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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"Farewell, O Prophet!—but 'why didn't you say so before?'
"Allah il Allah Ari Furniss is His Prophet!
"Yours ever,
"F. C. B.
"Advt.—'LIKA JOKO'! Parliamentary Prophet!! Prophecies sent out on shortest notice. Terms, ——. Reduction on taking a quantity."
Yes! I did squirm at the misprint, which, however, was rectified in the next issue:
"A Parliamentary Prophecy.—In Mr. Harry Furniss's letter under this title in the Times of yesterday the word 'aspirates' should be read instead of 'aspirants' in the following passage: 'The Labour representatives feel mischievous and happy—they are the heroes of the hour—and, although the members of the Labour Party have hitherto been nonentities in the House, they will probably be 'named' several times in the future. But Parliament is a refrigerator for red-hot rhetoric, and such members will, in time, find respectability and aspirants, and grow dull."
I wish I had followed the example of Mr. John Morley, who announced a couple of months before the election that he had written down his General Election tip and placed it in a sealed envelope; but so far as I have heard, he never risked his reputation for prophecy—he refrained from publishing the secret. That grave and weighty right hon. gentleman scored as the humorist, and I failed as a prophet in my second attempt.
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CHAPTER VII. "PUNCH."Two Punch Editors—Punch's Hump—My First Punch Dinner—Charles Keene—"Robert"—W. H. Bradbury—du Maurier—"Kiki"—A Trip to the Place of his Birth—He Hates Me—A Practical Joke—du Maurier's Strange Model—No Sportsman—Tea—Appollinaris—My First Contribution—My Record—Parliament—Press Gallery Official—I Feel Small—The "Black Beetle"—Professor Rogers—Sergeant-at-Arms' Room—Styles of Work—Privileges—Dr. Percy—I Sit in the Table—The Villain of Art—The New Cabinet—Criticism—Punch's Historical Cartoons—Darwen MacNeill—Scenes in the Lobby—A Technical Assault—John Burns's "Invention"—John Burns's Promise—John Burns's Insult—The Lay of Swift MacNeill—The Truth—Sir Frank Lockwood—"Grand Cross"—Lockwood's Little Sketch—Lockwood's Little Joke in the House—Lockwood's Little Joke at Dinner—Lewis Carroll and Punch—Gladstone's Head—Sir William's Portrait—Ciphers—Reversion—Punch at Play—Three Punch Men in a Boat—Squaring up—Two Pins Club—Its One Joke—Its One Horse—Its Mystery—Artistic Duties—Lord Russell—Furious Riding—Before the Beak—Burnand and I in the Saddle—Caricaturing Pictures for Punch—Art under Glass—Arthur Cecil—My Other Eye—The Ridicule that Kills—Red Tape—Punch in Prison—I make a Mess of it—Waterproof—"I used your Soap two years ago"—Charles Keene—Charles Barber—Punch's Advice—Punch's Wives.
he first representative of Mr. Punch with whom I came into contact was the late Tom Taylor, at that period the tenant of the editorial chair. To this meeting I have referred on a previous page, when I mentioned that Mr. Taylor had just returned from the wilds of Connemara and strongly advised me to make some explorations in that little-known district for the purpose of making sketches of the "genus homo indigenous to the soil," [Pg 216] which I did a week or so prior to my setting foot in the busy haunt of men on murky Thames.
Tom Taylor was, I believe, one of the best of men, and the possessor of one of the kindest hearts; but although he certainly professed to take an interest in me (probably owing to the fact that it was to a relative of mine that he was indebted for his first introduction to literature), the fact remains that whenever I sent him a sketch I used to receive one of his extraordinary hieroglyphical missives supposed to be a note courteously declining my efforts, notwithstanding that I was often flattered although not enriched by subsequently seeing the subjects of them appear redrawn under another name in the pages of Punch.
[From a Photo by C. Watkins.]
It was not until Tom Taylor had passed away that Mr. Punch would deign to give me a chance. I had then been seven years in London hard at work for the leading magazines and illustrated papers, and I may truly say that my work was the only introduction I ever had to Mr. Burnand.
When I first entered the goal of my boyish ambition—that is to say, the editorial sanctum of Mr. Punch—I had never met the gentleman who for a number of years afterwards was destined to be my chief, and I fully expected to see the editor turn round and receive me with that look of irrepressible humour and in that habitually jocose style which I had so often heard described. I looked in vain for the geniality in the editor's glance, and there was a remarkably complete absence of the jocose in the sharp, irritable words which he addressed to me.
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"Really," said he, "this is too bad! I wrote to you to meet me at the Surrey Theatre last night, and you never turned up. We go to press to-day, and the sketches are not even made."
"I don't quite understand you," I replied, "for I never heard from you in my life, and I don't think that you ever saw me before."
"But surely you are Mr. ——?" (a contributor who had been drawing for Punch for some weeks). "Are you not?"
"No," I said. "My name is Furniss, and I understood that you wanted to see me."
This was in 1880, and from that period up to the time of my resignation from the staff of Punch I certainly do not think that I have ever seen Burnand's face assume such a threatening and offended expression as it wore that day.
I was then twenty-six. Strange to say, Charles Keene and George du Maurier were exactly the same age when they first made their d�but in Punch, but not yet invited to "join the table."
As I was leaving my house one summer evening a few years afterwards, the youngest member of my family, who was being personally conducted up to bed by his nurse, enquired where I was going.
"To dine with Mr. Punch," I replied.
"Oh, haven't you eaten all his hump yet, papa? It does last a long time!" And the little chap continued his journey to the arms of Morpheus, evidently quite concerned about his father's long-drawn-out act of cannibalism.
The first feast to which I was bidden was not one of the ordinary or office description, but a banquet given at the "Albion" Tavern, in the City, on the 3rd of January, 1881, to celebrate the installation of Mr. Burnand as the occupant of the editorial chair. And on my invitation card I first sketched my new [Pg 218] friends, the Punch staff, and a few of the outside contributors who were present, conspicuous among whom was George Augustus Sala, the honoured stranger of the evening. That he should be so struck me as peculiar, for it was an open secret that Sala wrote and illustrated that famous attack (nominally by Alfred Bunn), "A Word with Punch," a most vulgar, vicious, and personal insult which had given much offence years before; a clear proof of Mr. Punch's forgiving nature.
That grand old man of Punch, Tenniel, I made an attempt to sketch as he was "saying a few words," but on this particular occasion it was my vis-�-vis Charles Keene who interested me more than any other person present. He wore black kid gloves and never removed them all during dinner—that puzzled me. Why he wore them I cannot say. I never saw him wearing gloves at table again, or even out of doors. Then he was in trouble with his cigar, and finally I noticed that he threw it under the table and stamped upon it, and produced his favourite dirty Charles the First pipe, the diminutive bowl of which he filled continually with what [Pg 219] smokers call "dottles." He was then apparently perfectly happy, as indeed he always looked when puffing away at his antique clay.
Years afterwards, when sketching a background for a Punch drawing in the East End, I noticed some labourers [Pg 220] returning from working at excavations, laughing over something they had found in the ground; it was a splendid specimen of the Charles clay pipe, longer than any I have seen. I bought it from them to present to Keene, but he was ill then, and soon after the greatest master of black and white England ever produced had passed away.
After Keene the strangest character present was Mr. Deputy Bedford—"Robert" in the pages of Punch—an undertaker in the City, and one of the most humorous men within its boundary. I recollect introducing my wife to him at some function at the Mansion House—not as Robert, but as Mr. Deputy Bedford. She expressed her pleasure at meeting one of the City dignitaries, and he offered to show her over the treasures in the Mansion House. "There's a fine statue for you! Don't know who did it, but we paid a thousand pounds for it. And that one over there, which weighs half a ton less, cost twice as much. Oh! the pictures are worth something, too. That portrait cost �800; I don't know what that one cost, but the frame is cheap at �20. Yes, fine gold plate, isn't it? Old designs? Yes, but old or new, boiled down, I should think �80,000 wouldn't be taken for the pile!" And so on, and so on, with a merry twinkle in his eye and an excellent imitation of what outsiders consider City men to be.
My caricature of the genial E. L. S. (Sambourne) is not good, but quite as kind as Sala's remarks were on that occasion in chaffing Sambourne for turning up in morning costume. In the bottom right-hand corner of the card is a note of the late Mr. W. H. Bradbury, one of the proprietors of Punch, the kindest [Pg 221] and the best host, the biggest-hearted and most genial friend, I ever worked for. He has his eye, I notice, on a gentleman making an impromptu speech—the sensation of the evening—referred to by Mr. M. H. Spielmann in "The History of Punch." Next to that irrepressible orator is Mr. Lucy, "Toby, M.P.," as I saw him first.
From a pen and ink drawing by himself, the property of the Author.
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I note on this card an attempt to sketch du Maurier, the "Thackeray of the pencil." By the way, I was certainly the first to apply that term to him—in my first lecture, "Art and Artists." He was some distance from me at the banquet when I made these notes.
It is a curious fact that I really never had a seat allotted to me at the Punch table. I always sat in du Maurier's, except on the rare occasions when he came to the dinner, when I moved up one. It was always a treat to have du Maurier at "the table." He was by far and away the cleverest conversationalist of his time I ever met,—his delightful repartees were so neat and effective, and his daring chaff and his criticisms so bright and refreshing.
For some extraordinary reason du Maurier was known to the Punch men as "Kiki," a friendly sobriquet which greeted him when he first joined, and refers to his nationality. In the same way as an English schoolboy calls out "Froggy" to a Frenchman, his friends on the Punch staff called him Kiki, suggested by the Frenchman's peculiar and un-English art of self-defence.
Du Maurier took very little interest in the discussions at the table; in fact, he resented informal debate on the subject of the cartoon as an interruption to his conversation, although he once suggested a cartoon which will always rank as one of the most historical hits of Mr. Punch—a cartoon of the First
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