Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/312

 at different times under the various designations of the Tottenham Street or West London Theatre, the Queen's, and latterly as the Prince of Wales' Theatre. The result was almost a foregone conclusion. A newspaper is a sufficiently hazardous speculation, but a theatre in the hands of an inexperienced manager is one of the most risky of all possible experiments; and the result in this case was so unfortunate, that À Beckett in the end had to seek the uncomfortable protection of the insolvent court. He was considerably indebted to Seymour for the illustrations to "Figaro," half of the debt thus incurred being money actually paid away by the artist to the engraver who executed the cuts from his drawings on the wood. Finding that À Beckett was in no position to discharge this debt or to remunerate him for his future services, Seymour did—what every man of business must have done who, like the artist, was dependent on his pencil for bread, refused any longer to continue his assistance. Apart from the bad paper and bad impressions of which he complained, and above all the bad taste displayed in fulsome adulation of his own merits, supremely distasteful to a man of real ability, Seymour appears hitherto to have entertained no bad feeling, towards À Beckett personally. The result however was a feud. À Beckett was not unnaturally angry, and an angry man in his passion is apt to lose both his head and his memory. Forgetting the manner in which he had shortly before acknowledged the services and talent of the artist, he now attacked him and his abilities with a malice which would be unintelligible if we had not seen something of his nature and disposition. In his favourite "Notices to Correspondents" in the number of 13th September, 1834, he professes to account for the employment of Isaac Robert Cruikshank after the following disingenuous fashion: "Mr. Seymour, our ex-artist, is much to be pitied for his extreme anguish at our having come to terms with the celebrated Robert Cruikshank in the supplying the designs of the caricatures in 'Figaro.' Seymour has been venting his rage in a manner as pointless as it is splenetic, and we are sorry for him. He ought, however, to feel, that notwithstanding our friendly wish to bring him