Brasenose Club, and at the houses of hospitable and artistic friends in Manchester, Caldecott had exceptional opportunities of seeing good work, and obtaining information on art matters.
One who knew him well at this time, writing in the Manchester Courier of Feb. 16th, 1886, says:—
"Caldecott used to wander about the bustling, murky streets of Manchester, sometimes finding himself in queer out-of-the-way quarters, often coming across an odd character, curious bits of antiquity and the like. Whenever the chance came, he made short excursions into the adjacent country, and long walks which were never purposeless. Then he joined an artists' club and made innumerable pen and ink sketches. Whilst in this city so close was his application to the art that he loved that on several occasions he spent the whole night in drawing."
For five years, from 1867 to 1872, Caldecott worked steadily at the desk in Manchester, studying from nature whenever he had the chance in summer; and at the school of art in the long evenings, sometimes working long and late at some water colour drawing. Caldecott owed much to Manchester, as he often said, and he never forgot or undervalued the good of his early training. The friends he made then he kept always, and they were amongst his dearest and best.
In Manchester on the 3rd of July, 1868—his first drawings were published in a serio comic paper called Will o' the Wisp; and in 1869, in another paper called The Sphinx, he had several pages of drawings reproduced. He was painting a little at the same time, making many hunting and other studies; they were chiefly for friends, but one picture was exhibited at the Manchester Royal Institution in 1869.
There was no restraining Caldecott now, his artistic bent and his delightful humour were finding expression in sketches in odd hours and minutes, on bits of note paper, on old envelopes, and on the blotting paper before him at his desk, until everybody about him must have been alive to his talent. He might no doubt have eventually attained a good position in the bank, for, as one of his friends writes of him very truly,
"Caldecott's ability was general, not special. It found its natural and most agreeable outlet in art and humour, but everybody who knew him, and those who received his letters, saw that there were perhaps a dozen ways in which he would have distinguished himself had he been drawn to them."
The unpublished sketches dispersed through this chapter indicate but slightly the originality and fecundity of Caldecott's genius at this time.
There was clearly but one course to pursue—to give up commercial pursuits and go to London—if such sketches as these were to be found scattered amongst bank papers!
And so, in May, 1870, Caldecott, as his diary records, went to London for a few days with a letter of introduction to Mr. Thomas Armstrong from Mr. W. Slagg; and in the same year, 1870, some of his drawings were shown to Shirley Brooks, and to Mark Lemon, then editor of Punch. Mr. Clough thus records the event:—
"Bearing an introductory letter he went up to London on a flying visit, carrying with him a sketch on wood and a small book of drawings of the 'Fancies of a Wedding.' He was well received. The sketch was accepted, and with many compliments the book of drawings was detained.
"'From that day to this,' said Mr. Caldecott, 'I have not seen either sketch or book.' Some time after, on meeting Mark Lemon, the incident was recalled, when the burly, jovial editor replied, 'My dear fellow, I am vagabondising to-day, not Punching.' I don't think Mr. Caldecott rightly appreciated that joke."
From this date and all through the year 1871, Caldecott was at work in Manchester and sending to London drawings, some of which have hardly been exceeded for humour and expression in a few lines.
CHAPTER II.
DRAWING FOR "LONDON SOCIETY."
It was in February 1871, in the pages of London Society—a magazine which at that time included amongst its contributors J. R. Planché, Shirley Brooks, Francis T. Palgrave, Frederick Locker, G. A. Sala, Edmund Yates, Percy Fitzgerald, F. C. Burnand, Arthur à Beckett, Tom Hood, Mortimer Collins, Joseph Hatton, &c.; and amongst its artists Sir John Gilbert, Charles Keene, Linley Sambourne, G. Bowers, Mrs. Allingham, W. Small, F. Barnard, F. W. Lawson, M.E.E., and many other notable names—that Caldecott made his first appearance before a London public.
On November 3rd, 1870, his diary says:—
"Some drawings which I left with A. in London have been shown, accompanied by a letter from Du Maurier, to a man on London Society. Must wait a bit and go on working—especially studying horses, A. said."
From this parcel of Caldecott's drawings the present writer, being the "man" referred to, selected a few to be engraved; the sketch of the Rt. Hon. Robert Lowe on horseback in Hyde Park, on page 17, "Ye monthe of Aprile" and "Education under Difficulties" being amongst the first published.
It was suggested to him early in 1870 that he should come to London for a short time and make sketches in Hyde Park, and it touched Caldecott's fancy, (as he often mentioned afterwards,) that he whose experiences were far removed from such scenes should have been chosen as a chronicler of "Society." The sketches were made always from his own point of view, and some were so grotesque, and hit so hard at the aristocracy, that they were found inappropriate to a fashionable magazine!—one especially of Hyde Park in the afternoon, called "Sons of Toil," had to be declined by the Editor with real regret.
The packet of original sketches lies before the writer now; the pen and ink drawing of "The Chancellor of the Exchequer" is