Chapter VI: Part I: The Passing of the Old Order (6)

An article by Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick in the _Cornhill_, on English and Teuton domestic ideals, served _Punch_ in 1904 as the text for a ballad comparing the thrifty German _Hausfrau_ with the extravagant English wife. The infatuated writer sums up entirely in favour of the dainty, decorative Dolly as against the patient, industrious, but dowdy Grisel. Yet in the same year _Punch_ was much exercised with the inevitable decline of chivalry:--

Doubtless the better sort would gladly nourish
Those notions which occur in Arthur's tale;
Doubtless Romance might still contrive to flourish,
Changing its knightly for its Daily Mail,
If Woman would but give our modern gallants
A livelier chance to ventilate their talents.

Men ride abroad in rubbered automobiles,
Naked of armour, bar the nauseous smell,
Not bound on any ransom save to owe bills
Contracted by some errant damosel,
So that in Carlton's Halls, superbly gowned,
She may adorn their Dinner-table Round:

But here their service ends. They fain would wrestle
With horrid dragons or a heathen crew;
Ride _ventre à terre_ to help the weaker vessel,
Behaving just as Lancelot used to do;
Only you cannot keep it up much longer
When once the weaker sex becomes the stronger.

[Sidenote: _Matrons and Militants_]

An equally interesting feature of the times was what might be alternatively called the Revolt or the Apotheosis of Middle Age. Perhaps the first mention of what threatened to be an unfair competition of the matron with the maid is to be found in the verses in 1896, where we read of the modern woman:--

If married and mother she yet plays her part,
With six charming children she still must look "smart,"
For, judging by facts, what Society likes
Is a maid who is bold, and a matron who bikes.

Golf and dancing, however, were the great opportunities of the young middle-aged women who refused to retire to the shelf as in early Victorian days. In 1904 _Punch_ printed a story about golf, in which a maiden aunt "scores" overwhelmingly and turns out to be a champion player, to the confounding of her nephew and niece, a _dénoûment_ beyond imagination's widest stretch twenty years earlier.

With 1905 we plunge into the new phase of the Suffrage question. At the outset _Punch_ was decidedly sympathetic. Note, for example, the cartoon in which a beery working man--a "qualified voter"--addresses a well-dressed, refined-looking woman: "Ah, you may pay rates an' taxes, and you may 'ave responserbilities an' all; but when it comes to _votin'_, you must leave it to _us men_!" In a brief year _Punch_ was thoroughly estranged by the methods of the militants and their harrying of Ministers. His "Sensible Woman" retorts on her "Shrieking Sister": "_You_ help our cause? Why, you're its worst enemy." Raids on the House of Commons and scenes in the Lobbies and the Ladies' Gallery drove him in the Epilogue to 1906 to take a new line. Since in the course of the Crusade women had descended to man's brutal level, put off their dignity and womanliness, and become "the complete elector"--"why, then, Madam, when you get the franchise, as you will eventually, I shall say to myself--_Serve 'em right_." The name "suffragette" had been coined, and came to stay for about fifteen years, at any rate; _Punch_ tried his hand at a new variant--"the Insuffrabelles." It was still possible to laugh at a movement which intermittently ministered to mirth; as, for example, when a New York correspondent of a London paper wrote as follows:--

"In the course of a sympathetic discussion on the good work done for
the cause by the Suffragettes in London at a meeting of a woman's
society for political study, Mrs. Cory, a prominent advocate of female
equality, gave a definition of a Utopian dream which woman must not
rest until she has realized. 'Knowing as I do our ideals,' said Mrs.
Cory, 'confident as I am that we shall attain them, I fix my gaze
upon the brightening future, hopefully awaiting the time when a woman
on trial for her life will be defended by a female lawyer, convicted
by a female jury' (the natural result, we presume), 'sentenced by a
female judge, consoled by a female chaplain, and executed by a female
executioner. Then, and not till then, will she have attained her
proper place in the world.'"

_Punch_, with commendable reticence, contents himself with observing, "nothing, however, was said as to which world." In 1907 we encounter a picture describing the embarrassment of an unfortunate man invited to tea at a ladies' club by a lady who had forgotten that the afternoon was consecrated to a "Down with Men" Meeting. In "Cross-examining a Suffragist" _Punch_ dexterously manoeuvres a witness into the admissions (1) that nothing could cause Miss Pankhurst greater suffering than to stay idly at home while other women were demonstrating and going cheerfully to martyrdom; (2) that the greater the suffering, the greater the proof of faith in the Cause. Whereupon his Lordship then delivered judgment as follows:--

That Miss Pankhurst and her family should show their faith in the cause by suffering in the way suggested by _Mr. Punch_. That they should stay quietly at home for a while--keep out of the newspapers--arrange no demonstrations--go to no prison; seeing that this would be a much truer and more effective martyrdom than anything they had done as yet.

[Sidenote: _Argument and Ridicule_]

BUDDING SUFFRAGETTE: "I say, Pussy" (with intensity), "are you a Peth or a Pank?"]

"And," continued his Lordship, waxing eloquent, "if time hangs heavy on their hands----

"Are there no beggars at the gate,
Nor any poor about the lands?
Oh! teach the orphan boy to read,
Or teach the orphan girl to sew,
Pray Heaven for a Woman's heart,
And let the Woman's Suffrage go."

From argument _Punch_ turned to burlesque in his imaginary forecast "The Fight for Childhood Suffrage in 1927." One cannot blame him for making capital out of a misprint in which the various suffrage societies were credited with "tactics that differ, but whose aims lead to the same _gaol_." But argument and ridicule were powerless to influence the extremists. The moderates did not always disavow the methods of lawlessness. A highly respected and elderly peeress actually advocated the withdrawal of all subscriptions to charitable objects until women should be given the vote. A steady _crescendo_ in violence marks the progress of the campaign in 1908. "How long," asks _Punch à propos_ of "domiciliary" visits and raids, "are our Cabinet Ministers to be made the sport of clamorous women? Cattle-driving in Ireland, deplorable as a form of popular pastime, is a trifle compared with this new sport of Cabinet Minister-hunting?" This new sport, however, was only in its infancy. Meanwhile the merry game of martyrdom went on. One day, so ran the recital of her prison experiences given by a released Suffragette, "we organized a grand lark. We all agreed to roar like hungry animals at dinner-time. We made a fearful noise." After this, remarks the sardonic _Punch_, "we hope we shall hear no more of women being devoid of a sense of humour." But even at this early stage of the campaign _Punch_ seems to have realized that, apart from the merits of the case, the victory would rest with the side which made itself the greater public nuisance until its wish was granted. Mr. Asquith is shown in the summer of 1908 with a Suffragette playing the Beggar-maid to his Cophetua, and saying, "'This beggar-maid shall be my Queen'--that is, if there's a general feeling in the country to that effect." A couple of weeks later Mr. Haldane, "thinking Territorially" as he watches a procession of Suffragettes, enviously observes, "If I could only get the _men_ to come forward like this!" On the whole, _Punch_ jibes impartially and genially at Suffragists and anti-Suffragists alike. There is an ominous reference in the summer of 1908 to the remark of a stone-thrower: "It will be bombs next time," but pictorially, at any rate, _Punch_ was inclined to make light of the persecution of Ministers and M.P.s.

[Sidenote: _The Coming of the "Flapper"_]

In a cartoon at the end of the year, by an inversion of the classical legend, "Persea" (the anti-Suffragist League) is shown coming to the rescue of Mr. Asquith as "Andromedus," while the spirit of Milton is invoked in a mock-heroic sonnet, after Wordsworth:--

England hath need of thee: she is a den
Of roaring lions--women _versus_ men.

THE KING (Mr. Asquith): "'This beggar-maid shall be my Queen'--that is, if there's a general feeling in the country to that effect."]

To 1908 also belongs _Punch's_ recognition of the advent of the Flapper, whose intrusions and insubordinations are happily hit off in "The New Autocrat":--

Ere hockey had shown her what sport meant,
Ere yet she grew giddy and pert,
She doted on dolls and deportment,
And only came down for dessert:
Her sisters would apprehend no sting
From one so exceedingly green,
Nor jibbed at the casual toasting
Of bashful fifteen.

Her tastes were not always considered;
She seldom got more than her share;
And parents, whenever the kid erred,
Brought suitable pressure to bear!
But gone is the rule of the hoar head;
Old age is dismissed with a grunt;
And youth's irrepressible forehead
Has come to the front!

O wormwood and gall to our women!
O torture far worse than the rack,
To find that the smartest of trim men
Are off on a different tack:
For both at the helm and the prow, too,
There lolls an unspeakable chit,
And Thirty now learns she must bow to
Fourteen and a bit!

Her locks are confined by a ribbon;
Her language is open and free;
She talks like a parrot, she's glib on
The problems that petrify me;
Her phrases are novel; to-day, what
I marvel at most are the queer
Little statements she clinches with "Eh, what!"
Tacked on to "Old dear!"

Though chaperons tell her where minxes
Are certain to go when they die,
A sequence of eloquent winks is
Her sole and sufficient reply;
Though dowagers, itching to slap her,
Would send her in tears to her bed,
The simply ineffable Flapper
Goes smiling instead!

And yet, when reflective December
Repines at the pertness of May,
Sweet solace it is to remember
She too has her time of decay:
She too, when she starts to put flesh on,
Will take a subordinate post,
While babies, devoid of discretion,
Are ruling the roast!

SUFFRAGIST: "It's no good talking to me about Sisyphus. He was only a man!"]

The Flapper was destined to assume a more aggressive aspect in later years--_vide_ Dr. Shadwell's indictment in the _Nineteenth Century_--but _Punch's_ concluding reflections hold good. Her attitude towards the Suffrage movement at this stage was perhaps not unfairly summed up in the remark of a younger sister who declared that she did not want women to get the vote, because she "liked hearing about the Suffragettes."

In 1909 the policy of hunger-striking was adopted by the militants; _Punch_ refers to it, but cannot be blamed for failing to realize the disastrous possibilities of what proved to be perhaps the most sinister legacy of the Suffragist extremists to the forces of disorder. In 1910 he waxes ironical over Lady Cook's suggestion that it would be wiser for the men to capitulate at once. Their rule, she asserted, was nearly over; but, if and when the tables were turned, women must not retaliate but resist all attempts to humiliate and degrade men. This magnanimity only excited _Punch's_ mirth; and the advertisement in a weekly paper: "Lady, having quarrelled with all her friends, desires to meet another in same position," impelled him to devise the rules for a "Mutual Aggravation Society" for the special benefit of the more militant Suffragettes, misogamists and man-haters. _Punch_, I may note in passing, acknowledged the enterprise of the woman aviator, _à propos_ of an announcement in the _Daily Mail_ that already "Five women can fly," but deplored their unsightly kit, which suggested an Esquimaux in goggles.

[Sidenote: _Cabinet Cleavage_]

To return to the Suffrage campaign, the troubles of the Prime Minister are indicated in a cartoon showing Suffragist and anti-Suffragist tilting at one another in the ring while Mr. Asquith, endeavouring to get out of the way, remarks: "This is no place for me." A little later, under the heading "Excelsior," a determined-looking Suffragette appears as Sisyphus rolling up a huge stone labelled "Women Suffrage," and saying: "It's no good talking to me about Sisyphus. He was only a man." During the next three years and a half _Punch_ repeatedly illustrated the cleavage in the Cabinet and amongst the Suffragists, and exhibited a progressive resentment against the violence of the extremists. In "Sermons in Stones" (1911) John Bull tells a non-militant Suffragist that he could listen more attentively to her arguments "were it not for these concrete arguments, which I find rather distracting," viz., the stones and bricks flying through the window of his house. In "United We Differ" (1912) Mr. (now Lord) Harcourt and Mr. Lloyd George are shown back to back on the same platform, advocating respectively Votes and No Votes for Women, while in "Rag-Time in the House" (1913) the cross-currents are shown in a dance of Ministers and Opposition leaders. To the same year belongs the highly ironical cartoon "The Majesty of the Law." Justice, blindfolded and wearing a fool's cap labelled "Votes for Women," leans on her sword which is swathed in the bandage of the Hunger Strike. In 1913 also occur the picture of the militant Suffragist, an expert incendiary, reduced to despair by her inability to light her own fire; and the dialogue on the Fifth of November between two "burning Sapphos": "Coming to our bonfire?" "Ra-_ther_! Whose house are you burning?"

So we come to the year 1914. When the militant campaign was at its height, _Punch_ prophesied that women would get the vote by 1919. He was only a year out, but his prophecy was not complimentary. It takes the form of an account of a great procession to celebrate the triumph of destructive methods--burning, blowing up, etc. On reaching the House of Commons the demonstrators find that it had just been dynamited and was in flames, and realize that they had not left a single building standing in London that was large enough to accommodate the legislature. In the sequel the Vote was won, not by burning churches, mutilating pictures, or damaging pillar-boxes, but by women's work in the War. It was not a concession to violence, but an acknowledgment of public and patriotic service.

INVENTIONS, DISCOVERIES, NOVELTIES

In the realm of invention and discovery the period under review was richer in achievements than any of those dealt with in the preceding volumes. Again and again imaginative or fantastic forecast was outdone by reality. Road traffic was revolutionized by the coming and rapid development of the motor. Space and distance were annihilated by man's conquest of the air and the introduction of wireless telegraphy. Scientific research, by the discovery of X-rays and new elements, more than equalled the pretensions of mediæval thaumaturgists. The cinematograph added a new entertainment and terror to life. The submarine, it is true, dated from the time of the American Civil war, but its improvements clearly foreshadowed the formidable part it was destined to play in the Great War. The long and splendid annals of Arctic and Antarctic explorations were crowned by the exploits of Peary and Amundsen and our own heroic Scott. On this side of the New Order, as on others, _Punch_ supplies a commentary which, though necessarily incomplete and irregular, is invariably animated and often instructive.

Awkward position of Mr. Newfangle, who, when halfway up a steep hill, discovers by the sudden retrograde movement of the autocar that the motor has become exhausted.]

To begin with _terra firma_, one finds an early illustration of the motor in 1895, when the Hackney observes to the Shire-horse: "Look here, friend Dobbin, I'll be shod if they won't do away with us altogether some of these days." The road in the picture is crowded with bicyclists, male and female, with a traction engine and a "patent road locomotive" of the waggonette type in the foreground. In 1896 the unsettled nomenclature of this "new monstrosity from France" is shown by the various alternative names--autocar, automobile, etc.--gradually settling down to motor-car. Bells were used as signals--_vide_ the poem "Tinkle, twinkle, motor-car"--and a speed of twelve miles an hour is spoken of as typical. _Punch_ was busy throughout the year with forecasts and prophecies--a motor Derby; a "motor-crawler" for deer stalkers, not altogether unlike the "scooter" of recent years; a motor-coach for the Lord Mayor's procession; and a "moto-growler" almost indistinguishable from the electric brougham. Reference is made to the trial run of motors from London to Brighton, and the frequent breakdowns associated with motoring in its early stages are illustrated in the conjugation of the new verb to "mote":--

[Sidenote: _Motors and Motorists_]

PRESENT TENSE

I mote.
Thou stokest.
He looks out for the police.
We run into a lamp-post.
Ye knock a man over.
They pay damages.

IMPERFECT TENSE

I was moting.
Thou wast trying to steer.
He was carrying a red flag in front.
We were going four hours a mile.
Ye were cussing like anything.
They were giving it up as a bad job.

In 1897 _Punch's_ doggerel verses on "Motor-car-acteristics" are entirely disparaging to the new mode of locomotion, on the score of noise, smell and risk. With the new century the question of control became urgent, and while _Punch_ burlesques the grandmotherly restrictions adopted by some local authorities, his "Merry Motorist's Lament" in 1901 is aimed at the selfishness of those who resented the claims of pedestrians, horses, children, dogs, etc., to the use of the roads. Policemen were already employed to time the speed of motorists, but no distinguishing numbers were yet carried. To 1902 belong the first illustrations of the motor-bicycle and of "trailers" attached to the "push-bike." Breakdowns and the wearisomeness of motoring "shop" form the theme of verses in 1903. The adoption of the word "chauffeur" is resented by _Punch_ on patriotic grounds; but while suggesting various alternatives for the word "road-hog," which had now come into use, he has no mercy for the nuisance which had called it into being. When the speed limit was abolished in this year, _Punch_ vigorously opposed the concession, and in the text to his cartoon suggests that the true remedy was to be found in limiting the power of the engines. From this date onward the motor-car, being more or less firmly established as an integral part of the locomotive system, passes from the domain of the abnormal, and is superseded as a theme for speculation and prophecy by the airship and the aeroplane.

_Punch's_ first picture of a flying machine in this period occurs in the autumn of 1894. The mechanism is, however, purely fanciful, and the design more remote from the actuality of 1908 than that which I have reproduced in Vol. I., p. 73. The _Annual Register_ for 1900 records under date July 2 the flight of Count Zeppelin's airship from Friedrichshafen to Immenstaad on the Lake of Constance--a distance of three and a half miles. In the following year _Punch's_ "leaves from an aeronaut's diary", though purely farcical, are yet of interest as the earliest reference in his pages to flying in a "dirigible" as a _fait accompli_. How modest _Punch's_ prophecies were in regard to speed may be judged from his picture--at about the same date--of an aerial "bobby" arresting people for flying at thirty miles an hour! The flying motor-cab represented in 1902 belongs to the realm of uncircumstantial imagination, but in 1906, though ballooning is still spoken of as a fashionable amusement and is recommended, under the heading "If Pigs had wings," to road-hogs in search of a new thrill, a note of realism is struck by the use of the word "aeroplane" and reference to the £10,000 prize offered for the first airship flight from London to Manchester. The picture of aeroplanes at the close of this year recalls the Japanese box-kite. _Punch_ was evidently a little lax in his terminology. The balloon he commended to the "road-hog" probably meant the airship, for he almost simultaneously speaks of the passing of the old gas balloon, and when in 1907 _Punch_ published a design for a new penny piece "in accordance with Britannia's aerial ambitions," Britannia is shown in mid-air in what is apparently the car of an airship, certainly not the old "basket" of a balloon.

If _Punch_ failed in 1908--the _annus mirabilis_ of the Conquest of the Air--to recognize the paramount claims of the Brothers Wright, it must be borne in mind that the notorious aversion from publicity shown by those pioneers, and the deliberate secrecy with which they had conducted their experiments, kept them for a while out of the limelight. Mr. Farman's exploits in the early months of 1908 are duly celebrated in the cartoon in which Icarus, watching a biplane, says: "Confound that fellow! I wish _I'd_ thought of that!" But though Mr. Farman's efforts were completely eclipsed by those of Orville Wright in America and Wilbur Wright at Le Mans in France, in September, October and December, _Punch_ only gradually awoke to the fact. The reference to Wilbur Wright on September 16 conveys no clear acknowledgment of his achievement. He is, however, by implication promoted to importance three weeks later when we read amongst various "Messages from the Dead" the statement of Icarus: "The word aeroplane is a monstrosity to Elysian ears, and the mere mention of W(ilbur) W(right) puts me in a wax. Anyhow, no sea can be called after a man with such a name." An allusion in the following week to Wilbur Wright's avoidance of the "snap-shooter" helps to explain how it came about that he never figured in a cartoon. M. Bleriot's first cross-Channel flight in 1909 made a prodigious stir, and _Punch_ chronicled it in the figure of "Winged Victory" landing on the cliffs at Dover.

PUNCH (to Mr. Marconi): "Many hearts bless you to-day, Sir. The world's debt to you grows fast."]

Wireless telegraphy makes its _début_ in the pages of _Punch_ in 1894, when the verses "Hail, Columbia!" associate it with the name of Nikola Tesla, the electrician, born on the borders of Austria and Hungary, who migrated to the States in 1884. Five years later the Fairy Electricity, armed with wireless, gives warning to submarine cables and land telegraphs that she won't be able to keep them much longer. _Punch_ was here a previous prophet; but he showed a decidedly "intelligent anticipation" in his article on "Marconigrams" in January, 1902, where he predicted accurately enough some of the drawbacks involved in the tapping of messages by "receivers" other than those for which they were intended. The word "Marconigram"--in itself a tribute to the predominance of Signor Marconi's "system"--was then brand-new. _Punch's_ use of it antedates by a week the earliest reference quoted in Murray.

The name of Marconi was for several years unfortunately mixed up with a resounding politico-financial scandal, arising out of a traffic in shares in which the inventor was never even remotely implicated. _Punch_, therefore, had an extra reason for acknowledging his great services to humanity in the "S.O.S." cartoon in October, 1913, when a great disaster was averted by a wireless message from a liner in distress.

[Sidenote: _The Submarine of Fancy and Fact_]

NEPTUNE: "Look out, my dear--you're mistress _on_ the sea; but there's a neighbour of yours that's trying to be mistress _under_ it."

BRITANNIA: "All right, Father Nep--I'm not asleep."

("M. Rousseau, the inventor of the submarine warship says that the advantage of the submersible system would be incontestable, but that certain problems have arisen of which the solution has not been altogether realized.... The belief of M. Rousseau, however, is that the type of the submersible is perfectible, and that the difficulties will be overcome."--_Moniteur de la Flotte_, quoted in _The Times_.)]

Until the beginning of the new century _Punch's_ treatment of the submarine was mainly fantastic with intermittent moments of misgiving. The former mood prevails in his burlesque sequel to Jules Verne's _Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea_, printed in 1899, in which Esterhazy and Du Paty de Clam (notorious personages in the Dreyfus "affaire") are introduced along with "Captain Nemo." The submarine was at the moment chiefly associated in the public mind with Jules Verne's romance, and on that very account was perhaps treated less seriously than it deserved. Jules Verne, as we now know, was aggrieved that his countrymen did not recognize him as a scientific writer. But French engineers and inventors were busy with the problem, and in 1900 M. Rousseau's "submersible" inspired _Punch_ with a cartoon in which Neptune warns Britannia of the new menace to her rule, while Britannia replies that she is not asleep. The heading "Rousseau's Dream" certainly implies scepticism, but little more than a year later _Punch_, in May, 1901, had come to recognize the grim actualities of the new branch of the Navy:--

THE SONG OF THE SUB-MARINED

A life 'neath the ocean wave,
A home in the rolling deep,
That the billows never lave
Though the currents never sleep.
Where the whiting come and tap
On the porthole's misty pane,
And the congers bark and snap
In a dogfish-like refrain.

A life 'mid the flowing tide,
A home in the sunless sea,
In a ship with a porpoise hide
That ever concealed must be.
A perpetual game of nap
On the ocean's ill-made bed;
There one's feet get soft as pap
Where the sole alone may tread.

Oh, well for the collier lad
As he curses his garb of grime!
Oh, well for the man nigh mad
With the heat in a torrid clime!
O! well for the dark Lascar
In the sea of ice or snow!
But alas! without sun or moon or star,
For the mariner down below!

Sir Percy Scott's warning on the eve of the war of 1914, as I notice elsewhere, was not taken seriously by _Punch_. To go back to 1901, it was in that year that an acute controversy raged over the efficiency of the "Belleville" tubular boilers, but _Punch_ contented himself with merely registering the conflicting views of the experts.

[Sidenote: _Röntgen Rays and Radium_]

The discovery of the Röntgen rays in 1896 and of radium in 1903 are not absolutely neglected; but that is about all that can be said of _Punch's_ frivolous comments on these momentous new-comers. On the other hand, the possibilities and abuses of the cinematograph were his constant preoccupation from 1896 onwards. _Punch_ attended an exhibition given by a M. Trewey in that year, and, while making play with the exhibitor's name, was sufficiently up-to-date to allude to the "Pictures" and to foresee the inevitable abbreviation of their classical title. In 1901, under the heading "What it must never come to," _Punch_ only too correctly foreshadowed the vulgarity and indecorum of the film play in later years.

Nearly half a century earlier _Punch_ had chronicled the flight of the "Wild geese" to the gold diggings in California and Australia. Later on South Africa had become the lure to all who suffered from the _auri sacra fames_. In 1897 it was the turn of the New World again, and Klondyke and the Yukon were words on every lip. The old story of fortunes and failures was once more repeated, though not on so large a scale, and _Punch_ summed up its lessons in his pessimistic picture of exhausted diggers in Arctic surroundings lying at the feet of a sinister skeleton figure guarding a great gold nugget.

In the domain of non-commercial exploration three phases are to be noted: Nansen's "Farthest North" in the 'nineties, Peary's Conquest of the North Pole in 1909, and the Antarctic tragedy of 1912. Nansen's gallant effort was happily above criticism; and his fame, won in this arduous field, has of late been enhanced by his disinterested and humane persistence in the relief of the victims of the Great War. Peary's triumph, though great and incontrovertible, was clouded at the time by the extraordinary controversy which arose out of the rival claim of another American explorer, Dr. Cook. His story, according to which he had reached the Pole before Peary, was accepted at Copenhagen and did not lack a certain amount of American backing. In his earliest comments on the contradictory reports _Punch_ preserved an attitude of judicious caution, tempered with ironic satisfaction that the rival claimants were both Americans. But the publication of Dr. Cook's narrative converted this suspense of judgment into incredulity and even ridicule. The name of Dr. Cook's chief native witness, "Etukishook," was, to put it mildly, unfortunate. _Punch's_ final comment took the form of a cartoon in which the American Eagle was shown sitting on the top of the "Big Nail" and complacently remarking: "My Pole, anyway!"

[Sidenote: _The Antarctic Tragedy_]

From Dr. Cook's narrative to the journals of Captain Scott is a step from the ridiculous to the sublime. Here, again, there had been rivalry, but rivalry without dispute. The goal had been reached by Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer, only a few weeks before Scott and his four companions, Captain Oates, Dr. Wilson, Lieutenant Bowers and Petty Officer Evans--all of them "names to resound for ages." In March, 1912, "Captain Scott and his gallant comrades reached the South Pole and died on their homeward way." With this brief sentence _Punch_ prefaces his memorial verses on what was at once the most tragic and heroic episode in all the long annals of Polar exploration:--

Not for the fame that crowns a gallant deed,
They fixed their fearless eyes on that far goal,
Steadfast of purpose, resolute at need
To give their lives for toll.

But in the service of their kind they fared,
To probe the secrets which the jealous Earth
Yields only as the prize of perils dared,
The wage of proven worth.

So on their record, writ for all to know--
The task achieved, the homeward way half-won--
Though cold they lie beneath their pall of snow,
Shines the eternal sun.

O hearts of metal pure as finest gold!
O great example, where our sons may trace,
Too proud for tears, their birthright from of old,
Heirs of the Island Race!

In this context I may note two great disasters, the one at the beginning and the other at the end of this period, which served to illustrate the "price of Admiralty" and the perils of speed when combined with enormous size and structure of a type in which design has outrun strength. The first was the loss of the _Victoria_ in the manoeuvres off Tripoli in 1893, owing to an error in judgment on the part of a great admiral--Sir George Tryon. The second was the loss of the _Titanic_ in April, 1912. _Punch_ in both instances confined himself to the expression of sympathy and condolence, without endeavouring to draw morals or recalling, _à propos_ of the _Titanic_, his curious prophecy, given in an earlier volume, of the likelihood of just such a disaster resulting from the cult of speed at all costs and in all weathers.

The perils of the sea naturally suggest the means of endeavouring to avoid them. After a long interval the Channel Tunnel scheme was revived in 1906, and in his cartoon in January, 1907, _Punch_ indicates that it was calculated "a double debt to pay." Neptune is shown objecting to have his power undermined, but Britannia retorts: "I want to see more of my friends over there, and I never look my best when I've been seasick." So again, in August, 1913, under the heading "The Entente Tube," when the steward on a night Channel boat observes, "If they bring in this 'ere tunnel, my job's gone," _Punch_ replies, "That's the only sound objection I've heard yet."

STEWARD (on night Channel boat): "If they bring in this 'ere tunnel, my job's gone."

MR. PUNCH: "That's the only sound objection I've heard yet."]

(Foreign Artillery Officer, after dropping shell from Dirigible with the idea of destroying London): "Tut! Tut! I've missed it!"]

[Sidenote: _Punch's Prophecies_]

_Punch's_ forecasts and prophecies are mentioned under various headings, but two may be specially noted here. In 1909 a foreign officer (obviously a German) is depicted by Mr. George Morrow in the car of an airship "after dropping a shell with the idea of destroying London." "Tut! tut!" he observes, "I've missed it." The second picture, in October, 1910, is of "The New Arm and how to use it," and illustrates the conversion of a number of soldiers, by the device of opening umbrellas of a peculiar pattern, into what the approaching air-scout takes to be a field dotted with gigantic flowers. But, as I showed in an earlier volume, _Punch_ described the principle of _camouflage_ in full detail about half a century before it was carried into practice.

CHANGING LONDON

[Sidenote: _Cabs v. Taxis_]

MR. PUNCH (supported by shades of two of his most famous henchmen, John Leech and Charles Keene): "Good-bye, old friend. You've been very useful to me, but your day is done."]

London underwent many notable changes, structural and otherwise, between 1892 and 1914, but perhaps the most remarkable were brought about by the engineer rather than by the architect. Macadam had yielded to asphalt, and now asphalt largely gave place to the wood pavement. Electric lighting became general, and with the "electrification" of the old Underground a favourite source of well-founded complaint was finally removed. But the conspicuous and outstanding feature of London traffic in this period was the coming of the Tubes, while above ground it was revolutionized by the motor, and the passing to a great extent of horse-drawn vehicles. As early as 1902 Mr. Briton Rivière uttered a lament over the disappearance of the horse from London traffic. His point of view was quite intelligible, but it was purely artistic. _Punch_ was a great lover of the "noble animal," but it was precisely for that reason that he welcomed its release from the drudgery and suffering, the maltreatment and overloading inseparable from the old order. The speeding-up of street traffic brought with it new perils and noises, but it freed us from many discomforts and nuisances--for example, the "cab-runner," rampant in the middle 'nineties, who plagued unprotected females by his extortions and insolence until the coming of the taxi ran him off his legs. At the time of the South African War, when _Punch_ noted the commandeering of 'bus horses for service at the front, he declared that there had been hardly any improvement in the public vehicles of London since the days of Shillibeer--the coach-builder who introduced omnibuses to London in 1829. It is true that the drivers were famous for their conversational powers, which motor-bus drivers are unable to exercise owing to their isolation, but only mediævalists can lament the passing of the old lumbering, stuffy 'bus, dimly lit by oil lamps, and in wet weather redolent of damp straw. As for the "growler," _Punch_ was decidedly premature when in 1905, the centenary of the year in which public conveyances first plied for hire in London, he assumed that its reign was over. In 1907 he paid the "growler" the homage of a cartoon in which _Punch_, attended by the shades of John Leech and Charles Keene, admitted that the "Cabby" had been "very useful to him"--as a target for generally hostile criticism. In spite of _Punch's_ repeated valedictions, the "growler" continued to emerge during strikes in later years, and I am not certain whether it can be pronounced to be dead even yet. In 1907, again, there is a curious reference to the now largely disused practice of whistling for cabs. An irritated hansom-cabby observes to a gentleman who has been whistling for a "taximeter cab" for ten minutes--in series of three whistles--"Try _four_ whistles, guv'nor, and p'r'aps you'll get an airship." The whistling code had first of all to be revised so as to establish the precedence of the "taxi," and then was simplified by the disappearance of the "growler" and the hansom. In this context may be quoted the epitaph based on the fact that a French traveller had taken "Job Masters" to be a personal name, and published in 1909:--

His horses were old and his carriages were older,
But they were all we could get and we had to put up with them.
His watchwords were Livery and Bait, and he will be sadly missed.
His end was Petrol.

L.C.C.: "Ha, ha! You must learn to love me!"]

THE FAIRY ELECTRA (to Steam Locomotive Underground Demon): "Now they've seen me, I fancy _your_ days are numbered."

(Central London Electric Railway opened by H.R.H. the Prince of Wales--Wednesday, June 27, 1900.)]

[Sidenote: _The L.C.C. Trams_]

On the vexed question of the extension of the tramway system to central London _Punch_ did not maintain an inflexible consistency. In 1905 he supported the L.C.C. in their effort to carry the tram system across Westminster Bridge and along the Embankment, and when their Bill, passed in the Commons, was thrown out by the Lords, he showed Lord Halsbury, the leader of the Opposition on this occasion, as an out-of-date Horatius, _Punch_ informing him that "this isn't ancient Rome. This is modern London, and you've just got to move on." Yet in 1907 the congestion of empty trams between Blackfriars and Westminster Bridge moved him to ridicule the L.C.C.'s "Spectacular Vacuum Embankment Trams," and to paint a fancy portrait of a grocer's assistant who had actually succeeded in riding in one of them. Later on, again, on the eve of the War, _Punch_ made it clear that he had no sympathy with the L.C.C. in their obstinate preference for trams as opposed to motor-buses. The L.C.C. tram was "beaten on points" by its more flexible rival. "Hard lines on me," says the tram. "Yes," retorts the motor-bus, "it's always hard lines with you, my boy. That's what's the matter; you can't side-step."

But the coming of the new order in London locomotion dates appropriately from the year 1900. Early in that year _Mr. Punch_ describes his experiences on a trip from the Monument to Stockwell in what he calls the "Sardine-box railway," dwelling on the scrimmages of passengers and the rocking of the trains, and endorsing the company's advertisement that it was the "warmest line in London." Criticism gives place to eulogy in the summer, when the fairy "Electra" gives the Steam Locomotive Underground Demon notice to quit, and _Punch_ adopts the phrase, "The Twopenny Tube," from his lively but short-lived contemporary the _Londoner_. "Horace in London" indites a "Carmen Tubulare" in honour of the new Underground, and a burlesque article is based on the notion that the ozone generated in the Tubes would lead to a monstrous growth of appetite. The new and highly irregular verb, "Tu be," is conjugated in all tenses and moods, beginning: "I tube, thou payest tuppence; he Yerkes[6]; we get a hustle on; ye block the gangways; they palm off 'bus tickets." Complaints of over-crowding testified to the popularity of the new method of transit, and the voice of the "strap-hanger" was soon loud in the land. The congestion on the suburban railways had moved one of _Punch's_ bards to poetic remonstrance as early as 1901:--

We wage no far-off conflict with Afridi or with Boer,
A present peril we must face, our foes are at the door;
Brave must he be of heart, and as a flint must set his face,
Who in the train at Finsbury Park would struggle for a place.

[Footnote 6: Charles Tyson Yerkes, the American financier who, after a chequered early life, became a railway magnate and took a leading part in organizing and financing the London electrical railways.]

FRENCH TOURIST (to Father Thames): "Dis, donc, mon vieux, when does the next boat start on your beautiful river?"

FATHER THAMES: "It doesn't start. I ain't allowed to have any boats."]

Six years later _Punch_ describes "rack-hanging" on the suburban lines of the Great Eastern as one stage worse than "strap-hanging" on the Underground. Another and more formidable outcome of the subterranean extension of London traffic was noted in 1913 _à propos_ of the cracks in St. Paul's. _Punch's_ Londoner exults complacently over the impending downfall, so long as he is swiftly transported from his home to his office:--

I thunder down to work each morn,
And some historic shrine
Must have its matchless fabric torn
To get me there at nine;

And when I gather up my traps,
As sundown sets me free
A nation's monuments collapse,
To take me home to tea.

To parody Lord John Manners's couplet:--

Let fanes and monuments in ruins lie,
But give us still our new Mobility.

While there was this feverish activity in developing surface and subterranean communications on land, the apathy of the authorities in failing to develop an efficient service of steamboats roused _Punch_ to repeated protests--notably in the cartoon where Father Thames explains to a French visitor: "I ain't allowed to have any boats." In more complacent mood, however, Father Thames ejaculates, "Well, I'm blowed! This quite gets over me," as he surveys the opening in 1894 of the great Tower Bridge, or "the Giant Causeway," as _Punch_ calls it. In 1896 _Punch_ was concerned with the intention of the L.C.C. to do away with Chelsea Reach, and did not disguise his satisfaction when the scheme was "turned down" by a Select Committee. On the other hand, the unkempt and squalid condition of what he sarcastically calls the "Surrey Riviera" suggested a cartoon in January, 1913, exhibiting Father Thames in his filthiest guise saying plaintively, "I know a bank where the foul slime flows."

[Sidenote: _London's New Cathedral_]

The most notable of the structural changes in London in this period was the opening of the new thoroughfare from Holborn to the Strand and the clearing away of the old rookeries at the southern end. Kingsway and Aldwych were the names coined by Sir Laurence Gomme for the thoroughfare and crescent, and could not have been improved on; but _Punch_ exercised his ingenuity in offering a variety of suggestions purporting to be made by famous and notorious personages of the hour: e.g. "Via Marie," "John Lane," etc. Among single buildings the most notable addition was the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Westminster, consecrated in 1903. Bentley's masterpiece was the largest and most impressive church erected in London since St. Paul's, which _Punch_, in his irreverent "Lightning Guide" described as "London's largest temple and the biggest Wren's nest ever known." The new internal decoration executed in the early years of this century by the late Sir W. B. Richmond prompted the remark that "the Christian law is upheld in the nave, but the inside of the dome is strictly Mosaic." Mr. Hammerstein's Opera House in Kingsway after a brief allegiance to the serious lyric Muse went the way of other similar ventures. In the autumn of 1912 _Punch_ saw in the vacant theatre a chance for English opera, but his cartoon, "Now or Never," was not exactly optimistic, and the claims of Variety once more triumphed.

When improvements on a large scale are planned and executed it has generally been found impossible to reconcile the demands of High Art with the aims of municipal politics. The appeal of leading artists and architects was powerless to prevent the spoiling of the eastward vista along the chord of the Aldwych arc. So with the scheme of the Victoria Memorial, involving the new road from Trafalgar Square to Buckingham Palace. In the "Finishing Touch" _Punch_ represented the County Councillor blandly correcting London's remonstrance with him for blocking the view. Not a bit of it; he was only improving things: "_ars est celare artem_, you know"--in reference to the action of the "Improvements" Committee of the L.C.C. in allowing the prospect of the Admiralty Arch to be obstructed by a building at the eastern end.

The French have a saying that administrative art is always arid; _Punch_ went further and roundly accused the L.C.C. of Vandalism. In their schemes for widening Piccadilly in 1901 he scented a sinister design of converting it into a tramway route, just as he had foreshadowed the conversion of Rotten Row into a bicycle track in 1895--this, by the way, at a time when bicycling in the Park was only allowed from 10 A.M. till 12 noon. As a faithful champion of the equestrian interest, _Punch_ renewed in 1894 the appeals he had made in earlier years for making more rides in Hyde Park. He was much concerned with the general dirt and disorder which reigned there--the frowsy and immoral loungers, "socialist scamps and somnolent tramps, scoundrels who swear and zealots who groan," and welcomed the new rules in 1896 in the belief that they would exclude tub-thumpers, Salvationists and atheists, "sot and satyr, crank and vandal." _Punch_, in his zeal for maintaining the decencies and amenities of our parks, laid himself open to the charge of an anti-democratic bias. He was, however, sincerely proud of the glories of London, while always ready to denounce the blots on her scutcheon. Sir W. B. Richmond's anti-smoke crusade met with his approval in 1898. Writers who dilated on the fine atmospheric effects of London fog jarred on his robust common sense, but the beauties of Richmond Park in all seasons inspired him to genuine enthusiasm. A lyrical "note" new to his columns is sounded in the charming lines which he printed in 1910:--

Have you been to royal Richmond when the year is growing mellow,
And October, mild and fruitful, on its woodland sets her mark,
When the footpath--of her bounty--has a carpet red and yellow,
And the great harts roar a challenge as the twilight meets the dark,
And at half-past five or so,
There are lights that flash and glow,
Thrilling upward in the quiet out of Kingston down below?

LONDON SMOKE (tyrant and murderer): "Methinks there are two Richmonds in the field."

(A Mr. Richmond writes to _The Times_ in support of the Anti-Smoke campaign of Sir William B. Richmond, K.C.B., R.A. _Mr. Punch_ says, heartily, "Let 'em _all_ come, and more power to their elbows!")]

[Sidenote: _The End of the Westminster Aquarium_]

I do not find that _Punch_ in his record of "disappearances" notes the disuse of hatchments, but he duly chronicles at the close of 1895 the termination of the last of the old turnpike trusts on November 1. "Vanishing London" generally moved him to elegy. Over the Lowther Arcade, which was closed in 1898 by the sale of the Crown lease, he did not waste many tears, and the end of the Westminster Aquarium in January, 1903, did not excite any passionate regret. Still, _Punch_ had seen many strange shows and celebrities within its walls--Blondin, Zazel and Zaeo, Slavin and Sullivan, Pongo the Ape, Sandow the strong man, John Roberts the master of the cue; and a certain mitigated melancholy broods over _Punch_ as we watch him

Muse over a pipe of the days that are dead,
Dream that once more I am able to scan
Closely the bird with the duplicate head,
Live once again with the Petrified Man.

It was another matter altogether when _Punch_ heard that Clifford's Inn was to be pulled down in April of the same year. In his indignation he suggests that the Temple Gardens, Middle Temple Hall and Temple Church should forthwith be sacrificed to the craze for improvements, and continues in the same strain of exaggerated irony:--

If you turn the Charterhouse into a railway station, the Tower into
warehouses and Westminster Hall into an Inebriates' Home, something
will have been done towards making London a happier and a better place.

Another sign of the times which frequently exercised _Punch's_ mind and stimulated his satire was the multiplication of huge new hotels. In 1902, when it was announced that St. James's Hall was about to be pulled down to make room for another of these monsters, _Punch_ pictured Macaulay's New Zealander coming to visit London and finding it entirely composed of hotels and residential flats. The luxury _à l'Américaine_ of these mammoth establishments excited _Punch's_ strictures in 1907; simultaneously he inveighs against the poky and insanitary arrangements of the modern flat.

In earlier years _Punch_ had been prodigal of suggestions for the "improvement" of London; in this period he is more critical than constructive, though I note that in 1904 he reverts to his old suggestion of a great open-air _café_. This, he now proposed, should occupy the ground floor of the Ritz, with a _terrasse_ overlooking Piccadilly and the Green Park. But _Punch_ did not scorn the cheap restaurants, and in one of his "Lays of a Londoner" pays homage to the charms of Soho--a tribute culminating in this admirable stanza:--

Borne on the cosmopolitan breezes
Divinely blended odours trickle,
The louder forms of foreign cheeses
Contend against the home-made pickle.

[Sidenote: _Cromwell and Carlyle_]

It is hoped that Chelsea, with its Artists' Quarter, will take advantage of the magnificent opportunity offered by the four chimneys of the generating station. Why not an equestrian statue of Carlyle, reading his own works?]

On the subject of statues and memorials _Punch_ had always held strong views; views that by no means ministered to national self-satisfaction. When the question of a statue to Cromwell came up once more in 1894, _Punch_ practically repeated his old cut, with a slight variation of treatment, in "Room for a Big One," Cromwell addressing his Royal rivals, "Now then, your Majesties, I hope I don't intrude." In May, 1895, _Punch_ returned to the charge in his most truculent anti-monarchical vein:--

ON THE NEW STATUE

("Her Majesty's Government are about to entrust to one of our first sculptors a great historical statue, which has too long been wanting to the series of those who have governed England."--Lord Rosebery at the Royal Academy Banquet.)

Our "Uncrowned King" at last to stand
'Midst the legitimate Lord's anointed?
How will they shrink, that sacred band,
Dismayed, disgusted, disappointed!
The _parvenu_ Protector thrust
Amidst the true Porphyrogeniti?
How will it stir right royal dust!
The mutton-eating King's amenity
Were hardly proof against this slur.
William the thief, Rufus the bully,
The traitor John, and James the cur--
Their royal purple how 'twill sully
To rub against the brewer's buff!
Harry, old Mother Church's glory,
Meet this Conventicler?--Enough!
The Butcher dimmed not England's story,
But rather brightened her renown
In camp and court, it must be said,
And if he did not win a crown,
At least he never _lost his head_!

_Punch's_ acid remark made many years before, that we were incapable of producing a fine statue or memorial, is virtually repeated in his suggestion, made in 1896, for the formation of a "Metropolitan Statues Supply Association" for the purpose of supplying public statues and monuments on the hire system. There was certainly good excuse for the burlesque, for, as _Punch_ reminds us, "Mr. Akers-Douglas, replying to Mr. Labouchere as to whether his attention had been called to a statue 'purporting to be of the late Mr. John Bright in the Central Lobby,' and whether it is to remain there, said that it was erected under arrangements made with his predecessors. He admitted that there were very varied views as to its artistic merits."

[Sidenote: _National Heroes and their Memorials_]

In 1902 the fall of the Campanile of St. Mark's at Venice prompts a Trafalgar Square Lion to remark: "I only wish some of our London monuments would come down as easily." In an earlier volume I have mentioned _Punch's_ reiterated complaints of the time taken in completing the Nelson Memorial in Trafalgar Square. In 1903, after fifty years had elapsed, the monument to the Duke of Wellington in St. Paul's was still unfinished. _Punch_ dealt faithfully with this discreditable delay in a caustic perversion of Tennyson's ode, "Bury the Great Duke," and a cartoon in which, under the heading "Ars (Britannica) Longa," Napoleon, hearing from his victor that his monument is approaching completion, sarcastically comments, "Déjà?"

On the question of burials in Westminster Abbey, it may here be added, _Punch_ was clearly not satisfied with the arrangement which left the Dean as the chief arbiter, when he wrote in the summer of 1909:--

For whom shall England's high memorial fane
Offer a resting-place of hallowed stone
When they have nobly lived their destined span?
The nation speaks her choice, but speaks in vain;
The final verdict lies with one alone--
A Mr. Robinson, a clergyman.

The "Mr. Robinson," thus disparagingly referred to, was that learned divine, Dean of Westminster from 1902 to 1911, and since then Dean of Wells. It should therefore be remembered that he was Dean of Westminster when Irving was buried in the Abbey.

[Sidenote: "_Our Robert_"]