It has been the habit of the contributors to Punch, almost from the commencement of the periodical, to dine together every Wednesday. In the winter months the dinner was usually held in the front room of the first floor of the business premises of the proprietors, Messrs. Bradbury & Evans, in Bouverie Street, Whitefriars. Sometimes these dinners were held at the Bedford Hotel, Covent Garden. During the summer months it was customary to hold ten or twelve dinners at Greenwich, Richmond, Blackwall, and other places in the neighbourhood of London. On these occasions the programme (if we may so term it) of the forthcoming number was arranged and settled, papers were brought out, and the latest intelligence discussed, so as to bring the “cartoon” down to the latest, or rather one of the latest subjects of current interest. At the weekly council dinner John Leech was a faithful attendant. These meetings, indeed, “he thoroughly enjoyed, and his suggestions, not merely as to pictorial matters, but generally, were among the most valuable that were offered, as may be inferred from his large knowledge of the world, his keen sense of the ludicrous, and his hatred of injustice and cruelty.”[162] One of the most regular attendants of the Punch dinners—I think that in 1864, at least, he scarcely missed one—was the most indefatigable of the literary staff, Mr. Shirley Brooks. One was held at The Bedford on the 13th of April, 1864, just about the time when Lord John Russell was setting out as our representative at the Conference, and the outcome of this particular Punch dinner, at which were present Messrs. Mark Lemon, Shirley Brooks, Tom Taylor, John Leech, and Percival Leigh, was Leech’s admirable cartoon of Moses Starting for the Fair. “Let us hope,” adds the pictorial satirist, in special reference to his lordship’s unfortunate capacity for getting himself into a mess, that “he won’t bring back a gross of green spectacles.” It was one of the last of Leech’s political shafts, and the subject was suggested (we have his own authority for stating it) by his friend and literary colleague, Mr. Shirley Brooks.[163]
“Clearly ill,” is Mr. Brook’s record of the state of John Leech’s health on this same 13th of April, 1864. He no longer found pleasure in hunting, of which he had been exceedingly fond, and had even discontinued, at the order of his medical attendant, riding on horseback. He was affected with nervous irritability, the effect of incessant application. The ordinary noise of the streets—musicians, organ-grinders, street vendors, and the like—worried him beyond endurance. Long before the period at which we have arrived these annoyances had driven him from his residence in Brunswick Square to seek shelter from his enemies at No. 3, The Terrace, Kensington. His nervous irritability is manifested in the designs which he continued to draw for Punch. In one of his illustrations to vol. xlv. (1863), depicting certain familiar sea-side nuisances, he asks, “Why a couple of conceited fanatics should be allowed to disturb the repose of a Sunday afternoon by the sea-side?” and “Why the authorities at Brighton, so sensible and considerate in keeping the place free from the detestable organ grinders, should permit the terrible nuisance indicated [in the illustration] to exist?” “Fresh prawns, whiting, oysters, or watercresses,” remonstrated the persecuted artist, “are capital things in their way, and we should think that the jaded man of occupation, or the invalid, would very much rather send to a respectable shop for such delicacies, than have them ‘bellowed’ into his ears morning, noon, and night.” His illustrations of this character are so numerous that the ordinary observer would probably suppose that they were part only of a series; to the observer, however, who knew Leech, they clearly indicate the nervous irritability under which he suffered, and which was probably caused, and certainly intensified, by the nuisances of which he complained.
The state of Leech’s health in May, 1864, seems to me best explained in the letter which Mark Lemon at this time wrote to Mr. Bass, in relation to his proposed bill for the regulation of street music. After showing how he himself was obliged to quit London to escape the nuisance of street music, the then editor of Punch continues: “A dear friend of mine, and one to whom the public has been indebted for more than twenty years for weekly supplies of innocent amusement, and whose name will find a place in the future history of art, has not been so fortunate. He lived in Brunswick Square, and remained there until the nervous system was so seriously affected by the continual disturbance to which he was subjected while at work, that he was compelled to abandon a most desirable home, and seek a retreat at Kensington. After expending considerable sums to make his residence convenient for his art-work,—placing double windows to the front of his house, etc.,—he is again driven from his home by the continual visitation of street bands and organ-grinders. The effect upon his health—produced, upon my honour, by the causes I have named—is so serious that he is forbidden to take horse exercise, or indulge in fast walking, as a palpitation of the heart has been produced—a form of angina pectoris, I believe—and his friends are most anxiously concerned for his safety. He is ordered to Homburg, and I know that the expatriation will entail a loss of nearly £50 a week upon him just at present.
“I am sure I need not withhold from you the name of this poor gentleman. It is Mr. John Leech.
“If those gentlemen who laugh at complaints such as this letter contains were to know what are the natural penalties of constant brain-work, they would not encourage or defend such unnecessary inflictions as street music entails upon some of the benefactors of their age. Such men are the last to interfere with the enjoyments of their poorer fellow-labourers; but they claim to be allowed to pursue their callings in peace, and to have the comfort of their homes secured to them. All they wish is to have the same immunity from the annoyances of street music as the rest of the community have from dustmen’s bells, post-horns, and other unnecessary disturbances.”
The terrible nature of poor Leech’s sufferings will be shown by another anecdote of Dr. Mackay’s. Just about this time he met Mr. F. M. Evans, one of the proprietors of Punch, and asked him how Leech was. “Very ill,” was the reply; “the sufferings he endures from noise are painful to think of. I took him down into the country a little while ago to stay a week, or as much longer as he pleased, promising him that he should hear no organ-grinders there, nor railway whistles, nor firing of guns. The next morning on getting up to breakfast, I found that he had packed up his portmanteau and was ready to depart. ‘I cannot stay any longer here,’ he said, ‘the noise drives me frantic!’ ‘What noise?’ ‘The gardener whetting his scythe. It goes through my ears like a corkscrew.’ And nothing that I could say could prevail upon him to prolong his visit.”
But there was no falling off in the quality of the work which Leech executed for Punch or other employers at this time; on the contrary, his drawings seemed to me marked by more than their usual excellence. Witness more especially the few etchings he lived to finish for “Mr. Facey Romford’s Hounds,” and the coloured etching to “Punch’s Pocket Book” of the year. One of the illustrations which he designed for the 1864 edition of the “Ingoldsby Legends,” and which shows us one of his stalwart servant girls drawing up the trunkless head of “St. Genulphus” from the bottom of the well, appears to me to call for special notice. I would ask the reader to observe the details of that perfectly marvellous drawing, executed with all the effect and at a fifth of the labour which George Cruikshank in his best days would have bestowed upon it. I would entreat him to mark that wicked, graceless, bald-pated old head, with its port wine nose resting on the rim of the bucket, and its wicked old eye suggestively winking unutterable things at the perplexed and astounded maiden. I would ask him to look at that drawing; to take into account the health of the genial, failing artist who designed it; and to tell me, whether in all the range of English comic art he remembers to have met with anything more intensely comical?
We find John Leech and his able coadjutor, Mr. John Tenniel, present at the Punch dinner of Wednesday, the 15th of June; but shortly afterwards he started on the journey ordered by his medical advisers, and set off for Homburg in the company of his friend, Mr. Alfred Elmore, sojourning afterwards for a time at Schwalbach. He was absent altogether about six weeks. A record in the diary to which I am indebted for so much information in relation to him tells me, under date of 10th August, “Leech has returned from Germany, but I am sorry to say I don’t think he is stronger.” The sole result, in fact, obtained was that his mind was amused by his visit to new scenery, while his sketch-book was filled with valuable memorials of the sojourn for future use. He was present at the Punch dinner on Wednesday, the 17th of August, and suggested to his colleagues by way of cartoon the subject of The American Juggernaut.