Passages of a Working Life during Half a Century
Chapter XII
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CHAPTER XII.
IN 1842, having occasion to be in attendance at the Central
Criminal Court, my curiosity was excited by an unusual spectacle—that of an artist, seated
amongst the city dignitaries on the bench, diligently employed in sketching two Lascars on
their trial for a capital offence. What was there so remarkable in the case, in the
persons, or even in the costume, of the accused, that they should be made the subject of a
picture? The mystery was soon explained to me. “The Illustrated London News” had been announced for
publication on the Saturday of the week in which I saw the wretched foreigners standing at
the bar. I knew something about hurrying on wood-engravers for “The Penny Magazine;” but a Newspaper was an essentially
different affair. How, I thought, could artists and journalists so work concurrently that
the news and the appropriate illustrations should both be fresh? How could such things be
managed with any approach to fidelity of representation, unless all the essential
characteristics of a newspaper were sacrificed in the attempt to render it pictorial? I
fancied that this rash experiment would be a failure. It proved to be such a success as
could only be ensured by resolute and persevering struggles against natural difficulties.
It is not my purpose to enter upon any descrip-![]()
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tion
of the means by which a drawing, of the largest size, and full of the most elaborate
details, that is executed on a Wednesday, shall be engraved on a Thursday, printed off with
its appropriate letter-press on a Friday, and circulated by thousands through the kingdom
on a Saturday. I take “The Illustrated London
News,” as I shall take another remarkable production of artists and
writers, as a text upon which I may offer some remarks upon such prominent social features
of the time of Queen Victoria, as were thus capable
of receiving a new interest for the temporary gratification of a public of universal
readers. There is a higher point of view in which picture journalism may be regarded. It
furnishes the most available and the most valuable materials for the historian of manners.
It has been created by the revival of wood-engraving. When Bewick, about the close of the American war in 1783, had shewn the power of
this neglected art as the companion of type printing, if the Journalists of that time had
seen its capacity for presenting faithful and vivid images of the actors and scenes of the
day—its fleeting fashions and its passing follies—what a record we should have had of
memorable things lost! The pictorial humorists who succeeded Hogarth have given us some glimpses of public characters in their every-day
attitudes and dress, exaggerated into the ludicrous. Gilray, Rowlandson, Cruikshank, and a few less eminent, accomplished what
Addison described as the excellence of burlesque
pictures,—“where the art consists in preserving, amidst distorted proportions
and aggravated features, some distinguishing likeness of the person.” It
would probably have been unsafe for a newspaper in the time of George III., ![]()
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or even of the Regency, to have
provided such portraits for the amusement of a people who have always claimed the privilege
of laughing at their rulers. But if this would have been forbidden ground to a pictorial
journalist of the days of Bewick, what wealth of illustration was to
be found in all the aspects of common life, when there were distinctions of costume and of
manners in every rank of society! How varied would have been an “Illustrated London News” before the time when ail women walked in the
Parks, or in Whitechapel, hooped in steel, and all men sate in the Brougham or on the
knifeboard of the Omnibus in drab tunics. If the whole outward manifestations of our
present social life be not monotonous, their sober delineation in weekly pictures is
decidedly so. Look, for example, at one of the most interesting and satisfactory incidents
of this generation. We have a Queen who travels, not in set progresses as Elizabeth travelled, but by railway and steam-boat to the
extremest distances of the land over which she rules. “The
Illustrated London News,” it is said, never rose into a large circulation
till it began to trace her Majesty’s steps wherever she went. During the twenty years
from 1842 to 1862 what endless repetitions have we had of solemn directors of the iron road
bowing from the platform; of robed mayors and aldermen presenting their loyal addresses; of
smart ladies waving handkerchiefs from drawing-room windows; of crowds shouting and
impeding the way in narrow streets. All these pictures are alike, with a difference. The
scenery is varied; the actors are the same. Sometimes we have incidents that could never
have been seen by the artist—ships foundering—mines exploding. The ![]()
| Ch. XII.] | THE THIRD EPOCH. | 247 |
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staple materials for the steady-going illustrator to work most attractively upon are, Court
and Fashion; Civic Processions and Banquets; Political and Religious Demonstrations in
crowded halls; Theatrical Novelties; Musical Meetings; Races; Reviews; Ship Launches—every
scene, in short, where a crowd of great people and respectable people can be got together,
but never, if possible, any exhibition of vulgar poverty. This view of Society is
one-sided. We must look further for its “many coloured life.” We want to
behold something more than the showy make-up of the characteristics of the age. We want to
see the human form beneath the drapery.
In my second Volume (p. 6) I have noticed some of the ludicrous aspects of
common affairs presented by the caricatures of the period when I settled in London. With
exceptions to which I have just alluded, their artists were feeble as well as coarse
exponents of “the very age and body of the time.” Some of them addressed
the lowest tastes, after the fashion of a school which Addison has also described: “The distinguishing likeness is given
in such a manner as to transform the most agreeable beauty into the most odious
monster.” Amidst a host of caricaturists, good, bad, and indifferent, there
alighted upon this orb, in 1841, a crooked little gentleman, who has been the shrewdest
observer, the most good-humoured satirist, the most inoffensive promoter of merriment, and
one of the most trustworthy of portrait-painters, that ever brought the pencil to the aid
of the pen, for harmless entertainment and real moral instruction. The written wit and
wisdom of Mr. Punch I shall here pass by. But it
appears ![]()
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to me that the two decades in which I have been an admiring
observer of this personage, cannot be better illustrated than by glancing at the materials
which he has gathered together for a political and social history of his own times, as
viewed in the broad daylight of a laughing philosophy. He has best replied to the
invocation of the great moralist of the last age:— With, cheerful wisdom and instructive mirth. See motley life in modern trappings drest, And feed with various fools th’eternal jest.” |
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But the ludicrous side of human affairs, as regarded by such an observer, not
unfrequently suggests the serious side. Democritus and
Heraclitus walk the world together.
In the July of 1841, when Master Punch first saw the
light, there was a change of administration pregnant with the most important consequences.
Sir Robert Peel came into power. Hercules (Peel) tearing Theseus (Russell) from
the rock to which he had grown, led the way in that remarkable series of political
pencillings or cartoons, which, if they have not materially influenced public opinion, have
been something more than straws thrown up to show which way the wind blows. In 1842,
Peel as the modern Ceres,
appears with a cornucopia labelled Sliding Scale. But the mouth of the horn of plenty is
downward, and is padlocked. A gaunt Britannia with a
starved lion rejects the offering. A little later in the year, the minister, whose
accession to power was hailed by the frogs who were dissatisfied with their log of wood, is
now King Stork who is eating them up. In this year we
first recognise the ![]()
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representations of common life by a new
artist—one who was destined to be the Hogarth of an
era not so lawless and gross as that in which the great pictorial satirist flourished; but
an era in which the progress of refinement had not obliterated the infinitely varied
features of the “Cinthia of the
Minute.” The signature “J.
Leech” was that of a young man totally unknown in the regular schools of
art. In a few years his artistical power was as generally acknowledged as were his
wonderful range of observation, and his unequalled facility of expression. In 1843, we find
Leech not attempting to cover what may be called his personal
satire with the cloak of the anonymous. To one of his most famous sketches, “A scene in Westminster Circus,” where Brougham is clown to the ring, saying, “Now,
Mr. Wellington, is there anything I can run
for?” etc., there is the artist’s signature. It has been truly observed
of Leech’s political sketches, that although personal in one
sense he must be, in the other he is not. “It is always open to the political
satirist to treat his subject in the spirit of the early John Bull, and the manner of Theodore Hook. This is what Leech never did.
Private character was to him a sacred territory.”* The Punch of this period makes abundant merriment with the famous
ex-Chancellor. Before he was Clown in the Ring, he was Peter in Romeo and
Juliet, carrying the fan before Nurse Wellington. Much of this
is the reflection of the tittle-tattle of the clubs, or of the party assaults of the
newspapers—all representing Lord Brougham as an intriguer for place.
The calmer judgment of subsequent years ![]()
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would have interpreted the homage of one eminent man to another as a
genuine expression of private feeling. On either side there had been indications of mutual
respect, which had cast aside the differences of political opinion. In the first days of
Brougham’s accession to power,
Wellington, to the surprise of many, presented himself at the
Chancellor’s reception. In 1839, at the Festival of the Cinque Ports in honour of the
Lord Warden, Lord Brougham was selected as the representative of two
thousand guests to propose the health of the Duke. He said the choice thus made
“loudly tells that on this day all personal, all political feelings are
quelled, all strife of party is hushed.” The speech of Lord
Brougham is far from being a common-place eulogy—it is truly eloquent. The
Duke of Wellington, in his reply, adverted to the opinion just
expressed that there are times when all party animosities should be laid aside—“I
must do my noble and learned friend the justice to say that for years and years there
has been nothing of that description in social life as between him and me.” I
might have hesitated to have revived the remembrance of passing satire directed against one
who has rendered eminent services to his country—which, within my own range of observation,
I have not been slow to record—had I not felt that a long course of persevering effort to
urge on the progress of improvement, eventually surmounts not only good-natured ridicule
but malicious calumny. In 1858, Mr. Punch, pointing to
the Temple of Fame, says (with the greatest respect), “After you, my
Lord.”
In 1843 another statesman appears upon the scene, who, having once
rendered the most eminent services ![]()
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to his nation, has come to be
considered by thoughtful politicians as the great retarder of its progress. “The
Irish Ogre fattening on the finest Pisintry” is a portrait of O’Connell, with his Repeal Club in his hand and his
money bags of Rint at his feet, ladling his little victims into the cauldron of Agitation
soup. Year after year, until his reign is over, is the great Dan
presented to us in various ludicrous shapes. In 1845 he is “The Greedy Boy who
cries for the Moon.” He sits roaring upon nurse Peel’s lap, who tries to soothe him with the Maynooth Grant, but he
points to the Moon of Repeal shining through the window and cries, “I won’t
be aisy—I will have Repale.” The prudence and sagacity of Prince Albert prevented him from being the butt of political
satire. He seldom appears in the pencillings of Punch; never as being mixed up with party strifes. The grandfather of Queen Victoria had a homely claim upon the affections of
his people as Farmer George; and in the same way it was
no disparagement to the Consort of her Majesty that he should be represented as
“Prince Albert the British Farmer.”
In 1844 the Prince de Joinville
published a pamphlet in which he proposed that France should build steam-vessels of war. It
was described by the Duke of Wellington as “an
invitation and provocation to hostilities, to be carried on in a manner such as had
been disclaimed by the civilized portions of mankind.” The suggestion by the
son of Louis Philippe for the advantageous use of
this steam-navy was, to burn our towns and to plunder our coasts. The cartoon of Leech called “The
Quarrel,” exhibits Master Wellington saying,
“You’re too good a judge to hit me![]()
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—you
are,” and Master Joinville replying, “Am
I?” The bullying attitude of the bearded French boy with his doubled fist, and
the composure of the grey-headed senior, with his hands in his breeches’ pockets, are
more than clever. This period gives us the portrait of “Perfidious
Albion” by the same artist—the conventional John
Bull sitting in his garden smoking his pipe with half-shut eyes; a foaming
jug of ale upon his table; with his dog beneath enjoying his bone, regardless of the little
frog who has hopped out of the bushes.
Laugh as we will, we cannot in any epoch escape from the serious side of
human affairs. Law is not always Justice; the offender against the laws is not altogether
out of the pale of sympathy. Leech, in 1844,
presents “The Home of the Rick-burner.” A wretched
peasant sits in a dilapidated room, ragged, shivering, with four starving children around
his knees. He looks despairingly towards the pallet upon which his wife lies dead, whilst
one of the children is appealing to him for food. The demon in the background holds a
lighted torch. “The Game Laws” is a sketch in which
an altar is surmounted by the landowner’s idol, the hare. A labourer, manacled,
kneels before it, about to be sacrificed by the robed and coroneted high priest, who holds
the sword of justice in his hand, labelled “According to Law.” Two women
with their children are slowly making their way to the Union in the distance. These two
scenes are rural. “Fine or Imprisonment” is of Town
life. The double-faced magistrate, with his Midas ears,
smirks upon the fashionable blackguard, who stands in the box of one compartment, upon a
charge of assault—“Law for the Rich![]()
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—the Fine was immediately
paid.” The same magistrate’s face turned round frowns upon the rough
prisoner in the box of another compartment—“Law for the Poor—the Prisoner not
being able to pay, was removed in the Van to Prison.” “The Poor Man’s Friend” exhibits the great Redresser of
the wrongs of Society—the beneficent visitor who “makes the odds all
even.” An emaciated old man lies upon his hard bed, his broken spade on the
floor—“Testimonial” on the wall. The friend stands by the bedside.
“Reconciliation, or As it ought to be” is a
prophecy by Punch. The nobleman, uncovered,
points to Poor Laws and Game Laws which he has trodden under foot. The labourer, touching
his forelock with the countryman’s mark of respect, tramples the bludgeon beneath his
clouted shoe. The little gentleman on the ground is exhibiting the alphabet to the
labourer’s boy.
The year 1845 conducts us into new phases of political life. There are
parliamentary symptoms that the Anti Corn-Law League has not been working in vain.
“Papa Cobden taking Master Robert a Free-Trade
walk,” exclaims, “Do step out.” The fat little boy dragged
along, answers, “You know I cannot go as fast as you do.” Later in the
year “The Political Robin, driven by the severity of the times to
seek for Grain,” shows us the little bird, Peel, at the cottage door, looking up to the good child, Cobden, who has got an ear of corn in one hand and a full
bag in the other. In the same spirit, Peel, the country boy, is
throwing open the gate of monopoly; for “coming events cast their shadows
before.” But there were changes impending, which required zeal and
perseverance to carry through, almost as great ![]()
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as were required to
effect a free trade in corn. Brougham is presented as
“The Political Tinker,” crying, “Any old
laws to mend, or new ones to repeal?” The garb and the attitude are very
undignified, but there was true dignity in the occupation, as we have long since come to
acknowledge. The absorbing topic of 1845 was the Railway Mania, which brought such
disasters on its victims. Crowds are rushing to the locomotive “Speculation.”
The widow and the wife, the parson and the soldier, the fat citizen and the cockaded
footman, are here, all with their money-bags, and all cheered on by the sagacious Director
to prostrate themselves before the Railway Juggernaut. The game ends in the Railway Panic
of December. By the side of a wall covered with placards of the ephemeral journals that
were associated with this time of general insanity, the butcher’s boy meets the
grocer’s boy, and this dialogue ensues—“I say, Jim, vot’s a
Panic?”—“Blow’d if I know, but there’s von to be seen in
the City.”
The year 1846 opened with the knowledge of the failure of the potato crop.
Sir Robert Peel, unable to induce his Cabinet to
agree in a large measure for removing the restrictions upon the importation of corn,
resigned his office. This crisis gave us one of Leech’s celebrated cartoons. Peel is going out
of the door; Lord John Russell presents himself to the
Queen in the character of a Page seeking the
vacant situation. Her Majesty replies, “I am afraid you are not strong enough for
the place, John.” Peel comes back
to power, and proposes to the House of Commons his plans of commercial policy.
Robert Peel, baker, opens his cheap-bread shop. He stands at his
shop-door in Parliament Street, calm ![]()
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and confident, with his hands
under his white apron, whilst the Duke of Wellington
carries a placard “Down again—great fall in bread.” We have then an
anticipation of “The British Lion in 1850.” He sits
in his easy-chair, with a large loaf and a foaming jug on his table, and he puffs his cigar
in happy tranquillity. The anticipation was not very wide of the reality. “Actæon worried by his own Dogs” is a type of the baiting
which the great Minister had to endure before he was driven from power, “to leave
a name behind him execrated by every monopolist.” “Manager Peel” takes his Farewell Benefit, amidst showers of bouquets from
the Boxes and the waving of hats from the Pit; whilst a policeman is holding back a rioter
in the likeness of Mr. Disraeli, who doubles his
fist and wants to fight the favourite actor. In this year the distress of his country
incites Young Ireland to set up in “business for himself.” He wants
arms, and he goes to a shop where there is “A large assortment of most iligant
blunderbusses,” and “Pretty little pistols for pretty little
children.” England is a better friend to Ireland than her noisy Repealers.
The starving peasant sits desolate with his famished wife and children, till John Bull comes with a basket of loaves, saying,
“Here are a few things to go on with, brother, and I’ll soon put you in
a way to earn your own living.”
In 1847, Lord Palmerston makes his
first prominent appearance in the cartoons of “Punch.” The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, whose correspondence
with France and the three great powers of the Continent had been far from amicable, is the
showman of a booth, upon whose cloth are inscribed “Spanish Marriage—Horrible
Treachery.” “To be seen alive, ![]()
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the British
Lion roaring. To which is added the Confiscation of Cracow.” John Bull was then not quite awake to foreign affairs. He
cared little whom the Infanta of Spain married, and he was not much excited by the
violation of the Treaty of Vienna. He turns his back upon the showman, and marches away
with a confident air of contempt for such political trifles. He had a subject nearer at
home to demand his sympathy and his money. The Irish Famine was at its height of misery.
The great Agitator in vain shouted
“Repeal” whilst the people were starving. “O’Connell stumped out” shows how the English feeling for the Irish
distress, as reflected in the vigorous action of the Government, had put an end to the game
which had been so long played. The Repeal Bat may be thrown down, and the Agitator rush
away, whilst Russell, the bowler, exults in his
victory.
“The Rising Generation” of this
period was a new development of the genius of Leech.
For how many years have we been laughing over his infinite variety of precocious boys, who
would like to catch the “deuced fine girl” under the mistletoe; or
sitting with old uncle after dinner, wake him out of his nap to bid him put coals on the
fire and pass the wine. The youth of eighteen is as much the object of this gentle satire
as the boy of ten. He drives a cab and has a tiger. He stops to talk with a friend.
“Well, Charley, have you had it out with the old
boy?” And Charley tells what the undutiful old governor
says—“He says I must do something to get my own living.” The genial
reviewer of Leech in “The
Saturday,” characterises his schoolboys as “so fearful and
wonderful in their immature inso-![]()
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lence.” They belong to
an age in which the feeling of respect for parents and instructors appeared to be fast
passing away, into an assertion of equality which was certainly not justified by the
advance of the juveniles in real knowledge. The almost total ignorance amongst the rising
generation of the higher literature of their country had often been a subject of
conversation between Douglas Jerrold and myself.
With this indifference to serious reading came the assumption of a knowledge of the world.
It is not improbable that my friend, as one of the remarkable band of associates who met
once a week to discuss subjects for the forthcoming “Punch,” may have suggested to the fancy of
Leech some of the scenes in which the youth of England at once
manifested their mental imbecility and their contempt of the old teaching of the Catechism,
“To order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters.” Is it from
the want of the antique educational discipline, whether of the home or the school, that few
young men can say— “Parents first season us; then schoolmasters Deliver us to laws; they send us bound To rules of reason, holy messengers.” |
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A good deal of this may have arisen from the low state of middle-class education
twenty years ago. It was very little better, perhaps not so good, as the education of the
poorer classes, imperfect as that was. Leech has humorously depicted
the condition of the Educational question in 1847. “Between the
two Stools” of Voluntary education and State education, the peasant boy
comes to the ground.
1848 is ushered in by the revolution which has ejected Louis Philippe from his throne. Accord-![]()
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ing to “Punch,” the armed citizen
in the blouse has put out the royal light, flickering in the socket, with his
extinguisher—the cap of liberty. This event called up two evil spirits in the world—the
Spirit of Anarchy and the Spirit of Despotism. “Punch” has two tableaux of “the Trafalgar Square
Revolution.” I saw the riot in Trafalgar Square of the blackguard boys of
London. They were shouting, as the legend of tableau I makes them shout, “Down with
heaverythink.” Tableau 2 shows a ringleader in the hands of a policeman blubbering
out—“It aint me sir, I’m for God save the King and Rule
Britannia.” The 10th of April succeeds—that abortive attempt at a Chartist
revolution, which showed how the improvement of the condition of the people, by a sounder
commercial policy, had made them not only less turbulent, but more united for the defence
of institutions which were not solely for the benefit of the great. “There is no place like Home” shows us the fat father of a
family with his chubby wife surrounded by their children. He has been reading about
“The State of Europe.” The cartoon is encompassed by a border, in
which we have wonderfully varied representations of war in all its horrors—red republicans,
bearing a banner “La Propriété c’est le Vol,”
fighting with the French soldiery; whilst Germans and Italians are also in revolt. Martial
Law has its fusillades; and a terrified king is running away leaving his crown behind him.
In 1849, the discovery of gold in California, about a year before, had
attracted away many of the unquiet and dangerous spirits of our land. A legion of reckless
adventurers were assembled in what were popularly called the Diggings. A new artist of ![]()
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remarkable ability, Richard
Doyle, is now prominent in the pages of “Punch.” He presents us one of those grotesque groups for
which he is famous—“A Prospect of Thomas Tyddler hys Ground—with a
syghte of ye Yankees pickynge up Golde and Silvere.” His peculiar genius
having been manifested, he now enters upon the series entitled “Manners and Customs of ye Englyshe in 1849,” as illustrations of
“Mr. Pips his Diary.” Amidst the grotesqueness of
these representations, which went on through 1849 and a large part of 1850, the future
historian of manners may find most trustworthy materials for describing our social life in
the upper and middle ranks, and occasionally in the lower. I may select a few of the most
remarkable.
I shall first take Mr. Pips to the
seats of legislation and of law. A Committee of the House of Commons exhibits the outlines
of many a well-known face, and the usual concomitants of yawners and sleepers at a dreary
debate. The House of Commons is crowded; the Lords hearing Appeals exhibits the Chancellor
on the Woolsack, two Peers on the benches, three Counsel at the bar, and a countryman and
his wife wondering what all this can mean. Westminster Hall, showing the ceremony of
opening Term, presents that periodical scene of legal pomp, with a. great crowd of idlers,
including a pretty sprinkling of comely damsels, Mr.
Pips wisely observing “strange how women do flock to every
concourse.” Strange it is that they should crowd to see the Chancellor and
the Judges, but more strange that they should flock to sit penned up for hours at the Old
Bailey to witness “an interesting trial for murder.” I pass from these
constitutional gatherings to less solemn ![]()
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scenes of public interest.
“A Prospect of Exeter Hall—Showynge a Christian Gentleman
Denouncynge ye Pope”—is a bitter satire, which, however, is not likely to
put intolerance to shame. The raving orator is scarcely an exaggeration. Here we behold the
dapper and the burly clerics on the platform; the excited laity shouting “Hear,
Hear;” the wilderness of bonnets in the body of the hall—some of the wearers
lifting up their hands in dismay at the terrible truths they hear, some weeping, but all
delighted with the frantic gesticulations of the speaker. “Methinks,”
says Mr. Pips, “such violence do only prove
that there are other bigots besides papists.” Calmer is the assembly at
“A Scientific Institution during ye Lecture of an eminent
Savan.” Science, it would seem, is more tranquillising than Theology, as
popularly received. Money questions, however, touch the feelings of mankind as deeply as
polemics. “A Railwaye Meetynge—Emotyon of ye Shareholderes at ye
Announcemente of a Dividende of 2½d.,” presents a scene which those are
happy who have not witnessed, because they have abstained from engaging in such
experiments. Happy, too, is the contented poor man, who has no fears of being robbed by
fraudulent Directors. “Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator.” |
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Another sketch, equally significant of the times of 1849, presents us guests who have
come to be jovial, but endeavour to look miserable. It is “A
Banquet—Shewynge ye Farmer’s Friend Impressynge on ye Agricultural Interest that
it is ruined.” The orators of Exeter Hall, and the Farmer’s Friend,
have perhaps equally in view “A Prospect of an Election.” ![]()
| Ch. XII.] | THE THIRD EPOCH. | 261 |
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It is the old scene over again which Hogarth painted a century before, but with an infinite variety of minute
faces such as he rarely attempted to portray. He dealt more with individuality. In
Mr. Doyle’s sketch we have a countryman
holding his hand behind him to receive a bribe—in Hogarth we have the
more telling satire, of the honest yeoman with the partizan on either side of him dropping
money into the itching palms of both his hands.
The public scenes of London life have undergone so little change, that it
is scarcely necessary for me to notice St. James’ Street on a Drawing-Room Day, or
Hyde Park, or Kensington Gardens, or the Zoological Gardens. The Flower Shows at Chiswick
have migrated to the Regent’s Park and Brompton, in the hope, I may presume, that it
would not rain so incessantly on the grand gala days. The Royal Academy Exhibition has been
somewhat improved; for Mr. Doyle presents us with an
unhappy spectator breaking his back to gaze at the pictures in the top line, where, if we
may judge from the incredulous face of another gazing in the same direction whilst his
friend points out something remarkable, the majority present come to the same conclusion as
the wise personage in Sheridan’s Critic, who exclaims “The Spanish
Fleet you cannot see because it’s out of sight.” There is no difficulty in
appreciating the correctness of the faces and figures in Madame
Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors. The satisfaction of the crowd is very
delightful to behold, as they look upon the effigies of celebrated murderers. The sight is
almost as pleasant as a sensation novel, and sends many a spectator home with a glowing
satisfaction at considering how wicked the world is, and how excellent ![]()
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a thing it is to belong to the “unco guid.” The polite and the vulgar
are equally found in the Chamber of Horrors—whether the amusement-seekers inquire for
Madame Tussaud’s or Madame
Toossord’s. It is the same with “A Promenade
Concerte,” which was the rage when M.
Jullien first astonished the British public with his tremendous attitudes,
and gave them little beyond waltzes and polkas. He came in time to find that we could
appreciate good music, and did a real service in making us better acquainted with Mendelssohn and Beethoven. For his mixed company, he still had rather too much of his sound
and fury, his quadrilles and his galopes. But taken altogether, he deserved success.
Vauxhall is now as much a thing of the past as in the days of Sir
Roger de Coverley. In Mr. Doyle’s sketches will
live the waltzers not over studious of propriety, the respectable citizen and his family
devouring the almost impalpable slices of ham, the gents silently sucking their
sherry-cobblers, the universal smokers, the dingy waiters. It is gone—its illuminated and
its dark walks, its balloons and its fireworks. We may give a sigh for the destruction of
Vauxhall, but what a joy it is to have got rid of that pleasant place of diversion,
Smithfleld Cattle Market—its filth, its danger, its brutality. And yet for the blackguards
of London it was a place of recreation. What a triumph for the human animal it was to chase
a bull broken loose, to follow him into the adjacent streets and behold the terror of every
passenger. These immemorial amusements, provided by the Corporation of London, have come to
an end. There is scarcely any sight left but an execution before the Debtors’ Door in
the Old Bailey to gratify the populace of London. It is true that we are still ![]()
| Ch. XII.] | THE THIRD EPOCH. | 263 |
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indulged with the Lord Mayor’s Show on the 9th of November;
but the Guy Fawkes of the 5th has become a miserable affair of dirty little boys, and not
such a cavalcade as I have witnessed when “No Popery” was chalked on the
walls. In 1850 there was a wondrous revival, but the ragged Guys, as sketched by
Mr. Doyle in 1849, are dying out. The donkey drawing the effigy in
the cart is the type of the anniversary. The Church has given up its celebration. Greenwich
Fair too has died out—its bonnettings and its scratch-backs, its bullies and its
pickpockets. The diversions that were once common to the snobs and the roughs are passing
away. There was formerly a private solace in “A Cydere Cellare
duryng a Comyck Songe,” when, as Mr.
Pips records, “the thing that did most take was to see and hear one
Boss sing the song of Sam Hall the chimneysweep, going to be
hanged.” It is satisfactory to feel that the manly diversions which
Doyle has depicted with wonderful truth and spirit have not faded
away—that the emulation at Lord’s Cricket Ground and the Thames Regatta are still
objects of general interest, and keep alive a hearty spirit of good-fellowship amongst all
men. The skaters on the Serpentine, male and female, are there to be admired—the unhappy
bunglers are there to be laughed at.
When Mr. Doyle enters the houses
of the higher class and the upper-middle class, he is perhaps more humorous than in his
public scenes. But how unchanged are our manners and customs, since he presented us with
“An At Home—ye Polka.” The only perceptible
difference is that the flounce had not then given place to the crinoline. It has been said
that if a deaf man, who could not hear a note of ![]()
| 264 | PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE: | [Ch. XII. |
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the music, were to
behold a dance, he would think the whole party were mad, but there is more general insanity
in “Socyetye Enjoyinge itself at a Soyrée.”
Personally I ought to be grateful that I have passed the time of life when I am expected to
be gratified by standing for an hour or two in a crowded and insufferably hot room or suite
of rooms, only too happy to get away, if possible, to some obscure corner, to escape from
the strangers who bore me. It was no satisfaction to me, any more than it was to Mr. Pips, to see nothing extraordinary in a Lord’s
drawing-room “beyond the multitude of company, and divers writers, painters, and
other persons of note, elbowing their way through the press.” “A Few Friendes to Tea and a Little Musycke” is more
endurable. It is a solemn thing, indeed, to stand behind the stout lady at the piano and
murmur our approbation, but our health is not imperilled in such an evening party.
“The Wedding Breakfast” is not quite so safe, but
is agreeable enough if we have not the misfortune to be the elderly friend who is to
propose the health of the bride and bridegroom. The “best man,” who toasts the
bridesmaids and vows that such angels never before alighted on this mortal sphere, has a
happier position.
In continuing to adopt “Punch” as an Index to the social and political life of the Victorian era,
I must be satisfied to take a more rapid glance at the incidents and characters that follow
those of the middle of the century. 1850 was, however, remarkable for the struggles to
assert their principles of the three great theological powers that would dominate over
England—Low Church, High Church, Popery. Four sketches exhibit “The Admirable Working of ![]()
| Ch. XII.] | THE THIRD EPOCH. | 265 |
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Lord Ashley’s
Measure.” An aged woman reads the label “Post Office closed until
Monday,” and exclaims “Oh! I wish I knew how my dear girl
is.” In a cottage where children are preparing to go to bed, the good man tells
his wife that he must go over to the Red Lion “to hear what’s a doing, for
since these new-fangled post-office changes, I can’t get my bit of a
newspaper.” The tradesman at church heeds not the service, for he wonders
whether Walker’s bill was paid yesterday. The swindler on the
steam-boat rejoices that he has a clear day’s start of the brutal police. Public
opinion was too strong for Lord Ashley’s Measure,
and such will be the case with every attempt to make people religious by Act of Parliament.
These are the Herculean labours of Puritanism. “A Page for the
Puseyites” exhibits the invasion of household privacy for the conversion
of the aged and the young, of which the father of the family had no apprehension in the
time when the Church rarely troubled itself about domestic edification. The appointment of
English bishops by the Pope lighted up the country with a flame not very easily
extinguished. The sovereign pontiff is making “The daring Attempt to break into a
Church with the thin End of the Wedge.” Cardinal
Wiseman stands by his side—the coming bishop of Westminster. The aggressive
policy of Rome was legislated against by the English parliament in 1851. The versatile
public first applauded Lord John Russell’s
indignation, but in a few months laughed heartily when Leech gave us “The boy who chalked up ‘No
Popery!’—and then ran away!!”
In 1851 Bloomerism comes into the houses and walks the streets of London.
The Great Exhibition ![]()
| 266 | PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE: | [Ch. XII. |
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possibly brought over “this American
Custom.” How charming are Leech’s English-women, as they turn round to gaze at the absurd
Epicene costume of these wonderful importations. How true are his dirty boys hooting and
grinning. “The Settling Day of the Betting Office
Frequenter” is more true than humorous—the terrible lies beneath the
comic. The policeman seizes a wretched boy in bed—the sporting youth who is supposed to
have borrowed his master’s cash-box to pay his bets. In a few years the
betting-offices were shut up, and the vagabonds who used to frequent them congregated at
the corners of the streets and blocked up the pavement. To me they were an intolerable
nuisance, as they gathered at the corner of Farringdon Street and prevented an easy
approach to my place of business. But what a study of character they presented in their
eagerness or their desperation—their bloated faces, their bloodshot eyes, their watch
chains and breast pins, their seedy coats and dirty shirts.
In 1853 the French Emperor and
Mr. Bull, two sage physicians, hold “A Consultation about the State of Turkey.” The sick man is on
his bed. Death, in Russian garb, hovers over him ready to clutch his prey. At the end of
the year Lord Aberdeen is smoking the Pipe of Peace,
sitting on a barrel of gunpowder. The war begins. The guards are preparing to sail for the
Crimea. The old routine of military dress and military management is displayed in
“A striking Effect of choking and overloading our Guards at a
late Review.” The wretched soldiers are prostrate on the ground, beneath
the horrible infliction of their black chokers and the ponderous baggage on their
shoulders. On the ![]()
| Ch. XII.] | THE THIRD EPOCH. | 267 |
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assembling of parliament in 1855, the conduct of
the war became the subject of animadversion in and out of the Houses. Palmerston, an active lad,, is clearing the dirty door-step
of the administration of its mess of “Blunders, Routine, Precedent, Delay and
Twaddle.” Russell, who has just resigned,
looks on saying, “Ah! I lived there once, but I was obliged to leave—it was such a
very irregular family.” The cleaning of the door-step brought
Palmerston into power. After the reverses and changes of a Session
or two, Pam, in 1857, is “The Winner of
the Great National Steeple Chase.” The Indian Mutiny is better conducted
than the Crimean War. Palmerston as Boots at the British Lion knocks
at the bed-room door of Sir Colin Campbell, with
“Here’s your hot water, Sir,” and Sir
Colin answers, “All right, I have been ready a long
time.”
In 1858 the Orsini Plot, hatched in London, revived the old cry of
Perfidious Albion. Leech has a sketch of the British
conspirator in Paris—a smiling, contented, well-to-do Englishman, sauntering with his hands
in his pockets, watched by a dozen policemen. The ridiculous threats of some military
myrmidons of the French Emperor had a considerable
effect in producing the Volunteer Riflemen. The young and handsome engaged one is told by
his mistress, “It entirely depends upon your attention to drill whether I give you
that lock of hair or not,” and at Christmas the middle-aged John Bull of double-chin and rotund proportions
“guards his Pudding with his Rifle.” The old jealousies are set at
rest by “The True Lovers’ Knot”—the Treaty of
Commerce of 1860. “The Gladstone Pill” of increased
Income Tax has been presented to the ailing ![]()
| 268 | PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE: | [Ch. XII. |
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John Bull; but he is out again in full vigour when
Gladstone’s Budget relieves him of many
troublesome taxes, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer is “The Boy
for our Money.”
The more recent political sketches, bearing as they do upon events still
in progress, scarcely come within the purpose of this desultory chapter. Many of the
subjects have called forth more strikingly than ever the great artistic talent of John Tenniel—one who has dealt with the leading topics of
his own time in the spirit of a great historical painter. Up to the day when the sudden
death of John Leech eclipsed the gaiety of nations,
we had the most delicious representations of our English manners from his prolific pencil.
Whether he was in the hunting-field, or at a watering-place, or in the drawing-room,
everything he touched was made characteristic and interesting. The domestic life that he
presents is the comfortable English life, which appears so dull to foreigners, but which
has its own inappreciable happiness. We still have “The rising
Generation.” The small boy says “Going to the Pantomime,
Clara, this afternoon,” and
Clara answers, “A—No—I’m at Home—and have a
Kettledrum at three o’clock!” But the juvenile impertinence of the
school-boy is now more commonly associated with the coquettish airs of the little girl. Out
of that comes in most cases, we may hope, that blessed result which has been so quaintly
but truly expressed by Julius Hare—“To
brothers, sisters are antiseptics.”
In looking through these remarkable illustrations of nearly a quarter of
a century, I often pause to wonder at the unity of purpose which pervades the publication
during any particular year, or short series ![]()
| Ch. XII.] | THE THIRD EPOCH. | 269 |
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of years. Still more am
I surprised when I have run over forty-seven volumes, and find in them something far beyond
a collection of sketches by the cleverest artists of their day. And yet I ought not to be
surprised; for my intimacy with some members of the companionship of “Punch,” has often made me acquainted with a
peculiarity of its organisation. It is no secret that this periodical, which might very
soon have dwindled into a vehicle for random caricatures and miscellaneous jokes, has in a
great degree preserved its vitality by the interchange of thought between artists and
writers at weekly meetings. Let no one familiar with Boards or Committees imagine a group
intent on business—a dozen serious personages, seated on either side of a long table with a
green baize cover, each with a quire of paper and an inkstand before him. Not out of such
an array does inspiration come. It comes out of the “neat repast”—not
unaccompanied “with wine,” as Milton desired; perhaps even with that weed which
Milton did not disdain. I have heard one of the ablest of the
successors of A’Becket, Jerrold, and Thackeray describe some of these mysteries in a Lecture at Bristol. From my
pleasant intercourse with Shirley Brooks I can judge
how suggestive may still be the talk of the “round table” when the Paladins of
the Press prepare to do battle against folly or something worse. But no such association
could have preserved them from the malice and grossness of common satirists, had not a
presiding mind directed their career. It is the rare merit of Mark Lemon that no impurity ever sullied the work of which he is the
Editor,—that under his guidance Wit has thought it no restraint “to dwell in
decencies for ever.”
Gilbert Abbott À Beckett (1811-1856)
English comic writer educated at Westminster School; he was a journalist, playwright, and
writer for
Punch who pursued a legal career after being called to
the Bar in 1841.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
English politician and man of letters, with his friend Richard Steele he edited
The Spectator (1711-12). He was the author of the tragedy
Cato (1713).
Thomas Bewick (1753-1828)
English artist who pursued wood engraving as a fine art; his
History of
British Birds was published from 1797-1804.
Charles William Shirley Brooks (1816-1880)
The son of the architect William Brooks, he was a journalist and playwright who
contributed to
Punch and
Ainsworth's
Magazine.
Henry Peter Brougham, first baron Brougham and Vaux (1778-1868)
Educated at Edinburgh University, he was a founder of the
Edinburgh
Review in which he chastised Byron's
Hours of Idleness; he
defended Queen Caroline in her trial for adultery (1820), established the London University
(1828), and was appointed lord chancellor (1830).
Colin Campbell (1792-1863)
Scottish military officer who served in the Peninsular War, Indian, China, and the
Crimean War; he relieved Lucknow in the Indian Mutiny of 1857.
Richard Cobden (1804-1865)
English statesman and champion of free trade; he was MP for Stockport (1841-47), West
Riding of Yorkshire (1847-57), and Rochdale (1859).
Anthony Ashley- Cooper, seventh earl of Shaftesbury (1801-1885)
The son of the sixth earl (d. 1851); he was asocial reformer who introduced legislation
to relieve women and children laboring in coal mines and to limit the work-day for factory
laborers to ten hours.
George Cruikshank (1792-1878)
English caricaturist who illustrated the satirical periodical
The
Scourge (1811-16) and later Dickens's
Sketches by Boz
(1836).
Democritus (460 BC-370 BC)
Pre-Socratic philosopher who developed a cosmology based on atoms; he was known as the
“laughing philosopher.”
Richard Doyle [Dick Kitcat] (1824-1883)
The son of the Irish caricaturist John Doyle; after working as a cartoonist for
Punch in the 1840s he pursued a career as an illustrator and
watercolor artist.
James Gillray (1756-1815)
The most notable English caricaturist of his day, whose prints were sold at the shop of
Miss Hannah Humphrey.
George Hamilton- Gordon, fourth earl of Aberdeen (1784-1860)
Harrow-educated Scottish philhellene who founded the Athenian Society and was elected to
the Society of Dilettanti (1805); he was foreign secretary (1841-1846) and prime minister
(1852-55).
Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855)
The son of Francis Hare-Naylor; educated at Charterhouse, Trinity College, Cambridge and
the Middle Temple, he was a writer, Archdeacon of Lewes, and liberal churchman.
Heraclitus (540 BC c.-480 BC c.)
Greek philosopher of Ephesus who taught that change is real and permanence only an
illusion.
William Hogarth (1697-1764)
English satirical painter whose works include
The Harlot's
Progress,
The Rake's Progress, and
Marriage à la Mode.
Theodore Edward Hook (1788-1841)
English novelist, wit, and friend of the Prince of Wales; he edited the
John Bull (1820) and appears as the Lucian Gay of Disraeli's
Conigsby and as Mr. Wagg in
Vanity Fair.
Douglas William Jerrold (1803-1857)
English playwright and miscellaneous writer; he made his reputation with the play
Black-eyed Susan (1829) and contributed to the
Athenaeum,
Blackwood's, and
Punch.
Louis Jullien (1812-1860)
The first celebrity conductor; born in France, he performed in England in the 1840s and
1850s, conducting in white gloves with a jewelled baton.
John Leech (1817-1864)
English comic artist and friend of Thackeray; from 1841 to 1864 he contributed some 3000
drawings to
Punch.
Mark Lemon (1809-1870)
English playwright and journalist who contributed to
Household
Words and other periodicals before becoming the first editor of
Punch (1841-70).
Louis Philippe, king of the French (1773-1850)
The son of Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans; he was King of France 1830-48; he
abdicated following the February Revolution of 1848 and fled to England.
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809-1847)
German composer and conductor who was particularly admired in England where he visited
several times.
John Milton (1608-1674)
English poet and controversialist; author of
Comus (1634),
Lycidas (1638),
Areopagitica (1644),
Paradise Lost (1667), and other works.
Emperor Louis Napoleon (1808-1873)
Son of Louis Bonaparte, king of Holland; he was emperor of France (1852-70).
Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847)
Irish politician, in 1823 he founded the Catholic Association to press for Catholic
emancipation.
Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827)
English artist and caricaturist who exhibited at the Royal Academy and with the poet
William Combe produced the
Tour of Dr Syntax (1812).
John Russell, first earl Russell (1792-1878)
English statesman, son of John Russell sixth duke of Bedford (1766-1839); he was author
of
Essay on the English Constitution (1821) and
Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe (1824) and was Prime Minister (1865-66).
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816)
Anglo-Irish playwright, author of
The School for Scandal (1777),
Whig MP and ally of Charles James Fox (1780-1812).
Henry John Temple, third viscount Palmerston (1784-1865)
After education at Harrow and Edinburgh University he was MP for Newport (1807-11) and
Cambridge University (1811-31), foreign minister (1830-41), and prime minister (1855-58,
1859-65).
Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914)
The son of a fencing and dancing master, he became a book illustrator and cartoonist for
Punch; he was the illustrator for Lewis Carroll's
Alice books.
John Bull. (1820-1892). A scurrilous Tory weekly newspaper edited by Theodore Hook.
The Penny Magazine. 16 vols (1832-1846). Edited by Charles Knight for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
