The History of "Punch" Part 27

This was written in hot indignation of generous youth (he was but twenty-two years old) at the French atrocity in Algiers, when, during the campaign, General Pelissier filled with straw the mouth of the caves of Dahra, wherein the opposing Arabs, with their women and children, had taken refuge, and set fire to the ma.s.s. This foul act of the future Duke of Malakoff caused a thrill of horror to pa.s.s through Europe, and the gentle author of "The Angel in the House" was moved by the scandal to the composition of his eight-stanza poem, of which Douglas Jerrold procured the insertion on the 16th of August (p. 73, Vol. IX.):--

"Rush the sparks in rapid fountains Up abroad into the sky!

From the bases of the mountains Leap the fork'd flames mountain-high!

The flames, like devils thirsting, Lick the wind, where crackling spars Wage h.e.l.lish warfare, worsting All the still, astonished stars!

Ply the furnace, fling the f.a.ggots!

Lo, the flames writhe, rush, and tear And a thousand writhe like maggots In among them--_Vive la guerre!_"

The poem follows the details of the ma.s.sacre, sickening but for the power the lines display. It continues:

"And now, to crown our glory, Get we trophies, to display As vouchers for our story, And mementoes of this day!

Once more, then, to the grottoes!

Gather each one all he can-- Blister'd blade with Arab mottoes, Spear-head, b.l.o.o.d.y yataghan.

Give room now to the raven And the dog, who scent rich fare; And let these words be graven On the rock-side--_Vive la guerre!_"

It was Mr. Patmore's sole contribution, his Muse never again being startled into any other poetical demonstration of the sort in _Punch's_ pages. The following year he became a.s.sistant-librarian at the British Museum.

"Jacob Omnium's" first appearance, curiously enough, was with a short article which, in the reprinted works of Thackeray, has been ascribed to the novelist. This was "A Plea for Plush" (July 20th, 1846), appropriately signed "[Greek: Philophlynkes]," dealing, it is true, with Jeames's nether garments on a hot day, but still with no internal evidence of style to warrant its ascription to the "Fat Contributor."

Henceforward his other few papers were entered to him in his own name of Matthew J. Higgins. He was a great friend of the _Punch_ Staff, particularly of Thackeray and Leech. Of him the former had written in the "Ballad of Policeman X"--

"His name is Jacob Homnium, Exquire; And if _I_'d committed crimes, Good Lord! I wouldn't ave that mann Attack me in the _Times_!----"

while Leech took his part against Lord John Russell on the occasion of Higgins's "Story of the Mhow Court Martial." He was shown as a tall, self-possessed gentleman, saying to the little fellow, who is sparring up to him--"Pooh, go and hit one of your own size." Higgins's height, indeed, was greater than that of either Thackeray or his friend Dean Hole--six feet eight; and when the three friends walked abroad, the sensation among the pa.s.sers-by was considerable. On Thackeray and Dean Hole measuring heights once in the house of a common friend, it was found that they were practically equal. "Ah, yes," exclaimed the Dean; "the cases are about the same, but one contains a poor dancing-master's fiddle, and the other a Stradivarius."

_Punch's_ sensation of the year was the fierce revenge taken by Tennyson in its pages on Bulwer Lytton. Bulwer, as is explained elsewhere, had been set up by _Punch_ as one of its pet b.u.t.ts from the very beginning; and when Tennyson's sledge-hammer onslaught was brought to them, so it is said, by a distinguished man of letters--a particular friend of both parties--they rejoiced exceedingly. Tennyson's broadside had not been unprovoked. Years before, in 1830, he had published, through Effingham Wilson, "Poems, chiefly Lyrical," which contained the poem "To a Darling Room," afterwards suppressed. Seizing on this, Lytton had re-echoed in his "New Timon: A Romance of London," the strictures which Christopher North has so severely, though good-naturedly, pa.s.sed upon it in "Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine" for May, 1832, and furthermore taunted the Laureate with the pension of 200 which had just been conferred upon him. The attack was just the sort to extort a violent reply.

"Not mine, not mine (O, muse forbid!) the boon Of borrowed notes, the mock-bird's modish tune, The jingling medley of purloined conceits Out-babying Wordsworth, and out-glittering Keats, Where all the airs of patchwork pastoral chime To drown the ears in Tennysonian rhyme.

"Let school-miss Alfred vent her chaste delight On darling rooms, so warm and bright;[43]

Chant 'I am weary' in infectious strain, And 'catch the blue-fly singing on the pane;'

Though praised by critics and adored by Blues, Though Peel with pudding plumb the puling muse; Though Theban taste the Saxon purse controls, And pensions Tennyson while starves a Knowles."

_Punch_ (p. 64, Vol. X.) had rushed in to the rescue with the clever retort:--

_"The New Timon" and Alfred Tennyson's Pension._

"You've seen a lordly mastiff's port, Bearing in calm, contemptuous sort The snarls of some o'erpetted pup Who grudges him his 'bit and sup:'

So stands the bard of Locksley Hall, While puny darts around him fall, Tipp'd with what TIMON takes for venom; He is the mastiff, TIM the Blenheim."

But Tennyson's was not by any means "the lordly mastiff's port." He was stung by the contemptuous reference to the pension, and proved the truth of Johnson's aphorism--

"Of all the griefs that hara.s.s the distrest, Sure the most bitter is the scornful jest"--

and he straightway wrote the ten verses that appeared under the t.i.tle of "The New Timon, and the Poets" (p. 103, Vol. X.), signing them "ALCIBIADES":--

"We know him, out of SHAKESPEARE'S art, And those fine curses which he spoke; The old TIMON, with his n.o.ble heart, That, strongly loathing, greatly broke.

So died the Old: here comes the New.

Regard him: a familiar face: I _thought_ we knew him: What, it's you, The padded man that wears the stays--

"What profits now to understand The merits of a spotless shirt-- A dapper boot--a little hand-- If half the little soul is dirt?

"A TIMON, you! Nay, nay, for shame: It looks too arrogant a jest-- The fierce old man--to take _his_ name, You bandbox. Off, and let him rest."

This crushing rejoinder was cordially welcomed by Thackeray and the rest of the Staff, who loved to castigate the fopperies of the conceited poetaster, and Lytton, it is said, was not a little astonished at the virility of "school-miss Alfred." But Tennyson's anger soon cooled; perhaps his conscience smote him; for the very next week he toned down the savagery of his first verses in an "Afterthought," in which he said:

"And _I_ too talk, and lose the touch I talk of. Surely, after all, The n.o.blest answer unto such Is kindly silence when they brawl."

The first set of verses are not to be found in the poet's collected poems; but the second are included, only "kindly silence" is replaced by "perfect stillness." After that Tennyson broke silence no more; and Lytton subsequently made what was put forward as an _amende honorable_, in a speech at Hertford (October, 1862), when he said that "we must comfort ourselves with the thought so exquisitely expressed by our Poet Laureate," and so forth. The quarrel between _Punch_ and Lytton faded, first into a truce, and then into friendship; and in 1851 we find several of the Staff playing "Not so Bad as we Seem"--written specially for them--at Devonshire House, before the Queen and the Prince Consort.

It may not inappropriately be mentioned that when Woolner's bust of Tennyson was presented to Trinity College and the authorities excluded it from the chapel and library on the ground that there was no precedent for paying so much honour to a living person, _Punch_, by the hand of Shirley Brooks, published one of the finest parodies extant of the Laureate's style, beginning with the line--

"I am not dead; of that I do repent."

In January, 1847, Horace Smith, the brother of James ---- they of the "Rejected Addresses"--contributed a column "Christmas Commercial Report;" and John Macgregor--"Rob Roy"--began his acknowledged series of papers and sketches with "Costumes for the Commons" and "Meeting of the Streets," the pecuniary results of which he devoted to police-court poor-boxes. He was hardly more than a lad at the time; but he was already a strong writer, and his references to the French Revolution have the intrinsic merit that they were written by one who was in Paris at the time when the "Citizen King" took flight to England.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HENRY SILVER.

(_From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry._)]

Mr. Henry Silver, ex-_Punch_ Staff officer, first appeared anonymously in _Punch_ in February, 1848, with an obituary notice, sent from Norwich, where he was articled to Sir William Foster, Bart., solicitor.

It was called "The Death of Mr. Wimbush's Elephant"--the Jumbo of the period, which had died at the age of eighty-four. He was then only twenty years of age, and, encouraged by this success, he began contributing trifles to "The Month." This publication was edited by Albert Smith in 1851; but although it was ill.u.s.trated by Leech, and was one of the most genuinely humorous works of its kind, it ran for only six months. When "The Month" came to a sudden stop, the articles remaining unpublished were turned over to Mark Lemon to see what use he could make of them. Some were by Mr. Silver, who was forthwith summoned from his anonymity by a line in _Punch_: "'Naughty Boy' has not sent his address." Mark Lemon was not kept waiting for the answer, and after paying him for several of his previous contributions (an attention highly appreciated) he at once installed the young man as a writer at the rate of one guinea per column. This, in due course, was raised to thirty shillings, and at that remained until 1881, when he received a weekly stipend of six guineas, which the Editor declared to be the maximum then payable to a _Punch_ writer. Some years previous to this, and soon after the death of Douglas Jerrold, Mr. Silver had been summoned to occupy the place at the Table left vacant by the great satirist. "My chief work," he writes in answer to my inquiry, "was in the decade ending with the 'Sixties, though it by no means ceased then.

I often filled four or five columns a week, and contributed '_Punch's_ History of Costume'" (ill.u.s.trated by Tenniel), "'Our Dramatic Correspondent,' 'Our Dramatic Spectator,' with a great amount of prose and verse, and sundry pages of the 'Essence of Parliament' when Shirley Brooks was away."

Perhaps Mr. Silver's greatest service to _Punch_, as elsewhere explained, was his introduction of Charles Keene, with whom he was very intimate for more than forty years. His friendship with Leech, a fellow-Carthusian, though of course greatly his senior, is another interesting pa.s.sage of his life, testified to by the many hunting sketches which, with a score or more of Keene's, decorated the billiard room of the fine old house in Kensington where Leech had died, and which Mr. Silver subsequently occupied until it was pulled down in 1893.

At Leech's death Mr. Silver was invited by Mark Lemon to apply to the Governors of Charterhouse for the gift of an admission into "Gown-boys"

for the son of the great draughtsman who had been so good a friend.

After many fruitless efforts he was at length successful, and received the welcome present from the hands of Lord John Russell--as is set forth elsewhere. On the death of Lemon, Mr. Silver severed his regular connection with _Punch_.

The advent of the brilliant journalist Mr. Sutherland Edwards was the other event of 1848. "I was engaged on _Punch_," he says, "at the recommendation of Gilbert a Beckett, who had thought well of satirical verses and poems contributed by me to a paper called 'Pasquin.' Douglas Jerrold, however, had been attacked rather severely in 'Pasquin;' not by me, but by James Hannay. Hannay and myself wrote the whole of 'Pasquin'

up to the time of my quitting that publication in order to write for _Punch_; and we considered ourselves jointly responsible for what appeared in its columns. Jerrold was away in the Channel Islands at the time of my being engaged on _Punch_; and on his return to London he showed himself annoyed (not unnaturally, perhaps) at the Editor, Mark Lemon, having engaged me. 'Two youths,' he was reported to have said, 'throw mud at me, and because one of them hits me in the eye you clasp him to your bosom.' Mark Lemon now asked me to give up writing for _Punch_, but to contribute as much as I liked to a magazine he was about to start with the a.s.sistance of the contributors to _Punch_. It was to have been called 'The Gallanty Show;' but it never came out. After I had contributed to _Punch_ for some weeks, I wrote a few articles for one of '_Punch's_ Pocket-Books;' then finding I was not wanted, I ceased to send in contributions, and my engagement came to an end.... I resumed my connection with _Punch_ when Mr. Burnand became Editor (thirty-two years afterwards), and still write for it from time to time, but only as an occasional contributor." In this year Richard Doyle made a slight literary appearance in the paper, with an article on "High Art and the Royal Academy."

Charles d.i.c.kens is supposed to have contributed to _Punch_ in the following year (1849) an article ent.i.tled "Dreadful Hardships Endured by the Shipwrecked Crew of the _London_, Chiefly for Want of Water"--a criticism on the scandalous condition of the suburban water supply. Mr.

F. G. Kitton has examined the original ma.n.u.script preserved by Mrs. Mark Lemon in her autograph alb.u.m. Mr. Hatton found it among Lemon's papers, bearing on the outside, in the Editor's handwriting, the inscription, "d.i.c.kens' only contribution to _Punch_!" But the alleged contribution is absolutely undiscoverable in the pages of the paper. The explanation is, in Mr. Kitten's words, that "about the time the ma.n.u.script was written, several pictorial allusions to foul water in suburban London appeared in _Punch_, which bear directly upon the subject of d.i.c.kens's protest, and it is surmised that the Editor, on the receipt of d.i.c.kens's contribution, considered that greater prominence would be given to the matter to which they referred by means of a cartoon than by a few lines of text. Hence we find the rebuke enforced by the pencil of the artist, instead of the mere literary lashing which d.i.c.kens intended to inflict upon that particular public grievance." It may safely be suggested that this was the only occasion on which, after his reputation was made, d.i.c.kens was ever "declined with thanks." This MS., it may be added, was sold at Sotheby's on the 9th of July, 1889, and was knocked down for 16.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLES d.i.c.kENS' SOLE (AND REJECTED) CONTRIBUTION.

(_By Permission of Mr. F. G. Kitton and Mr F. Sabin._)]

The curious fact remains that d.i.c.kens, who was the intimate friend of _Punch's_ Editor for the best part of their working lives, whose publishers were _Punch's_ proprietors as well as the publishers and part proprietors of the "Daily News," which d.i.c.kens edited, never contributed to _Punch_, nor was in any way identified with it, save, indeed, with its Dinner-Table. At that function he was at one time a frequent visitor, and also was he present when at the Prince of Wales's wedding a brilliant company a.s.sembled at the publishing office to see the _cortege_ go by. It was on that occasion that Sothern, one of the invited guests, arrived on the other side of the way, but, owing to the denseness of the crowd, was utterly unable to force his way across. His friends caught sight of him, and pointed to a policeman. Sothern took the hint. "Get me through," he whispered, "and I'll give you a sovereign." "Afraid I can't," said the man regretfully, "but I'll try."

A prodigious effort was made, but unsuccessfully, loud protests going up from the packed crowd. Sothern was at his wits' end; he could not bear the thought of losing such a dinner in such a company, but his invention did not fail him. "Look here," he said to the constable; "put your handcuffs on me, drag me through, and land me at that door, and I'll give you _two_ pounds." The man seized the idea and Sothern together; he slipped on the handcuffs, and with a loud "Make way, there!" dragged his prize through a ma.s.s of humanity that was only too happy to a.s.sist the law as far as might be; and after a few moments of crushing, pushing, and general rough handling, the dishevelled comedian was successfully landed at _Punch's_ publishing door. "You'll find the money in my waistcoat pocket," said Sothern. But he did not observe that, after the policeman had secured it, a stealthy addition was made to the money in the constabular palm by one of his _Punch_ friends; and only when the man disappeared in the crowd did Sothern realise that a timely bribe had left him to mix with his friends for the rest of the day and to eat his dinner with hands firmly secured in his manacles!

It is said that d.i.c.kens held aloof from _Punch_ on account of Thackeray's success in it. If so, the jealousy must have been all on d.i.c.kens' side; for Thackeray's well-known exclamation, when he hurried into the _Punch_ office and slapped down before Lemon the latest number of "Dombey and Son" containing Paul Dombey's death, "It's stupendous!

unsurpa.s.sed! There's no writing against such power as this!" was that of a generous and magnanimous man. Bryan Proctor ("Barry Cornwall"), writing to E. Fitzgerald in 1870, said, "I saw a good deal of Thackeray until his death.... I did not observe much jealousy in Thackeray towards d.i.c.kens, nor _vice versa_. They travelled pretty comfortably on their dusty road together. Each had a quant.i.ty of good-nature, and each could afford to be liberal to the other." The probable explanation is that d.i.c.kens simply did not care to interrupt his triumphant career of novelist in order to write occasional articles in a paper in which anonymity was the rule and rejection so painfully possible.

Once, however, by the hand of Leech, d.i.c.kens made an appearance in _Punch_, and, curiously enough, only once. This was in the drawing of the awful appearance of a "wopps" at a picnic (p. 76, Vol. XVII.), where the novelist appears as the handsome, but not very striking, youth attendant on the young lady who is overcome at the distressing situation. It must be admitted that the portrait is hardly recognisable.