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

His Highness: "Ach! How is dat, Miss Prown?"

Miss Brown: "Why, my father and mother, my four grandparents, my eight great-grandparents, my sixteen great-great-grandparents, and my thirty-two great-great-great-grandparents were all certified over six foot six inches, perfect in form and feature, and with health and minds and manners to match, or they would not have been allowed to marry. And though I'm the shortest and plainest girl in the colony, I should never be allowed to marry anyone so very much beneath myself as your Highness!"

Mrs. Beresford Midas: "I'm so glad we've put down Plantagenet's name for Eton, Beresford! Here, the newspaper says there are more Lords and Baronets there than ever!"

Beresford Midas, Esq., J.P. (Brother and Junior Partner of Sir Gorgius): "Ah, but only one Dook! Pity there ain't a few more Dooks, Maria!"

Mrs. Beresford Midas: "Perhaps there will be when Plantagenet's of an age to go there."

Mr. Beresford Midas: "Let's 'ope so! At all events, we'll put down his name for 'Arrow as well; and whichever 'as most Dooks when the time comes, we'll choose that, yer know!"

Our prophetic instinct enables us to foresee that the British Aristocracy of the future will consist of two distinct parties – not the Tories and the Whigs – but the handsome people and the clever people. The former will be the highly developed descendants of the athletes and the beauties, the splendid cricketers and lawn tennis players of our day. The latter will be the offspring, not of modern æsthetes – oh, dear, no! but of a tougher and more prolific race, one that hasteth not, nor resteth; and for whom there is a good time coming. The above design is intended to represent a fashionable gathering at Lord Zachariah Mosely's, let us say, in the year two thousand and whatever-you-like.

N.B. – The happy thought has just occurred to His Lordship that a fusion of the two parties into one by means of intermarriage, would conduce to their mutual welfare and to that of their common progeny.

Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns

In illustrating the falling away of the titled classes from the maxim noblesse oblige on its physical side, Du Maurier occupied an exceptional position on Punch; but he was not less active than other artists and writers in exposing the "moral and intellectual damage" which they inflicted on the community. In 1878 the vogue of "Fancy Fairs" evokes a vigorous protest against the vanity, bad taste, forwardness and free-and-easiness of society women who made themselves cheap in order to sell dear to 'Arries. From this date onwards the vagaries of Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns, in whom Du Maurier incarnated all the pushfulness of the thrusting woman of fashion, are a constant source of entertainment. One of her earliest exploits as a Lion-hunter was to invite Monsieur de Paris to one of her receptions. Her husband thought she meant the Comte de Paris, but she speedily undeceives him. It was the headsman she was pursuing, not the Prince. "All the world" came, but the faithless executioner went to visit the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's instead! Later on, as the social mentor, guide, philosopher and friend of Lady Midas, we find her warning her pupil against inviting the aristocracy to meet each other. A music-hall celebrity must be provided as a "draw," and Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns recommends Nellie Micklemash and her banjo. "She is not respectable, but she is amusing, and that is everything." So when the Tichborne Claimant was released in 1884, Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns contemplates inviting him to dinner: "Surely there are still some decent people who would like to meet him." Elsewhere and in more serious vein Punch denounces the undue publicity given to this impostor's movements in the Press – one leading paper having stultified itself by condemning the practice in a leading article and simultaneously publishing an advertisement of the Claimant's appearance at a music-hall. This dualism, however, was no monopoly of the 'eighties and has become common form in the Georgian Press.

Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns acts as a bridge between the old and the new régime in her ceaseless and indiscriminate worship of celebrities and notorieties. She is the descendant of Mrs. Leo Hunter, but adds the shrewdness and cynicism of the go-between to the simple silliness of her ancestress. Todeson, another familiar figure in Du Maurier's gallery, attaches himself exclusively to the old nobility, but is always putting his foot in it by being plus royaliste que le roi, or more ducal than the duchess. For in the slightly distorting mirror of Du Maurier's genius we see, as an evidence of the spread of liberal ideas, a Duke dining with his tailor and being kept in very good order by him; and a musical Duchess learning to sing Parisian chansonnettes from a French expert in the franchement canaille manner. The craze for the stage among "Society people" had now reached formidable dimensions. They were no longer content with amateur theatricals, but had begun to enter into competition with the professionals.

The invasion of journalism by the same class Punch took much more seriously. Hazlitt, some fifty years earlier, had written in his essay "On the Conversation of Lords": "The Press is so entirely monopolized by beauty, birth or importance in the State, that an author by profession resigns the field to the crowd of well-dressed competitors, out of modesty or pride." But this was written when the mania for fashionable novels by Noble Authors was at its height, and Hazlitt uses the word Press of the printing press generally. In the early 'eighties the competition of titled amateurs was mainly confined to Society journals, a characteristic product of the new fusion of classes. As one of their ablest and most cynical editors said of his own paper, they were "written by and for nobs and snobs." They are now practically dead, owing to the absorption in the daily Press of the special features – above all the "personal note" – then peculiar to these weekly chronicles of high life. Punch ascribed the invasion of the Street of Ink by the amateurs to the penurious condition of the aristocracy and their ignoble readiness to turn their social opportunities into "copy" and cash. Under the heading of "Labor Omnia Vincit, or How Some of 'em try to live now," Punch published a satiric sketch of the new activities of Mayfair. The scene is laid in the boudoir of Lady Skribeler, a successful contributor to various Society journals. The scene opens with the arrival of her friend the Hon. Mrs. Hardup, who gives a pathetic account of her disastrous ventures in business and her failure to secure an engagement on the stage. Why, asks Lady Skribeler, had she not made her husband go into trade or keep a shop, or sell wine? —

Titled Professionals

Mrs. Hardup: "Oh, he has done that. He was Chairman of that Thuringian Claret Company; and we got ever so many people about us to take a quantity. But it fermented – or did something stupid; and they do say it killed the poor Duke, who was very kind to Harry, you know, and took a hundred dozen at once. And now, of course, there's no sale – or whatever they call it; and Harry says if it can't be got rid of to a firm of Blue Ink Makers, who are inquiring about it, it will have to go out to the Colonies as Château Margaux – at a dreadful loss. [Summing up.] I don't believe the men understand trade a bit, dear. So I'm going to do something for myself."

The sequel describes her initiation into the tricks of the trade by Lady Skribeler: —

Profiting by the morning's conversation, Mrs. Hardup besieges unprotected Editors, contributes to the literature of her country most interesting weekly accounts of the doings of her friends and acquaintances, and, it is to be hoped, practically solves, to her own satisfaction, the secret of the way in which a good many of us manage to live now.

Lady Gwendoline: "Papa says I'm to be a great artist, and exhibit at the Royal Academy!"

Lady Yseulte: "And papa says I'm to be a great pianist, and play at the Monday Pops!"

Lady Edelgitha: "And I'm going to be a famous actress, and act Ophelia, and cut out Miss Ellen Terry! Papa says I may – that is, if I can, you know!"

The New Governess: "Goodness gracious, young ladies! Is it possible His Grace can allow you even to think of such things! Why, my Papa was only a poor half-pay officer, but the bare thought of my ever playing in public or painting for hire, would have simply horrified him – and as for acting Ophelia or anything else – gracious goodness, you take my breath away!"

For success in this walk of journalism, "literary culture must be eschewed, for with literary culture come taste and discrimination – qualities which might fatally obstruct the path of the journalistic aspirant." It was not by any means monopolized by amateurs, and Punch, in his series of "Modern Types" a few years later, traces, under the heading "The Jack of all Journalisms," the rise to power and influence of a humble but unscrupulous scribe, successively venal musical and dramatic critic, interviewer and picturesque social reporter, but always "the blatant, cringing, insolent, able, disreputable wielder of a pen which draws much of its sting and its profit from the vanities and fears of his fellow-creatures." The sketch is an ingenious composite photograph, in which those familiar with London journalism in the 'eighties and 'nineties will recognize in almost every paragraph the lineaments of one or other of the most notorious and poisonous representatives of the Society Press.

As we have seen, journalism was only one field for the commercial instincts of penurious "Society people." In 1887 Punch takes for his text the following paragraph from a daily paper: —

"One well-known West End Milliner is a graduate of Girton; another bears a title; a third conceals a name not unknown to Burke under a pseudonym… Many of the best women of all classes are ready to do anything by which the honest penny may be earned."

Punch was somewhat sceptical as to the honesty of their intentions; the only way, he tells us, to get an invitation to the dances given by one titled shopkeeper was to buy one of her bonnets. This may have been a malicious invention, but he was fairly entitled to make game of the advertisement which appeared in the Manchester Evening Times in the spring of 1887: —

"To Christian Widowers. – A Nobleman's Widow, of good birth, about 40, no family, left with small income, pleasing, sweet-tempered, cultured, domesticated, fond of children, desires Settled Home and a high-minded Protestant Husband of 50, or older, seeking domestic happiness with a devoted, loving Christian wife. – Address – "

The American Invasion

The lady shopkeeper had become such an institution that Punch included her in one of his series of "Modern Types" in 1891. The portrait is not exactly flattering, though he admitted that she sometimes possessed other than purely social qualifications for success: —

At first everything will go swimmingly. Friends will rally round her, and she may perhaps discover with a touching surprise that the staunchest and truest are those of whom, in her days of brilliant prosperity, she thought the least. But a succès d'estime is soon exhausted. Unless she conducts her business on purely business lines, delivers her goods when they are wanted, and, for her own protection, sends in her accounts as they fall due, and looks carefully after their payment, her customers and her profits will fall away. But if she attends strictly to business herself, or engages a good business woman to assist her, and orders her affairs in accordance with the dictates of a proper self-interest, she is almost certain to do well, and to reap the reward of those who face the world without flinching, and fight the battle of life sturdily and with an honest purpose.

The New Governess (through her pretty nose): "Waall – I come right slick away from Ne' York City, an' I ain't had much time for foolin' around in Europe – you bet! So I can't fix up your gals in the Eu-ropean Languages no-how!"

Belgravian Mamma (who knows there's a Duke or two still left in the Matrimonial Market): "Oh, that's of no consequence. I want my daughters to acquire the American accent in all its purity – and the idioms, and all that. Now I'm sure you will do admirably!"

Millinery was the favourite field of enterprise, but the duchess who rebuked the indiscreet Todeson for his condemnation of trade as unworthy of the nobility, mentioned that her husband had gone in for bric-à-brac and her mother for confectionery. "Society people," in short, were dabbling extensively in trade, but it was mainly confined to the luxury trades. Punch does not mention, however, what was generally believed to be true, that a well-known peer was a partner in a firm of money-lenders, trading under a name most literally suggestive of blood-sucking. Commercialism in high places is illustrated indirectly but pointedly by the invasion of American heiresses. Dowagers with large families of daughters – for large families were still frequent and fashionable – found themselves seriously affected by the "unfair competition" of these wealthy and vivacious beauties. In 1888 Punch satirized their misfortunes in a picture representing English society mothers engaging American governesses so that their daughters might be instructed how to hold their own against American girls in attracting eligible dukes. So again in the Almanack of 1889, under the title "Social Diagnosis," a French baron identifies a certain lady as an English duchess on the evidence of her indisputably American origin, and in the same year, in a sardonic article, Punch exposes the American tendency to gloat over evidences of class distinctions in English society, while pretending to denounce them. This was inspired by the activities of certain American correspondents and "G. W. S." (the late Mr. Smalley) in particular, who is described as "too intimate with the 'hupper suckles' to think much of them." It was he, by the way, whose favourite form of social entertainment was described as not a "small and early" but an "Earl and Smalley." The hardest thing that Punch said of the American heiresses was put into the mouth of one of their number. In 1890 he published a picture of three fair New Yorkers conversing with a young Englishman. When he asks whether their father had come with them to Europe, one of them replies: "Pa's much too vulgar to be with us. It's as much as we can do to stand Ma." But the verses on "The American Girl" in the same year wind up on a note of reluctant admiration: —

Mayfair's New Idols

THE AMERICAN GIRL(An American Correspondent of The Galignani Messenger is very severe on the manners of his fair countrywomen.)She "guesses" and she "calculates," she wears all sorts o' collars,Her yellow hair is not without suspicion of a dye;Her "Poppa" is a dull old man who turned pork into dollars,But everyone admits that she's indubitably spry.She did Rome in a swift two days, gave half the time to Venice,But vows that she saw everything, although in awful haste;She's fond of dancing, but she seems to fight shy of lawn tennisBecause it might endanger the proportions of her waist.Her manner might be well defined as elegantly skittish;She loves a Lord as only a Republican can do;And quite the best of titles she's persuaded are the British,And well she knows the Peerage, for she reads it through and through.She's bediamonded superbly, and shines like a constellation,You scarce can see her fingers for the multitude of rings;She's just a shade too conscious, so it seems, of admiration,With irritating tendencies to wriggle when she sings.She owns she is "Amur'can," and her accent is alarming;Her birthplace has an awful name you pray you may forget;Yet, after all, we own La Belle Américaine is charming,So let us hope she'll win at last her long-sought coronet.

An heroic attempt was made in 1882 by that devoted apostle of the (socially) Sublime and Beautiful, Mr. Gillett, to revive Almack's. But, as Punch had frankly and even cheerfully recognized in connexion with a previous attempt, the time had gone by for the oligarchical control of the entertainments of the fashionable world.

Society had ceased to be small, select and exclusive; it was becoming increasingly mixed, cosmopolitan and plutocratic. The horizon was enlarged and the range of interests multiplied, but the desire to be in the movement was not always indulged in with dignity or discretion. Mayfair worshipped at new shrines and erected new idols. It was an age of strange crazes and pets and favourites. The great ladies of the 'thirties and 'forties may have been arrogant, but they seldom exploited their personalities, or cultivated a limelight notoriety. There is shrewd criticism in the legend of one of the earliest of the "Things one would have rather left unsaid," illustrated by Du Maurier in 1888: —

Aunt Jane: "Ugh! When I was your age, Matilda, Ladies of Rank and Position didn't have their photographs exposed in the shop windows."

Matilda (always anxious to agree): "Of course not, Aunt Jane. I suppose photography wasn't invented then?"

Old Bailey Ladies

Photography has much to answer for; and certainly played its part in luring the titled classes from their ivory towers, and creating the professional beauty. The "Giddy Society Lady," as portrayed by Punch in 1890, is a new version of the "Model Fast Lady" he described some forty years earlier, and though less mannish in her deportment, is much more flashy, vulgar and selfish than her predecessor. Tailor-made by day, excessively décolletée at night, and preferring Bessie Bellwood to Beethoven, this semi-detached and expensive wife as delineated by Punch is not an attractive figure. Yet with very few changes the portrait might stand for the modern society Maenad. Cigarette-smoking, it should be noted, was still considered "fast." Another recurrent type of unlovely womanhood much in evidence in these years is the "old Bailey lady" as Punch christened her many years before. In 1886 the writer of "A Bad Woman's Diary" expressly states that she would not go to a theatre in Lent, though she spends all her spare time attending murder trials. Punch did not spare the judges who lent themselves to this abuse, as may be gathered from the following dialogue: —

Her Grace: "Thank you so much for keeping such nice places for us, Judge! It was quite a treat! What romantic looking creatures they are, those four pirates! I suppose they really did cut the Captain and Mate and Cook into bits, and there's no doubt about the Verdict?"

Sir Draco: "Very little indeed, I fear!"

Her Grace: "Poor Dears! I suppose if I and the girls get there between five and six to-morrow, we shall be in time to see you pass the sentence? Sorry to miss your summing-up, but we've got an afternoon concert, you know!"

Sir Draco: "I'll take care that it shall be all right for you, Duchess!"

So, again, under the sarcastic heading, "True Feminine Delicacy of Feeling," this morbid curiosity is scarified in the conversation of two ladies in 1889: —

Emily (who has called to take Lizzie to the great Murder Trial): "What, deep black, dearest?"

Lizzie: "Yes. I thought it would be only decent, as the poor wretch is sure to be found guilty."

Emily: "Ah! Where I was dining last night, it was even betting which way the verdict would go, so I only put on half mourning!"

Gwendoline: "Uncle George says every woman ought to have a profession, and I think he's quite right!"

Mamma: "Indeed! And what profession do you mean to choose?"

Gwendoline: "I mean to be a professional beauty!"

It was in the same year that Punch published a double cut, showing the tricoteuses under the guillotine at the French Revolution, and, as a pendant, society ladies in a modern English Court of Justice.

The Terrors of Reminiscence

The fashionable craze for "slumming," which set in early in the 'eighties, was less objectionable; it was at worst an excrescence on the genuine interest taken in the housing question by serious reformers. But as practised by Mayfair it was ridiculed by Punch as a mere excuse for excitement; Du Maurier reduced it to an absurdity by his picture of society ladies going slumming in mackintoshes to avoid infection; and by another of Todeson, who had taken part in one of these excursions, being disillusioned by contact with real workers, and self-sacrificing East End clergymen. I have not been able to ascertain whether the same artist's picture of professional pugilists being fêted by society in 1887 was a mere piece of burlesque or not; but it was, at any rate, a good example of intelligent anticipation. His satire of "Society's new pet – the artist's model," in a picture of a handsome Junonian girl surrounded by infatuated Duchesses, drinking in her artless and h-less confidences, is probably only a fantastic caricature of aristocratic commercialism, as one of the great ladies is represented as thinking of letting her daughter become a model as a means of social advancement. Mention has been made of the invasion of journalism by society people. But students of foretastes and parallels will find a really remarkable anticipation of the terrors of modern Diaritis – not to use a more vulgar word – in the burlesque review of A Modern Memoir– the Autobiography and Letters of Miss Skimley Harpole, published by Messrs. Rakings & Co.: —

Seldom have we perused a book with so much interest as has thrilled us during our reading of these two handsome volumes. Situate as Miss Harpole was, the daughter of a famous bishop, claiming for mother a lady whose good deeds are remembered to this day, sister of one of the most brilliant female leaders of society, and herself popular, fêted and caressed, there is small room for wonder that even the bare details of Miss Harpole's everyday life would prove interesting, but when told in a charmingly frank style her book becomes a model of what a Memoir should be. In a few short simple sentences she, with delicious naïveté, relates her home life, and so clearly is the picture put before us that we cannot resist quoting the fragment:

"Take us at home of a night! The Bishop in an easy chair, with his gaitered legs crossed, and elevated on the back of another, with a short clay pipe in his mouth, is vaguely mixing his eleventh tumbler of hot gin-and-water, causing us girls great pain to conceal our titters, when, as happens very often at this period of the evening, he deposits the greater part of the hot water on the tablecloth or himself. My mother, regardless of him, sits, carefully studying a sporting paper, and the Racing Calendar, and making her selections for the next day's horse-race. For a heavy gambler is my mother, as is my brother, who, when at home – which is seldom – is either delighted at having won, or in the sulks because he has lost money to his fellow legal students at billiards. As a rule he is delighted, and always carries a lump of chalk in his pocket. My sister is writing notes to Men about Town, Peers and Guardsmen, her lovely features only losing their serenity when lit up by an arch look of wonderment whether she has made appointments with two different men at the same hour and place, while I am sitting, in my school-girlish way, by myself, making notes, so as to tell the world some day the true story of my life."

Space forbids us to say any more of the merits of this charming work, but we cannot resist one extract which shows how true was the estimate of the Bishop's noble character: —

"We were one night at the Italian opera, of which my father was passionately fond, and during the ballet our attention was drawn to a singularly lovely girl on the stage. 'Alas!' said the Colonel, 'she is as bad as she is beautiful.' The Bishop immediately avowed his readiness to investigate the case at the earliest opportunity. He was always thinking of others, despite Mamma's occasionally stubborn opposition."

This concludes our notice. In brief, the book is a most excellent specimen of the modern style of Memoir, conceived with kindliness of heart and charity of remembrance and executed with literary taste, skill and polish.