The History of "Punch" Part 12

Not a few of _Punch's_ jokes have been sent in by men who were destined a little later on to become members of the Staff and diners at the Table. Mr. Furniss's first drawing, as is duly explained elsewhere, was re-drawn by Mr. du Maurier, and Mr. Burnand's initial contribution--a little sketch of 'Varsity life--was re-drawn by Leech. But quite a number of non-professional wits and humorists have acted as disinterested friends, whose benevolent a.s.sistance has gone far to colour _Punch_ with the characteristics of their own _vis comica_. The chief of these no doubt is Mr. Joseph Crawhall, of Newcastle, whose devoted service to his friend Charles Keene was an important factor in the artist's _Punch_-life. From his other friends, Mr. Birket Foster and Mr. Andrew Tuer, Keene was in receipt of a great number of jokes--from the latter they came almost as regularly as the weekly paper. It was also from Mr. Tuer that he received, among many others, that happy thought, so happily realised, of the gentleman who one day paid an unaccustomed visit to his stables to give an order, and asking his coachman's child, "Well, my little man, do you know who I am?" received for answer, "Yes, you're the man who rides in our carriage." This story was quoted seven years later by Lord Aberdeen in a public speech, in which he attributed the adventure--though on what grounds did not appear--to "a celebrated physician," apparently Sir Andrew Clark.

After Charles Keene's death Mr. Tuer's humorous vein was turned on to others of the Staff. One of his contributions may be quoted as ill.u.s.trating how unintentional are the originals of some of _Punch's_ jokes. In 1889 appeared a picture ent.i.tled "A New Trade," in which a country maid, on being asked what her last employer was, replied, "He kept a Vicarage." The circ.u.mstance had actually taken place in Mr.

Tuer's own house. When the number appeared, the legend was read out to the maid, and it was explained to her that it was _her_ joke. She showed no enthusiasm, not even appreciation; but on seeing the others laugh, she said, with perfect gravity, yet still with hopeful perseverance, "Well, I must try and make some more!"

To Canon Ainger, also, among a crowd of willing helpers, has Mr. du Maurier often been indebted--for jokes rather scholarly than farcical, such as the parody spoken by a wretched pa.s.senger leaving the steamboat--

"Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee-- I've been as ill as any three!"

Most, perhaps, resembling the "Unknown Man" of the United States already spoken of is Mr. Henry Walker, of Worcester, a gentleman of wit and artistic knowledge. It had for many years been his practice, whenever inspired with a good idea for a humorous drawing, to make a sketch of it in his alb.u.m; and thus he had collected a goodly number. At first he would send his sketches to Keene from time to time, receiving due pecuniary acknowledgment in return, but later on he left the whole book with Mark Lemon to draw from as he listed. Altogether, between the years 1867 and 1869, Keene made fifteen drawings from Mr. Walker's book, in some cases keeping close to the original designs, in others entirely altering them; but in that re-drawn by Mr. du Maurier from the sketch here reproduced, the original has been greatly departed from and improved.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "MUSICAL."

_Eminent Musician:_ "You play, I believe?"

_Swell Amateur:_ "Ya-as!"

_Eminent Musician:_ "The concertina?"

_Swell Amateur:_ "No--the comb!"

(_From the Sketch by Henry Walker._)]

It may be added that when _Punch_ artists re-draw and touch up an outsider's sketch, it is their usual practice not to sign their drawings, but to leave them without any indication of their authorship.

Apart from these willing contributors are those from whom the Editor, always on the look-out for new blood and fresh wit, invites contributions, having seen good work of theirs elsewhere.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

_Eminent Musician:_ "You play, I believe?"

_Swell Amateur:_ "Ya-as!"

_Eminent Musician:_ "Concertina?"

_Swell Amateur:_ "No--comb!"

(_Reduced from the Drawing by G. du Maurier in "Punch," 20th June, 1868._)]

It is often thus that _Punch's_ ranks are recruited, and that Mr. Lucy, Mr. Lehmann, Mr. Partridge, Mr. Phil May, and others have been drawn into the agreeable vortex of Whitefriars.

On at least one occasion, however, _Punch_ threw his kerchief in vain, for Mr. Bristed tells us, in his "Five Years at an English University,"

how the Epigram Club, of Oxford, was invited by the Editor to send its productions to _Punch_, but that "with true English reserve" the Society came to an agreement that all their transactions should remain in ma.n.u.script.

Beside the editor of a comic journal stalks a demon on either hand--the Belial of Plagiarism and the Beelzebub of Repet.i.tion. The public looks to him to be a wit and a humorist, with a knowledge of every witticism that ever was made. If he suffer an old joke to appear, some "constant reader" will surely find him out, and publish the fact abroad with malignant glee. There are few vices so deeply resented as the telling of an old joke; in an editor it is recognised as amounting to crime. But those who judge so severely have clearly never made a scientific study of the Joke. It is not sufficient to a.n.a.lyse a witticism and dissect it, in the cold spirit of that terrible book called "A Theory of Wit and Humour," till its humour flies, like the delicate bouquet from uncorked wine. The genealogy of jokes and twists of humour and of thought, of form and application, must be traced; and the student will find that in respect to a great proportion of our verbal jests of to-day they may be tracked up to the Middle Ages, back to Cla.s.sic times, and lost perchance in the Oriental recesses of a jocular past. It is not only a case of mere unconscious repet.i.tion or of brazen-faced plagiarism that is the principle involved; it has its root in the chameleon-like variety of aspect possible to a piece of fooling or a flash of wit. Jokes are as adaptable to times and circ.u.mstances, as the human race itself; and to identify them and pin them down on a specimen card, one must be another Pastor Aristaeus, alert and skilful, in pursuit of a lightning Proteus, infinitely various and hopelessly volatile.

But even that is not enough. Suppose the editor to be a scholar, deeply read in the Cla.s.sics and in Oriental writings, and endowed besides with a memory so prodigious as to be able to recognise every joke that turns up, he has still to guard against the contributor, on whom he is to a considerable extent dependent. The jest-purveyor may be honest when he unwittingly sends in a joke that has already gone the rounds, and has appeared perhaps in some country paper; or he may be deliberately dishonest; or he may simply be impatient at not seeing his contribution printed (perhaps, after all, it is only being kept back for an ill.u.s.tration to be drawn to accompany it), and may send it off elsewhere--antic.i.p.ating its publication in the paper of his original choice. Or a group of jokes may form the stock-in-trade of a newly accepted contributor, who, as the seaside landladies say, "must have brought them in his portmantel." And then there are recurring events that naturally give recurring birth to jokes they almost necessarily suggest. There is thus no standard, no system of identification for the thousand disguises in which a joke may lurk; and unconscious plagiarism and repet.i.tion deserve greater indulgence than that which they commonly receive. Mr. Burnand, probably the most prolific punster of the age, once wrote to a contributor, "For goodness' sake, send no more puns; _they have all been made_!" Indeed, _Punch_ has given us more "pre-historic peeps" of humour than he or Mr. Reed have any notion of.

"Bless you," said _Punch_ in his third number, "half the proverbs given to Solomon are mine!"

It was the fashion when _Punch_ was young for the comic papers to indulge in fierce recrimination and bitter charge and counter-charge of plagiarism. At that time it was thought that a satirical paper could be launched into public favour on its abuse of rivals--so that all the drowning journals caught at the straws of the others' reputations.

Nowadays they more practically apply for an injunction. _Punch_, in point of fact, has sought the protection of the law on more than one occasion. As early as 1844 the Vice-Chancellor's Court was the scene of the action of the Proprietors of _Punch_ _v._ Marshall and Another, when Mr. Beth.e.l.l, afterwards Lord Westbury, complained that the defendants had published a "_Punch's_ Steamboat Companion" (an excessively vulgar production) with intention to deceive the public. The judge brilliantly remarked, "Well, this certainly is an excuse for the Court taking punch in the morning. (_Great laughter._) I think you have made out a sufficient case for your injunction, Mr. Beth.e.l.l;" and the injunction was accordingly granted. In the following year (July, 1845) steps had to be taken to protect Mr. and Mrs. Caudle from the wholesale piracy to which they were subjected on every side. Mr. Beth.e.l.l again made a comic speech, directed primarily against the "Hereford Times" and the "Southport Visitor," in which the eighth and ninth lectures, ill.u.s.trations and all, had been coolly reproduced, without a word of acknowledgment. As before, the serio-comic pleader was successful, and obtained the desired injunctions. Again, in 1872 Mr. J. C. Hotten was stopped from publishing "The Story of the Life of Napoleon, told by the Popular Caricaturists of the Last 30 Years," inasmuch as the compiler had annexed from _Punch_ all he desired for the work. (Law Reports 8, Exchequer 7.) Sir Henry Hawkins was for _Punch_, and Serjeant Parry defended. The judge, Lord Bramwell, and jury, too, believed in the sacred rights of property, and a farthing damages was awarded in addition to the forty shillings paid into Court. So _Punch_ won his case and gained his costs--and Hotten went on publishing his book just as if nothing had occurred. Another case, against the "Ludgate Monthly," need only be mentioned for the sake of a rival's remark that the idea of _Punch_ having published a joke worth copying and going to law about was the greatest joke of all.

During his minority _Punch_ made and sustained many an open charge of plagiarism. They were the amenities of comic literature, of which, however, the public soon tired; and _Punch_, recognising that newspaper readers will not be troubled to take part or sides in an Eatanswill warfare that does not concern them, practically dropped a campaign with which the rest continued to persevere. But _Punch's_ silence was misunderstood. At any rate, it was presumed upon. When he could stand the audacity of the poachers no longer, he broke out, as recounted, in the summer of 1844, again in the following year, and once more in 1847, into a practical prosecution. Douglas Jerrold's caustic pen had full play in his all-round denunciation of the pilferers, and in _Punch's_ name he let fly at big game. "First and foremost," he declared, "the great juggler of Printing-House Square walks in like a sheriff and takes our comic effects;" and Newman's pencil added point to the comprehensiveness of the a.s.sault. Of numerous frauds, too, _Punch_ had to complain. "_Punch's_ Almanacs" of a vile and indecent sort, with which he had nothing in the world to do, had been issued to his detriment, and several papers were produced in close imitation of his own; but it was the circ.u.mstance of his stolen jokes that wounded him most of all, and caused him to lay his baton about him with l.u.s.ty vigour. The incriminated journals, thoroughly in their element, retorted with well-feigned indignation. Prominent among them "Joe Miller the Younger" had professed for him at first a particular friendship which, when contemptuously rejected, turned, like the love of a woman scorned, to hate. It might have been retorted that _Punch_, in the words of his prospectus, had frankly owned that he would give "asylum for superannuated Joe Millers," and even that Mr. Birket Foster had been actually employed in 1842 in "adapting" and anglicising Gavarni's drawings for _Punch's_ pages. Instead, "Joe Miller" defended the size of his page, which was, he said, like _Punch's_ own, copied from the "Athenaeum," and protested against any attempt at monopoly, pointing out that the sub-t.i.tle "Charivari" was itself a plagiarism. If anyone, he went on, could prove that he bought a _Punch_ in mistake for a "Joe Miller," he would willingly pay 5 for each copy so sold, in order "to compensate the _Punch_ purchaser for his disappointment."

From this moment until his death he never left _Punch_ alone, and constantly pointed out many of his delinquencies, plagiarisms apparently so gross and frequent that it can hardly be doubted that some intrigue was afoot. For example, on August 2nd, 1845, there appeared in both papers a cartoon almost identical, with the att.i.tudes reversed, ent.i.tled "The Political Pas de Quatre"--after the existing ballet at Her Majesty's Theatre, danced by Grisi, Taglioni, Grahn, and Cerito--representing four ballet-skirted _danseuses_ in a grotesque pose or tableau. Those in the _Punch_ cartoon (which, by the way, was suggested at the Table by Gilbert a Beckett, and was executed by Leech) were impersonated by Lord Brougham, Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, and Daniel O'Connell; while in the other appeared Lord Brougham, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, and Daniel O'Connell; but, unless carefully compared, the one might certainly be mistaken for the other.

The "Joe Miller" block was drawn by A. S. Henning, who had quitted the service of _Punch_ three years before; and it was claimed by his paper that the original drawing was exhibited in their window a week before _Punch's_ appeared. But abuse of _Punch_ for this and other curious coincidences did not save him, and "Joe Miller the Younger" soon announced his metamorphosis into "Mephystopheles," which proved an inferior and still shorter-lived concern.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARTOON ENt.i.tLED "THE POLITICAL PAS DE QUATRE."

(_Drawn by A. S. Henning. From "Joe Miller the Younger," 2nd August, 1845._)]

Then followed the bright and able little monthly "The Man in the Moon,"

from which _Punch_ had some of the hardest knocks he ever received, for on its Staff were to be found most of the clever men of the day (including Shirley Brooks) for whom _Punch_ could find no room. Month after month examples were given of _Punch's_ alleged pilfering, which really only proved how the minds of humorists run in grooves, especially when dealing with topical subjects; and a cutting representation of Punch as an old clo'man begging bits of comic ma.n.u.script, with the plaintive cry of "Any Jo', Jo'--any old Jo'?" scored a great success.

"The Man in the Moon" chaffed Bulwer Lytton on his initials, "E.L.B.L.B.L.B.," and Thackeray followed in _Punch_ with "E.L.B.L.B.L.B.B.L.L. B.B.B." And one of Leech's sketches of "The Rising Generation"--a small boy saying, "Aw--hairdresser, when you've finished my hair, just take off my beard, will you?" (Vol. XII., p. 104, 1847)--was also represented as a gross infringement. The t.i.tle of a poem, "What are the Wild Waves Saying?" (with the reply, "We'd better have stayed at home"), issued in "The Man in the Moon," was seen in _Punch_ soon after; while the superiority of our "New Street-Sweeping Machines" over those then in use abroad (by which, of course, cannon was intended) appeared in _Punch's_ pages a fortnight afterwards. It is an interesting fact that this self-same idea of the Street-Sweeping Machines gave Charles Keene the subject for his first _Punch_ drawing just three years later.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARTOON ENt.i.tLED "THE POLITICAL PAS DE QUATRE."

(_Drawn by John Leech. From "Punch," 2nd August,1845._)]

But, apart from charges of direct plagiarism, "The Man in the Moon"

certainly antic.i.p.ated _Punch_ in some of his well-known cuts. The "Patent Railway-Director Buffer," which consisted in the tying of a railway director on the front of the locomotive, was certainly the "Moon's" invention in February, 1847. In March, 1853, Leech showed the world in his cartoon "How to Ensure against Railway Accidents," by lashing a director across the engine _a la Mazeppa_; and as late as 1857 (p. 24, Vol. x.x.xIII.) Sir John Tenniel showed a "Patent Railway Safety Buffer" precisely similar to the original device. Again, in "The Man in the Moon" (January, 1848) the little joke--_Park-keeper (St. James's Park):_ "You can't come in!" _Boy:_ "Vot do yer mean? Ain't it us as keeps yer?"--is surely related to Sir John Tenniel's cut (p. 181, Vol. x.x.xII., 1857), in which a delightful Hodge gazes open-mouthed at the sentry at the Horse Guards, and replies, when asked what he's staring at, "Wy shouldn't I stare? I pays vor yer!"

The "Puppet Show," too, kept up a running fire at _Punch_, and delighted in retorting upon his charge of "picking and stealing" by printing their jokes and his alleged belated ones in parallel columns. Among the pictures, too, the "Puppet Show"-man was sometimes first, as in the sketch of the fat old lady who enters an omnibus and, sitting down promiscuously somewhere between two gentlemen, says, "Don't disturb yourselves; I'll shake down"--an idea textually repeated in _Punch_ in 1864 by Mr. Fred Barnard. The "Puppet Show" (1848) is also to be remembered for its joke of the choleric old gentleman, indignant at the delay of an omnibus in which he has taken his seat, crying impatiently to the conductor, "_Is_ this omnibus going on?" and being quietly answered, "No, sir; it's stopping perfectly still"--a joke ill.u.s.trated by Mr. du Maurier in _Punch_ for 1871 (p. 208, Vol. LXI.); and for the picture of the City clerk in pink, who, surprised by his employer, is accosted with the significant words, "So that's the costume you are going to your uncle's funeral in?" Charles Keene used a similar joke forty-one years later, only with time the festival had changed into that of an aunt. In the "Showman's" pages, too, first appeared the Frenchman who accounts for his sore-throat by explaining that "Yesterday morning I have wash my neck!" And the Duke of Wellington, in one of the cartoons (May, 1849), cries, "Cobden, spare that tree," just as Beaconsfield pleaded with Gladstone in Tenniel's picture of thirty years later.

Again, a man with a gorgeous black-eye enters a room, and when it is remarked on, expresses his surprise that anyone should have noticed it.

Six years later Leech repeated the idea in _Punch_. In his parting shot the "Showman" says, "The _Punch_ writers say they can't understand our jokes. We feel a.s.sured that the world will admit that they _take_ them fast enough"--itself a pun, _by_ the way, which _Punch_ had himself used in the postscript to his first volume: "Ours hasn't been a bed of roses--we've had our rivals and our troubles. We came as a great hint, and everybody took us."

In "The Arrow," a clever fortnightly rival which existed (it cannot be said to have "flourished") in the year 1864, _Punch_ was severely handled for "plagiarising" two of that journal's jokes two or three weeks after their original publication. One of these had reference to the "Fight with Fate," which was then being played at the Surrey Theatre; and as Mr. Banting and his famous cure (the stout undertaker lived but two doors from Leech, in The Terrace at Kensington, and struck up a pleasing friendship with the artist) were then the talk of the town, "The Arrow" suggested a revised version, "A Fight with Fat," with a disciple of Mr. Banting as the chief character. _Punch_ followed suit with the entire idea. Thereupon the rival editor, Henry S. Leigh--the lines are manifestly his--apostrophised Mr. Banting thus:--

"Take mental exertion--fight shy of diversion (Remember, the proverb says 'Laugh and grow fat'); You may venture securely on _Punch_, because surely There can't be much fear of your laughing at _that_."

Anyone who possesses the original "Joe Miller's Jest-book" will be able, if he cares to look, to recognise a goodly number of the most popular jokes of the day, even including a number of _Punch_ jokes. He will there find set forth in quaint terms the retort of the non-churchgoer that if he is not a pillar of the church, he is certainly one of the b.u.t.tresses, for he stops outside--used in due time by Charles Keene; he will find the repartee placed by _Punch_ in the drawing by the same artist (May 4th, 1872) in the mouth of an Irish beggar-woman who had been refused alms by a pug-nosed gentleman, "The Lord preserve your eyesight, for you've no nose to carry spectacles;" as well as that witticism usually ascribed to Curran when addressing a jury in the face of a dissenting judge, "He shakes his head, but _there's nothing in it_;" besides other favourite jokes of similar antiquity and renown.

Robert Seymour, too, in whose work, strangely enough, Leech is said to have found no humour, shines out posthumously now and again from _Punch's_ pages. "Move on--here's threepence," says a butler.

"Threepence?" retorts the street-flutist contemptuously, "d'you think I don't know the value of peace and quietness?" That was originally Seymour's, together with the drawing of an Englishman's notion of "A Day's Pleasure"--a labouring-man dragging a cartload of children up a steep hill on a hot Sunday--an idea which was afterwards the subject of a _Punch_ cartoon.

Two jokes which from their universality of treatment and the unfailing welcome accorded them at every reappearance might almost be considered cla.s.sic and generic jests, were greatly a.s.sisted in their popularity by Seymour's pencil, before _Punch_ obtained for them still wider recognition. The first represents a fat man, between whose legs the dog he is whistling to has taken his faithful stand. The old gentleman whistles and whistles again, anxiously exclaiming, "Wherever can that dog be?" After Seymour had done with it, Alfred Crowquill took it up; and in 1854 (p. 71 of the second volume) Sir John Tenniel introduced it into _Punch_ under the t.i.tle of "Where, and oh where!" It was not yet worn out, however, though it doubtless had seen its best days; and so the "Fliegende Blatter" revived it in 1894 as a typical example of recent German humour. For the other joke two men are required: the one an unmistakable ruffian, a grim and dirty robber, and the other a weak, nervous, timid youth of insignificant stature, the scene representing the entrance to a dark lane as night closes in. "This is a werry lonely spot, sir," says Seymour's footpad; "I wonder you ain't afeard of being robbed!"--and the young man's hair stands on end, and lifts his hat above his head. Leech in 1853 (p. 100, first volume) alters the dialogue for _Punch_ by introducing the pleasing possibility of a greater tragedy, by the footpad asking the youth to buy a razor; and Captain Howard the following spring makes the ruffian inquire if he may accompany his victim "to hear the nightingale." In "Diogenes" (December, 1854) the pristine simplicity is restored by the _naf_ request that he "may go a little way" with the young gentleman; and finally, in 1857, Leech once more resurrects and renovates it with his astonishing talent and freshness for use in the Almanac.

"Are you comin' home?" asks an indignant wife of her tipsy spouse, in Mr. Phil May's admirable drawing of February 16th, 1895. "I'll do ellythik you like in reasol, M'ria (_hic_). But I won't come 'ome." In the previous year, however, the following had appeared in "Fun":--"_Guid Wife._-'Come hame, Jock; ye'll be doing nae guid here.'

_Jock._--'Onything in reason, Jenny, ma woman, but hame I wall nae gang!'" On the other hand, in the "Echo," in March, 1895, appeared the following item of news:--"There is a curious report of a dialogue in a Chinese medical paper:--Doctor: 'H'm. You are run down, sir. You need an ocean voyage. What is your business?' Patient: 'Second mate of the _Anna Maria_, just in from Hong Kong.'" But more than a quarter of a century before, _Punch_ had treated his readers to the same.--"Doctor c.o.c.kshure (_advising a nervous patient_): 'My good sir, what _you_ want is a thorough alteration of climate; the only thing to cure you is a long sea-voyage.' Patient: 'That's rather inconvenient. You see, I'm only just home from a sea-voyage round the world!'"

It is amusing for one endowed with a taste for the history of humour, and gifted with the requisite memory, to follow some of these interesting revivals or re-births of comic ideas. Sir John Tenniel's vision of "The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street," in the "Pocket Book" of 1880, was a familiar conception to those who remembered "Cruikshank's Omnibus" of 1841; while Leech's sea-sick Frenchman, in p. 76 of the second volume for 1851, was almost the counterpart of "Glorious George's" important etching "A very good man, no doubt, but a Bad Sailor." Again, one of the most brilliant things that ever appeared in a comic journal was the short dialogue supposed to pa.s.s between an inquiring child and his philosophical though impatient parent:--

"What is mind?" "No matter."

"What is matter?" "Never mind."

"This well-known definition," says Dr. Furnivall, "according to the 'Academy,' was by Professor T. Hewitt Key; he sent it to _Punch_, and of course it was printed forthwith--I suppose, somewhere about the 'Sixties." But as a matter of fact this _mot_, which has also been attributed to Kenny, had already been published in "The Month" as early as August, 1851 (page 147, Vol. I.); and I may add that though I remember hearing Professor Key quote it more than once, I never heard him pretend to its authorship.

Then, the belated Foozle returning home drunk, and offering to fight his aggressive-looking hat-stand, appeared in H. J. Byron's "Comic News"

(October 3rd, 1863), as well as in _Punch_ by Keene's pencil (1875); and the humorous chess-problem in the latter paper, in which White had to mate in a certain number of moves, if Black interposed no serious obstacle, was an echo of "White to play and check if Black doesn't prevent him" in "The Man in the Moon" of 1847, and of "White to play and check if Black doesn't mate him before" in "The Month" of October, 1851.

Mr. Sambourne's famous "cartoon junior" of Mr. Gladstone in the character of the child in the soap advertis.e.m.e.nt, who "Won't be happy till he gets It" (_i.e._ the cake of Home Rule, just out of his reach), was found, to his subsequent annoyance and surprise, to have been antic.i.p.ated by a week or two by the now defunct "Funny Folks;" and Sir John Tenniel's cartoon representing Mr. Goschen, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, as a hen sitting on her eggs--an idea which was not new even to him, as he had used it in 1880, ten years before--appeared some days after a similar one had been issued in the "Pall Mall Budget;" though, of course, _Punch's_ picture had, in accordance with the mechanical routine of the office, been decided on a week before publication.