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

This was fiction, based on what purported to be truth, and in turn was destined to be easily eclipsed by the actual reminiscences of a later generation. It may be noted in this context that the "blazing indiscretions" in the "Life of Bishop Wilberforce," published in 1883, and the letters of protest which they evoked, had already prompted the satire and sympathy of Punch.

"What? Going already? And in Mackintoshes? Surely you are not going to Walk?"

"Oh, dear no! Lord Archibald is going to take us to a dear little Slum he's found out near the Minories – such a fearful place! Fourteen poor Things in One Bed, and no Window – and the Mackintoshes are to keep out Infection, you know, and hide one's Diamonds, and all that!"

Thought-Reading and Theosophy

The fashionable quest of the unseen world took no new forms in the 'seventies and 'eighties. We hear much less of Spiritualism under that name. This was no doubt in part due to the success of Maskelyne and Cook in outdoing the "manifestations" of mediums, a success so remarkable that they were actually claimed as spiritualists by some of the fraternity. In 1874 Punch waxes facetious at the statement that additional help had been obtained in the working of certain mines by ghostly assistants. Later on there are references to the activities of palmists and Society Sibyls, but the study of the Unseen and the Occult in the 'eighties entered on a new and formidable phase with the advent of thought-readers, theosophists and psychical researchers. Punch devotes a good deal of space to an exhibition of his powers by Irving Bishop, a well-known thought-reader of the time, at which politicians were impressed and sceptics – represented by Ray Lankester – were unconvinced. The pin-finding business was certainly much less impressive than the exploits of the Zancigs some thirty years later. The invasion of the drawing-room by pseudo-science met with little sympathy from Punch, who summed up his view in the phrase, "modish science is a sciolist"; and in 1891 he expressed his resentment against the new mysticism and the jargon of Theosophy in a comprehensive denunciation of "useless knowledge." The verses are worth quoting, not for their poetic quality but for the list of names quoted: —

OUR REAL DESIDERATUM(By a "Well-informed" Fool)Ah! I was fogged by the Materialistic,By Huxley and by Zola, Koch and Moore;And now there comes a Maëlstrom of the MysticTo whirl me further yet from sense's shore.Microbes were much too much for me, bacilliBewildered me, and phagocytes did daze,But now the author 'cute of Piccadilly,Harris the Prophet, the Blavatsky craze,Thibet, Theosophy, and Bounding Brothers —No, Mystic Ones – Mahatmas I should say,But really they seem so much like the othersIn slippery agility! – day by dayMystify me yet more. Those germs were bad enough,But what are they compared with Astral Bodies?Of Useless Knowledge I have almost had enough,I really envy uninquiring noddies.I would not be a Chela if I could.I have a horror of the Esoterical.Besant and Olcott may be wise and good,They seem to me pursuing the chimerical.Maddened by mysteries of "Precipitation,"The Occult Dream and the Bacillus-Dance;We need Societies for the propagationOf Useful – Ignorance!

This bracketing of Huxley with Zola is decidedly unfair, and the juxtaposition of Koch the famous physiologist and of Mr. George Moore – already known for his realistic romances – borders on the grotesque. Piccadilly is, of course, the brilliant novel by Laurence Oliphant, diplomatist, man of the world and mystic, who became the disciple of the American "prophet" Harris, spiritualist and founder of the "Brotherhood of the New Life"; and Blavatsky is the amazing Russian lady who brought a new religion from the Far East as another woman, Mrs. Eddy, brought another from the Far West. Madame Blavatsky is no more, but Mrs. Besant is still very much with us, and Theosophy and Christian Science are firmly established in a country which, as the French cynic remarked, boasts a hundred and fifty religions but only one sauce.

Medium: "The spirit of the late Mr. Jones is present."

Jones's Widow (with emotion): "I hope you are happy, Jones!"

Jones (raps out): "Far happier than I ever was on earth!"

Jones's Widow: "Oh, Jones! Then you must be in Heaven!"

Jones: "On the contrary!"

Husband: "I think you might let me nurse that teapot a little now, Margery! You've had it to yourself all the morning you know!"

The Æsthetic Movement

Pilcox, a promising young Pharmaceutical Chemist, has modelled from memory an Heroic Group, in which Mrs. Cimabue Brown is represented as the Muse of this Century, crowning Postlethwaite and Maudle as the Twin Gods of its Poetry and Art.

Postlethwaite: "No loftiah theme has evah employed the sculptah's chisel!"

Maudle: "Distinctly so. Only work on in this reverent spirit, Mr. Pilcox, and you will achieve the Truly Great!"

Mrs. Cimabue Brown: "Nay, you have achieved it! Oh, my young friend, do you not know that you are a HEAVEN-BORN GENIUS?"

Poor Pilcox: "I do!"

(Gives up his pestle and mortar, and becomes a hopeless Nincompoop for life.)

The Chief Æsthete

But of all the Society crazes of this period the Æsthetic movement created the most resounding stir. Æstheticism on its social side was an excrescence on, and a perversion of, doctrines and principles to which English art and decorative design and letters owed a real and lasting debt. It is enough to mention the names of Rossetti and Morris, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and Ruskin to realize how far the fashionable æsthetes disimproved on their masters. Ruskin was in particular unfortunate, since many of their catchwords were borrowed from him and distorted to serve other ends. For while Ruskin deplored the fetish-worship of athletics, he believed in honest manual labour, and never subscribed to the maxim of art for art's sake, which, by the way, was anathema to Watts. Morris was essentially manly and a worker. The æsthetes were neither. In life and letters they cultivated languor, eccentricity, paradox, and extravagance of speech and dress. It was their aim to exploit, as a social asset and a means to the achievement of notoriety, the creed of artistic emotion which had been formulated by Pater. For Oxford, it must be regretfully admitted, was the "spiritual home" of the æsthetes. The word "æsthetic," as we have seen, in its modern cant sense dates back to the 'sixties, but it was not until the middle 'seventies that it began seriously to attract the attention of Punch. To 1874 belongs Du Maurier's picture of the effete-looking artist begging his wife to let him nurse the china teapot she had monopolized all the morning. In 1876 we read of the damping of "Mr. Boniface Brasenose's" enthusiasm by a fashionable lady. But the fashionable ladies soon succumbed to the craze, and became adepts in the lingo of intensity. Punch attacked the æsthetes alternately with the rapier and the bludgeon, using the former in the delicate raillery of Du Maurier's pictures, the latter in prose and verse comments on their eccentricities and extravagance. Here his attitude is invariably that of the healthy Philistine. But when we speak of "æsthetes" it would be more precise to use the singular. Maudle and Postlethwaite and all the other types satirized by Du Maurier are only variants on the chief priest of the new cult, Oscar Wilde, whom Punch attacked directly and indirectly with all the weapons at his disposal. Punch's ridicule was often trenchant and effective, but undoubtedly it helped to advertise one who was avid of notoriety, and infinitely preferred abuse to neglect. Punch's feelings towards him were all through of a piece with those of the witty Fellow of All Souls who, when a friend of Wilde's indignantly remarked that the men who had ducked him in the Cherwell ought to be prosecuted, interposed with the biting comment, "I suppose you mean under the Rivers' Pollution Act." For more than a year and a half, from the spring of 1881 to the end of 1882, there was seldom a number without a picture or a poem or a prose article in which the chief æsthete was held up to derision. Sambourne's drawing in June, 1881, is called a "fancy portrait," but it is quite a realistic likeness. "A Maudle-in Ballad, to the Lily," had appeared in April: —

My lank limp lily, my long lithe lily,My languid lily-love, fragile and thin,With dank leaves dangling and flower-flap chilly,That shines like the shin of a Highland gilly!Mottled and moist as a cold toad's skin!Lustrous and leper-white, splendid and splay!Art thou not Utter? and wholly akinTo my own wan soul and my own wan chin,And my own wan nose-tip, tilted to swayThe peacock's feather, sweeter than sin,That I bought for a halfpenny, yesterday?My long lithe lily, my languid lily,My lank limp lily-love, how shall I win —Woo thee to wink at me? Silver lily,How shall I sing to thee, softly, or shrilly?What shall I weave for thee – which shall I spin —Rondel, or rondeau, or virelay?Shall I buzz like a bee, with my face thrust inThy choice, chaste chalice, or choose me a tinTrumpet, or touchingly, tenderly playOn the weird bird-whistle, sweeter than sin,That I bought for a halfpenny, yesterday?

Other parodies by "Oscuro Wildegoose" followed, and Wilde's poems are "slated" in the Bludyer vein under the heading "Swinburne and Water." A good deal of Wilde's verse was derivative – even tertiary deposit – and Punch made fair game of the Swinburnian echoes and phrases such as "argent body," "pulse of sin," and "kosmic soul." But his literary criticism is somewhat heavy-handed. He is much happier in "Oscuro Wildegoose's" burlesque sonnet lamenting the unenlightened Philistinism of Grahamstown, in South Africa, where the Town Council did not know what a dado was, and conjectured that it was an ecclesiastical term! Wilde's visit to America in 1882 let loose a cascade of ridicule beginning with a bogus interview, followed up by a cartoon "Ariadne in Naxos," representing (in the manner of W. B. Richmond) the grief of Æstheticism at the departure of her hierophant. When Wilde lectured at Boston sixty students appeared in white waistcoats and knee-breeches, with sun-flowers in their buttonholes, and Punch welcomed the attention as a reductio ad absurdum of Wilde's efforts to revolutionize costume. Later on occurred the episode – which caused Punch unfeigned delight – of a letter addressed to "Oscar Wilde, Poet, London," being returned as "Not known." But the craze was passing. Gilbert's Patience, produced in 1881, had been largely instrumental in reducing the pose of preciosity to its true proportions, and by the summer of 1883 we find Punch coupling "Oscar" and "Jumbo" (the elephant) together as overrated lions. From this point onward the campaign slackens. In some acid verses on the Zeit-Geist in the spring of 1884, which we quote later on, a would-be Juvenal denounces vulgarity as the dominant feature of the time; and in his list of nuisances and impostors no room is found for the æsthete. At the close of the same year, however, to judge by another set of pessimistic verses, he was still active if not exactly rampant: —

The "culture," too, of the æsthetes, with all its flaccid flams,Its turgid affectations and its silly sickly shams,Is but as dross of Brummagem compared with virgin gold,When matched against the vigorous realities of old.

The Cult of Intensity

Scene – A drawing-room in "Passionate Brompton."

Fair Æsthetic (suddenly, and in deepest tones, to Smith, who has just been introduced to take her in to dinner): "Are you intense?"

The "Dilettante" satirized in a rather ponderous article – one of the series of "Modern Types" – in 1890 represents a later stage of pseudo-culture, in which a contempt for everything characteristically English is the leading trait. He warbles French chansonnettes, defies all the rules of English grammar and metre in his poetry, is much in request at charitable concerts in aristocratic drawing-rooms, affects a mincing delicacy in gait and manner, paints his face in middle age, talks habitually in an artistic jargon, and passes away in an odour of pastilles. The type existed and exists, but hardly deserved such detailed and elaborate portraiture. There is more interest in the verses on the over-cultured undergraduate in 1891 – one of a series entitled "Men who have taken me in – to dinner," by a Dinner Belle: —

He stood, as if posed by a column,Awaiting our hostess' advance;Complacently pallid and solemn,He deigned an Olympian glance.Icy cool, in a room like a crater,He silently marched me downstairs,And Mont Blanc could not freeze with a greaterAssurance of grandeur and airs.I questioned if Balliol was jolly —"Your epithet," sighed he, "means noise,Vile noise!" At his age it were follyTo revel with Philistine boys.Competition, the century's vulture,Devoured academical fools;For himself, utter pilgrim of Culture,He countenanced none of the schools.Exams. were a Brummagem fashionOf mobs and inferior taste;They withered "Translucence" and "Passion,"They vulgarized leisure by haste.Self to realize – that was the question,Inscrutable still while the cooksOf our Colleges preached indigestion,Their Dons indigestible books.Two volumes alone were not bathos,The one by an early Chinese,The other, of infinite pathos,Our Nursery Rhymes, if you please.He was lost, he avowed, in this era;His spirit was seared by the West,But he deemed to be Monk in MadeiraWould probably suit him the best.

Preciosity and Self-Expression

Hawker: "Book o' the words, my Lady. Hortherized copy. The Dam o' Cameleers!"

Mrs. Jones (for the benefit of the bystanders): "Oh no, thank you. We've come to see the acting, we do not wish to understand the play!"

It is not a bad picture of Oxford preciosity in the early 'nineties – the age of the Yellow Book– and contains the first reference in Punch to the new educational gospel of self-realization, or "self-expression," as it is now called. The mention of early Chinese poetry was probably only a piece of "intelligent anticipation," for its vogue only began yesterday. So too with the Nursery Rhymes which some of the Georgian poets assiduously cultivate. But there is no foreshadowing of the characteristic Balliol product of some ten years later, the "intellectual blood" who combined hard and free living with hard work for his schools – who was at once dissipated and distinguished. The new worship of intellect – a sort of inverted snobbery – had already been satirized by Du Maurier in his sketch of the new parvenu, foreshadowing the "coming aristocracy of mind": —

He: "Charming youth, that young Bellamy – such a refined and cultivated intellect! When you think what he's risen from, poor fellow, it really does him credit!"

She: "Why, were his people – a – inferiah?"

He: "Well, yes. His Grandfather's an Earl, you know, and his Uncle's a Bishop; and he himself is Heir to an old Baronetcy with eighty thousand a year!"

Manners were in a state of transition and flux. As late as 1883 smoking in the presence of ladies was still taboo and severely restricted even at clubs, and Punch contrasts the "bereavement" of gentlemen by the disappearance of ladies after dessert with the "consolation" afforded by the cigarette. It was not until 1884 that smoking was allowed for the first time after dinners at the Mansion House, an innovation deplored in the wail of an "Old Fogey." Punch had no love of the old proprieties where they were insincere, as, for example, when in 1881 he represented Mrs. Jones declining the offer of a "hortherized copy" of the book of words of the Dam o' Cameleers from a hawker: "Oh no, thank you. We've come to see the acting, we do not wish to understand the play." But he resented the curt colloquialisms, an outcome of the general speeding-up of life, which in his view impaired the courtesies of social intercourse between the sexes; while on the other hand modish artificialities, whether new or old, always excited his ire. Twice over in 1884 he was moved to protest against the excessive use of cosmetics, in the verses to a "Painted Lady" (prompted by Malcolm Morris's address at the Health Exhibition), in which the writer looks forward to the time when it will be fashionable to be healthy, and a few months later, in "A Few Home Truths," we read: —

High-handed Greetings

Our matrons and our girls "make up" with powder, bismuth, dye —Figures as well as frocks, obliging milliners supply —Alas! the fairest cheeks are stained with artificial hue:'Tis true – 'tis pity; pity 'tis, 'tis true!A Chapter on the Evolution of Deportment

Nowadays young ladies begin making-up rather earlier, but, if Punch is to be believed, we can draw consolation from the fact that they are little worse in this respect than their modish mothers or grandmothers. Another of Punch's pet aversions was the fashionable high hand-shake introduced in the 'nineties: —

HANDS AS THEY ARE SHOOK(New Style)In healthier times, when friends would meetTheir friends in chamber, park, or street,Each, as hereunder, each would greet.Your level hand went forth; you claspedYour crony's; each his comrade's grasped —If roughly, neither friend was rasped.Such was the good old-fashioned cueOf honest British "How d'ye do?"I think it manly still – don't you?But now, when smug acquaintance hailsA set that would be "smart," but fails,Another principle prevails.The arm, in lifted curve displayed,Droops limply o'er the shoulder-blade,As needing some chirurgeon's aid.

Our Mashers are still improving. They no longer enter the Ball Room with their Hands in their Pockets. They have adopted a Mode of Progression more in harmony with their Mental Structure.

The Decline of the Chaperon

The offenders here castigated are young men, but the ladies excelled in the new greeting. Languor was the distinguishing note of the young men of fashion in the 'eighties and 'nineties. It was the age of the "masher" – dreadful word – of the "Johnnie" and the "Chappie." In 1883 Punch published a poem entitled "Child Chappie's Pilgrimage," a modern Rake's Progress. Later on he satirized the studied imbecility of deportment of young dandies entering a ballroom as "The Earlswood Totter." Students of slang will note with interest the emergence of the word "bounder" in the year 1887. Punch's verses on the type thus designated indicate a much harsher view than now prevails. Nowadays we admit that a "bounder," though socially "impossible," may be a "stout fellow." Punch's portrait, in which the "bounder" is represented as a bilker and a blackmailer, corresponds with the "cad" in the worst sense which we now attribute to that word. Mention has been made of the decline of the chaperon. Here Punch virtually sides with the "little flirt" who boldly enunciates the doctrine that "in future a girl is her own chaperon." At the same time he clearly disapproved of the new habit of dispensing with introductions, and its logical outcome, satirized in one of Du Maurier's most graceful pictures – entertainments at which the hostess was ignorant of the very names of her guests.

Susceptible Youth: "Would you present Me to that Young Lady with the Black Fan?"

Hostess: "With pleasure, if you will tell me her Name – and Yours!"

The Roller-Skating craze, which attained the dimensions of an epidemic in 1875 and 1876, is treated by Punch rather as a form of social recreation fraught with matrimonial possibilities than an athletic pastime.

The year 1876 was also noteworthy for an epidemic of Fancy Dress Balls and Spelling Bees. The latter were never popular in Mayfair; spelling had never been a strong point with the British aristocracy. But in less exalted circles Spelling Bees flourished exceedingly for a while, and the prizes awarded may well have conduced to an improvement in the orthography of the upper middle classes. Punch's references to the craze are copious. It may suffice, however, to quote his "Dream of a Spelling-Bee," an engaging piece of dictionary-made nonsense verse: —

Menageries where sleuth-hounds caracole,Where jaguar phalanx and phlegmatic gnuFright ptarmigan and kestrels cheek by jowlWith peewit and precocious cockatoo:Gaunt seneschals, in crochety cockades,With seine-nets trawl for porpoise in lagoons;While scullions gauge erratic escapadesOf madrepores in water-logged galleons:Flamboyant triptychs groined with gherkins green,In reckless fracas with coquettish bream,Ecstatic gurgoyles, with grotesque chagrin,Garnish the gruesome nightmare of my dream!

Suburban Sentiment

The Spelling Bee was a solace of the suburbs, which were steadily rising into prominence, owing to increased facilities of communication with the centre of London, and the "Suburban Love Song" which Punch printed in May, 1889, marks the emergence of a class of society hitherto neglected in his pages – a class quite well-educated and not vulgar, but essentially bourgeois and sentimental: —

The blacks float down with a lazy grace,Hey, how the twirtle-birds twitter!And softly settle on hands and face;And the shards in the rockery glitter.The boughs are black and the buds are green —Hey, how the twitter-birds twirtle!And Cicely over the trellis-screenIs bleaching her summer kirtle.The mustard and cress (can they grow apart —Those twin-souls, cress and mustard?)Are springing apace: they have made such a startThat the pattern is rather fluster'd:For I made a device in the moist dark mould,In the shape of A's and S's,In capital letters, firm and bold,I sow'd my mustard and cresses.Here comes no nymph where the blue waves lispOn the white sands' gleaming level,Where the sharp light strikes on the laurel crisp,And flowers in the cool shade revel.But the garden shrubs are as fair to meAs pine and arbutus and myrtleThat grow by the shores of the Grecian sea,Where deathless nightingales twirtle.And the little house, with its suites complete,And the manifold anti-macassar,And the chalet cage, whence he greets the street —Meae puellae passer—Are fairer than aught that the sun is aboveIn the world as much as I've seen of it;For the little house is the realm of love,And my sweet little girl is the queen of it.

Foreign Travel Popularized

Indignant Anglo-Saxon (to Provincial French Innkeeper, who is bowing his thanks for the final settlement of his exorbitant and much-disputed account): "Oh, oui, Mossoo! pour le matière de ça, je paye! Mais juste vous regardez ici, mon ami! et juste-vous-marquez-mes-mots! Je paye – mais je mette le dans la 'Times'!"

For another view of the suburbs one may turn to the drab and depressing realism of George Gissing's novels. Punch himself did not always look at them through rose-coloured spectacles, and a year later, under the heading "Green Pastures or Piccadilly?" (adapted from a book by William Black), emphasizes the drawbacks of a bad train service, exorbitant tradesmen, imperfect drainage, and the desolation of a region in which, from 9 A.M.. to 6 P.M… "not a single male human being is visible, all of them being in town."

"Are there any second-class carriages on this line, Rogers?"

"No, my lord."

"Ah! Then take two first-class tickets and two third."

"Beg pardon, my lord! But is me and Mrs. Parker expected to go third-class?"

"Gracious heavens! No, Rogers! Not for the world! The third-class tickets are for my lady and me!"

At the beginning of this period foreign travel had ceased to be the exclusive privilege of the "classes." The days of cheap trips to "Lovely Lucerne" were yet to come, but Cook was already a power in the land, and as early as the close of 1874 we find Punch frankly expressing his opinion that travel agencies had assisted to "lower middle-class-Englishize the Continent." The value of travel as a corrective of insularity and a means of promoting a better understanding of our foreign neighbours is not recognized. Residence on the Continent was another matter, and the series of articles, "Elizabeth's residence in a French country house," indicate the possibilities of enlightenment on various points. In particular stress is laid on the fact that there was no spoiling of women in France; in that country they were the real workers. At home the increase of excursion trains only served to excite Punch's wrath against their discomfort and overcrowding and the greed of directors. Yet these drawbacks did not prevent impecunious or economical aristocrats from travelling third class, though their domestics had to go first.