John Leech, His Life and Work Volume II Part 11

With "Ask Mamma"--another of the many sporting books ill.u.s.trated by Leech--I shall close my selections from that kind of literature for the present.

In the frontispiece of the book, which represents "The Ancestors of our Hero," the female ancestor is such a bewitching creature as to make a reproduction of her in this place irresistible. This charming person is Mrs. William Pringle, _nee_ Willing, about whose birth, parentage, and education history is silent. Her acquaintance is first made by the reader of "Ask Mamma" in the position of a.s.sistant in a milliner's shop, which she soon left for a shop of her own. In this venture Miss Willing failed disastrously, and, leaving dressmaking, she became a lady's-maid in the service of "the beautiful, newly-married Countess Delacey." "It was to the service of the Countess Delacey," says our author, "that Miss Willing was indebted for becoming the wife of Mr. William Pringle." The acquaintance between Miss Willing and Mr. Pringle, which soon ripened into love and marriage, began on the stage-coach, in which Miss Willing was journeying to London to buy dresses for her mistress, the Countess.

Alas! it must be confessed that Miss Willing was an unscrupulous adventuress, and Mr. Pringle a very green goose indeed; for when he found Miss Willing installed in the Countess's house in Grosvenor Square, dressed in her mistress's emerald-green velvet costume, he believed her to be, as she represented herself, the mistress of the mansion. A big footman played into Miss Willing's hand, and "my lady'd"

her to her heart's content, and to the delight of Mr. Pringle, as the refreshments were supplied to which the victim had been invited. Under the inspiring influence of brandy-and-water Mr. Pringle's love grew apace; and in reply to the lady's prudent inquiries as to his means of keeping her surrounded by the luxury to which she had been accustomed, she was a.s.sured that "she should have everything she wanted: a tall footman with good legs, an Arab horse, an Erard harp, a royal pianoforte, a silver tea-urn, a gold coffee pot, a service of gold, _eat gold_ if she liked;" and, as he made this declaration, "he dropped upon his salmon-coloured knees, and with his gla.s.s of brandy in one hand and hers in the other, looked imploring up at her--a beautiful specimen of heavy sentimentality."

As one looks at the comical figure of Mr. Pringle, it would be difficult to believe that, even with the golden advantages with which he surrounds himself, he could be rendered acceptable to the lovely creature of Leech's fancy; if a finger could not be put upon couples amongst our own acquaintances even more strangely contrasted.

With respect to personal appearance, Mr. Pringle fares better at Leech's hands in a drawing representing a halt in the stage-coach journey to London. The pa.s.sengers have stopped for refreshment. The coachman attends for his fee. Mr. Pringle, "who was bent upon doing the magnificent, produced a large green-and-gold ta.s.selled purse, almost as big as a stocking, and drew therefrom a great five-shilling piece, which he handed ostentatiously to the man, saying: 'For this lady and me,'

just as if she belonged to him."

Here Mr. Pringle fairly resembles a good-looking buck of sixty years ago, and the coachman might have been one of those whom I remember on my own first journey to London, with his "Beg pardon, sir, I've drove you fifty miles," when his fee was less than he expected. The coat of many capes, the red cheeks and redder nose, the action of the man as he holds his hat and whip, are all true to life; here again without the least exaggeration. In composition, light and shade, and general effect, this drawing leaves nothing to wish for. The expression of Miss Willing, as she looks sideways at her victim, should be noted.

Mr. William Pringle did not long enjoy his married life, for his only son (the hero of "Ask Mamma") was but a child, when, "after an inordinate kidney supper, Mr. Pringle was found dead in his chair."

The widow was very rich, and after educating her son regardless of expense, she launched him into high life, and somehow or other brought about an acquaintance between "Billy" and a sporting n.o.bleman, the Earl of Ladythorne. From that time "Ask Mamma" becomes a chronicle of sporting adventure, with which I shall not trouble my reader, beyond the explanation required for the understanding of one or two examples of Leech's work.

The n.o.ble Earl of Ladythorne seems to have been a very impressionable personage, in a constant state of suffering from "Cupid's shafts"; and though for some reason or other he objected to hunting ladies, an "equestrian coquette, Miss De Glancey, of half the watering-places in England, and some on the Continent," had but to show herself amongst the field and the n.o.ble lord was again transfixed; this time the dart seems to have gone through and through the tender heart, only to be released by an event which occurred shortly afterwards.

It appears that Miss De Glancey's love of hunting was affected, in order to further her designs upon the Earl; she really feared and hated it; and though on the fatal day, which was destined to extinguish her hope of becoming a Countess, she had ridden boldly by the Earl through what he calls "a monstrous fine run," she "found no fun in it at all," and was "monstrous glad when it was over." No sooner was the fox despatched, than the sky darkened, the lightning flashed, the thunder bellowed, and the rain came down in torrents. "Poor Miss De Glancey,"

says our author, "was ready to sink into the earth." There was nothing for it but to seek the nearest shelter, which seems to have been the Punch Bowl at Rockbeer, in search of which "my lord" and the coquette ride off together. "An opportune flash of lightning so lit up the landscape as to show the clump of large elms at the entrance to Rockbeer." The hard driving rain beats downways and sideways, frontways and backways--all ways at once. The horses know not which way to duck to evade the storm. In less than a minute Miss De Glancey is as drenched as if she had taken a shower-bath. "The smart hat and feather are annihilated; the dubious frizette falls out; down comes the hair; the _bella-donna_-inspired radiance of her eyes is quenched; the crinoline and wadding dissolve like ice before the fire; and ere _the love-cured Earl_ lifts her off her horse at the Punch Bowl at Rockbeer, she has no more shape or figure than an icicle. Indeed, she much resembles one, for the cold sleet, freezing as it fell, has encrusted her in a rich coat of iced lace, causing her saturated garments to cling to her with the utmost pertinacity. A more complete wreck of a belle was perhaps never seen."

"Brief as woman's love," says Shakspeare. That this remark will sometimes apply to man's love cannot be contested, for have we not an example before us in the rapid way in which our n.o.ble friend's pa.s.sion was, so to speak, washed out of him? The love-stricken Earl "cured" by a shower of rain! We ought to be thankful for the downpour, for it was the cause of Leech's drawing, in which the unfortunate coquette is still, under the artist's tender treatment, an elegant creature, with grace and beauty in every line of her bedraggled form. How admirable, too, is the Earl! the rain dripping from the brim of his hat, and with every opportunity for making him ridiculous, he is still dignified, his face and figure n.o.ble, as he bends forward to meet the storm. It goes without saying that the horses are admirable in character and action, and that the whole scene exactly realizes a wet and stormy night.

CHAPTER XVIII.

MICHAEL HALLIDAY AND LEECH.

"No man can put more into a picture than there is in himself," says Sir Joshua Reynolds. As an art student I have always felt the force of this aphorism. I would even go further, and add that no man can avoid the disclosure in numberless ways of what "there is in himself" of special mental organization, under the heads of taste, temper, delicacy, honesty, kindliness, and the true and full appreciation of the beauties of nature.

"I cannot see nature as you represent it," someone is said to have remarked to Turner.

"Don't you wish you could?" was the reply.

It is not the subject of a great artist's work that we admire, but the artist's mind as reflected in his subject. Reynolds was fortunate in having for his sitters most of the beauties of the last century, and they were more fortunate still in falling into the hands of a painter who had such intense sympathy with their loveliness--so intense in some instances as to emphasize it somewhat to the sacrifice of individuality.

It is what Turner sees in nature that we reverence, producing beauties for us to which we were blind, till they were called up by the spell of the great magician. Heads as fine as any of those painted by Vand.y.k.e can be seen any day, but there is no Vand.y.k.e to show us the impression they make upon him. Let anyone compare Vand.y.k.e's Charles I. with a contemporary rendering of that monarch, and he will feel with me that it is the great painter's power of penetrating the inner man before him, so to speak, added to his sympathy with the melancholy and dignified King, that, combined with his transcendent technical power, enabled him to present to us both the person and the mind of the unfortunate King. The contemporary painters give us but the husk and sh.e.l.l of him.

But of all artists who have reflected themselves in their works, Leech is the best example. Save when his hatred of injustice and oppression is aroused, the man's loving, tender nature, and his honest English, manly character, are apparent in everything he does. As he was to all who knew him well, he shows himself in his treatment of every theme he touches with his pencil. Of his life--quiet, studious, and ever observant--there is little to relate that cannot be gathered from his works. His pa.s.sionate love of children and childish ways and tricks, his sympathy with beauty in all its forms, his eager partic.i.p.ation in manly sports, with numberless other delightful qualities, are part and parcel of the man who was never tired of giving us unconscious revelations of himself in his drawings. Even when a certain amount of ridicule is attached to the princ.i.p.al incidents in the career of a ludicrous personage, we never have a feeling for him approaching contempt.

In the history of Messrs. Briggs and Tom Noddy these gentlemen present themselves in positions of laughable difficulty. Laugh at them we certainly do, but we never despise them; for do they not show the good qualities of courage and fort.i.tude? Tom Noddy is thrown from his horse; nothing daunted, he instantly remounts. He drops his whip; he recovers it: is thrown again, and this time his horse gallops off; but though the little hunter pursues as fast as his little legs can go, the horse has the best of it and escapes. An ordinary being would despair and bemoan his loss; not so Tom Noddy, who gives up the pursuit for a time, and being no doubt a little tired, lights a cigar as he sits upon a stile.

When refreshed by tobacco and repose he resumes his horse-chase, and ultimately succeeds in finding the animal in the possession of a rustic, who had amused himself by nearly galloping him to death. Tom Noddy is a delightful little creature; his numerous escapades are plentiful in "Pictures of Life and Character," and will be for all time a hearty, healthy pleasure to all who study them.

Many attempts were made to betray Leech into personality. Subjects were suggested, and offers were made to him, by persons who had real or imaginary grievances, to place well-known public characters in positions ridiculous or contemptible. Those attempts would not have been made if the proposers had known Leech; such suggestions were always rejected, and sometimes in terms very unpleasant to their proposers. I was not aware that Tom Noddy had a prototype until I was informed by my old friend, Mr. Holman Hunt, in a paper of Leech reminiscences, originally intended for this memoir, that Mike Halliday, a man I knew well forty years ago, was the original Tom Noddy. Halliday's figure was intended for an ordinary-sized man, but when Nature had produced his head and shoulders she seemed to have changed her intention, and the rest of his figure was that of a diminutive form, a full foot shorter altogether than an ordinary middle-sized man. When I first became acquainted with Halliday he was a clerk in the House of Lords. "He then," says Holman Hunt, "took to poetry, to love that never found its earthly close, and to our art--for he found time for all. So well did he succeed in picture-making that he once completed an oil-painting of two lovers sitting under a ruined abbey window, habited in contemporary costume, the gentleman intent on taking the size of the lady's marriage-finger."

I remember this picture being exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856; I thought highly of it, and looked, but in vain, for a repet.i.tion of a success so complete as to cause the purchase of the picture by a well-known dealer, who had an engraving made from it, the print meeting with extensive popularity. Halliday's face was a very plain one, but totally unlike that of Tom Noddy: his hair was pale yellow, "a vapoury moustache joining a soft beard, long but spa.r.s.e whiskers;" he was slightly lame, and altogether an elf-like quaintness in his appearance made him quite a remarkable little figure.

"Leech," says Mr. Hunt, "became intimate with him, and so under many names and ingenious disguises did Leech's public make his acquaintance--Tom Noddy, and a variety of names he figured under. Leech told of an expedition which formed a small party with Halliday one evening in the country, where there was to be a meet with the hounds next morning. As they dined and chatted, the attractions became greater every minute to the cavalier instincts of Halliday's youth. Leech and the others had horses coming, and on inquiry it was found that it would be possible for Mike to find a mount at hand, and so it was pointed out that he could sleep there and have a good day on the morrow.

"'No,' said Halliday, 'I must find a train from town in time to be at the cover.'

"'Why, in the name of mystery--why go to town?' said they all.

"But all was useless--the little man would go, and would come back by a train starting very early from town; and so, to the bewilderment of all, he did. The next morning the friends went to see the train come in. As it stopped, down jumped the little Nimrod, decked out in carefully preserved pink, well-stained cords, with top-boots, and falling over the rim a ta.s.sel of ribbons in emulation of Sixteen-stringed Jack, as dandy hunting-men had dressed twenty years before. He was capped with hunting-helmet, and he carried a magnificent riding-whip in hand. Seeing him thus walking and skipping with that outward turn of the feet, which is denominated in horsey parlance 'dishing,' Leech said that with all the desire in the world to treat the matter with supreme seriousness, as Halliday did, it was almost impossible for him to curb his provoked risibility."

Leech, in speaking of Halliday at a party, of which Holman Hunt made one, said:

"Mike is a mine of resource to me. Whenever I am in difficulties I can remember something of him that it is possible to turn into a 'subject'; and," he added earnestly, "I do hope he never recognises the resemblance, for I often put some point to prevent recognition."

The surprise at this innocence made the whole table burst into laughter, but in undeceiving Leech we were able to a.s.sure him that Halliday was by no means pained by the darts which had struck him; that he wore them proudly as decorations, and so disarmed the ill-nature that might be disposed to take advantage of the chance. He often achieved this by drawing the attention of his visitors to the last addition to his gallery of _Punch_ portraits, exhibited on the walls of his studio.

It must have been from some peculiarity of dress or manner, to which Halliday's attention was called by "a candid friend," that he discovered that in drawing Tom Noddy Leech "had him in his eye"; for, as I said before, his face was as unlike that of Tom Noddy as Leech's own face was unlike the round, good-humoured physiognomy of Mr. Briggs, though some of the escapades of Briggs had their origin in Leech's personal experiences: a happy accident to the roof of Leech's house, and the noise and varied troubles caused in repairing it, was the suggestion of the famous scene of the Briggs disaster; and it was Leech himself who was caught by the leg by a policeman as--finding his front door blocked by scaffolding--he was attempting to enter in what that functionary considered a burglarious manner.

Leech was more fortunate than another artist of my acquaintance, for the officer listened to his explanation of the unusual way of entering his house, and, believing the statement, a.s.sisted him to "make himself at home." But my other friend, who had been "dining," finding something the matter with his latch-key--for do what he would he could not induce it to perform its usual office--mounted his area railings, and would very likely have fallen into the area if he had not been stopped by a policeman. The artist's attempts to explain his position were either incomprehensible by the officer, or they were not believed, for he was taken to the station and locked up for the night.

Leech gives us no hint by which we might guess in what condition of life the immortal Briggs made the fortune that enabled him to retire to his comfortable home in Bayswater; whatever his pursuit may have been, the taste for sport of every kind must have possessed the prosperous gentleman, to be indulged to the full--happily for us--when he had achieved independence.

Leech's powers are seen in their highest development in the Briggs drawings. Mr. Briggs is unfortunate in respect of horseflesh; the animals he selects are none of them free from vice, and in their various--and often successful--attempts to unseat their rider, they give the artist opportunities of showing his power of representing almost every action of which the horse is capable in the indulgence of that propensity. The enterprising sportsman chases the fox, coming in at the death, or soon after it--anyway, in time to give the huntsman half-a-sovereign for the brush, only he must "say nothing about it." He rides steeplechases, and though he is half drowned in a water-jump, and suffers other hindrances, he wins the race.

But it is in the shooting and fishing exploits that the sportsman and his ill.u.s.trator shine most. Among so many triumphs of art and sportsmanship, it is difficult to say which of the many excellent examples is to be preferred; all are admirable, but I think the one I have chosen for ill.u.s.tration is my favourite. Mr. Briggs is deer-stalking, and though he occasionally suffers, even to prostration, from the heat of the weather, and the difficulties presented by hills, rocks, and heather, he really enjoys creeping and hiding with his gillies, until the royal hart, which the forester has seen through his gla.s.s, is well within rifle shot. He fires, misses; and behold the result!

[Ill.u.s.tration: "AFTER AIMING FOR A QUARTER OF AN HOUR, MR. B. FIRES BOTH HIS BARRELS AND MISSES!! TABLEAU: THE FORESTER'S ANGUISH."]

In expression, drawing, character, and action, the figure of the forester is perfect; there is a tragic grandeur in the pose that would be appropriate in the gravest scene of misfortune. Poor Mr. Briggs plainly shows us that he not only suffers from the mortification of having missed so splendid an opportunity of distinguishing himself, but also from the misery his mishap has inflicted upon the forester. The skilful way in which this drawing is composed--the three figures separated from each other presenting a difficult problem to the artist--excites one's admiration. Without the connecting links afforded by the forms in the landscape, and the lines made by the dogs in the leash, held by the young gilly, the figures would be unpleasantly separated. As it is, with the masterly effect of light and shadow, this drawing is above all criticism.

My elderly readers may remember a certain Mr. Rarey, an American, I think, who "took the town" by his horse-taming feats. A horse named Cruiser, which was in the habit of indulging in every wickedness that could disgrace a horse, became docile under the Rarey treatment. The tamer's method was a profound secret; he allowed no one to witness the working of the charm by which a furious animal was changed into lamb-like meekness. In Cruiser's case, what was certain was, that a creature unapproachable without risk to limb and life, was transformed to such an extent that a child might--and did--ride him.

In a number of admirably humorous drawings, Leech pictures Mr. Briggs, who comes to grief in all his attempts to emulate Mr. Rarey. He evidently does not possess the secret, and though we laugh over his failures, we respect the courage which led to them. "Mr. Briggs tries his shooting pony" is an inimitable drawing. Mr. B. has no doubt been a.s.sured that the pony will take no more notice of a gun when fired from his back than "if you was to whistle a tune as you was riding of him."

In perfect confidence in the truthfulness of the dealer's a.s.surance, Mr.

Briggs fires. The pony instantly flies, rather than gallops, away--without, however, unseating Mr. Briggs, who clings to the saddle, clutching his gun still smoking from the recent discharge.

Mr. Briggs goes to Scotland after salmon, as well as deer and grouse. As a fisherman he is more successful with the rod than he was as a deer-stalker with the gun. A huge salmon, for which "he would not take a guinea a pound," rewards him for a long and desperate struggle, in which he encounters obstacles in the shape of the slippery rocks and deep-water holes that distinguish a Highland river.

In Scottish scenery Leech is as much at home as he is in the turnip-field or the covert. No praise can be too extravagant for all the backgrounds that form so perfect a setting for the gem-like figures of Mr. Briggs. Nor must his attendants be forgotten. Witness the difference of character, so completely marked, between the snuff-taking bearer of the "gaff," with his Scotch bonnet, and the forester in his kilt, who so pathetically mourns Mr. Briggs' failure, and who afterwards makes him "free of the forest" by smearing his face with the blood of a stag which has died by the accidental discharge of his gun.

During the quarter of a century of Leech's work, the British public had its crazes--Bloomerism, crinoline, spirit-rapping, and other less dangerous absurdities than the last, seized upon the minds of large portions of the people, to be thrown aside and replaced by other ridiculous fancies. Even games, after a time, seem to pall upon the players: cricket, happily, bids fair to be perennial; but croquet, once so fashionable, is no more. When one looks at Leech's drawings, in which crinolines figure so prominently, it is really difficult to believe that the artist has not exaggerated a frightful fashion; from observation I can a.s.sure a doubter that Leech has frequently under, rather than over, done the swell of those voluminous skirts. Of course, whenever they are permitted to do so, servants will imitate their masters and mistresses, and it was by no means uncommon for the ribs of a housemaid's crinoline to a.s.sert themselves through the outer skirt, as we see in some of Leech's drawings.

I would draw attention to the opposite, or ant.i.thesis, of this. In some of the cuts, prior, I think, to the "crinoline mania," Leech's delightful girls wear jackets of a form that follows the lines of nature, and of a very picturesque shape. These have a very short reign, being discarded in their turn by that G.o.ddess of Fashion, the dressmaker, for "something new" and outrageous. There is amongst the "Pictures of Life and Character" a drawing of a dinner-party in which the male guests are so hidden and covered by ladies' crinolines that their heads and a small portion of their shoulders only are visible. How the gentlemen's hands are to be used in the consumption of their dinners is left to the imagination of the beholder, and of the sufferers.

For the unexaggerated truth of this print I, who write, can vouch; for have I not again and again been obliged to solve the difficulty of using my knife and fork? In spite of the attacks upon it, crinoline had its day--and far too long a day it was.

The Bloomer costume--a Yankee invention--made but a feeble struggle for existence, though it had many advocates, notably a _belle Americaine_, one of whose lectures at the Hanover Square rooms I had the curiosity to attend. The lady wore a red velvet overcoat and loose trousers, a broad-brimmed black hat and feather, and looked and talked like a pretty boy.

Bloomerism afforded Leech many opportunities of showing that his pencil could invest eccentricity with beauty. A study of the Bloomer sketches will also show that the attempt to adopt the manly dress was, in his estimation, an insidious attempt to usurp manly work and offices. In proof of this see the charming Bloomer omnibus-conductor, who is threatened by an elderly male pa.s.senger with a summons for abusive language; or the group of Bloomer police, who fly from a riotous mob instead of arresting the ringleaders. Look at her again as "the man at the wheel" who must not be "spoken to." Those who have suffered from sea-sickness will see by the expression of the Bloomer's countenance why she should not be spoken to, and what the effect of conversation under the circ.u.mstances would most probably be. Leech gave his imagination full play in this fruitful theme. Granting the a.s.sumption of the masculine dress, he sees no reason why a proposal should not be made by the female lover instead of the male. Why, he seems to ask, should the gentleman have to undergo that terrible ordeal?

I advise my reader to seek in "Pictures of Life and Character" for a drawing of an elopement in which the positions of the princ.i.p.als are reversed. It is the lady who is pouring words of pa.s.sionate persuasion into the ears of her frightened and half-reluctant lover, as he looks back at the home he is leaving for ever; she almost drags him to the carriage which is to bear the happy pair away to Gretna Green.