Читать книгу The Confessions of a Caricaturist (Vol. 1&2) - Furniss Harry - Страница 6

Table of Contents

Introductory—Birth and Parentage—The Cause of my remaining a Caricaturist—The Schoolboys' Punch—Infant Prodigies—As a Student—I Start in Life—Zozimus—The Sullivan Brothers—Pigott—The Forger—The Irish "Pathriot"—Wood Engraving—Tom Taylor—The Wild West—Judy—Behind the Scenes—Titiens—My First and Last Appearance in a Play—My Journey to London—My Companion—A Coincidence.

In offering the following pages to the public, I should like it to be known that no interviewer has extracted them from me by the thumbscrew of a morning call, nor have they been wheedled out of me by the caresses of those iron-maidens of literature, the publishers. For the most part they have been penned in odd half-hours as I sat in my easy-chair in the solitude of my studio, surrounded by the aroma of the post-prandial cigarette.

I would also at the outset warn those who may purchase this work in the expectation of finding therein the revelations of a caricaturist's Chamber of Horrors, that they will be disappointed. Some day I may be tempted to bring forth my skeletons from the seclusion of their cupboards and strip my mummies, taking certain familiar figures and faces to pieces and exposing not only the jewels with which they were packed away, but all those spicy secrets too which are so relished by scandal-loving readers.

At present, however, I am in an altogether lighter and more genial vein. My confessions up to date are of a purely personal character, and like a literary Liliputian I am placing myself in the hand of that colossal Gulliver the Public.

I may, it is true, in the course of my remarks be led to retaliate to some extent upon those who have had the hardihood to assert that all caricaturists ought, in the interest of historical accuracy, to be shipped on board an unseaworthy craft and left in the middle of the Channel, for the crime of handing down to posterity distorted images of those now in the land of the living. This I feel bound to do in self-defence, as well as in the cause of truth, for to judge by the biographical sketches of myself which continually appear and reach me through the medium of a press-cutting agency, caricaturists as distorters of features are not so proficient as authors as distorters of facts.

I think it best therefore to begin by giving as briefly as possible an authentic outline of my early career.

For the benefit of anyone who may not feel particularly interested in such details, I should mention that the narration of this plain unvarnished tale extends from this line to page 29.

I was born in Ireland, in the town of Wexford, on March 26th, 1854. I do not, however, claim, to be an Irishman. My father was a typical Englishman, hailing from Yorkshire, and not in his appearance only, but in his tastes and sympathies, he was an unmistakable John Bull. By profession he was a civil engineer, and he migrated to Ireland some years before I was born, having been invited to throw some light upon that "benighted counthry" by designing and superintending the erection of gas works in various towns and cities.

My mother was Scotch. My great-great-grandfather was a captain in the Pretender's army at Culloden, and had a son, Angus, who settled in Aberdeen. When Æneas MacKenzie, my grandfather, was born, his family moved south and settled in Newcastle-on-Tyne. A local biographer writes of him: "A man who by dint of perseverance and self-denial acquired more learning than ninety-nine in a hundred ever got at a university—an accomplished and most trustworthy writer. The real founder of the Newcastle Mechanics' Institute, and the leader of the group of Philosophical Radicals who made not a little stir in the North of England at the beginning of the last century." He was not only a benevolent, active member of society and an ardent politician (Joseph Cowen received his earliest impressions from him—and never forgot his indebtedness), but the able historian of Northumberland, Durham, and of Newcastle itself, a town in which he spent his life and his energies. If I possess any hereditary aptitude for journalism, it is to him I owe it; whilst to my mother, who at a time when miniature painting was fashionable, cultivated the natural artistic taste with much success, I am directly indebted for such artistic faculties as are innate in me.

My family moved from Wexford to Dublin when I was ten. It is pleasant to know they left a good impression. In Miss Mary Banim's account of Ireland I find the following reference to these aliens in Wexford, which I must allow my egotism to transcribe: "Many are the kindly memories that remain in Wexford of this warm-hearted, gifted family, who are said not only to be endowed with rare talents, but, better still, with those qualities that endear people to those they meet in daily intercourse." The flattering adjectives with which the remarks about myself are sandwiched prevent my modest nature from quoting any more. However, as one does not remember much of that period of their life before they reach their teens I need not apologise for quoting from the same work this reference to me at that age:

"One who was his playmate—he is still a young man—describes Mr. Furniss as very small of stature, full of animation and merriment, constantly amusing himself and his friends with clever[!] reproductions of each humorous character or scene that met his eye in the ever-fruitful gallery of living art—gay, grotesque, pathetic, even beautiful—that the streets and outlets of such a town as Wexford present to a quick eye and a ready pencil."

I can appreciate the fact that at that early age I had an eye for the "pathetic, and even beautiful," but, alas! I have been misunderstood from the day of my birth. I used to sit and study the heavens before I could walk, and my nurse, a wise and shrewd woman, predicted that I should become a great astronomer; but instead of the works of Herschel being put into my hands, I was satiated with the vilest comic toy books, and deluged with the frivolous nursery literature now happily a thing of the past. At odd times my old leaning towards serious reflection and ambition for high art come over me, but there is a fatality which dogs my footsteps and always at the critical moment ruins my hopes.

It is indeed strange how slight an incident may alter the whole course of one's life, as will be seen from the following instance, which I insert here although it took place some years after the period to which I am now alluding.

The scene was Antwerp, to which I was paying my first visit, and where I was, like all artists, very much impressed and delighted with the cathedral of the quaint old place. The afternoon was merging into evening as I entered the sacred building, and the broad amber rays of the setting sun glowed amid the stately pillars and deepened the shadowy glamour of the solemn aisles. As I gazed on the scene of grandeur I felt profoundly moved by the picturesque effect, and the following morning discovered me hard at work upon a most elaborate study of the beautiful carved figures upon the confessional boxes. I had just laid out my palette preparatory to painting that picture which would of course make my name and fortune, when a hoarse and terribly British guffaw at my elbow startled me, and turning round I encountered some acquaintances to whom the scene seemed to afford considerable amusement. One of them was good enough to remark that to have come all the way to Antwerp to find a caricaturist painting the confessional boxes in the cathedral was certainly the funniest thing he had ever heard of, and thereupon insisted upon dragging me off to dine with him, a proposition to which I immediately assented, feeling far more foolish than I could possibly have looked. I may add that as the sun that evening dipped beneath the western horizon, so vanished the visions of high art by which I had been inspired, and thus it is that Michael Angelo Vandyck Correggio Raphael Furniss lies buried in Antwerp Cathedral. Strangely enough I came across the following paragraph some years afterwards: "The guides of Antwerp Cathedral point out a grotesque in the wood carving of the choir which resembles almost exactly the head of Mr. Gladstone, as depicted by Harry Furniss."

MY FATHER

My earliest recollections are altogether too modern to be of much interest. Crimean heroes were veterans when they, as guests at my father's table, fought their battles o'er again. The Great Eastern steamship was quite an old white elephant of the sea when I, held up in my nurse's arms, saw Brunel's blunder pass Greenore Point. I was hardly eligible for "Etons" when our present King was married. When first taken to church I was most interested, as standing on tiptoe on the seat in our square family pew, and peering into the next pew, I saw a young governess, at that moment the most talked-of woman in Great Britain, the niece of the notorious poisoner Palmer. She had just returned from the condemned cell, having made that scoundrel confess his crime, and there was more pleasure in the sight than in listening to the good old Rector Elgee who had christened me, or in seeing his famous daughter the poetess "Speranza," otherwise known as Lady Wilde.

In the newspaper shop windows—always an attraction to me—the coloured portrait of Garibaldi was fly-blown, the pictures of the great fight between Sayers and Heenan were illustrations of ancient history, and in the year I was born Punch published his twenty-sixth volume.

HARRY FURNISS, AGED 10.

Leaving Wexford before the railway there was opened, my parents removed to the metropolis of Ireland, and I went to school in Dublin at the age of twelve. It was at the Wesleyan Connexional School, now known as the Wesleyan College, St. Stephen's Green, that I struggled through my first pages of Cæsar and stumbled over the "pons asinorum," and here I must mention that although the Wesleyan College bears the name of the great religious reformer, a considerable number of the boys who studied there—myself included—were in no way connected with the Wesleyan body. I merely say this because I have seen it stated more than once that I am a Wesleyan, and as this little sketch professes to be an authentic account of myself, I wish it to be correct, however trivial my remarks may seem to the general reader. It is in the same spirit that I have disclaimed the honour of being an Irishman.

Once upon a time, when I was a very little boy, I remember being very much impressed by a heading in my copybook which ran: "He who can learn to write, can learn to draw." Now this was putting the cart before the horse, so far as my experience had gone, for I could most certainly draw before I could write, and had not only become an editor long before I was fit to be a contributor, but was also a publisher before I had even seen a printing press. In fact, I was but a little urchin in knickerbockers when I brought out a periodical—in MS. it is true—of which the ambitious title was "The Schoolboys' Punch." The ingenuous simplicity with which I am universally credited by all who know me now had not then, I fancy, obtained complete possession of me. I must have been artful, designing, diplomatic, almost Machiavellian; for anxious to curry favour with the head master of my school, I resolved to use the columns of "The Schoolboys' Punch" not so much in the interest of the schoolboy world as to attract the head master's favourable notice to the editor.

Accordingly, the first cartoon I drew for the paper was specially designed with this purpose in view, and I need scarcely say it was highly complimentary to the head master. He was represented in a Poole-made suit of perfectly-fitting evening dress, and the trousers, I remember, were particularly free from the slightest wrinkle, and must have been extremely uncomfortable to the wearer. This tailorish impossibility was matched by the tiny patent boots which encased the great man's small and exquisitely moulded feet. I furnished him with a pair of dollish light eyes, with long eyelashes carefully drawn in, and as a masterstroke threw in the most taper-shaped waist.

The subject of the picture, I flattered myself, was selected with no little cleverness and originality. A celebrated conjuror who had recently exposed the frauds of the Davenport Brothers was at the moment creating a sensation in the town where the school was situated, and from that incident I determined to draw my inspiration. The magnitude of the design and the importance of the occasion seemed to demand a double-paged cartoon. On one side I depicted a hopelessly scared little schoolboy, not unlike myself at the time, tightly corded in a cabinet, which represented the school, with trailing Latin roots, heavy Greek exercises, and chains of figures. The door, supposed to be closed on this distressing but necessary situation, is observed in the opposite cartoon to be majestically thrown open by the beaming and consciously successful head master, in order to allow a young college student, the pink of scholastic perfection, to step out, loaded with learning and academical honours.

"Great events from little causes spring!"—great, at least, to me. So well was my juvenile effort received, that it is not too much to say it decided my future career. Had my subtle flattery taken the shape of a written panegyric upon the head master in lieu of a cartoon, it is possible that I might, had I met with equal success, have devoted myself to journalism and literature; but from that day forward I clung to the pencil, and in a few years was regularly contributing "cartoons" to public journals, and practising the profession I have ever since pursued.

Drawing, in fact, seemed to come to me naturally and intuitively. This was well for me, for small indeed was the instruction I received. I recollect that a German governess, who professed, among other things, to teach drawing, undertook to cultivate my genius; but I derived little benefit from her unique system, as it consisted in placing over the paper the drawing to be copied, and pricking the leading points with a pin, after which, the copy being removed, the lines were drawn from one point to another. The copies were of course soon perforated beyond recognition, and, although I warmly protested against this sacrilege of art, she explained that it was by that system that Albert Dürer had been taught. This, of course, accounts for our having infant prodigies in art, as well as music and the drama. The rapidity with which Master Hoffmann was followed by infantile Lizsts and little Otto Hegner as soon as it became apparent that there was a demand for such phenomena, seems to indicate that in music at all events supply will follow demand as a matter of course, and if the infant artist can only be "crammed" in daubing on canvas as youthful musicians are in playing on the piano, then perhaps a new sensation is in store for the artistic world, and we shall see babies executing replicas of the old masters, and the Infant Slapdash painter painting the portraits of Society beauties. As a welcome relief to Chopin's Nocturne in D flat, played by Baby Hegner at St. James's Hall, we shall step across to Bond Street and behold "Le Petit Américain" dashing off his "Nocturne" on canvas. I sometimes wonder if I might have been made such an infant art prodigy, but when I was a lad public taste was not in its second childhood in matters of art patronage, nor was the forcing of children practised in the same manner as it is nowadays.

Naturally enough I did not altogether escape the thraldom of the drawing-master, and as years went on I made a really serious effort to study at an art school under the Kensington system, which I must confess I believe to be positively prejudicial to a young artist possessing imagination and originality. The late Lord Beaconsfield made one of his characters in "Lothair" declare that "critics are those who have failed in literature and art." Whether this is true as to the art critics, or that the dramatic critic is generally a disappointed playwright, it must in truth be said that drawing-masters are nearly always those who have failed in art. I can remember one gentleman who was the especial terror of my youth. I can see him now going his rounds along the chilly corridor, where, perhaps, one had been placed to draw something "from the flat." After years and years of practice at this rubbish, he would halt beside you, look at your work in a perfunctory manner, and with a dexterity which appalled you until you reflected that he had been doing the same thing exactly, and nothing else, for perhaps a decade, he would draw in a section of a leaf, and if, as in my case, you happened to have a pretty sister attending the ladies' class in the school, he would add leaf to leaf until your whole paper was covered with his mechanical handiwork, in order to have a little extra conversation with you, although, I need scarcely add, it was not exclusively confined to the subject of art.

This sort of thing was called "instruction in freehand drawing," and had to be endured and persisted in for months and months. Freehand! Shade of Apelles! What is there free in squinting and measuring, and feebly touching in and fiercely rubbing out a collection of straggling mechanical pencil lines on a piece of paper pinned on to a hard board, which after a few weeks becomes nothing but a confused jumble of fingermarks?

Had I an Art School I would treat my students according to their individual requirements, just as a doctor treats his patients. I am led here to repeat what I have already observed in one of my lectures, that for the young the pill of knowledge should be silver-coated, and that while they are being instructed they should also be amused. In other words, interest your pupils, do not depress them. Giotto did not begin by rigidly elaborating a drawing of the crook of his shepherd's staff for weeks together; his drawings upon the sand and upon the flat stones which he found on the hillsides are said to have been of the picturesque sheep he tended, and all the interesting and fascinating objects that met his eye. Then, when his hand had gained practice, he was able to draw that perfect circle which he sent to the Pope as a proof of his command of hand. But the truth is that we begin at the wrong end, and try to make our boys draw a perfect circle before they are in love with drawing at all. For my part, I had to endure some weeks of weary struggling with a cone and ball and other chilly objects, the effect of which was to fill my mind with an overwhelming sense of the dreariness of art education under the Kensington system. A short time, therefore, sufficed to disgust me with the Art School, and I preferred to stay at home caricaturing my relatives, educating myself, and practising alone the rudiments of my art.

A CARICATURE, MADE WHEN A BOY (NEVER PUBLISHED). DUBLIN EXHIBITION. PORTRAIT OF SIR A. GUINNESS

(NOW LORD IVEAGH) IN CENTRE.

Early in my teens, however, I was invited to join the Life School of the Hibernian Academy, as there happened to be a paucity of students at that institution, and in order to secure the Government grant it was necessary to bring them up to the required number. But here also there was no idea of proper teaching. Some fossilised member of the Academy would stand about roasting his toes over the stove. A recollection of a fair specimen of the body still haunts me. He used to roll round the easels, and you became conscious of his approaching presence by an aroma of onions. I believe he was a landscape painter, and saw no more beauty in the female form divine than in a haystack. It was his custom to take up a huge piece of charcoal and come down upon one of your delicately drawn pencil lines of a figure with a terrible stroke about an inch wide.

"There, me boy," he would exclaim, "that's what it wants," and walk on, leaving you in doubt upon which side of the line you had drawn he intended his alteration to come.

I soon decided to have my own models and study for myself, and this practice I have maintained to the present day. I really don't know what Mrs. Grundy would have said if she had known that at this early age I was drawing Venuses from the life, instead of tinting the illustrations to "Robinson Crusoe" or "Gulliver's Travels" in my playroom at home.

Few imagine that a caricaturist requires models to draw from. Although I will not further digress at this point, I may perhaps be pardoned if I return later on in this book to the explanation of my modus operandi—a subject which, if I may judge from the number of letters I receive about it, is likely to prove of interest to a large number of my readers.

It was when I was still quite a boy that my first great chance came. Being in Dublin, I was asked one day by my friend the late Mr. A. M. Sullivan to make some illustrations for a paper called Zozimus, of which he was the editor and founder. As a matter of fact, Zozimus was the Irish Punch. Mr. Sullivan, who was a Nationalist, and a man of exceptional energy and ability, began life as an artist. He came to Dublin, I was told, as a very young man, and began to paint; but the sails of his ships were pronounced to be far too yellow, the seas on which the vessels floated were derided as being far too green, while the skies above them were scoffed at as being far too blue. In these adverse circumstances, then, the artist soon drifted into journalism, and, inducing his brothers to join him in his new venture, thenceforth took up the pen and abandoned the brush. Each member of the family became a well-known figure in Parliamentary life. Mr. T. D. Sullivan, the poet of the Irish Party, is still a well-known figure in the world of politics; but my friend Mr. A. M. Sullivan, who died some years ago, belonged rather to the more moderate régime which prevailed in the Irish Party during the leadership of Mr. Butt.

At the time when I first made his acquaintance he was the editor and moving spirit of the Nation. It was a curious office, and I can recall many whom I first met there who have since come more or less prominently to the front in public life. There was Mr. Sexton, whom my friend "Toby" has since christened "Windbag Sexton" in his Parliamentary reports. Mr. Sexton then presided over the scissors and paste department of the journals owned by Mr. A. M. Sullivan, and, unlike the posing orator he afterwards became, was at that early stage of his career of a very modest and retiring disposition. Mr. Leamy also, I think, was connected with the staff, while Mr. Dennis Sullivan superintended the sale of the papers in the publishing department.

But the central figure in the office was unquestionably the editor and proprietor, Mr. A. M. Sullivan. His personality was of itself remarkable. Possessed of wonderful energy and nerve, he was a confirmed teetotaller, and his prominent eyes, beaming with intelligence, seemed almost to be starting from his head as, intent upon some project, he darted about the office, ever and anon checking his erratic movements to give further directions to his subordinates, when he had a funny habit of placing his hand on his mouth and blowing his moustache through his fingers, much to the amusement of his listeners, and to my astonishment, as I stood modestly in a corner of the editorial sanctum observing with awe the great Mr. Sexton, who, amid the distractions of scissors and paste, would drawl out a sentence or two in a voice strongly resembling the sarcastic tones of Mr. Labouchere.

In another part of the office sat Mr. T. D. Sullivan, the poet aforesaid, who, like his brother, is a genial and kindly man at heart, although possessing the volcanic temperament characteristic of his family. There he sat—a poet with a large family—his hair dishevelled, his trousers worked by excitement halfway up his calves, emitting various stertorous sounds after the manner of his brother, as he savagely tore open the recently-arrived English newspapers. Such was the interior of the office of the Nation, the representative organ of the most advanced type of the National Press of Ireland.

But Zozimus, the paper to which I was then contributing, had nothing in common with the rest of the publications issuing from that office. It was of a purely social character, and was a praiseworthy attempt to do something of a more artistic nature than the coarsely-conceived and coarsely-executed National cartoons which were the only specimens of illustrative art produced in Ireland. Fortunately for me, there was an effort made in Dublin just then to produce a better class of publications, and the result was that I began to get fairly busy, although it was merely a wave of artistic energy, which did not last long, but soon subsided into that dead level of mediocrity which does not appear likely to be again disturbed.

I was now in my seventeenth year, and, intent on making as much hay as possible the while the sun shone, I accepted every kind of work that was offered me; and a strange medley it was. Religious books, medical works, scientific treatises, scholastic primers and story books afforded in turn illustrative material for my pencil. One week I was engaged upon designs for the most advanced Catholic and Jesuitical manuals, and the next upon similar work for a Protestant prayer-book. At one moment it seemed as if I were destined to achieve fame as an artist of the ambulance corps and the dissecting-room. One of my earliest dreams—which I attribute to the fact that my eldest brother, with whom I had much in common, was a doctor—had been to adopt the medical profession. Curiously enough, my brother also had a taste for caricaturing, and, like the illustrious John Leech in his medical student days, he was wont to embellish his notes in the hospital lecture-room with pictorial jeux d'esprit of a livelier cast than those for which scope is usually afforded by the discourses of the learned Mr. Sawbones.

AN EARLY ILLUSTRATION ON WOOD BY HARRY FURNISS. PARTLY ENGRAVED BY HIM.

I remember that about this period a leading surgeon was anxious that I should devote myself to the pursuit of this anything but pleasant form of art, and seriously proposed that I should draw and paint for him some of his surgical cases. I accepted his offer without hesitation, and, burning to distinguish myself as an anatomical expert with the brush, I gave instruction to our family butcher to send me, as a model to study from, a kidney, which was to be the acme of goriness and as repulsive in appearance as possible. Of this piece of uncooked meat I made a quite pre-Raphaelite study in water-colours, but so realistic was the result that the effect it had upon me was the very antithesis to what I anticipated, disgusting me to such an extent that I not only declined to pursue further anatomical illustration, but for years afterwards was quite unable to touch a kidney, although I believe that had I selected a calf's head or a sucking-pig for my maiden effort in this direction, I might by now have blossomed into a Rembrandt or a Landseer.

Amongst other incidents which occurred during this period of my life was one which it now almost makes me shudder to think of. I was commissioned by no less a personage than the late Mr. Pigott, of Parnell Commission notoriety, to illustrate for him a story of the broadest Irish humour. Little did I think when I entered his office in Abbey Street, Dublin, and had an interview with the genial and pleasant-looking little man with the eye-glass, that he would one day play so prominent a rôle in the Parliamentary drama, or that the weak little arm he extended to me was destined years afterwards to be the instrument of a tragedy. I can truly say, at all events, my recollection as a boy of sixteen of the great Times forger is by no means unfavourable, and he dwells in my memory as one of the most pleasant and genial of men. I ought, perhaps, to say that in feeling I was anything but a Nationalist, because in Ireland, generally speaking, you must be either black or white. But like a lawyer who takes his brief from every source, I never studied who my clients were when they required my juvenile services.

Although I was not of Irish parentage and did not lean towards Nationalism in politics, it was necessary to sympathise now and then with the down-trodden race. For instance, I remember that one evening a respectable-looking mechanic called at my fathers house and requested to see me. His manner was strange and mysterious, and as he wanted to see me alone, I took him into an anteroom, where, with my hand on the door handle and the other within easy distance of the bell, I asked the excitable-looking stranger the nature of his business. Pulling from his pocket a roll of one-pound Irish bank-notes, he thrust them into my hand, and besought me at the same time not to refuse the request he was about to make. An idea flashed through my mind that perhaps he had seen me coming out of the offices of the National Press, and had jumped to the conclusion that I could therefore be bought over to perpetrate some terrible political crime. I even imagined that in the roll of notes I should find the knife with which the fell deed had to be done. Seeing that I shrank from him, he seized hold of my arm, and, in a most pitiable voice, said:

"Don't, young sorr, refuse me what I am about to ask you. I'm only a working man, but here are all my savings, which you may take if you will just dhraw me a picter to be placed at the top of a complete set of photographs of our Irish leaders. I want Britannia at the head of the group, a bastely dhrunken old hag, wid her fut on the throat of the beautiful Erin, who is to be bound hand and fut wid chains, and being baten and starved. Thin I want prisons at the sides, showing the grand sons of Ould Oireland dying in their cells by torture, whilst a fine Oirish liberator wid dhrawn sword is just on the point of killing Britannia outright, and so saving his disthressful country."

About this time someone had been good enough to inform me that all black and white artists are in the habit of engraving their own work, and, religiously believing this, I duly provided myself with some engraving tools, bought some boxwood, a jeweller's eye-glass, and a sand bag, without which no engraver's table can be said to be complete.

Then, setting to work to practise the difficult art, I struggled on as best I could, until one fine day a professional engraver enlightened me upon the matter. I need scarcely say he went into fits of laughter when I told him that every artist was expected to be a Bewick, and he pointed out to me that not only do artists as a rule know very little about engraving, but in addition they have often only a limited knowledge of how to draw for engravers.

However, thinking I should better understand the difficulties of drawing for publishers if I first mastered the technical art of reproduction, with the assistance of the engraver aforesaid I rapidly acquired sufficient dexterity with the tools to engrave my own drawings, and this I continued to do until I left Dublin, at the age of nineteen. Since then I have never utilised one of my gravers, except to pick a lock or open a box of sardines. Nor is this to be wondered at, considering that one can make a drawing in an hour which takes a week to engrave, and that an engraver may take five guineas for his share of the work whilst an artist may get fifty. There is very little doubt, therefore, as to the reason why artists who can draw refrain from engraving their own work.

SKETCHES IN GALWAY.

Republished by permission of the proprietors of the "Illustrated London News."

In the studio of the engraver to whom I have above referred there hung a huge map of London, and as I used to pore over it I took many an imaginary walk down Fleet Street, many a canter in the Row, and many a voyage to Greenwich on a penny steamboat, before I bade adieu to "dear dirty Dublin" in the year 1873, and, as many have done before me, arrived in the "little village" in search of fame and wealth.

Just prior to my leaving Ireland for the land of my parents I met no less an editor than Tom Taylor, who was then the presiding genius of the Punch table, and he gave me every encouragement to hasten my migration. He, however, had just returned from the wilds of Connemara, and before setting my face in the direction of Holyhead he strongly advised me also to pay a visit to the trackless wastes of the Western country, for the purpose of committing to paper the lineaments of the natives indigenous to the soil. This I did a week or so before quitting the land of my birth, and the sketches I made upon that occasion formed part of my stock-in-trade when I arrived in London.

After making the accompanying page of studies, I strolled along the bank of the river; and while sketching some men breaking stones an incident happened which first aroused me to the fact that the lot of the sketching artist is not always a happy one. A fiend in human shape—an overbearing overseer—came up at the moment, and roundly abused the poor labourers for taking the "base Saxon's" coin. Inciting them to believe that I was a special informer from London, he laughed on my declaring that I was merely a novice, and informed me that I ought to be "dhrounded." He was about to suit the action to the word and pitch me into the salmon-stuffed river when he was stopped by the mediation of my models, and I escaped from the grip of the agitator. In due course I found myself in the Claddagh, a village of mud huts, which formed the frontispiece by John Leech to "A Little Tour in Ireland" by "An Oxonian," "a village of miserable cabins, the walls of mud and stone, and for the most part windowless, the floors damp and dirty, and the roofs a mass of rotten straw and weeds." Pigs and fowls mixed up with boats and fish refuse. Women old, dried and ugly; girls young, dark, of Spanish type, scantily dressed in bright-coloured short garments, all tattered and torn; and children grotesque beyond description. I sketch three members of one family clothed (!) in the three articles of attire discarded by their father—one claimed the coat, another the trousers, whilst the third had only a waistcoat. No doubt Leech had seen the same sixteen years before, when he was there; and if "the Oxonian," who survives him—Canon Hole, of Rochester—were to make another little tour in Ireland, he would find the Claddagh still a spot to give an Englishman "a new sensation." All I can say is, that having escaped a "dhrouning" in the river when in Galway in 1873, I have visited many countries and seen much filth and misery, but I have seen nothing approaching the sad squalor of the wild West of Ireland.

The majority of those I sketched were hardly human. Tom Taylor was right—"I would find such characters there not to be found in all the world over," and I haven't. The people got on my overstrung youthful nerves. I left the country the moment I had sufficient material for my sketches. I had shaken off the unpleasant feeling of being murdered in the river. I had survived living a week or two in the worst inns in the world. I had risked typhoid and every other disease fostered by the insanitary surroundings—for I had to hide myself in narrow turnings and obnoxious corners so as to sketch unseen, as the religion of the natives opposed any attempt to have themselves "dhrawn," believing that the destruction of their "pictur'" would be fatal to their souls! I had sketched the famous house in Deadman's Lane—and listened as I sketched it, in the falling shades of night, to the old, old story of Fitz-Stephen the Warden, who had lived there, and had in virtue of his office to assist at the hanging of his own son. And, when in the dark I was strolling back to my hotel, my reflections were suddenly interrupted by something powerful seizing me in a grip of iron round my leg. I was held as in a vice, and could hardly move, by what—a huge dog—a wolf? No, something heavier; something more hideous; something clothed! As I dragged it under a lamp I saw revealed a huge head, covered by a black skull cap—a man's head—a dwarf, muttering in Irish something I could not understand—except one word, "Judy! Judy! Judy!" It was a woman of extraordinary strength thus clasped on to me. I dragged her to the hotel door, where I engaged an interpreter in the shape of the "boots," and made a bargain with "Judy" to release me on my giving her one shilling, and to sit to me for this sketch for half-a-crown. I have still a lively recollection of the vice-like grip.

"JUDY," THE GALWAY DWARF.

My friend who had introduced me to the editor of Punch was a prominent city official, and entertainer in chief of all men of talent from London, and was also, like Tom Taylor, an author and dramatist; and when I was a boy I illustrated one of his first stories. He also introduced me behind the scenes at the old Theatre Royal. I recollect my boyish delight when one day I was on the stage during the rehearsal of the Italian opera. Shall I ever forget that treat? It was much greater in my eyes than the real performance later on. If my memory serves, "Don Giovanni" was the opera. One of the principals was suddenly taken ill, and this rehearsal was called for the benefit of the understudy. He was a dumpy, puffy little Italian, and played the heavy father. Madame Titiens was—well—the heavy daughter. In the first scene she has to throw herself upon her prostrate father. This is the incident I saw rehearsed: the little fat father lay on the dusty stage, with one eye on the O.P. side. As soon as the massive form of Titiens bore down upon him he rolled over and over out of the way. This pantomime highly amused all of us, the ever-jovial Titiens in particular, and she again and again rushed laughingly in, but with the same result.

The first actor I ever saw perform was Phelps, in "The Man of the World." If anything could disillusionise a youth regarding the romance of the theatre, that play surely would. Be it to my credit that my first impression was admiration for a fine—if dull—performance. From that day I have been a constant theatre-goer. If I am to believe the following anecdote, published in a Dublin paper a few years ago, I "did the theatre in style," and had an early taste which I did not possess for making jokes.

"The jarvey drove Harry Furniss, when a boy, down to the old Theatre Royal, Dublin. On the way there Jehu enquired of the budding artist whether it was true that the roof was provided with a tank whence every part of the building could be deluged, shower-bath fashion, if necessary. 'Yes,' replied Raphael junior; 'and, you see, I always bring an umbrella in case of fire.'"

PHELPS, THE FIRST ACTOR I SAW.

I may confess that I have only once appeared in theatricals, and that was in high comedy as a member of the Dublin Amateur Theatrical Society. The play was "She Stoops to Conquer," and I took the part of—think!—Mrs. Hardcastle. I was only seventeen, and very small for my age, so I owe any success I may have made to the costumier and wig-maker. The Tony Lumpkin was so excellent that he adopted the stage as his profession, and became a very popular comedian; and our Diggory is now a judge—"and a good judge too"—in the High Court.

It was on a bright, breezy morning late in July, 1873, I shook the dust of "dear dirty Dublin" off my feet. With the exception of the Welsh railways, the Irish are notoriously the slowest in the world, and on that particular morning the mail train seemed to my impatient mind to progress pig-ways. The engine was attached to the rear of the train and faced the station, so that when it began to pull it was only the "parvarsity in the baste" caused it to go in the opposite direction, towards Kingstown, in an erratic, spasmodic, and uncertain fashion, so that the eight miles journey seemed to me eighty. It was quite a tedious journey to Salthill and Blackrock. At the latter station I saw for the last time the porter famous for being the slave of habit. For years it had been his duty to call out the name of the station, "Blackrock! Blackrock! Blackrock!" In due course he was removed to Salthill station, on the same line, and well do I remember how he puzzled many a Saxon tourist by his calling out continually, "Blackrock—Salthill-I-mane! Blackrock—Salthill-I-mane!" No doubt the traveller put this chronic absent-mindedness down to "Irish humour." I must confess that I agree in a great measure with the opinion of the late T. W. Robertson (author of "Caste," "School," &c.), that the witticisms of Irish carmen and others are the ingenious inventions of Charles Lever, Samuel Lover, William Carleton, and other educated men.

MRS. HARDCASTLE. MR. HARRY FURNISS,

FROM AN EARLY SKETCH.

Dickens failed to see Irish humour, or in fact to understand what was meant by it. So when he was on tour with his readings a friend of mine, who was his host, in the North, undertook to initiate him into the mysteries of Irish wit. As a sample he gave Dickens the following: A definition of nothing—a footless stocking without a leg. This conveyed nothing whatever to the mind of the greatest of English humourists; but when my friend took him to a certain spot and showed him a wall built round a vacant space, and explained to him that the native masons were instructed to build a wall round an old ruined church to protect it, and pulled down the church for the material to build the wall, he laughed heartily, and acknowledged the Irish had a sense of humour after all—if not, a quaint absence of it.

To me so-called Irish wit is a curious combination not wholly dependent on humour, and frequently unconscious. There is a story that when Mr. Beerbohm Tree arrived in Dublin he was received by a crowd of his admirers, and jumping on to a car said to his jarvey, "Splendid reception that, driver!"

The jarvey thought a moment, and replied, "Maybe ye think so, but begorrah, it ain't a patch on the small-pox scare!" Was that meant?

The poor Saxon "towrist"—what he may suffer in the Emerald Isle! There is a story on record of three Irishmen rushing away from the race meeting at Punchestown to catch a train back to Dublin. At the moment a train from a long distance pulled up at the station, and the three men scrambled in. In the carriage was seated one other passenger. As soon as they had regained their breath, one said:

"Pat, have you got th' tickets?"

"What tickets? I've got me loife; I thought I'd have lost that gettin' in th' thrain. Have you got 'em, Moike?"

"Oi, begorrah, I haven't."

"Oh, we're all done for thin," said the third. "They'll charge us roight from the other soide of Oireland."

The old gentleman looked over his newspaper and said:

"You are quite safe, gintlemen; wait till we get to the next station."

They all three looked at each other. "Bedad, he's a directhor—we're done for now entoirely."

But as soon as the train pulled up the little gentleman jumped out and came back with three first-class tickets. Handing them to the astonished strangers, he said, "Whist, I'll tell ye how I did it. I wint along the thrain—'Tickets plaze, tickets plaze,' I called, and these belong to three Saxon towrists in another carriage."

On the morning I left Ireland to seek my fortune in London I had a youthful notion that, once on the mainland of my parents' country, St. Paul's and the smoke of London would be visible; but we had passed through the Menai tunnel, grazed Conway Castle walls, and skirted miles of the Welsh rock-bound coast, and yet no St. Paul's was visible to my naked eye which was plastered against the window-pane of the carriage. The other eye, clothed and in its right mind, inspected the carriage and discovered that there were two other occupants—a lady and her maid. These interesting passengers had recovered from the effects of the Channel passage, and were eating their lunch. The lady politely offered me some sandwiches. "No, thanks," I replied; "I shall lunch in London." This reminds me of a story I heard when I was in America, of two young English ladies arriving at New York. They immediately entered the Northern Express at the West Central. About 7 o'clock in the evening they arrived at Niagara—half an hour or so is given to the passengers to alight and look at the wonderful Falls. The gentleman who told me the story informed me that as the two ladies were getting back into the carriage he asked them if they were going to dine at once. They, ignorant of the vastness of the "gre—e—at country Amuraka," replied, "Oh, no, thanks, we are going to dine with our friends when we arrive. It can't be long now, we have been travelling so fast all the day!"

"And may I ask, young ladies, where your friends live?"

"We are going to an uncle who has been taken suddenly ill in San Francisco."

These young ladies would have had to wait certainly five days for their dinner—I only five hours.

The strange lady and I conversed a great deal on various topics. By degrees she discovered that I was a young artist, friendless, and on his way to the great city to battle with fortune. I may have told her of my history, of my youthful ambitions and my professional plans—anyway she told me of hers, and, while her maid was lazily slumbering, she confessed to me her troubles.

"My story," she said, "is a sad one. I am of good family, and I married a well-known professional London man. He turned out to be a gambler, and ran through my money, and I returned to my parents. I have left them this morning again, and, like you, I am now on my way to London to start in life, and if possible make my own living. You see my appearance is not altogether unprepossessing" (she was tall, singularly handsome, a refined woman of style) … I bowed … "Well, I am also fortunate in having a good voice, it is well-trained, and I am going to London to sing as a paid professional in the houses in which I have formerly been a guest."

I sympathised with her, and she continued, weeping, to relate to me events of her unhappy married life until we arrived at Euston. I saw her and her maid into a four-wheeler, and I saw their luggage on the top. She gave me her card with her parents' address in London written on it, and requested that I would write to her at that address, as she would like to hear how I got on in London. I never saw her again. But I did write home, and found there was such a lady, her family were well-known society people in Ireland, and that her marriage had not been a happy one.

After three years in London I ran over to Ireland to see my parents. On my return I seemed to miss the charming companion of my journey over the same ground three years previously. Two uninteresting men were in the carriage: a typical German professor on tour, and communicative; and a typical English gentleman, uncommunicative. As the journey was a long one the German smoked, ate and drank himself to sleep, and after some hours the other man and I exchanged a word. The fact is I thought I knew his face—I told him so. He thought he knew mine. "Had we gone to school together?" "No." He was at least ten years my senior. It happened he had been to school with my half-brother (my father was married twice—I am the youngest son of his second family). We chatted freely about each other's family and on various topics, including the sleeping Teuton in the corner. I incidentally mentioned my last journey. The lady interested him, so I told him of the way in which she confessed to me. I waxed eloquent over her wrongs. He got still more excited as I described her husband as she described him to me; and as the train rolled into Euston, he said, "Well, you know who I am, I know who you are—I'll tell you one thing more: that woman's story is perfectly true—I'm her husband!"

That was one of the most extraordinary coincidences which ever happened to me. Three years after meeting the wife, over the same journey, at the same time of the year, I meet the husband; and I had never been the journey in the meantime.