Mr. Punch's History of Modern England (Vol. 1-4). Charles L. Graves
admit, but one peculiarly adapted to our purpose—are to us more painful than ludicrous; and the labouring man, dressed in the usual costume of his class, is in our eyes far more respectable than the Gent, in his dreary efforts to assume a style and tournure which he is so utterly incapable of carrying out.
Punch was a sincere lover of his country and her Constitution. When foreigners criticized England or the English he was up in arms in a moment. John Bull, he declared, à propos of the suspicion of the French Government, was the best natured, most kindly, and tolerant fellow in the world. But this conviction never stood in the way of his playing the candid friend to and dealing faithfully with his countrymen on all possible occasions. As a comprehensive indictment of their failings it would be hard to beat or to improve upon the following list of the things an Englishman likes:—
An Englishman likes a variety of things. For instance, nothing is more to his liking than: To talk largely about Art, and to have the worst statues and monuments that ever disgraced a metropolis!
To inveigh against the grinding tyrannies practised upon poor needlewomen and slop-tailors, and yet to patronize the shops where cheap shirts and clothes are sold!
To purchase a bargain, no matter whether he is in want of it or not!
To reward native talent, with which view he supports Italian operas, French plays, German singers, and in fact gives gold to the foreigners in exchange for the brass they bring him!
To talk sneeringly against tuft-hunting and all tuft-hunters, and yet next to running after a lord, nothing delights him more than to be seen in company with one!
To rave about his public spirit and independence, and with the greatest submission to endure perpetually a tax21 that was only put on for three years!
To brag about his politeness and courteous demeanour in public, and to scamper after the Queen whenever there is an opportunity of staring at her!
To boast of his cleanliness, and to leave uncovered (as in the Thames) the biggest sewer in the world!
To pretend to like music, and to tolerate the Italian organs and the discordant musicians that infest his streets!
To inveigh against bad legislation, and to refrain in many instances from exercising the franchise he pays so dearly for!
To admit the utility of education, and yet to exclude from its benefits every one who is not of the same creed as himself!
And lastly, an Englishman dearly likes:
To grumble, no matter whether he is right or wrong, crying or laughing, working or playing, gaining a victory or smarting under a national humiliation, paying or being paid—still he must grumble, and in fact he is never so happy as when he is grumbling; and, supposing everything was to his satisfaction (though it says a great deal for our power of assumption to assume any such absurd impossibilities), still he would grumble at the fact of there being nothing for him to grumble about!
Punch certainly exercised the national privilege of grumbling to the full, though the shafts of his satire were sometimes of the nature of boomerangs. We can sympathize with him when, in his list of "things and persons that should emigrate," he includes "all persons who give imitations of actors; all quack doctors and advertising professors; all young men who smoke before the age of fifteen, and young ladies who wear ringlets after the age of thirty," as fit for "dumping." But he runs the risk of the Quis tulerit Gracchos retort when he bans "all punsters and conundrum makers." In the main he was a strenuous supporter of education, especially elementary education, and the recognition and reward of men of science and letters, but, along with his general support of literary and scientific institutions, he seldom missed a chance of making game of learned societies, beginning with the British Association. The ignorance of candidates for appointments in the Civil Service does not escape his reforming zeal, when in 1857 no fewer than 44 per cent. were rejected for bad spelling; yet in 1852 we find him publishing a picture of a Japanese as a black man.
Desirable Emigrants
OFFENDED DIGNITY
Small Swell (who has just finished a quadrille): "H'm, thank goodness that's over. Don't give me your bread-and-butter Misses to dance with—I prefer grown Women of the World!"
(N.B. The bread-and-butter Miss had asked him how old he was, and when he went back to school.)
TWO WORDS TO A BARGAIN
Japanese: "We won't have Free Trade. Our ports are closed, and shall remain so."
American: "Then we will open our ports, and convince you that you're wrong."
Exploiting the Dead
Spiritualism invaded England from America at the end of the 'forties; the mania for table-turning dates from 1852, and in 1855 the famous "medium" Daniel Dunglas Home (the original of Browning's "Sludge") paid his first visit to England. From the very first Punch's attitude was hostile, sceptical, even derisive; and he was one of the first to condemn the harrying of humble fortune-tellers while fashionable and expensive exponents of clairvoyance were immune from prosecution. Crystal-gazing is mentioned in 1851. Playing upon words, in the Almanack for 1852 we read: "It is related as astonishing that there are some clairvoyants who can see right through anybody; but that is not so very strange. The wonder is that there should be anybody who cannot see through the clairvoyant." In 1853 it was seriously suggested by a mesmerist in the Morning Post that he could get into communication with Sir John Franklin; this Punch promptly pilloried, as, too, a little later, he did a reference to a play alleged to have been dictated by Shakespeare's spirit. In 1857 Punch solemnly vouches for the authenticity of the following advertisement under the heading "Spirits by retail":—
COMMUNICATIONS with the SPIRIT OF WASHINGTON for Oracular Revelation of public fact and duty; responses tendered relative to Executive or Governmental, State or Diplomatic, National or Personal questions on affairs of moment for their more ready and appropriate solution, and the special use of official, Congressional and editorial intelligence. Address "Washington Medium," Post Office, Box 628, Washington, D.C. No letter (except for an interview) will be answered unless it encloses one dollar, and only the first five questions of any letter with but one dollar will have a reply. Number your questions and preserve copies of them.
Sober and instructed opinion has always shown this distrust, but Punch was not always justified in his treatment of new arts and discoveries. He quite failed to recognize the importance and the possibilities of photography, the early references to which are uniformly disparaging. There was at least this excuse for his want of foresight, that for many years the professional photographer was destitute of any artistic feeling or training save in the purely mechanical side of his calling. In representing him as combining photography with hairdressing or other even more menial trades, Punch was not indulging in exaggeration. The mere name "photographer" called up the image of a seedy, weedy little man who suggested an unsuccessful artist by his dress and whose "studio" was a shabby chamber of theatrical horrors, in which the subject was clamped and screwed into rigidity by instruments of torture. In the 'fifties photography was already exploited as a means of advertising actors, actresses and even popular preachers, but it had not begun to be thought of as a means of social réclame. Apart from politicians and public characters little limelight was shed on personality. The relations between the Stage and Society were curiously different from those which prevail to-day. Punch was a great champion of the legitimate drama. Douglas Jerrold had been a prolific and successful, though not prosperous, playwright, and other members of the staff had written for the stage. The disregard of serious native talent by the Court22 and the fashionable world was a constant theme of bitter comment. But Punch shows no eagerness for the