INVENTORS AND ILLUSTRATORS.
In looking at the plethora of lovely women's faces in the "Pictures of
Life and Character," the spectator may fairly ask himself to realize, if
he can, anything more exquisite; and if he fail, he will also fail to
imagine that the charming creatures could have suffered much in their
passage from the wood to the paper.
I have said elsewhere that Charles Dickens was an occasional guest at
the _Punch_ Wednesday dinners; he was also an intimate friend of several
of the writers, notably of Leech, Lemon, and Douglas Jerrold. Dickens
was, of course, one of Thackeray's warmest admirers, but I am pretty
sure that the friendship between those great men could never have
reached intimacy. Though Leech failed in his application for the post of
illustrator of the "Pickwick Papers," he showed himself to be at one
with the great writer in the etchings and woodcuts with which he
ornamented Dickens' Christmas books, in conjunction with Stanfield,
Maclise, Cattermole, and others. Though Leech's etchings are inferior as
works of art to his wood-drawings, they still show the same beauty, and
perfect realization of character; in this assertion I am borne out by
the illustrations in the "Christmas Carol," and by those in the "Haunted
Man and the Battle of Life."
In my own profession I have observed, almost as a rule, that the artist
who habitually invents his own subjects--in other words, draws upon
himself for original ideas--generally fails, comparatively, in his
attempts to realize the ideas of others. May I not say the same of many
writers? Dickens, for instance, wrote of the life about him; but if,
like Scott, he had attempted to revive the past, would he have produced
work worthy to rank with "David Copperfield"? Scott seems to me a still
more conspicuous supporter of my theory, for he tried modern life in
"St. Ronan's Well," and produced a book incontestably inferior to
"Kenilworth."
Our historical painters have almost invariably failed in their attempts
upon everyday life; this extends even to the painters of _genre_.
Witness the works of the elder Leslie, who painted scenes from
Shakespeare, Molière, and the poets of the last century, with a success
that would have delighted the authors; but when he sought inspiration
from the life about him, the result was far from
satisfactory--conspicuous, indeed, in its contrast with his perfect
rendering, of "Sir Roger de Coverley" or "Uncle Toby," and the alluring
"Widow Wadman."
But the greatest of English painters is the greatest help to me in the
contention into which I venture to enter. Hogarth was beguiled by a
spirit, which must have been evil, into painting huge Scripture
subjects. The _size_ of these pictures, always of the proportion of full
life, was unsuited to his hand, while the themes became ludicrous under
his treatment. He failed completely also as an illustrator, witness his
designs from "Hudibras." In the Bristol Gallery, and in the Foundling
Hospital, these specimens of perverted genius may be seen; and no one
can look at them without regret that time should have been so
misspent--time which might have given us another immortal series like
the "Marriage à la Mode."
[Illustration: _Jack Johnson's attempt to rescue Derval._]
I fancy I can hear my readers say--And what has all this to do with John
Leech? Well, this: Leech is now about to pose as the destroyer, in his
own person, of my theory--he is, in fact, the exception to my rule;
for though the incidents in Albert Smith's "Ledbury" and "Brinvilliers"
bear no comparison in human interest with the delightful transcripts of
real life to be found in such profusion in the pictures of "Life and
Character," Leech's rendering of them could not be surpassed.
The tragic and humorous powers of the artist are fully displayed in the
examples which follow. In the first, from "Ledbury," "Jack Johnson
attempts to rescue Derval": the awful swirl of the river as it engulfs
the drowning man, while his would-be rescuer, finding the stream too
strong for him, clings frantically to a ring in the stonework of the
bridge, a full moon lightning up the scene, and throwing the Pont Neuf
which spans the Seine in the distance into deep shadow--all are combined
with admirable skill into, perhaps, the most powerful etching and the
most perfect illustration in the book.
In the second example the artist is in full sympathy with his
author--"Mrs. De Robinson holds a Conversazione of Talented People;" and
amongst them is "the foreign gentleman who executes an air upon the
grand piano." Here we have Leech using the scene as a peg upon which he
can hang the humorous character in which he takes such hearty, healthy
delight. The performer himself is scarcely a caricature of the foreign
pianist; while his audience, not forgetting the deaf old lady in the
corner--includes the affected gentleman, whose soul is in Elysium;
together with a variety of types, in which "lovely woman" is not
forgotten.