Those Cruikshank Prints In "Ten Things I Hate About You": 'The Blue Devils'

George Crukshank, The Blue Devils, 10 January 1823, courtesy Harvard Library

This is the first post about the Cruikshank prints mentioned in the book, with some notes about the imagery. The Cruikshank images Ashmont has in his dressing room must have been quite popular, because they were reprinted at later dates, sometimes as late as a decade or more after the original. Unfortunately, it’s difficult if not impossible to get all the jokes and references in 19th-century satirical prints, but I’ll offer clues where I can. I do strongly urge you to click on the links, so that you can view the images enlarged, and note the many, clever little details.

“Pray remember the poor debtors”—reference to a window at debtors' prison where prisoners begged for money to pay their prison expenses. Clearly, the subject of the illustration is up the River Tick, as he might say. Also: A blue devil blowing his brains out. A blue devil offering a razor, for throat cutting. Another imp offering a noose. A gentleman presenting an IOU, tapping on our hero's shoulder. A pickpocket—likely to find only lint. Inside the fireplace, a grate containing no coal but a list of what’s owing to coal merchants.

A set of paintings deals with catastrophes: a shipwreck, a burning building, a domestic quarrel growing violent. Then there’s the empty bottle, the overdue bill, the funeral parade , with the Beadle (a parish officer) leading the way.

The Miseries of Human Life, first published in 1806, was extremely popular, and continued to be reprinted. Thomas Rowlandson, among others, illustrated scenes from the book. You can read more about that here at the Princeton University site. An image search on line will show you many of the illustrations, and you can find countless editions of the book online.

Buchan's Domestic Medicine, originally published in 1769 and continuing to be updated and printed long after Buchan’s death, was a famous book of home medicine, used all over the world. This is also available online.

The book labeled Ennui appears to contain poetry. As I discovered in researching Vixen in Velvet, there’s an abundance of lugubrious poetry from this era, featuring what we might consider an unhealthy preoccupation with death, especially the death of the young and beautiful. Unfortunately, the poets and their readers had good reason to be preoccupied. Medical practice was more or less insane, by our standards, and a common cold or a sliver could kill in a time long before antibiotics existed. Women died in childbirth all too frequently.

Have I missed anything? Cruikshank is so imaginative—and oh, what a career!

The Green Man Inn and the Cattle Pound of Putney Heath

The Green Man about 1900.

The Green Man Inn, Putney Heath, features in two Difficult Dukes books, most recently in Ten Things I Hate About the Duke.

It “stands on the crest of Putney Hill, where the Heath and the Portsmouth Road begin” Charles Harper tells us, in The Old Inns of Old England (1906). But Harper spends most of his time on the highwaymen and footpads whose hangout it apparently was in the 18th century. My story comes some years later, on the brink of the Victorian era, and my focus is on the duels. Several famous ones took place here, including at least two involving Prime Ministers—this despite the fact that dueling was illegal.

A few years ago, during our stay in London, my husband and I visited Putney Heath on our way back from Wimbledon. At the time I wasn’t sure the area would find its way into another book. But I always want to see the real thing when I can, even if it’s too late to change errors. As it happened, we overlooked a site that later became critical to the Duke of Ashmont’s story. More about that later.

We were focused on the Green Man Inn and the heath itself, where we found a suitable dueling site. Although the landscape has changed in nearly 200 years, the change isn’t so radical as to eliminate the kind of space needed. It had to be well hidden by trees but also close to the road where vehicles might wait, ready to speed away all those involved in the event, dead and alive.

We found the perfect place. In fact, we received the distinct impression that a modern-day duel had gone on there, because we encountered two battered-looking men leaving our chosen dueling site. I was happy to see that the dispute was settled with fisticuffs rather than deadly weapons. If it was a dispute. For all I know, they got their bruises and other damage dragging booty through the heath.

We also visited the Green Man itself, where duelists would have stopped for a brandy and soda to bolster their courage on the way to the duel, and where survivors and seconds might settle their nerves afterward. This is where we find the Duke of Ashmont at the start of Ten Things I Hate About the Duke, a few hours after his duel. I used brandy and soda as the drink of choice because it’s recommended as a bracer in The Art of Dueling (1836).

Historical note: I am not positive about opening and closing hours, so there might be some artistic liberty in any character’s stopping in the early morning for a bracer.

What my husband and I failed to discern in our exploration of the area was the cattle pound that’s so significant in the early part of my book. Only when I was back in the U.S. did I discover its existence: “the house, seen across the road from where the large old-fashioned pound for strayed horses, donkeys, and cattle stands on the Heath, presents a charming scene,” Mr. Harper tells us.

“Opposite to the Green Man and just near the bus terminus, a wooden-fence cattle pound stands half-hidden beneath two large plane trees. Originally built in the nineteenth century and as a pen for straying livestock found on the heath, the pound has been a Grade II-listed structure since 1983.” —Simon McNeill-Ritchie & Ron Elam, Putney & Roehampton Through Time (2015)

I can verify that it was at least half-hidden, since we missed it entirely on a July day. I have had to look elsewhere for photographs and precise location. If you scroll down on this History of Putney Heath site, you’ll see a recent photograph of the cattle pound.

Whether the pound was built by the time of my story I have not yet been able to ascertain. All my sources are no more specific than “nineteenth century.” But it worked beautifully for my purposes, and 1833 does qualify as 19th century.