Chapter V: Part I: The National Outlook (5)

Towards the athletic woman _Punch_ was, on the whole, more benevolent. In 1883 he pays graceful homage to a woman with the engaging name of Jessie Ace who had saved a man from drowning. In the same year young ladies are gently chaffed for beginning to affect a knowledge of the technicalities of pastime and sport. But if _Punch_ is to be believed, it was still sketchy. Rugby and Association football are mixed up with cricket, and the two charming girls at the Eton and Harrow match at Lord's mistake the two umpires for the two headmasters. The slightly more serious view taken in 1884, when several cricket matches were played by women, is noted elsewhere. Fencing and boxing for women, under male instructors, French and British, are depicted by Du Maurier as "the last new fad" in 1886. The former, at any rate, came to stay and deserved to. Ladies had long figured in lawn tennis tournaments, but in his "Caution to Championesses" in 1887, _Punch_ displayed some misgiving as to the development of this competition. Nor did he approve of the novelty of women riding astride in 1890, begging them to do anything but that, and rewriting the old nursery rhyme for these new Amazons:--

Ride a cock-horse,
To Banbury Cross
To see a young lady
A-straddle o' course!

The _Almanack_ for the same year gives four types of model middle-class wives. The French keeps her husband's accounts; the German is the _Hausfrau_ and cook; the American is an intellectual; the English plays lawn tennis. The "Manly Maiden" (No. XXII in _Punch's_ "Modern Types") described in December, 1890, is less closely observed and far less interesting than _Punch's_ "Model Fast Lady" of forty years earlier. The sketch is a rather cruel caricature of the persevering but inefficient sportswoman who is always in the way, and is destined to "develop from a would-be hard-riding maiden into a genuinely hard-featured old maid." In agreeable contrast to this acid study is _Punch's_ homage to the exploits of a Guernsey rifle-woman, Miss Leale, at Bisley in 1891, and his welcome to Mrs. Sheldon, the American traveller, on her return from her travels in Africa, in which he suggests that in time to come Stanley may be known as "the male Mrs. Sheldon." The exaggeration may be ironical, but the irony is so well veiled as to be almost imperceptible. In the years that were to come the achievements of Mary Kingsley and Gertrude Bell were beyond the reach of the most subtle disparagement.

[Sidenote: _Women Workers_]

SHE: "What a fine-looking man Mr. O'Brien is!"

HE: "H'm--hah--rather rough-hewn, I think. Can't say I admire that loud-laughing, strong-voiced, robust kind of man. Now that's a fine-looking woman he's talking to!"

SHE: "Well--er--somewhat _effeminate_, you know. Confess I don't admire _effeminate_ women!"]

On the subject of women workers _Punch's_ utterances are apparently but not really irreconcilable. The "Wail of the Male; being a British workman's view of the cheap female labour question, respectfully submitted to the Trade Union Congress" in 1887, is a protest against women undercutting men in the labour market. But the voice is the voice of 'Arry, not of _Punch_--shrewd, glib and entirely selfish. The speaker has just got the "bullet"--having been sacked without notice--and speculates on further possibilities:--

Look here, Bill! If they shunt
You and me, and our like, as they're doing all round,
Because Women are cheap, and there's heaps to be found,
Won't it come to this, sooner or later, my boy,
That the most of us chaps will be out of employ,
Whilst the Women will do all the work there's to do,
And keep us, and the kids, on about half our "screw"?
Who's a-going to gain by that there but the boss?
And for everyone else it is bound to be loss.
A nice pooty look-out! Oh, I know what they say--
That the women work better than us for less pay,
And are much less the slaves of the pint and the pot,
What's that got to do with it? All tommy rot!
We have all got to live, and if women-folk choose
To collar our cribs or to cut down our screws,
_They_ will have to be bread-winners, leaving us chaps
To darn stockings at home with the kids on our laps.
Well, I hope as they'll like it. I tell you what, neighbour,
The world's being ruined by petticoat labour.
Besides, Mate, in spite of this Woman's Rights fuss,
Work don't make 'em better _as_ women, but wuss.
It mucks 'em for marriage, and spiles 'em for home,
'Cos their notion of life is to racket and roam.
Just look at that work-girl there, her with the fringe!
She's a nice pooty specimen! Makes a chap cringe
To think of that flashy young chit as a wife.
That's what cheap woman labour will do for our life.
Oh, give 'em the Vote, and the breeks, while you're at it,
Make 'em soldiers, and Bobbies, and bosses. But, drat it,
If this blessed new-fangled game's to prewail,
I pities the beggar who's born a poor Male!

Against these arguments, illustrative of a certain habit of mind, which at best excite a grudging acknowledgment of their coarse common sense, one may set the "Dream of Unfairly Treated Women" (after Tennyson) in 1890, describing the hardships of sempstresses, governesses, "slaveys" and shop-girls, the victims of sweating, greed, and worse, which unhappily were all too prevalent so recently as thirty years ago.

_Punch_, in fine, exhibits through this period a progressive acknowledgment of women's claims to be regarded as an intelligent being, tempered by moments of reaction. In 1875 he has a picture of an evening party at which all the men are anxious to be introduced to the wonderful Miss Pynke, that _rara avis_ "who has never written a novel or contributed to a magazine." In 1887 the "score" is given to the professor in his retort to the "high-brow" lady:--

MISS HYPATIA: "Yes, now that we are gradually educating
ourselves up to your level, you Men ought at least to meet us
halfway."

THE PROFESSOR: "Meet you halfway? How? By gradually
_un_educating ourselves down to yours?"

[Sidenote: _Feline Amenities_]

In 1890, again, the amusing series of "Feline amenities" continued for some years, though they are a tribute to the wit of women, are invariably based on a denial of the quality of magnanimity. In this context I am minded to include a curiosity, dating from the year 1886, in the shape of an imaginary letter signed "Elizabeth Fry Romper," which is of interest as showing the change in the attitude of philanthropic women during the century. The writer describes how "of course on the hottest day of the whole summer" she was told off to take a lot of Sunday school girls for "a day in the country" to Greenwich, "which is supposed to have an elevating effect upon them for the rest of the year." Of all the disagreeable things she ever has to do, this is "far the worst." The picture given is decidedly realistic:--

It is no joke waiting for an hour at a suburban station, with eighty
"young girls"--_real_ young girls--pouring in by detachments, all in
the wildest state of excitement, and decked with the entire contents
of their jewel-cases. Of course, the first thing they did was to
rush, helter-skelter, into a wrong train, and all the railway staff
hardly sufficed to pull them out again before the train started. I
had a whole compartment to look after, and felt rather nervous at
the thought that the next one was filled with men--smoking shocking
tobacco, by the way--and that the _talk_ was distinctly _audible_.

I was truly thankful to reach Greenwich, and trusted that the girls
might be fully occupied in getting tea, and that the heavy cake might
calm down their excitement a little. So we all set to with a great
deal of unnecessary bustle, and were flattering our elderly hearts
that everything was going off splendidly, when, on the bell being
rung--we had brought one on purpose--for the girls to be seated, the
Superintendent looked round for the head girl to lead the singing
grace. Instead of pious music of any sort, our ears were greeted with
a shout of discordant laughter, which was found to proceed from some
broken ground in the distance, where the _whole_ of our first class
were engaged in playing _Kiss in the Ring_ with a party of soldiers
from the neighbouring barracks. My dear, if you could have seen
the picture, you would never have forgotten it. I thought I should
have died of laughing on the spot. The hot, dishevelled, romping
girls, and the smart soldiers, quite unconscious of the awful face
of the Superintendent, as she advanced towards them, and the way the
damsels scuttered off as she let fall a few words of rebuke--it was
the funniest thing I ever saw. She succeeded in driving her flock,
sheepish but giggling, before her; all but one, who stoutly declined
to leave her soldier, declaring she didn't want no tea, but would 'ave
a spree in the merry-go-round with 'im. A separation was ultimately
effected, but the gloom that hung over that meal I never shall forget.
It was a mercy everyone else took it so seriously, or I couldn't have
held out; as it was, when I got home, I laughed myself nearly into a
fit.

The combination of duty, detachment and a sense of humour is not commonly credited to Victorian girls. But the problems that had to be tackled were very much the same, and so was human nature.

EDUCATION

Hasty generalizations from the study of _Punch_ throughout this period might easily lead one to the conclusion that the two great evils in national education were the craze for athletics in Public and Preparatory, and over-pressure in Board and Elementary, Schools. A more detailed examination of his pages tends to correct or modify this view. _Punch_ was in the main a firm believer in the public school system as an instrument of character-building, and he was no enemy of the ladder of learning which had been erected by Forster's Act of 1871. But while he detested snobbery, extravagance and complacent Philistinism, he was by no means satisfied that the State was getting good value for its constantly increasing expenditure on education. Thus to take the Elementary schools first, we find continual references, mostly unfavourable, to the administration and working of the Board School System. In 1875 he falls foul of the pedantry of over-zealous officials--the red-tape methods of inspectors, and the action of visitors who sent children back to school before they were free from infection. These inquisitorial activities roused _Punch's_ old democratic sympathies, and some ten years later we find him suggesting that a similar method might fairly be applied to the upper and upper middle classes--that what was sauce for the goose in the slums might be served up to the gander in the squares.

NORTHERN MATRON (before the School Board): "I'm not against Eddication, Ladies and Gen'l'men. I al'ays make him take his Book o' nights. But reelly I calls it a flyin' in the face o' Providence to be keepin' a Boy out o' the Stables with such a pair o' Legs as his'n!!"]

In the series of articles on "Education Made Easy" in 1887, _Punch_ sympathizes with the mothers who were constantly harried by "attendance officers" for neglecting to send their children to the Board Schools. Ignorance was a great evil, but the Board Schools were attempting too much. The essentials were not thoroughly taught; pupil-teachers were overworked; there was too much of the 'ologies, and the three R's were in danger of going to the wall. The reactionary protest against the teaching of music--"We don't want Grisis at Board Schools"--is ironical; but _Punch_ espoused the cause of those who condemned over-cramming in Board Schools, and based their crusade on Sir James Crichton-Browne's Report on over-pressure in 1884. But his great point was that there was too much teaching of the things that did not matter. His "Indignant Ratepayer" in 1887 welcomes the decision of the London School Board to hold an inquiry into the curriculum of their schools. The special committee were also to report "whether such changes can be made as shall secure that children leaving school shall be more fitted than they now are to perform the duties and work of life before them." One of the speakers had declared that "the boys educated in public elementary schools scorned all handicraft work, and wanted to be clerks, while girls in like-manner scorned all domestic service." The "Indignant Ratepayer" congratulated the School Board on turning over a new leaf, though it had taken them sixteen years to realize that they were on the wrong tack.

[Sidenote: _Indignant Ratepayers_]

A week later _Punch_ published another letter from another "Indignant Ratepayer," deprecating the congratulations as premature and indiscreet:--

I, too, _Mr. Punch_, am a ratepayer; I have seen my rates trebled
since the creation of the School Board; and I am now told that I ought
to thank my stars that, after sixteen years' work, they have at length
displayed a glimmering of common sense. There seems to be something
ominous in this term of sixteen years, for it appears that it is just
for this period that we have been supplying the Army with bayonets
that won't stab, and the Navy with cutlasses that won't cut. We are
always calling ourselves, though nobody else does, a practical people.
But what care we for the opinion of our neighbours, so long as we are
happy in the calm contemplation of our superiority?

"The unexpected always happens," so said Beaconsfield, and it seems
he was right, for who would have ever dreamed that the School Board
would have ever made such a confession? But although they confessed
much, they did not confess all. They said nothing of the numberless
half-starved children whose health has been impaired or ruined by the
tasks imposed upon them. Nothing of the hundreds of thousands spent in
bullying and worrying their poor parents. Nothing of the money spent
in endless litigation. On all such subjects the Board are discreetly
silent. They draw attention only to the outcome of their labours,
namely the boys and girls whose education has been completed--the
survival of the fittest in short--but who are fit for nothing.

"No handicraft work for the boys, no domestic service for the girls."
The boys all want to be clerks; what the girls want to be we are not
informed, but domestic service is not to be thought of, so the sooner
my wife and daughters take to such work the better. And for this
have I paid trebled rates. For this have we been passing Code after
Code, and fixing Standard after Standard, to find at last that the
whole work must be begun afresh. I too am indignant, as well as your
Correspondent, not that the School Board have been telling the truth,
but that they have been so long in telling it.

I protest against my money having been spent in injuring the health of
half the poor children of London, and of injuring the morals of the
other half.

_Punch_ was ready to give a hearing to economists who really felt the burden, but he had no sympathy with the "old gang" of City Fathers who were frankly obscurantist on the subject of education, while they were proud of having dined and wined themselves into the possession of "first class stomachs":--

"WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS," ETC.

That not particularly learned body which rejoices in the name of the
Commissioners of Sewers of the City of London, held a Special Meeting
at the Guildhall last week, to discuss the terribly extravagant
conduct of the London School Board in adding one penny in the pound to
the amount of the rate to be levied in the wealthy City of London for
the ensuing year. Much burning eloquence, of the peculiar City type,
was used on the occasion, and a statement by one highly excited member
that there were no fewer than 313 Board Schools in the Metropolis in
which the great work of education was being successfully carried on,
and that the cry was still for more, was received with as terrible a
groan of horror as if it had been announced, on authority, that there
were to be no more "Cakes and Ale" for the Sewage Commissioners.

In vain was it stated by those who, apparently, love light rather than
darkness, that whereas the population of London some ten or twenty
years ago was one of the most ignorant of any capital of Europe, it
was now, thanks to the School Board, assuming its proper place in this
respect, by giving all its children a good education. They were met by
a shout of derision from an angry Commissioner, who demanded to know
"why they didn't try to teach a cow to win the Derby," which brilliant
interrogation elicited great applause.

In vain was it suggested that this sudden affectation of sympathy
with the poor Ratepayer for having to pay this additional penny for
education, was but a blind to screen their own increased rate of
double the amount, for a purpose of not one-tenth the importance.
The Sewage Commissioners listened with impatience, reserving their
enthusiastic approbation for the very demonstrative gentleman who
addressed them after their own heart; and in language that all could
understand and thoroughly sympathise with. He was quite willing,
generous soul, that the poor children should have bread, but what he
objected to was rumpsteaks! and he concluded his brilliant oration
with the following magnificent peroration:--"Everybody should have
his meal, but he must have a stomach of the highest class before they
could give him turtle soup and port wine!"

Who but a member of the City Corporation could have contrived, when
discussing the question of the education of the Poor, to have brought
in those two gods of his idolatry, turtle soup and port wine? And in
combination too!

[Sidenote: _Under-feeding and Under-housing_]

YOUNG RUSTIC: "Gran'fa'r, who was Shylock?"

SENIOR (_after a pause_): "Lauk a' mussy, boy, yeou goo to Sunday Skewl, and don't know that!"]

This well-merited castigation preceded the protests of the "Indignant Ratepayers" by a couple of years, but it is more truly representative of _Punch's_ convictions on the main question. We had to educate our masters, and we must not squeal over the bill--provided the education was sound. On that point _Punch_ was by no means satisfied, and in 1887 he invokes the testimony of the British workmen, who is made to protest against the unpractical nature of modern education, and the undue prominence assigned to the 'ologies and 'ometries. A cartoon in 1888 represents Education betrayed by its "friends"--pedantry and jobbery. Over-pressure was aggravated by under-feeding and under-housing. As for the former, _Punch_ prints an East End remonstrance against the penny rate: "When we wants daily bread it ain't any good saying you only wants 'that there penny.'" But the steady growth of State expenditure on education is resented on the ground that it was devoted to inappropriate or unnecessary objects. In 1891 _Punch_ publishes a forecast of the Exasperated Public protesting against the ever-increasing extravagance of the London School Board, who have taken to building observatories and raised the salaries of elementary teachers to £2,500 a year.

This is burlesque, but there is criticism and dissatisfaction at the back of it. So when the Bill providing for "assisted" (i.e. Free) Education, for which the Budget surplus of £2,000,000 was to be devoted, was introduced in the same year, _Punch_ represented the cross-currents of the Unionist Party in his cartoon. Mother Goschen, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is seen introducing her adopted child (Free Education), whom she had found in Birmingham, to the Old Tory Party (Mrs. Gamp), who doesn't like the looks of him at all. But Goschen carried his point--that the Government were pledged to alleviate the burden which compulsory education had, in recent years, imposed upon the poorer portion of the people; and by September 1 the free education proposals of the Government were generally adopted throughout the country by both Board and Voluntary Schools.

The old question of corporal punishment comes up in 1880 and 1881, but in a new light. There was "one law for the rich and another for the poor," but here, at any rate, it could not be maintained that the poor were oppressed. Already flogging was only commonly resorted to in the schools for the upper classes, and _Punch_ emphasizes the contrast in his dialogue between the Peer and the Peasant. The Peasant observes that when he is tapped over the head with a cane, his mother goes and bashes the teacher over the head with the poker and gets him fired for assaulting her son. The Peer, on the other hand, owns to having been "swished" four times in a fortnight without attempting reprisals. Whereupon the Peasant suggests that he should have sent _his_ mother to go and bang his old master. If _Punch_ is to be believed, conflicts between teachers and parents were pretty frequent at this time. They are not unknown even to-day; but parents are less inclined to take the law into their own hands.

[Sidenote: _Literature and Crime_]

The education of the million, however, was not confined to school hours, and with the decline of illiteracy the growth of the reading habit brought its perils as well as its privileges. Juvenile criminality was no longer the result of ignorance and neglect--at least to the same extent. _Punch_ was inclined to trace the evil largely to the low tone of the cheap literature provided for the young. In the Diary of a Boy Burglar in 1886, his downfall is ascribed to his putting into practice the principles imbibed by a perusal of _Jack Sheppard_. A somewhat alarmist article in the _Fortnightly Review_ on "What Boys Read" declared that while many boys' books were healthy and helpful, the majority of the journals supplied for the children of the working classes were devoid of every element of sweetness and light. "They are filled with stories of blood and revenge, of passion and cruelty, as improbable and almost impossible in plot as they are contemptible in literary execution."

The solution of the matter by Press censorship, advocated by the writer, presented difficulties which _Punch_ did not shirk, and his own views, though strong, are tempered by sound common sense:--

Ainsworth's story may serve the turn of an Opéra-bouffe Librettist,
and the scamp himself be played by a sprightly actress without much
harm being done to anybody. _Jack Sheppard_, for instance, ought not
to be sanctioned by the Licenser any more than _Claude Duval_, _Dick
Turpin_, or any other drama of a like kind, of which the recognized
motive is the veiled incentive to crime. Still, a raid on Harrison
Ainsworth, notwithstanding the acknowledged mischief that has been
done to the young and ignorant by a perusal of his cracksman's
romance, would scarcely be the same thing, and yet the cases are
sufficiently parallel to admit at least of argument. We should be
inclined to suppress such romances as _Jack Sheppard_, _Rookwood_,
Bulwer's _Claude Duval_, and also _Eugene Aram_, which was so severely
and so justly satirized by Thackeray in _Mr. Punch's_ pages. For the
truth about Jack Sheppard our readers have only to refer to one of the
earliest volumes of _Mr. Punch's_ series, where they will find his
character as described by Ainsworth, and his true character as given
in the Newgate Calendar, displayed side by side in parallel columns.
_There was no sort of romance about the real Jack Sheppard._

Meantime, for want of a better remedy to meet the evil, let parents
and guardians, and those who have charge and direction of the
young idea, keep their eyes open and have a special regard to the
direction in which it shows inclination to shoot. It is just as
ready to derive its nutriment from the "penny healthful," as from
the "penny dreadful," and as a mere matter of commercial enterprise,
the former could be as easily forthcoming and available as the
latter. Philanthropy is continually actively busying itself about
the education of the young--here is something practical for it to
do--let it look to the quality of its _Magazine literature_. It wants
some energy and some capital, but both in these days ought to be
forthcoming. To drive the penny dreadful out of the literary field is
not a task beyond the powers of organization and enterprise. And it is
in this direction that the first steps will be taken in the material
and moral amelioration of "What boys read."

The subject recurs in 1889 and 1890, when sensational juvenile literature is again denounced; but the new stories are more vigorously condemned than the old, and the Ghost of Jack Sheppard, in a conversation with the Shade of Dick Turpin, scouts the notion that _they_ could upset the minds of the young. Why, they weren't in it with the papers read by everyone everywhere! _Punch_ vigorously supported the efforts of those who sought to abate the evils of child insurance, and welcomed the intervention of Magee, then Archbishop of York, who died while on a visit to London to attend a Committee of the House of Lords on his Infant Insurance Bill, in May, 1891. But when the Prevention of Cruelty Bill was in Committee in the summer of 1887, _Punch_ strongly supported the Attorney-General's amendment to omit from the Bill the words prohibiting the employment of children under ten in theatres and licensed places of public entertainment. Mr. Mundella, who was in charge of the Bill, accepted the amendment, but "Dick Temple, Sam Smith and other superlatively good people objected," and it was defeated both in the Committee and the Report stages, to _Punch's_ undisguised annoyance. After the Bill became law in July, he added "one word more," and his arguments, if not convincing, are at least consistent with his life-long sympathy with the professional actor:--

[Sidenote: _The Stage and Education_]

Well-intentioned persons do a heap of mischief, and talk and write a
lot of nonsense about what they don't understand. There are dangers to
morality ("who deniges of it?") in the Theatrical Profession, as in
every other profession; but these affect the amateur, and those who
go on the stage late in life, not those who are to the manner born.
The loves of poor, honest, hard-working theatrical families, where the
sons and daughters obtain theatrical employment at an early age, are
thoroughly respectable. Their stage-work is not only compatible with
their receiving a sound education, but is a complement of it. Habits
of strict discipline, cleanliness, and domestic thrift are inculcated;
the little children, from the biggest down to "the Widow's Mites"
engaged in a Pantomime, are seldom sick, and never sorry, but do their
work with pleasure, and would probably be willing to undertake even
"more study," rather than be deprived of their theatrical employment
which brings in the money, pays the school, and helps to keep a happy
family together under one roof, which, "be it never so 'umble," is
styled by that dear old English word "home"--and there is no place
like it. The efforts of those who would exclude children under ten
from theatrical work may cause great misery and break up many such
happy homes. We say this in serious earnest, and, from practical
experience, we do know what we are talking about.

_Punch_ resented pedantic, official, or fussy interference with children whether at work or play. A Children's Party at the Mansion House in January, 1881, provokes well-merited ridicule. No mixed dancing was allowed; the only diversion was provided by some "hideous negro entertainers" and, by way of compensation, a sermon by Mr. Spurgeon! After 11.30 P.M. young ladies were allowed to dance, but _only_ with young ladies; and the young gentlemen with young gentlemen. At the same time _Punch_ was a believer in the cane, when administered with discretion, and a resolute discourager of precocity. The full-page illustration in the _Almanack_ of 1884, "Education's Frankenstein," representing the omniscient child of the future, ruining all professions, as everyone can do everything, is an extravagant burlesque, but it foreshadows the complaints we have had of late of the "unfair competition" of the infant author and artist with the adult practitioner. In 1885 Du Maurier's Child of the Period gravely rebukes her grandmother who speaks of a "puff-puff"--"The locomotive, I suppose you mean, grandmamma." But this is a form of joke which recurs throughout the ages.

_Punch's_ "Winter Exhibition of the Works of Young Masters" in 1888 is a really illuminating piece of prophetic satire. The exhibitors are all children, and the works shown all belong to the Nursery Period. We may take one example:--

Billy Bolaine, born 1868, flourished 1880-2. No. 3. _Landscape, with
horse, ducks and figures._ Silvery effect of about eight o'clock in
the morning anywhere. The animals have given rise to some discussion,
but the general impression seems to be that the artist, who never
depicted anything without a subtle meaning, originally intended at
least one of them for a cow.

Altogether this is an excellent skit on the critics who greet all the efforts of the young with a foolish voice of praise. Self-conscious, aggressive and complacent precocity _Punch_ could not endure; the small American child who treats a bishop, who had endeavoured to repress him, as a back number, is clearly regarded as a nuisance. But in his plea for the unhappy infant prodigy _Punch_ recognized it as a real grievance that child performers were overworked by over-practising and continual travelling. In 1888 it was borne in upon him that, whether from the engrossing nature of modern girls' and boys' occupations, or their preference for contemporary and realistic fiction, the study of Fairy Tales and Nursery Lore was fast falling into neglect if not into positive contempt. To avert what he considered a national calamity, he felt it his duty to suggest to parents that no child should be allowed on any pretext in future to leave the Nursery for School until it had passed an examination in these subjects.

[Sidenote: _Fairy Tale Test Papers_]

_Punch's_ test papers are all excellent, but I can only find room for the General and the Pantomime Papers:--

CRITICAL AND GENERAL.

1. What is your opinion of the intelligence of Giants as a race? Of
what substance were they in the habit of making their bread? Would you
draw any and what distinction between (a) Giants and Giantesses, (b)
Ogres and Ogresses, (c) a Mamma Ogress and her daughters?

2. What is a Roc? What do Rocs feed on? If you were on the edge of
steep cliffs surrounding an inaccessible valley, strewn with diamonds
and visited by Rocs--how would you proceed in order to obtain some of
those diamonds? Give the reply of the Slave of the Lamp to Aladdin's
request that a Roc's egg should be hung up in his dome.

3. Mention instances when (a) a Wolf, (b) a Bear, (c) a Cat, (d) a
Harp, are recorded to have spoken, and give the substance of their
remarks, when possible, in each case.

4. Write down the name of any hero you can remember who suffered
inconvenience from (a) the imprudence, (b) the disobedience, of his
wife.

5. How would you act if you were invited to go to a party on the
opposite side of the way, and had nothing to go in but a pair of
Seven-Leagued Boots? Compare the drawbacks and advantages of going to
a State Ball in glass slippers.

6. State which family you would rather belong to: One in which
there was (i.) a Wicked Uncle, (ii.) an Envious Sister, (iii.) a
Jealous Brother, or (iv.) a Cruel Stepmother? Give your reasons, and
illustrate them by examples. How many Wicked Uncles do you remember to
have read of? Are Wicked Uncles ever sorry, and, if so, when?

7. Give any instances that occur to you where it is stated that the
chief personages of the story "all lived happily ever afterwards." Are
there any exceptions to this rule?

PANTOMIME PAPER.

(Optional, and for those Students only who may decide to "take up"
this branch of the subject.)

1. Did the manners, language, and general deportment of the various
Kings and Queens you have seen in Pantomimes correspond at all with
what you had expected them to be from the books?

2. Mention any fairy tale in which (1) long ballets, (2) allusions
to subjects in last year's papers, (3) jokes about "drinks" and
"pawn-tickets," (4) comic duets which you didn't quite understand, and
(5) men dressed up in women's clothes, occur. Mention (if you can) any
Pantomime in which they do not.

3. Were you surprised to hear at Drury Lane that the King who
befriended the Marquis of Carabas was originally a Potman? Do you
remember this in the original text?

4. Why do you suppose that the Wicked Brothers in this year's
Pantomime were frightened by green snakes, pink lizards, and enormous
frogs? Did their own explanation that they had "the jumps" convey much
to your mind? Did this scene make you laugh?

5. Give as clear and intelligible an account as you are able of the
story of any one Pantomime you have been to, mentioning where--if at
all--it departed from the version you have studied, and whether or
not you considered such departures (if any) to be improvements.

6. Investigate the principal peculiarities of Pantomime Animals. How
do they chiefly differ from other animals? Describe the effect of
kindness upon a Pantomime Donkey, and account for it.

N.B.--Not more than four questions need be attempted in each of
the above papers. Candidates are advised not to leave any question
unattempted from a mere inability to answer every part of such
question.

The Pantomime Paper conveys some excellent dramatic criticism, which is needed as much to-day as thirty years ago, but it may be permitted to stand in this educational context. As a counterblast to the charge of indifference towards fairy tales on the part of the modern child, it is only right to add that in 1892 Du Maurier's picture, "A Warning," shows a touching belief in the actuality of Bluebeard:--

ARCHIE (to his Sister, who has been reading him Fairy Tales):
"Won't there be a lot of Us, if none of us go and get married? Worse
than Hop-o'-my-Thumb!"

SISTER: "Yes; but you know I mean to be married!"

ARCHIE: "Do you mean to say you'd go and live alone with a
Man after reading Bluebeard?"

When we turn to the Public and Preparatory Schools we find that _Punch's_ criticisms resolve themselves into a triple indictment of their costliness, their curriculum and their undue exaltation of athletics. The attack on the athletic craze begins in 1875, when _Punch_ published an imaginary Report of a boy's work for 1895 at St. Paul's, Eastminster, which deals with nothing but his progress at games and sports.

[Sidenote: _The Fetish of Games_]

The charge had a good deal to justify it, but the choice of a name was not happy, since Colet's famous foundation has in its recent phase never invited criticism on the score of any slackness in studious industry. _Punch_ renews the attack more than once. In 1880, in a burlesque account of a Prize Day, brain-work is just tolerated; athletic prowess is the only thing really encouraged and rewarded. Yet simultaneously we encounter Master Freddy from Eton, who considers that energy of any sort is "bad form." "Good form," in _Punch's_ view, might easily degenerate into a snobbish fetish, and in one of his "International Comparisons," in the _Almanack_ of 1879, he emphasizes the comprehensiveness of French public schools as contrasted with the class distinctions observed in England. It was in the same year that an inquiry was held into the administration of Wellington College and the alleged departure from the intentions of the founders. _Punch_ took the line that what was meant to be a military orphanage had become a rather costly public school of the common type, and noted that Mr. Gladstone defended the change because Benson, his son-in-law, was head master. This was a partial error. Gladstone's son-in-law was Wickham, who had succeeded Benson as head master. But the sting remained. _Punch_, it may be added, was thoroughly consistent in his attitude of antagonism to the diversion of old foundations from their original aims.

"Of course you needn't _Work_, Fitzmilksoppe; but _Play_ you _must_ and _shall_."]

The costly inefficiency of the public schools came up again in 1880, _à propos_ of a correspondence in _The Times_, in which a "disappointed mother" recounted the experience of her two sons who, on leaving a public school at the age of nineteen, had forgotten all they knew before they went there:--

Hence a justly "Disappointed Mother" naturally enough concludes that
"_Our great schools want inspection sadly_." Experience has certainly
given her some cause to compare them unfavourably with private
schools; although as to the latter she generalizes rather widely in
saying that they "must teach, or close." Too many of them do neither.

Her boys, at any rate, both of them learned at a Private Boarding
School enough to enable them to pass the Junior Oxford Local
Examination at an early age. Unquestionably they were taught so much;
but then how were they taught it? In such a style that they have now,
at an adult age, to be taught it over again.

So it seems that a "Disappointed Mother's" two sons were educated
at the Private Boarding School as the bottles are aërated in a
soda-water manufactory. Information must have been forced into the
former as carbonic acid gas is pumped into the latter. The gas is
retained in the bottles whilst corked down, but escapes on the
removal of pressure; so, if the boyish minds are left open, their
school-learning, set free from forcible compression, goes off in
youthful effervescence. Admirable system, by which our youth at an
early age are enabled to pass the examinations, for which at maturer
years they have to be crammed all over again!

[Sidenote: _Classics v. Commerce_]

The inspection of public schools has remained a subject of acute controversy ever since; and it is not clear whether _Punch's_ approval would have extended to Government inspection. It was in the same year, by the way, that Du Maurier illustrated the dialogue between Sir Gorgius Midas and an aristocratic Colonel. Sir Gorgius's main regret was that he had never been at a public school; the Colonel, who was once at Eton, laments that he suffers from a neglected education. Burnand, who succeeded to the editorship of _Punch_ in 1880, was also an old Etonian, but was not on that account prepared to grant his old school a complete immunity from criticism. The "Diary of a Present Etonian," which appeared in 1885, is in the main jocularly descriptive, but illustrates a prevalent Philistinism, the habits of ragging and borrowing money, and tells of a week with only one whole school-day and two whole holidays. Yet while fully alive to the waste of time and money which went on at the public schools, _Punch_ was very far from embracing the creed of the revolutionary utilitarians who would scrap the old curriculum wholesale. In 1887 he printed an ironic account of the "Public School of the Future," thoroughly impregnated with the Commercial Spirit. The hero, the new "Tom Brown," develops a talent for finance so remarkable that his father longs to see him loose on the Stock Exchange.

_Punch_ did not believe in compulsory classics, because he disliked dons, pedants and academics; but in his parody of "The Isles of Greece" from the point of view of a British schoolboy, he made it abundantly clear that he had no love of the purely commercial "bread-study" view of Education:--

Oh feed me not on mythic lore,
But Science and the Modern Fact;
Teach me Electric Fires to store,
The difference 'twixt "Bill" and "Act."
Why should a Cockney care a "cuss"
For Homer or for Æschylus?

For who _are_ they? But what art thou,
My Country? On thy fertile shore
The heroic lyre is tuneless now;
To scheme for dividends, dig for ore,
_These_ are the things we hold divine,
Not Homer's long-resounding line.

In dealing with University Education _Punch_ maintained his attitude of a moderate reformer. Keble College, Oxford, dates from 1870; in 1878 _Punch_ twice over displays a keen hostility to the Anglican spirit of its founders and the "gingerbread and gilt" of Butterfield's architecture. He seizes the occasion to belittle Keble's poetry, to attack Pusey, Burgon and Liddon, and to describe the college in the following contemptuous quatrain:--

Half withdrawn in ways ascetic,
Half with modern notions stirring;
Half athletic, half æsthetic,
Neither fish, flesh nor red herring.

_Punch_ did not share the late Canon Liddon's pessimism over the new Science degree at Oxford in 1879. Liddon is quoted as saying that without the habits of exactness and precision acquired by classical studies it was impossible to reach the higher characteristics of an educated man. The argument was naturally resented by those who maintained that "exactness and precision" were precisely the qualities inculcated by scientific training, and in an ironical dialogue _Punch_ derides specialization as compared with the "humanities." In 1885 the neglect of English literature at the older Universities is satirized in the picture of the undergraduate reading out his illiterate letter, in which the first and third persons are hopelessly mixed up.

In 1886 the spread of free education to the Universities is foreshadowed in a description of the Slade Professor at Oxford lecturing to a mixed audience of coal-heavers and undergraduates; and the "Progressists' Calendar" indicates a revolt of Ratepayers against their new burdens. In the same year the "Studies from _Punch's_ Studio" include a portrait of the new type of University don. "Wyckham of Jude's," who displays much versatile energy and a wide range of interests--athletics, music, philosophy, Browning and psychical research--ultimately goes to Australia as a Professor of Greek. The reference to "Eleutheria Hall" foreshadows Ruskin College, which was founded in 1899, and in other ways _Punch's_ fancy portraiture illustrates the changes which had come over the spirit of Oxford's dream. We note, for example, the allusion to the new cosmopolitanism--the invasion of foreigners, white and coloured, anticipating the time some thirty years later which gave birth to one of the best of modern Oxford anecdotes. A film was being exhibited showing a large canoe manned by Hawaiian natives, whereon a voice arose from the audience, "Well rowed, Balliol!"

[Sidenote: _The Value of Modern Languages_]

The proposal, since realized, to introduce Agriculture as a subject for study at Oxford is jocularly treated early in 1887 in the form of a diary of a candidate who is ploughed for his unorthodox views on potato culture. As for modern languages, the advantages of a foreign education--social and artistic as well as commercial--are excellently summed up in the same year in Du Maurier's picture of the industrious and accomplished young man from Hamburg, who is not only a skilled pianist but can speak six languages, live on a pound a week, work eighteen hours out of the twenty-four, and do without a holiday!

* * * * *

YOUNG MÜLLER (from Hamburg) accompanies the Miss Goldmores in some of Rubinstein's lovely duets--to the envy and disgust of Brown, Jones, and Robinson. (N.B.--Young Müller can also speak six languages, live on a pound a week, work eighteen hours out of twenty-four, and do without a holiday.)]

In 1875 _Punch_ dwelt sympathetically on the still surviving prevalence of classical learning amongst statesmen. The occasion was furnished by Disraeli's florid eulogy of the imagination of the English School of Art at the Royal Academy banquet:--

"HE TOO WAS BORN IN ARCADIA"

(Matthew Arnold on Disraeli at the R.A. Dinner).

Born in Arcadia! Ay, he knew
Pan's cloven foot-print on the dew,
And heard, the mystic woods across,
Aigipod[=e]s, Philokrotos,
"The bright-haired god of pastoral,"[4]
With pipings to his wood-nymphs call.
Yes, but a nobler sound there came--
The clarion of imperial Fame,
By which our greatest are withdrawn
From the serene Arcadian lawn.

Derby and Gladstone felt the breeze
That urged their sails to Homer's seas;
Yet in the Senate found their fate,
And drank the hot wine of debate.
Perish the thought that England's realm
Should e'er have dullards at the helm!
Far from us be the stolid serf
Who ne'er has trod Arcadian turf,
Nor heard, amid the glimmering trees,
Pan's happy Orestiades.

[Footnote 4: Chapman: Homeric Hymns.]

Probably the exigencies of the metre are responsible for the strange
lapse which made _Punch_ substitute "Orestiades" for "Oreades." Greek
was not then in the "last ditch," though the following advertisement,
which _Punch_ reproduces in the same year, seems to show that its
study did not conduce to opulence:--

A Bachelor, elderly and somewhat infirm, having a moderate
acquaintance with the Latin and Greek languages and who is
likewise expert with a weeding hoe, seeks a HOME and
EMPLOYMENT. A bracing air and easy access to the services of
the Church indispensable.--Address, &c.

Nowadays one of our leading literary weeklies talks of the "Hyperion Spring." But as early as 1891 the question of Compulsory Greek was attracting a good deal of attention, and _Punch_ sided with _The Times_ in expressing his disbelief in "protected studies." He also took occasion to criticize the narrowness of the old curriculum in his picture deriding the ignorance of Dante shown by classical students. It is just as well that he heads the picture "Too much Greek," for no good Virgilian would ever have laid himself open to such a charge.

[Sidenote: _Too Much Greek_]

FIRST CLASSIC: "By the way, hadn't Dante got another Name?"

SECOND CLASSIC: "Yes; Alfieri, I think--or else Alighieri."

FIRST CLASSIC: "Ah, perhaps you're right. I had a notion it was Gabriel Rossetti, or something!"]

At the beginning of this period _Punch_ undoubtedly showed a good deal of mistrust of the new methods of elementary education, in so far as they encouraged literary aspirations among the masses and tended to convert the artisan into the clerk. At its close he strikes a different and decidedly more democratic note in his ironical proposed "inscription for a Free Public Library" under the heading, "_Laissez Faire_":--

Here is an Institution doomed to scare
The furious devotees of _Laissez Faire_.
What mental shock, indeed, could prove immenser
To Mumbo Jumbo--or to Herbert Spencer?
Free Books? Reading provided from the Rates?
Oh, that means Freedom's ruin, and the State's!
Self-help's all right--e'en if you rob a brother--
But human creatures must not help each other!
The "Self-made Man," whom Samuel Smiles so praises,
Who on his fellows' necks his footing raises,
The systematic "Sweater," who sucks wealth
From toiling crowds by cunning and by stealth--
He is all right, he has no maudlin twist,
He does not shock the Individualist!
But rate yourselves to give the poor free reading?
The Pelican to warm her nestlings bleeding,
Was no such monument of feeble folly.
Let folks alone, and all will then be jolly.
Let the poor perish, let the ignorant sink,
The tempted tumble, and the drunkard drink!
Let--no, don't let the low-born robber rob,
Because--well, that would rather spoil the job.
If footpad-freedom brooked no interference,
Of Capital there might be a great clearance;
But, Wealth well-guarded, let all else alone,
'Tis thus our race hath to true manhood grown:
To make the general good the common care,
Breaks through the sacred law of _Laissez Faire_!

_Laissez Faire_ in the family circle was another matter. The authority of the father in domestic affairs is represented as still unquestioned even by the mother as late as 1879. But, just as you can always find proverbs which are mutually contradictory the one of the other, so the pages of _Punch_ constantly provide simultaneous illustrations of opposing tendencies. In the very same year in which the doctrine of patriarchal rule is shown to be still firmly established, _Punch_ exhibits a highly modern aspect of the relations between the two generations. Squire Quiverfull's son, who pays 60s. a hundred for his cigars, rebukes his father for paying 3d. each for _his_: "If I had as many children to provide for as you, I wouldn't smoke at all."

RELIGION AND THE CHURCHES

In the previous volume it was shown how _Punch_ ranged himself on the side of the determined Protestantism of the mass of the English people against the growth of Ritualistic opinions and practices in the Church of England.

The tone of _Punch's_ remonstrances was not always judicious or considerate, and it would be easy to overrate their influence. Still, they were not unrepresentative, and undoubtedly played a part in the movement which led to the introduction in the spring of 1874 of the Archbishops' Bill for the Regulation of Public Worship. As it was originally drafted, the directory power as to worship was given to the Bishop, assisted by a board of Assessors, clerical and lay, with an appeal to the Archbishop with a Board of Assessors whose decision should be final. The provisions of the Bill were criticized by Lord Salisbury, the Bishop of Peterborough, and Lord Shaftesbury, but of the amendments proposed those of Lord Shaftesbury carried the day, viz. that an Ecclesiastical Judge should preside in the Courts of Canterbury and York, to be appointed by the two Archbishops with the approval of the Crown, and that before this Judge, and not before the Bishop, such case of complaint, if not dismissed by the Bishop as frivolous, was to go for trial; one appeal should lie from this Judge to the Privy Council. These amendments gave the final character to the Act.

So far the Ministers had not committed themselves, and grave differences of opinion were known to exist in the Cabinet. On the introduction of the Bill into the Commons further cross-currents were revealed. Mr. Gladstone declared uncompromising war on the Bill, on the ground that it was not asked for by the Bishops, and as now modified was "manufactured not by the two Primates but by members of Parliament independently of them"; that it lacked weight and authority; and gave undue powers to indiscreet Bishops. He accordingly formulated six resolutions embodying the principles which ought to guide legislation on the subject. Sir William Harcourt followed, vigorously traversing his late leader's argument, and defending the Bill. His "Erastian Manifesto" was so favourably received by the House that Disraeli, in a remarkable speech, made it clear that the Government had adopted the Bill. It was in this speech that he declared that it "would be wise for us to rally on the broad platform of the Reformation." As long as the doctrines relating to the worship of the Virgin, or the Confessional were held by Roman Catholics, he was prepared to treat them with reverence. "What I do object to is Mass in masquerade."

The second reading was carried without a division; on the following day Mr. Gladstone withdrew his resolutions; and large majorities confirmed the principal clauses in Committee. When the Bill came back from the Lords, Disraeli gave way on an important amendment dealing with the question of appeal, which the Commons had introduced and the Lords had thrown out; he repeated that the Bill was intended "to put down Ritualism"; incidentally he described Lord Salisbury, who had repudiated "the bugbear of a majority of the House of Commons," as "a great master of gibes and flouts and jeers," but appealed to the House not to fall into the trap and lose the Bill by gratifying their _amour-propre_. The appeal was not in vain; the Commons without a division decided not to insist on their amendment, and the Bill which was appointed to come into operation in July, 1875, was read a third time on August 3. It is hard to say whether Sir William Harcourt's panegyrics of Disraeli, or Disraeli's sarcasms at the expense of Lord Salisbury caused more remark.

[Sidenote: _Gladstone on Vatican Decrees_]

But a more sensational sequel of the debates in Parliament was provided by Mr. Gladstone's article on Ritualism in the October _Contemporary_ and his pamphlet issued in November on _The Vatican Decrees_. By the former, in which he insisted on the hopelessness of the attempt to Romanize the Church and people of England, he provoked the Irish Romanist journals to fury and indignation. The reverberations of the _Vatican Decrees_ pamphlet were even wider. For Mr. Gladstone was not content with assailing the Papal claim to Infallibility: he went so far as to say that "it was a political misfortune that during the last thirty years the Roman Catholic Church should have acquired such an extension of its hold upon the highest classes of this country." The conquests had been chiefly among women, "but the number of male converts, or captives (as I might prefer to call them), has not been inconsiderable."