Chapter IX: Part I: Loyal Toasts (1)

_Duke of Edinburgh._--Sailor. Plays the fiddle like an angel. Married
to rich Russian Princess. Friend of Sir Arthur Sullivan.

_Duke of Connaught._--First-class Soldier, covered with Egyptian
Medals.... His Royal Highness may be called "the heroic and beloved
son of our revered Sovereign"--by a provincial Mayor. Name may be
introduced in connexion with Ireland, the Franco-German War, Foreign
Stocks--"Prefs." and "Unified"--the late Duke of Wellington, and "the
Patrol Camp Equipage Hold-all."

_Duke of Albany._--Scientific. Called after the King of the Belgians.
Was at Oxford. Connected more or less with South Kensington, Upton
Park Road, Bedford Park, the Kyrle Society, and Cremona violins. Is
walking in the steps of the late greatly lamented Prince Consort.

_Prince Teck._--Served with distinction as a letter-carrier on the
field of Tel-el-Kebir, sold furniture of Kensington Palace by auction,
and retired abroad. Name of no great value to anyone.

Here _Punch_, consciously or unconsciously, was satirizing himself in his ceremonial moods. He was on much safer ground in the excellent pictorial burlesque of the life of the Duke of Clarence at Cambridge, based on a series of illustrations in a serious picture-paper in which, amongst other incidents, the Prince had been depicted as "coxing" a racing boat from the bow! This was fair game. There is a spice of malice in the prospectus of an hotel which would supply "a long felt want" by catering at cheap prices for Royal visitors, foreign Princes and potentates, who could not be suitably accommodated in Buckingham Palace. The publication in February, 1884, of a further instalment of "Leaves from her Journal in the Highlands" is claimed as the Queen's Valentine to _Mr. Punch_. When the Duke of Albany died in March, _Punch_ did not err on the side of underestimating the promise and achievement of that estimable Prince, but there is an uncanny resemblance between his graceful elegiac stanzas and the points outlined in the handbook of loyal toasts noted above. For a few months the irresponsible satirist is silent; but he explodes again towards the close of the year over the rumour that the Crown of Brunswick had been offered to the Duke of Cambridge, and that he absolutely refused to resign the command of the British Army. As the rumour was groundless, there was no excuse for _Punch's_ malicious imaginary dialogue between the Duke and the foreign officer who had come to make him the offer. In representing the Duke as being discovered writing an article for the _Sunday Times_ on "Dress," _Punch_ was only reverting to the old familiar gibe at the passionate preoccupation of the Royal Family with tailoring.

[Sidenote: _A Pacific Prince_]

"And what's all this I hear, Barbara, about your wanting to find some Occupation?"

"Well, you see, it's so dull at Home, Uncle. I've no Brothers or Sisters--and Papa's paralysed--and Mamma's going blind--so I want to be a Hospital Nurse."]

The alternations of candour and cordiality continue in the following year. The Duke of Clarence is heartily congratulated on attaining his majority; and the visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales to Ireland is chronicled in cartoons in which the Prince figures as a stage Irishman, and Erin is seen reproving a sullen little rebel. The Prince of Wales's visit to Berlin in the same year (1885) is hailed as an omen of more pacific relations--the Prince figuring as a Dove, the old Emperor as a friendly Eagle. This was the year in which Princess Beatrice, the youngest of the Queen's daughters, was married to Prince Henry of Battenberg. _Punch_ makes a remarkably frank allusion to the discussions in the House over her marriage portion in May. The passage is interesting not merely for the matter but for the new manner of the "Essence of Parliament," widely different from that of Shirley Brooks:--

_Thursday._ Gladstone moved Resolution allotting Wedding Dowry of six
thousand a year to Princess Beatrice. On the whole rather a depressing
business. More like a funeral than the preliminary to a wedding party.
House listened in politely glum silence. Gladstone seemed to feel
this, and laboured along making most of argument that this was the
last. Also (being the last) promised Committee for next year to go
into whole matter. Labby opposed vote, and O'Brien testified afresh
to his disappointment at failure of efforts made to spoil success of
Prince of Wales' visit to Ireland. W. Redmond gave the proposal a
great fillip by opposing it, and House divided: 337 for making the
little present; 38, chiefly Parnellites, against.

By way of set-off, _Punch_ descanted melodiously on the "Royal Ring-Doves," alluding to Princess Beatrice as

England's home-staying daughter, bride, yet bound
As with silk ties, within the dear home-round
By many a gentle reason.

Here one cannot forget that terrible _Court Journal_ of four years back, or acquit _Punch_ of irony in the light of the fact (recorded in the _Annual Register_) that the Queen only gave her consent to the marriage on condition of Princess Beatrice's living in England. The discomforts and stinginess of the Court are satirized in an acid extract from the "Letter of a Lady-in-Waiting" in January, 1886, and there is a good deal of veiled sarcasm in the long account of the opening of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in the summer. The whole ceremony is made to appear tedious, badly rehearsed and trivial, and the Queen is described as speaking with a "slightly foreign accent." Cordiality revives, however, in the verses "Astræa Redux," on the Queen's "happy restoration to public life," _à propos_ of her visit to Liverpool; and in the reference to her patronage of the Carl Rosa Opera Company at the Lyceum.

[Sidenote: _Punch's Jubilee Ode_]

With the year of the Queen's Golden Jubilee _Punch's_ chivalrous devotion to the person of the sovereign, which had never failed even in his most democratic days, reawakened in full force. In his Jubilee ode he emphasizes throughout the peaceful aim of the celebration:--

Not with the ruthless Roman's proud parade
Of flaunting ensigns and of fettered foes,
Nor radiantly arrayed
In pomp of purple, such as fitly flows
From the stern Conqueror's shoulders, comes our Queen
Whilst England's ways with June's glad garniture are green.

Not with the scent of battle, or the taint
Of cruel carnage round about her car,
Making the sick air faint
With the dread breath of devastating war,
Rolls on our Royal Lady, whilst the shout
Of a free people's love compasses her about.

The pageantry that every step attends
Is not the martial pomp that tyrants love,
No purchased shout of slaves the shamed air rends;
Peace's white-pinion'd dove
Might perch upon those banners unafraid,
The shackled forces here are thralls of Art and Trade.

* * * * *

Triumph! Shall we not triumph who have seen
Those fifty years round on from sun to snow,
From snow to sun, since when, a girlish Queen
In that far June-tide's glow,
Your brow first felt that golden weight well-worn,
Which tried the Woman's heart, but hath not over-borne?

Fifty fair years which, like to all things fair,
Are flecked with shadow, yet whereon the sun
Hath never set in shame or in despair,
Their changeful course have run.
And we who saw the dawn now flock to see
June's noonday light illume Victoria's Jubilee.

Just, pure, and gentle, yet of steadfast will
When high occasion calls and honour pricks!
With such a soul our Commonwealth should thrill,
That, that alone shall fix
Our rule in rock-like safety, and maintain
Free way for England's flag o'er the wind-winnowed main.

And _Punch_, whose memory scans those fifty years,
Whose patriot forecast broods o'er coming-days,
Smiles with the smiling throngs, and lifts his cheers,
With those the people raise,
And prays that firmer faith, spirit more free,
May date from this proud day of jocund Jubilee.

The June and July numbers are dominated by the Jubilee, and _Punch_, though he spoke with many voices in dealing with the various phases of the festival, kept his criticism within limits of wholly genial satire and whimsicality. There was a scene of decorous "revelry by night" at the Reform Club, which gave a ball on June 16, recorded in a set of verses with solos for Sir William Harcourt, John Bright and Lord Rosebery, packed with political innuendoes, and winding up with a soliloquy from the grand old M.C. (without) who sings:--

Call this a Ball? More muddled every minute;
Not one good dancer there. Glad I'm not in it!

The Lord Chamberlain, in Sambourne's picture, figures as the "boots" of an hotel, run off his legs by the demands of Princes, Potentates, Ambassadors:--

'Midst pleasures and 'midst palaces to roam,
Is nice for foreign dignities, no doubt;
But then they've lots of palaces at home,
Which we are quite without.

"Robert, the City Waiter," descants on the festivities; the Editor was prodigal of puns; there were Jubilee mock advertisements; and a certain amount of criticism of the arrangements, though, as I note elsewhere, _Punch_ pays a special tribute to the police for their efficiency, courtesy, patience and humanity. A protest is entered against the route of procession being exclusively West End, and _Punch_ suggests an extension to take in some of the poorer parts of London. The procession itself is described in a long article entitled "The Longest Day," noting various incidents, such as the unhorsing of the Marquis of Lorne, and summing up in the words: "For impressive splendour and simple dignity, the Royal Procession couldn't be beaten. But as a Pageant there was much to be desired." The closed carriages were a mistake; the military bands were not fully used, and musically the procession was "the dullest of its sort ever witnessed in any big city on any big occasion." Still the police were A1, and Messrs. Brock gave the public a "Brocken night" at the Crystal Palace, where the rhododendrons were in their glory. The scene in the Abbey was "Abbey and glorious." But _Punch_, after an explosion of punning, becomes serious as he describes the scene when the Queen took her seat on the Throne, and the moving sequel when she discarded precedent and showed her womanliness by embracing her children. Nor does _Punch_ omit to mention the masque, performed by the Benchers of Gray's Inn, originally produced by Sir Francis Bacon in 1613; the Naval Review with the curious incident of Lord Charles Beresford's resignation in consequence of a breach of etiquette on his part in using public signals to send a private message to his wife; and the Queen's visit to Hatfield when the "lordly Cecil" entertained his sovereign as his ancestor had done in 1573.

_Punch_, as I have often been at pains to insist, was a Londoner, but he did not hesitate to pronounce the Manchester Exhibition as the "gem of the Jubilee," a "perfect article" and "a superb model." It was better than any of the shows at South Kensington, and _Punch_ rightly singles out as its special glory the magnificent Picture Gallery of Modern English Painters. On the other hand, provincial ideas of suitable Jubilee memorials come in for a good deal of ridicule. The list, which includes a central pig-market, a new town pump, a cemetery, a new sewage scheme, gasworks, etc., is clearly farcical, but an actual instance is quoted from the _Western Daily Mail_ of the decision of a village in Cardiganshire to celebrate Her Majesty's Jubilee by providing a public hearse. "The chairman, who originated the proposal, was congratulated upon his happy idea, and an Executive Committee was formed to carry it out," which prompted _Punch_ to suggest that they ought to get Mr. Hayden Coffin to sing their Jubilee ode. _Punch's_ own serious suggestion for a Jubilee memorial was the revival and extension of Queen Anne's Bounty to improve the lot of the poor clergy, in place of the Church House Scheme.

[Sidenote: _How to Conciliate Ireland_]

The visit of Prince Albert Victor (the Duke of Clarence) and Prince George (the present King) to Ireland in the summer of 1887 is taken as the text of one of _Punch's_ periodical appeals to the Queen to conciliate Ireland by going there herself, Hibernia being credited with a desire for her presence:--

Ah, then, if your Majesty's self we could see
Sure we'd drop every grumble and quarrel;
Stay a month in the year with my children and me,
'Twould be a nice change from Balmoral.

The Prince of Wales's silver wedding fell in 1888, and furnished _Punch_ with a theme for loyal verse. It was also the momentous year in which three Emperors reigned in Germany, but of the significance of the change from Wilhelm I to Wilhelm II I have spoken elsewhere. _Punch's_ Jubilee fervour had now died down, and Prince Henry of Battenberg's appointment as Governor of the Isle of Wight is recorded in a semi-burlesque picture of the Prince "with new scenery and costumes," and the comment: "Old England is safe at last."

On May 21 Prince Leopold of Battenberg (now Lord Mountbatten) had been born at Windsor: on the following day a meeting was held under the chairmanship of Lord Waterford to discuss the advisability of abolishing the office of Viceroy of Ireland. Accordingly, _Punch_, more in malice than seriousness, suggests as a solution of the Irish difficulty that a Battenberg Prince should be born in Ireland, and brought up as the future Viceroy, in imitation of the trick of Edward Longshanks as related by Drayton in his "Polyolbion":--

Through every part of Wales he to the Nobles sent
That they unto his Court should come incontinent
Of things that much concern'd the county to debate;
But now behold the power of unavoided fate!
When thus unto his will he fitly had them won,
At her expected hour the Queen brought forth a son--
Young Edward, born in Wales, and of Carnarvon called,
Thus by the English craft the Britons were enthralled.

_Punch_ treats the parallel from Paddy's point of view, and winds up:--

Sly Longshanks long ago with Cambria played a game--
What if, say, Battenberg should contemplate the same?
Pat, give him a fair chance, will prove himself--right loyal;
But--ye can't heal ould wounds with mere soft soap--though Royal.

The last line is, we fear, a much truer reading of the problem than the sentiments ascribed to Hibernia on a previous page.

The betrothal of the Princess Louise to the Earl, afterwards Duke, of Fife, in the summer of 1889, impelled _Punch_ to rewrite Burns's "The Wooing o't" for the occasion. The messages to the House from the Crown, asking that provision should be made for Prince Albert Victor and Princess Louise, led to a prolonged debate, and the question of Royal Grants was referred to a Committee of all sections of the House, on the basis that "Parliament ought not to recognize in an indefinite way the duty of providing for the Royal Family in the third generation." The Queen did not formally waive her claim, but made it clear that she would not press it in the case of any other of her grandchildren. Mr. Labouchere, Mr. Bradlaugh and Mr. Storey opposed the Majority Report of the Committee in spite of a strong speech made by Gladstone in favour of the grants, which were ultimately carried by large majorities. _Punch_ approved of the Committee, on the ground that it was high time we knew exactly how far the system was to be carried, and ascribed similar sentiments to the average working man in his new version of a popular song of the day. The Majority Report was embodied in the Prince of Wales's Children Bill, which became law on August 9, in spite of the opposition of those, including Mr. Morley and Sir William Harcourt, who maintained that the grant was proposed in such a way as to leave room for further claims and to bind future Parliaments.

[Sidenote: _Two Views of the Kaiser_]

The young Kaiser and his wife visited England in 1891, and _Punch's_ greeting came near to being fulsome. In July _Punch_, the Kaiser and the Prince of Wales are associated in the cartoon, "A Triple Alliance," the accompanying legend containing the following high tribute to the Imperial guest:--

The Prince of Wales doth join with all the world
In praise of--Kaiser Wilhelm; by my hopes
I do not think a braver gentleman
More active-valiant, or more valiant young,
More daring, or more bold, is now alive
To grace this latter age with noble deeds.

Yet at the close of the year the feverish versatility of the young ruler is treated with the utmost disrespect:--

The German Emperor has lately rearranged his scheme of work for
weekdays. From six A.M. to eight A.M. he gives
lectures on Strategy and Tactics to generals over forty years old.
From eight to ten he instructs the chief actors, musicians and
painters of Berlin in the principles of their respective arts. The
hours from ten to twelve he devotes to the compilation of his Memoirs
in fifty-four volumes. A limited edition of large-paper copies is to
be issued. From twelve to four P.M. he reviews regiments,
cashiers colonels, captures fortresses, carries his own dispatches to
himself, and makes speeches of varying length to all who will listen
to him. Any professional reporter found taking accurate notes of His
Majesty's words is immediately blown from a Krupp gun with the new
smokeless powder. From four to eight he tries on uniforms, dismisses
Ministers and officials, dictates state-papers to General Caprivi,
and composes his history of "How I pricked the Bismarck Bubble." From
eight to eleven P.M. His Majesty teaches schoolmasters how to
teach, wives how to attend to their families, bankers how to carry on
their business, and cooks how to prepare dinners. The rest of the day
he devotes to himself. On Thursday next His Majesty leaves Berlin on
his tenth visit to the European Courts.

Another royal visitor in 1891 was Prince Victor Emmanuel of Italy--the present King--to whom _Punch_, in the character of Niccolo Puncio Machiavelli, proffers worldly advice, advising him to be liberal of snuff-boxes.

The Prince of Wales, born in the same year as _Punch_, completed his fiftieth year in November. _Punch's_ Jubilee greeting is friendly without being effusive. Reviewing the Prince's career from childish days, _Punch_ recalls the picture of him in sailor kit as a child; the nation's "Suspense" at the time of the dangerous illness in December, 1871. _Punch_ had watched him all along, abroad and at home, "where'er you've travelled, toiled, skylarked"; and recognizes him at fifty as "every inch a Prince," and worthy of cordial greeting; adding a graceful compliment to Alexandra, "the unfading flower from Denmark, o'er the foam."

The betrothal of the Duke of Clarence to Princess Mary of Teck had been hailed with loyal enthusiasm, and his premature death in January, 1892, was recorded with genuine feeling and sympathy. In neither cartoon, however, was Tenniel at his best, and the memorial verses, though graceful and kindly, do not lend themselves to quotation, the reference to the "rending of Hymen's rosy band" betraying a pardonable inability to predict the sequel.

SOCIETY

SIR GORGIUS MIDAS: "Hullo! Where's all the rest of yer gone to?"

HEAD FOOTMAN: "If you please, Sir Gorgius, as it was past two o'clock, and we didn't know for certain whether you was coming back here, or going to sleep in the City, the hother footmen thought they might go to bed----"

SIR GORGIUS: "'Thought they might go to bed,' did they? A pretty state of things, indeed! So that if I'd 'a 'appened to brought 'ome a friend, there'd 'a only been you four to let us hin, hay!"]

Critics and satirists of fashionable English society in the early and middle periods of the Victorian age were mainly concerned with its arrogance and exclusiveness. As we reach the 'seventies, with the breaking down of the old caste barriers and the intrusion of the new plutocracy, the ground of attack is shifted; the "old nobility," dislodged from their Olympian fastnesses, are exhibited as not merely accepting but paying court to underbred millionaires, and eking out their reduced incomes by an irregular and undignified competition with journalists, shopkeepers, and even actors. Society had ceased to be exclusive; it was becoming "smart," and had taken to self-advertisement. Wealth without manners had invaded Mayfair.

[Sidenote: _Woes of the Country Squire_]

These days ushered in the age of Society journals, of Society beauties, of vulgarity in high places, of parasitic peers, of the invasion of society by American heiresses, of the beginning of the end of the chaperon, the dawn of the gospel of "self-expression," and the rebellion of sons and daughters. Money, or the lack of it, was at the root of all, or nearly all, these changes. Dukes had already begun to sell their libraries and art treasures, and the wail of the old landed aristocracy was not unfairly vocalized in "The Song of the Country Squire," to the air of "The Fine old English Gentleman," and published by _Punch_ in the autumn of 1882:--

The fine Old English Gentleman once held a fine estate,
Of a few thousand acres of farm and forest land, with polite
and punctually-paying tenants, excellent shooting, ancestral oaks,
immemorial elms, and all that sort of thing.
But it hasn't been so of late;
For the rents have gone down about twenty per cent., lots of acres
are laid down in grass,
And the person who imagines that the Squire of whom Washington
Irving and Mounseer Montalembert wrote all sorts of pretty things
has a jolly good time of it in these de--testable days,
Is a sentimental ass,
Says the fine Old Country Gentleman, one of the present time.

The fine Old Country Gentleman has an Elizabethan mansion,
But what the dickens is the good of that if his means continually
narrow in proportion to
His family's expansion?
If he gives up his deer, and sells his timber, dismisses his
servants, and thinks of advertising his house for a grammar
school,
Or a lunatic asylum
(As he often has to do), what is there in his lot to excite the
jealousy of those darned Radicals, though the common comfort of
that poor _caput lupinum_, the Land Owner, on however little
a scale
Seems invariably to rile 'em?
Asks the fine Old Country Gentleman, one of the modern time.
With an encumbered property, diminishing rent-roll, and expenses
beyond his income,
The question which confronts him at every corner is, whence will the
needful "tin" come?
And when they prate to us about our "improvidence," and advise us to
"cut down" and economize, why, where, in the name of patience,
I ask'll
Be the pull of being a Country Gentleman at all, if one has to live
like a retired pork-butcher or prosperous publican, and perhaps
you will answer
That question, Mr. Charles Milnes Gaskell![8]
Of the fine Old Country Gentleman, one of the modern time.

[Footnote 8: This gentleman had recently written an article on the subject in the _Nineteenth Century_.]

The "profiteer" was already in Society and on the moors; _Punch_ reviled him in "My 'art's in the 'Ighlands," and in a picture of an opulent Semite swearing that he hasn't "a drop of Hebrew blood in ma veinth, 'thelp me." Du Maurier created Sir Gorgius Midas as typical of the New Plutocracy--a gross, bediamonded figure, surrounded by flunkeys, with Dukes and Duchesses as his pensioners. The alleged poverty-stricken condition of the aristocracy is a frequent theme: one ducal family can only afford to go to the opera when Sir Gorgius lends them his box. But the Dukes still had their uses. The Beresford Midases put their boy's name down both for Eton and Harrow, and decided to send him to whichever has most "dooks" when the time comes. The New Rich show themselves apt pupils in all the snobbery of rank. For example, Sir Gorgius is shocked at the innovation of ladies and gentlemen riding in or on omnibuses. This is not documentary evidence, of course, but it was perfectly legitimate caricature. Du Maurier was not attacking the self-made man whose creed is summed up in the Lancashire saying: "Them as 'as brass don't care a damn what them as 'asn't thinks on 'em." He bestowed his ridicule impartially on the servile plutocrats who aped the customs of the titled classes, and the aristocrats who were unable to grow poor with dignity. Du Maurier's contribution to the social history of the middle and later Victorian age was invaluable on its critical and satirical side. But he was emphatically an aristocrat in the sense that he believed in good manners and fine physique: he set beauty above rank or riches, and was an early apostle of Eugenics. Long before the cult of athletics had begun to affect the stature and build of English girls, he devoted his pencil to glorifying the Junoesque type of English beauty. And while none of _Punch's_ artists ever paid more consistent homage to elegance and distinction of feature and figure, he could be on occasion a merciless satirist of the physical deterioration brought about by intermarriage amongst the old nobility. Thus in 1880 he showed a ridiculous little degenerate affectionately rebuking his effete parents for "interfering in his affairs," with the result that he is "under 5 feet 1 inch, can't say Boh to a goose, and justly passes for the gweatest guy in the whole county."

The same spirit is shown in the fantastic contrast between the aristocracies of the past and the future. The scene is "an island in British Oceana"; the time 1989, a hundred years later than the date of the picture:--

HIS HIGHNESS THE GRAND DUKE OF GEROLSTEIN: "Ach! Miss
Prown--in your lôfly bresence I forket my zixty-vour kvarterings.
I lay my Ditle at your Veet. Bitte! pecome ze Crant Tochess of
Gerolstein!"

MISS BROWN: "Your Highness also forgets that I have
sixty-four Quarterings!"

HIS HIGHNESS: "Ach! How is dat, Miss Prown?"

MISS BROWN: "Why, my father and mother, my four grandparents,
my eight great-grandparents, my sixteen great-great-grandparents, and
my thirty-two great-great-great-grandparents were all certified over
six foot six inches, perfect in form and feature, and with health and
minds and manners to match, or they would not have been allowed to
marry. And though I'm the shortest and plainest girl in the colony, I
should never be allowed to marry anyone so very much beneath myself as
your Highness!"

MRS. BERESFORD MIDAS: "I'm so glad we've put down Plantagenet's name for Eton, Beresford! Here, the newspaper says there are more Lords and Baronets there than ever!"

BERESFORD MIDAS, ESQ., J.P. (_Brother and Junior Partner of Sir Gorgius_): "Ah, but only one Dook! Pity there ain't a few more Dooks, Maria!"

MRS. BERESFORD MIDAS: "Perhaps there _will_ be when Plantagenet's of an age to go there."

MR. BERESFORD MIDAS: "Let's 'ope so! At all events, we'll put down his name for 'Arrow as well; and whichever 'as most Dooks when the time comes, we'll choose _that_, yer know!"]

Our prophetic instinct enables us to foresee that the British Aristocracy of the future will consist of two distinct parties--not the Tories and the Whigs--but _the handsome people_ and _the clever people_. The former will be the highly developed descendants of the athletes and the beauties, the splendid cricketers and lawn tennis players of our day. The latter will be the offspring, not of modern æsthetes--oh, dear, no! but of a tougher and more prolific race, one that hasteth not, nor resteth; and for whom there is a good time coming. The above design is intended to represent a fashionable gathering at Lord Zachariah Mosely's, let us say, in the year two thousand and whatever-you-like.

N.B.--The happy thought has just occurred to His Lordship that a fusion of the two parties into one by means of intermarriage, would conduce to their mutual welfare and to that of their common progeny.]

[Sidenote: _Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns_]

In illustrating the falling away of the titled classes from the maxim _noblesse oblige_ on its physical side, Du Maurier occupied an exceptional position on _Punch_; but he was not less active than other artists and writers in exposing the "moral and intellectual damage" which they inflicted on the community. In 1878 the vogue of "Fancy Fairs" evokes a vigorous protest against the vanity, bad taste, forwardness and free-and-easiness of society women who made themselves cheap in order to sell dear to 'Arries. From this date onwards the vagaries of Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns, in whom Du Maurier incarnated all the pushfulness of the thrusting woman of fashion, are a constant source of entertainment. One of her earliest exploits as a Lion-hunter was to invite Monsieur de Paris to one of her receptions. Her husband thought she meant the Comte de Paris, but she speedily undeceives him. It was the headsman she was pursuing, not the Prince. "All the world" came, but the faithless executioner went to visit the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's instead! Later on, as the social mentor, guide, philosopher and friend of Lady Midas, we find her warning her pupil against inviting the aristocracy to meet each other. A music-hall celebrity must be provided as a "draw," and Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns recommends Nellie Micklemash and her banjo. "She is not respectable, but she is amusing, and that is everything." So when the Tichborne Claimant was released in 1884, Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns contemplates inviting him to dinner: "Surely there are still _some_ decent people who would like to meet him." Elsewhere and in more serious vein _Punch_ denounces the undue publicity given to this impostor's movements in the Press--one leading paper having stultified itself by condemning the practice in a leading article and simultaneously publishing an advertisement of the Claimant's appearance at a music-hall. This dualism, however, was no monopoly of the 'eighties and has become common form in the Georgian Press.

Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns acts as a bridge between the old and the new _régime_ in her ceaseless and indiscriminate worship of celebrities and notorieties. She is the descendant of Mrs. Leo Hunter, but adds the shrewdness and cynicism of the go-between to the simple silliness of her ancestress. Todeson, another familiar figure in Du Maurier's gallery, attaches himself exclusively to the old nobility, but is always putting his foot in it by being _plus royaliste que le roi_, or more ducal than the duchess. For in the slightly distorting mirror of Du Maurier's genius we see, as an evidence of the spread of liberal ideas, a Duke dining with his tailor and being kept in very good order by him; and a musical Duchess learning to sing Parisian chansonnettes from a French expert in the _franchement canaille_ manner. The craze for the stage among "Society people" had now reached formidable dimensions. They were no longer content with amateur theatricals, but had begun to enter into competition with the professionals.

The invasion of journalism by the same class _Punch_ took much more seriously. Hazlitt, some fifty years earlier, had written in his essay "On the Conversation of Lords": "The Press is so entirely monopolized by beauty, birth or importance in the State, that an author by profession resigns the field to the crowd of well-dressed competitors, out of modesty or pride." But this was written when the mania for fashionable novels by Noble Authors was at its height, and Hazlitt uses the word Press of the printing press generally. In the early 'eighties the competition of titled amateurs was mainly confined to Society journals, a characteristic product of the new fusion of classes. As one of their ablest and most cynical editors said of his own paper, they were "written by and for nobs and snobs." They are now practically dead, owing to the absorption in the daily Press of the special features--above all the "personal note"--then peculiar to these weekly chronicles of high life. _Punch_ ascribed the invasion of the Street of Ink by the amateurs to the penurious condition of the aristocracy and their ignoble readiness to turn their social opportunities into "copy" and cash. Under the heading of "_Labor Omnia Vincit_, or How Some of 'em try to live now," _Punch_ published a satiric sketch of the new activities of Mayfair. The scene is laid in the boudoir of Lady Skribeler, a successful contributor to various Society journals. The scene opens with the arrival of her friend the Hon. Mrs. Hardup, who gives a pathetic account of her disastrous ventures in business and her failure to secure an engagement on the stage. Why, asks Lady Skribeler, had she not made her husband go into trade or keep a shop, or sell wine?--

[Sidenote: _Titled Professionals_]

MRS. HARDUP: "Oh, he has done that. He was Chairman of that
Thuringian Claret Company; and we got ever so many people about us
to take a quantity. But it fermented--or did something stupid; and
they do say it killed the poor Duke, who was very kind to Harry, you
know, and took a hundred dozen at once. And now, of course, there's no
sale--or whatever they call it; and Harry says if it can't be got rid
of to a firm of Blue Ink Makers, who are inquiring about it, it will
have to go out to the Colonies as Château Margaux--at a dreadful loss.
[Summing up.] I don't believe the men understand trade a bit, dear. So
I'm going to do something for myself."

The sequel describes her initiation into the tricks of the trade by Lady Skribeler:--

Profiting by the morning's conversation, Mrs. Hardup besieges
unprotected Editors, contributes to the literature of her country
most interesting weekly accounts of the doings of her friends and
acquaintances, and, it is to be hoped, practically solves, to her own
satisfaction, the secret of the way in which a good many of us manage
to live now.

LADY GWENDOLINE: "Papa says _I'm_ to be a great artist, and exhibit at the Royal Academy!"

LADY YSEULTE: "And papa says _I'm_ to be a great pianist, and play at the Monday Pops!"

LADY EDELGITHA: "And I'm going to be a famous actress, and act Ophelia, and cut out Miss Ellen Terry! Papa says I may--that is, if I _can_, you know!"

THE NEW GOVERNESS: "Goodness gracious, young ladies! Is it possible His Grace can allow you even to _think_ of such things! Why, _my_ Papa was only a poor half-pay officer, but the bare thought of my ever playing in _public_ or painting for _hire_, would have simply _horrified_ him--and as for acting Ophelia or anything else--gracious goodness, you take my breath away!"]

For success in this walk of journalism, "literary culture must be eschewed, for with literary culture come taste and discrimination--qualities which might fatally obstruct the path of the journalistic aspirant." It was not by any means monopolized by amateurs, and _Punch_, in his series of "Modern Types" a few years later, traces, under the heading "The Jack of all Journalisms," the rise to power and influence of a humble but unscrupulous scribe, successively venal musical and dramatic critic, interviewer and picturesque social reporter, but always "the blatant, cringing, insolent, able, disreputable wielder of a pen which draws much of its sting and its profit from the vanities and fears of his fellow-creatures." The sketch is an ingenious composite photograph, in which those familiar with London journalism in the 'eighties and 'nineties will recognize in almost every paragraph the lineaments of one or other of the most notorious and poisonous representatives of the Society Press.

As we have seen, journalism was only one field for the commercial instincts of penurious "Society people." In 1887 _Punch_ takes for his text the following paragraph from a daily paper:--

"One well-known West End Milliner is a graduate of Girton; another
bears a title; a third conceals a name not unknown to Burke under a
pseudonym.... Many of the best women of all classes are ready to do
anything by which the honest penny may be earned."

_Punch_ was somewhat sceptical as to the honesty of their intentions; the only way, he tells us, to get an invitation to the dances given by one titled shopkeeper was to buy one of her bonnets. This may have been a malicious invention, but he was fairly entitled to make game of the advertisement which appeared in the _Manchester Evening Times_ in the spring of 1887:--

"To Christian Widowers.--A Nobleman's Widow, of good birth, about 40,
no family, left with small income, pleasing, sweet-tempered, cultured,
domesticated, fond of children, desires Settled Home and a high-minded
Protestant Husband of 50, or older, seeking domestic happiness with a
devoted, loving Christian wife.--Address----"

[Sidenote: _The American Invasion_]

The lady shopkeeper had become such an institution that _Punch_ included her in one of his series of "Modern Types" in 1891. The portrait is not exactly flattering, though he admitted that she sometimes possessed other than purely social qualifications for success:--

At first everything will go swimmingly. Friends will rally round
her, and she may perhaps discover with a touching surprise that the
staunchest and truest are those of whom, in her days of brilliant
prosperity, she thought the least. But a _succès d'estime_ is soon
exhausted. Unless she conducts her business on purely business lines,
delivers her goods when they are wanted, and, for her own protection,
sends in her accounts as they fall due, and looks carefully after
their payment, her customers and her profits will fall away. But if
she attends strictly to business herself, or engages a good business
woman to assist her, and orders her affairs in accordance with the
dictates of a proper self-interest, she is almost certain to do well,
and to reap the reward of those who face the world without flinching,
and fight the battle of life sturdily and with an honest purpose.

THE NEW GOVERNESS (_through her pretty nose_): "Waall--I come right slick away from Ne' York City, an' I ain't had much time for foolin' around in Europe--you bet! So I can't fix up your gals in the Eu-ropean Languages no-how!"

BELGRAVIAN MAMMA (_who knows there's a Duke or two still left in the Matrimonial Market_): "Oh, that's of no consequence. I want my daughters to acquire the American accent in all its purity--and the idioms, and all that. Now I'm sure _you_ will do _admirably_!"]

Millinery was the favourite field of enterprise, but the duchess who rebuked the indiscreet Todeson for his condemnation of trade as unworthy of the nobility, mentioned that her husband had gone in for bric-à-brac and her mother for confectionery. "Society people," in short, were dabbling extensively in trade, but it was mainly confined to the luxury trades. _Punch_ does not mention, however, what was generally believed to be true, that a well-known peer was a partner in a firm of money-lenders, trading under a name most literally suggestive of blood-sucking. Commercialism in high places is illustrated indirectly but pointedly by the invasion of American heiresses. Dowagers with large families of daughters--for large families were still frequent and fashionable--found themselves seriously affected by the "unfair competition" of these wealthy and vivacious beauties. In 1888 _Punch_ satirized their misfortunes in a picture representing English society mothers engaging American governesses so that their daughters might be instructed how to hold their own against American girls in attracting eligible dukes. So again in the _Almanack_ of 1889, under the title "Social Diagnosis," a French baron identifies a certain lady as an English duchess on the evidence of her indisputably American origin, and in the same year, in a sardonic article, _Punch_ exposes the American tendency to gloat over evidences of class distinctions in English society, while pretending to denounce them. This was inspired by the activities of certain American correspondents and "G. W. S." (the late Mr. Smalley) in particular, who is described as "too intimate with the 'hupper suckles' to think much of them." It was he, by the way, whose favourite form of social entertainment was described as not a "small and early" but an "Earl and Smalley." The hardest thing that _Punch_ said of the American heiresses was put into the mouth of one of their number. In 1890 he published a picture of three fair New Yorkers conversing with a young Englishman. When he asks whether their father had come with them to Europe, one of them replies: "Pa's much too vulgar to be with us. It's as much as we can do to stand Ma." But the verses on "The American Girl" in the same year wind up on a note of reluctant admiration:--

[Sidenote: _Mayfair's New Idols_]

THE AMERICAN GIRL.

(An American Correspondent of _The Galignani Messenger_ is very severe
on the manners of his fair countrywomen.)

She "guesses" and she "calculates," she wears all sorts o' collars,
Her yellow hair is not without suspicion of a dye;
Her "Poppa" is a dull old man who turned pork into dollars,
But everyone admits that she's indubitably spry.

She did Rome in a swift two days, gave half the time to Venice,
But vows that she saw everything, although in awful haste;
She's fond of dancing, but she seems to fight shy of lawn tennis
Because it might endanger the proportions of her waist.

Her manner might be well defined as elegantly skittish;
She loves a Lord as only a Republican can do;
And quite the best of titles she's persuaded are the British,
And well she knows the Peerage, for she reads it through and
through.

She's bediamonded superbly, and shines like a constellation,
You scarce can see her fingers for the multitude of rings;
She's just a shade too conscious, so it seems, of admiration,
With irritating tendencies to wriggle when she sings.

She owns she is "Amur'can," and her accent is alarming;
Her birthplace has an awful name you pray you may forget;
Yet, after all, we own _La Belle Américaine_ is charming,
So let us hope she'll win at last her long-sought coronet.

An heroic attempt was made in 1882 by that devoted apostle of the (socially) Sublime and Beautiful, Mr. Gillett, to revive Almack's. But, as _Punch_ had frankly and even cheerfully recognized in connexion with a previous attempt, the time had gone by for the oligarchical control of the entertainments of the fashionable world.

Society had ceased to be small, select and exclusive; it was becoming increasingly mixed, cosmopolitan and plutocratic. The horizon was enlarged and the range of interests multiplied, but the desire to be in the movement was not always indulged in with dignity or discretion. Mayfair worshipped at new shrines and erected new idols. It was an age of strange crazes and pets and favourites. The great ladies of the 'thirties and 'forties may have been arrogant, but they seldom exploited their personalities, or cultivated a limelight notoriety. There is shrewd criticism in the legend of one of the earliest of the "Things one would have rather left unsaid," illustrated by Du Maurier in 1888:--

AUNT JANE: "Ugh! When I was your age, Matilda, Ladies of
Rank and Position didn't have their photographs exposed in the shop
windows."

MATILDA (_always anxious to agree_): "Of course not, Aunt
Jane. I suppose photography wasn't invented then?"

[Sidenote: _Old Bailey Ladies_]

Photography has much to answer for; and certainly played its part in luring the titled classes from their ivory towers, and creating the professional beauty. The "Giddy Society Lady," as portrayed by _Punch_ in 1890, is a new version of the "Model Fast Lady" he described some forty years earlier, and though less mannish in her deportment, is much more flashy, vulgar and selfish than her predecessor. Tailor-made by day, excessively _décolletée_ at night, and preferring Bessie Bellwood to Beethoven, this semi-detached and expensive wife as delineated by _Punch_ is not an attractive figure. Yet with very few changes the portrait might stand for the modern society Maenad. Cigarette-smoking, it should be noted, was still considered "fast." Another recurrent type of unlovely womanhood much in evidence in these years is the "old Bailey lady" as _Punch_ christened her many years before. In 1886 the writer of "A Bad Woman's Diary" expressly states that she would not go to a theatre in Lent, though she spends all her spare time attending murder trials. _Punch_ did not spare the judges who lent themselves to this abuse, as may be gathered from the following dialogue:--

HER GRACE: "Thank you so much for keeping such nice places
for us, Judge! It was quite a treat! What romantic looking creatures
they are, those four pirates! I suppose they really did cut the
Captain and Mate and Cook into bits, and there's no doubt about the
Verdict?"

SIR DRACO: "Very little indeed, I fear!"

HER GRACE: "Poor Dears! I suppose if I and the girls get
there between five and six to-morrow, we shall be in time to see you
pass the sentence? Sorry to miss your summing-up, but we've got an
afternoon concert, you know!"

SIR DRACO: "I'll take care that it shall be all right for
you, Duchess!"

So, again, under the sarcastic heading, "True Feminine Delicacy of Feeling," this morbid curiosity is scarified in the conversation of two ladies in 1889:--

EMILY (_who has called to take Lizzie to the great Murder
Trial_): "What, deep black, dearest?"

LIZZIE: "Yes. I thought it would be only decent, as the poor
wretch is sure to be found guilty."

EMILY: "Ah! Where I was dining last night, it was even
betting which way the verdict would go, so I only put on half
mourning!"

GWENDOLINE: "Uncle George says every woman ought to have a profession, and I think he's quite right!"

MAMMA: "Indeed! And what profession do you mean to choose?"

GWENDOLINE: "I mean to be a professional beauty!"]

It was in the same year that _Punch_ published a double cut, showing the _tricoteuses_ under the guillotine at the French Revolution, and, as a pendant, society ladies in a modern English Court of Justice.

[Sidenote: _The Terrors of Reminiscence_]

The fashionable craze for "slumming," which set in early in the 'eighties, was less objectionable; it was at worst an excrescence on the genuine interest taken in the housing question by serious reformers. But as practised by Mayfair it was ridiculed by _Punch_ as a mere excuse for excitement; Du Maurier reduced it to an absurdity by his picture of society ladies going slumming in mackintoshes to avoid infection; and by another of Todeson, who had taken part in one of these excursions, being disillusioned by contact with real workers, and self-sacrificing East End clergymen. I have not been able to ascertain whether the same artist's picture of professional pugilists being _fêted_ by society in 1887 was a mere piece of burlesque or not; but it was, at any rate, a good example of intelligent anticipation. His satire of "Society's new pet--the artist's model," in a picture of a handsome Junonian girl surrounded by infatuated Duchesses, drinking in her artless and h-less confidences, is probably only a fantastic caricature of aristocratic commercialism, as one of the great ladies is represented as thinking of letting her daughter become a model as a means of social advancement. Mention has been made of the invasion of journalism by society people. But students of foretastes and parallels will find a really remarkable anticipation of the terrors of modern Diaritis--not to use a more vulgar word--in the burlesque review of _A Modern Memoir_--the Autobiography and Letters of Miss Skimley Harpole, published by Messrs. Rakings & Co.:--

Seldom have we perused a book with so much interest as has thrilled
us during our reading of these two handsome volumes. Situate as Miss
Harpole was, the daughter of a famous bishop, claiming for mother a
lady whose good deeds are remembered to this day, sister of one of
the most brilliant female leaders of society, and herself popular,
fêted and caressed, there is small room for wonder that even the bare
details of Miss Harpole's everyday life would prove interesting, but
when told in a charmingly frank style her book becomes a model of
what a Memoir should be. In a few short simple sentences she, with
delicious _naïveté_, relates her home life, and so clearly is the
picture put before us that we cannot resist quoting the fragment:

"Take us at home of a night! The Bishop in an easy chair, with his
gaitered legs crossed, and elevated on the back of another, with a
short clay pipe in his mouth, is vaguely mixing his eleventh tumbler
of hot gin-and-water, causing us girls great pain to conceal our
titters, when, as happens very often at this period of the evening,
he deposits the greater part of the hot water on the tablecloth or
himself. My mother, regardless of him, sits, carefully studying a
sporting paper, and the Racing Calendar, and making her selections for
the next day's horse-race. For a heavy gambler is my mother, as is my
brother, who, when at home--which is seldom--is either delighted at
having won, or in the sulks because he has lost money to his fellow
legal students at billiards. As a rule he is delighted, and always
carries a lump of chalk in his pocket. My sister is writing notes to
Men about Town, Peers and Guardsmen, her lovely features only losing
their serenity when lit up by an arch look of wonderment whether she
has made appointments with two different men at the same hour and
place, while I am sitting, in my school-girlish way, by myself, making
notes, so as to tell the world some day the true story of my life."

Space forbids us to say any more of the merits of this charming work,
but we cannot resist one extract which shows how true was the estimate
of the Bishop's noble character:--

"We were one night at the Italian opera, of which my father was
passionately fond, and during the ballet our attention was drawn to a
singularly lovely girl on the stage. 'Alas!' said the Colonel, 'she
is as bad as she is beautiful.' The Bishop immediately avowed his
readiness to investigate the case at the earliest opportunity. He
was always thinking of others, despite Mamma's occasionally stubborn
opposition."

This concludes our notice. In brief, the book is a most excellent
specimen of the modern style of Memoir, conceived with kindliness of
heart and charity of remembrance and executed with literary taste,
skill and polish.

This was fiction, based on what purported to be truth, and in turn was destined to be easily eclipsed by the actual reminiscences of a later generation. It may be noted in this context that the "blazing indiscretions" in the "Life of Bishop Wilberforce," published in 1883, and the letters of protest which they evoked, had already prompted the satire and sympathy of _Punch_.

"What? Going already? And in Mackintoshes? Surely you are not going to Walk?"

"Oh, dear no! Lord Archibald is going to take us to a dear little Slum he's found out near the Minories--such a fearful place! Fourteen poor Things in One Bed, and no Window--and the Mackintoshes are to keep out Infection, you know, and hide one's Diamonds, and all that!"]

[Sidenote: _Thought-Reading and Theosophy_]

The fashionable quest of the unseen world took no new forms in the 'seventies and 'eighties. We hear much less of Spiritualism under that name. This was no doubt in part due to the success of Maskelyne and Cook in outdoing the "manifestations" of mediums, a success so remarkable that they were actually claimed as spiritualists by some of the fraternity. In 1874 _Punch_ waxes facetious at the statement that additional help had been obtained in the working of certain mines by ghostly assistants. Later on there are references to the activities of palmists and Society Sibyls, but the study of the Unseen and the Occult in the 'eighties entered on a new and formidable phase with the advent of thought-readers, theosophists and psychical researchers. _Punch_ devotes a good deal of space to an exhibition of his powers by Irving Bishop, a well-known thought-reader of the time, at which politicians were impressed and sceptics--represented by Ray Lankester--were unconvinced. The pin-finding business was certainly much less impressive than the exploits of the Zancigs some thirty years later. The invasion of the drawing-room by pseudo-science met with little sympathy from _Punch_, who summed up his view in the phrase, "modish science is a sciolist"; and in 1891 he expressed his resentment against the new mysticism and the jargon of Theosophy in a comprehensive denunciation of "useless knowledge." The verses are worth quoting, not for their poetic quality but for the list of names quoted:--

OUR REAL DESIDERATUM

(_By a "Well-informed" Fool_)

Ah! I was fogged by the Materialistic,
By Huxley and by Zola, Koch and Moore;
And now there comes a Maëlstrom of the Mystic
To whirl me further yet from sense's shore.
Microbes were much too much for me, bacilli
Bewildered me, and phagocytes did daze,
But now the author 'cute of _Piccadilly_,
Harris the Prophet, the Blavatsky craze,
Thibet, Theosophy, and Bounding Brothers--
No, Mystic Ones--Mahatmas I should say,
But really they seem so much like the others
In slippery agility!--day by day
Mystify me yet more. Those germs were bad enough,
But what are they compared with Astral Bodies?
Of Useless Knowledge I have almost had enough,
I really envy uninquiring noddies.
I would not be a Chela if I could.
I have a horror of the Esoterical.
Besant and Olcott may be wise and good,
They seem to me pursuing the chimerical.
Maddened by mysteries of "Precipitation,"
The Occult Dream and the Bacillus-Dance;
We need Societies for the propagation
Of Useful--Ignorance!