[Sidenote: _The Sompting Experiment_]

In this context I may note that about this time _Punch_ frequently

dwells on the unsuitability and extravagant cost of the amusements

provided for children. In "How to Befriend the Gilded Babes" he

castigates without mercy a gentleman who had been writing on

entertainments for titled juveniles, and outlines a children's

party the cost of which is estimated at the modest figure of £250.

_Punch's_ repeated protests against the perversion of pantomimes to

suit grown-ups are too familiar to call for detailed mention, but in

connexion with youthful precocity I may mention a curious anticipation

dating from the autumn of 1905. This is a "domestic drama, composed by

an infant of ten summers who, after reaching mature years, retrieved it

from a box containing his toy theatre and copied it out," exactly as

it stood. The drama, which is entitled "The Sheep in Wolf's Clothing,"

bears all the stigmata of a _bonâ fide_ child's essay in dramatic

authorship, and foreshadows the exploits of "Daisy Ashford" without

being either so funny or so vulgar as _The Young Visiters_. _Punch_ had

always been alive to the educative value of the theatre, and it speaks

well for his vigilance that the remarkable experiment carried out in

the little village of Sompting in Sussex did not escape his notice. The

children were taught by making them act their lessons, and _Punch_ in

some whimsical verses anticipates the extension of the method to the

public schools. It is true that he does not take the experiment quite

seriously, but he does not "crab" it. It was reserved in later years

for a brilliant and enthusiastic educational reformer, Mr. E. G. A.

Holmes, to hail in the Sompting schoolmistress the "Egeria" of the new

_régime_ of elementary instruction. In less benevolent mood _Punch_

quoted in 1907 an apparently genuine letter which had appeared in the

_Children's Realm_, a paper which aimed at teaching "the higher way

of living to the young." The letter describes a small boy who was "a

very earnest vegetarian" and a super-prig into the bargain. _Punch_

was exasperated by prigs in all walks of life, and it rejoiced his

heart when Mr. Roosevelt compared President Wilson to a "Byzantine

logothete." The high-browed infant filled him with dismay, and in

1910 he illustrated the "advance in elementary culture" by a highly

imaginative account of the reply given by a very small boy who had been

asked by a lady visitor whether he enjoyed his recent birthday party:--

HENRY: "In the impression retained by the memory, shades have

ceased to count: it stands, sharply, for a few estimated and cherished

things rather than, nebulously, for a swarm of possibilities. I cut

the silhouette, in a word, out of the curious confusion of it all,

I save and fix the outline, and it is with my eye on this profiled

distinction that as a critic I speak. It is the function of the critic

to assert with assurance when once his impression has become final;

and it is in noting this circumstance that I perceive how slenderly

prompted I am to deliver myself on such an occasion upon the merits

or attractiveness of the entertainment so generously provided for the

diversion of myself and friends."

(Lady visitor before swooning has sufficient presence of mind to ring

the bell for assistance.)

[Illustration: BROTHER: "What did you say to that old chap

just now?"

SISTER: "I only thanked him for picking up my bag."

BROTHER: "My dear girl, you must learn not to be so beastly

_grateful_. It's not done nowadays."]

[Sidenote: _Punch's "Universal Hymn"_]

This is an instance of the danger of trying to kill two birds with

one stone, for the parody of Henry James's later manner distracts our

attention from the main aim of the satire. _Punch_ was more sorry for

than annoyed at the children of Chelsea, of ages from five to sixteen,

who were said in 1908 never to ask for Dickens or the _Jungle Book_

at the Free Library, but to devour works on "science, sociology, fine

arts and religion." In the same year the Sociological Society held an

exhibition of charts and plans, to show parents how to select their

children's toys "as a profound educational agency," but _Punch_ saw in

it nothing but an exhibition of the profoundest Prigmatism--to use a

word which he coined in later years. His bitterest comment on the new

spirit of the young belongs to the year 1913, when a boy of seventeen

rebukes his sister of twelve for thanking an old man for picking up her

bag. The best antidote to this spirit was furnished by the Boy Scout

movement, which grafted on to the public-school code of "playing the

game" the larger ideals of altruism and mutual-as opposed to self-help.

I have already spoken of the origin and development of what was the

greatest non-official and informal contribution to national education

of our times. Logically perhaps it ought to have been discussed in this

chapter, but in its wider implications it belongs to the social and

political history of the last twenty years.

To turn from general tendencies to the controversies which arose out

of the working of the Education Act of 1871, we find that _Punch_

was, as usual, impartially critical of all extremists, whether

clerical or secularist. Against the latter he inveighed in 1894 in his

"Universal Hymn for School Board Hymnals, adapted to modern Educational

requirements":--

Arise my soul--if soul I've got--

And, vaguely vocal, thank

For all the blessings of my lot

The--Unknown Eternal Blank!

I thank the--Streak of Azure Haze

That on my birth has smiled,

And made me, in post-Christian days,

A happy School-Board child.

I was not born, as myriads were,

In ages dark and dim,

And taught to pray a pious prayer,

Or sing a holy hymn.

I was not born a little slave

To formula and creed,

Or taught that Heaven must light the Grave,

Or God-love banish greed.

I was not born when priests might roam

And teach the childish band

To sing about Our Heavenly Home,

Or of that Happy Land!

Mere dogma muddles up the mind,

And leaves it in a mess.

Religion surely was designed

To make our freedom less.

The Conscience-Clause? It may secure

_Some_ freedom to the slave.

But Where's the sense--unless we're sure

That we a conscience _have_?

We've lots of "Standards" which we treasure,

There's one superfluous, quite,

A Standard human wit can't measure

(In Board Schools)--that of Right!

Secular matters make our joys,

And facts are our sole food.

Do we turn out _good_ girls and boys?

Good heavens! What _is_ "Good"?

Through all the periods of my life

One goodness I'll pursue;

With rare "good things" this world is rife;

I'll try to get a few.

At the close of the same year, however, _Punch_ castigates sectarian

bigots with equal vigour. He took for his text a letter by Dr. James

Martineau to _The Times_, in which that "wise and gentle teacher"

had appealed to the conflicting parties of School Board electors and

members to reconcile themselves to a peaceful co-existence on the basis

of our common Christianity. _Punch_ does not spare "secular spleen" and

"shortsighted super-thrift," but his severest criticisms are reserved

for the sectarian zealots, Anglican and Nonconformist, who had broken

up the compromise of 1871, and he concludes:--

Oh, self-elected shepherds, with your crooks,

Fighting, while round your folds the wolves are creeping!--

Pedagogues wrangling o'er your lesson-books,

Whilst your wrath rages human love sits weeping!

If of "a common Christianity"

Ye were but practical and patient teachers,

In Education's task ye might _agree_.

Now sense is asking, "Who shall teach our teachers?"

[Sidenote: _The Abortive Bill of 1896_]

[Illustration: INEXPERIENCED AND ANXIOUS YOUNG MISTRESS: "The

new housemaid, Maria, is a Roman Catholic; but I hope you will not

allow any religious controversy in the servants' hall."

COOK (with much dignity): "You needn't have any fear, my lady.

In really 'igh-class families religion is _never_ mentioned!"]

_Punch's_ comments foreshadowed the conflict that raged over the

Education Bill of 1896, which had been framed to redeem the pledge

given by the Government to aid voluntary schools. Denounced by the

Opposition as a deliberate attempt to shatter the school-board system

and promote the interest of a particular sect, while, on the other

hand, all sects were agreed that the proposed aid was inadequate;

swamped by amendments--1,238, to be precise, had been placed on the

paper when the House met in June after the Whitsuntide Recess--the

Bill was abandoned in Committee without exciting any real regret from

any party. _Punch_ chronicles its withdrawal without any comment, but

his silence cannot be interpreted as expressing satisfaction with the

existing _régime_. In 1899 he falls foul of Sir John Gorst, then the

acting head of the Board of Education, for his alleged intention of

entrusting the teaching of all other children to half-educated pupil

teachers.

The progress and passage of the much-discussed Education Act of 1902

revived _Punch's_ distrust of the so-called "friends" of the human

child. He shows Mr. Balfour on a bicycle steering a perilous and

devious course beset with obstacles, and develops the theme in a fable,

based on that of the Old Woman going to Market, in which Lord Hugh

Cecil, Mr. Bryce, Archbishop Temple, Mr. Lloyd George and Sir William

Harcourt are brought in to represent the various and conflicting

elements in the struggle. _Punch's_ moral is that "if you don't all

hurt each others' feelings a good deal, there's no chance of getting

the Education Bill through Parliament." The truth of this comment was

abundantly shown by the vehement controversy which arose over the

famous Kenyon-Slaney amendment, limiting the right of an incumbent

to give religious instruction in a Church School--a provision which

infuriated the High Anglicans and was reluctantly acquiesced in by

moderate Churchmen. _Per contra_ Dr. Percival, the Bishop of Hereford,

who voted with the Opposition, declared that the Bill had given great

strength to the Opposition to the Church in the country and tended to

destroy its spiritual influence. And Lord Rosebery, while not in favour

of the refusal of Nonconformists to pay rates, confessed that if they

submitted tamely to the enactments of the Bill they would cease to

exist politically.

[Sidenote: _A Stepping-Stone Ministry_]

_Punch_ had no sympathy with the "passive resistance" movement,

and when Mr. Lloyd George in 1904 advocated the closing of all the

elementary schools in Wales as a protest against the Education Act,

he regarded him as more desirous to serve party ends than to save the

souls of the young. In 1906 it was the turn of the Liberals to redeem

_their_ pledges, and Mr. Birrell was in charge of the measure. _Punch_

accordingly depicted him as a schoolmaster saying to the Act of 1902,

"My boy, this [the cane he is holding] can't hurt you more than it's

going to hurt me." _Punch_ evidently had no love for the new Bill, but

his satire is impartially levelled at the irreconcilable sectarian

differences of the supporters and antagonists of the measure. All this

wrangling had nothing to do with the education of children. The gradual

and inevitable transformation of the measure by the end of the year

is happily hit off in an adaptation from "Alice in Wonderland," with

Mr. Balfour as the Cheshire Cat and Mr. Birrell as Alice carrying what

_had_ been a baby, but was now a pig, as the Cheshire Cat expected.

[Illustration: "I am glad to see you come so regularly to our evening

services, Mrs. Brown."

"Yus. Yer see, me 'usband 'ates me goin' hout of a hevening, so I does

it to spite 'im."]

The Education Office in these years was the great jumping-off ground

for aspirants to higher Ministerial office, and was occupied by a

succession of "transient and (sometimes) embarrassed phantoms." Mr.

Birrell quitted Whitehall to govern Ireland from Overstrand, and in

1908 _Punch_, in his cartoon on the tardy compromise achieved by the

Church and Nonconformity, showed "Master Runciman," with his Bill,

being carried safely through the waters of strife by the Archbishop of

Canterbury and Dr. Clifford.

[Illustration: MOTHER (visiting son at preparatory school):

"Well, my darling!"

SON: "I say, Mother, don't look so ghastly pleased before all

these fellows."]

In 1905, according to the _Scotsman_ (quoted by _Punch_), the

prospective Unionist candidate for Berwick maintained before a meeting

of electors that "the only way to deal with the religious question was

to allow each denomination to provide religious teaching in school

hours _for the parents of such children as desired it_." The italics

are provided by _Punch_, who threw further light on the need for this

"vicarious religion" in an illustrated dialogue published in 1911:--

SCHOOLMISTRESS: "And am I to give the child religious

instruction?"

MOTHER: "I don't care wot yer do so long as yer don't bash

'er abaht the 'ead."

[Sidenote: _John Bull, Junior_]

Throughout this period _Punch_ was perhaps more concerned with the

youngest than with the younger generation--with the progress of the

child than with that of the ingenuous youth. Yet he was not neglectful

of the changes going on in public and preparatory schools. The picture

of "John Bull, Junior," in 1905 represents the human boy of the

public-school type as still primarily interested in pastime:--

For instance, his industry's tireless

In getting his _Wisden_ by rote;

But of Signor Marconi (the wireless)

He takes the most negligent note.

That the primary use of the cable

Is cricket, he's free to maintain--

He associates cricket with Abel,

And bats with the mention of Cain.

He can't tell the whereabouts clearly

Of Constantinople or Prague,

But he'll talk by the hour about Brearley,

He'll tell you the birthplace of Haigh.

He cannot be sure if the Hooghly's

A river, a town, or a hill;

But then upon Bosanquet's "googlies"

A volume he'd easily fill.

This was before the aeroplane and the motor had infected schoolboys

with a passion for mechanics, and the view expressed is borne out by

a suggestion made in 1907 by Sir J. J. Thomson, and duly noted in

_Punch_, that boys should go to school in holiday time and during term

time should "stay at home and learn something." A year earlier _Punch_

had very properly laid his finger on a blot in the school system--the

inadequate salaries of assistant masters. In "The Worm Turns" he had

enlarged on the protest which one of the number had registered in the

_Westminster Gazette_. It was all very well, as "Kappa" had done in

the columns of that paper, to abuse schoolmasters, but what could you

expect at the price when, at the best preparatory schools, £120 a year,

resident, was considered adequate pay for a first-class man, and things

were not much better in the public schools. Hence _Punch's_ versified

gloss, in which the much-maligned assistant master sums up the matter

thus:--

Ah, well, it may be we are all past praying for,

But in this world one gets what one is paying for,

(That seems a fairly obvious remark);

And I for one, although exposed so crushingly,

Still mean to draw my salary unblushingly--

That of a third-rate clerk.

[Illustration: UNANSWERABLE

YOUNG HOPEFUL: "'Shamefully ignorant'! Of course I'm ignorant,

Father. But then why did you send me to a Public School? I always

look upon a fellow who's learnt anything at a Public School as a

_self-educated man_!"]

_Punch_ clearly admitted that all was not well with a system in which

undue prominence was attached to the athletic prowess, and in 1909 he

pilloried an advertisement for a schoolmaster which had appeared in

the _Spectator_: "Rugby Blue required. Football is the chief subject,

but elementary Latin, English and Mathematics are also looked for." On

the other hand, _Punch_ was no believer in the commercializing of our

public schools. When Lord Rosebery in 1896 had said that "an inquiry

by Chambers of Commerce into the progress of technical and commercial

education in Germany would make our hair stand on end," _Punch_ showed

him as the Fat Boy in _Pickwick_ saying, "I wants to make yer flesh

creep." And when, in the fateful year 1914, a "Commercial Side," on

lines already laid down in many secondary schools of a different type,

was started at Bradfield College, _Punch_ sought to reduce the plan to

an absurdity by an imaginative account of its working.

[Sidenote: _School Diet_]

[Illustration: The Headmaster of Rugby is reported to have said at the

recent Conference on School Diet that "while adults should rise from

the table hungry, children should reach a sense of repletion before

rising."

HOUSE-MASTER (with pride, to Parent): "Then with regard to

food: we feed our boys to repletion five times a day, and our chef's

puddings have no equal in any school in the kingdom."]

As regards the feeding of boys at school, the change from the Spartan

_régime_ of the previous generation can be vividly illustrated from

the pages of _Punch_. Down to the close of the Victorian age, hampers

were, if not an absolute necessity, at any rate a welcome supplement

to the frugal diet provided at most schools. In 1899 _Punch_ supported

the continuance of hampers in some ironical verses inspired by a letter

in the _Daily Chronicle_ from a schoolmaster's wife. The good lady had

complained of the effect of Tuck upon the ethics of schoolboys, and

advocated ordinary school diet. _Punch_ at the time regarded this as

a counsel of stoical perfection utterly wasted on the ordinary human

boy. A very different note was sounded by the Headmaster of Rugby

in 1912, who was reported to have said at the Conference on School

Diet that "while adults should rise from the table hungry, children

should reach a sense of repletion before rising." Accordingly _Punch_

published a picture of a mother with an alarmingly obese small boy

interviewing a house-master who proudly remarks: "Then as to food, we

feed our boys to repletion five times a day, and our chef's puddings

have no equal in any school in the Kingdom." This was an exaggeration

so far as the public schools were concerned, but it was fair satire of

the sumptuousness of the fashionable and expensive preparatory school

of pre-war days. _There_ the pendulum had swung to the opposite extreme

from the meagre diet of the 'seventies, when there was no luxury at

preparatory schools and at many of the public schools the feeding was a

scandal.

On the new relations that had sprung up between boys and masters--the

"elder brother" theory--I do not find any notable mention in _Punch_.

I suspect him of adhering to the old view that it was a far higher

compliment to a master to describe him as a "just beast" than

"popular." The decline of the classical side is touched on, while

the continued inefficiency of instruction in modern languages is

delightfully satirized in the late Mr. F. H. Townsend's picture of

a young lord of creation, the centre of an adoring group of small

sisters. "Now Guy," says his mother, "tell us about the school. Is

everything all right?" "Oh, yes, Mother--except one thing." "My

darling! What is it?" "Well, I wish you hadn't got us that French nurse

to teach us the right pronunciation; it makes the other fellows laugh

so." _Punch's_ picture was true of a time now rapidly passing away,

and furnishes a valuable comment on the solution of a century-old

problem. The French master, generally a refugee in the old days, was

never accorded a proper status and very seldom recognized as one

of themselves by his colleagues. He was generally poor, and he was

a standing proof of the saying of the Latin satirist that there is

nothing more cruel about poverty than the fact that it makes people

ridiculous. Also nine times out of ten he was unable to keep order; so

that in the fullness of time headmasters found themselves confronted

by this dilemma. They had to choose between foreigners with a correct

accent who could not maintain discipline, and natives with a bad

accent who could. And in pre-war days they often decided in favour of

the latter.

[Sidenote: _Commerce at the Universities_]

[Illustration: SMITHSON JUNIOR (as the homily ends and the

real business is about to start): "Please, sir, is it sterilized?"]

_Punch_ viewed the multiplication of universities with acquiescence

rather than enthusiasm. He had been, as we have seen, a severe critic

of academic obstructives at Oxford and Cambridge, but he was entirely

opposed to their reconstruction on purely utilitarian lines. In his

view there was room for universities of different types; to standardize

them would be a blunder, almost a crime. So when a school of brewing

was established at Birmingham, he gave a forecast of Oxford in the

year 2000 A.D., completely commercialized, with the Ashmolean

transformed into the University Co-operative Stores. In 1901 a daily

paper had said that, compared with the University of Birmingham, Oxford

must seem hopelessly out of date. _Punch_ rejoined in a masque in which

the claims of the old and new universities are reviewed and contrasted,

but the last word is left to the Oxford chorus:--

Out of date and useless we,

Commerce is beyond our ken--

Let us thank the gods we be

Twenty Oxford men.

Mr. Andrew Carnegie's gift of £2,000,000 to the Scottish universities

in the same year is eulogized in the cartoon of "The Macmillion,"

but the prose comment, in which the extensions of the scheme are

foreshadowed, is not lacking in an element of irony.

Mr. Rhodes's historic bequest to Oxford is discussed in an imaginary

letter from a Cambridge to an Oxford don. The Cambridge don ridicules

the notion that it would revolutionize Oxford, convert it into the

University of the Empire, or transform the hoary old home of lost

causes into a realization of the ideals of young barbarians from the

bounding prairie or of the pipe-sucking beer-nurtured students of the

Fatherland. The new-comers would find their level and, if really decent

fellows, would do well enough. "Oxford will still remain Oxford, and

that, at any rate, we may be thankful for." Nor did the Cambridge man

anticipate any serious change in inter-'Varsity relations:--

As to ourselves at Cambridge, why, I fancy we shall be able to

rub along quite comfortably, thank you. If I may use a commercial

expression, we've got our own line of Australians and Canadians and

Americans, and even of Afrikanders, and I think we shall be able to

continue business at the old shop in the old style without any of the

new-fangled additions that Mr. Rhodes has conferred upon Oxford. I'll

wager that when fifty years are past we shall still be able to meet

you on the river, at cricket, at football, nay, even at chess and

billiards, on the same terms of average equality. And in after life we

shall still manage to compete.

This letter, by the way, was virtually a rejoinder to a set of

verses, published a few weeks earlier, in which _Punch_ indulged in

a fantastic forecast of the results of the invasion of the Rhodes

scholars--including an entire revision of the system of examinations

in accordance with the terms of Mr. Rhodes's will. The Craven would be

awarded for manliness and the Ireland for muscle:--

Then at last shall Oxford Greats men

Really be Imperial statesmen.

The sequel has shown that the views ascribed to the Cambridge don were

much nearer the mark.

[Sidenote: _The Awakening of Oxford_]

[Illustration: THE BREAKING OF THE CHARM

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY Oxford University.

THE FAIRY PRINCE Lord Curzon.

THE CHANCELLOR (after reading aloud his "Memorandum"): "Awake,

adorable dreamer!"]

In 1904 _Punch_ ranged himself unfalteringly on the side of compulsory

Greek. Oxford had decided to retain it, and _Punch_, garbed as a

Hellenic sage, appeals to Cambridge not to be outdone in loyalty to the

old faith by her sister. It is hard to avoid reading into the cartoon

"Breaking the Charm" in 1909 more than _Punch_ meant to express. Lord

Curzon, as the Fairy Prince, is seen, with his Memorandum on University

Reform, appealing to the Sleeping Beauty in Matthew Arnold's phrase,

"Awake, adorable dreamer!" Of course, the "adorable dreamer" was bound

to be pictorially represented by a woman, but recent concessions have

lent a special significance to the awakening. Strange to say, the

most powerful and eloquent impeachment of the intrusion of women into

Oxford comes from the New World; from the pen of the most brilliant of

American essayists--Mr. Paul Elmer More. "With petticoats," he writes

of Oxford, "came the world and the conventions of the world; manners

were softened, the tongue was filed, angles of originality were ironed

out; the drawing-room conquered the cloister."

_Punch's_ practical abandonment of the _rôle_ of religious

controversialist was noticed in the previous volume. In the period

under review references to the churches are for the most part confined

to the part they played in connexion with the Education Bills already

mentioned. The echoes of the "No Popery" campaign had so far died

down that, on the publication in 1898 of Mr. Wilfrid Ward's review of

Cardinal Wiseman's life, _Punch's_ notice was not merely sympathetic

but laudatory. "The storm that arose in England on his return from

Rome to England with the rank of Cardinal was sufficient to have blown

a punier man clean off the island. The Cardinal stood four square to

it and lived it down." This is a notable tribute from _Punch_, who

had blown and stormed with the best of the Cardinal's assailants. As

for the now forgotten but once notorious "Kensitite" demonstrations,

_Punch's_ attitude is seen in his advertisement printed in the same

year:--

_To Prize-Fighters and others._--Wanted, MUSCULAR CHRISTIANS

to act as sidesmen; used to _mêlées_ and capable of using their

fists. Liberal terms. Free doctor. Pensions in case of personal

injury. Apply, stating qualifications, to High Church Clerical Agency,

Kensiton, W.

_A propos_ of muscular Christians, in 1900 _Punch_ mentions that a

country curate had recently received notice to quit because though

unexceptionable in other respects, his vicar declared that "what

this parish really needs is a good fast bowler with a break from the

off." Modern clerical methods of acquiring popularity were satirized

in 1905. A Congregational minister had taken part in a theatrical

performance, and _Punch_ gave a burlesque account of a bishop appearing

at a music-hall in a travesty of _Hamlet_ for the benefit of a Decayed

Curates' Fund.

[Sidenote: _Anti-Clericalism in France_]

Bishops and deans have done wonderful things of late years, but this

particular forecast remains fortunately unfulfilled hitherto. To 1906

belongs one of the few cartoons in this period in which the relations

of Church and State are directly referred to. For this was the year

in which the French Government cancelled the Concordat and laid an

interdict on the Religious Orders. The policy found no favour from

_Punch_. In "The Triumph of Democracy" he showed a French priest,

a dignified figure, standing outside a doorway guarded by a French

soldier, and bearing the notice: "République Française. Liberté,

Egalité, Fraternité. Entrée interdite au Clergé."

[Illustration: HOSTESS: "And do you really believe in

Christian Science?"

VISITOR: "Well, you see, I've been getting rather stouter

lately, and it's such a comfort to know that I _really_ have _no

body_!"]

Sabbatarianism gave _Punch_ little or no chance, save for a mild

protest against the action of the L.C.C. with regard to the Queen's

Hall Concerts in 1898. The change is accurately reflected in the

opening lines:--

Ah! County C., why stop our glee?

For bigotry is dead;

The broader mind can nowhere find

Remotest cause to dread

An instant fall of scruples all

If Sunday's gloom should flee;

We're all agreed in word and deed,

Except the County C.

_Punch's_ occupation as an anti-Sabbatarian was practically gone by

the end of the last century. Bishops had ceased to provoke his satire

by their opulence, though the balance-sheet, issued by the Bishop

of London in 1905 to prove how hard it was to make both ends meet,

excited some good-humoured raillery. Christian Science _Punch_ left

severely alone, save for an occasional negligible or oblique reference.

His last and most forcible intervention in religious controversy was

provoked by the action of the Bishop of Zanzibar in protesting against

the administration of the Holy Communion to non-Anglican members. In

the cartoon "The Black Man's Burden" in January, 1914, _Punch_ drew

two negroes singing as a duet "Why do de Christians rage?" and this

scathing comment undoubtedly reflected the views of the great majority

of moderate Churchmen at home as well as missionaries and colonial

administrators abroad.

I have spoken elsewhere of _Punch's_ share in the Dreyfus controversy,

and may add that while laudably free from anti-Semitic partisanship, he

did not refrain from satirizing the ostrich-like attitude of the Jews

in transition who thought that the signs of race could be obliterated

by a change of name.

Reverence and admiration in full measure inspire the tribute to the

wise and sagacious Leo XIII, when he died in 1903:--

The long day closes and the strife is dumb,

Thither he goes where temporal loss is gain,

Where he that asks to enter must become

A little child again.

And since in perfect humbleness of heart

He sought his Church's honour, not his own,

All faiths are one to share the mourner's part

Beside the empty throne.

[Illustration: THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN

Refrain by natives of South Africa and Kikuyu.]

The _amende_ to Cardinal Wiseman has been already noted, and I like

to end this section with an even more striking palinode--the most

notable that had appeared in _Punch_ since his posthumous tribute to

Lincoln. _Punch_ had assailed the Salvation Army and its founder with

all the weapons at his command in the early days of that movement.

Happily he did not wait till General Booth's death to acknowledge his

error. In the autumn of 1908 General Booth and Mr. John Burns had

both been subjected to severe criticism at the Trade Union Congress,

and are shown in a cartoon standing outside the door of the meeting

saying to _Mr. Punch_: "You see before you two condemned criminals."

_Punch_ replies: "Well, I shouldn't worry about that," and they rejoin

in unison: "We don't." This was indirect commendation; there were no

reserves in the memorial verses on General Booth's death in August,

1912. _Punch_ compares him with the warrior saints of old time and

continues:--

Nay, his the nobler warfare, since his hands

Set free the thralls of misery and her brood--

Hunger and haunting shame and sin that brands--

And gave them hope renewed.

Bruised souls, and bodies broken by despair,

He healed their heartache, and their wounds he dressed,

And drew them, so redeemed, his task to share,

Sworn to the same high quest.

Armed with the Spirit's wisdom for his sword,

His feet with tidings of salvation shod,

He knew no foes save only such as warred

Against the peace of God.

Scorned or acclaimed, he kept his harness bright,

Still, through the darkest hour, untaught to yield,

And at the last, his face toward the light,

Fell on the victor's field.

No laurelled blazon rests above his bier,

Yet a great people bows its stricken head

Where he, who fought without reproach or fear,

Soldier of Christ, lies dead.

THE ADVANCE OF WOMEN

In the early 'nineties there was a penny weekly paper called _Woman_,

of a mildly "feministic" type, which took for its motto "Forward,

but not too fast." There was no reason to suspect its founders of

deliberately choosing two adjectives, each of which bore an ambiguous

meaning; taken in their literal sense they aptly epitomize the

spirit of Feminism in the early years of a phase which began with

"emancipation novels" and ended in a resort to physical force. Yet

even at the outset the more sober representatives of the movement were

being forced into the background to make way for the more strident

spokeswomen of the doctrine of equal rights. The prim spinster and

the apostles of culture were replaced by the women who were frankly

"out" to shock public opinion and flout decorum, who rode bicycles

in knickerbockers and wrote "problem" novels. The "New Woman," so

constantly referred to in these years, had many variations--athletic,

literary, worldly, but was always bent on "self-expression." The

fashionable type was caricatured in _Dodo_; the rebellious daughter

was glorified in Grant Allen's story, now only remembered in its

title--_The Woman who Did_. Ibsen was very much in the air, and his

remark that the modern daughter felt the need for "a mild kind of

_Wanderjahr_" impelled _Punch_ to discourse on "Rosamund and the

_Wanderjahr_" (a good deal "after" Miss Edgeworth's story of _Rosamund

and the Purple Jar_). His views are non-committal but apparently

unsympathetic. On the other hand, he welcomed somewhat prematurely the

admission of women to the Fellowship of the Royal Geographical Society,

recognized their skill and endurance as Alpine climbers, applauded

their adoption of the calling of gardeners, hailed the appearance

of a Women's Eight on the Thames--coached, it should be added, by

a distinguished member of his staff--and duly chronicled the first

inter-'Varsity Women's hockey match in 1894. The first illustration

of a woman bicycling in knickerbockers occurs in the same year. Under

the heading "The 'Arden-ing Process," Orlando addresses his companion:

"Tired, Rosalind?" and she replies with quite unfeminine brevity:

"Pneumatically." No attempt is made to represent the new garb as

unbecoming, as in the days of "Bloomerism," but rather the reverse.

[Illustration: THE 'ARDEN-ING PROCESS

ORLANDO: "Tired, Rosalind?"

ROSALIND: "Pneumatically."]

Towards the "New Woman" on her intellectual side, _Punch_ was decidedly

hostile. One could not find a better expression of his views than in

the large illustration, "Donna Quixote," in April, 1894. The central

figure, wearing pince-nez and waving a latchkey, is formidable rather

than repellent. Around her on the floor lie books by Ibsen, Tolstoi and

Mona Caird, and in the decorative border (which embodies her visions)

she is seen tilting at the dragon of Decorum, and smiting down the

triple Cerberus of Mrs. Grundy, "Mamma" and Chaperon. Du Maurier's

"Passionate Female Literary Types" in the same year are unlovely to

the verge of hideousness, and the legends are frankly satirical. When

"Sarah Grand" declared that Man, morally, was "in his infancy" and that

"now Woman holds out a strong hand to the Child-man," and insisted

on helping him up by "spanking proper principles into him in the

nursery," _Punch_ quoted back at her "Ouida's" statement that "the New

Woman was an unmitigated bore," and went on:--

[Sidenote: _The New Womanhood_]

There is a New Woman, and what do you think?

She lives upon nothing but Foolscap and Ink!

But, though Foolscap and Ink form the whole of her diet,

This nagging New Woman can never be quiet!

The ironical protest registered by _Punch_ against ladies who insisted

on travelling in smoking carriages and then objected to smoking, only

serves to show how far we have travelled in the last thirty years.

Another passing phase in the history of sex-antagonism is to be found

in the record of the first of many dinners at which only literary

ladies were allowed to be present. _Punch_ printed a letter signed "A

Daughter of Eve who remembers Adam," who observed that "the Literary

Ladies' Dinner of the 1st of June only needed one feature to be

absolutely perfect--the presence of Gentlemen." Whether the letter was

_bonâ fide_ or not, it probably expressed the view of the majority

of those present. The more violent the manifestations of the New

Womanhood, the more reactionary became _Punch's_ attitude. His reaction

reached a culminating point in 1894, when he painted the following

sketch of "A Modern Madame":--

She has aspirations after the impossible, and is herself far from

probable; she regards her husband as an unnecessary evil, and her

children as disturbances without compensating advantages.

She writes more than she reads and seldom scribbles anything.

She has no feelings, and yet has a yearning after the intense.

She is the antithesis of her grandmother, and has made further

development in generations to come quite impossible.

She thinks without the thoughts of a male, and yet has lost the

comprehension of a female.

To sum up, she is hardly up to the standard of a man, and yet has sunk

several fathoms below the level of a woman.

So again he reverts to his older views on Education _à propos_ of the

"Pioneers":--

Ah, learn whate'er you will, yet spare our hearts

A home-grown, feminine Baboo of Arts.

Believe it, envious maids, the men you spurn

Think little of the honours that they earn.

Too well they're taught in common sense's rules

To dwell upon their triumphs in the Schools,

And chiefly prize the Baccalaureate fur

Because, in love's young days, it pleases Her.

But you, in purpose tyrannously strong,

Get, in each effort, your perspective wrong.

Learn all you wish to learn, exult in learning,

For Hymen's torch keep midnight oil a-burning,

Bulge your fair foreheads with those threatening bumps,

Ungraceful as an intellectual mumps,

Be blatant, rude, self-conscious as you can,

Be all you feign--and imitate--in Man,

Spurn all the fine traditions of the past,

Be New or nothing--what's the gain at last?

You know as much, with hard-eyed, harsh-voiced joy,

As the shock-headed, shambling fifth-form boy;

Adding, what his sound mind would never please,

An Asiatic hunger for degrees.

True learning's that alone whereon are based

Clear insight, reason, sympathy, and taste.

Not relic-worshipping of bones long dry,

Not giving puppet-life to x and y,

And walking haughtily a fair world through

Because some girls can't do the sums you do.

Still less, the little, little world of cliques,

Where Mutual Admiration dons the breeks,

And then proceeds kind tolerant man to flout--

A petulant, unresented Barring-out.

Meanwhile our faith looks on, devoid of fear,

Facing the hatchet of the Pioneer.

Still will the storm, in Nature's potent plan,

Be temper'd to the shorn, or bearded, man.

Your sex will still be perfect in its place,

With voice of melody and soul of grace.

Pose, lecture, worry, copy as you will,

Man will be man, and woman woman still!

[Sidenote: _The Real New Woman_]

By way of reducing the "misanthropic" attitude of some of the "New

Women" to absurdity, _Punch_ reported a probably apocryphal dialogue

between two men: "I say, old man, is it true that your wife has

been asked to resign at the Omphale Club?" "Well, yes; you see, the

Committee found out that she'd been guilty of ungentlemanly conduct."

But what exasperated _Punch_ most of all was the decadent preciosity of

the irregulars who espoused the cause of the New Womanhood. One need

only mention "The Woman who Wouldn't Do," illustrated _à la_ Beardsley,

where "Yellow Book" morality is burlesqued in the phrase "marriage is

a degrading system, nurtured under the purple hangings of the tents

of iniquity." These moods of disgust seldom lasted long. _Punch_ was

no wholesale hater of modernity, and in his verses on "The Real New

Woman" frankly admitted that there was much in her to admire. One

notes a change of ideal in the absence of any mention of her cooking

qualifications; and in the admission that "she's splendid at seeing a

joke," _Punch_ acknowledges a great advance on the buxom but humourless

damsels of Leech. The first mention of a Ladies' Football Club in 1895

brings home to us the fact that what passed for prejudice in 1895

with enthusiastic advocates of sex equality has been confirmed by the

judgment of those best qualified to judge down to 1921.

_Punch's_ epigram on woman's "Asiatic hunger for degrees" represents

a passing mood rather than his general attitude to the demand. "The

lady students of the Universities," wrote _The Times_ on March 13,

1896, "have received a cruel series of rebuffs in the last few days.

On Tuesday week the Congregation of the University of Oxford refused

to admit them to the B.A. degree. On Tuesday last it followed up

this blow by rejecting all the resolutions proposed as alternatives.

Yesterday the Cambridge Senate inflicted the unkindest cut of all by

practically imitating the ungallant example of Oxford." Yet, instead

of exulting over their defeat, _Punch_ was decidedly sympathetic in

his cartoon of Minerva, with her owl in a cage, met at the gates of

the Oxford Schools by a corpulent bespectacled Don, who observes,

"Very sorry, Miss Minerva, but perhaps you are not aware that this

is a monastic establishment." One notes a certain inconsistency

in _Punch's_ condemning women for their disregard of the fine art

of gastronomy, preferring "a tray on a rickety side-table" or the

haphazard arrangements of a picnic to regularity and comfort at

meals, and almost in the same breath rebuking them for flouting the

sweet domesticities of home and indulging in extravagant pleasures in

public. Another interesting sign of the times is recorded a couple of

years later in "The Modern Woman's _Vade Mecum_"--showing a reaction

against the old notion that the blue stocking must be above any regard

for appearances. Here the governing idea is that cleverness need not

be divorced from fascination; that fine heads should be covered with

pretty toques; that pince-nez are more becoming than spectacles; and

that literary women should not neglect fashion journals or sacrifice

toilet to intellect. The allusion in the same year (1898) to a Women's

Club consisting exclusively of women who would not marry because they

could not find husbands intellectual enough to suit them, was probably

an exaggeration. But there were Feminist stalwarts who virtually

expressed that view; just as there were enthusiasts of "mixed hockey,"

then beginning to come into fashion, who may not have been entirely

uninfluenced by a matrimonial motive.

The proposal to allow women to hold municipal office, included in the

Local Government Bill, was vetoed in 1899, but not before _Punch_

had issued a pictorial forecast of a procession, headed by the Right

Worshipful the Lady Mayor, with female mace-bearer, sword-bearer, Town

Clerk and "she-rives." The Cecil family have been of late years active

in support of the Woman Suffrage Movement, but Lord Salisbury was no

feminist. In 1899 Colonel Denny introduced a Bill making the provision

of seats for shop assistants compulsory. _Punch_ describes how this

modest measure was "turned down" in the Lords on the initiative of the

Prime Minister, who scented in the concession possibilities of a revolt

of domestic servants. In 1900 the "New Woman," i.e. the heroine of the

"Woman who Did" type, is described as moribund if not defunct. The

fashion of knickerbockers went out with the century. Women chauffeurs,

however, make their appearance in 1900, and the correct designation

for them is discussed. But for a couple of years women's claims and

pretensions were largely submerged by the War. There was a strange

product much in evidence at the Mount Nelson Hotel, Cape Town, but

Punch overlooked the vagaries which were admirably satirized in a once

famous Limerick:--

There was a young lady of Berwick,

Whose conduct was highly hysteric.

She followed the guns

And distributed buns

To the men who were down with enteric.

[Sidenote: _The Housewife's Burden_]

The Club movement was spreading rapidly, and the founding of the

"Ladies' Army and Navy Club" in 1902 prompts a burlesque on the

qualifications insisted on for membership in the Ladies' Athenæum,

Conservative, Travellers' and Bachelors' Clubs. _Punch_ again sounds

the plea for the revival of domesticity in the "Prayer of a Lady

Principal" addressed to Oxford Women Students, with apologies to Mr.

Kipling:--

Take up the housewife's burden--

All ye whose schools are done,

Who let your foolish fancy dwell

On thoughts of coming fun.

Put _Games for Girls_ upon the shelf

With Jowett, Jebb, and Gow;

Be Mrs. Beeton's Homely Hints

Your _vade mecum_ now.

Take up the housewife's burden--

No lofty rule of queens,

But long and sordid service--

The slave to ways and means.

Have done with flighty folly!

Throw off your infant past!

'Tis yours to cope with butcher's bills,

To make the mutton last.

Take up the housewife's burden--

The truceless wars of peace;

Go, humour whimsy housemaids,

And wait your cook's caprice.

And when your hopes are highest

(When both ends nearly meet),

Your lord's untimely lavishness

Shall all your thrift defeat.

Take up the housewife's burden--

Ye shall not shun the call;

Nor cry too loud on Culture,

When darns and dusting pall.

Go, face the test of wifehood--

To wield the adoring rod,

And treat a Man as merely

Half baby and half god.

The then fashionable alternative is ironically extolled in an

irreverent parody of Kingsley's lines, as adapted for a Young Lady's

album:--

Be smart, dear girl, and let who will be other;

Break from the fold, not stick there like a lamb;

So shall your lot, as maid and wife and mother,

Be one Grand Slam.

An article by Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick in the _Cornhill_, on English and

Teuton domestic ideals, served _Punch_ in 1904 as the text for a ballad

comparing the thrifty German _Hausfrau_ with the extravagant English

wife. The infatuated writer sums up entirely in favour of the dainty,

decorative Dolly as against the patient, industrious, but dowdy Grisel.

Yet in the same year _Punch_ was much exercised with the inevitable

decline of chivalry:--

Doubtless the better sort would gladly nourish

Those notions which occur in Arthur's tale;

Doubtless Romance might still contrive to flourish,

Changing its knightly for its Daily Mail,

If Woman would but give our modern gallants

A livelier chance to ventilate their talents.

Men ride abroad in rubbered automobiles,

Naked of armour, bar the nauseous smell,

Not bound on any ransom save to owe bills

Contracted by some errant damosel,

So that in Carlton's Halls, superbly gowned,

She may adorn their Dinner-table Round:

But here their service ends. They fain would wrestle

With horrid dragons or a heathen crew;

Ride _ventre à terre_ to help the weaker vessel,

Behaving just as Lancelot used to do;

Only you cannot keep it up much longer

When once the weaker sex becomes the stronger.

[Sidenote: _Matrons and Militants_]

An equally interesting feature of the times was what might be

alternatively called the Revolt or the Apotheosis of Middle Age.

Perhaps the first mention of what threatened to be an unfair

competition of the matron with the maid is to be found in the verses in

1896, where we read of the modern woman:--

If married and mother she yet plays her part,

With six charming children she still must look "smart,"

For, judging by facts, what Society likes

Is a maid who is bold, and a matron who bikes.

Golf and dancing, however, were the great opportunities of the young

middle-aged women who refused to retire to the shelf as in early

Victorian days. In 1904 _Punch_ printed a story about golf, in which

a maiden aunt "scores" overwhelmingly and turns out to be a champion

player, to the confounding of her nephew and niece, a _dénoûment_

beyond imagination's widest stretch twenty years earlier.

With 1905 we plunge into the new phase of the Suffrage question. At

the outset _Punch_ was decidedly sympathetic. Note, for example, the

cartoon in which a beery working man--a "qualified voter"--addresses

a well-dressed, refined-looking woman: "Ah, you may pay rates an'

taxes, and you may 'ave responserbilities an' all; but when it comes to

_votin'_, you must leave it to _us men_!" In a brief year _Punch_ was

thoroughly estranged by the methods of the militants and their harrying

of Ministers. His "Sensible Woman" retorts on her "Shrieking Sister":

"_You_ help our cause? Why, you're its worst enemy." Raids on the House

of Commons and scenes in the Lobbies and the Ladies' Gallery drove him

in the Epilogue to 1906 to take a new line. Since in the course of

the Crusade women had descended to man's brutal level, put off their

dignity and womanliness, and become "the complete elector"--"why, then,

Madam, when you get the franchise, as you will eventually, I shall say

to myself--_Serve 'em right_." The name "suffragette" had been coined,

and came to stay for about fifteen years, at any rate; _Punch_ tried

his hand at a new variant--"the Insuffrabelles." It was still possible

to laugh at a movement which intermittently ministered to mirth; as,

for example, when a New York correspondent of a London paper wrote as

follows:--

"In the course of a sympathetic discussion on the good work done for

the cause by the Suffragettes in London at a meeting of a woman's

society for political study, Mrs. Cory, a prominent advocate of female

equality, gave a definition of a Utopian dream which woman must not

rest until she has realized. 'Knowing as I do our ideals,' said Mrs.

Cory, 'confident as I am that we shall attain them, I fix my gaze

upon the brightening future, hopefully awaiting the time when a woman

on trial for her life will be defended by a female lawyer, convicted

by a female jury' (the natural result, we presume), 'sentenced by a

female judge, consoled by a female chaplain, and executed by a female

executioner. Then, and not till then, will she have attained her

proper place in the world.'"

_Punch_, with commendable reticence, contents himself with observing,

"nothing, however, was said as to which world." In 1907 we encounter

a picture describing the embarrassment of an unfortunate man

invited to tea at a ladies' club by a lady who had forgotten that

the afternoon was consecrated to a "Down with Men" Meeting. In

"Cross-examining a Suffragist" _Punch_ dexterously manoeuvres a

witness into the admissions (1) that nothing could cause Miss Pankhurst

greater suffering than to stay idly at home while other women were

demonstrating and going cheerfully to martyrdom; (2) that the greater

the suffering, the greater the proof of faith in the Cause. Whereupon

his Lordship then delivered judgment as follows:--

That Miss Pankhurst and her family should show their faith in

the cause by suffering in the way suggested by _Mr. Punch_. That

they should stay quietly at home for a while--keep out of the

newspapers--arrange no demonstrations--go to no prison; seeing that

this would be a much truer and more effective martyrdom than anything

they had done as yet.

[Sidenote: _Argument and Ridicule_]

[Illustration: THE SPLIT

BUDDING SUFFRAGETTE: "I say, Pussy" (with intensity), "are you

a Peth or a Pank?"]

"And," continued his Lordship, waxing eloquent, "if time hangs heavy on

their hands----

"Are there no beggars at the gate,

Nor any poor about the lands?

Oh! teach the orphan boy to read,

Or teach the orphan girl to sew,

Pray Heaven for a Woman's heart,

And let the Woman's Suffrage go."

From argument _Punch_ turned to burlesque in his imaginary forecast

"The Fight for Childhood Suffrage in 1927." One cannot blame him

for making capital out of a misprint in which the various suffrage

societies were credited with "tactics that differ, but whose aims

lead to the same _gaol_." But argument and ridicule were powerless to

influence the extremists. The moderates did not always disavow the

methods of lawlessness. A highly respected and elderly peeress actually

advocated the withdrawal of all subscriptions to charitable objects

until women should be given the vote. A steady _crescendo_ in violence

marks the progress of the campaign in 1908. "How long," asks _Punch à

propos_ of "domiciliary" visits and raids, "are our Cabinet Ministers

to be made the sport of clamorous women? Cattle-driving in Ireland,

deplorable as a form of popular pastime, is a trifle compared with

this new sport of Cabinet Minister-hunting?" This new sport, however,

was only in its infancy. Meanwhile the merry game of martyrdom went

on. One day, so ran the recital of her prison experiences given by a

released Suffragette, "we organized a grand lark. We all agreed to roar

like hungry animals at dinner-time. We made a fearful noise." After

this, remarks the sardonic _Punch_, "we hope we shall hear no more

of women being devoid of a sense of humour." But even at this early

stage of the campaign _Punch_ seems to have realized that, apart from

the merits of the case, the victory would rest with the side which

made itself the greater public nuisance until its wish was granted.

Mr. Asquith is shown in the summer of 1908 with a Suffragette playing

the Beggar-maid to his Cophetua, and saying, "'This beggar-maid shall

be my Queen'--that is, if there's a general feeling in the country

to that effect." A couple of weeks later Mr. Haldane, "thinking

Territorially" as he watches a procession of Suffragettes, enviously

observes, "If I could only get the _men_ to come forward like this!" On

the whole, _Punch_ jibes impartially and genially at Suffragists and

anti-Suffragists alike. There is an ominous reference in the summer of

1908 to the remark of a stone-thrower: "It will be bombs next time,"

but pictorially, at any rate, _Punch_ was inclined to make light of the

persecution of Ministers and M.P.s.

[Sidenote: _The Coming of the "Flapper"_]

In a cartoon at the end of the year, by an inversion of the classical

legend, "Persea" (the anti-Suffragist League) is shown coming to the

rescue of Mr. Asquith as "Andromedus," while the spirit of Milton is

invoked in a mock-heroic sonnet, after Wordsworth:--

England hath need of thee: she is a den

Of roaring lions--women _versus_ men.

[Illustration: KING COPHETUA AND THE BEGGAR-MAID

THE KING (Mr. Asquith): "'This beggar-maid shall be my

Queen'--that is, if there's a general feeling in the country to that

effect."]

To 1908 also belongs _Punch's_ recognition of the advent of the

Flapper, whose intrusions and insubordinations are happily hit off in

"The New Autocrat":--

Ere hockey had shown her what sport meant,

Ere yet she grew giddy and pert,

She doted on dolls and deportment,

And only came down for dessert:

Her sisters would apprehend no sting

From one so exceedingly green,

Nor jibbed at the casual toasting

Of bashful fifteen.

Her tastes were not always considered;

She seldom got more than her share;

And parents, whenever the kid erred,

Brought suitable pressure to bear!

But gone is the rule of the hoar head;

Old age is dismissed with a grunt;

And youth's irrepressible forehead

Has come to the front!

O wormwood and gall to our women!

O torture far worse than the rack,

To find that the smartest of trim men

Are off on a different tack:

For both at the helm and the prow, too,

There lolls an unspeakable chit,

And Thirty now learns she must bow to

Fourteen and a bit!

Her locks are confined by a ribbon;

Her language is open and free;

She talks like a parrot, she's glib on

The problems that petrify me;

Her phrases are novel; to-day, what

I marvel at most are the queer

Little statements she clinches with "Eh, what!"

Tacked on to "Old dear!"

Though chaperons tell her where minxes

Are certain to go when they die,

A sequence of eloquent winks is

Her sole and sufficient reply;

Though dowagers, itching to slap her,

Would send her in tears to her bed,

The simply ineffable Flapper

Goes smiling instead!

And yet, when reflective December

Repines at the pertness of May,

Sweet solace it is to remember

She too has her time of decay:

She too, when she starts to put flesh on,

Will take a subordinate post,

While babies, devoid of discretion,

Are ruling the roast!

[Illustration: EXCELSIOR!

SUFFRAGIST: "It's no good talking to me about Sisyphus. He was

only a man!"]

The Flapper was destined to assume a more aggressive aspect in

later years--_vide_ Dr. Shadwell's indictment in the _Nineteenth

Century_--but _Punch's_ concluding reflections hold good. Her attitude

towards the Suffrage movement at this stage was perhaps not unfairly

summed up in the remark of a younger sister who declared that she did

not want women to get the vote, because she "liked hearing about the

Suffragettes."

In 1909 the policy of hunger-striking was adopted by the militants;

_Punch_ refers to it, but cannot be blamed for failing to realize the

disastrous possibilities of what proved to be perhaps the most sinister

legacy of the Suffragist extremists to the forces of disorder. In 1910

he waxes ironical over Lady Cook's suggestion that it would be wiser

for the men to capitulate at once. Their rule, she asserted, was nearly

over; but, if and when the tables were turned, women must not retaliate

but resist all attempts to humiliate and degrade men. This magnanimity

only excited _Punch's_ mirth; and the advertisement in a weekly paper:

"Lady, having quarrelled with all her friends, desires to meet another

in same position," impelled him to devise the rules for a "Mutual

Aggravation Society" for the special benefit of the more militant

Suffragettes, misogamists and man-haters. _Punch_, I may note in

passing, acknowledged the enterprise of the woman aviator, _à propos_

of an announcement in the _Daily Mail_ that already "Five women can

fly," but deplored their unsightly kit, which suggested an Esquimaux in

goggles.

[Sidenote: _Cabinet Cleavage_]

[Illustration: MILITANT SUFFRAGIST (after long and futile

efforts to light a fire for her tea-kettle): "And to think that only

yesterday I burnt two pavilions and a church!"]

To return to the Suffrage campaign, the troubles of the Prime Minister

are indicated in a cartoon showing Suffragist and anti-Suffragist

tilting at one another in the ring while Mr. Asquith, endeavouring to

get out of the way, remarks: "This is no place for me." A little later,

under the heading "Excelsior," a determined-looking Suffragette appears

as Sisyphus rolling up a huge stone labelled "Women Suffrage," and

saying: "It's no good talking to me about Sisyphus. He was only a man."

During the next three years and a half _Punch_ repeatedly illustrated

the cleavage in the Cabinet and amongst the Suffragists, and exhibited

a progressive resentment against the violence of the extremists. In

"Sermons in Stones" (1911) John Bull tells a non-militant Suffragist

that he could listen more attentively to her arguments "were it not

for these concrete arguments, which I find rather distracting," viz.,

the stones and bricks flying through the window of his house. In

"United We Differ" (1912) Mr. (now Lord) Harcourt and Mr. Lloyd George

are shown back to back on the same platform, advocating respectively

Votes and No Votes for Women, while in "Rag-Time in the House" (1913)

the cross-currents are shown in a dance of Ministers and Opposition

leaders. To the same year belongs the highly ironical cartoon "The

Majesty of the Law." Justice, blindfolded and wearing a fool's cap

labelled "Votes for Women," leans on her sword which is swathed in

the bandage of the Hunger Strike. In 1913 also occur the picture of

the militant Suffragist, an expert incendiary, reduced to despair by

her inability to light her own fire; and the dialogue on the Fifth

of November between two "burning Sapphos": "Coming to our bonfire?"

"Ra-_ther_! Whose house are you burning?"

So we come to the year 1914. When the militant campaign was at its

height, _Punch_ prophesied that women would get the vote by 1919. He

was only a year out, but his prophecy was not complimentary. It takes

the form of an account of a great procession to celebrate the triumph

of destructive methods--burning, blowing up, etc. On reaching the House

of Commons the demonstrators find that it had just been dynamited

and was in flames, and realize that they had not left a single

building standing in London that was large enough to accommodate the

legislature. In the sequel the Vote was won, not by burning churches,

mutilating pictures, or damaging pillar-boxes, but by women's work in

the War. It was not a concession to violence, but an acknowledgment of

public and patriotic service.

INVENTIONS, DISCOVERIES, NOVELTIES

In the realm of invention and discovery the period under review was

richer in achievements than any of those dealt with in the preceding

volumes. Again and again imaginative or fantastic forecast was outdone

by reality. Road traffic was revolutionized by the coming and rapid

development of the motor. Space and distance were annihilated by man's

conquest of the air and the introduction of wireless telegraphy.

Scientific research, by the discovery of X-rays and new elements,

more than equalled the pretensions of mediæval thaumaturgists. The

cinematograph added a new entertainment and terror to life. The

submarine, it is true, dated from the time of the American Civil war,

but its improvements clearly foreshadowed the formidable part it was

destined to play in the Great War. The long and splendid annals of

Arctic and Antarctic explorations were crowned by the exploits of Peary

and Amundsen and our own heroic Scott. On this side of the New Order,

as on others, _Punch_ supplies a commentary which, though necessarily

incomplete and irregular, is invariably animated and often instructive.

[Illustration: DECIDEDLY UNCOMFORTABLE

Awkward position of Mr. Newfangle, who, when halfway up a steep hill,

discovers by the sudden retrograde movement of the autocar that the

motor has become exhausted.]

To begin with _terra firma_, one finds an early illustration of the

motor in 1895, when the Hackney observes to the Shire-horse: "Look

here, friend Dobbin, I'll be shod if they won't do away with us

altogether some of these days." The road in the picture is crowded

with bicyclists, male and female, with a traction engine and a "patent

road locomotive" of the waggonette type in the foreground. In 1896 the

unsettled nomenclature of this "new monstrosity from France" is shown

by the various alternative names--autocar, automobile, etc.--gradually

settling down to motor-car. Bells were used as signals--_vide_ the

poem "Tinkle, twinkle, motor-car"--and a speed of twelve miles an

hour is spoken of as typical. _Punch_ was busy throughout the year

with forecasts and prophecies--a motor Derby; a "motor-crawler" for

deer stalkers, not altogether unlike the "scooter" of recent years;

a motor-coach for the Lord Mayor's procession; and a "moto-growler"

almost indistinguishable from the electric brougham. Reference is made

to the trial run of motors from London to Brighton, and the frequent

breakdowns associated with motoring in its early stages are illustrated

in the conjugation of the new verb to "mote":--

[Sidenote: _Motors and Motorists_]

PRESENT TENSE

I mote.

Thou stokest.

He looks out for the police.

We run into a lamp-post.

Ye knock a man over.

They pay damages.

IMPERFECT TENSE

I was moting.

Thou wast trying to steer.

He was carrying a red flag in front.

We were going four hours a mile.

Ye were cussing like anything.

They were giving it up as a bad job.

In 1897 _Punch's_ doggerel verses on "Motor-car-acteristics" are

entirely disparaging to the new mode of locomotion, on the score of

noise, smell and risk. With the new century the question of control

became urgent, and while _Punch_ burlesques the grandmotherly

restrictions adopted by some local authorities, his "Merry Motorist's

Lament" in 1901 is aimed at the selfishness of those who resented the

claims of pedestrians, horses, children, dogs, etc., to the use of the

roads. Policemen were already employed to time the speed of motorists,

but no distinguishing numbers were yet carried. To 1902 belong the

first illustrations of the motor-bicycle and of "trailers" attached

to the "push-bike." Breakdowns and the wearisomeness of motoring

"shop" form the theme of verses in 1903. The adoption of the word

"chauffeur" is resented by _Punch_ on patriotic grounds; but while

suggesting various alternatives for the word "road-hog," which had now

come into use, he has no mercy for the nuisance which had called it

into being. When the speed limit was abolished in this year, _Punch_

vigorously opposed the concession, and in the text to his cartoon

suggests that the true remedy was to be found in limiting the power of

the engines. From this date onward the motor-car, being more or less

firmly established as an integral part of the locomotive system, passes

from the domain of the abnormal, and is superseded as a theme for

speculation and prophecy by the airship and the aeroplane.

_Punch's_ first picture of a flying machine in this period occurs in

the autumn of 1894. The mechanism is, however, purely fanciful, and

the design more remote from the actuality of 1908 than that which I

have reproduced in Vol. I., p. 73. The _Annual Register_ for 1900

records under date July 2 the flight of Count Zeppelin's airship from

Friedrichshafen to Immenstaad on the Lake of Constance--a distance of

three and a half miles. In the following year _Punch's_ "leaves from an

aeronaut's diary", though purely farcical, are yet of interest as the

earliest reference in his pages to flying in a "dirigible" as a _fait

accompli_. How modest _Punch's_ prophecies were in regard to speed

may be judged from his picture--at about the same date--of an aerial

"bobby" arresting people for flying at thirty miles an hour! The flying

motor-cab represented in 1902 belongs to the realm of uncircumstantial

imagination, but in 1906, though ballooning is still spoken of as

a fashionable amusement and is recommended, under the heading "If

Pigs had wings," to road-hogs in search of a new thrill, a note of

realism is struck by the use of the word "aeroplane" and reference to

the £10,000 prize offered for the first airship flight from London

to Manchester. The picture of aeroplanes at the close of this year

recalls the Japanese box-kite. _Punch_ was evidently a little lax in

his terminology. The balloon he commended to the "road-hog" probably

meant the airship, for he almost simultaneously speaks of the passing

of the old gas balloon, and when in 1907 _Punch_ published a design for

a new penny piece "in accordance with Britannia's aerial ambitions,"

Britannia is shown in mid-air in what is apparently the car of an

airship, certainly not the old "basket" of a balloon.

If _Punch_ failed in 1908--the _annus mirabilis_ of the Conquest of

the Air--to recognize the paramount claims of the Brothers Wright,

it must be borne in mind that the notorious aversion from publicity

shown by those pioneers, and the deliberate secrecy with which they

had conducted their experiments, kept them for a while out of the

limelight. Mr. Farman's exploits in the early months of 1908 are duly

celebrated in the cartoon in which Icarus, watching a biplane, says:

"Confound that fellow! I wish _I'd_ thought of that!" But though Mr.

Farman's efforts were completely eclipsed by those of Orville Wright in

America and Wilbur Wright at Le Mans in France, in September, October

and December, _Punch_ only gradually awoke to the fact. The reference

to Wilbur Wright on September 16 conveys no clear acknowledgment of his

achievement. He is, however, by implication promoted to importance

three weeks later when we read amongst various "Messages from the

Dead" the statement of Icarus: "The word aeroplane is a monstrosity

to Elysian ears, and the mere mention of W(ilbur) W(right) puts me in

a wax. Anyhow, no sea can be called after a man with such a name." An

allusion in the following week to Wilbur Wright's avoidance of the

"snap-shooter" helps to explain how it came about that he never figured

in a cartoon. M. Bleriot's first cross-Channel flight in 1909 made a

prodigious stir, and _Punch_ chronicled it in the figure of "Winged

Victory" landing on the cliffs at Dover.

[Illustration: "S.O.S."

PUNCH (to Mr. Marconi): "Many hearts bless you to-day, Sir.

The world's debt to you grows fast."]

Wireless telegraphy makes its _début_ in the pages of _Punch_ in

1894, when the verses "Hail, Columbia!" associate it with the name

of Nikola Tesla, the electrician, born on the borders of Austria and

Hungary, who migrated to the States in 1884. Five years later the

Fairy Electricity, armed with wireless, gives warning to submarine

cables and land telegraphs that she won't be able to keep them much

longer. _Punch_ was here a previous prophet; but he showed a decidedly

"intelligent anticipation" in his article on "Marconigrams" in January,

1902, where he predicted accurately enough some of the drawbacks

involved in the tapping of messages by "receivers" other than those for

which they were intended. The word "Marconigram"--in itself a tribute

to the predominance of Signor Marconi's "system"--was then brand-new.

_Punch's_ use of it antedates by a week the earliest reference quoted

in Murray.

The name of Marconi was for several years unfortunately mixed up with

a resounding politico-financial scandal, arising out of a traffic

in shares in which the inventor was never even remotely implicated.

_Punch_, therefore, had an extra reason for acknowledging his great

services to humanity in the "S.O.S." cartoon in October, 1913, when

a great disaster was averted by a wireless message from a liner in

distress.

[Sidenote: _The Submarine of Fancy and Fact_]

[Illustration: "ROUSSEAU'S DREAM"

NEPTUNE: "Look out, my dear--you're mistress _on_ the sea; but

there's a neighbour of yours that's trying to be mistress _under_ it."

BRITANNIA: "All right, Father Nep--I'm not asleep."

("M. Rousseau, the inventor of the submarine warship says that the

advantage of the submersible system would be incontestable, but that

certain problems have arisen of which the solution has not been

altogether realized.... The belief of M. Rousseau, however, is that the

type of the submersible is perfectible, and that the difficulties will

be overcome."--_Moniteur de la Flotte_, quoted in _The Times_.)]

Until the beginning of the new century _Punch's_ treatment of the

submarine was mainly fantastic with intermittent moments of misgiving.

The former mood prevails in his burlesque sequel to Jules Verne's

_Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea_, printed in 1899, in which

Esterhazy and Du Paty de Clam (notorious personages in the Dreyfus

"affaire") are introduced along with "Captain Nemo." The submarine

was at the moment chiefly associated in the public mind with Jules

Verne's romance, and on that very account was perhaps treated less

seriously than it deserved. Jules Verne, as we now know, was aggrieved

that his countrymen did not recognize him as a scientific writer. But

French engineers and inventors were busy with the problem, and in

1900 M. Rousseau's "submersible" inspired _Punch_ with a cartoon in

which Neptune warns Britannia of the new menace to her rule, while

Britannia replies that she is not asleep. The heading "Rousseau's

Dream" certainly implies scepticism, but little more than a year later

_Punch_, in May, 1901, had come to recognize the grim actualities of

the new branch of the Navy:--

THE SONG OF THE SUB-MARINED

A life 'neath the ocean wave,

A home in the rolling deep,

That the billows never lave

Though the currents never sleep.

Where the whiting come and tap

On the porthole's misty pane,

And the congers bark and snap

In a dogfish-like refrain.

A life 'mid the flowing tide,

A home in the sunless sea,

In a ship with a porpoise hide

That ever concealed must be.

A perpetual game of nap

On the ocean's ill-made bed;

There one's feet get soft as pap

Where the sole alone may tread.

Oh, well for the collier lad

As he curses his garb of grime!

Oh, well for the man nigh mad

With the heat in a torrid clime!

O! well for the dark Lascar

In the sea of ice or snow!

But alas! without sun or moon or star,

For the mariner down below!

Sir Percy Scott's warning on the eve of the war of 1914, as I notice

elsewhere, was not taken seriously by _Punch_. To go back to 1901, it

was in that year that an acute controversy raged over the efficiency

of the "Belleville" tubular boilers, but _Punch_ contented himself with

merely registering the conflicting views of the experts.

[Illustration: A NEW STAR]

[Sidenote: _Röntgen Rays and Radium_]

The discovery of the Röntgen rays in 1896 and of radium in 1903 are

not absolutely neglected; but that is about all that can be said of

_Punch's_ frivolous comments on these momentous new-comers. On the

other hand, the possibilities and abuses of the cinematograph were

his constant preoccupation from 1896 onwards. _Punch_ attended an

exhibition given by a M. Trewey in that year, and, while making play

with the exhibitor's name, was sufficiently up-to-date to allude to

the "Pictures" and to foresee the inevitable abbreviation of their

classical title. In 1901, under the heading "What it must never

come to," _Punch_ only too correctly foreshadowed the vulgarity and

indecorum of the film play in later years.

Nearly half a century earlier _Punch_ had chronicled the flight of the

"Wild geese" to the gold diggings in California and Australia. Later

on South Africa had become the lure to all who suffered from the

_auri sacra fames_. In 1897 it was the turn of the New World again,

and Klondyke and the Yukon were words on every lip. The old story of

fortunes and failures was once more repeated, though not on so large

a scale, and _Punch_ summed up its lessons in his pessimistic picture

of exhausted diggers in Arctic surroundings lying at the feet of a

sinister skeleton figure guarding a great gold nugget.

In the domain of non-commercial exploration three phases are to be

noted: Nansen's "Farthest North" in the 'nineties, Peary's Conquest of

the North Pole in 1909, and the Antarctic tragedy of 1912. Nansen's

gallant effort was happily above criticism; and his fame, won in this

arduous field, has of late been enhanced by his disinterested and

humane persistence in the relief of the victims of the Great War.

Peary's triumph, though great and incontrovertible, was clouded at the

time by the extraordinary controversy which arose out of the rival

claim of another American explorer, Dr. Cook. His story, according to

which he had reached the Pole before Peary, was accepted at Copenhagen

and did not lack a certain amount of American backing. In his earliest

comments on the contradictory reports _Punch_ preserved an attitude of

judicious caution, tempered with ironic satisfaction that the rival

claimants were both Americans. But the publication of Dr. Cook's

narrative converted this suspense of judgment into incredulity and even

ridicule. The name of Dr. Cook's chief native witness, "Etukishook,"

was, to put it mildly, unfortunate. _Punch's_ final comment took the

form of a cartoon in which the American Eagle was shown sitting on the

top of the "Big Nail" and complacently remarking: "My Pole, anyway!"

[Sidenote: _The Antarctic Tragedy_]

From Dr. Cook's narrative to the journals of Captain Scott is a step

from the ridiculous to the sublime. Here, again, there had been

rivalry, but rivalry without dispute. The goal had been reached by

Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer, only a few weeks before Scott

and his four companions, Captain Oates, Dr. Wilson, Lieutenant Bowers

and Petty Officer Evans--all of them "names to resound for ages." In

March, 1912, "Captain Scott and his gallant comrades reached the South

Pole and died on their homeward way." With this brief sentence _Punch_

prefaces his memorial verses on what was at once the most tragic and

heroic episode in all the long annals of Polar exploration:--

Not for the fame that crowns a gallant deed,

They fixed their fearless eyes on that far goal,

Steadfast of purpose, resolute at need

To give their lives for toll.

But in the service of their kind they fared,

To probe the secrets which the jealous Earth

Yields only as the prize of perils dared,

The wage of proven worth.

So on their record, writ for all to know--

The task achieved, the homeward way half-won--

Though cold they lie beneath their pall of snow,

Shines the eternal sun.

O hearts of metal pure as finest gold!

O great example, where our sons may trace,

Too proud for tears, their birthright from of old,

Heirs of the Island Race!

In this context I may note two great disasters, the one at the

beginning and the other at the end of this period, which served to

illustrate the "price of Admiralty" and the perils of speed when

combined with enormous size and structure of a type in which design

has outrun strength. The first was the loss of the _Victoria_ in

the manoeuvres off Tripoli in 1893, owing to an error in judgment

on the part of a great admiral--Sir George Tryon. The second was

the loss of the _Titanic_ in April, 1912. _Punch_ in both instances

confined himself to the expression of sympathy and condolence, without

endeavouring to draw morals or recalling, _à propos_ of the _Titanic_,

his curious prophecy, given in an earlier volume, of the likelihood of

just such a disaster resulting from the cult of speed at all costs and

in all weathers.

The perils of the sea naturally suggest the means of endeavouring to

avoid them. After a long interval the Channel Tunnel scheme was revived

in 1906, and in his cartoon in January, 1907, _Punch_ indicates that

it was calculated "a double debt to pay." Neptune is shown objecting

to have his power undermined, but Britannia retorts: "I want to see

more of my friends over there, and I never look my best when I've been

seasick." So again, in August, 1913, under the heading "The Entente

Tube," when the steward on a night Channel boat observes, "If they

bring in this 'ere tunnel, my job's gone," _Punch_ replies, "That's the

only sound objection I've heard yet."

[Illustration: THE ENTENTE TUBE

STEWARD (on night Channel boat): "If they bring in this 'ere

tunnel, my job's gone."

MR. PUNCH: "That's the only sound objection I've heard yet."]

[Illustration: MR. PUNCH'S INVASION STORY

(Foreign Artillery Officer, after dropping shell from Dirigible with

the idea of destroying London): "Tut! Tut! I've missed it!"]

[Sidenote: _Punch's Prophecies_]

_Punch's_ forecasts and prophecies are mentioned under various

headings, but two may be specially noted here. In 1909 a foreign

officer (obviously a German) is depicted by Mr. George Morrow in the

car of an airship "after dropping a shell with the idea of destroying

London." "Tut! tut!" he observes, "I've missed it." The second

picture, in October, 1910, is of "The New Arm and how to use it," and

illustrates the conversion of a number of soldiers, by the device of

opening umbrellas of a peculiar pattern, into what the approaching

air-scout takes to be a field dotted with gigantic flowers. But, as

I showed in an earlier volume, _Punch_ described the principle of

_camouflage_ in full detail about half a century before it was carried

into practice.

CHANGING LONDON

[Sidenote: _Cabs v. Taxis_]

[Illustration: THE PASSING OF THE GROWLER

MR. PUNCH (supported by shades of two of his most famous

henchmen, John Leech and Charles Keene): "Good-bye, old friend. You've

been very useful to me, but your day is done."]

London underwent many notable changes, structural and otherwise,

between 1892 and 1914, but perhaps the most remarkable were brought

about by the engineer rather than by the architect. Macadam had yielded

to asphalt, and now asphalt largely gave place to the wood pavement.

Electric lighting became general, and with the "electrification" of

the old Underground a favourite source of well-founded complaint was

finally removed. But the conspicuous and outstanding feature of London

traffic in this period was the coming of the Tubes, while above ground

it was revolutionized by the motor, and the passing to a great extent

of horse-drawn vehicles. As early as 1902 Mr. Briton Rivière uttered

a lament over the disappearance of the horse from London traffic. His

point of view was quite intelligible, but it was purely artistic.

_Punch_ was a great lover of the "noble animal," but it was precisely

for that reason that he welcomed its release from the drudgery and

suffering, the maltreatment and overloading inseparable from the old

order. The speeding-up of street traffic brought with it new perils

and noises, but it freed us from many discomforts and nuisances--for

example, the "cab-runner," rampant in the middle 'nineties, who plagued

unprotected females by his extortions and insolence until the coming

of the taxi ran him off his legs. At the time of the South African

War, when _Punch_ noted the commandeering of 'bus horses for service

at the front, he declared that there had been hardly any improvement

in the public vehicles of London since the days of Shillibeer--the

coach-builder who introduced omnibuses to London in 1829. It is true

that the drivers were famous for their conversational powers, which

motor-bus drivers are unable to exercise owing to their isolation, but

only mediævalists can lament the passing of the old lumbering, stuffy

'bus, dimly lit by oil lamps, and in wet weather redolent of damp

straw. As for the "growler," _Punch_ was decidedly premature when in

1905, the centenary of the year in which public conveyances first plied

for hire in London, he assumed that its reign was over. In 1907 he paid

the "growler" the homage of a cartoon in which _Punch_, attended by the

shades of John Leech and Charles Keene, admitted that the "Cabby" had

been "very useful to him"--as a target for generally hostile criticism.

In spite of _Punch's_ repeated valedictions, the "growler" continued

to emerge during strikes in later years, and I am not certain whether

it can be pronounced to be dead even yet. In 1907, again, there is a

curious reference to the now largely disused practice of whistling for

cabs. An irritated hansom-cabby observes to a gentleman who has been

whistling for a "taximeter cab" for ten minutes--in series of three

whistles--"Try _four_ whistles, guv'nor, and p'r'aps you'll get an

airship." The whistling code had first of all to be revised so as to

establish the precedence of the "taxi," and then was simplified by the

disappearance of the "growler" and the hansom. In this context may be

quoted the epitaph based on the fact that a French traveller had taken

"Job Masters" to be a personal name, and published in 1909:--

His horses were old and his carriages were older,

But they were all we could get and we had to put up with them.

His watchwords were Livery and Bait, and he will be sadly missed.

His end was Petrol.

[Illustration: BOGEY OR BENEFACTOR?

L.C.C.: "Ha, ha! You must learn to love me!"]

[Illustration: NOTICE TO QUIT

THE FAIRY ELECTRA (to Steam Locomotive Underground Demon):

"Now they've seen me, I fancy _your_ days are numbered."

(Central London Electric Railway opened by H.R.H. the Prince of

Wales--Wednesday, June 27, 1900.)]

[Sidenote: _The L.C.C. Trams_]

On the vexed question of the extension of the tramway system to

central London _Punch_ did not maintain an inflexible consistency.

In 1905 he supported the L.C.C. in their effort to carry the tram

system across Westminster Bridge and along the Embankment, and when

their Bill, passed in the Commons, was thrown out by the Lords, he

showed Lord Halsbury, the leader of the Opposition on this occasion,

as an out-of-date Horatius, _Punch_ informing him that "this isn't

ancient Rome. This is modern London, and you've just got to move on."

Yet in 1907 the congestion of empty trams between Blackfriars and

Westminster Bridge moved him to ridicule the L.C.C.'s "Spectacular

Vacuum Embankment Trams," and to paint a fancy portrait of a grocer's

assistant who had actually succeeded in riding in one of them. Later

on, again, on the eve of the War, _Punch_ made it clear that he had

no sympathy with the L.C.C. in their obstinate preference for trams as

opposed to motor-buses. The L.C.C. tram was "beaten on points" by its

more flexible rival. "Hard lines on me," says the tram. "Yes," retorts

the motor-bus, "it's always hard lines with you, my boy. That's what's

the matter; you can't side-step."

But the coming of the new order in London locomotion dates

appropriately from the year 1900. Early in that year _Mr. Punch_

describes his experiences on a trip from the Monument to Stockwell in

what he calls the "Sardine-box railway," dwelling on the scrimmages of

passengers and the rocking of the trains, and endorsing the company's

advertisement that it was the "warmest line in London." Criticism

gives place to eulogy in the summer, when the fairy "Electra" gives

the Steam Locomotive Underground Demon notice to quit, and _Punch_

adopts the phrase, "The Twopenny Tube," from his lively but short-lived

contemporary the _Londoner_. "Horace in London" indites a "Carmen

Tubulare" in honour of the new Underground, and a burlesque article is

based on the notion that the ozone generated in the Tubes would lead

to a monstrous growth of appetite. The new and highly irregular verb,

"Tu be," is conjugated in all tenses and moods, beginning: "I tube,

thou payest tuppence; he Yerkes[6]; we get a hustle on; ye block the

gangways; they palm off 'bus tickets." Complaints of over-crowding

testified to the popularity of the new method of transit, and the

voice of the "strap-hanger" was soon loud in the land. The congestion

on the suburban railways had moved one of _Punch's_ bards to poetic

remonstrance as early as 1901:--

We wage no far-off conflict with Afridi or with Boer,

A present peril we must face, our foes are at the door;

Brave must he be of heart, and as a flint must set his face,

Who in the train at Finsbury Park would struggle for a place.

[Footnote 6: Charles Tyson Yerkes, the American financier who, after a

chequered early life, became a railway magnate and took a leading part

in organizing and financing the London electrical railways.]

[Illustration: "THEY ORDER THESE THINGS BETTER IN FRANCE"

FRENCH TOURIST (to Father Thames): "Dis, donc, mon vieux, when

does the next boat start on your beautiful river?"

FATHER THAMES: "It doesn't start. I ain't allowed to have any

boats."]

Six years later _Punch_ describes "rack-hanging" on the suburban lines

of the Great Eastern as one stage worse than "strap-hanging" on the

Underground. Another and more formidable outcome of the subterranean

extension of London traffic was noted in 1913 _à propos_ of the

cracks in St. Paul's. _Punch's_ Londoner exults complacently over the

impending downfall, so long as he is swiftly transported from his home

to his office:--

I thunder down to work each morn,

And some historic shrine

Must have its matchless fabric torn

To get me there at nine;

And when I gather up my traps,

As sundown sets me free

A nation's monuments collapse,

To take me home to tea.

To parody Lord John Manners's couplet:--

Let fanes and monuments in ruins lie,

But give us still our new Mobility.

While there was this feverish activity in developing surface and

subterranean communications on land, the apathy of the authorities in

failing to develop an efficient service of steamboats roused _Punch_

to repeated protests--notably in the cartoon where Father Thames

explains to a French visitor: "I ain't allowed to have any boats." In

more complacent mood, however, Father Thames ejaculates, "Well, I'm

blowed! This quite gets over me," as he surveys the opening in 1894

of the great Tower Bridge, or "the Giant Causeway," as _Punch_ calls

it. In 1896 _Punch_ was concerned with the intention of the L.C.C.

to do away with Chelsea Reach, and did not disguise his satisfaction

when the scheme was "turned down" by a Select Committee. On the other

hand, the unkempt and squalid condition of what he sarcastically calls

the "Surrey Riviera" suggested a cartoon in January, 1913, exhibiting

Father Thames in his filthiest guise saying plaintively, "I know a bank

where the foul slime flows."

[Sidenote: _London's New Cathedral_]

The most notable of the structural changes in London in this period

was the opening of the new thoroughfare from Holborn to the Strand and

the clearing away of the old rookeries at the southern end. Kingsway

and Aldwych were the names coined by Sir Laurence Gomme for the

thoroughfare and crescent, and could not have been improved on; but

_Punch_ exercised his ingenuity in offering a variety of suggestions

purporting to be made by famous and notorious personages of the hour:

e.g. "Via Marie," "John Lane," etc. Among single buildings the most

notable addition was the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Westminster,

consecrated in 1903. Bentley's masterpiece was the largest and most

impressive church erected in London since St. Paul's, which _Punch_, in

his irreverent "Lightning Guide" described as "London's largest temple

and the biggest Wren's nest ever known." The new internal decoration

executed in the early years of this century by the late Sir W. B.

Richmond prompted the remark that "the Christian law is upheld in the

nave, but the inside of the dome is strictly Mosaic." Mr. Hammerstein's

Opera House in Kingsway after a brief allegiance to the serious lyric

Muse went the way of other similar ventures. In the autumn of 1912

_Punch_ saw in the vacant theatre a chance for English opera, but his

cartoon, "Now or Never," was not exactly optimistic, and the claims of

Variety once more triumphed.

When improvements on a large scale are planned and executed it has

generally been found impossible to reconcile the demands of High Art

with the aims of municipal politics. The appeal of leading artists

and architects was powerless to prevent the spoiling of the eastward

vista along the chord of the Aldwych arc. So with the scheme of the

Victoria Memorial, involving the new road from Trafalgar Square to

Buckingham Palace. In the "Finishing Touch" _Punch_ represented the

County Councillor blandly correcting London's remonstrance with him

for blocking the view. Not a bit of it; he was only improving things:

"_ars est celare artem_, you know"--in reference to the action of the

"Improvements" Committee of the L.C.C. in allowing the prospect of the

Admiralty Arch to be obstructed by a building at the eastern end.

The French have a saying that administrative art is always arid;

_Punch_ went further and roundly accused the L.C.C. of Vandalism. In

their schemes for widening Piccadilly in 1901 he scented a sinister

design of converting it into a tramway route, just as he had

foreshadowed the conversion of Rotten Row into a bicycle track in

1895--this, by the way, at a time when bicycling in the Park was only

allowed from 10 A.M. till 12 noon. As a faithful champion of

the equestrian interest, _Punch_ renewed in 1894 the appeals he had

made in earlier years for making more rides in Hyde Park. He was much

concerned with the general dirt and disorder which reigned there--the

frowsy and immoral loungers, "socialist scamps and somnolent tramps,

scoundrels who swear and zealots who groan," and welcomed the new

rules in 1896 in the belief that they would exclude tub-thumpers,

Salvationists and atheists, "sot and satyr, crank and vandal." _Punch_,

in his zeal for maintaining the decencies and amenities of our parks,

laid himself open to the charge of an anti-democratic bias. He was,

however, sincerely proud of the glories of London, while always ready

to denounce the blots on her scutcheon. Sir W. B. Richmond's anti-smoke

crusade met with his approval in 1898. Writers who dilated on the fine

atmospheric effects of London fog jarred on his robust common sense,

but the beauties of Richmond Park in all seasons inspired him to

genuine enthusiasm. A lyrical "note" new to his columns is sounded in

the charming lines which he printed in 1910:--

Have you been to royal Richmond when the year is growing mellow,

And October, mild and fruitful, on its woodland sets her mark,

When the footpath--of her bounty--has a carpet red and yellow,

And the great harts roar a challenge as the twilight meets the dark,

And at half-past five or so,

There are lights that flash and glow,

Thrilling upward in the quiet out of Kingston down below?

[Illustration: "RICHARD THE THIRD" ADAPTED

LONDON SMOKE (tyrant and murderer): "Methinks there are two

Richmonds in the field."

(A Mr. Richmond writes to _The Times_ in support of the Anti-Smoke

campaign of Sir William B. Richmond, K.C.B., R.A. _Mr. Punch_ says,

heartily, "Let 'em _all_ come, and more power to their elbows!")]

[Sidenote: _The End of the Westminster Aquarium_]

I do not find that _Punch_ in his record of "disappearances" notes

the disuse of hatchments, but he duly chronicles at the close of 1895

the termination of the last of the old turnpike trusts on November

1. "Vanishing London" generally moved him to elegy. Over the Lowther

Arcade, which was closed in 1898 by the sale of the Crown lease, he

did not waste many tears, and the end of the Westminster Aquarium in

January, 1903, did not excite any passionate regret. Still, _Punch_ had

seen many strange shows and celebrities within its walls--Blondin,

Zazel and Zaeo, Slavin and Sullivan, Pongo the Ape, Sandow the strong

man, John Roberts the master of the cue; and a certain mitigated

melancholy broods over _Punch_ as we watch him

Muse over a pipe of the days that are dead,

Dream that once more I am able to scan

Closely the bird with the duplicate head,

Live once again with the Petrified Man.

It was another matter altogether when _Punch_ heard that Clifford's Inn

was to be pulled down in April of the same year. In his indignation he

suggests that the Temple Gardens, Middle Temple Hall and Temple Church

should forthwith be sacrificed to the craze for improvements, and

continues in the same strain of exaggerated irony:--

If you turn the Charterhouse into a railway station, the Tower into

warehouses and Westminster Hall into an Inebriates' Home, something

will have been done towards making London a happier and a better place.

Another sign of the times which frequently exercised _Punch's_ mind

and stimulated his satire was the multiplication of huge new hotels.

In 1902, when it was announced that St. James's Hall was about to

be pulled down to make room for another of these monsters, _Punch_

pictured Macaulay's New Zealander coming to visit London and finding

it entirely composed of hotels and residential flats. The luxury

_à l'Américaine_ of these mammoth establishments excited _Punch's_

strictures in 1907; simultaneously he inveighs against the poky and

insanitary arrangements of the modern flat.

In earlier years _Punch_ had been prodigal of suggestions for the

"improvement" of London; in this period he is more critical than

constructive, though I note that in 1904 he reverts to his old

suggestion of a great open-air _café_. This, he now proposed, should

occupy the ground floor of the Ritz, with a _terrasse_ overlooking

Piccadilly and the Green Park. But _Punch_ did not scorn the cheap

restaurants, and in one of his "Lays of a Londoner" pays homage to the

charms of Soho--a tribute culminating in this admirable stanza:--

Borne on the cosmopolitan breezes

Divinely blended odours trickle,

The louder forms of foreign cheeses

Contend against the home-made pickle.

[Sidenote: _Cromwell and Carlyle_]

[Illustration: (Sir William Bull, M.P., is anxious to form in the

metropolis a Society for Completing Modern Buildings. "Look," he says,

"at the Thames Embankment, with its pediments for sculpture, and not

one filled in, except the space which I got occupied by the Boadicea

group.")

It is hoped that Chelsea, with its Artists' Quarter, will take

advantage of the magnificent opportunity offered by the four chimneys

of the generating station. Why not an equestrian statue of Carlyle,

reading his own works?]

On the subject of statues and memorials _Punch_ had always held strong

views; views that by no means ministered to national self-satisfaction.

When the question of a statue to Cromwell came up once more in 1894,

_Punch_ practically repeated his old cut, with a slight variation

of treatment, in "Room for a Big One," Cromwell addressing his

Royal rivals, "Now then, your Majesties, I hope I don't intrude."

In May, 1895, _Punch_ returned to the charge in his most truculent

anti-monarchical vein:--

ON THE NEW STATUE

("Her Majesty's Government are about to entrust to one of our first

sculptors a great historical statue, which has too long been wanting to

the series of those who have governed England."--Lord Rosebery at the

Royal Academy Banquet.)

Our "Uncrowned King" at last to stand

'Midst the legitimate Lord's anointed?

How will they shrink, that sacred band,

Dismayed, disgusted, disappointed!

The _parvenu_ Protector thrust

Amidst the true Porphyrogeniti?

How will it stir right royal dust!

The mutton-eating King's amenity

Were hardly proof against this slur.

William the thief, Rufus the bully,

The traitor John, and James the cur--

Their royal purple how 'twill sully

To rub against the brewer's buff!

Harry, old Mother Church's glory,

Meet this Conventicler?--Enough!

The Butcher dimmed not England's story,

But rather brightened her renown

In camp and court, it must be said,

And if he did not win a crown,

At least he never _lost his head_!

_Punch's_ acid remark made many years before, that we were incapable

of producing a fine statue or memorial, is virtually repeated in his

suggestion, made in 1896, for the formation of a "Metropolitan Statues

Supply Association" for the purpose of supplying public statues and

monuments on the hire system. There was certainly good excuse for the

burlesque, for, as _Punch_ reminds us, "Mr. Akers-Douglas, replying to

Mr. Labouchere as to whether his attention had been called to a statue

'purporting to be of the late Mr. John Bright in the Central Lobby,'

and whether it is to remain there, said that it was erected under

arrangements made with his predecessors. He admitted that there were

very varied views as to its artistic merits."

[Sidenote: _National Heroes and their Memorials_]

In 1902 the fall of the Campanile of St. Mark's at Venice prompts

a Trafalgar Square Lion to remark: "I only wish some of our London

monuments would come down as easily." In an earlier volume I have

mentioned _Punch's_ reiterated complaints of the time taken in

completing the Nelson Memorial in Trafalgar Square. In 1903, after

fifty years had elapsed, the monument to the Duke of Wellington

in St. Paul's was still unfinished. _Punch_ dealt faithfully with

this discreditable delay in a caustic perversion of Tennyson's ode,

"Bury the Great Duke," and a cartoon in which, under the heading

"Ars (Britannica) Longa," Napoleon, hearing from his victor that his

monument is approaching completion, sarcastically comments, "Déjà?"

On the question of burials in Westminster Abbey, it may here be added,

_Punch_ was clearly not satisfied with the arrangement which left the

Dean as the chief arbiter, when he wrote in the summer of 1909:--

For whom shall England's high memorial fane

Offer a resting-place of hallowed stone

When they have nobly lived their destined span?

The nation speaks her choice, but speaks in vain;

The final verdict lies with one alone--

A Mr. Robinson, a clergyman.

The "Mr. Robinson," thus disparagingly referred to, was that learned

divine, Dean of Westminster from 1902 to 1911, and since then Dean

of Wells. It should therefore be remembered that he was Dean of

Westminster when Irving was buried in the Abbey.

[Illustration: DRIVER (approaching Hyde Park Corner and

pointing out the sights to country visitors): "On the left's the

statute erected to the memory of the great Dook o' Wellington, and that

'ere on the right's a statute erected to the memory of the pore ole

'oss-'buses wot's bin run orf the street by them stinkin' motors."]

[Sidenote: "_Our Robert_"]

Mention has already been made of the widening of the Mall as part of

the Queen Victoria Memorial. Brock's statue and monumental group were

pronounced by _Punch_ in 1911 "worthy of a great Queen and a great

City," an acknowledgment truly remarkable in one so chary of approval.

Captain Adrian Jones's Peace "Quadriga" on Constitution Hill prompted

a burlesque alternative design in 1908, with "four typical pedestrians

rampant and a motor-car urgent." In 1912 an old lady is seen asking

a policeman, "Is _that_ what they call the Quadruped, officer?"

and the obliging Robert replies, "Yes, Mum; all except the lady."

Towards "Robert," by the way, _Punch_ was in the main sympathetic and

appreciative throughout this period, and in one of the "Lays of a

Londoner" pays a generous tribute to the benevolent autocrat of the

highway:--

In vain the dray-horse paws the air,

The flow of low abuse grows brisker;

He never turns an injured hair,

Or lifts a deprecating whisker,

For he knows well enough that they

May gibe, but dare not disobey!

Whether in dark, secluded walks

He flouts the schemes that bad men work us;

Or maiden ladies, screaming "Lawks!"

Hang on his neck in Oxford Circus;

His mien displays an abstract calm

That soothes the fractured nerves like balm.

Who spoors the burglar's nimble feet,

And spots the three-card man's devices?

Who hales before the judgment seat

The vendor of unwholesome ices?

Who's apt at any time to have his

Complexion spoiled by hob-nailed navvies?

It is indeed our Robert, or,

As some prefer to say, our "Bobby";

The civil servant, paid to floor

The wiles of those who'd kill or rob 'ee;

Who keeps our premises secure,

Our butter and our morals pure.

And when we hear of fresh alarms,

Of bombs and mutiny and massacre,

Of citizens dispersed by arms,

In countries where such things, alas! occur,

Well may we urge our Robert's claim

Alike to gratitude and fame.

This is a fairly comprehensive summary of the multifarious activities

of one who is, or, at any rate, was up to the end of 1918, more of an

institution than a man.

Though he lived in or just off Fleet Street, _Punch_ kept an eye on the

growth of the charms of Greater London. In 1907 he printed his "Song of

Six Suburbs (after Mr. Rudyard Kipling)":--

BRIXTON

Though far outside the radius you roam,

Where shall a fairer prospect meet the eyes?

Brand-new, like Aphrodite from the foam,

The homes of Brixton Rise.

TOOTING

Supreme am I, Suburbia's guiding star,

And when I speak let lesser tongues be dumb;

The prefix "Upper" shows the class we are;

Where Tooting beckons, Come!

HAMPSTEAD

Upon your North-West Passage scale my heights,

And mark the joyous crowds that sport beneath;

Men call me "Happy": O the strange delights,

The dalliance on my Heath!

PECKHAM

A peaceful calm envelops every street,

And like an old-world idyll life drifts by;

Where else such courtly couples shall you meet

A-comin' thro' the Rye?

CLAPHAM

Unto my yoke my stalwarts meekly bend:

Daily, between the hours of 8 and 9,

To dare worse horrors than the Pit I send

Sons of the Chatham line!

EALING

"Last, loveliest, exquisite," I give to those

Civilian warriors from India rest;

What suburb boasts the dignified repose

That clings to Ealing, W.?

Later on the garden suburb is a frequent theme of genial comment and

satire based on first-hand observation, for the late Mr. F. H. Townsend

was a resident in Golder's Green, and his ingenious pencil found ample

scope in the amenities and humours of the new _Rus in Urbe_. Another

"garden" that had provoked _Punch_ to less favourable comment in

earlier years--Covent Garden--was still a source of dissatisfaction as

late as 1904. When John Hollingshead died in the autumn of that year,

_Punch_, in his obituary notice of the manager of the Gaiety Theatre,

revealed the fact that "his was the dauntless hand that, under _Mr.

Punch's_ banner, attacked 'Mud Salad Market' many years ago." If the

present condition of Covent Garden market is not exactly ideal, at any

rate it does not justify the censures passed on it seventeen years ago

as still blocking traffic with congested muck.

[Illustration: A LADY WITH A PAST

LONDON (in her new Museum at Kensington Palace): "Bless my

soul, what a life I've led!"]

In 1912 the London Museum was opened at Kensington Palace, and _Punch_,

in a commemorative cartoon, showed London as an old lady examining

the cases of the Roman, Saxon and Norman periods. "Bless my soul," she

says, "what a life I've led!" And _Punch_ was often more interested in

the life she had led than in that she was leading or was about to lead.

Her future, as outlined by Sir Aston Webb in January, 1914, seemed to

him a charming but somewhat visionary prospect:--

Meanwhile this London is my place;

Sad though her dirt, as I admit is,

I love the dear unconscious grace

That shines beneath her sooty face

Better than all your well-groomed cities.