On the 29th of August, 1817, a boy was born in London gifted with a genius which, in the short time allowed for its development, delighted and astonished the world. The child’s name was Leech, and he was christened John. The Leech family was of Irish extraction. From information received, it appears that the father of Leech, also called John, was possessed of an uncle who had made a large fortune as the owner of the London Coffee-House, Ludgate Hill. With this fortune he retired, leaving his nephew to reign in his stead at the Coffee-House, not without a reasonable hope and expectation that the nephew would follow in the uncle’s prosperous footsteps. But times had changed. Clubs were being formed, and the customers of the Ludgate Hill place of entertainment preferred to be enrolled as members of the novel institutions rather than subject themselves to the somewhat mixed company at the Coffee-House. Leech’s establishment, however, struggled on into my early time, for I can well remember being advised, if I wished for a good and wonderfully cheap dinner, consisting—as per advertisement—of quite startling varieties of dishes, my desire might be gratified by payment of eighteen-pence to the authorities at the London Coffee-House, Ludgate Hill.
I do not know the precise time at which the doors of the Coffee-House were finally closed and the father Leech, with his large family, was thrown upon the world; but it must have been some years after the subject of this memoir had been enrolled amongst the Charterhouse scholars, an event that took place when he was seven years old. Previous to this by about four years, some feeble buds of the genius that blossomed so abundantly afterwards are said to have shown themselves, and to have been observed by Flaxman as the child sat with pencil and paper on his mother’s knee. The great sculptor is reported to have said:
“This drawing is wonderful. Do not let him be cramped by drawing-lessons; let his genius follow its own bent. He will astonish the world.”
I venture to think that for this story a grain of salt would be by no means sufficient. No drawing done by a child of three years old, however gifted, could be “wonderful” in the estimation of Flaxman; and that such an artist as he was should have said anything so foolish as what is tantamount to advising a parent against “learning to draw” I take the liberty of disbelieving. Flaxman was a friend of the Leeches, and in after years, while John Leech was still a youth, the sculptor again examined some of his sketches, and, after looking well at them, he very likely said, as is reported:
“That boy must be an artist; he will be nothing else.”
A child of seven seems almost cruelly young to be subjected to the hardships of a public school.
“I thought,” wrote John’s father, “that I was not wrong in sending him thus early, as Dr. Russell, the head-master, had a son of the same age in the school, and John was in the same form with him.”
No doubt the elder Leech felt much the parting from his little son, but to Mrs. Leech the boy’s leaving home was a severe blow; the mother’s heart would no doubt realize and exaggerate the perils to mind and body arising from contact with something like six hundred fellow-pupils, scarcely one so young, and none so loving and lovable as her little boy. John was boarded at a house close by the Charterhouse, and only allowed to go home at rare intervals. The fond mother, however, could not live without seeing him, and to enable her to gratify her longing, a room was hired in a house overlooking the boy’s playground, from which, carefully hidden, she could see her little son as he walked and talked with the form-fellow, “the particular friend” to whom a sympathetic nature had attached him; or watch him as he joined heart and soul in some game—not too rough—for a fall from his pony, by which his arm had been broken and was still far from strong, made such rough sports as are common to schoolboys too dangerous to be indulged in.
The Charterhouse rejoiced in a drawing-master named Burgess. Upon what principles that master proceeded to train the youth of Charterhouse I am unable to speak; they were most likely those in vogue at the time of young Leech’s sojourn. If they were of that description, it was fortunate that Leech paid—as is said—little or no attention to them, finding a difficulty, no doubt, in applying them to the sketches that constantly fell from him on to the pages of his school-books.