Harry Furniss

“ So is it in the publishing world.
It is the isolated editor, without the machinery of a big office, or the head of the man of commerce,—if he stops, from whatever cause, his one effort is the failure! The "successful publisher" stops a dozen new ventures in the same time, and he is still considered successful. A publisher is very much like a conjuror: he must start two or three tricks, so that if one is likely to go wrong he can draw the attention of the public off it by another, and the first is quickly dropped or reintroduced under another name. ”

“ A harassed leader, an ambitious Opposition, the balance of power resting in the hands of the Irish, divided amongst themselves, a new and probably noisy party, boredom increased, faddism intensified—such are the ingredients of the new House; and with little spice thrown in in the shape of a revived morality scandal, the new Parliament promises to be a hotch-potch of surprises. I myself take no side in politics, and am glad to say that I have numerous friends in all parties. ”

“ To sail out of harbour on a Friday was unheard of. In these days of science, days in which steam has driven the old frigate-rigged sailing ships from the seas, one would have thought that superstition would have vanished with the old hulks, and that in the floating palaces crossing the Atlantic, in which longshoremen take the place of old-time sea-dogs, charms and omens would have lost their power. Yet sailor superstitions are as hard to kill even in these gorgeous up-to-date liners as it is to exterminate the rats in the hold or the cockroaches in the larder. ”

“ I am told a Japanese artist who wishes to study a particular flower, for instance, travels to the part of the country where it is to be found; he takes no photographic camera, no superb sketching pad or box of paints, but he lives by the plant, watches day by day the flower grow, blossom, and decay, under every condition, and mentally notes every detail, so that ever afterwards he can paint that flower in every possible way with facility and knowledge. I have myself treated Mr. Gladstone as that Japanese artist treats the beautiful flower. ”

“ Surely it is not too much to ask, even for a caricaturist to ask—for such he somewhat scornfully terms me—that when so powerful a personality as a leader writer levels his pen against an individual, however humble, he should not depend upon the report of another newspaper, the exigencies of whose space naturally prevent, it may be assumed, the devotion of more than a column verbatim report to any utterances of a 'mere caricaturist.' But, frankly, does the nature of my own occupation in the arts preclude me from pronouncing a correct judgment on portraits and portraiture? ”

“ He was a study as fascinating to the artist as to the politician, and no portrait ever drawn by pen or pencil can hand down to future generations the mysterious subtlety in the personality of the all-powerful leader.
He was as puzzling to the Parliamentary artist as he was to the politician: he never appeared just as one expected him. When I first made a sketch of him he had short hair, a well-trimmed moustache, shortly-cut side whiskers, a neat-fitting coat and trousers, and well-shaped boots. ”

“ Most beautiful bouquets labelled with the names of the lady passengers are on view in the saloon. Just as the last gangway is drawn on to the shore, amid cries of "Clear away!" we hear suddenly "Hold hard!" There is a commotion. Someone has not yet arrived; we lean over the side of the ship to see who is coming. Perhaps it is an important emissary of the Government, or even the President himself. We all push forward; the stalwart New York police keep back the crowd; the crew of the good ship Majestic hold the gangway in its place as the centre of attraction trips gaily up it. ”

“ I am to draw political cartoons without being political; I am to draw caricatures without being personal; I am to be funny without holding my subject up to ridicule; I am to be effective without being strong—in fact, I am to be a caricaturist without caricature! On the other hand, no cartoon I ever drew for Punch was more popular. ”

“ You certainly admire and emulate to a certain extent the fashionable Society women of England, but the ordinary English girl you treat with indifference, and speak of with contumely. You look upon her as a badly-dressed idiot. That may strike your ears as a sweeping assertion, but my ears have tingled over and over again by hearing that very sentiment coming from your own pretty mouths. Now, as we are alone, let me say a word or two on that point. You say the English woman is a fool. ”

“ It is impossible to treat a strong political subject—such as the meeting of that particular Cabinet caricatured by me—without offending some readers by amusing others, unless, as I say, the subject is treated in a colourless manner. This particular cartoon hurt because it hit a strong situation in a truthful and straight-forward manner, and subsequent events proved it to be a correct conception. Yet at the time no name was too bad for me, and as these are my confessions, let me assure the public that had the Cabinet been a Conservative one I would have treated it in exactly the same way ”

“ I am always ducking breakers, descending companion ladders, and I roll across the street as if it were the deck of a liner. Every building I enter seems to be rocking up and down, up and down, and as on the occasion I refer to I sat before the knights of the quill to be cross-examined, I felt as if I were in the cabin of a ship rather than in my own room at the hotel, and that the books on the table were in reality fiddles to keep the glasses and other things from falling off. ”

“ I confess as a caricaturist, surely I need not caricature my confessions by any mock-modesty. Although I have illustrated novels, short stories, fairy tales, poems, parodies, satires, and jeux d'esprit, for the realistic, the fanciful, the weirdly imaginative and the broadly humorous, as my Punch colleague, E. T. Milliken, wrote, my more distinctive, natural and favourite métier is that of graphic art. This intimate friend, in publishing his "appreciation" of me, put in his own too highly-coloured opinion of my black and white work in this direction. ”

“ Some day I shall write a paper entitled "Photographers I Have Met," for few people have faced the fire of the camera oftener than I. I am not a fashionable beauty, nor much of a celebrity, neither am I honestly a vain man—I shrink from the rays of the too truthful lens—but I have been dragged into the line of fire and held there until the deed is done, like an unwilling convict. In nearly every town I have visited have I undergone this operation, and the result is a collection of criminal-looking, contorted countenances of a description seldom seen outside the museum of a police station. ”

“ Such was my introduction to this select little club in Parliament, in which, with the exception of the Professor, all forgot politics, and the best of the Tories, Home Rulers, Radicals, and officials were at peace. I was always on most friendly terms with my "Black Beetle," a proof that caricature leaves no unkind sting when the victim is really a man of the world and a jolly good fellow. Surely nothing could be more offensive to an official in high office than to be continually represented as a black beetle! ”

“ All the time the Irish purveyors are emptying their baskets and filling their pockets, and rowing back to the shore enriched and delighted; their brothers and sisters are flowing up the gangway in a continual stream, with weeping eyes and breaking hearts at the thought of leaving their country perhaps for ever; and as soon as they are all on board, together with the mails, which have come overland to Queenstown, we up anchor, steam past Fastnet Rock, and soon the Old World is out of sight behind us. ”

“ Gladstone unfolds the fateful document, and lo! it is a blank sheet. Paralysis and grim despair fall upon the spirits of the assembly; face to face with a nightmare reality, not a man amongst them has strength to say, 'This is a dream.' At the head of the table, his elbows resting on the parchment, and an undipped quill actually split upon it in his angry grasp, sits the Premier, a never-to-be-forgotten picture of impotent ill-humour. The task with which the Cabinet is confronted, for him as for the rest, is impossible and yet inexorable. ”

“ Scores of Columbuses arrive at Sandy Hook every week to discover America for themselves, from Charles Columbus Dickens to Rudyard Columbus Kipling, to say nothing of Tom, Dick, Harry Columbus Brown, Jones, Robinson. It is hardly fair to say that they go over with their pockets full of letters of introduction to their American cousins, who receive them with open arms and unlimited hospitality, and then that these Toms, Dicks, and Harrys bring back in exchange notes for columns of ridicule and abuse of their Transatlantic friends. If our Americans have a fault, it is a very slight one. ”

“ His Press work he looked upon as mere bread and milk. His work was excellent, journalism which editors term "safe," neither too brilliant nor too dull, certainly having no trace whatever of eccentricity.
I may here offer an opinion, and make a suggestion to young journalists, and that is—safe, steady, dull mediocrity is what pays in the long run; to attempt to be brilliant when not a genius is fatal. To have the genius, brilliancy, pluck, and success means tremendous prosperity and favour for a time, but the editors and the public tire of your cleverness. You are too much in evidence. ”

“ QUARANTINE ISLAND.
Yet lunatics arrive and make lunacy rampant, and a whole city is left after such a visitation an asylum of melancholia—Mad Melbourne. Lunacy frequently takes the form of egotism. Peasants imagine themselves princes; Calibans believe themselves to be Adonises; beggars imagine themselves millionaires. It is a harmless vanity and hurts no one, but a mad city may ruin thousands by suddenly imagining itself a gold mine. Melbourne a few years ago imagined it suddenly became the hub of the universe. The world and his wife had but one burning desire—that was to live in Melbourne. ”

“ Of course it was most interesting to me to study such a genius at such a time, and in recording my experiences and impressions of Lewis Carroll my object is not so much to deal with the actual illustration to those ill-conceived books "Sylvie and Bruno," but to deal with my impressions of the man obtained by working with him for so long, for to have known the man was even as great a treat as to read his books. Lewis Carroll was as unlike any other man as his books were unlike any other author's books. ”

“ After our headlong race across the broad Atlantic, after every nut and screw in the vessel has been strained to save every particle of time, and every moment watched and calculated, here at the mouth of the Hudson, in sight of the colossal statue of Liberty, we are kept waiting under a broiling sun on a beautiful day for an unconscionable time whilst forsooth the health officer or his subordinate is enjoying his lunch. Fancy 1,700 foreigners being kept waiting because a paid official—paid by the shipowners of England—wishes to satisfy his selfish greediness! ”

“ Punch required "funny little figures," and I supplied them; but my métier, I must confess, was work requiring more demand upon direct draughtsmanship and power. I am a funny man, a caricaturist, by force of circumstances; an artist, a satirist, and a cartoonist by nature and training. The one requires technical knowledge—in the other, "drawing doesn't count." The more amateurish the work, the funnier the public consider it. The serious confession I have to make is that I have been mistaken for a caricaturist in the accepted and limited meaning of the term. ”

“ It is impossible for those whose office carries them behind the scenes, in the midst of the festive and fashionable crowd which throngs the stately rooms of the Academy, not to think of the poor lodging and the shabby studio, and the easel, the rejected picture, the subject of so much labour, the spring of so many hopes, which was expected to win bread, if not fame, for the painter. ”

“ Art, I hold, is nowadays purely a commercial affair. Burlington House is simply a huge shop, and it is all nonsense to talk for one instant about the encouragement it gives to art, or to take seriously the prosy platitudes which are poured forth year by year at that picture tradesmen's dinner—the Royal Academy Banquet. Women are not invited—women, forsooth, whose works on the walls have done their share towards bringing the shillings to the turnstiles of the Academy. ”