The History of "Punch"

by M. H. Spielmann

Mr. G. du Maurier's First Drawing—The "Romantic Tenor"—Polite Satire—His Types and Creations—His Pretty Women—And Fair American—"Chang," "Don," and "Punch"—Mr. du Maurier as a Punch Writer—Mr. Gordon Thompson—Mr. Stacy Marks, R.A.—Paul Gray—Sir John Millais, Bart., R.A.—Mr. Fred Barnard—First Joke Refused as "Painful"—Mr. R. T. Pritchett—Initiation by Sir John Tenniel—Fritz Eltze—His Amiable Jocularity—Mr. A. R. Fairfield—Colonel Seccombe—Fred Walker, A.R.A.—Mr. J. Priestman Atkinson ("Dumb Crambo")—C. H. Bennett—Mr. W. S. Gilbert ("Bab")—His Classic Joke—G. B. Goddard—Miss Georgina Bowers—Mr. Walter Crane.

GEORGE DU MAURIER.
(From a Photograph by W. and D. Downey.)

When, in 1860, Mr. George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier contributed his first drawing to Punch, he had little suspicion that he would be counted, together with John Leech, John Tenniel, and Charles Keene, as one of the four great pillars on which would rest the artistic reputation of the paper. In that first drawing, himself and two of his friends were represented entering the "studio" of a photographer, smoking, as the manner of artists is; and they are coldly requested by the deity of the place to leave their tobacco outside, as "they are in an artist's studio" (p. 150, Vol. XXXIX.). It was a poor sketch enough, showing some straining after comicality, and lacking every trace of the grace and beauty the draughtsman was so soon to develop. He was Parisian born, and after studying with a view to a scientific career, he became convinced, through Dr. Williamson's amiable assurance that he would make a "shocking bad chemist," that art and not science was his destiny—more especially as his professors had been delighted with such little caricatures of his as they had seen; but, as Mr. du Maurier suggestively put it in his lecture on "Social Pictorial Satire," "they had not seen them all." He studied art at Antwerp and Paris in company with several notabilities of the day; but when, through an accident in the laboratory, he lost the sight of one eye, and found the other seriously imperilled, his chances of success in life seemed small. It was when lying, during his long illness, in the Antwerp Hospital, in 1858, that he first saw "Punch's Almanac"—a delight which he never forgot. When he recovered his ordinary health, he returned to England, though with little improvement of sight to cheer him. With a courage, however, equal to that of Sir John Tenniel, he girded himself against fate; he worked hard in London, where he lived in humble lodgings at 85, Newman Street, which he shared with his life-long friend, the late Lionel Henley, afterwards R.B.A.—"the dearest fellow that ever was." He sometimes wondered, he has told me, if he would eat a dinner that day; and as becomes the impecunious, he was a tremendous democrat. He "hated the bloated aristocracy, without knowing much about it; and, to do it justice, the bloated aristocracy did not go out of its way to pester him with its attentions." But in those happy, hungry, hard-working days, when dinner was not always a vested interest, Mr. du Maurier seemed already tinged with the daintier tastes that were destined to lead his pencil to the delineation of these same "bloated" classes; and even in those hard times he could always boast a dress-suit.

So at the age of twenty-six—the same as that at which Charles Keene made his début in Punch—he sent in an occasional contribution that was far more in Leech's manner than in what came to be his own.

Art has a way, figuratively speaking, of flourishing on an empty stomach, and Mr. du Maurier made rapid progress on the training. Keene's acquaintance and genial friendship enslaved at once his artistic methods, as well as his artistic adoration. It was not that he admired Leech less, but that he appreciated Keene more; and when the former died, to the sorrow and consternation of the Staff, Mr. du Maurier was appointed to his seat at the Table. He obeyed the summons on the first Wednesday that followed Leech's death, and carved his monogram on the board between those of the bosom friends, Thackeray and Leech. Mark Lemon, with characteristic shrewdness, soon discovered in what direction lay the talent and perhaps the penchant of the artist, and told him not to try to be "too funny," but to do the graceful side of things, and to be "the romantic tenor in Mr. Punch's opera bouffe company," while Keene was to do the comic songs. The little social dramas of the day, the drawing-rooms of Belgravia, and the nurseries of Mayfair—those were his preserves, from which he could get as much game as he chose, humorous if he liked, but graceful withal.

But Mr. du Maurier is emphatically not what is commonly understood by "a funny man," for all his subtlety and love of humour; he is a combination of the artistic, with a distinct and clear sense of beauty, and of the scientific, with speculations and theories of race and heredity—who would as lief draw East-End types for the sake of their "character," and would look at a queer face more for the interest that is in it than for its comicality. If Mr. du Maurier's sense of beauty is strong, so is his appreciation of ugliness; and if you take down any of the volumes of Punch—that shine in their shelves like the teeth in the great laughing mouth of Humour itself—you will find no faces or forms more hideous or grotesque than those which the artist has chosen to put there.

But if there is one thing to justify the opinion of his admirers that he is the "Thackeray of the pencil," it is primarily to be found, not so much in the keen satire of his drawing and legends, but in his startling, his strikingly truthful creations. Creations we have had from Leech, Keene, and others—from Leech's pure sense of fun and jollity; from Keene's unerring observation of men and women, and fleeting emotion—but those of Mr. du Maurier go deeper into vices, virtues, habits, and motives, and are at the root of his pictorial commentaries. He has given us true pictures of the manners of his time; and those manners he has satirised with more politeness and irony, perhaps, than broad humour. He worked well with Keene in double harness, and his pictures are at once a foil and a complement of that genius's work and point de vue. He has satirised everything, and his art has been admirably adapted to the depth of the civilisation he probes and dissects. His sense of beauty and tenderness apart, he is to art much what Corney Grain was to the stage, though his hand is not so heavy; and while you laugh with Leech, you smile with Mr. du Maurier—lovingly at his children, respectfully at his pretty women, and sardonically at his social puppets.

His own particular creations—his types and "series"—are to some sections of Punch's admirers, Punch's chief attraction. Especially is this the case in the United States,[59] where to Mr. du Maurier many people have looked almost exclusively, not only for English fashions in male and female attire, and the dernière mode in social etiquette, but for the truest reflection of English life and character. First of all these types are Sir Gorgius Midas—who, the artist once confided to me, was drawn without exaggeration from real life—and his common wife and still vulgarer son. Then Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns, the clever and scheming, and her husband, depressed and stolidly obedient; the bishop and the flunkey, all calves and dignity; Grigsby, the "comic" man, and his punctilious friend, Sir Pompey Bedell, inflated with pretentious emptiness; 'Arry and 'Arriet, blatant and irrepressible; young Cadby, the Cockney; and the Duke and Duchess of Stilton, whose very figures seem to be drawn in purple ink; the refined colonel, a counterpart and not unworthy comrade of Newcome himself; Maudle, Postlethwaite, and Mrs. Cimabue Brown, most delightful trio of sickening "æsthetes"—specially beloved of Mr. du Maurier, whose famous drawing, "Are You Intense?" is perhaps the particular favourite of all his satiric Punch work; Mr. Soapley and Mr. Todeson, who vie with each other in vulgar servility and sycophancy; the Herr Professor, ponderously humorous in smoking-room or boudoir; and Anatole, the bridegroom, happy and dapper in the Bois de Boulogne; Titwillow and the ex-Jew at the Club—what an assemblage of carefully differentiated specimens of London's characteristic inhabitants! That many of them are often accepted, universally quoted as types, apart from any express reference to Punch or to its artist, is the best testimony of the truth of his irony; for they are as recognisable in the real world as the Jacques, the Becky Sharps, and the Pecksniffs of other brains. And besides these there are the general characters so accurately presented to us—the refined lady with the very old face and frontal grey or white curls whom Mr. du Maurier used to draw, I believe, from the person of Mrs. Hamilton Aädé; the charming young ladies for whom, in succession, his wife and daughters have sat; and the delightful little ones to whom Professor Ruskin paid partial tribute when he declared, a little cruelly, perhaps, that the "charm of his extremely intelligent, and often exquisitely pretty children, is dependent, for the greater part, on the dressing of their back hair and the fitting of their boots."