_PUNCH_ ON THE WAR-PATH: COUNTER-ATTACK.
Satire and Libel--Mrs. Ramsbotham Assaulted--Attacks of "The Man in
the Moon" and "The Puppet-Show"--H. S. Leigh's Banter--Malicious
Wit--Mr. Pincott--_Punch's_ Purity gives Offence--His Slips of
Fact--Quotation--And Dialect are Resented--His Drunkards not
Appreciated by the U.K.A.--"_Punch_ is not as good as it was!"
Above the head of every editor the law of libel hangs like the sword of
Damocles. It is at all times difficult for a newspaper of any sort to
avoid the infringement of its provisions, vigilant though the editor may
be. But in the case of a confessedly "satirical" journal the danger is
enormously increased, for the margin between "fair comment" and flat
libel shrinks strangely when the _raison d'étre_ of the criticism is
pungency, and the object laughter.
That _Punch_ has steered clear of giving serious offence, save on
occasions extremely few, must be counted to him for righteousness. It is
true that, as a Lord Chancellor once declared, "_Punch_ is a chartered
libertine." But for him to have won his "charter" at all proves him at
least to have been worthy of it, the tolerance and indulgence of the
nation having been in themselves a temptation. It is not so much that he
has not hit hard; it is rather that he has hit straight. Indeed, as we
have seen, he has struck hastily in many directions; but, save in his
years of indiscretion, he has scarcely ever been guilty of anything
approaching scurrility. At a time when the "Satirist" was flinging its
darts at the peculiarly vulnerable Duke of Brunswick, goading him into
the writing of his pamphlets, and into that crushing retaliation whereby
the paper was condemned in five thousand pounds damages, _Punch_ was
perhaps the most moderate public censor and _arbiter elegantiarum_
amongst all those who used ridicule and irony as instruments of
castigation; and indulgence has been the reward that he has reaped.
That Mr. George Jones and Mr. S. C. Hall dared not face the ultimate
ordeal of a court of law must be held to justify _Punch's_ persistently
caustic denunciations; while the case of Mr. Gent-Davis, then M.P. for
Kennington, served chiefly to confirm the fact that "abstractions" and
"imaginary personages" find their counterparts, in the opinions of some,
in real life. In this case one of the Staff, who lived in the member's
constituency, and had taken some interest in local politics, contributed
a humorous paper to a series on which he was engaged, and it was
published in _Punch(_November 13, 1886). In this essay a type of
suburban lady-politician--a "study from Mr. Punch's Studio"--was
satirised under the name of "Mrs. Gore-Jenkins." Forthwith a summons
against the Editor at the Mansion House police court was the result, for
the Member accepted the description as directed against his wife; but
the explanation that the article was intended as a mere political satire
on an "imaginary person" was held to be satisfactory, and the incident
was finally closed.
On another occasion an unflattering poem on a "popular singer" was
illustrated, quite innocently by the artist, who probably never saw the
verses, with what appeared to be a portrait of Mr. Isidore de Lara; but
no sooner was the matter pointed out than any intention to offend the
musician was immediately disclaimed by the paper. At another time one of
_Punch's_ artists showed the little band of Socialists (Messrs.
Champion, Hyndman, and others), who were then before the law on a
political charge, as subjects of _Punch's_ traditional "summary
justice." But although _Punch_ was quickly brought to book, his victims
did not take the matter very seriously. Mr. John Burns, indeed,
confesses as much in a communication upon the subject. "On one
occasion," he tells me, "_Punch_ suspended me, pictorially of course,
from a gallows tree. This I, of course, regarded as Mr. Punch's humorous
desire to see me in an elevated position. On other occasions he has been
equally kind but less appropriate in his method of praise or censure."
_Punch_ has altogether had some two-score actions commenced, or
threatened, against it, by business firms or aggrieved persons or, more
often still, by newspapers on the ground of libel and kindred
wrongdoing. But then, consider how many there are in the world, and in
England especially, who will not see a joke!
A subject upon which _Punch_ has for some years been persistently
twitted is the personality of "Mrs. Ramsbotham"--Thackeray's Mrs. Julia
Dorothea Ramsbottom of "The Snob" (No. 7, May, 1829)--a homely sort of
Mrs. Malaprop, whose constant misquotations and misapplication of words
of somewhat similar sound to those she intends to use give constant
amusement to one section of _Punch's_ readers, and irritation quite as
constant to the other. She is the lady who suffers from a "torpedo
liver;" who complains of being "a mere siphon in her own house;" who
discharges her gardener because his answers to her questions are so
"amphibious;" and who does not understand how there can be "illegal
distress" in a free country where people may be as unhappy as they like.
There have, of course, been many originals to this unconscious
humorist--and are still. One lady, it has been declared, is not unknown
in society, who has held forth to a surprised circle of her
acquaintances on the operation of "trigonometry" (tracheotomy)--who,
when she imparted a bit of scandal would add, "but that, you know, as
the lawyers say, is _inter alias_"--and who wished that people would
always say what they meant, and not talk paregorically (metaphorically).
"Mrs. Ramsbotham" is obviously descended, through Mrs. Malaprop, from
Dogberry, and has many a time been "condemned to everlasting
redemption," at least by the _genus irritabile_. One critic cast his
protest in the form of a poetic appeal to _Punch_, and published it in
an Oxford journal:--
"Of Mrs. Ram I wish to speak,
You dear old London Charivari;
Don't ram her down our throats each week.
Of sameness do be chary. Vary."
A broader and severer hint was offered by the lively Poet of the London
"Globe":--
_To Mrs. Ramsbotham._
A few there be who still delight,
O Mrs. R., in _Punch's_ page,
Who like a joke to wear the blight
Of age.
Who, if they find a grain of wheat,
Are well content to pass the chaff,
And, every week, at least complete
One laugh.
But even they who swallow pun
Unmurm'ring, now and then declare,
Henceforward they must seek their fun
Elsewhere.
It is when you have multiplied
Your misconceptions, Mrs. Ram.,
That patience, sorely thus o'er-tried,
Says "----."
My task is therefore plain: to hint
That you, true woman to the core,
Are, when you interfere with print,
A bore.
I would not venture to suggest
The line of conduct to pursue;
I state a fact ... and leave the rest
To you.
But, in spite of this bitter cry, the next week's number of _Punch_
contained a quarter of a page of the lady's reminiscences and three
misapprehensions. "O," exclaimed the tormented Poet, "that some Abraham
would arise to do sacrifice!" Later on Mr. Furniss arose to the call, as
the murderous Barons responded to Henry's ejaculation. In "Lika Joko"
(November 3, 1894) there was printed an obituary notice of Mrs.
Ramsbotham (as nothing in her name had appeared in the previous week's
_Punch_), and a very comic death-bed scene was presented--reminding one
of a similar incident in "Joe Miller the Younger," when that paper,
like many of the public, grew tired of Mrs. Caudle, and, reporting her
"sudden death," published an engraving by Hine, wherein _Punch_ in
weepers is seen laying a wreath upon her monument, while Toby and his
bâton are both decorated with crape. In "Lika Joko's" presentation of
her "_momentum mori_," she babbles of things in general; she is nervous
as to the physic handed to her, and remarks that these medicine bottles
are as like to one another as the two Dominoes in the "Comedy of
Horrors;" she declares, as her mind wanders to the Chino-Japanese war,
that "the best remedy for political disorders is antimony, but things
may be different in horizontal nations;" and, finally, as she sinks
back in death, she fancies she sees a hand a'Becketting to her.
But _Punch_ ignored the attack; and the report of the death of his
lady-correspondent was duly recognised as a canard.
But "Lika Joko" is by no means the only comic paper that has attacked
_Punch_, smiting him hip and thigh. The violent charges of plagiarism
which for many years it was the fashion to bring against him have
already been referred to. From the beginning the principal--as it is the
easiest--charge that has been made is the alleged heaviness of _Punch's_
fun or his deficiency of wit; less often, it has been a legitimate
complaint of blunder or of journalistic wrongdoing. Some of the most
violent of these attacks came from the aforesaid "Joe Miller," and from
"The Great Gun"--the short-lived journal of distinct ability. In "The
Man in the Moon" the pens of Shirley Brooks, James Hannay, and other
wits made it distinctly uncomfortable for _Punch_--but nothing more.
Thus to a portrait of Mr. Punch, who is shown in the last degree of
misery, is appended the legend, "A CASE OF REAL DISTRESS.--'I haven't
made a joke for many weeks!'" (November, 1847). In the next number
appeared the brilliant verses, "Our Flight with _Punch_," from Shirley
Brooks's pen, as well as a sketch of a man speechless with amazement,
described as the "Portrait of a Gentleman finding a Joke in _Punch_."
Then there is the riddle, "Why is a volume of _Punch_ like a pot of bad
tea?--Because it is full of slow leaves;" and in the same number, a
biting satire in anticipation of a play written by some of the _Punch_
Staff and produced at Covent Garden in aid of the family of Leigh Hunt,
ends with the words, "_Every_ resorter to the stalls and boxes will be
expected to purchase a copy of either 'Dombey,' _Punch_, or 'Jerrold's
Weekly Newspaper,' as, next to benevolence, it is in aid of those works
that the chief actors appear. N.B.--Strong coffee will be provided to
keep the audience awake throughout the performance. _Vivant Bradbury et
Evans!_"
"The Puppet-Show" followed on the same lines, but its attacks were more
personal. Under the heading of "A Trio of Punchites" (April, 1848),
Thackeray, Douglas Jerrold, and Gilbert à Beckett were torn limb from
limb, and later on Mark Lemon and the rest were added to the holocaust;
yet, like the Cardinal of Rheims' congregation, nobody seemed a penny
the worse. The paper began its fusillade in the first number, and soon
came out with a large picture, well drawn and engraved in the manner of
the day, of Mr. Punch, much humiliated, receiving a lecture from Mr.
Bull:--
SHAMEFUL ATTEMPT AT OVERCHARGE!
MR. BULL (_a commercial gentleman_)--"Hallo, Mr. Punch, threepence!
What do you mean by threepence? Why, the Puppet-Showman supplies a
better paper for a penny! You must mind what you are about!"
MR. PUNCH--"Well, sir, you may think it too much, but really the
article is so very heavy I cannot sell it for less."
On another occasion the same idea is carried a step further, in the form
of an advertisement: "NOTICE.--If the heavy joke, which was sent to the
'Puppet-Show' office last Monday, and for which two-and-ninepence was
charged, be not forthwith removed, it will be sold to _Punch_ to pay
expenses;" and later on it hints that the Parisians will do well to
import a few of _Punch's_ jokes as the best of all possible material for
the barricades they were then erecting (1848). A graver charge was
contained under the heading, "On Sale or Hire," and it ran: "We
perceive, by an advertisement in _Punch_, that the entire work can be
purchased for £4 10s. Judging from its ridiculous puffs of Her
Majesty's Theatre, we should say that it could always be bought by a box
at the Opera." This amiable paragraph appeared in a lively column which
was a weekly feature of the paper, and was headed "Pins and Needles."
"Pasquin," a rival "comic" edited by Mr. Sutherland Edwards, was always
"bandying epithets" with the Showman, and no sooner was the column
introduced than he drew pleasing attention to the fact in the following
paragraph: "The 'Puppet-Show' has started 'Pins and Needles.' We don't
wonder at it. 'Pins and Needles' are always a sign of a defective
circulation."
From time to time, too, pamphlets have been directed against _Punch_,
such as the "Anti-Punch,"[25] published by the men who naturally fall
under the lash of a satirist, and resent its application. Of such was
the widely circulated "Phrenological Manipulation of the Head of
_Punch_," written by George Combe about 1845, in the form of an open
letter. It began, "Sir, you are not an honest man.... Practically your
benevolence is merely professional, it is only for the readers of
_Punch_. Why do you act like Toby in the manger?" But there is little
wit and less reason in these booklets to recommend, or to justify aught
but oblivion.
A more able and important foe than these was Harry S. Leigh, who in 1864
was editor of "The Arrow," with Mortimer Collins as verse-writer and
Matt Morgan as cartoonist. Leigh opened his attack with rhymes that were
greatly enjoyed at the time. They ran thus:--
RHYMES FOR A BIG BABY.
No. I.
"Sad stuff of Lemon's,"
Think the bells of St. Clement's;
"Not worth five farthings,"
Sneer the bells of St. Martin's;
"Going down daily,"
Grunt the bells of Old Bailey;
"_Once_ it was rich,"
Hint the bells of Shoreditch:
"When could _that_ be?"
Ask the bells of Step-ney;
"Hanged if _I_ know,"
Growls the big bell at Bow.
No. II.
Sing a song of threepence,
A paper full of trash;
Four-and-twenty "funny men"
Have made a pretty hash;
For when the paper's opened,
One soon begins to sing--
"Oh! threepence is a dainty price
To pay for such a thing."
And he returns to the charge later on in a set of verses in which he
pretends to pay tribute to _Punch's_ bygone force--"honest if
delicate"--and to Judy's and Toby's straightforward roughness. After
making charges of corruption, he proceeds:
"Alas! how times and manners pass!
When no one fears a panic--
When Scotland tolerates the Mass--
And Spain is puritanic;
When Yankee 'anacondas' scrunch
The South's heroic leader--
Then may we find a pleasant _Punch_,
And _Punch_ a happy reader."
Nowadays the commoner form of humorous attack upon _Punch_ is the
assumption that it is a serious journal: a cold-blooded analysis of its
contents will be made, or the quotation of its best bits under the
ungrateful title of "Alleged Humour from _Punch_;" or a joke will be
printed and savagely "quoted" as "From _next week's_ PUNCH." When the
three "New Humorists," Messrs. Barry Pain, Jerome, and Zangwill, were
driven to despair (so says one of them) by the sneers of the Press, they
met in solemn conclave and swore never to make another joke. So Mr.
Zangwill set to work at a serious novel. Mr. Jerome took to editing a
weekly paper, and Mr. Pain _began writing for Punch_! Even when Mr.
Pincott, for thirty years the "reader" on the paper, committed suicide
the day after his wife was buried, a number of papers could not resist
the temptation that was offered. "Fancy having to read through all
_Punch's_ jokes week after week for years!" exclaimed one. "No wonder we
are a hardy race. No wonder the poor man shot himself." Mr. Pincott was
a man of great ability, of remarkable erudition, and extreme
conscientiousness. Although his bereavement was preying on his mind, he
saw the paper out, and did not commit the fatal act until he had sent
his usual letter to the Editor, wherewith he would relieve himself of
his week's responsibility. "I never met a man with so much information
and of so varied a character," writes one of his fellow-workers. "He
never passed a quotation without verifying it, and could give you
chapter and verse for everything. He knew his Shakespeare by heart, and
all the modern poets, and he was never at fault in his classics." He was
not, however, allowed to leave the world without a farewell gibe and a
laugh, for Wit knows no mercy.
Another main charge laid at _Punch's_ door is that he is too little like
Hogarth in the past, too little like French satirists in the present.
Thackeray's proud boast that the paper had never said aught that could
cause a girl's cheek to mantle with a blush,[26] is acknowledged by the
naturalist and realist of the day as the severest condemnation that
could be brought against it. "We do not want in _Punch_ a moral paper
_virginibus puerisque_," says M. Arsène Alexandre, in effect, in his
important work "L'Art du Rire;" "_Punch_ is _un peu trop gentleman_.
What we want is to be enlightened." But _Punch_ has not chosen to cast
the beams of his search-light on to that side of "life" which is turned
towards vice; and if he determines that the _liaisons_ and all the
attendant world of humour that afford inspiration to the talent of the
Grévins, the Forains, the Guillaumes, and the Willettes of France, are
outside his field of treatment, who shall blame him? If there is any
moral at all to be gleaned from the work of the _Punch_ caricaturists,
it is argued, it is the never-ending sermon, though the sermon is a
humorous one, of the non-existence of immorality. Perhaps; but _Punch_
does not aspire to reflect the savagery we call civilisation by painting
a Hogarthian "Progress," nor to preach virtue by depicting vice. It is
no doubt very appalling and amusing to hear a young girl-cynic say, as
she points to a hideous monkey in a zoological gardens--"He only wants a
little money to be just like a man!" _Ça donne à penser_; but _Punch_
prefers wholesome jests to irony and repellent cynicism, and is content
to leave his impeachment in the hands of his spice-loving detractors,
even at the risk of being reminded year by year that "Gentle Dulness
ever loves a joke."
Another fruitful source of adverse criticism is an occasional slip on
_Punch's_ part in respect to some point of fact. Then at once half a
dozen papers are on his track with an eagerness that suggests the idea
that they were lying in wait. First come the matters of detail, as when
the "Athenæum" (January, 1877) justifiably complained that the popular
conception of the imperial crown of the Empress of India as a
four-arched structure, like that of Germany, is due to the mistake of
_Punch_, "whose artists are always falling into this error in their
cartoons of the Empress of India." In 1879 Sir John Tenniel was
challenged by Mr. Sala on the correctness of the balloon in his
frontispiece to the seventy-sixth volume, and in March, 1893, Mr. du
Maurier was soundly rated for showing a group of Oxford undergraduates,
in the rooms of one of them, wearing cap and gown with perfect docility.
Yachtsmen fell foul of Mr. Sambourne for introducing an ensign on a
staff in his famous drawing of "The _Times_ Tacking;" for such a staff,
stuck on the taffrail with the boom touching it, was "an impossible
object," and would have been instantly snapped off, while, moreover, the
ensign should have been at the peak. In another admirable drawing
_Punch_ once showed a ship on the starboard tack while the helmsman is
steering on the port tack, and the ship, by what appears a miracle, is
lying over to the wind; and, again, Toby is actually shown in the
Almanac for 1895 drawing a cork from a champagne bottle with a
cork-screw! Then photographers are as resentful of inaccuracy as
bicyclists; and the fact that Mr. Hodgson in the second of his two
drawings, "To be well shaken before taken" (August, 1894), representing
an "'Arry on 'orseback" first whipping up his horse before being
photographed, and then posing before the "seaside tintype man," placed
the equestrian _between_ the sun and the lens, was warmly taken up; for
would not the result, forsooth, be "the loss of the picture in a flare
spot?"
The literary error, too, is held to be inexcusable, and _Punch_ is
pointed at with scorn for a misquotation from Horace; or an incorrect
rendering in one of his drawings of an antiquarian inscription; or a
slip in a Shakespearean line; or an inaccuracy in slang or dialect.
Scottish, Irish, Suffolk, or Yorkshire must all be perfectly rendered,
or the natives will know the reason why. In August, 1894, Mr. Hodgson
sent from the Yorkshire moors a story of a keeper who, dissatisfied with
the calendar, replies to a sportsman's inquiries: "Well, sir, middlin',
pretty middlin'. But, oh dear, it's awk'ard this 'ere Twelfth bein'
fixed of a Sunday! Now might Mr. Gladstone ha' had hanything to do wi'
that arrangement, sir?" An outraged correspondent--a fluent Yorkshire
conversationalist, of course--at once corrected the original version and
translated it into the true vernacular: "Nobbut middlin', sir, nobbut
middlin'. But, ah lad, it's a fond business this puttin' t' Twelfth o' a
Sunday. Div ye think 'at owd Gladstone 'ad owt to do wi' it?" And again
_Punch_ rarely introduces "mon" (as an equivalent for "man") into his
Scotch jokes without producing a disclaimer against this alleged
"peculiarly British error."
A third form of mistake commonly gloated over is that which touches some
general fact of economics or social matters. An example of this was Mr.
Linley Sambourne's drawing, entitled "An Embarras de Richesses,"
graphically illustrating the glut of money in "the City" in the summer
of 1894. The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street is shown standing on a
pile of bags of bullion impatiently waving back the City men who are
pressing forward with more bags of gold, which bags are labelled
"Deposits." But the Bank of England allows no interest on deposits, as
suggested by the drawing and its accompanying verses; and the
draughtsman, explained one of the financial papers which gleefully
called attention to the misconception, "thought it was the Old Lady who
had reduced her deposit rates to one-half per cent."
But what are considered the most heinous, as well as the rarest, of all
blunders are those of policy or important movements, which, of course,
concern large bodies of men, whether they constitute a party, a
constituency, or a strike. A case in point was the cartoon dedicated
(August, 1893) to the miners on strike in Northumberland and Durham: but
at that particular moment it was the miners of other districts who were
so involved. Another instance was the substitution of Mr. Logan, M.P.,
for Mr. Leon, M.P. (December, 1893), in a Parliamentary picture that
illustrated an incident mentioned in the "Essence of Parliament." But it
may be taken that the error was rather a slip than a blunder that
represented "Toby barking up the wrong tree."
It is natural, of course, that the "faddists" should be among Mr.
Punch's most impatient critics, because "fad" and "cant" have always
been _Punch's_ pet ground-game that he loves to run to earth. It is
perhaps from the Temperance party that he has had most sport, for he has
always taken delight in the pictures they dislike the most--the
incomparable drawings of Leech and Keene, which show the humorous,
instead of only the hateful, side of inebriety; and he chuckles as he
reads, now their protests against Mr. Bernard Partridge's excruciating
pictures of a drunken man's "progress," now the plaintive paragraph that
"in a recent issue of _Punch_ more than twenty-five per cent. of the
advertisements concerned hotels, wines, spirits, and mineral waters!"
And, lastly, there is the critic who is always bewailing _Punch's_
deterioration--an impending dissolution which has been announced from
the second number!
People in Society seem curiously fond of expressing this opinion to the
members of the Staff themselves, if all the stories current are to be
believed. "Well, you know, Mr. Milliken," once remarked a lady, "I do
_not_ think _Punch_ is as good as it _used_ to be." "No," assented the
creator of 'Arry; "_it never was!_"
For such as these there is and can be no comfort; for them there is no
excellence save in the past; no inferiority save in the present. The
perusal of humorous papers is of course but a poor occupation for
pessimists such as they, and it is hardly likely that it could ever
awaken in them sentiments other than those so tersely put by the
"Gentlewoman's" poet:--
"In vain I search for humour each
And every 'comic' 'neath the sky.
Alas! I fear the busy Leech
Has sucked the vein of humour dry!"
FOOTNOTES:
[25] "Anti-Punch, or the Toy-shop in Fleet Street; a Romance of the
Nineteenth Century." By the Author of "Anti-Coningsby." 16mo. 1847.
[26] This declaration, if not absolutely accurate, has often been
repeated, and was confirmed at the Church Congress of 1893 by Dr.
Welldon, who held up _Punch_ as the one clean paper for the rest of the
Press to follow!