SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE

[Frontispiece: Mr. And Mrs. Candle. 

From the original drawing by JOHN LEECH. In the possession of JOHNKENDRICK BANGS. Esq. The lower portion has never before beenreproduced. ]

SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE. 

_By_ GEORGE DU MAURIER, _Author of "Trilby" "The Martian" &c. _

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

MDCCCXCVIII

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

_Mr. And Mrs. Caudle_

_John Leech_

_"In the Bay of Biscay O"_

_A Specimen of Pluck_

_One of Mr. Briggs's Adventures in the Highlands_

_Thank Goodness! Fly-fishing has begun!_

_"The jolly little Street Arabs"_

_Doing a little Business_

_A Tolerably Broad Hint_

_Charles Keene_

_The Snowstorm, Jan. 2, 1867_

_Waiting for the Landlord!_

_A Stroke of Business_

_"None o' your Larks"_

_An Affront to the Service_

_"Not up to his Business"_

_George du Maurier_

_Feline Amenities_

_The New Society Craze_

_A Pictorial Puzzle_

_Refinements of Modern Speech_

_"Reading without Tears"_

_The Height of Impropriety_

_Things one would wish to have expressed differently_

SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE

It is my purpose to speak of the craft to which I have devoted thebest years of my life, the craft of portraying, by means of littlepen-and-ink strokes, lines, and scratches, a small portion of theworld in which we live; such social and domestic incidents as lendthemselves to humorous or satirical treatment; the illustratedcriticism of life, of the life of our time and country, in its lighteraspects. 

The fact that I have spent so many years in the practice of this craftdoes not of itself, I am well aware, entitle me to lay down the lawabout it; the mere exercise of an art so patent to all, so easilyunderstanded of the people, does not give one any special insight intoits simple mysteries, beyond a certain perception and appreciation ofthe technical means by which it is produced--unless one is gifted withthe critical faculty, a gift apart, to the possession of which I makeno claim. 

There are two kinds of critics of such work as ours. First there isthe wide public for whom we work and by whom we are paid; "who livesto please must please to live"; and who lives by drawing for a comicperiodical must manage to please the greater number. The judgment ofthis critic, though often sound, is not infallible; but his verdictfor the time being is final, and by it we, who live by our wits andfrom hand to mouth, must either stand or fall. 

The other critic is the expert, our fellow-craftsman, who has learnedby initiation, apprenticeship, and long practice the simple secrets ofour common trade. He is not quite infallible either, and is apt toconcern himself more about the manner than the matter of ourperformance; nor is he of immediate importance, since with the publicon our side we can do without him for a while, and flourish like agreen bay-tree in spite of his artistic disapproval of our work; buthe is not to be despised, for he is some years in advance of thatother critic, the public, who may, and probably will, come round tohis way of thinking in time. 

The first of these two critics is typified by Molière's famous cook, who must have been a singularly honest, independent, and intelligentperson, since he chose in all cases to abide by her decision, and notwith an altogether unsatisfactory result to Mankind! Such cooks arenot to be found in these days--certainly not in England; but he is anunlucky craftsman who does not possess some such natural critics inhis family, his home, or near it--mother, sister, friend, wife, orchild--who will look over his shoulder at his little sketch, and say:

"Tommy [or Papa, or Grandpapa, as the case may be], that person you'vejust drawn doesn't look quite natural, " or:

"That lady is not properly dressed for the person you want her tobe--those hats are not worn this year, " and so forth and so forth. 

When you have thoroughly satisfied this household critic, then is thetime to show some handy brother-craftsman your amended work, andlisten gratefully when he suggests that you should put a tone on thiswall, and a tree, or something, in the left middle distance to balancethe composition, and raise or depress the horizon-line to get a bettereffect of perspective. 

In speaking of some of my fellow-artists on _Punch_, and of theirwork, I shall try and bring both these critical methods intoplay--promising, however, once for all, that such criticism on my partis simply the expression of my individual taste or fancy, the taste orfancy of one who by no means pretends to the unerring acumen ofMolière's cook, on the one hand, and who feels himself by no meansinfallible in his judgment of purely technical matters, on the other. I can only admire and say why, or why I don't; and if I fail in makingyou admire and disadmire with me, it will most likely be my fault aswell as my misfortune. 

I had originally proposed to treat of Richard Doyle, John Leech, andCharles Keene--and finally of myself, since that I should speak ofmyself was rather insisted upon by those who procured me the honour ofspeaking at all. I find, however, that there is so much to say aboutLeech and Keene that I have thought it better to sacrifice RichardDoyle, who belongs to a remoter period, and whose work, exquisite asit is of its kind, is so much slighter than theirs, and fills so muchless of the public eye; for his connection with _Punch_ did not lastlong. Moreover, personally I knew less of him: just enough to findthat to know was to love him--a happy peculiarity he shared with histwo great collaborators on _Punch_. 

_John Leech_! What a name that was to conjure with, and is still!

I cannot find words to express what it represented to me of pureunmixed delight in my youth and boyhood, long before I ever dreamed ofbeing an artist myself! It stands out of the path with such names asDickens, Dumas, Byron--not indeed that I am claiming for him an equalrank with those immortals, who wielded a weapon so much more potentthan a mere caricaturist's pencil! But if an artist's fame is to bemeasured by the mere quantity and quality of the pleasure he hasgiven, what pinnacle is too high for John Leech!

Other men have drawn better; deeper, grander, nobler, more poeticalthemes have employed more accomplished pencils, even in black andwhite; but for making one _glad_, I can think of no one to beat him. 

To be an apparently hopeless invalid at Christmas-time in some dreary, deserted, dismal little Flemish town, and to receive _Punch's Almanac_(for 1858, let us say) from some good-natured friend in England--thatis a thing not to be forgotten! I little dreamed then that I shouldcome to London again, and meet John Leech and become his friend; thatI should be, alas! the last man to shake hands with him before hisdeath (as I believe I was), and find myself among the officiallyinvited mourners by his grave; and, finally, that I should inherit, and fill for so many years (however indifferently), that half-page in_Punch_ opposite the political cartoon, and which I had loved so wellwhen he was the artist!

Well, I recovered from a long and distressing ailment of my sightwhich had been pronounced incurable, and came to England, where I wasintroduced to Charles Keene, with whom I quickly became intimate, andit was he who presented me to Leech one night at one of Mr. ArthurLewis's smoking concerts, in the winter of 1860. I remember feelingsomewhat nervous lest he should take me for a foreigner on account ofmy name, and rather unnecessarily went out of my way to assure himthat I was rather more English than John Bull himself. It didn'tmatter in the least; I have no doubt he saw through it all: he waskindness and courtesy itself; and I experienced to the full thatemotion so delightful to a young hero-worshipper in meeting face toface a world-wide celebrity whom he has long worshipped at a distance. In the words of Lord Tennyson:

 "I was rapt By all the sweet and sudden passion of youth Towards greatness in its elder. . . . "

But it so happened at just this particular period of his artisticcareer and of mine that he no longer shone as a solitary star of thefirst magnitude in my little firmament of pictorial social satire. Anew impulse had been given to the art of drawing on wood, a new schoolhad been founded, and new methods--to draw straight from natureinstead of trusting to memory and imagination--had been the artisticorder of the day. Men and women, horses and dogs, landscapes andseascapes, all one can make pictures of, even chairs and tables andteacups and saucers, must be studied from the life--from thestill-life, if you will--by whoever aspired to draw on wood; evenangels and demons and cherubs and centaurs and mermaids must beclosely imitated from nature--or at least as much of them as could begot from the living model. 

_Once a Week_ had just appeared, and _The Cornhill Magazine_. Sir JohnMillais and Sir Frederick Leighton were then drawing on wood just likethe ordinary mortals; Frederick Walker had just started on his briefbut splendid career; Frederick Sandys had burst on the black-and-whiteworld like a meteor; and Charles Keene, who was illustrating the_Cloister and the Hearth_ in the intervals of his _Punch_ work, had, after long and patient labour, attained that consummate mastery ofline and effect in wood draughtsmanship that will be for everassociated with his name; and his work in _Punch_, if only by virtueof its extraordinary technical ability, made Leech's by contrastappear slight and almost amateurish in spite of its ease and boldness. 

So that with all my admiration for Leech it was at the feet of CharlesKeene that I found myself sitting; besides which we were much togetherin those days, talking endless shop, taking long walks, riding side byside on the knife-boards of omnibuses, dining at cheap restaurants, making music at each other's studios. His personal charm was great, asgreat in its way as Leech's; he was democratic and so was I, as one isbound to be when one is impecunious and the world is one's oyster toopen with the fragile point of a lead-pencil. His bohemian world wasmine--and I found it a very good world and very much to my taste--aclear, honest, wholesome, innocent, intellectual, and most industriousBritish bohemia, with lots of tobacco, lots of good music, plenty oftalk about literature and art, and not too much victuals or drink. Many of its denizens, that were, have become Royal Academicians orhave risen to fame in other ways; some have had to take a back seat inlife; surprisingly few have gone to the bad. 

This world, naturally, was not Leech's; if it had ever been, I doubt;his bohemia, if he ever had lived in one, had been the bohemia ofmedicine, not of art, and he seemed to us then to be living on socialheights of fame and sport and aristocratic splendour where none of usdreamed of seeking him--and he did not seek us. We hated and despisedthe bloated aristocracy, just as he hated and despised foreignerswithout knowing much about them; and the aristocracy, to do itjustice, did not pester us with its obtrusive advances. But I neverheard Leech spoken of otherwise in bohemia than with affectionateadmiration, although many of us seemed to think that his best work wasdone. Indeed, his work was becoming somewhat fitful in quality, andalready showed occasional signs of haste and illness and fatigue; hisfun was less genial and happy, though he drew more vigorously thanever, and now and again surprised us by surpassing himself, as in hisseries of Briggs in the Highlands a-chasing the deer. 

All that was thirty years ago and more. I may say at once that I havereconsidered the opinion I formed of John Leech at that time. Leech, it is true, is by no means the one bright particular star, but he hasrecovered much of his lost first magnitude: if he shines more by whathe has to say than by his manner of saying it, I have come to thinkthat that is the best thing of the two to shine by, if you cannotshine by both; and I find that his manner was absolutely what itshould have been for his purpose and his time--neither more nor less;he had so much to say and of a kind so delightful that I have no timeto pick holes in his mode of expression, which at its best hassatisfied far more discriminating experts than I; besides which, themethods of printing and engraving have wonderfully improved since hisday. He drew straight on the wood block, with a lead-pencil; hisdelicate grey lines had to be translated into the uncompromisingcoarse black lines of printers' ink--a ruinous process; and what hiswork lost in this way is only to be estimated by those who know. True, his mode of expression was not equal to Keene's--I never knew any thatwas, in England, or even approached it--but that, as Mr. RudyardKipling says, is another story. 

The story that I will tell now is that of my brief acquaintance withLeech, which began in 1860, and which I had not many opportunities ofimproving till I met him at Whitby in the autumn of 1864--a memorableautumn for me, since I used to forgather with him every day, and havelong walks and talks with him--and dined with him once or twice at thelodgings where he was staying with his wife and son and daughter--allof whom are now dead. He was the most sympathetic, engaging, andattractive person I ever met; not funny at all in conversation, orever wishing to be--except now and then for a capital story, which hetold in perfection. 

[Illustration: JOHN LEECH. ]

The keynote of his character, socially, seemed to be self-effacement, high-bred courtesy, never-failing consideration for others. He was themost charming companion conceivable, having intimately known so manyimportant and celebrated people, and liking to speak of them; but onewould never have guessed from anything he ever looked or said that hehad made a whole nation, male and female, gentle and simple, old andyoung, laugh as it had never laughed before or since for a quarter ofa century. He was tall, thin, and graceful, extremely handsome, of the higherIrish type; with dark hair and whiskers and complexion, and very lightgreyish-blue eyes; but the expression of his face was habitually sad, even when he smiled. In dress, bearing, manner, and aspect, he was thevery type of the well-bred English gentleman and man of the world andgood society; I never met any one to beat him in that peculiardistinction of form, which, I think, has reached its highest Europeandevelopment in this country. I am told the Orientals are still oursuperiors in deportment. But the natural man in him was still thebest. Thackeray and Sir John Millais, not bad judges, and men withmany friends, have both said that they personally loved John Leechbetter than any man they ever knew. 

At this time he was painting in oil, and on an enlarged scale, some ofhis more specially popular sketches in _Punch_, and very anxious tosucceed with them, but nervously diffident of success with them, evenwith [Greek: hoi polloi]. He was not at his happiest in these efforts;and there was something pathetic in his earnestness and perseverancein attempting a thing so many can do, but which he could not do forwant of a better training; while he could do the inimitable so easily. 

I came back to town before Leech, and did not see him again until thefollowing October. On Saturday afternoon, the 28th, I called at hishouse, No. 6 The Terrace, Kensington, with a very elaborate drawing inpencil by myself, which I presented to him as a souvenir, and withwhich he seemed much pleased. 

He was already working at the _Punch Almanac_ for '65, at a window onthe second floor overlooking the street. (I have often gazed up at itsince. ) He seemed very ill, so sad and depressed that I could scarcelyspeak to him for sheer sympathy; I felt he would never get through thelabour of that almanac, and left him with the most melancholyforebodings. 

Monday morning the papers announced his death on Sunday, October 29th, from angina pectoris, the very morning after I had seen him. 

I was invited by Messrs. Bradbury and Evans, the publishers of_Punch_, to the funeral, which took place at Kensal Green. It was themost touching sight imaginable. The grave was near Thackeray's, whohad died the year before. There were crowds of people, Charles Dickensamong them; Canon Hole, a great friend of Leech's, and who has writtenmost affectionately about him, read the service; and when the coffinwas lowered into the grave, John Millais burst into tears and loudsobs, setting an example that was followed all round; we all forgotour manhood and cried like women! I can recall no funeral in my timewhere simple grief and affection have been so openly and spontaneouslydisplayed by so many strangers as well as friends--not even in France, where people are more demonstrative than here. No burial inWestminster Abbey that I have ever seen ever gave such an impressionof universal honour, love, and regret. 

"Whom the gods love die young. " He was only forty-six!

I was then invited to join the _Punch_ staff and take Leech's emptychair at the weekly dinner--and bidden to cut my initials on thetable, by his; his monogram as it was carved by him is J. L. Under aleech in a bottle, dated 1854; and close by on the same board are theinitials W. M. T. 

I flatter myself that convivially, at least, my small D. M. , carved inimpenetrable oak, will go down to posterity in rather distinguishedcompany!

If ever there was a square English hole, and a square English peg tofit it, that hole was _Punch_, and that peg was John Leech. He wasJohn Bull himself, but John Bull refined and civilised--John Bullpolite, modest, gentle--full of self-respect and self-restraint, andwith all the bully softened out of him; manly first and gentlemanlyafter, but very soon after; more at home perhaps in the club, thedrawing-room, and the hunting-field, in Piccadilly and the Park, thanin the farm or shop or market-place; a normal Englishman of the uppermiddle class, with but one thing abnormal about him, viz. , his genius, which was of the kind to give the greater pleasure to the greaternumber--and yet delight the most fastidious of his day--and I think ofours. One must be very ultra-aesthetic, even now, not to feel hischarm. 

He was all of a piece, and moved and worked with absolute ease, freedom, and certainty, within the limits nature had assigned him--andhis field was a very large one. He saw and represented the wholepanorama of life that came within his immediate ken with an unwaveringconsistency, from first to last; from a broadly humorous, thoughmostly sympathetic point of view that never changed--a very delightfulpoint of view, if not the highest conceivable. 

Hand and eye worked with brain in singular harmony, and all threeimproved together contemporaneously, with a parallelism mostinteresting to note, as one goes through the long series of his socialpictures from the beginning. 

He has no doubts or hesitations--no bewildering subtleties--no seekingfrom twelve to fourteen o'clock--either in his ideas or technique, which very soon becomes an excellent technique, thoroughly suited tohis ideas--rapid, bold, spirited, full of colour, breadth, andmovement--troubling itself little about details that will not help thetelling of his story--for before everything else he has his story totell, and it must either make you laugh or lightly charm you--and hetells it in the quickest, simplest, down-rightest pencil strokes, although it is often a complicated story!

For there are not only the funny people and the pretty people actingout their little drama in the foreground--there is the scene in whichthey act, and the middle distance, and the background beyond, and thesky itself; beautiful rough landscapes and seascapes and skyscapes, winds and weathers, boisterous or sunny seas, rain and storm andcloud--all the poetry of nature, that he feels most acutely while hislittle people are being so unconsciously droll in the midst of it all. He is a king of impressionists, and his impression becomes ours on thespot--never to be forgotten! It is all so quick and fresh and strong, so simple, pat, and complete, so direct from mother Nature herself! Ithas about it the quality of inevitableness--those are the very peoplewho would have acted and spoken in just that manner, and we meet themevery day--the expression of the face, the movement and gesture, inanger, terror, dismay, scorn, conceit, tenderness, elation, triumph. . . . Whatever the mood, they could not have looked or actedotherwise--it is life itself. An optimistic life in which joyousnessprevails, and the very woes and discomfitures are broadly comical tous who look on--like some one who has sea-sickness, or a headacheafter a Greenwich banquet--which are about the most tragic things hehas dealt with. 

(I am speaking of his purely social sketches. For in his admirablelarge cuts, political and otherwise serious, his satire is oftenbitter and biting indeed; and his tragedy almost Hogarthian. )

Like many true humorists, he was of a melancholy temperament, and nodoubt felt attracted by all that was mirthful and bright, and in happycontrast to his habitual mood. Seldom if ever does a drop of his innersadness ooze out through his pencil-point--and never a drop of gall;and I do not remember one cynical touch in his whole series. 

In his tastes and habits he was by nature aristocratic; he liked thesociety of those who were well dressed, well bred and refined likehimself, and perhaps a trifle conventional; he conformed quitespontaneously and without effort to upper-class British ideal of histime, and had its likes and dislikes. But his strongest predilectionsof all are common to the British race: his love of home, his love ofsport, his love of the horse and the hound--especially his love of thepretty woman--the pretty woman of the normal, wholesome English type. This charming creature so dear to us all pervades his show frombeginning to end--she is a creation of his, and he thoroughly lovesher, and draws her again and again with a fondness that is halflover-like and half paternal--her buxom figure, her merry bright eyesand fresh complexion and flowing ringlets, and pursed-up lips likeCupid's bow. Nor is he ever tired of displaying her feet and ankles(and a little more) in gales of wind on cliff and pier and parade, orclimbing the Malvern Hills. When she puts on goloshes it nearly breakshis heart, and he would fly to other climes! He revels in herinfantile pouts and jealousies and heart-burnings and butterflydelights and lisping mischiefs; her mild, innocent flirtations withbeautiful young swells, whose cares are equally light. 

She is a darling, and he constantly calls her so to her face. Herfavourite seaside nook becomes the mermaid's haunt; her back hairflies and dries in the wind, and disturbs the peace of the toosusceptible Punch. She is a little amazon _pour rire_, and ridesacross country, and drives (even a hansom sometimes, with a pair ofmagnificent young whiskerandoes smoking their costly cigars inside);she is a toxophilite, and her arrow sticks, for it is barbed withinnocent seduction, and her bull's-eye is the soft military heart. Shewears a cricket-cap and breaks Aunt Sally's nose seven times; she putsher pretty little foot upon the croquet-ball--and croquet'd you arecompletely! With what glee she would have rinked and tennised if hehad lived a little longer!

[Illustration: "IN THE BAY OF BISCANY O"

The Last Sweet Thing in Hats and Walking-Sticks. --_Punch_, September27, 1862. ]

She is light of heart, and perhaps a little of head! Her worst troubleis when the captain gives the wing of the fowl to some other darlingwho might be her twin-sister; her most terrible nightmare is when shedreams that great stupid Captain Sprawler upsets a dish of trifle overher new lace dress with the blue satin slip; but next morning she isherself again, and rides in the Row, and stops to speak with thatgreat stupid Captain Sprawler, who is very nice to look at, whose backis very beautiful, and who sprawls most gracefully over the railings, and pays her those delightful, absurd compliments about her and herhorse "being such a capital pair, " while, as a foil to so much graceand splendour, a poor little snub-nosed, ill-dressed, ill-conditioneddwarf of a snob looks on, sucking the top of his cheap cane in abjectadmiration and hopeless envy! Then she pats and kisses the nice softnose of Cornet Flinders's hunter, which is "deucedly aggravating forCornet Flinders, you know"--but when that noble sportsman is frozenout and cannot hunt, she plays scratch-cradle with him in the boudoirof her father's country house, or pitches chocolate into his mouthfrom the oak landing; and she lets him fasten the skates on to herpretty feet. Happy cornet! And she plays billiards with her handsomecousin--a guardsman at least--and informs him that she is justeighteen to his love--and stands under the mistletoe and asks thisenviable relation of hers to show her what the garroter's hug is like;and when he proceeds to do so she calls out in distress because hispointed waxed moustache has scratched her pretty cheek; and when Mr. Punch is there, at dinner, she and a sister darling pull crackersacross his August white waistcoat, and scream in pretty terror at theexplosion; to that worthy's excessive jubilation, for Mr. Punch isLeech himself, and nothing she does can ever be amiss in his eyes!

Sometimes, indeed, she is seriously transfixed herself, and bids Mr. Tongs, the hairdresser, cut off a long lock of her hair where it willnot be missed---and she looks so lovely under the smart of Cupid'sarrow that we are frantically jealous of the irresistible warrior forwhom the jetty tress is destined. In short, she is innocence andliveliness and health incarnate--a human kitten. 

When she marries the gilded youth with the ambrosial whiskers, theirhoneymooning is like playing at being married, their heartlessbillings and cooings are enchanting to see. She will have notroubles--Leech will take good care of that; her matrimonial tiffswill be of the slightest; hers will be a well-regulated household; thecourse of her conjugal love will run smooth in spite of her littleindiscretions--for, like Bluebeard's wife, she can be curious attimes, and coax and wheedle to know the mysteries of Freemasonry, andcry because Edwin will not reveal the secret of Mr. Percy, thehorse-tamer; and how Edwin can resist such an appeal is more than wecan understand! But soon they will have a large family, and live happyever after, and by the time their eldest-born is thirteen years old, the darling of fourteen years back will be a regular materfamilias, stout, matronly, and rather severe; and Edwin will be fat, bald, andmiddle-aged, and bring home a bundle of asparagus and a nice newperambulator to celebrate the wedding-day!

And he loves her brothers and cousins, military or otherwise, just asdearly, and makes them equally beautiful to the eye, with those lovelydrooping whiskers that used to fall and brush their bosoms, theirsmartly waistcoated bosoms, a quarter of a century ago! He dressesthem even better than the darlings, and has none but the kindliest andgentlest satire for their little vanities and conceits--for they haveno real vices, these charming youths, beyond smoking too much andbetting a little and getting gracefully tipsy at race-meetings andGreenwich dinners--and sometimes running into debt with their tailors, I suppose! And then how boldly they ride to hounds, and how splendidlythey fight in the Crimea! how lightly they dance at home! How healthy, good-humoured, and manly they are, with all their vagaries of dressand jewellery and accent! It is easy to forgive them if they give thewhole of their minds to their white neckties, or are dejected becausethey have lost the little gridiron off their chatelaine, or lose allpresence of mind when a smut settles on their noses, and turn faint atthe sight of Mrs. Gamp's umbrella!

And next to these enviable beings he loves and reveres the sportsman. One is made to feel that the true sportsman, whether he shoots orhunts or fishes, is an August being, as he ought to be in GreatBritain, and Leech has done him full justice with his pencil. He is nosubject for flippant satire; so there he sits his horse, or stalksthrough his turnip-field, or handles his rod like a god! Handsome, well-appointed from top to toe, aristocratic to the finger-tips--amost impressive figure, the despair of foreigners, the envy of alloutsiders at home (including the present lecturer)!

[Illustration: A SPECIMEN OF PLUCK

RUGGLES. "Hold hard, Master George. It's too wide, and uncommon deep!"

MASTER GEORGE. "All right, Ruggles! We can both _swim_!"--_Punch_. ]

He has never been painted like this before! What splendid lords andsquires, fat or lean, hook-nosed or eagle-eyed, well tanned by sun andwind, in faultless kit, on priceless mounts! How redolent they are ofhealth and wealth, and the secure consciousness of high socialposition--of the cool business-like self-importance that sits so wellon those who are knowing in the noblest pursuit that can ever employthe energies and engross the mind of a well-born Briton; for they canride almost as well as their grooms, these mighty hunters before theLord, and know the country almost as well as the huntsman himself! Andwhat sons and grandsons and granddaughters are growing up round them, on delightful ponies no gate, hedge, or brook can dismay--nothing butthe hard high-road!

It is a glorious, exhilarating scene, with the beautiful wintrylandscape stretching away to the cloudy November sky, and the lordsand ladies gay, and the hounds, and the frosty-faced, short-temperedold huntsman, the very perfection of his kind; and the poor cockneysnobs on their hired screws, and the meek clod-hopping labourerslooking on excited and bewildered, happy for a moment at beholding somuch happiness in their betters. 

[Illustration: ONE OF MR. BRIGG'S ADVENTURES IN THE HIGHLANDS

After aiming for a Quarter of and Hour Mr. B. Fires both of hisBarrels--and--misses!!!! Tableau--The Forester's Anguish--_Punch_, 1861. ]

To have seen these sketches of the hunting-field is to have been therein person. It is almost the only hunting that I ever had--and probablyever shall have--and I am almost content that it should be so! It isso much easier and simpler to draw for _Punch_ than to drive acrosscountry! And then, as a set-off to all this successful achievement, this pride and pomp and circumstance of glorious sport, we have theimmortal and ever-beloved figure of Mr. Briggs, whom I look upon asLeech's masterpiece--the example above all others of the most humorousand good-natured satire that was ever penned or pencilled. The moreridiculous he is the more we love him; he is more winning andsympathetic than even Mr. Pickwick himself, and I almost think agreater creation! Besides, it took two to make Mr. Pickwick, theauthor and the artist, whereas Mr. Briggs issued fully equipped fromthe brain of Leech alone!

Not indeed that all unauthorised gallopers after the fox findforgiveness in the eyes of Leech. Woe to the vulgar little cockneysnob who dares to obtrude his ugly mug and his big cigar and hishired, broken-winded rip on these hallowed and thrice-happyhunting-grounds!--an earthenware pot among vessels of brass; thepunishment shall be made to fit the crime; better if he fell off andhis horse rolled over him than that he should dress and ride and looklike that! For the pain of broken bones is easier to bear than thescorn of a true British sportsman!

[Illustration: THANK GOODNESS! FLY-FISHING HAS BEGUN!

MILLER. "Don't they really, perhaps they'll bite better towards thecool of the evening, they mostly do. "--_Punch_, 1857. ]Then there are the fishermen who never catch any fish, but whom nostress of weather can daunt or distress. There they sit or stand withthe wind blowing or the rain soaking, in dark landscapes with ruffledstreams and ominous clouds, and swaying trees that turn up the whitesof their leaves--one almost hears the wind rush through them. Onealmost forgets the comical little forlorn figure who gives such pointto all the angry turbulence of nature in the impression produced bythe _mise en scène_ itself--an impression so happily, so vividlysuggested by a few rapid, instructive pencil strokes and thumb smudgesthat it haunts the memory like a dream. 

He loves such open-air scenes so sincerely, he knows so well how toexpress and communicate the perennial charm they have for him, thatthe veriest bookworm becomes a sportsman through sheer sympathy--bythe mere fact of looking at them. 

And how many people and things he loves that most of us love!--itwould take all night to enumerate them--the good authoritative pater-and materfamilias; the delightful little girls; the charming cheekyschool-boys; the jolly little street Arabs, who fill old gentlemen'sletter-boxes with oyster-shells and gooseberry-skins; the cabmen, thebusmen; the policemen with the old-fashioned chimney-pot hat; the oldbathing-women, and Jack-ashores, and jolly old tars--his British taris irresistible, whether he is hooking a sixty-four pounder out of theBlack Sea, or riding a Turk, or drinking tea instead of grog andcomplaining of its strength! There seems to be hardly a mirthfulcorner of English life that Leech has not seen and loved and paintedin this singularly genial and optimistic manner. 

[Illustration: "THE JOLLY LITTLE STREET ARABS"

From the original drawing for _Punch_ in possession of John KendrickBangs, Esq. ]

His loves are many and his hates are few--but he is a good hater allthe same. He hates Mawworm and Stiggins, and so do we. He hates theforeigner--whom he does not know, as heartily as Thackeray does, whoseems to know him so well--with a hatred that seems to me a littleunjust, perhaps: all France is not in Leicester Square; many Frenchmencan dress and ride, drive and shoot as well as anybody; and they beganto use the tub very soon after we did--a dozen years or so, perhaps--say after the _coup d'état_ in 1851. 

Then he hates with a deadly hatred all who make music in the street ornext door--and preach in the crossways and bawl their wares on theparade. What would he have said of the Salvation Army? He is hauntedby the bark of his neighbour's dog, by the crow of his neighbour'sCochin China cock; he cannot even bear his neighbour to have hischimney swept; and as for the Christmas waits--we all remember _that_tragic picture! This exaggerated aversion to noises became a diseasewith him, and possibly hastened his end. 

Among his pet hates we must not forget the gorgeous flunky and theguzzling alderman, the leering old fop, the rascally book-maker, thesweating Jew tradesman, and the poor little snob (the 'Arry of hisday) who tries vainly to grow a moustache, and wears such a shockingbad hat, and iron heels to his shoes, and shuns the Park during theriots for fear of being pelted for a "haristocrat, " and whosepunishment I think is almost in excess of his misdemeanor. To succeedin over-dressing one's self (as his swells did occasionally withoutmarring their beauty) is almost as ignominious as to fail; and whenthe failure comes from want of means, there is also almost a patheticside to it. 

[Illustration: DOING A LITTLE BUSINESS

OLD EQUESTRIAN. "Well, but--you're not the boy I left my horse with!"

BOY. "No, sir; I jist spekilated, and bought 'im of t'other boy for aharpenny. "--_Punch_. ]

And he is a little bit hard on old frumps, with fat ankles and scraggybosoms and red noses--but anyhow we are made to laugh--_quod eratdemonstrandum_. We also know that he has a strong objection to coldmutton for dinner, and much prefers a whitebait banquet at Greenwich, or a nice well-ordered repast at the Star and Garter. So do we. 

And the only thing he feared is the horse. Nimrod as he is, and thehappiest illustrator of the hunting-field that ever was, he seems forever haunted by a terror of the heels of that noble animal he drew sowell--and I thoroughly sympathise with him!

In all the series the chief note is joyousness, high spirits, thepleasure of being alive. There is no _Weltschmerz_ in his happy world, where all is for the best--no hankering after the moon, no discontentwith the present order of things. Only one little lady discovers thatthe world is hollow, and her doll is stuffed with bran; only onegorgeous swell has exhausted the possibilities of this life, and findsout that he is at loss for a new sensation. So what does he do? Cuthis throat? Go and shoot big game in Africa? No; he visits the top ofthe Monument on a rainy day, or invites his brother-swells to a Punchand Judy show in his rooms, or rides to Whitechapel and back on anomnibus with a bag of periwinkles, and picks them out with a pin!

Even when his humour is at its broadest, and he revels in almostpantomimic fun, he never loses sight of truth and nature--neverstrikes a false or uncertain note. Robinson goes to an evening partywith a spiked knuckle-duster in his pocket and sits down. Jones digsan elderly party called Smith in the back with the point of hisumbrella, under the impression that it is his friend Brown. A charminglittle street Arab prints the soles of his muddy feet on a smart oldgentleman's white evening waistcoat. 

Tompkyns writes Henrietta on the stands under two hearts transfixed byan arrow, and his wife, whose name is Matilda, catches him in the act. An old gentleman, maddened by a bluebottle, smashes all his furnitureand breaks every window-pane but one--where the bluebottle is. And inall these scenes one does not know which is the most irresistible, themost inimitable--the mere drollery or the dramatic truth of gestureand facial expression. 

The way in which every-day people really behave in absurd situationsand under comically trying circumstances is quite funny enough forhim; and if he exaggerates a little and goes beyond the absolute proseof life in the direction of caricature, he never deviates ahair's-breadth from the groove human nature has laid down. There isexaggeration, but no distortion. The most wildly funny people are lowcomedians of the highest order, whose fun is never forced and neverfails; they found themselves on fact, and only burlesque what theyhave seen in actual life--they never evolve their fun from the depthsof their inner consciousness; and in this naturalness, for me, liesthe greatness of Leech. There is nearly always a tenderness in thelaughter he excites, born of the touch of nature that makes the wholeworld kin!

[Illustration: A TOLERABLY BROAD HINT

"Oh, I beg your pardon, sir, but you didn't say as we were to pull upanywhere, did you, sir?"--_Punch_, 1859. ]

Where most of all he gives us a sense of the exuberant joyousness andbuoyancy of life is in the sketches of the seaside--the newlydiscovered joys of which had then not become commonplace to people ofthe middle class. The good old seaside has grown rather stale by thistime--the very children of to-day dig and paddle in a half-perfunctorysort of fashion, with a certain stolidity, and are in strange contrastto those highly elate and enchanting little romps that fill hisseaside pictures. 

Indeed, nothing seems so jolly, nothing seems so funny, now, as whenLeech was drawing for _Punch_. The gaiety of one nation at least hasbeen eclipsed by his death. Is it merely that there is no such lighthumorist to see and draw for us in a frolicsome spirit all the fun andthe jollity? Is it because some of us have grown old? Or is it thatthe British people themselves have changed and gone back to their oldway of taking their pleasure sadly?

Everything is so different, somehow; the very girls themselves havegrown a head taller, and look serious, stately, and dignified, likeOlympian goddesses, even when they are dancing and playinglawn-tennis. 

I for one should no more dream of calling them the darlings than Ishould dare to kiss them under the mistletoe, were I ever so splendida young captain. Indeed I am too prostrate in admiration--I can onlysuck the top of my stick and gaze in jealous ecstasy, like one ofLeech's little snobs. They are no longer pretty as their grandmotherswere--whom Leech drew so well in the old days! They are _beautiful_!

And then they are so cultivated, and _know_ such a lot--of books, ofart, of science, of politics, and theology--of the world the flesh, and the devil. They actually think for themselves; they have brokenloose and jumped over the ring-fence; they have taken to the water, these lovely chicks, and swim like ducklings, to the dismay of thosegood old cocks and hens, their grandparents! And my love of them istinged with awe, as was Leech's love of that mighty, beautiful, butmost uncertain quadruped, the thoroughbred horse--for, like him, whenthey are good, they are very, very good, but when they are bad, theyare horrid. We have changed other things as well: the swell has becomethe masher, and is a terrible dull dog; the poor little snob hasblossomed into a blatant 'Arry, and no longer wears impossible hatsand iron heels to his boots; he has risen in the social scale, andholds his own without fear or favour in the Park and everywhere else. To be taken for a haristocrat is his dream!--even if he be pelted forit. In his higher developments he becomes a "bounder, " and bounds awayin most respectable West End ball-rooms. He is the only person withany high spirits left--perhaps that is why high spirits have gone outof fashion, like boxing the watch and wrenching off door-knockers!

And the snob of our day is quite a different person, more likely thannot to be found hobnobbing with dukes and duchesses--as irreproachablein dress and demeanour as Leech himself. Thackeray discovered andchristened him for us long ago; and he is related to most of us, andmoves in the best society. He has even ceased to brag of his intimacywith the great, they have become so commonplace to him; and if heswaggers at all, it is about his acquaintance with some popular actoror comic vocalist whom he is privileged to call by his christian-name. 

And those splendid old grandees of high rank, so imposing of aspect, so crushing to us poor mortals by mere virtue not of their wealth andtitle alone, but of their high-bred distinction of feature andbearing--to which Leech did such ample justice--what has become ofthem?

They are like the snows of yester-year! They have gone the way oftheir beautiful chariots with the elaborate armorial bearings and thetasselled hammercloth, the bewigged, cocked-hatted coachman, and thetwo gorgeous flunkies hanging on behind. Sir Gorgeous Midas has beatenthe dukes in mere gorgeousness, flunkies and all--burlesqued thevulgar side of them, and unconsciously shamed it out of existence;made swagger and ostentation unpopular by his own evilexample--actually improved the manners of the great by sheer mimicryof their defects. He has married his sons and his daughters to themand spoiled the noble curve of those lovely noses that Leech drew sowell, and brought them down a peg in many ways, and given them a newlease of life; and he has enabled us to discover that they are not ofsuch different clay from ourselves after all. All the old slavishformulae of deference and respect--"Your Grace, " "Your Ladyship, " "MyLord"--that used to run so glibly off our tongues whenever we had achance, are now left to servants and shopkeepers; and my slightexperience of them, for one, is that they do not want to be toadied abit, and that they are very polite, well-bred, and most agreeablepeople. 

If we may judge of our modern aristocracy by that very slenderfragment of our contemporary fiction, mostly American, that stillthinks it worth writing about, our young noble of to-day is the mostgood-humoured, tolerant, simple-hearted, simple-minded, unsophisticated creature alive--thinking nothing of hishonours--prostrate under the little foot of some fair Yankee, who isjust as likely as not to jilt him for some transatlantic painter notyet known to fame. 

Compare this unpretending youth to one of Bulwer's heroes, orDisraeli's, or even Thackeray's! And his simple old duke of a fatherand his dowdy old duchess of a mother are almost as devoid of swaggeras himself; they seem to apologise for their very existence, if we maytrust these American chroniclers who seem to know them so well; and Ireally think we no longer care to hear and read about them quite somuch as we did--unless it be in the society papers!

But all these past manners and customs that some of us can remember sowell--all these obsolete people, from the heavily whiskered swell tothe policeman with the leather-bound chimney-pot hat, from good pater-and mater-familias who were actually looked up to and obeyed by theirchildren, to the croquet-playing darlings in the pork-pie hats andhuge crinolines--all survive and will survive for many a year in JohnLeech's "Pictures of Life and Character. "

Except for a certain gentleness, kindliness, and self-effacing modestycommon to both, and which made them appear almost angelic in the eyesof many who knew them, it would be difficult to imagine a greatercontrast to Leech than Charles Keene. 

Charles Keene was absolutely unconventional, and even almosteccentric. He dressed more with a view to artistic picturesquenessthan to fashion, and despised gloves and chimney-pot hats, and blackcoats and broadcloth generally. 

[Illustration: CHARLES KEENE

From a photograph by Elliott and Fry, London. ]

Scotch tweed was good enough for him in town and country alike. Thougha Tory in politics, he was democratic in his tastes and habits. Heliked to smoke his short black pipe on the tops of omnibuses; he likedto lay and light his own fire and cook his mutton-chop upon it. He hada passion for music and a beautiful voice, and sang with a singularpathos and charm, but he preferred the sound of his bagpipes to thatof his own singing, and thought that you must prefer it too!

He was for ever sketching in pen and ink, indoors and out--he used atone time to carry a little ink-bottle at his buttonhole, and steelpens in his waistcoat-pocket, and thus equipped he would sketchwhatever took his fancy in his walks abroad--houses, 'busses, cabs, people--bits of street and square, scaffoldings, hoardings withadvertisements--sea, river, moor, lake, and mountain--what has he notsketched with that masterly pen that had already been so carefullytrained by long and arduous practice in a life-school? His heart wasin his work from first to last; beyond his bagpipes and his old books(for he was a passionate reader), he seemed to have no other hobby. His facility in sketching became phenomenal, as also his knowledge ofwhat to put in and what to leave out, so that the effect he aimed atshould be secured in perfection and with the smallest appearance oflabour. 

Among his other gifts he had a physical gift of inestimable value forsuch work as ours--namely, a splendid hand--a large, muscular, well-shaped, and most workman-like hand, whose long deft fingers couldmove with equal ease and certainty in all directions. I have seen itat work--and it was a pleasure to watch its acrobatic dexterity, itsunerring precision of touch. It could draw with nonchalant facilityparallel straight lines, or curved, of just the right thickness anddistance from each other--almost as regular as if they had been drawnwith ruler or compass--almost, but not _quite_. The quiteness wouldhave made them mechanical, and robbed them of their charm of humanhandicraft. A cunning and obedient slave, this wonderful hand, forwhich no command from the head could come amiss--a slave, moreover, that had most thoroughly learned its business by long apprenticeshipto one especial trade, like the head and like the eye that guided it. 

Leech, no doubt, had a good natural hand, that swept about withenviable freedom and boldness, but for want of early discipline itcould not execute these miracles of skill; and the commands that camefrom the head also lacked the preciseness which results from patientlyacquired and well-digested knowledge, so that Mr. Hand was apt now andthen to zigzag a little on its own account--in backgrounds, on floorsand walls, under chairs and tables, whenever a little tone was felt tobe desirable--sometimes in the shading of coats and trousers andladies' dresses. 

But it never took a liberty with a human face or a horse's head; andwhenever it went a little astray you could always read between thelines and know exactly what it meant. 

There is no difficulty in reading between Keene's lines; every one ofthem has its unmistakable definite intimation; every one is the rightline in the right place!

We must remember that there are no such things as lines in nature. Whether we use them to represent a human profile, the depth of ashadow, the darkness of a cloak or a thunder-cloud, they are mereconventional symbols. They were invented a long time ago, by adistinguished sportsman who was also a heaven-born amateur artist--theJohn Leech of his day--who engraved for us (from life) the picture ofmammoth on one of its own tusks. 

And we have accepted them ever since as the cheapest and simplest wayof interpreting in black and white for the wood-engraver the shapesand shadows and colours of nature. They may be scratchy, feeble, anduncertain, or firm and bold--thick and thin--straight, curved, parallel, or irregular--cross-hatched once, twice, a dozen times, atany angle--every artist has his own way of getting his effect. Butsome ways are better than others, and I think Keene's is the firmest, loosest, simplest, and best way that ever was, and--the most difficultto imitate. His mere pen-strokes have, for the expert, a beauty and aninterest quite apart from the thing they are made to depict, whetherhe uses them as mere outlines to express the shape of things animateor inanimate, even such shapeless, irregular things as the stones on asea-beach--or in combination to suggest the tone and colour of adress-coat, or a drunkard's nose, of a cab or omnibus--of a distantmountain with miles of atmosphere between it and the figures in theforeground. 

[Illustration: THE SNOWSTORM, JAN. 2, 1867

CABBY (_petulantly--the Cabbies even lose their tempers_). "It's nouse your a-calling o' me, Sir! Got such a Job with these 'ere Twoas'll last me a Fortnight!!"--_Punch_, January 19, 1867. ]

His lines are as few as can be--he is most economical in this respectand loves to leave as much white paper as he can; but one feels in hisbest work that one line more or one line less would impair theperfection of the whole--that of all the many directions, curves, andthicknesses they might have taken he has inevitably hit upon just theright one. He has beaten all previous records in this respect--in thiscountry, at least. I heard a celebrated French painter say: "He is agreat man, your Charles Keene; he take a pen and ink and a bit ofpaper, and wiz a half-dozen strokes he know 'ow to frame a gust ofwind!" I think myself that Leech could frame a gust of wind aseffectually as Keene, by the sheer force of his untaught naturalinstinct--of his genius; but not with the deftness--this economy ofmaterial--this certainty of execution--this consummate knowledge ofeffect. 

To borrow a simile from music, there are certain tunes so fresh andsweet and pretty that they please at once and for ever, like "Home, Sweet Home, " or "The Last Rose of Summer"; they go straight to theheart of the multitude, however slight the accompaniment--a few simplechords--they hardly want an accompaniment at all. 

Leech's art seems to me of just such a happy kind; he draws--I mean hescores like an amateur who has not made a very profound study ofharmony, and sings his pretty song to his simple accompaniment with sosweet and true a natural voice that we are charmed. It is the magic ofnature, whereas Keene is a very Sebastian Bach in his counterpoint. There is nothing of the amateur about him; his knowledge of harmony inblack and white is complete and thorough; mere consummate scoring hasbecome to him a second nature; each separate note of his voice revealsthe long training of the professional singer; and if his tunes areless obviously sweet and his voice less naturally winning andsympathetic than Leech's, his aesthetic achievement is all thegreater. It is to his brother-artists rather than to the public atlarge that his most successful appeal is made--but with an intensitythat can only be gained by those who have tried in vain to do what hehas done, and who thereby know how difficult it is. His real magic isthat of art. 

This perhaps accounts for the unmistakable fact that Leech'spopularity has been so much greater than Keene's, and I believe isstill. Leech's little melodies of the pencil (to continue the parallelwith the sister art) are like Volkslieder--national airs--and moredirectly reach the national heart. Transplant them to other lands thathave pencil Volkslieder of their own (though none, I think, comparableto his for fun and sweetness and simplicity) and they fail to pleaseas much, while their mere artistic qualities are not such as to findfavour among foreign experts, whereas Keene actually gains by such aprocess. He is as much admired by the artists of France and Germany asby our own--if not more. For some of his shortcomings--such as hislack of feeling for English female beauty, his want of perception, perhaps his disdain, of certain little eternal traits and conventionsand differences that stamp the various grades of our socialhierarchy--do not strike them, and nothing interferes with theircomplete appreciation of his craftsmanship. 

[Illustration: WAITING FOR THE LANDLORD!

RIBBONMAN (_getting impatient_). "Bedad, they ought to be here be thistoime! Sure, Tiriace, I hope the ould gintleman hasn't mit wid anaccidint!!!"--_Punch_, July 27, 1878. ]

Perhaps, also, Leech's frequent verification of our manly Britishpluck and honesty, and proficiency in sport, and wholesomeness andcleanliness of body and mind, our general physical beauty anddistinction, and his patriotic tendency to contrast our exclusivepossession of these delightful gifts with the deplorable absence ofthem in any country but our own, may fail to enlist the sympathies ofthe benighted foreigner. 

Whereas there is not much to humiliate the most touchy French orGerman reader of _Punch_, or excite his envy, in Charles Keene'sportraiture of our race. He is impartial and detached, and the mostrabid Anglophobe may frankly admire him without losing hisself-esteem. The English lower middle class and people, that Keene hasdepicted with such judicial freedom from either prejudice orpre-possession, have many virtues; but they are not especiallyconspicuous for much vivacity or charm of aspect or gainliness ofdemeanour; and he has not gone out of his way to idealise them. 

Also, he seldom if ever gibes at those who have not been able toresist the temptations (as Mr. Gilbert would say) of belonging toother nations. 

Thus in absolute craftsmanship and technical skill, in the ease andbeauty of his line, his knowledge of effect, his complete mastery overthe material means at his disposal, Charles Keene seems to me assuperior to Leech as Leech is to him in grace, in human naturalnessand geniality of humour, in accurate observation of life, in keennessof social perception, and especially in width of range. 

[Illustration: A STROKE OF BUSINESS

VILLAGE HAMPDEN (_"who with dauntless breast" has undertaken forsixpence to keep off the other boys_). "If any of yer wants to seewhat we're a Paintin' of it's a 'Alfpenny a 'Ead, but you marn't makeno Remarks. "--_Punch_, May 4, 1867. ]

The little actors on Leech's stage are nearly all of them every-daypeople--types one is constantly meeting. High or low, tipsy or sober, vulgar or refined, pleasant or the reverse, we knew them all beforeLeech ever drew them; and our recognition of them on his page is fullof delight at meeting old familiar friends and seeing them made fun offor our amusement. 

Whereas a great many of Keene's middle-class protagonists are peculiarand exceptional, and much of their humour lies in their eccentricity, they are characters themselves, rather than types of Englishcharacters. Are they really observed and drawn from life, do theyreally exist just as they are, or are they partly evolved from thedepths of an inner consciousness that is not quite satisfied with lifejust as it is?

[Illustration: "NONE O' YOUR LARKS"

GIGANTIC NAVVY: "Let's walk between yer, Gents; folks 'll think you'vetook up a Deserter. "--_Punch_, October 19, 1861. ]

They are often comic, with their exquisitely drawn faces so full ofsubtlety--intensely comic! Their enormous perplexities about nothing, their utter guilelessness, their innocence of the wicked world and itsways, make them engaging sometimes in spite of a certain ungainlinessof gesture, dress, and general behaviour that belongs to them, andwhich delighted Charles Keene, who was the reverse of ungainly, justas the oft-recurring tipsiness of his old gentlemen delighted him, though he was the most abstemious of men. I am now speaking of hismiddle-class people--those wonderful philistines of either sex; thoseelaborately capped and corpulent old ladies; thosemuttonchop-whiskered, middle-aged gentlemen with long upper lips andflorid complexions, receding chins, noses almost horizontal in theirprominence; those artless damsels who trouble themselves so littleabout the latest fashions; those feeble-minded, hirsute swells withthe sloping shoulders and the broad hips and the little hats cocked onone side; those unkempt, unspoiled, unspotted from the world brothersof the brush, who take in their own milk, and so complacently ignoreall the rotten conventionalism of our over-civilised existence. 

When he takes his subjects from the classes beneath these, he is, ifnot quite so funny, at his best, I think. His costermongers andpolicemen, his omnibus drivers and conductors and cabbies, areinimitable studies; and as for his 'busses and cabs, I really cannotfind words to express my admiration of them. In these, as in hisstreet scenes and landscapes, he is unapproached and unapproachable. 

Nor must we forget his canny Scotsmen, his Irish labourers andpeasants, his splendid English navvies, and least of all hisvolunteers--he and Leech might be called the pillars of the Volunteermovement, from the manner, so true, so sympathetic, and so humorous, in which they have immortalised its beginning. 

[Illustration: AN AFFRONT TO THE SERVICE

OMNIBUS DRIVER (_to Coster_). "Now then, Irish! pull a one side, willyou? What are you gaping at? Did you never see a Milisher man before?"

_A disgustingly ignorant observation in the opinion of young Longslip, Lieutenant in Her Majesty's Fusileer Guards_--_Punch_, March 7, 1863. ]

Charles Keene is seldom a satirist. His nature was too tolerant andtoo sweet for hate, and that makes him a bad and somewhat perfunctoryhater. He tries to hate 'Arry, but he can't, for he draws an ideal'Arry that surely never was, and thus his shaft misses the mark:compare his 'Arry to one of Leech's snobs, for instance! He tries tohate the haw-haw swell, and is equally unsuccessful. When you hate andcan draw, you can draw what you hate down to its minutestdetails--better, perhaps, than what you love--so that whoever runs andreads and looks at your pictures hates with you. 

Who ever hated a personage of Keene's beyond that feeble kind ofaversion that comes from mere uncongeniality, a slightly offendedsocial taste, or prejudice? One feels a mere indulgent andhalf-humorous disdain, but no hate. On the other hand, I do not thinkthat we love his personages very much--we stand too much outside hiseccentric world for sympathy. From the pencil of this most lovableman, with his unrivalled power of expressing all he saw and thought, Icannot recall many lovable characters of either sex or any age. Hereand there a good-natured cabby, a jolly navvy, a simple-mindedflautist or bagpiper, or a little street Arab, like the small boy whopointed out the jail doctor to his pal and said, "That's my medicalman. "

Whereas Leech's pages teem with winning, graceful, lovable types, andhere and there a hateful one to give relief. 

But, somehow, one liked the man who drew these strange people, evenwithout knowing him; when you knew him you loved him very much--somuch that no room was left in you for envy of his unattainable masteryin his art. For of this there can be no doubt--no greater or morefinished master in black and white has devoted his life to theillustration of the manners and humours of his time; and if Leech iseven greater than he--and I for one am inclined to think he is--it isnot as an artist, but as a student and observer of human nature, as amaster of the light, humorous, superficial criticism of life. 

[Illustration: "NOT UP TO HIS BUSINESS"

CROSS BUS DRIVER. "Now why didn't you take that there party?"

CONDUCTOR: "Said they wouldn't go. "

CROSS BUS DRIVER. "_Said_ THEY wouldn't go? THEY said they wouldn'tgo? Why, what do you suppose you're put there for? You call thatconductin' a buss. Oh! THEY wouldn't go! I like that, &c. , &c. "--_Punch_, September 1, 1860. ]

Charles Keene died of general atrophy on January 4, 1891. It wasinexpressibly pathetic to see how patiently, how resignedly he wastedaway; he retained his unalterable sweetness to the last. 

His handsome, dark-skinned face, so strongly lined and full ofcharacter; his mild and magnificent light-grey eyes, that reminded oneof a St. Bernard's; his tall, straight, slender aspect, that remindedone of Don Quixote; his simplicity of speech and character; his loveof humour, and the wonderful smile that lit up his face when he hearda good story, and the still more wonderful wink of his left eye whenhe told one--all these will remain strongly impressed on the minds ofthose who ever met him. 

I attended his funeral as I had attended Leech's twenty-six yearsbefore; Canon Ainger, a common friend of us both, performed theservice. It was a bitterly cold day, which accounted for thesparseness of the mourners compared to the crowd that was present onthe former occasion; but bearing in mind that all those present wereeither relations or old friends, all of them with the strongest anddeepest personal regard for the friend we had lost, the attendanceseemed very large indeed; and all of us, I think, in our affectionateremembrance of one of the most singularly sweet-natured, sweet-tempered, and simple-hearted men that ever lived, forgot for thetime that a very great artist was being laid to his rest. 

[Illustration: GEORGE DU MAURIER

From an unpublished photograph by Fradelle and Young, London. ]

And now, in fulfilment of my contract, I must speak of myself--adifficult and not very grateful task. One's self is a person aboutwhom one knows too much and too little--about whom we can never hit ahappy medium. Sometimes one rates one's self too high, sometimes (butless frequently) too low, according to the state of our digestion, ourspirits, our pocket, or even the weather!

In the present instance I will say all the good of myself I candecently, and leave all the rating to you. It is inevitable, howeverunfortunate it may be for me, that I should be compared with my twogreat predecessors, Leech and Keene, whom I have just been comparingto each other. 

When John Leech's mantle fell from his shoulders it was found that thegarment was ample to clothe the nakedness of more than one successor. 

John Tenniel had already, it is true, replaced him for several yearsas the political cartoonist of _Punch_. How admirably he has alwaysfilled that post, then and ever since, and how great his fame is, Ineed not speak of here. Linley Sambourne and Harry Furniss, sodifferent from each other and from Tenniel, have also, since then, brought their great originality and their unrivalled skill to thepolitical illustrations of _Punch_--Sambourne to the illustration ofmany other things in it besides, but which do not strictly belong tothe present subject. 

I am here concerned with the social illustrators alone, and, besides, only with those who have made the sketches of social subjects in_Punch_ the principal business of their lives. For very many artists, from Sir John Millais, Sir John Gilbert, Frederick Walker, andRandolph Caldecott downward, have contributed to that fortunateperiodical at one time or another, and not a few distinguishedamateurs. 

Miss Georgina Bowers, Mr. Corbould, and others have continued thefox-hunting tradition, and provided those scenes which have become anecessity to the sporting readers of _Punch_. 

To Charles Keene was fairly left that part of the succession that wasmost to his taste--the treatment of life in the street and the opencountry, in the shops and parlours of the lower middle class, and thehomes of the people. 

And to me were allotted the social and domestic dramas, the nursery, the school-room, the dining and drawing rooms, and croquet-lawns ofthe more or less well-to-do. 

I was particularly told not to try to be broadly funny, but toundertake the light and graceful business, like a _jeune premier_. Iwas, in short, to be the tenor, or rather the tenorino, of that littlecompany for which Mr. Punch beats time with his immortal baton, and towarble in black and white such melodies as I could evolve from mycontemplations of the gentler aspect of English life, while Keene, with his magnificent, highly trained basso, sang the comic songs. 

We all became specialised, so to speak, and divided Leech's vastdomain among us. 

We kicked a little at first, I remember, and whenever (to continue themusical simile) I could get in a comic song, or what I thought one, orsome queer fantastic ditty about impossible birds and beasts andfishes and what not, I did not let the opportunity slip; while Keene, who had a very fine falsetto on the top of his chest register, wouldnow and then warble, pianissimo, some little ballad of thedrawing-room or nursery. 

Illustration: FELINE AMENITIES

But gradually we settled into our respective grooves, and I have grownto like my little groove very much, narrow though it be--a poor thing, but mine own!

"I_wish_ you hadn't asked Captain Wareham, Lizzie. Horrid man! I can'tbear him!"

"Dear me, Charlotte--isn't the world big enough for you both?"

"Yes; but your little Dining-room _isn't_!"--_Punch_, February 16, 1889. ]

Moreover, certain physical disabilities that I have the misfortune tolabour under make it difficult for me to study and sketch the lustythings in the open air and sunshine. My sight, besides being defectivein many ways, is so sensitive that I cannot face the common light ofday without glasses thickly rimmed with wire gauze, so that sketchingout of doors is often to me a difficult and distressing performance. That is also partly why I am not a sportsman and a delineator ofsport. 

I mention this infirmity not as an excuse for my shortcomings andfailures--for them there is no excuse--but as a reason why I haveabstained from the treatment of so much that is so popular, delightful, and exhilarating in English country life. If there hadbeen no Charles Keene (a terrible supposition both for _Punch_ and itsreaders), I should have done my best to illustrate the lower walks andphases of London existence, which attracts me as much as any other. Itis just as easy to draw a costermonger or a washerwoman as it is agentleman or lady--perhaps a little easier--but it is by no means soeasy to draw them as Keene did! And to draw a cab or an omnibus afterhim (though I have sometimes been obliged to do so) is almost temptingProvidence!

If there had been no Charles Keene, I might, perhaps, with practice, have become a funny man myself--though I do not suppose that my funwould have ever been of the broadest. 

Before I became an artist I was considered particularly good atcaricaturing my friends, who always foresaw for me more than onechange of profession, and _Punch_ as the final goal of my wanderingsin search of a career. For it was originally intended that I should bea man of science. 

Dr. Williamson, the eminent chemist and professor of chemistry, toldme not long ago that he remembers caricatures that I drew, now fortyyears back, when I was studying under him at the Laboratory ofChemistry at University College, and that he and other grave andreverend professors were hugely tickled by them at the time. Indeed, he remembers nothing else about me, except that I promised to be avery bad chemist. 

I was a very bad chemist indeed, but not for long! As soon as I wasfree to do as I pleased, I threw up test-tubes and crucibles and wentback to Paris, where I was born and brought up, and studied to becomean artist in M. Gléyre's studio. Then I went to Antwerp, where thereis a famous school of painting, and where I had no less a person thanMr. Alma-Tadema as a fellow-student. It was all delightful, butmisfortune befell me, and I lost the sight of one eye--perhaps it wasthe eye with which I used to do the funny caricatures; it was a verygood eye, much the better of the two, and the other has not improvedby having to do a double share of the work. 

And then in time I came to England and drew for _Punch_, thusfulfilling the early prophecy of my friends and fellow-students atUniversity College--though not quite in the sense they anticipated. 

[Illustration: THE NEW SOCIETY CRAZE

THE NEW GOVERNESS (_through her pretty nose_). "Waall--I come rightslick away from Ne'York City, an' I ain't had much time for foolin'around in Europe--you bet! So I can't fix up your Gals in the Eu-rôpean languages, no-how!"

BELGRAVIAN MAMMA: (_who knows there's a Duke or two still left in theMatrimonial Market_). "Oh, that's of no consequence. I want myDaughters to aquire the American Accent in all its purity--and theIdioms, and all that. Now I'm sure _you_ will do _admirably_!"--_Punch_, December 1, 1888. ]

I will not attempt a description of my work--it is so recent and hasbeen so widely circulated that it should be unnecessary to do so. Ifyou do not remember it, it is that it is not worth remembering; if youdo, I can only entreat you to be to my faults a little blind, and tomy virtues very kind!

I have always tried as honestly and truthfully as lies in me to serveup to the readers of _Punch_ whatever I have culled with the bodilyeye, after cooking it a little in the brain. My raw material requiresmore elaborate working than Leech's. He dealt more in flowers andfruits and roots, if I may express myself so figuratively--from thelordly pineapple and lovely rose, down to the humble daisy and savoryradish. _I_ deal in vegetables, I suppose. Little that I ever findseems to me fit for the table just as I see it; moreover, by dishingit up raw I should offend many people and make many enemies, anddeserve to do so. I cook my green pease, asparagus, French beans, Brussels sprouts, German sauerkraut, and even a truffle now and then, so carefully that you would never recognise them as they were when Ifirst picked them in the social garden. And they do not recognisethemselves! Or even each other!

And I do my best to dish them up in good, artistic style. Oh that Icould arrange for you a truffle with all that culinary skill thatCharles Keene brought to the mere boiling of a carrot or a potato! Heis the _cordon bleu_ par excellence. The people I meet seem to me moreinteresting than funny--so interesting that I am well content to drawthem as I see them, after just a little arrangement and a verytransparent disguise--and without any attempt at caricature. Thebetter-looking they are, the more my pencil loves them, and I feelmore inclined to exaggerate in this direction than in any other. 

Sam Weller, if you recollect, was fond of "pootiness and wirtue. " I_so_ agree with him! I adore them both, especially in women andchildren. I only wish that the wirtue was as easy to draw as thepootiness. 

But indeed for me--speaking as an artist, and also, perhaps, a littlebit as a man--pootiness is almost a wirtue in itself. I don't think Ishall ever weary of trying to depict it, from its dawn in the toddlinginfant to its decline and setting and long twilight in the beautifulold woman, who has known how to grow old gradually. I like to surroundit with chivalrous and stalwart manhood; and it is a standinggrievance to me that I have to clothe all this masculine escort incoats and trousers and chimney-pot hats; worse than all, in theevening dress of the period!--that I cannot surround my divinity witha guard of honour more worthily arrayed!

Thus, of all my little piebald puppets, the one I value the most is mypretty woman. I am as fond of her as Leech was of his; of whom, by-the-way, she is the granddaughter! This is not artistic vanity; itis pure paternal affection, and by no means prevents me from seeingher faults; it only prevents me from seeing them as clearly as you do!

Please be not very severe on her, for her grandmother's sake. Wordsfail me to express how much I loved her grandmother, who wore acricket-cap and broke Aunt Sally's nose seven times. 

[Illustration: A PICTORIAL PUZZLE

TENOR WARBLER (_with passionate emphasis on the first word of eachline_)--"_Me-e-e-e-e-e-t_ me once again, M-e-e-e-e-t me once aga-a-ain--"

_Why does the Cat suddenly jump off the Hearth-rug, rush to the Door, and make frantic Endeavors to get out_?--_Punch_. ]

Will my pretty woman ever be all I wish her to be? All she ought tobe? I fear not! On the mantelpiece in my studio at home there stands acertain lady. She is but lightly clad, and what simple garment shewears is not in the fashion of our day. How well I know her! Almostthoroughly by this time--for she has been the silent companion of mywork for thirty years! She has lost both her arms and one of her feet, which I deplore; and also the tip of her nose, but that has been madegood!

She is only three feet high, or thereabouts, and quite two thousandyears old, or more; but she is ever young--

 "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety!"

and a very giantess in beauty. For she is a reduction in plaster ofthe famous statue at the Louvre. 

They call her the Venus of Milo, or Melos! It is a calumny--a libel. She is no Venus, except in good looks; and if she errs at all, it ison the side of austerity. She is not only pootiness but wirtueincarnate (if one can be incarnate in marble), from the crown of herlovely head to the sole of her remaining foot--a very beautiful foot, though by no means a small one--it has never worn a high-heel shoe!

Like all the best of its kind, and its kind the best, she never satesnor palls, and the more I look at her the more I see to love andworship--and, alas! the more dissatisfied I feel--not indeed with theliving beauty, ripe and real, that I see about and around--mere lifeis such a beauty in itself that no stone ideal can ever hope to matchit! But dissatisfied with the means at my command to do the livingbeauty justice--a little bit of paper, a steel pen, and a bottle ofink--and, alas! fingers and an eye less skilled than they would havebeen if I had gone straight to a school of art instead of a laboratoryfor chemistry!

And now for social pictorial satire considered as a fine art. 

They who have practised it hitherto, from Hogarth downward, have notbeen many--you can count their names on your fingers! And the widepopularity they have won may be due as much to their scarcity as tothe interest we all take in having the mirror held up to ourselves--tothe malicious pleasure we all feel at seeing our neighbours held up togentle ridicule or well-merited reproof; most of all, perhaps, to therealistic charm that lies in all true representation of the socialaspects with which we are most familiar, ugly as these are often aptto be, with our chimney-pot hats, and trousers that unfit us, itseems, for serious and elaborate pictorial treatment at the hands ofthe foremost painters of our own times--except when we sit to them forour portraits; then they have willy-nilly to make the best of us, justas we are!

[Illustration: REFINEMENTS OF MODERN SPEECH

(SCENE--_A Drawing-room in "Passionate Brompton_. ")

FAIR AESTHETIC (_suddenly, and in deepest tones to Smith, who has justbeen introduced to take her in to Dinner_). 

"Are you Intense?"--_Punch_, June 14, 1879. ]

The plays and novels that succeed the most are those which treat ofthe life of our own day; not so the costly pictures we hang upon ourwalls. We do not care to have continually before our eyes elaboraterepresentations of the life we lead every day and all day long; welike best that which rather takes us out of it--romantic or gracefulepisodes of another time or clime, when men wore prettier clothes thanthey do now--well-imagined, well-painted scenes from classiclore--historical subjects--subjects selected from our splendidliterature and what not; or, if we want modern subjects, we preferscenes chosen from a humble sphere, which is not that of those who canafford to buy pictures--the toilers of the earth--the toilers of thesea--pathetic scenes from the inexhaustible annals of the poor; orelse, again, landscapes and seascapes--things that bring a whiff ofnature into our feverish and artificial existence--that are in directcontrast to it. 

And even with these beautiful things, how often the charm wears awaywith the novelty of possession! How often and how soon the lovelypicture, like its frame, becomes just as a piece of wall-furniture, inwhich we take a pride, certainly, and which we should certainly missif it were taken away--but which we grow to look at with the patheticindifference of habit--if not, indeed, with aversion!

Chairs and tables minister to our physical comforts, and we cannot dowithout them. But pictures have not this practical hold upon us; thesense to which they appeal is not always on the alert; yet there theyare hanging on the wall, morning, noon, and night, unchanged, unchangeable--the same arrested movement--the same expression offace--the same seas and trees and moors and forests and rivers andmountains--the very waves are as eternal as the hills!

Music will leave off when it is not wanted--at least it ought to! Thebook is shut, the newspaper thrown aside. Not so the beautifulpicture; it is like a perennial nosegay, for ever exhaling its perfumefor noses that have long ceased to smell it!

But little pictures in black and white, of little every-day peoplelike ourselves, by some great little artist who knows life well andhas the means at his command to express his knowledge in this easy, simple manner, can be taken up and thrown down like the book ornewspaper. They are even easier to read and understand. They arewithin the reach of the meanest capacity, the humblest education, themost slender purse. They come to us weekly, let us say, in cheapperiodicals. They are preserved and bound up in volumes, to be takendown and looked at when so disposed. The child grows to love thembefore he knows how to read; fifty years hence he will love themstill, if only for the pleasure they gave him as a child. He will soonknow them by heart, and yet go to them again and again; and if theyare good, he will always find new beauties and added interest as hehimself grows in taste and culture; and how much of that taste andculture he will owe to them, who can say?

Nothing sticks so well in the young mind as a little picture one canhold close to the eyes like a book--not even a song or poem--for inthe case of most young people the memory of the eye is better thanthat of the ear--its power of assimilating more rapid and more keen. And then there is the immense variety, the number!

[Illustration: "READING WITHOUT TEARS"

TEACHER. "And what comes after S, Jack?"

PUPIL. "T!"

TEACHER. "And what Comes after T?"

PUPIL. "For all that we have Received, " &c. , &c. --_Punch_, February17, 1869. ]

Our pictorial satirist taking the greatest pains, doing his very best, can produce, say, a hundred of these little pictures in a twelvemonth, while his elder brother of the brush bestows an equal labour and anequal time on one important canvas, which will take anothertwelvemonth to engrave, perhaps, for the benefit of those fortunateenough to be able to afford the costly engraving of that one pricelesswork of art, which only one millionaire can possess at a time. Happymillionaire! happy painter--just as likely as not to become amillionaire himself! And this elder brother of the brush will be thefirst to acknowledge his little brother's greatness--if the littlebrother's work be well done. You should hear how the first painters ofour time, here and abroad, express themselves about Charles Keene!They do not speak of him as a little brother, I tell you, but a verybig brother indeed. 

Thackeray, for me, and many others, the greatest novelist, satirist, humorist of our time, where so many have been great, is said to haveat the beginning of his career wished to illustrate the books ofothers--Charles Dickens's, I believe, for one. Fortunately, perhaps, for us and for him, and perhaps for Dickens, he did not succeed; helived to write books of his own, and to illustrate them himself; andit is generally admitted that his illustrations, clever as they are, were not up to the mark of his writings. 

It was not his natural mode of expression--and I doubt if any amountof training and study would have made it a successful mode: the loveof the thing does not necessarily carry the power to do it. That heloved it he has shown us in many ways, and also that he was alwayspractising it. Most of my hearers will remember his beautiful balladof "The Pen and the Album"--

 "I am my master's faithful old gold pen. I've served him three long years, and drawn since then Thousands of funny women and droll men . . . "

[Illustration: THE HEIGHT OF IMPROPRIETY

MISS GRUNDISON, JUNIOR. "There goes Lucy Holyroyd, all alone in a Boatwith young Snipson as usual. So impudent of them!"

HER ELDER SISTER. "Yes; how shocking if they were Upset and Drowned--without a Chaperon, you know!"--_Punch_, August 8, 1891. ]

Now conceive--it is not an impossible conception--that the marvellousgift of expression that he was to possess in words had been changed bysome fairy at his birth into an equal gift of expression by means ofthe pencil, and that he had cultivated the gift as assiduously as hecultivated the other, and finally that he had exercised it assedulously through life, bestowing on innumerable little pictures inblack and white all the wit and wisdom, the wide culture, the deepknowledge of the world and of the human heart, all the satire, thetenderness, the drollery, and last, but not least, that incomparableperfection of style that we find in all or most that he haswritten--what a pictorial record that would be!

Think of it--a collection of little wood-cuts or etchings, with eachits appropriate legend--a series of small pictures equal in volume andin value to the whole of Thackeray's literary work! Think of thelaughter and the tears from old and young, rich and poor, and from thethousands who have not the intelligence or the culture to appreciategreat books, or lack time or inclination to read them. 

All there was in the heart and mind of Thackeray, expressed through amedium so simple and direct that even a child could be made to feelit, or a chimney-sweep! For where need we draw the line? We are onlypretending. 

Now I am quite content with Thackeray as he is--a writer of books, whose loss to literature could not be compensated by any gain to thegentle art of drawing little figures in black and white--"thousands offunny women and droll men. " All I wish to point out--in these dayswhen drawing is pressed into the service of daily journalism, and withsuch success that there will soon be as many journalists with thepencil as with the pen--is this, that the career of the future socialpictorial satirist is full of splendid possibilities undreamed-of yet. 

It is a kind of hybrid profession still in its infancy--hardlyrecognised as a profession at all--something halfway betweenliterature and art--yet potentially combining all that is best andmost essential in both, and appealing as effectively as either to someof our strongest needs and most natural instincts. 

It has no school as yet; its methods are tentative, and its fewmasters have been pretty much self-taught. But I think that a methodand a school will evolve themselves by degrees--are perhaps evolvingthemselves already. 

The quality of black and white illustrations of modern life isimmeasurably higher than it was thirty or forty years ago--its averageand artistic quality--and it is getting higher day by day. The numberof youths who can draw beautifully is quite appalling; one would thinkthey had learned to draw before learning to read and write. Whyshouldn't they?

Well, all we want, for my little dream to be realised, is that amongthese precocious wielders of the pencil there should arise here aDickens, there a Thackeray, there a George Eliot or an AnthonyTrollope, who, finding quite early in life that he can draw as easilyas other men can spell, that he can express himself, and all that hehears and sees and feels, more easily, more completely, in that waythan in any other, will devote himself heart and soul to that form ofexpression--as I and others have tried to do--but with advantages ofnature, circumstances, and education that have been denied to us!

[Illustration: THINGS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE EXPRESSED DIFFERENTLY

HE. "The fact is I never get any wild fowl shooting--never!"

SHE. "Oh, then you ought to come down to our Neighborhood in theWinter. It would just suit you, there are such a lot of Geese about--a--a--I mean _Wild_ Geese of course!"--_Punch_, November 21, 1891. ]

Hogarth seems to have come nearer to this ideal pictorial satiristthan any of his successors in _Punch_ and elsewhere. For he was notmerely a light humorist and a genial caricaturist; he dealt also inpathos and terror, in tragic passion and sorrow and crime; he oftenstrikes chords of too deep a tone for the pages of a comic periodical. 

But the extent of his productiveness was limited by the method of hisproduction; he was a great painter in oils, and each of his lifescenes is an important and elaborate picture, which, moreover, heengraved himself at great cost of time and labour, after the originaltime and labour spent in painting it. It is by these engravings, farmore than by his pictures, that he is so widely known. 

It is quite possible to conceive a little sketchy woodcut no largerthan a cut in _Punch_, and drawn by a master like Charles Keene, orthe German Adolf Menzel, giving us all the essence of any picture byHogarth even more effectively, more agreeably, than any of Hogarth'smost finished engravings. And if this had been Hogarth's method ofwork, instead of some fifty or sixty of those immortal designs weshould have had some five or six thousand! Almost a library!

So much for the great pictorial satirist of the future--of the nearfuture, let us hope--that I have been trying to evolve from my innerconsciousness. May some of us live to see him!