SOCIAL LIFE IN TRANSITION
CROWN AND COURT
In a period of change and transition, in which the decline of the
influence of the old "governing classes" was attended by the rise of a
new type of statesman, the stability of the throne and the prestige of
the Sovereign remained unshaken; the veneration in which the old Queen
was held in the last ten years of her reign was based on a respect
which rendered her almost invulnerable to criticism. _Punch_, who in
earlier years had appropriated the _rôle_ and privileges of the Court
Jester, and in the middle Victorian period had frankly regretted the
Queen's long seclusion, never alludes to her in the closing years of
her reign save in a spirit of gratitude and chivalrous devotion. We
hear no more of the "Royal Recluse," for the phrase no longer applied
to one who in advanced years was strenuous in the discharge of her
duties. There is a pleasant story that when the Queen was informed that
she had reigned longer than any of her predecessors, she said: "Have I
done well?" and _Punch_ supplied the answer:--
"Have I done well?" Most gracious Queen,
Look on the record of your life;
Think of What is, What might have been.
Empress of Peace 'mid constant strife!
The last year of her reign was sadly clouded by the uncertainties of
the South African war, and she paid the inevitable penalty of those who
live to fourscore by surviving many of those who were nearest to her;
but age brought her consolations as well. The marriage of the Duke of
York in 1893 inspired _Punch_ with a genial ode, full of classical tags
and headed "Hymen Hymenæe!" He would not "trill a fulsome lay," but
contented himself with showing "good will to goodness," typified in his
cartoon of the royal pair seated on a Lion led by _Punch_ with a bridle
of roses. A year later the birth of the present Prince of Wales, Queen
Victoria's great-grandson, is celebrated by an ingenious adaptation of
Shakespeare:--
Now is the Winter of our discontent
Made glorious by this _Son_ of York.
[Illustration: A BORN LEGISLATOR
"Do you often attend the sittings in the House of Lords, Duke?"
"I did once--if I remember, to vote against some measure of Mr.
Gladstone's--but I caught a bad cold there, so I never went again!"]
The customary official congratulations of Parliament did not escape
a protest from Mr. Keir Hardie, who was "indisposed to associate
himself with any effort to do special honour to the Royal family,"
though he was "delighted to learn that the infant was a fairly healthy
one." This unfortunately-worded concession only served to exasperate
the loyalists, and _Punch_ drew a picture of Mr. Hardie, in his
deer-stalker cap, severely apostrophizing the royal infant in his
cradle. _A propos_ of the Prince's seven names, it may be added that
_Punch_ noted the inclusion of all the four patron saints of the United
Kingdom--George, Andrew, Patrick and David--a choice which, as he put
it, ought to help him to dodge ill luck in after years.
[Illustration: A YOUNG REPUBLICAN
LITTLE LORD CHARLES: "Oh, _I'm_ going to be an _Omnibus
Conductor_, when _I_ grow up."
FAIR AMERICAN: "But your brother's going to be a _Duke_, isn't
he?"
L. L. C.: "Ah, yes; but that's about all he's _fit_ for, you know!"]
[Sidenote: _Punch on the Duke of Cambridge_]
No charge of courtiership, however, could be brought against _Punch_
for his treatment of the question of the retirement of the Duke of
Cambridge in 1895 from the post of Commander-in-Chief. In "All the
Difference" Lord Wolseley is shown saying to the Duke: "In September
I have to retire from my appointment," and the Duke replies, "Dear
me! _I_ haven't." The same idea is developed in some satirical verses
glorifying the "Spirit of Eld," which was allowed to dominate the
conduct of high affairs of State. But when the Duke did go in November,
_Punch_ was more gracious. His "parting salute," put into the mouth of
Tommy Atkins, forms a friendly gloss on what Lord Wolseley had said
in his first Army order; and when the Duke died in 1904, _Punch's_
four-line tribute is a model of laconic and judicial appreciation:--
The years that saw old customs changed to new
Still left his spirit changeless to the end,
Who served his kindred's Throne a long life through
And died, as he had lived, the soldier's friend.
Modern Royal Annals are largely made up of "marriage and death and
division," and laureates, unofficial as well as official, are
largely concerned with the two former. The death of Prince Henry of
Battenberg from fever incurred while on active service in Ashanti in
1896 enabled _Punch_ to pay decorous and not extravagant homage to
the "servant of duty." He had a much better theme in the death of the
Prince's brilliant and ill-starred brother Alexander, in 1893, and the
verses are not unworthy of one who was too great a gentleman to be a
successful adventurer:--
Europe's Prince Charming, lion-like, born to dare,
Betrayed by the black treacherous Northern Bear!
Soldier successful vainly, patriot foiled,
Wooer discomfited, and hero spoiled!
Triumphant champion of Slivnitza's field,
To sordid treachery yet doomed to yield.
An age more chivalrous you should have seen,
When brutal brokers, and when bagmen keen
Shamed not the sword and blunted not the lance.
Then had you been true Hero of Romance.
The coronation of the Tsar Nicholas in 1896 is chronicled in the
cartoon in which Peace says to him: "I was your father's friend--let me
be yours," and his visit to Balmoral suggests another variation on the
same theme. Under the heading "Blessed are the Peacemakers," Nicholas
is seen taking an affectionate farewell of the Queen. Ten years
later _Punch_ was to realize how vain were the dreams of good will
when hampered by infirmity of purpose. For the moment, however, the
pleasures and pastimes of Royalty were more in evidence. The Prince of
Wales was alleged to have taken to bicycling, and _Punch_, still wedded
to an old habit, proposed the new title of "the Prince of Wheels." The
Prince is also congratulated on winning his first Derby with Persimmon,
and encouraged to pay no attention to the Nonconformist stalwarts of
Rochdale and Heywood who had begged him to abandon racing and withdraw
from the turf. When Princess Maud of Wales was married to Prince
Charles of Denmark, _Punch_ was not content with a loyal cartoon and a
suitable Shakespearean quotation. He seized the opportunity to combine
humanitarianism with allegiance to the throne by issuing a Plea for the
Birds to the Women of England--begging them to discontinue the wearing
of egret plumes on this and every other occasion.
[Sidenote: _Jubilee Tributes_]
Tributes to the Queen in the year of her Diamond Jubilee are
unqualified in their admiration. Perhaps the most hearty and
impressive, if not the most polished, is the "Song Imperial" printed in
June:--
Stand up England, land of toil and duty,
In your smoking cities, in your hamlets green;
Stand up England, land of love and beauty,
Stand up, shout out, God save the Queen!
Stand up Scotland, up Wales and Ireland,
Loyal to her royalty, crowd upon the scene;
Stand up, all of us, we who are the sire-land,
Stand up, shout out, God save the Queen!
Stand up ye Colonies, the joy-cry reaches you,
Near lands, far lands, lands that lie between;
Where the sun bronzes you, where the frost bleaches you,
Stand up, shout out, God save the Queen!
Stand up all! Yes, princes, nobles, peoples,
All the mighty Empire--mightier ne'er hath been;
Boom from your decks and towers, clang from all your steeples
God save Victoria, God save the Queen!
Why not? Has she not ever loved and served us,
Royal to us, loyal to us, gracious ever been?
Ne'er in peace betrayed us, ne'er in war unnerv'd us;
Up, then, shout out, God save the Queen!
But now our sun descends, from the zenith westward,
Westward and downward, of all mortals seen;
Yet may the long day lengthen, though the fall be rest-ward,
May we long together cry, God save the Queen!
When in the coming-time, 'neath the dim ocean line,
Our dear sun shall sink in the wave serene,
Tears will fill these eyes of mine, tears will fill those eyes of thine,
Lowly kneeling, all will pray, God save the Queen!
In his "Jubilee Celebrator's _Vade Mecum_" _Punch_ did not spare
criticism of the arrangements and the profiteering of speculators
in seats. Yet with all deductions and drawbacks the Jubilee "was a
gigantic success, for it has shown that a quarter of the world loves
and appreciates a blameless Queen, and rejoices to be her subjects."
The visit of the Duke and Duchess of York to Ireland in July prompts
the usual cartoon attributing to Erin the familiar suggestion of a
Royal residence in Ireland, a cure for discontent which _Punch_ was
never weary of prescribing. Queen Victoria's eightieth birthday fell in
1899, and in the same number in which _Punch_ welcomes the anniversary
he indulges in an unflattering pictorial comment on "Imperial Bruin"
breathing forth compliments and pacific professions while carrying on
dangerous intrigues in the Far East. Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught,
had renounced the succession to the Dukedom of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in the
lifetime of his brother, the Duke of Edinburgh, who had succeeded to
the title in 1893. _Punch_ in 1899 congratulated the Duke of Connaught
on a decision the wisdom of which was amply justified in the sequel.
Here _Punch_ made no claims to prophecy: he merely showed the Duke
of Connaught waving aside the proffered honour and gave as his motto
Gilbert's often-quoted lines:--
In spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations,
He remains an Englishman.
_Punch's_ lines on the death of the Duke of Edinburgh in the following
year attain to a positively "lapidary" excellence in their discretion
and brevity:--
Summoned to lordship in a stranger land,
He left his English birthright of the main,
Now, swiftly touched by Death's restoring hand,
He is the Queen's again.
The cartoon which linked Italy with Britannia as "Sisters in
Sorrow"--King Humbert had been assassinated two days before the death
of the Duke of Edinburgh--strikes the ceremonial and conventional note
avoided in the epitaph quoted above, and noticeable in the cartoon
prompted by the Queen's visit to Ireland earlier in the year.
[Illustration: THE MAGIC CARPET
(Wishing "Godspeed" to the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York, who
are starting for Australia.)]
To 1900 also belongs the first appearance in a _Punch_ cartoon of the
ex-Crown Prince of Germany. In consonance with German Court tradition
he was now about to learn a trade, and as his tastes were said to lie
in the direction of typography, _Punch_ offers to take him on as a
printing apprentice.
I have spoken elsewhere of the death of Queen Victoria in 1901; for
it was a great deal more than an event in Court history; it marked
the end of an era. _Punch_, in a commemorative number, reprinted a
great many of his cartoons, good and bad, but omitting the disparaging
or satirical pictures to which reference has been made in previous
volumes; but even with this limitation, the collection is a valuable
contribution to the pictorial history of our times. In discussing the
National Memorial _Punch_ makes Art express the pious hope that London
will get something worthy of a great city and a great Queen, and, as
we have seen, in later years he acknowledged that she had done so. The
start of the Duke and Duchess of York for their visit to Australia
in March forms the theme of the pleasant fantasy reproduced on the
preceding page.
In August the Empress Frederick of Germany, the most highly placed,
the most gifted, and the most ill-starred of the Queen's daughters,
followed her mother to the grave. Here _Punch's_ tribute, in which
Germany and England figure as chief mourners, does not represent the
hard facts, and overlooks the bitter antagonism of Bismarck to "the
Liberal English woman," as he called her, her failure to inspire
affection in the German nation, and the estrangement of her meteoric
son. But _Punch's_ attitude was natural, for the Kaiser's visit to
Osborne during Queen Victoria's last illness had touched the heart
of England; and the description of the Empress Frederick as "gentle,
brave and wise" was a venial misreading of the character of one whose
fortitude, intrepidity and intellectual gifts were beyond question, but
whose individuality was too pronounced to accommodate itself to her
political surroundings.
[Illustration: FELICIDADES!
(After the well-known picture by Velazquez in the Museo del Prado,
Madrid. With _Mr. Punch's_ respectful congratulations to their
Majesties of Spain.)]
[Sidenote: _Coronation Humours_]
The preparations for the crowning of King Edward furnished _Punch_
with material for a display of abundant good will to the Sovereign,
tempered by an explosion of irresponsible frivolity. In the "Overflow
Fête," designed by _Punch_ as "Bouverie King of Arms," he seized
the opportunity of making game of all his favourite butts. A court
of "overflow claims" considers the applications of Lord Halsbury,
Sir J. Blundell Maple, Mr. Gibson Bowles, "Brer Fuchs" (Emil Fuchs,
an Austrian artist much in Court favour but heavily derided by art
critics), Mr. G. B. Shaw, Mr. Alfred Austin the Poet Laureate, and
many others. Most of their alleged claims are declined, but a few
exceptions are made, as, for example, that in favour of Mr. G. R.
Sims being allowed to supply the fountains in Trafalgar Square with
"Tatcho." A procession of emblematic cars is mainly satirical, and
includes a "sleeping car" typical of British industry. The programme of
the Gala Performance at the National Opera House introduces Dan Leno,
and includes a masque of "Poets in Hades" on the lines of the Frogs
of Aristophanes. _Punch_ also added what purported to be an Official
Coronation Ode by Mr. Alfred Austin--a masterpiece of deliberate
ineptitude--and a "Chantey of the Nations" in which Mr. Rudyard
Kipling's imperialism is burlesqued in none too friendly a spirit.
_Punch_ provided a jocular epilogue to the masque: he also dedicated a
set of serious verses to the King wishing him
health and years' increase,
Wisdom to keep his people's love,
And, other earthly gifts above,
The long-desired, the gift of Peace.
The King is also hailed in a hunting picture as the "King of
Sportsmen"; and the grace and kindliness of Queen Alexandra, now as
ever, appealed to _Punch's_ chivalry. The dominant "note" sounded in
_Punch's_ pages is one of jocularity and good humour. He reproduces
the statement that "no fewer than 1,047 poets have sent in Coronation
Odes for the prizes offered by _Good Words_"--no longer, it need
hardly be added, the _Good Words_ of Norman Macleod. American visitors
are maliciously pictured as attempting to buy coronets; and _Punch_
makes great play with the official announcement of the amount of space
allotted to peeresses in the Abbey. Duchesses were to have eighteen
inches and ladies of inferior rank sixteen; what was wanted, in
_Punch's_ phrase, was "A Contractor for the Aristocracy."
[Sidenote: _Death of King Edward_]
The sudden and dangerous illness of the King and the postponement of
the Coronation turned all this gaiety to gloom and suspense, happily
relieved by a recovery which gave the celebrations, when they were
held, the quality of a thanksgiving as well as of a great pageant.
In 1903 the King and Queen visited Ireland, and _Punch_ prefaced his
Donnybrook Fair rhymes--a long way after Thackeray--on their entry into
Dublin with the audacious but impenitent declaration that he intended
to adhere to a method of spelling which bore no sort of resemblance to
Irish pronunciation.
Of all the Royal visitors in the years before the war, none was more
popular or "had a better Press" than King Alfonso. In 1905 _Punch_
happily contrasted past and present in his cartoon of the Kings of
England and Spain in friendly converse, while in the background the
formidable shade of Queen Elizabeth remarks with more of amazement than
approval: "Odds my life! A King of Spain in England! And right cousinly
entreated withal!" King Alfonso's marriage in the following year to
Princess Ena of Battenberg is genially commemorated in Sambourne's
happy adaptation of Velazquez; and when the infant Prince of the
Asturias made his first visit to England, the same artist gave us the
wholly delightful picture of Prince Olaf of Denmark pushing the Spanish
princelet in his "pram": "Come along, old man," he says; "I'll show
you round. I've been here before." Spain was not a royal bed of roses,
but it was at least spared the upheaval which convulsed the adjoining
kingdom of Portugal. On the assassination of King Carlos and the Crown
Prince in 1908, Britannia in _Punch's_ cartoon bade King Manoel take
courage: when he was deposed by the Revolution of 1910, he appears as
a dignified figure mournfully bewailing the downfall of his House.
Simultaneously _Punch_ chronicles the saying attributed to the late
Mlle. Gaby Deslys: "I am not ashamed of having the friendship of young
King Manoel," and ironically describes it as "the humility of true
greatness."
King Edward was born in the same year in which _Punch_ first appeared,
and when he died in 1910 the commemorative number goes back to the
cartoon of "The First Tooth," published at a time when _Punch's_
comments on the Royal Nursery were more frank than decorous. But
whether as a small boy or an Oxford undergraduate, in America or India,
in illness or in health, as Prince or King, he had always found a
benevolent friend and lenient critic in _Punch_, who now saluted him in
death, in the name of Europe, as a Maker of Peace.
To the mass of obituary literature, mostly uncritical, which was
inspired by the passing of a great and popular personality _Punch_
contributed an interesting fact. There was nothing surprising in the
statement that King Edward never joined in debate in the House of
Lords; but it was curious to learn that he never voted--except for the
Deceased Wife's Sister Bill. The King's affection for his little dog
Cæsar was one of those personal traits which had moved the popular
sentiment, and _Punch_ was fortunate in having on his staff a writer
who was a poet as well as a lover of dogs:--
Reft of your master, little dog forlorn,
To one dear mistress you shall now be sworn,
And in her queenly service you shall dwell,
At rest with one who loved your master well.
And she, that gentle lady, shall control
The faithful Kingdom of a true dog's soul,
And for the past's dear sake shall still defend
Cæsar, the dead King's humble little friend.
Evidence of the unabated popularity of King Alfonso continue to appear
in 1910, when that sovereign's visit to the Duke of Westminster
prompted some frivolous rhymes on "the Merry Monarch":--
Oh, why does Eaton all her banners don so?
To feast the roving eyes of King Alfonso.
Why was it that the sun last Wednesday shone so?
It loved the polo feats of King Alfonso.
What spectacle delights the footman John so?
The riding-breeches worn by King Alfonso.
What is it fascinates the Eatonian bonne so?
It is the winning ways of King Alfonso.
What puffs the plumage of the ducal swans so?
The notice they receive from King Alfonso.
Why are the Kaiser's courtiers jumped upon so?
He's sick with jealousy of King Alfonso.
Why does the British Press keep on and on so?
It cannot have enough of King Alfonso.
[Sidenote: _Kaiser, King, and Laureate_]
The mention of the Kaiser is ominous. _Punch_ had, for reasons
mentioned above, given him a brief respite, but one of his periodical
outbursts at Königsberg in August, 1910, provoked a cartoon
representing the Imperial Eagle re-entering his cage "Constitution" to
the relief of his keeper, whom he reassures with the remark: "It's all
right: I'm going back of my own accord. But (_aside_) I got pretty near
the sky that time. Haven't had such a day out for two years." This was
not exactly respectful treatment, but it was not so frank as _Punch's_
heading "Thank Goodness!" prefixed ten years earlier to the statement
made, by an American paper, that in a Boston Lunatic Asylum there
were eleven patients, each of whom believed himself to be the German
Emperor, but that they had no means of communicating with the outer
world.
King George's coronation in 1911 gave _Punch_ another occasion for
mingling jest with earnest, loyalty to the Sovereign with chaff of
notorieties. The King's serious concern with his country's welfare had
already been illustrated in the cartoon in which he is seen, like his
namesake saint, attacking a dragon--that of "Apathy." At the time of
the coronation _Punch_ lays stress on the heritage of sea-power that
had fallen to him, a sailor prince. In July the Prince of Wales was
welcomed in his Principality--this time, in _Punch's_ picture, by a
dragon the reverse of apathetic.
In June, 1913, the office of Laureate fell vacant by the death of Mr.
Alfred Austin. After Southey, Wordsworth and Tennyson, the anti-climax
had been so painful that _Punch_ may well be excused for the cartoon
in which Pegasus appeals to Ringmaster Asquith to disestablish him:
the Steed of the Muses was tired of being harnessed to the Royal
Circus. There are some who think that, in the best interests of the
distinguished author who was appointed, it would have been well if
_Punch's_ advice had been followed.
VANITY FAIR
In the fifty years that had passed since _Punch's_ birth in 1841,
"Society," as it was then understood, had undergone a revolution which
not only changed its structure but altered the meaning of the word. It
had, in Mr. A. B. Walkley's phrase, become one of those "discoloured"
words like "respectable" and "genteel," in which the new "connotation"
strove with and gradually supplanted the old. "Society," in the old
limited sense, stood for a limited, exclusive and predominantly
aristocratic set, arrogant at times, but not wanting in a certain
self-respect. But by the 'nineties it had become amorphous, unwieldy,
cosmopolitan and plutocratic. Du Maurier, the finest and best equipped
of the commentators and critics of the old _régime_, who recognized
its distinction and its drawbacks, and satirized with impartial
ridicule decadent aristocrats and vulgar intruders, was perhaps _felix
opportunitate mortis_:--
He brought from two great lands the best of both
In one fine nature blent.
Lover of English strength and Gallic grace,
Of British beauty, or of soul or face,
Yet with that subtler something born of race
That charm to cleanness lent.
A Thackeray of the pencil! So men said.
His reverence high for the great Titan dead
Put by such praise with ease;
But social satire of the subtler sort
Was his, too. Not the shop, the slum, the court,
But gay saloons gave quarry for his sport.
'Twas in such scenes as these
His hectoring Midas, and his high-nosed earl,
His worldly matron, and his winsome girl,
Were found, and pictured clear,
With skill creative and with strength restrained.
They live, his butts, cold-hearted, shallow-brained.
In his own chosen walk Du Maurier reigned
Supreme, without a peer.
[Sidenote: _The Social Jungle_]
The tribute was fully earned; but Du Maurier was not one of those
who enjoyed plying the scourge, and he was fortunate in that he did
not live to see the "Gay Saloon" turned into the Social Jungle, as
foreshadowed in _Punch's_ adaptation of Mr. Kipling's poem in 1894,
which ends with the couplet:--
Because of his age and his cunning, his grip and
his power of jaw,
In all that the Law leaveth open the word of King
Mammon is Law.
For "Wolf" read "Worldling" for "Jungle" read "Social World" and
_Punch's_ parallel "Laws" work out well enough. But in the years that
followed it was not so much mammon-worship as the craze for excitement
at all costs that dominated the fashionable world. The vulgarity and
love of the limelight which Du Maurier had satirized were multiplied
tenfold. Society became a romp and a ramp. England began to go
dancing-mad in the 'nineties, but the harmless rowdiness of Kitchen
Lancers, of the "Barn-dance" and the "Washington Post" developed in
the new century into a mania for which historians found a parallel in
the "Tarantism" of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. We passed
through various and mostly distressing phases of the malady from the
days of Loie Fuller's serpentine contortions to the introduction of the
"Salome" dance by Miss Maud Allan. Skirt-dancing, with a superabundance
of skirts, gradually gave place to a style marked by the desire to
dispense not only with skirts but with any sort of clothing. The
wonderful performances of the Russian Ballet revealed a new world of
art and "washed out" a good deal of highly advertised and indecorous
incompetence, but in many ways proved a doubtful boon. The cult of the
male dancer revived, and the triumphs of Pavlova and Karsavina lured
the aristocratic amateur into futile and unseemly competition. This
was only one of the many signs of the love of publicity which marked
Society when it had ceased to be select. In the 'forties, when the
_crême de la crême_ disported themselves at Cremorne, the Gardens
were reserved for their exclusive use. Now, "smartness" was the note
of Society, and "smartness" does not like to hide its light under a
bushel. In the middle 'nineties _Punch_ registered his protest against
ladies who begged publicly in the streets--the "merry half-sisters of
charity," as he called them. By 1903 he indicated the spread of the
new fashion in the ironical remark that "the eccentric habit of dining
at home is, I regret to say, steadily spreading." The further course
of this anti-domestic movement is correctly shown in the cartoon of
Christmas _à la mode_ in 1908, when the butler of a modern English
house inhospitably repels Father Christmas with: "Not at 'ome. Her
Ladyship is at Monty Carlo; the young gentlemen are in the Halps; and
Sir John has taken the other members of the family to the Restorong!"
_Punch_ was not content with attacking the organized publicity of
social life, with which may be connected his satire of the orgy of
Pageants; he was equally vigorous in chastising its organized frivolity
and horse-play; the extravagance of the week-end pleasure-hunt; the
ostentatious folly of freak entertainments; and other excesses and
eccentricities summed up in the two detestable phrases _fin de siècle_
and _de luxe_.
_Punch_ found no traces of a Golden Age in the 'nineties, though he
admitted they were Yellow enough. For these were the years of the
_Yellow Book_--alternately regarded as typical of _fin de siècle_
decadence (in _Punch's_ view) or as a symbol of literary renascence--of
the now forgotten "emancipation novel," _The Yellow Aster_; to say
nothing of the Yellow Peril and the Yellow Press. The _Daily Mail_,
by the way, was not founded till 1896. As a social satirist _Punch_,
throughout all this period, is much more concerned with the material
or physical than the mental or spiritual vagaries of the rich and
well-to-do. But a notable exception must be made in favour of that
famous--or shall I say notorious?--coterie known as "the Souls," who
are frequently referred to in 1893 and 1894. Readers anxious for
"inside" information may be recommended to consult the _Autobiography_
of Mrs. Asquith, who was one of the number.
[Illustration: KEEPING CHRISTMAS--OUT
BUTLER OF MODERN ENGLISH HOME: "Not at ome. Her Ladyship is
at Monty Carlo; the young gentlemen are in the Halps; and Sir John has
taken the other members of the family to the Restorong."]
[Illustration: MRS. MONTMORENCY-SMYTHE: "And what were you
reading when I came in, my dear? Shakespeare! Ah! What a wonderful man!
And to think that he wasn't exactly what one would call a gentleman."]
[Illustration: CULTURE BY THE SEA
"Have you Browning's works?" "No, Miss. They're too difficult. People
down here don't understand them." "Have you _Praed_?" "Prayed, Miss?
Oh, yes; we've tried that, but it's no use!"]
[Sidenote: _The "Souls"_]
They were most of them highly born and highly gifted. Some afterwards
attained eminence in politics and literature; and it must be admitted
that they were clever enough to get themselves a great deal talked
about without deliberately courting publicity at the time. Their
audacities and unconventionalities enjoyed a considerable reputation,
but did not often get into the papers. _Punch_ was obviously
"intrigued" about them, but ingeniously disguised his curiosity by
passing it on to an imaginary American visitor, "high-toned" (the word
"high-brow" was a later importation) and inquiring, who came over to
study our "Institootions"--Mr. Gladstone also used to pronounce it
that way--and wrote down his impressions for a work on _Social Dry Rot
in Europe_. So, hearing vague talk of a secret moral institution, the
Society of Souls, he set to work to collect authentic information about
them, but was everywhere baffled. The nearer he got to the shrine,
the more negative and mysterious was the information vouchsafed. But
the Philistine view is well burlesqued in his conversation with a
fashionable lady who described the Souls as "a horrid stuck-up set of
people who did all sorts of horrid things, all read the same books
at the same time, sacrificed wild asses at the altar of Ibsen, the
Hyperborean Apollo, and were bound by a rule that no Soul might ever
marry another Soul." A year or so later _Punch_ noted the report that
the Souls had ceased to exist, and would be replaced by a new club--the
"No Bodies"--of which the membership would be unlimited. Still the
Souls had had their day and, as representing an effort to establish an
exclusive social coterie to which intellect or wit formed the chief
passport, demand at least a passing word. The satire of fashionable
culture dies down and is never very seriously revived even in the
days when the late Emil Reich lectured on Plato at Claridge's. "Smart"
Society was more active with its heels than with its head or its heart.
_Punch_ distrusted the sincerity of fashionable ladies who professed
a desire to "elevate the masses" by organizing entertainments which
were a hotch-potch of Ibsen, skirt-dancing, exotic sentiment and frank
vulgarity. He waxes sarcastic, again, over charitable bazaars, run by
women who didn't enjoy them, for causes of which they knew nothing and
cared less. Frivolity was the thing that mattered. In the "Letters
to a Débutante" which appeared in 1894 _Punch_ assumes the _rôle_
of the cynical mentor, e.g. "It is hardly possible to exaggerate the
unimportance of nearly everything that happens": "Laugh when you're
thinking what to say. It saves time." In weighing the rival merits of a
group of suitors, the preference is given to the rich German-Jew. The
decay of ballroom manners was an old subject of complaint with _Punch_,
but it was never so persistently harped upon as during the years which
began with the Barn-dance and ended with the Bunny-hug. In 1894, _à
propos_ of the exuberant agility of a middle-aged Mænad, an old lady in
one of Du Maurier's pictures observes that the "Pas de Quatre" should
be "Pas du Tout" for Aunt Jane. The "Romping Lancers" are also noted,
and in "Association v. Rugby" a breathless young lady beseeches her
partner--a famous Rugby half-back--to dance "Soccer" for a little. In
1896, under the heading "The Death of the Dance," _Punch_ takes for
his text the remark of a speaker at a recent meeting of the British
Association of Teachers of Dancing: "I had rather be old and teach
deportment than be young and teach people to romp the Barn-dance"; and
he bewails the conversion of the once "light fantastic" into heavy
prancing, spasmodic antics, and the general decay of elegance and
grace. The arrival in 1897 of "The Washington Post" is greeted with
ironical approval: "You take hold of a girl by both hands, try a double
shuffle, and then slide off to another part of the room and repeat
the performance." In 1898 the lines on "The Lost Art" are based upon
the statement made by a provincial mayor that the risk of injury was
rather greater in the ballroom than in the football field:--
[Sidenote: _Ball-room Manners_]
Oh! for the days when there were dancers!
Oh! for the mazes of the Lancers!
With what a nimble step elastic
We tripped it on the light fantastic,
With a sweet charm which now is not,
Through gay cotillion or gavotte,
Or, with a grace more regal yet,
We stepped a stately minuet,
Each man of us a choice assortment
Of Turveydropian deportment.
But where is now your ancient pomp?
Your dance is but a vulgar romp,
Your shocking "Barns" and "Posts"--oh, fie!
You only think of kicking high.
The men career _sans_ time, _sans_ rhythm,
The girls rush helter-skelter with 'em,
They charge, they trample on one's toes,
Their elbows hit one on the nose,
They black one's eyes, still on they come,
They butt one in the back and stom--
I mean the waistcoat, till the hall
Is more like battlefield than ball.
I'd rather serve in the Soudan,
I'd rather fight at Omdurman,
I'd rather quarrel with a chum,
I'd rather face a Rugby scrum,
Nay, by the stars, I'd rather be
That hapless wretch, the referee,
Most desperate of men, than chance
My life and limbs at modern dance.
In 1906 the introduction of the "Boston" waltz prompts one of _Punch's_
artists to depict the sad experience of a young lady whose partners
had all learned the new dance from American instructors, and who all
danced it in a different way. The band, by the way, is playing "The
Blue Danube," for Johann Strauss was still a name to conjure with.
References to rowdy dancing are frequent in 1907, when _Punch_ printed
designs of various costumes to resist the tremendous wear-and-tear
of the ballroom, and in 1908, when he suggests, to meet a "long felt
want," that a special space should be railed off for "plungers."
_Punch's_ picture of the "Borston" as danced in 1909 belies the
ironical title "The Poetry of Motion." Long tight skirts were still
worn and are a feature of the series of suggestions, made in the same
year, by Mr. Baumer for brightening our ballrooms--the Judy-walk, the
Apache Polka, the Salome Lancers and the Vampire Valse. That same
acute observer of gilded (and painted) youth includes in his burlesque
Coronation Procession in 1911 a member of the aristocracy in the
guise of a caracoling Bacchante; and in the same year the male dancer
craze is satirized in a series of pictures showing the spread of the
infection to policemen, railway porters, scavengers, ticket collectors,
etc. The revival of old English dances dates from this period, but if
_Punch_ is to be trusted, made little impression on Mayfair. Even the
most distinguished and eminent politicians did not scorn the dance. Mr.
Balfour gave a ball at the height of the season in 1912, and _Punch_
(who was not there) gave the following wholly apocryphal description of
the revels:--
ARTHUR'S BALL
When Parliament, sick with unreason,
Was occupied, night after night,
With bandying charges of treason,
And challenging Ulster to fight,
To ease the political tension
Prince Arthur determined to call
A truce to this deadly dissension
By giving a Ball.
The guests were by no means confined to
The ranks of the old Upper Ten,
For Arthur has always inclined to
Consort with all manner of men;
So the brainy, though lacking in breeding,
Were bidden as well as the fops;
The foes of carnivorous feeding,
And lovers of chops.
There were golfers from Troon and Kilspindie
Discussing their favourite greens;
Bronzed soldiers from Quetta and Pindi;
Pale pilots of flying-machines;
There were débutantes visibly flustered,
Calm beauties from over the "Pond";
Sleek magnates of soap and of mustard,
And Brunner and Mond.
* * * * *
I saw a delectable Duchess
Sit out with a Syndicalist,
And a battle-scarred soldier on crutches
Hob-nob with a Pacificist;
And a famous professor of Psychics--
A Scot who was reared at Dunkeld--
Indulge in the highest of high kicks
I ever beheld.
Lord Haldane, whose massive proportions
Were gracefully garbed in a kilt,
Performed the most daring contortions
With true Caledonian lilt;
Lord Morley resembled a Gracchus;
Lloyd George was a genial Jack Cade,
And Elibank, beaming like Bacchus,
The revels surveyed.
The music was subtly compounded
Of melodies famous of yore,
And measures that richly abounded
In modern cacophonous lore;
There was Strauss, the adored of Vienna,
The genius of joyous unrest,
And Strauss, who the shrieks of Gehenna
Contrives to suggest.
I'd like to describe, but I canna,
The envy combined with dismay
Aroused by adorable Anna
Whom several Kingdoms obey.
Her entry produced quite a crisis--
Some prudes were surprised she was axed--
She appeared in the costume of Isis
According to Bakst.
It was four of the clock ere I quitted
These scenes of eclectic delight;
The fogies had most of them flitted,
The revels were still at their height;
For Garvin was dancing a Tango,
His head in the place of his legs;
And Spender a blameless fandango
Encircled by eggs.
What incidents happened thereafter
I only can dimly surmise:
But gusts of ecstatical laughter
Went echoing up to the skies;
And I know from my own observation
The guests were agreed, one and all,
That Arthur united the nation
By giving this Ball.
[Illustration: THE POETRY OF MOTION, 1909
The "Borston"]
[Illustration: HE: "Very interesting, these Morris-dances.
Have you ever seen any before?" SHE: "No. I don't even know
who Morris was."]
[Sidenote: _Tango-mania_]
The mention of Anna--the famous Pavlova--was at any rate topical,
for the cult of the Russian Ballet was now at its height, and in his
Almanack for 1913 _Punch_ exhibited the political and other public
celebrities of the hour engaged in appropriate evolutions _à la Russe_.
The "Bunny-hug" was very properly gibbeted in a scathing cartoon, and
in his hints to social climbers _Punch_ suggests various styles of
vulgar and inane dancing as a passport to notoriety. With laudable
fairness he admits, in parallel illustrations, that the Tango of fact
was a much less lurid thing than the Tango as painted by the fancy of
Puritans; but the revival of afternoon dances and the fashion of "Tango
teas" met with no approval, and in the cartoon "Exit Tango," early in
1914, _Punch_, rather prematurely perhaps, congratulated the "Spirit of
Dancing" on the passing of "the tyranny of the dullest of nightmares."
In one of the last of the references to the dancing craze in this
period--February, 1914, to be precise--_Punch_ notes, as one of the
reasons why the Tango was already _démodé_, the fact that matrons had
taken to it with the utmost fury, after a preliminary stage of acute
disapproval. In the words of one of the younger generation:--
Now we may watch our mothers, smiling and flushed and gay,
Doing it, doing it, doing it--tangoing night and day.
Stamping a Texas Tommy, wreathing a Grapevine Swirl,
Gleefully Gaby Gliding, young as the youngest girl.
We may not laugh at our mothers, for (between me and you)
They can out-dance us often--get all our partners too.
[Illustration: THE "BUNNY-HUG"
MODERN YOUTH (to Terpsichore): "My hug, I think." MR.
PUNCH: "My kick, I know!"]
[Sidenote: _Matron v. Maid_]
This, however, was no new thing. It was only the latest manifestation
of a "movement" which runs right through the social history of the
whole of this period, and which may be alternatively described as the
Emancipation or the Apotheosis of Middle Age. The earliest references
to the change link it up with the coming of the New Woman. For example,
in 1894, in a "Song of the Twentieth Century," _Punch_ describes the
man of the family as relegated to the shelf by his more energetic
female relatives:--
Aunt Jane is a popular preacher,
Aunt Susan a dealer in stocks,
While Father, the gentlest old creature,
Attends to the family socks.
But as time goes on it is in the pursuit of pleasure rather than in
the sphere of serious effort that the competition of the middle-aged
woman is noted as a new and formidable sign of the times. Thus in 1895
we have Du Maurier's picture of the Sunday caller finding that the
mother of the family is playing lawn tennis while the young ladies
have gone to church. By 1900 the youthfulness of the older generation
is made a source of complaint by the juniors. In "Filia Pulchra, Mater
Pulchrior," _Punch_ genially arraigns the mothers who "cut out" their
daughters. A paper for ladies had declared that the woman of forty was
most dangerous to the susceptible male, and _Punch_ enlarges on the
theme in "The Rivals," in which an eligible suitor exclaims, "Take, oh
take Mamma away!" In 1903 he recurs ironically to the subject in the
lines "De Senectute":--
However pedagogues may frown
And view such dicta with disfavour,
The folk who never sober down
Confer on life its saltiest savour.
The grandmother who wears a cap
Incurs her family's displeasure;
But if she sets a booby-trap
And wears a fringe, she is a treasure.
The old ideal of growing old gracefully had been superseded by a
refusal to grow old at all; and the "unfair competition" of matron
with maid is pointedly illustrated in _Punch's_ "Country House Hints"
in 1908, where, after giving information about tips, dresses, etc.,
the writer observes that girls are at a discount as guests: "they
are not rich enough for Bridge, and they put a restriction on funny
stories." They may have done so fourteen years ago; but only a year
later, in a burlesque article based on the fulsome Society paragraphs
of the contemporary Press, _Punch_ made it clear that the process of
emancipation was proceeding apace:--
Wise mothers--and modern mothers are seldom wanting in astuteness--do
not keep their young "flapper" daughters buried in the schoolroom
until the day of presentation. They prepare them for their complete
emancipation by a series of preliminary canters. Thus they take them
to dine at the Fitz or the Tarlton while the hair that is hanging down
their backs is still their own....
The upbringing of Lady Sarah Boodle has been wholly unconventional,
and as her parents spend most of their time in balloons, she is
looking forward to her first season with all the _fougue de dix-huit
ans_. Until she was sixteen Lady Sarah was allowed to read nothing but
the _Sporting Times_ and the _Statist_. This led, not unnaturally,
to a violent reaction, and Lady Sarah is now a devoted student
of Maeterlinck, Mr. W. B. Yeats and Fiona Macleod. Happily this
development has not impaired her healthy enjoyment of Bridge. Last
year she won £300 at this winsome pastime.... One may fitly conclude
this group of winsome English girls with the mention of two beautiful
cousins, Lady Phoebe Bunting and Miss Miriam Belshazzar. By an
extraordinary coincidence they are both third cousins once removed of
Daphne, Lady Saxthorpe, whose coster impersonations were so marked a
feature of her late husband's tenure of office as Governor of Hong
Kong. Lady Phoebe, strange to say, never learned her alphabet until
she was nearly fifteen, while her cousin had mastered the intricacies
of compound interest almost before she could walk. Lady Phoebe
is a winsome blonde, while Miss Belshazzar is a _svelte_ brunette
whose superb Semitic profile recalls the delicious proboscis of her
illustrious grandfather, Sir Joshua Schnabelheimer.
[Sidenote: _Ostentatious Luxury_]
Extravagant expense and ostentation--another old abomination of
_Punch's_--were not only rife, but they were constantly written up
and discussed with a foolish voice of praise in what purported to be
democratic papers. A ducal wedding in the mid-'nineties, which was
carefully "rehearsed" before it was actually solemnized, caused a
veritable explosion in _Punch_ about the columns of matrimonial gush
and statistics--the "haystacks of chrysanthemums"--which deluged the
papers. In the picture of coroneted sandwichmen engaged by adroit
speculators to puff their schemes, _Punch_ in 1897 was only repeating
an old indictment of parasitic peers. He had no quarrel with people
who took to trade openly and seriously, disregarding the old fine-drawn
social distinctions and contempt for commerce--witness his song of
"The English Gentleman of the Present Day" in 1899. But he had no
welcome for the newfangled newspaper articles on gastronomy, with
_menus_ and prices, puffing well-known hotels and restaurants. The
statement of a writer in _The Times_ in 1900 that "the necessaries of
life may be purchased for £2,000 a year" provided _Punch_ with food for
ironical comment. A year later it was seriously maintained in a popular
monthly that, from the point of view of a smart Society woman, it was
impossible to _dress_ on £1,000 a year. The standard of high living had
gone up by leaps and bounds from the days when to _Punch's_ youthful
fancy £1,000 a year represented wealth almost beyond the dreams of
avarice.
Another old grievance--needless extravagance in the Army--raised its
head in 1900, when a correspondent in _The Times_ complained that the
latest regulations issued by the War Office were like a tailor's list,
and contained details of seventy-seven kinds of gold lace! No wonder
was it, as _Punch_ noted, that the fathers of subalterns in crack
regiments had to guarantee them a minimum allowance of £600 a year.
This was just before the South African war, which immediately led to
a general rise of prices--the universal excuse "owing to the war"
foreshadowing what took place fifteen years later. Parallels abound,
though on a smaller scale. Marriage is ironically declared to be
impossible for self-respecting and self-protective girls owing to the
dearth of servants. "Like the Dodo, the domestic servant is extinct,"
and _Punch_, in his list of suggested exhibits for museums, includes
the following:--
_Domestic Servant_ (Mummy).--An extremely rare and finely preserved
specimen of a vanished class, whose extinction dates from 1901
A.D. It is therefore of the highest interest to the
Anthropologist and the Comparative Anatomist. Its duties are now
performed, perhaps more effectively, by the automatic "general" and
the electric dumb-waiter. When alive, it commanded the salary of a
prima donna, etc.
Aversion from work was already abroad. A fond parent is shown in this
year commenting on the recalcitrant attitude of her daughter: "No, she
won't work. She never would work. She never will work. There's only one
thing--she'll 'ave to go out to service."
Still "smart" Society went on its way unheeding. The increasing
publicity of social life is satirized under "Public Passion" in the
recital of a young wife who writes: "We are _never_ at home. I believe
it is fashionable to go to hospitals now and be ill amongst all sorts
and conditions of people." The honeymoon was passing because brides
could not face the awful loneliness of a _tête-à-tête_ existence, and
welcomed a speedy return to a semi-detached go-as-you-please existence
amongst their friends. A week-end honeymoon at Brighton is indicated
as the maximum period which could be endured by a modern couple.
In fashionable speech inanity began to be replaced by profanity.
Unbridled language on the part of aristocrats and smart people led
in 1903 to the famous conversational opening of a burlesque Society
novel: "'Hell!' said the Duchess, who had hitherto taken no part in
the conversation"[7]--which _Punch_ takes as his text for a discourse
upon further developments and reactions. The device of engineering and
paying for personal notices in the papers and simultaneously denouncing
the scandalous enterprise of pressmen, and the introduction of "freak"
parties from America are noticed and reproved in 1903, when amongst
other recreations of the Smart Set we read of "Shinty, a wild and
tumultuous version of hockey, in which there are absolutely no rules."
[Footnote 7: The author of this much-quoted phrase was said to
have been an Eton boy, but I have been unable to trace his name or
subsequent career.]
[Sidenote: _The New Mobility_]
At the beginning of this period bicycling was fashionable. The lines
"To Julia, Knight-errant" in 1895 refer in whimsical vein to the brief
vogue of bicycling parties by night in the City, organized by "smart"
people. Battersea Park was also frequented by fashionable riders; but
_Punch_, with a sure instinct, saw that the craze would not last,
and in the same year foreshadowed donkey-riding as the next modish
recreation. The advent of "mokestrians" was a mere piece of burlesque,
suggested perhaps by the popularity of the sentimental coster song
introduced by Mr. Albert Chevalier, but the speedy disestablishment of
the bicycle as a fashionable means of locomotion was correctly foretold
in one of the latest pictures from the pen of Du Maurier. Here one of
a group of fair bicyclists in the Park expresses her ardent desire for
the passing of a tyranny which she hated and only obeyed because it
was the fashion. Motoring was another matter, because it was expensive
and luxurious, and _Punch_, philosophizing in 1904 on the probable
results of a mode of motion which combined speed of transit with the
immobility of the passenger, predicted the advent of an obese and
voracious "motorocracy" with Gargantuan appetites and mediæval tastes.
In a "Ballade of Modern Conversation" which appeared in 1905, the three
outstanding topics are Bridge, motors and ailments, and about this time
_Punch_ printed a picture of a gentleman who, when asked what was his
favourite recreation, replied, "Indigestion."
[Illustration: ENGLISH AS SHE IS SPOKE!
FUTURE DUKE: "What are you goin' to do this mornin' eh?"
FUTURE EARL: "Oh, I dunno. Rot about, I s'pose, as usual."
FUTURE DUKE: "Oh, but I say, that's so rotten."
FUTURE EARL: "Well, what else is there to do, you rotter?"]
The influence and example of American millionaires is a frequent
theme of satire. In 1904 _Punch_ had attacked their acquisitiveness
in a burlesque account of the contemplated "bodily removal of
certain European landscapes." In 1905 he dealt faithfully with a
famous "freak" dinner at the Savoy Hotel, costing £600 a head, when
the guests were entertained in a huge gondola and the courtyard was
flooded to represent a Venetian lagoon. The American "enfant terrible"
in 1907, frankly discussing her relations with her parents, supplies
an interesting comment on the complexities of divorce, as described a
few years earlier by the late Mr. Henry James in _What Maisie Knew_.
The unemployment and inefficiency of the Upper Classes were admirably
satirized in a set of Neo-Chaucerian verses, suggested by a society
chronicler who had anticipated a March of the Upper Class unemployed
to the East End. In 1906 the Pageant craze assumed formidable
dimensions, and the ubiquitous activities of Mr. Louis Napoleon Parker
as Pageant-master are duly if disrespectfully acknowledged. _Punch_
had never been enthusiastic about "dressing up"; it was, in his view,
foreign to the temper of the British and essentially one of the
things which they managed better abroad. Moreover, he regarded this
preoccupation with the past as an evasion of our responsibilities to
the future. This view is pointedly expressed in the cartoon "Living
on Reputation" in 1908, where Britannia (among the Pageants) remarks:
"Quite right of them to show pride in my past; but what worries me is
that nobody seems to take any interest in my future." "Smart" people
were furiously interested in the things of the present, and for the
most part in the things that did not matter. From 1906 right up to the
war no feature of the feverish pleasure-hunt indulged in by the idle
rich escaped the vigilant eye of "Blanche," whose "Letters," when all
allowance is made for a spice of exaggeration and for the wit which
the author perhaps too generously ascribes to her puppets, remain a
substantially faithful picture of the audacious frivolity, the inanity,
the rowdiness and the extravagance of England _de luxe_, unashamed of
its folly, yet, at its worst, never inhuman or even arrogant. I don't
think that any of "Blanche's" set would have quitted a shooting party
because he was asked to drink champagne out of a claret glass, as in
the picture of the young super-snob in 1908.
[Sidenote: _Paint and "Pekies"_]
[Illustration: THE CULT OF THE PEKY-PEKY
FIRST OWNER OF PRIZE DOGLET: "These seaside places don't
appeal to me the least little bit. But Ozoneville was recommended to
give tone to Choo-choo's nerves. He's been suffering from severe shock
through seeing two fearful mongrels have a fight in the park one day.
Your little thingy-thing's off colour too?"
SECOND OWNER OF PRIZE DOGLET: "Yes, a bit run down after the
season. Sorry, but I really must hurry away. Band's beginning to play
something of Balfe's, and I _never_ allow Ming-ming to hear banal
_démodé_ music."]
Horse-play as an integral part of the modern idea of pleasure is
satirized in 1910 in a series of suggestions for new "Side-shows"
at Exhibitions, which should combine the maximum amount of motion,
discomfort, and even danger to life and limb. The recrudescence of
"beauty doctors" is noted by "Blanche" in the same year, and the
increasing use of paint, not to repair the ravages of age, but to
lend additional lustre to the bloom of youth, is faithfully recorded
by _Punch's_ artists in the decade before the war. Bridge--to which
_Punch_ had paid a negative homage on the ground that it kept the
drawing-room ballad-monger and the parlour-tricksters at bay--had
ousted whist, and in 1913 was threatened by "Coon-Can." On the cult of
the "Peky-Peky" _Punch_ spoke with two voices, for while he deprecated
the infatuation of their owners, he was fully alive to the charm, the
intelligence, and the courage of these picturesque little Orientals.
Extravagance invariably leads to reaction; but in this period the
reactions were not always sincere--at least not among the "Smart Set."
They intermittently played at being serious, but the motive generally
savoured of materialism: they were more concerned with conserving
their bodies than with saving their souls. It was an age of new and
strange Diets and Cures and food-fads. _Punch's_ "Health Seeker's _Vade
Mecum_" in 1893 reflects modern pessimism and uncertainty. In 1904, in
"Our Doctors," he recalls Mr. Gladstone's tribute to Sir Andrew Clark,
but his appreciation and eulogy of medical worthies was a good deal
discounted by his linking the names of Jenner and Gull with those of
Morell Mackenzie and Robson Roose. Neurotics were now to be found in
unexpected quarters. In 1899 Phil May has a picture of an admiral kept
awake all night by a butterfly that went flopping about his room.
The movement for learning "First Aid" had already become
fashionable--and to that extent futile--and in 1901, in "Courtship
_à la_ Galton," _Punch_ mildly satirizes the creed of Eugenics, as
illustrated by the union of two Galtonites, despising sentiment, but
possessing diplomas of matrimonial fitness. Romance and Hygiene seldom
go hand-in-hand. The "Simple Life" was another favourite cult and
catchword; but its votaries were for the most part "affecting to seem
unaffected."
[Sidenote: _Smart Simplicity_]
American visitors flooded London for the Coronation of 1902, and
_Punch_ makes good play with a statement in a weekly review that "the
old-world simplicity of rural life is unique and has an unfailing charm
for our Transatlantic visitors." This was and is true of the best of
them, but _Punch_ turned the announcement to legitimate ridicule in
"Arcady, Ltd.," with its "faked" rusticity, carefully rehearsed and
organized to cater for the taste of wealthy explorers. The cry of "Back
to the Land" is illustrated in the futile efforts of fashionables
pretending to assist in the harvest field: it is ironically commended
in 1906 to exhausted _débutantes_ as the best form of cure for the
fatigues of the London season. The "Simple Life," as practised by
well-to-do dyspeptics and the unindustrious rich, was in his view a
complete fraud, for they were really preoccupied with the material side
of existence. Hence the adoption of weird unknown foods and clothing.
In 1910 "Blanche" gives us to understand that the craze for abstinence
had even invaded the "Smart Set":--
A good many people are going in for the No-food cult, the Dick
Flummerys among others. Indeed, dinners and suppers seem to be by
way of becoming extinct functions. Dick says that till you've been
without food for a week you don't know what you're really capable
of. I don't think that would be a very reassuring thing to hear from
anyone looking as wild and haggard as Dick does now, if one happened
to be _tête-à-tête_ with, him and some knives! Dotty tells me that,
with their tiny house and small means, they find entertaining much
easier now they belong to the No-food set. Their little rooms will
hold _twice_ as many no-fooders as ordinary people, she says, and then
there's no expense of feeding 'em. No, indeed. At the Flummerys', when
your partner asks, "What shall I get you?" he merely adds, "_Hot_ or
_cold_ water?"
In general, however, these rigours were confined to intellectual or
pseudo-intellectual coteries, of which a good representative is to be
found in the hatless and sandalled youth depicted in May, 1912--not
unnaturally classed as a tramp by the old Highland shepherd--who
evidently belongs to the type ingeniously described as that of the
"Herbaceous Boarder." In 1913, in "a chronicle of Cures, with the
Biography of a Survivor," _Punch_ briefly traces the progress of fads
in food, drink and hygiene in the past half-century. He begins with
light sherry, goes on with Gladstone claret, deviates into the water
cure, takes to whisky and soda, then to cocoa nibs, and winds up with
paraffin. Simultaneously and successively the survivor abandons "prime
cuts" for vegetarianism; relapses to carnivorous habits under the
auspices of Salisbury (the apostle of half-cooked beef and hot-water)
and Fletcher (who found salvation in chewing); then took to Plasmon
with Eustace Miles, lactobacilline in accordance with the prescription
of Metchnikoff, and finally developed into a full-blown disciple of
osteopathy. The list is not by any means complete, for no mention is
made of Dr. Haig or of China tea, or the uncooked vegetable cure. But
it will serve as a rough survey of the romance and reality of modern
dietetics.
When I said that smart people were more concerned with their bodies
than their souls, this must not be taken to imply a complete
disregard for the things of the spirit. We hear little in _Punch_ of
Spiritualism, but a certain amount about occultism. "Auras" and their
colours and meanings were attracting attention in 1903, and in 1906
the "mascot" craze had reached such a pitch that _Punch_ was moved to
intervene. If, he contends, we _must_ have mascots, they had better
be duly examined and licensed. The "Smart Set," again, always anxious
to advertise their worship of pleasure, were not immune from the
denunciations of popular preachers. The fiery fulminations of Father
Bernard Vaughan did not escape _Punch's_ amused notice. In 1907 the
results of this crusade are foreshadowed in a series of pictures in
which the "Smart Set" are exhibited as converts to decorum, simplicity
and sanity. They have taken to serious pursuits--part-singing and
photography. They frequent cheap restaurants and, as motorists, develop
an unfamiliar consideration for the foot passenger. The irony and
scepticism underlying these forecasts is further shown in the burlesque
"Wise Words on Wedlock" by "Father Vaughan Tupper," in the following
year--a string of extracts from his "great sermon," in which worldly
wisdom is mixed with sonorous platitudes.
[Sidenote: _Caste and "The Social Fetish"_]
While complaints of the decline of manners are constant, evidences
frequently recur of the worship of "good form" and the efforts made to
keep it up. In 1900 _Punch_ pillories an advertisement which offered
coaching to "strangers, colonials, Americans and foreigners on matters
of high English etiquette and fashion"; but in the same year it
requires a certain amount of reading between the lines to dissociate
_Punch_ from the sentiments expressed in the verses on Caste:--
"Kind hearts are more than coronets,"
I know this must of course be true;
It is the same old sun that sets
On high and low, that rises too.
What matters it for whom you buy
The ring of diamonds and pearls,
A maid whose birth is none too high,
Or daughter of a hundred earls?
If you're content that she should be--
Well, not exactly as you are,
The trifling difference in degree
May only very seldom jar.
Intolerance we should suppress,
An attribute of fools and churls,
Yet I prefer, I must confess,
The daughter of a hundred earls.
It may, perhaps, be fair to regard this as a piece of impersonation--a
point of view--rather than an editorial pronouncement. Anyhow,
_Punch_ was perfectly sound in his ridicule of the aristocratic
pseudo-Socialist who wished to have it both ways, and of the
gullibility or snobbery of reporters who ministered to her vanity.
Suburban pretensions to smartness are also chaffed in the picture of
the mother rebuking her daughter for relapsing to "Pa" and "Ma" instead
of calling her parents "Pater" and "Mater."
What _Punch_ could not stand, and to his credit never had stood, was
the inverted snobbery of those who professed to despise the privileges
and the shibboleths of rank, while all the time they took the utmost
pains to let you know that they belonged to the class which claimed
those privileges and that they were incapable of violating its
shibboleths. This old game, revived with considerable skill by Lady
Grove in her treatise on The Social Fetish, in which great stress is
laid on the test of pronunciation, was mercilessly exposed in its true
colours by _Punch_ in 1907. The article is an extremely workmanlike,
polite, but damaging criticism of an odious but ancient habit--that
of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Another old
custom--the mutual abuse in public of politicians who were bosom
friends in private--was revived with such gusto in these years as to
elicit _Punch's_ comment of "Pals before Party."
[Illustration: PALS BEFORE PARTY
M.P.'S WIFE: "I say, Archie, it's a shame to abuse poor Roddy
as you did in your speech last night. After all, he's your best pal,
although he _is_ on the other side."
M.P.: "My dear girl, that's nothing to what he's going to say about
me to-morrow. He's shown me his speech, and I'm jotting down a few
additional epithets for him to stick in."]
Though manners were in a state of flux, etiquette still survived.
The orthodox horror felt by the smart man about town at anyone of his
own class carrying a parcel in the streets was, if _Punch_ is to be
believed, still prevalent in 1908; the characteristic British avoidance
of sentiment is illustrated a year later in the salutation, "Hallo! old
man. How are you, and how are your people, and all that sort of silly
rot?" Characteristic, again, of British understatement is the reply
of a V.C. to the question, "Say, how did you get that el'gant little
cross?" put to him by a fair American: "Oh, I dunno. Pullin' some silly
rotter out of a hole." The change that had come over the relations
between Society and professional actors, musicians and authors is
shown in the picture of the long-haired genius who remarks, "And is
this the first time you've met me, Duchess?" The Duchess is reduced to
speechlessness, and takes refuge in a petrifying stare. That was in
1908, and the picture forms a good pendant to the affable Duchess of Du
Maurier, who in a similar position had remarked: "You must really get
someone to introduce you to me." Writing on the necessary attributes of
a Lion of the Season in 1899, _Punch_ placed an interesting personality
first: literary lions were no longer popular, as most people now wrote
books. Pursuing the inquiry farther, he gives special preference to
travellers and athletes:--
[Sidenote: _Social Lions_]
_Q._ Then what is the best mode of becoming a Lion?
_A._ By discovering a new continent or suffering imprisonment amongst
cannibals for five or six years.
_Q._ And what is the reward of such a time of misery?
_A._ A fortnight's _fêting_ in Belgravia and Mayfair.
_Q._ Is this sufficient?
_A._ More than enough. The fawning of Society begins to pall after a
week's experience of its cloying sweetness.
_Q._ Is there any celebrity other than literary or exploratory capable
of securing the attention of Mrs. Leo Hunter and her colleagues?
_A._ Prowess in the cricket field is a recognized path to social
success.
_Q._ And has not an amateur cricketer an advantage over other
competitors for fashionable fame?
_A._ Yes; he can claim his days for matches and his nights for rest.
_Q._ From the tone of your last answer it would seem that you do not
consider the lot of a Society Lion a happy one?
_A._ You are right; but the _fêted_ one has the satisfaction of
knowing that the fevered notoriety of a brief season is usually
followed by the restful obscurity of a long lifetime.
It is enough, by way of explanation, to add that when _Punch_ wrote,
the names of Mr. Walter Savage Landor and M. de Rougemont were on every
lip. Fifteen years later, actors, boxers and, above all, dancers, male
and female, were the favourite quarry of social lion-hunters. There was
nothing very new about this tendency: it was as old as ancient Athens
and had its roots in the everlasting human love of variety, in the
desire at all costs to escape from dullness and routine. In 1909 a girl
at Bristol who attempted to commit suicide received eighteen offers
of marriage, and the _Daily Chronicle_ reported that Mme. Steinheil,
on the mere suspicion of having murdered her husband, was receiving
similar proposals every day. This was at a time when, according to
the same journal, there were thousands of young women in Bristol with
certificates of competency as teachers, wives, and scholars, many of
whom could not find husbands. _Punch_ enlarges on this theme with
philosophical irony. Security and respectability were apt to be dreary
and monotonous, and it must at least be lively to be married to a
poisoner.
Turning back to the minor etiquette of Mode, we note that by 1903
evening dress was no longer insisted on in the more expensive seats
at the theatres, though in 1906 the _Lancet_ was alleged to have
recommended evening dress as indicative of "tone" and conducive to
hygiene. _Punch_ had long before declaimed against the tyranny of
paying "calls." In 1907 he alludes to the practice as obsolete, and
suggests that ladies, instead of having "At Home" days, should be out
on certain days, so as to give their friends a safe opportunity for
leaving cards.
_Punch_ had for many years ceased from criticizing the manners of
medical students, which occupied so much of his attention fifty years
earlier; the most serious of his comments on professional manners were
excited by "ragging" amongst officers in the Army. The protest, which
he printed in 1896, purported to come from the ranks, and is based on
the assumption that leadership was impaired when officers forgot to
be gentlemen. At the Universities, _Punch_ was evidently concerned by
the multiplication of prigs. Early in the new century Balliol was, as
usual, singled out as the principal hot-bed for the propagation of this
type, but _Punch_ paid that college a remarkable if reluctant tribute.
He enumerated all the different species of undergraduates to be found
there; keen laborious Scots, Ruskinite road-builders, and converts to
Buddhist, Gnostic and Agnostic theories; but admitted that if Balliol
contained all the cranks, it also contained the coming men--the men
who would count. That curious Balliol product which emerged about this
time, the "intellectual 'blood,'" seems to have escaped _Punch's_
notice. At the end of the last century he notes the invasion of schools
by the bicycle, and speculates fantastically on its results. As a
matter of fact, bikes were afterwards largely proscribed in public and
private schools, and the ban has not even yet been wholly removed.
[Illustration: ON THE RHINE
FIRST TOURIST: "Care to use these glasses?"
SECOND TOURIST: "No, thanks. Seen it all on the cinema 't
'ome!"]
[Sidenote: _An Appeal to Santa Claus_]
Fashion has many phases; and children's Christmas presents reflect
the popular tastes of the moment. In 1908 _Punch_ printed the appeal
of a little girl to Santa Claus to help her to avoid getting as many
as possible of the same presents. This last Christmas it had been
"perfectly absurd"--an endless iteration of _Peter Pan_ story books,
Golliwogs and copies of _Alice in Wonderland_, illustrated by Rackham
and other artists. The sacrilegious attempt to supersede Tenniel's
classical designs naturally met with no sympathy from _Punch_, and,
what is more to the point, did not prove a success.
Not a few of _Punch's_ old social butts and pet aversions disappear at
the end of the century--including the old "'Arry." One of 'Arry's last
efforts was to rejoice over the defeat of women at Oxford, and another
was to describe how he was teaching his "best girl" how to pedal. The
"Twelve Labours of 'Arry," as depicted by Phil May in the Almanack for
1896, in which he is seen on the rink, the river, hunting, shooting,
driving tandem, boxing, playing cricket, golfing, bicycling, etc.,
introduce a new type indistinguishable from the "new rich" in dress
and deportment. The new type of tourist depicted in 1912 lacks the
exuberance of the old, and his _nil admirari_ attitude is attributed to
the "educative" influence of the "pictures."
FASHION IN DRESS
From the very earliest times the evolution of dress has been governed
by two contending principles--Protection and Decoration; and the
student of "primitive culture" will find these principles asserting
themselves even in our own highly sophisticated times. One need not be
an expert in psycho-analysis to trace in modern fashions the survival
of the primitive instinct of decoration or the conflict between the
irrational and the rational selves which is writ large in the annals of
Mode. Profoundly conscious of my own incompetence to deal adequately
with this fascinating and momentous subject, I nevertheless venture to
submit that Laxity is the outstanding feature or "note" of the period
now under review. It is an ambiguous term, but none the less suitable
on that account, for laxity in its original sense implies a looseness
which conduces to comfort, while, in its later and ethical use, it
stands for irregularity, extravagance and eccentricity. Both meanings
are richly exemplified in the fashions which prevailed in the years
1892-1914; but it must be admitted that, on the score of a wise laxity,
man was more "rational" than woman in endeavouring to reconcile the
claims of comfort and adornment. Women's dress is far more various,
interesting, amusing and even exciting, but on the principle that one
should keep one's cake for the end, I prefer to begin with the mere
bread-and-butter of male costume. _Punch_, as my readers may remember,
had in his earlier days inveighed against the rigidity and discomfort
of men's dress, the tyranny of the top-hat and the strangulation of
tight-fitting collars. In middle age, we find him more of a stickler
for propriety of costume. Thus in 1893 he describes, with affected
amazement, the strange garb adopted by fashionable young men for
their morning exercise in the Park between nine and eleven--a straw
hat worn on the back of the head, an unbuttoned coat, no waistcoat
and flannel trousers. Simultaneously one of his artists depicts
the strange and casual attire of M.P.s in the House of Commons in
August--tweeds and knickerbockers, sombreros, caps, and even blazers.
Yet, with an inconsistency which did credit to his humane instincts,
_Punch_, at the close of the same year, assails the high stiff collar
worn by young men of fashion and refrains, in 1894, from any serious
comment on an article in the _Scotsman_ on the laxity of costume
characteristic of modern Oxford. "Straw hats and brown boots appear to
abound everywhere," while "bowlers" were gradually discarded. When the
centenary of the top-hat arrived in 1897, _Punch_ suggested that its
abolition would be a suitable way of celebrating the year of Jubilee.
But the "top-hat" had its defenders as well as detractors, and the
"pros" and "cons" of the correspondence in _The Times_ are admirably
summed up in _Punch's_ article:--
It would be advisable, or inadvisable, as the case may be, to abolish
It in the Jubilee Year.
Because all the scarecrows in the country are already fitted.
Because It is the hall-mark of human dignity, and, combined with a
smile, is sufficient by Itself, without any other costume, to stamp
the wearer as one of Nature's Noblemen, whether he be a Missing Link
or a King of the Cannibal Islands.
Because It is indispensable, as part of the stock-in-trade of
conjurers, for the production of live rabbits, pots of flowers,
interminable knotted handkerchiefs, and other useful and necessary
articles.
Because no Harrow boy is happy till he gets It.
Because It is a decided protection in a street fight, or when you fall
out hunting or coming home late from the Club.
Because It only needs to be carefully sat on to make an excellent and
noiseless substitute for the concertina.
Because no self-respecting Guy, Bridegroom, or 'Bus-driver is ever
seen without one.
Because It is a very effective counterpart of the Matinée hat at
Lord's, and similar gatherings.
Because, to be at all in the fashion, and to look decently dressed,
you require a fresh one every day. This is good for the trade.
Because It stimulates the manufacture of umbrellas, eye-glasses,
hansom-cabs, frock-coats, hair-restorers, and forcible language.
Because no one has yet ventured to wear It on the all-prevalent
bicycle.
Because no statue has ever had the face to sport It, with very few
deplorable exceptions.
Because It is really the most becoming headgear hitherto devised.
Because It is really the most unbecoming headgear hitherto devised.
Because, after a hundred years, it is time we had a change.
Because, when a thing has been running for a century, it is a pity to
abolish It.
Because, if It is abolished, the custom of raising It to ladies will
perish as well, and there will follow the Extinction of Manners
for Men, the Decadence of Church Parade, the General Cutting of
Acquaintances, the re-introduction of Thumb-biting, Nose-pulling,
Duelling, and Civil War, the disappearance of Great Britain as a
first-class Power, the establishment of a Reign of Terror, and much
inconvenience.
Because I have recently purchased an Extra Special Loyal and
Up-to-Date Jubilee Tile, which I hope to wave, throw up, and generally
smash and sacrifice on the Great Occasion.
But that is not another story.
[Sidenote: _Fashions in Hats_]
_Punch_ had already referred to Its disuse on the cricket field. The
mention of statues in top-hats is not an effort of imagination: Dr.
Grigor, to whom Nairn owes so much of its popularity as a health
resort, is thus attired in the stone effigy of him which stands in the
centre of the town. The tall hat, though now seldom seen except at
weddings and funerals, has survived its centenary; but new fashions in
headgear date from 1897, when _Punch's_ "Stifled Stockbroker" rejoices,
when the thermometer stood at ninety in the shade, in the relief
afforded by his Panama and Pyjamas.
The appearance of the Homburg Hat is chronicled in 1900, but not in
a complimentary manner. "Bertie's new hat," according to a satirical
young lady, "looks as though somebody had begun excavating to find his
brains, and had given it up in despair." There was another heat wave
this year, and _Punch_ notices that straw hats were worn at Sandown,
while the horses in Paris were "wearing straw bonnets to protect them
from the heat," a practice adopted in subsequent years in London. The
"boom" in sandals in 1901 belongs more to Hygiene than to Fashion, but,
if _Punch_ is to be believed, it was not confined to health cranks and
children; and in the Sapphic stanza of Canning's "Needy Knife-grinder"
he gives voice to the indignant protest of the London shoeblack.
Another sartorial centenary, that of trousers, fell in the year 1902,
but _Punch's_ appeal to the poets to celebrate it in song remained
unanswered. Meanwhile a young peer was credited by a society journal
with the intention of forming a League in order to differentiate men's
evening dress from that of a waiter, but _Punch_ failed to see in the
venture any sign of _noblesse oblige_. By 1902 the Panama Hat had been
vulgarized by 'Appy 'Arry; and a year later _Punch_ speaks of "the late
Panamania." It had gone out of fashion in New York, being superseded by
the ordinary stiff straw hat, and _Punch_ anticipated that the "slump"
would also cross the Atlantic.
[Illustration: FOND WIFE: "What do you think of Bertie's new
hat, dear?"
HER CANDID SISTER: "Well, dear, I think it looks as though
somebody had begun excavating to find his brains, and had given it up
in despair."]
[Sidenote: _Novelties v. Revivals_]
There is one grand distinction between men and women in regard to
dress. Women (or those who dictate their fashions) are divided between
novelties and revivals, and the revivals are generally of the most
outrageous absurdities. It is otherwise with the simple male. He deals
far less in revivals, and when he hits upon a good novelty he generally
sticks to it. In this category I would unhesitatingly include the brown
boot, to which _Punch_ devoted the following instructive article,
modelled on the style of the _Daily Mail_, in the year 1903:--
THE CULT OF THE BROWN BOOT
No serious student of dermatology can have avoided noticing the
enormous increase in the use of brown boots in the last quarter of a
century. In 1879 a clubman would no more have thought of walking down
Pall Mall in brown boots than of flying. But now even archdeacons
frequent the Athenæum Club in that ubiquitous footwear.
Necessity is probably the mother of invention, as Lord Avebury has
pointedly remarked, and the introduction of the brown boot is due,
according to a well-known Bond Street maker, to the exigencies
of a retired General, who, finding it difficult to get his boots
adequately blacked at his chambers, suggested, as a solution of his
embarrassment, that it might be possible to devise a form of boot
in which blacking could be entirely dispensed with. The example at
once provoked imitation, and now it is estimated by Dr. Nicholson
Roberts in the _Bootman_ that in London alone 1,250,000 pairs of
tawny-coloured footgear are sold in the year.
Boots, it may not be generally known, are made from the hides of
various animals, terrestrial and marine. The skin is removed after the
animal has been slaughtered, not before, and is then subjected to a
variety of preliminary processes of a mollifying character, of which
the most important is that of tanning. Tan, or tannin, as it is more
correctly called, is a substance of a friable texture and a highly
pronounced but hygienic odour. It is principally found in Indian
tea, whence it is extracted by machinery especially designed for the
purpose, and stored in tanyards. It is also occasionally used to
deaden the sound of traffic and provide equestrians with a substratum
calculated to minimize the wear and tear of their horses' hoofs. Dogs
of certain breeds are also technically described as being "black and
tan."
The process of bootmaking, of which the headquarters is at
Northampton, will be familiar to all who have attended the
performances of Wagner's opera _Die Meistersinger_. It involves
the use of powerful cutting instruments, cobbler's wax, needles,
thread, and other implements, and the principal terms in its somewhat
extensive terminology are vamp, welt, upper leathers, and nether sole.
Bootmakers, like tailors, commonly sit cross-legged at their work, and
hold pronounced political views; hence the term freebooter. But it has
been noted that the makers of brown boots incline to Liberal Unionism.
Their patron saint is Giordano Bruno, and in theology they affect
latitudinarianism.
The term "brown boots," it should also be noted, is a misnomer, as it
includes shades of yellow, orange, and russet. Army men affect the
latter, while stockbrokers and solicitors prefer the former.
In conclusion it may be worth while to record certain established
rules, the disregard of which may have untoward consequences. Black
laces do not harmonize well with brown boots, nor is it _de rigueur_
to wear them with a frock-coat, or when in evening or court dress.
[Illustration: THE SEX QUESTION
(A study in Bond Street)]
The information here imparted must be accepted with certain reserves,
and the same remark holds good of _Punch's_ picture of Church Parade
in 1906, where hatless "nuts" smoking pipes, wearing Panama hats,
knickerbockers and even dressing-gowns, are shown mingling with more
correctly attired pedestrians. But, allowing for exaggeration, the
picture reflects a real tendency--towards greater comfort and less
convention in dress. The "nut" depicted in 1907 wears a coat with
a pronounced waist, and highly coloured hose, but in 1910 _Punch_
descants lyrically on the announcement, made by the _Daily Express_,
that "the reign of the passionate sock is over," though a man might
"still let himself go in handkerchiefs." The poet ironically bewails
the fiat which dooms our socks henceforth to silence:--
There is a power, my friends,
That disciplines our loud-hued nether ends.
Still, he consoles himself with the reflection that he still can wear
his heart "up his sleeve," thus recalling the new definition of a
gentleman given some years earlier in suburban circles as one who wore
his handkerchief up his cuff.
[Illustration: HOST: "How do you like the course?"
VISITOR: "Well, I don't wish to appear ungrateful, but I
should like to lie down!"]
[Sidenote: _Passionate Socks and Knickerbockers_]
Owing to the increasing skimpiness of skirts and the cult of slimness,
the approximation of male and female attire reached a point in 1911
which suggested to one of _Punch's_ artists a new Sex Question puzzle.
But while the female "nut" was becoming indistinguishable from the
male, the male golfer had come to affect a bagginess of knickerbockers
recalling the exuberance of the female cyclist of two decades earlier,
and, as _Punch_ showed, exceedingly ill-suited for progress in a high
wind.
[Illustration:
AGAINST THE WIND WITH THE WIND
Disastrous influence of the sea-breezes on the modern "nut" coiffure.
Recently witnessed by our artist at a popular watering-place.]
Throughout this period whiskers remained in disfavour with all men of
fashion, though they lingered on among the elderly and the middle-aged.
Pianists, artists and literary geniuses still wore their hair long.
The value of a beard in correcting an imperfect profile was admirably
illustrated in Du Maurier's picture of the complacent Admiral in
1894, and naval officers, then and now, availed themselves of a
privilege denied to the other Service, without any loss of trimness
and smartness of appearance. The "toothbrush" moustache dates back to
pre-War days, and its popularity was not impaired when early in 1914
the General commanding the Prussian Guards Corps forbade its adoption
as "not consonant with the German national character." Waxed ends
to the moustache were now only worn by policemen, taxi-drivers and
Labour leaders. But the outstanding feature of male _coiffure_ during
the latter part of this period was the adoption of the practice of
liberally oiling or pomading the hair and brushing it right back over
the head without any parting. Whence the practice came I do not know,
but it became almost universal amongst "nuts," undergraduates and the
senior boys at our public schools. _Punch_ did not admire the fashion,
but it must have been a gold mine to all dealers in bear's grease,
brilliantine, Macassar's "incomparable oil," and all manner of unguents
simple or synthetic.
[Sidenote: _Revival of Crinoline Threatened_]
_Punch's_ chronicle of feminine fashion opens in 1893 with the menace
of a return of the crinoline, the bare mention of which was enough to
upset his equanimity, for his seven years' war against it had by his
own admission been more or less of a failure:--
CRINOLINE
Rumour whispers, so we glean
From the papers, there have been
Thoughts of bringing on the scene
This mad, monstrous, metal screen,
Hiding woman's graceful mien.
Better Jewish gaberdine
Than, thus swelled out, satin's sheen!
Vilest garment ever seen!
Form unknown in things terrene;
Even monsters pliocene
Were not so ill-shaped, I ween.
Women wearing this machine,
Were they fat or were they lean--
Small as Wordsworth's celandine,
Large as sail that's called lateen--
Simply swept the pavement clean:
Hapless man was crushed between
Flat as any tinned sardine.
Thing to rouse a Bishop's spleen,
Make a Canon or a Dean
Speak in language not serene.
We must all be very green,
And our senses not too keen,
If we can't say what we mean,
Write in paper, magazine,
Send petitions to the Queen,
Get the House to intervene.
Paris fashion's transmarine--
Let us stop by quarantine
Catastrophic Crinoline!
[Illustration: FASHION
"Oh, Mummy, have you been vaccinated on _both_ arms?"]
Du Maurier, in a picture which serves as a pendant to one which
appeared in November, 1857, contrasts the Misses Roundabout's inflated
circumference with the graceful lines of the normal skirt, but the
warning was happily unnecessary and the threatened danger never
materialized. Another revival, that of the "Coal-scuttle" bonnet,
was not nearly so formidable, but it enabled _Punch_ to indulge in a
characteristic gibe at the headgear of the "loud Salvation lasses."
The mania for expansion had ascended, and the fashion of large puffed
sleeves in the same year prompted the criticism of the little girl:
"Oh, Mummy, have you been vaccinated on _both_ arms?" For many years
huge hats continued to offend _Punch's_ sense of proportion. In 1893
he contrasts the small flat sailor-hat worn at the seaside with the
monstrosities in vogue in London, and in 1894 I note the first of
his many tirades against the "Matinée Hat." In the 'fifties _Punch_
had derided "Bloomerism"; now he was momentarily converted to the
introduction of "rational" dress for women cyclists. Thus in 1894 he
defended the innovation with pen and pencil against the protests of
Mrs. Grundy, that "great Goose Autocrat, the Palladium of Propriety,
the Ægis of social morality," and attacked her inconsistency in banning
knickerbockers while she acquiesced in audacious _décolletage_. The
lady in knickerbockers portrayed in 1895 is a distinctly attractive
figure though she owns that she had adopted them not to ride a
bicycle, but because she had got a sewing machine.
[Sidenote: _Matinée Hats and Russian Blouses_]
Hats and balloon sleeves occupy a good deal of notice in 1895 and 1896.
In an ingenious parody of Keats's "_La Belle Dame sans Merci_," _Punch_
denounces the use of "mixed plumes" in women's hats, and the poet is
left
alone and sadly loitering
While the sedge shakes not with the glancing plumes
And no birds sing.
The nuisance of the matinée hat had roused the ire of the male
playgoer. _Punch_ compared it to the Eiffel Tower and to a Tower of
Babel on top of a garden bed. The obstruction in Parliament was nothing
to it; and on reading that large theatre hats had been prohibited
in Ohio, he was ready to admit that here, at any rate, we might
Americanize our modes to good purpose. Floral decorations had reached
such a pitch of extravagance as to warrant the remark of the loafer to
a lady wearing a huge beflowered hat: "Want a _gardener_, Miss?" Signs
of sanity, however, were recognized in the announcement that Parisian
_couturières_ had issued a fiat against wasp waists, and were going to
take the Venus of Milo henceforth as their model, though _Punch_ was
rather sceptical of the results of this bold move, which in his view
would cause consternation in the ranks of the fashion-plate designers.
The Venus of Milo, by the way, has in 1922 been "turned down" by a
fashionable Chicago lady as utterly early Victorian.
Passing over the introduction of the "bolero" coat and the brief
revival of the early Victorian bonnet in 1897, we come in 1898 to one
of the first instances of the Russian invasion--the appearance of the
Russian blouse. _Punch_ describes it as the same back and front, with
a kind of ruff below the waist which sticks out stiffly all round. It
required four times as much stuff as was necessary, but provided room
to stow away a fair-sized sewing machine without detection. The "Medici
Collar," another novelty, or revival, of the year, is caricatured in
a picture which gives the impression of a "bearded lady"; while the
enormously lofty trimmings of hats are reported (on the authority of
the _Daily Telegraph_) to have obliged carriage-makers to lower the
seats of many closed vehicles. Knickerbockers had already gone out of
fashion, even for bicycling, and _Punch_ unchivalrously compares them
with the baggy nether-wear of Dutchmen.
Skirts were still worn tight but very long, so long that the shade
of Queen Bess is invoked to express her wonder how the modern woman
could walk at all, and _Punch_ suggests a new occupation for the
London street boys as trainbearers. In 1899 the new colour was "_rouge
automobile_," described as _très-chic_ or _teuf-teuf_--the Parisian
argot for the noisy motor of the hour.
The _Hairdresser_ announced that "this year hair is to be worn
green," but the statement appears to have been premature. _Punch_
again fulminates against the persistent Plumage Scandal--this time
in a picture of the "Extinction of Species," typified by a ferocious
fashion-plate lady with a plumed hat surrounded by plucked egrets.
_A propos_ of headgear, it may be added that in the Coronation year
of 1902 _Punch_ issued a Proclamation to all women not to wear large
hats at the ceremony and so cause annoyance, vexation, desperation
and profanity to sightseers. His Schedule comprises Gainsboroughs,
Bergères, Tricornes, Plateaux, Lady Blessington, Rustic, Picture and
Matinée hats--a tolerably comprehensive list.
From 1903 onwards large bag-shaped muffs came prominently into view,
and _Punch_ ungallantly emphasizes their value as a means of hiding
large hands. The outstanding feature of this and the next year is the
influence of motoring on dress. Here, according to _Punch_, decoration
was entirely sacrificed to comfort: the motorist swathed in furs is
compared to the bear, the mountain goat, the chimpanzee and the Skye
terrier. In 1904 he notes the universal adoption of the motor-cap, even
by those who never owned or rode in a motor-car. For the rest, the
"clinging style" of dress, with long skirts and long hanging sleeves,
was generally in vogue. Mrs. Roundabout fears that it would make her
look "so dreadfully emaciated," but rotundity of figure had ceased to
be the rule even with the middle-aged. Fashionable women, apart from
their motor costumes, continued to display their wonderful disregard
for the rigours of the climate, a trait which is faithfully dealt with
in _Punch's_ verses on the "Pneumonia Blouse."
[Sidenote: _Revival of the Directoire Style_]
By 1904 skirts were beginning to be appreciably shortened, but, as a
set-off, fashionable women indemnified themselves by the length and
expansiveness of their sleeves:--
Her sleeves are made in open bags
Like trousers in the Navy;
No more she sweeps the streets, but drags
Her sleeves across the gravy.
Elaborate bathing dresses, exhibiting a gradual tendency to reduce the
amount of material, are henceforth a frequent subject of illustration.
In 1905 _Punch's_ fair bathers remain on the shore and never enter
the water as it would absolutely spoil their dresses. We hear less of
the matinée hat, but the enormous _coiffures_ depicted in 1907 proved
hardly less objectionable to those who sat behind them; and as for
hats, the more grotesque and absurd they were the stronger was their
appeal. The new hats in 1907, with the brim large at the back, have a
sort of sou'-wester effect; and the towering monstrosities depicted at
the close of the year make "busbys" look small: Mars is eclipsed by
Venus. In 1908 _Punch_ chronicles the advent of the latest importation
from France, the revived "Directoire" costume as worn at Longchamps:--
Long languid lines unbroken by a frill,
Superfluous festoons reduced to nil,
A figure like a seal reared up on end
And poking forward with a studied bend;
A shortish neck imprisoned in a ruff,
Skin-fitting sleeves that show a stint of stuff,
A waist promoted halfway up the back,
And not a shred that's comfortably slack;
A multitude of buttons, row on row,
Not there for business--merely made for show;
A skirt whose meagre gores necessitate
The waddle of a Chinese lady's gait;
A "busby" toque extinguishing the hair,
As if a giant hand had crushed it there--
Behold the latest mode! and write beneath,
"A winter blossom bursting from its 'sheath.'"
[Illustration: A DECADE'S PROGRESS
I. Mrs. Browne, Mrs. Browne, junior, and Mrs. Browne, junior's little
girl, as they were in 1901, and--
II. As they are to-day.]
[Illustration: AS WE KNEW HER TEN YEARS AGO--AS WE MEET HER TO-DAY]
[Sidenote: _Fashion Plate Heroines_]