If not a genius, the man was talented and clever,—a universal favourite. He could draw, he could write; he was an admirable vocalist, setting the table in a roar with his medley of songs. Even as a painter he was favourably known. Temperance and Intemperance were engraved from his painting in oils, and called forth a letter of thanks from the great apostle of temperance, Father Mathew himself. Other works were The Ups and Downs of Life, the well-known President and Vice President (both engraved), and many others. A clever artist in “black and white,” two of his pen-and-ink sketches—The Huntsman’s Rest and The Solitary—were honoured with a place among the drawings at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1846. His talents did not end here; most of the Christmas pantomimes of his time were indebted to him for clever designs, devices, and effects. The kindly, genial, gifted man died in 1872, in his sixty-eighth year.

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Some of our readers may possibly remember seeing in one of the comic publications published concurrently with or shortly after the appearance of Mr. Charles Darwin’s work, a series of comical designs ridiculing the theory of the “origin of species” in a manner which must have astonished as well as amused the learned philosopher. The origin of the genus footman, and of the dish he carries to his master’s table, is traced out as follows: The dish carries a bone, which eventually finds its way into the jaws of a mongrel cur with a peculiarly short tail. The process then goes merrily onwards; the dog gradually develops; his skin turns into a suit of livery with buttons, the dog-collar gradually assumes the form of a footman’s tie, until the process is ended and the species complete. In like manner, a cat develops into a spinster aunt; a monkey into a mischievous urchin; a pig into a gourmand; a sheep into a country bumpkin; a weasel into a lawyer; a dancing bear into a garrotter; a shark into a money-lender; a snail into the schoolboy to which Shakespeare likens him; a fish into a toper, and so on. These “developments” (twenty in number), which were dedicated to Mr. Darwin, are signed “C. H. B.” and these are the initials of Charles H. Bennett, one of the gentlest, most promising, and withal most original graphic humourists of the century.

Amongst the earliest of the serials which he illustrated was, we believe, Diogenes, a sort of rival of Punch, which made its appearance and ran a brief course in 1853-4. Associated with him in the illustrations were McConnell and Watts Phillips, the latter of whom contributed largely also to the literary matter. We find a clever design of his (in Leech’s style) in the second volume: “Now, gentlemen of the jury,” says a brazen-faced barrister, “I throw myself upon your impartial judgment as husbands and fathers, and I confidently ask, Does the prisoner [the most murderous-looking ruffian un-hung] look like a man who would knock down and trample upon the wife of his bosom? Gentlemen, I have done!”

There was considerable originality in the designs of Bennett, which is more particularly manifested in the well-known series of humorous sketches in which the effect intended to be produced is effected by means of the shadows of the figures represented, which are supposed to indicate their distinguishing failings and characteristics. Among them may be mentioned a tipsy woman amused at the shadow cast by her own figure of a gin bottle; an undertaker, in his garb of woe wrung from the pockets of widows and orphans, casts the appropriate shadow of a crocodile; a red-nosed old hospital nurse of a tea-pot; a worn-out seamstress of a skeleton; a mischievous street boy of a monkey; an angry wife sitting up for a truant husband of an extinguisher; a tall, conceited-looking parson, with a long coat, of a pump; while a sweep, with his “machine,” to his mortal terror beholds his own shadow preceding him in the guise of Beelzebub himself. The series is continued in a work published by W. Kent & Co. in 1860, under the title of “Shadow and Substance,” the letterpress of which is contributed to Bennett’s pictures by Robert B. Brough. Literary work of this description, like William Combe’s “Doctor Syntax,” is necessarily unsatisfactory; but the pictures themselves are distinctly inferior to the series which preceded them, the best being Old Enough to Know Better,—a bald-headed, superannuated old sinner behind the scenes, presenting a bouquet to a ballet girl, his figure casting a shadow on the back of the scene of a bearded, long-eared, horned old goat.

Chas. H. Bennett. [“Shadow and Substance.” “OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER.” [Face p. 372.

We are in no position to give a detailed list of Charles Bennett’s work, which was of a very miscellaneous kind, comprising among others a series of slight outline portraits of members of parliament, which appeared in the Illustrated Times, an edition of the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” edited by the Rev. Charles Kingsley; “John Todd,” a work by the Rev. John Allen; “Shadows,” and “Shadow and Substance,” just spoken of; “Proverbs, with Pictures by Charles H. Bennett,” etc., etc. His talent at last attracted the notice of the weekly Punch council, and he received the coveted distinction of being engaged on the permanent staff of that periodical.

His life, however, was a brief one. The diary of Shirley Brooks, who took much personal interest in him, refers with some anxiety to his illness on the 30th of March, 1867. On the 31st of March the report was somewhat more favourable; but the 2nd of April brought a letter from the editor of Punch, Mark Lemon, which said that Charles Bennett had died between the hours of eight and nine o’clock that morning. “I am very sorry,” adds Shirley Brooks in an autograph note appended beneath the letter referred to. “B[ennett] was a man whom one could not help loving for his gentleness, and a wonderful artist.” The obituary notice by the same hand which appears in Punch records that “he was a very able colleague, a very dear friend. None of our fellow-workers,” it continues, “ever entered more heartily into his work, or laboured with more earnestness to promote our general purpose. His facile execution and singular subtilty of fancy were, we hoped, destined to enrich these pages for many a year. It has been willed otherwise, and we lament the loss of a comrade of invaluable skill, and the death of one of the kindliest and gentlest of our associates, the power of whose hand was equalled by the goodness of his heart.” Charles Bennett was only thirty-seven when he died.

He left a widow and eight children unprovided for, for his health having precluded it, no life insurance had been effected. The Punch men, however, with the unselfishness which so nobly characterizes them, put their shoulders to the wheel for the family of their stricken comrade. “We shall have to do something,” said Shirley Brooks in his diary of the 3rd of April; and they did it accordingly. A committee was immediately started, on which we find the names of Messrs. Arthur Lewis,[184] Wilbert Beale, Mark Lemon, Du Maurier, John Tenniel, Arthur Sullivan, and W. H. Bradbury. Then came rehearsals, and, on the 11th of May, a performance at the Adelphi in aid of the Bennett fund. Mr. Arthur Sullivan had, in conjunction with Mr. F. C. Burnand, converted the well-known farce of “Box and Cox” into an operetta of the most ludicrous description. This was the opening piece—the forerunner of “Pinafore,” “Pirates,” “Patience,” and other triumphs. Arthur Sullivan himself conducted, and the players were Mr. Du Maurier, Mr. Quinton, and Mr. Arthur Blunt. Then followed “A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing,” in which Mesdames Kate Terry, Florence Terry, Mrs. Stoker, Mrs. Watts (the present Ellen Terry), and Messrs. Mark Lemon, Tom Taylor, Tenniel, Burnand, Silver, Pritchett, and Horace Mayhew took part. This was succeeded by Offenbach’s “Blind Beggars,” who were admirably personated by Mr. Du Maurier and Mr. Harold Power. The evening concluded with a number of part songs and madrigals sung by the Moray Minstrels—so called from their chiefly performing at Moray Lodge, the residence of Mr. Arthur Lewis. Between the two portions of their entertainment, Shirley Brooks came on and delivered an address written by himself, which contained the following allusion to him for whose family the generous work had been undertaken:—

THACKERAY’S MARGINAL SKETCHES, MADE WHEN AT SCHOOL, IN HIS SCHOOL-BOOKS, ETC. [Back to p. 375.