John Leech, His Life and Work, Vol. 2 [of 2]

by William Powell Frith

Mr. Briggs goes to Scotland after salmon, as well as deer and grouse. As a fisherman he is more successful with the rod than he was as a deer-stalker with the gun. A huge salmon, for which "he would not take a guinea a pound," rewards him for a long and desperate struggle, in which he encounters obstacles in the shape of the slippery rocks and deep-water holes that distinguish a Highland river.

In Scottish scenery Leech is as much at home as he is in the turnip-field or the covert. No praise can be too extravagant for all the backgrounds that form so perfect a setting for the gem-like figures of Mr. Briggs. Nor must his attendants be forgotten. Witness the difference of character, so completely marked, between the snuff-taking bearer of the "gaff," with his Scotch bonnet, and the forester in his kilt, who so pathetically mourns Mr. Briggs' failure, and who afterwards makes him "free of the forest" by smearing his face with the blood of a stag which has died by the accidental discharge of his gun.

During the quarter of a century of Leech's work, the British public had its crazes—Bloomerism, crinoline, spirit-rapping, and other less dangerous absurdities than the last, seized upon the minds of large portions of the people, to be thrown aside and replaced by other ridiculous fancies. Even games, after a time, seem to pall upon the players: cricket, happily, bids fair to be perennial; but croquet, once so fashionable, is no more. When one looks at Leech's drawings, in which crinolines figure so prominently, it is really difficult to believe that the artist has not exaggerated a frightful fashion; from observation I can assure a doubter that Leech has frequently under, rather than over, done the swell of those voluminous skirts. Of course, whenever they are permitted to do so, servants will imitate their masters and mistresses, and it was by no means uncommon for the ribs of a housemaid's crinoline to assert themselves through the outer skirt, as we see in some of Leech's drawings.

I would draw attention to the opposite, or antithesis, of this. In some of the cuts, prior, I think, to the "crinoline mania," Leech's delightful girls wear jackets of a form that follows the lines of nature, and of a very picturesque shape. These have a very short reign, being discarded in their turn by that Goddess of Fashion, the dressmaker, for "something new" and outrageous. There is amongst the "Pictures of Life and Character" a drawing of a dinner-party in which the male guests are so hidden and covered by ladies' crinolines that their heads and a small portion of their shoulders only are visible. How the gentlemen's hands are to be used in the consumption of their dinners is left to the imagination of the beholder, and of the sufferers.

For the unexaggerated truth of this print I, who write, can vouch; for have I not again and again been obliged to solve the difficulty of using my knife and fork? In spite of the attacks upon it, crinoline had its day—and far too long a day it was.

The Bloomer costume—a Yankee invention—made but a feeble struggle for existence, though it had many advocates, notably a belle Americaine, one of whose lectures at the Hanover Square rooms I had the curiosity to attend. The lady wore a red velvet overcoat and loose trousers, a broad-brimmed black hat and feather, and looked and talked like a pretty boy.

Bloomerism afforded Leech many opportunities of showing that his pencil could invest eccentricity with beauty. A study of the Bloomer sketches will also show that the attempt to adopt the manly dress was, in his estimation, an insidious attempt to usurp manly work and offices. In proof of this see the charming Bloomer omnibus-conductor, who is threatened by an elderly male passenger with a summons for abusive language; or the group of Bloomer police, who fly from a riotous mob instead of arresting the ringleaders. Look at her again as "the man at the wheel" who must not be "spoken to." Those who have suffered from sea-sickness will see by the expression of the Bloomer's countenance why she should not be spoken to, and what the effect of conversation under the circumstances would most probably be. Leech gave his imagination full play in this fruitful theme. Granting the assumption of the masculine dress, he sees no reason why a proposal should not be made by the female lover instead of the male. Why, he seems to ask, should the gentleman have to undergo that terrible ordeal?

I advise my reader to seek in "Pictures of Life and Character" for a drawing of an elopement in which the positions of the principals are reversed. It is the lady who is pouring words of passionate persuasion into the ears of her frightened and half-reluctant lover, as he looks back at the home he is leaving for ever; she almost drags him to the carriage which is to bear the happy pair away to Gretna Green.

Spirit-rapping, table-turning, and the rest of it, fare badly at the hands of Leech. Happy was the thought that possessed him when, by a touch of his magic pencil, he changed the heads of a seance-party into those of geese. And how admirably humorous is the drawing in which furniture starts into life at the bidding of a medium, to the astonishment and dismay of the housemaid! Hats were supposed to "turn about and wheel about" under the influence of encircled hands round the brims. It would be a mistake to suppose that the handsome Guardsman who, with the assistance of the fingers of those pretty creatures, so patiently waits for the hat to move, has either the expectation or the desire that the experiment will be successful. No, he greatly enjoys the situation, and is eager to prolong it for any unreasonable time.