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

Distinguished Foreigner: "Voulez-vous me faire l'honneur de Danser cette Valse avec moi, Meess Matilde?"

Miss Matilda (an accomplished waltzer): "Avec plaiseer, Monsieur. Quelle est voter Forme – le 'Lurch de Liverpool,' le 'Dip de Boston,' ou le 'Kick de Ratcliffe Highway'?"

(We have feebly tried to represent the "Ratcliffe Highway Kick," which at present is only danced in the very best society, and confers a great air of distinction on the performers.)

This is not an example of the Struggle for Existence – it is merely "The Valse," as we have lately seen it danced at Suburban Subscription Balls, etc.

The Royal College of Music was founded in 1882. George Grove, the first director, the "dear 'G'" of countless friends in all walks of life, was an old ally, and the venture, in which the Prince of Wales took from the very outset an active and energetic part, received Punch's benediction, though an element of genial chaff is not absent in the picture of the Prince conducting his orchestra of royal and noble minstrels, with the Duke of Edinburgh as first violin. Punch showed a truer insight into the potentialities of the new institution when he suggested that it might help to solve the problem of National Opera. By its annual operatic performances so admirably directed for some thirty years by Sir Charles Stanford, and by the training of first-class instrumentalists and singers, the R.C.M. has done an amount of spade-work which has more than fulfilled Punch's prediction.

Popular Songs

On the educative value of the music-halls Punch in earlier years had maintained an attitude of scepticism, not to say hostility. He had been careful to draw invidious distinctions between the vulgarity of music-hall comedians and the entertainments provided by the German Reeds and Corney Grain, in whom he recognized "one in ten thousand" and a true follower of John Parry, the father and perhaps the greatest of all musical entertainers, whose vis comica, allied to unfailing good taste and reinforced by remarkable musicianship, had won the admiration of Lablache and Malibran. I have noted elsewhere Punch's disparagement of the efforts to improve the music-halls. He displays a certain lukewarm approval of the prospectus of the "Coffee Music Hall Company, Limited," issued in 1879 under the auspices of Lord and Lady Cowper, Mr. and Mrs. Cowper-Temple, Sir Charles Trevelyan and Canon Duckworth; the names of Mr. and Mrs. German Reed and Sir Jules Benedict, however, inspired him with more confidence than their aristocratic co-patrons.

The popular songs of the hour seldom failed to attract Punch's vigilant censure. In 1887 "Two Lovely Black Eyes" enchanted the million. It was well parodied in the series of "Popular Songs Resung" by "Miss Virginia Bowdler" in 1891, and in 1889 Punch published his excellent "Model Music-Hall Songs." The song that broke his heart in 1891 was "Hi-tiddly-hi-ti"; in 1892 a "Melancholy Muser" is plunged into despair by the "Ta-ra-ra" boom: —

I am shrouded in impenetrable gloom-de-ay,For I feel I'm being driven to my doom-de-ay,By an aggravating dittyWhich I don't consider witty;And they call the horrid thing, "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!"Every 'bus-conductor, errand-boy, and groom-de-ay,City clerk, and cheeky crossing-sweep with broom-de-ayMakes my nervous system bristleAs he tries to sing or whistleThat atrocious and absurd "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!"So I sit in the seclusion of my room-de-ay,And deny myself to all – no matter whom-de-ay —For I dread a creature comingWhose involuntary hummingMay assume the fatal form, "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!"Oh, I fear that when the Summer roses bloom-de-ay,You will read upon a well-appointed tomb-de-ay:"Influenza never lick'd him,But he fell an easy victimTo that universal scourge – 'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!'"

The amazing popularity of Mr. Albert Chevalier's coster songs is acknowledged in 1892, but Punch hardly does justice to the talents of the creator of what was virtually a new and specialized type of comic song heavily larded with sentiment.

HEROES AND WORTHIES

In the course of these chapters mention has not infrequently been made of the homage paid by Punch to his special heroes and heroines. Memorial verses had always been a feature of the paper, and in the beginning of this period they assumed formidable dimensions: at its close there was a welcome reaction towards brevity; but in the following anthology I have not always quoted these tributes in full, preferring to extract the stanzas or lines which seemed to me to come nearest the mark in truth of portraiture or felicity of expression. Thus, while other features of Charles Kingsley's work in life and letters are noted in the verses printed on his death in 1875, his achievement in the domain of historical romance is much the most happily treated: —

He raised strong Saxon Hereward from deathIn his grey shroud of mist from mere and fen;Called up the England of Elizabeth,With Drake and Raleigh, chief of Devon men.

To 1878 belong the lines on the "Christian athlete" Selwyn, Bishop of New Zealand and afterwards of Lichfield: —

At length from work he rests, and to the bierHis good deeds follow him, and good men's love;And one true Bishop less we reckon here,And one good angel more they count above.

The epitaph on Lord John Russell, who died three weeks after his golden wedding in 1878, applauds his consistency but is not memorable, though he is well described as a fighter for freedom "in spite of what was done in Freedom's name."

The lines on the great John Lawrence in July, 1879, contain one good stanza: —

A simple mannered, rude and rugged man,But true and wise and merciful and just.Of all these monuments, when all we scan,Which rises o'er more justly honoured dust?

Rowland Hill, always one of Punch's special heroes, was buried in the Abbey in September of the same year. Here Punch's best tribute is in prose, when he speaks of him as

Rowland Hill, Stanley, and Darwin.

One of the greatest benefactors to his country and to the civilized world that it ever produced; now inhabiting an abode among the band of departed worthies who in this life were heroes and saints and bards of the better sort: —

Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes.

The verses on Dean Stanley in July, 1881, are not quoted in his Life by Lord Ernle, so I make no excuse for printing them here: —

With clear, calm eye he fronted Faith, and she,Despite the clamorous crowd,Smiled, knowing her soul-loyal votaryAt no slave's altar bowed.With forward glance beyond polemic scopeHe scanned the sweep of Time,And everywhere changed looks with blue-eyed Hope,Victress o'er doubt and crime.But inward turning, he, of gentle heart,And spirit mild as free,More gladly welcomed, as life's better part,The rule of Charity.

Punch's most generous acknowledgment of the genius of Charles Darwin was published in 1877: —

THREE ILLUSTRATIONS OF A THEORYThough dogmatists and dullards long opposedHis Theory with venomous persistence,Darwin may now consider it has closedIts – "Struggle for existence."To calm research, not fierce polemic raid,Truth yields her secrets. After fair inspectionThe age twixt Science and her foes has madeA – "Natural selection."Thou canst not, Zealotry, as blind as hot,Truth's champion slay, however hard thou hittest.Darwin outlives detraction. Is this not"Survival of the fittest"?

When Darwin died in April, 1882, Punch had entered on a phase in which the claims of science to solve the riddle of the universe excited his misgiving, and his obituary lines are of a non-committal order, save for one admirable couplet: —

Recorder of the long Descent of ManAnd a most living witness of his rise.

There are no reserves in his valediction to Henry Fawcett in November, 1884: —

No braver conquest o'er ill fortune's floutOur age has seen than his who held straight on,Though the great God-gift from his days was gone,"And Wisdom at one entrance quite shut out" —Held on with genial stoutness, seeing moreThan men with sight undarkened, but with mindThrough prejudice and Party bias blind.

Another statesman of equal fearlessness and independence was W. E. Forster; but here the whole virtue of Punch's salutation in April, 1886, is summed up in the two lines: —

A sturdy lover of a sturdy land,He served it, zeal at heart and life in hand.

I pass over the "In Memoriam" lines on the good Lord Shaftesbury in the previous year. They render full justice to his splendid and life-long service on behalf of the "helpless thralls of trade" and the "all unchildlike children" "victims of modern Molochs," "all who creep or fall on poverty's rough road or crime's steep slope"; but they are otherwise laboured and diffuse. Sincerity is no guarantee of literary excellence. Punch shows to greater advantage in the lines on Newman in August, 1890, who is lauded, not as a great Cardinal nor as one

Above all office and all state,Serenely wise, magnanimously great;Not as the pride of Oriel, or the StarOf this host or of that in creed's hot war,But as the noble spirit, stately, sweet,Ardent for good without fanatic heat,Gentle of soul, though greatly militant,Saintly, yet with no touch of cloistral cant;Him England honours, and so bends to-dayIn reverent grief o'er Newman's glorious clay.

Lord Granville and W. H. Smith

Two statesmen, widely differing in birth, temperament and character, are commemorated in 1891. Of Lord Granville Punch writes: —

Bismarckian vigour, stern and starkAs Brontë's self, was not his dower;Not his to steer a storm-tost barkThrough waves that whelm, and clouds that lower.Temper unstirred, unerring tactWere his. He could not "wave the banner,"But he could lend to steely actThe softly silken charm of manner.

Mr. W. H. Smith was a much harder subject for eulogy, for he was not a "dæmonic genius," an orator, or a romantic figure, but simply a good plain honest servant of his country. Yet Punch's verses, if not inspired by high poetic rapture, are something more than adequate in their appreciation of Mr. W. H. Smith's solid qualities: —

A capable, clear-headed, modest toiler,Touched with no egoist taint,To Duty sworn, the face of the DespoilerMade him not fear or faint.O'erworn, o'erworked, with smiling face, though weary,The tedious task he plied;Sagacious, courteous, ever calm and cheery,Unsoured by spleen or pride.As unprovocative as unpretentious,Skilful though seeming slow;Unmoved by impulse of conceit contentiousTo risk success for show.O rare command of gifts, which, common branded,Are yet so strangely rare!Selflessness patient, judgment even-handed,And spirit calmly fair!

To turn from grave to gay, I may round off this collection with two zoological elegies. When "Jumbo," the famous elephant at the Zoo, whose purchase by Barnum and departure from London had provoked a grotesque explosion of sentimentality, was killed by a railway accident in America in 1885, Punch recorded his decease in the following epigram: —

Alas, poor Jumbo! Here's the fruitOf faithless Barnum's greed of gain;How sad that so well-trained a bruteShould owe his exit to a train!

The elegy on Charles Jamrach, the celebrated naturalist and menagerie-keeper of St. George's-in-the-East, who died in September, 1891, at the age of seventy-six, was better deserved. Charles Jamrach, the most notable of the dynasty which for three-quarters of a century enjoyed a practical monopoly of the trade in wild animals in this country, was a "stout fellow": Frank Buckland describes his single-handed struggle with a runaway tiger in 1857; he appears in the D.N.B.; and Punch, in his lines on "The King of the Beasts," after describing the lamentations of the animals at the Zoo, ends up on a note of genuine regret: —

O Jamrach! O Jamrach! Woe's stretched on no sham rackOf metre that mourns you sincerely;E'en that hard nut o' natur, the great Alligator,Has eyes that look red, and blink queerly.Mere "crocodile's tears," some may snigger, but jeersMust disgust at a moment so doleful;For Jamrach the brave, who has gone to his grave,All our sorrow's sincere as 'tis soulful!

1

Bright had recently made a vehement speech at Manchester against the Turks. It was about the same time that he described Lord Salisbury as "prostrating his intellect (to Lord Beaconsfield) in hope of a succession that might never come."

2

Major O'Gorman does not appear in the D.N.B. But he inspired an immortal comment from a sympathetic compatriot, who calling to inquire about the Major's progress during a serious illness, was told that he was being kept up by periodic teaspoonfuls of brandy. "Tayspoons!" was the indignant retort. "And what use 'ud a tayspoon be, sthrayin' about in such a wilderness of a man?"

3

The quotation reminds me that, when I was an undergraduate at Oxford at this time, the handmaiden at a certain lodgings was called "Annie Katie" by successive generations of undergraduates. These were not her baptismal names: they had been bestowed upon her by an ingenious scholar because her surname was Macan.

4

Chapman: Homeric Hymns.

5

An attempt was made in 1884 to open a new fish market in Smithfield to break the monopoly of Billingsgate, but the scheme failed through mismanagement, and Punch renewed his attacks in 1889.

6

Lord Rosebery, during his tenure of office, is generally alluded to as "Mr. Rosebery," because he preferred to be called "Mr. Chairman" rather than "My Lord."

7

The Maudslays, Joseph and Thomas Henry, were both famous marine engineers; the Rennies, George and Sir John, carried on the business and enhanced the repute of their father, a famous civil engineer and pupil of James Watt. Ford is probably a misprint for Fox (Sir Douglas Fox), the engineer of the Mersey Tunnel. Mr. Fryer, the vocalist of the evening, was a professional singer.

8

This gentleman had recently written an article on the subject in the Nineteenth Century.

9

"Si Natura negat, facit indignatio versum."

10

It was translated in the feuilleton of an Italian paper as La Fortuna del Campo Clamoroso!

11

The surname borne by C. S. C. until his branch of the family resumed that of Calverley.

12

Presumably a reference to Louis XIV's versatile Minister of that name.

13

The title of one of Sullivan's most popular songs.