M. H. Spielmann

Horace Mayhew—"The Wicked Old Marquis"—A Birthday Ode—R. B. Peake—Thomas Hood—"The Song of the Shirt"—Its Origin—Its Effect in the Country—Its Authorship Claimed by Others—Translated throughout Europe—A Missing Verse—Hood Compared with Jerrold—"Reflections on New Year's Day"—Dr. E. V. Kenealy—J. W. Ferguson—Charles Lever—Laman Blanchard—Tom Taylor—Passed over by Shirley Brooks—Taylor's Critics—Mr. Coventry Patmore—"Jacob Omnium"—Tennyson v. Bulwer Lytton—Horace Smith—"Rob Roy" Macgregor—Mr. Henry Silver—Introduces Charles Keene—His Literary Work—Service to Leech—Retirement—Mr. Sutherland Edwards—Charles Dickens and Punch—Sothern Earns his Dinner—Reconciliation of Dickens and Mark Lemon—J. L. Hannay—Cuthbert Bede.

Punch had been running about eight months when, in Wills's words, "a handsome young student returned from Germany and was heartily welcomed by his brother, Mr. Henry Mayhew, and then by the rest of the fraternity." This was at the particular Punch meeting at which Mr. Hamerton was present. Horace Mayhew's diploma joke consisted, I believe, of "Questions addressÉes au grand concours aux ÉlÈves d'Anglais, du CollÉge St. Badaud dans le DÉpartement de la Haute Cockaigne" (Vol. III. p. 89). Regular occupation was forthwith found for him as sub-editor, his duties being to collect the cuts from the artists, to act as medium of communication between the writers and draughtsmen, and to assist Mark Lemon in making-up the paper; and for these services he received one pound a week. Soon, however, it was found that the editor could very well perform all such duties for himself, and the post of "pony" was abolished. Horace—or "Ponny," as he was invariably nicknamed—became one of the accepted writers. He was most prolific as a suggestor, and never failed of point and pith in his own numerous little paragraphs. As a proposer he had much of the talent of his brother, but little of his genius. "The Life and Adventures of Miss Robinson Crusoe," written by Douglas Jerrold, was "Ponny's" suggestion; but he carried out his conceptions entirely in such papers as his extremely amusing "Model Men," "Model Women," and "Model Couples;" and his "Change for a Shilling" and "Letters left at a Pastrycook's" are still remembered.

"Ponny" had not a seat "in the Cabinet" until January 11th, 1845, before which time he had no separate existence as a contributor, all his "copy" being entered indiscriminately to the Editor. For a long while his average contribution was thirty-one columns in each volume; but his main value lay in the short articles and paragraphs of a playful and whimsical character. Thus, when the "Birmingham Advertiser" declared with grovelling snobbishness that "in these days it is quite refreshing to pronounce the name of the Duke of Newcastle," "Ponny" suggested that during the summer months "the name of his Grace should be written up in every public thoroughfare." He was, in fact, in the words of an old friend, "bright, good-natured, and lively, not very clever, but always letting off little jokes;" "a social butterfly," adds Mr. Sala, "who never fulfilled the promise of his youth."

He was a strikingly good-looking man, and was justifiably proud of Thackeray's greeting as they met at Evans's—"Ah, here comes Colonel Newcome!" "From his aristocratic mien and premature baldness," says Vizetelly, "Wiltshire Austin christened him 'the wicked old Marquis.' The keeping of late hours was Ponny Mayhew's bane. For a quarter of a century—save an annual fortnight devoted to recruiting himself at Scarborough or elsewhere—he scorned to seek repose before the milkman started on his rounds, and during the greater portion of the year never thought of rising until the sun had set, when he would emerge from his Bond Street rooms as spruce and gay as a lark." He had been engaged to a daughter of Douglas Jerrold (whose other daughter, it will be remembered, was the wife of Henry Mayhew), but on the ground that "one Mayhew is enough in the family," Jerrold would not hear of it, and the young people remained faithful to each other to the end. Living first with Joseph Swain, the engraver, he afterwards took up his residence for a time with the Lemons at King's Road, Chelsea.

"Ponny's" portrait, it has often been said, may be seen in the White Knight in "Alice in Wonderland;" but "the resemblance," says Sir John Tenniel, "was purely accidental, a mere unintentional caricature, which his friends, of course, were only too delighted to make the most of. P. M. was certainly handsome, whereas the White Knight can scarcely be considered a type of 'manly beauty.'" He was a great favourite with the Staff, by reason of his many charming qualities. What they thought of him may be in a measure deduced from one or two of the verses borrowed from Shirley Brooks's Birthday Ode, here reproduced from Mr. Hatton's "True Story" in "London Society":—

"Ponny" Mayhew, who did not actually write anything for some years before his end, died in May, 1872; and on p. 191 of the sixty-second volume a graceful obituary notice pays tribute to his long and faithful service and his gentle good-nature.

By this time Punch's established reputation brought a great number of anonymous contributions, only a very few of which were ever used, and of fewer still was the authorship placed upon record. Early in 1843, however (p. 82, Vol. IV.), Mr. Blackwood, of Edinburgh, sent in one of the earliest of Scottish witticisms, a conundrum; Joseph O'Leary, a reporter of the "Morning Herald," is said to have contributed a poem on "The English Vandal;" and R. B. Peake, who had adapted "A Night with Punch" for W. J. Hammond, began his little series of "Punch's Provincial Intelligence," of which the most notable is a humorous report of the University Boatrace of the year; and then the elder Hood began his short but brilliant career.

Thomas Hood had forgiven and forgotten the annoyance he had felt on seeing in the first number of Punch a bogus advertisement ascribed to him under the title of "Lessons in Punmanship," at which he "could only express his amazement that his name should be paraded with apparent authority in a paper of the very existence of which he was not aware;" and within two years he became a fairly constant contributor, after writing to Dickens, "You will be glad to hear that I have made an arrangement with Bradbury to contribute to Punch, but that is a secret I cannot keep from you. It will be light occasional work for odd times." So he began with a sketch re-drawn by H. G. Hine, accompanying a "Police Report of a Daring Robbery by a Noble Lord"—the first of his stinging attacks on Lord William Lennox, one of Punch's favourite and, it must be admitted, legitimate butts. Then followed at different times a score or more of conundrums in the true Hoodian vein under the title of "Whys and Whens," fair specimens of which are these: "Why is killing bees like a confession? Because you unbuzz 'em." "Why is 'yes' the most ignorant word in the language? Because it doesn't no anything." "What's the difference between a soldier and a bomb-shell? One goes to wars, the other goes to peaces." "When is a clock on the stairs dangerous? When it runs down." A couple of sketches and "A Drop of Gin," an important poem of seventy-six lines somewhat in the manner of the latter portion of "Miss Kilmansegg" were followed—enclosed within a comic border!—by his greatest popular effort, "The Song of the Shirt." This appeared, not in the "Almanac," but in the "Christmas Number," on p. 261 of the second volume for 1843.

The particular incident by which this immortal poem was suggested was one which had called forth a powerful leading-article in the "Times." It was the "terrible fact" that a woman named Bidell, with a squalid, half-starved infant at the breast, was "charged at the Lambeth police-court with pawning her master's goods, for which she had to give £2 security. Her husband had died by an accident, and had left her with two children to support, and she obtained by her needle for the maintenance of herself and family what her master called the 'good living' of seven shillings a week."

Punch was at once aglow with red-hot indignation, and in an article entitled "Famine and Fashion!" proposed an advertisement such as this for the firm that employed her—

The subject touched Hood more powerfully perhaps than others, for his nature was essentially grave and sympathetic. As he himself had said, it was only for his livelihood that he was a lively Hood—although he was always brimming over with comicalities; and he never felt more deeply the dignity of his profession and his own force and weight than when he was engaged on serious work. So Hood conjured up his "Song of the Shirt," moved by the revelations of poor seamstresses who received, as it appeared, five farthings a shirt, out of which sum they had to find their own needles! Mark Lemon told Mr. Joseph Hatton that Hood had "accompanied the poem with a few lines in which he expressed the fear that it was hardly suitable for Punch, and leaving it between his discretion and the waste-paper basket." It had, said Hood, already been rejected by three papers, and he was sick of the sight of it. Mark Lemon brought the poem up at the Table, where the majority of the Staff protested against its inclusion in a comic paper. But Lemon was determined; and, after all, was it not for a Christmas number that he destined it—a number in which something serious, pathetic, with a note of pity and love, was surely not out of place?

The effect on its publication was tremendous. The poem went through the land like wild-fire. Nearly every paper quoted it, headed by the "Times;" it was the talk of the hour, the talk of the country. It went straight to John Bull's kind, bourgeois, sympathetic heart, just as Carlyle declared that Ruskin's truths had "pierced like arrows" into his. The authorship, too, was vigorously canvassed with intense interest. Dickens, with that keen insight and critical faculty which had enabled him almost alone among literary experts to detect the sex of George Eliot, then an unknown writer (though doubtless he was helped in the case I now speak of by Hood's letter to him just quoted), was one of the few who at once named the writer of the verses. And it was well for Hood that he had proof positive of the authorship, for one of the most curious things connected with the poem was the number of persons who had the incomprehensible audacity to claim it. One young gentleman was mentioned by name, either by his friends or himself, and I find a letter in a volume of newspaper cuttings to this effect: "I have just read, to my great surprise, the announcement in your paper that Mr. Hood wrote 'The Song of the Shirt,' because I know positively that what I before stated to you is the fact." So hard pressed, indeed, was Hood, that he wrote a private letter in February, 1845, in the following terms:—

Had these literary vultures had their way, Hood would have been brazened out of his verses altogether.

Punch shared handsomely in the glory of the poet, and its circulation tripled on the strength of it. And Mrs. Hood, poor soul, triumphed in her prophecy; for had she not said, and maintained in spite of each successive rejection from foolish editors—"Now mind, Hood, mark my words; this will tell wonderfully! It is one of the best things you ever did!"

And so this song, which, in spite of its defects, still thrills you as you read, achieved such a popularity that for sudden and enthusiastic applause its reception has rarely been equalled. It was soon translated into every language of Europe—(Hood used to laugh as he wondered how they would render "Seam and gusset and band," into Dutch); it was printed and sold as catchpennies, printed on cotton pocket-handkerchiefs, it was illustrated and parodied in a thousand ways; and the greatest triumph of all, which brought tears of joy to Hood's eyes, before a week was out a poor beggar-woman came singing it down the street, the words set to a simple air of her own. The greatest delight of Hood—"the darling of the English heart," as he was called, who was literally dying when he wrote the song, and so fulfilled the sole condition which Jerrold said was all that was needed to make him famous—was the conviction that the interest which the nation was taking in his lines would turn to the real advantage of those in whose cause he pleaded. He felt that he had touched not only the nation's heart but the nation's conscience, and he deeply appreciated Kenny Meadows' and Leech's efforts in the same direction, such as are to be seen in the cartoons of "Pin Money, Needle Money," and many more besides.

Speaking of the "Song of the Shirt," which brought letters to Punch from every part of the globe, Mr. Ruskin declares it the most impressive example of the most perfect manifestation of the temper of the caricaturist, the highest development of which is to be found in Hood's poetry; and he compares it to Leech's "General FÉvrier turned Traitor." There certainly can be no doubt that its force is amazingly assisted by its plainness and simplicity of language.

It is a curious fact that one verse of the poem was not printed by Mark Lemon, although it appeared in the original manuscript; nor is it included in the reprinted "Works." I imagine that its omission was simply a matter of make-up, as it would be hard to compress the poem into the space allotted to it, without using a much smaller type than was usual in Punch; and an odd number of verses is a serious matter for a sub-editor to wrestle with when he has to arrange a poem into double columns of a given depth. The missing verse, which, to do Mark Lemon justice, is the one most easily spared, runs as follows:—

In the same number that contained the "Song of the Shirt" was another impressive poem by Hood, "The Pauper's Christmas Carol," in seven stanzas; but it was entirely overshadowed and eclipsed by its fellow-song, so that it lay, as it has done for the most part since, almost unknown, unhonoured, and unsung. Yet it was as ringing and true as any of Jerrold's most stirring efforts in his championship of the poor. But the two friends were essentially different in their treatment and methods. Hood's satire was never personal, as Jerrold's was; and, unlike Jerrold, Hood would never tolerate the idea, much less practise it, of placing "a wide moral gulf between Rich and Poor, with Hate on one side and Fear on the other." He sought to help the poor by awakening the love and sympathy of Society, and for that reason he selected his epitaph in reference to his poem, for he would never have chosen this as technically his finest work. He was altogether out of harmony with Jerrold's policy of stinging the rich into charity and justice by biting satire and illogical sarcasm, warm-hearted and well-meant though it was.

At this time Hood was fast approaching his end; and he wrote for Punch on his death-bed. Though still young, he was becoming more and more afflicted with physical ailments. Amongst other troubles, he was getting stone deaf, he said; but consoled himself with the reflection that his friend Charles Landseer was two stone deafer. And all the while his rollicking fun, and quaintly sudden turn of word and idea were transporting his readers, as he somewhere says, "from Dull-age to Grin-age." His humour was effervescent, continuous, and effortless—not like Jerrold's wit, intermittent flashes called up at need—but overflowing in a rich stream of joke, pun, hit, crank, and quip, covering a field far wider than Jerrold's, and more genial.

The next contribution was his poem "The Drama," apropos of the State trials in Ireland, and the Fair Maid of Perth, with allusion to the Fighting Smith in either case—a poem of 108 lines. Then followed "Reflections on New Year's Day" (January 6th, 1844), from which a couple of specimen verses may well be quoted:—

After a column on "The Awful State of Ireland" Hood was, on the 3rd of March, 1844, editorially reckoned on the Staff. But the decree of Fate was against him, and he only contributed two more pieces altogether. Punch, as he acknowledged, was the one bright meteor that had flashed across his milk-and-watery way in his latter years, and gave him, together with Sir Robert Peel's tactful and charming bestowal of a pension, his last delight. But already death, he said, had thrown open wide its door to him, and he was "so near to it that he could almost hear the hinges creak." And when he died, there were engraved upon his tombstone, at his own desire, the simple words, "He Sang the Song of the Shirt."

The first arrival of 1844 was Dr. Edward Vaughan Kenealy, who, many years after, acted for and defended the historic "Claimant," the self-confessed Orton, alias Castro, alias "Sir Roger Tichborne," with so much violent ability, lost his balance and came to utter grief. In his youth one of his scholarly relaxations was to translate English verse of various sorts into various languages—Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Hindustani, and the like, for he was a remarkable linguist. His unique Punch contribution was the rendering of "The King of the Cannibal Islands" into Greek, and very good Greek too. The jeu d'esprit is to be found on p. 79, Volume VI., as well as in his volume of verse dedicated to Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, whom he was destined afterwards to waste his life in vilifying, while shattering his own career in his savage and ineffective assaults.

In the following month T. J. Serle struck up an ephemeral connection. He had been Macready's secretary, and acting manager of Drury Lane, and had written "The Shadow on the Wall," and other successful plays; and Jerrold's eldest son was named Thomas Serle, after him. His first paper was "A Fine Lady," on the 10th of March; but after one further contribution, two months later, he appeared no more. About the same time there was printed "The Magnitia," by Frank Moir (May 3rd, No. 199).

J. W. Ferguson was a far more important and more useful contributor, whose work was full of talent, whose versification was clever and pointed, and whose topical "Punch's Fairy Tales" (with obtrusively obvious morals) are models of their kind. His "Little Frenchman's First Lesson" (May 18th, 1844) purports to be a translation of a French poem with which patriots are supposed to implant hatred of England in the minds and hearts of their children the refrain being "Car ce sont lÀ des perfides Albionnais!"—and the "Second Lesson," which replies to a French attack, were important efforts. His "Lays of the Amphitheatre (Royal), by T. B. Macaulay," "Cyinon and Iphigeneia," and similar contributions justified his inclusion in the Staff (April, 1845); but after the autumn of 1846, by which time he was represented by a score of columns, he disappeared from Punch's scene.

A letter from Charles Lever (6th June, 1844), under the title of "A Familiar Epistle," and over the signature "Archy Delany," for a moment brought that distinguished novelist into contact with Thackeray—a circumstance that was not forgotten by either writer, when the latter paid his rather stiff Dublin visit some time afterwards to the "Harry Rollicker" whom he so brilliantly parodied in his "Prize Novelists." Then Mr. W. P. Bull, of Nuneaton, sent in half a column of mock-heroic verse—"A Soliloquy"—which purported to be the commencement of a scene from an unpublished drama entitled "The Chemist," a contribution of which Lemon thought very highly. No further items, however, came from that quarter.

Three recruits appeared with the month of October. A writer named Jackson forwarded a couple of pieces ("Irish Intelligence" and "The Polka Pest"—the latter well describing the craze with which the new dance inoculated the whole country); and then Laman Blanchard, Jerrold's life-long friend and fellow-worker from the beginning, made a dÉbut that was almost coincident with his death. His "Royal Civic Function" showed what a hand had been lost to Punch; but it was his delightful "New Year's Ode: To the Winner of the St. Nisbett—Season, 1844," that was the best of his rare contributions. It was at once an elegy of Mrs. Nisbett, and a prayer and prophecy that she might again be seen on the boards. The last verse runs:—

The prophecy was only partly fulfilled; Mrs. Nisbett was certainly seen again upon the stage, but Blanchard was not there to enjoy the sight. He died within the same year, to the passionate grief of Douglas Jerrold.

The last and most important accession of the year was Tom Taylor, for six-and-thirty years a Staff officer of Punch, and for the last six of them commander-in-chief. He was twenty-seven years old when he sent in his first two contributions—"Punch to Messieurs les RÉdacteurs of the French Press" and "Startling and most Important Intelligence" (October 19th, 1844). According to John Timbs, "Landells in one of his artistic visits to Cambridge met with Mr. T. Taylor, who, having completed his University studies, came to London to embark in the profession of letters, his first contribution being to Douglas Jerrold's 'Illuminated Magazine,'" just at the time when Landells ceased his connection. Bristed, in his record of English University life, foretold of "Travis," generally accepted as a literary portrait of Taylor, "perhaps he will be a nominal barrister and an actual writer for Punch and the magazines. Perhaps he will go quite mad and write a tragedy:" a capital example of a prophecy after the event, so far as it goes—for "Five Years" was published in 1851.

Tom Taylor prided himself on the classic verve of his prose and verse, and undoubtedly assisted in maintaining Punch's literary standard. His work for the paper went on increasing—from six columns in Vol. VII., to forty-two in Vol. XIII.—and soon won him his seat at the Table. For a long while, however, he did not shine as a cartoon-suggestor, the first being "Peel's Farewell" (July 14th, 1849), and the second in the following May, the extremely happy burlesque on the picture in the National Gallery—"Leeds Mercury instructing Young England." As time went on and he became known as a writer of taste and versatility, as a dramatist and adaptor of plays, French and English; art critic of the "Times;" artist biographer; and Civil Servant (he attained to the secretaryship of the Local Government Board), the weight of his increasing responsibility and influence seemed to get into what should have been his humorous work. To counteract it, Thackeray, up to the time of his resignation, struggled to maintain the spirit of jollity and the lightness of touch which had formerly been Punch's true note. But in 1874, when Shirley Brooks died, Tom Taylor, who had been identified with the paper ten years before Brooks had joined it, was promoted, as by right of service, to the supreme command.

It cannot be said that his editorship was a success. His fun was too scholarly and well-ordered, too veiled, deliberate, and ponderous; and under him Punch touched its lowest point of popularity.

His popularity among the outsiders was great, as I have learnt from many of his old contributors; for he loved to extend his hospitality to young men at his house, Lavender Sweep, at Wandsworth, and to send kindly notes of encouragement and promises of future help. Nevertheless, he was ever the butt of rival publications. In one of them a cartoon, entitled "An Editor Abroad," was published, showing Mr. Burnand and Mr. du Maurier helping him and his Punch Show out of the mud in which he had stuck; in another he was represented as "The Trumpet Blower;" while in an article in "The Mask" (April, 1868), before he had assumed his sway, Mr. Punch is supposed to point to "Mark Lemon's Triumphal Car" and, referring to Taylor, to say: "He is our seraph.... His adaptations, I assure you, are delightful. You must be well up in Michel Levy's rÉpertoire to find him out. He is so very artful."

A peculiar feature of Tom Taylor's editorship was the hieroglyphical character of his handwriting. His missives of instructions to artists and writers came as a terror to the receivers, who could make little of them. "Mr. Tom Taylor's letters," Mr. Swain informs me, "were often very difficult to decipher. His writing was peculiar, and he would also continue the letter if necessary in any odd corner that was vacant. I remember his writing some instructions to an artist one day in this fashion, while I stood at his table, and, while blotting it, saying, 'You can send it off, but I don't think he'll be able to make it out.'" To this experience may be added my own—that I have been the first to decipher one of these notes addressed to an unattached artist, now understood for the first time, nearly twenty years after it was written. To the compositors he was a perpetual tribulation; and it is doubtful if he could not have given points to Horace Greeley. That his son helped him, towards the end, in a secretarial sort of way, was no doubt a saving mercy.

His was one of the busiest literary and journalistic careers of the day; and when he died he left a void—great, it is true, yet in one respect easily enough filled. But it was little to his friends that his humour was not of the brightest and lightest, for his heart was of the warmest, as Mr. George Meredith set forth in the October number of the "Cornhill Magazine," to which he contributed a noble tribute—"To a Friend Recently Lost, T. T."—a sonnet beginning:—

The Punch men, themselves, in a whole-page obituary (July 24th, 1880), bore graceful testimony to his personal worth. "That he is not with us," they said, "is hard to imagine.... A cultivated man of letters, an admirable scholar, he was as free from pedantry as he was incapable of idleness. From first to last he was, in the highest and best sense, 'Thorough.' ... Quick to detect and appreciate talent, he was ready in every way and on all occasions to hold out a helping hand to a beginner." Thus feelingly they spoke of "the dear friend" they had lost. For in his death they forgot the little annoyances they had suffered from the tampering with their lines and spoiling their points, of which they had sometimes had occasion to complain; with other drawbacks belonging to an essentially fidgety nature. It may safely be said, that if he left a hard task to his successor to work up the reputation of Punch as a comic paper, he did not at least render it difficult for him to make his mark by comparison.

No new humorist appeared in the volumes for 1845, although a poet of eminence found expression on a single occasion. To one Kelly is to be credited some humorous verses on "Dunsinane;" to J. Rigby, an Irish Song; to Leech, his Harlequinade verses (which do not aspire even to the dignity of a "trifle" or doggerel); to Watts Phillips, a few articles of little importance; and to J. King, the verses in which an "Exiled Londoner" (p. 147, Vol. IX.) apostrophises his beloved Babylon. The one contribution of importance was that of Mr. Coventry Patmore.

This was written in hot indignation of generous youth (he was but twenty-two years old) at the French atrocity in Algiers, when, during the campaign, General Pelissier filled with straw the mouth of the caves of Dahra, wherein the opposing Arabs, with their women and children, had taken refuge, and set fire to the mass. This foul act of the future Duke of Malakoff caused a thrill of horror to pass through Europe, and the gentle author of "The Angel in the House" was moved by the scandal to the composition of his eight-stanza poem, of which Douglas Jerrold procured the insertion on the 16th of August (p. 73, Vol. IX.):—

The poem follows the details of the massacre, sickening but for the power the lines display. It continues:

It was Mr. Patmore's sole contribution, his Muse never again being startled into any other poetical demonstration of the sort in Punch's pages. The following year he became assistant-librarian at the British Museum.

"Jacob Omnium's" first appearance, curiously enough, was with a short article which, in the reprinted works of Thackeray, has been ascribed to the novelist. This was "A Plea for Plush" (July 20th, 1846), appropriately signed "F???f??????," dealing, it is true, with Jeames's nether garments on a hot day, but still with no internal evidence of style to warrant its ascription to the "Fat Contributor." Henceforward his other few papers were entered to him in his own name of Matthew J. Higgins. He was a great friend of the Punch Staff, particularly of Thackeray and Leech. Of him the former had written in the "Ballad of Policeman X"—

while Leech took his part against Lord John Russell on the occasion of Higgins's "Story of the Mhow Court Martial." He was shown as a tall, self-possessed gentleman, saying to the little fellow, who is sparring up to him—"Pooh, go and hit one of your own size." Higgins's height, indeed, was greater than that of either Thackeray or his friend Dean Hole—six feet eight; and when the three friends walked abroad, the sensation among the passers-by was considerable. On Thackeray and Dean Hole measuring heights once in the house of a common friend, it was found that they were practically equal. "Ah, yes," exclaimed the Dean; "the cases are about the same, but one contains a poor dancing-master's fiddle, and the other a Stradivarius."

Punch's sensation of the year was the fierce revenge taken by Tennyson in its pages on Bulwer Lytton. Bulwer, as is explained elsewhere, had been set up by Punch as one of its pet butts from the very beginning; and when Tennyson's sledge-hammer onslaught was brought to them, so it is said, by a distinguished man of letters—a particular friend of both parties—they rejoiced exceedingly. Tennyson's broadside had not been unprovoked. Years before, in 1830, he had published, through Effingham Wilson, "Poems, chiefly Lyrical," which contained the poem "To a Darling Room," afterwards suppressed. Seizing on this, Lytton had re-echoed in his "New Timon: A Romance of London," the strictures which Christopher North has so severely, though good-naturedly, passed upon it in "Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine" for May, 1832, and furthermore taunted the Laureate with the pension of £200 which had just been conferred upon him. The attack was just the sort to extort a violent reply.

Punch (p. 64, Vol. X.) had rushed in to the rescue with the clever retort:—

"The New Timon" and Alfred Tennyson's Pension.

But Tennyson's was not by any means "the lordly mastiff's port." He was stung by the contemptuous reference to the pension, and proved the truth of Johnson's aphorism—

and he straightway wrote the ten verses that appeared under the title of "The New Timon, and the Poets" (p. 103, Vol. X.), signing them "Alcibiades":—

This crushing rejoinder was cordially welcomed by Thackeray and the rest of the Staff, who loved to castigate the fopperies of the conceited poetaster, and Lytton, it is said, was not a little astonished at the virility of "school-miss Alfred." But Tennyson's anger soon cooled; perhaps his conscience smote him; for the very next week he toned down the savagery of his first verses in an "Afterthought," in which he said:

The first set of verses are not to be found in the poet's collected poems; but the second are included, only "kindly silence" is replaced by "perfect stillness." After that Tennyson broke silence no more; and Lytton subsequently made what was put forward as an amende honorable, in a speech at Hertford (October, 1862), when he said that "we must comfort ourselves with the thought so exquisitely expressed by our Poet Laureate," and so forth. The quarrel between Punch and Lytton faded, first into a truce, and then into friendship; and in 1851 we find several of the Staff playing "Not so Bad as we Seem"—written specially for them—at Devonshire House, before the Queen and the Prince Consort. It may not inappropriately be mentioned that when Woolner's bust of Tennyson was presented to Trinity College and the authorities excluded it from the chapel and library on the ground that there was no precedent for paying so much honour to a living person, Punch, by the hand of Shirley Brooks, published one of the finest parodies extant of the Laureate's style, beginning with the line—

In January, 1847, Horace Smith, the brother of James —— they of the "Rejected Addresses"—contributed a column "Christmas Commercial Report;" and John Macgregor—"Rob Roy"—began his acknowledged series of papers and sketches with "Costumes for the Commons" and "Meeting of the Streets," the pecuniary results of which he devoted to police-court poor-boxes. He was hardly more than a lad at the time; but he was already a strong writer, and his references to the French Revolution have the intrinsic merit that they were written by one who was in Paris at the time when the "Citizen King" took flight to England.

Mr. Henry Silver, ex-Punch Staff officer, first appeared anonymously in Punch in February, 1848, with an obituary notice, sent from Norwich, where he was articled to Sir William Foster, Bart., solicitor. It was called "The Death of Mr. Wimbush's Elephant"—the Jumbo of the period, which had died at the age of eighty-four. He was then only twenty years of age, and, encouraged by this success, he began contributing trifles to "The Month." This publication was edited by Albert Smith in 1851; but although it was illustrated by Leech, and was one of the most genuinely humorous works of its kind, it ran for only six months. When "The Month" came to a sudden stop, the articles remaining unpublished were turned over to Mark Lemon to see what use he could make of them. Some were by Mr. Silver, who was forthwith summoned from his anonymity by a line in Punch: "'Naughty Boy' has not sent his address." Mark Lemon was not kept waiting for the answer, and after paying him for several of his previous contributions (an attention highly appreciated) he at once installed the young man as a writer at the rate of one guinea per column. This, in due course, was raised to thirty shillings, and at that remained until 1881, when he received a weekly stipend of six guineas, which the Editor declared to be the maximum then payable to a Punch writer. Some years previous to this, and soon after the death of Douglas Jerrold, Mr. Silver had been summoned to occupy the place at the Table left vacant by the great satirist. "My chief work," he writes in answer to my inquiry, "was in the decade ending with the 'Sixties, though it by no means ceased then. I often filled four or five columns a week, and contributed 'Punch's History of Costume'" (illustrated by Tenniel), "'Our Dramatic Correspondent,' 'Our Dramatic Spectator,' with a great amount of prose and verse, and sundry pages of the 'Essence of Parliament' when Shirley Brooks was away."

Perhaps Mr. Silver's greatest service to Punch, as elsewhere explained, was his introduction of Charles Keene, with whom he was very intimate for more than forty years. His friendship with Leech, a fellow-Carthusian, though of course greatly his senior, is another interesting passage of his life, testified to by the many hunting sketches which, with a score or more of Keene's, decorated the billiard room of the fine old house in Kensington where Leech had died, and which Mr. Silver subsequently occupied until it was pulled down in 1893.

At Leech's death Mr. Silver was invited by Mark Lemon to apply to the Governors of Charterhouse for the gift of an admission into "Gown-boys" for the son of the great draughtsman who had been so good a friend. After many fruitless efforts he was at length successful, and received the welcome present from the hands of Lord John Russell—as is set forth elsewhere. On the death of Lemon, Mr. Silver severed his regular connection with Punch.

The advent of the brilliant journalist Mr. Sutherland Edwards was the other event of 1848. "I was engaged on Punch," he says, "at the recommendation of Gilbert À Beckett, who had thought well of satirical verses and poems contributed by me to a paper called 'Pasquin.' Douglas Jerrold, however, had been attacked rather severely in 'Pasquin;' not by me, but by James Hannay. Hannay and myself wrote the whole of 'Pasquin' up to the time of my quitting that publication in order to write for Punch; and we considered ourselves jointly responsible for what appeared in its columns. Jerrold was away in the Channel Islands at the time of my being engaged on Punch; and on his return to London he showed himself annoyed (not unnaturally, perhaps) at the Editor, Mark Lemon, having engaged me. 'Two youths,' he was reported to have said, 'throw mud at me, and because one of them hits me in the eye you clasp him to your bosom.' Mark Lemon now asked me to give up writing for Punch, but to contribute as much as I liked to a magazine he was about to start with the assistance of the contributors to Punch. It was to have been called 'The Gallanty Show;' but it never came out. After I had contributed to Punch for some weeks, I wrote a few articles for one of 'Punch's Pocket-Books;' then finding I was not wanted, I ceased to send in contributions, and my engagement came to an end.... I resumed my connection with Punch when Mr. Burnand became Editor (thirty-two years afterwards), and still write for it from time to time, but only as an occasional contributor." In this year Richard Doyle made a slight literary appearance in the paper, with an article on "High Art and the Royal Academy."

Charles Dickens is supposed to have contributed to Punch in the following year (1849) an article entitled "Dreadful Hardships Endured by the Shipwrecked Crew of the London, Chiefly for Want of Water"—a criticism on the scandalous condition of the suburban water supply. Mr. F. G. Kitton has examined the original manuscript preserved by Mrs. Mark Lemon in her autograph album. Mr. Hatton found it among Lemon's papers, bearing on the outside, in the Editor's handwriting, the inscription, "Dickens' only contribution to Punch!" But the alleged contribution is absolutely undiscoverable in the pages of the paper. The explanation is, in Mr. Kitten's words, that "about the time the manuscript was written, several pictorial allusions to foul water in suburban London appeared in Punch, which bear directly upon the subject of Dickens's protest, and it is surmised that the Editor, on the receipt of Dickens's contribution, considered that greater prominence would be given to the matter to which they referred by means of a cartoon than by a few lines of text. Hence we find the rebuke enforced by the pencil of the artist, instead of the mere literary lashing which Dickens intended to inflict upon that particular public grievance." It may safely be suggested that this was the only occasion on which, after his reputation was made, Dickens was ever "declined with thanks." This MS., it may be added, was sold at Sotheby's on the 9th of July, 1889, and was knocked down for £16.

The curious fact remains that Dickens, who was the intimate friend of Punch's Editor for the best part of their working lives, whose publishers were Punch's proprietors as well as the publishers and part proprietors of the "Daily News," which Dickens edited, never contributed to Punch, nor was in any way identified with it, save, indeed, with its Dinner-Table. At that function he was at one time a frequent visitor, and also was he present when at the Prince of Wales's wedding a brilliant company assembled at the publishing office to see the cortÈge go by. It was on that occasion that Sothern, one of the invited guests, arrived on the other side of the way, but, owing to the denseness of the crowd, was utterly unable to force his way across. His friends caught sight of him, and pointed to a policeman. Sothern took the hint. "Get me through," he whispered, "and I'll give you a sovereign." "Afraid I can't," said the man regretfully, "but I'll try." A prodigious effort was made, but unsuccessfully, loud protests going up from the packed crowd. Sothern was at his wits' end; he could not bear the thought of losing such a dinner in such a company, but his invention did not fail him. "Look here," he said to the constable; "put your handcuffs on me, drag me through, and land me at that door, and I'll give you two pounds." The man seized the idea and Sothern together; he slipped on the handcuffs, and with a loud "Make way, there!" dragged his prize through a mass of humanity that was only too happy to assist the law as far as might be; and after a few moments of crushing, pushing, and general rough handling, the dishevelled comedian was successfully landed at Punch's publishing door. "You'll find the money in my waistcoat pocket," said Sothern. But he did not observe that, after the policeman had secured it, a stealthy addition was made to the money in the constabular palm by one of his Punch friends; and only when the man disappeared in the crowd did Sothern realise that a timely bribe had left him to mix with his friends for the rest of the day and to eat his dinner with hands firmly secured in his manacles!

It is said that Dickens held aloof from Punch on account of Thackeray's success in it. If so, the jealousy must have been all on Dickens' side; for Thackeray's well-known exclamation, when he hurried into the Punch office and slapped down before Lemon the latest number of "Dombey and Son" containing Paul Dombey's death, "It's stupendous! unsurpassed! There's no writing against such power as this!" was that of a generous and magnanimous man. Bryan Proctor ("Barry Cornwall"), writing to E. Fitzgerald in 1870, said, "I saw a good deal of Thackeray until his death.... I did not observe much jealousy in Thackeray towards Dickens, nor vice versÂ. They travelled pretty comfortably on their dusty road together. Each had a quantity of good-nature, and each could afford to be liberal to the other." The probable explanation is that Dickens simply did not care to interrupt his triumphant career of novelist in order to write occasional articles in a paper in which anonymity was the rule and rejection so painfully possible.

Once, however, by the hand of Leech, Dickens made an appearance in Punch, and, curiously enough, only once. This was in the drawing of the awful appearance of a "wopps" at a picnic (p. 76, Vol. XVII.), where the novelist appears as the handsome, but not very striking, youth attendant on the young lady who is overcome at the distressing situation. It must be admitted that the portrait is hardly recognisable.

But a serious quarrel broke out between Dickens and the Punch men, publishers and Editor alike—a quarrel wholly on Dickens's side. So great had been his intimacy and his influence that he could cause the insertion of a cartoon and even bring about the alteration of the Dinner day. But now, on the unhappy differences between himself and his wife, trouble arose between old friends. Mark Lemon had naturally leaned towards the wife, from chivalry and sense of right, and the publishers preferred to take no share in a quarrel in which they certainly had no concern. On May 28, 1859, the whole of the back page of Punch was given to an advertisement of "Once a Week," which was to follow "Household Words," and to an explanation of the position of affairs between "Mr. Charles Dickens and his late Publishers." The following paragraphs are all that it is needful to quote from the statement:—

So this foolish estrangement went on until, years afterwards, Clarkson Stanfield on his death-bed besought Dickens to resume his friendship with the man with whom, after all, he had had no cause of quarrel. So Dickens sent to Lemon (whom he doubtless suspected of having written the publishers' damaging defence just quoted) a kindly letter when "Uncle Mark" appeared as Falstaff before the public, and when Stanfield was buried the two men clasped hands over his open grave; and later on, when Dickens died, some of the most touching and beautiful verses that ever appeared in Punch were devoted to his memory.

In 1850 appeared James Hannay, Mr. Sutherland Edwards' associate in "Pasquin," and founder (I am informed by his cousin, Mr. J. L. Hannay, the police magistrate) of "The Puppet Show." It was when he was approached by the proprietors of this periodical (the Vizetelly brothers), and was asked to write for it as well—"Something in the manner of Sterne, with a dash of Swift"—he replied that in that case his remuneration would have to be "Something in the manner of Rothschild, with a dash of Baring." Hannay was at that time on the "Morning Chronicle," after having, like Jerrold and Stanfield, given a trial to the Royal Navy and found it wanting. He literally fought his way into Punch, just as Shirley Brooks did a few years subsequently, and was assisted from within by the kindly appreciation of Thackeray. Perhaps Jerrold was reconciled to the accession in view of Hannay having started "The Puppet Show" with the main object of violently assaulting his old friend and chum Mr. Edwards, who, in spite of all journalistic amenities, remained his chum, for these assaults were only attacks pour rire.

For a time Hannay's pen was of the utmost value to Punch. His earliest contributions were notes on a tour in Scotland—his native country—he describing himself as "The Scotchman who went back again." But he did not remain very long with Punch; besides being a wit, he was a scholar with a very serious side to his character, and the amusement of the public became, in his eyes, less important than their instruction. He was only twenty-three when he produced his first novel of "Singleton Fontenoy, R.N.," which so pleased Carlyle that it induced the old philosopher to invite him to his house. Then he turned lecturer on literary subjects, became "Quarterly" reviewer, married a daughter of Kenny Meadows, took to diplomacy in a small way, and was appointed Her Majesty's Consul at Barcelona, where he died in 1873. Mr. Holman Hunt, one of the band of wits and youthful geniuses of whom Hannay was the wittiest of all, writes to me of him as "a contributor of great power who might with self-control have gained a great position—a friend who used to come on our nocturnal boating expeditions up the river. He was one of the dear crew who in different capacities and with varied powers once manned life's larger boat with me."

Sir John Tenniel contributed a few pieces in 1851 (p. 56, Vol. XX.) and later, but they were of little importance. Cuthbert Bede was as much a writer as a draughtsman, as he showed by his parody of the "High-mettled Racer." Then came another of Punch's stars of the first magnitude, Shirley Brooks.