"COMIC GRAMMAR" AND "COMIC HISTORY."
The friendship, begun in their student-days at St. Bartholomew's,
between Leech and Percival Leigh flourished in renewed strength by the
discovery of similarity of taste--Leigh unable to draw, but possessing a
truly humorous pen; so the friends "laid their heads together," the
result being the production of the "Comic Latin Grammar," letter-press
by Leigh, illustrations by Leech. The first intention of the authors was
that this should be a mere skit, a trifling brochure, consisting of a
few pages; but, as so often happens, the work grew under their hands,
and when published in 1840 it had assumed somewhat formidable
proportions, and was followed by a work of similar character, with the
title of "The Comic English Grammar."
The "Comic English Grammar" was a work full of pleasant humour,
charmingly illustrated by Leech "with upwards of fifty characteristic
woodcuts." It is curious to observe in these drawings the contrast that
they afford to the artist's later and more perfect work. There is a
timidity, and what we call a hardness, from which the sketches in
"Pictures of Life and Character" are entirely free; the general drawing,
too, is faulty, but the humour and character are all there.
[Illustration]
The first illustration, given above, is from a ballad called "Billy
Taylor," popular in my young days, in which Billy's true love--with the
reluctance to part from him common to persons suffering from that
passion--disguises herself as a man before the mast, and shares the
dangers of the sea with her sailor-lover:
"Ven as the Captain comed for to hear on't,
Wery much applauded vot she'd done."
[Illustration]
The verb "applauded" has here no nominative case, whereas it ought to
have been governed by the pronoun "he." "He very much applauded," etc.,
says the writer of the "Comic Grammar" for our instruction. The second
example, given above, seems to me capital fooling, and an excellent
proof of the necessity for care in punctuation and accent.
"Imagine," says the writer, "an actor commencing Hamlet's famous
soliloquy thus:
"'To be or not to be; that is. The question,' etc.
Or saying, in the person of Duncan in 'Macbeth':
"'This castle hath a pleasant seat, the air.'
Or, as the usurper himself, exclaiming:
"'The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!
Where got's thou that goose? Look!'"
Here we have the fault of _hardness_ that I speak of, and something of
feeble drawing, but the humour is perfect.
After the publication of the "Comic Grammar," written by Gilbert a
Beckett, one of the _Punch_ staff, a somewhat similar experiment upon
the public and on a larger scale was tried by the same author in the
issue of a "Comic History of England." This venture was warmly opposed
at its inception by Jerrold, whose wrath at the idea of burlesquing
historical personages was expressed with vehemence. Gilbert a Beckett
persisted, however, and the history appeared, with over three hundred
illustrations on wood and steel by John Leech. The book is, as might be
expected, very light reading, containing many puns and much play upon
words. Leech's work seems to me to be slight, hurried, and even
careless, compared with that of his later time; but the spirit of
rollicking fun with which grave historical incidents are treated, and
the humorous satire that the principal personages receive at the hands
of the illustrator, make the "Comic History of England" amusing enough.
The following extract, with the drawing that illustrates it, will show
the truth of my estimate of both.
"A story is told of a certain Fair Rosamond, and, though there is no
doubt of its being a story from beginning to end, it is impossible to
pass it over in English history. Henry, it was alleged, was enamoured of
a certain Miss Clifford--if she can be called a certain Miss Clifford,
when she was really a very doubtful character. She was the daughter of a
baron on the banks of the Wye, when, without a why or a wherefore, the
King took her away, and transplanted the Flower of Hereford, as she well
deserved to be called, to the Bower of Woodstock. In this bower he
constructed a labyrinth something like the Maze at Rosherville, and as
there was no man stationed on an elevation in the centre to direct the
sovereign which way to go, nor exclaim, 'Right, if you please!'
'Straight on!' 'You're right now, sir!' 'Left!' 'Right again!' etc.,
etc., his Majesty had adopted the plan of dragging one of Rosamond's
reels of silk along with him when he left the spot, so that it formed a
guide for him on his way back again. This tale of silk is indeed a most
precious piece of entanglement, but it was perhaps necessary for the
winding up of the story. While we cannot receive it as part of the
thread of history, we accept it as a means of accounting for Eleanor's
having got a clue to the retreat of Rosamond.
"The Queen, hearing of the silk, resolved naturally enough to unravel
it. She accordingly started for Woodstock one afternoon, and, suspecting
something wrong, took a large bowl of poison in one hand and a stout
dagger in the other. Having found Fair Rosamond, she held the poniard to
the heart and the bowl to the lips of that unfortunate young person,
who, it is said, preferred the black draught to the steel medicine."
Later on in the history we have another good example of Leech's humour.
King Edward, having subdued the Welsh, "endeavoured to propitiate his
newly acquired subjects by becoming a resident in the conquered country.
His wife Eleanor gave birth to a son in the castle of Caernarvon, and he
availed himself of the circumstance to introduce the infant as a native
production, giving him the title of Prince of Wales, which has ever
since been held by the eldest son of the British sovereign."
[Illustration: QUEEN ELEANOR AND FAIR ROSAMOND.]
[Illustration: KING EDWARD INTRODUCING HIS SON AS PRINCE OF WALES TO HIS
NEWLY-ACQUIRED SUBJECTS.]
A well-known historical scene is parodied as follows: Henry IV. being
ill, "the Prince of Wales was sitting up with him in the temporary
capacity of nurse," says Mr. a Becket. "The son, however, seemed rather
to be waiting for his father's death than hoping for the prolongation of
his life; and the King having gone off in a fit, the Prince, instead of
calling for assistance or giving any aid himself, heartlessly took that
opportunity to see how he should look in the crown, which always hung on
a peg in the royal bedchamber. Young Henry was figuring away before a
cheval glass with the regal bauble on his head, and was exclaiming,
'Just the thing, upon my honour!' when the elder Henry, happening to
recover, sat up in bed and saw the conduct of his offspring.
[Illustration: UNSEEMLY CONDUCT OF HENRY, PRINCE OF WALES.]
[Illustration: THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER GOES INTO MOURNING FOR HIS LITTLE
NEPHEWS.]
"'Hallo!' cried the King, 'who gave you leave to put that on? I think
you might have left it alone till I've done with it.'"
The savage and hypocritical character of Richard III. afforded Leech an
opportunity for satire in his design of that monarch, when still Duke of
Gloucester, in the shape of a crocodile shedding tears for the death of
the two Princes in the Tower.
"Richard," says the chronicler, "by whom the outward decencies of life
were very scrupulously observed, in order to make up for the inner
deficiencies of his mind, determined to go into mourning for the young
Princes, and repaired to the same _maison de deuil_ which he had
honoured with his presence on a former occasion when requiring the
'trappings of woe' for himself and his retainers on the death of his
dear brother."
With the escape of Mary, Queen of Scots, I must close the extracts from
the "Comic History of England."
"When the Queen was imprisoned at Lochleven, a certain George Douglas,"
says the historian, "with the sentimentality peculiar to seventeen, fell
sheepishly in love with the handsome Mary. She gave some encouragement
to the gawky youth, but rather with a view of getting him to aid her in
her escape than out of any regard to the over-sensitive stripling. Going
to his brother's bedroom in the night, the boy took the keys from the
basket in which they were deposited, and, letting Mary out, he handed
her to a skiff and took her for a row, without thinking of the row his
conduct was leading to."
[Illustration: MARY'S ELOPEMENT.]
A considerable interval of time elapsed between the publication of a
Beckett's "Comic English Grammar" and the same writer's "Comic History
of England," the former being produced in 1840, and the latter seven
years afterwards; but as there is little or no appreciable difference
between the two works, either as regards the literary or artistic merit,
I have thought it well to introduce them in this place.
These efforts show but one side of Leech's many-sided power. It was in
"The Children of the _Mo_bility," a satire on a production just then
published, in which the children of the _no_bility were put before the
world in all the splendour of their aristocratic surroundings, that
Leech's genius had full play, the little Duke affording an instructive
contrast to the street arab, and the shivering, half-naked beggar-girl
becoming infinitely pathetic in her rags. This work was executed in
lithography, consisting of seven prints; and though, as works of art,
they bear no comparison to the wood-drawings of a later time--they are
not even so good as the "Fly-Leaves" published at the _Punch_ Office
later on--still, comparatively imperfectly as they are rendered, they
show the artist's intense sympathy with suffering childhood, as well as
enjoyment in the games and "larks" by which the sufferings are for a
time at least forgotten.
I now approach the period when the establishment of a comic newspaper
was destined to afford Leech opportunities for the display of his
powers, opportunities of which he availed himself with a prodigality
almost as marvellous as the powers.
END OF VOL. I.
BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.
_J. D. & Co._