Robert Seymour’s “O lawkes, there’s that nasty cow walking all over our dinner!” (1834-36)
Seymour was an illustrator, and cartoonist noted for his wit and humor. For his sketches, as opposed to a political or social cartoons. His preference is to satirize the lower middle classes trying to do their best but getting things wrong.
The caption reads: “O lawkes, there’s that nasty cow walking all over our dinner! Oh dear, Oh dear, there goes his foot into the currant and raspberry pie!”
Seymour was Charles Dickens’s original illustrator for The Pickwick Papers, but after completing ten illustrations, they had a falling out. Unknown to Dickens, Seymour was desperately unstable,e and in the midst of controversy, he committed suicide. Especially noteworthy is his “Mr Pickwick in Chase of his Hat.” The illustrations for The Pickwick Papers will be treated in a post for Charles Dickens.
See The Sketches of Seymour—Complete (1834/36) London: Thomas Fry, after 1838). http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5650/5650-h/5650-h.htm.This edition is based on a collection of Seymour’s works to which Alfred Crowquill, the pseudonym of Alfred Henry Forrester, added narrative and doggerel verse. Seymour wrote legends for each illustration, but Crowquill greatly expanded Seymour’s intention. See: Seymour’s Sketches / Illustrations in Prose and Verse by Alfred Crowquill; Engraved on Steel by Henry Wallis, from the Original Drawings of the Late Robert Seymour (London: Joshua Thompson, 1838).http://www.rookebooks.com/product?prod_id=11886