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