I asked Mr. Furniss if he thought there was anything suggestive of cruelty in caricature.
"Not in this country," he replied; "in Spain, Italy, and France—yes. Caricaturists there score off their cruelty. Listen to this. One night I was in the House. Mr. Gladstone rose to speak. He held his left hand up and referred to it as 'This old Parliamentary hand.' I noticed a fact—which men who had sat in that House for years had never seen. On that left hand Mr. Gladstone has only three fingers! Think of it—think of what your caricaturist with an inclination towards cruelty might have made of that fact, coupled with those significant words! I ask you again—think of it!"
He spoke in thorough earnestness. He told me that he looked forward to the time when he should consign to the rag-basket the famous Gladstone collar and cease to play with Goschen's eye-glass. He is striving to accomplish something more—he would do it now, but it isn't marketable. Mr. Furniss is a sensible man. He caricatures to live; and, if the laughs follow, well, so much the better.
The afternoon passed rapidly, and the studio became darker and darker. Venus on the coal-box looked quite ghostly, and a lay figure in the far corner was not calculated to comfort the nervously-inclined when amongst the "props" of an artist's studio. "Buzzy" merrily rushed in and announced dinner, and "Bogie" jumped up and barked his raptures at the word. "Bogie" knew it meant scraps. Mrs. Furniss and the children met us at the dining-room door. The youngsters' faces were as solemn as the Court of Queen's Bench. Little Lawrence looked up at me very demurely, the others waiting anxiously.
"Please could you tell us what a spiral staircase is?" he asked.
A dead silence.
"Oh!" I answered, anxious to show a superior knowledge of these peculiarly constructed "ups and downs," "It's—it's—it's one of those twirley-whirley"—here I illustrated my meaning by twirling my finger round and round.
A shout of laughter went up.
If the reader will try this little joke on a score of people, by the time the twentieth is arrived at he will then discover why the happiest quartette of youngsters in the immediate vicinity of Primrose Hill laughed so gaily.
Then we all went in to dinner. How well the shirt-cuff story went down with the soup.