CHAPTER X.

“A MAN MADE OF MONEY.”—DOUGLAS JERROLD.

Knowing that this extraordinary book was illustrated by John Leech, and hearing that it contained some of his best work, it became my duty to make a sufficient acquaintance with the book to enable me to criticise and explain the drawings to my readers. I tried “skimming,” but the power of the book, and the brilliancy of the wit in it, so attracted me that I read the whole of it.

It is not my province, and it is certainly not in my power, to pose as a critic of literary work; and the hero—the man made of money, with a heart made of bank-notes instead of flesh and blood, containing within himself a bank that could be drawn upon to any amount—is so wonderful a being as to place him out of the category of human creatures, and altogether beyond criticism. This gentleman’s name was Jericho. He had waited till he was forty, and then he married a widow with three children; two of them were girls, the third a young gentleman of whom those who knew him best said, “He was born for billiards.” There was no love lost between Mr. Jericho and his step-children; in fact, they cordially hated him, and he returned the compliment. Their name was Pennibacker, inherited from their father, Captain Pennibacker, whose loving wife “was made a widow at two-and-twenty by an East Indian bullet.” Mr. Jericho was one of that large class which, though really needy, manoeuvres successfully to be considered wealthy. His step-children considered him as “a rich plum-cake, to be sliced openly or by stealth among them.” The widow Pennibacker was first attracted to him by “a whispered announcement that he was a City gentleman. Hence Jericho appeared to the imagination of the widow with an indescribable glory of money about him.”

Mrs. Jericho desired to make a few purchases, and she approached her husband with a cry familiar to most of us:

“‘Mr. Jericho, when can you let me have some money?’”

The lady’s confidence in her husband’s wealth ought to have been shaken by what followed her application. Mr. Jericho turned a deaf ear to the appeal, which was repeated in every variety of tone and accent.

At length, “waving her right hand before her husband’s face with a significant and snaky motion,” she reiterated her demand with a terrible calmness:

“‘When can I have some money?’

“‘Woman!’ cried Jericho vehemently, as though at once and for ever he emptied his heart of the sex; and, rushing from the room, he felt himself in the flattering vivacity of the moment a single man. ‘I’m sure, after all, I do my best to love the woman,’ thought Jericho, ‘and yet she will ask me for money.’”

Disgusted with these unreasonable demands for money, Mr. Jericho determines to revenge himself by taking a day’s pleasure with three special friends, to be ended by “a quiet banquet at which the human heart would expand in good fellowship, and where the wine was above doubt.”

The dinner was a great success. It was very late—or rather somewhat early, as the sparrows were twittering from the eaves—when Mr. Jericho sought the marital couch, in which, too, his “wife Sabilla” was evidently “in a sound, deep, sweet sleep.”

“Untucking the bed-clothes, and making himself the thinnest slice of a man, Jericho slides between the sheets; and there he lies feloniously still, and he thinks to himself—Being asleep, she cannot tell how late I came to bed. At all events, it is open to dispute, and that is something.

“‘Mr. Jericho, when can you let me have some money?’

“With open eyes, and clearly ringing every word upon the morning air, did Mrs. Jericho repeat this primal question.

“And what said Jericho? With a sudden qualm at the heart, and with a stammering tongue, he answered:

“‘Why, my dear, I thought you were sound asleep.’”

Here follows a dialogue in the vein of the “Caudle Lectures,” in which Jerrold gives his wit and humour full play. To the perusal of the “give-and-take” passage of arms I cordially commend my readers. The dialogue closes with these words:

“‘I’m sure it’s painful enough to my feelings, and I feel degraded by the question, nevertheless I must and will ask you—When will you let me have some money?’”

This was the last straw, and Jericho groaned out:

“‘I wish to Heaven I was made of money!’”

To which Mrs. Jericho retorted, “in a low, deep, earnest voice:

“‘I wish to Heaven you were!’”

Silence came at last, and in the midst of it Jericho “subsided into muddled sleep; snoring heavily, contemptuously, at the loneliness of his spouse.”

And now two fleas—an elder and younger flea—come upon the scene, and proceed to dine, or sup, upon Mr. Jericho’s brow.

A long conversation ensues between these interesting creatures, in which the elder flea describes to his son how a man’s heart was changed into inexhaustible bank-notes.

“‘Miserable race!’ said the father flea, with his beautiful bright eye shining pitifully upon Jericho; ‘miserable, craving race, you hear, my son! Man in his greed never knows when he has wherewithal. He gorges to gluttony; he drinks to drunkenness; and you heard this wretched fool who prayed to Heaven to turn him—heart, brain, and all—into a lump of money.’”

How the operation was effected may be learnt from Mr. Jerrold’s book. One result of it was a most troubled and miserable night to the dreamer Jericho, whose complaints to his wife when he awoke met with no sympathy.

“‘If I were to live a thousand years, I shouldn’t forget last night!’ groaned Jericho.

“‘Very likely not,’ said Mrs. Jericho; ‘I’ve no doubt you deserve to remember it. I shouldn’t wonder——’”

Mrs. Jericho’s want of money is intensified by the wants of her son Basil, whose luck at billiards may have failed him just when his creditors were most pressing.

“‘Well, what does the old fellow say, the scaly old griffin? What’s he got to answer for himself?’” This was “the sudden question put to Mrs. Jericho on her return to the drawing-room, after the interview with her husband. ‘Come, what is it? Will he give me some money? In a word,’ asked young hopeful, ‘will he go into the melting-pot, like a man and a father?’

“‘My dear Basil, you mustn’t ask me,’ replied Mrs. Jericho.

“‘Oh, mustn’t I, though!’ cried Basil. ‘Ha, you don’t know the lot of people that’s asking me; bless you, they ask a hundred times to my once!’”

The Jerichos have some rich friends, the Carraways, who live in a mansion called Jogtrot Hall, “the one central grandeur, the boast and the comfort of the village of Marigolds.” To a fÊte at the Hall comes an invitation to the Jerichos. It had always been Mrs. Jericho’s ambition that her girls should—“in her own nervous words”—make a blow in marriage, and she felt that perhaps the time had come. But the girls’ dresses—the “war-paint,” as Mr. Basil put it—there was the difficulty, only to be surmounted by Mr. Jericho’s yielding to the repeated cry, “When will you let me have some money?”

With but faint hopes of success, Mrs. Jericho seeks her husband in his study. In a long colloquy, she urges the importance of her daughters’ appearance at this “grand party,” and the necessity for an advance to enable them to do so properly. Mr. Jericho turns a deaf ear to her appeal, till suddenly a wonderful change comes over him.

“Quite a new look of satisfaction gleamed from his eyes, and his mouth had such a strange smile of compliance! What could ail him?”

The charm was working, the marvellous change was in operation. Mrs. Jericho fears for her husband’s sanity. “‘He doesn’t look mad,’ thought Mrs. Jericho, a little anxious.

“‘I feel as if I had got new blood, new flesh, new bones, new brain! Wonderful!’ Jericho trod up and down the room and snapt his fingers. ‘Something’s going to happen,’ said he.”

And something did indeed happen. The transformation was complete; the hard heart had given place to illimitable money.

“‘You will let me have the money?’ repeated Mrs. Jericho.

“Jericho answered not a word, but withdrew his hand from his breast. Between his finger and his thumb he held in silver purity a virgin Bank of England note for a hundred pounds. Mrs. Jericho ran delightedly off with the money.

“And Jericho sat with his heart beating faster. Again he placed his hand to his breast, again drew forth another bank-note. He jumped to his feet, tore away his dress, and, running to a mirror, saw therein reflected, not human flesh, but over the region of the heart a loose skin of bank-paper, veined with marks of ink. He touched it, and still in his hand lay another note. His thoughtless wish had been wrought into reality. Solomon Jericho was in very truth a Man made of Money.”

The fÊte at Jogtrot Hall was a great success. The guests were many, and some of them distinguished. The Honourable Mr. Candytuft, Colonel Bones, Commissioner Thrush, and Dr. Mizzlemist, of Doctors’ Commons, must be noted, as they have to be dealt with pictorially by Leech hereafter. After a variety of entertainments, some twenty or thirty hungry guests graced a table under a long, wide tent, on which “there were the most delicious proofs of the earth’s goodness, with every kitchen mystery.” The host, Mr. Carraway, took the head of the table; Mr. Jericho, “dignified and taciturn, graced the board.” The orator on the occasion was Dr. Mizzlemist, who had been seized with a passion to drink everybody’s health. For the third time he rose to give “the health of Solomon Jericho, Esquire, an honour to his country.”

“In the course of his speech the Doctor delivered himself with so much energy that at the same time he stuck the fork, which had served him in emphasizing the Jericho virtues, between the bones of Mr. Jericho’s right hand, pinning it where it lay.

“‘It is nothing,’ said the philosophic Jericho.”

The change in Mr. Jericho’s appearance, from the full-faced, healthy-looking individual of Leech’s first drawing, to the spare, hollow-cheeked man at the banquet, is to be accounted for by the fact that, after each application to the strange bank established in Mr. Jericho’s breast, his whole form shrinks; he becomes thinner and thinner, to the alarm of his tailor, who “says, as he measures the changed man:

“‘Six inches less round the body, as I’m a sinner! Six inches less, Mr. Jericho, and I last took your measure six weeks ago.’”

At the Carraway fÊte the Misses Jericho made, and improved, the acquaintance of the Hon. Mr. Candytuft, and of an incredible idiot, Sir Arthur Homadod. The idiot was as beautiful as he was foolish; he was therefore handsome beyond the dreams of beauty. Whatever had taken the place of the mind in the baronet was impressed by Miss Agatha Pennibacker, and that virgin’s heart being free, she lost it to Sir Arthur. The Hon. Mr. Candytuft, having an eye to the enormous fortune supposed to be possessed by Mr. Jericho, and being desirous to secure the portion of it that would of course fall to his step-daughter, made love to Miss Monica with considerable success.

In the meantime the ladies wish to go to Court; in this they are encouraged by Candytuft; and, to enable them to make a proper figure there, costly jewels are required. To Candytuft and Jericho enter Mrs. J., “with a magnificent suite of jewels.

“‘Aren’t they beautiful, my dear Solomon?’ said she....

“‘You know, my dear,’ said Mrs. Jericho, in her sweetest, most convincing voice, ‘it would be impossible to go to Court without diamonds. One isn’t dressed without diamonds.’

“‘Court!’ Jericho opened his eyes, and a wan smile broke on his thin, blank cheek. ‘Are you going to Court?’

“‘Why, of course—are we not, dear Mr. Candytuft? What would be thought of us if we did not pay our homage to——’

“The sentence was broken by the sudden appearance of Monica and Agatha, each bearing a jewel-case, and looking radiant with the possession.

“‘Thank you, dear papa,’ said Monica, curtseying and smiling her best to Jericho.

“‘They’re beautiful. Thank you—dear, dearest papa,’ cried the more impulsive Agatha.

“‘Look!’ said Monica, and she exhibited her treasure.

“‘Look!’ cried Agatha, and she half dropped upon one knee, on the other side, to show her jewels.

“‘Beautiful!’ cried Candytuft. ‘Pray, ladies, don’t stir.’

“The girls, with pretty wonder on their faces, kept their positions on either side of Jericho.

“‘My dear madam’—and Candytuft appealed to Mrs. Jericho—‘is not this a delightful group—an exquisite family picture? It ought to be painted.’”

Mr. Candytuft is right. The graceful figures of the girls, the attenuated figure of papa, in whose hopeless expression one sees the dread of further attenuation, together with his own perfect presentment, would make—indeed, does make—an admirable picture. The jewels cost one thousand pounds: ten calls have to be made upon the supernatural bank. They are made, and the jeweller is paid. And the result! For some minutes after the departure of the tradesman Jericho sat motionless—all but breathless. He would, however, know his fate. He took out the silk lace with which an hour ago he had measured his chest. Again he passed it round his body. He had drawn upon the bank, and he had shrunk an inch.

Truly he was a man made of money—money was the principle of his being, for with every note he paid away a portion of his life.

Poor Mr. Carraway was ruined through no fault of his own. Jogtrot Hall was sold, and Jericho bought it. Thirty thousand pounds’ worth of flesh had he sacrificed to buy to himself a country mansion. He had become a member of Parliament, and at the same time become so thin that his tailor declared, “It’s like measuring a penknife for a sheath.” “Why,” said the tailor to his wife, “he isn’t a man at all, but a cotton-pod. He can’t have no more stomach than a ’bacco-pipe.” In fact, it was the growing belief of a large circle that Jericho was no flesh, no man, at all. “He was made up of coats,” ran the rumour, “like an onion.”

The insolence that is sometimes the accompaniment of great riches took full possession of Mr. Jericho, and he found an occasion to treat Colonel Bones to a specimen of it. Almost without provocation the Colonel was called “a toad-eater! a bone-picking pauper!” etc. For this insult the Colonel declared he would have Mr. Jericho’s blood, and in pursuance of that object he sent the millionaire a challenge. Jericho fought very hard to avoid fighting, but his second, Mr. Candytuft, prevailed, and the belligerents met in Battersea Fields. Mr. Commissioner Thrush waited upon the angry Colonel, and the celebrated Dr. Dodo was there to attend to the wounded. The seconds confer; the men are placed. Candytuft looked at them with an eye of admiration. The signal was given.

“Colonel Bones fires, and his ball goes clear through Jericho’s bosom, knocking off a button in its passage, and striking itself flat against a pile of bricks.”

“‘A dead man!’ cried the doctor, running to Jericho.

“‘My friend,’ exclaimed Candytuft, ‘have you made your will?’

“‘Eh? What’s the matter?’ said Jericho.

“‘Matter!’ exclaimed Dr. Dodo, and he pointed his cane to the hole in the front of Jericho’s coat, immediately over the region of his heart. ‘Matter! It’s the first time I ever heard a man with a bullet clean through his breast ask—What’s the matter!’”

The Colonel’s ball had passed through Jericho’s bank-note-paper breast, and Jericho lived and moved and was none the worse for it. Jericho fired in the air.

An ugly atmosphere was collecting about Mr. Jericho, and he was aware of it. “His own family saw in him a man of mysterious attributes. Monica turned pale at the smallest courtesy of her parent, and Agatha, suddenly meeting him on the staircase, squealed and ran away as from a fiend.

“Mr. Jericho went on a rejoicing conqueror. His huge town mansion, burning with gold—massive, rich, and gorgeous; for the Man of Money was far the most substantial, the most potent development of his creed, whereby to awe and oppress his worshippers——”

Mrs. Jericho had made up her mind that it was time her daughters were “settled in life, and she said as much to her husband.”

“‘Your girls, my dear, have my free permission to settle when and where they like,’ said the husband.

“But in sounding Mr. Jericho as to his intentions in the matter of settlements, she could make no way whatever. At last she put the point-blank question:

“‘What do you propose to give the dear child?’ (alluding to Monica, for whose hand Candytuft was about to ask).

“‘Give! I’ll give a magnificent party on the occasion.’

“‘But the dowry; what dowry do you give?’

“‘Dowry! I thought, my dear, you observed marriage was no bargain? Why, you’re making it quite a ready-money transaction!’”

At this point the conversation was interrupted by Mr. Candytuft, who, before advocating his own case, warmly espoused that of his foolish friend, Sir Arthur Homadod, the accepted of Agatha.

“‘He’s as bashful as—as—upon my life I am at a loss for a simile. And as he and I are old friends, and as he knew that I should see you—in fact, he’s in the house at this moment, and came along with me—he desired me to inform you that Miss Agatha had consented to fix the—the—what d’ye call it—the happy day.’

“‘Wish them joy,’ said Jericho.

“‘As to the young lady’s dowry?’ hesitated Candytuft.

“‘I can’t give a farthing; can’t afford it, my dear Candytuft.’”

The ambassador then speaks for himself:

“‘You may have remarked my affection for Miss Monica? You must have remarked it?’

“‘I beg a thousand pardons,’ said the wag Jericho, ‘but it has quite escaped me.’

“Candytuft wanly smiled.

“‘In a word, my dear sir, we have come to the sweet conclusion that we were made for one another.’

“‘Dear me! Well, how lucky you should have met!’”

Mr. Candytuft beats about the bush for awhile, but at last comes abruptly to the point, saying:

“‘I must ask—you force me to be plain—what will you give with the young lady?’

“‘Not a farthing!’ cried Jericho. ‘Not one farthing!’ said the man of money with determined emphasis.

“‘What is the matter?’ said Mrs. Jericho, who entered the room at this juncture.

“‘Pooh! you know well enough,’ cried Jericho. ‘Mr. Candytuft wants to marry rich; but that’s not all—he wants to be handsomely paid for the trouble.’”

After awhile Jericho affects to agree to dower his step-daughter, and he says:

“‘Let us settle the sum, eh! Well, then, what sum would satisfy you?’”

It was a delicate question to put thus nakedly.

“‘Come, name a figure. Say five thousand pounds.’”

Candytuft looked blankly at Jericho, moving not a muscle.

“‘What do you say to seven?’

“Candytuft gently lifted his eyebrows, deprecating the amount.

“‘Come, then, we’ll advance to ten?’

“The lover’s face began to thaw, and he showed some signs of kindly animation.

“‘At a word, then,’ cried Jericho with affected heartiness, ‘will you take fifteen thousand?’

“‘From you—yes,’ cried Candytuft; and he seized Jericho’s hand.

“The man of money looked at Candytuft with a contemptuous sneer, and with a wrench twisted his hand away. He then dropped into a chair, and a strange, diabolical scowl possessed his countenance. The man of money looked like a devil.

“‘And where—where do you think this money is to come from? Where?’ asked Jericho, and he rose from his chair, and it seemed as though the demon possessing him would compel the wretch to talk—would compel him to make terrible revelations. Each word he uttered was born of agony. But there he stood, forced to give utterances that tortured him. ‘I will tell you,’ roared Jericho, ‘what this money is. Look about you! What do you see?—fine pictures, fine everything. Why, you see me—tortured, torn, worked up, changed. The walls are hung with my flesh—my flesh you walk upon. I am worn piecemeal by a hundred thieves, but I’ll be shared among them no longer.’”

By this time the girls and Sir Arthur Homadod, alarmed by the cries of Jericho, had entered the room.

“‘And you had a fine feast, had you not?’ cried the possessed man of money, writhing with misery and howling his confession. ‘And what did you eat?—my flesh. What did you drink?—my blood!’”

It would be impossible to imagine a more satisfactory realization of this powerful scene than Leech’s rendering of it. The shrinking figure of Candytuft as he retreats before the fury of the moneyed man; the awful passion of the shrivelled Jericho; above all, the vacuous expression of Sir Arthur, all are done to perfection and without exaggeration. Beyond the endeavour to make the meaning of the illustrations in the “Man made of Money” clear to my readers, I have little or nothing to do with the story. I may note, however, that young Basil Pennibacker falls in love with Bessy, the pretty daughter of the ruined merchant Carraway, and that bold bankrupt, who is about to seek a new fortune at the Antipodes, calls upon Jericho to ask his consent to his stepson’s marriage. How the announcement of the engagement was received may be imagined, or if my reader be not satisfied with his idea of what may have taken place, he can read in Mr. Jerrold’s book how Mr. Carraway was met by his old friend. He will also find an illustration of an interview between “The Pauper and the Man of Money,” but as I do not think it quite worthy of Leech, I do not reproduce it. I may as well add that Basil—who turns out to be a very good fellow—does marry Bessy, and the happy pair, with the parent pair of Carraways, depart for Australia in the good ship Halcyon.

Mr. Jericho’s explosion, and his unpleasant conduct generally—especially regarding Monica’s dowry—had altered Mr. Candytuft’s matrimonial intentions for the present: there were delays. “He had suddenly discovered some dormant right to some long-forgotten property, and he meant to secure that, and lay it as an offering at the feet of his bride.” How the foolish Sir Arthur agreed to marry Agatha without a dowry, to the intense delight of Jericho—how splendid preparations for the wedding were made—how the wedding-party, Jericho included, waited at the church for the bridegroom, who never came (he had overslept himself in consequence of an overdose of medicine taken to steady his nerves)—for these details my reader is again referred to Mr. Jerrold, who describes the whole most enjoyably. Leech draws the baronet awakened by his servant, but too late: the canonical hour has passed. A report was spread that Sir Arthur had taken poison to avoid the Jericho connection.

Just at this time Mr. Jericho was offered a most satisfactory mortgage—so any way there was land for his money—no less than five-and-forty thousand pounds, by his friend the Duke of St. George.

Jericho lent the money, in the hope of climbing into the House of Lords with the assistance of the Duke; but this last drain upon his resources, with its penalty of attenuation, had left very little of him to go anywhere.

“He had shrunk,” says the author. “How horribly he had dwindled, how wretchedly small he had become! Ay, how small! He would measure himself, he would know the exact waste. Whereupon Jericho took the silken cord and passed it round his breast. Why, it would twice encircle him—twice! and a piece to spare. With horror and loathing he flung the cord into the fire. He would never again take damning evidence against himself.”

It became evident to Jericho that, if he desired to retain enough of his person to enable his friends and relations to recognise him, the drain upon the chest notes must cease.

“He would, therefore, not draw another note—no, not another. He would live upon what he had. He would turn the foolish superfluities about him into hard, tangible money.”

Bent upon turning everything belonging not only to himself, but to his wife and daughters, into cash, he sent for Mrs. Jericho.

“The trembling wife had scarcely power to meet the eyes of her helpmate. In two days twenty years seemed to have gathered upon him. His face looked brown, thin, and withered as last year’s leaf. His whole body bent and swayed like a piece of paper moved by the air. As he held his hand aloof, the light shone through it. It was plain there was some horrid compact between her lord and the infernal powers, or—it was all as one—the tyranny of conscience had worn him to his present condition.

“‘Mrs. Jericho, madam, you will instantly bring me all your diamonds—jewellery—all. Give like orders to your daughters, the mincing harpies that eat me.’”

The terrified woman remonstrated, asked for an explanation, offered to send for the doctor.

“‘Away with you! do as I command. Bring me all your treasures—all. And your minxes! See that they obey me too, and instantly.’

“‘Yes, my love, to be sure,’ said Mrs. Jericho, for she was all but convinced that Solomon’s reason was gone or going. It was best to humour him. ‘And why, my love, do you wish for these things? Of course you shall have them, but why?’

“‘To turn them into money, madam,’ cried Jericho, rubbing his hands. ‘We have had enough of the tomfoolery of wealth—I now begin to hunger for the substance. I’ll do without fashion. I’ll have power, madam—power!’”

The conversation continued, and Mrs. Jericho became more and more convinced that her husband was mad.

“‘Oh that Dr. Stubbs would make a morning call!’ silently prayed the wife.”

The man of money, having determined to dismantle his house and send his wife and daughters adrift, retired with one servant, all the rest being discharged, into “one of his garrets, a den of a place,” where the scullion had slept. The servant was the pauper grandfather of one of his footmen, an old man of “congenial weakness with Jericho. Indeed, there looked between them a strange similitude, twin brethren damned to the like sordidness, the like rapacity.”

Jericho had nicknamed the old man Plutus. Jericho and Plutus were in face and expression as like as two snakes.

Mrs. Jericho, assured of her husband’s madness, took counsel with her friends. Drs. Stubbs and Mizzlemist, Colonel Bones, Commissioner Thrush, and Candytuft met in conclave and listened to Mrs. Jericho’s account of her husband’s ravings; but she failed to convince the doctors that what a jury would consider insanity, was apparent in anything that the man of money had said or done. As Dr. Mizzlemist delivered this opinion, a crash was heard in an adjoining room—another, and another, and then a loud triumphant laugh from the throat of Jericho.

Wife and daughters, with jury of friends, started to their feet. Candytuft, ere he was aware—for had he reflected “a moment, he would as soon have unbarred a lion’s cage—opened the doors. And there stood Jericho, laden with spoil.”

Though Mr. Jericho was voted sane by the doctors, his conduct displayed a brutality for which madness would be the only excuse. The Jews were coming, everything was to be sold.

“‘Why stay you here?’ cried the man of money to his wife. ‘Why will you not be warned? In a few hours there will not be a bed for your fine costly bones to lie upon. Now will you depart?’”

The Jews wandered about the rooms, appraising everything. Jericho was anxious to avoid a “public hubbub,” as he called a sale.

“‘I want,’ said he to the brokers, ‘at a thought, to melt all you see, and have seen, into ready money. Take counsel together, I say, and make me an offer, a lumping offer, for the whole—eh?’”

The man of money ascended to his garret and awaited the Jews’ offer, which was promised for the evening. He was alone, “evening closed in, and the moon rose and looked reproachfully at the miser.”

The garret door opened, and Plutus appeared.

“‘Well, has it come?’ cried the master.

“‘Here it is,’ answered the servant, as he laid a letter upon the table.

“‘Well, now for their conscience!’ exclaimed the man of money.”

Light was required; there was a candle upon the table, and paper prepared to light it.

“Most precious paper—the heart’s flesh and blood of the man of money! For the devilish serving-man had folded a note (how obtained can it matter?)—a note peeled from the breast of his master, a piece of money, a part of the damned Jericho sympathizing with him.

“The man of money took the paper—the devil, with his ear upturned, crept closer to the door—and thrust it amidst the dying coals. A moment, and the garret is rent as with a lightning flash.

“Yelling, and all on fire, the man of money falls prostrate with hell in his face. Then his lips move, but not a sound is heard. And the fire communicated by the sympathy of the living note—the flesh of his flesh—like a snake of flame glides up his limbs, devouring them. And so he is consumed: a minute, and the man of money is a thin black paper ash. Now the night wind stirs it, and now a sudden breeze carries the cinereous corpse away, fluttering it to dust impalpable.”

Mr. Thackeray’s “Four Georges” are, no doubt, familiar to my readers, some of whom may also remember his delivery of them in the form of lectures to large audiences. In that great writer’s early time he wrote many essays, art-criticisms, etc., under the name of “Michael Angelo Titmarsh,” and it is under that title that he is represented in the drawing by his friend Leech, as he appeared at Willis’s Rooms “in his celebrated character of Mr. Thackeray.”

In the Month, Mr. Albert Smith makes Leech’s drawing a peg upon which he hangs some justly complimentary remarks on the Thackeray lectures which took the town by storm forty years ago.

Whether the “Belle of Hyde Park” or the “Belle of the Ball” is to be considered the belle of the Month’s July issue is left in doubt; but there is no doubt whatever about the claim of the pretty creature (who, accompanied by an extremely plain and dissolute-looking cavalier in the costume of Charles II.’s time, enters an imaginary ball-room) to a loveliness that it would be difficult to surpass, as the drawing amply proves.

This cut is accompanied by some verses which appear to me quite unreadable; I therefore spare my readers from the infliction of any of them.

The frontispiece to the Month for August is an etching by Leech of singular beauty, called “Charade Acting.” I have looked in vain through the letter-press for any explanation of this charade, so I suppose the meaning is purposely left for discovery to the intelligence of the observer. It represents the clever performance of Mr. Smiley and Miss Corgy.

Mr. Smiley evidently represents a valorous knight—else why that dish-cover shield, that saucepan helmet, that long surcoat of nightshirt in the place of mail? The knight has armed himself further with sword and lance (sword of any period, lance a roasting-spit). Those warlike preparations must have been made in defence of that delicious girl leaning over the back of the ancient chair. Is she supposed to be a distressed damsel leaning from her prison-window and listening to Mr. Smiley’s vows of liberating her or dying in the attempt? If so, where is the word that will express as much? Not in the brain of the stout old gentleman who is fast asleep amongst the audience, nor in that of the pretty little girl who sits in front of him apparently wondering why people should be “so silly.” The lady who tries to hide a yawn with her fan has evidently “given it up,” and the two lovely women near her are much in the same condition.

Now we come to the belle of the month of August, who is riding with her papa in Kensington Gardens. An attempt was made—later, I think, than the Exhibition year—to extend Rotten Row into Kensington Gardens, and thus deprive pedestrians—notably children and nursemaids—of their promenades amongst the trees. For some months the equestrian habituÉs of Rotten Row careered in the Gardens, to the terror and danger of children, and the disturbance of many groups of soldiers and nursemaids. This usurpation created very strong opposition.

I lived in the neighbourhood, and I accompanied a deputation to Sir Cornewall Lewis—then in power—with a view of impressing upon that Minister the desirability of rescinding the objectionable privilege which had been granted to the riders. We had some eloquent talkers, but their oratory seemed to me to make no impression upon Sir C. Lewis, who may have listened, but during the harangues he was always writing letters, and no sooner was one finished than he began another; and we left him without an intimation of our success or failure. But what is certain is, that within a week of our interview the equestrians disappeared—I hope for ever—from Kensington Gardens. Leech being a constant rider, both spoke and drew in favour of the new ride. Drawings may be found in the Punch series in which he laughs at the opponents of the horses in the Gardens, and I remember his indignation when I told him of our deputation and its successful issue.

Leech was never happier than in the infinite variety of his pictures of life at the seaside; his invention was inexhaustible, as numberless groups of seaside visitors engaged in the search of health or pleasure—from the small digger on the sands to the valetudinarian at the Spa—sufficiently prove. Never was he more delightful than in dealing with the charming lady bathers, one of whom plays the part of the Month’s “Belle of September.”

I think this picture might have inspired the poet of the Month, but his lyre is silent.

“The Balcony Nuisance!” Without some explanation the drawing that follows this title would be perfectly incomprehensible. How, in the name of common-sense, of propriety, or of justice, can the word “nuisance” be applicable to the occupants of that balcony? Well, it is in this wise: A correspondent of the Month, who signs himself “Narcissus,” lives in a suburban square, from which he indites a remarkable letter. According to “Narcissus,” suburban squares are famous for the production of vast numbers of “single ladies.” He calls his square a “realm of girldom,” the proportion of the belles being very great over the marriageable young men, and therefore they watch with keen eyes for any new flirtations. “And now,” said he, “comes my complaint. I cannot call at any house where there are daughters but, the instant I knock, every balcony near me is filled with waves of rustling muslin, and a dozen pairs of bright eyes are on the qui vive for every movement or expression. I need not say how annoying this is.”

I see no trace of annoyance in the simpering buck who is the cynosure of all eyes in the drawing. Leech evidently saw through the affectation of annoyance, and depicted the Narcissus mind in its real condition of gratified conceit.

The Month’s October issue contains a good deal of Leech’s work. The number contains a “Belle of the Month,” but she is so inferior in attractiveness to her sisters that I am ungallant enough to pass her by. I find, however, a pretty musical group entitled “Pestal.” In 1851 Mr. Albert Smith says that Pestal, who was a Russian officer, was imprisoned for marrying without the consent of his Sovereign, and “cast for death.” Of course, though, according to Mr. Smith, this unfortunate man may have been a “Pestal-ent person,” we are not expected to believe the crime for which he was executed was only that of neglecting to ask the Czar’s consent to his marriage. “On the eve of his execution, as he lay ironed, awaiting the next morning’s mangling,” continues the inveterate punster, “in a happy moment of enthusiasm, he composed the waltz that bears his name.”

The pretty music seems to have sentimentalized the handsome youth, and drawn him closer to the performer, who is one of those sweet creatures with whom the artist has made us so familiar. I cannot refrain from presenting my readers with an example of the poetry that adorns the Month, so that they may be convinced of the propriety of giving them as little of it as possible. Forty-one verses, of which the two following are fair examples, accompany the drawing called Pestal:

“The Great Dinner-Bell Nuisance” not only gives occasion for a capital drawing by Leech, but the title also heads a capital paper, in which the absurdity of the function, when there is not the least necessity for it, is well satirized. A retired lawyer named Watkins Brown lives in a village which contains at most 347 people, “in a comfortable sort of house in the Italian style, which he christened Somerford Villa.” He has no children, and his establishment consists of five persons, Mrs. W. B., Betsy, the cook, etc., including Buttons, the page. This boy, armed with a bell, is a nuisance to the neighbourhood; he performs upon it three times a day. “Now,” says the indignant writer, “why does Buttons do this? Is it to echo back the sound that comes at the same hours from Sir Marmaduke Hamilton’s, of Somerford Hall, and to impress people that Brown and Sir Marmaduke are the only gentlemen in the neighbourhood? It can’t be to let Brown and his wife know that luncheon or dinner is ready, for in nine cases out of ten they are in the room when the cloth is laid. Again I ask, why does Buttons do this? If he is of opinion that his master is unaware it is time to dress for dinner, why doesn’t he tell him so at once when he is in the room, instead of using such an absurd system of information? However, by six o’clock Brown and his wife are in the drawing-room, and Buttons seeing them there, and perceiving that they are just about to go to the dining-room, rushes out to the little court-yard, and then to the door of the miniature conservatory, and again commits the offence he had committed half an hour before. In the baby courtyard there are two dogs chained, and two other sporting dogs in a model of a kennel. Well, Buttons appears in the presence of the dogs with his great bell, and the sensible brutes, conscious of the pain they are about to endure, immediately set up a howl of quadruple agony, to which the bell tolls its awful accompaniment.”

Exactly fifty years ago I went on a portrait-painting tour into the country. Some sitters were promised to me, and I had hope, subsequently justified, that they would be the precursors of others. Amongst my patrons was a clergyman of aristocratic lineage; who, though he had inherited little in the shape of money, was possessed of certain tastes common to the upper ten, in which he could not afford to indulge; but amongst them was the dinner-bell, in which he did indulge, to the great annoyance of his neighbours. The Vicarage was an unpretending house with a small garden about it, in a small village; the inhabitants were chiefly Methodists, and the congregation at church was the smallest I ever saw.

The Vicar was not popular; the villagers disliked what they called “his airs and graces,” and they detested his dinner-bell. After sittings from the Vicar, he and I took occasional walks together, and one day, as we were passing a cobbler’s shop, the proprietor of it, “a detestable little Radical Methodist,” as the Vicar called him, appeared at his door with a huge bell in his hand; he stepped into the middle of the road, and, affecting not to see us, he rang it furiously.

“Man! man!” cried the Vicar, “stop that! What are you making that dreadful noise for?”

“Well, ye see,” replied the cobbler, in the language of the county, “it’s ma dinner-time, and aase joust ringin’ mysen in, to a bit of berry pudden.”

I was so vividly reminded by the Month’s “Dinner-Bell Nuisance” of my early experience, that I could not resist my inclination to introduce it into what purports to be the life of John Leech, in which it has no business whatever to appear. Once more I apologize, and hope I may not be tempted to “do it again.”

Of all the Belles of the Month, the belle of the month November is perhaps the most lovable. There she stands on Brighton Pier—stands, that is to say, as well as she can on those pretty feet of hers, against a wind that is so boisterously rude to her and to her mother, whose figure, blown out of shape, makes a striking contrast to her daughter’s. The little dog declines to face the gale, which seems likely to carry him away altogether, as well as the struggling child behind. The touches of cloud and sea, together with the screaming gulls, are indicated with the facile skill peculiar to Leech.

In a paper headed “Hotels,” Mr. Smith expatiates somewhat tediously on the “old-established house” of the “old coaching days.” He says “the inmates of the coffee-room were mostly commercial travellers.” Those gentlemen may have been permitted to use the coffee-room; but my recollection of such places tells me that the commercials always had a room of their own, specially provided for them.

The writer goes on to tell us that “the commercial gents,” on the occasion of his discovery of them in the coffee-room, “pulled off their boots—not a very delicate performance—before everybody; and then, after sitting over the fire, and drinking hot brown brandy and water until they were nearly at red heat, ordered ‘a pan of coals,’ and went to bed.”

Yes; and provided an excellent subject for Leech, worthy of being reproduced here, or anywhere, if only for that inimitable old chambermaid, who has lighted commercial gents to bed any time these forty years.

Judging from the twist of the commercial’s necktie as he follows, or rather staggers, after the ancient maid, the brown brandy has done its work; and it is ten to one against his carrying that box of patterns safely upstairs.

One boot is successfully removed from commercial number two, and it will evidently not be the fault of the man who is struggling with the other if it does not follow suit.

Let the observer note the marked difference in character in all these figures, as well as the skill and truth with which the details in the room are rendered.

In 1851 Bloomerism was in full bloom, or rather the attempts of few foolish people to make it prevail amongst us were so persistent as to bring upon them attacks by pen and pencil.

As I have already drawn attention to the craze, and to some examples of the way Leech dealt with it, I should have made no further allusion to the subject had I not found in the pages of the Month drawings of such charm that, in justice to the magazine and my readers, I felt I must notice them.

First, then, we have a Bloomer whip “tooling” her friends down to the races. If Bloomerism prevailed, this is the sight that Epsom might have seen in the year 1851, to say nothing of equestrian bloomers of whose horsewomanship Leech shows us examples.

I think in my last selection from the Month I might claim for myself a position resembling that of the pyrotechnic artist whose display of fireworks culminates in a glorious blaze in the last scene of his entertainment, if I were permitted to introduce it.

My firework takes the form of a bouquet of young ladies at some “ancestral home” in the country, who have just received a box of books from London—perhaps from Mudie. What a bevy of beauties!—two of them already absorbed in the last new novel, while another makes off with an armful of treasures.

When I say that this drawing—whether we regard it as a composition of figures and of light and shade, or as an example of Leech’s supreme power over grace of action and beauty—is worthy of admiration for itself, and of our gratitude to the Month for the opportunity of reproducing it, I fear no contradiction.