Chapter III: Part I: The Two Nations (2)

FOOTMAN: "Matter enuff! Here's the marchioness bin and giv me notice because I don't match Joseph, an' I must go, unless I can get my fat down in a week!"]

The relations of masters, mistresses and servants is a never ending theme in the pages of _Punch_. His attitude was governed by the broad principles that the labourer was worthy of his hire, and that those who offered inadequate wages must expect neither character nor efficiency. But he draws a clear distinction between the domestic slave and the flunkey, holding that snobbery in employers was the chief cause of its prevalence amongst highly paid servants. _Punch_ was the champion of the "slavey"--immortalized in Dickens's "Marchioness"--even of the much-maligned charwoman; the relentless critic of Jeames, his plush and powder and calves. As early as 1847 we find him supporting a reversal of the old régime: the mistress must be approved by the servant, and furnish a satisfactory character. The plea is not surprising, when advertisements for a kitchen-maid, "wages £3 a year," appeared in a fashionable paper and earned _Punch's_ satire. Contrariwise, he never spares the arrogance of "servantgalism" the assumption of "my lady the housemaid." In this spirit _Punch_ makes game of a school for servants at Bristol, where lessons on the pianoforte were given, but if servant girls and nurses were neglectful of their duties and their infant charges, mistresses were equally to blame for their indolence and disregard of parental responsibilities. But the keenest arrows in _Punch's_ quiver were reserved for "Jeames." He quotes from the columns of _The Times_ the advertisements of a footman, "tall, handsome, with broad shoulders and extensive calves," who "prefers Belgravia or the North Side of the Park," while a little later on another of this type insists on "six months a year in town, and if in an unfashionable neighbourhood, five guineas extra salary." If I refrain from quoting from Thackeray's constant variations on this theme in the pages of _Punch_, it is only because they are so familiar to readers of his collected works. The etiquette of flunkeydom was peculiar. These gorgeous and pampered menials had their grievances; they were "expected to sit in church in a position from which the clergyman could neither be seen nor heard," as _Punch_ put it in 1851. Liveried servants were not allowed in Rawstorne Street Chapel, Brompton, in 1846, and a protest was made in the Press that at St. George's, Hanover Square, "the real aristocracy of the land are separated from their liveried domestics by a mere oak panelling." But in this war on flunkeyism "Jeames" was not the real enemy; it was rather the genius of snobbery which _Punch_ impersonated in "Jenkins" of the _Morning Post_ (or _Morning Plush_, as he called it), whose fulsome and lyrical rhapsodies are held up to ridicule in number after number. In this context two extracts may suffice, from an account of the galaxy of rank and fashion at the Opera which appeared in the _Morning Post_:

It is, above all, necessary that the middle classes and the poor
should see and feel that if the aristocracy has the monopoly of
titles and the lion's share of the dignities and offices of the
State, instead of hoarding, it nobly expends its revenues in those
luxuries which emanate from the ingenuity and labour of the
industrious.

And again--the italics and capitals are _Punch's_:--

Ever since the Italian lyrical drama crossed the Alps in the suites
of the tasteful Medicis, its vogue has daily increased, it has
become a ruling passion--it is the quintessence of all civilized
pleasures; and wherever its principal virtuosi hoist their
standard, there for the time is the CAPITAL OF EUROPE, where the
most illustrious, noble, elegant and tasteful members of society
assemble.

These _ornaments of society_ are in general absent at the too early
opening of Her Majesty's Theatre; but on Saturday, as we surveyed
the house previous to the overture, most of those who _constitute
society_ in England--those whom we _respect, esteem or
love_--rapidly filled the house.

Every seat in every part of it was occupied, and if _those
objectionable spectators were there_--those gentlemen of ambiguous
gentility, the fashionable couriers, valets, _tailors_ and
_shoemakers_, who obtain admission to the pit on the strength of
knowing the measure of some actor or actress's foot--_they and
their frowsy dames_ were so nailed _to their benches as not to
offend the eye_.

These effusions, and others equally unbridled in their assertion of the divinity of kings and coronets, prompted _Punch_ to adorn "Jenkins" with the _alias_ of Lickspittleoff. It was not a nice name, but _Punch_ might have retorted _tâchez de ne pas le mériter_.

[Sidenote: _The Underpaid Governess_]

From servants to governesses the transition in those days was only too easy. _Punch's_ study of the advertisements in this branch of the "slave market" began early, and let us hope to good purpose, though as I write the comparative rates of remuneration for cooks and teachers are still open to criticism. In the autumn of 1843, commenting on an advertisement in _The Times_, in which "S. S." offered a salary of £2 a month to "a morning daily governess of ladylike manners for three or four young female pupils, capable of imparting a sound English education, with French, music and singing, dancing and drawing, unassisted by masters," _Punch_ observes:--

How very much would it surprise the race of S.S.'s; what a look of
offended virtue would they put on were somebody to exclaim to them,
"It is such as you who help to fill our streets, and throng the
saloons of our theatres; it is such as you who make the Magdalen
indispensable." We have recently read the statistics of insanity,
and have found governesses to be in a frightful disproportion to
other educated classes. Can this be wondered at when we read such
offers as those of S.S.?

The terms of £2 a month were, however, liberal compared with those offered by other employers. An assistant in a ladies' school was expected to teach English, French and music for £1 a quarter, while not at all infrequently the offer of board and lodging was regarded as an excuse for dispensing with a salary altogether. In dealing with the problem of these "Sisters of Misery," _Punch_ waxes ironical on the results of their improvidence:--

If in the course of ten years, with a salary of, let us say, twenty
pounds a year, out of which she has only to buy clothes fit to keep
company with the children, the governess has not saved a
sufficiency for her declining age, it is but too painful to know
that she must have been a very profuse, improvident person. And
yet, I fear me, there are lamentable instances of such
indiscretion. I myself, at this moment, know a spendthrift creature
who, as I have heard, in her prime--that is, for the ten
years--lived in one family. Two of her pupils are now countesses.
Well, she had saved next to nothing, and when discharged she sank
lower and lower as a daily governess, and at length absolutely
taught French, Italian, and the harp to the daughters of small
tradesmen at eighteenpence a lesson. In time she, of course, got
too old for this. She now lives somewhere at Camberwell, and though
sand-blind, keeps a sixpenny school for little boys and girls of
the lower orders. With this, and the profits on her cakes, she
continues to eke out a miserable existence--a sad example, if they
would only be warned, to improvident governesses.

[Sidenote: _A Real Dotheboys Hall_]

_Punch's_ attentive study of the curiosities of literature in advertisements relating to education continued for many years. A batch of them extracted from _The Times_ appears in the issue of August 14, 1853, and pillories the meanness of ladies who wished to secure governesses without salaries, or, as an alternative, to turn their houses into boarding schools and get assistants without paying for them. Already, some three weeks earlier, _Punch_ had quoted from _The Times_ the advertisement of an academy for young gentlemen near Richmond, in Yorkshire, where youths were "boarded, furnished with books, and instructed in whatever their future prospects might require for twenty and twenty-two guineas a year. No vacations unless desired." On this "Dotheboys Hall" in real life _Punch_ observes that while such a price for a year's food for mind and body is a miracle of cheapness, "the age of miracles has passed, and especially--after the publication of _Nicholas Nickleby_--of such miracles as this." Yet an advertisement of a school in Essex on almost precisely similar lines survived for at least forty years after _Punch's_ protest, as the present writer can testify. Nor were the claims of the underpaid official forgotten. In his "Penny Post Medal" _Punch_ endeavoured to illustrate the triumph of Rowland Hill, and waxed lyrical over his achievement, indignant over his treatment:--

Beautiful, much more beautiful, to the eye of the philosopher
_Punch_, is the red coat of the Postman with his bundle of penny
missives than the scarlet coat of the Life Guardsman! For the
Postman is the soldier of peace--the humanizing, benevolent
distributor of records of hopes, affections, tenderest
associations. He is the philanthropic go-between--the cheap and
constant communicant betwixt man and man.

[Sidenote: _Rowland Hill's Reward_]

In the Penny Post Medal _Punch_ has endeavoured to show the triumph
of Rowland Hill--no Greek or Roman triumph e'er so great--carried
in well-earned glory into the Post-office, Saint Martin's-le-Grand.
If the beholder have any imagination, he will hear huzzaing
shouts--he will hear all the street-door knockers of the kingdom
for that moment instinct with joyous life, loudly knock, knock,
knocking in thundering accord. Such is the triumph of Rowland Hill.

Turn we to the Obverse. It shows an old story; old as the
ingratitude of man--old as the Old Serpent. Sir Robert Peel, the
Tory Minister, no sooner gets into place than, in reward for the
services of Mr. Rowland Hill, he turns him from the Post Office!
or as it is allegorically shown, he, as Britannia, presents him
with--the sack.

After this, a subscription is set afoot to which Sir Robert, with
Magdalen penitence, subscribes ten pounds! Ten Pounds! It must be
owned a very small plaister to heal so cruel a cut!

But these beneficent "red-coated genii" were "cruelly ill-paid" for long and arduous labour. "His walk in life is frequently such a walk that it is a wonder he has a leg to stand upon; for he travels some twenty or thirty miles a day, to the equal wear and tear of body and sole. For this his salary is a guinea a week." Accordingly, when in 1848 Post Office robberies were frequent, _Punch_, without excusing theft, regarded it as the natural result of this miserable pittance. Under-payment has always been a great incentive to dishonesty, and in 1848 we have _Punch's_ assurance that the postmen were the worst paid of all Government employees.

The long fight for early closing, for the Saturday half-holiday, and for reasonable Sunday recreation, found unflinching support in _Punch_ from his earliest years. He did not, it is true, profess a burning sympathy with the bank clerks in 1842 when they were agitating for a closure at 4 instead of 5 p.m., but he was wholeheartedly on the side of the shop assistants, especially in the linendrapers' and milliners' establishments. One of his earliest incursions into this controversy took the form of a report of an imaginary meeting of duchesses at Almack's, at which resolutions were passed deprecating, in a contrite spirit, the overworking of milliners' assistants, and establishing an association to persuade dressmakers to reduce the hours of work to eight a day, abolish Sunday work, afford reasonable time to execute orders, provide medical advice and change of air for the sick, and start a fund to carry out these aims (May 27, 1843). These aims have long been realized in all well-conducted shops, but they were something like counsels of perfection in the year of "The Song of the Shirt." But _Punch's_ irony at the expense of inconsiderate shoppers in "Beauty and Business _versus_ Early Shops," and "Directions to Ladies for Shopping," not only tilts at femininity's little ways, but shows that human nature has not materially changed in the last seventy-five years. _Punch_ was moved by the hardships of dressmakers and shop-girls, whom he compared to convicts: "hard labour" was no worse than theirs. He frankly advocated the boycotting of a money-grubbing hosier in Cheapside, who kept his shop open until nine or ten o'clock, though all the other hosiers in that thoroughfare had for two years closed theirs at eight--for that was as far as early closing had reached in the 'fifties. But _Punch_ was always a moderate reformer, very far from being a revolutionary, and he condemned with great asperity an attempt to launch an experiment mildly foreshadowing modern syndicalism:--

[Sidenote: _Syndicalism in the 'Forties_]

Notwithstanding our desire to aid the assistant drapers in any
reasonable movement, we cannot encourage them in the foolery which,
according to a prospectus of the Metropolitan Assistant Drapers'
Company, they seem to contemplate. They are coolly asking the
public for £150,000 in 15,000 shares of ten pounds each, to start a
model establishment, in which the assistants shall be their own
masters, choose their own work, take their own time, and seize
"every opportunity for indulging in all healthy pursuits and
reasonable enjoyments." The prospectus then goes on to state, that
the assistants will become "free and happy, as they should be." If
a linendraper's shop is to be turned into a state of "freedom and
happiness" all day long, it may suit the shop-boys well enough, but
it will not be quite so agreeable to the customers.

Holding it to be his duty "to smash humbug of every description," _Punch_, after an examination of the financial proposals of the "free and happy" linendrapers, pronounces them guilty of very gross humbug in putting forward their prospectus. The control of industry by the workers formed no part of his schemes for bettering their condition.

In the period under review Sunday was, speaking broadly, the only holiday of the working classes. _Punch's_ views on their recreations, therefore, were necessarily governed by his views on Sunday observance, Sunday trading and Sabbatarianism generally. Let it be noted at the outset that he was no advocate of the Continental Sunday: he was all for keeping Sunday quiet, even dull. But against any legal or other restrictions, which thwarted poor people's innocent enjoyment and recreation, he ranged himself as an uncompromising adversary. As we have seen, he indignantly resented the fining of boys for playing cricket, or children for selling sweets, on Sunday. He supported the opening of museums and picture galleries on Sundays as early as August, 1842, and, in recording the defeat of the motion in the Commons, ends his comments on "The Pharisees' Sunday" with the remark: "The Museum and the National Gallery are, for the present, closed on Sundays; so for a time there are left for the people--the Eagle Tavern and the Red House at Battersea." _Punch_ vehemently assailed the snobbery which sought to exclude working men and poor children from the parks. He welcomed the opening of the Zoological Gardens to the public in 1848 at a low charge, without a "Fellow's order," _plus_ a shilling. But of all the movements which inspired him with hope for the future, none offered brighter prospects than the great Exhibition of 1851. It was Douglas Jerrold who coined the name of the "Crystal Palace." _Punch_ had some misgivings as to the encroachment of the buildings on public amenities and rights, and warmly espoused the cause of Ann Hicks, whose family for 118 years had held possession of an apple stall in Hyde Park. Her grandfather, it was alleged, had saved George II from drowning in the Serpentine! The stall was removed and Ann Hicks allowed five shillings a week for one year, but, largely owing to _Punch's_ intervention, was assisted to emigrate to Australia. And _Punch_ was indignant at the suggested exclusion of the public on the opening day, May 1, 1851, for fear of annoying the Royal family. But these misgivings were happily removed, and the opening of the Exhibition marked a turning point in the long campaign of criticism, frank to the verge of discourtesy and indecorum, sometimes justified, but often malicious, which _Punch_ had conducted against the Court in general and the Prince Consort in particular. He made the _amende_ handsomely in his "own report of the opening of the great Exhibition":--

At length a cheer without, and a flourish of trumpets within,
announce the arrival of the Queen--and the Prince, who, by the idea
of this Exhibition, has given to Royal Consortship a new glory, or,
rather, has rendered for ever illustrious, in his own case, a
position too often vibrating between the mischievous and the
insignificant. Prince Albert has done a great service to humanity,
and earned imperishable fame for himself by an idea, the greatness
of which, instead of becoming less, will appear still greater as it
recedes from us.... Beyond comparison, the most gratifying incident
of the day was the promenade of the Queen and Prince, holding by
the hand their two eldest children, through the whole of the lower
range of the building. It was a magnificent lesson for
foreigners--and especially for the Prussian princes, who cannot
stir abroad without an armed escort--to see how securely and
confidently a young female Sovereign and her family could walk in
the closest possible contact, near enough to be touched by almost
everyone, with five-and-twenty thousand people, selected from no
class, and requiring only the sum of forty-two shillings as a
qualification for the nearest proximity with royalty. Here was a
splendid example of that real freedom on the one hand, and perfect
security on the other, which are the result of our constitutional
monarchy, and which all the despotism and republicanism of the
world cannot obtain elsewhere, let them go on as long as they may,
executing each other in the name of order, or cutting each other's
throats in the name of liberty.

The only blot, as we thought, upon the whole proceedings were the
unnatural and crab-like movements of one of our wealthiest peers,
the Marquess of Westminster, and his fellow-official, the Lord
Chamberlain, whose part in the pageant consisted of the difficult,
but not very dignified, feat of walking backwards during the
progress of the procession. We hope the time is not far distant
when, among the other sensible arrangements of the present reign, a
wealthy nobleman may be released from the humiliation of having to
perform before the Sovereign and the public a series of awkward
evolutions, which not all the skill of the posture-master can
redeem from the absurdity attaching to the contortions of the
mountebank.

_Punch_ could not resist having a dig at the aristocrat courtiers, but he had nothing but praise for the Queen and the Prince Consort, and especially for their practice of visiting the Exhibition on the "shilling days." As he put it in the lines "Victoria Felix",:--

Heaven's duteous sunshine waits upon her going,
And with it blends a sunshine brighter still--
The loyal love of a great people, knowing
That building up is better than o'erthrowing;
That freedom lies in taming of self-will.

_Punch's_ loyalty to the Sovereign, however, did not cause him to forget the workers. He suggests to Prince Albert that a dinner should be given to the workmen who erected the building. As for Paxton, the architect, _Punch_ agreed with the _Examiner_ that a knighthood was not a sufficient reward for his services, and suggested that he should be given a share of the profits. But _Punch_ was from the first concerned with the future of the building; with the possibilities of transforming it into a permanent People's Palace. So when Paxton asked "What is to become of the Crystal Palace?" and answered his own question by saying "Let the Crystal Palace become a winter park under glass," with rare flowers and plants and a colossal aviary, _Punch_ voted the suggestion of the Crystal Magician "delightful and practicable," for, as he notes, on the testimony of "the princely Devonshire, Mr. Paxton never failed in anything he undertook." Nay, _Punch_ went so far as to depict, in a cartoon, John Bull contemplating the marvels of the winter garden. The scheme lapsed, and in the spring of 1852 _Punch_ was indignant at the imminent sale of the Crystal Palace, and lavish of gibes at the "nobs and snobs" who despised the masses:--

THE PEOPLE AND THEIR PALACE

The People! I weally am sick of the wawd:
The People is ugly, unpleasant, absawd;
Wha-evaw they go, it is always the case,
They are shaw to destwoy all the chawm of the place.

They are all vewy well in their own pwopa spheeaw,
A long distance off; but I don't like them neeaw;
The slams is the place faw a popula show;
Don't encouwage the People to spoil Wotten Wow.

It is odd that the Duke of Awgyll could pasue
So eccentric a cawse, and Lad Shaftesbuwy too,
As to twy and pwesawve the Glass House on its site,
Faw no weason on awth but the People's delight.

The Queen, in an excellent parody of "The May Queen," is credited with the desire to keep up the Palace; _Punch_ threw all his weight on the side of Paxton in his efforts to defeat the obstructives, and when, in June, 1852, the move to Sydenham was finally decided on, he prophesied a great future for that favoured suburb. The "christening" took place in August, and furnished _Punch_ with an opportunity for answering the reproach that "the English don't know how to amuse themselves":--

The great cause of Peace had every fitting honour paid to it on
Thursday last at Sydenham. In its train followed some of the
greatest celebrities of the day, all children of the people, who
had come to assist at the christening of their new Palace. The Arts
and Sciences, of course, were there, and gave the cause their
blessing, until such time when they could give it something, if not
more pure, at least more tangible. Literature, too, was there, and
promised to devote its best pen to the service of the new
principle, and Trade and Commerce had already sent off their ships
to collect treasure to pour into the lap of their beautiful, but
too long neglected child, as soon as the Palace was in a fit state
to receive them. And the Poor advanced, and, opening their hearts,
gave the cause their best wishes--and these were deposited with the
coins of the realm, and are to form the foundation of the new
building. Never was Palace begun upon so strong a foundation
before!

If only half the promises are fulfilled that were made at its
christening, this Palace of the People will be the grandest palace
ever constructed. And, in truth, it should be so! The people have
built palaces sufficiently for others; it is but proper now they
built one for themselves.

And when it is built it will be time enough to inquire if
Englishmen know how to amuse themselves. They have had hitherto so
few opportunities of learning, that it is ungracious to ask at
present. In the meantime we wish them every enjoyment in their new
playground at Sydenham. It will be the most beautiful playground in
the world.

[Sidenote: _Sabbatarian Solicitude_]

_Punch's_ generous anticipations, in part illusory, were mingled
with wrath against militant Sabbatarians, over-zealous for the
souls of their fellow-creatures. A deputation, headed by the
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of London and Winchester, and
the Earl of Shaftesbury, lost no time in waiting on Lord Derby, in
order to urge upon the Prime Minister "the expediency of adopting
measures to prevent the Crystal Palace, or its grounds, being
opened to the public on Sundays." _Punch_ is bitterly sarcastic
against this condescending solicitude on the part of peers and
prelates for the spiritual welfare of the vulgar cockneys, snips,
snobs, mechanics, shopmen, and their womenkind; creatures that not
only consume tea and shrimps, periwinkles, and ginger-beer, but
also smoke pipes and penny Pickwicks! The people must feel
flattered that they are thus, sympathized with by the superior
classes; only perhaps they would rather the sympathy were shown
otherwise than by excluding them from pure air and enjoyment--in
great tenderness for their immortal part, but with small
consideration for their perishable lungs.

But the attack was not solely based on religious grounds. The _Morning Herald_ scented revolution in the proposal, and _Punch_ was moved to address an ironical warning to the Home Secretary:--

A word in your ear, Mr. Walpole. There is treason, hydra-headed
treason hatching. Now, we are not joking. Were we inclined to be
droll, we would not cast our jokes before certain Home Secretaries.
Hush! This way. In a corner, if you please.

Do you ever see the _Morning Herald_? We thought so. Somehow, you
look as if you did. Still, we have brought a copy. Here it is. A
leader on the treasonous atrocities contemplated by the traitorous
projectors of the Crystal Palace in Penge Park! We will read
you--when we can get a good mouthful of breath--a few of the lines:
the dreadful lines. You see, the Palace is to be open on Sundays
after one o'clock. In that fact the _Herald_ sees revolution,
anarchy, and perhaps--a future republic with John Cromwell Bright
in Buckingham Palace! Listen:

"'Go to mass on the Sabbath morning' is the Church of Rome's
command; 'then go to the park, the ball, or the theatre.' That is
the Sabbath of Paris, of Munich, of Vienna, and, we are sorry to
say, of Berlin also. And, as _one natural result_, a single month,
in 1848, saw the Sovereigns of Paris, of Vienna, of Munich, and of
Berlin _fugitives before their rebellious subjects_. The people of
England remained untouched by this sudden madness; they were loyal
to their Queen, _because_ they feared their God!"

You will perceive, Right Honourable Sir, that had the Palace
existed in Penge Park in 1848, the British Throne would have gone
to bits like a smashed decanter. The Queen has only continued to
reign _because_ there has been no People's Palace!

We see, Sir, you are moved, but let us go on.

"The Crystal Palace will be the main engine for introducing the
Continental Sabbath among us. The people may go to church, it will
be said, and _then_ they may go down to Sydenham and enjoy a walk
in the Crystal Palace, and what harm can _that_ do? Just all the
harm in the world. Open and naked profaneness would shock most
persons, but this mixture of religion and dissipation will ruin
myriads!"

_Punch_, on the contrary, believed that, in spite of the fulminations of Exeter Hall, the Crystal Palace, with its art treasures, and the setting provided by the wonder-working Paxton, would become the People's Sunday School, and a monster extinguisher of gin palaces. So we find him printing a mock protest from publicans against the desecration of the Sabbath by the proposed opening of the Crystal Palace after morning service.

_Punch's_ views on temperance were eminently moderate. It is true that in one of his early numbers he had depicted, in the cartoons of "The Gin Drop" and "The Water Drop," the horrors of drunkenness in the vein of Cruickshank; true also that he expressed admiration for the crusade of Father Mathew. He condemned excess, but he was no enemy of conviviality. Indeed he was up in arms against those who sought to "rob a poor man of his beer." In his view the best antidotes to intemperance were to be found in recreation and education, and in using Sunday to promote those ends. He severely criticised in the autumn of 1845 the provisions of the new Beer Bill, which prevented excursionists from obtaining needful refreshment at an inn, not only at unreasonable, but at reasonable hours, and protested against the closing of these hospitable portals against them on Sunday, "and perhaps very soon on every other day, if gentlemen, who can go to clubs, as well as to church, being blest with affluence, and, therefore, belonging to the better classes, continue to legislate in their present spirit for himself (the excursionist) and the rest of the worse--that is the worse off."

[Sidenote: _Punch at the Palace_]

Meanwhile the Crystal Palace had been opened by the Queen on Saturday, June 10, 1854. _Punch_ describes the imaginary visit which he paid a few days earlier to inspect the building and, by special command of the Queen, to report as to its probable readiness for her reception on the opening day. After being conducted through the building by Sir Joseph Paxton, he explained that it was not his intention to be present at the inaugural ceremony:--

He was the godfather of the edifice, having originally invented and
conferred upon it the title of the Crystal Palace; but he should
leave to his friend the Archbishop the entire solemnities of the
day, including an announcement which Dr. Sumner had most kindly
undertaken to make, namely, that at the special instance of the
Queen, arrangements would be at once effected for opening the
Palace on Sundays.

Fact is tempered with fancy in this account, as well as in his optimistic report of the meeting of Crystal Palace shareholders; it characterizes, too, the series of humorous handbooks to the Crystal Palace, which appeared in the pages of _Punch_ in the following months. But we find in the remarks put into the mouth of Mr. Laing, the chairman, a very good summary of his own views:--

On reflection it had been thought better that men, under the
crystal roof, should temperately refresh themselves--all mutually
sustaining one another even by their own self-respect of the
decencies of life, there and then in their own Crystal Palace--than
that, turned away hungering and athirst, they should be absorbed in
the holes and corners of surrounding public-houses.

The subsequent history of the Crystal Palace hardly fulfilled _Punch's_ sanguine expectations of its future as a great people's playground and school. Intermittently it fulfilled this function, but as an educational institution it served the needs of the suburban residents rather than those of the great public; its entertainments were in the main supported by the patronage of the middle and well-to-do classes. As years went on the Crystal Palace, owing to its distance from London, suffered seriously from the competition of the series of exhibitions at Earl's Court. Yet one who is old enough, as the present writer is, to remember visits in his school days in the early 'seventies--recurrent Handel festivals from the days when Costa was conductor and Patti was in her golden prime; flower and dog and cat shows; the glory of the rhododendron shrubberies; pantomimes and firework displays; and, above all, the admirable Saturday concerts, which drew musical London for some forty years--such a one, and there must be many like him, will always look back on the Crystal Palace with grateful affection, and hold in reverence the names of Paxton and Ferguson, George Grove and August Manns, and many other good men and true who laboured to realize _Punch's_ ideal.

CHARTISM

[Sidenote: _The Fight for Cheap Bread_]

JOHN: "My Mistress says she hopes you won't call a meeting of her creditors; but if you will leave your Bill in the usual way, it shall be properly attended to."]

We have seen that _Punch_ did not belittle the Chartist movement, but admitted the evils, political, social, and economic, out of which it sprang. So did some of the leaders of the Young England group (see _Sybil_), but _Punch_ ridiculed their remedies. He was out of touch alike with Whigs, Tories, and Churchmen, especially the Tractarians, who denounced the men who tempted the people to rail against their rulers and superiors.

_Punch_, too, did a good deal in this line. But while he recognized the sincerity and earnestness of Chartism, he distrusted the methods of the extremists, and his distrust was largely justified by the history of the movement. The cleavage between the advocates of moral and physical force showed itself from the very beginning, and the fiasco of 1848 was largely due to the fact that the leading spirits of Chartism had already declared themselves against it, or actually withdrawn from the movement. Of the famous Six Points of the People's Charter of 1838, three have been conceded--No Property Qualifications, Vote by Ballot, and Payment of Members--and we have come very near the realization of Universal Suffrage and Equal Representation. The demand for Annual Parliaments alone remains unsatisfied. Yet Lovett, who drafted the Charter, and was imprisoned in 1839 with other Chartist leaders after the riots in Birmingham, emerged from gaol more than ever an advocate of moral force, joined Sturge in his efforts to reconcile the Chartists and the middle class reformers, and after 1842 took no further part in the Chartist movement. In the years of riots and fires and strikes and starvation that followed the rejection of the second National Petition in 1842, the leaders were, with few exceptions, engulfed in a tide which they were unable to control. Feargus O'Connor was one of the exceptions, but his success in inducing the Chartists to repudiate the Corn Law Repeal agitation, and the disastrous failure of his agrarian scheme at Watford, alienated many of the old Chartists. Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn Law rhymer, withdrew from the movement, which he had actively supported, in order to devote all his energies to the repeal of the hated "bread tax," and happily lived long enough to see it abolished. _Punch_, who had pronounced its dirge in February, 1849, with the legend "obiit. February 1, 1849, aged 34," was heart and soul with the Corn Law rhymer. Repeal of the Corn Laws was the deepest principle in his early life, and he was too angry to do justice to Peel, denouncing him as a "political eel"; an infringer of Dickens's copyright in Pecksniff; attacking his policy of "wait awhile," much as later critics attacked the policy of "wait and see"; and even when Peel's conversion was complete, refusing to acknowledge any virtue in it. When _Punch_ was bracketed with Peel as an opponent of the Corn Laws he indignantly repudiated the association: _he_ at least had never turned his coat. One cannot help feeling that remorse must have mingled with admiration in his posthumous tributes to the statesman "who gave the people bread." But there were no prickings of conscience in the welcome extended by him in 1850 to the proposal (realized in 1854) to erect a statue to Ebenezer Elliott at Sheffield:--

The true-tempered men of Sheffield are about to do a new honour to
themselves by honouring the memory of Ebenezer Elliott, the man
whose wise pen drew up the indictment against that public robber,
Corn Law: and never was indictment better drawn for conviction,
though a rare success attended the novel deed, for it was only
worded with common words, the words themselves hot and glowing with
hate of wrong. Elliott struck from his subject--as the blacksmith
strikes from the red iron--sparkles[2] of burning light; and where
they fell they consumed. His homely indignation was sublimed by the
intensity of his honesty: if his words were homely, they were made
resistless by the inexorable purpose that uttered them. But the man
had the true heart and soul of the poet, and could love the simple
and beautiful as passionately as he denounced the selfish and the
mean.

The Corn-Law Rhymes did greatest service. They were the earliest
utterances of a people contending with a sense of inarticulate
suffering. They supplied the words; they gave a voice and meaning
to the labouring heart, and the true poet vindicated his fine
mission by making his spirit pass into the spirit of the many.

Time rolled on and Corn Law was condemned. The indictment drawn by
the poet was the draft afterwards improved; but Ebenezer Elliott
was the first drawer; and honoured be the men of Sheffield who seek
to do monumental homage to their patriotic poet! We have plenty of
modern statues to the sword, it is full time we had one to the pen.

[Footnote 2: Elliott himself said: "My feelings have been hammered until they have become _cold_--short, and are apt to snap and fly off in sarcasms" (D.N.B. xvii., 267).]

Meanwhile the Chartist movement, weakened by defections and dissensions, and by the dissipation of its energies on a mixed programme, which antagonized all classes, damped by the constant rains which fell at every meeting and drenched the fires of revolution, was marching steadily to disintegration. _Punch's_ distrust of the professional agitator is expressed in a bitter portrait published in the spring of 1848:--

THE MODEL AGITATOR

[Sidenote: _The Professional Agitator_]

The only thing he flatters is the mob. Nothing is too sweet for
them; every word is a lump of sugar. He flatters their faults,
feeds their prejudices with the coarsest stimulants, and paints,
for their amusement, the blackest things white. He is madly cheered
in consequence. In time he grows into an idol. But cheers do not
pay, however loud. The most prolonged applause will not buy a
mutton chop. The hat is carried round, the pennies rain into it,
and the Agitator pours them into his patriotic pocket. It is
suddenly discovered that he has made some tremendous sacrifice for
the people. The public sympathy is first raised, then a
testimonial, then a subscription. He is grateful, and promises the
Millennium. The trade begins to answer, and he fairly opens shop as
a Licensed Agitator. He hires several journeymen with good lungs,
and sends agents--patriotic bagmen--round the country to sell his
praises and insults, the former for himself, and the latter for
everybody else. Every paper that speaks the truth of him is
publicly hooted at; everybody who opposes him is pelted with the
hardest words selected from the Slang Dictionary. A good grievance
is started, and hunted everywhere. People join in the cry, the
Agitator leading off and shouting the loudest. The grievance is
run off its legs; but another and another soon follows, till there
is a regular pack of them. The country is in a continual ferment,
and at last rises. Riots ensue; but the Model Agitator is the last
person to suffer from them. He excites the people to arm themselves
for the worst; but begs they will use no weapons. His talk is
incendiary, his advice nothing but gunpowder, and yet he hopes no
explosion will take place. He is an arsenal wishing to pass for a
chapel or a baby-linen warehouse. He is all peace, all love, and
yet his hearers grow furious as they listen to him, and rush out to
burn ricks and shoot landlords. He is always putting his head on
the block. Properly speaking he is beheaded once a quarter.

A monster meeting is his great joy, to be damped only by the rain
[the great open-air meetings of the Chartists were uniformly
unfortunate in their weather] or the police. He glories in a
prosecution. He likes to be prosecuted. He asks for it; shrieks out
to the Government, "Why don't you prosecute me?" and cries and gets
quite mad if they will not do it. The favour at length is granted.
He is thrown into prison and gets fat upon it; for from that moment
he is a martyr, and paid as one, accordingly.

The Model Agitator accumulates a handsome fortune, which he
bequeathes to his sons, with the following advice, which is a rich
legacy of itself: "If you wish to succeed as an Agitator, you must
buy your patriotism in the cheapest market and sell it in the
dearest."

The monster demonstration of 1848, as a recent writer[3] puts it, "was the funeral of Chartism with the Duke of Wellington as the Master of Ceremonies." Hopes of a general rising had been kindled by the revolution in Paris, but they were not fulfilled. The _annus mirabilis_ which set thrones rocking on the Continent and toppled down that of Louis Philippe passed in the main peacefully in England. Feargus O'Connor's monster procession and petition on April 10 ended in fiasco, largely owing to the precautions taken by the Duke of Wellington as Commander-in-Chief--the swearing in of 170,000 special constables (including Louis Napoleon!) and his wise decision to keep the troops as far as possible out of sight. It is right to record the fact that _Punch_ was not moved by these events to desert his "left-centre" position; that he advocated amnesty rather than reprisals. In September, 1849, he published his special "Chartist Petition to the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty":--

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR MAJESTY--

WHEREAS Death, the great Gaol-Deliverer, has by Cholera set free
from Westminster Prison, Joseph Williams and Alexander Sharpe,
foolish men, foolishly preaching the Charter, by means of pike and
blunderbuss--

_Punch_ humbly prays that your Majesty will, in this season of
political tranquillity, and of grave moral chastisement, give
orders for the release of certain misguided men, it is hoped better
instructed for the future--and thereupon pardon and set free
William Vernon, Ernest Jones, Little Cuffey, and other such
offenders, now made harmless by the common sense and common loyalty
of the English people.

And your Petitioner will ever Print and Pray--

PUNCH.

[Footnote 3: C. R. Fay in "Life and Labour in the Nineteenth Century," p. 166.]

[Sidenote: "_Little Cuffey_"]

Ernest Jones was the young poet, a recent recruit of Feargus O'Connor, and Cuffey was the fiery little tailor for whom _Punch_ always had a soft corner in his heart. When Sir George Grey announced that Cuffey had been included in the list of deported prisoners, amnestied on the declaration of peace after the Crimean War, _Punch_ expressed his satisfaction at the release of the "resolute, fire-eating but withal frank-hearted and honest goose-hero of Chartism." But of much greater importance and significance is the striking poem printed in the issue of June 16, 1849, which may be taken as the best condensed summary of _Punch's_ political and social creed in a time of transition. The occasion was a speech of Lord John Russell in the House, declining to entertain proposals for an extension of the franchise. Lord John, it may be recalled, was nicknamed "Finality Jack" for saying in a debate on the Address in 1837 that it was impossible for him to take part in further measures of electoral reform. _Punch_ held that the collapse of the physical force movement, so far from prompting a lethargic acquiescence in the existing régime, ought to stir men of good will to further efforts in order to remove legitimate grounds of discontent:--

THE TENTH OF APRIL TO LORD JOHN RUSSELL

My name, Lord John, is pleasant on many a noble tongue;
I've been bepuffed, bespeechified, bedined, bedrunk, besung;
Conservatism, Finality, Laissez-Faire and Statu Quo,
Are glad to shake hands with "the Tenth," till very proud I grow.

At home, abroad, inside and out, you think you read me true,
But when did ever Whig know man's or people's heart all through?
I _am_ all that you style me, when your praise on me you pour;
All that, my Lord, but take my word, with that I'm something more.

I read your speech, the other night, when Hume, my stout old friend,
Asked of the House, as you did once, the suffrage to extend.
'Twas the use you then made of my name that hath these lines begot--
Hear what the Tenth of April is, and hear what it is not.

I am the friend of Order, but Statu Quo I loathe,
The Law I heed, but still would weed, and trim and guide its growth;
Finality, your present love, unlovely is to me;
That "what is, is," proves not, I wis, that what is, ought to be.

"Content" you think I was, and so, noways for change athirst,
Content men are with second best, in preference to worst:
Content to hold up half a truth, when all truth shakes to fall;
Content with what gives half a loaf, against no bread at all!

But yet no ways content, Lord John, to see some things I see,
As a laughing House of Commons, and a helpless Ministry,
A nation little taught, a Church under-and overpaid,
And prone Respectability in Mammon-service laid.

Great towns o'erbrimming with their scum, great stews of plague
and sin;
Toil that should proudly bear itself, in grossness sunk and gin;
Crime stored away to ripen in settlement and gaol;
The rich for wealth, the poor for want, alike forpined and pale.

Then think, my Lord, and you, his friends, who deem those overbold,
That bid you move along the paths you entered on of old,
Think how delay may order with anarchy combine,
And to disaffection's vinegar turn loyalty's strong wine.

Mistake me not for what I'm not, know me for what I am,
The nursing mother of Reform, not Revolution's dam;
Mine is the spirit that erst reared our England's throne on law,
That never bore a lie it knew, or blinked a truth it saw.

Nations or men, we may not rest--look round on Europe's thrones
Shattered or shaken--hearken to her convulsive groans--
Ere you fool us with Finality, of all bad pleas the worst,
Think 'tis _the Tenth_ of April you invoke, and not _the First_.

[Sidenote: _Reform or Revolution?_]

This may not be great poetry, but it is and remains sound political philosophy, and an apologia for Chartism as interpreted by the saner and nobler spirits who took part in the movement, endeavoured to control it, and were in some instances engulfed in it. The Rebecca Riots in South Wales in 1842-3 are little more than a name to most of the present generation. Few of those who connect them vaguely with resentment against the Turnpike Laws know that the name arose from the proclamations issued in the name of Rebecca, in allusion to the verse in _Genesis_ (xxiv. 60) in which it is promised to the wife of Isaac that her seed shall possess "the gate of her enemies." Six years later there were still 160 turnpikes in and about London, and _Punch_ declared that Rebecca was needed to sweep them away. "We laugh at the French for their passports; they may with equal justice laugh at us for our turnpikes. At all events the passports cost very little, whereas you cannot go three miles out of London without dipping your hand into your pocket two or three times."

Emigration at this time was hailed by many, including _Punch_, as a remedy for existing discontent with conditions, and in the cartoon "Here and There," and the verses "Know'st Thou the Land where the Kangaroos Bound?" _Punch_ gives a roseate picture of Australia, "deficient in mouths, overburdened with meat," and urges John Bull to help his paupers to go thither and live in plenty at high wages. A little time later the Female Emigration Scheme, started by Sidney Herbert and other practical philanthropists, furnished _Punch_ with a text for his oft-repeated sermon on the Two Nations. The writer was one of those who witnessed the departure of a party of thirty-eight women from Fenchurch Street station for Gravesend, and thence to Australia, and after describing the group, their homely appearance and dress and manners, continues in a vein of self-reproach:--

What a confession it is that we have almost all been obliged to
make! A clear and earnest-minded writer gets a commission from the
_Morning Chronicle_ newspaper, and reports upon the state of our
poor in London; he goes amongst labouring people and poor of all
kinds--and brings back what? A picture of London life so wonderful,
so awful, so piteous and pathetic, so exciting and terrible, that
readers of romances own they never read anything like to it; and
that the griefs, struggles, strange adventures here depicted exceed
anything that any of us could imagine. Yes; and these wonders and
terrors have been lying by your door and mine ever since we had a
door of our own. We had but to go a hundred yards off and see, for
ourselves, but we never did. Don't we pay poor-rates, and are they
not heavy enough in the name of patience? Very true; and we have
our own private pensioners, and give away some of our superfluity
very likely. You are not unkind; not ungenerous. But of such
wondrous and complicated misery as this you confess you had no
idea. No. How should you? You and I--we are of the upper classes;
we have had hitherto no community with the poor. We never speak a
word to the servant who waits on us for twenty years; we condescend
to employ a tradesman, keeping him at a proper distance--mind, of
course, at a proper distance; we laugh at his young men if they
dance, jig and amuse themselves like their betters, and call them
counter-jumpers, snobs, and what not; of his workmen we know
nothing--how pitilessly they are ground down, how they live and
die, here close by us at the backs of our houses; until some poet
like Hood wakes and sings that dreadful _Song of the Shirt_; some
prophet like Carlyle rises up and denounces woe; some clear-sighted
energetic man like the writer of the _Chronicle_ travels into the
poor man's country for us, and comes back with his tale of terror
and wonder.

Awful, awful poor man's country! The bell rings and then
eight-and-thirty women bid adieu to it, rescued from it (as a few
more thousands will be) by some kind people who are interested in
their behalf. It is a solemn moment indeed--for those who (with
the few thousands who will follow them) are leaving this country
and escaping from the question between rich and poor; and what for
those who remain? But, at least, those who go will remember that in
their misery here they found gentle hearts to love and pity them,
and generous hands to give them succour, and will plant in the new
country their grateful tradition of the old. May Heaven's good
mercy speed them.

Emigration was one of the contributory influences which helped to end the hunger of the Hungry 'Forties. The repeal of the Corn Laws was a far more powerful factor in the revival of prosperity, and the efforts of Protection to raise its diminished head met with consistent derision from _Punch_, who gloried in the statistics of increasing trade. But he was no Benthamite, and one may search his files in vain for any recognition of the salutary results of the new Poor Law. The famous report of 1834 was drawn up by men who were largely inspired by the doctrines of Bentham and Malthus, and their scientific principles were repugnant to _Punch_. There is really not much to choose between his criticisms and the hostility of the Chartists to the workhouses or "Bastilles" of the new system. In his zeal for pillorying instances of harsh administration he overlooked the real improvement effected in the Act of 1834 in the rural districts. But the new Poor Law, though it was followed by an immediate local re-absorption on a sounder economic basis of agricultural labour and a migration of the surplus elsewhither, was not the sole cause of this improvement.[4] The demand for labour in the rapidly expanding industries of railway construction and coal mining was an even more potent instrument of relief. Coal, on which both industries equally depended and depend, may be now a tyrant, but it was in a sense the good genius of the 'forties, though the high prices paid in London owing to extortionate tolls caused _Punch_ to denounce him as "Cruel King Coal" from the point of view of the poor consumer.

[Footnote 4: See C. R. Fay, "Life and Labour in the Nineteenth Century," p. 204.]

[Sidenote: _The Beginning of Better Times_]

The threat of revolution passed, but the diffusion of prosperity brought with it, as it always does, further demands for increased wages. The year 1853 was so notable for strikes that _Punch_, who had already applauded poor needlewomen for adopting this course, and suggested it to poor curates, felt obliged to register his protest:--

Really John Bull may almost be described as a maniac with lucid
intervals. A few years ago it was the railway mania--a very
dangerous frenzy....The mania now prevailing is one which, if not
attended to, may perhaps prove troublesome. This is the striking
mania. Everybody is striking. The other day it was the cabmen; now
it is the dockyard labourers; the policemen, even, have struck and
thrown down their staves. Our mechanics have so far become
machines, that, like clocks, as clocks ought to be, they are all
striking together. Should this mania spread, we shall have striking
become what might be called the order, but that it will be the
disorder, of the day. In short, almost everybody will strike except
the threshers, the smiths and the pugilists. With all this striking
though, we had better take care that we are not floored.

As for the efficacy of the strike-weapon in general, _Punch's_ view is summed up in the remark which he puts into the mouth of a working man's wife as early as 1853, "Wot good did strikes ever do the pore?"

MACHINERY AND MONEY-MAKING