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

So we come to the year 1914. When the militant campaign was at its height, Punch prophesied that women would get the vote by 1919. He was only a year out, but his prophecy was not complimentary. It takes the form of an account of a great procession to celebrate the triumph of destructive methods – burning, blowing up, etc. On reaching the House of Commons the demonstrators find that it had just been dynamited and was in flames, and realize that they had not left a single building standing in London that was large enough to accommodate the legislature. In the sequel the Vote was won, not by burning churches, mutilating pictures, or damaging pillar-boxes, but by women's work in the War. It was not a concession to violence, but an acknowledgment of public and patriotic service.

INVENTIONS, DISCOVERIES, NOVELTIES

In the realm of invention and discovery the period under review was richer in achievements than any of those dealt with in the preceding volumes. Again and again imaginative or fantastic forecast was outdone by reality. Road traffic was revolutionized by the coming and rapid development of the motor. Space and distance were annihilated by man's conquest of the air and the introduction of wireless telegraphy. Scientific research, by the discovery of X-rays and new elements, more than equalled the pretensions of mediæval thaumaturgists. The cinematograph added a new entertainment and terror to life. The submarine, it is true, dated from the time of the American Civil war, but its improvements clearly foreshadowed the formidable part it was destined to play in the Great War. The long and splendid annals of Arctic and Antarctic explorations were crowned by the exploits of Peary and Amundsen and our own heroic Scott. On this side of the New Order, as on others, Punch supplies a commentary which, though necessarily incomplete and irregular, is invariably animated and often instructive.

Awkward position of Mr. Newfangle, who, when halfway up a steep hill, discovers by the sudden retrograde movement of the autocar that the motor has become exhausted.

Motors and Motorists

To begin with terra firma, one finds an early illustration of the motor in 1895, when the Hackney observes to the Shire-horse: "Look here, friend Dobbin, I'll be shod if they won't do away with us altogether some of these days." The road in the picture is crowded with bicyclists, male and female, with a traction engine and a "patent road locomotive" of the waggonette type in the foreground. In 1896 the unsettled nomenclature of this "new monstrosity from France" is shown by the various alternative names – autocar, automobile, etc. – gradually settling down to motor-car. Bells were used as signals —vide the poem "Tinkle, twinkle, motor-car" – and a speed of twelve miles an hour is spoken of as typical. Punch was busy throughout the year with forecasts and prophecies – a motor Derby; a "motor-crawler" for deer stalkers, not altogether unlike the "scooter" of recent years; a motor-coach for the Lord Mayor's procession; and a "moto-growler" almost indistinguishable from the electric brougham. Reference is made to the trial run of motors from London to Brighton, and the frequent breakdowns associated with motoring in its early stages are illustrated in the conjugation of the new verb to "mote": —

PRESENT TENSEI moteThou stokestHe looks out for the policeWe run into a lamp-postYe knock a man overThey pay damagesIMPERFECT TENSEI was motingThou wast trying to steerHe was carrying a red flag in frontWe were going four hours a mileYe were cussing like anythingThey were giving it up as a bad job

In 1897 Punch's doggerel verses on "Motor-car-acteristics" are entirely disparaging to the new mode of locomotion, on the score of noise, smell and risk. With the new century the question of control became urgent, and while Punch burlesques the grandmotherly restrictions adopted by some local authorities, his "Merry Motorist's Lament" in 1901 is aimed at the selfishness of those who resented the claims of pedestrians, horses, children, dogs, etc., to the use of the roads. Policemen were already employed to time the speed of motorists, but no distinguishing numbers were yet carried. To 1902 belong the first illustrations of the motor-bicycle and of "trailers" attached to the "push-bike." Breakdowns and the wearisomeness of motoring "shop" form the theme of verses in 1903. The adoption of the word "chauffeur" is resented by Punch on patriotic grounds; but while suggesting various alternatives for the word "road-hog," which had now come into use, he has no mercy for the nuisance which had called it into being. When the speed limit was abolished in this year, Punch vigorously opposed the concession, and in the text to his cartoon suggests that the true remedy was to be found in limiting the power of the engines. From this date onward the motor-car, being more or less firmly established as an integral part of the locomotive system, passes from the domain of the abnormal, and is superseded as a theme for speculation and prophecy by the airship and the aeroplane.

Punch's first picture of a flying machine in this period occurs in the autumn of 1894. The mechanism is, however, purely fanciful, and the design more remote from the actuality of 1908 than that which I have reproduced in Vol. I., p. 73. The Annual Register for 1900 records under date July 2 the flight of Count Zeppelin's airship from Friedrichshafen to Immenstaad on the Lake of Constance – a distance of three and a half miles. In the following year Punch's "leaves from an aeronaut's diary", though purely farcical, are yet of interest as the earliest reference in his pages to flying in a "dirigible" as a fait accompli. How modest Punch's prophecies were in regard to speed may be judged from his picture – at about the same date – of an aerial "bobby" arresting people for flying at thirty miles an hour! The flying motor-cab represented in 1902 belongs to the realm of uncircumstantial imagination, but in 1906, though ballooning is still spoken of as a fashionable amusement and is recommended, under the heading "If Pigs had wings," to road-hogs in search of a new thrill, a note of realism is struck by the use of the word "aeroplane" and reference to the £10,000 prize offered for the first airship flight from London to Manchester. The picture of aeroplanes at the close of this year recalls the Japanese box-kite. Punch was evidently a little lax in his terminology. The balloon he commended to the "road-hog" probably meant the airship, for he almost simultaneously speaks of the passing of the old gas balloon, and when in 1907 Punch published a design for a new penny piece "in accordance with Britannia's aerial ambitions," Britannia is shown in mid-air in what is apparently the car of an airship, certainly not the old "basket" of a balloon.

If Punch failed in 1908 – the annus mirabilis of the Conquest of the Air – to recognize the paramount claims of the Brothers Wright, it must be borne in mind that the notorious aversion from publicity shown by those pioneers, and the deliberate secrecy with which they had conducted their experiments, kept them for a while out of the limelight. Mr. Farman's exploits in the early months of 1908 are duly celebrated in the cartoon in which Icarus, watching a biplane, says: "Confound that fellow! I wish I'd thought of that!" But though Mr. Farman's efforts were completely eclipsed by those of Orville Wright in America and Wilbur Wright at Le Mans in France, in September, October and December, Punch only gradually awoke to the fact. The reference to Wilbur Wright on September 16 conveys no clear acknowledgment of his achievement. He is, however, by implication promoted to importance three weeks later when we read amongst various "Messages from the Dead" the statement of Icarus: "The word aeroplane is a monstrosity to Elysian ears, and the mere mention of W(ilbur) W(right) puts me in a wax. Anyhow, no sea can be called after a man with such a name." An allusion in the following week to Wilbur Wright's avoidance of the "snap-shooter" helps to explain how it came about that he never figured in a cartoon. M. Bleriot's first cross-Channel flight in 1909 made a prodigious stir, and Punch chronicled it in the figure of "Winged Victory" landing on the cliffs at Dover.

Punch (to Mr. Marconi): "Many hearts bless you to-day, Sir. The world's debt to you grows fast."

Wireless telegraphy makes its début in the pages of Punch in 1894, when the verses "Hail, Columbia!" associate it with the name of Nikola Tesla, the electrician, born on the borders of Austria and Hungary, who migrated to the States in 1884. Five years later the Fairy Electricity, armed with wireless, gives warning to submarine cables and land telegraphs that she won't be able to keep them much longer. Punch was here a previous prophet; but he showed a decidedly "intelligent anticipation" in his article on "Marconigrams" in January, 1902, where he predicted accurately enough some of the drawbacks involved in the tapping of messages by "receivers" other than those for which they were intended. The word "Marconigram" – in itself a tribute to the predominance of Signor Marconi's "system" – was then brand-new. Punch's use of it antedates by a week the earliest reference quoted in Murray.

The name of Marconi was for several years unfortunately mixed up with a resounding politico-financial scandal, arising out of a traffic in shares in which the inventor was never even remotely implicated. Punch, therefore, had an extra reason for acknowledging his great services to humanity in the "S.O.S." cartoon in October, 1913, when a great disaster was averted by a wireless message from a liner in distress.

Neptune: "Look out, my dear – you're mistress on the sea; but there's a neighbour of yours that's trying to be mistress under it."

Britannia: "All right, Father Nep – I'm not asleep."

("M. Rousseau, the inventor of the submarine warship says that the advantage of the submersible system would be incontestable, but that certain problems have arisen of which the solution has not been altogether realized… The belief of M. Rousseau, however, is that the type of the submersible is perfectible, and that the difficulties will be overcome." —Moniteur de la Flotte, quoted in The Times.)

The Submarine of Fancy and Fact

Until the beginning of the new century Punch's treatment of the submarine was mainly fantastic with intermittent moments of misgiving. The former mood prevails in his burlesque sequel to Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, printed in 1899, in which Esterhazy and Du Paty de Clam (notorious personages in the Dreyfus "affaire") are introduced along with "Captain Nemo." The submarine was at the moment chiefly associated in the public mind with Jules Verne's romance, and on that very account was perhaps treated less seriously than it deserved. Jules Verne, as we now know, was aggrieved that his countrymen did not recognize him as a scientific writer. But French engineers and inventors were busy with the problem, and in 1900 M. Rousseau's "submersible" inspired Punch with a cartoon in which Neptune warns Britannia of the new menace to her rule, while Britannia replies that she is not asleep. The heading "Rousseau's Dream" certainly implies scepticism, but little more than a year later Punch, in May, 1901, had come to recognize the grim actualities of the new branch of the Navy: —

THE SONG OF THE SUB-MARINEDA life 'neath the ocean wave,A home in the rolling deep,That the billows never laveThough the currents never sleep.Where the whiting come and tapOn the porthole's misty pane,And the congers bark and snapIn a dogfish-like refrain.A life 'mid the flowing tide,A home in the sunless sea,In a ship with a porpoise hideThat ever concealed must be.A perpetual game of napOn the ocean's ill-made bed;There one's feet get soft as papWhere the sole alone may tread.Oh, well for the collier ladAs he curses his garb of grime!Oh, well for the man nigh madWith the heat in a torrid clime!O! well for the dark LascarIn the sea of ice or snow!But alas! without sun or moon or star,For the mariner down below!

Sir Percy Scott's warning on the eve of the war of 1914, as I notice elsewhere, was not taken seriously by Punch. To go back to 1901, it was in that year that an acute controversy raged over the efficiency of the "Belleville" tubular boilers, but Punch contented himself with merely registering the conflicting views of the experts.

Röntgen Rays and Radium

The discovery of the Röntgen rays in 1896 and of radium in 1903 are not absolutely neglected; but that is about all that can be said of Punch's frivolous comments on these momentous new-comers. On the other hand, the possibilities and abuses of the cinematograph were his constant preoccupation from 1896 onwards. Punch attended an exhibition given by a M. Trewey in that year, and, while making play with the exhibitor's name, was sufficiently up-to-date to allude to the "Pictures" and to foresee the inevitable abbreviation of their classical title. In 1901, under the heading "What it must never come to," Punch only too correctly foreshadowed the vulgarity and indecorum of the film play in later years.

Nearly half a century earlier Punch had chronicled the flight of the "Wild geese" to the gold diggings in California and Australia. Later on South Africa had become the lure to all who suffered from the auri sacra fames. In 1897 it was the turn of the New World again, and Klondyke and the Yukon were words on every lip. The old story of fortunes and failures was once more repeated, though not on so large a scale, and Punch summed up its lessons in his pessimistic picture of exhausted diggers in Arctic surroundings lying at the feet of a sinister skeleton figure guarding a great gold nugget.

In the domain of non-commercial exploration three phases are to be noted: Nansen's "Farthest North" in the 'nineties, Peary's Conquest of the North Pole in 1909, and the Antarctic tragedy of 1912. Nansen's gallant effort was happily above criticism; and his fame, won in this arduous field, has of late been enhanced by his disinterested and humane persistence in the relief of the victims of the Great War. Peary's triumph, though great and incontrovertible, was clouded at the time by the extraordinary controversy which arose out of the rival claim of another American explorer, Dr. Cook. His story, according to which he had reached the Pole before Peary, was accepted at Copenhagen and did not lack a certain amount of American backing. In his earliest comments on the contradictory reports Punch preserved an attitude of judicious caution, tempered with ironic satisfaction that the rival claimants were both Americans. But the publication of Dr. Cook's narrative converted this suspense of judgment into incredulity and even ridicule. The name of Dr. Cook's chief native witness, "Etukishook," was, to put it mildly, unfortunate. Punch's final comment took the form of a cartoon in which the American Eagle was shown sitting on the top of the "Big Nail" and complacently remarking: "My Pole, anyway!"

The Antarctic Tragedy

From Dr. Cook's narrative to the journals of Captain Scott is a step from the ridiculous to the sublime. Here, again, there had been rivalry, but rivalry without dispute. The goal had been reached by Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer, only a few weeks before Scott and his four companions, Captain Oates, Dr. Wilson, Lieutenant Bowers and Petty Officer Evans – all of them "names to resound for ages." In March, 1912, "Captain Scott and his gallant comrades reached the South Pole and died on their homeward way." With this brief sentence Punch prefaces his memorial verses on what was at once the most tragic and heroic episode in all the long annals of Polar exploration: —

Not for the fame that crowns a gallant deed,They fixed their fearless eyes on that far goal,Steadfast of purpose, resolute at needTo give their lives for toll.But in the service of their kind they fared,To probe the secrets which the jealous EarthYields only as the prize of perils dared,The wage of proven worth.So on their record, writ for all to know —The task achieved, the homeward way half-won —Though cold they lie beneath their pall of snow,Shines the eternal sun.O hearts of metal pure as finest gold!O great example, where our sons may trace,Too proud for tears, their birthright from of old,Heirs of the Island Race!

In this context I may note two great disasters, the one at the beginning and the other at the end of this period, which served to illustrate the "price of Admiralty" and the perils of speed when combined with enormous size and structure of a type in which design has outrun strength. The first was the loss of the Victoria in the manoeuvres off Tripoli in 1893, owing to an error in judgment on the part of a great admiral – Sir George Tryon. The second was the loss of the Titanic in April, 1912. Punch in both instances confined himself to the expression of sympathy and condolence, without endeavouring to draw morals or recalling, à propos of the Titanic, his curious prophecy, given in an earlier volume, of the likelihood of just such a disaster resulting from the cult of speed at all costs and in all weathers.

The perils of the sea naturally suggest the means of endeavouring to avoid them. After a long interval the Channel Tunnel scheme was revived in 1906, and in his cartoon in January, 1907, Punch indicates that it was calculated "a double debt to pay." Neptune is shown objecting to have his power undermined, but Britannia retorts: "I want to see more of my friends over there, and I never look my best when I've been seasick." So again, in August, 1913, under the heading "The Entente Tube," when the steward on a night Channel boat observes, "If they bring in this 'ere tunnel, my job's gone," Punch replies, "That's the only sound objection I've heard yet."

Steward (on night Channel boat): "If they bring in this 'ere tunnel, my job's gone."

Mr. Punch: "That's the only sound objection I've heard yet."

(Foreign Artillery Officer, after dropping shell from Dirigible with the idea of destroying London): "Tut! Tut! I've missed it!"

Punch's Prophecies

Punch's forecasts and prophecies are mentioned under various headings, but two may be specially noted here. In 1909 a foreign officer (obviously a German) is depicted by Mr. George Morrow in the car of an airship "after dropping a shell with the idea of destroying London." "Tut! tut!" he observes, "I've missed it." The second picture, in October, 1910, is of "The New Arm and how to use it," and illustrates the conversion of a number of soldiers, by the device of opening umbrellas of a peculiar pattern, into what the approaching air-scout takes to be a field dotted with gigantic flowers. But, as I showed in an earlier volume, Punch described the principle of camouflage in full detail about half a century before it was carried into practice.

CHANGING LONDON

Mr. Punch (supported by shades of two of his most famous henchmen, John Leech and Charles Keene): "Good-bye, old friend. You've been very useful to me, but your day is done."

Cabs v. Taxis

London underwent many notable changes, structural and otherwise, between 1892 and 1914, but perhaps the most remarkable were brought about by the engineer rather than by the architect. Macadam had yielded to asphalt, and now asphalt largely gave place to the wood pavement. Electric lighting became general, and with the "electrification" of the old Underground a favourite source of well-founded complaint was finally removed. But the conspicuous and outstanding feature of London traffic in this period was the coming of the Tubes, while above ground it was revolutionized by the motor, and the passing to a great extent of horse-drawn vehicles. As early as 1902 Mr. Briton Rivière uttered a lament over the disappearance of the horse from London traffic. His point of view was quite intelligible, but it was purely artistic. Punch was a great lover of the "noble animal," but it was precisely for that reason that he welcomed its release from the drudgery and suffering, the maltreatment and overloading inseparable from the old order. The speeding-up of street traffic brought with it new perils and noises, but it freed us from many discomforts and nuisances – for example, the "cab-runner," rampant in the middle 'nineties, who plagued unprotected females by his extortions and insolence until the coming of the taxi ran him off his legs. At the time of the South African War, when Punch noted the commandeering of 'bus horses for service at the front, he declared that there had been hardly any improvement in the public vehicles of London since the days of Shillibeer – the coach-builder who introduced omnibuses to London in 1829. It is true that the drivers were famous for their conversational powers, which motor-bus drivers are unable to exercise owing to their isolation, but only mediævalists can lament the passing of the old lumbering, stuffy 'bus, dimly lit by oil lamps, and in wet weather redolent of damp straw. As for the "growler," Punch was decidedly premature when in 1905, the centenary of the year in which public conveyances first plied for hire in London, he assumed that its reign was over. In 1907 he paid the "growler" the homage of a cartoon in which Punch, attended by the shades of John Leech and Charles Keene, admitted that the "Cabby" had been "very useful to him" – as a target for generally hostile criticism. In spite of Punch's repeated valedictions, the "growler" continued to emerge during strikes in later years, and I am not certain whether it can be pronounced to be dead even yet. In 1907, again, there is a curious reference to the now largely disused practice of whistling for cabs. An irritated hansom-cabby observes to a gentleman who has been whistling for a "taximeter cab" for ten minutes – in series of three whistles – "Try four whistles, guv'nor, and p'r'aps you'll get an airship." The whistling code had first of all to be revised so as to establish the precedence of the "taxi," and then was simplified by the disappearance of the "growler" and the hansom. In this context may be quoted the epitaph based on the fact that a French traveller had taken "Job Masters" to be a personal name, and published in 1909: —

His horses were old and his carriages were older,But they were all we could get and we had to put up with them.His watchwords were Livery and Bait, and he will be sadly missed.His end was Petrol.

The Fairy Electra (to Steam Locomotive Underground Demon): "Now they've seen me, I fancy your days are numbered."

(Central London Electric Railway opened by H.R.H. the Prince of Wales – Wednesday, June 27, 1900.)

The L.C.C. Trams

On the vexed question of the extension of the tramway system to central London Punch did not maintain an inflexible consistency. In 1905 he supported the L.C.C. in their effort to carry the tram system across Westminster Bridge and along the Embankment, and when their Bill, passed in the Commons, was thrown out by the Lords, he showed Lord Halsbury, the leader of the Opposition on this occasion, as an out-of-date Horatius, Punch informing him that "this isn't ancient Rome. This is modern London, and you've just got to move on." Yet in 1907 the congestion of empty trams between Blackfriars and Westminster Bridge moved him to ridicule the L.C.C.'s "Spectacular Vacuum Embankment Trams," and to paint a fancy portrait of a grocer's assistant who had actually succeeded in riding in one of them. Later on, again, on the eve of the War, Punch made it clear that he had no sympathy with the L.C.C. in their obstinate preference for trams as opposed to motor-buses. The L.C.C. tram was "beaten on points" by its more flexible rival. "Hard lines on me," says the tram. "Yes," retorts the motor-bus, "it's always hard lines with you, my boy. That's what's the matter; you can't side-step."

But the coming of the new order in London locomotion dates appropriately from the year 1900. Early in that year Mr. Punch describes his experiences on a trip from the Monument to Stockwell in what he calls the "Sardine-box railway," dwelling on the scrimmages of passengers and the rocking of the trains, and endorsing the company's advertisement that it was the "warmest line in London." Criticism gives place to eulogy in the summer, when the fairy "Electra" gives the Steam Locomotive Underground Demon notice to quit, and Punch adopts the phrase, "The Twopenny Tube," from his lively but short-lived contemporary the Londoner. "Horace in London" indites a "Carmen Tubulare" in honour of the new Underground, and a burlesque article is based on the notion that the ozone generated in the Tubes would lead to a monstrous growth of appetite. The new and highly irregular verb, "Tu be," is conjugated in all tenses and moods, beginning: "I tube, thou payest tuppence; he Yerkes6; we get a hustle on; ye block the gangways; they palm off 'bus tickets." Complaints of over-crowding testified to the popularity of the new method of transit, and the voice of the "strap-hanger" was soon loud in the land. The congestion on the suburban railways had moved one of Punch's bards to poetic remonstrance as early as 1901: —