Adventures and Enthusiasms Part 10

"Because friction generates caloric, which volatises the oleaginous particles of the stearine matter."

--And once I knew many psalms.

One of the odd things about what we call loss of memory is that it is catching. How often when one person forgets a name well known to him does his companion, to whom it is equally well known, forget it too. Why is that? The other day I had an excellent example of this curious epidemic. It was necessary for the name of a certain actor--not a star, but a versatile repertory actor of distinction--to be recalled in order that a letter to him might quickly be despatched. I had forgotten his name, but I described him and his methods with sufficient accuracy for every one (there were about six of us) to recognise him. Some of us could even say in what parts we had seen him and compare notes as to his excellence, and yet his name absolutely eluded one and all. Why? We all knew it; why did we unanimously fail to know it then?

We parted intent upon obtaining this necessary information, my last sapient words being that to the best of my belief his first name was Joseph and his second began with P. On meeting again the next day, each of us had it pat enough, and it had broken upon each, more or less suddenly, during the night. Since the name was Michael Sherbrooke, you will understand why, in my case, its arrival was peculiarly gratifying.

If I am not now known to those others as Mrs. Nickleby, it is only because they are so kind-hearted.

The great mystery is, Where, while one is forgetting them, are the things one forgets, but suddenly will remember again? Where are they lurking? This problem of their whereabouts, their capacity to hide and elude, distresses me far more than one's inability to call them from the vasty deep of the brain. Or are they, perhaps, not there at all? Do they not, perhaps, have evenings out, times off for lunch and so forth, and thus we sometimes miss them? Or can there perhaps be some vast extra-mural territory of the brain from which facts have to be fetched--as, if one would consult old newspapers at the British Museum, one must wait until the volumes can be brought from Hendon? The fact that they always, or nearly always, return, sooner or later, rather supports these theories.

THE MORAL DRESSING-TABLE

The prettiest little book that ever I saw lies before me. It is called "The Toilet," and was published by the author in 1821 and sold by Mr.

Sams, bookseller to H.R.H. the Duke of York, at No. 1 St. James's Street; for princes in those days had their own booksellers no less than their own wine-cellars. Times have changed, and to-day No. 1 St. James's Street is a block of flats, and the Duke surveys London from the top of a column of stone.

The author of "The Toilet" was "S. G." (standing for Stacey Grimaldi), and the purpose of his book--so laudable then and how unnecessary now!--was to make young women better. This task was to be performed by means of a preface and a number of verses, but chiefly by a series of copperplate engravings with movable covers. I have seen old gardening books on this principle, by Capability Brown and others, in which the potentialities of gentlemen's places are made evident by the same mechanical means. Thus, by lifting up one clump of trees you see where the house could most advantageously stand, and by lifting up another you gaze along the lovely avenue that ought to be planted there, and so forth; but I never saw good manners and high ideals inculcated in this way. That they can be "The Toilet" proves.

But let me explain. The articles ill.u.s.trated are those that are found in ladies' boudoirs, such as mirrors, and jewel case, and bottles of essence--all very charmingly designed as though by a Chippendale.

Indeed, the copy which lies before me--as pretty a little book, did I say? as ever I saw--is known by its owner as "The Chippendale Book"; and never could the effort to get gentleness and the best manners into an impressionable female nature be more ingeniously or ingratiatingly made.

Imagine, now, the fair one opening at the preface, where she reads at once these words: "I request your acceptance of a few appendages to your toilet, of extreme beauty and value, though some of them may be at variance with modern fas.h.i.+ons." She then turns on and finds that the appendages consist of an Enchanting Mirror, a Wash to Smooth Wrinkles, some Superior Rouge, some Matchless Ear Rings, a Fine Lip Salve, a Mixture to Sweeten the Voice, and so forth--each delicately drawn.

Before lifting the cover of the mirror she reads that it is long since many of the gay inhabitants of the town have decorated themselves before it, and then, lifting the cover, discovers the word "Humility" on the gla.s.s. Fancy the shock to the frivolous and vain! But humility is not all; Uriah Heep had that and still was a most undesirable person, and so she must read on, all recipiency. Doing so she learns that it is singular that although we do generally wear ear-rings similar to those in the jewel case in the presence of a superior, we are apt to cast them off in the company of our inferiors; and, lifting the lid of the case, she finds the word "Attention" within. And so on through the book. The Wash to Smooth Wrinkles turns out to be Contentment; the Universal Beautifier is Good Humour; the Best White Paint is Innocence; the Superior Rouge is Modesty; the Mixture giving Sweetness to the Voice is Mildness and Truth (where is the young woman who any longer wants mildness?), and the Finest Lip Salve is Cheerfulness.

Finally we come to a very beautiful flowered pot--I wish you could see it--containing "The Late King's Eye Water"--the late King being George III, the father of the Prince whose own particular bookseller put forth this little volume. All the time, from the first moment of opening it, I had the feeling that somewhere hovering around or over "The Toilet" was the spirit of the courtier. Its blend of discretion and elegance is such as a palace mentor could hardly be without, and the description of the Late King's Eye Water settled it. "You are perhaps aware that our late much-beloved King possessed bad sight, and, doubtless, many different eye waters were prescribed for his use; but I can a.s.sure you, that whatever else the good Monarch might have used, he invariably possessed some of the accompanying description; it was by him recommended to our present Sovereign [George the Fourth], as also to his own beloved and ill.u.s.trious Daughters; it has been by them constantly used, and their example has diffused it throughout the British Empire." On lifting the cover of the pot containing the Late King's Eye Water (which he recommended to his eldest son) we find it to contain "Benevolence"; but a certain poem by Moore, addressed to George IV after the death of Sheridan, would suggest that the collyrium was not at any rate "constantly" used.

THACKERAY'S SCHOOLFELLOW

If the measure of an artist is the accuracy with which the life of his times is reflected in his work, and the width of his range, then John Leech, the centenary of whose birth was August 29, 1917, is the greatest artist that England has produced. But since such a claim as that would submerge us in controversial waters, let it rather be said that Leech is the most representative artist that England has produced. The circ.u.mstances that he worked in black and white and was chiefly concerned with the humorous aspect of men and manners do not affect the position.

The outlines of Leech's life are very simple. He was born in London on August 29, 1817, the son of John Leech, proprietor of the once very prosperous London Coffee-House on Ludgate Hill, who was said to be something of a draughtsman and was also a Shakespeare enthusiast. The child took early to the pencil; and it is recorded that Flaxman, a friend of the family, found him at a tender age, on his mother's knee, drawing well enough to be encouraged. The great sculptor's advice was that the boy, whom he thought to be clearly destined for an artist, should be permitted to follow his own bent. Three years later Flaxman seems to have repeated this counsel. At seven, Leech was sent to school at Charterhouse, then in its old London quarters; and the story is told that Mrs. Leech, who probably thought seven far too young, took a room which over-looked the playground in order secretly to watch her little son, thus displaying a sympathetic solicitude which that son inherited and carried through life. At Charterhouse Leech remained until he was sixteen, among his school-fellows being Thackeray; but as Thackeray was six years his senior it is unlikely that they saw much of each other as boys, although they were always glad later in life, when they became very intimate colleagues on _Punch_, to recall their schooldays and extol their school.

On leaving, Leech went to Bart.'s to learn to be a surgeon, and there by curious and fortunate chance fell in with a congenial fellow-student named Percival Leigh, whose interest in comic journalism was to play a very important part in Leech's career. Leigh had two friends who shared his literary tastes and ambitions--Albert Smith, a medical student at the Middles.e.x Hospital, and Gilbert Abbott a Beckett, a young barrister, these forming a humorous band of brothers to which Leech made a very welcome addition. Leigh was seriously concerned also with medicine, but there is no evidence that Leech burnt any midnight oil in its pursuit, although he made some excellent anatomical drawings. The popularity of the London Coffee-House on Ludgate Hill meanwhile declining, a less expensive instructor than St. Bartholomew became necessary; and Leech was placed with the ingenious Mr. Whittle of Hoxton, who, under the guise of a healer, devoted most of his attention to pigeons and boxing. Mr. Whittle of Hoxton (who is to be found under the name of Rawkins in Albert Smith's novel, "The Adventures of Mr.

Ledbury," which Leech ill.u.s.trated) may not appreciably have extended his pupil's knowledge of therapeutics, but he is our benefactor in quickening his interest in sport. Leech's next mentor was Dr. John c.o.c.kle, son of the c.o.c.kle of the pills; and then, the paternal purse being really empty, he, at the age of eighteen, flung physic to the dogs and trusted for a living to his pencil, which, since Charterhouse had the most indifferent of drawing-masters, was still untrained.

In those days there were many ephemeral satirical sheets, in addition to the magazines, to offer employment to the comic draughtsman, and Leech did not starve; his two experiences of the inside of a sponging-house being due to his good nature rather than to financial foolishness of his own. His first publication was a slender collection of street types ent.i.tled "Etchings and Sketchings," by A Pen, 1835. He tried also political caricatures and drew bruisers for "Bell's Life in London." In 1836 he was among those draughtsmen (Thackeray was another) who competed without success for Seymour's post as ill.u.s.trator of a series of humorous papers describing the proceedings of the Pickwick Club. In 1840 appeared his parody of the Mulready envelope, which was very popular and a real foundation-stone for the young artist, and Percival Leigh's "Comic Latin Grammar" and "Comic English Grammar," the ill.u.s.trations to which fortified the impression which the Mulready skit had made, and established the fact that a new pictorial humorist of resource and vigour had appeared.

In 1841 _Punch_ was founded, with Mark Lemon as its editor and Leigh on its staff; and for Leech to join up was merely a matter of time. His first efforts were tentative, but by 1844, when Thackeray was also a power on the staff, he had become the paper's strong man, and its strong man he remained until his death twenty years after. _Punch_ had a great personnel, courage, and sound ideas, but without Leech's sunny humanity week after week it is unlikely to have won its way to such complete popularity and trust. It was he, more than any other contributor, who drove it home to the heart of the nation.

Leech's cartoons were for the most part suggested to him, the outcome of discussion round the Mahogany Tree (which is made of pine); but to a larger extent probably than with any of his colleagues or successors the social drawings, by which he is now best known and by which he will live, were the fruits of his own observation, visual and aural. That is to say, he provided words as well as drawings. He also followed the line of least resistance. It was enough for him to think an incident funny, to set it down, and by the time it had pa.s.sed through that filter--a blend of humane understanding and humane fun--which he kept in his brain, it was a.s.sured of a welcome by _Punch's_ readers too. To-day the paper is a little more exacting, a little more complex: a consequence possibly, in some measure, of the fertility and universality of its earlier giant, who antic.i.p.ated so many jokes. To-day, as it happens, there is more of the Leech spirit in _Life_, where absurdity for its own sake is to a greater extent cultivated. But for twenty years that spirit permeated and dominated _Punch_. Leech had a great chance and he rose to it. Never before had things been made so easy for a satirical artist with alert eyes. Hogarth had had to plan and struggle to get his engravings before the public; Gillray and Rowlandson had only the print-sellers as a medium; but Leech had an editor who appreciated him and gave him his head, and employers who paid handsomely, while his work appeared in a paper which increased its circulation with every number.

That is to say, he knew that he had an audience: no small incentive. The result is that "Pictures of Life and Character" is the completest survey of the social England of his times that any artist has ever made or is likely to make.

To-day this inexhaustible work in three immense volumes is out of print, but there never was a book that better deserved continuous accessibility. It is Leech's monument, and he has no other. One learns from it, while laughing the honestest of laughter, how inveterate a plagiarist from herself is Dame Fas.h.i.+on. The number of drawings which need only the slightest modernizing change to be telling now is extraordinary. Leech missed nothing; and the world is always coming full circle.

The criticism has too often been made that Leech could not draw. Placed beside Keene or Phil May he is, it is true, wanting in inevitableness; his line is merely efficient, never splendid; yet sometimes he could draw amazingly and get the very breath of life into a figure. In particular was he a master of gesture, and now and then his landscapes are a revelation. But the resplendent fact is that he could draw well enough; he did, as Thackeray said, what he wished to do; that is proved by his triumph. A man who cannot draw does not get all his fellow-countrymen following his pencil in a rapture (as though it were the Pied Piper's whistle) as Leech did for twenty years. Du Maurier, who admired him immensely, hit on a happy comparison when he said that Leech was "a ballad-writer among draughtsmen," or, in other words, he had simplicity, lucidity, movement, and a story. It has to be remembered, too, that Leech did single-handed what ever since his day it has needed a syndicate to accomplish. He, himself and alone, was cartoonist, social draughtsman, low-life draughtsman, and the provider of hunting scenes.

If the Volunteers were to be chaffed, Leech's was the hand; if the priceless Mr. Briggs was to be invented and kept busy, Leech was his impresario. And it was he also who drew the prettiest girls in what Thackeray called "Mr. Punch's harem."

All his life, after finding himself, Leech worked too hard, being, although well paid, in some mysterious way continually either in debt or about to be. He was also uniformly behind time; and Mark Lemon used humorously to bemoan half his days misspent in cabs between the _Punch_ office and the artist's various residences collecting his belated drawings. Leech, however, when once he had made up his mind, drew very rapidly, and his productiveness was amazing, for besides his _Punch_ work he ill.u.s.trated a large number of books, including (which some people would call his masterpiece) the sporting novels of Surtees.

In private life--but all his life was private--Leech was not less simple than that other great Carthusian, Colonel Newcome. He loved his family, rode his horse Red Mullet whenever there was a free moment, and as often as possible had a day's run with the Puckeridge hounds, not only for enjoyment, but in order that that very important section of his work, his hunting scenes, might not languish. He was fond of dinner parties, both as host and guest, and after them preferred conversation to cards.

He sang lugubrious songs in a deep, melancholy voice, with his eyes fixed upwards--the favourite being Barry Cornwall's "King Death," the words of which, d.i.c.kens averred, were inscribed on the ceiling in mystic characters discernible only by the singer. He told stories well, but the record of good things said by him is meagre, and his letters are singularly free from humorous pa.s.sages. Once, however, when a liberty had been taken with him by a public man, he threatened "to _draw_ and defend himself"; and there is a pleasant story of his retort to some rowdy inebriated men in Kensington who excused themselves by saying that they were Foresters: "Then, why the devil don't you go to the forest and make a din there?" Noise was, indeed, his bane. He had double windows in his house, but was always in danger of headaches and shattered nerves from street sounds and, in particular, barrel organs. It is even said that street music led to his early death; but that probably was only indirectly. He died of overwork, aged forty-seven.

Leech's friends were devoted to him, as he to them. Thackeray came first, and indeed once he said that he loved him more than any man, although on another occasion it was FitzGerald and Brookfield whom he named. d.i.c.kens and Leech were friends as well as collaborators. It is to Dean Hole, with whom Leech took the "Little Tour in Ireland" in 1858, that we must go for the best description of his appearance--"A slim, elegant figure, over six feet in height, with a grand head 'on which nature had written Gentleman,' with wonderful genius in his ample forehead; wonderful penetration, observation, humour in his blue-grey Irish eyes, and wonderful sweetness and sympathy and mirth about his lips, which seemed to speak in silence."

Of Leech's genius and accomplishment no one has written better than Dr.

John Brown in "Horoe Subsecivae," third series. Millais, who coached Leech in oil painting for his exhibition of enlarged scenes from the career of Mr. Briggs, also was his close friend; while Trelawny, whom Millais painted, claimed to have loved Leech next only to Sh.e.l.ley.

Another artist friend was W. P. Frith, who became his biographer. All his friends testify to the sweetness of his nature and the purity of his character, while the two great novelists of his day, writing of his work--d.i.c.kens of his "Rising Generation" and Thackeray of the "Pictures of Life and Character"--used independently the phrase that he came to his task like "a gentleman." In those days gentlemen, at any rate in public places, were less uncommon than now; but even then Leech was conspicuous.

It is perhaps with d.i.c.kens and Thackeray that he will be most closely a.s.sociated by posterity. He stands between them as a fellow-Victorian colossus. All three were doing, in different ways, the same work--that is to say, they were selecting and fixing, for all time, their time; and all three were distinguished by that remarkable abundance which makes the middle years of the last century so astonis.h.i.+ng to us. d.i.c.kens, Thackeray, Carlyle, Macaulay, Ruskin, Trollope, Leech, in England; Dumas, Balzac, Hugo, Dore, in France. What rivulets to-day compared with those floods!

Leech died prematurely (in his father's arms, while a children's party was in progress in his house) on October 29, 1864, less than a year after Thackeray. "How happy," said Miss Thackeray (afterward Lady Ritchie), "my father will be to meet him!" _Punch's_ tribute contained this sentence: "Society, whose every phase he has ill.u.s.trated with a truth or grace and a tenderness heretofore unknown in satiric art, gladly and proudly takes charge of his fame." No words to-day, fifty-six years after, can improve on it; nor has in the interim any greater social delineator or humaner genius arisen.

_IN RE_ PHYSIOGNOMY

I. IDENTIFICATION

Many summers ago I was on one of David MacBrayne's steamers on the way to a Scotch island. Among the few pa.s.sengers was an interesting man with whom I fell into conversation. He was vigorous, bulky, tall, with a pointed grey beard and a ma.s.s of grey hair under a Panama, and he was bound, he told me, for a well-known fis.h.i.+ng-lodge, whither he went every August. He had been a great traveller and knew Persia well; he had also been in Parliament, and one of his sons was in the siege of Mafeking. So much I remember of his affairs; but his name I did not learn. We talked much about books, and I introduced him to Doughty's "Arabia Deserta."

I have often thought of him since and wondered who he was, and whenever I have met fishermen or others likely to be acquainted with this attractive and outstanding personality. I have asked about him; but never with success. And then the other day I seemed really to be on the track, for I met a man in a club who also has the annual custom of spending a fortnight or so in the same Scotch island, and he claimed to know every one who has ever visited that retired spot.

This is what happened.

"If you're so old an islander as that," I said, "you're the very person to solve the problem that I have carried about for four or five years.

There's a man who fishes regularly up there"--and then I described my fellow-pa.s.senger. "Tell me," I said, "who he is."

He considered, knitting his brows.

"You're sure you're right in saying he is unusually tall?" he inquired at last.

"Absolutely," I replied.

"That's a pity," he said, "because otherwise it might be Sir Gerald Orpington. Only he's short. Still, he was in Parliament right enough.

But, of course, if it was a tall man it's not Orpington."

He considered again.

"You say," he remarked, "that he had been in Persia? Now old Jack Beresford is tall enough and has plenty of hair, but I swear he's never been to Persia, and of course he hasn't a son at all. It's very odd.