the roof of which the grapes hang in
great and luscious clusters in the autumn--you reach the studio. It is
a big, square room. Run your eyes round the walls, try to take in its
thousand and one quaint treasures. You can see humour in every one of
them--merriment oozes out of every single item. Stand before this almost
colossal statue of Venus. She of the almost faultless waist and
fashion-plate divine rests on a coal-box. Sit down on the sofa. It is
the stuffed lid of another receptacle for fuel. Golf is one of the
artist's hobbies, and he invariably plays with clergymen--excellent
thing for the character. We light our cigars from a capital little
match-stand modelled out of a golf-ball, and the next instant "Lika
Joko" is juggling with three or four balls. A clever juggler, forsooth.
And the battledore and shuttlecock? Excellent exercise. After a long
spell of work, the battledore is seized and the shuttlecock bounces up
to the glass roof. It went through the other day, hence play has been
postponed owing to the numerous engagements of the local glazier.
Fencing foils are in a corner; a quaint arrangement of helmets, masks,
and huge weapons _a la_ Waterloo suggests "scalping trophies." The china
is curious--there is even an empty ginger jar--picked up in country
places, of a rare and valuable old-fashioned type. He has the finest
collection of old tinsel pictures of the Richard III. and Dick Turpin
order in the kingdom, and values an old book full of tinsel patterns of
the most exquisite design and workmanship. Old glass pictures are
scattered about, "Lord Nelson's Funeral Car," and Joey Grimaldi grins at
you from the far corner of the room.
[Illustration: SCALPING TROPHIES.
_From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry._]
All this and much more is characteristic of the humour of the famous
caricaturist. We look at "Lika Joko's" skits and laugh; we take a
delight in picking out from his ingenious pictorial mazes our own
particular politician or favourite actor; we roar at "Lika Joko's"
comicality, and only know him as a caricaturist. But there is another
side to this studio picture--Mr. Harry Furniss's pencil is such that it
can make you weep; so realistic, indeed, that when in his early days he
was sent to sketch scenes of distress and misery, they were so terribly
real and dramatic that the paper in question dared not publish them. No
artist appreciates a "situation" better than he. I looked through
portfolio after portfoli
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