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

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."

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.

"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.