Chapter 2
She is light of heart, and perhaps a little of head! Her worst trouble is when the captain gives the wing of the fowl to some other darling who might be her twin-sister; her most terrible nightmare is when she dreams that great stupid Captain Sprawler upsets a dish of trifle over her new lace dress with the blue satin slip; but next morning she is herself again, and rides in the Row, and stops to speak with that great stupid Captain Sprawler, who is very nice to look at, whose back is very beautiful, and who sprawls most gracefully over the railings, and pays her those delightful, absurd compliments about her and her horse "being such a capital pair," while, as a foil to so much grace and splendour, a poor little snub-nosed, ill-dressed, ill-conditioned dwarf of a snob looks on, sucking the top of his cheap cane in abject admiration and hopeless envy! Then she pats and kisses the nice soft nose of Cornet Flinders's hunter, which is "deucedly aggravating for Cornet Flinders, you know"--but when that noble sportsman is frozen out and cannot hunt, she plays scratch-cradle with him in the boudoir of her father's country house, or pitches chocolate into his mouth from the oak landing; and she lets him fasten the skates on to her pretty feet. Happy cornet! And she plays billiards with her handsome cousin--a guardsman at least--and informs him that she is just eighteen to his love--and stands under the mistletoe and asks this enviable relation of hers to show her what the garroter's hug is like; and when he proceeds to do so she calls out in distress because his pointed waxed moustache has scratched her pretty cheek; and when Mr. Punch is there, at dinner, she and a sister darling pull crackers across his August white waistcoat, and scream in pretty terror at the explosion; to that worthy's excessive jubilation, for Mr. Punch is Leech himself, and nothing she does can ever be amiss in his eyes!
Sometimes, indeed, she is seriously transfixed herself, and bids Mr. Tongs, the hairdresser, cut off a long lock of her hair where it will not be missed---and she looks so lovely under the smart of Cupid's arrow that we are frantically jealous of the irresistible warrior for whom the jetty tress is destined. In short, she is innocence and liveliness and health incarnate--a human kitten.
When she marries the gilded youth with the ambrosial whiskers, their honeymooning is like playing at being married, their heartless billings and cooings are enchanting to see. She will have no troubles--Leech will take good care of that; her matrimonial tiffs will be of the slightest; hers will be a well-regulated household; the course of her conjugal love will run smooth in spite of her little indiscretions--for, like Bluebeard's wife, she can be curious at times, and coax and wheedle to know the mysteries of Freemasonry, and cry because Edwin will not reveal the secret of Mr. Percy, the horse-tamer; and how Edwin can resist such an appeal is more than we can understand! But soon they will have a large family, and live happy ever after, and by the time their eldest-born is thirteen years old, the darling of fourteen years back will be a regular materfamilias, stout, matronly, and rather severe; and Edwin will be fat, bald, and middle-aged, and bring home a bundle of asparagus and a nice new perambulator to celebrate the wedding-day!
And he loves her brothers and cousins, military or otherwise, just as dearly, and makes them equally beautiful to the eye, with those lovely drooping whiskers that used to fall and brush their bosoms, their smartly waistcoated bosoms, a quarter of a century ago! He dresses them even better than the darlings, and has none but the kindliest and gentlest satire for their little vanities and conceits--for they have no real vices, these charming youths, beyond smoking too much and betting a little and getting gracefully tipsy at race-meetings and Greenwich dinners--and sometimes running into debt with their tailors, I suppose! And then how boldly they ride to hounds, and how splendidly they fight in the Crimea! how lightly they dance at home! How healthy, good-humoured, and manly they are, with all their vagaries of dress and jewellery and accent! It is easy to forgive them if they give the whole of their minds to their white neckties, or are dejected because they have lost the little gridiron off their chatelaine, or lose all presence of mind when a smut settles on their noses, and turn faint at the sight of Mrs. Gamp's umbrella!
And next to these enviable beings he loves and reveres the sportsman. One is made to feel that the true sportsman, whether he shoots or hunts or fishes, is an August being, as he ought to be in Great Britain, and Leech has done him full justice with his pencil. He is no subject for flippant satire; so there he sits his horse, or stalks through his turnip-field, or handles his rod like a god! Handsome, well-appointed from top to toe, aristocratic to the finger-tips--a most impressive figure, the despair of foreigners, the envy of all outsiders at home (including the present lecturer)!
He has never been painted like this before! What splendid lords and squires, fat or lean, hook-nosed or eagle-eyed, well tanned by sun and wind, in faultless kit, on priceless mounts! How redolent they are of health and wealth, and the secure consciousness of high social position--of the cool business-like self-importance that sits so well on those who are knowing in the noblest pursuit that can ever employ the energies and engross the mind of a well-born Briton; for they can ride almost as well as their grooms, these mighty hunters before the Lord, and know the country almost as well as the huntsman himself! And what sons and grandsons and granddaughters are growing up round them, on delightful ponies no gate, hedge, or brook can dismay--nothing but the hard high-road!
It is a glorious, exhilarating scene, with the beautiful wintry landscape stretching away to the cloudy November sky, and the lords and ladies gay, and the hounds, and the frosty-faced, short-tempered old huntsman, the very perfection of his kind; and the poor cockney snobs on their hired screws, and the meek clod-hopping labourers looking on excited and bewildered, happy for a moment at beholding so much happiness in their betters.
To have seen these sketches of the hunting-field is to have been there in person. It is almost the only hunting that I ever had--and probably ever shall have--and I am almost content that it should be so! It is so much easier and simpler to draw for _Punch_ than to drive across country! And then, as a set-off to all this successful achievement, this pride and pomp and circumstance of glorious sport, we have the immortal and ever-beloved figure of Mr. Briggs, whom I look upon as Leech's masterpiece--the example above all others of the most humorous and good-natured satire that was ever penned or pencilled. The more ridiculous he is the more we love him; he is more winning and sympathetic than even Mr. Pickwick himself, and I almost think a greater creation! Besides, it took two to make Mr. Pickwick, the author and the artist, whereas Mr. Briggs issued fully equipped from the brain of Leech alone!
Not indeed that all unauthorised gallopers after the fox find forgiveness in the eyes of Leech. Woe to the vulgar little cockney snob who dares to obtrude his ugly mug and his big cigar and his hired, broken-winded rip on these hallowed and thrice-happy hunting-grounds!--an earthenware pot among vessels of brass; the punishment shall be made to fit the crime; better if he fell off and his horse rolled over him than that he should dress and ride and look like that! For the pain of broken bones is easier to bear than the scorn of a true British sportsman!
His loves are many and his hates are few--but he is a good hater all the same. He hates Mawworm and Stiggins, and so do we. He hates the foreigner--whom he does not know, as heartily as Thackeray does, who seems to know him so well--with a hatred that seems to me a little unjust, perhaps: all France is not in Leicester Square; many Frenchmen can dress and ride, drive and shoot as well as anybody; and they began to use the tub very soon after we did--a dozen years or so, perhaps--say after the _coup d'état_ in 1851.
Then he hates with a deadly hatred all who make music in the street or next door--and preach in the crossways and bawl their wares on the parade. What would he have said of the Salvation Army? He is haunted by the bark of his neighbour's dog, by the crow of his neighbour's Cochin China cock; he cannot even bear his neighbour to have his chimney swept; and as for the Christmas waits--we all remember _that_ tragic picture! This exaggerated aversion to noises became a disease with him, and possibly hastened his end.
Among his pet hates we must not forget the gorgeous flunky and the guzzling alderman, the leering old fop, the rascally book-maker, the sweating Jew tradesman, and the poor little snob (the 'Arry of his day) who tries vainly to grow a moustache, and wears such a shocking bad hat, and iron heels to his shoes, and shuns the Park during the riots for fear of being pelted for a "haristocrat," and whose punishment I think is almost in excess of his misdemeanor. To succeed in over-dressing one's self (as his swells did occasionally without marring their beauty) is almost as ignominious as to fail; and when the failure comes from want of means, there is also almost a pathetic side to it.
And he is a little bit hard on old frumps, with fat ankles and scraggy bosoms and red noses--but anyhow we are made to laugh--_quod erat demonstrandum_. We also know that he has a strong objection to cold mutton for dinner, and much prefers a whitebait banquet at Greenwich, or a nice well-ordered repast at the Star and Garter. So do we.
And the only thing he feared is the horse. Nimrod as he is, and the happiest illustrator of the hunting-field that ever was, he seems for ever haunted by a terror of the heels of that noble animal he drew so well--and I thoroughly sympathise with him!
In all the series the chief note is joyousness, high spirits, the pleasure of being alive. There is no _Weltschmerz_ in his happy world, where all is for the best--no hankering after the moon, no discontent with the present order of things. Only one little lady discovers that the world is hollow, and her doll is stuffed with bran; only one gorgeous swell has exhausted the possibilities of this life, and finds out that he is at loss for a new sensation. So what does he do? Cut his throat? Go and shoot big game in Africa? No; he visits the top of the Monument on a rainy day, or invites his brother-swells to a Punch and Judy show in his rooms, or rides to Whitechapel and back on an omnibus with a bag of periwinkles, and picks them out with a pin!
Even when his humour is at its broadest, and he revels in almost pantomimic fun, he never loses sight of truth and nature--never strikes a false or uncertain note. Robinson goes to an evening party with a spiked knuckle-duster in his pocket and sits down. Jones digs an elderly party called Smith in the back with the point of his umbrella, under the impression that it is his friend Brown. A charming little street Arab prints the soles of his muddy feet on a smart old gentleman's white evening waistcoat.
Tompkyns writes Henrietta on the stands under two hearts transfixed by an arrow, and his wife, whose name is Matilda, catches him in the act. An old gentleman, maddened by a bluebottle, smashes all his furniture and breaks every window-pane but one--where the bluebottle is. And in all these scenes one does not know which is the most irresistible, the most inimitable--the mere drollery or the dramatic truth of gesture and facial expression.
The way in which every-day people really behave in absurd situations and under comically trying circumstances is quite funny enough for him; and if he exaggerates a little and goes beyond the absolute prose of life in the direction of caricature, he never deviates a hair's-breadth from the groove human nature has laid down. There is exaggeration, but no distortion. The most wildly funny people are low comedians of the highest order, whose fun is never forced and never fails; they found themselves on fact, and only burlesque what they have seen in actual life--they never evolve their fun from the depths of their inner consciousness; and in this naturalness, for me, lies the greatness of Leech. There is nearly always a tenderness in the laughter he excites, born of the touch of nature that makes the whole world kin!
Where most of all he gives us a sense of the exuberant joyousness and buoyancy of life is in the sketches of the seaside--the newly discovered joys of which had then not become commonplace to people of the middle class. The good old seaside has grown rather stale by this time--the very children of to-day dig and paddle in a half-perfunctory sort of fashion, with a certain stolidity, and are in strange contrast to those highly elate and enchanting little romps that fill his seaside pictures.
Indeed, nothing seems so jolly, nothing seems so funny, now, as when Leech was drawing for _Punch_. The gaiety of one nation at least has been eclipsed by his death. Is it merely that there is no such light humorist to see and draw for us in a frolicsome spirit all the fun and the jollity? Is it because some of us have grown old? Or is it that the British people themselves have changed and gone back to their old way of taking their pleasure sadly?
Everything is so different, somehow; the very girls themselves have grown a head taller, and look serious, stately, and dignified, like Olympian goddesses, even when they are dancing and playing lawn-tennis.
I for one should no more dream of calling them the darlings than I should dare to kiss them under the mistletoe, were I ever so splendid a young captain. Indeed I am too prostrate in admiration--I can only suck the top of my stick and gaze in jealous ecstasy, like one of Leech's little snobs. They are no longer pretty as their grandmothers were--whom Leech drew so well in the old days! They are _beautiful_!
And then they are so cultivated, and _know_ such a lot--of books, of art, of science, of politics, and theology--of the world the flesh, and the devil. They actually think for themselves; they have broken loose and jumped over the ring-fence; they have taken to the water, these lovely chicks, and swim like ducklings, to the dismay of those good old cocks and hens, their grandparents! And my love of them is tinged with awe, as was Leech's love of that mighty, beautiful, but most uncertain quadruped, the thoroughbred horse--for, like him, when they are good, they are very, very good, but when they are bad, they are horrid. We have changed other things as well: the swell has become the masher, and is a terrible dull dog; the poor little snob has blossomed into a blatant 'Arry, and no longer wears impossible hats and iron heels to his boots; he has risen in the social scale, and holds his own without fear or favour in the Park and everywhere else. To be taken for a haristocrat is his dream!--even if he be pelted for it. In his higher developments he becomes a "bounder," and bounds away in most respectable West End ball-rooms. He is the only person with any high spirits left--perhaps that is why high spirits have gone out of fashion, like boxing the watch and wrenching off door-knockers!
And the snob of our day is quite a different person, more likely than not to be found hobnobbing with dukes and duchesses--as irreproachable in dress and demeanour as Leech himself. Thackeray discovered and christened him for us long ago; and he is related to most of us, and moves in the best society. He has even ceased to brag of his intimacy with the great, they have become so commonplace to him; and if he swaggers at all, it is about his acquaintance with some popular actor or comic vocalist whom he is privileged to call by his christian-name.
And those splendid old grandees of high rank, so imposing of aspect, so crushing to us poor mortals by mere virtue not of their wealth and title alone, but of their high-bred distinction of feature and bearing--to which Leech did such ample justice--what has become of them?
They are like the snows of yester-year! They have gone the way of their beautiful chariots with the elaborate armorial bearings and the tasselled hammercloth, the bewigged, cocked-hatted coachman, and the two gorgeous flunkies hanging on behind. Sir Gorgeous Midas has beaten the dukes in mere gorgeousness, flunkies and all--burlesqued the vulgar side of them, and unconsciously shamed it out of existence; made swagger and ostentation unpopular by his own evil example--actually improved the manners of the great by sheer mimicry of their defects. He has married his sons and his daughters to them and spoiled the noble curve of those lovely noses that Leech drew so well, and brought them down a peg in many ways, and given them a new lease of life; and he has enabled us to discover that they are not of such different clay from ourselves after all. All the old slavish formulae of deference and respect--"Your Grace," "Your Ladyship," "My Lord"--that used to run so glibly off our tongues whenever we had a chance, are now left to servants and shopkeepers; and my slight experience of them, for one, is that they do not want to be toadied a bit, and that they are very polite, well-bred, and most agreeable people.
If we may judge of our modern aristocracy by that very slender fragment of our contemporary fiction, mostly American, that still thinks it worth writing about, our young noble of to-day is the most good-humoured, tolerant, simple-hearted, simple-minded, unsophisticated creature alive--thinking nothing of his honours--prostrate under the little foot of some fair Yankee, who is just as likely as not to jilt him for some transatlantic painter not yet known to fame.
Compare this unpretending youth to one of Bulwer's heroes, or Disraeli's, or even Thackeray's! And his simple old duke of a father and his dowdy old duchess of a mother are almost as devoid of swagger as himself; they seem to apologise for their very existence, if we may trust these American chroniclers who seem to know them so well; and I really think we no longer care to hear and read about them quite so much as we did--unless it be in the society papers!
But all these past manners and customs that some of us can remember so well--all these obsolete people, from the heavily whiskered swell to the policeman with the leather-bound chimney-pot hat, from good pater- and mater-familias who were actually looked up to and obeyed by their children, to the croquet-playing darlings in the pork-pie hats and huge crinolines--all survive and will survive for many a year in John Leech's "Pictures of Life and Character."
Except for a certain gentleness, kindliness, and self-effacing modesty common to both, and which made them appear almost angelic in the eyes of many who knew them, it would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast to Leech than Charles Keene.
Charles Keene was absolutely unconventional, and even almost eccentric. He dressed more with a view to artistic picturesqueness than to fashion, and despised gloves and chimney-pot hats, and black coats and broadcloth generally.
Scotch tweed was good enough for him in town and country alike. Though a Tory in politics, he was democratic in his tastes and habits. He liked to smoke his short black pipe on the tops of omnibuses; he liked to lay and light his own fire and cook his mutton-chop upon it. He had a passion for music and a beautiful voice, and sang with a singular pathos and charm, but he preferred the sound of his bagpipes to that of his own singing, and thought that you must prefer it too!
He was for ever sketching in pen and ink, indoors and out--he used at one time to carry a little ink-bottle at his buttonhole, and steel pens in his waistcoat-pocket, and thus equipped he would sketch whatever took his fancy in his walks abroad--houses, 'busses, cabs, people--bits of street and square, scaffoldings, hoardings with advertisements--sea, river, moor, lake, and mountain--what has he not sketched with that masterly pen that had already been so carefully trained by long and arduous practice in a life-school? His heart was in his work from first to last; beyond his bagpipes and his old books (for he was a passionate reader), he seemed to have no other hobby. His facility in sketching became phenomenal, as also his knowledge of what to put in and what to leave out, so that the effect he aimed at should be secured in perfection and with the smallest appearance of labour.