PENCIL STUDY FOR "PUNCH" PICTURE.
(By George du Maurier.)
It was in the year following Mr. du Maurier's début that Mr. John Gordon Thompson began his short connection with Punch. He was a very young man, and these drawings were almost his earliest work. He was at that time studying for the Civil Service, and after his appointment to Somerset House he discontinued to a great extent his artistic efforts; but when he left the Service in 1870 he resumed the pencil, and became, and remained for twenty years without one week's break, the cartoonist of "Fun." His style was not yet formed when he contributed to Punch, and his three-and-thirty socials, all published by 1864, gave little promise of the ability he afterwards displayed in the papers, magazines and books innumerable which he illustrated with such furious ardour.
Mr. H. Stacy Marks, R.A., also made his appearance in the paper in 1861, with a design for an architectural hat of Tudor-Gothic order, fitted with gargoyles round the brim for rainy weather. He also made an initial "I," and then was seen in Punch no more until the Almanac for 1882, when he made a full-page ornithological drawing of "Up before the Beak."
Paul Gray was another of Punch's promising contributors fated to an early death. He began with a few initials—a couple of "A's" were his first little feat, one of them made out of an old woman and a bathing machine. Then came "socials" up to 1865, which attracted attention for their grace, in spite of their lack of backbone; but after a variety of work, including drawings for the "Argosy" and illustrations for Kingsley's "Hereward," his pencil was laid down, and he was no more than twenty-five when he died.
Half-a-dozen sketches by Harris in 1863 were followed by Sir John Millais' first contribution—a mock-heroic illustration to Mr. Burnand's "Mokeanna" (p. 115, Vol. XLIV.). The distinguished artist repeated his unusual experience in the Almanac for 1865, when in a technically exquisite drawing he showed a couple of children in a studio assaulting the lay figure. There were other pictures by which Sir John figured indirectly in Punch. As one of the most intimate friends of John Leech, he took the liveliest interest in his work. "Once," he informs me, "I forwarded two drawings to Leech from Scotland, and he traced them on to the wood and they appeared in Punch—one a tourist struggling against the wind in a plaid; the other, two artists sketching with veils on to escape the midges. Possibly they were the occasion of my attending the Dinner. Leech, I think, asked me to do a drawing for 'Mokeanna' and the drawing of the 'Children in the Studio.'"
About this time it is claimed that Miss Joanna Hill, the niece of Sir Rowland Hill, contributed some sketches on the convict question; but it is certain that nothing in her name was ever accepted.
A LIBEL ON HIMSELF.
(By F. Barnard.)
A far more interesting and amusing adherent was Mr. Fred Barnard, a humorist of the first rank; but as he was not yet seventeen years of age at the time it is not surprising that his drawings were greatly inferior to his admirable work of later years. His first joke was rejected, as he quaintly explains in the following note: "In 1863 I was a student (and in consequence fondly supposed to be studying) at Heatherley's School of Art in Newman Street, and was then half-past sixteen. I must have had plenty of assurance at that time, for, unknown to anyone, I sent a joke, accompanied by a pencil sketch, to Punch. It represented a brute of a dustman belabouring his horse's head with the butt-end of his whip. To him enters a fussy, benevolent-looking, and slightly sarcastic old gentleman, who remonstrates with him in these words: 'My good man, that isn't the way to treat your horse! You should poke it in his eye—poke it in his eye, man!' Mark Lemon returned it as, he said, 'the enclosed is rather too painful for Punch.' Encouraged by this repulse, I sent in another joke and drawing, which were accepted. A small parcel arrived shortly afterwards containing a 'block' of wood. As I had never seen one before, and had no notion whatever as to the process of wood engraving, I didn't know what it was, or for what use. At the back, on its rough ribbed surface, was a mystic inscription which I interpreted into 'C. Bramitsi Struss,' but which a friend informed me was intended for '6, Bouverie Street,' and he showed me how to set to work. And so I did the drawing and some dozen others.... But I rather fancy I shine with more than usual brilliancy in religious periodicals—especially when the articles I have to illustrate are written by imbecile women or ministers of the Gospel—I find it so congenial and instructive." In three years Mr. Barnard was seen but fifteen times in all. Twenty years later, in 1884, he made a last appearance in a drawing which did not show him at his best (p. 303, Vol. LXXXIV.). This was entitled "Early Prejudice," in which a child, referring to the baby, suddenly exclaims, "Oh, mamma! when baby begins to talk, what a dreadful thing if we find out he's an Irishman!"—a joke, by the way, which in its main point was anticipated by Mr. du Maurier in 1876, in his drawing called "Waiting for the Verdict." Lastly there was a sketch called "Evening at Earls," which was sent in and engraved, but not used; and since that day Mr. Barnard abstained from further contribution.