Just that which
makes people say (with some truth) that Dickens never drew a gentleman
would make them say with equal truth that what was interesting in the
gentlemen of Charles Keene (and he perpetually drew them) was not the
externals upon which gentlemen so pride themselves, but the soul. Thus I
have in mind one picture wherein Keene drew a gentleman; true, he was a
gentleman who had just swallowed a bad oyster, and therefore he was a
man as well. I recall another of an old gentleman complaining of the
caterpillar on his chop: he is a gentleman of the professional rather
than the territorial classes, and, great heavens! what a power of line!
All you see beneath the round of his hat is the end of his nose, the
curve of his mouth, and two bushy ends of whiskers. Yet one can tell all
about that man; one could write a book on him. One knows his economics,
his religion, his accent, and what he thought of the Third Napoleon and
what of Garibaldi. I have called draughtsmanship of this quality an
inheritance--I might have called it perhaps with better propriety a
monument. It is possible that England in the near future will look back
with great envy, as she will certainly look back with great pride, to
the generation preceding our own: they were a solid and a happy
community of men. How much they owed to fortune, how much to themselves,
it is not the place of such random stuff as mine to consider.
Pages:
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59