Yet this practice of drawing from memory has its drawbacks; for the things remembered are apt to grow old-fashioned. The Flying Dutchman was running when Sir John's locomotive still had the odour of Puffing Bilfy about it. His indifference to that "actuality" which is the characteristic of Mr. Sambourne has often raised the howl of the specialist. When in an excellently drawn cartoon full of point (November, 1893), entitled "A Bicycle made for Two," he grafted the features of a modern roadster on to the type of 1860, the cycling world fluttered in a manner that must have been very encouraging to the artist. His machine, they said, was the most wonderful one ever placed on the market. Sir H. H. Fowler, it was said, was sitting on a half-inch tube without a saddle, and "working with his heels on pedals shaped like a Mexican gaucho's stirrup"—but his critics had clearly never seen a gaucho's stirrup. "Nor has the lady—riding behind, instead of in front—better accommodation, being in suspension over a frame that lacks a backstay, and above a wheel that buckles under her weight; while the handles are thrown up instead of down, and their bars so slender that they must inevitably break." The gear-case is on one side of the frame and the chain on the other, and the frame itself was a marvel of ingenuity misapplied. Thus did the cyclists moan in many newspapers, taking the matter au grand serieux, with quite unusual regard for mechanical accuracy, and a total disregard for the political allusion and point. Similarly in January of the same year the "Forlorn Maiden" of trade was shown lying across the railway lines while an engine is bearing down upon her. But "there are five rails in sight, all at equal distances apart, though the railway gauge is four feet eight inches and a half, and the locomotive is running on the six-foot way." The girl, too, stretches across it, and spans it from waist to ankles, not counting a bend at the knees, so that at the lowest estimate she is ten feet high. This violated the public conscience even more than the fact that the engine rushes along the inside line of the two sets of rails; and they declared that never before had the maxim ars longa been more triumphantly indicated than in the maiden's figure. But what of it all? Is it not a striking commentary on our English temperament, that while an inaccuracy of a purely mechanical description raises the protests of thousands who have no idea beyond the parts of a bicycle or the width of a railway gauge, a score of artistic beauties pass unnoticed and unchallenged?

And so Tenniel worked his way upwards. The fact that in a fencing bout he had partially lost his sight, through the button of his father's foil dropping off, whereupon he received the point in his eye, was not the slightest deterrent. He regarded it merely as an annoying, though not a very important, incident. Being satisfied that the Almighty had only given us two eyes as a measure of precaution, to provide against such vexatious little accidents as he had experienced, he went on working as if nothing had happened. "It's a curious thing, is it not," he said one day to the writer, "that two of the principal men on Punch, du Maurier and I, have only two eyes between them?" Yet it only made him the more careful. Free from mannerism, he never allowed carefulness to interfere with fun, and his cartoon of Britannia discovering the source of the Nile, and of Lord Beaconsfield as a peri entering the Paradise of Premiership, are among the memorably funny things of Punch. His elevation to the leading position on the paper has thus been gradual and certain; not of his own assumption, however, but the ready tribute of his colleagues, who have always regarded him not only as the great artist, but as the link incarnate of the tradition of Punch of the present with the past. So he is the favourite of the band, to whom he is the beloved "Jackīdēs" of Shirley Brooks's christening. It was Mark Lemon who, at the Dinner, first applied to him the burlesque line—"No longer Jack, henceforth Jackīdēs call;" but it was Brooks who confirmed the practice of according to him the sobriquet which Punch (p. 148, Vol. XLV.) had previously conferred on Lord John Russell, "England's Briefest Peer."

It was a startling proof of his extraordinary, and by him half-unsuspected, popularity, that when Tenniel's knighthood became known the honour was received with loud and general applause—with an enthusiasm quite unusual in its command of popular approval. "I am receiving shoals of letters and telegrams," he wrote to me on the day of the announcement; "I suppose you know the reason Y." It is said that Lord Salisbury had intended to make the recommendation himself, but that the nomination was delayed and forgotten; but when Mr. Gladstone came into office the new Premier repaired the neglect of the old, and at the same time acknowledged the steady support which Punch had offered to the Whig policy. By the general public it was regarded as an appreciation of the man who was the personification of the good-humoured and the loftier side of political life—who had brought the Punch spirit round to something a good deal better and higher than he found it, blending fun with classic grace, and humour with dignity. To the art world it was the recognition of that "Black-and-white" drawing which has been the glory of England and the Cinderella of the Royal Academy of Arts. It was in this sense that Sir John Tenniel accepted the distinction. But it was to "Jackīdēs" that the Punch Staff drank when Mr. Agnew proposed his health at the Dinner following the announcement of the nomination; it was "dear old John Tenniel" that the Arts Club toasted when, with Mr. Val Prinsep, R.A., in the chair and Mr. du Maurier in the vice-chair, the new knight was the honoured guest of his club, and received its congratulations with the modest dignity and kindly good taste characteristic of him. And it was "good Sir John," the cartoonist—who has also been, at extremely rare intervals, a Punch writer too (see Punch, p. 56, Vol. XX.)—who was celebrated by the pen of Mr. Milliken—"the Pride of Mr. Punch and the delight of the British Public."

FOOTNOTES:

[51] It may be stated that Doyle contributed a ewe-lamb of literature to Punch (May 13th, 1843), entitled "High Art and the Royal Academy" (Vol. XVI., p. 197).

[52] This conversation took place in April, 1889.

[53] Since 1892, I may explain, Sir John Tenniel and Punch have moved with the times. Sir John now draws his cartoons upon the Chinese-whitened surface of cardboard, and they are photographed on the block in the usual way.

[54] But when, in 1866, Keene contributed three cartoons, Sir John Tenniel's appeared side by side. This was the result of a revived experiment to add to the attractions of the paper by giving two cartoons—an experiment resumed in later years in the case of Mr. Sambourne and Mr. Furniss.



CHAPTER XX.

PUNCH'S ARTISTS: 1850-60.

Captain Howard—Receipt for Landscape Drawing—Earnings, Real and Ideal—George H. Thomas—Charles Keene—His Training—Introduction to Punch—Called to the Table—Uselessness in Council—A Strong Politician—Inherits Leech's Position—Keene as an Artist—Where He Failed—His Joke-Primers—Torturing the Bagpipes—Good Stories, Used, Spoiled, and Rejected—"Toby" as a Dachshund—Death of "Frau"—Keene's Technique—His Inventions and Creations—And what He Earned by Them—Charles Martin—Harry Hall—Rev. Edward Bradley ("Cuthbert Bede")—"Verdant Green" or "Blanco White"?—Double Acrostics—George Cruikshank Defies Punch—Mr. T. Harrington Wilson—Mr. Harrison Weir—Mr. Ashby-Sterry—Alfred Thompson—Frank Bellew—Julian Portch—"Cham"—G. H. Haydon—J. M. Lawless.



An amateur who signed with cross-pipes, and who appeared five times in the following year, was the one other contributor of 1850; and then 1851 was distinguished by the enlistment of the prolific draughtsman who at first used three running legs—quaintly accepted as the Manx arms—as his sign-manual. This was Captain Henry R. Howard, the son of a country gentleman, born at Watford, where he lived in the same house for over fifty years. He was always sketching from a child; and being persuaded by his friends to "do some of those for Punch," he sent a few samples to the Editor, but without much hope of success. They brought an immediate invitation to call upon Mark Lemon, who told him, after seeing his pencil sketches, that he might draw for them, but not on paper, on wood; and learning that he had had no such experience, referred him for instruction to the courtesy of Leech and Tenniel, whose senior he was by six years. He was not entirely without artistic education, having studied in Hanover under a pupil of Benjamin West's. "You must draw skeletons," said Herr Ramburg. "But I only want to draw landscapes," pleaded the youth. "Then you must draw skeletons first," replied the artist; "it is the only way to draw landscapes."

After securing Lemon's favour Captain Howard drew scores of comic humanised beasts and birds in the form of initials and decorations. At last, after some years, Lemon proposed a change, when Howard quietly remarked, "I've been wondering how long you'd go on taking those things; I should have thought you were sick of them. I am." Meanwhile he had changed his signature of the Manx legs—he had just been sojourning in the island when he adopted them—as Lemon represented it as Leech's opinion that it was sometimes unnecessarily like his own wriggling signature; and he had adopted in substitution the little trident that figured in the paper for fifteen years. When Leech died, Captain Howard aspired to be—in part, at least—his successor; but although he was now drawing figure-subjects, and had an inexhaustible stock of jokes and fun, he was told, to his bitter disappointment, that new blood was wanted; and the great mantle which had fallen was now drawn round the shoulders of Charles Keene and Mr. du Maurier. Captain Howard then practically retired. Although in the first year of his contributions he was L30 out of pocket by his Punch work, as he bought his own blocks instead of claiming them from Swain, he was soon making L100 a year from the paper. Just before he retired an officer recently returned from India expressed the desire to draw also for Punch as a profession. "I hear," said he, "that Leech makes L1,500 a year out of it." "So that you would be satisfied with L1,200?" asked Captain Howard. His friend admitted that even the inferior sum would be acceptable. "Very well," replied Howard encouragingly; "come and dine with me, and I'll show you by my books that my Punch income last year was just twelve pounds!"

Captain Howard's work, though clever and ingenious, was weak. Its humour, often fresh enough, was never very pronounced; nor did the draughtsman's hand ever become that of a master. In 1853 he had made no fewer than sixty-six cuts, and about doubled that number each year up to 1867, when, with only two drawings in the volume, he finally vanished from Punch's pages. Three years later there was printed an initial by him, representing a comic hammer-fish (p. 265, Vol. LIX.), but this belonged to "old stock;" and it marks the failure of its author's long-sustained effort to obtain a recognised position in the front rank of the artistic Staff. He died 31st August, 1895.

A contemporary of his was G. H. Thomas, brother of one of the founders of the "Graphic," and a popular painter of the day, who received much employment from the Queen. Mark Lemon was very anxious to secure the services of so admirable a draughtsman; but Thomas, who was trying to shake himself free from wood-drawing in favour of oil-painting, showed little responsive enthusiasm. He did, however, contribute a couple of drawings—one of them a large head-piece to the preface, representing a feast given to Punch on his twenty-first volume day. In it he is supported by the Queen and Court, and at the round table are the representatives of the nations. It is not a happy effort, and is clearly inspired by Doyle—whose fancy the Editor was still seeking to replace; and, moreover, it is poorly engraved; but it is as full of figures as of incident. Then came C. H. Bradley, who seldom got beyond initials and trifles of large heads on little bodies, being only once or twice promoted to "socials" during the nine years of his connection with the paper. On occasion he showed real humour, while his artistic merit seems to have owed most of what excellence it possessed to the study of Tenniel's work. Bradley, whose monogram might easily be mistaken by the unwary for that of C. H. Bennett, who followed eight years later, executed but five-and-thirty cuts between 1852 and 1860.



Punch was ten years old when the hand of Charles Keene, but not Charles Keene himself, was introduced to the Editor, through the instrumentality of Mr. Henry Silver. Keene had at first been intended for the law, and afterwards had spent a short period in an architect's office. But he decided to throw himself into art; and in order to learn engraving and drawing on the wood, he followed the practice of the day (such as had been adopted by Leech, William Harvey, Fred Walker, Mr. Birket Foster, Mr. Walter Crane, and other of Punch's artists), and apprenticed himself to an engraver—Whymper, for choice. Then he studied along with his comrade Tenniel and other incipient geniuses at the Clipstone Street Academy, and as early as 1846 produced with his friend—who was soon to be his fellow-giant on Punch—the "Book of Beauty," already referred to. He took a studio in the Strand—a sky-parlour renowned for its dust and inaccessibility—and lived, as all good Bohemians should, chiefly on art, song, and smoke: an existence sweetened by a few warm but eclectic friendships. He worked desperately hard, and having, through his fellow-shireman Samuel Read, become connected with the "Illustrated London News," he made for it many drawings of the sort now called "actuality."

By that time Mr. Henry Silver had contracted with Keene an acquaintanceship which was to grow into a warm friendship, and it was under the shadow of that intimacy that his earlier contributions were made. As Mr. Silver himself explains in his statement written for Mr. George S. Layard's admirable "Life and Letters of Charles Keene of Punch" (p. 47): "It may seem a little strange that Keene at first showed some reluctance to let his name be known where it was finally so famous. Still, it is the fact that while his earliest Punch drawings were of my devising, he steadily declined to own himself the doer of them. I was writing then for Punch as an outsider, but my ambition was to draw, and for this I had no talent. As for working on the wood, I soon 'cut' it in despair, and, like a baffled tyrant, I knew not how to bring my subjects to the block. Keene very kindly undertook the labour for me, and the first design he executed was 'A Sketch of the New Paris Street-sweeping Machines'—a couple of cannon, namely—which was published in December, 1851, immediately after the bloody coup d'etat."

This was the barest sketch, childish and shaky in execution, which, however, is explained in the legend as being due to the "Special Artist" being in the line of fire. Mr. Layard asserts that when Keene made the drawing he thought the joke "a mighty poor one;" and he might have added, as is made clear in the chapter dealing with "Plagiarism," not even a new one, for Punch himself had used the idea before (p. 166, Vol. XV.), and was then accused of theft by the "Man in the Moon." Mr. Silver proceeds:—

"His next two drawings illustrate an article of mine, and appear on the second page of the next volume. His fourth, a far more finished drawing, like these, saw the light in 1852, and may be found in Vol. XXIII., p. 257. It shows a gentleman engaged in fishing in his kitchen, and is entitled 'The Advantage of an Inundation,' the autumn of that year being very wet. Mark Lemon wrote to me commending it, and asking me to try and draw a little more for him. I showed Charles the letter, and said that now, of course, his name must be divulged, for I clearly was obtaining kudos under false pretences. However, he deferred the disclosure for a while, and it was not until the spring of 1854 that his 'C. K.' first appeared (vide initial 'G,' Vol. XXVI., p. 128)—a modest little monogram, quite unlike his later and so well-known signature. In the interim he marked his drawings with a mask, which was a device of mine for hiding his identity."

For nine years Keene worked steadily on Punch, improving artistically in an amazing manner, and in 1860 he was called to the Table—they served long terms of probation then—and ate his first Dinner on February 20th. It was a notable company that he used to meet, all the chief "rising stars" of Punch being still upon the Staff, save Douglas Jerrold, who had died three years before. There were Mark Lemon, Thackeray (nominally retired), Tom Taylor, Horace Mayhew, Shirley Brooks, Percival Leigh, John Leech, Henry Silver, and John Tenniel; and into this brilliant assemblage, on the evening in question (when, however, Thackeray was absent, and Sir Joseph Paxton was present as a visitor), he was received with a cordial welcome. But neither at that time nor thenceforward did he take a prominent part in the discussions over the cartoon, although on one occasion he did astonish the company with an excellent though belated suggestion. He had, in fact, no originality of a literary or humorous kind. He knew the exact value of a joke when it was made, and could usually display its point to incomparable advantage; but joke-creation was not one of his strong points, even though he was often forced to it by necessity. Occasionally, however, he would miss a point entirely, as in the joke sent him by Mr. Alfred Cooper[55]:—

"VISITOR (having shot a hare at the usual seventy yards): 'Long shot that, Johnson.'

"KEEPER: 'Yes, sir; Master remarked as it were a wery long shot.'

"VISITOR (gratified): 'Ah! Oh, he noticed it, did he?'

"KEEPER: 'Yes, sir; Master always take notice. When gen'lemen makes wery long shots, they don't get asked again!'"

"Why," asks Keene, "would 'Master' object to this long shot? Burnand ... is sure to want to know I don't know either! Will you kindly explain, so that I can answer him as if I were an expert." As if even a non-sportsman would fail to see the point!

But at the Table, delightful as Keene personally was—he was lovingly addressed as "Carlo"—he was not a leading conversationalist. He proposed little; yet when his opinion was asked, he gave it, with judgment and taste, tersely expressed. His work, besides, was rarely discussed at the Table, for he usually had to seek his material outside. Moreover, he was, as he expressed it, a "hot Tory," and so strongly antipathetic did he profess himself towards the Liberal tendency of some of the Staff of that day that he would declare with a wink that he positively preferred to stay away; and on the occasion of the accession of Mr. Anstey, wrote this sturdy Conservative "I hope he's a Tory. We want some leaven to the set of sorry Rads that lead poor old Punch astray at present." But few independent readers, and fewer still of Keene's personal friends, will take very seriously his sweeping assertion and political pronunciamentoes—at least, as regards Punch, for whom and for his colleagues he retained to the end feelings of the warmest affection.

When John Leech died in 1864, it was Keene who received the main heritage of his great position as the social satirist of the paper, and with it the heaviest share of work and artistic responsibility. Not only did his work increase in the ordinary numbers, but extra drawings—such as the etched frontispieces to the Pocket-books—fell also to his lot; and a good deal against the grain—for he hated any approach to personality, even though his target was a public man and his shaft was tipped with harmless fun—he executed fourteen cartoons, as is explained elsewhere. In addition to his ordinary "socials" and the formal decorations of each successive volume, Keene re-illustrated "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures" with a marvellous series of drawings, and Mr. Frank C. Burnand's "Tracks for Tourists," which made their first appearance as "How, When, and Where" (1864) and were ultimately republished in "Very Much Abroad." Of his outside work for "Once a Week," published by Messrs. Bradbury and Evans, and other publications, no mention need here be made.

It is doubtful if the public will ever realise how great an artist Keene was. His transcendent merit has, however, for a long time been the wonder and admiration of his brother-craftsmen and of the critics. The stream of his genius continued to flow for six-and-thirty years in the most amazing manner. His drawings are in the highest form of Impressionism, reproducing every phase of fleeting expression and suddenly-arrested action with a certainty and accuracy which are absolutely unsurpassable. His power of composition, of breadth of handling, chiaroscuro, and suggestion of colour and form, was perfect within the range of his medium; and in that medium he gave us, not paper with pen-lines on it, but a perfect sense of light, form, and expression. He was as careful, too, in his "comic cuts" as the most conscientious of painters could be in his canvas; and drawing invariably from the model—even if that model were simply an old shoe—he would often journey into the country for a background of, say, a turnip-field, or in search of any other detail or local colour.

In one direction alone did he fail, or choose to fail—in the portrayal of facial beauty, elegance, and respectability. A pretty woman lurked but rarely about the point of his pencil, as she does so delightfully about those of his principal collaborators on Punch; and an elegant woman—save by accident—never. You may point to the Brittany peasant in the number for September 20th, 1856; to the very Leechy young lady on p. 188, Vol. XXXVI. (May 7th, 1859), who, it must be admitted, really is a "lady;" and to one or two more. But these pretty women serve rather to accentuate the ugliness of all his other women, when they should have been most beautiful; while elegance is with him a virtue that very rarely saves. Keene, indeed, misrepresented his countrywomen as much as M. Forain libels his. Keene's "swells," and even his gentlemen, are snobs; his aristocracy and his clerks are cast in the same mould; his city young men are like artizans; and his brides are forbidding—models of virtue, no doubt, but lacking every outward feminine charm. These shortcomings, of course, are to a certain extent to be accounted for by his own nature. Living in the strictest economy and temperateness, he hated anything like ostentation. He despised "Society" and the whole fabric of fashion, and held the world of Burke and Debrett in good-natured abhorrence. Like Leech and Dickens, he had given his heart to the middle and lower-middle classes, and among them he found his best models and most admirable motifs.

No Punch artist was ever so dependent upon his friends for "subjects" as he, and none received such continuous and delightful support. From Messrs. Joseph Crawhall, Andrew Tuer, Walker, Clayton, Birket Foster, Sands, Pritchett, Savile Clark, Ashby-Sterry, Chasemore, and others, he was under constant friendly, and fully-acknowledged, obligation. Not but that he made constant effort to secure "jokes" of his own. He was ever on the look-out, and often very hard-pressed, for them. One day he told Mr. Pritchett that he had determined to join a riding class at Allen's Riding-school, and seek inspiration there. His friend amiably suggested that he (Mr. Pritchett) should attend as observer and reporter, and tell Keene all the ridiculous things he did on horseback and the amusing appearances he cut. But the idea did not seem to commend itself to Keene, who merely replied that he thought he should choose a hearse-horse to ride, as being at once more stately, decorative, and safe.

Amongst Keene's own subjects are to be included the greater number of those series of drawings dealing with artist and volunteer life; but it must be recognised that to a great extent Keene was frankly the illustrator of other men's ideas, and often of other men's "legends." These legends, or "cackle," were often touched up by Keene; but sometimes they were entirely original. And though it must be admitted that they are not concise as Leech's, they are, as a rule, more life-like, more truthfully Impressionistic—just as his drawings are. The "legend," by the way, Keene used to term the "libretto"—a reflection, as it were, of his passion for music (a passion he shared with Gainsborough and Dyce and Romney, and so many more of our most eminent artists). This love of music he indulged at the meetings of the Moray Minstrels, in the Crystal Palace Choir during the Handel Festivals, and in the depths of the country, wherein he would bury himself in order to torture the bagpipes, without testing too severely the forbearance of his fellow-men.

When he secured a good story—which he loved to impart with an ecstatic wink to one or other of his closest friends—he would look as carefully to the "libretto" as to the drawing, as in the case of the British farmer who, crossing the Channel for the first time—in great discomfort at the roll of the boat—"This Capt'n don't understand his business. Dang it, why don't he keep in the furrows?" or the story—older, by the way, than Keene had any knowledge of—of the Scotchman who was asked by a friend, upon whom he had called, if he would take a glass of whiskey. "No," he said, "it's too airly; besides, I've had a gill a'ready!"



And when his legends were altered by the Editor he would fret for a week. Once when Tom Taylor altered the good Scotch of a "field preacher" (Almanac for 1880) he declared himself "in a great rage," and swore that he would "never forgive" the delinquent. On other occasions, too, he fumed at the desecration of his "librettos;" and when the word "last" was accidentally omitted from his joke—"Heard my [last] new song?" "Oh, Lor! I hope so!!" he mourned over the loss of the point. Yet he might have been comforted; for had the word been retained, the further charge of plagiarism could have been sustained against him.



But his sorest point against Punch—to which, after all, he was sincerely attached—was not the alteration, but the total suppression of some of his work. Two such cases are duly recorded by Mr. Layard—both of them admirable jokes in their way, though perhaps of questionable taste. The first deals with a "Bereaved Husband's" opposition to the "Sympathetic Undertaker's" remorseless insistence that the chief mourner should enter the first carriage with his mother-in-law. "Ah! well," he sighs, with resignation; "but it will completely spoil my day!"

The second story—to which an excellent drawing was made—tells of a widow who looks with sorrowful resignation upon a portrait of her husband that hangs above the fireplace, and says to her sympathising friend: "But why should I grieve, dear? I know where he passes his evenings now!" The first of these Mark Lemon—ever anxious to avoid giving offence—declined on the ground that it was too hard upon mothers-in-law; and the second because, in Keene's own words, "Our Philistine Editor ... said it would 'jar upon feelings'!" He surely could not have borne completer testimony to the care, the ultra-respect for others' sentiments, which has usually distinguished Punch, to the disgust of critics of less refinement and consideration.

On another point, too, he was not at one with Punch, and that was "Toby." The form and face of Mr. Punch, as rendered by him, was hardly a classic rendering; but this was forgiven him. But Keene's Toby was neither the cur represented by some, nor the Irish terrier affected by others, but a dachshund! And he persisted in so drawing him to the end, not because he thought it right, but because "it might have been!" and because the original of the beast was his own much-loved pet "Frau," which he survived not many days. (See next page.)

To this drawing particular interest attaches, for it is the very last that ever came from his hand—a loving tribute to an old friend that had passed away. Concerning it, Mr. Henry S. Keene writes to me: "The history of the dog is shortly this. She was a favourite old dog of my brother's, and has figured a good many times in his drawings as the dog of the 'typical' Punch, and was of the breed of the 'dachshund.' She was very old and full of infirmities, and my brother consented, with some reluctance, to put the poor thing out of its misery. When it was dead, he had it put on a chair in his room, and made the sketch. This was about three months before he died, and was the last thing he drew. It required an effort on his part, as he had entirely left off doing any work since the beginning of last year [1890]."

More than any other man on Punch, Keene suffered at the hands of the engraver. But it was wholly his own fault. He took no heed whatever of the engraver, and set before him problems to which there was no solution. Thus, he loved to make his drawings on old rough paper, which by its grain gave a wonderfully charming but irreproducible quality to his ragged lines, and which by stains of age would impart effects wholly foreign to the art of the wood-cutter.



Moreover, he would manufacture his own inks in varying degrees of greyness, and even of different colours, and then set them before the cutter (not the engraver, mind) to translate into black-and-white. Yet there are some who blame the craftsman for not reproducing what it was an absolute impossibility to reproduce by printer's ink and graver! But Keene was engrossed in his art; and I have seen a drawing, at Mr. Birket Foster's house at Witley, which was the seventh attempt he made before he was satisfied. This was the drawing entitled "Ahem!" representing a man kissing a girl, while someone, with the familiar inconsiderateness of humanity, is approaching. The background for this drawing is Mr. Foster's house.

But although Keene was not a man of ideas, his merits as a creator—as a realiser of types—were supreme. Many of his dramatis personae no doubt became old-fashioned in a sense; but who can deny the truth to life of the Kirk Elder, the slavey, the policeman, the fussy City man, the diner-out, the waiter (did he not invent "Robert"?), the cabman, the hen-pecked husband, the drunkard, the gillie, the Irish peasant, the schoolboy, and the Mrs. Brown of Arthur Sketchley's prosaic muse? The wealth of his limited fancy, and his power of resolving it into well-ordered design, and presenting it with strange economy of means, invested these puppets of his with a vividness which is often startling. With greater force and subtlety, if with less refinement and grace, than Leech—though not, like him, the genial sketcher of the genial side of things—he has recorded, in the five or six thousand designs that make up the sum of his contribution, the character of "the classes" of our day, and that with such intensity of truth that we derive our delight in his work even more from the faithfulness of its representation than from the fun of the joke and the comic rendering of the subject. One writer has been found who sees in his pictures nothing but degradation, and who condemns the one which shows a tippler who has returned late and thrown himself upon the bed beside his wife fully clad and with his umbrella open, as "obscene, and it is matched by many another equally odious!" But everybody else will endorse Sir Frederic Leighton's enthusiastic testimony that "among the documents for the study in future days of middle-class and of humble English life, none will be more weighty than the vivid sketches of this great humorist."[56] In praising Keene's "feeling of out-of-doorness," in the "Magazine of Art," Mr. William Black criticised truly when he declared, "Ever and again we come upon a bit of a turnip-field, a hedge-row, even the corner of a London street, the vividness of which is a sudden delight to the eyes." This estimate was well thrown into verse a few months later, when Punch in its bereavement sang the praises of its greatest artist:—

"... Nor human humours only; who so tender Of touch when sunny Nature out-of-door Wooed his deft pencil? Who like him could render Meadow or hedge-row, turnip-field or moor?

Snowy perspective, long suburban winding Of bowery roadway, villa-edged and trim, Iron-railed city street, where gas-lamps blinding Glare through the foggy distance, dense and dim?"

Keene's simple, kind, and somewhat lonely life are too well known to call for recapitulation here—his tenderness and chivalry towards women, his unconventionality, his love of ancient pipes and virulent "dottle"-smoking, his quaint story-telling and singular modesty, his sensitiveness (he never would ask his nephew, Mr. Corbould, to sit as model to him again after a bantering inquiry of how much he was going to pay), his Conservatism, his humour, his gentle hobbies, and, lastly, his stern economy. Indeed, by his thrift, when he died, he was found to have accumulated over L30,000, chiefly out of his Punch work, in spite of the fact that he would never receive a salary: all this is accessible elsewhere. For some time before he died he ceased to draw for the paper, so broken was he; and it is worth noting that the last sketch that appeared from his hand was "'Arry on the Boulevards," in the Paris Number of Punch (1889), although he was not able to join the rest of the Staff in their trip to the Universal Exhibition.

He died on the 10th of January, 1891, and was buried in Hammersmith Cemetery, in the presence of most of his colleagues, who mourned their friend—

"Frank, loyal, unobtrusive, simple-hearted, Loving his book, his pipe, his song, his friend; Peaceful he lived and peacefully departed, A gentle life-course with a gracious end."

Charles Martin—a son of the distinguished painter of Biblical catastrophes, of boundless halls, and illimitable space, John Martin—made three drawings for Punch. "The Bonnet-maker's Dream" was an effort to enlist sympathy for one class of women-workers; but his only fair illustrated joke was that in which a page-boy, pointing to the old torch-extinguishers in one of the London squares, informs his wondering companion that they are "what the swells in ancient days put their weeds out with." But as an artist he was lazy, preferring to make occasional nice little water-colour drawings than to work hard and continuously at black-and-white. He succeeded in making his way into society as a man-'bout-town, which he preferred to either; so that his connection with Punch began and ended with the year 1853.

An amateur signing "C" made an anonymous appearance in the same year; and Mr. Harry Hall, who was horse-painter first at Tattersall's, and afterwards at Newmarket, where he made Mark Lemon's acquaintance while painting a Derby Winner, contributed a single sketch. It is not remarkable, nor superior to his subsequent work as horse-draughtsman to the "Field"; but it proves, at least, that Mr. Sydney P. Hall's father could draw with ease.

It was in 1853 that the Reverend Edward Bradley[57] first contributed a drawing to Punch under his well-known pseudonym, but earlier than that he found admittance in its pages, with both picture and prose, under the signature, not of "Cuthbert Bede," but simply "E. B." The nom de plume under which he is best known he adapted from the names of the two patron saints of Durham, to which city he was much attached, and within whose boundaries he spent his 'Varsity career.

"Photography being a novelty in 1853," says he in his MS. reminiscences, to the transcript of which I have had access through the courtesy of his son, Mr. Cuthbert Bradley, "Mark Lemon readily accepted my proposal to introduce it into Punch," and accordingly, the first four caricature illustrations of photography that appeared were in Punch, between May and August, 1853. One of these represented "The Portrait of an Eminent Photographer who has just succeeded in focussing a view to his Complete Satisfaction." He was depicted with his head under the hood, while a bull was charging him in the rear—a sketch that was pleasantly referred to by Charles Kingsley in his novel, "Two Years Ago."



To the encouragement of Mark Lemon, Cuthbert Bede owed a good deal, in respect to both pen and pencil, and in the warmth of his geniality the sketches for "Verdant Green" were made, and, says the author, more than forty of them were engraved for Punch's pages, to appear a page each week.[58] But circumstances caused Mark Lemon, with Cuthbert Bede's consent, to transfer them to a special Supplement at that time being prepared by Punch's Editor for the "Illustrated London News"—a journal which then enjoyed the co-operation of all the best pens and pencils more closely identified with the Sage of Fleet Street.

Then in 1850 the MS. of "Verdant Green" went the round of the publishers for issue in book-form, and not till after a year's tour was it accepted, and reluctantly enough issued, the publisher vowing that it would not pay its expenses. But within four-and-twenty hours he found out his mistake, and the announcement was made thirty years afterwards, that the sale of the book had amounted to upwards of 170,000 copies—while the author, from first to last, received the splendid sum of L350 for a work which must be reckoned among the great popular successes of the century.

When Douglas Jerrold was at Oxford, in November, 1854, Cuthbert Bede was presented to the sharp-tongued wit, the introducer adding, by way of explanation, "Mr. Verdant Green." "At that time," says Bede, "I was closely shaven, and had a very pale face. Douglas Jerrold looked sharply up at me, with a glitter in his blue eyes, and at once said, 'Mr. Verdant Green? I should have thought it was Mr. Blanco White!'"—though, of course, there was no more real resemblance between Blanco White's face and that of the Rev. Bradley's, than there was between "Mr. Verdant Green" and "Doblado's Letters from Spain." "Among several things that were very agreeable to me in connection with the publication of 'Verdant Green,'" he continues, "was a circumstance that was related to me by an eminent Oxford don, who is now a bishop. He had entered the room of Dr. Pusey, at Christ Church, and saw, as usual, the library table covered with books of divinity and learned tomes; but on the top of these was perched, in pert, cock-sparrow fashion, that shilling railway book that had recently been published, with the spectacled face of the Oxford Freshman on the cover. My friend told me that Dr. Pusey held up the book to him and said, that he had not only read it through, but that he kept it on his table so that he might read bits of it in the pauses of his severer study."

One of Cuthbert Bede's proudest memories was the introduction of the double acrostic. He did not claim to have invented it, for he knew of the monkish acrostics; but for six months he had amused his friends with his revival before he showed them to Mark Lemon. The latter, with a quick eye for novelty, asked Bradley to write a paper on them for the "Illustrated London News," which was then being edited by Dr. Charles Mackay, and the humorist was only too happy to comply with the request. The first of these "double acrostic charades"—the first ever printed—appeared in the paper on August 30, 1856, and at intervals for some months afterwards; indeed, there was a regular column devoted to them, edited by Cuthbert Bede, that drew letters from all parts of the world, literally in thousands, which were forwarded to him in packets by rail. He had to explain their construction, and give examples for practice in the art.

The first was "Charles Dickens—Pickwick Papers"; then followed "London—Thames," "Waterloo—Napoleon," "Scutari Hospital—Miss Nightingale," and then "Lemon—Punch." Here is how the last-named was treated:—

THE LETTERS (5).

I brighten even the brightest scene (L am P) I very nearly an ostrich had been (E m U) I with a hood once pass'd all my days (M aria N) I am a fop in a play of all plays (O sri C) To its greatness the city of Bath I did raise (N as H)

THE WORDS.

I'm a Mark of judgment, of taste, and wit, O'er a crowd of pages I rule the roast; I mix with choice spirits, while choicer ones sit Around, while I give them full many a toast. Of my two words, my first is squeez'd into my second, Although at its head it is commonly reckoned.

"When I read it to Mark Lemon," says Bede, in conclusion, "he said that Punch ought to be well flavoured, for that into its composition there went not one, but three lemons—Mark Lemon, Leman Rede, and Laman Blanchard."

Edward and his brother, Thomas Waldron Bradley, were sons of a surgeon of Kidderminster. When the former was quite a child, his delight in sketching was as remarkable as his keenness of observation, and he had a trick on arriving home, after seeing anything that interested him in the streets, of saying, "Give me a slate," and sketching the scene upon it with the utmost facility. It was this facility, joined to his lack of artistic education, which placed upon his work the unmistakable stamp of the amateur. But his sense of humour saved him, winning for him admittance to Punch's pages in 1847, when he was only twenty years of age. He had made his debut the previous year in "Bentley's Miscellany," with some love verses signed with his usual pen-name. Five years later he was making suggestions for "The Month," and both he and his brother Walrond (whose pseudonym of "Shelsley Beauchamp" is hardly yet forgotten in his own county) wrote in it.

His early MS. diaries record frequent receipts of small sums from Punch in return for small contributions. His first draft upon the Whitefriars exchequer was on October 23rd, 1847, when one guinea was received. By 1853 the receipts were a little more frequent, but still hardly noteworthy. Here, at any rate, is an example:—

Up to August 4th, received from Mark Lemon for Punch—

Photo subjects L4 0 0 Table-turning 0 10 0 Initial letter to Peterloo Brown, I. 3 0 0 Sidney Snub 1 10 0 Savage Lions in London 1 0 0

Sept. 14: 2nd and 3rd Peterloo Brown letters 6 5 0 Article "High Mettle Dragon".

—while his earnings for the following year amount to L22 6s. for drawings and MS. After 1856 he contributed nothing more to Punch's pages, though a stray forgotten cut appears to have cropped up in the second volume for 1874.

George Cruikshank was a valuable friend to Cuthbert Bede, just as he was to Watts Phillips, and gave him a good deal of advice as to drawing on wood for Punch, as well as practical lessons in draughtsmanship, by working before him on his wonderful etching of the "Tail of a Comet;" still, he was unable to impart to his pupil's work either trained ease or style. Cruikshank was on terms of intimacy with Mark Lemon, but he never drew for Punch, save indirectly for its advertisement page in 1844—an announcement for his "Table-Book," in which appear the portraits of Gilbert Abbott a Beckett (his literary Editor), Thackeray, and himself. Yet the "Quarterly Review," in the course of an essay upon that journal, declared that "Punch owes at least half its popularity to the pencil of George Cruikshank"! The fact is, that Cruikshank, though on intimate terms with many of the Staff, would never allow himself to be persuaded to draw for its pages. "We shall have you yet," said Mark Lemon one day. "Never," said Cruikshank, in his most melodramatic tone and striking his favourite attitude. He had then become the staunchest of total abstainers, and he held its very name in abhorrence. Moreover, he professed to look upon their Dinners as orgies; but it is far more likely that the predominance in its pages and in its councils of his mighty rival, John Leech, had more to do with his total abstinence—from Punch, I mean—than any other consideration. "Between Cruikshank and Leech," says Mr. Frith, "there existed little sympathy and less intimacy. The extravagant caricature that pervades so much of Cruikshank's work, and from which Leech was entirely free, blinded him a little to the great merit of Cruikshank's serious work. I was very intimate with 'Immortal George,' as he was familiarly called, and I was much surprised by the coolness with which he received my enthusiastic praise of Leech. 'Yes, yes,' said George, 'very clever. The new school, you see. Public always taken with novelty.'" Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that the only lessons in etching Leech ever had he received from George Cruikshank. Moreover, George had a grievance, as will be seen by the following letter addressed to Mr. G. H. Haydon, one of Punch's subsequent contributors, to whom reference will be made later on:—

"263, Hampstead Road, N.W., January 7, 1867.

"MY DEAR SIR,

"I am sorry that I am not able to tell you where to find a 'Punch and Judy,' but I think some of that family reside, or might be heard of, in the vicinity of Leicester Square. The 'Punch' that I copied my figures from for the 'History of Punch and Judy' was an old Italian long since deceased. His performance and figures were first-rate—far superior to anything of the present day, and it is quite evident that poor Leech and others copied my Punch, for Punch and other works, from the Punch that I copied from this Italian Punch.

"Speaking of Punch, you are, I presume, aware that although the idea of 'Punch' was taken from my 'Omnibus,' that I never had anything to do with that work of 'Punch,' and also that for many years (20!!!) I have not taken anything in the way of Punch.

"However, I will say no more about Punch at present, as I fear you will feel as if you could 'punch' the head of

"Yours truly.

"GEORGE CRUIKSHANK."



His grievance was that Punch's figure was stolen from his book (to which Payne Collier had written the text), and that the paper itself was but an imitation of his own short-lived monthly magazine. With greater reason could he complain that the Punch Pocket-books were copied from his "Comic Annuals," as they were, and that the imitations killed the originals after a contest of a dozen years; but the idea of Punch being copied from the "Omnibus," with which it had hardly a single point in common, save humour and illustration, has probably about as much foundation as Cruikshank's claim against Dickens and "Oliver Twist," or against Harrison Ainsworth and "The Miser's Daughter" and "The Tower of London." Yet Punch rendered ample tribute to his genius, not so much in the adaptation of many of his best-known drawings to cartoons, including "Jack Sheppard" (1841), "Oliver asking for More" (1844), "The Fix" [Points of Humour] (1844), "The Juggernaut" (1845), "Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger" (1846), "The Deaf Postilion" (1846), and "Fagin in the Cell" (1848), "The Election" [Sketches by Boz] down to "Harcourt the Headsman" (June 8th, 1895); but also by deliberate statement and amiability prepense. That, however, did not prevent Punch from chaffing "the Great George" upon occasion, as when he was preparing his "Life of Falstaff" the journal gravely assumed that he would reform that incorrigible tippler into a "teetotal Falstaff," and protested against the enthusiast mixing water so copiously with the milk of his human kindness. So Cruikshank set off in great wrath towards Fleet Street to seek out the scoffer, and, meeting Blanchard Jerrold, sputtered out his purpose and declared that he was on the trail of that scoundrel Punch to "knock his old wooden head about." When he died, Punch announced that "England is the poorer by what she can ill spare—a man of genius. Good, kind, genial, honest, and enthusiastic George Cruikshank ... has passed away."

Mr. T. Harrington Wilson, the well-known special correspondent of the "Illustrated London News," at that time a specialist in theatrical portraiture, joined the paper as an occasional contributor in 1853, and over various monograms sent in a dozen clever, but hardly striking, drawings. These were "socials" dealing with society or fashion, stage situations from behind the scenes, and grotesque ideas, such as the "effect of wearing respirators on burglars" (October, 1853). Mr. Wilson—who, by the way, had studied at the National Gallery side by side with Sir John Tenniel and Charles Martin—contributed to the Pocket-books from 1854 to 1857, and ceased his connection when he was ordered abroad.

All the outside artistic help received by Punch in 1854 came from five occasional correspondents: from "F. M.," an amateur, in February; from Mr. Swain the engraver (who fitfully contributed unimportant sketches at times of sudden need), in the same month; from J. Bennett; from Chambers (a half-a-dozen initials extending over that and the following year, and reappearing in 1864;) and from Mr. Harrison Weir. The contribution of the latter occurred during Leech's indisposition, when Mr. Weir was invited by Mark Lemon to make a few drawings to fill the place which would be so sadly missed. So the artist—who was working under Lemon on the "Field"—produced a half-page drawing illustrative of the tribulation of young lady who was obliged to leave half her luggage behind by reason of the cab-strike; and it was printed on p. 163 of Vol. XXVII. Then Leech recovered, and Mr. Weir's services were dispensed with.

The second clergyman who ever drew for Punch was the Rev. W. F. Callaway, a Baptist minister of York and Birmingham, and the son of a gentleman who had distinguished himself by writing a book on "Cingalese Gods." He contributed one or two sketches, the first one being referred to in his MS. diary, February 15th, 1855—"Found my Sketch in Punch—'Comment on the Balaclava Railway.'" It had been re-drawn in part by Leech, but the character of the original was left intact. Then three initials from Ince are to be chronicled; another from "W. R.," and a drawing signed "H.," from B. C. Halliday (p. 200, Vol. XXVIII), showing "Our Artist in the Crimea" in a hopeless mess; as well as a dozen initials of no particular importance from G. W. Terry (p. 171, Vol. XXX.) from 1856 to 1858.

Mr. J. Ashby-Sterry, so well and pleasantly known in later days as Punch's "Lazy Minstrel," and writer of verses and paragraphs innumerable in its pages, was from 1856 to 1861 an artistic contributor on fifteen occasions. "When I was a youth," he writes, "I fear I must have annoyed good, genial Mark Lemon very much, for I was continually sending pen-and-ink sketches to Punch. Not content with showering these upon him, which were invariably courteously returned, I began to pelt him with wood blocks. I took to drawing on the wood enthusiastically, and was continually popping these little parcels into the letter-box under the shadow of St. Bride's Church. At last one of them, to my intense joy, appeared. Altogether I must have had about four initial letters, a dozen black silhouettes, and a quarter-page social cut inserted in the paper. But the quantity that were never used at all, and the number that were re-drawn by my old friend Charles Keene, is a high testimony to the artistic knowledge and editorial skill of Mark Lemon." But Mr. Ashby-Sterry does himself an injustice, as all will say who have seen the vivacious sketch of a gentleman struggling violently inside his shirt, with the legend: "How agreeable it is, more especially if you are late, and are dressing against time to dine with ultra-punctual people—how agreeable it is, on getting into your clean shirt, to find the laundress has been careful to fasten all the buttons for you!" Moreover, he was trained as an artist, both at "the Langham" and at the Royal Academy Schools; and portraits painted by him of his father and grandfather have long since "toned" into canvases at once able and attractive.

A few sketches by Saunderson in this same year were followed by the debut of Alfred Thompson. When a cavalry officer, this gentleman, encouraged by the acceptance of his work by "Diogenes," in 1854, sent a few drawings—initials, for the most part—to Punch, that were published in 1856-7-8, and he was persuaded by Mark Lemon to take up the career of art. On retiring from the service, he studied in Paris, and contributed to the "Journal Amusant;" and on his return found that Mark Lemon was dead, and that, by the side of Keene and Tenniel, there had grown up a giant in the person of Mr. du Maurier. Under Tom Taylor's editorship he was a regular literary contributor, and was promised the next vacant place on the Staff; but an offer from Messrs. Agnew of the management of the Theatre Royal, Manchester, tempted him away from London and all journalistic enterprise. On his return to town, Mr. Burnand was on the point of becoming Editor, and the connection came to an end. And so Punch knew him no more, and Mr. Thompson appeared before a later generation chiefly as editor of the brilliant little "Mask," as designer of stage costumes and ballets, and writer of pantomimes. By some he was also remembered as a contributor, in 1865, to the "Comic News" and "The Arrow." His last Punch sketches were published in 1876 and 1877, and in the Pocket-book for the latter year was buried what was, perhaps, his most important literary contribution that is worth preserving—a continuation of "Daniel Deronda." The most that can be said of Mr. Thompson's sketches is that they are bright and not without fancy; but since these were made, his power and charm of grace greatly increased. He died in New Jersey, September, 1895.

Frank Bellew, whose signature consisted of a flattened triangle, either with or without his initials, drew about thirty initials and quarter- or half-page "socials" from 1857 until 1862, many of them dealing with incidents connected with the American Civil War; and then—following the example of Newman and Mr. Thompson—he went to America, where he obtained more recognition for his clever outline drawings and for the pathetic touches and moral points which he loved to introduce; and there he begat a son whose reputation as a humorous draughtsman (being "Chip" of the New York "Life") soon became far greater than his father's. Bennet and "B. W." followed with a few trifles in 1857 and 1858, and then on October 13th Julian Portch sent in his first contribution.

Portch sprang from humble surroundings, and with no recommendations but his art; that, however, was sufficient for Mark Lemon. It is true that it lacked strength, but it showed a delicate pencil and a certain power of comic expression sufficient to place him among "Mr. Punch's clever young men" of the second rank. He was forthwith employed on decorations to the preface and to the Pocket-book (a task on which he was engaged for several consecutive years), as well as on Punch itself. He stopped active contribution in 1862, his work being seen only once in 1863, 1864, 1867, and 1870; but the last drawing he sent in was in October, 1861. He had illustrated "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a new edition of Boswell's "Life of Johnson," and, in part, Mr. Cholmondeley Pennell's "Puck on Pegasus," when in 1855 Henry Vizetelly, whose pupil he had been, sent him to the Crimea as war correspondent for the "Illustrated Times," in order to make sketches of British camp life. In the rigours of that awful winter he was laid low with rheumatic fever, ending in general paralysis; and after three years of lovingly tended illness he died in September, 1865.

An anonymous contributor, more than usually modest, then sent in three drawings (August, 1859) as from "A Stranger," and then the distinguished French caricaturist, "Cham" (the Comte Amedee de Noe), made six humorous and spirited character sketches of Turco soldiers in Paris in 1859, not very complimentary to his country's allies. When he had visited London previously, Mark Lemon had sent him a little parcel of wood-blocks for drawings for Punch, and was astonished to receive them all back the next morning, all covered with vigorous work, with a calm request for "more woods." He was, perhaps, a better raconteur than comic draughtsman, and, speaking English thoroughly well, became at once a great favourite. Thackeray, in particular, delighted to do him honour in his rooms at Young Street. In the same year Brunton, a young artist far better known outside Punch's pages than in them, put his sign-manual of arrow-pierced hearts to a couple of drawings; and it is curious to observe how in his "Annamite Ambassadors" he forestalled Mr. Furniss's "Lika Joko" series.

Miss Coode was the first lady who drew for Punch, contributing nineteen drawings from November, 1859, to January, 1861; and then G. H. Haydon (barrister-at-law and steward of Bridewell and the Royal Bethlehem Hospital) began his connection. He was the intimate friend of John Leech, by whom he was introduced to Punch, and of Charles Keene, with whom he used to draw regularly at the Langham Sketching Club. During 1860-1-2 he contributed twenty-two sketches and initials. He was a keen fly-fisherman, and many of Leech's subjects of this sort were done with him at Whitchurch, Hampshire, which they haunted together for the sport. After Leech's death Haydon contributed nothing more, as it was only during his spare time and out of friendly feeling that he made his sketches. He was, on the other hand, the subject of several of Keene's angling drawings, which were also done for the most part at Whitchurch. Such is the sketch in the Almanac for 1885, wherein the "Gigantic Angler" is an excellent portrait of Haydon, while Leech's drawing of August 11th, 1860, was a record of an incident that happened while the friends were fishing the same water. From that extremely promising young artist, M. J. Lawless, who was doing some of his best designs for "Once a Week," there came between May, 1860, and the following January, six drawings; but he was already a dying man when they were done, and he left little proof in them of the greatness of his talent. He was still contributing, however, when, on September 28th, 1860, there was sent into the office a drawing from the hand of one of the most brilliant of Punch's lights—George du Maurier.

FOOTNOTES:

[55] See Mr. Layard's "Life and Letters of Charles Keene," p. 387.

[56] Speech at Royal Academy Banquet, May 2nd, 1891.

[57] English humour is under a great debt to the English Church. Not only, of course, are Sydney Smith and "Tom Ingoldsby" of immortal fame—to name no others—in the front rank of our wits, but Punch has received the homage of "Cuthbert Bede," Dean Hole, the Rev. W. F. Callaway, Canon Ainger, and the Rev. Anthony C. Deane. The Irish Catholic priest Father James Healy, by the way, indirectly contributed a number of capital jokes.

[58] It is to be observed, however, that there is no mention of these engravings in Mr. Swain's "Punch Cut Book."



CHAPTER XXI.

PUNCH'S ARTISTS: 1860-67.

Mr. G. du Maurier's First Drawing—The "Romantic Tenor"—Polite Satire—His Types and Creations—His Pretty Women—And Fair American—"Chang," "Don," and "Punch"—Mr. du Maurier as a Punch Writer—Mr. Gordon Thompson—Mr. Stacy Marks, R.A.—Paul Gray—Sir John Millais, Bart., R.A.—Mr. Fred Barnard—First Joke Refused as "Painful"—Mr. R. T. Pritchett—Initiation by Sir John Tenniel—Fritz Eltze—His Amiable Jocularity—Mr. A. R. Fairfield—Colonel Seccombe—Fred Walker, A.R.A.—Mr. J. Priestman Atkinson ("Dumb Crambo")—C. H. Bennett—Mr. W. S. Gilbert ("Bab")—His Classic Joke—G. B. Goddard—Miss Georgina Bowers—Mr. Walter Crane.



When, in 1860, Mr. George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier contributed his first drawing to Punch, he had little suspicion that he would be counted, together with John Leech, John Tenniel, and Charles Keene, as one of the four great pillars on which would rest the artistic reputation of the paper. In that first drawing, himself and two of his friends were represented entering the "studio" of a photographer, smoking, as the manner of artists is; and they are coldly requested by the deity of the place to leave their tobacco outside, as "they are in an artist's studio" (p. 150, Vol. XXXIX.). It was a poor sketch enough, showing some straining after comicality, and lacking every trace of the grace and beauty the draughtsman was so soon to develop. He was Parisian born, and after studying with a view to a scientific career, he became convinced, through Dr. Williamson's amiable assurance that he would make a "shocking bad chemist," that art and not science was his destiny—more especially as his professors had been delighted with such little caricatures of his as they had seen; but, as Mr. du Maurier suggestively put it in his lecture on "Social Pictorial Satire," "they had not seen them all." He studied art at Antwerp and Paris in company with several notabilities of the day; but when, through an accident in the laboratory, he lost the sight of one eye, and found the other seriously imperilled, his chances of success in life seemed small. It was when lying, during his long illness, in the Antwerp Hospital, in 1858, that he first saw "Punch's Almanac"—a delight which he never forgot. When he recovered his ordinary health, he returned to England, though with little improvement of sight to cheer him. With a courage, however, equal to that of Sir John Tenniel, he girded himself against fate; he worked hard in London, where he lived in humble lodgings at 85, Newman Street, which he shared with his life-long friend, the late Lionel Henley, afterwards R.B.A.—"the dearest fellow that ever was." He sometimes wondered, he has told me, if he would eat a dinner that day; and as becomes the impecunious, he was a tremendous democrat. He "hated the bloated aristocracy, without knowing much about it; and, to do it justice, the bloated aristocracy did not go out of its way to pester him with its attentions." But in those happy, hungry, hard-working days, when dinner was not always a vested interest, Mr. du Maurier seemed already tinged with the daintier tastes that were destined to lead his pencil to the delineation of these same "bloated" classes; and even in those hard times he could always boast a dress-suit.

So at the age of twenty-six—the same as that at which Charles Keene made his debut in Punch—he sent in an occasional contribution that was far more in Leech's manner than in what came to be his own.

Art has a way, figuratively speaking, of flourishing on an empty stomach, and Mr. du Maurier made rapid progress on the training. Keene's acquaintance and genial friendship enslaved at once his artistic methods, as well as his artistic adoration. It was not that he admired Leech less, but that he appreciated Keene more; and when the former died, to the sorrow and consternation of the Staff, Mr. du Maurier was appointed to his seat at the Table. He obeyed the summons on the first Wednesday that followed Leech's death, and carved his monogram on the board between those of the bosom friends, Thackeray and Leech. Mark Lemon, with characteristic shrewdness, soon discovered in what direction lay the talent and perhaps the penchant of the artist, and told him not to try to be "too funny," but to do the graceful side of things, and to be "the romantic tenor in Mr. Punch's opera bouffe company," while Keene was to do the comic songs. The little social dramas of the day, the drawing-rooms of Belgravia, and the nurseries of Mayfair—those were his preserves, from which he could get as much game as he chose, humorous if he liked, but graceful withal.

But Mr. du Maurier is emphatically not what is commonly understood by "a funny man," for all his subtlety and love of humour; he is a combination of the artistic, with a distinct and clear sense of beauty, and of the scientific, with speculations and theories of race and heredity—who would as lief draw East-End types for the sake of their "character," and would look at a queer face more for the interest that is in it than for its comicality. If Mr. du Maurier's sense of beauty is strong, so is his appreciation of ugliness; and if you take down any of the volumes of Punch—that shine in their shelves like the teeth in the great laughing mouth of Humour itself—you will find no faces or forms more hideous or grotesque than those which the artist has chosen to put there.

But if there is one thing to justify the opinion of his admirers that he is the "Thackeray of the pencil," it is primarily to be found, not so much in the keen satire of his drawing and legends, but in his startling, his strikingly truthful creations. Creations we have had from Leech, Keene, and others—from Leech's pure sense of fun and jollity; from Keene's unerring observation of men and women, and fleeting emotion—but those of Mr. du Maurier go deeper into vices, virtues, habits, and motives, and are at the root of his pictorial commentaries. He has given us true pictures of the manners of his time; and those manners he has satirised with more politeness and irony, perhaps, than broad humour. He worked well with Keene in double harness, and his pictures are at once a foil and a complement of that genius's work and point de vue. He has satirised everything, and his art has been admirably adapted to the depth of the civilisation he probes and dissects. His sense of beauty and tenderness apart, he is to art much what Corney Grain was to the stage, though his hand is not so heavy; and while you laugh with Leech, you smile with Mr. du Maurier—lovingly at his children, respectfully at his pretty women, and sardonically at his social puppets.

His own particular creations—his types and "series"—are to some sections of Punch's admirers, Punch's chief attraction. Especially is this the case in the United States,[59] where to Mr. du Maurier many people have looked almost exclusively, not only for English fashions in male and female attire, and the derniere mode in social etiquette, but for the truest reflection of English life and character. First of all these types are Sir Gorgius Midas—who, the artist once confided to me, was drawn without exaggeration from real life—and his common wife and still vulgarer son. Then Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns, the clever and scheming, and her husband, depressed and stolidly obedient; the bishop and the flunkey, all calves and dignity; Grigsby, the "comic" man, and his punctilious friend, Sir Pompey Bedell, inflated with pretentious emptiness; 'Arry and 'Arriet, blatant and irrepressible; young Cadby, the Cockney; and the Duke and Duchess of Stilton, whose very figures seem to be drawn in purple ink; the refined colonel, a counterpart and not unworthy comrade of Newcome himself; Maudle, Postlethwaite, and Mrs. Cimabue Brown, most delightful trio of sickening "aesthetes"—specially beloved of Mr. du Maurier, whose famous drawing, "Are You Intense?" is perhaps the particular favourite of all his satiric Punch work; Mr. Soapley and Mr. Todeson, who vie with each other in vulgar servility and sycophancy; the Herr Professor, ponderously humorous in smoking-room or boudoir; and Anatole, the bridegroom, happy and dapper in the Bois de Boulogne; Titwillow and the ex-Jew at the Club—what an assemblage of carefully differentiated specimens of London's characteristic inhabitants! That many of them are often accepted, universally quoted as types, apart from any express reference to Punch or to its artist, is the best testimony of the truth of his irony; for they are as recognisable in the real world as the Jacques, the Becky Sharps, and the Pecksniffs of other brains. And besides these there are the general characters so accurately presented to us—the refined lady with the very old face and frontal grey or white curls whom Mr. du Maurier used to draw, I believe, from the person of Mrs. Hamilton Aaede; the charming young ladies for whom, in succession, his wife and daughters have sat; and the delightful little ones to whom Professor Ruskin paid partial tribute when he declared, a little cruelly, perhaps, that the "charm of his extremely intelligent, and often exquisitely pretty children, is dependent, for the greater part, on the dressing of their back hair and the fitting of their boots."

The admirable setting in which Mr. du Maurier frames his series of jokes is testimony to his genius. He follows Leech's plan of such series ("Servantgalism," "The Rising Generation," etc.), but the quality of the thought and its presentation is as much more elaborate than Leech's as his method of draughtsmanship is more complicated. These series or formulae, in their chief heads and subtle variations, display the quality of his mind. If you turn to the volumes for 1888 (XCIV. and XCV.) you will find examples of no fewer than nine of them: (1) Things one would rather have left unsaid; (2) Things one would rather have expressed differently; (3) Social Agonies; (4) Feline Amenities; (5) Our Imbeciles; (6) Typical Modern Developments; (7) Studies in Evolution; (8) Nincompoopiana; and (9) What our Artist has to put up with;—the last-named, however, a vein which Keene began to work as early as 1854.

His talent, too, in devising the legends, or "cackle," for the drawings is uniformly happy, unsurpassed by any man who ever wrote for Punch. As Mr. Anstey says, he has brought the art of precis-writing to perfection. His legends are not always so concise as Leech's, but for truth of expression, felicitous colloquialism, and above all, for foreign accent, he is unapproached. I go farther, and say that he is the first man who ever put truthfully upon paper, and properly differentiated, the "broken English" and slangy mispronunciations of German, French, and Semite, to say nothing of his Cockney; indeed, his studies in this direction prove him, besides an admirable physiologist pour rire and a pungent though courteous satirist, an inimitable comparative-"broken"-philologist.



True to his role of "Romantic Tenor," Mr. du Maurier has endowed Punch with the greater part of the grace and beauty which have done so much to make the paper what it is. "In his social subjects," says a distinguished critic,[60] "Mr. du Maurier, though somewhat mannered and fond of a single type of face and figure, has carried the ironical genre, received by Leech from Gavarni and Charlet, to the highest point of elegance it has attained." He is too fond of the beautiful, sighs Mr. James; he sees everything en beau, and Mistress and Maid with him are a good deal of Juno and Hebe. No doubt his grace often militates against his fun, but Mr. du Maurier, as has already been suggested, is only by accident a professional funny man. Besides, when he wishes to be merely funny, he passes Beauty by as if he were not the most devoted of her adorers, as you may see in one of the best of all his drawings in Punch, in which a typically selfish master of the house orders up the cook into the breakfast-room, complaining that he cannot eat the bacon which he has just served; his wife's, he says, is the worst he ever saw—and his own is nearly as bad!

Even more than his lovely child (often drawn from his little grandson), his superb youth, and his splendid gentleman, Mr. du Maurier's pretty woman is the pedestal upon which he has erected his reputation—at least, so far as Punch is concerned. His pretty woman, he declares, is the granddaughter of Leech's, and he beseeches the public to love her, paternally at least as he does, "for her grandmother's sake."



Writing his mind on the subject of his delightful creation at my own request,[61] he says:—

"I do hope the reader does not dislike her—that is, if he knows her. I am so fond of her myself, or, rather, so fond of what I want her to be. She is my piece de resistance, and I have often heard her commended, and the praise of her has sounded sweet in mine ears, and gone straight to my heart, for she has become to me as a daughter. She is rather tall, I admit, and a trifle stiff; but English women are tall and stiff just now; and she is rather too serious; but that is only because I find it so difficult, with a mere stroke in black ink, to indicate the enchanting little curved lines that go from the nose to the mouth-corners, causing the cheeks to make a smile—and without them the smile is incomplete—merely a grin. And as for height, I have often begun by drawing the dear creature little, and found that by one sweep of the pen (adding a few inches to the bottom of her skirt) I have improved her so much that it has been impossible to resist the temptation—the thing is so easy, and the result so satisfying and immediate."

Nowadays, he has declared, girls are no longer pretty—they are beautiful; and as Mr. Galton, the anthropometrical expert, himself admits, they, even more than the rest of mankind, have certainly grown taller. The artist, as we have seen, invented the tall woman; the Psyches of our fathers' days have become the Venuses and Junos of these; and more than one writer has gravely sought to fix the responsibility, or the credit, on Mr. du Maurier and his pencil. Scientific investigation has taught us that the English girl tops her foreign sisters, though her average weight is two pounds less than that of the fair American; and there is little doubt that if she does not absolutely adapt her height to the artist's sense of beauty and power of inspiration, she has at least to thank him for making it fashionable. The truth of the matter is that Mr. du Maurier has always been a close observer; and just as his drawings have always been in the fashion in point of dress through his careful watching of the changing wardrobe of his wife and daughters, so was he the first to record the increasing stature of English girls, even while Leech was still drawing them as he had known them—short and buxom and "plump little dumplings"—never recognising that they had been deposed by Fashion and improved by Nature. But the race changed, and Punch changed with them. Venus was Venus once more, and Mr. du Maurier was her Prophet.

"And the old ladies!" proceeds Mr. du Maurier; "it is such a pleasure to draw them, and do one's best. To think of all the charming old ladies one has known, and (according to one's letterpress) to select the chin of one, the white curls of another, the mouth and nose of a third, and then to make a subtle arrangement in sweet sympathetic wrinkles—too often to be subtly disarranged by the engraver and the printer!

"Then we get to the male characters, and there it is comparatively plain sailing; and would be pleasant sailing enough but for the hideousness of certain portions of the modern male attire. However new, however good the tailor, however comely the leg beneath, the TROUSER is the one heart-breaking object to the conscientious but aesthetically-minded draughtsman on wood! It ignores the knee, and falls on the boot in a shape that has no reference to the ankle whatever—a shape of its own—and yet the ankle is the foundation of everything!

"Next in order of demerit and impossibility comes the chimney-pot hat, which is not lacking in character, but is ugly and ridiculous. Its one redeeming feature is the difficulty it presents to the draughtsman. It is mathematical, geometrical, with every curve known to science, as hard to represent correctly as a boat or a fiddle—more so; and the delight of successful achievement is proportionately great. Linley Sambourne alone, who was originally trained as an engineer, has been able to grapple with the chimney-pot hat; Walker all but succeeded by the sheer force of his heaven-born genius."

But, in spite of all this beauty, surely his misrepresentation of that divinity—the American Girl—is beyond all hope of pardon, beyond contrition, beyond all penance. He does full justice to her refined and splendid loveliness and her magnificent proportions; but he seems to regard her, if one may say so, as a sort of Kensington-Town-Hall-Subscription-Dance young lady, a little more outree and free and slangy and vulgar. She guesses in the ballroom that English partners don't "bunch" (give bouquets); when invited to go in to supper she avers, not without a sense of inward satisfaction, that she is "pretty crowded already;" she has a deep though entirely a tourist's interest in English institutions, ruins, and celebrities; she has little reverence else for what is in the heavens above or the earth beneath; and she dearly loves a lord—or she would, if by any honourable means she can obtain the chance. His American girls, too, all come from one and the same place; they are all born from one and the same mother; their natural cleverness and unnatural ignorance are compounded in the same proportions, and, altogether, they are the most charming and delightful libels on American young-womanhood that well could be. But is his representation of the American girl any less pleasant than the common, home-made American view of an English gentleman—at least, of an English "swell"? Not at all. On the contrary, she is, as I said before, a divinity.

More than once Mr. du Maurier has broken away from his light comedy role and, besides giving vent to his fantastic power in his wonderful "Night-mares," has given us something with serious thought, and, now and again, with tragedy in it—has offered us, indeed, a taste of the deepest poetic quality that he has shown in his novels of "Peter Ibbetson" and "Trilby." You may see a touch of it in Tenniel's great cartoon at the outbreak of hostilities between France and Germany, in which the great Napoleon stands warningly in the path of the infatuated Emperor; that was du Maurier's suggestion. You may see a touch of it in the page drawing of "Old Nickotin Stealing Away the Brains of His Devotees" (1868), in which a circle of strange men, whose own heads are their pipe-bowls, smoke away their brains through long tubes that work well into the composition, while, in the foreground, one of the poor foolish wretches drops, just as a last little curling puff rises from his smoked-out skull. There were more of such compositions before 1880, at the time when Mr. du Maurier was still making full-page drawings in Punch. But, after all, it is not in Punch, but rather in the "Cornhill Magazine" and "Once a Week," in "Esmond," and other works—particularly in the "Illustrated Magazine"—that his full power in serious work must be sought.

Professor Ruskin, after declaring that the "terrific force" of Mr. du Maurier's satire of character in face and figure consists in the absence of caricature, describes as "cruelly true" the design "representing the London mechanic with his family when Mr. Todeson is asked to amuse 'the dear creatures' at Lady Clara's garden tea;" and proclaims the artist more exemplary than either John Leech or John Tenniel ("the real founders of Punch, and by far the greatest of its illustrators both in force of art and range of thought") "in the precision of the use of his means, and the subtle boldness to which he has educated the interpreter of his design."[62] In point of fact, the engraver has had to "interpret" Mr. du Maurier's drawings far less than those of many of his colleagues, for his line is too delicate, sympathetic, and precise to leave room for anything but the strictest possible facsimile. This was quite as true in the old days when he drew upon the block, as in later times, when, yielding to the stern demands of failing eyesight—which, for a period, forced him to suspend work altogether—he drew with the pen upon paper several times larger than the ultimate reduction effected by means of photography. It is curious in tracing his hand through Punch to see how his work gradually strengthened; how his early vigour of subject and activity of mind, expressed in strong black-and-white, gave way to a daintier touch when the grace and prettiness of his dramatis personae came to demand greater refinement of the drawn line; and how this again constantly widened out into a broader method, under the inspiration of Charles Keene. And yet from first to last, in the smallest sketch as in the most elaborate picture, his hand is unmistakable.

In common with Keene and others, Mr. du Maurier has suffered from time to time from printers' errors. One of the most curious, perhaps, is that in which three little boys are shown in a drawing playing upon a sofa, evidently very much in the way of their elder sister, who is receiving a visit from an admirer. The sister asks her brothers with pardonable point if they will not go and play downstairs. No, the oldest replies, Mamma has sent them up "to play forfeits." The joke, utterly pointless as printed, becomes intelligible when it is explained that "forfeits" is an error for "propriety." Many of the artist's jokes, as already explained, have come from various friends; indeed, in this case, they are probably less often manufactured than in that of others. All the same, it may be of interest to record that the oft-quoted joke of the aesthetic young couple who agreed that they must "live up to" their blue and white tea-pot, was not "made up," but was spoken in downright, imbecile earnest.



Like Keene, too, Mr. du Maurier loved to put his own dogs into Punch. Whether it was his magnificent St. Bernard, "Chang," whose seven-foot skeleton now graces the Royal College of Surgeons, or his little terrier, "Don," or his dachshund, "Punch," they have all played their part in public and justified their existence as models, and have in their time been the pets as much of you and me as of their legal owner. But, for all his connoisseurship in dogs, Mr. du Maurier is woefully deficient in certain forms of sportsmanlike knowledge, and could he but have heard the howls in the cricket world a few years since when he ventured on depicting a "mixed match," and showed the wickets about forty yards apart, he would almost have wished the excellent joke untold. Herein, of course, he was not more ignorant than his friend Keene, who had to be specially coached (yet with what disastrous results!) when he wished to present a picture involving the "placing" of the field.