Part 32 (1/2)
[178] So great was the scarcity of good engravers in 1880, that in September of that year the proprietors of the _Graphic_ newspaper acknowledged the difficulty they experienced in obtaining the a.s.sistance of high-cla.s.s engravers, and stated their intention to found a school of engraving on wood. Specimens of a new style of ill.u.s.tration have lately come from America, which appear in ill.u.s.trated serials; some are good, but the majority, notwithstanding the song of praise with which they were first received, are nothing less than _abominable_.
[179] Onwhyn's name occurs frequently in ill.u.s.trative literature. He etched a set of designs for ”Pickwick” and ”Nicholas Nickleby;” for Mr. Henry c.o.c.kton's ”George St. Julian,” and a translation of Eugene Sue's ”Mysteries of Paris.” He is well known as the ill.u.s.trator of ”Valentine Vox,” ”f.a.n.n.y the Little Milliner,” and other works. Some of his best designs will be found in Mrs. Trollope's ”Michael Armstrong.” He occasionally displays some ability, but his performances are very unequal.
[180] See Mr. Alfred G. Buss, in ”Notes and Queries,” April 24th, 1875.
[181] A very clever and promising artist, who died early, of consumption.
[182] As the _Tomahawk_ appeared in 1867, it does not come within the scope of the present work.
[183] A work produced by David Bogue, in 1849, and ill.u.s.trated by the celebrated French caricaturist, which professes to give sketches of ”London Life and Character.” Allowing for the unfaithfulness of the portraits, which are wholly Parisian, these designs possess unquestionable merit. The literary contributors were Albert Smith, s.h.i.+rley Brooks, Angus B. Reach, Oxenford, J. Hannay, Sterling Coyne, and others.
[184] Afterwards married Kate Terry.
[185] ”Thackeray,” by Anthony Trollope, in ”English Men of Letters,”
p. 7.
CHAPTER XVIII.
_CONTEMPORARIES OF JOHN LEECH: RICHARD DOYLE AND JOHN TENNIEL._
We gather from the article in ”The Month” which followed his death, and to which we have to acknowledge materials of which we have availed ourselves in the revision of the present chapter,[186] that Richard Doyle's first work was _The Eglinton Tournament, or the Days of Chivalry Revived_, which was published when he was only fifteen years old. Three years later he produced _A Grand Historical, Allegorical, and Cla.s.sical Procession_, a humorous pageant which the same authority tells us combined ”a curious medley of men and women who played a prominent part on the world's stage, bringing out into good-humoured relief the characteristic peculiarities of each.” Apart from his talent, it was no doubt the fact of his being his father's son--the son of John Doyle, the once famous and eminent HB--which first attracted the attention of the promoters of _Punch_, and he was only nineteen when, in 1843, he was taken on the regular pictorial staff of that periodical. It was to the cheery, delightful pencil of Richard Doyle that the paper owed much of the popularity which it subsequently achieved.
”It was from his father that he not only inherited his artistic talent, but received, and that almost exclusively, his artistic training.” The writer in ”The Month” goes on to tell us that John Doyle would not allow his son ”to draw from models; his plan was to teach the boy to observe with watchful eye the leading features of the object before him, and then some little time after reproduce them from memory as nearly as he could.... He had no regular training in academy or school of art; he painted in the studio of no master save his father; and it is curious to see how his genius overleapt what would have been serious disadvantages to an ordinary man.... He attached himself to no school; he was not familiar, strange to say, with the masterpieces of foreign artists. He had never been in Paris, or Rome, or Vienna.” It will be well for the reader to bear this in mind, because Doyle is one of the few book ill.u.s.trators or etchers whom the professional art critic has condescended to notice, and it will enable him the better to understand and appreciate the soundness of his criticism. No one, we are told, owed less than Richard Doyle ”did to those who had gone before him; and if this rendered his works less elaborate and conventional, it gave them a freshness and originality which might have been hampered if he had been forced into conformity with the accepted canons of the professional studio.”[187] The writer of the article from which we have quoted would seem to have read what Mr. Hodder has told us respecting his friend Kenny Meadows, for the following is certainly not new to us: ”He was not a self-taught artist, for he was trained by one who had a genius kin to his own, but he was an artist who had never forced himself into the observance of those mechanical rules and canons which to ordinary men are necessary to their correct painting (just as rules of grammar are necessary to correct writing), but hamper and trammel the man of genius, who has in himself the fount whence such rules proceed, and instinctively follows them in the spirit, though not in the letter. So far as they will forward the end he has in view, and no farther.”[188]
It will be seen by the above that the kindly writer gives Doyle credit for _genius_, and we who are strictly impartial will cheerfully admit that if he had not positive genius,--which we somewhat doubt,--he was certainly one of the most genial and graceful of comic designers.
It was _Punch's_ practice during the earlier years of his career to produce a new cover with each succeeding volume.[189] Richard Doyle, however, signalized his accession by the contribution of a wrapper which was considered too good to be thrown aside at the expiration of a few months. The well known and admirable design was stereotyped, and still forms, with certain modifications, the permanent cover of _Punch's_ weekly series.
Specially worthy of note amongst his _Punch_ designs may be mentioned _The Napoleon of Peace_ (Louis Philippe), and _The Land of Liberty_, ”recommended to the consideration of Brother Jonathan.” In the latter, allusion is made to the Mexican war, rifle duelling and rowdyism, repudiation, Lynch law, and the then but no longer ”peculiar inst.i.tution.” These will be found in the thirteenth volume, with a design of great excellence, _Punch's Vision at Stratford-on-Avon_, supposed to occur in the house of Shakespeare.
A new English (?) party had been growing up and gradually forcing itself into English politics. This was the Peace-at-any-price party, the members of which, oblivious of the fact that the best preservative of peace is to be found in a perpetual state of readiness for war, erased from their minds all remembrance of the position won for the nation by our glorious army and navy, and ruled that national honour and national obligations must now be considered subordinate to the interests of peace, trade, and commerce. Conspicuous among these men of the new school was Mr. Cobden, an able, earnest, but (so far as our foreign policy was concerned) thoroughly mistaken enthusiast. He figures as ”Peace” in Doyle's cartoon of _John Bull between Peace and War_ (_i.e._ the Duke of Wellington). In _Gentlemen, make your Game while the Ball is Rolling_ (1848), the best cartoon ever designed by Richard Doyle, the various European monarchs are engaged at _roulette_ under the auspices of _Punch_ himself. The ball is the world, and the edges of the board are respectively inscribed, ”Reform,” ”Progress,” ”Republicanism,”
”Equality,” ”Const.i.tutional Government.” ”Anarchy,” and ”Liberalism.”
Bomba of Naples having staked a large sum, he and other monarchs follow the erratic movements of the ball with absorbing attention. In the background may be seen the then Queen of Spain and Louis Philippe, who, having staked their all and lost, are just leaving the apartment.
Another, following up the same subject, is the political sea serpent of ”Revolution” suddenly appearing above the surface of the sea and upsetting, one after another, the c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l boats in which the various European sovereigns are endeavouring to get to sh.o.r.e. The writer in the Catholic ”Month” points out the fact that ”this picture was drawn in the earlier part of the year, before the Roman revolution, and the Holy Father was still riding safely unharmed by the monster which is working havoc in France and Germany, and Austria and Spain.” In _The Citizen of the World_ we find a capital skit upon the ”admirable Crichton” delusion which made my Lord Brougham fancy himself in every character he chose to a.s.sume, or on any subject to which he condescended to give his attention, _facile princeps_. Here we find him figuring in turn as an English Lord Chancellor, a German student, a French subject, a French National Guard, an American citizen, a Bedouin Arab, a Carmelite monk, a Chinese mandarin, an Osmanli, a red Indian, a Scottish shepherd, and by the unmistakable nose and self-complacent smirk on his countenance, it is clear that in each and every character Henry Lord Brougham feels himself thoroughly at home. _The Sleeping Beauty_ is a clever composition. ”Beauty,” by the way, is Lord John Russell, and amongst the sleeping attendants may be recognised the Duke of Wellington, Benjamin Disraeli, Colonel Sibthorpe, and Lord William Bentinck; while the ever indispensable Brougham of course puts in an appearance, this time in the character of a jester.
Richard Doyle, as we have seen, was young when he joined the ranks of the _Punch_ staff. Young men are apt to ”dream dreams,” and one of Richard Doyle's was in truth a charming one. In _Ireland: a Dream of the Future_, he shows us our Queen gazing into the depths of an Irish lake, wherein she beholds prosperous towns, smiling fields, a contented peasantry, flouris.h.i.+ng homesteads, a land flowing with milk and honey.
On the opposite bank sit in dreary solitude a starving cottier and his family. This was Richard Doyle's dream in 1849. He did not live to wake to the reality of 1884: half a dozen ”Gladstone” bags filled with American dynamite, the property of subjects of a republic who allows her mongrel murderers to plot the deaths of thousands of the people of a friendly nation without lifting a hand or a finger to restrain them. A home government too weak to pa.s.s a law which would stop these outrages by hanging these foreign miscreants as high as Haman. These formed no part of course of the young artist's dream. He delighted in suns.h.i.+ne.
The year 1850 was memorable for the repeal of the window tax, one of the most extraordinary impositions which ever crossed the inventive mind of a Chancellor of the Exchequer. ”Hollo! old fellow,” says a workman to his family, hailing the unwonted appearance of the sunbeams in their dark and dreary apartment, ”Hollo! old fellow; we're _glad_ to see you here.”
Among the numerous ill.u.s.trations which Doyle designed for _Punch_, probably the most original were the series ent.i.tled ”Manners and Customs of ye Englishe,” which, under the t.i.tle of ”Bird's-eye Views of English Society,” he afterwards continued in the _Cornhill Magazine_ in a more elaborate form. The ”Manners and Customs” form a curious record of the doings of the period, and remind us of ”Sam Cowell” and the cider cellars, the Jenny Lind mania, Julien and his famous band, Astleys, the Derby day, and many of the forgotten scenes and follies in which some of us may have mingled in days gone by. They are very clever so far as they go; but none of them, as the writer in ”The Month” would have us believe, are at all ”worthy of” or in any way remind us of ”Hogarth”
(why are all the writers on _comic_ art immediately reminded of Hogarth?). ”Each face in one of these pictures--_A Prospecte of Exeter Hall, showynge a Christian Gentleman denouncynge ye Pope_,” says the same writer--”deserves a careful study, and tells the tale of bigotry, prejudice, and gaping credulity which has made Exeter Hall a bye-word among men.” Although we agree with the writer on this subject, we would at the same time take leave to remind him that the Catholics are singularly fortunate in England compared with the religious freedom or tolerance enjoyed by Protestants in Catholic countries--in Italy for instance, or in Spain. As for ”bigotry,” let him look only at Catholic France during the reign of priestcraft there, where an actor of the position of Talma, writing with reference to a proposed monument to his English brother, John Kemble, could add by way of shameful contrast, ”Je serai trop heureux _ici_ si les pretres _me_ laissent _une tombe dans mon jardin_!”
When we first completed this chapter, and while the artist was yet living, we deemed it better to say as little as possible in reference to the conscientious motives which induced him to throw up his lucrative position on _Punch_, and with it the whole of his splendid prospects in comic art; and this course we had decided to follow after Richard Doyle had been removed from us by death. As, however, the Catholic organ has entered fully into the subject, not only is every cause for further reticence removed, but by being placed in a position to understand causes and motives, we are enabled to do justice to the memory of this most generous and unselfish of men.
The Catholics have cause to feel satisfied with the results of what the benighted Protestants of England are apt to term the ”Papal Aggression.”
The conduct of the latter in relation to this portentous event is thus described by ”The Month”:--”In 1850 the Catholic Hierarchy was established in England, and the Protestant public raved and stormed and talked bigoted nonsense without end respecting this new invasion.
Parliament pa.s.sed the futile and obsolete Ecclesiastical t.i.tles Bill, and _Punch_ took up the popular cry. Cardinal Wiseman was represented as 'tree'd' by the Papal bull, and comic verses and personal ridicule was lavished on the Pope, the new hierarchy, and Catholics generally.