"Now, while Mr. Leech has been making his comments upon our society and manners, one of the wittiest and keenest observers has been giving a description of his own country of France in a thousand brilliant pages; and it is a task not a little amusing and curious for a student of manners to note the difference between the two satirists—perhaps between the societies they describe. Leech's England is a country peopled by noble elderly squires, riding large-boned horses, followed across country by lovely beings of the most gorgeous proportions, by respectful retainers, by gallant little boys emulating the pluck and courage of the sire. The joke is the precocious courage of the child, his gallantry as he charges his fences, his coolness as he eyes the glass of port, or tells grandpapa he likes his champagne dry. How does Gavarni represent the family father, the sire, the old gentleman, in his country—the civilized country? Paterfamilias, in a dyed wig and whiskers, is leaning by the side of Mademoiselle Coralie on her sofa in the Rue de Bréda. Paterfamilias, with a mask and a nose half a yard long, is hobbling after her at the ball. The enfant terrible is making papa and mamma alike ridiculous by showing us mamma's lover, who is lurking behind the screen. A thousand volumes are written protesting against the seventh commandment. The old man is for ever hunting after the young woman; the wife is for ever cheating the husband. The fun of the old comedy never seems to end in France, and we have the word of their own satirists, novelists, painters of society, that it is being played from day to day.
"In the works of that barbarian artist, Hogarth, the subject which affords such playful sport to the civilized Frenchman is stigmatized as a fearful crime, and is visited by a ghastly retribution. The English savage never thinks of such a crime as funny, and, a hundred years after Hogarth, our modern 'painter of mankind' still retains his barbarous modesty, is tender with children, decorous before women, has never once thought he had the right or calling to wound the modesty of either.
"Mr. Leech surveys society from the gentleman's point of view. In old days, when Mr. Jerrold lived and wrote for that famous periodical, he took the other side; he looked up at the rich and great with a fierce, a sarcastic aspect, and a threatening posture, and his outcry or challenge was: 'Ye rich and great, look out! We, the people, are as good as you. Have a care, ye priests, wallowing on a tithe pig and rolling in carriages and four; ye landlords, grinding the poor; ye vulgar fine ladies, bullying innocent governesses, and what not—we will expose your vulgarity, we will put down your oppression, we will vindicate the nobility of our common nature,' and so forth. A great deal has to be said on the Jerrold side, a great deal was said, perhaps, even, a great deal too much. It is not a little curious to speculate upon the works of these two famous contributors to Punch, these two 'preachers,' as the phrase is. 'Woe to you, you tyrant and heartless oppressor of the poor!' calls out Jerrold as Dives' carriage rolls by. 'Beware of the time when your bloated coachman shall be hurled from his box, when your gilded flunkey shall be cast to the earth from his perch, and your pampered horses shall run away with you and your vulgar wife and smash you into ruin.' The other philosopher looks at Dives and his cavalcade in his own peculiar manner. He admires the horses and copies, with the most curious felicity, their forms and action. The footmen's calves and powder, the coachman's red face and flock wig, the over-dressed lady and plethoric gentleman in the carriage, he depicts with the happiest strokes; and if there is a pretty girl and a rosy child on the back seat, he 'takes them up tenderly' and touches them with a hand that has a caress in it. The artist is very tender to all these little people. It is hard to say whether he loves girls or boys most—those delightful little men on their ponies in the hunting field, those charming little Lady Adas flirting at the juvenile ball, or Tom the butcher's boy on the slide, or ragged little Emily pulling the go-cart, freighted with Elizerann and her doll. Steele, Fielding, Goldsmith, Dickens, are similarly tender in their pictures of children. We may be barbarians, monsieur; but even savages are occasionally kind to their papooses. 'When are the holidays?' Mothers of families ought to come to this exhibition and bring the children. Then there are the full-grown young ladies—the very full-grown young ladies—dancing in the ball-room or reposing by the sea-shore: the men can peep at whole seraglios of these beauties for the moderate charge of one shilling, and bring away their charming likenesses in the illustrated catalogue (two-and-six). In the 'Mermaids' Haunt,' for instance, there is a siren combing her golden locks, and another dark-eyed witch actually sketching you as you look at her, whom Ulysses could not resist. To walk by the side of the much-sounding sea and come upon such a bevy of beauties as this, what bliss for a man or a painter! The mermaids in that haunt, haunt the beholder for hours after. Where is the shore on which those creatures were sketched? The sly catalogue does not tell us.
"The outdoor sketcher will not fail to remark the excellent fidelity with which Mr. Leech draws the backgrounds of his little pictures. The homely landscape, the sea, the winter road by which the huntsmen ride, the light and clouds, the birds floating overhead, are indicated by a few strokes which show the artist's untiring watchfulness and love of Nature. He is a natural truth-teller, as Hogarth was before him, and indulges in no flights of fancy. He speaks his mind out quite honestly like a thorough Briton. He loves horses, dogs, river and field sports. He loves home and children—that you can see. He holds Frenchmen in light esteem. A bloated 'mosoo,' walking Leicester Square with a huge cigar and a little hat, with billard and estaminet written on his flaccid face, is a favourite study with him; the unshaven jowl, the waist tied with a string, the boots which pad the quadrant pavement—this dingy and disreputable being exercises a fascination over Mr. Punch's favourite artist.
"We trace, too, in his work a prejudice against the Hebrew nation, against the natives of an island much celebrated for its verdure and its wrongs. These are lamentable prejudices indeed, but what man is without his own? No man has ever depicted the little 'snob' with such a delightful touch. Leech fondles and dances this creature as he does the children. To remember one or two of these dear gents is to laugh. To watch them looking at their own portraits in this pleasant gallery will be no small part of the exhibition; and as we can all go and see our neighbours caricatured here, it is just possible that our neighbours may find some smart likenesses of their neighbours in these brilliant, life-like, good-natured Sketches in Oil."
The publication of this sympathetic article in such a paper as the Times, by such a writer as Thackeray, no doubt increased the popularity of "Sketches in Oil." However that may have been, its appearance gave the keenest pleasure to Leech, who is said to have "rejoiced like a child, exclaiming:
"'That's like putting a thousand pounds into my pocket!'"
By far the best examples of Leech's oil paintings are in the collection of his old warmly attached friend, Mr. Charles Adams, of Barkway. Instead of a garish stain of washy colour merely passed over an engraving, these small sporting subjects are painted in a good solid style, well drawn and carefully finished; carrying with them the conviction, to my mind, that Leech might possibly have been as great with the brush as he was with the lead pencil.
Amongst the "Pictures of Life and Character" there is a drawing of two young ladies sitting vis-à-vis on a rustic seat; from the books held by both of them it might be supposed they were reading, as no doubt they were, till one of them caught sight of their partners at the ball the night before, who by a strange coincidence are advancing upon them through the wood. The drawing is entitled "Remarkable Occurrence," with the following explanation: "On the morning after the dispensary ball, as Emily Deuxtemps and Clara Polkington were sitting in the plantation, who should come to the very spot but Captain Fastman and young Reginald Phipps!"