The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1, Harry Furniss [digital book reader txt] 📗

on a penny steamboat, before I bade adieu to "dear dirty Dublin" in the year 1873, and, as many have done before me, arrived in the "little village" in search of fame and wealth.

Just prior to my leaving Ireland for the land of my parents I met no less an editor than Tom Taylor, who was then the presiding genius of the Punch table, and he gave me every encouragement to hasten my migration. He, however, had just returned from the wilds of Connemara, and before setting my face in the direction of Holyhead he strongly advised me also to pay a visit to the trackless wastes of the Western country, for the purpose of committing to paper the lineaments of the natives indigenous to the soil. This I did a week or so before quitting the land of my birth, and the sketches I made upon that occasion formed part of my stock-in-trade when I arrived in London.

After making the accompanying page of studies, I strolled along the bank of the river; and while sketching some men breaking stones an incident happened which first aroused me to the fact that the lot of the sketching artist is not always a happy one. A fiend in human shape—an overbearing overseer—came up at the moment, and roundly abused the poor labourers for taking the "base Saxon's" coin. Inciting them to believe that I was a special informer from London, he laughed on my declaring that I was merely a novice, and informed me that I ought to be "dhrounded." He was about to suit the action to the word and pitch me into the salmon-stuffed river when he was stopped by the mediation of my models, and I escaped from the grip of the agitator. In due course I found myself in the Claddagh, a village of mud huts, which formed the frontispiece by John Leech to "A Little Tour in Ireland" by "An Oxonian," "a village of miserable cabins, the walls of mud and stone, and for the most part windowless, the floors damp and dirty, and the roofs a mass of rotten straw and weeds." Pigs and fowls mixed up with boats and fish refuse. Women old, dried and ugly; girls young, dark, of Spanish type, [Pg 22] scantily dressed in bright-coloured short garments, all tattered and torn; and children grotesque beyond description. I sketch three members of one family clothed (!) in the three articles of attire discarded by their father—one claimed the coat, another the trousers, whilst the third had only a waistcoat. No doubt Leech had seen the same sixteen years before, when he was there; and if "the Oxonian," who survives him—Canon Hole, of Rochester—were to make another little tour in Ireland, he would find the Claddagh still a spot to give an Englishman "a new sensation." All I can say is, that having escaped a "dhrouning" in the river when in Galway in 1873, I have visited many countries and seen much filth and misery, but I have seen nothing approaching the sad squalor of the wild West of Ireland.

The majority of those I sketched were hardly human. Tom Taylor was right—"I would find such characters there not to be found in all the world over," and I haven't. The people got on my overstrung youthful nerves. I left the country the moment I had sufficient material for my sketches. I had shaken off the unpleasant feeling of being murdered in the river. I had survived living a week or two in the worst inns in the world. I had risked typhoid and every other disease fostered by the insanitary surroundings—for I had to hide myself in narrow turnings and obnoxious corners so as to sketch unseen, as the religion of the natives opposed any attempt to have themselves "dhrawn," believing that the destruction of their "pictur'" would be fatal to their souls! I had sketched the famous house in Deadman's Lane—and listened as I sketched it, in the falling shades of night, to the old, old story of Fitz-Stephen the Warden, who had lived there, and had in virtue of his office to assist at the hanging of his own son. And, when in the dark I was strolling back to my hotel, my reflections were suddenly interrupted by something powerful seizing me in a grip of iron round my leg. I was held as in a vice, and could hardly move, by what—a huge dog—a wolf? No, something heavier; something more hideous; something clothed! As I dragged it under a lamp I saw revealed a huge head, covered by a black skull cap—a man's head—a dwarf, muttering in Irish something I could not [Pg 23] understand—except one word, "Judy! Judy! Judy!" It was a woman of extraordinary strength thus clasped on to me. I dragged her to the hotel door, where I engaged an interpreter in the shape of the "boots," and made a bargain with "Judy" to release me on my giving her one shilling, and to sit to me for this sketch for half-a-crown. I have still a lively recollection of the vice-like grip.

My friend who had introduced me to the editor of Punch was a prominent city official, and entertainer in chief of all men of talent from "JUDY," THE GALWAY DWARF. London, and was also, like Tom Taylor, an author and dramatist; and when I was a boy I illustrated one of his first stories. He also introduced me behind the scenes at the old Theatre Royal. I recollect my boyish delight when one day I was on the stage during the rehearsal of the Italian opera. Shall I ever forget that treat? It was much greater in my eyes than the real performance later on. If my memory serves, "Don Giovanni" was the opera. One of the principals was suddenly taken ill, and this rehearsal was called for the benefit of the understudy. He was a dumpy, puffy little Italian, and played the heavy father. Madame Titiens was—well—the heavy daughter. In the first scene she has to throw herself upon her prostrate father. This is the incident I saw rehearsed: the little fat father lay on the dusty stage, with one eye on the O.P. side. As soon as the massive form of Titiens bore down upon him he rolled over and over out of the way. This pantomime highly amused all of us, the ever-jovial Titiens in particular, and she again and again rushed laughingly in, but with the same result.

The first actor I ever saw perform was Phelps, in "The Man of the World." If anything could disillusionise a youth regarding the romance of the theatre, that play surely would. Be it to [Pg 24] my credit that my first impression was admiration for a fine—if dull—performance. From that day I have been a constant theatre-goer. If I am to believe the following anecdote, published in a Dublin paper a few years ago, I "did the theatre in style," and had an early taste which I did not possess for making jokes.

"The jarvey drove Harry Furniss, when a boy, down to the old Theatre Royal, Dublin. On the way there Jehu enquired of the budding artist whether it was true that the roof was provided with a tank whence every part of the building could be deluged, shower-bath fashion, if necessary. 'Yes,' replied Raphael junior; 'and, you see, I always bring an umbrella in case of fire.'"