Beschreibung:

Autograph Manuscript Signed 6 times and initialed ("George Cruikshank," "Geo Cruikshank" and "GCk"), 12 pp, 4to and 8vo, [London, c.1867], with 19 original colored pen and ink drawings, being a working manuscript on the subjects of "British Volunteers" and "Our National Defenses," chipped margins, light toning. Laid in a navy, quarter-morocco gilt binding, cloth slipcase, spine of binding worn. Together with: fragment of an Autograph Letter Signed ("George Cruikshank Lt. Col. 48th Middlesex Rifles"), 1 p, 4to, 263 Hampstead Road, February 15, 1867, recounting his experience "About fifty years back, upon one occasion when some serious Riots were expected to take place in London, I was then in the 'Loyal North Britons....'"; a working manuscript, 2 pp, 8vo, with 3 pen and ink sketches, being Cruikshank's notes on the subject of British military volunteers; a check sent to Cruikshank; and British Volunteers & Our Rifle Volunteers. Sixteen Subjects, sketched by 'Quiz.' (London: Read & Co., 1867). Provenance: Paul Francis Webster (his sale, Sotheby's New York, April 24, 1985, Lot 21). George Cruikshank scathingly condemns the idea of a volunteer army in England: "Here we find that these British volunteers were formed in regiments of 1000 strong and even in larger masses 'armed and accounted – and drilled, like the regular troops' but after all the trouble and expense of this military preparation the only use they were of, was to 'display, - the moral power executed by the danger of invasion; but as soldiers - mere mimies without solidity to support the regular army' that is to say some 50 thousand of English, Scotch, Welch and Irish men were so terrified at the idea of an invasion that in their fright they all ran...."