I mention this infirmity not as an excuse for my shortcomings and failures—for them there is no excuse—but as a reason why I have abstained from the treatment of so much that is so popular, delightful, and exhilarating in English country life. If there had been no Charles Keene (a terrible supposition both for Punch and its readers), I should have done my best to illustrate the lower walks and phases of London existence, which attracts me as much as any other. It is just as easy to draw a costermonger or a washerwoman as it is a gentleman or lady—perhaps a little easier—but it is by no means so easy to draw them as Keene did! And to draw a cab or an omnibus after him (though I have sometimes been obliged to do so) is almost tempting Providence!
If there had been no Charles Keene, I might, perhaps, with practice, have become a funny man myself—though I do not suppose that my fun would have ever been of the broadest.
Before I became an artist I was considered particularly good at caricaturing my friends, who always foresaw for me more than one change of profession, and Punch as the final goal of my wanderings in search of a career. For it was originally intended that I should be a man of science.
Dr. Williamson, the eminent chemist and professor of chemistry, told me not long ago that he remembers caricatures that I drew, now forty years back, when I was studying under him at the Laboratory of Chemistry at University College, and that he and other grave and reverend professors were hugely tickled by them at the time. Indeed, he remembers nothing else about me, except that I promised to be a very bad chemist.
I was a very bad chemist indeed, but not for long! As soon as I was free to do as I pleased, I threw up test-tubes and crucibles and went back to Paris, where I was born and brought up, and studied to become an artist in M. Gléyre's studio. Then I went to Antwerp, where there is a famous school of painting, and where I had no less a person than Mr. Alma-Tadema as a fellow-student. It was all delightful, but misfortune befell me, and I lost the sight of one eye—perhaps it was the eye with which I used to do the funny caricatures; it was a very good eye, much the better of the two, and the other has not improved by having to do a double share of the work.
And then in time I came to England and drew for Punch, thus fulfilling the early prophecy of my friends and fellow-students at University College—though not quite in the sense they anticipated.
[Illustration: THE NEW SOCIETY CRAZE
THE NEW GOVERNESS (through her pretty nose). "Waall—I come right slick away from Ne'York City, an' I ain't had much time for foolin' around in Europe—you bet! So I can't fix up your Gals in the Eu- rôpean languages, no-how!"
BELGRAVIAN MAMMA: (who knows there's a Duke or two still left in the
Matrimonial Market). "Oh, that's of no consequence. I want my
Daughters to aquire the American Accent in all its purity—and the
Idioms, and all that. Now I'm sure you will do admirably!"—
Punch, December 1, 1888.]
I will not attempt a description of my work—it is so recent and has been so widely circulated that it should be unnecessary to do so. If you do not remember it, it is that it is not worth remembering; if you do, I can only entreat you to be to my faults a little blind, and to my virtues very kind!