The Acid is "The Story of a Feather" (Douglas Jerrold).

The Sweet is The Great "Saxon Suggestor" (W. M. Thackeray).

The Spice is "The Sub" (Horace Mayhew).

The Water is The "Professor" (Percival Leigh).

And the Spoon is The "Editor" (Mark Lemon).

Where, then, was the art?

[Ill.u.s.tration: R. J. HAMERTON.

(_From a Photograph by E. Higgins, Stamford._)]

Mr. Hamerton was one of the few Irishmen who have worked on the paper.

He had begun to teach drawing at a school in Co. Longford when he was but fourteen, and came to London to draw upon stone under the eye of Charles Hullmandel, the father of the lithographic art in England. With the exception of occasional incursions into oil and water colour--he was a popular member of the British Artists half-a-century ago--and a few years' book-ill.u.s.tration for the London publishers, "it was stone, stone, stone, till 1891, when the drawing on the huge stones became too much for my old back." Like his life-long friend and contemporary, Hine, he was not of _Punch_ Punchy--at least, in respect to conviviality; and after a record of Staff service extending to 1844, with fitful contributions up to 1848, he deserted the precincts of Whitefriars, and soon after renounced wood-drawing in favour of his more lucrative employment. He had, however, already contributed ten cartoons--striking for their handling, if not at first for their finish. The majority of his subjects were Irish--such as the "Irish Ogre Fattening on the 'Finest Pisintry,'" "The Shadow Dance," "King O'Connell at Tara,"

"Bagging the Wild Irish Goose," and so forth--and terribly severe he was, as only an Irishman could be, on Daniel O'Connell and Lord Brougham. He ill.u.s.trated a Beckett's "Comic Blackstone;" but his masterpiece in wood-draughtsmanship was his ill.u.s.tration of John Forster's "Life of Goldsmith" for Bradbury and Evans. Then after a couple of contributions from "W. B."--W. Brown, whose "Comic Alb.u.m" was deservedly popular in its day, and whose "Statue to Jenkins" pleased _Punch's_ readers greatly--and the cut signed "B," attributed to Thomas Hood, and another anonymous contribution by "S," there came Richard Doyle, one of the most notable acquisitions of the decade. He was the second son of the famous "[HB]," and had done capital comic work of an amateur character while still a boy. His "Comic English Histories,"

executed when he was only fifteen years of age, were published after his death; but he was still young when he first became known to the public.

He was possessed of an extraordinary power of fanciful draughtsmanship; and his precocity is sufficiently proved by his comic ill.u.s.trations to Homer, wrought at the tender age of twelve, with real humour, wealth of invention, and excellence of expression. His uncle, Mr. Conan, dramatic critic of the "Morning Herald," showed his work to his friend Mark Lemon, and Lemon forthwith requested Mr. Swain to instruct the youth in wood-draughtsmanship. So the engraver set forth with blocks and pencils to this "certain clever young son" of the once mighty "HB," who was now in a fair way of falling out of public notice. Arrived at Cambridge Terrace, he endeavoured to impart to Richard Doyle the art and mystery of drawing on the wood--how to prepare his blocks, and so forth, and to give such further information as might be required. But so nervous was the youth, who was small and thin in person, and greatly agitated in mind and manner, that he persisted in keeping his distance out of simple shyness, and literally dodged around the dining-room table, altogether too excited to lend the slightest attention to the words of his mentor.

In due course, Mr. Swain tells me, the first drawing was delivered, "and a bad, smudgy thing it was, too, altogether different from the work he almost immediately contributed for the Almanac of that year." Doyle's first work in _Punch_ consisted of the clever comic borders to the Christmas number, one of which enclosed Hood's "Song of the Shirt;" but with the ill.u.s.tration to the rhymed version of "Don Pasquale" he made his actual debut.

He was not promoted at once to the position of cartoonist; for the first six months he contributed only one big cut to five of Leech's, and his proportion during several years that followed did not exceed one in three. His first cartoon, ent.i.tled "The Modern Sisyphus"--representing Sir Robert Peel, as the tormented one, engaged in rolling the stone (O'Connell) up the hill, with Lord John Russell and others, as the Furies, looking on--appeared on March 16th, 1844; and from that time onwards his work rapidly increased in volume. His initial-letters--an invention further developed later on by C. H. Bennett, Mr. Ernest Griset, and Mr. Linley Sambourne--and his cartoons were reinforced by the famous series of "Brown, Jones, and Robinson," "Mr. Pips hys Diary,"

"Bird's-eye Views of English Society," and "Ye Manners and Customs of Ye Englyshe," their manner of presentation having been created by the artist, who was forthwith dubbed by his comrades "Professor of Mediaeval Design." When Doyle was first called to the Table, his punctilious father did not show any enthusiasm, being in some doubts, apparently, as to the supposed wild recklessness of those savage orgies. He wrote to the Proprietors, hoping that they would not insist upon it for a time, as his son's health was not robust. A little later Doyle himself wrote stiffly to protest against his real name having been printed on the cover of _Punch_ contrary to his distinct request to Mark Lemon, who had promised to retain the name by which he was already known to the public--"d.i.c.k Kitcat"--as in the etched plates to Maxwell's "Hector O'Halloran." But the demand was not persisted in.

"d.i.c.ky" Doyle continued to work regularly for the paper, and his monogram signature, with a "d.i.c.ky" either perched upon the top or pecking on the ground close by, was rarely absent from a single number, when the Popery scare--which had seized the popular mind towards the end of 1849--infected _Punch_ with extraordinary virulence. So long as Mark Lemon confined his cartoons and his text to the general question of "Papal Aggression," Doyle, who was a devout Irish Catholic, held his peace; but when the very doctrine of the faith was attacked, and the Pope himself personally insulted, he severed himself regretfully but determinedly from the paper. Anterior to this, Doyle had remonstrated, but had been reminded that he himself had been permitted to caricature Exeter Hall and all its ways, so that he could not complain if the tables were turned upon his own party. Jerrold and Thackeray, says Mr.

Everitt, sought to dissuade him in vain. "Look at the 'Times,'" they argued; "its language has been most violent, but the Catholic writers on its Staff do not, for that reason, resign. They understand, and the world at large understands, that the individual contributor is not responsible for the opinions expressed by other contributors in articles with which they have nothing to do.' 'That is all very well in the "Times,"' was Doyle's answer, 'but not in _Punch_. For the "Times" is a monarchy [I believe, these were his very words], whereas _Punch_ is a republic.' So when a week or so later an article, attributed to Jerrold himself, jeeringly advised the Pope to 'feed his flock on the wafer of the Vatican,' it was too much for Doyle.... So he wrote to resign his connection with _Punch_, stating his reasons plainly and simply."

But when Doyle resigned, for reasons which earned him the respect of all who heard of them, it was not realised how strong was the undercurrent of feeling within the _Punch_ office. It is true that at the bottom of what I may call the "_Punch_ Aggression" were Jerrold and the Proprietors; and that the onslaught of the one, with the encouragement of the others, so profoundly wounded Doyle as to force him into sacrificing lucrative employment, and condemning him in the result to a life of toil. But for once in his career Doyle was guilty of behaviour which, if not inexcusable in the circ.u.mstances, was certainly indefensible. He left the paper in the lurch. His letter of resignation was sent in on November 27th, he having allowed the Editor to think that the blocks for the Almanac, already overdue, had all been completed; and when it was discovered that they had not been done, and that nothing was forthcoming, consternation reigned in the office. No doubt the revenge was sweet, but it was ill-judged; for while no Catholic member of the Staff has ever raised his voice in its justification, Doyle's conduct served but to increase the bitterness of the anti-Catholic feeling in _Punch's_ Cabinet, and perhaps to produce attacks more intemperate than any that had gone before. And, moreover, it rendered more difficult the position of others of the same faith who became members of the Staff.

So Doyle quitted the paper at the close of 1850, yet his hand was seen in its pages in 1857, 1862 (four cuts), and 1864. This was a question of "old stock"--a matter which often crops up in _Punch_: it is not a unique circ.u.mstance to see a sketch appear many years after it was drawn, and even when the hand that has drawn it has turned to dust. In 1883 there appeared a cut by Mr. Sambourne which was made fifteen years before; and in 1894 there was published a sketch by R. B. Wallace (of the late Lord Beaconsfield) a year after the artist died and fourteen years after he had ceased to draw for the paper.

But when Doyle left _Punch_ he would draw for none of its rivals. With the exception of the single lapse already alluded to, his conduct was always high-minded and generous; and his virtue and n.o.bility of character have been testified to by all his friends. He declined the offer of a large sum to draw for a well-known periodical as he disapproved of the principles of its conductors; and on similar grounds he refused to ill.u.s.trate a new edition of Swift. Mr. Holman Hunt has recorded his testimony as to his sterling worth. "d.i.c.ky Doyle," he tells me, "I knew affectionately. John Leech and Doyle were never very cordial, Doyle's staunch Romanism separating them. While so rigid and consistent a religionist, he was one of the most charitable of men, and would never be a party to any scandal, however much it had been provoked. I am afraid that no portrait was ever painted of him, certainly none showing his delightfully amusing laugh, which always seemed to be indulged apologetically--with the face bent into the cravat and the double chin pressed forward."

Doyle's great misfortune as an artist was that his father, cultivating the son's fancy at the expense of his training, not only would allow him no regular teaching, but would not permit him to draw from the model--nothing but "observance of Nature" and memory-drawing. The result was that Doyle remained an amateur to the end--an extremely skilful one, whose shortcomings were concealed in his charming ill.u.s.trations and imaginative designs, but were startlingly revealed in his larger work and in his figure-drawing. As a draughtsman he was usually feeble, though graceful; his effects, technically speaking, were constantly false, and his drawing often as poor as Thackeray's. He was saved by his charm and sweetness, his inexhaustible fun and humour,[51] his delightful though superficial realisation of character, and his keen sense of the grotesque. When he died in December, 1883, _Punch_ devoted to his memory a poem in which his artistic virtues are generously appreciated, but not a word is said as to the parting of their ways.

From this tribute, this "reconciliation after death," I transcribe one stanza:--

"Turning o'er his own past pages, _Punch_, with tearful smile, can trace That fine talent's various stages, Caustic satire, gentle grace, Feats and freaks of c.o.c.kney funny-- BROWN, and JONES, and ROBINSON; And, huge hive of Humour's honey, Quaint quintessence of rich fun, Coming fresh as June-breeze briary With old memories of our youth, Thrice immortal _Pips's Diary_!

Masterpiece of Mirth and Truth!"

In 1844 the versatile artist-dramatist, Watts Phillips, first declared himself in _Punch_ with a few examples of his art, which George Cruikshank had fostered. They lasted up to 1846, but amounted to very little. He gave more attention to "Puck," of which Chatto was the editor; and when, a few years afterwards, he joined "Diogenes" as its cartoonist, he gave full rein to his undoubted talent.

In the same year Richard Doyle's brother Henry--better known as a distinguished member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, and best of all as the grave and extremely able Director of the National Gallery of Ireland--made a number of small cuts for _Punch_, which were published in 1844 and the following years; but as I was informed, at the time of his death, by his elder brother James, now also dead (the chronicler, and the compiler of the "Official Baronage of England"): "The _Punch_ episode was the merest child's play to him. His line, chosen years before, was sacred or poetic art; and his ill.u.s.trations to Telemachus, done before this time, remarkable for invention and colour, were greatly admired by Prince Albert. That he drew for _Punch_ at one time is, of course, true; but the mention of it gives a false impression of his taste and princ.i.p.al work at that period." Yet the spirit of humour was strong within him, for he was one of the "Great Gunners" in 1845; and from 1867 to 1869, when he was appointed to Dublin, he was cartoonist for "Fun," signing with a Hen, or "Fusbos."

Thomas Onwhyn, best known, nowadays, perhaps, by his "extra ill.u.s.trations" to "Pickwick" and "Nicholas Nickleby," and by his plates to "Valentine Vox" and c.o.c.kton's other novels, began to contribute a few blocks to _Punch_--a fact which has. .h.i.therto been denied. His first drawing, published on p. 130, Vol. XIII. (1847), ill.u.s.trates an article by Gilbert a Beckett, ent.i.tled, "The Friends Reconciled." The next was a "Social," on p. 230 of the same volume, representing a hatter's wiles and their victim. But Onwhyn was better used to the etching-needle than the pencil, and his drawing on wood was hard and unsympathetic, and his figures were usually rather strained than funny. About this time he was retiring from his position as a popular ill.u.s.trator of books. Throne Crick's "Sketches from the Diary of a Commercial Traveller," embellished by Onwhyn, had just appeared; and the artist was beginning to bring out his series of alb.u.ms of plates, big and small, on all sorts of humorous subjects. The time was, therefore, appropriate at which to embark on independent ill.u.s.tration in _Punch_. But in the following year he contributed not more than a sketch or two; and thenceforward, until he finally laid down his pencil in 1870, he confined his artistic efforts to his own happy ideas with but few exceptions--such as "Welcome, a Charade; by W. Shakesides" (1850). Onwhyn died so late as 1886.

For four years, if we except two or three unimportant cuts contributed by E. J. Burton in 1847-8-9, no new name appears upon the draughtsman's roll. Then John Macgregor--the celebrated "Rob Roy"--who had begun to contribute paragraphs and short articles in 1847, commenced adding sketches, such as his "Silence in the Gallery," in January, 1848.

"Prince Albert's Hat" was also his, and others besides; and it is worth remarking that the proceeds of these sketches and articles were given to the police-courts, wherewith the magistrates might a.s.sist poor cases.

The year 1850 became of the first importance in the history of _Punch_.

Not that William McConnell and his gentle art would make the year remarkable, for his early defection from _Punch_, and his premature death from consumption, cut short a career which promised considerably more than it achieved. Mr. Sala tells me that McConnell was a handsome little fellow, bright, alert, and full of originality. He was always exceptionally well-dressed--and with good reason, for his father, on coming over from Ireland and settling in Tottenham Court Road, resumed his trade of tailor. The youth sent in some sketches, which were highly thought of by Mark Lemon. He was turned over to Mr. Swain for some instruction in drawing on the wood, and subsequently took up his residence in the engraver's house for a time; but, not living long enough to prove his individuality, he remained to the end an imitator of Leech. Perhaps that was the reason that he drew so small a salary from _Punch_; at any rate, he always resented what he considered to be the contumelious and shabby treatment meted out to him by Mark Lemon. But for such money as he did receive, it must be admitted that he gave full value in the fierceness of his cartoons on Louis Napoleon. He did much book ill.u.s.tration, besides drawing for the Press, serious and comic--his _Punch_ work including a couple of cartoons in 1852, among a great number of "socials." His last appearance was in July of that year. He was a good and improving draughtsman, especially of horses; and he revelled in beggars, "swells," and backgrounds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: W. McCONNELL.

(_From a Photograph by Southwell Brothers, Baker Street._)]

The great acquisition of the year was John Tenniel. The paper had been left by Doyle, as I have explained, without its Almanac blocks, and it found itself, moreover, without a second cartoonist, and, what was quite as important at the moment, without an artist of distinctly decorative ability, who would provide the fanciful initial-letters, headings, and t.i.tle-pages which have always been a feature in _Punch_. The circ.u.mstances of his joining the paper Sir John once recounted to me in conversation, with that sort of apologetic humour and true modesty that are characteristic of him:--

"I never learned drawing, except in so far as attending a school and being allowed to teach myself. I attended the Royal Academy Schools after becoming a probationer, but soon left in utter disgust of there being no teaching. I had a great idea of High Art; in fact, in 1845 I sent in a sixteen-foot-high cartoon for Westminster Palace. In the Upper Waiting Hall, or 'Hall of Poets,' of the House of Lords, I made a fresco, but my subject was changed after my work had been decided on and worked out. At Christmas, 1850, I was invited by Mark Lemon to fill the place suddenly left by Doyle, who with very good reasons for himself--that of objection to the "Papal Aggression" campaign suddenly severed his connection with _Punch_. Doyle had left them in great straits--the Pocket-book and Almanac to come out--and I was applied to by Lemon, on the initiation of Jerrold, to fill the breach. This was on the strength of my ill.u.s.trations to aesop's Fables, which had recently been published by Murray. I did the t.i.tle and half-t.i.tle to the nineteenth volume, as well as the first page-border to the Almanac, together with a few initials and odds and ends for the end of that volume, and the first ill.u.s.tration to the next; but only the half-t.i.tle, t.i.tle, and tail-piece were signed. My first cartoon was that facing page 44 in the twentieth volume; and, only signing occasionally for the first month or two, I went on from time to time doing cartoons.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIR JOHN TENNIEL, R.I.

(_From a Pen-Drawing by Himself._)]

"As for political opinions, I have none; at least, if I have my own little politics, I keep them to myself, and profess only those of my paper. If I have infused any dignity into cartoon-designing, that comes from no particular effort on my part, but solely from the high feeling I have for art. In any case, if I am a 'cartoonist'--the accepted term--I am not a caricaturist in any sense of the word. My drawings are sometimes grotesque, but that is from a sense of fun and humour. Some people declare that I am no humorist, that I have no sense of fun at all; they deny me everything but severity, 'cla.s.sicality,' and dignity.

Now, _I_ believe that I have a very keen sense of humour, and that my drawings are sometimes really funny!

"I have now been working regularly at the weekly cartoons for _Punch_ for close on thirty years (from 1862),[52] missing only two or three times from illness. In all that time I have hardly left London for more than a week; yet I enjoy wonderful health, doubtless to be attributed to regular riding. I carry out my work thus: I never use models or Nature for the figure, drapery, or anything else. But I have a wonderful memory of _observation_--not for dates, but anything I see I remember. Well, I get my subject on Wednesday night; I think it out carefully on Thursday, and make my rough sketch; on Friday morning I begin, and stick to it all day, with my nose well down on the block. By means of tracing-paper--on which I make all alterations of composition and action I may consider necessary--I transfer my design to the wood, and draw on that. The first sketch I may, and often do, complete later on as a commission.

Indeed, at the present time I have a huge undertaking on hand, in which I take great delight--the finishing of scores of my sketches, of which I have many hundreds. They are for a friend--an enthusiastic admirer, if I may be permitted to say so. Well, the block being finished, it is handed over to Swain's boy at about 6.30 to 7 o'clock, who has been waiting for it for an hour or so, and at 7.30 it is put in hand for engraving. That is completed on the following night, and on Monday night I receive by post the copy of next Wednesday's paper. Although case-hardened in a sense, I have never the courage to open the packet. I always leave it to my sister, who opens it and hands it across to me, when I just take a glance at it, and receive my weekly pang. My work would be difficult to photograph on to the wood, as it is all done in pencil; the only pen-and-ink work I have done, so far, being for the Almanac and Pocket-book.[53]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROUGH PENCIL SKETCH FOR "ARTHUR AND GUINEVERE," FOR "PUNCH'S POCKET-BOOK."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "WILL IT BURST?"

_Captain of Gun:_ "Ram 'em all down, my lads! She'll stand it safe enough!!!"

(_From Sir John Tenniel's Rough Sketch for the Cartoon in "Punch," 14th Feb., 1870--p. 67, Vol. LXXVIII._)]

"As I never have a model, I never draw from life, always when I want a portrait, a uniform, and so on, from a photograph, though not in quite the same spirit as Sambourne does. I get a photograph only of the man whom I want to draw, and seek to get his character. Then, if the photograph is in profile, I have to 'judge' the full face, and _vice versa_; but if I only succeed in getting the character, I seldom go far wrong--a due appreciation is an almost infallible guide. I had the opportunity of studying Mr. Gladstone's face carefully when he did me the honour of inviting me to dinner at Downing Street, and I have met him since; but I fancy, after my 'Mrs. Gummidge' cartoon and 'Ja.n.u.s,' I don't deserve to be honoured again! His face has much more character and is much stronger than Mr. Bright's. Mr. Bright had fine eyes and a grand, powerful mouth, as well as an earnest expression; but a weak nose--artistically speaking, no nose at all--still, a very intellectual face indeed."

Thus it was not only Nature, but the Pope, who marked out Tenniel for the position of _Punch's_ Cartoonist--the greatest "Cartoonist" the world has produced. Had the Pope not "aggressed" by appointing archbishops and bishops to English Sees, and so raised the scare of which Lord John Russell and Mr. Punch really seem to have been the leaders, Doyle would not have resigned, and no opening would have been made for Tenniel. Sir John, indeed, was by no means enamoured of the prospect of being a _Punch_ artist when Mark Lemon made his overtures to him. He was rather indignant than otherwise, as his line was high art and his severe drawing above "fooling." "Do they suppose," he asked a friend, "that there is anything funny about _me_?" He meant, of course, in his art, for privately he was well recognised as a humorist; and little did he know, in the moment of hesitation before he accepted the offer, that he was struggling against a kindly destiny.

John Tenniel was only sixteen years old when his first oil picture was exhibited at the Suffolk Street Galleries, and he soon became recognised, not only as a painter, but as a book and magazine ill.u.s.trator of unusual skill. But he and Keene had already proclaimed themselves the humorists they were by the production of the "Book of Beauty," to which much public attention was drawn when the sketches contained in it were exhibited and sold. They had been fellow-students at the life cla.s.s, and in the year 1844 were both intimate visitors at the house of their friends, Mr. and Mrs. Barrett. After dinner, when the lamp was brought in, the two young artists would amuse themselves, together with their host, by making drawings in coloured chalks. Mr.

Barrett, it may be said, was a thin man, signing himself "5-12ths," in recognition of the n.o.bler proportions of Mrs. Barrett, unquestionably his "better half." Keene chose the "Signs of the Zodiac," to begin with, as the subject of his admirable burlesques, Tenniel having already selected quotations from Shakespeare, history, poetry, and so forth, the humour which he infused into them being equal to anything he afterwards produced in _Punch_. But it may interest the present owners of these highly-prized productions to know that those who produced them thought very little of them as art, while Sir John expressed the greatest surprise that in their rubbed condition they should attract any notice whatever. As early proofs, however, of the comic faculty of two of _Punch's_ giants, they were interesting and valuable designs; while, so far as Sir John's work was concerned, they were the forerunners of the extremely humorous ill.u.s.trations of Shakespearian quotations with which he advanced his reputation and his position on the paper.

No sooner had the severe young cla.s.sicist determined to accept the position offered him in _Punch's_ band, than Mr. Swain was requested to wait upon him in Newman Street, and instruct him in the art of drawing upon wood. But he found that Tenniel, the ill.u.s.trator of the Rev. Thomas James's edition of aesop's Fables, published by John Murray in 1848, was already a brilliant expert. The accomplished young draughtsman soon took keen delight in the smooth face of a block, and at once began--and ever continued--to demand a degree of smoothness that was the despair of Swain to procure. Tenniel, indeed, always drew with a specially-manufactured six-H pencil--which appears more impressive with its proper style of "H H H H H H"--and so delicate was the drawing that, firm and solid as were the lines, it looked as if you could blow it off the wood. The result is that Swain has always _interpreted_ Sir John Tenniel's work, not simply facsimile'd it, aiming rather at producing what the artist intended or desired to have, than what he actually provided in his exquisite grey drawings. So Swain would thicken his lines while retaining their character, just as he would reduce Mr.

Sambourne's, particularly in the flesh parts, and otherwise bring the resources of the engraver's art to bear upon the work of the masters of the pencil. Doubtless the artists might deplore the "spoiling" of their lines; but pencil greys are not to be reproduced in printer's ink--they must be "rendered." And though, as artists, draughtsmen may groan under the transitional process, they realise that in submitting their work to the wood-cutter's craft, they must take its drawbacks along with its advantages.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROUGH SKETCH FOR "THOR" FOR "PUNCH'S POCKET-BOOK."]

The first drawing by Tenniel in the bound volume is, as he says, the frontispiece to the second half-yearly volume for 1850, but his actual first contribution the initial on p. 224 of that volume. Perhaps the most notable thing about it is the extraordinary resemblance between the artist's work at the beginning and at the end of his career. Of course, it is much "tighter;" it is much younger. But the hand and method are strangely unchanged. It is beautiful in its exquisite precision and its refinement, and altogether superior in its character to what its creator, in a spirit of severe self-criticism, chooses to believe. "My first cartoon," he wrote to me, "was 'Lord Jack the Giant-Killer'--and awfully bad it is; in fact, all my work, at that particular time, NOW seems to me about as bad as bad could be, and fills me with wonder and amazement!!" But this cartoon, continuing the Papal campaign so hateful to Doyle, by showing Lord John Russell with his sword of truth and liberty attacking the crozier-armed Cardinal Wiseman, was greatly inferior to the smaller contributions. His improvement, however, was rapid. Tenniel's first "half-page social" is on p. 218 of the same volume; while in 1852 we have his first superb Lion, and his first obituary cartoon. Gradually he took over the political big cut, which Leech was happy to place in his hands; but during the long years that they worked together the two men were admirable foils to one another. Leech sketched and Tenniel drew; Leech gave us farce and drama, and Tenniel, high comedy and tragedy; and the freedom of the one heightened the severer beauties of the other. And when Leech died, his friend continued the labour alone. Except in 1864, 1868, and 1875-6-7-8, in which last-named year he took his first holiday from _Punch_ work and went with Mr. Silver to Venice--(during his illness or absence Charles Keene contributed thirteen cartoons[54])--and again in 1884 and 1894 (when Mr. Sambourne twice took over the duty), he has never, from that day to this present time of writing, missed a single week. Nearly two thousand cartoons, initials innumerable, "socials," double-page cartoons for the Almanac and other special numbers, and two hundred and fifty designs for the Pocket-books--such is the record of the great satirist's career; and the only change has been in the direction of freedom of pencil and breadth of artistic view.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HUMPTY-DUMPTY!"

(_From Sir John Tenniel's First Rough Sketch for the Cartoon in "Punch"

20th July, 1875--p. 18, Vol. LXXV._)]