John Leech, His Life and Work Volume II Part 16

CHAPTER XX.

DR. JOHN BROWN AND LEECH.

Whether that charming writer, Dr. John Brown, knew Leech in the flesh or not, I cannot say; but that he knew and fully appreciated him in spirit is evident enough in a paper published in a collection of essays ent.i.tled "Horae Subsecivae." I gather from the concluding pa.s.sages of the Doctor's brilliant essay that it had been his intention to have written Leech's life, having collected much material for the purpose, but that "ill-health put a stop to this congenial labour." How admirably the labour would have been executed may be shown by the following extracts:

"Leech," says Dr. Brown, "was singularly modest, both as a man and an artist. This came by nature, and was indicative of the harmony and sweetness of his essence; but doubtless the perpetual going to Nature, and drawing out of her fulness, kept him humble, as well as made him rich--made him (what every man of sense and power must be) conscious of his own strength. But before 'the great mother' he was simple and loving, attentive to her lessons as a child, for ever learning and doing."

Again: "Of all our satirists, none have such a pervading sense and power of girlish, ripe, and womanly beauty as Leech.... There is a genuine domesticity about his scenes that could come only from a man who was much at his own fireside, and in the nursery when baby was washed. You see, he is himself _pater familias_, with no Bohemian trait or raffish turn. What he draws, he has seen; what he asks you to live in, and laugh at and with, he has laughed at and lived in. It is this wholesomeness and (to use the right word) this goodness that makes Leech more than a drawer of funny pictures, more even than a great artist. It makes him a teacher and an example of virtue in its widest sense, from that of manliness to the sweet devotion of a woman, and the loving open mouth and eyes of _parvula_ on your knee."

I find it difficult to believe that these remarks were written by one who had no personal knowledge of Leech; indeed, I should have thought the writer must have enjoyed an amount of intimacy with him. If Dr.

Brown and Leech were strangers to each other, the writer's accurate estimate of the artist shows how exactly the drawings reflect the delightful nature of their producer, so familiar to his nearest friends.

"What we owe to him," adds Dr. Brown, "of wholesome, hearty mirth and pleasure, and of something better than either--good as they are--purity, affection, pluck, humour, kindliness, good-humour, good-feeling, good-breeding, the love of Nature, of one another, of truth, the joys of children, the loveliness of our homely English fields, with their sunsets and village spires, their glimpses into the pure infinite beyond, the sea and all its fulness, its waves 'curling their monstrous heads and hanging them,' their crisping smiles on sunlit sands--all that variety of Nature and of man, which is only less infinite than its Maker! Something of this and of that mysterious quality called humour, that fragrance and flavour of the soul, which G.o.d has given us to cheer our lot, to help us to 'take heart and hope and steer right onward,' to have our joke, that lets us laugh and make game of ourselves when we have little else to laugh at or play with, of that which gives us when we will the silver lining of the cloud, and paints a rainbow on the darkened sky out of our own 'troublous tears'--something of all these has this great, simple-hearted, hard-working artist given to us and to our children as a joy and a possession for ever. Let us be grateful to him; let us give him our best honour, affection, and regard."

Walking with Leech one day, we met an old gentleman, to whom I introduced my friend: early in the fifties it was. The old man, though well stricken in years, sported a dark and heavy moustache.

"And so," said Leech, when, after a few commonplaces, we separated, "that is old Mr. Blank the portrait-painter, is it? What on earth induces him to wear purple moustachios?" Purple they were, certainly, and of rather a bright tinge.

"Well," I replied, "he has dyed them, for they were white the other day."

"In my opinion," said Leech, "only soldiers should be allowed moustachios."

In my early days, that "hirsute appendage" created such a prejudice against the wearers as would not be credited in these beard-bearing times. There were places of business the doors of which were closed against the moustache. At a well-known bank complete shaving of moustache and beard is insisted upon to this day. The sufferings of our troops in the Crimea were sufficiently agonizing without the torment or even the possibility of the morning's shave; and it is to the Russian campaign we owe the "beard movement," which from that time to the present is so universal. Our officers returned from their battles covered with glory and hair, and so much improved by the latter--in the opinion of those whose approval was most valued--as to make a sacrifice of it out of the question. Little did Leech imagine when he made his sweeping objection to the moustache, what a factor he would find it in his future work. How many delightful sketches turn upon it! Who can forget those two little rival sn.o.bs--rivals in the love of some fair approver of beards--who have withdrawn themselves from society during the incubation of their moustachios, and who, having accidentally sought the same suburban retirement, meet face to face, stubbly beard to stubbly beard, at a corner of a lane? And that precocious young gentleman who asks his sisters if they approve of the removal of a moustache, the presence of which they had never been able to discover!

Under the heading of "The Beard Movement," we have a British swell in a fainting state in the arms of a policeman; this serious condition having arisen from the sight of a postman with moustachios. In another drawing, policemen are marching to their posts of duty decorated by beards of such magnitude as to strike terror into the street boys, who scatter in all directions at the sight of them.

In "Pictures of Life and Character" other examples of the alarm excited by the beard movement are given with the refined humour peculiar to Leech.

I find I have to modify somewhat my conviction that Leech rarely adopted the subjects proposed to him for ill.u.s.tration; no doubt by far the largest number were the outcome of his own conception, or observation of incidents in his experience; but I have proof of several examples to the contrary. For instance, Mr. Holman Hunt says: "One Friday night I had sat down to much correspondence, intending before concluding to write of two or three amusing facts picked up that might suit him (Leech) for ill.u.s.tration. It had become very late, and I was clearing away my paper, when, with vexation, I remembered his letter had not been written. I seized the pen, and on a page I drew two horizontal lines quite dividing the s.p.a.ce. In the top I put: 'Scene--Kitchen garden, country cottage.

_Dramatis Personae_: Factotum, master entering,' and then a line or two of dialogue.

"The second subject I treated similarly, and the third also, which was not so promising. I enclosed this without a word to Leech, and posted it with my other letters about two in the morning. The following Wednesday the two subjects, admirably treated, were in _Punch_. When next I saw him he was eager with excuses for not having written. He added: 'The letter when it was opened at breakfast was most opportune, for I had to leave town by five, and I was bound to furnish two designs before going, and I had come down without having the wildest notion what to do.

The subjects in your note were ready-made, and I was able to sketch them without a moment's waste of time."

Mr. Hunt tells an anecdote of Kenny Meadows, the jovial Bohemian, whom, I hope, the reader of these pages may remember, that is so characteristic and amusing, and ill.u.s.trative of his own nature and of that of Leech, that I insert it in this place. "Meadows was quite at the head of the _Punch_ artists when Leech joined them, and was naturally delighted by the praise bestowed upon his drawings by 'this ruler amongst the ill.u.s.trators of _Punch_.' He--Meadows--declared that a sight of Leech's ill.u.s.trations had so disgusted him with his own work that he felt inclined to give up art altogether. 'Why,' said he, 'should I go on giving proof after proof of my incapacity when you leave me so far behind?' This modest effusion was uttered early in the evening, and before the setting in of the gin-and-water period, which was destined to effect a striking change in Meadows' estimate of himself, and of the recent addition to the pictorial staff.

"Leech was a sincere admirer of Meadows' work, and of this he a.s.sured the self-condemning artist in no measured terms, instancing for special praise many of Kenny's designs br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with poetic conceits in the ill.u.s.trations of Shakespeare. Meadows listened to Leech's compliments, and said it was 'deuced liberal' of him to say what he did. He then mixed himself a gla.s.s of gin and water, saying, 'Well, after all, it's wise to make the best of things, and be as jolly as one can under all circ.u.mstances.'

"The two artists then fell into general conversation, and into--on the part of one of them--the imbibing of much gin and water. Under the influence of the latter, Meadows returned to the subject of his own works, and proceeded to show in what respect they surpa.s.sed those of others--even Leech's, which were worthless from the absence of 'poetry,'

which ought to sanctify all art.

"'Give me imagination or nothing, my dear boy!' he exclaimed. 'I don't want your commonplace facts done with a little trick of caricature, as it is called. Why don't you aim at something better, something higher? I would rather do nothing than the things you do, which, not only in design, but in execution, are unworthy of a true artist.'"

All this was told to my friend by Leech himself, and, says Mr. Hunt, "Leech's shrug of the shoulders, expressive of bearing infinite disgrace, was the gesture of a comedian, but a hearty, good-natured laugh gave the real expression of the feeling left in his kind soul; there was not a jot of malice there against the severe judgment upon himself. The Scandinavian hero returning so sedate from victory that he might have been supposed to have suffered a defeat, or from disaster in the field, so composed that he might have been thought victorious, could not have surpa.s.sed Leech's manner in accepting both the praise and the censure of his elder rival."

Another old friend of mine, Mr. Horsley, R.A., offers further proof of Leech's occasional acceptance of suggestions for his designs. In the course of a walk Mr. Horsley was accosted by one of those itinerant traders to whom the street is the shop, and solicited to buy a rope of onions.

"Take the last rope, sir," says the man. My friend looks like a prosperous gentleman, to whom the offer might be made with a prospect of success, though the awkwardness of his appearance with the addition of a long rope of large onions in his hand would most likely prove a deterrent to the purchase. Mr. Horsley declined the offer, but it instantly occurred to him that such a proposal, if made to one of Leech's "swells," would be intensely comic, and he accordingly mentioned the incident to Leech, who smiled as usual and said nothing. A drawing, however, appeared immediately in _Punch_, but, strange to say, the incident is defrauded of much, if not all, its humour. The swell leaves nothing to be desired, except that he certainly should have been alone, and not, as according to Leech, accompanied by a lady, to whom the onions might have been useful. The absurdity surely consisted in the ludicrous position of a young gentleman who was subjected to an offer of which he would scarcely know the meaning, and much less likely to take advantage of it. My friend expressed his disappointment to Leech, who, with characteristic modesty, acknowledged his mistake.

"I may mention another curious failure," says Mr. Horsley. "Leech came into my room one day roaring with laughter at a story he had just heard of two small boys who had been overheard discussing the age of a companion, and one said to the other, 'Well, I don't 'zactly know how old Charley is; but he must be very old, for he blows his own nose.'

This is delightful as coming from the little chaps that Leech drew so perfectly; but, wonderful to relate, he represented the conversation as pa.s.sing between a boy looking fourteen or fifteen and a girl in a riding-habit."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

I subjoin the first idea of that which seems to be the incident told to Mr. Horsley, though it fails to ill.u.s.trate the scene as described by Mr.

Horsley, or the rendering of it afterwards adopted by Leech. The sketch, however, will show the rough manner in which all the thoughts so perfectly expressed on the wood-block were first sketched by the artist.

CHAPTER XXI.

AUTOGRAPH-HUNTERS AND OTHERS.

No doubt all painters, poets, literary men, Churchmen--in short, all men who have attained to more or less celebrity--become the prey of the autograph-hunter, either in the form of a boy at school, a young lady whose life is made continuous sunshine by the contemplation of your pictures or the study of your delightful poems, or an elderly gentleman who has watched your career with intense interest from its beginning.

Each of these applicants, strange to say, avers that he or she will be made happier by the possession of your name on a card or a piece of paper which is enclosed for your signature, and in addition to your "valued name," if you happen to be an artist, "if you will add a slight sketch," the grat.i.tude of the hunter will know no bounds. I have been guilty on one or two occasions of complying with a desire that seems to verge upon the unreasonable; but my folly is as nothing compared to that of Edwin Landseer, who was a frequent and willing victim to such imposition. On one of the many occasions when I had the happiness of receiving Landseer at my house, the conversation turned upon the autograph-hunter, whose habits were strongly anathematized by some of us; the great painter defended the craze as harmless, easily gratified, and complimentary to the objects of it.

"Only this morning," said he, "I had an application from someone at Birmingham for my name, and for a sketch of a dog's head added to it; well, I complied with both desires."

I confess to my surprise when I heard this, and I was amused on hearing artists who were present exclaim loudly against such a proceeding, as creating a precedent that they would be expected to follow. Harmless, however, is the autograph pest in comparison with the really terrible _alb.u.m_, which bids unblushingly for work that may consume many hours of the time of the painter or the poet. Here, again, Landseer was a great sinner; many a splendidly bound alb.u.m lies at this moment on gilded tables in stately English mansions, the homes of our "old n.o.bility,"

with delightful drawings of sporting scenes by that cunning hand; and there are instances, I am sorry to say, of the possessors being unable to resist the sums offered for the purchase of their treasures so cheaply acquired.

As I am speaking of Edwin Landseer, I seize the opportunity of expressing my great regret that my friend Mr. Sidney Cooper, R.A., in his recently published memoirs, should have created an impression in the public mind that Landseer was a drunkard. From my intimate knowledge of Landseer, I can aver that nothing could be further from the fact. I have dined in his company scores of times, and I have met him in all kinds of society, and under conditions which would have made the propensity, if it possessed him, irresistible; and never in a single instance did I, or anyone else, see Landseer even _excited_ by drink. This was the habit of the man until about a year and a half before his death, when the brain disorder began which afterwards destroyed him. I cannot disguise from myself that if Mr. Cooper had questioned the physicians who attended Landseer in his last illness, he would have been told that a craving for drink of every kind is one of the peculiarities of the disease which every sufferer from it is quite unable to resist. I know that great care was taken to keep stimulants from the ill.u.s.trious patient; but that he may have secretly possessed himself of wine or spirits on certain occasions, and in that way given a colour to the report of his drunken habits, is probable enough; but I venture to think a brother-artist--even if the charge of habitual intoxication could have been proved against this great painter--should have been mournfully silent; how much more careful, then, should he have been, if he desired--perhaps as a warning--to proclaim this terrible failing, to ascertain whether he had truthful ground to go upon.

I do not in the least apologize for the above, though it is "far wide"

of the purpose of this chapter; but I feel that my complaint against alb.u.ms is a little ungracious and ungrateful in the face of the admirable page of sketches with which my publisher has supplied me. (See note at the end of this chapter.)

Mr. Richard Bentley was the possessor of an autograph-book and alb.u.m combined; but he did not solicit the aid of strangers to fill it, thereby creating a wide difference between himself and the ordinary alb.u.m nuisance. "My father," says Mr. George Bentley, "started an autograph-book, and got Cruikshank, Leech, and some others to give a sketch, or, if not an artist, an autograph. Leech did one in colour. It was so superior to anything in the volume that I cut it out and framed it, and so see it every day in my life."

The idea is to reproduce some of the characters he was so fond of sketching, and some he had actually given; for instance, the girl in bed is, I think, from the scene where a man gets up at night to fire at some cats. The wife suddenly awakes, and finds him looking out of window, gun in hand, and imagines thieves. The _voyez vous_[Ill.u.s.tration] is delicious, and the old gentleman with "Now, it's my opinion," etc., I am pretty sure is taken from a sketch in some work he had ill.u.s.trated.

So far Mr. George Bentley, who shows that his father, who was the liberal employer of Leech, d.i.c.kens, Cruikshank, and so many others, had a _raison d'etre_ for his requests in favour of his alb.u.m.

I supplement Mr. Bentley's remarks on this delightful page by calling my readers' special attention to that charming little boy and his dreadful old grandmother--"Will Charley come and live with his gran-ma?" Study well that little boy's face, beautiful as an angel's, as he looks wondering at the hideous old woman--will he live with her? not, I think, if he can help it. See, also, the lovely little group of the ill-a.s.sorted couple--old husband and young wife. More terrible the lady's fate there than Charley's with his "Gran-ma."

I have now to notice another alb.u.m belonging to no less a person than the late Duke of Devonshire. Leech made the Duke's acquaintance while staying with Millais at the Peac.o.c.k, Baslow, a place within easy distance of Chatsworth; where, by the way, Millais painted the perfect likeness of Leech which, by his kindness, is allowed to enrich this volume, and where, by Sir Joseph Paxton, I think, Leech was introduced to the Duke, and entertained with much kindness at Chatsworth. How the alb.u.m was introduced to Leech, and whether the Duke asked for a sketch or the artist volunteered it, I have no evidence to offer; but that a design was made and repeated, the following letters from the Duke sufficiently prove:

"August 6, 1851.

"DEAR SIR,

"I am so much charmed with your device that I must have a seal engraved from it. Perhaps you would have the kindness to renew the sketch for me on a smaller scale, as I am unwilling to extract the leaf made valuable by you from the book. The stone should not be larger than this, which, I fear, makes my request hardly possible.

"Most sincerely yours,