Forty Years of 'Spy'

"I'm not coming here to have the Queen's uniform insulted!" and looking deeper into the drawing: "and my nose doesn't turn round the corner like that."

I expostulated, and presently he stood once more. After the same brief interval he bounced over again.

"I won't have the Queen's uniform ridiculed. My ears are not so large as that—you must cut a bit off them...."

At this I retired to the sofa, tired out, and determined to settle my recalcitrant soldier.

"Look here," I began, "I didn't ask you here to teach me my business. I really can't continue under your instructions."

"Oh, very well," he said, changing his tone, "I'm sure we're both hungry, and I think you'd better come with me and have a bit of lunch at my club, and we'll settle this after."

I agreed, thinking perhaps he had been out of humour. We had an excellent lunch and parted good friends. Before leaving he said, "I have no doubt you'll see there was something in my suggestion, and I'll come again to-morrow."

I finished the drawing, without further discussion, but he did not leave my studio looking quite happy, and he carefully ascertained before getting the address of the lithographers who were going to reproduce the drawing. I heard afterwards that he lost very little time in paying them a visit and begging them to cut a considerable piece off the ears, which they informed him was impossible as they had no right of alterations, and it would be quite against their principles.

An officer in my unhappy subject's regiment said to me afterwards, that the result was greatly appreciated at Aldershot, but that they were all greatly disappointed to find that I had flattered him!

My caricatures are frequently described as "gross" by the wife who is hurt by the pencil that points a joke at her husband's peculiarities; or she says, "Why don't you do my husband as you did So-and-so!" (referring to a decided and unsparing caricature). I have been described as unkind; or sometimes when, carried away by a fascinating subject, I have perhaps not sufficiently controlled my pencil, I have been accused of "brutality." The truth is that in working one may not intend anything personal, or for one moment imagine any one could take the result seriously; but the finished work, made with a detailed, and possibly inhuman devotion to one's own conception, strikes the beholder in a mood entirely different. Very few of those who admire a caricature realize that its satire lies, not in any personal venom, but in the artist's detached observation of life and character. In the early days of Vanity Fair people viewed caricature as something entirely new, and in the light of this novelty viewed it in the right spirit; later they grew particular, and, as they frequently paid (from which I did not benefit), an entirely new type of subject came to me; it was as though a spirit of commercialism crept between me and my sitters.

A subject whom I strongly caricatured, pleased me by saying when introduced to him, "No man is worth that (snapping his fingers) if he can't join in a laugh against himself."

I remember going to lunch with a very rich man (for the purpose of studying him), who would insist on looking at my rough notes in spite of my protestations to the effect that they were only notes, not drawings. He became highly incensed.

"I may be stoutish," he exclaimed, "but I'm not a fat, dumpish figure like that. Now wouldn't it be a good and a new idea if you were to make me different. You see my friends know me as a short, round man, it would be so funny and quite a novelty if you were to make me tall and thin. Now you think it well over—it would be quite a departure in caricature."

I intimated that I thought the idea was rather far-fetched and that it was possible that his friends would prefer him as nature had made him.

"If you want to please me, you must make me tall," he said. "I'll come to your studio and pay you a visit and perhaps buy some of your work—if you satisfy me in this respect."

I told him I was not accustomed to be bribed in that manner and wished I had not accepted his hospitality. There are people who think they can do anything by bribery. They call at one's studio, and hint that one shall paint a portrait of them and go as far as to point out how it shall be done, and what the price shall be. Others, when one has done a mere drawing of them, imagine that they have been tremendously caricatured and complain bitterly.

If it had not been a question of time and money, I would not have encouraged sitters in my studio at all. When I became pressed for time, however, it was impossible to seek my subjects, especially when, with the exception of men of definite public position, I was not always sure of finding them. One interesting point in connection with the men whom one finds only in such places as the House of Commons, is the fact that one is then at the mercy of the lighting of the building. This frequently accounts for bad portraits and unrecognizable caricatures, for lighting falsifies extraordinarily.

Of course I had innumerable sitters who were delightful in every way, and many who, if they were peculiar, were otherwise good sorts; but I am chiefly concerned at this moment with the strange stories of the exceptional cases that have astonished me from time to time. A peculiarity of some of my sitters in which I have rarely found an exception, is as to their professed ability to stand. I do not like to tire my sitters, and I usually tell them I am afraid they will find a position wearisome, which they deny, telling me at the same time that standing for hours is not in the least tedious to them. Half an hour goes by—and they start to sigh and fidget, and presently give in, and finally confess they had not expected it to be such an ordeal—and always with the air of having remarked something entirely original. I have noticed, too, the brightness of step with which my sitters enter my studio, and, after a long sitting, the revived brightness brought about by the mention of lunch.

Bradlaugh, who was a willing subject, asked me upon entering my studio rather breezily whether I wished him to stand upon "'is 'ead or 'is 'eels," so he quite appreciated the situation.

There are people who become nervous about their clothes. I have known a peer object to spats because they did not look nice in a picture. One man who was a noted dandy grew very concerned about his trousers. After making innumerable efforts to persuade him to stand still, I was obliged to wait while he explained about his clothes.

"My trousers are usually perfect, and without a crease," he said, bending to look at them, while he bagged out the knees and found creases in every direction. The more creases he saw the more concerned he became and looked at them in grieved surprise as though he had never seen them before.

A sitter who worried over his clothes came to me in the form of a gentleman from Islington, who wore the most extraordinary trousers, for which he continually apologized, and seemed quite oblivious of the fact that I was drawing him in profile. Every other moment he would turn full face to me with some remark ending with another apology for his trousers (which reminded me of the first Lord Lytton's, they were so wide at the foot).

"Please remember I am drawing you in profile," I would interject occasionally, as he turned his face to me, and each time he would try to remember, apologize for his nether garments, and his forgetfulness, raising his hat and bowing to me at every apology. Why he was so conscious of his clothes I do not know, unless he found their cut necessary to Islington.

À propos of clothes. After being at Tattersall's one day, I went with Mr. Sterling Stuart to lunch, and afterwards we proceeded to his dressing-room to choose a suit which he was to wear when I drew his caricature. As he gave me a free hand I found one which attracted my eye immediately; it was an old tweed with a good broad, brown stripe, and I felt there was no question to which was the best for my purpose.

He appeared the next day in my studio looking the pink of perfection, and as I surveyed him I suddenly realized with dismay that his trousers did not match the incomparable coat. I drew his attention to what I imagined was an oversight.

"Well, my boy! do you think," he said, "that the man who built that coat could have lived to build the trousers too?"

Not long after my cartoon of the Prince of Wales appeared, I was passing by a tailor's shop and I saw a reproduction in the window. Feeling slightly curious as to its exact object there, I went to look, and on closer examination found that the ingenious tailor was using it as a form of advertisement, and underneath was written:—

"The very best coat that I've seen the Prince wear
Was drawn by the artist of Vanity Fair."

The sensitiveness of people with a tendency towards corpulency is also at times provocative of trouble. Sir Watkins William Wynn, who sat for me on one occasion, was quite a portly old gentleman, and, presumably in order to conceal his stoutness from my notice, he buttoned his coat before taking up his position. As an inevitable result, a number of well marked creases made their appearance in the region of his watch-chain, and these I naturally included in my drawing. When he subsequently saw the latter he refused at first to believe that so many creases existed, but after I had finally convinced him of their presence he went straight off to his tailor's and bestowed the blame on him. No doubt the tailor profited in the long run; however, I fancy, as a matter of fact, that I have been of service to a good many tailors in my time. For many of the notabilities I have cartooned seemed altogether unaware of their habilatory shortcomings till they were confronted with them in my drawings.

Self-conceit is the keynote of the story of a noble lord who called upon me at my studio with a view to my "putting him in Vanity Fair." I was very busy at the time, and had consequently to suggest the postponing his appointment till a later hour, whereupon he took great offence and refused to return at all. But I was determined he should not escape me, and I took the opportunity at an evening party to study him thoroughly. When his caricature appeared he was so chagrined that he dyed his hair, which was white, to a muddy brown, in order that he should not be recognized.

An old gentleman of great position in the world who came to my studio, had a very red nose. After the sitting, as he was leaving, he said rather shyly:—

"I hope you will not be too generous with your carmine, as it might give the public a wrong impression, and it is an unfortunate fact that both my grandfathers, my father, and myself all have had red noses, and all are total abstainers."

Another subject was restless to a degree, and walked about the room instead of permitting me to draw him.

"Hope you won't keep me very long," he said, "I'm never still for a moment, I'm always walking about my room. You'd better do me with a book in my hand as though I were dictating to my clerk."

I was rather disconcerted, for this was not to be a caricature, but a characteristic portrait.

"But," I said, "your friends won't know you so. Anyway, go on walking."

I made little notes as I watched him, and after he had been walking some time I began to hope that he would be getting tired, when he stopped short and said:—

"No! You'd better do me with my hand on my waistcoat."

"Very well," I replied, "we'll begin again."

In this position I began a drawing of him, when he decided it would not do.

"Oh, well," I said, "sometimes you sit down, don't you? And it seems to me a very natural thing to do. Suppose I draw you that way?"

Mark Twain was another subject who came under the category of the "walkers." I had a good deal of difficulty in getting hold of him, but when I eventually caught him at his hotel, I found him decidedly impatient.

"Now you mustn't think I'm going to sit or stand for you," he told me, "for once I am up I go on."

The whole time I watched him he paced the room like a caged animal, smoking a very large calabash pipe and telling amusing stories. The great humorist wore a white flannel suit and told me in the course of conversation that he had a dress suit made all in white which he wore at dinner-parties. He had just taken his Honorary Degree at Oxford, and he rather wanted to put his gown on, but I preferred to "do" him in the more characteristic and widely-known garb. He struck me as being a very sensitive man, whose nervous pacings during my interview were the result of a highly strung temperament. The only pacifying influence seemed to be his enormous pipe which he never ceased to smoke.

When I think of all the good stories I have missed when I have been studying these really humorous people, I regret that my attention must be centred on my work regardless of the delightful personalities which sometimes it has been my good fortune to meet.

I should like to be able to wind up my sitters like mechanical toys, to be amusing to order. What a lot of trouble it would save!

A clever amateur caricaturist once wanted me to paint his portrait, and during his sittings gave me his views upon caricature. He informed me that he had no compunction whatever in doing a caricature upon the physical defects of his subjects, and that if, for instance, a man had … well … a decidedly large stomach, he would not hesitate to increase it.

After several sittings I made one of the best drawings and characteristic portraits I have ever done, as he appealed to me as a subject, for he was individual in his dress, and his hat had a character which is rare nowadays.

But during the progress of the work, he was self-conscious and awkward, which is a result curious in a man who had a clever gift of caricature, himself. However, I did not exaggerate my work to the extent of producing a caricature, and gave him more credit than to expect me to flatter him. But it seemed that I expressed his bulk more truthfully than was tactful, for it appeared he had undergone a dieting process and considered himself quite sylph-like in consequence. When the drawing was in the hands of the lithographers I went down to see the proof, and to my surprise this man turned up. He appeared to be very friendly, shook hands, and expressed the usual polite banalities. I was a trifle puzzled, but I heard afterwards that he went to the office the next day with his lawyer to look at the drawing, and said to him:—