The History of "Punch" Part 42

E. J. Wheeler was the other arrival, and he still (1895) spreads over _Punch's_ pages his bright little theatrical sketches and initials, as well as ill.u.s.trations to Mr. Burnand's own literary contributions. His drawings are unmistakable, as much by their rather old-fas.h.i.+oned method as by the well-known monogram of later years, or by the appropriate sign-manual of a "four-Wheeler" in his earlier contributions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HARRY FURNISS.

(_From a Photograph by Debenham and Gould._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BISHOP PUNCH.

(_By Harry Furniss._)]

In Mr. Harry Furniss _Punch_ found an artist who was destined to become, during the fourteen years of his connection, a considerable factor in his career. Mr. Furniss was bred up in the _Punch_ tradition. While still a boy at school in Ireland--where, through a mistake on Time's part, he was born, of English and Scotch parents--he produced, edited, and ill.u.s.trated "The Schoolboys' Punch" in ma.n.u.script, in careful imitation of the original, drawing the cartoon as well. One of these "big cuts" represented himself as the performer in a cabinet-trick--(the sensation of the Davenport Brothers was before the public at the time)--in which the cabinet was the school, and the ropes that bound him the curriculum; while from another cabinet he emerges in full blaze of scholastic triumph. He soon began drawing, and engraving his own designs, for Mr. A. M. Sullivan's Irish version of _Punch_; and having met Tom Taylor--who then reigned in Whitefriars--and been by him applauded for his sketches, he accepted the hint that he might send in drawings to the original Hunchback of Fleet Street. But when they came, Taylor declined them on the ground that the ideas were unsuitable; yet, curiously enough, they several times appeared, re-drawn by members of the Staff. One of these, re-drawn by Mr. du Maurier in February, 1877, represented a scene witnessed by Mr. Furniss from the railway--a flooded field navigated by two men in a boat, who are reading a notice-board indicating that the submerged "highly-eligible site" was "To be Let or Sold for Building." Mr. Furniss thereupon decided to have done with _Punch_ during that editors.h.i.+p; and came to London to seek his artistic fortune. He speedily made such way on leading journals, especially on the "Ill.u.s.trated London News," that Mr. Burnand, on succeeding to his office, invited the young draughtsman, then aged twenty-six, to become a regular contributor. Mr. Furniss's first sketch (published on p. 204, Vol. LXXIX., 1880) was a skit on what is ignorantly called the Temple Bar Griffin--(it is really an heraldic dragon, designed by Horace Jones)--executed by his friend C. B. Birch, A.R.A.

At that time Mr. Henry W. Lucy had just been summoned to reinforce _Punch's_ Staff, and to take over the "Essence of Parliament," since s.h.i.+rley Brooks's death so ponderously distilled by the late Tom Taylor, and to him was left the selection of an ill.u.s.trator of his "Toby's Diaries." In selecting Mr. Furniss he made a wise choice, for the "Lika Joko" of later times had been a close student of politics, and seemed cut out for the post. How he justified himself is sufficiently known; he achieved for himself a great popularity, and unquestionably acquired for _Punch_ a unique position among journals, as representing to the people that personal side of Parliamentary life, the familiar aspect and the _vie intime_ of the House of Commons, not to be found elsewhere. No doubt, here and there some offence was taken; and wives would at times protest against the caricatures of husbands' figures, clothes, or faces; but as a rule the "truthful falsehood" was appreciated by Mr. Furniss's victims--many of whom would ask to be included in his pictures--and few frequenters of the Lobby were more popular than he.

"Mr. Gladstone's collars" are a by-word in the land; and Mr. Furniss made them. It is generally recognised that Mr. Gladstone wore no such collars. Nevertheless, his favourite sitting att.i.tude in the House was one very low down, his chin buried in his chest; and the more tired or depressed he was--the more weary or dejected at the course of the debate--the more his head would sink within his collar, and the more the linen rose. This fact gave Mr. Furniss the idea, in the course of a few sessions, of his drawing of "Mr. Gladstone's Choler Getting Up;" and thereon was based his popular fiction. Similarly, the representation of Lord Randolph Churchill as a small boy of irrepressible "cheek" was at first intended to typify the n.o.ble lord's irrepressible unimportance in the Chamber (that was before he had risen from the Fourth Party leaders.h.i.+p to the Chancellors.h.i.+p of the Exchequer); while the creation of the complacent, many-chinned descendant of the Plantagenets in "The House of Harcourts"--a page imagined and drawn in greatest haste straight on to the wood-block, to fill up--was received with uproarious delight by the public as a true piece of satirical humour. But of all his "types" the funniest, as well as the easiest, was the ungainly but side-splitting caricature of Sir Richard Temple--which helped not a little to spread his fame throughout the land. All these men took the fun in the best of good part, Sir William Harcourt only protesting--not when Harry Furniss endowed him with an extra chin, but when he did not credit him with the full complement of hair.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A HURRIED NOTE.

(_By Harry Furniss._)]

To obtain his portraits Mr. Furniss would stalk his quarries unawares: for self-consciousness in a sitter kills all character. A favourite ruse was for him to tell Mr. A. that he wanted to sketch Mr. B., and that his work would be greatly facilitated if the hon. member would keep the other in conversation. Mr. A. would enter gleefully into the joke, and then Harry Furniss would sketch _Mr. A!_ If need be, he would make his sketch, unseen and unseeing, upon a piece of cardboard or in a sketch-book, in the side-pocket of his overcoat. In this way detail, mannerism, gesture, pose--character, in fact, would be secured, and next week's _Punch_ might contain the portrait--sometimes severe, generally humorous, and always well-observed. A rapid worker, too, is Furniss--incomparably the quickest of his colleagues--who could produce anything from a thumbnail sketch to a full-page drawing, portraits and all, in an hour or so, although he would prefer, of course, to have fair time to arrange his composition, to pencil it in, and then work it up carefully from the living model. On the occasion when Lord Randolph Churchill's hunting adventures in South Africa kept London amused, Mr.

Furniss, who was in the country and about to start for town by rail, saw an account of the exploit in the morning paper. He wired to Mr. Burnand: "See Churchill's lion-hunt, page -- 'Times.' Splendid opportunity.

Reply ---- Junction." At ten-thirty he found the answer awaiting him at the junction: "Good. Let engravers have it to-day." He set to work at once in the train. Having to change several times, he found the junctions of great use for drawing in the faces; and by half-past four the finished page was in Mr. Swain's possession.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TWO FRIENDS.

(_By Harry Furniss._)]

Indefatigable and unconventional, as much a journalist as an artist, gifted with a rapid intelligence and a subacid humour, Mr. Furniss, in his work on _Punch_, has been extremely varied, and by the strength of his personality he imparted to the Parliamentary side of the paper a touch of his own convictions. It was obvious from his treatment of the Irish that he was a strong Unionist, and that his sympathy with the Irish party was neither very deep nor very cordial. This was emphasised by some of the best caricatures he ever produced. They were bitterly resented; but probably more ill-feeling was created by the ludicrous picture he subsequently drew of the patriots as they returned, sea-sick, moist, and dejected, to Dublin from the "London Conference," ent.i.tled "A Sketch at Kingstown." On the top of this came the irritation caused by his laughable but merciless mimicry, in his famous entertainment of "The Humours of Parliament," of the imaginary Member for Ballyhooly; but it was the caricatures of Mr. Swift MacNeill, M.P., that brought matters to a head. Mr. MacNeill had previously appreciated the sketches, and begged certain of them. But at last, on the occasion of an exuberant and unflattering, but still not an ill-humoured, portrait, supported by a solid contingent of his Party, he sought the artist out and, reproaching him in excited and unmeasured terms, he committed a "technical a.s.sault"

upon him. Mr. Furniss was not to be induced to retaliate, even when Dr.

Tanner, M.P., and others who surrounded him addressed him in words more violent and offensive than Mr. MacNeill's, and threatened him with corporal punishment. As it appeared to the draughtsman that it was all a pre-arranged affair, he remained pa.s.sive, lest a development of the situation should lead--as it was probably intended that it should lead--to his exclusion from the Lobby. _Punch_ himself, however, snapped his fingers at this _argumentum baculinum_, and Mr. Furniss, with rare good taste, revenged himself by a full-page drawing (21st September, 1893) of "A House of Apollo-ticians," in which every member has been idealised to a point of extraordinary personal beauty, while the artist himself appears in the corner as a malignant ape of hideous aspect. This was balm, no doubt, to the gentleman who had been so incensed at being "caricatured, now as a potato, now as a gorilla;" while the situation was cleverly summed up thus:--

"O, Mr. MacNeill was quite happy until a Draughtsman in _Punch_ made him like a gorilla-- At the Zoo the gorilla quite happy did feel Till the draughtsman in _Punch_ made him like the MacNeill."

Meanwhile, several series of importance had come from his pencil. His "Puzzle-heads" are marvels of ingenuity, in each of which a portrait of a celebrity is built up of personal attributes, characteristics, or incidents in the career of the person represented; his Lika Joko "j.a.panneries" caught with amazing truth the spirit of j.a.panese draughtsmans.h.i.+p--far more completely than either Bennett or Brunton ever succeeded in achieving; and his "Interiors and Exteriors" reflect social and public life with exuberant, almost with extravagant, humour.

But the end of his connection with _Punch_ was at hand. He had joined in October, 1880. He had been called to the Table four years later, and on the 21st February, 1894, he ate his last dinner at it, and resigned in the following month. Meanwhile, like Charles Keene, he was never one of the salaried Staff, but to the end was paid by the square inch. This permitted him to do as much work as he chose for other papers; but it made him feel, at the same time, that he was not flesh of their flesh, while he suspected himself of getting into a cast-iron groove from which he sought to free himself. So, after a minor "misunderstanding" had been put right, Mr. Furniss quitted his old friend _Punch_, and forthwith set about starting a monthly magazine of his own. This enterprise, in the course of evolution, was considerably modified; and for a time the weekly "Lika Joko" soon emerged into open rivalry with the paper which for nearly fourteen years had made the name of Furniss as celebrated throughout all English-speaking lands as that of any of his colleagues.

And such is the Pa.s.sing of Furniss, whose extraordinary powers of observation (he was the first, by the way, to detect and represent truthfully Mr. Gladstone's loss of a digit) and of catching a likeness in its essential lines, and whose unbounded and buoyant good-humour early justified Mr. Burnand's selection. Though he so soon drifted into Parliamentary sketching, there is no cla.s.s of work, except the officially-recognised political "cartoons," which he did not attempt; and he romped through _Punch's_ pages with unlimited invention and inexhaustible resource--with comedy and farce, with drama and tragedy, and sometimes with work startling in its truth and touching in its pathos.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "A HAPPY RELEASE."--A REJECTED SKETCH.

(_Drawn by C. J. Lillie._)]

The men who immediately followed Mr. Harry Furniss did not come to stay.

In December, 1880, a sketch of "Cherry Unripe"--a clever parody on Sir John Millais' famous picture--was contributed by Mr. Stowers, who then rested on his laurels. Mr. Finch Mason contributed three sporting cuts in 1881, three in 1882, and one in the following year, and then Mr.

Charles J. Lillie appeared on the scene. Mr. Lillie's princ.i.p.al victories have been won in the field of poster-designing, his favourite achievement being the design of a young lady in bathing costume who, being wrecked, succeeded by the aid of Somebody's Soap, with the cleverness of her s.e.x, in "was.h.i.+ng herself ash.o.r.e." At the time when Mr.

Herkomer was designing his famous poster for the "Magazine of Art," Mr.

Lillie submitted to _Punch_ a set of humorous sketches nominally adapted to similar advertis.e.m.e.nts of wines. Thus, "Port: Old and Crusty," was of course a typical Colonel Chutnee, a fire-eating Anglo-Indian; "Sherry: Pale and Dry," was an ascetic philosopher; "Claret: Very Light and Delicate," was a maiden dainty and graceful; and so forth. Some of these were published in the early summer of 1881; but that of "Champagne" (here reproduced) was not used. Shortly afterwards the clever draughtsman sought work and adventure in Europe, Africa, and America, and on his return devoted himself to story-writing, confining his pencil to the ill.u.s.tration of his own articles. Like Mr. Sambourne and others of Mr. Punch's artistic contributors, Mr. Lillie was trained as an engineer.

As already recounted, a new idea was carried into effect in _Punch's_ Almanac for 1882: drawings were sought from certain members of the Royal Academy who were supposed to be afflicted with the _vis comica_ in any p.r.o.nounced degree. Of these, only Mr. G. A. Storey made his debut in _Punch_ on this occasion; but his drawing of "Little Snowdrop"--a fancy character-portrait of a Dutch lady--pretty as it was, displayed but a very mild sort of humour. In the following February Mr. Alfred Bryan began his series of "Sketches by Boz," in which public men of the day were caricatured as personages in d.i.c.kens' novels. Thus, the Duke of Cambridge was most happily identified with "Joe Bagstock, Sir!", Sir John Holker was the Fat Boy, and Mr. Bradlaugh appeared as Rogue Riderhood "taking his Davy." These clever sketches, to the number of twenty-seven, were spread over that year and the next, when, to the regret of both Editor and artist, the connection was unavoidably severed.

FOOTNOTES:

[64] Mr. Sambourne's cartoons are dealt with in the chapter devoted to that subject.

[65] It may be as well to give here the names of the diners, so that the reader may identify them in the reproduction which forms the frontispiece to this volume. Mr. Burnand, at the head of the table, with his left hand outstretched towards the figure of _Punch_, is giving the toast of the evening; on his left is Mr. Anstey, and then Mr. Lucy and Mr. E. T. Reed, the late Gilbert a Beckett and Mr. Milliken, Sir W.

Agnew, the late Mr. W. H. Bradbury, Mr. du Maurier, Mr. Furniss and Mr.

R. C. Lehmann, Mr. Arthur a Beckett, Mr. Sambourne, and Sir John Tenniel. The portraits and busts along the wall are (from left to right) of Mark Lemon, Gilbert Abbott a Beckett, with, under it, Douglas Jerrold, Thackeray, Doyle, Hood, Leech, s.h.i.+rley Brooks, and Tom Taylor.

On the easel is a portrait of Charles Keene, then recently dead.

[66] This is all very well; but as the alleged visit took place in 1870, the year in which Caldecott came up to London, and as Mark Lemon died on the 23rd of May in that year, and that not suddenly, the story is hardly above suspicion.

CHAPTER XXIII.

_PUNCH'S_ ARTISTS: 1882-95.

Mr. William Padgett--Mr. E. M. c.o.x--Mr. J. P. Mellor--Sir F.

Leighton, Bart., P.R.A.--Mr. G. H. Jalland--Monsieur Darre--Mr. E.

T. Reed--His Original Humour--"Contrasts" and "Prehistoric Peeps"--Approved by Sports Committees and School Cla.s.ses--Mr.

Maud--A Useful Drain--Mr. Bernard Partridge--Fine Qualities of his Art--Mr. Everard Hopkins--Mr. Reginald Cleaver--Mr. W. J.

Hodgson--Excites the Countryside--Miss Sambourne--Sir Frank Lockwood, Q.C., M.P.--Mr. Arthur Hopkins--Mr. J. F. Sullivan--Mr.

J. A. Shepherd--Mr. A. S. Boyd--Mr. Phil May--A Test of Drunkenness--Mr. Stafford--"Caran d'Ache"--Conclusion.

At the same time as the single sketch signed with a swan (by Mr.

Thompson), Mr. William Padgett, the excellent painter of poetical landscape, made his unique appearance. He had been arranging the mock-aesthetic costumes for Mr. Burnand at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, when "The Colonel" was about to deal a crus.h.i.+ng blow at the absurdities of the "artistic craze." Mr. Padgett had painted the large picture called "Ladye Myne"--a burlesque of the "greenery-yallery" type then in fas.h.i.+on at the Grosvenor Gallery; and the departure of the apostle of the movement from these sh.o.r.es for the United States inspired the painter with the words and the drawing of the mourning "Ariadne," which were shown to the Editor of _Punch_ and forthwith inserted. The only other stranger of 1882 was Mr. Pigott, with a single sketch ent.i.tled "Cultcha."

The six years that followed were almost a close time for outsiders. The only arrival of 1883 was Mr. Everard Morant c.o.x, an artist of dainty imagination and graceful pencil, whose seven charming little cuts appeared at intervals up to July, 1890. The next was Mr. John Page Mellor, barrister-at-law (appointed in 1894 Solicitor to the Treasury), who contributed three drawings from 1886 to 1888--"Sub Punch and Judice" (p. 305, Vol. XCI.), which was partly re-drawn; a skit on the proposed Wheel and Van Tax (p. 205, Vol. XCIV.); and the "Judges going to Greenwich," signed with mystic Roman numerals. In the same year Mr.

Harper Pennington, the American artist, made a couple of drawings of the opera of "The Huguenots," followed by a sketch of Mr. Whistler and another.

Sir Frederic Leighton, President of the Royal Academy, once paid homage to _Punch_ by the contribution of a single drawing--a portrait of Miss Dorothy Dene--which ill.u.s.trated an article ent.i.tled "The Schoolmaster Abroad," and was published on May 29th, 1886 (Vol. XC.). It is one of the few tint blocks that have appeared in the paper, and is, strictly speaking, not a woodcut at all, but a wood-engraving.

Mr. G. H. Jalland began his genuinely comic hunting sketches in 1888.

Although an amateur, Mr. Jalland is often extremely happy in his drawings (which now and again are excellently drawn), and his jokes are usually conceived in a richly comic vein. A great many--nearly a hundred--of his subjects were published during 1889, and he is still an occasional contributor to the fun of the week. We would not willingly lose the artist who gave us the sketch of a Frenchman bawling during a hunt: "Stop ze cha.s.se! _Stop ze fox!!!_ I tomble--I falloff!" The sportsman's mantle, which fell from Leech's shoulders on to Miss Bowers', and then on to Mr. Corbould's, descended at last on to those of Mr. Jalland, who wore it almost exclusively for a time, and, from the humorist's point of view, wore it easily and well.

Monsieur G. Darre, who had worked in Paris on the "Charivari" for a couple of years, and for a short time on the "Journal Amusant," "Le Grelot," "Le Carillon," and others, besides making a series of ill.u.s.trations for a monumental "Histoire de France," came to London in 1883. Five years later, at the suggestion of Mr. Swain--who had already cut some of his work for other periodicals--he sent in his first sketch to _Punch_. This was a drawing of "Joseph's Sweetheart," at the Vaudeville, showing great mastery over pen-and-ink. It was followed during this year and the next with sketches of varied importance, theatrical and political, in which France and General Boulanger played chief part, and in which portraits were always well rendered; but when the thirteenth had been delivered--(alas! the fatal number)--the arrival of Mr. Bernard Partridge convinced him that there would no longer be room for him. After contributing for a time to other ill.u.s.trated papers, the artist made himself proudly independent of black-and-white by becoming a successful designer of show-cards in water-colour for commercial houses. He may claim to have introduced, in a small way, a more clas.h.i.+ng style into _Punch_ than had hitherto been seen there; but though his drawings, especially those on his native politics, were undeniably clever and very effective, they lacked true artistic quality and _Punch's_ essential spirit.

[Ill.u.s.tration: E. T. REED.

(_Drawn by Himself._)]

Some sketches signed "C. A. M." were sent in, in 1889, by Mr. C. A.

Marshall, solicitor of Retford, Notts. Their chief merit appeared to be the excellence of the horse-drawing; but only a couple of them were accepted, and these were published in the course of the year.