Social Pictorial Satire | Page 8

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 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