The "Elderly Party's" face is just as Mr. Burnand drew it; the other is Leech's own, and, therefore, all the more remarkable. The second picture, here given, is still more interesting. Though Mr. Burnand knew neither Leech nor Mark Lemon, when he sent the drawing he requested John Leech to be kind enough to copy the Dean exactly, as it was a likeness of the Rev. Mr. Hedley, Senior Dean of Trinity College, Cambridge, while the youth was a burlesque presentment of himself. Owing to Mr. Burnand's going in for acting, he had sacrificed a very small moustache.
Mr. Burnand and the Dean.
By kind permission of the Proprietors of "Punch."
Mr. Burnand had very little difficulty in getting on the staff of Punch. Whilst engaged in playwriting he also did considerable journalistic work, and amongst other journals was with the late Henry J. Byron and Mr. W. S. Gilbert on Fun. Tom Hood was editor then, and the proprietor a looking-glass manufacturer named Maclean.
"Maclean," said Mr. Burnand, "used to smile very broadly, and show a set of teeth that led Byron to call him Maclean teeth. I took a very good idea to Maclean. It was to imitate the popular novelists of the day, and I drew out the first sketch for his inspection. He wouldn't see it. I wrote to Mark Lemon and asked him to see me. He did; he saw me and my notion at once. The first was to be a burlesque of a page in The London Journal. Sir John Gilbert was illustrating that paper at the time.
"'We'll get Gilbert to do the pictures,' cried Lemon. Gilbert undertook the work, and so it came about that he had to burlesque himself! Millais did a picture for it, so did 'Phiz,' Du Maurier, and Charles Keene.
"Keene! I never knew Keene tell an anecdote in his life. He couldn't. He could recollect something about a story, but could never get through it. There he would sit, pulling away at his little stump of a pipe, and all of a sudden break out into a laugh and chuckle, and endeavour to contribute his anecdote something in this style:
"'I can't help laughing'—chuckle. 'I once went to see'—chuckle—'somebody—I forget his name, but you'll know—about twenty-five years ago'—chuckle. 'When I say twenty-five I mean two or three years ago'—chuckle. 'I was going from'—chuckle—'what's that place? Ah! I forget, but it was on a 'bus. There, it was the funniest thing you ever saw'—prolonged chuckle—'I was outside no, it was inside, when suddenly the man said to me—'
"'What man, Charlie?' we would ask.
"'Why, the man. He said to me—no, it wasn't me. Ah! well, it's no matter'—chuckle.
"'Well, what made you laugh, Charles?' was our question.
"'Why, the'—chuckle—'the—the joke!'
"'What joke?'
"'Well'—chuckle—'I hardly remember the joke; but—it was about that time!'
"Poor Keene had an anecdote which he always wound up with, 'They were Ribston pippins,' but nobody ever knew what the story was about, or where it began.
"Oh, yes, I knew Thackeray well. Thackeray sold me once. It happened at his house at Prince's-gate, on the occasion of
