A CHAT BETWEEN MY PEN AND PENCIL.
What is Caricature?—Interviewing—Catching Caricatures—Pellegrini—The "Ha! Ha!"—Black and White v. Paint—How to make a Caricature—M.P.'s—My System—Mr. Labouchere's Attitude—Do the Subjects object?—Colour in Caricature—Caught!—A Pocket Caricature—The Danger of the Shirt-cuff—The Danger of a Marble Table—Quick Change—Advice to those about to Caricature.
I am asked what is caricature, how can I define it? Ah, here it is explained by some great authority—whom I cannot say, for I have it under the heading of "Cuttings from Colney Hatch," undated, unnamed. Kindly read it carefully:
"The word itself, 'caricature,' is related etymologically to our own 'cargo,' and means, in all Italian simplicity, a loading. So, then, the finely analytical quality of the Italian intellect, disengaging the ultimate (material) element out of all the (spiritual) elements of pictorial distortion and travesty, called it simply a 'loading.' After all, 'exageration' only substitutes the idea of mound, or agger for carica—the heaping up of a mound—for the common Italian word 'load' or 'cartload.' One can easily understand how a cold, cynical, and hating Neapolitan, pushed about by the police for a likeness much too like, would shrug his shoulders, and say, possibly, the likeness was loaded. But when we look at the character of the loading, there may be anything there, from diabolical and malignant spite up to the simplest fun, to say nothing of the almost impossibility of drawing the real truth, and the almost necessary tendency to exaggerate one thing and diminish another. But if the Italian mind, with a head to be chopped off by a despot for a joke, discovered the colourless and impregnable word 'load,' the French gamin, on his own responsibility, hit upon the identical word in French, namely, 'charge'—une charge meaning both a pictorial or verbal goak or caricature, and a load. When did the word 'caricature' first obtain in the Italian language, and how? When did the word 'charge' acquire a similar meaning in France, and was it or not suggested by the Italian word? But the thing caricature goes back to the night of ages, and is in its origin connected with the subjective risible faculty on the one side and the objective tendency to making faces on the other. Curiously enough, the original German ideas of caricature appear to have hinged precisely upon the distortion of the countenance, since Fratze, the leading word for caricature, signifies originally a grimace. Then we have Posse, buffoonery (Italian, pazzie), which, without original reference to drawing, would exactly express many of Mr. ——'s very exquisite drolleries, diving as they do into the weirdest genius—conceptions of night and of day, of dawn and of twilight—the mixture of the terrible, the grotesque, the gigantic, the infinitely little, the animal, the beast, the ethereal, the divinely loving, the diabolically cynical, the crawling, the high-bred, all in a universal salmagundi and lobster nightmare, mixing up the loveliest conceptions with croaking horrors, the eternal aurora with the everlasting nitschewo of the frozen, blinding steppe. Caricature! What can we English call it?"
THE STUDIO OF A CARICATURIST.
What indeed after this? Except in despair we adopt the child's well-known definition—"First you think, and then you draw round the think." I have been more than once asked to deliver a lecture explaining the process. Of course such an idea is too absurd for serious consideration. The comic writer cannot give anyone a recipe for making jokes, nor can a comic actor show you how to grimace so as to make others laugh in this serious country. We are not taught to look at the comic side of things—any humorous element may grow, like Topsy, unaided—nor is the power given to many to explain to others their inventions. Bessemer, the inventor of the steel bearing his name, when he first made his discovery was asked to read a paper explaining his invention to a large meeting of experts. He had his carefully-prepared notes in front of him, but they only embarrassed him. He struggled to speak, but failed. Only the weight of the lumps of metal dangling in his coattail pocket kept him from collapsing. Suddenly he dived his hand into the pocket and produced a piece of steel, which he thumped on the table. "Bother the paper! Here is my steel, and I'll tell you how I made it!" So would it be with a caricaturist. After a struggle he would say, "Bother words, words, words! Here is a pencil, and here is some paper. I'll show you how I caricature."
CARICATURE OF ME BY MY DAUGHTER, AGE 15.
Personally, I have no objection to being caricatured—I frequently make caricatures of myself. Nor have I any objection to being interviewed—I interview myself. What else are these pages but interviews? I confess I fail to see any objection to a legitimate caricature or a legitimate interview. On the contrary, I look upon interviewing by an experienced and sympathetic writer as invaluable to a public man who is bringing out something novel and of interest to the public at large. It certainly seems to me judicious that he should give his preliminary ideas regarding it to the public firsthand, instead of allowing them to leak out in an unauthentic and disfigured form through the fervid imaginations of irresponsible scribes, leading to much misconception.
But I do object to the incapable, be he an interviewer wielding the pencil or the pen. To illustrate my meaning I shall take the latter first. The pen in this case did his work in true professional style. He came to interview me, and by doing so to "boom" me for a journal which was about to make a feature of my contributions to its pages. He brought with him a new note-book of remarkable size; an artist with a portfolio, pencils, and other artistic necessities; and a photographer! The interviewer shall describe the scene in his own words.
The interviewer remarked that the readers of the ——"would be very interested in knowing exactly how the thing (interviewing) was done. How did the ideas come? How did they take shape? And what was the method of work? Neither at these nor at any other questions did Mr. Furniss wince. It must not be forgotten that when he was in America last year he was interviewed, on an average, once a day; and a man who has passed through
A SERIOUS PORTRAIT—FROM LIFE. such an experience as that is unlikely to recoil before any ordinary ordeal; although Mr. Furniss was bound to admit that a combination of interviewer, artist, and photographer had never before got him into his grip. The situation would have had its ludicrous side for anybody who had chanced to peep through the skylight. The spectacle of five men (for the presence of the indefatigable secretary was an indispensable part of the proceedings) all solemnly drinking tea, while a deer-hound kept a wistful eye on the sugar-basin, was unusual, and perhaps a little grotesque—to all save the participants. Seated at his easel in the characteristic position represented in our sketch, Mr. Furniss would now and again ask permission to move his arm towards his cup of tea, and would then bend back to the make-belief work at which he was posing." There is a picture of interviewing! Everything so prepared, so studied, so well described to impress the subscribers of the enterprising journal. The photographer with a wide angle lens took in all that was in my studio—to "make-believe," as the camera invariably does, that the apartment was six times larger than it really is. But the artist, who should idealise if the photographer could not, who so sadly interfered with my enjoying my tea, who was sent to make the most of me to raise the enthusiasm of the readers and to increase the subscriptions, succeeded in doing with his pencil what no interviewer has done with his pen,—he made me wince! Here is a reduction of the serious portrait published.
I have sat down time after time to answer young correspondents' questions about the "system" to adopt for the production of caricature. I invariably end by drawing imaginary caricatures of my correspondent and fail to reply. When interviewed on the subject of caricature, I discourse on the history of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, and the technique in the work of Burne-Jones, Rossetti, and Holman Hunt, and caricature is therefore driven from our minds.
However, the difficulty was solved in a very unexpected manner. One day, whilst smoking my cigar after lunch, I overheard an interview in my studio, which I here reproduce.
A Pencil of mine was working away merrily shortly after the opening of the Session, when suddenly my favourite Pen flew off the writing-table, where it had been enjoying a quiet forty winks, and alighted on the easel.
ow very awkward you are!" cried the Pencil. "See, you have knocked against and so agitated me that I have actually given Sir William an extra chin."
"One more or less does not matter, does it?" rejoined the Pen. "I apologise, and trust you will make allowances for me, as I am only an artist's Pen, don't you know, and naturally rather uncouth, I fear."
"Pray take a seat upon the indiarubber, and let me know to what I am indebted for the honour of this visit."
"Well," continued the Pen, "I have flown over here to remind you of your promise to confess to me some of the secrets of caricature."
"Ah, yes," replied the Pencil, "I remember now. I have really been so busy sketching Members of Parliament at St. Stephen's, that I had almost forgotten my promise."
"A poor Pen is out of place in an artist's studio, except to minister to the requirements of the autograph hunter. Well, you need not be jealous. My literary flight is not intended to be a very high one after all. Now you know more about the secrets of the studio than I do; so tell me, is it the custom of H. F. to have a regular sitting for a caricature, after the fashion of the portrait painters?"
"Oh, you are too delightfully innocent altogether," laughed the Pencil, rubbing its leaden head rapidly on a piece of paper, to sharpen its point. "A regular sitting! What do you think? No, sir, no, emphatically never. Such an operation would be fatal to the delicate constitution of a caricature, and the result would not be worth the paper upon which it is drawn. It is only in ordinary portraiture that a sitting is required, and upon that point I have a theory."
"Oh, never mind your theories now, old fellow," rejoined the Pen, as it took a sip of ink and prepared to chronicle the reply. "What I want to chat to you about at present is how to catch a caricature."
The Pencil pricked up his ears, and with a knowing wink, said:
"Ah, I see! You want to know secrets. Well, I will tell you 'how it's done.' The great point about a caricature is that it must be caught unawares. A man when he thinks he is unobserved struts about gaily, just for all the world like a hedgehog. All his peculiarities are then as evident as your cousins the quills upon the back of the fretful porcupine. But the moment the man or woman who is about to be caricatured observes H. F. take me in hand, I always notice that he shrivels up and collapses as quickly as one of the insectivora surprised at his feast. But wait a moment: now you ask me, I do recollect one unfortunate man who, despite H. F.'s protest, insisted upon coming here once to sit for a caricature. He looked the picture of misery, and sat in the chair there, just as if he were at a dentist's. H. F. made a most flattering portrait. Indeed, so much too handsome was it that I could hardly follow the workings of his fingers, I was laughing so."
"'Oh, what a relief!' cried the sitter, when H. F. showed him the drawing. 'You have certainly made a pretty guy of me, but, thank heaven, I am not thin-skinned.'
"'Only thick-headed,' muttered H. F. sotto voce to me as he continued to chat with the sitter.
"No sooner had he left the studio than the 'study' was in the fire, and the caricature which afterwards came from the Furniss was drawn entirely from memory.
"The artist is in more evil case when he has absolutely no chance whatever of making the slightest memorandum, for he must trust to memory alone," remarked the Pencil.
"Yet Pellegrini boasted that he always trusted to memory," said the Pen.
"I know he did," replied the Pencil, "and more than once chaffed H. F. for bringing me out. H. F., I know, has the greatest admiration for most of Pellegrini's work, but thinks that 'Ape' certainly had the failing common to all Italian caricaturists of being cruel rather than funny. I may mention too, here, an incident for the truth of which H. F. can vouch, and which illustrates another weakness of the inhabitants of the Sunny South. When the poor fellow was ill a friend of his one day set to work to put his room in order, and in moving a screen was surprised to find behind it a number of soiled shirts. He began to count them over with a view to sending them to the laundry, when Pellegrini starting up exclaimed, 'You fellow! you leave my shirts there, or I am a ruined man. Don't you see they are my "shtock in drade"?' And sure enough upon the huge familiar linen cuffs were numerous notes in pencil—sketches, in fact, from life for coming caricatures. Now, when H. F. intends to trust entirely to memory, I often find that he makes a note in writing after this fashion: 'Like So-and-so, with a difference,'—and the difference is noted. Or 'Think of an animal, a bird, or a fish, and to that add So-and-so, and subtract So-and-so,' and this results in a portrait. For instance, if he saw a man like this, I should not be surprised by his writing a single word as 'Penguin' for his guidance, and so on."
"PENGUIN."
"The old caricaturists, I suppose, had a decided advantage over the moderns in having artistic costumes to depict?" asked the Pen.
"Of course," replied the Pencil. "Even up to the time of Seymour the tailor made the man, and was, therefore, largely responsible for the caricature. You have only to see Mr. Brown in the ordinary attire of to-day and also in Court dress to appreciate this, and sympathise with me."
MR. BROWN, ORDINARY ATTIRE. COURT DRESS.
"Now here is another point," continued the Pen, "upon which you can throw some light, old fellow. I have often seen letters on the writing-table from people asking H. F. for his recipe for the making of caricatures. I invariably scribble the same reply, 'Find out the chief points and exaggerate them.' Not satisfied with this, some have asked him to explain his modus operandi." "I recollect an instance," replied the Pencil. "It was in the studio here. An interviewer called, and asked H. F. to explain the art of caricature. So he took down a volume of portraits from the book-shelves, and opened it at this one. You see it is the head of a man who should be universally respected by us of the grey goose fraternity. 'Well, you see there is not much to caricature,' said H. F.; 'it is simply the portrait of a kindly,
intellectual-looking man, the late Chief Librarian of the British Museum, I remember well," continued the Pencil, brightening up, "H. F. took me in hand, and telling me to knock over the forehead, keep in the eyes, pull the nose, and wipe off the chin, produced a caricature 'on the spot.'"
"I suppose sometimes you find caricatures ready-made, Mr. Pencil?" continued the Pen.
"Of course we do," replied the Pencil. "Nature will have her joke sometimes, nor can we blame her, for it is only by reason of contrast that we admire the beautiful. A propos of this, my dear Pen, I may
A CARICATURE. tell you that in county Wexford, in Ireland, there is a certain very beautiful estate, round which runs a carefully-built wall. At a particular point the regularity ceases, and the wall runs on, constructed in every conceivable style, and contrary to all the canons of masonry. There is a legend that the owner of the estate, tired of the
NOT A CARICATURE. monotonous appearance of the wall, ordered that a certain space should be left in it which should be filled up with a barrier as irregular in construction as possible. This was done, and that portion of the wall is called the 'Ha-ha!' because so funny does it look that everyone who passes is observed to laugh. Now is it not much the same in Nature? A world full of Venuses and Adonises would soon pall. So now and then we find a human 'Ha-ha!' interspersed among them. In that case, I say, the caricaturist's work is already done. He has simply to copy Nature. Yet there are some who actually find fault with H. F. for doing that very thing, saying that his pencil (that's me) is 'unkind,' 'cruel,' 'gross,' and so on. There are many M.P.'s whom he habitually draws without the slightest exaggeration, notwithstanding which, Mr. Pen, there are members of your calling who do not scruple to inform the world that in drawing the Parliamentary 'Ha-ha!' as he is, H. F. is libelling him. There is one M.P. in particular—— No, I shall not give his name or show his portrait. I believe him to be very clever, very interesting, undeniably a great man, and extremely vain of his personal appearance. But he is built contrary to all the laws of Nature, and if H. F. draws him as he is, he is accused of libelling him. If he improves him, no one knows him. Oh, Mr. Pen, you may take it from me that the lot of the caricaturist is not a happy one."
"For the matter of that," put in the Pen, "neither is the painter's. You know Gay's lines:
"So very like, a painter drew,
That every eye the picture knew,
He hit complexion, feature, air,
So just, the life itself was there.
He gave each muscle all its strength,
The mouth, the chin, the nose's length,
His honest pencil touched with truth,
And marked the date of age and youth.
He lost his friends, his practice failed,—
Truth should not always be revealed."
But Gay did not live in the days of Sargent!"
"We are getting on nicely," said the Pen. "Now answer a question which is often put to me—viz., why caricaturists eschew paint?"
"Because," replied the Pencil, "people often seem to forget that in the present day, when events follow each other in quick succession, a subject becomes stale almost before the traditional nine days' interest in it has expired—that paint is no longer the medium by which a caricaturist can possibly express his thoughts. Of course, I am not referring to mere tinting, such as that in which the old caricaturists had their drawings reproduced, but to colouring in oils, after the manner of the great satirist Hogarth. Some may remember H. F.'s caricature in Punch of the late Serjeant-at-Arms, Captain Gosset, as a black-beetle. Now, had he painted a full-length portrait of him, and sent it elaborately framed to the Royal Academy, it would not only have taken him very much longer to execute, but the Captain would not have looked a whit more like a black-beetle than he did in black and white in the pages of Punch.
"It must be remembered, also, that in caricature everything depends upon contrast. For instance, in a Parliamentary sketch he can easily make Sir William Harcourt inflate himself to such an extent that he occupies a good third of the picture, but were he to paint a portrait of him of similar proportions it would be necessary to take the roof off Burlington House and bring over the Eiffel Tower to which to hang the enormous frame that would be requisite. Moreover, there would be an additional disadvantage, for it would be impossible to take in the whole figure at once, and it would be necessary to mount the first platform at least to obtain a peep at even the lowest of the series of chins which distinguishes the descendant of kings. However, it is just on the cards that some day he may open a Parliamentary Portrait Gallery, and then I can promise that Sir William will have justice done to him at last. Sixteen yards of 'Historicus' would assuredly be enough to draw the town. But, in point of fact, it would be just as reasonable to ask an actor why he is not an opera singer as well, or to ask an opera singer why he does not dispense with the music and play in legitimate tragedy, as to enquire of a modern caricaturist why he does not work in colours."
The Pencil, after the delivery of this discourse, rolled over to the barber-knife, who trimmed him up.
"There are some people," continued the Pen, "who object to be sketched in any shape or form. I recollect an editor once challenging H. F. to get a sketch of an interesting man who had defied photographers and artists alike, and absolutely refused to have his portrait taken. You will find a paragraph about this in press-cutting book, marked 'Pritt.' Just read it when I'm being attended to."
"Mr. Pritt, Leeds, is reckoned chief of the Yorkshire anglers. 'A striking peculiarity with him,' a Yorkshire correspondent says, 'is that he never will sit for his likeness. Mr. Harry Furniss, however, the well-known artist of Punch, during his recent visit to Leeds, on the occasion of the meeting of the British Association, managed to 'take' Mr. Pritt; and the portrait, drawn in characteristic style, appears in the Yorkshire Weekly under the heading 'Caught at Last'."
"Yes, that's it. H. F. was invited to dine by this curious and clever individual.
"'Delighted to see you, Mr. Furniss; but one thing I must ask you to understand at once—I'm not going to be sketched.'
"'I assure you,' he said, 'I shall not sketch you unless you are well aware I am drawing you, and, in fact, willingly give me assistance.'
"'That's very good of you. Now I am happy. I have made up my mind I shall never allow my face to be drawn or photographed, and once I make up my mind nothing in the world will move me.'
"'Indeed!' he replied. 'But, pardon me, you have not always had that antipathy. I am looking at a photograph of you hanging on the wall there, taken when you were a baby.'
"'Oh, ah! Do you detect that? No one knows it to be me. Of course, I was not accountable for my actions at that age.'
"'Ah, how you have altered! Dear me! why, your nose is not that shape now. Here it is Roman; you have a sort of——'
"'Have a—what, eh?'
"'Have you a pencil?' (Taking me out.) 'This will do. Now, your nose is like that.'
"'Is it? But my mouth is the same, isn't it?'
"'Not quite—I will show you.'
"'Of course, my chin isn't as round?'
"'Oh, no! It's more like this. And you have less hair—see here.'
"'Dear me! Of course, one can see who this is. This astonishes me.'
"Someone else coming in at that moment, he quickly pocketed the sketch and me, and, much to his host's chagrin, it was duly published as a portrait of the gentleman from a 'special sitting'—'Caught at Last.'
THE EDITOR OF PUNCH SITS FOR HIS PORTRAIT.
"This reminds me, by the way, of a portrait which H. F. once drew of the author of 'Happy Thoughts' as a frontispiece to a new edition of that humorous book of books. Our guv'nor's first effort at this portrait was distinctly a failure, and no wonder, for the moment I was produced the editor of Punch turned his back upon us, and, with the greatest vigour, commenced writing at his table. Not being so intimate then with Mr. Burnand as we subsequently became, both I and the guv'nor thought him peculiar. But after a considerable time the editorial chair was wheeled round, and with a smile its genial occupant said calmly, 'Well, let me see the result.'
"'The result is nil at present,' replied H. F., 'for I have not yet caught a glimpse of your face.'
"Mr. Burnand looked surprised. 'Dear me!' he said; 'I thought you were making a study of me at work, you know.'
"'All I could see was the back of your head in silhouette. There now—sit just as you are, please. That's exactly the pose and expression which I want to catch. Thanks!' cried the guv'nor, as he rapidly set to work, when suddenly all cheerfulness vanished from Mr. Burnand's countenance, as with a horrified look he pointed to the table by my side, where lay the sketching materials.
"'What's that?' he cried, dismayed.
"'Oh, a lump of bread, useful in touching up high lights,' said H. F.
"'You don't say so! The sight of it quite upset me. I really thought you had brought your supper with you, and intended to work from me all night. I shall never recover my natural expression this evening, so please call again.' And as H. F. closed his sketch-book, the following brief colloquy took place:
"The editor of 'Happy Thoughts': 'Caught anything?'
"H. F.: 'No.'
"The editor: 'Good evening!'
"And the door closed.
"Frequently a subject has posed for H. F. without being aware of the fact that he was making a sketch. For instance, in his happy hunting ground—Parliament—Brown, M.P., say, comes up to him in the Lobby: 'Ha! I see you are up to mischief—taking someone off.'
"H. F. gives a knowing look, and points to Jones.
"'Ha! ha! I see. I'll talk to him. Ha! ha! and I'll look out for the caricature. Don't be too hard on poor Jones!'
"'Thanks, awfully,' replies H. F. He makes a rapid sketch, nods to Brown as much as to say, 'That'll do,' smiles, and walks off. He has of course never troubled about Jones at all; it's Brown he has been sketching all the time.
"It is utterly absurd to imagine you can escape from the caricaturist.
"H. F. trained himself to make sketches with his hand in his pocket, and worked away with me and his book—or rather cards, which he had specially for the purpose—whilst looking straight into the face of his victim. He manages in this way to sketch people sitting opposite to him in the train, and sometimes when talking to them all the time.
"You know that without special permission from the Lord High Great Chamberlain no stranger is allowed to pass the door of the English House of Lords, even when it is empty; but when the precious Peers are sitting, the difficulty of making a sketch is too great for description. You are not allowed to sit down, speak, smile, sneeze, or sketch. H. F. once produced me in the House of Lords. Had he drawn a sword instead of a pencil he could not have created greater consternation. Explanation was useless. The officials knew that he was only for 'takkin' notes' for Punch, but the vision of a pencil produced an effect upon them the same as if they had caught sight of an infernal machine. But necessity is the mother of invention. It was then he hit upon the plan I have just told you about. He draws in his pocket. Keeping the card against his leg, he sketches quite easily. A pocket Hercules is an oft enough heard-of individual—so why not a pocket artist?
SKETCH ON A SHIRT-CUFF.
"Previous to this he used to make a rapid note on his shirt-cuff; but that is a dangerous practice. Wives might resent the face if it were too pretty, and your washerwoman might recognise a Member of Parliament as her intimate friend. The incident which cured him of using his shirt-cuff for sketching happened at a large dinner, where he was introduced to the wife of a well-known public man, who soon showed she was not altogether pleased by the introduction, and truly at the moment he had forgotten that he had made a sketch of the lady on his shirt-cuff, which he did not take sufficient care to conceal.
"I recollect once on the terrace of the House of Commons he was sketching a lady of foreign extraction, the wife of a gentleman well-known to the Irish Party, with a profile something like this. I made the sketch, unfortunately, on the marble tea-table. When H. F.'s friends were leaving, he found he could not rub this off the table, and what embarrassed him more was the fact that some Irish Members were bearing down to take possession of the table as soon as we left. I had a rapid vision of our guv'nor floating in the Thames, being hurled over by the infuriated Members from the Emerald Isle; so I quickly transformed the lady into something resembling a popular Member of Parliament at the time, and, as we were leaving, I overheard an Irish Member say, 'Bedad! and Furniss has been dhrawin' that owld beauty, Mundella!'
MUNDELLA.
"Have you anything new?" asked the Pen. "May I look? I know that St. Stephen's is your happy hunting ground."
"Ah, yes," responded the Pencil, "I know it well. But I can tell you it is not altogether a bed of roses. When we come across Members who have taken liberties with their personal appearance during the recess, H. F. and I resent it, I can tell you."
"Naturally," observed the Pen in a voice of the utmost sympathy, "for it means more work."
"Of course," continued the Pencil. "Now I have always held that model M. P.'s have no right to alter. They are the property of the political caricaturist, and what on earth is to become of him if the bearded men begin to shave and the smooth-faced to disguise themselves in 'mutton-chops' or 'Dundrearys'? Yet they will do it. We may draw them in their new guise, but the public won't have them at any price. They want their old favourites, and if they miss a well-known 'Imperial,' a moustache, a pair of dyed whiskers, or other such hall-mark in the picture, or on the other hand find a set of familiar chins concealed beneath an incipient Newgate fringe, a nose and chin which have been accustomed to meet for many a long year suddenly divided by the intrusion of a bristly moustache, or a delightfully asinine expression lost under the influence of a pair of bushy side-whiskers, recognition becomes impossible and the caricature falls flat. The fact is, my friend Pen, it is not only their features, but their characteristic attitudes which we make familiar, and their political differences cause the artistic effect. To me it is marvellous to note how differently artists draw the same head. Expression of course varies, but the construction of the head must always remain the same. Yet I have seen no less a head than that of Mr. Gladstone so altered in appearance in the work of different artists that I have been forcibly reminded of the old story of St. Peter's skull. A tourist travelling in Italy was shown a cranium at Rome which he was assured was the veritable relic. In Florence he was shown another, and somewhere else he was shown a third. Upon his remonstrating the guide observed, 'It is quite right, sir: the skull you saw at Rome was that of St. Peter when he was a boy; that at Florence was his when he was a young man, and this was his skull when he died.'
"Then again, familiarity with the subject is only arrived at by continually watching and sketching a Member. A few years ago I was lying down in my berth in the sketch-book which was in H. F.'s pocket, when I overheard a conversation between him and Mr. Labouchere upon Parliamentary portraits."
"What did H. F. say about them?" asked the Pen. "He ought to know the alphabet of Parliamentary portraiture at all events by this time."
"You're right," nodded the Pencil. "He's drawn a few thousand of them in his time. What did H. F. say? Well, he told Labouchere that he always created a type for each Member, and to that he adheres."
"'Yes,' said the Sage, late of Queen Anne's Gate, 'and when the original turns up, those who derive their impression of a Member from your sketches are disappointed if the two do not exactly tally.'"
"But surely our guv'nor does not sketch direct from life?" asked the Pen, amazed.
"Of course he does," indignantly replied the Pencil. "He whips me out of my bed at all times, but as he pointed out to the Member for Northampton (see how Parliamentary I am getting), it would never do invariably to sketch a man as you see him. 'For instance,' went on H. F. addressing him, 'I made a sketch of you, Mr. Labouchere, in the corridor of the House of Commons, kneeling on a seat, and had I never seen you before, I should have no doubt used this as a characteristic instead of an accidental attitude of yours.'
"Just fancy what you would have written, my dear Pen, if you had seen in Punch one of H. F.'s portraits of Lord Hartington with his hat upon the back of his head instead of over his eyes, or Mr. Gladstone depicted with a Shakespeare collar, or Mr. Cyril Flower without one, or Mr. Arnold Morley smiling, or Mr. Balfour looking cross, or Mr. Broadhurst
MR. LABOUCHERE. in evening dress, or Mr. Chamberlain without an orchid in the button-hole of his coat! Yet I venture to say the time has been when Mr. Chamberlain may have had to rush down to the House orchidless, and when Mr. Broadhurst may have worn evening dress. Stranger things than that have happened, I can tell you. I have actually seen the irrepressible smile vanish from the face of Mr. John Morley. But never—no, never, will I believe that the ex-Chief Liberal Whip has ever looked jovial, that Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Cyril Flower ever exchanged collars, or that Lord Hartington ever wore his hat at the back of his head.
"On the other hand, my dear Pen, you know as well as I do that Lord Randolph Churchill did not wear imitation G.O.M. collars, that Mr. Herbert Gladstone is no longer in his teens, that Mr. Gladstone was not always so wild-looking as H. F. usually represented him, and that perhaps Sir William Harcourt is not simply an elephantine mass of egotism."
"Then why did he draw them so?" enquired the Pen.
"Ah! that is the secret of the caricaturist," laughed the Pencil. "There is something more in politicians, you know, than meets the eye, and the caricaturist tries to record it. You're so captious, my dear Pen. It is not given to everyone to see a portrait properly, however true it may be. Some folks there are who are colour-blind. There are others who are portrait-blind. Others again are blind to the humorous. An old M.P. came up to H. F. one day in the Lobby of the House of Commons when a new Parliament had assembled for the first time, and said to him, 'Well, you have a rich harvest for your pencil (that was me). I never saw such odd specimens of humanity assembled together before.'
THE M.P. REAL AND IDEAL.
"'That may be so,' replied H. F., 'but mark my words, after a session or two, my comic sketches of the Members—for which, by the way, the specimens you are looking at are merely notes, and which you are now good enough to call faithful portraits—will become so familiar to you that they will cease to amuse you. And you may even come to pronounce them gross libels. In other words, you will find that their frequent repetition will rob them in your eyes of their comic character altogether, just as in the case with the attendants at the Zoo, on whose faces you will fail to detect the ghost of a smile at the most outrageous pranks of the monkeys, although you shall see everyone else in the place convulsed with laughter.'"
"But surely, Mr. Pencil," argued the Pen, "you lose friends by caricaturing them?"
"Not those who are worthy of friendship," replied the Pencil, with a solemn air. "And those who cannot take a joke are not worthy of it. H. F. is not a portrait painter. It makes the lead turn in my case to witness the snobbishness which exists nowadays among certain thin-skinned artists and writers. The Society grub has eaten the heart out of all true artistic ambitions. An honest satirist has no chance nowadays. He must not draw what he sees, or write what he really thinks about it. Pleasing wishy-washiness is idolised, whilst Hogarth is voted coarse. Great Scott! How this age of cigarettes and lemon squash would have stirred the pulse and nerved the brush of the greatest of English caricaturists!"
THE PHOTO.
AS HE REALLY IS.
Then as the Pencil wiped away a tear of regret for the decadence of English satirical art the Pen jotted down the following lines culled from the old tomb-stone at Chiswick:
"If Genius fire thee Stranger stay,
If Nature touch thee, drop a tear.
If neither move thee, turn away,
For Hogarth's honoured dust lies here."
"When he has not seen a Member, and has no reference to go by, how does he manage?"
"He does not find photography of much use. Sometimes, if he has to draw a man for some special reason, and has not seen him, a photograph is, of course, the only means possible; then he generally gets a letter something like this:
"'Dear Sir,—I enclose you a photograph of myself, the only one I possess. It belongs to my wife, and she has reluctantly lent it, and trusts you will take every care of it and return it at once. It was taken on our wedding trip. I may mention that I have less hair at the top of my head and more on my face, and I may seem to some a trifle older.'
"Well, here, you see, H. F. has to use his judgment.
"But to my surprise H. F. received a visit from the original of the photograph shortly after his sketch was published, who came to inform the guv'nor that no one could possibly recognise him in the sketch; and when I saw him in the flesh I quite believed him. You can judge from the sketch how useful the photograph was.
"The second appearance of the new and ambitious M.P. in the pages of Punch did not satisfy the legislator either. It was not his face he took exception to, but his boots, like Mr. Goldfinch in 'A Pair of Spectacles.' He lost faith in his bootmaker, squeezed his extremities into patent leather shoes of the most approved and uncomfortable make, and hobbled through the Lobbies doing penance at the shrine of caricature. A caricature, you see, does not depend upon the face alone.
"One of H. F.'s earliest Parliamentary caricatures was a sketch of Mr. Henry Broadhurst, the deservedly popular representative of the working classes. He was Member for Stoke when the sketch was made. There is no affectation about him. Neither the skin that covers his solid frame nor that which encases his active feet is thin. His figure is one of the best known and most characteristic in Parliament. Who is not familiar with the round, determined little head, with the short cropped hair, the square-cut beard, the shrewd expression, the genial smile, the short jacket, the horsey trousers, the round hat, and the thick boots? The figure often appeared in Mr. Punch's Parliamentary Portrait Gallery. When our friend the late William Woodall introduced his fellow-candidate to the electors of Stoke a voice cried out, 'We know 'im! we know 'im! We've seen 'is boots in Punch!'
"No one can deny that the potters of Staffordshire are an artistic public.
"The late chief proprietor of the leading paper had the largest feet ever seen in the House of Commons, and a certain noble lord whose name will ever be connected with Majuba carries off the palm for the largest in the Upper House. The new Member for —— will, in due course, owe his Parliamentary fame to the extraordinary heels of his boots, if nothing else, just as the late Lord Hardwicke's reputation was due to the mysterious shine of his hat.
"But, judging from the illustrated papers, M.P.'s all wear spats, new trousers every day (for they never have a crease), the most beautifully-fitting coats, and white hats with black bands round them. Why are they drawn so?" asked the Pen.
"Excuse the familiar vulgar rejoinder—Ask me another."
"I hear it said that you never caricature women."
"What rot! Have I not worked in illustrating the Members of the Houses of Parliament for years, to say nothing of Judges and—their wives?"
"I mean young women."
"Oh, really I have no time to answer these questions; here are a bundle of my unpublished caricatures; take them and be off."