Lord Bateman: A Ballad- Ritchie 1892 Harper's Magazine, May 1892
[Excerpt's from the article which include Thackeray's illustrations. Written by Thackeray's daughter Anne,
R. Matteson 2014]
Lord Bateman: A Ballad
by Anne Thackeray Ritchie
Harper's Magazine, Volume 86; May 1892
One of the heads that rise out of my witches' cauldron, as I look back at the people I have known, is that of George Cruikshank. . .
. . . life there were many catastrophes, which not all his delightful powers over the spirits and fairies of the world of fancy were sufficient to avert. Who does not know his realm of fays and pucks, and the weird sprites of the bottle, and the burglars and goblins and bold desperadoes out of Ainsworth and Oliver Twist? But, best of all, I think, among the playfellows he conjured into our nursery we loved Lord Bateman. From our earliest childhood we lived in his adventurous company. The noble lord, pointing his toes and brandishing his cane, the proud young Porter, and Sophia, as depicted by the artist, were our daily companions. Nor can I remember the time when Lord Bateman was not; but I never knew that my father had also made pictures to the familiar ballad, nor was it until the other day, when Mrs. Leslie Stephen sent them to me, that I ever saw the sketches. This lady happened to be nursing her children through some infantine illness, and in their nursery stood a table which had also stood in my own sister's nursery before, and which had been dragged forward to suit the convenience of the little invalids. By some accident the table went over with a crash, and an unsuspected drawer fell out, all stufl"ed full of papers and odds and ends. Among them were these present pictures, which had emerged into the daylight after over a quarter of a century of seclusion. The little table had once been in my father’s bedroom, and the drawings must have been put away there by himself years and years before, and remained undiscovered until Mrs.Leslie Stephen came upon them, wondering at the odd chance that conveyed them straight to her from her old friend's hands. She sent them on to me, and I in turn recognized the familiar figures.
Here was Sophia, with added details, waving her broidered and coroneted handkerchief. Here was Lord Bateman in his travelling coronet and costume, with piles of luggage. Here was the proud young Porter, with some faint likeness to Grufl’anufi' in the “Rose and the Ring,” or to the Jeames of early days. Here was the wedding ceremony. His lordship's sudden squint seemed but a proper retribution for his very equivocal conduct. The colors were so bright, so merry, and so fresh, and the drawings so easy and delicate, that they most certainly must have belonged to the time when my father was still in all the enjoyment of life and good spirits. I showed the pictures to Mr. Osgood, the representative of Messrs. Harper over here, and I asked him if they could not be reproduced in the pages of HARPER'S MAGAZINE, where the history of the brave Boudin had already been so faithfully rendered. He was kindly interested in my wishes, and made the necessary arrangements with Messrs. Harper to carry them out. So much for the little history of how the drawings now given came into our possession.
The small mystification concerning the ballad itself is curious as showing how completely the trace of a man’s work can be lost in a comparatively short space of time, with people still alive to remember the facts.
There are certain riddles in literature which turn up from time to time, from the authorship of “Junius” to that of the “ Tin Trumpet," and one of these concerns the modern version of the loving ballad of “Lord Bateman” and the delightful notes which are appended to George Cruikshan k’s illustrations. These have been variously ascribed to Mr. Dickens, to my father, and to George Cruikshank himself. My own impression (for which I have absolutely no foundation) is that the notes sound like Mr. Dickens‘s voice, and the ballad like my own father's. The original ballad is a very old one, very much longer and cruder than in Cruikshank’s version, and is to be found, so I am told, in the British Museum, printed upon long narrow slips, such as used to be the fashion when ballads were hawked about the streets with the last dying speeches and confessions and other cheerful ephemera which took the place of the sensational newspaper headings of to-day.
Mr. Charles Johnson, who knows more than anybody almost about my father’s early writings, writing to the Athe-nwum for January 21, 1888, says: “ The literary part of the work has been ascribed to each of the two greatest novelists of our time, \Vil1iam Makepeace Thackeray and Charles Dickens. It seems strange that there should be any doubt as to which of these two great writers took part in Cruikshank's version of the ballad, but so it is; various stories are told, and may be thus summarized: Mr. Hamilton says. . .
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. . . discover anything for me. His answer contains a curious corroboration of Mr. Johnson‘s views.
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Thackeray's copy seldom rhyme. The principal variations in the Cruikshank version are such as result from a change of the spelling to suit the supposed character of the singer, and the editor’s attempts at making the second and fourth lines in each verse rhyme; one of the rhymes, indeed, Northu'mberlee, suggests a device of the author of 'Little Billee.'*
When up he jumps; There's land, I see,
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letter-press of Cruikshank's comic almanacs for '39 and '40 had been written entirely by Thackeray." Then he goes on: “ My strongest argument comes last. There lies before me as I write a scrap-book containing. partly in Thackeray's own writing and partly roughly printed on couunon paper, the famous history of Lord Batenmn, profusely illustrated by Thackeray himself. The
ballad is the same, verse for verse, as Cruikshank‘s version, but the lines in . . .
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“A lucky chance”(so he says) “brought here this afternoon Mr. Trueman. who was a great friend of Cruikshank's, and who possesses the finest collection of his works. I took the opportunity of propounding to him the question of ‘Lord Bateman.’ He says that it has at dififerent times been ascribed to Dickens. Thackeray. and Cruikshank himself, or that Thackeray wrote the poem and Dickens the notes. Mr. Trueman is convinced from his own observation that the whole thing was written by Thackeray for Cruikshank, with whom he was on terms of great friendship at the time. Moreover, in the years ‘39 and ’40 the two were working together for the very publisher who published ‘Lord Bateman,’ which makes it more probable, as Dickens had no connection with that publisher. . . . Mr. Trueman also instanced the curious story of the ballad of ‘The Three Sailors of Bristol City,’ to illustrate your father's practice of inventing ballads off-hand and neglecting them altogether afterwards." One dear old friend tantalizingly tells me that Cruikshank once told him all about it, but what he told him he cannot recall. Another old friend, Miss Georgina Hogarth, to whom I also applied, knowing that she was more likely than anybody to be able to help me, says that her impression is that Charles Dickens wrote the notes to help Mr. Cruikshank, although she has no certain recollection on the matter. So the little secret remains mysterious and self-contained, but, happily, here are the pictures for us all to enjoy.