Charles L. Graves

“ From 1906 right up to the war no feature of the feverish pleasure-hunt indulged in by the idle rich escaped the vigilant eye of "Blanche," whose "Letters," when all allowance is made for a spice of exaggeration and for the wit which the author perhaps too generously ascribes to her puppets, remain a substantially faithful picture of the audacious frivolity, the inanity, the rowdiness and the extravagance of England de luxe, unashamed of its folly, yet, at its worst, never inhuman or even arrogant. ”

“ Towards Barrie as a playwright Punch was at first much less benevolent than he had been to Barrie the novelist, and Mr. Granville Barker's plays depressed more than they impressed him. But for rather more than half the period under review Punch's critiques of plays were primarily a medium for jocular comment, for fun at all costs, for explosions of puns. As a devotee of cheerfulness he resented gloom; as a professional humorist he found himself out of touch with a good deal of the new humour, the new whimsicality, the new wit. ”

“ 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." ”

“ For "Wolf" read "Worldling" for "Jungle" read "Social World" and Punch's parallel "Laws" work out well enough. But in the years that followed it was not so much mammon-worship as the craze for excitement at all costs that dominated the fashionable world. The vulgarity and love of the limelight which Du Maurier had satirized were multiplied tenfold. Society became a romp and a ramp. ”

“ Otherwise, and in spite of the renown of Strauss, Germany ceased to exercise her old musical supremacy, and, even before the war, Russia, France and Italy had entered into a formidable competition with the "predominant partner" in the domain of opera. And though opera is an artificial blend of incompatibles and must always remain on a lower plane than abstract or absolute music—the most transcendental thing in the whole range of art—it claims priority of notice in this record for two sufficient reasons: its social prestige and the amount of space devoted to it by Punch. ”

“ Your people are by nature the mildest and most loyal, and by tradition and education the most thoughtful, in Europe. But mild and loyal as they are their minds must rise in revolt against a sovereign who reproduces in the crudest form the stale theories of divine right and arbitrary government, whose one notion of administration is to increase his stupendous military forces by taxation while diminishing the number of his reasonable critics by imprisonment. ”

“ Punch was a great lover of the "noble animal," but it was precisely for that reason that he welcomed its release from the drudgery and suffering, the maltreatment and overloading inseparable from the old order. The speeding-up of street traffic brought with it new perils and noises, but it freed us from many discomforts and nuisances—for example, the "cab-runner," rampant in the middle 'nineties, who plagued unprotected females by his extortions and insolence until the coming of the taxi ran him off his legs. ”

“ The internal embarrassments of the Cabinet certainly must have taxed the smiling capacities of the Premier to the utmost, to say nothing of Ulster and the militant suffragists. Yet when Dame Curzon is depicted tempting Master Asquith to take a joy-ride on a donkey labelled "General Election," Master Asquith replies that he is not taking any violent exercise this season, but thinks of waiting till 1915. There are not a few people who in the interests of the country are very thankful that the Liberals were still in power and not in opposition when the great decision had to be made a year later. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Behold, a star is born!
George Meredith was an old friend of Punch's from the days when he contributed to Once a Week, but he was not exempt from criticism on that account, as I have already shown. In 1894 he was again burlesqued in a parody of Lord Ormont and his Aminta, which ran through three numbers and was decorated with a portrait of the author as a bull in the china shop of syntax, grammar and form. Punch in middle age only dimly appreciated Meredith's genius, and was disconcerted by his obscurity. ”

“ Whatever views may be held as to the origin of the Boer war—that it was forced on by mining magnates, or that it was the inevitable result of a reactionary system which threatened our hold on South Africa—it remains one of the very few examples of a war which, in the long run, left things better than they had been, and satisfied the aspirations of the majority of the conquered. ”

“ The chronicles of sport and pastime from the early 'nineties down to the outbreak of the War are one long and instructive commentary on the old saying that in the long run the pupil always beats his master. At the opening of this period, though assailed in the domain of athletic sports by the Americans, and in that of cricket by the Australians, Great Britain still led the world in games and most forms of sport. ”

“ The cinematograph added a new entertainment and terror to life. The submarine, it is true, dated from the time of the American Civil war, but its improvements clearly foreshadowed the formidable part it was destined to play in the Great War. The long and splendid annals of Arctic and Antarctic explorations were crowned by the exploits of Peary and Amundsen and our own heroic Scott. On this side of the New Order, as on others, Punch supplies a commentary which, though necessarily incomplete and irregular, is invariably animated and often instructive. ”

“ Society went on its way unheeding. The increasing publicity of social life is satirized under "Public Passion" in the recital of a young wife who writes: "We are never at home. I believe it is fashionable to go to hospitals now and be ill amongst all sorts and conditions of people." The honeymoon was passing because brides could not face the awful loneliness of a tête-à-tête existence, and welcomed a speedy return to a semi-detached go-as-you-please existence amongst their friends. ”

“ Throughout this period whiskers remained in disfavour with all men of fashion, though they lingered on among the elderly and the middle-aged. Pianists, artists and literary geniuses still wore their hair long. The value of a beard in correcting an imperfect profile was admirably illustrated in Du Maurier's picture of the complacent Admiral in 1894, and naval officers, then and now, availed themselves of a privilege denied to the other Service, without any loss of trimness and smartness of appearance. ”

“ For these were the years of the Yellow Book—alternately regarded as typical of fin de siècle decadence (in Punch's view) or as a symbol of literary renascence—of the now forgotten "emancipation novel," The Yellow Aster; to say nothing of the Yellow Peril and the Yellow Press. The Daily Mail, by the way, was not founded till 1896. As a social satirist Punch, throughout all this period, is much more concerned with the material or physical than the mental or spiritual vagaries of the rich and well-to-do. ”

“ The Germans are the only modern people who have a single word to express delight in the misfortunes of others—Schadenfreude. It is not a noble sentiment, but a suspicion of it mingles with Punch's comments on Germany's internal troubles. In 1878 he had shown Bismarck squeezing down the Socialist Jack-in-the-Box, and nearly thirty years later repeats the formula at the expense of Count von Bülow; but the Socialist Jack-in-the-Box was now a much more formidable figure: it was "a bigger task for a smaller man." ”

“ Yet if Punch was increasingly critical of Labour—organized Labour—he was very far from being a thick-and-thin champion of Capital. Greedy employers and directors are never spared. The agricultural depression in 1892 furnishes him with the occasion for a vigorous onslaught on railway rates. Agriculture is shown as a female figure, bound hand and foot by Foreign Competition, lying prostrate on the track and about to be run down by an engine labelled Railway Rates. In 1895 the verses and cartoon inspired by lock-outs on the Clyde are equally severe on the employers. ”

“ Fashion has many phases; and children's Christmas presents reflect the popular tastes of the moment. In 1908 Punch printed the appeal of a little girl to Santa Claus to help her to avoid getting as many as possible of the same presents. This last Christmas it had been "perfectly absurd"—an endless iteration of Peter Pan story books, Golliwogs and copies of Alice in Wonderland, illustrated by Rackham and other artists. The sacrilegious attempt to supersede Tenniel's classical designs naturally met with no sympathy from Punch, and, what is more to the point, did not prove a success. ”

“ 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! ”

“ To-day we read with an amused surprise Punch's comment in 1900 on the introduction of an eight-hours' day for domestics in Australia, and his forecast of a similar state of affairs in England under a new Patriarchal Statute. Nor is there anything wildly extravagant in his ironical anticipation of the cook of the future demanding £100 wages, though unable to guarantee more in return than "chop one day and steak the next." The higher education of servants, according to Punch, was tending to produce a type which knew everything except the things which really mattered. ”

“ It was another matter altogether when Punch heard that Clifford's Inn was to be pulled down in April of the same year. In his indignation he suggests that the Temple Gardens, Middle Temple Hall and Temple Church should forthwith be sacrificed to the craze for improvements, and continues in the same strain of exaggerated irony:—
If you turn the Charterhouse into a railway station, the Tower into warehouses and Westminster Hall into an Inebriates' Home, something will have been done towards making London a happier and a better place. ”