Mr. Punch's History of Modern England. Volume 2 of 4.—1857-1874

In earlier years Punch, as we know, had overlooked Lord Shaftesbury's great services as a practical philanthropist in view of his Sabbatarianism. But he had learned to dissociate Lord Shaftesbury from the "snuffling sect" of Puritan killjoys, and in 1868 indulges in a eulogy of his Protestant zeal against Popery and Ritualism. The ballad on the insurrection in Spain, in the early winter of that year, shows no abatement of Punch's distrust of Romanism. The end of the Temporal Power in 1870 was welcomed as the logical, inevitable, and desirable consummation of Italian unity: it made Italy, not the Vatican, mistress of Rome, and it was in keeping with the consistent policy of the paper that the Pope's pretensions as a peace-maker in 1871 should be roughly disputed. England, it is claimed, was the true pacificator of Europe, and Professor (afterwards Sir John) Seeley's observations in "How to keep the Peace" suggest the possibility of a League of Nations.

The end of this period was marked by the passing of a great divine, a famous bishop and the greatest of missionaries. In the memorial verses printed on April 13, 1872, Punch recognized the true saintliness, the love of truth, the nobly righteous indignation of F. D. Maurice: —

The life of love he lived, the truth he spoke,The seeds of good he sowed on earth remain.In many brave hearts, eased from Evil's yoke,The fruitful soul of Maurice lives again.

Incidentally it is noted that Maurice never received any preferment, bishopric, canonry, or deanery.

Wilberforce and Livingstone

The lines given below on Wilberforce, who is coupled with Lord Westbury, are largely inspired by the de mortuis note. The writer begins by recording the worst that had been said of both – the slyness of the sleek priest, the sneers and scorn and mincing tones of the bitter lawyer. But now we know better, and recognize that the dove was blended with the serpent in both: —

And so, Life's judgment set to right by Death's,Lay busy Bishop and keen Judge to rest;And, by their coffins, think with bated breaths,How good the worst of us, how bad the best.

Chorus of Old Washerwomen: "There! Take'em away – we can't be worrited with them things."

"If the seventy-five members of the Pan-Anglican Synod have not a single word to say upon any of the great questions, theoretical or practical, which concern the very existence of the Church of England, their impotent caution and misplaced decency will do more to endanger it than any external attack with which it is at present threatened." —Pall Mall Gazette.]

Writing of Livingstone, always one of his heroes, Punch does not agree with the view that his was a wasted life, or that a greater work of reclamation was to be done at home, and applauds the unselfishness, fearlessness, and vision of one who died in sight of evening rest and honours fairly won: —

By their own scale great souls gauge things and men;Their ways and weights are not our weights and ways;Only their vision goes beyond our ken,Reaching to larger lights – diviner days.

It was in this larger vision that Punch found the Church of England wanting, and when the first Pan-Anglican Synod met in 1867, he took as the text of his cartoon the acid comment of the Pall Mall Gazette just quoted.

The question of Public Worship Regulation was already in the air, though it did not lead to legislation until the return of the Conservatives to power. On July 12, 1873, Punch published a cartoon à propos of the protest against Ritualism and the Confessional. Mr. Miall, M.P., a leader of the Liberation Society, is shown with two archbishops expressing his delight to find them so earnestly co-operating with him for the destruction of the State Church. A fortnight later Punch complained that Dr. Thomson (the Archbishop of York) had misread the cartoon. What Punch really meant was to suggest that by neglecting the representations of real Churchmen, and by tolerating the antics of Ritualism, the hierarchy were playing into the hands of the Church's enemies. But he still hoped that the Archbishops would stiffen their backs and carry out the spirit of Tait's threat against those who brought their toys to church. So when Archdeacon Denison, who supported the Confessional, denounced certain Bishops for their ultra-Protestantism, Punch suggested that Denison's friends should present him with a triple cap (with bells).

EDUCATION

The worst of education, as Peacock remarks, is that there is no beginning and no end to it. But the subject is set about with other pitfalls and difficulties. It is one of the most important things in life; its annals have been adorned by great and even heroic names; yet the calling has never been free from gibes at the dominie and the gerund-grinder. And again, by the irony of fate it has been responsible for an unconscionable amount of dull and pedantic and cranky literature. There is no greater benefactor than a good schoolmaster; there is no greater bore than the "Educationist." Punch, though a comic journal, has not escaped the infection in dealing with the subject, but it is to his credit that on the whole he has resisted the temptation to indulge in untimely facetiousness, and has not been afraid to be serious when the occasion demanded.

Contending zealots, assisted by Parliamentary apathy, had effectually barred the progress of national education throughout the period treated in the previous volume. But the awakening had begun in 1858, though more than twenty years were to pass before Forster's Act was placed on the Statute Book. The debate on the Paper Duty in June, 1858, showed, at any rate, that all parties were at one in condemning this tax. Disraeli, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, could not afford to remit it, but Punch read the signs of the times aright in his comment: "The House voted £563,435 for Educational purposes in order to qualify the people to read the books which the removal of the paper duty will place in their hands." It was reserved for Mr. Gladstone to make good this forecast. His famous series of Free Trade Budgets between 1859 and 1865 were quite as much the effect as the cause of national prosperity, but in 1865 "no one ventured to doubt Gladstone's financial omniscience. Everyone who paid less for his pound of tea or his newspaper could look upon him as a personal benefactor."9

The judicious use of opportunity rather than genius may have been the secret of Gladstonian finance; but no such reserves are called for in appraising the merits of the series of Acts dealing with national education passed during his first Premiership. If one needs a practical illustration of the immense advance made in education in ten years, one need only compare the provisions of the Act of 1870 with the account of what Punch calls an "anti-educational demonstration" in the Commons in July, 1860, when Palmerston was Prime Minister: —

There was a Bill for making it compulsory on the employers of the labour of children under twelve years old, to have a certificate that the child was learning to read and write, and had twenty hours of teaching per month-nothing like an hour a day. But so monstrous an Innovation frightened the House. Mr. Henley was pious, and said that people were not to eat unless they worked, but were not commanded to read and write; Mr. Buxton was humane, and said there were thousands of children too idle, wicked or stupid to learn, and their vested rights were not to be interfered with; Mr. Hardy took the old Tory view, and said that the children of the poor were taught quite enough to enable them to do the duties they were intended for; and Mr. Baynes, as a Dissenter, declared the Bill to be needless, and that the work of education was going on admirably. Yielding to these irresistible arguments, the Bill was thrown out, a majority of 122 to 51 deciding that the children of the English poor want no assistance in the battle with the World, the Flesh and the First Whig.

It was this debate, by the way, that prompted Punch to recall the derivation of Parliament by a French etymologist from the two verbs parler and mentir.

Education Act of 1870

A good beginning had been made with the Act providing efficient inspection of endowed and Grammar Schools in 1869, but the Elementary Education Act of 1870 was a measure of first-rate importance, which has affected our national life more vitally than any other passed in the last fifty years, unless we except the People's Representation Act of 1918. From the moment of its introduction Punch realized its far-reaching influence. On March 26, 1870, he published the cartoon, "The Three R's, or Better Late than Never." Here we see Forster addressing a group of small school children, town and country types: "Well, my little people, we have been gravely and earnestly considering whether you may learn to read. I am happy to say that, subject to a variety of restrictions, conscience clauses, and the consent of your vestries – you may!" The conflict that led to the final compromise is indicated by two groups in the background: one amicably gathered round John Bull; the other including a bishop, a coronetted peer, a sour-visaged minister of the Chadband type, and an austere female.

Clerical Examiner: "What is your name?"

Incorrigible: "Biler, sir."

Clerical Examiner: "Who gave you that name?"

Incorrigible: "The boys in our Court, sir."

The issues involved are set forth in a "long and grave letter" addressed by Punch to "Master Gutterblood" in town, and "Master Chawbacon" in the country. Writing as their friend and well-wisher, sincerely anxious to see them properly taught, he deplores the obstacles hitherto put in their way by the "black-coats" – Parson, Priest and Nonconformist Minister. He applauds Forster's plan, and specially condemns the action of the secularizing party who would exclude all religion from schools, since the bulk of English people were in favour of some simple religious teaching: —

Those who are now barring your road to school are not the Churches, but those who insist that no Church at all shall have a hand in your teaching when you have got there. I have been accustomed to think that it was the Established Church's jealousy of the Dissenters that kept you ignorant, now it looks as if you were to be kept in the dark by the Dissenters' jealousy of the Established Church, working with those who distrust and dislike equally Church and Dissent, and all forms of religious Creed.

Mr. Punch (to Bull A.1): "Yes, it's all very well to say 'Go to school!' How are they to go to school with those people quarrelling in the doorway? Why don't you make 'em 'move on'?"

It was a fair summary of the opposing interests which clashed during the progress of the Bill through the House. Punch's impatience is shown in the further cartoon "Obstructives." "Those people" are a group of clerics of various Churches blocking the school doorway. A fortnight later Punch was able to announce in his "Essence of Parliament" that the very qualified compulsion proposed by Parliament had been approved by large majorities, and to publish his third cartoon on the solving of the problem. Master Forster (with his slate) is saying to Britannia, the Schoolmistress, "Please, M'm, I've done it, M'm." And when Britannia asks, "And how have you done it, William?" he replies, "Please, M'm, I've reduced all the fractions to the lowest common denomination." To this is added the stage direction "The good Boy enters the Cabinet." The Bill passed through both Houses, and when Parliament rose on August 10 and the Queen's Speech made special reference thereto, Punch comments, "Excuse us, your Majesty, but permit us to say 'Hooray!' and to add a cheer for Mr. Forster." He welcomed a measure which affirmed the principle that the State was bound to provide gratuitous instruction for all the children in the realm, but resented the educational luxuries which leading "Educationalists" were anxious to introduce. So we find a burlesque list of these fancy subjects, including hieroglyphics, croquet, bézique, etiquette, given in the following year with the remark: "There are people old-fashioned enough to think that it might be as well to give our poor neglected children only plain joints at first – the 3 R's – and let the entrées stand over for the present." The introduction of the "Fourth R" – Religion – prompted the "Educational Epigram" a year later: —

Milk is for babes, wrote one that knew.Sectarian Educators, youWho dogmas teach which Doctors question,Are you not giving babes strong meat,So much too tough for them to eatThe upshot must be indigestion?

Rector's Wife: "And what's your father, my boy?"

Boy: "My father's a 'Hagitator,' an' he says he won't have me learnt no catechism, 'r else you'll all of yer 'ear of it!"

In the following summer we have a picture by Charles Keene of a beery working man protesting against temperance propagandism at schools, and resolving to withdraw his small son from the reach of these subversive doctrines, while humorous capital is made out of the "Conscience Clause" at the expense of the "agitator." The provision of gratuitous meals to elementary school children was not yet even mooted, but Punch strongly supported the philanthropists who in 1867 gave weekly dinner parties in Marylebone to seven or eight hundred children, following the example set by Victor Hugo during his sojourn in Guernsey.

Scene – Toy-shop. (Enter highly educated Youth of Twelve). – "Oh, I want some toy, or conjuring trick, or something that would do for an old gentleman of fifty or thereabouts; my grandfather, in point of fact, – you know the kind of thing. I dessay."

Children and their Tormentors

Turning to preparatory or boarding schools, we have to note that academies of the type of "Dotheboys Hall" had not altogether disappeared, to judge by the advertisement which Punch pilloried under the heading of "Children and their Tormentors": —

"Boarding Schools wanted, in London, for a boy, nine years, and two girls, six and seven years old, requiring firm discipline, having become wild and unruly, through neglect occasioned by family misfortunes. No holiday could be given, as holidays destroy any good effected at school. The father, quite a gentleman, can only pay 20 guineas each. This advertisement is only intended for schools of pre-eminent efficiency for such cases, and prosperous enough to be able and willing to accept such terms, and undertake the needed task of reformation for the sake of the schools' own additional credit of success. Particulars and references, by letter only."

As for its conducing to the "credit" of a school to help unnatural fathers thus to get rid of their children, surely no one but a squeers could indulge in such a thought. If through neglect at home, a child becomes unruly and requires to be "reformed," it is right that at a proper age it should be sent to school, if proper means are wanting for teaching it at home. But a girl of six years old can scarcely be so "wild" as to require, for her taming, utter banishment from home: nor can she be much bettered by being badly fed for twenty pounds a year, and, worse still, taught to grow up without knowing what "home" means.

The name of "gentleman" had been strangely taken in vain a year earlier, as we gather from an extract which sounds like an echo from The Fairchild Family: —

THE GAME OF JACK KETCH

On Saturday last a man named Thomas Edwards was hanged for murder at Liverpool, when, according to a report of the execution which appeared in the Daily Telegraph: —

"To the discredit of some person, a drag, containing gentlemen's children, was brought near the gallows."

Fine fun for gentlemen's children during the Christmas holidays, to see a man hanged. Just the spectacle to amuse little boys – but perhaps there were some little girls too among these gentlemen's children. Well, in that case, the gentlemen have taken a good step towards getting their girls, as well as their boys, off their hands. Nothing is more likely than that the juvenile spectators of Thomas Edwards' death-struggles will get to play at hanging, and effectually hang one another.

In 1868 Punch was exercised in mind by the pernicious influence on the ingenuous youth of "penny dreadfuls," and the activities of educational faddists. Precocious pedantry, as we show on the previous page, is satirized in 1863. There is a curious foreshadowing of Madame Montessori's hostility to fairy tales in Du Maurier's "Little Christmas Dream." Du Maurier had a genius for the delineation of nightmares, and in this picture he quite excelled himself. Earlier in the same year Punch made excellent capital, again with the aid of Du Maurier's pencil, out of Lord Malmesbury's statement that it was useless to teach modern languages at the public schools, "as parents can easily procure such instruction for their children by hiring foreign nurses." The artist depicts four disgusted Harrow boys, who have returned for the holidays, taking an educational walk with their German and French instructresses, while a young and untutored yokel looks on with grim amusement.

Mr. L. Figuier, in the Thesis which precedes his interesting work on the World before the Flood, condemns the practice of awakening the youthful mind to admiration by means of fables and fairy tales, and recommends, in lieu thereof, the study of the Nature History of the World in which we live. Fired by this advice, we have tried the experiment on our eldest, an imaginative boy of six. We have cut off his "Cinderella" and his "Puss in Boots," and introduced him to some of the more peaceful Fauna of the pre-Adamite world, as they appear restored in Mr. Figuier's book. The poor boy has not had a decent nights rest ever since!

Lord Malmesbury considers that it is useless to teach modern languages at the Public Schools, "as parents can easily procure such instruction for their children by hiring foreign nurses." Observe the delight of four young gentlemen who have returned from Harrow for the holidays, and discover that their parents have procured French and German instruction for them. Also observe the envy of the young and untutored clown.

A notable landmark in the annals of preparatory and public school education is reached in 1869, when Punch quoted the following epoch-marking advertisement: —

"Grammar School, W – R – Wanted immediately, a Second Assistant Master, to teach thoroughly writing and arithmetic, also junior English subjects. Must be a good cricketer and round-arm bowler. Character to bear the strictest investigation. Salary £40, increasing to £60."

Punch on Co-Education

The resounding fame of W. G. Grace, who began his great career in first-class cricket in 1863, at the age of 15, and had just reached his majority, was doubtless responsible for this new educational departure. The salary was certainly not exorbitant, but the advent of the cricket-master moves no sympathy in Punch. He admits the force of the proverb that "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," but asks "does not Jack at some schools play a little to excess?" and speculates on the amazement which the schoolmaster abroad would feel in reading this announcement. On the other hand, over-pressure and "cramming" were equally distasteful to Punch, who was seriously perturbed by the sensational accounts given in 1870 of the breakdown of Woolwich candidates.

Mr. Punch is of opinion that a polite and easy bearing towards the opposite sex (tempered, of course, with propriety and discretion) cannot be inculcated at too early an age. He therefore recommends that whenever an Institute for Young Ladies happens to meet an Academy for Young Gentlemen, they should all be formally introduced to each other, and allowed to take their walks abroad in company.

Co-education had not yet emerged on the horizon of practical educational politics, and the plea put forward in a picture by Du Maurier for a mixed "crocodile" cannot be seriously entertained. The artist suggests that whenever an Institute for Young Ladies happens to meet an Academy for Young Gentlemen they should all be formally introduced to one another and allowed to take their walks abroad in company. The question of corporal punishment was raised by a lively correspondence in The Times, towards the close of 1872, on the Winchester practice of "tunding" with a ground-ash or cricket-stump. The action was general, the father of the boy whose punishment by a prefect had started the correspondence, the headmaster, Dr. Ridding, "in English less classical than queer," and sundry old Wykehamists all joining in. Punch was at first scandalized by the brutality with which the prefects exercised their disciplinary powers, but the spirit and good sense showed by the victim caused him to modify his view: —

His punishment, while he feels it unjustHe takes without blather or ban:Yes, out of the lot who've kicked up a dust,The boy is the Man.

At the beginning of the same year the invasion of the public schools by the new plutocracy, as described by a correspondent in the Morning Post, who assumed the unfortunate pseudonym of "Pavidus," impelled Punch to some outspoken comment. "Pavidus" complained that the standard in tips and pocket-money had been unduly raised by the young cotton-lords – boys who came back with £5 as a minimum. Punch finds the root of the evil in the perversion of the public schools from their original intention – to educate the sons of poor gentlemen – and suggests that if the "nobs" don't like their sons associating with young plutocrats, they should get up poor schools of their own and keep the high-bred paupers select. A similar situation has arisen since the war, but the difficulty has been solved without snobbery or squealing. Parents who cannot afford to send their sons to schools with which their families have been associated for generations, send them elsewhere, but they do not "make a song about it."

Arthur (on pony): "Hollo! What have you got on your heads?"

Juvenile Swell: "Why, you see, every snob wears a cap or a wide-awake now; so the men of our school have returned to the old Chimney Pot!"

(As paterfamilias we are sorry to say that we have observed this monstrosity many times this Christmas.)

University Reform

There remain the Universities, the apex of the educational pyramid. The Universities Commission was not appointed till 1872. Its report on the income and property of Oxford and Cambridge was not published till October 1874, and the Universities' Act was not passed till 1877. Punch's contributions to the discussions which arose over University Reform nearly always take the form of hostile criticism of the champions of "no change," and he devotes by far the greater amount of space to the castigation of Oxford conservatives and non-resident reactionaries. The vote on the institution of the non-Collegiate or "unattached" system in 1868 furnished Punch with the materials for a comprehensive indictment of all his pet Oxford aversions. In the wail of the Mediævalists, headed "An Oxford Miserere," Punch ranges himself on the side of the reformers; Sir John, afterwards Lord Coleridge, who had taken an active part in the successful movement for the abolition of religious tests in the Universities; Conington, the distinguished Latinist and editor of Virgil; Raper, the well-known Fellow of Trinity College, who, under more than one President, was the power behind the throne; and Jowett, who with Stanley and Maurice, had always been supported by Punch in his espousal of "modernist" views.

When Mr. Meyrick, an Oxford Don, expressed his satisfaction that our Educational System was not that of the Germans, Punch was unable to echo his complacency, and went so far as to wish that "our Dons and Fellows were but as these Germans"; but it may be pleaded in extenuation of his offence that the doctrine of "Kultur" was less vocal in the 'sixties, and that German professors and teachers were not then so firmly harnessed to the car of "Machtpolitik." Punch little thought that some fifty years later Admiral Tirpitz would admit that the most formidable opponent of Germany was the "polo-playing Englishman." The notion that pastime was overdone finds vent in the "Chant for College Athletes": —