Chapter V: Part I: The National Outlook (5)

It was a fair summary of the opposing interests which clashed during the progress of the Bill through the House. _Punch's_ impatience is shown in the further cartoon "Obstructives." "Those people" are a group of clerics of various Churches blocking the school doorway. A fortnight later _Punch_ was able to announce in his "Essence of Parliament" that the very qualified compulsion proposed by Parliament had been approved by large majorities, and to publish his third cartoon on the solving of the problem. Master Forster (with his slate) is saying to Britannia, the Schoolmistress, "Please, M'm, I've done it, M'm." And when Britannia asks, "And _how_ have you done it, William?" he replies, "Please, M'm, I've reduced all the fractions to the lowest common denomination." To this is added the stage direction "The good Boy enters the Cabinet." The Bill passed through both Houses, and when Parliament rose on August 10 and the Queen's Speech made special reference thereto, _Punch_ comments, "Excuse us, your Majesty, but permit us to say 'Hooray!' and to add a cheer for Mr. Forster." He welcomed a measure which affirmed the principle that the State was bound to provide gratuitous instruction for all the children in the realm, but resented the educational luxuries which leading "Educationalists" were anxious to introduce. So we find a burlesque list of these fancy subjects, including hieroglyphics, croquet, bézique, etiquette, given in the following year with the remark: "There are people old-fashioned enough to think that it might be as well to give our poor neglected children only plain joints at first--the 3 R's--and let the _entrées_ stand over for the present." The introduction of the "Fourth R"--Religion--prompted the "Educational Epigram" a year later:--

Milk is for babes, wrote one that knew.
Sectarian Educators, you
Who dogmas teach which Doctors question,
Are you not giving babes strong meat,
So much too tough for them to eat
The upshot must be indigestion?

RECTOR'S WIFE: "And what's your father, my boy?"

BOY: "My father's a 'Hagitator,' an' he says he won't have me learnt no catechism, 'r else you'll all of yer 'ear of it!"]

In the following summer we have a picture by Charles Keene of a beery working man protesting against temperance propagandism at schools, and resolving to withdraw his small son from the reach of these subversive doctrines, while humorous capital is made out of the "Conscience Clause" at the expense of the "agitator." The provision of gratuitous meals to elementary school children was not yet even mooted, but _Punch_ strongly supported the philanthropists who in 1867 gave weekly dinner parties in Marylebone to seven or eight hundred children, following the example set by Victor Hugo during his sojourn in Guernsey.

[Sidenote: _Children and their Tormentors_]

Turning to preparatory or boarding schools, we have to note that academies of the type of "Dotheboys Hall" had not altogether disappeared, to judge by the advertisement which _Punch_ pilloried under the heading of "Children and their Tormentors":--

"BOARDING SCHOOLS wanted, in London, for a boy, nine years, and two
girls, six and seven years old, requiring firm discipline, having
become wild and unruly, through neglect occasioned by family
misfortunes. No holiday could be given, as holidays destroy any
good effected at school. The father, quite a gentleman, can only
pay 20 guineas each. This advertisement is only intended for
schools of pre-eminent efficiency for such cases, and prosperous
enough to be able and willing to accept such terms, and undertake
the needed task of reformation for the sake of the schools' own
additional credit of success. Particulars and references, by letter
only."

As for its conducing to the "credit" of a school to help unnatural
fathers thus to get rid of their children, surely no one but a
squeers could indulge in such a thought. If through neglect at
home, a child becomes unruly and requires to be "reformed," it is
right that at a proper age it should be sent to school, if proper
means are wanting for teaching it at home. But a girl of six years
old can scarcely be so "wild" as to require, for her taming, utter
banishment from home: nor can she be much bettered by being badly
fed for twenty pounds a year, and, worse still, taught to grow up
without knowing what "home" means.

The name of "gentleman" had been strangely taken in vain a year earlier, as we gather from an extract which sounds like an echo from _The Fairchild Family_:--

THE GAME OF JACK KETCH

On Saturday last a man named Thomas Edwards was hanged for murder
at Liverpool, when, according to a report of the execution which
appeared in the _Daily Telegraph_:--

"To the discredit of some person, a drag, containing gentlemen's
children, was brought near the gallows."

Fine fun for gentlemen's children during the Christmas holidays, to
see a man hanged. Just the spectacle to amuse little boys--but
perhaps there were some little girls too among these gentlemen's
children. Well, in that case, the gentlemen have taken a good step
towards getting their girls, as well as their boys, off their
hands. Nothing is more likely than that the juvenile spectators of
Thomas Edwards' death-struggles will get to play at hanging, and
effectually hang one another.

In 1868 _Punch_ was exercised in mind by the pernicious influence on the ingenuous youth of "penny dreadfuls," and the activities of educational faddists. Precocious pedantry, as we show on the previous page, is satirized in 1863. There is a curious foreshadowing of Madame Montessori's hostility to fairy tales in Du Maurier's "Little Christmas Dream." Du Maurier had a genius for the delineation of nightmares, and in this picture he quite excelled himself. Earlier in the same year _Punch_ made excellent capital, again with the aid of Du Maurier's pencil, out of Lord Malmesbury's statement that it was useless to teach modern languages at the public schools, "as parents can easily procure such instruction for their children by hiring foreign nurses." The artist depicts four disgusted Harrow boys, who have returned for the holidays, taking an educational walk with their German and French instructresses, while a young and untutored yokel looks on with grim amusement.

Mr. L. Figuier, in the Thesis which precedes his interesting work on the World before the Flood, condemns the practice of awakening the youthful mind to admiration by means of fables and fairy tales, and recommends, in lieu thereof, the study of the Nature History of the World in which we live. Fired by this advice, we have tried the experiment on our eldest, an imaginative boy of six. We have cut off his "Cinderella" and his "Puss in Boots," and introduced him to some of the more peaceful Fauna of the pre-Adamite world, as they appear restored in Mr. Figuier's book. The poor boy has not had a decent nights rest ever since!]

Lord Malmesbury considers that it is useless to teach modern languages at the Public Schools, "as parents can easily procure such instruction for their children by hiring foreign nurses." Observe the delight of four young gentlemen who have returned from Harrow for the holidays, and discover that their parents have procured French and German instruction for them. Also observe the envy of the young and untutored clown.]

A notable landmark in the annals of preparatory and public school education is reached in 1869, when _Punch_ quoted the following epoch-marking advertisement:--

"Grammar School, W---- R---- Wanted immediately, a Second Assistant
Master, to teach thoroughly writing and arithmetic, also junior
English subjects. Must be a good cricketer and round-arm bowler.
Character to bear the strictest investigation. Salary £40,
increasing to £60."

[Sidenote: _Punch on Co-Education_]

The resounding fame of W. G. Grace, who began his great career in first-class cricket in 1863, at the age of 15, and had just reached his majority, was doubtless responsible for this new educational departure. The salary was certainly not exorbitant, but the advent of the cricket-master moves no sympathy in _Punch_. He admits the force of the proverb that "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," but asks "does not Jack at some schools play a little to excess?" and speculates on the amazement which the schoolmaster abroad would feel in reading this announcement. On the other hand, over-pressure and "cramming" were equally distasteful to _Punch_, who was seriously perturbed by the sensational accounts given in 1870 of the breakdown of Woolwich candidates.

MR. PUNCH is of opinion that a polite and easy bearing towards the opposite sex (tempered, of course, with propriety and discretion) cannot be inculcated at too early an age. He therefore recommends that whenever an Institute for Young Ladies happens to meet an Academy for Young Gentlemen, they should all be formally introduced to each other, and allowed to take their walks abroad in company.]

Co-education had not yet emerged on the horizon of practical educational politics, and the plea put forward in a picture by Du Maurier for a mixed "crocodile" cannot be seriously entertained. The artist suggests that whenever an Institute for Young Ladies happens to meet an Academy for Young Gentlemen they should all be formally introduced to one another and allowed to take their walks abroad in company. The question of corporal punishment was raised by a lively correspondence in _The Times_, towards the close of 1872, on the Winchester practice of "tunding" with a ground-ash or cricket-stump. The action was general, the father of the boy whose punishment by a prefect had started the correspondence, the headmaster, Dr. Ridding, "in English less classical than queer," and sundry old Wykehamists all joining in. _Punch_ was at first scandalized by the brutality with which the prefects exercised their disciplinary powers, but the spirit and good sense showed by the victim caused him to modify his view:--

His punishment, while he feels it unjust
He takes without blather or ban:
Yes, out of the lot who've kicked up a dust,
The boy is the Man.

At the beginning of the same year the invasion of the public schools by the new plutocracy, as described by a correspondent in the _Morning Post_, who assumed the unfortunate pseudonym of "Pavidus," impelled _Punch_ to some outspoken comment. "Pavidus" complained that the standard in tips and pocket-money had been unduly raised by the young cotton-lords--boys who came back with £5 as a minimum. _Punch_ finds the root of the evil in the perversion of the public schools from their original intention--to educate the sons of poor gentlemen--and suggests that if the "nobs" don't like their sons associating with young plutocrats, they should get up poor schools of their own and keep the high-bred paupers select. A similar situation has arisen since the war, but the difficulty has been solved without snobbery or squealing. Parents who cannot afford to send their sons to schools with which their families have been associated for generations, send them elsewhere, but they do not "make a song about it."

ARTHUR (on pony): "Hollo! What have you got on your heads?"

JUVENILE SWELL: "Why, you see, every snob wears a cap or a wide-awake now; so the men of our school have returned to the old Chimney Pot!"

(As paterfamilias we are sorry to say that we have observed this monstrosity many times this Christmas.)]

[Sidenote: _University Reform_]

There remain the Universities, the apex of the educational pyramid. The Universities Commission was not appointed till 1872. Its report on the income and property of Oxford and Cambridge was not published till October 1874, and the Universities' Act was not passed till 1877. _Punch's_ contributions to the discussions which arose over University Reform nearly always take the form of hostile criticism of the champions of "no change," and he devotes by far the greater amount of space to the castigation of Oxford conservatives and non-resident reactionaries. The vote on the institution of the non-Collegiate or "unattached" system in 1868 furnished _Punch_ with the materials for a comprehensive indictment of all his pet Oxford aversions. In the wail of the Mediævalists, headed "An Oxford _Miserere_," _Punch_ ranges himself on the side of the reformers; Sir John, afterwards Lord Coleridge, who had taken an active part in the successful movement for the abolition of religious tests in the Universities; Conington, the distinguished Latinist and editor of Virgil; Raper, the well-known Fellow of Trinity College, who, under more than one President, was the power behind the throne; and Jowett, who with Stanley and Maurice, had always been supported by _Punch_ in his espousal of "modernist" views.

When Mr. Meyrick, an Oxford Don, expressed his satisfaction that our Educational System was not that of the Germans, _Punch_ was unable to echo his complacency, and went so far as to wish that "our Dons and Fellows were but as these Germans"; but it may be pleaded in extenuation of his offence that the doctrine of "Kultur" was less vocal in the 'sixties, and that German professors and teachers were not then so firmly harnessed to the car of "Machtpolitik." _Punch_ little thought that some fifty years later Admiral Tirpitz would admit that the most formidable opponent of Germany was the "polo-playing Englishman." The notion that pastime was overdone finds vent in the "Chant for College Athletes":--

How doth the busy Undergrad
Improve each shining hour,
Loving each new athletic "fad"
To show his muscles' power!

* * * * *

In feats of strength and games of skill
His time must all be passed,
Heedless that, 'spite of cram, he will
Be sorely plucked at last.

[Sidenote: _Affluent College Servants_]

Over-athleticism, however, was not the only ground of complaint against education at the older Universities in the 'sixties. The high cost of living for undergraduates, owing to the extortion of local tradesmen and the perquisites of college servants, provoked a correspondence in _The Times_ in the winter of 1865. _Punch_ ironically affected to defend the retail "profiteers." His College butler in "The Undergraduates' Rebellion" associates himself with the College Dean as the victim of a mutiny of meanness, and the accompanying cartoon rubs in the point, a stout butcher addressing an equally stout Don, engaged in cutting a loaf, with the words, "Wery low them letters in the papers, Mr. Dean! Wery 'ard on both of us, Sir--my beef and your bread-an'-butter!" _Punch's_ satire was justified by the fortunes notoriously made at the time and for many years afterwards by College cooks and butlers, whose incomes sometimes exceeded those of the Heads of Houses. More than ten years later a Christ Church "Scout" bitterly complained of the passing of the good old times. As he put it, "Instead of taking food home out of College, I has to bring it in."

INVENTIONS, NOVELTIES AND FORECASTS

Railways, their dangers and inconveniences, continue throughout this period to furnish _Punch_ with a never-ending theme of criticism and complaint; nor need we altogether wonder when it is remembered that it was not until 1861 that communication between guard and engine driver was established on the Eastern Counties Railway, and then at first only on express and fast trains;[10] and again, that it was not until 1873 that sleeping carriages were first introduced. The murder of Mr. Briggs by Müller on the North London line on July 9, 1864, created a scare amongst nervous passengers, which even the introduction of the corridor carriage has not altogether allayed. But, from the point of view of a Londoner, the most notable feature in railway development was the extension of intra-urban facilities which grew out of the Act of 1853, though the construction of the Underground did not begin till the spring of 1860, and it was not opened for traffic, in its original and limited range, till January, 1863. The completion of the Inner and the addition of the Outer Circle followed; the Swiss Cottage extension was not opened till 1868; but Highgate and many other suburbs remained isolated until the coming of the tubes.

The "Tuppenny Tube" was not opened till June, 1900, but nearly forty years earlier we read in _Punch_ that "amongst the new railway projects, it seems there is to be a tubular underground from Regent's Circus to the Bank." The plea for cheap workmen's trains to the suburbs in the spring of 1870 only surprises us now by its having waited so long to be granted.

[Footnote 10: In January, 1868, reference is made to carriages with circular holes between the compartments in order to facilitate communication.]

In the realm of imaginative forecast, one may note Du Maurier's nightmare picture of aerial trains to Paris in 1870, and the burlesque charter for an aerial railway company in 1872. But the project of a Channel tunnel had long been seriously considered, though the experimental borings were not made till 1876.[11] Ten years earlier _Punch_ had indulged in some fantastic speculations on the result of the preliminary trials conducted by French and English engineers, with Sir John Hawkshaw at the head of the latter.

[Footnote 11: The scheme was originally proposed by a French engineer named Mathieu in the very beginning of the century, and taken up in 1833 by Thomé de Gamond, who worked at it for more than twenty years until an International Committee was formed. Operations were interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War, but resumed in earnest in 1872. M. de Gamond died in poverty in 1876.]

THE RANTOONE

A patent for pneumatic tyres had been taken out in the 'forties; bicycles and tricycles came in at the end of the 'sixties; but twenty years were to elapse before the boneshaker and the "ordinary"--that wonderful and perilous machine--gave place to the "safety." In 1868 and 1869 references abound to velocipedes--the word "bicycle" had not yet established itself--and in the Almanack for 1869 there is a picture of a strange mechanism called the "Rantoone," a tricycle with two large wheels behind and a small guiding wheel in front. It is also mentioned in Henry Kingsley's _Boy in Grey_, and Crawley's _Manly Games for Boys_. But the bicycle, as we know it, the most momentous addition to the resources of locomotion between the coming of the steam engine and the advent of the petrol-driven motor, was only looming in the future; it was little more than a plaything in the period under review.

Telegraph wires first began to spread their overhead network in London in 1859; the District Telegraph Company was started in 1860. Ten years later _Punch_ celebrates the reduction of the fee for a twenty-word telegram to one shilling. Of the use of telegraphy in war he expressed considerable scepticism, on the ground that it would lead to endless contradictory rumours.

That Tummas met as he was a-comin' whoam--"Ta looked like a man a ridin' 'pon nawthin'!"]

[Sidenote: _The Atlantic Cable_]

The most notable advance in telegraphy, however, was that of the long-distance cables. The year 1858 abounds in references to the second and third attempts to span the Atlantic. Frequent failures delayed the achievement of the enterprise for several years. In 1865 _Punch_ published a series of reports purporting to come from the _Great Eastern_, then engaged in laying the cable, but it was not until the summer of 1866 that he was able to record the completion of the task:--

A Parliamentary week never ended with a more gratifying incident. A
Minister, Mr. Hunt, stated that the Atlantic Telegraph had been
laid to America, an ex-Minister, Mr. Childers, confirmed the fact,
and an Honourable Member held in his hand a signal that had just
arrived. _Mr. Punch_ instantly sent Mr. Johnson a peremptory signal
to liquor severely.

Undoubtedly the record of the marvels of applied science kept by _Punch_, and the forecasts of further extension in which he indulged, come home to us more closely in connexion with inventions for use in warfare. The unrealized projects of Captain Warner have been described in the previous volume. A liquid-fire bomb or incendiary shell, and an incendiary rifle-bullet attracted attention early in 1859. But the lessons of the American War of 1861-1865 gave _Punch_ occasion to think sometimes seriously, and even with flashes of remarkable insight, on the possibilities of future warfare. His old distrust of armoured ships as "ferreous freaks" was not entirely dispelled by the triumph of the monitor; he gives us a picture of a new iron-clad mistaken for a Noah's Ark, and speaks of the new types as flat-irons. He admits that the action between the _Merrimac_ and the _Monitor_ conclusively proves that one iron-clad ship is a match for several wooden ships carrying more and heavier guns; but if there are to be no ships of war but iron ships, and iron ships are mutually shot-proof, he is impelled to the further conclusion that naval war in the future may end in an inconclusive stalemate:--

Ships being rendered practically invulnerable, any two vessels of
war belonging to hostile nations will, hereafter, meeting on the
high seas, each find itself unable to injure the other and
therefore be obliged to part in peace, the result of their
collision having been as nearly as possible the opposite to that of
the conflict between the Kilkenny Cats.

From such a prospect _Punch_ professes to derive hope; but there is more sagacity in the "Farewell to the Fleet" which followed three weeks later, a valediction which in its last stanza crudely anticipates the pre-and post-war warnings of Admiral Sir Percy Scott:--

Now farewell, my trim three-decker,
Sails and spars and all farewell;
Iron's proved of wood a wrecker,
Where 'twill steer us who can tell?

In glorious Nelson's days, d'ye mind them,
Our tars were sailors every inch:
Stout hearts, with pigtails stout behind them,
And ne'er a man to skulk or flinch.

But now--my dear eyes! British sailors
Half soldiers and half stokers are;
And if we manned the fleet with tailors,
'Twould in a month be fit for war.

* * * * *

Bomb-proof, hull-sunk, iron-roofed, we steam on,
Nor ball nor boarder fear we now;
And when our foe we run abeam on,
He sinks at once beneath our prow.

Them Yankee swabs, from shot a-shrinking:
Fight under water, so they tells;
Dear eyes! our Navy soon, I'm thinking,
Will be a fleet of diving bells.

[Sidenote: _The Navy of the Future_]

But by far the best illustration of the way in which the course of the war caused _Mr. Punch_ to think furiously, fantastically, but by no means foolishly, is to be found in the fantasy headed, "A Flying Island wanted":--

Will somebody please invent for us an Island of Laputa?

It would save a mint of money in plated ships, and Armstrong guns,
and Shoeburyness experiments. Although we are at peace, a most
expensive war is raging between gunmakers and shipbuilders, and so
far as one can learn, there seem but little hopes of stopping it.
First the guns will gain the day, and then the ships will be built
stronger until they are ball-proof, then bigger guns will come, and
then still stronger ships; and so the battle will go on, and
victories alternately be won by either side, and the Queen's powder
be burnt at a most tremendous rate, so long as Mr. Bull agrees to
stand the shot.

If the Invention War goes on much longer than it has done, we quite
expect to hear of the construction of a cannon that shall throw a
ball as big as the Ball upon St. Paul's, and of a mortar that shall
pitch a shell as large round as the dome. Indeed, we fancy that in
course of time conical shot will equal the Big Pyramid of Egypt,
and that guns will be invented of sufficient power to throw such
shot across from Brighton to Boulogne.

Now, if somebody would just invent a Flying Island, and present us
with the patent, this costly fight between artillerists and
shield-makers would probably soon cease. There would be no need
then of our Army and our Navy, our big guns and our block ships,
our field pieces and forts. Whenever any nation dared to pick a
quarrel with us, all that we should have to do would be to let our
Flying Island drop upon their heads, and squash their fleets and
forces flat at one fell swoop.

The development of long-range artillery has fulfilled _Punch's_ fancy. And we have become a flying island; but, unfortunately, the power of swooping from the skies is shared by other countries. As for ascents into the upper air, it was in the same year (1862) that the long unbroken record in altitude was made by Coxwell and Glaisher in the old-fashioned balloon. There is a reference to the Aeronautical Exhibition held at the Crystal Palace in 1868; but the disaster which befell the Belgian, de Groof, in July, 1874, while attempting to descend from a balloon in a newly invented parachute, elicited a decidedly obscurantist comment:--

DE GROOF

(Killed in attempting to Fly, July 9, 1874)

He who provides for all beneath the sky,
Made men to walk, as He made birds to fly;
Then let man stick to earth, and have the sense
Not to fly in the face of Providence!

[Sidenote: _The Coming of the Typewriter_]

Cigarettes had come in with the Crimean War. In 1858 _Punch_ suggested an improved passport with a photograph. To the same year belong the introduction of the word "dipsomaniac," spirit-drawing (a forerunner of spirit-photographs), _Punch's_ first mention of Schweppe's soda water and of synthetic substitutes for food, and his prediction of the formation of a Camel Corps. Aerated bread, and the magnetic hair brush--supposed to restore the pigment to grey hair by drawing out the iron in the blood--were among the novelties of 1860; hair-brushing by machinery was introduced in 1864, and the sewing machine makes its debut in _Punch_ in 1866. An even more epoch-making invention, which ranks among the most momentous products of the age in its far-reaching results on commerce, journalism, literature and the whole social system, was the type-writer, exhibited in London in 1867:--

GOOD NEWS FOR BAD WRITERS

It is surprising what discoveries are made in the dead season. Here
is one, for instance, the account of which has recently been
snipped out by the scissors of many a sub-editor:--

"Writing superseded. Mr. Pratt, of Alabama, is the inventor of a
typewriting machine, lately exhibited to the London Society of
Arts, which is said to print a man's thoughts twice as fast as he
can write them with the present process. By a sort of piano
arrangement the letters are brought in contact with carbonized
paper, which is moved by the same manipulation."

Every author his own printer! What a happy state of things! No more
struggles to write legibly with nibless tavern-pens; no more labour
in deciphering the hieroglyphs of hasty writers. Literary work will
be in future merely play--on the piano. The future Locke may write
his essays by a touch upon the keys.

In this inventive age there really is no saying where discovery
will stop. Now that authors are to put their thoughts in print with
twice the pace that they can write them, perhaps ere long they will
be able to put their works in type without so much as taking the
trouble to compose them. A thought-hatching easy chair may very
likely be invented, by the help of which an author may sit down at
his ease before his thought-printing piano, and play away _ad
libitum_ whatever may occur to him. Different cushions may be used
for different kinds of composition, some stuffed with serious
thoughts, fit for sermons or reviews, and others with light
fancies, fit for works of fiction, poetry, or fun. By a judicious
choice of cushions an author will be able to sit down to his piano,
and play a novel in three volumes twice or thrice a week, besides
knocking off a leader every morning for a newspaper, and issuing
every fortnight a bulky epic poem, or a whole encyclopædia complete
within a month.

On the whole, this is not a bad though fantastic summary of the possibilities of a machine which, whatever its influence on the manufacture of novels, the multiplication of unnecessary books, and the art of letter-writing, has at least proved a wonderful time-saver and revolutionized the prospects of the "superfluous woman." In spite of its terrible ticking, it has proved a great lubricator of life; and, _à propos_ of lubricants, we have to note the advent in the early 'seventies of synthetic butter, under its modern name:--

There are probably very few members of that generally
bread-and-butter-eating community, the British Public, who have not
frequently partaken, without knowing it, of the article described
in the following extract from a letter of the _Morning Post's_
Correspondent at Paris:--

"Butter, like all alimentary substances, has vastly increased in
price. An enterprising merchant exhibits what he calls 'Produit
nouveau, Margarine Mouriès, remplaçant le beurre pour la cuisine.
Economie incontestable sur le beurre; il coûte moitié moins cher,
et on en use moitié moins.' This butter is made from the fat of
beef, and costs 10d. per pound."

In merry England, however, this article does not merely replace
Butter for the kitchen, but also for the breakfast-parlour, where
it is eaten, not under the name of Margarine, in
bread-and-margarine, but that of Butter, in bread-and-butter. It is
bought for Butter, and it is sold for Butter; only the buyer
believes it to be what it is sold for, whereas the seller well
knows that it is a product of beef-suet; and he serves his customer
with the latter commodity at the price of the former. The
"enterprising merchant" of Paris, who sells Margarine as a
substitute for Butter, and does not sell his customers by selling
it as Butter, and at Butter's value, has very likely found honesty
to be the best policy. That policy might, perhaps, be adopted with
advantage by an enterprising British Cheesemonger.

Beef-fat is, we fear, a euphemism for the principal ingredient in the synthesis of margarine as originally compounded, and it was a consciousness of this fact that more than anything else prompted the dishonesty of the British cheesemonger.

The list of useful novelties may be completed with postcards, which date from the year 1870. _Punch_ recognized their drawbacks, and recommended people who used them to write in cypher or in Greek characters, which was less a counsel of perfection fifty years ago than it would be to-day.

England's debt to America in the domain of invention was not confined to mechanical labour-saving appliances. The inventiveness of the American journalist repeatedly extorts the reluctant admiration of _Punch_ from 1857 onwards. In the summer of 1858 he culls a gorgeous example of the high art of sensational reporting from a New York paper in which it was stated that six people were butchered by a man who blew his brains out, yet "at the latest date all the sufferers were in a fair way of recovery." Yet in their own way the English penny-a-liners were capable of fine work. In December of the same year _Punch_ quotes the following from the account of an agricultural show in a daily paper:--

"Yesterday the gold medal pen of pigs was denuded of one of its
finest specimens, one of those most extraordinary animals having
expired from its obesity during the previous night. There were
other demises from apoplexy amongst the porcine confraternity
during the show."

[Sidenote: _The Press Surpasses Itself_]

It was in the Victorian age, again--though unknown to _Punch_--that the reporter of an Irish paper concluded his description of a burglary with the words, "after a fruitless search, all the money was recovered except one pair of boots." But the supremacy of the New World in this field was conclusively established in the year 1869, the _annus mirabilis_ for ever memorable by its association with the greatest of all American advertisements. Fragments of this classic are familiar even to the present generation, but we are, thanks to _Punch_, able to give the original text in its entirety:--

Among those of our institutions that are especially getting
Americanized is a part of our Press, professing to afford us
information which it calls "reliable" and also abounding in
announcements on which we may rely if their phraseology strikes us
as the language of truth and honesty. Some of these notifications
are formed on models, whereof a contemporary quotes an example:--

"A wonderful Medicine. The following advertisement is from a recent
issue of a New York paper:--'If you want a really pure
unsophisticated "family pill," buy Dr. R----'s liver-encouraging,
kidney-persuading, silent perambulator--twenty-seven in a box. This
pill is as mild as a pet-lamb, and as searching as a small
tooth-comb. It don't go fooling about, but strictly attends to
business, and is as certain as an alarm clock.'"

Puffery, resembling, if not quite equalling, that above instanced,
in wit and humour, is fast gaining ground among us. America has
taught us how to advertise. Thank Barnum. We have been, and are
continuing to be, Americanized. We are progressing.

Angelina Squills (the doctor's daughter) by a judicious use of her father's stethoscope, is able to detect and enjoy the delicate tenor voice of the interesting young curate who lodges next door.]

One is glad that _Punch_ recognized the "wit and humour" of this unique document, though he says nothing of its magical choice of words. Dr. R---- was Dr. Rumbold. But whether or no he composed the advertisement I have not been able to discover--or, indeed, anything about him. Perhaps it was his swan-song; like the Old Masters, who according to Artemus Ward executed the execrable paintings exhibited at his lecture as their crowning and final achievement: "they did them and then they died."

[Sidenote: _The Next Generation_]

Sufficient materials have already been accumulated to enable the reader to form an estimate of _Punch's_ credentials as a prophet or "intelligent anticipator." They would not, however, be complete without the "Forecast of the Next Generation" which appeared in 1872, and which is interesting not so much from its prophecies as from its comprehensive catalogue of Victorian shortcomings, failings and abuses:--

The next generation will possess an army properly clothed.

The next generation will all be able to read and write.

The next generation will wear light clothes in summer.

The next generation will remove some of the public-statues and
edifices which their predecessors have erected.

The next generation will find life supportable without so many
Vestries.

The next generation will not make calls.

The next generation will ride to and fro in decent cabs.

The next generation will have other sorts of fish in daily
consumption besides red herrings.

The next generation will speak French and German, and, possibly,
know something of their own language and literature.

The next generation will not wear high black hats in the month of
July.

The next generation will see the officers of the army walking about
the streets in uniform.

The next generation will have other public places of amusement open
to them on Sundays, besides public-houses.

The next generation will be better cooks.

The next generation will have no theatres with fees.

The next generation will leave the table with the ladies.

The next generation will not avoid Hotels.

The next generation will find they can get on pretty comfortably
without the Lord Privy Seal, the Chancellor of the Duchy of
Lancaster, the Judge Advocate General, etc.

The next generation will not be ashamed of Leicester Square.

The next generation will be able to cross the Channel with less
bodily discomfort.

The next generation will journey by railway more safely and more
punctually.

The next generation will still have the National Debt, duns,
dentists, domestics, humbugs, quacks, impostors, absurd fashions,
adulteration, swindlers, and the Income Tax.

LONDON

[Sidenote: _Foul State of the Thames_]

Though nothing comparable to the Hausmannizing of Paris by systematized and uniform reconstruction was accomplished in London in the mid-Victorian period, great changes and improvements were introduced. Bridges were built, the river was partially purified and the Thames Embankment carried out. The state of the "ancient river, shining as he goes, mail-clad in morning to the ancient sea" of Henley's phrase, was a hideous scandal in the 'fifties. Father Thames may on occasion have appealed to the eye, but he continually affronted the nose. In 1858 the growth of London was estimated to reach 5,816,900 by 1901. Yes, says _Punch_, but what if the Thames is not purified? In June of that year the nuisance, aggravated by a dry summer, was painfully brought home to legislators in session at Westminster. Constant protests were raised in both Houses, and when Lord John Manners asserted that the Central Board of Works stopped the way, _Punch_ would have liked to see Thwaites--the chairman--and his "gabbling colleagues" committed to prison until they had purged their contempt for our river.

A month later the drought and the bad drainage produced a regular panic, and on July 15 Disraeli introduced a Bill authorizing the cleansing of the Thames and giving the Board of Works power to raise a special rate (which _Punch_ called the Stinking Fund) and a free hand in construction. The stench of the river continued to inspire a succession of poems, paragraphs and articles throughout the rest of the year, including an address to the Thames (after Tennyson), and beginning,

Bake, bake, bake,
O Thames, on thy way to the sea!
And I would that thy stink could poison
A Bishop, Peer or M.P.

The subsequent discontinuance of these tirades is a tolerably safe indication that the nuisance was being seriously grappled with. Eight years later, in the autumn of 1866, Father Thames, though still a disreputable figure, is allowed by _Punch_ to use the _tu quoque_ argument against a Parliamentary critic at a time when electoral corruption was calling loudly for reform.

HON. MEMBER (on Terrace of Parliament Palace): "O, you horrid, dirty old river!"

FATHER THAMES: "Don't _you_ talk, Mister Whatsyername! Which of us has the cleaner hands, I wonder?"]

The new suspension bridge in St. James's Park is attacked in 1857 for its ugliness. "We can't make a monument, and now it seems we can't make a bridge." The new erection is described as a grotesque failure, but at least the ornamental water had been purified. _Punch_ was more hopeful of the new Blackfriars Bridge, built by Cubitt, when he attended the ceremony of laying the foundation-stone in July, 1865, and when it was opened in November, 1869--just a hundred years after the opening of Mylne's bridge--he celebrated the event in an imaginary dialogue between the Queen, Mr. Cubitt and Dr. Johnson. The introduction of Johnson was thoroughly appropriate, for the doctor had attacked Mylne's bridge, or the "Pitt Bridge," as it was originally called, as contravening sound principles of engineering, and events proved that he was right. Over the new Westminster Bridge, begun in May, 1854, and opened at 4 a.m. on the morning of May 24, 1862--the day and hour on which Queen Victoria was born--_Punch_ abandoned his pessimism, pronounced Page's design beautiful, and scouted the suggestion of a fussy M.P. who wished to have palisades erected to prevent would-be suicides from jumping over. It was this bridge to which another M.P., Sir W. Fraser, was anxious that the name Sebastopol should be attached.

[Sidenote: _London Statues_]

Statues are a subject of mixed comment, mostly unflattering. But a good point was scored in 1858 at the expense of Tom Duncombe, the eccentric Radical M.P. and man of fashion, who was incensed at the erection of a statue to Jenner in Trafalgar Square, and sneered in the House at the "Berkeley cow-pox-doctor":--

_Mr. Punch_ cannot conceive what the veteran dandy Tom was thinking
about. Could he be aware that the discovery of vaccination, which
has saved myriads on myriads of lives, and which Parliament
rewarded, in 1802 and 1807, with grants of £10,000 and £20,000, has
the still higher merit of preserving a face from ravages very
inimical to lady-killing?

The Guards' Memorial, unveiled in February, 1861, is only faintly praised:--

It is no worse and perhaps it is a trifle better than the many
statuesque caricatures that, in the name of Art, are supposed to
adorn our much-abused London. The truth is, that the English
sculptors have already displayed such a cruel affection for the
Metropolis, that it has been quite a spoiled child with them.

When a fine memorial was made, we were not able to keep it; and _Punch_ greatly regrets in 1873 that Foley's statue of Outram, temporarily erected in Waterloo Place before its removal to India, was not allowed to remain there, as it was "the finest statue, the only fine statue ever erected in London." _Punch_, however, had forgotten that ten years earlier he had applied the epithet "fine" to Joseph Durham's statue of the Prince Consort in the Royal Horticultural Society's garden.

But of all London statues the most unfortunate and the most ignominiously treated was that of George I in Leicester Square. The Square throughout the 'sixties was a standing eyesore; an unkempt wilderness, where garbage of every kind was shot. The dilapidated condition of the statue in 1865 harmonized with its dingy surroundings and prompted a parody of Cowper:--

I am Monarch of all I survey,
My right leg is minus a foot,
My left has been taken away,
And another they haven't yet put.

In the "Lay of Leicester Square" _Punch_, after a survey of the great days of Leicester House, where "Prince Fred 'gainst Bubb Dodington once held the stakes," describes its lamentable condition at the moment he wrote:--

In dirt and neglect Soho's Slums I outvie
Than my seediest foreigner seedier am I.

Things had come to such a pass that "well bred spectres" no longer could haunt Leicester Square:--

I, Leicester Square garden, so called from the days
When my beds were made, shrubs pruned, and grass duly mown,
In my dirt and disorder maintain the old ways--
While my leg-less lead King, from his war-horse o'erthrown,
Proclaims in his downfall that highest of laws,
"Vested rights are still rights, whate'er nuisance they cause."

Later on in the year there is a cartoon aimed at Ayrton, the unpopular Chief Commissioner of Works in which "Ayrton the (B)Ædile" is shown pointing to the battered statue from which the figure of the rider had been removed, and saying "Ha! Now that's a style of Art I flatter myself I really do understand."

From this derelict condition Leicester Square was rescued by the enterprise and munificence of Baron Albert Grant, whose chequered career was largely redeemed by an act which gave us the Square as we know it. Under the heading, "Grant in Aid and a Check that wants Crossing," _Punch_ gratefully records his intervention and the difficulties which delayed the execution of the scheme.

The greatest of all the improvements that belong to this period was the Thames Embankment, which had formed part of Wren's scheme for the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire. Not until nearly two hundred years had elapsed was Parliamentary sanction obtained for carrying out the plan. It was vigorously opposed in the House of Lords by the Duke of Buccleuch, and _Punch_, on July 5, 1862, published a cartoon with the heading, "Sawney stops the way." John Bull, driving a bus labelled "Embankment," is confronted by a fully armed and kilted Scottish chieftain waving a banner inscribed, "Buccleuch and No Thoroughfare," while _Punch_ as conductor remarks, "Drive on, John; never mind the Scotchman." John Bull drove on, and early in August, 1868, _Punch_ celebrated (though somewhat ironically) the completion of the footway opening of the Embankment from Westminster to Essex Street. As Sir Joseph Bazalgette, who was responsible for the plans and their execution, was engineer to the Metropolitan Board of Works, _Punch_ could not resist the opportunity for ridiculing his old _bête noire_ Sir John Thwaites, the chairman, and his colleagues, the _feu de joie_ loosed off by a sergeant and two bombardiers R.A., and the subsequent junketings at Woolwich. The Victoria Embankment from Blackfriars to Westminster was not opened to the public till 1870, the Albert Embankment on the south side from Westminster Bridge to Vauxhall in the same year; while the Chelsea Embankment from Battersea Bridge to Chelsea Bridge was finished in 1874. Taken together they constitute the greatest addition to the amenities of London made in our time, to say nothing of the reclamation of swamp and slime from the river and their conversion into what is perhaps the finest roadway in London. Cleopatra's Needle was originally presented to England by Mehemet Ali in 1819. Engineering difficulties stood in the way of its removal from Egypt for nearly sixty years. The question is discussed by _Punch_ in 1869, but it was not till 1877 that the munificence of Sir Erasmus Wilson and the skill of John Dixon solved the problem of its transportation to its present site.

OLD LADY: "Well, I'm sure no woman with the least sense of decency would think of going down _that_ way to it."]

[Sidenote: _London Railways_]

_Punch_ had no regrets when the old Hungerford Market (built in 1680, rebuilt in 1831), an unsuccessful rival to Covent Garden, was swept away in 1862 to make room for the new Charing Cross Terminus. But he was at best a lukewarm supporter of the extension of London railways, underground and suburban. The progress of the excavations and the "horrible mess" in the New Road, elicited a growl at the "Underground" and the delays in the construction of the "Sewer Railway." It was suggested that Dr. Cumming had found out that the opening of the line would bring on the end of the world before the date he had fixed for that catastrophe; that garrotters had found the excavations a convenient hiding-place, and so forth. Blundering, jobbing, squabbling, and litigation are also assigned as reasons for delay. In the following year, 1863, protests against further extensions of the underground trains reach a climax, and _Punch_ denounces the vandals who want to ravage Sloane Square and Regent Street. In particular the viaduct crossing Ludgate Hill roused his indignation, and the anti-utilitarian point of view is maintained in the illustration of the "Highly ornamental tank" with which the railway company proposed to block out the view of St. Paul's, while the issue of Stanford's Railway Map of London is made the occasion of a vehement tirade against the devastation of London: "The railway man shall not be monarch of all he surveys." _Punch_, we may add, admitted the decrease in railway accidents, but attributed it to the pressure of public opinion and the penalties exacted from companies for negligence in safeguarding passengers from loss of life and limb.

[Sidenote: _Eheu Fugaces!_]

The pulling down of historic buildings or the removal of historic landmarks invariably moved _Punch_ to regret or indignation. He cordially approved, it is true, of the relief of the Park Lane block in 1864 by the cutting of Hamilton Place, and the removal of the narrowest and most dangerous bottle-neck in the streets of London. And he acquiesced in the removal of Charterhouse School to the country in the interests of the boys, publishing, without fully endorsing, the arguments of those who prophesied that in its new surroundings the school would come to be known as Magna Charterhouse. But in general he lamented the demolitions and destructions which accompanied the triumphal march of commerce. Even the dismantling of the Colosseum in Regent's Park in 1868 evoked a melodious lament:--

I remember, I remember,
When I was a little boy,
How I came home in December
My fond parents to annoy.
But my pretty maiden Aunty
Was kind and gave to me
A sort of show galanty
A funny thing to see.

I remember, I was taken
By my Aunt's peculiar cabby,
For to hear the rafters shaken
By the Choir in the Abbey.
Nor the service, nor Te Deum
Nor the sights of Christmas time,
Could approach the Colosseum,
Save, perhaps, the Pantomime.

I remember, I remember,
All those Ruins in the grounds,
And the classic broken pillars
(Sold for something like three pounds.)
And the statues! One of Jason
Was a noble work of art;
They were knocked down to a mason,
Who removed them in his cart.

A little less than a year later a similar note is sounded when an announcement appeared advertising the sale of the "Supper Colonnade" at Vauxhall "to be sold cheap, a remnant of the past which has witnessed many a scene of merriment with lords and ladies of high degree." The disposal of relics, even dignified relics, has often been a problem to administrators. Parliament debated in 1860 what was to be done with the Duke of Wellington's funeral car, and it was ultimately stowed away in the crypt of St. Paul's. The old "Star and Garter" at Richmond was burned down in January, 1870, and _Punch_ was moved to a poetic valediction in the name of the old frequenters who associated it with the days of their courtship. The doom of Temple Bar was pronounced in the same year, but _Punch_ admits that those who lamented its doom were in "a small and mouldy minority." But there are no reserves in the protest uttered in 1871 against the pulling down of the City churches registered under the heading of "The Pick-axe Age":--

Go ahead, Gentlemen Governors. Pull down any secular building that
seems to be in the way, and, as Sir Epicure Mammon says,

"Now and then a Church."

Temple Bar is doomed. Now Mr. Lowe wants to destroy the Church of
St. Clement Danes, where Dr. Johnson used to worship. All right.
St. Mary-le-Strand is an obstruction to vans and drays. Let us
erase that. More room is wanted in Trafalgar Square, especially as
Mr. Bruce hands it over to legislators of the rough kind; down with
St. Martin. Then, though St. Margaret's has historical
reminiscences, especially of Commonwealth days, and gives scale to
the Abbey, there would be room for a large grass-plot for the
people, with Ayrton-statues, were St. Margaret's invited to remove.
The Abbey itself suggests an extinct superstition, and its
architecture insults that of the Houses; do we want the Abbey?
Then, what a splendid sweep for the carriages of the "self-made men
of the City," civic knights, and the like, if St. Paul's Cathedral
no longer blocked the road from Cheapside to Ludgate Hill! Go
ahead, Gentlemen Governors. We can't do much in the way of building
up fine things, but we are out-and-outers at knocking them down.

[Sidenote: _Historic Landmarks_]

And he returns to the charge a few months later in an ironical plea for the destruction of Wren's churches--St. Mildred's, Poultry; St. Dionis, Backchurch; St. James's, Aldgate; St. Martin's, Outwich, and St. Antholin's, Sise Lane. "Sir Christopher's Cathedral, as it is also a mausoleum, will probably be spared until some railway or tramway shall want the site." When the destruction of Northumberland House was projected in 1873 _Punch_, in a fit of feudal enthusiasm, deplored the vandalism and commercialism of the Philistine Board of Works, and pointed out that there was still time to save the time-honoured house of the Percys. When the demolition was carried out in the following year, and the lion was removed to Syon House, he was consoled by the reflection that it would be at least out of the reach of ignoble and mean-minded vandals. On the other hand, he had rejoiced greatly when in 1866, as the result of a deputation headed by Lord Stanhope and Dean Stanley, Parliament voted a sum of £7,000 for the restoration of Westminster Chapter House. In 1873 St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, an inn which had been a favourite resort of Johnson, Garrick and "Sylvanus Urban," was taken over by the order of St. John of Jerusalem, and _Punch_ compares the public spirit of these Templars favourably with the zeal of the "good Templars" whom he regarded as fussy fanatics. There was no controversial acrimony, however, in his plea for the preservation of the Tabard Inn, Southwark, and the poem "For the Tabard" was written by one who had not merely read but loved his Chaucer.

BOISTEROUS RELATIVE: "Hullo! Gus, my hearty, why I haven't seen you for ages! How are you? Give us your hand, my----"

GUS (alarmed): "Hoy! Keep off! Keep back, stand o' one side! Don't come near me----How d'e do. Glad 'see you, but keep off at present, will you----I've just adjusted my sights!"]

The preservation of the amenities of London and the suburbs found a strong champion in _Punch_. We note a change of temper in 1864 in his comment on the rowdy behaviour of members of the "lower classes" who frequented St. James's Park, and the suggestion that it should be renamed "St. Giles's." In earlier days _Punch_ had warmly resented the exclusion of working-men in fustian from this same park. But no class prejudice impairs his satisfaction in November, 1864, when Wimbledon Common was preserved for the nation and the "small bore man" by the good offices of Lord Spencer:--

WIMBLEDON PRESERVED

There is for us, and shall be, one retreat,
If but that only one, saved stucco-free,
Wimbledon, evermore for pilgrims' feet
Kept sacred, noble Spencer, thanks to thee!
Thy generous charter gives us scope to flee
Still thither from the hubbub and the heat.

In the following year he appeals to other Commons--Wandsworth, Barnes and Streatham--to follow the lead of Wimbledon, and when in 1866 Victoria Park was threatened with the erection of the Imperial Gas Company's works, _Punch_ wrote:--

Let Companies shape their projects to scrape
Up wealth, and dividends share,
But dim their eyes if ever they tries
To rob a poor man of fresh air.

[Sidenote: _Alexandra Palace Destroyed_]