John Leech, His Life and Work Volume II Part 18

A story is told of a visit of a sporting lord who took his huntsman--whose judgment of hounds and horses was celebrated for its ac.u.men--to give his verdict on the Leech Exhibition in general, and on dogs and horses in particular.

"'Ah, my lord, nothin' but a party as knows 'osses could have drawed them there 'unters.'"

If the huntsman offered an opinion on other features of the exhibition, it is not recorded; he criticised only what he understood--therein giving a much-needed example to many critics.

In the few remarks in the way of criticism on the Leech Exhibition which I allow myself to make, I claim to be in the position of the huntsman whose experience of the horse made his opinion of that animal valuable; my own experience of pictures, as it extends over fifty years, may fairly claim for me the right of judgment, and I acknowledge myself to be one of those who thought the exhibition of "Sketches in Oil" did not increase Leech's reputation; though it happily did increase his own fortune, or the fortune of somebody else.

Dr. Brown says that Leech "obtained a great mastery over oil-colours."

The huntsman may have thought as much; if he did, he was as much in error as Dr. Brown. The sketches lost much charm by their enlargement, and they were further greatly damaged by the crude and inharmonious way in which they were coloured. The girls' lovely faces, which delight us so thoroughly in their pencilled forms, became almost vulgar under the artist's attempts to paint flesh--the most difficult of all things to render truly. When he first gives them to us fresh from the wood block, conveying to us, as he does, the most ravishing beauty by a few pencil-marks, we paint the faces for ourselves with the colours and brushes of the mind, with a result unattainable by the colourman's tools unless they are in the hands of a Reynolds or a Vand.y.k.e. Leech's delightful backgrounds, too, were terribly spoilt by his oil-paints: air and distance disappeared altogether in many of them. But it is time my grumbling gave place to what Mr. Thackeray had to say about the Leech Exhibition in the _Times_ of June 21, 1862:

"Now, while Mr. Leech has been making his comments upon our society and manners, one of the wittiest and keenest observers has been giving a description of his own country of France in a thousand brilliant pages; and it is a task not a little amusing and curious for a student of manners to note the difference between the two satirists--perhaps between the societies they describe. Leech's England is a country peopled by n.o.ble elderly squires, riding large-boned horses, followed across country by lovely beings of the most gorgeous proportions, by respectful retainers, by gallant little boys emulating the pluck and courage of the sire. The joke is the precocious courage of the child, his gallantry as he charges his fences, his coolness as he eyes the gla.s.s of port, or tells grandpapa he likes his champagne dry. How does Gavarni represent the family father, the sire, the old gentleman, in _his_ country--the civilized country? Paterfamilias, in a dyed wig and whiskers, is leaning by the side of Mademoiselle Coralie on her sofa in the Rue de Breda. Paterfamilias, with a mask and a nose half a yard long, is hobbling after her at the ball. The _enfant terrible_ is making papa and mamma alike ridiculous by showing us mamma's lover, who is lurking behind the screen. A thousand volumes are written protesting against the seventh commandment. The old man is for ever hunting after the young woman; the wife is for ever cheating the husband. The fun of the old comedy never seems to end in France, and we have the word of their own satirists, novelists, painters of society, that it is being played from day to day.

"In the works of that barbarian artist, Hogarth, the subject which affords such playful sport to the civilized Frenchman is stigmatized as a fearful crime, and is visited by a ghastly retribution. The English savage never thinks of such a crime as funny, and, a hundred years after Hogarth, our modern 'painter of mankind' still retains his barbarous modesty, is tender with children, decorous before women, has never once thought he had the right or calling to wound the modesty of either.

"Mr. Leech surveys society from the gentleman's point of view. In old days, when Mr. Jerrold lived and wrote for that famous periodical, he took the other side; he looked up at the rich and great with a fierce, a sarcastic aspect, and a threatening posture, and his outcry or challenge was: 'Ye rich and great, look out! We, the people, are as good as you. Have a care, ye priests, wallowing on a t.i.the pig and rolling in carriages and four; ye landlords, grinding the poor; ye vulgar fine ladies, bullying innocent governesses, and what not--we will expose your vulgarity, we will put down your oppression, we will vindicate the n.o.bility of our common nature,' and so forth. A great deal has to be said on the Jerrold side, a great deal was said, perhaps, even, a great deal too much. It is not a little curious to speculate upon the works of these two famous contributors to _Punch_, these two 'preachers,' as the phrase is. 'Woe to you, you tyrant and heartless oppressor of the poor!'

calls out Jerrold as Dives' carriage rolls by. 'Beware of the time when your bloated coachman shall be hurled from his box, when your gilded flunkey shall be cast to the earth from his perch, and your pampered horses shall run away with you and your vulgar wife and smash you into ruin.' The other philosopher looks at Dives and his cavalcade in his own peculiar manner. He admires the horses and copies, with the most curious felicity, their forms and action. The footmen's calves and powder, the coachman's red face and flock wig, the over-dressed lady and plethoric gentleman in the carriage, he depicts with the happiest strokes; and if there is a pretty girl and a rosy child on the back seat, he 'takes them up tenderly' and touches them with a hand that has a caress in it. The artist is very tender to all these little people. It is hard to say whether he loves girls or boys most--those delightful little men on their ponies in the hunting field, those charming little Lady Adas flirting at the juvenile ball, or Tom the butcher's boy on the slide, or ragged little Emily pulling the go-cart, freighted with Elizerann and her doll. Steele, Fielding, Goldsmith, d.i.c.kens, are similarly tender in their pictures of children. We may be barbarians, monsieur; but even savages are occasionally kind to their papooses. 'When are the holidays?' Mothers of families ought to come to this exhibition and bring the children. Then there are the full-grown young ladies--the very full-grown young ladies--dancing in the ball-room or reposing by the sea-sh.o.r.e: the men can peep at whole seraglios of these beauties for the moderate charge of one shilling, and bring away their charming likenesses in the ill.u.s.trated catalogue (two-and-six). In the 'Mermaids' Haunt,' for instance, there is a siren combing her golden locks, and another dark-eyed witch actually sketching you as you look at her, whom Ulysses could not resist. To walk by the side of the much-sounding sea and come upon such a bevy of beauties as this, what bliss for a man or a painter! The mermaids in that haunt, haunt the beholder for hours after. Where is the sh.o.r.e on which those creatures were sketched? The sly catalogue does not tell us.

"The outdoor sketcher will not fail to remark the excellent fidelity with which Mr. Leech draws the backgrounds of his little pictures. The homely landscape, the sea, the winter road by which the huntsmen ride, the light and clouds, the birds floating overhead, are indicated by a few strokes which show the artist's untiring watchfulness and love of Nature. He is a natural truth-teller, as Hogarth was before him, and indulges in no flights of fancy. He speaks his mind out quite honestly like a thorough Briton. He loves horses, dogs, river and field sports.

He loves home and children--that you can see. He holds Frenchmen in light esteem. A bloated 'mosoo,' walking Leicester Square with a huge cigar and a little hat, with _billard_ and _estaminet_ written on his flaccid face, is a favourite study with him; the unshaven jowl, the waist tied with a string, the boots which pad the quadrant pavement--this dingy and disreputable being exercises a fascination over Mr. Punch's favourite artist.

"We trace, too, in his work a prejudice against the Hebrew nation, against the natives of an island much celebrated for its verdure and its wrongs. These are lamentable prejudices indeed, but what man is without his own? No man has ever depicted the little 'sn.o.b' with such a delightful touch. Leech fondles and dances this creature as he does the children. To remember one or two of these dear gents is to laugh. To watch them looking at their own portraits in this pleasant gallery will be no small part of the exhibition; and as we can all go and see our neighbours caricatured here, it is just possible that our neighbours may find some smart likenesses of _their_ neighbours in these brilliant, life-like, good-natured _Sketches in Oil_."

The publication of this sympathetic article in such a paper as the _Times_, by such a writer as Thackeray, no doubt increased the popularity of "Sketches in Oil." However that may have been, its appearance gave the keenest pleasure to Leech, who is said to have "rejoiced like a child, exclaiming:

"'That's like putting a thousand pounds into my pocket!'"

By far the best examples of Leech's oil paintings are in the collection of his old warmly attached friend, Mr. Charles Adams, of Barkway.

Instead of a garish stain of washy colour merely pa.s.sed over an engraving, these small sporting subjects are painted in a good solid style, well drawn and carefully finished; carrying with them the conviction, to my mind, that Leech might possibly have been as great with the brush as he was with the lead pencil.

Amongst the "Pictures of Life and Character" there is a drawing of two young ladies sitting _vis-a-vis_ on a rustic seat; from the books held by both of them it might be supposed they were reading, as no doubt they were, till one of them caught sight of their partners at the ball the night before, who by a strange coincidence are advancing upon them through the wood. The drawing is ent.i.tled "Remarkable Occurrence," with the following explanation: "On the morning after the dispensary ball, as Emily Deuxtemps and Clara Polkington were sitting in the plantation, who should come to the very spot but Captain Fastman and young Reginald Phipps!"

I forget the year in which this drawing appeared. The scene is laid at Scarborough, where Leech was pa.s.sing his summer holiday. I was so taken with the beauty of the girls, the composition of the drawing, and its general adaptability to the making of an oil picture, that I wrote to the artist; and, pointing out these characteristics, begged him to "paint the subject." I received no reply to my entreaty, but on meeting him afterwards in London, he apologized, and declared he would take my advice.

"You don't mind my not answering you, old fellow: I hate letter-writing.

It was very kind of you to write--glad you like the girls on the garden-seat. Well, I will try my hand at it the moment _I have time to spare_." The time never came. A "Remarkable Occurrence" did not even appear amongst the "Sketches in Oil."

It would have been a very onerous task for a man in perfect health, and accustomed to the use of the brush, to have prepared those sixty-seven sketches in oil for exhibition, even if his time could have been wholly devoted to it. To Leech, with the hand of Death nearly touching him, in almost entire ignorance of the method in which he was working--the ordeal was terrible. To the entreaties of his friends that he should stick less closely to his easel at Lowestoft or Whitby, he would reply that the fine air of the former, and the picturesque scenery abounding at the latter, were intended for idle people, and not for him.

To the man with well-strung nerves Leech's sensibility to noises of all kinds seems incomprehensible; but for years before the oil sketches were undertaken I knew of his sufferings from himself; and the world must have guessed them from his attacks upon the organ-grinders, the bellowing street-hawkers, and the thousand and one noises that distress the London householder whose livelihood depends upon his brain. Of course most of the drawings in which the organ-grinder and the itinerant vendor of stale fish figure, are highly humorous; causing the unthinking to laugh, unconscious of the terrible seriousness under which they have been produced.

Humour was so much a part of Leech's nature that it sometimes a.s.serted itself incongruously. For example: One evening a convivial party of the Ancient Order of Foresters returning from, perhaps, the Crystal Palace, where high festival had been held, roused poor Leech almost to madness by a yelling uproar opposite his door. He left his work, and rushed bare-headed amongst them.

"What are you making this horrible row for?"

Then seeing the extraordinary Robin Hood kind of costume affected by these people, he said:

"What's it all about--who are you?"

"We are Foresters, that's what we are," was the reply.

"Then, why on earth don't you go into a forest and make your infernal row there, instead of disturbing a whole street with your noise?" said Leech.

There is no doubt that hyper-sensitiveness to noises troubled Leech "from his youth up," for we find in comparatively early drawings in _Punch_ examples of the nuisances created by the fish-hawkers, and the sellers of the great variety of things that n.o.body wants, at the different seaside places where he took his so-called holidays. He was naturally hard upon the encouragers of these pests. There is an inimitable sketch of an old lady who has called an organ-grinder into her parlour. The man, a perfect type of the Italian performer, grinds away at his instrument, the old woman snaps her fingers and kicks up her heels in mad delight; her parrot screams, and her dog howls an accompaniment. Cake and wine are on the table, and there is a stuffed cat in a gla.s.s case on the wall. The drawing is called a "Fancy Sketch of the Old Party who rather likes Organ-grinding."

In another sketch an elderly paterfamilias is seen sitting upon the beach attempting to read his newspaper under the difficulties caused by a boy with guinea-pigs, and others with something to sell; a sailor proposes a sail, an old woman has a box of baby linen, and the inevitable sweetstuff merchant looms in the near distance. The drawing is ent.i.tled "The Bores of the Beach," with the following explanatory lines:

"So, as it's a fine day, you'll sit on the beach and read the paper comfortably, will you? Very good! Then we recommend you to get what guinea-pigs, brandy-b.a.l.l.s, boats, and children's socks, to say nothing of sh.e.l.l-work boxes, lace collars, and the like you may want, before you settle down."

Perhaps the drawing that most happily ill.u.s.trates the terrible suffering that is caused by those wandering minstrels, the Italian organ-grinders, is in double form--two _scenes_, so to speak. The first represents a dignified, middle-aged father of a family who stands at his door "expostulating with an organ-grinder, who is defying him with extreme insolence, alternated with performances on the instrument of torture,"

says Leech. The Italian, who is an embodiment of brutal impudence, says, "Ha! ha! P'lice! Where you find p'lice?"

In the second drawing we see why the noise is more than commonly distressing, for it represents a bedroom in the indignant father's house, where a "sick boy, tended by his mother, is suffering from nervous fever."

I dwell at some length upon these drawings, because they greatly aided Mr. Ba.s.s in his efforts to put a stop to some extent--alas! only to some extent--to a serious public nuisance. The Bill which that gentleman carried through Parliament still requires amendment before the author, the musician, the artist, or the tradesman even, can pursue his calling in the peace so essential to success.

An eminent artist friend of mine lived in a part of the town where organ-grinders greatly congregate. The interruptions to his work were constant and terrible. After finding that remonstrance, threats of the police, and other inducements, failed to procure relief, he armed himself with a pea-shooter, with which he practised upon his lay figure until he acquired considerable skill in the use of it; and when he considered he was enough of a marksman, he stood by his shutter window and waited; not for long, for the notes of "Champagne Charley is my name"--a favourite melody some years ago--pierced his ears from "an instrument of torture" opposite to his window. Through a narrow aperture made by the shutter the pea-shooter was projected, a smart blow on the cheek of the organ-grinder stopped "Champagne Charley" in the middle of one of his notes; the man rubbed his face and looked about him, up and down and round about, with an expression of pained surprise pleasant to behold. He then took up the tune where he had left it, and had produced a few more notes when a blow upon the grinding hand, and another almost instantly on his face, again stopped the performance. "It was very gratifying," said my friend, "to study the puzzled expression of the fellow as he looked about for the cause of his trouble." After another attempt to play out his tune, and another salute from the pea-shooter, he shouldered his organ and took himself off. "Yes," said the sportsman, "after a while they found me out, but they couldn't get at me, and now I am never troubled by any of them."

I am writing these pages at Lowestoft, where Leech pa.s.sed several summer holidays. Under the name of "Sandbath," this place had the honour of appearing in _Punch_ as the scene of several humorous incidents, notably of one in which the street-horrors are stigmatized under the heading of "How to Make a Watering-place Pleasant, particularly to Invalids." Time 6.30 a.m. (a hint to the powers that be at Sandbath).

The princ.i.p.al performer is an admirably drawn figure of a big burly ruffian--ugliness personified--from whose monstrous mouth one can almost hear "Yah-ha-bloaters!" Two little boys, carrying baskets of shrimps, are yelling "Ser-imps, fine ser-imps!" while two more youths add to the din by ringing bells by way of announcing other delicacies likely to be in request early in the morning. The date of this drawing can be fixed pretty accurately, for I hear from Mr. Adams that several of the sketches in oil exhibited in 1862 were finished at this place, Mr. Adams constantly watching his friend as he worked.

To the unexaggerated truth of the incident I can speak, for the cry of "Bloaters!" arouses me every morning, and precisely at the time indicated by Leech. Added to this, even as I write about the organ-grinder detested of Leech, comes one, as if in revenge, under my window; and in reply to my threat of police, I am told to "go and _find_ a policeman"--an impossibility, as the wretch well knows, for there is but one in Sandbath--as far as my observation goes--and he never appears in this part of it.

A pet.i.tion, very numerously signed by eminent members of all the professions, and by others, was a formidable weapon in Mr. Ba.s.s's hands in his crusade against street musicians and other peace-breakers. The Bill pa.s.sed both Houses, and became law. Leech signalized the success by an admirable drawing called "The Rival Barrels."

"Three cheers for Ba.s.s and his barrel of beer, and out with the foreign ruffian and his barrel-organ."

One of Mr. Ba.s.s's draymen is using a cask of beer in the form of a weapon as he rolls it against a foreign organ-grinder, who finds himself perilously near the edge of a cliff at Dover or Folkestone, _en route_ from the country he has tormented so long. The brutal Italian scowls and threatens as the barrel rolls upon him, but we feel he must go; the stalwart, good-humoured drayman is too much for him.

If--as I feel sure--the brilliant powers possessed by Leech were certain to be attended by a highly sensitive and nervous organization, absolute tranquillity and ease of mind were required for the exercise of them; but in this unhappy case what do we find? No repose--no cessation--no peace. The conditions under which these wonderful drawings were produced were no doubt to some extent uncontrollable--the public appet.i.te grew with what it fed on; it was not _Punch_ only who insisted upon his weekly portion, but numberless publications, stories, biographies, poems, taxed the genius of the popular ill.u.s.trator.

It was not till I undertook this task that I had any idea of the _quant.i.ty_ of work done by Leech: to say nothing of the excellence of it, the quant.i.ty is astonishing. But surely, I hear my reader say, though _Punch_ required ever-recurring contributions, other demands upon the artist were within his own control. There are men, and plenty of them, who would have turned deaf ears to appeals from relatives and friends; but John Leech was not one of those, and I fear it cannot be denied it was to meet pressing solicitation for money from various quarters that we must look to account for the worn brain and the shattered nerves that throbbed with agony at noises which would scarcely have disturbed a healthy man.

For some years before his death he suffered from sleeplessness, and at length he yielded to the suggestion of his friends and the order of his doctor--that change of air and scene should be tried as a remedy. Mark Lemon became his companion, and the two went to Biarritz, staying a short time in Paris on their way.

"That Leech's pencil was not idle on this holiday," says Shirley Brooks, "two well-known pictures will testify. One of them is a general view of that now famous watering-place, with specimens of its curious frequenters. The other is a very remarkable drawing. It represents a bull-fight as seen by a decent Christian gentleman, and, for the first time since the brutal fray was invented, the cold-blooded barbarity and stupidity of the show is depicted without any of the flash and flattery with which it has pleased artists to treat the atrocious scene. That grim indictment of a nation professing to be civilized will be on record for many a day after the offence shall have ceased.

"This brief visit," continues Mr. Brooks, "to the Continent was his last but one. His strength did not increase, and he no longer found pleasure in hunting, of which he had been exceedingly fond, and later he discontinued riding on horseback. He was then not merely advised, but ordered to travel. About this time the great man who had been to him as a brother, the schoolmate of his boyhood, the chief friend of his manhood--Thackeray--died. He told Millais of his presentiment that he, too, should die suddenly, and soon. In the summer of 1864 he went to Homburg, accompanied by his friend, Alfred Elmore, and afterwards he sojourned at Schwalbach. His mind was amused if his body was not strengthened by these visits to new scenery, and his sketch-book was soon filled with memorials, some of which he embodied in his last large _Punch_ engraving--a view of the place where the residents of Schwalbach meet to drink the waters, and with figures of ill.u.s.trious political people.

"Soon after his return he resolved to try what pure fresh English air would do for him, and accompanied by his family he went to Whitby.

Several friends were also staying there at the same time, and he wrote to London that he liked the place. In September, on his writing to me that he would prolong his stay if I and wife would come down, we went, and remained at Whitby till he left it, on the 3rd of October.

"The scenery round Whitby is varied, and some of it is exceedingly fine; and Leech, when we could induce him to leave the painting in oil--to which he devoted far too many hours--enjoyed the drives into the wild moors, and up and down the terrible but picturesque roads; and he was still more delighted with the rich woods, deep glades, and glorious views around Mulgrave Castle. I hoped that good was being done; but it was very difficult to stir him from his pictures, of which he declared he must finish a great number before Christmas. It was not for want of earnest and affectionate remonstrance close by his side, nor for lack of such remonstrance being seconded by myself and others, that he persevered in over-labour at these paintings, which he had undertaken with his usual generosity, in order to provide a very large sum of money _for the benefit of his relatives, not of his own household_. It need hardly be said that he was never pressed for work by his old friend the editor of _Punch_. His contributions to that periodical had not exceeded one half-page engraving for some time, until he volunteered to compose the large Schwalbach picture. Let me note another instance of his kindness to utter strangers. A deputation from the Whitby Inst.i.tute waited upon him to ask him to attend a meeting, and to speak in promotion of the interests of the a.s.sociation. He was on that day too ill to bear an interview with more than one of the gentlemen, and was, of course, compelled to refuse their request. But it occurred to him that they might think his refusal ungracious (as I am sure they could not), and he sent for all his 'Sketches of Life and Character' from London, and presented them to the Inst.i.tution."

Amongst the party at Whitby was Mr. George Du Maurier, whose charming drawings are familiar, not only to the readers of _Punch_, but also as excellent ill.u.s.trations in other newspapers and periodicals; especially good are they in Thackeray's great novel of "Esmond." Du Maurier only made Leech's acquaintance a few months before his death, but he tells me that in the Whitby walks and talks he found him to be the most delightful companion, and the most "lovable" of men. My friend also tells me that he was the last of the craft that shook the hand to which we all owe so much. Du Maurier called upon Leech the day before his death to present a little drawing to him; he seemed "much as usual," and the artists parted, little dreaming that they had parted for ever.

On the day after Mr. Hill's party the weekly dinner of the _Punch_ staff took place. Leech attended as usual, but the readiness with which he was wont to make suggestions, or to discuss those already made, seemed to have deserted him. He was dull, silent, and appeared, says Shirley Brooks, "scarcely to understand what was going on"--requiring a question to be repeated two or three times before he could frame a reply to it, and then his answer was often wide of the mark. This condition, I suppose, showed the alternations of the disease that was killing him, for he was perfectly free from such a distressing symptom only the night before the _Punch_ dinner, and as free from it, according to Du Maurier, the day before his death.

The journeys abroad, and the Whitby sojourn, even if the sufferer could have been prevailed upon to cease work altogether, came too late. The sword had worn out the scabbard. Leech's conversation and letters after his return from Whitby expressed ardent hope, but feeble conviction, that he had materially benefited by the change of air and scene. I think he knew that his prophecy, so mournfully spoken to Millais by the death-bed of Thackeray, was near its fulfilment. In common with all Leech's friends, I knew that he had suffered from attacks of angina pectoris, or breast pang; but in our ignorance of the serious character of the disease, most of us thought lightly of its attacks. One idea amongst us was that he had strained, and perhaps injured, some muscle in one of his hunting tumbles. That the agony of the spasms was very dreadful we knew, because on one occasion, after a severe attack, he said, "If it had lasted a little longer, I must have died." But how often have sufferers used the same words when they were in no danger whatever!