JOHN LEECH
Leech's Early Attempts at Drawing—Medical Studies—First Published Work—Desires to Illustrate "Pickwick"—Becomes Acquainted with Dickens—"A Christmas Carol"—Sale of the Original Drawings—"The Chimes"—Leech Misinterprets his Author—"The Cricket on the Hearth"—An Altered Design—The Artist's Humour Exemplified—"The Battle of Life"—Sale of Original Drawings—Unpublished Letters by Leech—A Grave Error—"The Haunted Man"—Leech's Method of Work—Artistic Value of his Sketches—Ruskin's Criticism—Leech as an Actor—A Serious Accident—Dickens as Nurse—Ill-health—A Fatal Seizure—Sir John Millais' Portrait of Leech.
John Leech, the leading spirit of Punch for more than twenty years, was born in London in 1817, his father (an Irishman of culture) being a vintner, and at one time the proprietor of the London Coffee-House on Ludgate Hill, then the most important of the large City hotels. As the elder Leech showed some skill as a draughtsman, we may reasonably assume that from him the son inherited a talent for drawing, by means of which he was destined, before many years had passed, to astonish the world by his humour and originality. When a mere lad, he exhibited such aptitude and dexterity with the pencil, that Flaxman, the famous sculptor, pronounced these precocious efforts to be wonderful, and exclaimed: "That boy must be an artist; he will be nothing else or less." Notwithstanding this recommendation, young Leech (after a course of schooling at the Charterhouse, where he had William Makepeace Thackeray as a fellow-pupil) was entered by his father at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, with a view to his adopting the medical profession; but his penchant for drawing and sketching proved irresistible, and he gained more repute among the students by means of his life-like (but good-natured) caricatures, than for any ability he may have displayed in hospital work. On leaving St. Bartholomew's, he was placed under an eccentric practitioner named Whittle (whom Albert Smith has immortalised as Mr. Rawkins), and subsequently under Dr. John Cockle, afterwards Physician to the Royal Free Hospital.
Plate XLIII
JOHN LEECH
From the Water-colour Drawing by
Sir JOHN E. MILLAIS, P.R.A., 1854
Leech, however, gradually relinquished his medical studies, and resolved to live by his pencil. He was only eighteen years of age when he published his first venture, "Etchings and Sketchings, by A. Penn, Esq.," comprising a collection of slightly caricatured sketches of various odd characters to be met with on the streets of London. Shortly after this maiden effort there appeared upon the scene the initial number of the celebrated "Pickwick Papers," and when, in the second number, the sad death was announced of Robert Seymour, the illustrator, Leech immediately conceived the idea of seeking election as his successor. "Boz" at this time was absolutely unknown to him except by that strange pseudonym, so the ambitious young artist communicated his desire to the publishers, Chapman & Hall, to whom he sent as a specimen of his powers a clever drawing, delicately tinted in colour, of that familiar scene in "Pickwick" where Tom Smart sits up in bed and converses with the animated chair.[36] Thackeray (it will be remembered) also aspired to the position coveted by Leech, but neither possessed the necessary qualifications.
In those early years Leech designed numerous illustrations for Bells Life in London, and concocted schemes of drollery with his literary friends which resulted in the publication of such humorous productions as the "Comic Latin Grammar," "Comic English Grammar," &c. In August, 1841, he contributed his first drawing to Punch (the fourth number), this being the forerunner of many hundreds of pictures, chiefly of "life and character," bearing the familiar sign-manual of a leech wriggling in a bottle. The artist's connection with Punch gave him a great opportunity, for he was thus enabled to come before the public, week after week, with an endless succession of scenes in high life and low life, now of the hunting-field and now of the river,—always with something that could not fail to delight the eye and to excite good-natured laughter. His deftness and versatility naturally brought many commissions from publishers anxious to secure the aid of his prolific pencil, so that besides his weekly contribution to Punch he was occupied in preparing designs for other works, notably Douglas Jerrold's Shilling Magazine, Hood's Comic Annual, and "The Ingoldsby Legends."