It is doubtful if the public will ever realise how great an artist Keene was. His transcendent merit has, however, for a long time been the wonder and admiration of his brother-craftsmen and of the critics. The stream of his genius continued to flow for six-and-thirty years in the most amazing manner. His drawings are in the highest form of Impressionism, reproducing every phase of fleeting expression and suddenly-arrested action with a certainty and accuracy which are absolutely unsurpassable. His power of composition, of breadth of handling, chiaroscuro, and suggestion of colour and form, was perfect within the range of his medium; and in that medium he gave us, not paper with pen-lines on it, but a perfect sense of light, form, and expression. He was as careful, too, in his "comic cuts" as the most conscientious of painters could be in his canvas; and drawing invariably from the model—even if that model were simply an old shoe—he would often journey into the country for a background of, say, a turnip-field, or in search of any other detail or local colour.
In one direction alone did he fail, or choose to fail—in the portrayal of facial beauty, elegance, and respectability. A pretty woman lurked but rarely about the point of his pencil, as she does so delightfully about those of his principal collaborators on Punch; and an elegant woman—save by accident—never. You may point to the Brittany peasant in the number for September 20th, 1856; to the very Leechy young lady on p. 188, Vol. XXXVI. (May 7th, 1859), who, it must be admitted, really is a "lady;" and to one or two more. But these pretty women serve rather to accentuate the ugliness of all his other women, when they should have been most beautiful; while elegance is with him a virtue that very rarely saves. Keene, indeed, misrepresented his countrywomen as much as M. Forain libels his. Keene's "swells," and even his gentlemen, are snobs; his aristocracy and his clerks are cast in the same mould; his city young men are like artizans; and his brides are forbidding—models of virtue, no doubt, but lacking every outward feminine charm. These shortcomings, of course, are to a certain extent to be accounted for by his own nature. Living in the strictest economy and temperateness, he hated anything like ostentation. He despised "Society" and the whole fabric of fashion, and held the world of Burke and Debrett in good-natured abhorrence. Like Leech and Dickens, he had given his heart to the middle and lower-middle classes, and among them he found his best models and most admirable motifs.
No Punch artist was ever so dependent upon his friends for "subjects" as he, and none received such continuous and delightful support. From Messrs. Joseph Crawhall, Andrew Tuer, Walker, Clayton, Birket Foster, Sands, Pritchett, Savile Clark, Ashby-Sterry, Chasemore, and others, he was under constant friendly, and fully-acknowledged, obligation. Not but that he made constant effort to secure "jokes" of his own. He was ever on the look-out, and often very hard-pressed, for them. One day he told Mr. Pritchett that he had determined to join a riding class at Allen's Riding-school, and seek inspiration there. His friend amiably suggested that he (Mr. Pritchett) should attend as observer and reporter, and tell Keene all the ridiculous things he did on horseback and the amusing appearances he cut. But the idea did not seem to commend itself to Keene, who merely replied that he thought he should choose a hearse-horse to ride, as being at once more stately, decorative, and safe.
Amongst Keene's own subjects are to be included the greater number of those series of drawings dealing with artist and volunteer life; but it must be recognised that to a great extent Keene was frankly the illustrator of other men's ideas, and often of other men's "legends." These legends, or "cackle," were often touched up by Keene; but sometimes they were entirely original. And though it must be admitted that they are not concise as Leech's, they are, as a rule, more life-like, more truthfully Impressionistic—just as his drawings are. The "legend," by the way, Keene used to term the "libretto"—a reflection, as it were, of his passion for music (a passion he shared with Gainsborough and Dyce and Romney, and so many more of our most eminent artists). This love of music he indulged at the meetings of the Moray Minstrels, in the Crystal Palace Choir during the Handel Festivals, and in the depths of the country, wherein he would bury himself in order to torture the bagpipes, without testing too severely the forbearance of his fellow-men.
When he secured a good story—which he loved to impart with an ecstatic wink to one or other of his closest friends—he would look as carefully to the "libretto" as to the drawing, as in the case of the British farmer who, crossing the Channel for the first time—in great discomfort at the roll of the boat—"This Capt'n don't understand his business. Dang it, why don't he keep in the furrows?" or the story—older, by the way, than Keene had any knowledge of—of the Scotchman who was asked by a friend, upon whom he had called, if he would take a glass of whiskey. "No," he said, "it's too airly; besides, I've had a gill a'ready!"
CHARLES KEENE TORTURING THE BAGPIPES.
(From a Pen-Drawing by Himself. By Permission of Henry S. Keene. Engraved by J. Swain.)
And when his legends were altered by the Editor he would fret for a week. Once when Tom Taylor altered the good Scotch of a "field preacher" (Almanac for 1880) he declared himself "in a great rage," and swore that he would "never forgive" the delinquent. On other occasions, too, he fumed at the desecration of his "librettos;" and when the word "last" was accidentally omitted from his joke—"Heard my [last] new song?" "Oh, Lor! I hope so!!" he mourned over the loss of the point. Yet he might have been comforted; for had the word been retained, the further charge of plagiarism could have been sustained against him.
