Evidence from Artists.
More than one kind of evidence may be brought forward in this case, and I propose to “put in” a certain class of witness that not the most acute cross-examining counsel, Daniel O’Connell, Hawkins, or even Sergeant Buzfuz, can shake. I pity that young man or woman to-day who has not mended several holes in his education by reading the books of Dickens and Lever in editions illustrated by the immortal Phiz. If I do no more for him by this passage than induce him to mend such holes I shall have been of some use to his mind. For my part I look upon Phiz as far superior to Hogarth or Cruikshank in the fidelity to nature of his drawings of the faces of his numerous characters, especially the old men. Look through Dombey & Son, Bleak House, Pickwick Papers, Barnaby Rudge, Tom Burke, Jack Hinton, Harry Lorrequer, The O’Donohue, and, perhaps best of all for the illustrations, The Knight of Gwynne. Examine, with a lens if necessary, the delicate way in which Phiz shows the projecting hairs on the eyebrows of his many elderly men, and note at the same time the truth to scientific fact which he shows in his female characters, for only in the drawings of “Mrs. Gamp proposes a toast” and of Mrs. Pipchin in “Paul and Mrs. Pipchin,” and one or two doubtful instances, can I find that he represents even his elderly women with this feature of their eyebrow hairs. But see Captain Cuttle and Mr. Bunsby in “Solemn references to Mrs. Bunsby,” both with strongly-marked shelves of hair sticking out from the brows, Captain Cuttle in “The shadow in the little parlour,” one of the fat coachmen in “Mr. Weller and his friends drinking to Mr. Pell”—the sharp brush projecting from the brow of Bagnet in “Mr. Smallweed breaks the pipe of peace,” that of Vholes in “Attorney and Client, fortitude and impatience”—(the equally remarkable absence of this feature in Pecksniff, Chadband and Skimpole, men without character or feeling)—Gashford in “Lord George Gordon,” the fat figure in “The Gallant Vintner,” Pioche in “Minette in attendance on Pioche,” the courtier in “Louis XIV. and de Genchy,” “The death of Shaun,” the blind man in “Joe the mighty hunter,” the right hand figure in “Mr. O’Leary creating a sensation,” Sir Archibald Mc’Nab in “A fireside group,” “Roade’s return to O’Donoughue Castle,” Sandy Mc’Grane and Old Hickman in “Sandy expedites the doctor,” Daly in “Daly bestows a helmet on Bully Dodd,” the knight in “The Knight is taken Prisoner.”
Another witness to the scientific facts of the frequent presence of these hairs on the eyebrows of elderly men, and the rarity of them in those of women, is the dear friend of our youth, our friend even to hoar hairs, the Book of Nonsense, by Edward Lear. Here in 110 vivid drawings of several hundred characters, each of them sketched with a few bold strokes, is inscribed again and again this peculiar feature. Look at the “Old man with a nose,” the “Old Man of th’Abruzzi,” the “Old man of Melrose,” the “Old man of Calcutta,” the “Old Person of Anerley,” the “Old Person of Chester,” all with strange and striking bushes of long hairs standing out from their brows. Again see how hardly one of the female characters shows a trace of it even in that most truculent “Grandmother of the Young Person of Smyrna” who threatened to burn her, though her vertical wrinkles are formidable, or in the remarkable face of the wife of the “Old Man of Peru.” The “Old Lady of Prague” shows it in a moderate degree. Support of this kind may be trivial, and so will the opposing counsel say is that of a burglar’s finger-prints, but, quâ evidence, it is as strong as that which commits the criminal to a prison on this modern proof. No one can suppose that Phiz and Lear fifty or sixty years ago had a prophetic and treacherous insight into the harmless labours of a man in the year 1920 who would exploit their labours to the advantage of his hypothesis, and that they faked their caricatures for such a purpose. This is the only alternative line for Sergeant Buzfuz to take unless he acknowledge the facts to be facts, and betake himself to abuse of the plaintiff’s attorney.