"If humour only meant laughter," said Thackeray, in his essay on the English humorists, "you would scarcely feel more interest about humorous writers than the life of poor Harlequin, who possesses with these the power of making you laugh. But the men regarding whose lives and stories you have curiosity and sympathy appeal to a great number of our other faculties, besides our mere sense of ridicule. The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness; your scorn of untruth, pretension, imposture; your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy. To the best of his means and ability he comments on all the ordinary actions and passions of life almost."
It may surely be claimed that these words, consecrated to his mighty predecessors by the Great Humorist ofPunch, may be applied without undue exaggeration to his colleagues on the paper. Though posing at first only as the puppet who waded knee-deep in comic vice,Punchhas worked as a teacher as well as a jester—a leader, and a preacher of kindness. Nor was it simple humour that wasPunch'sprofession at the beginning; he always had a more serious and, so to say, a worthier object in view. This may be gathered from the very first article in the very first number,the manifesto of the band of men who started it, contributed by Mark Lemon, under the title of—
"THE MORAL OF PUNCH.""As we hope, gentle public, to pass many happy hours in your society, we think it right that you should know something of our character and intentions. Our title, at a first glance, may have misled you into a belief that we have no other intention than the amusement of a thoughtless crowd, and the collection of pence. We have a higher object. Few of the admirers of our prototype, merry MasterPunch, have looked upon his vagaries but as the practical outpourings of a rude and boisterous mirth. We have considered him as a teacher of no mean pretensions, and have, therefore, adopted him as the sponsor for our weekly sheet of pleasant instruction. When we have seen him parading in the glories of his motley, flourishing hisbâtonin time with his own unrivalled discord, by which he seeks to win the attention and admiration of the crowd, what visions of graver puppetry have passed before our eyes!... Our ears have rung with the noisy frothiness of those who have bought their fellow-men as beasts in the market-place, and found their reward in the sycophancy of a degraded constituency, or the patronage of a venal ministry—no matter of what creed, for partymustdestroy patriotism...."There is one portion ofPunch'sdrama we wish was omitted, for it always saddens us—we allude to the prison scene.Punch, it is true, sings in durance, but we hear the ring of the bars mingling with the song. We are advocates for thecorrectionof offenders; but how many generous and kindly beings are there pining within the walls of a prison whose only crimes are poverty and misfortune!..."We now come to the last great lesson of our motley teacher—the gallows; that accursed tree which has itsrootin injuries. How clearlyPunchexposes the fallacy of that dreadful law which authorises the destruction of life!Punchsometimes destroys the hangman, and why not? Where is the divine injunction against the shedder of man's blood to rest? Nonecananswer! To us there is butOnedisposer of life. At other timesPunchhangs the devil: this is as it should be. Destroy the principle of evil by increasing the means of cultivating the good, and the gallows will then become as much a wonder as it is now a jest...."As on the stage ofPunch'stheatre many characters appearto fill up the interstices of the more important story, so our pages will be interspersed with trifles that have no other object than the moment's approbation—an end which will never be sought for at the expense of others, beyond the evanescent smile of a harmless satire."
"As we hope, gentle public, to pass many happy hours in your society, we think it right that you should know something of our character and intentions. Our title, at a first glance, may have misled you into a belief that we have no other intention than the amusement of a thoughtless crowd, and the collection of pence. We have a higher object. Few of the admirers of our prototype, merry MasterPunch, have looked upon his vagaries but as the practical outpourings of a rude and boisterous mirth. We have considered him as a teacher of no mean pretensions, and have, therefore, adopted him as the sponsor for our weekly sheet of pleasant instruction. When we have seen him parading in the glories of his motley, flourishing hisbâtonin time with his own unrivalled discord, by which he seeks to win the attention and admiration of the crowd, what visions of graver puppetry have passed before our eyes!... Our ears have rung with the noisy frothiness of those who have bought their fellow-men as beasts in the market-place, and found their reward in the sycophancy of a degraded constituency, or the patronage of a venal ministry—no matter of what creed, for partymustdestroy patriotism....
"There is one portion ofPunch'sdrama we wish was omitted, for it always saddens us—we allude to the prison scene.Punch, it is true, sings in durance, but we hear the ring of the bars mingling with the song. We are advocates for thecorrectionof offenders; but how many generous and kindly beings are there pining within the walls of a prison whose only crimes are poverty and misfortune!...
"We now come to the last great lesson of our motley teacher—the gallows; that accursed tree which has itsrootin injuries. How clearlyPunchexposes the fallacy of that dreadful law which authorises the destruction of life!Punchsometimes destroys the hangman, and why not? Where is the divine injunction against the shedder of man's blood to rest? Nonecananswer! To us there is butOnedisposer of life. At other timesPunchhangs the devil: this is as it should be. Destroy the principle of evil by increasing the means of cultivating the good, and the gallows will then become as much a wonder as it is now a jest....
"As on the stage ofPunch'stheatre many characters appearto fill up the interstices of the more important story, so our pages will be interspersed with trifles that have no other object than the moment's approbation—an end which will never be sought for at the expense of others, beyond the evanescent smile of a harmless satire."
A portion of this programme was duly eliminated by the abolition of the Fleet and the Marshalsea; and it must be admitted thatPunchhas long since forgotten his declared crusade against capital punishment. But he has been otherwise busy. His sympathy for the poor, the starving, the ill-housed, and the oppressed; for the ill-paid curate and the worse-paid clerk; for the sempstress, the governess, the shop-girl, has been with him not only a religion, but a passion. Professor Ruskin, judging only byPunch'spictures, and that a little narrowly, has thought otherwise.Punch"has never in a single instance," says he in his "Art of England," "endeavoured to represent the beauty of the poor. On the contrary, his witness to their degradation, as inevitable consequences of their London life, is constant and, for the most part, contemptuous."
Truth to tell,Punchhas been kindly from the first; and a man of mettle, too. None has been too exalted or too powerful for attack; withal, his assaults, in comparison with those of his scurrilous contemporaries, have been moderate and gentlemanly in tone. He has attacked abuses from the highest to the lowest. Sham gentility, vulgar ostentation, crazes and fads, linked æstheticism long drawn out, foolish costume, silly affectations of fashion in compliment and language—all have been set up as targets for his shafts of ridicule or scorn. He has been a moral reformer and a disinterested critic. A liberal-minded patriot, he has ever opposed the advocacy of "Little Peddlington" in Imperial politics; and municipal maladministration is a perennial subject for his denunciations. He has been a kindly cauteriser of social sores; caustic, but rarely vindictive. Spiritualism, Socialism, Ibsenism, Walt Whitmania—all the movements and sensations of the day, social, political, and artistic, in so far as they are follies—have been shot at as they rose. And havingconquered his position,Punchhas known how to retain it. "The clown," says Oliver Wendell Holmes, "knows his place to be at the tail of the procession." It is toPunch'shonour that with conscious dignity—and, of course, with conscious impudence—he tookhisplace at its head. And there he has stayed; and transforming his pages into the Royal Academy of pictorial satire, his alone among all the comic papers has forced its way into the library and taken up its position in the boudoir. His workers are the best available in the land; and when in course of time one contributor falls away, another is ready to step quickly into his place—uno avulso non deficit alter.
SoPunch—who for many years past has set up as the incarnation of all that is best in wit and virtue—is a scholar and a gentleman. He is, moreover, on his own showing, a perfect combination of humour, wisdom, and honour; and yet, in spite of it all, not a bit of a prig. It is true that when he donned the dress-coat, and "Punch" and "Toby" put on airs as "Mr. Punch" and "Toby, M.P.," he became milder at the expense of some of his political influence. Yet what he lost in power he gained in respectability, as well as in the affection of his countrymen. He appealed to a higher class, to the greater constituency of the whole nation; and remembering that a jest's prosperity lies in the ear that hears it, he transferred some of his allegiance from pit to stalls, and was content with the well-bred smile where before he had been eager for noisy laughter and loud applause.
People say—among them Mr. du Maurier himself—that there does not seem quite as much fun and jollity in the world as when John Leech was alive; but that surely is only the wail of the middle-aged. Englishmen never were uproarious in their mirth, as Froissart once reminded us. But it is true thatPunchdoes not indulge so much as once he did in caricature—which after all, as Carlyle has pointed out, is not Humour at all, but Drollery. Caricature, one must remember, has two mortal enemies—a small and a great: artistic excellence of draughtsmanship, and national prosperity with its consequent contentment.Good harvests beget good-humour. They stifle all motive for genuine caricature, for "satire thrives only on the wrath of the multitude." A joke may be only a joke—or a comedy, or a tragedy; but the greatest caricature (which need by no means display the greatest art) is necessarily that which goes straightest to the heart and mind. No drawing is true caricature which does not make the beholderthink,whether it springs simply from good-humour or has its source in the passion of contempt, hatred, or revenge, of hope or despair. Mere amusement, said Swift, "is the happiness of those who cannot think," while Humour, to quote Carlyle again, "is properly the exponent of low things; that which first renders them poetical to the mind." Through this truth we may see howPunchhas so continually dealt with vulgarity without being vulgar; while many of his so-called rivals, touching the self-same subjects, have so tainted themselves as to render them fitter for the kitchen than the drawing-room, through lack of this saving grace. Fun may have been in their jokes, but not true humour.Punchthus became to London much what the Old Comedy was to Athens; and, whatever individual critics may say, he is recognised as the Nation's Jester, though he has always sought to do what Swift declared was futile—to work upon the feelings of the vulgar with fine sense, which "is like endeavouring to hew blocks with a razor."
If there is one thing more than another on whichPunchprides himself—on which, nevertheless, he is constantly reproached by those who would see his pages a remorseless mirror of human weakness and vice—it is his purity and cleanness; his abstention from the unsavoury subjects which form the principal stock-in-trade of the French humorist. This trait was Thackeray's delight. "As for your morality, sir," he wrote to Mr. Punch, "it does not become me to compliment you on it before your venerable face; but permit me to say that there never was before published in this world so many volumes that contained so much cause for laughing, and so little for blushing; so many jokes, and so little harm. Why, sir, say even that your modesty, whichastonishes me more and more every time I regard you, is calculated, and not a virtue naturally inherent in you, that very fact would argue for the high sense of the public morality among us. We will laugh in the company of our wives and children; we will tolerate no indecorum; we like that our matrons and girls should be pure."
It was not till the great occasion of his Jubilee that the Merry Old Gentleman of Fleet Street, who "hath no Party save Mankind; no Leader—but Himself," discovered the full measure of his popularity. The day broke for him amid a chorus of greeting—a perfect pæan of triumph, in which his own trumpet was not the softest blown. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Press of the world welcomed the fiftieth anniversary of his birth, and that with a cordiality and unanimity never before accorded to any paper. Hardly a journal in the English-speaking world but commented on the event with kindly sympathy; hardly one that marred the celebration with an ill-humoured reflection. Pencil as well as pen was put to it to do honour to the greatest comic paper in the world, and demonstrate in touching friendliness the confraternity of the Press.
For the public,Punchissued his "Jubilee number" and, in accordance with the promise given in the first volume fifty years before, he produced in his hundredth a brief history of his career and the names of the men who made it, modestly advising his readers to secure a set of his back volumes as the real "Hundred Best Books." For himself, he dined with the Staff at the "Ship Hotel" at Greenwich, when the Editor, who occupied the chair, was fêted by the proprietors of the paper and received a suitable memento of the glorious event.
MR. PUNCH PORTRAYED BY DIFFERENT HANDS.MR. PUNCH PORTRAYED BY DIFFERENT HANDS.
See p.9.
And what may appear to some as the most curious celebration of all was a solemn religious celebration—nothing less than aTe Deum—in honour of the occasion. It sounds at first, perhaps, a little like a joke—though not in good enough taste to be one of Mr. Punch's own; but the service was held; and when regarded in the light shed upon it by the Rev. J. de Kewer Williams, the incongruity of it almost disappears. "I led my people yesterday," he wrote, "in givingthanks on the occasion of your Jubilee, praying that you might ever be as discreet and as kindly as you have always been." The prayer spoken in the pulpit appropriately ended as follows: "For it is so easy to be witty and wicked, and so hard to be witty and wise. May its satire ever be as good and genial, and the other papers follow its excellent example!"
The public tribute was not less cordial and sincere, and poetic effusions flowed in a gushing stream. But none of these verses, doggerel and otherwise, expressed more felicitously the general feeling than those which had been written some years before by Henry J. Byron—(who had himself attempted to establish a rival toPunch, but had been crushed by the greater weight)—one of his verses running:—
"From 'Forty-one to present timesHow much these pages speak,AndPunchstill bids us look intoThe middle of next week;And that's a Wednesday, as we know,When still our friend appears,As honest, fearless, bright, and pureAs in the bygone years."
"From 'Forty-one to present timesHow much these pages speak,AndPunchstill bids us look intoThe middle of next week;And that's a Wednesday, as we know,When still our friend appears,As honest, fearless, bright, and pureAs in the bygone years."
But greater far than the public esteem is the affection of the Staff, who naturally enough regard the personality ofPunchwith a good deal more than ordinary loyal sentiment andesprit de corps. It is interesting to observe the different views the artists have severally taken of it, for most of them in turn have attempted his portrayal. Brine regarded him as a mere buffoon, devoid of either dignity or breeding; Crowquill, as a grinning, drum-beating Showman; Doyle, Thackeray, and others adhered to the idea of the Merry, but certainly not uproarious, Hunchback; Sir John Tenniel showed him as a vivified puppet, all that was earnest, responsible, and wise, laughing and high-minded; Keene looked on him generally as a youngish, bright-eyed, but apparently brainless gentleman, afflicted with a pitiable deformity of chin, and sometimes of spine; Sir John Gilbert as a rollicking Polichinelle, and Kenny Meadows as Punchinello; John Leech's conception,originally inspired, no doubt, by George Cruikshank's celebrated etchings, was the embodiment of everything that was jolly and all that was just, on occasion terribly severe, half flesh, half wood—the father, manifestly, of Sir John Tenniel's improved figure of more recent times. Every artist—Mr. du Maurier, Mr. Sambourne, Mr. Furniss, and the rest—has had his own ideal; and it is curious to observe that in his realisation of it, each has illustrated or betrayed in just measure the strength or weakness of his own imagination.
Some of these portraits, characteristic examples ofPunch'sleading artists, are reproduced on page7, arranged according to authorship, thus:—
W. NewmanKenny MeadowsR. DoyleW. M. ThackerayJ. Leech (1)J. Tenniel (1)C. KeeneJ. Leech(2)G. du MaurierL. Sambourne (1)J. Tenniel(2)F. EltzeL. Sambourne (2)J. Tenniel (3)H. Furniss
The Mystery of His Birth—Previous Unsuccessful Attempts at Solution—Proposal for a "London Charivari"—Ebenezer Landells and His Notion—Joseph Last Consults with Henry Mayhew—Whose Imagination is Fired—Staff Formed—Prospectus—Punchis Born and Christened—The First Number.
The Mystery of His Birth—Previous Unsuccessful Attempts at Solution—Proposal for a "London Charivari"—Ebenezer Landells and His Notion—Joseph Last Consults with Henry Mayhew—Whose Imagination is Fired—Staff Formed—Prospectus—Punchis Born and Christened—The First Number.
It should be counted against neither the fair fame nor the reputation ofPunchthat the facts of his birth have never yet been definitely and honourably established. It is not that his parentage has been lost to history in a discreet and charitable silence; on the contrary, it is rather that that honour has been claimed by over-many, covetous of the distinction. He seems to come within the category of Defoe's true-born Englishman, "whose parents were the Lord knows who," not because there should be any doubt upon the subject, but because none suspected at the time the latent importance of the bantling and the circumstances of his birth until it seemed too late to decide by demonstration or simple affirmation who was father and who the sponsors. Had it then been known thatPunchwas born for immortality, I should not now be at the pains of setting forth, at greater length than would otherwise be necessary or justifiable, the proofs of his parentage and of his natal place.
"Great Homer's birth seven rival cities claim,Too mighty such monopoly of Fame."
"Great Homer's birth seven rival cities claim,Too mighty such monopoly of Fame."
Rubens was born both at Antwerp and Cologne. One knows it to be so, when one has visited both houses. Hans Memling, again, was native of Bruges and Mömelingen too. It is hardly surprising, then, that several roof-trees claim the honour of having sheltered the new-bornPunch, and that many men have contended for his paternity.
I say "his" paternity; for the absolute personality ofPunchhas long been recognised. It has been the usual custom of comic papers to indulge in a similar fiction, mildly humorous and conveniently anonymous—"Figaro in London," "Pasquin," "The Puppet Show"-man, "The Man in the Moon," and the rest. ButPunchwas not only a personality himself, but at the outset began by introducing the rest of his family to the public. Nowadays he ignores his wife, especially since a contemporary has appropriated her name. But this was not always so. In his prospectus he announces that his department of "Fashion" will be conducted by Mrs. J. Punch, whose portrait, drawn by Leech's pencil, appeared in 1844 (p. 19, Vol. VI.), and who was seen again, under the name of Judina, in honourable companionship with her husband, in the preface to Vol. XLVII., for 1864, and once more in "Mrs. Punch's Letters to Her Daughter." His daughter Julia, too, being then, in 1841, "in service," wrote a letter to the journal in that style of damaged orthography afterwards adopted by the immortal Jeames and his American cousin, Artemus Ward. But it was not long beforePunchtook a rise in the social scale, and many men of distinction in literature have claimed him for their child with all the emphasis of groundless assertion.
According to the "City Press" (June 27th, 1892), Mr. C. Mitchell frequently declared thatPunchoriginated with him, Shirley Brooks, Henry Mayhew, and Ebenezer Landells, in his office in Red Lion Court, the latter drawing the original sketch of the pink monthly cover ofPunch. But as Shirley Brooks did not come on the scene till thirteen years later, and as the cover in question is the one designed, and signed, by Sir John Gilbert in 1842, the claim may be dismissed, except in so far as it may support Landells' statement that he prepared the scheme of such a paper and submitted it to several publishers before he and his associates determined upon carrying it themselves into execution. And soon after it was started, as will be seen, the services of a speculative printer were anxiously sought.
Mr. Hatton declares that Mark Lemon "always spoke of it to me as a project of himself and Henry Mayhew," whereinhe is followed by the "Dictionary of National Biography;" and the Hon. T. T. à Beckett gives the exclusive honour to Henry Mayhew (wherein he is followed by the same authority in the notice of the latter writer), but admits the further founder's claim of Stirling Coyne.
The writer of the well-known, but sadly inaccurate, pamphlet entitled "Mr. Punch, His Origin and Career," which was published in 1882 as a memorial of Mark Lemon, explains circumstantially that it was Mr. Last, the printer, who proposed the idea to Henry Mayhew, who "readily accepted it." The book is generally accredited to Sidney Blanchard; but when I explain that the printer of it, now deceased, informed me that it was written and brought to him by Last's son, the transfer of the central interest from Landells and Henry Mayhew becomes intelligible.
The late Mr. R. B. Postans, the house-chum of Henry Mayhew, "his companion from morning to night," and George Hodder, in his oft-quoted "Memories of My Time," agree in according undivided credit to Henry Mayhew; but they unfortunately disagree in essentials, and contradict each other, and indirectly confirm my own conclusions. Hodder further declares that Mayhew invented the paper and its name simultaneously, which sprang Minerva-like, full-titled, from his brain—which we know to be untrue, as the name was not decided upon until a subsequent meeting. Indeed, on the final prospectus, written with Mark Lemon's hand, as may be seen on p.20, the present title was only inserted as an after-thought.
Then comes the version of Henry Mayhew's son, Mr. Athol Mayhew, who claims everything for his father in a statement of some length, in some respects authentic, but in many details entirely erroneous. He carries back Mayhew's idea of a "London Charivari" to the year 1835; but, as will be seen a little further on, Orrin Smith, Jerrold, Thackeray, and several more of the wags of the day afterwards combined in a stillborn effort to start a similar paper based on the same model. The writer bases his case far too much on Hodder's "Memories," which, entertaining though they are, do notuniversally command the trust and respect with which Mr. Athol Mayhew regards them. "A more sanguine man than my father," he says, "never breathed, and in his arrangement with Hodder appears to have taken everything for granted, although the scheme had not as yet been even breathed to Messrs. Landells and Last [the engraver and printer]; for when the latter gentleman agreed to enter into the speculation, Mayhew had removed to Clement's Inn." But the writer, who would appear to have inherited the paternal characteristic of "taking everything for granted," has not considered that Hodder declared that his visit to Hemming's Row, by which occasion it is alleged that the newPunchhad sprung to Mayhew's brain, was "in the summer". AsPunchappeared in the middle of July, and, according to the draft prospectus, was first arranged to appear on June 10th (though this may possibly have been alapsus calami), it requires more than ordinary sanguineness to accept the statement that not a word had been breathed to persons so paramount in such a newspaper enterprise as the printer and engraver—especially when the paper was to make its appearance in a few days' time. And yet Mr. Mayhew adds that matters did not progress even so rapidly as his authority, George Hodder, narrates.
Yet although it was not, as will appear, Henry Mayhew who was the actual initiator ofPunch, it was unquestionably he to whom the whole credit belongs of having developed Landells' specific idea of a "Charivari," and of its conception in the form it took. Though not the absolute author of its existence, he was certainly the author of its literary and artistic being, and to that degree, as he was wont to claim, he was itsfounder.
From all these versions (which, after all, vary hardly more than the accounts of other incidents ofPunchlife[1]) it isnot very easy at first sight to sift the truth. There is a story of the tutor of an Heir-Apparent who asked his pupil, by way of examination, what was the date of the battle of Agincourt. "1560," promptly replied the Prince. "The date which your Royal Highness has mentioned," said the tutor, "is perfectly correct, but I would venture to point out that it has no application to the subject under discussion." A like criticism might fairly be passed on each existing reading of the genesis ofPunch. It has been worth while, for the first time, and it is to be hoped the last, to collate and compare these statements, and ascertain the facts as far as possible. Claims have been set up, variously and severally, for Henry Mayhew, Mark Lemon, Joseph Last, Ebenezer Landells, and Stirling Coyne; even Douglas Jerrold and Gilbert à Beckett have been declared originators, though no such pretentions came directly from them. Otherwise than in the spirit of the Scottish minister who exclaimed, "Brethren, let us look our difficulties boldly and fairly in the face—and pass on," I propose to take those portions of the stories which tally with the facts I have ascertained and verified beyond all doubt, and, disentangling the general confusion as briefly as may be, to present one consistent version, which must stand untainted by claims of friendship, by pride of kinship, or filial respect.
It had occurred to many of the wits, literary and artistic, who well understood the cause of mortality in the so-called comic press that had gone before, that a paper might succeed which was decently and cleanly conducted. It might be as slashing in its wit and as fearless in its opinions as it pleased,so long as those opinions were honest and their expression restrained. Their idea was founded rather on Philipon's Paris "Charivari" than on anything that had appeared in England; but they plainly saw that to attract and hold the public the paper which they imagined must be a weekly and not a daily one. The Staff which was brought together consisted of Douglas Jerrold, Thackeray, Laman Blanchard, Percival Leigh, and Poole, author of "Paul Pry"—authors; and Kenny Meadows, Leech, and perhaps Crowquill—artists; with Orrin Smith as engraver. The whole scheme of this new "London Charivari" was in a forward state of preparation, even to pages of text being set up, when it suddenly collapsed through a mistaken notion of Thackeray's that each co-partner—there being no "capitalist" thought of—would be liable for the private debts of his colleagues. The suggestion was too much for the faith of the schemers in one another's discretion, and "The London Charivari" was incontinently dropped; yet unquestionably it had some indirect influence on the subsequent constitution and career of Mr. Punch.
EBENEZER LANDELLS.EBENEZER LANDELLS.
For some years the success of the Paris "Charivari" had attracted the attention of Mr. Ebenezer Landells, wood-engraver, draughtsman, and newspaper projector. He had been a favourite pupil of the great Bewick himself, and had come up to London, where he soon made his mark as John Jackson's and Harvey's chief lieutenant and obtained an entrance into literary and artistic circles. A man of great originality and initiative ability, of unflagging energy and industry, of considerable artistic taste, and of great amiability, he also had the defect of the creative quality of his mind, so that, owing to that lack of business talent which the public generally associates with the artistic temperament, he did not ultimately prove himself more than a moderate financial success. As Jerrold,Thackeray, and the rest had done before him, he believed in a "Charivari" for England, and pondered how the Parisian success might be emulated and achieved. In his house at 22, Bidborough Street, St. Pancras (where most of the earlyPunchblocks were cut), he had a ready-made staff of engravers that included some names destined to become better known—Mr. Birket Foster; Mr. Edmund Evans, best known nowadays in connection with Miss Kate Greenaway's delightful children's books; J. Greenaway, her father, who became a master engraver himself; and William Gaiter, who afterwards took Orders; while "outside" were Edward and George Dalziel, T. Armstrong, and Charles Gorway. With these young men the handsome, tall engraver was extremely popular; they called him "the Skipper," or "Old Tooch-it-oop" behind his back, in token of his Northumbrian accent, but to his friends he was generally known as "Daddy Longlegs," or "Daddy Landells."
So Landells took the idea, which he determined upon carrying out, to one or two well-established publishers, Wright of Fleet Street amongst them, but none could see the germ of a first-rate property in it. It was objected that the temperament of the English people so differed from that of the French that they certainly would neither appreciate nor encourage the requisite style of writing, even supposing—which they did not believe—that the necessary talent were forthcoming. Moreover, they would not credit that a comic paper could succeed without the scurrility, and often enough the indecencies, that had distinguished earlier satirical prints; and although the popularity of Hood's "Comic Annual" and Cruikshank's "Comic Almanac" was pointed to, they would have nothing to do with a weekly, however much it professed to supersede previous ribaldry with clean wit and healthy humour.
As it happened, early in 1841 Landells was concerned, with his friend Joseph Last, printer, of 3, Crane Court, Fleet Street, in projecting a periodical known as "The Cosmorama," an illustrated journal of life and manners of the day, and to him Landells imparted his conviction that such a journal as he imaginedwould certainly succeed. The enterprising printer lent a readier ear than others had done (perhaps, in view of his limited capital and still more limited ideas of speculation, altogether too ready an ear), and agreed with Landells to take up so excellent a notion. Now, in the little world of comic writing a brilliant humorist was at work—Henry Mayhew, one of several brothers of ability, a man whose resource was equal to his wit. He was already known to Last as the son of the leading member of the firm of Mayhew, Johnston, and Mayhew, of Carey Street, his legal advisers. He was residing at the time at Hemming's Row, over a haberdasher's shop, and, with F. W. N. Bayley and others, he had been secured as writer on "The Cosmorama." Landells, introduced to him by Last, approached him on the subject of the "Charivari." Mayhew grasped the conception at once, and, as the sequel proved, saw it more completely, and perhaps appreciated its literary and artistic possibilities more clearly, than either its material originator or his ambassador had done. He immediately advised dropping "The Cosmorama," and directing on to the new comic all the energy and resources that were to have been put into the more commonplace publication. In due course he imparted the new idea to his friend Postans, who shared his room, and to other visitors; but he forgot to mention how the idea had been brought to him, so that his friends not unnaturally counted it as another of Harry's many happy, but usually impracticable, thoughts. But in this instance Mayhew made his personality felt, for the character of the paper, instead of partaking of that acidulated, sardonic satire which was distinctive of Philipon's journal, on which it was to have been modelled, took its tone from Mayhew's genial temperament, and from the first became, or aimed at becoming, a budget of wit, fun, and kindly humour, and of honest opposition based upon fairness and justice.
As for the Staff of such a paper as he imagined, Mayhew urged that he could secure the services of Douglas Jerrold, Gilbert à Beckett, Mark Lemon, Stirling Coyne, and others, in addition to those already engaged; and then adjournment was proposed to Mark Lemon's rooms in Newcastle Street,Strand. "The Shakespeare's Head," in Wych Street, had previously been Lemon's place of business. It was the meeting-place of the little "quoting, quipping, quaffing" club of fellow-workers in Bohemia; and Lemon, it was explained, had dabbled both in verse and the lighter drama, efforts which were "not half bad." Little did the writer dream that his modest Muse had marked him out for the editorship of the greatest comic journal the world has seen! To the duties of tavern-keeper Lemon, who was enamoured of literature and the drama, had been condemned by a fate more than usually unkind. He had found himself nearly penniless when Mr. Very, his stepfather, offered him a clerical position in his brewery in Kentish Town. But the brewery failed, and with it Lemon's livelihood, and he was only rescued by a jovial tavern-keeper named Roper, one of his stepfather's customers, and by him put into charge—disastrously for both—of the Wych Street public-house. Then he married, having borrowed five pounds to do it with, and by his wife's advice kept in touch with his literary acquaintance; and by the acceptance of a five-act comedy by Charles Mathews at Covent Garden—which was to be played by a cast including the great comedian's self, Mme. Vestris, and "Old" Farren—he received a hundred pounds down, and was tided over his difficulties until the starting ofPunchgave him permanent employment.
So to Mark Lemon they went, and a full list was quickly drawn up. Mayhew undertook to communicate with Douglas Jerrold, who, then better known to the public as the successful dramatist than as the great satirist, was staying at Boulogne for the sake of his young family's education; and a charming picture has been drawn by his son of how, on the visit of à Beckett, Charles Dickens, and the rest, he would throw off his clothes and swim with them in the sea, or challenge them to a game of leap-frog on the sands—a curious contrast to his own declaration that the only exercise he cared for was cribbage.[2]
Stirling Coyne, Daily, W. H. Wills, H. P. Grattan (H. Plunkett, otherwise "Fusbos"), Henning, Henry Baylis, and "Paul Prendergast"—whose "Comic Latin Grammar" had been attracting much attention—were proposed, and Hodder was told off to wait upon the latter. At the adjourned meeting at the "Edinburgh Castle" tavern in the Strand, Somerset House, Postans, William Newman, Baylis (afterwards president of the "PunchClub"), Stirling Coyne, Henning, Mayhew, Landells, and Hodder were present. The latter then explained that "Prendergast" was a young medical man, Percival Leigh by name, who preferred to wait before giving his adhesion until he was satisfied as to the character of the publication; and "Phiz" had returned a similar reply to Mark Lemon—though later on he was glad enough to accept little commissions in the way of drawing initial letters for the paper.
Henning was then nominated cartoonist; Brine, Phillips, and Newman, artists-in-ordinary; and Lemon, Coyne, Mayhew, à Beckett, and Wills, the literary Staff, until the advent of the others, whose adhesion was anxiously awaited. Henry Mayhew, Mark Lemon, and Stirling Coyne were to be joint editors; Last, of course, was to be printer, and Landells engraver; and W. Bryant publisher. Several more meetings were held—at the "Crown" in Vinegar Yard, at Landells' house, and elsewhere—and in due course Mark Lemon produced the draft prospectus, consisting of three folios of blue paper, which probably contains a good deal more of Mayhew and Coyne than of Mark Lemon. Edmund Yates estimated its chemical composition thus:—
Henry Mayhew95Stirling Coyne3W. H. Wills1.5Mark Lemon.5——100
And his estimate was probably correct. This interesting document is here shown in reduced facsimile:—
(Original size of page 5¼ x 3¾ inches.)
THE HISTORY OF "PUNCH."View larger image
DRAFT OF THE PUNCH PROSPECTUS, IN MARK LEMON'S HANDWRITING (REDUCED).View larger image
DRAFT OF THE PUNCH PROSPECTUS, IN MARK LEMON'S HANDWRITINGView larger image
At the head of this announcement there was a woodcut of Lord Morpeth, Lord Melbourne (Prime Minister), and Lord John Russell, who were then inoffice, but were popularly, and correctly, supposed to be in imminent danger of defeat. The price originally proposed was twopence—the usual price of similar papers of the day—but it was altered to "the irresistibly comic charge of threepence!!" and the title was beinggiven as "The Fun——," when the writer stopped short and erased it. It is generally believed that the intention was to call the paper "The Funny Dog—with Comic Tales," as appears in the final line of the prospectus; a title, moreover, that was employed in 1857 for a book in which more than onePunchman co-operated. A reduced copy of the now rare leaflet as it was printed and circulated by tens of thousands is given on the previous page. "Vates," it should be explained, was thenom de plumeof the notorious sporting tipster then attached to "Bell's Life in London."
Preliminary LeafletPreliminary LeafletView larger image
As to the origin ofPunch'sname, there are as many versions as of the origin ofPunchitself. Hodder declares that it was Mayhew's sudden inspiration. Last asserted that when "somebody" at the "Edinburgh Castle" meeting spoke of the paper, like a good mixture of punch, being nothing without Lemon, Mayhew caught at the idea and cried, "A capital idea! We'll call itPunch!" Jovial Hal Baylis it was, says another, who, when refreshment time came round (it was always coming round with him), gave the hint so readily taken. Mrs. Brezzi, wife of the sculptor, lays the scene of the first meeting in the "Wrekin Tavern," Broad Street, Longacre, and writes that the founders were only prevented from calling the paper "Cupid," with Lord Brougham in that character on the title-page [presumably a mistake for Lord Palmerston, who subsequently was so shown inPunchby Brine, picking his teeth with his arrow] by the sight from Joseph Allen's window of a Punch and Judy show in the north-eastern corner of Trafalgar Square. Mrs. Bacon, Mark Lemon's niece, informs me that she distinctly remembers being seated among the gentlemen who met at his rooms in Newcastle Street, and hearing Henry Mayhew suddenly exclaim, "Let the name be 'Punch'!"—a fact engraven on her memory through her childish passion for the reprobate old puppet. Mr. E. Stirling Coyne claims that it was his father who suggested the title at the memorable meeting at Allen's. This, at least, in Lemon's words, is certain: "It was calledPunchbecause it was short and sweet. And Punch is an English institution. Everyone loves Punch, and will bedrawn aside to listen to it. All our ideas connected with Punch are happy ones." The decision was not set aside when it was found that Jerrold had edited a "Punch in London" years before, proposed to him a few months earlier by Mr. Mills (of Mills, Jowett, and Mills). But the favour with which the title was received was not universal. "I remember," Mr. Birket Foster tells me, "Landells coming into the workshop and saying, 'Well, boys, the title for the new work is to bePunch.' When he was gone, we said it was a very stupid one, little thinking what a great thing it was to become."
SIGNATURES ON DOCUMENT BY WHICH PUNCH WAS FOUNDED.SIGNATURES ON DOCUMENT BY WHICHPUNCHWAS FOUNDED.View larger image
(See AppendixI.)
The business plan was to be a co-operative one. Mayhew, Lemon, and Coyne, it was finally agreed, were to be co-editors and own one-third share as payment.[3]Last was to find theprinting and own one share, and Landells was to find drawings and engraving, and own one share. The claims of outside contributors (among whom were Jerrold and à Beckett) and the paper-maker's bill were to be the first charge on the proceeds; and if these were not enough, Landells and Last were to make up the deficiency. So, on the same plan as the first abortive attempt of a "London Charivari," the new paper was embarked on, by men who with but little capital ("it was started with £25—which I found!" says Landells) yet threw themselves into it, and became their own publishers. Advertising to the extent of £111 12s. was ventured on, including "billing in 6 Mags.," "page in 'Master Humphrey's Clock' twice," 100,000 of the prospectuses reproduced on p.23,[4]and 2,000 window-bills that bore the design which Henning drew forPunch'scover, after a rough sketch by Landells.
It was a busy fortnight; and it may well be doubted if any other journal of such great eventual popularity has ever been launched with so little preparation. Every technical detail identical with what was employed up to recent years was settled; Henning drew his ill-composed cartoon of "Parliamentary Candidates under Different Heads," roughly done, but not ill-cut; and Mark Lemon, Henry Mayhew, Henry Grattan, Joseph Allen, F. G. Tomlins, Gilbert à Beckett, and W. H. Wills (the biting epigram "To the Black-balled of the United Service Club,"i.e.Lord Cardigan, was his), all contributed to the first number. It is an axiom of newspaper conductors that "the first number is always the worst number," andPunchdid nothing to disprove the rule. Nevertheless, it was a great success. The tone and quality were far higher in dignity and excellence than was common to an avowedly smart and comic paper—far different from what is suggested by the word "Charivari;" and the public admitted that here was a novel school of comic writing, by a motley moralist and punning philosopher, and hailed with pleasure the advent of a "New Humour."