Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 7.djvu/230

 222 NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. vn. mab. 22,1913. " Eventually John Cassell enticed Smith away, but kept the affair a profound secret. Smith, who always wrote his weekly instalment of ' copy' at The London Journal office, chanced to be in the middle of a story.* In this dilemma he decided upon bringing the tale to a sudden close, and to accomplish this artistically he took the principal characters to America, and blew them all up on board a Mississippi steamboat. He then handed his ' copy' to the boy in waiting, proud of having solved a troublesome difficulty." The interesting memoir of Sir John Gilbert in the ' Dictionary of National Bio- graphy ' (Supplement, vol. ii. p. 276) implies that he had the wood engraver at his house. It says :— "Gilbert would first sketch the whole subject very slightly in ink, and then complete the draw- ing in sections, unscrewing each portion of the composite block of boxwood as it was finished, and passing it on to the engraver, while he continued his work on the next piece of wood, with a perfect recollection of its relation to the whole design."+ "A complete set of these woodcuts [from The London Journal], very superior as works of art to the fiction which gave rise to them, was preserved by Gilbert himself, and presented to the Guildhall Library. The British Museum also possesses proofs of the woodcuts to four novels published in The London Journal from 1852 to 1854." The Guildhall Library has now only two folio volumes of prints cut out from the Journal, and, unfortunately, they are not proofs, and are far from being complete. So far as I can make out, Smith's stories began with ' Stanfleld Hall' in the number dated 19 May, 1849. The first number of The London Journal —which appeared on 1 March, 1845—has an illustration, nicely done, signed " G. Stiff del. et sculp." He was, I presume, the starter of The London Journal, but Mr. Boase in ' Modern English Biography ' says he bought it in 1844. Tho first long story- seems to be ' The Mystories of the Inquisi- tion,' by G. W. M. Reynolds, of whom there is a notice in an article entitled ' Biographical Sketches of Living Authors '—29 Nov., 1845. I thought at first that Gilbert got a good hint of the sort of tiling wanted from the clever French illustrations to ' Martin the Foundling,' by Eugene Sue, reprinted in The London Journal in 1847, but when I come to Gilbert's first illustrations I find this is not so. In fact, I doubt if Gilbert ever saw the French illustrations. worked in the same offhand way. Smith's facility of composition was equal to Gilbert's. t This refers to large woodcuts, such as the whole- or even double-page illustrations of The Illustrated London New*. Up to 5 Aug., 1848, the editor had been chiefly satisfied with translations from the French. In this number began ' Gideon Giles,' by Thomas Miller, with an excellent illustration of three men in the taproom of an inn, which struck me as worthy of Gilbert and his engraver. This novel had been previously published separately in 1841. The next illustration is somewhat stifferr but is juvenile Gilbertian, and it reveals a Christian name I had wanted—that of Walter Gorway, the engraver. The third is also Gilbertian, but not so well engraved, by Greenway D. Wright. The next volume (vii.) has several good portraits, notably Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean and Mrs. Keeley, none of which, pro- bably, has ever been reproduced. There are also capital views of English churches,, and I noticed particularly a long account,, with illustration, of St. George's Roman Catholic Cathedral, Lambeth Road, in which everybody receives honourable mention ex- cept the architect, who is not even named. On p. 369 is a drawing of the chanceL taken expressly for The London Journal, On p. 105 (vol. vii.) we come to an illus- tration that looks like Gilbert's, but differs from his usual work on account of its being engraved by another hand ; in the next we are undoubtedly with Gilbert again. ' Gideon Giles ' came to an end on 30 Dec., 1848. I am convinced that all the illustrations to it are Gilbert's, and I should also think he- settled the titles descriptive of the scene. I do not find Gilbert again until 3 March, 1849 (vol. viii. p. 401), when there is a splendid illustration by him to Thomas Miller's ' Godfrey Malvern.' The cut occu- pies half a page, double the size of previous ones. This size was continued, and the cut put on the front page. As was usual, it was not signed by Gilbert; nor, as was unusual, by the engraver. With the issue dated 19 May, 1849- (No. 221, vol. ix. p. 161), begins ' Stanfield Hall,' by J. F. Smith, author of ' The Jesuit,'* &c, with a fine series of Gilbert's appeared, for there are several publications entitled ' The Jesuit,' but only ono three - volume novel, which Halkett and Laing wrongly ascribe to"C. Spindler," probably following (or were they followed by?) the National Library Catalogue. The entry in the latter has been corrected, at my suggestion, to J. F. Smith. Karl Spindler wrote a ' Jesuit,' but very little examination sufficed to convince me that Spindler's was quite a different work. Lately, on reading parts of " The Jesuit [a novel], in three volumes, Loudon, Saunders & Otley, 1832," I have no doubt that it is Smith's. These volumes are insoribed to Lieut. - Col.
 * It is remarkable that both author and artist
 * I have often wondered where Smith's'Jesuit'