"CHANG.""CHANG."(Drawn by G. du Maurier. By Courtesy of the Fine Art Society.)
Like Keene, too, Mr. du Maurier loved to put his own dogs intoPunch. 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 aboutforty 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.
"DON.""DON."(Drawn by G. du Maurier.)
Apart from his artistic services toPunch, Mr. du Maurier has been a contributor to its pages of verse and prose, comparable with some of the best that has appeared there. Who can forget his admirable nonsense-verses, his "Vers Nonsensiques à l'usage des Familles Anglaises," or his exquisite fooling in his "Shalott" poem, or his "Alphabet" verses, or hisvers de société? They worthily heralded the novelist as we know him now, who is also the author of one of the most brilliant lectures—brimming over with happy thought and sparkling epigram—that have been composed in recent years. It is by his long, varied, and effective service that Mr. du Maurier has to be recognised as one of the four artists—Leech, Keene, and Tenniel being the others—who bore the chief share in raisingPunchto his pinnacle, and he is to be named with Keene as a truthful recorder of the life and humours of Society during the last forty years of the nineteenth century. But if it is for this achievement, and for his delightful genius that he is primarily esteemed in Whitefriars and throughout the English-speaking world, it is for himself and his own good-humour that "Kiki"—as he is known to his intimates—has been regarded with affection and admiration by his colleagues during the long period of his honourable, dignified, and brilliant connection.
For the space of one-and-twenty years—a period which drew to a close in 1895—Mr. du Maurier has lived and worked in his house near Hampstead Heath, from which he has wrought so many backgrounds for hisPunchpictures. Whitby, Scarborough, Boulogne, as well as Paris and London,have oftentimes afforded him local colour; but you get to learn Hampstead as you look at his drawings better than any of the others, and to know his sanctum—his salon-studio. Its characteristic bits, its bow-window, its Late-Gothic fireplace, its window-seat, are all familiar. And here the artist's model has latterly been the draughtsman's more constant companion, for "the older I grow," says Mr. du Maurier, "the more careful, the more of a student I become." So, for everyPunchdrawing he now makes beautiful pencil studies which, in my opinion, are even more delightful and more dainty than the pen-and-ink pictures they assist in perfecting. Examples of these studies, accurately and simply drawn, are here reproduced, and they will be seen to reveal the draughtsman's graceful artistry more completely than any other work in his recognised medium.
PENCIL STUDY FOR "PUNCH" PICTURE.PENCIL STUDY FOR "PUNCH" PICTURE.(By George du Maurier.)
PENCIL STUDY FOR "PUNCH" PICTURE.PENCIL STUDY FOR "PUNCH" PICTURE.(By George du Maurier.)
It was in the year following Mr. du Maurier's début that Mr. John Gordon Thompson began his short connection withPunch. He was a very young man, and these drawings were almost his earliest work. He was at that time studying for the Civil Service, and after his appointment to Somerset House he discontinued to a great extent his artistic efforts; but when he left the Service in 1870 he resumed the pencil, and became, and remained for twenty years without one week's break, the cartoonist of "Fun." His style was notyet formed when he contributed toPunch, and his three-and-thirty socials, all published by 1864, gave little promise of the ability he afterwards displayed in the papers, magazines and books innumerable which he illustrated with such furious ardour.
Mr. H. Stacy Marks, R.A., also made his appearance in the paper in 1861, with a design for an architectural hat of Tudor-Gothic order, fitted with gargoyles round the brim for rainy weather. He also made an initial "I," and then was seen inPunchno more until the Almanac for 1882, when he made a full-page ornithological drawing of "Up before the Beak."
Paul Gray was another ofPunch'spromising contributors fated to an early death. He began with a few initials—a couple of "A's" were his first little feat, one of them made out of an old woman and a bathing machine. Then came "socials" up to 1865, which attracted attention for their grace, in spite of their lack of backbone; but after a variety of work, including drawings for the "Argosy" and illustrations for Kingsley's "Hereward," his pencil was laid down, and he was no more than twenty-five when he died.
Half-a-dozen sketches by Harris in 1863 were followed by Sir John Millais' first contribution—a mock-heroic illustration to Mr. Burnand's "Mokeanna" (p. 115, Vol. XLIV.). The distinguished artist repeated his unusual experience in the Almanac for 1865, when in a technically exquisite drawing he showed a couple of children in a studio assaulting the lay figure. There were other pictures by which Sir John figured indirectly inPunch. As one of the mostintimate friends of John Leech, he took the liveliest interest in his work. "Once," he informs me, "I forwarded two drawings to Leech from Scotland, and he traced them on to the wood and they appeared inPunch—one a tourist struggling against the wind in a plaid; the other, two artists sketching with veils on to escape the midges. Possibly they were the occasion of my attending the Dinner. Leech, I think, asked me to do a drawing for 'Mokeanna' and the drawing of the 'Children in the Studio.'"
About this time it is claimed that Miss Joanna Hill, the niece of Sir Rowland Hill, contributed some sketches on the convict question; but it is certain that nothing in her name was ever accepted.
A LIBEL ON HIMSELF.A LIBEL ON HIMSELF.(By F. Barnard.)
A far more interesting and amusing adherent was Mr. Fred Barnard, a humorist of the first rank; but as he was not yet seventeen years of age at the time it is not surprising that his drawings were greatly inferior to his admirable work of later years. His first joke was rejected, as he quaintly explains in the following note: "In 1863 I was a student (and in consequence fondly supposed to be studying) at Heatherley's School of Art in Newman Street, and was then half-past sixteen. I must have had plenty of assurance at that time, for, unknown to anyone, I sent a joke, accompanied by a pencil sketch, toPunch. It represented a brute of a dustman belabouring his horse's head with the butt-end of his whip. To him enters a fussy, benevolent-looking, and slightly sarcastic old gentleman, who remonstrates with him in these words: 'My good man,thatisn't the way to treat your horse! You shouldpoke it in his eye—poke it in his eye, man!' Mark Lemon returned it as, he said, 'the enclosed is rather too painful forPunch.' Encouraged by this repulse, I sent in anotherjoke and drawing, which were accepted. A small parcel arrived shortly afterwards containing a 'block' of wood. As I had never seen one before, and had no notion whatever as to the process of wood engraving, I didn't know what it was, or for what use. At the back, on its rough ribbed surface, was a mystic inscription which I interpreted into 'C. Bramitsi Struss,' but which a friend informed me was intended for '6, Bouverie Street,' and he showed me how to set to work. And so I did the drawing and some dozen others.... But I rather fancy I shine with more than usual brilliancy in religious periodicals—especially when the articles I have to illustrate are written by imbecile women or ministers of the Gospel—I find it so congenial and instructive." In three years Mr. Barnard was seen but fifteen times in all. Twenty years later, in 1884, he made a last appearance in a drawing which did not show him at his best (p. 303, Vol. LXXXIV.). This was entitled "Early Prejudice," in which a child, referring to the baby, suddenly exclaims, "Oh, mamma! when baby begins to talk, what a dreadful thing if we find outhe's an Irishman!"—a joke, by the way, which in its main point was anticipated by Mr. du Maurier in 1876, in his drawing called "Waiting for the Verdict." Lastly there was a sketch called "Evening at Earls," which was sent in and engraved, but not used; and since that day Mr. Barnard abstained from further contribution.
In this same year a young lady named Miss Mansel (now Mrs. Bull) sent in a drawing of an incident which occurred at her uncle's place at Anglesey in Hampshire—the initials "R. M." on the buckets being those of Colonel Mansel. "My eyes!" says Cooper the groom, in effect, to a gentleman who has watched a lady dismount from her over-ridden animal; "to them ladies a 'oss is a 'oss, and he must go!" Leech slightly re-touched the drawing, adding pigeons in the foreground, and so forth, but, of course, did not add his initials. Curiously enough, this block was included among that artist's "Pictures of Life and Character" (p. 52, Series IV.). "I remember I was very proud," writesthe lady, "a few days after the drawing appeared, at hearing some officers in High Street, Portsmouth, quoting my sketch as a lady galloped up the road. I was only about seventeen then."
R. T. PRITCHETT.R. T. PRITCHETT.(From a Photograph by H. Bibo, Warwick.)
After a single contribution (entitled "Clara") by that ill-fated genius, George Pinwell, Mr. R. T. Pritchett left his rifles forPunch'spages. He was in fact but a boy when he took charge of his father's gun factory at Enfield, and was still a lad when he conducted experiments in competition, with his own hand, for a new Government gun, introducing a bullet of his own conception, firing every shot, and triumphing over every competitor. So the "Enfield" or "Pritchett rifle" brought him fame; but it proved the stumbling-block of his artistic career, for he found out for himself the truth that a man known for one thing has little chance in any other field—particularly in the artistic field. He was glad, however, when the Government eventually decided to manufacture the gun themselves, and the House of Commons voted him £1,000—though the experiments had cost nearly three times as much—and he was enabled to take to art.
It was at a meeting of the Moray Minstrels, the delightful "Jermyn Band" promoted by Mr. Arthur Lewis—where every man was invited on his own merits and guests were excluded—that he met John Tenniel. John Forster was the leader, and there were often present John Leech, Dickens, Stanfield, Thackeray, Landseer, Tom Angell, Sir John Millais, Mr. Carl Haag, Mr. Frith, Mr. Marks, Charles Keene, Mr. Whistler, and Sir Arthur Sullivan; altogether a notable company. It was under Sir John Tenniel's hospitable roof that Mr. Pritchett was initiated into the mysteries of wood-drawing. He had been watching the Master drawing his cartoon, and was busy sketching the top of his amiable head, when its owner told him he would be much better occupied in drawing on thewood, and threw him over a piece. Upon it Mr. Pritchett made a sketch, which Sir John took to Mr. Swain, and which afterwards appeared in one of A. K. H. B.'s works. By Mr. Swain the draughtsman was introduced to "Once a Week" and toPunch, and for the latter Mr. Pritchett began with some initials. His work appears from 1863 until 1869, some six-and-twenty amusing drawings in all, and when he ceased in order to take to painting, he drew for no other comic paper; for he had adopted the proud motto: "AutPunch, aut nullus." He then took to travel, writing books and illustrating them by himself, and commended himself still further by the cruise he made and illustrated with Lady Brassey inThe Sunbeam. Moreover, he has for many years drawn privately for the Queen, in recognition of which he received the Jubilee medal. A portrait of him, drawn by Charles Keene, may be seen in thePunchpicture wherein a little girl asks her papa if she "may have the gentleman's moustache for a tail for her horse"—a portrait so good that by virtue of it he made the acquaintance of Mr. Sambourne years after, when the latter gentleman accosted him with the words "I know you by Keene's likeness of you inPunch!"
Then came Fritz Eltze, who was introduced toPunchon May 1st, 1864, and in due course took up some of the work let fall by Leech. He was a son of Sir Richard Mayne's confidential secretary, and most of what he knew of the life he drew was what he could see down Scotland Yard, or what he could remember of happy early days at Ramsgate. He was a confirmed invalid who had never enjoyed life like other children, and the consumption from which he died was already developing. He submitted a few sketches to Mark Lemon who, according to his custom, sent Mr. Swain to make inquiries, with a result that was the brightest spot in the artist's life. Although his work had the touch of the amateur about it, it had a curious charm; and rapid improvement followed. His humours of the fashions and follies of the day were greatly appreciated, especially as his work advanced to half-page "socials;" butit was to his tender touches that his popularity was chiefly due, particularly in his treatment of child-life. The little one who—being told that they may not have mistletoe in church at Christmas—naively asks if "they must not love one another in church," and the other who, when playing at "horses" and one of the leaders falls, cries to its companion next in command to "sit on her head and cut the traces," are typical of his work in this direction. His last contribution (Mr. Punchà la Turcon a minaret) appeared in September, 1870, but a couple of drawings, in 1872 and 1875, were published "out of stock." Eltze, one ofPunch'stall men, by the way, was a pleasing draughtsman whose work, in its curious absence of lining, had a striking appearance of originality in its practically broad outline.
Mr. A. R. Fairfield may be known by his sign-manual like a Sign of the Zodiac run wild. It is, however, merely an inverted "A" on the Greek character Φ with its stem elongated. He sprang from an artistic family, and after three months' training at South Kensington in 1857, he began to draw on wood for "Fun" at about the same time as Mr. W. S. Gilbert—the autumn of 1861. His connection withPunchwas fortuitous. Being sent by Dr. James Macaulay, the editor of the "Leisure Hour," to Mr. Swain for some blocks on which to make his drawings for that magazine, he was smartly captured by the vigilant engraver for the "London Charivari." The result was many initials and drawings made to his own jokes; but his first contributions appeared in the special "Shakespeare Jubilee Number." His work appears often enough after that—four-and-twenty times in 1864 and 1865. They were at times amateurish in manner, but they had character and humour. It was Leech's death that practically put an end to Mr. Fairfield's connection withPunch, for Keene then came to reign supreme in the art department; but it did not matter much, as Mr. Fairfield, at that time a clerk at the Board of Trade—in which capacity only he ever came into contact with Tom Taylor, then Secretary of the Local Government Board—was given to understand that his career would be interferedwith if he prosecuted too far his outside work. In 1887 (p. 245, Vol. XC.) another sketch appears, comet-like, after an interval of more than twenty years.
Colonel Seccombe followed a few weeks after Mr. Fairfield's début. At that time he was a subaltern. His youthful military drawings—signed with a sketch of a cannon—were clever, and highly promising. His cuts appeared in 1864, 1866, and again in 1882—eight altogether. Foreign service interrupted the young draughtsman's artistic studies for a considerable period, but the result of his later labours is seen in the many works for children and others which he has since published.
At the same time came a bevy of draughtsmen, who added little toPunch'sprestige—Dever, whose eight drawings are but caricatures, which none can see without being reminded of some of the grotesque types which later on were adopted by Mr. E. T. Reed in his earlier work; H. R. Robinson with two (though his work was not printed till two years later); Chambers with one; and Rogat with three; and then the year 1865 brought two or three contributors of interest and importance.
The first of these was Fred Walker, A.R.A., whose first drawing, printed in the "Almanac," shows a number of water-nymphs sea-bathing around Neptune—called "The New Bathing Company (Limited). Specimens of the Costumes to be worn by the Shareholders"—is graceful, and technically good, but not particularly remarkable, and is rather fanciful than funny. His second and last, "Captain Jinks of theSelfishand his Friends enjoying themselves on the River"—a more masterly sketch—was made in 1869 (p. 74, Vol. LVII.), in hot indignation at the selfishness and mischievousness of steam-launch skippers on the upper Thames. He had himself been an angry witness of the destruction of the river-banks by private steamboats, but had fairly boiled over at the sight of the very incident which he recorded inPunch—the outrageous, insolent indifference shown by the trippers to all on the river or its banks, save their own selfish selves. As a fisherman, Mr. Leslie, R.A., tells us, Walker looked upon thesteam-launcher as his natural enemy; and it was while the two friends were on the river together that the incident occurred, and the drawing was decided upon. "He was most fastidious about this work, rehearsing it many times before he was satisfied.... In rendering the distant landscape the work becomes entirely finished and tender. It is a beautiful little bit of Bray, with the church and poplars drawn direct from Nature; a bridge is introduced to prevent the scene being too easily recognised. On the opposite bank is a portrait of myself, with easel and picture upset by the steamer's swell.... I was told that three copies ofPunchwere sent to the steam-launch proprietor on the day of publication.... This clever bit of satire had no effect."
J. PRIESTMAN ATKINSON.J. PRIESTMAN ATKINSON.
"Dumb Crambo, Junior"—Mr. J. Priestman Atkinson—is better remembered byPunchreaders, perhaps, by his pencil-name than by his common cipher. In 1864 he was in the General Manager's office at Derby, pleasingly varying his clerical duties by drawing caricatures for the amusement of his fellow-clerks, and designing cartoons for the local satirical journal, the "Derby Ram," which appeared spasmodically and devoted itself principally to electioneeringpurposes. One of his colleagues was Harry Lemon, Mark's son, who showed his father some of his friend's sketches. On the occasion of a subsequent visit paid by Mr. Atkinson to town, Mark Lemon invited him to dine at the Garrick Club (whither they drove in a hansom, much in the style shown in the sketch), and Shirley Brooks drank to him as "the future cartoonist ofPunch." His first cut—an initial T—appeared on p. 15, Vol. XLVIII, and thenceforward Mr. Atkinson has been considered on the "outside Staff," with but two breaks: the first during an absence in Paris for artistic instruction, and the second from 1869 to 1876, when an opportunity occurred to make a "sure fortune" in commerce. The "sure fortune," as usually befalls, became a pecuniary loss, and the draughtsman gladly went back to the service ofPunchand the other papers and books to which his pencil (under a different signature) has been devoted. It is years since Mr. Atkinson, who has latterly worked less forPunchthan in the early days of his connection, was able to do himself full justice in a half-page drawing; but his "Dumb Crambo" series remain among the happy things whichPunchhas published in the direction of punning sketches. They remind one of those by Hine, Newman, and the rest, in the old "blackie" days, and are often little masterpieces of comic ingenuity—as may be seen in "Shooting over an Extensive Moor," where a man is discharging his weapon over the portly figure of a Moorish gentleman. Mr. Atkinson, in addition, made some two score literary contributions to the paper and "Pocket-book"—poems chiefly, and stories, not counting smaller trifles, between August, 1877, and the accession of Mr. Burnand to the Editorship. It was, I may add, at the suggestion of Mr. Burnand that Mr. Atkinson adopted hisnom de crayon, just as he suggested Mr. Furniss's "Lika Joko."
IN A HANSOM WITH MARK LEMON.IN A HANSOM WITH MARK LEMON.Drawn by J. Priestman Atkinson.)
One of the brightest and most talented draughtsmenPunchhas ever had was Charles H. Bennett, the forerunner of Mr. Linley Sambourne. He had graduated in comic draughtsmanship, having been the life and soul of "Diogenes" (August, 1855), and rendered solid service to the "Comic Times" (1855),and the "Comic News" (1863 to 1865), by which time his cipher of an owl, and then of a B in an owl's beak ("B in it" = Bennett), were known and appreciated. Apart from hisPunchwork, his "Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress" was his masterpiece in serious art; while in the opposite direction his "Shadows" (which procured him for a time the public nickname of "Shadow Bennett"), as well as his amusing "Studies in Darwinesque Development" for Vizetelly's "Illustrated Times," and his second series, somewhat less satisfactory, of "Shadow and Substance," obtained for him great popularity. But when he came onPunch, introduced to Mark Lemon by Hain Friswell, he was within two years of his death. His début was on February 11th, 1865, with a sketch of "Our Play Box," in which "Mr. Punch's delight at finding his Dear Old Puppets where he left them in July" shows that the artist had already begun those illustrations to the "Essence of Parliament" which form the backbone of hisPunchwork. Occasional pictures there are, unconventional in shape, grotesque, ingenious, graceful in fancy, that delight us while, as a rule, they successfully conceal any lack of early artistic education; but the Parliamentary drawings are those by which Bennett will be best remembered. Between the dateof his first sketch, when he was forthwith summoned to the Table without serving any probationary period, to that last sketch in the spring of 1867, showing Lord John Russell as a cock crowing upon the 1832 Easter egg (p. 116, Vol. LII.), he had made over 230 drawings for the paper, besides his contributions to the Pocket-books of 1866 and 1867. He had already established himself, despite repeated absences through ill-health, one of the greatest favourites inPunch'scompany; and the comic letter addressed to him by his colleagues during one of his illnesses is printed in the chapter on the "PunchDinner." Indeed, he had not time to cut his cipher on the Table; the H is begun and abandoned. "As for dear Bennett," Mr. Frederic Shields tells me, "every link that attached me to him has so long since been severed, that to attempt to find the lost end of the thread is hopeless. Nothing remains but the sweet odour of his memory—like a faded rose-leaf turned up in a long-closed drawer." But Mr. Sala declares that he had been, "socially, the most miserable of mankind. He was sober, industrious, and upright, and scarcely a Bohemian; but throughout his short life he was 'Murad the Unlucky.' At one time he occupied shabby chambers in the now defunct Lyon's Inn, Strand; and it was the poor fellow's fate to have a child born—a child that died—the sack from his employers, and the brokers in,all in the same day." Still, Bennett, who was one of the original founders of the Savage Club, was cheerful enough, and of a singularly lovable disposition—as may almost be gathered from his pictures inPunch, in which the shadow of none of his former troubles is ever reflected: nothing but his "facile execution and singular subtlety of fancy." Indeed, "Cheerful Charley," as he was known to his intimates, became, as he himself declared, one of the luckiest and happiest of men—fully appreciated for his art and his own delightful qualities by troops of admiring friends. It was his extraordinary power of realising an abstract thought and crystallising it at once into a happy pictorial fancy that set him on a pedestal, a poet among his colleagues—those colleagues who, when he died, lamented "the loss of a comrade of invaluable skill,and the death of one of the kindliest and gentlest of our associates, the power of whose hand was equalled by the goodness of his heart."
CHARLES H. BENNETT.CHARLES H. BENNETT.(From the Water-Colour Drawing by Himself.)
But Bennett left his family in sad straits, and, on Shirley Brooks's initiative, the "Punchmen" at once set about devising a means to help them. The result was the theatrical performance referred to on pp. 132-134. The Moray Minstrels wound up this famous entertainment, and Shirley Brooks delivered a touching address of his own writing.
Besides T. W. Woods (who made four drawings), Prehn (two), Lowe (six), and Hays (three), Mr. W. S. Gilbert swelled the list of contributors in this same year (1865). His work, consisting of fifteen small cuts signed with the now familiar "Bab," and designed to illustrate the rhymes they accompany, was lost toPunchby the indisposition for compromise displayed by contributor and Editor alike. "I sent three or four drawings," Mr. Gilbert informs me, "and half-a dozen short articles; but I was told by Mark Lemon, or rather a message reached me from him, that he would insert nothing more of mine unless I left 'Fun,' with which I was connected. This I declined to do unless he would take me on the regular staff ofPunch. Thishedeclined to do, and so the matter ended. I had previously offered 'The Yarn of the Nancy Bell' (the first of the Bab Ballads) toPunch, but Mark Lemon declined it on the ground that it was 'too cannibalistic for his readers.'" So Mr. Gilbert knewPunchno more; and it is commonly related that he enjoys nothing more than an occasional good-humoured fling at the journal which could not see his worth. "I say, Burnand," he has many times been reported to have said at the Garrick Club and elsewhere, when the Editor had referred to the heavy post-bag delivered each day at the office, though witticisms found among the wilderness of suggestions were desperately few, "do youneverget anything good?" "Oh, sometimes—occasionally." "Then," drawled the other, "why don't you ever put one of them in?"
"A Hot Chestnut" (p. 143, Vol. XLIX.) was the first contribution of G. B. Goddard, well known a little later onas Bouverie Goddard, the animal-painter. Oil-colour was in truth his medium; but his drawings were good, andPunchfor a couple of years rejoiced in his new hunting draughtsman. Goddard was a great friend of Charles Keene, with whom he shared for a time a studio in Baker Street; but feeling that he must paint pictures rather than draw upon the wood-block, he left the paper, after placing to his credit fourteen drawings—of which some were adjudged to contain the best horses seen in its pages since the death of Leech.
MRS. BOWERS-EDWARDS.MRS. BOWERS-EDWARDS.(From a Photograph by S. A. Walker.)
By far the most important lady artist who ever worked forPunchwas Miss Georgina Bowers (for some years now Mrs. Bowers-Edwards).[63]It is not usual, as I have remarked before, to find a woman a professional humorist, though a colonialPunchis edited by a lady; but it is, I believe, an undoubted fact, that up to this year of grace no female caricaturist has yet appeared before man's vision. But Miss Bowers was a humorist, with very clear and happy notions as to what fun should be, and how it should be transferred to a picture. Her long career began in 1866, and thenceforward, working with undiminished energy, she executed hundreds of initials and vignettes as well as "socials," devoting herself in chief part to hunting and flirting subjects. She was a facile designer, but her manner was chronically weak. It was John Leech who set her on the track; Mark Lemon, to whom she took her drawings, encouraged her, and with help from Mr. Swain she progressed.
"My first published drawing," Miss Bowers tells me, "was a dreadful thing of a girl urging a muff of a man to give her a lead at a brook. My 'jokes' all came fromincidents I saw out hunting, and from my own varied adventures with horse and hound; but occasionally a suggestion sent to the Editor was transferred to me to be put into shape. Then some one else wrote up to them. When I first hunted in Hertfordshire, I had great opportunities for provincial sporting studies. I feel now that some of my subjects were too personal, and wonder how many people forgave me. I often overheard stories about myself in the hunting-field (where I had hard times with ladies occasionally). When Shirley Brooks died, I felt I had lost my best and most helpful friend; and then Mr. Tom Taylor cared nothing for sport or sporting subjects, so that I felt that my work was uncongenial to him, and I got on badly and lost all interest in it, and gave up, after having drawn ten years for the paper, to which I shall never again contribute."
Mr. Walter Crane, of all people in the world, appears on p. 33 of Vol. LI. The cut is hardly funny, except in idea—it represents a chignon-show—nor is it as well drawn as much of the work he was doing at the time; he had not yet hit upon the style or subject that he afterwards made his own. A couple of sketches by O. Harling, an amateur, conclude the list for the year.
The year 1867 is famous inPunch'scalendar for the acquisition of Mr. Linley Sambourne; but an earlier arrival was Mr. Frederic Shields. Mr. Swain suggested that he should "do a letter or two"; Mr. Shields did three, including a "social" ("Want your door swep', marm?"), and a girl curling her hair with the fender-tongs. The initials were kept over until 1870; and this constituted the sum of Mr. Shields' artistic adventure into the domain of humour.
Mr. Linley Sambourne—Mechanical Engineering Loses a Decorative Designer—Mr. Sambourne's Work—His Photographs—And Enterprise—Strasynski—Mr. Wilfrid Lawson—Mr. E. J. Ellis—Mr. Ernest Griset—Mr. A. Chasemore—Mr. Walter Browne—Mr. Briton Riviere, R.A.—An Undergraduate Humorist—APunchInitial Converted into an Academy Picture—Mrs. Jopling-Rowe—Mr. Wallis Mackay—Mr. J. Sands, Artist, Traveller, and Hermit—Mr. W. Ralston—Mr. A. Chantrey Corbould—Charles Keene's Advice—Randolph Caldecott—Major-General Robley—R. B. Wallace—Colonel Ward Bennitt—Mr. Montagu Blatchford—Mr. Harry Furniss—Origin of Mr. Gladstone's Collars—A Favourite Ruse—How It's Done—Mr. Furniss and the Irish Members—The Lobby Incident—Clever Retaliation—Mr. Furniss's Withdrawal—Mr. Lillie—Mr. Storey, A.R.A.—Mr. Alfred Bryan.
Mr. Linley Sambourne—Mechanical Engineering Loses a Decorative Designer—Mr. Sambourne's Work—His Photographs—And Enterprise—Strasynski—Mr. Wilfrid Lawson—Mr. E. J. Ellis—Mr. Ernest Griset—Mr. A. Chasemore—Mr. Walter Browne—Mr. Briton Riviere, R.A.—An Undergraduate Humorist—APunchInitial Converted into an Academy Picture—Mrs. Jopling-Rowe—Mr. Wallis Mackay—Mr. J. Sands, Artist, Traveller, and Hermit—Mr. W. Ralston—Mr. A. Chantrey Corbould—Charles Keene's Advice—Randolph Caldecott—Major-General Robley—R. B. Wallace—Colonel Ward Bennitt—Mr. Montagu Blatchford—Mr. Harry Furniss—Origin of Mr. Gladstone's Collars—A Favourite Ruse—How It's Done—Mr. Furniss and the Irish Members—The Lobby Incident—Clever Retaliation—Mr. Furniss's Withdrawal—Mr. Lillie—Mr. Storey, A.R.A.—Mr. Alfred Bryan.
LINLEY SAMBOURNE.LINLEY SAMBOURNE.(From a Drawing by Himself.)
One day when Mr. Linley Sambourne made a successful appearance as Admiral Van Tromp at a fancy-dress ball, Mr. W S. Gilbert drily observed, "One Dutch of Sambourne makes the whole world grin!" The jest was wider in its application than he who made it, probably, had intended. The humour of the artist, his quaintness of fancy, wit, and touch, are appreciated by whoever looks for something more, even in a professedly comic design, than that which is at first andimmediately obvious. When, early in 1867, Mark Lemon fell into admiration of a little drawing that was luckily thrust into his hand, and declared that the young draughtsman who wrought it had a great future before him, he proved himself possessed of a faculty of critical insight, or of an easy-going artistic conscience, uncommon even among editors. Few who saw Mr. Linley Sambourne's early work, even throughout the first two or three years of his practice, would have imagined that behind those woodcuts, for all their cleverness, there lay power and even genius, or that the man himself would soon come to be regarded as one of the greatest masters of pure line of his time.
At that time Mr. Sambourne had been working in the engineering draughtsmen's office of Messrs. Penn and Sons, of Greenwich. But the work was not congenial; the "pupil" spent most of his time in sketching, and there is a story—doubtless as apocryphal as it is malicious—that in one of his designs for a steam-engine, he sacrificed so much to "effect" as to carry his steam-pipe through the spokes of the fly-wheel. It was his office companion in misfortune, Mr. Alfred Reed, who secured his friend's release from the thraldom of the iron-bound profession, by seizing the sketch already alluded to and showing it to his father, German Reed. By that gentleman it was submitted to his friend Mark Lemon, who had about that time been writing an "entertainment" for the company at the "Gallery of Illustrations." The result was an editorial summons to the sketcher, and an engagement which has lasted to the present day. Thus it was that, with a sketch of John Bright tilting at a quintain under the title of "Pros and Cons," Mr. Sambourne found himself, at the age of twenty-two, a regular contributor toPunch—though he had still to wait until 1871 before he was rewarded with a seat at the Table.
Of artistic education he had had practically none. In the engineering drawing-office he had learned how to handle the pen and to put it to uses which have become a feature of his draughtsmanship. But besides a life-school attendance extending over not more than a fortnight, he had no otherteachers than his own eyes and his own intelligence. In his earliest work with the pencil there was a curious use of the point. Suddenly he was called upon, through the unexpected absence of Charles Keene from town, for more important work than that with which he had hitherto been entrusted. This was the half-page head-piece and the tail-piece to the preface to Vol. LIII. Then came promotion to the "small socials" and "half-page socials." Some of the work he did fairly well, founding himself now upon Leech, now upon Keene; but his character and originality were too powerful to follow any man. He began to form a style of his own, and that style did not lend itself to the representation of modern life. It was suited better for decoration than for movement; while the beauty of line and of silhouette which he sought and obtained, in spite of his intense, almost aggressive, individuality, placed him absolutely apart from all the black-and-white artists of the day.
It was, I have said, to the example of his predecessor, Charles H. Bennett, who died in April, 1867 (the very month in which Sambourne's first drawing appeared), that we owe those wonderful initial letters to the "Essence of Parliament" of Shirley Brooks—those intricate drawings which, covering nearly a whole page, were such miracles of invention, of fancy, and of allusion, swarming with figures, overflowing with suggestion, teeming with subtle symbolism. But these things did not come at once. It was not until the "comic cut" idea was put entirely on one side and his imagination allowed full play, that Mr. Sambourne fully developed his powers—his strength of conception, design, and execution. And then it was that he revealed the fact that though a humorist—and invariably, too, a good-humorist—by necessity, he is a classic by feeling.
The artist's personality, as it should, impresses us first, powerfully and irresistibly. While under Mark Lemon, Mr. Sambourne, as an artist, was still unformed. Under Shirley Brooks was awakened his wonderful inventive faculty. Under therégimeof masterly inactivity—the happy policy oflaissez faire—of Tom Taylor, the talent had burst forth intoluxuriance, not to say exuberance. And under Mr. Burnand it was schooled and restrained within severer limits.
It was many years before regular political cartooning[64]fell to his lot. He illustrated several of Mr. Burnand's serials inPunch, and some of his work out of it. But afterwards he rose to the treatment of actuality. Upon the event of the hour his picture is formed, and each week his workmustbe forthcoming. There can be no question of failure, no dallying with the subject, however elaborate or unpromising it may appear. A decision must be come to, and that rapidly; and there the artist sits, his watch hung up before him, "one eye on the dial and the other on the drawing-paper," knowing that at the appointed hour the work must be ready for the messenger. Thus the majority of his four thousand designs have been greatly hurried—hurried in thought as well as in execution. Many have been wrought in a single day; the great majority within two days; very few, indeed, have taken more. But when he has the time he wants, what amazing results are achieved! Sir John Tenniel once exclaimed to me: "What extraordinary improvement there is in Sambourne's work! Although a little hard and mechanical, it is of absolutely inexhaustible ingenuity and firmness of touch. His diploma for the Fisheries Exhibition almost gave me a headache to look at it—so full, cram-full of suggestion, yet leaving nothing to the imagination, so perfectly and completely drawn, with a certainty of touch which baffles me to understand how he does it."
For the rest, Mr. Sambourne's method, like his work, is unique. Keen of observation though he is, his memory for detail is not to be compared to that of Sir John Tenniel; and, actuated by that desire for accuracy which he holds desirable in a journal specially devoted to topical allusion, he avails himself extensively of the use of photography. In the cabinets in his studio, filled full of drawers, each labelled according to their contents, over ten thousand photographs are classified: every celebrity of the day, and to a certainextent of the past, British and foreign, at various ages, in various costumes, and in various attitudes; representatives of the Church, the Bench, and the Bar; of Science, Art, Literature, and the Stage; the beasts and birds and insects in and out of the Zoological Gardens; figures by the score, nude and draped; costumes of all ages and every country; soldiers, sailors, and the uniforms of every army and navy; land and sea and sky; boating and botany, nuns and clowns, hospital-nurses, musical instruments, and rifles, locomotives, wheel-barrows, shop-windows, and everything else besides—everything, in short, as he himself declared, "from a weasel to a Welshman"—all are photographed mostly by himself, and all are arranged by himself, in readiness against the demand for accuracy and the exigencies of haste. But when time permits, Mr. Sambourne goes to greater trouble still. Does he require a special uniform? he begs the War Office—not unsuccessfully—to lend him one or two men, or even a detachment; does he want to represent Mr. Gladstone—say, as Wellington (as he did November 2nd, 1889)? he procures the loan of the duke's own raiment, and only stops short at borrowing Mr. Gladstone himself. For his types, too, he takes pains not less thorough. For Britannia's helmet, he made working drawings of the unique Greek piece in the British Museum, and from that had a replica constructed—one of the most notable items in a notable "property" room.
At the back of his house is a paved courtyard, wherein his servant poses as every character under the sun while he is photographed by his master, who then runs inside to develop the plate and make a dash at his drawing. Or he will photograph himself, or the model in the desired attitude; or he will get his friends to pose. Among his sitters there is none more useful than the burly man who serves equally well for "Policeman A 1" or John Bull, for the Duke of Cambridge or Prince Bismarck. It was he who sat for one of the finest of Mr. Sambourne's "junior cartoons" on the occasion when the great ex-Chancellor had said: "I am like the traveller lost in the snow, who begins to get stiff while the snow-flakescover him." This picture of the aged and forlorn statesman, accompanied only by his faithful hound, is perhaps the best of the artist's achievements of dignity and pathos—worthy of being named with "Dropping the Pilot" of Sir John Tenniel. His passion for realism is so great that, I remember, when he was engaged on his "Mahogany Tree" for the Jubilee number ofPunch—one of the most popular drawings he ever made—he had just such a table duly laid for dinner in the courtyard, with one person sitting at it in order to show the proportion, and photographed it from a window of the house at the necessary elevation.[65]But for his love of accuracy he would not have done these things; nor, but for his love of naturalism, could he have given us his numerous fine studies of Nature. And but for this, Mr. Punch would never have printed one or two of his Norwegian sketches, such as "The Church-going Bell," in which there was not the slightest attempt at humour or fun—nothing but a calm and reposeful love of Nature, the deep, sad impression on the mind and heart of the artist as he watches the northern sun dip in sleepy majesty behind the panting waves.
Like Rabelais, he can use the pencil to greater ends under cover of the motley, and encase bitter truths with the gilt of a printed jest. Like Giotto and his legendary feat, he can draw you a perfect circle with his pen—and perhaps he is the only man in the country who can do it. His is the rare gift that in him sense of fun, of dignity, and of art is equal. He will brook nothing more serious in his sallies than chaff and banter; and yet his kindly art, based upon Nature and observation of the work of others, has,by its very truth, made him enemies even on foreign thrones. Nevertheless, it is less as a politician and a satirist that he claims recognition; it is primarily as an artist that he will assuredly be remembered when his place among his countrymen has to be determined.
ERNEST GRISET.ERNEST GRISET.(From a Photograph by W. G. Parker and Co.)
A Polish artist, with Mr. Sambourne's initials, L. Strasynski by name, also began in 1867, and during that and the following year contributed nine cuts, very foreign in feeling and firm in touch. Then, after an anonymous draughtsman, "M.S.R.," had appeared with a single cut ("Candles"), Mr. F. Wilfrid Lawson, the elder brother and teacher of Cecil Lawson, contributed a sheetful of initials and vignettes which dribbled forth in the paper up to 1876; and Mr. T. Walters, a half-a-dozen, up to 1875. Mr. E. J. Ellis, now better known in other fields than comic draughtsmanship, began on December 12th, 1867. He had received an introduction to Mark Lemon through Mr. (now Sir) Algernon Borthwick, and found the Editor "good-natured enough," as he himself says, "to allow me to do a dozen or so of initials, and a quarter-page illustration. They were all more or less pinched and painful things, and Mr. Lemon did not conceal from me that 'he was not knocked over by them.' But they were drawn on the block—not on paper—and from the strangeness and discomfort of it came the tight-elbowed style of the work. Of what I did altogether, only about a third were printed; half were paid for; but what they paid for they did not print, and what they printed they did not pay for." At that time Mr. Ellis caught the fever of decorative art, classic and romantic, which culminated in the "interpreted" edition of Blake's "Prophetic Books," in collaboration with Mr. Yeats; andPunchlost a promising recruit.
The experience of Mr. Ernest Griset, who is first seen on p. 61 of Vol. LIV., was more extensive but less gratifying. He excelled at comic animals—his human figures are most of them of one ragged type—but on Bennett's sudden disappearance he was quickly encouraged to take up the dead man's work, and was enabled to show in many of his three-and-sixty drawings of that year the full range of his talent, his remarkable invention and ingenuity. Mr. Griset, though born in Boulogne, was educated in England, and after studying art under Gallait, intended to follow water-colour painting, taking subjects by preference of a Glacial Prehistoric kind. But the foundation of "Fun" gave him the opportunity of comic draughtsmanship, and the work he did for the paper brought him Mark Lemon's invitation to call upon him. A cordial reception and a flattering tribute to his ability were followed by an understanding of regular employment, and the young draughtsman became aPunchartist unattached. But he did not remain long in favour. His work, perhaps, was not highly popular, and Mark Lemon perceptibly cooled towards him. So, finding he was no longer wanted, Mr. Griset, who was then no more than twenty-four years of age, retired, and consoled himself in other directions—notably by illustrating "Æsop's Fables," which had attracted Bennett and Sir John Tenniel before him.