PERSONAL ANECDOTES (_continued_).
At the time when the troop of artists and literary men were stumping the
country with their theatrical performances, Leech lived in Alfred Place,
which he soon left for a charming little house in Notting Hill Terrace.
Dickens wrote an amusing account of one of the amateur excursions, which
the immortal Mrs. Gamp is supposed to join, and about which she
discourses to her friend Mrs. Harris, not forgetting her opinion of the
artists, Cruikshank and Leech:
"If you'll believe me, Mrs. Harris, I turns my head, and sees the very
man" (George Cruikshank) "a-making pictures of me on his thumb-nail at
the window; while another of 'em" (John Leech), "a tall, slim,
melancolly gent, with dark hair and a bage voice, looks over his
shoulder, and with his head o' one side, as if he understood the
subject, and coolly he says:
"'I've drawed her several times in _Punch_,' he says, too. The owdacious
wretch!
"'Which I never touches, Mr. Wilson,' I says out loud--I couldn't have
helped it, Mrs. Harris, if you'd took my life for it--'which I never
touches, Mr. Wilson, on account of the lemon!'"
From the nature of Leech's work, he was never able to take a holiday in
the true sense of the word. To say nothing of the numberless works which
he had engaged himself to illustrate, the inevitable _Punch_ must appear
every week, and almost equally inevitable was the appearance of one or
two of Leech's drawings in it. Proof is abundant of the rapidity with
which those inimitable works were executed; but it must be borne in mind
that they were the outcome of a sensitive organization--a power of
seeing and seizing the humorous and the beautiful in the everyday
incidents of life; in short, of a mind always on the watch for subjects
for illustration.
When one thinks of the constant wear and tear of such a life, it is
scarcely a matter for wonder that it was so lamentably short.
The localities of Leech's so-called holidays can easily be recognised by
his drawings, or rather by their backgrounds, which showed, in
admirable truthfulness, whether the artist was at Scarborough or
Broadstairs, at Folkestone, Dover, Lowestoft, or Ramsgate, or, by their
unfamiliarity to us, at some less frequented place.
It was in 1848, and while Mr. and Mrs. Leech were staying with the
Dickens family at Brighton, that a very unpleasant incident of the visit
took place: no less than the sudden insanity of the landlord of the
house in which the party lodged, resulting in as sudden an exeunt of the
lodgers. But before the people still in their senses could take
themselves off, there was a duty to be done. A doctor must be fetched;
and no sooner did he appear than the madman attacked him, and would very
soon have made a vacancy in the list of M.D.'s if Dickens and Leech had
not rushed to the rescue. In a letter to Forster, Dickens gives a
humorous description of Mrs. Leech and Mrs. Dickens doing their best--in
their fear for their husbands' safety--to assist the maniac in his
murderous endeavours by pulling their husbands back just as the doctor
had fainted from fear. More assistance, however, arrived, and the mad
landlord was soon rendered harmless.
I vividly recollect the alarm that the news of an accident to Leech--in
which it was rumoured that he had been seriously, even dangerously,
injured--caused to everyone, and acutely to his friends. A huge wave
was said to have struck him while bathing--killing him on the spot,
according to some reports; fracturing his skull, or producing concussion
of the brain, from which recovery was hopeless, according to others.
These alarming accounts came to us from the Isle of Wight, where Leech
was staying with Dickens in the autumn of 1849. The fact was, that one
of the tremendous waves that, under certain atmospheric conditions, roll
in upon the shore at Bonchurch, struck Leech on the forehead, and
rendered him senseless.
"He was put to bed," said Dickens, "with twenty of his namesakes upon
his temples."
The day following, congestion of the brain became unmistakable,
accompanied by great pain; ice was applied to the head, and bleeding
again was thought necessary, this time in the arm. For some days Leech
was in great danger, Dickens sitting up with him all night on more than
one alarming occasion. He says, in a letter to Forster:
"My plans are all unsettled by Leech's illness, as of course I do not
like to leave this place so long as I can be of any service to him and
his good little wife. Ever since I wrote to you he has been seriously
worse, and again very heavily bled. The night before last he was in
such an alarming state of restlessness, which nothing could relieve,
that I proposed to Mrs. Leech to try magnetism. Accordingly, in the
middle of the night, I fell to, and, after a very fatiguing bout of it,
put him to sleep for an hour and thirty-five minutes. A change came on
in his sleep, and he is decidedly better. I talked to the astounded Mrs.
Leech across him, when he was asleep, as if he had been a truss of hay."
Whether from Dickens' magnetic efforts or the efforts of Nature, Leech
gradually, but very slowly, recovered. On being questioned about his
accident, Leech is reported to have said that he remembered an enormous
angry, white-topped wave coming at him, and, in what seemed to him the
next moment, he found himself in bed in great pain--the interval having
been some days.
In corroboration of this, I may mention an accident that happened to Mr.
Elmore (brother of the R.A. and great friend of Leech), who was terribly
injured by a blow on the head in a railway accident on the Marseilles
line.
"I was reading a novel," said Mr. Elmore to me, "and the next instant,
as it seemed, I found myself suffering great pain in a strange bed, with
strange surroundings, in what I afterwards found was a French cottage."
The sufferer also found that more than three weeks had elapsed between
the blow and the recovery of consciousness from it. Where, in my blind
ignorance I venture to ask, was the ever-living soul all this time?
One of the amusements of the visitors at Folkestone consists in watching
the arrival of the French packet; and I have noticed that the more
stormy the day, the greater is the crowd that forms itself into an
avenue, through which the voyagers must pass in landing. This amusement,
I think, is not very creditable to us, because it is derived from an
enjoyment arising from the sufferings of our fellow-creatures. The rosy
passenger, who is evidently "a good sailor," attracts no attention--we
rather resent his condition as inappropriate to the occasion; but the
man from whose face every vestige of colour has flown, whose legs can
scarcely support him as he walks up the gangway, is an object of great
delight to us. We are generally--not always--silent in our enjoyment,
scarcely ever receiving a poor sea-sick creature as Leech was once
welcomed at Boulogne.
In 1854, Leech and his wife went to Boulogne to stay with Dickens. The
day was stormy, and when the artist stepped ashore, he was received with
cheers by a crowd of people, mostly English, who loudly congratulated
him as looking more intensely miserable than any of the wretched
passengers who had preceded him. Leech told Dickens that he had realized
at last what an actor's feelings must be when a round of applause greets
his efforts.
"I felt," he said, "that I had made a great hit."
My intimacy with Leech led to the usual exchange of hospitalities. I
recall with pleasure the occasions on which I had the great delight of
welcoming him at my house in London or at the seaside. He never varied
from the simple, modest demeanour of the perfect gentleman, was never
noisy or argumentative, and always considerate of the feelings of
others; prodigal in his praise of his brother artists; never, if he
could avoid it, speaking of himself or his works, but if, in course of
conversation, allusion had been made to some cut more than commonly
attractive, he would meet it with: "Glad you like it, my dear fellow;
don't see anything particularly funny in it myself;" or, "Ah! I wish you
could have seen it on the wood; they seem to me to have cut all the
prettiness out of the girl's face."
The first time I dined with Leech was at his house in Notting Hill
Terrace, on the occasion of some Highland sports that took place in Lord
Holland's park hard by, out of which Leech made some capital sketches,
that afterwards appeared in _Punch_. Leech's dinners, without being too
lavish or extravagant, were always unexceptionable as to food, and
notably so as to wine; of the latter, being no judge himself, he took
care it should be supplied by "one who knew," and who was also reliable.
One of the guests at this particular dinner was the Rev. Mr. White,
whose acquaintance our host had made at the Isle of Wight. I mention
this gentleman because he was not only a very jovial clergyman, but a
great friend of Leech and Dickens, and the author of some plays which
had more or less success--one of them, with the title of "The King of
the Commons," was played under Phelps' management, and had a
considerable run.
"White," Leech whispered to me, "is a great judge of port. I hope to
goodness he will like some I have got on purpose for him--and for you,
my boy; only you know nothing about it, do you?"
"Not a bit," said I.
When the port appeared we watched the clergyman, and, judging by his
expression, the port was successful; but Leech was not satisfied till in
reply to his inquiry as to its qualities the clergyman, smacking his
lips, said:
"Sir, the Church approves."
At one of the delightful dinners at Leech's double-windowed
house--double-windowed to keep out noise, which distressed him all his
life--on the Terrace, Kensington, I first met Shirley Brooks, thus
commencing a life-long friendship with one of the most charming
companions, one of the wittiest men and the best story-tellers that ever
made "the hours go by on rosy wing." One of the strongest men on the
_Punch_ staff--afterwards editor--Brooks and Leech became somewhat
intimate, but whether the intimacy ever became merged into close
friendship, I doubt. I frequently dined at Brooks's, but never met Leech
there--indeed, from what I have heard, I am pretty sure that, with the
exception of his old fellow-student, Percival Leigh, who was one of his
nearest and dearest friends, Leech's feeling towards his brother members
of the _Punch_ staff never reached friendship in the true meaning of the
word. Albert Smith, of whose entertainments Leech said one of the
severest things I or anyone ever heard him say--"After all, Frith, it is
only bad John Parry"--was a loud, and, to me, a rather vulgar
person--too antagonistic to the gentle Leech for the growth of
friendship. At the _Punch_ meetings, however, I have it from one who was
occasionally present, that Albert Smith always addressed Leech as
"Jack," being the only one of the company who used the familiarity. This
provoked Douglas Jerrold, who had often winced under the infliction, to
ask Leech one day, "How long is it necessary for a man to know you
before he can call you 'Jack'?"
After this remark "Jack" was less frequently heard. My authority for the
above is the late Mr. George Hodder, an author who I fear has left no
"footprints in the sands of time." It was said of him that, on being
introduced to a very distinguished artist, he remarked--perhaps feeling
the necessity of making a complimentary speech--"Art is a grand thing,
sir." This unfortunate gentleman died from injuries received by the
upsetting of a coach in Richmond Park.
It is not at all uncommon for middle-class entertainers--though they may
possess a fair staff of servants--to seek outside assistance when they
gather an unusual number of guests round their hospitable boards. On one
occasion--and very likely oftener--Leech sought such supplementary aid,
and found it in the form of his parish clerk, a solemn person who was
not too proud to add to his stipend by "going out to wait." As is usual
with his class, the clerk-waiter arrived in good time to help in
furnishing forth the dinner-table, having an eye to the placing of the
flowers, plate, etc. The guests, amounting to ten or twelve, were
announced in due course, all old acquaintances, and all expecting their
dinners with the punctuality for which their host was noted. Hungry men,
though they may be good talkers under happier circumstances, are seldom
brilliant; on this occasion, though Dickens and Jerrold may have been
amongst the guests, the conversation languished at last into silence.
Half an hour passed. What could have happened? Suddenly one of the
guests--was it Dickens or Jerrold?--sprang from his chair, and going to
Leech, with extended hand, said:
"Well, it's getting late; I'm afraid I must go. Thank you, dear boy, for
a delightful evening; the dinner was capital, the turtle first
rate--never tasted finer salmon; and as to the champagne----"
The puzzled looks of Leech and his guests ended in a roar of laughter,
in the midst of which a black and solemn figure appeared, and in the
tones in which he would have given the responses at church, said:
"Dinner is served."
The assembled guests received the welcome announcement with a chorus of
"AMEN!"