sexes are standing side by side, that during the pauses of "the
figure," or otherwise, the gentleman shall ask the lady if she be
fond of dancing; the reply will be, "Yes, very," for it is known to
be an unvarying rule that all young ladies are fond of dancing.
That, therefore, affords no clue, nor indeed much subject for
converse; hence another question succeeds, "Are you fond of music?"
Answer, without exception, "Yes"--general rule as before; but when
the rejoinder comes, "What instrument do you play?" although the
reply in that case always made and provided is "the piano," yet the
mention of a few composers' names will soon inform you of the kind
of musical taste the fair one possesses. If she admire Herz, you
will know she belongs to the thunder-and-lightning school of "fine
players"; therefore, breathe not the names of Mozart, Beethoven, or
Cramer. Should she own to singing, and call Mercadante "grand" or
Donizetti "exquisite," do not mention Weber or Schubert, but say a
word or two for Alexander Lee.[18]
It will frequently occur that (always excepting the first two
queries) a young lady will answer your questions with
indifference--almost contempt--in the belief that you are a very
commonplace soulless person. She has, you will find, a tinge of
romance in her character; therefore, lose not a moment in plunging
over head-and-ears into a talk about poetry. Should Byron or
Wordsworth fail, try T. K. Hervey, or Barry Cornwall, but Moore is
most strongly recommended. If you think you can trust yourself to
do a little poetry on your own account, dash it slightly with
meta-physics. Wherever you discover a tinge of blueism or romance,
the mixture of "the moon," "the stars," and "the human mind," with
common conversation is highly efficacious. When the latter
predominates in the damsel, an effective parting speech may be
quoted from _Romeo and Juliet_, which will bring in a reflection
upon the short duration of the happiness you have enjoyed, and the
quotation:
"I never knew a young gazelle," etc.
[Sidenote: _"Finishing" a Daughter_]
This was written in _Punch_ in July, 1842, but there is not much
difference in the estimate of the feminine intellect given ten years
later:--
HOW TO "FINISH" A DAUGHTER
1. Be always telling her how pretty she is.
2. Instil into her mind a proper love of dress.
3. Accustom her to so much pleasure that she is never happy at
home.
4. Allow her to read nothing but novels.
5. Teach her all the accomplishments, but none of the utilities of
life.
6. Keep her in the darkest ignorance of the mysteries of
house-keeping.
7. Initiate her into the principle that it is vulgar to do anything
for herself.
8. To strengthen the latter belief, let her have a lady's maid.
9. And lastly, having given her such an education, marry her to a
clerk in the Treasury upon £75 a year, or to an ensign who is going
out to India.
If, with the above careful training, your daughter is not finished,
you may be sure it is no fault of yours, and you must look upon her
escape as nothing short of a miracle.
[Footnote 18: George Alexander Lee (1802-51), son of a London publican
and pugilist, "tiger" to Lord Barrymore, and subsequently tenor singer,
music seller, lessee of Drury Lane, composer and music director at the
Strand and Olympic Theatres. Among his many songs and ballads, popular
in their day, were "Away, Away to the Mountain's Brow," "The Macgregor's
Gathering," and "Come where the Aspens Quiver."]
[Illustration: SPORTING MAN (loquitur): "I say, Charles, that's a
promising little filly along o' that bay-haired woman who's talking to
the black-cob-looking man."]
The "higher education" of women was not discussed in these days of
Keepsakes and Books of Beauty, though, as we have seen, the official
recognition of learned women and authoresses--Mrs. Somerville and Maria
Edgeworth--was supported by _Punch_. In his "Letters to a Young Man
about Town," Thackeray frequently insists on the refining influence of
good women in Society, but intellectual ladies met with little
encouragement from his pen or pencil; he liked to see women at dinners,
regretted their early departure, and suggested that the custom of the
gentlemen remaining behind might be modified if not abolished; "the only
substitute for them or consolation for the want of them is smoking."
_Punch_ castigates the caprice of flirts, while admitting their
fascination. He ridicules the imaginary ailments of fashionable women
exhausted by gaiety; but he waxes bitterly indignant over "the Old
Bailey ladies" who obtained access to the chapel at Newgate to listen to
the "condemned sermon" in the presence of a convicted murderer, or
scrambled for seats at the trials of notorious malefactors. The only
excuse for this odious curiosity was that their menfolk set the women
the worst possible example. Executions were public, and were freely
patronized by the nobility and gentry. The most powerful of the
_Ingoldsby Legends_ deals with this ugly phase of early Victorian
manners, and can be verified from the pages of _Punch_, who tells us
how, on the occasion of an execution in June, 1842:--
All the houses opposite to the prison (Old Bailey) had been let to
sight-seeking lovers at an enormous price, and, in several
instances, the whole of the casements were taken out and raised
seats erected for their accommodation. In one case a noble lord was
pointed out to the reporter as having been a spectator at the last
four or five executions: his price for his seat was said to be
fifteen pounds.
The "Model Fast Lady" liked champagne, but the charge of indulgence in
the pleasures of the table is never brought against women of fashion.
Their extravagance in dress is often rebuked; but lovely woman, if left
to herself, in the 'forties and 'fifties, was probably content to
subsist (as according to R. L. Stevenson she subsisted forty or fifty
years later) mainly on tea and cake. Women were not exempt from the
accusation of snobbery: sarcastic comment is prompted by the letter of a
correspondent to the _Morning Post_, who wrote to describe how, as the
result of a railway accident, she, "a young lady of some birth, was
placed in a cornfield and had to wait six hours."
[Sidenote: _Verrey and Gunter_]
[Illustration: Manners and Cvstoms of ye Englyshe
A FASHIONABLE CLUB--FOUR O'CLOCK P.M.]
The brunt, however, of the social satire was borne by the men. Gluttony
was ever a male vice, and _Punch_ is constantly running a tilt against
civic gourmands and turtle-guzzling aldermen. But his censure was not
confined to the gross orgies of the City Fathers at a time when cholera
and typhus were rampant. "Everybody lives as if he had three or four
thousand a year," is his dictum, which he follows up by pleading for
more simple and frequent dinners, the entertainment of poor friends and
relations--more hospitality and less show. The "nobility and gentry" did
not, however, court publicity in their entertainments as in a later
age.[19] They dined sumptuously in their own houses; there were few
expensive restaurants in those days or for many years to come. The
nearest approach was Verrey's Café, which was then a fashionable resort,
and the immortal Gunter, who "to parties gave up what was meant for
mankind." "Society" was small, unmixed, and exclusive. Neither love nor
money could secure the "Spangle-Lacquers" (under which title _Punch_
satirizes the pretensions of the New Rich), the _entrée_ to Almack's.
For club life a mine of useful information is to be found in Thackeray's
"Letters to a Young Man about Town" and in the social cartoons of
Richard Doyle. The account of a club cardroom and the absorption and
obsession of the players needs little revision to fit the manners of
to-day, and there is much excellent advice to young men to avoid
roystering and drinking with "Old Silenus," the midnight monarch of the
smoking-room at the Polyanthus. From Thackeray's contributions we have
borrowed sparingly, but cannot refrain from quoting the passage in which
he pays noble homage to the genius of Dickens:--
What a calm and pleasant seclusion the library presents after the
brawl and bustle of the newspaper-room! There is never anybody
here. English gentlemen get up such a prodigious quantity of
knowledge in their early life that they leave off reading soon
after they begin to shave, or never look at anything but a
newspaper. How pleasant this room is--isn't it? with its sober
draperies, and long calm lines of peaceful volumes--nothing to
interrupt the quiet--only the melody of Horner's nose as he lies
asleep upon one of the sofas. What is he reading? Hah, _Pendennis_,
No. VII.--hum, let us pass on. Have you read _David Copperfield_,
by the way? How beautiful it is--how charmingly fresh and simple!
In those admirable touches of tender humour--and I should call
humour, Bob, a mixture of love and wit--who can equal this great
genius? There are little words and phrases in his books which are
like personal benefits to the reader. What a place it is to hold in
the affections of men! What an awful responsibility hanging over a
writer! What man, holding such a place, and knowing that his words
go forth to vast congregations of mankind--to grown folks, to their
children, and perhaps to their children's children--but must think
of his calling with a solemn and humble heart? May love and truth
guide such a man always! It is an awful prayer; may Heaven further
its fulfilment! And then, Bob, let the _Record_ revile him--See,
here's Horner waking up--How do you do, Horner?
[Footnote 19: _Who's Who_ first appeared in 1849. In those days it was
little more than a bare list of dignitaries and officials. It was not
until 1897 that the personal note was sounded and details added which
have swelled the slim volume to its present portentous bulk.]
[Sidenote: _Tobacco Tabooed_]
Smoking was not yet a national habit. It was the height of bad form to
be seen smoking in the street. Even in clubs it was frowned upon, and
Thackeray, in his "Snob Papers," writes in ironic vein respecting "that
den of abomination which, I am told, has been established in _some_
clubs, called the Smoking Room." The embargo on pipes was not removed
for many years. A well-known judge removed his name from a well-known
club about the year 1890 because the committee refused to tolerate
pipe-smoking on their precincts. _Punch_ early ranged himself on the
side of liberty, and in 1856 was greatly incensed against the British
Anti-Tobacco Society, as against all "Anti's," "who, not content with
hating balls, plays, and other amusements themselves, want to enforce
their small antipathies on the rest of us."
[Illustration: GROUP IN THEATRE BOX]
The relaxations of men of fashion, if less multitudinous than to-day,
were at least tolerably varied. The golden age of the dandies had
passed, but the breed was still not quite extinct in 1849; witness
Thackeray's picture of Lord Hugo Fitzurse. "Fops' Alley," at the Opera,
was one of their favourite resorts; and its attractions are summed up,
during the season of 1844, in the last stanza of a "Song of the
Superior Classes":--
Blest ballet, soul-entrancing,
Who would not rather gaze
On youth and beauty dancing
Than one of Shakespeare's plays?
Give me the haunt of Fashion,
And let the Drama's shrine
Engross the vulgar's passion;
Fops' Alley, thou art mine.
Robuster natures found distraction in knocker-wrenching and organizing
parties to witness executions, but it would be as unfair to judge the
manners of the high life of the time from the exploits of the mad
Marquess of Waterford as it would be to base one's estimate on the
achievements of Lord Shaftesbury. Thackeray, in _The Newcomes_, written
in 1853, gives a somewhat lurid account of the entertainment at the
"Coal Hole," from which the indignant colonel abruptly withdrew with his
son Clive. The moral atmosphere of "Cyder Cellars" and similar places of
entertainment was not exactly rarefied, but _Punch_ makes a notable
exception in favour of Evans's Supper Rooms, which were reopened after
redecoration in the year 1856 as the abode of supper and song. There was
no price for admission. You entered by a descent from the western end of
the Piazza, Covent Garden, and took your choice from the little marble
tables near the door or nearer the raised platform. _Punch's_ only
adverse criticism is directed against the epileptic gesticulations of
the Ethiopian serenaders. For the rest he has nothing but praise for the
entertainment, whether for mind or body:--
Anybody wanting to hear a little good music, sup, and get to bed
betimes will be precisely suited at this place. Singing commences
at eight. Any country curate, now, or indeed, rector, being in town
under those circumstances, would find it just answer his purpose.
To a serious young man, disapproving of the Opera, and tired of
Exeter Hall, it would be a pleasant change from the last-named
institution. Moreover it has the advantage of cheapness--so
important to all who are truly serious. Even a bishop might give
it an occasional inspection, without derogation from the decorum of
his shovel hat and gaiters. A resort whereat unobjectionable
amusement is provided for the youthful bachelor--the student of
law--of medicine--nay, of divinity--offers an attraction in the
right direction which is powerful to counteract a tendency towards
the wrong: and a glass of grog, with the accompaniment of good
singing, may have a moral value superior to that of a teetotal
harangue and a cup of Twankay.[20]
[Footnote 20: "Twankay," constantly used at this time as an equivalent
for tea, after the name of the district of Taung Kei in China.]
[Sidenote: _Travellers and Outlaws_]
The cult of pastime was as yet in its infancy; years were to elapse
before even croquet was to assert its gentle sway. But there was always
the great game of politics and patronage, and though Crockford, the
founder of the famous gambling club at 50, St. James's Street, retired
in 1840, after he had won "the whole of the ready money of the existing
generation," in Captain Gronow's phrase, there was plenty of gambling
for very high stakes. There was also travel, limited in its larger and
more leisurely range to people of fortune, but already beginning to
appeal through excursions to the middle classes. "Paris in twelve hours"
was advertised by the South Eastern Railway in 1849, though according to
_Punch_ it really took twenty-nine hours; but before long the time
occupied in the transit was reduced to nine hours. Boulogne had long
been the resort of a curious colony of Englishmen "composed of those who
are living on their means, and those who are living in despite of them,
including, to give a romantic air of society, a slight sprinkling of
outlaws." It was at Boulogne-sur-Mer that Brummell ended his days in
poverty; but the most famous outlaws of the period under review were
"the most gorgeous" Countess of Blessington and Count D'Orsay, who fled
precipitately from Gore House in April, 1849, to Paris. Nine years
earlier Lady Blessington had been one of the most courted leaders of
fashionable society. She had beauty, fascination, a fair measure of
literary talent, and an industry only surpassed by her extravagance. Of
D'Orsay, whom Byron called the _Cupidon déchaîné_, handsome, gifted and
popular, athlete, wit and dandy, it is enough to say that he was the
only artist congenial to the Duke of Wellington, who used to call
sculptors "damned busters" and so exasperated Goya by his cavalier
treatment that the old Spanish painter is alleged to have challenged him
to a duel! Lady Blessington and D'Orsay escaped censure from _Punch_
even in his democratic days. It was hard to be angry with these birds of
Paradise, gorgeous in their lives, almost tragic in their eclipse. They
at any rate did not come under the condemnation meted out to Cockney
travellers on the Continent in 1845:--
SMALL CHANGE FOR PERSONS GOING ON THE CONTINENT
Laugh at everything you do not understand, and never fail to
ridicule anything that appears strange to you. The habits of the
lower class will afford you abundant entertainment, if you have the
proper talent to mimic them. Their religious ceremonies you will
also find to be an endless source of amusement.
Recollect very few people talk in English on the Continent, so you
may be perfectly at your ease in abusing foreigners before their
faces, and talking any modest nonsense you like, in the presence of
ladies, at a _table d'hôte_. Do not care what you say about the
government of any particular state you may be visiting, and show
your national spirit by boasting, on every possible occasion, of
the superiority of England and everything English.
[Illustration: THE OPERA
DOORKEEPER: "Beg your pardon, Sir--but must, indeed, Sir, be in full
dress."
SNOB (excited): "Full dress!! Why, what do you call this?"]
[Sidenote: _The "Gent" Abroad and at Home_]
The criticism, if caustic, was not without provocation, and unhappily
the provocation did not cease, indeed, it may not be a rash assertion to
observe that it has not yet altogether ceased. The type reappeared as
"'Arry." In the early 'forties he was one of _Punch's_ pet aversions
under the title of "the Gent":--
Of all the loungers who cross our way in the public thoroughfares,
the _Gent_ is the most unbearable, principally from an assumption
of style about him--a futile aping of superiority that inspires us
with feelings of mingled contempt and amusement, when we
contemplate his ridiculous pretensions to be considered "the
thing."
No city in the world produces so many holiday specimens of tawdry
vulgarity as London; and the river appears to be the point towards
which all the countless myriads converge. Their strenuous attempts
to ape _gentility_--a bad style of word, we admit, but one
peculiarly adapted to our purpose--are to us more painful than
ludicrous; and the labouring man, dressed in the usual costume of
his class, is in our eyes far more respectable than the Gent, in
his dreary efforts to assume a style and _tournure_ which he is so
utterly incapable of carrying out.
_Punch_ was a sincere lover of his country and her Constitution. When
foreigners criticized England or the English he was up in arms in a
moment. John Bull, he declared, _à propos_ of the suspicion of the
French Government, was the best natured, most kindly, and tolerant
fellow in the world. But this conviction never stood in the way of his
playing the candid friend to and dealing faithfully with his countrymen
on all possible occasions. As a comprehensive indictment of their
failings it would be hard to beat or to improve upon the following list
of the things an Englishman likes:--
An Englishman likes a variety of things. For instance, nothing is
more to his liking than: To talk largely about Art, and to have
the worst statues and monuments that ever disgraced a metropolis!
To inveigh against the grinding tyrannies practised upon poor
needlewomen and slop-tailors, and yet to patronize the shops where
cheap shirts and clothes are sold!
To purchase a bargain, no matter whether he is in want of it or
not!
To reward native talent, with which view he supports Italian
operas, French plays, German singers, and in fact gives gold to the
foreigners in exchange for the brass they bring him!
To talk sneeringly against tuft-hunting and all tuft-hunters, and
yet next to running after a lord, nothing delights him more than to
be seen in company with one!
To rave about his public spirit and independence, and with the
greatest submission to endure perpetually a tax[21] that was only
put on for three years!
To brag about his politeness and courteous demeanour in public, and
to scamper after the Queen whenever there is an opportunity of
staring at her!
To boast of his cleanliness, and to leave uncovered (as in the
Thames) the biggest sewer in the world!
To pretend to like music, and to tolerate the Italian organs and
the discordant musicians that infest his streets!
To inveigh against bad legislation, and to refrain in many
instances from exercising the franchise he pays so dearly for!
To admit the utility of education, and yet to exclude from its
benefits every one who is not of the same creed as himself!
And lastly, an Englishman dearly likes:
To grumble, no matter whether he is right or wrong, crying or
laughing, working or playing, gaining a victory or smarting under a
national humiliation, paying or being paid--still he must grumble,
and in fact he is never so happy as when he is grumbling; and,
supposing everything was to his satisfaction (though it says a
great deal for our power of assumption to assume any such absurd
impossibilities), still he would grumble at the fact of there being
nothing for him to grumble about!
[Footnote 21: The income tax. _Punch_ knew better, and prophesied from
the very outset that it would never come off.]
_Punch_ certainly exercised the national privilege of grumbling to the
full, though the shafts of his satire were sometimes of the nature of
boomerangs. We can sympathize with him when, in his list of "things and
persons that should emigrate," he includes "all persons who give
imitations of actors; all quack doctors and advertising professors; all
young men who smoke before the age of fifteen, and young ladies who wear
ringlets after the age of thirty," as fit for "dumping." But he runs the
risk of the _Quis tulerit Gracchos_ retort when he bans "all punsters
and conundrum makers." In the main he was a strenuous supporter of
education, especially elementary education, and the recognition and
reward of men of science and letters, but, along with his general
support of literary and scientific institutions, he seldom missed a
chance of making game of learned societies, beginning with the British
Association. The ignorance of candidates for appointments in the Civil
Service does not escape his reforming zeal, when in 1857 no fewer than
44 per cent. were rejected for bad spelling; yet in 1852 we find him
publishing a picture of a Japanese as a black man.
[Sidenote: _Desirable Emigrants_]
[Illustration: OFFENDED DIGNITY
SMALL SWELL (who has just finished a quadrille): "H'm, thank goodness
that's over. Don't give me your bread-and-butter Misses to dance with--I
prefer grown Women of the World!"
(N.B. The bread-and-butter Miss had asked him how old he was, and when
he went back to school.)]
[Illustration: TWO WORDS TO A BARGAIN
JAPANESE: "We won't have Free Trade. Our ports are closed, and shall
remain so."
AMERICAN: "Then we will open our ports, and convince you that you're
wrong."]
[Sidenote: _Exploiting the Dead_]
Spiritualism invaded England from America at the end of the 'forties;
the mania for table-turning dates from 1852, and in 1855 the famous
"medium" Daniel Dunglas Home (the original of Browning's "Sludge") paid
his first visit to England. From the very first _Punch's_ attitude was
hostile, sceptical, even derisive; and he was one of the first to
condemn the harrying of humble fortune-tellers while fashionable and
expensive exponents of clairvoyance were immune from prosecution.
Crystal-gazing is mentioned in 1851. Playing upon words, in the
_Almanack_ for 1852 we read: "It is related as astonishing that there
are some clairvoyants who can see right through anybody; but that is not
so very strange. The wonder is that there should be anybody who cannot
see through the clairvoyant." In 1853 it was seriously suggested by a
mesmerist in the _Morning Post_ that he could get into communication
with Sir John Franklin; this _Punch_ promptly pilloried, as, too, a
little later, he did a reference to a play alleged to have been dictated
by Shakespeare's spirit. In 1857 _Punch_ solemnly vouches for the
authenticity of the following advertisement under the heading "Spirits
by retail":--
COMMUNICATIONS with the SPIRIT OF WASHINGTON for Oracular
Revelation of public fact and duty; responses tendered relative to
Executive or Governmental, State or Diplomatic, National or
Personal questions on affairs of moment for their more ready and
appropriate solution, and the special use of official,
Congressional and editorial intelligence. Address "Washington
Medium," Post Office, Box 628, Washington, D.C. No letter (except
for an interview) will be answered unless it encloses one dollar,
and only the first five questions of any letter with but one dollar
will have a reply. Number your questions and preserve copies of
them.
Sober and instructed opinion has always shown this distrust, but _Punch_
was not always justified in his treatment of new arts and discoveries.
He quite failed to recognize the importance and the possibilities of
photography, the early references to which are uniformly disparaging.
There was at least this excuse for his want of foresight, that for many
years the professional photographer was destitute of any artistic
feeling or training save in the purely mechanical side of his calling.
In representing him as combining photography with hairdressing or other
even more menial trades, _Punch_ was not indulging in exaggeration. The
mere name "photographer" called up the image of a seedy, weedy little
man who suggested an unsuccessful artist by his dress and whose "studio"
was a shabby chamber of theatrical horrors, in which the subject was
clamped and screwed into rigidity by instruments of torture. In the
'fifties photography was already exploited as a means of advertising
actors, actresses and even popular preachers, but it had not begun to
be thought of as a means of social _réclame_. Apart from politicians and
public characters little limelight was shed on personality. The
relations between the Stage and Society were curiously different from
those which prevail to-day. _Punch_ was a great champion of the
legitimate drama. Douglas Jerrold had been a prolific and successful,
though not prosperous, playwright, and other members of the staff had
written for the stage. The disregard of serious native talent by the
Court[22] and the fashionable world was a constant theme of bitter
comment. But _Punch_ shows no eagerness for the bestowal of official
recognition on actors; when the question of knighthoods was mooted, he
expressed apprehension lest they should be conferred upon the
upholsterers rather than the upholders of the Drama. With that form of
mummer-worship which took the form of the publication of personal gossip
about actors he had no sympathy, and even satirized it in a burlesque
account of the daily life of an imaginary low comedian. On occasions
when actors resented the tone of dramatic criticism, as in the quarrel
between Charles Mathews and the _Morning Chronicle_, _Punch_ stood for
the liberty of the Press. Against sensationalism, horrors, plays based
on crime, and the cult of monstrosity _Punch_ waged unceasing war, but
he was no prude. Those who were always on the look out for offence were
sure to find it: "certain it is that whenever a father of a family
visits a theatre, something verging on impropriety takes place." So
again he falls foul of the inconsistent prudery which allowed a
performance of _La Dame aux Camélias_ at Exeter Hall in 1857, but
prohibited an English translation of the words.
[Footnote 22: "As well hope to touch, Memnon-like, the statue of Queen
Anne into mourning music, as to awaken generous impulses in the House of
Hanover towards art, or science or letters." The payment of 13s. 4d.
each to actors at a Royal Command performance provokes a sarcastic
reference to the Court Almoner Extraordinary.]
[Sidenote: _"Punch's" Respect for Decorum_]
Many of the broader aspects of early Victorian social life remain with
us to-day, though modified or amended. "The broad vein of plush that
traverses the whole framework of English society," as _Punch_
flamboyantly gibed, if not wholly obliterated is at least less
conspicuous. Jeames and Jenkins are dead. If we cannot say the same of
bullying at schools, "ragging" in the Army, the unnecessary expense of
uniforms and the costly pageantry of funerals--all of which were
strenuously condemned by _Punch_--it may at least be contended that
public opinion is more vigilant in arraigning and bringing to light
offences against humanity, good taste and common sense. Modern critics
have not been wanting who charge _Punch_ with prudery and squeamishness,
but this is not the place to discuss whether the popularity of the paper
would have been enhanced, or its influence and power fortified by
following the example of _La Vie Parisienne_ or of _Jugend_. Certainly
during the period under review reticence and respectability were
combined on occasion with a remarkable freedom of comment, and the
tragedy of "The Great Social Evil" was frankly admitted in Leech's
famous picture. Though an isolated reference it was worth a hundred
sermons. If _Punch_ preferred to be the champion of domesticity and
decorum in public and private life, he was reflecting an essential
feature of the age--a feature which no longer exists. It was an age of
patriarchal rule and large families. Nothing strikes one more in
turning over the pages of old numbers of _Punch_ than the swarms of
young people who figure in the domestic groups so dear to John Leech.
The numbers, more than the precocity of the rising generation, impress
the reader. The type represented is mainly drawn from well-to-do
middle-class households, but all classes were prolific. If one needs
proof, there is the evidence of Debrett and of the tombstones in our
country churchyards.
[Sidenote: _Mr. Quiverfull_]
[Illustration: Scene: A Public-house, Bury St. Edmunds, after the Dinner
given by the Mayor of Bury to the Lord Mayor of London.
COUNTRY FOOTMAN: "Pray, Sir, what do you think of our town? A nice
place, ain't it?"
LONDON FOOTMAN (condescendingly): "Vell, Joseph, I likes your town well
enough. It's clean; your streets are hairy; and you've lots of rewins.
But I don't like your champagne; its all Gewsberry."]
[Illustration: THE GREAT SOCIAL EVIL
Time: Midnight. A sketch not a hundred miles from the Haymarket.
BELLA: "Ah! Fanny! How long have you been _Gay_?"]
[Illustration: A FRESHENER ON THE DOWNS]
THE LIBERAL PROFESSIONS
As a mirror of public opinion on the status and importance of the
learned and liberal professions _Punch_, when due allowance has been
made for his limitations, his prejudices and even his passions, cannot
be overlooked by the student of social history. A whole book has been
written on his attitude towards the Church; in another section of this
chronicle I have dealt at some length with his hostility to Pluralism,
Sabbatarianism, Ritualism, and endeavoured to show how a generally
tolerant and "hang theology" attitude was in the early 'fifties
exchanged for one of fierce anti-Vaticanism. The "No Popery" drum was
banged with great fury, and when the Roman Catholic hierarchy was
re-established in England in 1850, _Punch_ supported the Ecclesiastical
Titles Act which declared the assumption of titles connected with places
in the realm illegal and imposed heavy penalties on the persons assuming
them. This Act, passed in 1851, remained a dead letter until 1871, when
it was repealed. As for the law and lawyers the record of _Punch_ is
more consistent and creditable, and, as we have seen, he was from the
first an unflinching advocate of cheap justice and the removal of
irregularities which pressed hardest on the poor, an unrelenting critic
of barbarous and oppressive penalties. No one was too great or small to
escape his legal pillory, or to secure recognition for reforming zeal or
humane administration--from Lord Brougham and Lord St. Leonards down to
unpaid magistrates. To what has been said elsewhere it may be added that
the series of papers written by Gilbert à Beckett, under the heading of
"The Comic Blackstone," are much better than their title, for they
contain a good deal of shrewd satire and sound sense. _Punch_ had good
reason to be proud of his own legal representative, the humane and
genial Gilbert à Beckett. He welcomed Talfourd's promotion to the Bench
as an honour to letters, for Talfourd was not only the executor and
first biographer of Lamb and the author of the highly successful, but
now forgotten, tragedy of _Ion_, but his services to authors in
connexion with copyright earned for him the dedication of _Pickwick_. On
his death in 1854, _Punch's_ elegy fittingly commemorated the character
and career of one of whom, as an advocate, it was said that the wrong
side seldom cared to hear him, and who, like Hood, in his last words,
deplored the mutual estrangement of classes in English society.
[Sidenote: _The Bench and the Universities_]
On the other hand, judges who jested on the Bench, indulged in judicial
clap-trap, or encouraged the public to regard the Courts of Justice as
substitutes for theatrical entertainments, are severely handled. _Judex
jocosus odiosus_; but the type is, apparently, impervious to satire.
Another anticipation of latter-day criticism is to be found in the
remark made in 1856: "There was once a Parliament--(we do not live in
such times now!)--in which there were few or no lawyers." Even more
red-hot in its up-to-dateness is _Punch's_ sarcastic dismissal of the
cult of "efficiency" sixty-five years ago:--
_Mr. Punch's_ reverence for the business powers of so-called men of
business is not abject. The "practical men," who smile
compassionately at schemers and visionaries, are the men who
perpetually make the most frightful smashes and blunders. No
attorney, for instance, can keep, or comprehend accounts, and a
stock-jobber, the supposed incarnation of shrewdness, is the most
credulous _gobemouche_ in London.
With University authorities, professors, dons, and academics generally,
we look in vain for any sign of sympathy, save that _Punch_ condemned
the rule which then prevented Fellows from marrying. For the rest, he
looked on the older Universities as the homes of mediæval obscurantism,
stubbornly opposed to reforms long overdue. Of the two, Oxford fared the
worse at his hands on account of the Tractarian movement, Pusey, and
Newman. This antagonism was based on political and religious
divergences, not on any hostility to learning or the classical
curriculum, of which _Punch_ was a supporter, to the extent of printing
_jeux d'esprit_ in Latin and Greek in his pages. All along he was a
jealous guardian of the "illustrious order of the goose-quill," a sturdy
champion of its claims to adequate pay and official recognition, a
vigilant critic of the "homoeopathic system of rewards" adopted by the
Crown in the Civil List. References to this undying scandal are
honourably frequent in the early volumes of _Punch_. It may suffice to
quote the letter to Lord Palmerston in the summer of 1856:--
I will not, this hot weather, weary your lordship by specifying
every case, but will sum up the account as I find it divided:
To Science, Literature, and Art £275
To sundries 925
------
£1,200
Deduct sundries 925
------
£275
Due to Science, Literature, and Art 925
------
Total Civil List £1,200
Equally creditable is the reiterated plea--from 1847 onward--for the
establishment of International Copyright, to guard English authors from
the piracy of American publishers, amongst whom Putnam is singled out as
an honourable exception. It may be fairly claimed for _Punch_ that he
made very few mistakes in appraising the merits of the authors of his
time or of the rising stars. He failed to render justice to Disraeli as
a writer, and he curtly dismissed Walt Whitman's _Leaves of Grass_ as "a
mad book by an American rough." But literary values prove him
substantially right in his distaste for the flamboyant exuberance of
Bulwer Lytton, and absolutely sound in his castigation of the
tripe-and-oniony flavour of Samuel Warren's books, one of which he held
up to not undeserved obloquy under the ferocious misnomer of "The
Diarrhoea of a Late Physician." He was a veritable _malleus stultorum_
in dealing alike with the futilities of incompetent aristocrats and the
homely puerilities of Martin Tupper and Poet Close. The famous campaign
against the poet Bunn and his bad librettos goaded the victim into
reprisals in which he gave as good as he got, but the fact remains that
Bunn _was_ a bad poet, though _Punch_ quite overdid his persecution. The
nobility of Wordsworth, though the least humorous of poets, was
handsomely acknowledged; when the erection of a statue to Peel was
mooted, _Punch_ put in a claim for a similar honour to the sage of
Rydal. And though indignant with Carlyle for his defence of slavery,
_Punch_ was still ready to acknowledge "the monarch in his masquerade."
Lastly, he not only welcomed Tennyson as a master, but threw open his
columns to him to retort on his detractors.
[Sidenote: _"Punch" and "The Times"_]
[Illustration: JENKINS AT HOME]
[Sidenote: _Victorian and Georgian Journalism_]
Dog does not eat dog, but the unwritten etiquette in accordance with
which one newspaper does not directly attack another was much less
strictly observed sixty or seventy years ago. Delane, the editor of _The
Times_, exercised a greater political influence than any other
journalist before or since, and for a good many years _Punch_ acted as a
sort of free-lance ally of the great daily,[23] drawing liberally from
its columns in the way of extracts and illustrations, and, according to
his habitual practice, underlining its policy while pretending to be
shocked at it. Several of the men on _Punch_ were contributors to _The
Times_. Gilbert à Beckett's name stands first in the list of the
principal contributors and members of the staff of _The Times_ under
Delane given in Mr. Dasent's biography. Yet I have searched the pages of
the biography and the index in vain for a single reference to _Punch_.
None the less the relations of the two papers were close and cordial,
and "Billy" Russell, the _Times_ war correspondent and unsparing critic
of mismanagement in the Crimea, had no more enthusiastic trumpeter than
_Punch_. But the great gulf in prestige and power between _The Times_
under Delane and the rest of the London Press is indirectly but
unmistakably shown in _Punch's_ habitual disrespect for most of his
other contemporaries. In another context, I have quoted examples of his
flagellation of the _Morning Post_--the only paper, by the way, which
supported the _Coup d'État_; but two masterpieces of malice may be
added. In 1843, _à propos_ of "Jenkins's" incurably unctuous worship of
rank, _Punch_ observes: "If the reader be not weeping at this, it is not
in the power of onions to move him." And again, a little later on in the
same year, _Punch_ compares the "beastliness" of Jenkins, "the life-long
toad-eater," with the "beastly fellow" denounced in the _Morning Post_
for swallowing twelve frogs for a wager! _Punch_ was not content with
identifying the _Morning Post_ with the imaginary personality of
Jenkins, the super-flunkey, but was also responsible for re-christening
the _Morning Herald_ and the _Standard_--Conservative morning and
evening papers which, until 1857, belonged to the same proprietor--Mrs.
Gamp and Mrs. Harris. The _Standard_ retaliated by calling _Punch_ the
"most abject of all the toadies of _The Times_," and accusing it of
libelling "the young gentlemen of Eton" and the Queen. By an unconscious
compliment _Punch_ was bracketed with the _Examiner_, the ablest and
most independent of the weeklies, as _The Times_ was of the dailies, for
its disloyalty to the Crown. In the war of wits which ensued and was
carried on for several years, all the honours rested with _Punch_. But
these controversies belong rather to the domestic history of _Punch_;
and _Punch's_ friendly relations with the _Daily News_, of which Dickens
was the first editor, must be somewhat discounted by the facts that
Douglas Jerrold was an intimate friend of the novelist, who occasionally
dined with the _Punch_ staff; that Paxton, one of _Punch's_ heroes,
exerted all his great influence on behalf of the new daily; and finally,
that Bradbury and Evans were, at the time, the publishers of Dickens, of
_Punch_, and of the _Daily News_. The journalism of the 'forties and
'fifties presents curious analogies with and divergences from the
journalism of to-day. _Punch_ is never weary of girding at the cult of
monstrosity and sensationalism, the disproportionate amount of space
devoted to crime and criminals and _causes célèbres_, the habit of
burning the idols of yesterday, the nauseating compliments paid to
statesmen after death by those who had maligned them in their lifetime.
Many of the least reputable exploits of Georgian journalism were
anticipated in early Victorian days. Criticism was franker, more
outspoken, and less restrained by the law of libel, and _Punch_ always
stood out within reasonable limits for the liberty of the Press. When an
Edinburgh jury gave a verdict against the _Scotsman_ in the famous case
brought by Duncan MacLaren in 1852, _Punch_ compared them to Bomba, and
congratulated the Scottish gentlemen who defrayed the _Scotsman's_ costs
and damages. He regarded it as a righteous protest against a verdict
which threatened "to make it impossible to express contempt at
political apostasy, disgust at the abandonment of principles, or
indignation at any coalition, however disreputable, without the danger
of being brought before a jury." The _Scotsman_ was then edited by
Alexander Russel, the most powerful, original, and enlightened of Scots
journalists. Russel, for the last twenty years of his life, dominated
the _Scotsman_ as Delane dominated _The Times_. But it was, in the main,
a righteous and benevolent dictatorship. "What made every one turn with
alert curiosity to _The Times_ in Delane's day was that nobody knew
beforehand which side he would take on any new question." [24] And much
the same might be said of Russel. No such curiosity is possible to-day.
There has been a great levelling up of journalism from the bottom, and a
great levelling down from the top. In the old days the gap between men
like Delane and Russel and the penny-a-liners was greater than any gap
that now exists in the profession. Not the least of their distinctions
was the fact that they both died without even a knighthood to their
names. Fifty years later neither of them could have held his post for a
fortnight. It is to the credit of _Punch_ that he recognized the value
of their independence and emulated it in his own sphere. He played his
part manfully in helping to kill the old flunkey-worship of rank, but
could not prevent the reincarnation of "Jenkins" in the modern
sycophantic worshipper of success--no matter how achieved. The
excellence of provincial journalism--not yet exposed to the competition
of the cheap London press--is attested by _Punch's_ frequent citations,
but he did not overlook its ineptitudes, some of which happily remain to
refresh our leisure.
[Footnote 23: On the occasion of _Punch's_ Jubilee, in 1891, _The Times_
remarked: "May we be excused for noting the fact that he (_Punch_) has
generally, in regard to public affairs, taken his cue from _The Times_?"
That was substantially true of _The Times_ under the old _régime_ when
Delane was editor. Mr. Herbert Paul, himself a strong Liberal, writes in
his _History of Modern England_ that "Delane's chief quality was his
independence." Mr. Dasent, in his biography, gives good grounds for his
assertion that Delane was at no time what could be called a party man,
though his instincts were essentially Liberal, and notes that "if
charged with inconsistency, Delane would merely remind his critics that
_The Times_ was the organ of no party, and that every issue was complete
in itself."]
[Footnote 24: _Delane of "The Times,"_ by Sir Edward Cook, p. 281.]
[Sidenote: _Quacks and Doctors_]
But of all the professions, none looms larger in the early pages of
_Punch_ than that of medicine. Here, again, a broad distinction is drawn
between the heads of the profession and those who are preparing for it;
between legitimate and illegitimate practitioners. Men like Harvey and
Jenner are extolled as heroes and benefactors of humanity at large, and
their recognition by the State is urged as a national duty. The
maintenance of the status and dignity of physicians and surgeons,
civil, naval, and military, is frequently insisted upon before and
during the Crimean War. _Punch's_ tribute to the services of Florence
Nightingale in reorganizing the nursing profession has already been
noted. He was a strenuous advocate of the disestablishment of Mrs. Gamp,
and a consistent supporter of the campaign against quackery, though
under no illusions as to the possibility of its entire extermination:--
Great outcry has been raised of late, in the _Lancet_ and other
journals, against Quacks and Quackery. Let them not flatter
themselves that it is possible to put either down. The Quack is a
personage too essential to the comfort of a large class of society
to be deprived of his vocation. He is, in fact, the Physician of
the Fools--a body whose numbers and respectability are by far too
great to admit of anything of the kind. However, as there are some
people in the world who are not fools, and who will not, when they
want a doctor, have recourse to a Quack, if they can help it, the
practice of the latter ought certainly to be limited to its proper
sphere. For this end we could certainly go rather farther than Sir
James Graham's sympathies permitted him to proceed last session. We
propose that every Quack should not only not be suffered to call
himself what he is not, but should be compelled to call himself
what he is. We would not only prevent him from assuming the title
of a medical man, but we would oblige him to take that of Quack.
This was written in 1845. The Sir James Graham referred to was one of
the blackest of all _Punch's bêtes noires_--in consequence of the
postal censorship which earned for him the title of "The Breaker (not
the Keeper) of the Seals," and prompted the savage cartoon of "Peel's
Dirty Little Boy." He never had friendly treatment at the hands of
_Punch_. Elsewhere it is insinuated that the measure played the game of
the quacks, and the history of attempts to regulate their activities in
the last seventy years goes far to justify _Punch's_ scepticism. But his
censure was not confined to quacks; he says hard things of doctors who
exploited and traded on _malades imaginaires_, and more than once
exhibits impatience at the failure of medical science to arrive at any
definite conclusions as to the causes or cure of the cholera epidemic in
1849. And when Mr. Muntz brought forward a motion in 1845 to oblige
doctors to write their prescriptions in English and put English labels
on their gallipots, the proposal was satirized as an effort to strip
medicine of its indispensable mystery. It may be not unfairly contended
that _Punch_, in his horror of humbug and condemnation of guzzling and
gormandizing, was a disciple of Abernethy. His views on diet inclined to
moderation rather than asceticism, and the new cult of vegetarianism,
which seems to have had its origin in Manchester, was satirized under
the heading, "Greens for the Green."
[Illustration: SOMETHING LIKE A HOLIDAY
PASTRYCOOK: "What have you had, Sir?"
BOY: "I've had two jellies, seven of these, eleven of these, and six of
those, and four Bath buns, a sausage roll, ten almond cakes--and a
bottle of ginger beer."]
[Sidenote: _Medical Students_]
By far the largest number of the references to medicine, however, are
concerned with the manners and customs of medical students, and if
corroboration be needed for the unflattering picture of this class which
has been drawn in _Pickwick_, the pages of _Punch_ supply it in
distressing abundance. The counterparts of Bob Sawyer and Benjamin
Allen, in all their dingy rowdiness are portrayed in a series of
articles and paragraphs running through the early volumes.
[Illustration: THE MEDICAL STUDENT]
Thus, under the heading Hospitals we read:--
The attributes of the gentlemen walking the various hospitals may
be thus enumerated:
Guy's {Half-and-half, anatomical _fracas_,
St. Thomas's {and billiards.
St. George's Doings at Tattersall's.
London Too remote to be ascertained.
University Conjuring, juggling, and mesmerism.
Bartholomew's State of Smithfield Markets.
Middlesex Convivial harmony.
Charing Cross Dancing at the Lowther-rooms.
King's College Has not yet acquired any peculiarity.
Westminster Dashes of all the others combined.
Even when all allowance has been made for the exaggeration of the
satirist, there was undoubtedly a serious warrant for this indictment,
and we may congratulate ourselves that it is a gross libel on the
medical students of to-day. They may be exuberant, noisy, and rowdy on
occasion, but they are neither grubby nor callous, and the unfortunate
episode of their treatment of Mr. "Pussyfoot" Johnson may be regarded,
we believe, as a blot on the scutcheon of their sportsmanship which the
great majority regretted and reprobated.
WOMEN IN THE 'FORTIES AND 'FIFTIES
On the position and influence of women in society _Punch_, as we have
already seen, furnishes a critical if not a complete commentary.
Extravagance, exclusiveness and arrogance are faithfully dealt with.
There is genuine satire in the picture of the fine lady who, on hearing
that her pet dog had bitten the footman in the leg, expressed the
fervent hope that it would not make the dog ill. Fashionable delicacy is
ridiculed, and _Punch_ ranged himself on the side of "S.G.O." (Lord
Sidney Godolphin Osborne) in his crusade in _The Times_ against Mayfair
matrons for not nursing their own offspring, and for employing
wet-nurses who, in turn, had to starve their own children. A few years
earlier, when the question "Can Women regenerate Society?" was seriously
discussed in the same journal, the issue is drowned by _Punch_ in a
stream of comic suggestions. There is not much to choose between the
"Dolls' House" ideal and that expressed in the sonnet printed in the
winter of 1846:--
I idolize the ladies. They are fairies
That spiritualize this earth of ours;
From heavenly hotbeds, most delightful flowers,
Or choice cream-cheeses from celestial dairies.
But learning in its barbarous seminaries,
Gives the dear creatures many wretched hours,
And on their gossamer intellects sternly showers
Science with all its horrid accessaries.
Now, seriously, the only things, I think,
In which young ladies should instructed be,
Are stocking-mending, love, and cookery--
Accomplishments that very soon will sink,
Since Fluxions, now, and Sanscrit conversation,
Always form part of female education.
[Illustration: SOMETHING LIKE A BROTHER
FLORA: "What a very pretty waistcoat, Emily!"
EMILY: "Yes, dear. It belongs to my brother Charles. When he goes out of
town, he puts me on the Free List, as he calls it, of his wardrobe.
Isn't it kind?"]
[Sidenote: _Victorian Damsels_]
But even within the ranks of the social _élite_ signs of a desire for
equal rights were not wanting. These, however, were mainly in the
direction of aping masculinity in sport and dress. In the same year we
read of the Duchess of Marlborough shooting, and a Ladies' Club is
mentioned for the first time a few months earlier. References to the
mistakenly modern idea of ladies smoking are to be found pretty
frequently even before the Crimean War, which is generally held
responsible for the introduction of the cigarette, and soon afterwards
we have a picture of a lady calmly enjoying a smoke in the train. Fine
ladies are satirized for emulating their brothers and husbands by
leaving their bills unpaid. It must be owned that woman, if she ventured
to step outside the domain of an amiable, decorative, or domestic mode
of existence met with little commendation from _Punch_. He was a strong
advocate of schools for cooking long years before the historic advice of
"Feed the Brute" appeared in his pages. But the strong-minded female
only excited his ridicule and satire, though with unkind inconsistency
he was never weary of making fun of the troubles of the helpless
"unprotected female." There are hundreds of portraits of charming
Victorian damsels in Leech's "Social Cuts," but their predominant trait
is health and amiability. Very rarely do they say anything wise or witty
or plain spoken--even under great provocation from their pert schoolboy
brothers. But we know--even from the pages of _Punch_--that Victorian
women and girls were not all of this yielding and gentle type, and it is
to his credit that in his sketch of "The Model Fast Lady," he was able
to render justice to a phase of advanced womanhood remote alike from
sentimentality and intellectualism:--
[Sidenote: _The Model Fast Lady_]
She delights in dogs; not King Charles's, but big dogs that live in
kennels. She takes them into the drawing-room, and makes them leap
over the chairs. Her mare, too, is never out of her mouth.... If
she is intimate with you, she will call you "my dear fellow"; and
if she takes a fancy to you, you will be addressed the first time
by your Christian name, familiarized very shortly from Henry into
Harry. Her father is hailed as "Governor." Her speech, in fact, is
a little masculine. If your eyes were shut, you would fancy it was
a "Fast Man" speaking, so quick do the "snobs," and "nobs," and
"chaps," and "dowdies," "gawkies," "spoonies," "brats," and other
cherished members of the Fast Human Family run through her loud
conversation. Occasionally, too, a "Deuce take it," vigorously
thrown in, or a "Drat it," peculiarly emphasized, will startle you;
but they are only used as interjections, and mean nothing but
"Alas!" or "Dear me!" or, at the most, "How provoking!"
The MODEL FAST LADY is not particularly attached to dancing. She
waltzes as if she had made a wager to go round the room one hundred
and fifty times in five minutes and a quarter. If any one is pushed
over by the rapidity of her Olga revolutions, she does not stop,
but merely laughs, and "hopes no limbs are broken."
By the bye, if she has a weakness, it is on the score--rather a
long one--of wagers. She is always betting. It must be mentioned,
however, that she is most honourable in the payment of her debts.
She would sell her _Black Bess_ sooner than levant.
THE MODEL FAST LADY has, at best, but a superficial knowledge of
the art of flirting. Compliments, she calls "stuff"; and sentiment
"namby-pamby nonsense." She likes a person to be sensible; and has
no idea of being made a fool of.
At a picnic she is invaluable. When your tumbler is empty, she'll
take Champagne with you--that is to say, if you're not too proud.
You may as well fill her glass; she has no notion of being cheated.
Here's better luck to you! and to enforce it, she runs the point of
her parasol into your side.
She dislikes smoking? Not _she_ indeed; she's rather fond of it. In
fact, she likes a "weed" herself occasionally, and to convince you,
will take a whiff or two. Her forefinger is not much needle-marked,
and she laughs at Berlin wool, and all such fiddle faddle. She has
a pianoforte, but really she has no patience to practise. She can
play a short tune on the cornet-à-piston.
Literature is a sealed pleasure to her, though it is but fair to
state she reads _Bell's Life_, and has a few volumes in her bedroom
of the _Sporting Magazine_. She knows there was a horse of the name
of _Byron_.
The FAST LADY rather avoids children. If a baby is put into her
hands, she says, "Pray, somebody, come and take this thing, I'm
afraid of dropping it." She prefers the society of men, too, to
that of her own sex.
Her costume is not regulated much by the fashions, and she is
always the first to come down when the ladies have gone upstairs to
change their dress.
Her greatest accomplishment is to drive. With the whip in one hand
and the reins in the other, and a key-bugle behind, she would not
exchange places with the Queen herself.
With all these peculiarities and manly addictions, however, the
FAST LADY is good hearted, very good natured, and never guilty of
what she would call "a dirty action." Her generosity, too, must be
included amongst her other faults, for she gives to all, and
increases the gift by sympathy. She is always in good humour, and,
like gentle dulness, dearly loves a joke. She is an excellent
daughter, and her father dotes on her and lets her do what she
likes, for "he knows she will never do anything wrong, though she
is a strange girl." In the country she is greatly beloved. The poor
people call her "a dear good Miss," and present their petitions and
unfold all their little griefs to her. She is continually having
more presents of pups sent to her than she knows what to do with.
The farmers, too, consult her about their cows and pigs, and she is
the godmother to half the children in the parish.
Her deficiencies, after all, are more those of manner than of
feeling. She may be too largely gifted with the male virtues, but
then she has a very sparing collection of the female vices. Nature
may be to blame for having made her one of the weaker vessels, but
imperfect and manly as she is, she still retains the inward
gentleness of the woman, and many fine ladies, who stand the
highest in the pulpits of society, would preach none the less
effectively if they had only as good a heart--even with the
trumpery straw in which, like a rich fruit, it is enveloped--as the
MODEL FAST LADY.
[Illustration: FAST YOUNG LADY (to Old Gent): "Have you such a
thing as a lucifer about you, for I've left my cigar lights at
home."]
This was written seventy years ago, but within the last decade we have
seen Miss Compton frequently impersonating _rôles_ of which the leading
traits were, in essentials, identical with those of the Model Fast
Lady. The model woman, married or unmarried, as represented by the
writers and artists of _Punch_, was feminine, kindly, but colourless,
though the "deviations from the norm" are not overlooked--the
lion-huntresses of Belgravia; thrusting matrons; willing victims of the
social tread-mill and the "petty decalogue of Mode"; cynical
high-priestesses of the marriage market.
When we turn to the higher education of women generally the attitude
assumed is nearly always one of mild chaff. _Punch_ refused to take it
seriously, and propounded his own scheme for a female university, in
which the fashionable accomplishments are enumerated in detail:--
French and Italian as spoken in the fashionable circles, music,
drawing, fancy-work, and the higher branches of dancing, will form
the regular _curriculum_. A minor examination on these subjects, or
a "Little Go," will be instituted before the Spinstership of Arts
can be tried for. The examined shall be able to "go on" anywhere in
"Télémaque," or in the conversations in Veneroni's Grammar; to play
a fantasia of Thalberg's; to work a pair of slippers in Berlin
wool; and to dance the Cachuca and Cracovienne.
For the degree of Spinster, the candidate shall be examined in
various novels by Paul de Kock, Victor Hugo, Balzac, and others;
also in the _libretto_ of the last new opera. She shall be able to
play or sing any of the fashionable pieces or airs of the day, and
shall give evidence of an extensive acquaintance with Bellini,
Donizetti, Labitzky, and Strauss. She shall draw and embroider, in
a satisfactory manner, various fruits, flowers, cottages and a
wood, Greeks and Mussulmen. Lastly, she shall dance, with
correctness and elegance, a "pas de deux" with any young gentleman
who may be selected for the purpose.
There shall be likewise, with respect to music and dancing, an
annual examination for honours. The candidates shall evince a
familiarity with the most admirable feats of Taglioni, and the
Ellslers, and with the most difficult compositions of Herz, Czerny,
and Bochsa; though if they like they may be allowed to take up, in
preference, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Weber.
These examinations shall be called respectively the Musical and the
Dancing Tripos. No one shall be admissible to the latter who has
not taken honours in the former. The gradations or distinction
shall be as follows: In the Musical Tripos the foremost damsel
shall be entitled the Senior Warbler; next shall follow the Simple
Warblers; the Bravissimas shall come next; then the Bravas; and
finally those who barely get their degree.
The first dancer shall be denominated La Sylphide; after her shall
be ranked the Sylphs; next to these the first and second Coryphées;
and lastly, as before, the merely passable.
[Illustration: MISS WALKER: A FEMALE POLITICIAN, 1842]
[Sidenote: _Women and Politics_]
This article is fairly typical of the attitude of _Punch_ towards what
we now call "Feminism"--a term so new that in the _New English
Dictionary_ it is dismissed in half a dozen words as a rare word meaning
"the qualities of females"! That definition, however, was given in 1901.
Now it would have to be revised to include the movement for political
emancipation, economic independence, and admission to the professions.
References to female politicians begin in the third volume, where we
find the very unsympathetic and even acid sketch here given of Miss
Walker, "the female Chartist." Eight years elapsed before ladies were
admitted to the gallery of the House of Commons, though, even then,
carefully screened from view by the metal work of the "Grille," an
Orientally obscuring device which lasted till Georgian days. The
possibility of their appearing on the floor of the House is never
seriously contemplated; the "Parliamentary female" included amongst the
"ladies of creation" in the _Almanack_ for 1852 is modelled on Mrs.
Jellyby--_Bleak House_ had been coming out serially from March, 1852,
onwards. The pioneers of the invasion of the professions hailed from
America. Miss Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D., of Boston,[25] is mentioned in
1848, and in the following year _Punch_ welcomed the innovation in
verse:--
AN M.D. IN A GOWN
Young ladies all, of every clime,
Especially of Britain,
Who wholly occupy your time
In novels or in knitting,
Whose highest skill is but to play,
Sing, dance, or French to clack well,
Reflect on the example, pray,
Of excellent Miss Blackwell!
For Doctrix Blackwell--that's the way
To dub in rightful gender--
In her profession, ever may
Prosperity attend her!
_Punch_, a gold-handled parasol
Suggests for presentation,
To one so well deserving all
Esteem and admiration.
[Footnote 25: Miss Blackwell, as we learn from an _In Memoriam_ notice
in _The Times_, was born in Bristol on February 3, 1821, died at
Hastings in 1910, and was buried at Kilmun, Argyllshire. She is there
described as "the first woman doctor."]
[Sidenote: _The Bloomer Craze_]
[Illustration: BLOOMERISM--AN AMERICAN CUSTOM]
_Punch's_ commendation rather declines in dignity in the last stanza.
But we are hardly prepared for his condemnation of women doctors in 1852
merely on the illogical ground that they were unfitted to walk the
hospitals or use the scalpel. The better training of nurses had been
urged before the days of Florence Nightingale; _Punch_ appreciated the
gossiping humours of Mrs. Gamp, but he was very far from regarding her
as a ministering angel. To the "strong-minded female," however, he had a
strong antipathy, and in his pictures rather ungenerously emphasized the
unloveliness, even the scragginess, of the advocates of women's rights.
The famous Amelia Jenks Bloomer was a vigorous suffragist and temperance
reformer, but _Punch_ was only concerned with her campaign on behalf of
"trouserloons." "Bloomers" were a constant theme of comment in pantomime
librettos; they were adopted by some barmaids; and a "Bloomer Ball" was
actually held in the year 1851. This earliest form of "rational" dress
for women was, however, banned by Mayfair. The divided skirt, many years
later, was more fortunate in having a Viscountess for its chief
advocate. _Punch_ is not only concerned with feminine dress-vagaries. He
makes a semi-frivolous suggestion of the appointment of a Poetess
Laureate, and the "Letters from Mary Ann," though they form a new
departure and indicate an increased readiness to treat the claims of
women from the women's point of view, cannot be regarded as a
whole-hearted contribution to the cause. Women were already knocking at
the door of other professions. In 1855 we find references to ladies at
the Bar in America and women preachers in Methodist chapels in England.
The first Exhibition of Women Artists is noticed in July, 1857.
_Punch's_ anticipation of women policemen in 1851 was probably prompted
not by a desire to see the innovation realized, but merely served as a
means of guying bloomerism. The female omnibus conductor is another
piece of unconscious prophecy, as she was imaginatively represented as
being in charge of 'buses for ladies only, to relieve male passengers
from the pressure of voluminous dresses and redundant parcels. But while
_Punch_ was an opponent of woman suffrage and, at best, a lukewarm
supporter of woman's demand for professional employment, he was--as we
have shown in other sections of this survey--at least a persistent
advocate of the reform of the Divorce Laws--and unwearied in his
exposure of the hardships and sufferings of underpaid governesses,
sweated sempstresses, and women-workers generally. Brutal assaults on
women were, in his view, altogether inadequately punished by fine. He
was alive to their wrongs if not to their "rights," and the sneers of
some of his contemporaries at the Women's Petition in 1856 moved him to
indignation:--
THE CRY OF THE WOMEN
Now, this petition or lamentation--in which _Mr. Punch_ gives
willing ear to the cry of weakness and unjust suffering--has been
rebuked, pooh-poohed, pished and fiddle-de-dee'd; but in these
scoffings _Mr. Punch_ joineth not. He cannot, for the life of him,
say, with certain editorial porcupines of the male gender, "Of what
avail these lamentations of lamenting women, whose cries are
foolishness? Wherefore should women at any time lift up their
voices; when is it not manifest from the beginning that women were
created to sing small? And finally, if women be beaten by savages,
and robbed by sots, what of it? It is better that women should be
beaten and crouch in the dust--it is better they should be robbed
and sit at home, than go and petition Parliament."
[Sidenote: _"Punch" Champions Horatia_]
He espoused the cause of humble heroines, of the neglected widows or
orphans of heroes and benefactors like a true knight errant. Elsewhere
we have told of his exertions on behalf of Mother Seacole, the brave old
sutler in the Crimea, for whose benefit he started a special fund. The
scurvy treatment of the widow of Lieutenant Waghorn, the pioneer of the
Overland Route, who wore himself out in a work of national importance,
moved him to righteous indignation. She was given a pension of £25,
afterwards increased to £40.
But none of these palpable wrongs to women stirred _Punch_ so deeply in
these years as the tardy and meagre discharge of the nation's debt to
Nelson in respect of his daughter Horatia. To this particular bit of
narrow-mindedness he recurs again and again in the years 1849 to 1855,
when he sums up what had been done to liquidate the debt:--
NELSON'S DAUGHTER AND GRANDCHILDREN
An advertisement in _The Times_ tells the world that the eight
children of Nelson's daughter Horatia--Nelson's grandchildren--are
"more or less provided for." Perhaps a little less than more; but
let that pass. At length a long, long standing debt has been paid,
or rather compounded, at something less than nineteen shillings in
the pound. The Government, as the Government, has done nothing. The
stiff, whalebone virtue that set up the back of Queen Charlotte
against Nelson's daughter--George the Third thought Nelson's
funeral had too much state in it for a mere subject; such pomp "was
for kings"--still kept the Government aloof from all help of
Horatia and her children. At length, however, the press spoke out.
The "ribald press" for a time laid aside its ribaldry, and
condescended to champion the claims of Nelson's daughter upon
Nelson's fellow-countrymen. Well, something has been done; and thus
much in explanation we take from the advertisement in question:--
"The eight children of Horatia, Mrs. Ward, are all now, more or
less, provided for. Her eldest son has been presented to the living
of Radstock by the Dowager Countess of Waldegrave; the second son
had been previously appointed by Sir W. Burnett Assistant-Surgeon
in the Navy; to the third, Lord Chancellor Cranworth has given a
clerkship in the Registry-Office; the fourth son received a Cadetcy
from Captain Shepherd; His Royal Highness Prince Albert conferred a
similar appointment on the youngest son; and Her Majesty has been
graciously pleased to settle upon the three daughters a pension of
£300 per annum. To this last result the exertions of the late Mr.
Hume, M.P., mainly contributed. Messrs. Green, of Blackwall, and
Messrs. Smith, of Newcastle, conveyed the two Cadets to India free
of expense."
To this may be added a "small cash balance" paid to Mrs. Ward, "after
investing £400 in the funds." Altogether some £1,427 have been
subscribed in the cause of Nelson's daughter. We state the sum, and will
not pause to calculate whether the amount be the tenth of a farthing or
even a whole farthing in the pound, for which England is Nelson's
debtor. Let us anyway thank those who have helped Horatia's children.
They have all done well, from the Dowager Countess to the Queen, ending
with the prince ship-owners of Blackwall and Newcastle. Their ships will
not have the worst fortune of wreck or storm for having borne,
passage-free, the grandsons of Nelson to their Indian work. Let us, too,
pause to thank the shade of Joseph Hume--the strong, sound, kind old
heart! Joseph, who "mainly contributed," with those earnest, honest
fingers of his to undraw the royal purse-strings, so that the three
grand-daughters may now keep the wolf from the door, as their immortal
grandfather kept the foe from the "silver-girt isle."
We omit the bitter words in which _Punch_ heaps scorn on Nelson's
brother, "the first parson Lord Nelson," because the odious charges
there made cannot be substantiated. This was not the only occasion on
which _Punch's_ zeal was disfigured by the vehemence of his
partisanship. But we cannot blame him for his jubilation over the
thrashing of General Haynau, the woman-flogger, by the draymen and
labourers at Barclay's Brewery on the occasion of his visit to London in
1850, or for the vigour with which he scarified the papers who found
excuses and parallels for Haynau's ferocity in the military exigencies
of the Peninsular War.
[_Sidenote: Slavery in America--and England_]
Foremost amongst _Punch's_ heroines in the 'forties and 'fifties were
Jenny Lind, the Swedish, and Florence, the English Nightingale, but of
these mention is made elsewhere. In general, the personalities of
notable or notorious women were not unfairly exploited in the pages of
_Punch_. The conspicuous isolation of Miss, afterwards Baroness, Burdett
Coutts, in virtue of her great wealth, suggests in 1846 the problem,
Whom will she marry? which was not settled until 1881. Less restraint is
shown in dealing with the arrival in England, after practically ruling
Bavaria for more than a year, of the meteoric adventuress, Lola
Montez,[26] and with her marriage with a young Cornet in the Life Guards
in July, 1849. Another visitor, of a very different sort, was the famous
Mrs. Beecher-Stowe,[27] author of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, whose sojourn in
England in 1853 brought the question of slavery in America into social
prominence and led to the presentation of the "Stafford House Address,"
initiated by the Duchess of Sutherland, to the women of America. The
appeal was not well received, being answered by the "Address of many
thousands of the women of the United States," who pointed out the
degraded conditions in which the poor in England lived. Two wrongs do
not make a right, but there was excuse for the retort. The Southern
planters were not all Legrees. Let it be added that, in his indignation
at the inadequate sentences passed on wife-beaters, _Punch_ did not fail
to pillory cruel mothers who tortured or neglected their children. In
the autumn of 1856 he contrasts the sentence of four years on a woman
who had tortured her daughter to death with that of fifteen years on a
man for mutilating a sheep. Already the problem of the numerical
disparity of the sexes and the hard case of the "superfluous woman" had
begun to attract attention, and emigration was preached as a panacea. To
what has been written elsewhere on the remedy and _Punch's_ belief in
it, we may add his remarks on "Our female supernumeraries":--
_The Cynical View_:--Wherever there is mischief, women are sure to
be at the bottom of it. The state of the country bears out this old
saying. All our difficulties arise from a superabundance of
females. The only remedy for this evil is to pack up bag and
baggage, and start them away.
[Footnote 26: The stage name of Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert,
daughter of an English officer, born at Limerick in 1818, the favourite
of the old King Ludwig of Bavaria; dancer, actress, author, lecturer,
who died in New York "sincerely penitent" in 1861.]
[Footnote 27: See the _Examiner_ and _Punch_. The following
advertisement in the _Examiner_ will be read with interest:--"The
arrival of Mrs. Beecher-Stowe has given an impetus to the demand for all
Stephen Glover's compositions connected with _Uncle Tom_: 'The Sea of
Glass,' Eliza's song 'Sleep, our child,' 'Eva's Parting Words,' and
Topsy's song 'I'm but a little nigger girl.'"]
_The Alarmist View_:--If the surplus female population with which
we are overrun increases much more, we shall be eaten up with
women. What used to be our better half will soon become our worse
nine-tenths; a numerical majority which it will be vain to contend
with, and which will reduce our free and glorious constitution to
that most degrading of all despotisms, a petticoat government.
_Our Own View_:--It is lamentable that thousands of poor girls
should starve here upon slops, working for slopsellers, and only
not dying old maids because dying young, when stalwart mates and
solid meals might be found for all in Australia. Doubtless they
would fly as fast as the Swedish hen-chaffinches--if only they had
the means of flying. It remains with the Government and the country
to find them wings.
[Sidenote: _The Worm Turns_]
_Punch's_ chivalry to women is beyond question, but it was not
untempered by a certain condescension. Throughout these years--with rare
exceptions--he remains faithful to the old assumption that no woman
could have a sense of humour. Grown-up sisters are frequently
represented as being unmercifully chaffed by small brothers without
apparently having the slightest power of effectual rejoinder. And this
defect is shown in the pictures, where the women are exceedingly
pleasant to look at, but nearly always quite expressionless. Yet in
moments of generous expansion _Punch_ was capable of crediting them with
extremely damaging criticism of their lords and masters. The high-water
mark of his sympathy with female emancipation in these years is to be
found in the homely remonstrances of "Mrs. Mouser" in "A Bit of my
Mind":--
... Well, the hypocrisy of men all over the world, especially the
civilized!--for, after all, the savages are really and truly more
of the gentlemen. They mean what they say to the sex, and act up to
it; they don't call the suffering creatures lilies, and roses, and
angels, and jewels of life, and then treat 'em as if they were
weeds of the world, and pebbles of the highway. But with civilized
nations--as I fling it at Mouser--they all of 'em make women the
sign-post pictures of everything that's beautiful and behave to the
dear originals as if they were born simpletons. "Look at Liberty,
Mr. Mouser," said I, "look, you want to make Liberty look as lovely
as it can be done, and what do you do? Why, you're obliged to come
to women for the only beautiful Liberty that will serve you. You
paint and stamp Liberty as a woman, and then--but it's so like
you--then you won't suffer so much as a single petticoat to take
her seat in the House of Commons. And next, Mouser"--for I would be
heard--"and next, you want the figure of Justice. Woman again.
There she is, with her balance and sword, as the sort of
public-house sign for law, but--is a poor woman allowed to wear
false hair, and put a black gown upon her back, and so much as once
open her mouth on the Queen's Bench? May she put a tippet of ermine
on herself--may she even find herself in a jury? Oh, no: you can
paint Justice, and cut her in stone, but you never let the poor
thing say a syllable."
[Illustration: "Are you going?"
"Why, ye-es. The fact is that your party is so slow and I am weally so
infernally bored, that I shall go somewhere and smoke a quiet cigar."
"Well, good-night. As you are by no means handsome, a great puppy, and
not in the least amusing, I think it is the best thing you can do."]
FASHION IN DRESS
It is a noteworthy sign of the times that between 1841 and 1857 the
specific references to the dress of men in the text of _Punch_ are much
more numerous than those dealing with the vagaries of female attire. The
balance inclines in the contrary direction in the pictures which, when
tested by old daguerreotypes and the contents of family albums, form a
substantially correct and illuminating commentary on the evolution of
fashion in women's dress. So we begin with the ladies, with the double
proviso that Leech and Doyle and their brother artists on _Punch_ were
not fashion-plate designers, and that the charms and extravagances of
the modish world which they depicted were drawn mainly from the
Metropolis. _Punch_ was a Londoner, even a Cockney, and throws little
light on the social life of the provinces.
[Sidenote: _The Breadth of the Fashion_]
[Illustration: EASIER SAID THAN DONE
MASTER OF THE HOUSE: "Oh, Fred, my boy--when dinner is ready, you take
Mrs. Furbelow downstairs!"]
[Illustration: GRAND CHARGE OF PERAMBULATORS--AND DEFEAT OF SWELLS]
[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM AN UNPUBLISHED NOVEL]
[Sidenote: _Aids to Beauty_]
To speak roughly, fashion in women's dress is subject to two great
alternating influences--in the direction of elongation or of lateral
extension. In the 'forties and 'fifties the tendency was steadily in the
second direction and away from the slim elegance which has been the aim
of the modistes of recent years. Long, "mud-bedraggled" dresses are, it
is true, condemned in 1844, but width rather than length was the
prevailing feature. It was the age of flounces, and this expansive
tendency culminated, in the mid-'fifties, in the reign of the crinoline,
against which _Punch_ waged for many years a truceless but, as he
himself admitted, a wholly ineffectual warfare. The first indication of
the coming portent is to be found in the _annus mirabilis_ of 1848, when
an "air-tube dress extender" is shown in a picture. This, however, was a
single hoop and comparatively modest in its circumference. The
crinoline, in its full amplitude, did not invade London until 1856.
Thenceforward, hardly a number is free from satire and caricature of
this exuberant monstrosity, and the inconvenience caused in theatres,
drawing-rooms, in the parks and public vehicles, and in the streets.
What with the bath-chairs of invalids, the ladies' dresses, and the
children's perambulators, we read in 1856, that "it amounts almost to an
impossibility nowadays to walk on the pavements." People were now
dressed "not in the height, but the full breadth of the fashion." The
structure of the machine, with its whalebone ribs and inflated tubes,
was revealed in all its mammoth dimensions. It was denounced alike as an
absurdity and as a danger, but satire and warnings were equally
powerless to abate the nuisance. But the crinoline was only the most
conspicuous and culminating example of a tendency to superfluous
clothing and a semi-Oriental muffling-up of the female form, against
which _Punch_ has lived to see a most acute and wholesome reaction. A
sentimental "Buoy at the Nore" writes to put on record a protest against
the enormous sunbonnets which covered up the "dear heads" of beauties on
the Ramsgate sands. In those days the use of cosmetics and pigments was
far less general; veils and bonnets and sunshades, notably the
projection aptly nicknamed the "Ugly," were in great demand. The
resources of civilization were employed to preserve complexions rather
than to supply artificial substitutes. So we find _Punch_ in 1855
describing with much gusto a young lady at the seaside wearing: (1) A
huge, round hat doubled down to eclipse all but her chin, (2) an "Ugly"
of similar magnitude, (3) a veil, and (4) a parasol. These huge, round
hats, like shallow bowls, were worn by little girls, who were often
dressed like their parents with flounces and voluminous skirts. But
extremes meet, and along with the monstrous seaside hats--big enough to
be used as a substitute for an archery target by undisciplined younger
brothers--small bonnets, worn on the back of the head, and tiny parasols
were in vogue in 1853. A certain masculinity of attire was affected by
young ladies of sporting tastes--in the way of waistcoats and ties for
example--but the fashionable world set its face as a flint against
anything in the way of rational dress reform. In 1851 we find one of the
earliest instances in _Punch_ of the use of the word "æsthetic" in
connexion with costume, where in an imaginary dialogue Miss Runt, a
strong-minded female, speaks of "our dress viewed as sanitary,
economical, æsthetic."[28] Mayfair had no appreciation of any of these
aspects of millinery, and "Bloomerism" never caught on with the
fashionable world.
[Illustration: WHAT MUST BE THE NEXT FASHION IN BONNETS]
[Illustration: PLAIN]
[Illustration: RINGLETS]
This was the age of flounces and crinolines; it was also the age of
ringlets. Bands and braids and hair nets are features of early Victorian
_coiffure_, but ringlets were undoubtedly the favourite mode for full
dress occasions. The fashion lasted for a good many years. You will find
it in the ballroom scene depicted by Leech in 1847, and Leech
illustrated Surtees's novel _Plain or Ringlets?_ in 1860. Of the "plain"
variety of hairdressing there are several good examples in _Punch_,
notably the head given above, with which we couple the ringleted belle
illustrated at the foot of the same page.
[Footnote 28: "Æsthetical" was noticed as early as 1847 in a dig at _New
Curiosities of Literature_, and in 1853 we read of an "æsthetic tea," at
which "the atmosphere was one of architecture, painting, stained glass,
brasses, heraldry, wood carving, madrigals, chants, motets, mysticism
and theology."]
[Sidenote: Coiffures in the Fifties]
[Illustration: ÆSTHETIC PIONEERS
MRS. TURTLEDOVE: "Dearest Alfred! Will you decide now what we shall have
for dinner?"
MR. TURTLEDOVE: "Let me see, poppet. We had a wafer yesterday--suppose
we have a roast butterfly to-day."]
In the mid-'fifties, it may be noted, it was the fashion for women to
wear gold and silver dust in their hair. In 1854 it was often dressed _à
l'impératrice_ in imitation of the Empress Eugénie, and _Punch_
satirizes as an absurdity the general adoption of a _coiffure_ unsuited
to people of certain ages, features, and positions--a wide scope for his
wit. Tight lacing is seldom noted, and in one respect the ladies of the
time were exempt from censure: high heels had not yet come in, or, if
they had, they escaped _Punch's_ vigilant eye. In the main Leech, on
whose pencil the burden of social commentary fell, was a genial satirist
of feminine foibles. Whether they were dancing or riding or bathing,
walking or doing nothing, the young women he drew were almost
invariably comely to behold. And that reminds me that the decorum of
sea-bathing in the 'fifties was promoted by the apparatus known as the
awning, attached to bathing machines. Children were handed over to the
rigours of old bathing-women as depicted in the terrifying picture
opposite.
[Sidenote: MERMAIDS AT PLAY]