"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