Social Pictorial Satire | Page 8

he fell off and his horse rolled over him than
that he should dress and ride and look like that! For the pain of broken
bones is easier to bear than the scorn of a true British sportsman!
[Illustration: THANK GOODNESS! FLY-FISHING HAS BEGUN!
MILLER. "Don't they really, perhaps they'll bite better towards the cool
of the evening, they mostly do."--_Punch_, 1857.] Then there are the
fishermen who never catch any fish, but whom no stress of weather can
daunt or distress. There they sit or stand with the wind blowing or the
rain soaking, in dark landscapes with ruffled streams and ominous
clouds, and swaying trees that turn up the whites of their leaves--one
almost hears the wind rush through them. One almost forgets the
comical little forlorn figure who gives such point to all the angry
turbulence of nature in the impression produced by the _mise en scène_
itself--an impression so happily, so vividly suggested by a few rapid,
instructive pencil strokes and thumb smudges that it haunts the memory
like a dream.
He loves such open-air scenes so sincerely, he knows so well how to
express and communicate the perennial charm they have for him, that
the veriest bookworm becomes a sportsman through sheer
sympathy--by the mere fact of looking at them.
And how many people and things he loves that most of us love!--it

would take all night to enumerate them--the good authoritative pater-
and materfamilias; the delightful little girls; the charming cheeky
school-boys; the jolly little street Arabs, who fill old gentlemen's
letter-boxes with oyster-shells and gooseberry-skins; the cabmen, the
busmen; the policemen with the old-fashioned chimney-pot hat; the old
bathing-women, and Jack-ashores, and jolly old tars--his British tar is
irresistible, whether he is hooking a sixty-four pounder out of the Black
Sea, or riding a Turk, or drinking tea instead of grog and complaining
of its strength! There seems to be hardly a mirthful corner of English
life that Leech has not seen and loved and painted in this singularly
genial and optimistic manner.
[Illustration: "THE JOLLY LITTLE STREET ARABS"
From the original drawing for Punch in possession of John Kendrick
Bangs, Esq.]
His loves are many and his hates are few--but he is a good hater all the
same. He hates Mawworm and Stiggins, and so do we. He hates the
foreigner--whom he does not know, as heartily as Thackeray does, who
seems to know him so well--with a hatred that seems to me a little
unjust, perhaps: all France is not in Leicester Square; many Frenchmen
can dress and ride, drive and shoot as well as anybody; and they began
to use the tub very soon after we did--a dozen years or so, perhaps--say
after the _coup d'état_ in 1851.
Then he hates with a deadly hatred all who make music in the street or
next door--and preach in the crossways and bawl their wares on the
parade. What would he have said of the Salvation Army? He is haunted
by the bark of his neighbour's dog, by the crow of his neighbour's
Cochin China cock; he cannot even bear his neighbour to have his
chimney swept; and as for the Christmas waits--we all remember that
tragic picture! This exaggerated aversion to noises became a disease
with him, and possibly hastened his end.
Among his pet hates we must not forget the gorgeous flunky and the
guzzling alderman, the leering old fop, the rascally book-maker, the
sweating Jew tradesman, and the poor little snob (the 'Arry of his day)

who tries vainly to grow a moustache, and wears such a shocking bad
hat, and iron heels to his shoes, and shuns the Park during the riots for
fear of being pelted for a "haristocrat," and whose punishment I think is
almost in excess of his misdemeanor. To succeed in over-dressing one's
self (as his swells did occasionally without marring their beauty) is
almost as ignominious as to fail; and when the failure comes from want
of means, there is also almost a pathetic side to it.
[Illustration: DOING A LITTLE BUSINESS
OLD EQUESTRIAN. "Well, but--you're not the boy I left my horse
with!"
BOY. "No, sir; I jist spekilated, and bought 'im of t'other boy for a
harpenny."--Punch.]
And he is a little bit hard on old frumps, with fat ankles and scraggy
bosoms and red noses--but anyhow we are made to laugh--quod erat
demonstrandum. We also know that he has a strong objection to cold
mutton for dinner, and much prefers a whitebait banquet at Greenwich,
or a nice well-ordered repast at the Star and Garter. So do we.
And the only thing he feared is the horse. Nimrod as he is, and the
happiest illustrator of the hunting-field that ever was, he seems for ever
haunted by a terror of the heels