The History of "Punch" Part 18

And so forth. Then, presenting the head of Jerrold on the body of an unusually wriggling serpent, which he gives forth as being from "portraits in possession of the family," he goes on to "say something"

of the man of savage sarcasm and "bilious bitings:"--

Now, with all his failings, let me record my opinion that it is to Jerrold's pen you are indebted, Punch, for the fame you once enjoyed; for, beyond any doubt, he is a fellow of infinite ability.

I have known him some years, and the last time but one I ever _saw_ him was in 1842, when, meeting me in St. James's Street, he thanked me for a handsome critique he believed me to have written on his comedy of "Bubbles of the Day," and on that occasion he said a better thing, Punch, than he has written in your pages. I said to him, "What, you are picking up character, I suppose?"--to which he replied, "There's plenty of it lost, in this neighbourhood." The last time I ever _heard_ from him was during the first visit of Duprez to Drury Lane Theatre, when I received the following note from him:--

Wednesday.

"MY DEAR SIR,

Will you enable me to hear your French nightingale--_do pray_,

Yours very truly, D. JERROLD."

--which is the vilest pun ever perpetrated at the expense of that eminent singer.... Unlike the other two of his party, he is a man of undoubted genius; but all who admit this, at the same time regret the frequent misdirection of his mind. He is one of the most ill-conditioned, spiteful, vindictive, and venomous writers in existence, and whatever honey _was_ in his composition, has long since turned to gall.... Can it be possible [he adds, after digging up and quoting some of Jerrold's feeblest verse] that it never occurs to a wholesale dealer in slander and ridicule that he is liable to be a.s.sailed by the very weapons he useth against others?

Then comes the portrait of Gilbert Abbott a Beckett, in wig and gown, but with devil's hoofs and tail. On him the attack is savage in the extreme, the details of his _early_ lack of financial success being published, and the whole dismissed with the comprehensive remark: "a very prolific person, this friend of yours, Punch!--editor of thirteen periodicals, and lessee of a theatre into the bargain, and all total failures!" After heavy-handed chaff he proceeds to abuse Mark Lemon, up and down, in similar terms; and with a view to show that others write verse as bad as his, reprints the weakest lines in his "Fridolin" and "The Rhine-boat." In the course of his very effective attack Bunn proceeds:--

In speaking of the Castle of Heidelberg, which _he_ says is on the Rhine, although everyone else says it is on the Neckar, he thus apostrophises it:--

"'Tis here the north wind loves to hold His dreary revels, loud and cold, The nettle's bloom's his daily fare, The TOAD _the guest most welcome there_!!"

Whether the last line _gives the reason why Thickhead visited Heidelberg does not appear_.

He then dots epigrams and so forth--all insults of various degrees of offensiveness--about the remaining pages, virtually suggesting, in Sheridan's words, that while _Punch's_ circulation has gone down hopelessly, "everything about him is a jest except his witticisms." The advertis.e.m.e.nts, too, are of a similarly satirical character, one of them showing, as an ill.u.s.tration of a "patent blacking," Mark Lemon (as pot-boy) looking at his own likeness in the polish of a Wellington boot which reflects a rearing donkey. The last cut represents a medicine bottle with a label inscribed "This dose to be repeated, should the patients require it," and the "Notice to Correspondents" declares that ample material is left for future use. Such further publication, however, was never called for. _Punch_ attempted no reply--inexplicably, one would think, for there must have been something left to say of Hot Cross Bunn. _Punch's_ rivals were not slow to twit him on his defeat, especially the "Puppet Show" and "The Man in the Moon," the latter of which, in a comic report of the proceedings at the "Licensing Committee for Poets," remarked, "Mr. Alfred Bunn was bitterly opposed on personal grounds by a person named Punch; but Mr. Bunn having intimated his wish to have a Word with Punch, the latter skulked out of court, and _was not heard of afterwards_."

"A Word with Punch"--which the _Punch_ men are said to have bought up as far as possible--had a considerable sale, and an "edition de luxe" was also issued, coloured. The engravings in it were made by Landells, a modest piece of vengeance which must, however, have been gratifying, so far as it went. It may be added that J. R. Adam, "the Cremorne Poet,"

took up the cudgels unasked in _Punch's_ behalf in a reply ent.i.tled "A Word with Bunn;" but this little octavo is as insignificant as its author, and attracted little notice.

Once again, in the early days of "Fun," _Punch_ came very near to being startled with another such infernal machine. Mr. Clement Scott tells me:--"We were offended with _Punch_ for some reason--it was in the Tom Taylor days--and we meditated, planned out, and nearly executed a second edition of 'A Word with Punch.' Tom Hood was furious. Sala was in our conspiracy. In fact, all the 'young lions' of 'Fun' were 'crazy mad.' We thought we could annihilate poor old _Punch_ with one blow. But we never did it--because, I think, although we were plucky, we were impecunious!

We were very proud, but, alas! our pockets were empty; so the whole company--Hood, Sala, Jeff Prowse, Harry Leigh, Brunton, Paul Gray, W. S.

Gilbert, W. B. Rands, Tom Robertson, Clement Scott and Co., had to knock under."

From Bunn's time may be dated the better taste and greater chivalry that have since distinguished _Punch_, even in his most rampant moods. He has always had his b.u.t.ts--from the soft-hearted and, at the time, unpardonably hirsute Colonel Sibthorpe, to Sir R. Temple and Mr.

McNeill, Mr. Newdegate, Mr. Roebuck, Edwin James, ex-Q.C. (who was disbarred for corruption and set up in New York, joining, as _Punch_ put it, the "bar sinister"), Madame Rachel (the "beautiful for ever"

enameller, who had not yet been convicted), Colonel North, Sir Francis Baring, c.o.x of Finsbury, Wiscount Williams of Lambeth, the Duke of Buccleuch, Lord Malmsbury, and a host of others. But his attacks rarely overstepped due limits; nor did _Punch_ ever find another aspiring Bunn among them. Amongst the inanimate objects which at various times _Punch_ made his mark were Trafalgar Square and its Fountains (or the "Squirts,"

as they were scornfully called), the National Gallery, Mud-Salad Market, Leicester Square, the Wellington Statue on the Wellington Arch, the Great Exhibition, John Bell's Guards' Memorial in Waterloo Place, and the British Museum Catalogue--all of which, so far as they represented Londoners' grievances, have ere now been reformed.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] _Mangez bien_, Jenkinsonian French for "fare well."

[19] Jenkinsonian French for "thread-bare subject."

[20] On the occasion of _Punch's_ Jubilee, July, 1891, the "Times"

remarked; 'May we be excused for noting the fact that he [Punch] has generally, in regard to public affairs, taken his cue from the "Times"?'

[21] "Fortnightly Review," December, 1886.

[22] His publisher.

[23] Edmund Yates believed that Bunn was Thackeray's model also for Mr.

Dolphin, the manager, in "Pendennis."

[24] "Dictionary of National Biography."

CHAPTER X.

_PUNCH_ ON THE WAR-PATH: COUNTER-ATTACK.

Satire and Libel--Mrs. Ramsbotham a.s.saulted--Attacks of "The Man in the Moon" and "The Puppet-Show"--H. S. Leigh's Banter--Malicious Wit--Mr. Pincott--_Punch's_ Purity gives Offence--His Slips of Fact--Quotation--And Dialect are Resented--His Drunkards not Appreciated by the U.K.A.--"_Punch_ is not as good as it was!"

Above the head of every editor the law of libel hangs like the sword of Damocles. It is at all times difficult for a newspaper of any sort to avoid the infringement of its provisions, vigilant though the editor may be. But in the case of a confessedly "satirical" journal the danger is enormously increased, for the margin between "fair comment" and flat libel shrinks strangely when the _raison d'etre_ of the criticism is pungency, and the object laughter.

That _Punch_ has steered clear of giving serious offence, save on occasions extremely few, must be counted to him for righteousness. It is true that, as a Lord Chancellor once declared, "_Punch_ is a chartered libertine." But for him to have won his "charter" at all proves him at least to have been worthy of it, the tolerance and indulgence of the nation having been in themselves a temptation. It is not so much that he has not hit hard; it is rather that he has. .h.i.t straight. Indeed, as we have seen, he has struck hastily in many directions; but, save in his years of indiscretion, he has scarcely ever been guilty of anything approaching scurrility. At a time when the "Satirist" was flinging its darts at the peculiarly vulnerable Duke of Brunswick, goading him into the writing of his pamphlets, and into that crushing retaliation whereby the paper was condemned in five thousand pounds damages, _Punch_ was perhaps the most moderate public censor and _arbiter elegantiarum_ amongst all those who used ridicule and irony as instruments of castigation; and indulgence has been the reward that he has reaped.

That Mr. George Jones and Mr. S. C. Hall dared not face the ultimate ordeal of a court of law must be held to justify _Punch's_ persistently caustic denunciations; while the case of Mr. Gent-Davis, then M.P. for Kennington, served chiefly to confirm the fact that "abstractions" and "imaginary personages" find their counterparts, in the opinions of some, in real life. In this case one of the Staff, who lived in the member's const.i.tuency, and had taken some interest in local politics, contributed a humorous paper to a series on which he was engaged, and it was published in _Punch(_November 13, 1886). In this essay a type of suburban lady-politician--a "study from Mr. Punch's Studio"--was satirised under the name of "Mrs. Gore-Jenkins." Forthwith a summons against the Editor at the Mansion House police court was the result, for the Member accepted the description as directed against his wife; but the explanation that the article was intended as a mere political satire on an "imaginary person" was held to be satisfactory, and the incident was finally closed.

On another occasion an unflattering poem on a "popular singer" was ill.u.s.trated, quite innocently by the artist, who probably never saw the verses, with what appeared to be a portrait of Mr. Isidore de Lara; but no sooner was the matter pointed out than any intention to offend the musician was immediately disclaimed by the paper. At another time one of _Punch's_ artists showed the little band of Socialists (Messrs.

Champion, Hyndman, and others), who were then before the law on a political charge, as subjects of _Punch's_ traditional "summary justice." But although _Punch_ was quickly brought to book, his victims did not take the matter very seriously. Mr. John Burns, indeed, confesses as much in a communication upon the subject. "On one occasion," he tells me, "_Punch_ suspended me, pictorially of course, from a gallows tree. This I, of course, regarded as Mr. Punch's humorous desire to see me in an elevated position. On other occasions he has been equally kind but less appropriate in his method of praise or censure."

_Punch_ has altogether had some two-score actions commenced, or threatened, against it, by business firms or aggrieved persons or, more often still, by newspapers on the ground of libel and kindred wrongdoing. But then, consider how many there are in the world, and in England especially, who will not see a joke!

A subject upon which _Punch_ has for some years been persistently twitted is the personality of "Mrs. Ramsbotham"--Thackeray's Mrs. Julia Dorothea Ramsbottom of "The Sn.o.b" (No. 7, May, 1829)--a homely sort of Mrs. Malaprop, whose constant misquotations and misapplication of words of somewhat similar sound to those she intends to use give constant amus.e.m.e.nt to one section of _Punch's_ readers, and irritation quite as constant to the other. She is the lady who suffers from a "torpedo liver;" who complains of being "a mere siphon in her own house;" who discharges her gardener because his answers to her questions are so "amphibious;" and who does not understand how there can be "illegal distress" in a free country where people may be as unhappy as they like.

There have, of course, been many originals to this unconscious humorist--and are still. One lady, it has been declared, is not unknown in society, who has held forth to a surprised circle of her acquaintances on the operation of "trigonometry" (tracheotomy)--who, when she imparted a bit of scandal would add, "but that, you know, as the lawyers say, is _inter alias_"--and who wished that people would always say what they meant, and not talk paregorically (metaphorically).

"Mrs. Ramsbotham" is obviously descended, through Mrs. Malaprop, from Dogberry, and has many a time been "condemned to everlasting redemption," at least by the _genus irritabile_. One critic cast his protest in the form of a poetic appeal to _Punch_, and published it in an Oxford journal:--

"Of Mrs. Ram I wish to speak, You dear old London Charivari; Don't ram her down our throats each week.

Of sameness do be chary. Vary."

A broader and severer hint was offered by the lively Poet of the London "Globe":--

_To Mrs. Ramsbotham._

A few there be who still delight, O Mrs. R., in _Punch's_ page, Who like a joke to wear the blight Of age.

Who, if they find a grain of wheat, Are well content to pa.s.s the chaff, And, every week, at least complete One laugh.

But even they who swallow pun Unmurm'ring, now and then declare, Henceforward they must seek their fun Elsewhere.

It is when you have multiplied Your misconceptions, Mrs. Ram., That patience, sorely thus o'er-tried, Says "----."

My task is therefore plain: to hint That you, true woman to the core, Are, when you interfere with print, A bore.

I would not venture to suggest The line of conduct to pursue; I state a fact ... and leave the rest To you.