-

 
 GEORGE DU MAURIER 
 From ,in unpublished photograph by I'radelle and Youngf, London.
 
 SOCIAL 
 PICTORIAL 
 S AT I R E 
 
 Reminiscences and Apprecia- 
 tions of English Illustrators 
 of the Past Generation. By 
 GEORGE DU MAURIER 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
 
 BY GEORGE DU MAURIER. 
 
 PETER IBBETSON. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, 
 
 $i 50. 
 
 TRILBY. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, $1 75. 
 THE MARTIAN. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, $1 75. 
 A LEGEND OF CAMELOT. Pictures and Verses. 
 
 Illustrated. Large 410, Cloth, $5 oo. 
 ENGLISH SOCIETY. Illustrated. Oblong 4 to, 
 
 Cloth, $2 50. 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON : 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS. 
 
 Copyright, 1898, by HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 
 All rights rtitrvtd.
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 GEORGE DU MAURIER Frontispiece 
 
 JOHN LEECH Facing p. 6 
 
 A SPECIMEN OF PLUCK " IO 
 
 ONE OF MR. BRIGGS'S ADVENTURES 
 
 IN THE HIGHLANDS " 14 
 
 MR. AND MRS. CAUDLE " 22 
 
 "IN THE BAY OF BISCAY O 1 ' . . . " 26 
 
 " THE JOLLY LITTLE STREET ARABS " " 32 
 THANK GOODNESS ! FLY-FISHING HAS 
 
 BEGUN! " 38 
 
 DOING A LITTLE BUSINESS .... " 42 
 
 A TOLERABLY BROAD HINT . ... " 46 
 
 CHARLES KEENE " 54 
 
 THE SNOWSTORM, JAN. 2, 1867 . . " 58 
 
 WAITING FOR THE LANDLORD! . . " 62 
 
 "NONE O' YOUR LARKS " .... " 68 
 
 A STROKE OF BUSINESS " 72 
 
 AN AFFRONT TO THE SERVICE . . " 78
 
 iv ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 "NOT UP TO HIS BUSINESS" . . . Facing p. 82 
 
 FELINE AMENITIES 84 
 
 A PICTORIAL PUZZLE " 88 
 
 THE NEW SOCIETY CRAZE .... " QO 
 
 "READING WITHOUT TEARS" ... Q2 
 
 REFINEMENTS OF MODERN SPEECH . " 94 
 THINGS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE 
 
 EXPRESSED DIFFERENTLY ... " 96 
 
 THE HEIGHT OF IMPROPRIETY . . " 98
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 IT is my purpose to speak of the 
 craft to which I have devoted the best 
 years of my life, the craft of portraying, 
 by means of little pen-and-ink strokes, 
 lines and scratches, a small portion of 
 the world in which we live ; such social 
 and domestic incidents as lend them- 
 selves to humorous or satirical treat- 
 ment; the illustrated criticism of life, 
 of the life of our time and country, in 
 its lighter aspects. 
 
 The fact that I have spent so many 
 years in the practice of this craft does 
 not of itself, I am well aware, entitle 
 me to lay down the law about it; the
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 mere exercise of an art so patent to all, 
 so easily understanded of the people, 
 does not give one any special insight 
 into its simple mysteries, beyond a cer- 
 tain perception and appreciation of the 
 technical means by which it is pro- 
 duced unless one is gifted with the 
 critical faculty, a gift apart, to the pos- 
 session of which I make no claim. 
 
 There are two kinds of critics of such 
 work as ours. First there is the wide 
 public for whom we work and by whom 
 we are paid ; " who lives to please must 
 please to live ;" and who lives by draw- 
 ing for a comic periodical must man- 
 age to please the greater number. The 
 judgment of this critic, though often 
 sound, is not infallible ; but his verdict 
 for the time being is final, and by it we, 
 who live by our wits and from hand to 
 mouth, must either stand or fall. 
 
 The other critic is the expert, our fel-
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 low-craftsman, who has learned by initia- 
 tion, apprenticeship, and long practice 
 the simple secrets of our common trade. 
 He is not quite infallible either, and is 
 apt to concern himself more about the 
 manner than the matter of our perform- 
 ance; nor is he of immediate importance, 
 since with the public on our side we can 
 do without him for a while, and flourish 
 like a green bay-tree in spite of his artistic 
 disapproval of our work ; but he is not to 
 be despised, for he is some years in ad- 
 vance of that other critic, the public, who 
 may, and probably will, come round to 
 his way of thinking in time. 
 
 The first of these two critics is typified 
 by Moliere's famous cook, who must 
 have been a singularly honest, indepen- 
 dent, and intelligent person, since he 
 chose in all cases to abide by her deci- 
 sion, and not with an altogether unsatis- 
 factory result to Mankind ! Such cooks 
 3
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 are not to be found in these days cer- 
 tainly not in England ; but he is an un- 
 lucky craftsman who does not possess 
 some such natural critics in his family, 
 his home, or near it mother, sister, 
 friend, wife, or child who will look over 
 his shoulder at his little sketch, and say : 
 
 " Tommy [or Papa, or Grandpapa, as 
 the case may be], that person you've 
 just drawn doesn't look quite natural," 
 or: 
 
 " That lady is not properly dressed for 
 the person you want her to be those 
 hats are not worn this year," and so 
 forth and so forth. 
 
 When you have thoroughly satisfied 
 this household critic, then is the time to 
 show some handy brother craftsman 
 your amended work, and listen grateful- 
 ly when he suggests that you should put 
 a tone on this wall, and a tree, or some- 
 thing, in the left middle distance to 
 4
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 balance the composition ; and raise or 
 depress the horizon-line to get a better 
 effect of perspective. 
 
 In speaking of some of my fellow-art- 
 ists on Punch, and of their work, I shall 
 try and bring both these critical meth- 
 ods into play premising, however, once 
 for all, that such criticism on my part is 
 simply the expression of my individual 
 taste or fancy, the taste or fancy of one 
 who by no means pretends to the un- 
 erring acumen of Moliere's cook, on the 
 one hand, and who feels himself by no 
 means infallible in his judgment of pure- 
 ly technical matters, on the other. I can 
 only admire and say why, or why I 
 don't; and if I fail in making you ad- 
 mire and disadmire with me, it will 
 most likely be my fault as well as my 
 misfortune. 
 
 I had originally proposed to treat of 
 Richard Doyle, John Leech, and Charles 
 5
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 Keene and finally of myself, since that 
 I should speak of myself was rather in- 
 sisted upon by those who procured me 
 the honor of speaking at all. I find, 
 however, that there is so much to say 
 about Leech and Keene that I have 
 thought it better to sacrifice Richard 
 Doyle, who belongs to a remoter period, 
 and whose work, exquisite as it is of its 
 kind, is so much slighter than theirs, 
 and fills so much less of the public eye ; 
 for his connection with Punch did not 
 last long. Moreover, personally I knew 
 less of him ; just enough to find that to 
 know was to love him a happy peculi- 
 arity he shared with his two great col- 
 laborators on Punch. 
 
 John Leech ! What a name that was 
 to conjure with, and is still ! 
 
 I cannot find words to express what it 
 represented to me of pure unmixed de- 
 light in my youth and boyhood, long
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 before I ever dreamed of being an artist 
 myself ! It stands out of the past with 
 such names as Dickens, Dumas, Byron 
 not indeed that I am claiming for him 
 an equal rank with those immortals, who 
 wielded a weapon so much more potent 
 than a mere caricaturist's pencil ! But 
 if an artist's fame is to be measured by 
 the mere quantity and quality of the 
 pleasure he has given, what pinnacle is 
 too high for John Leech ! 
 
 Other men have drawn better; deeper, 
 grander, nobler, more poetical themes 
 have employed more accomplished pen- 
 cils, even in black and white; but for 
 making one glad, I can think of no one 
 to beat him. 
 
 To be an apparently hopeless invalid 
 at Christmas-time in some dreary, de- 
 serted, dismal little Flemish town and to 
 receive Puncfts Almanac (for 1^58, let us 
 say) from some good-natured friend in 
 7
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 England that is a thing not to be for- 
 gotten! I little dreamed then that I 
 should come to London again, and meet 
 John Leech and become his friend ; that 
 I should be, alas ! the last man to shake 
 hands with him before his death (as I 
 believe I was), and find myself among 
 the officially invited mourners by his 
 grave ; and, finally, that I should inherit, 
 and fill for so many years (however in- 
 differently), that half-page in Punch op- 
 posite the political cartoon, and which 
 I had loved so well when he was the 
 artist ! 
 
 Well, I recovered from a long and dis- 
 tressing ailment of my sight which had 
 been pronounced incurable, and came to 
 England, where I was introduced to 
 Charles Keene, with whom I quickly 
 became intimate, and it was he who pre- 
 sented me to Leech one night at one 
 of Mr. Arthur Lewis's smoking concerts,
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 in the winter of 1860. I remember feel- 
 ing somewhat nervous lest he should 
 take me for a foreigner on account of 
 my name, and rather unnecessarily went 
 out of my way to assure him that I was 
 rather more English than John Bull him- 
 self. It didn't matter in the least; I 
 have no doubt he saw through it all ; he 
 was kindness and courtesy itself ; and I 
 experienced to the full that emotion so 
 delightful to a young hero-worshipper 
 in meeting face to face a world-wide 
 celebrity whom he has long worshipped 
 at a distance. In the words of Lord 
 
 Tennyson : 
 
 " I was rapt 
 
 By all the sweet and sudden passion of youth 
 Towards greatness in its elder." . . . 
 
 But it so happened at just this particular 
 period of his artistic career and of mine 
 that he no longer shone as a solitary 
 star of the first magnitude in my little 
 9
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 firmament of pictorial social satire. A 
 new impulse had been given to the art 
 of drawing on wood, a new school had 
 been founded, and new methods to 
 draw straight from nature instead of 
 trusting to memory and imagination 
 had been the artistic order of the day. 
 Men and women, horses and dogs, land- 
 scapes and seascapes, all one can make 
 pictures of, even chairs and tables and 
 teacups and saucers, must be studied 
 from the life from the still-life, if you 
 will by whoever aspired to draw on 
 wood; even angels and demons and 
 cherubs and centaurs and mermaids must 
 be closely imitated from nature or at 
 least as much of them as could be got 
 from the living model. 
 
 Once a Week had just appeared, and 
 The Cornhill Magazine. Sir John Mil- 
 lais and Sir Frederick Leighton were 
 then drawing on wood just like the or- 
 
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 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 dinary mortals; Frederick Walker had 
 just started on his brief but splendid 
 career; Frederick Sandys had burst on 
 the black-and-white world like a meteor ; 
 and Charles Keene, who was illustrating 
 the Cloister and the Hearth in the inter- 
 vals of his Punch work, had, after long 
 and patient labor, attained that consum- 
 mate mastery of line and effect in wood 
 draughtsmanship that will be forever 
 associated with his name ; and his work 
 in Punch, if only by virtue of its extraor- 
 dinary technical ability, made Leech's 
 by contrast appear slight and almost 
 amateurish in spite of its ease and bold- 
 ness. 
 
 So that with all my admiration for 
 Leech it was at the feet of Charles 
 Keene that I found myself sitting; be- 
 sides which we were much together in 
 those days, talking endless shop, taking 
 long walks, riding side by side on the
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 knife-boards of omnibuses, dining at 
 cheap restaurants, making music at each 
 other's studios. His personal charm was 
 great, as great in its way as Leech's ; he 
 was democratic and so was I, as one is 
 bound to be when one is impecunious 
 and the world is one's oyster to open 
 with the fragile point of a lead-pencil. 
 His bohemian world was mine and I 
 found it a very good world and very 
 much to my taste a clear, honest, 
 wholesome, innocent, intellectual, and 
 most industrious British bohemia, with 
 lots of tobacco, lots of good music, 
 plenty of talk about literature and art, 
 and not too much victuals or drink. 
 Many of its denizens, that were, have 
 become Royal Academicians or have 
 risen to fame in other ways ; some have 
 had to take a back seat in life; surpris- 
 ingly few have gone to the bad. 
 
 This world, naturally, was not Leech's, 
 
 12
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 if it had ever been, I doubt ; his bohemia, 
 if he ever had lived in one, had been the 
 bohemia of medicine, not of art, and he 
 seemed to us then to be living on social 
 heights of fame and sport and aristo- 
 cratic splendor where none of us dreamed 
 of seeking him and he did not seek us. 
 We hated and despised the bloated aris- 
 tocracy, just as he hated and despised 
 foreigners without knowing much about 
 them ; and the aristocracy, to do it jus- 
 tice, did not pester us with its obtrusive 
 advances. But I never heard Leech 
 spoken of otherwise in bohemia than 
 with affectionate admiration, although 
 many of us seemed to think that his best 
 work was done. Indeed, his work was 
 becoming somewhat fitful in quality, and 
 already showed occasional signs of haste 
 and illness and fatigue; his fun was less 
 genial and happy, though he drew more 
 vigorously than ever, and now and again 
 13
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 surprised us by surpassing himself, as in 
 his series of Briggs in the Highlands a- 
 chasing the deer. 
 
 All that was thirty years ago and 
 more. I may say at once that I have 
 reconsidered the opinion I formed of 
 John Leech at that time. Leech, it is 
 true, is by no means the one bright par- 
 ticular star, but he has recovered much 
 of his lost first magnitude ; if he shines 
 more by what he has to say than by his 
 manner of saying it, I have come to 
 think that that is the best thing of the 
 two to shine by, if you cannot shine by 
 both ; and I find that his manner was 
 absolutely what it should have been for 
 his purpose and his time neither more 
 nor less ; he had so much to say and of 
 a kind so delightful that I have no 
 time to pick holes in his mode of ex- 
 pression, which at its best has satisfied 
 far more discriminating experts than I ; 
 14
 
 HEj 
 
 s a
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 besides which, the methods of printing 
 and engraving have wonderfully im- 
 proved since his day. He drew straight 
 on the wood block, with a lead-pencil ; 
 his delicate gray lines had to be trans- 
 lated into the uncompromising coarse 
 black lines of printers' ink a ruinous 
 process ; and what his work lost in this 
 way is only to be estimated by those 
 who know. True, his mode of expres- 
 sion was not equal to Keene's I never 
 knew any that was, in England, or even 
 approached it but that, as Mr. Rud- 
 yard Kipling says, is another story. 
 
 The story that I will tell now is that 
 of my brief acquaintance with Leech, 
 which began in 1860, and which I had 
 not many opportunities of improving 
 till I met him at Whitby in the autumn 
 of 1864 a memorable autumn for me, 
 since I used to forgather with him every 
 day, and have long walks and talks with 
 15
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 him and dined with him once or twice 
 at the lodgings where he was staying 
 with his wife and son and daughter all 
 of whom are now dead. He was the 
 most sympathetic, engaging, and attrac- 
 tive person I ever met ; not funny at all 
 in conversation, or ever wishing to be 
 except now and then for a capital story, 
 which he told in perfection. 
 
 The key-note of his character, socially, 
 seemed to be self-effacement, high-bred 
 courtesy, never-failing consideration for 
 others. He was the most charming com- 
 panion conceivable, having intimately 
 known so many important and celebrat- 
 ed people, and liking to speak of them; 
 but one would never have guessed from 
 anything he ever looked or said that he 
 had made a whole nation, male and fe- 
 male, gentle and simple, old and young, 
 laugh as it had never laughed before or 
 since, for a quarter of a century. 
 16
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 He was tall, thin, and graceful, ex- 
 tremely handsome, of the higher Irish 
 type; with dark hair and whiskers and 
 complexion, and very light grayish-blue 
 eyes ; but the expression of his face was 
 habitually sad, even when he smiled. In 
 dress, bearing, manner, and aspect he 
 was the very type of the well-bred Eng- 
 lish gentleman and man of the world 
 and good society ; I never met any one 
 to beat him in that peculiar distinction 
 of form, which, I think, has reached its 
 highest European development in this 
 country. I am told the Orientals are 
 still our superiors in deportment. But 
 the natural man in him was still the 
 best. Thackeray and Sir John Millais, 
 not bad judges, and men with many 
 friends, have both said that they per- 
 sonally loved John Leech better than 
 any man they ever knew. 
 
 At this time he was painting in oil, 
 
 B I 7
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 and on an enlarged scale, some of his 
 more specially popular sketches in Punch, 
 and very anxious to succeed with them, 
 but nervously diffident of success with 
 them, even with ol TroXAo*. He was not 
 at his happiest in these efforts ; and 
 there was something pathetic in his ear- 
 nestness and perseverance in attempting 
 a thing so many can do, but which he 
 could not do for want of a better train- 
 ing ; while he could do the inimitable so 
 easily. 
 
 I came back to town before Leech, 
 and did not see him again until the fol- 
 lowing October. On Saturday afternoon, 
 the 28th, I called at his house, No. 6 
 The Terrace, Kensington, with a very 
 elaborate drawing in pencil by myself, 
 which I presented to him as a souvenir, 
 and with which he seemed much pleased. 
 
 He was already working at the Punch 
 Almanac for '65, at a window on the 
 
 18
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 second floor overlooking the street. (I 
 have often gazed up at it since.) He 
 seemed very ill, so sad and depressed 
 that I could scarcely speak to him for 
 sheer sympathy ; I felt he would never 
 get through the labor of that almanac, 
 and left him with the most melancholy 
 forebodings. 
 
 Monday morning the papers an- 
 nounced his death on Sunday, October 
 2pth, from angina pectoris, the very 
 morning after I had seen him. 
 
 I was invited by Messrs. Bradbury and 
 Evans, the publishers of Punch, to the 
 funeral, which took place at Kensal 
 Green. It was the most touching sight 
 imaginable. The grave was near Thack- 
 eray's, who had died the year before. 
 There were crowds of people, Charles 
 Dickens among them ; Canon Hole, a 
 great friend of Leech's and who has 
 written most affectionately about him, 
 19
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 read the service ; and when the coffin 
 was lowered into the grave, John Millais 
 burst into tears and loud sobs, setting an 
 example that was followed all round ; 
 we all forgot our manhood and cried like 
 women ! I can recall no funeral in my 
 time where simple grief and affection 
 have been so openly and spontaneously 
 displayed by so many strangers as well 
 as friends not even in France, where 
 people are more demonstrative than 
 here. No burial in Westminster Abbey 
 that I have ever seen ever gave such an 
 impression of universal honor, love, and 
 regret. 
 
 " Whom the gods love die young." 
 He was only forty-six ! 
 
 I was then invited to join the Punch 
 staff and take Leech's empty chair at 
 the weekly dinner and bidden to cut 
 my initials on the table, by his; his 
 monogram as it was carved by him is 
 
 20
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 J. L. under a leech in a bottle, dated 
 1854; and close by on the same board 
 are the initials W. M. T. 
 
 I flatter myself that convivially, at 
 least, my small D. M., carved in impene. 
 trable oak, will go down to posterity in 
 rather distinguished company ! 
 
 If ever there was a square English 
 hole, and a square English peg to fit it, 
 that hole was Punch, and that peg was 
 John Leech. He was John Bull himself, 
 but John Bull refined and civilized 
 John Bull polite, modest, gentle full of 
 self-respect and self-restraint ; and with 
 all the bully softened out of him ; manly 
 first and gentlemanly after, but very 
 soon after; more at home perhaps in 
 the club, the drawing-room, and the 
 hunting-field, in Piccadilly and the Park, 
 than in the farm or shop or market-place ; 
 a normal Englishman of the upper 
 middle class, with but one thing abnor- 
 
 21
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 mal about him, viz., his genius, which 
 was of the kind to give the greater pleas- 
 ure to the greater number and yet 
 delight the most fastidious of his day 
 and I think of ours. One must be very 
 ultra-aesthetic, even now, not to feel his 
 charm. 
 
 He was all of a piece, and moved and 
 worked with absolute ease, freedom, and 
 certainty, within the limits nature had 
 assigned him and his field was a very 
 large one. He saw and represented the 
 whole panorama of life that came within 
 his immediate ken with an unwavering 
 consistency, from first to last ; from a 
 broadly humorous, though mostly sym- 
 pathetic point of view that never 
 changed a very delightful point of 
 view, if not the highest conceivable. 
 
 Hand and eye worked with brain in 
 singular harmony, and all three im- 
 proved together contemporaneously, 
 22
 
 From the original drawing by JOHN LEECH. 
 In the possession of JOHN KENDRICK BANGS, Esq.
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 with a parallelism most interesting to 
 note, as one goes through the long series 
 of his social pictures from the beginning. 
 
 He has no doubts or hesitations no 
 bewildering subtleties no seeking from 
 twelve to fourteen o'clock either in 
 his ideas or technique, which very soon 
 becomes an excellent technique, thor- 
 oughly suited to his ideas rapid, bold, 
 spirited, full of color, breadth, and move- 
 ment troubling itself little about details 
 that will not help the telling of his story 
 for before everything else he has his 
 story to tell, and it must either make 
 you laugh or lightly charm you and he 
 tells it in the quickest, simplest, down- 
 rightest pencil strokes, although it is 
 often a complicated story! 
 
 For there are not only the funny peo- 
 ple and the pretty people acting out 
 their little drama in the foreground 
 there is the scene in which they act, and 
 23
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 the middle distance, and the background 
 beyond, and the sky itself; beautiful 
 rough landscapes and seascapes and 
 skyscapes, winds and weathers, boister- 
 ous or sunny seas, rain and storm and 
 cloud all the poetry of nature, that he 
 feels most acutely while his little people 
 are being so unconsciously droll in the 
 midst of it all. He is a king of impres- 
 sionists, and his impression becomes 
 ours on the spot never to be forgotten ! 
 It is all so quick and fresh and strong, 
 so simple, pat, and complete, so direct 
 from mother Nature herself! It has 
 about it the quality of inevitableness 
 those are the very people who would 
 have acted and spoken in just that man- 
 ner, and we meet them every day the 
 expression of the face, the movement 
 and gesture, in anger, terror, dismay, 
 scorn, conceit, tenderness, elation, tri- 
 umph. . . . Whatever the mood they 
 24
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 could not have looked or acted other- 
 wise it is life itself. An optimistic life 
 in which joyousness prevails, and the 
 very woes and discomfitures are broadly 
 comical to us who look on like some 
 one who has seasickness, or a headache 
 after a Greenwich banquet which are 
 about the most tragic things he has 
 dealt with. 
 
 (I am speaking of his purely social 
 sketches. For in his admirable large 
 cuts, political and otherwise serious, his 
 satire is often bitter and biting indeed ; 
 and his tragedy almost Hogarthian.) 
 
 Like many true humorists he was of 
 a melancholy temperament, and no 
 doubt felt attracted by all that was 
 mirthful and bright, and in happy con- 
 trast to his habitual mood. Seldom if 
 ever does a drop of his inner sadness 
 ooze out through his pencil point and 
 never a drop of gall ; and I do not re- 
 25
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 member one cynical touch in his whole 
 series. 
 
 In his tastes and habits he was by 
 nature aristocratic ; he liked the society 
 of those who were well dressed, well 
 bred and refined like himself, and per- 
 haps a trifle conventional ; he conformed 
 quite spontaneously and without effort 
 to upper-class British ideal of his time, 
 and had its likes and dislikes. But his 
 strongest predilections of all are com- 
 mon to the British race : his love of 
 home, his love of sport, his love of the 
 horse and the hound especially his love 
 of the pretty woman the pretty woman 
 of the normal, wholesome English type. 
 This charming creature so dear to us all 
 pervades his show from beginning to 
 end she is a creation of his and he 
 thoroughly loves her, and draws her 
 again and again with a fondness that is 
 half lover-like and half paternal her 
 26
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 buxom figure, her merry bright eyes 
 and fresh complexion and flowing ring- 
 lets, and pursed -up lips like Cupid's 
 bow. Nor is he ever tired of displaying 
 her feet and ankles (and a little more) 
 in gales of wind on cliff and pier and 
 parade or climbing the Malvern Hills. 
 When she puts on goloshes it nearly 
 breaks his heart, and he would fly to 
 other climes ! He revels in her infantile 
 pouts and jealousies and heart-burnings 
 and butterfly delights and lisping mis- 
 chiefs ; her mild, innocent flirtations with 
 beautiful young swells, whose cares are 
 equally light. 
 
 She is a darling, and he constantly 
 calls her so to her face. Her favorite 
 sea-side nook becomes the mermaid's 
 haunt ; her back hair flies and dries in 
 the wind, and disturbs the peace of the 
 too susceptible Punch. She is a little 
 amazon flour rire, and rides across coun- 
 27
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 try, and drives (even a hansom sometimes, 
 with a pair of magnificent young whis- 
 kerandoes smoking their costly cigars 
 inside) ; she is a toxophilite, and her ar- 
 row sticks, for it is barbed with innocent 
 seduction, and her bull's-eye is the soft 
 military heart. She wears a cricket-cap 
 and breaks Aunt Sally's nose seven 
 times ; she puts her pretty little foot 
 upon the croquet-ball and croquet'd 
 you are completely! With what glee 
 she would have rinked and tennised if 
 he had lived a little longer ! 
 
 She is light of heart, and perhaps a 
 little of head ! Her worst trouble is 
 when the captain gives the wing of the 
 fowl to some other darling who might 
 be her twin sister; her most terrible 
 nightmare is when she dreams that great 
 stupid Captain Sprawler upsets a dish of 
 trifle over her new lace dress with the 
 blue satin slip ; but next morning she is 
 28
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 herself again, and rides in the Row, and 
 stops to speak with that great stupid 
 Captain Sprawler, who is very nice to 
 look at, whose back is very beautiful, 
 and who sprawls most gracefully over 
 the railings, and pays her those delight- 
 ful, absurd compliments about her and 
 her horse " being such a capital pair," 
 while, as a foil to so much grace and 
 splendor, a poor little snub-nosed, ill- 
 dressed, ill-conditioned dwarf of a snob 
 looks on, sucking the top of his cheap 
 cane in abject admiration and hopeless 
 envy ! Then she pats and kisses the 
 nice soft nose of Cornet Flinders's hun- 
 ter, which is "deucedly aggravating for 
 Cornet Flinders, you know " but when 
 that noble sportsman is frozen out and 
 cannot hunt, she plays scratch-cradle 
 with him in the boudoir of her father's 
 country-house, or pitches chocolate into 
 his mouth from the oak landing; and 
 29
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 she lets him fasten the skates on to her 
 pretty feet. Happy cornet ! And she 
 plays billiards with her handsome cousin 
 
 a guardsman at least and informs 
 him that she is just eighteen to his love 
 
 and stands under the mistletoe and 
 asks this enviable relation of hers to 
 show her what the garroter's hug is like ; 
 and when he proceeds to do so she calls 
 out in distress because his pointed wax- 
 ed mustache has scratched her pretty 
 cheek, and when Mr. Punch is there, at 
 dinner, she and a sister darling pull 
 crackers across his august white waist- 
 coat, and scream in pretty terror at the 
 explosion ; to that worthy's excessive 
 jubilation, for Mr. Punch is Leech him- 
 self, and nothing she does can ever be 
 amiss in his eyes ! 
 
 Sometimes, indeed, she is seriously 
 transfixed herself, and bids Mr. Tongs, 
 the hair-dresser, cut off a long lock of her 
 30
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 hair where it will not be missed and 
 she looks so lovely under the smart of 
 Cupid's arrow that we are frantically 
 jealous of the irresistible warrior for 
 whom the jetty tress is destined. In 
 short, she is innocence and liveliness and 
 health incarnate a human kitten. 
 
 When she marries the gilded youth 
 with the ambrosial whiskers, their honey- 
 mooning is like playing at being mar- 
 ried, their artless billings and cooings 
 are enchanting to see. She will have no 
 troubles Leech will take good care of 
 that ; her matrimonial tiffs will be of the 
 slightest ; hers will be a well-regulated 
 household ; the course of her conjugal 
 love will run smooth in spite of her little 
 indiscretions for like Bluebeard's wife 
 she can be curious at times, and coax 
 and wheedle to know the mysteries of 
 Freemasonry, and cry because Edwin 
 will not reveal the secret of Mr. Percy, 
 31
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 the horse - tamer ; and how Edwin can 
 resist such an .appeal is more than we 
 can understand ! But soon they will 
 have a large family, and live happy ever 
 after, and by the time their eldest-born 
 is thirteen years old, the darling of four- 
 teen years back will be a regular mater- 
 familias, stout, matronly, and rather 
 severe ; and Edwin will be fat, bald, and 
 middle-aged, and bring home a bundle 
 of asparagus and a nice new perambu- 
 lator to celebrate the wedding-day! 
 
 And he loves her brothers and cousins, 
 military or otherwise, just as dearly, and 
 makes them equally beautiful to the 
 eye, with those lovely drooping whiskers 
 that used to fall and brush their bosoms, 
 their smartly waistcoated bosoms, a 
 quarter of a century ago ! He dresses 
 them even better than the darlings, and 
 has none but the kindliest and gentlest 
 satire for their little vanities and conceits 
 32
 
 "THE JOLLY LITTLE STREET ARABS 
 
 From the original drawing for Punch in possession of John Kendrick Bangs, Esq.
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 for they have no real vices, these 
 charming youths, beyond smoking too 
 much and betting a little and getting 
 gracefully tipsy at race-meetings and 
 Greenwich dinners and sometimes run- 
 ning into debt with their tailors, I sup- 
 pose ! And then how boldly they ride 
 to hounds, and how splendidly they fight 
 in the Crimea! how lightly they dance 
 at home ! How healthy, good-humored, 
 and manly they are, with all their va- 
 garies of dress and jewelry and accent ! 
 It is easy to forgive them if they give 
 the whole of their minds to their white 
 neckties, or are dejected because they 
 have lost the little gridiron off their 
 chatelaine, or lose all presence of mind 
 when a smut settles on their noses, and 
 turn faint at the sight of Mrs. Gamp's 
 umbrella ! 
 
 And next to these enviable beings he 
 loves and reveres the sportsman. One 
 c 33
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 is made to feel that the true sportsman, 
 whether he shoots or hunts or fishes, is 
 an august being, as he ought to be in 
 Great Britain, and Leech has done him 
 full justice with his pencil. He is no 
 subject for flippant satire ; so there he 
 sits his horse, or stalks through his tur- 
 nip-field, or handles his rod like a god ! 
 Handsome, well-appointed from top to 
 toe, aristocratic to the finger-tips a 
 most impressive figure, the despair of 
 foreigners, the envy of all outsiders at 
 home (including the present lecturer) ! 
 
 He has never been painted like this 
 before ! What splendid lords and squires, 
 fat or lean, hook-nosed or eagle-eyed, 
 well tanned by sun and wind, in faultless 
 kit, on priceless mounts ! How redolent 
 they are of health and wealth, and the 
 secure consciousness of high social posi- 
 tion of the cool business-like self-impor- 
 tance that sits so well on those who are 
 34
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 knowing in the noblest pursuit that can 
 ever employ the energies and engross 
 the mind of a well-born Briton ; for they 
 can ride almost as well as their grooms, 
 these mighty hunters before the Lord, 
 and know the country almost as well as 
 the huntsman himself ! And what sons 
 and grandsons and granddaughters are 
 growing up round them, on delightful 
 ponies no gate, hedge, or brook can 
 dismay nothing but the hard high- 
 road! 
 
 It is a glorious, exhilarating scene, 
 with the beautiful wintry landscape 
 stretching away to the cloudy Novem- 
 ber sky, and the lords and ladies gay, 
 and the hounds, and the frosty- faced, 
 short-tempered old huntsman, the very 
 perfection of his kind ; and the poor 
 cockney snobs on their hired screws, 
 and the meek clod -hopping laborers 
 looking on excited and bewildered, 
 35'
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 happy for a moment at beholding so 
 much happiness in their betters. 
 
 To have seen these sketches of the 
 hunting-field is to have been there in 
 person. It is almost the only hunting 
 that I ever had and probably ever shall 
 have and I am almost content that 
 it should be so ! It is so much easier 
 and simpler to draw for Punch than to 
 drive across country ! And then, as a 
 set-off to all this successful achievement, 
 this pride and pomp and circumstance 
 of glorious sport, we have the immortal 
 and ever-beloved figure of Mr. Briggs, 
 whom I look upon as Leech's master- 
 piece the example above all others of 
 the most humorous and good-natured 
 satire that was ever penned or pencil- 
 led ; the more ridiculous he is the more 
 we love him ; he is more winning and 
 sympathetic than even Mr. Pickwick 
 himself, and I almost think a greater 
 36
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 creation ! Besides, it took two to make 
 Mr. Pickwick, the author and the artist. 
 Whereas Mr. Briggs issued fully equip- 
 ped from the brain of Leech alone ! 
 
 Not indeed that all unauthorized gal- 
 lopers after the fox find forgiveness in 
 the eyes of Leech. Woe to the vulgar 
 little cockney snob who dares to ob- 
 trude his ugly mug and his big cigar and 
 his hired, broken-winded rip on these 
 hallowed and thrice -happy hunting- 
 grounds! an earthen- ware pot among 
 vessels of brass; the punishment shall 
 be made to fit the crime ; better if he 
 fell off and his horse rolled over him 
 than that he should dress and ride and 
 look like that ! For the pain of broken 
 bones is easier to bear than the scorn of 
 a true British sportsman ! 
 
 Then there are the fishermen who 
 never catch any fish, but whom no stress 
 of weather can daunt or distress. There 
 37
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 they sit or stand with the wind blowing 
 or the rain soaking, in dark landscapes 
 with ruffled streams and ominous 
 clouds, and swaying trees that turn up 
 the whites of their leaves one almost 
 hears the wind rush through them. One 
 almost forgets the comical little forlorn 
 figure who gives such point to all the 
 angry turbulence of nature in the im- 
 pression produced by the mise en stine 
 itself an impression so happily, so viv- 
 idly suggested by a few rapid, instruc- 
 tive pencil strokes and thumb smudges 
 that it haunts the memory like a dream. 
 
 He loves such open-air scenes so sin- 
 cerely, he knows so well how to express 
 and communicate the perennial charm 
 they have for him, that the veriest book- 
 worm becomes a sportsman through 
 sheer sympathy by the mere fact of 
 looking at them. 
 
 And how many people and things he 
 33
 
 THANK GOODNESS ! FLY-FISHING HAS BEGUN ! 
 
 MILLER. " Don't they really, perhaps they'll bite better 
 towards the cool of the evening, they mostly do." 
 
 Punch, 1857.
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 loves that most of us love! it would 
 take all night to enumerate them the 
 good authoritative pater and mater- 
 familias; the delightful little girls; the 
 charming cheeky school-boys ; the jolly 
 little street arabs, who fill old gentle- 
 men's letter-boxes with oyster-shells and 
 gooseberry-skins ; the cabmen, the 'bus- 
 men ; the policemen with the old-fashion- 
 ed chimney-pot hat ; the old bathing- 
 women, and Jack-ashores, and jolly old 
 tars his British tar is irresistible, wheth- 
 er he is hooking a sixty - four pounder 
 out of the Black Sea, or riding a Turk, 
 or drinking tea instead of grog and com- 
 plaining of its strength ! There seems 
 to be hardly a mirthful corner of English 
 life that Leech has not seen and loved 
 and painted in this singularly genial and 
 optimistic manner. 
 
 His loves are many and his hates are 
 few but he is a good hater all the same. 
 
 39
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 He hates Mawworm and Stiggins, and 
 so do we. He hates the foreigner whom 
 he does not know as heartily as Thack- 
 eray does, who seems to know him so 
 well with a hatred that seems to me a 
 little unjust, perhaps ; all France is not 
 in Leicester Square ; many Frenchmen 
 can dress and ride, drive and shoot as 
 well as anybody ; and they began to use 
 the tub very soon after we did a dozen 
 years or so, perhaps say after the coup 
 d'ttat in 1851. 
 
 Then he hates with a deadly hatred 
 all who make music in the street or next 
 door and preach in the cross-ways and 
 bawl their wares on the parade. What 
 would he have said of the Salvation 
 Army? He is haunted by the bark of 
 his neighbor's dog, by the crow of his 
 neighbor's cochin-china cock ; he cannot 
 even bear his neighbor to have his chim- 
 ney swept ; and as for the Christmas 
 40
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 waits we all remember that tragic pict- 
 ure! This exaggerated aversion to 
 noises became a disease with him, and 
 possibly hastened his end. 
 
 Among his pet hates we must not for- 
 get the gorgeous flunky and the guzzling 
 alderman, the leering old fop, the ras- 
 cally book-maker, the sweating Jew 
 tradesman, and the poor little snob (the 
 'Arry of his day) who tries vainly to 
 grow a mustache, and wears such a 
 shocking bad hat, and iron heels to his 
 shoes, and shuns the Park during the 
 riots for fear of being pelted for a 
 " haristocrat," and whose punishment I 
 think is almost in excess of his misde- 
 meanor. To succeed in overdressing 
 one's self (as his swells did occasionally 
 without marring their beauty) is almost 
 as ignominious as to fail ; and when the 
 failure comes from want of means, there 
 is also almost a pathetic side to it. 
 41
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 And he is a little bit hard on old 
 frumps, with fat ankles and scraggy 
 bosoms and red noses but anyhow we 
 are made to laugh quod erat demon- 
 strandum. We also know that he has 
 a strong objection to cold mutton for 
 dinner, and much prefers a whitebait 
 banquet at Greenwich, or a nice well- 
 ordered repast at the Star and Garter. 
 
 So do we. 
 
 
 
 And the only thing he feared is the 
 horse. Nimrod as he is, and the happiest 
 illustrator of the hunting-field that ever 
 was, he seems forever haunted by a 
 terror of the heels of that noble animal 
 he drew so well and I thoroughly sym- 
 pathize with him ! 
 
 In all the series the chief note is joy- 
 ousness, high spirits, the pleasure of 
 being alive. There is no Weltschmerz in 
 his happy world, where all is for the best 
 no hankering after the moon, no dis- 
 42
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 content with the present order of things. 
 Only one little lady discovers that the 
 world is hollow, and her doll is stuffed 
 with bran ; only one gorgeous swell has 
 exhausted the possibilites of this life, 
 and finds out that he is at loss for a new 
 sensation. So what does he do ? Cut 
 his throat ? Go and shoot big game in 
 Africa ? No ; he visits the top of the 
 Monument on a rainy day, or invites 
 his brother swells to a Punch and Judy 
 show in his rooms, or rides to White- 
 chapel and back on an omnibus with a 
 bag of periwinkles, and picks them out 
 with a pin. 
 
 Even when his humor is at its broad- 
 est, and he revels in almost pantomimic 
 fun, he never loses sight of truth and 
 nature never strikes a false or uncertain 
 note. Robinson goes to an evening 
 party with a spiked knuckle-duster in his 
 pocket, and sits down. Jones digs an 
 43
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 elderly party called Smith in the back 
 with the point of his umbrella, under the 
 impression that it is his friend Brown. 
 A charming little street Arab prints the 
 soles of his muddy feet on a smart old 
 gentleman's white evening waistcoat. 
 Tompkyns writes Henrietta on the sands 
 under two hearts transfixed by an arrow, 
 and his wife, whose name is Matilda, 
 catches him in the act. An old gentle- 
 man, maddened by a blue -bottle, 
 smashes all his furniture and breaks 
 every window-pane but one where the 
 blue-bottle is and in all these scenes 
 one does not know which is the most 
 irresistible, the most inimitable, the mere 
 drollery or the dramatic truth of gesture 
 and facial expression. 
 
 The way in which every-day people 
 really behave in absurd situations and 
 under comically trying circumstances is 
 quite funny enough for him ; and if he 
 
 44
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 exaggerates a little and goes beyond the 
 absolute prose of life in the direction of 
 caricature, he never deviates a hair's- 
 breadth from the groove human nature 
 has laid down. There is exaggeration, 
 but no distortion. The most wildly 
 funny people are low comedians of the 
 highest order, whose fun is never forced 
 and never fails ; they found themselves on 
 fact, and only burlesque what they have 
 seen in actual life they never evolve 
 their fun from the depths of their inner 
 consciousness; and in this naturalness, 
 for me, lies the greatness of Leech. 
 There is nearly always a tenderness in 
 the laughter he excites, born of the 
 touch of nature that makes the whole 
 world kin ! 
 
 Where most of all he gives us a sense 
 of the exuberant joyousness and buoy- 
 ancy of life is in the sketches of the 
 sea-side the newly discovered joys of 
 45
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 which had then not become common- 
 place to people of the middle class. The 
 good old sea-side has grown rather stale 
 by this time the very children of to- 
 day dig and paddle in a half-perfunctory 
 sort of fashion, with a certain stolidity, 
 and are in strange contrast to those 
 highly elate and enchanting little romps 
 that fill his sea-side pictures. 
 
 Indeed, nothing seems so jolly, noth- 
 ing seems so funny, now, as when Leech 
 was drawing for Punch. The gayety of 
 one nation at least has been eclipsed by 
 his death. Is it merely that there is no 
 such light humorist to see and draw for 
 us in a frolicsome spirit all the fun and 
 the jollity ? Is it because some of us 
 have grown old ? Or is it that the Brit- 
 ish people themselves have changed and 
 gone back to their old way of taking 
 their pleasure sadly ? 
 
 Everything is so different, somehow; 
 4 6
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 the very girls themselves have grown a 
 head taller, and look serious, stately, 
 and dignified, like Olympian goddesses, 
 even when they are dancing and playing 
 lawn-tennis. 
 
 I for one should no more dream of 
 calling them the darlings than I should 
 dare to kiss them under the mistletoe, 
 were I ever so splendid a young captain. 
 Indeed I am too prostrate in admiration 
 I can only suck the top of my stick 
 and gaze in jealous ecstasy, like one of 
 Leech's little snobs. They are no longer 
 pretty as their grandmothers were 
 whom Leech drew so well in the old 
 days ! They are beautiful / 
 
 And then they are so cultivated, and 
 know such a lot of books, of art, of 
 science, of politics, and theology of the 
 world, the flesh, and the devil. They 
 actually think for themselves ; they have 
 broken loose and jumped over the ring 
 
 47
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 fence ; they have taken to the water, 
 these lovely chicks, and swim like duck- 
 lings, to the dismay of those good old 
 cocks and hens, their grandparents! And 
 my love of them is tinged with awe, as 
 was Leech's love of that mighty, beauti- 
 ful, but most uncertain quadruped, the 
 thoroughbred horse for, like him, when 
 they are good, they are very, very good, 
 but when they are bad, they are horrid. 
 We have changed other things as well : 
 the swell has become the masher, and is 
 a terrible dull dog; the poor little snob 
 has blossomed into a blatant 'Any, and 
 no longer wears impossible hats and iron 
 heels to his boots; he has risen in the 
 social scale, and holds his own without 
 fear or favor in the Park and everywhere 
 else. To be taken for a haristocrat is 
 his dream ! Even if he be pelted for it. 
 In his higher developments he becomes 
 a " bounder," and bounds away in most
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 respectable West End ball-rooms. He 
 is the only person with any high spirits 
 left perhaps that is why high spirits 
 have gone out of fashion, like box- 
 ing the watch and wrenching off door- 
 knockers ! 
 
 And the snob of our day is quite a 
 different person, more likely than not 
 to be found hobnobbing with dukes and 
 duchesses as irreproachable in dress 
 and demeanor as Leech himself. Thack- 
 eray discovered and christened him for 
 us long ago ; and he is related to most 
 of us, and moves in the best society. He 
 has even ceased to brag of his intimacy 
 with the great, they have become so 
 commonplace to him ; and if he swag- 
 gers at all, it is about his acquaintance 
 with some popular actor or comic vocal- 
 ist whom he is privileged to call by his 
 Christian name. 
 
 And those splendid old grandees of 
 D 49
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 high rank, so imposing of aspect, so 
 crushing to us poor mortals by mere 
 virtue not of their wealth and title 
 alone, but of their high-bred distinction 
 of feature and bearing to which Leech 
 did such ample justice what has be- 
 come of them? 
 
 They are like the snows of yester-year! 
 They have gone the way of their beauti- 
 ful chariots with the elaborate armorial 
 bearings and the tasselled hammercloth, 
 the bewigged, cocked-hatted coachman, 
 and the two gorgeous flunkies hanging 
 on behind. Sir Gorgeous Midas has 
 beaten the dukes in mere gorgeousness, 
 flunkies and all burlesqued the vulgar 
 side of them, and unconsciously shamed 
 it out of existence ; made swagger and 
 ostentation unpopular by his own evil 
 example actually improved the man- 
 ners of the great by sheer mimicry of 
 their defects. He has married his sons 
 50
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 and his daughters to them and spoiled 
 the noble curve of those lovely noses 
 that Leech drew so well, and brought 
 them down a peg in many ways, and 
 given them a new lease of life ; and he 
 has enabled us to discover that they are 
 not of such different clay from ourselves 
 after all. All the old slavish formulae 
 of deference and respect "Your Grace," 
 "Your Ladyship," "My Lord "that 
 used to run so glibly off our tongues 
 whenever we had a chance, are now left 
 to servants and shopkeepers; and my 
 slight experience of them, for one, is 
 that they do not want to be toadied a 
 bit, and that they are very polite, well- 
 bred, and most agreeable people. 
 
 If we may judge of our modern aris- 
 tocracy by that very slender fragment 
 of our contemporary fiction, mostly 
 American, that still thinks it worth writ- 
 ing about, our young noble of to-day is 
 51
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 the most good-humored, tolerant, simple- 
 hearted, simple-minded, unsophisticated 
 creature alive thinking nothing of his 
 honors prostrate under the little foot of 
 some fair Yankee, who is just as likely 
 as not to jilt him for some transatlantic 
 painter not yet known to fame. 
 
 Compare this unpretending youth to 
 one of Bulwer's heroes, or Disraeli's, or 
 even Thackeray's ! And his simple old 
 duke of a father and his dowdy old duch- 
 ess of a mother are almost as devoid of 
 swagger as himself ; they seem to apolo- 
 gize for their very existence, if we may 
 trust these American chroniclers who 
 seem to know them so well ; and I really 
 think we no longer care to hear and read 
 about them quite so much as we did 
 unless it be in the society papers ! 
 
 But all these past manners and cus- 
 toms that some of us can remember so 
 well all these obsolete people, from the 
 52
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 heavily whiskered swell to the policeman 
 with the leather-bound chimney-pot hat, 
 from good pater and materfamilias, who 
 were actually looked up to and obeyed 
 by their children, to the croquet-playing 
 darlings in the pork-pie hats and huge 
 crinolines all survive and will survive 
 for many a year in John Leech's pict- 
 ures of Life and Character. 
 
 Except for a certain gentleness, kind- 
 liness, and self-effacing modesty com- 
 mon to both, and which made them ap- 
 pear almost angelic in the eyes of many 
 who knew them, it would be difficult to 
 imagine a greater contrast to Leech than 
 Charles Keene. 
 
 Charles Keene was absolutely uncon- 
 ventional, and even almost eccentric. 
 He dressed more with a view to artistic 
 picturesqueness than to fashion, and de- 
 spised gloves and chimney-pot hats, and 
 black coats and broadcloth generally. 
 
 53
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 Scotch tweed was good enough for him 
 in town and country alike. Though a 
 Tory in politics, he was democratic in 
 his tastes and habits. He liked to smoke 
 his short black pipe on the tops of om- 
 nibuses; he liked to lay and light his 
 own fire and cook his mutton-chop upon 
 it. He had a passion for music and a 
 beautiful voice, and sang with a singular 
 pathos and charm, but he preferred the 
 sound of his bagpipes to that of his own 
 singing, and thought that you must pre- 
 fer it too ! 
 
 He was forever sketching in pen 
 and ink, in -doors and out he used at 
 one time to carry a little ink-bottle at 
 his button-hole, and steel pens in his 
 waistcoat-pocket, and thus equipped he 
 would sketch whatever took his fancy in 
 his walks abroad houses, 'busses, cabs, 
 people bits of street and square, scaf- 
 foldings, boardings with advertisements 
 
 54
 
 From a photograph by Elliott and Fry, Londo 
 CHARLES KEENE
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 sea, river, moor, lake, and mountain 
 what has he not sketched with that mas- 
 terly pen that had already been so care- 
 fully trained by long and arduous prac- 
 tice in a life-school? His heart was in 
 his work from first to last ; beyond his 
 bagpipes and his old books (for he was a 
 passionate reader), he seemed to have 
 no other hobby. His facility in sketch- 
 ing became phenomenal, as also his 
 knowledge of what to put in and what 
 to leave out, so that the effect he aimed 
 at should be secured in perfection and 
 with the smallest appearance of labor. 
 
 Among his other gifts he had a phys- 
 ical gift of inestimable value for such 
 work as ours namely, a splendid hand 
 a large, muscular, well -shaped, and 
 most workman -like hand, whose long 
 deft fingers could move with equal ease 
 and certainty in all directions. I have 
 seen it at work and it was a pleasure 
 55
 
 . SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 to watch its acrobatic dexterity, its un- 
 erring precision of touch. It could draw 
 with nonchalant facility parallel straight 
 lines, or curved, of just the right thick- 
 ness and distance from each other al- 
 most as regular as if they had been 
 drawn with ruler or compass almost, 
 but not quite. The quiteness would 
 have made them mechanical, and robbed 
 them of their charm of human handi- 
 craft. A cunning and obedient slave, 
 this wonderful hand, for which no com- 
 mand from the head could come amiss 
 a slave, moreover, that had most thor- 
 oughly learned its business by long ap- 
 prenticeship to one especial trade, like 
 the head and like the eye that guided it. 
 Leech no doubt had a good natural 
 hand, that swept about with enviable 
 freedom and boldness, but for want of 
 early discipline it could not execute 
 these miracles of skill; and the com- 
 56
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 mands that came from the head also 
 lacked the preciseness which results 
 from patiently acquired and well-digest- 
 ed knowledge, so that Mr. Hand was 
 apt now and then to zigzag a little on 
 its own account in backgrounds, on 
 floors and walls, under chairs and tables, 
 whenever a little tone was felt to be de- 
 i." "Me sometimes in the shading of 
 coaFs and trousers and ladies' dresses. 
 
 But it never took a liberty with a hu- 
 man face or a horse's head ; and when- 
 ever it went a little astray you could al- 
 ways read between the lines and know 
 exactly what it meant. 
 
 There is no difficulty in reading be- 
 tween Keene's lines ; every one of them 
 has its unmistakable definite intimation ; 
 every one is the right line in the right 
 place ! 
 
 We must remember that there are no 
 such things as lines in nature. Whether 
 
 57
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 we use them to represent a human pro- 
 file, the depth of a shadow, the darkness 
 of a cloak or a thunder-cloud, they are 
 mere conventional symbols. They were 
 invented a long time ago, by a distin- 
 guished sportsman who was also a 
 heaven-born amateur artist the John 
 Leech of his day who engraved for us 
 (from life) the picture of a mammoth on 
 one of its own tusks. 
 
 And we have accepted them ever since 
 as the cheapest and simplest way of in- 
 terpreting in black and white for the 
 wood-engraver the shapes and shadows 
 and colors of nature. They may be 
 scratchy, feeble, and uncertain, or firm 
 and bold thick and thin straight, 
 curved, parallel, or irregular cross- 
 hatched once, twice, a dozen times, at 
 any angle every artist has his own way 
 of getting his effect. But some ways 
 are better than others, and I think 
 58
 
 in s 
 5 o 
 !1 < 
 
 I: w 
 
 H
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 Keene's is the firmest, loosest, simplest 
 and best way that ever was, and the 
 most difficult to imitate. His mere pen- 
 strokes have, for the expert, a beauty 
 and an interest quite apart from the 
 thing they are made to depict, whether 
 he uses them as mere outlines to express 
 the shape of things animate or inanimate, 
 even such shapeless, irregular things as 
 the stones on a sea-beach or in com- 
 bination to suggest the tone and color 
 of a dress-coat, or a drunkard's nose, of 
 a cab or omnibus of a distant moun- 
 tain with miles of atmosphere between 
 it and the figures in the foreground. 
 
 His lines are as few as can be he is 
 most economical in this respect and 
 loves to leave as much white paper as he 
 can ; but one feels in his best work that 
 one line more or one line less would 
 impair the perfection of the whole 
 that of all the many directions, curves, 
 59
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 and thicknesses they might have taken 
 he has inevitably hit upon just the right 
 one. He has beaten all previous rec- 
 ords in this respect in this country, at 
 least. I heard a celebrated French 
 painter say: " He is a great man, your 
 Charles Keene ; he take a pen and ink 
 and a bit of paper, and wiz a half-dozen 
 strokes he know 'ow to frame a gust of 
 wind !" I think myself that Leech 
 could frame a gust of wind as effectually 
 as Keene, by the sheer force of his un- 
 taught natural instinct of his genius; 
 but not with the deftness this economy 
 of material this certainty of execution 
 this consummate knowledge of effect. 
 To borrow a simile from music, there 
 are certain tunes so fresh and sweet and 
 pretty that they please at once and for- 
 ever, like " Home, Sweet Home," or 
 " The Last Rose of Summer "; they go 
 straight to the heart of the multitude, 
 60
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 however slight the accompaniment a 
 few simple chords they hardly want an 
 accompaniment at all. 
 
 Leech's art seems to me of just such 
 a happy kind : he draws I mean he 
 scores like an amateur who has not 
 made a very profound study of harmony, 
 and sings his pretty song to his simple 
 accompaniment with so sweet and true 
 a natural voice that we are charmed. It 
 is the magic of nature, whereas Keene 
 is a very Sebastian Bach in his counter- 
 point. There is nothing of the amateur 
 about him ; his knowledge of harmony 
 in black and white is complete and thor- 
 ough; mere consummate scoring has 
 become to him a second nature; each 
 separate note of his voice reveals the 
 long training of the professional singer ; 
 and if his tunes are less obviously sweet 
 and his voice less naturally winning and 
 sympathetic than Leech's, his aesthetic 
 
 61
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 achievement is all the greater. It is to 
 his brother artists rather than to the 
 public at large that his most successful 
 appeal is made but with an intensity 
 that can only be gained by those who 
 have tried in vain to do what he has 
 done, and who thereby know how diffi- 
 cult it is. His real magic is that of art. 
 This perhaps accounts for the unmis- 
 takable fact that Leech's popularity has 
 been so much greater than Keene's, and 
 I believe is still. Leech's little melodies 
 of the pencil (to continue the parallel 
 with the sister art) are like Volkslieder 
 national airs and more directly reach 
 the national heart. Transplant them to 
 other lands that have pencil Volkslieder 
 of their own (though none, I think, com- 
 parable to his for fun and sweetness and 
 simplicity) and they fail to please as 
 much, while their mere artistic qualities 
 are not such as to find favor among for- 
 62
 
 2 
 
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 81 
 
 3 '. ^ 
 
 S cd S 
 
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 ^o r
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 eign experts, whereas Keene actually 
 gains by such a process. He is as much 
 admired by the artists of France and Ger- 
 many as by our own if not more. For 
 some of his shortcomings, such as his 
 lack of feeling for English female beauty, 
 his want of perception, perhaps his dis- 
 dain, of certain little eternal traits and 
 conventions and differences that stamp 
 the various grades of our social hierarchy, 
 do not strike them, and nothing inter- 
 feres with their complete appreciation 
 of his craftsmanship. 
 
 Perhaps, also, Leech's frequent verifi- 
 cation of our manly British pluck and 
 honesty, and proficiency in sport, and 
 wholesomeness and cleanliness of body 
 and mind, our general physical beauty 
 and distinction, and his patriotic ten- 
 dency to contrast our exclusive posses- 
 sion of these delightful gifts with the 
 deplorable absence of them in any coun- 
 63
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 try but our own, may fail to enlist the 
 sympathies of the benighted foreigner. 
 
 Whereas there is not much to humili- 
 ate the most touchy French or German 
 reader of Punch, or excite his envy, in 
 Charles Keene's portraiture of our race. 
 He is impartial and detached, and the 
 most rabid Anglophobe may frankly ad- 
 mire him without losing his self-esteem. 
 The English lower middle class and 
 people, that Keene has depicted with 
 such judicial freedom from either prej- 
 udice or prepossession, have many vir- 
 tues; but they are not especially con- 
 spicuous for much vivacity or charm 
 of aspect or gainliness of demeanor ; 
 and he has not gone out of his way to 
 idealize them. 
 
 Also, he seldom if ever gibes at those 
 who have not been able to resist the 
 temptations (as Mr. Gilbert would say) 
 of belonging to other nations. 
 6 4
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 Thus in absolute craftsmanship and 
 technical skill, in the ease and beauty of 
 his line, his knowledge of effect, his com- 
 plete mastery over the material means 
 at his disposal, Charles Keene seems to 
 me as superior to Leech as Leech is to 
 him in grace, in human naturalness and 
 geniality of humor, in accurate observa- 
 tion of life, in keenness of social percep- 
 tion, and especially in width of range. 
 
 The little actors on Leech's stage are 
 nearly all of them every-day people 
 types one is constantly meeting. High 
 or low, tipsy or sober, vulgar or refined, 
 pleasant or the reverse, we knew them 
 all before Leech ever drew them; and our 
 recognition of them on his page is full 
 of delight at meeting old familiar friends 
 and seeing them made fun of for our 
 amusement. 
 
 Whereas a great many of Keene's mid- 
 dle-class protagonists are peculiar and 
 
 E 65
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 exceptional, and much of their humor 
 lies in their eccentricity ; they are char- 
 acters themselves, rather than types of 
 English characters. Are they really 
 observed and drawn from life, do they 
 really exist just as they are, or are they 
 partly evolved from the depths of an in- 
 ner consciousness that is not quite satis- 
 fied with life just as it is? 
 
 They are often comic, with their ex- 
 quisitely drawn faces so full of subtlety 
 intensely comic ! Their enormous per- 
 plexities about nothing, their utter guile- 
 lessness, their innocence of the wicked 
 world and its ways, make them engaging 
 sometimes in spite of a certain ungain- 
 liness of gesture, dress, and general be- 
 havior that belongs to them, and which 
 delighted Charles Keene, who was the 
 reverse of ungainly, just as the oft-recur- 
 ring tipsiness of his old gentlemen de- 
 lighted him, though he was the most ab- 
 
 66
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 stemious of men. I am now speaking 
 of his middle-class people those won- 
 derful philistines of either sex ; those 
 elaborately capped and corpulent old 
 ladies ; those mutton - chop - whiskered, 
 middle-aged gentlemen with long upper 
 lips and florid complexions, receding 
 chins, noses almost horizontal in their 
 prominence ; those artless damsels who 
 trouble themselves so little about the 
 latest fashions ; those feeble - minded, 
 hirsute swells with the sloping shoulders 
 and the broad hips and the little hats 
 cocked on one side ; those unkempt, 
 unspoiled, unspotted from the world 
 brothers of the brush, who take in their 
 own milk, and so complacently ignore 
 all the rotten conventionalism of our 
 over-civilized existence. 
 
 When he takes his subjects from the 
 classes beneath these, he is, if not quite 
 so funny, at his best, I think. His cos- 
 67
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 termongers and policemen, his omnibus 
 drivers and conductors and cabbies, are 
 inimitable studies ; and as for his 'busses 
 and cabs, I really cannot find words to 
 express my admiration of them. In 
 these, as in his street scenes and land- 
 scapes, he is unapproached and unap- 
 proachable. 
 
 Nor must we forget his canny Scots- 
 men, his Irish laborers and peasants, his 
 splendid English navvies, and least of all 
 his volunteers he and Leech might be 
 called the pillars of the volunteer move- 
 ment, from the manner, so true, so sym- 
 pathetic, and so humorous, in which 
 they have immortalized its beginning. 
 
 Charles Keene is seldom a satirist. 
 His nature was too tolerant and too 
 sweet for hate, and that makes him a bad 
 and somewhat perfunctory hater. He 
 tries to hate 'Any, but he can't, for he 
 draws an ideal 'Any that surely never 
 68
 
 "NONE O* YOUR LARKS" 
 
 GIGANTIC NAVVY. " Let's walk between yer, Gents; folks '11 think you've took 
 up a Deserter." Punch, October 19, 1861.
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 was, and thus his shaft misses the mark ; 
 compare his 'Any to one of Leech's 
 snobs, for instance ! He tries to hate 
 the haw-haw swell, and is equally un- 
 successful. When you hate and can 
 draw, you can draw what you hate down 
 to its minutest details better, perhaps, 
 than what you love so that whoever 
 runs and reads and looks at your pict- 
 ures hates with you. 
 
 Who ever hated a personage of Keene's 
 beyond that feeble kind of aversion that 
 comes from mere uncongeniality, a 
 slightly offended social taste, or prej- 
 udice ? One feels a mere indulgent and 
 half-humorous disdain, but no hate. On 
 the other hand, I do not think that we 
 love his personages very much we 
 stand too much outside his eccentric 
 world for sympathy. From the pencil 
 of this most lovable man, with his 
 unrivalled power of expressing all he 
 69
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 saw and thought, I cannot recall many 
 lovable characters of either sex or any 
 age. Here and there a good-natured 
 cabby, a jolly navvy, a simple-minded 
 flautist or bagpiper, or a little street 
 Arab, like the small boy who pointed 
 out the jail doctor to his pal and said, 
 " That's my medical man." 
 
 Whereas Leech's pages teem with 
 winning, graceful, lovable types, and 
 here and there a hateful one to give 
 relief. 
 
 But, somehow, one liked the man who 
 drew these strange people, even without 
 knowing him ; when you knew him you 
 loved him very much so much that no 
 room was left in you for envy of his un- 
 attainable mastery in his art. For of 
 this there can be no doubt no greater 
 or more finished master in black and 
 white has devoted his life to the illustra- 
 tion of the manners and humors of his 
 70
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 time ; and if Leech is even greater than 
 he, and I for one am inclined to think 
 he is, it is not as an artist, but as a stu- 
 dent and observer of human nature, as a 
 master of the light, humorous, superficial 
 criticism of life. 
 
 Charles Keene died of general atrophy 
 on January 4, 1891. It was inexpres- 
 sibly pathetic to see how patiently, how 
 resignedly, he wasted away ; he retained 
 his unalterable sweetness to the last. 
 
 His handsome, dark-skinned face, so 
 strongly lined and full of character ; his 
 mild and magnificent light -gray eyes, 
 that reminded one of a St. Bernard's ; 
 his tall, straight, slender aspect, that re- 
 minded one of Don Quixote ; his sim- 
 plicity of speech and character ; his love 
 of humor, and the wonderful smile that 
 lit up his face when he heard a good 
 story, and the still more wonderful wink 
 of his left eye when he told one all 
 71
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 these will remain strongly impressed 
 on the minds of those who ever met 
 him. 
 
 I attended his funeral as I had attend- 
 ed Leech's twenty -six years before; 
 Canon Ainger, a common friend of us 
 both, performed the service. It was a 
 bitterly cold day, which accounted for 
 the sparseness of the mourners compared 
 to the crowd that was present on the 
 former occasion ; but bearing in mind 
 that all those present were either rela- 
 tions or old friends, all of them with the 
 strongest and deepest personal regard 
 (or the friend we had lost, the attend- 
 ance seemed very large indeed ; and all 
 of us, I think, in our affectionate remem- 
 brance of one of the most singularly 
 sweet-natured, sweet-tempered, and sim- 
 ple-hearted men that ever lived, forgot 
 for the time that a very great artist was 
 being laid to his rest. 
 72
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 And now, in fulfilment of my contract, 
 I must speak of myself a difficult and 
 not very grateful task. One's self is a 
 person about whom one knows too much 
 and too little about whom we can 
 never hit a happy medium. Sometimes 
 one rates one's self too high, sometimes 
 (but less frequently) too low, according 
 to the state of our digestion, our spirits, 
 our pocket, or even the weather ! 
 
 In the present instance I will say all 
 the good of myself I can decently, and 
 leave all the rating to you. It is inev- 
 itable, however unfortunate it may be 
 for me, that I should be compared with 
 my two great predecessors, Leech and 
 Keene, whom I have just been compar- 
 ing to each other. 
 
 When John Leech's mantle fell from 
 his shoulders it was found that the gar- 
 ment was ample to clothe the naked- 
 ness of more than one successor. 
 
 73
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 John Tenniel had already, it is true, 
 replaced him for several years as the 
 political cartoonist of Punch. How ad- 
 mirably he has always filled that post, 
 then and ever since, and how great his 
 fame is, I need not speak of here. Lin- 
 ley Sambourne and Harry Furniss, so 
 different from each other and from Ten- 
 niel, have also, since then, brought their 
 great originality and their unrivalled skill 
 to the political illustrations of Punch 
 Sambourne to the illustration of many 
 other things in it besides, but which do 
 not strictly belong to the present subject. 
 
 I am here concerned with the social 
 illustrators alone, and, besides, only with 
 those who have made the sketches of 
 social subjects in Punch the principal 
 business of their lives. For very many 
 artists, from Sir John Millais, Sir John 
 Gilbert, Frederick Walker, and Ran- 
 dolph Caldecott downward, have con- 
 
 74
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 tributed to that fortunate periodical at 
 one time or another, and not a few dis- 
 tinguished amateurs. 
 
 Miss Georgina Bowers, Mr. Corbould, 
 and others have continued the fox-hunt- 
 ing tradition, and provided those scenes 
 which have become a necessity to the 
 sporting readers of Punch. 
 
 To Charles Keene was fairly left that 
 part of the succession that was most to 
 his taste the treatment of life in the 
 street and the open country, in the shops 
 and parlors of the lower middle class, 
 and the homes of the people. 
 
 And to me were allotted the social and 
 domestic dramas, the nursery, the school- 
 room, the dining and drawing rooms, 
 and croquet -lawns of the more or less 
 well-to-do. 
 
 I was particularly told not to try to 
 be broadly funny, but to undertake the 
 light and graceful business, like zjeune 
 75
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 premier. I was, in short, to be the 
 tenor, or rather the tenorino, of that 
 little company for which Mr. Punch 
 beats time with his immortal baton, and 
 to warble in black and white such mel- 
 odies as I could evolve from my con- 
 templations of the gentler aspect of 
 English life, while Keene, with his mag- 
 nificent, highly trained basso, sang the 
 comic songs. 
 
 We all became specialized, so to 
 speak, and divided Leech's vast domain 
 among us. 
 
 We kicked a little at first, I remember, 
 and whenever (to continue the musical 
 simile) I could get in a comic song, or 
 what I thought one, or some queer fan- 
 tastic ditty about impossible birds and 
 hearts and fishes and what not, I did not 
 let the opportunity slip ; while Keene, 
 who had a very fine falsetto on the top 
 of his chest register, would now and 
 76
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 then warble, pianissimo, some little bal- 
 lad of the drawing-room or nursery. 
 
 But gradually we settled into our re- 
 spective grooves, and I have grown to 
 like my little groove very much, nar- 
 row though it be a poor thing, but 
 mine own ! 
 
 Moreover, certain physical disabilities 
 that I have the misfortune to labor un- 
 der make it difficult for me to study and 
 sketch the lusty things in the open air 
 and sunshine. My sight, besides being 
 defective in many ways, is so sensitive 
 that I cannot face the common light of 
 day without glasses thickly rimmed with 
 wire gauze, so that sketching out-of- 
 doors is often to me a difficult and 
 distressing performance. That is also 
 partly why I am not a sportsman and a 
 delineator of sport. 
 
 I mention this infirmity not as an ex- 
 cuse for my shortcomings and failures 
 77
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 for them there is no excuse but as a 
 reason why I have abstained from the 
 treatment of so much that is so popular, 
 delightful, and exhilarating in English 
 country life. 
 
 If there had been no Charles Keene 
 (a terrible supposition both for Punch 
 and its readers), I should have done my 
 best to illustrate the lower walks and 
 phases of London existence, which at- 
 tract me as much as any other. It is 
 just as easy to draw a costermonger or 
 a washer-woman as it is a gentleman or 
 lady perhaps a little easier but it is 
 by no means so easy to draw them as 
 Keene did ! And to draw a cab or an 
 omnibus after him (though I have some- 
 times been obliged to do so) is almost 
 tempting Providence ! 
 
 If there had been no Charles Keene, 
 I might, perhaps, with practice, have be- 
 come a funny man myself though I do 
 78
 
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 9 a 
 
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 5 N 
 
 II
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 not suppose that my fun would have 
 ever been of the broadest ! 
 
 Before I became an artist I was con- 
 sidered particularly good at caricaturing 
 my friends, who always foresaw for me 
 more than one change of profession, and 
 Punch as the final goal of my wander- 
 ings in search of a career. For it was 
 originally intended that I should be a 
 man of science. 
 
 Dr. Williamson, the eminent chemist 
 and professor of chemistry, told me not 
 long ago that he remembers caricatures 
 that I drew, now forty years back, when 
 I was studying under him at the Labor- 
 atory of Chemistry at University College, 
 and that he and other grave and rever- 
 end professors were hugely tickled by 
 them at the time. Indeed he remembers 
 nothing else about me, except that I 
 promised to be a very bad chemist. 
 
 I was a very bad chemist indeed, but 
 
 79
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 not for long ! As soon as I was free to 
 do as I pleased, I threw up test-tubes 
 and crucibles and went back to Paris, 
 where I was born and brought up, and 
 studied to become an artist in M. 
 Glyre's studio. Then I went to Ant- 
 werp, where there is a famous school of 
 painting, and where I had no less a per- 
 son than Mr. Alma-Tadema as a fellow- 
 student. It was all delightful, but mis- 
 fortune befell me, and I lost the sight 
 of one eye perhaps it was the eye with 
 which I used to do the funny carica- 
 tures ; it was a very good eye, much the 
 better of the two, and the other has not 
 improved by having to do a double 
 share of the work. 
 
 And then in time I came to England 
 and drew for Punch, thus fulfilling the 
 early prophecy of my friends and fellow- 
 students at University College though 
 not quite in the sense they anticipated. 
 80
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 I will not attempt a description of my 
 work it is so recent and has been so 
 widely circulated that it should be un- 
 necessary to do so. If you do not 
 remember it, it is that it is not worth 
 remembering ; if you do, I can only en- 
 treat you to be to my faults a little 
 blind, and to my virtues very kind ! 
 
 I have always tried as honestly and 
 truthfully as lies in me to serve up to the 
 readers of Punch whatever I have culled 
 with the bodily eye, after cooking it 
 a little in the brain. My raw material 
 requires more elaborate working than 
 Leech's. He dealt more in flowers and 
 fruits and roots, if I may express myself 
 so figuratively from the lordly pineap- 
 ple and lovely rose, down to the hum- 
 ble daisy and savory radish. / deal in 
 vegetables, I suppose. Little that I ever 
 find seems to me fit for the table just as 
 I see it ; morever, by dishing it up raw 
 
 F 8l
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 I should offend many people and make 
 many enemies, and deserve to do so. I 
 cook my green pease, asparagus, French 
 beans, Brussels sprouts, German sauer- 
 kraut, and even a truffle now and then, 
 so carefully that you would never rec- 
 ognize them as they were when I first 
 picked them in the social garden. And 
 they do not recognize themselves! Or 
 even each other ! 
 
 And I do my best to dish them up in 
 good, artistic style. O that I could ar- 
 range for you a truffle with all that 
 culinary skill that Charles Keene brought 
 to the mere boiling of a carrot or a po- 
 tato ! He is the cordon bleu par excel- 
 lence. The people I meet seem to me 
 more interesting than funny so in- 
 teresting that I am well content to 
 draw them as I see them, after just a 
 little arrangement and a very transpar- 
 ent disguise and without any attempt 
 82
 
 S rf 2 c/J g 
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 IB. 
 
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 S- G 
 
 5 2 
 S 5
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 at caricature. The better looking they 
 are, the more my pencil loves them, and 
 I feel more inclined to exaggerate in 
 this direction than in any other. 
 
 Sam Weller, if you recollect, was fond 
 of "pootiness and wirtue." I so agree 
 with him ! I adore them both, especial- 
 ly in women and children. I only wish 
 that the wirtue was as easy to draw as 
 the pootiness. 
 
 But indeed for me speaking as an 
 artist, and also, perhaps, a little bit as a 
 man pootiness is almost a wirtue in it- 
 self. I don't think I shall ever weary of 
 trying to depict it, from its dawn in the 
 toddling infant to its decline and set- 
 ting and long twilight in the beautiful 
 old woman, who has known how to grow 
 old gradually. I like to surround it with 
 chivalrous and stalwart manhood ; and 
 it is a standing grievance to me that I 
 have to clothe all this masculine escort 
 83
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 in coats and trousers and chimney-pot 
 hats ; worse than all, in the evening dress 
 of the period! that I cannot surround 
 my divinity with a guard of honor more 
 worthily arrayed ! 
 
 Thus, of all my little piebald puppets 
 the one I value the most is my pretty 
 woman. I am as fond of her as Leech 
 was of his ; of whom, by-the-way, she is 
 the granddaughter ! This is not artistic 
 vanity ; it is pure paternal affection, and 
 by no means prevents me from seeing 
 her faults ; it only prevents me from 
 seeing them as clearly as you do ! 
 
 Please be not very severe on her, for 
 her grandmother's sake. Words fail me 
 to express how much I loved her grand- 
 mother, who wore a cricket -cap and 
 broke Aunt Sally's nose seven times. 
 
 Will my pretty woman ever be all I 
 wish her to be ? All she ought to be ? 
 I fear not ! 
 
 8 4
 
 FELINE AMENITIES 
 
 "I wish you hadn't asked Captain Wareham, Lizzie. Horrid man! I 
 can't bear him !" 
 
 "Dear me, Charlotte isn't the World big enough for you both?" 
 "Yes; but your little Dining-room isn't I" Punch, February 16, 1889.
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 On the mantel-piece in my studio at 
 home there stands a certain lady. She 
 is but lightly clad, and what simple gar- 
 ment she wears is not in the fashion of 
 our day. How well I know her ! Al- 
 most thoroughly by this time for she 
 has been the silent companion of my 
 work for thirty years! She has lost 
 both her arms and one of her feet, 
 which I deplore ; and also the tip of her 
 nose, but that has been made good ! 
 
 She is only three feet high, or there- 
 abouts, and quite two thousand years 
 old, or more ; but she is ever young 
 
 "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale 
 Her infinite variety !" 
 
 and a very giantess in beauty. For she 
 is a reduction in plaster of the famous 
 statue of the Louvre. 
 
 They call her the Venus of Milo, or 
 Melos ! It is a calumny a libel. She 
 85
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 is no Venus, except in good looks ; and 
 if she errs at all, it is on the side of aus- 
 terity. She is not only pootiness, but 
 wirtue incarnate (if one can be incarnate 
 in marble), from the crown of her lovely 
 head to the sole of her remaining foot 
 a very beautiful foot, though by no means 
 a small one it has never worn a high- 
 heel shoe ! 
 
 Like all the best of its kind, and its 
 kind the best, she never sates nor palls, 
 and the more I look at her the more I 
 see to love and worship and, alas, the 
 more dissatisfied I feel not indeed with 
 the living beauty, ripe and real, that I 
 see about and around mere life is such 
 a beauty in itself that no stone ideal 
 can ever hope to match it ! But dissatis- 
 fied with the means at my command to 
 do the living beauty justice a little bit 
 of paper, a steel pen, and a bottle of ink 
 and, alas, fingers and an eye less skilled 
 
 86
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 than they would have been if I had gone 
 straight to a school of art instead of a 
 laboratory for chemistry ! 
 
 And now for social pictorial satire con- 
 sidered as a fine art. 
 
 They who have practised it hither- 
 to, from Hogarth downward, have not 
 been many you can count their names 
 on your fingers ! And the wide popular- 
 ity they have won may be due as much 
 to their scarcity as to the interest we all 
 take in having the mirror held up to our- 
 selves to the malicious pleasure we all 
 feel at seeing our neighbors held up to 
 gentle ridicule or well - merited reproof ; 
 most of all, perhaps, to the realistic charm 
 that lies in all true representation of the 
 social aspects with which we are most 
 familiar, ugly as these are often apt to 
 be, with our chimney-pot hats and trou- 
 sers, that unfit us, it seems, for serious 
 and elaborate pictorial treatment at the 
 87
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 hands of the foremost painters of our 
 own times except when we sit to them 
 for our portraits ; then they have willy- 
 nilly to make the best of us, just as 
 we are! 
 
 The plays and novels that succeed 
 the most are those which treat of the 
 life of our own day ; not so the costly 
 pictures we hang upon our walls. We 
 do not care to have continually before 
 our eyes elaborate representations of 
 the life we lead every day and all day 
 long; we like best that which rather 
 takes us out of it romantic or graceful 
 episodes of another time or clime, when 
 men wore prettier clothes than they do 
 now well-imagined, well-painted scenes 
 from classic lore historical subjects 
 subjects selected from our splendid 
 literature and what not ; or, if we want 
 modern subjects, we prefer scenes chosen 
 from a humble sphere, which is not 
 88
 
 ^l so l 
 
 ^ a * * 
 
 5 5 3 ~
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 that of those who can afford to buy 
 pictures the toilers of the earth 
 the toilers of the sea pathetic scenes 
 from the inexhaustible annals of the 
 poor; or else, again, landscapes and 
 seascapes things that bring a whiff of 
 nature into our feverish and artificial 
 existence that are in direct contrast 
 to it. 
 
 And even with these beautiful things, 
 how often the charm wears away with 
 the novelty of possession ! How often 
 and how soon the lovely picture, like its 
 frame, becomes just as a piece of wall- 
 furniture, in which we take a pride, cer- 
 tainly, and which we should certainly 
 miss if it were taken away but which 
 we grow to look at with the pathetic 
 indifference of habit if not, indeed, 
 with aversion ! 
 
 Chairs and tables minister to our 
 physical comforts, and we cannot do 
 89
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 without them. But pictures have not 
 this practical hold upon us; the sense 
 to which they appeal is not always on 
 the alert ; yet there they are hanging 
 on the wall, morning, noon, and night, 
 unchanged, unchangeable the same 
 arrested movement the same expres- 
 sion of face the same seas and trees 
 and moors and forests and rivers and 
 mountains the very waves are as eter- 
 nal as the hills ! 
 
 Music will leave off when it is not 
 wanted at least it ought to ! The book 
 is shut, the newspaper thrown aside. 
 Not so the beautiful picture ; it is like a 
 perennial nosegay, forever exhaling its 
 perfume for noses that have long ceased 
 to smell it ! 
 
 But little pictures in black and white, 
 of little every-day people like ourselves, 
 by some great little artist who knows 
 life well and has the means at his corn- 
 go
 
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 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 mand to express his knowledge in this 
 easy, simple manner, can be taken up 
 and thrown down like the book or news- 
 paper. They are even easier to read 
 and understand. They are within the 
 reach of the meanest capacity, the hum- 
 blest education, the most slender purse. 
 They come to us weekly, let us say, in 
 cheap periodicals. They are preserved 
 and bound up in volumes, to be taken 
 down and looked at when so disposed. 
 The child grows to love them before he 
 knows how to read ; fifty years hence he 
 will love them still, if only for the pleas- 
 ure they gave him as a child. He will 
 soon know them by heart, and yet go 
 to them again and again ; and if they 
 are good, he will always find new beau- 
 ties and added interest as he himself 
 grows in taste and culture ; and how 
 much of that taste and culture he will 
 owe to them, who can say ? 
 91
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 Nothing sticks so well in the young 
 mind as a little picture one can hold 
 close to the eyes like a book not even 
 a song or poem for in the case of most 
 young people the memory of the eye is 
 better than that of the ear its power of 
 assimilating more rapid and more keen. 
 And then there is the immense variety, 
 the number! 
 
 Our pictorial satirist taking the great- 
 est pains, doing his very best, can pro- 
 duce, say, a hundred of these little pict- 
 ures in a twelvemonth, while his elder 
 brother of the brush bestows an equal 
 labor and an equal time on one impor- 
 tant canvas, which will take another 
 twelvemonth to engrave, perhaps, for 
 the benefit of those fortunate enough to 
 be able to afford the costly engraving 
 of that one priceless work of art, which 
 only one millionaire can possess at a 
 time. Happy millionaire ; happy painter 
 92
 
 TJ H V H 
 
 C B G B 
 
 - 2 n 
 
 r S r S 
 
 M . B 
 I 50 -SO 
 
 fl'.H'. 
 
 _ o 
 S 3 
 < S 
 
 8 H
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 just as likely as not to become a mill- 
 ionaire himself ! And this elder broth- 
 er of the brush will be the first to ac- 
 knowledge his little brother's greatness 
 if the little brother's work be well 
 done. You should hear how the first 
 painters of our time, here and abroad, 
 express themselves about Charles 
 Keene ! They do not speak of him as 
 a little brother, I tell you, but a very 
 big brother indeed. 
 
 Thackeray, for me, and many others, 
 the greatest novelist, satirist, humorist 
 of our time, where so many have been 
 great, is said to have at the beginning 
 of his career wished to illustrate the 
 books of others Charles Dickens's, I 
 believe, for one. Fortunately, perhaps, 
 for us and for him, and perhaps for 
 Dickens, he did not succeed ; he lived to 
 write books of his own, and to illus- 
 trate them himself ; and it is generally 
 93
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 admitted that his illustrations, clever 
 as they are, were not up to the mark 
 of his writings. 
 
 It was not his natural mode of expres- 
 sion and I doubt if any amount of 
 training and study would have made it 
 a successful mode ; the love of the thing 
 does not necessarily carry the power to 
 do it. That he loved it he has shown 
 us in many ways, and also that he was 
 always practising it. Most of my hear- 
 ers will remember his beautiful ballad of 
 " The Pen and the Album " 
 
 " I am my master's faithful old gold pen. 
 I've served him three long years, and drawn 
 
 since then 
 Thousands of funny women and droll 
 
 men." . . . 
 
 Now conceive it is not an impossible 
 
 conception that the marvellous gift of 
 
 expression that he was to possess in 
 
 94
 
 REFINEMENTS OF MODERN SPEECH 
 (ScEXE A Drawing-room in "Passionate Brompten."} 
 FAIR ./ESTHETIC (suddenly, and in deepest tones to Smith, 
 
 who lias just been introduced to take her in to Dinner). "Are 
 
 you Intense ?" Punch, June 14, 1879.
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 words had been changed by some fairy 
 at his birth into an equal gift of expres- 
 sion by means of the pencil, and that he 
 had cultivated the gift as assiduously as 
 he cultivated the other, and finally that 
 he had exercised it as sedulously through 
 life, bestowing on innumerable little pict- 
 ures in black and white all the wit and 
 wisdom, the wide culture, the deep 
 knowledge of the world and of the hu- 
 man heart, all the satire, the tenderness, 
 the drollery, and last, but not least, that 
 incomparable perfection of style that 
 we find in all or most that he has writ- 
 ten what a pictorial record that would 
 be! 
 
 Think of it a collection of little 
 wood -cuts or etchings, with each its 
 appropriate legend a series of small 
 pictures equal in volume and in value 
 to the whole of Thackeray's literary 
 work ! Think of the laughter and the 
 95
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 tears from old and young, rich and poor, 
 and from the thousands who have not 
 the intelligence or the culture to ap- 
 preciate great books, or lack time or 
 inclination to read them. 
 
 All there was in the heart and mind 
 of Thackeray, expressed through a me- 
 dium so simple and direct that even 
 a child could be made to feel it, or a 
 chimney-sweep! For where need we 
 draw the line? We are only pretending. 
 
 Now I am quite content with^Thack- 
 eray as he is a writer of books, whose 
 loss to literature could not be compen- 
 sated by any. gain to the gentle art of 
 drawing little figures in black and white 
 "thousands of funny women and droll 
 men." All I wish to point out, in these 
 days when drawing is pressed into the 
 service of daily journalism, and with 
 such success that there will soon be as 
 many journalists with the pencil as with 
 96
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 the pen, is this, that the career of the 
 future social pictorial satirist is full of 
 splendid possibilities undreamed-of yet. 
 
 It is a kind of hybrid profession still 
 in its infancy hardly recognized as a 
 profession at all something half-way 
 between literature and art yet poten- 
 tially combining all that is best and most 
 essential in both, and appealing as effec- 
 tively as either to some of our strongest 
 needs and most natural instincts. 
 
 It has no school as yet ; its methods 
 are tentative, and its few masters have 
 been pretty much self-taught. But I 
 think that a method and a school will 
 evolve themselves by degrees are per- 
 haps evolving themselves already. 
 
 The quality of black and white illus- 
 trations of modern life is immeasurably 
 higher than it was thirty or forty years 
 ago its average and artistic quality 
 and it is getting higher day by day. 
 G 97
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 The number of youths who can draw 
 beautifully is quite appalling; one would 
 think they had learned to draw be- 
 fore learning to read and write. Why 
 shouldn't they? 
 
 Well, all we want, for my little dream 
 to be realized, is that among these pre- 
 cocious wielders of the pencil there 
 should arise here a Dickens, there a 
 Thackeray, there a George Eliot or an 
 Anthony Trollope, who, finding quite 
 early in life that he can draw as easily 
 as other men can spell, that he can ex- 
 press himself, and all that he hears and 
 sees and feels, more easily, more com. 
 pletely, in that way than in any other, 
 will devote himself heart and soul to 
 that form of expression as I and oth- 
 ers have tried to do but with advan- 
 tages of nature, circumstances, and edu- 
 cation that have been denied to us ! 
 
 Hogarth seems to have come nearer
 
 S O 
 
 ^ 2, H 
 
 f X r*. ?T 
 
 P M 
 H 
 "< 
 
 I 5. 
 
 < 1!.
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 to this ideal pictorial satirist than any 
 of his successors in Punch and elsewhere. 
 For he was not merely a light humorist 
 and a genial caricaturist ; he dealt also 
 in pathos and terror, in tragic passion 
 and sorrow and crime; he often strikes 
 chords of too deep a tone for the pages 
 of a comic periodical. 
 
 But the extent of his productiveness 
 was limited by the method of his pro- 
 duction ; he was a great painter in oils, 
 and each of his life scenes is an impor- 
 tant and elaborate picture, which, more- 
 over, he engraved himself at great cost 
 of time and labor, after the original time 
 and labor spent in painting it. It is by 
 these engravings, far more than by his 
 pictures, that he is so widely known. 
 
 It is quite possible to conceive a little 
 
 sketchy wood-cut no larger than a cut 
 
 in Punch, and drawn by a master like 
 
 Charles Keene, or the German Adolf 
 
 99
 
 SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE 
 
 Mensel, giving us all the essence of any 
 picture by Hogarth even more effective- 
 ly, more agreeably, than any of Ho- 
 garth's most finished engravings. And 
 if this had been Hogarth's method of 
 work, instead of some fifty or sixty of 
 those immortal designs we should have 
 had some five or six thousand! Almost 
 a library ! 
 
 So much for the great pictorial satir- 
 ist of the future of the near future, let 
 us hope that I have been trying to 
 evolve from my inner consciousness. 
 May some of us live to see him ! 
 
 THE END
 
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