Mr. Punch's History of Modern England. Volume 3 of 4.—1874-1892

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

A Pacific Prince

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

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

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

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

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

England's home-staying daughter, bride, yet boundAs with silk ties, within the dear home-roundBy many a gentle reason.

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

Punch's Jubilee Ode

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

Not with the ruthless Roman's proud paradeOf flaunting ensigns and of fettered foes,Nor radiantly arrayedIn pomp of purple, such as fitly flowsFrom the stern Conqueror's shoulders, comes our QueenWhilst England's ways with June's glad garniture are green.Not with the scent of battle, or the taintOf cruel carnage round about her car,Making the sick air faintWith the dread breath of devastating war,Rolls on our Royal Lady, whilst the shoutOf a free people's love compasses her about.The pageantry that every step attendsIs not the martial pomp that tyrants love,No purchased shout of slaves the shamed air rends;Peace's white-pinion'd doveMight perch upon those banners unafraid,The shackled forces here are thralls of Art and Trade.Triumph! Shall we not triumph who have seenThose fifty years round on from sun to snow,From snow to sun, since when, a girlish QueenIn that far June-tide's glow,Your brow first felt that golden weight well-worn,Which tried the Woman's heart, but hath not over-borne?Fifty fair years which, like to all things fair,Are flecked with shadow, yet whereon the sunHath never set in shame or in despair,Their changeful course have run.And we who saw the dawn now flock to seeJune's noonday light illume Victoria's Jubilee.Just, pure, and gentle, yet of steadfast willWhen high occasion calls and honour pricks!With such a soul our Commonwealth should thrill,That, that alone shall fixOur rule in rock-like safety, and maintainFree way for England's flag o'er the wind-winnowed main.And Punch, whose memory scans those fifty years,Whose patriot forecast broods o'er coming-days,Smiles with the smiling throngs, and lifts his cheers,With those the people raise,And prays that firmer faith, spirit more free,May date from this proud day of jocund Jubilee.

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to Conciliate Ireland

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

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

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

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

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

Punch treats the parallel from Paddy's point of view, and winds up: —

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

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

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

Two Views of the Kaiser

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

The Prince of Wales doth join with all the worldIn praise of – Kaiser Wilhelm; by my hopesI do not think a braver gentlemanMore active-valiant, or more valiant young,More daring, or more bold, is now aliveTo grace this latter age with noble deeds.

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

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

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

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

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

SOCIETY

Sir Gorgius Midas: "Hullo! Where's all the rest of yer gone to?"

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

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

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

Woes of the Country Squire

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

The fine Old English Gentleman once held a fine estate,Of a few thousand acres of farm and forest land, with polite and punctually-paying tenants, excellent shooting, ancestral oaks, immemorial elms, and all that sort of thing.But it hasn't been so of late;For the rents have gone down about twenty per cent., lots of acres are laid down in grass,And the person who imagines that the Squire of whom Washington Irving and Mounseer Montalembert wrote all sorts of pretty things has a jolly good time of it in these de – testable days,Is a sentimental ass,Says the fine Old Country Gentleman, one of the present time.The fine Old Country Gentleman has an Elizabethan mansion,But what the dickens is the good of that if his means continually narrow in proportion toHis family's expansion?If he gives up his deer, and sells his timber, dismisses his servants, and thinks of advertising his house for a grammar school,Or a lunatic asylum(As he often has to do), what is there in his lot to excite the jealousy of those darned Radicals, though the common comfort of that poor caput lupinum, the Land Owner, on however little a scaleSeems invariably to rile 'em?Asks the fine Old Country Gentleman, one of the modern time.With an encumbered property, diminishing rent-roll, and expenses beyond his income,The question which confronts him at every corner is, whence will the needful "tin" come?And when they prate to us about our "improvidence," and advise us to "cut down" and economize, why, where, in the name of patience, I ask'llBe the pull of being a Country Gentleman at all, if one has to live like a retired pork-butcher or prosperous publican, and perhaps you will answerThat question, Mr. Charles Milnes Gaskell!8Of the fine Old Country Gentleman, one of the modern time.

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

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

His Highness the Grand Duke of Gerolstein: "Ach! Miss Prown – in your lôfly bresence I forket my zixty-vour kvarterings. I lay my Ditle at your Veet. Bitte! pecome ze Crant Tochess of Gerolstein!"

Miss Brown: "Your Highness also forgets that I have sixty-four Quarterings!"