Mr. Punch's History of Modern England. Volume 4 of 4.—1892-1914

We wage no far-off conflict with Afridi or with Boer,A present peril we must face, our foes are at the door;Brave must he be of heart, and as a flint must set his face,Who in the train at Finsbury Park would struggle for a place.

French Tourist (to Father Thames): "Dis, donc, mon vieux, when does the next boat start on your beautiful river?"

Father Thames: "It doesn't start. I ain't allowed to have any boats."

Six years later Punch describes "rack-hanging" on the suburban lines of the Great Eastern as one stage worse than "strap-hanging" on the Underground. Another and more formidable outcome of the subterranean extension of London traffic was noted in 1913 à propos of the cracks in St. Paul's. Punch's Londoner exults complacently over the impending downfall, so long as he is swiftly transported from his home to his office: —

I thunder down to work each morn,And some historic shrineMust have its matchless fabric tornTo get me there at nine;And when I gather up my traps,As sundown sets me freeA nation's monuments collapse,To take me home to tea.

To parody Lord John Manners's couplet: —

Let fanes and monuments in ruins lie,But give us still our new Mobility.

While there was this feverish activity in developing surface and subterranean communications on land, the apathy of the authorities in failing to develop an efficient service of steamboats roused Punch to repeated protests – notably in the cartoon where Father Thames explains to a French visitor: "I ain't allowed to have any boats." In more complacent mood, however, Father Thames ejaculates, "Well, I'm blowed! This quite gets over me," as he surveys the opening in 1894 of the great Tower Bridge, or "the Giant Causeway," as Punch calls it. In 1896 Punch was concerned with the intention of the L.C.C. to do away with Chelsea Reach, and did not disguise his satisfaction when the scheme was "turned down" by a Select Committee. On the other hand, the unkempt and squalid condition of what he sarcastically calls the "Surrey Riviera" suggested a cartoon in January, 1913, exhibiting Father Thames in his filthiest guise saying plaintively, "I know a bank where the foul slime flows."

London's New Cathedral

The most notable of the structural changes in London in this period was the opening of the new thoroughfare from Holborn to the Strand and the clearing away of the old rookeries at the southern end. Kingsway and Aldwych were the names coined by Sir Laurence Gomme for the thoroughfare and crescent, and could not have been improved on; but Punch exercised his ingenuity in offering a variety of suggestions purporting to be made by famous and notorious personages of the hour: e.g. "Via Marie," "John Lane," etc. Among single buildings the most notable addition was the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Westminster, consecrated in 1903. Bentley's masterpiece was the largest and most impressive church erected in London since St. Paul's, which Punch, in his irreverent "Lightning Guide" described as "London's largest temple and the biggest Wren's nest ever known." The new internal decoration executed in the early years of this century by the late Sir W. B. Richmond prompted the remark that "the Christian law is upheld in the nave, but the inside of the dome is strictly Mosaic." Mr. Hammerstein's Opera House in Kingsway after a brief allegiance to the serious lyric Muse went the way of other similar ventures. In the autumn of 1912 Punch saw in the vacant theatre a chance for English opera, but his cartoon, "Now or Never," was not exactly optimistic, and the claims of Variety once more triumphed.

When improvements on a large scale are planned and executed it has generally been found impossible to reconcile the demands of High Art with the aims of municipal politics. The appeal of leading artists and architects was powerless to prevent the spoiling of the eastward vista along the chord of the Aldwych arc. So with the scheme of the Victoria Memorial, involving the new road from Trafalgar Square to Buckingham Palace. In the "Finishing Touch" Punch represented the County Councillor blandly correcting London's remonstrance with him for blocking the view. Not a bit of it; he was only improving things: "ars est celare artem, you know" – in reference to the action of the "Improvements" Committee of the L.C.C. in allowing the prospect of the Admiralty Arch to be obstructed by a building at the eastern end.

The French have a saying that administrative art is always arid; Punch went further and roundly accused the L.C.C. of Vandalism. In their schemes for widening Piccadilly in 1901 he scented a sinister design of converting it into a tramway route, just as he had foreshadowed the conversion of Rotten Row into a bicycle track in 1895 – this, by the way, at a time when bicycling in the Park was only allowed from 10 A.M. till 12 noon. As a faithful champion of the equestrian interest, Punch renewed in 1894 the appeals he had made in earlier years for making more rides in Hyde Park. He was much concerned with the general dirt and disorder which reigned there – the frowsy and immoral loungers, "socialist scamps and somnolent tramps, scoundrels who swear and zealots who groan," and welcomed the new rules in 1896 in the belief that they would exclude tub-thumpers, Salvationists and atheists, "sot and satyr, crank and vandal." Punch, in his zeal for maintaining the decencies and amenities of our parks, laid himself open to the charge of an anti-democratic bias. He was, however, sincerely proud of the glories of London, while always ready to denounce the blots on her scutcheon. Sir W. B. Richmond's anti-smoke crusade met with his approval in 1898. Writers who dilated on the fine atmospheric effects of London fog jarred on his robust common sense, but the beauties of Richmond Park in all seasons inspired him to genuine enthusiasm. A lyrical "note" new to his columns is sounded in the charming lines which he printed in 1910: —

Have you been to royal Richmond when the year is growing mellow,And October, mild and fruitful, on its woodland sets her mark,When the footpath – of her bounty – has a carpet red and yellow,And the great harts roar a challenge as the twilight meets the dark,And at half-past five or so,There are lights that flash and glow,Thrilling upward in the quiet out of Kingston down below?

London Smoke (tyrant and murderer): "Methinks there are two Richmonds in the field."

(A Mr. Richmond writes to The Times in support of the Anti-Smoke campaign of Sir William B. Richmond, K.C.B., R.A. Mr. Punch says, heartily, "Let 'em all come, and more power to their elbows!")

The End of the Westminster Aquarium

I do not find that Punch in his record of "disappearances" notes the disuse of hatchments, but he duly chronicles at the close of 1895 the termination of the last of the old turnpike trusts on November 1. "Vanishing London" generally moved him to elegy. Over the Lowther Arcade, which was closed in 1898 by the sale of the Crown lease, he did not waste many tears, and the end of the Westminster Aquarium in January, 1903, did not excite any passionate regret. Still, Punch had seen many strange shows and celebrities within its walls – Blondin, Zazel and Zaeo, Slavin and Sullivan, Pongo the Ape, Sandow the strong man, John Roberts the master of the cue; and a certain mitigated melancholy broods over Punch as we watch him

Muse over a pipe of the days that are dead,Dream that once more I am able to scanClosely the bird with the duplicate head,Live once again with the Petrified Man.

It was another matter altogether when Punch heard that Clifford's Inn was to be pulled down in April of the same year. In his indignation he suggests that the Temple Gardens, Middle Temple Hall and Temple Church should forthwith be sacrificed to the craze for improvements, and continues in the same strain of exaggerated irony: —

If you turn the Charterhouse into a railway station, the Tower into warehouses and Westminster Hall into an Inebriates' Home, something will have been done towards making London a happier and a better place.

Another sign of the times which frequently exercised Punch's mind and stimulated his satire was the multiplication of huge new hotels. In 1902, when it was announced that St. James's Hall was about to be pulled down to make room for another of these monsters, Punch pictured Macaulay's New Zealander coming to visit London and finding it entirely composed of hotels and residential flats. The luxury à l'Américaine of these mammoth establishments excited Punch's strictures in 1907; simultaneously he inveighs against the poky and insanitary arrangements of the modern flat.

In earlier years Punch had been prodigal of suggestions for the "improvement" of London; in this period he is more critical than constructive, though I note that in 1904 he reverts to his old suggestion of a great open-air café. This, he now proposed, should occupy the ground floor of the Ritz, with a terrasse overlooking Piccadilly and the Green Park. But Punch did not scorn the cheap restaurants, and in one of his "Lays of a Londoner" pays homage to the charms of Soho – a tribute culminating in this admirable stanza: —

Borne on the cosmopolitan breezesDivinely blended odours trickle,The louder forms of foreign cheesesContend against the home-made pickle.

Cromwell and Carlyle

It is hoped that Chelsea, with its Artists' Quarter, will take advantage of the magnificent opportunity offered by the four chimneys of the generating station. Why not an equestrian statue of Carlyle, reading his own works?

On the subject of statues and memorials Punch had always held strong views; views that by no means ministered to national self-satisfaction. When the question of a statue to Cromwell came up once more in 1894, Punch practically repeated his old cut, with a slight variation of treatment, in "Room for a Big One," Cromwell addressing his Royal rivals, "Now then, your Majesties, I hope I don't intrude." In May, 1895, Punch returned to the charge in his most truculent anti-monarchical vein: —

ON THE NEW STATUE

("Her Majesty's Government are about to entrust to one of our first sculptors a great historical statue, which has too long been wanting to the series of those who have governed England." – Lord Rosebery at the Royal Academy Banquet.)

Our "Uncrowned King" at last to stand'Midst the legitimate Lord's anointed?How will they shrink, that sacred band,Dismayed, disgusted, disappointed!The parvenu Protector thrustAmidst the true Porphyrogeniti?How will it stir right royal dust!The mutton-eating King's amenityWere hardly proof against this slur.William the thief, Rufus the bully,The traitor John, and James the cur —Their royal purple how 'twill sullyTo rub against the brewer's buff!Harry, old Mother Church's glory,Meet this Conventicler? – Enough!The Butcher dimmed not England's story,But rather brightened her renownIn camp and court, it must be said,And if he did not win a crown,At least he never lost his head!

Punch's acid remark made many years before, that we were incapable of producing a fine statue or memorial, is virtually repeated in his suggestion, made in 1896, for the formation of a "Metropolitan Statues Supply Association" for the purpose of supplying public statues and monuments on the hire system. There was certainly good excuse for the burlesque, for, as Punch reminds us, "Mr. Akers-Douglas, replying to Mr. Labouchere as to whether his attention had been called to a statue 'purporting to be of the late Mr. John Bright in the Central Lobby,' and whether it is to remain there, said that it was erected under arrangements made with his predecessors. He admitted that there were very varied views as to its artistic merits."

National Heroes and their Memorials

In 1902 the fall of the Campanile of St. Mark's at Venice prompts a Trafalgar Square Lion to remark: "I only wish some of our London monuments would come down as easily." In an earlier volume I have mentioned Punch's reiterated complaints of the time taken in completing the Nelson Memorial in Trafalgar Square. In 1903, after fifty years had elapsed, the monument to the Duke of Wellington in St. Paul's was still unfinished. Punch dealt faithfully with this discreditable delay in a caustic perversion of Tennyson's ode, "Bury the Great Duke," and a cartoon in which, under the heading "Ars (Britannica) Longa," Napoleon, hearing from his victor that his monument is approaching completion, sarcastically comments, "Déjà?"

On the question of burials in Westminster Abbey, it may here be added, Punch was clearly not satisfied with the arrangement which left the Dean as the chief arbiter, when he wrote in the summer of 1909: —

For whom shall England's high memorial faneOffer a resting-place of hallowed stoneWhen they have nobly lived their destined span?The nation speaks her choice, but speaks in vain;The final verdict lies with one alone —A Mr. Robinson, a clergyman.

The "Mr. Robinson," thus disparagingly referred to, was that learned divine, Dean of Westminster from 1902 to 1911, and since then Dean of Wells. It should therefore be remembered that he was Dean of Westminster when Irving was buried in the Abbey.

Driver (approaching Hyde Park Corner and pointing out the sights to country visitors): "On the left's the statute erected to the memory of the great Dook o' Wellington, and that 'ere on the right's a statute erected to the memory of the pore ole 'oss-'buses wot's bin run orf the street by them stinkin' motors."

"Our Robert"

Mention has already been made of the widening of the Mall as part of the Queen Victoria Memorial. Brock's statue and monumental group were pronounced by Punch in 1911 "worthy of a great Queen and a great City," an acknowledgment truly remarkable in one so chary of approval. Captain Adrian Jones's Peace "Quadriga" on Constitution Hill prompted a burlesque alternative design in 1908, with "four typical pedestrians rampant and a motor-car urgent." In 1912 an old lady is seen asking a policeman, "Is that what they call the Quadruped, officer?" and the obliging Robert replies, "Yes, Mum; all except the lady." Towards "Robert," by the way, Punch was in the main sympathetic and appreciative throughout this period, and in one of the "Lays of a Londoner" pays a generous tribute to the benevolent autocrat of the highway: —

In vain the dray-horse paws the air,The flow of low abuse grows brisker;He never turns an injured hair,Or lifts a deprecating whisker,For he knows well enough that theyMay gibe, but dare not disobey!Whether in dark, secluded walksHe flouts the schemes that bad men work us;Or maiden ladies, screaming "Lawks!"Hang on his neck in Oxford Circus;His mien displays an abstract calmThat soothes the fractured nerves like balm.Who spoors the burglar's nimble feet,And spots the three-card man's devices?Who hales before the judgment seatThe vendor of unwholesome ices?Who's apt at any time to have hisComplexion spoiled by hob-nailed navvies?It is indeed our Robert, or,As some prefer to say, our "Bobby";The civil servant, paid to floorThe wiles of those who'd kill or rob 'ee;Who keeps our premises secure,Our butter and our morals pure.And when we hear of fresh alarms,Of bombs and mutiny and massacre,Of citizens dispersed by arms,In countries where such things, alas! occur,Well may we urge our Robert's claimAlike to gratitude and fame.

This is a fairly comprehensive summary of the multifarious activities of one who is, or, at any rate, was up to the end of 1918, more of an institution than a man.

Though he lived in or just off Fleet Street, Punch kept an eye on the growth of the charms of Greater London. In 1907 he printed his "Song of Six Suburbs (after Mr. Rudyard Kipling)": —

BRIXTONThough far outside the radius you roam,Where shall a fairer prospect meet the eyes?Brand-new, like Aphrodite from the foam,The homes of Brixton Rise.TOOTINGSupreme am I, Suburbia's guiding star,And when I speak let lesser tongues be dumb;The prefix "Upper" shows the class we are;Where Tooting beckons, Come!HAMPSTEADUpon your North-West Passage scale my heights,And mark the joyous crowds that sport beneath;Men call me "Happy": O the strange delights,The dalliance on my Heath!PECKHAMA peaceful calm envelops every street,And like an old-world idyll life drifts by;Where else such courtly couples shall you meetA-comin' thro' the Rye?CLAPHAMUnto my yoke my stalwarts meekly bend:Daily, between the hours of 8 and 9,To dare worse horrors than the Pit I sendSons of the Chatham line!EALING"Last, loveliest, exquisite," I give to thoseCivilian warriors from India rest;What suburb boasts the dignified reposeThat clings to Ealing, W.?

Later on the garden suburb is a frequent theme of genial comment and satire based on first-hand observation, for the late Mr. F. H. Townsend was a resident in Golder's Green, and his ingenious pencil found ample scope in the amenities and humours of the new Rus in Urbe. Another "garden" that had provoked Punch to less favourable comment in earlier years – Covent Garden – was still a source of dissatisfaction as late as 1904. When John Hollingshead died in the autumn of that year, Punch, in his obituary notice of the manager of the Gaiety Theatre, revealed the fact that "his was the dauntless hand that, under Mr. Punch's banner, attacked 'Mud Salad Market' many years ago." If the present condition of Covent Garden market is not exactly ideal, at any rate it does not justify the censures passed on it seventeen years ago as still blocking traffic with congested muck.

London (in her new Museum at Kensington Palace): "Bless my soul, what a life I've led!"

In 1912 the London Museum was opened at Kensington Palace, and Punch, in a commemorative cartoon, showed London as an old lady examining the cases of the Roman, Saxon and Norman periods. "Bless my soul," she says, "what a life I've led!" And Punch was often more interested in the life she had led than in that she was leading or was about to lead. Her future, as outlined by Sir Aston Webb in January, 1914, seemed to him a charming but somewhat visionary prospect: —

Meanwhile this London is my place;Sad though her dirt, as I admit is,I love the dear unconscious graceThat shines beneath her sooty faceBetter than all your well-groomed cities.

PART II

SOCIAL LIFE IN TRANSITION

CROWN AND COURT

In a period of change and transition, in which the decline of the influence of the old "governing classes" was attended by the rise of a new type of statesman, the stability of the throne and the prestige of the Sovereign remained unshaken; the veneration in which the old Queen was held in the last ten years of her reign was based on a respect which rendered her almost invulnerable to criticism. Punch, who in earlier years had appropriated the rôle and privileges of the Court Jester, and in the middle Victorian period had frankly regretted the Queen's long seclusion, never alludes to her in the closing years of her reign save in a spirit of gratitude and chivalrous devotion. We hear no more of the "Royal Recluse," for the phrase no longer applied to one who in advanced years was strenuous in the discharge of her duties. There is a pleasant story that when the Queen was informed that she had reigned longer than any of her predecessors, she said: "Have I done well?" and Punch supplied the answer: —

"Have I done well?" Most gracious Queen,Look on the record of your life;Think of What is, What might have been.Empress of Peace 'mid constant strife!

The last year of her reign was sadly clouded by the uncertainties of the South African war, and she paid the inevitable penalty of those who live to fourscore by surviving many of those who were nearest to her; but age brought her consolations as well. The marriage of the Duke of York in 1893 inspired Punch with a genial ode, full of classical tags and headed "Hymen Hymenæe!" He would not "trill a fulsome lay," but contented himself with showing "good will to goodness," typified in his cartoon of the royal pair seated on a Lion led by Punch with a bridle of roses. A year later the birth of the present Prince of Wales, Queen Victoria's great-grandson, is celebrated by an ingenious adaptation of Shakespeare: —

Now is the Winter of our discontentMade glorious by this Son of York.

"Do you often attend the sittings in the House of Lords, Duke?"

"I did once – if I remember, to vote against some measure of Mr. Gladstone's – but I caught a bad cold there, so I never went again!"

The customary official congratulations of Parliament did not escape a protest from Mr. Keir Hardie, who was "indisposed to associate himself with any effort to do special honour to the Royal family," though he was "delighted to learn that the infant was a fairly healthy one." This unfortunately-worded concession only served to exasperate the loyalists, and Punch drew a picture of Mr. Hardie, in his deer-stalker cap, severely apostrophizing the royal infant in his cradle. A propos of the Prince's seven names, it may be added that Punch noted the inclusion of all the four patron saints of the United Kingdom – George, Andrew, Patrick and David – a choice which, as he put it, ought to help him to dodge ill luck in after years.

Little Lord Charles: "Oh, I'm going to be an Omnibus Conductor, when I grow up."

Fair American: "But your brother's going to be a Duke, isn't he?"

L. L. C.: "Ah, yes; but that's about all he's fit for, you know!"

Punch on the Duke of Cambridge

No charge of courtiership, however, could be brought against Punch for his treatment of the question of the retirement of the Duke of Cambridge in 1895 from the post of Commander-in-Chief. In "All the Difference" Lord Wolseley is shown saying to the Duke: "In September I have to retire from my appointment," and the Duke replies, "Dear me! I haven't." The same idea is developed in some satirical verses glorifying the "Spirit of Eld," which was allowed to dominate the conduct of high affairs of State. But when the Duke did go in November, Punch was more gracious. His "parting salute," put into the mouth of Tommy Atkins, forms a friendly gloss on what Lord Wolseley had said in his first Army order; and when the Duke died in 1904, Punch's four-line tribute is a model of laconic and judicial appreciation: —

The years that saw old customs changed to newStill left his spirit changeless to the end,Who served his kindred's Throne a long life throughAnd died, as he had lived, the soldier's friend.

Modern Royal Annals are largely made up of "marriage and death and division," and laureates, unofficial as well as official, are largely concerned with the two former. The death of Prince Henry of Battenberg from fever incurred while on active service in Ashanti in 1896 enabled Punch to pay decorous and not extravagant homage to the "servant of duty." He had a much better theme in the death of the Prince's brilliant and ill-starred brother Alexander, in 1893, and the verses are not unworthy of one who was too great a gentleman to be a successful adventurer: —

Europe's Prince Charming, lion-like, born to dare,Betrayed by the black treacherous Northern Bear!Soldier successful vainly, patriot foiled,Wooer discomfited, and hero spoiled!Triumphant champion of Slivnitza's field,To sordid treachery yet doomed to yield.An age more chivalrous you should have seen,When brutal brokers, and when bagmen keenShamed not the sword and blunted not the lance.Then had you been true Hero of Romance.

The coronation of the Tsar Nicholas in 1896 is chronicled in the cartoon in which Peace says to him: "I was your father's friend – let me be yours," and his visit to Balmoral suggests another variation on the same theme. Under the heading "Blessed are the Peacemakers," Nicholas is seen taking an affectionate farewell of the Queen. Ten years later Punch was to realize how vain were the dreams of good will when hampered by infirmity of purpose. For the moment, however, the pleasures and pastimes of Royalty were more in evidence. The Prince of Wales was alleged to have taken to bicycling, and Punch, still wedded to an old habit, proposed the new title of "the Prince of Wheels." The Prince is also congratulated on winning his first Derby with Persimmon, and encouraged to pay no attention to the Nonconformist stalwarts of Rochdale and Heywood who had begged him to abandon racing and withdraw from the turf. When Princess Maud of Wales was married to Prince Charles of Denmark, Punch was not content with a loyal cartoon and a suitable Shakespearean quotation. He seized the opportunity to combine humanitarianism with allegiance to the throne by issuing a Plea for the Birds to the Women of England – begging them to discontinue the wearing of egret plumes on this and every other occasion.