The History of "Punch" Part 13

_Punch's_ advice to vocalists, "Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves" (November, 1892), had, curiously enough, been spoken years before by the eccentric d.u.c.h.ess in "Alice in Wonderland;" and his conceit that there is no fear for the prosperity of Ireland under Home Rule "so long as her _capital's D(o)ublin'_" dates from still earlier times. Then there was the fine old Scotch joke of a Glasgow baillie who, replying to the toast of the "Law," remarked that "all our greatest law-givers are dead--Moses is dead, Solon is dead, Confucius and Justinian are dead--_and I'm nae feelin' that vera weel mysel'_," which in March, 1893, _Punch_ republished, adapting it, however, to modern literature--the speaker quaintly including George Eliot amongst our deceased "best men." More recently a precisely parallel anecdote has been attributed to Dr. McCosh, apropos of Leibnitz's theory of evil ("Westminster Gazette," January, 1895). And again, there is an old story of Baron Rothschild, who when very busy received the visit of a business acquaintance. "Take a chair," quoth the Baron. "Can't," said his visitor, "I'm in a hurry." "Then take two chairs," suggested the Baron, still engrossed. In 1871 the same joke was sent in to _Punch_ in a remodelled form, and duly published. "Call me a cab!" says an excited gentleman. "You're too late, sir," replies the servant; "a cab couldn't do it." "Confound you!" cries the other, "call two cabs, then!"

In 1892 a catastrophe befell _Punch_, a double _faux pas_. An excellent child story had been printed in "Vanity Fair" of October 15th, in which a little girl at a Sunday-school cla.s.s was asked to define a parable: "Please, miss," replies the child, "a parable's a 'eavenly story with no earthly meaning!" A fortnight later _Punch_, who had been victimised, had the misfortune, not only to come out with the same joke, but by a typographical slip to spoil it by making the child define a parable as "a heavenly story with an earthly meaning"--the result being to evoke a paean of exultation from the few papers whose favourite sport it is to keep a malevolent weather-eye on _Punch_ in perpetual hope of catching him tripping. Just such a little chorus of mischievous delight greeted the publication of Mr. du Maurier's joke in which an old maid complains that a serious drawback to the charming view from her windows is the tourists bathing on the opposite sh.o.r.e. It is true, as her friend reminds her, that the distance is very great--"_but with a telescope, you know!_" But years before, Charles Keene had ill.u.s.trated the same idea, taking, however, a cricket dressing-tent instead of a bathing sh.o.r.e; and long before that it had been scoffed at for its antiquity.

In like fas.h.i.+on another _Punch_-baiter complained a quarter of a century ago that an American paper printed a joke which _Punch_ duly used as a "social," and which has since been revived as follows: "Harriet Hosmer tells of an incident which occurred in her studio, where her statue of Apollo rested. An old lady was being shown around, a Mrs. Raggles, and she paused before this masterpiece a long time. Finally she exclaimed, 'So that's Apoller, is it?' She was a.s.sured that it was. 'Supposed to be the handsomest man in the world, warn't he?' The surmise was a.s.sented to. Then turning away disgustedly, 'Wal,' she said, 'I've seen Apoller and I've seen Raggles--an' I say, Give me Raggles!'"

One of the stories told of Dominique was once printed in _Punch_ as original. This was when he took a bath by the doctor's order, and being asked how he felt, replied, "Rather wet." The jokelet, curiously enough, had already been printed in "Mark Lemon's Jest-Book," and was so far a cla.s.sic that it is to be found in the "Arlequina" of 1694. Again, the story of the boy who, when ordered by a "swell" to hold his horse, asked if it bit, or kicked, or took two to hold, and when rea.s.sured on each point, replied, "Then hold him yourself," is older still; for it is to be found in "Mery Tales, Wittie Questions and Quicke Answeres Very pleasant to be Readde" (published by H. Wilkes in 1567), under the heading, "Of the Courtier that bad the boy holde his horse, xliii." This little book, by the way, is included in Hazlitt's collection of Shakespeare's Jest-books.

In drawing attention to these incidents in _Punch's_ career--examples of which might easily be multiplied--it is not my purpose to expose shortcomings, but rather to insist on the difficulty of the humorist's path and the pitfalls that beset genuine originality. "The late Mark Lemon," wrote Mr. Hatton, "had a kind of editorial instinct for an old joke. He could identify the spurious article as easily as an expert detects counterfeit money. Lemon's soul was in _Punch_, and he had a keen memory for every line that had appeared in its columns. He edited a book of humorous anecdotes, but even he overlooked numerous doubles, and left not a few errors for the detection of the critics;" in fact, was fallible too, as in the nature of things he was bound to be. And s.h.i.+rley Brooks, although with his wide knowledge of comic literature and "happy thoughts" he was successful too, had nevertheless humiliation to bear for blunders not a few. Tom Taylor neither knew nor cared; as Mr.

Labouchere severely said, "he had no sense of humour," and the jokes had to take their chance. But to-day a careful eye is kept to this question of originality, and so far as cartoons are concerned, Sir John Tenniel has always been trusted to see that subjects for cartoons are not used over again.

Although _Punch_ has tripped now and again, he has been the comic quarry which the nation and the nation's press have worked for half a century, quoting, borrowing, stealing, a thousand times to his once. His best ideas are enjoyed and used, and in due time are sent back, often quite innocently, for re-issue. Nay, even what is popularly known in England as "modern American humour" has been claimed as a leaf out of _Punch's_ book, quaint exaggeration forming its staple feature, as in the case where we are told that "a young artist in Picayune takes such perfect likenesses that a lady married the portrait of her lover instead of the original."

Lastly, a couple of drawings by Mr. du Maurier may be referred to (second volume for 1872, and first volume for 1894), which created a good deal of amus.e.m.e.nt at the time of their publication. In the first case a visitor calls to inquire after the condition of a happy mother.

And the babe, is it a boy? "No," says the page. Ah! a girl. "No,"

repeats the lad. What is it, then? asks the startled visitor. "If you please," replies the intelligent retainer, "the doctor said it was a Heir!" Now, this joke almost textually reproduces a circ.u.mstance attending the birth of that Earl of Dudley of whom Rogers wrote the epigram which Byron thought "unsurpa.s.sable":--

"Ward has no heart, they say; but I deny it; He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it."

The second drawing reproduces a story (long since forgotten) of the first Duke of Wellington, who joined a notorious gambling club, with the express view, it was said, to black-balling his son, the Marquis of Douro, a likely candidate--and then went complacently and told him so.

Much the same difficulty attending the identification and indexing of the jokes of the past is experienced in respect to _Punch_ itself.

Consider for a moment. That work consisted in the summer of 1895 of 108 volumes. At the moderate estimate of four jokes per column, attempted and made, we reach a grand total of nearly 270,000 jokes--a total bewildering in its vastness, and representing, one would think, all the humour that ever was produced since this melancholy world began. The mind refuses to grasp such a ma.s.s of comicality; how, then, would you cla.s.sify this prodigious joviality and sarcasm? How detect a joke that may reappear under a hundred disguises of time, place, condition, and application--yet the same root-joke after all? Is it surprising that the same ideas recur--and, recurring, sometimes escape the shrewd eye of _Punch's_ investigation department?

It has already been said that to Sir John Tenniel it has fallen to prevent the repet.i.tion of subjects in respect to the cartoons. Yet it must not be imagined that others on the Staff are not as earnest students of _Punch's_ pages, that they have not graduated as Masters of his Arts. Yet, for all their vigilance, repet.i.tions have often recurred.

You remember Tenniel's superb cartoon of the n.o.ble savage manacled with the chains of slavery taking refuge on a British s.h.i.+p with clasped hands uplifted to the commander? It was at the time of Mr. Ward Hunt's slavery circular, and was ent.i.tled "Am I not a Man and a Brother?" A like subject with the same t.i.tle was contributed by Leech on June 1st, 1844, when a manacled negro appeals to Lord Brougham, who, making "a long nose," hurries off to the Privy Council Office. Similarly have we had two "Vigils"--one in the spring of 1854, and the other thirty-four years later. And _Punch's_ exclusion from France, figuratively at Calais Pier, has been the subject of two drawings--the first in 1843,[15] and the other, by Mr. Linley Sambourne, on January 12th, 1878. The repet.i.tions at such long intervals lose, of course, any such significance as the critical might feel inclined to attribute; but in _Punch's_ nonage the self-same engravings have more than once been actually used a second time, such as "Deaf Burke"--the celebrated prize-fighter of Windmill Street--who was shown twice in the first volume, certainly not for his beauty's sake; a drawing by Hine, which was similarly employed in the same year; and in 1842 a cut by Gagniet, which had been bought from a French publication. Perhaps the nearest modern approach to this was when in 1872 Mr. Sambourne practically repeated his figure of Mr. Punch turning round from his easel to face the reader.

At the time when the Russo-Turkish War was drawing to a close, one of the most powerful of Tenniel's cartoons--which made a great impression on the country, as giving keen point to Mr. Gladstone's agitation against Lord Beaconsfield's att.i.tude at that period--was the drawing of the Prime Minister, leaning back comfortably reading in his armchair, declaring that he can see nothing at all about "Bulgarian Atrocities" in the Blue Books, though the background of the picture itself is all violence and butchery. Yet n.o.body recalled the fact that the artist had made a similar cartoon of Cobden and Palmerston in the spring of 1857.

Charles Keene certainly had not studied his _Punch_ as he ought. Of that there is abundant proof; for although the care he took to obtain good and original jokes was conscientious in the extreme, he over and over again re-drew his own and other people's drolleries. The British grumble of the British farmer who under no circ.u.mstances can be appeased or contented was typified by Leech in a picture wherein the farmer was represented as looking at a splendid field of heavy golden corn (p. 96, Vol. XXVII, 1854), but was not satisfied even then. "Ah!" he grumbles, "see what it'll cost me to get it in!" The idea tickled Keene so greatly when he heard it that, entirely unmindful of Leech's page, he made a drawing of the same subject on p. 268 of the first volume for 1878; and then, forgetting all about it, eleven years later (p. 35 of the second volume for 1889) he actually did it all over again!

"What do you mean by coming home at this time of night?" asks an indignant wife of her tipsy husband. "My dear," replies the prodigal, with a generous attempt at candour and conciliation, "all other places shu'rup!" Keene drew this admirably in 1871 (p. 71, Vol. LXI), and Mr.

du Maurier most delightfully again in 1883 (p. 14, Vol. Lx.x.xIV.). These and many more examples of unconscious receptivity and reproduction by professional humorists will strike the attentive reader of _Punch's_ pages. He will see how to both Leech and Mr. Ralston occurred the idea of an over-dressed vulgarian in morning clothes protesting in angry dismay against the opera-house officials' suggestion that he is not in "full dress;" how both Miss Georgina Bowers (1870) and Mr. du Maurier were tickled by the retort to the economical dictum that it is extravagant to have both b.u.t.ter and jam on a slice of bread--"Extravagant? _Economical!_--same piece of bread does for both!"; how "Childe Chappie's Pilgrimage" of our day was preceded by "Child Sn.o.bson's Pilgrimage" of 1842; how Mr. du Maurier in November, 1888, and again in the Almanac for 1895 repeated the joke of a husband declaring that he would be "extremely annoyed" if in the event of his death his wife did not invite certain of his particular friends to his funeral; how Poe's "Bells" maintain their power to attract the parodist; how curiously tempting to the punster is the idea of a bashful policeman in the National Gallery being asked where "the fine new Constable is" (for Mr. Burnand, Charles Keene, and Sir Frank Lockwood have all done it, in the order indicated); and many other amusing slips of the sort. And he must not on any account miss those twin jokes--for they are both of them good and in their essence identical--of John Leech and Mr. du Maurier.

In Mr. du Maurier's version we have a poor woman touting for a bottle of wine for her sick husband. The doctor had recommended port, she says--"and it doesn't matter how _old_ it is, sir!" In Leech's the host is impressing on his youthful guest that "that wine has been in my cellar four-and-twenty years come last Christmas--four-and-twenty years, sir!" And the guileless youth gus.h.i.+ngly makes answer, in the belief that he is making himself remarkably pleasant, "Has it really, sir? _What it must have been when it was new!_"

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Compare s.h.i.+rley Brooks's couplet (1857):--

"MARRY (AND DON'T) COME UP.

"A fellow that's single, a fine fellow's he; But a fellow that's married's a _felo de se_."

[14] See _Punch_, p. 235, Vol. LXI., 1861.

[15] See p. 191.

CHAPTER VII.

CARTOONS--CARTOONISTS AND THEIR WORK.

The Cartoon takes Shape--"The Parish Councils c.o.c.katoo"--Cartoonists and their Relative Achievements--John Leech's First--Rapidity in Design "General Fevrier turned Traitor"--"The United Service"--Sir John Tenniel's Animal Types--"The British Lion Smells a Rat"--The Indian Mutiny--A Cartoon of Vengeance--_Punch_ and Cousin Jonathan--"Ave Caesar!"--The Franco-Prussian War--The Russo-Turkish War--"The Political 'Mrs. Gummidge'"--"Dropping the Pilot," its Origin and Present Owners.h.i.+p--"Forlorn Hope"--"The Old Crusaders"--Troubles of the Cartoonist--The Obituary Cartoon.

In describing the _Punch_ Dinner I show how the merry meeting lapses, by a natural transition, from pleasure to work, and ends with the evolution of the cartoon; how the mist of talk, vague perhaps and undecided at first, slowly develops a bright nebulous point, round which the discussion revolves and revolves, until at last it takes form, slowly and carefully, though changed a dozen times, and finally, after being threshed and threshed again, stands in the ultimate form in which next week it meets the public eye.

For when the meal is done, and cigars and pipes are duly lighted, subjects are deliberately proposed in half-a-dozen quarters, until quite a number may be before the Staff. They are fought all round the Table, and, unless obviously and strikingly good, are probably rejected or attacked with the good-humoured ridicule and withering scorn distinctive of true friends.h.i.+p and cordial intimacy. Then is each fully and formally debated, every tussle advancing it a stage, and none finally accepted until all the others have fallen in the battledore-and-shuttlec.o.c.k process to which they have been subjected. Then, when the subject is settled, comes the consideration of the details--what should the grouping be? what the accessories? how many figures?--(during the hunting season John Leech would decline to introduce more than two, as his week-end would otherwise be spoiled)--and other minor yet still important considerations; and then each man's opinion has its proper weight in the Council of _Punch_. In this year of grace Mr. Lucy is listened to with the respect due to his extraordinary Parliamentary knowledge; Mr. Milliken is the chief literary authority since "the Professor" (Percival Leigh) went to his rest; and so each man is counted upon for the special or expert knowledge he may bring to bear on the particular subject then before the meeting.

And when the subject of the cartoon is a political one, the debate grows hot and the fun more furious, and it usually ends by Tories and Radicals accepting a compromise--for the parties are pretty evenly balanced at the Table; while Mr. Burnand a.s.sails both sides with perfect indifference. At last, when the intellectual tug-of-war, lasting usually from half-past eight for just an hour and three-quarters by the clock, is brought to a conclusion, the cartoon in all its details is discussed and determined; and then comes the fight over the t.i.tle and the "cackle," amid all the good-natured chaff and banter of a pack of boisterous, high-spirited schoolboys.

More than once it has happened that notwithstanding a subject being well on the way to becoming a cartoon--the raw material of an idea having been almost hammered into a presentable political missile or social criticism by the heads of the company--a side remark may arrest further labour, and turn attention in an entirely different direction. Such was the case with one of the most successful cartoons of recent years. The topic of the week was the Parish Councils Bill, which was then before the Lords, and was receiving severe handling in that House. In the course of discussion came an "aside" from Mr. Arthur a Beckett, to the effect that "Gladstone is having a deuce of a time." "Like the c.o.c.katoo," a.s.sented Mr. Lehmann, referring to the story of the unhappy bird which was left for a short while alone with a monkey, and which, when the owner returned to the room and found his bird clean plucked of its feathers by the monkey--all but a single plume in the tail--looked up dejectedly, and croaked in tones of almost voiceless horror, "I've been having a doose of a time!" The remarks were caught at by Mr.

Burnand as a happy thought, and the new idea was tossed like a ball from one to another until there issued from it the well-known design of the monkey in its coronet, as the House of Lords, having plucked the c.o.c.katoo-Bill of most of its feather-clauses--a drawing which, under the t.i.tle of "The Parish Councils c.o.c.katoo," hit off the situation with singular felicity, and reaped the reward of the public applause. In a similar manner there developed Mr. Sambourne's peculiarly happy "Cartoon Junior," representing Mr. Gladstone, newly retired, looking up from the perusal of the first speech made by Lord Rosebery on his promotion to the Premiers.h.i.+p--a speech some of the points of which he afterwards had to withdraw or explain away--with the words, "Pity a Prime Minister should be so ambiguous!" In the arrangement of these second cartoons, which, as is elsewhere described, immediately follows the handing of the written-out subject of the main picture to Sir John Tenniel, a contrast is always the first thing sought for. If the first deals with foreign politics, the second must treat of home matters, political or social; if the "senior" is social, the "junior" will be political; if Sir John is realistic, Mr. Sambourne is idealistic. And if it is impossible so to differentiate them, the prominent figures at least which appear in the one are carefully avoided in the other.

But in the early years of _Punch_ the method was not so democratic. The matter was discussed, but the preponderance of two or three of the Staff made their opinions felt to such a degree that when a subject was proposed by one of them, that subject, when it appeared, was unmistakably theirs and n.o.body else's. I have before me the full details of these matters during a considerable period, and I find that on the whole Douglas Jerrold was the most prolific of suggestors, while Henry Mayhew (so long as he remained), Gilbert Abbot a Beckett, Mark Lemon, and Horace Mayhew, roughly speaking, divided the honours between them.

Thackeray seldom made a suggestion, and it is not very often that the entry "Leech _solus_" is credited to the great cartoonist before 1848.

During the years 1845, 1846, and 1847, for instance, Leech alone proposed eleven subjects, Mark Lemon thirty-five, Henry Mayhew twenty, Horace Mayhew fifteen, Douglas Jerrold sixteen, Thackeray four, Tom Taylor four, Gilbert a Beckett two, and Percival Leigh two, leaving the rest to be shared by the united Staff.

The men who have borne the t.i.tle of _Punch's_ Cartoonist are fifteen in number. Taking them in the chronological order of their first contribution, not of drawings, but of cartoons to the paper, they are: 1841, A. S. Henning, W. Newman, Brine, John Leech, and Birket Foster; 1842, A. "Crowquill," Kenny Meadows, H. G. Hine, and H. Heath; 1843, R.

J. Hamerton; 1844, R. Doyle; 1851, John Tenniel; 1852, W. McConnell; 1864, Charles Keene; and 1884 and 1894, Linley Sambourne.[16]

From March 4th, 1843, to September 30th, 1848 (after which, with the exception of one cartoon in 1849 from Newman, and a few from McConnell in 1852, John Leech and John Tenniel shared the cartoon-drawing absolutely between them--no other hand making one at all for six-and-thirty years), there appeared 314 cartoons in about 286 weeks.

It sometimes happened that _Punch_ appeared without a cartoon at all, especially in those parlous cashless days of 1842, and again in 1846 and 1848; but, on the other hand, two cartoons were frequently given in the same number, usually from different hands, though occasionally Leech would do both. The 314 designs were made up thus:--

J. Leech 223

R. Doyle 53

Kenny Meadows 14

R. J. Hamerton 10

H. G. Hine 8

W. Newman 6

---- 314 (exclusive of the Almanacs)

--Hamerton having taken Hine's place, Doyle having superseded Hamerton, and Meadows, after 1844, having disappeared. Roughly speaking, from the commencement of _Punch_ to the end of 1894, there have been 2,750 cartoons in all, and these have been contributed approximately thus:

Sir John Tenniel 1,860

John Leech 720

R. Doyle 70