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
position--of the cool business-like self-importance that sits so well
on those who are 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 November 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 labourers
looking on excited and bewildered, happy for a moment at beholding so
much happiness in their betters.
[Illustration: ONE OF MR. BRIGG'S ADVENTURES IN THE HIGHLANDS
After aiming for a Quarter of and Hour Mr. B. fires both of his
Barrels--and--misses!!!! Tableau--The Forester's Anguish--_Punch_,
1861.]
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 masterpiece--the example above all others of the most humorous
and good-natured satire that was ever penned or pencilled. 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 creation! Besides, it took two to make Mr. Pickwick, the
author and the artist, whereas Mr. Briggs issued fully equipped from
the brain of Leech alone!
Not indeed that all unauthorised gallopers after the fox find
forgiveness in the eyes of Leech. Woe to the vulgar little cockney
snob who dares to obtrude his ugly mug and his big cigar and his
hired, broken-winded rip on these hallowed and thrice-happy
hunting-grounds!--an earthenware 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!
[Illustration: 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.]
Then there are the fishermen who never catch any fish, but whom no
stress of weather can daunt or distress. There 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 impression produced by
the _mise en scène_ itself--an impression so happily, so vividly
suggested by a few rapid, instructive pencil strokes and thumb smudges
that it haunts the memory like a dream.
He loves such open-air scenes so sincerely, he knows so well how to
express and communicate the perennial charm they have for him, that
the veriest bookworm becomes a sportsman through sheer sympathy--by
the mere fact of looking at them.
And how many people and things he loves that most of us love!--it
would take all night to enumerate them--the good authoritative pater-
and materfamilias; the delightful little girls; the charming cheeky
school-boys; the jolly little street Arabs, who fill old gentlemen's
letter-boxes with oyster-shells and gooseberry-skins; the cabmen, the
busmen; the policemen with the old-fashioned chimney-pot hat; the old
bathing-women, and Jack-ashores, and jolly old tars--his British tar
is irresistible, whether he is hooking a sixty-four pounder out of the
Black Sea, or riding a Turk, or drinking tea instead of grog and
complaining 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.
[Illustration: "THE JOLLY LITTLE STREET ARABS"
From the original drawing for _Punch_ in possession of John Kendrick
Bangs, Esq.]
His loves are many and his hates are few--but he is a good hater all
the same. He hates Mawworm and Stiggins, and so do we. He hates the
foreigner--whom he does not know, as heartily as Thackeray 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'état_ in 1851.
Then he hates with a deadly hatred all who make music in the street or
next door--and preach in the crossways and bawl their wares on the
parade. What would he have said of the Salvation Army? He is haunted
by the bark of his neighbour's dog, by the crow of his neighbour's
Cochin China cock; he cannot even bear his neighbour to have his
chimney swept; and as for the Christmas waits--we all remember _that_
tragic picture! This exaggerated aversion to noises became a disease
with him, and possibly hastened his end.
Among his pet hates we must not forget the gorgeous flunky and the
guzzling alderman, the leering old fop, the rascally book-maker, the
sweating Jew tradesman, and the poor little snob (the 'Arry of his
day) who tries vainly to grow a moustache, 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 misdemeanor. To succeed
in over-dressing 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.
[Illustration: DOING A LITTLE BUSINESS