Chapter IX: Part II: The Social Fabric (3)

Many of the broader aspects of early Victorian social life remain with us to-day, though modified or amended. "The broad vein of plush that traverses the whole framework of English society," as _Punch_ flamboyantly gibed, if not wholly obliterated is at least less conspicuous. Jeames and Jenkins are dead. If we cannot say the same of bullying at schools, "ragging" in the Army, the unnecessary expense of uniforms and the costly pageantry of funerals--all of which were strenuously condemned by _Punch_--it may at least be contended that public opinion is more vigilant in arraigning and bringing to light offences against humanity, good taste and common sense. Modern critics have not been wanting who charge _Punch_ with prudery and squeamishness, but this is not the place to discuss whether the popularity of the paper would have been enhanced, or its influence and power fortified by following the example of _La Vie Parisienne_ or of _Jugend_. Certainly during the period under review reticence and respectability were combined on occasion with a remarkable freedom of comment, and the tragedy of "The Great Social Evil" was frankly admitted in Leech's famous picture. Though an isolated reference it was worth a hundred sermons. If _Punch_ preferred to be the champion of domesticity and decorum in public and private life, he was reflecting an essential feature of the age--a feature which no longer exists. It was an age of patriarchal rule and large families. Nothing strikes one more in turning over the pages of old numbers of _Punch_ than the swarms of young people who figure in the domestic groups so dear to John Leech. The numbers, more than the precocity of the rising generation, impress the reader. The type represented is mainly drawn from well-to-do middle-class households, but all classes were prolific. If one needs proof, there is the evidence of Debrett and of the tombstones in our country churchyards.

[Sidenote: _Mr. Quiverfull_]

COUNTRY FOOTMAN: "Pray, Sir, what do you think of our town? A nice place, ain't it?"

LONDON FOOTMAN (condescendingly): "Vell, Joseph, I likes your town well enough. It's clean; your streets are hairy; and you've lots of rewins. But I don't like your champagne; its all Gewsberry."]

Time: Midnight. A sketch not a hundred miles from the Haymarket.

BELLA: "Ah! Fanny! How long have you been _Gay_?"]

THE LIBERAL PROFESSIONS

As a mirror of public opinion on the status and importance of the learned and liberal professions _Punch_, when due allowance has been made for his limitations, his prejudices and even his passions, cannot be overlooked by the student of social history. A whole book has been written on his attitude towards the Church; in another section of this chronicle I have dealt at some length with his hostility to Pluralism, Sabbatarianism, Ritualism, and endeavoured to show how a generally tolerant and "hang theology" attitude was in the early 'fifties exchanged for one of fierce anti-Vaticanism. The "No Popery" drum was banged with great fury, and when the Roman Catholic hierarchy was re-established in England in 1850, _Punch_ supported the Ecclesiastical Titles Act which declared the assumption of titles connected with places in the realm illegal and imposed heavy penalties on the persons assuming them. This Act, passed in 1851, remained a dead letter until 1871, when it was repealed. As for the law and lawyers the record of _Punch_ is more consistent and creditable, and, as we have seen, he was from the first an unflinching advocate of cheap justice and the removal of irregularities which pressed hardest on the poor, an unrelenting critic of barbarous and oppressive penalties. No one was too great or small to escape his legal pillory, or to secure recognition for reforming zeal or humane administration--from Lord Brougham and Lord St. Leonards down to unpaid magistrates. To what has been said elsewhere it may be added that the series of papers written by Gilbert à Beckett, under the heading of "The Comic Blackstone," are much better than their title, for they contain a good deal of shrewd satire and sound sense. _Punch_ had good reason to be proud of his own legal representative, the humane and genial Gilbert à Beckett. He welcomed Talfourd's promotion to the Bench as an honour to letters, for Talfourd was not only the executor and first biographer of Lamb and the author of the highly successful, but now forgotten, tragedy of _Ion_, but his services to authors in connexion with copyright earned for him the dedication of _Pickwick_. On his death in 1854, _Punch's_ elegy fittingly commemorated the character and career of one of whom, as an advocate, it was said that the wrong side seldom cared to hear him, and who, like Hood, in his last words, deplored the mutual estrangement of classes in English society.

[Sidenote: _The Bench and the Universities_]

On the other hand, judges who jested on the Bench, indulged in judicial clap-trap, or encouraged the public to regard the Courts of Justice as substitutes for theatrical entertainments, are severely handled. _Judex jocosus odiosus_; but the type is, apparently, impervious to satire. Another anticipation of latter-day criticism is to be found in the remark made in 1856: "There was once a Parliament--(we do not live in such times now!)--in which there were few or no lawyers." Even more red-hot in its up-to-dateness is _Punch's_ sarcastic dismissal of the cult of "efficiency" sixty-five years ago:--

_Mr. Punch's_ reverence for the business powers of so-called men of
business is not abject. The "practical men," who smile
compassionately at schemers and visionaries, are the men who
perpetually make the most frightful smashes and blunders. No
attorney, for instance, can keep, or comprehend accounts, and a
stock-jobber, the supposed incarnation of shrewdness, is the most
credulous _gobemouche_ in London.

With University authorities, professors, dons, and academics generally, we look in vain for any sign of sympathy, save that _Punch_ condemned the rule which then prevented Fellows from marrying. For the rest, he looked on the older Universities as the homes of mediæval obscurantism, stubbornly opposed to reforms long overdue. Of the two, Oxford fared the worse at his hands on account of the Tractarian movement, Pusey, and Newman. This antagonism was based on political and religious divergences, not on any hostility to learning or the classical curriculum, of which _Punch_ was a supporter, to the extent of printing _jeux d'esprit_ in Latin and Greek in his pages. All along he was a jealous guardian of the "illustrious order of the goose-quill," a sturdy champion of its claims to adequate pay and official recognition, a vigilant critic of the "homoeopathic system of rewards" adopted by the Crown in the Civil List. References to this undying scandal are honourably frequent in the early volumes of _Punch_. It may suffice to quote the letter to Lord Palmerston in the summer of 1856:--

I will not, this hot weather, weary your lordship by specifying
every case, but will sum up the account as I find it divided:

To Science, Literature, and Art £275
To sundries 925
------
£1,200
Deduct sundries 925
------
£275
Due to Science, Literature, and Art 925
------
Total Civil List £1,200

Equally creditable is the reiterated plea--from 1847 onward--for the establishment of International Copyright, to guard English authors from the piracy of American publishers, amongst whom Putnam is singled out as an honourable exception. It may be fairly claimed for _Punch_ that he made very few mistakes in appraising the merits of the authors of his time or of the rising stars. He failed to render justice to Disraeli as a writer, and he curtly dismissed Walt Whitman's _Leaves of Grass_ as "a mad book by an American rough." But literary values prove him substantially right in his distaste for the flamboyant exuberance of Bulwer Lytton, and absolutely sound in his castigation of the tripe-and-oniony flavour of Samuel Warren's books, one of which he held up to not undeserved obloquy under the ferocious misnomer of "The Diarrhoea of a Late Physician." He was a veritable _malleus stultorum_ in dealing alike with the futilities of incompetent aristocrats and the homely puerilities of Martin Tupper and Poet Close. The famous campaign against the poet Bunn and his bad librettos goaded the victim into reprisals in which he gave as good as he got, but the fact remains that Bunn _was_ a bad poet, though _Punch_ quite overdid his persecution. The nobility of Wordsworth, though the least humorous of poets, was handsomely acknowledged; when the erection of a statue to Peel was mooted, _Punch_ put in a claim for a similar honour to the sage of Rydal. And though indignant with Carlyle for his defence of slavery, _Punch_ was still ready to acknowledge "the monarch in his masquerade." Lastly, he not only welcomed Tennyson as a master, but threw open his columns to him to retort on his detractors.

[Sidenote: _"Punch" and "The Times"_]

[Sidenote: _Victorian and Georgian Journalism_]

Dog does not eat dog, but the unwritten etiquette in accordance with which one newspaper does not directly attack another was much less strictly observed sixty or seventy years ago. Delane, the editor of _The Times_, exercised a greater political influence than any other journalist before or since, and for a good many years _Punch_ acted as a sort of free-lance ally of the great daily,[23] drawing liberally from its columns in the way of extracts and illustrations, and, according to his habitual practice, underlining its policy while pretending to be shocked at it. Several of the men on _Punch_ were contributors to _The Times_. Gilbert à Beckett's name stands first in the list of the principal contributors and members of the staff of _The Times_ under Delane given in Mr. Dasent's biography. Yet I have searched the pages of the biography and the index in vain for a single reference to _Punch_. None the less the relations of the two papers were close and cordial, and "Billy" Russell, the _Times_ war correspondent and unsparing critic of mismanagement in the Crimea, had no more enthusiastic trumpeter than _Punch_. But the great gulf in prestige and power between _The Times_ under Delane and the rest of the London Press is indirectly but unmistakably shown in _Punch's_ habitual disrespect for most of his other contemporaries. In another context, I have quoted examples of his flagellation of the _Morning Post_--the only paper, by the way, which supported the _Coup d'État_; but two masterpieces of malice may be added. In 1843, _à propos_ of "Jenkins's" incurably unctuous worship of rank, _Punch_ observes: "If the reader be not weeping at this, it is not in the power of onions to move him." And again, a little later on in the same year, _Punch_ compares the "beastliness" of Jenkins, "the life-long toad-eater," with the "beastly fellow" denounced in the _Morning Post_ for swallowing twelve frogs for a wager! _Punch_ was not content with identifying the _Morning Post_ with the imaginary personality of Jenkins, the super-flunkey, but was also responsible for re-christening the _Morning Herald_ and the _Standard_--Conservative morning and evening papers which, until 1857, belonged to the same proprietor--Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Harris. The _Standard_ retaliated by calling _Punch_ the "most abject of all the toadies of _The Times_," and accusing it of libelling "the young gentlemen of Eton" and the Queen. By an unconscious compliment _Punch_ was bracketed with the _Examiner_, the ablest and most independent of the weeklies, as _The Times_ was of the dailies, for its disloyalty to the Crown. In the war of wits which ensued and was carried on for several years, all the honours rested with _Punch_. But these controversies belong rather to the domestic history of _Punch_; and _Punch's_ friendly relations with the _Daily News_, of which Dickens was the first editor, must be somewhat discounted by the facts that Douglas Jerrold was an intimate friend of the novelist, who occasionally dined with the _Punch_ staff; that Paxton, one of _Punch's_ heroes, exerted all his great influence on behalf of the new daily; and finally, that Bradbury and Evans were, at the time, the publishers of Dickens, of _Punch_, and of the _Daily News_. The journalism of the 'forties and 'fifties presents curious analogies with and divergences from the journalism of to-day. _Punch_ is never weary of girding at the cult of monstrosity and sensationalism, the disproportionate amount of space devoted to crime and criminals and _causes célèbres_, the habit of burning the idols of yesterday, the nauseating compliments paid to statesmen after death by those who had maligned them in their lifetime. Many of the least reputable exploits of Georgian journalism were anticipated in early Victorian days. Criticism was franker, more outspoken, and less restrained by the law of libel, and _Punch_ always stood out within reasonable limits for the liberty of the Press. When an Edinburgh jury gave a verdict against the _Scotsman_ in the famous case brought by Duncan MacLaren in 1852, _Punch_ compared them to Bomba, and congratulated the Scottish gentlemen who defrayed the _Scotsman's_ costs and damages. He regarded it as a righteous protest against a verdict which threatened "to make it impossible to express contempt at political apostasy, disgust at the abandonment of principles, or indignation at any coalition, however disreputable, without the danger of being brought before a jury." The _Scotsman_ was then edited by Alexander Russel, the most powerful, original, and enlightened of Scots journalists. Russel, for the last twenty years of his life, dominated the _Scotsman_ as Delane dominated _The Times_. But it was, in the main, a righteous and benevolent dictatorship. "What made every one turn with alert curiosity to _The Times_ in Delane's day was that nobody knew beforehand which side he would take on any new question." [24] And much the same might be said of Russel. No such curiosity is possible to-day. There has been a great levelling up of journalism from the bottom, and a great levelling down from the top. In the old days the gap between men like Delane and Russel and the penny-a-liners was greater than any gap that now exists in the profession. Not the least of their distinctions was the fact that they both died without even a knighthood to their names. Fifty years later neither of them could have held his post for a fortnight. It is to the credit of _Punch_ that he recognized the value of their independence and emulated it in his own sphere. He played his part manfully in helping to kill the old flunkey-worship of rank, but could not prevent the reincarnation of "Jenkins" in the modern sycophantic worshipper of success--no matter how achieved. The excellence of provincial journalism--not yet exposed to the competition of the cheap London press--is attested by _Punch's_ frequent citations, but he did not overlook its ineptitudes, some of which happily remain to refresh our leisure.

[Footnote 23: On the occasion of _Punch's_ Jubilee, in 1891, _The Times_ remarked: "May we be excused for noting the fact that he (_Punch_) has generally, in regard to public affairs, taken his cue from _The Times_?" That was substantially true of _The Times_ under the old _régime_ when Delane was editor. Mr. Herbert Paul, himself a strong Liberal, writes in his _History of Modern England_ that "Delane's chief quality was his independence." Mr. Dasent, in his biography, gives good grounds for his assertion that Delane was at no time what could be called a party man, though his instincts were essentially Liberal, and notes that "if charged with inconsistency, Delane would merely remind his critics that _The Times_ was the organ of no party, and that every issue was complete in itself."]

[Footnote 24: _Delane of "The Times,"_ by Sir Edward Cook, p. 281.]

[Sidenote: _Quacks and Doctors_]

But of all the professions, none looms larger in the early pages of _Punch_ than that of medicine. Here, again, a broad distinction is drawn between the heads of the profession and those who are preparing for it; between legitimate and illegitimate practitioners. Men like Harvey and Jenner are extolled as heroes and benefactors of humanity at large, and their recognition by the State is urged as a national duty. The maintenance of the status and dignity of physicians and surgeons, civil, naval, and military, is frequently insisted upon before and during the Crimean War. _Punch's_ tribute to the services of Florence Nightingale in reorganizing the nursing profession has already been noted. He was a strenuous advocate of the disestablishment of Mrs. Gamp, and a consistent supporter of the campaign against quackery, though under no illusions as to the possibility of its entire extermination:--

Great outcry has been raised of late, in the _Lancet_ and other
journals, against Quacks and Quackery. Let them not flatter
themselves that it is possible to put either down. The Quack is a
personage too essential to the comfort of a large class of society
to be deprived of his vocation. He is, in fact, the Physician of
the Fools--a body whose numbers and respectability are by far too
great to admit of anything of the kind. However, as there are some
people in the world who are not fools, and who will not, when they
want a doctor, have recourse to a Quack, if they can help it, the
practice of the latter ought certainly to be limited to its proper
sphere. For this end we could certainly go rather farther than Sir
James Graham's sympathies permitted him to proceed last session. We
propose that every Quack should not only not be suffered to call
himself what he is not, but should be compelled to call himself
what he is. We would not only prevent him from assuming the title
of a medical man, but we would oblige him to take that of Quack.

This was written in 1845. The Sir James Graham referred to was one of the blackest of all _Punch's bêtes noires_--in consequence of the postal censorship which earned for him the title of "The Breaker (not the Keeper) of the Seals," and prompted the savage cartoon of "Peel's Dirty Little Boy." He never had friendly treatment at the hands of _Punch_. Elsewhere it is insinuated that the measure played the game of the quacks, and the history of attempts to regulate their activities in the last seventy years goes far to justify _Punch's_ scepticism. But his censure was not confined to quacks; he says hard things of doctors who exploited and traded on _malades imaginaires_, and more than once exhibits impatience at the failure of medical science to arrive at any definite conclusions as to the causes or cure of the cholera epidemic in 1849. And when Mr. Muntz brought forward a motion in 1845 to oblige doctors to write their prescriptions in English and put English labels on their gallipots, the proposal was satirized as an effort to strip medicine of its indispensable mystery. It may be not unfairly contended that _Punch_, in his horror of humbug and condemnation of guzzling and gormandizing, was a disciple of Abernethy. His views on diet inclined to moderation rather than asceticism, and the new cult of vegetarianism, which seems to have had its origin in Manchester, was satirized under the heading, "Greens for the Green."

PASTRYCOOK: "What have you had, Sir?"

BOY: "I've had two jellies, seven of these, eleven of these, and six of those, and four Bath buns, a sausage roll, ten almond cakes--and a bottle of ginger beer."]

[Sidenote: _Medical Students_]

By far the largest number of the references to medicine, however, are concerned with the manners and customs of medical students, and if corroboration be needed for the unflattering picture of this class which has been drawn in _Pickwick_, the pages of _Punch_ supply it in distressing abundance. The counterparts of Bob Sawyer and Benjamin Allen, in all their dingy rowdiness are portrayed in a series of articles and paragraphs running through the early volumes.

Thus, under the heading Hospitals we read:--

The attributes of the gentlemen walking the various hospitals may
be thus enumerated:

Guy's {Half-and-half, anatomical _fracas_,
St. Thomas's {and billiards.
St. George's Doings at Tattersall's.
London Too remote to be ascertained.
University Conjuring, juggling, and mesmerism.
Bartholomew's State of Smithfield Markets.
Middlesex Convivial harmony.
Charing Cross Dancing at the Lowther-rooms.
King's College Has not yet acquired any peculiarity.
Westminster Dashes of all the others combined.

Even when all allowance has been made for the exaggeration of the satirist, there was undoubtedly a serious warrant for this indictment, and we may congratulate ourselves that it is a gross libel on the medical students of to-day. They may be exuberant, noisy, and rowdy on occasion, but they are neither grubby nor callous, and the unfortunate episode of their treatment of Mr. "Pussyfoot" Johnson may be regarded, we believe, as a blot on the scutcheon of their sportsmanship which the great majority regretted and reprobated.

WOMEN IN THE 'FORTIES AND 'FIFTIES

On the position and influence of women in society _Punch_, as we have already seen, furnishes a critical if not a complete commentary. Extravagance, exclusiveness and arrogance are faithfully dealt with. There is genuine satire in the picture of the fine lady who, on hearing that her pet dog had bitten the footman in the leg, expressed the fervent hope that it would not make the dog ill. Fashionable delicacy is ridiculed, and _Punch_ ranged himself on the side of "S.G.O." (Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne) in his crusade in _The Times_ against Mayfair matrons for not nursing their own offspring, and for employing wet-nurses who, in turn, had to starve their own children. A few years earlier, when the question "Can Women regenerate Society?" was seriously discussed in the same journal, the issue is drowned by _Punch_ in a stream of comic suggestions. There is not much to choose between the "Dolls' House" ideal and that expressed in the sonnet printed in the winter of 1846:--

I idolize the ladies. They are fairies
That spiritualize this earth of ours;
From heavenly hotbeds, most delightful flowers,
Or choice cream-cheeses from celestial dairies.
But learning in its barbarous seminaries,
Gives the dear creatures many wretched hours,
And on their gossamer intellects sternly showers
Science with all its horrid accessaries.
Now, seriously, the only things, I think,
In which young ladies should instructed be,
Are stocking-mending, love, and cookery--
Accomplishments that very soon will sink,
Since Fluxions, now, and Sanscrit conversation,
Always form part of female education.

FLORA: "What a very pretty waistcoat, Emily!"

EMILY: "Yes, dear. It belongs to my brother Charles. When he goes out of town, he puts me on the Free List, as he calls it, of his wardrobe. Isn't it kind?"]

[Sidenote: _Victorian Damsels_]

But even within the ranks of the social _élite_ signs of a desire for equal rights were not wanting. These, however, were mainly in the direction of aping masculinity in sport and dress. In the same year we read of the Duchess of Marlborough shooting, and a Ladies' Club is mentioned for the first time a few months earlier. References to the mistakenly modern idea of ladies smoking are to be found pretty frequently even before the Crimean War, which is generally held responsible for the introduction of the cigarette, and soon afterwards we have a picture of a lady calmly enjoying a smoke in the train. Fine ladies are satirized for emulating their brothers and husbands by leaving their bills unpaid. It must be owned that woman, if she ventured to step outside the domain of an amiable, decorative, or domestic mode of existence met with little commendation from _Punch_. He was a strong advocate of schools for cooking long years before the historic advice of "Feed the Brute" appeared in his pages. But the strong-minded female only excited his ridicule and satire, though with unkind inconsistency he was never weary of making fun of the troubles of the helpless "unprotected female." There are hundreds of portraits of charming Victorian damsels in Leech's "Social Cuts," but their predominant trait is health and amiability. Very rarely do they say anything wise or witty or plain spoken--even under great provocation from their pert schoolboy brothers. But we know--even from the pages of _Punch_--that Victorian women and girls were not all of this yielding and gentle type, and it is to his credit that in his sketch of "The Model Fast Lady," he was able to render justice to a phase of advanced womanhood remote alike from sentimentality and intellectualism:--

[Sidenote: _The Model Fast Lady_]

She delights in dogs; not King Charles's, but big dogs that live in
kennels. She takes them into the drawing-room, and makes them leap
over the chairs. Her mare, too, is never out of her mouth.... If
she is intimate with you, she will call you "my dear fellow"; and
if she takes a fancy to you, you will be addressed the first time
by your Christian name, familiarized very shortly from Henry into
Harry. Her father is hailed as "Governor." Her speech, in fact, is
a little masculine. If your eyes were shut, you would fancy it was
a "Fast Man" speaking, so quick do the "snobs," and "nobs," and
"chaps," and "dowdies," "gawkies," "spoonies," "brats," and other
cherished members of the Fast Human Family run through her loud
conversation. Occasionally, too, a "Deuce take it," vigorously
thrown in, or a "Drat it," peculiarly emphasized, will startle you;
but they are only used as interjections, and mean nothing but
"Alas!" or "Dear me!" or, at the most, "How provoking!"

The MODEL FAST LADY is not particularly attached to dancing. She
waltzes as if she had made a wager to go round the room one hundred
and fifty times in five minutes and a quarter. If any one is pushed
over by the rapidity of her Olga revolutions, she does not stop,
but merely laughs, and "hopes no limbs are broken."

By the bye, if she has a weakness, it is on the score--rather a
long one--of wagers. She is always betting. It must be mentioned,
however, that she is most honourable in the payment of her debts.
She would sell her _Black Bess_ sooner than levant.

THE MODEL FAST LADY has, at best, but a superficial knowledge of
the art of flirting. Compliments, she calls "stuff"; and sentiment
"namby-pamby nonsense." She likes a person to be sensible; and has
no idea of being made a fool of.

At a picnic she is invaluable. When your tumbler is empty, she'll
take Champagne with you--that is to say, if you're not too proud.
You may as well fill her glass; she has no notion of being cheated.
Here's better luck to you! and to enforce it, she runs the point of
her parasol into your side.

She dislikes smoking? Not _she_ indeed; she's rather fond of it. In
fact, she likes a "weed" herself occasionally, and to convince you,
will take a whiff or two. Her forefinger is not much needle-marked,
and she laughs at Berlin wool, and all such fiddle faddle. She has
a pianoforte, but really she has no patience to practise. She can
play a short tune on the cornet-à-piston.

Literature is a sealed pleasure to her, though it is but fair to
state she reads _Bell's Life_, and has a few volumes in her bedroom
of the _Sporting Magazine_. She knows there was a horse of the name
of _Byron_.

The FAST LADY rather avoids children. If a baby is put into her
hands, she says, "Pray, somebody, come and take this thing, I'm
afraid of dropping it." She prefers the society of men, too, to
that of her own sex.

Her costume is not regulated much by the fashions, and she is
always the first to come down when the ladies have gone upstairs to
change their dress.

Her greatest accomplishment is to drive. With the whip in one hand
and the reins in the other, and a key-bugle behind, she would not
exchange places with the Queen herself.

With all these peculiarities and manly addictions, however, the
FAST LADY is good hearted, very good natured, and never guilty of
what she would call "a dirty action." Her generosity, too, must be
included amongst her other faults, for she gives to all, and
increases the gift by sympathy. She is always in good humour, and,
like gentle dulness, dearly loves a joke. She is an excellent
daughter, and her father dotes on her and lets her do what she
likes, for "he knows she will never do anything wrong, though she
is a strange girl." In the country she is greatly beloved. The poor
people call her "a dear good Miss," and present their petitions and
unfold all their little griefs to her. She is continually having
more presents of pups sent to her than she knows what to do with.
The farmers, too, consult her about their cows and pigs, and she is
the godmother to half the children in the parish.

Her deficiencies, after all, are more those of manner than of
feeling. She may be too largely gifted with the male virtues, but
then she has a very sparing collection of the female vices. Nature
may be to blame for having made her one of the weaker vessels, but
imperfect and manly as she is, she still retains the inward
gentleness of the woman, and many fine ladies, who stand the
highest in the pulpits of society, would preach none the less
effectively if they had only as good a heart--even with the
trumpery straw in which, like a rich fruit, it is enveloped--as the
MODEL FAST LADY.

This was written seventy years ago, but within the last decade we have seen Miss Compton frequently impersonating _rôles_ of which the leading traits were, in essentials, identical with those of the Model Fast Lady. The model woman, married or unmarried, as represented by the writers and artists of _Punch_, was feminine, kindly, but colourless, though the "deviations from the norm" are not overlooked--the lion-huntresses of Belgravia; thrusting matrons; willing victims of the social tread-mill and the "petty decalogue of Mode"; cynical high-priestesses of the marriage market.

When we turn to the higher education of women generally the attitude assumed is nearly always one of mild chaff. _Punch_ refused to take it seriously, and propounded his own scheme for a female university, in which the fashionable accomplishments are enumerated in detail:--

French and Italian as spoken in the fashionable circles, music,
drawing, fancy-work, and the higher branches of dancing, will form
the regular _curriculum_. A minor examination on these subjects, or
a "Little Go," will be instituted before the Spinstership of Arts
can be tried for. The examined shall be able to "go on" anywhere in
"Télémaque," or in the conversations in Veneroni's Grammar; to play
a fantasia of Thalberg's; to work a pair of slippers in Berlin
wool; and to dance the Cachuca and Cracovienne.

For the degree of Spinster, the candidate shall be examined in
various novels by Paul de Kock, Victor Hugo, Balzac, and others;
also in the _libretto_ of the last new opera. She shall be able to
play or sing any of the fashionable pieces or airs of the day, and
shall give evidence of an extensive acquaintance with Bellini,
Donizetti, Labitzky, and Strauss. She shall draw and embroider, in
a satisfactory manner, various fruits, flowers, cottages and a
wood, Greeks and Mussulmen. Lastly, she shall dance, with
correctness and elegance, a "pas de deux" with any young gentleman
who may be selected for the purpose.

There shall be likewise, with respect to music and dancing, an
annual examination for honours. The candidates shall evince a
familiarity with the most admirable feats of Taglioni, and the
Ellslers, and with the most difficult compositions of Herz, Czerny,
and Bochsa; though if they like they may be allowed to take up, in
preference, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Weber.

These examinations shall be called respectively the Musical and the
Dancing Tripos. No one shall be admissible to the latter who has
not taken honours in the former. The gradations or distinction
shall be as follows: In the Musical Tripos the foremost damsel
shall be entitled the Senior Warbler; next shall follow the Simple
Warblers; the Bravissimas shall come next; then the Bravas; and
finally those who barely get their degree.

The first dancer shall be denominated La Sylphide; after her shall
be ranked the Sylphs; next to these the first and second Coryphées;
and lastly, as before, the merely passable.

[Sidenote: _Women and Politics_]

This article is fairly typical of the attitude of _Punch_ towards what we now call "Feminism"--a term so new that in the _New English Dictionary_ it is dismissed in half a dozen words as a rare word meaning "the qualities of females"! That definition, however, was given in 1901. Now it would have to be revised to include the movement for political emancipation, economic independence, and admission to the professions. References to female politicians begin in the third volume, where we find the very unsympathetic and even acid sketch here given of Miss Walker, "the female Chartist." Eight years elapsed before ladies were admitted to the gallery of the House of Commons, though, even then, carefully screened from view by the metal work of the "Grille," an Orientally obscuring device which lasted till Georgian days. The possibility of their appearing on the floor of the House is never seriously contemplated; the "Parliamentary female" included amongst the "ladies of creation" in the _Almanack_ for 1852 is modelled on Mrs. Jellyby--_Bleak House_ had been coming out serially from March, 1852, onwards. The pioneers of the invasion of the professions hailed from America. Miss Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D., of Boston,[25] is mentioned in 1848, and in the following year _Punch_ welcomed the innovation in verse:--

AN M.D. IN A GOWN

Young ladies all, of every clime,
Especially of Britain,
Who wholly occupy your time
In novels or in knitting,
Whose highest skill is but to play,
Sing, dance, or French to clack well,
Reflect on the example, pray,
Of excellent Miss Blackwell!

For Doctrix Blackwell--that's the way
To dub in rightful gender--
In her profession, ever may
Prosperity attend her!
_Punch_, a gold-handled parasol
Suggests for presentation,
To one so well deserving all
Esteem and admiration.

[Footnote 25: Miss Blackwell, as we learn from an _In Memoriam_ notice in _The Times_, was born in Bristol on February 3, 1821, died at Hastings in 1910, and was buried at Kilmun, Argyllshire. She is there described as "the first woman doctor."]

[Sidenote: _The Bloomer Craze_]

_Punch's_ commendation rather declines in dignity in the last stanza. But we are hardly prepared for his condemnation of women doctors in 1852 merely on the illogical ground that they were unfitted to walk the hospitals or use the scalpel. The better training of nurses had been urged before the days of Florence Nightingale; _Punch_ appreciated the gossiping humours of Mrs. Gamp, but he was very far from regarding her as a ministering angel. To the "strong-minded female," however, he had a strong antipathy, and in his pictures rather ungenerously emphasized the unloveliness, even the scragginess, of the advocates of women's rights. The famous Amelia Jenks Bloomer was a vigorous suffragist and temperance reformer, but _Punch_ was only concerned with her campaign on behalf of "trouserloons." "Bloomers" were a constant theme of comment in pantomime librettos; they were adopted by some barmaids; and a "Bloomer Ball" was actually held in the year 1851. This earliest form of "rational" dress for women was, however, banned by Mayfair. The divided skirt, many years later, was more fortunate in having a Viscountess for its chief advocate. _Punch_ is not only concerned with feminine dress-vagaries. He makes a semi-frivolous suggestion of the appointment of a Poetess Laureate, and the "Letters from Mary Ann," though they form a new departure and indicate an increased readiness to treat the claims of women from the women's point of view, cannot be regarded as a whole-hearted contribution to the cause. Women were already knocking at the door of other professions. In 1855 we find references to ladies at the Bar in America and women preachers in Methodist chapels in England. The first Exhibition of Women Artists is noticed in July, 1857. _Punch's_ anticipation of women policemen in 1851 was probably prompted not by a desire to see the innovation realized, but merely served as a means of guying bloomerism. The female omnibus conductor is another piece of unconscious prophecy, as she was imaginatively represented as being in charge of 'buses for ladies only, to relieve male passengers from the pressure of voluminous dresses and redundant parcels. But while _Punch_ was an opponent of woman suffrage and, at best, a lukewarm supporter of woman's demand for professional employment, he was--as we have shown in other sections of this survey--at least a persistent advocate of the reform of the Divorce Laws--and unwearied in his exposure of the hardships and sufferings of underpaid governesses, sweated sempstresses, and women-workers generally. Brutal assaults on women were, in his view, altogether inadequately punished by fine. He was alive to their wrongs if not to their "rights," and the sneers of some of his contemporaries at the Women's Petition in 1856 moved him to indignation:--

THE CRY OF THE WOMEN

Now, this petition or lamentation--in which _Mr. Punch_ gives
willing ear to the cry of weakness and unjust suffering--has been
rebuked, pooh-poohed, pished and fiddle-de-dee'd; but in these
scoffings _Mr. Punch_ joineth not. He cannot, for the life of him,
say, with certain editorial porcupines of the male gender, "Of what
avail these lamentations of lamenting women, whose cries are
foolishness? Wherefore should women at any time lift up their
voices; when is it not manifest from the beginning that women were
created to sing small? And finally, if women be beaten by savages,
and robbed by sots, what of it? It is better that women should be
beaten and crouch in the dust--it is better they should be robbed
and sit at home, than go and petition Parliament."

[Sidenote: _"Punch" Champions Horatia_]

He espoused the cause of humble heroines, of the neglected widows or orphans of heroes and benefactors like a true knight errant. Elsewhere we have told of his exertions on behalf of Mother Seacole, the brave old sutler in the Crimea, for whose benefit he started a special fund. The scurvy treatment of the widow of Lieutenant Waghorn, the pioneer of the Overland Route, who wore himself out in a work of national importance, moved him to righteous indignation. She was given a pension of £25, afterwards increased to £40.

But none of these palpable wrongs to women stirred _Punch_ so deeply in these years as the tardy and meagre discharge of the nation's debt to Nelson in respect of his daughter Horatia. To this particular bit of narrow-mindedness he recurs again and again in the years 1849 to 1855, when he sums up what had been done to liquidate the debt:--

NELSON'S DAUGHTER AND GRANDCHILDREN

An advertisement in _The Times_ tells the world that the eight children of Nelson's daughter Horatia--Nelson's grandchildren--are "more or less provided for." Perhaps a little less than more; but let that pass. At length a long, long standing debt has been paid, or rather compounded, at something less than nineteen shillings in the pound. The Government, as the Government, has done nothing. The stiff, whalebone virtue that set up the back of Queen Charlotte against Nelson's daughter--George the Third thought Nelson's funeral had too much state in it for a mere subject; such pomp "was for kings"--still kept the Government aloof from all help of Horatia and her children. At length, however, the press spoke out. The "ribald press" for a time laid aside its ribaldry, and condescended to champion the claims of Nelson's daughter upon Nelson's fellow-countrymen. Well, something has been done; and thus much in explanation we take from the advertisement in question:--

"The eight children of Horatia, Mrs. Ward, are all now, more or
less, provided for. Her eldest son has been presented to the living
of Radstock by the Dowager Countess of Waldegrave; the second son
had been previously appointed by Sir W. Burnett Assistant-Surgeon
in the Navy; to the third, Lord Chancellor Cranworth has given a
clerkship in the Registry-Office; the fourth son received a Cadetcy
from Captain Shepherd; His Royal Highness Prince Albert conferred a
similar appointment on the youngest son; and Her Majesty has been
graciously pleased to settle upon the three daughters a pension of
£300 per annum. To this last result the exertions of the late Mr.
Hume, M.P., mainly contributed. Messrs. Green, of Blackwall, and
Messrs. Smith, of Newcastle, conveyed the two Cadets to India free
of expense."

To this may be added a "small cash balance" paid to Mrs. Ward, "after investing £400 in the funds." Altogether some £1,427 have been subscribed in the cause of Nelson's daughter. We state the sum, and will not pause to calculate whether the amount be the tenth of a farthing or even a whole farthing in the pound, for which England is Nelson's debtor. Let us anyway thank those who have helped Horatia's children. They have all done well, from the Dowager Countess to the Queen, ending with the prince ship-owners of Blackwall and Newcastle. Their ships will not have the worst fortune of wreck or storm for having borne, passage-free, the grandsons of Nelson to their Indian work. Let us, too, pause to thank the shade of Joseph Hume--the strong, sound, kind old heart! Joseph, who "mainly contributed," with those earnest, honest fingers of his to undraw the royal purse-strings, so that the three grand-daughters may now keep the wolf from the door, as their immortal grandfather kept the foe from the "silver-girt isle."

We omit the bitter words in which _Punch_ heaps scorn on Nelson's brother, "the first parson Lord Nelson," because the odious charges there made cannot be substantiated. This was not the only occasion on which _Punch's_ zeal was disfigured by the vehemence of his partisanship. But we cannot blame him for his jubilation over the thrashing of General Haynau, the woman-flogger, by the draymen and labourers at Barclay's Brewery on the occasion of his visit to London in 1850, or for the vigour with which he scarified the papers who found excuses and parallels for Haynau's ferocity in the military exigencies of the Peninsular War.

[_Sidenote: Slavery in America--and England_]

Foremost amongst _Punch's_ heroines in the 'forties and 'fifties were Jenny Lind, the Swedish, and Florence, the English Nightingale, but of these mention is made elsewhere. In general, the personalities of notable or notorious women were not unfairly exploited in the pages of _Punch_. The conspicuous isolation of Miss, afterwards Baroness, Burdett Coutts, in virtue of her great wealth, suggests in 1846 the problem, Whom will she marry? which was not settled until 1881. Less restraint is shown in dealing with the arrival in England, after practically ruling Bavaria for more than a year, of the meteoric adventuress, Lola Montez,[26] and with her marriage with a young Cornet in the Life Guards in July, 1849. Another visitor, of a very different sort, was the famous Mrs. Beecher-Stowe,[27] author of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, whose sojourn in England in 1853 brought the question of slavery in America into social prominence and led to the presentation of the "Stafford House Address," initiated by the Duchess of Sutherland, to the women of America. The appeal was not well received, being answered by the "Address of many thousands of the women of the United States," who pointed out the degraded conditions in which the poor in England lived. Two wrongs do not make a right, but there was excuse for the retort. The Southern planters were not all Legrees. Let it be added that, in his indignation at the inadequate sentences passed on wife-beaters, _Punch_ did not fail to pillory cruel mothers who tortured or neglected their children. In the autumn of 1856 he contrasts the sentence of four years on a woman who had tortured her daughter to death with that of fifteen years on a man for mutilating a sheep. Already the problem of the numerical disparity of the sexes and the hard case of the "superfluous woman" had begun to attract attention, and emigration was preached as a panacea. To what has been written elsewhere on the remedy and _Punch's_ belief in it, we may add his remarks on "Our female supernumeraries":--

_The Cynical View_:--Wherever there is mischief, women are sure to
be at the bottom of it. The state of the country bears out this old
saying. All our difficulties arise from a superabundance of
females. The only remedy for this evil is to pack up bag and
baggage, and start them away.

[Footnote 26: The stage name of Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, daughter of an English officer, born at Limerick in 1818, the favourite of the old King Ludwig of Bavaria; dancer, actress, author, lecturer, who died in New York "sincerely penitent" in 1861.]

[Footnote 27: See the _Examiner_ and _Punch_. The following advertisement in the _Examiner_ will be read with interest:--"The arrival of Mrs. Beecher-Stowe has given an impetus to the demand for all Stephen Glover's compositions connected with _Uncle Tom_: 'The Sea of Glass,' Eliza's song 'Sleep, our child,' 'Eva's Parting Words,' and Topsy's song 'I'm but a little nigger girl.'"]

_The Alarmist View_:--If the surplus female population with which
we are overrun increases much more, we shall be eaten up with
women. What used to be our better half will soon become our worse
nine-tenths; a numerical majority which it will be vain to contend
with, and which will reduce our free and glorious constitution to
that most degrading of all despotisms, a petticoat government.

_Our Own View_:--It is lamentable that thousands of poor girls
should starve here upon slops, working for slopsellers, and only
not dying old maids because dying young, when stalwart mates and
solid meals might be found for all in Australia. Doubtless they
would fly as fast as the Swedish hen-chaffinches--if only they had
the means of flying. It remains with the Government and the country
to find them wings.

[Sidenote: _The Worm Turns_]

_Punch's_ chivalry to women is beyond question, but it was not untempered by a certain condescension. Throughout these years--with rare exceptions--he remains faithful to the old assumption that no woman could have a sense of humour. Grown-up sisters are frequently represented as being unmercifully chaffed by small brothers without apparently having the slightest power of effectual rejoinder. And this defect is shown in the pictures, where the women are exceedingly pleasant to look at, but nearly always quite expressionless. Yet in moments of generous expansion _Punch_ was capable of crediting them with extremely damaging criticism of their lords and masters. The high-water mark of his sympathy with female emancipation in these years is to be found in the homely remonstrances of "Mrs. Mouser" in "A Bit of my Mind":--

... Well, the hypocrisy of men all over the world, especially the
civilized!--for, after all, the savages are really and truly more
of the gentlemen. They mean what they say to the sex, and act up to
it; they don't call the suffering creatures lilies, and roses, and
angels, and jewels of life, and then treat 'em as if they were
weeds of the world, and pebbles of the highway. But with civilized
nations--as I fling it at Mouser--they all of 'em make women the
sign-post pictures of everything that's beautiful and behave to the
dear originals as if they were born simpletons. "Look at Liberty,
Mr. Mouser," said I, "look, you want to make Liberty look as lovely
as it can be done, and what do you do? Why, you're obliged to come
to women for the only beautiful Liberty that will serve you. You
paint and stamp Liberty as a woman, and then--but it's so like
you--then you won't suffer so much as a single petticoat to take
her seat in the House of Commons. And next, Mouser"--for I would be
heard--"and next, you want the figure of Justice. Woman again.
There she is, with her balance and sword, as the sort of
public-house sign for law, but--is a poor woman allowed to wear
false hair, and put a black gown upon her back, and so much as once
open her mouth on the Queen's Bench? May she put a tippet of ermine
on herself--may she even find herself in a jury? Oh, no: you can
paint Justice, and cut her in stone, but you never let the poor
thing say a syllable."

"Why, ye-es. The fact is that your party is so slow and I am weally so infernally bored, that I shall go somewhere and smoke a quiet cigar."

"Well, good-night. As you are by no means handsome, a great puppy, and not in the least amusing, I think it is the best thing you can do."]

FASHION IN DRESS

It is a noteworthy sign of the times that between 1841 and 1857 the specific references to the dress of men in the text of _Punch_ are much more numerous than those dealing with the vagaries of female attire. The balance inclines in the contrary direction in the pictures which, when tested by old daguerreotypes and the contents of family albums, form a substantially correct and illuminating commentary on the evolution of fashion in women's dress. So we begin with the ladies, with the double proviso that Leech and Doyle and their brother artists on _Punch_ were not fashion-plate designers, and that the charms and extravagances of the modish world which they depicted were drawn mainly from the Metropolis. _Punch_ was a Londoner, even a Cockney, and throws little light on the social life of the provinces.

[Sidenote: _The Breadth of the Fashion_]

MASTER OF THE HOUSE: "Oh, Fred, my boy--when dinner is ready, you take Mrs. Furbelow downstairs!"]

[Sidenote: _Aids to Beauty_]

To speak roughly, fashion in women's dress is subject to two great alternating influences--in the direction of elongation or of lateral extension. In the 'forties and 'fifties the tendency was steadily in the second direction and away from the slim elegance which has been the aim of the modistes of recent years. Long, "mud-bedraggled" dresses are, it is true, condemned in 1844, but width rather than length was the prevailing feature. It was the age of flounces, and this expansive tendency culminated, in the mid-'fifties, in the reign of the crinoline, against which _Punch_ waged for many years a truceless but, as he himself admitted, a wholly ineffectual warfare. The first indication of the coming portent is to be found in the _annus mirabilis_ of 1848, when an "air-tube dress extender" is shown in a picture. This, however, was a single hoop and comparatively modest in its circumference. The crinoline, in its full amplitude, did not invade London until 1856. Thenceforward, hardly a number is free from satire and caricature of this exuberant monstrosity, and the inconvenience caused in theatres, drawing-rooms, in the parks and public vehicles, and in the streets. What with the bath-chairs of invalids, the ladies' dresses, and the children's perambulators, we read in 1856, that "it amounts almost to an impossibility nowadays to walk on the pavements." People were now dressed "not in the height, but the full breadth of the fashion." The structure of the machine, with its whalebone ribs and inflated tubes, was revealed in all its mammoth dimensions. It was denounced alike as an absurdity and as a danger, but satire and warnings were equally powerless to abate the nuisance. But the crinoline was only the most conspicuous and culminating example of a tendency to superfluous clothing and a semi-Oriental muffling-up of the female form, against which _Punch_ has lived to see a most acute and wholesome reaction. A sentimental "Buoy at the Nore" writes to put on record a protest against the enormous sunbonnets which covered up the "dear heads" of beauties on the Ramsgate sands. In those days the use of cosmetics and pigments was far less general; veils and bonnets and sunshades, notably the projection aptly nicknamed the "Ugly," were in great demand. The resources of civilization were employed to preserve complexions rather than to supply artificial substitutes. So we find _Punch_ in 1855 describing with much gusto a young lady at the seaside wearing: (1) A huge, round hat doubled down to eclipse all but her chin, (2) an "Ugly" of similar magnitude, (3) a veil, and (4) a parasol. These huge, round hats, like shallow bowls, were worn by little girls, who were often dressed like their parents with flounces and voluminous skirts. But extremes meet, and along with the monstrous seaside hats--big enough to be used as a substitute for an archery target by undisciplined younger brothers--small bonnets, worn on the back of the head, and tiny parasols were in vogue in 1853. A certain masculinity of attire was affected by young ladies of sporting tastes--in the way of waistcoats and ties for example--but the fashionable world set its face as a flint against anything in the way of rational dress reform. In 1851 we find one of the earliest instances in _Punch_ of the use of the word "æsthetic" in connexion with costume, where in an imaginary dialogue Miss Runt, a strong-minded female, speaks of "our dress viewed as sanitary, economical, æsthetic."[28] Mayfair had no appreciation of any of these aspects of millinery, and "Bloomerism" never caught on with the fashionable world.