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

Tributes to the Queen in the year of her Diamond Jubilee are unqualified in their admiration. Perhaps the most hearty and impressive, if not the most polished, is the "Song Imperial" printed in June: —

Stand up England, land of toil and duty,In your smoking cities, in your hamlets green;Stand up England, land of love and beauty,Stand up, shout out, God save the Queen!Stand up Scotland, up Wales and Ireland,Loyal to her royalty, crowd upon the scene;Stand up, all of us, we who are the sire-land,Stand up, shout out, God save the Queen!Stand up ye Colonies, the joy-cry reaches you,Near lands, far lands, lands that lie between;Where the sun bronzes you, where the frost bleaches you,Stand up, shout out, God save the Queen!Stand up all! Yes, princes, nobles, peoples,All the mighty Empire – mightier ne'er hath been;Boom from your decks and towers, clang from all your steeplesGod save Victoria, God save the Queen!Why not? Has she not ever loved and served us,Royal to us, loyal to us, gracious ever been?Ne'er in peace betrayed us, ne'er in war unnerv'd us;Up, then, shout out, God save the Queen!But now our sun descends, from the zenith westward,Westward and downward, of all mortals seen;Yet may the long day lengthen, though the fall be rest-ward,May we long together cry, God save the Queen!When in the coming-time, 'neath the dim ocean line,Our dear sun shall sink in the wave serene,Tears will fill these eyes of mine, tears will fill those eyes of thine,Lowly kneeling, all will pray, God save the Queen!

Jubilee Tributes

In his "Jubilee Celebrator's Vade Mecum" Punch did not spare criticism of the arrangements and the profiteering of speculators in seats. Yet with all deductions and drawbacks the Jubilee "was a gigantic success, for it has shown that a quarter of the world loves and appreciates a blameless Queen, and rejoices to be her subjects." The visit of the Duke and Duchess of York to Ireland in July prompts the usual cartoon attributing to Erin the familiar suggestion of a Royal residence in Ireland, a cure for discontent which Punch was never weary of prescribing. Queen Victoria's eightieth birthday fell in 1899, and in the same number in which Punch welcomes the anniversary he indulges in an unflattering pictorial comment on "Imperial Bruin" breathing forth compliments and pacific professions while carrying on dangerous intrigues in the Far East. Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, had renounced the succession to the Dukedom of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in the lifetime of his brother, the Duke of Edinburgh, who had succeeded to the title in 1893. Punch in 1899 congratulated the Duke of Connaught on a decision the wisdom of which was amply justified in the sequel. Here Punch made no claims to prophecy: he merely showed the Duke of Connaught waving aside the proffered honour and gave as his motto Gilbert's often-quoted lines: —

In spite of all temptationsTo belong to other nations,He remains an Englishman.

Punch's lines on the death of the Duke of Edinburgh in the following year attain to a positively "lapidary" excellence in their discretion and brevity: —

Summoned to lordship in a stranger land,He left his English birthright of the main,Now, swiftly touched by Death's restoring hand,He is the Queen's again.

The cartoon which linked Italy with Britannia as "Sisters in Sorrow" – King Humbert had been assassinated two days before the death of the Duke of Edinburgh – strikes the ceremonial and conventional note avoided in the epitaph quoted above, and noticeable in the cartoon prompted by the Queen's visit to Ireland earlier in the year.

(Wishing "Godspeed" to the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York, who are starting for Australia.)

To 1900 also belongs the first appearance in a Punch cartoon of the ex-Crown Prince of Germany. In consonance with German Court tradition he was now about to learn a trade, and as his tastes were said to lie in the direction of typography, Punch offers to take him on as a printing apprentice.

I have spoken elsewhere of the death of Queen Victoria in 1901; for it was a great deal more than an event in Court history; it marked the end of an era. Punch, in a commemorative number, reprinted a great many of his cartoons, good and bad, but omitting the disparaging or satirical pictures to which reference has been made in previous volumes; but even with this limitation, the collection is a valuable contribution to the pictorial history of our times. In discussing the National Memorial Punch makes Art express the pious hope that London will get something worthy of a great city and a great Queen, and, as we have seen, in later years he acknowledged that she had done so. The start of the Duke and Duchess of York for their visit to Australia in March forms the theme of the pleasant fantasy reproduced on the preceding page.

In August the Empress Frederick of Germany, the most highly placed, the most gifted, and the most ill-starred of the Queen's daughters, followed her mother to the grave. Here Punch's tribute, in which Germany and England figure as chief mourners, does not represent the hard facts, and overlooks the bitter antagonism of Bismarck to "the Liberal English woman," as he called her, her failure to inspire affection in the German nation, and the estrangement of her meteoric son. But Punch's attitude was natural, for the Kaiser's visit to Osborne during Queen Victoria's last illness had touched the heart of England; and the description of the Empress Frederick as "gentle, brave and wise" was a venial misreading of the character of one whose fortitude, intrepidity and intellectual gifts were beyond question, but whose individuality was too pronounced to accommodate itself to her political surroundings.

(After the well-known picture by Velazquez in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. With Mr. Punch's respectful congratulations to their Majesties of Spain.)

Coronation Humours

The preparations for the crowning of King Edward furnished Punch with material for a display of abundant good will to the Sovereign, tempered by an explosion of irresponsible frivolity. In the "Overflow Fête," designed by Punch as "Bouverie King of Arms," he seized the opportunity of making game of all his favourite butts. A court of "overflow claims" considers the applications of Lord Halsbury, Sir J. Blundell Maple, Mr. Gibson Bowles, "Brer Fuchs" (Emil Fuchs, an Austrian artist much in Court favour but heavily derided by art critics), Mr. G. B. Shaw, Mr. Alfred Austin the Poet Laureate, and many others. Most of their alleged claims are declined, but a few exceptions are made, as, for example, that in favour of Mr. G. R. Sims being allowed to supply the fountains in Trafalgar Square with "Tatcho." A procession of emblematic cars is mainly satirical, and includes a "sleeping car" typical of British industry. The programme of the Gala Performance at the National Opera House introduces Dan Leno, and includes a masque of "Poets in Hades" on the lines of the Frogs of Aristophanes. Punch also added what purported to be an Official Coronation Ode by Mr. Alfred Austin – a masterpiece of deliberate ineptitude – and a "Chantey of the Nations" in which Mr. Rudyard Kipling's imperialism is burlesqued in none too friendly a spirit. Punch provided a jocular epilogue to the masque: he also dedicated a set of serious verses to the King wishing him

health and years' increase,Wisdom to keep his people's love,And, other earthly gifts above,The long-desired, the gift of Peace.

The King is also hailed in a hunting picture as the "King of Sportsmen"; and the grace and kindliness of Queen Alexandra, now as ever, appealed to Punch's chivalry. The dominant "note" sounded in Punch's pages is one of jocularity and good humour. He reproduces the statement that "no fewer than 1,047 poets have sent in Coronation Odes for the prizes offered by Good Words" – no longer, it need hardly be added, the Good Words of Norman Macleod. American visitors are maliciously pictured as attempting to buy coronets; and Punch makes great play with the official announcement of the amount of space allotted to peeresses in the Abbey. Duchesses were to have eighteen inches and ladies of inferior rank sixteen; what was wanted, in Punch's phrase, was "A Contractor for the Aristocracy."

Death of King Edward

The sudden and dangerous illness of the King and the postponement of the Coronation turned all this gaiety to gloom and suspense, happily relieved by a recovery which gave the celebrations, when they were held, the quality of a thanksgiving as well as of a great pageant.

In 1903 the King and Queen visited Ireland, and Punch prefaced his Donnybrook Fair rhymes – a long way after Thackeray – on their entry into Dublin with the audacious but impenitent declaration that he intended to adhere to a method of spelling which bore no sort of resemblance to Irish pronunciation.

Of all the Royal visitors in the years before the war, none was more popular or "had a better Press" than King Alfonso. In 1905 Punch happily contrasted past and present in his cartoon of the Kings of England and Spain in friendly converse, while in the background the formidable shade of Queen Elizabeth remarks with more of amazement than approval: "Odds my life! A King of Spain in England! And right cousinly entreated withal!" King Alfonso's marriage in the following year to Princess Ena of Battenberg is genially commemorated in Sambourne's happy adaptation of Velazquez; and when the infant Prince of the Asturias made his first visit to England, the same artist gave us the wholly delightful picture of Prince Olaf of Denmark pushing the Spanish princelet in his "pram": "Come along, old man," he says; "I'll show you round. I've been here before." Spain was not a royal bed of roses, but it was at least spared the upheaval which convulsed the adjoining kingdom of Portugal. On the assassination of King Carlos and the Crown Prince in 1908, Britannia in Punch's cartoon bade King Manoel take courage: when he was deposed by the Revolution of 1910, he appears as a dignified figure mournfully bewailing the downfall of his House. Simultaneously Punch chronicles the saying attributed to the late Mlle. Gaby Deslys: "I am not ashamed of having the friendship of young King Manoel," and ironically describes it as "the humility of true greatness."

King Edward was born in the same year in which Punch first appeared, and when he died in 1910 the commemorative number goes back to the cartoon of "The First Tooth," published at a time when Punch's comments on the Royal Nursery were more frank than decorous. But whether as a small boy or an Oxford undergraduate, in America or India, in illness or in health, as Prince or King, he had always found a benevolent friend and lenient critic in Punch, who now saluted him in death, in the name of Europe, as a Maker of Peace.

To the mass of obituary literature, mostly uncritical, which was inspired by the passing of a great and popular personality Punch contributed an interesting fact. There was nothing surprising in the statement that King Edward never joined in debate in the House of Lords; but it was curious to learn that he never voted – except for the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill. The King's affection for his little dog Cæsar was one of those personal traits which had moved the popular sentiment, and Punch was fortunate in having on his staff a writer who was a poet as well as a lover of dogs: —

Reft of your master, little dog forlorn,To one dear mistress you shall now be sworn,And in her queenly service you shall dwell,At rest with one who loved your master well.And she, that gentle lady, shall controlThe faithful Kingdom of a true dog's soul,And for the past's dear sake shall still defendCæsar, the dead King's humble little friend.

Evidence of the unabated popularity of King Alfonso continue to appear in 1910, when that sovereign's visit to the Duke of Westminster prompted some frivolous rhymes on "the Merry Monarch": —

Oh, why does Eaton all her banners don so?To feast the roving eyes of King Alfonso.Why was it that the sun last Wednesday shone so?It loved the polo feats of King Alfonso.What spectacle delights the footman John so?The riding-breeches worn by King Alfonso.What is it fascinates the Eatonian bonne so?It is the winning ways of King Alfonso.What puffs the plumage of the ducal swans so?The notice they receive from King Alfonso.Why are the Kaiser's courtiers jumped upon so?He's sick with jealousy of King Alfonso.Why does the British Press keep on and on so?It cannot have enough of King Alfonso.

Kaiser, King, and Laureate

The mention of the Kaiser is ominous. Punch had, for reasons mentioned above, given him a brief respite, but one of his periodical outbursts at Königsberg in August, 1910, provoked a cartoon representing the Imperial Eagle re-entering his cage "Constitution" to the relief of his keeper, whom he reassures with the remark: "It's all right: I'm going back of my own accord. But (aside) I got pretty near the sky that time. Haven't had such a day out for two years." This was not exactly respectful treatment, but it was not so frank as Punch's heading "Thank Goodness!" prefixed ten years earlier to the statement made, by an American paper, that in a Boston Lunatic Asylum there were eleven patients, each of whom believed himself to be the German Emperor, but that they had no means of communicating with the outer world.

King George's coronation in 1911 gave Punch another occasion for mingling jest with earnest, loyalty to the Sovereign with chaff of notorieties. The King's serious concern with his country's welfare had already been illustrated in the cartoon in which he is seen, like his namesake saint, attacking a dragon – that of "Apathy." At the time of the coronation Punch lays stress on the heritage of sea-power that had fallen to him, a sailor prince. In July the Prince of Wales was welcomed in his Principality – this time, in Punch's picture, by a dragon the reverse of apathetic.

In June, 1913, the office of Laureate fell vacant by the death of Mr. Alfred Austin. After Southey, Wordsworth and Tennyson, the anti-climax had been so painful that Punch may well be excused for the cartoon in which Pegasus appeals to Ringmaster Asquith to disestablish him: the Steed of the Muses was tired of being harnessed to the Royal Circus. There are some who think that, in the best interests of the distinguished author who was appointed, it would have been well if Punch's advice had been followed.

VANITY FAIR

In the fifty years that had passed since Punch's birth in 1841, "Society," as it was then understood, had undergone a revolution which not only changed its structure but altered the meaning of the word. It had, in Mr. A. B. Walkley's phrase, become one of those "discoloured" words like "respectable" and "genteel," in which the new "connotation" strove with and gradually supplanted the old. "Society," in the old limited sense, stood for a limited, exclusive and predominantly aristocratic set, arrogant at times, but not wanting in a certain self-respect. But by the 'nineties it had become amorphous, unwieldy, cosmopolitan and plutocratic. Du Maurier, the finest and best equipped of the commentators and critics of the old régime, who recognized its distinction and its drawbacks, and satirized with impartial ridicule decadent aristocrats and vulgar intruders, was perhaps felix opportunitate mortis: —

He brought from two great lands the best of bothIn one fine nature blent.Lover of English strength and Gallic grace,Of British beauty, or of soul or face,Yet with that subtler something born of raceThat charm to cleanness lent.A Thackeray of the pencil! So men said.His reverence high for the great Titan deadPut by such praise with ease;But social satire of the subtler sortWas his, too. Not the shop, the slum, the court,But gay saloons gave quarry for his sport.'Twas in such scenes as theseHis hectoring Midas, and his high-nosed earl,His worldly matron, and his winsome girl,Were found, and pictured clear,With skill creative and with strength restrained.They live, his butts, cold-hearted, shallow-brained.In his own chosen walk Du Maurier reignedSupreme, without a peer.

The Social Jungle

The tribute was fully earned; but Du Maurier was not one of those who enjoyed plying the scourge, and he was fortunate in that he did not live to see the "Gay Saloon" turned into the Social Jungle, as foreshadowed in Punch's adaptation of Mr. Kipling's poem in 1894, which ends with the couplet: —

Because of his age and his cunning, his grip andhis power of jaw,In all that the Law leaveth open the word of KingMammon is Law.

For "Wolf" read "Worldling" for "Jungle" read "Social World" and Punch's parallel "Laws" work out well enough. But in the years that followed it was not so much mammon-worship as the craze for excitement at all costs that dominated the fashionable world. The vulgarity and love of the limelight which Du Maurier had satirized were multiplied tenfold. Society became a romp and a ramp. England began to go dancing-mad in the 'nineties, but the harmless rowdiness of Kitchen Lancers, of the "Barn-dance" and the "Washington Post" developed in the new century into a mania for which historians found a parallel in the "Tarantism" of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. We passed through various and mostly distressing phases of the malady from the days of Loie Fuller's serpentine contortions to the introduction of the "Salome" dance by Miss Maud Allan. Skirt-dancing, with a superabundance of skirts, gradually gave place to a style marked by the desire to dispense not only with skirts but with any sort of clothing. The wonderful performances of the Russian Ballet revealed a new world of art and "washed out" a good deal of highly advertised and indecorous incompetence, but in many ways proved a doubtful boon. The cult of the male dancer revived, and the triumphs of Pavlova and Karsavina lured the aristocratic amateur into futile and unseemly competition. This was only one of the many signs of the love of publicity which marked Society when it had ceased to be select. In the 'forties, when the crême de la crême disported themselves at Cremorne, the Gardens were reserved for their exclusive use. Now, "smartness" was the note of Society, and "smartness" does not like to hide its light under a bushel. In the middle 'nineties Punch registered his protest against ladies who begged publicly in the streets – the "merry half-sisters of charity," as he called them. By 1903 he indicated the spread of the new fashion in the ironical remark that "the eccentric habit of dining at home is, I regret to say, steadily spreading." The further course of this anti-domestic movement is correctly shown in the cartoon of Christmas à la mode in 1908, when the butler of a modern English house inhospitably repels Father Christmas with: "Not at 'ome. Her Ladyship is at Monty Carlo; the young gentlemen are in the Halps; and Sir John has taken the other members of the family to the Restorong!" Punch was not content with attacking the organized publicity of social life, with which may be connected his satire of the orgy of Pageants; he was equally vigorous in chastising its organized frivolity and horse-play; the extravagance of the week-end pleasure-hunt; the ostentatious folly of freak entertainments; and other excesses and eccentricities summed up in the two detestable phrases fin de siècle and de luxe.

Punch found no traces of a Golden Age in the 'nineties, though he admitted they were Yellow enough. For these were the years of the Yellow Book– alternately regarded as typical of fin de siècle decadence (in Punch's view) or as a symbol of literary renascence – of the now forgotten "emancipation novel," The Yellow Aster; to say nothing of the Yellow Peril and the Yellow Press. The Daily Mail, by the way, was not founded till 1896. As a social satirist Punch, throughout all this period, is much more concerned with the material or physical than the mental or spiritual vagaries of the rich and well-to-do. But a notable exception must be made in favour of that famous – or shall I say notorious? – coterie known as "the Souls," who are frequently referred to in 1893 and 1894. Readers anxious for "inside" information may be recommended to consult the Autobiography of Mrs. Asquith, who was one of the number.

Butler of Modern English Home: "Not at ome. Her Ladyship is at Monty Carlo; the young gentlemen are in the Halps; and Sir John has taken the other members of the family to the Restorong."

Mrs. Montmorency-Smythe: "And what were you reading when I came in, my dear? Shakespeare! Ah! What a wonderful man! And to think that he wasn't exactly what one would call a gentleman."

"Have you Browning's works?" "No, Miss. They're too difficult. People down here don't understand them." "Have you Praed?" "Prayed, Miss? Oh, yes; we've tried that, but it's no use!"

The "Souls"

They were most of them highly born and highly gifted. Some afterwards attained eminence in politics and literature; and it must be admitted that they were clever enough to get themselves a great deal talked about without deliberately courting publicity at the time. Their audacities and unconventionalities enjoyed a considerable reputation, but did not often get into the papers. Punch was obviously "intrigued" about them, but ingeniously disguised his curiosity by passing it on to an imaginary American visitor, "high-toned" (the word "high-brow" was a later importation) and inquiring, who came over to study our "Institootions" – Mr. Gladstone also used to pronounce it that way – and wrote down his impressions for a work on Social Dry Rot in Europe. So, hearing vague talk of a secret moral institution, the Society of Souls, he set to work to collect authentic information about them, but was everywhere baffled. The nearer he got to the shrine, the more negative and mysterious was the information vouchsafed. But the Philistine view is well burlesqued in his conversation with a fashionable lady who described the Souls as "a horrid stuck-up set of people who did all sorts of horrid things, all read the same books at the same time, sacrificed wild asses at the altar of Ibsen, the Hyperborean Apollo, and were bound by a rule that no Soul might ever marry another Soul." A year or so later Punch noted the report that the Souls had ceased to exist, and would be replaced by a new club – the "No Bodies" – of which the membership would be unlimited. Still the Souls had had their day and, as representing an effort to establish an exclusive social coterie to which intellect or wit formed the chief passport, demand at least a passing word. The satire of fashionable culture dies down and is never very seriously revived even in the days when the late Emil Reich lectured on Plato at Claridge's. "Smart" Society was more active with its heels than with its head or its heart.

Punch distrusted the sincerity of fashionable ladies who professed a desire to "elevate the masses" by organizing entertainments which were a hotch-potch of Ibsen, skirt-dancing, exotic sentiment and frank vulgarity. He waxes sarcastic, again, over charitable bazaars, run by women who didn't enjoy them, for causes of which they knew nothing and cared less. Frivolity was the thing that mattered. In the "Letters to a Débutante" which appeared in 1894 Punch assumes the rôle of the cynical mentor, e.g. "It is hardly possible to exaggerate the unimportance of nearly everything that happens": "Laugh when you're thinking what to say. It saves time." In weighing the rival merits of a group of suitors, the preference is given to the rich German-Jew. The decay of ballroom manners was an old subject of complaint with Punch, but it was never so persistently harped upon as during the years which began with the Barn-dance and ended with the Bunny-hug. In 1894, à propos of the exuberant agility of a middle-aged Mænad, an old lady in one of Du Maurier's pictures observes that the "Pas de Quatre" should be "Pas du Tout" for Aunt Jane. The "Romping Lancers" are also noted, and in "Association v. Rugby" a breathless young lady beseeches her partner – a famous Rugby half-back – to dance "Soccer" for a little. In 1896, under the heading "The Death of the Dance," Punch takes for his text the remark of a speaker at a recent meeting of the British Association of Teachers of Dancing: "I had rather be old and teach deportment than be young and teach people to romp the Barn-dance"; and he bewails the conversion of the once "light fantastic" into heavy prancing, spasmodic antics, and the general decay of elegance and grace. The arrival in 1897 of "The Washington Post" is greeted with ironical approval: "You take hold of a girl by both hands, try a double shuffle, and then slide off to another part of the room and repeat the performance." In 1898 the lines on "The Lost Art" are based upon the statement made by a provincial mayor that the risk of injury was rather greater in the ballroom than in the football field: —