[Contents]CHAPTER XIX.
PUNCH'S ARTISTS: 1841-50.
William Harvey—Mr. Birket Foster—Kenny Meadows—His Joviality—Alfred "Crowquill"—Sir John Gilbert—Exit "Rubens"—Hablôt Knight Browne ("Phiz")—Henry Heath—Mr. R. J. Hamerton—W. Brown—Richard Doyle—Desires Pseudonymity—His Protest against Punch's "Papal Aggression" Campaign—Withdraws—His Art—Epitaph by Punch—Henry Doyle—T. Onwhyn—"Rob Roy" Macgregor—William McConnell—Sir John Tenniel—His Career—And Technique—His Early Work—Cartoons—His Art—His Memory and its Lapses—"Jackīdēs"—Knighthood.
Three other names belong to the year 1841: Ashley, William Harvey, and Mr. Birket Foster—the second distinguished landscape artist who may be said to have been raised upon Punch. Of the first-named, nothing need be said, but that he contributed a single sketch and no more. William Harvey, however, stands on a different footing, yet his employment on Punch is inexplicable. He had no real humour, and, what is perhaps more to his credit, he pretended to none; nor did he take pains, as so many do, to prove it. Kenny Meadows, we are told, used to rally him on his excessive sense of gracefulness, which stood in the way of anything like truthful representation. "Beauty," he would say, "is Harvey's evil genius, and grace his damnation." It hardly required the couple of initials ("A" and "E" on pp. 144 and 146 of the first vol.), conceived and carried out in the Birket Foster manner, with landscape backgrounds and field-sport symbols, to prove that Nature had not intended the artist for a Punch draughtsman. He was far better fitted for the illustration of "Knight's Pictorial Shakespeare" than for comic draughtsmanship. And when he had spread consternation in the office by sending in a charge of twelve guineas for the third wrapper, which he had been commissioned to design—money never being scarcer than at that moment—the proprietors immediately became equally convinced that such was not his vocation, and his connection with the paper ceased forthwith.
I said he drew "in the Birket Foster manner," for that young draughtsman, who was at the time one of Landells' apprentices, had already begun to draw initials on p. 85 of Punch's first volume—an "O," consisting of a laurel wreath with a Lifeguardsman charging through. These initials—there were thirteen in 1841, eleven in the following year, and two in 1843—were remarkable work for a boy of seventeen; and still more remarkable was the fact that he should be entrusted, even at a pinch, with the execution of a cartoon. It is true that this was only an adaptation of Cruikshank's plate of "Jack Sheppard cutting his name on the Beam"—a design highly appreciated at a moment when the fortunes of Harrison Ainsworth's young housebreaker were being followed with breathless interest by every section of society; and it is not less a fact that the head of Lord John Russell was touched up by Henning. Still the achievement is as remarkable as coming from an artist of Mr. Birket Foster's temperament, as those other cartoons, executed in "The Censor" at a later period, by Professor Herkomer. But this was not all he did, for to him are to be credited also a few miscellaneous illustrations, as well as those extremely French-looking designs which he imitated, by order, from drawings by Gavarni for a novelette by Lecourt (pp. 262, 263 and 275, Vol. I.). As an artist he was entirely untaught, save for Brine's quaint advice, and for the counsel of Crowquill that in figure-drawing he should make dots first for the head and chief joints, as an assistance. For a time he followed these strange indications on the royal road to drawing, and on them, perhaps, he based to some extent the illustrations which he made for book-covers, together with Charles Keene, for Mr. Edmund Evans—who, it may not be out of place here to repeat, now so well known as the engraver and publisher of Miss Kate Greenaway's picture books, was a fellow-pupil of Birket Foster's with "Daddy" Landells. He, too, made a couple of drawings for Punch in 1842, when he was no more than sixteen: the first a "blackie," entitled "Train'd Animals"—representing a trainful of wild beasts (p. 108, Vol. III.), and the other an initial; and his name appears as well as the engraver of one of "Phiz's" designs in "Punch's Valentines." It occurred to him a little later on to buy up "remainders" of unsaleable novels, to employ clever artists to illustrate some stirring scene of love, adventure, or revenge, and with this design on the boards to place the book for sale on the railway bookstalls. His shrewdness met with a rich reward; the picture sold the book; and it often happened that a book that had failed egregiously on its first appearance, would run into two or three editions when presented as a railway novel with a cover sufficiently startling or absorbing in its interest.
An unprecedented, and an unrepeated, incident occurred in 1842. In that year there appeared a number of drawings by Gavarni (apart from those re-drawn by Mr. Birket Foster), and something has been made by commentators of the early enterprise of the Editor in inviting the contributions of the eminent French master of caricature. But as a matter of fact Gavarni was not invited at all, nor did he ever draw for Punch. These blocks, and the one by Gagniet, had simply been bought up by the publishers, and used after they had appeared in "Les Parisiens peints par Eux-Mêmes" as well as in the English translation of 1840. The use of clichés, it should be stated, has never since been resorted to. When Gavarni did make a prudence-visit to England in 1847 he held aloof from Punch, perhaps on account of his former connection with "The Great Gun." His principal achievement here was to offend the Queen, Thackeray, Dickens, and others, by coolly ignoring their proffered hospitality and friendly advances.
In this same volume first appeared a notable quintet—Kenny Meadows, Alfred "Crowquill," W. M. Thackeray, Sir John Gilbert, and "Phiz" (Hablôt Knight Browne).
Few men of his day enjoyed so great a vogue as Kenny Meadows. His pencil was for many years in extraordinary demand; and although as an artist he could not stand against his great contemporary George Cruikshank, his popularity—among publishers, at least—if not as great, was nearly as extensive. His work is more than half forgotten now, but the memory of his name survives; and to speak of "Kenny Meadows" is to recall the typical art of the illustrator and (such as it was) of the comic draughtsman of the first half of the century.
