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

If cricket claims less notice in Punch's pages, it must not be taken to imply any lessening of his love. The reason is to be found in the richer field for satire and ridicule provided by other pastimes. The immense development of Association football as a spectacular game, and the wholesale importation of hireling players to represent a district to which they did not belong, found no favour with Punch. His picture of Football Fever in the Midlands on Saturday afternoon in 1892 is deliberately grotesque and hostile. By 1904 the achievements of the Dominions and of Wales in the Rugby game lend point to Punch's burlesque forecast of the "Football of the Future." International matches are to be "refereed" by well-known statesmen; Esperanto is to be spoken; and Great Britain is represented by a team of fourteen New Zealanders and one Welshman. In 1910 a weekly paper advocated weeping for men as "the true elixir of energy and the greatest of Nature's restoratives." This pronouncement was turned to good account in "A Cup Tie Episode," relating how a team, with three – love against them at half-time, turned the tables on their opponents after a copious outburst of tears. Again, when a daily paper in 1913 conducted a referendum amongst its readers to ascertain what subjects of public interest were insufficiently treated in its columns, Punch asserts that "to the Editor's question 465,326 readers replied, football; 235,473, golf; 229,881, flying; and 2, foreign politics." The burlesque snapshots published in the same year if reprinted to-day would hardly be an exaggeration of the latest inanities of the camera in the football field.

While Punch might plead guilty to an "insufficient treatment" of professional football, and glory in his guilt, he could not be charged with a similar neglect of golf. As a solace to the unsuccessful lady lawn-tennis player it is recommended, as early as 1894, in an audacious travesty of Goldsmith: —

When lovely woman tries to volley,But finds that men refuse to play,What charm can soothe her melancholy?What game can take her grief away?The means her spirits to recover,To still the jeers of those that scoff,To fascinate the tardy lover,And gain his favour is – to Golf.

First Caddie: "Who're ye foor this morning, Angus?"

Second Caddie: "A'm foor the petticoats."

Punch and Tom Morris

Sacrilegious hands are laid on Mrs. Browning, in 1902, in the lament of "The Golf Widows" – i.e. women whose husbands do nothing but play or talk golf – an excellent satire on the selfishness, the "shop," and the strong language of the "strong man off his game." But there are golfers and golfers; and Punch recognized one of the real heroes of the game in his "Royal and ancient friend," old Tom Morris, whose resignation of his post as green-keeper at St. Andrew's inspired this genial salutation: —

Well have you borne your fourscore years and two,Faithful in service, as in friendship true;Now, pacing slowly homewards from the Turn,Long may it be before you cross the Burn,And, ere you tread your well-loved links no more,May eight-two (plus twenty) be your score.

The popularity of golf in France has led to the framing of a complete glossary of French equivalents for the terminology of the game. Punch, as a good humanist, essayed a similar task at a time when the revival of Latin for conversational purposes was proposed by some hardy classicists. As he justly remarks: "The advantages of Latin in this context will not have escaped the notice of even the most superficial observers. Thus the bad effect on caddies of using strong language in the vernacular is entirely obviated. Again, when the ball is lying dead, only a dead language can render justice to the situation."

"'I can only emphasize the fact that I consider that physically, morally, and socially, the benefits that cycling confers on the men of the present day are almost unbounded.' (Aside) Wish I were on a 'Safety'!!"

Bicycling, Croquet, Swimming

Of the brief vogue of bicycling among the "smart set" I have spoken already. The abuse of this indispensable machine inspired a new version of "Daisy Bell, or a Bicycle Made for Two" – "Blazy Bill or the Bicycle Cad" – of which it may suffice to quote the last stanza: —

Blazy! Blazy!Turn up wild wheeling, do!I'm half crazy,All in blue funk of you.The "Galloping Snob" was a curse, Sir,But the Walloping Wheelman is worser;I'd subscribe half a quidTo be thoroughly ridOf all Bicycle Cads like you.

As a set-off, however, in "Facilis Descensus" Punch sings gaily and genially of the "dear little Bishop" who had bought a new "bike" and found that in the joys of the wheel nothing could come up to "coasting." The picture of Mr. Gladstone on the old "ordinary" is not a representation of fact, but I print it as a reminder of the appearance of that remarkable and perilous-looking machine. Croquet, which had led a submerged existence for several years, reasserted itself in 1894, and Punch, in affected astonishment, asked, "Are we back in the 'sixties again?" The revival was attributed by the Pall Mall Gazette to the abolition of "tight croqueting," a phrase which gave Punch openings for facetious comment. In the previous year he had disrespectfully spoken of croquet as the "feeblest game," and yet admitted that, given a pretty partner, it beat golf and polo. Swimming, in its heroic form, loomed large in 1905, and in Punch's picture the Channel is black with male and female athletes, while an article is devoted to a fictitious account of an hotel at Dover specially equipped to meet their needs. Women had by now taken so kindly to all kinds of sport and pastime that Punch sought to reduce their competition to absurdity in the dialogue of two stalwart young men who preferred arranging flowers to shooting or golfing, because they had become "so effeminate." The sporting woman, by the way, was no favourite of Du Maurier's. Ten years earlier he had portrayed an odious specimen of the new womanhood in Miss Goldenberg, who, in reply to the question of the charming vicar's wife whether she had had good sport, replies jauntily: "Oh, rippin'! I only shot one rabbit, but I managed to injure quite a dozen more!" The "Ballad of the Lady Hockey-player" in 1903 ascribes to her a distinctly matrimonial purpose: —

And to-day I'm so excited that I feel inclined to scream,But a certain sense of modesty prevails;For this very afternoon I am to play against a teamThat will be composed of eligible males.Though I do not care two pinsWhich side loses, or which wins,I may get some introductions if I hit 'em on the shins.

Winter sports in Switzerland make their début in Punch in 1895 in an article on tobogganing dated "Canton des Grisons." Mention is made of curling, "bandy" and figure-skating, but nothing is said of ski-ing, which though practised as a sport in Norway from 1860, did not reach Switzerland till the end of the century. Another foreign importation, this time from Japan, was ju-jitsu, to the value of which Punch pays a dubious tribute in 1899 in a burlesque interview with a burglar on whom a householder had ineffectually tried the new art of self-defence. In the same mood are the farcical suggestions for dealing with various awkward situations in 1905, and the overthrow of a butler by a page-boy, to the petrifaction of the servants' hall. There was a recrudescence of roller-skating in 1909 which Punch deals with in pictures, prose and verse. The inexpert and self-protective lover sings, after Ben Jonson: —

Rink with me only with thine eyes,And do not clutch my frame;Clasp yonder expert's hand instead,And I'll not press my claim.

The Tyranny of Ping-pong

There are many allusions to "Rinkomania," but not nearly so many as to Ping-Pong, which attained the proportions of a pestilence in 1901, 1902 and 1903. Punch began by calling it a "ghastly game," but kept in close touch with its progress until the tyranny was overpast. He gives us pictures of ping-pong in the kitchen; of people searching beneath the table and in corners for missing balls; a sketch of a ping-pong tournament, with local champions and devotees of all ages and callings.

In his "Cry of the Children" the younger generation lift up their voices in protest: —

We shall never know what peace is till we land upon that shoreWhere the fathers cease from pinging and the mothers pong no more.

In 1902 the Table Tennis Gazette issued its first number, and Punch speculates on the contents: —

Here you may learn if it is trueThat Tosher's got his Ping-Pong Blue.

The epidemic abated in 1903, and in "The Lost Golfer" Punch has some excellent chaff (after Browning) of the "parlour hero," his mind temporarily unhinged by a "piffulent game." The verses begin "Just for a celluloid pilule he left us," and end with the anticipation that the "lost golfer" will yet return to his old haunts: —

Back for the Medal Day, back for our foursomes,Back from the tables' diminishing throng;Back from the infantile ceaseless half-volley,Back from the lunatic lure of Ping-Pong.

Ping-pong departed, to be revived in 1920, but another and equally devastating craze ran its course in 1907, when "Diabolo" – the old "Devil-on-two-sticks" – was the ruling passion of the hour. It was honoured with a cartoon showing John Redmond playing the "Divil of a Game," the reel being "Leadership," and numerous illustrations are devoted to the progress of the mania. Punch affected to have discovered a new disease, "Diabolo Neck," which he compares and contrasts with "the Cheek of the Devil," and records the observation of an ill-tempered old gentleman, as he watched some performers "diabolizing" in Kensington Gardens: "A month or so ago that sort of thing was only being done in our Asylums."

First Thruster (guiltily conscious of having rather pressed on hounds): "Now we're goin' to catch it; that's the master comin', isn't it?"

Second Thruster (his host): "It's all right. We've got two masters. That's the one that supplies the money; the other supplies the language."

The vogue of Bridge dates from the last years of the old century. According to the veracious Daily Mail, in 1899 a Cambridge Professor was earning handsome fees by giving instruction in the game to members of the University, and Punch embroiders the text according to his wont. In 1901 Punch's cartoon "Discarded" shows Fashion, in her fool's cap, accosting "Mr. Bridge": "Come along, Partner! That dear old Mister Whist is such a bore! He is so vieux jeu!" Bridge figures as a gallant and picturesque cavalier, while Whist is a sour-visaged old pedant. Punch was not always of one mind about the triumphant new-comer, but he cordially echoed the sentiments of the Morning Post when that journal asserted that Bridge made for the abolition of the drawing-room ballad and the drawing-room ballad-monger; and it gave him abundant scope for comment and parody, e.g. his perversion of Longfellow's lines into "I played on at Bridge at midnight." Bridge, however, had not always a monopoly of attraction even in the days when its tyranny was at its height. In 1902 we encounter the tragedy of the four men driven to the nursery to play Bridge because "they are playing Ping-Pong in the dining-room, and 'Fives' in the billiard-room, Jack's trying to imitate Dan Leno in the drawing-room, Dick's got that infernal gramophone of his going in the hall, and they are laying supper in the smoking-room."

Hunting and Prize-fighting

It is a relief to turn from these mostly futile indoor pastimes to the robuster sports of the chase, the turf and the prize-ring. Punch was fortunate in this period in having at his command, in Mr. Armour, an artist who restored the hunting pictures to a higher level of draughtsmanship than they had ever reached before. This implies no disparagement of the incomparable geniality of Leech's drawings, which in that respect have never been equalled, unless by Randolph Caldecott. But for the correct drawing of hounds, horses and riders, and for the discreet handling of the hunting landscape, Mr. Armour's equipment is above reproach. References to the turf in the early years of this period are mostly connected with Lord Rosebery. His success in winning the Derby with Ladas in 1894 lends point to the "highly improbable anticipation" of Punch's artist in which the Premier, in parson's garb, announces his conversion to the tenets of the Nonconformist conscience. In September of the same year we have the wail of a "disgusted backer" over the defeat of the favourite in the St. Leger: —

Ladas, Ladas,Go along with you, do.I'm now stone-brokeAll on account of you.It wasn't a lucky Leger;I wish I'd been a hedger,Though you did look sweetBefore defeat! —But I've thoroughly done with you.

In a more serious vein of irony Punch, in 1906, muses on the popularity of the turf and ends with this reflection: —

Is it not odd that hitherto no poetHas thought to mention how, with lord and serf,Whether they plunge thereon, or rest below it,There is no equaliser like the Turf?Whatso our claim,The starting price is one, and Death the same.

The problem of the future of the horse exercises Punch in 1911. Mr. Morrow's suggestions are always original, if fantastic, but he is on safe ground when he declares that the horse could always be of use in pageants. Motor-cars in ceremonial processions remind one of nothing so much as huge beetles.

The great revival of boxing came at the end of the period, but in 1908 there is an amusing reference to Jack Johnson who, after defeating Tommy Burns, had become very unpopular in New South Wales, but, according to the Daily Mail, found consolation for adverse criticism in reading Shakespeare, Milton and Bunyan. The statement was not thrown away on Punch, who, while welcoming the evidence that Jack Johnson was able to keep his temper sweet, observed that it would be sweeter still to know what Shakespeare, Milton and Bunyan thought of his devotion. On the eve of the War, as I have noted in the first chapter, the man in the street was thinking a good deal more about Carpentier than the Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand.

1

Josiah Tatnall, flag-officer of the East India Squadron in 1856.

2

Mr. James Falconer, the Liberal Member for Forfarshire, 1909-1918.

3

The present writer was at Bayreuth in the week before the War. After the declaration of war on Serbia by Austria and in view of its inevitable consequences, the Germans, in conversation and in their Press, were unanimous in "banking on" the neutrality of England on the ground of her domestic embarrassments in Ulster and the friendliness of the Liberal Government.

4

Mr. Herbert Gardner, President of the Board of Agriculture, afterwards Lord Burghclere.

5

"The Revolt against Authority." Fortnightly Review, November, 1921.

6

Charles Tyson Yerkes, the American financier who, after a chequered early life, became a railway magnate and took a leading part in organizing and financing the London electrical railways.

7

The author of this much-quoted phrase was said to have been an Eton boy, but I have been unable to trace his name or subsequent career.

8

The Botticelli joke in the same year was new. One man is afraid he made an ass of himself because, when asked if he liked Botticelli, he had said that he preferred Chianti, and his friend kindly explains that Botticelli is not a wine but a cheese.