BOY. "No, sir; I jist spekilated, and bought 'im of t'other boy for a
harpenny."--_Punch_.]
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
demonstrandum_. 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 for
ever haunted by a terror of the heels of that noble animal he drew so
well--and I thoroughly sympathise with him!
In all the series the chief note is joyousness, 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 discontent
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 possibilities 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 Whitechapel and back on an
omnibus with a bag of periwinkles, and picks them out with a pin!
Even when his humour is at its broadest, 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 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 stands under two hearts transfixed by
an arrow, and his wife, whose name is Matilda, catches him in the act.
An old gentleman, maddened by a bluebottle, smashes all his furniture
and breaks every window-pane but one--where the bluebottle 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 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!
[Illustration: A TOLERABLY BROAD HINT
"Oh, I beg your pardon, sir, but you didn't say as we were to pull up
anywhere, did you, sir?"--_Punch_, 1859.]
Where most of all he gives us a sense of the exuberant joyousness and
buoyancy of life is in the sketches of the seaside--the newly
discovered joys of which had then not become commonplace to people of
the middle class. The good old seaside 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
seaside pictures.
Indeed, nothing seems so jolly, nothing seems so funny, now, as when
Leech was drawing for _Punch_. The gaiety 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 British people themselves have changed and gone back to their old
way of taking their pleasure sadly?
Everything is so different, somehow; 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-fence; they have taken to the water,
these lovely chicks, and swim like ducklings, 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, beautiful, 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 'Arry, 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 favour 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 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 boxing 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 demeanour as Leech himself. Thackeray 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
swaggers at all, it is about his acquaintance with some popular actor
or comic vocalist whom he is privileged to call by his christian-name.
And those splendid old grandees of 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 become of
them?
They are like the snows of yester-year! They have gone the way of
their beautiful 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 manners of the great by sheer mimicry
of their defects. He has married his sons 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 aristocracy by that very slender
fragment of our contemporary fiction, mostly American, that still
thinks it worth writing about, our young noble of to-day is the most
good-humoured, tolerant, simple-hearted, simple-minded,
unsophisticated creature alive--thinking nothing of his
honours--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 duchess of a mother are almost as devoid of swagger
as himself; they seem to apologise 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 customs that some of us can remember so
well--all these obsolete people, from the heavily whiskered swell to
the policeman with the leather-bound chimney-pot hat, from good pater-
and mater-familias 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 "Pictures of Life and Character."
Except for a certain gentleness, kindliness, and self-effacing modesty
common to both, and which made them appear 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 unconventional, and even almost
eccentric. He dressed more with a view to artistic picturesqueness
than to fashion, and despised gloves and chimney-pot hats, and black
coats and broadcloth generally.
[Illustration: CHARLES KEENE