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THE "ILLUMINATED MAGAZINE."

reason to smile at the work and be satisfied with the artist. Mr.
Leech, his chief contributor, and some kindred humourists 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.” That this was true is proved by the fact that
during his connection with Punch, extending over a period of three
and twenty years, he executed no less than three thousand pictures,
of which at least six hundred are cartoons. No wonder that when
he lay dead, Shirley Brooks-another valued contributor, and after-
wards editor of Punch-mournfully acknowledged that the good ship
had lost its "mainsail." ‡

Most admirable examples of his designs on wood will be found in the first three volumes of "The Illuminated Magazine,” a delightful serial which appeared in 1843-4, which also contains a series of etchings on copper of unusual size and brilliancy. Associated with him on the pages of this periodical, which is now seldom met with, were his friends Thomas Hood and Mark Lemon Douglas Jerrold and Laman Blanchard, Albert Smith and Angus Bethune Reach, Samuel Lover and Kenny Meadows. The world was young with authors and artists alike in those days; the youngest of the band were William Hepworth Dixon, then aged twenty-two; John Leech, twenty-six; and Wilkie Collins, literally not "out of his teens," one of whose earliest literary productions we find here under the title of "The Last Stage Coachman,” illustrated by Hine. In these volumes appeared Douglas Jerrold's delightful allegory of the "Chronicles of Clovernook," to which the veteran Kenny Meadows contributed some of the most quaint and original of his sketches.

John Leech's portrait appears in three of the Punch sketches -two only of which are due to his own hand; the first in January,

Thackeray in the Quarterly.

+ I calculate that the minor drawings number about 2,500; if to these we add 638 cartoons, we get a sum total of over 3,100 illustrations for Punch alone. If we say nearly 1,000 for Mr. Surtees' sporting novels, without taking into account Leech's other work, we may form some notion of his untiring industry.

MS. Diary of Shirley Brooks (October 31st, 1864).

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CARLY LITERARY CONTRIBUTORS TO “PUNCH."

2S7

1346, in one wherein a servant maid is depicted as saying, “If you please, sir, here's the printer's boy called again;" again, in January, 1847, where we find him playing the clarionet as one of the orchestra at Mr. Punch's Fancy Ball. Other performers are-Mayhew, cornet; Percival Leigh, double bass; Gilbert à Beckett, violin; Richard Doyle, clarionet; Thackeray, piccolo; Tom Taylor, piano; while Mark Lemon, the conductor, appeals to Jerrold to somewhat moderate his assaults on the drum. Another hand portrays him seven years later, as armed with a porte crayon he rides his hobbyhorse at an easel which does duty for a hurdle, Jerrold is playing skittles, Thackeray holds the bat at a game of cricket, and Mark Lemon is engaged at rackets. Amongst the early literary contributors to Punch were Mark DOUGLAS JERI OLD. Lemon, Horace Mayhew, Gilbert à Beckett, Stirling Coyne, W. H. Wills, H. P. Grattan, Douglas Jerrold, Percival Leigh, and Dr. Maginn. Albert Smith joined the staff through the introduction of his friend Leech; Thackeray was a later acquisition, in 1844. It was scarcely to be expected that the brilliant and the lesser wits who shed their lustre on the early volumes of Punch, and were brought together at the weekly council dinners, would invariably agree;-Jerrold and Thackeray, for instance, entertained a sort of constitutional antipathy to one another, and the latter, it must not be forgotten, was (in the words of Anthony Trollope) "still struggling to make good his footing in literature" at the time he joined the ranks of the Punch parliament. Jerrold could not veil his contempt for Albert Smith, angrily asking Leech at one of the Punch gatherings, with reference to the former's free and easy method of addressing his friend, "Leech, how long is it necessary for a man to know you before he can call you 'Jack'?" When A Beckett announced his "Comic History of England," in 1846, the strong mind of Jerrold recoiled in horror from what he deemed a sacrilege. Writing to Charles Dickens in reference to the announcement, he said, "After all, life has something serious in it. It cannot be all a Comic History of Humanity. Some men would, I believe, write the Comic Sermon

ALBERT SMITH.

on the Mount. Think of a Comic History of England! The drollery of Alfred! the fun of Sir Thomas More in the Tower! the farce of his daughter begging the dead head, and clasping it in her coffin, on her bosom! Surely the world will be sick of this blasphemy!" "The Comic History of England" appeared, notwithstanding, and was followed afterwards by the "Comic History of Rome;" and however we may sympathize with the honest indignation of Jerrold, and condemn the questionable taste of A Beckett, we have at least to thank the latter for some of the drollest and most original designs which ever emanated from the pencil of John Leech.

The eccentric and original costumes in which he draped the classical characters of Rome appear to have been a favourite idea with the artist. Shirley Brooks relates that he first made his acquaintance at a fancy ball given at the house of their mutual friend, the late John Parry. "Leech's costume," says the late editor of Punch, "I well remember. It was something like Charles Mathews, as chorus to Medea. The black trousers and patent leather boots of decorous life were below; but above was the classic tunic. Then in addition he wore a fine new hat, round which, instead of around his head, was the laurel wreath; and the Greek ideal was brought into further discomfiture by a pair of spectacles and an exceedingly neat umbrella." This comical idea will be found ridiculously amplified in his amazing designs to "The Comic History of Rome."

Medical student, novelist, dramatist, humourist, and showman-for some of us still remember his diorama of "The Overland Route"-the most fortunate venture of Albert Richard Smith (to give him his full name) was his ascent of Mont Blanc, which formed the theme of a well-remembered lecture, in which his perils amid rocky pinnacle, snow-field, and glacier lost nothing by the graphic mode in which they were related. This "ascent," by the way, proved a source of profit to others besides himself; and we should be curious to know the number of Chamounix guides and hotel-keepers who were enabled through his indirect means to

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