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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41018 ***
+
+JOHN LEECH
+
+His Life and Work
+
+[Illustration: _The Marchioness going to execution._]
+
+
+
+
+  JOHN LEECH
+
+  His Life and Work
+
+  BY
+
+  WILLIAM POWELL FRITH, R.A.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  _WITH PORTRAIT AND NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS_
+
+  IN TWO VOLUMES
+  VOL. II.
+
+  LONDON
+  RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON
+  Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
+  1891
+  [_All rights reserved_]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
+
+
+  CHAPTER                PAGE
+
+      I. "PUNCH"                                                       1
+
+     II. CARTOONS                                                     15
+
+    III. THE LAWYER'S STORY                                           35
+
+     IV. LOVE OF FIELD SPORTS                                         40
+
+      V. INVENTORS AND ILLUSTRATORS                                   54
+
+     VI. "INGOLDSBY LEGENDS"                                          59
+
+    VII. DICKENS AND THACKERAY ON LEECH                               66
+
+   VIII. DEAN HOLE                                                    80
+
+     IX. TYPES                                                        89
+
+      X. LEECH AND HIS PREDECESSORS                                   96
+
+      XI. KENNY MEADOWS                                              103
+
+    XII. "COMIC HISTORY OF ROME"                                     106
+
+   XIII. PERSONAL ANECDOTES                                          113
+
+    XIV. PERSONAL ANECDOTES--CONTINUED                               119
+
+     XV. SPORTING NOVELS                                             130
+
+    XVI. THE "BON GAULTIER BALLADS"                                  137
+
+   XVII. SPORTING NOVELS--CONTINUED                                  152
+
+  XVIII. MICHAEL HALLIDAY AND LEECH                                  163
+
+    XIX. THOMAS HOOD AND LEECH                                       182
+
+     XX. DR. JOHN BROWN AND LEECH                                    218
+
+    XXI. AUTOGRAPH-HUNTERS AND OTHERS                                229
+
+   XXII. ARTISTS' LIVES                                              239
+
+  XXIII. LEECH EXHIBITION                                            247
+
+   XXIV. MILLAIS AND LEECH                                           275
+
+    XXV. MR. H. O. NETHERCOTE AND JOHN LEECH                         283
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+  THE MARCHIONESS GOING TO EXECUTION                     _Frontispiece_
+
+  THE DRUNKEN POST-BOY                                                11
+
+  "THEY MAY BE OFFICERS, BUT THEY ARE NOT GENTLEMEN"                  13
+
+  JACK ARMSTRONG                                                      17
+
+  THE JEW AND SKELETON TAILORS                                        29
+
+  "I'LL THIN YOUR TOP!"                                               37
+
+  "GIVE HER HER HEAD, JACK"                                           42
+
+  "OH, IF THIS IS ONE OF THE PLACES CHARLEY SPOKE OF,
+  I SHALL GO BACK!"                                                   44
+
+  JACK JOHNSON ATTEMPTS TO RESCUE DERVAL                 _To face p. 57_
+
+  THE MAID AND THE HEAD OF GENGULPHUS                                 62
+
+  ELOPEMENT OF ROMAN YOUTH WITH SABINE LADIES                        109
+
+  ROME SAVED FROM THE GAULS BY GEESE                                 111
+
+  LITTLE JOHN AND RED FRIAR                                          140
+
+  LITTLE JOHN AND THE POPISH BULL                                    142
+
+  GEORGE OF GORBALS                                                  149
+
+  THE LOVER'S FRIEND AND THE LOVER                                   150
+
+  AFTER AIMING FOR A QUARTER OF AN HOUR, MR. B.
+  FIRES BOTH HIS BARRELS, AND MISSES!                                173
+
+  WHAT WIDE REVERSES OF FATE ARE THERE!                              188
+
+  MISS KILMANSEGG                                                    191
+
+  THE FOREIGN COUNT                                                  197
+
+  THE WEDDING--"WILT THOU HAVE THIS WOMAN?"                          202
+
+  LOVE AT THE BOARD                                                  204
+
+  HE BROUGHT STRANGE GENTLEMEN HOME TO DINE                          208
+
+  THE TORN WILL                                                      212
+
+  BEDTIME                                                            216
+
+  "HE BLOWS HIS OWN NOSE!"                                           228
+
+  THE SEAL                                                           235
+
+  A CYPRESS BRANCH FOR THE TOMB OF JOHN LEECH                        301
+
+
+
+
+JOHN LEECH:
+
+_HIS LIFE AND WORK_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+"PUNCH."
+
+
+In the year 1841 I exhibited a picture at the Suffolk Street Gallery,
+and I recollect accidentally overhearing fragments of a conversation
+between a certain Joe Allen and a brother member of the Society of
+British Artists in Suffolk Street. Allen's picture happened to hang near
+mine, and we were both "touching up" our productions. Joe Allen was the
+funny man of the society, and, though he startled me a little, he did
+not surprise me by a loud and really good imitation of the peculiar
+squeak of Punch.
+
+"Look out, my boy," he said to his friend, "for the first number. We" (I
+suppose he was a member of the first staff) "shall take the town by
+storm. There is no mistake about it. We have so-and-so"--naming some
+well-known men--"for writers; Hine, Kenny Meadows, young Leech, and a
+lot more first-rate illustrators," etc.
+
+Whether Allen's friend took his advice and bought the first number of
+_Punch_, which appeared in the following July, I know not; but I bought
+a copy, and remember my disappointment at finding Leech conspicuous by
+his absence from the pages. In the hope of finding him in the second
+issue, I went to the shop where I had bought the first. The shopman met
+my request for the second number of _Punch_, as well as I can recollect,
+in the following words:
+
+"What paper, sir? Oh, _Punch_! Yes, I took a few of the first; but it's
+no go. You see, they billed it about a good deal" (how well I recollect
+that expression!), "so I wanted to see what it was like. It won't do;
+it's no go."
+
+I have been told that, like most newspapers, _Punch_ had some difficulty
+in keeping upon his legs in his first efforts to move; but as those
+elegant members, so exquisitely drawn by Tenniel, have supported the
+famous hunchback for nearly half a century, there is no need for his
+friends' anxiety as to his future movements.
+
+Though Leech had engaged himself to the then proprietors of _Punch_ as
+one of the illustrators of the paper, it seems strange that his first
+contribution did not appear till the 7th of August, and in the fourth
+number, and stranger still that its appearance should have damaged the
+paper. Under the heading of "Foreign Affairs," the artist represents
+groups of foreigners such as may be seen any day in the neighbourhood of
+Leicester Square. The reader is told in a footnote that the plate does
+not represent foreign _gentlemen_, an unnecessary intimation to anyone
+who knows a foreign gentleman.
+
+It is said that this engraving sent down the circulation of _Punch_ to
+an alarming point. I confess my inability to understand this, and would
+rather attribute the decadence to some other cause, contemporary with
+the production of "Foreign Affairs." The drawing is somewhat hard upon
+the foreign frequenters of the purlieus of Leicester Square, and would
+only have been more acceptable to John Bull on that account. By Leech's
+non-appearance in _Punch_ for many months after "Foreign Affairs" was
+published, one is driven to the conclusion that the managers had little
+faith in him as an attraction. The second volume contains very few of
+Leech's designs, while it bristles with inferior work.
+
+My own admiration for Leech's genius, so constantly roused by his works,
+with which I was familiar, created a great desire for his acquaintance;
+but being perfectly unknown at that time as an artist, and knowing none
+of Leech's friends, I began to despair of the realization of my wishes,
+when accident helped me.
+
+A Scottish painter--a Highlander and fierce Jacobite--named McIan, who
+was also an actor and friend of Macready, to whose theatrical company he
+was attached, lived with his wife, an accomplished artist, somewhere in
+the neighbourhood of Gordon Square. Calling one morning to see Mrs.
+McIan, I found her in her studio, not, as usual, hard at work at her own
+easel, but superintending the labours of a pupil, who was hard at work
+at another; and the pupil, a tall, slim, and remarkably handsome young
+man, was John Leech.
+
+I made some remark about the different method in which he was employed
+to that with which he was familiar. I forget what he was copying--some
+still life, I think.
+
+"I like painting much better than what I have to grind at day after day,
+if I could only do it," said Leech; "but it's so confoundedly difficult,
+you know, and requires such a lot of patience."
+
+I fancy I thought his efforts in oil-painting on that occasion very
+promising; but the exigencies of his position quite prevented the
+unceasing devotion to the study of painting which is required before any
+success can be assured.
+
+Leech was once heard to say that he would rather be the painter of a
+really good picture than the producer of any number of the "kind of
+things" he did. I, for one, am very thankful that he never did produce a
+good picture, for he would have been tempted to repeat the success, to
+the loss of numbers of delightful sketches.
+
+Mrs. McIan appeared to think that Leech would soon cease to draw for
+_Punch_; indeed, she doubted, as did many others, that _Punch_ would
+long succeed in attracting the public; and I joined her in the
+hope--rather hypocritically, I fear--that her young friend would
+persevere in mastering the difficulty of the technicalities of
+oil-painting, and thus place himself amongst the best painters of the
+country. Leech had taken many lessons from Mrs. McIan, and that lady
+seemed convinced that he had but to persevere and the difficulties would
+fall before him, as, to use her own figure, the walls of Jericho fell
+before the sound of the trumpet. Ah, perseverance! "there's the rub."
+
+From the time of my introduction to Leech I became gradually very
+intimate with him, and the more I knew of his nature, the more I became
+convinced that he totally lacked the disposition for continuous, steady,
+mechanical industry necessary for success in painting. He constantly
+ridiculed the care spent on the details in pictures; finish, in his
+opinion, was so much waste of time. "When you can see what a man intends
+to convey in his picture, you have got all he wants, and all you ought
+to wish for; all elaboration of an idea after the idea is comprehensible
+is so much waste of time"--this was his constant cry, a little
+contradicted by the fact that he as constantly tried to paint his ideas,
+but in a fitful and perfunctory manner.
+
+I can imagine the enthusiasm that was lighted up in Leech upon his first
+sight of one of our annual exhibitions. After a visit to one of them he
+was known to have gone home, and getting out easel, canvas, and colours,
+he would set to work in a fury of enthusiasm, which evaporated at the
+encounter of the first technical difficulty. He used to take pleasure in
+watching my own attempts at painting, and I remember on one occasion,
+when I was finishing a rather elaborate piece of work, he said:
+
+"Ah, my Frith, I wasn't created to do that sort of thing! I should never
+have patience for it."
+
+He was right, and, happily for the world, he became convinced that, even
+if he had the power to fully "carry out"--as we call it--one of his
+drawings into a completed oil picture, the time required would have
+deprived us of immortal sketches; and though he undoubtedly "left off
+where difficulties begin"--as I once heard a painter, who was
+exasperated at Leech's sneers at his manipulation, say to him--he has
+left behind him work which will continue to delight succeeding
+generations so long as wit, humour, character and beauty are
+appreciated--that is to say, so long as human nature endures.
+
+I feel I ought to apologize for what I am about to tell, because it has
+nothing to do with my hero beyond the fact of its occurrence having
+taken place on the memorable morning when I first had the happiness of
+meeting him.
+
+I have said that McIan was a Scotchman, a Highlander of the clan McIan,
+and a worshipper of Charles Stuart, whose usual cognomen, the Pretender,
+I should have been sorry to have used in the presence of my Jacobite
+friend. As Leech left the room to go to his "grind," as he called his
+woodwork, McIan entered, and we were discussing Leech's prospects when
+McIan's servant--an old, hard-featured Scotchwoman--hurried into the
+room, and, in an awe-stricken voice, said:
+
+"Sir--sir, here's the Preences!"
+
+The words were scarcely out of her mouth, when two gentlemen
+entered--tall, rather distinguished but melancholy, looking young men.
+No sooner did McIan and his wife catch sight of them, than, without a
+word, they both dropped upon their knees, and while the lady kissed the
+hands of one of the gentlemen, her husband paid a similar attention to
+the hands of the other. I was holding my hat, and I remember I dropped
+it in my astonishment, for I was not aware that I was in the presence of
+the last of the Stuarts; or that these two young men claimed to be the
+great-grandsons of the hero of Culloden, and amongst a large section of
+Scotchmen, and not a few Englishmen, had their claim allowed. Anyone
+curious about this delusion can read for himself how it was dispelled,
+but the men themselves implicitly believed in their royal descent. They
+are both dead now. I once saw one of them again at a garden-party at
+Chelsea Hospital, where his likeness to the Stuarts was the talk of the
+company. It was certainly striking.
+
+It is a melancholy task to me to try to recall the social scenes in
+which Leech so often figured--sad indeed to think how few of his
+friends, more intimate with him than I, now remain amongst us! Though
+Leech very seldom illustrated any ideas but his own, I can recall an
+example or two to the contrary; and still oftener have I seen, by the
+sparkle of his eye, that something occurring in conversation had
+suggested a "cut."
+
+I think it was Dickens who said that a big cock-pheasant rising in
+covert under one's nose was like a firework let off in that locality.
+Elsewhere we have Leech's rendering of the idea.
+
+When cards, or some other way of getting rid of time after dinner, had
+been proposed, I have heard Leech say:
+
+"Oh, bother cards! Let us have conversation."
+
+And talk it was, often good talk; but Leech was more a listener than a
+partaker. Not that he could not talk, and admirably; but he was always
+on the watch for subjects which he hoped something in conversation might
+suggest.
+
+Leech's mental condition was certainly deeply tinged with the sadness so
+common to men who possess wit and humour to a high degree. He sang well,
+but his songs were all of a melancholy character, and very difficult to
+get from him. Indeed, the only one I can remember, and that but
+partially, was something about "King Death," with allusions to a
+beverage called "coal-black wine," which that potentate was supposed to
+drink. As I write I can see the dear fellow's melancholy face, with his
+eyes cast up to the ceiling, where Dickens said the song was written in
+ghostly characters which none but Leech could read.
+
+I may give another example--rare, no doubt--of Leech's having used a
+suggested subject. Many years ago my brother-in-law, long since dead,
+took a party of friends to the Derby. They drove, or, rather, were
+driven, down to Epsom, the usual post-boy being recommended as a
+careful, steady driver--a character very desirable, considering the
+crowded state of the road, more especially on the return journey. The
+post-boy quite realized all that was said of him as the party went to
+the course, but when the time came for departure he was found, after
+considerable searching, to be as nearly dead-drunk as possible. What was
+to be done? The man could scarcely stand; his driving was, of course,
+out of the question.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Well," said my brother-in-law to his friends, "if you will trust
+yourselves to me, I will ride and drive you back;" and, after tying the
+post-boy on to the carriage, where he soon fell fast asleep, my
+brother mounted and drove his party safely home.
+
+This I thought a good subject for Leech, and I suggested it to him. He
+smiled faintly, and said not a word. Very nearly a year after I had told
+him of the incident, as I was walking with him one day, he said:
+
+"By the way, Frith, are you going to use the subject you mentioned to me
+of the drunken post-boy and your brother-in-law?"
+
+"I? No," said I; "it's more in your way than mine."
+
+"Then I'll do it next week."
+
+He was as good as his word.
+
+Nothing could be less like my brother-in-law than the delightful "swell"
+who is driving home some charming women, who are, however, left to our
+imagination; and as to the post-boy, the artist has awoke him to some
+purpose. What could surpass that drunken smile?
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Long, long ago there might have been seen on the sands at Ramsgate two
+stuffed figures, the size of life, intended to represent soldiers; for
+they were bedecked with the red coat, cap, and trousers of the ordinary
+private. The clothes were simply stuffed out into something resembling
+human forms, but the effect, as may be supposed, was ludicrous in the
+extreme. They were the work of a professor of archery, who supplied his
+customers with bows and arrows, with which the archer showed how seldom
+he could hit the target made by the two soldiers. Leech and I watched
+the shooting for some time, till the little sketch-book was produced,
+and Leech made a rapid drawing of the two soldiers, afterwards to figure
+in an inimitable cut in _Punch_.
+
+A young lady is seen bathing with her aunt, whose attention she is
+directing to the two stuffed figures. The aunt is short-sighted, and the
+girl is wickedly pretending that the figures are live officers, watching
+the bathers. The aunt says, "They may be officers, but they are not
+gentlemen," etc.
+
+I am sure that Leech never used a model, in the sense that the model is
+commonly used by artists, for the thousands of human beings made
+immortal by his genius; but that he made numberless sketches for
+backgrounds, detail of dresses, landscapes, foregrounds, and bits of
+character caught from unconscious sitters, there can be no doubt. How
+wonderful was the memory, how sensitive the mental organization, that
+could retain and reproduce every variety of type, every variety of
+beauty and character!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+CARTOONS.
+
+
+As I fancy I am one of the few of Leech's friends who have figured
+personally in _Punch_, I may be excused for the egotism of the
+following:
+
+About the year 1852 I began the first of a series of pictures from
+modern life, then quite a novelty in the hands of anyone who could paint
+tolerably. When the picture which was called "Many Happy Returns of the
+Day" (a birthday subject, in which the health of the little heroine of
+the day is being drunk) was finished, Leech came to see it, and
+expressed his satisfaction on finding an artist who could leave what he
+called "mouldy costumes" for the habits and manners of everyday life. As
+he was speaking, two of my brother artists, whose practice was on
+different lines to mine, called, and saw my picture for the first time.
+They both looked attentively at it, and the longer they looked--judging
+from their faces--the less they liked it. I shall not forget Leech's
+expression when I gave him a sort of questioning look as to the
+correctness of his judgment.
+
+"Well, what do you think of the picture?" said Leech to one of the
+painters.
+
+"Well, really I don't know what to think," was the reply.
+
+It never occurred to me that the incident was one likely to serve my
+friend for a drawing; lively was my surprise, and great was my pleasure,
+therefore, when I saw myself "immortalized for ever," as my old master
+used to say, in the pages of _Punch_.
+
+In this drawing may be seen a striking proof of the avoidance of
+personality which always distinguished Leech. I cannot see my own back,
+but I have been assured by those who have had that privilege that there
+is a dashing, not to say aristocratic, character about Jack Armstrong to
+which I have no claim. While Messrs. Potter and Feeble are quite
+curiously unlike the persons they are supposed to represent--neither of
+my high art friends wore beards--yet the attitudes of the men were
+exactly reproduced; while the background, with armour, oak-cabinet,
+etc., for which no sketch was taken, was a perfectly correct
+representation of my old painting-room.
+
+[Illustration: "JACK ARMSTRONG."]
+
+In one of my autumnal holidays Leech stayed a few days with me. He had
+not been well; picking up "a thousand stones in a thousand hours," to
+which he likened his unceasing work, had begun to tell upon him; and in
+reply to my warning, that, for his own sake, to say nothing of the
+interests of _Punch_, he should husband his strength--for, I added, "If
+anything happened to you, who are 'the backbone of _Punch_,' what would
+become of the paper?"--I can see his smile as I hear him say, "Don't
+talk such rubbish! backbone of _Punch_, indeed! Why, bless your heart!
+there isn't a fellow at work upon the paper that doesn't think _that_ of
+himself, and with about as much right and reason as I should. _Punch_
+would get on well enough without me, or any of those who think
+themselves of such importance."
+
+Among the many admirable qualities that adorned the character of John
+Leech his modesty was remarkable; he thought little or nothing of his
+own work. "Talk of drawing, my dear fellow," he once said to me, "what
+is my drawing compared to Tenniel's? Look at the way that chap can draw
+a boot; why, I couldn't do it to save my life."
+
+Though Leech in his modesty chose to ignore the fact, it was no less a
+fact that for nearly a quarter of a century he was the leading spirit of
+_Punch_. "Think," said Thackeray, "what a number of _Punch_ would be
+without a drawing by Leech in it!"
+
+In addition to the wonderful political cartoons, Leech contributed more
+than three thousand illustrations of life and manners to the paper; and
+it is said--I know not how truly--that he received from first to last
+more than £40,000 for his contributions to _Punch_ alone. If he did,
+what did he do with the money? That he was in no way extravagant I know,
+and that he was frequently in dire straits after his connection with
+_Punch_ I also know. Let my reader imagine what pecuniary trouble must
+have been to this man, whose mind was racked by the constantly recurring
+demands for intellectual work such as Leech supplied week after week,
+and often day after day! Did he lend or give away his hardly-earned
+money? Did he accept bills for so-called friends, and find that he had
+to meet them? Leech was one of the most open-hearted and generous of
+men, an easy victim to a plausible tale of real or fictitious distress.
+I suppose we shall never know why a man who made so large an income, who
+had not a large family to absorb much of it, and who never lived
+expensively, should have died comparatively poor. Let me leave these
+painful considerations and "pursue the triumph and partake the gale" of
+the artist's glorious career.
+
+Between Cruikshank and Leech there existed little sympathy and less
+intimacy. The extravagant caricature that pervades so much of
+Cruikshank's work, and from which Leech was entirely free, blinded him a
+little to the great merit of Cruikshank's serious work. I was very
+intimate with "Immortal George," as he was familiarly called, and I was
+much surprised by the coolness with which he received my enthusiastic
+praise of Leech.
+
+"Yes, yes," said George, "very clever. The new school, you see. Public
+always taken with novelty."
+
+For the larger part of fifty-seven years Cruikshank told me he had been
+in the habit of drinking wine and spirits, often a great deal too much
+of both; but from his fifty-seventh birthday to his seventy-fifth, when
+he lectured me for taking a single glass of sherry, he had devoted
+himself to strict teetotalism, the interests of which he advocated by
+tongue, brush, and etching-needle.
+
+Unlike Leech, Cruikshank was a painter, and the last years of his life
+were spent in painting a huge picture, or, rather, a series of pictures
+upon one canvas, which he called "The Worship of Bacchus." From this
+work he executed a large engraving, a proof of which he presented to
+me, telling me to study it well and I should see what dire results might
+arise from drinking a glass of sherry. Like most proselytes, Cruikshank
+carried his faith in his creed to the verge of absurdity, and sometimes
+beyond it; but in the "Worship of Bacchus," and more powerfully still in
+a series of etchings called "The Bottle," he gave his tragic power full
+play, and produced scenes and incidents in which the consequences of
+"drink" are portrayed--now with pathos, now with the terrible
+retribution that often ends the drunkard's career in madness.
+
+In one of the large cartoons in _Punch_ Leech used the awful figure of
+"Fagin in the Condemned Cell" (one of Cruikshank's finest illustrations
+to "Oliver Twist"), changing him into King Louis Philippe. That
+sovereign was always somewhat of a red rag to Leech, as many cuts, in
+which the king is turned into ridicule, prove; and when the crash of
+1848 came, Leech received the fugitive with a shower of drawings,
+culminating in the tragic figure exiled and in the condemned cell. The
+student of Leech does not require to be told that the artist was as
+great in the tragedies of life as he was when he shot the follies as
+they flew about him, or when he touched so caressingly the beauty of
+childhood and of women.
+
+During the Crimean War, when such fearful news came to us of the
+sufferings of our soldiers during the inclement winter of 1854-55, the
+Emperor of Russia is said to have invoked the aid of Generals January
+and February in our ruin. Those officers certainly destroyed many of our
+men, but one of them laid his icy hand upon the man who had called him
+for so different a purpose. Never can I forget the impression that
+Leech's drawing of the Emperor's death-bed made upon me! There lay the
+Czar, a noble figure in death, as he was in life, and by his side a
+stronger King than he--a bony figure, in General's uniform,
+snow-besprinkled, who "beckons him away." Of all Leech's serious work,
+this seems to me the finest example. Think how savage Gillray or vulgar
+Rowlandson would have handled such a theme!--the Emperor would have been
+caricatured into a repulsive monster, and Death would have lost his
+terrors. Moreover, neither of those artists was capable of conceiving
+the subject.
+
+To show the infinite variety of Leech's powers, I may draw attention in
+this place to another of the political cartoons.
+
+The uneasiness created in this country by what was called the "Papal
+Aggression" always seemed to me as absurd and unfounded as it has since
+proved to have been. I remember asking Cardinal Manning, then
+Archbishop of Westminster by order of the Pope, for his autograph. He
+wrote his name for me, but when I asked him to add his title, he smiled
+and said, "I dare not do that; I might be sent to prison if I wrote my
+Popish title."
+
+Lord John Russell was in power at that time, and was of course very
+active in the crusade against the Catholics. The Cardinal in England was
+Wiseman; and Leech drew Lord John as a street boy, running away from the
+Cardinal's door, after chalking "No Popery" upon it. Perfect in
+workmanship, and perfect in idea, is this admirable drawing.
+
+I may note here one very bad consequence of the "Papal
+Aggression"--namely, the secession of Richard Doyle from the _Punch_
+staff. Doyle was a Catholic; it was therefore impossible for him to
+remain amongst men who, by pen and pencil, opposed what was called the
+audacious attempt to "tithe and toll in our dominions." It was a pity,
+for Doyle was, next to Leech, by far the strongest man on the staff of
+_Punch_ artists--quaintly humorous, and full of a delicate fancy, but
+without the broad views of life or the grasp of character that
+distinguished Leech. Of course, as personality was the essence of the
+political cartoons, the use of it was unavoidable; but Leech managed to
+be personal without being offensive to the chief actor, unless, as in
+the case of Louis Philippe and a few others, he considered that their
+escapades deserved severe castigation; he then took good care to apply
+the whip with a will. Lord Russell, in his "Recollections," speaks of
+the "No Popery" satire as "a fair hit."
+
+In many of the political cartoons official personages are represented as
+boys, well-behaved or ill-behaved, obstinate or stupid, or both, in the
+work appointed for them. For example, when Sir Robert Peel resigned, in
+1846, Lord John Russell figures as page-boy applying for the vacant
+place. The Queen looks the button boy up and down, and then says, "I
+fear, John, you are not strong enough for the situation."
+
+Then we have Disraeli, also as a boy, in whose figure that statesman's
+curious foppery in dress is felicitously noted, confronted with a
+majestic figure of Sir Robert Peel, who says:
+
+"Well, my little man, what are you going to do this Session, eh?"
+
+"Why--aw--aw--I've made arrangements--aw--to smash everything."
+
+Events of the past, looked at by the light of the present, assume
+sometimes very strange, almost incredible aspects. Can there have been a
+time, one is inclined to ask, when a man's religion could prove a bar to
+college, Bench, and Parliament? Assuredly there was such a time, and not
+long ago--say forty years or so--when no Jew could be a judge or a
+member of Parliament; and it was only after severe battles and many
+defeats that victory at last attended the Jewish banner. One of the most
+violent opponents of the Jews was Sir Robert Harry Inglis, a very
+conscientious and worthy gentleman. By a happy thought of Leech's, Sir
+Robert is made to figure in one of the most humorous of the political
+cartoons.
+
+About this time my old friend Frank Stone had painted two pictures in
+illustration of his favourite theme--love. They were called "The First
+Appeal" and "The Last Appeal." In the first a kind of peasant lover is
+beseeching his "flame" to listen to his vows. She listens, but without
+encouraging a hope in the swain that he will prevail. Time is supposed
+to pass, leaving terrible traces of suffering--apparently to the verge
+of consumption--in the young man, who, on finding the girl at a well,
+makes his last, almost dying, appeal. He seizes her hand; but she turns
+away, deaf to his passionate beseeching.
+
+In the Leech drawing the composition of Stone's picture is exactly
+preserved; but in place of the lady we have Sir Robert Inglis, who turns
+away in horror from a young gentleman of a very marked Jewish type
+indeed.
+
+The present _Punch_ artists have greatly the advantage of Leech, in
+respect of the aid derivable from photography. In these days, there is
+scarcely a statesman whose photograph cannot be seen in the London
+shop-windows, to the great advantage of the political caricaturists of
+to-day. It was only at the latter part of Leech's time that photography
+became so generally used to familiarize us with the features of our
+legislators, and even then I doubt if Leech took much advantage of it.
+He had seen all these men, and a rough sketch in his note-book, aided by
+his marvellous memory, was sufficient to enable him to produce
+unmistakable likenesses.
+
+It remains for me to note some of the instances in which Leech's powers
+were brought to bear upon the social questions of the time--questions
+admitting of a humorous or a pathetic treatment, apart from those of a
+merely political character.
+
+In 1850 a motion by Lord Ashley, afterwards Shaftesbury, was carried
+against the Government by a majority of ninety-three to sixty-eight,
+ordering that the transmission and delivery of letters on Sunday should
+cease in all parts of the kingdom. The new law was acted upon for some
+weeks, and caused so much public inconvenience, and so great and
+indignant a popular outcry, that the obnoxious rules were rescinded.
+Leech took full advantage of the opportunity thus afforded him. His
+ready imagination supplied him with instances in which the operation of
+the new law would cause loss and suffering. This was shown in a drawing
+which, amongst other proofs, depicts a mother in great distress because
+she can have no news of her sick child. And when, in September, 1850,
+the obnoxious regulation was withdrawn, Leech celebrated the event in an
+admirable cartoon, in which the promoters, Lords Russell and Ashley,
+dressed as Puritans, are ruefully contemplating each other, Russell
+addressing his fellow-Puritan with, "Verily, Brother Ashley, between you
+and me and the _post_ we have made a nice mess of it!"
+
+The neglect of our troops during the Crimean campaign afforded the
+artist many humorous and tragic subjects. The Government was accused,
+rightly or wrongly, of many sins of omission and commission; amongst the
+rest, of not providing the army with clothing suitable to the terrible
+winter which it was sure to have to pass in front of Sebastopol. And
+one of Leech's most telling drawings represents two ragged soldiers
+shivering in the snow. One tells the other that news has arrived of a
+medal that is to be awarded. "Yes," says his comrade; "but they had much
+better send us a coat to put it on."
+
+Two pictures may be noted--one by Tenniel, which is infinitely pathetic,
+the other by Leech, ghastly in its contrast to the humorous side of the
+author's powers. The first represents a fashionable lady, whose
+magnificent ball-dress has just been fitted upon her by the dressmaker,
+who says:
+
+"We would not have disappointed your ladyship at any _sacrifice_, and
+the robe is finished À MERVEILLE."
+
+But the _sacrifice_! The lady turns to the looking-glass, wherein she
+sees the dress, and part of the cost of making it, in the appalling
+figure of the workwoman, whose haggard form leans back exhausted, dully
+lighted by a dying lamp, by the help of which all night long the lady
+has not been "_disappointed_."
+
+[Illustration: "THE JEW AND SKELETON TAILORS."]
+
+The sufferings of the workers, through which their employers so often
+became rich, touched the tender heart of Leech, and he never lost an
+opportunity of pointing out the selfish tyranny of both the men and
+women traders who almost ground the life out of their unhappy
+assistants.
+
+If John Leech could have entertained a prejudice against any human
+beings, it must have been against the Jewish race, for there is scarcely
+an instance in which he deals with the Jews that they do not suffer
+under his hand. The points of their physiognomy are rather cruelly
+prominent sometimes, even almost to caricature, and they are constantly
+placed in ludicrous positions. There can be no doubt that in some
+instances the tailor is no less a bloodsucker than the dressmaker, but I
+think there are as many, or more, Christian--or, rather,
+unchristian--tailors who "sweat" their workpeople as there are Jewish.
+However, in one of Leech's most powerful prints, he gives the _pas_ to
+the Jew, who watches a group of skeleton tailors as they labour in their
+bones for his benefit. It is a gruesome drawing, which, once seen, can
+never be forgotten.
+
+Leech was happily left to his own devices as regards the contributions
+to _Punch_, with the sole exception of the large cartoons, the subjects
+of which were always settled by the whole staff at a dinner, which took
+place every Wednesday. At this dinner no strangers were present. This
+was, and is still, the rule. Exceptions, however, were made on one or
+two occasions in favour of Charles Dickens, Sir Joseph Paxton, and some
+others.
+
+It was, of course, open to any member to suggest a subject, and in the
+early Leech days it is said that the discussions on a proposed theme
+waxed fast and furious, Thackeray and Douglas Jerrold generally taking
+opposite sides. The dinners were usually held in the front room of the
+first-floor of No. 11, Bouverie Street--the business-place of the
+proprietors of the paper--and the Bedford Hotel, Covent Garden, was
+sometimes honoured by the presence of the staff. During the summer
+months the dinners took place at Greenwich, Richmond, or Blackwall; and
+once a year there was a more comprehensive banquet, at which
+compositors, readers, printers, clerks, etc., assisted. This dinner was
+called the "Way-goose." I am speaking of long ago. Whether these details
+would apply to the present time I know not.
+
+I never knew Jerrold. I have frequently seen him, but always avoided an
+introduction; for, to speak the truth, I was afraid of him. I had heard
+so many stories of his making "dead sets" at new acquaintances as to
+disincline me to become one. By anybody quick at repartee I was told he
+was easily silenced, and an example was mentioned when a barmaid
+succeeded in stopping a torrent of "chaff" of which she was the victim.
+It appears that Jerrold went with some friends to a supper-room one
+night after the theatre. The supper was "topped up" with hot grog, which
+was served to the guests in large, old-fashioned rummers.
+
+"There," said the girl, as she placed the big glass before Jerrold,
+"there's your grog, and mind you don't fall into it."
+
+Jerrold was a very little man, and the hit told to the extent of dulling
+him for the rest of the evening.
+
+At the Wednesday dinner the whole of the contents of the forthcoming
+number of _Punch_ were discussed. When the cloth was removed and dessert
+laid upon the table, the first question put by the editor was:
+
+"What shall the cartoon be?"
+
+It is said of Tenniel that he rarely suggested a subject for the
+cartoon, but that the readiness with which he saw and explained the
+possibilities of a subject was remarkable. During the Indian Mutiny,
+Shirley Brooks proposed that the picture should represent the British
+Lion in the act of springing upon the native soldiers in revenge for the
+cruelties at Cawnpore. Tenniel rose to the occasion, and, as Brooks
+told me, he exclaimed, "By Jove, that will do for a double-page cut!"
+and a magnificent double-page drawing was made of it by him.
+
+In the inevitable difference of opinion that arose on the occasion of
+these dinners--the chief disputants being, as I have just observed,
+Thackeray and Jerrold--Jerrold, being the oldest as well as the
+noisiest, generally came off victorious. In these rows it is said to
+have required all the suavity of Mark Lemon to calm the storm, his award
+always being final. Jerrold used to say:
+
+"It's no use our quarrelling, for we must meet again and shake hands
+next Wednesday."
+
+The last editions of the evening papers were always brought in, so that
+the cartoon might apply to the latest date. On the Thursday morning
+following the editor called at the houses of the artists to see what was
+being done. On Friday night all copy was delivered and put into type,
+and at two o'clock on Saturday proofs were revised, the forms made up,
+and with the last movement of the engine the whole of the type was
+placed under the press, which could not be moved till the Monday
+morning.
+
+By means of the Wednesday meetings, the discussions arising on all
+questions helped both caricaturist and wit to take a broad view of
+things, as well as enabled the editor to get his team to draw well
+together and give uniformity of tone to all the contributions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE LAWYER'S STORY.
+
+
+By the courtesy of the proprietors of _Punch_, I am allowed to reproduce
+in this place a delightfully humorous drawing, the scene of which is
+laid in a barber's shop.
+
+This picture explains itself, but there is a circumstance connected with
+it which is, I think, well worth relating; and as I heard it from
+Leech's own lips at one of the pleasant Egg dinners, I will give it in
+Leech's own words, the strangeness of the incident having left a very
+vivid impression on my memory. The usual company--Dickens, Forster,
+Lemon, etc.--was present; Leech was singing. We had listened for some
+time to the inevitable "King Death," when Dickens exclaimed:
+
+"There, that will do; if you go on any longer, you will make me cry.
+Tell them about the lawyer who lost his client. Yes, I know the story,
+but they don't; and I would much rather hear it again than listen to
+any more of that lugubrious song."
+
+"Well, here goes," said Leech. "I suppose there is no one at this table
+who neglects to improve his mind by the weekly study of _Punch_; at any
+rate, all civilized people are familiar with the illustrations which
+adorn that famous periodical. Amongst those classical works the other
+day was a high-art drawing by me, representing a gentleman in a barber's
+shop, having his hair cut. In the course of talk peculiar to his
+fraternity, the little hairdresser remarks that his customer's hair _is
+very thin on the top_. This mild observation moved the object of it, a
+person of irascible temper, into ungovernable fury. He springs from his
+chair, which he upsets in the action, and flying at the terrified
+barber, he exclaims, 'Confound you, you puppy! Do you think I came here
+to be insulted and told of my imperfections? _I'll thin your top!_'
+
+[Illustration: "I'LL THIN YOUR TOP."]
+
+"Well, I don't see anything particularly facetious in the drawing, but a
+friend of mine, a lawyer in Bedford Row, did, and laughed whenever he
+thought of it. Unfortunately, the day on which the drawing was published
+had been fixed for a consultation upon a matter in which an old and
+respected client's interests were seriously involved. Legal points of
+extreme intricacy and difficulty were to be examined and discussed;
+hopes were to be encouraged, and anxiety appeased. In his information to
+his legal adviser, the client had arrived at a point of extreme gravity,
+when my unfortunate drawing obtruded itself upon the legal mind, and so
+disturbed it as to cause the lawyer to repress a laugh with much
+difficulty.
+
+"'I see you smile,' said the client. 'Surely the very serious character
+of the evidence which I put before you should strike you as convin----'
+
+"'Oh, I beg your pardon; I was not smiling.'
+
+"'Well, you did something very like it. I really must ask for your
+strictest attention to facts which are capable of such absolute----
+There you go again! My dear sir, what _can_ there be in my statement to
+cause a smile? Pray think of the gravity of the case--how deeply my
+interests are at stake--and give me your most serious attention.'
+
+"'I will--indeed I will,' said the lawyer, mentally devoting me and my
+drawing to the devil.
+
+"For some minutes the legal gentleman succeeded in banishing the little
+barber and his enraged victim; but suddenly they again ruthlessly seized
+upon his imagination, and he laughed aloud.
+
+"'Good God!' said the client; 'what is there to laugh at in that?'
+
+"'I assure you, sir, I was not laughing at what you told me, which is
+important indeed, but at a ludicrous idea that crossed my mind.'
+
+"'What business have ludicrous ideas in your mind when you require all
+its attention for business which--excuse my saying so--you are well paid
+for listening to?'
+
+"The consultation proceeded; graver and graver grew the details; when,
+at a moment of extreme importance, the barber came again upon the scene,
+and the lawyer laughed loud and long.
+
+"'It's no use; I can't get rid of it,' he said to his astonished and
+indignant visitor. 'There is a drawing in _Punch_ to-day that is so
+irresistibly funny that I can't get it out of my head, and I can't help
+laughing whenever I think of it.'
+
+"'I don't believe a single word you say!' said the angry client; 'and as
+you persist in treating my case with such insulting levity, I will go
+elsewhere, and endeavour to find someone who will attend to me. And as
+for you, sir, I will never trouble you again on this or any other
+matter.'
+
+"That," said Leech, "is how my friend lost his client."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+LOVE OF FIELD SPORTS.
+
+
+Leech had long passed his boyish days before his love for field sports
+showed itself in his works. I recollect his saying how fruitful of
+subject the hunting-field, the stubble, and the stream would prove to
+the artist who was also a sportsman. In his early works, dealing as they
+did chiefly with the London life of the street or the home, we find the
+horse playing an inferior part; and it was not till he felt the
+importance of varying his subjects, and of supplying the public with the
+sporting scenes they love so much, that, mounted by his friend Adams, he
+joined the "Puckeridge" and became one of the "field."
+
+Leech was a timid rider. He much preferred an open gate to a thickset
+hedge, and the highroad to either. He must, however, have frequently
+been in full career with the "field"; how otherwise could he have
+acquired his knowledge of the thorough sportsman's seat on horseback,
+the cut of his clothes--correct even to the number of buttons--and,
+above all, display that Heaven-gifted power of showing the horse in
+repose, as well as in all the varieties of action? Landseer and all the
+animal-painters within my knowledge studied the horse from casts, often
+from the Elgin marbles, before they attempted drawing from the living
+animal. Landseer made himself acquainted with the superficial structure
+by dissection; but Leech, without any preparatory study whatever, drew
+the hunter, the cab-horse, the hackney, the rough pony, the cob--no
+matter which--in absolute perfection.
+
+[Illustration: "GIVE HER HER HEAD, JACK."]
+
+In the autograph letters which, through Mr. Adams' kindness, I am
+permitted to publish, Leech's constant charge to his friend to get him a
+horse suitable to a "timid, elderly gentleman," or to give the animal
+some preliminary gallops himself so as to take the _freshness_ out of
+him, prove, as I said before, that Leech was anything but a daring
+rider. In spite of his care, however, he had some ugly falls, in which,
+happily, his hat was the greatest sufferer. Numbers of the hunting
+scenes were _facts_, and the persons represented were Leech and his
+friend--notably one in which the artist is riding a mare afflicted
+with the "freshness" he dreaded, which his friend observing, shouts,
+"Give her her head, Jack! give her her head!" while it is pretty evident
+that more "head" will lead to the rider being swept from the saddle by
+the branches through which the mare is plunging.
+
+
+  "Barlow, Derbyshire,
+  "July, 1852.
+
+  "MY DEAR CHARLEY,
+
+     "You will see from the above address that I am still rusticating. I
+     expect to be in town soon after the 12th of August, and then, after
+     I have done my month's work, I am your man. You say when, and, if
+     you are quite sure it will not distress Mrs. Adams, I will bring my
+     wife with me. Charles Eaton [Mrs. Leech's brother] says he will
+     come too. I am sure nothing would please him more than to run down
+     to Barkway. Don't make yourself uncomfortable about the quantity of
+     sport. I shall be quite satisfied with what you offer me. I rejoice
+     to hear such good accounts of your wife and little ones. Pray give
+     our united regards to her and them, and believe me ever,
+
+  "Yours faithfully,
+
+  "JOHN LEECH."
+
+[Illustration: "OH, IF THIS IS ONE OF THE PLACES CHARLEY SPOKE OF, I
+SHALL GO BACK!"]
+
+Yet another fact. Somewhere in the Puckeridge country there is a deep
+gully, or dried-up water-course, with precipitous sides, with which
+Leech, one hunting-morning, found himself face to face. Some of the
+"field" had crossed, and were climbing the opposite bank. Leech pulled
+up, and said to his friend:
+
+"Oh, if this is one of the places Charley spoke of, I shall go back!"
+
+I am able here to give the rough sketch, now in Mr. Adams' possession,
+from which the drawing was taken that afterwards appeared in _Punch_.
+
+Some years ago I took my exercise chiefly on horseback, and, after
+risking my neck several times from the "freshness" of a thoroughbred
+mare, I thought it best to get rid of her. Amongst the rest of my horsey
+friends, I thought Leech would be likely to know of an animal that might
+suit me, and I spoke to him on the subject. Leech soon succeeded, and
+sent the horse for my inspection. The man who brought the animal for
+approval assured me that a child could ride him with perfect safety. I
+liked his looks, and bought him. My first and last ride upon my new
+purchase was to Rotten Row in the height of the season. Whether he was a
+horse of Radical or Socialistic principles, or not, I cannot say; but
+what I soon discovered was a determined dislike to the aristocratic
+company in which he found himself; he shied at the ladies and kicked at
+the gentlemen, and finally took to what is called "buck-jumping," an
+amusement which would speedily have relieved him of my company if I had
+not taken advantage of a momentary cessation of his antics and safely
+descended from his detestable back. Leech soon heard of "the dangers I
+had passed," when he wrote to me as follows:
+
+
+  "6, The Terrace, Kensington,
+  "Sunday.
+
+  "MY DEAR FRITH,
+
+     "I was shocked last night at the Garrick to hear from Elmore that I
+     had nearly killed you through recommending a horse which had
+     misbehaved himself in the Park. To be sure, I told you that I had
+     been to look at an animal for my little girl, and that it did not
+     suit, and I told you that it might be worth your looking at, as I
+     had heard that it was young, sound, and steady; but if you ride a
+     beast that you know nothing about in Rotten Row, and if that beast
+     has not been out for a week, or probably a fortnight, I must
+     protest against being made answerable for the consequences. I most
+     sincerely hope, however, that you are not hurt or come to grief in
+     any way.
+
+  "Believe me,
+  "Yours always,
+  "JOHN LEECH."
+
+It goes without saying that so true-hearted a man as John Leech, would
+be--as indeed he was--a model of the domestic virtues--the best of
+husbands and fathers, and a most dutiful and affectionate son. In
+evidence of the latter, I put before my readers some letters written to
+his parents in his maturer years, which will amply justify what I say of
+him.
+
+
+  "32, Brunswick Square,
+  "February 25, 1854.
+
+  "MY DEAR PAPA,
+
+     "I am sure you will be glad to hear that you have a little
+     granddaughter.
+
+     "She came into the world at a quarter-past eleven o'clock--just
+     now--and she is, with dear Annie (to me a _novel_ phrase), 'as well
+     as can be expected.'
+
+  "Kind love to all.
+  "Your affectionate son
+  "JOHN.
+
+"Tell Polly that the flag will be hoisted!"
+
+
+  "8, St. Nicholas Cliff, Scarboro',
+  "August 30, 1858.
+
+  "MY DEAR MAMMA,
+
+     "Thank you with my best love for thinking of my birthday. I hope
+     you will be able to wish me happy returns of the day for many and
+     many a year to come. The children gave your kisses very heartily, I
+     assure you. You will be glad to hear, I am sure, that they were
+     never better.
+
+     "Thank God they are thriving beautifully, which is a great
+     happiness to me. I wish you could see them making dirt pies and
+     gardens on the sands. A great many people notice them--indeed,
+     although I say it, between you and me, I don't see any nicer little
+     folks down here. If either you or papa could come here for a time
+     we would endeavour to take the best care of you. I am no great hand
+     at pen-and-inking, as you know, so you will excuse a very short
+     note. I thought, however, that you would like to know that I got
+     from Ireland safe and sound, and always believe me,
+
+  "My dear mamma,
+  "Your affectionate son,
+  "JOHN."
+
+
+  "1, Crescent, Scarboro',
+  "August 29, 1859.
+
+  "MY DEAR MAMMA,
+
+     "It would be a great comfort to me, and I think it would be
+     pleasant for you, if you would come here and see us for as long as
+     you can spare the time. I want very much to go into the north, but
+     I do not like leaving Annie quite alone with the chicks. We can
+     give you a bed in, I think you will say, a tolerably comfortable
+     house. Come as soon as you can, and stay as long as you can. I
+     think it would do you good; only bring warm things, as when it is
+     cold here, it is very cold. By the way, it is my birthday. What
+     shall I say? Well, I wish you many happy returns of the day, and
+     believe me, with best love from all to all,
+
+  "Your affectionate son,
+  "JOHN."
+
+
+  "5, Pleydell Gardens,
+  "Sandgate Road, Folkestone,
+  "August 29, 1862.
+
+  "MY DEAR MAMMA,
+
+     "Many thanks for your note this morning. You will be glad to know,
+     I am sure, that it found us all very well. May you be able to send
+     me such a congratulation for many a year to come. And with best
+     love to you, and to all at home, believe me ever,
+
+  "Your affectionate son,
+
+  "JOHN.
+
+     "Tell papa that if he would like to run down here, we can give him
+     a bed. He would like to see a couple of little brown faces. I am
+     going away for a few days (on Monday, I think); so if any of you
+     could keep Annie with the chicks, and keep her company while I am
+     absent, it would be very nice, I think."
+
+A great deal has been said--and with a certain amount of truth, no
+doubt--about the difference between a drawing on wood as it leaves the
+hands of the artist, and as it appears after its sufferings at the hands
+of the wood-engraver. Leech is reported to have replied to an admiring
+friend, who was extolling one of his drawings:
+
+"Ah, wait till you see what it looks like in _Punch_ next week."
+
+I once saw one of Leech's drawings on the wood, and I afterwards saw it
+in _Punch_, and I remember wondering at the fidelity with which it was
+rendered. Some of the lines, finer than the finest hair, had been cut
+away or _thickened_, but the character, the vigour, and the beauty were
+scarcely damaged. To Mr. Swain, who for many years cut all Leech's
+drawings, the artist owed and acknowledged obligation; he thought
+himself fortunate in avoiding certain other wood-cutters, who were
+somewhat remorseless in their operations.
+
+Mr. Swain, the wood-engraver, writes:
+
+     "For twenty-five years I engraved nearly all Mr. Leech's drawings.
+     I always found him kind, and willing to forgive any of my
+     shortcomings in not rendering his touches in all things. My work
+     was always against time. I seldom had more time than two days to
+     engrave one of his drawings in.
+
+     "Photographing drawings on wood was not known in his time, or it
+     would have been a great advantage to him; instead of drawing on the
+     block, he would then have drawn on paper, as most artists do in the
+     present day, and had his drawings photographed on the wood, thus
+     preserving the finished drawings, which would have been of great
+     value now; besides, it would have been a great help to the
+     engraver, always to have the original drawing to refer to in
+     engraving the blocks.
+
+     "He never had any models, and rarely ever made any sketches. He
+     showed me a little note-book once with a few thumb-nail sketches of
+     bits of background, but he seemed never to forget anything he saw,
+     and could always go back in his memory for any little bit of
+     country street he might want for background, etc.
+
+     "It was generally very late in the week before he could get his
+     drawings ready, which gave very little time to the engraver to do
+     justice to his work.
+
+     "His first introduction to _Punch_ was through Mr. Percival Leigh.
+
+     "Mr. Leech was a man of very nervous temperament. I will give you
+     an instance of this. Mr. Mark Lemon told me one day that Leech had
+     been invited to a gentleman's house in the country for a few days'
+     hunting. He arrived there in the evening. He was awakened early in
+     the morning by a grating noise made by the gardener rolling the
+     gravel under his window--noise he could never endure. This had such
+     an effect upon his nerves, that he got up, packed his things, and
+     was off to town before any of the family were aware of it. A
+     barrel-organ was to him an instrument of torture.
+
+     "He had lived in Russell Square for many years, but for some time
+     before his death he took a large house--6, The Terrace, Kensington.
+
+     "I remember going to see him at his new house. He took great
+     delight in showing me over it, and pointing out that he had had
+     double windows put in all over the house _to keep all noises
+     out_."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+INVENTORS AND ILLUSTRATORS.
+
+
+In looking at the plethora of lovely women's faces in the "Pictures of
+Life and Character," the spectator may fairly ask himself to realize, if
+he can, anything more exquisite; and if he fail, he will also fail to
+imagine that the charming creatures could have suffered much in their
+passage from the wood to the paper.
+
+I have said elsewhere that Charles Dickens was an occasional guest at
+the _Punch_ Wednesday dinners; he was also an intimate friend of several
+of the writers, notably of Leech, Lemon, and Douglas Jerrold. Dickens
+was, of course, one of Thackeray's warmest admirers, but I am pretty
+sure that the friendship between those great men could never have
+reached intimacy. Though Leech failed in his application for the post of
+illustrator of the "Pickwick Papers," he showed himself to be at one
+with the great writer in the etchings and woodcuts with which he
+ornamented Dickens' Christmas books, in conjunction with Stanfield,
+Maclise, Cattermole, and others. Though Leech's etchings are inferior as
+works of art to his wood-drawings, they still show the same beauty, and
+perfect realization of character; in this assertion I am borne out by
+the illustrations in the "Christmas Carol," and by those in the "Haunted
+Man and the Battle of Life."
+
+In my own profession I have observed, almost as a rule, that the artist
+who habitually invents his own subjects--in other words, draws upon
+himself for original ideas--generally fails, comparatively, in his
+attempts to realize the ideas of others. May I not say the same of many
+writers? Dickens, for instance, wrote of the life about him; but if,
+like Scott, he had attempted to revive the past, would he have produced
+work worthy to rank with "David Copperfield"? Scott seems to me a still
+more conspicuous supporter of my theory, for he tried modern life in
+"St. Ronan's Well," and produced a book incontestably inferior to
+"Kenilworth."
+
+Our historical painters have almost invariably failed in their attempts
+upon everyday life; this extends even to the painters of _genre_.
+Witness the works of the elder Leslie, who painted scenes from
+Shakespeare, Molière, and the poets of the last century, with a success
+that would have delighted the authors; but when he sought inspiration
+from the life about him, the result was far from
+satisfactory--conspicuous, indeed, in its contrast with his perfect
+rendering, of "Sir Roger de Coverley" or "Uncle Toby," and the alluring
+"Widow Wadman."
+
+But the greatest of English painters is the greatest help to me in the
+contention into which I venture to enter. Hogarth was beguiled by a
+spirit, which must have been evil, into painting huge Scripture
+subjects. The _size_ of these pictures, always of the proportion of full
+life, was unsuited to his hand, while the themes became ludicrous under
+his treatment. He failed completely also as an illustrator, witness his
+designs from "Hudibras." In the Bristol Gallery, and in the Foundling
+Hospital, these specimens of perverted genius may be seen; and no one
+can look at them without regret that time should have been so
+misspent--time which might have given us another immortal series like
+the "Marriage à la Mode."
+
+[Illustration: _Jack Johnson's attempt to rescue Derval._]
+
+I fancy I can hear my readers say--And what has all this to do with John
+Leech? Well, this: Leech is now about to pose as the destroyer, in his
+own person, of my theory--he is, in fact, the exception to my rule;
+for though the incidents in Albert Smith's "Ledbury" and "Brinvilliers"
+bear no comparison in human interest with the delightful transcripts of
+real life to be found in such profusion in the pictures of "Life and
+Character," Leech's rendering of them could not be surpassed.
+
+The tragic and humorous powers of the artist are fully displayed in the
+examples which follow. In the first, from "Ledbury," "Jack Johnson
+attempts to rescue Derval": the awful swirl of the river as it engulfs
+the drowning man, while his would-be rescuer, finding the stream too
+strong for him, clings frantically to a ring in the stonework of the
+bridge, a full moon lightning up the scene, and throwing the Pont Neuf
+which spans the Seine in the distance into deep shadow--all are combined
+with admirable skill into, perhaps, the most powerful etching and the
+most perfect illustration in the book.
+
+In the second example the artist is in full sympathy with his
+author--"Mrs. De Robinson holds a Conversazione of Talented People;" and
+amongst them is "the foreign gentleman who executes an air upon the
+grand piano." Here we have Leech using the scene as a peg upon which he
+can hang the humorous character in which he takes such hearty, healthy
+delight. The performer himself is scarcely a caricature of the foreign
+pianist; while his audience, not forgetting the deaf old lady in the
+corner--includes the affected gentleman, whose soul is in Elysium;
+together with a variety of types, in which "lovely woman" is not
+forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+"INGOLDSBY LEGENDS."
+
+
+In the "Ingoldsby Legends" Leech found a very congenial field for the
+exercise of his powers. Though I will not presume to prophesy respecting
+literary merit, I venture to think that, during the course of his
+practice, Leech's illustrations have occasionally appeared attached to
+literature scarcely worthy of them; they will, doubtless, in some cases,
+act as the salt, which will preserve for posterity certain books of an
+ephemeral character. This remark cannot apply to the "Ingoldsby
+Legends," which is a work that "the world will not willingly let die,"
+until delightful wit and humour, wedded to no less delightful verse,
+cease to charm. The burden of the illustrations of the "Legends" falls
+upon the worthy shoulders of John Tenniel, and they show some of the
+strongest work of that admirable artist. Leech appears in diminished
+force as to numbers, but in the examples I give he leaves nothing to
+wish for.
+
+         "For, only see there! in the midst of the Square,
+          Where, perch'd upon poles six feet high in the air,
+     Sit, chained to the stake, some two, three, or four pair
+     Of wretches, whose eyes, nose, complexion, and hair
+     Their Jewish descent but too plainly declare;
+     Each clothed in a garment more frightful by far, a
+     Smock-frock sort of gaberdine called a _Samarra_,
+     With three times the number of devils upon it--
+     A proportion observed on the sugar-loaf bonnet;
+     With this further distinction, of mischief a proof,
+     That every fiend-Jack stands upright on his hoof!
+         While the picture flames, spread over body and head,
+     Are three times as crooked, and three times as red!
+     All, too, pointing upwards, as much as to say,
+     'Here's the real _bonne-bouche_ of the Auto da Fé!'
+
+    "Torquemada, meanwhile, with his cold, cruel smile,
+     Sits looking on calmly, and watching the pile,
+     As his hooded 'Familiars' (their names, as some tell, come
+     From their being so much more 'familiar' than 'welcome')
+         Have by this begun to be 'poking their fun,'
+     And their fire-brands, as if they were so many posies
+         Of lilies and roses, up to the noses
+     Of Lazarus Levi and Moses Ben Moses,
+     And similar treatment is forcing out hollow moans
+     From Aby Ben Lasco and Ikey Ben Solomons,
+     Whose beards--this a black, that inclining to grizzle--
+     Are smoking and curling, and all in a frizzle;
+     The King, at the same time, his Dons and his Visitors,
+     Sit, sporting smiles, like the Holy Inquisitors!"
+
+
+  "16, Lansdowne Place, Brighton,
+
+  "September 3, 1863.
+
+  "MY DEAR SIR,
+
+     "I have been obliged to make the 'Auto da Fé' this size, as I found
+     I could not possibly get the subject on to a small block. You will
+     see, too, that I have altered the appearance of the victims. It
+     occurred to me that a real human being burning alive was hardly
+     fun, so I have made them a set of Guy Fawkeses, and added, I hope,
+     to the humour while getting rid of the horror.
+
+  "Believe me, my dear Sir,
+
+  "Yours faithfully,
+
+  "JOHN LEECH.
+
+  "RICHARD BENTLEY, ESQ."
+
+In the second example we have the figure of a maid at a well, which
+Leech has given us with the charm that never fails him. Her astonishment
+at the head in the bucket might have been indicated more forcibly, but
+there, I fancy, the engraver must have been to blame; yet he gives the
+head of Gengulphus with such perfection of expression and character as
+to make one feel that the original drawing of it could scarcely have
+been better.
+
+    A LAY OF ST. GENGULPHUS.
+
+    "But scarce had she given the windlass a twirl,
+       'Ere Gengulphus's head, from the well's bottom said,
+     In mild accents, 'Do help us out, that's a good girl!'
+
+[Illustration]
+
+    "Only fancy her dread when she saw a great head
+       In her bucket--with fright she was ready to drop!
+     Conceive, if you can, how she roared and she ran,
+       With the head rolling after her, bawling out 'Stop!'"
+
+As this memoir progresses I propose to submit further illustrations
+from some of the many serials, novels, tales, poems, etc., with which
+Leech was connected. I also propose, in the course of my narrative, to
+quote opinions of Leech's powers from men better qualified to judge of
+them, and able to express their opinions in far more felicitous language
+than mine. Amongst those Dickens takes a foremost place. I think the
+friendship between Leech and Dickens began very early in the life of the
+former; the nature of Leech's work, and the modest and gentle character
+of the man, were especially attractive to Dickens.
+
+In the amateur company of actors formed by Dickens, Leech was a
+conspicuous figure; but his heart was not in the work, though he
+entirely sympathized with the object of it, which was of a charitable
+nature, resulting in many performances--very successful in a pecuniary
+sense--for the benefit of poor and deserving literary men. The company
+consisted of Dickens, Mark Lemon, John Forster, G. H. Lewis, Douglas
+Jerrold, Leech, Egg, Wilkie Collins, Frank Stone, and others, who
+christened themselves "The Guild of Literature and Art." The late Lord
+Lytton took great interest in the Guild, for which he wrote a play
+called "Not so Bad as We Seem; or, Many Sides to a Character," and to
+this he added a gift of land on his estate in Hertfordshire, where some
+houses of a superior cottage form were built, in which decayed artists
+and authors were to end their days; but these gentlemen declined to
+_begin_ any days there under the conditions prescribed; and when the
+houses were built, tenants for them could not be found. The Guild,
+therefore, was something of a fiasco, with the exception of the relief
+it afforded in several instances to worthy objects.
+
+Leech acted in the first play that the amateurs ventured upon, no less
+than Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his Humour," in which Dickens played
+Bobadil and Leech Master Matthew. This occurred about 1847, I think, and
+I was honoured by an invitation to the first or second performance. _Par
+parenthèse_, I may add that I had the honour of being asked to join the
+company, but feeling that I could not learn a part, or, if I did get
+over that difficulty, the footlights would paralyze my memory, and also
+having neither face nor figure for the stage, I thought it best to
+"stick to my last."
+
+Though Leech had a good part in "Every Man," strange to say, I have no
+recollection of his performance; though that of Dickens, Jerrold, Egg,
+and others remains vividly in my memory. Dickens gave proofs in
+Bobadil, and in many other characters, that he might have been a great
+actor. The same, nor anything like it, could not be said with truth of
+Leech, if he played his other parts no better than he did that of
+Slender in the "Merry Wives of Windsor." It is only in that character
+that I can remember him, though I must have seen him in others. The tone
+in which he said "Oh, sweet Anne Page!" can I ever forget? There was a
+ring of impatience in his performance, a kind of "Oh, I wish this was
+all over!" that was plainly perceptible to those who knew him
+intimately. Leech's tall figure and handsome face told well upon the
+stage, but with those his attractions as an actor ceased. In Lord
+Lytton's play Leech had no part, I think, but my old friend Egg played
+that of a poor poet, who is discovered in a miserable attic when the
+curtain rises, and the poet soliloquizes to the effect that "Years ago,
+when under happier circumstances"--something or other. Egg always begun,
+"Here's a go, when under," etc. Unlike Leech, Egg was fond of acting,
+but, like Leech, he displayed no capacity for the art.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+DICKENS AND THACKERAY ON LEECH.
+
+
+Perhaps the most striking difference between Leech and the caricaturists
+who preceded him, as well as those who were his contemporaries, was
+shown in the part that beauty played in every drawing in which it could
+be appropriately introduced; he may be credited with the creation of
+many of the loveliest creatures that ever fell from the pencil of an
+artist. Leech revelled in beauty as Gillray and Rowlandson revelled in
+ugliness.
+
+In 1841 a work appeared, in book-form, of sketches by Leech, entitled
+"The Rising Generation," in which the rising youth, with their mannish
+manners, were satirized. Of this book Dickens wrote:
+
+"We enter our protest against those of the rising generation who are
+precociously in love being made the subject of merriment by a pitiless
+and unsympathizing world. We never saw a boy more distinctly in the
+right than the young gentleman kneeling in the chair to beg a lock of
+hair from his pretty cousin to take back to school. Madness is in her
+apron, and Virgil, dog-eared and defaced, is in her ringlets. Doubts may
+suggest themselves of the perfect disinterestedness of the other young
+gentleman contemplating the fair girl at the piano--doubts engendered by
+his worldly allusion to 'tin,' although that may have arisen in his
+modest consciousness of his own inability to support an establishment;
+but that he should be 'deucedly inclined to go and cut that fellow out'
+appears to us one of the most natural emotions of the human breast. The
+young gentleman with the dishevelled hair and clasped hands, who loves
+the transcendent beauty with the bouquet and can't be happy without her,
+is to us a withering and desolate spectacle. Who _could_ be happy
+without her? The growing youths are not less happily observed and
+depicted than the grown women. The languid little creature, who 'hasn't
+danced since he was quite a boy,' is perfect; and the eagerness of the
+small dancer, whom he declines to receive for a partner at the hands of
+the glorious old lady of the house (the little feet quite ready for the
+first position, the whole heart projected into the quadrille, and the
+glance peeping timidly at the desired one out of a flutter of hope and
+doubt), is quite delightful to look at. The intellectual youth, who
+awakens the tremendous wrath of a Norma of private life by considering
+woman an inferior animal, is lecturing at the present moment, we
+understand, on the Concrete in connection with the Will. The legs of the
+young philosopher who considers Shakespeare an overrated man were seen
+by us dangling over the side of an omnibus last Tuesday. We have no
+acquaintance with the scowling young gentleman, who is clear that 'if
+his governor don't like the way he is going on, why, he must have
+chambers and so much a week;' but, if he is not by this time in Van
+Diemen's Land, he will certainly go to it through Newgate. We should
+exceedingly dislike to have personal property in a strong-box, to live
+in the quiet suburb of Camberwell, and to be in the relation of bachelor
+uncle to that youth. In all his designs, whatever Mr. Leech desires to
+do he does. His drawing seems to us charming, and the expression,
+indicated by the simplest means, is exactly the natural expression, and
+is recognised as such at once. Some forms of our existing life will
+never have a better chronicler. His wit is good-natured, and always the
+wit of a gentleman. He has a becoming sense of responsibility and
+restraint; he delights in agreeable things, and he imparts some pleasant
+air of his own to things not pleasant in themselves; he is suggestive
+and full of matter, and he is always improving. Into the tone as well as
+into the execution of what he does, he has brought a certain elegance
+which is altogether new, without involving any compromise of what is
+true. Popular art in England has not had so rich an acquisition."
+
+In the endeavour to satisfy Dickens with the type required for the
+characters in his stories, Leech encountered the difficulty that all the
+author's illustrators had to master. "Phiz" made many drawings in
+Dickens' presence before he could realize the author's idea of Mr.
+Dombey; Cruikshank was more than once required to redraw a whole scene
+from "Oliver Twist"; and Leech has often been heard to speak of the
+minute details as to feature, height, thinness or fatness--in fact,
+every physical and, so far as it could be shown by appearance, mental
+quality--that Dickens insisted upon before he could be satisfied with
+the _vera effigies_ of one of his characters. The feelings of the great
+author, then, may be imagined when he found--too late for correction--a
+terrible error into which Leech had fallen in the drawing of a scene
+from "The Battle of Life," by introducing a personage into a scene which
+closes the second part of the tale, who was not intended to have been
+present.
+
+It was in December, 1846, that "The Battle of Life" made one of the
+series of Christmas stories. In Leech's unfortunate illustration, which
+represented the flight of the bride, he made the mistake of supposing
+that Michael Warden had taken part in the elopement, and introduced his
+figure with that of Marian. Leech's error was not discovered until too
+late for remedy, the publication of the book having been delayed to the
+utmost limit expressly for those drawings; and it is highly
+characteristic of Dickens, and of the true regard he had for the artist,
+that, knowing the pain he must inflict, under the circumstances, by
+complaining, he never reproached Leech; excusing him, no doubt, on the
+ground of the hurry and confusion under which so much of his work was
+produced; but anyone who reads the story carefully will see what havoc
+the mistake makes of one of the most delicate turns in it.
+
+Dickens wrote thus to Forster in reference to the grievous error: "When
+I first saw it, it was with a horror and agony not to be expressed. Of
+course, I need not tell _you_, my dear fellow, that Warden had no
+business in the elopement scene; he was never there. In the first hot
+sweat of this surprise and novelty, I was going to implore that the
+printing of that sheet might be stopped, and the figure taken out of the
+block; but when I thought of the pain this might give to our
+kind-hearted Leech, and that what is such a monstrous enormity to me as
+never entered my brain, may not so present itself to others, I became
+more composed, though the fact is wonderful to me. No doubt a great
+number of copies will be printed by the time this reaches you, and
+therefore I shall take it for granted that it stands as it is. Leech
+otherwise is very good, and the illustrations altogether are by far the
+best that have been done for any of my Christmas books."
+
+It may appear presumptuous in me to differ from Dickens in respect to
+the illustrations to "The Battle of Life"; but, in my opinion, these are
+not to be compared favourably with those of the "Christmas Carol." With
+the well-known readiness of people to ferret out mistakes, it seems
+strange that the illustrator's mistake was never publicly noticed.
+
+The first series of "The Pictures of Life and Character," reprinted from
+_Punch_, appeared in 1854. They were heartily welcomed by the public;
+and it is as follows that Thackeray, Leech's intimate friend, speaks of
+them in the _Quarterly Review_, in an article published at that time:
+
+"This book is better than plum-cake at Christmas. It is one enduring
+plum-cake, which you may eat, and which you may slice and deliver to
+your friends, and to which, having cut it, you may come again, and
+welcome, from year's end to year's end. In the frontispiece you see Mr.
+Punch examining the pictures in his gallery--a portly, well-dressed,
+middle-aged, respectable gentleman, in a white neck-cloth and a polite
+evening costume, smiling in a very bland and agreeable manner upon one
+of his pleasant drawings, taken out of one of his handsome portfolios.
+Mr. Punch has very good reason to smile at the work and be satisfied
+with the artist. Mr. Leech, his chief contributor, and some hundred
+humorists, with pencil and pen, have served Mr. Punch admirably. There
+is no blinking the fact that in Mr. Punch's cabinet John Leech is the
+right-hand man.
+
+"Fancy a number of _Punch_ without John Leech's pictures! What would you
+give for it? The learned gentlemen who wrote the book must feel that
+without him it were as well left alone. Look at the rivals whom the
+popularity of _Punch_ has brought into the field--the direct imitators
+of Mr. Leech's manner--the artists with a manner of their own. How
+inferior their pencils are to his humour in depicting the public
+manners, in arresting and amusing the nation! The truth, the strength,
+the free vigour, the kind humour, the John Bull pluck and spirit of that
+hand are approached by no competitor. With what dexterity he draws a
+horse, a woman, a child! He feels them all, so to speak, like a man.
+What plump young beauties those are with which Mr. Punch's chief
+contributor supplies the old gentleman's pictorial harem! What famous
+thews and sinews Mr. Punch's horses have, and how Briggs on the back of
+them scampers across the country! You see youth, strength, enjoyment,
+manliness, in those drawings, and in none more so, to our thinking, than
+in the hundred pictures of children which this artist loves to design.
+Like a brave, hearty, good-natured Briton, he becomes quite soft and
+tender with the little creatures, pats gently their little golden heads,
+and watches with unfailing pleasure their ways, their jokes, laughter,
+caresses. _Enfants terribles_ come home from Eton, young miss practising
+her first flirtation, poor little ragged Polly making dirt-pies in the
+gutter, or staggering under the weight of her nurse-child, who is as big
+as herself--all these little ones, patrician and plebeian, meet with
+kindness from this kind heart, and are watched with curious anxiety by
+this amiable observer.
+
+"Now, anyone who looks over Mr. Leech's portfolio must see that the
+social pictures which he gives us are authentic. What comfortable little
+drawing-rooms and dining-rooms, what snug libraries, we enter! What fine
+young gentlemanly wags they are, those beautiful little dandies, who
+wake up gouty old grandpapa to ring the bell; who decline aunt's pudding
+and custards, saying that they will reserve themselves for anchovy-toast
+with the claret; who talk together behind ball-room doors, where Fred
+whispers Charley, pointing to a dear little partner seven years old, 'My
+dear Charley, she has very much gone off; you should have seen that girl
+last season!'
+
+"Look well at the economy of the famous Mr. Briggs. How snug, quiet, and
+appropriate all the appointments are! What a comfortable, neat, clean,
+middle-class house Briggs' is (in the Bayswater suburb of London, we
+should guess from the sketches of the surrounding scenery)! What a good
+stable he has, with a loose-box for those celebrated hunters which he
+rides! How pleasant, clean, and warm his breakfast-table looks! What a
+trim maid brings in the boots that horrify Mrs. B.! What a snug
+dressing-room he has, complete in all its appointments, and in which he
+appears trying on that delightful hunting-cap which Mrs. Briggs flings
+into the fire! How cosy all the Briggs party seem in their drawing-room,
+Briggs reading a treatise on dog-breaking by a lamp, mamma and grannie
+with their respective needlework, the children clustering round a big
+book of prints--a great book of prints such as this before us, at this
+season, must make thousands of children happy by as many firesides! The
+inner life of all these people is represented. Leech draws them as
+naturally as Teniers depicts Dutch boors, or Morland pigs and stables.
+It is your house and mine; we are looking at everybody's family circle.
+Our boys, coming from school, give themselves such airs, the young
+scapegraces! Our girls, going to parties, are so tricked out by fond
+mammas--a social history of London in the middle of the nineteenth
+century. As such future students--lucky they to have a book so
+pleasant!--will regard these pages; even the mutations of fashion they
+may follow here, if they be so inclined. Mr. Leech has as fine an eye
+for tailory and millinery as for horseflesh. How they change, these
+cloaks and bonnets! How we have to pay milliners' bills from year to
+year! Where are those prodigious _chatelaines_ of 1850, which no lady
+could be without? Where are those charming waistcoats, those _stunning_
+waistcoats, which our young girls used to wear a few seasons back, and
+which caused 'Gus, in the sweet little sketch of 'La Mode,' to ask Ellen
+for her tailor's address? 'Gus is a young warrior by this time, very
+likely facing the enemy at Inkerman; and pretty Ellen, and that love of
+a sister of hers, are married and happy, let us hope, superintending one
+of those delightful nursery scenes which our artist depicts with such
+tender humour. Fortunate artist, indeed! You see he must have been bred
+at a good public school, and that he has ridden many a good horse in his
+day; paid, no doubt out of his own pocket, for the originals of those
+lovely caps and bonnets; and watched paternally the ways, smiles,
+frolics, and slumbers of his favourite little people.
+
+"As you look at the drawings, secrets come out of them--private jokes,
+as it were, imparted to you by the author for your special delectation.
+How remarkably, for instance, has Mr. Leech observed the hairdressers of
+the present age! Mr. Tongs, whom that hideous old bald woman who ties on
+her bonnet at the glass informs that 'she has used the whole bottle of
+Balm of California, but her hair comes off yet'--you can see the bears'
+grease not only on Tongs' head, but on his hands, which he is clapping
+clammily together. Remark him who is telling his client 'there is
+cholera in the hair,' and that lucky rogue whom that young lady bids to
+cut off a long thick piece--for somebody, doubtless. All these men are
+different and delightfully natural and absurd. Why should hairdressing
+be an absurd profession?
+
+"The amateur will remark what an excellent part hands play in Mr.
+Leech's pieces; his admirable actors use them with perfect naturalness.
+Look at Betty putting down the urn; at cook laying her hands upon the
+kitchen-table, whilst the policeman grumbles at the cold meat. They are
+cooks' and housemaids' hands without mistake, and not without a certain
+beauty, too. That bald old lady tying on her bonnet at Tongs' has hands
+which you see are trembling. Watch the fingers of the two old harridans
+who are talking scandal; for what long years they have pointed out holes
+in their neighbours' dresses and mud on their flounces!
+
+"'Here's a go! I've lost my diamond ring!'
+
+"As the dustman utters this pathetic cry and looks at his hands, you
+burst out laughing. These are among the little points of humour. One
+could indicate hundreds of such as one turns over the pleasant pages.
+
+"There is a little snob, or gent, whom we all of us know, who wears
+little tufts on his little chin, outrageous pins and pantaloons, smokes
+cigars on tobacconists' counters, sucks his cane in the streets, struts
+about with Mrs. Snob and the baby (the latter an immense woman, whom
+Snob nevertheless bullies), who is a favourite abomination of Leech, and
+pursued by that savage humourist into a thousand of his haunts. There he
+is choosing at the tailor's--such waistcoats! Yonder he is giving a
+shilling to the sweeper who calls him 'Capting.' Now he is offering a
+paletot to a huge giant who is going out in the rain. They don't know
+their own pictures very likely; if they did, they would have a meeting,
+and thirty or forty of them would be deputed to thrash Mr. Leech. One
+feels a pity for the poor little bucks.
+
+"Just one word to the unwary specially to note the backgrounds of
+landscapes in Leech's drawings--homely drawings of moor and wood and
+sea-shore and London street--the scenes of his little dramas. They are
+as excellently true to nature as the actors themselves. Our respect for
+the genius and humour which invented both increases as we look and look
+again at the designs. May we have more of them--more pleasant Christmas
+volumes over which we and our children may laugh together! Can we have
+too much of truth and fun and beauty and kindness?"
+
+In this delightfully appreciative spirit wrote Thackeray--a man of
+profounder genius than Leech--of his friend's work. It is said that when
+he was asked to name the most intimate and dearest friend of his life,
+Thackeray replied, "John Leech."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+DEAN HOLE.
+
+
+In 1858 a second series of "Pictures of Life and Character," and later a
+third, were presented to a delighted public. The history of the immortal
+Briggs, collected from _Punch's_ pages, was also published in separate
+form. In this year Leech made the acquaintance of the Rev. S. Reynolds
+Hole, now Dean of Rochester, a kindred spirit, whose admiration of the
+artist's work had long created a burning desire for his personal
+acquaintance. It was upon Easter Monday that the first meeting took
+place, and thus Mr. Hole describes very correctly Leech's appearance:
+
+"Well, he was very like my idea of him, only 'more so.' A slim, elegant
+figure, over six feet in height, with a grand head, on which nature had
+written 'gentleman'--with wonderful genius in his ample forehead;
+wonderful penetration, observation, humour, in his blue-gray Irish
+eyes; and wonderful sweetness, sympathy and mirth about his lips, which
+seemed to speak in silence."
+
+These words bring my old friend again before me, but I think Mr. Hole
+fails to notice the slight shadow of melancholy that was never long
+absent from his handsome face. Mr. Hole says that, vividly as the first
+interview comes back to him, he can recall but little of the
+conversation. It appears Leech had been out with the hounds on this
+special Monday, in company with his friend Adams, in the Belvoir
+country, where his presence soon became known to the "field"; and Leech
+as speedily discovered, by the whisperings among the sportsmen, that he
+was expected to perform acts of horsemanship which would throw those of
+"Herne the Hunter" into insignificance. "He being the quietest and most
+retiring of riders, much as he loved the sport, and never going over a
+fence if he could find a gap or a gate, it seemed, nevertheless, to be
+the general impression and belief of the yeomen who followed his Grace
+of Rutland's hounds that when a fox was found the celebrated Mr. Leech
+would utter a wild Irish yell, clench his teeth, put both spurs into his
+steed, and bound over the country like a mad buck. His complete
+inaptitude for these gymnastics, and the consequent disgust and
+disappointment of the agricultural interest when he made early deviation
+from the chase in favour of the King's highway, seemed to please him
+vastly."
+
+Mr. Hole also speaks enthusiastically of his first meeting Thackeray at
+a dinner at Leech's, when he and Thackeray stood up together, like
+Thornhill and Olivia in the "Vicar of Wakefield," to see which was the
+taller. Mr. Hole won the day by proving himself to be two inches
+"longer" than Thackeray, who was six feet two, the longer gentleman
+being six feet four.
+
+The story of Thackeray and a very tall friend going to see a giant, and
+being asked by the man at the door of the exhibition if they "were in
+the business," I have heard told differently. My friend Alfred Elmore,
+R.A., who was intimate with Thackeray, in speaking of that great
+writer's personal appearance (which, never prepossessing, had been
+injured by a broken nose acquired in the same way as that misfortune
+happened to Michael Angelo), told me that he--Thackeray--was passing by
+an exhibition of a giant, when the humour took him to ask the man at the
+door if he was in want of a giant.
+
+"Well," said the man, "yes, we do; but not such a d----d ugly one as
+you."
+
+"John Leech's consideration for others," says Mr. Hole, "was patent
+wherever he went; but his anxiety for his friends and their enjoyment
+and amusement in his own house was a very winsome sight to see.... Far
+too much of a gentleman to be a gourmand, though he was wont to say he
+deserved a good dinner when he had done a hard day's work, and that, as
+a matter of economy, he was reluctantly compelled to eat and drink of
+the best lest he should injure his manipulation, he seemed to think,
+nevertheless, that his guests were bound to be greedy, and that it was
+his duty to provide the material. I remember that on one occasion the
+strawberries were so large that he put the largest on a plate and handed
+it to a servant, with a request that it might be carved on the
+sideboard."
+
+Mr. Hole gives a charming picture of Leech and himself in the sunny
+glades of Sherwood Forest. After lamenting that the country might be
+dull to the artist with only his friend's company to amuse him, and
+expressing his anxiety on the subject, he says:
+
+"I soon saw that my anxiety was foolish. It was evidently, as he said, a
+grand enjoyment to him simply to sit under a tree and rest; to hear the
+throstle instead of the hurdy-gurdy; to see the sun instead of the
+smoke.... He could only sigh his admiration. Presently he opened his
+pocket sketch-book, and put a point to his pencil; but he turned from
+one bit of loveliness to another as he sauntered on, and soon closed his
+book in a kind of profound but calm resignation. 'Much too beautiful for
+work,' he said; 'I can do no work to-day.' So we sat among the bracken,
+and drank that delicious air...."
+
+Mr. Hole was, and perhaps still is, a great rose-grower; and the day
+after the forest walk he gave a garden-party in honour of Leech and the
+roses. The roses, it appears, were not only brilliant in their summer
+glory on their native trees, but also glorious indeed on the faces of
+the young ladies who fluttered about Leech, "with evident expectation of
+having their portraits taken, for the future admiration of the world."
+All this was delightful to Leech, but not "to one young man of sullen
+temperament, who, after watching the idol of his heart 'making up,' as
+he called it, to Leech with her fascinations, retired to a shrubbery to
+smoke, and murmured a desire to 'punch that fellow's head.'..." I can
+well imagine the pleasure of Leech in all his kind friends' care to
+gratify him; and I can also imagine "the perplexity and annoyance" with
+which he listened to the lady--let us hope she was neither pretty nor
+young--who made him a speech in which she ended by telling him he was
+"the delight of the nation."
+
+It was in the evening of the day of the rose-show that Leech proposed a
+visit to Ireland for a fortnight's holiday, begging his friend to go
+with him. To this Mr. Hole consented, little dreaming that on the
+following morning, just as he was leaving, Leech would say to him, "You
+must write your impressions, and I will illustrate." Mr. Hole's modesty
+took alarm, but with no reason, as the "Impressions" subsequently
+proved. The result of this trip was the publication, in 1859, of a
+volume entitled, "A Little Tour in Ireland; being a visit to Dublin,
+Limerick, Killarney, Cork," etc., by an "Oxonian." The "Oxonian" was, of
+course, Mr. Hole; and the illustrations showed Leech in his happiest
+vein. These were in the form of coloured folding-plates and numerous
+woodcuts.
+
+The travellers did a great deal in the fortnight. They saw "Dublin,
+Galway, the wild grandeur of Connemara, the scenery of the Shannon from
+Athlone to Limerick, the gentle loveliness of Killarney, the miniature
+prettiness of Glengariff, and that 'beautiful city called Cork.' ... Ah
+me, how happy we were! Looking from the steamer at the calm
+phosphorescent waves (so thankful they were calm, for we were miserable
+mariners, though Leech had represented himself in a letter as revelling
+in stormy seas), or gliding along the rails, or riding in cars, or
+rowing in boats; listening to quaint carmen, oarsmen, and guides;
+talking and laughing in genial converse with each other, or silent in
+the serene fruition of the exquisite scenery around...."
+
+Mr. Hole had ample opportunity for seeing Leech's method of making notes
+from nature. It was not sketching from nature in the true sense of the
+phrase, but simply memoranda, in a kind of shorthand, which was
+afterwards elaborated into backgrounds, which are as true to nature as
+the figures they relieve and foil. The same with faces that attracted
+the artist from their peculiarities of character or expression; a few
+touches were sufficient as guides for the finished heads and figures. I
+have some examples in a sketch-book in my possession.
+
+"Nothing," says Mr. Hole, "escaped him that was in any way absurd,
+abnormal, incongruous, or in any way ridiculous; and a touch of his
+elbow or a turn of his thumb drew my attention continually to something
+amusing in the aspect or the remarks of those about us at the _table
+d'hôte_, or the steamer, or public car, which else, in my obtuseness, I
+had never relished.... It was always his rule, however pressed for time,
+surrounded with engagements, or enticed by pleasures, never to 'scamp'
+his work. Sometimes his rapidity of execution was marvellous, but there
+was never haste. I have known him to send off from my own house three
+finished drawings on the wood, designed, traced, and rectified, without
+much effort, as it seemed, between breakfast and dinner. How I wish that
+the world could have seen those blocks! They were entrusted, no doubt,
+to the most skilful gravers of the day, but the exquisite fineness,
+clearness, the faultless grace and harmony of the drawing, could not be
+reproduced. If the position of an eyelash was altered, or the curve of a
+lip was changed, there might be an ample remainder to convey the
+intention and to win the admiration of those who never knew their loss,
+but the _perfection_ of the original was gone. Again and again I have
+heard him sigh as he looked over the new number of _Punch_; and as I,
+seeing nothing but excellence, would ask an explanation, he would point
+to some almost imperceptible obliquity which vexed his gentle soul."
+
+Mr. Hole continued to be the intimate friend of Leech during the latter
+part of a life that was indeed "too short for friendship, not for
+fame"; and he speaks of the many eminent men whom he met at Leech's
+house, with the gratification that might be expected from one who was
+fully able to share in the "flow of soul" that distinguished those
+meetings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+TYPES.
+
+
+During one of the "sittings" which Dickens gave me when I painted his
+portrait, I asked him if, when he drew the character of Pecksniff, any
+of his inspiration had arisen from a knowledge of the character, and
+even personal appearance, of an individual known to both of us, whose
+name I mentioned.
+
+"Why, yes," was the reply; "I had him in my eye."
+
+In like manner, I think, in his most favourite type of beauty, Leech was
+thinking of his wife, who was in all respects a charming woman. She
+permeates a little to the destruction of variety of character many of
+the lovely figures in _Punch_, where now and again may be found an
+excellent likeness of Mrs. Leech. That she was a striking person is
+evident from the fact that she struck Leech to the heart as he met her
+in the street; so hard was the blow, that the artist forgot his errand,
+and followed the enslaver to her own door. Inquiries were set on foot;
+an introduction followed; he came, he saw, conquered, and was married in
+1843 to Miss Eaton, who made the best of wives and mothers.
+
+It goes without saying that Leech was a worshipper of female beauty in
+all its bewitching variety. I remember watching with him the riders in
+Rotten Row, and after some startlingly lovely creatures had passed us,
+he said:
+
+"Ah, my Frith, don't you wish you were a Turk, and able to marry all
+that little lot?"
+
+Only two of Leech's children lived to maturity, and both survived him.
+His son, John Charles Warrington Leech--a fine boy, whom I well
+remember--was the darling of his father's heart, and the boy returned
+his love with all the fervour of his loving nature. If Leech had lived
+to learn that his son was accidentally drowned by the capsizing of a
+boat at South Adelaide--a deplorable event that took place in 1876--the
+intelligence would have broken his heart. This affliction was mercifully
+averted from him, as also was the death of his daughter, which occurred
+a few years ago, soon after she became a happy mother.
+
+Leech's working coat was made of black velvet, something in shape like
+a shooting-coat; Leech the younger, at the age of five, was allowed to
+dress exactly like his father; and he might have been seen on most
+mornings, palette in hand, standing before a little easel, working away
+at copies of the engravings in the _Illustrated London News_, which he
+coloured literally with all the colours of the rainbow, whilst the
+father sat by with block and pencil. The young gentleman not only
+inherited his father's love of art, but also some of his humour; for he
+informed a new servant, who appeared for the first time in the nursery,
+that his papa said that he was "one of those children that can only be
+managed by kindness"--"So please go and get me some sponge-cake and an
+orange." This served Leech for an excellent cut in _Punch_.
+
+Mr. Hole gives another instance of Master Leech's Leech-like cleverness.
+He says:
+
+"My wife's maid had paid a long visit to the nursery for a chat with his
+lady-in-waiting, and when he began some display of disobedience, she
+said:
+
+"'Really, Master Leech, if you won't be good, I must tell your mamma.'
+
+"'And I shall tell her,' he rejoined, 'if you do, what a time you've
+been idling here.'"
+
+I may add in this place an anecdote sent to me by an intimate lady
+friend of Leech's, who, after speaking of his devotion to his wife and
+children, tells me that she was taking luncheon with him one day at his
+house in Brunswick Square.
+
+"His two children dined at the same time. Leech said with a very grave
+voice:
+
+"'Now, children, say your grace.'
+
+"Both children began to say it together as fast as they could. Leech
+said when they had finished:
+
+"'Well run--Ada first, Bougie a good second.'"
+
+Mrs. Hall, a daughter of Mr. Adams--the Chattie of Leech's
+letters--supplies me with an example, "one out of many instances of
+great kindness to her as a child," which I present to my readers:
+
+"I was about eight years old," says Mrs. Hall, "and on one rough morning
+during my stay with him at Broadstairs I was sent in charge of a maid to
+play upon the beach. The wind carried away my bonnet. Regardless of
+danger, I rushed into the sea after it, and after many struggles I
+recovered it, but was horrified to find that a crowd had collected round
+me. I was taken home dripping, and feeling very guilty. You can imagine
+the relief it was to find my dear friend ready to comfort and not to
+scold; and I have a happy recollection of being snugly tucked up on his
+knee for some hours after the event, while he continued his drawing."
+
+The publication of my desire for information respecting John Leech's
+youthful days has put into my possession one of his earliest drawings;
+for this I am indebted to one of his Charterhouse schoolfellows, a very
+young old gentleman indeed. Mr. Charles Maitland Tate's name may be
+found in the first division of the fourth form in the list of scholars
+of 1828. Mr. Maitland's first acquaintance with "little Johnny Leech"
+began at Brighton in 1823, where he found our embryo six-year-old artist
+learning equestrian accomplishments, with the help of a small pony and
+the instruction of "an old retired jockey," who was one of the stable
+servants of George IV. at the Pavilion.
+
+"Leech was a gentle, dear little fellow," says Mr. Maitland. "I
+accompanied him on several of his pony excursions, and the more I saw of
+him, the better I liked him."
+
+Leech was entered at Charterhouse in 1824, Maitland a year or two
+afterwards, having grown into a strapping boy of eleven. Mr. Maitland's
+father was a Dean of St. Paul's, able, no doubt, from his position to
+procure a presentation--as he did from Lord Grey--for his son, who
+entered as a Gown boy, thus taking, and maintaining, a higher position
+in the school than Leech ever succeeded in reaching. Young Maitland had
+been a few days in the Charterhouse, when he was accosted by a small
+boy, who was obliged to tell his name before his early friend could
+recognise him. Boy-like, Maitland immediately took young Leech under his
+protection, and threatened dire consequences to anyone who bullied or
+ill-treated him. The protector's prowess, however, was not wanted, for
+Leech never made an enemy then or afterwards.
+
+Amongst the scholars was one named Douglas, whose powers of sketching in
+caricature were very remarkable. Of this I convinced myself by a book of
+drawings in the possession of Mr. Maitland. Douglas's talent made him
+very attractive to Leech, and the boys became great friends.
+
+"Leech copied several of his friend's drawings," says Mr. Maitland; but,
+as might have been expected, he soon abandoned copying and took to
+original work, a specimen of which I give below, as perhaps the earliest
+known drawing by Leech.[A]
+
+If, before I had written the first portion of this book, I had known Mr.
+Maitland's story, I should have introduced it earlier; for this and
+other shortcomings and irregularities, I hope to be forgiven on the
+ground of my inexperience and ignorance of the laws of literary
+composition. With this apology I proceed to make more mistakes, but
+mistakes only in the _order_ in which the _truth_ should be told.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+LEECH AND HIS PREDECESSORS.
+
+
+John Leech may be truly said to be _sui generis_; there has been nothing
+like him before his time, or since his bright and short career ended. It
+would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that existing
+between the works of Leech and those of his predecessors, at the head
+and front of whom must be placed Hogarth, who stands _longo intervallo_
+above any of his successors. In his terrible lashing of the vices and
+follies of his own time--vices and follies that are common to all
+time--Hogarth sometimes, though rarely, indulged in an exaggeration of
+character amounting to caricature. Leech dealt with the life about him
+in a totally different spirit; his was a lighter, a more genial, and a
+kinder hand. Unlike Hogarth, he made us laugh at the follies of our
+fellow-creatures, and would have nothing to do with their vices, though
+he has shown us in many examples how keen was his sympathy with the
+poor and the oppressed, and how intense was his hatred of the oppressor.
+The name of caricaturist is as inappropriate to Leech as it is to
+Hogarth, though instances may be found, as in Hogarth, of occasional
+indulgence in exaggeration. These examples are mostly to be found in the
+illustration of books which in themselves somewhat outrage the modesty
+of nature. Hogarth's pictures are often disfigured by a coarseness
+closely bordering on indecency; instances may, indeed, be found where
+the great artist has passed the border with revolting audacity. In the
+thousands of drawings by Leech, instead of the _double entendre_, we
+have some delightful trait of child-life; instead of the adulterous
+husband, we have paterfamilias living a healthy, happy life among his
+children, only amused at his schoolboy son's tricks played upon his
+sisters.
+
+Consideration should, no doubt, be shown to Hogarth and his immediate
+successors in respect of the coarseness of the time in which they lived;
+certainly the works of Bunbury, Woodward, Rowlandson and Gillray require
+all the excuses that can be made for them. Compared to the two
+latter-named artists, the two former may be said to be harmless. In the
+hands of all four, however, caricature reigned triumphant.
+
+Rowlandson had less excuse for the constant displays of vulgarity and
+ugliness that abound in his works, than the other designers, who were
+destitute of any sense of beauty. It was not so with Rowlandson. I have
+seen early drawings by him full of the charm of beauty in women:
+refined, and graceful. This power, which one would have thought was a
+part of the man's nature, vanished altogether as he advanced in life;
+swamped in the whirl of dissipation in which he lived, his originally
+better nature became utterly vulgarized by his surroundings. That
+Rowlandson had a certain very coarse humour, a facility in grouping
+masses of figures in large compositions, and a power of inventing faces
+and figures for which he had no authority in nature, cannot be denied;
+but there is always an intense vulgarity, in which the man seems to
+revel with as intense a pleasure.
+
+Gillray altogether differed from Rowlandson, both in his subjects and in
+the way he treated them. In politics he was a savage partisan, lashing
+his opponents with merciless fury and cruel personality. Gillray was in
+art what Churchill was in literature. He had a grim humour all his own;
+witness his constant attacks upon Bonaparte, then, and always, the
+_bête noire_ of this country. There are many examples in which the
+Corsican tyrant is made ridiculous, ferocious, or cowardly, according to
+the events of the time and the humour of the artist.
+
+In a parody of Belshazzar's feast, Bonaparte, as Belshazzar, has caught
+sight of the writing on the wall; he looks with extended arms and an
+expression of cowardly horror at the warning. By his side sits the
+Empress, an outrage upon the fattest of fat women, ill-drawn and vulgar
+in the extreme. A man with a face hideous beyond the dreams of ugliness
+(caricature _in excelsis_) is devouring the Tower of London, which
+figures as a _plat_ in the banquet; the rest of the guests round the
+monarch's table, vying with the dreadful gourmand in repulsiveness, are
+one and all caricatured out of nature. The meats provided for this
+singular entertainment consist of what may be called English fare, the
+_pièce de résistance_ in front of Bonaparte, which he will presently
+demolish, being the Bank of England; and that indigestible dish is
+flanked by St. James's Palace. Then we have the head of Pitt, which is
+labelled "The Roast Beef of Old England," and served up appetizingly on
+a trencher, etc. Behind the Emperor stand his guards with huge uplifted
+sabres, from which blood is dripping, while behind the dropsical
+Empress stand her ladies-in-waiting, three female ghouls of wondrous
+hideousness, in dresses so _décoletté_ as to shock persons less nice
+than Mrs. Grundy.
+
+In another example the great Corsican is represented as "Teddy Doll, the
+great French Gingerbread Baker, drawing out a new Batch of Kings," while
+his man, Talleyrand, is making up the dough for others. Bonaparte is
+pictured in uniform, with boots and spurs, and a huge cocked-hat with an
+impossible feather, drawing out a batch of newly-made kings--Bavaria,
+Würtemburg, and Baden--from an enormous oven, labelled "New French Oven
+for Imperial Gingerbread." Beneath the oven-door is what is called "an
+ash-hole for broken gingerbread." Amongst the _débris_ which has been
+swept into the ash-hole by a broom labelled "Corsican Besom of
+Destruction," Spain, a crowned death's head, is prominent; together with
+Austria, Holland, Switzerland, Venice, etc., "all in wild destruction
+blent." In the background Hanover is being destroyed by the Prussian
+Eagle, as Talleyrand is busy kneading up the dough to be presently
+passed from "the Political Kneading-Trough," to reappear in the shape of
+gingerbread kings of Poland, Turkey, and Hungary, after the
+manipulation of the King-maker and a visit to the French oven.
+
+There is much grim humour in this piece, and humour as well as a deeper
+meaning in the parody of "Belshazzar's Feast"; but, turning from such
+work and the thoughts that arise from it to that of Leech is like
+turning from a slaughter-house to a flower-garden, from ugliness to
+beauty.
+
+From the time of Gillray to that of Leech, there is little to be said of
+the caricaturists, with one splendid exception, "Immortal George." I do
+not agree with those who place Cruikshank above Leech. Cruikshank was
+essentially a caricaturist; Leech was not. Comparisons, as Mrs. Malaprop
+says, are "odorous," but we are sometimes forced into them; and, while
+admitting that there were certain paths--heights, perhaps--which
+Cruikshank ascended with honour, and on which Leech could not have found
+foothold, there was a highroad, bordered by beautiful things, on which
+he would have easily distanced his formidable rival.
+
+In my young days the political drawings of "H. B.," the father of
+Richard Doyle, were much esteemed and in great request. They dealt
+solely with the political events of the hour, and, though feebly drawn
+and ineffective as works of art, the designer managed to produce
+unmistakable likenesses of Sir Robert Peel, the Duke of Wellington, _et
+hoc genus_, with remarkable certainty, and always without a trace of
+caricature.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+KENNY MEADOWS.
+
+
+The reader has only to look at the early numbers of _Punch_ to see how
+inferior were the drawings compared to Leech's work, or to that of the
+excellent artists now at work on _Punch_. Kenny Meadows was perhaps the
+best; indeed, he was a fellow of excellent fancy, quaintly humorous at
+times--seen, I think, at his best in his Shakespeare illustrations;
+which, in spite of some extravagance, are full of character, and, as in
+the "Midsummer Night's Dream," almost poetical in their realization of
+the scenes of that immortal play. But Kenny was a sad Bohemian, a jovial
+soul, loving company and the refreshments that attend it, in which he
+indulged in happy forgetfulness till "all but he departed."
+
+In illustration of Kenny's habits, I introduce a little story told to me
+by himself. Long years ago Mr. Carter Hall edited a book of British
+ballads, and engaged a number of artists to illustrate them; Kenny
+Meadows amongst the rest. I also had the honour of supplying a
+contribution. When the drawings were finished, we were invited one
+evening to the Rosery--as Mr. Hall called his Brompton cottage--to
+submit our work for his criticism, and approval or condemnation, as the
+case might be. Our refreshment was coffee and biscuits, a repast very
+unsatisfactory to all of us, more or less--to Meadows especially. Kenny
+bore his disappointment very well till we left the Rosery--this we did
+at the earliest moment consistent with good manners--when he said, after
+criticising our entertainment in strong language:
+
+"There is a house close by where we can get supper. What do you fellows
+say?"
+
+We all said "that was the place for us."
+
+Under Meadows' guidance, we found an inn and an excellent supper, and
+about midnight, when the fun was getting fast and furious, I left;
+Meadows remaining with two or three other choice spirits--how long I
+only knew when I met him a few days afterwards. The time of his return
+home may be guessed by what follows. Day was breaking as Meadows
+stealthily entered his bedroom, almost praying that Mrs. Meadows might
+be asleep; but that lady awoke, and, catching sight of her husband,
+said:
+
+"You are very late, Meadows."
+
+"Oh no," said Meadows, "I am not; it's quite early."
+
+("So it was, you know," said the Bohemian to me, as he told me of his
+reception.)
+
+"Early!" exclaimed the wife. "Why, what o'clock is it?"
+
+"Oh, about one, or a little after," said Kenny.
+
+Unluckily, at that moment the peculiar but unmistakable cry of the
+milkman was heard--"and that pretty well settled the time, you know,
+Frith."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+"COMIC HISTORY OF ROME."
+
+
+The extreme difficulty--in some instances the impossibility--of
+procuring copies of some of the books illustrated by Leech makes exact
+chronological sequence impossible in any attempt to describe the career
+of the artist. I hope to be pardoned, therefore, for the irregularity of
+my dates.
+
+In 1852 a "Comic History of Rome" appeared, written by Gilbert à
+Beckett, with "ten coloured etchings and numerous woodcuts by Leech."
+Rome fares pretty much the same as England at the hands of both writer
+and illustrator. In Mr. À Beckett's part of the work the history of Rome
+becomes a very comic history indeed, and Leech, of course, enters into
+the spirit of the fun with all his exuberance of fancy and irresistible
+humour. Visitors to the National Gallery, should they be curious to see
+the difference of treatment of the same subject by different minds, can
+be gratified by comparing Rubens' "Rape of the Sabines" with Leech's
+rendering of that famous historical event.
+
+In one particular the illustration of the scene is identical in both
+pictures. Rubens dresses the ladies in the costume peculiar to his own
+time; Leech in the time of Queen Victoria. In the great Fleming's work
+the principal victim of the Roman youth is the wife of the painter, in
+the dress of Rubens' day; in Leech's drawing, strange to say, we have an
+excellent likeness of Mrs. Leech, as she sits complacently on the
+shoulders of a Roman youth. Rubens, however, pays more attention to
+truth in the habiliments of his ravishers, for if they, in all
+probability, did not much resemble Roman soldiers in their habits as
+they lived, they present a tolerable resemblance to the ancient Roman as
+we know him. Whereas Leech--while preserving something like the form of
+the upper part of the Roman costume--cannot be said to be correct when
+he puts Hessian boots upon one man, hunting-tops upon another, and
+consigns the nether portion of a third to the military trousers, boots
+and spurs of the modern Life-Guardsman. Nobody, I think, will believe
+that umbrellas were known to the Romans, as Leech would have us to
+understand, by putting one as a weapon into the hands of the stout,
+very modern woman belabouring the Roman who is carrying off her
+daughter.
+
+In explanation of the following cut, I may remind readers of Roman
+history that Romulus sent cards of invitation to attend certain games to
+the Latins and Sabines, with their wives and daughters.
+
+"The weather being propitious," says Mr. À Beckett, "all the Sabine
+beauty and fashion were attracted to the place, and the games,
+consisting of horse-racing, gave to the scene all the animation of Ascot
+on a Cup-day. Suddenly, at a preconcerted signal, there was a general
+elopement of the Roman youth with the Sabine ladies, who were in the
+most ungallant manner abandoned to their fate by the Sabine gentlemen.
+It is true the latter were taken by surprise, but they certainly made
+the best of their way home before they thought of avenging the wrong and
+insult that had been committed. Had they been all married ladies who
+were carried off, the cynic might have suggested that the Sabine
+husbands would not have objected to a cheap mode of divorce; but--to
+make use of an Irishism--there was only one single woman who happened to
+be a wife in the whole of that goodly company."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+An Etruscan ruler named Porsenna had a difficulty with Rome. He speedily
+besieged that city, frightening the people in the suburbs "out of their
+wits and into the city, where he never enjoyed a moment's peace till
+peace was concluded." Presently a treaty of peace was negotiated,
+greatly to the advantage of Porsenna; for not only was Rome compelled to
+restore the territory taken from the Veii, but the victor also "claimed
+hostages, among whom were sundry young ladies of the principal Roman
+families. One of these was named Clælia, who, with other maidens, having
+resolved on a bold plunge for their liberty, jumped into the Tiber's
+bed, and swam like a party of ducks to the other side of the river."
+
+This delightful drawing reminds one of many a seaside sketch in
+"Pictures of Life and Character," leaving us wondering how a few
+pencil-lines can call up such visions of beauty.
+
+Everyone knows of the tradition of Rome's being saved from the Gauls by
+the cackling of geese, and my readers are here presented with Leech's
+historical picture of the event.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"The Gauls," says Mr. À Beckett, "crept up, one by one, to the top of
+the rock, which was the summit of their wishes. Just as they had
+effected their object, a wakeful goose commenced a vehement cackle, and
+the solo of one old bird was soon followed by a chorus from a score of
+others. Marcus Manlius, who resided near the poultry, was so alarmed at
+the sound that he instantly jumped out of his skin--for in those days a
+sheep-skin was the usual bedding--and ran to the spot, where he caught
+hold of the first Gaul he came to, and, giving him a smart push, the
+whole pack behind fell like so many cards to the bottom."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+PERSONAL ANECDOTES.
+
+
+The late Frederick Tayler, whose water-colour drawings are familiar to
+all lovers of art, was a guest for some days at the mansion of the Duke
+of Athole--an elderly gentleman thirty years ago, but how nearly
+connected with the present Duke I am unable to say. According to Tayler,
+the old Duke was a very eccentric person; one of his whims being an
+insistence upon all the male guests at his castle wearing the Scottish
+national dress. On my friend's pleading that he could not wear a costume
+that he didn't possess, he was supplied with the kilt and the rest of
+it, from a store kept for unprovided visitors--"and," said Tayler, "I
+was immediately compelled to ride about eighteen miles in a condition of
+discomfort that may be imagined." Another little peculiarity was
+scarcely less distressing, for dinner was never served till near
+midnight. Hungry guests were kept waiting till, folding-doors being
+thrown open, the major-domo appeared, holding a wand, and in solemn
+tones announced "His Grace!"
+
+In 1850 this remarkable Duke "took it into his head" to close his
+beautiful Glen Tilt to tourists. I was fortunate enough to have passed
+through it before this decree was issued; but multitudes--noisy
+multitudes, as they proved themselves--not having had my advantage,
+became clamorous for their right, as they believed, of unobstructed
+passage through the lovely glen. Many letters from indignant tourists
+appeared in the press, which almost universally condemned the Duke's
+action, _Punch's_ baton being brought into play in the tourists' cause;
+and to this weapon was added Leech's pencil, which, in a vigorous
+drawing, portrayed the old Duke as a dog in the manger, with a snarl on
+his face that portended a bite if his position was assailed. The drawing
+was entitled "A Scotch Dog in the Manger," and was immediately followed
+by another blow, happily paraphrasing Scott's lines in the "Lady of the
+Lake," and supposed to apply to "a scene from the burlesque recently
+performed at Glen Tilt":
+
+    "These are Clan Athole's warriors true,
+     And, Saxons, I'm the regular Doo."
+
+How far these drawings were the means of causing the Duke to reverse his
+decision I know not; but it was reversed, and that he took Leech's
+somewhat severe treatment good-humouredly is shown by his treatment of
+the artist, whom he met near the glen soon after the drawings appeared.
+Leech was alone, sketch-book in hand, no doubt noting, by pencil and
+observation, for future use, some of the beauties around him, when a
+horseman approached, attended by a groom. Leech was probably on
+forbidden ground, for the rider, who was the Duke of Athole, immediately
+asked his name and "what he was doing there." Under ordinary
+circumstances Leech would have said, "What is _your_ name?" for the
+matter of that, "and what do you want to do with mine if I give it to
+you?"; but whether the manner of his questioner impressed him, or
+conscious guilt shook him, I cannot say. It is certain, however, that he
+replied he was an artist, and that his name was Leech.
+
+"Not John Leech?" said the Duke.
+
+"Yes, John," was the reply.
+
+And Leech now, feeling sure that he was in the presence of the Duke, and
+that he was about to hear some strong language about his daring to
+caricature so august a personage for merely asserting his rights,
+proceeded to explain that he would not intrude further, but return at
+once to his inn, where he intended to pass the night.
+
+The Duke turned to his groom, and told him to dismount, and called to
+Leech to take the servant's place.
+
+Leech obeyed, when the Duke said, "No, sir; no inn for you to-night: you
+must dine and sleep at my house. I am the Duke of Athole." Further
+hesitation on Leech's part was met by a warmer and more pressing
+invitation.
+
+Leech yielded, and the two rode off together. The road to the castle lay
+through some rather perilous country, culminating in a narrow and broken
+path, with cliff on one side and a precipice on the other. The artist
+hesitated; the Duke called upon him to come on. "Has he brought me here
+to revenge himself by breaking my neck?" thought Leech. He timidly
+advanced, and reached the Duke, who had stopped for him at a point where
+the path was most dangerous.
+
+"Are you, sir, the man who has maligned me in _Punch_?" fiercely
+demanded the Duke.
+
+The fearful position in which Leech found himself, terrible to anyone,
+but to a nervous man especially frightful, extorted from him an
+apologetic confession, excusable under the circumstances.
+
+"Your Grace," said he, "we--we--that is, nearly everyone--has done
+something that he--he--regrets having done. I am very sorry I have---- I
+regret very much that anything I have done should have given you any
+annoyance."
+
+The Duke's affected fierceness was exchanged for the jovial manner said
+to be peculiar to him, and the pair rode off pleasantly together.
+
+The castle was reached, and Leech was shown to a dressing-room, where he
+made himself as presentable as he could under the circumstances, in
+anticipation of the usual announcement that dinner was served. I can
+imagine my friend's feelings as he waited in hungry expectation. "As he
+could not manage to break my neck," thought Leech, as hour after hour
+passed without a summons to dinner, "he means to starve me."
+
+At last, thinking that perhaps his room was too far off for the sound of
+the gong to reach him, he rang the bell. A servant appeared.
+
+"I am afraid," said Leech, "that I did not hear the dinner-bell; is
+dinner ready?"
+
+"Not yet, sir; you will be informed when it is."
+
+Another hour passed. Leech became desperate; starvation seemed to stare
+him in the face. Again he rang the bell; again the servant answered it,
+and the reply was again, "Not yet."
+
+The clock had struck ten before the welcome sound of the gong reached
+the famished man. If Mr. Frederick Tayler is to be believed, the Leech
+dinner with the Duke was an _early_ one. No explanation was ever given
+to Tayler of these abnormal dinner-hours, but Leech was told that "his
+Grace" always took a nap after his rides, and his guests were fed when
+he awoke.
+
+Leech was fond of telling of this adventure with the Duke, whose
+likeness can be seen in more than one of Landseer's pictures.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+PERSONAL ANECDOTES (_continued_).
+
+
+At the time when the troop of artists and literary men were stumping the
+country with their theatrical performances, Leech lived in Alfred Place,
+which he soon left for a charming little house in Notting Hill Terrace.
+
+Dickens wrote an amusing account of one of the amateur excursions, which
+the immortal Mrs. Gamp is supposed to join, and about which she
+discourses to her friend Mrs. Harris, not forgetting her opinion of the
+artists, Cruikshank and Leech:
+
+"If you'll believe me, Mrs. Harris, I turns my head, and sees the very
+man" (George Cruikshank) "a-making pictures of me on his thumb-nail at
+the window; while another of 'em" (John Leech), "a tall, slim,
+melancolly gent, with dark hair and a bage voice, looks over his
+shoulder, and with his head o' one side, as if he understood the
+subject, and coolly he says:
+
+"'I've drawed her several times in _Punch_,' he says, too. The owdacious
+wretch!
+
+"'Which I never touches, Mr. Wilson,' I says out loud--I couldn't have
+helped it, Mrs. Harris, if you'd took my life for it--'which I never
+touches, Mr. Wilson, on account of the lemon!'"
+
+From the nature of Leech's work, he was never able to take a holiday in
+the true sense of the word. To say nothing of the numberless works which
+he had engaged himself to illustrate, the inevitable _Punch_ must appear
+every week, and almost equally inevitable was the appearance of one or
+two of Leech's drawings in it. Proof is abundant of the rapidity with
+which those inimitable works were executed; but it must be borne in mind
+that they were the outcome of a sensitive organization--a power of
+seeing and seizing the humorous and the beautiful in the everyday
+incidents of life; in short, of a mind always on the watch for subjects
+for illustration.
+
+When one thinks of the constant wear and tear of such a life, it is
+scarcely a matter for wonder that it was so lamentably short.
+
+The localities of Leech's so-called holidays can easily be recognised by
+his drawings, or rather by their backgrounds, which showed, in
+admirable truthfulness, whether the artist was at Scarborough or
+Broadstairs, at Folkestone, Dover, Lowestoft, or Ramsgate, or, by their
+unfamiliarity to us, at some less frequented place.
+
+It was in 1848, and while Mr. and Mrs. Leech were staying with the
+Dickens family at Brighton, that a very unpleasant incident of the visit
+took place: no less than the sudden insanity of the landlord of the
+house in which the party lodged, resulting in as sudden an exeunt of the
+lodgers. But before the people still in their senses could take
+themselves off, there was a duty to be done. A doctor must be fetched;
+and no sooner did he appear than the madman attacked him, and would very
+soon have made a vacancy in the list of M.D.'s if Dickens and Leech had
+not rushed to the rescue. In a letter to Forster, Dickens gives a
+humorous description of Mrs. Leech and Mrs. Dickens doing their best--in
+their fear for their husbands' safety--to assist the maniac in his
+murderous endeavours by pulling their husbands back just as the doctor
+had fainted from fear. More assistance, however, arrived, and the mad
+landlord was soon rendered harmless.
+
+I vividly recollect the alarm that the news of an accident to Leech--in
+which it was rumoured that he had been seriously, even dangerously,
+injured--caused to everyone, and acutely to his friends. A huge wave
+was said to have struck him while bathing--killing him on the spot,
+according to some reports; fracturing his skull, or producing concussion
+of the brain, from which recovery was hopeless, according to others.
+These alarming accounts came to us from the Isle of Wight, where Leech
+was staying with Dickens in the autumn of 1849. The fact was, that one
+of the tremendous waves that, under certain atmospheric conditions, roll
+in upon the shore at Bonchurch, struck Leech on the forehead, and
+rendered him senseless.
+
+"He was put to bed," said Dickens, "with twenty of his namesakes upon
+his temples."
+
+The day following, congestion of the brain became unmistakable,
+accompanied by great pain; ice was applied to the head, and bleeding
+again was thought necessary, this time in the arm. For some days Leech
+was in great danger, Dickens sitting up with him all night on more than
+one alarming occasion. He says, in a letter to Forster:
+
+"My plans are all unsettled by Leech's illness, as of course I do not
+like to leave this place so long as I can be of any service to him and
+his good little wife. Ever since I wrote to you he has been seriously
+worse, and again very heavily bled. The night before last he was in
+such an alarming state of restlessness, which nothing could relieve,
+that I proposed to Mrs. Leech to try magnetism. Accordingly, in the
+middle of the night, I fell to, and, after a very fatiguing bout of it,
+put him to sleep for an hour and thirty-five minutes. A change came on
+in his sleep, and he is decidedly better. I talked to the astounded Mrs.
+Leech across him, when he was asleep, as if he had been a truss of hay."
+
+Whether from Dickens' magnetic efforts or the efforts of Nature, Leech
+gradually, but very slowly, recovered. On being questioned about his
+accident, Leech is reported to have said that he remembered an enormous
+angry, white-topped wave coming at him, and, in what seemed to him the
+next moment, he found himself in bed in great pain--the interval having
+been some days.
+
+In corroboration of this, I may mention an accident that happened to Mr.
+Elmore (brother of the R.A. and great friend of Leech), who was terribly
+injured by a blow on the head in a railway accident on the Marseilles
+line.
+
+"I was reading a novel," said Mr. Elmore to me, "and the next instant,
+as it seemed, I found myself suffering great pain in a strange bed, with
+strange surroundings, in what I afterwards found was a French cottage."
+
+The sufferer also found that more than three weeks had elapsed between
+the blow and the recovery of consciousness from it. Where, in my blind
+ignorance I venture to ask, was the ever-living soul all this time?
+
+One of the amusements of the visitors at Folkestone consists in watching
+the arrival of the French packet; and I have noticed that the more
+stormy the day, the greater is the crowd that forms itself into an
+avenue, through which the voyagers must pass in landing. This amusement,
+I think, is not very creditable to us, because it is derived from an
+enjoyment arising from the sufferings of our fellow-creatures. The rosy
+passenger, who is evidently "a good sailor," attracts no attention--we
+rather resent his condition as inappropriate to the occasion; but the
+man from whose face every vestige of colour has flown, whose legs can
+scarcely support him as he walks up the gangway, is an object of great
+delight to us. We are generally--not always--silent in our enjoyment,
+scarcely ever receiving a poor sea-sick creature as Leech was once
+welcomed at Boulogne.
+
+In 1854, Leech and his wife went to Boulogne to stay with Dickens. The
+day was stormy, and when the artist stepped ashore, he was received with
+cheers by a crowd of people, mostly English, who loudly congratulated
+him as looking more intensely miserable than any of the wretched
+passengers who had preceded him. Leech told Dickens that he had realized
+at last what an actor's feelings must be when a round of applause greets
+his efforts.
+
+"I felt," he said, "that I had made a great hit."
+
+My intimacy with Leech led to the usual exchange of hospitalities. I
+recall with pleasure the occasions on which I had the great delight of
+welcoming him at my house in London or at the seaside. He never varied
+from the simple, modest demeanour of the perfect gentleman, was never
+noisy or argumentative, and always considerate of the feelings of
+others; prodigal in his praise of his brother artists; never, if he
+could avoid it, speaking of himself or his works, but if, in course of
+conversation, allusion had been made to some cut more than commonly
+attractive, he would meet it with: "Glad you like it, my dear fellow;
+don't see anything particularly funny in it myself;" or, "Ah! I wish you
+could have seen it on the wood; they seem to me to have cut all the
+prettiness out of the girl's face."
+
+The first time I dined with Leech was at his house in Notting Hill
+Terrace, on the occasion of some Highland sports that took place in Lord
+Holland's park hard by, out of which Leech made some capital sketches,
+that afterwards appeared in _Punch_. Leech's dinners, without being too
+lavish or extravagant, were always unexceptionable as to food, and
+notably so as to wine; of the latter, being no judge himself, he took
+care it should be supplied by "one who knew," and who was also reliable.
+One of the guests at this particular dinner was the Rev. Mr. White,
+whose acquaintance our host had made at the Isle of Wight. I mention
+this gentleman because he was not only a very jovial clergyman, but a
+great friend of Leech and Dickens, and the author of some plays which
+had more or less success--one of them, with the title of "The King of
+the Commons," was played under Phelps' management, and had a
+considerable run.
+
+"White," Leech whispered to me, "is a great judge of port. I hope to
+goodness he will like some I have got on purpose for him--and for you,
+my boy; only you know nothing about it, do you?"
+
+"Not a bit," said I.
+
+When the port appeared we watched the clergyman, and, judging by his
+expression, the port was successful; but Leech was not satisfied till in
+reply to his inquiry as to its qualities the clergyman, smacking his
+lips, said:
+
+"Sir, the Church approves."
+
+At one of the delightful dinners at Leech's double-windowed
+house--double-windowed to keep out noise, which distressed him all his
+life--on the Terrace, Kensington, I first met Shirley Brooks, thus
+commencing a life-long friendship with one of the most charming
+companions, one of the wittiest men and the best story-tellers that ever
+made "the hours go by on rosy wing." One of the strongest men on the
+_Punch_ staff--afterwards editor--Brooks and Leech became somewhat
+intimate, but whether the intimacy ever became merged into close
+friendship, I doubt. I frequently dined at Brooks's, but never met Leech
+there--indeed, from what I have heard, I am pretty sure that, with the
+exception of his old fellow-student, Percival Leigh, who was one of his
+nearest and dearest friends, Leech's feeling towards his brother members
+of the _Punch_ staff never reached friendship in the true meaning of the
+word. Albert Smith, of whose entertainments Leech said one of the
+severest things I or anyone ever heard him say--"After all, Frith, it is
+only bad John Parry"--was a loud, and, to me, a rather vulgar
+person--too antagonistic to the gentle Leech for the growth of
+friendship. At the _Punch_ meetings, however, I have it from one who was
+occasionally present, that Albert Smith always addressed Leech as
+"Jack," being the only one of the company who used the familiarity. This
+provoked Douglas Jerrold, who had often winced under the infliction, to
+ask Leech one day, "How long is it necessary for a man to know you
+before he can call you 'Jack'?"
+
+After this remark "Jack" was less frequently heard. My authority for the
+above is the late Mr. George Hodder, an author who I fear has left no
+"footprints in the sands of time." It was said of him that, on being
+introduced to a very distinguished artist, he remarked--perhaps feeling
+the necessity of making a complimentary speech--"Art is a grand thing,
+sir." This unfortunate gentleman died from injuries received by the
+upsetting of a coach in Richmond Park.
+
+It is not at all uncommon for middle-class entertainers--though they may
+possess a fair staff of servants--to seek outside assistance when they
+gather an unusual number of guests round their hospitable boards. On one
+occasion--and very likely oftener--Leech sought such supplementary aid,
+and found it in the form of his parish clerk, a solemn person who was
+not too proud to add to his stipend by "going out to wait." As is usual
+with his class, the clerk-waiter arrived in good time to help in
+furnishing forth the dinner-table, having an eye to the placing of the
+flowers, plate, etc. The guests, amounting to ten or twelve, were
+announced in due course, all old acquaintances, and all expecting their
+dinners with the punctuality for which their host was noted. Hungry men,
+though they may be good talkers under happier circumstances, are seldom
+brilliant; on this occasion, though Dickens and Jerrold may have been
+amongst the guests, the conversation languished at last into silence.
+Half an hour passed. What could have happened? Suddenly one of the
+guests--was it Dickens or Jerrold?--sprang from his chair, and going to
+Leech, with extended hand, said:
+
+"Well, it's getting late; I'm afraid I must go. Thank you, dear boy, for
+a delightful evening; the dinner was capital, the turtle first
+rate--never tasted finer salmon; and as to the champagne----"
+
+The puzzled looks of Leech and his guests ended in a roar of laughter,
+in the midst of which a black and solemn figure appeared, and in the
+tones in which he would have given the responses at church, said:
+
+"Dinner is served."
+
+The assembled guests received the welcome announcement with a chorus of
+"AMEN!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+SPORTING NOVELS.
+
+
+Amongst the many books illustrated by Leech are some sporting novels,
+written, I think, by a Mr. Surtees. "Ask Mamma," "Handley Cross," "Plain
+or Ringlets," "Mr. Romford's Hounds," etc., owe their origin to this
+prolific gentleman. As these works are ornamented by coloured steel
+engravings and innumerable woodcuts by Leech, it has been my duty to
+look into them; read them, I cannot. I hope if the author is still
+living he will attribute my want of appreciation to a want of sympathy
+with his heroes and heroines, though I admit, in the portions I have
+read, that he shows considerable humour as well as power in expressing
+it. This, from one who knows his own ignorance of the subject in
+question, should be gratifying to Mr. Surtees.
+
+Though to my mind Leech is quite at his best in "Pictures of Life and
+Character," there are examples of his powers in all these books which
+quite justify my selection of some of them for the gratification of my
+readers. "Mr. Romford's Hounds" is "embellished" with twenty-five large
+steel plates, in one of which a certain Mr. Facey, who has a charming
+Miss Lucy for his hunting companion, is checked by an obstacle which
+causes him to exclaim to Lucy, "Dash it! this is a rum customer," "as he
+stood in his stirrups, looking at what was on the far side."
+
+"Oh, throw your heart over it," said Lucy, "and then follow it as
+quickly as you can."
+
+"Heart!" muttered Facey. "I shall never find it again if I do. It would
+be like looking for a needle in a bundle of hay."
+
+"Let _me_ try, then," said Lucy.
+
+It would be difficult indeed to surpass the beauty of the girl's figure
+in this drawing, exquisitely drawn, true in character and action as it
+is. Mr. Facey's expression, too, exactly conveys the idea that the
+longer he looks at the awkward place the less he likes it. The
+horses--notably the action of the one ridden by the young lady--are in
+every way admirable. The background, with a few slight touches, gives us
+a stretch of country--a withered tree, a flock of birds, and the cloudy
+sky, with no doubt the southerly wind that "proclaims the hunting
+morning."
+
+"Mr. Romford's Hounds" gives us another sportsman, who rejoices in the
+name of Muffington. This gentleman is possessed for the moment of a
+horse called, or, rather, miscalled, Placid Joe, whose former name, Pull
+Devil, seems better-suited to his propensities, as shown in the drawing,
+in which Placid Joe has taken the bit between his teeth, to the
+discomfiture of Mr. Muffington. From the following telegram it would
+seem that Placid Joe had been borrowed for the day's hunting. Thus it
+ran:
+
+     "Mr. Martin Muffington, at the White Swan, Showoffborough, to Mr.
+     Green, Brown Street, Bagnigge Wells Road, London.
+
+     "That brute Placid Joe has no more mouth than a bull. He's carried
+     me right into the midst of the hounds, and nearly annihilated the
+     huntsman. I will send him back by the 9.30 a.m. train to-morrow,
+     and won't pay you a halfpenny for his hire."
+
+The character of Mr. Muffington, together with his action as he tugs in
+vain at Placid Joe, are admirable; but the horse, good as it is in
+action, appears to me less well proportioned than Leech's horses almost
+invariably are, the head and neck being too small. But what could
+surpass the huntsman and his steed just recovering from the "cannoning"
+received from Placid Joe? The scattered hounds, the riders behind, and
+the landscape leave nothing to be desired.
+
+"Plain or Ringlets" contains twelve coloured plates and no less than
+forty-three woodcuts. Judging from a slight acquaintance with the
+letterpress and a careful study of the illustrations in this book, I
+find that the author deals less exclusively with the feats of the hunter
+than in "Mr. Romford's Hounds"; shooting, racing, etc., are allowed to
+figure prominently, and the pursuit of "lovely woman"--in which there
+seem to be as many false scents and heavy falls as beset the chasing of
+the fox--plays an important part in "Plain or Ringlets." Unlike the
+policeman's, I have often thought that the riding-master's life must "be
+a happy one." I am borne out in this, I think, by the illustration, in
+which Leech is delightfully at home. Says our author:
+
+"Smiling, cantering bevies of beauties, with their shining hair in gold
+or silver beaded nets, and party-coloured feathers in their jaunty
+little hats, alone imparted energy to the scene as they tit-tupped along
+with quickly following tramp, led by the most magnificent and affable of
+riding-masters, who thus advertise their studs, just as Howes and
+Cushing advertise their grand United States Circus. Bless us, what a
+pace some of them go!"
+
+What life and motion there are in this group! How is it, by what occult
+influence do we find those two lovely creatures right and left of the
+riding-master, instead of one place of honour being reserved for the
+stout middle-aged lady, who, strange to say, seems quite contented with
+her position? I don't believe those two girls want any teaching, for do
+they not sit their horses with perfect grace, as safely at home in their
+saddles as they would be in one of the lounges in their drawing-rooms,
+which either of them would fill so charmingly? Look what pretty
+creatures the magician Leech can call up for us by a few scratches of
+his pencil, in the rear of this cantering procession!
+
+The Duke of Tergiversation (Phoebus, what a name!), says the author of
+"Plain or Ringlets," found on inheriting his estate that "the life had
+been eaten out of it" before the death of his father put him in
+possession of his ancestral property. The Duke, however, seems to have
+made the acquaintance of a banker, named Goldspink, who yielded to his
+persuasions and promises to the extent of allowing his aristocratic
+customer to overdraw his account to such a formidable amount as
+seriously to imperil the stability of the bank. Mr. Goldspink then seeks
+an interview with his Grace, which the Duke, after endeavouring by all
+sorts of shifts to avoid, was at length compelled to grant.
+
+"Ah, my dear Mr. Goldspink!" exclaimed the Duke, advancing with
+outstretched hands and all the cheerful cordiality imaginable as our
+"crab-actioned" friend followed the smoothly-gliding butler, Mr.
+Garnett, into the presence. "Ah, my dear Goldspink, this is indeed most
+kind and considerate! First neighbour that has come to greet us. How,
+may I ask, is your worthy wife and your excellent son?" taking both the
+banker's hands and shaking them severely.
+
+The banker makes a mental calculation of the Duke's liabilities, with a
+clear understanding that "his Grace is on the gammon-and-spinach tack,"
+and then says:
+
+"Thank your Grace--his Grace--my Grace--that is to say--they are both
+pretty well. Hope the Duchess and Lord Marchhare----"
+
+"The Duchess and Marchhare are both at this moment enjoying a quiet cup
+of tea in her pretty little boudoir, where, I am sure, they will be most
+happy to see Mr. Goldspink," said the Duke, motioning him to the
+gilt-moulded white door opposite.
+
+This cut seems to me to show Leech's power of marking the difference of
+character in the persons represented in a degree noticeable by the most
+ordinary observer. The Duke is an aristocrat from top to toe; the
+insincerity of his welcome even is apparent; while the squat and
+"crab-like" figure of the banker is no less true to nature; his delight
+at shaking hands with a Duke making him forget for the moment the
+serious issues dependent upon the interview.
+
+At the eleventh hour I find myself forbidden to show my readers any of
+the admirable drawings which illustrate this book.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE "BON GAULTIER BALLADS."
+
+
+I will here leave the sporting novels for a time and introduce my reader
+to the "Bon Gaultier Ballads," and if he make his first acquaintance
+with that work through this introduction, I respectfully advise him to
+improve it by a more intimate knowledge, for he will not only find
+excellent reading, but illustrations by Richard Doyle and others,
+scarcely inferior to those by Leech.
+
+It will be remembered that at the time of the Papal aggression Lord John
+Russell, according to Leech, chalked "No Popery" on Cardinal Wiseman's
+door and then ran away. In the "Bon Gaultier Ballads" we find his
+lordship face to face with Cardinal Wiseman, disguised as a friar, in
+Sherwood Forest, where Little John is supposed to reign in place of
+Robin Hood, deceased. The ballad is entitled "Little John and the Red
+Friar," and begins:
+
+    "The deer may leap within the glade,
+       The fawns may follow free--
+     For Robin is dead, and his bones are laid
+       Beneath the greenwood tree.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Now, Little John was an outlaw proud,
+       A prouder ye never saw;
+     Through Nottingham and Leicestershires
+       He thought his word was law,
+     And he strutted through the greenwood wide
+       Like a pestilent jackdaw.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Now, word had come to Little John,
+      As he lay upon the grass,
+    That a friar red was in merry Sherwood
+      Without his leave to pass."
+
+Little John inquires from his little foot-page what manner of man is
+this burly friar who intrudes into his domain.
+
+    "'My master good,' the little page said,
+       'His name I wot not well;
+     But he wears on his head a hat so red,
+       With a monstrous scallop-shell.
+
+    "'He says he is Prior of Copmanhurst,
+       And Bishop of London town,
+     And he comes with a rope from our Father the Pope
+       To put the outlaws down.'"
+
+Little John searches the forest for his scarlet enemy--
+
+    "O'er holt and hill, through brake and breere,
+       He took his way alone.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Then Little John, he strutted on,
+       Till he came to an open bound,
+     And he was aware of a Red Friar
+       Was sitting upon the ground.
+
+    "His shoulders they were broad and strong,
+       And large was he of limb;
+     Few yeomen in the north countrie
+       Would care to mell with him.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "'What dost thou here, thou strong friar,
+       In Sherwood's merry round,
+     Without the leave of Little John
+       To range with hawk and hound?'
+
+    "'Small thought have I,' quoth the Red Friar,
+       'Of any leave, I trow;
+     But Little John is an outlawed thief,
+       And so, I ween, art thou!
+
+    "'Know I am, I am Prior of Copmanhurst,
+       And Bishop of London town,
+     And I bring a rope from our Father the Pope
+       To put the outlaws down.'
+
+    "Then out spoke Little John in wrath,
+       'I tell thee, burly frere,
+     The Pope may do as he likes at home,
+       But he sends no Bishops here!'"
+
+    "'Up and away, Red Friar,' he said,
+       'Up and away right speedilie;
+     And were it not for that cowl of thine,
+       Avenged on thy body I would be!'
+
+[Illustration]
+
+    "'Nay, heed not that,' said the Red Friar,
+       'And let my cowl no hindrance be;
+     I warrant I can give as good
+       As ever I take from thee!'
+
+    "Little John he raised his quarter-staff,
+       And so did the burly priest;
+     And they fought beneath the greenwood tree
+       A stricken hour at least."
+
+Little John gets much the worst of the fight, and endeavours to come to
+terms with the Red Friar:
+
+    "'There's some mistake, good friar,' he said;
+       'There's some mistake 'twixt thee and me;
+     I know thou art Prior of Copmanhurst,
+       But not beneath the greenwood tree.
+
+    "'And if you will take some other name,
+       You shall have ample time to bide;
+     With pasture also for your Bulls,
+       And power to range the forest wide.'
+
+    "'There's no mistake!' the friar said;
+       'I'll call myself just what I please:
+     My doctrine is that chalk is chalk,
+       And cheese is nothing else but cheese.'
+
+    "'So be it then!' quoth Little John"
+
+from his refuge in the tree, to which, according to Leech, he has been
+tossed by the Popish Bull.
+
+Cardinal Wiseman, as I remember him, was a huge burly figure, not unlike
+Leech's drawing; a stronger resemblance to Lord John can be traced in
+the swaggering little figure in the first illustration and also in the
+second.
+
+Most of the "Bon Gaultier Ballads" are illustrated by Doyle and other
+hands. Leech's contributions are confined to four of them. The next from
+which I select drawings is called "The Rhyme of Sir Launcelot Bogle." It
+appears that "this valiant knight, most terrible in fight," had married
+the sister of another valiant knight named George of Gorbals, and with
+his bride he had retired to his castle near Glasgow. For some reason or
+other this marriage was very distasteful to the brother of the bride--so
+distasteful, indeed, that nothing but the blood of Sir Launcelot would
+wipe out the disgrace. In pursuit of his revenge, George of Gorbals
+armed his followers and approached the castle, where
+
+    "A donjon keep arose, that might baffle any foes,
+        With its men-at-arms in rows
+                                  On the towers.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+    "And the flag that flaunted there showed the grim and grizzly bear,
+         Which the Bogles always wear for their crest.
+     And I heard the warder call, as he stood upon the wall,
+         'Wake ye up! my comrades all,
+                                  From your rest!
+
+    "'For, by the blessed rood, there's a glimpse of armour good
+         In the deep Cowcaddens Wood, o'er the stream;
+     And I hear the stifled hum of a multitude that come,
+         Though they have not beat the drum,
+                                  It would seem!
+
+    "'Go tell it to my lord, lest he wish to man the ford
+         With partisan and sword just beneath;
+     Ho, Gilkison and Nares! Ho, Provan of Cowlairs!
+         We'll back the bonny bears
+                                  To the death.'
+
+    "To the towers above the moat, like one who heedeth not,
+         Came the bold Sir Launcelot, half undressed;
+     On the outer rim he stood, and peered into the wood,
+         With his arms across him glued
+                                  On his breast.
+
+    "And he muttered, 'Foe accurst, thou hast dared to seek me first?
+         George of Gorbals, do thy worst; for I swear
+     O'er thy gory corpse to ride, ere thy sister and my bride
+         From my undissevered side
+                                  Thou shalt tear!'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sir Launcelot, not being sure that Cowcaddens Wood really hides his
+mortal enemy, despatches a "herald stout," accompanied by
+
+    "Sir Roderick Dalgleish, and his foster-brother Neish,
+         With his bloodhounds in the leash,"
+
+to see whether the party in the wood are friends or foes. All doubt on
+the subject is put to rest by a shower of arrows which
+
+    "Sped their force, and a pale and bleeding corse
+         He (the herald) sank from off his horse
+                                  On the plain!
+
+    "Back drew the bold Dalgleish, back started stalwart Neish,
+         With his bloodhounds in the leash from Brownlee.
+    'Now shame be to the sword that made thee knight and lord,
+         Thou caitiff thrice abhorred,
+                                  Shame on thee!'"
+
+After this burst of not unnatural rage at the unhandsome treatment of a
+herald, whose office should have made his person sacred, Sir Launcelot
+gives orders that there must be
+
+        "'Forthwith no end of those heavy bolts;
+     Three angels to the brave who finds the foe a grave,
+         And a gallows for the slave
+                                  Who revolts!'
+
+    "Ten days the combat lasted; but the bold defenders fasted,
+         While the foemen, better pastied, fed their host;
+     You might hear the savage cheers of the hungry Gorbaliers,
+         As at night they dressed the steers
+                                  For the roast.
+
+    "And Sir Launcelot grew thin, and Provan's double chin
+         Showed sundry folds of skin down beneath;
+     In silence and in grief found Gilkison relief,
+         Nor did Neish the spell-word 'beef'
+                                  Dare to breathe."
+
+Then Edith, the bride, made her appearance upon the ramparts.
+
+    "And she said unto her lord, as he leaned upon his sword,
+         'One short and little word may I speak?
+     I cannot bear to view those eyes so ghastly blue,
+         Or mark the sallow hue
+                                  Of thy cheek.
+
+    "'I know the rage and wrath that my furious brother hath
+         Is less against us both than at me.
+     Then, dearest, let me go, to find among the foe
+         An arrow from the bow,
+                                  Like Broomlee!'"
+
+To this noble offer of self-sacrifice Sir Launcelot will not listen for
+a moment. He replies:
+
+    "'All our chances are not lost, as your brother and his host
+         Shall discover to their cost rather hard!
+     Ho, Provan! take this key; hoist up the malvoisie,
+         And heap it, d'ye see,
+                                  In the yard.
+
+    "'Of usquebaugh and rum you will find, I reckon, some,
+         Beside the beer and mum, extra stout;
+     Go straightway to your task, and roll me all the casks,
+         And also range the flasks
+                                  Just without.
+
+    "'If I know the Gorbaliers, they are sure to dip their ears
+         In the very inmost tiers of the drink.
+     Let them win the outer court, and hold it for their sport,
+         Since their time is rather short,
+                                  I should think!'
+
+    "With a loud triumphant yell, as the heavy drawbridge fell,
+         Rushed the Gorbaliers pell-mell, wild as Druids;
+     Mad with thirst for human gore, how they threatened and they swore,
+         Till they stumbled on the floor
+                                  O'er the fluids.
+
+    "Down their weapons then they threw, and each savage soldier drew
+         From his belt an iron screw in his fist;
+     George of Gorbals found it vain their excitement to restrain,
+         And, indeed, was rather fain
+                                  To assist.
+
+    "With a beaker in his hand, in the midst he took his stand,
+         And silence did command all below;
+     'Ho, Launcelot the bold! ere thy lips are icy cold,
+         In the centre of thy hold
+                                  Pledge me now!'
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Dumb as death stood Launcelot, as though he heard him not;
+         But his bosom Provan smote and he swore,
+     And Sir Roderick Dalgleish remarked aside to Neish,
+         'Never, sure, did thirsty fish
+                                  Swallow more!
+
+    "'Thirty casks are nearly done, yet the revel's scarce begun;
+         It were knightly sport and fun to strike in!'
+     'Nay, tarry till they come,' quoth Neish, 'unto the rum--
+         They are working at the mum
+                                  And the gin!'
+
+    "Then straight there did appear to each gallant Gorbalier
+         Twenty castles dancing near, all around;
+     The solid earth did shake, and the stones beneath them quake,
+         And sinuous as a snake
+                                  Moved the ground.
+
+    "Why and wherefore had they come seemed intricate unto some,
+         But all agreed the rum was divine;
+     And they looked with bitter scorn on their leader highly born,
+         Who preferred to fill his horn
+                                  Up with wine."
+
+Like the fateful moment at Waterloo, the time had now come to strike,
+and Sir Launcelot and his friends took full advantage of it.
+
+    "'Now make the trumpets blast, and comrades follow fast,
+         Smite them down unto the last,'
+                                  Cried the knight.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Saint Mungo be my guide! it was goodly in that tide
+         To see the Bogle ride in his haste;
+     He accompanied each blow with a cry of 'ah!' or 'oh!'
+         As he always cleft the foe
+                                  To the waist.
+
+    "'George of Gorbals, craven lord! thou didst threat me with the
+                                                                   cord;
+         Come forth and brave my sword, if you dare!'
+     But he met with no reply, and never could descry
+         The glitter of his eye
+                                  Anywhere."
+
+The Gorbaliers were destroyed to a man, and in obedience to an order
+from Sir Launcelot the casks and empty flasks were removed by the
+"cellar master," but not without a shock--
+
+    "For he swore he heard a shriek
+                                  Through the door.
+
+    "When the merry Christmas came, and the Yule-log lent its flame
+         To the face of squire and dame in the hall,
+     The cellarer went down to tap October brown,
+         Which was rather of renown
+                                  'Mongst them all.
+
+    "He placed the spigot low, and gave the cask a blow,
+         But his liquor would not flow through the pin;
+     'Sure, 'tis sweet as honeysuckles!' so he rapped it with his
+                                                               knuckles,
+         But a sound as if of buckles
+                                  Clashed within.
+
+    "'Bring a hatchet, varlets, here!' and they cleft the cask of beer--
+         What a spectacle of fear met their sight!
+     There George of Gorbals lay, skull and bones all blanched and gray,
+         In the arms he bore the day
+                                  Of the fight!"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+From Leech's contributions to the "Bon Gaultier Ballads" my third
+selection consists of an illustration of "The Lay of the Lover's
+Friend." The "Lay" is a capital skit on the propensity of certain lovers
+to inflict the sorrows caused by the loss of their hearts upon friends
+to whom the loss is a matter of indifference. Says the friend:
+
+[Illustration]
+
+    "'I would all womankind were dead,
+       Or banished o'er the sea;
+     For they have been a bitter plague
+       These last six weeks to me.
+     It is not that I am touched myself,
+        For that I do not fear;
+      No female face has shown me grace
+        For many a bygone year.
+            But 'tis the most infernal bore,
+              Of all the bores I know,
+            To have a friend who's lost his heart
+              A short time ago.
+
+    "'Whene'er we steam it to Blackwall,
+       Or down to Greenwich run,
+     To quaff the pleasant cider-cup,
+       Or feed on fish and fun;
+     Or climb the slopes of Richmond Hill
+       To catch a breath of air--
+     Then, for my sins, he straight begins
+       To rave about his fair.
+           Oh, 'tis the most tremendous bore,
+             Of all the bores I know,
+           To have a friend who's lost his heart
+             A short time ago.'"
+
+Judging from the angry face of "the lover's friend" as he stretches out
+his hand towards the claret, it will require even more than the
+consolation to be derived from the finest brand to enable him to endure
+his friend's moaning with common patience. One studies with wonder and
+admiration the few touches with which the story is told in this little
+drawing. See the handsome frowning face of "the lover's friend," so
+perfectly in contrast with that of the absorbed lover, whose voice can
+almost be heard expatiating on the beauty of the lost one, and the
+hardness of her heart!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+Sporting Novels (_continued_).
+
+
+"Handley Cross" is another of the sporting novels so admirably
+illustrated by Leech. The hero of this book is a certain Mr. Jorrocks, a
+retired "great city grocer of the old school." A fortune gained in the
+grocery business enabled Mr. Jorrocks to retire into country life, where
+the sports of the field awaited him. He became a mighty hunter, the
+possessor of the finest horses and "the best pack of 'ounds in all the
+world," who would make the foxes cry "Capevi!" He is M.F.H., and so
+great an authority on sporting matters as to warrant his announcing
+himself as a lecturer on the duties of all concerned in the truly
+British sport of the chasing of the fox. Mr. Jorrocks's antecedents were
+such as to preclude the possibility of the display of brilliant
+oratorical powers. His mode of expression--including the absence of the
+letter "h," where it should be used, and its presence where it should
+not--was what might have been expected from the retired grocer whose
+little figure adorns the illustration.
+
+Leech's old friend, Mr. Adams, tells me that a man named Nicholls, Lady
+Louise Clinton's coachman, was the model for Mr. Jorrocks. Leech never
+went anywhere, not even to church, without his little sketch-book; and
+on a special Sunday at Barkway Church, where Lady Clinton had her pew,
+she was followed by a little man who, after handing her ladyship her
+books of devotion, took his seat outside the pew, and became an
+unconscious study for Leech; who in a few minutes transferred an exact
+likeness to the sketch-book, which was afterwards as exactly reproduced
+in the "hunting lecture."
+
+A curious reader can study Mr. Jorrocks's lecture in the pages of
+"Handley Cross." He will there wonder with me how it came about, that so
+distinguished an audience of aristocratic men, and lovely women, could
+listen for many minutes to an oration which must have lasted at least
+two hours, and which ends with the following peroration: "So shall
+little Spooney jog on rejoicin'! Each succeedin' year shall find him
+better mounted, and at each fresh deal he will become a wiser and I
+'opes a nappier man."
+
+Mr. Jorrocks concluded amidst loud and universal applause.
+
+Leech's mastery of character--unexaggerated, true to nature, without a
+trace of caricature--can be seen in the foreground figures of this
+etching. The man standing behind the lady with the lovely profile is a
+gentleman, though perhaps not a wise one; but what can the beautiful
+profile find in Mr. Jorrocks's discourse to amuse or enlighten her? And
+those pretty creatures in the distance, who certainly seem a little
+bored, how is it that they did not slip away with their cavaliers behind
+them, and so leave Mr. Jorrocks to talk about 'unting to 'is 'eart's
+content?
+
+One of Mr. Jorrocks's sporting friends is Mr. Charley Stobbs, a
+good-looking young gentleman who finds himself belated after a hard
+day's hunting. He wanders about an unknown country, darkness comes upon
+him, and he endeavours in vain to find his way to Handley Cross. "The
+night was drear and dark, the wind whistled and howled with uncommon
+keenness, the cutting hail drifted with the sharpness of needles against
+his face. Horse and rider were equally dispirited," says the
+chronicler. This free and easy, or, rather uneasy, fox-hunter,
+determined to seek shelter for the night at the first house he came to,
+that promised from its appearance a comfortable bed, with, perhaps, an
+introductory supper. He soon found himself "under the lee of a large
+house, and having dismounted, and broken his shins against a scraper, he
+at length discovered a bell-pull in the door-post, which having sounded,
+the echoing notes from afar proclaimed the size and importance of the
+mansion." "A little maiden" gave Charley admission, and, with surprising
+alacrity, provided him with "ham sandwiches, hot water, lemon, nutmeg,"
+etc., to say nothing of a bottle of sherry!
+
+To the common mind the ease with which Mr. Charles Stobbs managed to
+procure for himself a supper and lodging in a stranger's mansion will be
+a matter of surprise; in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he would
+have met with a very different reception. We rejoice in his success,
+because it gives us a likeness of his good-looking self, in conjunction
+with that of one of the prettiest and daintiest waiting-maids ever
+created by Leech's pencil.
+
+Had I been permitted I should have selected a drawing from "Handley
+Cross," which heads a chapter called "The Waning Season," not from its
+subject (which has little interest), but because it is an admirable
+example of Leech's mastery of landscape. The figure of the old hedger,
+with his big gauntlets and bill-hook, is as true as possible to nature,
+well drawn, and perfect in action, as he stoops over the faggots he has
+collected; but I would call more attention to the drawing of the
+foreground and distance of the landscape; the stunted tree and the
+wattled fence in its perspective cunningly going off almost to the
+horizon--thus leading the eye into space--with its lines so skilfully
+broken by the leafless trees. The sky, too, though represented by a few
+lines, composes artistically with the forms in the distance and the rest
+of the wintry landscape.
+
+With "Ask Mamma"--another of the many sporting books illustrated 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, _née_ 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 assistant 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 assured 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 glass 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 passengers 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 tasselled 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 nobleman, 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 noble 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 noble 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 noble friend's passion
+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 noble, 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 Vandyke can
+be seen any day, but there is no Vandyke to show us the impression they
+make upon him. Let anyone compare Vandyke'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 shell 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
+passionate love of children and childish ways and tricks, his sympathy
+with beauty in all its forms, his eager participation 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 principal 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 fortitude? 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 repetition 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 sparse 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 tassel 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 assure 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, assisted 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 illustrator 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 illustration 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
+glass, is well within rifle shot. He fires, misses; and behold the
+result!
+
+[Illustration: "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
+assured 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 assurance, 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 assure 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 assert themselves through the outer skirt, as we see in some of
+Leech's drawings.
+
+I would draw attention to the opposite, or antithesis, 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 Goddess 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 passenger 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 circumstances would most probably be. Leech gave his imagination
+full play in this fruitful theme. Granting the assumption 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 principals are
+reversed. It is the lady who is pouring words of passionate 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.
+
+Spirit-rapping, table-turning, and the rest of it, fare badly at the
+hands of Leech. Happy was the thought that possessed him when, by a
+touch of his magic pencil, he changed the heads of a seance-party into
+those of geese. And how admirably humorous is the drawing in which
+furniture starts into life at the bidding of a medium, to the
+astonishment and dismay of the housemaid! Hats were supposed to "turn
+about and wheel about" under the influence of encircled hands round the
+brims. It would be a mistake to suppose that the handsome Guardsman who,
+with the assistance of the fingers of those pretty creatures, so
+patiently waits for the hat to move, has either the expectation or the
+desire that the experiment will be successful. No, he greatly enjoys the
+situation, and is eager to prolong it for any unreasonable time.
+
+Here I cannot resist interposing a little anecdote of an experience of
+which I should like to have an explanation by the spiritualists. The
+incident took place on one of the many occasions when I served as a
+member of the dreaded Hanging Committee of the Royal Academy. As is well
+known, the Academicians have a vast variety of works of art offered for
+exhibition, perpetrated, as a rule, by human hands. But there is no rule
+without an exception, and it was my fate to witness the exception in the
+form of pictures painted by spirits, and sent for exhibition by their
+thrice-blessed proprietor. These were very striking works indeed. At
+first sight they looked like masses of many-coloured weeds, very weird
+vegetation, unlike anything "in heaven above or on the earth beneath."
+On nearer inspection, some childishly-drawn, half-naked figures were
+discernible amongst the weeds, intended to represent spiritual forms of
+departed friends, probably, who had been changed into these unfortunate
+figures. These works received our most careful examination, created
+laughter, and were rejected. Now, I respectfully ask what the spirits
+were about thus to subject themselves and their doings to the ignorant
+ribaldry of the Academicians? They must have known that we were in a
+state of darkest unbelief, and the least they could have done was to
+warn the owner of these works of their certain fate at our hands, and
+thus have saved him the trouble of sending them to Burlington House, to
+say nothing of the expense of the handsome frames in which they were
+enshrined. "I pause for a reply."
+
+Archery and croquet afforded Leech opportunities for the display of
+beauty in many forms. His lady-archers are bewitching creatures, their
+male competitors always manly, graceful gentlemen. The pursuit of both
+amusements offered chances of love-making and flirtation, of which full
+advantage is sometimes taken; indeed, in one instance we see a game of
+croquet stopped altogether by a couple who find an interchange of--shall
+we say vows?--more interesting than the game; a feeling which, judging
+from the other players, is by no means shared.
+
+Leech seems to have left no phase of human life and character untouched:
+whether he deals with the aristocrat or the plebeian, the Duchess or the
+beggar, the very poor or the very rich, the beautiful or the ugly, he is
+ever true to Nature; turning away from our vices, dealing lovingly with
+us in all ways, touching our follies lightly, humorously, and always
+good-naturedly--in short, invariably reflecting in his work his own
+disposition to what is pure, manly, and true.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THOMAS HOOD AND LEECH.
+
+
+The difficulty of gauging public taste in matters literary and artistic
+can be proved by numberless examples. How often does the manager of a
+theatre place in trembling anxiety a piece before his audience which
+afterwards runs for hundreds of nights! "Our Boys" has had a long life
+upon the stage; but so doubtful was everyone connected with its
+production of its living for one night even, that another play was held
+in readiness to take the place of the damned one. Books that have made
+reputations for their authors have been refused by publisher after
+publisher. Engravings run the same perilous course. Print-sellers, from
+long experience of public wants, should know what will satisfy them; but
+they seem to find the difficulty that befalls publishers and the
+managers of theatres.
+
+Many years ago a very pretty servant-maid became a part of my
+household. I induced her to sit for me, having noticed the graceful way
+in which her various duties were performed; and I made a half-length
+figure of her carrying a silver salver, on which was a decanter,
+thinking that the contrast between the silver, glass, and a pretty gray
+dress would make an effective scheme of colour. The picture was
+beautifully engraved by Holl, and offered for publication by a friend,
+who bought it, to one of the most experienced print-sellers in London.
+To please my friend, to whom the print-seller was under great
+obligation, he bought the right of publication; but having no faith in
+its success, my pretty servant was passed on--at a sacrifice--to another
+print-seller, and she afterwards found great favour with the public, and
+was highly remunerative to her proprietor, under the name and title of
+"Sherry, sir?" This title was the "happy thought" of the print-seller,
+who, on my remonstrating with him for vulgarizing my picture, informed
+me that the title had been the sole cause of the success of the
+engraving.
+
+A print was published many years ago of three chorister boys in surplice
+and cassock, who, with open mouths and upturned eyes, are supposed to be
+singing. In a moment of inspiration the artist, who, I believe, was
+also the engraver, christened his subject, "We praise Thee, O Lord!" and
+then offered it at most of the principal print-shops in London, where it
+was invariably refused. The artist published "We praise Thee," etc.,
+himself, and, I was told, made more than two thousand pounds by it.
+
+All this is introductory to the most astonishing example that could be
+conceived of the fallacy of what I may call expert opinion, on literary
+merit and public taste.
+
+I am not sure of the precise date, but I think it was about 1848 or 1849
+that Hood's "Song of the Shirt" appeared in _Punch_. There is, or was, a
+letter in existence from Hood to Mark Lemon, then editor of _Punch_, in
+which the writer tells his friend he has enclosed a poem that he may
+publish in _Punch_ if he likes; but he "most likely won't like," and
+refuse it, as the publishers, one and all, to whom it has been offered,
+had done without hesitation. "In that case," said Hood, "tear it up, and
+put it in the waste-paper-basket; for I am sick of the sight of it."
+This was the "Song of the Shirt," one of the most powerful, touching,
+and pathetic poems in the English language.
+
+My old friend, Willert Beale, whose recently-published "Light of Other
+Days" has charmed so many readers, sends me the following account of the
+introduction of the "Song of the Shirt" into _Punch_:
+
+"Mark Lemon" (then editor of _Punch_) "was looking over the immense heap
+of _Punch_ letters on his desk, when he opened one enclosing a poem,
+which the writer said had been rejected by three contemporaries, and if
+unavailable for _Punch_, he begged the editor, whom he knew but
+slightly, to consign the paper to his waste-basket, as he was sick of
+the sight of it. The poem was signed 'Tom Hood,' and entitled 'The Song
+of the Shirt,' now so famous among us all. Of a totally different
+character to anything that had previously appeared in the pages of
+_Punch_, most of the staff were dead set against the insertion of it;
+but Mark Lemon, whose quick appreciation of its merits made him
+unwilling to let so valuable a prize slip from his grasp, over-ruled all
+objections with quiet though firm determination, and brought it before
+the public through the medium of _Punch_. The insertion _trebled_ the
+sale of the number. Mark Lemon was always very proud of this success,
+which was certainly attributable to his efforts.
+
+"'Hood wants but one thing to make him famous,' he used to say, 'and
+that is death.'
+
+"His words were verified, for in poverty and comparative obscurity died
+one of England's cleverest men."
+
+In 1849 some very painful disclosures were made in the Metropolitan
+police-courts, when it appeared "that numbers of poor sempstresses were
+paid by the slop-sellers only three-halfpence for making a shirt, and in
+proportion for other articles of ready-made clothing." In all
+probability these disclosures suggested the "Song of the Shirt," as they
+assuredly did the charming designs by Leech, called "Pin-Money" and
+"Needle-Money." It seems to me almost an impertinence for a commentator
+on such admirable designs as these to point out the beauties so palpable
+to all who look at them. We sympathize with each of these classes of
+beings, for they are both the results of conditions that they have done
+nothing to create. It is certain that one of them is miserable, and it
+is by no means sure that the lovely girl's pin-money brings happiness
+with it.
+
+There was everything in the shape of similarity of thought and feeling
+to have brought Leech and Hood into intimacy, but I doubt if they ever
+saw much of each other. Hood's comparatively premature death, preceded
+by much sickness and seclusion, took place while Leech was far from the
+position in public estimation that he afterwards reached. In proof of
+similarity of humour I give the following note from Hood to Dickens:
+
+
+  "17, Elm Tree Road, 1841,
+  _Saturday_.
+
+  "DEAR DICKENS,
+
+     "As you are going to America, and have kindly offered to execute
+     any little commission for me, pray, if it be not too much trouble,
+     try to get me an autograph of Sandy Hook's. I have Theodore's.
+
+  "Yours very truly,
+
+  "THOS. HOOD.
+
+     "My boy does _not_ wait for an answer."
+
+"Miss Kilmansegg and her Precious Leg: a Golden Legend," is perhaps one
+of the best, as it is certainly the longest, of Hood's poems,
+remarkable, indeed, for its puns and ingenious play upon words, its
+felicitous rhyming, and its underlying moral. Miss Kilmansegg was born
+with a golden spoon in her mouth, and her condition is shown in the
+charming drawing with which Leech illustrates the following lines:
+
+    "What wide reverses of fate are there!
+     Whilst Margaret, charmed by the Bulbul rare,
+       In a Garden of Gull reposes,
+     Poor Peggy hawks nosegays from street to street,
+     Till--think of that, who find life so sweet!--
+       She hates the smell of roses!
+
+[Illustration: "WHAT WIDE REVERSES OF FATE ARE THERE!"]
+
+    "Not so with the infant Kilmansegg--
+     She was not born to steal or beg,
+       Or gather cresses in ditches;
+     To plait the straw, or bind the shoe,
+     Or sit all day to hem and sew,
+     As females must--and not a few!--
+       To fill their insides with stitches."
+
+The christening of the golden child was an affair so splendid as to tax
+the poet's invention for tropes and figures worthy of the occasion:
+
+    "Gold! and gold! and nothing but gold!
+     The same auriferous shine behold
+       Wherever the eye could settle!
+     On the walls--the sideboard--the ceiling--sky--,
+     On the gorgeous footmen standing by,
+     In coats to delight a miner's eye
+       With seams of precious metal.
+
+    "Gold! and gold! and besides the gold,
+     The very robe of the infant told
+     A tale of wealth in every fold--
+       It lapped her like a vapour!
+     So fine! so thin! the mind at a loss,
+     Could compare it to nothing except a cross
+       Of cobweb with banknote paper."
+
+Powerful as the poet's imagination shows in these glittering rhymes, it
+fails him in his endeavour to find a prefix in the form of a name worthy
+of accompanying Kilmansegg. He says:
+
+    "Then the babe was crossed and blessed amain,
+     But instead of Kate, or Ann, or Jane,
+       Which the humbler female endorses--
+     Instead of one name, as some people prefix,
+     Kilmansegg went at the tails of six,
+       Like a carriage of state with its horses."
+
+The names, therefore, are left to the imagination of the reader, who may
+learn, if he will, some particulars of the nameless Kilmansegg's
+childhood:
+
+    "Turn we to little Miss Kilmansegg,
+     Cutting her first little toothy-peg
+       With a fifty-guinea coral--
+         A peg upon which
+         About poor and rich
+       Reflection might hang on a moral.
+
+    "Born in wealth, and wealthily nursed,
+     Capp'd, papp'd, napp'd, and lapp'd from the first
+       On the knees of Prodigality,
+     Her childhood was one eternal round
+     Of the game of going on Tiddler's ground,
+       Picking up gold in reality.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Gold! and gold! 'twas the burden still!
+     To gain the heiress's early goodwill
+       There was much corruption and bribery.
+     The yearly cost of her golden toys
+     Would have given half London's charity boys
+     And charity girls the annual joys
+       Of a holiday dinner at Highbury."
+
+The kind of education permitted to this unfortunate heiress may be
+gathered from the following extracts:
+
+    "Long before her A B and C
+     They had taught her by heart her £ s. d.,
+       And as how she was born a great heiress;
+     And as sure as London was made of bricks
+     My Lord would ask her the day to fix
+     To ride in a fine gilt coach and six,
+       Like her Worship the Lady Mayoress.
+
+    "The very metal of merit they told,
+     And praised her for being as 'good as gold'!
+       Till she grew as a peacock haughty;
+     Of money they talked the whole day round,
+     And weighed desert like grapes, by the pound,
+     Till she had an idea from the very sound
+       That people with naught were naughty.
+
+    "Gold! still gold....
+     Gold ran in her thoughts and filled her brain,
+     She was golden-headed, like Peter's cane,
+       With which he walked behind her."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Leech's drawings which decorate "Miss Kilmansegg" display his
+appreciation of beauty and character, and are, in some examples, of
+great artistic excellence--notably in the portrait of the foreign
+gentleman who became the husband of the heiress. Some of them are, of
+course, deficient in the artistic qualities with which his long practice
+enabled him to enrich his latest work.
+
+My space will not permit of my making many extracts from Hood's
+admirable work--only, indeed, so far as to explain Leech's drawings; but
+to those of my readers who make Miss Kilmansegg's acquaintance for the
+first time in these pages, I heartily recommend a perusal of the poem,
+and envy them the pleasure they will find in reading it.
+
+Of course Miss Kilmansegg
+
+            "... learnt to sing and to dance,
+    To sit on a horse although he should prance,
+    And to speak a French not spoken in France
+      Any more than at Babel's building."
+
+The steed was a thoroughbred of great spirit--
+
+    "A regular thoroughbred Irish horse,
+     And he ran away, as a matter of course,
+       With a girl worth her weight in guineas."
+
+I think it would be very difficult to find a description of any event in
+any book to equal Hood's account of the mad career of the Irish horse
+and its unfortunate rider:
+
+    "Away went the horse in the madness of fright,
+     And away went the horsewoman mocking the sight;
+     Was yonder blue flash a flash of blue light,
+       Or only the flash of her habit?
+
+    "Away she flies, and the groom behind"--
+
+encountering all the perils of London streets, till the inevitable
+catastrophe takes place:
+
+    "On and on! still frightfully fast!
+     Dover Street, Bond Street, all are past!
+     But--yes--no--yes!--they're down at last!
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+            There's a shriek and a sob
+            And the dense dark mob
+     Like a billow closes around them!
+                'She breathes!'
+                'She don't'
+                'She'll recover!'
+                'She won't.'
+       'She's stirring! she's living by Nemesis!'
+     Gold, still gold, on counter and shelf,
+     Golden dishes as plenty as delf,
+     Miss Kilmansegg's coming again to herself
+       On an opulent goldsmith's premises!"
+
+The heiress recovers; but, alas! in her fall she broke her leg, and as
+"the limb was doomed it couldn't be saved." A substitute must be found.
+Of what, then, shall the "proxy limb" be made?
+
+    "She couldn't--she shouldn't--she wouldn't have wood!
+     Nor a leg of cork, if she never stood;
+     And she swore an oath, or something as good,
+       The proxy limb should be golden!
+
+     So a leg was made in a comely mould
+     Of gold--fine virgin, glittering gold--
+       As solid as man could make it;
+     Solid in foot, and calf, and shank,
+     A prodigious sum of money it sank;
+     In fact 'twas a Branch of the family Bank,
+       And no easy matter to break it."
+
+The golden leg became the talk of the town, kicking away all other
+attractions. The new novel, the new murder, even "wild Irish riots and
+rum-pusses," were neglected; in fact, "the leg was in everybody's
+mouth," and a grand fancy ball was given at the Kilmansegg mansion to
+celebrate the heiress's recovery, as well as to exhibit the golden leg.
+All the world and his wife worship at the golden shrine:
+
+    "In they go--in jackets, and cloaks,
+     Plumes and bonnets, turbans and tokes,
+       As if to a congress of nations:
+     Greeks and Malays, with daggers and dirks,
+     Spaniards and Jews, Chinese and Turks--
+     Some like original foreign works,
+       But mostly like bad translations.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+     But where--where--where? with one accord
+     Cried Moses and Mufti, Jack and my Lord,
+       Wang-Fong and Il Bondacani--
+     When slow and heavy, and dead as a dump,
+     They heard a foot begin to stump,
+                   Thump! lump!
+                   Lump! thump!
+       Like the spectre in 'Don Giovanni!'
+
+    "And lo! the heiress, Miss Kilmansegg,
+     With her splendid, brilliant, beautiful leg,
+       In the garb of a Goddess olden--
+     Like chaste Diana going to hunt
+     With a golden spear--which of course was blunt,
+     And a tunic looped up to a gem in front,
+       To show the leg was golden."
+
+The fancy ball was a great success, and at supper--which the poet
+describes in glowing language--the heiress's health was proposed:
+
+              "'Miss Kilmansegg,
+               Full glasses I beg.
+    Miss Kilmansegg and her Precious Leg!'
+      And away went the bottle careering!
+    Wine in bumpers! and shouts in peals!
+    Till the clown didn't know his head from his heels,
+    The Mussulman's eyes danced two-some reels,
+      And the Quaker was hoarse with cheering!"
+
+The party being over, and the last guest gone, Miss Kilmansegg went to
+bed and to dream:
+
+    "Miss Kilmansegg took off her leg
+     And laid it down like a cribbage-peg,
+       For the rout was done and the riot;
+     The square was hushed, not a sound was heard
+     The sky was gray, and no creature stirr'd
+     Except one little precocious bird
+       That chirped--and then was quiet.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "And then on the bed her frame she cast,
+     The time for repose had come at last;
+     But long, long after the storm is past
+       Rolls the turbid, turbulent billow."
+
+She dreams:
+
+    "Gold! she saw at her golden foot
+     The Peer whose tree has an olden root;
+     The Proud, the Great, the Learned to boot,
+       The handsome, the gay, and the witty--
+     The man of Science--of Arms--of Art,
+     The man who deals but at Pleasure's mart,
+       And the man who deals in the City."
+
+The poet now rhymes delightfully of the time--the perilous time--when a
+choice has to be made of a partner in life for the heiress. The dream
+was realized so far as regards the number of her suitors, for--
+
+          "to tell the rigid truth,
+    Her favour was sought by Age and Youth,
+      For the prey will find a prowler!
+    She was followed, flattered, courted, address'd,
+    Woo'd and coo'd and wheedl'd, and press'd
+    By suitors from North, South, East, and West,
+      Like that Heiress in song, 'Tibbie Fowler.'"
+
+The _embarras de choix_ resulted, as often happens, in the selection of
+the worst of the group:
+
+    "A foreign Count--who came incog.
+     Not under a cloud, but under a fog,
+       In a Calais packet's fore-cabin,
+
+     To charm some lady British-born,
+     With his eyes as black as the fruit of the thorn,
+     And his hooky nose, and his beard half shorn,
+       Like a half-converted Rabbin.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "He was dressed like one of the glorious trade--
+     At least, when Glory is off parade--
+     With a stock, and a frock, well trimmed with braid,
+     And frogs--that went a-wooing."
+
+[Illustration: "THE FOREIGN COUNT."]
+
+He could
+
+      "act the tender, and do the cruel;
+    For amongst his other killing parts,
+    He had broken a brace of female hearts,
+      And murdered three men in a duel.
+
+    "Savage at heart, and false of tongue;
+     Subtle with age, and smooth to the young,
+       Like a snake in his coiling and curling,
+     Such was the Count--to give him a niche--
+     Who came to court that heiress rich,
+     And knelt at her foot--one needn't say which--
+       Besieging her Castle of _Sterling_."
+
+In the whole range of Leech's art, no more subtle realization of
+character can be found than this wonderful drawing presents; in every
+touch, in every line, can be read the savage brutality of the man to
+whom the happiness of Hood's poor rich heroine is confided. How evident
+is "the trail of the serpent" over features not unhandsome! The love
+that could fail to be warned by such a face must be blind indeed. The
+poet's comments, and the contrast he shows between the lots of those who
+"marry for money" and those in whom simple and true love have been the
+guiding stars, are delightful. I add an example:
+
+    "But, oh! the love that gold must crown!
+     Better, better, the love of the clown,
+     Who admires his lass in her Sunday gown,
+       As if all the fairies had dressed her!
+     Whose brain to no crooked thought gives birth,
+     Except that he never will part on earth
+       With his truelove's crooked tester!
+
+    "Alas! for the love that's linked with gold,
+     Better, better a thousand times told--
+       More honest and happy and laudable,
+     The downright loving of pretty Ciss,
+     Who wipes her lips, though there's nothing amiss,
+     And takes a kiss, and gives a kiss,
+       In which her heart is audible."
+
+The Count has been accepted; he has presented his betrothed
+
+    "With a miniature sketch of his hooky nose,
+     And his dear dark eyes as black as sloes,
+     And his beard and whiskers as black as those.
+       The lady's consent he requited:
+     And instead of the lock that lovers beg,
+     The Count received from Miss Kilmansegg
+     A model, in small, of her precious leg--
+       And so the couple were plighted!"
+
+But a short time probably elapsed between the betrothal and the
+marriage, which was solemnized, with golden splendour, of course, at St.
+James's Church. Thus the poet sings:
+
+    "'Twas morn--a most auspicious one!
+     From the golden east, the golden sun
+     Came forth his glorious race to run
+       Through clouds of most splendid tinges;
+     Clouds that had lately slept in shade,
+           But now seemed made
+           Of gold brocade,
+       With magnificent gold fringes.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "In short, 'twas the year's most golden day,
+     By mortals called the first of May,
+           When Miss Kilmansegg,
+           Of the golden leg
+       With a golden ring was married.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "And then to see the groom! the Count
+     With Foreign Orders to such an amount,
+       And whiskers so wild--nay, bestial;
+     He seemed to have borrowed the shaggy hair,
+     As well as the stars, of the Polar Bear,
+       To make him look celestial!"
+
+Of course the church was crowded inside and out,
+
+    "For next to that interesting job,
+     The hanging of Jack, or Bill, or Bob,
+     There's nothing that draws a London mob
+       As the noosing of very rich people.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "And then, great Jove! the struggle, the crush,
+     The screams, the heaving, the awful rush,
+       The swearing, the tearing, the fighting;
+     The hats and bonnets, smashed like an egg,
+     To catch a glimpse of the golden leg,
+     Which between the steps and Miss Kilmansegg
+       Was fully displayed in alighting.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "But although a magnificent veil she wore,
+     Such as never was seen before,
+     In case of blushes, she blushed no more
+       Than George the First on a guinea!
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Bravely she shone--and shone the more,
+     As she sailed through the crowd of squalid and poor,
+       Thief, beggar, and tatterdemalion;
+     Led by the Count, with his sloe-black eyes,
+     Bright with triumph, and some surprise,
+     Like Anson, in making sure of his prize,
+       The famous Mexican galleon.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Six 'Handsome Fortunes,' all in white,
+     Came to help the marriage rite,
+       And rehearse their own hymeneals;
+     And then the bright procession to close,
+     They were followed by just as many beaux--
+       Quite fine enough for ideals.
+
+    "And how did the bride perform her part?
+     Like any bride who is cold at heart,
+       Mere snow with the ice's glitter;
+     What but a life of winter for her?
+     Bright but chilly, alive without stir,
+     So splendidly comfortless, just like a fir
+       When the frost is severe and bitter.
+
+    "Yet wedlock's an awful thing!
+      'Tis something like that feat in the ring
+         Which requires good nerve to do it,
+           When one of a 'grand equestrian troop'
+           Makes a jump at a gilded hoop,
+             Not certain at all
+             Of what may befall
+         After his getting through it.
+
+    "Such were the future of man and wife,
+     Whose bale or bliss to the end of life
+       A few short words were to settle:
+         Wilt thou have this woman?
+           I will--and then,
+         Wilt thou have this man?
+           I will, and Amen----
+     And those two were one flesh in the angels' ken,
+       Except one leg--that was metal."
+
+[Illustration: THE WEDDING--"WILT THOU HAVE THIS WOMAN?"]
+
+Here we have the Count in profile, only more agreeable because the view
+affords less of his villainous face.
+
+I confess I am disappointed with Leech's rendering of Miss Kilmansegg. I
+cannot see why she should be deprived of a portion of the sympathy one
+always feels for "beauty in distress." Why should she be represented as
+the commonplace, red-nosed creature who plays the part of the bride in
+Leech's drawing? To be sure, the contrast she affords to the sweet
+little bridesmaid behind her heightens that young lady's attractions;
+but I cannot help thinking the heiress is hardly treated.
+
+I pass over the wedding-breakfast, which was composed of everything in
+season, and of much that was out of it--
+
+    "For wealthy palates there be that scout
+     What is _in_ season for what is _out_,
+       And prefer all precocious savour;
+     For instance, early green peas, of the sort
+     That costs some four or five guineas a quart,
+       Where _mint_ is the principal flavour."
+
+The inevitable honeymoon follows--
+
+     "To the loving a bright and constant sphere
+      That makes earth's commonest scenes appear
+        All poetic, romantic, and tender;
+      Hanging with jewels a cabbage-stump,
+      And investing a common post or a pump,
+      A currant-bush or a gooseberry clump,
+        With a halo of dream-like splendour."
+
+     "Oh, happy, happy, thrice happy state,
+      When such a bright planet governs the fate
+        Of a pair of united lovers!
+      Tis theirs, in spite of the serpent's hiss,
+      To enjoy the pure primeval kiss,
+      With as much of the old original bliss
+        As mortality ever recovers."
+
+[Illustration: "LOVE AT THE BOARD."]
+
+I hope my readers will agree with me, that amongst the pleasures we
+receive from this delightful poem, one of the greatest is the charming
+little sketch which it has suggested to Leech in these two happy lovers,
+completely wrapped up in each other, with love in the cottage, at the
+board, and all about them.
+
+But the Kilmansegg moon!
+
+    "Now, the Kilmansegg moon, it must be told,
+     Though instead of silver it tipped with gold,
+     Shone rather wan, and distant, and cold;
+       And before its days were thirty,
+     Such gloomy clouds began to collect,
+     With an ominous ring of ill-effect,
+     As gave but too much cause to expect
+       Such weather as seamen call dirty.
+
+    "She hated lanes, she hated fields,
+     She hated all that the country yields,
+       And barely knew turnips from clover;
+     She hated walking in any shape,
+     And a country stile was an awkward scrape,
+     Without the bribe of a mob to gape
+       At the leg in clambering over.
+
+    "Gold, still gold, her standard of old--
+     All pastoral joys were tried by gold,
+       Or by fancies golden and crural,
+     Till ere she had passed one week unblest
+     As her agricultural uncle's guest,
+     Her mind was made up and fully imprest
+       That felicity could not be rural."
+
+And the Count?
+
+     "To the snow-white lambs at play,
+      And all the scents and sights of May,
+        And the birds that warbled their passion,
+      His ears, and dark eyes, and decided nose,
+      Were as deaf, and as blind, and as dull as those
+      That overlook the Bouquet de Rose,
+          The Huile Antique,
+          And Parfum Unique,
+        In a Barber's Temple of Fashion.
+
+     "And yet had that fault been his only one,
+      The pair might have had few quarrels or none,
+        For their tastes thus far were in common;
+      But faults he had that a haughty bride
+      With a golden leg could hardly abide--
+      Faults that would even have roused the pride
+        Of a far less metalsome woman.
+
+            *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "He left her, in spite of her tender regards,
+      And those loving murmurs described by bards,
+      For the rattling of dice and the shuffling of cards
+        And the poking of balls into pockets.
+
+     "Moreover, he loved the deepest stake
+      And the heaviest bets the players would make,
+        And he drank--the reverse of sparely!
+      And he used strange curses that made her fret;
+      And when he played with herself at picquet,
+          She found to her cost--
+          For she always lost--
+        That the Count did not count quite fairly.
+
+     "And then came dark mistrust and doubt,
+      Gathered by worming his secrets out,
+        And slips in his conversation--
+      Fears which all her peace destroyed,
+      That his title was null, his coffers were void,
+      And his French château was in Spain, or enjoyed
+        The most airy of situations.
+
+     "But still his heart--if he had such a part--
+      She--only she--might possess his heart,
+        And hold her affections in fetters.
+      Alas! that hope, like a crazy ship,
+      Was forced its anchor and cable to slip
+      When, seduced by her fears, she took a dip
+        In his private papers and letters--
+
+     "Letters that told of dangerous leagues,
+      And notes that hinted as many intrigues
+        As the Count's in the 'Barber of Seville.'
+      In short, such mysteries came to light
+      That the Countess-bride, on the thirtieth night,
+      Woke and started up in a fright,
+      And kicked and screamed with all her might,
+      And finally fainted away outright,
+        For she dreamt she had married the Devil!"
+
+In short, poor Miss Kilmansegg, or, rather, the "Golden Countess," was
+utterly wretched:
+
+    "Her cheek is pale, and her eye is dim,
+     And downward cast, yet not at the limb
+       Once the centre of all speculation;
+     But downward drooping in comfort's dearth,
+     As gloomy thoughts are drawn to the earth--
+     Whence human sorrows derive their birth--
+       By a moral gravitation.
+
+    "How blessed the heart that has a friend
+     A sympathizing ear to lend
+       To troubles too great to smother!
+     But friend or gossip she had none
+     To hear the vile deeds the Count had done,
+     How night after night he rambled;
+     And how she learned by sad degrees
+     That he drank and smoked, and, worse than these,
+       That he 'swindled, intrigued, and gambled'!
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "He brought _strange_ gentlemen home to dine
+     That he said were in the Fancy Line,--
+     And they fancied spirits instead of wine,
+     And called her lap-dog 'Wenus.'"
+
+[Illustration: "HE BROUGHT STRANGE GENTLEMEN HOME TO DINE."]
+
+Leech has pretty well marked the profession of the "strange gentlemen"
+in this admirable drawing; their attitudes, the cut of their clothes,
+the character in their figures, to say nothing of the sticking-plaster
+on a face that could belong to no one but a "fighting man," sufficiently
+proclaim their habits. The figure of the Count is tragic in its
+intensity of drunken self-abandonment.
+
+A leg of solid gold would, no doubt, if turned into cash, represent a
+large sum of money. It seems to have been the determination of the
+Countess, while still Miss Kilmansegg, to have reserved to herself all
+rights over the golden leg, for that auriferous limb was settled, as
+well as fixed upon herself, to be disposed of by will or otherwise, as
+she pleased. Says the poet:
+
+    "So the Countess, then Miss Kilmansegg,
+     At her marriage refused to stir a peg
+     Till her lawyers had fastened on her leg,
+       As fast as the law could tie it."
+
+Means which seem illimitable very speedily vanish when they fall into
+the hands of such people as the foreign Count. It was said of a famous
+_roué_ of the last century that he "practised every vice except
+prodigality and hypocrisy--his insatiable avarice exempted him from the
+first, and his matchless impudence from the second." Our Count seems to
+have surpassed his prototype, whose "impudence" may not have been of the
+brutal character from which the poor Countess suffered; whilst a slight
+dash of avarice might have prevented the golden leg from being all that
+was left of her golden fortune.
+
+The following lines eloquently describe the Count's state of mind after
+his orgies:
+
+    "And then how wildly he used to stare,
+     And shake his fist at nothing, and swear,
+     And pluck by the handful his shaggy hair,
+     Till he looked like a study of Giant Despair
+       For a new edition of Bunyan!
+
+    "For dice will run the contrary way,
+     As is well known to all who play,
+       And cards will conspire as in treason."
+
+At all events, cards, dice, and other expensive amusements had so
+reduced the Count that he had not a leg to stand upon, except his wife's
+golden one, and as that limb was in her own control, it was but a
+doubtful security. The Countess had made a will in which the leg was
+left to the Count, but life is uncertain--the Countess might outlive her
+husband; moreover, he was so placed that delay was not only dangerous,
+but inconvenient. The chronicler thus continues:
+
+    "Now, the precious leg while cash was flush,
+     Or the Count's acceptance worth a rush,
+       Had never excited dissension;
+     But no sooner the stocks began to fall,
+     Than, without any ossification at all,
+     The limb became what people call
+       A perfect bone of contention.
+
+    "For altered days made altered ways,
+     And instead of the complimentary phrase
+       So current before her bridal,
+     The Countess heard, in language low,
+     That her precious leg was precious slow,
+     A good 'un to look at, but bad to go,
+       And kept quite a sum lying idle.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "But spite of hint, and threat, and scoff,
+       The leg kept its situation;
+     For legs are not to be taken off
+       By a verbal amputation.
+
+    "Firmly then--and more firmly yet--
+     With scorn for scorn, and with threat for threat,
+       The proud one confronted the cruel;
+     And loud and bitter the quarrel arose,
+     Fierce and merciless--one of those
+     With spoken daggers, and looks like blows--
+       In all but the bloodshed a duel.
+
+    "Rash and wild, and wretched and wrong,
+     Were the words that came from weak and strong,
+       Till, maddened for desperate matters,
+     Fierce as a tigress escaped from her den,
+     She flew to her desk--'twas opened--and then,
+     In the time it takes to try a pen,
+     Or the clerk to utter his slow 'Amen,'
+       Her will was in fifty tatters!
+
+    "But the Count, instead of curses wild,
+     Only nodded his head and smiled,
+     As if at the spleen of an angry child;
+       But the calm was deceitful and sinister!
+     And a lull like the lull of the treacherous sea--
+     For Hate in that moment had sworn to be
+     _The golden leg's sole legatee,
+       And that very night to administer_."
+
+[Illustration: "THE TORN WILL."]
+
+"That very night!"--one more night of golden dreaming, in the midst of
+which comes death; the deliverer from an existence which the worship of
+gold has made so pitiful:
+
+     "'Tis a stern and startling thing to think,
+      How often mortality stands on the brink
+        Of its grave without any misgiving:
+      And yet in this slippery world of strife,
+      In the stir of human bustle so rife,
+      There are daily sounds to tell us that life
+        Is dying, and Death is living!
+
+     "But breath and bloom set doom at nought--
+      How little the wretched Countess thought,
+        When at night she unloosed her sandal,
+      That the fates had woven her burial-cloth,
+      And that Death, in the shape of a death's head moth,
+        Was fluttering round her candle!
+
+     "As she looked at her clock of ormolu,
+      For the hours she had gone so wearily through
+        At the end of a day of trial,
+      How little she saw in the pride of prime
+      The dart of Death in the hand of Time--
+        That hand which moved the dial!
+
+     "As she went with her taper up the stair,
+      How little her swollen eye was aware
+        That the shadow which followed was double!
+      Or when she closed her chamber-door,
+      It was shutting out, and for evermore,
+        The world and its worldly trouble.
+
+     "Little she dreamt as she laid aside
+      Her jewels--after one glance of pride--
+        They were solemn bequests to Vanity;
+      Or when her robes she began to doff,
+      That she stood so near to the putting off
+        Of the flesh that clothes humanity.
+
+     "And when she quenched the taper's light,
+      How little she thought, as the smoke took flight,
+      That her day was done and merged in a night
+        Of dreams and duration uncertain;
+          Or along with her own
+          That a hand of bone
+        Was closing mortality's curtain!
+
+            *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "Thus, even thus, the Countess slept,
+      While death still nearer and nearer crept,
+        Like the Thane who smote the sleeping;
+      But her mind was busy with early joys,
+      Her golden treasures and golden toys,
+          That flashed a bright
+          And golden light
+        Under lids still red with weeping.
+
+     "The golden guineas in silken purse,
+      And the 'Golden Legends' she heard from her nurse,
+        Of the Mayor in his gilded carriage--
+      And London streets that were paved with gold,
+      And the golden eggs that were laid of old--
+          With each golden thing
+          To the golden ring
+        At her own auriferous marriage!
+
+     "And still the golden light of the sun
+      Through her golden dream appeared to run,
+      Though the night that roared without was one
+        To terrify seamen or gipsies--
+      While the moon, as if in malicious mirth,
+      Kept peeping down at the ruffled earth,
+      As though she enjoyed the tempest's birth,
+        In revenge of her old eclipses.
+
+     "But vainly, vainly the thunder fell,
+      For the soul of the sleeper was under a spell,
+        That time had lately embittered--
+      The Count, as once at her foot he knelt--
+      That foot which now he wanted to melt!
+      But, hush! 'twas a stir at her pillow she felt,
+        And some object before her glittered.
+
+     "'Twas the golden leg! she knew its gleam!
+      And up she started and tried to scream;
+        But even in the moment she started,
+      Down came the limb with a frightful smash,
+      And, lost in the universal flash
+      That her eyeballs made at so mortal a crash,
+        The spark called vital departed.
+
+     "Gold, still gold, hard, yellow, and cold,
+      For gold she had lived, and died for gold--
+        By a golden weapon, not oaken;
+      In the morning they found her all alone--
+      Stiff, and bloody, and cold as a stone--
+      But her leg, the golden leg, was gone,
+        And the 'golden bowl was broken.'
+
+     "HER MORAL.
+
+     "Gold! gold! gold! gold!
+      Bright and yellow, hard and cold,
+      Molten, graven, hammered, and rolled;
+      Heavy to get, and light to hold;
+      Hoarded, bartered, bought, and sold,
+      Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled;
+      Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old
+      To the very verge of the churchyard mould;
+      Price of many a crime untold;
+      Gold! gold! gold! gold!
+      Good or bad a thousandfold!
+        How widely its agencies vary--
+      To save, to ruin, to curse, to bless--
+      As even its minted coins express,
+      Now stamped with the image of good Queen Bess,
+        And now of Bloody Mary!"
+
+[Illustration: "BEDTIME."]
+
+The admirable design--the "tailpiece" to the legend of "Miss Kilmansegg
+and her Golden Leg"--which Leech calls "Bedtime," is reproduced, not
+only for its excellence as a composition, but also in evidence of the
+readiness of the artist's imagination to adopt an idea that has been
+suggested by the poem, and of the skill with which that cunning hand has
+realized it. The little old miser has been "counting out his money" with
+the delight that "time cannot wither, nor custom stale." His shrunken
+shanks, thin face and hands, betray his age. Death cannot be far off;
+but no thought apart from the treasure can be spared for the inevitable
+visitor who surprises the miser at last in the midst of his golden
+worship. He is far from being tired; but he must go to bed, and sleep
+the sleep that knows no waking. His skeleton nurse has come for him; her
+bony hands encircle him. His shroud is on her arm; she cannot wait--no,
+not for him to handle once more those glittering coins, on which his eye
+sparkles, and his claw-like fingers make vain attempts to reach.
+
+
+
+
+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
+entitled "Horæ Subsecivæ." I gather from the concluding passages 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 God 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 snobs--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 illustration; 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
+illustration. 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 space. In the top I put: 'Scene--Kitchen garden, country cottage.
+_Dramatis Personæ_: 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 illustrative 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 illustrators of _Punch_.' He--Meadows--declared that a sight
+of Leech's illustrations 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 assured
+the self-condemning artist in no measured terms, instancing for special
+praise many of Kenny's designs brimming over with poetic conceits in the
+illustrations 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 glass 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
+circumstances.'
+
+"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 surpassed 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 surpassed 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
+passing between a boy looking fourteen or fifteen and a girl in a
+riding-habit."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I subjoin the first idea of that which seems to be the incident told to
+Mr. Horsley, though it fails to illustrate 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 gratitude 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
+_album_, 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 album lies at this moment on gilded
+tables in stately English mansions, the homes of our "old nobility,"
+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 illustrious 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
+albums 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 album
+combined; but he did not solicit the aid of strangers to fill it,
+thereby creating a wide difference between himself and the ordinary
+album 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_[Illustration] 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 illustrated.
+
+So far Mr. George Bentley, who shows that his father, who was the
+liberal employer of Leech, Dickens, Cruikshank, and so many others, had
+a _raison d'être_ for his requests in favour of his album.
+
+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-assorted 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 album belonging to no less a person than
+the late Duke of Devonshire. Leech made the Duke's acquaintance while
+staying with Millais at the Peacock, 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
+album 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,
+
+  "DEVONSHIRE."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The reduced scale proved no obstacle, and the success was gracefully
+acknowledged as follows:
+
+
+  "London, April 14, 1852.
+
+  "DEAR SIR,
+
+     "In these critical days of the Crystal Palace, let me request your
+     acceptance of the seal for which you gave me the idea.
+
+     "And that you may not have any feeling as to depriving me of it, I
+     must tell you that I have another.
+
+  "Believe me,
+
+  "Most sincerely yours,
+
+  "DEVONSHIRE."
+
+But what was the subject of the drawing? In a courteous reply to my
+inquiry, I find from the present Duke that he has no such drawing in
+any of his books, and he knows nothing of the seal. In a postscript to
+one of Leech's letters to his friend Adams, however, I find the
+following mention of it:
+
+     "Look at the seal on this envelope. I told you, I think, some time
+     ago about my making a little sketch for the Duke of Devonshire, and
+     how kind he was about it, saying he must have a seal made of it.
+     Well, he called here himself, and left me a most handsome and
+     valuable seal the other day, of which, I confess, I am proud to
+     send you an impression. As you say of some of your people, 'It's
+     very nice to be treated so, isn't it?' The design of the seal is a
+     spade turning up the Crystal Palace, in allusion to Paxton being a
+     gardener.
+
+  "Ever yours, my dear Charley,
+  "JOHN LEECH.
+
+  "31, Notting Hill Terrace,
+  "April 20, 1852."
+
+Though the present Duke of Devonshire knows nothing of the seal, or the
+drawing from which it was made, I am happy to say that I am able to
+present to my readers an impression from it, through the kindness of
+Leech's son-in-law, Mr. Gillett, to whom I applied in my perplexity.
+
+Everybody may not know that Sir Joseph Paxton, the Duke of Devonshire's
+gardener, was the architect of the glass house of 1851, afterwards
+christened the Crystal Palace, which--greatly enlarged--now flourishes
+at Sydenham. I conclude this chapter with an extract from _Notes and
+Queries_, evidently written by a friend of Leech. The writer, under date
+November, 1864, says:
+
+     "Leech's success was owing to his almost daily practice of jotting
+     in his note-book every remarkable physiognomy or incident that
+     struck him in his rambles. Such, at any rate, was his practice at
+     the commencement of his too brief career. On one occasion he and I
+     were riding to town together in an omnibus, when an elderly
+     gentleman in a very peculiar dress, and with very marked features,
+     stepped into the vehicle, and sat down immediately in front of us.
+     We were the only inside passengers. For whom or for what he took,
+     or probably mistook, us, I know not; but he stared so hard, and
+     made such wry faces at us, that I could hardly refrain from
+     laughter. My discomfiture was almost completed when Leech suddenly
+     exclaimed, 'By the way, did Prendergast ever show you that
+     extraordinary account that has been recently forwarded to him?'
+     and, showing me his note-book, added, 'Just run your eye up that
+     column, and tell me what you can make of it.' Instead of a column,
+     the features of the old gentleman were reflected upon the page with
+     life-like fidelity. On another occasion I saw him strike off with
+     promptitude and skill the scene of a quarrel between some dirty
+     little urchins in a suburban village."
+
+_Note._--To my great regret, I find that the material in which Mr.
+Bentley's drawing was executed made its reproduction impossible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+ARTISTS' LIVES.
+
+
+"Silent, gentle, forbearing, his indignation flashed forth an eloquence
+when roused by anything mean or ungenerous. Manly in all his thoughts,
+tastes, and habits, there was about him an almost feminine tenderness.
+He would sit by the bedside, and smooth the pillow of a sick child with
+the gentleness of a woman. No wonder he was the idol of those around
+him, but it is the happiness of such a life that there is so little to
+be told of it."
+
+I do not know to what friend of Leech's we are indebted for these few
+words; which are, however, sufficient to convey a perfect idea of the
+subject of them to those to whom he was only known by his works.
+
+The lives of most artists are uneventful. Leech's short life was
+especially so. His incessant labour prevented his giving the time to
+what is called society--that is so often devoted to it--to the loss of
+the happiness that home always afforded to him. He was a
+self-sacrificing and most dutiful son, a good and loving father and
+husband, and a true and faithful friend. In the quotation above we read
+that there is little to be told of Leech's life. I have talked with
+those who had the happiness of greater intimacy with him than I can
+boast of, without being able to learn anything beyond the ordinary
+events of an everyday life, void of dramatic incident, commonplace in
+fact, except for the constant triumph of an unapproachable genius.
+
+Leech had a large circle of friends and acquaintances, with here and
+there an aristocrat amongst the latter; but his intimates were few:
+between them and him, however, there were unusually strong ties of
+affectionate regard; his nervous, modest, retiring nature often conveyed
+a false impression of him to casual acquaintances. I have heard him
+described as haughty, "stand-offish," cold, and so on; and his manner to
+some of those who may have met him for the first time, occasionally
+admitted of that construction; but it arose from nervousness, or from an
+aversion to loud and ill-timed compliment, feeling, as he sincerely did,
+his "little sketches" deserved no such eulogium. Though Leech's life
+offers no field for the description of stirring events, the delightful
+nature of the man affords matchless opportunities for study, reflection,
+and emulation; and that study may be pursued in the examination of his
+works, in which, as in a looking-glass, the nature of their producer is
+reflected. There may be seen ever-recurring proofs of the artist's
+intense love of Nature in all her forms; whether he deals with woman,
+the most beautiful of all Nature's works, or with children in the
+endless variety of their attractiveness, absolute truth, tenderness and
+beauty are paramount; and not only are these creatures natural and
+beautiful, but the artist is at one with them in all their doings, from
+the sympathy peculiar to him with all that is simple, pure, and lovable.
+Side by side with this tenderness of heart, we have a robust manliness
+which shows itself constantly.
+
+As a matter of course Leech's love of Nature was not confined to
+humanity, but was extended to the animal creation, to the trees and the
+fields, the sea-shore and the sea--in short, to every form of animate
+and inanimate nature. Think what a delight such a constituted heart and
+mind must be to the possessor of them! and not only to him, but to us to
+whom he so freely offers the results of his sympathies, making us
+certainly happier, and it is to be hoped better, by the taking in of so
+much that is exhilarating, healthy, and true. Evidence is frequent of
+pity for the sufferings of the poor and the oppressed. In many a scene
+Leech becomes a warm sympathizer with unmerited distress; and constantly
+his honest heart is stirred into indignation at some instance of
+injustice; then we find that the pencil which can deal so gently with
+childhood and woman can also, in indelible lines, stigmatize the
+stony-hearted oppressor.
+
+Underlying the refined and delicate humour that distinguishes the
+greater part of Leech's work we frequently find some more or less
+serious social grievance smartly satirized. In "Servant-Gal-ism," for
+example, the airs and graces, the impudent assumption, and the
+dishonesty even, which sometimes disgrace those otherwise worthy people,
+are shown to us in drawings so humorous as to make us laugh heartily,
+but at the same time we feel the full force of the satire intended. In
+the encounters between servant-girls and their mistresses the ladies
+sometimes get the worst of it; notably in a drawing that represents a
+mistress and her maid in conflict respecting the dressing of their hair.
+The old lady has tortured her few remaining locks into miserable little
+ringlets, that make a shocking contrast to the long curls of her young
+and pretty servant; and no sooner does she catch sight of the girl's
+ringlets, than she angrily tells her she will not permit such bare-faced
+imitation of the way she chooses to wear her hair. Here I am afraid we
+cannot help feeling a certain amount of contempt for the blind vanity
+and tyranny of the mistress, while we sympathize with the maid.
+
+Footmen afford a wide field for the good-humoured banter of Leech.
+
+Amongst the many striking proofs of the genius that distinguished him,
+is one that to me, as an artist, is astonishing. I allude to the
+individual character with which Leech invests each of his servant-girls
+and footmen, as well as every type that comes under his hand. I have not
+counted the number of servants of "all sorts and sizes" that appear in
+"Pictures of Life and Character," but I am quite sure that a comparison
+of one with another will prove that not one can be found in the
+slightest degree to resemble another; each is an individual by himself
+or herself, separate and distinct--a footman from top to toe; take away
+his uniform, and, from some peculiarity of manner or action, he is
+unmistakably a footman still. The same may be said of the maid-servants,
+in whom Leech's wonderful power of individualizing is shown even more
+palpably; for the cook is a cook, and perfectly distinct from the
+scullery-maid and the charwoman; and no two cooks or kitchen-maids
+resemble each other personally, but only in their offices.
+
+The same may be truly said of numberless types immortalized by Leech;
+but, strange to say, it cannot be said of the _young_ ladies: they
+almost all have a family likeness to one another--a resemblance that can
+be traced to Mrs. Leech. This fault, for it is a fault, and a grave one,
+is as strange to me as the infinite variety shown in his representation
+of all sorts and conditions of men and women is astounding. In marking
+this I point to the only shortcoming in all Leech's work, and though, as
+I think (I may be wrong), he has this fault in his treatment of young
+ladies, it is absent in his drawings of elderly or old ones; the
+aristocratic or plebeian old women are as well marked in personal
+contrast with each other as the rest of his delightful creations.
+
+The rest of his creations! What a dazzling, bewildering mass of humanity
+crowds upon the mind when one attempts to point out special scenes for
+examination and criticism! If I were to say a tithe of what I feel about
+hundreds of Leech's drawings, I should greatly exceed the space
+permitted to me in this book, and I should also show how inferior my
+powers of analysis are to those of Dickens and Thackeray, and others
+whose delightful appreciation of beauty, humour and character are so
+eloquently set forth elsewhere in this memoir; and perhaps I may add
+that I have sufficient respect for the intelligence of my readers to
+convince me that they require no directions from me as to when they
+should laugh and when look grave, or where to discover the point of a
+joke that is palpable to the "meanest capacity."
+
+With Leech's work in an artistic sense I have more to do. Considering
+the limited means employed, the results produced are very wonderful.
+Nothing is left to desire in character or expression; the story is
+perfectly told in every drawing; and it can be read without reference to
+the few lines beneath, which in the wording of them appear to me as
+perfect as the cuts themselves. The composition of groups and figures,
+which looks so simple and natural, is the result of consummate art. The
+drawing, notably of figures and animals in action, is always correct.
+Chiaroscuro is too comprehensive a word to apply to the light and shadow
+of Leech's drawings; but in what we call "black and white," or, in other
+words, in the distribution of the masses of dark, and what I may term
+semi-dark, and light, they are always skilfully effective.
+
+I have been told that Leech's work, in the opinion of a high authority
+in matters of art, resembles, and successfully rivals, the silver-point
+drawings of the old masters. I have seen many examples of those
+beautiful drawings, but I have never seen one that bore the faintest
+resemblance to the way in which Leech "lays his lines." The same judge
+tells us that Leech's work betrays an ignorance of the principles of
+effect--in other words, a neglect of the laws that should guide an
+artist in the selection of his scheme of light and shadow. An
+intelligent glance at any of Leech's drawings will show the fallibility
+of that judgment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+LEECH EXHIBITION.
+
+
+About the year 1860--or thereabouts--there was exhibited in London a
+huge picture of Nero contemplating the ruins of Rome, by a German artist
+named Piloti. On seeing the picture I was much struck by a certain
+somewhat coarse vigour in the work, which asserted itself in spite of
+crude and harsh colouring; the principal figure--as often happens--was
+disappointing and theatrical. Nero stood in a melodramatic posture, with
+his arms folded, enjoying the destruction of the city. Leech,
+accompanied by his friend, the late Sir Edgar Boehm, R.A. (the eminent
+sculptor who made an admirable statuette of Leech), saw the picture, and
+after a long study of it he turned to Boehm and said: "I would rather
+have been the painter of that picture than the producer of all the
+things I have ever perpetrated!" Leech's friend received this avowal
+with incredulous laughter, and, pointing out some of the glaring faults
+of the Nero, endeavoured to convince his companion that one of his
+drawings was worth acres of such work as Piloti's; in which I, for one,
+entirely agree with him.
+
+The hankering after oil-colours which always possessed Leech was
+destined to be gratified; for soon after this--in 1862--he came before
+the public as the painter of a series of "sketches in oil," being
+reproductions of his own drawings in _Punch_. These--almost
+virgin--attempts were exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, where they were
+visited by thousands of admiring spectators, who left several thousand
+pounds behind them. Everyone knows what a few inches of space are taken
+up by one of Leech's drawings as it appears in "Pictures of Life and
+Character." A sketch of such small dimensions would have been
+ineffective in colours, and it was owing to an invention by which the
+originals were enlarged, that the artist was enabled to offer to the
+public copies of drawings four or five inches square, increased in some
+instances to three feet by two.
+
+"'The idea originated,' says Dr. Brown, 'with Mr. Mark Lemon, Leech's
+friend and colleague, who saw that by a new invention--a beautiful piece
+of machinery--the impression of a block in _Punch_ being first taken on
+a sheet of indiarubber, was enlarged; when by a lithographic process
+the copy thus got could be transferred to the stone and impressions
+printed upon a large sheet of canvas. Having thus obtained an outline
+groundwork, consisting of his own lines enlarged to some eight times the
+area of the original block, Leech proceeded to colour these. His
+knowledge of the manipulation of oil-colours was very slight, and it was
+under the guidance of his friend Millais that his first attempts were
+made, and crude enough they were. He used a kind of transparent colour,
+which allowed the coarse lines of the enlargement to show through, so
+that the production presented the appearance of indifferent lithographs
+slightly tinted. In a short time he obtained great mastery over
+oil-colour, and instead of allowing the thick, fatty lines of printer's
+ink to remain on the canvas, he, by the use of turpentine, removed the
+ink, particularly with regard to the lines of the faces and figures.
+These he redrew with his own hand in a fine and delicate manner. To this
+he added a delicacy of finish, particularly in flesh-colour, which
+greatly enhanced the value and beauty of his later works."
+
+The catalogue to the sketches in oil is prefaced by a few modest words
+by the artist, who concludes some remarks upon their production thus:
+
+"These sketches have no claim to be regarded, or tested, as finished
+pictures. It is impossible for anyone to know the fact better than I do.
+They have no pretensions to a higher name than the name I give them,
+'Sketches in Oil.'"
+
+The exhibition consisted of sixty-seven works, and the room containing
+them was filled all day long by a laughing crowd. Leech shrank from
+crowds at all times, and an assembly drawn together by his own works
+would have special terrors for him. After the opening of the gallery he
+was never known to visit it, mainly from his innate modesty, but also
+from his dread of being "caught and talked at by enthusiastic people."
+
+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
+acumen--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 Vandyke. 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 noble 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
+glass 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 Bréda. 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 tithe 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
+nobility 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, Dickens, 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-shore: 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 illustrated 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 shore 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 'snob' 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 passed 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-à-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 entitled "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 passing 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 asserted
+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 nobody 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 glass 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 entitled "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-balls, boats, and children's socks, to say nothing
+of shell-work boxes, lace collars, and the like you may want, before you
+settle down."
+
+Perhaps the drawing that most happily illustrates 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. Bass 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 passed 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 principal 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 petition, very numerously signed by eminent members of all the
+professions, and by others, was a formidable weapon in Mr. Bass's hands
+in his crusade against street musicians and other peace-breakers. The
+Bill passed both Houses, and became law. Leech signalized the success by
+an admirable drawing called "The Rival Barrels."
+
+     "Three cheers for Bass and his barrel of beer, and out with the
+     foreign ruffian and his barrel-organ."
+
+One of Mr. Bass'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
+appetite 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 illustrator.
+
+It was not till I undertook this task that I had any idea of the
+_quantity_ of work done by Leech: to say nothing of the excellence of
+it, the quantity 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 illustrious 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 Institute
+waited upon him to ask him to attend a meeting, and to speak in
+promotion of the interests of the association. 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 Institution."
+
+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 illustrations 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!
+
+I approach the end of my endeavour to show my illustrious friend in his
+true colours, with sad feelings, grievously increased by the conviction
+that under happier circumstances he might have been the delight of all
+who did--and did not--know him for many years beyond the time so cruelly
+shortened. The letter to a friend which follows--written at Kensington
+after his return from Whitby--gives us in his own melancholy words a sad
+account of his condition.
+
+
+  "6, The Terrace, Kensington,
+
+  "October 6, 1864.
+
+  "MY DEAR ----,
+
+     "I received your most kind note last night on my return from Whitby
+     in Yorkshire, where I have been with my family since I came from
+     Germany; and I assure you I have so many things to put in order,
+     that to go away from my work would be impossible just now. I was
+     amused with Homburg, and to some extent I think the waters did me
+     some good; but I am sorry to say I can give but a sorry account of
+     my health. Nothing seems to quiet my nervous system, and I suffer
+     still from sleeplessness dreadfully. Alas for Sheldrake! Why, I
+     could not ride him if I had him; anything out of a walk would bring
+     on a spasm that would occasion me to drop from his back. I trust I
+     may be able to ride some time yet, but do not see my way. As for
+     shooting, you would see me disappear amongst the turnips in about
+     five minutes from exhaustion. But, however, I look forward with
+     hope, and with a will, shall try and make myself a better man; and
+     I am not yet incapable, thank God, to enjoy the society of a
+     friend, and hope you will find me out--no, not out, but at
+     home--should you come to London this autumn or winter. You must see
+     a pantomime, you know. I have one great consolation--that the air
+     of Yorkshire did my wife and children great good; and hoping that
+     you and all your kind relations at ... are well,
+
+  "Believe me,
+
+  "Yours faithfully,
+
+  "JOHN LEECH."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+MILLAIS AND LEECH.
+
+
+The way to a certain place is said to be paved with good intentions. If
+that be so, a large space in the pavement must be filled by intentions
+to write the life of Leech. In the Dean of Rochester--the intimate
+friend of the artist when known as the Rev. Reynolds Hole--the intention
+still exists, as I gather from a letter received from him in reply to my
+appeal for assistance. The Dean tells me he possesses "above a hundred
+letters" by Leech--one and all denied to me--barred by the "intention,"
+which seems to have come to life again, after being resigned by him many
+years ago in favour of Dr. John Brown; who in his turn relegated his
+intention to its place in the pavement.
+
+I think it was about the year 1882 that, when calling on my old friend
+Sir John Millais, I was introduced to a Mr. Evans, who was presented to
+me as a literary man engaged in writing the life of Leech--a stranger to
+Millais in quest of information. Though I felt that Millais, in the
+genial and hearty way peculiar to him, over-estimated the importance of
+my assistance in his advice to Mr. Evans to tax my memory, "and he would
+find the tax paid in full," I promised to try to remember something of
+interest, and communicate with him further. The result of the "taxation"
+was a paper, which I sent to the address given to me at Manchester.
+
+Years passed, and as I heard nothing I concluded that the Evans life was
+abandoned, and thought no more of the matter. Alas! events proved that
+the Evans intention was destined to take its place amongst the others,
+for the promoter died; but not till he had collected a quantity of
+material, to which I have been greatly indebted in writing this memoir.
+After my interview with Mr. Evans at Millais', I never saw or heard from
+him, except in acknowledgment of my contribution; and it is strange to
+me, that with every requisite for the carrying out of the intention,
+into which, judging from his manner, he entered enthusiastically and
+lovingly, he should have made such little way with it--probably from
+ill-health--when the material fell into the hands of Messrs. Bentley,
+and from theirs into mine.
+
+Amongst the papers I found the following from Sir John Millais, of all
+the friends of Leech one of the dearest, the most loving and steadfast,
+and the best able to appreciate his qualities as an artist and a man. In
+a letter to Mr. Evans--February, 1882--Millais says:
+
+"I knew John Leech intimately, and I think saw more of him than any
+other of his friends. He was one of the very best gentlemen I ever knew,
+with an astounding appreciation of everything sad or humorous. He was
+both manly and gentle, nervous and brave, and the most delightful
+companion that ever lived. I loved John Leech (and another who is also
+gone) better than any other friends I have known."
+
+In a further communication, Sir John says:
+
+"I will endeavour to find some letters which may be of interest.
+Unfortunately, I have given most of them away at the time I received
+them, many containing sketches; I cannot remember now where they are. I
+am sure I had more than anyone, as I was for years his daily companion.
+There is another friend of his--Percival Leigh, attached to
+_Punch_--whom you do not mention. You should see him, as he could give
+you a great deal of information. Mr. Adams was a hunting friend, and
+many times Leech and myself stayed with him. Mr. Parry was the master of
+the Puckeridge hounds, and most of the hunting sketches were the upshot
+of scenes in Hertfordshire.
+
+"Leech stayed with me twice in Scotland, and out of those visits came
+Mr. Briggs's exploits in deer-stalking, salmon-fishing, and
+grouse-shooting.
+
+"The late Duke of Athole asked him to Blair, and took him for a
+deer-drive. Previously to that there had been a good deal written in the
+papers against the Duke, in consequence of his Grace having stopped two
+University men from crossing the forest; and Leech made a drawing in
+_Punch_ by no means complimentary of the Duke, who was represented
+turning back the tourists, exclaiming, 'I am the regular Do-Dhu.' But
+you must turn to _Punch_, and you will find the illustration for
+yourself. I speak from memory as to the exact words; but I well
+recollect Leech, in his jocose way, asking me whether I thought he would
+be safe in the Duke's hands after that squib. I afterwards heard his
+Grace was delighted with it, and carried the woodcut about in his pocket
+to show to his friends.
+
+"I have seen Leech make his first sketch (of which I have specimens),
+and trace them on to the block, scores of times. The first was rapid;
+but on the wood he was very deliberate, knowing how necessary clearness
+of execution is to the engraver.
+
+"The late Mr. Trelawney--the intimate friend of Byron and
+Shelley--speaking one day to me of his recollections, said that Shelley
+and Leech were the two men he had loved best, and that he cared to know
+me only because I was a great friend of the man he admired so much."
+
+Here I may interpose to remind my readers that the figure of the sailor
+in Millais' superb picture of the North-West Passage was painted from
+Trelawney, who is supposed to say, "It should be done, and England must
+do it." The man's head, painted with all Millais' power, is a most
+perfect likeness of Shelley's friend.
+
+Millais goes on to tell us that "some of the happiest days we spent
+together were at the Peacock Inn at Baslow, in Derbyshire, close to
+Chatsworth, where every kindness was shown to Leech by the Duke and Sir
+Joseph Paxton--shooting, fishing, and cricketing."
+
+I again interpose to say that the portrait given as frontispiece to
+this volume was drawn on one of the "happy days" at the Peacock Inn at
+Baslow.
+
+"We played together in a match with a neighbouring village, and at a
+supper which he gave to the teams he sang 'King Death' with becoming
+gravity, and was much entertained by the local amorous ditties sung by
+the young farmers."
+
+In further advice to Mr. Evans, Sir John says:
+
+"You cannot dwell too much on his tender anxiety for his wife and
+children, almost distressing at times to those about him."
+
+The great painter continues:
+
+"I should tell you that he was always careful in his dress, and always
+went to the best houses for everything he purchased, probably from
+having early in life discovered the wisdom of such a course--see his
+satire of everything shoddy--but chiefly from inherent good taste. His
+choice was so quiet that one only _felt_ he was perfectly attired. Leech
+was six feet high, slim, well but rather delicately made. Strangers felt
+when they were introduced to him that they were in the presence of a
+gentleman grave and courteous always, and a merry fellow when harmless
+fun was demanded. Like Landseer, he had the power of telling a story in
+the fewest words, and with astonishing effect upon his hearers; but as
+a rule he was averse to taking the initiative in conversation. He would
+sit placidly smoking his cigar in an easy-chair, and only chime in to
+cap what was said by some voluble speaker, and then retire again into
+the full enjoyment of his weed and silence."
+
+In his evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons which was
+formed to inquire into the constitution and working of the Royal
+Academy, with a view to certain changes in that body, Millais said that
+he thought Leech was deserving of full membership in the institution,
+for, indeed, said he:
+
+"Very few of us painters will leave behind us such good and valuable
+work as he has left--work which is in great part historical. His
+appreciation of the pathetic was as strong as his sense of the
+ridiculous, and you will never find a bit of false sentiment in anything
+he did."
+
+Landseer is reported to have said--after expressing enthusiastic
+admiration of Leech's genius--that the worst thing he ever did deserved
+to be framed and placed before students as an example for their
+emulation and improvement. Sir John Millais concludes his remarks upon
+his friend--remarks for which I am sure my readers will be as grateful
+as I am--by a few pathetic words heralding the sad and final scene:
+
+"He became so nervous latterly that he used to take my arm when we were
+walking together, jerking it perceptibly at any sudden noise, or at any
+vehicle passing rapidly near us; lingering an unnecessary time at the
+street crossings; and the morning he came from Thackeray's house, on
+coming downstairs after seeing his dead friend, he said, 'I also shall
+die suddenly.'
+
+"I arrived from a Continental tour," concludes Millais, "the day of his
+death, and by arrangement went immediately to his house to dine with
+him. His wife told me he had been asking for me; but I did not think it
+wise to disturb him then. A little later I returned, ran upstairs to his
+bedside, and found him dead."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+MR. H. O. NETHERCOTE AND JOHN LEECH.
+
+
+For the following interesting paper my readers are indebted to Mr.
+Nethercote, of Moulton Grange, Northamptonshire, who sent it to my
+predecessor, Mr. Evans, amongst whose Leech material I found it. As Mr.
+Nethercote's anecdotes were intended for publication, I reproduce them
+without alteration or abbreviation. Mr. Nethercote and Leech were at
+Charterhouse together.
+
+"Leech," says his friend, "was the most popular boy in the school, and
+the margins of his grammars were a delight to boyish eyes. After leaving
+Charterhouse I lost sight of him for many years; but through the medium
+of our common friend Reynolds, now Canon Hole, we came together again
+when he was living in Brunswick Square, and we frequently met at each
+other's houses. On one occasion, after telling me of his sufferings
+from street bands, he said:
+
+"'May I come to you with wife and family for a few days? I am dying of
+"Dixie's Land."'
+
+"He came, and the very first day after dinner, on taking our evening
+stroll round the garden, our ears were greeted with the hateful tune!
+The village band had just mastered the homicidal air, and were
+inadvertently making themselves _particeps crimines_ in the murder of my
+friend. I shall never forget his delightful smile as, when the doleful
+tune burst upon our ears, he said:
+
+"'Ah, well! "Dixie's Land" in Brunswick Square and "Dixie's Land" at
+Moulton Grange are two very different tunes; in the latter case a mile
+of atmosphere intervenes between it and me, and in the former I was in
+the very bowels of it.'
+
+"He was fond of going to see a meet with hounds, but he was no rider. He
+once asked me to sell him a horse I was riding, on the ground of its
+apparent quietness. I declined doing this because it was not right in
+its wind.
+
+"'All the better,' said he; 'it will not be able to run away far;' and
+he bought it.
+
+"He was fond of being here (at Moulton Grange), and used to enjoy taking
+quiet rides along the lanes, and over the many-acred, well-gated grass
+fields, full of heavy Hertford and Devon cattle; and many a delightful
+chat have I had with him _in rebus Punchibus_, its contributors,
+artists, publishers, editors, etc. I am inclined to think that the man
+he liked best in the world was R. Hole, and then Thackeray and Millais;
+but of course I cannot say this with any certainty."
+
+I stop Mr. Nethercote's narrative for a moment for Mrs. Leech to be
+heard; that lady assured Canon Hole--now Dean of Rochester--after
+Leech's death, that the two men whom her husband loved best in the world
+were himself and Millais. Thackeray was asked to name the man he loved
+above all others, and he named Leech; but on another occasion, when he
+was asked the same question by his daughter, as recorded in Fitzgerald's
+"Memoirs," he said:
+
+"Why, Fitz, to be sure; and next to him Brookfield."
+
+We will now listen again to Mr. Nethercote, who says:
+
+     "By his desire I accompanied him one night to see 'Lord Dundreary,'
+     and I shall never forget his dismay on seeing that neither the
+     farce nor the acting had 'fetched' me. He could not understand my
+     feeling that the whole thing was non-natural, and that no lord who
+     ever lived was half so great a fool as Lord Dundreary.
+
+     "On one occasion he was staying at Moulton Grange on the eve of the
+     great fight between Tom Sayers and Heenan. A lady of great beauty,
+     one of the party, was enlarging overnight on the brutality of all
+     prize-fights, and expressed a hope that this fight might be
+     prevented. On hearing of Sayers' conduct in the fight, the lady
+     could not help expressing her admiration of his bravery, whereon
+     Leech made a charming sketch of his fair friend crowning Sayers
+     with a laurel-wreath, and entitled it 'Beauty crowning Valour.'
+
+     "I need not say how greatly the sketch is valued by its possessors.
+
+     "Leech used to like hearing his work criticised by friendly
+     amateurs, and seemed to take in and, as it were, masticate their
+     comments.
+
+     "I remember once, over our after-dinner cigar, telling him that I
+     considered he failed in portraying the periphery of a wheel--that
+     he made it over-fluffy--and failed also in drawing a stake and
+     bound fence.
+
+     "The latter he admitted, and begged me to find him a model to
+     study. This I did, and an excellent 'stake and bound' appeared in
+     the _Punch_ of the following Wednesday.
+
+     "He stuck to his wheel, and doubtless he was right and I was wrong.
+
+     "The last letter I received from him was in reply to an invitation
+     to come for a week's shooting. I knew that he had been ill, and
+     hoped it might do him good. His answer was:
+
+     "'Shoot, my dear Nethercote; I couldn't walk round a turnip.'
+
+     "When that was written the end was not far off. The news reached me
+     as I left home to hunt, and heavy indeed was my heart all that day,
+     and for many a succeeding one, and still is when I think of him,
+     the warmest-hearted, most generous, gracious, kindly, hospitable,
+     endearing friend that man ever had.
+
+     "Such are some of the recollections of my dear friend, written off
+     in a hurry. If they prove of any use to you, you are most welcome
+     to them.
+
+  "H. O. NETHERCOTE.
+
+  "October 12, 1885."
+
+
+MR. ASHBY STERRY.
+
+The name which heads the few words below is one that is very familiar as
+the writer of many charming verses; and it is no wonder that Mr. Evans,
+on discovering the sonnet addressed to Miss Rosie Leech, should have
+mistaken the source of its inspiration, the more readily, as Miss Leech
+was christened Ada Rose.
+
+In the belief that my readers will be glad to have the verses, and Mr.
+Ashby Sterry's account of their production, I add them to Mr. Sterry's
+sympathetic appreciation of Leech.
+
+"For as long as I can remember, I have had the most profound admiration
+for the genius of John Leech," says Mr. Sterry; "and he gave me as much
+delight in my childhood as he subsequently did when I became a man. I am
+grieved to say that I hardly knew him at all; it was many years after
+his death that I became connected with _Punch_. I should be most happy
+for you to quote the lines to Miss Rosie Leech; they, however, do not
+refer to John Leech's daughter. Several girls that I knew some years ago
+reminded me forcibly of the works of various artists. I sketched their
+portraits in sonnets, and added their Christian name to the surname of
+the master they represented."
+
+Rosie was emphatically a "Leech girl" in all respects, and one that he
+would have gloried in drawing.
+
+
+"MISS ROSIE LEECH.
+
+    "Down on the sands there strolls a merry maid,
+       Aglow with ruddy health and gladsome glee;
+       She breasts the breezes of the summer sea,
+     And lets each zephyr trifle with each braid;
+     Laughs gaily as her petticoats evade
+       Her girlish grasp and wildly flutter free,
+       As, bending to some boisterous decree,
+     The neatest foot and ankle are displayed.
+     Her rounded youthful figure you may trace
+       Half pouting, as rude Boreas unfurls
+     A wealth of snowy frillery and lace,
+       A glory of soft golden-rippled curls.
+     Comes blushing with a rare unconscious grace,
+       The bonniest of England's bonny girls!"
+
+
+MR. H. CHOLMONDELEY PENNELL AND LEECH.
+
+"PUCK ON PEGASUS."
+
+Mr. C. Pennell (_loquitur_): "My acquaintance began with his making some
+illustrations for my book 'Puck on Pegasus.' I found him liberal to
+generosity in all his professional dealings with me. Indeed, I have
+since ascertained that, seeing I was a débutant in literature, he only
+let me pay him about half his usual price--a generosity in which he was
+equalled by my friend Mr. John Tenniel. The charming drawings of these
+two inimitable artists on wood were, I have not the slightest doubt,
+the principal cause of the success of the verses to which they were so
+unequally mated.
+
+"The Athenæum, I recollect, whilst using the scalping-knife freely on
+the letterpress, observed that 'the illustrations were of Leech's
+loveliest.' Naturally, I have always felt towards Leech and Tenniel the
+gratitude which a young author owes to men who, already famous
+themselves, so frankly and generously first lent him a helping hand.
+
+"I think Mr. Tenniel and Mr. Leech were at the time I speak of great
+friends, and I remember their once asking me to go down somewhere to
+hunt with them--an invitation which I have since regretted not being
+able to accept. Leech was an enthusiast about hunting, and hence his
+admirable and accurate delineations of horses and hunting scenes.
+
+"He was a decidedly handsome man; tall, square, and well built, and in
+manners delightfully genial and frank. I was young when I knew him, and
+had not had much experience of the world; but I have often thought since
+that he was one of the most fascinating men it has ever been my good
+fortune to meet.
+
+"Out of the artists whose pencils graced the pages of 'Puck on Pegasus,'
+not only those I have mentioned, but also Sir John Millais and Sir Noël
+Paton, are, as everyone knows, striking instances of exceptional--well,
+what shall I call it, to spare their blushes?--say 'good looks.' Since I
+last met the 'Queen's Limner for Scotland,' his hair has become gray,
+but, notwithstanding, as I told Lady Paton a few weeks ago, her husband
+is still the handsomest man in North Britain.
+
+"The only little special circumstance I can recall of Leech's
+'individualism,' so to speak, is the fondness he had for sitting half on
+the table--one leg resting on the ground, and one dangling--the attitude
+in which he is represented in the photograph I have of him."
+
+As the foregoing--found amongst Mr. Evans' Leech material--was evidently
+intended for publication, I make no scruple in presenting it to my
+readers. Without presuming to pose as a literary critic, I venture to
+differ from the author of "Puck on Pegasus" where he relegates his
+rhymes so far to the limbo of poetical failures as to claim for their
+chief merit that of having been the cause of some most admirable
+illustrations. Mr. Cholmondeley Pennell was unusually fortunate in all
+his illustrators; but surely such brilliantly clever youthful efforts as
+"Puck on Pegasus" displayed well deserved their good fortune. I confess
+I was disappointed in finding two drawings only which, from internal
+evidence, I can attribute to Leech; these, and, indeed, most of the
+others, strange to say, are unsigned.
+
+Readers of Longfellow will, I think, agree with me that the "Song of
+In-the-Water" is an admirable imitation of the manner of the American
+poet's "Hiawatha," without the caricature, not to say vulgarity, which
+so often disfigures those attempts.
+
+The "Song of In-the-Water" is short, and I am tempted to treat my
+readers to the whole of it.
+
+I also note the delightful little initial letter W, pictorially
+rendered, evidently by Doyle:
+
+    "When the summer night descended
+     Sleepy, on the white witch water,
+     Came a lithe and lovely maiden,
+     Gazing on the silent water--
+       Gazing on the gleaming river--
+     With her azure eyes and tender
+     On the river glancing forward,
+     Till the laughing wave sprang upward,
+       Upward from his reedy hollow
+         With the lily in his bosom,
+       With his crown of water lilies--
+         Curling every dimpled ripple
+       As he sprang into the starlight,
+       As he clasped her charmed reflection
+         Glowing to his crystal bosom,
+       As he whispered, 'Fairest, fairest,
+         Rest upon this crystal bosom!'
+       And she straightway did accordin';--
+       Down into the water stept she,
+         Down into the wavering river,
+       Like a red deer in the sunset--
+       Like a ripe leaf in the autumn:
+     From her lips, as rose-buds snow-filled,
+       Came a soft and dreamy murmur,
+       Softer than the breath of summer,
+         Softer than the murm'ring river,
+         Than the cooing of Cushawa--
+       Sighs that melted as the snows melt,
+         Silently and sweetly melted;
+       Sounds that mingled with the crisping
+         Foam upon the billow resting:
+       Yet she spoke not, only murmured.
+
+    "From the forest shade primeval,
+     Piggey-Wiggey looked out at her;
+       He, the very Youthful Porker--
+       He, the Everlasting Grunter--
+     Gazed upon her there, and wondered!
+       With his nose out, Rokey Pokey--
+       And his tail up, Curley Wurley--
+     Wondered what on earth the joke was,
+     Wondered what the girl was up to--
+     What the deuce her little game was,
+     Why she didn't squeak and grunt more!
+       And she floated down the river
+       Like a water-proof Ophelia;
+     FOR HER CRINOLINE SUSTAINED HER."
+
+We may look, and look in vain, through the long list of Leech's
+delightful creations for anything more lovely, more exquisitely dainty,
+than this floating damsel, with grace and charm in every line of her. I
+am sure my readers will join me in gratitude to Mr. Pennell for having
+given occasion for a picture that is "a joy for ever."
+
+Leech's remaining drawing illustrates a poem entitled "Rejected
+Addresses," not in any way, I think, intended as a parody of any of the
+celebrated "Rejected Addresses" of Messrs. Smith--addresses, it will be
+remembered, that were written in the manner of various poets who
+flourished early in this century. Mr. Pennell deals with a certain
+Alderman, a Sir Toby, who was
+
+    "An Alderman of the very first degree,
+     But neither wife nor son had he:
+         He had a daughter fair--
+     And often said her father, 'Cis,
+     You shall be dubbed "my Lady," Miss,
+         When I am dubbed Lord Mayor.'"
+
+"Sir Gobble Grist" was the aged swain of parental choice, but, as is not
+uncommon in such cases, the choice was not favoured by one of the
+parties concerned in it. The Alderman was, however, peremptory, for he
+says to the pretty Cis:
+
+     "'The day I don the gown and chain,
+      In Hymen's modern Fetter Lane
+          You wed Sir Gobble Grist;
+      And whilst with pomp and pageant high
+      I scrape, and strut, and star it by
+      St. George's in the East, you'll try
+          St. George's in the West.'
+
+     "Oh, vision of parental pride!
+      Oh, blessed Groom to such a Bride!
+          Oh, happy Lady Cis!
+      Yet sparks must always strike the match,
+      And miss may chance to lose her 'catch,'
+          Or he may catch _a miss_!
+
+     "Such things do happen, here and there
+      When knights are old, and nymphs are fair,
+          And who can say they don't?
+      When Worldly takes the gilded pill,
+      And Dives stands and says, 'I will,'
+          AND BEAUTY SAYS, 'I WON'T.'
+
+            *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "Alas! that beaus will lose their spring,
+      And wayward belles refuse to 'ring,'
+          Unstruck by Cupid's dart!
+      Alas that--must the truth be told--
+      Yet oft'ner has the archer sold
+      The 'white and red' to touch 'the gold,'
+          And Diamonds trumped the Heart!
+
+     "That luckless heart! too soon misplaced,
+      Why is it that parental taste,
+      On sagest calculation based,
+          So rarely pleases Miss?
+      Let those who can the riddle read;
+      For me, I've no idea indeed,
+          No more, perhaps, had Cis.
+
+     "It may be that she found Sir G.
+      Less tender than a swain should be,--
+          Young--sprightly--witty--gay.
+      It might have been she thought his hat
+      Or head too round, or square, or flat,
+          Or empty--who can say?
+
+            *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "I know not! but the Parson waited,
+      The Bridegroom swore, the Groomsmen rated,
+          Till two o'clock or near;--
+      Then home again in rage and wrath,
+      Whilst pretty Cis--was rattling North
+          With Jones the Volunteer!"
+
+Surely the poet has no occasion to blush for these verses, or to think
+that they needed Leech's aid to preserve them. To me they seem admirable
+of their kind, and well worthy of affording employment for Leech's
+inimitable pencil; and how perfectly has he realized for us the happy
+pair! Let us hope that pretty Cis has made a prudent choice in the
+handsome Volunteer, whose uneasy glance conveys a fear that the journey
+'due North' may still be interrupted. To those who desire to read
+sprightly verse, and to see the verse illustrated with very uncommon
+perfection by such artists as Doyle, Millais, Tenniel, Sir Noël Paton,
+and others, I heartily commend "Puck on Pegasus."
+
+On Tuesday, the 25th of October, 1864, I dined at the house of Mr.
+Hills, in Queen Ann Street. The party consisted of several gentlemen,
+most of whose names I forget. I think Landseer and Millais were amongst
+the guests. I am sure Leech was, for I sat next to him. I cannot say I
+noticed much difference in his appearance; he was perhaps even quieter
+than usual, and when he joined in general conversation I fancied I
+noticed a slight change in his deep voice, which seemed to me to have a
+kind of far-away sound in it, more noticeable still when he spoke to me.
+I heard he had not been well, and, in reply to my inquiry, he said he
+should be well enough if he could get away from the horrible noises that
+never seemed to cease in his neighbourhood. Back and front of his house,
+he said, noises of all kinds were incessant; his servant's time was
+taken up in sending away street musicians; the cries of the hawkers were
+awful, work was impossible to him except under agonizing conditions--a
+butcher's cart passed and repassed his house repeatedly with a dog in it
+that barked continually. He then mentioned other nuisances, and
+concluded his grievances with a sentence which I can never forget.
+"Rather, Frith," he said, "than continue to be tormented in this way, I
+would prefer to go to the grave where there is no noise." Before that
+day week his desire was accomplished, his ever-to-be-honoured grave had
+received him, and he was deaf to all noises for evermore.
+
+Leech's doctors had warned him against excitement of any kind; he was
+forbidden to ride on horseback or to walk rapidly; and he was told that,
+if he would cease to work, and dismiss all anxiety from his mind, they
+had good hope of his recovery. Cease to work and dismiss anxiety! What
+vain words to a man who was consumed by the desire to raise money, which
+nothing but work would bring! And for whom were these dying energies put
+forth? Clearly not for himself or "his own household."
+
+The day before his death Leech went to see Dr. Quain, who again
+prescribed absolute rest as his only chance. And how did the poor fellow
+follow this advice? He went home and wrote to the _Punch_ office, saying
+that a messenger might be sent for a drawing in progress, which "he
+would finish if he could." Strange to say, the fancy was as bright and
+the imagination as powerful as ever, and, for the moment, the hand
+itself had lost none of its cunning; but the physical strength failed
+utterly, and the pencil fell from that wonderful hand for ever. The
+messenger came, and was sent empty away.
+
+On the day of his death--having spent the rest of the previous day,
+after his failure to complete the _Punch_ drawing, in bed--he begged to
+be allowed to draw. "It would amuse me," he said. A medical friend who
+was present gave a reluctant permission, and seeing no immediate
+appearance of danger, the doctor left him to his amusement. "Instead,
+however, of beginning at once," says Miss Leech, "he threw himself upon
+a couch in the room, and after a little while he was persuaded to go to
+bed and keep himself perfectly quiet. This he did, but scarcely had he
+composed himself for sleep than he suddenly started up and, calling to
+his father and sister, fell back and expired in their arms without a
+sigh."
+
+Thus, on the 29th of October, 1864, died John Leech, done to death by
+overwork in his anxiety for others, who, let us hope, were worthy of the
+sacrifice. It is not too much to say that the death of this inimitable
+artist was a sorrow to all English-speaking people, and no less to many
+foreign peoples, who--"as one touch of nature makes the whole world
+kin"--fully relished the beauty, truth, and humour of all Leech's work.
+Of this we have ample proof in the elaborately appreciative remarks of
+French and German writers. Among the former, M. Ernest Chesnau, in the
+_Gazette des Beaux Arts_ of June, 1875, has an exhaustive article on
+Leech and his works--too long for reproduction here. Of the loving
+sympathy felt by his German brethren, the following tribute from the
+German _Punch_--the _Kladderadatsch_--offers ample evidence. It is
+entitled "A Cypress Branch for the Tomb of John Leech."
+
+"Poor John! Thy German brethren, too, stand in the shape of a weeping
+willow at thy grave, for our locks are turned to mourning branches that
+droop down over thy simple cross. Ungrudgingly we behold thy glory, thy
+'like nature' which stirred up the foul carp-pond of life. We remember
+thy fox-hunting and angling gentlemen, thy ladies, the pretty ones and
+the declining, thy blue stockings, thy gentlemen, thy volunteers, thy
+sportsmen, thy Flunkeiana, and thy immortal Mr. Briggs, this pearl of
+English _bonhommie_. Mr. Punch, too, whose greatest ornament thou wert,
+sits mourning on thy tomb. He has cast off his merry Punchinello
+costume, and is nothing but a sorrowing old man. Farewell, merry John,
+thou boy of endless good-humour.
+
+"We erect this little monument in thy own spirit, with an eye that
+laughs through tears, for after thou hadst conquered the first bitter
+pangs of death, thou must surely at thy last moment have smiled at
+leaving this miserable world."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The English journals vied with each other in expressions of sorrow for
+this irreparable loss. The death of Garrick, said Dr. Johnson, "eclipsed
+the gaiety of nations." How much more truly this may be said of the
+premature death of Leech! Never was man so loved and honoured by his
+personal friends, never was a man's death more sincerely mourned than
+that of "dear, kind John Leech" by those who had the delightful
+privilege of knowing intimately all the endearing qualities of his heart
+and mind. See what that great man, who was so soon to follow him to the
+grave, says, and think what the simple words imply! Says Dickens, in a
+letter to Forster written a few days after Leech's death, "I have not
+done my number ('Our Mutual Friend'). This death of poor Leech has put
+me out woefully."
+
+It was predicted that Leech's death would be death to _Punch_. How false
+and foolish that prophecy was, none knew so well as Leech himself; but
+while admitting to the full the great talent of the present _Punch_
+staff of artists, it cannot be denied that Leech's place is vacant, and
+I assume the prophetic mantle and proclaim (I hope mistakenly) that it
+will never be filled. It should always be borne in mind that though it
+is impossible to exaggerate the benefit that _Punch_ derived from
+Leech's pencil, the artist is also deeply indebted to _Punch_ for the
+exceptional opportunities the peculiar character of the paper offered
+for the display of his powers. The fact is, the paper and the
+illustrations were exactly suited to each other, and always worked
+harmoniously together.
+
+That Leech's death would be keenly felt by all connected with _Punch_
+goes without saying, and if tears are evidences of grief, those that
+fell from the eyes of the whole of the staff as they stood round Leech's
+grave gave full assurance of their sorrow.
+
+On the 3rd of November, by a notice in the daily papers, the public were
+informed that the funeral of John Leech would take place at Kensal Green
+on the following day. At two o'clock on the afternoon of the 4th, great
+crowds of people lined the ways from the chapel to the grave, which was
+already surrounded by the friends and acquaintances of the dead. The
+pall-bearers were Mark Lemon, Shirley Brooks, Tom Taylor, J. E. Millais,
+R.A., Horace Mayhew, M. Evans (Bradbury and Evans, of _Punch_), John
+Tenniel, F. C. Burnand, Samuel Lucas, and Henry Silver (all members of
+the staff or contributors to _Punch_). These were followed by John
+Leech, the artist's father; Dr. Quain, poor Leech's unwearied attendant
+in his illness; Charles Keene, George Du Maurier, and others, all more
+or less associated with Leech in their relation to _Punch_. In
+attendance were Charles Dickens, W. H. Russell, Perceval Leigh, Edmund
+Yates, Charles F. Adams, German Reed, H. K. Browne ('Phiz'), Thomas
+Landseer, A.R.A., George Cruikshank, Godfrey Turner, Creswick (the
+tragedian), Marcus Stone, J. Phillip, R.A., W. P. Frith, R.A., and many
+others. The red coats of two soldiers made bright spots amongst the
+sombre crowd. The service for the dead was read by the Rev. S. R. Hole,
+now Dean of Rochester, whose warm friendship for Leech distressingly
+affected him in his delivery of the solemn passages in the burial
+service. The last words had scarcely ceased when we crowded together,
+and without a dry eye amongst us, as we took our farewell look into the
+resting-place of the man we loved so well. One tomb only divides the
+graves of Thackeray and Leech. Of both these men it may be justly said
+that, like Saul and Jonathan of old, "they were beautiful in their
+lives," and but a short time and a small space divide them in their
+deaths.
+
+Leech's wife and children soon followed him to the grave; and though, to
+the surprise and regret of all who knew of the immense mass of work that
+he produced, he was unable to leave even a moderate fortune behind him,
+it is satisfactory to know that his family did not suffer. Anything
+approaching privation was warded off by means which it is not necessary
+to particularize.
+
+The whole world is the inheritor under the will of Leech; and what a
+legacy he has bequeathed! Posterity will be able to study us in our
+habits as we lived, in our pleasures and our pains, in our follies and
+eccentricities, in our sports and amusements--in short, in every
+condition of life, high and low. A type, or types, of every class, from
+the very poor to the very rich, from the beggar to the King, spring
+perfect from Leech's pencil. He revels in beauty; tenderness and manly
+strength combine in his works, as they did in himself, a love of what is
+good and pure, and a hatred of the ignoble and the base is shown in all
+he drew, and in every act of his private life. My endeavour in these
+pages has been to convey to those to whom Leech will be but a name, as
+clear an idea as lay in my power of the "life and character" of the
+author of the matchless works which will be a delight for all time.
+Death only sanctifies the loving memory in which Leech will be held by
+those who knew him. The kindly and intelligent of future generations
+will, I hope and believe, not only appreciate the humour and character,
+the fun and frolic, in Leech's drawings, but discover also the
+delightful nature of their producer in many a tender touch, in many a
+good-natured rendering of matter that was susceptible in other hands of
+severe or vulgar treatment; and if I can create for him something of the
+affectionate regard in the future that is universally felt for him in
+the present, my object in writing this imperfect memoir will be
+attained.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+
+[A] I regret to say that, from the nature of the material in
+which this early drawing is made, it has been found impossible of
+reproduction.]
+
+
+
+
+BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.
+
+_J. D. & Co._
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+
+Hyphenation has been standardised.
+
+"Duval" has been changed to "Derval" on page 57 for consistency.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of John Leech, His Life and Work, Vol. II
+(of II), by William Powell Frith
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41018 ***