{"id":1161,"date":"2017-06-05T09:27:21","date_gmt":"2017-06-05T09:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/?p=1161"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:22:03","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:22:03","slug":"the-schoolboy-sketches-of-john-leech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/2017\/06\/05\/the-schoolboy-sketches-of-john-leech\/","title":{"rendered":"The schoolboy sketches of John Leech"},"content":{"rendered":"

The artist and illustrator John Leech, who became one of the foremost contributors to Punch<\/em> and created the artwork for some of Dickens\u2019 most popular works, notably A Christmas Carol<\/em>, was born in 1817 in London, the son of the assistant proprietor of the London Coffee House.\u00a0 He was sent to Charterhouse School from the age of seven, initially as a day pupil and then as a boarder, and went on to study medicine at St Bartholomew\u2019s in London.\u00a0 But in 1834 his father\u2019s business collapsed and John Leech senior found himself in the court of bankruptcy.\u00a0 With this loss of family income, his son could not hope to pursue a career in medicine and was compelled to turn to art, a hobby in which he had always shown outstanding talent, to make his living and to support his family.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Leech did not distinguish himself academically at Charterhouse, but he was popular with his fellow-pupils. Charles Maitland, who first met Leech when he was only six and took the younger boy under his wing at school, described him as \u2018a gentle, dear little fellow\u20191<\/sup>.\u00a0 Another friend, H.O. Nethercote, remarked that he was \u2018the most popular boy in the school\u20192<\/sup>.\"scs03048_greek_opp_p53_reduced\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Leech self-confessedly found Latin exercises very difficult and simply \u2018got somebody to do them for him\u20193<\/sup>.\u00a0 In our collections, is a copy of\u00a0the chief Latin and Greek textbook used at the school, which was written by the Charterhouse schoolmaster John Russell.\u00a0 Our copy is inscribed \u2018Berney\u2019 on the cover and almost certainly belonged to George Berney, who was a fellow boarder in Churtons with Leech.\u00a0 Its blank pages are filled with \u2018doodles\u2019, notable for their vitality and humour.\u00a0 We are extremely grateful to the archivist at Charterhouse School for sharing with us some images from Leech\u2019s own copy of this same textbook, which is also filled with illustrations on a similar range of themes.\u00a0 A comparison of the drawings from the two books makes it plain that Leech was sketching for the entertainment of his friends, as well as himself.\"scs03048_greek_opp_p82_reduced\"<\/a>\"823_89_max_pl_opp_p75_reduced\"<\/a>\u00a0 At Charterhouse, he was well known for his habit of \u2018doodling\u2019.\u00a0 Maitland remembered that Leech bonded with a boy called Douglas, another talented caricaturist: \u2018Leech copied several of his friend\u2019s drawings, but \u2026 he soon abandoned copying and took to original work \u2026\u20194<\/sup>.\u00a0 Nethercote recalled that \u2018the margins of [Leech\u2019s] grammars were a delight to boyish eyes\u20195<\/sup>.\u00a0 In later life, Leech still enjoyed sketching humorous little drawings on scraps of paper for friends and family6<\/sup>.\"scs03048_latin_opp_p91_reduced\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Some of the Charterhouse drawings illustrate the Latin and Greek exercises they accompany and many reflect Leech\u2019s lifelong love for country pursuits. As a collection, they foreshadow the \u2018verve and excitement\u2019 of his later work, \u2018that sense of capturing the passing minute, that desire to understand modern life by glimpsing\u20197<\/sup>.\"scs03048_greek_opp_p11_reduced\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"per_050_03970_p98_reduced\"<\/a>Leech\u2019s letters home from school show that he struggled sometimes \u2013 \u2018I am very unhappy\u2019, \u2018Send me a cake \u2026 [and] some money as soon as you can\u20198<\/sup> \u2013 but Leech looked back on his time at Charterhouse with enough affection to return there with a friend, who wrote\u00a0a piece about their visit for the magazine Once a Week<\/em> in July 1860.\u00a0 Leech even contributed this drawing of his boyhood self in the tree, from the branches of which he used to watch the mail- and stage-coaches pass on the road outside9<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

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Portrait of John Leech by John Everett Millais from: William Powell Frith, John Leech: His Life and Work, Vol. I, (London, 1891), 709.42092 LEE\/FRI<\/p><\/div>\n

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This portrait of Leech was painted by his friend, John Everett Millais, and pronounced by another friend, Holman Hunt, to be \u2018undoubtedly the best portrait of the artist\u201910<\/sup>.\u00a0 Dickens, through the mouth of his popular character Mrs Gamp, described Leech as \u2018a tall, slim, melancolly gent, with dark hair and a bage voice\u201911<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

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\"823_83_sur_pl_opp_p15_reduced\"<\/a>Although Leech\u2019s art owed a debt to his famous predecessors, Rowlandson and Gillray, and, as a child, he had briefly been tutored by Cruikshank, his style was very much his own. \u2018Leech had \u2026 naturalism, he needed no exaggeration, his duty was to portray impressions of society, not prejudices about it\u201912<\/sup>.\u00a0 Dickens, a good friend, described Leech as \u2018the very first Englishman who had made beauty a part of his art\u201913<\/sup>.\u00a0 Leech himself put it in this way to a young Etonian, a chance acquaintance who had ambitions to become a caricaturist, \u2018I don\u2019t know about your taking lessons, except from Nature, and learn from her as much as possible\u201914<\/sup>.\"scs03048_latin_opp_p147_reduced\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1. William Powell Frith, John Leech: His Life and Work<\/em>, Vol. II, p. 93, 709.42092 LEE\/FRI<\/p>\n

2. Ibid<\/em>., p. 283<\/p>\n

3. Simon Houfe, John Leech and the Victorian Scene<\/em>, (Woodbridge, 1984), p. 19, 709.42092 LEE\/HOU<\/p>\n

4. William Powell Frith, John Leech: His Life and Work<\/em>, Vol. II, p. 94, 709.42092 LEE\/FRI<\/p>\n

5. Ibid.<\/em>, p. 283<\/p>\n

6. Simon Houfe, John Leech and the Victorian Scene<\/em>, (Woodbridge, 1984), p. 235, 709.42092 LEE\/HOU<\/p>\n

7. Ibid<\/em>., p. 231<\/p>\n

8. William Powell Frith, John Leech: His Life and Work<\/em>, Vol. I, pp. 11 & 14, 709.42092 LEE\/FRI<\/p>\n

9. Once a Week<\/em>, (London, 21 July 1860), pp. 98 & 101, PER 050 O3970<\/p>\n

10. Frederic G. Kitton, Dickens and his Illustrators<\/em>, (London, 1899), p. 148, 823.83 DIC\/KIT<\/p>\n

11. William Powell Frith, John Leech: His Life and Work<\/em>, Vol. II, p. 119, 709.42092 LEE\/FRI<\/p>\n

12. Simon Houfe, John Leech and the Victorian Scene<\/em>, (Woodbridge, 1984), p. 229, 709.42092 LEE\/HOU<\/p>\n

13. Frederic G. Kitton, Dickens and his Illustrators<\/em>, (London, 1899), p. 147, 823.83 DIC\/KIT<\/p>\n

14. Simon Houfe, John Leech and the Victorian Scene<\/em>, (Woodbridge, 1984), p. 236, 709.42092 LEE\/HOU<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The artist and illustrator John Leech, who became one of the foremost contributors to Punch and created the artwork for some of Dickens\u2019 most popular works, notably A Christmas Carol, was born in 1817 in London, the son of the assistant proprietor of the London Coffee House.\u00a0 He was sent to Charterhouse School from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1161"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1262,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161\/revisions\/1262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}