Mr. Punch's History of Modern England (Vol. 1-4). Charles L. Graves
the Bazaar in Baker Street until the erection of the present building in 1884. Punch owned that admission to her show was a test of popularity, but he condemned the Chamber of Horrors as ministering to the cult of monstrosity, and compared Madame Tussaud in 1849—the year before her death—to the witches who made wax models of those whom they wished to injure.
THE HAPPY FAMILY
Chelsea buns are still with us, though it is declared in London Past and Present that the tradition of making them is lost; the "Original Bun House," at the bottom of Jews' Row, was taken down in 1839, but its memories linger in the early volumes of Punch. There is a good series entitled "The Gratuitous Exhibitions of London," one of which, "The Happy Family," lasted for forty years later. The present writer well remembers in his schoolboy days the wire safe on wheels, stationed at the corner of Trafalgar Square, near Hampton's shop, containing cats, mice, pigeons, rabbits, and small birds, very much as in Punch's picture. The nearest survival is the cage of fortune-telling birds one sees now and again. A charge of twopence was made for admission to St. Paul's Churchyard, and this was a non-gratuitous exhibition which Punch bitterly resented, even to the extent of comparing it with Wombwell's Menagerie. The occasional raids of the aristocracy on Cremorne Gardens—which stood a little west of Battersea Bridge—have been described elsewhere. The gardens, which competed with Vauxhall as a scene for dancing, fireworks and various exhibitions—"The Siege of Gibraltar" was pyrotechnically reproduced in 1851—were not closed till 1877, soon after which date the house, built by the Earl of Huntingdon, and occupied as a private house by Lord Cremorne in the Regency, was pulled down and the grounds built over.
The Dominion of Din
Punch had a friendly feeling for the London street arab, whose sayings so often enliven his pages, and calls him the "small olive-branch of the great unwashed." But he was somewhat impatient of the tyranny of the tip-cat, battledore and shuttlecock, hopscotch and all street games which imperilled the safety of the elderly foot passenger. Professional mendicants he regarded with abhorrence, and waged unceasing war on Italian organ-grinders as an insolent and irremovable nuisance, as well as on German bands and all who maintained the dominion of unnecessary din. He would gladly have seen all street-cries abolished: the "elfin note of the milkman" had no charm for him. Here perhaps the sensitiveness and sufferings of John Leech were responsible for his antipathy. Mark Lemon wrote a letter to Mr. M. T. Bass, M.P., who brought in a Bill to regulate street music, in which he traced Leech's fatal illness to the disturbance of his nervous system by "the continual visitation of street bands and organ-grinders." Those readers who take an interest in the evolution of musical taste may be interested to know that in 1856 the popular tunes on the street organs were "The Ratcatcher's Daughter," "Annie Laurie," the serenade from Verdi's "Trovatore" and "The Red, White and Blue," a selection admirably representative of sport, sentiment, the prevalent Italianation of opera, and patriotism.
TASTE
Shop Girl (who had been expected to procure Tennyson's "Miller's Daughter"): "No, Miss! We've not got the Miller's, but here's the 'Ratcatcher's Daughter,' just published!"
Beadles, Broadsheets and Advertisements
The Zoological Gardens had been opened in 1828 and were already a most popular resort; the hippopotamus at one time almost rivalling "General" Tom Thumb as the most run-after celebrity. "Good David Mitchell," who was secretary to the Zoological Society from 1847 to 1859, was a prime favourite with Punch, and is never mentioned without a friendly word. But of all officials concerned with the administration of London none stood higher in his esteem than Sir Benjamin Hall, M.P. for Marylebone from 1837 to 1859, when he was created Lord Llandovery, President of the Board of Health in 1854, and Chief Commissioner of Works from 1855 to 1858. "Ben Hall's" services in adding to the amenities of the parks and introducing bands on Sundays were celebrated by Punch in prose and verse. It was he who brought in a Bill for the sorely needed better management of the Metropolis in March, 1855, and Punch more than once applauded him for castigating the follies of the Central Metropolitan Board, whose vagaries in suggesting names for streets roused Punch's special ire in 1856. A nomenclator like the late Sir Laurence Gomme, who combined official authority with a fine historical sense, only emerges once in a century. Among the minor officials of the time beadles were conspicuous. Punch devotes a special article to those of the Burlington and Lowther Arcades, the Quadrant and the British Museum, but these gorgeous uniformed functionaries, splendid in scarlet and gold, are now only memories of the elderly or the aged. Gone, too, are the broadsheets, "dying speeches" and ballads of Catnach, the Seven Dials bookseller; gone also are the "mock auctions" which were held in the Strand up to the war. London had no picture-palaces in the 'forties and 'fifties, but there was an abundance of panoramas, which Punch noted as a reaction against the cult of dwarfs. The fogs cannot have been worse than those which prevailed for nearly a week one winter at the close of the 'nineties, but the smoke nuisance was perhaps more acute because entirely unregulated. Punch defended the intermission of postal deliveries on Sunday, on the ground that it promoted the blessed dullness of that day, and here at least the chronicler has no change to record. On the growth of the great modern art of advertising Punch is a most instructive commentator. As early as December, 1842, he printed an essay on its theory and practice in which the following passage occurs:—
The Kentish Herald lately contained the following notice: "Ranelagh Gardens, Margate—last night of Mount Vesuvius, in consequence of an engagement with the Patagonians." This is tragical enough; but The Times outdoes it in horror by informing us that "The Nunhead Cemetery is now open for general interment"; and immediately afterwards comes an advertisement of "The London General Mourning Warehouse, Oxford Street"; and then, to crown all, Mr. Simpson, of Long Acre, declares himself ready to make "Distresses in Town and Country, so as to give general satisfaction."
In 1847 Punch recurs to the subject in a spirit foreshadowing the activities of that excellent society which of late years has striven to restrain the excesses of the advertiser:—
Advertisements are spreading all over England—they have crept under the bridges—have planted themselves right in the middle of the Thames—have usurped the greatest thoroughfares—and are now just on the point of invading the omnibuses. Advertising is certainly the great vehicle for the age. Go where you will, you are stopped by a monster cart running over with advertisements, or are nearly knocked down by an advertising house put upon wheels, which calls upon you, when too late, not to forget "Number One." These vehicles, one would think, were more than enough to satisfy the most greedy lover of advertisements, but it seems that there is such an extraordinary run for them that omnibuses are to be lined and stuffed with nothing else.
We have long acquiesced in this invasion of the sanctity of the omnibus. It is the desecration of the countryside that chiefly disgusts the fastidious of to-day.
PART II
THE SOCIAL FABRIC
THE COURT
At the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, Caran d'Ache, the famous French artist—perhaps the greatest genius in his peculiar genre that our age has produced—published a wonderful design in which the parallel histories of France and Great Britain, during our Queen's reign, were summed up at a glance with masterly insight. Great Britain was represented by one person under two aspects: Queen Victoria as a girl and as an old woman; France by a long procession of figures: King, Prince President, Emperor, and the series of Presidents of the Republic. The stability of England