'Mr. Crindle's Rapid Career Upon Town'.
Henry George Hine was a 19th-century English watercolour landscape painter, who worked as a cartoonist for Punch magazine. Together with journalist Albert Smith, he made three comic strips: 'Mr. Crindle's Rapid Career Upon Town' (1847), 'The Surprising Adventures of Mr. Touchango Jones, an Emigrant' (1848) and 'How My Rich Uncle Came to Dine at Our Village' (1848), all published in the short-lived magazine The Man in the Moon. 'Mr. Crindle' was widely distributed in the mid-19th century and even semi-plagiarized by Gustave Doré.
Early life and career
Henry George Hine was born in 1811 in Brighton, Sussex, as the son of a local coachmaster. He was completely self-taught in terms of drawing and painting and basically learned the craft in his own spare time. Most of his early works were sea and coast landscape paintings. After moving to London Hine became an apprentice under English painter and engraver Henry Meyer. Hine also spent two years in Rouen, France, before returning to London to set up his own wood engraving business. He married in 1840 and remained a Londoner for the rest of his life. In 1841 Hine became one of the first cartoonists to publish in the newly found satirical magazine Punch. He was a regular in its pages until 1844, when John Leech became their house cartoonist. Hine's caricatures and cartoons also appeared in magazines like Puck, The Great Gun, Joe Miller the Younger, the Illustrated London News and The Man in the Moon before he retired from cartooning and became a full-time landscape painter again.
'Portraits of the Writers and Artists of Punch' (1843).
Mr. Crindle's Rapid Career Upon Town
In the monthly magazine The Man in the Moon, Hine published a few text comics. In each issue a large sequential cartoon was printed on the front page. These cartoons could be folded out for proper reading. The huge readable format also enabled the cartoonist to draw as much and as detailed as he wanted. The first of these fold-outs appeared in the debut issue, under the title 'Life and Death of Don Guzzles of Carrara' (January 1847). This romantic parody was drawn by an unknown artist. A month later, French artist Cham published an English-language comic in the magazine, titled 'The Foreign Gentleman in London; or the English Adventures of M. Vanille' (February 1847). However, he left it unfinished as he had to return to Paris. In the next issue (March 1847), Hine's comic strip, 'Mr. Crindle's Rapid Career Upon Town', appeared. It follows the adventures of a rich young man, Mr. Crindle, who wants to spend his money in London. Naturally things do not go according to plan. The humorous text comic, with text printed underneath the images, was written by journalist Albert Smith. It was serialized throughout the next nine months. The final episode could be read in the December issue.
'Mr. Crindle's Rapid Career Upon Town' was quite popular with readers. Punch published the entire narrative in book format. Between 12 January and 15 June 1850 Charles Philipon, of the French satirical magazine Journal Pour Rire, asked two of his colleagues, E. Bourget and Gustave Doré, to draw a similar comic strip for his magazine. Their story, 'L'Homme Aux Cent Mille Écus' (1850) also revolved around the humorous mishaps of a naïve man who inherits a large sum of money, but loses it all over the course of the story. The serialized narrative sometimes copied certain images from Hine's tale. Though the creators at least had the decency of mentioning their original inspiration on the title page. 'L'Homme aux Cent Mille Écus' was later partly republished in The Man in the Moon.
The Surprising Adventures of Mr. Touchango Jones, An Emigrant
In 1848 Albert Smith and Henry George Hine created another serialized comic for The Man in the Moon: 'The Surprising Adventures of Mr. Touchango Jones, An Emigrant'. The story, serialized in five monthly episodes, centers around Mr. Jones who runs away from his wife and lands in the fictional country Quashybungo. There he manages to hold his own against some primitive natives, after which the story brings him to France. Smith and Hine brought real-life current events into the narrative, by having Jones get involved in the 1848 socialist revolutions in Europe.
How My Rich Uncle Came to Dine at Our Village
The final story by Albert Smith and Henry George Hine, 'How My Rich Uncle Came to Dine at Our Village' (1848), is basically a bumbling police officer tale. Neither 'Touchango Jones' or 'Rich Uncle' enjoyed the same success as 'Mr. Crindle'. The Man in the Moon also found it difficult to keep up their expensive fold-out gimmick. They dropped it and soon folded themselves.
Final years and death
In 1863 Hine got involved with the Institute of Painters in Water-Colours, of which he became a full member one year later. Between 1888 and 1895 he was vice-president of the publication. Henry George Hine passed away in 1895.
'The Christmas Pic-Nic at the Diggings' (1851).