CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM ■T.M. Grouse CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 1924 087 991 281 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924087991281 M'^- PUNCH'S HISTORY OF MODERN ENGLAND THE RECONCILIATION: OR, AS IT OUGHT TO BE Reproduced from the cartoon in Punch, 15th March, 1845. M^- Punch's History OF Modern England By CHARLES L. GRAVES In Four Volumes VOL. I.— 1841-1857 New York FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY Publishers h^ Published by arrangement with the Proprietors of "Punch PREFACE THE title of this worli indicates at once its main source and its limitations. The files of Punch have been generally admitted to be a valuable mine of information on the manners, customs, and fashions of the Victorian age, and of the wealth of material thus provided liberal use has been made. But it must not be forgotten that Punch has always been a London paper, and that in so far as English life is reflected in his pages, London always comes first, though in this volume, and especially during the "Hungry 'Forties," Lancashire comes a very good second. For pictures of provincial society — such, for example, as that given in Cranford or in the novels of Trollope — or of life in Edinburgh or Dublin, the chronicler of Victorian England must look outside Punch. The "country cousin " is not forgotten, but for the most part comes into view when he is on a visit to London, not when he is on his native heath. Yet even with these deductions the amount of material is embarrassingly rich. And this is due not only to the multi- plicity of subjects treated, but to the manner in which they were discussed. Of Punch, in his early days at any rate, the criticism recently applied to Victorian writers in general by a writer in Blackwood holds good: "They had a great deal to say, and they said it sometimes in too loud a voice. Such was their virtue, to which their vice was akin. Their vice was the vice of rhetoric. They fell to the temptation of many words. They wrote too often as the tub-thumper speaks, without much self-criticism and with a too fervent desire to be heard imme- diately and at all costs." In the 'forties Punch doubled the r61es of jester and political pamphleteer, and in the latter v Preface capacity indulged in a great deal of vehement partisan rhetoric. The loudest, the most passionate and moving as well as the least judicial of his spokesmen was Douglas Jerrold. The choice of dividing lines between periods must always be some- what artificial, but I was confirmed in my decision to end the first volume with the year of the Indian Mutiny by the fact, that it coincided with the death of Douglas Jerrold, who from 1841 to 1857 had, more than any other writer, been responsible for the Radical and humanitarian views expressed in Punch. My task would have been greatly simplified by the exclusion of politics altogether. But to do that would have involved the neglect of what is, after all, perhaps the most interesting and in many ways the most honourable phase of Punch's history, his championship of the poor and oppressed, and his efforts to bridge the gap between the "Two Nations" — the phrase which was used and justified in the finest passage of Disraeli's Sybil, and which I have chosen as the title for the first part of the present volume. To write a Social History of England at any time without reference to the political background would be difficult; it is practically impossible in a chronicle based on Punch in the 'forties and 'fifties. In the second part I have endeavoured to redress the balance. Here one recognizes the advantages of Punch's London outlook in dealing with the Court and fashion and the acute contrasts furnished between Mayfair on the one hand and the suburbs and slums on the other. No attempt has been made to represent Punch as in- fallible whether as a recorder, a critic, or a prophet. He was often wrong, unjust, and even cruel — notably in his view of Peel and Lincoln, and in his conduct of the "No Popery " crusade — though he seldom failed to make amends, even to the extent of standing in a white sheet over Lincoln's grave. But the majority of these confessions took the form of post- vi Preface humous tributes. As for the gradual cooling of Punch's democratic ardour, that may be attributed partly to the removal or remedying of abuses by legislation and the education of public opinion ; partly to the fact that newspapers follow the rule of individuals, and tend to become more moderate as they grow older. The great value of Punch resides in the fact that it provides us with a history of the Victorians written by them- selves. This is no guarantee of the accuracy of the facts re- corded. We have had painful proof in recent years that con- temporary evidence, when based on hearsay, even though written down red-hot in a diary, is, to put it mildly, incapable of corroboration. But, as reflecting the nature and mood of the writer, contemporary evidence is always interesting. My aim has been to supply a critical commentary, and, where possible, to verify or correct the statements or judgments re- corded in Punch. Acknowledgments of the various authorrties consulted will be found in the footnotes, but I should like to express my special indebtedness to the Dictionary of National Biography ; to the New English Dictionary ; to The Political History of England, by Sir Sidney Low and Mr. Lloyd Sanders; to Mr. C. R. Fay's Life and Labour in the Nineteenth Century; and, where the inner or domestic history of the paper is concerned, to Mr. M. H. Spielmann's History of Punch. The work of preparing this volume has been greatly lightened by the encouragement and practical help of Mr. Philip Agnew, the managing director, and Mr. Heather, the secretary, of Messrs. Bradbury, Agnew and Co. ; by Miss Berry's transcription of extracts; and, above all, by the research, the advice and suggestions of Miss M. R. Walpole, the assistant librarian of the Athenaeum Club. CHARLES L. GRAVES. vii CONTENTS PART I THE TWO NATIONS Punch and the People 3 Chartism 40 Machinery and Money-making 61 Education 81 Religious Controversy ...... 91 From Peace to War 112 ENTR'ACTE London in the Mid-Nineteenth Century , . . 141 PART II THE SOCIAL FABRIC The Court ......... 165 The Old Nobility 201 Society — Exclusive, Genteel, and Shabby Genteel . 208 The Liberal Professions 232 Women in the 'Forties and 'Fifties .... 243 Fashion in Dress 258 The Drama, Opera, Music, and the'^Fine Arts . . 271 Personalities 304 PART I THE TWO NATIONS M^ PUNCH'S History of Modern England PUNCH AND THE PEOPLE O ! fair and fresh the early spring Her buddingf wreath displays, To ail the wide earth promising- The joy of harvest days; Yet many a waste of wavy gold Hath bent above the dead ; Then let the living share it too — Give us our daily bread. Of old a nation's cry shook down The sword-defying wall, And ours may reach the mercy-seat, Though not the lordly hall. God of the Corn ! shall man restrain Thy blessings freely shed? O ! look upon the isles at last — Give us our daily bread. IT is fitting that a chronicle of social life in England in the Victorian age, drawn in its essentials from the pages of Punch, should begin with the People. For Punch began as a radical and democratic paper, a resolute champion of the poor, the desolate and the oppressed, and the early- volumes abound in evidences of the miseries of the "Hungry 'Forties " and in burning pleas for their removal. The strange mixture of jocularity with intense earnestness which confronts 3 Mr. PimcJis Historv of Modern England us on every page was due to the characters and antecedents of the men who founded and wrote for the paper at its outset. Of at least three of them it might be said that they were humanitarians first and humorists afterwards. Henry May- hew, one of the originators and for a short time joint-editor, was " the first to strilve out the hne of philanthropic journalism which takes the poor of London as its theme," and in his articles in the Morning Chronicle and his elaborate work on London Labour and the London Poor, which occupied him intermittently for the best part of twenty )rears, showed him- self a true forerunner of Charles Booth. His versatility was amazing. The writer of the obituary notice of him in the AthencBum observes that "it would not be difficult to show him as a scientific writer, a writer of semi-religious biography, and an outrageous joker at one and the same time." Another member of the original staff was Gilbert k Beckett, who crowded an extraordinary amount of work into his short life as leader- writer on The Times, comic journalist, dramatist. Poor Law Commissioner and Metropolitan Magistrate. It was k Beckett's report on the scandal connected with the Andover Union — pronounced by the Home Secretary, Buller, to be one of the best ever presented to Parliament — that led to important alterations in the Statute book, and secured for him, at the age of thirty-eight, his appointment as Metropolitan Police Magistrate. Thackeray's references to "a Beckett the beak" are frequent and affectionate, and on his death in 1856 a noble tribute was paid him in the pages of the journal he had served from its opening number. "As a magistrate, Gilbert k Beckett, by his wise, calm, humane administration of the law, gave a daily rebuke to a too ready belief that the faithful exercise of the highest and gravest social duties is incompatible with the sportiveness of literary genius." These words were penned by Douglas Jerrold, who died within a year of his friend, and was the most ardent and impassioned humanitarian of the three. By the irony of fate Jerrold is chiefly remembered for his sledge-hammer retorts : the industrious and ingenious playwright is little more than a name; the brilliant publicist and reformer, the friend and associate of Chartists, the life- 4 The Fotmdeys of ''Punch long champion of the under-dog is forgotten. Gilbert a Beckett and Henry Mayhew had both been at Westminster. Their people were well-to-do. Douglas Jerrold had known both poverty and privation, and his education was largely acquired in a printer's office. His brief service in the Navy was long enough to make him a strenuous advocate of the claims of the lower deck to more humane treatment. He did not believe that harsh discipline and flogging were necessary to the efficiency of either Service. As a boy he had seen something of the human wreckage of war, and the spectacle had cured him for ever of any illusions as to militarism. But his dis- trust of Emperors, Dictators and the " King business " gener- ally — always excepting Constitutional Monarchy — was so pro- nounced that any interference on their part was enough to convert him into a Jingo. How far he was from being a pacificist may be judged from the temper of Punch in the Crimean War, its advocacy of ruthlessness as the best means of shortening the hostilities, and its bitter criticism of Lord Aberdeen and Mr. Gladstone, and above all of Cobden and Bright, for their alleged pro-Russian sympathies. In the 'forties Cobden and Bright were the leaders of that group of "middle-class men of enthusiasm and practical sagacity " which directed the Free Trade movement, and they had been supported by Punch in the campaign against the Corn Laws. Douglas Jerrold was the spear-head of Punch's attacks on Protection, Bumbledom, unreformed Corporations, Cant and Snobbery, the cruelty, the inequality, the expense and the delays of the Law. He might be described as being violently and vituperatively on the side of the angels. The freedom of his invective, notably in the articles signed "Q," is beyond belief. Compared with his handling of ducal landlords, the most diastic criticisms of Mr. Lloyd George in his earlier days are as water to wine. At ail costs Jerrold was determined that the Tory dogs should not have the best of it. Biographies of the Punch staff do not fall within the scope of this chronicle, but some knowledge of the record and the tem- perament of the men who gave the paper its peculiar quality for many years is essential to a proper understanding of its influence 5 Mr. PnncJis History of Modern England on public opinion. They were humorous men, but they could be terribly in earnest, and they had abundant excuse for their seriousness. They could not forgive the Duke of Wellington when on August 24, 1841, he declared that England was "the only country in which the poor man, if only sober and in- dustrious, was quite certain of acquiring a competency." They regarded it as "a heartless insult thrown in the idle teeth of famishing thousands, the ghosts of the victims of the Corn Laws. ... If rags and starvation put up their prayer to the present Ministry, what must be the answer delivered by the Duke of Wellington ? ' Ye are drunken and lazy ! ' " A few days later Mr. Fielden, M.P., moved "that the distress of the working people at the present time is so great throughout the country, but particularly in the manufacturing districts, that it is the duty of this House to make instant inquiry into the cause and extent of such distress, and devise means to remedy it; and at all events to vote no supply of money until such inquiry be made." The motion was negatived by 149 to 41, and a Tory morning paper complacently observed that "there has been for the last few days a smile on the face of every well-dressed gentleman, and of every well-to-do artisan, who wend their way along the streets of this vast metropolis. It is caused by the Opposition exhibition of Friday night in the House of Commons." The comment on this "spiteful imbecility" is not to be wondered at:' "Toryism believes only in the well-dressed and the well-to-do. Purple and fine linen are the instrumental parts of her religion. Her faith is in glossy raiment and a full belly." The Home Secretary stated in reply to a question, about a year later, that the keepers of St. James's Park were particularly ordered "not to admit persons who wore fustian jackets," an order which prompted Ptmch to remark that in Merry England "labour was ignominy, and your only man the man with white hands and filbert nails." A writer in the Examiner so recently as 1861 could remember the time when the sentries in St. James's Park used, at the point of the bayonet, accord- ing to their orders, to dismount women from their pattens, and make them trudge on with them in their hands. It is 6 THE POOR MAN'S FRIEND (The Hungry 'Forties) Mr. Punch s History of Modern England an old story; as old as the days of Ahasuerus, when "no one might enter the King's gate clothed with sackcloth." Punch never wearied of bringing home to his readers these abrupt contrasts of wealth and poverty. The people were crying for bread and Parliament had been occupied in carrying the Ventilation of the House Bill and the Royal Kitchen Garden Bill. The amount voted for the Royal Stables at Windsor was considerably more than three times what was obtained from Parliament for the education of the poor. The Times of December 2, 1841 quoted from the Sporting Magazine an account of the accommodation provided for the Prince Consort's beagles and Her Majesty's dogs — sleeping beds, compartments paved with asphalt, dry and clean, with roomy and healthy green yards; and boiling and distemper houses detached from the other portions of the building — and bracketed with it the sworn evidence of the late matron and medical attendant at the Sevenoaks Union. The lying-in ward was small and always looked dirty. "There had been six women there at one time : two were confined in one bed. It was impossible entirely to shut out the infection. I have known fifteen children sleep in two beds." Six young girls, inmates of the Lambeth workhouse, were charged about the same time with breaking several panes of glass. In their defence they complained that they had been treated worse in the work- house than they would be in prison, and said that it was to cause their committal to the latter place they broke the windows. Strange reading this in a comic journal, yet paralleled by similar extracts week after week and month after month. The birth of the Prince of Wales was chronicled in the same issue of the daily papers which contained the "luscious history " of the Lord Mayor's dinner : — Oh, men of Paisley — good folks of Bolton — what promise for ye is here ! Turkeys, capons, sirloins, asparagris, pheasants, pine- apples, Savoy cakes, Chantilly baskets, mince-pies, preserved gingfcr, brandy cherries, a thousand luscious cakes that "the sense aches at ! " What are all these gifts of plenty but a glad promise that in the time of the "sweetest young prince," on the birthday of that Prince just vouchsafed to us, all England will be a large Lord Mayor's table ! 8 Fleshpots and Famine When the question of the title of the next King was dis- cussed, Punch boldly suggested Lazarus: — Let Henry the Fifth have his Agincourt; let him, in history, sit upon a throne of Frenchmen's skulls; our LAZARUS THE FIRST shall heal the wounds of wretchedness — shall gather bloodless laurels in the hospital and workhouse — his ermine and purple shall make fellowship with rags of linsey-wolsey — he shall be a king enthroned and worshipped in the hearts of the indigent ! LAZARUS THE FIRST! There is hope in the very sound for the wretched ! There is Christian comfort to all men in the very syllables ! By giving such a name to the greatest king of the earth, there is a shadowing forth and a promise of glorification to the beggars in eternity. Poverty and sores are anointed — tatters are invested with regality — man in his most abject and hopeless condition is shown his rightful equality with the bravest of the earth — royalty and beggary meet and embrace each other in the embrace of fraternity. O ye thousands famished m cellars ! O ye multitudes with hunger and cold biting with " dragon's tooth " your very vitals ! shout, if you can find breath enough, " Long live Lazarus ! " In those days there was a "Pauper's Corner" in Punch, in which the cry of the people found frequent and touching utterance. We have quoted from "The Prayer of the People " as a heading to this chapter. Another short poem deserves to be rescued from these old files, and added to the lyrics inspired by the Anti-Corn Law movement : — Disease and want are sitting by my hearth — The world hath left me nothing of its good ! The land hath not been stricken by a dearth, And yet I am alone and wanting food. The sparrow on the housetops o'er the earth Doth find its sustenance, and surely HE Who gave the mighty universe its birth Would never love the wild bird more than me. Punch had no illusions as to the genuineness of the Chartist movement, as may be gathered from his comments on the presentation of the Great Petition in 1842. There might, he owned, be dangerous demagogues who offered evil counsel, but 9 Mr. Punch's History of Modern England the Chartists themselves had a degree of intelligence, a power of concentration, a knowledge of the details of public business, heretofore unknown to great popular combinations of dis- sentients : — There are among the Chartists hard-headed logicians — men keenly alive to their sufferings, and what is more, soundly schooled as to the causes of them. We grant that their petition presented to Parliament contained many follies, very many extravagances — that it prayed for what the timidity of poverty will call revolutionary measures ; but is it not an axiom in politics, that to get even a little it is necessary to ask a great deal? We only call upon Toryism, or Whiggism either, each to show us its army of 3,000,000 of spotless politicians. But we contend that the Chartists are foully maligned when they are branded as thieves and spoilers. It is an old cry that property has its rights ; it has been added — and well added — that property has also its duties. To these let us subjoin — property has also its cowardice. Inquiries and investigations into the condition of agricul- tural labourers and of artisans were already bringing to light many disquieting facts. The physical destitution and spiritual forlorn ness of the workers in the Midlands were painfully illus- trated in the evidence of Mr. Home on the condition of the operatives of Wolverhampton : — I have entered the houses and hovels of journeymen locksmiths and keymakers indiscriminately and unexpectedly, and seen the utmost destitution ; no furniture in the room below but a broken board for a table, and a piece of plank laid across bricks for a seat; with the wife hungry — almost crying with hunger — and in rags, yet the floor was perfectly clean. I have gone upstairs, and seen a bed on the floor of a room seven feet long by six feet high at one side, but slanting down to nothing, like a wedge, where a husband, his wife and three children slept, and with no other article in the room of any kind whatever except the bed. . . . William Benton — "Thinks that's his name; can't spell it rightly. Age, don't know justly — mother says he's turned eighteen. Can't read or write; can tell some of his letters. Goes to a Sunday school sometimes. Is of the Baptist school religion, whatever that is. Never heard of Moses ; never heard of St. Paul. Has heard of Christ ; knows who Jesus Christ was — he was Adam. Doesn't care much about going to school if he could . . . ." 10 The Song of the Shirt You will find poor girls who have never sung or danced ; never seen a dance ; never read a book that made them laugh ; never seen a violet or a primrose or other flowers ; and others whose only idea of a green field was derived from having been stung by a nettle. The Commission which had been engaged in learning the exact conditions of all the women and children employed in agriculture in England suggested to Punch an imaginary report of an inquiry into the state of the aristocracy, and the moral condition, employment, health, diet, etc., of the residents in Belgrave Square, most of the ladies examined being over- worked by violent dancing in overheated rooms Sweating in the cheap clothes trade was already attracting the notice of reformers, and Punch was on the warpath whfen a Jew slop- seller prosecuted a poor widow with two children for pawning articles which she had to make up for him. She got yd. a pair for making up trousers, and earned 7s. a week. It was this episode, exposed in the verses "Moses and Co.," which paved the way for Hood's immortal "Song of the Shirt," the greatest poem, the most noble contribution that ever appeared in the pages of Punch. It was printed in the Christmas number of 1843, and dwarfed all the other contributions to insignifi- cance : — THE SONG OF THE SHIRT With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat in unwomanly rags. Plying her needle and thread — Stitch ! stitch ! stitch ! In poverty, hunger and dirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch She sang the "Song of the Shirt." " Work ! work ! work ! While the cock is crowing aloof ! And work — work — work, Till the stars shine through the roof ! It's O ! to be a slave Along with the barbarous Turk, II Mr. Punclis History of Modern England Where woman has never a soul to save, If this is Christian work ! " Work — work — work Till the brain begins to swim ; Work — work— work Till the eyes are heavy and dim ! Seam and gusset and band, Band and gusset and seam, Till over the buttons I fall asleep, And sew them on in a dream ! "O men, with sisters dear! O men, with mothers and wives ! It is not linen you're wearing out, But human creatures' lives ! Stitch — stitch — stitch. In poverty, hunger and dirt, Sewing at once, with a double thread, A shroud as well as a shirt. " But why do I talk of Death, That phantom of grisly bone? I hardly fear his terrible shape. It seems so like my own — It seems so like my own. Because of the fasts I keep; Oh God, that bread should be so dear, And flesh and blood so cheap ! " Work — work — work ! My labour never flags ; And what are its wages ? A bed of straw, A crust of bread — and rags. That shatter'd roof — and this naked floor — A table — a broken chair — And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank For sometimes falling there ! "Work — work — work ! From weary chime to chime. Work — work — work — As prisoners work for crime ! 12 The Song of the Shirt Band and gusset and seam, Seam and gusset and band, Till the heart is sick and the brain benumb'd. As well as the weary hand. " Work — work — work In the dull December light, And work — work — work When the weather is warm and bright ; While underneath the eaves The brooding swallows cling As if to show me their sunny backs And twit me with the spring. " Oh ! but to breathe the breath Of the cowslip and primrose sweet — With the sky above my head, And the grass beneath my feet ; For only one short hour To feel as I used to feel, Before I knew the woes of want And the walk that costs a meal ! " Oh, but for one short hour ! A respite however brief; No blessed leisure for love or hope, But only time for grief ! A little weeping would ease my heart, But in their briny bed My tears must stop, for every drop Hinders needle and thread ! " With fingers weary and worn. With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat in unwomanly rags Plying her needle and thread — Stitch ! stitch ! stitch ! In poverty, hunger and dirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch, Would that its tone could reach the rich ! She sang this "Song of the Shirt." The story of "The Song of the Shirt" is well told by Mr. M. H. Spielmann in his History of "Punch." Mark 13 Mr. PuncJis History of Modern England Lemon proved himself a great editor by deciding to publish the poem against the expressed opinions of his colleagues, who thought it unsuitable for a comic journal, and also by his omitting the one weak verse in the original MS. Strange to say, the poem does not appear in the index. The sequel PIN MONEY may be found in Peel's correspondence, and does honour to a statesman who, while he lived, received scant justice from Punch. Though the impact of Hood's burning verses on public opinion was immense and abiding, Hood himself a year later was dying in penury, of consumption. On November i6, 1844, Peel wrote him a letter expressing admiration for his work, and offering him a pension. "I am not conferring a 14 Sir Robert Peel and Hood private obligation upon you, but am fulfilling the intentions of the Legislature, which has placed at the disposal of the Crown a certain sum (miserable indeed in amount) in recog- nition of public claims on the bounty of the Crown." All he asked in return was that Hood would give him the oppor- NEEDLE MONEY tunity of making his personal acquaintance. That was im- possible owing to the state of Hood's health. Mrs. Hood wrote on January 14, 1845, to beg for prompt assistance : Hood was dangerously ill and creditors were pressing. Peel sent the ;^ioo at once, and on February 17 Hood wrote to thank him "with all the sincerity of a dying man " and to bid him a respectful farewell. He could write no more, though 15 Mr. PuncJis History of Modern England he had wished to write one more paper. Then follow these memorable words, even more needed now than they were seventy-five years ago : — • Certain classes, at the poles of society, are already too far asunder. It should be the duty of our writers to draw them nearer by kindly attraction, not to aggravate existing repulsions and place a wider moral gulf between rich and poor, with hate on one side and fear on the other. But I am too weak for this task, the last I had set myself. It is death that stops my pen, you see, not a pension. God bless you, sir, and prosper all your measures for the benefit of my beloved country. Hood died on May 3, 1845, and was buried in Kensal Green, but more than seven years later no tombstone marked his resting-place, and Punch was moved to ask : — If marble mark the soldier-statesman's grave. If monuments adorn his place of sleep Whose hand struck off the fetters from the slave. And his who sought out woe in dungeons deep, Did he not fight for Toil's sad sons and daughters? Was not his voice loud for the worker's right? Was he not potent to arrest the slaughters Of Capital and Labour's desperate fight? Eventually a tombstone was erected, bearing the words : "He sang the Song of the Shirt," but the pension continued to his widow lapsed on her death a year later. A sum of ;^8oo, collected by public subscription, was all that was available for the children, Lord John Russell, then Premier, having found himself unable to extend the pension for their benefit, at a time when, as Punch reminded him, the Duchess of Inverness, widow of the Duke of Sussex, was drawing a pension of ;^i,ooo a year. "The Song of the Shirt " rang through the land, but it did not end the hardships of the sweated sempstress. Within a year Punch was moved to indignation by the story of Esther Pierce, paid 6d. for embroidering eighty blossoms on a silk shawl, and charged with pawning the goods of her employer. In 1848, under the heading "The Cheap 16 The Duke of Norfolk's Panacea Shirt Market," we read of a woman prosecuted on a similar charge, who was paid 2S. 6d. a dozen for making up shirts, or 2jd. apiece, and on these earnings supported herself, two children and a husband out of work. As late as 1859 the sweated shirt makers were still receiving only 4s. 6d. a dozen. No wonder is it that when the movement in favour of cottage gardens was frowned upon in some quarters on the ground that flowers here were "out of place," Punch retorted with the bitter jibe : "What has the labourer to do with stocks but sit in them ? " No wonder again that a legal pillory of harsh sentences was a constant feature of his pages in the 'forties and 'fifties. A humane magistrate who refused in 1845 to hear a charge of wood-stealing from a hedge brought against a man earning 7s. a week — the common rate at the time for agricultural labourers — stated from the Bench that he knew of good hands in Warwickshire who were earning only 3s. and 3s. lod. a week. Meat was a luxury : only the elders got bacon : the children potatoes and salt : bread was lod. a loaf. Yet this was the tim_e when the Duke of Norfolk seriously proposed that the poor should eke out their meagre fare by the use of curry powder,^ a suggestion that recalls the historic comment of the French lady, shortly before the Revolution, on hearing that the peasantry had no bread, "Then why don't they eat cake?" Punch dealt faithfully with this ducal gaffe under the heading, "A Real Blessing to Landlords": — The g-enuine Anti-Appetitive Curry Powder, strongly recom- mended by the Duke of Norfolk, is the labourer's only true substitute for bread and meat. It possesses the singular property of deluding the empty stomach into a sense of fullness, and is calculated to relieve those distressing symptoms of vacuity which result from living on seven shillings a week. It may be warranted to supersede potatoes and bacon; containing in fact, in itself, the essence of gammon ; and one pinch dissolved in a tumbler of hot water is equal to a pot of beer. Landed proprietors, not wishing to reduce their rents, will find this preparation admirably calculated to reconcile labourers with their present rate of wages by enabling them almost ' For the actual speech of the Duke see the Examiner for 1845, P- 786. c-1 17 Mr. PiincJts History of Modern England entirely to dispense with food. Sold in pots, at from one shilling. Agricultural societies supplied. N.B. — A liberal allowance on taking a quantity. In these years the Dukes were constantly in M.7, Punch's pillory; the Duke of Marlborough for his harsh treatment of his tenantry in connection with the Woodstock Election in 1844; the Duke of Buckingham for prosecuting a rat-catcher, who was fined i8s. or fourteen days for killing a leveret as big as a kitten, and about the same time for prosecuting a poacher for damaging a fence to the amount of one penny; the Duke of Sutherland, in the same year again, for the arbitrary rules enforced on his estate, the whole county being parcelled out into sheep-walks, which suggested to Punch that he should be dignified with the Order of Mutton; the Duke of Richmond for apparently imagining that agricultural troubles could be settled by the simple process of drinking the health of the British labourer; the Duke of Atholl for closing Glen Tilt. Even the Great Duke himself was not immune from criticism and censure. He had done a great work in the past, but he was out of touch with the times and lacking in sympathy with the people. His words reflected his iron temperament : they were like tenpenny nails. In 1845 Punch made bold to suggest that the time for his going to grass had arrived: — The Times says "he is the leader of the aristocracy." Let him go and lead the Dukes. He is fit for that, but not any longer for governing us. . . . The old Duke should no longer block up the great thoroughfare of civilisation — he should be quietly and respect- fully eliminated. For the future, let us have him and admire him — in history. Harsh sentences on juvenile delinquents and plebeian offenders under the Game Laws and Sunday Trading Act, the harrying of vagrants, the treatment of destitution as a crime, are a constant spur to Punch's reforming zeal. The hard cases quoted from The Times and many provincial papers include the flogging of a boy for accidentally killing a leveret; Harsh Sentences on Children the trial of a starving woman for the crime of stealing a faggot worth a penny ; the prosecution of two children, aged six and twelve, for picking two handfuls of peas while walk- ing in a field through which there was a path, and the send- ing of the elder boy to gaol for fourteen days in default of pay- ment of a fine of 6d. and 13s. costs; a sentence of six months' imprisonment for stealing a crab worth is. 6d. ; the fining of a man 5s. by his vicar because his child, aged nine, had sold a halfpenny worth of sweets to another child on Sunday — which reminds Punch of Herod and the Innocents. In 1841 Lord Brougham, in Parliament, during a discussion on prison dis- cipline, stated that a man "had been confined ten weeks, having been fined is., with 14s. costs, because he was absent one Sunday from church." Then in 1846 we have the case of a, woman charged with "exciting charity," though she had not solicited alms. As late as 1859 we read of a child of nine in Essex, sent to prison for fourteen days and whipped for steal- ing J lb. of butter. Small wonder is it that Punch was a fervent and convinced anti-Sabbatarian, or that he wrote in 1846: "The State does not trouble itself much with education in this country, but the most usual schools for the young and destitute are the prisons." The alternatives of fine or imprison- ment heightened the evil, for while the poor delinquent went to gaol the well-to-do offender escaped. Brutal assaults on women were punished by a lenient fine, which the bully could generally pay; fraudulent tradesmen were not deterred from repeating their offences by a money penalty which they could easily afford; it was only the penniless pilferer who was sure of prison. In 1844 we find Punch tracing incendiarism in Suffolk to the greed of the farmers in keeping wages down, and publishing Leech's famous cartoon "The Home of the Rick Burner." Facit indignatio versum: here is the picture of "The Fine Old English Gentleman of the Present Time "— in the middle of the Hungry 'Forties: — I'll sing' you a fine old song, improved by a modern pate, Of a fine Old English Gentleman, who owns a large estate. But pays the labourers on it a very shabby rate. 19 Mr. PitncJis History of Modern England Some seven shillings each a week for early work and late, Gives this fine Old English Gentleman, one of the present time. * * * # In winter's cold, when poor and old for some assistance call, And come to beg a trifle at the portals of his hall, He refers them to the workhouse, that stands open wide for all; For this is how the parish great relieve the parish small. Like this fine Old English Gentleman, one of the present time. Here is the portrait of the pauper: — Houseless, famish'd, desp'rate man, A ragged wretch am I ! And how, and when, and where I can, I feed, and lodge, and lie. And I must to the workhouse go, // better may not be; Ay, if, indeed ! The workhouse ! No ! The gaol — the gaol for me. * * * There shall I get the larger crust, The warmer house-room there; And choose a prison since I must, I'll choose it for its fare. The dog will snatch the biggest bone, So much the wiser he : Call me a dog — the name I'll own — The gaol— the gaol for me. The horror of the "Union" inspired some of the most moving pages in Dickens' "Our Mutual Friend " some twenty years later. How deep and well justified it was in the 'forties may be gathered from the scandal of the Andover Union workhouse in '45, the habitual underfeeding of paupers, and the frequent inquests at which verdicts of "natural death " were returned on victims of neglect and even cruelty. The opposition to the humane proposal to establish a lending library at the Greenwich workhouse, following the example of Wandsworth, moved Punch to indignant irony: "Food for a pauper's mind, indeed ! It is quite enough to have to find food for his body." In 185 1 an inquiry into the manage- ment of a workhouse near Leeds revealed that the inmates 20 Bigamy or Divorce ? were fed at a trough, six at a time. In 1857 the workhouse children at Bath were not allowed to see the pantomime Jack and the Beanstalk. Owing to the intervention of the Guardians, headed by a clergyman, the children were actually stopped at the door of the theatre. But in "Dust from a Bath-brick" Punch dusted the jackets of the Guardians in his best style. Again and again we find him protesting against the regulation of the new Poor Law which separated man and wife directly they entered the workhouse. For professional mendicants he had no sympathy. Witness the ironical lines on "The Jolly London Beggars " : — A fig- for honest occupation, Begfgary's an easier trade; Industry is mere starvation, Mendicancy's better paid. In the long campaign for the reform of the Marriage Laws Punch never ceased to reiterate his conviction that cheap divorce was a better remedy than the punishment of the brutal husband. Yet when Mr. Justice Maule delivered his historic judgment in 1845, Punch hardly rendered justice to that master- piece of fruitful irony : — WAGGERY OF THE BENCH One Thomas Rollins, as poor as beg-gary, was arraigned as a bigamist. His first wife had left him and become no better than one of the wicked. W'hereupon Rollins took another helpmate ; and, for such violation of the law, found himself face to face with Justice Maule, who, as it will appear, happened to be in one of his pleasantest humours. He told the culprit, and we doubt not with a gravity of face worthy of the original Billy Lackaday, "that the law was the same for him as it was for a rich man, and was equally open for him, throug-h its aid, to afford relief." In the like way that turbot and champagne are the same to Lazarus as to Dives ; if Lazarus could only buy the taste of them. Beggar and rich man have both the same papillary organs — a dignifying truth for the outcast wanting- a dinner ! However, the droll Judge continued his pleasantry : " He (Rollins) should have brought an action against the man who was living in the way stated with his wife, cuid he should 21 Mr. PtincJis History of Modern England have obtained damages, and then should have gone to the Ecclesiastical Court and obtained a divorce, which, would have done what seemed to have been done already, and then he should have gone to the House of Lords, and, proving all his case and the preliminary proceeding's, have obtained a full and complete divorce; after which he might, if he liked it, have married again." There is a delicious vein of humour in this. It smacks of the grave, earnest fun of Swift. How the jest increases in volume as we follow the pauper from court to court — tarry with him awhile in the House of Lords — and finally see him "married again." And then the Judge, in a sustained spirit of drollery, observes : "The prisoner might perhaps object to this, that he had not the money to pay the expenses, which would amount to about £S°° or ;^6oo — perhaps he had not so many pence — but this did not exempt him from paying the penalty for committing a felony, of which he had been convicted." Of course not. Therefore Thomas Rollins is in effect not punished for marrying a second wife, but for the turpitude of wanting "about ;^5oo or ;^6oo," by means of which he might have rid himself of his first spouse. In England the bonds of Hymen are only to be cut with a golden axe. Assuredly there needs a slight alteration in the marriage service. " Whom God hath joined, let no man put asunder," should be followed by these words, "Unless paid about ;^5oo or ;^6oo to separate them." Punch, we are afraid, was inclined, in those days at any rate, to resent any attempt to usurp his functions as a public ironist, even by those who were fighting on the same side as himself. Anyhow, he omitted to mention that the judge sentenced Rollins to one day's imprisonment. But later refer- ences to this fataous judgment made it clear that Punch recognized that the judge's irony was deliberate and animated by a sincere desire for reform, not by mere irresponsible "waggery." Against the Game Laws and their administration Punch waged a continuous war. Squires were condemned for the damage done to land by game kept up for the profit of the landlord, hares being fed at the expense of the tenant farmer. John Bull worshipped rank and money, and amongst his idols 22 The Model Labourer were hares, pheasants and partridges, with his "bold peasantry " as their constant victims. The Hon. Grantley Fitzhardinge Berkeley, M.P., who published a pamphlet in 1845 defending the drastic treatment of poachers, was very roughly handled for his calm assertion of the sacred rights of game; but perhaps the most effective comment on the inequalities of life on the land is to be found in the ironical portrait of "The Model Labourer " in the summer of 1848 :— He supports a large family upon the smallest wages. He works from twelve to fourteen hours a day. He rises early to dig in what he calls his garden. He prefers his fireside to the alehouse, and has only one pipe when he gets home, and then to bed. He attends church regularly, with a clean smock frock and face, on Sundays, and waits outside, when service is over, to pull his hair to his landlord, or, in his absence, pays the same reverence to the steward. Beer and he are perfect strangers, rarely meeting, except at Christ- mas or harvest time; and as for spirits, he only knows them, like meat, by name. He does not care for skittles. He never loses a day's work by attending political meetings. Newspapers do not make him discontented, for the simple reason that he cannot read. He believes strongly in the fact of his belonging to the " Finest Peasantry." He sends his children to school somehow, and gives them the best boots and education he can. He attributes all blights, bad seasons, failures, losses, accidents to the repeal of the Corn Laws. He won't look at a hare, and imagines, in his respect for rabbits, that Jack Sheppard was a poacher. He whitewashes his cottage once a year. He is punctual with his rent, and somehow, by some rare secret best known by his wages, he is never ill. He knows absolutely nothing beyond the affairs of his parish, and does not trouble himself greatly about them. If he has a vote, it is his landlord's, of course. He joins in the cry of "Protection," wonder- ing what it means, and puts his X most innocently to any farmer's petition. He subscribes a penny a week to a Burial Society. He erects triumphal arches, fills up a group of happy tenants, shouts, sings, dances — any mockery or absurdity, to please his master. He has an incurable horror of the Union, and his greatest pride is to starve sooner than to solicit parish relief. His children are taught the same creed. He prefers living with his wife to being separated from her. His only amusement is the Annual Agricultural Fat-and- Tallow Show ; his greatest happiness if his master's pig, which he has fattened, gets the prize. He struggles on, existing rathpr than 23 Mr. Punch s History of Modem England living-, infinitely worse fed than the beasts he gets up for the exhibitions — much less cared about than the soil he cultivates; toil- ing without hope, spring, summer, autumn and winter, his wages never higher — frequently less — and perhaps after thirty years' un- ceasing labour, if he has been all that time with the same landlord, he gets the munificent reward of six-and-twopence, accompanied, it is true, with a warm eulogium on his virtues by the President (a real Lord) for having brought up ten children and several pigs upon five shillings a week. This is the MODEL LABOURER, whose end of life is honourably fulfilled if he is able, after a whole life's sowing for another, to reap a coflSn for himself to be buried in ! This is not an imaginary portrait, though some of the touches are heightened by the artist. As for the vote, a good illustration is to be found in the advertisement of the sale of the Earl of Ducie's domain in 1843, quoted by Punch on page 14 of Vol. v., including "the entire village of Nymph- field, wherein are 66 houses and the Ducie Arms, with political influence extending over 1,200 honest yeomen." As for the exhibitions, with their rewards and prizes for the virtuous and industrious poor. Punch was lavish of sarcasm at the expense of this parsimonious and condescending benevolence, when the prizes represented a miserable percentage on the profits which the recipients had earned for their masters by special zeal. So we find him suggesting a prize of ;^i to the labourer who had lived the longest number of years on the shortest commons, and during the same period Leech's cartoon of a show where the prize pig is awarded £s 3^- and the prize peasant £2 2s. When baby shows were introduced in the next decade. Lord Palmerston was drawn with his prize agricul- tural baby, holding up a wizened old labourer with the label "Prize, 30s. Labourer all his life and never wanted to im- prove his condition." Punch's democratic distrust of Lords and Ladies Bountiful was no doubt in part the cause of his hostility to the Young England movement. From his account of the matter one might gather that Disraeli identified himself with, if he did not actually originate, the fashion of giving prizes to the working classes. Lord John Manners fell an easy prey to "the Democritus of Fleet Street" (as the Daily Telegraph called Punch in later years), when in "England's 24 Lord Shaftesbury Trust and other Poems " was penned the memorable cri de coeur: — Though I could bear to view our crowded towns Sink into hamlets or unpeopled downs ; Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die, But leave us still our old nobility. But "Young England" practised better than its poet preached. For proof one need only turn to the history of the reform of the Factory Acts which Punch unflinchingly sup- ported, while rendering scant justice to the man who started this "great campaign against the oppression of the industrial poor " and carried it to a successful conclusion, or to some of those who lent him most valuable assistance. Of Lord Ashley, afterwards the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, it has been said that if there is a Seventh Heaven he is there. But he was a Tory, who had opposed the Reform Bill of 1832, though he supported Catholic Emancipation and resigned his seat for Dorset in 1846 in the belief that the continuance of the Corn Laws was impracticable; he was an aristocrat; he held pronounced Evangelical views and was a convinced Sabbatarian. On all these grounds he was held suspect by Punch. Yet as early as 1833 Lord Ashley was mainly in- strumental in securing the passage of a Factory Act, the scope of which was narrowed by the hostility of Whigs, manufac- turing capitalists and doctrinaire Radicals. In 1840 he got a Commission appointed, whose report, published in 1842, shocked the conscience of the nation and led to the introduc- tion of a Bill excluding women and children from mines. In the next phase of this humane campaign, when Sir James Graham introduced a Government Bill to regulate labour in factories, Disraeli and the "Young England " group supported Ashley throughout against the refusal of the Government to concede the ten-hour limit. But the Government, supported by Bright and most of the Radical Free Traders, threw all its weight into the scale of the millowners, carried the day against Ashley, "Young England" and most of the official Whigs, and until 1847 the labour of boys from 13 to 18 years of age, 25 Mr. PimcJis History of Modern England and of girls and women to 21, stood at twelve hours a day. The Act of 1847, which limited the hours of work for women and children to ten hours, was imperfectly drafted, and the interpretation placed upon it by the Courts enabled manu- facturers to evade its provisions. In 1850 the Government offered a compromise implying a loj-hour day, which was reluctantly accepted by Lord Ashley. But Disraeli supported Lord John Manners in protesting against this compromise. As his biographers do well to remind us, he condemned it as a breach of faith with the overworked population : the honour of Parliament was concerned in not taking advantage of a legal flaw. The Government again carried the day, but only for the moment; the objects of its critics have long since been more than obtained. Disraeli's speech on this occasion was "instinct Avith the spirit of Sybil" — his finest and best constructed novel. Sybil was published in 1845, and though in its essentials exhibiting a remarkable convergence with the aims of Punch, was never mentioned by him at the time. Disraeli was a Jew. Now Punch consistently supported the removal of Jewish disabilities as an act of justice, and when rebuking the Exeter Hall philanthropists for thinking that charity must begin abroad, and for neglecting the starving sempstress for the apostate Jew, Chinese, Hottentots, etc., gave them this excellent advice : "Ye who would convert the Jews, first copy the Jews' great virtue ; first take care of your own poor; feed and clothe them, and then, if you will, with the superfluity make converts of the Hebrews."- But Punch was no lover of Jews, and least of all of Disraeli. He soon recognized his abilities as a great Parliamentary gladiator; he admitted his courage and tenacity. In the main, however, Punch regarded him at this stage of his career as a brilliant but undesirable alien, a flamboyant charlatan, an untrustworthy and insincere patron of the agricultural interest. Yet Sybil in its pictures of the inequalities and miseries of the social and in- dustrial system then prevailing, was conceived and executed largely in the spirit of Hood's deathbed letter to Peel. Dis- raeli was never more "on the side of the angels" than when he wrote the dialogue between Egremont and the stranger. The 26 The Two Nations stranger, after observing that while Christianity teaches us to love our neighbours as ourselves, modern society acknowledges no neighbour, adds that society, still in its infancy, is beginning to feel its way. Egremont replies : — "Well, Society may be in its infancy; but, say what you like, our Queen reigns over the greatest nation that ever existed." "Which nation?" asked the younger stranger; "for she reigns over two." The stranger paused. Egremont was silent, but looked in- quiringly. "Yes," resumed the younger stranger after a moment's interval, "two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy ; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts and feelings as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets ; who are formed by a different breeding, and fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws." "You speak of," said Egremont hesitatingly,— "THE RICH AND THE POOR." Disraeli's sumptuous upholstery, which Thackeray was so fond of burlesquing, is occasionally apparent in Sybil, though one must not forget his own explanation: "I write in irony, and they call it bombast." For the rest the pictures of life in the agricultural and industrial districts, the squalid wretchedness of cellar and hovel, the evils of the truck system and the "tommy-shop" were never more luridly painted by any Chartist writer than by Disraeli in Sybil. The details are not exaggerated; they are borne out by sober historians such as S. R. Gardiner in describing the conditions in Man- chester, Bethnal Green and Dorsetshire. Disraeli's inability to reproduce the speech of artisans or peasants correctly is a negligible matter. He never made a systematic tour in the slums as Lord Ashley did in preparation for his campaign on behalf of Ragged Schools; he was not a literary realist; but here he was in touch with realities, and we have his own word for it that he wrote from personal observation. The heroes of the book are all on the side of reform; Gerard, the people's leader; St. Lys, the humanitarian parson; Egremont, an aristocrat converted from indifference by contact with the poor; and the martyrs are the victims of the existing system, agricultural labourers on 8s. a week and starving hand-loom 27 Mr. PuncJis History of Modern England weavers. Disraeli has no use for tlie Lord Marneys and de Mowbrays wiio complacently acquiesced in the serfdom of the slaves in smock-frocks or even denied that they were badly off. They were not a real aristocracy, a "corporation of the best and bravest," in Carlyle's phrase. But for reasons already given Punch was not prepared to accept Disraeli as an ally. He was too useful as a butt for satire and ridicule, and his oriental personality was antipathetic to Punch's eminently British mind. Moreover, in justice to Punch it must be admitted that there were real divergences. Disraeli opposed the repeal of the Corn Laws, though he lived to describe Protection as dead and damned. The readjustment of the "Two Nations " which, as a leader of the "Young England" movement, he proposed for the remedy and removal of the distress and tumult and anger of the Hungry 'Forties, involved in his view the strengthening of the Sovereign and the maintenance of the leadership of the aristocracy. They were to be awakened to their responsibilities and duties, but not shorn of their rights and privileges. Punch was a thoroughgoing Free Trader and Corn Law Repealer, a believer in measures rather than men, an unsparing critic of Kings and Courts, and whenever he saw an aristocratic head, inclined to hit it. "Young England " only served as a target for satire; Punch refused to recognize the genuine idealism by which the best of the group were animated. But, as one of their defenders has admitted, they were not a real Party, and were concerned with principles rather than specific measures of reform. Idealism which stopped short of immediate action did not appeal to Punch. Though often a petulant and intolerant critic, he was always on the look out for practical evidences of reform, legislative, administrative or philanthropic. In 1842 he hailed the de- cision to close the Fleet Prison, and when it was about to be demolished, wrote in 1845 : "Truly there are sermons in stones, and if Beelzebub wanted to preach on the folly, cruelty, ignor- ance and wickedness of men towards men, even he could not hit upon a more suggestive text than is written — written in tears — on every stone of the Fleet Prison." Of the efforts to bring justice within the reach of the poor he was an impassioned 28 A Plot Against Prisons advocate from the very first. When a police magistrate ex- pressed views of which he disapproved he did not hesitate to describe him as "an insufferably ignorant, and therefore in- solent, magisterial cur"! That was in 1841. Four years later Punch vociferously applauds a courageous magistrate who committed a "gentleman " to the House of Correction for a brutal assault, and welcomes a revolt against harsh sen- tences in the action of the Recorder at the Central Criminal Court, who in 1847 refused to send a boy of twelve to prison for stealing jC^ 12s. from his master "because if he went to prison he might become an expert thief." In the year 1853 Punch discussed at length, under the title of "A Plot against Prisons," and in the ironical vein which frequently exposed him to misconception by his prosaic readers, "a dangerous conspiracy organized for the purpose of defraud- ing the gallows and the hulks," and initiated by one of the noblest of many noble Quaker philanthropists: — The originator of the plot is one Joseph Sturge, who has founded an establishment, called the Reformatory Institution, in Birmingham, and placed it under the superintendence of another man named Ellis, who formerly presided over a similar concern in London, being a place of resort for young thieves, where they were inveigled, and seduced into the abandonment of their dishonest calling. To this end no pains were spared to render the paths of virtue seductive, by blending as much amusement as possible with the particular branch of industry the lads were instructed in. The man Ellis, their enticer from the line of turpitude, is a shoemaker. He says in his evidence, reported by the House of Commons : "I used to go and sit with them for two or three hours a day, and I used to tell them that they might, by governing their tongfues, their tempers and their appetites, and governing them- selves generally, be much more happy if they would put them- selves in harmony with the laws of their own physical nature; and I showed them how wrong it was to break the social laws that bind society together, and also the laws of God, and so forth. I considered that my conversation with them for two or three hours had had a great effect ; and I provided them with wholesome food, and I gave them clothes to wear, and I sur rounded them with as many comforts as I possibly could." 29 I\[y. PiincJis History of Modern England The Birmingham Institution, under the same management, has also succeeded to such an extent that it is in contemplation to establish another there on a larger scale ; which, no doubt, will most seriously tend to impair the utility of those magnificent edifices, our gaols and bridewells, which everywhere afford such vast but by no means empty accommodation. A meeting has been held. Lord Calthorpe in the chair, to carry out the desired object, which will tend to throw so many turnkeys out of employment, and to which all persons are asked to subscribe who desire to rob Jack Ketch of SERVANTGALISM CoOK: " Well, to be sure, Mum! Last place I were in Missis always knocked at the door afore she come into the kitchen ! ! " his livelihood, and the Grovernment of convict labour, by substituting prevention for cure — superseding prison discipline by reformation. The relations of masters, mistresses and servants is a never ending theme in the pages of Punch. His attitude was governed by the broad principles that the labourer was worthy of his hire, and that those who offered inadequate wages must expect neither character nor efficiency. But he draws a clear distinction between the domestic slave and the flunkey, hold- 30 High Life Below Stairs ^jj^'"\ ing that snobbery in employers was the chief cause of its prevalence amongst highly paid servants. Punch was the champion of the " slavey " — immor- talized in Dickens's " Marchioness " — even of the much- maligned char- woman ; the relent- less critic of Jeames, his plush and powder and calves. As early as 1847 we find him supporting a reversal of the old regime : the mis- tress must be ap- proved by the ser- vant, and furnish a satisfactory charac- ter. The plea is not surprising, when advertise- ments for a kitchen- maid, "wages £3 a year," appeared in a fashionable paper and earned Punch's satire. Contrariwise, he never spares the arrogance of "ser- vantgalism," the assumption of " my lady the housemaid." In this spirit Punch makes game of a school for servants at Bristol, where lessons on the were given, but if servant girls and nurses Coachman : " Why — what's the matter, John Thomas ? " FOOTMAN : " Matter enuff ! Here's the mar- chioness bin and giv me notice because I don't match Joseph, an" I must go, unless I can get my fat down in a week ! " pianoforte 31 Mr. Punch s Hislojy of Modern England were neglectful of their duties and their infant charges, mistresses were equally to blame for their indolence and disregard of parental responsibilities. But the keenest arrows in Punch's quiver were reserved for "Jeames." He quotes from the columns of The Times the advertisements of a foot- man, "tall, handsome, with broad shoulders and extensive calves," who "prefers Belgravia or the North Side of the Park," while a little later on another of this type insists on "six months a year in town, and if in an unfashionable neigh- bourhood, five guineas extra salary." If I refrain from quoting from Thackeray's constant variations on this theme in the pages of Punch, it is only because they are so familiar to readers of his collected works. The etiquette of flunkeydom was peculiar. These gorgeous and pampered menials had their grievances; they were "expected to sit in church in a position from which the clergyman could neither be seen nor heard," as Punch put it in 185 1. Liveried servants were not allowed in Raw- storne Street Chapel, Brompton, in 1846, and a protest was made in the Press that at St. George's, Hanover Square, "the real aristocracy of the land are separated from their liveried domestics by a mere oak panelling." But in this war on flunkeyism "Jeames" was not the real enemy; it was rather the genius of snobbery which Punch impersonated in "Jenkins " of the Morning Post (or Morning Plush, as he called it), whose fulsome and lyrical rhapsodies are held up to ridicule in number after number. In this context two extracts may suffice, from an account of the galaxy of rank and fashion at the Opera which appeared in the Morning Post: It is, above all, necessary that the middle classes and the poor should see and feel that if the aristocracy has the monopoly of titles and the lion's share of the dignities and offices of the State, instead of hoarding, it nobly expends its revenues in those luxuries which emanate from the ingenuity and labour of the industrious. And again — the italics and capitals are Punch's: — Ever since the Italian lyrical drama crossed the Alps in the suites of the tasteful Medicis, its vogue has daily increased, it has become 32 The Underpaid Governess a ruling passion — it is the quintessence of all civilized pleasures; and wherever its principal virtuosi hoist their standard, there for the time is the CAPITAL OF EUROPE, where the most illustrious, noble, elegant and tasteful members of society assemble. These ornaments of society are in general absent at the too early opening of Her Majesty's Theatre; but on Saturday, as we surveyed the house previous to the overture, most of those who constitute society in England — those whom we respect, esteem or love — rapidly filled the house. Every seat in every part of it was occupied, and if those objection- able spectators were there^those gentlemen of ambiguous gentility, the fashionable couriers, valets, tailors and shoemakers, who obtain admission to the pit on the strength of knowing the measure of some actor or actress's foot — they and their frowsy dames were so nailed to their benches as not to offend the eye. These effusions, and others equally unbridled in their assertion of the divinity of kings and coronets, prompted Punch to adorn "Jenkins " with the alias of Lickspittleoff. It was not a nice name, but Punch might have retorted tdchez de ne fas le meriter. From servants to governesses the transition in those days was only too easy. Punch's study of the advertisements in this branch of the "slave market " began early, and let us hope to good purpose, though as I write the comparative rates of remuneration for cooks and teachers are still open to criticism. In the autumn of 1843, commenting on an advertisement in The Times, in which " S. S." offered a salary of £2 a month to "a morning daily governess of ladylike manners for three or four young female pupils, capable of imparting a sound English education, with French, music and singing, dancing and drawing, unassisted by masters," Punch observes: — How very much would it surprise the race of S.S.'s; what a look of offended virtue would they put on were somebody to exclaim to them, " It is such as you who help to fill our streets, and throng the saloons of our theatres; it is such as you who make the Magdalen indispensable." We have recently read the statistics of insanity, and have found governesses to be in a frightful disproportion to other educated classes. Can this be wondered at when we read such offers as those of S.S. ? D— I 33 Mr. PiincJis History of Modern England The terms of £2 a month were, however, Hberal compared with those offered by other employers. An assistant in a ladies' school was expected to teach English, French and music for £\ a quarter, while not at all infrequently the offer of board and lodging was regarded as an excuse for dispensing with a salary altogether. In dealing with the problem of these Thomas gives warning because his master has given up reading prayers, and he can't bemean himself by "sayin' 'Amen ' to a governess." "Sisters of Misery," Punch waxes ironical on the results of their improvidence : — If in the course of ten years, with a salary of, let us say, twenty pounds a year, out of which she has only to buy clothes fit to keep company with the children, the governess has not saved a sufficiency for her declining age, it is but too painful to know that she must have been a very profuse, improvident person. And yet, I fear me, there are lamentable instances of such indiscretion. I myself, at this moment, know a spendthrift creature who, as I have heard, in her prime — that is, for the ten years — lived in one family. Two of her pupils are now countesses. Well, she had saved next to nothing, and when discharged she sank lower and lower as a daily governess, and at length absolutely taught French, Italian, and the harp to the 34 A Real Dotheboys Hall daughters of small tradesmen at eighteenpence a lesson. In time she, of course, got too old for this. She now lives somewhere at Camberwell, and though sand-blind, keeps a sixpenny school for little boys and girls of the lower orders. With this, and the profits on her cakes, she continues to eke out a miserable existence — a sad example, if they would only be warned, to improvident governesses. Punch's attentive study of the curiosities of literature in advertisements relating to education continued for many years. A batch of them extracted from The Times appears in the issue of August 14, 1853, and pillories the meanness of ladies who wished to secure governesses without salaries, or, as an alternative, to turn their houses into boarding schools and get assistants without paying for them. Already, some three weeks earlier, Punch had quoted from The Times the advertise- ment of an academy for young gentlemen near Richmond, in Yorkshire, where youths were " boarded, furnished with books, and instructed in whatever their future prospects might require for twenty and twenty-two guineas a year. No vacations unless desired." On this "Dotheboys Hall" in real life Punch observes that while such a price for a year's food for mind and body is a miracle of cheapness, "the age of miracles has passed, and especially — after the publication of Nicholas Nickleby — of such miracles as this." Yet an advertisement of a school in Essex on almost precisely similar lines survived for at least forty years after Punch's protest, as the present writer can testify. Nor were the claims of the underpaid official forgotten. In his "Penny Post Medal " Punch endeavoured to illustrate the triumph of Rowland Hill, and waxed lyrical over his achievement, indignant over his treatment : — Beautiful, much more beautiful, to the eye of the philosopher Punch, is the red coat of the Postman with his bundle of penny missives than the scarlet coat of the Life Guardsman ! For the Postman is the soldier of peace — the humanizing, benevolent dis- tributor of records of hopes, affections, tenderest associations. He is the philanthropic go-between — the cheap and constant communicant betwixt man and man. 35 My. PuncJis History of Modem England In the Penny Post Medal Punch has endeavoured to show the triumph of Rowland Hill — no Greek or Roman triumph e'er so great — carried in well-earned glory into the Post-office, Saint Martin 's-le- Grand. If the beholder have any imagination, he will hear huzzaing shouts — he will hear all the street-door knockers of the kingdom for ROWLAND HILL'S TRIUMPHAL ENTRY INTO ST. MARTIN'S-LE- GRAND that moment instinct with joyous life, loudly knock, knock, knocking in thundering accord. Such is the triumph of Rowland Hill. Turn we tO' the Obverse. It shows an old story ; old as the ingratitude of man — old as the Old Serpent. Sir Robert Peel, the Tory Minister, no sooner gets into place than, in reward for the services of Mr. Rowland Hill, he turns him from the Post Office ! or 36 Rowland HilFs Reward as it is allegorically shown, he, as Britannia, presents him with- '''Mtt; this, a subscription is set afoot to which Sir Robert whh Magdalen penitence, subscribes ten pounds ! Ten Pounds ! It must be owned a very small plaister to heal so cruel a cut ! BRITANNIA PRESENTING ROWLAND HILL WITH THE SACK But these beneficent "red-coated g^-j^.^-^^r^f Ij^ts n.id" for lonff and arduous labour. "His walk in life is Cen y suclf a walk that it is a wonder he has a leg to stand uDon for he travels some twenty or thirty miles a day to theequal wear and tear of body and sole. For this his salary 37 Mr. PuncKs History of Modern England is a guinea a week." Accordingly, when in 1848 Post Office robberies were frequent, Punch, witliout excusing theft, re- garded it as the natural result of this miserable pittance. Under- payment has always been a great incentive to dishonesty, and in 1848 we have Punch's assurance that the postmen were the worst paid of all Government employees. The long fight for early closing, for the Saturday half- holiday, and for reasonable Sunday recreation, found un- flinching support in Punch from his earliest years. He did not, it is true, profess a burning sympathy with the bank clerks in 1842 when they were agitating for a closure at 4 instead of 5 p.m., but he was wholeheartedly on the side of the shop assistants, especially in the linendrapers' and milliners' establishments. One of his earliest incursions into this controversy took the form of a report of an imaginary meeting of duchesses at Almack's, at which resolutions were passed deprecating, in a contrite spirit, the overworking of milliners' assistants, and establishing an association to persuade dressmakers to reduce the hours of work to eight a day, abolish Sunday work, afford reasonable time to execute orders, provide medical advice and change of air for the sick, and start a fund to carry out these aims (May 27, 1843). These aims have long been realized in all well-conducted shops, but they were some- thing like counsels of perfection in the year of "The Song of the Shirt." But Punch's irony at the expense of incon- siderate shoppers in "Beauty and Business versus Early Shops," and "Directions to Ladies for Shopping," not only tilts at femininity's little ways, but shows that human nature has not materially changed in the last seventy-five years. Punch was moved by the hardships of dressmakers and shop- girls, whom he compared to convicts : " hard labour " was no worse than theirs. He frankly advocated the boycotting of a money-grubbing hosier in Cheapside, who kept his shop open until nine or ten o'clock, though all the other hosiers in that thoroughfare had for two years closed theirs at eight — for that was as far as early closing had reached in the 'fifties. But Punch was always a moderate reformer, very far from being a revolutionary, and he condemned with great asperity 38 Syndicalism in the 'Forties an attempt to launch an experiment mildly foreshadowing modern syndicalism : — Notwithstanding our desire to aid the assistant drapers in any reasonable movement, we cannot encourage them in the foolery which, according to a prospectus of the Metropolitan Assistant Drapers' Company, they seem to contemplate. They are coolly asking the public for ;^i 50,000 in 15,000 shares of ten pounds each, to start a model establishment, in which the assistants shall be their own masters, choose their own work, take their own time, and seize "every opportunity for indulging in all healthy pursuits and reason- able enjoyments." The prospectus then goes on to state, that the assistants will become "free and happy, as they should be." If a linendraper's shop is to be turned into a state of "freedom and happiness " all day long, it may suit the shop-boys well enough, but it will not be quite so agreeable to the customers. Holding it to be his duty "to smash humbug of every description," "Punch, after an examination of the financial pro- posals of the "free and happy " linendrapers, pronounces them guilty of very gross humbug in putting forward their prospectus. The control of industry by the workers formed no part of his schemes for bettering their condition. In the period under review Sunday was, speaking broadly, the only holiday of the working classes. Punch's views on A View in Hyde Park, showing the proposed site for the Exhibition of Industry! 39 Mr. Punch s History of Modem England their recreations, therefore, were necessarily governed by his views on Sunday observance, Sunday trading and Sabbatari- anism generally. Let it be noted at the outset that he was no advocate of the Continental Sunday : he was all for keeping Sunday quiet, even dull. But against any legal or other re- strictions, which thwarted poor people's innocent: enjoyment and recreation, he ranged himself as an uncompromising ad- versary. As we have seen, he indignantly resented the fining of boys for playing cricket, or children for selling sweets, on Sun- day. He supported the opening of museums and picture galleries on Sundays as early as August, 1842, and, in recording the defeat of the motion in the Commons, ends his comments on "The Pharisees' Sunday" with the remark: "The Museum and the National Gallery are, for the present, closed on Sundays; so for a time there are left for the people — the Eagle Tavern and the Red House at Battersea." Punch vehemently assailed the snobbery which sought to exclude working men and poor children from the parks. He welcomed the open- ing of the Zoological Gardens to the public in 1848 at a low charge, without a "Fellow's order," -plus a shilling. But of all the movements which inspired him with hope for the future, none offered brighter prospects than the great Exhibition of 185 1. It was Douglas Jerrold who coined the name of the "Crystal Palace." Punch had some misgivings as to the encroachment of the buildings on public amenities and rights, and warmly espoused the cause of Ann Hicks, whose family for 118 years had held possession of an apple stall in Hyde Park. Her grandfather, it was alleged, had saved George H from drowning in the Serpentine ! The stall was removed and Ann Hicks allowed five shillings a week for one year, but, largely owing to Punch's intervention, was assisted to emigrate to Australia. And Punch was indignant at the suggested exclusion of the public on the opening day, May i, 1 85 1, for fear of annoying the Royal family. But these mis- givings were happily removed, and the opening of the Ex- hibition marked a turning point in the long campaign of criticism, frank to the verge of discourtesy and indecorum, sometimes justified, but often malicious, which Punch had 40 41 Mr. PimcJis History of Modern England conducted against the Court in general and the Prince Consort in particular. He made the amende handsomely in his "own report of the opening of the great Exhibition" : — At length a cheer without, and a flourish of trumpets within, announce the arrival of the Queen — and the Prince, who, by the idea of this Exhibition, has given to Royal Consortship a new glory, or, rather, has rendered for ever illustrious, in his own case, a position too often vibrating between the mischievous and the insignificant. Prince Albert has done a great service to humanity, and earned imperishable fame for himself by an idea, the greatness of which, instead of becoming less, will appear still greater as it recedes from us. . . . Beyond comparison, the most gratifying incident of the day was the promenade of the Queen and Prince, holding by the hand their two eldest children, through the whole of the lower range of the building. It was a magnificent lesson for foreigners — and especially for the Prussian princes, who cannot stir abroad with- out an armed escort — to see how securely and confidently a young female Sovereign and her family could walk in the closest possible contact, near enough to be touched by almost everyone, with five- and-twenty thousand people, selected from no class, and requiring only the sum of forty-two shillings as a qualification for the nearest proximity with royalty. Here was a splendid example of that real freedom on the one hand, and perfect security on the other, which are the result of our constitutional monarchy, and which all the despotism and republicanism of the world cannot obtain elsewhere, let them go on as long as they may, executing each other in the name of order, or cutting each other's throats in the name of liberty. The only blot, as we thought, upon the whole proceedings were the unnatural and crab-like movements of one of our wealthiest peers, the Marquess of Westminster, and his fellow-official, the Lord Chamberlain, whose part in the pageant consisted of the difficult, but not very dignified, feat of walking backwards during the progress of the procession. We hope the time is not far distant when, among the other sensible arrangements of the present reign, a wealthy nobleman may be released from the humiliation of having to perform before the Sovereign and the public a series of awkward evolutions, which not all the skill of the posture- master can redeem from the absurdity attaching to the contortions of the mountebank. Punch could not resist having a dig at the aristocrat courtiers, but he had nothing but praise for the Queen and the Prince Consort, and especially for their practice of yisit- 42 The Peoples Palace ing the Exhibition on the "shilling days." As he put it in the lines "Victoria Felix ",: — Heaven's duteous sunshine waits upon her going-, And with it blends a sunshine brighter still — The loyal love of a great people, knowing That building up is better than o'erthrowing; That freedom lies in taming of self-will. Punch's loyalty to the Sovereign, however, did not cause him to forget the workers. He suggests to Prince Albert that a dinner should be given to the workmen who erected the building. As for Paxton, the architect. Punch agreed with the Examiner that a knighthood was not a sufficient reward for his services, and suggested that he should be given a share of the profits. But Punch was from the first concerned with the future of the building; with the possibilities of transform- ing it into a permanent People's Palace. So when Paxton asked " What is to become of the Crystal Palace ? " and answered his own question by saying "Let the Crystal Palace become a winter park under glass," with rare flowers and plants and a colossal aviary. Punch voted the suggestion of the Crystal Magician "delightful and practicable," for, as he notes, on the testimony of "the princely Devonshire, Mr. Paxton never failed in anything he undertook." Nay, Punch went so far as to depict, in a cartoon, John Bull contemplating the marvels of the winter garden. The scheme lapsed, and in the spring of 1852 Punch was indignant at the imminent sale of the Crystal Palace, and lavish of gibes at the "nobs and snobs " who despised the masses : — THE PEOPLE AND THEIR PALACE The People ! I weally am sick of the wawd : The People is ugly, unpleasant, absawd ; Wha-evaw they go, it is always the case. They are shaw to destwoy all the chawm of the place. They are all vewy well In their own pwopa spheeaw, A long distance off; but I don't like them neeaw ; The slams is the place faw a popula show; Don't encouwage the People to spoil Wotten Wow. 43 Mr. PuncJis History of Modern England It is odd that the Duke of Awgyll could pasue So eccentric a cawse, and Lad Shaftesbuwy too, As to twy and pwesawve the Glass House on its site, Faw no weason on awth but the People's delight. The Queen, in an excellent parody of "The May Queen," is credited with the desire to keep up the Palace ; Punch threw all his weight on the side of Paxton in his efforts to defeat the obstructives, and when, in June, 1852, the move to Syden- ham was finally decided on, he prophesied a great future for that favoured suburb. The "christening" took place in August, and furnished Punch with an opportunity for- ansAvering the reproach that "the English don't know how to amuse themselves" : — The great cause of Peace had every fitting honour paid to it on Thursday last at Sydenham. In its train followed some of the greatest celebrities of the day, all children of the people, who had come to assist at the christening of their new Palace. The Arts and Sciences, of course, were there, and gave the cause their blessing, until such time when they could give it something, if not more pure, at least more tangible. Literature, too, was there, and promised to devote its best pen to the service of the new principle, and Trade and Commerce had already sent off their ships to collect treasure to pour into the lap of their beautiful, but too long neglected child, as soon as the Palace was in a fit state to receive them. And the Poor advanced, and, opening their hearts, gave the cause their best wishes — and these were deposited with the coins of the realm, and are to form the foundation of the new building. Never was Palace begun upon so strong a foundation before ! If only half the promises are fulfilled that were made at its christening, this Palace of the People will be the grandest palace ever constructed. And, in truth, it should be so! The people have built palaces sufficiently for others; it is but proper now they built one for themselves. And when it is built it will be time enough to inquire if English- men know how to amuse themselves. They have had hitherto so few opportunities of learning, that it is ungracious to ask at present. In the meantime we wish them every enjoyment in their new play- ground at Sydenham. It will be the most beautiful playground in the world. Punch's generous anticipations, in part illusory, were mingled with wrath against militant Sabbatarians, over-zealous 44 Sabbatarian Solicitude for the souls of their fellow-creatures. A deputation, headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of London and Winchester, and the Earl of Shaftesbury, lost no time in waiting on Lord Derby, in order to urge upon the Prime Minister "the expediency of adopting measures to prevent the Crystal Palace, or its grounds, being opened to the public on Sundays." Punch is bitterly sarcastic against this condescending solicitude on the part of peers and prelates for the spiritual welfare of the vulgar cockneys, snips, snobs, mechanics, shopmen, and their womenkind ; creatures that not only consume tea and shrimps, periwinkles, and ginger-beer, but also smoke pipes and penny Pickwicks ! The people must feel flattered that they are thus sympathized with by the superior classes; only perhaps they would rather the sympathy were shown otherwise than by excluding them from pure air and enjoyment — in great tenderness for their immortal part, but with small consideration for their perishable lungs. But the attack was not solely based on religious grounds. The Morning Herald scented revolution in the proposal, and Punch was moved to address an ironical warning to the Home Secretary : — A word in your ear, Mr. Walpole. There is treason, hydra- headed treason hatching. Now, we are not joking. Were we in- clined to be droll, we would not cast our jokes before certain Home Secretaries. Hush ! This way. In a corner, if you please. Do you ever see the Morning Herald ? We thought so. Some- how, you look as if you did. Still, we have brought a copy. Here it is. A leader on the treasonous atrocities contemplated by the traitorous projectors of the Crystal Palace in Penge Park ! We will read you — when we can get a good mouthful of breath — a few of the lines : the dreadful lines. You see, the Palace is to be open on Sundays after one o'clock. In that fact the Herald sees revolution, anarchy, and perhaps— a future republic with John Cromwell Bright in Buckingham Palace ! Listen : " ' Go to mass on the Sabbath morning ' is the Church of Rome's command; ' then go to the park, the ball, or the theatre.' That is the Sabbath of Paris, of Munich, of Vienna, and, we are sorry to say of Berlin also. And, as one natural result, a single month, m 1848, saw the Sovereigns of Paris, of Vienna, of Munich, and of Berlin fugitives before their rebellious subjects. The people of Eng- 45 J\Ir. PuncJis History of Modern England land remained untouched by this sudden madness ; they were loyal to their Queen, because they feared their God ! " You will perceive, Rig-ht Honourable Sir, that had the Palace existed in Penge Park in 1848, the British Throne would have gone to bits like a smashed decanter. The Queen has only continued to reign because there has been no People's Palace ! We see, Sir, you are moved, but let us go on. "The Crystal Palace will be the main engine for introducing the Continental Sabbath among us. The people may go to church, it will be said, and then they may go down to Sydenham and enjoy a walk in the Crystal Palace, and what harm can that do? Just all the harm in the world. Open and naked profaneness would shock most persons, but this mixture of religion and dissipation will ruin myriads ! " Punch, on the contrary, believed that, in spite of the fulminations of Exeter Hall, the Crystal Palace, with its art treasures, and the setting provided by the wonder-working Paxton, would become the People's Sunday School, and a monster extinguisher of gin palaces. So we find him printing a mock protest from publicans against the desecration of the Sabbath by the proposed opening of the Crystal Palace after morning service. Punch's views on temperance were eminently moderate. It is true that in one of his early numbers he had depicted, in the cartoons of "The Gin Drop" and "The Water Drop," the horrors of drunkenness in the vein of Cruickshank; true also that he expressed admiration for the crusade of Father Mathew. He condemned excess, but he was no enemy of conviviality. Indeed he was up in arms against those who sought to "rob a poor man of his beer." In his view the best antidotes to intemperance were to be found in recreation and education, and in using Sunday to promote those ends. He severely criticised in the autumn of 1845 the provisions of the new Beer Bill, which prevented excursionists from obtaining needful refreshment at an inn, not only at unreasonable, but at reasonable hours, and protested against the closing of these hospitable portals against them on Sunday, "and perhaps very soon on every other day, if gentlemen, who can go to clubs, as well as to church, being blest with affluence, and, therefore, 46 Punch at the Palace belonging to the better classes, continue to legislate in their present spirit for himself (the excursionist) and the rest of the worse — that is the worse off." Meanwhile the Crystal Palace had been opened by the Queen on Saturday, June lo, 1854. Punch describes the imaginary visit which he paid a few days earlier to inspect the building and, by special command of the Queen, to report as to its probable readiness for her reception on the opening day. After being conducted through the building by Sir Joseph Paxton, he explained that it was not his intention to be present at the inaugural ceremony : — He was the godfather of the edifice, having originally invented and conferred upon it the title of the Crystal Palace; but he should leave to his friend the Archbishop the entire solemnities of the day, including an announcement which Dr. Sumner had most kindly undertaken to make, namely, that at the special instance of the Queen, arrangements would be at once effected for opening the Palace on Sundays. Fact is tempered with fancy in this account, as well as in his optimistic report of the meeting of Crystal Palace share- holders ; it characterizes, too, the series of humorous handbooks to the Crystal Palace, which appeared in the pages of Punch in the following months. But we find in the remarks put into the mouth of Mr. Laing, the chairman, a very good summary of his own views: — On reflection it had been thought better that men, under the crystal roof, should temperately refresh themselves — all mutually sustaining one another even by their own self-respect of the decencies of life, there and then in their own Crystal Palace — than that, turned away hungering and athirst, they should be absorbed in the holes and corners of surrounding public-houses. The subsequent history of the Crystal Palace hardly fulfilled Punch's sanguine expectations of its future as a great people's playground and school. Intermittently it fulfilled this func- tion, but as an educational institution it served the needs of the suburban residents rather than those of the great public; its entertainments were in the main supported by the patronage of 47 My. Pimclis History of Modern England the middle and well-to-do classes. As years went on the Crystal Palace, owing to its distance from London, suffered seriously from the competition of the series of exhibitions at Earl's Court. Yet one who is old enough, as the present writer is, to remember visits in his school days in the early 'seventies — recurrent Handel festivals from the days when Costa was conductor and Patti was in her golden prime; flower and dog and cat shows; the glory of the rhododendron shrubberies; pantomimes and firework displays; and, above all, the admir- able Saturday concerts, which drew musical London for some forty years — such a one, and there must be many like him, will always look back on the Crystal Palace with grateful affec- tion, and hold in reverence the names of Paxton and Ferguson, George Grove and August Manns, and many other good men and true who laboured to realize Punch's ideal. 48 CHARTISM WE have seen that Punch did not belittle the Chartist movement, but admitted the evils, political, social, and economic, out of which it sprang. So did some of the leaders of the Young England group (see Sybil), but Punch ridiculed their remedies. He was out of touch alike with Whigs, Tories, and Churchmen, especially the Tractarians, who denounced the men who tempted the people to rail against their rulers and superiors. Punch, too, did a good deal in this line. But while he recog- nized the sincerity and earnestness of Chartism, he distrusted the methods of the extremists, and his distrust was largely justified by the history of the movement. The cleavage between the advocates of moral and physical force showed itself from the very beginning, and the fiasco of 1848 was largely due to the fact that the leading spirits of Chartism had already declared themselves against it, or actually withdrawn from the move- ment. Of the famous Six Points of the People's Charter of 1838, three have been conceded — No Property Qualifications, Vote by Ballot, and Payment of Members — and we have come very near the realization of Universal Suffrage and Equal Representation. The demand for Annual Parliaments alone remains unsatisfied. Yet Lovett, who drafted the Charter, and was imprisoned in 1839 'with other Chartist leaders after the riots in Birmingham, emerged from gaol more than ever an advocate of moral force, joined Sturge in his efforts to reconcile the Chartists and the middle class reformers, and after 1842 took no further part in the Chartist movement. In the years of riots and fires and strikes and starvation that followed the rejection of the second National Petition in 1842, the leaders were, with few exceptions, engulfed in a tide which they were unable to control. Feargus O'Connor was one of E— I 49 NOT SO VERY UNREASONABLE ! EH ? John: " My Mistress says she hopes you won't call a meeting of her creditors ; but if you will leave your Bill in the usual way, it shall be properly attended to." 50 The Fight for Cheap Bread the exceptions, but his success in inducing the Chartists to repudiate the Corn Law Repeal agitation, and the disastrous failure of his agrarian scheme at Watford, alienated many of the old Chartists. Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn Law rhymer, withdrew from the movement, which he had actively supported, in order to devote all his energies to the repeal of the hated "bread tax," and happily lived long enough to see it abolished. Punch, who had pronounced its dirge in February, 1849, '^ith the legend "obiit. February i, 1849, aged 34," was heart and soul with the Corn Law rhymer. Repeal of the Corn Laws was the deepest principle in his early life, and he was too angry to do justice to Peel, denouncing him as a "political eel"; an infringer of Dickens's copyright in Pecksniff; attack- ing his policy of "wait awhile," much as later critics attacked the policy of "wait and see "; and even when Peel's conver- sion was complete, refusing to acknowledge any virtue in it. When Punch was bracketed with Peel as an opponent of the Corn Laws he indignantly repudiated the association : he at least had never turned his coat. One cannot help feeling that remorse must have mingled with admiration in his posthumous tributes to the statesman "who gave the people bread." But there were no prickings of conscience in the welcome extended by him in 1850 to the proposal (realized in 1854) to erect a statue to Ebenezer Elliott at Sheffield : — The true-tempered men of Sheffield are about to do a new honour to themselves by honouring the memory of Ebenezer Elliott, the man whose wise pen drew up the indictment against that public robber, Corn Law : and never was indictment better drawn for conviction, though a rare success attended the novel deed, for it was only worded with common words, the words themselves hot and glowing with hate of wrong. Elliott struck from his subject — as the blacksmith strikes from the red iron — sparkles' of burning light ; and where they fell they consumed. His homely indignation was sublimed by the intensity of his honesty : if his words were homely, they were made resistless by the inexorable purpose that uttered them. But the man had the true heart and soul of the poet, and could love the simple ■ Elliott himself said : " My feelings have been hammered until they have become cold — short, and are apt to snap and fly ofi in sarcasms " (D.N.B. xvii., 267). 51 * Mr. Punclis History of Modern Englana and beautiful as passionately as he denounced the selfish and the mean. The Corn-Law Rhymes did greatest service. They were the earliest utterances of a people contending- with a sense of inarticulate suffering. They supplied the words ; they gave a voice and meaning to the labouring heart, and the true poet vindicated his fine mission by making his spirit pass into the spirit of the many. Time rolled on and Corn Law was condemned. The indictment drawn by the poet was the draft afterwards improved ; but Ebenezer Elliott was the first drawer ; and honoured be the men of Sheffield who seek to do monumental homage to their patriotic poet ! We have plenty of modern statues to the sword, it is fuU time we had one to the pen. Meanwhile the Chartist movement, weakened by defections and dissensions, and by the dissipation of its energies on a mixed programme, which antagonized all classes, damped by the constant rains which fell at every meeting and drenched the fires of revolution, was marching steadily to disintegration. Punch's distrust of the professional agitator is expressed in a bitter portrait published in the spring of 1848 : — THE MODEL AGITATOR The only thing he flatters is the mob. Nothing is too sweet for them ; every word is a lump of sugar. He flatters their faults, feeds their prejudices with the coarsest stimulants, and paints, for their amusement, the blackest things white. He is madly cheered in consequence. In time he grows into an idol. But cheers do not pay, however loud. The most prolonged applause will not buy a mutton chop. The hat is carried round, the pennies rain into it, and the Agitator pours them into his patriotic pocket. It is suddenly discovered that he has made some tremendous sacrifice for the people. The public sympathy is first raised, then a testimonial, then a subscription. He is grateful, and promises the Millennium. The trade begins to answer, and he fairly opens shop as a Licensed Agitator. He hires several journeymen with good lungs, and sends agents — patriotic bagmen — round the country to sell his praises and insults, the former for himself, and the latter for everybody else. Every paper that speaks the truth of him is publicly hooted at; every- body who opposes him is pelted with the hardest words selected from the Slang Dictionary. A good grievance is started, and hunted everywhere. People join in the cry, the Agitator leading off and 52 The Pyofessioual Agitator PUNCH'S MONUMENT TO PEEL shouting the loudest. The grievance is run off its legs ; but another and another soon follows, till there is a regular pack of them. The country is in a continual ferment, and at last rises. Riots ensue; but the Model Agitator is the last person to suffer from them. He excites the people to arm themselves for the worst ; but begs they will use no weapons. His talk is incendiary, his advice nothing but gunpowder, and yet he hopves no explosion will take place. He is an arsenal wishing to pass for a chapel or a baby-linen warehouse. He is all peace, all love, and yet his hearers grow furious as they listen to him, and rush out to burn ricks and shoot landlords. He is always putting his head on the block. Properly speaking he is beheaded once a quarter. A monster meeting is his great joy, to be damped only by the rain [the great open-air meetings of the Chartists were uniformly 53 Mr. PuncJis History oj Modern England unfortunate in their weather] or the police. He glories in a prosecu- tion. He likes to be prosecuted. He asks for it ; shrieks out to the Government, "Why don't you prosecute me? " and cries and gets quite mad if they will not do it. The favour at length is granted. He is thrown into prison and gets fat upon it; for from that moment he is a martyr, and paid as one, accordingly. The Model Agitator accumulates a handsome fortune, which he bequeathes to his sons, with the following advice, which is a rich legacy of itself : " If you wish to succeed as an Agitator, you must buy your patriotism in the cheapest market and sell it in the dearest." The monster demonstration of 1848, as a recent writer^ puts it, "was the funeral of Chartism with the Duke of Welling- ton as the Master of Ceremonies." Hopes of a general rising had been kindled by the revolution in Paris, but they were not fulfilled. The annus mirahilis which set thrones rocking on the Continent and toppled down that of Louis Philippe passed in the main peacefully in England. Feargus O'Connor's monster procession and petition on April 10 ended in fiasco, largely owing to the precautions taken by the Duke of Welling- ton as Commander-in-Chief— the swearing in of 170,000 special constables (including Louis Napoleon !) and his wise decision to keep the troops as far as possible out of sight. It is right to record the fact that Punch was not moved by these events to desert his "left-centre " position; that he advocated amnesty rather than reprisals. In September, 1849, he published his special "Chartist Petition to the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty " : — MAY IT PLEASE YOUR MAJESTY— WHEREAS Death, the great Gaol-Deliverer, has by Cholera set free from Westminster Prison, Joseph Williams and Alexander Sharpe, foolish men, foolishly preaching the Charter, by means of pike and blunderbuss— Punch humbly prays that your Majesty will, in this season of jx>litical tranquillity, and of grave moral chastisement, give orders for the release of certain misguided men, it is hoped better instructed for the future^and thereupon pandon and set free William Vernon, Ernest Jones, Little Cuffey, and other such offenders, now made ' C. R. Fay in " Life and Labour in the Nineteenth Century," p. i66. 54 Little Ctiffey " harmless by the common sense and common loyalty of the English people. And your Petitioner will ever Print and Pray — PUNCH. Ernest Jones was the young poet, a recent recruit of Feargus O'Connor, and Cuffey was the fiery little tailor for whom Punch always had a soft corner in his heart. When Sir George Grey an- n o u n c e d that Cuffey had been included in the list of deported pris- oners, amnestied on the declaration of peace after the Crimean War, Punch expressed his satisfaction at the release of the "resolute, fire-eat- ing but withal frank-hearted and honest goose-hero of Chartism." But of much greater importance and significance is the striking poem printed in the issue of June i6, 1849, which may be taken as the best condensed summary of Punch's political and social creed in a time of transition. The occasion was a speech of Lord John Russell in the House, declining to entertain pro- posals for an extension of the franchise. Lord John, it may be recalled, was nicknamed "Finality Jack " for saying in a debate on the Address in 1837 that it was impossible for him to take 55 Special's Wife : " Contrary to regulations, indeed ! Fiddlesticks! I must insist, Frederick, upon your taking this hot brandy-and-water. I shall be having you laid up next, and not fit for anything." Mr. Punch's History of Modern England part in further measures of electoral reform. Punch held that the collapse of the physical force movement, so far from prompt- ing a lethargic acquiescence in the existing regime, ought to stir men of good will to further efforts in order to remove legitimate grounds of discontent : — THE TENTH OF APRIL TO LORD JOHN RUSSELL My name, Lord John, is pleasant on many a noble tongue; I've been bepuffed, bespeechified, bedined, bedrunk, besung-; Conservatism, Finality, Laissez-Faire and Statu Quo, Are glad to shake hands with "the Tenth," till very proud I grow. At home, abroad, inside and out, you think you read me true. But when did ever Whig know man's or people's heart all through? I am all that you style me, when your praise on me you j)our; All that, my Lord, but take my word, with that I'm something more. I read your speech, the other night, when Hume, my stout old friend. Asked of the House, as you did once, the suffrage to extend. 'Twas the use you then made of my name that hath these lines begot — Hear what the Tenth of April is, and hear what it is not. I am the friend of Order, but Statu Quo I loathe, The Law I heed, but still would weed, and trim and guide its growth ; Finality, your present love, unlovely is to me ; That "what is, is," proves not, I wis, that what is, ought to be. " Content " you think I was, and so, noways for change athirst. Content men are with second best, in preference to worst : Content to hold up half a truth, when all truth shakes to fall ; Content with what gives half a loaf, against no bread at all ! But yet no ways content, Lord John, to see some things I see. As a laughing House of Commons, and a helpless Ministry, A nation little taught, a Church under- and overpaid. And prone Respectability in Mammon-service laid. Great towns o'erbrimmlng with their scum, great stews of plague and sin ; Toil that should proudly bear itself, in grossnessi sunk and gin ; Crime stored away to ripen in settlement and gaol ; The rich for wealth, the poor for want, alike forpined and pale. 56 Reform or Revolution ? Then think, my Lord, and you, his friends, who deem those overbold. That bid you move along- the paths you entered on of old. Think how delay may order with anarchy combine, And to disaffection's vinegar turn loyalty's strong wine. Mistake me not for what I'm not, know me for what I am. The nursing mother of Reform, not Revolution's dam; Mine is the spirit that erst reared our England's throne on law. That never bore a lie it knew, or blinked a truth it saw. Nations or men, we may not rest — look round on Europe's thrones Shattered or shaken — hearken to her convulsive groans — Ere you fool us with Finality, of all bad pleas the worst, Think 'tis the Tenth of April you invoke, and not the First. This may not be great poetry, but it is and remains sound political philosophy, and an apologia for Chartism as inter- preted by the saner and nobler spirits who took part in the movement, endeavoured to control it, and were in some in- stances engulfed in it. The Rebecca Riots in South Wales in 1842-3 are little more than a name to most of the present generation. Few of those who connect them vaguely with resentment against the Turnpike Laws know that the name arose from the proclamations issued in the name of Rebecca, in allusion to the verse in Genesis (xxiv. 60) in which it is promised to the wife of Isaac that her seed shall possess "the gate of her enemies." Six years later there were still 160 turnpikes in and about London, and Punch declared that Rebecca was needed to sweep them away. "We laugh at the French for their passports; they may with equal justice laugh at us for our turnpikes. At all events the passports cost very little, whereas you cannot go three miles out of London with- out dipping your hand into your pocket two or three times." Emigration at this time was hailed by many, including Punch, as a remedy for existing discontent with conditions, and in the cartoon "Here and There," and the verses "Know'st Thou the Land where the Kangaroos Bound ? " Punch gives a roseate picture of Australia, "deficient in mouths, over- burdened with meat," and urges John Bull to help his paupers to go thither and live in plenty at high wages. A little 57 Mr. PuncJis History of Modern England time later the Female Emigration Scheme, started by Sidney Herbert and other practical philanthropists, furnished Punch with a text for his oft-repeated sermon on the Two Nations. The writer was one of those who witnessed the departure of a party of thirty-eight women from Fenchurch Street station for Gravesend, and thence to Australia, and after describing the group, their homely appearance and dress and manners, continues in a vein of self-reproach : — What a confession it is that we have almost all been obliged to make ! A clear and earnest-minded writer gets a commission from the Morning Chronicle newspaper, and reports upon the state of our poor In London ; he goes amongst labouring people and poor of all kinds — and brings back what? A picture of London life so wonder- ful, so awful, so piteous and pathetic, so exciting and terrible, that readers of romances own they never read anything like to it ; and that the griefs, struggles, strange adventures here depicted exceed anything that any of us could imagine. Yes ; and these wonders and terrors have been lying by your door and mine ever since we had a door of our own. We had but to go a hundred yards off and see, for ourselves, but we never did. Don't we pay poor-rates, and are they not heavy enough in the name of patience? Very true; and we have our own private pensioners, and give away some of our super- fluity very likely. You are not unkind ; not ungenerous. But of such wondrous and complicated misery as this you confess you had no idea. No. How should you? You and I — we are of the upper classes ; we have had hitherto no community with the poor. We never speak a word to the servant who waits on us for twenty years ; we condescend to employ a tradesman, keeping him at a proper distance — mind, of course, at a proper distance; we laugh at his young men if they dance, jig and amuse themselves like their betters, and call them counter-jumpers, snobs, and what not; of his workmen we know nothing — how pitilessly they are ground down, how they live and die, here close by us at the backs of our houses ; until some poet like Hood wakes and sings that dreadful Song of the Shirt; some prophet like Carlyle rises up and denounces woe ; some clear- sighted energetic man like the writer of the Chronicle travels into the poor man's country for us, and comes back with his tale of terror and wonder. Awful, awful poor man's country ! The bell rings and then eight-and-thirty women bid adieu to it, rescued from it (as a few more thousands will be) by some kind people who are interested in their behalf. It is a solemn moment indeed — for those who (with 58 The Beginning of Better Times the few thousands who will follow them) are leaving this country and escaping from the question between rich and poor; and what for those who remain? But, at least, those who go will remember that in their misery here they found gentle hearts to love and pity them, and generous hands to give them succour, and will plant in the new country their grateful tradition of the old. May Heaven's good mercy speed them. Emigration was one of the contributory influences which helped to end the hunger of the Hungry 'Forties. The repeal of the Corn Laws was a far more powerful factor in the revival of prosperity, and the efforts of Protection to raise its diminished head met with consistent derision from Punch, who gloried in the statistics of increasing trade. But he was no Benthamite, and one may search his files in vain for any recognition of the salutary results of the new Poor Law. The famous report of 1834 was drawn up by men who were largely inspired by the doctrines of Bentham and Malthus, and their scientific principles were repugnant to Punch. There is really not much to choose between his criticisms and the hostility of the Chartists to the workhouses or "Bastilles" of the new system. In his zeal for pillorying instances of harsh adminis- tration he overlooked the real improvement effected in the Act of 1834 in the rural districts. But the new Poor Law, though it was followed by an immediate local re-absorption on a sounder economic basis of agricultural labour and a migration of the surplus elsewhither, was not the sole cause of this improve- ment.' The demand for labour in the rapidly expanding in- dustries of railway construction and coal mining was an even more potent instrument of relief. Coal, on which both in- dustries equally depended and depend, may be now a tyrant, but it was in a sense the good genius of the 'forties, though the high prices paid in London owing to extortionate tolls caused Punch to denounce him as "Cruel King Coal " from the point of view of the poor consumer. The threat of revolution passed, but the diffusion of pros- perity brought with it, as it always does, further demands for increased wages. The year 1853 was so notable for strikes ' See C. R. Fay, " Life and Labour in the Nineteenth Century," p. 204. 59 Mr. Puuclis History of Modern England that Punch, who had already applauded poor needlewomen for adopting this course, and suggested it to poor curates, felt obliged to register his protest : — Really John Bull may almost be described as a maniac with lucid intervals. A few years ago it was the railway mania — a very dangerous frenzy. . . . The mania now prevailing is one which, if not attended to, may perhaps prove troublesome. This is the striking mania. Everybody is striking. The other day it was the cabmen ; now it is the dockyard labourers ; the policemen, even, have struck and thrown down their staves. Our mechanics have so far become machines, that, like clocks, as clocks ought to be, they are all striking together. Should this mania spread, we shall have striking become what might be called the order, but that it will be the disorder, of the day. In short, almost everybody will strike except the threshers, the smiths and the pugilists. With all this striking though, we had better take care that we are not floored. As for the efficacy of the strike-weapon in general, Punch's view is summed up in the remark which he puts into the mouth of a working man's wife as early as 1853, "Wot good did strikes ever do the pore ? " 60 MACHINERY AND MONEY-MAKING IN the 'thirties and 'forties the triumphs of applied science and invention had already begun to exert an immediate and far-reaching influence on national prosperity and the economics of industrialism. The views on the new order ex- pressed in Punch reflect, with certain variations, the enlightened moderation of the class of which he was the spokesman. The coming of the age of steam and machinery is welcomed, or accepted, with a temjjered optimism. He approaches the subject mainly as a critic or a satirist zealous for reform. But on two notable occasions he assumes the role of philosopher and prophet. The first was in January, 1842, a propos of a remark made by Sir Robert Peel that increased demand for manufactures would only increase machine-power : — Machinery, in its progress, has doubtless been the origin of terrible calamity ; it has made the strong man so much live lumber. But as we cannot go back, and must go on, it is for statesmen and philosopliers to prepare for the crisis as surely coming as the morning light. How, when machinery is multiplied — as it will be — a thousandfold? How, when tens of thousand-thousand hands are made idle by the ingenuity of the human mind? How, when, com- paratively speaking, there shall be no labour for man? Will the multitude lie down and, unrepining, die? We think not — we are sure not. Then will rise — and already we hear the murmur — a cry, a shout for an adjustment of interests; a shout that, hard as it is, will strike upon the heart of Mammon, and make the spoiler tremble. We put this question to Sir Robert Peel : if all labour done by man were suddenly performed by machine power, and that power in the possession of some thousand individuals — what would be the cry of the rest of the race? Would not the shout be, "Share, share"? The steam-engine, despite of themselves, must and will carry statesmen back to first principles. As it is, machinery is a fiend to the poor ; the time will come when it will be a beneficent angel. On the second occasion, in May, 1844, the note struck in the last sentence is sounded more hopefully. In a fantasy 61 ]\Iy. PiincJis History of Modern England entitled "The May Day of Steam," the writer notes the pass- ing of the old May Day and foreshadows Labour's appropria- tion of that festival ; and a speech is put into the mouth of a working man prophesying the ultimate unmitigated good of ^mflw(?, Erofoicil UucB ».• RAILWAY MAP OF ENGLAND (A PROPHECY) invention, though its first operation created great inequality and caused misery to the hand-worker. But for the most part Punch is concerned with the dangers and discomforts of the new method of locomotion and the wild speculation to which it gave rise. Railway directors were to him anathema. In 62 The Impudence of Steam his first volume Punch sturdily declares that "the best thing to do for poor Earth to protect her Would be to hang daily a railway director," and of his many railway cartoons perhaps the most effective is that which represents a director sitting on the front buffers of an engine as the best remedy for collisions. The "Impudence of Steam " is satirized in some prophetic verses, one couplet of which is still often quoted : — " Ease her, stop her ! " "Any gentleman for Joppa? " "'Mascus, 'Mascus?" "Tickets, please, sir." " Tyre or Sidon? " " Stop her, ease her ! " "Jerusalem, 'lem, 'lem! " " Shur ! Shur ! " " Do you go on to Egypt, sir? " "Captain, is this the land of Pharaoh? " "Now look alive there ! Who's for Cairo? " "Back her!" "Stand clear, I say, old file! " "What gent or lady's for the Nile, " Or Pyramids? " " Thebes ! Thebes ! Sir ! " " Steady ! " "Now, Where's that party for Engedi? " Pilgrims holy. Red Cross Knights, Had ye e'er the least idea. Even in your wildest flights. Of a steam trip to Judea? What next marvel Time will show It is difficult to say, "'Bus," perchance, to Jericho, "Only sixpence all the way." Cabs in Solyma may fly ; 'Tis a not unlikely tale : And from Dan the tourist hie Unto Beersheba by "rail." But the miseries and discomforts of railway travelling are dwelt on far more frequently than its prospective delights. The first-class alone was endurable, and that was grossly over- charged : the rest had to put up with overcrowding, discomfort, draughts, hard seats, smoke, dust and dirt. Third-class pas- 63 ]\Ir. PuncJis History of Modern England sengers were negligible and contemptible folk; neither punctu- ality nor civility was to be expected. In 1845 the railway mania becomes acute — a "universal epidemic." George Hudson, the Railway King, looms large in the public eye; and Punch expresses his dissatisfaction with M.P.s for dabbling in speculation which they have themselves the opportunity of unduly favouring. Burlesques of various railway projects — centrifugal and atmospheric — abound. Punch ridicules the idea of a railway in the Isle of Wight as unnecessary and calculated to spoil the " Garden of Eng- land." The menace to the rural and pastoral amenities of the countryside moves him to eloquent protest. The sufferings of M.P.s before Railway Committees are set forth in the parody of Tennyson's "Mariana in the Moated Grange "; the golden harvest reaped by expert engineering witnesses is resentfully acknowledged; "Jeames " has not escaped the infection and appears frequently as speculator, "stag," and dupe. The Battle of the Gauges had been joined, and Punch asserts that the largest entry in the "railway returns" was that recording the casualties. The Unicorn in the Royal Arms is explained as the "Stag " of railway speculation, and a design of a railway lunatic asylum is submitted as the most appropriate terminus for many of the new schemes. The protests of fox-hunters, noted bv Punch, recall the verses of the Cheshire poet : — Let the steam pot Hiss till it's hot, But give me the speed of the Tantivy Trot. The mania was not confined to men : Punch satirizes the ladies who were "stagging it " under the heading "A Doe in the City," and suggests a Joint Stock Railway Workhouse as the natural and fitting end of all these operations. This idea is further developed in "Jaques in Capel Court," a parody which begins : — All the world are stags ! Yea, all the men and women merely jobbers — 64 00 o H eople stripped to pay for the music. The romance of one era is the reality of the next. The Arbitra- tion Question has taken root, and will grow and spread. They show a cedar in the gardens at Paris — a cedar of hugest girth and widest shape — that, some century ago, was brought from Lebanon in the cap of a traveller. The olive twig, planted by Mr. Cobden in Westminster, will flourish despite the blighting wit of mess- rooms', and rise and spread into a tree that shall offer shade and security to all nations. In a similar vein is the welcome extended to the Peace Congress in Paris : — THE PARLIAMENT OF PEACE IN PARIS Anyway, the cause of peace has been reverently preached, and reverently listened to, in the warlike city of Paris. Within a walk of the tomb of the great peace-breaker — who turned kingdoms into 118 The Frankfort Peace Congress graves, and whose miserable purple was dyed in the heart's blood of human freedom — even there peace has been worshipped. Napoleon in his violet robe — beset with g-olden bees — the bees that, as in the lion of the olden day, swarmed in carcases — Napoleon, with his Pope-blessed crown clipping his homicidal brain, is, after all, a portentous, glistering evil — contrasted with our Quaker friend [Joseph Sturge], who, risen in the Hall of St. Cecilia, condemns aggressive war as an abomination, a nuisance that it behoves man, in this season of his soul's progress, with all his heart and all his mind, to denounce and renounce as un-Ohristian, vile, and bruti- fying. The drab against the purple; and, in our small thoughts, the drab, so preaching, carries it. So, again, Punch breaks a lance in defence of the Peace Congress in the year 1850 at Frankfort. What if it were inspired by visionary aims? All great reformers, idealists and benefactors — Harvey, Jenner, Stephenson — ^had been ridi- culed by unthinking and unimaginative critics : — TO THE LAUGHERS The Peace Congress is a capital joke. It's so obvious a subject for fun that we haven't thought it worth while to waste a laugfh on it. All manner of pens have been poking the public in the ribs about it — paper pellets of all colours and weights have been slung at it — arrows from all quivers have been emptied on its vulnerable sides. " Preach Peace to the World ! " The poor noodles ! " Inculcate the supremacy of right over might ! " Ineffable milk-and-water spoonies ! " Hold out to nations brotherhood for warfare, the award of justice instead of the bayonet ! " The white-faced, lily- livered prigs ! "Why, it's the merest Utopianism," says the Economist. "It's neither more nor less than Christianity," sneers the Statist; "Trade is the peace-maker," says the Doctor of the Manchester School; "Diplomacy keeps the world quiet," jocularly declares the Red-tapist ; " Peace indeed, the designing democrat ! " growls the Absolutist; "Peace, with a bloated Aristocracy still rampant!" snarls the Red Republican. And they all drown in a chorus of contemptuous laughter the pleading voices of the poor Peace Con- gressists in the Church of St. Paul. But there are some voices which refuse to join in this chorus. And there are some, too, of the wise and the great who can discern in this gathering of friends of peace, this little Babel of various tongues, this tiny congress of many races, a thing in no way to be 119 Mr. PuncKs History of Modern England ridiculed any more than the acorn is to be ridiculed when Science declares that its heart contains the Oak. The pacificist note had already been sounded when the Duke of Wellington publicly declared in 1849 that it was time ignorance should cease in the Army, on which Punch remarked "When the aforesaid ignorance ceases, how long will the British Army last ? " And in the same year, while condemning the Government for refusing to pay for enlarging the National Gallery, he protested against the Naval Estimates as past a joke "when ;^i58,ooo might be spent on a frigate including her total loss at sea." On naval matters Punch foretold many things, but he did not foresee the advent or predict the cost of the super-Dreadnought. Indeed, if the truth be told, he was extremely sceptical as to the efficiency of ironclads at all. They were "ferreous freaks" : vessels "made in foundries were sure to founder." He is on safer ground altogether when he assails with great spirit and caustic irony the refusal of the Admiralty in 1850 to admit naval surgeons to the wardroom, and proclaimed in vehement accents that he was "made positively ill " by the arguments of those who opposed Captain Boldero's proposals. The status and dignity of Army and Navy doctors and surgeons were near to his heart, and he scorn- fully resented the view that while "glory may be written on a drum head, it is not to be put down on lint." The turning point at which Punch's pacificist zeal began to cool was reached in 1849, and the change grew out of a generous sympathy with Italy and Hungary. The repeated warnings addressed by Palmerston to Austria, the independent action which so often embarrassed his colleagues and annoyed his Sovereign, and his support of Turkey in refusing to surrender Kossuth (though he subsequently repudiated any responsibility for his welcome in England), were warmly praised by Punch, who welcomed his declaration as a "bugle note." In 1850 Punch waxed humorous at the expense of Sir Francis Head, who wrote a book in which he demonstrated that 150,000 Frenchmen could invade London with the greatest ease. The coup d'etat of 185 1, and suspicion of the aims of Louis 120 THERE'S ALWAYS SOMETHING " I'm very sorry, Palmerston, that you cannot agree with your fellow-servants ; but as I don't feel inclinedito part with John, you must go, of course." 121 Mr. Punch's History of Modern England Napoleon, whom Punch described as a "perjured homicide," converted him into a supporter of rifle clubs as "patriotic and needful." The Russell Cabinet fell over the Local Militia Bill, Palmerston carrying an amendment which omitted the word "local " from the title of the Bill, so as to make the Militia generally available as an Army Reserve. Palmerston had already resigned, or been dismissed, for exceeding his functions as Foreign Minister by expressing his private approval of the policy of Louis Napoleon, but in spite of this Punch regretted the loss of the strong man of the Cabinet. The year 1852 opened in gloom and misgiving, faithfully reflected in the lines on "Retrospect and Prospect: or 185 1 and 1852," with their picture of the anxious vigil of England. " Defence not defiance " is the keynote of the appeal, " Speak, Mr. Cobden 1 " but it foreshadowed a cleavage which was soon to develop into bitter antagonism : — Armaments useless our money to spend on. Certainly we should be acting- like geese; But have we any sure ground to depend on, In trusting our neighbours will leave us at peace? Speak, Mr. Cobden ! The services of Volunteer Rifle Corps were accepted by the Government, and Punch (who was extremely satirical at the expense of the Oxford University authorities for discouraging the O.U.R.C.) can fairly claim to have been the inventor of camouflage on the strength of the following suggestions as to equipment. Under the heading of "Safety Uniforms" the reader finds : — In accordance with the practical suggestions of several dis- tinguished military officers, and others, care has been taken to provide a great variety of patterns and uniforms, the colours of which, assimilating to every conceivable shade of surrounding objects, cause the wearer to present as indistinct a mark as possible to the enemy's aim. Besides the neutral greys corresponding to the mixed colours of the heath, and the brown mixture identical with the colour of the mud, samples have been manufactured of slate- oolour and brick-dust red, calculated for house-top service amongst 122 Death of " The Duke " the chimney pots, of bright green with mother-of-pearl and gilt buttons mtermingled, adapted for field fighting in case of an invasion occurrmg at the time of the daisies and buttercups, of straw colour for a harvest or stubble brigade, and of snowy white, which would be a suitable tint if we were to be attacked simultaneously by the foe and the frost. A splendid pattern has also been made of cloth of gold and silver, the dazzling effect of which under a glare of sunshine, in the midst of a Turneresque landscape, would be such as utterly to bewilder the aim of the most expert marksman. All these wonderful uniforms, warranted incapable of being hit, besides a regulation rifle guaranteed never to miss, to be had at Messrs. Punch and Co.'s, Army Clothiers, 85, Fleet Street, where every species of Gentlemanlike Dressing is supplied to those requiring a superior article and good cut. The challenge to Cobden to declare himself soon gave place to direct attacks on the pacificists, and the death of the Duke of Wellington gave Punch a fresh text on which to expound the doctrine of preparation. RENDERING UP THE SWORD Our Arthur sleeps — our Arthur is not dead. Excalibar shall yet leap from the sheath, Should e'er invading foot this England tread — Upstirring, then, his marble tomb beneath. Our Wellington's undying fire shall burn Through all our veins — until the foeman say, "Behold, their Arthur doth to life return ! " And awestruck from the onset shrink away. Moreover, Punch defends the martial pageantry at the Duke's funeral at this juncture on the ground that it served to show to "Continental despots and bigots with what enthu- siasm we yet honour military heroism ; that if we have abjured the life of strife, we have not renounced the spirit of valour." Throughout 1852 and 1853 there is a steady crescendo of hostility in the references to Cobden, Bright and the Quaker pacificists. In this, both pen and pencil are wielded with aim and purpose, as evidenced in the cartoon "No danger," and the verses in "Ephraim Smug." In the Russo-Turkish quarrel Punch's long and consistent distrust — to put it mildly 123 Mr. PliucJis History of Modern England %r "{f ># ABERDEEN SMOKING THE PIPE OF PEACE — of the Tsar Nicholas was the governing factor which deter- mined him to espouse the side of the Porte, inspired his cartoons "Turkey in Danger" and "Paws off, Bruin," and, most astonishing of all, reconciled him, though most reluctantly, to the alliance A.iith his hete noire, the Emperor Napoleon III. For when war came in the spring of 1854 the predictions and misgivings of alarmists and prophets were falsified, and Great Britain was arrayed not against but on the side of France. In the interval divid- ing the outbreak of hostilities between Russia and Turkey from Great Britain's declaration of war on March 28, 1854, Punch threw all his weight into the balance with the War party 124 Outbreak of War in the Cabinet, and bitterly resented the alleged pro-Russian sympathies of Lord Aberdeen. These are hinted at in the cartoon in which the Prime Minister is shown with the British Lion saying "I must let him go," and are unmistakably indicated in the charges against Lord Aberdeen of blacking the Tsar's boots, and prosecuting the war in a dilatory and half-hearted way. The Manchester School and the "Pilgrimage to Russia " of the deputation from the Society of Friends to carry to the Tsar their protest against the war are severely handled. On the other hand belief in the righteousness of our cause did not blind Punch to the negligence and worse of those charged with the conduct of military operations and the equipment of our forces. He regrets the typical English attitude, in regard to preparations, that the whole thing was "rather a bore." The need of organized efficiency is preached in every number, and, above all, the debt of honour owed by the nation to the rank rv;^^^ Itinerant Newsman, No. I : " I say. Bill, what^are you givin' 'em ? " Ditto, No. 2 : " Grand Massacre of the French, and Terrible Slaughter of the British Troops." Mr. Ptinclis History of Modern England and file of our fighting men and to their dependents. Quite early in the war we find this excellent plea on behalf of "The girls they leave behind them " : — It is to be hoped that "A Naval Officer," writing' in The Times, will not vainly have called attention to the position in which the wives of soldiers will be placed by the departure of their husbands on foreign service for the defence of Europe and mankind against the enemy Nicholas. As to the soldier's pay, he half starves upon it himself, and after his semi-starvation there remains not the value of a crumb to be handed over to his wife and perhaps children. The girl — and, maybe, the little girls and boys — left by him have surely a claim superior to that of the mate and progeny of the lazy clown and the sottish and improvident mechanic. It is just that relief should be dealt out to them with no parochial hand, but with a palm a little wider open than that of the relieving officer, and in a spirit of consideration somewhat more kindly than the beadle's. The "Soldier's Dream " of the kind lady who came to visit his wife and children is an appeal to translate the vision into reality. And there were other grievances. The breakdown of the postal service to the seat of war and the injustice of making the recipients pay 2S. for each letter are shown up in "Dead Letters from the Baltic." But this was a minor matter compared with the grievous scandal of the hospitals, disclosed by William Russell, the fear- less correspondent of The Times, and ultimately remedied by the exertions of Sidney Herbert and, above all, of Florence Night- ingale. This had moved the country deeply, and the indignation was not easily allayed. Florence Nightingale's services are repeatedly referred to. She was Punch's chief heroine in these years, from the day of her first mention and the publication of "The Nightingale's Song " : — THE NIGHTINGALE'S SONG TO THE SICK SOLDIER Listen, soldier, to the tale of the tender Nightingale, 'Tis a charm that soon will ease your wounds so cruel, Singing medicine for your pain, in a sympathizing strain, With a jug, jug, jug of lemonade or gruel. 126 Song of the Nightingale Singfing bandages and lint, salve and cerate without stint, Singing plenty both of liniment and lotion. And your mixtures pushed about, and the pills for you served out. With alacrity and promptitude of motion. Singing light and gentle hands, and a nurse who understands How to manage every sort of application, From a poultice to a leech; whom you haven't got to teach The way to make a poppy fomentation. WOUNDED SOLDIERS AND NIGHTINGALES Singing pillows for you smoothed, smart and ache and anguish soothed, By the readiness of feminine invention ; Singing fever's thirst allayed, and the bed you've tumbled made, With a careful and considerate attention. Singing succour to the brave, and a rescue from the grave, Hear the Nightingale that's come to the Crimea, 'Tis a Nightingale as strong in her heart as in her song, To carry out so gallant an idea. 127 Mr. Punch's History of Modern England This is only one of a whole series of poems — notably one written at the time of her dangerous illness in May, 1855 — inspired by the "Lady of the Lamp," who did not forget, on her side, to aclcnowledge that the wounded common soldiers had behaved "like gentlemen and Christians to their nurses." Her saintship is secure, in spite of the adroit disparagement of modern iconoclasts; and the verdict of the common soldier was ' Well, Jack, here's good news from home. We're to have a medal." ' That's very kind. Maybe one of these days we'll have a coat to stick It on. happily expressed by a private at a dinner given to Crimean troops by the people of Folkestone and Hythe in 1856 : "We cannot forget Miss Nightingale — nor can we forget mis- management." Florence Nightingale was not forgotten by the nation ; the Queen sent her an autograph letter of thanks and a brooch, but no official recognition was bestowed upon her by the British Government until 1907, when she was given the Order of Merit. As for William Russell, Punch laboured in season and out of season to secure some public acknowledgment of his humanity 128 Familiar Grievances and courage, but the debt remained unpaid for forty years, and was then liquidated by a mere knighthood. The Crimean War was not a great war, judged by modern standards, but it assuredly was not a picnic, and it abounded in prospective plagiarism. Note, for example, the complaint of the treatment of the "Jolly Russian prisoners," in the winter of 1854: — How jolly the prisoner, who gets for 'his pay, From his captor's own purse seven shillings a day ! And that's how we pension our officer-foes. For which we shall certainly pay through the nose. The nation that prisoners so handsomely pays The wages of postmen will probably raise. And doubtless provide on a grand scale for all The children and wives of our soldiers who fall. Note aeain the criticisms of official reticence about individual acts of bravery in the lines "The Unmentioned Brave : Song by a Commanding Officer," early in 1855 : — Oh ! no, we never mention them. Their names must not be heard, My hand Routine forbids to trace Of their exploits one word. Most glorious though their deeds may be, To say it I regret. When they expect a word from me, They find that I forget. You say that they are happy now, The bravest of the brave, A " special " pen recording how Mere Grenadiers behave. Of "special" pens I disapprove, An inconvenient set. Who oftentimes the veil remove, And print what we forget. The charges of incompetence in the conduct of the war and of greed among those who made profit out of it have a painfully familiar ring. Generals, beginning with Lord Hardinge, were j-i 129 Mr. Fundi s History of Modern England A DISTRESSED AGRICULTURIST Landlord: "Well, Mr. Springwheat, according to the papers, there seems to be a probability of a cessation of hostilities." Tenant (who strongly approves of war prices) : " Goodness gracious ! Why, you don't mean to say there's any DANGER OF PEACE ? " too old; or they were "blundering cavalrymen." Heroism was kept severely in its place or inadequately rewarded, as when a drummer-boy, who had shown conspicuous gallantry at the battle of the Alma, was given £e^ by the Prince Consort; or, again, when a gallant sergeant was given a silk handkerchief hemmed by the Queen. Why, asks Punch, was he not made an ensign ? Of a review of wounded soldiers by the Queen he observes that it would have been more gracious if she had gone to the hospital instead of having the invalids brought up to the palace to be inspected. In the same vein is the dialogue, "Honour to the Brave " : — Flunkey (reads) : "Yesterday thirty of the Invalids from the Crimea were inspected . . . many of the gallant fellows were dread- fully mutilated at the Alma and Inkerman. . . . After the inspection ten of the Guards were regaled in the Servants' Hall." 130 Combatants and Non-Combat ants Flunkey (loq.) : "Regaled in the Servants' 'All! Eh? Well, 1 don't think they've any call to grumble about not bein' ' Honoured Sufficient ! ' " The navvies who volunteered for service in the Crimea are not forgotten by Punch. When cheers are raised for the fighting men and their commanders, As loud a cheer give, England, to the Navvies' gallant band, Who have gone to lend our warriors a stalwart helping hand. These to their work with shovel and crowbar as true will stand As those to theirs with bayonet, with rifle and with brand. The Charge of the Light Brigade' prompts Leech's picture of "A Trump Card(igan) " ; but, rather than with the officers. Punch, throughout the war, was more concerned with the rank and file, and with instances of unfair differentiation between officers and men, notably in regard to the sale of promotions and the grants of leave, satirized in the cartoon, "The New Game of Follow my Leader," in which a very diminutive bugler, advancing in front of a long file of soldiers, addresses the com- mander-in-chief : "Please, General, may me and these other chaps have leave to go home on urgent Private affairs ? " The efforts of the Peace Party are a constant source of de- risive criticism, as in the bitter stanzas, "Mr. Gladstone's Peace Song." Even more bitter is the onslaught in the year 1856 on John Bright : — Merrily danced the Quaker Bright, And merrily danced that Quaker, When he heard that Kars was in hopeless plight, And Mouravieff meant to take her. He said he knew it was wrong to fight, He'd help nor Devil nor Baker, But to see that the battle was going right, O ! merrily danced the Quaker. 1 Punch welcomed Tennyson's famous poem, which originally appeared in the Examiner, but could not agree with the view expressed in " Maud " that war is better than peace, though he held that it might be the only way — as at the moment — to secure it. 131 Mr. Pnnc/ts History of Modern England The article in which we read that " Wholesale slaughter and devastation, when you are driven to it, is the only economy of slaughter and devastation," is a definitely frank espousal of the doctrine of "f rightfulness." Cobden and Bright, "our calico friends," are mercilessly assailed in every number; Cobden in particular for his pamphlet, "What next, and next? " and for his servility to America. Peace came at the end of March, 1856, with its aftermath of criticism, dissatisfaction, discontent with the Peace terms, and fierce comments on generals and con- tractors, mismanagement and neglect of men and horses, and on the failure of the navy. Already the Sebastopol Blue Book had appeared — a painful document with "delay," "want of " and "unaccountable neglect" appearing on every page. The discussion of the Peace Treaty in Parliament prompts Punch to mitigated "joy and satisfaction " over what he calls "Walewski's Treaty of Peace "; to praise Lord Malmesbury — THE BRITISH LION SMELLS A RAT 132 Paying the Bill no favourite of his; to describe Lord Aberdeen as crawling out "like an old slug, now that the war-storm is over," to express his general approbation, tempered by his "preposterous love of Russia " ; and to condemn Disraeli, the leader of the Opposition, for his ignominious silence in the Commons. The speeches by Lord Panmure in the Lords, and Lord Palmerston in the Com- mons, in moving the votes of thanks to our soldiers, sailors, marines, militia, and Foreign Legion, and those of the Leaders of the Opposition, who seconded them, were appropriate, but fell short of the merits of the theme. "Certain figures, given on official authority, tell the whole story of the two years' war with grim succinctness. We have lost 22,467 men, of whom but 3,532 died in battle or from wounds." Nothing is new : in emphasizing the demand that Russia must be made to pay the bill, and declaring that her attempts to evade the Treaty must be rigorously dealt with, Punch strikes a note all too familiar in the last two years and a half. His general attitude is summed up in the lines on "Rejoicings for Peace ", : — Thank Heaven the War is ended ! That is the general voice, But let us feign no splendid Endeavours to rejoice. To cease from lamentation We may contrive — but — pooh ! Can't rise to exultation, And cock-a-doodle-doo ! We can't pass now direct from grief to laughter, Like supernumeraries on the stage, To smiling happiness from settled rage; We look before and after. Before, to all those skeletons and corses Of gallant men and noble horses ; After — though sordid the consideration — Unto a certain bill to pay. Which we shall have for many a day. By unrepealable taxation. Yet never fought we in a better cause. Nor conquered yet a nobler peace. Mr. Piinc/is Histcry of Modem England We stood in battle for the eternal laws; 'Twas an affair of high Police, Our arms enforced a great arrest of State; And now remains — the Rate. Friction with America over the dismissal of our Minister at Washington led to a remarkably frank open letter to President Pierce, of which the gist is : "Let us fight by all means if you will have it, but think what it means " ; wholesome advice. On the other hand the temper of the Manchester Pacificists, who had taken to disparaging Sardinia and the cause of Italian liberty, a propos of the advance of a million pounds to Sar- dinia, prompted the invidious suggestion : "They possibly fear lest a blow struck anywhere for freedom should cause the countermand of a trade offer." Punch, in these days no longer Pacificist, hailed Sidney Herbert's Bill for improving the edu- cation of officers in the Army, and establishing a board to examine for commissions and promotions; but he was more enthusiastic over Sir Joseph Paxton's proposed inquiry into the barracks system, quoting with approval his remark that, while every prisoner in our gaols costs us ;^i5o a year, "the soldier was the worst-lodged person in the Queen's Dominions." Post-war parallels multiply at this period, the year 1856 — in the recrudescence of crime and burglaries, and the garrotting scare; in wholesale criticism of Lord Palmerston. There is an excellent burlesque in the shape of an imaginary article from the Morning Herald on the execution of Palmerston on Tower Hill. Immediately after exulting over "Pam's" down- fall, the writer passes to a fulsome adulation of the dead. Here, as so often time has proved. Punch was a prophet as well as a critic. Other familiar grounds for discontent are to be found in the Peace terms and undue leniency to Russia ; in friction with France ; wholesale speculation and peculation ; unnecessary Parliamentary expenditure; and complaints of high prices, which, by the way, induced Punch to suggest abstinence as the best means of bringing down the price of sugar and butter. The return of the Guards is fitly honoured in July, and "The Nightingale's Return" in August: — 134 Incapable Commanders Most blessed thing's come silently, and silently depart; Noiseless steals spring-time on the year, and comfort on the heart; And still, and light, and gentle, like a dew, the rain must be. To quicken seed in furrow and blossom upon tree. So she, our sweet Saint Florence, modest, and still, and calm, With no parade of martyr's cross, no pomp of martyr's palm. To the place of plague and famine, foulness, and wounds and pain. Went out upon her gracious toil, and so returns again. When titles, pensions, orders, with random hand are showered, 'Tis well that, save with blessings, she stiU should walk undowered. What title like her own sweet name, with the music all its own? What order like the halo by her good deeds round her thrown? Lord Hardinge, the commander-in-chief, had been denounced as "the apex of incapacity," but Punch spoke kindly of that gallant old hero of the Peninsula on his resignation. He was "all bravery and kindness except when opposed to Court in- fluence, and then he could neither snub great people nor stand up for the interests of the Army." With this statement we may bracket a useful obiter dictum on appointments gener- ally : "Too much ability is demanded for the small places, and for the large places generally too little." No confidence is shown in the "whitewashing report" of the Chelsea Board of Inquiry into the charges brought against Lord Lucan, Lord Cardigan, and others. The Board was packed with "aristocratic officers," and its report is described as "& Chelsea Hospital salve for curing the reputations of Lucan, Cardigan, and Co." Evidently Punch is in good satirical form, for he follows this sally a month later with an indignant article on the appointment of an earl's son, aged twelve, to be a Royal Page at ^200 a year for four years, with a grant of ;^500 as outfit, and a lieutenancy in the Guards without pur- chase ; and the simultaneous offer of a commission as ensign in a marching regiment to a heroic sergeant-major, aged forty, without money to purchase it. A bad case of "ragging" in the Guards comes in for severe castigation, and the dismissal of the offenders from the service is welcomed as a step in the right direction. Nevertheless, while he was a stern critic of 135 Mr. PuncJis History of Modern Englmid extravagant and ill-conditioned officers, Punch recognized the need of decent pay, and appealed for aid from the State to remedy the long-borne grievance. Amid the discordant chorus of criticism and discontent which arose on the conclusion of Peace, happier notes are sounded in the references to the initia- tion, on a comprehensive basis, of the Order of Valour. The principle adopted in its bestowal is set forth in the lines which appeared in the issue of February 23, 1856 : — Till now the stars and garters Were for birth or fortune's son, And as oft in snug home-quarters As in fields of fight were won. But at length a star arises, Which as glorious will shine On Smith's red serge vest as upon the breast Of Smyth's scarlet superfine. Too' long mere food for powder We've deemed our rank and file, Now higher hopes and prouder Upon the soldier smile. And if no Marshal's baton Private Smith in his knapsack bears. At least in the War, the chance of the star With his General he shares. The first distribution of the "V.C." by the Queen was not made until June 26, 1857, ^"d in the same vein, but with greater dignity Punch strove to render justice to the occasion : — THE STAR OF VALOUR Distributed by the Queen's Own Hand. June 26, 1857. The fount of Honour, sealed till now To all save claims of rank and birth, Makes green the laurel on the brow Ennobled but by soldier's worth. Of these the bravest and the best Who 'scaped the chance of shot and sword, 136 The Victoria Cross England doth, by her Queen, invest With Valour's Cross — their great reward ! Marking her sense of something still, A central nobleness, that lies Deeper than rank which royal will, Or birth, or chance, or wealth supplies. Knighthood that girds all valiant hearts. Knighthood that crowns each fearless brow ; That knighthood this bronze cross imparts — Let Fleece, and Bath, and Garter bow ! The plainness of the cross aroused critical comment, to which expression was lent in the epigram, which has not lost ils point yet : — Here's Valour's Cross, my men; 'twill serve, Though rather ugly — take it, John Bull a medal can deserve, But can't contrive to make it. But the very simplicity of the bronze cross has lent it dis- tinction. Punch was on safer ground when he urged that doctors and firemen were well qualified to receive it; the Albert Medal, in recognition of acts of gallantry in saving life performed by anyone whatever, was not instituted till 1866. Punch's democratic bias is also agreeably shown in his plea on behalf of the artisans and artificers employed at the dockyards and arsenals, whose labours shortened the war, but who were thrown out of work on its conclusion. In answer to their petition for help to emigrate, it was intimated to them that the Government would help them if they would help themselves. The delay of the Government in fulfilling their side of the bargain, when the men had com- plied with this condition, gives occasion for a piece of sarcastic criticism on State parsimony. And in this context we may note the charming poem on Mother Seacole, the brave old sutler in the Crimea, beloved of all soldiers, who had fallen on evil days, but was relieved by public subscription, largely due 137 Mr. Punch's History of Modern England to the appeal in Punch's columns. Lastly, and to sum up this review, we may note the shrewd common sense of the timely article setting forth the pros and cons of Army Pur- chase, in which the writer emphasizes the need of a higher standard of brains and ability. Under the existing tradition, the abolition of purchase would probably mean promotion by influence — an equally vicious system. To alter the way of get- ting a commission was of no avail unless you altered the thing itself. Efficiency was not incompatible with purchase, but it was incompatible with "taking care of Dowb " — not the only reference in Punch to the historic telegram of Lord Panmure to Lord Raglan on behalf of his prot^g6 and relative, Captain Dowbiggin. 138 ENTR'ACTE LONDON IN THE MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY THE survey of London, as set forth in the pages of Punch seventy and eighty years ago, undoubtedly ministers to our complacency. Much that was picturesque has vanished, but the improvements in the state of the streets, in lighting, communications, and, above all, sanitation, cannot be easily overstated. In the early 'forties three methods of paving the streets were employed: stones, Macadam, and wood; and according to Punch they were all bad. The stones caused jolt- ing. Macadam was muddy, while wood pavement, which was only partially used in a few favoured localities — the Poultry and Lombard Street— was a constant source of danger by reason of its slipperiness. The spectacle, so familiar in recent years, of horses skating on all four feet down inclines is noticed in the year 1849. Hansom, the architect, had taken out the patent for his safety carriage in 1834, and that strange vehicle, which Disraeli celebrated as "the Gondola of London," and which is now relegated to the position of a curiosity or a relic, was fully established in a popularity which lasted for half a century or more. To those like the present writer who have been in a hansom when one wheel came off, or the horse's belly-band broke, or who have been propelled against the glass when the horse came down, the wonder is that it lasted so long. Yet, on a fine day, it was a pleasing, if precarious, vehicle, and inspired an exiled poet in the 'eighties to say that he would "give a monarch's ransom for a Piccadilly hansom." The old four-wheeler or "growler" still lingers and emerges during strikes of taxi-drivers, but Punch, though he found the cabman swathed in capes a fertile theme for his pencil, in general re- garded him as a rapacious and extortionate old bandit, and his cab a squalid and insanitary means of transit. The one-day 141 J//'. PuncJis History of Modern Engla7id cab strike in 1853 grew out of the new Act fixing the fare at 6d. a mile. Under the new police regu- lations, whenever a dispute as to mile- age occurred, both parties could deposit five shillings and have the matter de- cided by a magis- trate. In one in- stance the cabman, not having five shil- lings, lost his case and was fined. A good deal of public sympathy, fostered by the Examiner, was enlisted on be- half of the cabman, but Punch was rigidly on the side of the public as against the proprietors of dirty cabs, miserable horses, and their abusive and rapacious drivers. The stringency of the regulations may be gathered from the lines on "A Civil Cabman's Sauce," based on a paragraph which appeared in The Times. A cabman had been sentenced by the Lord Mayor to twenty shillings or fourteen days for refusing to take a fare because he wanted his tea. The cabman had suggested that the fare might also require that refreshment. At this period, it may be also noted, cabmen were not allowed to smoke when on their stands. Towards its close an improvement in the cab service is acknowledged, but many years were to elapse before the institution of cab-shelters. As for the rapacity of cabmen, it was as water compared with wine when judged by the standard of taxi-drivers. Turning next to the 'buses, some of us are old enough to remember their dim interiors, the smell of damp, sodden straw 142 CABMAN IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE TAKEN THE WRONG TURNING— THAT'S ALL The Ancient Omnibus on the floors, and the perilous ascent to the roof by what was little better than a rope ladder. Still, we own to a sneaking regret for the old 'bus driver ; to sit next him on the box-seat was a liberal education in the repartee of the road. The "knife- board," as the low partition against which outside passengers sat back to back was called, does not appear until after 1852. The slow speed of travel by 'bus is a constant source of satire; a journey to the remoter suburbs, if Punch is to be believed, took almost as long as it now takes to go to Exeter. Yet, with familiar inconsistency, he constantly rebukes the 'busmen for racing, especially on the route from Putney to St. Paul's. The miseries of the crowded interior, what with dogs, bundles, bird-cages, and wet umbrellas, are vividly described, and it was not until 1849 that fixed fares were introduced. Up till then the sum was left to the caprice of the conductor, or "cad." Competition brought improvement in the shape of a superior type of "saloon" 'bus, and towards the end of this period complaints against cabs and 'buses died down somewhat; but in comfort, Amy (to Rose): "Good gracious, Rose, I'm afraid fronijthe way the man talUs that he is intoxicated! " Cabby (impressively): "Beg pardon. Miss ! N-n-not (hie) intossi — intossi-cated hie) — itsh only shiight 'ped-ped-pediment in speesh, Miss ! " Mr. PiincJis History of Modem England cleanliness, and speed, the difference between the public vehicles of 1857 and 1920 is immense. About the former year the reader will find a good description in "The Fine Old English Omni- bus," of its discomforts, stuffiness and perils and the disagree- able qualities of the "cad" and driver. In one respect only, London was better served — on its waterway. The Thames passenger steamers were a great feature of the time. Not that they were above criticism ; collisions were frequent, overloading was habitual, the conduct of the passengers was not above reproach, and in general the service was condemned as both risky and inefficient, and ranked along with smallpox and rail- roads as a remedy for over-population. From vehicles one passes by a natural transition to those who were charged with the regulation of traffic, though its masterly control by the police had not yet been deve- loped to the point at which it has fre- quently elicited the admiration of foreign visitors. The new police- men, who had been embodied under the Metro- politan Police Act of 182 9, when Peel was Home Secretary, were no special favour- ites of Punch in his early years, and his opinion of their efficiency may be gauged by his greeting FEMALE -BUSES (A Prophecy) ^^^ jj^reat of their 144 The New Police Force strike with the remark that he did not think it would make much difference. Their relations with cooks — a fruitful source of satire — began to be a theme of ridicule in the late 'forties, and inspired in Punch "The Loves of the New Police," recount- ing the tragedy of a constable who forfeited his post owing to a fatal weakness for chops and stout. THE POLICE We have spoken already of the postmen ; for their dress in 1844 students of official costume may be referred to the picture overleaf. As for lighting, gas was already in general, though by no means universal, use. The gasless condition of Kensington is bewailed in 1844; the bad lighting of Eaton Square in 1849. The use of electricity was foreshadowed, but that was all. For domestic purposes the commonest illuminant was " camphine," an oil distilled from turpentine. Miss Mulock in The Ogil- vies speaks of it as being always either "too dull or too bright," and Punch is not enthusiastic as to its virtues. The agility of the street lamplighter lent point to a proverb which has become obsolete under modern conditions, for the lamp- K-i 145 Mr. Punch's History of Modern England SIR JAMES GRAHAM HOLDS A REVIEW OF THE LONDON POSTMEN lighter has no longer need to climb and never runs. In 1844 Punch speaks of the Lucifer having replaced the Congreve — or " Congry " as it was vulgarly called — friction match ; but the change of name was later, according to Mayhew and Charles Knight, who speaks of the penny box of Lucifer matches as "a triumph of science." The linking-up of central with outlying London had hardly begun in the 'forties. Many of the nearer suburbs were then practically detached villages. Kensington was reached by a dark, badly-laid country road from Knightsbridge, where, till 1846, carters used to stop at the Half-way House, a little road- side inn, for their half-pint of porter and bit of bread and cheese. The isolation of Brook Green, Islington, Battersea Fields, even Chelsea, when a little allowance has been made for satiric license, was a real thing. Lord Ebury shot snipe in Pimlico in the 'twenties; and they probably frequented its swamps as late as the year 1840. What are now parks or residential quarters were then waste spaces or open fields. The " Pontine Marshes " of Shepherd's Bush, as Punch called them, have long been drained and covered with houses. But there were wildernesses 146 Municipal Apathy even in central London, notably Leicester Square and Lin- coln's Inn Fields. The "dead seclusion " and unkempt appear- ance of Leicester Square was a standing reproach to Londoners. As for the tey-ra incognita of Lincoln's Inn Fields, "the Metro- politan Bush," it only differed from Leicester Square because it was "invisible to the naked eye." The dirt and confusion and cruelty to animals which reigned in the region of Smith- field market, and are the subject of reiterated protests in Punch, belong to an unregretted past. Punch was a great Londoner. We talk of people being house-proud; he was city-proud, and it irked him to see historic squares and public places neglected or disfigured. For years and years his complaints go up against the interminable delays in the erection and completion of the Nelson memorial in Trafalgar Square, the lions that lingered, the fountains that would not play. They begin in 1844; in 1845 he calls Trafalgar Square " England's Folly," and eleven years later we read : — In England, the growth of buildings, like that of its institutions, is exceedingly slow, if sure. Years are taken over a building that on the Continent would be run up in almost as many months. A celebrated German statistician has sent us the following incredible particulars : To erect a Simple Column It takes in England 12 years. Ditto, with Lions, everything complete ,, ,, 24 ,, To build a Common Bridge ,, ,, 15 ,, Ditto a Suspension Bridge ,, ,, 25 ,, Ditto Houses of Parliament A trifle under 100 ,, With statues, the same authority proceeds to say, they have a curious plan. They erect the pedestal first, and then leave it in one of their most public places to be ready for the statue of some cele- brated man, when they have caught one. Thus, in Trafalgar Square, they have a pedestal that has been waiting for years. It is supposed to be for the COMING MAN, but apparently he is in no hurry to make his appearance. "Britannia," Punch makes the remark, is assuredly "a great deal happier in her heroes than in her efforts to perpetuate 147 Mr. Punch's History of Modem England their memory." And six years later he adds : "We cannot make a statue that is not ridiculous ourselves, nor, although we invite foreign competition, is it likely that we shall get any other kind of statue made." In the same spirit of national self-criticism the following lines appear in 1851 on "The Nation and Its Monuments " : — The National Gallery holds its place In Trafalgfar's noble Square, And being- a national disgrace. Will remain for ever there. The Duke on the Arch was raised, in spite Of all that the world could say ; And because he stands on an awkward site. We, of course, shall let him stay. The Palace of Glass is so much admired. Both in Country and in Town, That its maintenance is by all desired : So we mean to pull it down. In 1852 Punch gives a list of things indefinitely postponed, in which we find the completion of Nelson's pillar; the catalogue of the British Museum Library — Punch was no admirer of Panizzi, the librarian ; the Reform of the City Corporations; the completion of the new Houses of Parliament; an omnibus that will carry a person quicker than he can walk; good water; cheap gas; perfect sewerage; and unadulterated milk. The campaign against Barry, the architect of the new Houses of Parliament, was conducted with a good deal of acrimony. Punch began by objecting to the cost, then to Barry's "long sleep," and later on to the expensive experiments in ventilation, and the darkness of the reporters' gallery. Nor was he less impatient over the delays in the completion of the Hungerford Suspension Bridge and the new Westminster Bridge — begun in 1854, eight years after the old bridge had been closed as dangerous, and opened in i860. The future of the derelict Marble Arch moved him to frequent and caustic comment before its removal from outside Buckingham Palace 148 London Changes and Improvements to its present site in 1850. As early as 1853 there was talk of removing Temple Bar, but this was not done till 1878. And the mention of Buckingham Palace recalls the fact that in 1857, when it was proposed to cut a carriage road through St. James's Park, there was no public road past the palace. The pelicans, which delight us to-day on their sadly-diminished lake, date back to the time of Charles II, who received a gift of these birds from the Tsar of Muscovy. The record of new buildings, constructions, monuments, and "improvements" kept by Punch is not complete, but it serves to illustrate the changes between mid-Victorian and Georgian London. The Thames Tunnel, Brunei's pioneer work in the long series of subterranean engineering achievements which have transformed the under-crust of London, was opened in August, 1843, and on October 28, 1844, the Queen opened the new Royal Exchange amid civic junketings which caused "Q" (Douglas Jerrold) to deplore the absence of the sons of labour from a hollow pageant in which only merchant princes were represented. The reference to the two tall buildings at Albert Gate seems to indicate an apprehension even in those early days of the coming of skyscrapers, of which Queen Anne's Mansions are still the sole realization. Thackeray has a humorous poem on "The Pimlico Pavilion, which refers to the pavilion in the gardens of Buckingham Palace, a summer house with a central octagon room. In yiew of Punch's persistent attacks on the Court for neglecting native talent, it should be recorded that the task of filling the eight lunettes below the cornice with frescoes was entrusted to eight British artists, including Stanfield, Landseer, and Maclise, and that the subjects were all suggested by passages from Milton's Comus. On Wyatt's unfortunate colossal statue of the Duke of Wellington, erected opposite Apsley House in 1846, and replaced by Boehm's smaller equestrian statue in 1883, Punch heaped unstinted ridicule with pen and pencil. Nor was he less hostile in his criticisms on the "hideous models " submitted for the proposed memorial to the Iron Duke, when these designs were exhibited in 1857, describing them as "Nemesis in Plaster of Paris," and representing the French 149 Mr. Punch's History of Modern England Ambassador as telegraphing to his Government : "Waterloo is avenged." The New Billingsgate buildings merely serve as an excuse for some jocular remarks on their supposed humanizing in- fluence on the Billingsgate dialect. But a good deal of space is devoted to Big Ben, his name and note (E natural), and the vicissitudes which attended his hanging in the Clock Tower. Of the references which abound in 1856, perhaps the most notable is the suggestion that the clapper should be named Gladstone, "as, without doubt, his is the loudest tongue in Parliament. The announcement in 1857 that a crack had been discovered in Big Ben led to an epigram in disparagement of Mr. Gladstone's rival, so Punch was able to have it both ways : — Big Ben is cracked, we needs must own ; Small Ben is sane, past disputation ; Yet we should like to know whose tone Is most offensive to the nation. The late Mr. Henry Jephson, L.C.C., published in 1907 an exhaustive work on "The Sanitary Evolution of London." He quotes Dickens's terrible description of one of the old intra- mural churchyards, but makes no mention of Punch's services in the cause of London sanitation. They certainly deserved and deserve recognition, for he spared no effort to bring home to a wider public than that reached by Blue Books and Reports the intimate and deadly connexion between dirt and disease. As early as the year 1842 we find in his pages this grue- some but unexaggerated pen-picture of the Thames and its tributaries : — Vauxhall contributes lime, Lambeth pours forth a rich amalgfam fromi the yards of knackers and bone-grinders, Horseferry liberally gives up all its dead dogs, Westminster empties its treasures into the mighty stream by means of a common sewer of uncommon dimensions, the Fleet-ditch bears in its inky current the concentrated essences of Clerkenwell, Field-lane, Smithfield, Cowcross — and is, by means of its innumerable branches, augmented by the potent 150 The Filthy Thames ingredients of St. Giles's, Somers-town, Barbican, St. Luke's, and the surrounding districts. The fluids of the Whitechapel slaughter- houses call in their transit through the Minories for the contributions of Houndsditch, Ratcliff Highway, Bevis Marks, and Goodman's Fields, and thus richly laden pour their delicious slime into the Thames by means of the Tower-ditch. Finally, the Surrey side yields the refuse of tar-works and tan-yards, and it is allowed by THE "SILENT HIGHWAY "-MAN all, that the people of Deptford, Woolwich, and those situated in the lower course of the stream, get the Thames water (which here sustains six different characters) in the highest perfection. The cartoon, The "Silent Highway "-Man, was published in 1858, but it is, perhaps, the best of the many pictorial com- ments on the above text. The noisome state of the Serpentine — "a lake of mere manure " — constantly affronted Punch's sen- sitive nose. Insanitary Sraithfield and squalid Covent Garden elicit dishonourable mention from the early 'forties onward. But 15J Mr. Punch's History of Modern England it "was in 1849, the year of the cholera and typhus visitation, that his crusade against London filth — "Plague, Pestilence and Co." — began in earnest. The evil is traced to the triple source of bad drainage, overcrowded intramural burial grounds, and the unchecked pollution of the river. Punch salutes Mr. G. A. Walker, the author of "Gatherings from Graveyards," as a public benefactor for his zeal in endeavouring to secure the abolition of intramural interments, and tilts savagely at ob- structive Boards of Guardians, vestry clerks, and extortionate undertakers, who profited by the maintenance of the abuse. He gives us an "Elegy written in a London Churchyard," on a victim of an epidemic brought on by preventable dirt; he exhibits "the water that John drinks"; he represents Hamlet soliloquizing in a London graveyard; and in 1849 he suggests the revision of street nomenclature in accordance with official acquiescence in the then existing dominion of dirt. Though by no means an enthusiastic admirer of the Duke of Wellington, Punch confesses that he would like to see him appointed Sanitary Dictator. The Thames, with its "acres of cesspool," is likened to "a fetid Dead Sea." Yet Punch refused to lay the blame at the door of Lord John Russell or the Govern- ment, who were held guilty by the Morning Herald for the twelve thousand deaths from cholera in London. The real criminals were to be found elsewhere. The ravages of typhus and cholera in 1849 have been surpassed in recent years by those of influenza, but the toll was heavy, and heaviest among the poor : — For three sad months Britannia mourned her children night and day, For three sad months she strove in vain the pestilence to stay ; Medicine, helpless, groped and guessed, and tried all arts to save, But the dead carried with them their secret to the grave. Death sat at the gaunt weaver's side, the while he plied the loom.; Death turned the wasting grinder's wheel, as he earn'd his bread and doom ; Death, by the wan shirtmaker, plied the fingers to the bone ; Death rocked the infant's cradle, and with opium hushed its moan. 152 King C holer ds Friends The Metropolitan Internments Bill, introduced in 1850, was a much-needed reform, and furnished Vunch with an occasion for free-spoken denunciation of "King Cholera's friends," Boards of Guardians, and other obstructives who "laugh to scorn doctors and drains, and uphold the great jij!a!yMk^iAii.^vii,'i THE POOR CHILD'S NURSE cause of dirt." His method of dealing with the offenders is generally direct : sometimes it takes the form of extrava- gant irony, as in the "account pf my travels in search of self-government ",: — What is it to me that fever is never absent from these places — that infants do not rear, and men die before their time — that sickness engfenders pauperism — that filth breeds depression, and depression drives to drink ? What do you mean by telling' me that cholera slew in Rotherhithe its 205 victims in every 10,000, in St. Olave's its 181, 153 Mr. PuncJis History of Modern England in St. Saviour's its 153, in Lambeth its 120, while in the Strand it carried off only 35, in Kensington 33, in Marylebone 17, and in Hampstead 8, out of the same number? Still, British landlords did what they liked with their own, and self-government is unimpaired. The satellites and slaves of an encroaching centralization are kept at arm's length, and if they have succeeded in putting down sewers, at least we have triumphed in not laying our house-drains into 'em. It is with pride, therefore, I repeat, that whatever may be the case in the country (where I regret to see the hateful Public Health Act seems to be extending its ravages), in London we are still enjoying the enormous, the invaluable privileges of self-government, and that if Epidemic Cholera should visit us again, we may con- fidently show him to his old haunts in 1832 and 1849, and so convince him that, in this free country, Ifie, too, is at liberty "TO DO WHAT HE LIKES WITH HIS OWN." Punch naturally applauded the Bill brought in by Sir George Grey, in 1856, to reform the Corporations of London, but would THE END OF GOG AND MAGOG; OR, THINGS VERY BAD IN THE CITY 154 London's Vanished Glories have preferred a more drastic measure, and warned the unre- pentant City Fathers of the dangers of refusing to accept the liberal terms offered them. Among the features of vanishing and now vanished London, the Fleet Prison has already been noticed. It passed "unwept, unhonoured, and unsung," save in the ironical valediction pro- nounced by Punch on the occasion of the sale of the materials of the prison in 1846. Holywell Street, swept away by recent improvements, was still reckoned as one of London's lions, though a dingy one at best. The glories of Vauxhall Gardens were expiring, and the Colosseum in Regent's Park, which, with its Panorama of London, statues, works of dubious art and Swiss scenery, was a precursor of the Earl's Court Exhibitions, had fallen on evil days, and was sold in 1843 by the famous George Robins, the "Cicero of auctioneers." For the splendour of Astley's Circus in the 'forties. Punch forms a useful com- mentary on the delightful mock ballads of Bon Gaultier. Gomersal, the famous equestrian impersonator of Napoleon, was going strong in 1844. His retirement to a hostelry at Hull in 1849 is attributed by Punch to disgust at the failure of Im- perialism. Widdecomb, the illustrious ring-master, and the subject of many of Punch's pleasantries, earned the distinction of a mention by Browning, who refers to him as resembling Tom Moore, with his "painted cheeks and sham moustache," and he finds a niche in the Pantheon of the D.N.B. Astley's is the mere shadow of a name to the present generation, and only elderly Londoners can recall the delights of the Poly- technic as a place more of entertainment than instruction, with the tank and diving bell and electrifying apparatus, dear to mid-Victorian schoolboys in their Christmas holidays. These are duly chronicled by Punch along with the attractions of Rosherville Gardens, then presided over by Baron Nathan, one of the irregular impresario peers who do not appear in "De- brett," of whom the last representative was Lord George Sanger. Baron Nathan catered for a mixed audience, but as a director of dances he appealed to a fashionable clientele. When Bur- nand wrote the libretto of Cox and Box in 1866, Rosherville was the paradise of the City clerk, witness Cox's song overleaf, 155 Mr. Ptmch's History of Modern England My aged employer, his whole physiognomy Shining with soap like a star in astronomy, Said "Mr. Cox, you'll oblige me and honour me If you will take this as your holiday ! " Then visions of Brighton and back and of Rosherville — Feeling the rain put on my mackintosh I vill, etc. Brighton already justified its title of "London-on-Sea," and the volume of excursion traffic had begun to provoke complaints from the residents as likely to impair the amenities of the place. These complaints the democratic Punch denounced as snob- bish; and he speaks of Brighton in 1841 as the home of half- pay officers with dyed whiskers. Later on, however, he takes a somewhat different view in his realistic pictures of the Semitic invader^. The Pantheon in Oxford Street, where in its first phase as a theatre Miss Stephens, afterwards Countess of Essex, made her dehut on the stage, had since 1834 been reconstructed as a bazaar and picture gallery. Punch describes it in 1842 as a Zoo and National Gallery combined, with its conservatory, aviary, statues, and pictures. It was a pleasant cut for idlers in wet weather from Oxford Street to Marlborough Street. But its glories were but a pale reflex of the days when the building excited Walpole's enthusiasm, and Gibbon was a regular at- tendant of its "splendid and elegant" masquerades. After various vicissitudes the Pantheon was closed in 1867, and is now a wine warehouse. The Lowther Arcade, from the Strand to King William Street, was consecrated to the sale of toys. The present writer can remember it in the 'seventies, with stout and bearded shopmen blowing on tin trumpets and spinning tops for the allurement of passers by. It has disappeared, but the Burlington Arcade remains. Under the heading of "The Haunts of the Regent Street Idler," Punch gives a detailed account of its attractions in 1842 : — The covered passage through which the overland journey from Burlington Gardens to Piccadilly is generally performed so abounds in objects of amusement to the lounger that, in point of cheap happiness, it becomes a perfect Burlington Arcadia. He can pass a whole afternoon therein, with the additional comfortable feeling of 156 Burlington Arcadia security from any unexpected shower. First of all He makes a regular inspection of every article in Delaporte's windows — from Gavarni's Charivari sketches, which have been there as far as the memory of the oldest lounger can reach, to the droll Diahleries, and the Dames et Seigneurs de la Cour du Moyen Age, who rushed into publicity at the first whisper of the Queen's Fancy Ball. Then he listens to the dulcet notes of an accordion, which is perpetually playing in this favoured thoroughfare, whilst he saunters on to the fancy stationer's, and criticizes the water-colour albumified views of Venice and Constantinople, all neutral tint and burnt sienna; or falls in love with the impassioned head of La Esmeralda, and regrets such symmetrical young ladies do not dance about the streets at the present day ; his attention only being withdrawn from the beautiful gipsy by two portraits of mortal angels in very low dresses, one of whom is asleep at one corner of the window, and the second combing her hair at the other. He peers into all the artificial flower shops, to see what hidden divinities are therein concealed by the bowers of tinted gauze and tinsel ; and having admired the languish- ing ladies and very nice gentlemen in the hairdressers' windows, finally loses himself in an earthly paradise of painted snuff-boxes, parasols, popular music and perfumery, together with certain articles of ladies' dress, like dolls' pillows in convulsions, the display of which has always struck us as being a profane revelation of the arcana pertaining to the toilet of a beauty. Covent Garden Theatre, as we know it, was not opened till May, 1858. Of its predecessors on the same site two were destroyed by fire, one in 1808, and the next in May, 1856, after a somewhat orgiastic bal masque organized by Anderson, "the Wizard of the North," Gye's tenant at the time. This, by the way, was the third theatre burned down during Anderson's engagements, and the disaster led to a picture in Punch re- presenting Mario, the famous tenor, mourning amid the ruins of the scenes of his many triumphs — an ingenious adaptation of the episode of Marius sitting as a refugee amid the ruins of Carthage. Punch was no lover of bah masques, reckoning them among the things which they manage better abroad. Nor was he a friendly critic of Madame Tussaud, modestly housed at the Bazaar in Baker Street until the erection of the present building in 1884. Punch owned that admission to her show was a test of popularity, but he condemned the Chamber of Horrors as ministering to the cult of monstrosity, and com- i57j Mr. Pimchs History of Modern England pared Madame Tussaud in 1849 — ^the year before her death — to the witches who made wax models of those whom they wished to injure. Chelsea buns are still with us, though it is declared in London Past and Present that the tradition of making them THE HAPPY FAMILY is lost; the "Original Bun House," at the bottom of Jews' Row, was taken down in 1839, but its memories linger in the early volumes of Punch. There is a good series entitled "The Gratuitous Exhibitions of London," one of which, "The Happy Family," lasted for forty years later. The present writer well remembers in his schoolboy days the wire safe on wheels, stationed at the corner of Trafalgar Square, near Hampton's shop, containing cats, mice, pigeons, rabbits, and small birds, very much as in Punch's picture. The nearest survival is the cage of fortune-telling birds one sees now and again. A charge 158 The Dominion of Din of twopence was made for admission to St. Paul's Churchyard, and this was a non-gratuitous exhibition which Punch bitterly resented, even to the extent of comparing it with Wombwell's Menagerie. The occasional raids of the aristocracy on Cre- morne Gardens — which stood a little west of Battersea Bridge — have been described elsewhere. The gardens, which competed with Vauxhall as a scene for dancing, fireworks and various exhibitions — "The Siege of Gibraltar" was pyrotechnically reproduced in 1851 — were not closed till 1877, soon after which date the house, built by the Earl of Huntingdon, and occupied as a private house by Lord Cremorne in the Regency, was pulled down and the grounds built over. Punch had a friendly feeling for the Lx>ndon street arab, whose sayings so often enliven his pages, and calls him the "small olive-branch of the great unwashed." But he was somewhat impatient of the tyranny of the tip-cat, battledore and shuttlecock, hopscotch and all street games which im- perilled the safety of the elderly foot passenger. Professional mendicants he regarded with abhorrence, and waged unceasing war on Italian organ-grinders as an insolent and irremovable nuisance, as well as on German bands and all who maintained the dominion of unnecessary din. He would gladly have seen all street-cries abolished : the "elfin note of the milkman" had no charm for him. Here perhaps the sensitiveness and suffer- ings of John Leech were responsible for his antipathy. Mark Lemon wrote a letter to Mr. M. T. Bass, M.P., who brought in a Bill to regulate street music, in which he traced Leech's fatal illness to the disturbance of his nervous system by "the continual visitation of street bands and organ-grinders." Those readers who take an interest in the evolution of musical taste may be interested to know that in 1856 the popular tunes on the street organs were "The Rat-catcher's Daughter," "Annie Laurie," the serenade from Verdi's "Trovatore " and "The Red, White and Blue," a selection admirably repre- sentative of sport, sentiment, the prevalent Italianation of opera, and patriotism. The Zoological Gardens had been opened in 1828 and were already a most popular resort; the hippopotamus at one time 159 Mr. PimcHs History of Modern England almost rivalling "General" Tom Thumb as the most run- after celebrity. "Good David Mitchell," who was secretary to the Zoological Society from 1847 to 1859, was a prime favourite with Punch, and is never mentioned without a friendly word. But of all officials concerned with the administration of London TASTE Shop Girl (who had been expected to procure Tennyson's " Miller's Daughter"): "No, Miss I We've not got the Miller's, but here's the 'Ratcatcher's Daughter," just published ! " none stood higher in his esteem than Sir Benjamin Hall, M.P. for Marylebone from 1837 to 1859, when he was created Lord Llandovery, President of the Board of Health in 1854, and Chief Commissioner of Works from 1855 to 1858. "Ben Hall's" services in adding to the amenities of the parks and introducing bands on Sundays were celebrated by Punch in prose and verse. It was he who brought in a Bill for the sorely needed better management of the Metropolis in March, 160 Beadles, Broadsheets and Ad'vertisements 1855, and Punch more than once applauded him for castigating the follies of the Central Metropolitan Board, whose vagaries in suggesting names for streets roused Punch's special ire in 1856. A nomenclator like the late Sir Laurence Gomme, who combined official authority with a fine historical sense, only emerges once in a century. Among the minor dfiicials of the time beadles were conspicuous. Punch devotes a special article to those of the Burlington and Lowther Arcades, the Quadrant and the British Museum, but these gorgeous uni- formed functionaries, splendid in scarlet and gold, are now only memories of the elderly or the aged. Gone, too, are the broadsheets, "dying speeches" and ballads of Catnach, the Seven Dials bookseller; gone also are the "mock auctions" which were held in the Strand up to the war. London had no picture-palaces in the 'forties and 'fifties, but there was an abundance of panoramas, which Punch noted as a reaction against the cult of dwarfs. The fogs cannot have been worse than those which prevailed for nearly a week one winter at the close of the 'nineties, but the smoke nuisance was perhaps more acute because entirely unregulated. Punch defended the intermission of postal deliveries on Sunday, on the ground that it promoted the blessed dullness of that day, and here at least the chronicler has no change to record. On the growth of the great modern art of advertising Punch is a most instructive commentator. As early as December, 1842, he printed an essay on its theory and practice in which the following passage occurs : — The Kentish Herald lately contained the following notice : "Ranelagh Gardens, Margate — last night of Mount Vesuvius, in consequence of an engagement with the Patagonians." This is tragical enough; but The Times outdoes it in horror by informing us that "The Nunhead Cemetery is now open for general interment " ; and immediately afterwards comes an advertisement of "The London General Mourning Warehouse, Oxford Street " ; and then, to crown all, Mr. Simpson, of Long Acre, declares himself ready to make "Distresses in Town and Country, so as to give general satisfaction. " In 1847 Punch recurs to the subject in a spirit foreshadow- L— 1 161 Mr. Punch's History of Modern England ing the activities of that excellent society which of late years has striven to restrain the excesses of the advertiser : — Advertisements are spreadingf all over Engfland — they have crept under the bridges — have planted themselves right in the middle of the Thames — have usurped the greatest thoroughfares — and are now just on the point of invading the omnibuses. Advertising is certainly the great vehicle for the age. Go where you will, you are stopped by a monster cart running over with advertisements, or are nearly knocked down by an advertising house put upon wheels, which calls upon you, when too late, not to forget "Number One." These vehicles, one would think, were more than enough to satisfy the most greedy lover of advertisements, but it seems that there is such an extraordinary run for them that omnibuses are to be lined and stuffed with nothing else. We have long acquiesced in this invasion of the sanctity of the omnibus. It is the desecration of the countryside that chiefly disgusts the fastidious of to-day. 162 PART II THE SOCIAL FABRIC THE COURT AT the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, / \ Caran d'Ache, the famous French artist — perhaps the greatest genius in his peculiar genre that our age has produced — published a wonderful design in which the parallel histories of France and Great Britain, during our Queen's reign, were summed up at a glance with masterly insight. Great Britain was represented by one person under two aspects : Queen Victoria as a girl and as an old woman ; France by a long procession of figures : King, Prince President, Emperor, and the series of Presidents of the Republic. The stability of England and the fluctuations of France could not have been pictorially symbolized with greater point. The Victorian age is rightly named, for Queen Victoria in her virtues, her pre- judices and limitations was, in many ways, its most command- ing figure, and the personal devotion and respect she inspired in men differing so widely in temperament and outlook as Melbourne and O'Connell, Peel and Russell, Disraeli, Lord Salisbury and Lord Roberts, to mention no others, counted for much in securing the country against the violent upheavals from which our nearest neighbour suffered. Yet, when the wave of sentiment created by the romantic conditions under which a girl of eighteen was summoned to wear a crown had died down, the light that beat upon the throne was far from genial ; it was often fierce. The controversy over the Ladies of the Bed- chamber threatened to drag the Crown into the arena of party politics. The contention of the Tories was, in the main, sound and constitutional — that these appointments should not be made or maintained in such a way as to expose the Sovereign to influences hostile to the Government in power; and the Queen cannot be acquitted of a certain obstinacy in the assertion of 165 Mr. Punch's History of Modern England her rights. But the cry that the Tories were forcing her hand was vigorously taken up, and strange cross currents of feeling were developed, O'Connell's passionate outburst of loyalty be- ing the strangest of all. It was one of the ironies of circumstance that, in the early years of her reign, the Queen's relations with Whig Ministers — ^always excepting Lord Palmerston — ^were far more cordial than with the Tories. Yet this was no guaran- tee for the popularity of the Court, and only those who are familiar with the history of the time can appreciate how un- popular it was. The middle-class element were not enamoured of the Whigs, but whatever they thought of the influence exerted by Lord Melbourne as the Queen's Mentor, they were not prepared to recognize any improvement when, on his re- tirement, the post was informally, but none the less effectually, filled by a German prince. The Queen's marriage was one of affection rather than policy, and Prince Albert had many ex- cellent qualities. He was a highly educated, in some ways even a learned man ; he was industrious, and his private character was without stain. It was not in human nature to expect that he should entirely efface himself in affairs of State ; but he played the game better than he was given credit for, and on at least one occasion his intervention was quite contrary to that ascribed to him. At the same time he was lacking in charm and geniality; his manner was stiff, his conversation academic and occasionally gauche. His notions of sport were not those of an English sportsman, and he had a passion for devising new military uniforms. To put it bluntly, he was a foreigner, and the chief ground of the unpopularity of the Court was that it gave an unfair preference to everything foreign — language, art, music, letters — and consistently declined to en- courage native talent. Satiric references to the royal patron- age of foreigners begin in Punch's first volume. "Ride-a-cock horse " is turned into a florid Italian cavatina, and the words translated into Italian — "Su Gallo-Cavallo a Banburi Croce " — for the benefit of the nurse of the Princess Royal, Mrs. Ratsey, referred to as "a lady equally anxious with ourselves to instil into the infant mind an utter contempt for anything English." This sets the keynote to a series of complaints which i66 Ultra-Loyalty Burlesqued re-echo over many years. For the moment we may turn to Punch's extraordinarily frank comments, cast in the form of a burlesque of the ultra-loyal press, on the rapid growth of the royal nursery, d propos of the birth of the Prince of Wales : — THE LORD MAYOR AND THE QUEEN By the Correspondent of the Observer The interesting- condition of Her Majesty is a source of the most agonizing suspense to the Lord Mayors of London and Dublin, who, if a Prince of Wales is not born before their period of office expires, will lose the chance of being created baronets. According to rumour, the baby — we beg pardon, the scion of the House of Brunswick — was to have been born — we must apologize again, we should say was to have been added, to the illustrious stock of the reigning family of Great Britain — some day last month, and of course the present Lord Mayors had comfortably made up their minds that they should be entitled to the dignity it is cus- tomary to confer on such occasions as that which the nation now ardently anticipates. But here we are at the beginning of November, and no Prince of Wales. We have reason to know that the Lord Mayor of London has not slept a wink since Saturday, and his lady has not smiled, according to an authority on which we are accus- tomed to rely, since Thursday fortnight. Some say it is done on purpose, because the present official is a Tory ; and others insinuate that the Prince of Wales is postponed in order that there may be an opportunity of making Daniel O'Connell a baronet. Others suggest that there will be twins presented to the nation, one on the night of November 8, the other on the morning of the gth, so as to conciliate both parties ; but we are not disposed at present to pronounce a decided opinion on this part of the question. We know that politics have been carried most indelicately into the very heart of the Royal Household.^ But we hope, for the honour of all parties, that the confinement of the Queen is not to be made a matter of political arrangement. This is followed up in the next issue by an equally audacious comment from the same fictitious correspondent : — ' The imbroglio of the Ladies of the Bedchamber had been settled in 1840. But Scribe's Verre d'Eau, under the title of The Maid of Honour, with the real incident turned into farce, had been adapted to the English stage and produced at the Adelphi. 167 Mr. Punch's History of Modern England THE BIRTH OF THE PRINCE OF WALES (By the Observer's own Correspondent) It will be seen that we were not premature in announcing the probability of the birth of a Prince of Wales ; and though it was impossible that anyone should be able to speak with certainty, our positive tone upon the occasion serves to show the exclusive nature of all our intelligence. We are enabled now to state that the Prince will immediately take, indeed he has already taken, the title of the Prince of Wales, which it is generally understood he will enjoy — ^at least if a child so young can be said to enjoy anything of the kind — until an event shall happen which we hope will be postponed for a very protracted period. The Prince of Wales, should he survive his mother, will ascend the throne; but whether he will be George the Fifth, Albert the First, Henry the Ninth, Charles the Third, or Anything the Nothingfth, depends upon cir- cumstances we are not at liberty to allude to at present, nor do we think we shall be enabled to do so in a second edition. Our suggestion last week, that the royal birth should take place on Lord Mayor's Day, has, we are happy to see, been partially attended to; but we regret that the whole hog has not been gone, by twins having been presented to the anxious nation, so that there might have been a baronetcy each for the outgoing and incoming Lord Mayors of London and Dublin. This vein is further developed in burlesque bulletins of the progress of the infant Prince. Punch's serious views as to the Prince's future are to be found in his "Paean to the Princelet " and its sequel, inspired by the Royal Christening in February, 1842 : — PUNCH AND THE PRINCELET * * * * The little Prince must love the poor. And he wiU heed the cry Of the pauper mother, when she finds Her infant's fountains dry. He'll fill the cruse, and bruise the ear. To make those founts o'erflow. For they have vow'd our little Prince No "vanities" shall know. And we will rattle our little bell, And laugh, and dance, and sing as well — Roo-too-tooit ! Shallaballa 1 Life to the Prince ! Fallallalla I 168 A ROYAL NURSERY RHYME FOR I860 ; • There was a Royal Lady who lived in a shoe She had so many children she didn t know what to do. 169 Mr. Punches History of Modern England And death's dark bones will then become Like iv'ry pure and white ! His blood-dyed robe will moulder off, And bis garments be as light ; For man will slaughter man no more For wrong begot by wrongs, For our little Prince will say — "To me Nor life nor death belongs." So we will rattle our little bell, And laugh, and dance, and sing as well — ' Roo-too-tooit ! Shallaballa ! Life to the Prince ! Fallallalla I But while taking the Prince's future very seriously. Punch could not emulate those writers in the Press who, with goose- quill in hand, could not approach the ordinary trials from which even Royal infants are not exempt, save on their knees : — It has been announced to the public, through the medium of the Press, that a most important epoch has arrived in the life of the Prince of Wales. It is a strange fact, that this " important epoch " has not been noted in the biography of any previous Prince of Wales ; for we look in vain through the pages of Hume and Smollett, Rapin, Lingard, Miss Julia Corner, and indeed every other corner within our reach, without being able to ascertain when Edward the Black Prince was driven from the breast to the bottle. The Heir Apparent to the English throne has, we are told, been lately subjected to this frightful vicissitude; and though bis Royal Highness is said to have borne it tolerably well, it will appear that while he took to the pap-spoon with princely fortitude, there was something of the infant perceptible in his mode of first receiving it. When another Princess was born in 1843, we read that "there were some apprehensions that the nasal organ of the Heir Apparent might be affected by the birth of a younger sister, but we are happy to say that there are no symptoms of a derangement of the Prince's proboscis at present," also that Donizetti had been requested to arrange a series of concertos for the penny trumpet, and had sent to the Prince one on the noble theme of "This little pig went to market" to the Italian words : — 170 Prince Albert as Tailor Questo piccolo porco E andato al mercato. Questo piccolo porco E a casa restato. Questo piccolo porco Ha avuto del rosbief per pranza. Questo piccolo porco Niente ebbe nel sua stanza. These familiar jocularities, redeemed by their general good humour from the charge of disrespect, are harmless compared with the sustained campaign of ridicule directed against Prince Albert as tailor and sportsman. German sovereigns and princes have always been great on uniforms, and Prince Albert un- doubtedly suffered severely from this hereditary failing. A concise biography in the Almanack for 1842 states that he was born on August 26, 1819, and afterwards invented "a shocking bad hat for the British Infantry, but England refused to put her Foot in it." From this time onward the attacks are constant and malicious. The Prince's bell-shaped hat repeatedly figures in cartoons. He "bresents his gompliments " to Herzog Jenkins (of the Morning Post), for whom he has "gomposed a dugal goronet." In the following year there is a cartoon representing the Prince in his sartorial studio surrounded by designs and models; the following comment is associated with the cartoon : — Ever since the accession of Prince Albert to the Royal Hus- bandship of these realms, he has devoted the energies of his mind and the ingenuity of his hands to the manufacture of infantry caps, cavalry trousers, and regulation sabretaches. One of his first measures was to transmogrify the pantaloons of the Eleventh Hussars; and as the regiment alluded to is Prince Albert's Own, His Royal Highness may do as he likes with his own, and no one could complain of his bedizening the legs of the unfortunate Eleventh with scarlet cloth and gold door-leather. When, how- ever, the Prince, throwing the whole of his energies into a hat, proposed to encase the heads of the British soldiery in a machine which seemed a decided cross between a muff, a coal scuttle, and a slop pail, then Punch was compelled to interfere, for the honour 171 Mr. Punch! s History of Modern England of the English army. The result has been that the head-gear has been summarily withdrawn by an order from the War Office, and the manufacture of more of the Albert hat has been absolutely prohibited. THE TAILOR'S GOOSE— THE TERROR OF THE ARMY The campaign reached its height in 1845 when Punch was given an irresistible opportunity on the occasion of the Prince being entertained by the Merchant Tailors. The Prince, Punch averred, was a born tailor, the Prince of Tailors, the true British tailor. He sought to make the British Army invincible by rendering them so comical that, by coming rapidly on the enemy, they might convulse him with laughter and paralyse his defence. He had fraternized with the Goose of Great Britain, and might sit cross-legged in the eyes of posterity. After this 172 Prince Albert as Sportsman outburst of derision Punch gave the Prince a rest as tailor, but took up the running — or baiting — ^with renewed energy against his sportmanship. Punch, it may be noted, was not an un- mitigated admirer of field sports; he denounced otter hunting as cruel, and more than onoe protested against officers and others who rode their horses to death for a wager. It was part of the humanitarianism which impelled him to support the abolition of capital punishment, though here his argument was based on the view that death was a release for the murderer, who was more effectually punished by being kept in lifelong penance for his crime. Punch was never an enemy of fox hunting. Doubt- less the influence of Leech counted for something. But the .organized slaughter of game filled him with disgust, and the exploits of the Prince in the Highlands in the autumn of 1842 prompted the first of many tirades. The pheasant battues at Drayton, when the Queen and Prince Albert were the guests of Sir Robert Peel, are treated in the same spirit, and the Ballad of Windsor Chase, with its grotesque illustration of fat beagles and obese hares, the Prince on horseback, and the Queen in her pony phaeton, carries on the satire in this fashion : — Six hares alive were taken out Each in its canvas sack ; And five as dead as mutton, in The same were carried back. The battue of hares at Stowe during the Prince's visit to the Duke of Buckingham in January, 1845, is the subject of another derisive ballad modelled on ]ohn Gilpin, and of a car- toon showing the Prince shooting down the tame quarry point- blank from an easy chair. The grand climax to this raillery, however, was reached during the Royal visit to Germany in September, when the stag hunt at Gotha was scarified with pen and pencil. In two parallel cartoons of "Court Pastimes " are contrasted the bear-baiting under Elizabeth with the butchery of stags under Victoria; and the hand of Thackeray is unmistakable in the "Sonnick, sejested by Prince 173 Mr. Punch s History of Modern England Halbert gratiously killing the Staggs at Sacks-Cobug- Gothy": — Some forty Ed of sleak and hantlered dear In Cobug (where sucb hanimmles abound) ELIZABETH Were shot, as by the nusepapers I hear, By Halbert Usband of the British Crownd. Britannia's Queen let fall the purly tear; Seeing them butchered in their silvn prisns ; Igspecially, when the keepers, standing round. Came up and cut their pretty hinnocent whizns. Suppose, Instead of this pore Germing sport, This Saxn wenison which he shoots and baggs, 174 stag Slmighter at Gotha Our Prins should take a turn in Capel Court And make a massyker of English Staggs.* Pore Staggs of Hengland ! Were the Untsman at you, What avoc he would make and what a trimenjus battu ! Jeams. VICTORIA Even more lacerating is the use made in the same number of the comment of a loyal eye-witness quoted by the Standard :— TEARS AT GOTHA The Standard gives the following extract of a letter from Gotha to a gentleman in London : — "This (the deer killing) was very shocking. The Queen wept : In reference to the then prevalent mania for railway speculation. Mr. Punch's History of Modern England I saw large tears in her eyes: and Her Majesty tells me that she with difficulty kept the chair during what followed. When the Queen saw the otter hunt in Scotland, the pity that she naturally felt at the death of the animal was counterbalanced by a knowledge of his propensities, so that it is almost as meritorious to destroy an otter as it is a snake; but this was a totally different case; nor is Her Majesty yet recovered. For the Prince, the deer were too numerous, and must be killed. This was the German method ; and no doubt the reigning Duke will distribute them to his people, who will thank Prince Albert for providing them venison." This incident marked the high-water level of Punch's anti- Albertianism — at any rate, in the domain of sport; we find an address of condolence to the Prince on the conclusion of the shooting season a year and a half later, but, in the main, the criticisms of the Royal Consort henceforth are founded on other grounds of dissatisfaction. What infuriated Punch even more than the ineptitudes of the Court was the fulsome adulation of the Lickspittle-offs of the Press, who were prepared, not only to defend, but to eulogize them. "The amount of good that Royalty can effect in this country is astonishing," Punch frankly admits, while caustically adding : "only less astonishing than that which it has yet to do." But between a generous acknowledgment of what could be done by royal example (as, for instance, its discouragement of gambling) and the "in- sanity of loyalty," there was an immense gulf, and Punch was never weary of gibbeting those writers in and out of the Press who thought they "could best oppose the questioning spirit of the time — questioning, as it does, the ' divinity ' that hedges the throne — by adopting the worse than foolish adulation of a bygone age." Assuredly, the absolute reductio ad ahsurdum of this courtiership was reached when the Queen was extolled for behaving as any reasonable woman would: — The excessively loyal man has the ugliest manner of paying a compliment. He evidently takes his king or queen as a carved log dropped from the skies, or he would not marvel as he does when the aforesaid image shows any touch of life or human sympathy. If his idol perform the commonest act of social courtesy, he roars — "what condescension ! " If it display the influence of affections, 176 THE MOMENTOUS QUESTION " Tell me, oh tell me, dearest Albert, have you any Railw ay Shares ? " M-1 177 Mr. Punch! s History of Modern England he screams — "a miracle ! " Her Majesty, on her arrival at Windsor from Scotland, has her babies immediately brought to her: whereupon, says The Atlas — "The woman and the mother for a moment proclaimed the supremacy of nature over the etiquette of a court, and the splendour of a diadem ! " What very ill-breeding on the part of " nature " — but then, we presume, she is such a stranger at courts ! Was there no Gold Stick in Waiting to show the baggage to the door? The same offender is brought to book in the following issue for deprecating royal excursions by railway : — The Atlas thus sermonizes upon Royalty "by the rail " : — "We are aware that every precaution is taken by the directors and managers of the Great Western Railway, when Her Majesty makes use of a special train, and we are not less acquainted with the courage and absence of all fear from the mind of the Queen. But a long regency in this country would be so fearful and tre- mendous an evil, that we cannot but desire, in common with many others, that these royal railway excursions should be, if possible, either wholly abandoned or only occasionally resorted to." There is danger by the railway ; and therefore, says The Atlas, the Queen should be only "occasionally" exposed to it. Say the chances against accident are as nineteen to twenty, shall the Queen "take a dhance " ? "Yes," says loyalty, "the Queen may occa- sionally take a chance ! " Punch, as the accompanying cartoon shows, refused to take a serious view of railways where Royalty was concerned, and went to the length of maliciously insinuating that Prince Albert, wearying of his rose-leaf fetters, had been indulging in a "flutter" on the Stock Exchange. Criticism of the Court on the one hand and obsequious toadyism on the other were much more pronounced eighty years ago. The later vice is well rebuked in the fictitious Royal Pro- clamation issued in connexion with the Queen's visit to Scot- land in the autumn of 1844. It will be noticed that here, as on so many occasions, Punch adopted the device of assuming that the exalted personages adulated resented the adulation : — Her Majesty has just issued a Proclamation, of which Punch has been favoured with an early copy. 178 Sycophancy Rebuked WHEREAS, on each and every of Our Royal Movements, it has been, and is the custom of sundry weakly-disposed persons known as "our own correspondents," "our private correspondents," and others, to write, and cause to be printed, absurd and foolish language, touching Ourself, Our Royal Consort, and Beloved Babies — it is Our Will and Pleasure that such foolish practices (tending as they really do to bring Royalty into contempt) shall be dis- continued; and that from henceforth, all vain, silly, and sycophantic verbiage shall cease, and good, straightforward, simple English be used in all descriptions of all progresses made by Ourself, our Royal Consort, and Our Dearly Beloved Children. And FURTHER- MORE, it shall be permitted to Our Royal Self to wear a white shawl, or a black shawl, without any idle talk being passed upon the same. AND FURTHER, Our Beloved Consort shall, when- ever it shall so please him, "change his round hat for a naval cap with a gold band," withoiut calling for the special notice of the Newspapers, AND FURTHER, That Our Beloved Child, the Princess Royal, shall be permitted to walk "hand in hand " with her Royal Father, without exciting such marked demonstrations of wonderment at the familiarity, as have been made known to Me by the public Press. BE IT KNOWN, That the Queen of England is not the Grand Lama; and FURTHER BE IT REMEMBERED that Englishmen should not emulate the vain idolatry of speech familiar in the mouths of Eastern bondmen. VICTORIA REGINA. Given at Blair Athol, September i6, 1844. In this context should be noted the constant criticisms of the Couyt Circular — the ironical suggestions that it should be published in French or Italian,' and the castigation, under the heading "Genteel Christianity," of the announcement of the confirmation of the "juvenile nobility and gentry" by the Bishop of London in the Chapel Royal, St. James's. Five years later we come across a truly delightful suggestion, prompted by the vacancy in the Laureateship, for the employ- ment of the new occupant of the post: — .... The chief difficulty we see about the office, is the fact of there being nothing to do in it. The virtues of our Queen are ' . . . . "Buckingham Palace, where, it is said, if a person puts a question in English he is asked in German or French what he means." 179 Mr. Pimck's History of Modern England of too matter-of-fact a sort, and of too everyday occurrence, to be the subject of mere holiday odes, or, indeed, of fiction in any shape. If any duties are to be attached to the Laureateship, we would propose that they should consist of the task of gfiving a poetical turn to that otherwise very dull and uninteresting- affair, the Court Circular, which fills the somewhat contemptible duty of Paul Pry in constant attendance on what ought to be the domestic privacy of royalty. As an illustration of what we mean, we give the following specimen :— This morning at an early hour. In Osborne's peaceful grounds. The Queen and Prince — 'spite of a shower — Took their accustomed rounds. With them, to bear them company. Prince Leiningen he went, And with the other royal three. The Duchess, eke, of Kent. His Royal Highness Prince of Wales Went forth to take the air ; The Princess Royal, too, ne'er fails His exercise to share. On the young members of the flock Was tenderest care bestowed. For two long hours by the clock They walked — they ran — they rode. Calmly away the hours wear In Osborne's tranquil shade, And to the dinner-party there Was no addition made. Judge-Advocate Sir D. Dundas Having returned to town. The Royal family circle has Settled serenely down. It is not too much to assume that Punch's ridicule assisted in eliminating some, at least, of these excrescences on the official record of Ufe at Court. We may pass over the chaff of Prince Albert as a farmer, and of his prize pigs and oxen. The bestowal of the D.C.L. degree at Cambridge in October, 1843, is treated with acidulated 180 The Prince of Bricklayers satire, and in his imaginary speech in dog-latin the Prince pre- sents the University with a new academic cap {novus pileus academicus) of his own designing. A month later the Prince's gratuitous distribution, through the clergy, of Professor Buck- land's pamphlet on the treatment of the potato — on the eve of the Irish famine — is described as a mockery to hungry people, "but then Princes are such wags," adds Punch. The much- canvassed appointment of the Prince as Chancellor of Cam- bridge University in 1847 led to sardonic comment : — Nothing in England has been thought too good for the members of this happy family ; but really it is rather too humiliating when we begin to express our doubts whether we can find anything, among the most venerable of our institutions, good enough to place at the feet of a Prince of Saxe-Gotha. But though the compliment is left-handed, there are symp- toms of a friendlier tone in the parallel between Prince Hal (Henry V) and Prince "Al." Punch, furthermore, congratu- lates the Prince on giving up the hat-business, interesting him- self in the welfare of the working classes, and contributing by his speeches and subscriptions to the advancement of social re- form. A year later he is saluted as the Prince of Bricklayers : — His Royal Highness is now always laying the foundation stone of some charitable institution or other. . . . The services of Her Majesty's Consort ought to be duly requited, and Punch, in order to reward him in kind, hereby spreads the mortar of approbation with the trowel of sincerity, upon a Prince who really appears to be coming out like a regular brick. But, as we have noted elsewhere, it was the Exhibition of 185 1 which, more than anything else, tended to enhance the Prince's repute and popularity. It was a great and fruitful idea — ^and the Prince was its only begetter. The speech of the Prince Consort in explaining the significance of the Exhibition as the realizing of the solidarity of the world, Thackeray's May Day Ode, which appeared in The Times, and other utterances in the Press show, as Professor Bury points out in The Idea of Progress, that "the Exhibition was, 181 Mr. Punch: s History of Modern England at the time, optimistically regarded not merely as a record of material achievement and technical progress, but as a demon- stration that humanity was at last on its way to a better and happier state. ... A vista was suggested, at the end of which far-sighted people might think they discerned Tennyson's ' Federation of the World.' " Punch never failed to give the Prince the credit of initiating the scheme, and, after a little wav- ering, gave it his enthusiastic support. The change in public opinion towards the Prince is well reflected in the frank but friendly palinode which appeared in the issue of November 26, 1853, as a result of the suggestion made by City magnates to erect a statue to the Prince in Hyde Park : — PRINCE PUNCH TO PRINCE ALBERT Illustrious and excellent brother, Don't consider me rude or unkind, If, as from one Prince to another, I give you a bit of my mind — And I do so with all the more roundness, As your conduct amongst us has shown A propriety, judgment and soundness Of taste, not surpassed by my own. You've respected John Bull's little oddities. Never trod on the old fellow's corns ; Chose his pictures and statues — commodities Wherein his own blunders he mourns. And if you're a leetle more German In these than I'd have you — what is't Beyond what a critic may term an Educational bias or twist? You have never pressed forward unbidden ; When called on you've never shown shame, Not paraded, nor prudishly hidden Your person, your purse, or your name ; You've lent no man occasion to call you Intruder, intrignjer, or tool ; Even I've not had often to haul you O'er the coals, or to take you to school. 182 Prince Punch to Prince Albert All this, my dear Prince, gives me boldness — Which, au. reste, our positions allow — For a hint (which you'll not charge to coldness, After all I have written just now) : Which is to put down certain flunkies, Who by flatt'ry your favour would earn. Pelting praise at your head, as at monkeys Tars throw stones — to get nuts in return. Then silence your civic applauders. Lest better men cease from applause. He who tribute accepts of marauders. Is held to be pledged to their cause. Let no Corporate magnates of London An honour presume to award : Their own needs, till ill-doings be undone, Little honour to spare can affofd ! A little later on, on the eve of the Crimean War, Punch was evidently impressed by the alleged interference of the Prince in high affairs of State. The cartoon of January 7, 1854, represents the Prince skating on thin ice marked "Foreign Affairs — Very Dangerous," and Mr. Punch shouting to him; and in the same issue the lines "Hint and Hypothesis" warn the Prince against shifting his tactics and adopting the role of an intriguer. These rumours were so persistent that Lord Aberdeen felt it necessary to allude to them in the House of Lords at the opening of the Session, declaring that not only was there no foundation for the charge that the Prince had interfered with the Army or the Horse Guards, but that he had declined the suggestion of the Duke of Wellington that he should succeed him as Commander-in-Chief. His interest in the Army was naturally keen, but it was general. That he was the adviser of the Queen, in his capacity of husband and most intimate companion was beyond all doubt, but Lord Aberdeen vigorously maintained that he had never uttered a single syllable in the Council which had not tended to the honour, the interest, and the welfare of the country. Still suspicion was not wholly appeased, and Punch's references to the Prince during 183 Mr. Punch's History of Modem England the Crimean War were none too friendly. In 1855 he is credited with the intention of heroically resigning his Field Marshal's baton and pay, as a "noble beginning of Military Reform," in response to the public cry for the dismissal of "incompetent nobility." And at the end of the year his desire to go to the Crimea is made the subject of ironic remonstrance. As a matter of fact, the reader of to-day must be told, the inten- tion and the desire were both inventions of Punch, who was playing his favourite game of attributing to exalted personages resolves and actions which they never contemplated, but which he wanted them to make or take, and which if they had taken, he would probably have criticized as unnecessary and inju- dicious. Even more malicious was the picture of Punch re- garding a portrait of the Prince, exhibited in the Academy of 1857, in Field Marshal's uniform, and saying to himself, "What sanguinary engagement can it be ? " Punch cannot be acquitted of treating the Prince Consort — as he only now began to be generally called — with less than justice in view of the difficult and delicate position he occupied. The impression was given that the Prince wanted to meddle in the conduct of the War, and that it was necessary to prevent him from making himself a nuisance by going to the front. And mixed with this was the impression, which these cartoons and comments prompted, that the Prince was making a request which he knew would be refused; that, in short, he was at once vain-glorious, insincere, and self-protective. It was not the first time Punch had been unjust to the Prince: he had failed to recognize him as a poAverful ally in the campaign against duelling in 1843. In the main, however, it may be urged that ridicule gave place to criticism in the latter years of the Prince's life ; but the revulsion of feeling in Punch — and the public — did not set in until after his death. Like Peel, the Prince Consort had to die before his services to the country were recognized. As the Prince Consort was, often without just grounds, the chief cause of the unpopularity of the Court and the favourite target of satire, we have given him priority in this survey. But, quite apart from the influence which he exerted, or was supposed to exert, upon her, the Queen was by no means exempt from 184 THE GRASSHOPPERS' FEAST: A PROPHETIC VISION. Queen Butterfly received by Lord Grasshopper— Monday. October 28, 1844. 185 Mr. Punch's History of Modern England direct censure, remonstrance, and exceedingly frank criticism. In one respect, however, the Queen was treated with invariable consideration. Even in his most democratic days Pzmch never caricatured the Sovereign. The portraits of the Queen are always pleasant, even flattering. Witness the delightful picture of her visit to the City in 1844. Though Punch's pen was sharp his pencil was kind, though at times extremely familiar, as in the prophetic cartoon published under the heading, "A Royal Nursery Rhyme for i860* " : — There was a Royal Lady who lived in a shoe, She had so many children she didn't know what to do. As early as the Christmas number of 1842 Punch had given "the arrangements for the next ten years of the Royal family," with the names and titles of eleven princes and princesses ! In the spring of 1843 he comments, with mock sympathy, on the Queen's liability to income tax. More serious is the charge, brought in his favourite oblique fashion, against the Queen for the neglect of her duties. — TREASONOUS ATTACK ON HER MAJESTY Pwnch has been greatly shocked by a very treasonable letter in the columns of The Times. Whether Punch's friend, the Attorney General, has had the epistle handed over to him, and contemplates immediate proceeding's against "C. H.," the traitorous writer, Punch knows not ; but after this information, the distinguished law-ofBcer cannot plead ignorance of the evil, as an apo.logy for future supineness. The letter purports to be a remonstrance to our sovereign lady, the Queen ; in a measure, accusing Her Gracious Majesty of a certain degree of indifference towards the interests of London trade, of literature, the arts and sciences. The rebel writes as follows : — "Buckingham Palace is neither so agreeable nor salubrious a residence as Windsor, but neither Is the crown so pleasant to wear as a bonnet. I trust it is not necessary to remind Queen Victoria that royalty, like property, has its duties as well as its rights. One of these duties is to reside in the metropolis of the kingdom, the presence of the sovereign in the capital being essential on many occasions. I could enumerate other duties of the sovereign, such, for Instance, as conferring fashion on public entertainments that * See p. 169. 186 Neglect of Native Talent deserve to be encouraged by attending such places of amusement, and countenancing science, literature and the arts, by honouring distinguished professors with marks of approbation; in which re- spect it is much to be regretted there is too much room for those remarks on the remissness of Her Majesty in these respects that are so frequently made in society. When we know how much discontent, engendered by widely spread and deeply-felt distress is expressed by persons not to be numbered among ' the lower classes,' it is not without alarm that the influence of these acts of omission on the part of Queen Victoria can be regarded; and it becomes the duty of every friend of the monarchy and the con- stitution to warn the Sovereign of the danger, not merely to her personal popularity, but to the feeling of loyalty to the throne, that is likely to accrue from such neglect." In these years, and for a good many years to come, Punch hunted in couples with The Times. The neglect of native talent and the encouragement of foreign artists, musicians, men of letters, is harped upon in number after number for year after year. Here again the method is sometimes direct, sometimes oblique, as in the fictitious list of people invited to the Court : Dickens, Hood, Mrs. Somerville, and Maria Edgeworth. Another opportunity was when it was announced that the Danish Royal family had attended the funeral of Thorwaldsen in deep mourning, Punch exclaims, "imagine for a moment English Royalty in deep mourning for departed genius!" The often-repeated visits of "General Tom Thumb " to Court in 1844 made him very angry. At the second "command" performance the General "per- sonated Napoleon amid great mirth, and this was followed by a representation of Grecian statues, after which he danced a ■nautical hornpipe, and sang several of his favourite songs" in the presence, as Punch notes, of the Queen of the Belgians, daughter of Louis Philippe. But Punch had his revenge on this curious and deep-rooted interest of Royalty in dwarfs- Queen Isabella of Spain had one permanently attached to her staff — by indulging in a delightful speculation on the happy results that would have ensued if George IV, like General Tom Thumb, had stopped growing at the age of five months : — 187 Mr. Punch's History of Modern England How much we should have been spared had George IV only weighed 15 lbs. and stopped at 25 inches! How much would have been saved merely in tailors' bills, and how many pavilions for his dwarf majesty might have been built at a hundredth part of the cost that was swallowed by the royal folly at Brighton ! The Georges, it may be remarked, were no favourites of Punch, nor was this to be wondered at when one recalls their treatment at the hands of Thackeray, the least democratic member of the staff. Punch considered that Brummell was a better man than his "fat friend," and consigned the latter to infamy in the following caustic epitaph, one of a series on the Four Georges : — GEORGIUS ULTIMUS He left an example for age and for youth To avoid. He never acted well by Man or Woman, And was as false to his Mistress as to his Wife. He deserted his Friends and his Principles. He was so ignorant that he could scarcely spell; But he had some skill in cutting out Coats, And an undeniable Taste for Cookery. He built the Palaces of Brighton and of Buckingham, And for these Qualities and Proofs of Genius, An admiring Aristocracy Christened him the "First Gentleman in Europe." Friends, respect the KING whose Statue is here, And the generous Aristocracy who admired him. In the same year Punch, with malicious inventiveness, repre- sented Queen Victoria in the act of unveiling a great statue to Shakespeare on Shakespeare Cliff, adding as her epitaph : "She rarely went to the Italian Opera and she raised a statue to Shakespeare." In these agilities The Times again proved a useful ally, for in the same number we find the following : — HIGH TREASON A traitor, who signs himself "Alpha," and writes in The Times, writes thus : — 188 H Pi o u <: < o H H O n urt, that the loathsome dead may declare the greater loathsomeness of the living." The Mar- quess of Londonderry came under the lash not merely as a rapacious coal-owner, but as a bad writer: "the most noble but not the most grammatical Marquess." So again we are informed respecting the Marquess of Normanby's novels that "they have just declared a dividend of 2^d. in the pound, which is being paid at all the butter shops." One has to wait for nearly ten years for acknowledgment of virtue in the marquisate, but then it is certainly handsome. The occasion was the entrance into power of the Derby-Disraeli (or "Dilly- Dizzy ") Cabinet : — THE MARQUIS OF LANSDOWNE AND THE NEW MINISTRY The first act of the Ministry in the House of Lords was done with the worst of grace. The Marquis of Lansdowne took farewell of office and of official life. And who was there, among the new men, to do reverence to the unstudied yet touching ceremony? Nobody, save the Earl of Malmesbury. The Times says, and most truly : "A public life, which has literally embraced the first half of this century, and which last night was most gracefully con- cluded, deserved an ampler and richer tribute than our new Foreign Secretary seemed able to bestow." Nothing could be colder, meaner, and certainly more foreign to the heartiness of English generosity than the chip-chip phrases of Lord Malmesbury. It is such men as the Marquis of Lansdowne who are the true strength of the House of Lords. He is a true Englishman. In fifty years of political life his name has never been mixed with aught mean or jobbing. In the most tempestuous times, his voice has been heard amongst the loudest for right. In days when to be a reformer was to take rank a little above a fanatic and a public despoiler, the Marquis of Lansdowne struck at rotten 203 My. Pimclis History of Modern England boroug'hs. He has ever been a patriot in the noblest sense. And there was nobody but cold-mouthed Malmesbury to touch upon his doings? So it is ! Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, A great-sized monster of ingratitudes : Those scraps are good deeds past. But the political deeds of the Marquis of Lansdowne are written in the history of his country. After the wear of fifty years, not one spot rests upon his robes. His coronet borrows worth and lustre from the true, manly, English brain that beats — (and in the serene happiness of honoured age may it long continue to beat !) — beneath it. As for peers in general. Punch's views may be g;athered from his scheme for the Reform of the House of Lords issued in the same year: — It is an indisputable truth that there can be no such being as a born legislator. As unquestionable is the fact that there may be a born ass. We are not proving that fact — only stating it — pace your word- snapper on the look-out for a snap. But your born ass may be born to your legislator's office, and command a seat in the house of legislators by inheritance, as in not a few examples, wherein the coronet hides not the donkey's ears. The object of a Reform in the House of Lords should be to keep the asinines of the aristocracy out of it : so that the business of the country may be no more impeded by their braying, or harmed by their kicking. Nobody is a physician by birth. Even the seventh son of a seventh son must undergo an examination before he is allowed to prescribe a dose of physic for an old woman. But any eldest son, or other male relation, of a person of a certain order is chartered, as such, to physic the body corporate : which is absurd. Now, the Reform we propose for the House of Lords, is, not to admit any person, whose only claim to membership is that of having been born a Peer, to practise his profession without examination. Examine him in the Alphabet — there have been Peers who didn't know that. In reading, writing, and arithmetic : you already make 204 Educating the House of Lords a Lord — the Mayor of London — count hobnails. In history — for he IS to help furnish materials for its next page. In geography, astronomy, and the use of the globes ; which, being indispensable to ladies, are a fortiori to be required of Lords. In political economy, the physiology of the Constitution which he will have to treat. In medicine, that he may understand the analogies of national and APPROPRIATE First Citizen : " I say. Bill — I wonder what he calls hisself ? " Second Ditto: "Blowed if I know! — but I calls him a Bloated Haristo- crat." individual therapeutics ; and also learn not to patronize homoeopaths and other quacks. In geology, that he may acquire a philosophical idea of pedigree, by comparing the bones of his ancestors with those of the ichthyosaurus, or the foundation of his house with the granite rocks. In the arts and sciences, generally, which it will be his business to promote, if he does his business. In literature, that he may cultivate it; at least, respect it, and stand up for the liberty 205 Mr^ Punch s History of Modern England of unlicensed printing, instead of insulting and calumniating the Press. This is our scheme of Peerage Reform, to which the principal objection we anticipate is, that it is impracticable, because it can't be done ; and that, warned by the confusion and disorder that has resulted from change in foreign nations, we should shrink from touching a time-honoured institution ; which is as much as to say, that because our neighbours have divided their carotid arteries, we had better not shave ourselves. To "most noble fatuities," "Lord White Sticks," privileged gamblers, extravagant guardsmen, pluralists (among whom the Greys and Elliots are specially attacked), and their fulsome upholders in the Press, scant mercy is shown. Some exceptions are made : Lord Mahon for his interest in the drama and art ; Lord Albemarle for his views on the Reform of the Marriage Laws ; Lord St. Leonards for cutting down Chancery pleadings and all the "awful and costly machinery of word spinning" connected therewith. With Lord Brougham, who was so long one of Punch's favourite butts, we deal elsewhere. But neither he nor Sugden (Lord St. Leonards) belonged to the "Old Nobility"; they were not ranked with the "snobbish peers " who opposed the education of the masses or the appoint- ment of a Minister of Education, or wanted to keep poor children out of the London parks, a topic referred to more than once. Aristocratic nepotism is another favourite theme of satire : the classic example being furnished by the famous telegram sent during the Crimean War by Lord Panmure, when Secretary for War, to Lord Raglan: "Take care of Dowb." "Dowb." was Captain Dowbiggin, a relative of Lord Panmure's. Hence the epigram : — CE N'EST QUE LE PREMIER PAS QUI COUTE "The reform of our army," should Panmure ask, "how begin?" "By not taking," says Punch, "quite so much care of Dowbiggin." With Bulwer Lytton a long feud was maintained, but it was not as a peer but as a writer and a sophisticated snob that he 206 Thackeray on Great Folks earned the dislike of Punch, who published (February 28, 1846) Tennyson's retort on his traducer. In later years, however, a complete reconciliation took place. Punch saw no inherent virtue in peers or peerages. He welcomed the bestowal of one on Macaulay; he applauded the decision of Peel's family in declining the honour after his death. Mentions by name of noble personages in his pages in this period are more often hostile than friendly. He agreed with Tennyson that "kind hearts are more than coronets," but he was far from maintaining that they were incompatible. Thackeray, who, as we know, did not see eye to eye with Douglas Jerrold, and found his constant anti-aristocratic in- vective tiresome, redressed the balance, notably in "Mr. Brown's Letters to a Young Man about Town." Discoursing on good women, in whose company you can't think evil, he says you may find them in the suburbs and Mayfair, and, again : — The great comfort of the society of great folks is that they do not trouble themselves about your twopenny little person, as smaller persons do, but take you for what you are — a man kindly and good- natured, or witty and sarcastic, or learned and eloquent, or a good raconteur, or a very handsome man, or an excellent gourmand and judge of wine — or what not. Nobody sets you so quickly at your ease as a fine gentleman. I have seen more noise made about a Knight's lady than about the Duchess of Fitz-Battleaxe herself; and Lady Mountararat, whose family dates from the Deluge, enter and leave a room, with her daughters the lovely Ladies Eve and Lilith D'Arc, with much less pretension, and in much simpler capotes and what-do-you-call-'ems, than Lady de Mogins, or Mrs. Shindy, who quit an assembly in a whirlwind, with trumpets and alarums like a stage King and Queen. 207 SOCIETY— EXCLUSIVE, GENTEEL, AND SHABBY GENTEEL FOR the manners and customs of High Life in the 'forties and 'fifties Punch cannot be regarded as a first-rate authority for the excellent reason that, with the exception of Thackeray, none of the staff had the entree to these exalted circles. They were busy, hard-worked, often over-worked, journalists and officials, and their recreations and diversions did not bring them into intimate contact with the dwellers in May- fair or Belgravia. They kept a watchful eye upon the extrava- gances and vagaries of High Life, but mainly as it revealed itself in its public form or in politics. In the study of the Geology of Society, which appeared in one of his earliest num- bers, Punch subdivides the three main strata of Society — High Life, Middle Life, Low Life — into various classes. The superior, or St. James's series, contains people wearing coro- nets, related to coronets, expecting coronets. Thence we pass to the Russell Square group, and the Clapham group, and thence to the "inferior series" resident in Whitechapel and St. Giles, and it was of these groups, especially the transitional, genteel and shabby genteel, that Punch, in his earliest days, had most firstJiand knowledge. The exclusiveness of fashionable society cannot be better illustrated than by the existence of such an institution as Almack's. It was nothing less than a stroke of genius on the part of that shrewd Scot from Galloway — Almack is said to have been an inversion of his real name, MacCaul, though another account of his origin represents him as a Yorkshire Quaker — who came to London as a valet to the Duke of Hamil- ton, and, soon after starting Almack's Club, a fashionable resort for aristocratic gamblers, afterwards merged in Brooks's, opened the famous Assembly Rooms in King Street, St. 208 Almack's James's, where, for more than seventy-five years, weekly sub- scription balls were held during the twelve weeks of the London season. Almack gave his name to the Assembly Rooms, but the management was entirely vested in the hands of a com- mittee of lady patronesses of the highest rank and fas.hion, who distributed the ten-guinea tickets. By the beginning of the nineteenth century it was "the seventh heaven of the fashion- able world to be introduced to Almack's." Grantley Berkeley, who frequented the Assembly Rooms in their golden prime, speaks of the committee as "a feminine oligarchy, less in number, but equal in power to the Venetian Council of Ten." They issued the tickets "for the gratification of the creme de la creme of Society, with a jealous watchfulness to prevent the intrusion of the plebeian rich or the untitled vulgar; and they drew up a code of laws, for the select who received invitations, which they, at least, meant to be as unalterable as those of the Medes and Persians." ' Great care was taken that the supply of debutantes should not exceed the demand, and so many en- gagements were entered into to the accompaniment of CoUinet's band that Almack's was regarded as, perhaps, the greatest matrimonial market of the aristocracy. The maximum attend- ance recorded was seventeen hundred. Almack himself died in 1 78 1, bequeathing the Assembly Rooms to his niece, who married Willis, after whom they were subsequently named. By 1840 their glory had largely departed, but so serious a review as the Quarterly wrote respectfully of their decline : "The palmy days of exclusiveness are gone by in England. Though it is obviously impossible to prevent any given number of persons from congregating and re-establishing an oligarchy, we are quite sure that the attempt would be ineffectual, and that the sense of their importance would extend litde beyond the set." Yet Almack's lingered for several years. In its august precincts, which had welcomed and sanctioned the waltz (originally con- demned as an unseemly exhibition), the ravages of the successor of the waltz and quadrille — the polka — are described by Punch (after Byron) in the lament of the sentimental young lady at the close of the season of 1844. The craze for dancing was not ' Vidt Grantley Berkeley's Recollections. 0—1 209 THE POLKA I. My Polka before Six Lessons. 2. My Polka after Six Lessons. 210 Polkamania so widely diffused as in 1920, but to judge from the "History, Symptoms, and Progress of the Polkamania," all strata of Society were affected: — • That obstinate and tormenting disease, the Polkamania, is said to have orig-inated in Bohemia ; in consequence, we may presume from analogy, of the bite of some rabid insect like the Tarantula Spider, although the Polka Spider has not yet been described by entomologists ; but, when discovered, it probably will be under the name of Aranea Polkapoietica. The Polkamania, after raging fiercely for some time in the principal cities of the Continent, at length made its appearance in London, having been imported by M. Jullien, who inoculated certain Co\mtesses and others with its specific virus, which he is said to have obtained from a Bohemian nobleman. The form of its eruption was at first circular^ corre- sponding' to the circles of fashion ; but it has now extended to the .sMAKlIGf^-S MO.CvsToM^ oF ^^GI-YSHE Itj ■ 184-9 flN'PsTHOME". y^^OLKA. 211 Mr. PuncJis History of Moaern England whole body of society, including its lowest members. Its chief symptoms are extraordinary convulsions and wild gesticulations of the limbs, with frequent stampings on the floor, and rotatory move- ments of the body, such as accompany lesions of the cerebellum. That part is said by Gall to be the organ of amativeness ; and the Polka delirium, in several instances, has terminated in love-madness. This form of mania, in the female subject, displays itself, partly, in a passion for fantastic finery ; as fur trimmings, red, green and yellow boots, and other strange bedizenments. Articles of dress, indeed, seem capable of propagating the contagion ; for there are Polka Pelisses and Polka Tunics ; now, it was but the other day that we met with some Polka Wafers, so that the Pblkamania seems communicable by all sorts of thjng-s that put it into people's heads. In this respect it obviously resembles the Plague ; but not in this respect only ; for, go where you will, you are sure to be plagued with it. After committing the greatest ravages in London itself, it attacked the suburbs, whence it quickly spread to remote districts, and there is now not a hamlet in Great Britain which it does not infest more or less. Its chief victims are the young and giddy ; but as yet it has not been known to prove fatal, although many, ourselves included, have complained of having been bored to death by it. No cure has as yet been proposed for Polkamania ; but per'haps an antidote, corresponding to vaccination, in the shape of some new jig or other variety of the caper, may prove effectual : yet, after all, it may be doubted if the remedy would not be worse than the disease. Very little change would be needed to fit the above to the Jazzmania of to-day. The polka had a long innings. When the 'forties opened, the waltz and the quadrille were firmly entrenched in fashionable favour. The waltz, as we write, shows signs of rearing its diminished head, but the quadrille, in those days a most elaborate business with a variety of figures — La Pastorale, L'Et6, La Trenitz, La Poule, etc. — is dead beyond redemption. But the polka mania raged with little abatement for a good ten years.' In 1844, amongst other advertisements of teachers of the art of dancing, was that of a young lady who had been instructed by a Bohemian nobleman. In spite of much ridicule and many appeals (in which Thackeray joined) ' A correspondent wrote to The Times in 1846 complaining that at Ramsgate " the ladies dance polkas in their bathing dresses," and suggesting a stricter supervision of the proprieties by policemen. 212 Modish Futilities for the suppression of the pest, the malady was described as still acute in the dog-days of 1856, and, in more subdued phases, lasted for another fifty years. The mazurka also came into vogue in the mid-'forties, but was never a serious rival to the polka in its prime. It was an age of famous professional dancers — Taglioni (who gave her name to an overcoat), Fanny Ellsler, Cerilo, and Grisi, the cousin of the prima-donna ; but though there were schools of dancing, and This dansants, which Punch heavily ridiculed, and though the fashionables occa- sionally secured the exclusive use of the lawns at Cremorne, there was no competition between amateurs and professionals, as in modern times. The latter were left the monopoly of the higher flights of the art. Besides the polka, the accomplish- ments of the young lady of fashion were mainly decorative. If they did not toil or spin, at least they occupied themselves with fancy knitting, crochet, and the practice of Poonah painting — an early and crude imitation of Oriental art, so popular that the advertisements of instructors in "Indian Poonah painting" figure in the newspapers and directories of the time. The fashionable pets were spaniels, macaws, and Persian cats. The prevailing tastes in art and letters in fashionable or genteel society are (allowing for a little exaggeration) not badly hit off in a paper on the Natural History of Courtship, giving hints for the nice conduct of conversation at a social gathering : — It hath been wisely ordained, wherever two individuals of opposite sexes are standing side by side, that during- the pauses of "the figure," or otherwise, the gentleman shall ask the lady if she be fond of dancing; the reply will be, "Yes, very," for it is known to be an unvarying rule that all young ladies are fond of dancing. That, therefore, affords no clue, nor indeed much subject for con- verse; hence another question succeeds, "Are you fond of music? " Answer, without exception, " Yes " — general rule as before ; but when the rejoinder comes, "What instrument do you play? " although the reply in that case always made and provided is "the piano," yet the mention of a few composers' names will soon inform you of the kind of musical taste the fair one possesses. If she admire Herz, you will know she belongs to the thunder-and-lightning school of "'fine players"; therefore, breathe not the names of Mozart, Beethoven, or Cramer. Should she own to singing, and call 213 Mr. PtLudis History of Modern England Mercadante "grand" or Donizetti "exquisite," do not mention Weber or Schubert, but say a word or two for Alexander Lee.' It will frequently occur that (always excepting the first two queries) a young lady will answer your questions with indifference — almost contempt — in the belief that you are a very commonplace soulless person. She has, you will find, a tinge of romance in her character; therefore, lose not a moment in plunging over head- and-ears into a talk about poetry. Should Byron or Wordsworth fail, try T. K. Hervey, or Barry Cornwall, but Moore is most strongly recommended. If you think you can trust yourself to do a little poetry on your own account, dash it slightly with meta- physics. Wherever you discover a tinge of blueism or romance, the mixture of "the moon," "the stars," and "the human mind," with common conversation is hig^hly efficacious. When the latter predominates in the damsel, an effective parting speech may be quoted from Romeo and Juliet, which will bring in a reflection upon the short duration of the happiness you have enjoyed, and the quotation : " I never knew a young gazelle," etc. This was written in Punch in July, 1842, but there is not much difference in the estimate of the feminine intellect given ten years later : — HOW TO "FINISH" A DAUGHTER 1. Be always telling her how pretty she is. 2. Instil into her mind a proper love of dress. 3. Accustom her to so much pleasure that she is never happy at home. 4. Allow her to read nothing but novels. 5. Teach her all the accomplishments, but none of the utilities of life. 6. Keep her in the darkest ignorance of the mysteries of house- keeping. 7. Initiate her into the principle that it is vulgar to do anything for herself. 8. To strengthen the latter belief, let her have a lady's maid. 9. And lastly, having given her such an education, marry her to * George Alexander Lee (1802-51), son of a London publican and pugilist, " tiger " to Lord Barrymore, and subsequently tenor singer, music seller, lessee of Drury Lane, composer and music director at the Strand and Olympic Theatres. Among his many songs and ballads, popular in their day, were " Away, Away to the Mountain's Brow," " The Macgregor's Gathering," and " Come where the Aspens Quiver." 214 Finishing''' a Daughter a clerk in the Treasury upon ^-j^ a year, or to an ensign who is gfoing out to India. If, with the above careful training, your daughter is not finished, you may be sure it is no fault of yours, and you must look upon her escape as nothing short of a miracle. The " higher education " of women was not discussed in these days of Keepsakes and Books of Beauty, though, as we Sporting Man (loquitur) : " I say, Charles, that's a promising little filly along o' that bay-haired woman who's talking to the black-cob-Iooking man.'' have seen, the official recognition of learned women and author- esses — ^Mrs. Somerville and Maria Edgeworth — ^was supported by Punch. In his "Letters to a Young Man about Town," Thackeray frequently insists on the refining influence of good women in Society, but intellectual ladies met with little en- couragement from his pen or pencil ; he liked to see women at dinners, regretted their early departure, and suggested that the custom of the gentlemen remaining behind might be modified if not abolished; "the only substitute for them or consolation for the want of them is smoking." Punch castigates the caprice of flirts, while admitting their 215 Mr. PimcJis History of Modern England fascination. He ridicules the imaginary ailments of fashionable women exhausted by gaiety; but he waxes bitterly indignant over "the Old Bailey ladies" who obtained access to the chapel at Newgate to listen to the "condemned sermon" in the presence of a convicted murderer, or scrambled for seats at the trials of notorious malefactors. The only excuse for this odious curiosity was that their menfolk set the women the worst possible example. Executions were public, and were freely patronized by the nobility and gentry. The most powerful of the Ingoldsby Legends deals with this ugly phase of early Victorian manners, and can be verified from the pages of Punch, who tells us how, on the occasion of an execution in June, 1842 : — ■ Ail the houses opposite to the prison (Old Bailey) had been let to sight-seeking lovers at an enormous price, and, in several instances, the whole of the casements were taken out and raised seats erected for their accommodation. In one case a noble lord was pointed out to the reporter as having been a spectator at the last four or five executions : his price for his seat was said to be fifteen pounds. The "Model Fast Lady" liked champagne, but the charge of indulgence in the pleasures of the table is never brought against women of fashion. Their extravagance in dress is often rebuked; but lovely woman, if left to herself, in the 'forties and 'fifties, was probably content to subsist (as according to R. L. Stevenson she subsisted forty or fifty years later) mainly on tea and cake. Women were not exempt from the accusation of snobbery : sarcastic comment is prompted by the letter of a correspondent to the Morning Post, who wrote to describe how, as the result of a railway accident, she, "a young lady of some birth, was placed in a cornfield and had to wait six hours." The brunt, however, of the social satire was borne by the men. Gluttony was ever a male vice, and Punch is constantly running a tilt against civic gourmands and turtle-guzzling aldermen. But his censure was not confined to the gross orgies of the City Fathers at a time when cholera and typhus were rampant. "Everybody lives as if he had three or four thousand a year," is his dictum, which he follows up by plead- 216 Verrey and Gunter ing for more simple and frequent dinners, the entertainment of poor friends and relations — more hospitality and less show. The " nobility and gentry " did not, however, court publicity in their entertainments as in a later age.' They dined sumptuously in their own houses; there were few expensive restaurants in those days or for many years to come. The JiEiBTiners imd CvsCottls of /• Qnglyshe A FASHIONABLE CLUB— FOUR O'CLOCK P.M. nearest approach was Verrey's Cafe, which was then a fashion- able resort, and the immortal Gunter, who "to parties gave up what was meant for mankind." "Society " was small, unmixed, and exclusive. Neither love nor money could secure the "Spangle-Lacquers " (under which title Punch satirizes the pre- 1 Who's Who first appeared in 1849. In those days it was little more than a bare list of dignitaries and officials. It was not until 1897 that the personal note was sounded and details added which have swelled the slim volume to its present portentous bulk. 217 Mr. Punch's History of Modern England tensions of the New Ridh), the entree to Almack's. For club life a mine of useful information is to be found in Thackeray's " Letters to a Young Man about Town " and in the social car- toons of Richard Doyle. The account of a club cardroom and the absorption and obsession of the players needs little revision to fit the manners of to-day, and there is much excellent advice to young men to avoid roystering and drinking with "Old Silenus," the midnight monarch of the smoking-room at the Polyanthus. From Thackeray's contributions we have borrowed sparingly, but cannot refrain from quoting the passage in which he pays noble homage to the genius of Dickens : — What a calm and pleasant seclusion the library presents after the brawl and bustle of the newspaper-room ! There is never any- body here. English gentlemen get up such a prodigious quantity of knowledge in their early life that they leave off reading soon after they begin to shave, or never look at anything but a news- paper. JHow pleasant this room is — isn't it? with its sober draperies, and long calm lines of peaceful volumes — nothing to interrupt the quiet — only the melody of Horner's nose as he lies asleep upon one of the sofas. What is he reading? Hah, Pendennis, No. VH. — hum, let us pass on. Have you read David Copperfield, by the way? How beautiful it is — how charmingly fresh and simple ! In those admirable touches of tender humour — and I should call humour, Bob, a mixture of love and wit — who can equal this great genius? There are little words and phrases in his books which are like personal benefits to the reader. What a place it is to hold in the affections of men ! What an awful responsibility hanging over a writer ! What man, holding such a place, and knowing that his words go forth to vast congregations of mankind — to grown folks, to their children, and perhaps to their children's children — ^but must think of his calling with a solemn and humble heart? May love and truth guide such a man always ! It is an awful prayer ; may Heaven further its fulfilment ! And then, Bob, let the Record revile him — See, here's Horner waking up^ — How do you do, Horner? Smoking was not yet a national habit. It was the height of bad form to be seen smoking in the street. Even in clubs it was frowned upon, and Thackeray, in his "Snob Papers," writes in ironic vein respecting "that den of abomination which, I am told, has been established in some clubs, called 218 Tobacco Tabooed the Smoking Room." The embargo on pipes was not re- moved for many years. A well-known judge removed his name from a well-known club about the year 1890 because the committee refused to tolerate pipe-smoking on their precincts. Punch early ranged himself on the side of liberty, and in 1856 was greatly incensed against the British Anti-Tobacco Society, as against all "Anti's," "who, not content with hating balls, plays, and other amusements themselves, want to enforce their small antipathies on the rest of us." The relaxations of men of fashion, if less multitudinous than to-day, were at least tolerably varied. The golden age of the dandies had passed, but the breed was still not quite extinct in 1849 ; witness Thackeray's picture of Lord Hugo Fitzurse. "Fops' Alley," at the Opera, was one of their favourite resorts; and its attractions are summed up, during the season GROUP IN THEATRE BOX 219 Mr. PmicJis History of Modern England of 1844, in the last stanza of a "Song of the Superior Classes" : — Blest ballet, soul-entrancing, Who would not rather g-aze On youth and beauty dancing Than one of Shakespeare's plays? Give me the haunt of Fashion, And let the Drama's shrine Engross the vulgar's passion ; Fops' Alley, thou art mine. Robuster natures found distraction in knocker-w^renching and organizing parties to witness executions, but it would be as unfair to judge the manners of the high life of the time from the exploits of the mad Marquess of Waterford as it would be to base one's estimate on the achievements of Lord Shaftesbury. Thackeray, in The Newcomes, written in 1853, gives a somewhat lurid account of the entertainment at the "Coal Hole," from which the indignant colonel abruptly with- drew with his son Clive. The moral atmosphere of "Cyder Cellars " and similar places of entertainment was not exactly rarefied, but Punch makes a notable exception in favour of Evans's Supper Rooms, which were reopened after redecora- tion in the year 1856 as the abode of supper and song. There was no price for admission. You entered by a descent from the western end of the Piazza, Covent Garden, and took your choice from the little marble tables near the door or nearer the raised platform. Punch's only adverse criticism is directed against the epileptic gesticulations of the Ethiopian serenaders. For the rest he has nothing but praise for the entertainment, whether for mind or body :^ Anybody wanting to hear a little good music, sup, and get to bed betimes will be precisely suited at this place. Singing com- mences at eight. Any country curate, now, or indeed, rector, being in town under those circumstances, would find it just answer his purpose. To a serious young man, disapproving of the Opera, and tired of Exeter Hall, it would be a pleasant change from the last- named institution. Moreover it has the advantage of cheapness — so important to all who are truly serious. Even a bishop might 220 Travellers and Outlaws gflve it an occasional inspection, without derogation from the decorum of his shovel hat and gaiters. A resort whereat unobjectionable amusement is provided for the youthful bachelor — ^the student of law —of medicine — nay, of divinity — offers an attraction in the right direction which is powerful to counteract a tendency towards the wrong : and a glass of grog, with the accompaniment of good singing, may have a moral value superior to that of a teetotal harangue and a cup of Twankay.' The cult of pastime was as yet in its infancy ; years were to elapse before even croquet was to assert its gentle sway. But there was always the great game of politics and patronage, and though Crockford, the founder of the famous gambling club at 50, St. James's Street, retired in 1840, after he had won "the whole of the ready money of the existing generation," in Captain Gronow's phrase, there was plenty of gambling for very high stakes. There was also travel, limited in its larger and more leisurely range to people of fortune, but already beginning to appeal through excursions to the middle classes. "Paris in twelve hours " was advertised by the South Eastern Railway in 1849, though according to Punch it really took twenty-nine hours; but before long the time occupied in the transit was reduced to nine hours. Boulogne had long been the resort of a curious colony of Englishmen "composed of those who are living on their means, and those who are living in despite of them, including, to give a romantic air of society, a slight sprinkling of outlaws." It was at Boulogne-sur-Mer that Brummell ended his days in poverty; but the most famous outlaws of the period under review were "the most gorgeous" Countess of Blessington and Count D'Orsay, who fled pre- cipitately from Gore House in April, 1849, to Paris. Nine years earlier Lady Blessington had been one of the most courted leaders of fashionable society. She had beauty, fascination, a fair measure of literary talent, and an industry only surpassed by her extravagance. Of D'Orsay, whom Byron called the Cupidon dechaine, handsome, gifted and popular, athlete, wit and dandy, it is enough to say that he was the only artist 1 " Twankay," constantly used at this time as an equivalent for tea, after the name of the district of Taung Kei in China. 221 Mr^ PuncJis History of Modern England congenial to the Duke of Wellington, who used to call sculp- tors "damned busters" and so exasperated Goya by his cavalier treatment that the old Spanish painter is alleged to have challenged him to a duel I Lady Blessington and D'Orsay escaped censure from Punch even in his democratic days. It was hard to be angry with these birds of Paradise, gorgeous in their lives, almost tragic in their eclipse. They at any rate THE OPERA Doorkeeper: "Beg your pardon, Sir — but must, indeed, Sir, be in full dress." SNOB (excited) : " Full dress ! ! Why, what do you call this ? '' did not come under the condemnation meted out to Cockney travellers on the Continent in 1845 : — SMALL CHANGE FOR PERSONS GOING ON THE CONTINENT Laugh at everything you do not understand, and never fail to ridicule anything that appears strange to you. The habits of the lower class will afford you abundant entertainment, if you have the proper talent to mimic them. Their religious ceremonies you will also find to be ati endless source of amusement. Recollect very few people talk in English on the Continent, so 222 The ^^ Gent" Abroad and at Home you may be perfectly at your ease in abusing foreigners before their faces, and talking any modest nonsense you like, in the presence of ladies, at a table d'hSte. Do not care what you say about the government of any particular state you may be visiting, and show your national spirit by boasting, on every .possible occasion, of the superiority of England and everything English. The criticism, if caustic, was not without provocation, and unhappily the provocation did not cease, indeed, it may not be a rash assertion to observe that it has not yet altogether ceased. The type reappeared as " 'Arry." In the early 'forties he was one of Punch's pet aversions under the title of "the Gent"i: — Of all the loungers who cross our way in the public thorough- fares, the Gent is the most unbearable, principally from an assump- tion of style about him — a futile aping of superiority that inspires us with feelings of mingled contempt and amusement, when we contemplate his ridiculous pretensions to be considered "the thing." No city in the world produces so many holiday specimens of tawdry vulgarity as London ; and the river appears to be the point towards which, all the countless myriads converge. Their strenuous attempts to ape gentility — a bad style of word, we admit, but one peculiarly adapted to our purpose — are to us more painful than ludicrous ; and the labouring man, dressed in the usual costume of his class, is in our eyes far more respectable than the Gent, in his dreary efforts to assume a style and tournure which he is so utterly incapable of carrying out. Punch was a sincere lover of his country and her Constitu- tion. When foreigners criticized England or the English he was up in arms in a moment. John Bull, he declared, a propos of the suspicion of the French Government, was the best natured, most kindly, and tolerant fellow in the world. But this con- viction never stood in the way of his playing the candid friend to and dealing faithfully with his countrymen on all possible occasions. As a comprehensive indictment of their failings it would be hard to beat or to improve upon the following list of the things an Englishman likes : — An Englishman likes a variety of things. For instance, nothing is more to his liking than : 223 Mr. PitncJts History of Modern England To talk largely about Art, and to have the worst statues and monuments that ever disgraced a metropolis ! To inveigh against the grinding tyrannies practised upon poor needlewomen and slop-tailors, and yet to patronize the shops where cheap shirts and clothes are sold ! To purchase a bargain, no matter whether he is in want of it or not ! To reward native talent, with which view he supports Italian operas, French plays, German singers, and in fact gives gold to the foreigners in exchange for the brass they bring him ! To talk sneeringly against tuft-hunting and all tuft-hunters, and yet next to running after a lord, nothing delights him more than to be seen in company with one ! To rave about his public spirit and independence, and with the greatest submission to endure perpetually a tax ' that was only put on for three years ! To brag about his politeness and courteous demeanour in public, and to scamper after the Queen whenever there is an opportunity of staring at her ! To boast of his cleanliness, and to leave uncovered (as in the Thames) the biggest sewer in the world ! To pretend to like music, and to tolerate the Italian organs and the discordant musicians that infest his streets ! To inveigh against bad legislation, and to refrain in many instances from exercising the franchise he pays so dearly for ! To admit the utility of education, and yet to exclude from its benefits every one who is not of the same creed as himself ! And lastly, an Englishman dearly likes : To grumble, no matter whether he is right or wrong, crying or laughing, working or playing, gaining a victory or smarting under a national humiliation, paying or being paid — still he must grumble, and in fact he is never so happy as when he is grumbling ; and, supposing everything vs^as to his satisfaction (though it says a great deal for our power of assumption to assume any such absurd im- possibilities), still he would grumble at the fact of there being nothing for him to grumble about ! Punch certainly exercised the national privilege of grumb- ling to the full, though the shafts of 'his satire vi^ere sometimes of the nature of boomerangs. We can sympathize with him when, in his list of "things and persons that should emigrate," ' The income tax. Punch knew better, and prophesied from the very outset that it would never come off. 224 Desirable Emigrants he includes "all persons who give imitations of actors; all quack doctors and advertising professors; all young men who smoke before the age of fifteen, and young ladies who wear ringlets after the age of thirty," as fit for "dumping." But he runs the risk of the Quh tulerit Gracchos retort when he bans "all OFFENDED DIGNITY Small Swell (who has just finished a quadrille) : " H'm, thank goodness that's over. Don't give me your bread-and-butter Misses to dance with — I prefer grown Women of the World ! " (N.B. The bread-and-butter Miss had asked him how old he was, and when he went back to school.) punsters and conundrum makers." In the main he was a strenuous supporter of education, especially elementary educa- tion, and the recognition and reward of men of science and letters, but, along with his general support of literary and scientific institutions, he seldom missed a chance of making game of learned societies, beginning with the British Associa- p-i 225 Mr Piuiclis History of Modern England tion. The ignorance of candidates for appointments in the Civil Service does not escape his reforming zeal, when in 1857 no fewer than 44 per cent, were rejected for bad spelling; yet in 1852 we find him publishing a picture of a Japanese as a black man. Spiritualism invaded England from America at the end of TWO WORDS TO A BARGAIN Japanese: "We won't have Free Trade. Our ports are closed, and shall remain so." American: "Then we will open our ports, and convince you that you're wrong." the 'forties; the mania for table-turning dates from 1852, and in 1855 the famous "medium" Daniel Dunglas Home (the ori- ginal of Browning's "Sludge") paid his first visit to England. From the very first Punch's attitude was hostile, sceptical, even derisive; and he was one of the first to condemn the harrying of humble fortune-tellers while fashionable and expensive ex- ponents of clairvoyance were immune from prosecution. Crystal- gazing is mentioned in 1851. Playing upon words, in the 226 Exploiting the Dead Almanack for 1852 we read : "It is related as astonishing that there are some clairvoyants who can see right through anybody ; but that is not so very strange. The wonder is that there should be anybody who cannot see through the clairvoyant." In 1853 it was seriously suggested by a mesmerist in the Morning Post that he could get into communication with Sir John Franklin; this Punch promptly pilloried, as, too, a little later, he did a reference to a play alleged to have been dictated by Shakespeare's spirit. In 1857 Punch solemnly vouches for the authenticity of the following advertisement under the heading "Spirits by retail": — COMMUNICATIONS with the SPIRIT OF WASHINGTON for Oracular Revelation of public fact and duty ; responses tendered relative to Executive or Governmental, State or Diplomatic, National or Personal questions on affairs of moment for their more ready and appropriate solution, and the special use of official. Congressional and editorial intelligence. Address "Washington Medium," Post Office, Box 628, Washington, D.C. No letter (except for an inter- view) will be answered unless it encloses one dollar, and only the first five questions of any letter with but one dollar will have a reply. Number your questions and preserve copies of them. Sober and instructed opinion has always shown this distrust, but Punch was not always justified in his treatment of new arts and discoveries. He quite failed to recognize the importance and the possibilities of photography, the early references to which are uniformly disparaging. There was at least this excuse for his want of foresight, that for many years the professional photographer was destitute of any artistic feeling or training save in the purely mechanical side of his calling. In repre- senting him as combining photography with hairdressing or other even more menial trades, Punch was not indulging in exaggeration. The mere name "photographer" called up the image of a seedy, weedy little man who suggested an un- successful artist by his dress and whose "studio " was a shabby chamber of theatrical horrors, in which the subject was clamped and screwed into rigidity by instruments of torture. In the 'fifties photography was already exploited as a means of adver- tising actors, actresses and even popular preachers, but it 227 Mr. PuiicJis History of Modern England had not begun to be thought of as a means of social reclame. Apart from politicians and public characters little limelight was shed on personality. The relations between the Stage and Society- were curiously different from those which prevail to-day. Punch was a great champion of the legitimate drama. Douglas Jerrold had been a prolific and successful, though not pros^jer- ous, playv/right, and other members of the staff had written for the stage. The disregard of serious native talent by the Court' and the fashionable world was a constant theme of bitter com- ment. But Punch shows no eagerness for the bestowal of official recognition on actors; when the question of knighthoods was mooted, he expressed apprehension lest they should be conferred upon the upholsterers rather than the upholders of the Drama. With that form of mummer-worship which took the form of the publication of personal gossip about actors he had no sympathy, and even satirized it in a burlesque account of the daily life of an imaginary low comedian. On occasions when actors resented the tone of dramatic criticism, as in the quarrel between Charles Mathews and the Morning Chronicle, Punch stood for the liberty of the Press. Against sensational- ism, horrors, plays based on crime, and the cult of monstrosity Punch waged unceasing war, but he was no prude. Those who were always on the look out for offence were sure to find it : "certain it is that whenever a father of a family visits a theatre, something verging on impropriety takes place." So again he falls foul of the inconsistent prudery which allowed a per- formance of La Dame aux Camelias at Exeter Hall in 1857, but prohibited an English translation of the words. Many of the broader aspects of early Victorian social life remain with us to-day, though modified or amended. "The broad vein of plush that traverses the whole framework of English society," as Punch flamboyantly gibed, if not wholly obliterated is at least less conspicuous. Jeames and Jenkins • " As well hope to touch, Memnon-like, the statue of Queen Anne into mourning music, as to awaken generous impulses in the House of Hanover towards art, or science or letters." The payment of 13s. 4d. each to actors at a Royal Command performance provokes a sarcastic reference to the Court Almoner Extraordinary. 228 ' Punclis " Respect for Decorum are dead. If we cannot say the same of bullying at schools, "ragging " in the Army, the unnecessary expense of uniforms and the costly pageantry of funerals — all of which were stren- uously condemned by Punch — it may at least be contended that Scene: A Public-house, Bury Si. Edmunds, after the Dinner given by the Mayor of Bury to the Lord Mayor of London. Country Footman : " Pray, Sir, what do you thinlc of our town ? A nice place, ain't it ? " London Footman (condescendingly); "Veil, Joseph, I likes your town well enough. It's clean; your streets are hairy; and you've lots of rewins. But I don't like your champagne ; its all Gewsberry." public opinion is more vigilant in arraigning and bringing to light offences against humanity, good taste and common sense. Modarn critics have not been wanting who charge Punch with prudery and squeamishness, but this is not the place to discuss whether the popularity of the paper would have been enhanced, or its influence and power fortified by following the example of La Vie Parisienne or of Jugend. Certainly during the period under review reticence and respectability were combined on 229 Mr. PimcJis History of Modern England occasion with a remarkable freedom of comment, and the tragedy of "The Great Social Evil" was frankly admitted in Leech's famous picture. Though an isolated reference it was worth a THE GREAT SOCIAL EVIL Time: Midnight. A sketch not a hundred miles from the Haymarket. Bella: "Ah! Fanny! How long have you been Gay}" hundred sermons. If Punch preferred to be the champion of domesticity and decorum in public and private life, he was reflecting an essential feature of the age — a feature which no longer exists. It was an age of patriarchal rule and large 230 Mr. QuiverfnH families. Nothing strikes one more in turning over the pages of old numbers of Punch than the swarms of young people who figure in the domestic groups so dear to John Leech. The numbers, more than the precocity of the rising generation, impress the reader. The type represented is mainly drawn from well-to-do middle-class households, but all classes were prolific. If one needs proof, there is the evidence of Debrett and of the tombstones in our country churchyards. A FRESHENER ON THE DOWNS 231 THE LIBERAL PROFESSIONS 4 S a mirror of public opinion on the status and importance / \ of the learned and liberal professions Punch, when due allowance has been made for his limitations, his pre- judices and even his passions, cannot be overlooked by the student of social history. A whole book has been written on his attitude towards the Church ; in another section of this chronicle I have dealt at some length with his hostility to Pluralism, Sabbatarianism, Ritualism, and endeavoured to show how a generally tolerant and "hang theology" attitude was in the early 'fifties exchanged for one of fierce anti- Vaticanism. The "No Popery " drum was banged with great fury, and when the Roman Catholic hierarchy was re- established in England in 1850, Punch supported the Ecclesias- tical Titles Act which declared the assumption of titles con- nected with places in the realm illegal and imposed heavy penalties on the persons assuming them. This Act, passed in 1 85 1, remained a dead letter until 1871, when it was repealed. As for the law and lawyers the record of Punch is more con- sistent and creditable, and, as we have seen, he was from the first an unflinching advocate of cheap justice and the removal of irregularities which pressed hardest on the poor, an unrelenting critic of barbarous and oppressive penalties. No one was too great or small to escape his legal pillory, or to secure recog- nition for reforming zeal or humane administration — from Lord Brougham and Lord St. Leonards down to unpaid magistrates. To what has been said elsewhere it may be added that the series of papers written by Gilbert k Beckett, under the heading of "The Comic Blackstone," are much better than their title, for they contain a good deal of shrewd satire and sound sense. Punch had good reason to be proud of his own legal represen- tative, the humane and genial Gilbert k Beckett. He welcomed 232 The Bench and the Universities Talfourd's promotion to the Bench as an honour to letters, for Talfourd was not only the executor and first biographer of Lamb and the author of the highly successful, but now for- gotten, tragedy of Ion, but his services to authors in connexion with copyright earned for him the dedication of Pickwick. On his death in 1854, Punch's elegy fittingly commemorated the character and career of one of whom, as an advocate, it was said that the wrong side seldom cared to hear him, and who, like Hood, in his last words, deplored the mutual estrangement of classes in English society. On the other hand, judges who jested on the Bench, indulged in judicial clap-trap, or encouraged the public to regard the Courts of Justice as substitutes for theatrical entertainments, are severely handled. Judex jocosus odiosus ; but the type is, apparently, impervious to satire. Another anticipation of latter- day criticism is to be found in the remark made in 1856 : "There was once a Parliament — (we do not live in such times now !) — in which there were few or no lawyers." Even more red-hot in its up-to-dateness is Punch's sarcastic dismissal of the cult of "efficiency " sixty-five years ago : — Mr. Punch's reverence for the business powers of so-called men of business is not abject. The "practical men," who smile com- passionately at schemers and visionaries, are the men who perpetually make the most frightful smashes and blunders. No attorney, for instance, can keep, or comprehend accounts, and a stock-jobber, the supposed incarnation of shrewdness, is the most credulous gcbemouche in London. With University authorities, professors, dons, and academics generally, we look in vain for any sign of sympathy, save that Punch condemned the rule which then prevented Fellows from marrying. For the rest, he looked on the older Universities as the homes of mediaeval obscurantism, stubbornly opposed to reforms long overdue. Of the two, Oxford fared the worse at his hands on account of the Tractarian movement, Pusey, and Newman. This antagonism was based on political and religious divergences, not on any hostility to learning or the classical curriculum, of which Punch was a supporter, to the extent of 233 Mr. PuncJis History of Modern England printing ieux d'esprit in Latin and Greek in his pages. All along he was a jealous guardian of the "illustrious order of the goosequill," a sturdy champion of its claims to adequate pay and official recognition, a vigilant critic of the "homoeopathic system of rewards" adopted by the Crown in the Civil List. References to this undying scandal are honourably frequent in the early volumes of Punch. It may suffice to quote the letter to Lord Palmerston in the summer of 1856 : — I will not, this hot weather, weary your lordship by specifying- every case, but will sum up the account as I find it divided : To Science, Literature, and Art £^75 To sundries 925 £1,200 Deduct sundries 925 £275 Due to Science, Literature, and Art 925 Total Civil List ;^i,20o Equally creditable is the reiterated plea — from 1847 onward — for the establishment of International Copyright, to guard English authors from the piracy of American publishers, amongst whom Putnam is singled out as an honourable excep- tion. It may be fairly claimed for Punch that he made very few mistakes in appraising the merits of the authors of his time or of the rising stars. He failed to render justice to Disraeli as a writer, and he curtly dismissed Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass as "a mad book by an American rough." But literary values prove him substantially right in his distaste for the flamboyant exuberance of Bulwer Lytton, and absolutely sound in his castigation of the tripe-and-oniony flavour of Samuel War- ren's books, one of which he held up to not undeserved obloquy under the ferocious misnomer of "The Diarrhoea of a Late Physician." He was a veritable malleus stultorum in dealing alike with the futilities of incompetent aristocrats and the homely puerilities of Martin Tupper and Poet Close. The famous cam- 234 Punch'' and ''The Times paign against the poet Bunn and his bad librettos goaded the victim into reprisals in which he gave as good as he got, but the fact remains that Bunn -was a bad poet, though Pwnc/i quite overdid his persecution. The nobility of Wordsworth, though the least humorous of poets, was handsomely acknowledged; when the erection of a statue to Peel was mooted, Vunch put in a claim for a similar honour to the sage of Rydal. And though indignant with Carlyle for his defence of slavery, Vunch was still ready to acknowledge "the monarch in his masquerade." Lastly, he not only welcomed Tennyson as a master, but threw open" his columns to him to retort on his detractors. Dog does not eat dog, but the unwritten etiquette in accord- ance with which one newspaper does not directly attack another was much less strictly observed sixty or seventy years ago. Delane, the editor of The Times, exercised a greater political influence than any other journalist before or since, and for a good many years Punch acted as a sort of free-lance ally of the great daily,' drawing liberally from its columns in the way of extracts and illustrations, and, according to his habitual prac- tice, underlining its policy while pretending to be shocked at it. Several of the men on Punch were contributors to The Times. Gilbert k Beckett's name stands first in the list of the principal contributors and members of the staff of The Times under Delane given in Mr. Dasent's biography. Yet I have searched the pages of the biography and the index in vain for a single reference to Punch. None the less the relations of the "two papers were close and cordial, and "Billy " Russell, the Times war correspondent and unsparing critic of mismanagement in the J On the occasion of Punch's Jubilee, in 1891, The Times remarked : " May we be excused for noting the fact that he (Punch) has generally, in regard to public affairs, taken his cue from The Times? " That was substantially true of The Times under the old rigime when Delane was editor. Mr. Herbert Paul, himself a strong Liberal, writes in his History 0) Modern England that " Delane's chief quality was his independence." Mr. Dasent, in his biography, gives good grounds for his assertion that Delane was at no time what could be called a party man, though his instincts were essentially Liberal, and notes that " if charged with inconsistency, Delane would merely remind his critics that The Times was the organ of no party, and that every issue was complete in itself." 235 Mr. PitncJis History of Modern England Crimea, had no more enthusiastic trumpeter than Punch. But the great gulf in prestige and power between The Times under Delane and the rest of the London Press is indirectly but un- mistakably shown in Punch's habitual disrespect for most of his other contemporaries. In another context, I have quoted JENKINS AT HOME examples of his flagellation of the Morning Post—the only paper, by the way, which supported the Coup d'Etat; but two masterpieces of malice may be added. In 1843, a propos of "Jenkins's" incurably unctuous worship of rank. Punch observes : " If the reader be not weeping at this, it is not in the power of onions to move him." And again, a little later on in the same year, Punch compares the "beastliness" of Jenkins, "the life-long toad-eater," with the "beastly fellow" denounced in the Morning Post for swallowing twelve frogs for a wager ! Punch was not content with identifying the Morning Post with 236 Victorian and Georgian Jotirnalisni the imaginary personality of Jenkins, the super-flunkey, but was also responsible for re-christening the Morning Herald and the Standard — Conservative morning and evening papers which, until 1857, belonged to the same proprietor — Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Harris. The Standard retaliated by calling Punch the "most abject of all the toadies of The Times," and accusing it of libelling "the young gentlemen of Eton " and the Queen. By an unconscious compliment Punch was bracketed with the Examiner, the ablest and most independent of the weeklies, as The Times was of the dailies, for its disloyalty to the Crown. In the war of wits which ensued and was carried on for several years, all the honours rested with Punch. But these contro- versies belong rather to the domestic history of Punch; and Punch's friendly relations with the Daily News, of which Dickens was the first editor, must be somewhat discounted by the facts that Douglas Jerrold was an intimate friend of the novelist, who occasionally dined with the Punch staff; that Paxton, one of Punch's heroes, exerted all his great influence on behalf of the new daily ; and finally, that Bradbury and Evans were, a: the time, the publishers of Dickens, of Punch, and of the Daily News. The journalism of the 'forties and 'fifties presents curious analogies with and divergences from the journalism of to-day. Punch is never weary of girding at the cult of monstrosity and sensationalism, the disproportionate amount of space devoted to crime and criminals and causes celebres, the habit of burning the idols of yesterday, the nau- seating compliments paid to statesmen after death by those who had maligned them in their lifetime. Many of the least reputable exploits of Georgian journalism were anticipated in early Victorian days. Criticism was franker, more outspoken, and less restrained by the law of libel, and Punch always stood out within reasonable limits for the liberty of the Press. When an Edinburgh jury gave a verdict against the Scotsman in the famous case brought by Duncan MacLaren in 1852, Punch compared them to Bomba, and congratulated the Scottish gentlemen who defrayed the Scotsman's costs and damages. He regarded it as a righteous protest against a verdict which threatened "to make it impossible to express contempt at poli- 237 Mr. PuncJis History of Modern England tical apostasy, disgust at the abandonment of principles, or indignation at any coalition, however disreputable, without the danger of being brought before a jury." The Scotsman was then edited by Alexander Russel, the most powerful, original, and enlightened of Scots journalists. Russel, for the last twenty years of his life, dominated the Scotsman as Delane dominated The Times. But it was, in the main, a righteous and benevolent dictatorship. "What made every one turn with alert curiosity to The Times in Delane's day was that nobody knew beforehand which side he would take on anyi new ques- tion." ' And much the same might be said of Russel. No such curiosity is possible to-day. There has been a great levelling up of journalism from the bottom, and a great levelling down from the top. In the old days the gap between men like Delane and Russel and the penny-a-liners was greater than any gap that now exists in the profession. Not the least of their dis- tinctions was the fact that they both died without even a knight- hood to their names. Fifty years later neither of them could have held his post for a fortnight. It is to the credit of Punch that he recognized the value of their independence and emulated it in his own sphere. He played his part manfully in helping to kill the old flunkey-worship of rank, but could not prevent the reincarnation of "Jenkins " in the modern sycophantic worship- per of success — no matter how achieved. The excellence of provincial journalism — not yet exposed to the competition of the cheap London press — is attested by Punch's frequent cita- tions, but he did not overlook its ineptitudes, some of which happily remain to refresh our leisure. But of all the professions, none looms larger in the early pages of Punch than that of medicine. Here, again, a broad distinction is drawn between the heads of the profession and those who are preparing for it; between legitimate and illegiti- mate practitioners. Men like Harvey and Jenner are extolled as heroes and benefactors of humanity at large, and their recog- nition by the State is urged as a national duty. The maintenance of the status and dignity of physicians and surgeons, civil, ' Delane of " The Times," by Sir Edward Cook, p. 281. 238 Quacks and Doctors naval, and military, is frequently insisted upon before and during the Crimean War. Punch's tribute to the services of Florence Nightingale in reorganizing the nursing profession has already been noted. He was a strenuous advocate of the disestablishment of Mrs. Gamp, and a consistent supporter of the campaign against quackery, though under no illusions as to the possibility of its entire extermination : — Great outcry has been raised of late, in the Lancet and other journals, against Quacks and Quackery. Let them not flatter them- selves that it is possible to put either down. The Quack is a personag-e too essential to the comfort of a large class of society to be deprived of his vocation. He is, in fact, the Physician of the Fools — a body whose numbers and respectability are by far too great to admit of anything of the kind. However, as there are some people in the world who are not fools, and who will not, when they want a doctor, have recourse to a Quack, if they can help it, the practice of the latter ought certainly to be limited to its proper sphere. For this end we could certainly go rather farther than Sir James Graham's sympathies permitted him to proceed last session. We propose that every Quack should not only not be suffered to call himself what he is not, but should be compelled to call himself what he is. We would not only prevent him from assuming the title of a medical man, but we would oblige him to take that of Quack. This was written in 1845. The Sir James Graham referred to was one of the blackest of all Punch's betes noires — in con- sequence of the postal censorship which earned for him the title of "The Breaker (not the Keeper) of the Seals," and prompted the savage cartoon of "Peel's Dirty Little Boy." He never had friendly treatment at the hands of Punch. Elsewhere it is insinuated that the measure played the game of the quacks, and the history of attempts to regulate their activities in the last seventy years goes far to justify Punch's scepticism. But his censure was not confined to quacks; he says hard things of doctors who exploited and traded on tnalades imaginaires, and more than once exhibits impatience at the failure of medical science to arrive at any definite conclusions as to the causes or cure of the cholera epidemic in 1849. And when Mr. Muntz brought forward a motion in 1845 to oblige doctors to write their prescriptions in English and put English 239 Mr. Pundis History of Modern England labels on their gallipots, the proposal was satirized as an effort to strip medicine of its indispensable mystery. It may be not SOMETHING LIKE A HOLIDAY Pastrycook : " What have you had, Sir ? " Boy : " I've had two jellies, seven of these, eleven of these, and six of those, and four Bath buns, a sausage roll, ten almond cakes — and a bottle of ginger beer." unfairly contended that Punch, in his horror of humbug and condemnation of guzzling and gormandizing, was a disciple of Abernethy. His views on diet inclined to moderation rather than asceticism, and the new cult of vegetarianism, which seems to have had its origin in Manchester, was satirized under the heading, "Greens for the Green." By far the largest number of the references to medicine, however, are concerned with the manners and customs of medical students, and if corroboration be needed for the unflattering picture of this class which has been drawn in Pickwick, the pages of Punch supply it in distressing abundance. The coun- 240 Medical Students terparts of Bob Sawyer and Benjamin Allen, in all their dingy rowdiness are portrayed in a series of articles and paragraphs running through the early volumes. Thus, under the heading Hospitals we read : — The attributes of the gentlemen walking the various hospitals may be thus enumerated : Guy's St. Thomas's St. George's London University Bartholomew's Middlesex Charing Cross King's College Westminster Half-and-half, anatomical fracas, and billiards. Doings at Tattersall's. Too remote to be ascertained. Conjuring, juggling, and mesmerism. State of Smithfield Markets. Convivial harmony. Dancing at the Lowther-rooms. Has not yet acquired any peculiarity. Dashes of all the others combined. 0-1 THE MEDICAL STUDENT 241 Mr. PimcJis History of Modern England Even when all allowance has been made for the exaggeration of the satirist, there was undoubtedly a serious warrant for this indictment, and we may congratulate ourselves that it is a gross libel on the medical students of to-day. They may be exuberant, noisy, and rowdy on occasion, but they are neither grubby nor callous, and the unfortunate episode of their treatment of Mr. "Pussyfoot " Johnson may be regarded, we believe, as a blot on the scutcheon of their sportsmanship which the great majority regretted and reprobated. 242 WOMEN IN THE 'FORTIES AND 'FIFTIES ON the position and influence of women in society Punch, as we have already seen, furnishes a critical if not a complete commentary. Extravagance, exclusiveness and arrogance are faithfully dealt with. There is genuine satire in the picture of the fine lady who, on hearing that her pet dog had bitten the footman in the leg, expressed the fervent hope that it would not make the dog ill. Fashionable delicacy is ridiculed, and Punch ranged himself on the side of "S.G.O." (Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne) in his crusade in The Times against Mayfair matrons for not nursing their own offspring, and for employing wet-nurses who, in turn, had to starve their own children. A few years earlier, when the question "Can Women regenerate Society ? " was seriously discussed in the same jotirnal, the issue is drowned by Punch in a stream of comic suggestions. There is not much to choose between the " Dolls' House " ideal and that expressed in the sonnet printed in the winter of 1846 : — I idolize the ladies. They are fairies That spiritualize this earth of ours ; From heavenly hotbeds, most delightful flowers, Or choice cream-cheeses from celestial dairies. But learning in its barbarous seminaries, Gives the dear creatures many wretched hours, And on their gossamer intellects sternly showers Science with all its horrid accessaries. Now, seriously, the only things, I think, In which young ladies should instructed be. Are stocking-mending, love, and cookery — Accomplishments that very soon will sink, Since Fluxions, now, and Sanscrit conversation, Always form part of female education. 243 Mr. PiincJts History of Modern England But even within the ranks of the social elite signs of a desire for equal rights were not wanting. These, however, were mainly in the direction of aping masculinity in sport and dress. In the same year we read of the Duchess of Marlborough shooting, and a Ladies' Club is mentioned for the first time a few months SOMETHING LIKE A BROTHER Flora; "What a very pretty waistcoat, Emily!" Emily; "Yes, dear. It belongs to my brother Charles. When he goes out of town, he puts me on the Free List, as he calls it, of his wardrobe. Isn't it kind ? " earlier. References to the mistakenly modern idea of ladies smoking are to be found pretty frequently even before the Crimean War, which is generally held responsible for the introduction of the cigarette, and soon afterwards we have a picture of a lady calmly enjoying a smoke in the train. Fine ladies are satirized for emulating their brothers and husbands by 244 Victorian Damsels leaving their bills unpaid. It must be owned that woman, if she ventured to step outside the domain of an amiable, decorative, or domestic mode of existence met with little commendation from Punch. He was a strong advocate of schools for cooking long years before the historic advice of "Feed the Brute " ap- peared in his pages. But the strong-minded female only excited his ridicule and satire, though with unkind inconsistency he was never weary of making fun of the troubles of the helpless "unprotected female." There are hundreds of portraits of charming Victorian damsels in Leech's "Social Cuts," but their predominant trait is health and amiability. Very rarely do they say anything wise or witty or plain spoken — even under great provocation from their pert schoolboy brothers. But we know — even from the pages of Punch — ^that Victorian women and girls were not all of this yielding and gentle type, and it is to his credit that in his sketch of "The Model Fast Lady," he was able to render justice to a phase of advanced womanhood remote alike from sentimentality and intellectualism : — She delights in dogs; not King Charles's, but big dogs that live in kennels. She takes them into the drawing-room, and makes them leap over the chairs. Her mare, too, is never out of her mouth. ... If she is intimate with you, she will call you "my dear fellow" ; and if s:he takes a fancy to you, you will be addressed the first time by your Christian name, familiarized very shortly from Henry into Harry. Her father is hailed as "Governor." Her speech, in fact, is a little masculine. If your eyes were shut, you would fancy it was a "Fast Man " speaking, so quick do the "snobs," and "nobs," and "chaps," and "dowdies," "gawkies," "spoonies," "brats," and other cherished members of the Fast Human Family run through her loud conversation. Occasionally, too, a " Deuce take it," vigorously thrown in, or a "Drat it," peculiarly emphasized, will startle you ; but they are only used as interjections, and mean nothing but "Alas!" or "Dear me!" or, at the most, "How provoking ! " The MODEL FAST LADY is not particularly attached to dancing. She waltzes as if she had made a wager to go round the room one hundred and fifty times in five minutes and a quarter. If any one is pushed over by the rapidity of her Olga revolutions, she does not stop, but merely laughs, and "hopes no limbs are broken." By the bye, if she has a weakness, it is on the score — rather a 245 Mr- PuncJi s History of Modern England long one — of wagfers. She is always betting. It must be men- tioned, however, that she is most honourable in the payment of her debts. She would sell her Black Bess sooner than levant. THE MODEL FAST LADY has, at best, but a superficial knowledg-e of the art of flirting. Compliments, she calls "stuff"; Fast Young Lady (to Old Gent) : " Have you such a thing as a lucifer about you, for I've left my cigar lights at home." and sentiment "namby-pamby nonsense." She likes a person to be sensible; and has no idea of being made a fool of. At a picnic she is invaluable. When your tumbler is empty, she'll take Champagne with you — that is to say, if you're not too proud. You may as well fill her glass; she has no notion of being cheated. Here's better luck to you ! and to enforce it, she runs the point of her parasol into your side. She dislikes smoking? Not she indeed; she's rather fond of it. In fact, she likes a "weed" herself occasionally, and to con- vince you, will take a whiff or two. Her forefinger is not much needle-marked, and she laughs at Berlin wool, and all such fiddle 246 The Model Fast Lady faddle. She has a pianoforte, but really she has no patience to practise. She can play a short tune on the cornet-i-piston. Literature is a sealed pleasure to her, though it is but fair to state she reads Bell's Life, and has a few volumes in her bedroom of the Sporting Magazine. She knows there was a horse of the name of Byron. The FAST LADY rather avoids children. If a baby is put into her hands, she says, "Pray, somebody, come and take this thing, I'm afraid of dropping it." She prefers the society of men, too, to that of her own sex. Her costume is not regulated much by the fashions, and she is always the first to come down when the ladies have gone upstairs to change their dress. Her greatest accomplishment is to drive. With the vi^hip in one hand and the reins in the other, and a key-bugle behind, she would not exchange places with the Queen herself. With all these peculiarities and manly addictions, however, the FAST LADY is good hearted, very good natured, and never guilty of what she would call "a dirty action." Her generosity, too, must be included amongst her other faults, for she gives to all, and increases the gift by sympathy. She is always in good humour, and, like gentle dulness, dearly loves a joke. She is an excellent daughter, and her father dotes on her and lets her do what she likes, for "he knows she will never do anything wrong, though she is a strange girl." In the country she is greatly beloved. The poor people call her "a dear good Miss," and present their petitions and unfold all their little griefs to her. She is continually having more presents of pups sent to her than she knows what to do with. The farmers, too, consult her about their cows and pigs, and she is the godmother to half the children in the parish. Her deficiencies, after all, are more those of manner than of feeling. She may be too largely gifted with the male virtues, but then she has a very sparing collection of the female vices. Nature may be to blame for having made her one of the weaker vessels, but imperfect and manly as she is, she still retains the inward gentle- ness of the woman, and many fine ladies, who stand the highest in the pulpits of society, would preach none the less effectively if they had only as good a heart — even with the trumpery straw in which, like a rich fruit, it is enveloped — as the MODEL FAST LADY. This was written seventy years ago, but within the last decade we have seen Miss Compton frequently impersonating roles of which the leading traits were, in essentials, identical 247 Mr. Ptmck's History of Modern England with those of the Model Fast Lady. The model woman, married or unmarried, as represented by the writers and artists of Punch, was feminine, kindly, but colourless, though the "deviations from the norm " are not overlooked — the lion-huntresses of Belgravia; thrusting matrons; willing victims of the social tread- mill and the "petty decalogue of Mode"; cynical high- priestesses of the marriage market. When we turn to the higher education of women generally the attitude assumed is nearly always one of mild chaff. Punch refused to take it seriously, and propounded his own scheme for a female university, in which the fashionable accomplish- ments are enumerated in detail : — French and Italian as spoken in the fashionable circles, music, drawing-, fancy-work, and the higher branches of dancing, will form the regular curriculum. A minor examination on these sub- jects, or a "Little Go," will be instituted before the Spinstership of Arts can be tried for. The examined shall be able to "go on" anywhere in "Tel^maque," or in the conversations in Veneroni's Grammar ; to play a fantasia of Thalberg's ; to work a pair of slippers in Berlin wool ; and to dance the Cachuca and Craco- vienne. For the degree of Spinster, the candidate shall be examined in various novels by Paul de Kock, Victor Hugo, Balzac, and others ; also in the libretto of the last new opera. She shall be able to play or sing any of the fashionable pieces or airs of the day, and shall give evidence of an extensive acquaintance with Bellini, Donizetti, Labitzky, and Strauss. She shall draw and embroider, in a satisfactory manner, various fruits, flowers, cottages and a \|VOO .ENGLVSHE IN 1849 rvAf->"w.rR|EHDS ToTE/^ AND A LnrtE:- MvSYCtC Italian virtuoso Giulio Regondi, but is seldom heard nowadays outside of music halls. Turgenieff said that the zither always reminded him of a Jew trying to sing through his nose. With- out going so far as that, one may say that it would be hard to carry out Sir Edward Elgar's favourite expression-mark nobilmente on the concertina. With regard to fashionable music Punch complains in 1849 that execution was everything, composition little or nothing. He only anticipated the com- plaint of a later satirist who wrote : — Spare, execution, spare thy victim's bones — Composed by Mozart, decomposed by Jones. Specimens of fashionable musical criticism have already been given under the head of opera. Punch had the root of the 292 PuncJis " Taste in Music matter in him but was lacking in technique, and confesses him- self unable to make out what a critic meant by alluding to a new tenor's "admirable portamento." He was on much more sure ground when he attacked Balfe for mangling Beethoven at the Grand National Concerts at Her Majesty's Theatre in ~ 1850, when trivial rubbish was sandwiched between move- ments of the Eroica Symphony. A second visit, however, enabled him to withdraw his censure, as the Eroica and C minor Symphonies were performed without being cut in two. Punch had "no use for " Wagner, as we have seen, but he fully appre- ciated his romantic forerunner Weber; his salutation of Spohr and Hummel as classics was perhaps a trifle premature. The TASTE IN 1854— VILLIKINS AND HIS DINAH IN THE DRAWING-ROOM Young Lady (who ought to know better) : " Now, William, you are not low enough yet. Begin again at ' he took the cold pizen.' " Mr. PiincHs History of Modern England names of the various musical celebrities who figure in the pages of Punch in this period afford a striking illustration of the transitoriness of the fame of the executant. Who but experts in musical biography know of Sivori and Ole Bull now ? Even the laurels of the great Thalberg, the most "gentlemanly " of all the great pianists, author of the most fashionable varia- tions, have withered sadly in the last half century. Punch does not seem to have been specially impressed by Liszt, the greatest of them all, and misspells his name "Listz" on the occasion of a perfunctory reference to him in 1843. The favourite composers of waltzes were Strauss, the founder of the dynasty of the Viennese waltz-kings, and Labitzky. To the present generation the name Strauss has totally different associations ; and we live so fast that an enlightened writer has recently declared that the once redoubtable Richard is also dead. It would be an overstatement to say that conductors were of no account in the 'forties and 'fifties, in view of the notoriety of Jullien and the prestige of Costa, who was both an autocrat and a martinet, but they did not loom nearly so large in the public eye as the great singers. The balance of repute has long since been decisively redressed and the popular conductor of to-day has no reason to complain of lack of homage, whether in the form of applause or official recognition . The low opinion which Punch entertained of contemporary architects and sculptors and of their ability to design or execute a public building, a monument, or a memorial, has been noted in our brief survey of London. He made an exception in favour of Paxton, but does not seem to have recognized the genius of Alfred Stevens, and here at any rate was not in advance of public or expert opinion of the time. Stevens's design for the Wellington monument was only placed sixth in order of merit by the adjudicators of the competition in 1857, and though ultimately the execution of the monument was entrusted to him, it was not placed in the position intended, for it till twenty-seven years after his death. As a judge of painting and painters Punch showed greater independence, intelligence and enlightenment. His earlier volumes abound in references to forgotten names, but he was at least no indiscriminate wor- 294 Turner as Painter and Poet shipper of established reputation. In a notice of the Suffollc Street Gallery in the autumn of 1841 he prints a most trenchant criticism of Maclise's "Sleeping Beauty" as showing "a disdain for both law and reason and avoiding an approximation to the vulgarity of flesh and blood in his representation of humanity." Landseer falls under his lash for his "courtier pictures" at the R.A. in 1844, arid in the same article we find the first of many satirical references to Turner's poetic titles. Punch, we regret to say, wholly failed to recognize that a bad poet might be a very great painter. In his "Scamper through the Academy " we read : — No. 77 is called Whalers, by J. M. W. Turner, R.A., and embodies one of those singular effects which are only met with in lobster salads, and in this artist's pictures. Whether he calls his pictures Whalers, or Venice, or Morning, or Noon, or Night, it is all the same ; for it is quite as easy to fancy it one thing as another. We give here two subjects by this celebrated artist. ' ^ — , .1 \ 1 j And again : — We had almost forgotten Mr. J. M. W. Turner, R.A., and his celebrated MS. poem, the Fal- lacies of Hope, to which he con- stantly refers us as " in former years," but on this occasion he has obliged us by simply men- tioning the title of the poem, without troubling us with an extract. We will, however, supply a motto to his Morning — returning from the Ball, which really seems to need a little explanation ; and as he is too modest to quote the Fallacies of Hope, we will quote it for him : 295 VENICE BY GASLIGHT.— GOING TO THE BALL MS. "Fallacies of Hope "(An Un- published Poem). — TURNER. ^ ,^ — -^^^ u '^:)^ ^ 1 ,/:■ - '^ \\> s^ ' t - -*^ ■> .- _=^-^ VENICE BY DAYLIGHT.— RETURNING FROM THE BALL MS. " Fallacies of Hope" (An Un- published Poem) ^Turner. Mr. Punch's History of Modern England "Oh! what a scene! — Can this be Venice? No. And yet methinks it is — because I see Amid the lumps of yellow, red and blue, Something which looks like a Venetian spire. That dash of orange in the background there Bespeaks 'tis Morning ! And that little boat (Almost' the colour of tomato sauce) Proclaims them now returning from the ball ! This in my picture, I would fain convey, I hope I do. Alas ! ■what FALLACY ! " But there is some good "horse sense " mixed up with frivolity in an article on the canons of criticism a few pages later : — GENERAL MAXIMS L The power of criticism is a gift, and requires no previous education. IL The critic is greater than the artist. IIL The artist cannot know his own meaning. The critic's office is to inform him of it. IV. Painting is a mystery. The language of pictorial criticism, like its subject, should be mysterious and unintelligible to the vulgar. It is a mistake to classify it as ordinary English, the rules of which it does not recognise. V. Approbation should be sparingly given : it should be bestowed in preference on what the general eye condemns. The critical dignity must never be lowered by any explanation why a work of art is good or bad. CHARACTERISTICS OF PARTICULAR STYLES 1. To criticise a Picture by Turner. — Begin by protesting against his extravagance; then go on with a "notwithstanding." Combine such phrases as "bathed in sunlight," " flooded with summer glories," "mellow distance," with a reference to his earlier pictures; and wind up with a rapturous rhapsody on the philosophy of art. 2. To criticise a Picture by Stanfield. — Begin by unqualified praise; then commence detracting, first on the score of "sharp, hard outline" ; then of "leathery texture " ; then of "scenic effect of the figures"; and conclude by a wish he had never been a scene painter. 3. To criticise a Picture by Eify.— Begin by delirious satisfaction with his "delicious carnations " and "mellow flesh-tones." Remark 296 Rules for Art Critics on the skilful arrangement of colour and admirable composition ; and finish with a regret that Etty should content himself with merely painting from "the nude Academy model," without troubling himself with that for which you had just before praised him. — N.B. Never mind the contradiction. 4. To criticise a Picture by E. Landseer. — Here you are bound to unqualified commendation. If the subject be Prince Albert's Hat or the Queen's Macaw, some ingenious compliment to royal patrons is expected. Punch will be happy to supply newspaper critics with similar directions for " doing " all the principal painters in similar style. He subjoins some masterly specimens of artistic criticism : — The "facile princeps" of daily critics of art (he of the Post) has the following, in a criticism of Herbert's Gregory and Choristers : — "There is a want of modulative melody in its colours and mellow- ness in its hand (whose?), pushed to an outrd simplicity in the MANNE[^5 AtO CVSTOMS or /' E:nGLYSHE:- IW- 1849 JJiX \ "(' EXHYBiTrON. AT /• PsOYAL>ACAOef1Y£. 297 Mr. PuncJis History of Modern England plainness and un grammatical development of its general effect. The handling is firm and simple, though in the drapery occasionally too square and inflexible." The neglect and rough handling of the treasures of the National Gallery, where pictures presented to the nation were buried in a vault, is a frequent source of indignant comment throughout this period — note for example "The Pictures' Petition " in 1853. But in another sense contemporary pictures were roughly handled by Punch. Thus in 1849 he puts in an effective plea for realism as against Wardour Street "Old Clo'," and appeals to artists to "paint human beings instead of clothes- horses." There is indeed a strangely familiar ring in "Mr. Pips's " notes on the R.A. Exhibition of the year: — "The Exhibition at large I judge to be a very excellent middling one, many Pictures good in their kind, but that Kind in very few cases high. The Silks and Satins mostly painted to admiration, and the Figures copied carefully from the Model ; but this do appear too plainly ; and the action generally too much like a Scene in a Play." The same complaint recurs in the following year, when Punch is moved, as the result of visiting all the exhibitions then open to ask certain questions : — Is painting a living art in England at this moment? Is there a nineteenth century? Are there men and women round about us, doing, acting, suffering? Is the subject matter of Art, clothes? Or is it men and women, their actions, passions and sufferings? If Art is vital, should it not somehow find food among living events, interests, and incidents? Is our life, at this day, so unideal, so devoid of all sensuous and outward picturesqueness and beauty, that for subjects to paint we must needs go back to the Guelphs and Ghibellines, or to Charles the Second, or William the Third, or George the Second? But much more interesting than these generalities — sound and sensible though they are — is the first reference to "certain 298 The P.R.B. young friends of mine, calling themselves — the dear silly boys — Pre-Raphaelites " in the same volume. It must cer- tainly be admitted that in his earlier criticisms of the P.R.B.'s Mr. Punch managed to dissemble his affection pretty effectively. The initial compliment in the notice of 185 1 is largely discounted by what follows : — CONVENT THOUGHTS Our dear and promising' young- friends, the Pre-Raphaelites, deserve especial commendation for the courage with which they have dared to tell some most disagreeable truths on their canvases this year. Mr. Ruskin was quite right in taking up the cudgels against The Times on this matter. The pictures of the P.R.B. are true, and that's the worst of them. Nothing can be more wonderful than the truth of Collins 's representation of the Alisma Plantago, except the unattractiveness of the demure lady, whose botanical pursuits he has recorded under the name of CONVENT THOUGHTS. 299 Mr. Ptmclis History of Modern England ... By the size of the lady's head he no doubt meant to imply her vast capacity of brains — while by the utter absence of form and limb under the robe, he subtly conveys that she has given up all thoughts of making a figure in the world. Mr. Millais's "Mariana in the moated Grange" is obviously meant to insinuate a delicate excuse for the gentleman who wouldn't MARIANA IN THE MOATED GRANGE come — and to show the world the full import of Tennyson's description : — • then said she, "I am very dreary." Anything drearier than the lady, or brighter than her blue velvet robe, it is impossible to conceive. But Punch makes the amende most handsomely in 1852: — Before two pictures of Mr. Millais I have spent the happiest hour that I have ever spent in the Royal Academy Exhibition. In 300 Commercialism in Art those two pictures [Ophelia and The Huguenot] I find more loving observation of Nature, more mastery in the reproduction of her forms and colours, more insight into the sentiment of our greatest poet, a deeper feeling of human emotion, a happier choice of a point of interest, and a more truthful renderii^ of its appropriate expression, than in all the rest of those eight hundred squares of canvas put together. In 1852 Punch singles out, from a wilderness of niggling landscapes and highly-coloured and meretricious upholstery, Watts's "marvellous chalk drawing of Lord John Russell." For the rest, Art is more of a trade now, than it was when Raphael's studio had no other name than bottega^in English, shop; and moreover, it is an emasculate and man-milliner sort of a trade, instead of one demanding strong brains, and a brave and believing heart. It is a trade mainly conversant with miserable things and petty aims — with vanity, and ostentation and vulgarity, and sensuality and frivolity — no longer dealing- with themes of prayer and praise, with the glories of beatitude, or the horror of damnation, with the perpetua- tion of family dignities and devotions, the recording of great events, the dignifying of public and national, or the beautifying of private and individual life. It is a trade in ornament, and its Academy is a shop, and its Exhibition a display of rival wares, in which the best hope and the sole aim of the many is to catch the eye of a customer; and he who " colours most highly, is sure to please." As a comprehensive indictment of the commercialism and triviality of Victorian art this leaves little to be desired. For an illustration of Punch's altered opinion of the P.R.B.'s it may suffice to quote his palinode in 1853 : — Will you consider me ridiculous or blind when I assure you, on my honour as a puppet and a public performer, that these young gentlemen have written for me this year four of the sweetest and deepest and most thoughtful books I have-, read since I laid down Mr. Millais's historical romance of The Huguenot, last year? I am sensible of the omniscience of the daily, and some of the weekly papers, and I am aware that this is an opinion which should not be breathed within ear-shot of places where they take in The Times, and the Morning Post, and the Examiner. But I am a sort of 301 Mr. Pnndis History of Modern England chartered libertine, and nobody will believe anything I say is serious, so I can enjoy the luxury of saying what I feel, having no character to keep up. Then I tell you frankly — not forgetting Edwin Land- seer's two grand cantos of his Highland Poem, Night and Morning by the Lochside, or Stanfield's noble paean-picture of the Battered Hull that carries the body of Nelson, like a Viking with his ship for bier — ^not forgetting these and other picture-books well worth reading — I tell you that Hunt's Claudia and Isabella is to me the book of the collection, though it records in colours what Shakespeare has written in words ; and that little, if at all after it, comes Millais's Order of Release, and then the Strayed Sheep and Proscribed Royalist of the same authors. I do not mean to put either after the other, so I bracket them." In accepting the principles of the P.R.B.'s Punch shows all the zeal of the convert, as may be gathered from the following discourse published shortly afterwards : — Art must adapt itself to the conditions of the time and the life it has to reflect. See what follows. If pictures are to be hung in rooms instead of churches, and public halls and palaces, they must be small. Work on a small scale, being meant for the satisfaction of a close eye, must be highly finis:hed. These conditions did not affect the old painters and must affect the moderns, and these conditions my young friends the Pre-Raphaelites appear to be conscious of and to submit to, for which I cannot blame them, but praise them rather, for wisely recognising the necessity of adapting Art to surrounding circumstances. What have they recognised besides? That the truest representation and grandest creation may and must be combined by the great artist ; that as man works in a setting of eartli and air, all the beauties and fitness of that setting must be rendered — the more truthfully the better — and that the most accurate rendering of these need not detract from the crowning work — the creation of the central interest which sums itself in human expression. The practice of painting hitherto has seemed to challenge the possibility of combining these two things — ^human expression and accurate representation of inanimate or lower nature. These young men take up the gauntlet, and say, "We are prepared to do this — at least to try and do it." Their first-fruits are before the world, and already it has felt that the undertaking is new and startling and cheerfully courageous : nay, more : that to a certain point — and 302 Enthusiasm of a Cowvert further than might be expected from such beardless champions — it has already succeeded. So God speed these young Luthers of the worn-out Art-faith; they have burnt the Bull of the Painter-Popes of their time. They have still enough work before them, such as their spiritual father before them went through — devils of their own creating to hurl their palettes at, and many mighty magnates to wrestle with, and confute, and put to shame — by trust in their gospel truth that Accurate Repre- sentation is the first requisite of Art. It may be added that when French medals were conferred on English artists in 1855, Punch complained that the newer school, i.e. the P.R.B.'s, had been overlooked in favour of Court painters such as Landseer. As a set-off to these examples of Punch's artistic and aesthetic flair and enlighten- ment, it must be owned that in 1854 he had expressed high praise for Frith's Ramsgate Sands (which was bought by the Queen) on account of its realism. But it may be accounted to him for righteousness that he supported Ivord Stanhope's National Portrait Gallery Bill in 1856, and entered a vigorous protest against the vile "Germanism" of the title "Art Treasures Exhibition" instead of "Treasures of Art" for the show at Manchester in 1857. The more modern and equally vile Germanism "Concert-Direction Smith" or whoever the musical agent may be, has apparently been washed out by the War of 1914. With all deductions and limitations Punch's record as a critic of the fine arts acquits him handsomely of the charge of Philistinism. 303 PERSONALITIES TOWARDS the end of the period reviewed in this volume, Punch enumerates his special betes noires as "Humbug, Cant, Sleek Hypocrisy and Brazen Wrong." But as has already been abundantly proved, the list would have to be considerably extended to in- clude all the personages, notable and notorious, who came under his lash. In earlier years he is much more specific. Thus in 1850 his amiable catalogue of the gentlemen and public bodies who have kindly consented to furnish him with game in the ensuing year contains Colonel Sibthorp, the bearded reactionary who sat for Lincoln, Barry, the architect of the new Houses of Parliament, all quack-medicine vendors, tyrants and woman-fioggers (the Tsar Nicholas and Haynau are specially aimed at), Madame Tussaud, Lord Brougham, R.A.'s, the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, Smithfield and all City nuisances, and all sinecurists and pensionists. In 1852 Panizzi (for his long deferred catalogue of the British Museum of which he was Chief Librarian), Cardinal Wiseman, and Lord Maidstone are added, together with Railway Directors, Homoeopathists and Protectionists. Among the various devices adopted to ventilate his personal animosity may be noted Punch's list of "desirable emigrants," and the ingenious suggestion that "Penal Statues" should be erected to commemorate the misdeeds of great ofTenders, obstructionists, bigots and anti-reformers. Of some of Punch's butts it may be said that they were rescued from oblivion by his satire and caricature — Sibthorp for example, though be was by no means the merely reactionary buffoon who appears in Punch. He was eccentric in dress and figure, opposed all the great measures of Reform, and was the incarnation of ultra-Tory tradition. But he was frequently 304 PEEL AS THE KNAVE OF SPADES U— 1 305 Mr. PnncJts History of Modern England witty, and as truculently courageous as Punch himself. Sir Peter Laurie, Alderman and Lord Mayor of London, stood to Punch for all that was pompous, officious, meddlesome and even odious in City administration. We rub our eyes on reading in the D.N.B. that Sir Peter throughout his public life "devoted himself largely to schemes of social advancement, was a good magistrate and a disciple of Joseph Hume." But the explana- tion of this and other divergent records is simple enough. Punch was often too angry or enthusiastic to be just or dis- criminating. He wrote on the spur of the moment, with the result that he often had to revise his verdicts. We have seen this change in regard to Prince Albert, the Duke of Wellington, and Palmerston, and already Punch had reluctantly begun to admit that Disraeli was a force in politics and not a mere mountebank. The bitter attacks on Bulwer Lytton as a pinch- beck writer and padded dandy, which abound in the 'forties, ended in reconciliation and amity. We have seen the process at work again in the altered estimates of Jullien. Bunn was severely let alone, but only when it was found that the animal, as in the French saying, was so evil as to defend himself when he was attacked. Sometimes, however. Punch was implacable and impenitent. He never appears to have had a really good word to say for Daniel O'Connell, but regarded Repeal through- out as a fraud, and the "Liberator" as a self-seeking and grasping agitator. When Dan promised in 1845 to achieve Repeal in six months or lay his head on the block, and did neither. Punch only jeered at his "brazen boasting," and de- picted him later on as the real "Potato Blight" of Ireland. Impenitence, too, marked his attitude towards both " Henry of Exeter" (Dr. Phillpotts), Pusey, and Wiseman; and his dis- trust of Louis Napoleon, after a brief period of reticence imposed during the Crimean War, revived in full force in the later 'fifties. We have also seen the converse of the process described above in the treatment of Cobden and Bright, who were rudely hauled down from their pinnacles when Punch the peace-loving Free Trader developed in the Crimean War into the bellicose patriot. The change was made in the con- trary direction with Peel, but the grace of recognition was 306 'Punch's" Injustice to Peel grievously impaired by its delay. Posthumous honours are a. sorry reparation for continual abuse of the living, and Punch's treatment of Peel is one of the worst blots on his scutcheon. In Punch's early volumes no abuse was too bad for the- Conservative statesman. Even the Bible was ransacked for "SS^OjI^C^irr THE ROYAL RED RIDING HOOD invidious parallels, which only stopped short ot Judas. He was a "political eel," a "quack," a "genius or Janus," and there is a curious foreshadowing of the recriminations of our own time, in the way in which Peel, in virtue of his inveterate policy of temporizing, is saddled with the watchword "wait awhile." If "Jenkins" was Punch's "chief butler" — in the sense of the supreme flunkey — Lord Brougham was his chief butt 307 Mr. PuncJis History of Modern England throughout these years. And certainly no public character in the nineteenth century ever played better into the hands of the satirist. His nose in the most literal sense lent a handle to the caricaturist. His tweed trousers figure as regularly in Punch's portraits as the straw in Palmerston's mouth — ^which, by the way, is generally traced to a trick that " Pam " acquired in visiting his stables. Palmerston's nickname was "Cupid " from his gallantry : the mythological parallel for Brougham would have been Proteus. One of the earliest references to him in Punch appears in the composite Preface to Vol. vi., in which each of the contributors ascribes to Punch his own characteristics, Brougham praising him for "forswearing like a chameleon every shade of opinion, when for the moment he has ceased to wear it." Thereafter the fun becomes fast and furious. Brougham is charged with writing the flamboyant advertisements of George Robins, a veritable Barnum among auctioneers. His tweed trousers are explained as a cause of his always wanting to get back to the woolsack. He is credited, in virtue of his versatile activities, with the attempt to discover perpetual motion. Brougham's vanity, craving for office at all costs, meddlesomeness, and subservience to the Duke of Wellington are held up to contempt, and in "Rational Readings for Grown-up People " (an early anticipation of the Missing Word Competition) we read : — If people may, without rebuke. Call Welling-ton the "Iron Why then we safely may presume The " Brazen Peer " to term Lord - The snobbishness of Brougham's arguments on behalf of royal princes in his Debtors' Bill again infuriates the demo- cratic Punch, who in 1849 was even more disgusted by Brougham's fulsome championship of Radetzky and the Austrians when they defeated the Piedmontese. But Punch's hostility reaches its height in the verses (accompanying a cartoon which represents Brougham standing on his head) describing the amazing farrago of inconsistencies which composed the mind 308 en Pi a I— I H Pi o U O > O Pi pi w < u z w W o 309 Mr. Pimdis History of Modern England of one who was at once a charlatan and encyclopaedist, a re- former and a courtier. In the same year Punch suggests a Bill should be promoted for "the better behaviour of the erotic and learned lord," Who'd rather mount the mountebank's stage than be laid on the shelf. Who does with ease the difficult task of turning- his back on himself. Brougham's perversely obstructive attitude towards the Exhibition of 1851 excited Punch's wrath, when he himself had become converted to the scheme, but already the tone of the paper had changed; and the turning point was reached on the occasion of Brougham's visit to America in 1850, when Punch printed the following unofficial letter of introduction to the President of the United States : — To General Taylor, President of the United States, Favoured by Henry Lord Brougham, Member of the French Institute. " Dear Taylor, " I have much pleasure in making yourself and my friend Brougham — ^the Brougham whose fame is not European but world- wide — personally acquainted. With all his little drolleries, he is an excellent fellow ; and with all his oddities, he has worked like a Hercules stable-boy at our Augean Courts of Law. He has cheapened costs ; he has well-nigh destroyed the race of sharp attorneys. Indeed, if you would seek Brougham's monument, look around every attorney's office; and you will not see Brougham's picture." Punch had already welcomed Brougham's espousal of the anti-Sabbatarian cause, but the full avowal of reconciliation is to be found in the following graceful verses printed in 1851 : — A PALINODE From Punch to Henry Brougham "During the last five or six weeks, he had with the utmost difficulty, and against the opinion of his medical advisers, attended the service of their Lordships' House. During the last ten days the 310 A Palinode to Broiighmn difficulty had increased and become more severe. In the hope of assisting in this great measure, in a cause to which his life had been devoted, he had struggled to the last, until he found he could struggle no more." — hord. Brougham's last speech on Law Reform in the House of Lords. And is the busy brain o'erwrought at last? Has the sharp sword fretted the sheath so far? Then, Henry Brougham, in spite of all that's past. Our ten long years of all but weekly war, Let Punch hold out to you a friendly hand. And speak what haply he had left unspoken Had the sharp tongue lost naught of its command, That nervous frame still kept its spring unbroken. Forgot the changes of thy later years. No more he knows the Ishmael once he knew. Drinking delights of battle 'mongst the Peers — ■ Your hand 'gainst all men, all men's hands 'gainst you. He knows the Orator whose fearless tongue Lashed into infamy and endless scorn The wretches who their blackening scandal flung Upon a Queen — of women most forlorn. He knows the lover of his kind, who stood Chief of the banded few who dared to brave The accursed traffickers in negro blood, And struck his heaviest fetter from the slave ; The Statesman who, in a less happy hour Than this, maintained man's right to read and know. And gave the keys of knowledge and of power With equal hand alike to high and low ; The Lawyer who, unwarped by private aims, Denounced the Law's abuse, chicane, delay : The Chancellor who settled century's claims. And swept an age's dense arrears away ; The man whose name men read even as they run. On every landmark the world's course along, That speaks to us of a great battle won Over untruth, or prejudice or wrong. Mr. Punch's History of Modern England Remembering this, full sad I am to hear That voice which loudest in the combat rung Now weak and low and sorrowful of cheer, To see that arm of battle all unstrung. And so, even as a warrior after fight Thinks of a noble foe, now wounded sore, I think of thee, and of thine ancient might. And hold a hand out, armed for strife no more. This is a fine summary of Brougham's services as the friend of humanity, the champion of free speech and popular education, and the great legal reformer, erring, if at all, in the over- generous estimate of his disinterestedness as an advocate. Brougham recovered from his breakdown and lived for seven- teen years longer — years crowded with multifarious activities, legal, scientific, literary. He was, in many ways, a unique figure in public life, though, when the lives of the Lord Chan- cellors are brought up to date in the next generation, he will not be able to avoid rivalry on the score of early advancement, versatility, vituperation, and vulgarity. Sir James Graham is not mentioned nearly so often as Brougham, but in respect of concentrated hostility of criticism he occupies the first place amongst Punch's pet aversions. No cartoon in this period held up any politician to greater contempt and ridicule than the repulsive picture of the Home Secretary as "Peel's Dirty Little Boy," who was "always in trouble." The predominating cause of Punch's resentment was the historic episode of the opening of suspect correspondence, notably that of Mazzini; but Sir James Graham could do nothing right in Punch's view : nihil tetigit quod non foedavit. Peter Borthwick, the advocate of the slave-owners, M.P. for Evesham from 1835 to 1847, and editor of the Morning Post from 1850 till his death in 1852, was no favourite of Punch. He was, however, as the date shows, not editorially responsible for "Jenkins"; and by introducing the Borthwick clause into the Poor Law Amendment Bill in 1847, under which married couples over the age of sixty were not, as theretofore, separated when they entered the poor-house, he so far expiated his pro-slavery 312 ' Punch^'' Designs a Statue heresies that Punch granted him "six months immunity from ridicule for this good act." Punch's antipathy to Urquhart is curious, for they were united in their Russophobia. But Punch was often intolerant of competitors, and he was never an ex- travagant Turcophil as Urquhart was. MR. PUNCH'S DESIGN FOR A STATUE TO MISS NIGHTINGALE If a paper, like a man, is to be fairly judged by its heroes and favourites. Punch emerges from the test with considerable credit. Most of them have been mentioned incidentally else- 313 Mr. Punch's History of Modern England where, and the list' might easily be added to. Let it suffice, however, to give the names of Jenner, Stephenson, Rowland Hill, Paxton, Faraday, and Livingstone; Mazzini and Kossuth; Jenny Lind, Florence Nightingale, and William Russell, of whose lectures Punch wrote an enthusiastic and well-merited encomium in the summer of 1857. • It i3 perhaps worthy of note that with the exception of Paxton none of those mentioned belonged to the decorated or decorative classes. Stephenson refused a knighthood in 1850; it was not bestowed on William Russell till more than forty years later. Rowland Hill was made a K.C.B. in i860. 314 A complete Index ivill be found in the Fourth Volume. Printed by Cassell & Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.G. 4 F.100.521 \ 1 1^1 ' 'f i