Gustave
Dore was born in Strasbourg in 1832. He became a book illustrator
in Paris and his commissions included work by Rabelais, Balzac and
Dante. In 1853 he was asked to illustrate the works of Lord
Byron. This was followed by other work for British publishers
including a new illustrated English Bible.
Dore's English Bible (1865) was a great success and in 1867
Gustave Dore had a major exhibition of his work in London.
This led to the foundation of the Dore Gallery in New Bond Street.
In 1869, Blanchard Jerrold, the son of
Douglas Jerrold, suggested that they worked
together to produce a comprehensive portrait of London. Jerrold had
got the idea from The Microcosm of London, that had been produced
by Rudolf Ackermann, William
Pyne and Thomas Rowlandson in 1808.
Dore signed a five-year project with he publishers, Grant & Co,
that involved him staying in London for
three months a year. Dore was paid the vast sum of £10,000 a
year for the proposed art work. The book, London: A Pilgrimage,
with 180 engravings by Dore, was eventually published in 1872.
Although a commercial success, many of the critics disliked the book.
Several were upset that Dore had appeared to concentrate on the poverty
that existed in London. Gustave Dore was
accused by the Art Journal of "inventing rather than copying".
The Westminster Review claimed
that " Dore gives us sketches in which the commonest, the vulgarest
external features are set down".
London: A Pilgrimage was a financial success and Dore received
commissions from other British publishers. Dore's later work included
Paradise Lost, The Idylls of the King and The Works
of Thomas Hood. His work also appeared in the Illustrated
London News. Dore continued to illustrate books until his
death in 1883.
Gustave
Dore, Houndsditch (1872)
(1)
Blanchard Jerrold, London: A Pilgrimage
(1872)
That which most astonishes the watcher of the industries of the poor,
is the fertility of invention that never slackens. In a low lodging
house by Shadwell, which we entered late one Friday night, in the
midst of the hurly-burly, herring-frying, gambling, and singing, a
poor old man was making card-board railway carriages for sale in the
streets. I remarked that this was something new.
"Yes, sir," he said, lifting the side of a carriage with
his gummed pencil as he spoke - for he could not afford to lose a
moment.
"Yes, sir: they won't look at stage-coaches now. Yer see, the
young uns don't know them: so I've took to these here; and they takes
them readily."
If we pass from the great markets to the small; from the West End
shops to Phil's Gardens, by St. Mary Axe, and Petticoat Lane, and
the New Cut, and Somers Town; we come upon begone communities, who
are without knowledge or skill, and can consequently command only
the lowest wage. Behold them keenly testing and examining the huge
bunches of rags that are temptingly hung from old clothesmen's doors
and windows; and how their eyes run along the rows of old boots and
shoes upon the pavement. The eagerness of the vendors is as remarkable
as the anxiety painted on the faces of the customers. This is a hard
battle over every rag and trinket: and the noise of the strife is
deafening.
(2)
Blanchard Jerrold, London: A Pilgrimage
(1872)
The barrel organ is the opera of the street-folk: and Punch is their
national comedy theatre. I cannot call to mind any scene on our many
journeys through London that struck the authors of this pilgrimage
more forcibly than the sound of the organ. The women leaning out of
the windows - pleasurably stirred, for an instant, in that long disease,
their life - and the children trooping and dancing round the swarthy
player!
(3)
Blanchard Jerrold, London: A Pilgrimage
(1872)
We dismiss our cab: it would be useless in the strange, dark byeways,
to which we are bound: natives of which will look upon us as the Japanese
looked upon us the first European travellers in the streets of Jeddo.
The missionary, the parish doctor, the rent collector (who must be
a bold man indeed), the policeman, the detective, and the humble undertaker,
are the human beings from without who enter this weird and horrible
Bluegate Fields.
We arrived at Whitechapel Police Station, to pick up the superintendent
of savage London. He had some poor specimens - maundering drunk -
in his cells already - and it was hardly nine o'clock.
We plunge into a maze of courts and narrow streets of low houses -
nearly all the doors of which are open, showing kitchen fires blazing
far in the interior, and strange figures moving about.
At dark corners, lurking men keep close to the wall; and the police
smile when we wonder what would become of a lonely wanderer who should
find himself in these regions unprotected. "He would be stripped
to his shirt" was the candid answer - made while we threaded
an extraordinary tangle of dark alleys where two men could just walk
abreast, under the flickering lamps jutting from the ebon walls, to
mark the corners.
Gustave
Dore, Bluegate Fields (1872)
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