Chapter 38

and his Poll waltzing an accompaniment to an article on the "Debate on the Navy," which was written by Gilbert à Beckett. To the same writer's chapter on "The Footman," in his series of "_Punch's_ Guide to Servants" (p. 40, Volume IX.), is a characteristic illustration by Thackeray, and again on the following page to "The Gomersal Museum." A little farther on, on p. 56, is a clever cut of a lovers' _tête-à-tête_ beside a tea-table, to accompany Percival Leigh's ballad of "The Lowly Bard to his Lady Love;" and many similar results will reward a more extended search.

Thackeray's own opinion of his powers as a draughtsman is not easy to determine. We know, of course, from his own lips, his (? affected) surprise at Dickens not finding his art good enough to illustrate "Pickwick" _vice_ Seymour, deceased. But in the interval between this application in 1836 and his later work he probably came to a more critical estimate of the real value of his draughtsmanship--that work which had been so laboriously and earnestly evolved from his studies in the Louvre and elsewhere. When Vizetelly was engraving Thackeray's designs to "Mrs. Perkin's Ball," which on account of their unsophisticated artistic character, were re-touched by a clever young draughtsman, the artist wrote that there was a "je ne sais quoi" in his "vile drawing" which was worth retaining. "Somehow," he said, "I prefer my Nuremberg dolls to Mr. Thwaites's superfine wax models." After Edmund Yates had started that brilliant little journal or magazine, which was not destined, however, to live as long as it deserved, Thackeray wrote to him: "You have a new artist on 'The Train,' I see, my dear Yates. I have been looking at his work, and I have solved a problem. I find there _is_ a man alive who draws worse than myself!" Yet he continued to draw for _Punch_ with zeal; but when an acquaintance told him, probably in all sincerity, "but you _can_ draw," Thackeray brusquely put down the compliment to the toadyism of a "snob." Trollope declares that Thackeray "never learned to draw--perhaps, never could have learned;" but he did not see that in the art of illustration, especially of a humorous character, there is something more important than academic correctness and technical mastery. He moved his pencil slowly, with a deliberate broad touch, without haste, and with no more attempt at refinement than was natural to him. Yet his hand was capable of astonishing delicacy of touch; and I have seen the Lord's Prayer written by him one day at the _Punch_ Table, within the space of a threepenny-piece, which is a marvel of legibility. There is a character about Thackeray's work--his "je ne sais quoi"--that makes us forgive him his glaring faults--indeed, we almost come to love him for them--when once we have frankly recognised that it was in great measure his facility in drawing that was his artistic ruin. There is always something of the caricaturist in his most serious and important sketches--most of all, perhaps, in his etchings. It is in his smallest cuts that he is seen to the best advantage, and in them he occasionally challenges comparison with Doyle and Leech himself.

In the execution of his _Punch_ sketches, in nearly all the three hundred and eighty of them, Thackeray was as summary as in the turning of a ballad, and I describe elsewhere how he would make a drawing on the wood while the engraver waited and chatted over a cigar. It was clearly not his opinion that, as is nowadays adjudged to be the proper course, elaborate studies should first be made from the life-model, even for the execution of a simple _Punch_ picture. He preferred, when possible, to confine his pencil to the illustration of his own text; but on occasion he would produce a "social" cut--a drawing, that is to say, with a joke printed beneath. Sometimes it would be in the manner of Leech, as in the joke in Volume IX. (p. 3) called "The Ascot Cup Day," wherein a hot-potato-seller asks a small boy with a broom, "Why are you on the crossing, James? Is your father Hill?" and is informed "No. He's drove mother down to Hascot." More personal was such work as "The Stags, a Drama of To-day," in which a retired thimblerigger and an unfortunate costermonger, under a magnificent alias, take advantage of the railway mania to make their application for shares--for which they could not pay, of course, if things went wrong--in accordance with the game of "heads I win, tails I vanish," at that time extensively played throughout the country. Later on (in Volume XV.), following "The Heavies," he gave, in seven scenes, a panorama of an "Author's Miseries." In 1847 (Volume XII., p. 59) Thackeray contributed a "social" picture which is to this day a wonder to all beholders. It is entitled "Horrid Tragedy in Private Life," and represents a room in which two ladies, or a lady and a servant, are in a state of the greatest alarm. What the meaning of it all is there is nothing whatever to indicate (unless it be that something has fallen on the taller lady's dress); and on its appearance the "Man in the Moon" offered a reward of £500 and a free pardon to anyone who would publish an explanation. The reward was never claimed; and Thackeray's contribution remains one of _Punch's_ Prize Puzzles, unsolved, and, apparently, unsolvable.

It was in No. 137--that notable part which contained "The Song of the Shirt"--that Thackeray appeared in his own right, as belonging not only to the Staff, but to the Table. The contribution was a "Singular Letter from the Regent of Spain;" and with it Thackeray took his place at the Dinner as an excellent substitute for Albert Smith. That writer, who had found his successor "a very jolly fellow with no High Art about him," and a charming companion at "the Cider Cellars," a month later disappeared for ever from _Punch_ as a contributor, refiguring only in its pages from time to time as an object of attack.

Thackeray's work on _Punch_ covered every corner of _Punch's_ field. Burlesques of history and parodies of literature, ballads and songs, stories and jokes, papers and paragraphs, pleasantry and pathos, criticisms and conundrums, travels in the East and raillery in the West, political skits and social satire--from a column to a single line--such was the sum of Thackeray's contribution to _Punch_. Less prolific than either Jerrold or Gilbert à Beckett, he produced, nevertheless, an enormous amount of "copy" that was always readable, even when it was not his best. He wrote from Paris to his friend, Mrs. Brookfield (September 2nd, 1849): "I won't give you an historical disquisition in the Titmarsh manner upon this, but reserve it for _Punch_--for whom, on Thursday [I have written] an article that I think is quite unexampled for dulness, even in that Journal, and that beats the dullest Jerrold. What a jaunty, offhand, satiric rogue I am, to be sure--and a gay young dog!" But he did not think his work half so uninteresting as he pretended; he even regarded with satisfaction that which he produced when greatly out of the vein. "It is but a hasty