"... Nor human humours only; who so tender
Of touch when sunny Nature out-of-door
Wooed his deft pencil? Who like him could render
Meadow or hedge-row, turnip-field or moor?
Snowy perspective, long suburban winding
Of bowery roadway, villa-edged and trim,
Iron-railed city street, where gas-lamps blinding
Glare through the foggy distance, dense and dim?"
Keene's simple, kind, and somewhat lonely life are too well known to call for recapitulation here—his tenderness and chivalry towards women, his unconventionality, his love of ancient pipes and virulent "dottle"-smoking, his quaint story-telling and singular modesty, his sensitiveness (he never would ask his nephew, Mr. Corbould, to sit as model to him again after a bantering inquiry of how much he was going to pay), his Conservatism, his humour, his gentle hobbies, and, lastly, his stern economy. Indeed, by his thrift, when he died, he was found to have accumulated over £30,000, chiefly out of his Punch work, in spite of the fact that he would never receive a salary: all this is accessible elsewhere. For some time before he died he ceased to draw for the paper, so broken was he; and it is worth noting that the last sketch that appeared from his hand was "'Arry on the Boulevards," in the Paris Number of Punch (1889), although he was not able to join the rest of the Staff in their trip to the Universal Exhibition.
He died on the 10th of January, 1891, and was buried in Hammersmith Cemetery, in the presence of most of his colleagues, who mourned their friend—
"Frank, loyal, unobtrusive, simple-hearted,
Loving his book, his pipe, his song, his friend;
Peaceful he lived and peacefully departed,
A gentle life-course with a gracious end."
Charles Martin—a son of the distinguished painter of Biblical catastrophes, of boundless halls, and illimitable space, John Martin—made three drawings for Punch. "The Bonnet-maker's Dream" was an effort to enlist sympathy for one class of women-workers; but his only fair illustrated joke was that in which a page-boy, pointing to the old torch-extinguishers in one of the London squares, informs his wondering companion that they are "what the swells in ancient days put their weeds out with." But as an artist he was lazy, preferring to make occasional nice little water-colour drawings than to work hard and continuously at black-and-white. He succeeded in making his way into society as a man-'bout-town, which he preferred to either; so that his connection with Punch began and ended with the year 1853.
An amateur signing "C" made an anonymous appearance in the same year; and Mr. Harry Hall, who was horse-painter first at Tattersall's, and afterwards at Newmarket, where he made Mark Lemon's acquaintance while painting a Derby Winner, contributed a single sketch. It is not remarkable, nor superior to his subsequent work as horse-draughtsman to the "Field"; but it proves, at least, that Mr. Sydney P. Hall's father could draw with ease.
It was in 1853 that the Reverend Edward Bradley[57] first contributed a drawing to Punch under his well-known pseudonym, but earlier than that he found admittance in its pages, with both picture and prose, under the signature, not of "Cuthbert Bede," but simply "E. B." The nom de plume under which he is best known he adapted from the names of the two patron saints of Durham, to which city he was much attached, and within whose boundaries he spent his 'Varsity career.
"Photography being a novelty in 1853," says he in his MS. reminiscences, to the transcript of which I have had access through the courtesy of his son, Mr. Cuthbert Bradley, "Mark Lemon readily accepted my proposal to introduce it into Punch," and accordingly, the first four caricature illustrations of photography that appeared were in Punch, between May and August, 1853. One of these represented "The Portrait of an Eminent Photographer who has just succeeded in focussing a view to his Complete Satisfaction." He was depicted with his head under the hood, while a bull was charging him in the rear—a sketch that was pleasantly referred to by Charles Kingsley in his novel, "Two Years Ago."
