Chapter V: Part I: The Passing of the Old Order (5)

The passing of the old order in Education had for its chief landmark the Act of 1871, but the change admits of endless illustrations. Many of these lie outside the scope of our survey; but no treatise on the Modern Child would be complete which did not take account of _Punch's_ contributions to this engrossing problem. To take one example, the precocious representatives of the "younger generation" in Leech's pictures are almost invariably shown as the "sedulous apes" of their elders as men of the world. In the period under review in this volume imitation gives place to independence. The precocious child of both sexes--Leech's precocious children were almost without exception boys--is sometimes pedantic, but the distinctive note is one of scepticism and revolt. The young iconoclast has "found out all about Santa Claus and is now going to look into this Robinson Crusoe business." When the Rector asks Molly would she rather be beautiful or good, Molly audaciously replies: "I'd rather be beautiful and repent." Another version of the same retort is illustrated in Mr. Shepperson's charming picture. And when Uncle George, shocked by his little niece's declaration that she hated all her lessons, asks appealingly, "Come, now, you don't mean to say you hate history?" he receives the blunt answer: "Yes, I do. To tell you the truth, Uncle, I don't care a bit what anybody ever did." In this magnificent declaration of independence _Punch_ sought to reduce to an absurdity the new doctrine of "self-expression" as adopted by the nursery. _Punch's_ love of children was beyond question, but he remained in substantial accord with the Greek sage who said that the roots of education were bitter but the fruit sweet; that to avoid or evade the discipline of parents and teachers was to forgo learning and virtue. The modern and already fashionable inversion of the old method, by which education was to be "brightened" and sweetened at the outset, and every study turned into a game, seemed to _Punch_ subversive of what was not merely an old but an inevitable order, and the new science of psychological "Pædology" found in him an invariably hostile critic. Passing over a burlesque article on the "Scientific Investigation of Infancy" based on a paper in the _Fortnightly_ in 1895, I may note the first of his rejoinders to those austere educationists who have made war on Wonderland. In that year Mr. Holman, an inspector of schools, in an address delivered before the College of Preceptors, declared that "the race has outgrown fairy-tales, and to use them for early education is practically to bring about a reversion to type. They express the ideas of a profoundly ignorant primitive man. The hero has more often than not to lie, steal and cheat and to be an ingrate to accomplish his ends." A mass meeting of fairy-tale heroes and heroines, convoked by _Punch_, carried by acclamation a resolution of protest against this heresy, which, by the way, has of late years been espoused by the redoubtable Madame Montessori. _Punch_ carried the war into the enemy's camp in a revised version of _Cinderella_, rewritten so as to combine instruction with amusement, and based on the latest scientific, ethnological, and psychological discoveries and theories; while in "New Lamps for Old" he retold other nursery tales so as to meet the supposed requirements of the modern child. I am afraid it must be taken as a confession of the failure of his efforts that in 1911 _Punch_ described an "advanced child" replying to his grandmother's offer to tell him a story, "Oh, no, Granny, not a _story_, please! They're so stodgy and unconvincing and as out-of-date as _tunes_ in music. We should much prefer an impressionist word-picture or a subtle character-sketch."

[Sidenote: _The War on Wonderland_]

MRS. H.: "No, certainly not."

TOMMY: "I'm so glad you're candid about it. There's such a pose among grown-ups nowadays to _pretend_ they do."]

The attempt to teach gardening at certain schools in the 'nineties was "guyed" in the account of a disastrous imaginary experiment--the encouragement of Small Holdings for Small Boys at a fashionable Preparatory School. Here _Punch_ is irresponsible and reactionary; but there is point in his criticism of the new-fangled cult of "nature study," on the ground that even playtime was now made a burden and toil for children by object lessons. In the same year (1900) the doctrine of self-expression was proclaimed in strident tones by Mr. Bernard Shaw in a lecture to the members of the Teachers' Guild of Great Britain. "Any grown-up person," said the prophet, "guilty of the crime of trying to form the character of children ought to be drowned. If there is to be any progress at all, it must be recognized that the children know better than their teachers." This was almost beyond the reach of comment or parody, but _Punch_ did his best. Cranks, whether official or unofficial, he treated with impartial disrespect, and shortly before falling upon Mr. Shaw he had gibbeted a school inspector who had been alleged in his report to have penned this immortal sentence:--

The lower babies' mental arithmetic leaves much to be desired.

In the verses on "Spoilt Parents" in 1901 _Punch_ expresses an obviously ironical approval of filial insubordination as encouraged in America, and a year later took for his text a passage quoted from an essay written by an Australian girl of thirteen, in which she had referred to "The Lady of Shalott" as "a fairy tale I remember in my childhood." In 1903 the activities of the "Pædologist" furnished Punch with abundant material. He celebrates, again with ironical applause, the expulsion of Euclid; he refers to an American lady who, in discussing suitable literature for children, had found a "moral squint" in _Jack and the Beanstalk_ and _Bluebeard_; and he founds an excellent set of verses on an article in the _Contemporary_ by Dr. Woods Hutchinson. The child, according to this eminent writer, passes through all the stages of evolution; "he is born not an Anglo-Saxon, but a Cave-dweller," and _Punch_ proceeds to expound the "recapitulation theory" as follows:--

When Edward, crawling on the floor,
Invades the eight-day clock,
Pray do not spank him any more
For dirtying his frock.
He is a little troglodyte,
As were our sires before us,
Who vanished when there hove in sight
The grim ichthyosaurus.

When, _ætat._ four, with savage joy
The hunter's art he plies
Upon the panes, don't scold the boy
For torturing the flies.
He has but reached the second scene
When men were all the scions
Of mighty Nimrod, and were keen
On slaying bears and lions.

At six, ambitious Edward yearns
A pirate king to be;
The tables into ships he turns,
And sails the fireside sea.
Then if the things are smashed to bits,
Don't give the boy a licking;
He's reached a further phase, and its
The æon of the Viking.

A little, and the pirate bold
A patriot becomes;
He fights the rascal imps who hold
In force the neighbouring slums.
Pray don't repress his noble rage,
E'en though his nose be gory;
He is but passing through the age
Of good Queen Bess's glory.

Last scene of all that ends this slight
But most eventful play
Is symbol of the lofty height
Achieved by man to-day.
At ten can Edward understand
What money means: he's willing
To be a saint for sixpence, and
An angel for a shilling.

[Sidenote: _Evolution and Self-Expression_]

As a rule, the most clamorous apostles of the new doctrines hailed from the New World. In 1904 Mr. G. Archibald, a "Child Specialist" of Montreal, gave utterance to the now familiar view that "Whenever you say 'Don't' to a child you crush the creative instinct within him which is the richest and most precious thing he has." _Punch_, it is hardly necessary to remind the reader, was not likely to subscribe to this view. Had not the _Daily Telegraph_ referred to his advice to those about to marry--_Don't_--as "the memorable monosyllabic monition of the Democritus of Fleet Street"? So we are not surprised to find him enlarging ironically on the precept of Montreal:--

Should the genius of Marmaduke lead him to rear,
From the dining-room floor to the ceiling,
A palace of crystal and china, oh! fear
To exhibit an atom of feeling.
But your Satsuma bowl you will cheerfully bring,
And, where others would threaten to skin him,
You will beg him to do as he likes with the thing,
Lest you crush the creative within him.

If Lucy refuses potatoes and bread,
And calls for méringues and for trifle,
Or anything else that may enter her head,
Such yearnings another would stifle.
You will hand her a menu-card, beg her to state
What she happens to fancy for dinner,
And pray that you never may find it your fate
To crush the creative within her.

Advancing years failed to reconcile _Punch_ to the non-repressive method. As late as 1912 one of his artists depicted the chaotic results in an elementary school of realizing the ideals of one of the pamphlets of a Teachers' Association, viz., to place a child "in an atmosphere where there are no restraints, where he can move freely about in the schoolroom, where the teacher is essentially a passive agent and where there is no punishment."

[Sidenote: _The Sompting Experiment_]

In this context I may note that about this time _Punch_ frequently dwells on the unsuitability and extravagant cost of the amusements provided for children. In "How to Befriend the Gilded Babes" he castigates without mercy a gentleman who had been writing on entertainments for titled juveniles, and outlines a children's party the cost of which is estimated at the modest figure of £250. _Punch's_ repeated protests against the perversion of pantomimes to suit grown-ups are too familiar to call for detailed mention, but in connexion with youthful precocity I may mention a curious anticipation dating from the autumn of 1905. This is a "domestic drama, composed by an infant of ten summers who, after reaching mature years, retrieved it from a box containing his toy theatre and copied it out," exactly as it stood. The drama, which is entitled "The Sheep in Wolf's Clothing," bears all the stigmata of a _bonâ fide_ child's essay in dramatic authorship, and foreshadows the exploits of "Daisy Ashford" without being either so funny or so vulgar as _The Young Visiters_. _Punch_ had always been alive to the educative value of the theatre, and it speaks well for his vigilance that the remarkable experiment carried out in the little village of Sompting in Sussex did not escape his notice. The children were taught by making them act their lessons, and _Punch_ in some whimsical verses anticipates the extension of the method to the public schools. It is true that he does not take the experiment quite seriously, but he does not "crab" it. It was reserved in later years for a brilliant and enthusiastic educational reformer, Mr. E. G. A. Holmes, to hail in the Sompting schoolmistress the "Egeria" of the new _régime_ of elementary instruction. In less benevolent mood _Punch_ quoted in 1907 an apparently genuine letter which had appeared in the _Children's Realm_, a paper which aimed at teaching "the higher way of living to the young." The letter describes a small boy who was "a very earnest vegetarian" and a super-prig into the bargain. _Punch_ was exasperated by prigs in all walks of life, and it rejoiced his heart when Mr. Roosevelt compared President Wilson to a "Byzantine logothete." The high-browed infant filled him with dismay, and in 1910 he illustrated the "advance in elementary culture" by a highly imaginative account of the reply given by a very small boy who had been asked by a lady visitor whether he enjoyed his recent birthday party:--

HENRY: "In the impression retained by the memory, shades have
ceased to count: it stands, sharply, for a few estimated and cherished
things rather than, nebulously, for a swarm of possibilities. I cut
the silhouette, in a word, out of the curious confusion of it all,
I save and fix the outline, and it is with my eye on this profiled
distinction that as a critic I speak. It is the function of the critic
to assert with assurance when once his impression has become final;
and it is in noting this circumstance that I perceive how slenderly
prompted I am to deliver myself on such an occasion upon the merits
or attractiveness of the entertainment so generously provided for the
diversion of myself and friends."

(Lady visitor before swooning has sufficient presence of mind to ring
the bell for assistance.)

SISTER: "I only thanked him for picking up my bag."

BROTHER: "My dear girl, you must learn not to be so beastly _grateful_. It's not done nowadays."]

[Sidenote: _Punch's "Universal Hymn"_]

This is an instance of the danger of trying to kill two birds with one stone, for the parody of Henry James's later manner distracts our attention from the main aim of the satire. _Punch_ was more sorry for than annoyed at the children of Chelsea, of ages from five to sixteen, who were said in 1908 never to ask for Dickens or the _Jungle Book_ at the Free Library, but to devour works on "science, sociology, fine arts and religion." In the same year the Sociological Society held an exhibition of charts and plans, to show parents how to select their children's toys "as a profound educational agency," but _Punch_ saw in it nothing but an exhibition of the profoundest Prigmatism--to use a word which he coined in later years. His bitterest comment on the new spirit of the young belongs to the year 1913, when a boy of seventeen rebukes his sister of twelve for thanking an old man for picking up her bag. The best antidote to this spirit was furnished by the Boy Scout movement, which grafted on to the public-school code of "playing the game" the larger ideals of altruism and mutual-as opposed to self-help. I have already spoken of the origin and development of what was the greatest non-official and informal contribution to national education of our times. Logically perhaps it ought to have been discussed in this chapter, but in its wider implications it belongs to the social and political history of the last twenty years.

To turn from general tendencies to the controversies which arose out of the working of the Education Act of 1871, we find that _Punch_ was, as usual, impartially critical of all extremists, whether clerical or secularist. Against the latter he inveighed in 1894 in his "Universal Hymn for School Board Hymnals, adapted to modern Educational requirements":--

Arise my soul--if soul I've got--
And, vaguely vocal, thank
For all the blessings of my lot
The--Unknown Eternal Blank!

I thank the--Streak of Azure Haze
That on my birth has smiled,
And made me, in post-Christian days,
A happy School-Board child.

I was not born, as myriads were,
In ages dark and dim,
And taught to pray a pious prayer,
Or sing a holy hymn.

I was not born a little slave
To formula and creed,
Or taught that Heaven must light the Grave,
Or God-love banish greed.

I was not born when priests might roam
And teach the childish band
To sing about Our Heavenly Home,
Or of that Happy Land!

Mere dogma muddles up the mind,
And leaves it in a mess.
Religion surely was designed
To make our freedom less.

The Conscience-Clause? It may secure
_Some_ freedom to the slave.
But Where's the sense--unless we're sure
That we a conscience _have_?

We've lots of "Standards" which we treasure,
There's one superfluous, quite,
A Standard human wit can't measure
(In Board Schools)--that of Right!

Secular matters make our joys,
And facts are our sole food.
Do we turn out _good_ girls and boys?
Good heavens! What _is_ "Good"?

Through all the periods of my life
One goodness I'll pursue;
With rare "good things" this world is rife;
I'll try to get a few.

At the close of the same year, however, _Punch_ castigates sectarian bigots with equal vigour. He took for his text a letter by Dr. James Martineau to _The Times_, in which that "wise and gentle teacher" had appealed to the conflicting parties of School Board electors and members to reconcile themselves to a peaceful co-existence on the basis of our common Christianity. _Punch_ does not spare "secular spleen" and "shortsighted super-thrift," but his severest criticisms are reserved for the sectarian zealots, Anglican and Nonconformist, who had broken up the compromise of 1871, and he concludes:--

Oh, self-elected shepherds, with your crooks,
Fighting, while round your folds the wolves are creeping!--
Pedagogues wrangling o'er your lesson-books,
Whilst your wrath rages human love sits weeping!
If of "a common Christianity"
Ye were but practical and patient teachers,
In Education's task ye might _agree_.
Now sense is asking, "Who shall teach our teachers?"

[Sidenote: _The Abortive Bill of 1896_]

COOK (with much dignity): "You needn't have any fear, my lady. In really 'igh-class families religion is _never_ mentioned!"]

_Punch's_ comments foreshadowed the conflict that raged over the Education Bill of 1896, which had been framed to redeem the pledge given by the Government to aid voluntary schools. Denounced by the Opposition as a deliberate attempt to shatter the school-board system and promote the interest of a particular sect, while, on the other hand, all sects were agreed that the proposed aid was inadequate; swamped by amendments--1,238, to be precise, had been placed on the paper when the House met in June after the Whitsuntide Recess--the Bill was abandoned in Committee without exciting any real regret from any party. _Punch_ chronicles its withdrawal without any comment, but his silence cannot be interpreted as expressing satisfaction with the existing _régime_. In 1899 he falls foul of Sir John Gorst, then the acting head of the Board of Education, for his alleged intention of entrusting the teaching of all other children to half-educated pupil teachers.

The progress and passage of the much-discussed Education Act of 1902 revived _Punch's_ distrust of the so-called "friends" of the human child. He shows Mr. Balfour on a bicycle steering a perilous and devious course beset with obstacles, and develops the theme in a fable, based on that of the Old Woman going to Market, in which Lord Hugh Cecil, Mr. Bryce, Archbishop Temple, Mr. Lloyd George and Sir William Harcourt are brought in to represent the various and conflicting elements in the struggle. _Punch's_ moral is that "if you don't all hurt each others' feelings a good deal, there's no chance of getting the Education Bill through Parliament." The truth of this comment was abundantly shown by the vehement controversy which arose over the famous Kenyon-Slaney amendment, limiting the right of an incumbent to give religious instruction in a Church School--a provision which infuriated the High Anglicans and was reluctantly acquiesced in by moderate Churchmen. _Per contra_ Dr. Percival, the Bishop of Hereford, who voted with the Opposition, declared that the Bill had given great strength to the Opposition to the Church in the country and tended to destroy its spiritual influence. And Lord Rosebery, while not in favour of the refusal of Nonconformists to pay rates, confessed that if they submitted tamely to the enactments of the Bill they would cease to exist politically.

[Sidenote: _A Stepping-Stone Ministry_]

_Punch_ had no sympathy with the "passive resistance" movement, and when Mr. Lloyd George in 1904 advocated the closing of all the elementary schools in Wales as a protest against the Education Act, he regarded him as more desirous to serve party ends than to save the souls of the young. In 1906 it was the turn of the Liberals to redeem _their_ pledges, and Mr. Birrell was in charge of the measure. _Punch_ accordingly depicted him as a schoolmaster saying to the Act of 1902, "My boy, this [the cane he is holding] can't hurt you more than it's going to hurt me." _Punch_ evidently had no love for the new Bill, but his satire is impartially levelled at the irreconcilable sectarian differences of the supporters and antagonists of the measure. All this wrangling had nothing to do with the education of children. The gradual and inevitable transformation of the measure by the end of the year is happily hit off in an adaptation from "Alice in Wonderland," with Mr. Balfour as the Cheshire Cat and Mr. Birrell as Alice carrying what _had_ been a baby, but was now a pig, as the Cheshire Cat expected.

"Yus. Yer see, me 'usband 'ates me goin' hout of a hevening, so I does it to spite 'im."]

The Education Office in these years was the great jumping-off ground for aspirants to higher Ministerial office, and was occupied by a succession of "transient and (sometimes) embarrassed phantoms." Mr. Birrell quitted Whitehall to govern Ireland from Overstrand, and in 1908 _Punch_, in his cartoon on the tardy compromise achieved by the Church and Nonconformity, showed "Master Runciman," with his Bill, being carried safely through the waters of strife by the Archbishop of Canterbury and Dr. Clifford.

SON: "I say, Mother, don't look so ghastly pleased before all these fellows."]

In 1905, according to the _Scotsman_ (quoted by _Punch_), the prospective Unionist candidate for Berwick maintained before a meeting of electors that "the only way to deal with the religious question was to allow each denomination to provide religious teaching in school hours _for the parents of such children as desired it_." The italics are provided by _Punch_, who threw further light on the need for this "vicarious religion" in an illustrated dialogue published in 1911:--

SCHOOLMISTRESS: "And am I to give the child religious instruction?"

MOTHER: "I don't care wot yer do so long as yer don't bash 'er abaht the 'ead."

[Sidenote: _John Bull, Junior_]

Throughout this period _Punch_ was perhaps more concerned with the youngest than with the younger generation--with the progress of the child than with that of the ingenuous youth. Yet he was not neglectful of the changes going on in public and preparatory schools. The picture of "John Bull, Junior," in 1905 represents the human boy of the public-school type as still primarily interested in pastime:--

For instance, his industry's tireless
In getting his _Wisden_ by rote;
But of Signor Marconi (the wireless)
He takes the most negligent note.
That the primary use of the cable
Is cricket, he's free to maintain--
He associates cricket with Abel,
And bats with the mention of Cain.

He can't tell the whereabouts clearly
Of Constantinople or Prague,
But he'll talk by the hour about Brearley,
He'll tell you the birthplace of Haigh.
He cannot be sure if the Hooghly's
A river, a town, or a hill;
But then upon Bosanquet's "googlies"
A volume he'd easily fill.

This was before the aeroplane and the motor had infected schoolboys with a passion for mechanics, and the view expressed is borne out by a suggestion made in 1907 by Sir J. J. Thomson, and duly noted in _Punch_, that boys should go to school in holiday time and during term time should "stay at home and learn something." A year earlier _Punch_ had very properly laid his finger on a blot in the school system--the inadequate salaries of assistant masters. In "The Worm Turns" he had enlarged on the protest which one of the number had registered in the _Westminster Gazette_. It was all very well, as "Kappa" had done in the columns of that paper, to abuse schoolmasters, but what could you expect at the price when, at the best preparatory schools, £120 a year, resident, was considered adequate pay for a first-class man, and things were not much better in the public schools. Hence _Punch's_ versified gloss, in which the much-maligned assistant master sums up the matter thus:--

Ah, well, it may be we are all past praying for,
But in this world one gets what one is paying for,
(That seems a fairly obvious remark);

And I for one, although exposed so crushingly,
Still mean to draw my salary unblushingly--
That of a third-rate clerk.

YOUNG HOPEFUL: "'Shamefully ignorant'! Of course I'm ignorant, Father. But then why did you send me to a Public School? I always look upon a fellow who's learnt anything at a Public School as a _self-educated man_!"]

_Punch_ clearly admitted that all was not well with a system in which undue prominence was attached to the athletic prowess, and in 1909 he pilloried an advertisement for a schoolmaster which had appeared in the _Spectator_: "Rugby Blue required. Football is the chief subject, but elementary Latin, English and Mathematics are also looked for." On the other hand, _Punch_ was no believer in the commercializing of our public schools. When Lord Rosebery in 1896 had said that "an inquiry by Chambers of Commerce into the progress of technical and commercial education in Germany would make our hair stand on end," _Punch_ showed him as the Fat Boy in _Pickwick_ saying, "I wants to make yer flesh creep." And when, in the fateful year 1914, a "Commercial Side," on lines already laid down in many secondary schools of a different type, was started at Bradfield College, _Punch_ sought to reduce the plan to an absurdity by an imaginative account of its working.

[Sidenote: _School Diet_]

HOUSE-MASTER (with pride, to Parent): "Then with regard to food: we feed our boys to repletion five times a day, and our chef's puddings have no equal in any school in the kingdom."]

As regards the feeding of boys at school, the change from the Spartan _régime_ of the previous generation can be vividly illustrated from the pages of _Punch_. Down to the close of the Victorian age, hampers were, if not an absolute necessity, at any rate a welcome supplement to the frugal diet provided at most schools. In 1899 _Punch_ supported the continuance of hampers in some ironical verses inspired by a letter in the _Daily Chronicle_ from a schoolmaster's wife. The good lady had complained of the effect of Tuck upon the ethics of schoolboys, and advocated ordinary school diet. _Punch_ at the time regarded this as a counsel of stoical perfection utterly wasted on the ordinary human boy. A very different note was sounded by the Headmaster of Rugby in 1912, who was reported to have said at the Conference on School Diet that "while adults should rise from the table hungry, children should reach a sense of repletion before rising." Accordingly _Punch_ published a picture of a mother with an alarmingly obese small boy interviewing a house-master who proudly remarks: "Then as to food, we feed our boys to repletion five times a day, and our chef's puddings have no equal in any school in the Kingdom." This was an exaggeration so far as the public schools were concerned, but it was fair satire of the sumptuousness of the fashionable and expensive preparatory school of pre-war days. _There_ the pendulum had swung to the opposite extreme from the meagre diet of the 'seventies, when there was no luxury at preparatory schools and at many of the public schools the feeding was a scandal.

On the new relations that had sprung up between boys and masters--the "elder brother" theory--I do not find any notable mention in _Punch_. I suspect him of adhering to the old view that it was a far higher compliment to a master to describe him as a "just beast" than "popular." The decline of the classical side is touched on, while the continued inefficiency of instruction in modern languages is delightfully satirized in the late Mr. F. H. Townsend's picture of a young lord of creation, the centre of an adoring group of small sisters. "Now Guy," says his mother, "tell us about the school. Is everything all right?" "Oh, yes, Mother--except one thing." "My darling! What is it?" "Well, I wish you hadn't got us that French nurse to teach us the right pronunciation; it makes the other fellows laugh so." _Punch's_ picture was true of a time now rapidly passing away, and furnishes a valuable comment on the solution of a century-old problem. The French master, generally a refugee in the old days, was never accorded a proper status and very seldom recognized as one of themselves by his colleagues. He was generally poor, and he was a standing proof of the saying of the Latin satirist that there is nothing more cruel about poverty than the fact that it makes people ridiculous. Also nine times out of ten he was unable to keep order; so that in the fullness of time headmasters found themselves confronted by this dilemma. They had to choose between foreigners with a correct accent who could not maintain discipline, and natives with a bad accent who could. And in pre-war days they often decided in favour of the latter.

[Sidenote: _Commerce at the Universities_]

_Punch_ viewed the multiplication of universities with acquiescence rather than enthusiasm. He had been, as we have seen, a severe critic of academic obstructives at Oxford and Cambridge, but he was entirely opposed to their reconstruction on purely utilitarian lines. In his view there was room for universities of different types; to standardize them would be a blunder, almost a crime. So when a school of brewing was established at Birmingham, he gave a forecast of Oxford in the year 2000 A.D., completely commercialized, with the Ashmolean transformed into the University Co-operative Stores. In 1901 a daily paper had said that, compared with the University of Birmingham, Oxford must seem hopelessly out of date. _Punch_ rejoined in a masque in which the claims of the old and new universities are reviewed and contrasted, but the last word is left to the Oxford chorus:--

Out of date and useless we,
Commerce is beyond our ken--
Let us thank the gods we be
Twenty Oxford men.

Mr. Andrew Carnegie's gift of £2,000,000 to the Scottish universities in the same year is eulogized in the cartoon of "The Macmillion," but the prose comment, in which the extensions of the scheme are foreshadowed, is not lacking in an element of irony.

Mr. Rhodes's historic bequest to Oxford is discussed in an imaginary letter from a Cambridge to an Oxford don. The Cambridge don ridicules the notion that it would revolutionize Oxford, convert it into the University of the Empire, or transform the hoary old home of lost causes into a realization of the ideals of young barbarians from the bounding prairie or of the pipe-sucking beer-nurtured students of the Fatherland. The new-comers would find their level and, if really decent fellows, would do well enough. "Oxford will still remain Oxford, and that, at any rate, we may be thankful for." Nor did the Cambridge man anticipate any serious change in inter-'Varsity relations:--

As to ourselves at Cambridge, why, I fancy we shall be able to rub along quite comfortably, thank you. If I may use a commercial expression, we've got our own line of Australians and Canadians and Americans, and even of Afrikanders, and I think we shall be able to continue business at the old shop in the old style without any of the new-fangled additions that Mr. Rhodes has conferred upon Oxford. I'll wager that when fifty years are past we shall still be able to meet you on the river, at cricket, at football, nay, even at chess and billiards, on the same terms of average equality. And in after life we shall still manage to compete.

This letter, by the way, was virtually a rejoinder to a set of verses, published a few weeks earlier, in which _Punch_ indulged in a fantastic forecast of the results of the invasion of the Rhodes scholars--including an entire revision of the system of examinations in accordance with the terms of Mr. Rhodes's will. The Craven would be awarded for manliness and the Ireland for muscle:--

Then at last shall Oxford Greats men
Really be Imperial statesmen.

The sequel has shown that the views ascribed to the Cambridge don were much nearer the mark.

[Sidenote: _The Awakening of Oxford_]

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY Oxford University.
THE FAIRY PRINCE Lord Curzon.

THE CHANCELLOR (after reading aloud his "Memorandum"): "Awake, adorable dreamer!"]

In 1904 _Punch_ ranged himself unfalteringly on the side of compulsory Greek. Oxford had decided to retain it, and _Punch_, garbed as a Hellenic sage, appeals to Cambridge not to be outdone in loyalty to the old faith by her sister. It is hard to avoid reading into the cartoon "Breaking the Charm" in 1909 more than _Punch_ meant to express. Lord Curzon, as the Fairy Prince, is seen, with his Memorandum on University Reform, appealing to the Sleeping Beauty in Matthew Arnold's phrase, "Awake, adorable dreamer!" Of course, the "adorable dreamer" was bound to be pictorially represented by a woman, but recent concessions have lent a special significance to the awakening. Strange to say, the most powerful and eloquent impeachment of the intrusion of women into Oxford comes from the New World; from the pen of the most brilliant of American essayists--Mr. Paul Elmer More. "With petticoats," he writes of Oxford, "came the world and the conventions of the world; manners were softened, the tongue was filed, angles of originality were ironed out; the drawing-room conquered the cloister."

_Punch's_ practical abandonment of the _rôle_ of religious controversialist was noticed in the previous volume. In the period under review references to the churches are for the most part confined to the part they played in connexion with the Education Bills already mentioned. The echoes of the "No Popery" campaign had so far died down that, on the publication in 1898 of Mr. Wilfrid Ward's review of Cardinal Wiseman's life, _Punch's_ notice was not merely sympathetic but laudatory. "The storm that arose in England on his return from Rome to England with the rank of Cardinal was sufficient to have blown a punier man clean off the island. The Cardinal stood four square to it and lived it down." This is a notable tribute from _Punch_, who had blown and stormed with the best of the Cardinal's assailants. As for the now forgotten but once notorious "Kensitite" demonstrations, _Punch's_ attitude is seen in his advertisement printed in the same year:--

_To Prize-Fighters and others._--Wanted, MUSCULAR CHRISTIANS
to act as sidesmen; used to _mêlées_ and capable of using their
fists. Liberal terms. Free doctor. Pensions in case of personal
injury. Apply, stating qualifications, to High Church Clerical Agency,
Kensiton, W.

_A propos_ of muscular Christians, in 1900 _Punch_ mentions that a country curate had recently received notice to quit because though unexceptionable in other respects, his vicar declared that "what this parish really needs is a good fast bowler with a break from the off." Modern clerical methods of acquiring popularity were satirized in 1905. A Congregational minister had taken part in a theatrical performance, and _Punch_ gave a burlesque account of a bishop appearing at a music-hall in a travesty of _Hamlet_ for the benefit of a Decayed Curates' Fund.

[Sidenote: _Anti-Clericalism in France_]

Bishops and deans have done wonderful things of late years, but this particular forecast remains fortunately unfulfilled hitherto. To 1906 belongs one of the few cartoons in this period in which the relations of Church and State are directly referred to. For this was the year in which the French Government cancelled the Concordat and laid an interdict on the Religious Orders. The policy found no favour from _Punch_. In "The Triumph of Democracy" he showed a French priest, a dignified figure, standing outside a doorway guarded by a French soldier, and bearing the notice: "République Française. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. Entrée interdite au Clergé."

VISITOR: "Well, you see, I've been getting rather stouter lately, and it's such a comfort to know that I _really_ have _no body_!"]

Sabbatarianism gave _Punch_ little or no chance, save for a mild protest against the action of the L.C.C. with regard to the Queen's Hall Concerts in 1898. The change is accurately reflected in the opening lines:--

Ah! County C., why stop our glee?
For bigotry is dead;
The broader mind can nowhere find
Remotest cause to dread
An instant fall of scruples all
If Sunday's gloom should flee;
We're all agreed in word and deed,
Except the County C.

_Punch's_ occupation as an anti-Sabbatarian was practically gone by the end of the last century. Bishops had ceased to provoke his satire by their opulence, though the balance-sheet, issued by the Bishop of London in 1905 to prove how hard it was to make both ends meet, excited some good-humoured raillery. Christian Science _Punch_ left severely alone, save for an occasional negligible or oblique reference. His last and most forcible intervention in religious controversy was provoked by the action of the Bishop of Zanzibar in protesting against the administration of the Holy Communion to non-Anglican members. In the cartoon "The Black Man's Burden" in January, 1914, _Punch_ drew two negroes singing as a duet "Why do de Christians rage?" and this scathing comment undoubtedly reflected the views of the great majority of moderate Churchmen at home as well as missionaries and colonial administrators abroad.

I have spoken elsewhere of _Punch's_ share in the Dreyfus controversy, and may add that while laudably free from anti-Semitic partisanship, he did not refrain from satirizing the ostrich-like attitude of the Jews in transition who thought that the signs of race could be obliterated by a change of name.

Reverence and admiration in full measure inspire the tribute to the wise and sagacious Leo XIII, when he died in 1903:--

The long day closes and the strife is dumb,
Thither he goes where temporal loss is gain,
Where he that asks to enter must become
A little child again.

And since in perfect humbleness of heart
He sought his Church's honour, not his own,
All faiths are one to share the mourner's part
Beside the empty throne.

Refrain by natives of South Africa and Kikuyu.]

The _amende_ to Cardinal Wiseman has been already noted, and I like to end this section with an even more striking palinode--the most notable that had appeared in _Punch_ since his posthumous tribute to Lincoln. _Punch_ had assailed the Salvation Army and its founder with all the weapons at his command in the early days of that movement. Happily he did not wait till General Booth's death to acknowledge his error. In the autumn of 1908 General Booth and Mr. John Burns had both been subjected to severe criticism at the Trade Union Congress, and are shown in a cartoon standing outside the door of the meeting saying to _Mr. Punch_: "You see before you two condemned criminals." _Punch_ replies: "Well, I shouldn't worry about that," and they rejoin in unison: "We don't." This was indirect commendation; there were no reserves in the memorial verses on General Booth's death in August, 1912. _Punch_ compares him with the warrior saints of old time and continues:--

Nay, his the nobler warfare, since his hands
Set free the thralls of misery and her brood--
Hunger and haunting shame and sin that brands--
And gave them hope renewed.

Bruised souls, and bodies broken by despair,
He healed their heartache, and their wounds he dressed,
And drew them, so redeemed, his task to share,
Sworn to the same high quest.

Armed with the Spirit's wisdom for his sword,
His feet with tidings of salvation shod,
He knew no foes save only such as warred
Against the peace of God.

Scorned or acclaimed, he kept his harness bright,
Still, through the darkest hour, untaught to yield,
And at the last, his face toward the light,
Fell on the victor's field.

No laurelled blazon rests above his bier,
Yet a great people bows its stricken head
Where he, who fought without reproach or fear,
Soldier of Christ, lies dead.

THE ADVANCE OF WOMEN

In the early 'nineties there was a penny weekly paper called _Woman_, of a mildly "feministic" type, which took for its motto "Forward, but not too fast." There was no reason to suspect its founders of deliberately choosing two adjectives, each of which bore an ambiguous meaning; taken in their literal sense they aptly epitomize the spirit of Feminism in the early years of a phase which began with "emancipation novels" and ended in a resort to physical force. Yet even at the outset the more sober representatives of the movement were being forced into the background to make way for the more strident spokeswomen of the doctrine of equal rights. The prim spinster and the apostles of culture were replaced by the women who were frankly "out" to shock public opinion and flout decorum, who rode bicycles in knickerbockers and wrote "problem" novels. The "New Woman," so constantly referred to in these years, had many variations--athletic, literary, worldly, but was always bent on "self-expression." The fashionable type was caricatured in _Dodo_; the rebellious daughter was glorified in Grant Allen's story, now only remembered in its title--_The Woman who Did_. Ibsen was very much in the air, and his remark that the modern daughter felt the need for "a mild kind of _Wanderjahr_" impelled _Punch_ to discourse on "Rosamund and the _Wanderjahr_" (a good deal "after" Miss Edgeworth's story of _Rosamund and the Purple Jar_). His views are non-committal but apparently unsympathetic. On the other hand, he welcomed somewhat prematurely the admission of women to the Fellowship of the Royal Geographical Society, recognized their skill and endurance as Alpine climbers, applauded their adoption of the calling of gardeners, hailed the appearance of a Women's Eight on the Thames--coached, it should be added, by a distinguished member of his staff--and duly chronicled the first inter-'Varsity Women's hockey match in 1894. The first illustration of a woman bicycling in knickerbockers occurs in the same year. Under the heading "The 'Arden-ing Process," Orlando addresses his companion: "Tired, Rosalind?" and she replies with quite unfeminine brevity: "Pneumatically." No attempt is made to represent the new garb as unbecoming, as in the days of "Bloomerism," but rather the reverse.

ORLANDO: "Tired, Rosalind?"

ROSALIND: "Pneumatically."]

Towards the "New Woman" on her intellectual side, _Punch_ was decidedly hostile. One could not find a better expression of his views than in the large illustration, "Donna Quixote," in April, 1894. The central figure, wearing pince-nez and waving a latchkey, is formidable rather than repellent. Around her on the floor lie books by Ibsen, Tolstoi and Mona Caird, and in the decorative border (which embodies her visions) she is seen tilting at the dragon of Decorum, and smiting down the triple Cerberus of Mrs. Grundy, "Mamma" and Chaperon. Du Maurier's "Passionate Female Literary Types" in the same year are unlovely to the verge of hideousness, and the legends are frankly satirical. When "Sarah Grand" declared that Man, morally, was "in his infancy" and that "now Woman holds out a strong hand to the Child-man," and insisted on helping him up by "spanking proper principles into him in the nursery," _Punch_ quoted back at her "Ouida's" statement that "the New Woman was an unmitigated bore," and went on:--

[Sidenote: _The New Womanhood_]

There is a New Woman, and what do you think?
She lives upon nothing but Foolscap and Ink!
But, though Foolscap and Ink form the whole of her diet,
This nagging New Woman can never be quiet!

The ironical protest registered by _Punch_ against ladies who insisted on travelling in smoking carriages and then objected to smoking, only serves to show how far we have travelled in the last thirty years. Another passing phase in the history of sex-antagonism is to be found in the record of the first of many dinners at which only literary ladies were allowed to be present. _Punch_ printed a letter signed "A Daughter of Eve who remembers Adam," who observed that "the Literary Ladies' Dinner of the 1st of June only needed one feature to be absolutely perfect--the presence of Gentlemen." Whether the letter was _bonâ fide_ or not, it probably expressed the view of the majority of those present. The more violent the manifestations of the New Womanhood, the more reactionary became _Punch's_ attitude. His reaction reached a culminating point in 1894, when he painted the following sketch of "A Modern Madame":--

She has aspirations after the impossible, and is herself far from
probable; she regards her husband as an unnecessary evil, and her
children as disturbances without compensating advantages.

She writes more than she reads and seldom scribbles anything.

She has no feelings, and yet has a yearning after the intense.

She is the antithesis of her grandmother, and has made further
development in generations to come quite impossible.

She thinks without the thoughts of a male, and yet has lost the
comprehension of a female.

To sum up, she is hardly up to the standard of a man, and yet has sunk
several fathoms below the level of a woman.

So again he reverts to his older views on Education _à propos_ of the "Pioneers":--

Ah, learn whate'er you will, yet spare our hearts
A home-grown, feminine Baboo of Arts.
Believe it, envious maids, the men you spurn
Think little of the honours that they earn.
Too well they're taught in common sense's rules
To dwell upon their triumphs in the Schools,
And chiefly prize the Baccalaureate fur
Because, in love's young days, it pleases Her.
But you, in purpose tyrannously strong,
Get, in each effort, your perspective wrong.
Learn all you wish to learn, exult in learning,
For Hymen's torch keep midnight oil a-burning,
Bulge your fair foreheads with those threatening bumps,
Ungraceful as an intellectual mumps,
Be blatant, rude, self-conscious as you can,
Be all you feign--and imitate--in Man,
Spurn all the fine traditions of the past,
Be New or nothing--what's the gain at last?

You know as much, with hard-eyed, harsh-voiced joy,
As the shock-headed, shambling fifth-form boy;
Adding, what his sound mind would never please,
An Asiatic hunger for degrees.
True learning's that alone whereon are based
Clear insight, reason, sympathy, and taste.
Not relic-worshipping of bones long dry,
Not giving puppet-life to x and y,
And walking haughtily a fair world through
Because some girls can't do the sums you do.
Still less, the little, little world of cliques,
Where Mutual Admiration dons the breeks,
And then proceeds kind tolerant man to flout--
A petulant, unresented Barring-out.

Meanwhile our faith looks on, devoid of fear,
Facing the hatchet of the Pioneer.
Still will the storm, in Nature's potent plan,
Be temper'd to the shorn, or bearded, man.
Your sex will still be perfect in its place,
With voice of melody and soul of grace.
Pose, lecture, worry, copy as you will,
Man will be man, and woman woman still!

[Sidenote: _The Real New Woman_]

By way of reducing the "misanthropic" attitude of some of the "New Women" to absurdity, _Punch_ reported a probably apocryphal dialogue between two men: "I say, old man, is it true that your wife has been asked to resign at the Omphale Club?" "Well, yes; you see, the Committee found out that she'd been guilty of ungentlemanly conduct." But what exasperated _Punch_ most of all was the decadent preciosity of the irregulars who espoused the cause of the New Womanhood. One need only mention "The Woman who Wouldn't Do," illustrated _à la_ Beardsley, where "Yellow Book" morality is burlesqued in the phrase "marriage is a degrading system, nurtured under the purple hangings of the tents of iniquity." These moods of disgust seldom lasted long. _Punch_ was no wholesale hater of modernity, and in his verses on "The Real New Woman" frankly admitted that there was much in her to admire. One notes a change of ideal in the absence of any mention of her cooking qualifications; and in the admission that "she's splendid at seeing a joke," _Punch_ acknowledges a great advance on the buxom but humourless damsels of Leech. The first mention of a Ladies' Football Club in 1895 brings home to us the fact that what passed for prejudice in 1895 with enthusiastic advocates of sex equality has been confirmed by the judgment of those best qualified to judge down to 1921.

_Punch's_ epigram on woman's "Asiatic hunger for degrees" represents a passing mood rather than his general attitude to the demand. "The lady students of the Universities," wrote _The Times_ on March 13, 1896, "have received a cruel series of rebuffs in the last few days. On Tuesday week the Congregation of the University of Oxford refused to admit them to the B.A. degree. On Tuesday last it followed up this blow by rejecting all the resolutions proposed as alternatives. Yesterday the Cambridge Senate inflicted the unkindest cut of all by practically imitating the ungallant example of Oxford." Yet, instead of exulting over their defeat, _Punch_ was decidedly sympathetic in his cartoon of Minerva, with her owl in a cage, met at the gates of the Oxford Schools by a corpulent bespectacled Don, who observes, "Very sorry, Miss Minerva, but perhaps you are not aware that this is a monastic establishment." One notes a certain inconsistency in _Punch's_ condemning women for their disregard of the fine art of gastronomy, preferring "a tray on a rickety side-table" or the haphazard arrangements of a picnic to regularity and comfort at meals, and almost in the same breath rebuking them for flouting the sweet domesticities of home and indulging in extravagant pleasures in public. Another interesting sign of the times is recorded a couple of years later in "The Modern Woman's _Vade Mecum_"--showing a reaction against the old notion that the blue stocking must be above any regard for appearances. Here the governing idea is that cleverness need not be divorced from fascination; that fine heads should be covered with pretty toques; that pince-nez are more becoming than spectacles; and that literary women should not neglect fashion journals or sacrifice toilet to intellect. The allusion in the same year (1898) to a Women's Club consisting exclusively of women who would not marry because they could not find husbands intellectual enough to suit them, was probably an exaggeration. But there were Feminist stalwarts who virtually expressed that view; just as there were enthusiasts of "mixed hockey," then beginning to come into fashion, who may not have been entirely uninfluenced by a matrimonial motive.

The proposal to allow women to hold municipal office, included in the Local Government Bill, was vetoed in 1899, but not before _Punch_ had issued a pictorial forecast of a procession, headed by the Right Worshipful the Lady Mayor, with female mace-bearer, sword-bearer, Town Clerk and "she-rives." The Cecil family have been of late years active in support of the Woman Suffrage Movement, but Lord Salisbury was no feminist. In 1899 Colonel Denny introduced a Bill making the provision of seats for shop assistants compulsory. _Punch_ describes how this modest measure was "turned down" in the Lords on the initiative of the Prime Minister, who scented in the concession possibilities of a revolt of domestic servants. In 1900 the "New Woman," i.e. the heroine of the "Woman who Did" type, is described as moribund if not defunct. The fashion of knickerbockers went out with the century. Women chauffeurs, however, make their appearance in 1900, and the correct designation for them is discussed. But for a couple of years women's claims and pretensions were largely submerged by the War. There was a strange product much in evidence at the Mount Nelson Hotel, Cape Town, but Punch overlooked the vagaries which were admirably satirized in a once famous Limerick:--

There was a young lady of Berwick,
Whose conduct was highly hysteric.
She followed the guns
And distributed buns
To the men who were down with enteric.

[Sidenote: _The Housewife's Burden_]

The Club movement was spreading rapidly, and the founding of the "Ladies' Army and Navy Club" in 1902 prompts a burlesque on the qualifications insisted on for membership in the Ladies' Athenæum, Conservative, Travellers' and Bachelors' Clubs. _Punch_ again sounds the plea for the revival of domesticity in the "Prayer of a Lady Principal" addressed to Oxford Women Students, with apologies to Mr. Kipling:--

Take up the housewife's burden--
All ye whose schools are done,
Who let your foolish fancy dwell
On thoughts of coming fun.
Put _Games for Girls_ upon the shelf
With Jowett, Jebb, and Gow;
Be Mrs. Beeton's Homely Hints
Your _vade mecum_ now.

Take up the housewife's burden--
No lofty rule of queens,
But long and sordid service--
The slave to ways and means.
Have done with flighty folly!
Throw off your infant past!
'Tis yours to cope with butcher's bills,
To make the mutton last.

Take up the housewife's burden--
The truceless wars of peace;
Go, humour whimsy housemaids,
And wait your cook's caprice.
And when your hopes are highest
(When both ends nearly meet),
Your lord's untimely lavishness
Shall all your thrift defeat.

Take up the housewife's burden--
Ye shall not shun the call;
Nor cry too loud on Culture,
When darns and dusting pall.
Go, face the test of wifehood--
To wield the adoring rod,
And treat a Man as merely
Half baby and half god.

The then fashionable alternative is ironically extolled in an irreverent parody of Kingsley's lines, as adapted for a Young Lady's album:--

Be smart, dear girl, and let who will be other;
Break from the fold, not stick there like a lamb;
So shall your lot, as maid and wife and mother,
Be one Grand Slam.