CHAPTER IV.

MEETING OF MULREADY AND LEECH.

Mr. Mulready, R.A., was commissioned by the authorities to design a postal envelope for general use, a penny stamp affixed insuring free delivery of letters all over England. The design, which should have been of a simple character, was far too ornate and elaborate. At the top Britannia was represented in the act of despatching winged messengers with letters to all parts of the world, and down the sides of the envelope were the recipients of letters which had conveyed heart-breaking news to one side, and good tidings to the other. As a work of art the Mulready envelope has, in my opinion, great merit, but it was ludicrously inappropriate to the purposes for which it was intended. Leech saw and seized the opportunity, with the result appended.

The signature of the bottled leech, so familiar afterwards, is used here as Mulready's signature, and "thereby hangs a tale," which, though the burden of it deals with a future time, I venture to introduce in this place.

My friend Augustus Egg, R.A., who lived in a charming house in Queen's Road, Bayswater, was not only well known as an excellent artist, but also as being the Amphitryon whose hospitality was famous, and whose dinners were still more famous by reason of the guests who were wont to surround his table. Where is the hungry man who would not have been enchanted to meet Dickens and Leech, Mark Lemon and John Forster (Dickens's biographer), Hawkins, Q.C. (now the judge), Landseer, Mulready, Webster, and other artists less famous? Of these dinners I shall have something to say by-and-by; at present I confine myself to one special occasion.

It was on one day during the year 1847 that Egg said to me:

"You know Mulready better than I do; I wish you would go and get him to fix a day to dine here--any day next week will suit me. Leech wants to meet him; and, somehow or other, though both have dined here frequently, they have never met."

"Good," said I; "I will do your bidding."

And on the following Sunday I called upon Mulready.

"Egg will be pleased if you will dine with him any day next week, sir, that you may be disengaged. He expects the usual set--Dickens, Landseer, Leech, and the rest. You have never met Leech, I think; he is very desirous to make your acquaintance."

"Ah, is he? Well, I don't care about knowing Leech."

"Really, sir" (it was always the Johnsonian _sir_ to the old gentleman), said I, when I had recovered from my surprise, "may I ask why you won't meet Leech?"

"Yes, you may," said the old painter, "and I will tell you. Of course you remember that unfortunate postal envelope that I designed? Well, Leech caricatured it. You needn't look so surprised--you don't think I am such a fool as to mind being caricatured; but I do mind being represented as a _blood-sucker_! What else can he mean by using that infernal little leech in a bottle in the front of his caricature as my signature? You know well enough, Frith, that I have never asked monstrous prices for my pictures. You fellows get better paid for your work than I ever did, and you wouldn't like to be called blood-suckers, I expect."

Mr. Mulready was an Irishman, and rather a peppery one; and I am happy to say that I overcame my disposition to laugh in his face mainly through a feeling of astonishment that my old friend could be ignorant of the ordinary way in which Leech signed his drawings.

"Do you happen to have a number of _Punch_ by you, Mr. Mulready?" said I.

"No; as a languid swell said when he was asked that same question, 'I am no bookworm; I never see _Punch_.'"

As I could not give my angry friend ocular proof of his mistake by producing the usual signature to _Punch_ drawings, I set to work to explain how the little leech came into the bottle, and, without much difficulty, convinced my old friend that an insult to him was not intended.

The two artists met; and it was delightful to watch Leech's handsome face as Mulready himself told of his misconception. First there was a serious, almost pained, expression, which, no doubt, arose in that tender heart from being the innocent cause of pain to another; the serious look passed off, to give place to a smile, which broadened into a roar of laughter. From that moment Leech and Mulready were fast friends.

With an apology for the interruption, I return to my narrative.

Alas! I can well remember the appearance of the "Sketches by Boz," to be so quickly followed by the "Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club." None but those who witnessed it can conceive the enthusiasm with which that immortal work was received by an eager public, who welcomed each number as it appeared, month after month, with hearty appreciation. Of course, there were carping critics, one of whom is reported to have said the author would "go up like a rocket and come down like a stick." That prophet, a man of much literary ability, drank himself into a debtors' prison, where, I was told, he died of delirium tremens.

There is, I think, a vein of melancholy unusually developed in the nature of almost all humorists. As an instance, I may give the actor Liston, whose humour on the stage was to me unparalleled; off it, he was gloom personified. Gillray, the caricaturist, died melancholy mad; and poor Seymour, the first illustrator of "Pickwick," committed suicide. I may remark in this place the surprise with which I heard Leech say that he could see no fun in any of Seymour's sketches.

In a walk that we took together, I tried to convert him by naming several examples of what appeared to me humorous work.

"No," said Leech; "the only drawing I ever saw by Seymour that appeared funny to me was one in which two cockneys were represented out shooting. They are about to load their guns, when one says to the other:

"'I say, which do you put in first--powder or shot?'

"'Why, powder, to be sure,' said his friend.

"'Do you?' was the reply. 'Then I don't!'"

I can vividly recall the shock occasioned by Seymour's death. He was fairly prosperous, I believe. His engagement to illustrate "Pickwick" was a lucrative one, and he was much employed in other work. In spite of all these advantages, the humorist's melancholy was fatal to him.

I was present at the banquet at the Royal Academy when Thackeray, in returning thanks for literature--Dickens being present--told us how, on finding there was a vacancy for an illustrator of "Pickwick," he took a parcel of drawings to the author and applied for the place. From my own knowledge of Thackeray's limited powers as an artist, I should have been sure of the failure of his application. Very different would have been the fate of Leech, who was also anxious to supply Seymour's place; but he was too late, for Dickens had already chosen Hablot K. Browne, who, under the sobriquet of "Phiz," worked in harmony with his author for very many years. There was no doubt a disposition on the part of "Phiz" to exaggeration in his illustration of Dickens' characters (already fully charged, so to speak, by their author), sometimes to the verge of caricature, and even beyond it; this fault Leech would have avoided, as his exquisite etchings in Dickens' Christmas books fully prove.