John Leechs Pictures of Life and Character | Page 7

he rides in the Park; has his stall at the Opera; is
constantly dining out at clubs and in private society; and goes every
night in the season to balls and parties, where you see the most
beautiful women possible. He is welcomed amongst his new friends the
great; though, like the good old English gentleman of the song, he does
not forget the small. He pats the heads of street boys and girls; relishes
the jokes of Jack the costermonger and Bob the dustman;
good-naturedly spies out Molly the cook flirting with policeman X, or
Mary the nursemaid as she listens to the fascinating guardsman. He
used rather to laugh at guardsmen, "plungers," and other military men;
and was until latter days very contemptuous in his behavior towards
Frenchmen. He has a natural antipathy to pomp, and swagger, and
fierce demeanor. But now that the guardsmen are gone to war, and the
dandies of "The Rag"--dandies no more--are battling like heroes at
Balaklava and Inkermann* by the side of their heroic allies, Mr.
Punch's laughter is changed to hearty respect and enthusiasm. It is not
against courage and honor he wars: but this great moralist--must it be
owned?--has some popular British prejudices, and these led him in
peace time to laugh at soldiers and Frenchmen. If those hulking
footmen who accompanied the carriages to the opening of Parliament
the other day, would form a plush brigade, wear only gunpowder in
their hair, and strike with their great canes on the enemy, Mr. Punch
would leave off laughing at Jeames, who meanwhile remains among us,
to all outward appearance regardless of satire, and calmly consuming
his five meals per diem. Against lawyers, beadles, bishops and clergy,
and authorities, Mr. Punch is still rather bitter. At the time of the Papal
aggression he was prodigiously angry; and one of the chief misfortunes
which happened to him at that period was that, through the violent
opinions which he expressed regarding the Roman Catholic hierarchy,
he lost the invaluable services, the graceful pencil, the harmless wit, the
charming fancy of Mr. Doyle. Another member of Mr. Punch's cabinet,
the biographer of Jeames, the author of the "Snob Papers," resigned his

functions on account of Mr. Punch's assaults upon the present Emperor
of the French nation, whose anger Jeames thought it was unpatriotic to
arouse. Mr. Punch parted with these contributors: he filled their places
with others as good. The boys at the railroad stations cried Punch just
as cheerily, and sold just as many numbers, after these events as before.
* This was written in 1854.
There is no blinking the fact that in Mr. Punch's cabinet John Leech is
the right-hand man. Fancy a number of Punch without Leech's pictures!
What would you give for it? The learned gentlemen who write the work
must feel that, without him, it were as well left alone. Look at the rivals
whom the popularity of Punch has brought into the field; the direct
imitators of Mr. Leech's manner--the artists with a manner of their
own--how inferior their pencils are to his in humor, in depicting the
public manners, in arresting, amusing the nation. The truth, the strength,
the free vigor, the kind humor, the John Bull pluck and spirit of that
hand are approached by no competitor. With what dexterity he draws a
horse, a woman, a child! He feels them all, so to speak, like a man.
What plump young beauties those are with which Mr. Punch's chief
contributor supplies the old gentleman's pictorial harem! What famous
thews and sinews Mr. Punch's horses have, and how Briggs, on the
back of them, scampers across country! You see youth, strength,
enjoyment, manliness in those drawings, and in none more so, to our
thinking, than in the hundred pictures of children which this artist loves
to design. Like a brave, hearty, good-natured Briton, he becomes quite
soft and tender with the little creatures, pats gently their little golden
heads, and watches with unfailing pleasure their ways, their sports,
their jokes, laughter, caresses. Enfans terribles come home from Eton;
young Miss practising her first flirtation; poor little ragged Polly
making dirt-pies in the gutter, or staggering under the weight of Jacky,
her nursechild, who is as big as herself--all these little ones, patrician
and plebeian, meet with kindness from this kind heart, and are watched
with curious nicety by this amiable observer.
We remember, in one of those ancient Gilray portfolios, a print which
used to cause a sort of terror in us youthful spectators, and in which the
Prince of Wales (his Royal Highness was a Foxite then) was
represented as sitting alone in a magnificent hall after a voluptuous
meal, and using a great steel fork in the guise of a toothpick. Fancy the

first young gentleman