Chapter X: Part I: Loyal Toasts (2)

This bracketing of Huxley with Zola is decidedly unfair, and the juxtaposition of Koch the famous physiologist and of Mr. George Moore--already known for his realistic romances--borders on the grotesque. _Piccadilly_ is, of course, the brilliant novel by Laurence Oliphant, diplomatist, man of the world and mystic, who became the disciple of the American "prophet" Harris, spiritualist and founder of the "Brotherhood of the New Life"; and Blavatsky is the amazing Russian lady who brought a new religion from the Far East as another woman, Mrs. Eddy, brought another from the Far West. Madame Blavatsky is no more, but Mrs. Besant is still very much with us, and Theosophy and Christian Science are firmly established in a country which, as the French cynic remarked, boasts a hundred and fifty religions but only one sauce.

MEDIUM: "The spirit of the late Mr. Jones is present."

JONES'S WIDOW (_with emotion_): "I hope you are happy, Jones!"

JONES (_raps out_): "Far happier than I ever was on earth!"

JONES'S WIDOW: "Oh, Jones! Then you must be in Heaven!"

JONES: "_On the contrary!_"]

HUSBAND: "I think you might _let me_ nurse that teapot a little _now_, Margery! You've had it to yourself all the _morning_ you know!"]

[Sidenote: _The Æsthetic Movement_]

POSTLETHWAITE: "No loftiah theme has evah employed the sculptah's chisel!"

MAUDLE: "Distinctly so. Only work on in _this_ reverent spirit, Mr. Pilcox, and you will achieve the _Truly Great_!"

MRS. CIMABUE BROWN: "Nay, you _have_ achieved it! Oh, my young friend, do you not know that you are a HEAVEN-BORN GENIUS?"

POOR PILCOX: "I do!"

(Gives up his pestle and mortar, and becomes a hopeless Nincompoop for life.)]

[Sidenote: _The Chief Æsthete_]

But of all the Society crazes of this period the Æsthetic movement created the most resounding stir. Æstheticism on its social side was an excrescence on, and a perversion of, doctrines and principles to which English art and decorative design and letters owed a real and lasting debt. It is enough to mention the names of Rossetti and Morris, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and Ruskin to realize how far the fashionable æsthetes disimproved on their masters. Ruskin was in particular unfortunate, since many of their catchwords were borrowed from him and distorted to serve other ends. For while Ruskin deplored the fetish-worship of athletics, he believed in honest manual labour, and never subscribed to the maxim of art for art's sake, which, by the way, was anathema to Watts. Morris was essentially manly and a worker. The æsthetes were neither. In life and letters they cultivated languor, eccentricity, paradox, and extravagance of speech and dress. It was their aim to exploit, as a social asset and a means to the achievement of notoriety, the creed of artistic emotion which had been formulated by Pater. For Oxford, it must be regretfully admitted, was the "spiritual home" of the æsthetes. The word "æsthetic," as we have seen, in its modern cant sense dates back to the 'sixties, but it was not until the middle 'seventies that it began seriously to attract the attention of _Punch_. To 1874 belongs Du Maurier's picture of the effete-looking artist begging his wife to let him nurse the china teapot she had monopolized all the morning. In 1876 we read of the damping of "Mr. Boniface Brasenose's" enthusiasm by a fashionable lady. But the fashionable ladies soon succumbed to the craze, and became adepts in the lingo of intensity. _Punch_ attacked the æsthetes alternately with the rapier and the bludgeon, using the former in the delicate raillery of Du Maurier's pictures, the latter in prose and verse comments on their eccentricities and extravagance. Here his attitude is invariably that of the healthy Philistine. But when we speak of "æsthetes" it would be more precise to use the singular. Maudle and Postlethwaite and all the other types satirized by Du Maurier are only variants on the chief priest of the new cult, Oscar Wilde, whom _Punch_ attacked directly and indirectly with all the weapons at his disposal. _Punch's_ ridicule was often trenchant and effective, but undoubtedly it helped to advertise one who was avid of notoriety, and infinitely preferred abuse to neglect. _Punch's_ feelings towards him were all through of a piece with those of the witty Fellow of All Souls who, when a friend of Wilde's indignantly remarked that the men who had ducked him in the Cherwell ought to be prosecuted, interposed with the biting comment, "I suppose you mean under the Rivers' Pollution Act." For more than a year and a half, from the spring of 1881 to the end of 1882, there was seldom a number without a picture or a poem or a prose article in which the chief æsthete was held up to derision. Sambourne's drawing in June, 1881, is called a "fancy portrait," but it is quite a realistic likeness. "A Maudle-in Ballad, to the Lily," had appeared in April:--

My lank limp lily, my long lithe lily,
My languid lily-love, fragile and thin,
With dank leaves dangling and flower-flap chilly,
That shines like the shin of a Highland gilly!
Mottled and moist as a cold toad's skin!
Lustrous and leper-white, splendid and splay!
Art thou not Utter? and wholly akin
To my own wan soul and my own wan chin,
And my own wan nose-tip, tilted to sway
The peacock's feather, sweeter than sin,
That I bought for a halfpenny, yesterday?

My long lithe lily, my languid lily,
My lank limp lily-love, how shall I win--
Woo thee to wink at me? Silver lily,
How shall I sing to thee, softly, or shrilly?
What shall I weave for thee--which shall I spin--
Rondel, or rondeau, or virelay?
Shall I buzz like a bee, with my face thrust in
Thy choice, chaste chalice, or choose me a tin
Trumpet, or touchingly, tenderly play
On the weird bird-whistle, sweeter than sin,
That I bought for a halfpenny, yesterday?

Other parodies by "Oscuro Wildegoose" followed, and Wilde's poems are "slated" in the Bludyer vein under the heading "Swinburne and Water." A good deal of Wilde's verse was derivative--even tertiary deposit--and _Punch_ made fair game of the Swinburnian echoes and phrases such as "argent body," "pulse of sin," and "kosmic soul." But his literary criticism is somewhat heavy-handed. He is much happier in "Oscuro Wildegoose's" burlesque sonnet lamenting the unenlightened Philistinism of Grahamstown, in South Africa, where the Town Council did not know what a dado was, and conjectured that it was an ecclesiastical term! Wilde's visit to America in 1882 let loose a cascade of ridicule beginning with a bogus interview, followed up by a cartoon "Ariadne in Naxos," representing (in the manner of W. B. Richmond) the grief of Æstheticism at the departure of her hierophant. When Wilde lectured at Boston sixty students appeared in white waistcoats and knee-breeches, with sun-flowers in their buttonholes, and _Punch_ welcomed the attention as a _reductio ad absurdum_ of Wilde's efforts to revolutionize costume. Later on occurred the episode--which caused _Punch_ unfeigned delight--of a letter addressed to "Oscar Wilde, Poet, London," being returned as "Not known." But the craze was passing. Gilbert's _Patience_, produced in 1881, had been largely instrumental in reducing the pose of preciosity to its true proportions, and by the summer of 1883 we find _Punch_ coupling "Oscar" and "Jumbo" (the elephant) together as overrated lions. From this point onward the campaign slackens. In some acid verses on the _Zeit-Geist_ in the spring of 1884, which we quote later on, a would-be Juvenal denounces vulgarity as the dominant feature of the time; and in his list of nuisances and impostors no room is found for the æsthete. At the close of the same year, however, to judge by another set of pessimistic verses, he was still active if not exactly rampant:--

The "culture," too, of the æsthetes, with all its flaccid flams,
Its turgid affectations and its silly sickly shams,
Is but as dross of Brummagem compared with virgin gold,
When matched against the vigorous realities of old.

[Sidenote: _The Cult of Intensity_]

_Scene--A drawing-room in "Passionate Brompton."_

FAIR ÆSTHETIC (_suddenly, and in deepest tones, to Smith, who has just been introduced to take her in to dinner_): "_Are you intense?_"]

The "Dilettante" satirized in a rather ponderous article--one of the series of "Modern Types"--in 1890 represents a later stage of pseudo-culture, in which a contempt for everything characteristically English is the leading trait. He warbles French chansonnettes, defies all the rules of English grammar and metre in his poetry, is much in request at charitable concerts in aristocratic drawing-rooms, affects a mincing delicacy in gait and manner, paints his face in middle age, talks habitually in an artistic jargon, and passes away in an odour of pastilles. The type existed and exists, but hardly deserved such detailed and elaborate portraiture. There is more interest in the verses on the over-cultured undergraduate in 1891--one of a series entitled "Men who have taken me in--to dinner," by a Dinner Belle:--

He stood, as if posed by a column,
Awaiting our hostess' advance;
Complacently pallid and solemn,
He deigned an Olympian glance.
Icy cool, in a room like a crater,
He silently marched me downstairs,
And Mont Blanc could not freeze with a greater
Assurance of grandeur and airs.

I questioned if Balliol was jolly--
"Your epithet," sighed he, "means noise,
Vile noise!" At his age it were folly
To revel with Philistine boys.
Competition, the century's vulture,
Devoured academical fools;
For himself, utter pilgrim of Culture,
He countenanced none of the schools.

Exams. were a Brummagem fashion
Of mobs and inferior taste;
They withered "Translucence" and "Passion,"
They vulgarized leisure by haste.
Self to realize--that was the question,
Inscrutable still while the cooks
Of our Colleges preached indigestion,
Their Dons indigestible books.

Two volumes alone were not bathos,
The one by an early Chinese,
The other, of infinite pathos,
Our Nursery Rhymes, if you please.
He was lost, he avowed, in this era;
His spirit was seared by the West,
But he deemed to be Monk in Madeira
Would probably suit him the best.

[Sidenote: _Preciosity and Self-Expression_]

HAWKER: "Book o' the words, my Lady. Hortherized copy. The Dam o' Cameleers!"

MRS. JONES (for the benefit of the bystanders): "Oh no, thank you. We've come to see the _acting_, we do not wish to understand the _play_!"]

It is not a bad picture of Oxford preciosity in the early 'nineties--the age of the _Yellow Book_--and contains the first reference in _Punch_ to the new educational gospel of self-realization, or "self-expression," as it is now called. The mention of early Chinese poetry was probably only a piece of "intelligent anticipation," for its vogue only began yesterday. So too with the Nursery Rhymes which some of the Georgian poets assiduously cultivate. But there is no foreshadowing of the characteristic Balliol product of some ten years later, the "intellectual blood" who combined hard and free living with hard work for his schools--who was at once dissipated and distinguished. The new worship of intellect--a sort of inverted snobbery--had already been satirized by Du Maurier in his sketch of the new _parvenu_, foreshadowing the "coming aristocracy of mind":--

HE: "Charming youth, that young Bellamy--such a refined
and cultivated intellect! When you think what he's risen from, poor
fellow, it really does him credit!"

SHE: "Why, were his people--a--inferiah?"

HE: "Well, yes. His Grandfather's an Earl, you know, and his
Uncle's a Bishop; and he himself is Heir to an old Baronetcy with
eighty thousand a year!"

Manners were in a state of transition and flux. As late as 1883 smoking in the presence of ladies was still taboo and severely restricted even at clubs, and _Punch_ contrasts the "bereavement" of gentlemen by the disappearance of ladies after dessert with the "consolation" afforded by the cigarette. It was not until 1884 that smoking was allowed for the first time after dinners at the Mansion House, an innovation deplored in the wail of an "Old Fogey." _Punch_ had no love of the old proprieties where they were insincere, as, for example, when in 1881 he represented Mrs. Jones declining the offer of a "hortherized copy" of the book of words of the _Dam o' Cameleers_ from a hawker: "Oh no, thank you. We've come to see the _acting_, we do not wish to understand the _play_." But he resented the curt colloquialisms, an outcome of the general speeding-up of life, which in his view impaired the courtesies of social intercourse between the sexes; while on the other hand modish artificialities, whether new or old, always excited his ire. Twice over in 1884 he was moved to protest against the excessive use of cosmetics, in the verses to a "Painted Lady" (prompted by Malcolm Morris's address at the Health Exhibition), in which the writer looks forward to the time when it will be fashionable to be healthy, and a few months later, in "A Few Home Truths," we read:--

Our matrons and our girls "make up" with powder, bismuth, dye--
Figures as well as frocks, obliging milliners supply--
Alas! the fairest cheeks are stained with artificial hue:
'Tis true--'tis pity; pity 'tis, 'tis true!

[Sidenote: _High-handed Greetings_]

1787 1887"

"HERE'S A HOW-D'Y'-DO!"

A Chapter on the Evolution of Deportment.]

Nowadays young ladies begin making-up rather earlier, but, if _Punch_ is to be believed, we can draw consolation from the fact that they are little worse in this respect than their modish mothers or grandmothers. Another of _Punch's_ pet aversions was the fashionable high hand-shake introduced in the 'nineties:--

HANDS AS THEY ARE SHOOK

(New Style)

In healthier times, when friends would meet
Their friends in chamber, park, or street,
Each, as hereunder, each would greet.

Your level hand went forth; you clasped
Your crony's; each his comrade's grasped--
If roughly, neither friend was rasped.

Such was the good old-fashioned cue
Of honest British "How d'ye do?"
I think it manly still--don't you?

But now, when smug acquaintance hails
A set that would be "smart," but fails,
Another principle prevails.

The arm, in lifted curve displayed,
Droops limply o'er the shoulder-blade,
As needing some chirurgeon's aid.

Our Mashers are still improving. They no longer enter the Ball Room with their Hands in their Pockets. They have adopted a Mode of Progression more in harmony with their Mental Structure.]

[Sidenote: _The Decline of the Chaperon_]

The offenders here castigated are young men, but the ladies excelled in the new greeting. Languor was the distinguishing note of the young men of fashion in the 'eighties and 'nineties. It was the age of the "masher"--dreadful word--of the "Johnnie" and the "Chappie." In 1883 _Punch_ published a poem entitled "Child Chappie's Pilgrimage," a modern Rake's Progress. Later on he satirized the studied imbecility of deportment of young dandies entering a ballroom as "The Earlswood Totter." Students of slang will note with interest the emergence of the word "bounder" in the year 1887. _Punch's_ verses on the type thus designated indicate a much harsher view than now prevails. Nowadays we admit that a "bounder," though socially "impossible," may be a "stout fellow." _Punch's_ portrait, in which the "bounder" is represented as a bilker and a blackmailer, corresponds with the "cad" in the worst sense which we now attribute to that word. Mention has been made of the decline of the _chaperon_. Here _Punch_ virtually sides with the "little flirt" who boldly enunciates the doctrine that "in future a girl is her own chaperon." At the same time he clearly disapproved of the new habit of dispensing with introductions, and its logical outcome, satirized in one of Du Maurier's most graceful pictures--entertainments at which the hostess was ignorant of the very names of her guests.

SUSCEPTIBLE YOUTH: "Would you present Me to that Young Lady with the Black Fan?"

HOSTESS: "With pleasure, if you will tell me her Name--and Yours!"]

The Roller-Skating craze, which attained the dimensions of an epidemic in 1875 and 1876, is treated by _Punch_ rather as a form of social recreation fraught with matrimonial possibilities than an athletic pastime.

The year 1876 was also noteworthy for an epidemic of Fancy Dress Balls and Spelling Bees. The latter were never popular in Mayfair; spelling had never been a strong point with the British aristocracy. But in less exalted circles Spelling Bees flourished exceedingly for a while, and the prizes awarded may well have conduced to an improvement in the orthography of the upper middle classes. _Punch's_ references to the craze are copious. It may suffice, however, to quote his "Dream of a Spelling-Bee," an engaging piece of dictionary-made nonsense verse:--

Menageries where sleuth-hounds caracole,
Where jaguar phalanx and phlegmatic gnu
Fright ptarmigan and kestrels cheek by jowl
With peewit and precocious cockatoo:

Gaunt seneschals, in crochety cockades,
With seine-nets trawl for porpoise in lagoons;
While scullions gauge erratic escapades
Of madrepores in water-logged galleons:

Flamboyant triptychs groined with gherkins green,
In reckless fracas with coquettish bream,
Ecstatic gurgoyles, with grotesque chagrin,
Garnish the gruesome nightmare of my dream!

[Sidenote: _Suburban Sentiment_]

The Spelling Bee was a solace of the suburbs, which were steadily rising into prominence, owing to increased facilities of communication with the centre of London, and the "Suburban Love Song" which _Punch_ printed in May, 1889, marks the emergence of a class of society hitherto neglected in his pages--a class quite well-educated and not vulgar, but essentially bourgeois and sentimental:--

The blacks float down with a lazy grace,
Hey, how the twirtle-birds twitter!
And softly settle on hands and face;
And the shards in the rockery glitter.

The boughs are black and the buds are green--
Hey, how the twitter-birds twirtle!
And Cicely over the trellis-screen
Is bleaching her summer kirtle.

The mustard and cress (can they grow apart--
Those twin-souls, cress and mustard?)
Are springing apace: they have made such a start
That the pattern is rather fluster'd:

For I made a device in the moist dark mould,
In the shape of A's and S's,
In capital letters, firm and bold,
I sow'd my mustard and cresses.

Here comes no nymph where the blue waves lisp
On the white sands' gleaming level,
Where the sharp light strikes on the laurel crisp,
And flowers in the cool shade revel.

But the garden shrubs are as fair to me
As pine and arbutus and myrtle
That grow by the shores of the Grecian sea,
Where deathless nightingales twirtle.

And the little house, with its suites complete,
And the manifold anti-macassar,
And the chalet cage, whence he greets the street--
_Meae puellae passer_--

Are fairer than aught that the sun is above
In the world as much as I've seen of it;
For the little house is the realm of love,
And my sweet little girl is the queen of it.

[Sidenote: _Foreign Travel Popularized_]

INDIGNANT ANGLO-SAXON (_to Provincial French Innkeeper, who is bowing his thanks for the final settlement of his exorbitant and much-disputed account_): "Oh, oui, Mossoo! pour le matière de _ça_, je _paye_! Mais juste vous regardez _ici_, mon ami! et juste-vous-marquez-mes-_mots_! Je _paye--mais je mette le dans la_ 'Times'!"]

For another view of the suburbs one may turn to the drab and depressing realism of George Gissing's novels. _Punch_ himself did not always look at them through rose-coloured spectacles, and a year later, under the heading "Green Pastures or Piccadilly?" (adapted from a book by William Black), emphasizes the drawbacks of a bad train service, exorbitant tradesmen, imperfect drainage, and the desolation of a region in which, from 9 A.M. to 6 P.M., "not a single male human being is visible, all of them being in town."

"Are there any second-class carriages on this line, Rogers?"

"No, my lord."

"Ah! Then take two first-class tickets and two third."

"Beg pardon, my lord! But is me and Mrs. Parker expected to go third-class?"

"Gracious heavens! No, Rogers! Not for the world! The third-class tickets are for my lady and me!"]

At the beginning of this period foreign travel had ceased to be the exclusive privilege of the "classes." The days of cheap trips to "Lovely Lucerne" were yet to come, but Cook was already a power in the land, and as early as the close of 1874 we find _Punch_ frankly expressing his opinion that travel agencies had assisted to "lower middle-class-Englishize the Continent." The value of travel as a corrective of insularity and a means of promoting a better understanding of our foreign neighbours is not recognized. Residence on the Continent was another matter, and the series of articles, "Elizabeth's residence in a French country house," indicate the possibilities of enlightenment on various points. In particular stress is laid on the fact that there was no spoiling of women in France; in that country they were the real workers. At home the increase of excursion trains only served to excite _Punch's_ wrath against their discomfort and overcrowding and the greed of directors. Yet these drawbacks did not prevent impecunious or economical aristocrats from travelling third class, though their domestics had to go first.

The everlasting servant problem recurs again and again in the 'eighties. Complaints of inadequate wages are seldom heard. In 1876 _Punch_ refers to a letter of Charles Reade on the comparative luxury of the lives of servants contrasted with those of dressmakers. In 1875 Mrs. Crawshay, of Cyfarthfa, had read a paper before the British Association advocating the introduction of "Lady Helps," but _Punch_ was not convinced by her arguments, and turned the suggestion to something like ridicule in his burlesque extension of the idea in a series of advertisements of "Gentlemen Helps." "Jeames" was still a target, but a dwindling target of _Punch's_ satire. When the _Morning Post_ was reduced to a penny in 1881, "Jeames" tells the policeman that on hearing the news "you might have knocked me down with a peacock's feather." As of old, _Punch_ found the real root of flunkeyism in the snobbery of masters and mistresses, and the worst offenders in this period were the _parvenus_, like Sir Gorgius Midas, who surrounded themselves with flunkeys even at picnics, and exaggerated the ostentation of the class whose manners they crudely aped. The shabbily dressed peer is contrasted with the bediamonded _parvenu_, and in one of Du Maurier's "Social Problem" pictures the problem is to tell the butler from the lord, the former being a most aristocratic-looking person, while his master--a new creation--is an unmistakable "bounder." Towards the growing self-assertion of female servants _Punch_ was much more tolerant. In 1877, when the problem was already acute, he praises an independent attitude in a servant as being merely business-like, and later on sides with Mary Ann against despotic mistresses who advertised for parlourmaids and cooks who must not wear fringes. In 1891 _Punch_ published a set of verses inspired by the dismissal, after nine days, of a maid who refused to wear a cap. But the extremists who would make the mistress the "woman" and the servant the "lady" found no favour in his sight; he was no more a supporter of tyrannical servants than of exacting mistresses, and in 1884 our sympathies are distinctly enlisted on the side of the graceful young wife, terrified at the prospect of having to give warning to a formidable cook, and begging the page-boy to stand by during the ordeal.

[Sidenote: _Mistress and Maid_]

In 1886 _Punch_ discussed the formation of an Anti-Tipping League, but came to the shrewd conclusion, verified by experience, that it called for too much courage to prove successful. A year before, in a series of papers on "Public Grievances," he had published a set of letters written from different points of view, showing that mistresses and maids were both at fault. The sketch of "My Housemaid" in 1892 reverts to the old complaints of destructiveness and "followers," and notices, as special traits, a love of funerals and Exeter Hall.

Nine years earlier the _Daily Telegraph_ had published a sensational report of the impending importation of Chinese labour for domestic service. _Punch_ was not inclined to take the report seriously, but it cropped up again in 1882 in the _St. James's Gazette_:--

Domestic servants will view with well-grounded anxiety a decision
arrived at by the Chinese merchants who met in conference a few days
ago in London. It was resolved, among other things, to send letters to
various Clubs in China, recommending emigration to England. If this
recommendation is acted on, we may be on the eve of a great domestic
and social revolution. There will, no doubt, be a prejudice at first
in some households against the introduction into the family circle
of the "heathen Chinee." But when his merits are discovered, it is
not impossible he may be warmly welcomed as a valuable acquisition,
meeting one of the most pressing requirements of the day.

_Punch_ contented himself with publishing a mock protest from "John Thomas" of Belgravia against this "rediklus" proposal:--

The "St. Jeames's" takes a Lo view of the Domestic's Posishon. As if
Work was the one thing Needfull. Whereas the fact is that a Footman
in Good Societa is requier'd not only for Use but much more still for
horniment. Look at a Chinee's legs. Look at his shoalders. Where's the
bredth of the Won and the Carves of the Huther? Compare our ites mine
and his. Six foot to sixpennuth of apence. Ow can I and sitch as me
think of bein jellus of a Beger like that? If we was we mite petition
for a additional Dooty on Forren Men Servants; but we don't want No
sich Protection for Native Industry agin Imports.

[Sidenote: _The Doctors' Dilemma_]

In the same vein is a picture of a policeman paralysed by the appearance of a male Chinese cook in the area. But a somewhat different note is sounded in the Rip Van Winkle survey of England in 1932, published in the same number as John Thomas's protest, showing the British workman crowded out of every sort of employment by his laziness and greed and forced to take refuge in the workhouse, while the work of the country is wholly done by industrious aliens.

The scandal of underpaid governesses practically disappears from _Punch's_ pages in this period. The evil was not extinct, but "superfluous women" were beginning to find other occupations, and the growing popularity of girls' schools undoubtedly diminished the demand for governesses.

In regard to inequalities of remuneration, _Punch_ proved himself a sturdy champion of the medical profession. A lecture by Mr. Richard Davy at the Westminster Hospital in the autumn of 1875 took a decidedly pessimistic view of the professional prospects of medical students:--

Their salaries were simply miserable; hospital physicians and surgeons
were, for the most part, unpaid. Poor Law Officers most piteously;
surgeons in the services very badly, and young practitioners not at
all. For seven years' hard work in the Marylebone Dispensary he
had received one guinea, and a very distinguished London assistant
physician had found that his salary equalled that of the man who put
the skid on the omnibus wheels at Holborn Hill.

He advised every one to resign at once any and every
thought of becoming a medical man unless he possessed three
qualifications:--First, independence; second, an aptitude and love for
the profession; third, the readiness to pay a heavy premium in this
world for his prospects of reward in the next.

_Punch_ expressed righteous indignation at the "generosity" with which an appreciative Government and a grateful Public were accustomed to requite the services of medical men. But the disparities of which Mr. Davy legitimately complained were nothing to those which have been common of late years. In 1920 the demonstrators in science at Oxford were getting just about the same pay as the Oxford road-sweepers. Attempts to disparage the social status of doctors were invariably resented by _Punch_, and when, in November, 1880, the Bishop of Liverpool, in a speech to medical men, observed "I am not ashamed to say I have a son a doctor," _Punch_ promptly retorted in the following epigram:--

How kind of the Bishop, and how patronizing,
And yet to his _Punch_ 'tis a little surprising,
That speaking to medical men there in session,
He dared speak of shame and a noble profession.
A Bishop looks after our souls, but how odd is
The sneer that's implied at the curers of bodies.
For surely it would be no hard task to fish up,
A hundred brave Doctors as good as the Bishop.

[Sidenote: _Cremation and Comprehension_]

_Punch_, it will be remembered, had been a caustic critic of medical students of the Bob Sawyer type in the 'forties. But he made his _amende_ handsomely in 1886, when he acknowledged the change in the type and contrasted the serious and frugal modern student with the rowdy, bibulous sawbones of forty years before. Of irregular practitioners _Punch_ had always been a hostile critic, and even the orthodox members of the profession did not always escape a certain amount of genial satire, as when, in 1886, an eminent physician, feeling ill, declines to call in any doctor because "we all go in for thinking each other such humbugs." In this context it may be permissible to add to what has already been said on the subject of cremation, and _Punch's_ support of Sir Henry Thompson, that in 1874 there appeared the following mock "Grave-digger's Remonstrance" with that eminent surgeon:--

Who are you to be thieving
The poor sexton's bread?
How can we earn our living
If you urn our dead?

NEPHEW: "I hope you haven't been waiting long, Uncle?"

UNCLE: "All right, my boy. Been reading the paper, and had a pinch--By the by, it's queer flavoured snuff in this jar of yours, Fred."

NEPHEW (aghast): "Snuff, Uncle!--Jar! Good gracious!--That's not snuff! Those are the ashes of my landlord's first wife!"]

_Punch_, always a strong advocate of comprehension, saw in cremation a means of breaking down the barriers erected between conformists and nonconformists by exclusive graveyards.

Turning to other callings and the social problems which they presented, we may note that the difficulty experienced by retired officers in finding suitable and remunerative employment had begun to attract attention in 1885. The suggestions made by Lord Napier of Magdala in that year did not meet with a sympathetic response from _Punch_, who, in a somewhat infelicitous burlesque, foreshadowed the strange results on hotel management of the employment of officers in various menial capacities. The hardships of the underpaid clergy and "ragged curates" are seldom referred to in this period. In 1889 we are introduced to a new type in the moustachioed, eye-glassed, but energetic curate, who observes, "My vicar's away. I preach three times on Sunday, and boss the entire show." Indulgence in slang by bishops, however, did not come in till more than thirty years later.

Social inversions are a frequent theme of comment. The new commercial Croesus expresses a contemptuous compassion for the "poor devils with fixed incomes." The Highlands are invaded by prosperous suburban tradesmen in kilts, and pen and pencil are enlisted to illustrate the embarrassments of the "New Poor," the altered balance between High and Low Life, and the comparative wealth of the working classes owing to their freedom from taxation and responsibilities. A notable sign of the times was the emergence of the American millionaire art collector. The first great ducal sale at Stowe dates back to 1848, but it was an isolated example and looked upon as almost a portent. In the 'eighties the depression of the landed interest led to further dispersion of treasures, beginning with the Duke of Hamilton's sale in 1882, and in 1889 the activity of American purchasers excited the laments of patriotic Frenchmen, echoed by _Punch_. There is, however, a good deal to be said on the other side when the American millionaire happens to be as enlightened and generous as the late Mr. Pierpont Morgan and his son. The influence of the "New Rich" in England on art only ministered to _Punch's_ sense of ridicule, happily exercised at the expense of _parvenus_ who bought books by the hundred yards or purchased faked "ancestral" portraits. These atrocities furnished congenial scope for the comments of Du Maurier's "Grigsby"--one of his most diverting creations--who plays the part of the facetious skeleton at the feasts of "Sir Pompey Bedell" and other self-satisfied plutocrats.

[Sidenote: _"Grigsby" on Family Portraits_]

GRIGSBY: "By the way, that's a new Picture, Sir Pompey--the Knight in Armour, I mean!"

SIR POMPEY BEDELL: "Er--yes. It came to me in rather a curious way--er--too long to relate at present. It's an Ancestor of mine--a Bedell of Richard the Third's period!"

GRIGSBY (_who made an all but successful offer of three-seventeen-six_ for said Picture, last week, to old Moss Isaacs, in Wardour Street): "By Jove, he was precious near being an _Ancestor of Mine_, too!"

(_Proceeds to explain, but is interrupted by Sir P.'s proposing to join the Ladies._)]

_Punch's_ attitude to the French, it may be noted, had grown much more genial and appreciative after the war of 1870. This mellower temper reflected a general feeling, but it was due in part at least to the influence of Du Maurier, who had French blood in his veins and had studied art in Paris. He did not refrain from chaffing the French "sportman," but his satire was delicate and tempered by candour. For example, one need only point to the picture of the Englishman in France expostulating with his French artist friend at the caricatures of Englishwomen in the Parisian Press, and suddenly silenced by the inopportune appearance of a party of Englishwomen exactly bearing out the caricature! _Punch_ had no love of the English tourist on the Continent, and seldom failed to gibbet his inconsiderate angularity. He was no believer in globe-trotting as a means of promoting mutual understanding. But he was increasingly ready to admit that there were things which they managed better abroad, and to acknowledge that we might go very far astray if we formed our estimate of France on "_Les Français peints par eux mêmes_." Both nations have a way of putting their worst foot foremost, the one through shyness and reserve, the other through an excess of outspokenness, and Du Maurier's racial dualism made him an excellent interpreter of both failings.

Out of many miscellaneous features of this period we may single out the Japanese craze, a form of cheap æstheticism satirized by _Punch_ in the early 'eighties; the popularity of the banjo, honoured by more than one reference in 1886 when it appears among the luggage to be taken to the seaside; the fashion in huge St. Bernard dogs, beloved of Du Maurier, who yet recognized the absurdity of breeding gigantic types in one of his nightmare pictures in 1879; and the plague of recitation, faithfully dealt with in _Punch's_ admirable "Manual for Young Reciters." Christmas cards became fashionable in 1876; and _Punch_, as a sentimentalist, did not support the agitation against them as a "senseless extravagance" in 1878. The "Missing Word Competition" entered on its devastating career in 1892.

[Sidenote: "_Fin-de-Siècle_"]

As a symptom of the general speeding-up of life, and the resort to short cuts of all sorts in speech, as well as in action, one may note the appearance of a group of new words, of which "leaderette" and "sermonette" were the most notable until the arrival, many years later, of the "Suffragette." With the arrival of the 'nineties another formidable phrase, _fin-de-siècle_, sprang into prominence, and soon achieved a popularity that exasperated _Punch_ beyond the bounds of endurance:--

WANTED, A WORD-SLAYER

_Fin-de-siècle_! Ah, that phrase, though taste spurn it, I
Fear, threatens staying with us to eternity.
Who _will_ deliver
Our nerves, all a-quiver,
From that pest-term, and its fellow, "modernity"?

_Just as he is pointing out to Monsieur Anatole Duclos, the Parisian journalist, how infinitely the English type of female beauty (especially amongst our Aristocracy) transcends that of France, or any other nation--who should come up from the beach but Lady Lucretia Longstaff and her five unmarried daughters!_

--"And as for those idiotic old French caricatures of les Anglaises, with long gaunt faces and long protruding teeth and long flat feet--why, good heavens! my dear Duclos, the type doesn't even _exist_!"]

_Punch_ was much preoccupied with "modernity" and its numerous manifestations in these years, and his preoccupation took the form of a comprehensive series of "Modern Types," to which reference has already been made. Some of them will appear anything but modern to the Georgian reader, and, indeed, are not so much new as recurrent types--for example, the precocious undergraduate who gambles, drinks, fails in his schools, emigrates and dies miserably. The "Young Guardsman" is an eminently conventional portrait of a type which disappeared in the Great War, and is almost a libel on a Brigade whose social prestige is of infinitely less importance than its magnificent record of heroic achievement. The "Average Undergraduate" is in the main a handsome tribute to the public school system. He is not an Admirable Crichton, a Blue or a Scholar, but a decent fellow, truthful and ingenuous, who will always be a "useful member of the community." The tone of the whole series, however, is very far from ministering to national complacency. The bitterest of all these portraits is that of "The Adulated Clergyman," an effeminate, self-indulgent, insincere and unwholesome impostor, at all points a base variant of the type satirized in Thackeray's fashionable preacher, Charles Honeyman.

_Punch's_ handling of social pests and evils throughout this period is decidedly pessimistic. The frank verses on divorce by consent--or rather collusion--in 1886 are a legitimate criticism enough. But at times he quite overshoots the mark, as, for example, in the acrimonious and grotesque tirade against the House of Lords, published in December, 1883, under the heading of "The Speaker: A Handbook to Ready-made Oratory." After giving a few notes on the personal appearance of some "titled types," the writer continues:--

There is a motto which every Peer is supposed to adopt as a rule of
life--"_noblesse oblige_." It is presumed that every bearer of a
hereditary title, carrying with it a right to receive numberless Blue
Books published at the expense of the Public, is willing, in virtue
of his position, to please everyone. Now it gratifies the community
at large to hear a Peer talking in public, and, as some Peers cannot
talk in public, it may be as well to give the specimen of the sort
of speech which would cause unlimited satisfaction in all quarters
but the highest. Of course, the imaginary speaker is a myth--a
foolish but frank Lord, with the courage of his opinions. Should
such a person, however, be found, there would be no doubt about his
popularity--again, in certain circles. It must be remembered that, as
the speaker would be a Peer addressing Commoners, all his Lordship's
remarks would be received with the deepest approval.

[Sidenote: "_Noblesse Oblige_!"]

OUR GALLANT COLONEL: "And where and how have _you_ spent the Summer, Miss Golightly?"

MISS GOLIGHTLY: "Oh, I sat in a punt with my favourite man--a quite too _delicious_ man!"]

Noble Orator (rising at the right of the Chairman).
Gentlemen--(enthusiastic applause)--I am sure I must thank you
for the honour you have conferred upon me. ("No, no!") Yes, it
is an honour, because I believe I am verily the most uneducated
dolt in all this brilliant assembly. (Cheers.) I am, indeed: and,
although a great many of my peers--perhaps the majority--are highly
respectable, still in my class you will discover many who resemble me
in nearly every particular. (Applause.) As a lad I refused to learn
anything, and could scarcely spell my name--certainly it was a long
one--at fifteen. (Great cheering.) I was a dunce at school, and a
cad at the University. (Frantic enthusiasm.) It is my great pride
to remember that at this latter seat of learning I had the honour
to burn half the College library, and to screw up the door to my
tutor's apartments. (Roars of laughter.) But from this you must not
imagine that I am fond of squandering. On the contrary, I audit my
own butcher's book, and superintend the store-cupboard of my Lady's
housekeeper. (Cheers.) I never go by a cab when I can take an omnibus,
and if asked for a shilling by a genuinely starving beggar, would,
after mature consideration, advance him a halfpenny on account,
chargeable on approved security. (Cheers.) And yet I am very rich,
enormously rich. (Renewed applause.) Many of the slums of the greatest
city in the world belong to me. (Cheers.) And although slums are not
pretty to look at or live in, they are good ones to pay. (Shouts of
enthusiasm.) From this slight confession you may imagine that I am
ignorant, vicious, mean, and grasping. (Prolonged cheering.) Well, I
am all these, and more, for I am an ass into the bargain. (Thunders of
applause.) Besides this, I have no birth to boast of. A hundred years
ago or so, my great-grandfather swept a crossing, and his wife dealt
in hare-and rabbit-skins. But what matter the past when we have the
present before us! I am crassly ignorant and intolerably offensive,
but I am a Lord. (Enormous enthusiasm.) And, as a Lord, I can give you
what laws I please--("You can; you can!")--or never go near the House
of Lords from one year's end to another. I generally adopt the latter
course, except when the interest of my own class, or the gratification
of a fad, cause me to perform my highly responsible duties. On these
occasions, however, I take care that I represent none but myself. (A
storm of applause.) Under these circumstances, as I am bored out of
my life, and have just enough sense to see that I am a nuisance to
everyone, inclusive of myself, I am sure you are glad that you are not
me. "_Noblesse oblige_," I want to console you! (The noble speaker
here resumed his seat amidst the wildest enthusiasm.)

Such a speech as the above would, no doubt, reconcile many listeners
to cease to envy the Peerage, the more especially if they happened to
be either Baronets of James the First's creation or members of the
oldest (not the mushroom) county families.

[Sidenote: _Punch's Pessimism_]

The speaker was "imaginary," though the burning down half a College library was a true bill, and the ringleader in this exploit afterwards attained high rank as a politician. But these composite portraits are seldom satisfactory, and in this instance the resultant monstrosity ceases to be representative. The House of Lords was not exclusively composed of black sheep at any time, and on the whole more dangerous scoundrels have made their way into the elected House. But here, as so often happens, _Punch_ provides the antidote to his own bane. In 1886, under the heading "A Radical Snob," he reprints what Thackeray wrote in his own pages just forty years earlier:--

"Perhaps, after all, there's no better friend to Conservatism than
your outrageous Radical Snob. When a man preaches to you that all
Noblemen are tyrants, that all Clergymen are hypocrites or liars,
that all Capitalists are scoundrels, banded together in an infamous
conspiracy to deprive the people of their rights, he creates a
wholesome revulsion of feeling in favour of the abused parties, and a
sense of fair play leads the generous heart to take a side with the
object of unjust oppression.

"The frantic dwarf ... becomes a most wicked and dangerous Snob when
he gets the ear of people more ignorant than himself, inflames them
with lies, and misleads them into ruin."

Yet, when all allowance has been made for inconsistency and extravagance, we cannot deny that a strongly marked vein of discontent and dissatisfaction--often too well-grounded--with the "scheme of things in general" runs through the pages of _Punch_ throughout these years, culminating in a dismal explosion of pessimism in March, 1884, over the decadence, the degeneracy and the vulgarity of the age:--

THE "ZEIT-GEIST"

Oh, for the Muse that laughed and stung
On _Gulliver's_ indignant tongue!
Curt was his speech and fierce and strong,
In lofty scorn of Cant and Wrong,--
And small indeed the times that teach
Weakness of grip for strength of speech,
Craving once more that Muse to fire
The chords of Satire's slackened lyre!

Oh, little day of little men,
What themes invite the mocker's pen!
What rush for wealth at any cost,
Honour and Health defied and lost;
What blatant parodies of Fame
(That hardly won and noble name),
Dragged in the sickly spectral lee
Of sallow Notoriety;
Ambition's highest aim to quaff
The rinsings of a paragraph,
And Life's whole purpose sunk and spent
To furnish an advertisement!
Oh, for some Juvenalian verse
Thy sound and fury to rehearse,
While Indignation pours the strain
Which Nature may desire in vain.[9]
Where'er the stifled spirit fly,
What sights and sounds obscure the sky!
The Statesman's cut-and-dried abuse,
And frothy violence turned to use,
Dead Christian hatreds spurred to life,
To serve the ends of party strife;
The Lawyer's pæans in his fees;
The Actor's noisy juggleries,
As every little journal tells
Where last he shook the cap and bells;
The Critic in his newest dress,
_Sans_ scholarship or kindliness,
With no credentials under Heaven
For worthy work or asked or given,
And nagging, after Insult's wont,
At those who "do," for those who don't;
Patriots by bravos hired and sung,
For bright sword carrying fish-fag's tongue.
The Poetaster's mixture, made
Of pitch and darkness for a trade;
The Man of Science, self-crowned King
Of Learning and of everything,
Serenely squatting on his throne,
Fogged with conundrums of his own,
And probing with his two-foot rod
His muddy substitutes for God,--
While tambourines and banjos raise
The Hymn of Noise for that of Praise;
Our very island's sea-girt rock
Risked to be land-bound into "stock";
Ay, even Woman's tarnished crown
Hawked through the windows of the town,
And all our sires held first and best
In pufferies of all sizes dressed,
Till England watch, through England's Press,
The fall of English manliness!

Vexed soul, seek out some other shore;
Houses are castles here no more;
Vain in the penny-age to fly
From all the penny-trumpetry:
Or hide thee from the watchful zeal
Of those who serve the weekly meal
For jaded gluttons, keen to gloat
On savoury sauce of Anecdote.
Yet let nor cook nor eaters rue,
The eaten seem to like it too,
For in Society's new game
Cooks, food, and eaters are the same,
And Fashion, spider-like, supplies
Her self-spun web to catch her flies!

Thou boastful "Spirit of the Time,"
Wake prose itself to angry rhyme!
Soon shall the dark forbid the light
To any hand with power to write,
And the new myriad scribbling-race,
Like locusts shroud all Sense's face,
Rushing (where angels are not seen)
Into the _Prigs' Own Magazine_,
While Upper-Tens profusely scrawl
In grammar from the servants' hall,
Till Ink itself shall blush to tint
Nothing but amateurs in print,
And the true child of letters learn
He has no space to breathe or turn,
And scorn accept the Century's plan,
That all may write, save those who can.
I turn me, wearied, at my desk,
From the last "thinker's" last burlesque
The last Agnostic's windy plea
That none knows anything, but he,
In English carefully destroyed
To hide his meaning's outer void;
And, bowing to the wisdoms old,
Read simpler lessons writ in gold:
And would but in a single word
The "Spirit of the Age" be heard,
Let him take up his glass and see
His image this--Vulgarity.

MARIUS.

[Footnote 9: "_Si Natura negat, facit indignatio versum._"]

[Sidenote: _The Spirit of the Time_]

What a list it is! The quest of notoriety, blatant advertisement, party rancour and sectarian strife, forensic greed, mummer-worship, incompetent and ungenerous criticism, fleshly poetry, the arrogance of science, "Corybantic Christianity," tarnished womanhood, the decay of manly fibre, prying journalism, amateurism in letters, windy Agnosticism, with vulgarity enthroned as high priestess of the age! Modern Juvenals, when they are Jeremiahs into the bargain, are not exhilarating companions. Here _Punch_ saw life in England neither steadily nor whole, and made the mistake, not surprising in a Londoner, of confounding the extravagances, the eccentricities and the vices of London coteries and cliques, and, above all, of her idle rich, with the tone and temper of the nation at large. "Smart" London Society did not represent England or even London. But _Punch_ spoke with many voices, and in the "Voces Populi," with which, towards the end of this period, Mr. Anstey had begun to refresh and rejoice the hearts of his readers, you will find an agreeable corrective of the unqualified pessimism of "Marius." The "people" whose "voices" are recorded were often ridiculous, vulgar and semi-educated, but they were not corrupt or degenerate. Twenty years later the extravagances castigated by "Marius" were even more pronounced, but were confined to the same limited though highly advertised circles. Yet many of those who seemed most wedded to self-indulgence were capable of a noble regeneration in the hour of their country's need. And outside these circles there was, in 1884, as at a later date, a great if unobtrusive throng of men and women who stood in the authentic line of the heroes and heroines of the past, only waiting for an opportunity to prove themselves the inheritors of their spirit.

RECREATION, SPORT, AND PASTIME

The second half of the nineteenth century was not only notable for the organization of Labour. It was also the age of the organization of Recreation, the age of Exhibitions. The Exhibition of 1851 was a serious affair in which entertainment was subordinated to the demands of Commerce, Industry and Science. The series of Exhibitions which marked the decade of the 'eighties, though their names and their avowed aims were serious, practical or scientific, were run with an ever increasing tendency to emphasize the spectacular element, to cater for the amusement and entertainment (in all senses) of the public.

_Punch_ summarized this tendency happily enough in the phrase that he applied to the possibilities of the Imperial Institute--"Commerce _v._ Cremorne." He had already deplored the decline of institutions, such as the Crystal Palace, which beginning with high educational aims, had come to rest their popular appeal on dangerous acrobatics and freak performances. He was even more outspoken in his comments on the degeneracy of the Aquarium at Westminster in 1879 and 1880.

References to "Zazel," the acrobat who was nightly shot from a cannon, and to Zazel's successor, "Zæo," abound in protests not only against the enterprising manager, and the cynical indifference of the Home Secretary, but above all against the public who went simply because of the risk, the chance of seeing accidents. "Zazel's" performance, as a matter of fact, was not as dangerous as it appeared; it proved a theme of fruitful burlesque on the part of Nellie Farren at the Gaiety Theatre; and when it was rumoured that Zazel was going to marry an Archdeacon, _Punch_ did not refrain from a ribald allusion to her passing "out of the mouth of a Canon into the arms of an Archdeacon." At the same time he was equally critical of the ostentatiously labelled "Entertainments for the People" organized as a sort of compromise between High Art, the Penny Reading and the Variety Stage. The efforts of the Kyrle Society to "bring Beauty home to the working-classes" left him cold or facetiously intolerant of patronizing preciosity. So, too, the performances at the Victoria Coffee Music-Hall in 1881 are damned with less than faint praise in a criticism put into the mouth of one of the class they were intended to reach, on the grounds that they were not only teetotal, but third-rate music-hall, and dull at that. The whole thing was spoiled by an atmosphere of conscious edification and of condescending patronage.

_Punch's_ attitude to the series of annual exhibitions which began with the "Fisheries" in 1883, underwent many phases. It began in hope and mild praise, but ended in disillusion, as the side-shows, _al fresco_ entertainments, bands and illuminations, and the everlasting "Welcome Club," became the stereotyped and dominating attractions of each successive show. _Punch_ wanted the site of the Fisheries made into a permanent Public Garden with a shilling gate money. But while he applauded the good intention of the promoters, he represented the West End fishmonger as "none the worse for it": the price of fish had not come down as it was thought it would.

[Sidenote: _Exhibition Absurdities_]

The "Healtheries" and "Inventories" followed in 1884 and 1885, and _Punch's_ verdict was that "The Fisheries and the Healtheries were very much the same, especially the Inventories." The Colonial and Indian Exhibition (the "Colinderies" as _Punch_ christened it) in 1886 prompts the usual mock-serious account of the opening ceremony. Some distrust was excited by the suggestion of the Prince of Wales that the Exhibition should be given a permanent existence as an Imperial Institute, to be founded as a Jubilee Memorial, and _Punch_ gave his blessing to a proposal which was carried into effect. The subsequent history of the Imperial Institute affords an interesting commentary on the fear, expressed by _Punch_ in 1888, that it would degenerate into another popular Exhibition, with bands, side-shows, etc. He regarded it at the moment as "a big-sounding name, signifying nothing; to conjure with but nothing more"; and some of the names of the organizing committee filled him with astonishment at the ineptitude of their choice.