The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 by Harry Furniss (ebook reader that looks like a book TXT) 📗
- Author: Harry Furniss
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Naturally for this reason I have always taken an interest in the doings of that time; so it was quite con amore that I acted as "special" at the first Balaclava Celebration Banquet (1875), twenty years after "Billy" Russell's first war letters and my first birthday.
The roll-call on the occasion was funny, seeing that it was that of the "Light Brigade"—some were "light" and many were heavy—one I recollect was about eighteen stone. The [Pg 58]banquet was held in the Alexandra Palace, Muswell Hill. The visitors, except the military—past or present—were shamefully treated. We had to stand all the time behind the chairs and wearily watch a scene not altogether elevating to lookers-on. We were not allowed a chair to sit on, nor any refreshment of any kind—not even if we paid for it; and I well recollect how hungry I was when I returned to my studio after a tedious journey at 1 in the morning, having had nothing to eat since 1 of the previous day. Such Red Tape was, I suppose, to illustrate the disgraceful arrangements of the commissariat in the Crimea! I was standing close to Miss Thompson (Lady Butler), who had just become famous by her picture "The Roll Call." She was making notes, and possibly intended painting a sequel to her celebrated picture. She was exhausted and tired, and no doubt too disgusted by such ungallant conduct on the part of the organisers of the banquet to touch the subject. Had she painted this particular roll-call I fear many of the figures would have had to be drawn out of the perpendicular.
Twenty years before one of the heroes was, possibly, a better and a wiser man, and tackled the "Rooshins" with greater dexterity than he displayed on this occasion in managing a jelly. He had waiters to right of him, waiters to left of him, and waiters behind him, but that jelly defeated him, although he charged it with fork, spoon, and finally with fingers.
From a very early age it was naturally my ambition to be introduced to Mr. Punch, but this was not to be just yet, and the first London paper for which I drew regularly was the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, which was started soon after I arrived in London. I continued to work for it until it was bought by the proprietor of the Illustrated London News, when I became a large contributor to that leading illustrated paper.
Most of my work for the Illustrated London News consisted of single and double pages of character sketches, in which Eton and Harrow cricket matches, Oxford and Cambridge boat races, tennis meetings, the Lawn at Goodwood, and many other scenes [Pg 59]of English life were treated pictorially; but I also acted sometimes in the capacity of a special correspondent, and this duty sometimes took me into places far from pleasant.
Page (reduction), "Illustrated London News." Republished by permission of the proprietors.
On my twenty-fourth Christmas, the year after I was married, I recollect having to start off upon such a mission to the North of England, where, owing to strikes and labour disputes, most distressing scenes were taking place. Throwing myself into the work, I thoroughly ferreted out the distress which prevailed, pursuing my investigations into the very garrets of the poor starving creatures whose privacy I thus disturbed at the entreaty and under the escort of the district visitors and other benevolent people, whilst the criminal classes also came in for a share of my observation, which in this case was conducted under the sheltering wing of a detective.
I cannot, however, say that my energy met with its due reward, for such was the realism with which I had treated the [Pg 60]subject allotted to me that the editor and proprietors of the Illustrated London News were reluctant to shock the susceptibilities of their readers by presenting them with such scenes, and I had to substitute for them sketches of soup kitchens, committee meetings and refuges. That the editorial decision was not a sound one was amply proved a few years later, when during a somewhat similar crisis Mr. G. R. Sims and the late Mr. Fred Barnard published work of a similar breadth and boldness with signal effect.
Visiting slums, seeing death from want and misery on all sides, is certainly not the most pleasant way of spending the festive season. In company with detectives, clergymen, or self-sacrificing district visitors, you may swallow the pill with the silver on; but try it single-handed, and it is a very different affair. I was taken for some demon rent-collector prowling about, and was peered at through broken windows and doors, and received with language warm enough to thaw the icicles. The sketches I made during the weeks I spent in the haunts of want and misery would have made a startling volume, but time and money were thrown away, and only the perfunctory pictures were published. The public have no idea, or seldom think, of the great trouble and expense incurred in faithfully depicting everyday scenes. Still, it is not possible for a "special" even to see everything, or to be in two places simultaneously; and consequently, in ordinary pictorial representations, dummy figures are frequently looked upon as true portraits. One boat race, for example, is very much like another. Some years ago I executed a panoramic series of sketches of the University Race from start to finish, and as they were urgently wanted, the drawings had to be sent in the same day. Early in the morning, before the break of fast, I found myself at Putney, rowing up to Mortlake, taking notes of the different points on the way—local colour through a fog. Getting home before the Londoners started for the scene, I was at work, and the drawings—minus the boats—were sent in shortly after the news of the race. The figures were imaginary and unimportant, but one correspondent wrote to point out the exact spot where he stood, and complained [Pg 61]of my leaving out the black band on his white hat, and placing him too near a pretty girl, adding that his wife, who had not been present, had recognised his portrait.
Yes, I must confess, one has often to draw upon the imagination even in serious "realism," Some years ago I went with a colleague of the pen to illustrate and describe the dreadful scenes which were said to take place in St. James's Park, where the poor people were seen to sleep all night on the seats. We arrived about 2 a.m. It was a beautiful moonlight night, but though we walked up and down for hours not a soul came in sight. My companion said, "It's a bad business; we cannot do anything with this." I replied, "We must not go away without something to show; REALISM! now if you will lie down I will make a sketch of you, and then I will lie down and you can describe me."
One of the most "uncanny" experiences I ever had as a "special" I find graphically described by the late Hon. Lewis Wingfield, who accompanied me on the strange mission.
"Winter without. Snow. A sea of billows drifting across the sky, glittering, frosted—a symphony in metals—silver, aluminium, lead—rendered buoyant for the nonce, ethereal—as though the world were really gone Christmas mad, and, having a sudden attack of topsy-turvydom in its inside, had taken to showering its treasures about the firmament, instead of keeping them snugly put away in mines below ground. A sheet of snow, and bitter white rain driving still. A huge building looming black, its many eyes staring into the dark—lidless, bilious, vacant. This is a hospital. Or is it a factory, disguised with a veneer of the Puginesque? Or an �sthetic barrack? Or an artistic workhouse? Visible yet, under falling snow which has not had time to cover them, are flower-beds, shrub-plots, meandering walks. Too genteel and ambitious for the most �sthetic of workhouses or advanced of hospitals, we [Pg 62] wonder what the building is; and our wonder is not decreased by seeing a postern opened in a huge black wall, from which a handful of conspirators creep silently. We rub our eyes. Are we dreaming? Is this, or is it not, the age of scientific marvels, levelling of castes, rampant communism, murder, agrarian outrage, sudden massacre?—the olla podrida which we are pleased to denominate enlightenment? That first black figure is James the Second. Heavens! The Jacobites live yet, and will join, doubtless, with the Fenians and Mr. Bradlaugh, and a posse comitatus of iconoclasts, to upset the reign of "THE CAITIFF" AND ORLANDO. order, and add a thorn to the chaplet of our hard-run Premier. James the Second. Not a doubt of it. There he is—periwig, black velvet, and bugles. Where, oh where, is the Great Seal, with which he played ducks and drakes in the Thames? Yet no. This is no Jacobite plot, for His Majesty is followed by no troop of partisans on tiptoe in hose and doublet. He is not seeking to win his own again. A woodman trudges behind—we recognise him, for his name's "Orlando"—(Wingfield himself, in a beautiful costume, which he had made two years previously when playing the part of Orlando in a production of "As You Like It" in Manchester, the Calvert Memorial performance; Miss Helen Faucit (Lady Martin), Rosalind; Herman Merivale, Touchstone; Tom Taylor, Adam; and other well-known celebrities assisting). Then he describes me: "A muffled creature of sinister aspect. Short, auburn-locked, extinguished by a portentous hat, tripping and stumbling over a cloak, or robe, in whose dragging folds he conceals his identity as well as his power of volition, a weird and gruesome phantom. What—oh [Pg 63]what—is this hovering ghost? He must be just defunct, for the purgatorial garments fit him not, he stumbles at every step, and when he trips an underdress is unveiled that's like a City waiter's. What is he—the arch conspirator—doing himself? He starts, tries to conceal a book, but we snatch it from him. Sketches! lots of sketches! caricatures, low and vulgar portraits of ourselves! 'What are you?' we scream, 'and why this orgy? Speak, caitiff, or for ever hold your peace!'
"Perceiving that we are in earnest and not to be trifled with, and glare with forbidding mien, the caitiff speaks in trembling accents. 'If you please,' he says, 'I'm the artist from the great illustrated journal; I'm drawing pictures of the lunatics. My disguise is beyond my own control, and trips me up, but I'm told it's becoming.' 'Lunatics!' we echo.
"'Yes,' the caitiff murmurs. 'This is the annual fancy dress ball at Brookwood Asylum. You and I and the doctors and attendants are the only sane people in the place. By-and-by the country gentry will be admitted, and then the tangle will be hopeless, for even in everyday life it's impossible to know who's mad and who isn't. How much more here?'
"We left the trembling caitiff to his secret sketching, and the despondency produced by his appearance. He was sane, was he? Then in him were we revenged on human nature, for sure never was mortal more oppressed by his gear and his surroundings."
The fact is that my editor, in sending his "young man," omitted to say that the invitation was crossed with "fancy dress only," so I arrived in ordinary war-paint. The Doctor was horrified. "This will never do. My patients will resent it. You must be in fancy dress." All my host could find was a seedy red curtain and an old cocked hat (had it been a nightcap I should have been complete as Caudle). I wrapped this martial cloak around me, and soon found myself in the most extraordinary scene, so graphically described by Wingfield. [Pg 64]He was not alone in his scorn for me. The "Duke of York" had a great contempt for my appearance, but when introduced to him as His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, he unbent, waved his bauble, and commanded me to be seated. The visitors eyed me suspiciously all the evening, and on my entering the supper-room, accompanied by the Doctor, they were seized with the idea that I must be a very dangerous case, and readily made room—in fact, made off. One of the poor patients was an artist, and showed me his sketch-book, the work of many, many months—a number of drawings in colour, stuck one on top of the other, resembling an elongated concertina, so that only the
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