Mr. Punch's History of Modern England (Vol. 1-4). Charles L. Graves
postponed, in which we find the completion of Nelson's pillar; the catalogue of the British Museum Library—Punch was no admirer of Panizzi, the librarian; the Reform of the City Corporations; the completion of the new Houses of Parliament; an omnibus that will carry a person quicker than he can walk; good water; cheap gas; perfect sewerage; and unadulterated milk. The campaign against Barry, the architect of the new Houses of Parliament, was conducted with a good deal of acrimony. Punch began by objecting to the cost, then to Barry's "long sleep," and later on to the expensive experiments in ventilation, and the darkness of the reporters' gallery. Nor was he less impatient over the delays in the completion of the Hungerford Suspension Bridge and the new Westminster Bridge—begun in 1854, eight years after the old bridge had been closed as dangerous, and opened in 1860. The future of the derelict Marble Arch moved him to frequent and caustic comment before its removal from outside Buckingham Palace to its present site in 1850. As early as 1853 there was talk of removing Temple Bar, but this was not done till 1878. And the mention of Buckingham Palace recalls the fact that in 1857, when it was proposed to cut a carriage road through St. James's Park, there was no public road past the palace. The pelicans, which delight us to-day on their sadly-diminished lake, date back to the time of Charles II, who received a gift of these birds from the Tsar of Muscovy.
The record of new buildings, constructions, monuments, and "improvements" kept by Punch is not complete, but it serves to illustrate the changes between mid-Victorian and Georgian London. The Thames Tunnel, Brunel's pioneer work in the long series of subterranean engineering achievements which have transformed the under-crust of London, was opened in August, 1843, and on October 28, 1844, the Queen opened the new Royal Exchange amid civic junketings which caused "Q" (Douglas Jerrold) to deplore the absence of the sons of labour from a hollow pageant in which only merchant princes were represented. The reference to the two tall buildings at Albert Gate seems to indicate an apprehension even in those early days of the coming of skyscrapers, of which Queen Anne's Mansions are still the sole realization. Thackeray has a humorous poem on "The Pimlico Pavilion", which refers to the pavilion in the gardens of Buckingham Palace, a summer house with a central octagon room. In view of Punch's persistent attacks on the Court for neglecting native talent, it should be recorded that the task of filling the eight lunettes below the cornice with frescoes was entrusted to eight British artists, including Stanfield, Landseer, and Maclise, and that the subjects were all suggested by passages from Milton's Comus. On Wyatt's unfortunate colossal statue of the Duke of Wellington, erected opposite Apsley House in 1846, and replaced by Boehm's smaller equestrian statue in 1883, Punch heaped unstinted ridicule with pen and pencil. Nor was he less hostile in his criticisms on the "hideous models" submitted for the proposed memorial to the Iron Duke, when these designs were exhibited in 1857, describing them as "Nemesis in Plaster of Paris," and representing the French Ambassador as telegraphing to his Government: "Waterloo is avenged."
The New Billingsgate buildings merely serve as an excuse for some jocular remarks on their supposed humanizing influence on the Billingsgate dialect.
But a good deal of space is devoted to Big Ben, his name and note (E natural), and the vicissitudes which attended his hanging in the Clock Tower. Of the references which abound in 1856, perhaps the most notable is the suggestion that the clapper should be named Gladstone, "as, without doubt, his is the loudest tongue in Parliament". The announcement in 1857 that a crack had been discovered in Big Ben led to an epigram in disparagement of Mr. Gladstone's rival, so Punch was able to have it both ways:—
Big Ben is cracked, we needs must own;
Small Ben is sane, past disputation;
Yet we should like to know whose tone
Is most offensive to the nation.
The Filthy Thames
The late Mr. Henry Jephson, L.C.C., published in 1907 an exhaustive work on "The Sanitary Evolution of London." He quotes Dickens's terrible description of one of the old intramural churchyards, but makes no mention of Punch's services in the cause of London sanitation. They certainly deserved and deserve recognition, for he spared no effort to bring home to a wider public than that reached by Blue Books and Reports the intimate and deadly connexion between dirt and disease. As early as the year 1842 we find in his pages this gruesome but unexaggerated pen-picture of the Thames and its tributaries:—
Vauxhall contributes lime, Lambeth pours forth a rich amalgam from the yards of knackers and bone-grinders, Horseferry liberally gives up all its dead dogs, Westminster empties its treasures into the mighty stream by means of a common sewer of uncommon dimensions, the Fleet-ditch bears in its inky current the concentrated essences of Clerkenwell, Field-lane, Smithfield, Cowcross—and is, by means of its innumerable branches, augmented by the potent ingredients of St. Giles's, Somers-town, Barbican, St. Luke's, and the surrounding districts. The fluids of the Whitechapel slaughter-houses call in their transit through the Minories for the contributions of Houndsditch, Ratcliff Highway, Bevis Marks, and Goodman's Fields, and thus richly laden pour their delicious slime into the Thames by means of the Tower-ditch. Finally, the Surrey side yields the refuse of tar-works and tan-yards, and it is allowed by all, that the people of Deptford, Woolwich, and those situated in the lower course of the stream, get the Thames water (which here sustains six different characters) in the highest perfection.
THE "SILENT HIGHWAY"-MAN
The cartoon, The "Silent Highway"-Man, was published in 1858, but it is, perhaps, the best of the many pictorial comments on the above text. The noisome state of the Serpentine—"a lake of mere manure"—constantly affronted Punch's sensitive nose. Insanitary Smithfield and squalid Covent Garden elicit dishonourable mention from the early 'forties onward. But it was in 1849, the year of the cholera and typhus visitation, that his crusade against London filth—"Plague, Pestilence and Co."—began in earnest. The evil is traced to the triple source of bad drainage, overcrowded intramural burial grounds, and the unchecked pollution of the river. Punch salutes Mr. G. A. Walker, the author of "Gatherings from Graveyards," as a public benefactor for his zeal in endeavouring to secure the abolition of intramural interments, and tilts savagely at obstructive Boards of Guardians, vestry clerks, and extortionate undertakers, who profited by the maintenance of the abuse. He gives us an "Elegy written in a London Churchyard," on a victim of an epidemic brought on by preventable dirt; he exhibits "the water that John drinks"; he represents Hamlet soliloquizing in a London graveyard; and in 1849 he suggests the revision of street nomenclature in accordance with official acquiescence in the then existing dominion of dirt.
Though by no means an enthusiastic admirer of the Duke of Wellington, Punch confesses that he would like to see him appointed Sanitary Dictator. The Thames, with its "acres of cesspool," is likened to "a fetid Dead Sea." Yet Punch refused to lay the blame at the door of Lord John Russell or the Government, who were held guilty by the Morning Herald for the twelve thousand deaths from cholera in London. The real criminals were to be found elsewhere. The ravages of typhus and cholera in 1849 have been surpassed in recent years by those of influenza, but the toll was heavy, and heaviest among the poor:—
For three sad months Britannia mourned her children night and day,
For three sad months she strove in vain the pestilence to stay;
Medicine, helpless, groped and guessed, and tried all arts to save,
But the dead carried with them their secret to the grave.
Death sat at the gaunt weaver's side, the while he plied the loom;
Death turned the wasting grinder's wheel, as he earn'd his bread and doom;
Death, by the wan shirtmaker, plied the fingers to the bone;
Death rocked the infant's cradle, and with opium hushed its moan.
THE POOR CHILD'S NURSE
King Cholera's Friends