SIR JOHN TENNIEL, R.I.
(From a Pen-Drawing by Himself.)
The great acquisition of the year was John Tenniel. The paper had been left by Doyle, as I have explained, without its Almanac blocks, and it found itself, moreover, without a second cartoonist, and, what was quite as important at the moment, without an artist of distinctly decorative ability, who would provide the fanciful initial-letters, headings, and title-pages which have always been a feature in Punch. The circumstances of his joining the paper Sir John once recounted to me in conversation, with that sort of apologetic humour and true modesty that are characteristic of him:—
"I never learned drawing, except in so far as attending a school and being allowed to teach myself. I attended the Royal Academy Schools after becoming a probationer, but soon left in utter disgust of there being no teaching. I had a great idea of High Art; in fact, in 1845 I sent in a sixteen-foot-high cartoon for Westminster Palace. In the Upper Waiting Hall, or 'Hall of Poets,' of the House of Lords, I made a fresco, but my subject was changed after my work had been decided on and worked out. At Christmas, 1850, I was invited by Mark Lemon to fill the place suddenly left by Doyle, who with very good reasons for himself—that of objection to the "Papal Aggression" campaign suddenly severed his connection with Punch. Doyle had left them in great straits—the Pocket-book and Almanac to come out—and I was applied to by Lemon, on the initiation of Jerrold, to fill the breach. This was on the strength of my illustrations to Æsop's Fables, which had recently been published by Murray. I did the title and half-title to the nineteenth volume, as well as the first page-border to the Almanac, together with a few initials and odds and ends for the end of that volume, and the first illustration to the next; but only the half-title, title, and tail-piece were signed. My first cartoon was that facing page 44 in the twentieth volume; and, only signing occasionally for the first month or two, I went on from time to time doing cartoons.
"As for political opinions, I have none; at least, if I have my own little politics, I keep them to myself, and profess only those of my paper. If I have infused any dignity into cartoon-designing, that comes from no particular effort on my part, but solely from the high feeling I have for art. In any case, if I am a 'cartoonist'—the accepted term—I am not a caricaturist in any sense of the word. My drawings are sometimes grotesque, but that is from a sense of fun and humour. Some people declare that I am no humorist, that I have no sense of fun at all; they deny me everything but severity, 'classicality,' and dignity. Now, I believe that I have a very keen sense of humour, and that my drawings are sometimes really funny!
"I have now been working regularly at the weekly cartoons for Punch for close on thirty years (from 1862),[52] missing only two or three times from illness. In all that time I have hardly left London for more than a week; yet I enjoy wonderful health, doubtless to be attributed to regular riding. I carry out my work thus: I never use models or Nature for the figure, drapery, or anything else. But I have a wonderful memory of observation—not for dates, but anything I see I remember. Well, I get my subject on Wednesday night; I think it out carefully on Thursday, and make my rough sketch; on Friday morning I begin, and stick to it all day, with my nose well down on the block. By means of tracing-paper—on which I make all alterations of composition and action I may consider necessary—I transfer my design to the wood, and draw on that. The first sketch I may, and often do, complete later on as a commission. Indeed, at the present time I have a huge undertaking on hand, in which I take great delight—the finishing of scores of my sketches, of which I have many hundreds. They are for a friend—an enthusiastic admirer, if I may be permitted to say so. Well, the block being finished, it is handed over to Swain's boy at about 6.30 to 7 o'clock, who has been waiting for it for an hour or so, and at 7.30 it is put in hand for engraving. That is completed on the following night, and on Monday night I receive by post the copy of next Wednesday's paper. Although case-hardened in a sense, I have never the courage to open the packet. I always leave it to my sister, who opens it and hands it across to me, when I just take a glance at it, and receive my weekly pang. My work would be difficult to photograph on to the wood, as it is all done in pencil; the only pen-and-ink work I have done, so far, being for the Almanac and Pocket-book.[53]
ROUGH PENCIL SKETCH FOR "ARTHUR AND GUINEVERE," FOR "PUNCH'S POCKET-BOOK."
"WILL IT BURST?"
Captain of Gun: "Ram 'em all down, my lads! She'll stand it safe enough!!!"
(From Sir John Tenniel's Rough Sketch for the Cartoon in "Punch," 14th Feb., 1870—p. 67, Vol. LXXVIII.)