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Mr. Punch's History of Modern England. Volume 2 of 4.—1857-1874
The train journey to Farnborough in the grey dawn, the company, and the fight itself are, however, described with spirit: —
Not only fighting covies,But sporting swells besides —Dukes, Lords, M.P.'s and Guardsmen,With county beaks besides;And tongues that sway our SenatorsAnd hands the pen that wieldWere cheering on the ChampionsUpon that morning's field.We pass over the details of the fight – how Sayers was floored nine times, and had his right arm crippled; how Heenan had both eyes put in mourning – to come to the last stage: —
Two hours and more the fight had sped,Near unto ten it drew,But still opposed – one-armed to blind —They stood, the dauntless two.Ah me! that I have lived to hearSuch men as ruffians scorned,Such deeds of valour brutal called,Canted, preached down and mourned!Ah, that these old eyes ne'er againA gallant mill shall see!No more behold the ropes and stakes,With colours flying free!But I forget the combat —How shall I tell its close,That left the Champion's belt in doubtBetween those well-matched foes?Fain would I shroud the tale in night, —The meddling Blues37 that thrust in sight, —The ring-keepers o'erthrown; —The broken ring, – the cumbered fight, —Heenanus' sudden, blinded flight, —Sayerius pausing, as he might,Just when ten minutes used arightHad made the fight his own!Bull Fight at Islington
This curious document, valuable as contemporary evidence, worthless as prophecy, serves to show how strangely Punch's humanitarianism was leavened and influenced by primitive instincts in the domain of sport.
Pigeon-shooting and bull-fighting were another matter altogether. In 1870 an abortive attempt was made to introduce the latter at the Agricultural Hall, Islington, and the Islington-Spanish bull-fight is treated with a happy mixture of ridicule and contempt in a contribution to Punch's "Evenings from Home." The proceedings appear to have been tame enough, and the bulls were probably "doped," yet enough of the real thing remained to warrant the hostile reception which the entertainment received. At its close the "Islington Spaniards" dispersed to the Islington public-houses. Punch returned to the subject a month later. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had interfered to good purpose. The Islington bull-fighters had been summoned before a magistrate and fined, and their "entertainment" had been stopped. Punch seized the occasion to add a comment which, on the very day on which, in 1921, I write these lines, is as timely as it was more than fifty years ago: —
From Islington to Wormwood Scrubbs is not far, and it is much to be feared by the tame-pigeon-shooting nobility and gentry that the officers of an impartial Association, vigilant to protect poor animals from cruelty, will as soon as possible be down upon the Gun Club.
Enthusiastic Cricketer: "Ah, last season was a good one! I'd both eyes blacked in one match, and two fingers smashed in the return match the same week! But give me 1870 over again. I got the ball on my forehead at 'short leg,' and was senseless for three-quarters of an hour!"
Cricket and Football
Turning to cricket, we find that "over-hand bowling flung from the elbow" was mentioned by Punch as a novelty in the late 'fifties. Cricket was still played in tall hats at that time; but by the 'sixties caps had come in. The dangers of the game are a not infrequent subject of comment, and, before the days of billiard-table pitches, the ball was capable of a good deal of awkward bumping; but to judge from Punch's pictures the resultant contusions were regarded with equanimity by the players as part of the day's work or play. Cricket was extending its domain, and à propos of the establishment of clubs at Lisbon and Oporto Punch quotes an entertaining account of a game between these clubs by a Lisbon sporting journalist for the instruction of his countrymen. The incident is taken by Punch as an occasion for suggesting international games of cricket: Turks and Chinamen, Dutch and Japanese. The Dutch have long been votaries of cricket; and though it has not caught on with the Japanese and Chinese, both these races have of late years cultivated lawn tennis with considerable success. Here, then, as so often happens, a mock prophecy is fulfilled in a way in which the prophet never expected. A critical year in the annals of Lord's was reached in 1864 when there was a danger of the ground being sold for building purposes. A sum of £10,000 was needed to secure the interests of cricket, and Punch, in an imaginary dialogue between a countryman and a cockney, represents the former as ready to contribute 5s. to avoid a national disgrace and "zave Lard's cricket ground."
References to football are confined to comments, mostly humorous but occasionally serious, on the practice of shinning or hacking. The Rules of the "West Shynnington Football Club" are conveniently used as a vehicle for a number of bad puns, but the trials of the modern referee are foreshadowed in the suggestion that "a Police Magistrate should always be in attendance to dispose of all charges made by players." Punch in more serious mood discerns in the letter of "A Surgeon" to The Times the disastrous results of hacking as then permitted by the Rugby code. "Hacking," in Punch's view, was simply an unfair form of fighting and should be abolished.
The outstanding event in rowing circles during these years was the famous race between the Oxford and Harvard fours on August 27, 1869. Punch celebrated the victory of Oxford in a notice giving the names of those who took part in the contest, congratulating Oxford, and wishing health to both crews, the accompanying cartoon representing a gigantic brawny John Bull shaking hands with a muscular but comparatively slim Uncle Sam, both in rowing trim, with the legend "Well Rowed All!" Punch, as umpire, remarks: "Ha, dear boys, you've only to pull together to lick all the world!" The sentiment is better than the treatment. Unluckily the race led to some acrimonious comment in the New York papers on British sportsmanship, and Punch, in his rejoinder, was more vigorous than polite. River "aquatics" have not always been free from recrimination. The origin of the famous retort to bargees, "Who ate puppy pie under Marlow Bridge?" is obscure; but it is mentioned as far back as the Almanack for 1858.
Leonora: "Dear! Dear! How the arrow sticks!"
Captain Blank (with a sigh of the deepest): "It does, indeed!"
Croquet and Flirtation
"Golf Sticks" are alluded to in January, 1858, but during the rest of this period I find no further mention of golf. Of social pastimes archery is still in favour, but croquet is by far the most frequently referred to. To judge from the pictures, croquet, then in its unscientific infancy, was played on lawns innocent of mowing machines or scythes. It was mainly an excuse for flirtation between Charles and Clara; and the cheating earlier mentioned was regarded as quite fair game. Punch dealt with it in a serial poem of heroic proportions in the year 1863. This epic – for it was little less – ran to seven numbers, but it is not memorable apart from its length. When the Croquet Tournament was held at Wimbledon in 1870, Punch was ready to acknowledge the presence of Queens of Beauty, but could not accord the men players a higher title than that of Carpet Knights.
Chorus of Offended Maidens: "Well! If Clara and Captain de Holster are going on in that ridiculous manner – we may as well leave off playing."
Miss Maud: "How do we stand?"
Captain Lovelace: "They are six to our love; and 'love' always means nothing, you know."
Miss Maud: "Always?"
Lawn Tennis
"Aunt Sally" – alleged to have been introduced by the Duke of Beaufort – is portrayed as a novel adjunct to the amenities of garden parties in 1860 by Leech. Roller-skating came in about 1873, and about the same time lawn tennis having survived its early name of "Sphairistikè," began to attract the attention of Punch's artists. The implements employed have a prehistoric appearance, but the pastime, thought still in its insular, garden-party and "pat-ball" stage, inspired some graceful lines in 1874: —
LAWN TENNISNow the long shadows of September come,And idle for a time the scribbler's pen is,He passes from the Town's discordant hum,From garrulous gossip of the kettle-drum,38From orators who should have been born dumb,To watch upon green lawns the girls play tennis.Robins are trilling in the faded trees,The flitting swallows of their voyage chatter,Testing their wings before they dare the seas,For Nile's dun marge or blue-girt Cyclades;The sportsman's shots come frequent on the breeze,The flying balls keep up a pleasant clatter.Croquet's a merry game for those who flirt(Who doesn't, pray —Punch, poet, peer, or parson?),But Tennis, when the ladies are alert,Follow the swift ball with a looped-up skirt,Strike it on high with graceful arm expert,Burns up the masculine heart with sudden arson.So, pour some icy fluid in a glassTinged with deep mulberry stain, true work of Venice:And Mr. Punch will let the soft hours pass,Watching with tranquil eyes each lovely lassFlit like an Oread o'er the smooth green grass,And win his old heart as she wins at Tennis.1
No mention is made in the otherwise full and sympathetic notice of James Montgomery in the D.N.B. of this, not the least honourable of the services of that Sheffield worthy. Though his verse, especially in the epic vein, was unequal, the D.N.B., differing from Lord Jeffrey who slated it in the Edinburgh, agrees with Punch in according James Montgomery the title of poet, reserving that of "Poetaster" to Robert or "Satan" Montgomery, who also dealt in epics, and was the victim of Macaulay's famous and ferocious castigation in the Quarterly.
2
"A painful death by burning has happened at Torquay. Louisa Row, aged ten, lost her mother a few weeks ago, and undertook the cooking for her father, a labourer, and the rest of the family. She had well performed the duties devolving upon her since her mother's death, until one day she went too near the grate, her frock was ignited, and she was terribly burned. The poor child lived several days after the accident. At the inquest a verdict of 'Accidental death' was returned."
3
The variations of view in Punch's estimate of John Bright form an interesting study. In the main, while admiring his courage, Punch found him too fond of asserting an impracticable independence. The masses distrusted him as a cottonocrat; the middle-classes as an out-and-out democrat and therefore an advocate of mob-rule. Punch himself had described Bright as an inciter to class-hatred in 1860.
4
The Political History of England, Vol. xii., by Sidney Low and Lloyd Sanders, p. 207.
5
It is strange that in the full account of Mill's Parliamentary activities given by Sir Leslie Stephen in his article on Mill in the D.N.B. no mention is made of this speech. Nor can I find any reference to it in Bain's Reminiscences.
6
Mill's actual words were "flogging – a most objectionable punishment in ordinary cases, but a particularly appropriate one for crimes of brutality, especially crimes against women." (Hansard, 3rd series, Vol. cxci., p. 1,054.)
7
Within our own times the milking of cows on Sunday was objected to by Scottish Sabbatarians.
8
This probably refers to his work on the Epistles of St. Paul (1855).
9
Oman's England in the Nineteenth Century, p. 155.
10
In January, 1868, reference is made to carriages with circular holes between the compartments in order to facilitate communication.
11
The scheme was originally proposed by a French engineer named Mathieu in the very beginning of the century, and taken up in 1833 by Thomé de Gamond, who worked at it for more than twenty years until an International Committee was formed. Operations were interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War, but resumed in earnest in 1872. M. de Gamond died in poverty in 1876.
12
St. Legers.
13
Punch notes that not a single shop was closed in Paris on the day of the Emperor's funeral.
14
See "Bant" in Passing English of the Victorian Era, by J. Redding Ware.
15
Frank, European.
16
Viziers, Ministers.
17
Cash.
18
Menials employed to apply the bastinado.
19
Infidels, unbelievers.
20
Chief or Lord.
21
The year 1859 is regarded by constitutional historians as a turning-point in our Parliamentary history. Punch mentions, amongst other things, that it was the year in which "the fashion broke out of abusing our wives for bad dinners."
22
The "tyranny of the younger brother" who is continually harassing his grown-up sisters was undoubtedly one of the results of the customary large families of the period. In Leech's pictures, again, the tender passion is nearly always illustrated by passages between cousins.
23
Yet Sir Henry Holland, the distinguished physician, states in his Reminiscences (1872) that he knew of cases, which had defied medicine, being cured by a ticket for Almack's.
24
The income tax was then only 10d. in the pound over £150.
25
May 20, 1867.
26
In 1858 Punch had chaffed Kingsley for his Ode to the North-East Wind in a parody purporting to be written by a dyspeptic valetudinarian, who resented the strenuous "muscular Christianity" of the original.
27
See the Life of John Ruskin, by Sir E. T. Cook.
28
The present writer saw and heard Ristori in the sleep-walking scene at Manchester in the early 'eighties, and her foreign accent was undoubtedly most pronounced. Her first words provoked laughter from the gallery, drowned immediately in a storm of cheering, renewed at the end of an impersonation so powerful and even terrifying that one entirely forgot the accent. The episode had an amusing sequel. An old theatre-goer wrote to a Manchester paper to express indignation at Ristori's reception by the gallery. The laughers could not be Manchester men: they must have been boors from Chowbent. A couple of days later a letter appeared from an equally indignant resident at Chowbent repelling the aspersion on a community so civilized that it possessed a Town Hall!
29
The "Old Vic," now reclaimed very much on the lines of the Russian ideal.
30
The Musical World was edited by J. W. Davison, the musical critic of The Times, a well-equipped musician, an unflinching champion of Mendelssohn and a bitter and persistent disparager of Wagner and Schumann.
31
Faust was produced at Her Majesty's Theatre (Mapleson) on June 11 and at Covent Garden (Gye) on July 2.
32
Grove was then – in 1872 – the manager of the Crystal Palace, and late in that year Punch wrote of him, "The Crystal Palace has never been so well kept as under the sway of my friend Mr. George Grove, Nemorum pulcherrimus ordo– Grove's rule is most admirable."
33
Another Charles Eastlake, the namesake and nephew of the P.R.A., for many years contributed art-criticism to Punch over the signature "Jack Easel," but was clearly free from the suspicion of family bias.
34
Some Experiences of a Barrister's Life.
35
Leaves of a Life.
36
Savile House, on the north side of Leicester Square, originally the residence of Sir George Savile, Burke's friend, was in its latter days rebuilt as a place of entertainment and became a resort of Bohemians and fast men about town. It was burned down in 1865 and the site is now occupied by the Empire Theatre.
37
Policemen.
38
"Drum" – a crowded social reception – dates back to the days of Pope. The Victorian "kettle-drum" was a tea-party.
