M. H. Spielmann

Punch's Influence on Dress and Fashion—His Records—As a Prophet—As an Artist—As an Actor and Dramatist—Benefit Performances—Guild of Literature and Art.

The man who glances at Punch's current number and throws it aside can have but little appreciation of the influence of the paper, not only in matters political, but in social subjects of every kind. That the Baron de Book-Worms can make or mar the success of a new book, as completely as the "Times," "AthenÆum," or "Spectator," has been testified to by Mr. Hall Caine and others; and in some quarters at least Punch's bÂton-strokes are as effective as ever, and recall the times when he could, and did, drive a semi-public man into obscurity, which, but for the fame of his onslaught, would have been absolute oblivion.

But it is in dress, in fashion, and in manners that Punch has gained, if anything, in weight and influence. In such subjects, treated as "charivarieties," as Mr. Arthur Sykes has called them, he has always been supreme, and fulfils an unquestioned destiny. John Leech determined that there should be no Bloomerism in the land, and there was none—only, by the charm of his drawings, he came very near making it popular, and converting British young womanhood to Turkish trousers. Mr. du Maurier thought that it would look pretty if every little lady in the land were to wear black stockings; and every little lady did: as unfalteringly as when Miss Kate Greenaway imposed upon them smocks and poke-bonnets, or when Mrs. Hodgson Burnett clad mothers' darlings in black velvet Fauntleroy suits, with bright-coloured sashes wound round their middles. As the volumes are examined, the reader becomes aware of the enduring value of Punch as a History of Costume in the Victorian Era. Even men's dress is noted with minute truthfulness—the violently variegated shirts of 1845; the Joinville ties, with their great fringed ends, out of which Thackeray made such capital in 1847; the pin-less cravats and cutaway coats of 1848; the ivory-handled canes of 1850, for sucking purposes—the fashion which came round thirty years later with the advance of the "crutch and toothpick brigade;" the big bows and short sticks of 1852; the frock-coats and weeping whiskers of 1853, with the corresponding inability to pronounce the "r" otherwise than as a "w," or to converse but with a languid, used-up drawl; the smaller ties and growing collars, when a wasting youth complains that "She is lost to him for ever" (she, the laundress!); the schoolboy's Spanish hat of 1860, that was soon developed into the "pork-pie," and was to be adopted generally for country wear with baggy knickerbockers; the full-blown Dundreary of 1861, with long weeping whiskers, long coat, long drawl, and short wits; with the sudden change for the better in the following year. All this is to be found clearly recorded year by year, season by season, with all the peculiarities of "form;" of umbrella and umbrella-carrying; of dancing, energetic and invertebrate; of handshaking, sensible and high-level (which was invented, of course, by the ballroom girl who was holding up her train in the dance); of hirsute adornment and Æsthetic craze—every shade of fashion is followed in its true development and in its wane—down to the recent phase of 1893 and 1894, when the swell lets out his collar for an advertisement hoarding, or, safe in the perfection of its starching, marches quietly across the desert while fierce Orientals turn the edges of their swords in vain across his linen-shielded neck.

And the ladies! The coal-scuttle bonnet and the incipient crinoline of 1845; the growing crinolines of 1851, larger in 1860, largest of all in 1864; the hair in bands or side-curls of 1852, and in nets in 1862; the bonnets worn almost off the head in 1853, more so in 1854, until Leech drew a picture of two ladies walking out, with footmen carrying their headgear behind them; the "spoon-shaped bonnet" of 1860—"the latest Parisian folly," which the street-boys mistake for "a dustman's 'at;" the archery of 1862, the pork-pie hat, the croquet, the tennis, the golf—every sport, every habit and custom, every change of dress, down to the minutest detail—all is recorded with faithfulness and humour, first by Leech's pencil, and then, in chief measure, by Mr. du Maurier's.

It is curious in turning over Punch's volumes to see how on occasion he could use his power of prophecy with an accuracy that spoke well for the common-sense, sometimes even the statesmanship, to be found among the Staff. "There is but one Punch, and he is his own prophet." It is rather as a social reformer than as a politician that he has exerted his gift, though an example of the latter class of foresight may be pointed to in the cartoon of Sir John Tenniel of April 7th, 1860. This was entitled "A Glimpse of the Future: A Probable and Large Importation of Foreign Rags," in which King Bomba of Naples, the Emperor Louis Napoleon, and the Pope were shown landing on British shores in very sorry plight. And in due time England was to see—at least, as far as the two monarchs were concerned—the realisation of the oracular couplet combined:—

Then the number of inventions and innovations forestalled by Punch's pen are many. In December, 1848, much is made of a proposed "opera telakouphanon"—a forecast of the telephone, phonograph, and theatrophone combined:—

—a thirty years' prophecy. The following year he represented a lady listening to music by telegraph; and the kinetoscope is only now waiting to fulfil Mr. du Maurier's forecast of many years ago. If Mr. Edison has not yet done quite all that Mr. Punch foretold, is not that rather Mr. Edison's than Punch's fault?

In an unhappy moment in 1847 Punch proposed the use of umbrellas and house-fronts for advertising purposes, and the hint was promptly taken. In the previous year he foretold the use of the Thames Tunnel as a railway conduit; and his sketch of a zebra harnessed to a carriage in the streets of London was realised forty years later. The great "Missing Word Competition" of 1892 was forestalled by Punch by four-and-thirty years (p. 53, Vol. XXXV., August 7th, 1858). Leech's "Mistress of the Hounds," too—how fantastic the idea was thought in those days, and laughed at accordingly!—has since become a hard, astraddle, uncompromising fact; and the lady's safety riding-skirt, that attached itself to the saddle when the lady lost her seat, anticipated by thirty years the patent for a similar contrivance taken out in 1884. Indeed, Punch's picture of November, 1854, was put in as evidence before Mr. Justice Wright in April, 1893, when an action between two sartorial artists turned upon the point of anteriority, and the picture won the case.

Common-sense, and shrewdness of observation and judgment, which are at the root of amateur prophecy, brought as much honour to Punch as ever Old Moore obtained through one of his lucky flukes. In December, 1893, the Prince of Wales opened the Hugh Myddleton Board School, the finest in London, which had been erected on the site of the old Clerkenwell prison; and on the invitation card to the ceremony appeared a reproduction of the Punch picture of May, 1847, which accompanied an altercation between "School and Prison, who've lately risen As opposition teachers." This was published nearly a quarter of a century before Mr. Forster's Education Act, and concludes with the prophecy curiously fulfilled in the case of this particular institution. To this picture, in which the county gaol, untenanted, looks scowlingly at the crowded school, the Prince feelingly referred when he spoke of the scepticism with which the statement was regarded, that the institution of "free" schools would shut the prisons up. But a volume might be filled with instances of the occasions on which Punch has seen with his eyes, and thought with the front of his brain—how his demands for necessary innovations (such, for example, as fever carriages in 1861) were quickly acted upon, and how his serious mood has enforced the respect which mere geniality might have failed to secure.

He is not, of course, entitled to invariable congratulation for his attitude towards art; but he has suffered as well as acted ill. When he derided the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and joined in the storm of ridicule that swirled round the heads of Rossetti and his devoted and courageous friends, he doubtless acted within his rÔle; but he utterly failed to see below the surface of the apparent affectation of the artists, and all he had to say of Sir John Millais' "Vale of Rest," in the lines descriptive of the year 1859, was

"Year Mr. Millais came out with those terrible nuns in the graveyard."

In the following year, however, Mr. Eastlake, afterwards of the National Gallery, made his mark in the paper as "Jack Easel," and a more intelligent view of art prevailed.

But neither has Art, as personified by the Royal Academy, recognised Punch, save by a couple of seats at the annual banquet. It is true that several of its members have drawn for it—Sir Frederic Leighton, Sir John Millais, Sir John Gilbert, Mr. Briton Riviere, Mr. Stacey Marks, Mr. G. A. Storey, and Fred Walker. But Punch's art has gone unnoticed, otherwise than by a square yard or two of wall space in the Black-and-White room at the annual exhibition. While the Academy has canonised many members whose names half a century later are forgotten, or are remembered only to be called up with a smile or a shrug, it has persistently ignored those who have employed the pencil instead of the brush, or have used ink instead of misusing paint. But it is unnecessary to pursue the subject farther; that the names of Keene, Leech, and Tenniel are not on the roll of the Academy is surely far more to the discredit of the institution than of the artists themselves, who presumably, from the Academic point of view, are "no artists." As Mr. du Maurier has pointed out, Punch's artists will have their revenge: "If the illustrator confine himself to his own particular branch, he must not hope for any very high place in the hierarchy of art. The great prizes are not for him! No doubt it will be all the same a hundred years hence—but for this: if he has done his work well, he has faithfully represented the life of his time, he has perpetuated what he has seen with his own bodily eyes; and for that reason alone his unpretending little sketches may, perhaps, have more interest for those who come across them in another hundred years than many an ambitious historical or classical canvas that has cost its painter infinite labour, imagination, and research, and won for him in his own time the highest rewards in money, fame, and Academical distinction. For genius alone can keep such fancy-work as this alive, and the so-called genius of to-day may be the scapegoat of to-morrow."

Punch was born, so to speak, upon the stage, between the four canvas walls of his own and Judy's show. His heart and soul were with and of the drama, and plays have rained from the prolific pens of his literary Staff. Many of his contributors acted in public—a few professionally, most of them as amateurs—and more than one has linked his life with a lady who had trodden the stage or concert platform. From the first he proclaimed that Music and the Drama were to be amongst the most prominent features of the work; and to that declaration he has ever since faithfully adhered. As a record of the London stage, the pages of Punch are fairly complete; as a dramatist he has, through the members of his Staff, been prolific, and on the whole highly successful; as an actor he has at least enjoyed himself; and just as Falstaff was the cause of wit in others, he has unwittingly served the pirates of the stage, and to better purpose, too, than they deserved.

With "readings," lectures, and "entertainments," the members of Punch's Staff have often come strikingly before the public; so much so, indeed, that they have stepped from their studies and studios on to the platform as by a natural transition. Albert Smith's "Overland Mail" and "The Ascent of Mont Blanc," with the extraordinary success that attended them, doubtless set the fashion to the band of men who were always, in one sense at least, before the public. Thackeray's "Four Georges" and the "English Humorists" raised the standard of quality at once; and to that standard more than one of his contemporaries and successors has aimed at attaining, even though they never hoped to succeed. Every Editor of Punch—except perhaps Stirling Coyne—delivered such lectures in his day. Henry Mayhew took for his subject that of which he had a complete mastery, "London Labour and London Poor." Mark Lemon, whose knowledge of the metropolis was probably even more extensive and peculiar than Sam Weller's own, lectured on it in "About London," and gave recitals of "Falstaff" with a certain measure of success. Shirley Brooks spoke, as he was so well qualified to do, on "The Houses of Parliament;" and discourses were similarly delivered by Tom Taylor. Mr. Burnand's bright "Happy Thoughts" readings could be forgotten by none that heard them. James Hannay, laying humour aside, lectured on the more serious aspects of literature; and Cuthbert Bede talked of the literary and artistic friends of his Verdant Green career. Mr. Harry Furniss, with his delightful entertainments on "Portraiture" and "The Humours of Parliament," achieved a success undreamed of by the earlier Punch reciters; and Mr. du Maurier in his "Social Pictorial Satire" touched a literary and critical height that charmed every audience by its humour, its delicacy, and its admirable taste.

The theatrical stars of half a century march through Punch's pages in long procession, and matters of high theatrical politics engage the attention from year to year. Punch's interest in theatricals is hardly surprising when it is remembered how closely identified with the drama have been many members of the Staff. Douglas Jerrold was a successful playwright before ever Punch was heard of, and as the author of "Black-Eyed Susan" and "Time Works Wonders" he made his name popular with many who had hardly heard of his connection with "the great comic." It has been computed that the Punch writers, from first to last, have contributed no fewer than five hundred plays to the stage; and it may be mentioned as a curious fact that to "German Reed's" each successive Editor of Punch has contributed an "Entertainment." The Staff has on several occasions been seen upon the boards; and on countless occasions Punch has figured there, usually against his will. It but sufficed for Punch to make a hit for hungry provincial actors, either of stock companies or on tour, to pounce upon it and work it up into a play or an entertainment. Jerrold's brother-in-law, W. J. Hammond, who was at one time manager of the Strand Theatre, travelled with what must be considered the authorised show, thus described: