William Frith - John Leech, His Life and Work, Vol. 2 [of 2]

"Now, anyone who looks over Mr. Leech's portfolio must see that the social pictures which he gives us are authentic. What comfortable little drawing-rooms and dining-rooms, what snug libraries, we enter! What fine young gentlemanly wags they are, those beautiful little dandies, who wake up gouty old grandpapa to ring the bell; who decline aunt's pudding and custards, saying that they will reserve themselves for anchovy-toast with the claret; who talk together behind ball-room doors, where Fred whispers Charley, pointing to a dear little partner seven years old, 'My dear Charley, she has very much gone off; you should have seen that girl last season!'

"Look well at the economy of the famous Mr. Briggs. How snug, quiet, and appropriate all the appointments are! What a comfortable, neat, clean, middle-class house Briggs' is (in the Bayswater suburb of London, we should guess from the sketches of the surrounding scenery)! What a good stable he has, with a loose-box for those celebrated hunters which he rides! How pleasant, clean, and warm his breakfast-table looks! What a trim maid brings in the boots that horrify Mrs. B.! What a snug dressing-room he has, complete in all its appointments, and in which he appears trying on that delightful hunting-cap which Mrs. Briggs flings into the fire! How cosy all the Briggs party seem in their drawing-room, Briggs reading a treatise on dog-breaking by a lamp, mamma and grannie with their respective needlework, the children clustering round a big book of prints – a great book of prints such as this before us, at this season, must make thousands of children happy by as many firesides! The inner life of all these people is represented. Leech draws them as naturally as Teniers depicts Dutch boors, or Morland pigs and stables. It is your house and mine; we are looking at everybody's family circle. Our boys, coming from school, give themselves such airs, the young scapegraces! Our girls, going to parties, are so tricked out by fond mammas – a social history of London in the middle of the nineteenth century. As such future students – lucky they to have a book so pleasant! – will regard these pages; even the mutations of fashion they may follow here, if they be so inclined. Mr. Leech has as fine an eye for tailory and millinery as for horseflesh. How they change, these cloaks and bonnets! How we have to pay milliners' bills from year to year! Where are those prodigious chatelaines of 1850, which no lady could be without? Where are those charming waistcoats, those stunning waistcoats, which our young girls used to wear a few seasons back, and which caused 'Gus, in the sweet little sketch of 'La Mode,' to ask Ellen for her tailor's address? 'Gus is a young warrior by this time, very likely facing the enemy at Inkerman; and pretty Ellen, and that love of a sister of hers, are married and happy, let us hope, superintending one of those delightful nursery scenes which our artist depicts with such tender humour. Fortunate artist, indeed! You see he must have been bred at a good public school, and that he has ridden many a good horse in his day; paid, no doubt out of his own pocket, for the originals of those lovely caps and bonnets; and watched paternally the ways, smiles, frolics, and slumbers of his favourite little people.

"As you look at the drawings, secrets come out of them – private jokes, as it were, imparted to you by the author for your special delectation. How remarkably, for instance, has Mr. Leech observed the hairdressers of the present age! Mr. Tongs, whom that hideous old bald woman who ties on her bonnet at the glass informs that 'she has used the whole bottle of Balm of California, but her hair comes off yet' – you can see the bears' grease not only on Tongs' head, but on his hands, which he is clapping clammily together. Remark him who is telling his client 'there is cholera in the hair,' and that lucky rogue whom that young lady bids to cut off a long thick piece – for somebody, doubtless. All these men are different and delightfully natural and absurd. Why should hairdressing be an absurd profession?

"The amateur will remark what an excellent part hands play in Mr. Leech's pieces; his admirable actors use them with perfect naturalness. Look at Betty putting down the urn; at cook laying her hands upon the kitchen-table, whilst the policeman grumbles at the cold meat. They are cooks' and housemaids' hands without mistake, and not without a certain beauty, too. That bald old lady tying on her bonnet at Tongs' has hands which you see are trembling. Watch the fingers of the two old harridans who are talking scandal; for what long years they have pointed out holes in their neighbours' dresses and mud on their flounces!

"'Here's a go! I've lost my diamond ring!'

"As the dustman utters this pathetic cry and looks at his hands, you burst out laughing. These are among the little points of humour. One could indicate hundreds of such as one turns over the pleasant pages.

"There is a little snob, or gent, whom we all of us know, who wears little tufts on his little chin, outrageous pins and pantaloons, smokes cigars on tobacconists' counters, sucks his cane in the streets, struts about with Mrs. Snob and the baby (the latter an immense woman, whom Snob nevertheless bullies), who is a favourite abomination of Leech, and pursued by that savage humourist into a thousand of his haunts. There he is choosing at the tailor's – such waistcoats! Yonder he is giving a shilling to the sweeper who calls him 'Capting.' Now he is offering a paletot to a huge giant who is going out in the rain. They don't know their own pictures very likely; if they did, they would have a meeting, and thirty or forty of them would be deputed to thrash Mr. Leech. One feels a pity for the poor little bucks.

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