Chapter IV: Part I: The Two Nations (3)

In the 'thirties and 'forties the triumphs of applied science and invention had already begun to exert an immediate and far-reaching influence on national prosperity and the economics of industrialism. The views on the new order expressed in _Punch_ reflect, with certain variations, the enlightened moderation of the class of which he was the spokesman. The coming of the age of steam and machinery is welcomed, or accepted, with a tempered optimism. He approaches the subject mainly as a critic or a satirist zealous for reform. But on two notable occasions he assumes the rôle of philosopher and prophet. The first was in January, 1842, _à propos_ of a remark made by Sir Robert Peel that increased demand for manufactures would only increase machine-power:--

Machinery, in its progress, has doubtless been the origin of
terrible calamity; it has made the strong man so much live lumber.
But as we cannot go back, and must go on, it is for statesmen and
philosophers to prepare for the crisis as surely coming as the
morning light. How, when machinery is multiplied--as it will be--a
thousandfold? How, when tens of thousand-thousand hands are made
idle by the ingenuity of the human mind? How, when, comparatively
speaking, there shall be _no_ labour for man? Will the multitude
lie down and, unrepining, die? We think not--we are sure not. Then
will rise--and already we hear the murmur--a cry, a shout for an
adjustment of interests; a shout that, hard as it is, will strike
upon the heart of Mammon, and make the spoiler tremble.

We put this question to Sir Robert Peel: if all labour done by man
were suddenly performed by machine power, and that power in the
possession of some thousand individuals--what would be the cry of
the rest of the race? Would not the shout be, "Share, share"?

The steam-engine, despite of themselves, must and will carry
statesmen back to first principles. As it is, machinery is a fiend
to the poor; the time will come when it will be a beneficent angel.

RAILWAY MAP OF ENGLAND (A PROPHECY)]

[Sidenote: _The Impudence of Steam_]

On the second occasion, in May, 1844, the note struck in the last sentence is sounded more hopefully. In a fantasy entitled "The May Day of Steam," the writer notes the passing of the old May Day and foreshadows Labour's appropriation of that festival; and a speech is put into the mouth of a working man prophesying the ultimate unmitigated good of invention, though its first operation created great inequality and caused misery to the hand-worker. But for the most part _Punch_ is concerned with the dangers and discomforts of the new method of locomotion and the wild speculation to which it gave rise. Railway directors were to him anathema. In his first volume _Punch_ sturdily declares that "the best thing to do for poor Earth to protect her Would be to hang daily a railway director," and of his many railway cartoons perhaps the most effective is that which represents a director sitting on the front buffers of an engine as the best remedy for collisions. The "Impudence of Steam" is satirized in some prophetic verses, one couplet of which is still often quoted:--

"Ease her, stop her!"
"Any gentleman for Joppa?"
"'Mascus, 'Mascus?" "Tickets, please, sir."
"Tyre or Sidon?" "Stop her, ease her!"
"Jerusalem, 'lem, 'lem!" "Shur! Shur!"
"Do you go on to Egypt, sir?"
"Captain, is this the land of Pharaoh?"
"Now look alive there! Who's for Cairo?"
"Back her!" "Stand clear, I say, old file!"
"What gent or lady's for the Nile,"
"Or Pyramids?" "Thebes! Thebes! Sir!" "Steady!"
"Now, where's that party for Engedi?"

Pilgrims holy, Red Cross Knights,
Had ye e'er the least idea,
Even in your wildest flights,
Of a steam trip to Judea?
What next marvel Time will show
It is difficult to say,
"'Bus," perchance, to Jericho,
"Only sixpence all the way."
Cabs in Solyma may fly;
'Tis a not unlikely tale:
And from Dan the tourist hie
Unto Beersheba by "rail."

But the miseries and discomforts of railway travelling are dwelt on far more frequently than its prospective delights. The first-class alone was endurable, and that was grossly overcharged: the rest had to put up with overcrowding, discomfort, draughts, hard seats, smoke, dust and dirt. Third-class passengers were negligible and contemptible folk; neither punctuality nor civility was to be expected.

In 1845 the railway mania becomes acute--a "universal epidemic." George Hudson, the Railway King, looms large in the public eye; and _Punch_ expresses his dissatisfaction with M.P.s for dabbling in speculation which they have themselves the opportunity of unduly favouring. Burlesques of various railway projects--centrifugal and atmospheric--abound. _Punch_ ridicules the idea of a railway in the Isle of Wight as unnecessary and calculated to spoil the "Garden of England." The menace to the rural and pastoral amenities of the countryside moves him to eloquent protest. The sufferings of M.P.s before Railway Committees are set forth in the parody of Tennyson's "Mariana in the Moated Grange"; the golden harvest reaped by expert engineering witnesses is resentfully acknowledged; "Jeames" has not escaped the infection and appears frequently as speculator, "stag," and dupe. The Battle of the Gauges had been joined, and _Punch_ asserts that the largest entry in the "railway returns" was that recording the casualties. The Unicorn in the Royal Arms is explained as the "Stag" of railway speculation, and a design of a railway lunatic asylum is submitted as the most appropriate terminus for many of the new schemes. The protests of fox-hunters, noted by _Punch_, recall the verses of the Cheshire poet:--

Let the steam pot
Hiss till it's hot,
But give me the speed of the Tantivy Trot.

The mania was not confined to men: _Punch_ satirizes the ladies who were "stagging it" under the heading "A Doe in the City," and suggests a Joint Stock Railway Workhouse as the natural and fitting end of all these operations. This idea is further developed in "Jaques in Capel Court," a parody which begins:--

All the world are stags!
Yea, all the men and women merely jobbers--

and after enumerating the various phases of the mania, concludes:--

Last scene of all,
That ends this sad but common history,
Is Union pauperism and oakum-picking:
Sans beer, sans beef, sans tea, sans everything.

Railway titles, a railway peerage and Parliament are foreshadowed, with King Hudson, "the monarch of all they 'survey,'" installed in his palace at Hampton Court. The relations of John Bull--on whom "the sweet simplicity of the three per cents." had begun to pall--with humbugging promoters is hit off in the stanza:--

Said John, "Your plan my mind contents,
I'm sick and tired of Three per Cents.;
And don't get enough by my paltry rents"--
So he got hooked in by the railway "gents."

[Sidenote: _Rules for Railways_]

In his anti-Puseyite zeal _Punch_ mendaciously declares that a railway from Oxford to Rome has been projected with the Pope's approval. In fact, any stick was good enough to beat the speculators with. "Locksley Hall" is parodied as "Capel Court," and the rush to deposit plans at the Board of Trade, when special trains were chartered by rival promoters, is described in humorous detail in a _Punch_ ballad. Padded suits are suggested in 1846 as a protection against railway accidents, but the best summary--with all its exaggerations--of the discomforts of railway travelling in the mid 'forties is to be found in the "Rules and Regulations for Railways":--

The French Government has published a royal _ordonnance_, fixing
the regulations that are henceforward to be observed by all railway
companies in working their lines. As it is a pity these things
should be better managed in France, we publish a set of regulations
for English railways. Lord John Russell is welcome to them, if he
likes.

Every passenger in the second or third class is to be allowed to
carry a dark lantern, or a penny candle, or a safety lamp, into the
train with him, as the directors have kept the public in the dark
quite long enough.

No train is to travel slower than an omnibus, let the excursion be
ever so cheap, or the occasion ever so joyful.

Cattle are to be separated from the passengers as much as possible,
as it has been found, from experiments, that men and oxen do not
mix sociably together.

No stoppage at a railway station is to exceed half an hour.

No railway dividend is to exceed 100 per cent., and no bonus to be
divided oftener than once a month.

No fare is to be raised more than at the rate of a pound a week.

No third-class carriage is to contain more than a foot deep of
water in wet weather, but, to prevent accidents, corks and swimming
belts should always be kept in open carriages.

The ladies' carriages are to be waited upon by female policemen.

Every tunnel must be illuminated with one candle at least.

Never less than five minutes are to be allowed for dinner or
refreshment.[5]

One director must always travel with every train, only he is to be
allowed the option of choosing his seat, either in the second or
third class--whichever of the two he prefers.

Hospitals are to be built at every terminus, and a surgeon to be in
attendance at every station.

There must be some communication between every carriage and the
stoker, or the guard, either by a bell, or a speaking tube, or a
portable electric telegraph, so that the passengers may have some
means of giving information when their carriage is off the line, or
falling over an embankment, or a maniac or a horse has broken
loose.

There is sense as well as absurdity in this list. "Smoking saloons" are noted as a novelty on the Eastern Counties Railway during the year 1846, but in the same year to _Punch_ belongs the credit of suggesting refreshment cars, and indulging in a pictorial forecast of underground railways.

[Footnote 5: _Punch_ was especially wroth with the "3 minutes for scalding soup" at Wolverton and Swindon.]

The proposal that drums and trombones should be mounted on the engine as a means of signalling cannot be taken seriously. Railway libraries on the L. & N.W.R. are noted as a novelty in 1849. But by that year the temper of the speculating public had changed, and _Punch_ is a faithful index of the cold fit which had followed the disillusionment of the over-sanguine investor. The lure of El Dorado now beckoned from the New World, and the railway madness gave way to the mining insanity. The papers were full of complaints from discontented shareholders. The Battle of the Gauges continued, but Hudson is already spoken of in _Punch_ as a discrowned sovereign, threatened with disestablishment at Madame Tussaud's. For a while _Punch_ was inclined to extend to him a certain amount of sympathy in his downfall, and in "Two Pictures" he draws a contrast between mammon worship and the onslaught on mammon's high priest by his greedy and discontented worshippers. But the mood of compassion soon changes to resentment in the bitter adaptation of Cowper's poem, _The Loss of the Royal George_:--

Toll for a knave!
A knave whose day is o'er!
All sunk--with those who gave
Their cash, till they'd no more!

* * * * *

The _Royal George_ is gone,
His iron rule is o'er--
And he and his directors
Shall break the lines no more!

[Sidenote: _King Hudson's Downfall_]

In the same vein are the proposals that Hudson should be the chief "Guy" on November 5, and be appointed governor of a convict settlement on the Isle of Dogs. Simultaneously improvements are noted in the quickening of the transit to Paris, the increase of excursions, and the beginning of _voyages de luxe_.

But the note of complaint and dissatisfaction prevails. The discomfort, danger, unpunctuality and discourtesy endured by railway passengers are rubbed in with wearisome reiteration. In 1852 _Punch_ ironically comments on the patience of the British public, "content to travel in railway pens, like sheep to the slaughter, injured, deluded, derided, only bleating in return," and concludes his summary of recent protests from correspondents of _The Times_ with the remark:--

Railway accidents, railway frauds, railway impertinence are the
staple of our daily newspaper-reading. Railway chairmen and
directors are descending to the knavery, extortion, impudence, and
brutality from which cabmen are rising in the scale of manners and
morals. And, as aforesaid, the British public stands all this with
passive mournfulness, quiet endurance, meek, inactive
expostulation.

TOUTER: "Going by this train, Sir?"

PASSENGER: "'M? Eh? Yes."

TOUTER: "Allow me, then, to give you one of my cards, Sir."]

The directors of the L. & N.W.R. are severely criticised for overworking their engine drivers, _à propos_ of a well-authenticated case of a man who had been on duty for thirty hours without relief or opportunity to rest. "If dividends demand economy, and economy necessitates the employment of one man to do the work of six, the only thing to be done for public safety is to get a man with an iron constitution," and _Punch_ accordingly suggests that the directors should provide themselves with engine drivers entirely composed of that metal. Complaints of dangerous railways continue to the end of the period under review, and in 1856 _Punch_ is still of opinion that we might take a leaf out of the book of the Russians, who carry surgeons on their trains. Undertakers he had already suggested as a part of the normal equipment of expresses.

[Sidenote: _"Bradshaw: A Mystery"_]

A witty bishop once scandalized his hearers by bracketing _Bradshaw_ with the Bible as an indispensable book. Bradshaw's _Railway Time Tables_ were first issued in 1839; the monthly guide dates from December, 1841; it was not, however, until 1856 that _Punch_ began to realize the elements of comedy underlying that austere document, and utilized them in a little play called _Bradshaw: A Mystery_, describing the separation, adventures and ultimate reunion of two harassed lovers. Love may laugh at locksmiths, but _Bradshaw_ is another matter. Here is the happy ending of this romantic libel:--

_Leonora._ Oh, don't talk of _Bradshaw_!
_Bradshaw_ has nearly maddened me.
_Orlando_. And me.
He talks of trains arriving that ne'er start;
Of trains that seem to start, and ne'er arrive;
Of junctions where no union is effected;
Of coaches meeting trains that never come;
Of trains to catch a coach that never goes;
Of trains that start after they have arrived;
Of trains arriving long before they leave.
He bids us "see" some page that can't be found;
Or if 'tis found, it speaks of spots remote
From those we seek to reach! By _Bradshaw's_ aid
You've tried to get to London--I attempted
To get to Liverpool--and here we are,
At Chester--'Tis a junction--I'm content
Our union--at this junction--to cement.
And let us hope, nor you nor I again
May be attacked with _Bradshaw_ on the brain.
_Leonora._ I'm happy now! My husband!
_Orlando._ Ah, my bride!
Henceforth take me--not _Bradshaw_--for your guide.
_The curtain falls._

"Orlando's" speech is a good summary of the humours of _Bradshaw_ as analysed in _Punch's_ "Comic Guide" some years later.

From steam to electricity the transition is obvious. _Punch_ notes the adoption of the "Electro-Magnetic Telegraph" by the Great Western Railway in the summer of 1844. In 1845 we read of an electric gun to fire 1,000 balls a minute. The laying of a submarine cable from Dover to Calais is discussed in 1846, but was not realized till five years afterwards, when _Punch_ hailed the completion of the scheme as a new link between the two countries and celebrated it in a cartoon and a sonnet.

Already the influence of electricity on international relations had been foreshadowed, and in the same year in which Palmerston repudiated responsibility for the welcome of Kossuth in England _Punch_ rudely described his message as "electric lying." The days of "wireless diplomacy" in the old sense of the epithet were passing, to the embarrassment of representatives who were within immediate hail of the central Government. Soon we begin to hear complaints of the new service on the score of delays and excessive charges, and when an earthquake shock was felt "for the first time" in Ireland in the winter of 1852, _Punch_ notes that a writer in the _Limerick Chronicle_ attributed it to the atmospheric influence of the electric telegraph! Electricity as an illuminant elicited an optimistic if somewhat previous eulogy in 1849; and cooking by electricity is foreshadowed in 1857. The laying of the transatlantic cable is welcomed long before it was an accomplished fact, but _Punch's_ compliments had a sting in their tail when he wrote the following lines:--

AMERICAN JOURNALISM IN A NEW LINE

It is much to be hoped that the telegraph wire,
About to be laid down, will not form a lyre,
On which to strike discord 'twixt the old world and new;
Though scarce can we hope all its messages true,
For then t'other side would have nothing to do.

_Punch's_ interest in aeronautics dates from his earliest infancy, though his mixture of prophecy and satire is rather confusing. Designs of aerial steamships abound in his columns; and one of them is not too bad an anticipation of the aeroplane.

[Sidenote: _Aviation Forecasts_]

In 1845 there was actually a periodical called _The Balloon_, though _Punch_ is jocular at the expense of its very limited _clientèle_. Still, though the number of aeronauts was few, their enterprise attracted a great deal of attention, and Green, who made 526 ascents between 1821 and 1852, including his famous trip from Vauxhall to Weilburg in Nassau, is frequently mentioned. _Punch_, to his credit, inveighed vehemently against the senseless inhumanity of aeronautic acrobats who made a practice of taking up animals with them. He was less fortunate in his dogmatic pronouncement in 1851 that the balloon was a "perfectly useless invention," and in his scornful dismissal, four years later, of the suggestion that it might be useful in warfare:--

Everybody, including, of course, all the nobodies, would seem to
have some peculiar plan for finishing off the war in a successful
and expeditious manner. The last place we should look for the means
of carrying on hostilities with vigour is up in the air; but,
nevertheless, an aeronaut has "stepped in" upon the public with a
suggestion that balloons are the means required for the siege of
Sebastopol and the smashing of Cronstadt. If this theory is
correct, Lord Raglan ought at once to be superseded by the "veteran
Green" or the "intrepid" Mrs. Graham.

One of the "intrepids," who has gained a high position by his
balloon, has published a dialogue between himself and a general,
who is, of course, represented as soon beating a retreat in an
argument against the employment of balloons in battle. The aeronaut
proposes to hover in his balloon over the enemy's position, and
take observations of what is passing, but he forgets that a passing
shot might happen to catch his eye in a rather disagreeable manner.
The aeronaut undertakes not only to observe, but to make himself
the subject of observation by a series of signals, through the
medium of which he proposes to point out the movements of the
enemy. This is to be effected by an apparatus which, as it would of
course be at the mercy of the wind, would be blown about in all
directions possibly, except that which it ought to take, and thus
the signals would be converted into signal failures. The aeronaut
also proposes using his balloon for "destructive purposes," by
taking up some shells, which should be "light to lift but terrible
to fall," and so arranged as to avoid the fate of Captain Warner's
invention, "whose balloon," we are told by the aeronaut himself,
"went off in an opposite direction to what he had intended."

"And by what means," answers the general, "would you let off your
missiles?"

"Either by fuses," answers the aeronaut, "a liberating trigger, or
an electric communication, or by _another contrivance_ which you
must excuse me, general, for not mentioning, as I hold it _a
secret_."

This "_secret_" will probably be kept to all eternity, and, at all
events, until it is revealed we must be excused for refusing to
call on Lord Aberdeen to adopt balloons for warfare, or to blow up
the Commander-in-Chief literally sky high, till he makes the air
the basis of military operations.

Some enthusiasts certainly laid themselves open to ridicule. In 1849 a certain J. Browne advertised a "balloon railway to California" as both "safe and cheap." Captain Warner, again, ruled himself out of court by his refusal to explain the secret of his alleged inventions--the long-range torpedo and the bomb-dropping balloon--to the committee appointed to report thereon until he had been assured of the payment of £200,000 for each. Still, he cannot be denied the credit, such as it is, of having foreshadowed two of the deadliest and most destructive engines of modern warfare. _Punch_ at first lent Warner a certain measure of support, until careful inquiry had shown him to be both untrustworthy and intractable.

THE GOLD CRAZE IN 1849]

The railway "boom" had stimulated that first infirmity of ignoble minds--the desire to "get rich quick"--and cupidity, balked of its expectations, turned eagerly towards the goldfields to satisfy its longings. In 1849 California was the Mecca of the gold craze, and there is hardly a number of _Punch_ in this year which does not refer to the stampede from Europe to the diggings--"the wild-goose chase after the golden calf," as he called it. It was a gold fever in more senses than one, since the diggers suffered terribly from disease, which led to the cynical suggestion that convicts should be sent there, as they were not likely to return. Cobden, still in high favour with _Punch_ as the apostle of national economy, was busy preaching Peace, Retrenchment and Reform, but his efforts were powerless to stem the tide of speculation.

In 1850 we find a reference to the glut of bullion at the Bank, a state of affairs long strangely unfamiliar. In 1851 the opening of the goldfields in Australia diverted the stream of speculative emigration from California to the antipodes, and this new phase of the _auri sacra fames_ does not escape _Punch's_ notice, though no mention is made of the curious fact that amongst those who were lured to the diggings was Lord Robert Cecil, afterwards Marquess of Salisbury. Alongside of the evidences of the great expansion of commerce and national prosperity we find frequent references to the growth of gambling. In 1852 _Punch's_ pages abound in allusions, in text and illustrations, to the betting mania--to gulls and pigeons and sharks. "Profiteering" was rampant in the Crimean War, and _Punch_ is eloquent in his denunciation of the contractors who supplied shoddy equipment and bad guns. And the aftermath of the war included, besides other familiar sources of discontent, "defalcations, embezzlements and other cases of gross and enormous dishonesty." It was a time of speculation and peculation, of bank smashes and absconding directors--those of the Royal British Bank coming in for special execration. The fraudulent banker is singled out by _Punch_ as the arch-rogue and thief who excited the envy of the burglar, since the banker stole more and escaped unpunished. The brothers Sadleir are specially selected for dishonourable mention in 1856, but John Sadleir, M.P. for Carlow and an ex-Lord of the Treasury, who was the original of Mr. Merdle in _Little Dorrit_, and was described in _The Times_ after his death as a "national calamity," only escaped punishment by suicide.

[Sidenote: _Novelties and Anticipations_]

As we survey the various new inventions, novel devices and anticipations mentioned in the pages of _Punch_, we are tempted to exclaim, in the hackneyed phrase, that there is nothing new under the sun. A "Glaciarium" with artificial ice is noted in the autumn of 1843. "Euphonia," or the speaking machine, invented and exhibited by Professor Faber at the Egyptian Hall in 1846, was an automaton, and can hardly be regarded as a lineal ancestor of the gramophone. The "patent mile-index cab" in 1847, on the other hand, was a genuine harbinger of the taxi, but the time was not ripe for its general adoption. _Punch's_ account of "Talking by Telegraph," in the autumn of 1848, is no more than a piece of intelligent anticipation. The telephone voice, however, is happily hit off in the remark that "we have heard of a singer's voice being rather wiry at times; but there will be something very trying in the perpetual twang of the new mode of small talk that is recommended to us," a comment of 1848. The beneficent side of the discovery of anæsthetics is lightly passed over in _Punch's_ earlier references to this revolution in surgery in 1847, which suggest its application to politicians or its use by hen-pecked husbands. Here only ether is mentioned, but the "blessings of chloroform" are discussed a few months later in the same jocular spirit. Incubators, the sewing machine and phonetic spelling are among the wonders of the wonderful year of 1848. Pitman and the "Fonetik Nuz" furnish _Punch_ with food for mirth in 1849; the claims of the discoverer of "Xyloidine," a new motive power to take the place of steam, are treated with frivolous scepticism more justifiable than that shown by _Punch_ towards ironclads in 1850. In 1851 the novelties included "Electro-biology," _i.e._ hypnotism; shoeblacks; electric clocks; false legs,[6] invented by Palmer, an American; and the supply of tea to the Navy. "Noiseless wheels" in 1853 suggest the advent of the age of rubber; but Robert W. Thomson had taken out his patent for india-rubber tyres in 1845. Steam ploughs, gas-stoves for cooking and central heating for houses followed in rapid succession in 1853 and 1854. _Punch's_ ironical suggestions in the latter year for the comfort and convenience of Cockney travellers in the ascent of Snowdon are only one of many instances where the mocking fancy of one generation becomes the fact of its successor.

The "new pillar boxes" must be added to the features of 1854; their colour harmonized with the red coats then worn by the postmen; while the scheme to propel mail bags through tubes by atmospheric pressure was put forward as early as 1855. Massage appears as the new "movement cure" by kneading and pressing, vide _Punch_, 1856, but he, however, was not solely interested in beneficent inventions. Lord Dundonald's famous "secret war plan," originally proposed in 1811, and rejected by a secret Committee presided over by the Duke of York, who pronounced it "infallible, irresistible, but inhuman," was revived after the inventor's readmission to the British Navy, and urged on the Admiralty and Government during the Crimean War. It was again rejected on the score of its inhumanity, though _Punch_ welcomed the plan, without knowing exactly what it was, and besought the Government to cast away scruples and use _anything_ against such an enemy as Russia. Whatever may have been "Dundonald's plan" was never divulged, it remained a nameless mystery. The new nomenclature evolved by the triumphs of applied science in humaner directions led to a good deal of controversy, notably over the introduction of the word "telegram" as a substitute for "telegraphic despatch." The shorter form was first officially used in 1855 (see the _Panmure Papers_) by Lord Clarendon, but scholars and men of letters protested vigorously against this Yankee barbarism. Shilleto, the famous Cambridge scholar, suggested "telegrapheme." He did not want it, but it was at least properly constructed on Greek analogies. Oxford, as _Punch_ notices in 1857, supported the modern form, and here for once, at any rate, abandoned her traditional espousal of lost causes.

[Footnote 6: Henry Heather Bigg (1826-81), the surgical instrument maker, who made the substitutes for the lost limbs of soldiers in the Crimean War, is mentioned in 1856 (Vol. xxx., p. 28).]

[Sidenote: _Telegram or Telegrapheme?_]

In general, _Punch_, as a moderate reformer, deals impartially with the contending claims of science and the classical curriculum. He believed in the liberalizing influence of the humanities, while he denounced academic arrogance, pedantry and exclusiveness. He might be described as a mitigated modernist in these years, in which he advocated the popularization of science by means of Institutes and similar centres of enlightenment, and welcomed new inventions--while reserving to himself the right to burlesque their possibilities, and to ridicule the pretensions of pompous professors and futile philosophers. He was at one with those rationalists who waged war on superstition and credulity, but he realized better than they did how deeply entrenched the enemy was in high places, and how mistaken was the view that the victory was already won. The friendly lines which he addressed to Faraday in 1853 are mere halting doggerel, but they are worth recalling, if only for their sound doctrine, which is as much needed to-day as it was sixty-seven years ago:--

Oh, Mr. Faraday, simple Mr. Faraday!
Did you of enlightenment consider this an age?
Bless your simplicity, deep in electricity,
But in social matters, unsophisticated sage!
Weak superstition dead; knocked safely on the head,
Long since buried deeper than the bed of the Red Sea,
Did you not fondly fancy? Did you think that necromancy
Practised now at the expense of any fool could be?

Oh, Mr. Faraday, simple Mr. Faraday!
Persons not uneducated--very highly dressed--
Fine folks as peer and peeress, go and fee a Yankee seeress,
To evoke their dead relations' Spirits from their rest.
Also seek cunning men, feigning by mesmeric ken,
Missing property to trace and indicate the thief,
Cure ailments, give predictions: all of these enormous fictions
Are, among our higher classes, matters of belief.

Oh, Mr. Faraday, simple Mr. Faraday!
Guided by the steady light which mighty Bacon lit,
You naturally stare, seeing that so many are
Following whither fraudulent Jack-with-the-lanterns flit.
Of scientific lore though you have an ample store,
Gotten by experiments, in one respect you lack;
Society's weak side, whereupon you none have tried,
Being all philosopher and nothing of a quack.

EDUCATION

Education in the 'forties was the Cinderella of the Legislature. Parliament, it is true, spent laborious hours in discussing the theory of education, but in debating the principle overlooked the practice. Money was doled out in homoeopathic doses. In 1841 the sum of £10,000 was voted for the education of the people in the same session in which £70,000 was voted for the Royal Stables at Windsor, a contrast which _Punch_ had not forgotten five years later. The direct connexion between ignorance and crime was constantly forced on the attention of humane magistrates. When the Lord Mayor of London, in January, 1846, declared that "society was responsible for the contamination to which poor children were subjected," and that there was no calamity, to his way of thinking, "comparable to that which sprang from the bringing up of youth in habits and practices of idleness and vice," _Punch_ found himself in the unfamiliar position of being called upon to eulogize a functionary who as a rule never gave him a chance. "Juvenile delinquents," he points out, were "as much reared for Newgate as many of the beautiful babies, taking their morning airings in the parks, are reared for hereditary legislators." In another graphically brusque passage describing the transportation for life of four lads aged from 18 to 21, we read "they were brought up as brutes, and society reaps the terrible fruits of their rearing." Hullah's music classes for the people at Exeter Hall in 1842 were excellent in their way, but the solace of song was a doubtful boon in the Hungry 'Forties, and though _Punch_ supported the establishment of schools of cookery throughout the kingdom, the supply of things to cook was more urgently needed. The years rolled on, the Corn Laws were repealed, and prosperity revived, but illiteracy remained, and it was due in the country districts, in _Punch's_ view, to the fact that "contending zealots cannot agree with what theological mysteries they shall leaven the common information which the schoolmaster is to impart to the country bumpkin."

[Sidenote: _Abysmal Ignorance_]

In 1850 the following dialogue was given in _The Times_ police report of Wednesday, January 9, and quoted in _Punch_:--

George Ruby, a boy aged 14, was put into the box to be sworn, and
the Testament was put into his hand. He looked quite astonished
upon taking hold of the book.

_Ald. Humphrey._ Well, do you know what you are about? Do you know
what an oath is?

_Boy._ No.

_Ald. H._ Do you know what a Testament is?

_Boy._ No.

_Ald. H._ Can you read?

_Boy._ No.

_Ald._ H. Do you ever say your prayers?

_Boy._ No, never.

_Ald. H._ Do you know what prayers are?

_Boy._ No.

_Ald. H._ Do you know what God is?

_Boy._ No.

_Ald H._ Do you know what the devil is?

_Boy._ I've heard of the devil, but I don't know him.

_Ald. H._ What do you know, my poor boy?

_Boy._ I knows how to sweep the crossing.

_Ald. H._ And that's all?

_Boy._ That's all. I sweeps the crossing.

The Alderman said he, of course, could not take the evidence of a
creature who knew nothing whatever of the obligation to tell the
truth.

It was to cope with this sort of destitution that the Ragged Schools movement had been started several years before. From the first _Punch_ lent it his hearty support, though in his first notice, in 1846, he was unable to resist the opportunity of combining his approval with a dig at the aristocracy:--

WHAT RAGGED SCHOOLS MAY COME TO

It is with peculiar satisfaction that we view the establishment of
Ragged Schools in various parts of the Metropolis. We speak
advisedly when we describe our satisfaction as peculiar. For it is
not merely that we are rejoiced at the idea of a number of youthful
mendicants being prevented from becoming thieves and pickpockets,
taught to earn an honest livelihood, and rescued from vice and
misery through the instrumentality of these seminaries. No; our
views are much higher than such plebeian considerations as these,
and they also extend far beyond the present time. We have an eye to
the benefit of our posterity and to that of the superior classes
generally.

When we consider that Eton was established for the reception of
poor and indigent scholars, and that Winchester and most of our
other public schools were, at their first foundation, charities, we
may not unreasonably indulge the hope that the Ragged Schools,
originally, like them, destined for the instruction of the
tag-rag-and-bobtail, may ultimately become gratuitous institutions
for the education of the children of the aristocracy.

Yet it was an aristocrat of the "old nobility" who started and devoted his best energies to the furtherance of the Ragged Schools movement, as all the world knows. His name is not even mentioned here, and when it is mentioned in these years is too often coupled with tasteless gibes at Lord Shaftesbury's proclivities and Sabbatarianism. _Punch_ could not forgive Lord Shaftesbury for his association with Exeter Hall (which to _Punch_ meant fireside philanthropy and Jellybyism) and his support of laws which enabled magistrates to fine boys fifteen shillings or a fortnight's wages each for playing cricket on Sunday. Sir Robert Peel had to die before _Punch_ did him justice. Lord Shaftesbury was more fortunate, for thirty years before he died _Punch_ made the _amende_ in "The Earl King, or the Earl of Shaftesbury and the Juvenile Mendicant."

[Sidenote: _The Distressed Author_]

"The greater the employment of the primer, the less the need of the 'cat'" is an aphorism which sums up the creed of the humanitarian reformers of the 'forties and 'fifties. The "ladder of learning" was not yet planted in the modern sense, and efforts to ascend from the lower to the upper rungs were frowned upon by those in authority. At a meeting of the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in June, 1849, a clerical speaker ridiculed the questions, set in an examination paper for National School teachers, which presupposed a knowledge of the works of Shakespeare, Milton, Adam Smith, Johnson and Scott, and of the Life of Mrs. Fry. Learning was at a discount; authors of note, with few exceptions--such as Thackeray and Macaulay--were generally impecunious, and sometimes on the border-land of destitution. Douglas Jerrold had a life-long struggle to keep his head above water, for all his industry. There were no royalties in those days, and for _Black-Eyed Susan_, which brought tens of thousands of pounds to theatrical lessees and popular actors, he received from first to last the sum of £60. _Punch_ was the constant champion of the distressed author fallen on evil days, such as Joseph Haydn of the _Dictionary of Dates_, who was granted a Civil List pension of £25 a year just three weeks before his death in January, 1856, or old Joseph Guy, "the man of many books, the ever-green 'Spelling Book' among the number." One of the finest (but posthumous) tributes to Sir Robert Peel was on the occasion of the Literary Fund dinner in 1856, when a sum of £100 was sent from the proceeds of the first portion of the _Peel Papers_:--

BOY: "I vonts a nillustrated newspaper with a norrid murder and a likeness in it."]

From the tomb of Sir Robert speaks the spirit that, when in the
flesh and baited by the dogs of party [not to mention the bitter
satire of _Punch_ himself], still beneficently thought of the wants
of spasmodic Haydn; still, by sympathy in word and act, smoothed
the dying pillow of poor Tom Hood.

The respect and admiration with which George Stephenson and Joseph Paxton were invariably treated was largely due to the fact that they were self-taught men. And when Joseph Hume died in 1855, _Punch_, who had so often chaffed him for his love of figures and returns, while applauding his attack on "gold lace" and extravagance, paid fitting homage to the perseverance which enabled him to fight his way up from poverty and obscurity, to his rugged honesty, his hard-won triumphs, and his honourable participation in all victories over wrong in Church and State. An alarming ignorance, however, was not monopolized by the lower orders. In his scheme for the reform of the House of Lords _Punch_ suggests that peers should only be admitted to the Upper House after an examination in the three R's, history, geography and political economy. Geography even in our own enlightened days remains a stumbling-block to Ministers, even Prime Ministers. Disraeli's ignorance of arithmetic on the occasion of his appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Derby Cabinet is a frequent source of ribaldry in _Punch_, who suggested the establishment of an infants' school for the new Cabinet. So recently as the eve of the twentieth century a Chancellor of the Exchequer was reported to have been so ignorant of decimals that he asked what was meant by those "damned dots."

[Sidenote: _The Education Bill of 1856_]

Reverting to elementary education, we can find no better commentary on its progress in the mid 'fifties than two extracts from _Punch's_ "Essence of Parliament" in the spring of 1856:--

_Thursday_, March 6th. In the Commons, Lord John Russell moved a
series of resolutions on the subject of Education, and afterwards
withdrew them. What they were, therefore, does not seem to be a
matter of any very overwhelming interest, especially as he
threatens them again on the 10th of April. His plan, however,
comprised a sort of timid notion of a rate not to be altogether
voluntary; but the fact, disclosed by the census of 1851, that of
four millions of our children, between five and fifteen years of
age, two millions are proved to be on no school list at all, while
a great mass of the other two millions are receiving the most
miserable tuition, did not excite either Lord John, or our Blessed
House of Representatives, into an indignant declaration that the
children _should_ be taught, that the nation should pay for their
teaching, and that the parents who hindered or neglected the work
should be punished. On the contrary, they chattered and talked
commonplace, and complimented one another, and an old Dissenting
Attorney called Hadfield[7] said that the people were taught as
well as any other people, which he proved from the fact that they
wrote and posted a great many letters; and he opposed all further
interference. Having thus got rid of the Education of the Poor, the
House went on to the Education of the Rich, and had a discussion on
the Oxford Reforms, but it also ended in nothing.

_Thursday_, April 10th. The House of Commons was occupied during
this night and the next with discussing Lord John Russell's
Education resolutions. They were opposed, of course, by
representatives of the Church, of Dissent, and of the Manchester
school: the first think that their religion only should be taught
by the State; the second that their religion only should be taught,
but not by the State; and the third that no religion should be
taught at all. It is needless to say that Government has no
practical views on the subject, but like all half-hearted people
contrived to get the worst in the fray.

[Footnote 7: _Punch_ is unjust to George Hadfield, member for Sheffield from 1852 to 1874, a prominent Congregationalist and advanced Liberal who took an active part in forming the Anti-Corn Law League and rendered valuable assistance in the House in promoting legal reform.]

PRODIGY: "Mamma! Look dere, dere Papa!"]

In July, 1856, at the end of the session, the Education Bill for England and Scotland figured in the "Massacre of the Innocents," sixteen in all. As a set-off the Cambridge University Bill introduced some useful reforms, though it failed to secure the admission of Dissenters; and a Minister for Education was created under the title of Vice-President of the Committee of the Council of Education. But _Punch_, in these years at any rate, had no love for the older universities. He regarded them, and especially Oxford, as the strongholds of mediævalism, obscurantism, and all the "isms" against which he was always tilting in Church and State; and he seldom failed to satirize the opposition of academic authorities to inquiry and reform. The romance of "the home of lost causes" made no appeal to his practical mind. Yet of classical scholarship and the classical curriculum he was a loyal supporter. Classical allusions, quotations and parallels abound in his pages: he even printed translations in doggerel Greek by Dr. Kenealy. But the education of the masses was his prime concern, and after the fiasco of 1856 Parliament remained inactive for nearly six years--until the notable measure, establishing the principle of "payment by results," was introduced by Lowe in 1862. In this context it may be noted that as early as 1848 _Punch_ avowed his belief in the value of making lessons interesting to children:--

The reason why school books are so dreary to the child is because
they are full of subjects he has no sympathy with. Children's books
should be written for children. The child may be father to the man,
but that is no reason why he should be treated with literature
which is only fit for a father.... If battles are to be fought
before children they should be fought with tin soldiers.... Study
should be made into a good romp, learning turned into a game, and
children then could run into the schoolroom with the same eagerness
they rush now into the playground.

[Sidenote: _A Child's Letter to Hans Anderson_]

Here we have a crude anticipation of the Montessori system, around which so much controversy rages to-day. _Punch_ has always been a lover of children, gentle and simple, but at the same time a faithful critic of the _enfant terrible_ and of juvenile precocity. One of the most delightful letters that ever appeared in his pages was the genuine epistle from a little girl printed in the issue of January 10, 1857:--

"MY DEAR MR. PUNCH,

"we Hope you are Quite well and i wish you many Happy returns of
Christmas and i hope you will Excuse me riting to You but mamma Says
you allways are Fond of little people so i Hope you will Excuse as
me and charley read in the illusterated London [_News_] that Mr.
Hans Christian anderson is Coming to spend His Hollidays in England
And We shold like to see Him becase he as Made us All so Happy with
is Betiful storys the ugly duck the Top and the ball the snow Quen
the Red shoes the Storks little ida the Constant tinsoldier great
claws and Little Claws the darning Neddle and All the rest of Them
and it says in the illustat [_several attempts, a smear, and the
spelling evaded_] Paper the children shold Meet him in the
Crys-pallace and we shold Like to Go and tell him how much We Love
him for his betiful stores do you know the tinder box and tommelise
and charley liks the wild Swans best but i Hope you will Excuse bad
riting and i Am

"Yours affectionate

"NELLY.

charley says i Have not put in wat We ment if you please Will you
put In punch wat everybody is to Do to let Mr. hans Ansen know how
Glad we are He is Coming."

We hope that Hans Andersen--who, by the way, as a writer of fairy stories is regarded with disfavour by Madame Montessori--saw this letter. On the relations of parents and children generally, two of _Punch's_ aphorisms are not without their bearing on present-day conditions. In the year 1844 the _Comic Blackstone_ reads: "Children owe their parents support; but this is a mutual obligation, for they must support each other, though we sometimes hear them declaring each other wholly insupportable." And the other, under the heading "The World's Nursery," runs: "The spoilt children of the present age rarely turn out the great men of the next." It should be added, as some readers will remember, that in neither of the decades under review were the children of the poor in any danger of being spoiled.

RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY

_Punch's_ efforts on behalf of Sunday recreation, already alluded to, exposed him to a great deal of hostile criticism. In 1854 the _English Journal of Education_ declared that _Punch_ was not suitable reading for Sunday: it was "worse than useless literature." But _Punch_ gave as good as he got. When the _Record_ attacked the Queen for having a band at Windsor on Sunday, and alluded to Nero fiddling while Rome burned, _Punch_ unblushingly called the editor "a brimstone-faced _Mawworm_."[8] The question of the opening of the British Museum and National Gallery on Sunday came up again in 1855 on the motion of Sir Joshua Walmsley, but was defeated by 235 to 48 votes, to _Punch's_ great disgust. He advises constituencies to watch closely the conduct of the triumphant Sabbatarians. "If one of the 235 saints who opposed the resolution of Sir Joshua Walmsley has his boots cleaned on Sunday, or takes a drive, or eats a warm dinner, unless by medical order, he is a humbug and a hypocrite, and unworthy of the suffrages of free and independent electors." A year later the anti-Sabbatarians resumed their attack, and in his "Essence of Parliament," distilled by Shirley Brooks, _Punch_ summarizes the debate:--

The debate to-night was brief, and chiefly left to men of small
calibre. The principal exceptions were Lord Stanley, who manfully
stood out as an Anti-Sabbatarian; Mr. Napier, who saw "poison" in
seeing pictures on Sunday; Mr. Heywood, who denied the truth of the
Jewish history of the Creation, but described the Sabbath as a
divine ordinance to be kept as a day of rejoicing; and Lord
Palmerston, who thought there would be no harm in opening these
exhibitions, but that there would be much if the House acted in
defiance of the opinions which had been expressed against doing so.
This eminently House-of-Commons logic and morality was too suited
to the audience not to be successful. On division, 376--add four
who were "shut out" and say 380--gentlemen in comfortable
circumstances, most of them with carriages and country houses,
decided, against 48 opponents, that the only holiday Mammon has
left to the poor man shall not be better spent than in a squalid
house, a dirty drinking-yard, or a debauching public-house.

[Footnote 8: Mawworm was an eighteenth-century forerunner of Chadband in Bickerstaffe's play _The Hypocrite_.]

This Parliamentary opportunism, to which Palmerston adhered in the matter of Sunday bands in the parks, was one of the qualities which _Punch_ liked least in "the judicious bottle-holder," as he loved to call Palmerston. In the controversy which raged round this question throughout the year _Punch_ gladly recognized the enlightened zeal of Sir Benjamin Hall, the Member for Marylebone and Commissioner of Works. For a while the bands played in the parks on Sundays, and _Punch_ celebrated the concession, which had been sanctioned by Palmerston, in an "Ode to Sir Benjamin Hall."

But the boon was short-lived. "The Sunday Band, Hall's grant," was "abolished by the influence of Cant," and on May 19 Palmerston, while retaining his personal opinion as to the propriety of having Sunday music in the parks, stated that such "representations" had been made to him that he had felt it his duty to give way. The Sabbatarians were jubilant, as may be gathered from _Punch's_ reference to the _Record_ in his issue of August 16:--

We doubt very much whether we can any longer conscientiously call
the _Record_ our serious contemporary. That doubt is suggested by
the following passage occurring in one of its leading articles:--

"We are taught to expect the blessing of God on the conduct of our
affairs when we act in accordance with the divine will; and it
almost seems as if Lord Palmerston acquired new strength from the
moment when he agreed to put down the Sunday bands. The attempt to
make Government responsible for the loss of Kars was defeated by a
great majority, and the subsequent attempt to censure Lord
Clarendon on account of the American dispute was defeated by a
majority still more overwhelming."

We can conceive a person devoid of all veracity and conscience,
writing in a great hurry to a set of imbecile fanatics,
perpetrating such stuff and nonsense as the above, but we cannot
well conceive any other person guilty thereof.

[Sidenote: Goldsmith Bowdlerized]

_Punch_ could not see harm in music on any day, and he printed a charming "petition" from the song-birds of Kensington to Sir Benjamin Hall, expressing their apprehension of an order forbidding them to sing on Sundays. But then, as now, there were moralists who saw not good but evil in everything. In the same year of 1856 the Government issued an edition of Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" for the use of schools, and the lines:--

The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age and whisp'ring lovers made--

were amended by the substitution of "youthful converse" for "whisp'ring lovers." Assuming the character and style of Dr. Johnson, _Punch_ castigates this "pseudo-purifier of Goldsmith" in round terms. "Sir, he is a noisome fellow, Sir, he is a male prude and a hypocrite. Sir, he is a dunce."

_Punch's_ hostility to Exeter Hall, which has undergone structural and other vicissitudes even more remarkable than those of the Crystal Palace, was originally based on what may be called its foreign policy, which he regarded as indistinguishable from the worst form of Jellybyism. This is how he described Exeter Hall in 1842:--

It is at the Hall that the fireside philanthropist, the good and
easy man, for whom life has been one long lounge on a velvet
sofa--it is there that he displays his practical benevolence,
talking for hours on the glory of shipping white pastors to Africa
to baptise the negro; or, if the climate will not have it so, to
die there. And it is from the Hall that the good and pious, having
voted a supply of religion to the black, depart for their own
comfortable homes, having, to their exceeding content, indicated
their Christianity by paying a pound, singing a hymn, and--taking
care of themselves.

In 1846, in "A word on the May meetings" (June 6), he appeals to the Exeter Hall people to drop their foreign philanthropy and educate the poor at home--multiply ragged schools by ten thousand, and aid in the housing movement, social reform, the establishment of baths and wash-houses. As a matter of fact, many of the Exeter Hall people, with Lord Shaftesbury at their head, took an active part in these movements, but _Punch_ could not forgive them for their rigid insistence on Sunday observance, and labelled them indiscriminately as Pharisees, Pecksniffs and Chadbands.

His hostile criticisms of the Church, especially the bishops and archbishops, were equally uncomplimentary but better founded. As _The Times_ wrote in 1847: "The chief practical difficulty of the Church of England is how to engage and secure the affections of the poor." _Punch_ re-echoed the sentiment (October 16, 1847), adding the sarcastic comment: "Bishops, with tens of thousands a year, cry 'Hear, hear!'" But he overlooked the fact that one of the remedies advocated by "Young England" for existing evils was the reorganization of the Church--to make it the friend, comforter and protector of the people. "Young England," however, was an aristocratic movement, and its leaders were almost as great _bêtes noires_ to _Punch_ as Dr. Sumner, the Archbishop of Canterbury (commonly regarded as the incarnation of Cant), "Soapy Sam" (Wilberforce), "Henry of Exeter" (Dr. Phillpotts), and Blomfield, the Bishop of London.