The History of "Punch" Part 40

Atkinson to town, Mark Lemon invited him to dine at the Garrick Club (whither they drove in a hansom, much in the style shown in the sketch), and s.h.i.+rley Brooks drank to him as "the future cartoonist of _Punch_."

His first cut--an initial T--appeared on p. 15, Vol. XLVIII, and thenceforward Mr. Atkinson has been considered on the "outside Staff,"

with but two breaks: the first during an absence in Paris for artistic instruction, and the second from 1869 to 1876, when an opportunity occurred to make a "sure fortune" in commerce. The "sure fortune," as usually befalls, became a pecuniary loss, and the draughtsman gladly went back to the service of _Punch_ and the other papers and books to which his pencil (under a different signature) has been devoted. It is years since Mr. Atkinson, who has latterly worked less for _Punch_ than in the early days of his connection, was able to do himself full justice in a half-page drawing; but his "Dumb Crambo" series remain among the happy things which _Punch_ has published in the direction of punning sketches. They remind one of those by Hine, Newman, and the rest, in the old "blackie" days, and are often little masterpieces of comic ingenuity--as may be seen in "Shooting over an Extensive Moor," where a man is discharging his weapon over the portly figure of a Moorish gentleman. Mr. Atkinson, in addition, made some two score literary contributions to the paper and "Pocket-book"--poems chiefly, and stories, not counting smaller trifles, between August, 1877, and the accession of Mr. Burnand to the Editors.h.i.+p. It was, I may add, at the suggestion of Mr. Burnand that Mr. Atkinson adopted his _nom de crayon_, just as he suggested Mr. Furniss's "Lika Joko."

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLES H. BENNETT.

(_From the Water-Colour Drawing by Himself._)]

One of the brightest and most talented draughtsmen _Punch_ has ever had was Charles H. Bennett, the forerunner of Mr. Linley Sambourne. He had graduated in comic draughtsmans.h.i.+p, having been the life and soul of "Diogenes" (August, 1855), and rendered solid service to the "Comic Times" (1855), and the "Comic News" (1863 to 1865), by which time his cipher of an owl, and then of a B in an owl's beak ("B in it" = Bennett), were known and appreciated. Apart from his _Punch_ work, his "Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress" was his masterpiece in serious art; while in the opposite direction his "Shadows" (which procured him for a time the public nickname of "Shadow Bennett"), as well as his amusing "Studies in Darwinesque Development" for Vizetelly's "Ill.u.s.trated Times," and his second series, somewhat less satisfactory, of "Shadow and Substance," obtained for him great popularity. But when he came on _Punch_, introduced to Mark Lemon by Hain Friswell, he was within two years of his death. His debut was on February 11th, 1865, with a sketch of "Our Play Box," in which "Mr. Punch's delight at finding his Dear Old Puppets where he left them in July" shows that the artist had already begun those ill.u.s.trations to the "Essence of Parliament" which form the backbone of his _Punch_ work. Occasional pictures there are, unconventional in shape, grotesque, ingenious, graceful in fancy, that delight us while, as a rule, they successfully conceal any lack of early artistic education; but the Parliamentary drawings are those by which Bennett will be best remembered. Between the date of his first sketch, when he was forthwith summoned to the Table without serving any probationary period, to that last sketch in the spring of 1867, showing Lord John Russell as a c.o.c.k crowing upon the 1832 Easter egg (p. 116, Vol. LII.), he had made over 230 drawings for the paper, besides his contributions to the Pocket-books of 1866 and 1867. He had already established himself, despite repeated absences through ill-health, one of the greatest favourites in _Punch's_ company; and the comic letter addressed to him by his colleagues during one of his illnesses is printed in the chapter on the "_Punch_ Dinner." Indeed, he had not time to cut his cipher on the Table; the H is begun and abandoned. "As for dear Bennett," Mr. Frederic s.h.i.+elds tells me, "every link that attached me to him has so long since been severed, that to attempt to find the lost end of the thread is hopeless. Nothing remains but the sweet odour of his memory--like a faded rose-leaf turned up in a long-closed drawer." But Mr. Sala declares that he had been, "socially, the most miserable of mankind. He was sober, industrious, and upright, and scarcely a Bohemian; but throughout his short life he was 'Murad the Unlucky.' At one time he occupied shabby chambers in the now defunct Lyon's Inn, Strand; and it was the poor fellow's fate to have a child born--a child that died--the sack from his employers, and the brokers in, _all in the same day_." Still, Bennett, who was one of the original founders of the Savage Club, was cheerful enough, and of a singularly lovable disposition--as may almost be gathered from his pictures in _Punch_, in which the shadow of none of his former troubles is ever reflected: nothing but his "facile execution and singular subtlety of fancy." Indeed, "Cheerful Charley," as he was known to his intimates, became, as he himself declared, one of the luckiest and happiest of men--fully appreciated for his art and his own delightful qualities by troops of admiring friends. It was his extraordinary power of realising an abstract thought and crystallising it at once into a happy pictorial fancy that set him on a pedestal, a poet among his colleagues--those colleagues who, when he died, lamented "the loss of a comrade of invaluable skill, and the death of one of the kindliest and gentlest of our a.s.sociates, the power of whose hand was equalled by the goodness of his heart."

But Bennett left his family in sad straits, and, on s.h.i.+rley Brooks's initiative, the "_Punch_ men" at once set about devising a means to help them. The result was the theatrical performance referred to on pp.

132-134. The Moray Minstrels wound up this famous entertainment, and s.h.i.+rley Brooks delivered a touching address of his own writing.

Besides T. W. Woods (who made four drawings), Prehn (two), Lowe (six), and Hays (three), Mr. W. S. Gilbert swelled the list of contributors in this same year (1865). His work, consisting of fifteen small cuts signed with the now familiar "Bab," and designed to ill.u.s.trate the rhymes they accompany, was lost to _Punch_ by the indisposition for compromise displayed by contributor and Editor alike. "I sent three or four drawings," Mr. Gilbert informs me, "and half-a dozen short articles; but I was told by Mark Lemon, or rather a message reached me from him, that he would insert nothing more of mine unless I left 'Fun,' with which I was connected. This I declined to do unless he would take me on the regular staff of _Punch_. This _he_ declined to do, and so the matter ended. I had previously offered 'The Yarn of the Nancy Bell' (the first of the Bab Ballads) to _Punch_, but Mark Lemon declined it on the ground that it was 'too cannibalistic for his readers.'" So Mr. Gilbert knew _Punch_ no more; and it is commonly related that he enjoys nothing more than an occasional good-humoured fling at the journal which could not see his worth. "I say, Burnand," he has many times been reported to have said at the Garrick Club and elsewhere, when the Editor had referred to the heavy post-bag delivered each day at the office, though witticisms found among the wilderness of suggestions were desperately few, "do you _never_ get anything good?" "Oh, sometimes--occasionally." "Then,"

drawled the other, "_why don't you ever put one of them in?_"

"A Hot Chestnut" (p. 143, Vol. XLIX.) was the first contribution of G.

B. G.o.ddard, well known a little later on as Bouverie G.o.ddard, the animal-painter. Oil-colour was in truth his medium; but his drawings were good, and _Punch_ for a couple of years rejoiced in his new hunting draughtsman. G.o.ddard was a great friend of Charles Keene, with whom he shared for a time a studio in Baker Street; but feeling that he must paint pictures rather than draw upon the wood-block, he left the paper, after placing to his credit fourteen drawings--of which some were adjudged to contain the best horses seen in its pages since the death of Leech.

By far the most important lady artist who ever worked for _Punch_ was Miss Georgina Bowers (for some years now Mrs. Bowers-Edwards).[63] It is not usual, as I have remarked before, to find a woman a professional humorist, though a colonial _Punch_ is edited by a lady; but it is, I believe, an undoubted fact, that up to this year of grace no female caricaturist has yet appeared before man's vision. But Miss Bowers was a humorist, with very clear and happy notions as to what fun should be, and how it should be transferred to a picture. Her long career began in 1866, and thenceforward, working with undiminished energy, she executed hundreds of initials and vignettes as well as "socials," devoting herself in chief part to hunting and flirting subjects. She was a facile designer, but her manner was chronically weak. It was John Leech who set her on the track; Mark Lemon, to whom she took her drawings, encouraged her, and with help from Mr. Swain she progressed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MRS. BOWERS-EDWARDS.

(_From a Photograph by S. A. Walker._)]

"My first published drawing," Miss Bowers tells me, "was a dreadful thing of a girl urging a m.u.f.f of a man to give her a lead at a brook. My 'jokes' all came from incidents I saw out hunting, and from my own varied adventures with horse and hound; but occasionally a suggestion sent to the Editor was transferred to me to be put into shape. Then some one else wrote up to them. When I first hunted in Hertfords.h.i.+re, I had great opportunities for provincial sporting studies. I feel now that some of my subjects were too personal, and wonder how many people forgave me. I often overheard stories about myself in the hunting-field (where I had hard times with ladies occasionally). When s.h.i.+rley Brooks died, I felt I had lost my best and most helpful friend; and then Mr.

Tom Taylor cared nothing for sport or sporting subjects, so that I felt that my work was uncongenial to him, and I got on badly and lost all interest in it, and gave up, after having drawn ten years for the paper, to which I shall never again contribute."

Mr. Walter Crane, of all people in the world, appears on p. 33 of Vol.

LI. The cut is hardly funny, except in idea--it represents a chignon-show--nor is it as well drawn as much of the work he was doing at the time; he had not yet hit upon the style or subject that he afterwards made his own. A couple of sketches by O. Harling, an amateur, conclude the list for the year.

The year 1867 is famous in _Punch's_ calendar for the acquisition of Mr.

Linley Sambourne; but an earlier arrival was Mr. Frederic s.h.i.+elds. Mr.

Swain suggested that he should "do a letter or two"; Mr. s.h.i.+elds did three, including a "social" ("Want your door swep', marm?"), and a girl curling her hair with the fender-tongs. The initials were kept over until 1870; and this const.i.tuted the sum of Mr. s.h.i.+elds' artistic adventure into the domain of humour.

FOOTNOTES:

[59] Mr. Henry James, jun., considers ("Century Magazine," 1883) that "since 1868, _Punch_ has been, artistically speaking, George du Maurier."

[60] See "Encyclopaedia Britannica."

[61] See "Magazine of Art," 1891.

[62] "The Art of England: The Fireside," p. 174.

[63] The other ladies are Miss Coode, Mrs. Romer (Mrs. Jopling-Rowe), Mrs. Field, Miss Fraser, Miss Mansell (Mrs. Bull)--merely a sketch, and Miss Maud Sambourne.

CHAPTER XXII.

_PUNCH'S_ ARTISTS: 1867-82.

Mr. Linley Sambourne--Mechanical Engineering Loses a Decorative Designer--Mr. Sambourne's Work--His Photographs--And Enterprise--Strasynski--Mr. Wilfrid Lawson--Mr. E. J. Ellis--Mr.

Ernest Griset--Mr. A. Chasemore--Mr. Walter Browne--Mr. Briton Riviere, R.A.--An Undergraduate Humorist--A _Punch_ Initial Converted into an Academy Picture--Mrs. Jopling-Rowe--Mr. Wallis Mackay--Mr. J. Sands, Artist, Traveller, and Hermit--Mr. W.

Ralston--Mr. A. Chantrey Corbould--Charles Keene's Advice--Randolph Caldecott--Major-General Robley--R. B. Wallace--Colonel Ward Bennitt--Mr. Montagu Blatchford--Mr. Harry Furniss--Origin of Mr.

Gladstone's Collars--A Favourite Ruse--How It's Done--Mr. Furniss and the Irish Members--The Lobby Incident--Clever Retaliation--Mr.

Furniss's Withdrawal--Mr. Lillie--Mr. Storey, A.R.A.--Mr. Alfred Bryan.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LINLEY SAMBOURNE.

(_From a Drawing by Himself._)]

One day when Mr. Linley Sambourne made a successful appearance as Admiral Van Tromp at a fancy-dress ball, Mr. W S. Gilbert drily observed, "One Dutch of Sambourne makes the whole world grin!" The jest was wider in its application than he who made it, probably, had intended. The humour of the artist, his quaintness of fancy, wit, and touch, are appreciated by whoever looks for something more, even in a professedly comic design, than that which is at first and immediately obvious. When, early in 1867, Mark Lemon fell into admiration of a little drawing that was luckily thrust into his hand, and declared that the young draughtsman who wrought it had a great future before him, he proved himself possessed of a faculty of critical insight, or of an easy-going artistic conscience, uncommon even among editors. Few who saw Mr. Linley Sambourne's early work, even throughout the first two or three years of his practice, would have imagined that behind those woodcuts, for all their cleverness, there lay power and even genius, or that the man himself would soon come to be regarded as one of the greatest masters of pure line of his time.

At that time Mr. Sambourne had been working in the engineering draughtsmen's office of Messrs. Penn and Sons, of Greenwich. But the work was not congenial; the "pupil" spent most of his time in sketching, and there is a story--doubtless as apocryphal as it is malicious--that in one of his designs for a steam-engine, he sacrificed so much to "effect" as to carry his steam-pipe through the spokes of the fly-wheel.

It was his office companion in misfortune, Mr. Alfred Reed, who secured his friend's release from the thraldom of the iron-bound profession, by seizing the sketch already alluded to and showing it to his father, German Reed. By that gentleman it was submitted to his friend Mark Lemon, who had about that time been writing an "entertainment" for the company at the "Gallery of Ill.u.s.trations." The result was an editorial summons to the sketcher, and an engagement which has lasted to the present day. Thus it was that, with a sketch of John Bright tilting at a quintain under the t.i.tle of "Pros and Cons," Mr. Sambourne found himself, at the age of twenty-two, a regular contributor to _Punch_--though he had still to wait until 1871 before he was rewarded with a seat at the Table.

Of artistic education he had had practically none. In the engineering drawing-office he had learned how to handle the pen and to put it to uses which have become a feature of his draughtsmans.h.i.+p. But besides a life-school attendance extending over not more than a fortnight, he had no other teachers than his own eyes and his own intelligence. In his earliest work with the pencil there was a curious use of the point.

Suddenly he was called upon, through the unexpected absence of Charles Keene from town, for more important work than that with which he had hitherto been entrusted. This was the half-page head-piece and the tail-piece to the preface to Vol. LIII. Then came promotion to the "small socials" and "half-page socials." Some of the work he did fairly well, founding himself now upon Leech, now upon Keene; but his character and originality were too powerful to follow any man. He began to form a style of his own, and that style did not lend itself to the representation of modern life. It was suited better for decoration than for movement; while the beauty of line and of silhouette which he sought and obtained, in spite of his intense, almost aggressive, individuality, placed him absolutely apart from all the black-and-white artists of the day.

It was, I have said, to the example of his predecessor, Charles H.

Bennett, who died in April, 1867 (the very month in which Sambourne's first drawing appeared), that we owe those wonderful initial letters to the "Essence of Parliament" of s.h.i.+rley Brooks--those intricate drawings which, covering nearly a whole page, were such miracles of invention, of fancy, and of allusion, swarming with figures, overflowing with suggestion, teeming with subtle symbolism. But these things did not come at once. It was not until the "comic cut" idea was put entirely on one side and his imagination allowed full play, that Mr. Sambourne fully developed his powers--his strength of conception, design, and execution.

And then it was that he revealed the fact that though a humorist--and invariably, too, a good-humorist--by necessity, he is a cla.s.sic by feeling.

The artist's personality, as it should, impresses us first, powerfully and irresistibly. While under Mark Lemon, Mr. Sambourne, as an artist, was still unformed. Under s.h.i.+rley Brooks was awakened his wonderful inventive faculty. Under the _regime_ of masterly inactivity--the happy policy of _laissez faire_--of Tom Taylor, the talent had burst forth into luxuriance, not to say exuberance. And under Mr. Burnand it was schooled and restrained within severer limits.

It was many years before regular political cartooning[64] fell to his lot. He ill.u.s.trated several of Mr. Burnand's serials in _Punch_, and some of his work out of it. But afterwards he rose to the treatment of actuality. Upon the event of the hour his picture is formed, and each week his work _must_ be forthcoming. There can be no question of failure, no dallying with the subject, however elaborate or unpromising it may appear. A decision must be come to, and that rapidly; and there the artist sits, his watch hung up before him, "one eye on the dial and the other on the drawing-paper," knowing that at the appointed hour the work must be ready for the messenger. Thus the majority of his four thousand designs have been greatly hurried--hurried in thought as well as in execution. Many have been wrought in a single day; the great majority within two days; very few, indeed, have taken more. But when he has the time he wants, what amazing results are achieved! Sir John Tenniel once exclaimed to me: "What extraordinary improvement there is in Sambourne's work! Although a little hard and mechanical, it is of absolutely inexhaustible ingenuity and firmness of touch. His diploma for the Fisheries Exhibition almost gave me a headache to look at it--so full, cram-full of suggestion, yet leaving nothing to the imagination, so perfectly and completely drawn, with a certainty of touch which baffles me to understand how he does it."

For the rest, Mr. Sambourne's method, like his work, is unique. Keen of observation though he is, his memory for detail is not to be compared to that of Sir John Tenniel; and, actuated by that desire for accuracy which he holds desirable in a journal specially devoted to topical allusion, he avails himself extensively of the use of photography. In the cabinets in his studio, filled full of drawers, each labelled according to their contents, over ten thousand photographs are cla.s.sified: every celebrity of the day, and to a certain extent of the past, British and foreign, at various ages, in various costumes, and in various att.i.tudes; representatives of the Church, the Bench, and the Bar; of Science, Art, Literature, and the Stage; the beasts and birds and insects in and out of the Zoological Gardens; figures by the score, nude and draped; costumes of all ages and every country; soldiers, sailors, and the uniforms of every army and navy; land and sea and sky; boating and botany, nuns and clowns, hospital-nurses, musical instruments, and rifles, locomotives, wheel-barrows, shop-windows, and everything else besides--everything, in short, as he himself declared, "from a weasel to a Welshman"--all are photographed mostly by himself, and all are arranged by himself, in readiness against the demand for accuracy and the exigencies of haste. But when time permits, Mr.

Sambourne goes to greater trouble still. Does he require a special uniform? he begs the War Office--not unsuccessfully--to lend him one or two men, or even a detachment; does he want to represent Mr.

Gladstone--say, as Wellington (as he did November 2nd, 1889)? he procures the loan of the duke's own raiment, and only stops short at borrowing Mr. Gladstone himself. For his types, too, he takes pains not less thorough. For Britannia's helmet, he made working drawings of the unique Greek piece in the British Museum, and from that had a replica constructed--one of the most notable items in a notable "property" room.

At the back of his house is a paved courtyard, wherein his servant poses as every character under the sun while he is photographed by his master, who then runs inside to develop the plate and make a dash at his drawing. Or he will photograph himself, or the model in the desired att.i.tude; or he will get his friends to pose. Among his sitters there is none more useful than the burly man who serves equally well for "Policeman A 1" or John Bull, for the Duke of Cambridge or Prince Bismarck. It was he who sat for one of the finest of Mr. Sambourne's "junior cartoons" on the occasion when the great ex-Chancellor had said: "I am like the traveller lost in the snow, who begins to get stiff while the snow-flakes cover him." This picture of the aged and forlorn statesman, accompanied only by his faithful hound, is perhaps the best of the artist's achievements of dignity and pathos--worthy of being named with "Dropping the Pilot" of Sir John Tenniel. His pa.s.sion for realism is so great that, I remember, when he was engaged on his "Mahogany Tree" for the Jubilee number of _Punch_--one of the most popular drawings he ever made--he had just such a table duly laid for dinner in the courtyard, with one person sitting at it in order to show the proportion, and photographed it from a window of the house at the necessary elevation.[65] But for his love of accuracy he would not have done these things; nor, but for his love of naturalism, could he have given us his numerous fine studies of Nature. And but for this, Mr.

Punch would never have printed one or two of his Norwegian sketches, such as "The Church-going Bell," in which there was not the slightest attempt at humour or fun--nothing but a calm and reposeful love of Nature, the deep, sad impression on the mind and heart of the artist as he watches the northern sun dip in sleepy majesty behind the panting waves.

Like Rabelais, he can use the pencil to greater ends under cover of the motley, and encase bitter truths with the gilt of a printed jest. Like Giotto and his legendary feat, he can draw you a perfect circle with his pen--and perhaps he is the only man in the country who can do it. His is the rare gift that in him sense of fun, of dignity, and of art is equal.

He will brook nothing more serious in his sallies than chaff and banter; and yet his kindly art, based upon Nature and observation of the work of others, has, by its very truth, made him enemies even on foreign thrones. Nevertheless, it is less as a politician and a satirist that he claims recognition; it is primarily as an artist that he will a.s.suredly be remembered when his place among his countrymen has to be determined.

A Polish artist, with Mr. Sambourne's initials, L. Strasynski by name, also began in 1867, and during that and the following year contributed nine cuts, very foreign in feeling and firm in touch. Then, after an anonymous draughtsman, "M.S.R.," had appeared with a single cut ("Candles"), Mr. F. Wilfrid Lawson, the elder brother and teacher of Cecil Lawson, contributed a sheetful of initials and vignettes which dribbled forth in the paper up to 1876; and Mr. T. Walters, a half-a-dozen, up to 1875. Mr. E. J. Ellis, now better known in other fields than comic draughtsmans.h.i.+p, began on December 12th, 1867. He had received an introduction to Mark Lemon through Mr. (now Sir) Algernon Borthwick, and found the Editor "good-natured enough," as he himself says, "to allow me to do a dozen or so of initials, and a quarter-page ill.u.s.tration. They were all more or less pinched and painful things, and Mr. Lemon did not conceal from me that 'he was not knocked over by them.' But they were drawn on the block--not on paper--and from the strangeness and discomfort of it came the tight-elbowed style of the work. Of what I did altogether, only about a third were printed; half were paid for; but what they paid for they did not print, and what they printed they did not pay for." At that time Mr. Ellis caught the fever of decorative art, cla.s.sic and romantic, which culminated in the "interpreted" edition of Blake's "Prophetic Books," in collaboration with Mr. Yeats; and _Punch_ lost a promising recruit.

The experience of Mr. Ernest Griset, who is first seen on p. 61 of Vol.

LIV., was more extensive but less gratifying. He excelled at comic animals--his human figures are most of them of one ragged type--but on Bennett's sudden disappearance he was quickly encouraged to take up the dead man's work, and was enabled to show in many of his three-and-sixty drawings of that year the full range of his talent, his remarkable invention and ingenuity. Mr. Griset, though born in Boulogne, was educated in England, and after studying art under Gallait, intended to follow water-colour painting, taking subjects by preference of a Glacial Prehistoric kind. But the foundation of "Fun" gave him the opportunity of comic draughtsmans.h.i.+p, and the work he did for the paper brought him Mark Lemon's invitation to call upon him. A cordial reception and a flattering tribute to his ability were followed by an understanding of regular employment, and the young draughtsman became a _Punch_ artist unattached. But he did not remain long in favour. His work, perhaps, was not highly popular, and Mark Lemon perceptibly cooled towards him. So, finding he was no longer wanted, Mr. Griset, who was then no more than twenty-four years of age, retired, and consoled himself in other directions--notably by ill.u.s.trating "aesop's Fables," which had attracted Bennett and Sir John Tenniel before him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ERNEST GRISET.

(_From a Photograph by W. G. Parker and Co._)]