-his
_Punch_ work including a couple of cartoons in 1852, among a great
number of "socials." His last appearance was in July of that year. He
was a good and improving draughtsman, especially of horses; and he
revelled in beggars, "swells," and backgrounds.

[Illustration: W. McCONNELL.

(_From a Photograph by Southwell Brothers, Baker Street._)]

* * * * *

The great acquisition of the year was John Tenniel. The paper had been
left by Doyle, as I have explained, without its Almanac blocks, and it
found itself, moreover, without a second cartoonist, and, what was quite
as important at the moment, without an artist of distinctly decorative
ability, who would provide the fanciful initial-letters, headings, and
title-pages which have always been a feature in _Punch_. The
circumstances of his joining the paper Sir John once recounted to me in
conversation, with that sort of apologetic humour and true modesty that
are characteristic of him:--

"I never learned drawing, except in so far as attending a school and
being allowed to teach myself. I attended the Royal Academy Schools
after becoming a probationer, but soon left in utter disgust of there
being no teaching. I had a great idea of High Art; in fact, in 1845 I
sent in a sixteen-foot-high cartoon for Westminster Palace. In the Upper
Waiting Hall, or 'Hall of Poets,' of the House of Lords, I made a
fresco, but my subject was changed after my work had been decided on and
worked out. At Christmas, 1850, I was invited by Mark Lemon to fill the
place suddenly left by Doyle, who with very good reasons for
himself--that of objection to the "Papal Aggression" campaign suddenly
severed his connection with _Punch_. Doyle had left them in great
straits--the Pocket-book and Almanac to come out--and I was applied to
by Lemon, on the initiation of Jerrold, to fill the breach. This was
on the strength of my illustrations to AEsop's Fables, which had recently
been published by Murray. I did the title and half-title to the
nineteenth volume, as well as the first page-border to the Almanac,
together with a few initials and odds and ends for the end of that
volume, and the first illustration to the next; but only the half-title,
title, and tail-piece were signed. My first cartoon was that facing page
44 in the twentieth volume; and, only signing occasionally for the first
month or two, I went on from time to time doing cartoons.

[Illustration: SIR JOHN