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 inevitable, 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 comparing
to each other.
When John Leech's mantle fell from his shoulders it was found that the
garment was ample to clothe the nakedness of more than one successor.
John Tenniel had already, it is true, replaced him for several years
as the political cartoonist of _Punch_. How admirably he has always
filled that post, then and ever since, and how great his fame is, I
need not speak of here. Linley Sambourne and Harry Furniss, so
different from each other and from Tenniel, 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
Randolph Caldecott downward, have contributed to that fortunate
periodical at one time or another, and not a few distinguished
amateurs.
Miss Georgina Bowers, Mr. Corbould, and others have continued the
fox-hunting 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 parlours 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 a _jeune 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 melodies as I could evolve from my
contemplations of the gentler aspect of English life, while Keene,
with his magnificent, highly trained basso, sang the comic songs.
We all became specialised, 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 fantastic ditty about impossible birds and beasts 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 then warble, pianissimo, some little ballad of the
drawing-room or nursery.