LEECH AND HIS PREDECESSORS.
John Leech may be truly said to be _sui generis_; there has been nothing
like him before his time, or since his bright and short career ended. It
would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that existing
between the works of Leech and those of his predecessors, at the head
and front of whom must be placed Hogarth, who stands _longo intervallo_
above any of his successors. In his terrible lashing of the vices and
follies of his own time--vices and follies that are common to all
time--Hogarth sometimes, though rarely, indulged in an exaggeration of
character amounting to caricature. Leech dealt with the life about him
in a totally different spirit; his was a lighter, a more genial, and a
kinder hand. Unlike Hogarth, he made us laugh at the follies of our
fellow-creatures, and would have nothing to do with their vices, though
he has shown us in many examples how keen was his sympathy with the
poor and the oppressed, and how intense was his hatred of the oppressor.
The name of caricaturist is as inappropriate to Leech as it is to
Hogarth, though instances may be found, as in Hogarth, of occasional
indulgence in exaggeration. These examples are mostly to be found in the
illustration of books which in themselves somewhat outrage the modesty
of nature. Hogarth's pictures are often disfigured by a coarseness
closely bordering on indecency; instances may, indeed, be found where
the great artist has passed the border with revolting audacity. In the
thousands of drawings by Leech, instead of the _double entendre_, we
have some delightful trait of child-life; instead of the adulterous
husband, we have paterfamilias living a healthy, happy life among his
children, only amused at his schoolboy son's tricks played upon his
sisters.
Consideration should, no doubt, be shown to Hogarth and his immediate
successors in respect of the coarseness of the time in which they lived;
certainly the works of Bunbury, Woodward, Rowlandson and Gillray require
all the excuses that can be made for them. Compared to the two
latter-named artists, the two former may be said to be harmless. In the
hands of all four, however, caricature reigned triumphant.
Rowlandson had less excuse for the constant displays of vulgarity and
ugliness that abound in his works, than the other designers, who were
destitute of any sense of beauty. It was not so with Rowlandson. I have
seen early drawings by him full of the charm of beauty in women:
refined, and graceful. This power, which one would have thought was a
part of the man's nature, vanished altogether as he advanced in life;
swamped in the whirl of dissipation in which he lived, his originally
better nature became utterly vulgarized by his surroundings. That
Rowlandson had a certain very coarse humour, a facility in grouping
masses of figures in large compositions, and a power of inventing faces
and figures for which he had no authority in nature, cannot be denied;
but there is always an intense vulgarity, in which the man seems to
revel with as intense a pleasure.
Gillray altogether differed from Rowlandson, both in his subjects and in
the way he treated them. In politics he was a savage partisan, lashing
his opponents with merciless fury and cruel personality. Gillray was in
art what Churchill was in literature. He had a grim humour all his own;
witness his constant attacks upon Bonaparte, then, and always, the
_bête noire_ of this country. There are many examples in which the
Corsican tyrant is made ridiculous, ferocious, or cowardly, according to
the events of the time and the humour of the artist.
In a parody of Belshazzar's feast, Bonaparte, as Belshazzar, has caught
sight of the writing on the wall; he looks with extended arms and an
expression of cowardly horror at the warning. By his side sits the
Empress, an outrage upon the fattest of fat women, ill-drawn and vulgar
in the extreme. A man with a face hideous beyond the dreams of ugliness
(caricature _in excelsis_) is devouring the Tower of London, which
figures as a _plat_ in the banquet; the rest of the guests round the
monarch's table, vying with the dreadful gourmand in repulsiveness, are
one and all caricatured out of nature. The meats provided for this
singular entertainment consist of what may be called English fare, the
_pièce de résistance_ in front of Bonaparte, which he will presently
demolish, being the Bank of England; and that indigestible dish is
flanked by St. James's Palace. Then we have the head of Pitt, which is
labelled "The Roast Beef of Old England," and served up appetizingly on
a trencher, etc. Behind the Emperor stand his guards with huge uplifted
sabres, from which blood is dripping, while behind the dropsical
Empress stand her ladies-in-waiting, three female ghouls of wondrous
hideousness, in dresses so _décoletté_ as to shock persons less nice
than Mrs. Grundy.
In another example the great Corsican is represented as "Teddy Doll, the
great French Gingerbread Baker, drawing out a new Batch of Kings," while
his man, Talleyrand, is making up the dough for others. Bonaparte is
pictured in uniform, with boots and spurs, and a huge cocked-hat with an
impossible feather, drawing out a batch of newly-made kings--Bavaria,
Würtemburg, and Baden--from an enormous oven, labelled "New French Oven
for Imperial Gingerbread." Beneath the oven-door is what is called "an
ash-hole for broken gingerbread." Amongst the _débris_ which has been
swept into the ash-hole by a broom labelled "Corsican Besom of
Destruction," Spain, a crowned death's head, is prominent; together with
Austria, Holland, Switzerland, Venice, etc., "all in wild destruction
blent." In the background Hanover is being destroyed by the Prussian
Eagle, as Talleyrand is busy kneading up the dough to be presently
passed from "the Political Kneading-Trough," to reappear in the shape of
gingerbread kings of Poland, Turkey, and Hungary, after the
manipulation of the King-maker and a visit to the French oven.
There is much grim humour in this piece, and humour as well as a deeper
meaning in the parody of "Belshazzar's Feast"; but, turning from such
work and the thoughts that arise from it to that of Leech is like
turning from a slaughter-house to a flower-garden, from ugliness to
beauty.
From the time of Gillray to that of Leech, there is little to be said of
the caricaturists, with one splendid exception, "Immortal George." I do
not agree with those who place Cruikshank above Leech. Cruikshank was
essentially a caricaturist; Leech was not. Comparisons, as Mrs. Malaprop
says, are "odorous," but we are sometimes forced into them; and, while
admitting that there were certain paths--heights, perhaps--which
Cruikshank ascended with honour, and on which Leech could not have found
foothold, there was a highroad, bordered by beautiful things, on which
he would have easily distanced his formidable rival.
In my young days the political drawings of "H. B.," the father of
Richard Doyle, were much esteemed and in great request. They dealt
solely with the political events of the hour, and, though feebly drawn
and ineffective as works of art, the designer managed to produce
unmistakable likenesses of Sir Robert Peel, the Duke of Wellington, _et
hoc genus_, with remarkable certainty, and always without a trace of
caricature.