“Tuesday, December 14, 1852.

“My dear Charley Boy,

   “Hip! hip! hurrah! The almanack is finished, and now for a day with the Puckeridge.

“I shall come down if you will take me in on Friday evening, to hunt on Saturday and Monday, I hope. Mark talked of coming. I wish he would. He says he should not ride, but that’s all nonsense. Do you think Pattison has got a horse that would carry him? Oh, I have had a rare benefit of work! I have been positively at it ever since I saw you. I want freshening up, I assure you.... Lots of fresh work, old fellow, so I think I may manage a real horse soon.

*****

“With kindest regards.

“Ever faithfully yours,

“John Leech.”

“Notting Hill Terrace,   
“January 26, 1853.

“My dear Charley,

   “If you could ride my horse to-morrow (Thursday), pray do; it would save your own, and do her good. And the meet is close to you—Langley Green. I should have written before, but I have been harassed with work beyond measure. And as it is, the first number of ‘Handley Cross’ cannot come out until March. Mind you have the mare well worked, there’s a good fellow, as I don’t want, like our friend Briggs, to find her disagreeably fresh.

*****

   “Believe me always yours faithfully,

“John Leech.

“C. F. Adams, Esq.”

“Saturday, February 26, 1853.

“My dear Charley,

   “I suppose the frost has departed in the country, and that you have now what is called ‘open weather.’ It is very disagreeable here—wet, cold, and boisterous.

“However, if you can spare time (after riding your own, of course), I wish you would give the mare a benefit. I expect she will otherwise be a great deal too much for me.

*****

“I am, my dear Charley,

“Yours faithfully,

“John Leech.

“C. F. Adams, Esq.”

“32, Brunswick Square, “Saturday, January 21, 1854.

“My dear Charley,

   “Thank you for your note. I can’t come down to-morrow, but I hope after next week to make up for lost time. I have got through some work that has been fidgeting me. I shall have a little more leisure. The meet on Monday is Dassett’s, I see, so pray give it the mare; I have been so queer myself that I shall want her particularly ‘tranquil.’ I have sacrificed the moustaches for fear of frightening the horses in the field. They were getting too tremendous.

“If, if I can get away next week at all, depend upon it I will, for I want fresh air and a little horse exercise.

“With kindest regards, old fellow,

“Believe me always yours faithfully,

“John Leech.

“C. F. Adams, Esq.”

“Saturday, December 22, 1855.

“My dear Charley,

   “How is the country? I suppose no hunting as yet, for I have not received any card. The weather here to-day is mild and wet. I am working away in the hope of getting a day or two by-and-by comfortably. In the meantime, if there is anything going on, give my horse a turn across country, that’s a good fellow.

“With kindest regards, believe me,

“Yours faithfully,

“J. L.

“If you can’t spare time to hunt the mare, would it not be a good thing to send her to Patmore, and make him ride her? But do you attend to her if you can manage it.”

“8, St. Nicholas Cliff, Scarbro’,   
“August 30, 1858.

“My dear Charley,

   “Your note was forwarded here, and I only found it on my return from Ireland, where I have been for the last three weeks. The consequence is that I am, of course, in rather a muddle with my work, and I am afraid I must forego the pleasure of shooting with you—at any rate, for the early part of the season; so pray do not deprive other friends of sport on my account. I shall hope to have a day or two with you before the season is over. I am not a very greedy sportsman, you know, and as long as I get a good walk am pretty well satisfied. I am sorry you have been so unwell—you should really give yourself a holiday. The bow should be unstrung sometimes. I know I find it must. I wish you could have seen me catch a salmon in Ireland—a regular salmon! When I say catch, I should say hook, rather, for he was too much for me, and after ten minutes’ struggle he bolted with my tackle. It was really a tremendous sensation....

“Believe me always,

“Yours faithfully,

“John Leech.

“C. F. Adams, Esq.”

“White Horse, Baldock,   
“Friday evening, ——, 1858.

“My dear Charley,

*****

   “For the present I have arranged with Little to make this place my headquarters, it is so handy to the train, and I can come so much quicker and later to Hitchin. The slow railway journeys take it out of me, so that my pleasure is almost destroyed by the fatigue of travelling and bother to get off. I hope, nevertheless, that we shall have many evenings together to talk over the tremendous runs that we hope to have. I have bought a horse and brought it down here. I hope you will be out to-morrow to see it. I like it very much; it is a most excellent hackney, and sufficiently good-looking, although not perfect, I suppose; and it is represented to me as being a temperate hunter in addition to his other qualities. Well, we shall see. The black mare I shall send to Tattersall’s next week. She was as fresh as could be last Saturday, and I was quite glad I had not sold her; but, alas! she was as lame in the afternoon as possible, and next morning was a pretty spectacle! She would not do at all. So much for horseflesh.

“With kindest regards,

“Yours always,

“J. L.”

“32, Brunswick Square, W.C.,   
“November 20, 1862.

“My dear Charley,

   “If you ever have the time—which I never have—I should feel so glad if you would go some day and see how the ‘party’ at Kensington has done his work. I suppose ‘that little form’ of paying the bill must very soon be gone through, and I should like to know from a competent authority that the work has been well and properly done.

“How about the hunting? I am continually tormented here by noble sportsmen going by my window in full fig.

“Yours always,

“J. L.”

“6, The Terrace, Kensington,   
“November 27, 1862.

“My dear Charley,

   “I am obliged to go to St. Leonards to-night, but I should be very glad if you would to-morrow, Friday (as you propose), look at my new house. In the corner of one of the new rooms I see it looks a little damp, although they considered it dry before they papered. I must say I am pleased with the new residence, and I think by degrees I shall be able to make it pretty comfortable. We shall hardly get in here, I expect, much before Christmas. There is yet so much to do. I shall be very glad of any hints about improvements that may occur to you.

“Kind regards, and believe me,

“Always yours,

“J. L.”

There is amongst the pictures of “Life and Character” a drawing of a sportsman who has been thrown from his horse. He has fallen upon his head, and as he raises it, stunned and bewildered, and but half conscious, the sensations that must have possessed him are realized for us in a manner so marvellous, so wonderful in its originality and truth, as to convince one that the accident must have happened to the man who drew the picture; and this was the case, for the fallen man was Leech himself, says Mr. Adams, who in charging a fence was thrown, his horse falling at the same time. If I had been told that the sensations inevitable under the circumstances were required to be reproduced by pencil and paper, I should have said such a feat was beyond the reach of art; but there they are! As the prostrate man looks up, he sees sparks of fire, horse’s head, legs, hoofs mingled together in a whirl of confusion round his prostrate figure.

No doubt the work he undertook for Bell’s Life in London, a long-established and long-discontinued paper, in which sport of all kinds was the most prominent feature—and which occupied much of Leech’s time in his youthful days—contributed to the creation of a taste and love for field sports that always distinguished him. Quite a band of comic artists, including Cruikshank, Kenny Meadows, “Phiz,” Seymour, and Leech, contributed sketches illustrative of a variety of subjects by a variety of authors; Leech’s work being easily distinguishable from that of his brethren of the pencil.

CHAPTER XIII.

“COMIC GRAMMAR” AND “COMIC HISTORY.”

The friendship, begun in their student-days at St. Bartholomew’s, between Leech and Percival Leigh flourished in renewed strength by the discovery of similarity of taste—Leigh unable to draw, but possessing a truly humorous pen; so the friends “laid their heads together,” the result being the production of the “Comic Latin Grammar,” letter-press by Leigh, illustrations by Leech. The first intention of the authors was that this should be a mere skit, a trifling brochure, consisting of a few pages; but, as so often happens, the work grew under their hands, and when published in 1840 it had assumed somewhat formidable proportions, and was followed by a work of similar character, with the title of “The Comic English Grammar.”

The “Comic English Grammar” was a work full of pleasant humour, charmingly illustrated by Leech “with upwards of fifty characteristic woodcuts.” It is curious to observe in these drawings the contrast that they afford to the artist’s later and more perfect work. There is a timidity, and what we call a hardness, from which the sketches in “Pictures of Life and Character” are entirely free; the general drawing, too, is faulty, but the humour and character are all there.

The first illustration, given above, is from a ballad called “Billy Taylor,” popular in my young days, in which Billy’s true love—with the reluctance to part from him common to persons suffering from that passion—disguises herself as a man before the mast, and shares the dangers of the sea with her sailor-lover:

The verb “applauded” has here no nominative case, whereas it ought to have been governed by the pronoun “he.” “He very much applauded,” etc., says the writer of the “Comic Grammar” for our instruction. The second example, given above, seems to me capital fooling, and an excellent proof of the necessity for care in punctuation and accent.

“Imagine,” says the writer, “an actor commencing Hamlet’s famous soliloquy thus:

“‘To be or not to be; that is. The question,’ etc.

Or saying, in the person of Duncan in ‘Macbeth’:

“‘This castle hath a pleasant seat, the air.’

Or, as the usurper himself, exclaiming:

Here we have the fault of hardness that I speak of, and something of feeble drawing, but the humour is perfect.

After the publication of the “Comic Grammar,” written by Gilbert à Beckett, one of the Punch staff, a somewhat similar experiment upon the public and on a larger scale was tried by the same author in the issue of a “Comic History of England.” This venture was warmly opposed at its inception by Jerrold, whose wrath at the idea of burlesquing historical personages was expressed with vehemence. Gilbert à Beckett persisted, however, and the history appeared, with over three hundred illustrations on wood and steel by John Leech. The book is, as might be expected, very light reading, containing many puns and much play upon words. Leech’s work seems to me to be slight, hurried, and even careless, compared with that of his later time; but the spirit of rollicking fun with which grave historical incidents are treated, and the humorous satire that the principal personages receive at the hands of the illustrator, make the “Comic History of England” amusing enough. The following extract, with the drawing that illustrates it, will show the truth of my estimate of both.

“A story is told of a certain Fair Rosamond, and, though there is no doubt of its being a story from beginning to end, it is impossible to pass it over in English history. Henry, it was alleged, was enamoured of a certain Miss Clifford—if she can be called a certain Miss Clifford, when she was really a very doubtful character. She was the daughter of a baron on the banks of the Wye, when, without a why or a wherefore, the King took her away, and transplanted the Flower of Hereford, as she well deserved to be called, to the Bower of Woodstock. In this bower he constructed a labyrinth something like the Maze at Rosherville, and as there was no man stationed on an elevation in the centre to direct the sovereign which way to go, nor exclaim, ‘Right, if you please!’ ‘Straight on!’ ‘You’re right now, sir!’ ‘Left!’ ‘Right again!’ etc., etc., his Majesty had adopted the plan of dragging one of Rosamond’s reels of silk along with him when he left the spot, so that it formed a guide for him on his way back again. This tale of silk is indeed a most precious piece of entanglement, but it was perhaps necessary for the winding up of the story. While we cannot receive it as part of the thread of history, we accept it as a means of accounting for Eleanor’s having got a clue to the retreat of Rosamond.

“The Queen, hearing of the silk, resolved naturally enough to unravel it. She accordingly started for Woodstock one afternoon, and, suspecting something wrong, took a large bowl of poison in one hand and a stout dagger in the other. Having found Fair Rosamond, she held the poniard to the heart and the bowl to the lips of that unfortunate young person, who, it is said, preferred the black draught to the steel medicine.”

Later on in the history we have another good example of Leech’s humour. King Edward, having subdued the Welsh, “endeavoured to propitiate his newly acquired subjects by becoming a resident in the conquered country. His wife Eleanor gave birth to a son in the castle of Caernarvon, and he availed himself of the circumstance to introduce the infant as a native production, giving him the title of Prince of Wales, which has ever since been held by the eldest son of the British sovereign.”

A well-known historical scene is parodied as follows: Henry IV. being ill, “the Prince of Wales was sitting up with him in the temporary capacity of nurse,” says Mr. à Becket. “The son, however, seemed rather to be waiting for his father’s death than hoping for the prolongation of his life; and the King having gone off in a fit, the Prince, instead of calling for assistance or giving any aid himself, heartlessly took that opportunity to see how he should look in the crown, which always hung on a peg in the royal bedchamber. Young Henry was figuring away before a cheval glass with the regal bauble on his head, and was exclaiming, ‘Just the thing, upon my honour!’ when the elder Henry, happening to recover, sat up in bed and saw the conduct of his offspring.

“‘Hallo!’ cried the King, ‘who gave you leave to put that on? I think you might have left it alone till I’ve done with it.’”

The savage and hypocritical character of Richard III. afforded Leech an opportunity for satire in his design of that monarch, when still Duke of Gloucester, in the shape of a crocodile shedding tears for the death of the two Princes in the Tower.

“Richard,” says the chronicler, “by whom the outward decencies of life were very scrupulously observed, in order to make up for the inner deficiencies of his mind, determined to go into mourning for the young Princes, and repaired to the same maison de deuil which he had honoured with his presence on a former occasion when requiring the ‘trappings of woe’ for himself and his retainers on the death of his dear brother.”

With the escape of Mary, Queen of Scots, I must close the extracts from the “Comic History of England.”

“When the Queen was imprisoned at Lochleven, a certain George Douglas,” says the historian, “with the sentimentality peculiar to seventeen, fell sheepishly in love with the handsome Mary. She gave some encouragement to the gawky youth, but rather with a view of getting him to aid her in her escape than out of any regard to the over-sensitive stripling. Going to his brother’s bedroom in the night, the boy took the keys from the basket in which they were deposited, and, letting Mary out, he handed her to a skiff and took her for a row, without thinking of the row his conduct was leading to.”

A considerable interval of time elapsed between the publication of à Beckett’s “Comic English Grammar” and the same writer’s “Comic History of England,” the former being produced in 1840, and the latter seven years afterwards; but as there is little or no appreciable difference between the two works, either as regards the literary or artistic merit, I have thought it well to introduce them in this place.

These efforts show but one side of Leech’s many-sided power. It was in “The Children of the Mobility,” a satire on a production just then published, in which the children of the nobility were put before the world in all the splendour of their aristocratic surroundings, that Leech’s genius had full play, the little Duke affording an instructive contrast to the street arab, and the shivering, half-naked beggar-girl becoming infinitely pathetic in her rags. This work was executed in lithography, consisting of seven prints; and though, as works of art, they bear no comparison to the wood-drawings of a later time—they are not even so good as the “Fly-Leaves” published at the Punch Office later on—still, comparatively imperfectly as they are rendered, they show the artist’s intense sympathy with suffering childhood, as well as enjoyment in the games and “larks” by which the sufferings are for a time at least forgotten.

I now approach the period when the establishment of a comic newspaper was destined to afford Leech opportunities for the display of his powers, opportunities of which he availed himself with a prodigality almost as marvellous as the powers.

END OF VOL. I.