M. H. Spielmann

Mr. Linley Sambourne—Mechanical Engineering Loses a Decorative Designer—Mr. Sambourne's Work—His Photographs—And Enterprise—Strasynski—Mr. Wilfrid Lawson—Mr. E. J. Ellis—Mr. Ernest Griset—Mr. A. Chasemore—Mr. Walter Browne—Mr. Briton Riviere, R.A.—An Undergraduate Humorist—A Punch Initial Converted into an Academy Picture—Mrs. Jopling-Rowe—Mr. Wallis Mackay—Mr. J. Sands, Artist, Traveller, and Hermit—Mr. W. Ralston—Mr. A. Chantrey Corbould—Charles Keene's Advice—Randolph Caldecott—Major-General Robley—R. B. Wallace—Colonel Ward Bennitt—Mr. Montagu Blatchford—Mr. Harry Furniss—Origin of Mr. Gladstone's Collars—A Favourite Ruse—How It's Done—Mr. Furniss and the Irish Members—The Lobby Incident—Clever Retaliation—Mr. Furniss's Withdrawal—Mr. Lillie—Mr. Storey, A.R.A.—Mr. Alfred Bryan.

One day when Mr. Linley Sambourne made a successful appearance as Admiral Van Tromp at a fancy-dress ball, Mr. W S. Gilbert drily observed, "One Dutch of Sambourne makes the whole world grin!" The jest was wider in its application than he who made it, probably, had intended. The humour of the artist, his quaintness of fancy, wit, and touch, are appreciated by whoever looks for something more, even in a professedly comic design, than that which is at first and immediately obvious. When, early in 1867, Mark Lemon fell into admiration of a little drawing that was luckily thrust into his hand, and declared that the young draughtsman who wrought it had a great future before him, he proved himself possessed of a faculty of critical insight, or of an easy-going artistic conscience, uncommon even among editors. Few who saw Mr. Linley Sambourne's early work, even throughout the first two or three years of his practice, would have imagined that behind those woodcuts, for all their cleverness, there lay power and even genius, or that the man himself would soon come to be regarded as one of the greatest masters of pure line of his time.

At that time Mr. Sambourne had been working in the engineering draughtsmen's office of Messrs. Penn and Sons, of Greenwich. But the work was not congenial; the "pupil" spent most of his time in sketching, and there is a story—doubtless as apocryphal as it is malicious—that in one of his designs for a steam-engine, he sacrificed so much to "effect" as to carry his steam-pipe through the spokes of the fly-wheel. It was his office companion in misfortune, Mr. Alfred Reed, who secured his friend's release from the thraldom of the iron-bound profession, by seizing the sketch already alluded to and showing it to his father, German Reed. By that gentleman it was submitted to his friend Mark Lemon, who had about that time been writing an "entertainment" for the company at the "Gallery of Illustrations." The result was an editorial summons to the sketcher, and an engagement which has lasted to the present day. Thus it was that, with a sketch of John Bright tilting at a quintain under the title of "Pros and Cons," Mr. Sambourne found himself, at the age of twenty-two, a regular contributor to Punch—though he had still to wait until 1871 before he was rewarded with a seat at the Table.

Of artistic education he had had practically none. In the engineering drawing-office he had learned how to handle the pen and to put it to uses which have become a feature of his draughtsmanship. But besides a life-school attendance extending over not more than a fortnight, he had no other teachers than his own eyes and his own intelligence. In his earliest work with the pencil there was a curious use of the point. Suddenly he was called upon, through the unexpected absence of Charles Keene from town, for more important work than that with which he had hitherto been entrusted. This was the half-page head-piece and the tail-piece to the preface to Vol. LIII. Then came promotion to the "small socials" and "half-page socials." Some of the work he did fairly well, founding himself now upon Leech, now upon Keene; but his character and originality were too powerful to follow any man. He began to form a style of his own, and that style did not lend itself to the representation of modern life. It was suited better for decoration than for movement; while the beauty of line and of silhouette which he sought and obtained, in spite of his intense, almost aggressive, individuality, placed him absolutely apart from all the black-and-white artists of the day.

It was, I have said, to the example of his predecessor, Charles H. Bennett, who died in April, 1867 (the very month in which Sambourne's first drawing appeared), that we owe those wonderful initial letters to the "Essence of Parliament" of Shirley Brooks—those intricate drawings which, covering nearly a whole page, were such miracles of invention, of fancy, and of allusion, swarming with figures, overflowing with suggestion, teeming with subtle symbolism. But these things did not come at once. It was not until the "comic cut" idea was put entirely on one side and his imagination allowed full play, that Mr. Sambourne fully developed his powers—his strength of conception, design, and execution. And then it was that he revealed the fact that though a humorist—and invariably, too, a good-humorist—by necessity, he is a classic by feeling.

The artist's personality, as it should, impresses us first, powerfully and irresistibly. While under Mark Lemon, Mr. Sambourne, as an artist, was still unformed. Under Shirley Brooks was awakened his wonderful inventive faculty. Under the rÉgime of masterly inactivity—the happy policy of laissez faire—of Tom Taylor, the talent had burst forth into luxuriance, not to say exuberance. And under Mr. Burnand it was schooled and restrained within severer limits.

It was many years before regular political cartooning[64] fell to his lot. He illustrated several of Mr. Burnand's serials in Punch, and some of his work out of it. But afterwards he rose to the treatment of actuality. Upon the event of the hour his picture is formed, and each week his work must be forthcoming. There can be no question of failure, no dallying with the subject, however elaborate or unpromising it may appear. A decision must be come to, and that rapidly; and there the artist sits, his watch hung up before him, "one eye on the dial and the other on the drawing-paper," knowing that at the appointed hour the work must be ready for the messenger. Thus the majority of his four thousand designs have been greatly hurried—hurried in thought as well as in execution. Many have been wrought in a single day; the great majority within two days; very few, indeed, have taken more. But when he has the time he wants, what amazing results are achieved! Sir John Tenniel once exclaimed to me: "What extraordinary improvement there is in Sambourne's work! Although a little hard and mechanical, it is of absolutely inexhaustible ingenuity and firmness of touch. His diploma for the Fisheries Exhibition almost gave me a headache to look at it—so full, cram-full of suggestion, yet leaving nothing to the imagination, so perfectly and completely drawn, with a certainty of touch which baffles me to understand how he does it."

For the rest, Mr. Sambourne's method, like his work, is unique. Keen of observation though he is, his memory for detail is not to be compared to that of Sir John Tenniel; and, actuated by that desire for accuracy which he holds desirable in a journal specially devoted to topical allusion, he avails himself extensively of the use of photography. In the cabinets in his studio, filled full of drawers, each labelled according to their contents, over ten thousand photographs are classified: every celebrity of the day, and to a certain extent of the past, British and foreign, at various ages, in various costumes, and in various attitudes; representatives of the Church, the Bench, and the Bar; of Science, Art, Literature, and the Stage; the beasts and birds and insects in and out of the Zoological Gardens; figures by the score, nude and draped; costumes of all ages and every country; soldiers, sailors, and the uniforms of every army and navy; land and sea and sky; boating and botany, nuns and clowns, hospital-nurses, musical instruments, and rifles, locomotives, wheel-barrows, shop-windows, and everything else besides—everything, in short, as he himself declared, "from a weasel to a Welshman"—all are photographed mostly by himself, and all are arranged by himself, in readiness against the demand for accuracy and the exigencies of haste. But when time permits, Mr. Sambourne goes to greater trouble still. Does he require a special uniform? he begs the War Office—not unsuccessfully—to lend him one or two men, or even a detachment; does he want to represent Mr. Gladstone—say, as Wellington (as he did November 2nd, 1889)? he procures the loan of the duke's own raiment, and only stops short at borrowing Mr. Gladstone himself. For his types, too, he takes pains not less thorough. For Britannia's helmet, he made working drawings of the unique Greek piece in the British Museum, and from that had a replica constructed—one of the most notable items in a notable "property" room.

At the back of his house is a paved courtyard, wherein his servant poses as every character under the sun while he is photographed by his master, who then runs inside to develop the plate and make a dash at his drawing. Or he will photograph himself, or the model in the desired attitude; or he will get his friends to pose. Among his sitters there is none more useful than the burly man who serves equally well for "Policeman A 1" or John Bull, for the Duke of Cambridge or Prince Bismarck. It was he who sat for one of the finest of Mr. Sambourne's "junior cartoons" on the occasion when the great ex-Chancellor had said: "I am like the traveller lost in the snow, who begins to get stiff while the snow-flakes cover him." This picture of the aged and forlorn statesman, accompanied only by his faithful hound, is perhaps the best of the artist's achievements of dignity and pathos—worthy of being named with "Dropping the Pilot" of Sir John Tenniel. His passion for realism is so great that, I remember, when he was engaged on his "Mahogany Tree" for the Jubilee number of Punch—one of the most popular drawings he ever made—he had just such a table duly laid for dinner in the courtyard, with one person sitting at it in order to show the proportion, and photographed it from a window of the house at the necessary elevation.[65] But for his love of accuracy he would not have done these things; nor, but for his love of naturalism, could he have given us his numerous fine studies of Nature. And but for this, Mr. Punch would never have printed one or two of his Norwegian sketches, such as "The Church-going Bell," in which there was not the slightest attempt at humour or fun—nothing but a calm and reposeful love of Nature, the deep, sad impression on the mind and heart of the artist as he watches the northern sun dip in sleepy majesty behind the panting waves.

Like Rabelais, he can use the pencil to greater ends under cover of the motley, and encase bitter truths with the gilt of a printed jest. Like Giotto and his legendary feat, he can draw you a perfect circle with his pen—and perhaps he is the only man in the country who can do it. His is the rare gift that in him sense of fun, of dignity, and of art is equal. He will brook nothing more serious in his sallies than chaff and banter; and yet his kindly art, based upon Nature and observation of the work of others, has, by its very truth, made him enemies even on foreign thrones. Nevertheless, it is less as a politician and a satirist that he claims recognition; it is primarily as an artist that he will assuredly be remembered when his place among his countrymen has to be determined.

A Polish artist, with Mr. Sambourne's initials, L. Strasynski by name, also began in 1867, and during that and the following year contributed nine cuts, very foreign in feeling and firm in touch. Then, after an anonymous draughtsman, "M.S.R.," had appeared with a single cut ("Candles"), Mr. F. Wilfrid Lawson, the elder brother and teacher of Cecil Lawson, contributed a sheetful of initials and vignettes which dribbled forth in the paper up to 1876; and Mr. T. Walters, a half-a-dozen, up to 1875. Mr. E. J. Ellis, now better known in other fields than comic draughtsmanship, began on December 12th, 1867. He had received an introduction to Mark Lemon through Mr. (now Sir) Algernon Borthwick, and found the Editor "good-natured enough," as he himself says, "to allow me to do a dozen or so of initials, and a quarter-page illustration. They were all more or less pinched and painful things, and Mr. Lemon did not conceal from me that 'he was not knocked over by them.' But they were drawn on the block—not on paper—and from the strangeness and discomfort of it came the tight-elbowed style of the work. Of what I did altogether, only about a third were printed; half were paid for; but what they paid for they did not print, and what they printed they did not pay for." At that time Mr. Ellis caught the fever of decorative art, classic and romantic, which culminated in the "interpreted" edition of Blake's "Prophetic Books," in collaboration with Mr. Yeats; and Punch lost a promising recruit.

The experience of Mr. Ernest Griset, who is first seen on p. 61 of Vol. LIV., was more extensive but less gratifying. He excelled at comic animals—his human figures are most of them of one ragged type—but on Bennett's sudden disappearance he was quickly encouraged to take up the dead man's work, and was enabled to show in many of his three-and-sixty drawings of that year the full range of his talent, his remarkable invention and ingenuity. Mr. Griset, though born in Boulogne, was educated in England, and after studying art under Gallait, intended to follow water-colour painting, taking subjects by preference of a Glacial Prehistoric kind. But the foundation of "Fun" gave him the opportunity of comic draughtsmanship, and the work he did for the paper brought him Mark Lemon's invitation to call upon him. A cordial reception and a flattering tribute to his ability were followed by an understanding of regular employment, and the young draughtsman became a Punch artist unattached. But he did not remain long in favour. His work, perhaps, was not highly popular, and Mark Lemon perceptibly cooled towards him. So, finding he was no longer wanted, Mr. Griset, who was then no more than twenty-four years of age, retired, and consoled himself in other directions—notably by illustrating "Æsop's Fables," which had attracted Bennett and Sir John Tenniel before him.

At the end of the index to Vol. LIII. is a little tail-piece that marks the advent of Mr. A. Chasemore. This draughtsman was welcomed by Mark Lemon with the words: "You may try your hand at a large drawing, but let it be broad fun. We don't want any more ladies and pretty children." That was in 1868—yet ladies and pretty children do not even now seem to have lost their popularity! The original drawing was not a success, and had to be touched up by Keene. It is mentioned here as affording another good example of the careful way in which sketches are adapted. The subject was a recruit joining a volunteer corps. The adjutant inquires: "What company would you wish to be in?" to which the recruit replies: "Oh, gentleman's co'pany, of course!" The recruit was left untouched, but the adjutant was re-drawn by Keene. "I'm afraid there's not much humour in the idea," wrote the artist with quaint modesty; "still, I hope it's good enough for Punch!" Up to 1875 Mr. Chasemore contributed thirty-three drawings, and in addition there was a belated one in 1879; and then he passed over to "Judy," to which paper he thereafter devoted himself.

The last recruit of the year was "Phiz'" young son, Walter Browne, who, through his father's influence with Mark Lemon, was allowed to contribute a few drawings, the first of which appeared on p. 148, Vol. LV., and the last on November 20th, 1875. He was hardly out of his studentship at the time—he was a pupil of Bonnat—and his work was "young;" but he might have risen on Punch had he not allowed himself to be tempted away by a delusive offer of Tom Hood's of constant work on "Fun," so that he closed the door in his own face, and had thenceforward to look to news-drawing and book-illustration for advancement.

Mr. Briton Riviere, R.A., appeared in the month of January, 1868. Few who have followed his career as painter would detect in him the inveterate humorist; yet it was in that direction that his bent led him while he was still a boy. When at Oxford he had amused himself of an evening with making humorous illustrations in pen-and-ink, and a book which he then so drew was shown by him in 1868 to his friend Mr. G. L. Craik, one of the partners in the house of Macmillans, and the husband of John Halifax, Gentlewoman. This book Mrs. Craik sent to Mark Lemon, who invited the young graduate to the Punch office, and adopting the grotesque illustrations to "Mazeppa" at once, gave him a sort of running commission to do incidental work, to which Mr. Riviere gladly responded by a total of the twenty-three cuts—chiefly of wild animal subjects—contributed by him through 1868 and 1869. Not only was the work congenial, but the artist at the time was entirely dependent upon illustration for his livelihood, for he was newly-married, and the picture-buying public had not yet been educated up to purchasing his canvases. His illustrations—in chief part for American publications—were all done at night, as his days were delivered over to earnest though unremunerative painting. But directly his pictures began to make way, he dropped illustration, which had made inroads upon his health and had permanently injured his left eye through the strain of the artificial light. So Mr. Riviere ceased his Punch connection, the proprietors, moreover, consenting to suppress those blocks which had not yet appeared, as the painter feared that they would do harm to himself professionally, and no particular good to the paper. Yet he has always expressed his pride that he should have been one of the outside "Punch Staff," and he has proved it by elaborating the initial "M," which was published on p. 217, Vol. LVI., in "Punch's Derby Sporting Prophecy," into his picture "Of a Fool and His Folly there is no End," which was painted and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1890.

A couple of drawings from Mr. Cooper, and an initial by "W. V." (the cipher of Mr. Wallis Mackay, whose sketch and subsequent work did not appear for a couple of years) were next sent in, and then came Mr. J. Moyr Smith, whose long series of clever mock-Etruscan drawings continued with few breaks for the space of ten years. Although the spirit that runs through them becomes monotonous after a while, the draughtsmanship and the excellence of the fooling always elicit admiration. Mr. Smith had served his time to architecture; but natural love of figure-drawing, intensified by the study of Sir John Tenniel's comic illustrations of the historical costume, faithfully and even learnedly delineated and perfectly drawn, settled his career, and "Fun," under Tom Hood's editorship, witnessed his start in humorous life. Referred to Mark Lemon by "Pater" Evans, he obtained a ready hearing, and for a couple of years drew for the paper; but he did not work regularly, during an interval of three years, until 1872. From this time forward he was one of Punch's recognised outside contributors, though he worked for it only when not engaged in making designs for art-manufacturers. It was under Shirley Brooks's editorship, and later under Tom Taylor's, that he gave full rein to his passion for classic treatment, and his ornament, which gave a distinct cachet to Punch up to 1878, was not founded on a mere grotesque treatment of classical subjects, but was the fruit of a close study of and easy familiarity with heathen mythology, classical, Egyptian, and, in particular, Norse. The fun was not particularly broad, but Tom Taylor was especially tickled by his attempts to find amusement in the extraordinary head-dresses worn by ladies of Ancient Egypt—such as that in the cut (July 11th, 1874) learnedly inscribed "Oos Yer Atter?"

Mrs. Jopling-Rowe, then Mrs. Frank Romer, was the only new arrival in the year 1869. The death of her husband had left her under the necessity of supporting herself and her children, and as niece of Mark Lemon she might have obtained easy admittance to Punch, had she not found portrait-painting a more remunerative occupation. Under the initial of her name she made but four drawings of little importance, the most ambitious being an illustration of the "Song of Sixpence," which was treated as a subject from "Nursery History." It appeared on page 56 of Volume LVII.

Mr. Wallis Mackay, the clever "Captious Critic" of later days, followed "W. G."—a contributor of a couple of trifles—and worked for Punch from 1870 to 1874, making seven-and-twenty drawings, "socials" chiefly, in his well-known style. It was in the latter year that Tom Taylor succeeded to the editorship, and having been mortally offended with a personal sketch which the "Captious Critic" had drawn some time before, he forthwith cancelled the connection. Even the blocks already in hand and paid for were suppressed, with the exception of four, of which the last appeared in 1877. On the accession of Mr. Burnand, says Mr. Mackay, he was informed that Bouverie Street was no longer "a close borough," and that the Essence of Parliament awaited him; but the "Special Correspondent" was away in the wilds of Ireland, and the opportunity passed by.

The same day as that on which the first of Mr. Bennitt's four drawings arrived—(he must not be confounded with the Colonel Bennitt who is referred to later on)—saw also the first contribution of Mr. J. Sands, Charles Keene's friend, who put his little anagrammatic device of an hour-glass to more than three-score drawings between the years 1870 and 1880. Save for their ingenuity, they were not of first-rate importance. Mr. Sands had been an Edinburgh and Arbroath solicitor; a prairie farmer; an art-student under Charles Keene, who made him practise drawing until he became dyspeptic and melancholy at the sight of his own feeble work; an emigrant to Buenos Ayres, where he practised most trades in turn, including that of newspaper artist; a contributor and draughtsman (again under Keene's eye) to London magazines, and to Punch; a sojourner in the almost inaccessible island of St. Kilda; an archÆological explorer in the islands of the Hebrides; and finally, for thirteen years a hermit, living a hermit's life, solitary and intellectual, at the water's edge, at Walls, Shetland. Many have been the stones that have rolled for Punch, but few that have rolled so far, or gathered so much moss the while. In his more civilised moments, so to speak, Mr. Sands lived for a time a good deal in the life of Keene, to whom he presented many jokes and sketches for pictures; but he became disheartened at the slowness of his own promotion, and suspecting, moreover, that Keene, in his heart, would have been glad were he to retire in favour of Mr. A. Corbould, Keene's nephew, he finally decided to withdraw. Nevertheless, the friendship of the two men lasted to the end—a friendship that was a rare and deep attachment.

Two more names belong to 1870—that of Mr. E. F. Brewtnall, R.W.S., whose single contribution was sent in in this year; and Mr. W. Ralston, of Glasgow, later a photographer by profession, but by taste and opportunity an artist. It was with Shirley Brooks's succession to the Editorship that Mr. Ralston obtained his recognition. "I remember," says the draughtsman, "how in walking down to business that day I tried to look unconscious of my greatness, and mentally determined that it would make no difference in my bearing." His drawings at first were very hard, but the point of humour was invariably good, and the Scottish "wut" equal to that of the best man who ever drew for the paper. He was a self-taught draughtsman, who learned by watching his younger brother, "whose artistic boots," says he, "I was not fit to black;" but he improved rapidly, and contributed in all two hundred and twenty-seven drawings, initials, and "socials." At the death of Tom Taylor, Mr. Ralston's contributions ceased, only one more from his pencil ever appearing in the paper—in 1886. It was partly because Mr. Ralston became a busy "Graphic" artist, and partly because the Editor was in search of new blood; but the only time Mr. Ralston made his post-Taylorian appearance in Punch (that was not "old stock") was with an article in the Sandford and Merton style, directed against the Duke of Bedford and the Bloomsbury gates. This little attack, called "K.G.—Q.E.D.," constitutes Mr. Ralston's sole contribution to the literature of the age.

Mr. A. Chantrey Corbould, as already explained, was introduced to Punch by his uncle, Charles Keene. Beginning in 1871, he worked on until 1890, when a temporary cessation intervened. His work, dealing chiefly with hunting and "horsey" subjects, has always a certain freshness, in spite of being, technically speaking, a little tight, and at one time raised their author to very near the front rank in popularity. He was only eighteen when he joined (the expression "Mr. Punch's young men," it will be seen, is no misnomer), having already had the benefit of Keene's advice. One of the elder artist's letters is before me as I write:—

Fourteen years later, when Mr. Corbould was still hoping for that position with which many people already credited him—a Staff appointment—Keene wrote:—

This joke of Keene's was duly worked out by Mr. Corbould, and was produced Nov. 22, 1884 (p. 249, Vol. LXXXVII). Up to this time the draughtsman had worked under three Editors, to whom, as was the practice, he would send in slight sketches to "legends," and work out those which were accepted, the selection being made in due course, with a bit of criticism to take the vanity out of him, thus: "Very good subject. The man is far too big for the horse, which is a 15.3 if he's an inch. This was generally Leech's mistake; so you err in remarkably good company. Why 'Hunting Puzzle'? It's not a puzzle."

Apart from a couple of sketches by Mrs. Field and one by Mr. Graham, the year 1872 brought no contributor but Randolph Caldecott. The half-a-dozen sketches together comprising his "Seaside Drama" (p. 120, Vol. LXI.) contains no hint of that peculiar style, individual humour, and perfect suggestion, which he was to make his own. His drawings were published in 1872, 1873, and 1875, and then again in 1879, 1880, 1882, and 1883—eighteen drawings in all; but it was not until 1879 that Caldecott showed any of his later freshness and humorous exaggeration. It was in 1870, his biographer asserts, that his drawings were shown to Shirley Brooks and Mark Lemon:—

Caldecott had had some practice in humorous drawing, having drawn three years before for the "Will-o'-the-Wisp" and "The Sphinx." But his Punch work was merely occasional; his more serious labours were for the "Graphic," "The Pictorial World," and most notably, on Mr. Edmund Evans's suggestion, for the immortal children's books which the engraver might print in colours. He was only forty years old when he died, and Punch, in the course of a long obituary poem, bore witness to his singular charm, though he made no reference to the work contributed to his own pages:—

Perhaps the best military contributor of jokes that Punch has had is Major-General H. G. Robley. Keene, as I have already stated, re-drew or touched up the earlier of his sketches, which dealt for the most part with military life on foreign service. Twenty-seven contributions, many of them unsigned and of varying degrees of importance, came from young Captain Robley, as he was then, of the 91st (Argyle and Sutherland) Highlanders. To Keene he was, as the artist confessed, "a very obliging correspondent," who sketched well and sent him many suggestions. "You see, a mess-table makes a very 'preserve' for Punch subjects. I don't follow his drawings very much, but they are very useful in military subjects." Captain Robley contributed during the years 1873-8. Mr. W. J. Hennessy, who has since established his position as a delicate and accomplished draughtsman, made a couple of drawings of social subjects in 1873, and two more in 1875, but they were by no means of the excellence to which the artist afterwards attained.

No fresh contributor appears in 1874, the couple of sketches signed "C. B." having been sent in twelve months before, and that of F. Woods having been practically redrawn, although his initials were allowed to stand; but 1875 witnessed the work of five new hands in the paper. The first was Robert Bruce Wallace, whose style was modelled on that of C. H. Bennett, and greatly inspired besides by Mr. Sambourne. The bulk of his work was done from 1875 to 1878 inclusive, but in the latter year he fell away, and his contributions became very rare. He died in 1893, and one of his drawings made a posthumous appearance in 1894. He was a very prolific contributor. Wallace gave up his Punch connection—not, as has been said, because the remuneration was insufficient, but because he considered himself ill-treated. According to him, he had fully understood that he was to succeed Miss Georgina Bowers, and with this promotion in view, he had proceeded to Worcestershire from Manchester, where he lived, and made preparatory studies of horse and hound and landscape scenery. When, contrary to expectation, he found himself passed by, he was grievously disappointed and annoyed, and refused to go on with initials and so forth—which he drew with so much beauty and conscientiousness. He was a secretary of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts, and had a considerable reputation as a wit at its councils; and when Ford Madox Brown was engaged on his Manchester frescoes, Wallace acted for some time as his assistant.

Then followed Colonel Ward Bennitt, late of the 5th Lancers, who drew several initials and "socials;" but being at that time a lieutenant (in the 6th Inniskilling Dragoons), he found that he had no time during the day to draw for Punch, and that night work affected his eyesight. Mr. J. Curren, with a couple of sketches, in 1875 and 1876; Mr. L. G. Fawkes, of the Royal Hibernian Academy, with a single drawing in the former year; and that clever young painter, Valentine Bromley, who died so young after promising so well, with a single drawing, complete the list; but there was nothing distinctive in the work of any save the last.

Mr. Montagu Blatchford, who adopted—not without success—the Bennett-Sambourne-Wallace style of half-decorative, half-pictorial representation, appeared towards the end of 1876; and although he was supplanted a few years later by Mr. Harry Furniss and Mr. Wheeler, he continued, even after 1881, to be seen fitfully in Punch. He was, by profession, a carpet-designer, with unusual skill in freehand drawing; and when in the spring of 1876 he no longer saw Mr. Sambourne's work in the paper, he adopted the shrewd idea of sending in some sketches in which that artist's style was respectfully imitated. But Tom Taylor was shrewder still, and wrote: "Dear Sir,—Mr. Sambourne's absence is only temporary. I have not, therefore, an opening for a designer to fill his place, and return your drawings, which are very clever;" adding that he would be glad to give the young applicant an opening if possible—a chance which soon came, but which never meant very much for the artist. He began with a comic umbrella-stand, and from that basis made scores of small subjects, all, with but half-a-dozen exceptions, of his own suggestion. Then, when Tom Taylor died he sent less and less—a little sore that he should be pushed aside for younger men—and finally ceased altogether, returning to Halifax in response to business calls. Then followed W. J. Hodgson (who is not to be confounded with the draughtsman of the same name and initials of nearly twenty years later), with four cuts, during 1876 and the two next years; "Captain F.," with a couple; Miss Fraser ("MF"), daughter of Colonel Fraser of the City Police, with seven sketches; and Mr. Hallward, with a couple of initials.

For four years no accession of importance was made, Mr. W. G. Smith, with a single initial, and Mr. W. G. Holt, with three more ambitious cuts, being all that 1878 had to show; while 1879 brought forth Mr. Dower Wilson with a "social" in the Almanac, and a nameless F. B. ("Memorials"). In the following year Mr. Athelstan Rusden made his maiden appearance as an illustrator with a Disraeli Elephant, which he had drawn on the wood and sent in from Manchester; but "Moonshine" offered the inducement of continuous occupation, and the young amateur drifted away.

The year 1880 is memorable for the enlistment of Mr. Harry Furniss. Mr. E. J. Wheeler was the other arrival, and he still (1895) spreads over Punch's pages his bright little theatrical sketches and initials, as well as illustrations to Mr. Burnand's own literary contributions. His drawings are unmistakable, as much by their rather old-fashioned method as by the well-known monogram of later years, or by the appropriate sign-manual of a "four-Wheeler" in his earlier contributions.

In Mr. Harry Furniss Punch found an artist who was destined to become, during the fourteen years of his connection, a considerable factor in his career. Mr. Furniss was bred up in the Punch tradition. While still a boy at school in Ireland—where, through a mistake on Time's part, he was born, of English and Scotch parents—he produced, edited, and illustrated "The Schoolboys' Punch" in manuscript, in careful imitation of the original, drawing the cartoon as well. One of these "big cuts" represented himself as the performer in a cabinet-trick—(the sensation of the Davenport Brothers was before the public at the time)—in which the cabinet was the school, and the ropes that bound him the curriculum; while from another cabinet he emerges in full blaze of scholastic triumph. He soon began drawing, and engraving his own designs, for Mr. A. M. Sullivan's Irish version of Punch; and having met Tom Taylor—who then reigned in Whitefriars—and been by him applauded for his sketches, he accepted the hint that he might send in drawings to the original Hunchback of Fleet Street. But when they came, Taylor declined them on the ground that the ideas were unsuitable; yet, curiously enough, they several times appeared, re-drawn by members of the Staff. One of these, re-drawn by Mr. du Maurier in February, 1877, represented a scene witnessed by Mr. Furniss from the railway—a flooded field navigated by two men in a boat, who are reading a notice-board indicating that the submerged "highly-eligible site" was "To be Let or Sold for Building." Mr. Furniss thereupon decided to have done with Punch during that editorship; and came to London to seek his artistic fortune. He speedily made such way on leading journals, especially on the "Illustrated London News," that Mr. Burnand, on succeeding to his office, invited the young draughtsman, then aged twenty-six, to become a regular contributor. Mr. Furniss's first sketch (published on p. 204, Vol. LXXIX., 1880) was a skit on what is ignorantly called the Temple Bar Griffin—(it is really an heraldic dragon, designed by Horace Jones)—executed by his friend C. B. Birch, A.R.A.

At that time Mr. Henry W. Lucy had just been summoned to reinforce Punch's Staff, and to take over the "Essence of Parliament," since Shirley Brooks's death so ponderously distilled by the late Tom Taylor, and to him was left the selection of an illustrator of his "Toby's Diaries." In selecting Mr. Furniss he made a wise choice, for the "Lika Joko" of later times had been a close student of politics, and seemed cut out for the post. How he justified himself is sufficiently known; he achieved for himself a great popularity, and unquestionably acquired for Punch a unique position among journals, as representing to the people that personal side of Parliamentary life, the familiar aspect and the vie intime of the House of Commons, not to be found elsewhere. No doubt, here and there some offence was taken; and wives would at times protest against the caricatures of husbands' figures, clothes, or faces; but as a rule the "truthful falsehood" was appreciated by Mr. Furniss's victims—many of whom would ask to be included in his pictures—and few frequenters of the Lobby were more popular than he.

"Mr. Gladstone's collars" are a by-word in the land; and Mr. Furniss made them. It is generally recognised that Mr. Gladstone wore no such collars. Nevertheless, his favourite sitting attitude in the House was one very low down, his chin buried in his chest; and the more tired or depressed he was—the more weary or dejected at the course of the debate—the more his head would sink within his collar, and the more the linen rose. This fact gave Mr. Furniss the idea, in the course of a few sessions, of his drawing of "Mr. Gladstone's Choler Getting Up;" and thereon was based his popular fiction. Similarly, the representation of Lord Randolph Churchill as a small boy of irrepressible "cheek" was at first intended to typify the noble lord's irrepressible unimportance in the Chamber (that was before he had risen from the Fourth Party leadership to the Chancellorship of the Exchequer); while the creation of the complacent, many-chinned descendant of the Plantagenets in "The House of Harcourts"—a page imagined and drawn in greatest haste straight on to the wood-block, to fill up—was received with uproarious delight by the public as a true piece of satirical humour. But of all his "types" the funniest, as well as the easiest, was the ungainly but side-splitting caricature of Sir Richard Temple—which helped not a little to spread his fame throughout the land. All these men took the fun in the best of good part, Sir William Harcourt only protesting—not when Harry Furniss endowed him with an extra chin, but when he did not credit him with the full complement of hair.

To obtain his portraits Mr. Furniss would stalk his quarries unawares: for self-consciousness in a sitter kills all character. A favourite ruse was for him to tell Mr. A. that he wanted to sketch Mr. B., and that his work would be greatly facilitated if the hon. member would keep the other in conversation. Mr. A. would enter gleefully into the joke, and then Harry Furniss would sketch Mr. A! If need be, he would make his sketch, unseen and unseeing, upon a piece of cardboard or in a sketch-book, in the side-pocket of his overcoat. In this way detail, mannerism, gesture, pose—character, in fact, would be secured, and next week's Punch might contain the portrait—sometimes severe, generally humorous, and always well-observed. A rapid worker, too, is Furniss—incomparably the quickest of his colleagues—who could produce anything from a thumbnail sketch to a full-page drawing, portraits and all, in an hour or so, although he would prefer, of course, to have fair time to arrange his composition, to pencil it in, and then work it up carefully from the living model. On the occasion when Lord Randolph Churchill's hunting adventures in South Africa kept London amused, Mr. Furniss, who was in the country and about to start for town by rail, saw an account of the exploit in the morning paper. He wired to Mr. Burnand: "See Churchill's lion-hunt, page — 'Times.' Splendid opportunity. Reply —— Junction." At ten-thirty he found the answer awaiting him at the junction: "Good. Let engravers have it to-day." He set to work at once in the train. Having to change several times, he found the junctions of great use for drawing in the faces; and by half-past four the finished page was in Mr. Swain's possession.

Indefatigable and unconventional, as much a journalist as an artist, gifted with a rapid intelligence and a subacid humour, Mr. Furniss, in his work on Punch, has been extremely varied, and by the strength of his personality he imparted to the Parliamentary side of the paper a touch of his own convictions. It was obvious from his treatment of the Irish that he was a strong Unionist, and that his sympathy with the Irish party was neither very deep nor very cordial. This was emphasised by some of the best caricatures he ever produced. They were bitterly resented; but probably more ill-feeling was created by the ludicrous picture he subsequently drew of the patriots as they returned, sea-sick, moist, and dejected, to Dublin from the "London Conference," entitled "A Sketch at Kingstown." On the top of this came the irritation caused by his laughable but merciless mimicry, in his famous entertainment of "The Humours of Parliament," of the imaginary Member for Ballyhooly; but it was the caricatures of Mr. Swift MacNeill, M.P., that brought matters to a head. Mr. MacNeill had previously appreciated the sketches, and begged certain of them. But at last, on the occasion of an exuberant and unflattering, but still not an ill-humoured, portrait, supported by a solid contingent of his Party, he sought the artist out and, reproaching him in excited and unmeasured terms, he committed a "technical assault" upon him. Mr. Furniss was not to be induced to retaliate, even when Dr. Tanner, M.P., and others who surrounded him addressed him in words more violent and offensive than Mr. MacNeill's, and threatened him with corporal punishment. As it appeared to the draughtsman that it was all a pre-arranged affair, he remained passive, lest a development of the situation should lead—as it was probably intended that it should lead—to his exclusion from the Lobby. Punch himself, however, snapped his fingers at this argumentum baculinum, and Mr. Furniss, with rare good taste, revenged himself by a full-page drawing (21st September, 1893) of "A House of Apollo-ticians," in which every member has been idealised to a point of extraordinary personal beauty, while the artist himself appears in the corner as a malignant ape of hideous aspect. This was balm, no doubt, to the gentleman who had been so incensed at being "caricatured, now as a potato, now as a gorilla;" while the situation was cleverly summed up thus:—

Meanwhile, several series of importance had come from his pencil. His "Puzzle-heads" are marvels of ingenuity, in each of which a portrait of a celebrity is built up of personal attributes, characteristics, or incidents in the career of the person represented; his Lika Joko "Japanneries" caught with amazing truth the spirit of Japanese draughtsmanship—far more completely than either Bennett or Brunton ever succeeded in achieving; and his "Interiors and Exteriors" reflect social and public life with exuberant, almost with extravagant, humour.

But the end of his connection with Punch was at hand. He had joined in October, 1880. He had been called to the Table four years later, and on the 21st February, 1894, he ate his last dinner at it, and resigned in the following month. Meanwhile, like Charles Keene, he was never one of the salaried Staff, but to the end was paid by the square inch. This permitted him to do as much work as he chose for other papers; but it made him feel, at the same time, that he was not flesh of their flesh, while he suspected himself of getting into a cast-iron groove from which he sought to free himself. So, after a minor "misunderstanding" had been put right, Mr. Furniss quitted his old friend Punch, and forthwith set about starting a monthly magazine of his own. This enterprise, in the course of evolution, was considerably modified; and for a time the weekly "Lika Joko" soon emerged into open rivalry with the paper which for nearly fourteen years had made the name of Furniss as celebrated throughout all English-speaking lands as that of any of his colleagues.

And such is the Passing of Furniss, whose extraordinary powers of observation (he was the first, by the way, to detect and represent truthfully Mr. Gladstone's loss of a digit) and of catching a likeness in its essential lines, and whose unbounded and buoyant good-humour early justified Mr. Burnand's selection. Though he so soon drifted into Parliamentary sketching, there is no class of work, except the officially-recognised political "cartoons," which he did not attempt; and he romped through Punch's pages with unlimited invention and inexhaustible resource—with comedy and farce, with drama and tragedy, and sometimes with work startling in its truth and touching in its pathos.

The men who immediately followed Mr. Harry Furniss did not come to stay. In December, 1880, a sketch of "Cherry Unripe"—a clever parody on Sir John Millais' famous picture—was contributed by Mr. Stowers, who then rested on his laurels. Mr. Finch Mason contributed three sporting cuts in 1881, three in 1882, and one in the following year, and then Mr. Charles J. Lillie appeared on the scene. Mr. Lillie's principal victories have been won in the field of poster-designing, his favourite achievement being the design of a young lady in bathing costume who, being wrecked, succeeded by the aid of Somebody's Soap, with the cleverness of her sex, in "washing herself ashore." At the time when Mr. Herkomer was designing his famous poster for the "Magazine of Art," Mr. Lillie submitted to Punch a set of humorous sketches nominally adapted to similar advertisements of wines. Thus, "Port: Old and Crusty," was of course a typical Colonel Chutnee, a fire-eating Anglo-Indian; "Sherry: Pale and Dry," was an ascetic philosopher; "Claret: Very Light and Delicate," was a maiden dainty and graceful; and so forth. Some of these were published in the early summer of 1881; but that of "Champagne" (here reproduced) was not used. Shortly afterwards the clever draughtsman sought work and adventure in Europe, Africa, and America, and on his return devoted himself to story-writing, confining his pencil to the illustration of his own articles. Like Mr. Sambourne and others of Mr. Punch's artistic contributors, Mr. Lillie was trained as an engineer.

As already recounted, a new idea was carried into effect in Punch's Almanac for 1882: drawings were sought from certain members of the Royal Academy who were supposed to be afflicted with the vis comica in any pronounced degree. Of these, only Mr. G. A. Storey made his dÉbut in Punch on this occasion; but his drawing of "Little Snowdrop"—a fancy character-portrait of a Dutch lady—pretty as it was, displayed but a very mild sort of humour. In the following February Mr. Alfred Bryan began his series of "Sketches by Boz," in which public men of the day were caricatured as personages in Dickens' novels. Thus, the Duke of Cambridge was most happily identified with "Joe Bagstock, Sir!", Sir John Holker was the Fat Boy, and Mr. Bradlaugh appeared as Rogue Riderhood "taking his Davy." These clever sketches, to the number of twenty-seven, were spread over that year and the next, when, to the regret of both Editor and artist, the connection was unavoidably severed.