Chapter II: Part I: The National Outlook (2)

_Punch_ had for some twenty years been, on the whole, a consistent supporter of Mr. Gladstone, but his loyalty was more severely tested in the years 1884 and 1885 than at any other time in the Liberal leader's career. Indeed, there were moments when it might be said to have broken down, and respect gave place to something like contempt. This mood was revealed in the very first of the Gordon cartoons early in 1884. Gordon is seen ploughing along through Egyptian difficulties with Gladstone, "The Grand Old Man of the (Red) Sea," complacently smirking on his back. In February _Punch_ demands instant action. An angry John Bull bids Gladstone unmuzzle the British Lion _at once_, and _Punch_ comments severely on the Premier's word-jugglery and sophistry. Later on we see Gladstone in the desert "after the Simoom," leading a camel. "Mirage" shows Gordon looking anxiously for relief from the battlements of Khartoum. A burlesque correspondence between a British Hero and the British Government pours satire on the cheap sympathy and lax opportunism of the Government, who are only concerned with saving their skin and their faces. The Premier's preoccupation with trivial home legislation comes in for indignant rebuke, and the Trelawny quatrain is adapted for the benefit of Gordon. The two cartoons in May are especially bitter. Mr. Gladstone, on the Treasury Bench, as Micawber, declares, "I am delighted to add that I have now an immediate prospect of something turning up. I am not at liberty to say in what direction." A fortnight later the Liberal Majority (or Mrs. Micawber) protests she will never desert Mr. Micawber--referring to the result of the Vote of Censure.

_Punch_, however, had no intention of crossing the floor of the House. The Conservative opposition to the Franchise Bill rekindled his Liberalism. Lord Salisbury's attitude in particular excited his hostility. He figures in verse as "The Losing Leader" (after Browning), and in a cartoon as the bell-wether followed into the pit by a flock of coroneted sheep. It was "no Curtius leap, but mutton madness," and the hotheads are compared to the Gadarene swine. _Punch_ heaped laboured ridicule on the great Hyde Park Demonstration, printed burlesque advertisements suggesting employment for peers after the abolition of the House of Lords, and indulged in prophetic forecasts of "What it may come to."

[Sidenote: _The Franchise Bill_]

The Opposition suffered from the defection or lukewarmness of some of the wiser peers--Cranbrook, Cairns and Wemyss--and finally withdrew on the unofficial but opportune publication in the _Standard_ of the outline of the Government's Redistribution Scheme. _Punch_ gives his own account of the incident, according to which the whole Cabinet was mesmerized into revealing the Government plans, and summed up the whole business in his cartoon, "'Bill' the Giant-killer." The little Franchise Bill is seen blowing his horn before a castle (the House of Lords) with Lord Salisbury, as a huge Ogre, looking over the battlements and dismayed to find that his castle is not impregnable against Truth. In this context we may note that the payment of members was foreseen by _Punch_ in a burlesque "Thumb-nail Summary for 1884," printed in the first issue of that year. Under July we read:--

Newly elected Parliament meets for the first time, and commences a
campaign of active legislative reform by abolishing the Speaker.

The "Payment of Members Bill," involving a State income of £2,000
a year, the right to a stall at West End Theatres on first nights,
family railway tourist-tickets during the summer season, and free
dining for self and friend at the Holborn Restaurant while Parliament
is in Session, carried without a division.

The "Payment of Members Bill," being thrown out by the Peers, the
House of Lords is abolished by a short comprehensive Act, framed for
the purpose, in one sitting.

Much aristocratic distress prevails towards the end of the month,
and gangs of hungry Peers infesting the public thoroughfares are
prosecuted daily by the Secretary of the Charity Organisation Society,
and ultimately shipped to a Coral Island in the Pacific.

Mr. Gladstone's seventy-fifth birthday on December 29, 1884, was welcomed in a set of verses in which the eulogy is only tempered by a faint reserve as to his lack of youthful resolution and his excess of caution. Had the anniversary fallen a few weeks later, _Punch_ might have found it harder to pay such generous homage, for on February 7 appeared the unlucky cartoon which assumed that Gordon had been relieved. Yet even then, when the truth became known and while raising the cry of "Too late," _Punch_, though condemning delay and caution, deprecated party rancour:--

Not this the hour to echo faction's cry
Of half-exultant chiding, or to ply
The Party-phraser's venomed word-lash. No!
But laggard wills, counsels confused and slow
Should need no sharper spur, no keener goad
Than this to urge them on plain Honour's road.

[Sidenote: _The Tragedy of Khartoum_]

_Punch's_ contribution to the Gordon "Memorial" was an ode from which we may quote one stanza:--

Gordon! A name to gild our island story,
Opulent yet in many a noble name,
With lustre brighter than mere statecraft's fame,
More radiant than the warrior's glittering glory.
Such lesser lights eclipse them in the fine
Sun-glow of selfless valour such as thine,
Soldier whose sword, like Galahad's, was not used
To hew out honour, but to champion right;
Plan-shaper who, in council as in fight,
Wast endlessly resourceful, yet refused,
Death-snared, an easy flight!

Other pens were busy over this episode, which inspired perhaps the most scarifying epigram of our times:--

Judas despairing died, his guilt confessed,
But had he lived in this our age and city,
He surely would have figured with the best
Upon a Christ Memorial Committee.

The disaster, however, had one heartening result in the offer of military assistance from Canada, Victoria and New South Wales, duly recorded by _Punch_ in his cartoon of the Lion and the Colonial cubs. The year 1885 had opened with a sinister display of activity by dynamiters, and _Punch_ rebuked Sir William Harcourt for his alleged apathy and imperious resentment of criticism by calling him the "Not-at-Home Secretary." America promptly took legislative action, refusing sanctuary to dynamiters, and was loudly applauded, while Mr. Parnell, in _Punch's_ opinion, missed a golden opportunity for disavowing and condemning these outrages. In "What Mr. Parnell _might_ have said" _Punch_ printed the speech which he did _not_ make but ought to have made, "as a man, an Irishman and a Christian."

MRS. GUMMIDGE-GLADSTONE: "I ain't what I could wish myself to be. My troubles has made me contrairy. I feel my troubles, and they make me contrairy. I make the house uncomfortable. I don't wonder at it!!!"

JOHN PEGGOTTY-BULL (_deeply sympathizing aside_): "She's been thinking of the old 'un!"--_David Copperfield._]

The days of the Gladstone administration were numbered, and the motion in favour of Proportional Representation excited but a languid and academic interest. _Punch_ thought the system far too complicated, and sought to reduce it to absurdity by a practical illustration. He was much more serious in his resentment at the hectoring attitude of Bismarck _à propos_ of a recent speech of the Imperial Chancellor. In "Lecturing a Lecturer--a Friendly Tip to the Teuton Titan," he showed Bismarck standing in a truculent pose before a map of Europe while _Punch_ looks on in amusement. The point of the accompanying verses is that Britain was not to be scared or scolded into submission:--

Orbilian Colossus,
You'd chide us and spank us and goad us and toss us,
But when Polyphemus world-wigging would try
He may--pardon the _argot_--get "one in the eye."
And _Punch_, Herr Professor, whose point seldom misses,
Is ready if needful to play the Ulysses.

The attempt to represent Bismarck as a professor might not seem to show a very acute reading of the facts were it not that German professors proved the chief inflamers of militarism. It must be added that, as a set off to this expostulation, _Punch_ indited a remarkably genial poem to Bismarck a couple of weeks later on the occasion of his seventieth birthday. But this can hardly have atoned for the extremely acid and acute satire on the Spirit of German Colonization published about the same time. Here Germania declares her intentions to the native races in language which the treatment of the Herreros in German South-West Africa proved to be well within the mark:--

I haf brought you German culture for the poddy and the mind,
Die erhabene Kultur of efery sort and efery kind;
All the pessimistic dogtrines of the Schopenhauer school
And the blessings of a bureaucratish-military rule.
I shall teach you shplendit knowledge, vot you hitherto haf lacked,
That religion is a fantasy, vhilst sausage is a fact;
Ja, the mysteries of sauerkraut to you shall be made clear,
And your souls shall learn to float on foaming waves of Lager-Bier!

I do not intend to long-while you mit missionary rant,
But to brighten up your intellects mit Hegel and mit Kant.
Mit our Army-Service system I'll begift you by-and-by,
And mit all the priceless blessings of our Hohe Polizei.
Ach! I lofes you as a moder, and your happiness, I shwear,
Shall forefer be the von surpassing object of my care.
_I'll_ civilize you, Kinder, mid dem edlen Gerstenbrei,
And mit discipline, Potztausend!--or I'll know the reason vhy!

And then die hehre Göttin, hof'ring in the aether blue,
Vill summon up her gunboats and her Pickelhauben too,
Her bearded brawny varriors, vot nefer knew no fear,
And troops of learned bureaucrats, all buttoned-up to here.
Then if the shtupit natifes don't attend to vot she said,
And makes themselves unpleasant, they must all be shooted dead;
For trifles in the vay of German culture must not shtand--
Hoch soll der Bismarck leben! I drinks, "Our Fatherland!"

[Sidenote: _Lord Randolph Churchill_]

When the Government was defeated in June "on the Budget Stakes," as _Punch_ put it, he went so far as to accuse Gladstone of "riding to lose," and resented this action as not quite on the square. A month earlier he had shown Gladstone as the political Mrs. Gummidge, the "Old 'un" being Disraeli, whose portrait hangs on the wall. There was a rumour of Mr. Gladstone going to the Lords, and _Punch_ had a picture of Tennyson, in his robes in the "gay garden of elegant earls," inviting W. E. G. to "come into the garden," but Mr. Gladstone declines, preferring to paddle his own canoe. Lord Randolph was included in the Salisbury administration, which held office for six months, as Secretary of State for India, but his elevation to Cabinet rank did not appease _Punch's_ distrust--rather the reverse. He was not really an undersized man, but he invariably appears in _Punch_ about this time as a boy, a mannikin or some diminutive pest, while the vehemence of his language is resented in bitter criticism of his "mud-spattering" abuse, vulgar invective, and "Billingsgate Babel." In particular a speech which he delivered at a Conservative gathering at Canford Manor, Wimborne, excited _Punch's_ wrath, and prompted the picture of "Funny Little Randolph," as a "star comique" singing a topical song, "I don't care a rap," and exulting in his grimaces and bad manners. In the previous year _Punch_ had fallen foul of the "windy ravings of Loyalist Speakers" in Ireland, "the Loyalist Cæsar, and the Nationalist Pompey seem 'very much alike' indeed--in the matter of noisy mischief.... One feels that the Orange Champions would not hate 'disloyalty' so much did they not hate their 'Green' fellow countrymen more."

DICK: "I've chose my Three Acres--next to the Parson's. I mean to dig and grow 'Taters. Where 'ave you chose yours?"

HARRY: "I ain't chose no Land. I shan't grow no 'Taters. I shall take _your_ 'Taters!"]

Yet in the autumn of 1885, when Lord Carnarvon was Viceroy, _Punch_ developed a strong distrust of the conciliatory policy of the Conservatives. In one cartoon he shows Captain Moonlight masked and armed at an open door, the bar of the Crimes Act having been removed. In October he wrote, "when Tyranny alone is free where is the safety--save for slaves." In another cartoon he showed the National League as the Irish Vampire, hovering over Hibernia in her uneasy sleep, and bade her awake and banish the hideous monster that was sapping her strength. _Mr. Punch's_ "Political Address," issued shortly before the resignation of the Salisbury Cabinet, claimed that he was the only real Independent Candidate, the nominee of no party, section, or sect; bound to no programme, but "all for the four P's--Principle, Progress, Patriotism and Peace"--in fine, "whichever Party he returned to office, _Mr. Punch_, the non-partisan Member for Everywhere, will be in power." The new cry of "Three Acres and a Cow" raised at the close of 1885 left him cold, witness Du Maurier's "Sauce for the Goose." The verses in the same number on "New Words and Old Songs" imply that it was a mere vote-catching device, and at the same time mock at the cadging tactics of the Knights and Dames of the Primrose League founded in 1884.

[Sidenote: _Home Rule Rejected_]

On the resignation of the Salisbury Cabinet, Mr. Gladstone returned to power with Mr. Morley as Chief Secretary for Ireland. The story of his conversion to Home Rule, his failure to convert his colleagues, the split in the Cabinet and the introduction and rejection of the Home Rule Bill of 1886 is well told in the series of cartoons which begin with "At the Cross Roads" in February. There Gladstone is shown hesitating between Land Purchase and Home Rule, while Chamberlain as the cowboy advises the former. In "The Thanes fly from me" we see Gladstone as Macbeth asking Morley (Seyton) to give him his armour: "This push will cheer me ever or disseat me now." The Home Rule Bill is typified as the "Divided Skirt." Gladstone as the Grand Old Man Milliner is trying in vain to reconcile Britannia to her new dress. The sequel is shown in the "Actæon" cartoon in which Gladstone is pulled down by his own hounds--Chamberlain, Hartington, Goschen--and in the adaptation of Meissonier's "Retreat from Moscow," where Gladstone figures as the defeated Napoleon. It is rather curious, by the way, to note that during the debates _Punch_, in his "Essence of Parliament," describes Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Mr. Labouchere as the "two drolls of the House" at Question time.

GRAND OLD MAN-MILLINER (_persuasively_): "Fits beautifully, Madam! A little alteration here and there!"

MRS. BRITANNIA: "It's very uncomfortable, and I'm sure it isn't becoming. I shall never get along with it as it is!!"]

On the merits of Home Rule _Punch_ is rather non-committal, and speaks with more than one voice. The secession of the Liberal Unionists impressed him greatly; but he was bitterly antagonistic to the Ulster extremists, witness this epigram printed in May:--

_Lucus a non Lucendo_

Loyal? Nay, Ulster, you, for very shame
Should cede your long monopoly of that name.
Loyal--to whom--to what? To power, to pelf,
To place, to privilege, in a word, to _self_.
They who assume, absorb, control, enjoy all,
Must find it vastly pleasant to be "loyal."

Lord Randolph Churchill's famous jingle: "Ulster will fight. Ulster will be right," inspired a prophetic forecast of the result of such action, in which Ulster does fight and is defeated:--

The battle had been severe, but it was over at last. Belfast was
taken. Derry was in ruins. Everywhere the Orange faction had been
outnumbered and worsted. The reverse was crushing and complete. "We
shall now," said the General commanding the National forces, "be
suffered, perhaps, to hold our Parliament on College Green in peace."
He turned to a batch of captured officers as he spoke. They were a
motley crew. Among them figured several wearing the Queen's uniform,
while here and there stood some distinguished sympathizer with the
beaten cause, who had thrown in his lot to support rebellion against
Queen and Empire. Among these latter a scion of a Ducal House and
former well-known Member of the House of Commons, was weeping over
a broken drumhead. The General singled him out, and beckoned him
to approach. He drew near, surlily: "Well, my Lord," continued the
Commander, in a tone of banter. "How about your prophecy? Ulster will
fight. Ulster will be right. Ulster has fought. Ha! Ha!"

"And she has been wrong!" was the submissive and humble reply.

[Sidenote: _Lord Randolph at the Tresury_]

This squib was written before the rejection of the Home Rule Bill, a result which _Punch_, or the writer, probably did not anticipate. The accuracy of the forecast, however, remains still to be tested.

The Elections went against the Government, and Lord Salisbury was returned to power, with Lord Randolph as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons. The verses which accompany and expand the cartoon of "The Grand Young Man" with the shade of Dizzy looking on, almost deviate into geniality. _Punch_ fancies that Randolph, in spite of his defects of taste and manners, is "more than a mere mime," but, in contrasting his career with that of Lord Beaconsfield, points out that he was born in the purple and that his rise to power was easier and quicker. This comparatively friendly mood soon gave way to the old distrust, and by October, in "Swag, or the political Jack Sheppard," we see Lord Randolph, anxious to eclipse Dizzy as a Tory Turpin and "disher" of the Whigs, rifling a chest labelled "Liberal Measures," while Mr. Gladstone peers into the room at the back. _Punch's_ distrust was partly justified by Lord Randolph's impetuous resignation in December. What might have been a great career was wrecked by an impatient temper. Immense ability, industry, courage and reforming zeal were there, and it was hardly fair to represent him as a modern Curtius leaping into the pit of Popularity. The Treasury was not the only Government Office in which reform was thwarted by obstruction and mismanagement. _Punch_ attacked the War Office in the autumn of 1886 for setting its face "not merely against change, but against experiments pointing to change," and scouting all inventors as nuisances. He simultaneously proposed the foundation of an official organ of the Admiralty to be called "Dowb," the burlesque prospectus of which obliquely satirizes the abuse of perquisites, bad stores, muddled finance, futile commissions of inquiry and general incompetence in high places. Home politics engrossed attention throughout the year, but _Punch_ did not fail to note the gathering clouds in the Balkans, when Prince Alexander of Battenberg, the hero of Slivnitza, a gallant and picturesque figure, had abdicated the throne of Bulgaria, Russian jealousy having rendered his position untenable. In the cartoon of "The Vanishing Lady," the Tsar is shown as a juggler using the cloak of diplomacy to extinguish the freedom of the country he had helped to emancipate. The same year which witnessed the disappearance from the political scene of Prince Alexander was marked by the birth of Alfonso XIII of Spain, and _Punch_ offered his ceremonial greeting to one of the few sovereigns who survived the monarchical _débâcle_ of the Great War of 1914.

The Victorian age reached its grand climacteric in 1887, the year of the Queen's Golden Jubilee and the gathering of the Kings and Captains. Of the celebrations we speak elsewhere. _Punch_, no longer anti-Papist, linked them with those at the Vatican--in honour of Leo XIII, who had been ordained priest in 1837--in his lines on "Two Jubilees":--

St. Peter's and St. James's face to face
Exchanging with a more than courtly grace
Their mutual gifts and greetings!

A sight to stir the bigot; but the wise
Regard with cheerful and complacent eyes
This pleasantest of meetings.

And so on with praise of the Good Queen and Holy Father, _Punch_, as a "true freeman unfettered by servile fear or hate's poor purblind heat," being free to celebrate them both.

It was also the Centenary year of the United States, welcomed by _Punch_ in John Bull's song on Miss Columbia's Hundredth birthday to the air of "I'm getting a big boy now." Mr. Gladstone was invited to the celebrations but did not cross the Atlantic. John Bull abounds in professions of good-will, but there is a slight sting in the last chorus:--

You are getting a great girl now,
May you prosper, and keep out of row;
Shun Bunkum and bawl
All that's shoddy and small,
For you're getting a _great_ girl now.

The Salisbury Cabinet was strengthened by the inclusion of Mr. Goschen as Chancellor of the Exchequer--Mr. Goschen whom Lord Randolph "forgot," and whom _Punch_ styled the "Emergency man," a phrase now also forgotten, but then applied to the volunteers who assisted boycotted farmers and loyalists in Ireland. Mr. Balfour was at the Irish Office, the scene of his greatest administrative successes, and the Crimes Act and the Land Act were the two principal measures of the Session. In those days _The Times_ was the great champion of the Unionist policy, and in the summer of 1887 is shown prodding on Lord Salisbury and Mr. Balfour, armed with Crimes Act blunderbusses, in their attack on the Land League wild boar. The Land League was "proclaimed" in August; and already the controversy had begun between Mr. Parnell and _The Times_ over the former's alleged participation in the responsibility for the Phoenix Park murders. The question was raised in a series of articles on "Parnellism and Crime"; but the charges were not made specific until the following year. John Bright's secession from the Gladstonian Liberals had been a serious blow, and his contributions to the Unionist armoury were so vigorous and pointed, that it is rather strange to find _Punch_ assailing him in March, 1887, for his pacificist tendencies:--

The white flag, John, _may_ bid all battle cease,
Not the white feather! In defence of right,
Despite your dogmas, men perforce must fight
With swords as well as words: be it their care
With either, to heed honour, and fight fair.
You would "speak daggers" only; be it so;
But a word-stab may be a felon blow.

John Bright certainly spoke daggers against those who, in his own phrase, kept the rebellion pot always on the boil.

[Sidenote: _Germany's Momentous Year_]

The Earl of Iddesleigh, better known as Sir Stafford Northcote, died in January. There is an unmistakable reference to Lord Randolph Churchill's treatment of his one-time leader in the verses in which _Punch_ paid homage to a statesman "worn yet selfless, disparaged and dispraised," yet a "pattern of proud but gentle chivalry":--

So the arena's coarser heroes mocked
This antique fighter. And his place was rather
Where Arthur's knights in generous tourney shocked
Than where swashbucklers meet or histrions gather:
Yet--yet his death has touched the land with gloom;
All England honours Chivalry--at his tomb.

Here the reference to Lord Randolph is inferential though unmistakable. But an opportunity for having a dig at him is never missed. When the Bulgarian throne was offered to Prince Ferdinand, and his cautious and diplomatic tactics resulted in long delays, _Punch_ in pure malice suggested that the crown should be offered to Lord Randolph. He may be forgiven, however, in view of the remarkably accurate estimate which he formed of the slyness, timidity and meanness of "Ferdinand the Fox," and the alternations of servility and insolence in his attitude towards Russia. Bismarck again comes in for honorific notice this year in the guise of Sintram, accompanied and menaced by Socialism (the Little Master), but confidently riding along on his steed Majority. But 1888 was a momentous year for Germany--the year in which two Kaisers died and a third succeeded to the heritage of the Hohenzollerns. The old Emperor Wilhelm, the "_Greise Kaiser_," died on March 9; within a hundred days his son, the "_Weise Kaiser_," had fallen to the fatal malady which had sapped his splendid physique, to be succeeded in turn by the "_Reise Kaiser_," the nickname bestowed on Wilhelm II for his passion for movement and travel. At the moment of his accession _Punch_ was not inclined to be critical. The cartoon of "The Vigil" in June of that year expresses no misgivings, but only sympathy for one called to bear so heavy a burden. And this view is amplified in the verses in which the lessons of the past are used to fortify the hopes of the future:--

THE VIGIL

"Verse-moi dans le coeur, du fond de ce tombeau
Quelque chose de grand, de sublime et de beau!"

_Hernani_, Act iv, Scene 2.

The prayer of Charles, that rose amidst the gloom
Of the dead Charlemagne's majestic tomb,
Might fitly find an echo on the lips
Of the young Prince, whose pathway death's eclipse
Hath twice enshadowed in so brief a space.
Grandsire and Sire! Stout slip of a strong race,
Valiant old age and vigorous manhood fail,
And leave youth, high with hope, with anguish pale,
In vigil at their tomb! Watch on, and kneel,
Those clenched hands crossed upon the sheathèd steel.
Not lightly such inheritance should fall.
Hear you not through the gloom the glorious call
Of Valour, Duty, Freedom?

... And youth must face
What snowy age and stalwart manhood found
A weight of sorrow, though with splendour crowned.
Young Hohenzollern, soldierly of soul,
Heaven fix your heart on a yet nobler goal
Than sword may hew its way to. Those you mourn
Heroes of the Great War when France was torn
With Teuton shot, knew that the sword alone
May rear, but shall not long support a throne.
William has passed, bowing his silver crest,
Like an old Sea King going to his rest;
Frederick, in fullest prime, with failing breath,
But an heroic heart, has stooped to death:
Here, at their tomb, another Emperor keeps
His vigil, whilst Germania bows and weeps.
Heaven hold that sword unsheathed in that young hand,
And crown with power and peace the Fatherland!

Only a fortnight before the death of the old Emperor, Bismarck's Army Bill had awakened _Punch's_ misgivings. He reluctantly admired the strength of the lion combined with the shrewdness of the fox; and put into Bismarck's mouth the sonorous couplet:--

I speak of Peace, while covert enmity
Under the smile of safety wounds the world.

(_Founded on the first part of an old Fable of Dædalus and Icarus, the Sequel of which Mr. Punch trusts may never apply._)]

But by September it was the young Kaiser, not Bismarck, who invited "A Word in Season." The counsel was prompted by a speech in which he declared, "It is the pride of the Hohenzollerns to reign at once over the noblest, the most intellectual and most cultured of nations," a sentiment mild when compared with later utterances, yet sufficiently thrasonic to earn a rebuke for indulging in demagogic flattery, coupled with the advice to read Lord Wolseley's article in the _Fortnightly_ on Marlborough, Wellington and Napoleon, and to emulate the reticence of Moltke. In less than a month the inevitable cleavage between the Kaiser and his Chancellor is foreshadowed in the splendid cartoon reproduced, where Bismarck as Dædalus warns Wilhelm as Icarus, in a paraphrase of Ovid:--

My son, observe the middle path to fly,
And fear to sink too low, or rise too high.
Here the sun melts, there vapours damp your force,
Between the two extremes direct your course.

Nor on the Bear, nor on Boötes gaze,
Nor on sword-arm'd Orion's dangerous rays;
But follow me, thy guide, with watchful sight,
And as I steer, direct thy cautious flight.

_Metamorphoses_, Book VIII, Fable iii.

For the establishment of the Triple Alliance _Punch_ held Bismarck responsible. The three high contracting Powers become the "Sisters Three," Italy as Atropos, Austria as Lachesis, and Germany as Clotho. The policy is expounded in "a Bismarckian version of an old classical myth." Bismarck claims to be working for peace so long as he is the cloud compeller. While he is in power it will be all well with Germany. Of Austria he is less certain, owing to the precariousness of her crown, but he counts confidently on Italy, and ends on an optimistic note, dwelling on the pacific aims of this new political pact. It is hard to tell whether this is irony on the part of _Punch_ or a genuine approval of the Triple Alliance. But there is no doubt of his mistrust of Germany's ulterior motives in undertaking to co-operate with England in suppressing the Slave Trade in Africa--a mistrust expressed in the quatrain:--

When Fox with Lion hunts,
One would be sorry
To say who gains, until
They've shared the quarry.

[Sidenote: _Boulanger's Bid for Dictatorship_]

The sequel justified the suspicion, and less than a year later _Punch_ published a companion cartoon in which the Lion, coming round the corner, finds the Fox has pulled down the notice "Down with Slavery" and is about to put up a Proclamation in which "Up" takes the place of "Down."

Bismarck's hostility to the Empress Frederick was notorious. In her husband's brief reign there was a question of their daughter, Princess Victoria, marrying Prince Alexander, ex-sovereign of Bulgaria. _Punch_ represented Bismarck forbidding the banns, and putting an extinguisher labelled "Policy" on Cupid. It was stated that Bismarck threatened to resign if the marriage plan were proceeded with; _Punch_, the sentimentalist, believed that love would find out a way, and it did, but in a different direction. The Prince married, but the lady was not of royal or even noble birth, and as Count Hartenau he remained in obscurity and died while still a young man.

France also had her troubles in 1888, for this was the year of Boulanger, the _brav' Général_, who captivated the mob for a while, seemed at one moment to be within an ace of overthrowing the Republic and establishing a stratocracy, but collapsed ignobly in the testing hour. _Punch_ recognized the danger in his cartoon of France ruefully balancing the Cap of Liberty on her finger. But even in _L'Audace_, where Boulanger is shown climbing up a steep cliff, with "Deputy" at the bottom, "President" and "Dictator" at the top, and the Imperial Eagle peering over the summit--we are made to feel that the climber is not equal to the task. The conditions are exactly reproduced in the companion picture, "Many a Slip," only that Boulanger is shown rolling down the precipice.

New South Wales celebrated her Centenary on January 26, 1888, and _Punch_ added his tribute in a happily-worded greeting under the familiar heading, "Advance, Australia!":--

A hundred years! At Time's old pace
The merest day's march, little changing;
But now the measure's new, the race
Fares even faster, forward ranging.
What cycle of Cathay e'er saw
Your Century's wondrous transformation?
From wandering waifs to wards of Law!
From nomads to a mighty nation!
Belated dreamers moan and wail;
What scenes for croakers of that kidney,
Since first the _Sirius_ furled her sail
Where now is Sydney!

A hundred years! Let Fancy fly--
She has a flight that nothing hinders,
Not e'en reaction's raven cry--
Back to the days of Matthew Flinders,
Stout slip of Anglo-Saxon stock
Who gave the new-found land its nomen.
Faith, memory-fired, may proudly mock
At dismal doubt, at owlish omen.
Five sister-colonies spread now
Where then the wandering black-fellow
Alone enjoyed day's golden glow,
Night's moonlight mellow.

"The Island-Continent! Hooray!"
Punch drinks your health in honest liquor
On this your great Centennial day,
Whose advent makes his blood flow quicker.
We know what you can do, dear boys
In City-founding--and in Cricket.
A fig for flattery!--it cloys;
Frank truth, true friendship--that's the ticket!
Land of rare climate, stalwart men,
And pretty girls, and queer mammalia,
All England cries, through _Punch's_ pen,
"Advance, Australia!"

The same year witnessed the starting of the Australian navy. "Naturally the biggest island in the world has the biggest coast-line, and so needs the biggest fleet." The lead was taken by Victoria. _Punch_ saw nothing but healthy rivalry between the different colonies as the outcome of the movement, but looked to Federation as the true means to prevent the different Australian Colonies from being at "Southern Cross-purposes" when they all had their navies. The trouble in the Soudan prompts a warning from the Shade of Gordon: "If you mean to send help, do it thoroughly and _do it at once_," but anxiety was allayed by the success of General Grenfell at Suakin, an example of prompt action worthy of the attention of "long-halting statesmen."

[Sidenote: _Parnell and "The Times"_]

The most important measure of the Session at Westminster was the Local Government Bill establishing County Councils. _Punch_ made considerable capital out of Mr. Chamberlain's _rapprochement_ to the Tory interests. At a meeting of the National Society, Archbishop Benson had referred amid cheers to the words of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain at the opening of a School Board in Birmingham, and his acknowledgment of the fact that Voluntary Schools must have their place in the education of the people recognized. Mr. Chamberlain's views on the Liquor question had shown a similar concession to the demands of the brewing trade. So _Punch_ represents the "Artful Joe" walking arm-in-arm with the Archbishop and "Bung," and observing, "What a lot of nice friends I'm making." Mr. Chamberlain is already acknowledged to be "incomparably the best debater in the House"; _Punch_ rendered full justice to his ability, but his chief cartoonist, Tenniel, though still capable of splendid work, never managed to seize and reproduce the alert vivacity of Mr. Chamberlain's features. The progress of the controversy between Mr. Parnell and _The Times_ impelled _Punch_ as an _amicus curiæ_ to suggest that one or other of the disputants should wake up the Public Prosecutor in preference to the appointment of a Special Commission. The latter method of procedure, however, was adopted. The course of the inquiry was followed by _Punch_ in a series of articles, and when Parnell was exculpated on the chief count by the breakdown of _The Times_ witness Pigott, who confessed to forgery, fled the country and committed suicide, _Punch_ exhibited the Clock-face doing penance in a white sheet with the lines, "His honour rooted in dishonour stood, etc." But when the Report of the Commission was finally published, _Punch_ found it a veritable chameleon, which disappointed both sides, because most of those interested wore party-coloured spectacles or else were colour-blind.

England was visited in 1889 by two of the most perturbing personalities in European politics, the Kaiser Wilhelm II and General Boulanger. _Punch_, however, resolutely and, as it turned out, rightly refused to take the _brav' Général_ seriously, though he found in him plenty of food for disparaging satire as a shoddy hero on his prancing steed, as a "General Boum" in real life (recalling the grotesque figure in _La Grande Duchesse_), and as an uninvited guest, whose unwelcome arrival John Bull took as an occasion for going off to the French Exhibition. In a burlesque cartoon on France's embarrassments in choosing the right form of Government, _Punch_ exhibited President Carnot, the Comte de Paris, Prince Jerome Bonaparte ("Plon-Plon") and General Boulanger dancing a grotesque _pas de quatre_ before the French Electorate. But Boulanger was already ended, though his death, by his own hand, did not take place till the autumn of 1891. His histrionic equipment was perfect, and the French, though the most logical of people, are often carried away by their theatrical sense. He had served with some distinction in the army, and he was a fine figure on a horse. But he lacked the inflexible will, the iron resolution and the ruthlessness which make Cæsars and Napoleons; and _Punch's_ epitaph is a closely-packed summary of the forces and influences which conspired to his undoing:--

So high he floated, that he seemed to climb;
The bladder blown by chance was burst by time.
Falsely-earned fame fools bolstered at the urns;
The mob which reared the god the idol burns.
To cling one moment nigh to power's crest,
Then, earthward flung, sink to oblivion's rest
Self-sought, 'midst careless acquiescence, seems
Strange fate, e'en for a thing of schemes and dreams;
But Cæsar's simulacrum, seen by day,
Scarce envious Casca's self would stoop to slay,
And mounting mediocrity, once o'erthrown,
Need fear--or hope--no dagger save its own.

The Kaiser's visit to attend the Naval Review at Spithead is treated in a somewhat jocular and cavalier spirit in the cartoon, "Visiting Grandmamma":--

GRANDMA VICTORIA: "Now, Willie dear, you've plenty of _soldiers_ at home; look at these pretty _ships_--I'm sure you'll be pleased with _them_!"

[Sidenote: _Mistrust of the Kaiser_]

The Kaiser is shown with a toy spade making sand castles for his soldiers. Yet these soldiers were giving ground for anxiety--witness the cartoon in January on the armed peace of Europe with Peace holding out the olive in one hand, with the other on a sword hilt. The inevitable verses allude to the "truculent Kaiser" and evince mistrust of one who comes in such equivocal guise. _Punch_ credited Bismarck with exerting a restraining influence on the warlike activities of the Triple Alliance. He showed him in the spring playing Orpheus to this Cerberus, and lulling it to sleep. But the Kaiser inspired no such confidence, and at the close of the year he is shown posing as a peacemaker but preparing for war--fondling the dove on his hand, while behind is the eagle, with bayonets for feathers, feeding on the Army estimates.

Another sovereign whom _Punch_ failed to read with the same penetration was King Leopold II of the Belgians. On the occasion of the International Anti-Slavery Congress at Brussels in November, 1889, _Punch_, while very properly applauding the occasion as tending to the overthrow of "the demon of the shackle and the scourge," acclaimed Leopold II as a "magnanimous King." Cecil Rhodes, some years later, after an interview with the same monarch, said that he felt just as if he had been spending the morning in the company of the Devil.

_Punch_, like other critics, was happier in dealing with the dead than the living, and the death of John Bright in March inspired a generous though discriminating tribute to the memory and achievements of "Mercy's sworn militant, great Paladin of Peace":--

For Peace, and Freedom, and the People's right,
Based on unshaken Law, he stood and fought;
If not with widest purview, yet with sight
Single, sagacious, unobscured by aught
Of selfish passion or ambitious thought;
Seeing day's promise in the darkest night,
Hope for the weak 'midst menaces of Might:
Careless of clamour as of chance-blown dust,
Stern somewhat, scornful oft, and with the stark
Downright directness of a Roundhead's stroke,
Who drew a Heaven-dedicated sword
Against the foes of Freedom's sacred ark,
The friends of the oppressor's galling yoke,
All fierce assailants of the Army of the Lord.

These memorial verses, however, if I may say so without incurring the charge of unfilial disrespect--suffer throughout this period from prolixity. The writer says excellently, but diffusely, in ninety lines what is summed up in the majestic quatrain of Scott which stands at their head:--

Now is the stately column broke,
The beacon-light is quench'd in smoke,
The trumpet's silver sound is still,
The warder silent on the hill!

[Sidenote: _Dropping the Pilot_]

Mr. Gladstone's golden-wedding day in July furnished the theme for friendly and affectionate congratulations to a couple who stood for "Darby and Joan" _in excelsis_. Mr. Gladstone's domestic happiness was unclouded, but he was subjected to a painful ordeal in 1890 by the disclosures of the Parnell-O'Shea divorce case and the split in the Irish Party which followed. _Punch_ supported Gladstone in his breach with the Irish leader. He is shown in one cartoon refusing to give his hand to Parnell:--

The hand of Douglas is his own
And never shall in friendly grasp
The hand of such as Marmion clasp.

Gladstone is acquitted of "mere Pharisaic scorn." But an element bordering on the ridiculous enters into the succeeding cartoon of Gladstone and Morley as the Babes in the Wood, while Parnell and Healy as the wicked uncles are seen fighting in the background. The further developments of the struggle are shown in an adaptation of Meissonier's famous "La Rixe," in which Parnell is held back by Dillon and O'Brien from Healy, who is restrained by Justin McCarthy. Parnell's sun was setting in gloom and storm, but a greater than Parnell was passing from the stage of high politics in 1890. For this was the year of the dismissal of Bismarck by the Kaiser, commemorated in the issue of March 29 by Tenniel's famous "Dropping the Pilot" cartoon. _Punch_ saw no good in the change; he indulges in ominous speculations. Was Bismarck animated by faith or fear of the future in quitting his post? Would the new Pilot strike on sunken shoals or "wish on the wild main, the old Pilot back again"? The Kaiser's gifts are seen to be no solace for the wound of dismissal. As a matter of fact, Bismarck never used the ducal title of Lauenburg conferred on him. In little more than a month the Kaiser is shown as the Enfant Terrible of Europe, "rocking the boat," while France, Italy, Austria and Spain all appeal to him to be more careful and not tempt fate. The Kaiser's dabbling in industrial problems, in the hope of propping his rule by concessions to Socialism, meets with no sympathy. But a more serious ground for discontent arose over the cession of Heligoland. _Punch_ waxes indignantly sarcastic over Lord Salisbury's deal in East Africa by which Germany gained Heligoland as a bonus. It was "given away with a pound of tea"; Salisbury's weakness was worse than Gladstone's scuttle and surrender, and _Punch_ ruefully recalls the verses he printed nineteen years earlier:--

[Sidenote: _The Surrender of Helgoland_]

TIME THE AVENGER!

On June 24, 1871, _Mr. Punch_ sang, _à propos_ of the Germans desiring to purchase Heligoland:

Though to rule the waves, we may believe they aspire,
If their Navy grows great, we must let it;
But if one British island they think to acquire,
Bless their hearts, don't they wish they may get it?

And they _have_ got it!

But the fashionable world went on its way unheeding. Du Maurier satirized this indifference in a picture in which one lady asks another: "_Where_ is this Heligoland they're all talking so much about?" and her friend replies, "Oh, I don't know, dear. It's one of the places lately discovered by Mr. Stanley."

Russia, it may be added, also incurred _Punch's_ censure in 1890, the legalized persecution of Jews forming the theme of a prophetic cartoon in August, in which the shade of Pharaoh warns the Tsar, as he stands with a drawn sword and his foot on a prostrate Hebrew: "Forbear! That weapon always wounds the hand that wields it."

In 1891 the new "orientations" of the European Powers attract a good deal of notice. The Franco-Russian _entente_ is symbolized by the Bear making France dance to the tune of the Russian loan. _Punch's_ distrust of Russia--semi-Asiatic and half-Tartar--dated from the 'forties. The tightening of the Franco-Russian Entente in 1891 gave him no pleasure. He quotes with manifest approval the comment of a daily paper on the infatuation of France:--

The success of a Russian Loan is not dearly purchased by a little
effusion, which, after all, commits Russia to nothing. French
sentiment is always worth cultivating in that way, because unlike the
British variety, it has a distinct influence upon investments.

The cartoon of President Carnot embracing, and being hugged by, the Bear was founded on an episode at Aix-les-Bains where he kissed a little girl in Russian dress who gave him a bouquet, saying: "J'embrasse la Russie." _Punch's_ verses represent Carnot as fully conscious of his _blague_, yet with an uneasy consciousness that the Bear is going to squeeze him. Russia's religious intolerance again comes in for strong condemnation. The Tsar is shown wielding the knout on an aged Jew while the Emperor of China greets a Christian priest. This contrast was based on the issue of a decree in which the Chinese Government condemned anti-Christian excesses. In another cartoon the Tsar bids his minions remove another aged Jew on the familiar ground that Jews were always to the fore in Nihilist plots. The European Powers, it should be added, were not satisfied by China's official tolerance. The treatment of foreigners had provoked a collective protest, from which Russia abstained. So when John Bull, as a sailor, asks Russia to take a hand in controlling the Chinese Dragon, Russia replies: "Well, I don't know--you see, he's a sort of relation of mine!"

The admiration which _Punch_ had so often if reluctantly expressed for Bismarck in office yielded to something like disgust at his undignified bitterness in retirement, above all at his use of the "reptile press" as a means of attacking the Imperial policy and Caprivi, his successor as Chancellor. This feeling animates the "Coriolanus" cartoon in February, where Bismarck is shown with the _Hamburger Nachrichten_ in his hand. The death of Moltke a couple of months later is duly recorded in a versified tribute making all the usual points--on his taciturnity, composure, foresight and strategy. With his death Bismarck became the lonely survivor of "the Titanic three, Who led the Eagles on to Victory." Moltke died full of years and honours. It was otherwise with Parnell who at forty-five fell,

not as leaders love to fall,
In battle's forefront, loved and mourned by all;
But fiercely fighting, as for his own hand,
With the scant remnant of a broken band;
His chieftainship, well-earned in many a fray,
Rent from him--by himself!
None did betray
This sinister strong fighter to his foes;
He fell by his own action, as he rose.
He had fought all--himself he could not fight,
Nor rise to the clear air of patient right.

[Sidenote: _The Passing of Parnell_]

_Punch_ notes his coldness, his impassive persistence as an agitator, but says nothing of the ill-concealed contempt he showed for his followers, and the entire lack of geniality, _bonhomie_, and humour, which partly explained the mercilessness with which he was pursued once his power was shaken. As he had never won or tried to win their affection, he could not expect to find magnanimity in mean souls.

The wheels of the Parliamentary chariot drove heavily over the Land Purchase Bill. _Punch_ showed Mr. Balfour leading the poor tired little Bill through a maze of amendments. _A propos_ of its complicated nature and endless, obscure sub-sections, which aroused much hostile criticism in _The Times_, Mr. Balfour is made to say:--

_The Times_, too, may gird, and declare 'tis absurd not to know
_one's own Labyrinth_ better;
_The Times_ is my friend, but a trifle too fond of the goad and
the scourge and the fetter.

This, of course, was in the days when _The Times_ was ultra-Unionist. However, the Bill finally passed through its various stages, and Mr. W. H. Smith exhibits it with the fruits of the Session in June, 1891, as a gigantic strawberry. The choice of this particular fruit as a symbol was dictated by the fact that both he and Lord Salisbury had exhibited strawberries at the Horticultural Show.

The relations of Canada with England and the United States provoked much discussion in 1891. _Punch_ expressed confidence in Canada's loyalty, and simultaneously published a burlesque "Canadian Calendar (to be hoped not prophetic)," foretelling complete absorption in the United States. It begins with Reciprocity with the U.S.A., and goes on with the dying out of trade with and emigration from the old country, the increase of improvident Irish, the request of Canada to be annexed to America, and finally her decline into a tenth-rate Yankee state. On the death of the Canadian premier, Sir John Macdonald, "old To-morrow" as he was nicknamed from his habit of procrastination, _Punch_ overlooked the thrasonical magniloquence criticized in an earlier poem, and only dwelt on his long services to the Dominion.

Earlier in the year _Punch_ had typified the Federation of the Australian Colonies in a boating cartoon, the British Lion from the bank applauding a racing eight, manned by cubs and coxed by a kangaroo, and bidding them swing together.

On the death of the old Duke of Devonshire at the close of 1891, and the accession of Lord Hartington to the title, Mr. Chamberlain became leader of the Liberal-Unionists in the Commons. Mr. Chamberlain, in spite of the _rapprochement_ already noted, was still looked upon in some quarters as a somewhat dangerous Radical, and in January, 1892, _Punch_ represented the clock-faced _Times_ lecturing him on his responsibilities. Mr. Balfour succeeded Mr. W. H. Smith on the death of that unselfish, honest and capable statesman, as Leader of the House of Commons. The shades of Dizzy and Pam are friendly in the cartoon which records the promotion; slightly anxious on the score of Mr. Balfour's youth--he was then forty-four--but on the whole inclined to think that he will do. Parliament was dissolved in June, the Liberals were returned at the Elections, and the new House met on the now ominous date of August 4.

NATIONAL DEFENCE

In the 'seventies _Punch_, as we have seen, was decidedly non-interventionist. By the middle 'eighties he found it harder to preserve a middle course between the extremes of Jingoism and Pacificism, though he bestows impartial ridicule on both "Scuttle and Grab" in his burlesque forecast of the alternate foreign policies of the ultra-Imperialists and the ultra-Radicals. This was published early in 1885, when the Liberals were in power, and though deliberately fantastical and even farcical, shows how the wildest anticipations are sometimes verified by fact. Four periods are chosen. In 1890 the Grab Party inaugurate a forward policy all round by spending fifty millions upon the Army and Fleet, and are turned out by John Bull when it is found that their schemes involve

the seizure of sixteen islands, conquest of five native races,
absorption of fifty thousand square miles of--useless--new territory,
seven small wars, two large ones, four massacres, and an Income-tax of
five shillings in the pound.

The Scuttle Party is installed in power in 1895 with a big majority and bigger promises:--

Finishes off all wars by caving in all round, retiring everywhere
and relinquishing everything. Cuts down Army, and resolves to sell
half the Ironclad Fleet as old metal. Power which buys it immediately
utilizes it against us. Another Fleet has to be ordered at once at
fancy prices in response to Press clamour. Scuttle Party, in cleft
stick, halts between two opinions; in pursuit of peace is found
fighting all over the world, and after frantic efforts at economy,
runs up Income-tax to six shillings in the pound. John Bull turns out
Scuttle Party.

Then we jump to A.D. 2000, but even then the wildest stretch of _Punch's_ imagination does not exceed the establishment of conscription and the raising of the Army to a million men. Finally in his last forecast _Punch_ is reduced to solving the problem by an insurrection under a popular soap-boiler, the seizure of the leaders of the two parties, and the banishing of both "Scuttle" and "Grab" from the political dictionary.

[Sidenote: _Snubbing the Volunteers_]

With the return of the Conservatives to power, we find that _Punch_, so far from rebuking the Government for their expenditure on bloated armaments, develops into something like an alarmist on the subject of national preparedness and the folly of "cheap defences." The inefficiency of the Army and Navy is a constant theme from 1887 onwards. The bursting of big naval guns, the badness of munitions and designs for battleships are dealt with in bitter satirical verses: while the damaging report of the Parliamentary Committee on Army equipment and stores prompts a series of advertisements of the "Benevolent Bayonet," the "Blazing Breech-loader," the "Comic Cartridge," and so on. Dishonest contractors and incompetent officials are attacked as "the Vultures of Trade" and "the Vermin of Office and Mart." The persistent discouragement of volunteers by the military authorities was an old grievance of _Punch's_, and it crops up in this year in connexion with the removal of the camp from Wimbledon by order of "George Ranger." Indeed, the bitterness of _Punch's_ attack on the Duke of Cambridge revives the memories of the 'forties, when a duke, royal or otherwise, was his favourite cockshy:--

Some prate of patriotism, and some of cheap defence,
But to the high official mind that's all absurd pretence;
For of all the joys of snubbing, there's none to it so dear,
As to snub, snub, snub, snub, snub, snub, snub the British
Volunteer!

A patriotic Laureate may bid the Rifles form,
And Citizens may look to them for safety in War's storm;
But Secretaries, Dooks, and such at this delight to jeer,
And to snub, snub, snub, snub, snub, snub, snub the British
Volunteer!

A semi-swell he may be, but he may be a mere clerk,
And he's an interloper, and to snub him is a lark.
Sometimes he licks the Regulars, and so our duty's clear,
'Tis to snub, snub, snub, snub, snub, snub, snub the British
Volunteer!

He hankers for an increase in his Capitation Grant,
It's like his precious impudence, and have the lift he shan't.
What, make it easier for him to run us close? No fear!
We'll snub, snub, snub, snub, snub, snub, snub the British
Volunteer!

He has a fad for Wimbledon, but that is just a whim,
And as eviction's all the go, we'll try it upon _him_.
_He's_ not an Irish tenant, so no one will interfere,
When once more we snub, snub, snub, snub, snub the British
Volunteer!