John Leech, His Life and Work Volume II Part 4

I fancy I can hear my readers say--And what has all this to do with John Leech? Well, this: Leech is now about to pose as the destroyer, in his own person, of my theory--he is, in fact, the exception to my rule; for though the incidents in Albert Smith's "Ledbury" and "Brinvilliers"

bear no comparison in human interest with the delightful transcripts of real life to be found in such profusion in the pictures of "Life and Character," Leech's rendering of them could not be surpa.s.sed.

The tragic and humorous powers of the artist are fully displayed in the examples which follow. In the first, from "Ledbury," "Jack Johnson attempts to rescue Derval": the awful swirl of the river as it engulfs the drowning man, while his would-be rescuer, finding the stream too strong for him, clings frantically to a ring in the stonework of the bridge, a full moon lightning up the scene, and throwing the Pont Neuf which spans the Seine in the distance into deep shadow--all are combined with admirable skill into, perhaps, the most powerful etching and the most perfect ill.u.s.tration in the book.

In the second example the artist is in full sympathy with his author--"Mrs. De Robinson holds a Conversazione of Talented People;" and amongst them is "the foreign gentleman who executes an air upon the grand piano." Here we have Leech using the scene as a peg upon which he can hang the humorous character in which he takes such hearty, healthy delight. The performer himself is scarcely a caricature of the foreign pianist; while his audience, not forgetting the deaf old lady in the corner--includes the affected gentleman, whose soul is in Elysium; together with a variety of types, in which "lovely woman" is not forgotten.

CHAPTER VI.

"INGOLDSBY LEGENDS."

In the "Ingoldsby Legends" Leech found a very congenial field for the exercise of his powers. Though I will not presume to prophesy respecting literary merit, I venture to think that, during the course of his practice, Leech's ill.u.s.trations have occasionally appeared attached to literature scarcely worthy of them; they will, doubtless, in some cases, act as the salt, which will preserve for posterity certain books of an ephemeral character. This remark cannot apply to the "Ingoldsby Legends," which is a work that "the world will not willingly let die,"

until delightful wit and humour, wedded to no less delightful verse, cease to charm. The burden of the ill.u.s.trations of the "Legends" falls upon the worthy shoulders of John Tenniel, and they show some of the strongest work of that admirable artist. Leech appears in diminished force as to numbers, but in the examples I give he leaves nothing to wish for.

"For, only see there! in the midst of the Square, Where, perch'd upon poles six feet high in the air, Sit, chained to the stake, some two, three, or four pair Of wretches, whose eyes, nose, complexion, and hair Their Jewish descent but too plainly declare; Each clothed in a garment more frightful by far, a Smock-frock sort of gaberdine called a _Samarra_, With three times the number of devils upon it-- A proportion observed on the sugar-loaf bonnet; With this further distinction, of mischief a proof, That every fiend-Jack stands upright on his hoof!

While the picture flames, spread over body and head, Are three times as crooked, and three times as red!

All, too, pointing upwards, as much as to say, 'Here's the real _bonne-bouche_ of the Auto da Fe!'

"Torquemada, meanwhile, with his cold, cruel smile, Sits looking on calmly, and watching the pile, As his hooded 'Familiars' (their names, as some tell, come From their being so much more 'familiar' than 'welcome') Have by this begun to be 'poking their fun,'

And their fire-brands, as if they were so many posies Of lilies and roses, up to the noses Of Lazarus Levi and Moses Ben Moses, And similar treatment is forcing out hollow moans From Aby Ben Lasco and Ikey Ben Solomons, Whose beards--this a black, that inclining to grizzle-- Are smoking and curling, and all in a frizzle; The King, at the same time, his Dons and his Visitors, Sit, sporting smiles, like the Holy Inquisitors!"

"16, Lansdowne Place, Brighton,

"September 3, 1863.

"MY DEAR SIR,

"I have been obliged to make the 'Auto da Fe' this size, as I found I could not possibly get the subject on to a small block. You will see, too, that I have altered the appearance of the victims. It occurred to me that a real human being burning alive was hardly fun, so I have made them a set of Guy Fawkeses, and added, I hope, to the humour while getting rid of the horror.

"Believe me, my dear Sir,

"Yours faithfully,

"JOHN LEECH.

"RICHARD BENTLEY, ESQ."

In the second example we have the figure of a maid at a well, which Leech has given us with the charm that never fails him. Her astonishment at the head in the bucket might have been indicated more forcibly, but there, I fancy, the engraver must have been to blame; yet he gives the head of Gengulphus with such perfection of expression and character as to make one feel that the original drawing of it could scarcely have been better.

A LAY OF ST. GENGULPHUS.

"But scarce had she given the windla.s.s a twirl, 'Ere Gengulphus's head, from the well's bottom said, In mild accents, 'Do help us out, that's a good girl!'

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Only fancy her dread when she saw a great head In her bucket--with fright she was ready to drop!

Conceive, if you can, how she roared and she ran, With the head rolling after her, bawling out 'Stop!'"

As this memoir progresses I propose to submit further ill.u.s.trations from some of the many serials, novels, tales, poems, etc., with which Leech was connected. I also propose, in the course of my narrative, to quote opinions of Leech's powers from men better qualified to judge of them, and able to express their opinions in far more felicitous language than mine. Amongst those d.i.c.kens takes a foremost place. I think the friends.h.i.+p between Leech and d.i.c.kens began very early in the life of the former; the nature of Leech's work, and the modest and gentle character of the man, were especially attractive to d.i.c.kens.

In the amateur company of actors formed by d.i.c.kens, Leech was a conspicuous figure; but his heart was not in the work, though he entirely sympathized with the object of it, which was of a charitable nature, resulting in many performances--very successful in a pecuniary sense--for the benefit of poor and deserving literary men. The company consisted of d.i.c.kens, Mark Lemon, John Forster, G. H. Lewis, Douglas Jerrold, Leech, Egg, Wilkie Collins, Frank Stone, and others, who christened themselves "The Guild of Literature and Art." The late Lord Lytton took great interest in the Guild, for which he wrote a play called "Not so Bad as We Seem; or, Many Sides to a Character," and to this he added a gift of land on his estate in Hertfords.h.i.+re, where some houses of a superior cottage form were built, in which decayed artists and authors were to end their days; but these gentlemen declined to _begin_ any days there under the conditions prescribed; and when the houses were built, tenants for them could not be found. The Guild, therefore, was something of a fiasco, with the exception of the relief it afforded in several instances to worthy objects.

Leech acted in the first play that the amateurs ventured upon, no less than Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his Humour," in which d.i.c.kens played Bobadil and Leech Master Matthew. This occurred about 1847, I think, and I was honoured by an invitation to the first or second performance. _Par parenthese_, I may add that I had the honour of being asked to join the company, but feeling that I could not learn a part, or, if I did get over that difficulty, the footlights would paralyze my memory, and also having neither face nor figure for the stage, I thought it best to "stick to my last."

Though Leech had a good part in "Every Man," strange to say, I have no recollection of his performance; though that of d.i.c.kens, Jerrold, Egg, and others remains vividly in my memory. d.i.c.kens gave proofs in Bobadil, and in many other characters, that he might have been a great actor. The same, nor anything like it, could not be said with truth of Leech, if he played his other parts no better than he did that of Slender in the "Merry Wives of Windsor." It is only in that character that I can remember him, though I must have seen him in others. The tone in which he said "Oh, sweet Anne Page!" can I ever forget? There was a ring of impatience in his performance, a kind of "Oh, I wish this was all over!" that was plainly perceptible to those who knew him intimately. Leech's tall figure and handsome face told well upon the stage, but with those his attractions as an actor ceased. In Lord Lytton's play Leech had no part, I think, but my old friend Egg played that of a poor poet, who is discovered in a miserable attic when the curtain rises, and the poet soliloquizes to the effect that "Years ago, when under happier circ.u.mstances"--something or other. Egg always begun, "Here's a go, when under," etc. Unlike Leech, Egg was fond of acting, but, like Leech, he displayed no capacity for the art.

CHAPTER VII.

d.i.c.kENS AND THACKERAY ON LEECH.

Perhaps the most striking difference between Leech and the caricaturists who preceded him, as well as those who were his contemporaries, was shown in the part that beauty played in every drawing in which it could be appropriately introduced; he may be credited with the creation of many of the loveliest creatures that ever fell from the pencil of an artist. Leech revelled in beauty as Gillray and Rowlandson revelled in ugliness.

In 1841 a work appeared, in book-form, of sketches by Leech, ent.i.tled "The Rising Generation," in which the rising youth, with their mannish manners, were satirized. Of this book d.i.c.kens wrote:

"We enter our protest against those of the rising generation who are precociously in love being made the subject of merriment by a pitiless and unsympathizing world. We never saw a boy more distinctly in the right than the young gentleman kneeling in the chair to beg a lock of hair from his pretty cousin to take back to school. Madness is in her ap.r.o.n, and Virgil, dog-eared and defaced, is in her ringlets. Doubts may suggest themselves of the perfect disinterestedness of the other young gentleman contemplating the fair girl at the piano--doubts engendered by his worldly allusion to 'tin,' although that may have arisen in his modest consciousness of his own inability to support an establishment; but that he should be 'deucedly inclined to go and cut that fellow out'

appears to us one of the most natural emotions of the human breast. The young gentleman with the dishevelled hair and clasped hands, who loves the transcendent beauty with the bouquet and can't be happy without her, is to us a withering and desolate spectacle. Who _could_ be happy without her? The growing youths are not less happily observed and depicted than the grown women. The languid little creature, who 'hasn't danced since he was quite a boy,' is perfect; and the eagerness of the small dancer, whom he declines to receive for a partner at the hands of the glorious old lady of the house (the little feet quite ready for the first position, the whole heart projected into the quadrille, and the glance peeping timidly at the desired one out of a flutter of hope and doubt), is quite delightful to look at. The intellectual youth, who awakens the tremendous wrath of a Norma of private life by considering woman an inferior animal, is lecturing at the present moment, we understand, on the Concrete in connection with the Will. The legs of the young philosopher who considers Shakespeare an overrated man were seen by us dangling over the side of an omnibus last Tuesday. We have no acquaintance with the scowling young gentleman, who is clear that 'if his governor don't like the way he is going on, why, he must have chambers and so much a week;' but, if he is not by this time in Van Diemen's Land, he will certainly go to it through Newgate. We should exceedingly dislike to have personal property in a strong-box, to live in the quiet suburb of Camberwell, and to be in the relation of bachelor uncle to that youth. In all his designs, whatever Mr. Leech desires to do he does. His drawing seems to us charming, and the expression, indicated by the simplest means, is exactly the natural expression, and is recognised as such at once. Some forms of our existing life will never have a better chronicler. His wit is good-natured, and always the wit of a gentleman. He has a becoming sense of responsibility and restraint; he delights in agreeable things, and he imparts some pleasant air of his own to things not pleasant in themselves; he is suggestive and full of matter, and he is always improving. Into the tone as well as into the execution of what he does, he has brought a certain elegance which is altogether new, without involving any compromise of what is true. Popular art in England has not had so rich an acquisition."

In the endeavour to satisfy d.i.c.kens with the type required for the characters in his stories, Leech encountered the difficulty that all the author's ill.u.s.trators had to master. "Phiz" made many drawings in d.i.c.kens' presence before he could realize the author's idea of Mr.

Dombey; Cruikshank was more than once required to redraw a whole scene from "Oliver Twist"; and Leech has often been heard to speak of the minute details as to feature, height, thinness or fatness--in fact, every physical and, so far as it could be shown by appearance, mental quality--that d.i.c.kens insisted upon before he could be satisfied with the _vera effigies_ of one of his characters. The feelings of the great author, then, may be imagined when he found--too late for correction--a terrible error into which Leech had fallen in the drawing of a scene from "The Battle of Life," by introducing a personage into a scene which closes the second part of the tale, who was not intended to have been present.

It was in December, 1846, that "The Battle of Life" made one of the series of Christmas stories. In Leech's unfortunate ill.u.s.tration, which represented the flight of the bride, he made the mistake of supposing that Michael Warden had taken part in the elopement, and introduced his figure with that of Marian. Leech's error was not discovered until too late for remedy, the publication of the book having been delayed to the utmost limit expressly for those drawings; and it is highly characteristic of d.i.c.kens, and of the true regard he had for the artist, that, knowing the pain he must inflict, under the circ.u.mstances, by complaining, he never reproached Leech; excusing him, no doubt, on the ground of the hurry and confusion under which so much of his work was produced; but anyone who reads the story carefully will see what havoc the mistake makes of one of the most delicate turns in it.

d.i.c.kens wrote thus to Forster in reference to the grievous error: "When I first saw it, it was with a horror and agony not to be expressed. Of course, I need not tell _you_, my dear fellow, that Warden had no business in the elopement scene; he was never there. In the first hot sweat of this surprise and novelty, I was going to implore that the printing of that sheet might be stopped, and the figure taken out of the block; but when I thought of the pain this might give to our kind-hearted Leech, and that what is such a monstrous enormity to me as never entered my brain, may not so present itself to others, I became more composed, though the fact is wonderful to me. No doubt a great number of copies will be printed by the time this reaches you, and therefore I shall take it for granted that it stands as it is. Leech otherwise is very good, and the ill.u.s.trations altogether are by far the best that have been done for any of my Christmas books."

It may appear presumptuous in me to differ from d.i.c.kens in respect to the ill.u.s.trations to "The Battle of Life"; but, in my opinion, these are not to be compared favourably with those of the "Christmas Carol." With the well-known readiness of people to ferret out mistakes, it seems strange that the ill.u.s.trator's mistake was never publicly noticed.

The first series of "The Pictures of Life and Character," reprinted from _Punch_, appeared in 1854. They were heartily welcomed by the public; and it is as follows that Thackeray, Leech's intimate friend, speaks of them in the _Quarterly Review_, in an article published at that time:

"This book is better than plum-cake at Christmas. It is one enduring plum-cake, which you may eat, and which you may slice and deliver to your friends, and to which, having cut it, you may come again, and welcome, from year's end to year's end. In the frontispiece you see Mr.

Punch examining the pictures in his gallery--a portly, well-dressed, middle-aged, respectable gentleman, in a white neck-cloth and a polite evening costume, smiling in a very bland and agreeable manner upon one of his pleasant drawings, taken out of one of his handsome portfolios.

Mr. Punch has very good reason to smile at the work and be satisfied with the artist. Mr. Leech, his chief contributor, and some hundred humorists, with pencil and pen, have served Mr. Punch admirably. There is no blinking the fact that in Mr. Punch's cabinet John Leech is the right-hand man.

"Fancy a number of _Punch_ without John Leech's pictures! What would you give for it? The learned gentlemen who wrote the book must feel that without him it were as well left alone. Look at the rivals whom the popularity of _Punch_ has brought into the field--the direct imitators of Mr. Leech's manner--the artists with a manner of their own. How inferior their pencils are to his humour in depicting the public manners, in arresting and amusing the nation! The truth, the strength, the free vigour, the kind humour, the John Bull pluck and spirit of that hand are approached by no compet.i.tor. With what dexterity he draws a horse, a woman, a child! He feels them all, so to speak, like a man.

What plump young beauties those are with which Mr. Punch's chief contributor supplies the old gentleman's pictorial harem! What famous thews and sinews Mr. Punch's horses have, and how Briggs on the back of them scampers across the country! You see youth, strength, enjoyment, manliness, in those drawings, and in none more so, to our thinking, than in the hundred pictures of children which this artist loves to design.

Like a brave, hearty, good-natured Briton, he becomes quite soft and tender with the little creatures, pats gently their little golden heads, and watches with unfailing pleasure their ways, their jokes, laughter, caresses. _Enfants terribles_ come home from Eton, young miss practising her first flirtation, poor little ragged Polly making dirt-pies in the gutter, or staggering under the weight of her nurse-child, who is as big as herself--all these little ones, patrician and plebeian, meet with kindness from this kind heart, and are watched with curious anxiety by this amiable observer.

"Now, anyone who looks over Mr. Leech's portfolio must see that the social pictures which he gives us are authentic. What comfortable little drawing-rooms and dining-rooms, what snug libraries, we enter! What fine young gentlemanly wags they are, those beautiful little dandies, who wake up gouty old grandpapa to ring the bell; who decline aunt's pudding and custards, saying that they will reserve themselves for anchovy-toast with the claret; who talk together behind ball-room doors, where Fred whispers Charley, pointing to a dear little partner seven years old, 'My dear Charley, she has very much gone off; you should have seen that girl last season!'

"Look well at the economy of the famous Mr. Briggs. How snug, quiet, and appropriate all the appointments are! What a comfortable, neat, clean, middle-cla.s.s house Briggs' is (in the Bayswater suburb of London, we should guess from the sketches of the surrounding scenery)! What a good stable he has, with a loose-box for those celebrated hunters which he rides! How pleasant, clean, and warm his breakfast-table looks! What a trim maid brings in the boots that horrify Mrs. B.! What a snug dressing-room he has, complete in all its appointments, and in which he appears trying on that delightful hunting-cap which Mrs. Briggs flings into the fire! How cosy all the Briggs party seem in their drawing-room, Briggs reading a treatise on dog-breaking by a lamp, mamma and grannie with their respective needlework, the children cl.u.s.tering round a big book of prints--a great book of prints such as this before us, at this season, must make thousands of children happy by as many firesides! The inner life of all these people is represented. Leech draws them as naturally as Teniers depicts Dutch boors, or Morland pigs and stables.

It is your house and mine; we are looking at everybody's family circle.

Our boys, coming from school, give themselves such airs, the young scapegraces! Our girls, going to parties, are so tricked out by fond mammas--a social history of London in the middle of the nineteenth century. As such future students--lucky they to have a book so pleasant!--will regard these pages; even the mutations of fas.h.i.+on they may follow here, if they be so inclined. Mr. Leech has as fine an eye for tailory and millinery as for horseflesh. How they change, these cloaks and bonnets! How we have to pay milliners' bills from year to year! Where are those prodigious _chatelaines_ of 1850, which no lady could be without? Where are those charming waistcoats, those _stunning_ waistcoats, which our young girls used to wear a few seasons back, and which caused 'Gus, in the sweet little sketch of 'La Mode,' to ask Ellen for her tailor's address? 'Gus is a young warrior by this time, very likely facing the enemy at Inkerman; and pretty Ellen, and that love of a sister of hers, are married and happy, let us hope, superintending one of those delightful nursery scenes which our artist depicts with such tender humour. Fortunate artist, indeed! You see he must have been bred at a good public school, and that he has ridden many a good horse in his day; paid, no doubt out of his own pocket, for the originals of those lovely caps and bonnets; and watched paternally the ways, smiles, frolics, and slumbers of his favourite little people.