Fortunately all this happened previous to the introduction of the ink I use now, known as Waterproof ink—ink that will not run when washed over with water. The manufacturers of this article sent me a specimen bottle to experiment with, and asked me for my opinion of it. In replying, I sent the following note. The sketch was touched in to amuse my youngest boy, who was puzzled by the meaning of Waterproof ink. The makers, in acknowledging the note, asked me to mention the sum I would accept if, with my permission, they used the note and sketch I sent as an advertisement. I replied that they were welcome to use my note, but that I could not accept payment. However I received in a few days a large parcel of artists' materials: paints, sketch-books, brushes, pencils, &c.
This is more than I ever received for a better known advertisement: "I used your soap two years ago." I was never offered so much as a cake of soap from those who used my Punch sketch so freely! Permission was given for its use by the proprietors of Punch, not knowing I had any objection, and at the time I was ill with fever and unable to protest. The firm certainly paid me some years afterwards for the publication of the same advertisement for two insertions in a periodical I was starting, but only at the ordinary rate. I mention this fact as I have heard from friends all over the world that I received untold gold for the use of it, and as it has interested so many perhaps I may at the same time clear up another fallacy, which I did not know existed until I read Mr. Spielmann's "History of Punch." In that he refers to the very "oft-quoted drawing (lately used as an advertisement), the idea of which reached him from an anonymous correspondent. It is that of a grimy, unshaven, unwashed, mangy-looking tramp, who sits down to write, with a broken quill, a testimonial for a firm of soap-makers. A further point of interest about this famous sketch was that Charles Keene was deeply offended by it at first, in the groundless belief that it was intended as a skit upon himself. It must at least be admitted that the head is not unlike what one might have expected to belong to a dissipated and dilapidated Charles Keene." Poor Keene! How sorry I was to read this when too late to explain to him that he was never in my mind for a moment when I was drawing it! But, strange to say, the original who sat for it was a brother artist, another Charles, quite as delightful as Keene, equally clever in his own way, and my greatest friend—Charles Burton Barber, the animal painter, in appearance rather like Charles Keene, but nothing of the Bohemian about him, and a non-smoker! Still I am always being told that I had So-and-so in my eye when drawing the figure. I might in truth quote Sir John Tenniel's remark à propos of being accused of caricaturing his late comrade, Horace Mayhew, as the "White Knight" in "Alice in Wonderland": "The resemblance was purely accidental, a mere unintentional caricature, which his friends, of course, were only too delighted to make the most of." Ah, those friends are at the bottom of all these misunderstandings. I could a tale, or two, unfold, but that—that's another volume.
I SIT FOR JOHN BROWN.
Yes, poor Barber sat for the tramp, and I in return sat to him for a figure quite as incongruous in my case as the tramp was in his. I sat for John Brown for the picture Queen Victoria had commissioned of Mr. Brown surrounded by her pet dogs, which she had in her private room. She was so delighted with the picture that she had a replica made of it, and placed it in the passage outside, so that it was the first picture she looked at as she left her room. Barber's animals and children were delightful, but he was weak with his men, and was in trouble over John Brown's calves,—it was then that I posed for the "brawny Scott," but only for the portion here mentioned.
A CRIB BY AN AMERICAN ADVERTISER.
This figure of the tramp in my sketch of "I used your soap two years ago" has in fact been mistaken for myself. A relative of my own, who has been living in the Cape for many years, paid a visit to London, and on his return informed his children that he had seen me and brought my portrait back with him. "Oh, we have Cousin Harry's portrait in our nursery for some time: one he has signed too." It was the Punch-Pears production in colour! I am sure I do not know how ridiculous stories are received as true, that I got a fabulous sum for the use of this one; that such-and-such a member of the staff gets a huge retaining fee, &c., and other inventions—one in particular. If I have met one, I have met a score of people at different times of my life who positively declared that they actually sent that ever famous line: "Punch's advice to those about to marry—Don't!" and received immediately remuneration in sums varying from £5 to £500. That joke was probably conceived and thrown in at the last moment, at the critical point when the editor is "making up" the paper.