The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 by Harry Furniss (best ebook reader for chromebook txt) 📖

Equal praise must indeed be accorded to the management of the New Gallery and all the other Exhibitions with which I have been brought in contact in the course of my professional duties. Personally, as I have always made my notes at the Royal Academy on the authorised occasion, I have had nothing to fear from those who preside there. But my friend Linley Sambourne, who wished upon one occasion to caricature a picture of Burne-Jones' for a political cartoon in Punch (of course altering the figures and indeed everything else, so as not in any way to trench upon the great artist's copyright) was dogged by a detective, arrested, and finally thrown into the darkest dungeon beneath the Burlington House moat! Protest was useless. What his terror must have been my pen fails to describe. Visions of the thumbscrew, the rack, and all the tortures conceivable rose in the fertile imagination of my colleague, and [Pg 295] beads of perspiration made their appearance upon his massive brow. After weary hours, when lunch-time without the lunch had come and gone, and the pangs of hunger began to be added to his other miseries, when he was reflecting that his week's work for Punch was yet unfinished, that the engravers would be in despair at not having it in time, and that at that moment his editor was probably telegraphing to him all over London and instituting a search for his person all over his club, suddenly the bolts of his prison-chamber were withdrawn and his gaoler, the blood-thirsty tyrant Red Tape, allowed the genial artist to return to the bosom of his wife and family—not, however, without leaving a hostage behind him. The sketch—the guilty sketch—the cause of all his troubles, was detained. In vain the harassed artist explained to his grim Cerberus that the work was wanted for the next week's issue of Punch, and although as a matter of fact it duly appeared at the appointed time, Mr. Sambourne had to trust to his memory instead of to the courtesy and common sense of Burlington House for the reproduction of his skit.

I remember another incident which will serve to illustrate the trials and misfortunes of the caricaturist when pursuing his vocation outside the walls of his studio. It was the opening day of the New Gallery, and as I draw my sketches of the pictures with an ordinary pen and liquid Indian ink direct, and have them afterwards, like all my drawings, photographed on wood and engraved—of late years they are reproduced by process engraving—I was holding my bottle of ink and my sketch-book in one hand, while my pen was busy with the other. Upon arriving very early in the morning I thought I must have made a mistake, and that I had entered a manufactory of hats, for the hall was almost entirely taken up with hat-boxes. Upon enquiry, however, I learned that these merely contained the new hats in which the directors would, later on, receive their visitors. When the hall began to fill, and the fashionable crowd was pouring in, I was standing in the central lobby, sketching away with a will, when my friend Sir William Agnew, always early to arrive on such occasions, happened to come up and soon interested me in conversation about the genius of Millais [Pg 296] and the beauties of Burne-Jones. In my energetic manner I was debating a matter of some little interest when my eye caught that of Mr. Comyns-Carr, who, with his newly-selected hat on, was standing close by and regarding me with an expression of indescribable horror. "What is the matter with Carr?" I observed to Agnew; "surely Sargent should be here and hand down that expression to posterity." But when I followed his eyes as they passed sternly from mine to the floor, my hat nearly sprang off my head at the sight which I beheld! Forgetting that I held the bottle of ink in the hand with which I had been suiting the action to the word in my animated harangue to Sir William, I had splashed the virgin marble on which we were standing in all directions with hideous stains of the blackest of liquids. In my consternation I did not stay to see the incongruous figure of the charwoman and bucket who was immediately introduced amid the �lite of fashionable London, but fled incontinently from the gallery and, rushing in where angels fear to tread, sought sanctuary in my accustomed haunt, the Gallery of the House of Commons. There at least I thought I should be safe. Presently, when I had somewhat recovered from my agitation, I was making my way out of the House when I encountered a friend in the Central Lobby. I was explaining to him the unfortunate contretemps which had occurred at the New Gallery, and utterly forgot that I still held the bottle of ink in my hand, and on the sacred floor we stood upon I had perpetrated the offence again!

My only consolation for this chapter of accidents was that the particular ink in my bottle is different from the ordinary writing fluid, and leaves no stain behind it. It is in fact merely paint, and is innocent of gall. There are inks, as there are other forms of journalism, whose consequences are not so easily effaced or so harmless; but like the caricaturist's work itself, the material with which it is accomplished often looks blacker than it really is.

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ORIGINAL IDEA AS SENT TO ME. MY DRAWING OF IT IN PUNCH.

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Fortunately all this happened previous to the introduction of the ink I use now, known as Waterproof ink—ink that will not run when washed over with water. The manufacturers of this article sent me a specimen bottle to experiment with, and asked me for my opinion of it. In replying, I sent the following note. The sketch was touched in to amuse my youngest boy, who was puzzled by the meaning of Waterproof ink. The makers, in acknowledging the note, asked me to mention the sum I would accept if, with my permission, they used the note and sketch I sent as an advertisement. I replied that they were welcome to use my note, but that I could not accept payment. However I received in a few days a large parcel of artists' materials: paints, sketch-books, brushes, pencils, &c.

This is more than I ever received for a better known advertisement: "I used your soap two years ago." I was never offered so much as a cake of soap from those who used my Punch sketch so freely! Permission was given for its use by the proprietors of Punch, not knowing I had any objection, and at the time I was ill with fever and unable to protest. The firm certainly paid me some years afterwards for the publication of the same advertisement for two insertions in a periodical I was starting, but only at the ordinary rate. I mention this fact as I have heard from friends all over the world that I received untold gold for the use of it, and as it has interested so many perhaps I may at the same time clear up another fallacy, which [Pg 300] I did not know existed until I read Mr. Spielmann's "History of Punch." In that he refers to the very "oft-quoted drawing (lately used as an advertisement), the idea of which reached him from an anonymous correspondent. It is that of a grimy, unshaven, unwashed, mangy-looking tramp, who sits down to write, with a broken quill, a testimonial for a firm of soap-makers. A further point of interest about this famous sketch was that Charles Keene was deeply offended by it at first, in the groundless belief that it was intended as a skit upon himself. It must at least be admitted that the head is not unlike what one might have expected to belong to a dissipated and dilapidated Charles Keene." Poor Keene! How sorry I was to read this when too late to explain to him that he was never in my mind for a moment when I was drawing it! But, strange to say, the original who sat for it was a brother artist, another Charles, quite as delightful as Keene, equally clever in his own way, and my greatest friend—Charles Burton Barber, the animal painter, in appearance rather like Charles Keene, but nothing of the Bohemian about him, and a non-smoker! Still I am always being told that I had So-and-so in my eye when drawing the figure. I might in truth quote Sir John Tenniel's remark � propos of being accused of caricaturing his late comrade, Horace Mayhew, as the "White Knight" in "Alice in Wonderland": "The resemblance was purely accidental, a mere unintentional caricature, which his friends, of course, were only too delighted to make the most of." Ah, those friends are at the bottom of all these misunderstandings. I could a tale, or two, unfold, but that—that's another volume.

I SIT FOR JOHN BROWN.

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Yes, poor Barber sat for the tramp, and I in return sat to him for a figure quite as incongruous in my case as the tramp was in his. I sat for John Brown for the picture Queen Victoria had commissioned of Mr. Brown surrounded by her pet dogs, which she had in her private room. She was so delighted with the picture that she had a replica made of it, and placed it in the passage outside, so that it was the first picture she looked at as she left her room. Barber's animals and children were delightful, but he was weak with his men, and was in trouble over John Brown's calves,—it was then that I posed for the "brawny Scott," but only for the portion here mentioned.

A CRIB BY AN AMERICAN ADVERTISER.

This figure of the tramp in my sketch of "I used your soap two years ago" has in fact been mistaken for myself. A relative of my own, who has been living in the Cape for many years, paid a visit to London, and on his return informed his children that he had seen me and brought my portrait back with him. "Oh, we have Cousin Harry's portrait in our nursery for some time: one he has signed too." It was the Punch-Pears production in colour! I am sure I do not know how ridiculous stories are received as true, that I got a fabulous sum for the use of this one; that such-and-such a member of the staff gets a huge retaining fee, &c., and other inventions—one in particular. If I have met one, I have met a score of people at different times of my life who positively declared that they [Pg 302] actually sent that ever famous line: "Punch's advice to those about to marry—Don't!" and received immediately remuneration in sums varying from �5 to �500. That joke was probably conceived and thrown in at the last moment, at the critical point when the editor is "making up" the paper.

As I am writing these disjointed notes for family reading, it may perhaps not be out