PART I.--LOYAL TOASTS.

_Duke of Edinburgh._--Sailor. Plays the fiddle like an angel. Married

to rich Russian Princess. Friend of Sir Arthur Sullivan.

_Duke of Connaught._--First-class Soldier, covered with Egyptian

Medals.... His Royal Highness may be called "the heroic and beloved

son of our revered Sovereign"--by a provincial Mayor. Name may be

introduced in connexion with Ireland, the Franco-German War, Foreign

Stocks--"Prefs." and "Unified"--the late Duke of Wellington, and "the

Patrol Camp Equipage Hold-all."

_Duke of Albany._--Scientific. Called after the King of the Belgians.

Was at Oxford. Connected more or less with South Kensington, Upton

Park Road, Bedford Park, the Kyrle Society, and Cremona violins. Is

walking in the steps of the late greatly lamented Prince Consort.

_Prince Teck._--Served with distinction as a letter-carrier on the

field of Tel-el-Kebir, sold furniture of Kensington Palace by auction,

and retired abroad. Name of no great value to anyone.

Here _Punch_, consciously or unconsciously, was satirizing himself in

his ceremonial moods. He was on much safer ground in the excellent

pictorial burlesque of the life of the Duke of Clarence at Cambridge,

based on a series of illustrations in a serious picture-paper in which,

amongst other incidents, the Prince had been depicted as "coxing"

a racing boat from the bow! This was fair game. There is a spice

of malice in the prospectus of an hotel which would supply "a long

felt want" by catering at cheap prices for Royal visitors, foreign

Princes and potentates, who could not be suitably accommodated in

Buckingham Palace. The publication in February, 1884, of a further

instalment of "Leaves from her Journal in the Highlands" is claimed

as the Queen's Valentine to _Mr. Punch_. When the Duke of Albany died

in March, _Punch_ did not err on the side of underestimating the

promise and achievement of that estimable Prince, but there is an

uncanny resemblance between his graceful elegiac stanzas and the points

outlined in the handbook of loyal toasts noted above. For a few months

the irresponsible satirist is silent; but he explodes again towards the

close of the year over the rumour that the Crown of Brunswick had been

offered to the Duke of Cambridge, and that he absolutely refused to

resign the command of the British Army. As the rumour was groundless,

there was no excuse for _Punch's_ malicious imaginary dialogue between

the Duke and the foreign officer who had come to make him the offer.

In representing the Duke as being discovered writing an article for

the _Sunday Times_ on "Dress," _Punch_ was only reverting to the old

familiar gibe at the passionate preoccupation of the Royal Family with

tailoring.

[Sidenote: _A Pacific Prince_]

[Illustration: CHARITY THAT BEGINNETH NOT WHERE IT SHOULD

"And what's all this I hear, Barbara, about your wanting to find some

Occupation?"

"Well, you see, it's so dull at Home, Uncle. I've no Brothers or

Sisters--and Papa's paralysed--and Mamma's going blind--so I want to be

a Hospital Nurse."]

The alternations of candour and cordiality continue in the following

year. The Duke of Clarence is heartily congratulated on attaining

his majority; and the visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales to

Ireland is chronicled in cartoons in which the Prince figures as a

stage Irishman, and Erin is seen reproving a sullen little rebel. The

Prince of Wales's visit to Berlin in the same year (1885) is hailed as

an omen of more pacific relations--the Prince figuring as a Dove, the

old Emperor as a friendly Eagle. This was the year in which Princess

Beatrice, the youngest of the Queen's daughters, was married to Prince

Henry of Battenberg. _Punch_ makes a remarkably frank allusion to the

discussions in the House over her marriage portion in May. The passage

is interesting not merely for the matter but for the new manner of the

"Essence of Parliament," widely different from that of Shirley Brooks:--

_Thursday._ Gladstone moved Resolution allotting Wedding Dowry of six

thousand a year to Princess Beatrice. On the whole rather a depressing

business. More like a funeral than the preliminary to a wedding party.

House listened in politely glum silence. Gladstone seemed to feel

this, and laboured along making most of argument that this was the

last. Also (being the last) promised Committee for next year to go

into whole matter. Labby opposed vote, and O'Brien testified afresh

to his disappointment at failure of efforts made to spoil success of

Prince of Wales' visit to Ireland. W. Redmond gave the proposal a

great fillip by opposing it, and House divided: 337 for making the

little present; 38, chiefly Parnellites, against.

By way of set-off, _Punch_ descanted melodiously on the "Royal

Ring-Doves," alluding to Princess Beatrice as

England's home-staying daughter, bride, yet bound

As with silk ties, within the dear home-round

By many a gentle reason.

Here one cannot forget that terrible _Court Journal_ of four years

back, or acquit _Punch_ of irony in the light of the fact (recorded

in the _Annual Register_) that the Queen only gave her consent to

the marriage on condition of Princess Beatrice's living in England.

The discomforts and stinginess of the Court are satirized in an acid

extract from the "Letter of a Lady-in-Waiting" in January, 1886, and

there is a good deal of veiled sarcasm in the long account of the

opening of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in the summer. The whole

ceremony is made to appear tedious, badly rehearsed and trivial, and

the Queen is described as speaking with a "slightly foreign accent."

Cordiality revives, however, in the verses "Astræa Redux," on the

Queen's "happy restoration to public life," _à propos_ of her visit to

Liverpool; and in the reference to her patronage of the Carl Rosa Opera

Company at the Lyceum.

[Sidenote: _Punch's Jubilee Ode_]

With the year of the Queen's Golden Jubilee _Punch's_ chivalrous

devotion to the person of the sovereign, which had never failed even

in his most democratic days, reawakened in full force. In his Jubilee

ode he emphasizes throughout the peaceful aim of the celebration:--

Not with the ruthless Roman's proud parade

Of flaunting ensigns and of fettered foes,

Nor radiantly arrayed

In pomp of purple, such as fitly flows

From the stern Conqueror's shoulders, comes our Queen

Whilst England's ways with June's glad garniture are green.

Not with the scent of battle, or the taint

Of cruel carnage round about her car,

Making the sick air faint

With the dread breath of devastating war,

Rolls on our Royal Lady, whilst the shout

Of a free people's love compasses her about.

The pageantry that every step attends

Is not the martial pomp that tyrants love,

No purchased shout of slaves the shamed air rends;

Peace's white-pinion'd dove

Might perch upon those banners unafraid,

The shackled forces here are thralls of Art and Trade.

* * * * *

Triumph! Shall we not triumph who have seen

Those fifty years round on from sun to snow,

From snow to sun, since when, a girlish Queen

In that far June-tide's glow,

Your brow first felt that golden weight well-worn,

Which tried the Woman's heart, but hath not over-borne?

Fifty fair years which, like to all things fair,

Are flecked with shadow, yet whereon the sun

Hath never set in shame or in despair,

Their changeful course have run.

And we who saw the dawn now flock to see

June's noonday light illume Victoria's Jubilee.

Just, pure, and gentle, yet of steadfast will

When high occasion calls and honour pricks!

With such a soul our Commonwealth should thrill,

That, that alone shall fix

Our rule in rock-like safety, and maintain

Free way for England's flag o'er the wind-winnowed main.

And _Punch_, whose memory scans those fifty years,

Whose patriot forecast broods o'er coming-days,

Smiles with the smiling throngs, and lifts his cheers,

With those the people raise,

And prays that firmer faith, spirit more free,

May date from this proud day of jocund Jubilee.

The June and July numbers are dominated by the Jubilee, and _Punch_,

though he spoke with many voices in dealing with the various phases

of the festival, kept his criticism within limits of wholly genial

satire and whimsicality. There was a scene of decorous "revelry by

night" at the Reform Club, which gave a ball on June 16, recorded in

a set of verses with solos for Sir William Harcourt, John Bright and

Lord Rosebery, packed with political innuendoes, and winding up with a

soliloquy from the grand old M.C. (without) who sings:--

Call this a Ball? More muddled every minute;

Not one good dancer there. Glad I'm not in it!

The Lord Chamberlain, in Sambourne's picture, figures as the "boots"

of an hotel, run off his legs by the demands of Princes, Potentates,

Ambassadors:--

'Midst pleasures and 'midst palaces to roam,

Is nice for foreign dignities, no doubt;

But then they've lots of palaces at home,

Which we are quite without.

"Robert, the City Waiter," descants on the festivities; the Editor

was prodigal of puns; there were Jubilee mock advertisements; and a

certain amount of criticism of the arrangements, though, as I note

elsewhere, _Punch_ pays a special tribute to the police for their

efficiency, courtesy, patience and humanity. A protest is entered

against the route of procession being exclusively West End, and

_Punch_ suggests an extension to take in some of the poorer parts of

London. The procession itself is described in a long article entitled

"The Longest Day," noting various incidents, such as the unhorsing of

the Marquis of Lorne, and summing up in the words: "For impressive

splendour and simple dignity, the Royal Procession couldn't be beaten.

But as a Pageant there was much to be desired." The closed carriages

were a mistake; the military bands were not fully used, and musically

the procession was "the dullest of its sort ever witnessed in any big

city on any big occasion." Still the police were A1, and Messrs. Brock

gave the public a "Brocken night" at the Crystal Palace, where the

rhododendrons were in their glory. The scene in the Abbey was "Abbey

and glorious." But _Punch_, after an explosion of punning, becomes

serious as he describes the scene when the Queen took her seat on the

Throne, and the moving sequel when she discarded precedent and showed

her womanliness by embracing her children. Nor does _Punch_ omit to

mention the masque, performed by the Benchers of Gray's Inn, originally

produced by Sir Francis Bacon in 1613; the Naval Review with the

curious incident of Lord Charles Beresford's resignation in consequence

of a breach of etiquette on his part in using public signals to send a

private message to his wife; and the Queen's visit to Hatfield when the

"lordly Cecil" entertained his sovereign as his ancestor had done in

1573.

[Illustration: "GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!"]

_Punch_, as I have often been at pains to insist, was a Londoner, but

he did not hesitate to pronounce the Manchester Exhibition as the "gem

of the Jubilee," a "perfect article" and "a superb model." It was

better than any of the shows at South Kensington, and _Punch_ rightly

singles out as its special glory the magnificent Picture Gallery

of Modern English Painters. On the other hand, provincial ideas of

suitable Jubilee memorials come in for a good deal of ridicule. The

list, which includes a central pig-market, a new town pump, a cemetery,

a new sewage scheme, gasworks, etc., is clearly farcical, but an actual

instance is quoted from the _Western Daily Mail_ of the decision of

a village in Cardiganshire to celebrate Her Majesty's Jubilee by

providing a public hearse. "The chairman, who originated the proposal,

was congratulated upon his happy idea, and an Executive Committee was

formed to carry it out," which prompted _Punch_ to suggest that they

ought to get Mr. Hayden Coffin to sing their Jubilee ode. _Punch's_

own serious suggestion for a Jubilee memorial was the revival and

extension of Queen Anne's Bounty to improve the lot of the poor clergy,

in place of the Church House Scheme.

[Sidenote: _How to Conciliate Ireland_]

The visit of Prince Albert Victor (the Duke of Clarence) and Prince

George (the present King) to Ireland in the summer of 1887 is taken

as the text of one of _Punch's_ periodical appeals to the Queen to

conciliate Ireland by going there herself, Hibernia being credited with

a desire for her presence:--

Ah, then, if your Majesty's self we could see

Sure we'd drop every grumble and quarrel;

Stay a month in the year with my children and me,

'Twould be a nice change from Balmoral.

The Prince of Wales's silver wedding fell in 1888, and furnished

_Punch_ with a theme for loyal verse. It was also the momentous year in

which three Emperors reigned in Germany, but of the significance of the

change from Wilhelm I to Wilhelm II I have spoken elsewhere. _Punch's_

Jubilee fervour had now died down, and Prince Henry of Battenberg's

appointment as Governor of the Isle of Wight is recorded in a

semi-burlesque picture of the Prince "with new scenery and costumes,"

and the comment: "Old England is safe at last."

On May 21 Prince Leopold of Battenberg (now Lord Mountbatten) had

been born at Windsor: on the following day a meeting was held under

the chairmanship of Lord Waterford to discuss the advisability of

abolishing the office of Viceroy of Ireland. Accordingly, _Punch_,

more in malice than seriousness, suggests as a solution of the Irish

difficulty that a Battenberg Prince should be born in Ireland, and

brought up as the future Viceroy, in imitation of the trick of Edward

Longshanks as related by Drayton in his "Polyolbion":--

Through every part of Wales he to the Nobles sent

That they unto his Court should come incontinent

Of things that much concern'd the county to debate;

But now behold the power of unavoided fate!

When thus unto his will he fitly had them won,

At her expected hour the Queen brought forth a son--

Young Edward, born in Wales, and of Carnarvon called,

Thus by the English craft the Britons were enthralled.

_Punch_ treats the parallel from Paddy's point of view, and winds up:--

Sly Longshanks long ago with Cambria played a game--

What if, say, Battenberg should contemplate the same?

Pat, give him a fair chance, will prove himself--right loyal;

But--ye can't heal ould wounds with mere soft soap--though Royal.

The last line is, we fear, a much truer reading of the problem than the

sentiments ascribed to Hibernia on a previous page.

The betrothal of the Princess Louise to the Earl, afterwards Duke, of

Fife, in the summer of 1889, impelled _Punch_ to rewrite Burns's "The

Wooing o't" for the occasion. The messages to the House from the Crown,

asking that provision should be made for Prince Albert Victor and

Princess Louise, led to a prolonged debate, and the question of Royal

Grants was referred to a Committee of all sections of the House, on

the basis that "Parliament ought not to recognize in an indefinite way

the duty of providing for the Royal Family in the third generation."

The Queen did not formally waive her claim, but made it clear that she

would not press it in the case of any other of her grandchildren. Mr.

Labouchere, Mr. Bradlaugh and Mr. Storey opposed the Majority Report of

the Committee in spite of a strong speech made by Gladstone in favour

of the grants, which were ultimately carried by large majorities.

_Punch_ approved of the Committee, on the ground that it was high time

we knew exactly how far the system was to be carried, and ascribed

similar sentiments to the average working man in his new version of a

popular song of the day. The Majority Report was embodied in the Prince

of Wales's Children Bill, which became law on August 9, in spite of the

opposition of those, including Mr. Morley and Sir William Harcourt, who

maintained that the grant was proposed in such a way as to leave room

for further claims and to bind future Parliaments.

[Sidenote: _Two Views of the Kaiser_]

The young Kaiser and his wife visited England in 1891, and _Punch's_

greeting came near to being fulsome. In July _Punch_, the Kaiser and

the Prince of Wales are associated in the cartoon, "A Triple Alliance,"

the accompanying legend containing the following high tribute to the

Imperial guest:--

The Prince of Wales doth join with all the world

In praise of--Kaiser Wilhelm; by my hopes

I do not think a braver gentleman

More active-valiant, or more valiant young,

More daring, or more bold, is now alive

To grace this latter age with noble deeds.

Yet at the close of the year the feverish versatility of the young

ruler is treated with the utmost disrespect:--

The German Emperor has lately rearranged his scheme of work for

weekdays. From six A.M. to eight A.M. he gives

lectures on Strategy and Tactics to generals over forty years old.

From eight to ten he instructs the chief actors, musicians and

painters of Berlin in the principles of their respective arts. The

hours from ten to twelve he devotes to the compilation of his Memoirs

in fifty-four volumes. A limited edition of large-paper copies is to

be issued. From twelve to four P.M. he reviews regiments,

cashiers colonels, captures fortresses, carries his own dispatches to

himself, and makes speeches of varying length to all who will listen

to him. Any professional reporter found taking accurate notes of His

Majesty's words is immediately blown from a Krupp gun with the new

smokeless powder. From four to eight he tries on uniforms, dismisses

Ministers and officials, dictates state-papers to General Caprivi,

and composes his history of "How I pricked the Bismarck Bubble." From

eight to eleven P.M. His Majesty teaches schoolmasters how to

teach, wives how to attend to their families, bankers how to carry on

their business, and cooks how to prepare dinners. The rest of the day

he devotes to himself. On Thursday next His Majesty leaves Berlin on

his tenth visit to the European Courts.

Another royal visitor in 1891 was Prince Victor Emmanuel of Italy--the

present King--to whom _Punch_, in the character of Niccolo Puncio

Machiavelli, proffers worldly advice, advising him to be liberal of

snuff-boxes.

The Prince of Wales, born in the same year as _Punch_, completed his

fiftieth year in November. _Punch's_ Jubilee greeting is friendly

without being effusive. Reviewing the Prince's career from childish

days, _Punch_ recalls the picture of him in sailor kit as a child; the

nation's "Suspense" at the time of the dangerous illness in December,

1871. _Punch_ had watched him all along, abroad and at home, "where'er

you've travelled, toiled, skylarked"; and recognizes him at fifty

as "every inch a Prince," and worthy of cordial greeting; adding a

graceful compliment to Alexandra, "the unfading flower from Denmark,

o'er the foam."

The betrothal of the Duke of Clarence to Princess Mary of Teck had been

hailed with loyal enthusiasm, and his premature death in January, 1892,

was recorded with genuine feeling and sympathy. In neither cartoon,

however, was Tenniel at his best, and the memorial verses, though

graceful and kindly, do not lend themselves to quotation, the reference

to the "rending of Hymen's rosy band" betraying a pardonable inability

to predict the sequel.

SOCIETY

[Illustration: THE HEIGHT OF MAGNIFICENCE

SIR GORGIUS MIDAS: "Hullo! Where's all the rest of yer gone

to?"

HEAD FOOTMAN: "If you please, Sir Gorgius, as it was past two

o'clock, and we didn't know for certain whether you was coming back

here, or going to sleep in the City, the hother footmen thought they

might go to bed----"

SIR GORGIUS: "'Thought they might go to bed,' did they? A

pretty state of things, indeed! So that if I'd 'a 'appened to brought

'ome a friend, there'd 'a only been you four to let us hin, hay!"]

Critics and satirists of fashionable English society in the early

and middle periods of the Victorian age were mainly concerned with

its arrogance and exclusiveness. As we reach the 'seventies, with

the breaking down of the old caste barriers and the intrusion of

the new plutocracy, the ground of attack is shifted; the "old

nobility," dislodged from their Olympian fastnesses, are exhibited

as not merely accepting but paying court to underbred millionaires,

and eking out their reduced incomes by an irregular and undignified

competition with journalists, shopkeepers, and even actors. Society

had ceased to be exclusive; it was becoming "smart," and had taken to

self-advertisement. Wealth without manners had invaded Mayfair.

[Sidenote: _Woes of the Country Squire_]

These days ushered in the age of Society journals, of Society beauties,

of vulgarity in high places, of parasitic peers, of the invasion

of society by American heiresses, of the beginning of the end of

the chaperon, the dawn of the gospel of "self-expression," and the

rebellion of sons and daughters. Money, or the lack of it, was at the

root of all, or nearly all, these changes. Dukes had already begun to

sell their libraries and art treasures, and the wail of the old landed

aristocracy was not unfairly vocalized in "The Song of the Country

Squire," to the air of "The Fine old English Gentleman," and published

by _Punch_ in the autumn of 1882:--

The fine Old English Gentleman once held a fine estate,

Of a few thousand acres of farm and forest land, with polite

and punctually-paying tenants, excellent shooting, ancestral oaks,

immemorial elms, and all that sort of thing.

But it hasn't been so of late;

For the rents have gone down about twenty per cent., lots of acres

are laid down in grass,

And the person who imagines that the Squire of whom Washington

Irving and Mounseer Montalembert wrote all sorts of pretty things

has a jolly good time of it in these de--testable days,

Is a sentimental ass,

Says the fine Old Country Gentleman, one of the present time.

The fine Old Country Gentleman has an Elizabethan mansion,

But what the dickens is the good of that if his means continually

narrow in proportion to

His family's expansion?

If he gives up his deer, and sells his timber, dismisses his

servants, and thinks of advertising his house for a grammar

school,

Or a lunatic asylum

(As he often has to do), what is there in his lot to excite the

jealousy of those darned Radicals, though the common comfort of

that poor _caput lupinum_, the Land Owner, on however little

a scale

Seems invariably to rile 'em?

Asks the fine Old Country Gentleman, one of the modern time.

With an encumbered property, diminishing rent-roll, and expenses

beyond his income,

The question which confronts him at every corner is, whence will the

needful "tin" come?

And when they prate to us about our "improvidence," and advise us to

"cut down" and economize, why, where, in the name of patience,

I ask'll

Be the pull of being a Country Gentleman at all, if one has to live

like a retired pork-butcher or prosperous publican, and perhaps

you will answer

That question, Mr. Charles Milnes Gaskell![8]

Of the fine Old Country Gentleman, one of the modern time.

[Footnote 8: This gentleman had recently written an article on the

subject in the _Nineteenth Century_.]

The "profiteer" was already in Society and on the moors; _Punch_

reviled him in "My 'art's in the 'Ighlands," and in a picture of an

opulent Semite swearing that he hasn't "a drop of Hebrew blood in ma

veinth, 'thelp me." Du Maurier created Sir Gorgius Midas as typical

of the New Plutocracy--a gross, bediamonded figure, surrounded by

flunkeys, with Dukes and Duchesses as his pensioners. The alleged

poverty-stricken condition of the aristocracy is a frequent theme: one

ducal family can only afford to go to the opera when Sir Gorgius lends

them his box. But the Dukes still had their uses. The Beresford Midases

put their boy's name down both for Eton and Harrow, and decided to send

him to whichever has most "dooks" when the time comes. The New Rich

show themselves apt pupils in all the snobbery of rank. For example,

Sir Gorgius is shocked at the innovation of ladies and gentlemen riding

in or on omnibuses. This is not documentary evidence, of course, but it

was perfectly legitimate caricature. Du Maurier was not attacking the

self-made man whose creed is summed up in the Lancashire saying: "Them

as 'as brass don't care a damn what them as 'asn't thinks on 'em." He

bestowed his ridicule impartially on the servile plutocrats who aped

the customs of the titled classes, and the aristocrats who were unable

to grow poor with dignity. Du Maurier's contribution to the social

history of the middle and later Victorian age was invaluable on its

critical and satirical side. But he was emphatically an aristocrat in

the sense that he believed in good manners and fine physique: he set

beauty above rank or riches, and was an early apostle of Eugenics. Long

before the cult of athletics had begun to affect the stature and build

of English girls, he devoted his pencil to glorifying the Junoesque

type of English beauty. And while none of _Punch's_ artists ever paid

more consistent homage to elegance and distinction of feature and

figure, he could be on occasion a merciless satirist of the physical

deterioration brought about by intermarriage amongst the old nobility.

Thus in 1880 he showed a ridiculous little degenerate affectionately

rebuking his effete parents for "interfering in his affairs," with the

result that he is "under 5 feet 1 inch, can't say Boh to a goose, and

justly passes for the gweatest guy in the whole county."

The same spirit is shown in the fantastic contrast between the

aristocracies of the past and the future. The scene is "an island in

British Oceana"; the time 1989, a hundred years later than the date of

the picture:--

HIS HIGHNESS THE GRAND DUKE OF GEROLSTEIN: "Ach! Miss

Prown--in your lôfly bresence I forket my zixty-vour kvarterings.

I lay my Ditle at your Veet. Bitte! pecome ze Crant Tochess of

Gerolstein!"

MISS BROWN: "Your Highness also forgets that I have

sixty-four Quarterings!"

HIS HIGHNESS: "Ach! How is dat, Miss Prown?"

MISS BROWN: "Why, my father and mother, my four grandparents,

my eight great-grandparents, my sixteen great-great-grandparents, and

my thirty-two great-great-great-grandparents were all certified over

six foot six inches, perfect in form and feature, and with health and

minds and manners to match, or they would not have been allowed to

marry. And though I'm the shortest and plainest girl in the colony, I

should never be allowed to marry anyone so very much beneath myself as

your Highness!"

[Illustration: THE CHOICE OF A SCHOOL

MRS. BERESFORD MIDAS: "I'm so glad we've put down

Plantagenet's name for Eton, Beresford! Here, the newspaper says there

are more Lords and Baronets there than ever!"

BERESFORD MIDAS, ESQ., J.P. (_Brother and Junior Partner of

Sir Gorgius_): "Ah, but only one Dook! Pity there ain't a few more

Dooks, Maria!"

MRS. BERESFORD MIDAS: "Perhaps there _will_ be when

Plantagenet's of an age to go there."

MR. BERESFORD MIDAS: "Let's 'ope so! At all events, we'll put

down his name for 'Arrow as well; and whichever 'as most Dooks when the

time comes, we'll choose _that_, yer know!"]

[Illustration: THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

Our prophetic instinct enables us to foresee that the British

Aristocracy of the future will consist of two distinct parties--not

the Tories and the Whigs--but _the handsome people_ and _the clever

people_. The former will be the highly developed descendants of the

athletes and the beauties, the splendid cricketers and lawn tennis

players of our day. The latter will be the offspring, not of modern

æsthetes--oh, dear, no! but of a tougher and more prolific race, one

that hasteth not, nor resteth; and for whom there is a good time

coming. The above design is intended to represent a fashionable

gathering at Lord Zachariah Mosely's, let us say, in the year two

thousand and whatever-you-like.

N.B.--The happy thought has just occurred to His Lordship that a fusion

of the two parties into one by means of intermarriage, would conduce to

their mutual welfare and to that of their common progeny.]

[Sidenote: _Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns_]

In illustrating the falling away of the titled classes from the

maxim _noblesse oblige_ on its physical side, Du Maurier occupied

an exceptional position on _Punch_; but he was not less active than

other artists and writers in exposing the "moral and intellectual

damage" which they inflicted on the community. In 1878 the vogue of

"Fancy Fairs" evokes a vigorous protest against the vanity, bad taste,

forwardness and free-and-easiness of society women who made themselves

cheap in order to sell dear to 'Arries. From this date onwards the

vagaries of Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns, in whom Du Maurier incarnated

all the pushfulness of the thrusting woman of fashion, are a constant

source of entertainment. One of her earliest exploits as a Lion-hunter

was to invite Monsieur de Paris to one of her receptions. Her husband

thought she meant the Comte de Paris, but she speedily undeceives

him. It was the headsman she was pursuing, not the Prince. "All the

world" came, but the faithless executioner went to visit the Chamber of

Horrors at Madame Tussaud's instead! Later on, as the social mentor,

guide, philosopher and friend of Lady Midas, we find her warning her

pupil against inviting the aristocracy to meet each other. A music-hall

celebrity must be provided as a "draw," and Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns

recommends Nellie Micklemash and her banjo. "She is not respectable,

but she is amusing, and that is everything." So when the Tichborne

Claimant was released in 1884, Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns contemplates

inviting him to dinner: "Surely there are still _some_ decent people

who would like to meet him." Elsewhere and in more serious vein _Punch_

denounces the undue publicity given to this impostor's movements in

the Press--one leading paper having stultified itself by condemning

the practice in a leading article and simultaneously publishing an

advertisement of the Claimant's appearance at a music-hall. This

dualism, however, was no monopoly of the 'eighties and has become

common form in the Georgian Press.

Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns acts as a bridge between the old and the new

_régime_ in her ceaseless and indiscriminate worship of celebrities

and notorieties. She is the descendant of Mrs. Leo Hunter, but adds

the shrewdness and cynicism of the go-between to the simple silliness

of her ancestress. Todeson, another familiar figure in Du Maurier's

gallery, attaches himself exclusively to the old nobility, but is

always putting his foot in it by being _plus royaliste que le roi_, or

more ducal than the duchess. For in the slightly distorting mirror of

Du Maurier's genius we see, as an evidence of the spread of liberal

ideas, a Duke dining with his tailor and being kept in very good order

by him; and a musical Duchess learning to sing Parisian chansonnettes

from a French expert in the _franchement canaille_ manner. The craze

for the stage among "Society people" had now reached formidable

dimensions. They were no longer content with amateur theatricals, but

had begun to enter into competition with the professionals.

The invasion of journalism by the same class _Punch_ took much more

seriously. Hazlitt, some fifty years earlier, had written in his essay

"On the Conversation of Lords": "The Press is so entirely monopolized

by beauty, birth or importance in the State, that an author by

profession resigns the field to the crowd of well-dressed competitors,

out of modesty or pride." But this was written when the mania for

fashionable novels by Noble Authors was at its height, and Hazlitt uses

the word Press of the printing press generally. In the early 'eighties

the competition of titled amateurs was mainly confined to Society

journals, a characteristic product of the new fusion of classes. As

one of their ablest and most cynical editors said of his own paper,

they were "written by and for nobs and snobs." They are now practically

dead, owing to the absorption in the daily Press of the special

features--above all the "personal note"--then peculiar to these weekly

chronicles of high life. _Punch_ ascribed the invasion of the Street

of Ink by the amateurs to the penurious condition of the aristocracy

and their ignoble readiness to turn their social opportunities into

"copy" and cash. Under the heading of "_Labor Omnia Vincit_, or How

Some of 'em try to live now," _Punch_ published a satiric sketch of the

new activities of Mayfair. The scene is laid in the boudoir of Lady

Skribeler, a successful contributor to various Society journals. The

scene opens with the arrival of her friend the Hon. Mrs. Hardup, who

gives a pathetic account of her disastrous ventures in business and her

failure to secure an engagement on the stage. Why, asks Lady Skribeler,

had she not made her husband go into trade or keep a shop, or sell

wine?--

[Sidenote: _Titled Professionals_]

MRS. HARDUP: "Oh, he has done that. He was Chairman of that

Thuringian Claret Company; and we got ever so many people about us

to take a quantity. But it fermented--or did something stupid; and

they do say it killed the poor Duke, who was very kind to Harry, you

know, and took a hundred dozen at once. And now, of course, there's no

sale--or whatever they call it; and Harry says if it can't be got rid

of to a firm of Blue Ink Makers, who are inquiring about it, it will

have to go out to the Colonies as Château Margaux--at a dreadful loss.

[Summing up.] I don't believe the men understand trade a bit, dear. So

I'm going to do something for myself."

The sequel describes her initiation into the tricks of the trade by

Lady Skribeler:--

Profiting by the morning's conversation, Mrs. Hardup besieges

unprotected Editors, contributes to the literature of her country

most interesting weekly accounts of the doings of her friends and

acquaintances, and, it is to be hoped, practically solves, to her own

satisfaction, the secret of the way in which a good many of us manage

to live now.

[Illustration: REMOVAL OF ANCIENT LANDMARKS

LADY GWENDOLINE: "Papa says _I'm_ to be a great artist, and

exhibit at the Royal Academy!"

LADY YSEULTE: "And papa says _I'm_ to be a great pianist, and

play at the Monday Pops!"

LADY EDELGITHA: "And I'm going to be a famous actress, and act

Ophelia, and cut out Miss Ellen Terry! Papa says I may--that is, if I

_can_, you know!"

THE NEW GOVERNESS: "Goodness gracious, young ladies! Is it

possible His Grace can allow you even to _think_ of such things! Why,

_my_ Papa was only a poor half-pay officer, but the bare thought of

my ever playing in _public_ or painting for _hire_, would have simply

_horrified_ him--and as for acting Ophelia or anything else--gracious

goodness, you take my breath away!"]

For success in this walk of journalism, "literary culture

must be eschewed, for with literary culture come taste and

discrimination--qualities which might fatally obstruct the path of

the journalistic aspirant." It was not by any means monopolized by

amateurs, and _Punch_, in his series of "Modern Types" a few years

later, traces, under the heading "The Jack of all Journalisms," the

rise to power and influence of a humble but unscrupulous scribe,

successively venal musical and dramatic critic, interviewer and

picturesque social reporter, but always "the blatant, cringing,

insolent, able, disreputable wielder of a pen which draws much

of its sting and its profit from the vanities and fears of his

fellow-creatures." The sketch is an ingenious composite photograph,

in which those familiar with London journalism in the 'eighties and

'nineties will recognize in almost every paragraph the lineaments of

one or other of the most notorious and poisonous representatives of the

Society Press.

As we have seen, journalism was only one field for the commercial

instincts of penurious "Society people." In 1887 _Punch_ takes for his

text the following paragraph from a daily paper:--

"One well-known West End Milliner is a graduate of Girton; another

bears a title; a third conceals a name not unknown to Burke under a

pseudonym.... Many of the best women of all classes are ready to do

anything by which the honest penny may be earned."

_Punch_ was somewhat sceptical as to the honesty of their intentions;

the only way, he tells us, to get an invitation to the dances given by

one titled shopkeeper was to buy one of her bonnets. This may have been

a malicious invention, but he was fairly entitled to make game of the

advertisement which appeared in the _Manchester Evening Times_ in the

spring of 1887:--

"To Christian Widowers.--A Nobleman's Widow, of good birth, about 40,

no family, left with small income, pleasing, sweet-tempered, cultured,

domesticated, fond of children, desires Settled Home and a high-minded

Protestant Husband of 50, or older, seeking domestic happiness with a

devoted, loving Christian wife.--Address----"

[Sidenote: _The American Invasion_]

The lady shopkeeper had become such an institution that _Punch_

included her in one of his series of "Modern Types" in 1891. The

portrait is not exactly flattering, though he admitted that she

sometimes possessed other than purely social qualifications for

success:--

At first everything will go swimmingly. Friends will rally round

her, and she may perhaps discover with a touching surprise that the

staunchest and truest are those of whom, in her days of brilliant

prosperity, she thought the least. But a _succès d'estime_ is soon

exhausted. Unless she conducts her business on purely business lines,

delivers her goods when they are wanted, and, for her own protection,

sends in her accounts as they fall due, and looks carefully after

their payment, her customers and her profits will fall away. But if

she attends strictly to business herself, or engages a good business

woman to assist her, and orders her affairs in accordance with the

dictates of a proper self-interest, she is almost certain to do well,

and to reap the reward of those who face the world without flinching,

and fight the battle of life sturdily and with an honest purpose.

[Illustration: THE NEW SOCIETY CRAZE!

THE NEW GOVERNESS (_through her pretty nose_): "Waall--I come

right slick away from Ne' York City, an' I ain't had much time for

foolin' around in Europe--you bet! So I can't fix up your gals in the

Eu-ropean Languages no-how!"

BELGRAVIAN MAMMA (_who knows there's a Duke or two still left

in the Matrimonial Market_): "Oh, that's of no consequence. I want my

daughters to acquire the American accent in all its purity--and the

idioms, and all that. Now I'm sure _you_ will do _admirably_!"]

Millinery was the favourite field of enterprise, but the duchess

who rebuked the indiscreet Todeson for his condemnation of trade as

unworthy of the nobility, mentioned that her husband had gone in for

bric-à-brac and her mother for confectionery. "Society people," in

short, were dabbling extensively in trade, but it was mainly confined

to the luxury trades. _Punch_ does not mention, however, what was

generally believed to be true, that a well-known peer was a partner in

a firm of money-lenders, trading under a name most literally suggestive

of blood-sucking. Commercialism in high places is illustrated

indirectly but pointedly by the invasion of American heiresses.

Dowagers with large families of daughters--for large families were

still frequent and fashionable--found themselves seriously affected

by the "unfair competition" of these wealthy and vivacious beauties.

In 1888 _Punch_ satirized their misfortunes in a picture representing

English society mothers engaging American governesses so that their

daughters might be instructed how to hold their own against American

girls in attracting eligible dukes. So again in the _Almanack_ of 1889,

under the title "Social Diagnosis," a French baron identifies a certain

lady as an English duchess on the evidence of her indisputably American

origin, and in the same year, in a sardonic article, _Punch_ exposes

the American tendency to gloat over evidences of class distinctions in

English society, while pretending to denounce them. This was inspired

by the activities of certain American correspondents and "G. W. S."

(the late Mr. Smalley) in particular, who is described as "too intimate

with the 'hupper suckles' to think much of them." It was he, by the

way, whose favourite form of social entertainment was described as

not a "small and early" but an "Earl and Smalley." The hardest thing

that _Punch_ said of the American heiresses was put into the mouth of

one of their number. In 1890 he published a picture of three fair New

Yorkers conversing with a young Englishman. When he asks whether their

father had come with them to Europe, one of them replies: "Pa's much

too vulgar to be with us. It's as much as we can do to stand Ma." But

the verses on "The American Girl" in the same year wind up on a note of

reluctant admiration:--

[Sidenote: _Mayfair's New Idols_]

THE AMERICAN GIRL.

(An American Correspondent of _The Galignani Messenger_ is very severe

on the manners of his fair countrywomen.)

She "guesses" and she "calculates," she wears all sorts o' collars,

Her yellow hair is not without suspicion of a dye;

Her "Poppa" is a dull old man who turned pork into dollars,

But everyone admits that she's indubitably spry.

She did Rome in a swift two days, gave half the time to Venice,

But vows that she saw everything, although in awful haste;

She's fond of dancing, but she seems to fight shy of lawn tennis

Because it might endanger the proportions of her waist.

Her manner might be well defined as elegantly skittish;

She loves a Lord as only a Republican can do;

And quite the best of titles she's persuaded are the British,

And well she knows the Peerage, for she reads it through and

through.

She's bediamonded superbly, and shines like a constellation,

You scarce can see her fingers for the multitude of rings;

She's just a shade too conscious, so it seems, of admiration,

With irritating tendencies to wriggle when she sings.

She owns she is "Amur'can," and her accent is alarming;

Her birthplace has an awful name you pray you may forget;

Yet, after all, we own _La Belle Américaine_ is charming,

So let us hope she'll win at last her long-sought coronet.

An heroic attempt was made in 1882 by that devoted apostle of the

(socially) Sublime and Beautiful, Mr. Gillett, to revive Almack's. But,

as _Punch_ had frankly and even cheerfully recognized in connexion with

a previous attempt, the time had gone by for the oligarchical control

of the entertainments of the fashionable world.

Society had ceased to be small, select and exclusive; it was becoming

increasingly mixed, cosmopolitan and plutocratic. The horizon was

enlarged and the range of interests multiplied, but the desire to be

in the movement was not always indulged in with dignity or discretion.

Mayfair worshipped at new shrines and erected new idols. It was an

age of strange crazes and pets and favourites. The great ladies of

the 'thirties and 'forties may have been arrogant, but they seldom

exploited their personalities, or cultivated a limelight notoriety.

There is shrewd criticism in the legend of one of the earliest of the

"Things one would have rather left unsaid," illustrated by Du Maurier

in 1888:--

AUNT JANE: "Ugh! When I was your age, Matilda, Ladies of

Rank and Position didn't have their photographs exposed in the shop

windows."

MATILDA (_always anxious to agree_): "Of course not, Aunt

Jane. I suppose photography wasn't invented then?"

[Sidenote: _Old Bailey Ladies_]

Photography has much to answer for; and certainly played its part in

luring the titled classes from their ivory towers, and creating the

professional beauty. The "Giddy Society Lady," as portrayed by _Punch_

in 1890, is a new version of the "Model Fast Lady" he described some

forty years earlier, and though less mannish in her deportment, is much

more flashy, vulgar and selfish than her predecessor. Tailor-made by

day, excessively _décolletée_ at night, and preferring Bessie Bellwood

to Beethoven, this semi-detached and expensive wife as delineated by

_Punch_ is not an attractive figure. Yet with very few changes the

portrait might stand for the modern society Maenad. Cigarette-smoking,

it should be noted, was still considered "fast." Another recurrent

type of unlovely womanhood much in evidence in these years is the "old

Bailey lady" as _Punch_ christened her many years before. In 1886 the

writer of "A Bad Woman's Diary" expressly states that she would not go

to a theatre in Lent, though she spends all her spare time attending

murder trials. _Punch_ did not spare the judges who lent themselves to

this abuse, as may be gathered from the following dialogue:--

HER GRACE: "Thank you so much for keeping such nice places

for us, Judge! It was quite a treat! What romantic looking creatures

they are, those four pirates! I suppose they really did cut the

Captain and Mate and Cook into bits, and there's no doubt about the

Verdict?"

SIR DRACO: "Very little indeed, I fear!"

HER GRACE: "Poor Dears! I suppose if I and the girls get

there between five and six to-morrow, we shall be in time to see you

pass the sentence? Sorry to miss your summing-up, but we've got an

afternoon concert, you know!"

SIR DRACO: "I'll take care that it shall be all right for

you, Duchess!"

So, again, under the sarcastic heading, "True Feminine Delicacy of

Feeling," this morbid curiosity is scarified in the conversation of two

ladies in 1889:--

EMILY (_who has called to take Lizzie to the great Murder

Trial_): "What, deep black, dearest?"

LIZZIE: "Yes. I thought it would be only decent, as the poor

wretch is sure to be found guilty."

EMILY: "Ah! Where I was dining last night, it was even

betting which way the verdict would go, so I only put on half

mourning!"

[Illustration: TAKING TIME BY THE FORELOCK

GWENDOLINE: "Uncle George says every woman ought to have a

profession, and I think he's quite right!"

MAMMA: "Indeed! And what profession do you mean to choose?"

GWENDOLINE: "I mean to be a professional beauty!"]

It was in the same year that _Punch_ published a double cut, showing

the _tricoteuses_ under the guillotine at the French Revolution, and,

as a pendant, society ladies in a modern English Court of Justice.

[Sidenote: _The Terrors of Reminiscence_]

The fashionable craze for "slumming," which set in early in the

'eighties, was less objectionable; it was at worst an excrescence

on the genuine interest taken in the housing question by serious

reformers. But as practised by Mayfair it was ridiculed by _Punch_ as

a mere excuse for excitement; Du Maurier reduced it to an absurdity by

his picture of society ladies going slumming in mackintoshes to avoid

infection; and by another of Todeson, who had taken part in one of

these excursions, being disillusioned by contact with real workers, and

self-sacrificing East End clergymen. I have not been able to ascertain

whether the same artist's picture of professional pugilists being

_fêted_ by society in 1887 was a mere piece of burlesque or not; but

it was, at any rate, a good example of intelligent anticipation. His

satire of "Society's new pet--the artist's model," in a picture of a

handsome Junonian girl surrounded by infatuated Duchesses, drinking

in her artless and h-less confidences, is probably only a fantastic

caricature of aristocratic commercialism, as one of the great ladies

is represented as thinking of letting her daughter become a model as a

means of social advancement. Mention has been made of the invasion of

journalism by society people. But students of foretastes and parallels

will find a really remarkable anticipation of the terrors of modern

Diaritis--not to use a more vulgar word--in the burlesque review of _A

Modern Memoir_--the Autobiography and Letters of Miss Skimley Harpole,

published by Messrs. Rakings & Co.:--

Seldom have we perused a book with so much interest as has thrilled

us during our reading of these two handsome volumes. Situate as Miss

Harpole was, the daughter of a famous bishop, claiming for mother a

lady whose good deeds are remembered to this day, sister of one of

the most brilliant female leaders of society, and herself popular,

fêted and caressed, there is small room for wonder that even the bare

details of Miss Harpole's everyday life would prove interesting, but

when told in a charmingly frank style her book becomes a model of

what a Memoir should be. In a few short simple sentences she, with

delicious _naïveté_, relates her home life, and so clearly is the

picture put before us that we cannot resist quoting the fragment:

"Take us at home of a night! The Bishop in an easy chair, with his

gaitered legs crossed, and elevated on the back of another, with a

short clay pipe in his mouth, is vaguely mixing his eleventh tumbler

of hot gin-and-water, causing us girls great pain to conceal our

titters, when, as happens very often at this period of the evening,

he deposits the greater part of the hot water on the tablecloth or

himself. My mother, regardless of him, sits, carefully studying a

sporting paper, and the Racing Calendar, and making her selections for

the next day's horse-race. For a heavy gambler is my mother, as is my

brother, who, when at home--which is seldom--is either delighted at

having won, or in the sulks because he has lost money to his fellow

legal students at billiards. As a rule he is delighted, and always

carries a lump of chalk in his pocket. My sister is writing notes to

Men about Town, Peers and Guardsmen, her lovely features only losing

their serenity when lit up by an arch look of wonderment whether she

has made appointments with two different men at the same hour and

place, while I am sitting, in my school-girlish way, by myself, making

notes, so as to tell the world some day the true story of my life."

Space forbids us to say any more of the merits of this charming work,

but we cannot resist one extract which shows how true was the estimate

of the Bishop's noble character:--

"We were one night at the Italian opera, of which my father was

passionately fond, and during the ballet our attention was drawn to a

singularly lovely girl on the stage. 'Alas!' said the Colonel, 'she

is as bad as she is beautiful.' The Bishop immediately avowed his

readiness to investigate the case at the earliest opportunity. He

was always thinking of others, despite Mamma's occasionally stubborn

opposition."

This concludes our notice. In brief, the book is a most excellent

specimen of the modern style of Memoir, conceived with kindliness of

heart and charity of remembrance and executed with literary taste,

skill and polish.

This was fiction, based on what purported to be truth, and in turn

was destined to be easily eclipsed by the actual reminiscences of a

later generation. It may be noted in this context that the "blazing

indiscretions" in the "Life of Bishop Wilberforce," published in 1883,

and the letters of protest which they evoked, had already prompted the

satire and sympathy of _Punch_.

[Illustration: OVERDOING IT

"What? Going already? And in Mackintoshes? Surely you are not going to

Walk?"

"Oh, dear no! Lord Archibald is going to take us to a dear little Slum

he's found out near the Minories--such a fearful place! Fourteen poor

Things in One Bed, and no Window--and the Mackintoshes are to keep out

Infection, you know, and hide one's Diamonds, and all that!"]

[Sidenote: _Thought-Reading and Theosophy_]

The fashionable quest of the unseen world took no new forms in the

'seventies and 'eighties. We hear much less of Spiritualism under

that name. This was no doubt in part due to the success of Maskelyne

and Cook in outdoing the "manifestations" of mediums, a success so

remarkable that they were actually claimed as spiritualists by some of

the fraternity. In 1874 _Punch_ waxes facetious at the statement that

additional help had been obtained in the working of certain mines by

ghostly assistants. Later on there are references to the activities of

palmists and Society Sibyls, but the study of the Unseen and the Occult

in the 'eighties entered on a new and formidable phase with the advent

of thought-readers, theosophists and psychical researchers. _Punch_

devotes a good deal of space to an exhibition of his powers by Irving

Bishop, a well-known thought-reader of the time, at which politicians

were impressed and sceptics--represented by Ray Lankester--were

unconvinced. The pin-finding business was certainly much less

impressive than the exploits of the Zancigs some thirty years later.

The invasion of the drawing-room by pseudo-science met with little

sympathy from _Punch_, who summed up his view in the phrase, "modish

science is a sciolist"; and in 1891 he expressed his resentment against

the new mysticism and the jargon of Theosophy in a comprehensive

denunciation of "useless knowledge." The verses are worth quoting, not

for their poetic quality but for the list of names quoted:--

OUR REAL DESIDERATUM

(_By a "Well-informed" Fool_)

Ah! I was fogged by the Materialistic,

By Huxley and by Zola, Koch and Moore;

And now there comes a Maëlstrom of the Mystic

To whirl me further yet from sense's shore.

Microbes were much too much for me, bacilli

Bewildered me, and phagocytes did daze,

But now the author 'cute of _Piccadilly_,

Harris the Prophet, the Blavatsky craze,

Thibet, Theosophy, and Bounding Brothers--

No, Mystic Ones--Mahatmas I should say,

But really they seem so much like the others

In slippery agility!--day by day

Mystify me yet more. Those germs were bad enough,

But what are they compared with Astral Bodies?

Of Useless Knowledge I have almost had enough,

I really envy uninquiring noddies.

I would not be a Chela if I could.

I have a horror of the Esoterical.

Besant and Olcott may be wise and good,

They seem to me pursuing the chimerical.

Maddened by mysteries of "Precipitation,"

The Occult Dream and the Bacillus-Dance;

We need Societies for the propagation

Of Useful--Ignorance!

This bracketing of Huxley with Zola is decidedly unfair, and the

juxtaposition of Koch the famous physiologist and of Mr. George

Moore--already known for his realistic romances--borders on the

grotesque. _Piccadilly_ is, of course, the brilliant novel by Laurence

Oliphant, diplomatist, man of the world and mystic, who became the

disciple of the American "prophet" Harris, spiritualist and founder of

the "Brotherhood of the New Life"; and Blavatsky is the amazing Russian

lady who brought a new religion from the Far East as another woman,

Mrs. Eddy, brought another from the Far West. Madame Blavatsky is no

more, but Mrs. Besant is still very much with us, and Theosophy and

Christian Science are firmly established in a country which, as the

French cynic remarked, boasts a hundred and fifty religions but only

one sauce.

[Illustration: LAST NEWS FROM THE SPIRIT-WORLD

MEDIUM: "The spirit of the late Mr. Jones is present."

JONES'S WIDOW (_with emotion_): "I hope you are happy, Jones!"

JONES (_raps out_): "Far happier than I ever was on earth!"

JONES'S WIDOW: "Oh, Jones! Then you must be in Heaven!"

JONES: "_On the contrary!_"]

[Illustration: THE PASSION FOR OLD CHINA

HUSBAND: "I think you might _let me_ nurse that teapot a

little _now_, Margery! You've had it to yourself all the _morning_ you

know!"]

[Sidenote: _The Æsthetic Movement_]

[Illustration: AFFILIATING AN ÆSTHETE _Pilcox, a promising young

Pharmaceutical Chemist, has modelled from memory an Heroic Group, in

which Mrs. Cimabue Brown is represented as the Muse of this Century,

crowning Postlethwaite and Maudle as the Twin Gods of its Poetry and

Art._

POSTLETHWAITE: "No loftiah theme has evah employed the

sculptah's chisel!"

MAUDLE: "Distinctly so. Only work on in _this_ reverent

spirit, Mr. Pilcox, and you will achieve the _Truly Great_!"

MRS. CIMABUE BROWN: "Nay, you _have_ achieved it! Oh, my young

friend, do you not know that you are a HEAVEN-BORN GENIUS?"

POOR PILCOX: "I do!"

(Gives up his pestle and mortar, and becomes a hopeless Nincompoop for

life.)]

[Sidenote: _The Chief Æsthete_]

But of all the Society crazes of this period the Æsthetic movement

created the most resounding stir. Æstheticism on its social side was

an excrescence on, and a perversion of, doctrines and principles to

which English art and decorative design and letters owed a real

and lasting debt. It is enough to mention the names of Rossetti and

Morris, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and Ruskin to realize how far

the fashionable æsthetes disimproved on their masters. Ruskin was in

particular unfortunate, since many of their catchwords were borrowed

from him and distorted to serve other ends. For while Ruskin deplored

the fetish-worship of athletics, he believed in honest manual labour,

and never subscribed to the maxim of art for art's sake, which, by

the way, was anathema to Watts. Morris was essentially manly and a

worker. The æsthetes were neither. In life and letters they cultivated

languor, eccentricity, paradox, and extravagance of speech and dress.

It was their aim to exploit, as a social asset and a means to the

achievement of notoriety, the creed of artistic emotion which had been

formulated by Pater. For Oxford, it must be regretfully admitted,

was the "spiritual home" of the æsthetes. The word "æsthetic," as

we have seen, in its modern cant sense dates back to the 'sixties,

but it was not until the middle 'seventies that it began seriously

to attract the attention of _Punch_. To 1874 belongs Du Maurier's

picture of the effete-looking artist begging his wife to let him

nurse the china teapot she had monopolized all the morning. In 1876

we read of the damping of "Mr. Boniface Brasenose's" enthusiasm by

a fashionable lady. But the fashionable ladies soon succumbed to the

craze, and became adepts in the lingo of intensity. _Punch_ attacked

the æsthetes alternately with the rapier and the bludgeon, using the

former in the delicate raillery of Du Maurier's pictures, the latter

in prose and verse comments on their eccentricities and extravagance.

Here his attitude is invariably that of the healthy Philistine. But

when we speak of "æsthetes" it would be more precise to use the

singular. Maudle and Postlethwaite and all the other types satirized

by Du Maurier are only variants on the chief priest of the new cult,

Oscar Wilde, whom _Punch_ attacked directly and indirectly with all

the weapons at his disposal. _Punch's_ ridicule was often trenchant

and effective, but undoubtedly it helped to advertise one who was avid

of notoriety, and infinitely preferred abuse to neglect. _Punch's_

feelings towards him were all through of a piece with those of the

witty Fellow of All Souls who, when a friend of Wilde's indignantly

remarked that the men who had ducked him in the Cherwell ought to be

prosecuted, interposed with the biting comment, "I suppose you mean

under the Rivers' Pollution Act." For more than a year and a half,

from the spring of 1881 to the end of 1882, there was seldom a number

without a picture or a poem or a prose article in which the chief

æsthete was held up to derision. Sambourne's drawing in June, 1881, is

called a "fancy portrait," but it is quite a realistic likeness. "A

Maudle-in Ballad, to the Lily," had appeared in April:--

My lank limp lily, my long lithe lily,

My languid lily-love, fragile and thin,

With dank leaves dangling and flower-flap chilly,

That shines like the shin of a Highland gilly!

Mottled and moist as a cold toad's skin!

Lustrous and leper-white, splendid and splay!

Art thou not Utter? and wholly akin

To my own wan soul and my own wan chin,

And my own wan nose-tip, tilted to sway

The peacock's feather, sweeter than sin,

That I bought for a halfpenny, yesterday?

My long lithe lily, my languid lily,

My lank limp lily-love, how shall I win--

Woo thee to wink at me? Silver lily,

How shall I sing to thee, softly, or shrilly?

What shall I weave for thee--which shall I spin--

Rondel, or rondeau, or virelay?

Shall I buzz like a bee, with my face thrust in

Thy choice, chaste chalice, or choose me a tin

Trumpet, or touchingly, tenderly play

On the weird bird-whistle, sweeter than sin,

That I bought for a halfpenny, yesterday?

Other parodies by "Oscuro Wildegoose" followed, and Wilde's poems are

"slated" in the Bludyer vein under the heading "Swinburne and Water." A

good deal of Wilde's verse was derivative--even tertiary deposit--and

_Punch_ made fair game of the Swinburnian echoes and phrases such as

"argent body," "pulse of sin," and "kosmic soul." But his literary

criticism is somewhat heavy-handed. He is much happier in "Oscuro

Wildegoose's" burlesque sonnet lamenting the unenlightened Philistinism

of Grahamstown, in South Africa, where the Town Council did not know

what a dado was, and conjectured that it was an ecclesiastical term!

Wilde's visit to America in 1882 let loose a cascade of ridicule

beginning with a bogus interview, followed up by a cartoon "Ariadne

in Naxos," representing (in the manner of W. B. Richmond) the grief

of Æstheticism at the departure of her hierophant. When Wilde

lectured at Boston sixty students appeared in white waistcoats and

knee-breeches, with sun-flowers in their buttonholes, and _Punch_

welcomed the attention as a _reductio ad absurdum_ of Wilde's efforts

to revolutionize costume. Later on occurred the episode--which caused

_Punch_ unfeigned delight--of a letter addressed to "Oscar Wilde, Poet,

London," being returned as "Not known." But the craze was passing.

Gilbert's _Patience_, produced in 1881, had been largely instrumental

in reducing the pose of preciosity to its true proportions, and by

the summer of 1883 we find _Punch_ coupling "Oscar" and "Jumbo" (the

elephant) together as overrated lions. From this point onward the

campaign slackens. In some acid verses on the _Zeit-Geist_ in the

spring of 1884, which we quote later on, a would-be Juvenal denounces

vulgarity as the dominant feature of the time; and in his list of

nuisances and impostors no room is found for the æsthete. At the close

of the same year, however, to judge by another set of pessimistic

verses, he was still active if not exactly rampant:--

The "culture," too, of the æsthetes, with all its flaccid flams,

Its turgid affectations and its silly sickly shams,

Is but as dross of Brummagem compared with virgin gold,

When matched against the vigorous realities of old.

[Sidenote: _The Cult of Intensity_]

[Illustration: REFINEMENTS OF MODERN SPEECH

_Scene--A drawing-room in "Passionate Brompton."_

FAIR ÆSTHETIC (_suddenly, and in deepest tones, to Smith,

who has just been introduced to take her in to dinner_): "_Are you

intense?_"]

The "Dilettante" satirized in a rather ponderous article--one of

the series of "Modern Types"--in 1890 represents a later stage of

pseudo-culture, in which a contempt for everything characteristically

English is the leading trait. He warbles French chansonnettes, defies

all the rules of English grammar and metre in his poetry, is much in

request at charitable concerts in aristocratic drawing-rooms, affects

a mincing delicacy in gait and manner, paints his face in middle age,

talks habitually in an artistic jargon, and passes away in an odour

of pastilles. The type existed and exists, but hardly deserved such

detailed and elaborate portraiture. There is more interest in the

verses on the over-cultured undergraduate in 1891--one of a series

entitled "Men who have taken me in--to dinner," by a Dinner Belle:--

He stood, as if posed by a column,

Awaiting our hostess' advance;

Complacently pallid and solemn,

He deigned an Olympian glance.

Icy cool, in a room like a crater,

He silently marched me downstairs,

And Mont Blanc could not freeze with a greater

Assurance of grandeur and airs.

I questioned if Balliol was jolly--

"Your epithet," sighed he, "means noise,

Vile noise!" At his age it were folly

To revel with Philistine boys.

Competition, the century's vulture,

Devoured academical fools;

For himself, utter pilgrim of Culture,

He countenanced none of the schools.

Exams. were a Brummagem fashion

Of mobs and inferior taste;

They withered "Translucence" and "Passion,"

They vulgarized leisure by haste.

Self to realize--that was the question,

Inscrutable still while the cooks

Of our Colleges preached indigestion,

Their Dons indigestible books.

Two volumes alone were not bathos,

The one by an early Chinese,

The other, of infinite pathos,

Our Nursery Rhymes, if you please.

He was lost, he avowed, in this era;

His spirit was seared by the West,

But he deemed to be Monk in Madeira

Would probably suit him the best.

[Sidenote: _Preciosity and Self-Expression_]

[Illustration: BRITISH PROPRIETY

HAWKER: "Book o' the words, my Lady. Hortherized copy. The Dam

o' Cameleers!"

MRS. JONES (for the benefit of the bystanders): "Oh no, thank

you. We've come to see the _acting_, we do not wish to understand the

_play_!"]

It is not a bad picture of Oxford preciosity in the early

'nineties--the age of the _Yellow Book_--and contains the first

reference in _Punch_ to the new educational gospel of self-realization,

or "self-expression," as it is now called. The mention of early Chinese

poetry was probably only a piece of "intelligent anticipation,"

for its vogue only began yesterday. So too with the Nursery Rhymes

which some of the Georgian poets assiduously cultivate. But there

is no foreshadowing of the characteristic Balliol product of some

ten years later, the "intellectual blood" who combined hard and free

living with hard work for his schools--who was at once dissipated

and distinguished. The new worship of intellect--a sort of inverted

snobbery--had already been satirized by Du Maurier in his sketch of the

new _parvenu_, foreshadowing the "coming aristocracy of mind":--

HE: "Charming youth, that young Bellamy--such a refined

and cultivated intellect! When you think what he's risen from, poor

fellow, it really does him credit!"

SHE: "Why, were his people--a--inferiah?"

HE: "Well, yes. His Grandfather's an Earl, you know, and his

Uncle's a Bishop; and he himself is Heir to an old Baronetcy with

eighty thousand a year!"

Manners were in a state of transition and flux. As late as 1883 smoking

in the presence of ladies was still taboo and severely restricted even

at clubs, and _Punch_ contrasts the "bereavement" of gentlemen by the

disappearance of ladies after dessert with the "consolation" afforded

by the cigarette. It was not until 1884 that smoking was allowed for

the first time after dinners at the Mansion House, an innovation

deplored in the wail of an "Old Fogey." _Punch_ had no love of the old

proprieties where they were insincere, as, for example, when in 1881

he represented Mrs. Jones declining the offer of a "hortherized copy"

of the book of words of the _Dam o' Cameleers_ from a hawker: "Oh no,

thank you. We've come to see the _acting_, we do not wish to understand

the _play_." But he resented the curt colloquialisms, an outcome of the

general speeding-up of life, which in his view impaired the courtesies

of social intercourse between the sexes; while on the other hand modish

artificialities, whether new or old, always excited his ire. Twice over

in 1884 he was moved to protest against the excessive use of cosmetics,

in the verses to a "Painted Lady" (prompted by Malcolm Morris's address

at the Health Exhibition), in which the writer looks forward to the

time when it will be fashionable to be healthy, and a few months later,

in "A Few Home Truths," we read:--

Our matrons and our girls "make up" with powder, bismuth, dye--

Figures as well as frocks, obliging milliners supply--

Alas! the fairest cheeks are stained with artificial hue:

'Tis true--'tis pity; pity 'tis, 'tis true!

[Sidenote: _High-handed Greetings_]

[Illustration:

1787 1887"

"HERE'S A HOW-D'Y'-DO!"

A Chapter on the Evolution of Deportment.]

Nowadays young ladies begin making-up rather earlier, but, if _Punch_

is to be believed, we can draw consolation from the fact that they are

little worse in this respect than their modish mothers or grandmothers.

Another of _Punch's_ pet aversions was the fashionable high hand-shake

introduced in the 'nineties:--

HANDS AS THEY ARE SHOOK

(New Style)

In healthier times, when friends would meet

Their friends in chamber, park, or street,

Each, as hereunder, each would greet.

Your level hand went forth; you clasped

Your crony's; each his comrade's grasped--

If roughly, neither friend was rasped.

Such was the good old-fashioned cue

Of honest British "How d'ye do?"

I think it manly still--don't you?

But now, when smug acquaintance hails

A set that would be "smart," but fails,

Another principle prevails.

The arm, in lifted curve displayed,

Droops limply o'er the shoulder-blade,

As needing some chirurgeon's aid.

[Illustration: THE EARLSWOOD TOTTER

Our Mashers are still improving. They no longer enter the Ball Room

with their Hands in their Pockets. They have adopted a Mode of

Progression more in harmony with their Mental Structure.]

[Sidenote: _The Decline of the Chaperon_]

The offenders here castigated are young men, but the ladies excelled

in the new greeting. Languor was the distinguishing note of the young

men of fashion in the 'eighties and 'nineties. It was the age of the

"masher"--dreadful word--of the "Johnnie" and the "Chappie." In 1883

_Punch_ published a poem entitled "Child Chappie's Pilgrimage," a

modern Rake's Progress. Later on he satirized the studied imbecility

of deportment of young dandies entering a ballroom as "The Earlswood

Totter." Students of slang will note with interest the emergence of

the word "bounder" in the year 1887. _Punch's_ verses on the type

thus designated indicate a much harsher view than now prevails.

Nowadays we admit that a "bounder," though socially "impossible," may

be a "stout fellow." _Punch's_ portrait, in which the "bounder" is

represented as a bilker and a blackmailer, corresponds with the "cad"

in the worst sense which we now attribute to that word. Mention has

been made of the decline of the _chaperon_. Here _Punch_ virtually

sides with the "little flirt" who boldly enunciates the doctrine that

"in future a girl is her own chaperon." At the same time he clearly

disapproved of the new habit of dispensing with introductions, and

its logical outcome, satirized in one of Du Maurier's most graceful

pictures--entertainments at which the hostess was ignorant of the very

names of her guests.

[Illustration: MODERN SOCIAL PROBLEMS

SUSCEPTIBLE YOUTH: "Would you present Me to that Young Lady

with the Black Fan?"

HOSTESS: "With pleasure, if you will tell me her Name--and

Yours!"]

The Roller-Skating craze, which attained the dimensions of an epidemic

in 1875 and 1876, is treated by _Punch_ rather as a form of social

recreation fraught with matrimonial possibilities than an athletic

pastime.

The year 1876 was also noteworthy for an epidemic of Fancy Dress Balls

and Spelling Bees. The latter were never popular in Mayfair; spelling

had never been a strong point with the British aristocracy. But in

less exalted circles Spelling Bees flourished exceedingly for a while,

and the prizes awarded may well have conduced to an improvement in the

orthography of the upper middle classes. _Punch's_ references to the

craze are copious. It may suffice, however, to quote his "Dream of a

Spelling-Bee," an engaging piece of dictionary-made nonsense verse:--

Menageries where sleuth-hounds caracole,

Where jaguar phalanx and phlegmatic gnu

Fright ptarmigan and kestrels cheek by jowl

With peewit and precocious cockatoo:

Gaunt seneschals, in crochety cockades,

With seine-nets trawl for porpoise in lagoons;

While scullions gauge erratic escapades

Of madrepores in water-logged galleons:

Flamboyant triptychs groined with gherkins green,

In reckless fracas with coquettish bream,

Ecstatic gurgoyles, with grotesque chagrin,

Garnish the gruesome nightmare of my dream!

[Sidenote: _Suburban Sentiment_]

The Spelling Bee was a solace of the suburbs, which were steadily

rising into prominence, owing to increased facilities of communication

with the centre of London, and the "Suburban Love Song" which _Punch_

printed in May, 1889, marks the emergence of a class of society

hitherto neglected in his pages--a class quite well-educated and not

vulgar, but essentially bourgeois and sentimental:--

The blacks float down with a lazy grace,

Hey, how the twirtle-birds twitter!

And softly settle on hands and face;

And the shards in the rockery glitter.

The boughs are black and the buds are green--

Hey, how the twitter-birds twirtle!

And Cicely over the trellis-screen

Is bleaching her summer kirtle.

The mustard and cress (can they grow apart--

Those twin-souls, cress and mustard?)

Are springing apace: they have made such a start

That the pattern is rather fluster'd:

For I made a device in the moist dark mould,

In the shape of A's and S's,

In capital letters, firm and bold,

I sow'd my mustard and cresses.

Here comes no nymph where the blue waves lisp

On the white sands' gleaming level,

Where the sharp light strikes on the laurel crisp,

And flowers in the cool shade revel.

But the garden shrubs are as fair to me

As pine and arbutus and myrtle

That grow by the shores of the Grecian sea,

Where deathless nightingales twirtle.

And the little house, with its suites complete,

And the manifold anti-macassar,

And the chalet cage, whence he greets the street--

_Meae puellae passer_--

Are fairer than aught that the sun is above

In the world as much as I've seen of it;

For the little house is the realm of love,

And my sweet little girl is the queen of it.

[Sidenote: _Foreign Travel Popularized_]

[Illustration: THE TIME-HONOURED BRITISH THREAT

INDIGNANT ANGLO-SAXON (_to Provincial French Innkeeper,

who is bowing his thanks for the final settlement of his exorbitant

and much-disputed account_): "Oh, oui, Mossoo! pour le matière

de _ça_, je _paye_! Mais juste vous regardez _ici_, mon ami! et

juste-vous-marquez-mes-_mots_! Je _paye--mais je mette le dans la_

'Times'!"]

For another view of the suburbs one may turn to the drab and depressing

realism of George Gissing's novels. _Punch_ himself did not always look

at them through rose-coloured spectacles, and a year later, under the

heading "Green Pastures or Piccadilly?" (adapted from a book by William

Black), emphasizes the drawbacks of a bad train service, exorbitant

tradesmen, imperfect drainage, and the desolation of a region in

which, from 9 A.M. to 6 P.M., "not a single male human being is visible,

all of them being in town."

[Illustration: ABOLITION OF SECOND-CLASS CARRIAGES

"Are there any second-class carriages on this line, Rogers?"

"No, my lord."

"Ah! Then take two first-class tickets and two third."

"Beg pardon, my lord! But is me and Mrs. Parker expected to go

third-class?"

"Gracious heavens! No, Rogers! Not for the world! The third-class

tickets are for my lady and me!"]

At the beginning of this period foreign travel had ceased to be

the exclusive privilege of the "classes." The days of cheap trips

to "Lovely Lucerne" were yet to come, but Cook was already a power

in the land, and as early as the close of 1874 we find _Punch_

frankly expressing his opinion that travel agencies had assisted to

"lower middle-class-Englishize the Continent." The value of travel

as a corrective of insularity and a means of promoting a better

understanding of our foreign neighbours is not recognized. Residence

on the Continent was another matter, and the series of articles,

"Elizabeth's residence in a French country house," indicate the

possibilities of enlightenment on various points. In particular stress

is laid on the fact that there was no spoiling of women in France;

in that country they were the real workers. At home the increase of

excursion trains only served to excite _Punch's_ wrath against their

discomfort and overcrowding and the greed of directors. Yet these

drawbacks did not prevent impecunious or economical aristocrats from

travelling third class, though their domestics had to go first.

The everlasting servant problem recurs again and again in the

'eighties. Complaints of inadequate wages are seldom heard. In 1876

_Punch_ refers to a letter of Charles Reade on the comparative luxury

of the lives of servants contrasted with those of dressmakers. In

1875 Mrs. Crawshay, of Cyfarthfa, had read a paper before the British

Association advocating the introduction of "Lady Helps," but _Punch_

was not convinced by her arguments, and turned the suggestion to

something like ridicule in his burlesque extension of the idea in a

series of advertisements of "Gentlemen Helps." "Jeames" was still a

target, but a dwindling target of _Punch's_ satire. When the _Morning

Post_ was reduced to a penny in 1881, "Jeames" tells the policeman that

on hearing the news "you might have knocked me down with a peacock's

feather." As of old, _Punch_ found the real root of flunkeyism in the

snobbery of masters and mistresses, and the worst offenders in this

period were the _parvenus_, like Sir Gorgius Midas, who surrounded

themselves with flunkeys even at picnics, and exaggerated the

ostentation of the class whose manners they crudely aped. The shabbily

dressed peer is contrasted with the bediamonded _parvenu_, and in one

of Du Maurier's "Social Problem" pictures the problem is to tell the

butler from the lord, the former being a most aristocratic-looking

person, while his master--a new creation--is an unmistakable "bounder."

Towards the growing self-assertion of female servants _Punch_ was much

more tolerant. In 1877, when the problem was already acute, he praises

an independent attitude in a servant as being merely business-like,

and later on sides with Mary Ann against despotic mistresses who

advertised for parlourmaids and cooks who must not wear fringes. In

1891 _Punch_ published a set of verses inspired by the dismissal, after

nine days, of a maid who refused to wear a cap. But the extremists who

would make the mistress the "woman" and the servant the "lady" found no

favour in his sight; he was no more a supporter of tyrannical servants

than of exacting mistresses, and in 1884 our sympathies are distinctly

enlisted on the side of the graceful young wife, terrified at the

prospect of having to give warning to a formidable cook, and begging

the page-boy to stand by during the ordeal.

[Sidenote: _Mistress and Maid_]

[Illustration: JEAMES: "They tells me as the _Mornin' Post_ is

comin' to a penny! When I fust heard of it, constable, you might 'ave

knocked me down with a peacock's feather!!"]

In 1886 _Punch_ discussed the formation of an Anti-Tipping League, but

came to the shrewd conclusion, verified by experience, that it called

for too much courage to prove successful. A year before, in a series

of papers on "Public Grievances," he had published a set of letters

written from different points of view, showing that mistresses and

maids were both at fault. The sketch of "My Housemaid" in 1892 reverts

to the old complaints of destructiveness and "followers," and notices,

as special traits, a love of funerals and Exeter Hall.

Nine years earlier the _Daily Telegraph_ had published a sensational

report of the impending importation of Chinese labour for domestic

service. _Punch_ was not inclined to take the report seriously, but it

cropped up again in 1882 in the _St. James's Gazette_:--

Domestic servants will view with well-grounded anxiety a decision

arrived at by the Chinese merchants who met in conference a few days

ago in London. It was resolved, among other things, to send letters to

various Clubs in China, recommending emigration to England. If this

recommendation is acted on, we may be on the eve of a great domestic

and social revolution. There will, no doubt, be a prejudice at first

in some households against the introduction into the family circle

of the "heathen Chinee." But when his merits are discovered, it is

not impossible he may be warmly welcomed as a valuable acquisition,

meeting one of the most pressing requirements of the day.

_Punch_ contented himself with publishing a mock protest from "John

Thomas" of Belgravia against this "rediklus" proposal:--

The "St. Jeames's" takes a Lo view of the Domestic's Posishon. As if

Work was the one thing Needfull. Whereas the fact is that a Footman

in Good Societa is requier'd not only for Use but much more still for

horniment. Look at a Chinee's legs. Look at his shoalders. Where's the

bredth of the Won and the Carves of the Huther? Compare our ites mine

and his. Six foot to sixpennuth of apence. Ow can I and sitch as me

think of bein jellus of a Beger like that? If we was we mite petition

for a additional Dooty on Forren Men Servants; but we don't want No

sich Protection for Native Industry agin Imports.

[Sidenote: _The Doctors' Dilemma_]

In the same vein is a picture of a policeman paralysed by the

appearance of a male Chinese cook in the area. But a somewhat different

note is sounded in the Rip Van Winkle survey of England in 1932,

published in the same number as John Thomas's protest, showing the

British workman crowded out of every sort of employment by his laziness

and greed and forced to take refuge in the workhouse, while the work of

the country is wholly done by industrious aliens.

[Illustration: OUR MEDICAL STUDENTS]

The scandal of underpaid governesses practically disappears from

_Punch's_ pages in this period. The evil was not extinct, but

"superfluous women" were beginning to find other occupations, and the

growing popularity of girls' schools undoubtedly diminished the demand

for governesses.

In regard to inequalities of remuneration, _Punch_ proved himself a

sturdy champion of the medical profession. A lecture by Mr. Richard

Davy at the Westminster Hospital in the autumn of 1875 took a decidedly

pessimistic view of the professional prospects of medical students:--

Their salaries were simply miserable; hospital physicians and surgeons

were, for the most part, unpaid. Poor Law Officers most piteously;

surgeons in the services very badly, and young practitioners not at

all. For seven years' hard work in the Marylebone Dispensary he

had received one guinea, and a very distinguished London assistant

physician had found that his salary equalled that of the man who put

the skid on the omnibus wheels at Holborn Hill.

He advised every one to resign at once any and every

thought of becoming a medical man unless he possessed three

qualifications:--First, independence; second, an aptitude and love for

the profession; third, the readiness to pay a heavy premium in this

world for his prospects of reward in the next.

_Punch_ expressed righteous indignation at the "generosity" with which

an appreciative Government and a grateful Public were accustomed to

requite the services of medical men. But the disparities of which Mr.

Davy legitimately complained were nothing to those which have been

common of late years. In 1920 the demonstrators in science at Oxford

were getting just about the same pay as the Oxford road-sweepers.

Attempts to disparage the social status of doctors were invariably

resented by _Punch_, and when, in November, 1880, the Bishop of

Liverpool, in a speech to medical men, observed "I am not ashamed to

say I have a son a doctor," _Punch_ promptly retorted in the following

epigram:--

How kind of the Bishop, and how patronizing,

And yet to his _Punch_ 'tis a little surprising,

That speaking to medical men there in session,

He dared speak of shame and a noble profession.

A Bishop looks after our souls, but how odd is

The sneer that's implied at the curers of bodies.

For surely it would be no hard task to fish up,

A hundred brave Doctors as good as the Bishop.

[Sidenote: _Cremation and Comprehension_]

_Punch_, it will be remembered, had been a caustic critic of medical

students of the Bob Sawyer type in the 'forties. But he made his

_amende_ handsomely in 1886, when he acknowledged the change in

the type and contrasted the serious and frugal modern student with

the rowdy, bibulous sawbones of forty years before. Of irregular

practitioners _Punch_ had always been a hostile critic, and even the

orthodox members of the profession did not always escape a certain

amount of genial satire, as when, in 1886, an eminent physician,

feeling ill, declines to call in any doctor because "we all go in

for thinking each other such humbugs." In this context it may be

permissible to add to what has already been said on the subject of

cremation, and _Punch's_ support of Sir Henry Thompson, that in 1874

there appeared the following mock "Grave-digger's Remonstrance" with

that eminent surgeon:--

Who are you to be thieving

The poor sexton's bread?

How can we earn our living

If you urn our dead?

[Illustration: CREMATION

NEPHEW: "I hope you haven't been waiting long, Uncle?"

UNCLE: "All right, my boy. Been reading the paper, and had

a pinch--By the by, it's queer flavoured snuff in this jar of yours,

Fred."

NEPHEW (aghast): "Snuff, Uncle!--Jar! Good gracious!--That's

not snuff! Those are the ashes of my landlord's first wife!"]

_Punch_, always a strong advocate of comprehension, saw in cremation a

means of breaking down the barriers erected between conformists and

nonconformists by exclusive graveyards.

Turning to other callings and the social problems which they presented,

we may note that the difficulty experienced by retired officers in

finding suitable and remunerative employment had begun to attract

attention in 1885. The suggestions made by Lord Napier of Magdala in

that year did not meet with a sympathetic response from _Punch_, who,

in a somewhat infelicitous burlesque, foreshadowed the strange results

on hotel management of the employment of officers in various menial

capacities. The hardships of the underpaid clergy and "ragged curates"

are seldom referred to in this period. In 1889 we are introduced to a

new type in the moustachioed, eye-glassed, but energetic curate, who

observes, "My vicar's away. I preach three times on Sunday, and boss

the entire show." Indulgence in slang by bishops, however, did not come

in till more than thirty years later.

Social inversions are a frequent theme of comment. The new commercial

Croesus expresses a contemptuous compassion for the "poor devils

with fixed incomes." The Highlands are invaded by prosperous suburban

tradesmen in kilts, and pen and pencil are enlisted to illustrate the

embarrassments of the "New Poor," the altered balance between High and

Low Life, and the comparative wealth of the working classes owing to

their freedom from taxation and responsibilities. A notable sign of

the times was the emergence of the American millionaire art collector.

The first great ducal sale at Stowe dates back to 1848, but it was an

isolated example and looked upon as almost a portent. In the 'eighties

the depression of the landed interest led to further dispersion of

treasures, beginning with the Duke of Hamilton's sale in 1882, and

in 1889 the activity of American purchasers excited the laments of

patriotic Frenchmen, echoed by _Punch_. There is, however, a good deal

to be said on the other side when the American millionaire happens to

be as enlightened and generous as the late Mr. Pierpont Morgan and his

son. The influence of the "New Rich" in England on art only ministered

to _Punch's_ sense of ridicule, happily exercised at the expense of

_parvenus_ who bought books by the hundred yards or purchased faked

"ancestral" portraits. These atrocities furnished congenial scope for

the comments of Du Maurier's "Grigsby"--one of his most diverting

creations--who plays the part of the facetious skeleton at the feasts

of "Sir Pompey Bedell" and other self-satisfied plutocrats.

[Sidenote: _"Grigsby" on Family Portraits_]

[Illustration: HISTORY OF A FAMILY PORTRAIT

GRIGSBY: "By the way, that's a new Picture, Sir Pompey--the

Knight in Armour, I mean!"

SIR POMPEY BEDELL: "Er--yes. It came to me in rather a curious

way--er--too long to relate at present. It's an Ancestor of mine--a

Bedell of Richard the Third's period!"

GRIGSBY (_who made an all but successful offer of

three-seventeen-six_ for said Picture, last week, to old Moss Isaacs,

in Wardour Street): "By Jove, he was precious near being an _Ancestor

of Mine_, too!"

(_Proceeds to explain, but is interrupted by Sir P.'s proposing to join

the Ladies._)]

_Punch's_ attitude to the French, it may be noted, had grown much more

genial and appreciative after the war of 1870. This mellower temper

reflected a general feeling, but it was due in part at least to the

influence of Du Maurier, who had French blood in his veins and had

studied art in Paris. He did not refrain from chaffing the French

"sportman," but his satire was delicate and tempered by candour.

For example, one need only point to the picture of the Englishman in

France expostulating with his French artist friend at the caricatures

of Englishwomen in the Parisian Press, and suddenly silenced by the

inopportune appearance of a party of Englishwomen exactly bearing out

the caricature! _Punch_ had no love of the English tourist on the

Continent, and seldom failed to gibbet his inconsiderate angularity.

He was no believer in globe-trotting as a means of promoting mutual

understanding. But he was increasingly ready to admit that there were

things which they managed better abroad, and to acknowledge that we

might go very far astray if we formed our estimate of France on "_Les

Français peints par eux mêmes_." Both nations have a way of putting

their worst foot foremost, the one through shyness and reserve, the

other through an excess of outspokenness, and Du Maurier's racial

dualism made him an excellent interpreter of both failings.

Out of many miscellaneous features of this period we may single out

the Japanese craze, a form of cheap æstheticism satirized by _Punch_

in the early 'eighties; the popularity of the banjo, honoured by more

than one reference in 1886 when it appears among the luggage to be

taken to the seaside; the fashion in huge St. Bernard dogs, beloved of

Du Maurier, who yet recognized the absurdity of breeding gigantic types

in one of his nightmare pictures in 1879; and the plague of recitation,

faithfully dealt with in _Punch's_ admirable "Manual for Young

Reciters." Christmas cards became fashionable in 1876; and _Punch_,

as a sentimentalist, did not support the agitation against them as

a "senseless extravagance" in 1878. The "Missing Word Competition"

entered on its devastating career in 1892.

[Sidenote: "_Fin-de-Siècle_"]