Mr. Lambkin's habits grow worse and worse!
George Cruikshank
1844
Steel-engraving
9.9 cm high by 8.83 cm wide, framed
Sixteenth illustration for George Cruikshank's The Bachelor’s Own Book; Or, The Progress Of Mr. Lambkin (Gent.), in the Pursuit Of Pleasure And Amusement, p. 31 (right-hand side of the eighth plate).
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Mr. Lambkin's habits grow worse1 — At 3 o'clock a. m. he is placed upright (very jolly) against his own door, by a kind-hearted Cabman — [page 31]
In the second or the "effect" illustration, a kindly cabman makes sure that Lambkin, thoroughly besotted, at least arrives safe at his own door. Apparently none of his boon companions has given any thought to his safety, so that he has had to find his own way home, to a house with a neoclassical front, likely in the West End. The open cab-door points to the fact that this is a more expensive conveyance, the one-horse brougham carriage, rather than a hackney cabriolet, diligence, or a hansom cabriolet of the type seen in Robert Seymour's Pickwick illustration The Pugnacious Cabman and Cruikshank's own The Last Cab-driver.
The Palladian doorway and the building faced with Portland stone, as well as the wrought-iron area railing, suggest that Lambkin's residence is in a respectable London district such as the West End. Cruikshank utilizes a similar doorway in two of his illustrations for Sketches by Boz, The Parish Engine and "Coach!" The picture that most closely corresponds to Lambkin's arriving home incapacitated in the wee hours, however, is Our Next-door Neighbour, although the situation there is somewhat different in that the householder at his own door confronts his drunken neighbour; nobody in that earlier picture is as far gone as Lambkin. As the cabman assists the inebriated bourgeois to his door a constable on patrol approaches the scene.
Kunzle notes how this particular frame in the Cruikshank cartoon sequence connects the progress of the middle-aged English bourgeois and his continental counterpart in the Töpffer series:
The most original episodes are placed towards the end (17-21. . . ) when Mr. Lambkin undertakes to cure his general debilitation by means of various remedies, one of which (21...) gives us perhaps the only genuinely comic and novel scene in the whole sequence. [Kunzle, page 180]
The ultimate reward for Lambkin's gambling and alcoholism is a total physical breakdown. The cabman's propping the inebriate up on his own fashionable, Palladian portal prepares the reader for the hero's trying every restorative regimen and cure possible to address his debilitation, beginning with the latest miracle cure, Hydropathy. Indeed, Cruikshank devotes one of the twenty-four illustrations entirely to Hydropathy: Mr. Lambkin being tired of the old-fashioned regular practice. His other efforts to recover his health including consulting his "Medical Friend" (next plate), being nursed in his own rooms, taking up vigorous horseback-riding, and drinking raw milk.
Cruikshank, George. The Bachelor’s Own Book; Or, The Progress Of Mr. Lambkin, In The Pursuit Of Pleasure And Amusement. Glasgow: David Bryce, 1844, rpt. 1880.
Kunzle, David. "Mr. Lambkin: Cruikshank's Strike for Independence." George Cruikshank: A Revaluation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton U. P., 1974. Pp. 169-188.
Last modified 25 May 2018
