On November 12th, 1892 (p. 221, Vol. CIII.), appears an elaborate page of verses, explanatory notes, and four cuts illustrative of "The Vanishing Rupee"—a picture greatly appreciated in India. The originator of this satirical page was Mr. J. H. Roberts, an architect who had turned his back on his profession and had cast in his lot with illustrated journalism; and the manner in which he hit off the standing grievance of Anglo-India betrayed a touching personal interest in this painful fiscal question.
Mr. Arthur A. Sykes, more closely identified with Punch as a verse and prose writer than as a draughtsman, began the first of his sketches in November, 1893; and on the 18th of the same month Sir Frank Lockwood, Q.C., who had hitherto been content to see his artistic effervescence re-drawn by Mr. E. T. Reed, appeared in his own right with a comic scribble representing a barrister afflicted with a bad cold energetically addressing the court. It was entitled: "Cold, but In-vig-orating"—a pictorial pun worthy of Hood or Hine. This was the first of a series.
About this time the distinguished draughtsman, Mr. Arthur Hopkins, who has rarely been surpassed in rendering the simple grace of pretty English girlhood, evolved a joke while shopping with his wife, and straightway illustrated it and sent it on to Punch. It appeared the next week, and was quickly followed by another on the 1st of April. Since then the artist has been seen no more in Punch's pages, although, jokes serving, he is still a persona grata in Whitefriars. Mr. J. F. Sullivan—the immortal depictor of the humours and amenities of "The British Workman," and for many years the incarnation of "Fun"—struck up a belated connection with Punch, also in November, 1893. His drawings ran continuously during that and the next two months to the number of a dozen or so, and then, with the exception of an "old stock" sketch or two, they incontinently ceased.
The Almanac for 1894 witnessed the début of Mr. J. A. Shepherd, who, on the strength of his comic "Zig-Zags at the Zoo," was invited by Mr. Burnand to send in a page. His comic animals, drawn with singular precision and skill, and full of character, seemed to hit the popular taste, and, save for a period when ill-health interrupted, Mr. Shepherd has continued his contributions. He was a pupil of Mr. Alfred Bryan, and for a couple of years was on the staff of "Moonshine." Another recruit of 1894 was Mr. A. S. Boyd, one of the most brilliant of the "Daily Graphic" staff, and still affectionately remembered as "Twym" of the "Bailie" and "Quiz" of Glasgow. His first contribution (April 7th) was a sketch of a lady in an omnibus, whose outrageously large sleeves extinguished her neighbours as effectually as the crinoline of her grandmother (according to John Leech) had cancelled her grandfather. Since that time Mr. Boyd has been seen fitfully in Punch, and always with drawings executed with great care and with singular appreciation of the value of his blacks.
PHIL MAY.
(Drawn by Himself.)
Then came Mr. Phil May. Punch was long in discovering him, but he found him at last. Indeed, he could not afford to do without him, for Mr. May, though barely more than thirty years of age, was already in the foremost rank of humorous draughtsmen of the day, and few—even of Mr. Punch's own Staff—were better known and more popular than the young artist who had burst upon the town not long before. He had gone through a hard life as a boy. He had turned his back upon architecture, as Charles Keene, Mr. Moyr Smith, Mr. Roberts, Mr. Bernard Partridge, and other contributors to Punch had done before him, and had joined a strolling company, with whom he strolled and acted for four years, drawing caricatures of his fellow-actors for the shop-windows. He was only fourteen when he began sketching for a Yorkshire paper, and four years later he came to town and, after an interval of the direst want, soon made his mark. At that time he had evidently been looking at Mr. Sambourne's drawings, but a three years' visit to Australia, aided by the bitter experience of Melbourne newspaper printing presses, simplified his style to the point we now see it—in which elimination of all unnecessary lines seems carried to its furthermost limit. Indeed, his "economy of means" borders on parsimony. Gifted with a powerful personality, with the keenest sense of humour, and with strong human sympathies that lean much more to the side of the poor than of the well-to-do, and, above all, with a brilliant power of draughtsmanship, he was recognised as a master as soon as he asserted himself—an original master with many disciples and more imitators. He cannot be called a caricaturist, for in his work there lacks that fierce quality of critical conception—above all, that subject-matter that makes one think, that sardonic appeal to head and heart at once, which make up the sum of true caricature. If caricature is drollery, and not humour, as Carlyle says it is, Mr. May is above all things a humorist, and not at all a droll. He is neither a politician nor a reformer, nor even, if properly understood, a satirist. His aim is to show men and things as they really are, seen through a curtain of fun and raillery—not as they might or ought to be. Yet the essence of his work is inexorable truth, and his version of life is depicted to a delighted public with the unerring pencil of a laughing philosopher. And, moreover, his greatest quality is the astounding excellence of his draughtsmanship, which, so far from being germane to caricature, is not only unnecessary to it, but sometimes even a hindrance.
And so Mr. May began with his "social" cuts for Punch, selecting "low life" for the most part, as Mr. du Maurier chose high life, and making for every picture as careful a study from Nature as ever Charles Keene did—and probably as many of them. Furthermore, he prefers to seek out his jokes for himself. When he was in New York and found that the professional joke-purveyor was untrustworthy, he sauntered into a police court in the hope of finding character there, and perhaps humour. A woman was up before the magistrate on a charge of drunkenness—a charge which the lady denied. "How do you know she was drunk?" asked the magistrate. "She walked into a baker's shop," replied the policeman, "and wanted to buy a bonnet." The evidence was accepted as conclusive; and Mr. May sketched the prisoner there and then, and introduced her into his first drawing for Punch's page as the gutter-woman who, looking over an illustrated paper, confides to a friend that the portrait it contains of "Lady Sorlsbury" isn't a bit like what she really is in private life. Mr. May was in due course drawn into Punch's net, and eating his first Dinner in February, 1895, he cut his initials on the Table between those of Thackeray and Mr. du Maurier. The accompanying sketch was the eloquent announcement I received of his promotion.
