J. PRIESTMAN ATKINSON.
"Dumb Crambo, Junior"—Mr. J. Priestman Atkinson—is better remembered by Punch readers, perhaps, by his pencil-name than by his common cipher. In 1864 he was in the General Manager's office at Derby, pleasingly varying his clerical duties by drawing caricatures for the amusement of his fellow-clerks, and designing cartoons for the local satirical journal, the "Derby Ram," which appeared spasmodically and devoted itself principally to electioneering purposes. One of his colleagues was Harry Lemon, Mark's son, who showed his father some of his friend's sketches. On the occasion of a subsequent visit paid by Mr. Atkinson to town, Mark Lemon invited him to dine at the Garrick Club (whither they drove in a hansom, much in the style shown in the sketch), and Shirley Brooks drank to him as "the future cartoonist of Punch." His first cut—an initial T—appeared on p. 15, Vol. XLVIII, and thenceforward Mr. Atkinson has been considered on the "outside Staff," with but two breaks: the first during an absence in Paris for artistic instruction, and the second from 1869 to 1876, when an opportunity occurred to make a "sure fortune" in commerce. The "sure fortune," as usually befalls, became a pecuniary loss, and the draughtsman gladly went back to the service of Punch and the other papers and books to which his pencil (under a different signature) has been devoted. It is years since Mr. Atkinson, who has latterly worked less for Punch than in the early days of his connection, was able to do himself full justice in a half-page drawing; but his "Dumb Crambo" series remain among the happy things which Punch has published in the direction of punning sketches. They remind one of those by Hine, Newman, and the rest, in the old "blackie" days, and are often little masterpieces of comic ingenuity—as may be seen in "Shooting over an Extensive Moor," where a man is discharging his weapon over the portly figure of a Moorish gentleman. Mr. Atkinson, in addition, made some two score literary contributions to the paper and "Pocket-book"—poems chiefly, and stories, not counting smaller trifles, between August, 1877, and the accession of Mr. Burnand to the Editorship. It was, I may add, at the suggestion of Mr. Burnand that Mr. Atkinson adopted his nom de crayon, just as he suggested Mr. Furniss's "Lika Joko."
IN A HANSOM WITH MARK LEMON.
Drawn by J. Priestman Atkinson.)
One of the brightest and most talented draughtsmen Punch has ever had was Charles H. Bennett, the forerunner of Mr. Linley Sambourne. He had graduated in comic draughtsmanship, having been the life and soul of "Diogenes" (August, 1855), and rendered solid service to the "Comic Times" (1855), and the "Comic News" (1863 to 1865), by which time his cipher of an owl, and then of a B in an owl's beak ("B in it" = Bennett), were known and appreciated. Apart from his Punch work, his "Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress" was his masterpiece in serious art; while in the opposite direction his "Shadows" (which procured him for a time the public nickname of "Shadow Bennett"), as well as his amusing "Studies in Darwinesque Development" for Vizetelly's "Illustrated Times," and his second series, somewhat less satisfactory, of "Shadow and Substance," obtained for him great popularity. But when he came on Punch, introduced to Mark Lemon by Hain Friswell, he was within two years of his death. His début was on February 11th, 1865, with a sketch of "Our Play Box," in which "Mr. Punch's delight at finding his Dear Old Puppets where he left them in July" shows that the artist had already begun those illustrations to the "Essence of Parliament" which form the backbone of his Punch work. Occasional pictures there are, unconventional in shape, grotesque, ingenious, graceful in fancy, that delight us while, as a rule, they successfully conceal any lack of early artistic education; but the Parliamentary drawings are those by which Bennett will be best remembered. Between the date of his first sketch, when he was forthwith summoned to the Table without serving any probationary period, to that last sketch in the spring of 1867, showing Lord John Russell as a cock crowing upon the 1832 Easter egg (p. 116, Vol. LII.), he had made over 230 drawings for the paper, besides his contributions to the Pocket-books of 1866 and 1867. He had already established himself, despite repeated absences through ill-health, one of the greatest favourites in Punch's company; and the comic letter addressed to him by his colleagues during one of his illnesses is printed in the chapter on the "Punch Dinner." Indeed, he had not time to cut his cipher on the Table; the H is begun and abandoned. "As for dear Bennett," Mr. Frederic Shields tells me, "every link that attached me to him has so long since been severed, that to attempt to find the lost end of the thread is hopeless. Nothing remains but the sweet odour of his memory—like a faded rose-leaf turned up in a long-closed drawer." But Mr. Sala declares that he had been, "socially, the most miserable of mankind. He was sober, industrious, and upright, and scarcely a Bohemian; but throughout his short life he was 'Murad the Unlucky.' At one time he occupied shabby chambers in the now defunct Lyon's Inn, Strand; and it was the poor fellow's fate to have a child born—a child that died—the sack from his employers, and the brokers in, all in the same day." Still, Bennett, who was one of the original founders of the Savage Club, was cheerful enough, and of a singularly lovable disposition—as may almost be gathered from his pictures in Punch, in which the shadow of none of his former troubles is ever reflected: nothing but his "facile execution and singular subtlety of fancy." Indeed, "Cheerful Charley," as he was known to his intimates, became, as he himself declared, one of the luckiest and happiest of men—fully appreciated for his art and his own delightful qualities by troops of admiring friends. It was his extraordinary power of realising an abstract thought and crystallising it at once into a happy pictorial fancy that set him on a pedestal, a poet among his colleagues—those colleagues who, when he died, lamented "the loss of a comrade of invaluable skill, and the death of one of the kindliest and gentlest of our associates, the power of whose hand was equalled by the goodness of his heart."
CHARLES H. BENNETT.
(From the Water-Colour Drawing by Himself.)