The contribution by which he will certainly be best and most gratefully remembered is his "Essence of Parliament"—a work which was entirely his own conception, and which was continued for twenty years from week to week while Parliament was sitting, with cleverness, refinement, truth, and humour that are invaluable to the historian and delightful to the general reader. For this work his experience and training as the "Chronicle" reporter were invaluable to him. Brooks was essentially a politician in feeling, full of suggestion—apt, happy, and ingenious—and yet could turn with ease and equal facility to social, literary, poetical, or art-critical work, to his daily "leader" or weekly article for the "Illustrated London News." He was in his time the cartoon suggestor-in-chief, and towards the end of Mark Lemon's life rendered great assistance in the editorship of the paper; although Percival Leigh was the recognised locum tenens. Lemon had been dead but just a week when Brooks wrote (June 1st, 1870) from the Punch office to a friend:—
"Yesterday I accepted the Editorship of Punch. It will be a tie, and give me trouble, but I seem to have been generally expected to take the situation, and it is not good to disappoint General Expectations, as he is a stern officer. Wish me good fortune—but I know you do.
"I was offered a seat on a four-horse coach, for the Derby, alongside M. Gustave Doré. But I am here. Who says I have no self-denial?"
—which shows that he was already in harness.
In his editorship he took the utmost pride, and he would defend his paper with spirit. When an ill-mannered acquaintance told him "that of all the London papers he considered Punch the dullest," Brooks replied, "I wonder you ever read it." "I don't," said the other. "So I thought," retorted the Editor, "by your foolish remark."
Shirley Brooks fell ill with a complication of disorders, and Mr. Burnand did him the same service on Punch that he had done for Lemon, and that Leigh did for himself and Tom Taylor. When he was near his end, and a newspaper acquaintance called persistently to inquire how he was progressing, "Tell him," said the sick man, with a shrewd smile about his lips, "that he shall have his 'par' in good time." He was engaged in writing "Election Epigrams" and "The Situation" on his death-bed; and died in February, 1874, before their publication. He was buried in the cemetery of Kensal Green, close to where Thackeray lay by Leech, and within whose walls, though at some distance apart, Doyle was to sleep, and Henry Mayhew.
Neither Robert nor William Brough ever drew for Punch, but it is the belief of their brother, Mr. Lionel Brough, that they were both at one time literary contributors. Of this, however, I have no record. William was brother-in-law to Mark Lemon, but the two men were not on the best of terms. Robert, a provincial Jerrold, with all Douglas's power of sarcasm and some of his genius, had started the "Liverpool Lion," and was a brilliant comic draughtsman. It was the success of his play, "The Enchanted Isle," that brought him to London, where he wrote burlesques and so forth; but he will be remembered for his clever illustrations to most of Punch's rivals of his time, as well as his creation of "Billie Barlow"—the "Ally Sloper" of the day; and it was not to Punch's advantage that he did not enlist Brough's humorous talent.
In the year 1854—or it may have been a few months later—Mr. W. Beatty Kingston made an early appearance with a cockney ballad on the subject of the admission of female searchers to the penetralia of H.M. Record Office, of which at that time he was a "flickering light" at £100 a year. Soon he took service under the Hapsburgs, and left England afterwards for nearly a quarter of a century. In 1883 he resumed comic operations on the invitation of Mr. Burnand, and continued, until June, 1887, to contribute a good deal of verse, illustrated by Mr. Sambourne and Mr. Furniss. Many of these pieces have since been republished in "My Hansom Lays;" while of those which have since appeared some, such as "A Triplet" and "The Wizard's Curse," have passed into the category of "stock recitations."
Then F. I. Scudamore, still remembered for his vers de société, was a passing contributor. But in 1855 he joined "The Comic Times," with other of old Punch outsiders, and then obtained an appointment in the Government Telegraphs, and, with a Companionship of the Bath, the superintendence of the Constantinople Post Office.
Mr. Ashby-Sterry's name belongs to the following year, but he appeared solely as a draughtsman; his literary connection, which began twenty-four years later, will be spoken of in its proper place. Michael John Barry was another who at this time (1857) shed no little brilliancy on Punch; and to him is now credited the admirable "Peccavi" despatch—perhaps the most finished and pointed that ever appeared in Punch's pages, and certainly one of the most highly appreciated and most loudly applauded:—