PUNCH’S WRITERS: 1880-94.
“Robert, the City waiter”
made his low-comedy bow in 1880. “Robert’s”
literary father is Mr. Deputy John T. Bedford, whose
opportunities for studying the ways of the City waiter
have necessarily been many and excellent. The
result of his keen observation was introduced to Punch
through chance. “My introduction to Punch,”
Mr. Bedford informs me, “arose from the quite
accidental circumstance that Mr. Burnand and myself
were introduced at the same time, by Mr. F. Gordon,
on the directorship of the ‘Grand Hotel’
at Charing Cross; and very shortly afterwards ...
on the appointment of Mr. Burnand as Mr. Tom Taylor’s
successor, I ventured to congratulate him, when he
said to me, ’If any fun is to be found in the
City, I shall expect you to bring it to me.’
I replied that I had sometimes thought that there
was some to be got out of a City waiter, as waiters
were not quite so deaf as was generally considered.
I tried my hand, and my first attempt was very kindly
received; it was printed on , Vol. LXXIX.
(August 14th, 1880), under the title of ‘Notes
from the Diary of a City Waiter.’ ... There
is no truth in the statement that Robert was based
upon a certain waiter. He is certainly imaginary” a
statement which disposes of the assertion that the
famous old “Cock Tavern” is famous nowadays
for the original of “Robert” in the person
of its head-waiter. Since 1880 Mr. Deputy Bedford
is to be credited with more than two hundred contributions,
of which, however, only a proportion belong to the
“Robert” series. “You will find
some of them,” writes Mr. Bedford, “signed
J. Litgue, a nom de plume that puzzled Mr.
Burnand himself, until I revealed the secret that it
was French for ‘Bed-ford’; and he, with
his excellent knowledge of French, was thoroughly
sold.” “Robert” has been republished
in book form, and has attained an extraordinary circulation,
though some of Mr. Bedford’s critics have declared
that the chief attraction has been the admirable illustrations
by Charles Keene with which the little book is embellished.
For severe critics there are; one of whom, in order
to prove that “Robert” was not a humorous
creation at all, took the curious course of translating
one of his articles into good, well-spelt English,
and then triumphantly asking “Where
is the humour now?”
A complete contrast to Mr. Bedford
became a contributor to Punch a fortnight after
him Mr. J. Ashby-Sterry. Twenty-nine
years had passed since his boyish drawings had been
accepted; and during the interval he had relinquished
the pencil for the pen, had become a well-known journalist,
and the author of sundry volumes of light literature.
He was one of the first to be summoned by the new
Editor, and he responded nobly to the call. Since
August 28th, 1880, he has contributed as largely as
any outsider to Punch’s pages. Innumerable
picture-shows, new books, articles of all kinds, and
countless verses of every description on every possible
topic, with paragraphs long and short, are, so to
speak, the hors d’oeuvres of his contribution.
Many series of poems and papers are his, of which
the best-known is that of the “Lays of a Lazy
Minstrel” (begun August 28th, 1880), with their
riverside idylls and love-carols; but to his hand also
are to be credited “Simple Stories for Little
Gentlefolk,” “Holiday Haunts, by Jingle
Junior on the Jaunt,” “Club Carols,”
“Uncle Bulger’s Moral Tales,” “Songs
of the Streets,” “Rambling Rondeaux,”
and “Paper-knife Poems.” But it is
his fluent, melodious, and unpretentious verse that
has made him popular in Punch.
Reginald Shirley Brooks, the son of
Mr. Burnand’s brilliant predecessor, was working
for Punch in 1880, and the following year he
was called to the Table, and remained there without
much distinction until 1884. He wrote some smart
papers, but his groove was not that of the sober and
respectable Fleet Street Sage. He preferred wilder
spirits, and he accordingly retired, taking with him
the sympathy of his companions. He died soon
after.
After the escapade of Mr. George Augustus
Sala in respect to Alfred Bunn’s quarrel with
Punch and the resultant “Word with Punch”
of half a century ago (which was illustrated by Mr.
Sala’s lively pencil, as is explained in another
chapter), none would ever have thought that his pen
would have been driven in Punch’s service.
Lemon had declared him a “graceless young whelp,”
and nothing that Mr. Sala ever cared to do had tended
to change that opinion. Shirley Brooks and Tom
Taylor carried on the sentiment as a sort of dynastic
vendetta, and Mr. Sala’s name was kept on Punch’s
Index Expurgatorius until the accession of Mr. Burnand.
Punch was then no longer the close borough,
and the new Editor sought talent where he could find
it. He invited Mr. Sala to contribute, and the
invitation has been responded to whenever anything
“Punchy” has occurred to the writer as
in the rhymed travesty of Tennyson’s opening
verses of “The Princess.” It is an
amusing fact that on one occasion Mr. Sala contributed
a skit on himself felicitously entitled
“Egos of the Week” with
the startling and satisfactory result that one or
two papers, taking the thing au serieux, commented
on the fact, and expressed their pleasure that “at
last Mr. George Augustus Sala has had the drubbing
by Punch he has so long and so richly deserved”!
Mr. Clement Scott, the doyen
of the dramatic critics, Civil Servant (like so many
of the Punch Staff), member of the clever band
that nurtured “Fun” into life, and brother-in-law
of Mr. du Maurier, also had to wait till Mr. Burnand
was Editor before he was given the opportunity to
write for Punch. “It struck him,”
writes Mr. Scott, “that he might mingle among
the essentially comic pages an occasional poem that
might ventilate some grievance in a pathetic manner
or describe some heroic subject in the ballad style....
The first subject Burnand sent me was the overworked
and underpaid clerks in London. It took my fancy,
and in three hours after I received his letter I sent
him ’The Cry of the Clerk!’ To my intense
surprise, the morning after it appeared in Punch
I found it quoted in extenso in ’The Times’ an
unusual honour. I believe Dr. Chinery the instant
he read the poem clipped it out with his own scissors
and said, ’I don’t know if this has ever
been done before, but we must quote the poem to-morrow
morning.’ The sub-editor was aghast, but
the poem was printed as from Punch.”
These verses, indeed, struck people’s
consciences, as Thomas Hood had struck them years
ago with “The Song of the Shirt.”
It brought into relief the enforced “respectability”
of the men who earn but a few shillings a week, and
yet are supposed to be “above charity.”
It was the last verse that most struck home:
“Why did I marry? In mercy’s
name, in the form of my brother was I not
born?
Are wife and child to be given to him,
and love to be taken from me
with scorn?
It is not for them that I plead, for theirs
are the only voices that
break my sorrow,
That lighten my pathway, make me pause
’twixt the sad to-day and grim
to-morrow.
The Sun and the Sea are not given to me,
nor joys like yours as you flit
together
Away to the woods and the downs, and across
the endless acres of purple
heather.
But I’ve love, thank Heaven! and
mercy, too; ’tis for justice only I bid
you hark
To the tale of a penniless man like me to
the wounded cry of a London
Clerk!”
Then he took the part of the shop-girls
who are never allowed to sit down ("Weary Womankind");
of the London children who cry for fresh air ("The
Children’s Cry"), and described as well many
a deed of daring by sea and land, in which sailors,
soldiers, engine-drivers, policemen, life-boatmen,
and coastguardsmen were concerned. In his little
volume of “Lays and Lyrics” nearly a score
of these Punch poems are republished.
The Parliamentary phase of Punch
is the one which has remained constant from the beginning
of the paper. All else has been subject to change the
quality of its satire, the character of its literature,
the intention of its art, and the class of its humour.
But in his attendance upon Parliament Punch
has been persistently assiduous and consistently frank,
neither awed by its majesty nor sickened by its follies.
Parliament has always been regarded in his pages in
the spirit of benevolent patronage and control, which,
though unquestionably pedagogic, has always been just
and sympathetic in tone. It was in order to continue
the chain forged by Shirley Brooks and Tom Taylor in
their “Essence of Parliament,” without
the dropping of a link, that Mr. Burnand’s first
Staff appointment was made with a view to filling the
place that had been left vacant by Tom Taylor’s
death. His attention, like that of many others,
had long been attracted to the brilliant weekly articles
in the “Observer,” entitled “From
the Cross Benches” papers that dealt
with the week’s Parliamentary proceedings with
singular cleverness, humour, and originality and
at the proper moment he sought out the author of them,
Mr. Henry W. Lucy, of the “Daily News.”
Mr. Lucy had already graduated as
the Pepys of Parliament; for he had been known in
gallery and lobby of the House for the past ten years,
and was acting as chief of the Parliamentary Staff
for his paper. He was, therefore, considered
particularly well-fitted for the new post on Punch,
and he readily accepted the invitation. His first
contribution was a sort of prospectus of Toby’s
Diary, which was published on January 8th, 1881.
Thenceforward Mr. Lucy became known as “Toby,
M.P.;” and when a puzzled Member of Parliament,
familiar with his face, would occasionally ask him
in the Lobby, “By the way, where are you member
for?” he would answer “Barks”
and pass on. It is not uncommon to find unregenerate
members taking to themselves the credit of the witticisms
which Toby puts into their mouths; so that there is
perhaps excuse for the biographer of Lord Sherbrooke
(Robert Lowe), who attributed to his subject the capital
exclamation with which Mr. Lucy endowed him. When
he saw a deaf member get his ear-trumpet into position
in order to listen to a tedious orator, he remarked
(according to Toby): “What a pity it is
to see a man thus wasting his natural advantages!”
And Lowe has had the credit of it ever since.
No one in the House knows its members
so well as Mr. Lucy; no one out of it is so well acquainted
with its procedure; and when for a short time he reluctantly
filled the editorial chair of the “Daily News,”
he was unhappy till he got back to Toby’s “kennel”
in the gallery of the House of Commons.
But the Essence of Parliament as distilled
by “Toby” is by no means the only, hardly
even the most voluminous of Mr. Lucy’s Punch
work. In the recess he is a constant contributor
as Mr. Burnand’s deputy in the character of
Punch’s reviewer “The
Baron de Book-Worms,” through whose personality
“My Baronite” appears from time to time;
while among his serial articles have been “The
Letter-bag of Toby, M.P.,” and the set of Interviews
with Celebrities at Home, parodies of the “World’s”
articles, which delighted none so much as Edmund Yates
himself. Mr. Lucy joined the Table on his return
from Japan in 1884.
But it is as “Toby” that
he has gained most of his popularity. He showed
the way about the House of Commons to Mr. Harry Furniss;
and, up to the withdrawal of the latter, his “Diary”
was always illustrated by that artist. Later
on Mr. Edward J. Reed took the place Mr. Furniss resigned,
and the pair continue to set before the world their
humorous versions perversions, it would
be hardly fair to say of Parliamentary
proceedings. Mr. Lucy’s touch is light and
original, imparting an appearance of interest and
entertainment to the dullest debate, and of verisimilitude
to the most doubtful statements. Yet the “Diary”
is not without its value as a record, while it remains
an amusing commentary upon the work of the Session,
and an entirely inoffensive caricature of the men
and speeches with whom it deals.
In 1884, when the entertainer’s
platform was offering inducements superior to those
of the stage, Mr. George Grossmith began a series of
sketches in Punch, entitled “Very Trying,”
the fourth article of which contained a skit of Mr.
Flowers, the Police Magistrate at Bow Street, under
the heading of “The Good-humoured Magistrate,”
and another dealt with Mr. Vaughan. Then came
his funny musical sketches, with a few bars of absurd
music sprinkled here and there in imitation of the
London concert books. A few songs he also contributed
to the paper, “The Duke of Seven Dials”
becoming “popular even unto Hackney.”
Then, in collaboration with his brother, Mr. Weedon
Grossmith, he produced “The Diary of a Nobody.”
It was a domestic record of considerable length, which
dealt in an extremely earnest way with Mr. Samuel Porter,
who lived in a small villa in Holloway, and had trouble
with his drains, and was sometimes late at the office,
with similar circumstances of striking interest and
concern, which seemed to him to call for public notice.
The “Diary” was afterwards republished
in book form.
The light and dainty touch of Mr.
Andrew Lang has not been denied to Punch.
A number of trifles in verse appeared in 1883 and the
two following years, the most important of them being
a sonnet to Colonel Burnaby the one contribution,
it may be said, that the author has thought well to
republish. Some years later he produced the laughable
series “The Confessions of a Duffer” papers
so humorous that it is difficult to accept Mr. Lang’s
disclaimer that “a comic paper is a thing in
which I have no freedom to write.”
Besides Mr. W. Ralston, with his single
contribution of “K.G. Q.E.D.”
(November 22nd, 1884), Miss May Kendall was the chief
comer of the year 1885. This lady helps to make
up Punch’s bevy of lady literary contributors Miss
Betham-Edwards, Mrs. Frances Collins, Lady Campbell,
Miss Burnand (an occasional reviewer, or “Baronitess"),
Miss Hollingshead, and Mrs. Leverson, being the others.
She is one of the few lady humorists of any consequence
in her day. Women, as a rule, are humorists neither
born nor made. Often enough they are wits, more
frequently satirists. They can make, we are told,
but they cannot take, a joke; at any rate, they are
usually out of their element in the comic arena.
Moreover, as butts for the caricaturist they are unsatisfactory,
for in proportion as his efforts are successful, his
sense of chivalry is outraged; and we have seen how
Keene and others recoiled from the idea. Only
on one occasion did Mr. Furniss make the attempt, and
that indirectly and in a sense unintentionally and
the circumstance brought a miniature storm about his
ears. No woman has ever yet been a caricaturist,
in spite of the fact that her femininity befits her
pre-eminently for the part. That she has desisted
is a mercy for which man may be devoutly thankful.
At the present time the rule here laid down as to
lady humorists is proved by an exception in the person
of Miss Murphy, a lady, it is said, of much beauty,
who worked her way up from a subordinate position
to the editorship of “The Melbourne Punch,”
a really comic production; but the unequal battle that
would follow any extensive imitation of her example
is altogether too painful to contemplate.
Miss Kendall’s first poems,
which were introduced to the notice of Punch
by Mr. Andrew Lang in sincere admiration of their cleverness,
were “The Lay of the Ancient Trilobite,”
and “Ballad of the Ichthyosaurus,” which
were printed in the numbers for January 24th and February
14th, 1885. It is Miss Kendall’s peculiar
talent that she is able to extract delicate humour
out of the most unpromising subjects, and even in
these lays, which together constituted her maiden effort,
the characteristic is clearly shown. One verse
may serve as an example; it is from the poem which
shows how the Ichthyosaurus aspires to a higher life,
and how the all-absorbent Ether remains in triumph
after we have played out our little parts to their
puny end:
“And we, howsoever we hated,
And feared, or made love,
or believed,
For all the opinions we stated,
The woes and the wars we achieved,
We too shall lie idle together
In very uncritical case;
And no one will win but the
Ether
That fills circumambient space.”
Quaintly humorous ideas are spread
among her score of contributions and tenderness,
too; but it is as a humorous versifier of refinement
and originality that she has appealed strongly to
Punch readers, although, as she herself says,
“it seemed very wonderful to be in Punch,
which I had venerated from my youth up.”
The single contribution of Mr. Brandon
Thomas has a rather interesting story. It was
a patriotic song of a stirring sort, called “Britannia’s
Volunteers,” composed at a time in
1885 when patriotism was thick in the air.
It was put to music by Mr. Alfred Allen; and two days
after it was written, Mr. Thomas was at the house
of Mr. Woodall, M.P., and there he sang the song.
An old gentleman, who covered his mouth and chin with
his hand, sat in the front row, and levelled a piercing
look at the singer, listening with intense interest.
During the second verse Mr. Thomas, who was much affected
by the gazer, sang straight at the aged owner of the
wonderful eyes:
“They were no conscripts Marlbro’
led,
But freemen Volunteers,
A free-born race from fathers bred
That won for us Poictiers;
No conscript names were on the roll
All heroes dead and gone
That blazoned bright on Victory’s
scroll
The name of Wellington:
And Inkerman’s immortal height
Will tell for many a day
How sternly sons of Freedom fight,
Let odds be what they may.
Thus Liberty scorns vain alarms,
And answers back with cheers!
No conscript legions flogged to arms
Have yet flogged Volunteers!”
Then the masking hand was removed,
and the face of Mr. Gladstone was revealed. The
sight of him seemed to stimulate the singer, an enthusiastic
Conservative, and as he gave forth the last verse,
with singular effect, his eyes so filled with tears
that he could hardly see the piano keys:
“They think to crush old England,
And take her mighty place!
When they wipe out from ev’ry land
The language of her race;
When Justice meekly sheathes her sword,
And Freemen ne’er make
laws;
When Tyrants rule by force and fraud
And dead is Freedom’s
cause;
When Liberty shall see her home
Low levelled with the turf,
And watch each son in turn become
A tyrant-driven serf;
When Freedom’s sacred name’s
forgot
Within the hearts of men
They’ll crush us to the earth, but
not
By Heav’n! but
not till then!”
When it was finished, Mr. Gladstone
applauded vigorously, as though unconscious of the
pointed way in which the verse had been sung at him,
or respectful perhaps of the sincerity of the singer;
and Mr. Burnand, who was present, and had been watching
the scene with much amusement, enquired, aside, “Who
wrote that?” “I did.” “When?”
“Two days ago.” “Have you sent
it anywhere?” “No.” “Then
let me have it.” So with the metre slightly
changed it appeared in Punch on May 23rd.
Some of the most delicate and humorous
vers de société of the day have come from Mr.
Warham St. Leger, and some of the best have appeared
since the end of 1886 in the pages of Punch.
“The Lay of the Lost Critic” was the first
of his contributions, and it was sent in, not by its
author, but by a friend who had read it. So well
was it thought of that Mr. St. Leger was invited at
once to become a contributor, and accordingly he sent
in many poems during the four years that followed,
together with odd papers in the form of letters, especially
on pseudo-scientific lines. All these poems were
collected into a volume entitled “Ballads from
Punch” in which perhaps the most striking
are that “To my Hairdresser,” and the
irresistibly comic satire on modern ordnance, in which
during a naval battle, after all the fighting has
been done by ramming, “the last stern order of
the brave” is whispered through the ship:
“We’re going to fire the guns!!”
This desperate course is taken and described the
air grows thick and dark with broken breech, flying
tube, and disrupted armour-plate, and when all was
over
“... They
punished the seven survivors
For wasting the ordnance stores.”
Mr. Anstey (Guthrie) was already famous
for his little series of successful books, “Vice
Versa,” “The Giant’s Robe,”
“The Tinted Venus,” “The Black Poodle,”
and “A Fallen Idol,” when he was invited
to contribute to Punch. In each and all
of these stories there had been a clear and original
idea, worked out with ingenuity and invested with
rich and delicate humour. Their author was clearly
a man for Punch. So thought Mr. Burnand,
and Mr. Anstey shared the opinion. On November
4th, 1885, therefore, appeared his first contribution
“Faux et Preterea Nihil.” His work
was consistently good, and at the end of 1886 he was
called to the Table, taking his place and eating his
first Dinner in January, 1887.
Mr. Anstey’s writings attracted
attention from the beginning, and in their reprinted
form have been no less successful the truest
test of quality. Among the most delightful of
these was the “Model Music Hall Songs” songs
and dramas virginibus puerisque, adapted to
the requirements of the members of the London County
Council which sought out and found indecency in a
marionette’s pursuit of a butterfly. The
idea opened up to Mr. Anstey a comic vista, which he
has developed for our delectation. The songs
and dances, with their words and directions, are for
the most part screamingly funny, consisting partly
in the perfectly realised absurdity and inanity of
the performance, and partly in that quality of absolute
truthfulness to life which we are forced to realise
in the presentation of them. Laughter is often
produced by the mere faithfulness of an imitation,
whether the thing copied is funny or not. Simple
mimicry has the power to make us laugh; and over that
power, in all its phases of motive, act, and talk,
Mr. Anstey has absolute control. In addition,
he has a genius for plot-making and verse-writing,
be it original or parody, which in its own line is
unsurpassed in modern literature. In his analysis
of character and motive he seems to set before us
our own weak selves laid bare, until his voces populi
become voces animi, the voice of the people
speaking unpleasantly like the voice of conscience.
In this comic reproduction of actual
experience Mr. Anstey has travelled over the road
pointed out by Mr. Burnand in his “Happy Thoughts”
and “Out of Town;” but, adding greatly
to the scientific truth of it, he seems to have lost
something of the geniality and joviality of the form.
Mr. Anstey has placed Society on the dissecting-table,
and probing with a little less of the sympathy shown
by Mr. du Maurier, he carries his observation, consciously
or unconsciously, to a much farther and more merciless
point. Not that he has no kindly feeling for his
subjects; he has but he reserves it for
his good people. Towards his snobs and cads and
prigs he is pitiless; he turns his microscope upon
them, and with far less mercy than is to be found
in a vivisector he lays bare their false hearts, points
to their lying tongues, and tears them out without
a pang of remorse. It is all in fun, of course;
but it is unmistakable. Still, who shall find
fault with what is the essence of justice and truth,
which mercy only interferes with to weaken?
The burlesques in the “Model
Music Hall Songs” are often as good as their
originals just as some of the Rejected Addresses
by the Smiths were as good as the genuine poems they
parodied; and the representation of them is placed
before the reader with more than photographic truth.
In “So Shy!” we see the lady “of
a mature age and inclined to a comfortable embonpoint,”
who comes forward and sings
“I’m a dynety little dysy
of the dingle,
So retiring and so timid and
so coy
If you ask me why so long I have lived
single,
I will tell you ’tis
because I am so shoy.”
It is a notable fact that songs of
this sort were driven off the better-class music-hall
stage about this time, and there is little doubt that
Mr. Anstey, to whom Mr. Bernard Partridge afterwards
rendered artistic help, took yeoman’s share
in the campaign. More certain it is that with
“Mr. Punch’s Young Reciter” he effectively
suppressed the drawing-room spouter. No one with
a sense of humour who has read that series can now
stand up and recite a poem of a sentimental or an heroic
nature from the pens of Mr. Clement Scott or Mr. G.
R. Sims without genius to back him; and no one who
heard it could retain his gravity to the end.
“Burglar Bill” melted almost to repentance
by the innocent child who asked him to burgle her
doll’s house, and whose salvation was finally
wrought by the gift of the baby’s jamtart killed
the Young Reciter by dint of pure ridicule and honest
fun. He has made an unsophisticated reciter as
impossible as a sympathetic and sentimental audience.
And in “Voces Populi” the
popular dramas in dialogue, in which the conversation
accurately and concisely describes the character,
temperament, and tastes of the speaker there
is a humorous verbal photography of extraordinary
vividness. ’Arry is no longer a symbol and
a type, as he is in Mr. Milliken’s hands; he
is a definite person in one particular position in
life and no other, and what he says could not, we
feel, possibly have been said in any other way, nor
by any other person. And so along the whole gamut
of the classes through which Mr. Anstey leads us.
The humour is penetrating, and it is difficult to say
where the truth ends and the caricature begins.
Who can forget the visit to the Tudor Exhibition,
when Henry VIII’s remarkable hat was on view?
“’Arry,” says ’Arriet to her
escort; “look ‘ere; fancy a king goin’
about in a thing like that pink with a green
feather! Why, I wouldn’t be seen in it
myself!” ’Arry, who is clearly farceur,
replies with a pretty wit: “Ah, but that
was olé ’Enery all over, that was; he wasn’t
one for show. He liked a quiet, unassumin’
style of ’at, he did. ’None o’
yer loud pot’ats for Me!’ he’d tell
the Royal ’atters; ’find me a tile as
won’t attract people’s notice, or you won’t
want a tile yerselves in another minute!’ An’
you may take yer oath they served him pretty sharp,
too!” And so it is all through; the talk of the
people, of everybody in all sorts of positions in
life, is recorded in these “Voces,” and
in all there is the same quality of nature.
In “Travelling Companions,”
nearly as amusing and quite as observant, we are made
to feel that the two heroes detest each other hardly
more than Mr. Anstey detests Culcherd, the more unsympathetic
and contemptible of the two. They are nearly
as despicable as they are funny, and their creator
has little pity for them on that account. There
is a “plentiful lack of tenderness,” but
an abundance of humour to excuse it. This quality
is not visible in “Mr. Punch’s Pocket Ibsen” a
parody so good that we sometimes wonder if the part
we are reading is not really from the hand of the
Norwegian master. Nothing, surely, could be truer,
nothing touched with a lighter hand than “Pill-doctor
Herdal” an achievement attained solely
by a profound study of the dramatist. Again,
in “The Man from Blankley’s” and
in “Lyre and Lancet” we have social satires
grafted on to a most entertaining plot a
creation in both cases which may be compared with
Keene’s drawings for observation, and with Goldsmith’s
and Moliere’s plays for the happy construction
of these comedies of errors. The plots assuredly
would have extorted the admiration of Labiche himself,
so complicated and ingenious are they. Besides,
everything seems so natural, so inevitable, “so
much of a lesson,” that it is hardly to be wondered
at that “The Man from Blankley’s”
was on more than one occasion actually given out as
the text for a sermon delivered from the pulpit.
Another excuse for music-hall treatment
of an exquisite sort is afforded by the story of “Under
the Rose,” which is inimitable. For example:
THE SISTERS SARCENET (on stage):
“You men are deceivers
and awfully sly. Oh, you are!”
MALE PORTION OF AUDIENCE (as is expected
from them):
“No, we aren’t!”
THE SISTERS S. (archly): “Now
you know you are!
You come home with the milk; should your
poor wife ask why,
‘Pressing business, my pet,’
you serenely reply,
When you’ve really been out on the
‘Tiddle-y-hi!’
Yes, you
have!”
MALE AUDIENCE (as before):
“No, we’ve not!”
THE SISTERS S. (with the air of accusing
angels): “Why,
you know you have!”
It is sometimes objected that the
root of Mr. Anstey’s success lies near the surface,
and is nothing but the vividness of his dialogues.
It is a great deal more; it lies in the truth of his
characters, subtly drawn, but irresistible, and, now
and again, tenderly pathetic. Thus may you see
the optimist and pessimist, and the link between them,
in the following scene in the Mall on Drawing-Room
Day:
CHEERY OLD LADY (delighted):
“I could see all the coachmen’s ’ats
beautiful. We’ll
wait and see ’em all come out, John, won’t
we?
They won’t be
more than a hour and a half in there, I dessay.”
A PERSON WITH A FLORID VOCABULARY:
“Well, if I’d ha’ known all I was
goin’ to see was a set o’ blanky nobs shut
up in their blank-dash kerridges, blank my blanky
eyes if I’d ha’ stirred a blanky
foot, s’elp me dash, I wouldn’t!”
A VENDOR (persuasively):
“The kerrect lengwidge of hevery flower
that blows one
penny!”
In the composition of his “Voces”
and kindred work, it has been the practice of Mr.
Anstey to visit the needful spot, where he would try
to seize the salient points and the general tone,
the speakers and the scene, trusting to luck for a
chance incident, feature, or sentence that might provide
a subject. Sometimes he would have to go empty
away; but as a rule he would find enough to provide
the rough material for a sketch. Sometimes, too,
he would combine hints and anecdotes received from
his acquaintance with his own experience and invention;
on rarer occasions he would happen upon an incident
which could be worked up into a sketch very much as
it actually occurred, though with strict selection
and careful elaboration. On the whole it may be
taken that the conversations are mostly what might
have happened, but that they never were shorthand
reproductions of overheard talk; and the incidents
are almost invariably invented. Occasionally
something in an exhibition or show would suggest a
typical comment, or a casual remark might provide
an idea for a character; but a good deal is certainly
unconscious reminiscence and fragmentary observation,
and the residue pure guess-work.
Of the artistic quality of Mr. Anstey’s
work there can be no question neither of
its humour, nor of its value as a complete reflection
of English, and especially of Cockney, life. Old-fashioned
people may and do denounce it as newfangled; but does
anyone doubt the sort of welcome that would have been
accorded to it by Jerrold and Thackeray and Gilbert
a Beckett if they had had the good fortune to have
an Anstey in their midst half-a-century ago?
Mr. R. C. Lehmann, grand-nephew of
W. H. Wills, one of Punch’s early crew,
had a good reputation as a Cambridge wit before Mr.
Burnand captured him for Punch. In April,
1889, he began to edit “The Granta,” the
clever “barrel-organ of the Cambridge undergraduates,”
satirical, brightly humorous, and freshly youthful.
On the 14th of the following December there appeared
in Punch his first contribution, a dialogue
entitled “Among the Amateurs,” which has
since been reprinted in “The Billsbury Election.”
Mr. Lehmann lost no time in devising
series of articles, which all Punch readers
will remember. Such were “Modern Types”
and “Mr. Punch’s Prize Novels” (one
of the most successful, including parodies of a score
of the leading authors of the day), “In the Know,”
“The Adventures of Picklock Holes,” “Letters
to Abstractions,” “Lord Ormont’s
Mate and Matey’s Aminta,” “Manners
and Customs,” and “Studies in the New
Poetry.” Within four months of his first
contribution Mr. Lehmann was promoted to the Table an
unprecedentedly rapid promotion and he has
ever since been one of the most diligent of contributors.
Literary merit apart, Mr. Lehmann’s “Conversational
Hints for Young Shooters” has probably been
received with greater favour throughout the country,
on account of its subject and its felicitous treatment,
than any of the young author’s works. Country
readers are essentially sportsmen in conversation,
if not in fact; and nothing in humorous writing delights
them more than a clever burlesque on their favourite
topic. You may hear the book praised where one
of the writer’s more ambitious efforts may pass
unnoticed; and one of its passages is quoted with unction
in many a shooting party. “Johnson, who
was placed forward, again stood under a canopy of
pheasants, and shot with brilliant success into the
gaps.... The only theory which is accepted as
explaining the catastrophe is one that imputes a malignant
cunning to the birds.”
The year that saw Mr. Lehmann’s
appointment witnessed also the calling of his kinsman,
Mr. Barry Pain, one of the chief contributors to “The
Granta.” His story of “The Hundred
Gates,” printed in “Cornhill,” struck
Mr. Burnand as a work of promise; indeed, Mr. Burnand
is reported to have found it so funny that he thought
he must have written it himself. The annexing
of the writer was at once effected. One of his
earliest contributions to Punch was the amusing
parody of Tennyson’s “Throstle,”
just before Christmas, 1889; and a collection of comic
Cambridge definitions in imitation of Euclid followed.
Then came a set of short stories called “Storicules,”
and a series of articles constituting a mock guide
to conduct for young ladies. Since 1892 Mr. Pain’s
work has fallen away, probably only for a time; for
Punch has proved well-nigh irresistible to
every genuine humorist who is anxious to bring his
faculty to bear on the risibility of the English public.
Mr. Henry Pottinger Stephens, one
of the wits of the “Sporting Times,” the
founder of the “Topical Times,” and member
of the staff of the “Daily Telegraph,”
was for two or three years on the outside salaried
Staff of Punch. Contributing from 1889
to 1891, he wrote a series of “queer tales”
as well as some attacks on the then South Western Railway
management, under the title of “The Ways of Waterloo.”
Such dramatic criticisms as were not undertaken by
Mr. Burnand or relegated by him to Mr. Arthur a Beckett,
and numerous trifles besides, fell to him to do; but
on his departure for America the connection was broken,
and not afterwards resumed.
Passing by Mr. C. W. Cooke, we find
Mr. Charles Geake, member of the Bar and Fellow of
Clare College, Cambridge, as the chief recruit of the
year 1890. To “The Granta” he had
sent a casual contribution, and Mr. R. C. Lehmann,
appreciating his talent, proved his esteem by installing
Mr. Geake as the Cambridge editor of that paper.
From “The Granta” to Punch has
become a natural ascent, and on July 12th, 1890, Mr.
Geake made his first bow to London readers. Three
months later a packet of Punch office envelopes
announced that he had been placed on the footing of
a regular outside contributor, and that it was now
his privilege to send his work straight to the printer’s.
At first he wrote nothing but verse society
verse, ballades, rondeaux, topical verse,
and parodies in verse and prose, and then burlesques
of books, such as the capital imitation of “The
Tale of Two Telegrams” (a “Dolly Dialogue”
in the manner of “Anthony Hope"), , Vol.
CVII., September 1st, 1894, and “The Blue Gardenia”
(October 20th, 1894, , with various skits and
topical matter. “Lays of the Currency”
are among the chief of Mr. Geake’s poetical
“series,” and “Chronicles of a Rural
Parish” the adventures and misadventures
of a rural parishioner who wishes to patronise the
Parish Councils Act his principal effort
in comic prose.
The year 1892 brought three new writers:
Mr. Gerald F. Campbell, who began by contributing
(on April 23rd) poems of sentiment, such as “Town
Thoughts from the Country,” and three months
later “The Cry of the Children” and “Alone
in London;” R. F. Murray, the American-born author
of “The Scarlet Gown,” who, through Mr.
Andrew Lang’s introduction, sent in a few verses
shortly before his death; and Mr. Roberts, who finds
his place among the artists.
Mr. George Davies was an important
accession of the following year. On only half-a-dozen
occasions had he ever been in print, and that in obscure
publications, when he composed an “Ethnographical
Alphabet,” beginning “A is an Afghan.”
The writer, who is something of a tsiganologue, emboldened
by his success, followed up his alphabet, which appeared
January 21st, 1893, and within a year had placed to
his credit three-score contributions, most of them
in verse rather a remarkable achievement
for one heretofore considered a mere bookworm and dryasdust.
Another Cambridge man of originality
and ingenuity, mainly in verse, is Mr. Arthur A. Sykes a
“Cantabard,” as he himself would admit,
peculiarly skilled in “Cambrijingles.”
He began with “In the Key of Ruthene”
on May 6th, 1893, and followed it up with a laughable
ode “To a Fashion-Plate Belle.” It
was accompanied with a comic, though hardly exaggerated,
design of the female figure as depicted in ladies’
fashion-papers the drawing being also by
Mr. Sykes. Since then many verses by him have
appeared, in which quaint conception, sudden turn of
thought, and strange achievements in rhyming (as in
“The Tour That Never Was,” August 19th,
1893) are the chief figures. Then came the promotion
embodied in the privilege of sending his contributions
direct to the printer before, instead of after, being
submitted to the editorial eye; and a good deal of
prose work followed, such as the “Scarlet Afternoon,”
a skit in dialogue suggested by Mr. R. S. Hichens’
“Green Carnation.”
Light verse from the Rev. Anthony
C. Deane began on August 20th, 1892 ("Ad Puellam"),
but he was already a master of the art. Two months
before his little volume of “Frivolous Verses”
had appeared, and so struck Mr. Andrew Lang that he
reviewed it in a “Daily News” leading-article,
invited the author to go and see him, and suggested
his writing for Punch. Mr. Deane had already
been a “Granta” poet, and was well known
to Mr. Lehmann, who, finding that Mr. Lang had already
spoken to Mr. Anstey, gladly added a word of introduction
to the Editor. By such means as these, oftener
than by promiscuous outside application, is new blood
found: the best men do not, as a rule, force forward
their own work. Mr. Deane at that time was not
twenty-two, nor was he yet ordained. He passed
the necessary period at the same theological college Cuddesdon that
years before had sheltered Mr. Burnand, and went on
contributing verses to Punch, to the number
(1894) of sixty or seventy; so that the course of
his Punch love has run very smooth.
Another literary godson of Mr. Lehmann’s,
and child of “The Granta,” is Mr. Owen
Seaman. Through the good offices of the former,
Mr. Seaman’s “Rhyme of the Kipperling,”
nearly filling the first page of Punch, was
inserted in the number for January 13th, 1894.
This imitation of Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s “Rhyme
of the Three Sealers” was its own recommendation,
and since that time Mr. Seaman has been one of the
most prolific outside contributors of the year.
His series comprise “She-Notes” a
skit on “Keynotes” and “Airs Resumptive” of
which the fourth, “To Julia in Shooting-togs
(and a Herrickose Vein)” is an admirable specimen
of its class. Art and political criticism in verse
and prose are employed to illustrate the writer’s
facility and classic taste.
To this list, necessarily incomplete,
in spite of its length, a few names remain to be added,
and an incongruous party they form. Professor
Forbes; Mr. J. C. Wilson, mantle manufacturer; and
Mr. J. J. Lushington, of the Suffolk Chief Constable’s
Office, first a soldier and finally an auctioneer
(a giant of nearly six feet seven, who would have formed
a good fourth to Thackeray, “Jacob Omnium,”
and Dean Hole) men of every sort and condition,
brought together by the universal brotherhood of humour.
Mrs. Frances Collins was a contributor, and her Punch
utterance upon Judge Bayley’s curious decision
at Westminster County Court in January, 1877, as to
next-door music that is “intolerable,”
yet not “actionable” ("Music hath (C)Harms"),
is still remembered and quoted. Another lady-wit
of the present day is Mr. Lehmann’s sister,
Lady Campbell, who wrote the women’s letters
in the series of “Manners and Customs,”
while her brother took the male side of the correspondence.
Mrs. Leverson has been the contributor of numerous
clever prose parodies and general articles, the chief
of which up to June, 1895, has been “The Scarlet
Parasol.” Mr. James Payn has also worked
for Punch, but very little only to
the extent of placing some little pleasantry at its
service, and now and then suggesting a subject for
illustration. A set of rhymes by Mr. H. D. Traill,
reprinted in his volume entitled “Number Twenty,”
was his sole contribution, the “Saturday Review”
having had a sort of prescriptive right to all his
work of this description. It is the greater pity,
for even the lightest of his verses have the true
ring and, according to some, much of the vigour characteristic
of Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s work. Mr. Arthur
Armitage, too, was for many years a contributor.
Being a solicitor in practice, he kept his identity
a secret. He was always known to the Editor and
Proprietors as “Mr. A. Armstrong,” and
up to this present publication he never revealed the
levity of his youth. His first contribution was
“Marriage Customs of the Great Britons,”
which was inserted in the “Pocket-Book”
for 1855. After writing regularly for this offspring
of Punch’s, Mr. Armitage was, in 1861,
specially invited to contribute to the paper itself
on topics political, social, and commercial only
a satire on “The Baby of the Papal States”
(Louis Napoleon) being rejected, on the ground that,
were it inserted, war with France would be inevitable.
On Mark Lemon’s death Mr. Armitage ceased his
connection as an “outside regular,” and
five years later reprinted a number of his most amusing
Punch verses and articles under the title of
“Winkleton-on-Sea.” Frederick Gale better
known as “The Old Buffer” and as the great
cricket authority wrote a short series for
Punch. Then Mr. Walter Sichel, since the
beginning of 1892, has contributed some prose and
more verse, such as the series of “Men who have
taken me in to dinner,” “Lays
of Modern Home,” “Inns and Outs,”
as well as “Rhymes out of Season,” “The
Diary of an Old Joke,” and the original “Queer
Queries.” The late magistrate, Mr. Hosack,
too, contributed several sharp police-court sketches;
and “Arthur Sketchley” had a capital story
to tell, but spoiled it in the telling. Even H.
J. Byron, contrary to general belief, tried his hand
as a Punch contributor, but he was somewhat
dull. He admitted, in fact, that he wanted to
keep all his fun for his plays, and so starved his
Punch work of its legitimate humour. Mr.
Arthur E. Viles’s verses on “Temple Bar”
(December, 1877) may be mentioned, and Mr. Leopold
Godfrey Turner’s name must not be omitted.
But, of the contributors of trifles, a number must
remain anonymous as, indeed, many do from
choice; inevitably so before 1847, when it first became
the practice to enter up outsiders’ work in their
own names. And among these occasional contributors
the present writer is proud to range himself.
In looking at the literature of Punch,
we become sensible of a change not dissimilar to that
which we find to have taken place in its art.
There is nowadays no Jerrold, whose fulminating passion
and fine frenzy often came dangerously near to “high-falutin’.”
There is perhaps no versifier at the Table with quite
the same fancy or taste as Gilbert Abbott a Beckett,
Shirley Brooks, and Percival Leigh. But we have
instead a keener observation of the life and customs
of the day, an ingenuity and an elegance that go better
with the taste and habit of thought of the times.
In the old days it was not uncommon in discussing
Punch’s poetry to urge in apology that
Wit
will shine
Through the harsh cadence of a rugged
line.
Nowadays, when comedy and rapier have
to a great extent replaced farce and sword, finish
is accounted of greater importance than of yore, and
grace and daintiness are accepted where simple fun
was formerly the aim an aim, by the way,
which was as frequently missed as now. Let the
reader who is inclined to be as severe on latter-day
Punch as on latter-day everything, take down
one of the early volumes, and seek for the side-splitting
articles and epigrams, the verse apoplectic with fun,
which we are taught to expect there. He will learn
that it is not so much that the quality of Punch
has changed, despite the great names of the past.
He will find that the change is due rather to modern
fashion and to modern views than to any deterioration
of Punch’s. Good things are there
now, as then; and now, as then, many of the best writers
in the country contribute periodically to its pages.
With verse and article, epigram and parody, Punch
continues to be a record and a mirror of his times a
comic distorting mirror perhaps, but still a glass
of fashion and of history, with fun for its mercury,
which, through its literature, pleasantly and agreeably
reflects the deeds and the thoughts of the people.
What of it, if his verse now and again is only passable?
Sometimes it is fine always acceptable,
and rarely below an elevated established standard;
anyhow, some years ago, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain’s
single offering was rejected on its demerits by the
“monument of British humour.” Perhaps
the Editor judged it as Punch’s railway-porter
judged an old lady’s pet in accordance with railway
rules: Cats is “dogs,” and rabbits
is “dogs,” and so’s parrots; but
this ’ere tortis is a hinsect, and
there ain’t no need for
it. And the tone of Punch’s more
serious utterances is now that of the dining-room
rather than of the debating society and the vestry
room. Mr. Ruskin, among others, deplored Punch’s
kid gloves and evening-dress, when amiable obituary
notices on Baron Bethell (had he not been
Punch’s counsel in the old days?) and
the Bishop of Winchester were published. “Alas,
Mr. Punch,” he wrote, “is it come to this?
And is there to be no more knocking down, then?
And is your last scene in future to be shaking hands
with the devil?" Punch can still hit hard;
though “knocking down” is no longer his
main delight. His text has become as refined as
his art and that, of course, is the reason
that it no longer commands the chief attention of
the class that once was led by it. At that time
its art alone carried it into circles that abhorred
its politics, and it is recorded that Mulready was
driven to excuse himself to one of the Staff for not
reading the text by the lame confession that he was
“no bookworm!”