Early in 1841 I received a letter from Ingram & Cooke, news-agents of Nottingham, enclosing a fancy portrait of Old Parr from Wilson's “Wonderful Characters,” and requesting that a wood-cut might be made from it, with the words “From a picture by Sir Peter Paul Rubens” underneath. I wrote back that the portrait was a purely imaginary one, concocted more than a hundred and fifty years after both Parr and Rubens were dead, and was surprised to receive a reply saying, “No matter. Put Rubens's name all the same, as it is a well-known one.” Subsequently an engraving of Old Parr's gravestone in Westminster Abbey was ordered, and then instructions were received for designs to be made of Old Parr gathering medicinal herbs, his introduction to King Charles, and other incidents in the old Shropshire peasant's apocryphal long life. This latter commission was sent on to Mr, now Sir John Gilbert, and the illustrations afterwards figured in a more or less fictitious memoir of Old Parr, of which many million copies have since been printed. In the course of a few months the Nottingham firm removed to London, and carried on a roaring trade in Parr's pretended specific for attaining a stupendous old age, at Crane-court, Fleet-street, where piles of cases four feet long filled with many thousand small boxes of pills ordinarily blocked up the passage.

It was at this time that Marriott of the “Weekly Chronicle,” with whom I had kept up a casual acquaintance, sought my assistance in procuring a supply of drawings for some new illustrated publication which a friend of his contemplated bringing out.