ContentsCHAPTER X.

a public character!! Pray, Punch, are not these, your puppets, public characters? Have they not acted in public, laboured for the public, catered for the public? Has not Douglas Jerrold been hissed off the stage by the public? Have not à Beckett's writings! been acted, and damned, in public? and as to Mark Lemon, there can be no doubt ofhisbeing a public character, for he some time since kept apublic-house!!! All ceremony therefore is at an end between us.... There may be other misdemeanours of which they have from time to time thought me guilty; but the grand one of all is, that I have taken the liberty of attempting to write poetry, and have produced on the stage my own works in preference to theirs.... Did you ever see them act, Punch? Did you ever seeDouglas Jerrold in his own piece, entitled "The Painter of Ghent"? If not, I can only say you are a devilish lucky fellow! Did you ever see him and Mark Lemon act at Miss Kelly's theatre? and if so, did you ever see such an awful exhibition?... and if, astheysay, theydid"hold the mirror up to Nature,"Isay it was only tocast reflectionsupon her!! Did you read, Punch, the criticisms writtenbythemselvesuponthemselves in the next day's papers? If you did not, you have a treat to come.

THE WRAPPER OF "A WORD WITH PUNCH."THE WRAPPER OF "A WORD WITH PUNCH."View larger image(Designed by George Augustus Sala.)

And so forth. Then, presenting the head of Jerrold on the body of an unusually wriggling serpent, which he gives forth as being from "portraits in possession of the family," he goes on to "say something" of the man of savage sarcasm and "bilious bitings:"—

Now, with all his failings, let me record my opinion that it is to Jerrold's pen you are indebted, Punch, for the fame you once enjoyed; for, beyond any doubt, he is a fellow of infinite ability. I have known him some years, and the last time but one I eversawhim was in 1842, when, meeting me in St. James's Street, he thanked me for a handsome critique he believed me to have written on his comedy of "Bubbles of the Day," and on that occasion he said a better thing, Punch, than he has written in your pages. I said to him, "What, you are picking up character, I suppose?"—to which he replied, "There's plenty of it lost, in this neighbourhood." The last time I everheardfrom him was during the first visit of Duprez to Drury Lane Theatre, when I received the following note from him:—

Wednesday."My dear Sir,Will you enable me to hear your French nightingale—do pray,Yours very truly,D. Jerrold."

Wednesday.

"My dear Sir,

Will you enable me to hear your French nightingale—do pray,

Yours very truly,

D. Jerrold."

—which is the vilest pun ever perpetrated at the expense of that eminent singer.... Unlike the other two of his party, he is a man of undoubted genius; but all who admit this, at the same time regret the frequent misdirection of his mind. He is one of the most ill-conditioned, spiteful, vindictive, and venomous writers in existence, and whatever honeywasin his composition, has long since turned to gall.... Can it be possible [he adds, after digging up and quoting some of Jerrold's feeblest verse] that it never occurs to a wholesale dealer in slander and ridicule that he is liable to be assailed by the very weapons he useth against others?

Then comes the portrait of Gilbert Abbott à Beckett, in wig and gown, but with devil's hoofs and tail. On him the attackis savage in the extreme, the details of hisearlylack of financial success being published, and the whole dismissed with the comprehensive remark: "a very prolific person, this friend of yours, Punch!—editor of thirteen periodicals, and lessee of a theatre into the bargain, and all total failures!" After heavy-handed chaff he proceeds to abuse Mark Lemon, up and down, in similar terms; and with a view to show that others write verse as bad as his, reprints the weakest lines in his "Fridolin" and "The Rhine-boat." In the course of his very effective attack Bunn proceeds:—

In speaking of the Castle of Heidelberg, whichhesays is on the Rhine, although everyone else says it is on the Neckar, he thus apostrophises it:—"'Tis here the north wind loves to holdHis dreary revels, loud and cold,The nettle's bloom's his daily fare,Thetoadthe guest most welcome there!!"Whether the last linegives the reason why Thickhead visited Heidelberg does not appear.

In speaking of the Castle of Heidelberg, whichhesays is on the Rhine, although everyone else says it is on the Neckar, he thus apostrophises it:—

"'Tis here the north wind loves to holdHis dreary revels, loud and cold,The nettle's bloom's his daily fare,Thetoadthe guest most welcome there!!"

Whether the last linegives the reason why Thickhead visited Heidelberg does not appear.

He then dots epigrams and so forth—all insults of various degrees of offensiveness—about the remaining pages, virtually suggesting, in Sheridan's words, that whilePunch'scirculation has gone down hopelessly, "everything about him is a jest except his witticisms." The advertisements, too, are of a similarly satirical character, one of them showing, as an illustration of a "patent blacking," Mark Lemon (as pot-boy) looking at his own likeness in the polish of a Wellington boot which reflects a rearing donkey. The last cut represents a medicine bottle with a label inscribed "This dose to be repeated, should the patients require it," and the "Notice to Correspondents" declares that ample material is left for future use. Such further publication, however, was never called for.Punchattempted no reply—inexplicably, one would think, for there must have been something left to say of Hot Cross Bunn.Punch'srivals were not slow to twit him on his defeat, especially the "Puppet Show" and "The Man in the Moon," the latter of which, in a comic report of the proceedings atthe "Licensing Committee for Poets," remarked, "Mr. Alfred Bunn was bitterly opposed on personal grounds by a person named Punch; but Mr. Bunn having intimated his wish to have a Word with Punch, the latter skulked out of court, andwas not heard of afterwards."

"A Word with Punch"—which thePunchmen are said to have bought up as far as possible—had a considerable sale, and an "édition de luxe" was also issued, coloured. The engravings in it were made by Landells, a modest piece of vengeance which must, however, have been gratifying, so far as it went. It may be added that J. R. Adam, "the Cremorne Poet," took up the cudgels unasked inPunch'sbehalf in a reply entitled "A Word with Bunn;" but this little octavo is as insignificant as its author, and attracted little notice.

Once again, in the early days of "Fun,"Punchcame very near to being startled with another such infernal machine. Mr. Clement Scott tells me:—"We were offended withPunchfor some reason—it was in the Tom Taylor days—and we meditated, planned out, and nearly executed a second edition of 'A Word with Punch.' Tom Hood was furious. Sala was in our conspiracy. In fact, all the 'young lions' of 'Fun' were 'crazy mad.' We thought we could annihilate poor oldPunchwith one blow. But we never did it—because, I think, although we were plucky, we were impecunious! We were very proud, but, alas! our pockets were empty; so the whole company—Hood, Sala, Jeff Prowse, Harry Leigh, Brunton, Paul Gray, W. S. Gilbert, W. B. Rands, Tom Robertson, Clement Scott and Co., had to knock under."

From Bunn's time may be dated the better taste and greater chivalry that have since distinguishedPunch, even in his most rampant moods. He has always had his butts—from the soft-hearted and, at the time, unpardonably hirsute Colonel Sibthorpe, to Sir R. Temple and Mr. McNeill, Mr. Newdegate, Mr. Roebuck, Edwin James, ex-Q.C. (who was disbarred for corruption and set up in New York, joining, asPunchput it, the "bar sinister"), Madame Rachel (the "beautiful for ever" enameller, who had not yet beenconvicted), Colonel North, Sir Francis Baring, Cox of Finsbury, Wiscount Williams of Lambeth, the Duke of Buccleuch, Lord Malmsbury, and a host of others. But his attacks rarely overstepped due limits; nor didPunchever find another aspiring Bunn among them. Amongst the inanimate objects which at various timesPunchmade his mark were Trafalgar Square and its Fountains (or the "Squirts," as they were scornfully called), the National Gallery, Mud-Salad Market, Leicester Square, the Wellington Statue on the Wellington Arch, the Great Exhibition, John Bell's Guards' Memorial in Waterloo Place, and the British Museum Catalogue—all of which, so far as they represented Londoners' grievances, have ere now been reformed.

Satire and Libel—Mrs. Ramsbotham Assaulted—Attacks of "The Man in the Moon" and "The Puppet-Show"—H. S. Leigh's Banter—Malicious Wit—Mr. Pincott—Punch'sPurity gives Offence—His Slips of Fact—Quotation—And Dialect are Resented—His Drunkards not Appreciated by the U.K.A.—"Punchis not as good as it was!"

Above the head of every editor the law of libel hangs like the sword of Damocles. It is at all times difficult for a newspaper of any sort to avoid the infringement of its provisions, vigilant though the editor may be. But in the case of a confessedly "satirical" journal the danger is enormously increased, for the margin between "fair comment" and flat libel shrinks strangely when theraison d'étreof the criticism is pungency, and the object laughter.

ThatPunchhas steered clear of giving serious offence, save on occasions extremely few, must be counted to him for righteousness. It is true that, as a Lord Chancellor once declared, "Punchis a chartered libertine." But for him to have won his "charter" at all proves him at least to have been worthy of it, the tolerance and indulgence of the nation having been in themselves a temptation. It is not so much that he has not hit hard; it is rather that he has hit straight. Indeed, as we have seen, he has struck hastily in many directions; but, save in his years of indiscretion, he has scarcely ever been guilty of anything approaching scurrility. At a time when the "Satirist" was flinging its darts at the peculiarly vulnerable Duke of Brunswick, goading him into the writing of his pamphlets, and into that crushing retaliation whereby the paper was condemned in five thousand pounds damages,Punchwas perhaps the most moderate public censor andarbiter elegantiarumamongst all those who used ridicule and irony as instruments of castigation; and indulgence has been the reward that he has reaped.

That Mr. George Jones and Mr. S. C. Hall dared not face the ultimate ordeal of a court of law must be held to justifyPunch'spersistently caustic denunciations; while the case of Mr. Gent-Davis, then M.P. for Kennington, served chiefly to confirm the fact that "abstractions" and "imaginary personages" find their counterparts, in the opinions of some, in real life. In this case one of the Staff, who lived in the member's constituency, and had taken some interest in local politics, contributed a humorous paper to a series on which he was engaged, and it was published inPunch(November 13, 1886). In this essay a type of suburban lady-politician—a "study from Mr. Punch's Studio"—was satirised under the name of "Mrs. Gore-Jenkins." Forthwith a summons against the Editor at the Mansion House police court was the result, for the Member accepted the description as directed against his wife; but the explanation that the article was intended as a mere political satire on an "imaginary person" was held to be satisfactory, and the incident was finally closed.

On another occasion an unflattering poem on a "popular singer" was illustrated, quite innocently by the artist, who probably never saw the verses, with what appeared to be a portrait of Mr. Isidore de Lara; but no sooner was the matter pointed out than any intention to offend the musician was immediately disclaimed by the paper. At another time one ofPunch'sartists showed the little band of Socialists (Messrs. Champion, Hyndman, and others), who were then before the law on a political charge, as subjects ofPunch'straditional "summary justice." But althoughPunchwas quickly brought to book, his victims did not take the matter very seriously. Mr. John Burns, indeed, confesses as much in a communication upon the subject. "On one occasion," he tells me, "Punchsuspended me, pictorially of course, from a gallows tree. This I, of course, regarded as Mr. Punch's humorous desire to see me in an elevated position. On other occasions he has been equally kind but less appropriate in his method of praise or censure."

Punchhas altogether had some two-score actions commenced, or threatened, against it, by business firms or aggrievedpersons or, more often still, by newspapers on the ground of libel and kindred wrongdoing. But then, consider how many there are in the world, and in England especially, who will not see a joke!

A subject upon whichPunchhas for some years been persistently twitted is the personality of "Mrs. Ramsbotham"—Thackeray's Mrs. Julia Dorothea Ramsbottom of "The Snob" (No. 7, May, 1829)—a homely sort of Mrs. Malaprop, whose constant misquotations and misapplication of words of somewhat similar sound to those she intends to use give constant amusement to one section ofPunch'sreaders, and irritation quite as constant to the other. She is the lady who suffers from a "torpedo liver;" who complains of being "a mere siphon in her own house;" who discharges her gardener because his answers to her questions are so "amphibious;" and who does not understand how there can be "illegal distress" in a free country where people may be as unhappy as they like. There have, of course, been many originals to this unconscious humorist—and are still. One lady, it has been declared, is not unknown in society, who has held forth to a surprised circle of her acquaintances on the operation of "trigonometry" (tracheotomy)—who, when she imparted a bit of scandal would add, "but that, you know, as the lawyers say, isinter alias"—and who wished that people would always say what they meant, and not talk paregorically (metaphorically).

"Mrs. Ramsbotham" is obviously descended, through Mrs. Malaprop, from Dogberry, and has many a time been "condemned to everlasting redemption," at least by thegenus irritabile. One critic cast his protest in the form of a poetic appeal toPunch, and published it in an Oxford journal:—

"Of Mrs. Ram I wish to speak,You dear old London Charivari;Don't ram her down our throats each week.Of sameness do be chary. Vary."

A broader and severer hint was offered by the lively Poet of the London "Globe":—

To Mrs. Ramsbotham.A few there be who still delight,O Mrs. R., inPunch'spage,Who like a joke to wear the blightOf age.Who, if they find a grain of wheat,Are well content to pass the chaff,And, every week, at least completeOne laugh.But even they who swallow punUnmurm'ring, now and then declare,Henceforward they must seek their funElsewhere.It is when you have multipliedYour misconceptions, Mrs. Ram.,That patience, sorely thus o'er-tried,Says "——."My task is therefore plain: to hintThat you, true woman to the core,Are, when you interfere with print,A bore.I would not venture to suggestThe line of conduct to pursue;I state a fact ... and leave the restTo you.

To Mrs. Ramsbotham.

A few there be who still delight,O Mrs. R., inPunch'spage,Who like a joke to wear the blightOf age.

Who, if they find a grain of wheat,Are well content to pass the chaff,And, every week, at least completeOne laugh.

But even they who swallow punUnmurm'ring, now and then declare,Henceforward they must seek their funElsewhere.

It is when you have multipliedYour misconceptions, Mrs. Ram.,That patience, sorely thus o'er-tried,Says "——."

My task is therefore plain: to hintThat you, true woman to the core,Are, when you interfere with print,A bore.

I would not venture to suggestThe line of conduct to pursue;I state a fact ... and leave the restTo you.

But, in spite of this bitter cry, the next week's number ofPunchcontained a quarter of a page of the lady's reminiscences and three misapprehensions. "O," exclaimed the tormented Poet, "that some Abraham would arise to do sacrifice!" Later on Mr. Furniss arose to the call, as the murderous Barons responded to Henry's ejaculation. In "Lika Joko" (November 3, 1894) there was printed an obituary notice of Mrs. Ramsbotham (as nothing in her name had appeared in the previous week'sPunch), and a very comic death-bed scene was presented—reminding one of a similar incident in "Joe Miller the Younger," when that paper,like many of the public, grew tired of Mrs. Caudle, and, reporting her "sudden death," published an engraving by Hine, whereinPunchin weepers is seen laying a wreath upon her monument, while Toby and his bâton are both decorated with crape. In "Lika Joko's" presentation of her "momentum mori," she babbles of things in general; she is nervous as to the physic handed to her, and remarks that these medicine bottles are as like to one another as the two Dominoes in the "Comedy of Horrors;" she declares, as her mind wanders to the Chino-Japanese war, that "the best remedy for political disorders is antimony, but things may be different in horizontal nations;" and, finally, as she sinks back in death, she fancies she sees a hand a'Becketting to her. ButPunchignored the attack; and the report of the death of his lady-correspondent was duly recognised as a canard.

But "Lika Joko" is by no means the only comic paper that has attackedPunch, smiting him hip and thigh. The violent charges of plagiarism which for many years it was the fashion to bring against him have already been referred to. From the beginning the principal—as it is the easiest—charge that has been made is the alleged heaviness ofPunch'sfun or his deficiency of wit; less often, it has been a legitimate complaint of blunder or of journalistic wrongdoing. Some of the most violent of these attacks came from the aforesaid "Joe Miller," and from "The Great Gun"—the short-lived journal of distinct ability. In "The Man in the Moon" the pens of Shirley Brooks, James Hannay, and other wits made it distinctly uncomfortable forPunch—but nothing more. Thus to a portrait of Mr. Punch, who is shown in the last degree of misery, is appended the legend, "A Case of Real Distress.—'I haven't made a joke for many weeks!'" (November, 1847). In the next number appeared the brilliant verses, "Our Flight withPunch," from Shirley Brooks's pen, as well as a sketch of a man speechless with amazement, described as the "Portrait of a Gentleman finding a Joke inPunch." Then there is the riddle, "Why is a volume ofPunchlike a pot of bad tea?—Because it is full of slow leaves;" and in the same number, a biting satire in anticipation of a playwritten by some of thePunchStaff and produced at Covent Garden in aid of the family of Leigh Hunt, ends with the words, "Everyresorter to the stalls and boxes will be expected to purchase a copy of either 'Dombey,'Punch, or 'Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper,' as, next to benevolence, it is in aid of those works that the chief actors appear. N.B.—Strong coffee will be provided to keep the audience awake throughout the performance.Vivant Bradbury et Evans!"

"The Puppet-Show" followed on the same lines, but its attacks were more personal. Under the heading of "A Trio of Punchites" (April, 1848), Thackeray, Douglas Jerrold, and Gilbert à Beckett were torn limb from limb, and later on Mark Lemon and the rest were added to the holocaust; yet, like the Cardinal of Rheims' congregation, nobody seemed a penny the worse. The paper began its fusillade in the first number, and soon came out with a large picture, well drawn and engraved in the manner of the day, of Mr. Punch, much humiliated, receiving a lecture from Mr. Bull:—

Shameful Attempt at Overcharge!Mr. Bull(a commercial gentleman)—"Hallo, Mr. Punch, threepence! What do you mean by threepence? Why, the Puppet-Showman supplies a better paper for a penny! You must mind what you are about!"Mr. Punch—"Well, sir, you may think it too much, but really the article is so very heavy I cannot sell it for less."

Mr. Bull(a commercial gentleman)—"Hallo, Mr. Punch, threepence! What do you mean by threepence? Why, the Puppet-Showman supplies a better paper for a penny! You must mind what you are about!"

Mr. Punch—"Well, sir, you may think it too much, but really the article is so very heavy I cannot sell it for less."

On another occasion the same idea is carried a step further, in the form of an advertisement: "Notice.—If the heavy joke, which was sent to the 'Puppet-Show' office last Monday, and for which two-and-ninepence was charged, be not forthwith removed, it will be sold toPunchto pay expenses;" and later on it hints that the Parisians will do well to import a few ofPunch'sjokes as the best of all possible material for the barricades they were then erecting (1848). A graver charge was contained under the heading, "On Sale or Hire," and it ran: "We perceive, by an advertisement inPunch, that the entire work can be purchased for £4 10s.Judging from its ridiculous puffs of Her Majesty's Theatre, we should say that it could always be bought by a box at the Opera." This amiable paragraph appeared in a lively column which was a weekly feature of the paper, and was headed "Pins and Needles." "Pasquin," a rival "comic" edited by Mr. Sutherland Edwards, was always "bandying epithets" with the Showman, and no sooner was the column introduced than he drew pleasing attention to the fact in the following paragraph: "The 'Puppet-Show' has started 'Pins and Needles.' We don't wonder at it. 'Pins and Needles' are always a sign of a defective circulation."

From time to time, too, pamphlets have been directed againstPunch, such as the "Anti-Punch,"[25]published by the men who naturally fall under the lash of a satirist, and resent its application. Of such was the widely circulated "Phrenological Manipulation of the Head ofPunch," written by George Combe about 1845, in the form of an open letter. It began, "Sir, you are not an honest man.... Practically your benevolence is merely professional, it is only for the readers ofPunch.Why do you act like Toby in the manger?" But there is little wit and less reason in these booklets to recommend, or to justify aught but oblivion.

A more able and important foe than these was Harry S. Leigh, who in 1864 was editor of "The Arrow," with Mortimer Collins as verse-writer and Matt Morgan as cartoonist. Leigh opened his attack with rhymes that were greatly enjoyed at the time. They ran thus:—

No. I."Sad stuff of Lemon's,"Think the bells of St. Clement's;"Not worth five farthings,"Sneer the bells of St. Martin's;"Going down daily,"Grunt the bells of Old Bailey;"Onceit was rich,"Hint the bells of Shoreditch:"When couldthatbe?"Ask the bells of Step-ney;"Hanged ifIknow,"Growls the big bell at Bow.

No. I.

"Sad stuff of Lemon's,"Think the bells of St. Clement's;"Not worth five farthings,"Sneer the bells of St. Martin's;"Going down daily,"Grunt the bells of Old Bailey;"Onceit was rich,"Hint the bells of Shoreditch:"When couldthatbe?"Ask the bells of Step-ney;"Hanged ifIknow,"Growls the big bell at Bow.

No. II.Sing a song of threepence,A paper full of trash;Four-and-twenty "funny men"Have made a pretty hash;For when the paper's opened,One soon begins to sing—"Oh! threepence is a dainty priceTo pay for such a thing."

No. II.

Sing a song of threepence,A paper full of trash;Four-and-twenty "funny men"Have made a pretty hash;For when the paper's opened,One soon begins to sing—"Oh! threepence is a dainty priceTo pay for such a thing."

And he returns to the charge later on in a set of verses in which he pretends to pay tribute toPunch'sbygone force—"honest if delicate"—and to Judy's and Toby's straightforward roughness. After making charges of corruption, he proceeds:

"Alas! how times and manners pass!When no one fears a panic—When Scotland tolerates the Mass—And Spain is puritanic;When Yankee 'anacondas' scrunchThe South's heroic leader—Then may we find a pleasantPunch,AndPuncha happy reader."

Nowadays the commoner form of humorous attack uponPunchis the assumption that it is a serious journal: a cold-blooded analysis of its contents will be made, or the quotation of its best bits under the ungrateful title of "Alleged Humour fromPunch;" or a joke will be printed and savagely "quoted" as "Fromnext week'sPunch." When the three "New Humorists," Messrs. Barry Pain, Jerome, and Zangwill, were driven to despair (so says one of them) by the sneers of the Press, they met in solemn conclave and swore never to make another joke. So Mr. Zangwill set to work at a serious novel.Mr. Jerome took to editing a weekly paper, and Mr. Painbegan writing for Punch!Even when Mr. Pincott, for thirty years the "reader" on the paper, committed suicide the day after his wife was buried, a number of papers could not resist the temptation that was offered. "Fancy having to read through allPunch'sjokes week after week for years!" exclaimed one. "No wonder we are a hardy race. No wonder the poor man shot himself." Mr. Pincott was a man of great ability, of remarkable erudition, and extreme conscientiousness. Although his bereavement was preying on his mind, he saw the paper out, and did not commit the fatal act until he had sent his usual letter to the Editor, wherewith he would relieve himself of his week's responsibility. "I never met a man with so much information and of so varied a character," writes one of his fellow-workers. "He never passed a quotation without verifying it, and could give you chapter and verse for everything. He knew his Shakespeare by heart, and all the modern poets, and he was never at fault in his classics." He was not, however, allowed to leave the world without a farewell gibe and a laugh, for Wit knows no mercy.

Another main charge laid atPunch'sdoor is that he is too little like Hogarth in the past, too little like French satirists in the present. Thackeray's proud boast that the paper had never said aught that could cause a girl's cheek to mantle with a blush,[26]is acknowledged by the naturalist and realist of the day as the severest condemnation that could be brought against it. "We do not want inPuncha moral papervirginibus puerisque," says M. Arsène Alexandre, in effect, in his important work "L'Art du Rire;" "Punchisun peu trop gentleman.What we want is to be enlightened." ButPunchhas not chosen to cast the beams of his search-light on to that side of "life" which is turned towards vice; and if he determines that theliaisonsand all the attendant world of humour that afford inspiration to the talent of the Grévins, theForains, the Guillaumes, and the Willettes of France, are outside his field of treatment, who shall blame him? If there is any moral at all to be gleaned from the work of thePunchcaricaturists, it is argued, it is the never-ending sermon, though the sermon is a humorous one, of the non-existence of immorality. Perhaps; butPunchdoes not aspire to reflect the savagery we call civilisation by painting a Hogarthian "Progress," nor to preach virtue by depicting vice. It is no doubt very appalling and amusing to hear a young girl-cynic say, as she points to a hideous monkey in a zoological gardens—"He only wants a little money to be just like a man!"Ça donne à penser;butPunchprefers wholesome jests to irony and repellent cynicism, and is content to leave his impeachment in the hands of his spice-loving detractors, even at the risk of being reminded year by year that "Gentle Dulness ever loves a joke."

Another fruitful source of adverse criticism is an occasional slip onPunch'spart in respect to some point of fact. Then at once half a dozen papers are on his track with an eagerness that suggests the idea that they were lying in wait. First come the matters of detail, as when the "Athenæum" (January, 1877) justifiably complained that the popular conception of the imperial crown of the Empress of India as a four-arched structure, like that of Germany, is due to the mistake ofPunch, "whose artists are always falling into this error in their cartoons of the Empress of India." In 1879 Sir John Tenniel was challenged by Mr. Sala on the correctness of the balloon in his frontispiece to the seventy-sixth volume, and in March, 1893, Mr. du Maurier was soundly rated for showing a group of Oxford undergraduates, in the rooms of one of them, wearing cap and gown with perfect docility. Yachtsmen fell foul of Mr. Sambourne for introducing an ensign on a staff in his famous drawing of "TheTimesTacking;" for such a staff, stuck on the taffrail with the boom touching it, was "an impossible object," and would have been instantly snapped off, while, moreover, the ensign should have been at the peak. In another admirable drawingPunchonce showed a ship on the starboard tack whilethe helmsman is steering on the port tack, and the ship, by what appears a miracle, is lying over to the wind; and, again, Toby is actually shown in the Almanac for 1895 drawing a cork from a champagne bottle with a cork-screw! Then photographers are as resentful of inaccuracy as bicyclists; and the fact that Mr. Hodgson in the second of his two drawings, "To be well shaken before taken" (August, 1894), representing an "'Arry on 'orseback" first whipping up his horse before being photographed, and then posing before the "seaside tintype man," placed the equestrianbetweenthe sun and the lens, was warmly taken up; for would not the result, forsooth, be "the loss of the picture in a flare spot?"

The literary error, too, is held to be inexcusable, andPunchis pointed at with scorn for a misquotation from Horace; or an incorrect rendering in one of his drawings of an antiquarian inscription; or a slip in a Shakespearean line; or an inaccuracy in slang or dialect. Scottish, Irish, Suffolk, or Yorkshire must all be perfectly rendered, or the natives will know the reason why. In August, 1894, Mr. Hodgson sent from the Yorkshire moors a story of a keeper who, dissatisfied with the calendar, replies to a sportsman's inquiries: "Well, sir, middlin', pretty middlin'. But, oh dear, it's awk'ard this 'ere Twelfth bein' fixed of a Sunday! Now might Mr. Gladstone ha' had hanything to do wi' that arrangement, sir?" An outraged correspondent—a fluent Yorkshire conversationalist, of course—at once corrected the original version and translated it into the true vernacular: "Nobbut middlin', sir, nobbut middlin'. But, ah lad, it's a fond business this puttin' t' Twelfth o' a Sunday. Div ye think 'at owd Gladstone 'ad owt to do wi' it?" And againPunchrarely introduces "mon" (as an equivalent for "man") into his Scotch jokes without producing a disclaimer against this alleged "peculiarly British error."

A third form of mistake commonly gloated over is that which touches some general fact of economics or social matters. An example of this was Mr. Linley Sambourne's drawing, entitled "An Embarras de Richesses," graphically illustrating the glut of money in "the City" in the summer of 1894. TheOld Lady of Threadneedle Street is shown standing on a pile of bags of bullion impatiently waving back the City men who are pressing forward with more bags of gold, which bags are labelled "Deposits." But the Bank of England allows no interest on deposits, as suggested by the drawing and its accompanying verses; and the draughtsman, explained one of the financial papers which gleefully called attention to the misconception, "thought it was the Old Lady who had reduced her deposit rates to one-half per cent."

But what are considered the most heinous, as well as the rarest, of all blunders are those of policy or important movements, which, of course, concern large bodies of men, whether they constitute a party, a constituency, or a strike. A case in point was the cartoon dedicated (August, 1893) to the miners on strike in Northumberland and Durham: but at that particular moment it was the miners of other districts who were so involved. Another instance was the substitution of Mr. Logan, M.P., for Mr. Leon, M.P. (December, 1893), in a Parliamentary picture that illustrated an incident mentioned in the "Essence of Parliament." But it may be taken that the error was rather a slip than a blunder that represented "Toby barking up the wrong tree."

It is natural, of course, that the "faddists" should be among Mr. Punch's most impatient critics, because "fad" and "cant" have always beenPunch'spet ground-game that he loves to run to earth. It is perhaps from the Temperance party that he has had most sport, for he has always taken delight in the pictures they dislike the most—the incomparable drawings of Leech and Keene, which show the humorous, instead of only the hateful, side of inebriety; and he chuckles as he reads, now their protests against Mr. Bernard Partridge's excruciating pictures of a drunken man's "progress," now the plaintive paragraph that "in a recent issue ofPunchmore than twenty-five per cent. of the advertisements concerned hotels, wines, spirits, and mineral waters!"

And, lastly, there is the critic who is always bewailingPunch'sdeterioration—an impending dissolution which has been announced from the second number!

People in Society seem curiously fond of expressing this opinion to the members of the Staff themselves, if all the stories current are to be believed. "Well, you know, Mr. Milliken," once remarked a lady, "I donotthinkPunchis as good as itusedto be." "No," assented the creator of 'Arry; "it never was!"

For such as these there is and can be no comfort; for them there is no excellence save in the past; no inferiority save in the present. The perusal of humorous papers is of course but a poor occupation for pessimists such as they, and it is hardly likely that it could ever awaken in them sentiments other than those so tersely put by the "Gentlewoman's" poet:—

"In vain I search for humour eachAnd every 'comic' 'neath the sky.Alas! I fear the busy LeechHas sucked the vein of humour dry!"

Mr. Joseph Swain supersedes Ebenezer Landells—His Education as Engraver—Head of His Department—Engraving the Big Cut: Then and Now—Printing from the Wood-blocks—Leech's Fastidiousness—Impracticability of Keene—Thackeray's Little Confidence—A Record of Half a Century.

JOSEPH SWAINJOSEPH SWAIN

It was in 1843 that Mr. Swain engraved his first block forPunch. It was a drawing by Leech, on p. 50 of the fourth volume, to illustrate one of Albert Smith's "Side-Scenes of Society." The services of Landells, it will be remembered, had been suddenly dispensed with by the proprietors—for reasons of business jealousy according to Landells, though the proprietors gave out, in some quarters at least, for lack of proper excellence in his work. When they had decided to give Landells hiscongé, Bradbury and Evans looked about for another to replace him, and offered the engraving to one of the brothers Jewett. By him the task was readily undertaken, although he was, as he knew, wholly unable to carry it out; and when a block with one of Leech's drawings upon it was sent to him as a test, he offered the execution of it to his young acquaintance, Joseph Swain. So pleased was Leech with the result that he strongly recommended that the man who had cut such a block should, in place of the middleman, be installed as manager of the engraving department; and from that time forward that important portion of the work has remained in the hands of one ofPunch'smost faithful, loyal, and talented servants, of whomPunchhas happily had so many.

Mr. Swain had been brought up by his father from Oxford,his natal town, when he was nine years of age, and five years later had been placed with N. Whittock, a draughtsman of Islington, to learn the art and craft of wood-cutting. But though Mr. Whittock was something of an artist, he was less of an engraver; and finding after a few years that he was making but little progress, young Swain applied for instruction to Thomas Williams. That distinguished engraver was one of the few excellent "facsimile men" of the day; and he agreed to accept the applicant as "improver." At that time he was engaged in engraving the blocks of an edition of "Paul et Virginie"—the well-known illustrated edition which was published in Paris in 1838. For at that time there were fewer facsimile engravers in Paris than in London, and what there were, in point of ability, were not to be compared with the Englishmen; so that it was no uncommon thing for the best work to be sent from France to be executed in this country. On this particular work Meissonier, Johannot, Horace Vernet, and others had been engaged; and when that was finished, the series of works published by Charles Knight provided endless work for the skilled gravers at Williams' command: Harvey's "Arabian Nights," "Shakespeare," and the "History of Greece," and other notable works. It was a great school of engravers that existed then, both of masters and pupils, and included, besides Thomas Williams himself, his brother and sister, Samuel and Mary Ann Williams (a brilliant engraver she, who never gained her due of reputation), John Thompson, Orrin Smith, W. J. Linton, John Jackson, Mason Jackson, W. T. Greene, Robert Branston, Landells, the Dalziel Brothers,[27]and Edmund Evans. Most of them were soon employed by W. Dickes, under whose management the Abbotsford edition of Scott's works was being executed; and to Dickes, Joseph Swain also transferred his services. In due course the young engraver left that establishment, and hadnot long been on the look-out for a satisfactory opening when he received from Jewett the little commission which landed him in a very short time in the service ofPunch, in which he remained until he retired from business in favour of his son, after a completed period of half a century.

For some years Mr. Swain remained at the head of thePunchengraving department, devoting himself, and his six or eight assistants, exclusively toPunchwork. He then pointed out to the proprietors how, by conducting and extending the business on his own account, he could carry out their work more economically while increasing his own field of operations and doubling his earning powers. The suggestion was acted upon, and the result proved satisfactory to both parties. For by this time he had educated the necessary engravers to that style of facsimile cutting in which he himself, and but few besides, had been specially trained, and he was enabled to keep the weekly expense of engravingPunchdown to an average of under thirty pounds, and at the same time to spend his superfluous energies on many of the most famous illustrated books of his day.

For many years the boxwood blocks on which the drawings were made consisted of a single piece; for, as already explained, Charles Wells of Bouverie Street, at first a cabinetmaker of rare excellence, and later on a boxwood importer, had not then invented the device which revolutionised newspaper illustration—that of making a block in six or more sections which could be taken apart after the drawing had been made (and later on photographed) upon its surface and distributed among the engravers, and then screwed together again when each man had completed his own little piece. The invention which led to such an economy of time was only introduced in 1860 or thereabouts. For nineteen yearsPunchhad to see his big blocks cut on a single piece of wood, which was one of the reasons why the earlier cartoons and "pencillings" were, as a rule, so much more roughly drawn and hastily cut. In those early days a single "round" of wood was used—a "round" that had been cross-cut from the trunk of the tree. This was always kept seasoning until by naturalshrinkage it had split up to the centre, when a tongue-shaped piece of box was fitted into the triangular vacancy and screwed firmly through. Then the block was squared as well as its shape permitted, and when its surface had been properly prepared, it was ready for the artist.

As I find myself discussing technical details inPunchproduction, it may be well to go a step further, for such matters can hardly fail to interest the reader. The cartoon, for reasons of economy of time, has always, up to 1893, been drawn upon the wood[28]—not upon paper, as has been possible to the rest of the Staff for a good many years past—and is delivered into Mr. Swain's hands by Friday night. Twenty-four hours later the engraving of the block is completed, and it is handed over to the printers, who are already clamouring for it to be put in their formes—for there is no time to electrotype it, nor of course to stereotype the pages. Stereotyping, indeed, has been the latest of the innovations onPunch—an innovation to be reckoned but a year or two old—forPunch, in his own house at least, is a Conservative among Conservatives. What was always present in the publisher's mind was that the "foreign edition" had to be ready printed off by Monday morning, and every moment was necessarily grudged during which the machines were not running—even those few short minutes when a sheet or two of the paper, at first starting, were taken to Mr. Swain to be judged as to the printing of the cuts, or as to whether they wanted a little more "colour," or a little pressure taken off. "To myself," Mr. Swain tells me, "it has always been a pleasing reflection that during the whole time of my connection withPunch, extending over fifty years, I have never once failed to get my work done in time and without accident. Of course, now and again it has been a very near thing, but it has always been done somehow."

It has ever been matter for surprise to outsiders that the conductors of the journal could tempt Fate so recklessly as to put the original wood-blocks on the machines. As has beenseen, there was no alternative. But the fact remains that they ran a continual risk for fifty years which no other journal would care to face for a single week; for an accident to a single block (and such accidents are all too common) would have jeopardised the whole week's edition, as no other original existed (as it exists nowadays) from which the damaged block might be reproduced, or by which it might be superseded.

So it was only after the printing of an edition that the blocks were electrotyped. It is a curious fact that after 70,000 or 80,000 had been printed these blocks were nearly always found as good as new so far as the wood was concerned; only towards the end of the edition the blocks would sometimes get so filled up that some of the fine work was entirely lost, and the electros then taken suffered in consequence. An examination of this substance would show that it consisted of lime and pulp from the paper itself, compressed in a solid body so hard that it almost defied the graver to remove it.

Those early days were halcyon times forPunchengravers. Mark Lemon would come down two or three times a week to edit and make up the paper, and would talk leisurely with Mr. Swain of such matters as concerned the engraver. No block was hurried. If it could not be ready for one week, it was held over for the next—a saving grace which the engraver has now and again acknowledged by drawing an initial or other simple design on the wood half an hour before going to press, when the Editor hurriedly required such a decoration—possibly to supply an artist's omission. Such sketches were "The Cabman's Ticket" in February, 1854, put upon the wood from a scribble by Gilbert à Beckett—his sole artistic contribution toPunch; "Broomv. Brush" in May, 1859; and "The Turkish Bath" in 1880. And, above all, "process" had not yet held out its alluring promise of nearly equal results, to the inexpert eye, at a quarter of the cost of wood-engraving.

In another way did Mr. Swain place his mark on the pages ofPunch—by the introduction of many a young artist to the Editor. It was he who thus introduced Mr. T. Harrington Wilson to Mark Lemon, Mr. Ralston to Shirley Brooks, R. B. Wallace (whose acquaintance he had made throughMr. Frederick Shields) and Mr. Wheeler to Tom Taylor, and others, too, to the various rulers ofPunch. In some cases the artists themselves approached the engraver; in others, it was the Editor who would ask him to recommend some clever designer who could best execute this or that little drawing which he wanted done. Further service rendered by him was the share he took in educating several ofPunch'smore imposing personages for the work they had to do—such as Doyle, McDonnell, and others.

It has often been quoted of Leech that after he had shown a drawing on the wood to any friend who might happen to be with him, he would add with a sigh—"But wait till next week and see how the engraver will spoil it!" This was a piece of unintentional injustice, for the fault lay with the conditions of rapid printing (forPunchhas always been, and still is, printed on a cylinder machine)—with the printer, the ink-maker, and the paper manufacturer more than with the engraver, as a glance at the proofs of the engravings will show.

Speaking of this matter, Dean Hole says: "If the position of an eyelash was altered, or the curve of a lip was changed, there might be an ample remainder to convey the intention and to win the admiration of those who never knew their loss, but theperfectionof the original was gone. Again and again I have heard him [Leech] sigh as he looked over the new number ofPunch; and as I, seeing but excellence, would ask an explanation, he would point to some almost imperceptible obliquity which vexed his gentle soul." It is a curious fact that, in common with most draughtsmen, Leech never became reconciled to the fact that black printer's-ink cannot exactly render the tender grey tones of a hard lead pencil; but to the fact that he had not much to complain of Mr. Frith bears witness: "I once saw one of Leech's drawings on the wood, and I afterwards saw it inPunch, and I remember wondering at the fidelity with which it was rendered. Some of the lines, finer than the finest hair, had been cut away orthickened, but the character, the vigour, and the beauty were scarcely damaged." In connection with this subject Mr. Layard, in his "Life of Charles Keene," compared a photogravure and a wood-blockof one of thePunchpictures, with the principal, though unintended, result of proving how indulgent are wood-engraving and the tool of the skilled craftsman to the artist who inconsiderately persists in using grey inks of varying intensities and subtle lines of indefinite thicknesses on paper of various colour-patches, when reproduction upon wood is his sole ultimate aim.

As Mr. Swain lived for some time close to Thackeray's house, it was an occasional custom of his to call on his way to the office to see if the great "Thack" had any blocks ready that he might carry away with him. The novelist was usually at breakfast when he called, and would request that his visitor might be shown into the library. There he would presently join him and, if he were behindhand with his work, would request Mr. Swain to have a seat, a cigar, and a chat, while he produced aPunchdrawing "while you wait." "Ah, Swain!" he said one day, looking up from his block, when he was more than usually confidential, "if it had not been forPunch, I wonder where I should be!"

Mr. Joseph Swain retired in 1890 from the business he had formed, and handed it over to his son, who had been many years identified with it, and still continues the weekly engraving of thePunchcartoon. Wood-engraving has now been abandoned for all other illustrations, the first process block tried on the paper being Mr. Linley Sambourne's drawing called "Reconciliation, a scene from the new screaming farce, the 'Political Box and Cox,'" on the 3rd December, 1892 (p. 273); but that the innovation has been equally happy in the case of every artist I am not prepared to maintain.

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