The Confessions of a Caricaturist (Vol. 1&2). Furniss Harry

by Mr. M. H. Spielmann. My skit, it is needless to add, was very popular with the postmen. They showed their gratitude by saving many a misdirected letter. A letter addressed "Harry Furniss, London," has frequently found me, without the loss of a post.

      SPECIMEN OF MR. LINLEY SAMBOURNE'S ENVELOPES TO ME.

      I signed a certain number, which sold at 10s. 6d. each, and were bought up principally by the members of the Philatelic Society.

      CHEQUE FOR 5½D. PASSED THROUGH TWO BANKS AND PAID. I SIGNED IT backwards, AND IT WAS CANCELLED BY CLERK backwards.

      Perhaps the publication of this "Post Office Jumble" card was also the cause of the puzzled postmen taking the trouble to decipher and deliver the far more amusing artistic jokes of that irrepressible joker, Mr. Linley Sambourne. By his permission I here publish a page, a selection of the envelopes he has sent me from time to time.

      It is bad enough purposely to puzzle the overworked letter-carriers—they are too often tried by unintentional touches of humour emanating from the most innocent and unsuspected members of the public—but I confess that I was once the innocent cause of Mr. Sambourne trying the same thing on with the overworked bank clerk.

      I sent my Punch friend a cheque, here reproduced, for the sum of ½d., payable to "Lynnlay Sam Bourne, Esqre," signed SIR HENRY IRVING WRITES HIS NAME BACKWARDS. by me backwards, crossed "Don't you wish you may get it and go." Sambourne endorsed it "L. Sam. Bourne," and sent it to his bank. The clerk went one better, and wrote "Cancelled" backwards across my reversed signature. It passed through my bank, and the money was paid. This is probably unique in the history of banking.

      SIR HENRY IRVING'S ATTEMPT.

      A propos of writing backwards, in days when artists made their drawings on wood everything of course had to be reversed, and writing backwards became quite easy. To this day I can write backwards nearly as quickly as I write in the ordinary way. One night at supper I was explaining this, and furthermore told my friends that they themselves could write backwards—in fact, they could not avoid doing so. Not of course on the table, as I was doing, but by placing the sheet of paper against the table underneath, and writing with the point upwards. Perhaps my reader will try—and see the effect. For encouragement here are a few of the first attempts on that particular evening.

      MR. J. L. TOOLE'S FIRST ATTEMPT.

      A few years ago a banquet was given at the Mansion House to the representatives of French art; several English painters and others interested in art were invited to meet them. Previous to being presented to the Lord Mayor, every guest was requested to sign an autograph album—an unusual proceeding, I think, at a City dinner. Were I Lord Mayor I would compel my guests to sign their names—not on arrival, but when leaving the Mansion House, and thus possess an autograph album of erratic graphology, and one worth studying. In company with my friend Mr. Whitworth Wallis, the curator of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, I entered the Mansion House, when we were immediately accosted by a powdered flunkey in gorgeous uniform, in possession of the autograph album, who presented a truly magnificent pen at us, and in peremptory tones demanded our life or our signatures. Whitworth Wallis wrote his first, with a dash and confidence. I stood by and admired. "Oh," I said, taking the pen, "that's not half a dash; let me show you mine."

      MR. J. L. TOOLE'S SECOND ATTEMPT.

      Jeames, in taking the pen from me, looked condescendingly over the page, and with the air of a justice delivering judgment said to me:

      "Beaten 'im by hinches, sir. Beaten 'im by hinches!"

      Months after that I gave an entertainment one evening at Woolwich. My audience was principally composed of Arsenal hands. On leaving the platform I was taken into the Athletic Club rooms, and asked to sign their autograph book and say a "few words" to the members. The few words consisted of the "record" I had made in the signing match I had with Mr. Wallis at the Mansion House—an incident which was brought to my mind suddenly when I took the pen in my hand. It so happened that Whitworth Wallis, who is a well-known lecturer on art matters, was on that same night lecturing in the North of England, and as he left the platform at the same hour as I at Woolwich, he was, like me, asked to sign an autograph book, and told the very same story to his friends in the North as I was telling under exactly similar circumstances, the same evening, at the same hour, in the South. Neither of us knew that the other was lecturing that night. It is not by any means a usual thing to be asked to sign a club album, and Wallis and I had not met or corresponded since the evening at the Mansion House.

      After working many years for the Illustrated London News, I became a contributor to the Graphic, and for that journal wrote and illustrated a series of supplements upon "Life in Parliament"; but from this time forward it would be difficult to name any illustrated paper with which I have not at some time or other been connected. For instance, the Yorkshire Post a few years ago started a halfpenny evening paper, and sent their manager down to me to ask my honorarium to illustrate the first few numbers with character sketches of the members of the British Association, who were holding their meetings that week in Leeds. This was a happy thought, as the "British Asses," as they are too familiarly called, sent these first numbers of the paper all over the country; the new ship had something to start upon, and is now a prosperous concern. There are various stories about the sum I received for this work. It was a large sum for England, where enterprise of this kind is very rare. I was "billed" all over the town as if I were a Patti or Paderewski, and telegrams were sent to the London papers by the special reporters announcing the terms upon which I was at work; altogether it was a bit of Yankee booming that would have made a Harmsworth or a Newnes green with envy.

[1] "The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll," by Stuart Dodgson Collingwood (Fisher Unwin).