DESIGN FOR "PUNCH" SEAL,
BY H. G. HINE.
He was chief stock-artist, so to say; for Leech did not at once assume the commanding position on the paper that was soon to be his. And while Hine shared with him the honour of drawing "Punch's Pencillings," as the cartoons were called—several of the series of "Social Miseries" being from his hand—he produced from time to time the chief cut when it aspired to the dignity of a political caricature.
After a time, however, the amount of work sent to Hine was greatly reduced. It was now some time since he had contributed the whole of the cuts to the first "Almanac," but he was still an occasional cartoonist (Vols. III., IV., and V.); so that he was the more surprised at being roughly—and, as he proved, unjustly—accused of being late with a block. Other unpleasantnesses, which seemed to him gratuitous, suggested the idea that he might not be wanted on Punch. He put the point blankly, and was reassured. Still, the quantity of work sent him diminished; and as nothing came by Christmas, Hine accepted the offer of Christmas-work by the publisher of "The Great Gun"—for which, by the way, he never received payment. Then there suddenly arrived a mass of blocks from Punch; but they were returned with the message that, not hearing from his former proprietors, he had made other arrangements. And that was the end of his connection. Later on he worked for "Joe Miller the Younger," "Mephystopheles," and "The Man in the Moon," and used his pencil, in the true Spirit of a genuine sportsman, in pointing his well-barbed jokes against his old paper with as much enthusiasm as he had before given to its service. On page 153 of the second volume of Punch may be seen a little cut entitled "Choice Spirits in Bond"—being the portraits of himself and the lanky William Newman in the dock of a police-court. Although fifty-four years had passed, the strong resemblance of the little likeness could still be recognised by those who knew the artist in the last few months of his life.
After the collapse of "The Man in the Moon" Hine dropped out of comic draughtsmanship. By this time, indeed, he was tired of the work, for he had begun to think in jokes, to turn every thought to ridicule, and to look upon conversation rather as raw material for pun-making than as a means of expressing and interchanging ideas. The last straw was an occasion when he spent half a night with Horace Mayhew in trying to make a joke to complete a series for "Cruikshank's Almanack"—the very situation in Pope's epigram:—
"You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come;
Knock as you please, there's nobody at home."
Meanwhile another had arisen who was destined to overshadow for many years the rest of his colleagues, and while he lived to be the life and soul of the undertaking—Mr. Punch incarnate. This was John Leech, whose signature first appears on page 43 of the first volume.
When Mr. Frith, R.A., sought to persuade the overworked Leech to take a holiday, he added, just to drive the matter home: "If anything happened to you, who are the 'backbone of Punch,' what would become of the paper?" At which Leech smiled, says his biographer, and retorted, "Don't talk such rubbish! Backbone of Punch, indeed! Why, bless your heart, there isn't a fellow at work upon the paper that doesn't think that of himself, and with about as much right and reason as I should. Punch will get on well enough without me, or any of those who think themselves of such importance." In his life-time none would have been found to share the speaker's views; nevertheless, Punch—for all Leech's paramount importance to the paper—has maintained his prosperity, and more than doubled his lease of life since Leech laid down his pencil. Yet in his time he was as much the artistic Punch as Jerrold was the literary; and there are nearly as many who still believe that Leech at one time was Punch's Editor as accord the same unmerited honour to Jerrold.
JOHN LEECH.
(From the Portrait by Sir John E. Millais, Bart., R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery.)
The story of Leech's early life has been already told. How he was the son of the luckless owner of the London coffee-house in Ludgate Hill; how Flaxman saw his infantile drawings and declared he would be nothing but an artist—nay, "he was an artist;" how, at the Charterhouse, the gentle, nervous lad was schoolfellow of Thackeray, with whom he formed a passionate, life-long friendship; and of yet another hearty friend, Mr. Nethercote; how, when he was medical student at Bartholomew's Hospital, he contracted another evergreen friendship with Percival Leigh, and formed an acquaintanceship, long maintained, but never fully ripened, with another medico—Albert Smith, of Middlesex; how his father's failure caused him to give up medicine and the knife in favour of art and the pencil—by the exercise of which, when he was still under Dr. Cockle, son of the pill-doctor, he had already fascinated his fellow-students, and in particular Percival Leigh—on whose initiative it was that the "Comic Latin Grammar" was carried into execution. All this and more has ere now been recorded. But it all bears directly on his Punch career, and must not by any means be overlooked.