The Sun.
London, England, 1862-05-31 00:00:00

JOHN LEECH'S GALLERY.

PRIVATE "VIEW-THIS DAY.

A. delightful stroll we have had this forenoon
round one of the large rooms in the Egyptian
Hall, " laughing in our sleeve" as we walked.
And who could help laughing—even the gravest,
even the most smileless ? For there, disposed
along the walls of that apartment, in a double
row, are about a hundred of the very pick of the
rarest bits of fun, pencilled by John Leech, and
taken from Mr. Punch's celebrated Collection. The
original "Sketches in Oil" they are of pictures that
are familiar to us all, pictures that we have often
roared at the eight of, pictures the mere recollec-
tion of which has occasionally disturbed our gra-
vity rather painfully in scenes, and at times when
to laugh, or even smile, however covertly, is in the
very last degree an indecorum. Can any one, let
us ask, preserve a demure countenance, when he
looks at or even thinks of that wonderful sketch
by Leech (No. 19), entitled " Putting his foot in
it !" When the irritated gentleman flames out so
infuriatedly against the Pale-faced Hairdresser—
" Thin at the top, sir ? I'll thin your top, sir !" Or
(N 0.17) that dinin g-room scene re presen tin g Mr. Bot-
tles the Butler—all but transfixed against the door
pannelling—by the knives dexterously flung within
an inch of him by Master Hopeful, in practical il-
lustration of the Chinese knife trick. There is a
marvellously clever morsel of serio-comedy upon
horseback, in No. 28, by the way—where Jones is
represented as trying his new hack, "as quiet as a
lamb—just about !" Has anyone who ever
glanced at the woodcut of it in Punch, yet lost
a remembrance of that delicious double barrelled
shot at folly as it flies—sometimes—at the
Opera ? where Lizzy (in the Box) is saying to her
sister, " There is that ridiculous little man again ;
do look ; how very absurd !" And where poor
little Busby, down below—leaning against the back
of the pit, and gazing up sentimentally in the
most preposterous of lackadaisical attitudes,
is soliloquising to himself—" Ah ! there she
is again—dear girl !—and looking this way,
too : it is evident she admires me." For
an example of what the farce-writers of the Adelphi
call a " genuine screamer"commen d us to No. 54, the
famous sketch of the Irritable Gentleman, disturbed
by the Blue Bottle—the gentleman himself dishe-
velled, the room a chaos, "the blue fly singing
(still) i' the pane," distractingly, maddeningly !
" Cupid at Sea," too (No. 48) is a delectable glimpse
of Love strong in sea-sickness. Edwin
and Angelina being the dramatis person..
Close beside which sea-piece is the memora-
ble bathing scene of Master Franky, a
dear little naked imp, saving that he has one shoe
and sock on, exceedingly fractious, brandishing a
hair brush and evidently bent with all his small
might upon not going to " his own Marthar," the
bathing woman. Enough, however, when we have
commended all who dearly love a laugh (and who
does not ?) to pay a visit on Monday next or any
day afterwards to this truly delightful Gallery,
containing within it—as it does—the cream of the
jokes of our London Charivari, the outpourings
of the humerous genius of John Leech ! An artist
whose genius beyond that of all other contributors,
literary or pictorial, has constituted in truth the
" spirit," " flavour," vitality, and exhileration of
that pleasant intellectual tipple known, and quaffed
and relished during all these years under the title of
Punch,