The History of "Punch" Part 38

"I am sorry that I am not able to tell you where to find a 'Punch and Judy,' but I think some of that family reside, or might be heard of, in the vicinity of Leicester Square. The 'Punch' that I copied my figures from for the 'History of Punch and Judy' was an old Italian long since deceased. His performance and figures were first-rate--far superior to anything of the present day, and it is quite evident that poor Leech and others copied _my_ Punch, for _Punch_ and other works, from the Punch that I copied from this Italian Punch.

"Speaking of Punch, you are, I presume, aware that although the idea of 'Punch' was taken from my 'Omnibus,' that I never had anything to do with that work of 'Punch,' and also that for many years (20!!!) I have not taken anything in the way of _Punch_.

"However, I will say no more about Punch at present, as I fear you will feel as if you could 'punch' the head of

"Yours truly.

"GEORGE CRUIKSHANK."

[Ill.u.s.tration: T. HARRINGTON WILSON

(_Drawn by T. W. Wilson, R.I._)]

His grievance was that _Punch's_ figure was stolen from his book (to which Payne Collier had written the text), and that the paper itself was but an imitation of his own short-lived monthly magazine. With greater reason could he complain that the _Punch_ Pocket-books were copied from his "Comic Annuals," as they were, and that the imitations killed the originals after a contest of a dozen years; but the idea of _Punch_ being copied from the "Omnibus," with which it had hardly a single point in common, save humour and ill.u.s.tration, has probably about as much foundation as Cruikshank's claim against d.i.c.kens and "Oliver Twist," or against Harrison Ainsworth and "The Miser's Daughter" and "The Tower of London." Yet _Punch_ rendered ample tribute to his genius, not so much in the adaptation of many of his best-known drawings to cartoons, including "Jack Sheppard" (1841), "Oliver asking for More" (1844), "The Fix" [Points of Humour] (1844), "The Juggernaut" (1845), "Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger" (1846), "The Deaf Postilion" (1846), and "f.a.gin in the Cell" (1848), "The Election" [Sketches by Boz] down to "Harcourt the Headsman" (June 8th, 1895); but also by deliberate statement and amiability prepense. That, however, did not prevent _Punch_ from chaffing "the Great George" upon occasion, as when he was preparing his "Life of Falstaff" the journal gravely a.s.sumed that he would reform that incorrigible tippler into a "teetotal Falstaff," and protested against the enthusiast mixing water so copiously with the milk of his human kindness. So Cruikshank set off in great wrath towards Fleet Street to seek out the scoffer, and, meeting Blanchard Jerrold, sputtered out his purpose and declared that he was on the trail of that scoundrel _Punch_ to "knock his old wooden head about." When he died, _Punch_ announced that "England is the poorer by what she can ill spare--a man of genius.

Good, kind, genial, honest, and enthusiastic George Cruikshank ... has pa.s.sed away."

Mr. T. Harrington Wilson, the well-known special correspondent of the "Ill.u.s.trated London News," at that time a specialist in theatrical portraiture, joined the paper as an occasional contributor in 1853, and over various monograms sent in a dozen clever, but hardly striking, drawings. These were "socials" dealing with society or fashion, stage situations from behind the scenes, and grotesque ideas, such as the "effect of wearing respirators on burglars" (October, 1853). Mr.

Wilson--who, by the way, had studied at the National Gallery side by side with Sir John Tenniel and Charles Martin--contributed to the Pocket-books from 1854 to 1857, and ceased his connection when he was ordered abroad.

All the outside artistic help received by _Punch_ in 1854 came from five occasional correspondents: from "F. M.," an amateur, in February; from Mr. Swain the engraver (who fitfully contributed unimportant sketches at times of sudden need), in the same month; from J. Bennett; from Chambers (a half-a-dozen initials extending over that and the following year, and reappearing in 1864;) and from Mr. Harrison Weir. The contribution of the latter occurred during Leech's indisposition, when Mr. Weir was invited by Mark Lemon to make a few drawings to fill the place which would be so sadly missed. So the artist--who was working under Lemon on the "Field"--produced a half-page drawing ill.u.s.trative of the tribulation of young lady who was obliged to leave half her luggage behind by reason of the cab-strike; and it was printed on p. 163 of Vol.

XXVII. Then Leech recovered, and Mr. Weir's services were dispensed with.

The second clergyman who ever drew for _Punch_ was the Rev. W. F.

Callaway, a Baptist minister of York and Birmingham, and the son of a gentleman who had distinguished himself by writing a book on "Cingalese G.o.ds." He contributed one or two sketches, the first one being referred to in his MS. diary, February 15th, 1855--"Found my Sketch in _Punch_--'Comment on the Balaclava Railway.'" It had been re-drawn in part by Leech, but the character of the original was left intact. Then three initials from Ince are to be chronicled; another from "W. R.," and a drawing signed "H.," from B. C. Halliday (p. 200, Vol. XXVIII), showing "Our Artist in the Crimea" in a hopeless mess; as well as a dozen initials of no particular importance from G. W. Terry (p. 171, Vol. x.x.x.) from 1856 to 1858.

Mr. J. Ashby-Sterry, so well and pleasantly known in later days as _Punch's_ "Lazy Minstrel," and writer of verses and paragraphs innumerable in its pages, was from 1856 to 1861 an artistic contributor on fifteen occasions. "When I was a youth," he writes, "I fear I must have annoyed good, genial Mark Lemon very much, for I was continually sending pen-and-ink sketches to _Punch_. Not content with showering these upon him, which were invariably courteously returned, I began to pelt him with wood blocks. I took to drawing on the wood enthusiastically, and was continually popping these little parcels into the letter-box under the shadow of St. Bride's Church. At last one of them, to my intense joy, appeared. Altogether I must have had about four initial letters, a dozen black silhouettes, and a quarter-page social cut inserted in the paper. But the quant.i.ty that were never used at all, and the number that were re-drawn by my old friend Charles Keene, is a high testimony to the artistic knowledge and editorial skill of Mark Lemon." But Mr. Ashby-Sterry does himself an injustice, as all will say who have seen the vivacious sketch of a gentleman struggling violently inside his shirt, with the legend: "How agreeable it is, more especially if you are late, and are dressing against time to dine with ultra-punctual people--how agreeable it is, on getting into your clean shirt, to find the laundress has been careful to fasten all the b.u.t.tons for you!" Moreover, he was trained as an artist, both at "the Langham"

and at the Royal Academy Schools; and portraits painted by him of his father and grandfather have long since "toned" into canvases at once able and attractive.

A few sketches by Saunderson in this same year were followed by the debut of Alfred Thompson. When a cavalry officer, this gentleman, encouraged by the acceptance of his work by "Diogenes," in 1854, sent a few drawings--initials, for the most part--to _Punch_, that were published in 1856-7-8, and he was persuaded by Mark Lemon to take up the career of art. On retiring from the service, he studied in Paris, and contributed to the "Journal Amusant;" and on his return found that Mark Lemon was dead, and that, by the side of Keene and Tenniel, there had grown up a giant in the person of Mr. du Maurier. Under Tom Taylor's editorship he was a regular literary contributor, and was promised the next vacant place on the Staff; but an offer from Messrs. Agnew of the management of the Theatre Royal, Manchester, tempted him away from London and all journalistic enterprise. On his return to town, Mr.

Burnand was on the point of becoming Editor, and the connection came to an end. And so _Punch_ knew him no more, and Mr. Thompson appeared before a later generation chiefly as editor of the brilliant little "Mask," as designer of stage costumes and ballets, and writer of pantomimes. By some he was also remembered as a contributor, in 1865, to the "Comic News" and "The Arrow." His last _Punch_ sketches were published in 1876 and 1877, and in the Pocket-book for the latter year was buried what was, perhaps, his most important literary contribution that is worth preserving--a continuation of "Daniel Deronda." The most that can be said of Mr. Thompson's sketches is that they are bright and not without fancy; but since these were made, his power and charm of grace greatly increased. He died in New Jersey, September, 1895.

Frank Bellew, whose signature consisted of a flattened triangle, either with or without his initials, drew about thirty initials and quarter- or half-page "socials" from 1857 until 1862, many of them dealing with incidents connected with the American Civil War; and then--following the example of Newman and Mr. Thompson--he went to America, where he obtained more recognition for his clever outline drawings and for the pathetic touches and moral points which he loved to introduce; and there he begat a son whose reputation as a humorous draughtsman (being "Chip" of the New York "Life") soon became far greater than his father's. Bennet and "B. W." followed with a few trifles in 1857 and 1858, and then on October 13th Julian Portch sent in his first contribution.

Portch sprang from humble surroundings, and with no recommendations but his art; that, however, was sufficient for Mark Lemon. It is true that it lacked strength, but it showed a delicate pencil and a certain power of comic expression sufficient to place him among "Mr. Punch's clever young men" of the second rank. He was forthwith employed on decorations to the preface and to the Pocket-book (a task on which he was engaged for several consecutive years), as well as on _Punch_ itself. He stopped active contribution in 1862, his work being seen only once in 1863, 1864, 1867, and 1870; but the last drawing he sent in was in October, 1861. He had ill.u.s.trated "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a new edition of Boswell's "Life of Johnson," and, in part, Mr. Cholmondeley Pennell's "Puck on Pegasus," when in 1855 Henry Vizetelly, whose pupil he had been, sent him to the Crimea as war correspondent for the "Ill.u.s.trated Times," in order to make sketches of British camp life. In the rigours of that awful winter he was laid low with rheumatic fever, ending in general paralysis; and after three years of lovingly tended illness he died in September, 1865.

An anonymous contributor, more than usually modest, then sent in three drawings (August, 1859) as from "A Stranger," and then the distinguished French caricaturist, "Cham" (the Comte Amedee de Noe), made six humorous and spirited character sketches of Turco soldiers in Paris in 1859, not very complimentary to his country's allies. When he had visited London previously, Mark Lemon had sent him a little parcel of wood-blocks for drawings for _Punch_, and was astonished to receive them all back the next morning, all covered with vigorous work, with a calm request for "more woods." He was, perhaps, a better _raconteur_ than comic draughtsman, and, speaking English thoroughly well, became at once a great favourite. Thackeray, in particular, delighted to do him honour in his rooms at Young Street. In the same year Brunton, a young artist far better known outside _Punch's_ pages than in them, put his sign-manual of arrow-pierced hearts to a couple of drawings; and it is curious to observe how in his "Annamite Amba.s.sadors" he forestalled Mr. Furniss's "Lika Joko" series.

Miss Coode was the first lady who drew for _Punch_, contributing nineteen drawings from November, 1859, to January, 1861; and then G. H.

Haydon (barrister-at-law and steward of Bridewell and the Royal Bethlehem Hospital) began his connection. He was the intimate friend of John Leech, by whom he was introduced to _Punch_, and of Charles Keene, with whom he used to draw regularly at the Langham Sketching Club.

During 1860-1-2 he contributed twenty-two sketches and initials. He was a keen fly-fisherman, and many of Leech's subjects of this sort were done with him at Whitchurch, Hampshire, which they haunted together for the sport. After Leech's death Haydon contributed nothing more, as it was only during his spare time and out of friendly feeling that he made his sketches. He was, on the other hand, the subject of several of Keene's angling drawings, which were also done for the most part at Whitchurch. Such is the sketch in the Almanac for 1885, wherein the "Gigantic Angler" is an excellent portrait of Haydon, while Leech's drawing of August 11th, 1860, was a record of an incident that happened while the friends were fishing the same water. From that extremely promising young artist, M. J. Lawless, who was doing some of his best designs for "Once a Week," there came between May, 1860, and the following January, six drawings; but he was already a dying man when they were done, and he left little proof in them of the greatness of his talent. He was still contributing, however, when, on September 28th, 1860, there was sent into the office a drawing from the hand of one of the most brilliant of _Punch's_ lights--George du Maurier.

FOOTNOTES:

[55] See Mr. Layard's "Life and Letters of Charles Keene," p. 387.

[56] Speech at Royal Academy Banquet, May 2nd, 1891.

[57] English humour is under a great debt to the English Church. Not only, of course, are Sydney Smith and "Tom Ingoldsby" of immortal fame--to name no others--in the front rank of our wits, but _Punch_ has received the homage of "Cuthbert Bede," Dean Hole, the Rev. W. F.

Callaway, Canon Ainger, and the Rev. Anthony C. Deane. The Irish Catholic priest Father James Healy, by the way, indirectly contributed a number of capital jokes.

[58] It is to be observed, however, that there is no mention of these engravings in Mr. Swain's "_Punch_ Cut Book."

CHAPTER XXI.

_PUNCH'S_ ARTISTS: 1860-67.

Mr. G. du Maurier's First Drawing--The "Romantic Tenor"--Polite Satire--His Types and Creations--His Pretty Women--And Fair American--"Chang," "Don," and "Punch"--Mr. du Maurier as a _Punch_ Writer--Mr. Gordon Thompson--Mr. Stacy Marks, R.A.--Paul Gray--Sir John Millais, Bart., R.A.--Mr. Fred Barnard--First Joke Refused as "Painful"--Mr. R. T. Pritchett--Initiation by Sir John Tenniel--Fritz Eltze--His Amiable Jocularity--Mr. A. R.

Fairfield--Colonel Seccombe--Fred Walker, A.R.A.--Mr. J. Priestman Atkinson ("Dumb Crambo")--C. H. Bennett--Mr. W. S. Gilbert ("Bab")--His Cla.s.sic Joke--G. B. G.o.ddard--Miss Georgina Bowers--Mr.

Walter Crane.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GEORGE DU MAURIER.

(_From a Photograph by W. and D. Downey._)]

When, in 1860, Mr. George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier contributed his first drawing to _Punch_, he had little suspicion that he would be counted, together with John Leech, John Tenniel, and Charles Keene, as one of the four great pillars on which would rest the artistic reputation of the paper. In that first drawing, himself and two of his friends were represented entering the "studio" of a photographer, smoking, as the manner of artists is; and they are coldly requested by the deity of the place to leave their tobacco outside, as "they are in an artist's studio" (p. 150, Vol. x.x.xIX.). It was a poor sketch enough, showing some straining after comicality, and lacking every trace of the grace and beauty the draughtsman was so soon to develop. He was Parisian born, and after studying with a view to a scientific career, he became convinced, through Dr. Williamson's amiable a.s.surance that he would make a "shocking bad chemist," that art and not science was his destiny--more especially as his professors had been delighted with such little caricatures of his as they had seen; but, as Mr. du Maurier suggestively put it in his lecture on "Social Pictorial Satire," "they had not seen them _all_." He studied art at Antwerp and Paris in company with several notabilities of the day; but when, through an accident in the laboratory, he lost the sight of one eye, and found the other seriously imperilled, his chances of success in life seemed small. It was when lying, during his long illness, in the Antwerp Hospital, in 1858, that he first saw "Punch's Almanac"--a delight which he never forgot. When he recovered his ordinary health, he returned to England, though with little improvement of sight to cheer him. With a courage, however, equal to that of Sir John Tenniel, he girded himself against fate; he worked hard in London, where he lived in humble lodgings at 85, Newman Street, which he shared with his life-long friend, the late Lionel Henley, afterwards R.B.A.--"the dearest fellow that ever was." He sometimes wondered, he has told me, if he would eat a dinner that day; and as becomes the impecunious, he was a tremendous democrat. He "hated the bloated aristocracy, without knowing much about it; and, to do it justice, the bloated aristocracy did not go out of its way to pester him with its attentions." But in those happy, hungry, hard-working days, when dinner was not always a vested interest, Mr. du Maurier seemed already tinged with the daintier tastes that were destined to lead his pencil to the delineation of these same "bloated" cla.s.ses; and even in those hard times he could always boast a dress-suit.

So at the age of twenty-six--the same as that at which Charles Keene made his debut in _Punch_--he sent in an occasional contribution that was far more in Leech's manner than in what came to be his own.

Art has a way, figuratively speaking, of flourishing on an empty stomach, and Mr. du Maurier made rapid progress on the training. Keene's acquaintance and genial friendship enslaved at once his artistic methods, as well as his artistic adoration. It was not that he admired Leech less, but that he appreciated Keene more; and when the former died, to the sorrow and consternation of the Staff, Mr. du Maurier was appointed to his seat at the Table. He obeyed the summons on the first Wednesday that followed Leech's death, and carved his monogram on the board between those of the bosom friends, Thackeray and Leech. Mark Lemon, with characteristic shrewdness, soon discovered in what direction lay the talent and perhaps the _penchant_ of the artist, and told him not to try to be "too funny," but to do the graceful side of things, and to be "the romantic tenor in Mr. Punch's opera bouffe company," while Keene was to do the comic songs. The little social dramas of the day, the drawing-rooms of Belgravia, and the nurseries of Mayfair--those were his preserves, from which he could get as much game as he chose, humorous if he liked, but graceful withal.

But Mr. du Maurier is emphatically not what is commonly understood by "a funny man," for all his subtlety and love of humour; he is a combination of the artistic, with a distinct and clear sense of beauty, and of the scientific, with speculations and theories of race and heredity--who would as lief draw East-End types for the sake of their "character," and would look at a queer face more for the interest that is in it than for its comicality. If Mr. du Maurier's sense of beauty is strong, so is his appreciation of ugliness; and if you take down any of the volumes of _Punch_--that shine in their shelves like the teeth in the great laughing mouth of Humour itself--you will find no faces or forms more hideous or grotesque than those which the artist has chosen to put there.

But if there is one thing to justify the opinion of his admirers that he is the "Thackeray of the pencil," it is primarily to be found, not so much in the keen satire of his drawing and legends, but in his startling, his strikingly truthful creations. Creations we have had from Leech, Keene, and others--from Leech's pure sense of fun and jollity; from Keene's unerring observation of men and women, and fleeting emotion--but those of Mr. du Maurier go deeper into vices, virtues, habits, and motives, and are at the root of his pictorial commentaries.

He has given us true pictures of the manners of his time; and those manners he has satirised with more politeness and irony, perhaps, than broad humour. He worked well with Keene in double harness, and his pictures are at once a foil and a complement of that genius's work and _point de vue_. He has satirised everything, and his art has been admirably adapted to the depth of the civilisation he probes and dissects. His sense of beauty and tenderness apart, he is to art much what Corney Grain was to the stage, though his hand is not so heavy; and while you laugh with Leech, you smile with Mr. du Maurier--lovingly at his children, respectfully at his pretty women, and sardonically at his social puppets.

His own particular creations--his types and "series"--are to some sections of _Punch's_ admirers, _Punch's_ chief attraction. Especially is this the case in the United States,[59] where to Mr. du Maurier many people have looked almost exclusively, not only for English fashions in male and female attire, and the _derniere mode_ in social etiquette, but for the truest reflection of English life and character. First of all these types are Sir Gorgius Midas--who, the artist once confided to me, was drawn without exaggeration from real life--and his common wife and still vulgarer son. Then Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns, the clever and scheming, and her husband, depressed and stolidly obedient; the bishop and the flunkey, all calves and dignity; Grigsby, the "comic" man, and his punctilious friend, Sir Pompey Bedell, inflated with pretentious emptiness; 'Arry and 'Arriet, blatant and irrepressible; young Cadby, the c.o.c.kney; and the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Stilton, whose very figures seem to be drawn in purple ink; the refined colonel, a counterpart and not unworthy comrade of Newcome himself; Maudle, Postlethwaite, and Mrs.

Cimabue Brown, most delightful trio of sickening "aesthetes"--specially beloved of Mr. du Maurier, whose famous drawing, "Are You Intense?" is perhaps the particular favourite of all his satiric _Punch_ work; Mr.

Soapley and Mr. Todeson, who vie with each other in vulgar servility and sycophancy; the Herr Professor, ponderously humorous in smoking-room or boudoir; and Anatole, the bridegroom, happy and dapper in the Bois de Boulogne; t.i.twillow and the ex-Jew at the Club--what an a.s.semblage of carefully differentiated specimens of London's characteristic inhabitants! That many of them are often accepted, universally quoted as types, apart from any express reference to _Punch_ or to its artist, is the best testimony of the truth of his irony; for they are as recognisable in the real world as the Jacques, the Becky Sharps, and the Pecksniffs of other brains. And besides these there are the general characters so accurately presented to us--the refined lady with the very old face and frontal grey or white curls whom Mr. du Maurier used to draw, I believe, from the person of Mrs. Hamilton Aade; the charming young ladies for whom, in succession, his wife and daughters have sat; and the delightful little ones to whom Professor Ruskin paid partial tribute when he declared, a little cruelly, perhaps, that the "charm of his extremely intelligent, and often exquisitely pretty children, is dependent, for the greater part, on the dressing of their back hair and the fitting of their boots."

The admirable setting in which Mr. du Maurier frames his series of jokes is testimony to his genius. He follows Leech's plan of such series ("Servantgalism," "The Rising Generation," etc.), but the quality of the thought and its presentation is as much more elaborate than Leech's as his method of draughtsmanship is more complicated. These series or formulae, in their chief heads and subtle variations, display the quality of his mind. If you turn to the volumes for 1888 (XCIV. and XCV.) you will find examples of no fewer than nine of them: (1) Things one would rather have left unsaid; (2) Things one would rather have expressed differently; (3) Social Agonies; (4) Feline Amenities; (5) Our Imbeciles; (6) Typical Modern Developments; (7) Studies in Evolution; (8) Nincomp.o.o.piana; and (9) What our Artist has to put up with;--the last-named, however, a vein which Keene began to work as early as 1854.

His talent, too, in devising the legends, or "cackle," for the drawings is uniformly happy, unsurpa.s.sed by any man who ever wrote for _Punch_.

As Mr. Anstey says, he has brought the art of _precis_-writing to perfection. His legends are not always so concise as Leech's, but for truth of expression, felicitous colloquialism, and above all, for foreign accent, he is unapproached. I go farther, and say that he is the first man who ever put truthfully upon paper, and properly differentiated, the "broken English" and slangy misp.r.o.nunciations of German, French, and Semite, to say nothing of his c.o.c.kney; indeed, his studies in this direction prove him, besides an admirable physiologist _pour rire_ and a pungent though courteous satirist, an inimitable comparative-"broken"-philologist.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "MY PRETTY WOMAN."

(_Drawn by George du Maurier._)]

True to his _role_ of "Romantic Tenor," Mr. du Maurier has endowed _Punch_ with the greater part of the grace and beauty which have done so much to make the paper what it is. "In his social subjects," says a distinguished critic,[60] "Mr. du Maurier, though somewhat mannered and fond of a single type of face and figure, has carried the ironical _genre_, received by Leech from Gavarni and Charlet, to the highest point of elegance it has attained." He is too fond of the beautiful, sighs Mr. James; he sees everything _en beau_, and Mistress and Maid with him are a good deal of Juno and Hebe. No doubt his grace often militates against his fun, but Mr. du Maurier, as has already been suggested, is only by accident a professional funny man. Besides, when he wishes to be merely funny, he pa.s.ses Beauty by as if he were not the most devoted of her adorers, as you may see in one of the best of all his drawings in _Punch_, in which a typically selfish master of the house orders up the cook into the breakfast-room, complaining that he cannot eat the bacon which he has just served; his wife's, he says, is the worst he ever saw--and _his own is nearly as bad_!

Even more than his lovely child (often drawn from his little grandson), his superb youth, and his splendid gentleman, Mr. du Maurier's pretty woman is the pedestal upon which he has erected his reputation--at least, so far as _Punch_ is concerned. His pretty woman, he declares, is the granddaughter of Leech's, and he beseeches the public to love her, paternally at least as he does, "for her grandmother's sake."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PENCIL STUDY FOR "PUNCH" PICTURE.

(_By George du Maurier._)]