John Leech, His Life and Work. Vol. 1 [of 2]

“The man of money took the paper – the devil, with his ear upturned, crept closer to the door – and thrust it amidst the dying coals. A moment, and the garret is rent as with a lightning flash.

“Yelling, and all on fire, the man of money falls prostrate with hell in his face. Then his lips move, but not a sound is heard. And the fire communicated by the sympathy of the living note – the flesh of his flesh – like a snake of flame glides up his limbs, devouring them. And so he is consumed: a minute, and the man of money is a thin black paper ash. Now the night wind stirs it, and now a sudden breeze carries the cinereous corpse away, fluttering it to dust impalpable.”

CHAPTER XI

ALBERT SMITH AND LEECH

In July, 1851, a new work appeared, under the name and title of the Month: “a View of Passing Subjects and Manners, Home and Foreign, Social and General, by Albert Smith and John Leech.” The publication was a serial one – monthly, in fact; and as it contained many amusing skits by Albert Smith, and much of Leech’s best work, notice of it is incumbent upon a writer of Leech’s life.

Eighteen fifty-one, as everybody knows, was the year of the Great Crystal Palace Exhibition in Hyde Park. I well remember visiting the huge glass building in February, 1851, in company with Dickens and Sir Joseph Paxton. Dickens was wrapped in furs, and we shivered through the place, which was only partially roofed; and seemed altogether so far from completion as to cause great doubts in our minds of the possibility of its being ready for its contents by the first of May.

I put the question to Paxton, and his reply was:

“I think it will; but, mind, I don’t say it will.”

Paxton’s thought was justified; for the Exhibition was opened by the Queen in great state at the date fixed, though many of its intended exhibits were still to come.

I confess I shared the foolish dread that the opening would be so crowded as to be very uncomfortable, if not dangerous, to sight-seers; and I therefore declined to accompany my brother, who was braver than I; and sorry enough I was when I found that the panic had been so universal as to enable the few courageous visitors to have the show, as my brother expressed it, “all to themselves.”

The first number of the Month appeared in July, 1851, and the last was issued towards the close of that year. It seems to have been the intention of the authors to have taken typical young ladies, and, under the heading of “Belles of the Month,” have used them as prefixes to each monthly part. Unfortunately, I think this idea was only partially carried out. True, we have Belles of the Park, and Belles of the Ball, and one or two Belles of the Month, so charmingly done by Leech as to make it a matter of surprise that such great attractions were not more frequently admitted to the paper.

The literary portion which begins the Month is very Albert Smithian indeed. In proof, I quote some of his description of “The Hyde Park Belle”:

“The charming young lady introduced to me,” says Mr. Smith, “was of middling stature, with oval face, chestnut hair, dark eyes, and very white and regular teeth. She had on a white transparent bonnet, and light muslin dress all en suite. In answer to my questions, she replied as follows:

“‘I shall be nineteen in August, and have been out two years and a half. Have I ever been engaged? Only once, and that was broken off because I went on a drag to Richmond with the officers of the – th. Lady Banner was inside – it was all perfectly proper. She is a very nice woman – always ready to chaperone anybody anywhere if her share is paid. Only sometimes she bores one dreadfully. Edmund went to India. I don’t know where he is now; I have not heard. I dare say he is somewhere. He bored me dreadfully at last. I work very hard – oh, very hard indeed! – that is, in the season. My maid always sits up to make tea for me when I come home. Her hours are very regular, considering. She goes to bed every morning about four; but, then, she doesn’t have to dance half the night. Yes; I like the Crystal Palace. Oh! I get so tired there – walking, and walking, and walking, you can’t think how far! I know the Crystal Palace fountain and Dent’s clock, and the stuffed animals and the envelope-machine. I don’t think I have seen anything else; I have never been out of the nave and the transept – nobody goes anywhere else. I did not know that there was anything to see upstairs, except large carpets. I am sure they would bore me dreadfully. We are engaged every night… We had scarcely time to dress for the Grapnels’ dinner-party; and then we went to Mrs. Crutchley’s, to meet the Lapland Ambassador. We could not get into the room, and stood for two hours on the landing. Old Mr. Tawley was there, and would keep talking to me; he always bores me dreadfully. He is going to take mamma and me to see some pictures somewhere. I hate seeing pictures; they bore me dreadfully. After Lady Crutchley’s, we went to Mrs. Croley’s amateur concert, which was nearly over. She had only classical music. I don’t know what classical music is; I only know it bores me dreadfully. Ashton Howard says the same people who like classical music buy old china and wear false hair. I wish people would give up classical music. It never amuses anybody – that is, anybody worth amusing. I don’t know whether “The Huguenots” is classical music or not; I only know that when they give it at the Royal Italian Opera nobody seems bored then. I don’t know that I am exactly.’”

Whether in these boxes full of beauties one amongst them is intended by Leech to personate Mr. Smith’s “dreadfully bored” young lady, I cannot say. Certainly there is not one who seems in the condition described as not being “exactly bored.”

The Belle of Hyde Park continues:

“‘I go into the Park every day with mamma, but it bores me dreadfully. I see nothing but the same people, and I know all the trees and rails by heart. I ride sometimes; I like it better than the carriage. But papa don’t ride very often; and if he don’t I can’t, except with the Pevenseys and their brothers. John Pevensey is very stupid, and talks to me about farming. I get very tired; but I am obliged to go, because the Pevenseys know so many receivable people. But they bore me dreadfully; in fact, I don’t know who or what does not. I long for the season to be over; and when I go into the country, I long for it to begin again. I wish I could do as I pleased, like Marshall – that’s my maid – when she has a holiday. She is going to marry the man at the hairdresser’s; and last Sunday they went down all by themselves to Gravesend. I see mamma’s face if Ashton Howard was to propose to take me to Gravesend next Sunday, and without Lady Banner! I wish sometimes I was Marshall. Now and then I would give a good deal for a good cry. I can’t tell you why – I don’t know; only that everything is a trouble, and bores me dreadfully.’”

In reply to further inquiries from Mr. Smith, the young lady tells him what she pays for her satin shoes, which are worn out after two parties. Does she have her gloves cleaned?

“‘Certainly; but not for evening parties – the men’s coats blacken them in an instant. They do very well for the opera and evening concerts – nothing else. The Pevenseys wear cleaned gloves. Everybody knows it; and Ashton Howard always asks out loud if a camphine-lamp has gone out when they come into the room. You can get a nice bouquet for five or six shillings. Old Mr. Rigby, in the Regent’s Park, told me I might cut any flowers from his conservatory. But I don’t care for that – I would sooner buy them; he bores me dreadfully.’”

It cannot be denied that ugliness has reached its climax in men’s dress of the present day. It would be extremely difficult to find a garment more hideous than a dress-coat; and it is impossible for any head-covering to exceed the stove-pipe hat in ugliness, to say nothing of inconvenience and detestable uncomfortableness.

These sentiments were fully shared by one of the Month’s correspondents, a gentleman named Simmons, who “emerged from his residence at Islington” on the day of the opening of the Great Exhibition with the intention of showing to the multitudes who were expected to attend that ceremony the kind of hat that should depose, at once and for ever, the detestable chimney-pot.

“It was, in fact,” says the bold reformer, “merely a wide-brimmed, flat-crowned wideawake, to which I thought a feather – in these days of foreign immigration – would not be an out-of-the-way addition. I had contemplated my own features beneath it in as much variety of light and shadow as I could obtain from my shaving-glass for half an hour preceding my departure, and had arrived at such a satisfactory conclusion as to its effect, that I regarded myself as a sort of modern William Tell, about to release my country, by a bold example, from an oppressive and degrading subjection to a detested hat.”

A love of change is said to be inherent in human nature; but attacks upon custom – indeed, innovations of all kinds – are usually futile unless very special conditions attend the attempts. If the famous hat invented by a Royal Prince was received with overwhelming ridicule, as my older readers will remember that it was; a less melancholy fate could scarcely be expected for the wideawake and feather of the little gentleman from Islington.

“My appearance in the street certainly created a sensation,” says Mr. Simmons; “but it was one exceedingly mortifying to my feelings. Omnibus drivers winked at each other, and pointed at me with their whips. Occasionally a stray boy would indulge in personal observations, or a grown-up ragamuffin would sputter out an oath, and burst into a horse laugh, which to my mind appeared totally unwarranted by the circumstances of the case.”

The managers of the Month very wisely placed this etching in the front of their first number. In all respects Leech is here seen at his best. The figure of the poor little victim of reform, the street-boys and their surroundings, are all unsurpassable; while to an artist the composition of the figures and the arrangement of light and shadow are excellent.

After escaping from the attentions of Leech’s inimitable Arabs, Mr. Simmons reaches Hyde Park to find fresh troubles. The feathered wideawake creates a sensation, but not of the kind that its wearer expected; he was asked where “he bought it,” and “if he would sell it”; “if he made it himself”; and if he had “another at home like it to spare for a friend,” and so on. The “air of unconsciousness” that the reformer assumed irritated his assailants, whose “offensive remarks and insolent mirth” were soon exchanged for attentions more uncomfortable.

Says Mr. Simmons: “A bright flash of practical jocularity suddenly illumined the mind of an original genius, who at once carried it into effect by casting at my decided article of costume a large tuft of grass, which struck me on the back of my neck, broke into dry dirt, and raised a perfect roar of delight at my expense.” Instead of patiently enduring this assault, as a prudent man would have done when surrounded by enemies, the valiant Simmons turned upon his assailant, “and struck the wit a severe blow in the face.” That was a death-blow to the picturesque hat, which “afforded some slight sport as a football for a few moments, and then vanished and was seen no more.”

It will be seen by the quotations that the literary portion of the Month is of the slight character – though sometimes clever and amusing – to which so much of Leech’s work has been allied. A sketch, entitled “Home from the Party,” gives occasion for the accompanying drawing by Leech of a young gentleman who has “danced all night till the broad daylight,” “and gone home” by himself “in the morning.” On his journey a brougham overtakes him, containing “the handsome dark girl with the clematis and fuchsia wreath, looking pale and pretty, with a pocket-handkerchief over her head cornerwise, held together at the chin. We think about that brougham-girl till she is out of sight, and wonder if we appeared to the best advantage as she passed. We don’t much think we did. One of the springs of our hat was out of order, and we were carrying our gloves in our hand, crumpled up to the size of a walnut, as though we were going to conjure with them; and we were blinking as we met the sun at the corner, and holding a seedy bouquet in our hand, which evidently she had not given us.”

The remarks, conversations, comments, and so forth, that generally accompany Leech’s drawings were invariably his own composition, and in their humorous aptness are almost as admirable as the drawings they explain. In illustration I note a design under the heading of “Moral Courage.”

“Scene —A Station of the Shoeblack Brigade

“First Boy: ‘Here’s another swell, Bill, a-coming to be blacked.’

“Second Boy: ‘Ooray!’

“Third Boy: ‘Ain’t his boots thin neither?’

“Fourth Boy: ‘Wouldn’t they pinch my toes if I had ’em? Oh my!’

“Fifth Boy: ‘They don’t pinch his’n.’

“Sixth Boy: ‘Yes, they do.’

“First Boy: ‘Go easy, Blacky; mind his corns.’ (Swell winces.) ‘That was a nasty one.’

“(The comments are extended from the swell’s boots to his costume and appearance generally. And all this for a penny).”

Mr. Thackeray’s “Four Georges” are, no doubt, familiar to my readers, some of whom may also remember his delivery of them in the form of lectures to large audiences. In that great writer’s early time he wrote many essays, art-criticisms, etc., under the name of “Michael Angelo Titmarsh,” and it is under that title that he is represented in the drawing by his friend Leech, as he appeared at Willis’s Rooms “in his celebrated character of Mr. Thackeray.”

In the Month, Mr. Albert Smith makes Leech’s drawing a peg upon which he hangs some justly complimentary remarks on the Thackeray lectures which took the town by storm forty years ago.

Whether the “Belle of Hyde Park” or the “Belle of the Ball” is to be considered the belle of the Month’s July issue is left in doubt; but there is no doubt whatever about the claim of the pretty creature (who, accompanied by an extremely plain and dissolute-looking cavalier in the costume of Charles II.’s time, enters an imaginary ball-room) to a loveliness that it would be difficult to surpass, as the drawing amply proves.

This cut is accompanied by some verses which appear to me quite unreadable; I therefore spare my readers from the infliction of any of them.

The frontispiece to the Month for August is an etching by Leech of singular beauty, called “Charade Acting.” I have looked in vain through the letter-press for any explanation of this charade, so I suppose the meaning is purposely left for discovery to the intelligence of the observer. It represents the clever performance of Mr. Smiley and Miss Corgy.

Mr. Smiley evidently represents a valorous knight – else why that dish-cover shield, that saucepan helmet, that long surcoat of nightshirt in the place of mail? The knight has armed himself further with sword and lance (sword of any period, lance a roasting-spit). Those warlike preparations must have been made in defence of that delicious girl leaning over the back of the ancient chair. Is she supposed to be a distressed damsel leaning from her prison-window and listening to Mr. Smiley’s vows of liberating her or dying in the attempt? If so, where is the word that will express as much? Not in the brain of the stout old gentleman who is fast asleep amongst the audience, nor in that of the pretty little girl who sits in front of him apparently wondering why people should be “so silly.” The lady who tries to hide a yawn with her fan has evidently “given it up,” and the two lovely women near her are much in the same condition.

Now we come to the belle of the month of August, who is riding with her papa in Kensington Gardens. An attempt was made – later, I think, than the Exhibition year – to extend Rotten Row into Kensington Gardens, and thus deprive pedestrians – notably children and nursemaids – of their promenades amongst the trees. For some months the equestrian habitués of Rotten Row careered in the Gardens, to the terror and danger of children, and the disturbance of many groups of soldiers and nursemaids. This usurpation created very strong opposition.

I lived in the neighbourhood, and I accompanied a deputation to Sir Cornewall Lewis – then in power – with a view of impressing upon that Minister the desirability of rescinding the objectionable privilege which had been granted to the riders. We had some eloquent talkers, but their oratory seemed to me to make no impression upon Sir C. Lewis, who may have listened, but during the harangues he was always writing letters, and no sooner was one finished than he began another; and we left him without an intimation of our success or failure. But what is certain is, that within a week of our interview the equestrians disappeared – I hope for ever – from Kensington Gardens. Leech being a constant rider, both spoke and drew in favour of the new ride. Drawings may be found in the Punch series in which he laughs at the opponents of the horses in the Gardens, and I remember his indignation when I told him of our deputation and its successful issue.

Leech was never happier than in the infinite variety of his pictures of life at the seaside; his invention was inexhaustible, as numberless groups of seaside visitors engaged in the search of health or pleasure – from the small digger on the sands to the valetudinarian at the Spa – sufficiently prove. Never was he more delightful than in dealing with the charming lady bathers, one of whom plays the part of the Month’s “Belle of September.”

I think this picture might have inspired the poet of the Month, but his lyre is silent.

“The Balcony Nuisance!” Without some explanation the drawing that follows this title would be perfectly incomprehensible. How, in the name of common-sense, of propriety, or of justice, can the word “nuisance” be applicable to the occupants of that balcony? Well, it is in this wise: A correspondent of the Month, who signs himself “Narcissus,” lives in a suburban square, from which he indites a remarkable letter. According to “Narcissus,” suburban squares are famous for the production of vast numbers of “single ladies.” He calls his square a “realm of girldom,” the proportion of the belles being very great over the marriageable young men, and therefore they watch with keen eyes for any new flirtations. “And now,” said he, “comes my complaint. I cannot call at any house where there are daughters but, the instant I knock, every balcony near me is filled with waves of rustling muslin, and a dozen pairs of bright eyes are on the qui vive for every movement or expression. I need not say how annoying this is.”

I see no trace of annoyance in the simpering buck who is the cynosure of all eyes in the drawing. Leech evidently saw through the affectation of annoyance, and depicted the Narcissus mind in its real condition of gratified conceit.

The Month’s October issue contains a good deal of Leech’s work. The number contains a “Belle of the Month,” but she is so inferior in attractiveness to her sisters that I am ungallant enough to pass her by. I find, however, a pretty musical group entitled “Pestal.” In 1851 Mr. Albert Smith says that Pestal, who was a Russian officer, was imprisoned for marrying without the consent of his Sovereign, and “cast for death.” Of course, though, according to Mr. Smith, this unfortunate man may have been a “Pestal-ent person,” we are not expected to believe the crime for which he was executed was only that of neglecting to ask the Czar’s consent to his marriage. “On the eve of his execution, as he lay ironed, awaiting the next morning’s mangling,” continues the inveterate punster, “in a happy moment of enthusiasm, he composed the waltz that bears his name.”

The pretty music seems to have sentimentalized the handsome youth, and drawn him closer to the performer, who is one of those sweet creatures with whom the artist has made us so familiar. I cannot refrain from presenting my readers with an example of the poetry that adorns the Month, so that they may be convinced of the propriety of giving them as little of it as possible. Forty-one verses, of which the two following are fair examples, accompany the drawing called Pestal:

“In London, as usual, last season I spent,To Pocklington Square my notes were addressed all,And wherever I rambled or wandered or went,I was pestered with that horrid pest of a ‘Pestal.’“I thought this mysterious, moreover, and queer,’Tis better at once that the truth be confest all —That all through the city one word should appear,And that word the incomprehensible ‘Pestal.’”

“The Great Dinner-Bell Nuisance” not only gives occasion for a capital drawing by Leech, but the title also heads a capital paper, in which the absurdity of the function, when there is not the least necessity for it, is well satirized. A retired lawyer named Watkins Brown lives in a village which contains at most 347 people, “in a comfortable sort of house in the Italian style, which he christened Somerford Villa.” He has no children, and his establishment consists of five persons, Mrs. W. B., Betsy, the cook, etc., including Buttons, the page. This boy, armed with a bell, is a nuisance to the neighbourhood; he performs upon it three times a day. “Now,” says the indignant writer, “why does Buttons do this? Is it to echo back the sound that comes at the same hours from Sir Marmaduke Hamilton’s, of Somerford Hall, and to impress people that Brown and Sir Marmaduke are the only gentlemen in the neighbourhood? It can’t be to let Brown and his wife know that luncheon or dinner is ready, for in nine cases out of ten they are in the room when the cloth is laid. Again I ask, why does Buttons do this? If he is of opinion that his master is unaware it is time to dress for dinner, why doesn’t he tell him so at once when he is in the room, instead of using such an absurd system of information? However, by six o’clock Brown and his wife are in the drawing-room, and Buttons seeing them there, and perceiving that they are just about to go to the dining-room, rushes out to the little court-yard, and then to the door of the miniature conservatory, and again commits the offence he had committed half an hour before. In the baby courtyard there are two dogs chained, and two other sporting dogs in a model of a kennel. Well, Buttons appears in the presence of the dogs with his great bell, and the sensible brutes, conscious of the pain they are about to endure, immediately set up a howl of quadruple agony, to which the bell tolls its awful accompaniment.”

Exactly fifty years ago I went on a portrait-painting tour into the country. Some sitters were promised to me, and I had hope, subsequently justified, that they would be the precursors of others. Amongst my patrons was a clergyman of aristocratic lineage; who, though he had inherited little in the shape of money, was possessed of certain tastes common to the upper ten, in which he could not afford to indulge; but amongst them was the dinner-bell, in which he did indulge, to the great annoyance of his neighbours. The Vicarage was an unpretending house with a small garden about it, in a small village; the inhabitants were chiefly Methodists, and the congregation at church was the smallest I ever saw.

The Vicar was not popular; the villagers disliked what they called “his airs and graces,” and they detested his dinner-bell. After sittings from the Vicar, he and I took occasional walks together, and one day, as we were passing a cobbler’s shop, the proprietor of it, “a detestable little Radical Methodist,” as the Vicar called him, appeared at his door with a huge bell in his hand; he stepped into the middle of the road, and, affecting not to see us, he rang it furiously.

“Man! man!” cried the Vicar, “stop that! What are you making that dreadful noise for?”

“Well, ye see,” replied the cobbler, in the language of the county, “it’s ma dinner-time, and aase joust ringin’ mysen in, to a bit of berry pudden.”

I was so vividly reminded by the Month’s “Dinner-Bell Nuisance” of my early experience, that I could not resist my inclination to introduce it into what purports to be the life of John Leech, in which it has no business whatever to appear. Once more I apologize, and hope I may not be tempted to “do it again.”