Mr. Punch's History of Modern England. Volume 4 of 4.—1892-1914

Rosalind: "Pneumatically."

Towards the "New Woman" on her intellectual side, Punch was decidedly hostile. One could not find a better expression of his views than in the large illustration, "Donna Quixote," in April, 1894. The central figure, wearing pince-nez and waving a latchkey, is formidable rather than repellent. Around her on the floor lie books by Ibsen, Tolstoi and Mona Caird, and in the decorative border (which embodies her visions) she is seen tilting at the dragon of Decorum, and smiting down the triple Cerberus of Mrs. Grundy, "Mamma" and Chaperon. Du Maurier's "Passionate Female Literary Types" in the same year are unlovely to the verge of hideousness, and the legends are frankly satirical. When "Sarah Grand" declared that Man, morally, was "in his infancy" and that "now Woman holds out a strong hand to the Child-man," and insisted on helping him up by "spanking proper principles into him in the nursery," Punch quoted back at her "Ouida's" statement that "the New Woman was an unmitigated bore," and went on: —

There is a New Woman, and what do you think?She lives upon nothing but Foolscap and Ink!But, though Foolscap and Ink form the whole of her diet,This nagging New Woman can never be quiet!

The New Womanhood

The ironical protest registered by Punch against ladies who insisted on travelling in smoking carriages and then objected to smoking, only serves to show how far we have travelled in the last thirty years. Another passing phase in the history of sex-antagonism is to be found in the record of the first of many dinners at which only literary ladies were allowed to be present. Punch printed a letter signed "A Daughter of Eve who remembers Adam," who observed that "the Literary Ladies' Dinner of the 1st of June only needed one feature to be absolutely perfect – the presence of Gentlemen." Whether the letter was bonâ fide or not, it probably expressed the view of the majority of those present. The more violent the manifestations of the New Womanhood, the more reactionary became Punch's attitude. His reaction reached a culminating point in 1894, when he painted the following sketch of "A Modern Madame": —

She has aspirations after the impossible, and is herself far from probable; she regards her husband as an unnecessary evil, and her children as disturbances without compensating advantages.

She writes more than she reads and seldom scribbles anything.

She has no feelings, and yet has a yearning after the intense.

She is the antithesis of her grandmother, and has made further development in generations to come quite impossible.

She thinks without the thoughts of a male, and yet has lost the comprehension of a female.

To sum up, she is hardly up to the standard of a man, and yet has sunk several fathoms below the level of a woman.

So again he reverts to his older views on Education à propos of the "Pioneers": —

Ah, learn whate'er you will, yet spare our heartsA home-grown, feminine Baboo of Arts.Believe it, envious maids, the men you spurnThink little of the honours that they earn.Too well they're taught in common sense's rulesTo dwell upon their triumphs in the Schools,And chiefly prize the Baccalaureate furBecause, in love's young days, it pleases Her.But you, in purpose tyrannously strong,Get, in each effort, your perspective wrong.Learn all you wish to learn, exult in learning,For Hymen's torch keep midnight oil a-burning,Bulge your fair foreheads with those threatening bumps,Ungraceful as an intellectual mumps,Be blatant, rude, self-conscious as you can,Be all you feign – and imitate – in Man,Spurn all the fine traditions of the past,Be New or nothing – what's the gain at last?You know as much, with hard-eyed, harsh-voiced joy,As the shock-headed, shambling fifth-form boy;Adding, what his sound mind would never please,An Asiatic hunger for degrees.True learning's that alone whereon are basedClear insight, reason, sympathy, and taste.Not relic-worshipping of bones long dry,Not giving puppet-life to x and y,And walking haughtily a fair world throughBecause some girls can't do the sums you do.Still less, the little, little world of cliques,Where Mutual Admiration dons the breeks,And then proceeds kind tolerant man to flout —A petulant, unresented Barring-out.Meanwhile our faith looks on, devoid of fear,Facing the hatchet of the Pioneer.Still will the storm, in Nature's potent plan,Be temper'd to the shorn, or bearded, man.Your sex will still be perfect in its place,With voice of melody and soul of grace.Pose, lecture, worry, copy as you will,Man will be man, and woman woman still!

The Real New Woman

By way of reducing the "misanthropic" attitude of some of the "New Women" to absurdity, Punch reported a probably apocryphal dialogue between two men: "I say, old man, is it true that your wife has been asked to resign at the Omphale Club?" "Well, yes; you see, the Committee found out that she'd been guilty of ungentlemanly conduct." But what exasperated Punch most of all was the decadent preciosity of the irregulars who espoused the cause of the New Womanhood. One need only mention "The Woman who Wouldn't Do," illustrated à la Beardsley, where "Yellow Book" morality is burlesqued in the phrase "marriage is a degrading system, nurtured under the purple hangings of the tents of iniquity." These moods of disgust seldom lasted long. Punch was no wholesale hater of modernity, and in his verses on "The Real New Woman" frankly admitted that there was much in her to admire. One notes a change of ideal in the absence of any mention of her cooking qualifications; and in the admission that "she's splendid at seeing a joke," Punch acknowledges a great advance on the buxom but humourless damsels of Leech. The first mention of a Ladies' Football Club in 1895 brings home to us the fact that what passed for prejudice in 1895 with enthusiastic advocates of sex equality has been confirmed by the judgment of those best qualified to judge down to 1921.

Punch's epigram on woman's "Asiatic hunger for degrees" represents a passing mood rather than his general attitude to the demand. "The lady students of the Universities," wrote The Times on March 13, 1896, "have received a cruel series of rebuffs in the last few days. On Tuesday week the Congregation of the University of Oxford refused to admit them to the B.A. degree. On Tuesday last it followed up this blow by rejecting all the resolutions proposed as alternatives. Yesterday the Cambridge Senate inflicted the unkindest cut of all by practically imitating the ungallant example of Oxford." Yet, instead of exulting over their defeat, Punch was decidedly sympathetic in his cartoon of Minerva, with her owl in a cage, met at the gates of the Oxford Schools by a corpulent bespectacled Don, who observes, "Very sorry, Miss Minerva, but perhaps you are not aware that this is a monastic establishment." One notes a certain inconsistency in Punch's condemning women for their disregard of the fine art of gastronomy, preferring "a tray on a rickety side-table" or the haphazard arrangements of a picnic to regularity and comfort at meals, and almost in the same breath rebuking them for flouting the sweet domesticities of home and indulging in extravagant pleasures in public. Another interesting sign of the times is recorded a couple of years later in "The Modern Woman's Vade Mecum" – showing a reaction against the old notion that the blue stocking must be above any regard for appearances. Here the governing idea is that cleverness need not be divorced from fascination; that fine heads should be covered with pretty toques; that pince-nez are more becoming than spectacles; and that literary women should not neglect fashion journals or sacrifice toilet to intellect. The allusion in the same year (1898) to a Women's Club consisting exclusively of women who would not marry because they could not find husbands intellectual enough to suit them, was probably an exaggeration. But there were Feminist stalwarts who virtually expressed that view; just as there were enthusiasts of "mixed hockey," then beginning to come into fashion, who may not have been entirely uninfluenced by a matrimonial motive.

The proposal to allow women to hold municipal office, included in the Local Government Bill, was vetoed in 1899, but not before Punch had issued a pictorial forecast of a procession, headed by the Right Worshipful the Lady Mayor, with female mace-bearer, sword-bearer, Town Clerk and "she-rives." The Cecil family have been of late years active in support of the Woman Suffrage Movement, but Lord Salisbury was no feminist. In 1899 Colonel Denny introduced a Bill making the provision of seats for shop assistants compulsory. Punch describes how this modest measure was "turned down" in the Lords on the initiative of the Prime Minister, who scented in the concession possibilities of a revolt of domestic servants. In 1900 the "New Woman," i.e. the heroine of the "Woman who Did" type, is described as moribund if not defunct. The fashion of knickerbockers went out with the century. Women chauffeurs, however, make their appearance in 1900, and the correct designation for them is discussed. But for a couple of years women's claims and pretensions were largely submerged by the War. There was a strange product much in evidence at the Mount Nelson Hotel, Cape Town, but Punch overlooked the vagaries which were admirably satirized in a once famous Limerick: —

There was a young lady of Berwick,Whose conduct was highly hysteric.She followed the gunsAnd distributed bunsTo the men who were down with enteric.

The Housewife's Burden

The Club movement was spreading rapidly, and the founding of the "Ladies' Army and Navy Club" in 1902 prompts a burlesque on the qualifications insisted on for membership in the Ladies' Athenæum, Conservative, Travellers' and Bachelors' Clubs. Punch again sounds the plea for the revival of domesticity in the "Prayer of a Lady Principal" addressed to Oxford Women Students, with apologies to Mr. Kipling: —

Take up the housewife's burden —All ye whose schools are done,Who let your foolish fancy dwellOn thoughts of coming fun.Put Games for Girls upon the shelfWith Jowett, Jebb, and Gow;Be Mrs. Beeton's Homely HintsYour vade mecum now.Take up the housewife's burden —No lofty rule of queens,But long and sordid service —The slave to ways and means.Have done with flighty folly!Throw off your infant past!'Tis yours to cope with butcher's bills,To make the mutton last.Take up the housewife's burden —The truceless wars of peace;Go, humour whimsy housemaids,And wait your cook's caprice.And when your hopes are highest(When both ends nearly meet),Your lord's untimely lavishnessShall all your thrift defeat.Take up the housewife's burden —Ye shall not shun the call;Nor cry too loud on Culture,When darns and dusting pall.Go, face the test of wifehood —To wield the adoring rod,And treat a Man as merelyHalf baby and half god.

The then fashionable alternative is ironically extolled in an irreverent parody of Kingsley's lines, as adapted for a Young Lady's album: —

Be smart, dear girl, and let who will be other;Break from the fold, not stick there like a lamb;So shall your lot, as maid and wife and mother,Be one Grand Slam.

An article by Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick in the Cornhill, on English and Teuton domestic ideals, served Punch in 1904 as the text for a ballad comparing the thrifty German Hausfrau with the extravagant English wife. The infatuated writer sums up entirely in favour of the dainty, decorative Dolly as against the patient, industrious, but dowdy Grisel. Yet in the same year Punch was much exercised with the inevitable decline of chivalry: —

Doubtless the better sort would gladly nourishThose notions which occur in Arthur's tale;Doubtless Romance might still contrive to flourish,Changing its knightly for its Daily Mail,If Woman would but give our modern gallantsA livelier chance to ventilate their talents.Men ride abroad in rubbered automobiles,Naked of armour, bar the nauseous smell,Not bound on any ransom save to owe billsContracted by some errant damosel,So that in Carlton's Halls, superbly gowned,She may adorn their Dinner-table Round:But here their service ends. They fain would wrestleWith horrid dragons or a heathen crew;Ride ventre à terre to help the weaker vessel,Behaving just as Lancelot used to do;Only you cannot keep it up much longerWhen once the weaker sex becomes the stronger.

Matrons and Militants

An equally interesting feature of the times was what might be alternatively called the Revolt or the Apotheosis of Middle Age. Perhaps the first mention of what threatened to be an unfair competition of the matron with the maid is to be found in the verses in 1896, where we read of the modern woman: —

If married and mother she yet plays her part,With six charming children she still must look "smart,"For, judging by facts, what Society likesIs a maid who is bold, and a matron who bikes.

Golf and dancing, however, were the great opportunities of the young middle-aged women who refused to retire to the shelf as in early Victorian days. In 1904 Punch printed a story about golf, in which a maiden aunt "scores" overwhelmingly and turns out to be a champion player, to the confounding of her nephew and niece, a dénoûment beyond imagination's widest stretch twenty years earlier.

With 1905 we plunge into the new phase of the Suffrage question. At the outset Punch was decidedly sympathetic. Note, for example, the cartoon in which a beery working man – a "qualified voter" – addresses a well-dressed, refined-looking woman: "Ah, you may pay rates an' taxes, and you may 'ave responserbilities an' all; but when it comes to votin', you must leave it to us men!" In a brief year Punch was thoroughly estranged by the methods of the militants and their harrying of Ministers. His "Sensible Woman" retorts on her "Shrieking Sister": "You help our cause? Why, you're its worst enemy." Raids on the House of Commons and scenes in the Lobbies and the Ladies' Gallery drove him in the Epilogue to 1906 to take a new line. Since in the course of the Crusade women had descended to man's brutal level, put off their dignity and womanliness, and become "the complete elector" – "why, then, Madam, when you get the franchise, as you will eventually, I shall say to myself —Serve 'em right." The name "suffragette" had been coined, and came to stay for about fifteen years, at any rate; Punch tried his hand at a new variant – "the Insuffrabelles." It was still possible to laugh at a movement which intermittently ministered to mirth; as, for example, when a New York correspondent of a London paper wrote as follows: —

"In the course of a sympathetic discussion on the good work done for the cause by the Suffragettes in London at a meeting of a woman's society for political study, Mrs. Cory, a prominent advocate of female equality, gave a definition of a Utopian dream which woman must not rest until she has realized. 'Knowing as I do our ideals,' said Mrs. Cory, 'confident as I am that we shall attain them, I fix my gaze upon the brightening future, hopefully awaiting the time when a woman on trial for her life will be defended by a female lawyer, convicted by a female jury' (the natural result, we presume), 'sentenced by a female judge, consoled by a female chaplain, and executed by a female executioner. Then, and not till then, will she have attained her proper place in the world.'"

Punch, with commendable reticence, contents himself with observing, "nothing, however, was said as to which world." In 1907 we encounter a picture describing the embarrassment of an unfortunate man invited to tea at a ladies' club by a lady who had forgotten that the afternoon was consecrated to a "Down with Men" Meeting. In "Cross-examining a Suffragist" Punch dexterously manoeuvres a witness into the admissions (1) that nothing could cause Miss Pankhurst greater suffering than to stay idly at home while other women were demonstrating and going cheerfully to martyrdom; (2) that the greater the suffering, the greater the proof of faith in the Cause. Whereupon his Lordship then delivered judgment as follows: —

Argument and Ridicule

That Miss Pankhurst and her family should show their faith in the cause by suffering in the way suggested by Mr. Punch. That they should stay quietly at home for a while – keep out of the newspapers – arrange no demonstrations – go to no prison; seeing that this would be a much truer and more effective martyrdom than anything they had done as yet.

"And," continued his Lordship, waxing eloquent, "if time hangs heavy on their hands —

"Are there no beggars at the gate,Nor any poor about the lands?Oh! teach the orphan boy to read,Or teach the orphan girl to sew,Pray Heaven for a Woman's heart,And let the Woman's Suffrage go."

Budding Suffragette: "I say, Pussy" (with intensity), "are you a Peth or a Pank?"

From argument Punch turned to burlesque in his imaginary forecast "The Fight for Childhood Suffrage in 1927." One cannot blame him for making capital out of a misprint in which the various suffrage societies were credited with "tactics that differ, but whose aims lead to the same gaol." But argument and ridicule were powerless to influence the extremists. The moderates did not always disavow the methods of lawlessness. A highly respected and elderly peeress actually advocated the withdrawal of all subscriptions to charitable objects until women should be given the vote. A steady crescendo in violence marks the progress of the campaign in 1908. "How long," asks Punch à propos of "domiciliary" visits and raids, "are our Cabinet Ministers to be made the sport of clamorous women? Cattle-driving in Ireland, deplorable as a form of popular pastime, is a trifle compared with this new sport of Cabinet Minister-hunting?" This new sport, however, was only in its infancy. Meanwhile the merry game of martyrdom went on. One day, so ran the recital of her prison experiences given by a released Suffragette, "we organized a grand lark. We all agreed to roar like hungry animals at dinner-time. We made a fearful noise." After this, remarks the sardonic Punch, "we hope we shall hear no more of women being devoid of a sense of humour." But even at this early stage of the campaign Punch seems to have realized that, apart from the merits of the case, the victory would rest with the side which made itself the greater public nuisance until its wish was granted. Mr. Asquith is shown in the summer of 1908 with a Suffragette playing the Beggar-maid to his Cophetua, and saying, "'This beggar-maid shall be my Queen' – that is, if there's a general feeling in the country to that effect." A couple of weeks later Mr. Haldane, "thinking Territorially" as he watches a procession of Suffragettes, enviously observes, "If I could only get the men to come forward like this!" On the whole, Punch jibes impartially and genially at Suffragists and anti-Suffragists alike. There is an ominous reference in the summer of 1908 to the remark of a stone-thrower: "It will be bombs next time," but pictorially, at any rate, Punch was inclined to make light of the persecution of Ministers and M.P.s.

The Coming of the "Flapper"

In a cartoon at the end of the year, by an inversion of the classical legend, "Persea" (the anti-Suffragist League) is shown coming to the rescue of Mr. Asquith as "Andromedus," while the spirit of Milton is invoked in a mock-heroic sonnet, after Wordsworth: —

England hath need of thee: she is a denOf roaring lions – women versus men.

The King (Mr. Asquith): "'This beggar-maid shall be my Queen' – that is, if there's a general feeling in the country to that effect."

To 1908 also belongs Punch's recognition of the advent of the Flapper, whose intrusions and insubordinations are happily hit off in "The New Autocrat": —

Ere hockey had shown her what sport meant,Ere yet she grew giddy and pert,She doted on dolls and deportment,And only came down for dessert:Her sisters would apprehend no stingFrom one so exceedingly green,Nor jibbed at the casual toastingOf bashful fifteen.Her tastes were not always considered;She seldom got more than her share;And parents, whenever the kid erred,Brought suitable pressure to bear!But gone is the rule of the hoar head;Old age is dismissed with a grunt;And youth's irrepressible foreheadHas come to the front!O wormwood and gall to our women!O torture far worse than the rack,To find that the smartest of trim menAre off on a different tack:For both at the helm and the prow, too,There lolls an unspeakable chit,And Thirty now learns she must bow toFourteen and a bit!Her locks are confined by a ribbon;Her language is open and free;She talks like a parrot, she's glib onThe problems that petrify me;Her phrases are novel; to-day, whatI marvel at most are the queerLittle statements she clinches with "Eh, what!"Tacked on to "Old dear!"Though chaperons tell her where minxesAre certain to go when they die,A sequence of eloquent winks isHer sole and sufficient reply;Though dowagers, itching to slap her,Would send her in tears to her bed,The simply ineffable FlapperGoes smiling instead!And yet, when reflective DecemberRepines at the pertness of May,Sweet solace it is to rememberShe too has her time of decay:She too, when she starts to put flesh on,Will take a subordinate post,While babies, devoid of discretion,Are ruling the roast!

Suffragist: "It's no good talking to me about Sisyphus. He was only a man!"

The Flapper was destined to assume a more aggressive aspect in later years —vide Dr. Shadwell's indictment in the Nineteenth Century– but Punch's concluding reflections hold good. Her attitude towards the Suffrage movement at this stage was perhaps not unfairly summed up in the remark of a younger sister who declared that she did not want women to get the vote, because she "liked hearing about the Suffragettes."

In 1909 the policy of hunger-striking was adopted by the militants; Punch refers to it, but cannot be blamed for failing to realize the disastrous possibilities of what proved to be perhaps the most sinister legacy of the Suffragist extremists to the forces of disorder. In 1910 he waxes ironical over Lady Cook's suggestion that it would be wiser for the men to capitulate at once. Their rule, she asserted, was nearly over; but, if and when the tables were turned, women must not retaliate but resist all attempts to humiliate and degrade men. This magnanimity only excited Punch's mirth; and the advertisement in a weekly paper: "Lady, having quarrelled with all her friends, desires to meet another in same position," impelled him to devise the rules for a "Mutual Aggravation Society" for the special benefit of the more militant Suffragettes, misogamists and man-haters. Punch, I may note in passing, acknowledged the enterprise of the woman aviator, à propos of an announcement in the Daily Mail that already "Five women can fly," but deplored their unsightly kit, which suggested an Esquimaux in goggles.

Militant Suffragist (after long and futile efforts to light a fire for her tea-kettle): "And to think that only yesterday I burnt two pavilions and a church!"

Cabinet Cleavage

To return to the Suffrage campaign, the troubles of the Prime Minister are indicated in a cartoon showing Suffragist and anti-Suffragist tilting at one another in the ring while Mr. Asquith, endeavouring to get out of the way, remarks: "This is no place for me." A little later, under the heading "Excelsior," a determined-looking Suffragette appears as Sisyphus rolling up a huge stone labelled "Women Suffrage," and saying: "It's no good talking to me about Sisyphus. He was only a man." During the next three years and a half Punch repeatedly illustrated the cleavage in the Cabinet and amongst the Suffragists, and exhibited a progressive resentment against the violence of the extremists. In "Sermons in Stones" (1911) John Bull tells a non-militant Suffragist that he could listen more attentively to her arguments "were it not for these concrete arguments, which I find rather distracting," viz., the stones and bricks flying through the window of his house. In "United We Differ" (1912) Mr. (now Lord) Harcourt and Mr. Lloyd George are shown back to back on the same platform, advocating respectively Votes and No Votes for Women, while in "Rag-Time in the House" (1913) the cross-currents are shown in a dance of Ministers and Opposition leaders. To the same year belongs the highly ironical cartoon "The Majesty of the Law." Justice, blindfolded and wearing a fool's cap labelled "Votes for Women," leans on her sword which is swathed in the bandage of the Hunger Strike. In 1913 also occur the picture of the militant Suffragist, an expert incendiary, reduced to despair by her inability to light her own fire; and the dialogue on the Fifth of November between two "burning Sapphos": "Coming to our bonfire?" "Ra-ther! Whose house are you burning?"