CHARLES KEENE.
IT would be too much to speak of Charles Keene's death as "eclipsing the gaiety of nations," for, in spite of Dr. Johnson, nothing can do that. It is safe to say, however, that in that great artist and humorist, the English-speaking world—Punch circulates widely in America, and hundreds of copies go to the Colonies—loses one whose kindly good things, in word and line, were looked forward to from week to week as an almost certain source of pleasure and amusement. Charles Keene was never disappointing. If the joke was poor—as weekly jokes sustained for forty years must sometimes be—there was certain to be something in the drawing which touched " the sacred source of sympathetic " laughter, and left a joy that would not go away. The tip-tilt of a street-boy's nose, the cock of a cab-horse's ear, or the curves of an " elder's " top-hat, had often enough fun in them to justify a full•sized illustration without a word of comment. The creator of Punch's Highlanders, Dissenting ministers, country curates, lodging-house keepers, and 'bus-conductors seemed, indeed, able to attach the ele- mental spirit of laughter to the very lines and shadows of his picture. Many men can manage to draw a single comic face or figure, but Charles Keene's work breathed merriment throughout. The parts as well as the whole were compact of fun and humour. If the artist had been a caricaturist in the ordinary sense, this quality would have been less re- markable, for caricature to be successful demands that its spirit shall be all-pervasive. The spiritual heir of John Leech obtained, however, no assistance from the ingenuity of dis- tortion. His artistic method was realistic to the last degree, and his studies of men and women, but for the subtle sense of amusement they exhale, could always claim to be faithful representations of living persons. He took the life of the street and the railway, of the inside of the eating-house or of the omnibus, and portrayed it just as he found it, save that be contrived to mix therewith that imaginative some- thing which Shakespeare used when he created Dogberry and Verges.
It cannot be doubted that this all-pervading sense of laughter which belongs to Charles Keene's drawings was in a great measure due to the fact that his humour was essentially spontaneous. That this was the dominant character of his work, is clearly shown by the fact that it was never satirical. Satire by its nature is critical and reflective, the outcome of a conscious process of mental evolution necessarily divorced from anything like spontaneity. Mr. Du Maurier has shown us how attractive satirical illustration can be made, and how social follies may be lashed without a taint of bitterness. Between the standpoint of the mildest satirist and that of Mr. Charles Keene there is, however, a whole world of difference. To imagine the latter creating a Maudle or a Posselthwaite, a Mrs. Cimabue Brown, or even a Mrs. Ponsonby de Tompkins, is an impossi- bility. Any idea of producing a moral impression by his draw- ings was utterly foreign to his nature. He wanted to make the world laugh heartily, cheerfully, and honestly, and had no thought of directing it in matters of taste or opinion. He did not in the least desire to make his 'bus-drivers or cabmen more remarkable by depicting their eccentricities, or to alter his clergymen, his Presbyterian elders, or his little vulgar boys by a hair's-breadth. His work was, indeed, more than merely kindly and good-tempered ; it was sympathetic through and through, the artist's pencil evidently sharing to the full every 'sentiment it set forth. Take, for example, the inimitable pic- ture of the Rector's wife asking "the factotum and gardener," before the Archdeacon, how he thinks "we sold the Jersey • cow," and getting as her answer " Well, M'm, Master Byles has got the better o' we a many times, but (proudly) I think as we a done he to-rights this turn." A man with a satirical turn of mind would almost certainly have treated the subject in such a way as to suggest that the poor lady had been found out in an act of meanness ; or, again, a reflection upon farming clergymen might have been hinted at. Instead of concerning himself with the psychological situation in this way, Mr. Keene merely fastens upon the broad humour the words suggest. The Rector's wife receives her terrible 'broadside in a way which commands our sympathies at once; while as for the gardener and factotum, there is not a trace of anything but honest pride in his features or attitude. The Rector and the Archdeacon, who are a little in the background, are more broadly treated ; but in spite of that, we can see that they are feeling and looking exactly what each might be expected to feel and look under the circum- stances. Hundreds of other instances might be mentioned in which Mr, Keene illustrated incidents which naturally suggest satiric treatment, and yet managed to depict the humour without adding the reflective "sting." Even when he Telles for his joke on a piece of snobbishness, we get no tinge .of satiric indignation. In one of his earlier pictures—one of the first reprinted in the delightful volume of selections from his drawings called " Our People," which was first published in 1881 —we see the fat landlady of a country inn and her waiter dis- ...missing a bundle of effects left by a guest in the hall. " What ,,gentleman's luggage is this, Sam P" she asks. " Gentleman's luggage, 'M ? 'or' bleshyer, no, mam ! That's artist's traps, that is. They'll 'ave tea here to-night, take a little lodging to-morrow, and then they'll be a-loafin' about the place for months doin' mo good to nobody 1" It is obvious that this might have easily 'been made into satire. A look of unpleasantness or contempt upon the waiter's face, or in that of the landlady, would have been enough. As it is, however, there is no attempt to force a moral of any kind. The fat old lady, her servant, and the com- fortable surroundings of the country inn, all show nothing but good-temper, and there is nowhere the slightest suggestion that Mr. Keene is " shooting folly as it flies," or showing up the errors and foibles of his countrymen. All is pure good-humour and content.
It is the entire absence of any satirical touch that gives Charles Keene's work its quality of cheerfulness. " Cheerful " is the word of all others that applies to his particular form of humour. Gaiety in a special degree he has not got, for with gaiety we associate something fantastic, and this he was far too great a realist ever to introduce ; but of downright, simple-hearted cheerfulness, there is never the slightest lack. It is this that makes Charles Keene's work so repre- sentative of the English national character. Our people in their comic moods are not bright, epigrammatic, or sparkling, like the French, but they are essentially good- matured, and this quality was reflected in all Charles Keene's .contributions to Punch. It is probable that to this tendency .to represent incidents which, if not boisterous, are at least :always hearty, must be attributed the fact, so often noticed, that Charles Keene never drew a gentleman—meaning, of 'course, by "gentleman," a well-dressed man of the world, such as Mr. Du Mau rier is fond of depicting. In the drawing-room, the club, or the smart country-house, the occasions discoverable for displaying Mr. Keene's peculiar vein of humour would have been few ; and he was therefore of necessity thrown back upon middle and lower-middle class life. Again, Mr. Keene, to borrow a phrase from the theatre, was essentially " a character" artist. He wanted, in order to display his powers properly, a subject which would lend itself to character- -drawing. But in society people have been planed down level, -and if you draw its members, you must give up using the 'boldly marked impersonations which Mr. Keene loved. There are no people there answering to his Highlanders, his cooks, his policemen, his country gardeners, his railway porters and guards, or his " ministers " and elders. Unless he had caricatured, burlesqued, or satirised, which, we take it, he .could not have done, he would have found nothing to catch hold of among the London fashionables. His typical "swell," in a long, old-fashioned ulster, always baggy and unbuttoned, has been much derided, and has been quoted as a proof that Mr. Keene could not draw a gentleman even when he tried. We do not, however, think that he did try. We believe that his "swell" was meant to be what he obviously is, the swell of the lower-middle class,—a potential commercial traveller, someone, in fact, who wears newish clothes and hats, and is not very obviously anything else. This individual has plenty of character, and Mr. Keene seized upon him in prefer- ence to the dull and correct denizens of Pall Mall and May- fair. The ordinary Englishman of the upper class, except for purposes of satire, is, as we have said before, not worth the humorist's attention, for to be a polished gentleman, a man must not be a character. If Keene had lived in an out-of-the- way country place, he would no doubt have given ns good squires; but living as he did in London, and only visiting the country as a, tourist, he had to rely for his effects upon the classes that most visibly produce "characters." It may be said that we have praised Charles Keene too unreservedly, and have admitted no defects ; but we believe, in spite of this apparent objection, that our estimate is not an exaggerated one, What he attempted to do he did perfectly. Neither his art nor his humour was in kind the highest; but within its limits, his work was flawless.
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