The cleric mind in quarrels seems to revel.

Devil or none, some clerks will play the Devil.

[Illustration: AT THE CATTLE SHOW

(_A Troublesome Lot._)]

The intransigent attitude of the High Church party towards

Nonconformists is condemned with equal frankness when a Cornish vicar

repudiated the title of Reverend as it was "desecrated" by the "carrion

of dissent." In the same year the Rev. Arthur Tooth, of Hatcham, was

inhibited by the Dean of Arches, and _Punch_ warns Mother Church that

she will have no peace till she has got rid of this tooth. The familiar

line of argument is adopted that he was neither a sound Anglican nor a

true Romanist, and his church is called "St. James's (Colney) Hatcham."

Frequent and unflattering allusions to a manual entitled, _The Priest

in Absolution_, occur in 1877; and ironical comment is passed on the

suggestion made in the Lower House of Convocation, that vestments might

be allowed as from a distance they were not distinguishable from a

surplice.

Mr. Mackonochie's continued recalcitrancy also occupied _Punch's_

attention a good deal in 1877. In December he explains the views on

canonical obedience of the Vicar of St. Alban's, Holborn, as follows:--

When a Ritualist has gone on too long playing at Popery, he may,

through impaired biliary function affecting the sensorium, finally

contract a subjective delusion, induced upon his dominant fixed idea

that he is his own Pope, etc.

A week later, when Mr. Mackonochie was reported to have withdrawn

into a Retreat, _Punch_ kindly suggests that in earlier ages it

would have been Anticyra--the town celebrated for hellebore, the

chief remedy in antiquity for madness. Later on he gives specimens,

under the heading of "Obedientia Docet," of correspondence from

Mackonochie's Letter Writer to meet the situation of a subaltern

reprimanded by his colonel, a stockbroker replying to a client who

has objected to an investment effected on his credit, etc.--in all

of which insubordination and disregard of orders and instructions

are casuistically defended. On matters of doctrine and discipline

_Punch_ differed acutely from Archdeacon Denison, but he greeted the

publication of his _Notes of My Life_ affectionately, holding the

author to be "most optimist of pessimists, John Bullest of John Bulls."

In 1879 under the heading, "Coronatus, non Pileatus," _Punch_ applauds

Newman's refusal of a cardinal's hat, accompanying his approval with a

back-handed sarcastic reference to Manning, who had accepted the honour

in 1875. Manning's instructions for the observance of Lent are roughly

handled in the lines which end,

Will the great Lord Cardinal kindly make known

On what day, if any, our souls are our own?

But this was practically the Swan-song of _Punch's_ no-Popery campaign.

Lord Salisbury, in his speech on the Public Worship Regulation Bill,

had spoken of three schools of religious thought--the Sacramental, the

Emotional and the Philosophical. Henceforth and for a good many years

to come _Punch_ was mainly concerned with the two latter schools, and

most of all with the second. He reverted with undiminished vigour

to his old campaign against the Sabbatarians, but his chief _bête

noire_ was the Salvation Army. Here he was at one with Huxley in

his criticisms on "Corybantic Christianity," but for the rest he

impartially combated the pretensions of scientific dogmatism, of

Agnosticism (which he called the Nothingarian creed) and Positivism. He

warns France against the danger of a purely secularist education:--

An Atheist's "The Fool"--the Psalmist saith:

Will France risk such a brood of Fools?

Irreverent youth, with neither Hope nor Faith,

Will be the product of your Godless Schools.

[Sidenote: _Sunday Observance_]

He satirizes the advocates of undenominationalism in the picture of the

toy-shop man who declines to supply a Noah's Ark to a lady customer.

He had given up keeping them since School Boards came in: "They was

considered too denominational, M'um."

[Illustration: TOYS AND THEIR TEACHINGS

LADY CUSTOMER: "My little boy wishes for a Noah's Ark. Have

you one?"

TOYMAN: "No, M'um, no. We've given up keeping Noah's

Harks since the School Boards come in. They was considered too

denominational, M'um!"]

As for the keeping of Sunday, _Punch_ eulogizes Canon Basil Wilberforce

for encouraging Sunday bands, and contrasts his tolerance with the

attitude of a Dr. Watts, of Belfast, who objected to Sunday bathing:

"It was not necessary for a man to bath himself every morning. He did

not see, therefore, why it was necessary to open public baths on the

Sabbath morning." The Sunday opening of the picture galleries at the

Royal Manchester Institution proved a conspicuous success in 1880.

Those who opposed the experiment had been, if not silenced, confuted,

and _Punch_ entreated London to follow this excellent lead and not

stand _last_ in the Sunday Race between Public House and Public Gallery.

So when the Tay Bridge disaster was regarded by the Sabbatarian

zealots as a direct judgment on Sunday travelling, _Punch_ dealt with

them as they deserved:--

One of these self-sufficient judges of judgments, and complacent

dealers out of denunciations, converting the awful catastrophe

triumphantly to the account of his own black and bitter creed--in

which the Almighty figures as a sort of Ashantee Fetish, to be

propitiated by death and destruction--has no hesitation in putting

his finger on its immediate cause. Referring to the imprisoned

passengers--men, women, and little children--many of them known to

have been on their way to or from errands of friendship, mercy and

family affection--he asks whether it was not "awful to think" that--

"They had been carried away when many of them must have known that

they were transgressing the law of God."

It might do this gentleman some good to reflect that it is possible to

be "carried away" in another fashion, and to transgress a great law of

God--"Judge not that ye be not judged," in a more questionable manner.

To see the professing minister of a religion, of whose virtues one of

its leading Apostles has declared charity the greatest, swept off his

narrow line of literal sectarianism in a hurricane of bitter bigotry,

is suggestive of reflections which, if not exactly "awful," are neither

agreeable nor edifying.

[Sidenote: _Sunday Pastime and Sunday Closing_]

In the lines on "Our Sunday--down East"--permission to include which in

the programme of any Sabbatarian Penny Reading was freely granted by

_Punch_--he writes:--

Which is the day that _should_ be blest,

And to the weary, work-opprest,

Bring wholesome pleasure, peace, and rest?

Our Sunday.

Yet which the day of all the seven

To our sour lives adds sourer leaven,

And leaves poor folk most far from heaven?

Our Sunday.

The persistence of the Sabbatarian instinct, even where it was

disregarded, is illustrated in the picture of the young lady on a

railway platform asking her grandfather to hide their rackets: "We

needn't show everybody that we are going to play lawn tennis on a

Sunday afternoon."

When in 1888 Sunday boating was allowed in the parks after church

time, _Punch_ applauds "George Ranger" and Mr. David Plunket for

the _act_ but not the language of the order, which he condemns as

"Pharisaical trash." In the same year a largely signed petition was

laid before the Upper House of Convocation of Canterbury protesting

against the increasing pursuit of Sunday pastime by the "upper and

fashionable classes of Society." _Punch_ ridicules the vagueness of the

protest against "amusing programmes of fun and frolic," and sums up in

these words:--

Our English Sunday is none too lovely or lively an institution, but

as yet neither the upper nor the lower classes of English Society

have shown any tendency, publicly, to desecrate it. When they do, it

will be time enough, if not for the Upper House of the Convocation of

Canterbury, at least for the Public Opinion of the country to express

itself upon the matter. Meantime, grandmotherly interference had

better let it alone.

_Punch_ had evidently modified his earlier views as to the saving grace

of Sunday dullness in England as compared with the Continental Sunday.

The Bill for the Sunday closing of public-houses introduced in 1889

is dealt with in detail and at great length. The cartoon of "Sunday à

la Pharisee" aims at showing that the habitual toper will not suffer,

but that the decent working-man will be incommoded. It is rather

unfortunate, however, that the latter is shown sending his little girl

to the public-house for his beer. The accompanying verses are founded

on a wonderful fulmination in _The Times_:--

"To hedge people round with petty restrictions instead of teaching

them nobility of conduct and a worthy use of liberty, is the perennial

resource of shallow and incompetent reformers.... A depraved and

servile human nature, cribbed, cabined and confined by an infinity of

minute regulations enforced by the policemen, is their reading of the

social problem.... A small minority occasionally injure themselves

with bad liquor on Sunday, and these reformers can think of nothing

better than to forbid the entire Community to drink on Sundays at

all."

_Punch_ descants rhetorically for nearly one hundred lines on Smugby's

Sabbath, fanaticism, Pharisaism, etc., but as a Londoner he had

probably never witnessed the orgies of the Glasgow Fair. He never

failed to insist on the intemperateness of Temperance reformers, but

as a supporter of moderate drinking he was himself often guilty of

immoderate language.

In regard to anti-Semitism, another of his pet aversions in this

period, his record is far less open to criticism. He made a perfectly

fair point in representing men of Jewish extraction as the chief

offenders, for these were the days of the _Libre Parole_, edited by

Drumont, himself a renegade Jew, and of the anti-Semitic campaign in

France which reached its climax in the Dreyfus "affair" in the middle

'nineties. As early as 1881, in one of Du Maurier's pictures, Sir

Gorgius Midas is backed up in a tirade against the Jews by "Baron

von Meyer," who, with the stigmata of his race written all over him,

flatters himself that nobody can suspect his origin. In the cartoon on

the Jewish "pogroms" in Russia in 1882, Humanity, compared to a Portia

who pleads _for_ and not _against_ the Jews, is shown appealing to the

Tsar, who stands with his back turned and arms crossed. How would it

read in English, _Punch_ asks, if our papers contained accounts of the

murdering of Jews and the burning of their houses in Houndsditch, with

the police looking on in amused indifference, and the Home Secretary

sending messages of thanks to the murderers?

In the verses published in January, 1882, "A Cry from Christendom,"

against the old anti-Semitic cry of "Hep! Hep!" _Punch_ indignantly

denounces the hounding down of the Hebrew in the name of the Cross:--

Oh out on the Tartuffes of Creed! Let the spirit of Christendom

speak

Plain words of unfaltering truth for the cause of the helpless and

weak.

[Sidenote: _Punch's Toleration_]

No warnings of possible retaliation come from _Punch_; such a

possibility did not enter into the calculations of sympathizers with

the oppressed Jews, who were regarded as incapable of effective

resistance. A different aspect of the question is satirized in

references to Society "mariages de convenance" with rich Jewesses,

probably not unconnected with a recent notable alliance between a

distinguished peer and the daughter of a great Jewish house. _Punch's_

general view, however, was that expressed in the saying that "every

country has the Jews which it deserves," and he was ready to admit

that the good English Jews were very good indeed. In 1883 he published

Sambourne's portrait of Sir Moses Montefiore, a Hebrew of the Hebrews,

"who on the 8th day of Chesvan (November 8) entered on the hundredth

year of his blameless, brave and beneficent life"; and when the old man

died in the summer of 1885 _Punch_ paid him farewell homage in these

lines:--

Long in the land his days, whose heart and hand

All high and human causes could command;

Long in the land his memory will abide

His country's treasure, and his people's pride.

In 1886 _Punch_ vociferously applauded Dean Bradley, Stanley's

successor, for "his admirable answer to the three fanatical

Protestant-defence Secretaries, who would have forcibly ejected from

Westminster Abbey some Roman Catholics who were saying their private

prayers around the 'strong quadrilateral barrier of bronze,' which, as

stated by Canon Duckworth, protects the tomb of Edward the Confessor

from profane hands." He improves the occasion by some general remarks

aimed at Protestant visitors to Roman Catholic churches on the

Continent:--

_Mr. Punch_ heartily wishes that the conduct of English Protestants

visiting the Catholic Churches abroad were anything like as

inoffensive, and as appropriate to the sacred precincts, as was that

of the poor benighted Romanists in Westminster Abbey, who, thinking

that the best use to which a church could be put was to say prayers in

it, knelt and prayed accordingly.

After rebuking the insolent caddishness of ill-bred British tourists

which not only offended the congregation proper, but scandalized their

decent compatriots, _Punch_ continues:--

If Dean _Punch_ saw a hundred 'Arrys, Romans or Rum 'uns of any sort,

praying in Westminster Abbey would he interfere? No, bless 'em,

certainly not. But if he saw one of them sneaking out a pencil to

scribble his name on a monument, or attempting to nick a bit out of a

shrine, or off a tomb, he'd be down upon him then and there, and have

him up before the nearest police-magistrate charged with "maliciously

damaging," and fined heavily for the offence, no matter what his

excellent motive might have been for such wanton destruction. And

this is what the Dean and Chapter would do, too; for whether it be a

fanatic on one side or the other, law and order must not be set aside

in favour of such a rule as "_Omne ignotum pro Fanatico_."

The doctrine is excellent if the language is jocular. But _Punch's_

plea for tolerance is seriously impaired by the virulent hostility with

which he had for years assailed the Salvation Army and its founder. It

is true that he had always discouraged and discountenanced emotional

religion. The visit of Moody and Sankey in 1875 had drawn from him a

set of acid verses on "Missionaries in Motley." After describing their

methods, he continues:--

Their intent is sincere--let us trust, in all charity--

But Religion they cloak in the garb of Vulgarity,

And, under a visor of seeming profanity,

As comic evangelists, preach Christianity.

Those discourses of theirs are an exaggeration

Of the jocular species of pulpit oration,

Which was brought into vogue by that eminent surgeon

And physician of souls to the multitude, Spurgeon.

An impressible people are they that sit under

These 'cute Boanerges, these smart sons of thunder,

Who cause them, at will, to sing psalm or doxology

By an influence much like electro-biology.

Ira Sankey performs, as a musical Stentor,

To the _mobile vulgus_ the part of Precentor.

His remarkable name may suggest the inquiry

If he ever exhorts them to sing "_Dies Iræ_?"

_Quorsum hæc_? Can tomfoolery kindle true piety?

Maybe so. Human nature is fond of variety.

Mr. Merriman's unctuous sallies might irk us,

But although a Revival American Circus,

Ira Clown in the Ring, decent people would anger,

Couldn't Moody and Sankey join Hengler and Sanger?

If it didn't conduce much to edification,

It would probably pay, as a good speculation.

[Sidenote: _Punch and the Salvation Army_]

The verses gave such offence that _Punch_ was moved to publish an

explanation a week later, disclaiming any intention to throw any doubts

on the motives or the sincerity of the American Evangelists, but

maintaining his right to criticize what he honestly believed to be bad

taste in the style and manner of their appeals.

Let it be granted that there was much in the early methods of the

Salvation Army that provoked opposition and caused the judicious

to grieve. The outrageous familiarity with which the most sacred

names and subjects were treated in the _War Cry_; the conversion of

the most popular songs into hymn tunes; the military organization,

uniforms and titles; the "allonging and marshonging" with big drums

and trombones--all these features affronted and disgusted good people

who associated worship with privacy and reticence; while the hooligans

looked on the Salvationists as sour-faced Puritans, and organized a

"Skeleton Army" to break up their meetings. Collisions were frequent,

and throughout the 'eighties members of the Salvation Army were fined

and even imprisoned as disturbers of the public peace. Those of us who

are old enough to remember these scenes can well recall the impression

which the Salvationists made upon the detached observer of forty years

ago. Men and women and girls, they wore the set look of people who had

espoused an unpopular and even perilous cause and were resolved to

carry it through. They seldom looked happy, and they had little cause

for it. In ten years the physiognomy of the Salvationists had changed,

and they went about their work unmolested with serene and cheerful

faces. _Punch_ could at least plead this extenuation of his hostility,

that it was shared by learned and excellent men. But there is really

no excuse for his childish exultation over the Queen's refusal to

subscribe to the Salvation Army's funds in 1882, and his jeers at the

Archbishop of Canterbury for investing "his modest fiver in the Booth

Bank."

The prophecy in which he indulged in that year in an article headed,

"Bootheration to 'Em," is worth quoting. _Punch_ regretted the

conversion of the Grecian Theatre--"a place of generally harmless

recreation for the East End"--into a temple of Salvationism:--

Yet we feel certain that the Army, once possessed of a great

permanent meeting-place, will speedily convert it into some sort of

Conventicle, the excitement of "drums and excursions" will gradually

cease, conservatism will increase, Respectability and recognition by

Respectability will be the object of the majority, reformers will

arise and "camp out," regiments will desert, and some twenty new Sects

will be added to the list of the country which possesses "any number

of religions and only one sauce."

Part of the prophecy has been fulfilled; the concluding part, in which

the wish was father to the thought, has been falsified. For _Punch_ in

these days only saw hysteria and vulgarity in what he considered an

unhealthy mania. He seized on the repellent features of the crusade,

e.g. the song, "On Board of the 'Allelujah," issued by "Admiral

Tug" of the Salvation Navy--and overlooked the sincere and devoted

efforts at social reclamation which underlay these exuberances. Mr.

Justice Field's decision in June, 1882, allowing Salvationists to hold

processions and parades was deplored as likely to encourage all the

strange sects enumerated in _Whitaker's Almanack_--Jumpers, Shakers,

Mormons and Recreative Religionists--to go and do likewise. The verses

printed in November, 1883, are a bitter and violent tirade against the

movement in general and the Booth family in particular, with offensive

references to "dear Catherine ... blushing so feminine" who had been

arrested by a Swiss magistrate:--

All the world knows we're so blessedly 'umble--

(How like the Master we follow so well!)--

That for a Booth there's no chance of a tumble,

Though e'en the Temple of Solomon fell.

[Sidenote: _Hostility to General Booth_]

"Atlas" of the _World_ denounced the "Salvation Army nuisance" in the

autumn of 1884. It had spoilt a season at Worthing and might do so at

Brighton. _Punch_, welcoming the pious Mr. Edmund Yates as an ally,

proposed as a remedy the prohibition of _all_ processions, excepting

only those of State requirements, as a relic of barbarism and an

anachronism:--

Let the Salvation Army, with their ensigns and captains and uniforms,

and drums and trumpets, assemble in their Barracks just as Christians,

Jews, Turks and Heathens do in their Churches, Synagogues, Mosques

and Temples; and let their recruiting sergeants go about where they

list, or where they are likely to 'list; but let this out-of-door

_irreligious_ movement, this outrageous travesty of _Ecclesiastical

symbolism_, with its fanatic war-cries, its fanfares, its martial

hymns, and brass-band accompaniment, leading to riot and bloodshed on

the Lord's Day, let this be forthwith suppressed, as it can be, we

believe, by existing law; and if not, let the law be made. Of course

that harmless body of publicans and sinners, the Freemasons, would be

sufferers by such a regulation; but with His Royal Highness of Wales,

their Grand Master, at their head, they would be willing to bear the

privation of being occasionally deprived of an open-air display of

sashes, aprons and emblems for the sake of law and order.

_Punch's_ animosity towards the Salvationists showed little abatement

right on into the 'nineties. General Booth was twice caricatured: in

1885 as "His own Trumpeter" blowing an instrument like a French horn

in mid air, and in 1892 as "General Boombastes"--a composite title

of derision founded on Bombastes Furioso and General Boum of the

_Grande Duchesse_--in connexion with a great demonstration held by

the Salvation Army in Hyde Park in February of that year. Sarcastic

references occur from time to time to the finance of the Army, which

in those years lent itself to criticism. But science and intellect,

cynicism and fastidiousness were routed or converted in the sequel.

The Salvation Army came nearer success in reclaiming "the submerged

tenth" than any other sect or church: it outlived derision, criticism

and scepticism, and earned the tribute of imitation in the organization

of the Church Army. No finer example of this conversion is to be found

than in the life of Frank Crossley, the senior partner in the great

Manchester engineering firm, that noble and benevolent philanthropist,

who began in antipathy to the methods of the Salvation Army and

devoted the end of his life to intimate, self-sacrificing and cordial

co-operation with them in the slums of Ancoats.

Burnand, who succeeded to the editorship of _Punch_ in 1880, was

a Roman Catholic; but it cannot be asserted that he abused his

opportunities any more than Charles Cooper, who was a Romanist when

he joined the editorial staff of the _Scotsman_, a much more delicate

position for a member of that communion. _Punch_ became perhaps less

aggressively Protestant, but there was no substantial change in the

theological policy of the paper, or in its mainly Erastian attitude in

regard to the relations of Church and State. No serious exception can

be taken to the verdict on the Revised Version--completed in 1880--as

"a very qualified success if not an absolute failure," coupled with a

wish to know what were the suggestions for improvements made by our

American cousins. The verses in the same year on "A Life's Work and a

Life's Wage," recounting the sad experience of a Devonshire curate who

after thirty years' work, applied for an order to enter the workhouse

as a pauper--are only a renewal of _Punch's_ familiar complaints on

the scandal of underpaid clergy. Eleven years later, in 1891, he takes

up the same parable _à propos_ of a statement by Mr. Gladstone to the

effect that "if the priest is to live, he must beg, earn or steal,"

comparing the needy vicar, with eighty pounds a year, and the bishop

with five thousand. Yet in the same number, under the heading of

"Mitred Misery," _Punch_ has an article on the heavy and extortionate

fees incurred by bishops on their installation or translation. The

victim is represented as just managing to meet the expenses of his

elevation to one episcopal see and his translation to another, but

declining an archbishopric on the ground that it would land him

in the Bankruptcy Court. In an earlier year the contrast between

the well-to-do cleric and the poor is ironically emphasized in the

"Consolation" administered by Mr. Dean: "Ah, my poor fellow, your case

is very sad, no doubt! But remember that the rich have their troubles

too. I dare say, now, _you_ can scarcely realize what it is not to know

where to find an investment which will combine adequate security with a

decent interest on one's money."

[Sidenote: _Disestablishment_]

Doctrinal opportunism is satirized in Du Maurier's picture of the

vicar of a seaside town who was "High Church during the season, and

Low all the rest of the year." Much in the same spirit is the list

of qualifications necessary for a curate in a country parish: the

chief desideratum being that he must be able to play tennis with the

vicar's daughters. These jests were almost common form at the close

of the Victorian age. A more serious situation arose in 1885 owing

to the demand for Disestablishment put forward by the Radicals, but

_Punch_ refused to treat it seriously. His cartoon, "A False Alarm,"

shows a chorus of Conservative owls--including Lord Salisbury and Mr.

Cross--crying, "Too-whit, too-whoo, Church in Danger."

[Illustration: "TEMPORA MUTANTUR"

THE BISHOP (_to his youngest and favourite son_): "Now, why

shouldn't you adopt the _stage_ as a profession, Theodore? Lord Ronald

Beaumanoir, who's a year younger than yourself, is already getting

_sixteen guineas a week_ for low comedy parts at the Criterion! The

duchess told me so herself only yesterday!"]

_Punch_ appends an extract from a speech by Mr. Chamberlain expressing

his incredulity of any settlement of this question being arrived at in

the Parliament about to assemble. This view is further developed in

a burlesque forecast, "The Disestablisher's Diary," with sensational

and circumstantial details of the passing of Disestablishment, the

conversion of Westminster Abbey into a Coffee Hall, bishops begging in

the streets, riots of country clergy, etc. In 1887 the scheme of the

late Dean, then Archdeacon or "Harsh Deacon" Farrar (as _Punch_ called

him), for a Church House as a Jubilee memorial roused _Punch's_ violent

animosity. It was giving a stone to those who needed bread--the poor

clergy. In the cartoon on "Mammon the mendicant," who was sending round

the hat, John Bull declines to give anything to the seedy cleric for

the Church House: "I'd rather put it into your own [hat]."

A long article is devoted in 1890 to the trial of Bishop King of

Lincoln, but beyond facetious descriptions of the eminent counsel

engaged the only point made is that the bishop never came near the

place. In the same year another bishop, Dr. Jayne of Chester, earned

_Punch's_ unstinted approval for encouraging dancing among the working

classes. At a conference of the Girls' Friendly Society the bishop had

remarked that, "until they were prepared to introduce basket-making

into London Society as a substitute for quadrilles and waltzes he was

not disposed to accept it as an equivalent for balls and dances among

girls of other classes." This liberality of view prompted _Punch_ to

cut a series of ecstatic capers over the pluck and common sense of "my

pithy Jayne."

In agreeable contrast to these punning comments on Church matters are

the tributes to two remarkable men, widely sundered in temperament,

physique and doctrine, who both passed away in January, 1892. The

memorial lines on Cardinal Manning insist that he was much more than

A great priest, shrewd marshaller of men,

Subtle in verbal fence with tongue or pen,

Ascetic of the cell--

He is extolled as the friend of the poor, the struggling weak, the

toiler for temperance, the hastener on of light:--

In many a fray when Right's at odds with Might,

Might's foes will miss their friend.

[Sidenote: _Homage to Spurgeon_]

It should be remembered that _Punch_ did not easily applaud Temperance

advocates in this period, when he avowed himself as "capable of special

sympathy with the publicans." _Punch_ owed an _amende_ to Spurgeon as

well as to Manning, and made it handsomely. He recognizes Spurgeon's

sturdiness and geniality:--

You spoke a potent word

In the World's ear and listening thousands heard.

Spurgeon stirred the throng, not fastidious or sensitive souls. He was

honest, robust, Puritan but not ascetic:--

Crudeness may chill, and confidence offend,

But manhood, mother-wit and selfless zeal,

Speech clear as light and courage true as steel,

Must win the many. Honest soul and brave,

The greatest drop their garlands on your grave.

[Illustration: FICTION--PRESENT STYLE

GERTRUDE: "You never do anything now, Margaret, but go to all

sorts of Churches, and read those old Books of Theology. You never used

to be like that."

MARGARET: "How can I help it, Gerty? I'm writing a Popular

Novel!"]

At all points Spurgeon was poles apart from the "Adulated Clergyman,"

one of _Punch's_ "Modern Types" held up to contempt in the previous

year, and noted in another section--who develops out of a mincing

effeminate boy into an unconventional emotional preacher, ferocious

in pulpit denunciations, but full of honeyed sweetness in fashionable

drawing-rooms; adored by weak women, distrusted and despised by normal

men.

A new rival to the pulpit, it may be noted in conclusion, had sprung up

in the "theological romance." Mrs. Humphry Ward, whose _Robert Elsmere_

appeared in 1888, was its most widely read representative. But perhaps

her greatest title to our gratitude in this context is the fact that it

was her recommendation which induced Messrs. Macmillan to publish Mr.

Shorthouse's remarkable novel _John Inglesant_.

LONDON AND ITS GOVERNMENT

Growth and expansion rather than reconstruction was the leading

feature of London in the period with which we are now concerned. The

spreading of the "great wen," as Cobbett called it, went on in almost

all directions, and the linking up of the once detached village of

Kensington with Central London was followed by a remarkable extension

of that typically Victorian suburb. In 1884 _Punch_ described

travellers journeying for hours and hours in a northerly or westerly

direction, only to find that they had reached North Kensington or West

Kensington, as the case might be. Already in 1876 he had noted the

swallowing up of Brompton in South Kensington. Concurrently with this

suburban expansion the disappearance or removal of many old landmarks

went on apace. In 1876 _Punch_ had suggested that Temple Bar should be

removed by one of the elephants in the Lord Mayor's procession. The

long contemplated removal took place in 1878, and the historic site was

duly occupied by the pedestal bearing the much-criticized "Griffin,"

which led to abundant satirical comment in prose and verse and

pictures. The block in the traffic had been removed, but the cartoon of

"Alice in Blunderland" showed that from an architectural point of view

_Punch_ thought the remedy worse than the disease. Cremorne Gardens,

the scenes of alternate revelries in high and low life, were closed in

1877, and the withdrawal of "Evans's" licence in 1879 was plaintively

celebrated in the lament of a middle-aged Man about Town:--

Farewell the quiet chop! the kidneys poached!

Farewell the grizzled bones and the mixed drinks,

That made abstention virtue--O, farewell!

Farewell the ready waiter, the vague bill,

The nose-enlivening pinch, eye-winking smoke,

The kindly hand-shake, and all quality,

Pride, pomp, and circumstance of Paddy Green!

And O you ancient Basses, whose rude throats

The immortal Jove's dread clamour counterfeit,

Farewell!--A fellow's occupation's gone!

--_Othello_ improved.

In January, 1883, the old colossal equestrian statue of the Duke of

Wellington at Hyde Park Corner was taken down, and on the night of

August 12, 1884, was "removed by Messrs. Pickford in a specially

constructed waggon drawn by ten horses to Aldershot." The old statue,

universally condemned and ridiculed, which would have been removed

immediately but for Wellington's own objection, had been allowed to

de-decorate a splendid site for nearly forty years. Boehm's statue,

which replaced it, dates from 1888. To turn from the grandiose to the

homely, we may note that _Punch_ vigorously espoused the cause of the

cow-keepers in St. James's Park in 1885, and under the heading, "Wild

Sports Near the Horse Guards," protested against the "chivvying from

their milk-stalls of a lot of poor old women." One does not look for

humour in the _Annual Register_, but the mention of this episode in

that useful book of reference blends information with entertainment:--

_September 1st, 1885._ In pursuance of the orders of H.R.H. The

Ranger, the stall-holders in St. James's Park, who represented the

ancient "Milk Fair," held for nearly two centuries in the Mall, were

ordered to close their booths and remove their cows. Two only of the

stall-keepers refused to comply and after a strong protest in the

newspapers, stating that some of the existing tenants had held stalls

for more than a century [_sic_], the order for their immediate removal

was relaxed and a compromise at length effected.

The respite granted to these interesting centenarians expired a few

years later, and now the St. James's Park menagerie contains nothing

larger than the pelicans.

[Sidenote: _Demolition and Innovation_]

The proposed demolition of Staple Inn in 1886 was peculiarly

distasteful to _Punch_, who held all these old buildings in pious

reverence, and inspired him to indite a ballad of remonstrance to

the builder. As a matter of fact, the protest was premature, for the

Prudential Assurance Company, into whose hands it passed by purchase,

maintained the building as a relic of vanishing London. No such regrets

as those awakened by the passing of Staple Inn were aroused by the

announcement in 1887 that the Old Bailey and Newgate Prison were to be

demolished. When the old Fleet prison was dismantled, _Punch_ could

indulge in legitimate rejoicing, because it marked the close of a harsh

and cruel penal system--imprisonment for debt. Here it was only a case

of structural and sanitary improvements. In ancient days there were

prisons impressive by their dignity of design. Their purpose inspired

the strange and sinister side of Piranesi's genius in his famous

imaginative series of "Carcere." But a modern gaol can at best be an

unobtrusive reminder of a still necessary evil.

Though no achievement comparable in size and importance to the

scheme of the Thames Embankment is associated with this period, new

architectural features were not wanting; foremost among them were

Street's new Law Courts, the swan-song in stone of the Gothic revival;

a group of buildings dignified in conception and treatment, but

terribly handicapped by their internal discomforts and darkness. I have

already spoken of the "Griffin." Cleopatra's Needle was at last set up

on the Embankment in 1878, and remains to this day a standing proof of

the doubtful wisdom of detaching ancient historic monuments from their

surroundings. There is something forlorn in this relic of Ptolemaic

Egypt, as it faces the winking sky signs of the Surrey side. To the

late 'seventies belongs another architectural innovation destitute

of beauty, and only remarkable for its size and height--Queen Anne's

Mansions. The invincible conservatism of the English could not be more

strikingly displayed than by the fact that after more than forty years

Queen Anne's Mansions remains our solitary skyscraper. The El Dorado

which this method of economizing space offers to landlords and builders

has never been exploited. Some put it down to our sense of the æsthetic

fitness of things; others to the paralysing effect of building laws,

vested interests, and the dead hand of "ancient lights." Sir Martin

Conway, as becomes one who has scaled high peaks in both hemispheres,

has recently come forward as an apostle of altitude in architecture,

but so far without much response. _Punch_ had no quarrel with anything

about Queen Anne's Mansions except their ugliness, and unreservedly

withdrew the charge of irregular financial procedure which he had

brought--on the strength of _The Times_--against the projector and

original proprietor, Mr. Hankey.

But Queen Anne's Mansions were interesting in another way, for they

marked the beginning of the system of residential flats, which has

since revolutionized London life. Though Queen Anne's Mansions remain

unique at the moment when I write, the flat system "came to stay," to

be extensively used, exploited, and criticized. "Flats" however, as we

understand the term, were devised for the convenience of the well-to-do

or middle-class people. Among the contributions to the solving of the

housing problem of the poor on the block system, the most notable

in this period was the benefaction of Lord Iveagh, who in 1889 set

aside £250,000 for the purpose, following the fine example set by the

American millionaire, Peabody. Charing Cross Road, opened in February,

1887, was one of the first of the new thoroughfares which have changed

the face of Central London. _Punch_ was much concerned in 1883 by a

report that tramways were about to invade Kensington; some years were

to elapse before they were admitted to the Embankment, but _Punch_

already complained in this year that it was being spoiled by railways

and roughs. Trafalgar Square continued to excite his unflattering

comments, but there is no public place in the world which lends

itself to more criticism. As an American writer once remarked, the

buildings seem to emphasize rather than to correct the slope, so that

everything seems to be slithering down towards Whitehall. A notable

addition was made to the Square in 1887 by the erection of the Gordon

Memorial, and _Punch_ records the curious fact that Thornycroft's

statue was unveiled, without any formality, by Mr. David Plunket, Chief

Commissioner of Works, in the presence of a few friends of the general.

[Sidenote: _National Opera Houses_]

The connexion of art with architecture was not very happy or impressive

in these years. When the Royal College of Music was founded in 1882

with Sir George Grove, _Punch's_ old friend, as Director, it was

temporarily and inadequately housed in the buildings of the National

Training School of Music, in which it had been merged. The move to the

new buildings in Prince Consort Road did not take place till 1894. The

annals of opera, so far as architecture is concerned, are positively

disastrous. Mapleson, the once famous operatic impresario, projected

a grand National Opera House on the Embankment; the first brick was

laid by Mlle. Titiens in September, 1875, and the first stone of the

building by the Duke of Edinburgh in December. But the patronage of

"stars" and Royal Dukes could not conjure money out of the pockets

of the investing public. The scheme languished, and in 1881 _Punch_

records that the unfinished Opera House was being converted, not

musically, into "flats." By the summer of 1884 the project collapsed

entirely, and _Punch's_ comments on "A Beggar's Opera House" are not

without their point to-day:--

The sale by auction last week of what the retiring newspaper paragraph

chronicling the melancholy fact described as the "materials of the

unfinished Grand National Opera House on the Thames Embankment,"

cannot but afford food even to the least artistic mind for some rather

disagreeable reflections. That after a six years' struggle, involving

the sinking of something like £100,000 in hard cash, the speculative

element, that ought to have been equal to the emergency in the first

capital in the world, should have been contented to look on and smile,

while, to quote once more the paragraph in question, "157 lots, the

principal portion of which consisted of the iron girders and columns

used in the formation of the pit and box circles, originally costing,

it is said, £40,000," were knocked down for "the small sum of £218" is

something not very far removed from a national disgrace.

The building was finally demolished in 1888.

Another scheme which also ended disastrously, though the building

survives, was D'Oyly Carte's venture into the domain of serious opera.

The new English Opera House in Shaftesbury Avenue opened in 1891 with

Sullivan's _Ivanhoe_, but the analogy of the Gilbert and Sullivan light

operas was deceptive: the expectation of a long run was doomed to

failure, and the English Opera House was shortly afterwards converted

into the Palace Music Hall. _Punch's_ patriotic _amour propre_ was

wounded by the fact that where _Ivanhoe_ had failed, the _Basoche_,

its successor, and an essentially French opera, had caught on. Why,

he asks, call it the English Opera House? Why not the "Cosmopolitan"

or the "Royal Babel Opera House"? But these are questions which do

not fall within the scope of our immediate inquiry. It is enough to

record the fact that an abortive attempt to establish English opera on

a permanent basis succeeded in enriching the variety stage with a new

temple, while the site of Mapleson's projected Grand National Opera

House is now occupied by New Scotland Yard, generally admitted to be

the most successful outcome of the genius of Norman Shaw.

In earlier days _Punch_ had constituted himself an unofficial

Inspector of Nuisances for the Metropolis, and he never fulfilled

these self-imposed duties with greater zeal and even fury than in the

long campaign which he waged throughout the 'eighties against the

then Duke of Bedford. London was a "City of Dreadful Dirt" and Covent

Garden Market and the small streets around it, in _Punch's_ view, held

the palm for filthiness. He had given the Dukes a rest for a good

many years, but the scandal of "Mud-Salad Market" revived in him a

truculence worthy of Douglas Jerrold:--

[Illustration: A HOLIDAY TASK

Scene--Mud-Salad Market

DUKE OF MUDFORD: "Sweet pretty place, ain't it?"

MR. P. (_Inspector of Nuisances_): "No, my Lord Duke, it

isn't pretty, and it isn't sweet! Here, take this broom, and make a

clean sweep of it!"]

[Sidenote: _Mud-Salad Market_]

Mud-Salad Market belongs to his Grace the Duke of Mudford. It was

once a tranquil Convent Garden, belonging first to the Abbot of

Westminster, and finally to the Dukes of Mudford. The property

having been let on building leases, it became a small square in the

centre of London, bounded on one side by Inigo Jones's church--"The

handsomest barn in England"--on another side by a theatre, and warmly

supported on other sides by numerous minor taverns. The hot-houses

of the old Garden have become the pot-houses of the modern Market.

Mud-Salad Market, like its own vegetables, has now sprouted out in

all directions. You may start from Cabbage-leaf corner, near the site

of Temple Bar, on a market-morning, and may go as far as Turnip-top

Square in Bloomsbury, or Cauliflower-place at Charing Cross, and

it is all Mud-Salad Market. Houses are barricaded with mountainous

carts of green-stuff, cabs lose themselves in vain attempts to drive

through the maze of vegetables, the costermonger makes temporary

gardens on the pathway, while the roads are blocked with waggons,

carts, donkey-trucks, and porters staggering under the weight of huge

baskets. Carrots, turnips, vegetable-marrows, potatoes, lettuces, and

onions are masters of the situation. Vegetable refuse, ankle deep,

carpets the pathway in every direction, mixed with mud and rain-water,

and trampled into a pulpy slimy muck by thousands of hob-nailed boots.

Leases drop in, old houses are pulled down, great spaces are cleared,

new houses of an approved stucco type are built, and no attempt is

made to increase the legitimate limits of Mud-Salad Market.

* * * * *

It is not too much to say that Mud-Salad Market is a disgrace to

London, a special disgrace to his Grace of Mudford, and about the

greatest nuisance ever permitted in a great City of Nuisances.

Rather different this account of Mud-Salad Market from Leigh Hunt's

description of a certain Covent Garden Market in his day, when "it was

the most agreeable in the metropolis," and when it had been "raised"

into "a convenient and elegant state by the noble proprietor." Let his

Grace of Mudford take a leaf from that Duke's tree, and, if he can't

"raise" Mud-Salad Market, let him "raze" it, and give us a new one.

Grant, your Grace, a new broom to some one, let a clean sweep be

made of Mud-Salad Market, and your petitioners will never again pray

anything any more.

That was written in August, 1880. A fortnight later _Punch_ renews and

enlarges his attack:--

THE DUKE OF MUDFORD IN GLOOMSBURY

The Duke of Mudford's grip upon London extends far beyond Mud-Salad

Market. As Lord Cul-de-Sac and the Earl of No Thoroughfare, he claims

and exercises a right of blockade in Gloomsbury. London is a very

peculiar city. It is said to be sixteen miles long and eight miles

broad, and is supposed to contain a population of four millions.

Its parochial rulers for the last ten years have devoted all their

energy to the improvement of the great avenues of communication from

East to West, but the cross avenues are in much the same condition

as they were in the days of Dr. Johnson. The Strand and Fleet Street

have been improved, Oxford Street, Holborn, Newgate Street, etc.,

have been widened, a noble Embankment has been made, and a great

serpentine roadway, extending from Waterloo Bridge to Whitechapel, is

in course of formation. While this is done, or being done, there is

not a thoroughfare worthy of the name from South to North, from Park

Lane to Chancery Lane. Berkeley Street, Bond Street, St. Martin's

Lane, and other cross streets have to get rid of their northern

traffic by dodging round corners. The most central and most important

thoroughfare from South to North, is composed of Waterloo Bridge (a

bridge from which the halfpenny tax on suicide has just been removed),

Wellington Street (which stands on a hill, and is adorned by the

Thalia and Melpomene Theatres), Bow Street (which might be called

Bow-legged Street, where criminals are tried), Endell Street (where

they grow the criminals who are tried at Bow Street), and Gower

Street, which belongs to the Duke of Mudford.

[Sidenote: _A Ducal Defaulter_]

At the north end of Gower Street the traffic is stopped by a ducal

barrier, and turned round several narrow streets, to find its way

to the Euston Road as best it can. Three of the largest railway

termini--the North Western, the Midland and the Great Northern lie in

this direction; but the Duke of Mudford, Lord Cul-de-Sac, and Earl of

No Thoroughfare claims his right to stand between these railways and

their floods of traffic. The line must be drawn somewhere, and it is

drawn at Gower Street. It was Mrs. Partington's mission to try to mop

back the Atlantic: it is the Duke of Mudford's mission to push back

four millions of people.

By the way, Mud-Salad Market was at its dirtiest and filthiest last

Thursday. Such a standing nuisance in London ought to be as impossible

as it is impassable.

When the Duke of Westminster helped to start a cheap eating-house

with beds and baths in Bow Street, _Punch_ invidiously contrasted his

philanthropy with the recalcitrance of the Duke of "Mudford." Nor was

he content with agitating for the improvement of Covent Garden, but

followed up his attack by a similar exposure of the filthy condition

of Billingsgate, maintained by force of vested interests, where the

overcrowding led to the destruction of large quantities of fish and

the consequent enhancement of prices.[5] In 1883 the Duke of Bedford

had apparently been goaded into offering Covent Garden Market to

the Municipal Authorities, but they declined to relieve him of his

responsibilities, and the campaign continued. _Punch_ was not the only

paper which attacked the Duke for neglecting his London property, but

it was the most outspoken and persistent. The Duke had the reputation

of being an improving landlord on his country estates, but over a

million sterling had been added to the ducal revenues in his time by

fines exacted on leases falling due on his Bloomsbury estate, and, in

view of this fact, the scandal of Covent Garden inevitably exposed him

to hostile comment, from which his successors have been wholly immune.

[Footnote 5: An attempt was made in 1884 to open a new fish market in

Smithfield to break the monopoly of Billingsgate, but the scheme failed

through mismanagement, and _Punch_ renewed his attacks in 1889.]

Much of _Punch's_ criticism of the drawbacks of London was destructive.

But he did not refrain from specific suggestions. For example, he

persistently agitated for the painting of street names on lamps as a

guide at night, and to good purpose, as the extract overleaf shows. The

lighting of London still left much to be desired, and foreshadowed the

obligatory darkness of war time:--

Punch has long been pegging away at the Vestries and District Boards,

to turn the street lamps to account for display of the street names

after dark. His pegging has profited. He is glad to hear that the

practice is spreading, and will soon, he hopes and trusts, be

general. Wherever it is neglected, let ratepayers take up the cry,

and bombard not their street lamps, but their District Boards. The

manufacturer who has supplied labels with street names for the

lamps in Camberwell, writes to _Punch_ to say that he has furnished

similar labels throughout the parishes of Kennington, St. George

the Martyr Southwark, St. Mary's Newington, and Limehouse, as also

to the boroughs of Leeds, Leicester, Birmingham, Bootle-cum-Linacre

near Liverpool, and Newcastle-on-Tyne. He has also been supplying the

Board of Works with lamp-tablets notifying the position of Fire-plugs

and Hydrants, in the parishes of St. George the Martyr Rotherhithe,

Deptford, Charlton, and Woolwich, and is now preparing to fix similar

tablets in the parish of St. George the Martyr Hanover Square.

"Light--more Light"--is _Punch's_ cry, as it was fighting Ajax's, and

dying Goethe's. All honour to Sugg for his railway-Argand-burner, and

his new naphthalene with its forty-candle power--and when next he fits

it to a train, may _Punch_ be there to see, instead of to struggle

with a tantalising twilight, as he does under the present mockery of

railway-carriage illumination.

Another movement in which _Punch_ took an active part was that for

the provision of respectable restaurants for girl workers. The

"Coffee-Houses," which were then almost the only sort of cheap

eating-houses available, were both dirty and dismal, and the need

offered _Punch_ in 1881 an opportunity for combining a practical

suggestion with a dig at the Duke of Bedford:--

[Sidenote: _Punch's Suggested Improvements_]

A GOOD THING TO DO.

If the Church and Stage Guild, and the Association for Administering

Weak Tea to Reluctant Ballet Girls, are inclined for practical work,

we can tell them how to make themselves exceedingly useful to the

humbler members of the dramatic profession. Pantomime rehearsals are

beginning, and hundreds of girls, many of them living far off in the

suburbs, and most of them receiving only a few shillings a week, are

brought into the neighbourhood of Covent Garden early, kept at work

all day, with no time to return home before they are required for

their night duty at the theatres. There are hundreds of taverns,

public-houses, coffee-shops, restaurants, and pastry-cooks, in and

about the Strand, but, as far as we are aware, and we are pretty well

up in the supply resources of this neighbourhood, there is _not one

place where these girls can go to get a cheap and decent meal_. They

can go to hundreds of places, if they like to spend half their week's

earnings in less than an hour, but they cannot even do this without

being stared at like wild beasts, or annoyed by the insolent patronage

of the cad and the prowler. Commercial philanthropy has given the

market-men and women of Covent Garden a "kiosk" in Bow Street, and

what is done for the Mudford gang might surely be done for Theatrical

London. The old Bow Street Police Station is empty and wanting a

tenant, as "To Let" bills are stuck upon its broken windows. It has

space and position, and the least the Duke of Mudford--the proprietor

of Covent Garden and Drury Lane Theatres--can do, is to offer it at a

very moderate rental for this useful purpose. A chance for Mudford and

popularity.

A series of articles on "How to Improve London" began in the same

year, and though some of the suggestions were fantastic or counsels

of perfection, many have since been translated into reality. The list

of metropolitan improvements suggested in 1886 betrays perhaps an

excessive solicitude for equestrians in the Parks and a corresponding

desire to control 'buses and carts in their interests. The scheme

for doing away with all private residences within Regent's Park is

magnificently comprehensive. _Punch_ wished to construct

a public Summer and Winter Garden on a French and German model, with

Restaurants open for luncheons, dinners, and suppers, a theatre, a

circus, lawn tennis grounds, tennis court, boating by day, and by

night fireworks on the ornamental water. Such an establishment is a

real want, and Regent's Park, being at once well within reach, and

yet so far removed as to offer no obstruction to traffic, is the very

place for the purpose.

There is a patriarchalism which is almost Teutonic in his suggestion

for preserving the amenities of the Parks and public places:--

_Parks and Streets._ All Processions, not being State Pageants, should

be prohibited. All bodies of persons marching about with and playing,

or attempting to play, musical instruments, should be prohibited. Fine

and imprisonment should be the punishment for breaking these laws.

_Quiet Streets._ All organ-grinders and so-called street-musicians

should not be permitted to come within a radius of ten miles of

Charing Cross on pain of imprisonment, fine, and, for a third offence,

penal servitude for not less than seven years.

_Meetings._ Public spaces, at least four miles out of London, to be

set apart for open-air meetings, if required, and only such spaces to

be used for such purposes.

_Parks._ The London Parks shall be only used by the Public for the

purposes of recreation and enjoyment, and not for political meetings,

haranguing, preachings, and suchlike nuisances, which render Sunday a

day of turbulence and unrest, and prevent quiet, peaceable people, who

are at work all the week, from enjoying the fresh air on their only

holiday.

The reference to musical instruments in processions is clearly aimed at

the Salvation Army, of which in its earlier phase _Punch_, as we have

learned, was the resolute enemy.

[Illustration: WINDOW STUDIES

June. The festive hour, 7.45 p.m., Piccadilly.]

[Sidenote: _Public Vehicles_]

In 1889 _Punch_ drew up a new Bill for London Improvements,

including his old schemes for extending Rotten Row, making new

rides, and otherwise protecting the equestrian interest, but adding

new suggestions for the wholesale planting of trees along the

principal streets and thoroughfares, the training of creepers over

all the structures of the District Railway, the provision of popular

restaurants in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, and in general the

opening of as many open-air refreshment places as possible--on the

French model.

[Illustration: GETTING GOOD TIMES OUT OF BAD

Times are so bad, that the Stanley de Vere Talbots have to give up

their Carriage. They go about (Grandpapa included) all over London on

those nice Omnibuses with proper Staircases behind and Chairs on the

top instead of a Knife-board, and find it much less monotonous than

eternally driving round the Park. Their Carriage Acquaintances still

bow to them; perhaps because they are still Stanley de Vere Talbots!]

There is much less abuse of the imperfections of public vehicles in

this period, though they are by no means exempt from censure. In 1875

_Punch_ quotes at length the account of an exceptionally honest cabman

with the additional information that his name was Isaacs. The frequency

of cab accidents in 1880 elicits the fact, if it was a fact, that cabs

were not obliged to carry lights! The congestion of horse-drawn traffic

at the Marble Arch and the Piccadilly end of Hamilton Place clamoured

for a remedy, but _Punch_ was more concerned by the discreditable

congestion of pedestrian traffic in the neighbourhood of Piccadilly

Circus, and the nocturnal orgies enacted there. These belonged to the

scenes and institutions calculated to bring London into disrepute, of

which _Punch_ made a list in 1882 under the heading, "Things to Show

Cetewayo." To return to the vehicles, the hansom still retained its

popularity--witness Du Maurier's picture--and taximeter cabs introduced

in Paris by 1890 aroused hopes not destined to be fulfilled until

much later. The "growler" still held its own. _Punch_ had no love

for it or its driver, but supported the plea for more cab-shelters.

As for the omnibuses, the abolition of the "knife-board" and the

introduction of garden-seats and proper staircases were handsomely

acknowledged by _Punch_, though he still resented the importunities of

rival conductors. Only those who can remember the atmosphere on the

old and unelectrified Underground can properly appreciate _Punch's_

tirades against the dirt and discomfort of subterranean travel in

the 'eighties. They were aggravated, moreover, by an outbreak of

hooliganism, which became a serious nuisance in 1881. Nor was it any

comfort to the semi-asphyxiated passenger to be assured that the

underground officials were singularly free from bronchial affections.

[Sidenote: _The Tyranny of King Fog_]

In this atmospheric context the question of London fog and the smoke

nuisance naturally emerges. The table of the total number of days

of fog in London from 1871 onwards published in the Meteorological

Society's Journal shows a decline in the 'seventies and a recrudescence

in the 'eighties and early 'nineties. In 1878 _Punch_ notes ironically

that the London fogs made it impossible to see colours at a

dressmaker's, but did not interfere with "doing" the Old Masters. There

are frequent allusions in his pages to the Conference on Smoke and

Fog held in 1880, but at the end of the decade, when the nuisance was

unusually acute, _Punch_ launched out in a long, sardonic, and spirited

doggerel tribute to the unimpaired sovereignty of the demon King Fog.

The occasion was the visitation of January 9th-13th, 1888, when a heavy

fog settled over England and a great part of Ireland, traffic by sea

and land being greatly impeded and many accidents reported from all

parts of the country. But London, as usual, suffered most. _Punch_

describes how King Fog, having summoned all his attendant demons,

determined to surpass all his previous efforts in torturing "miserable

mortals," and succeeded.

[Illustration: FERVOUR IN THE FOG

UNPROMISING INDIVIDUAL (_suddenly, his voice vibrating with

passion_): "She's moy Unney; Oi'm 'er Joy!"]

The fog of January, 1888, was equalled, if not eclipsed, by that of

Christmas, 1904, but the table of statistics already referred to

records a marked decline from 1900 onwards. Statistics, however, are

a poor consolation. The late Director of the Meteorological Society,

writing in 1910, frankly owns that no statistics of the "frequency

occurrence" of fog warrant the inference that the atmosphere of

London is approaching that of the surrounding districts as regards

transparency. It is true that an absolute approximation was made in the

spring and early summer of 1921, but it was purchased at a cost which

even in these days must be regarded as exorbitant.

Sir William Harcourt's Bill for the reform of the Government of London,

introduced in April, 1884, and withdrawn in July, fell between two

stools; it exasperated the Obstructives and failed to satisfy the

Reformers. _Punch_, however, seized the opportunity to indulge in

a burlesque prophetic account of the first meeting of the reformed

Corporation, illustrating the embarrassment created by the _damnosa

hæreditas_ of the Metropolitan Board of Works, and, in general,

indicating the immense amount of work to be done, and the rooted

disinclination of the old gang to undertake it. Yet when the new

authority was established five years later, and the first elections to

the London County Council were held in January, 1889, it cannot be said

that _Punch_ exhibited any great enthusiasm. It is true that in his

verses on the "London County Council Dream," widespread improvements

and reforms are foreshadowed, but they end up on a note of tempered

optimism.

[Sidenote: _A Mixed Epitaph_]

[Illustration: REACTION

INDIGNANT CITIZEN (_who had expected great things of the

London County Council after the extinction of the Metropolitan Board

of Works and the abolition of the Wine and Coal Dues, receives an

application for Rates amounting to 2s. 8¾d. in the pound_): "D--!

D--!! D--!!!"]

In the very next month the mood of disillusionment is apparent in

the cartoon revealing friction and the delight of the ex-Bumble

and ex-member of the Metropolitan Board of Works. Not that _Punch_

regretted the Board, though he rendered justice to its greatest

achievements in the decidedly mixed epitaph composed for its tombstone,

to be surmounted by an armed figure labelled "Black Mail" and headed

"Peace to Its Hashes":--

To the Melancholy Memory of

The Metropolitan Board of Works.

It was an Unfortunate Institution.

Flushed in the earlier years of its Existence,

With a laudable Ambition

To command the Respect and Admiration of the Ratepayers,

It gave an Embankment to the Thames,

Drained London,

And suddenly showed the world

How jobbery could be elevated to the level of the Fine Arts;

Thus Fighting to the End, it was more anxious

To leave an Inheritance of Spite to its Successor,

Than to retire from the Scene of its Late Labours with Dignity to

itself.

Unwept, Unrepentant, yet Unhung,

It has Passed for Good and Aye to that Oblivion

From which it is Possible the More Thoughtful and

Philosophical Ratepayer

May think it would have been as Well

For the Interests of Municipal Honesty

That it had Never Emerged.

The series of articles on "County Councildom" are by no means

sympathetic; and the indignation of the ratepayer, who had expected

a reduction in his burdens and was proportionately disappointed, is

vividly and vocally expressed in Du Maurier's picture of "Reaction."

The resignation of Sir John Lubbock and later on of Lord Rosebery,[6]

the Chairman of the L.C.C., lent point to _Punch's_ allusions to the

jubilation of "Bumble" and his confident hope that he will have to come

back. "Bumble's" idea is that the "toffs" and "big pots" were "hooking

it" in disgust at the bad manners and arrogance of the "Progressives."

But if the truth be told, it was not the methods of the L.C.C. in

dealing with ordinary affairs of administration that disappointed

and exasperated _Punch_: it was the spirit in which the Progressives

addressed themselves to the task of regulating theatres and places of

entertainment. In his verses "Ye Moderates of England" he inveighs

against the grand-maternal rule of the Puritan L.C.C., and more

especially Messrs. McDougall and Lidgett:--

When Lidgett and McDougall

Are censors of the play,

We can patronize the drama

In a strictly proper way.

When Parkinson's Inspector

Of Ballets, we shall know

He will stop

Any hop

If he sees a dancer's toe.

[Footnote 6: Lord Rosebery, during his tenure of office, is generally

alluded to as "Mr. Rosebery," because he preferred to be called "Mr.

Chairman" rather than "My Lord."]

That was in March, 1892, and in the cartoon of "The Bogie Man" in

the previous number, Gog and Magog are seen shaking in their shoes

before the Progressives, who had been returned with a largely

increased majority. Lord Rosebery had declared his intention of not

offering himself for re-election to the L.C.C. in consequence of

the announcement that the election would be fought on Party lines.

_Punch_ made no secret of his disappointment, for he believed that

Progressivism was merely extravagance writ large, and had advised

everyone to vote for the Moderates:--

Oh, Rosebery turned traitor,

And Lubbock seemed to cool,

McDougall, now, and Parkinson

May proudly play the fool.

London's delivered to be ruled

On the "Progressive" plan,

And "Ben" can bear the honoured name--

Ye gods!--of _Alderman_!!!

"Ben" was Mr. Ben Tillett. As a matter of fact, Lord Rosebery was

re-elected Chairman, and held the post for a few months longer.

[Sidenote: _The Cockney Dialect_]

To conclude this survey of London between 1874 and 1892, one may note

that the changes included not only a new form of self-government, but

a new lingo. The progressive development of the Cockney dialect is far

too large a subject to be treated in a paragraph. Let it suffice to say

that while in Dickens's time the distinguishing mark of the Cockney was

the interchange of the "v" and "w," in the 'eighties and 'nineties he

turned his attention to the other end of the alphabet, replaced "a" by

"y," and began that "general post" of the vowels which is the despair

of those who seek to erect a true phonetic standard.

[Illustration: POOR LETTER "A"

"Do you sell Type?"

"Type, Sir? No, Sir. This is an Ironmonger's. You'll find Type at the

Linendryper's over the w'y!"

"I don't mean _Tape_, Man! _Type_, for _Printing_!"

"Oh, _Toype_ yer mean! I beg yer pardon, Sir!"]

[Illustration: THE BOGIE MAN

"Hush! Hush! Hush!

Here comes the bogie man!"

"Then hide your heads, my darlings,

He'll catch you if he can!"

]

RAILWAYS AND INVENTIONS: FORECASTS AND NOVELTIES

Railways continue to be a fertile seed plot of grievances. In 1876

Charles Keene devises a patent costume for collisions, closely

resembling that of a diver. This was the year in which Captain

Tyler's report on the Long Ashton accident to the "Flying Dutchman"

on July 27 prompted _Punch_ to a scathing set of verses on the G.W.R.

directors, of which the motto was, "Westward Ho! with grim Death."

The introduction of the Pullman dining-car in 1879 is welcomed in a

lyrical effusion, to the air of "The Low-backed Car," in which _Punch_

contrasts the discomforts of "Mugby Junction" days with the new

amenities of travel:--

Five minutes, a frantic fixture,

You strove with might and main

To gulp some scalding mixture,

While the bell rang--for the train!

Your tea or soup you swallowed,

As much as did not fly

On your shirt-front or your waistcoat,

From the dense crowd hustling by.

While the minxes at Mugby Bar

Smiled, serene, upon the war,

For they'd learnt the art,

And looked the part--

Of "We are your betters far."

But in Pullman's dining-car, Sir,

Now run on the Northern Line,

You've a soup, and a roast, and _entrées_,

And your cheese and your pint of wine.

At his table snug the passenger sits,

Or to the smoke-room moves,

While on either side the landscape flits,

Like a world in well-greased grooves.

Thanks to Pullman's dining-car,

No more Mugby Junction Bar--

No more tough ham and chicken,

Nor passenger-pickin'

For the minxes behind the Bar!

[Sidenote: _Punch is a Railway Critic_]

_Punch's_ jubilation was short-lived; and in 1883 his discontent

takes the form of a wholesale indictment of unnecessary noises,

draughts, dismal chilly waiting-rooms, atrocious refreshment-rooms,

undistinguishable station-names. The regulations and adjustments of

Railwaydom, he sums up, "can only be praised in the same spirit as

that in which Charles Kingsley lauded the British North-Easter." On

the question of Railways in the Lake District, about which Ruskin had

raised an exceeding bitter cry, _Punch_ seems rather to favour the

Philistine view:--

Let sentimental Ruskinites the thing disparage,

Most scenery afoot you miss--it cannot be denied:

The Nature-lover's point of view's a third-class smoking carriage,

'Twould be a blot if there were not a line to Ambleside.

"Justice at Fault," a cartoon in 1887, based on a recent inquiry,

reiterates _Punch's_ familiar complaint: overworked signalmen are

punished, while the directors go scot free. No jarring note, however,

is struck in the cartoon in the same year on the completion of the

Canadian Pacific Railway--"the New North-West Passage," or in the

verses in which Britannia and Canada exchange mutual compliments

and indulge in hopeful auguries. The opening of the first electric

underground railway in England by the Prince of Wales on November 4,

1890, passed unnoticed by _Punch_, but he rendered full justice in 1891

to the historic conclusion of the famous "Battle of the Gauges," when

Stephenson's triumph over Brunel was finally crowned by the abandonment

of the broad gauge on the Great Western. It had been an heroic contest,

and _Punch_ treated the defeated champion with dignity and respect,

quoting the words, "Good-bye, poor old Broad Gauge, God bless you!"

which were found written on the G.W. track.

The record of novelties, inventions and discoveries opens modestly in

1875 with the mention of hot-water bottles in bed as "a new idea."

They have long since ousted the warming-pan, which until recently

maintained a precarious existence in old-fashioned inns, and is now

merely a picturesque antique. Lovers of _The Rose and the Ring_

will remember its use as a weapon, and romantics will deplore its

abandonment, for there is no romance in a hot-water bottle. I have

dealt with the bicycle under the head of Pastime, but may supplement

what I have said elsewhere with a few further observations on this

momentous innovation. What I believe to be the first mention of the

word occurs towards the end of 1878. Before that we only hear of

velocipedes or "rantoones," and in the year 1879 an epigram refers to

the "Bycicle." _Punch's_ early references to the "steel horse" and the

"public wheel" are decidedly friendly, and he contrasts the bicyclist

favourably with the hangers-on of the noble animal:--

No slinking knaves environ him

And dog his ins and outs;

No jockeys, ostlers, stable-boys,

No tipsters and no touts.

Another substitute for the horse, I may remark in parenthesis, comes in

for notice at the time of our Egyptian campaigns.

The rules for the road in 1878 are farcical, their only interest being

the reference to proprietors of 64-in. machines, for this was the day

of the old "ordinary." The use of bells was first made obligatory in

Liverpool in 1877. Twelve years later, when the "safety" bicycle was

coming in, _Punch_ addressed a warning to enthusiasts in the form

of a skeleton cyclist stooping over the handles, in the approved

attitude, with an alarming curvation of the spine. In the same year

allusion is made to the thrill caused by the Bishop of Chester's

taking to the bicycle; but the rumour was exaggerated, for Dr. Jayne

only patronized the tricycle. _A propos_ of skeletons, it may be noted

that Mr. (afterwards Sir) Seymour Haden's advocacy of burial in wicker

coffins and the exhibition held at Stafford House to popularize the

scheme in 1875 merely served _Punch_ as an occasion for punning on the

projector's name, and suggesting that the funeral march of the future

seemed likely to be Haydn's "With Verdure Clad," as the wicker baskets

were to be filled with moss and ferns.

[Illustration: CAMEL-SHIP!

TOMMY ATKINS (to Mate, who had been told off to the same

refractory Animal): "Oh, look here, Bill, here's this cussed Beast has

been playing 'Cup and Ball' with me for the last Two Hours! Missed me

ever so many times!"

(_Vide Special Correspondence from the Soudan._)]

[Sidenote: _Flying Machines_]

Of more topical interest to the readers of to-day is the account given

by _Punch_ in the autumn of 1876 of a flying machine invented by a

Mr. Ralph Stott of Dover. Under the heading, "A Dædalus at Dover,"

_Punch_ forecasts the use of the flying machine as an engine of war.

Mr. Stott, who claimed that his machine was capable of speed up to

one hundred miles an hour, and of hovering in mid-air, went to Berlin

to see Bismarck, but backed out of the proposed trial ascent when the

German Government declined to pay him £1,000 in advance. This recalled

to _Punch_ the old story of "Twopence more and up goes the donkey"; for

the rest, while suspending judgment on the invention, he observes that

its use in war will constitute a "fearfully costly addition to already

bloated armaments: but the cheap defence of nations is now no longer

possible, and Governments, in their martial preparations, are obliged

to be regardless of expense."

[Illustration: THE WAR-SHIP OF THE (REMOTE) FUTURE]

_Punch_ was not an inventor himself; he never even put a hat on the

market; but almost every new invention or discovery prompted him to

indulge in forecasts, often farcical or fantastical, but, when read in

the light of subsequent views, sometimes proving that he prophesied

better than he knew. This is specially true of the development of

scientific warfare. The warship of the future, designed by Sambourne

in 1875, is not nearly so wonderful as some of the "blisters" of

the late war. In the following year the eighty-one-ton guns made

at Woolwich prompt an account of an imaginary sea-fight in which

battleships engage at fourteen miles distance. In 1879 Victor Hugo

declared that the twentieth century would see war abolished, along with

capital punishment, monarchy, dogmas and frontiers. _Punch_ replied

with a satirical forecast, in Hugo's manner, of a twentieth-century

invasion of Paris based on the pacificist assumption that, given

non-resistance, it would result in a "fraternal walk-over." The Channel

Tunnel scheme, revived in the early 'eighties, was the subject of much

discussion and debate, until in 1883 the Joint Select Committee of

the Lords and Commons decided by a majority that it was inexpedient

to give Parliamentary sanction to a submarine communication between

England and France. In 1881 _Punch_ notes the acute divergence of

views between various experts, and the military opposition headed by

the Duke of Cambridge and Lord Wolseley. He summed up the views of

the majority in a picture of Britannia saying that she was glad to

_lunch_ with Sir Edward Watkin--the indefatigable champion of the

scheme--any day, but drew the line at the tunnel. Early in 1883, under

the heading, "After it is Open," _Punch_, in a vein of laboured and

fantastic irony, records the evidence given before a "Channel Tunnel

_Closing_ Committee." Here by a complete change of front Lord Wolseley

is represented as urging the maintenance of the tunnel, and John

Bright as opposing it--both on account of the unforeseen consequences

of its having been made. The alternative and subsequent scheme of a

ferry or bridge is dealt with in 1890 by Du Maurier in a picture of

a cross-Channel gigantic Pullman car labelled, "Electric Plate-glass

Express." Du Maurier's fantasies were always fascinating, but the

nightmare element robs them of any pretence to realism. This applies

also to the "Tale for the Submarines in A.D. 2086" with

Sambourne's illustration, published in February, 1886. The forecast

of a naval battle given in 1891 under the title "Who'd be a Sailor? A

Story of Blood and Battle," is a slightly more circumstantial attempt

to realize the possibilities of marine warfare fifty years later.

_Punch's_ description of the devastating effect of high explosives

is not too extravagant, though it is meant to be farcical. Points of

more real interest in this fantasy are the idea of a Federation of

Anglo-Saxon nations--England, the Dominions and the United States--and

the well-merited recognition by name of the late Mr. Stead as an

advocate of the maintenance of Great Britain's naval supremacy.

[Illustration: "UNDER THE SEA!"

(A Tale for the Submarines in A.D. 2086)

"Mr. Nordenfeldt, if he has not actually made a discovery that will

revolutionize naval warfare, is on the track of one."--_Daily Paper._]

[Sidenote: _Gas v. Electricity_]

In 1881 _Punch_ published a cartoon with the title "What will he grow

to?" in which King Steam and King Coal are seen sulkily contemplating

the new and portentous infant Electricity. The question has only been

partially answered in the ensuing forty years, but _Punch_ found

ample material for comment and speculation in the achievements of the

'seventies and 'eighties. In his "Ode to the Coming Light" in 1878

delight is expressed at the possibility of a clean substitute for

gas. Yet he showed a wise caution as well as true foresight in the

verses accompanying the cartoon inspired by the slump in gas shares

in the same year. The notion that gas is likely to go utterly to the

wall is discouraged, and the panic-stricken share-holders typified by

the silly birds clustering round the Electric Lighthouse are advised

not to knock their brains out against the "Edison Light." Things

would work themselves out right in the end, and they did. Night has

not yet been turned into day, though a football match was played by

electric light at Sheffield more than forty years ago, and fresh

comfort for holders of gas shares was furnished in 1882 when the

eminent Dr. Siemens recommended the use of gas stoves for cookery. The

Electric Exhibition in 1881 is celebrated in an explosion of jocular

optimism; and in a burlesque fantasia on electricity in the house in

1883, _Punch_ anticipates the time when everything will be done by

electricity--shaving, boot-cleaning, carpet-beating--down or up to an

"Electric Family Prayer Reader," though not without frequent accidents,

as when the last-named machine gives the same chapter of Genesis three

mornings running. It was in the same year, by the way, that sixpenny

telegrams were first introduced--one of the many vanished privileges

which inspire envy in the harassed Georgian citizen.

References of the telephone abound through these years. The prevailing

temper of _Punch_ is shown in one of his earliest allusions to what

he calls "The Coming Agony," in 1877. An experiment in long-distance

telephoning is described in which a newspaper reporter is quoted as

saying, "On putting the instrument to my ear, I felt somewhat as if

a regiment of the line had fired a volley, at a hundred yards, into

that member." The _Almanack_ of 1878 has a page of telephone pictures,

illustrating bottled composers and singers--Gounod, Patti, Nilsson,

Santley, Henschel and De Soria--talks with the antipodes, etc. Mary

starts a "tallyphone" in the kitchen to converse with her young man;

and in another picture, suggested by the phonograph, Du Maurier

foreshadows the coming of the gramophone. A more friendly note is

struck in the article "Good-bye, Telephone," in 1881, lamenting that

vested interests were, by legal decision, ousting the telephone in

order to perpetuate the inefficiency of the telegraph:--

We may read about scientific progress, but we must go abroad to

see it. The wire that misspells a message, and the street Arab who

delivers it at his leisure, are all we shall get in this country till

the day when we are conquered by the Irish.

On the whole I am inclined to think that this is the strangest of

_Punch's_ many strange prophecies.

In the illustration of the "Photophone," the long-promised and

culminating development of the film, Du Maurier in 1881 depicts the

romance of long-distance courtship between Boulogne and Folkestone.

The "Telephone Trials" of 1885 are hardly distinguishable from those

of to-day. Telephonic communication with Paris was first established

in March, 1891, and _Punch_ represents Lord Salisbury and President

Carnot conversing over the wire about "outstanding questions." For

the ordinary person it was an expensive luxury, even in those days

of cheapness, and the lonely wife in Du Maurier's picture, on being

reassured by her husband (just off to Paris) that she can talk to

him over the telephone, but that it was rather costly, suggests he

had better leave her some blank cheques. A cartoon in the following

year, 1892, represents the telephone as the Cinderella of the Post

Office; but _Punch_ boldly predicts her final triumph over her "ugly

sisters"--the Telegraph and the Letter Post. The imperfections of

the telephone were simultaneously "guyed" in a delightful burlesque

on "Telephonic Theatre-goers," suggested by performances of the

"Theatrophone" at the Electrical Exhibition held in that year. The

experiences of auditors of different types are ludicrously reproduced,

notably those of the Irritable Person who is just beginning to hear the

dialogue of an exciting melodrama:--

GHOSTLY VOICES (_in the Irritable Person's ear as before_):

"Your _wife_?" "Yes, my wife, and the only woman in the world I ever

loved!"

THE IRR. P. (_pleased, to himself_): "Come, now I'm getting

accustomed to it, I can hear capitally."

THE VOICES: "Then why have you----?... I will tell you all.

Twenty-five years ago, when a shinder foodle in the Borjeezlers I----"

A STILL SMALL VOICE (_in everybody's ear_): "TIME,

PLEASE."

[Sidenote: _Unconscious Crime_]

In the realm of discovery the return of the Arctic Expedition of the

_Alert_ and the _Discovery_ under Nares was an outstanding event of

1876 and was commemorated in two cartoons. As a mountain had been named

after _Punch_ he was naturally inclined to be proud of an expedition

which had given him something to be proud of. In 1880 a plan for a

new Arctic Expedition in which balloons should take part attracted

a good deal of notice, but _Punch_ was reluctantly sceptical of the

feasibility of this "wild scheme," expounded before the Lord Mayor

by a deputation mainly of sailors, but including Coxwell the famous

aeronaut. In 1885 we catch the first murmurs of modern psychological

jargon in a ballade on "The Unconscious Self":--

'Tis a famous idea of Myers,

The _Spectator_ attempts to explain,

There's a hitch in the cerebral wires

That the burden of thinking sustain;

One "hemisphere" bustles amain,

While the other is laid on the shelf,

And what tenants these cells of the Brain?

It is just the Unconscious Self!

Now suppose that this essence inspires

All acts that give Moralists pain,

That ferocious passions it fires,

Why the sinner may guiltless remain!

He may forge, and may hurry to Spain

With a parcel of alien pelf,

But the culprit's that Side of his Brain,

It is just the Unconscious Self!

What a comfort to ladies and squires

When their scutcheon is under a stain!

They must answer whoever inquires,

With apology none can disdain,

"Automatic vagaries arraign,

But acquit the poor innocent elf.

Ananias is guiltless, and Cain,

It is just the Unconscious Self!"

Prince, surely the notion is plain

To the critical mind of a Guelph,

When we sin 'tis a kink in the brain.

It is just the Unconscious Self!

Write "Subconscious" for "Unconscious," and _Punch's_ lines remain

an excellent exposition and criticism of the fashionable doctrine of

Psycho-Analysis of to-day.

[Illustration: NO MISTAKE THIS TIME

LODGER: "Dear me, Mrs. Cribbles, your cat's been at this

mutton again!"

LANDLADY: "Oh no, Mum, it can't be the cat. My 'usband says he

b'lieves it's the Collerlarda Beetle."]

The arrival of the Colorado Beetle, a "newcomer" the reverse of

"blithe," is turned to humorous account by Keene in 1877. It was not

_Punch_, however, who was responsible for the unfeeling suggestion

that a young man, who had little to recommend him but the size of his

feet, and was in need of employment, should emigrate to Colorado to

crush the Beetle. Inoculation was already sufficiently advanced by

1881 for _Punch_ to make it the subject of what no doubt seemed to him

burlesque treatment. A lady, whose nephew is going out to Sierra Leone,

comes to buy him some Yellow Fever from her chemist, who offers her the

Traveller's half-guinea assortment of six of the Commonest Zymotics, to

be supplemented with most of the Tropical diseases at 5s. each. In the

light of the development of medical science the burlesque is not so

fantastic after all. Of the alternative method of cure by suggestion or

hypnotism _Punch_ was sceptically critical, though he exhibits in 1889

an ironical preference for the hypnotic treatment of dipsomaniacs as

compared with the repressive laws advocated by temperance extremists.

[Sidenote: _Drugs, Diet, and Speed_]

In 1890 influenza attained the proportions of an epidemic, and under

the heading, "Refreshments in Vogue," a butler is shown saying to a

lady, "Quinine or Antipyrin, my lady?" _A propos_ of refreshments, it

is to be noted that _Punch_, while no teetotaller, bestowed a somewhat

lukewarm benediction on Vegetarianism in 1886, when a Vegetarian

Restaurant was opened in the Strand opposite the Law Courts. The

movement was supported by several eminent medical men, including Sir

Henry Thompson and Sir James Crichton-Browne, on the ground that we

ought to eat less meat. Of late years Sir James Crichton-Browne has

shown more benevolence to carnivorous habits.

The general speeding-up of traffic on land and sea by improved methods

of locomotion inspired _Punch_ with mixed feelings. He was far-sighted

enough to recognize the need of raising the status of the engineer in

the Royal Navy long years before the introduction of the system of the

"common entry," but when he read in 1883 that a ship was being built to

cross the Atlantic in five days, he remarked that we were reducing our

periods of astonishment: "It's only a five days' wonder now." Wonder

gives place to protest, in 1889, against the racing of great Atlantic

liners; and the following passage has a curiously prophetic ring when

one thinks of the tragedy of the _Titanic_:--

RACING THE "RECORD"

(Suggestion for a brief Mid-Atlantic Cantata).

"Tearing ahead with the green sea sweeping the decks from end to end,

never slacking speed in the face of the heaviest weather, regardless

alike of the risk of crashing into some coming vessel and of the

chance of splitting in half on some suddenly appearing iceberg, as

of the dense fog which conceals both; with fires blazing and stokers

fainting over the stress of work that is wrung out of them--the

passage is made, from start to finish, at high-pressure pace. What is

gained is a few hours' triumph in time over the performance of some

rival Company, and the cost, if the practice be not speedily checked,

will, sooner or later, most assuredly be the loss in Mid-Atlantic of

a whole shipload of loudly protesting but as yet helpless and totally

unheeded passengers."--Notes of some recent Atlantic Passages taken at

random from the Daily Papers.

The speeding-up of agriculture by machinery found little favour in

_Punch's_ eyes. In the two pictures representing the "Delights of the

Peaceful Country" in 1884, the point of view is that of the sportsman.

Horses, maddened by the noise and smoke of steam ploughs and traction

engines, are seen bolting in all directions. The leader of a tandem is

shown standing on his hind-legs. Nowadays we expect to see sensitive

motorcars behaving in a similar way in the presence of Highland cattle.

_Punch_ did not retain a City editor on his staff, but the great

increase of limited liability companies in the 'eighties did not escape

his notice. The movement had gone so far that in 1886 a cartoon shows

a "Baked Tater Merchant" about to convert his business into a limited

liability company and retire into private life. The gold boom in

Johannesburg in 1889 inspired him with no misgivings, and an optimistic

article in the _Daily News_ prompted him to picture the Transvaal, a

Colonial Cinderella, transformed by Gold the fairy godmother. England

was visited in the same year by a party of American engineers on their

way to the Paris Exhibition, and their impressions are summarized in a

set of verses entitled, "Yankee Notions," in which _Punch_ undertakes

to interpret their admiration and gratitude. They would be admirable if

they had been written by an American, but acknowledgments of this sort

lose nine-tenths of their virtue when the host usurps the privilege of

the guest. Yet as a record of British achievement the lines are worth

quoting:--

We have seen the Mersey Tunnel, 'tis a tidy little funnel;

The Manchester Ship Canal, and Bridge of Forth, John Bull,

And we find the land of Smeaton not so easily is beaten.

We have travelled East and West, and South and North, John Bull.

In your skill we've grown believers, and those Forth Bridge

cantilevers

Lick the topping towers of Washington and Eiffel, John Bull.

And now we would say thankee on behalf of every Yankee

Who has had your hospitality, no trifle, John Bull.

At the Guildhall Banquet truly every toast was honoured duly,

And the Yankee Engineers received a bumper, John Bull.

The old "Star-spangled Banner," sung by Fryer in a manner

All his own, made every Yankee heart a thumper, John Bull.

It seemed to float right o'er us as we all joined in the chorus,

And drank the loving cup in Civic style, John Bull.

Well, and here's three hearty cheers for Old England's Engineers,

Who make the best of your queer little isle, John Bull.

'Tisn't long, 'tis rayther narrow, but Laird, Bessemer, and Yarrow,

With Armstrong, Whitworth, Maudslay, Ford, and Rennie,[7]

John Bull.

And others quite as clever use their very best endeavour

To make their little land as good as any, John Bull.

We must presently go back, and when on the homeward track

The results of our excursion we shall tot, John Bull,

And shall find ourselves agreeing we have seen _some_ things worth

seeing

In the land of Telford, Stephenson, and Watt, John Bull.

[Footnote 7: The Maudslays, Joseph and Thomas Henry, were both famous

marine engineers; the Rennies, George and Sir John, carried on the

business and enhanced the repute of their father, a famous civil

engineer and pupil of James Watt. Ford is probably a misprint for Fox

(Sir Douglas Fox), the engineer of the Mersey Tunnel. Mr. Fryer, the

vocalist of the evening, was a professional singer.]

[Illustration: SALTS AND STOKERS

VULCAN (Chief Engineer): "Yes, Ma'am, things _do_ look bad,

and won't be better till you make a change in your officering! It's

been Captain Nep's boys till now--it must be _both_ our boys in

future!!"]

"Snapshot" photography is mentioned, but one cannot say honourably

mentioned, in 1887, and in 1892 the "detective" camera is spoken of as

a fashionable plaything. The introduction of the Parcel Post in 1883

inspires a burlesque correspondence on its abuse by the senders of

unsuitable articles, such as red herrings. In 1890 the Jubilee of the

Penny Post is celebrated in a ballad in praise of Rowland Hill, always

one of _Punch's_ heroes, who had carried his point though denounced as

a lunatic.