DICKENS AND THACKERAY ON LEECH.
Perhaps the most striking difference between Leech and the caricaturists
who preceded him, as well as those who were his contemporaries, was
shown in the part that beauty played in every drawing in which it could
be appropriately introduced; he may be credited with the creation of
many of the loveliest creatures that ever fell from the pencil of an
artist. Leech revelled in beauty as Gillray and Rowlandson revelled in
ugliness.
In 1841 a work appeared, in book-form, of sketches by Leech, entitled
"The Rising Generation," in which the rising youth, with their mannish
manners, were satirized. Of this book Dickens wrote:
"We enter our protest against those of the rising generation who are
precociously in love being made the subject of merriment by a pitiless
and unsympathizing world. We never saw a boy more distinctly in the
right than the young gentleman kneeling in the chair to beg a lock of
hair from his pretty cousin to take back to school. Madness is in her
apron, and Virgil, dog-eared and defaced, is in her ringlets. Doubts may
suggest themselves of the perfect disinterestedness of the other young
gentleman contemplating the fair girl at the piano--doubts engendered by
his worldly allusion to 'tin,' although that may have arisen in his
modest consciousness of his own inability to support an establishment;
but that he should be 'deucedly inclined to go and cut that fellow out'
appears to us one of the most natural emotions of the human breast. The
young gentleman with the dishevelled hair and clasped hands, who loves
the transcendent beauty with the bouquet and can't be happy without her,
is to us a withering and desolate spectacle. Who _could_ be happy
without her? The growing youths are not less happily observed and
depicted than the grown women. The languid little creature, who 'hasn't
danced since he was quite a boy,' is perfect; and the eagerness of the
small dancer, whom he declines to receive for a partner at the hands of
the glorious old lady of the house (the little feet quite ready for the
first position, the whole heart projected into the quadrille, and the
glance peeping timidly at the desired one out of a flutter of hope and
doubt), is quite delightful to look at. The intellectual youth, who
awakens the tremendous wrath of a Norma of private life by considering
woman an inferior animal, is lecturing at the present moment, we
understand, on the Concrete in connection with the Will. The legs of the
young philosopher who considers Shakespeare an overrated man were seen
by us dangling over the side of an omnibus last Tuesday. We have no
acquaintance with the scowling young gentleman, who is clear that 'if
his governor don't like the way he is going on, why, he must have
chambers and so much a week;' but, if he is not by this time in Van
Diemen's Land, he will certainly go to it through Newgate. We should
exceedingly dislike to have personal property in a strong-box, to live
in the quiet suburb of Camberwell, and to be in the relation of bachelor
uncle to that youth. In all his designs, whatever Mr. Leech desires to
do he does. His drawing seems to us charming, and the expression,
indicated by the simplest means, is exactly the natural expression, and
is recognised as such at once. Some forms of our existing life will
never have a better chronicler. His wit is good-natured, and always the
wit of a gentleman. He has a becoming sense of responsibility and
restraint; he delights in agreeable things, and he imparts some pleasant
air of his own to things not pleasant in themselves; he is suggestive
and full of matter, and he is always improving. Into the tone as well as
into the execution of what he does, he has brought a certain elegance
which is altogether new, without involving any compromise of what is
true. Popular art in England has not had so rich an acquisition."
In the endeavour to satisfy Dickens with the type required for the
characters in his stories, Leech encountered the difficulty that all the
author's illustrators had to master. "Phiz" made many drawings in
Dickens' presence before he could realize the author's idea of Mr.
Dombey; Cruikshank was more than once required to redraw a whole scene
from "Oliver Twist"; and Leech has often been heard to speak of the
minute details as to feature, height, thinness or fatness--in fact,
every physical and, so far as it could be shown by appearance, mental
quality--that Dickens insisted upon before he could be satisfied with
the _vera effigies_ of one of his characters. The feelings of the great
author, then, may be imagined when he found--too late for correction--a
terrible error into which Leech had fallen in the drawing of a scene
from "The Battle of Life," by introducing a personage into a scene which
closes the second part of the tale, who was not intended to have been
present.
It was in December, 1846, that "The Battle of Life" made one of the
series of Christmas stories. In Leech's unfortunate illustration, which
represented the flight of the bride, he made the mistake of supposing
that Michael Warden had taken part in the elopement, and introduced his
figure with that of Marian. Leech's error was not discovered until too
late for remedy, the publication of the book having been delayed to the
utmost limit expressly for those drawings; and it is highly
characteristic of Dickens, and of the true regard he had for the artist,
that, knowing the pain he must inflict, under the circumstances, by
complaining, he never reproached Leech; excusing him, no doubt, on the
ground of the hurry and confusion under which so much of his work was
produced; but anyone who reads the story carefully will see what havoc
the mistake makes of one of the most delicate turns in it.
Dickens wrote thus to Forster in reference to the grievous error: "When
I first saw it, it was with a horror and agony not to be expressed. Of
course, I need not tell _you_, my dear fellow, that Warden had no
business in the elopement scene; he was never there. In the first hot
sweat of this surprise and novelty, I was going to implore that the
printing of that sheet might be stopped, and the figure taken out of the
block; but when I thought of the pain this might give to our
kind-hearted Leech, and that what is such a monstrous enormity to me as
never entered my brain, may not so present itself to others, I became
more composed, though the fact is wonderful to me. No doubt a great
number of copies will be printed by the time this reaches you, and
therefore I shall take it for granted that it stands as it is. Leech
otherwise is very good, and the illustrations altogether are by far the
best that have been done for any of my Christmas books."
It may appear presumptuous in me to differ from Dickens in respect to
the illustrations to "The Battle of Life"; but, in my opinion, these are
not to be compared favourably with those of the "Christmas Carol." With
the well-known readiness of people to ferret out mistakes, it seems
strange that the illustrator's mistake was never publicly noticed.
The first series of "The Pictures of Life and Character," reprinted from
_Punch_, appeared in 1854. They were heartily welcomed by the public;
and it is as follows that Thackeray, Leech's intimate friend, speaks of
them in the _Quarterly Review_, in an article published at that time:
"This book is better than plum-cake at Christmas. It is one enduring
plum-cake, which you may eat, and which you may slice and deliver to
your friends, and to which, having cut it, you may come again, and
welcome, from year's end to year's end. In the frontispiece you see Mr.
Punch examining the pictures in his gallery--a portly, well-dressed,
middle-aged, respectable gentleman, in a white neck-cloth and a polite
evening costume, smiling in a very bland and agreeable manner upon one
of his pleasant drawings, taken out of one of his handsome portfolios.
Mr. Punch has very good reason to smile at the work and be satisfied
with the artist. Mr. Leech, his chief contributor, and some hundred
humorists, with pencil and pen, have served Mr. Punch admirably. There
is no blinking the fact that in Mr. Punch's cabinet John Leech is the
right-hand man.
"Fancy a number of _Punch_ without John Leech's pictures! What would you
give for it? The learned gentlemen who wrote the book must feel that
without him it were as well left alone. Look at the rivals whom the
popularity of _Punch_ has brought into the field--the direct imitators
of Mr. Leech's manner--the artists with a manner of their own. How
inferior their pencils are to his humour in depicting the public
manners, in arresting and amusing the nation! The truth, the strength,
the free vigour, the kind humour, the John Bull pluck and spirit of that
hand are approached by no competitor. With what dexterity he draws a
horse, a woman, a child! He feels them all, so to speak, like a man.
What plump young beauties those are with which Mr. Punch's chief
contributor supplies the old gentleman's pictorial harem! What famous
thews and sinews Mr. Punch's horses have, and how Briggs on the back of
them scampers across the country! You see youth, strength, enjoyment,
manliness, in those drawings, and in none more so, to our thinking, than
in the hundred pictures of children which this artist loves to design.
Like a brave, hearty, good-natured Briton, he becomes quite soft and
tender with the little creatures, pats gently their little golden heads,
and watches with unfailing pleasure their ways, their jokes, laughter,
caresses. _Enfants terribles_ come home from Eton, young miss practising
her first flirtation, poor little ragged Polly making dirt-pies in the
gutter, or staggering under the weight of her nurse-child, who is as big
as herself--all these little ones, patrician and plebeian, meet with
kindness from this kind heart, and are watched with curious anxiety by
this amiable observer.
"Now, anyone who looks over Mr. Leech's portfolio must see that the
social pictures which he gives us are authentic. What comfortable little
drawing-rooms and dining-rooms, what snug libraries, we enter! What fine
young gentlemanly wags they are, those beautiful little dandies, who
wake up gouty old grandpapa to ring the bell; who decline aunt's pudding
and custards, saying that they will reserve themselves for anchovy-toast
with the claret; who talk together behind ball-room doors, where Fred
whispers Charley, pointing to a dear little partner seven years old, 'My
dear Charley, she has very much gone off; you should have seen that girl
last season!'
"Look well at the economy of the famous Mr. Briggs. How snug, quiet, and
appropriate all the appointments are! What a comfortable, neat, clean,
middle-class house Briggs' is (in the Bayswater suburb of London, we
should guess from the sketches of the surrounding scenery)! What a good
stable he has, with a loose-box for those celebrated hunters which he
rides! How pleasant, clean, and warm his breakfast-table looks! What a
trim maid brings in the boots that horrify Mrs. B.! What a snug
dressing-room he has, complete in all its appointments, and in which he
appears trying on that delightful hunting-cap which Mrs. Briggs flings
into the fire! How cosy all the Briggs party seem in their drawing-room,
Briggs reading a treatise on dog-breaking by a lamp, mamma and grannie
with their respective needlework, the children clustering round a big
book of prints--a great book of prints such as this before us, at this
season, must make thousands of children happy by as many firesides! The
inner life of all these people is represented. Leech draws them as
naturally as Teniers depicts Dutch boors, or Morland pigs and stables.
It is your house and mine; we are looking at everybody's family circle.
Our boys, coming from school, give themselves such airs, the young
scapegraces! Our girls, going to parties, are so tricked out by fond
mammas--a social history of London in the middle of the nineteenth
century. As such future students--lucky they to have a book so
pleasant!--will regard these pages; even the mutations of fashion they
may follow here, if they be so inclined. Mr. Leech has as fine an eye
for tailory and millinery as for horseflesh. How they change, these
cloaks and bonnets! How we have to pay milliners' bills from year to
year! Where are those prodigious _chatelaines_ of 1850, which no lady
could be without? Where are those charming waistcoats, those _stunning_
waistcoats, which our young girls used to wear a few seasons back, and
which caused 'Gus, in the sweet little sketch of 'La Mode,' to ask Ellen
for her tailor's address? 'Gus is a young warrior by this time, very
likely facing the enemy at Inkerman; and pretty Ellen, and that love of
a sister of hers, are married and happy, let us hope, superintending one
of those delightful nursery scenes which our artist depicts with such
tender humour. Fortunate artist, indeed! You see he must have been bred
at a good public school, and that he has ridden many a good horse in his
day; paid, no doubt out of his own pocket, for the originals of those
lovely caps and bonnets; and watched paternally the ways, smiles,
frolics, and slumbers of his favourite little people.
"As you look at the drawings, secrets come out of them--private jokes,
as it were, imparted to you by the author for your special delectation.
How remarkably, for instance, has Mr. Leech observed the hairdressers of
the present age! Mr. Tongs, whom that hideous old bald woman who ties on
her bonnet at the glass informs that 'she has used the whole bottle of
Balm of California, but her hair comes off yet'--you can see the bears'
grease not only on Tongs' head, but on his hands, which he is clapping
clammily together. Remark him who is telling his client 'there is
cholera in the hair,' and that lucky rogue whom that young lady bids to
cut off a long thick piece--for somebody, doubtless. All these men are
different and delightfully natural and absurd. Why should hairdressing
be an absurd profession?
"The amateur will remark what an excellent part hands play in Mr.
Leech's pieces; his admirable actors use them with perfect naturalness.
Look at Betty putting down the urn; at cook laying her hands upon the
kitchen-table, whilst the policeman grumbles at the cold meat. They are
cooks' and housemaids' hands without mistake, and not without a certain
beauty, too. That bald old lady tying on her bonnet at Tongs' has hands
which you see are trembling. Watch the fingers of the two old harridans
who are talking scandal; for what long years they have pointed out holes
in their neighbours' dresses and mud on their flounces!
"'Here's a go! I've lost my diamond ring!'
"As the dustman utters this pathetic cry and looks at his hands, you
burst out laughing. These are among the little points of humour. One
could indicate hundreds of such as one turns over the pleasant pages.
"There is a little snob, or gent, whom we all of us know, who wears
little tufts on his little chin, outrageous pins and pantaloons, smokes
cigars on tobacconists' counters, sucks his cane in the streets, struts
about with Mrs. Snob and the baby (the latter an immense woman, whom
Snob nevertheless bullies), who is a favourite abomination of Leech, and
pursued by that savage humourist into a thousand of his haunts. There he
is choosing at the tailor's--such waistcoats! Yonder he is giving a
shilling to the sweeper who calls him 'Capting.' Now he is offering a
paletot to a huge giant who is going out in the rain. They don't know
their own pictures very likely; if they did, they would have a meeting,
and thirty or forty of them would be deputed to thrash Mr. Leech. One
feels a pity for the poor little bucks.
"Just one word to the unwary specially to note the backgrounds of
landscapes in Leech's drawings--homely drawings of moor and wood and
sea-shore and London street--the scenes of his little dramas. They are
as excellently true to nature as the actors themselves. Our respect for
the genius and humour which invented both increases as we look and look
again at the designs. May we have more of them--more pleasant Christmas
volumes over which we and our children may laugh together! Can we have
too much of truth and fun and beauty and kindness?"
In this delightfully appreciative spirit wrote Thackeray--a man of
profounder genius than Leech--of his friend's work. It is said that when
he was asked to name the most intimate and dearest friend of his life,
Thackeray replied, "John Leech."