Chapter VII: Part I: The Passing of the Old Order (7)

Mention has already been made of the widening of the Mall as part of the Queen Victoria Memorial. Brock's statue and monumental group were pronounced by _Punch_ in 1911 "worthy of a great Queen and a great City," an acknowledgment truly remarkable in one so chary of approval. Captain Adrian Jones's Peace "Quadriga" on Constitution Hill prompted a burlesque alternative design in 1908, with "four typical pedestrians rampant and a motor-car urgent." In 1912 an old lady is seen asking a policeman, "Is _that_ what they call the Quadruped, officer?" and the obliging Robert replies, "Yes, Mum; all except the lady." Towards "Robert," by the way, _Punch_ was in the main sympathetic and appreciative throughout this period, and in one of the "Lays of a Londoner" pays a generous tribute to the benevolent autocrat of the highway:--

In vain the dray-horse paws the air,
The flow of low abuse grows brisker;
He never turns an injured hair,
Or lifts a deprecating whisker,
For he knows well enough that they
May gibe, but dare not disobey!

Whether in dark, secluded walks
He flouts the schemes that bad men work us;
Or maiden ladies, screaming "Lawks!"
Hang on his neck in Oxford Circus;
His mien displays an abstract calm
That soothes the fractured nerves like balm.

Who spoors the burglar's nimble feet,
And spots the three-card man's devices?
Who hales before the judgment seat
The vendor of unwholesome ices?
Who's apt at any time to have his
Complexion spoiled by hob-nailed navvies?

It is indeed our Robert, or,
As some prefer to say, our "Bobby";
The civil servant, paid to floor
The wiles of those who'd kill or rob 'ee;
Who keeps our premises secure,
Our butter and our morals pure.

And when we hear of fresh alarms,
Of bombs and mutiny and massacre,
Of citizens dispersed by arms,
In countries where such things, alas! occur,
Well may we urge our Robert's claim
Alike to gratitude and fame.

This is a fairly comprehensive summary of the multifarious activities of one who is, or, at any rate, was up to the end of 1918, more of an institution than a man.

Though he lived in or just off Fleet Street, _Punch_ kept an eye on the growth of the charms of Greater London. In 1907 he printed his "Song of Six Suburbs (after Mr. Rudyard Kipling)":--

BRIXTON

Though far outside the radius you roam,
Where shall a fairer prospect meet the eyes?
Brand-new, like Aphrodite from the foam,
The homes of Brixton Rise.

TOOTING

Supreme am I, Suburbia's guiding star,
And when I speak let lesser tongues be dumb;
The prefix "Upper" shows the class we are;
Where Tooting beckons, Come!

HAMPSTEAD

Upon your North-West Passage scale my heights,
And mark the joyous crowds that sport beneath;
Men call me "Happy": O the strange delights,
The dalliance on my Heath!

PECKHAM

A peaceful calm envelops every street,
And like an old-world idyll life drifts by;
Where else such courtly couples shall you meet
A-comin' thro' the Rye?

CLAPHAM

Unto my yoke my stalwarts meekly bend:
Daily, between the hours of 8 and 9,
To dare worse horrors than the Pit I send
Sons of the Chatham line!

EALING

"Last, loveliest, exquisite," I give to those
Civilian warriors from India rest;
What suburb boasts the dignified repose
That clings to Ealing, W.?

Later on the garden suburb is a frequent theme of genial comment and satire based on first-hand observation, for the late Mr. F. H. Townsend was a resident in Golder's Green, and his ingenious pencil found ample scope in the amenities and humours of the new _Rus in Urbe_. Another "garden" that had provoked _Punch_ to less favourable comment in earlier years--Covent Garden--was still a source of dissatisfaction as late as 1904. When John Hollingshead died in the autumn of that year, _Punch_, in his obituary notice of the manager of the Gaiety Theatre, revealed the fact that "his was the dauntless hand that, under _Mr. Punch's_ banner, attacked 'Mud Salad Market' many years ago." If the present condition of Covent Garden market is not exactly ideal, at any rate it does not justify the censures passed on it seventeen years ago as still blocking traffic with congested muck.

LONDON (in her new Museum at Kensington Palace): "Bless my soul, what a life I've led!"]

In 1912 the London Museum was opened at Kensington Palace, and _Punch_, in a commemorative cartoon, showed London as an old lady examining the cases of the Roman, Saxon and Norman periods. "Bless my soul," she says, "what a life I've led!" And _Punch_ was often more interested in the life she had led than in that she was leading or was about to lead. Her future, as outlined by Sir Aston Webb in January, 1914, seemed to him a charming but somewhat visionary prospect:--

Meanwhile this London is my place;
Sad though her dirt, as I admit is,
I love the dear unconscious grace
That shines beneath her sooty face
Better than all your well-groomed cities.