Chapter IV: Part I: The National Outlook (4)

In 1879 the trial of Peace, the murderer, gave _Punch_ a good opening for condemning the undue prominence given in the Press to the personalities and tastes of criminals. He makes a good point against papers which speak with two voices: filling their news columns with personal details of murderers and denouncing the cult of the criminal in their leading articles. Such inconsistencies, however, still continue to grieve the judicious. In the early 'eighties the urbane inefficiency of the Police Force, and especially of the detective side, is a frequent theme of criticism, both burlesque and serious. The most amusing entry relates to a constable alleged to have reported: "At 1.45 this morning, found an earthquake opposite No. 207." _Punch_ christened the C.I.D. the "Defective Police," but proved his impartiality by handsomely admitting the heavy odds against which constables had to contend--the truncheon was no match for the burglar's revolver.

[Sidenote: _Crime in Whitechapel_]

Frequent allusions to hooliganism and armed burglars occur in 1882. _Punch_ speaks of a "Mohock Revival," and asks, "Is the Police Force no remedy, or must we all carry revolvers?" For a while complaints against the impotence of the police cease, or take a new form, as when _Punch_ turns his attention to the disgraceful conditions prevailing at the Central Criminal Court, where respectable men and women subpoenaed as witnesses were exposed to hustling and insults from roughs--and constables. In 1887 he extended his censure to the shocking condition of the prisons in which unconvicted prisoners were lodged awaiting trial. For the conduct of the police during the Jubilee Celebrations he has nothing but praise, and waxed lyrical in "_Punch_ to the Peelers" over their humanity and courtesy.

But a far more severe ordeal awaited the police in 1888, the year of the crime wave in Whitechapel. Sarcastic allusions to the inefficiency of the Force are renewed. One cartoon represents them blindfolded and stumbling about amongst jeering criminals. _Punch_ was nearer the mark in the cartoon headed, "The Nemesis of Neglect"--based on a letter from "S. G. O." in _The Times_ pointing out that East End slums invited crime--and in his admissions that the numbers of the police were inadequate and that their inefficiency was largely due to the publicity given to the movements of detectives, and the measures taken by the authorities, by sensational interviewers in the cheap press. The amateur "crime investigator" unfortunately continued to flourish in spite of _Punch's_ censure. Hideous picture-posters, vividly representing sensational scenes of murder, exhibited as the "great attractions" of certain plays, are also condemned as a blot on civilization, a disgrace to the Drama, and a suggestion of crime. It should be added that _Punch_ expressly exempted Sir Charles Warren from blame, and indignantly dissociated himself from the attacks of those who joined in making him a scapegoat:--

The Police Force requires strengthening, and Sir Charles is perfectly
alive to the fact. What on earth can it matter if, in number, our
Police compare favourably with the Police Force at Constantinople,
or St. Petersburgh, or Vienna, or Jericho, if we have not sufficient
Police to protect life and property in the Metropolis? Socialistic
sensational Journalists and rowdy demagogues would like to see the
Police Force reduced to one in every two thousand, until they fell to
fighting among themselves, when they would be the first to yell out
"Police!" and scream for the intervention of the enfeebled arm of the
law.

In April, 1889, the proposed flogging of dangerous criminals excited a good deal of controversy. In _Punch's_ cartoon in April Bill Sikes protests as an injured innocent against the cat on the ground that it will make a brute of him. _Punch's_ attitude was strongly anti-sentimentalist, but he held that the lash should be used with discretion.

In the summer he renews his demand for increasing the police. The new Chief Commissioner, Monro, is shown telling John Bull that he can have any number of policemen _if he likes to pay for them_, while Policeman X, Junior, declares that the Force is overworked. It is curious to note that, in the list of police difficulties, besides Whitechapel murders, _Punch_ includes the control of Salvation Army processions and obstructions. But in these days even so wise and good a man as Huxley did not hesitate to label--and libel--Salvationism as "Corybantic Christianity."

On the everlasting Drink Question _Punch_ sided with the moderate reformers, disapproved of coercion or Prohibition, and found confirmation of his views in the testimony of the Howard Association in 1876 that moral persuasion and improvement in the conditions of living afforded the only real remedy. Recreation, as an alternative to and distraction from the public-house, he always advocated. When the Sunday opening of galleries and museums was again rejected in 1879, _Punch's_ cartoon took his familiar line that Sabbatarianism drove men to drink. "Bung" congratulates Archbishop Tait on the support of the Episcopal bench in defeating the measure. But in the same month, in "Friend Bung's Remonstrance," _Punch_ inserted a protest against the notion that all public-housekeepers would support Sabbatarian legislation. That he was sensitive to foreign criticism is shown by his skit on M. Millaud's articles in the _Figaro_ in 1880 in which the drunkenness of London had been unfavourably commented upon.

[Sidenote: _Licensing Anomalies_]

The "marvellous magisterial licensing system" of the period, which was "vexatious, inconsistent, and meddlesome," is repeatedly criticized in the year. In an article on the degeneracy of the Aquarium, _Punch_ gives a full account of its vulgar, inane, and sensational shows, and alludes to the nocturnal orgies enacted at that place of entertainment. Music and dancing licences, he declared, would be applied for by the ten thousand if there were freedom and wisdom, instead of the chaos and vested interest maintained by "Maw-worm" and "Meddlevex" (Middlesex) magistrates. The result was that London was "a city of unmitigated pot-houses." Yet drinking, judged by the test of state finance, was decreasing. The revenue from intoxicants in 1882 had fallen 2½ millions in seven years, and _Punch_ indulges in ironical comment. The picture in the spring of 1883 of the "Temperance Budget" shows the financial conditions of the country as only fairly satisfactory, and represents John Bull as saying: "I have been too sober--_Nunc est bibendum_." This was obviously ironical, but it was irony that might easily be misread. _Punch_ would probably have endorsed Archbishop Magee's famous dictum: "Better England free than England sober." Teetotalism was to _Punch_ inextricably associated with cranks, faddists, and fanatics. He was a robust humanitarian. Cock-fighting was a barbarous pastime, but he resented the unfair differentiation which punished working men who indulged in it with a heavy fine, while rich and aristocratic pigeon-shooters went scot-free. Dr. Carver's shooting performances at the Crystal Palace in 1879 are specially praised because he did not exhibit his skill by the slaughter of pigeons. So in 1876 _Punch_ had supported Mr. Flower's agitation against the use of bearing-reins for horses. Cruelty to animals he detested; but, on the burning question of vivisection, firmly upheld the practice, in the interests of humanity, when guarded by stringent regulations, and sided with Lister and Paget against Lord Shaftesbury, whose opposition he deeply regretted.

(_Vide Bishop of Oxford's Speech at the Church Congress_)

ELIZABETH WARING (_Laundress and Charwoman, and Sunday School Teacher to the U.C._): "And now, my dear little Ladies and Gentlemen, I trust you will not _desecrate_ this beautiful Sunday Afternoon by going on the River! You can do that from Monday Morning till Saturday Night, you know! His Lordship here, who was at Eton and Oxford, will no doubt _remember how the Oars he had plied so busily all the week, lay untouched on Sunday_! And you too, my dears, will please to give up the River, on that one day--to those who have been toiling all the busy Week long in stifling Offices and grimy Workshops, and suchlike!"]

Wages, as I have remarked above, were still remarkably low, judged by our post-war standards. In 1880 _Punch_ quotes an advertisement from the _Lincoln Gazette_ for an "active young town crier and bill-poster who can live on 1s. 3d. a week." But prices were low also, and by the mid 'seventies cheap railway fares and excursions had led to a great increase of travelling among the working classes. The "cheap tripper" figures largely in _Punch_ throughout these years, and his (and her) manners and customs lent themselves more readily to satire than sympathy. _Punch_ was still the friend as well as the critic of the masses, and when in 1883 the steam launch nuisance on the Thames was exciting a good deal of inflammatory comment, published his "Sunday School for the Upper Classes," in which a laundress and charwoman is seen giving a lesson to young gentlefolk, turning the tables on their Sabbatarian teaching, and asking them to give up the river on Sunday to those who worked all the week. But here, as so often, _Punch_ showed his habitual impartiality by simultaneously admitting that the state of the river was a scandal, and welcoming an official inquiry by the Thames Conservancy Board. A year later he emphasized Sir Charles Dilke's statement that the river was "a sort of savage place," with no real police to enforce the law; _Punch's_ picture of the Thames on Bank Holiday exhibits a carnival of rowdyism, collisions, and upsets. The steam launch was no favourite of _Punch_. He had already shown it as an intruder on the waterways of Venice, crowded with 'Arries and 'Arriets emitting characteristic comments on the Bridge of Sighs.

("Sic Transit Gloria Mundi")

'ANDSOME 'ARRIET: "Ow, my! If it 'yn't that bloomin' old Temple Bar, as they did aw'y with out o' Fleet Street!"

MR. BELLEVILLE (_referring to Guide-book_): "Now it 'yn't! It's the famous Bridge o' _Sighs_, as _Byron_ went and stood on; 'im as wrote _Our Boys_, yer know!"

'ANDSOME 'ARRIET: "Well, I _never_! It 'yn't much of a _size_, any'ow!"

MR. BELLEVILLE: "'Ear! 'Ear! Fustryte!"]

Throughout the 'eighties all the unlovely and odious attributes of lower middle-class vulgarity were concentrated by _Punch_ in a series of verses directed against 'Arry, who takes the place of the "snob" and the "gent" of the 'forties and 'fifties. One sometimes wonders whether the late Mr. Milliken, the creator of _Punch's_ 'Arry, was not intoxicated by the exuberance of his own invention, by the deftness of his patter, and exaggerated the atrocities of the original. For there is no redeeming feature in 'Arry, or in 'Arriet, who is indeed the worse of the two." ... Modesty? Meekness? Thrift? Oh, Jiminy! Ladies of Fashion ain't caught now with no such moral niminy piminy." Their lingo is extensive, peculiar, and unpleasant, and much of it has mercifully passed into the limbo of lost words--"rorty," for example, and (let us hope) "lotion" for drink. 'Arry, as depicted in these monologues, is always the Cockney; the withers of the provincial are unwrung in contemplating his excesses. He is sometimes a clerk, though not of the class whose "Cry" had evoked _Punch's_ sympathy, sometimes a counter-jumper, but always a cad. He and his partner are always drawn in such a way as to lend point to the cynical saying that "life would be endurable but for its amusements." His notion of pleasure is largely made up of din and destruction. If he takes a holiday in the country, he disturbs its sylvan seclusion by tearing up ferns and tearing down branches. But he is in his true element at the seaside--witness _Punch's_ gruesome adaptation of Southey's lines on Lodore, under the heading "The Shore."

[Sidenote: _'Arry and 'Arriet_]

In the centre of which may be seen the plain but captivating Mr. Belleville, who explains to the lovely Miss Eliza Larkins that it's of no consequence whether a man be handsome or not, "_so long as he looks like a gentleman_!"]

'Arry figures in a less repulsive mood when visiting the Paris Exhibition of 1889--"'Arry in Parry." He is very far from belonging to the submerged classes, and has generally plenty of money to spend on his amusements and creature comforts. But he is not enamoured of hard work. The competition of the German clerk in 1886 fills him with fury. He is disgusted with the "Sossidges" for ousting Englishmen from their jobs, but is not prepared to emulate the industry of the foreigner:--

Young Yah-Yah 'as nobbled my crib, turns his pink shovel nose up,
old man.
_He_ may live upon lager and langwidges, Charlie; sech isn't
_my_ plan.

Mr. Gladstone had appealed to the Englishman to prove himself the better man by competing with the German on the ground on which the latter excelled. The Cockney clerk retorts that it isn't good enough, and clamours for the expulsion of the industrious aliens who undercut him.

Mixed up with 'Arry's selfishness, greediness, and general lack of decency and good feeling there is a certain element of shrewdness, of practical common sense, but it is always exerted on behalf of Number One. Taken all round, he is easily the most disagreeable of all the types created by _Punch_ in a period in which his former complacency had given place, at best, to a somewhat peevish optimism, sinking at times, as we note elsewhere, to dismal laments over our decadence. But, in justice to _Punch_, it is right to add that by far the most severe denunciations are reserved for the degenerates in high places. The 'Arry poems do not show _Punch_ in the light of a Jeremiah or a Juvenal. Taken together, they form a sort of composite photograph of the mean Cockney who belongs neither to the classes nor the masses, who lacks the breeding and reticence of the one and the primitive virtues of the other. Moreover, the unabashed and undefeated complacency of these monologues, apart from their shrewdness, inspires a certain grudging admiration for this entirely impenitent "bounder."

[Sidenote: _Punch and the Army_]

But we part from him without regret, and with a feeling that he is almost too odious to be true to type. He bulks so largely in the pages of _Punch_ as to obscure the evidences of abiding friendliness to the true democracy on which 'Arry was a mere excrescence. The manners of the cheap tripper might offend _Punch_, but he was genuinely delighted when bands were introduced in the Parks on Sundays to the discomfiture of Sabbatarians and Pharisees; and we find him contrasting the activity of the police in suppressing gambling in Bermondsey with the tolerance extended to certain West End clubs. There was nothing new in this attitude, but we may note a change in regard to his views on emigration, which in earlier days _Punch_ had supported with enthusiasm. In 1877 a curious letter, guaranteed genuine, is published from a settler in Australia, describing the conditions there, and strongly deterring emigration to a country where there were no comforts, and nothing was cheaper than in England save meat.

"'Ellow, 'Erry! Why, 'ow _are_ yer?"

"_Eighteen Car-rat_, ole man! 'Ow's yerself?"]

In the earlier volumes of this survey it has been shown how deep-seated was the prejudice against the Army amongst respectable middle-class and working people. In his earlier and anti-militarist days _Punch_ had shared this feeling, and even denounced the recruiting-sergeant as an ogre or worse. From the Crimean War onward this hostility gave place to the wiser and saner view that the men who served their country bravely and faithfully should be decently treated, properly fed, and encouraged in self-respect by the community which they defended. How far public opinion fell short in this regard may be seen in the excellent appeal headed "Men Wanted" which _Punch_ issued in January, 1875. The Army was greatly in need of recruits, and the evidence taken before the Recruiting Commission proved that "the want of respect shown by civilians to Her Majesty's uniform had a great deal to do with the Army's loss of popularity." Whereupon _Punch_ proceeds to point out:--

1. That the intellectual training of Soldiers is now a matter of
paramount importance, and that the Privates of many Regiments can
compare favourably with civilians as regards education.

2. That through the exertions of H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge,
Recreation Rooms and Libraries have been established in all the
Barracks, with the object (an object that has been attained) of
fostering refinement in the ranks.

3. That, during the recent series of Autumn Manoeuvres, the Armies
in the Field have gained golden opinions from all with whom they have
come in contact.

4. That most Soldiers, when they leave the Service, are found to be
admirably adapted to fill the positions of clerks, railway-guards,
policemen, and other posts of importance and responsibility.

5. That a Colour-Sergeant is a Non-Commissioned Officer in command of
some sixty or a hundred men, who has been promoted after many years'
service in the ranks, in recognition of zeal, cleverness, and good
conduct.

Having made these observations, Field-Marshal _Punch_ is forced to record his deep regret:--

1. That a Magistrate speaking from the Bench should have thought
proper to inform a Recruit that to join the Army was to take a false
step in life, which might possibly entail the breaking of his parents'
hearts.

2. That a Non-Commissioned Officer should be refused admission
to the best seats in a place of public entertainment because he
(the Non-Commissioned Officer in question) happened at the time of
purchasing his ticket to be wearing the should-be honoured uniform of
Her Majesty the Queen.

Field-Marshal _Punch_ consequently feels it to be his duty to issue the following orders:--

1. In future, City Aldermen, in their official capacities, will
refrain from making remarks calculated to bring the Army into
ridicule, hatred, or contempt.

2. If any regulation exists preventing soldiers in uniform from
appearing in the better seats of places of entertainment, the rule in
question must be immediately abolished.

In conclusion, Field-Marshal _Punch_ is strongly of opinion that
recruiting will continue to remain slack until the difference existing
between the social conditions of the British Soldier in the present,
and the Negro Slave in the past, is thoroughly understood and admitted
by the public in general, and the people to whom this circular is
addressed in particular. It must be remembered in future that the
Livery of Her Majesty is worn by warriors, and not by flunkeys.

[Sidenote: _Mismanagement at Reviews_]

The remonstrance was well needed, though many years were to elapse before the second of these orders was acted on. Yet if _Punch_ had little mercy on those who imagined that _all_ soldiers were "brutal and licentious," he had no compassion on those who disgraced their uniform. In the controversy which arose in 1880 between Dr. W. H. Russell and Sir Garnet Wolseley over alleged breaches of discipline among our troops during the Zulu campaign, _Punch_ held that the war correspondent's was a "true bill," and actually advocated the reintroduction of flogging in the Army for "exceptional cases of brutality which degrade the soldier to the level of the garrotter or the wife-beater."

The allusions to the Volunteer Review in the Great Park at Windsor in July, 1881, dwell chiefly on the habitual neglect and lack of consideration meted out to the Army on these occasions:--

HOW TO TREAT THE ARMY

Select the hottest day you can possibly find for a perfectly useless
sham fight and send the men out with the heaviest, clumsiest, most
antiquated, and unseasonable headgear. When a few of them perish, as
a matter of course, of sunstroke, express the utmost astonishment
that anybody can die from such a cause in such perfect uniform in a
temperate climate.

HOW TO TREAT THE VOLUNTEERS

Encourage fifty thousand men to attend a Review, and then tell them
coolly that your military organization is quite unequal to the task
of giving them a day's food.... As they are nearly all respectable
middle-class members of Society, give them a shilling apiece to take
care of themselves, and trust to their decency not to abuse such
extraordinary liberality.

_Punch_ gave credit to the Duke of Cambridge for his efforts to improve the amenities of barrack life, but came down heavily on him for opposing the introduction, when the late Duke of Devonshire was at the War Office, of neutral-tinted uniforms on active service. The Duke of Cambridge thought it a good thing for a soldier that, when in action, he should be visible, and _Punch_ dealt faithfully with this ducal ineptitude:--

"THE THIN RED LINE"

(Horse Guards Duo.)

Pro.

Who says a soldier's a thing ready made
Of a suit of grey and a service-spade?--
That there's pluck in picking a 'vantage ground,
Then digging a hole and heaping a mound?
The notion's preposterous, laughable, quizzible!
By Jove, Sir, a soldier--he ought to be visible!

Con.

I grant you all that; but when Six-foot Guards
Like ninepins go down at a thousand yards,
'Tis time to note that, if work's to be done,
A field to be saved, a day to be won,
It won't be by speeches as firework as fizzible,
But by getting well home with movement invisible.

Pro.

Pooh! Stuff, Sir! What served us at Waterloo?
Your neutral tint, or your washed-out blue?
Digging and dodging?--I rather opine
A rush with a cheer of a "thin red line,"
In the midst of a hailstorm of all things whizzible!
Don't talk, Sir, to me of a coat that's not visible!

Con.

No use, my good friend; for though you may bless
The days that departed with Old Brown Bess,
If you make that "red line," that never will yield,
A target for every shot in the field,
Of your foemen you'll stir the faculties risible--
For neither your troops nor your brains will be visible!

[Sidenote: _Heroes, Charlatans and Criminals_]

Nor did _Punch_ in his zeal for the soldier on active service forget the claims to grateful recognition of the ex-service man. In 1890 we find an indignant appeal for the survivors of the Balaklava Charge, showing how they had been forgotten--except in music-hall recitations. To reinforce the appeal, _Punch_ printed a picture contrasting a Balaklava survivor, dying in a garret, with the well-remunerated professional "fasting man," one of whom was much in the public eye just then. An even more lurid contrast in modern hero-worship is exhibited in the sardonic description of the fêting and glorifying of criminals. The verses "I'd be a criminal" show how fashion, pseudo-science, sensational journalism, and sentimental folly conspired to apotheosize the murderer.

THE STATUS OF WOMEN

[Sidenote: _Undomestic Daughters_]

The history of modern England as set forth in the files of _Punch_ is largely a record of the education of the average man; and there are few, if any, aspects of this education during the period under review in this volume in which greater changes are observable than in _Punch's_ altered view of the _status_ of women. Even in his earliest days he had "rounded Cape Turk"; he had never favoured an Oriental seclusion of his womankind. But an element of condescension and patronage mingled with his chivalry. Their efforts to emerge from the sphere of domestic duties met for the most part with amused ridicule. For the rest the phrase "pretty dears" fairly sums up _Punch's_ earlier view of the place of women in the universe. This view had already been largely modified. We have seen how he had been shaken over the question of the suffrage, how he had been converted to women's invasion of the medical and other professions, and to their election to the London School Board. The progress of this recognition continues throughout this period; the competition of women sometimes excites chaff, sometimes misgiving, but it is no longer regarded as futile. Their solid achievements in a variety of spheres of activity are handsomely acknowledged. We hear less of the "pretty dears" and "ducks"; they are increasingly credited with the capacity to hold their own intellectually with the lords of creation. A conspicuous proof of this altered view is to be found in the texts which accompany the "social cuts" in the 'eighties and 'nineties. It has been said that "the ball of repartee cannot be kept up without constant repercussion," but in the days of Leech the repercussive quality was denied to the fair sex. This defect has _now_ been so completely redressed that the balance inclines rather to the other side, and in Du Maurier's pictures the "score" is generally given to the women. The day of the domestic "doormat" was passing, and grown-up girls are no longer at the mercy of pert or tyrannous schoolboy brothers. True, this self-assertion was far from complete. The solidarity and cohesion of the family circle was substantially unimpaired. Bachelor girls and revolting daughters were a negligible minority; and in the 'eighties the number of professional women was so small that unmarried aunts still played a considerable part in the domestic system, and are frequently found in charge of their small nephews and nieces. It was not until 1890 that _Punch_ included in his series of "Modern Types" that of "The Undomestic Daughter"; and even then her self-expression is circumscribed by lack of opportunity and, in the portrait given, can only find vent in fussy and futile philanthropy. She is a dreary rebel, with a genius for discomfort, who neglects her family when they need her most, ultimately contracts an unromantic marriage, and ends up as a domestic tyrant--a sort of variant on Mrs. Jellyby, but hardly recognizable as a forerunner of the emancipated daughter of to-day.

MATERFAMILIAS: "Where have you been all the morning, girls?"

SOPHRONIA CASSANDRA: "We've been practising old Greek attitudes at lawn-tennis, mamma!"

PAPA (_who is not æsthetic_): "Ah! hope you like it, I'm sure!"

SOPHRONIA CASSANDRA: "Very much, papa--only we _never hit the ball_!"]

_Punch_ was already a convert to the higher education of women within certain limits. His reservations are shown in 1875 in an interview between Professor _Punch_ and an ideal candidate for the Ladies' University as it should be. Domestic economy comes first in the curriculum, the humanities second. A picture in the following year would seem to indicate that _Punch's_ ideal was inverted, for one Girton student is shown reading to another a valentine headed with the famous lines from the _Antigone_ of Sophocles beginning [Greek: Erôs anikate machan].[3] "How much jollier," she observes, "than those silly English verses fellows used to send!" Classics were still the predominant partner, and in 1878 _Punch_ notes and resents the attempted revival of classical costume inaugurated by a fashionable poetess. 'Arry's tirade against the higher education of women in 1879, blaspheming against the whole movement as ridiculous and unnatural, is heavily ironical, for in the same year _Punch_ has some friendly verses on the extension of Girton and Newnham, and in 1880 congratulates Miss Scott on being bracketed eighth Wrangler. _Punch_ simultaneously congratulated Mrs., afterwards Lady Butler, on being elected an A.R.A., and rejoiced that the doors of the Academy had been reopened to the sex once honoured in the days of Sir Joshua:--

Mrs. Butler, née Elizabeth Thompson, _Punch_ takes off his hat to you
as the first Lady Associate. Your predecessors, Angelica Kauffmann and
Mary Moser, sprang into being full-blown R.A.'s.

This is as it should be. At last _Punch_ may say, and with pride he
says it, the Ladies are looking up--looking up to the high places of
Science and Art, which should never have been held beyond their reach,
and which will be graced by their occupancy.

But when the Academy doors are reopened to the Ladies, let them be
opened to their full width. Let us not hear of any petty restrictions
or exclusions from this or that function or privilege of R.A. What
these letters bring men let them bring to women.

_Punch's_ congratulations were premature. Forty years have elapsed, and no women have yet been elected Associates.

[Footnote 3: The quotation reminds me that, when I was an undergraduate at Oxford at this time, the handmaiden at a certain lodgings was called "Annie Katie" by successive generations of undergraduates. These were not her baptismal names: they had been bestowed upon her by an ingenious scholar because her surname was Macan.]

[Sidenote: _A Song of Degrees_]

It was in 1880 again that _Punch_ backed the appeal of Girton for funds to carry out the extension scheme and supported the petition of women for university degrees. Here he represents the would-be woman graduate as Vivien endeavouring to win over the recalcitrant academic Merlin:--

In Arts, if once examiners be ours,
To take degrees we must have equal powers;
The loss of these is as the loss of all.

It is the little rift within the lute,
That soon will leave the Girton lecturer mute;
And, slowly emptying, silence Newnham Hall.

The little rift in academic lute,
The speck of discontent in hard-earned fruit,
That, eating inwards, turns it into gall.

It is not worth the keeping; let it go:
But shall it? Answer fairly, answer no;
And take us all in all or not at all.

The decision of Durham University to grant women the B.A. degree in 1881 is cordially applauded, though the welcome is impaired by the facetious heading, "'Ducks' at Durham"; and the liberality of Cambridge in admitting women to the Tripos Examination is contrasted with the churlishness of Oxford. As I write the tables have been turned and Oxford is the paradise of the girl graduate.

In his earlier days _Punch_ never wearied of insisting on the importance of cookery, but a set of verses in 1881 marks an altered mood towards the old "woman in the kitchen" cry. Here the suggestion is even made that _men_ would be benefited by a course of lessons in cooking, and there is obvious irony in the concluding lines:--

This is woman's true position--
In the kitchen's inmost nook;
And a lady's noblest mission
Is to cook.

The two moods are subtly combined in Du Maurier's famous and unforgettable picture of the cynical widow advising a wife of two years' standing to "feed the brute."

WIFE OF TWO YEARS' STANDING: "Oh yes! I'm sure he's not so fond of me as at first. He's away so much, neglects me dreadfully, and he's so cross when he comes home. What _shall_ I do?"

WIDOW: "Feed the brute!"]

[Sidenote: _"Punch's" Misgivings_]

From the 'eighties onward physical culture plays an ever-increasing part in the education of girls. _Punch_ went astray in assuming in 1883 that bicycling was impossible for women, but in this and the next year we find him encouraging gymnastics for girls, though there is a touch of satire in Du Maurier's fashionable mother, who boasts to an eligible aspirant that every one of her daughters can knock their father down. The invasion of the domain of pastime and athletics by women and girls will be noted later on. For the moment I am concerned with their intellectual rather than their physical development. Little is said of girls' schools, though an interesting sidelight is shed on the methods of the old-fashioned boarding-school in the picture of the charming girl who explains to a Frenchman her fluency in his tongue: "At school the girl who sat next me at dinner used to eat my fat, and I used to do her French exercise for her; so I got lots of practice." Girls were becoming more studious, more highly educated, but they were not all female Admirable Crichtons. In 1885 _Punch_ chronicles the ingenuous remark of a young lady to her friend, "Only fancy! _As You Like It_ is by Shakespeare!" He welcomed the admission of lady graduates to the Convocation of the University of London in 1884, but misgiving mingles with admiration in his forecast of the omniscient "Woman of the Future" in the same year:--

The Woman of the Future! She'll be deeply read, that's certain,
With all the education gained at Newnham or at Girton;
She'll puzzle men in Algebra with horrible quadratics,
Dynamics, and the mysteries of higher mathematics;
Or, if she turns to classic tomes a literary roamer,
She'll give you bits of Horace or sonorous lines from Homer.

You take a maiden in to dine, and find, with consternation,
She scorns the light frivolities of modern conversation;
And not for her the latest bit of fashionable chatter,
Her pretty head is wellnigh full of more important matter;
You talk of Drama or Burlesque, theatric themes pursuing,
She only thinks of what the Dons at Oxford may be doing.

* * * * *

The Woman of the Future may be very learned-looking,
But dare we ask if she'll know aught of housekeeping or cooking?
She'll read far more, and that is well, than empty-headed beauties,
But has she studied with it all a woman's chiefest duties?
We wot she'll ne'er acknowledge, till her heated brain grows cooler,
That Woman, not the Irishman, should be the true home-ruler.

O pedants of these later days, who go on undiscerning
To overload a woman's brain and cram our girls with learning,
You'll make a woman half a man, the souls of parents vexing,
To find that all the gentle sex this process is unsexing.
Leave one or two nice girls before the sex your system smothers,
Or what on earth will poor men do for sweethearts, wives,
and mothers?

Here we find _Punch_ reverting to his earlier attitude. Moreover, as I have shown elsewhere, in the middle 'eighties he was in a decidedly pessimistic frame of mind, and inclined, like Porson, to "damn the scheme of things in general." The dismal mood passed, and _Punch_ is himself again and obviously rejoicing in his own malice in the verses on an imaginary episode at Girton, where a breakdown in health, attributed to the excessive study of Browning, is traced to over-indulgence in chocolate creams by the members of the Browning Club. _Punch's_ claim to be regarded as an expert authority where women's colleges are concerned is seriously invalidated by his confusing the sites of Newnham and Girton and, worse still, by calling the former "Nuneham" in the same year. But he redeemed himself triumphantly in his study of "The Girton Girl" (No. IX, and by far the best, of his series of "Studies from _Mr. Punch's_ Studio") in December, 1886. I have the testimony of a distinguished Girton student of nearly twenty years later that _Punch's_ sketch remained even then a masterly dissection of the "mentality" of the Girton Girl, and reveals an inside knowledge, both of generalities and details, which no mere man could have attained. The Girton Girl of fact is carefully distinguished from the Girton Girl of superstition. The latter is fast becoming as extinct as the Dodo:--

[Sidenote: _The Girton Girl in 1886_]

The modern schoolgirl is taking her place, no longer the giggling,
flirting maiden of fiction, but an ascetic and hard-working young
woman. Work has been her lot since the day when she stepped out of
her cradle to combine education and amusement in the arrangement of
alphabet bricks; and she looks back with a wistful incredulity to the
time when the mystic letters, B.A., were to her nothing worse than
the voice of the black sheep in the nursery rhyme. She inclines by
instinct towards æstheticism in dress, affecting the limpest materials
and the strangest hues, and making a compromise in the matter of
collar and cuffs by wearing at neck and wrists a piece of very _écru_
lace, turned down the wrong way. Her boots are the terror of stray
blackbeetles, for a course of lectures on Hygienic clothing early
taught her to view with horror and distrust a slim ankle and a pointed
toe. She has a scholarly touch of shortsightedness, which she corrects
by free use of the tortoiseshell _pince-nez_ that dangles from her
neck.

Her sense of duty is remarkable, and appalling. She virtuously accepts
the onerous office of secretary to innumerable societies. Countless
notices, in her bold and clear handwriting, may be seen day after
day upon the College notice-boards, some of them of a sufficiently
pathetic character. "Will the following members be so very good as to
pay their subscriptions due the _term before last_ to the 'Society
for promoting Masculine Intelligence'?" She does not even resent her
appointment as sub-officer of the Fire Brigade, the duties of which
position involve a constant personal supervision of two or three
repulsively oily little hand-engines, which she tends and lubricates
with loving care, till she has reduced her hands and face to the
colour of the brown holland apron which enshrouds the rest of her
person. Not even the horrors of an alarm practice can daunt her,
though she may just have settled herself to revel for an hour in the
pleasant byways of Professor Sidgwick's _Ethics_, when screams of
"Fire!" rushing footsteps, and an alarm-rattle, such as heralds a
bump in the May races, compel her to leave her books, and fly to the
Hall. Then the canvas buckets must be produced, her corps arranged in
alphabetical order, and marched off to the supposed scene of action.
All this she does in an incredibly short time; and when, at the
discretion of the head captain, the pumping of engines and passing of
buckets is allowed to stop, she returns to her work with fortitude and
resignation past belief.

(Cambridge, June, 1887)]

Yet in spite of her multifarious and strenuous activities the Girton Girl is not inhuman or immune to the appeal of her less serious-minded fellow students, and the sketch ends with a really charming portrait of a witty, incorrigibly frivolous, generously hospitable and irresistibly popular member of the college. At once critical, judicial, and genial, the study is a little masterpiece of its kind. The verses, published some months earlier, on a young Spanish lady who took her doctor's degree at Barcelona at the age of nineteen, are appropriately cast in Swinburne's "Dolores" stanza (as that was her Christian name) with the refrain, "Our M.D. of Spain," but are not remarkable either as a parody or an appreciation. Much happier in every way is the well-known picture of Miss Ramsay (afterwards Mrs. Montagu Butler) entering a first-class carriage "For Ladies Only" on the occasion of her being placed Senior Classic in 1887, an exploit which caused _Punch_ once more to raise his voice on behalf of the bestowal of degrees on women.

An even more remarkable success was achieved by Miss Philippa Fawcett, who in 1890 was declared to be "above the Senior Wrangler," and _Punch_, in "Topping the Tripos, or Something like a Score for the Sex," while congratulating the daughter, did not forget her father, always one of his heroes:--

Above the Senior Wrangler! Pheugh!
Where now are male reactionaries
Who flout the feminine, and pooh-pooh
Sweet Mathematic Megs and Maries?
Who says a girl is only fit
To be a dainty, dancing dangler?
Here's girlhood's prompt reply to it:
Miss Fawcett tops the Senior Wrangler!

Would it not have rejoiced the heart
Of her stout sire, the brave Professor?
Agneta Ramsay made good start,
But here's a shining she-successor!
Many a male who failed to pass
Will hear it with flushed face and jaw set,
But _Mr. Punch_ brims high his glass,
And drinks your health, Miss P. G. Fawcett!

[Sidenote: _The Eternal Feminine_]

Yet along with his acknowledgment of these scholastic triumphs, _Punch_ was equally ready to welcome evidences of feminine weakness in the haunts of austere study. In 1888 Miss Helen Gladstone recalled the fact that when she was at Newnham, a motion had been brought forward at the Debating Society that "life without gossip was not worth living" and carried by a large majority, and _Punch_ alluded to the incident under the heading, "_Nous_ at Newnham."

To round off _Punch's_ educational record in this period, I may add that in 1892 he alludes to that irrepressible controversialist, Sir James Crichton-Browne, the champion of mutton chops, and common sense, who had condemned the higher education of women from the medical point of view. _Punch_ professes himself converted by a young Amazon who reduces him to pulp and humiliation by her prowess at games of all sorts.

THE COLONEL: "Yes, _He_ was Senior Wrangler of his Year, and _She_ took a Mathematical Scholarship at Girton; and now they're Engaged!"

MRS. JONES: "Dear me, how interesting! And oh, how different their Conversation must be from the insipid twaddle of Ordinary Lovers!"

THEIR CONVERSATION

HE: "And what would _Dovey_ do if Lovey were to _die_?"

SHE: "Oh, Dovey would die _too_!"]

The entrance of women into existing professions or the creation by them of new callings is in the main viewed with sympathy and benevolence. In the controversy that arose in 1875 between Mrs. Nassau Senior, who had been appointed an inspector of Female Pauper Schools, and Mr. Tufnell, an official of the L.G.B., _Punch_ espoused the side of the lady, who, he considers, had the best of it both in temper and argument. The statement in April of the same year that a lady had been engaged by a firm of solicitors as consulting counsel at a high salary, quoted from a Liverpool paper, was probably apocryphal; but it prompted _Punch_ to observe that the more employments fit for gentlemen that are opened to ladies the better. Any such calling is better than marriage accepted merely as a situation.

[Sidenote: _"Jills in Office"_]

Unfortunately some doubt is thrown on the sincerity of this testimonial by the sketch "Portia in Petticoats" in 1882--a burlesque description of a solicitor's office where only women clerks are employed. After a week's absence the head of the firm returns to find that they have mostly disappeared, eloped or got married. The election of Miss Maude Stanley, a cousin of the Dean, as a Guardian in 1877 is the subject of a friendly notice at the expense of Bumble, who regards it as a "most unporochial innowation." In the same year _Punch_ views with admiration the beneficent work of the Ladies' Sanitary Association, established twenty years earlier to inculcate the value of healthy, sensible habits by means of lectures, tracts and handbooks. The suggestion made by a Hastings doctor in 1879 that women might be employed as dispensers is praised, though not without some reserves, in "Girls among the Gallipots," and the new "Ladies' Association for the Promotion of Horticulture and Minor Food Production" founded in the same year by Mrs. Thorne meets with _Punch's_ unqualified approval. This is the first mention that I have met in _Punch_ of a movement which led to the establishment of the horticultural schools at Swanley and elsewhere and the numerous poultry farms run by women all over the country. The institution of the "Royal Red Cross" decoration for nurses in 1883 is welcomed in friendly doggerel. As Bumble had condemned women guardians, so Mrs. Gamp is now represented as very indignant and contemptuous of the "nursing sisters," their position and recognition. But _Punch_ had no use here for amateurs. There is excellent point in Du Maurier's picture of the applicant for the post of matron or head nurse to a hospital who based her claim on being "not trained but gifted." By 1885 the female commercial traveller was apparently already in existence, but _Punch_ treated this innovation with jocular suspicion:--

I know a Maiden with a bag,
Take care!
She carries samples in a drag,
Beware! beware!
O Draper fond,
She is fooling thee!

She has the true "Commercial" style,
Take care!
To which she addeth woman's guile,
Beware! beware!
O Grocer goose,
She is plucking thee!

And so on with other shopkeepers.

On the efficiency of female clerks _Punch_ speaks with two voices in 1887, under the heading "Jills in Office." First of all we have an unflattering picture of the rudeness and inattention of the girls in one of those joint establishments--half shop and half post-office. In the next number we are given the reverse of the medal; the public are the offenders, and the girls act up to their names--Miss Goodchild, Miss Meekin and Miss Mannerly. The announcement in the same year that ladies were to be allowed to take diplomas in dentistry prompts _Punch_ to some frigid pleasantries; but this is a subject on which it has always been difficult to joke with discretion. _Punch_ found a happier theme in the institution of the "Lady Guide Association" in 1888. He applauds the scheme which aimed at "providing remuneration and employment for intelligent gentlewomen debarred by the present overcrowded labour market from earning a livelihood," but he recognized that the guides would have to be very formidably accomplished persons, since their duties comprised the giving advice and information to newcomers on every possible subject. As a "preliminary examination" was spoken of, _Punch_ supplied a test paper containing, _inter alia_, the following questions:--

1. A four-wheeled cab, containing five inside passengers, two children
on the box, and seven trunks on the roof, is taken from Liverpool
Street Station to the extreme end of Hammersmith, and the Lady who has
secured your services as guide, after having made the cabman carry the
seven trunks up to the third storey offers him, as his fare, two and
ninepence, which he indignantly refuses. On his subsequently claiming
thirteen and sixpence, and taking off his coat and offering to fight
the gentleman of the party for that amount on the steps of the house
in the presence of a sympathizing crowd, what speedy measures, if any,
should you adopt to effect a compromise?

2. You are engaged to conduct an intelligent, scientific, and
inquiring party of sixteen people over Windsor Castle, the Marylebone
Workhouse, the Thames Tunnel, Hanwell Lunatic Asylum, the National
Gallery, the British Museum, and the London Docks. Do you think that
your thorough knowledge of English history, your acquaintance with the
working of the Poor Laws, your grasp of the progress of European Art,
and your general familiarity with all the great political, commercial,
engineering, economic and other problems of the hour are such as to
warrant you in facing the coming ordeal with a jaunty confidence?

3. You are required by an economical Duke to provide a cheap wedding
for his only daughter, and he has stipulated that the breakfast
shall not, at the outside, cost more than ninepence a head. With a
four-and-sixpenny bridal cake, and a sound champagne that must not
exceed fifteen shillings a dozen, how do you propose to make the thing
go off with _éclat_?

In 1890 the "Dorothy" Restaurant was started for "Ladies Only," but this condition, though the _raison d'être_ of the venture, was soon modified: men were admitted from 6.30 to 10 P.M., and _Punch_ was unchivalrous enough to make humorous capital out of the concession.

In regard to the suffrage and "Women's Rights" _Punch_ remained on the side of the fence where he had got down after a good deal of vacillation. In 1879 he publishes what is apparently a _bonâ fide_ letter from "A Lancashire Witch" protesting against Miss Lydia Becker's claim to represent the general feeling of the district. "I assure you," she writes, "that Miss Becker's followers are chiefly ladies of her own pronounced politics, or semi-foreigners, and not Englishwomen _pur sang_." _Punch_ observes that "no Lancashire Witch need fear to be mixed up with the Representative Gathering of vote-claiming Spinsters which Miss Lydia Becker threatens to bring down on the Free Trade Hall. Witches who know whence comes the real potency of their charms will certainly not seek to mix voting-powder in the cauldron." This was not friendly to the Suffragists, but the tone is preferable to that of 'Arry's views on Women's Rights in 1881 after attending a lecture. There is a certain admixture of shrewd commonplace in his remarks, but the verses are chiefly remarkable as a storehouse of cad-slang, fortunately mostly obsolete. Female emigration comes up for comment in the same year, but, as the object was avowedly matrimonial, the scheme had no political significance. The picture of the large, self-indulgent, sultanic brother advising his adoring sisters, cousins and aunts to assert their rights by learning to be more independent of men is purely ironical and has no bearing on the problem of women's economic dependence. The dialogue in two scenes between Edwin and Angelina in 1883 on the working of the new Married Women's Property Act is a rather cynical burlesque. The first scene shows the Act as it is expected to work, to the advantage of women; in the second we see it as it is sure to work--to the confirmation of the _status quo_, the woman continuing to leave her money affairs entirely in her husband's hands.

(_A Troubled Dream of the Future_)]

[Sidenote: _Women Jurors_]

Sambourne's prophetic picture of "The Angel in 'the House'" in 1884 is an improvement on _Punch's_ earlier fancy portraits of women legislators, but it does not render prophetic justice either to Lady Astor or Mrs. Wintringham. _Punch_ refers more than once in 1885 to the Parliamentary candidature of Miss Helen Taylor who stood for Camberwell, but her nomination papers were not accepted. _Punch_ offers "Helen of Camberwell" his condolences, but they are shorn of all grace by his previous comparison of her to the Three Tailors of Tooley Street and other acidulated puns. Du Maurier's picture in 1887 of a Jury of Women antedates reality by more than thirty years; while the tension of party feeling in 1888 is illustrated by the genuine advertisement of a governess seeking work who had been "dismissed from a Conservative Clergyman's family for her Gladstonian views." Lady canvassers were already beginning to make their influence felt, and _Punch_ recognizes their value in a "lay" which gives an entertaining account of their "unscrupulous, seductive, siren ways." At any rate they could not be ignored. The temper of "The Political Woman"--one of the "Modern Types" series--in 1890 is acid and disparaging throughout:--

Having left school with an ill-assorted mass of miscellaneous
knowledge, she will show her contempt for ordinary feminine
accomplishments by refusing to attend dances, and by crushing
mild young men whom misfortune may have thrown in her way. Having
discovered from one of these that he imagines the Rebecca Riots to
be an incident of Old Testament History, and has no definite views
upon the currency question, she will observe in a tone of some
bitterness, that "These are our Governors!" and, having left him in a
state of collapse, will scale the ramparts of political discussion,
in company with a Professor, who happens to be unmarried and a
Member of Parliament. After making love for some months, by means of
an interchange of political tracts, these two will be married in a
registrar's office and will spend their honeymoon in investigating the
social requirements of Italian organ-grinders.

Thenceforward she exists chiefly as a member or president of innumerable committees; she neglects her husband and the son "whom, in a moment of regrettable absent-mindedness, she bore to the professor and brings up on Spartan principles and little else." Her home is a centre of slatternly discomfort:--

She will eventually fail to be elected a member of the School Board,
and having written a strong book on a delicate social question, will
die of the shock of seeing it adversely reviewed in _The Spectator_.

Sir Albert Rollit's Bill for extending the franchise to women was introduced in the early summer of 1892, and defeated on the second reading by only twenty-three votes. _Punch_, in his "Essence of Parliament," refers to an uproarious meeting in St. James's Hall, and to Mr. Asquith's "merciless logic" in demolishing the Bill. The Women's Liberal Federation had declared for the suffrage, and _Punch_ illustrated the situation in a picture of two political lady cricketers appealing to the G.O.M. at the wicket: "A team of our own? I should think so! If we're good enough to scout [i.e. field] for you, why shouldn't we take a turn at the bat?"

Women's clubs increased in numbers throughout this period, but met with little encouragement from _Punch_. In 1877 they are satirized as enemies to domestic life; as the haunts of semi-detached, smart women--types which _Punch_ portrayed in his "Dream of Queer Women" (after Tennyson) in the same year, wherein mention is made of the "shrieking sisterhood," realistic novelists, "art-beauties," shrewish suffragists and shady adventuresses. When the project of a Women's University Club was mooted in 1886, _Punch_ takes a less lurid view of its possibilities. Smoking, card-playing and billiards are indicated, but at worst the ladies will only be mild, if sedulous apes of the male clubman. Gossip will predominate, and _Punch_ suggests that the new venture should be called "The Blue-Stocking." As for smoking, in 1888 _Punch_ registered a protest under the title, "To a Fair Nicotian," in which the Laureate remonstrates with Lady Clara. He likes his own yard-long Broseley clay pipe, but disapproves even of a cigarette in the lips of lovely woman.

[Sidenote: _The Athletic Woman_]

(_It is always well to be well informed_)

CLARA (_pointing to the Umpires_): "Who are the two men in billycock hats and white coats?"

MATILDA: "Oh, don't you know? Those are the headmasters of Eton and Harrow!"]