Social Pictorial Satire | Page 9

of that noble animal he drew so
well--and I thoroughly sympathise with him!
In all the series the chief note is joyousness, high spirits, the pleasure of
being alive. There is no Weltschmerz in his happy world, where all is
for the best--no hankering after the moon, no discontent with the
present order of things. Only one little lady discovers that the world is
hollow, and her doll is stuffed with bran; only one gorgeous swell has
exhausted the possibilities of this life, and finds out that he is at loss for
a new sensation. So what does he do? Cut his throat? Go and shoot big
game in Africa? No; he visits the top of the Monument on a rainy day,
or invites his brother-swells to a Punch and Judy show in his rooms, or
rides to Whitechapel and back on an omnibus with a bag of periwinkles,
and picks them out with a pin!

Even when his humour is at its broadest, and he revels in almost
pantomimic fun, he never loses sight of truth and nature--never strikes
a false or uncertain note. Robinson goes to an evening party with a
spiked knuckle-duster in his pocket and sits down. Jones digs an elderly
party called Smith in the back with the point of his umbrella, under the
impression that it is his friend Brown. A charming little street Arab
prints the soles of his muddy feet on a smart old gentleman's white
evening waistcoat.
Tompkyns writes Henrietta on the stands under two hearts transfixed
by an arrow, and his wife, whose name is Matilda, catches him in the
act. An old gentleman, maddened by a bluebottle, smashes all his
furniture and breaks every window-pane but one--where the bluebottle
is. And in all these scenes one does not know which is the most
irresistible, the most inimitable--the mere drollery or the dramatic truth
of gesture and facial expression.
The way in which every-day people really behave in absurd situations
and under comically trying circumstances is quite funny enough for
him; and if he exaggerates a little and goes beyond the absolute prose
of life in the direction of caricature, he never deviates a hair's-breadth
from the groove human nature has laid down. There is exaggeration,
but no distortion. The most wildly funny people are low comedians of
the highest order, whose fun is never forced and never fails; they found
themselves on fact, and only burlesque what they have seen in actual
life--they never evolve their fun from the depths of their inner
consciousness; and in this naturalness, for me, lies the greatness of
Leech. There is nearly always a tenderness in the laughter he excites,
born of the touch of nature that makes the whole world kin!
[Illustration: A TOLERABLY BROAD HINT
"Oh, I beg your pardon, sir, but you didn't say as we were to pull up
anywhere, did you, sir?"--_Punch_, 1859.]
Where most of all he gives us a sense of the exuberant joyousness and
buoyancy of life is in the sketches of the seaside--the newly discovered
joys of which had then not become commonplace to people of the

middle class. The good old seaside has grown rather stale by this
time--the very children of to-day dig and paddle in a half-perfunctory
sort of fashion, with a certain stolidity, and are in strange contrast to
those highly elate and enchanting little romps that fill his seaside
pictures.
Indeed, nothing seems so jolly, nothing seems so funny, now, as when
Leech was drawing for Punch. The gaiety of one nation at least has
been eclipsed by his death. Is it merely that there is no such light
humorist to see and draw for us in a frolicsome spirit all the fun and the
jollity? Is it because some of us have grown old? Or is it that the British
people themselves have changed and gone back to their old way of
taking their pleasure sadly?
Everything is so different, somehow; the very girls themselves have
grown a head taller, and look serious, stately, and dignified, like
Olympian goddesses, even when they are dancing and playing
lawn-tennis.
I for one should no more dream of calling them the darlings than I
should dare to kiss them under the mistletoe, were I ever so splendid a
young captain. Indeed I am too prostrate in admiration--I can only suck
the top of my stick and gaze in jealous ecstasy, like one of Leech's little
snobs. They are no longer pretty as their grandmothers were--whom
Leech drew so well in the old days! They are _beautiful_!
And then they are so cultivated, and know such a lot--of books, of art,
of science, of politics, and theology--of the world the flesh, and the
devil. They actually think for themselves; they have broken loose and