The History of "Punch" Part 36

Of his work little need be said here, for in its main bearings it has already been fully considered. But acknowledgment must at least be made of how, with all his sense of fun and humour, Sir John Tenniel has dignified the political cartoon into a cla.s.sic composition, and has raised the art of politico-humorous draughtsmans.h.i.+p from the relative position of the lampoon to that of polished satire--swaying parties and peoples, too, and challenging comparison with the higher (at times it might almost be said the highest) efforts of literature in that direction. The beauty and statuesque qualities of his allegorical figures, the dignity of his beasts, and the earnestness and directness of his designs, apart from the exquisite simplicity of his work at its best, are things previously unknown in the art of which he is the most accomplished master, standing alone and far ahead of any of his imitators. The Teutonic character and the academic quality of his work, modified by the influence of Flaxman and the Greeks, are no blemishes; one does not even feel that he draws entirely from memory. Indeed, the things are completely satisfying as the work of a true artist, and--a quality almost as grateful and charming as it was previously rare--of a gentleman.

Yet this practice of drawing from memory has its drawbacks; for the things remembered are apt to grow old-fas.h.i.+oned. The Flying Dutchman was running when Sir John's locomotive still had the odour of Puffing Bilfy about it. His indifference to that "actuality" which is the characteristic of Mr. Sambourne has often raised the howl of the specialist. When in an excellently drawn cartoon full of point (November, 1893), ent.i.tled "A Bicycle made for Two," he grafted the features of a modern roadster on to the type of 1860, the cycling world fluttered in a manner that must have been very encouraging to the artist. His machine, they said, was the most wonderful one ever placed on the market. Sir H. H. Fowler, it was said, was sitting on a half-inch tube without a saddle, and "working with his heels on pedals shaped like a Mexican gaucho's stirrup"--but his critics had clearly never seen a gaucho's stirrup. "Nor has the lady--riding behind, instead of in front--better accommodation, being in suspension over a frame that lacks a backstay, and above a wheel that buckles under her weight; while the handles are thrown up instead of down, and their bars so slender that they must inevitably break." The gear-case is on one side of the frame and the chain on the other, and the frame itself was a marvel of ingenuity misapplied. Thus did the cyclists moan in many newspapers, taking the matter _au grand serieux_, with quite unusual regard for mechanical accuracy, and a total disregard for the political allusion and point. Similarly in January of the same year the "Forlorn Maiden" of trade was shown lying across the railway lines while an engine is bearing down upon her. But "there are five rails in sight, all at equal distances apart, though the railway gauge is four feet eight inches and a half, and the locomotive is running on the six-foot way." The girl, too, stretches across it, and spans it from waist to ankles, not counting a bend at the knees, so that at the lowest estimate she is ten feet high. This violated the public conscience even more than the fact that the engine rushes along the inside line of the two sets of rails; and they declared that never before had the maxim _ars longa_ been more triumphantly indicated than in the maiden's figure. But what of it all?

Is it not a striking commentary on our English temperament, that while an inaccuracy of a purely mechanical description raises the protests of thousands who have no idea beyond the parts of a bicycle or the width of a railway gauge, a score of artistic beauties pa.s.s unnoticed and unchallenged?

And so Tenniel worked his way upwards. The fact that in a fencing bout he had partially lost his sight, through the b.u.t.ton of his father's foil dropping off, whereupon he received the point in his eye, was not the slightest deterrent. He regarded it merely as an annoying, though not a very important, incident. Being satisfied that the Almighty had only given us _two_ eyes as a measure of precaution, to provide against such vexatious little accidents as he had experienced, he went on working as if nothing had happened. "It's a curious thing, is it not," he said one day to the writer, "that two of the princ.i.p.al men on _Punch_, du Maurier and I, have only two eyes between them?" Yet it only made him the more careful. Free from mannerism, he never allowed carefulness to interfere with fun, and his cartoon of Britannia discovering the source of the Nile, and of Lord Beaconsfield as a peri entering the Paradise of Premiers.h.i.+p, are among the memorably funny things of _Punch_. His elevation to the leading position on the paper has thus been gradual and certain; not of his own a.s.sumption, however, but the ready tribute of his colleagues, who have always regarded him not only as the great artist, but as the link incarnate of the tradition of _Punch_ of the present with the past. So he is the favourite of the band, to whom he is the beloved "Jack[=i]d[=e]s" of s.h.i.+rley Brooks's christening. It was Mark Lemon who, at the Dinner, first applied to him the burlesque line--"No longer Jack, henceforth Jack[=i]d[=e]s call;" but it was Brooks who confirmed the practice of according to him the _sobriquet_ which _Punch_ (p. 148, Vol. XLV.) had previously conferred on Lord John Russell, "England's Briefest Peer."

It was a startling proof of his extraordinary, and by him half-unsuspected, popularity, that when Tenniel's knighthood became known the honour was received with loud and general applause--with an enthusiasm quite unusual in its command of popular approval. "I am receiving shoals of letters and telegrams," he wrote to me on the day of the announcement; "I suppose you know the reason Y." It is said that Lord Salisbury had intended to make the recommendation himself, but that the nomination was delayed and forgotten; but when Mr. Gladstone came into office the new Premier repaired the neglect of the old, and at the same time acknowledged the steady support which _Punch_ had offered to the Whig policy. By the general public it was regarded as an appreciation of the man who was the personification of the good-humoured and the loftier side of political life--who had brought the _Punch_ spirit round to something a good deal better and higher than he found it, blending fun with cla.s.sic grace, and humour with dignity. To the art world it was the recognition of that "Black-and-white" drawing which has been the glory of England and the Cinderella of the Royal Academy of Arts. It was in this sense that Sir John Tenniel accepted the distinction. But it was to "Jack[=i]d[=e]s" that the _Punch_ Staff drank when Mr. Agnew proposed his health at the Dinner following the announcement of the nomination; it was "dear old John Tenniel" that the Arts Club toasted when, with Mr. Val Prinsep, R.A., in the chair and Mr.

du Maurier in the vice-chair, the new knight was the honoured guest of his club, and received its congratulations with the modest dignity and kindly good taste characteristic of him. And it was "good Sir John," the cartoonist--who has also been, at extremely rare intervals, a _Punch_ writer too (see _Punch_, p. 56, Vol. XX.)--who was celebrated by the pen of Mr. Milliken--"the Pride of Mr. Punch and the delight of the British Public."

FOOTNOTES:

[51] It may be stated that Doyle contributed a ewe-lamb of literature to _Punch_ (May 13th, 1843), ent.i.tled "High Art and the Royal Academy"

(Vol. XVI., p. 197).

[52] This conversation took place in April, 1889.

[53] Since 1892, I may explain, Sir John Tenniel and _Punch_ have moved with the times. Sir John now draws his cartoons upon the Chinese-whitened surface of cardboard, and they are photographed on the block in the usual way.

[54] But when, in 1866, Keene contributed three cartoons, Sir John Tenniel's appeared side by side. This was the result of a revived experiment to add to the attractions of the paper by giving two cartoons--an experiment resumed in later years in the case of Mr.

Sambourne and Mr. Furniss.

CHAPTER XX.

_PUNCH'S_ ARTISTS: 1850-60.

Captain Howard--Receipt for Landscape Drawing--Earnings, Real and Ideal--George H. Thomas--Charles Keene--His Training--Introduction to _Punch_--Called to the Table--Uselessness in Council--A Strong Politician--Inherits Leech's Position--Keene as an Artist--Where He Failed--His Joke-Primers--Torturing the Bagpipes--Good Stories, Used, Spoiled, and Rejected--"Toby" as a Dachshund--Death of "Frau"--Keene's Technique--His Inventions and Creations--And what He Earned by Them--Charles Martin--Harry Hall--Rev. Edward Bradley ("Cuthbert Bede")--"Verdant Green" or "Blanco White"?--Double Acrostics--George Cruikshank Defies _Punch_--Mr. T. Harrington Wilson--Mr. Harrison Weir--Mr. Ashby-Sterry--Alfred Thompson--Frank Bellew--Julian Portch--"Cham"--G. H. Haydon--J. M. Lawless.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAPTAIN H. R. HOWARD.

(_From a Photograph by Lambert Weston and Son._)]

An amateur who signed with cross-pipes, and who appeared five times in the following year, was the one other contributor of 1850; and then 1851 was distinguished by the enlistment of the prolific draughtsman who at first used three running legs--quaintly accepted as the Manx arms--as his sign-manual. This was Captain Henry R. Howard, the son of a country gentleman, born at Watford, where he lived in the same house for over fifty years. He was always sketching from a child; and being persuaded by his friends to "do some of those for _Punch_," he sent a few samples to the Editor, but without much hope of success. They brought an immediate invitation to call upon Mark Lemon, who told him, after seeing his pencil sketches, that he might draw for them, but not on paper, on wood; and learning that he had had no such experience, referred him for instruction to the courtesy of Leech and Tenniel, whose senior he was by six years. He was not entirely without artistic education, having studied in Hanover under a pupil of Benjamin West's. "You must draw skeletons," said Herr Ramburg. "But I only want to draw landscapes,"

pleaded the youth. "Then you must draw skeletons first," replied the artist; "it is the only way to draw landscapes."

After securing Lemon's favour Captain Howard drew scores of comic humanised beasts and birds in the form of initials and decorations. At last, after some years, Lemon proposed a change, when Howard quietly remarked, "I've been wondering how long you'd go on taking those things; I should have thought you were sick of them. I am." Meanwhile he had changed his signature of the Manx legs--he had just been sojourning in the island when he adopted them--as Lemon represented it as Leech's opinion that it was sometimes unnecessarily like his own wriggling signature; and he had adopted in subst.i.tution the little trident that figured in the paper for fifteen years. When Leech died, Captain Howard aspired to be--in part, at least--his successor; but although he was now drawing figure-subjects, and had an inexhaustible stock of jokes and fun, he was told, to his bitter disappointment, that new blood was wanted; and the great mantle which had fallen was now drawn round the shoulders of Charles Keene and Mr. du Maurier. Captain Howard then practically retired. Although in the first year of his contributions he was 30 out of pocket by his _Punch_ work, as he bought his own blocks instead of claiming them from Swain, he was soon making 100 a year from the paper. Just before he retired an officer recently returned from India expressed the desire to draw also for _Punch_ as a profession. "I hear," said he, "that Leech makes 1,500 a year out of it." "So that you would be satisfied with 1,200?" asked Captain Howard. His friend admitted that even the inferior sum would be acceptable. "Very well,"

replied Howard encouragingly; "come and dine with me, and I'll show you by my books that my _Punch_ income last year was just twelve pounds!"

Captain Howard's work, though clever and ingenious, was weak. Its humour, often fresh enough, was never very p.r.o.nounced; nor did the draughtsman's hand ever become that of a master. In 1853 he had made no fewer than sixty-six cuts, and about doubled that number each year up to 1867, when, with only two drawings in the volume, he finally vanished from _Punch's_ pages. Three years later there was printed an initial by him, representing a comic hammer-fish (p. 265, Vol. LIX.), but this belonged to "old stock;" and it marks the failure of its author's long-sustained effort to obtain a recognised position in the front rank of the artistic Staff. He died 31st August, 1895.

A contemporary of his was G. H. Thomas, brother of one of the founders of the "Graphic," and a popular painter of the day, who received much employment from the Queen. Mark Lemon was very anxious to secure the services of so admirable a draughtsman; but Thomas, who was trying to shake himself free from wood-drawing in favour of oil-painting, showed little responsive enthusiasm. He did, however, contribute a couple of drawings--one of them a large head-piece to the preface, representing a feast given to _Punch_ on his twenty-first volume day. In it he is supported by the Queen and Court, and at the round table are the representatives of the nations. It is not a happy effort, and is clearly inspired by Doyle--whose fancy the Editor was still seeking to replace; and, moreover, it is poorly engraved; but it is as full of figures as of incident. Then came C. H. Bradley, who seldom got beyond initials and trifles of large heads on little bodies, being only once or twice promoted to "socials" during the nine years of his connection with the paper. On occasion he showed real humour, while his artistic merit seems to have owed most of what excellence it possessed to the study of Tenniel's work. Bradley, whose monogram might easily be mistaken by the unwary for that of C. H. Bennett, who followed eight years later, executed but five-and-thirty cuts between 1852 and 1860.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLES S. KEENE.

(_Drawn by J. D. Watson. By Courtesy of "Black and White."_)]

_Punch_ was ten years old when the hand of Charles Keene, but not Charles Keene himself, was introduced to the Editor, through the instrumentality of Mr. Henry Silver. Keene had at first been intended for the law, and afterwards had spent a short period in an architect's office. But he decided to throw himself into art; and in order to learn engraving and drawing on the wood, he followed the practice of the day (such as had been adopted by Leech, William Harvey, Fred Walker, Mr.

Birket Foster, Mr. Walter Crane, and other of _Punch's_ artists), and apprenticed himself to an engraver--Whymper, for choice. Then he studied along with his comrade Tenniel and other incipient geniuses at the Clipstone Street Academy, and as early as 1846 produced with his friend--who was soon to be his fellow-giant on _Punch_--the "Book of Beauty," already referred to. He took a studio in the Strand--a sky-parlour renowned for its dust and inaccessibility--and lived, as all good Bohemians should, chiefly on art, song, and smoke: an existence sweetened by a few warm but eclectic friends.h.i.+ps. He worked desperately hard, and having, through his fellow-s.h.i.+reman Samuel Read, become connected with the "Ill.u.s.trated London News," he made for it many drawings of the sort now called "actuality."

By that time Mr. Henry Silver had contracted with Keene an acquaintances.h.i.+p which was to grow into a warm friends.h.i.+p, and it was under the shadow of that intimacy that his earlier contributions were made. As Mr. Silver himself explains in his statement written for Mr.

George S. Layard's admirable "Life and Letters of Charles Keene of _Punch_" (p. 47): "It may seem a little strange that Keene at first showed some reluctance to let his name be known where it was finally so famous. Still, it is the fact that while his earliest _Punch_ drawings were of my devising, he steadily declined to own himself the doer of them. I was writing then for _Punch_ as an outsider, but my ambition was to draw, and for this I had no talent. As for working on the wood, I soon 'cut' it in despair, and, like a baffled tyrant, I knew not how to bring my subjects to the block. Keene very kindly undertook the labour for me, and the first design he executed was 'A Sketch of the New Paris Street-sweeping Machines'--a couple of cannon, namely--which was published in December, 1851, immediately after the b.l.o.o.d.y _coup d'etat_."

This was the barest sketch, childish and shaky in execution, which, however, is explained in the legend as being due to the "Special Artist"

being in the line of fire. Mr. Layard a.s.serts that when Keene made the drawing he thought the joke "a mighty poor one;" and he might have added, as is made clear in the chapter dealing with "Plagiarism," not even a new one, for _Punch_ himself had used the idea before (p. 166, Vol. XV.), and was then accused of theft by the "Man in the Moon." Mr.

Silver proceeds:--

"His next two drawings ill.u.s.trate an article of mine, and appear on the second page of the next volume. His fourth, a far more finished drawing, like these, saw the light in 1852, and may be found in Vol. XXIII., p.

257. It shows a gentleman engaged in fis.h.i.+ng in his kitchen, and is ent.i.tled 'The Advantage of an Inundation,' the autumn of that year being very wet. Mark Lemon wrote to me commending it, and asking me to try and draw a little more for him. I showed Charles the letter, and said that now, of course, his name must be divulged, for I clearly was obtaining _kudos_ under false pretences. However, he deferred the disclosure for a while, and it was not until the spring of 1854 that his 'C. K.' first appeared (_vide_ initial 'G,' Vol. XXVI., p. 128)--a modest little monogram, quite unlike his later and so well-known signature. In the interim he marked his drawings with a mask, which was a device of mine for hiding his ident.i.ty."

For nine years Keene worked steadily on _Punch_, improving artistically in an amazing manner, and in 1860 he was called to the Table--they served long terms of probation then--and ate his first Dinner on February 20th. It was a notable company that he used to meet, all the chief "rising stars" of _Punch_ being still upon the Staff, save Douglas Jerrold, who had died three years before. There were Mark Lemon, Thackeray (nominally retired), Tom Taylor, Horace Mayhew, s.h.i.+rley Brooks, Percival Leigh, John Leech, Henry Silver, and John Tenniel; and into this brilliant a.s.semblage, on the evening in question (when, however, Thackeray was absent, and Sir Joseph Paxton was present as a visitor), he was received with a cordial welcome. But neither at that time nor thenceforward did he take a prominent part in the discussions over the cartoon, although on one occasion he did astonish the company with an excellent though belated suggestion. He had, in fact, no originality of a literary or humorous kind. He knew the exact value of a joke when it was made, and could usually display its point to incomparable advantage; but joke-creation was not one of his strong points, even though he was often forced to it by necessity.

Occasionally, however, he would miss a point entirely, as in the joke sent him by Mr. Alfred Cooper[55]:--

"VISITOR (_having shot a hare at the usual seventy yards_): 'Long shot that, Johnson.'

"KEEPER: 'Yes, sir; Master remarked as it were a wery long shot.'

"VISITOR (_gratified_): 'Ah! Oh, he noticed it, did he?'

"KEEPER: 'Yes, sir; Master always take notice. When gen'lemen makes wery long shots, they don't get asked again!'"

"Why," asks Keene, "would 'Master' object to this long shot? Burnand ...

is sure to want to know I don't know either! Will you kindly explain, so that I can answer him as if I were an expert." As if even a non-sportsman would fail to see the point!

But at the Table, delightful as Keene personally was--he was lovingly addressed as "Carlo"--he was not a leading conversationalist. He proposed little; yet when his opinion was asked, he gave it, with judgment and taste, tersely expressed. His work, besides, was rarely discussed at the Table, for he usually had to seek his material outside.

Moreover, he was, as he expressed it, a "hot Tory," and so strongly antipathetic did he profess himself towards the Liberal tendency of some of the Staff of that day that he would declare with a wink that he positively preferred to stay away; and on the occasion of the accession of Mr. Anstey, wrote this st.u.r.dy Conservative "I hope he's a Tory. We want some leaven to the set of sorry Rads that lead poor old _Punch_ astray at present." But few independent readers, and fewer still of Keene's personal friends, will take very seriously his sweeping a.s.sertion and political p.r.o.nunciamentoes--at least, as regards _Punch_, for whom and for his colleagues he retained to the end feelings of the warmest affection.

When John Leech died in 1864, it was Keene who received the main heritage of his great position as the social satirist of the paper, and with it the heaviest share of work and artistic responsibility. Not only did his work increase in the ordinary numbers, but extra drawings--such as the etched frontispieces to the Pocket-books--fell also to his lot; and a good deal against the grain--for he hated any approach to personality, even though his target was a public man and his shaft was tipped with harmless fun--he executed fourteen cartoons, as is explained elsewhere. In addition to his ordinary "socials" and the formal decorations of each successive volume, Keene re-ill.u.s.trated "Mrs.

Caudle's Curtain Lectures" with a marvellous series of drawings, and Mr.

Frank C. Burnand's "Tracks for Tourists," which made their first appearance as "How, When, and Where" (1864) and were ultimately republished in "Very Much Abroad." Of his outside work for "Once a Week," published by Messrs. Bradbury and Evans, and other publications, no mention need here be made.

It is doubtful if the public will ever realise how great an artist Keene was. His transcendent merit has, however, for a long time been the wonder and admiration of his brother-craftsmen and of the critics. The stream of his genius continued to flow for six-and-thirty years in the most amazing manner. His drawings are in the highest form of Impressionism, reproducing every phase of fleeting expression and suddenly-arrested action with a certainty and accuracy which are absolutely unsurpa.s.sable. His power of composition, of breadth of handling, chiaroscuro, and suggestion of colour and form, was perfect within the range of his medium; and in that medium he gave us, not paper with pen-lines on it, but a perfect sense of light, form, and expression. He was as careful, too, in his "comic cuts" as the most conscientious of painters could be in his canvas; and drawing invariably from the model--even if that model were simply an old shoe--he would often journey into the country for a background of, say, a turnip-field, or in search of any other detail or local colour.

In one direction alone did he fail, or choose to fail--in the portrayal of facial beauty, elegance, and respectability. A pretty woman lurked but rarely about the point of his pencil, as she does so delightfully about those of his princ.i.p.al collaborators on _Punch_; and an elegant woman--save by accident--never. You may point to the Brittany peasant in the number for September 20th, 1856; to the very Leechy young lady on p.

188, Vol. x.x.xVI. (May 7th, 1859), who, it must be admitted, really is a "lady;" and to one or two more. But these pretty women serve rather to accentuate the ugliness of all his other women, when they should have been most beautiful; while elegance is with him a virtue that very rarely saves. Keene, indeed, misrepresented his countrywomen as much as M. Forain libels his. Keene's "swells," and even his gentlemen, are sn.o.bs; his aristocracy and his clerks are cast in the same mould; his city young men are like artizans; and his brides are forbidding--models of virtue, no doubt, but lacking every outward feminine charm. These shortcomings, of course, are to a certain extent to be accounted for by his own nature. Living in the strictest economy and temperateness, he hated anything like ostentation. He despised "Society" and the whole fabric of fas.h.i.+on, and held the world of Burke and Debrett in good-natured abhorrence. Like Leech and d.i.c.kens, he had given his heart to the middle and lower-middle cla.s.ses, and among them he found his best models and most admirable _motifs_.

No _Punch_ artist was ever so dependent upon his friends for "subjects"

as he, and none received such continuous and delightful support. From Messrs. Joseph Crawhall, Andrew Tuer, Walker, Clayton, Birket Foster, Sands, Pritchett, Savile Clark, Ashby-Sterry, Chasemore, and others, he was under constant friendly, and fully-acknowledged, obligation. Not but that he made constant effort to secure "jokes" of his own. He was ever on the look-out, and often very hard-pressed, for them. One day he told Mr. Pritchett that he had determined to join a riding cla.s.s at Allen's Riding-school, and seek inspiration there. His friend amiably suggested that he (Mr. Pritchett) should attend as observer and reporter, and tell Keene all the ridiculous things he did on horseback and the amusing appearances he cut. But the idea did not seem to commend itself to Keene, who merely replied that he thought he should choose a hea.r.s.e-horse to ride, as being at once more stately, decorative, and safe.

Amongst Keene's own subjects are to be included the greater number of those series of drawings dealing with artist and volunteer life; but it must be recognised that to a great extent Keene was frankly the ill.u.s.trator of other men's ideas, and often of other men's "legends."

These legends, or "cackle," were often touched up by Keene; but sometimes they were entirely original. And though it must be admitted that they are not concise as Leech's, they are, as a rule, more life-like, more truthfully Impressionistic--just as his drawings are.

The "legend," by the way, Keene used to term the "libretto"--a reflection, as it were, of his pa.s.sion for music (a pa.s.sion he shared with Gainsborough and Dyce and Romney, and so many more of our most eminent artists). This love of music he indulged at the meetings of the Moray Minstrels, in the Crystal Palace Choir during the Handel Festivals, and in the depths of the country, wherein he would bury himself in order to torture the bagpipes, without testing too severely the forbearance of his fellow-men.

When he secured a good story--which he loved to impart with an ecstatic wink to one or other of his closest friends--he would look as carefully to the "libretto" as to the drawing, as in the case of the British farmer who, crossing the Channel for the first time--in great discomfort at the roll of the boat--"This Capt'n don't understand his business.

_Dang it, why don't he keep in the furrows?_" or the story--older, by the way, than Keene had any knowledge of--of the Scotchman who was asked by a friend, upon whom he had called, if he would take a gla.s.s of whiskey. "No," he said, "it's too airly; besides, I've had a gill a'ready!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLES KEENE TORTURING THE BAGPIPES.