In 1890 Mr. Burnand raised his young recruit to the rank of Staff-officer to fill the vacancy which had just occurred—a premature promotion, the wiseacres said. Mr. Reed then produced his forensic drawings, often basing them on sketches supplied by Sir Frank Lockwood, Q.C.; yet his work fluctuated so much in quantity that it was more than once rumoured that he and Punch had parted company. But in due course his triumph came when, in the Christmas number of 1893, he began "Prehistoric Peeps"—including "The First Hansom," "Primeval Billiards," and "A Quiet Game of Whist in Primeval Times." These popular fancies were no sudden inspiration; they were developed gradually. Following a natural humorous bent for dealing with sham antiquities in Punch, Mr. Reed had started during the previous year a series of "exhibits" in the Imperial Institute of the Future, consisting of comic restorations of common objects of to-day—the ridiculous speculations of the future archæologist. There was a much-patched and battered restoration of a four-wheeled cab; then a comic policeman; and the draughtsman was proceeding with a hansom when he experienced a difficulty in getting freshness into the treatment. So he determined to become a Cuvier on his own account, and, by going back to the beginning, to show the real original hansom, as it might have been, in pre-historic times. The artist was intensely amused with the idea, and finishing his three drawings—the other two suggesting themselves—delivered them just in time for the Almanac. The result was, in its way, electrical. Within a week everybody was laughing at them and talking about them. In the "Daily News" a leading-article was devoted to arguing, with admirable mock-gravity, that the artist's object in these drawings—especially in that of the Prehistoric Parliament, in which all our legislators are clad in primeval fashion, while the Speaker keeps order with the aid of an enormous tomahawk—was, of course, to prove the theory that similarity of face and figure accompanies similarity of pursuit throughout the generations. At Cambridge, in the May Week, the tableaux vivants of the "Footlights Society" included exact reproductions of the "Primeval Billiards" and "No Bathing To-day!"—skins, expressions, mastodons and all; while at Molesey Invitation Regatta (August, 1894) the "Prehistoric Coaching for the Boat Race" was carried out to the life in mid-river, with Gaul and Briton, woad-stained skins, raft, and fight, with the fearsome palæontological intruders, complete to the last detail—and applications were quickly made to the Punch Proprietors for permission to reproduce the scenes on magic-lantern slides for the use of schools! This, perhaps, is to be explained by the accuracy of many of the pre-historic beasts. Even at the London Institution a scientific lecturer has borne witness to the life-likeness of Mr. Reed's stegosaurus imglutis, and especially of the triceratops and the sprightly pterodactyle. Little wonder Sir William Agnew broke through the rule of "no speeches" at the Wednesday Dinner, and proposed the health of the young artist who had made for the paper so striking a success. When Mr. Harry Furniss retired, Mr. Reed was appointed his successor as Parliamentary draughtsman, and soon showed his independence of humour in his new post.
After Mr. Whistler had contributed his butterfly (p. 293, Vol. XCVIII.)—the sign-manual in the use of which he has for some years found so much harmless, if rather childish, pleasure—Mr. Maud, at that time a Royal Academy student, began his sporting sketches. The first drawing (published on p. 249, Vol. C., though it had been sent in six months before) was called "A Check." A country lout is sitting on a fence-rail shouting, and the hunt comes up. "Seen the fox, my boy?" asks the huntsman. "No, I ain't!" replies the lad. "Then what are you hollarin' for?" "Because," answers the scarecrow, "because I'm paid for it." This picture was a valuable introduction, procured through a friend who forwarded his drawing, for it brought him an invitation to illustrate "Romford's Hounds" and "Hawbuck Grange," as well as an established, though intermittent, connection with Punch. With few exceptions, Mr. Maud's jokes are the result of personal experience, for he looks to contretemps in the field for his humorous subjects. Through falling with his horse into a big drain in the Belvoir country—a precious accident for him—he collected sufficient matter to produce three jokes which duly saw the light. But the collection of such material is "damned hard riding," and each hunting season has only brought forth about ten such productions. Since that time Mr. Maud has turned his attention to sources of humour other than the hunting-field; and as in 1893 he carried off the Landseer scholarship and two silver medals for painting from the life, it is possible that he may in the near future be tempted far from the joyous art of comic black-and-white.
J. BERNARD PARTRIDGE.
(Drawn by Himself.)
Mr. Bernard Partridge made his first drawing for Punch in 1891, through the instrumentality of Mr. du Maurier, one of his greatest admirers. It was a drawing of a bishop in a distressing and undignified pose, and, though small in size, it proved at once to readers of Punch the justice of the extraordinary reputation the young artist had gained elsewhere. It was not only that his drawing and proportion are always entirely right—that, perhaps, is to be expected in the son of the late teacher of anatomy at the Royal Academy Schools—but that his handling is so graceful and dainty, his effects of light and shade so masterly, his portraiture so true, and his power of representing expression, as shown both in face and figure, so absolute. Mr. du Maurier saw in him his own successor for the time when he may be called upon to lay the pencil down; and the public recognised in him an appreciator of beauty to a degree hardly excelled by Mr. du Maurier himself. Being, moreover, as familiar with the expression of the foreigner as with that of the East-Ender, or the resident of "Buckley Square," he was a recruit after Mr. Punch's own heart and interest.
It is because Mr. Partridge's love for the stage is stronger than for the pencil that the invitation to contribute to Punch, and, in 1892, his promotion to the regular Staff, did not arouse in him any great enthusiasm at the time. Soon, however, he warmed up to his work, and his illustrations to Mr. Anstey's inimitable "Voces Populi," "The Man from Blankley's," and other of that writer's serials, made their mark at once, supported as they were by the "socials," signed now with his cipher, now with his quaint "Perdix fecit."
Concurrently with Mr. Partridge (1891), Mr. Everard Hopkins made his appearance with one of two drawings sent in. The accepted one was an admirable travesty of the dénouement of Ibsen's "Doll's House," representing a buxom middle-aged virago leaving the house of her diminutive hen-pecked husband, whose "birdie" she declines any longer to be. Numerous drawings of a graceful kind have since come from him, until he is in the way of being regarded as a recognised outside contributor.
Then followed Mr. Reginald Cleaver, whose work, somewhat hard, but of great beauty in its own line, has been devoted to "social" subjects; and on January 1st, 1892, Mr. W. J. Hodgson sent in a picture that was destined to be the first of a long series. He is essentially a sporting man—a vital necessity for Punch—and having been brought up in the thick of the sporting world, has immortalised in his pages many a hunting joke and scrap of "horsey" humour. His subjects are usually actualities, and more than once has a whole countryside been startled by the appearance in Punch of an incident that had just formed matter for gleeful conversation after a day's sport. Such was the amusing otter-hunt story that appeared in July, 1894, in which, under the title of "The Course of True Love, etc.," Miss Di, a six-foot damsel, asks her five-foot-three curate-lover to pick her up and carry her across the watercourse, "as it is rather deep, don't you know;" and the Wiltshire village where it occurred and the chief actors in the little comedy became at once the talk of the county, and the water itself is pointed out as the scene of the incident. Mr. Hodgson, it may be noted, was introduced to Punch through Sir Frank Lockwood, who sent to the Editor a volume which the draughtsman had illustrated.
Miss Maud Sambourne, when no more than eighteen years of age, also contributed her first drawing in the spring of 1892—a charming little figure of a girl, as dainty as a sketch by Mr. Abbey, and as different from her father's work as well could be imagined. Similar little drawings from her graceful pencil have appeared from time to time, the prettiest, perhaps, being "A Fair Unknown," on June 2nd, 1894.