Chapter X: Part II: Social Life in Transition (3)

It may be said of such an one that he is a man unlettered, having
little Latin and of Greek no whit. How should he write plays? Whence
hath he lore of law and medicine, of history and science? But there
be handbooks. And a man may learn by enquiry of another, giving to
him the price of half-a-pint. So shall the dramatist acquire such
matters as be necessary, as the names of battles and of Kings and an
imperfect understanding of legal phrases. Moreover, where no copyright
is, he may steal freely from others, appropriating their plots and
embellishing them.... Lastly to conclude this part, he that writeth
dramas must endure with philosophy the investigations of talented
ladies. Being of humble estate he must not murmur should his works be
taken from him and given to a Lord Chancellor. Being himself sane he
must bear with the lunatick fancies of others. And though his words
be twisted into crazy anagrams, and his dramas be made a source of a
scandal about Queen Elizabeth, he must not complain. Generally let the
wise man ignore the bee that buzzeth in another's bonnet.

_Punch's_ "Essay" is not without relevance in its bearing on the recent "invention" of that highly "talented lady" Miss Clemence Dane.

[Sidenote: _Punch on "R. L. S."_]

To repeat what I said in another volume, the highest qualities of the literary critic are revealed, not in his loyalty to established reputations so much as in his attitude to contemporary writers, in his ability to gauge the durability of their merits, and to distinguish a passing vogue from a sure title to remembrance. And there was certainly no lack of material on which to exercise these faculties in the 'nineties--romantic, realistic, and decadent. _Punch_ had already welcomed Mr. Kipling and Sir James Barrie, and though his appreciation of the former varied considerably in the next fifteen years, admiration of his freshness and invention prevailed on the whole over distaste for his excursions into politics, his addiction to technicalities, slang and obscurity. The literary criticism of _Punch_ was probably at its lowest ebb in 1893, when a review of Stevenson's _Catriona_ is bracketed with a notice of Miss Corelli's _Barabbas_. Punch deals faithfully with the method of handling Holy Writ adopted in _Barabbas_, but contents himself with recommending _Catriona_ to those who love Scots dialect, which he frankly confesses he does not.

When Stevenson died in his early prime in 1894, a very different temper inspired _Punch's_ tribute to the Great Romancer:--

The lighthouse-builder raised no light
That shall outshine the flame
Of genius in its mellowest might,
That beacons him to fame.
And Pala's peak shall do yet more
Than the great light at Skerryvore
To magnify his name,
Who mourned, when stricken flesh would tire,
That he was weaker than his sire.

Teller of Tales! Of tales so told
That all the world must list:
Story sheer witchery, style pure gold,
Yet with that tricksy twist
Of Puck-like mockery which betrays
The wanderer in this world's mad maze,
Not blindly optimist,
Who wooes Romance, yet sadly knows
That Life's sole growth is not the Rose.

So when in 1901 the late Mr. W. E. Henley published his famous disparagement of the official life of Stevenson, _Punch_, in an address to the "Beloved Shade" of R. L. S., uttered an indignant protest against the attack on his memory.

_Punch_ enthusiastically greeted the Ruritanian romances of "Anthony Hope" as an antidote to the ultra-realistic novel, and Mr. Kipling's _Jungle Book_ was welcomed in 1894 with a salvo of puns on the Kip-lingo of the Laureate of the Jingle-Jungle, the Bard of the Bandar-log. In 1895 _The Men that Fought at Minden_ is described as "perhaps the most coarse and unattractive specimen of verse that this great young man has yet put forth--a jumble of words without a trace of swing or music. All this Tommy Atkins business is about played out." In 1898, in the series of "Letters to the Celebrated," "The Vagrant," while deprecating the "orgy of Imperialism" which Mr. Kipling had helped to foster, frankly admitted that he was largely responsible for "a quickened sense of the greatness of our mother-land, and a new sympathy for those who fight our battles"; and predicted that his greatest and most enduring title to fame would rest on his verse. In 1899 Mr. Kipling is rebuked for his glorification of machinery--he is called "the Polytechnic Poet"--slang and militarism, while the parody of _Stalky and Co._ is distinctly hostile to what Punch evidently considered an ignoble travesty of Public School traditions. Punch had himself repeatedly assailed the fetish-worship of Athletics, but Mr. Kipling's _Island Race_--with its bitter reference to those who

contented their souls
With the flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at
the goals--

was more than he could endure. Accordingly his representative conducted an imaginary interview with "The Director-General of the Empire," who had added some fresh lines in violent and obscure abuse of rowing-men, and who explained that he never played games himself, but "spent all his spare time loafing and scoring off masters"--a further hit at _Stalky_. This mood of resentment had entirely passed by 1907, when _Punch_ depicted Mr. Kipling as "A Verry Parfit Nobel Knight"--on the occasion of his being awarded the Nobel Prize--and in 1910 the perusal of _Rewards and Fairies_ is compared to reading English history by the light of a Will-o'-the-Wisp.

The reviewer notes defects in style and lucidity, but ends on a note of whole-hearted admiration:--

When one considers the quality of Mr. Kipling's invention, the piety
of his patriotism, the freshness and vigour of his style, and his
astounding understanding of men and movements, why, one forgets all
about these little trifling defects and again murmurs, "Wizard."

[Sidenote: _The Yellow Book_]

To return to the early 'nineties, _Punch_ saw no virtue, artistic or otherwise, in the movement towards unrestrained self-expression in _belles lettres_ which had its outcome in the _Yellow Book_ and the _Savoy_, its headquarters at "The Bodley Head," and whose chief hierophants were the avowed disciples of Baudelaire and Verlaine. To _Punch_ the movement was wholly decadent. In the verses "Tell it not in Gath," in 1894, after denouncing "flowers of evil," and the practice of delving in the drains and dustbins of humanity, the writer declares he would far rather remain a Philistine than achieve enlightenment by such unsavoury means. In the same vein he addresses "Any Boy-poet of the Decadence":--

For your dull little vices we don't care a fig,
It is _this_ that we deeply deplore:
You were cast for a common or usual pig,
But you play the invincible bore.

As in his earlier tirades against the Æsthetes, _Punch_ confounded all the contributors to the _Yellow Book_ and the _Savoy_ in one common anathema. The former, with an illustration by "Daubaway Weirdsley," and "Max" as "Max Mereboom," himself one of the finest literary parodists of our time, is held up in 1895 to especial ridicule. The _Savoy_ in 1896 becomes "The Saveloy," with imaginary extracts and further attacks on Max Mereboom, Simple Symons, and Weirdsley; while in the same year in "The Chaunt of the Bodley Head" (after Praed's _Chaunt of the Brazen Head_) the Savoy School is condemned for its mephitic atmosphere. There was in the movement much deliberate eccentricity, much of the cant of anti-cant, which clamoured for robust satire, but _Punch_ was more happily inspired in his ridicule of the popular and society novels of the time--in his parody of _Sherlock Holmes_, which was quite good enough for the original, and of Dodo, in which the rowdiness and pseudo-intellectuality of Mr. Benson's heroine are excellently hit off. It opens well with "'Sling me over a two-eyed steak, Bill,'" said Bobo." In the sequel the Marquis of Cokaleek, the noble unappreciated husband, gets killed in the hunting field, but Bobo does not marry Bill, her fancy man. She jilts him and "got herself married to an Austrian Prince at half an hour's notice by the A. of C." _Punch_, let it be recorded, was responsible for the often quoted saying which appeared in 1894 that "the modern novel is a blend of the Erotic, the Neurotic and the Tommyrotic."

_Esther Waters_, compared and contrasted with Hardy's _Tess_, is pronounced in 1894 to be _not_ "_virginibus puerisque_," and a once famous "emancipation novel," _The Yellow Aster_, by "Iota," long since hopelessly out-distanced in the reaction against reticence, becomes _The Yellow Plaster_, by "Iõpna," whose "She-notes" wild are amusingly travestied in the same year. _The Yellow Aster_ and _Key-Notes_ were pioneer efforts in the domain of the psychological novel, and the new jargon is ridiculed in such burlesque phrases as "the woman's voice came through the envelope of Margerine's subconsciousness, steely clear as a cheese-cutter." The vogue of _The Green Carnation_, a _roman à clef_ which created some stir at the same time, is attested in Du Maurier's picture "How Opinion is Formed":--

HE: "Have you read that beastly book _The Mauve Peony_ by
Lady Middlesex?"

SHE: "Yes, I rather liked it."

HE: "So did I."

[Sidenote: _Unchristian Criticism of Hall Caine_]

Du Maurier's _Trilby_ was naturally treated with benevolence, though _Punch_ regretted the theological interludes, but _The Sorrows of Satan_ is rudely dismissed as "a farrago of balderdash and vanity"; the egotism of the author and of Mr. Robert Buchanan in belabouring their detractors is severely rebuked; and Mr. Hall Caine's _The Christian_ is recommended only as an absolute _pis aller_ if you hadn't even a Bradshaw to read. This great work is also parodied as "The Heathen," with Alleluia Grouse and Luke Blizzard in the _rôles_ of Glory Quayle and John Storm. There was still a spice of Bludyer in _Punch_, and on occasion he could act on the advice of a famous editor, "Be kind, be merciful, be gentle, but when you come across a silly fool, string him up." In later years, as the literary quality of his reviews improved, his clemency to the new-comers approached an uncritical tolerance.

The passing of the three-volume novel in 1894 is noted in a Ballade not untinged with regret, to judge from the "Envoi":--

Prince, writers' rights--forgive the pun--
And readers' too forbid the blow;
Of triple pleasure there'll be none,
Three-volume novels are to go!

The later manner of Henry James is rather infelicitously described in 1896 as "indifferent Trollopian and second-class Meredithian"; but _Punch_ made no mistake in the following year over Mr. W. W. Jacobs, in whose _Many Cargoes_--studies of those "who go down to the sea in ships of moderate tonnage"--he found a new fount of joy.

_Punch's_ "literary recipes" place Romance first, then follow the Society Novel (with thinly veiled portraits from life); the Detective Story (Gaboriau and water); and the Religious Novel. The plague of Reminiscences had moved _Punch_ to protest as early as 1893, when he wrote:--

That Memory's the Mother of the Muses,
We're told. Alas! it must have been the Furies!
Mnemosyne her privilege abuses--
Nothing from her distorting glass secure is.
Life is a Sphinx; folk cannot solve her riddles,
So they've recourse to spiteful taradiddles,
Which they dub "Reminiscences." Kind fate,
From the Fool's Memory preserve the Great!

Another and a newer aversion was the parasitic patronage of FitzGerald by inferior novelists and writers, which moved _Punch_ to include among "the things that we are still waiting, and it seems, likely to wait for--A Temporary Surcease from Omar Khayyám." This last-named nuisance has ceased to be so vocal of late years, but the plague of "Diaritis" is worse than ever. Mr. H. G. Wells appears on _Punch's_ horizon in 1898, but only as the weaver of circumstantial scientific romances, not as the regulator of the Universe, and discoverer of new Heavens and Hells. _The War of the Worlds_ is parodied in _The Martian_, but the wonderland of science appealed less to _Punch_ than the dream-world of "Lewis Carroll," whose death inspired a graceful tribute to author and illustrator:--

Lover of children! Fellow-heir with those
Of whom the imperishable kingdom is!
Beyond all dreaming now your spirit knows
The unimagined mysteries.

Darkly as in a glass our faces look
To read ourselves, if so we may, aright;
You, like the maiden in your faërie book--
You step beyond and see the light!

The heart you wore beneath your pedant's cloak
Only to children's hearts you gave away;
Yet unaware in half the world you woke
The slumbering charm of childhood's day.

We older children, too, our loss lament,
We of the "Table Round," remembering well
How he, our comrade, with his pencil lent
Your fancy's speech a firmer spell.

Master of rare woodcraft, by sympathy's
Sure touch he caught your visionary gleams,
And made your fame, the dreamer's, one with his,
The wise interpreter of dreams.

Farewell! But near our hearts we have you yet,
Holding our heritage with loving hand,
Who may not follow where your feet are set
Upon the ways of Wonderland.

[Sidenote: _Magic, Megalomania, and Sham Culture_]

From this wonder world _Punch_ turned to "_le monde où l'on s'affiche_" to castigate the methods of Mr. Hall Caine and Mr. Le Gallienne--the Manx megalomaniac and the Author-Lecturer--and to the realm of blameless banality ruled over by Sir John Lubbock. Sir John's genius for truisms had been guyed in 1894; in 1900 he appears in a special section of "The Book of Beauty" as the author of some enchanting platitudes, e.g. "A man's work will often survive him. Thus, Shakespeare and Watt are dead; but _Hamlet_ and the steam engine survive."

This was the year of the appearance of Lady Randolph Churchill's _Anglo-Saxon Review_, a sumptuous publication which for a brief period revived the glories of the _Books of Beauty_ and _Keepsakes_, edited in the 'thirties and 'forties of the last century by that "most gorgeous" lady, the Countess of Blessington.

Pseudo-intellectuality was one of the social shams which _Punch_ loved to pillory, and there is a good example in 1901 in the "Cultured Conversation" of a lady who observes, "I'm _devoted_ to Rossetti--I _delight_ in Shelley--and I simply _love_ Ella Wheeler Wilcox." _Punch_ himself in the same year "delighted" quite sincerely in _Some Experiences of an Irish R.M._, and "wept tears of laughter" over the episode of "Lisheen Races." This was apparently his first introduction to the work of those two wonderfully gifted Irish cousins, Violet Martin and Edith Somerville, but only towards the end of their long and fruitful collaboration did he recognize in them far higher qualities than those of the mere mirth-provoker.

In 1903 he was destined to make acquaintance with one of the most conspicuous representatives of the opposite tendency, Gorki, the Russian novelist and playwright. In "The Lowest Depths" _Punch_ parodied the dreary, violent and brutal squalors of _The Lower Depths_, and incidentally had a dig at the Stage Society for producing it. It was in the same year that _Punch_ described the "new curse of Caine"--"to be everlastingly coupled with the name of Miss Marie Corelli"--and paid them both grateful homage as purveyors of "copy":--

From cutting continual capers
Ev'n Kaisers must sometimes refrain;
But _you're_ never out of the papers--
Corelli and Caine.

At the time of the Boer war poets had been vociferously active. By 1904 a "slump" had set in; and in an interview Mr. John Lane, of the Bodley Head, had declared that verse had ceased to be remunerative. Embroidering this text _Punch_ traced the cause to the material self-indulgence of the public. People dined too well to want to read rhymes, and poets wanted better pay:--

And this is why no bards occur.
None ever knows that aching void,
That hunger, prompting like a spur,
Which former genii enjoyed;
For all the poets dead and gone,
Whose Muse contrived to melt the nation,
Habitually did it on
A regimen of strict starvation.

[Sidenote: _Notable Newcomers_]

But if verse was at a discount, new forms of prose were emerging, and the spasmodic discourses of Mr. Bart Kennedy in the _Daily Mail_ moved _Punch_ to parody what he considered to be a variant on Walt Whitman, in which sentences were reduced to a minimum and verbs were dispensed with altogether. Another new writer to whom _Punch_ now paid the homage of parody was Mr. Chesterton, whose glittering paradoxes are travestied in a mock eulogy of _Bradshaw_, in the manner of "G. K. C.'s" book on Dickens. Bradshaw is praised for his splendid consistency, his adherence to fact, his uniform excellence of style and freedom from extraneous matter. Moreover, he is a great teacher:--

The last and deepest lesson of Bradshaw is that we must be in time. No
man can miss a train and miss a train only. He misses more than that.
A man who misses a train misses an opportunity. It is probably the
reason of the terrific worldly success of Cæsar and Charlemagne that
neither of them ever missed a train.

Reviews of books, chiefly novels, became a regular feature of each week's issue in the latter half of this period, and it would be impossible to deal fully with _Punch's_ critical activities. As an example of the frank handling of a bad book it would be hard to improve on the notice of a novel which appeared in 1906: "Anyone who wants to read a vulgar book in praise of vicious vulgarians should read----, by--------. All others are counselled to avoid it."

_Punch's_ later and more tolerant mood may be illustrated by his notices of three typical novels by three representative novelists of post-Victorian days. Mr. Wells's _Ann Veronica_ in 1908 is received with guarded praise as that author's first real novel and "a remarkably clever book about rather unpleasant people." In 1910 _Punch_ shies at the excessive length and accumulated detail of Mr. Arnold Bennett's _Clayhanger_, but admits that the author makes wonderful use of unpromising material in his remarkable work. Thirdly, in 1913, _Punch's_ reviewer proclaims himself a whole-hearted admirer of Mr. Compton Mackenzie's _Sinister Street_, finding the hero "a figure to love," and the whole book marked by passionate honesty, marvellously minute observation, humour, and a haunting beauty of ideas and words. In conclusion, he is "prepared to wager that Mr. Mackenzie's future is bound up with what is most considerable in English fiction," adding, "We shall see."

"We think _Lips that have Gone Astray_ the foulest novel that ever yet defiled the English tongue; and that in absolute filth its Author can give any modern French writer six and beat him hollow!"--_The Parthenon._

FAIR AUTHOR (to her Publisher, pointing to above opinion of the Press quoted in his advertisement of her novel): "And pray, Mr. Shardson, what do you mean by inserting _this_ hideous notice?"

PUBLISHER: "My dear Miss Fitzmorse, you must remember that we've paid you a large price for your book, and brought it out at great expense--and we naturally wish to sell it!"]

These views are somewhat difficult to reconcile with those expressed in other parts of the paper about the same time. An eminent conductor and composer has recently stated that no noise which is deliberately made can be said to be ugly--e.g. a railway whistle or a boy whistling in the street. So in letters a similar creed had already come into fashion--any subject was fit for treatment if it was "arresting" or "elemental," a doctrine that _Punch_ outside his "Booking Office" found it hard to swallow. In "The Qualities that Count" one of his writers applied this principle to the poetry and letters of the hour:--

If you're anxious to acquire a reputation
For enlightened and emancipated views,
You must hold it as a duty to discard the cult of Beauty,
And discourage all endeavours to amuse.
You must back the man who, obloquy enduring,
Subconsciousness determines to express,
Who in short is "elemental," "unalluring,"
But "arresting" in his Art--or in his dress.

Or is your cup habitually brimming
With water from the Heliconian fount?
Then remember the hubristic, the profane, the pugilistic,
Are the only things in poetry that count.
So select a tragic argument, ensuring
The maximum expenditure of gore,
And the epithets "arresting," "unalluring,"
"Elemental" will re-echo as before.

But if your bent propels you into fiction,
You should clearly and completely understand
That your duty in a novel is not to soar, but grovel,
If you want it to be profitably banned.
So be lavish and effusive in suggesting
A malignant and mephitic atmosphere,
And you're sure to be applauded as "arresting,"
"Elemental," "unalluring," and "sincere."

[Sidenote: _Mr. Gosse and the Georgian Poets_]

In the same year Mr. Edmund Gosse had indulged in some caustic criticism of the Poetry of the Future. Mr. Gosse had said that "the natural uses of English and the obvious forms of our speech will be driven from our poetry." Also that "verses of excellent quality in this primitive manner can now be written by any smart little boy in a grammar school." Hence a squib in which _Punch_ makes disrespectful fun of "the Sainte-Beuve of the House of Lords," who, it may be added, has since made his peace with the young lions whom he had treated so disrespectfully. In 1913 the cult of Rabindranath Tagore had become fashionable. Here was an Oriental poet who sedulously eschewed the flamboyant exuberance of the westernized Indian, but _Punch_, while finding him a less fruitful theme for burlesque than the Babu immortalized by Mr. Anstey, regarded his mystical simplicity as fair game for parody, and declined to worship at his shrine. Another foreign importation, Mr. Conrad--whom in virtue of long residence in England, marvellous command of our language and unequalled insight into the magic of the sea and the simple heroism of the British sailorman, we are proud to call one of ourselves and one of the glories of English fiction--fascinated _Punch_ in 1900, the year in which _Lord Jim_ appeared. _Punch_ was a little disconcerted at first by Mr. Conrad's oblique method of narration, but the fascination grew with advancing years.

[Sidenote: _Farewell to Mark Twain_]

I find few references to Continental authors, but may single out the "little English wreath" which _Punch_ added to the memorial tributes to Alphonse Daudet on his death in 1897. Daudet's affinities with Dickens, always one of _Punch's_ heroes, naturally appealed to him apart from the humour of _Tartarin_ and the masterly studies of the Second Empire which Daudet had seen from the inside as one of the Duc de Morny's private secretaries. Towards American writers _Punch_ was almost uniformly sympathetic. It is true that he appreciated the earlier and American manner of Henry James more than the later cosmopolitan phase which began with _The Portrait of a Lady_. But during the short period in which _Punch_, in his "additional pages," published a number of short stories by various authors, Henry James was a contributor, and _Mrs. Medwin_ appeared in serial form in four successive numbers in August and September, 1901. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who died in 1894, is compared to Elia in the graceful memorial stanzas modelled on "The Last Leaf." Mr. W. D. Howells's papers on London and England in _Harper's Magazine_ in 1904 prompt a generous acknowledgment of their reasonableness, sanity and humour, together with an expression of amazement at the productivity of American short-story writers, mostly in the manner of Mr. Henry James. _Punch_, both then and afterwards, refused to take Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox seriously, and described her essays, _The Woman of the World_, as "high-toned but serenely platitudinous; 'bland, passionate, but deeply religious.'" Mark Twain, on his visit to London in 1907, was welcomed with pen and pencil--in the cartoon "To a Master of his Art," where _Punch_ salutes him over the punch-bowl and in some verses, _à propos_ of the dinner at the Pilgrims' Club:--

Pilot of many Pilgrims since the shout
"Mark twain!"--that serves you for a deathless sign--
On Mississippi's waterway rang out
Over the plummet's line--

Still where the countless ripples laugh above
The blue of halcyon seas long may you keep
Your course unbroken, buoyed upon a love
Ten thousand fathoms deep!

Some three years later came _Punch's_ "_Ave, atque Vale_," when Mark Twain died in April, 1910:--

Farewell the gentle spirit, strong to hold
Two sister lands beneath its laughter's spell!
Farewell the courage and the heart of gold!
Hail and Farewell!

To complete these American references I may add that _Punch_ in 1907 made great play out of the letter addressed by an American "Clippings Agency" to Petrarch, offering to send him press-cuttings of his works. But America has no monopoly of these solecisms. Fourteen years later, when the Phoenix Society revived _The Maid's Tragedy_, a similar offer was made by a London press-cutting agency to "John Fletcher, Esq." and "--Beaumont, Esq."

JOURNALISM

Already in the early 'nineties the altered status of journalism and the journalist had leapt to the eyes of _Punch_, who himself was in a sense born and bred in the "Street of Ink." I pass over his ironical disapproval of the _St. James's Gazette_ when that journal, in October, 1892, "sincerely hoped that there was no truth in the rumour that a paper for children will shortly make its appearance, entirely written and illustrated by children under fifteen years of age." The project never materialized, but its spirit has been translated into action by the literary enterprise of our modern _enfants terribles_. The adult journalist in the 'nineties was not to suffer from this unfair competition for a good many years to come. Meanwhile he could at least congratulate himself that he was better housed and paid: it was not until 1904 that the "wisdom of the East" began to interfere with his freedom as a war correspondent.

JAPANESE OFFICER (to Press Correspondent): "Abjectly we desire to distinguish honourable newspaper man by honourable badge."]

[Sidenote: _The Daily Mail Arrives_]

In 1897 _Punch_ illustrated the change by parallel pictures of the journalist in 1837, writing in a squalid room in the Fleet Prison, and in the year of the Diamond Jubilee, seated in a sumptuously equipped office, fat and prosperous, and smoking a large cigar. In the previous year _Punch_ had saluted the _Daily News_ on the attainment of its jubilee. The connexion was an old and intimate one, for the publishers of _Punch_ had been the first publishers of the _Daily News_, and it had been renewed in the 'nineties when Sir Henry Lucy ("Toby," of _Punch_) for a while occupied the chair in which Dickens had sat. A far more momentous event, however, was associated with the year 1896--the founding of the _Daily Mail_ by Mr. Alfred Harmsworth, subsequently described by one of _Punch's_ writers as "the arch-tarantulator of our times." He was certainly, if unintentionally, invaluable to _Punch_, and even more stimulating than Mr. Caine and Miss Corelli. By 1900 his genius for discovering a constant succession of scapegoats, and converting the idol of yesterday into the Aunt Sally of to-day, is handsomely acknowledged in the lines "Ad Aluredum Damnodignum." Then it was Sir Michael Hicks-Beach and Mr. Balfour, but _Punch_ foresaw that the habit was inveterate:--

For still, oh hawk-eyed Harmsworth, you pursue
With more than all the ardour of a lover,
From find to check and so from check to view
Your scapegoat-hunt from covert into covert.

As for the test of circulation, _Punch_ betrays a certain scepticism in his remarks on "The People's Pulse" in 1903:--

The account given by the _Daily Mail_, in Saturday's issue, of its
daily circulation for the last eight months, together with the
leading event of each day, ought to be kept up from time to time as
a Permanent People's Pulse Report. Nothing could be more instructive
than to note, for instance, that while the Delhi Durbar only attracted
844,799 readers, the "Oyster Scare" allured as many as 846,501; while
"Lord Dalmeny's Coming of Age" brought the figures up to 847,080, and
the "Sardine Famine" accounted for a further increase of 14,586. Or,
again, there is a world of significance in the fact that the relative
attractions of the "Poet Laureate's Play" and "Mr. Seddon's Meat
Shops" are represented by a balance of 5,291 in favour of the Napoleon
of New Zealand.

Life was certainly made livelier by the new methods introduced, with variations, from America, and _Punch_ feelingly contrasts the drab existence of those who lived before with that of those who lived under the Harmsworth _régime_:--

Drear was the lot, minus the _Mail_,
Of soldier, sailor, ploughboy, tinker;
And worse, whenever they grew pale,
They had no pills to make them pinker.

It is a nice question whether we owe more to the pink pill or to the Yellow Press. But there can be no doubt as to the influence of the new journalism on sport and pastime. Until then, in _Punch's_ phrase, "cricket was still a childish game and not a penman's serious study." Henceforth the cricketer fulfilled a double function. He not only played cricket but he wrote about it--and himself. Under the heading "The Cricketer on the Hearth," in 1899, _Punch_ publishes an imaginary interview _à la mode_ with Mr. Slogger. We omit the complacent autobiographical passages and content ourselves with the sequel:--

"Well, that's pretty well all, I think, except you'll probably want
to print at length my opinions on the Transvaal Question, Wagner's
Music, and the Future of Agriculture. These will have an overpowering
interest for your readers."

"Here are a few photographs of myself--but it's rather too heavy a
parcel to carry. I'll send it round in a van. Of course you'll print
them all. And now I must ask you to excuse me, as it's time to get
into flannels."

I thanked him for his courtesy, and hoped that he'd make a fine score
in the county match. He stared at me in surprise. "County Match?
You don't imagine I've time to play cricket nowadays, do you? No;
I'm going to change because half-a-dozen photographers will be here
directly, and they like to take me in costume. And after that I shall
have to see seven or eight more interviewers. Good morning!"

[Sidenote: _The Cricket Journalist_]

The intrusion of the emotional literary "note" in articles on pastime came later, and is parodied in the article (in 1904) "Do we take our amusements seriously enough?" by Mr. C. B. F:--

The frivolity of the Press is only paralleled by the frivolity of the
public. Take the light and airy way in which the spectators at our
great cricket grounds treat the imposing functions provided for them.
Suppose little (but heroic) Johnny Tyldesley runs out to that wily,
curling ball which sunny-faced Wilfred Rhodes pitches thirty-three
and three-quarter inches from the block. Up glides his trusty willow,
and a fortieth of a second after the ball has pitched descends on the
leather. With a wonderful flick of the elbow he chops the ball exactly
between square leg and point. Is the raucous "Well hit, Johnny," of
the crowd a fitting, a reverent salutation? Our Elizabethan dramatists
knew better. Have you not noticed in their stage directions, "A solemn
music"? Two or three phrases of Chopin played, let us say, on the
French horn by the doyen of the Press-box would be a better tribute
to such a miracle of skill. There are, however, elements of better
things in our crowds. Before now I have seen the potent Jessop smite
a rising ball to the boundary with all the concentrated energy of his
Atlantean shoulders, and as the ball reached the ring the spectators
with involuntary reverence prostrated themselves before it.

Nor do our greatest men gain the public honours which are their due.
In ancient Greece a great athlete was a national hero. The name of
Ladas has come down to us through the ages with those of Socrates and
Xenophon. Think of the sad contrast in modern England. Why is not Plum
Warner (I knew him in long clothes) a Knight of the Garter? Why is not
Ranji (exquisitely delicate Ranji--the Walter Pater of the cricket
field) Viceroy of India? There are living cricketers, with an average
of over eighty, and a dozen centuries in one season to their credit,
who have never even been sworn of the Privy Council.

On every side I trace the growth of the same spirit. England is
devoting itself to art, politics, literature and theology, and in
the rush and hurry of our modern life there is a sad danger that
sport will be underrated or overlooked. My countrymen must learn to
concentrate their minds on the things which really matter. In your
nobler moments would you not rather stand at the wicket than at the
table of the House of Commons, or on the political platform of the
City Temple, or on the stage of the Alhambra? Save her sport and you
save England.

Modern journalistic methods are reduced to absurdity in the account of the staff of a daily paper, who are all football players, cricketers, clairvoyants, crystal-gazers, music-hall artists, or burglars. In the verses on "Journalistic Evolution," in 1907, the tendency to condense everything is specially noted. Leaders have become "leaderettes," and will in turn yield to "leaderettelets"; the writer prophesies a day when _The Times_ will only consist of headlines.

Dasent's _Life of Delane_ appeared in 1908, and _Punch's_ reviewer reminds us of the commanding position occupied by that great editor, who was consulted by all Premiers, except Gladstone, and to whom Palmerston actually offered office. The gist and sting of the review, however, is to be found in a sentence not merely true but almost tragic in its bearings on the history of English journalism:--

Delane accepted the favour of contributions by Cabinet Ministers to
his news-chest, but he recognized that the power and influence of _The
Times_ were based upon the foundations of public spirit, concern for
national interest, and absolute impartiality in dealing with statesmen.

("In view of the grave importance of the present political situation, _The Times_ will be reduced in price to a penny."--Press Association.)]

_The Times_ passed under the financial control of Lord Northcliffe at the beginning of 1908, and in the spring of 1914, "in view of the grave importance of the political situation," its price was reduced to one penny. _Punch's_ comment took the form of a cartoon in which the new Dictator of Printing House Square is shown as a salesman at the door of the "Northcliffe Stores" with the legend on a slate, "Thunder is cheap to-day."

[Sidenote: _Homage to Andrew Lang_]

By way of contrast with hustling methods _Punch_ had noted with regret the passing in 1905 of _Longman's Magazine_, in whose pages Mr. Andrew Lang had for many years presided so gracefully "At the Sign of the Ship":--

Formerly, when, sated by sensation,
Gentle readers sought an air serene,
Refuge from the snapshot's domination
Might be found in _Longman's Magazine_.

There at least the roaring cult of dollars
Never took its devastating way;
There the pens of gentlemen and scholars
Held their uncontaminating sway.

There no parasitic bookman prated,
No malarious poetasters sang,
There all themes were touched and decorated
By your nimble fancy, Andrew Lang.

True, some hobbies you were always riding,
--Spooks and spies and totemistic lore;
But so deft, so dext'rous was your guiding,
No one ever labelled you a bore.

But alas! the landmarks that we cherish,
Standing for the earlier, better way,
Vanquished by vulgarity must perish,
Overthrown by "enterprise" decay.

Still with fairy books will you regale us,
Still pay homage to the sacred Nine,
But no more hereafter will you hail us
Monthly at the Ship's familiar Sign.

There no longer faithfully and gaily
Will you deal alike with foes and friends,
Wherefore, crying "Ave, atque vale!"
_Punch_ his parting salutation sends.

_Punch_ had his own losses to deplore, for in August, 1897, the death of Mr. E. J. Milliken removed a most valuable and fertile member of his staff. Mr. Milliken was not only the creator of "'Arry," and a fluent and dexterous versifier, but he combined with a retentive and accurate memory "the rare talent of most happily applying past literature, whether in history or fiction, to the illustration of contemporary instances," and for a long time had been the chief cartoon-suggester. A longer and more distinguished connexion with _Punch_ was severed in 1906 by the retirement of Sir Frank Burnand after forty-three years' service. He joined in 1863, as the youngest of the staff, and held the editorship for over twenty-five years. In "Just a Few Words at Parting" he defines the aim of the editor in words worthy of remembrance. If _Punch_ was to hold securely the position he had achieved, it should and must be "to provide relaxation for all, fun for all, without a spice of malice or a suspicion of vulgarity, humour without a flavour of bitterness, satire without reckless severity, and nonsense so laughter-compelling as to be absolutely irresistible from its very absurdity." The precept hardly covers the higher function assumed by _Punch_ in "The Song of the Shirt," but, as it stands, had assuredly been faithfully carried into practice by the master of exhilarating burlesque, the intrepid parodist, the author of the immortal _Happy Thoughts_. As for the personal affection that he inspired in his staff, it is truly expressed in the farewell lines addressed to him by "R. C. L.":--

Dear Frank, our fellow-fighter, how noble was your praise,
How kindly rang your welcome on those delightful days
When, gathered in your presence, we cheered each piercing hit,
And crowned with joy and laughter the rapier of your wit.

And if our words grew bitter, and wigs, that should have been
Our heads' serene adornment, were all but on the green,
How oft your sunny humour has shone upon the fray,
And fused our fiery tempers, and laughed our strife away!

FINE ARTS, DRAMA AND MUSIC

I have noticed in earlier volumes with what asperity _Punch_ assailed the conventionalities of academic and Royal Academic Art; how he became, for a while at any rate, a convert to Pre-Raphaelitism; how, later on, the exhibitors at the Grosvenor Gallery superseded the exponents of fashionable orthodoxy at Burlington House as the targets of his satire; and with what unremitting and undiscriminating zeal he "belaboured" all representatives of the Æsthetic movement. The further progress of this reaction can be traced throughout the first half of the period now under review. In the 'nineties Aubrey Beardsley was his special _bête noire_; in the early years of the new century the Impressionist school, and by 1910 the Post-Impressionists, furnish him with unfailing matter for caricature. It was not that those who stood on the old ways were exempt from criticism. Year after year the annual summer show at Burlington House never failed to receive a punctual tribute from pen and pencil. But for the most part these notices are inspired by irresponsible frivolity--a desire to extract fun by burlesquing the titles and subjects and treatment quite foreign to the spirit in which _Punch_ had addressed himself to the task in the 'fifties, and even later. The private view of the Academy became for _Punch_ an annual excuse for an explosion of punning, and the illustrations were a faithful counterpart of the text. Yet criticism occasionally emerges from this carnival of jocularity, as when Mr. Sargent's cavalier treatment of details is noted in 1895; or when _Punch_ in 1902 suggests that the formidable congestion of pictures at the R.A. might be relieved by hanging some of them in the refreshment room; or when he writes in 1904:--

An interesting exhibit at the Royal Academy is a drawing executed by
the artist when he was only sixteen years of age. Quite a feature of
the show, too, is the number of pictures by artists over that age
which have the appearance of having been painted by artists under that
age.

In 1908 _Punch_ satirized a then prevalent fashion in his drawing of the "Problem Room" at Burlington House, crowded with perplexed spectators dropping their solutions into a box marked "Puzzle Picture Syndicate." When the "Rokeby Venus" was damaged by a militant suffragist in 1914, _Punch_ suggested that the offender ought to be made to serve her term of imprisonment in the Royal Academy--a remark quite in the spirit of his old art-critic, Charles Eastlake.

The oblique and ironical method is admirably employed in the dramatized conversations of visitors to the Academy and other exhibitions. In the sketch "Round the R.A." in 1893 the schoolmistress and her bored pupils, the complacent Briton giving himself away at every turn to his French friend, and the prosaic and practical person, are all drawn from the quick. The orthodox verdict is "quite up to the average--such delightful puppies and kittens," while the rebellious pupil of the edifying Miss Pemmican remarks, "Bother the beastly old Academy. I wish it was burnt, I do!"

From the same hand, seventeen years later, comes an equally illuminating sketch of the visitors to the Grafton Galleries--art-student, precious young painter, young City man, high-brow critic, matter-of-fact lady, and the frank and immortal Philistine only moved to unseemly mirth when his friend remarks, "Drawing to the Synthesist is entirely unimportant in solving the problem how the artist may best express his own temperament." _Punch_ often found himself driven into the ranks of the Philistines in self-defence; anyhow, he always preferred the way of Gath to that of gush. In "An Old Master's Growl" in 1895 the speaker declares that the mass of the people only enjoyed the annual summer show; the few who came to see the Old Masters mostly came to be seen. But the ancients were not annoyed, it was only what they expected:--

We expect it--I said just as much to Vandyck--
There's but one in a hundred that comes who'll descry
The Beauty of Art. It's the sham I dislike:
Well--good-bye!

[Sidenote: _Leighton and Millais_]

From the other end of the scale comes another "growl" in the same year--that of the professional model, in Phil May's picture, against Burne-Jones who had recently made a drawing of Labour for the _Daily Chronicle_: "I reckon 'e'll be on the pavement next." Personalities, rather than principles or theories, interested _Punch_ at this period, and in 1896 and 1897 the circle of his eminent Victorian friends was reduced by the passing of three ornaments of British Art, all of them Academicians and two successively presidents of the Academy. Of the two sets of verses on Leighton, the second is much the better. _Punch_ takes for his text Watts's saying that Leighton had painted many pictures, but that his life was nobler than them all:--

_Noblesse oblige_: his manners matched his art;
Fine painter-skill, the bearing of a prince.

The writer alludes to the malignant disparagement indulged in by his detractors and sums up:--

Great if not quite among the greatest, here
A noble artist of a noble life
Rests with a fame that lives, and need not fear
Detraction or the hour's ephemeral strife.

Leighton's generosity and munificence to brother artists deserved all and more than all that _Punch_ said: his fame as an artist has hardly borne out the prediction of the last couplet. Sir John Millais, his successor, was linked by more intimate ties from the days of _Once a Week_. Du Maurier was one of his dearest friends, and _Punch_ claimed to have been alone, save for the _Spectator_, in acclaiming the genius of his early work. As he happily says, "from P.R.B, to P.R.A.--that tale is worth the telling." Millais only lived a few months to enjoy his honour, and on his death in the summer of 1896 _Punch_ dwelt on his triple endowment of health, heartiness and power, his entirely English spirit, his mastery as a painter, and his genius for friendship.

Sir John Gilbert, who died a year later, was an old comrade and contributor. He had designed the fourth wrapper in January, 1843--Doyle's final design was not adopted till six years later--and contributed intermittently to _Punch_ down to 1882. His robust and spirited talent as an illustrator is acknowledged in _Punch's_ tribute:--

The faded history of courts and kings
Touched by your spell took on its former hue;
You made the daily art of common things
Fresh as the morning dew.

A deeper note is sounded in _Punch's_ salutation of Watts on his death in 1904, when he recognizes the fidelity of that illustrious artist to his conception of the high mission of Art and his well-known repudiation of the maxim "Art for Art's Sake":--

His means were servants to the end in view
And not the end's self; so his heart was wise
To hold--as they have held, the chosen few--
High failure dearer than the easy prize.

Now lifted face to face with unseen things,
Dimly imagined in the lower life,
He sees his Hope renew her broken strings,
And _Love and Death_ no more at bitter strife.

[Sidenote: _Punch on Aubrey Beardsley_]

To retrace our steps to the 'nineties, it must be admitted that _Punch_ enjoyed himself more in belabouring Beardsley than in saluting established reputations. Seeing nothing in his work but a wilful, exotic and decadent _bizarrerie_, _Punch_ assailed him under various _aliases_, all of them grotesque and uncomplimentary. In 1893 the famous Beardsley "poster" for the Avenue Theatre inspired the lines headed "Ars Postera," which begin:--

Mr. Aubrey Beer de Beers,
You're getting quite a high renown;
Your Comedy of Leers, you know,
Is posted all about the town;
This sort of stuff I cannot puff,
As Boston says, it makes me "tired":
Your Japanee-Rossetti girl
Is not a thing to be desired.

Mr. Aubrey Beer de Beers,
New English Art (excuse the chaff)
Is like the Newest Humour style,
It's not a thing at which to laugh:
But all the same, you need not maim
A beauty reared on Nature's rules;
A simple maid _au naturel_
Is worth a dozen spotted ghouls.

On being presented with artful and crafty puzzle by artistic friend. (Query--Is it the right way up? And, if so, _what_ is it?)]

_Punch_ pursued his pet aversion from pillar to post--or poster--with caricatures of his types, compared to "Stygian Sphinxes, Chimæras in soot, problems in Euclid gone mad." Mr. Beardsley, however, was not the only emancipated artist who came under _Punch's_ lash. In a notice of an Exhibition at the Dudley Gallery, Mr. Sickert's picture of "The Sisters Lloyd" prompts the comment, "To be more original than the originals is to paint the piccalilli and gild the refined ginger-bread." By 1901 _Punch_ had become much impressed and exasperated by the modern cult of ugliness, and in 1902 began the first of a succession of travesties of modern impressionist art--"The Garden Party," "The Picnic," "A Dutch Landscape," in which all the negligible features are accentuated and the important ones left out. Another ingenious series belonging to the same year is that of illustrations of "Mary had a Little Lamb" in the style of Marcus Stone, Goodall, Clausen, Alma-Tadema, Dana Gibson, Albert Moore, John Collier, Briton Rivière, etc. These are executed in a spirit of friendly burlesque, very different from the notice of Mr. Gordon Craig's drawings, which is a masterpiece of adroit belittlement. "His drawing-power as an actor," we read, "is only equalled by his drawing-power as an artist"; and _Punch_ kindly recommends him "to confine, or extend, his art almost entirely to designing nursery wall-papers."

The exuberances of "_nouveau art_" had already elicited the cry of the visitor (in Du Maurier's picture in 1894) on being shown round her friend's new house: "Oh, _Liberty_, how many crimes are committed in thy name!"--a joke repeated from an earlier volume.[8] Nine years later the angularities of the new "Artful and Crafty" furniture are held up to well-merited ridicule. But it is only right to add that in 1897, in "The Pendulum of Taste"--an imaginative forecast of the sale of old furniture in the year 1996--_Punch_ indulges in a comprehensive and entirely damaging review of the monstrosities of Victorian furniture and decoration: groups of fruit in wax; hideous gaseliers; terrible chromolithographs; a tea-cosy embroidered with holly-berries in crewel work; a kneeling statuette of the infant Samuel; chairs and sofa in mahogany, upholstered in horsehair; a Kidderminster carpet "with a striking design of large nosegays on a ground of green moss"; and a complete set of antimacassars in wool and crochet. Mr. Galsworthy's minute description of the "Mausoleum," in which old Timothy Forsyte, the last and most long-lived of his generation, lived or rather vegetated down to and through the War, is much on the same lines. But _Punch_, being nearly twice as old as Mr. Galsworthy, had spent a good part of his life amid these surroundings.

[Footnote 8: The Botticelli joke in the same year was new. One man is afraid he made an ass of himself because, when asked if he liked Botticelli, he had said that he preferred Chianti, and his friend kindly explains that Botticelli is not a wine but a cheese.]

[Sidenote: _Art Definitions_]

The principles and theory of art-criticism, as I have noted above, did not trouble _Punch_ greatly in the first twelve or fifteen years of this period. He was mainly concerned with the robust expression of his likes and dislikes. But by 1908 he had become slightly infected by the new psychology of art, and by way of clarifying the atmosphere launched the following list of definitions:--

ART

(A glossary for the opening of the R.A.)

An Artist is a person who paints what he thinks he sees.

An Amateur is a person who thinks he paints what he sees.

An Impressionist is a person who paints what other people think he
sees.

A Popular Artist is a person who paints what other people think they
see.

A Successful Artist is a person who paints what he thinks other people
see.

A Great Artist is a person who paints what other people see they think.

A Failure is a person who sees what other people think they paint.

A Portraitist is a person who paints what other people don't think he
sees.

A Landscape Painter is a person who doesn't paint what other people
see.

A Realist is a person who sees what other people don't paint.

An Idealist is a person who paints what other people don't see.

The Hanging Committee are people who don't see what other people think
they paint.

A Royal Academician is a person who doesn't think and paints what
other people see.

A Genius is a person who doesn't see and paints what other people
don't think.

A Critic is a person who doesn't paint and thinks what other people
don't see.

The Public are people who don't see or think what other people don't
paint.

A Dealer is a person that sees that people who paint don't think, and
who thinks that people who don't paint don't see. He sees people who
don't see people who paint; he thinks that people who paint don't see
people who see; and he sees what people who don't paint think.

FINALLY

A Reader is a person whose head swims.

The art critics accredited to the daily Press, like their musical colleagues, could no longer be accused of lagging behind the modernist tendencies of the times: they aspired to be in the van of progress. In 1913 _Punch_ burlesques the wonderful phraseology of _The Times_ art critic in one of his "Studies of reviewers," which deals with the exhibitors at the Neo-British Art League. It may suffice to quote the appreciations of Mme. Strulda Brugh and Mr. Marcellus Thom. The method of the former, as illustrated by her "Pekinese Puppies," is contrasted with that of the Congestionist school in that she "deanthropomorphizes her scheme of pigmentation into nodules of aplanatic voluminosity":--

When therefore we have to assume a fluorescent reticulation of the
interstitial sonorities, a situation is developed which might well
baffle any but an advanced expert in transcendental mathematics. As a
result the modelling of the puppies' tails is lacking in curvilinear
conviction; their heads fail in canine suggestiveness, their fore-paws
in prehensile subjectivity.

Mr. Marcellus Thom's "Sardine Fishers in the Adriatic," executed in "creosoted truffle stick," is a masterpiece of "suppressed but dignified antinomianism":--

Wonderful though the drawing and the interfiltration of coordinating
paraboloids are, it is the psychological content of the picture rather
than its direct presentative significance which affects the solar
plexus of the enlightened onlooker. The whole atmosphere is summarized
and condensed in a circumambient and oleaginous aura.... To do full
justice to such a picture is unhappily beyond the resources of the
most sublime preciosity. It demands the [Greek: esôterikê phlyaria] of
Theopompus of Megalocrania or even the _intima desipientia_ distilled
in the _Atopiad_ of Vesanus Sanguinolentus.

The new spirit in Art had already been burlesqued by one of _Punch's_ artists in a series of "intelligent anticipations" of the work of Herkomer, Sargent, Leader and La Thangue as executed in the Futuristic Style; and again in Mr. Haselden's Paulo-Post-Impressionist portraits of various celebrities in the _Almanack_ for 1913. In the same year Mr. Sargent's decision to withdraw from portraiture is commemorated in a fancy picture of "an old Chelsea Gateway," where, beneath the name "John S. Sargent" hangs a notice, "No Bottles, No Circulars, No Hawkers, No Portraits." Here, I may add, that _Punch_ had, three years earlier, with the aid of Mr. George Morrow's ingenious pencil, duly chronicled the decay of flattery in contemporary portrait painting.