But Bennett left his family in sad straits, and, on Shirley Brooks's initiative, the "Punch men" at once set about devising a means to help them. The result was the theatrical performance referred to on pp. 132-134. The Moray Minstrels wound up this famous entertainment, and Shirley Brooks delivered a touching address of his own writing.
Besides T. W. Woods (who made four drawings), Prehn (two), Lowe (six), and Hays (three), Mr. W. S. Gilbert swelled the list of contributors in this same year (1865). His work, consisting of fifteen small cuts signed with the now familiar "Bab," and designed to illustrate the rhymes they accompany, was lost to Punch by the indisposition for compromise displayed by contributor and Editor alike. "I sent three or four drawings," Mr. Gilbert informs me, "and half-a dozen short articles; but I was told by Mark Lemon, or rather a message reached me from him, that he would insert nothing more of mine unless I left 'Fun,' with which I was connected. This I declined to do unless he would take me on the regular staff of Punch. This he declined to do, and so the matter ended. I had previously offered 'The Yarn of the Nancy Bell' (the first of the Bab Ballads) to Punch, but Mark Lemon declined it on the ground that it was 'too cannibalistic for his readers.'" So Mr. Gilbert knew Punch no more; and it is commonly related that he enjoys nothing more than an occasional good-humoured fling at the journal which could not see his worth. "I say, Burnand," he has many times been reported to have said at the Garrick Club and elsewhere, when the Editor had referred to the heavy post-bag delivered each day at the office, though witticisms found among the wilderness of suggestions were desperately few, "do you never get anything good?" "Oh, sometimes—occasionally." "Then," drawled the other, "why don't you ever put one of them in?"
"A Hot Chestnut" (p. 143, Vol. XLIX.) was the first contribution of G. B. Goddard, well known a little later on as Bouverie Goddard, the animal-painter. Oil-colour was in truth his medium; but his drawings were good, and Punch for a couple of years rejoiced in his new hunting draughtsman. Goddard was a great friend of Charles Keene, with whom he shared for a time a studio in Baker Street; but feeling that he must paint pictures rather than draw upon the wood-block, he left the paper, after placing to his credit fourteen drawings—of which some were adjudged to contain the best horses seen in its pages since the death of Leech.
MRS. BOWERS-EDWARDS.
(From a Photograph by S. A. Walker.)
By far the most important lady artist who ever worked for Punch was Miss Georgina Bowers (for some years now Mrs. Bowers-Edwards).[63] It is not usual, as I have remarked before, to find a woman a professional humorist, though a colonial Punch is edited by a lady; but it is, I believe, an undoubted fact, that up to this year of grace no female caricaturist has yet appeared before man's vision. But Miss Bowers was a humorist, with very clear and happy notions as to what fun should be, and how it should be transferred to a picture. Her long career began in 1866, and thenceforward, working with undiminished energy, she executed hundreds of initials and vignettes as well as "socials," devoting herself in chief part to hunting and flirting subjects. She was a facile designer, but her manner was chronically weak. It was John Leech who set her on the track; Mark Lemon, to whom she took her drawings, encouraged her, and with help from Mr. Swain she progressed.
"My first published drawing," Miss Bowers tells me, "was a dreadful thing of a girl urging a muff of a man to give her a lead at a brook. My 'jokes' all came from incidents I saw out hunting, and from my own varied adventures with horse and hound; but occasionally a suggestion sent to the Editor was transferred to me to be put into shape. Then some one else wrote up to them. When I first hunted in Hertfordshire, I had great opportunities for provincial sporting studies. I feel now that some of my subjects were too personal, and wonder how many people forgave me. I often overheard stories about myself in the hunting-field (where I had hard times with ladies occasionally). When Shirley Brooks died, I felt I had lost my best and most helpful friend; and then Mr. Tom Taylor cared nothing for sport or sporting subjects, so that I felt that my work was uncongenial to him, and I got on badly and lost all interest in it, and gave up, after having drawn ten years for the paper, to which I shall never again contribute."
Mr. Walter Crane, of all people in the world, appears on p. 33 of Vol. LI. The cut is hardly funny, except in idea—it represents a chignon-show—nor is it as well drawn as much of the work he was doing at the time; he had not yet hit upon the style or subject that he afterwards made his own. A couple of sketches by O. Harling, an amateur, conclude the list for the year.
The year 1867 is famous in Punch's calendar for the acquisition of Mr. Linley Sambourne; but an earlier arrival was Mr. Frederic Shields. Mr. Swain suggested that he should "do a letter or two"; Mr. Shields did three, including a "social" ("Want your door swep', marm?"), and a girl curling her hair with the fender-tongs. The initials were kept over until 1870; and this constituted the sum of Mr. Shields' artistic adventure into the domain of humour.