John Leech, His Life and Work, Vol. 2 [of 2]

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."