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JOHN LEECH:

HIS LIFE AND WORK

CHAPTER I.

"PUNCH."

In the year 1841 I exhibited a picture at the Suffolk Street Gallery, and I recollect accidentally overhearing fragments of a conversation between a certain Joe Allen and a brother member of the Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street. Allen's picture happened to hang near mine, and we were both "touching up" our productions. Joe Allen was the funny man of the society, and, though he startled me a little, he did not surprise me by a loud and really good imitation of the peculiar squeak of Punch.

"Look out, my boy," he said to his friend, "for the first number. We" (I suppose he was a member of the first staff) "shall take the town by storm. There is no mistake about it. We have so-and-so"—naming some well-known men—"for writers; Hine, Kenny Meadows, young Leech, and a lot more first-rate illustrators," etc.

Whether Allen's friend took his advice and bought the first number of Punch, which appeared in the following July, I know not; but I bought a copy, and remember my disappointment at finding Leech conspicuous by his absence from the pages. In the hope of finding him in the second issue, I went to the shop where I had bought the first. The shopman met my request for the second number of Punch, as well as I can recollect, in the following words:

"What paper, sir? Oh, Punch! Yes, I took a few of the first; but it's no go. You see, they billed it about a good deal" (how well I recollect that expression!), "so I wanted to see what it was like. It won't do; it's no go."

I have been told that, like most newspapers, Punch had some difficulty in keeping upon his legs in his first efforts to move; but as those elegant members, so exquisitely drawn by Tenniel, have supported the famous hunchback for nearly half a century, there is no need for his friends' anxiety as to his future movements.

Though Leech had engaged himself to the then proprietors of Punch as one of the illustrators of the paper, it seems strange that his first contribution did not appear till the 7th of August, and in the fourth number, and stranger still that its appearance should have damaged the paper. Under the heading of "Foreign Affairs," the artist represents groups of foreigners such as may be seen any day in the neighbourhood of Leicester Square. The reader is told in a footnote that the plate does not represent foreign gentlemen, an unnecessary intimation to anyone who knows a foreign gentleman.

It is said that this engraving sent down the circulation of Punch to an alarming point. I confess my inability to understand this, and would rather attribute the decadence to some other cause, contemporary with the production of "Foreign Affairs." The drawing is somewhat hard upon the foreign frequenters of the purlieus of Leicester Square, and would only have been more acceptable to John Bull on that account. By Leech's non-appearance in Punch for many months after "Foreign Affairs" was published, one is driven to the conclusion that the managers had little faith in him as an attraction. The second volume contains very few of Leech's designs, while it bristles with inferior work.

My own admiration for Leech's genius, so constantly roused by his works, with which I was familiar, created a great desire for his acquaintance; but being perfectly unknown at that time as an artist, and knowing none of Leech's friends, I began to despair of the realization of my wishes, when accident helped me.

A Scottish painter—a Highlander and fierce Jacobite—named McIan, who was also an actor and friend of Macready, to whose theatrical company he was attached, lived with his wife, an accomplished artist, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Gordon Square. Calling one morning to see Mrs. McIan, I found her in her studio, not, as usual, hard at work at her own easel, but superintending the labours of a pupil, who was hard at work at another; and the pupil, a tall, slim, and remarkably handsome young man, was John Leech.

I made some remark about the different method in which he was employed to that with which he was familiar. I forget what he was copying—some still life, I think.

"I like painting much better than what I have to grind at day after day, if I could only do it," said Leech; "but it's so confoundedly difficult, you know, and requires such a lot of patience."

I fancy I thought his efforts in oil-painting on that occasion very promising; but the exigencies of his position quite prevented the unceasing devotion to the study of painting which is required before any success can be assured.

Leech was once heard to say that he would rather be the painter of a really good picture than the producer of any number of the "kind of things" he did. I, for one, am very thankful that he never did produce a good picture, for he would have been tempted to repeat the success, to the loss of numbers of delightful sketches.

Mrs. McIan appeared to think that Leech would soon cease to draw for Punch; indeed, she doubted, as did many others, that Punch would long succeed in attracting the public; and I joined her in the hope—rather hypocritically, I fear—that her young friend would persevere in mastering the difficulty of the technicalities of oil-painting, and thus place himself amongst the best painters of the country. Leech had taken many lessons from Mrs. McIan, and that lady seemed convinced that he had but to persevere and the difficulties would fall before him, as, to use her own figure, the walls of Jericho fell before the sound of the trumpet. Ah, perseverance! "there's the rub."

From the time of my introduction to Leech I became gradually very intimate with him, and the more I knew of his nature, the more I became convinced that he totally lacked the disposition for continuous, steady, mechanical industry necessary for success in painting. He constantly ridiculed the care spent on the details in pictures; finish, in his opinion, was so much waste of time. "When you can see what