Harry Furniss

“ It is the proud boast of every married man, and more particularly so when his quiver is fairly full, that he presides over the happiest home in the land. But there is a corner of Regent's Park where stands a house whose four walls contain an amount of fun and unadulterated merriment, happiness, and downright pleasure that would want a lot of beating. The fact is that Mr. Harry Furniss is not only a merry man with his pencil. ”

“ I am to visit Eastbourne and eat buns and cakes, gazing the while into the beauteous eyes of Miss Smith. Then in Glasgow there is a Miss O'Grady, "with oh, such a perfect nose! Could I run up to Scotland to make a sketch of it?" A letter of introduction is enclosed, and, as a precaution, I am enjoined that I "must not mind her squint." But I do mind, and I am sure the blemish would sadly mar my proper judgment of the lovely feature for gazing on which those eyes have lost their rectitude. For the ears a journey to Brighton to see Miss Robinson, the Vicar's daughter, is recommended. ”

“ 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. ”

“ My manager rushed into my rooms with the paper in question. "This will ruin your prospects here! We depend on the women folk; they will never come to hear you after reading this!" And so it was. In spite of other interviewers at Washington writing of me as "an English good fellow, rich and juicy, and genial in flavour, like other hot stuffs of that remarkable country"; and another,
"Harry Furniss' eclipse of the gayety of John Bull, with facile pencil and brilliant tongue, attracted a cultured assemblage to the Columbia Theatre. ”

“ FURNISS, HARRY (1854–⁠) , British caricaturist and illustrator, was born at Wexford, Ireland, of English and Scottish parents. He was educated in Dublin, and in his schooldays edited a Schoolboy’s Punch in close imitation of the original. He came to London when he was nineteen, and began to draw for the illustrated papers, being for some years a regular contributor to the Illustrated London News. ”

“ If a politician were not a caricature by nature, I made him one. Mr. Gladstone's collar I invented—for the same reason a journalistic friend of mine invented Beaconsfield's champagne jelly—for "copy." When Members suggested nothing new, I turned my attention to officials. The Sergeant-at-Arms in that way became known as the "Black Beetle."
I watched Captain Gosset from the Press Gallery walk up the floor of the House in court dress, his knee-breeches showing off his rather bandy legs, elbows akimbo, and curious gait ”

“ No artist appreciates a "situation" better than he. I looked through portfolio after portfolio, drawer after drawer—full of character studies and work of a serious character done in all parts of the world. These have never been given to the public. Should they ever be published, Mr. Harry Furniss will at once be voted as serious and dramatic an artist as he is an eminently refined yet outrageously humorous caricaturist. ”

“ As I stood in the post office of Burlington House anxiously penning this message, and harassed into a state of almost feverish excitement, the sounds of martial music and the tramp of armed men in the adjacent courtyard fell upon my distracted ear. With a sickly and sardonic smile upon my face I laid down the pen and peeped through the door.
"Yes! I see it all now," I muttered. "The whole thing is a plant. The printer was bribed, and, coûte que coûte, the Academy has decided to take my body! Hence the presence of the military; and see, those cooks—what are they doing here in their white caps? ”

“ Astor discontinue it?
Because, I was told, Mrs. Astor had just died,—it was so dear to her that Mr. Astor felt he could not continue it, for purely sentimental reasons.
This was pathetically explained to me. It was so natural. Yet why should such a splendid paper cease when I had a large proprietor with capital waiting to start one? I was the man. So I was told, and so I believed, and so I proved to be. Not a moment was to be lost. I was with Sir George Lewis. Has Mr. Astor any objection? He thought certainly not. ”

“ Mr. Harry Furniss and Phil May [q. v. Suppl. II] were among his artists. With the latter he contributed in 1878 a series of 'Bird's-eye Views,' and from 1878 to 1889 he wrote a weekly article by 'The Showman,' genially criticising society and affairs. ”

“ The bare walls were draped with stars and stripes, and innumerable portraits of McKinley and Hobart confronted you on every side. In the centre was a roughly-constructed platform; on this a piano and seats for the orators. At 12.30 sharp (the business lunch hour) a crowd surged in; bankers, brokers, dry goods merchants, clerks, messengers, and office-boys, straight from the Quick Lunch Counters—a great institution there—filling every corner of the hall. An attendant carried the inevitable pitcher of ice water to the orators' table ”

“ This caricature-parody, therefore, was a sketch with a purpose. It was said at one of the meetings that my pencil "may perhaps touch the public sympathy in behalf of the postman more effectually than any language has been able to do." The wretched thing was thought worthy of an article 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. ”

“ Toole appeared in the Press the next day in London as well as the provinces:
"Brother artists, even when working in different grooves, do not lack appreciation of each other's work. After Mr. Harry Furniss's lecture in Leeds the other night, he and Mr. Toole foregathered; and the popular and genial actor presented the 'comedian of the pencil' with a very neat and handsome pencil-case, just adapted for the jotting down, wherever duty takes him, of those graphic sketches with which the caricaturist amuses us week by week." ”

“ 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. ”

“ I earnestly advocate the claims of the working man, and sometimes I feel myself a Whig of the old school. Whether I am a Tory, a Liberal or a Radical, troubles me very little, but as you seem to take a kind interest in my political opinions I should have preferred you to have styled me an Independent, which I understand means nothing.
"Harry Furniss.
"Garrick Club, London." ”

“ Sir William Harcourt, rose to pulverise Torydom and put an end to the Government and everything in general, when the Speaker rose and said that the question before the House was whether black sticking-plaster could be used in public hospitals.
"Oh, that's right, he wants putting down; too much of the grand Old Bailey style. Make yer fortune in plush and knee breeches as a prize flunkey; platform stuff won't do for us. What are you?" I feel smaller! ”

“ At the present day those who admire the dexterity with which Mr. Harry Furniss can cram in multitudes of characters into his cartoons for ‘Punch,’ may only look at one of the crowded scenes on a small scale, such as ‘Lord Mayor’s Day’ in Cruikshank’s ‘Comic Almanack,’ to see where the inspiration comes from. ”

“ On the whole, the Royal Academicians have never appeared under more favourable conditions than in this pleasant gallery. Mr. Furniss has shown that the one thing lacking in them is sense of humour, and that, if they would not take themselves so seriously, they might produce work that would be a joy, and not a weariness to the world. Whether or not they will profit by the lessons it is difficult to say, for dulness has become the basis of respectability, and seriousness the only refuge of the shallow. ”

“ I have really been so busy sketching Members of Parliament at St. Stephen's, that I had almost forgotten my promise."
"A poor Pen is out of place in an artist's studio, except to minister to the requirements of the autograph hunter. Well, you need not be jealous. My literary flight is not intended to be a very high one after all. Now you know more about the secrets of the studio than I do; so tell me, is it the custom of H. F. to have a regular sitting for a caricature, after the fashion of the portrait painters?" ”

“ With 46 Illustrations by Harry Furniss. 12mo. $1.50.
"Alice was a delightful little girl, but hardly more pleasing than are the hero and heroine of this latest book from a writer in whose nonsense there is far more sense than in the serious works of many contemporary authors."—Morning Post.
"Mr. Furniss's illustrations, which are numerous, are at once graceful and full of humor. We pay him a high compliment when we say he proves himself a worthy successor to Mr. Tenniel in illustrating Mr. ”

“ Expert opinion was called in, and the afternoon I had to make that drawing—with my own children as models—the "consultation" was being held in my wife's room. Carroll was on his way from Oxford to see the work, and I was drawing against time. It's the old story of the clown with the sick wife. Caricaturists are after all but clowns of the pencil. They must raise a laugh whatever their state of mind may be. For a long time I never would show Lewis Carroll my work, for the simple reason I did not do it. He thought I was at work, but I was not. That's where my acting eccentricity came in. ”

“ 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." ”

“ I may mention that I have less hair at the top of my head and more on my face, and I may seem to some a trifle older.'
[Pg 152]
"Well, here, you see, H. F. has to use his judgment.
"But to my surprise H. F. received a visit from the original of the photograph shortly after his sketch was published, who came to inform the guv'nor that no one could possibly recognise him in the sketch; and when I saw him in the flesh I quite believed him. You can judge from the sketch how useful the photograph was. ”

“ Tate, from Bournemouth, the day my letter in the Times appeared, in which he thanked me for my warm hearted letter in the Times, but begged of me not to press my proposal in his honour. "As you say, I am a modest man, and it would be more than I could stand. What I should like would be to [Pg 213] see the artists calling a public meeting and protesting against the way in which British art has been shelved." In the same letter he assured me "that too much could not be said in condemnation of Sir Frederick Leighton's and the Academicians' supineness." ”

“ I was writing in my sitting-room on the first floor, next to Parnell's room, when the strains of national music of approaching bands smote my ear, and soon the hotel was surrounded by a cheering, shouting crowd. Banners were flying, bands were playing, thousands of voices were shouting. Standing in a brake haranguing the surging mass of people was the familiar figure of Charles Stewart Parnell. ”

“ I open this door and we get the Irish draught. Ugh! Come on, come on quickly—mixture of Irish, working-men M.P.'s, and Rads. Kill a horse!"
The table of the House, which Mr. Disraeli erroneously described as "a solid piece of furniture," is in reality—like so many arguments which are flung across it—perfectly hollow; [Pg 250] and one evening when I arrived with Dr. Percy and found that in consequence of the winding-up speech of Mr. Gladstone in a great debate the Press Gallery was full and all the seats under the gallery were occupied, Dr. Percy kindly allowed me to sit inside the table. ”

“ He lectured his friends as he had lectured his youths, and treated grown-up men of the world as if they were children. In due course I visited Oxford to give my entertainments—"Humours of Parliament" first; "America in a Hurry" followed a few years afterwards. In the latter I gave a wordless imitation of that eccentric American, Talmage, at the same time carefully pointing out to my audience that I imitated his gestures and voice—not Talmage in the character of a preacher, but as a showman; I was therefore surprised to receive the following letter ”

“ Furniss's powers to be substantially limited to political satire or Parliamentary caricature. Much of the work he has already given to the public, and perhaps more of that which he has not yet published, but of which his chosen familiars are aware, will prove that in more serious or imaginative work, in strong, vivid realism as well as in frolic fancy, in landscape as well as in life, in the picturesque as well as in the humorous, he can display a notable mastery. ”