Social Pictorial Satire | Page 4

long walks and talks with him--and dined with him once or twice at the lodgings where he was staying with his wife and son and daughter--all of whom are now dead. He was the most sympathetic, engaging, and attractive person I ever met; not funny at all in conversation, or ever wishing to be--except now and then for a capital story, which he told in perfection.
[Illustration: JOHN LEECH.]
The keynote of his character, socially, seemed to be self-effacement, high-bred courtesy, never-failing consideration for others. He was the most charming companion conceivable, having intimately known so many important and celebrated people, and liking to speak of them; but one would never have guessed from anything he ever looked or said that he had made a whole nation, male and female, gentle and simple, old and young, laugh as it had never laughed before or since for a quarter of a century. He was tall, thin, and graceful, extremely handsome, of the higher Irish type; with dark hair and whiskers and complexion, and very light greyish-blue eyes; but the expression of his face was habitually sad, even when he smiled. In dress, bearing, manner, and aspect, he was the very type of the well-bred English gentleman and man of the world and good society; I never met any one to beat him in that peculiar distinction of form, which, I think, has reached its highest European development in this country. I am told the Orientals are still our superiors in deportment. But the natural man in him was still the best. Thackeray and Sir John Millais, not bad judges, and men with many friends, have both said that they personally loved John Leech better than any man they ever knew.
At this time he was painting in oil, and on an enlarged scale, some of his more specially popular sketches in _Punch_, and very anxious to succeed with them, but nervously diffident of success with them, even with [Greek: hoi polloi]. He was not at his happiest in these efforts; and there was something pathetic in his earnestness and perseverance in attempting a thing so many can do, but which he could not do for want of a better training; while he could do the inimitable so easily.
I came back to town before Leech, and did not see him again until the following October. On Saturday afternoon, the 28th, I called at his house, No. 6 The Terrace, Kensington, with a very elaborate drawing in pencil by myself, which I presented to him as a souvenir, and with which he seemed much pleased.
He was already working at the Punch Almanac for '65, at a window on the second floor overlooking the street. (I have often gazed up at it since.) He seemed very ill, so sad and depressed that I could scarcely speak to him for sheer sympathy; I felt he would never get through the labour of that almanac, and left him with the most melancholy forebodings.
Monday morning the papers announced his death on Sunday, October 29th, from angina pectoris, the very morning after I had seen him.
I was invited by Messrs. Bradbury and Evans, the publishers of _Punch_, to the funeral, which took place at Kensal Green. It was the most touching sight imaginable. The grave was near Thackeray's, who had died the year before. There were crowds of people, Charles Dickens among them; Canon Hole, a great friend of Leech's, and who has written most affectionately about him, read the service; and when the coffin was lowered into the grave, John Millais burst into tears and loud sobs, setting an example that was followed all round; we all forgot our manhood and cried like women! I can recall no funeral in my time where simple grief and affection have been so openly and spontaneously displayed by so many strangers as well as friends--not even in France, where people are more demonstrative than here. No burial in Westminster Abbey that I have ever seen ever gave such an impression of universal honour, love, and regret.
"Whom the gods love die young." He was only forty-six!
I was then invited to join the Punch staff and take Leech's empty chair at the weekly dinner--and bidden to cut my initials on the table, by his; his monogram as it was carved by him is J.L. under a leech in a bottle, dated 1854; and close by on the same board are the initials W.M.T.
I flatter myself that convivially, at least, my small D.M., carved in impenetrable oak, will go down to posterity in rather distinguished company!
If ever there was a square English hole, and a square English peg to fit it, that hole was _Punch_, and that peg was John Leech. He was John Bull himself, but John Bull refined and civilised--John Bull polite, modest, gentle--full