The literary error, too, is held to be inexcusable, and Punch is pointed at with scorn for a misquotation from Horace; or an incorrect rendering in one of his drawings of an antiquarian inscription; or a slip in a Shakespearean line; or an inaccuracy in slang or dialect. Scottish, Irish, Suffolk, or Yorkshire must all be perfectly rendered, or the natives will know the reason why. In August, 1894, Mr. Hodgson sent from the Yorkshire moors a story of a keeper who, dissatisfied with the calendar, replies to a sportsman's inquiries: "Well, sir, middlin', pretty middlin'. But, oh dear, it's awk'ard this 'ere Twelfth bein' fixed of a Sunday! Now might Mr. Gladstone ha' had hanything to do wi' that arrangement, sir?" An outraged correspondent—a fluent Yorkshire conversationalist, of course—at once corrected the original version and translated it into the true vernacular: "Nobbut middlin', sir, nobbut middlin'. But, ah lad, it's a fond business this puttin' t' Twelfth o' a Sunday. Div ye think 'at owd Gladstone 'ad owt to do wi' it?" And again Punch rarely introduces "mon" (as an equivalent for "man") into his Scotch jokes without producing a disclaimer against this alleged "peculiarly British error."

A third form of mistake commonly gloated over is that which touches some general fact of economics or social matters. An example of this was Mr. Linley Sambourne's drawing, entitled "An Embarras de Richesses," graphically illustrating the glut of money in "the City" in the summer of 1894. The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street is shown standing on a pile of bags of bullion impatiently waving back the City men who are pressing forward with more bags of gold, which bags are labelled "Deposits." But the Bank of England allows no interest on deposits, as suggested by the drawing and its accompanying verses; and the draughtsman, explained one of the financial papers which gleefully called attention to the misconception, "thought it was the Old Lady who had reduced her deposit rates to one-half per cent."

But what are considered the most heinous, as well as the rarest, of all blunders are those of policy or important movements, which, of course, concern large bodies of men, whether they constitute a party, a constituency, or a strike. A case in point was the cartoon dedicated (August, 1893) to the miners on strike in Northumberland and Durham: but at that particular moment it was the miners of other districts who were so involved. Another instance was the substitution of Mr. Logan, M.P., for Mr. Leon, M.P. (December, 1893), in a Parliamentary picture that illustrated an incident mentioned in the "Essence of Parliament." But it may be taken that the error was rather a slip than a blunder that represented "Toby barking up the wrong tree."

It is natural, of course, that the "faddists" should be among Mr. Punch's most impatient critics, because "fad" and "cant" have always been Punch's pet ground-game that he loves to run to earth. It is perhaps from the Temperance party that he has had most sport, for he has always taken delight in the pictures they dislike the most—the incomparable drawings of Leech and Keene, which show the humorous, instead of only the hateful, side of inebriety; and he chuckles as he reads, now their protests against Mr. Bernard Partridge's excruciating pictures of a drunken man's "progress," now the plaintive paragraph that "in a recent issue of Punch more than twenty-five per cent. of the advertisements concerned hotels, wines, spirits, and mineral waters!"

And, lastly, there is the critic who is always bewailing Punch's deterioration—an impending dissolution which has been announced from the second number!

People in Society seem curiously fond of expressing this opinion to the members of the Staff themselves, if all the stories current are to be believed. "Well, you know, Mr. Milliken," once remarked a lady, "I do not think Punch is as good as it used to be." "No," assented the creator of 'Arry; "it never was!"

For such as these there is and can be no comfort; for them there is no excellence save in the past; no inferiority save in the present. The perusal of humorous papers is of course but a poor occupation for pessimists such as they, and it is hardly likely that it could ever awaken in them sentiments other than those so tersely put by the "Gentlewoman's" poet:—

"In vain I search for humour each And every 'comic' 'neath the sky. Alas! I fear the busy Leech Has sucked the vein of humour dry!"

FOOTNOTES:

[25] "Anti-Punch, or the Toy-shop in Fleet Street; a Romance of the Nineteenth Century." By the Author of "Anti-Coningsby." 16mo. 1847.

[26] This declaration, if not absolutely accurate, has often been repeated, and was confirmed at the Church Congress of 1893 by Dr. Welldon, who held up Punch as the one clean paper for the rest of the Press to follow!



CHAPTER XI.

ENGRAVING AND PRINTING.

Mr. Joseph Swain supersedes Ebenezer Landells—His Education as Engraver—Head of His Department—Engraving the Big Cut: Then and Now—Printing from the Wood-blocks—Leech's Fastidiousness—Impracticability of Keene—Thackeray's Little Confidence—A Record of Half a Century.



It was in 1843 that Mr. Swain engraved his first block for Punch. It was a drawing by Leech, on p. 50 of the fourth volume, to illustrate one of Albert Smith's "Side-Scenes of Society." The services of Landells, it will be remembered, had been suddenly dispensed with by the proprietors—for reasons of business jealousy according to Landells, though the proprietors gave out, in some quarters at least, for lack of proper excellence in his work. When they had decided to give Landells his conge, Bradbury and Evans looked about for another to replace him, and offered the engraving to one of the brothers Jewett. By him the task was readily undertaken, although he was, as he knew, wholly unable to carry it out; and when a block with one of Leech's drawings upon it was sent to him as a test, he offered the execution of it to his young acquaintance, Joseph Swain. So pleased was Leech with the result that he strongly recommended that the man who had cut such a block should, in place of the middleman, be installed as manager of the engraving department; and from that time forward that important portion of the work has remained in the hands of one of Punch's most faithful, loyal, and talented servants, of whom Punch has happily had so many.

Mr. Swain had been brought up by his father from Oxford, his natal town, when he was nine years of age, and five years later had been placed with N. Whittock, a draughtsman of Islington, to learn the art and craft of wood-cutting. But though Mr. Whittock was something of an artist, he was less of an engraver; and finding after a few years that he was making but little progress, young Swain applied for instruction to Thomas Williams. That distinguished engraver was one of the few excellent "facsimile men" of the day; and he agreed to accept the applicant as "improver." At that time he was engaged in engraving the blocks of an edition of "Paul et Virginie"—the well-known illustrated edition which was published in Paris in 1838. For at that time there were fewer facsimile engravers in Paris than in London, and what there were, in point of ability, were not to be compared with the Englishmen; so that it was no uncommon thing for the best work to be sent from France to be executed in this country. On this particular work Meissonier, Johannot, Horace Vernet, and others had been engaged; and when that was finished, the series of works published by Charles Knight provided endless work for the skilled gravers at Williams' command: Harvey's "Arabian Nights," "Shakespeare," and the "History of Greece," and other notable works. It was a great school of engravers that existed then, both of masters and pupils, and included, besides Thomas Williams himself, his brother and sister, Samuel and Mary Ann Williams (a brilliant engraver she, who never gained her due of reputation), John Thompson, Orrin Smith, W. J. Linton, John Jackson, Mason Jackson, W. T. Greene, Robert Branston, Landells, the Dalziel Brothers,[27] and Edmund Evans. Most of them were soon employed by W. Dickes, under whose management the Abbotsford edition of Scott's works was being executed; and to Dickes, Joseph Swain also transferred his services. In due course the young engraver left that establishment, and had not long been on the look-out for a satisfactory opening when he received from Jewett the little commission which landed him in a very short time in the service of Punch, in which he remained until he retired from business in favour of his son, after a completed period of half a century.

For some years Mr. Swain remained at the head of the Punch engraving department, devoting himself, and his six or eight assistants, exclusively to Punch work. He then pointed out to the proprietors how, by conducting and extending the business on his own account, he could carry out their work more economically while increasing his own field of operations and doubling his earning powers. The suggestion was acted upon, and the result proved satisfactory to both parties. For by this time he had educated the necessary engravers to that style of facsimile cutting in which he himself, and but few besides, had been specially trained, and he was enabled to keep the weekly expense of engraving Punch down to an average of under thirty pounds, and at the same time to spend his superfluous energies on many of the most famous illustrated books of his day.

For many years the boxwood blocks on which the drawings were made consisted of a single piece; for, as already explained, Charles Wells of Bouverie Street, at first a cabinetmaker of rare excellence, and later on a boxwood importer, had not then invented the device which revolutionised newspaper illustration—that of making a block in six or more sections which could be taken apart after the drawing had been made (and later on photographed) upon its surface and distributed among the engravers, and then screwed together again when each man had completed his own little piece. The invention which led to such an economy of time was only introduced in 1860 or thereabouts. For nineteen years Punch had to see his big blocks cut on a single piece of wood, which was one of the reasons why the earlier cartoons and "pencillings" were, as a rule, so much more roughly drawn and hastily cut. In those early days a single "round" of wood was used—a "round" that had been cross-cut from the trunk of the tree. This was always kept seasoning until by natural shrinkage it had split up to the centre, when a tongue-shaped piece of box was fitted into the triangular vacancy and screwed firmly through. Then the block was squared as well as its shape permitted, and when its surface had been properly prepared, it was ready for the artist.

As I find myself discussing technical details in Punch production, it may be well to go a step further, for such matters can hardly fail to interest the reader. The cartoon, for reasons of economy of time, has always, up to 1893, been drawn upon the wood[28]—not upon paper, as has been possible to the rest of the Staff for a good many years past—and is delivered into Mr. Swain's hands by Friday night. Twenty-four hours later the engraving of the block is completed, and it is handed over to the printers, who are already clamouring for it to be put in their formes—for there is no time to electrotype it, nor of course to stereotype the pages. Stereotyping, indeed, has been the latest of the innovations on Punch—an innovation to be reckoned but a year or two old—for Punch, in his own house at least, is a Conservative among Conservatives. What was always present in the publisher's mind was that the "foreign edition" had to be ready printed off by Monday morning, and every moment was necessarily grudged during which the machines were not running—even those few short minutes when a sheet or two of the paper, at first starting, were taken to Mr. Swain to be judged as to the printing of the cuts, or as to whether they wanted a little more "colour," or a little pressure taken off. "To myself," Mr. Swain tells me, "it has always been a pleasing reflection that during the whole time of my connection with Punch, extending over fifty years, I have never once failed to get my work done in time and without accident. Of course, now and again it has been a very near thing, but it has always been done somehow."

It has ever been matter for surprise to outsiders that the conductors of the journal could tempt Fate so recklessly as to put the original wood-blocks on the machines. As has been seen, there was no alternative. But the fact remains that they ran a continual risk for fifty years which no other journal would care to face for a single week; for an accident to a single block (and such accidents are all too common) would have jeopardised the whole week's edition, as no other original existed (as it exists nowadays) from which the damaged block might be reproduced, or by which it might be superseded.

So it was only after the printing of an edition that the blocks were electrotyped. It is a curious fact that after 70,000 or 80,000 had been printed these blocks were nearly always found as good as new so far as the wood was concerned; only towards the end of the edition the blocks would sometimes get so filled up that some of the fine work was entirely lost, and the electros then taken suffered in consequence. An examination of this substance would show that it consisted of lime and pulp from the paper itself, compressed in a solid body so hard that it almost defied the graver to remove it.

Those early days were halcyon times for Punch engravers. Mark Lemon would come down two or three times a week to edit and make up the paper, and would talk leisurely with Mr. Swain of such matters as concerned the engraver. No block was hurried. If it could not be ready for one week, it was held over for the next—a saving grace which the engraver has now and again acknowledged by drawing an initial or other simple design on the wood half an hour before going to press, when the Editor hurriedly required such a decoration—possibly to supply an artist's omission. Such sketches were "The Cabman's Ticket" in February, 1854, put upon the wood from a scribble by Gilbert a Beckett—his sole artistic contribution to Punch; "Broom v. Brush" in May, 1859; and "The Turkish Bath" in 1880. And, above all, "process" had not yet held out its alluring promise of nearly equal results, to the inexpert eye, at a quarter of the cost of wood-engraving.

In another way did Mr. Swain place his mark on the pages of Punch—by the introduction of many a young artist to the Editor. It was he who thus introduced Mr. T. Harrington Wilson to Mark Lemon, Mr. Ralston to Shirley Brooks, R. B. Wallace (whose acquaintance he had made through Mr. Frederick Shields) and Mr. Wheeler to Tom Taylor, and others, too, to the various rulers of Punch. In some cases the artists themselves approached the engraver; in others, it was the Editor who would ask him to recommend some clever designer who could best execute this or that little drawing which he wanted done. Further service rendered by him was the share he took in educating several of Punch's more imposing personages for the work they had to do—such as Doyle, McDonnell, and others.

It has often been quoted of Leech that after he had shown a drawing on the wood to any friend who might happen to be with him, he would add with a sigh—"But wait till next week and see how the engraver will spoil it!" This was a piece of unintentional injustice, for the fault lay with the conditions of rapid printing (for Punch has always been, and still is, printed on a cylinder machine)—with the printer, the ink-maker, and the paper manufacturer more than with the engraver, as a glance at the proofs of the engravings will show.

Speaking of this matter, Dean Hole says: "If the position of an eyelash was altered, or the curve of a lip was changed, there might be an ample remainder to convey the intention and to win the admiration of those who never knew their loss, but the perfection of the original was gone. Again and again I have heard him [Leech] sigh as he looked over the new number of Punch; and as I, seeing but excellence, would ask an explanation, he would point to some almost imperceptible obliquity which vexed his gentle soul." It is a curious fact that, in common with most draughtsmen, Leech never became reconciled to the fact that black printer's-ink cannot exactly render the tender grey tones of a hard lead pencil; but to the fact that he had not much to complain of Mr. Frith bears witness: "I once saw one of Leech's drawings on the wood, and I afterwards saw it in Punch, and I remember wondering at the fidelity with which it was rendered. Some of the lines, finer than the finest hair, had been cut away or thickened, but the character, the vigour, and the beauty were scarcely damaged." In connection with this subject Mr. Layard, in his "Life of Charles Keene," compared a photogravure and a wood-block of one of the Punch pictures, with the principal, though unintended, result of proving how indulgent are wood-engraving and the tool of the skilled craftsman to the artist who inconsiderately persists in using grey inks of varying intensities and subtle lines of indefinite thicknesses on paper of various colour-patches, when reproduction upon wood is his sole ultimate aim.

As Mr. Swain lived for some time close to Thackeray's house, it was an occasional custom of his to call on his way to the office to see if the great "Thack" had any blocks ready that he might carry away with him. The novelist was usually at breakfast when he called, and would request that his visitor might be shown into the library. There he would presently join him and, if he were behindhand with his work, would request Mr. Swain to have a seat, a cigar, and a chat, while he produced a Punch drawing "while you wait." "Ah, Swain!" he said one day, looking up from his block, when he was more than usually confidential, "if it had not been for Punch, I wonder where I should be!"

Mr. Joseph Swain retired in 1890 from the business he had formed, and handed it over to his son, who had been many years identified with it, and still continues the weekly engraving of the Punch cartoon. Wood-engraving has now been abandoned for all other illustrations, the first process block tried on the paper being Mr. Linley Sambourne's drawing called "Reconciliation, a scene from the new screaming farce, the 'Political Box and Cox,'" on the 3rd December, 1892 (p. 273); but that the innovation has been equally happy in the case of every artist I am not prepared to maintain.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] Mr. George Dalziel writes to me: "For myself I was somewhat intimately connected with the publication from its birth; being associated with Landells as an engraver, it fell to my lot to engrave ... the first drawing contributed by John Leech, under the title of 'Foreign Affairs,' with many of the cartoons by Kenny Meadows, as well as many of the drawings of every artist engaged upon the journal, so long as Landells had anything to do with Punch."

[28] With the exception of the Almanac cartoon, for which the engraver has ample time.



CHAPTER XII.

PUNCH'S WRITERS: 1841.

Mark Lemon—As Others Saw Him—His Duties—His Industry—His Staff and their Apportioned Work—Lemon as an Editor—And Diplomatist—A Testimonial—And a Practical Joke—Henry Mayhew—His Great Powers and Little Weaknesses—Disappointment and Retirement—Stirling Coyne—Gilbert Abbott a Beckett—His Early Career—Tremendous Industry—A Beckett and Robert Seymour—Appointed Magistrate—Locked In—Angus B. Reach.



Mark Lemon was thirty-one when he found himself co-editor of Punch. His salary, it is true, was not more than thirty shillings a week; but it was to rise before his death to fifteen hundred pounds a year—a higher amount, it is said, than has been received by any other "weekly editor," before or since. However, he had found financial salvation; for although his playwriting had not been unsuccessful—and by the time he died his pieces were to be numbered by the score—the drama in the days of short runs was not a remunerative form of literature. His natural bonhomie stood him in good stead; it charmed his friends and non-plussed his enemies. Of the latter, it must be admitted, he had more than enough—or, at least, men to whom he was intensely antipathetic. One eminent journalist—more eminent than Mark himself—writes him down "a mealy-mouthed sycophant;" and another, hardly less popular, went further still in his denunciation, and, if he were to be believed, Mark Lemon must have been one of the most accomplished humbugs of his time. "There was nothing good about Mark," said a distinguished draughtsman, who worked with the Punch Editor for many a long year, "but his laugh." But against this criticism—which was that of men whose judgment ought to be clear and sound, and was, moreover, shared by others—there is an overwhelming mass of evidence in favour of Lemon's extreme amiability, kindness, and geniality. He, naturally, was the butt of rival comic papers, who would taunt him with his Jewish descent, with the mildness of his jokes and humour, and the bitterness of his false friendship. A favourite form was to print among supposed "Births" such a line as this: "On Wednesday, the 26th ult., at Whitefriars, Mr. Mark Lemon, of a joke, stillborn."

But Lemon could well afford to ignore all such attacks. Mr. George Chester, his life-long friend, pronounced him the prince of cronies, and I have seen many letters from him instinct with affection and jovial humour. One of them, by the way, gives information that "our nursemaid has the chicken-pock, and we expect to see her throw out feathers to-morrow." When he entered the composing-room he was invariably received with a cheer by the men, whom he called "my Caxtonian Bees." Charles Dickens believed in him as "a most affectionate and true-hearted fellow," and so described him to Sir A. H. Layard (in whose interest Dickens arranged for Tenniel's fine "Nineveh Bull" cartoon to be published); and though he quarrelled with him, because Lemon had the courage, chivalry, and uprightness to take Mrs. Dickens's side against her husband, he brought the estrangement to a close with a kindly message when Lemon first appeared as Falstaff. Mr. Joseph Hatton carries his friendly admiration almost to the point of Lemonolatry; and the man who could inspire such friendship must assuredly have been endowed with sterling qualities and with a lovable nature.

"Mr. Lemon impressed me," writes Mr. E. J. Ellis, "as the kindest and most lovable elderly boy I had ever seen. He evidently accepted my little sketches only for the promise, not the performance, of them. Some were rejected. This was done so genially that I found myself hastening to refuse my own drawings for him rather than put him to the effort of sparing my feelings while doing so. 'Here I sit,' he said, 'like a great ogre, eating up people's little hopes.' Then he showed me his waste-paper basket, and added—'But what am I to do? Look here!' I confess I never saw, except on pavement in coloured chalks, such nerve-twisting horrors as the paper sketches people sent." It is obvious from this that the writer never watched the pictures entering the Royal Academy on Sending-in Day.

Mark Lemon loved Punch; as well he ought. He refused to visit America to give his readings on terms that were highly alluring, as he could not find it in his heart to abandon the command, even for a time, nor bear to miss his two days a week at Whitefriars. When he said truly that he and Punch were made for each other, and that he "would not have succeeded in any other way," he might fairly have added, had he wished, how hard he had laboured for that success. Mr. Birket Foster has drawn me a vivid picture of how in those early days he had to visit Lemon in his Newcastle Street lodgings, and, mounting to the topmost storey, found him in an untidy, undusted room, sitting in his shirt-sleeves, with Horace Mayhew by his side plying the scissors, working at the weekly "make-up" of Punch with the desperate eagerness that was, in time, to bear so rich a harvest.

How Mark Lemon helped to bring together the original Staff has already been seen. It was, doubtless, his sound display of business capacity and character, in addition to his literary aptitude, that induced Henry Mayhew and Landells to nominate him as one of the co-editors—for that was a quality in which both Henry Mayhew and Stirling Coyne were confessedly deficient. "There are forty men of wit," says Swift, "for one man of sense." So the paper was started, and the very first article, "The Moral of Punch," was Lemon's;[29] but neither then nor after did he write much for it, though he still contributed a certain amount of graceful, serious verse, under the title of "Songs for the Sentimental," with a farcical last line which affects the reader suddenly like a cold douche. He wrote, as well, many short epigrams, paragraphs, and the like, besides being a fairly prolific suggestor of the cartoons; but the sum of his literary labours on the paper would not compare with that of the members on the Staff. To him fell the organisation, administration, and practical making-up of the paper.

In the early days of Punch, during those infantile convulsions to which the paper threatened to succumb, Mark Lemon assured his position by the great zeal with which he carried out his duties; and at the transfer of Punch he was left sole Editor, by the fiat of the new proprietors. Stirling Coyne left without real regret, though in considerable dudgeon at his treatment; he had many other irons in the fire, and the conditions of journal-weaning were unattractive to him. But to Henry Mayhew it was a bitter disappointment. It was he who had made Punch what it was; he found himself ousted from his legitimate position, and he considered, in his own words, that Mark Lemon "had allowed himself to be bought over," so that a coolness sprang up between the two men which was never quite removed.

In his work Lemon did not spare himself. For a time Horace Mayhew was his sub-editor, to whom fell the usual duties of the post—("Be it yours," as a careless speaker in the office nicknamed "Heavens!" is traditionally said to have advised, "Be it yours, 'Orace, to hurge the hartises [artists] hon!")—but before long Lemon took that duty upon himself, driving round to the chief contributors one day in the week to satisfy himself that their drawings and "copy" would be to time. The story goes that he always employed the same driver, and that when the man was about to replace the old vehicle with a new one, he suggested to Lemon, with glowing pride at the brightness of the idea, that he should have a figure of Punch emblazoned on the panels. In later years Lemon's son Harry acted as his secretary, and sometimes, though unofficially, as his sub-editor, and generally undertook the "travelling" for his father.

It was in Lombard Street, Whitefriars, of classic memory, that Bradbury and Evans carried on the practical part of their business; and here Mark Lemon might often be seen, radiant and effulgent as the circulation rose. In May,1843, Punch had removed from Wellington Street, Strand, to 194, Strand, an office which he gave up to his young rival, "The Great Gun," in January, 1845, in order to remove to 92, Fleet Street. Here he only remained for a couple of months, and, migrating in March of the same year, he set up for good and all in 85, Fleet Street, on the very site in St. Bride's Churchyard of the tailor's house where Milton once kept school. In the editorial office the Punch Staff would often write their articles, Thackeray especially taking advantage of the convenience. "In three hours more," he wrote to Mrs. Brookfield in 1850, "Mr. W. M. T. is hard at work at Punch office."

The management of the weekly "copy," the arrangement for series, and the dealing with outside applications of all sorts, quite apart from artistic contributions, were together no light task for the Editor, especially when one or other of the writers failed him, and the illustrations that were to accompany their articles had to be retaken into consideration. From the beginning outside contributions were remorselessly discouraged; yet some remarkable poems and sketches have come to Punch unsolicited from famous and brilliant pens, as will subsequently be seen. Still, the paper has always been a fairly close borough—as, after all, it has a perfect right to be; and by that means has been enabled to keep its distinctive colour—in contrast with the "Fliegende Blaetter," for example, whose staff may truly be said to consist of the whole German people. To each writer was allotted a certain space, which he was expected to fill; and when there was a deficit in the amount of his contribution—which there generally was, and a heavy one—it was duly entered up. Thus for a long while Douglas Jerrold's half-yearly total was theoretically 162 columns (or a weekly average of six and a quarter); Gilbert a Beckett's, 135 columns (five and a quarter); Percival Leigh's, Tom Taylor's, and Horace Mayhew's, 54; and Thackeray's, 46 columns; but few of them ever came up to their proper total. In earlier days, before Albert Smith left, the following were the weekly tasks: Jerrold, five columns; Gilbert a Beckett, four; Smith and Leigh, two each; and after Smith's departure a Beckett succeeded to Jerrold's figures.

The records of the Staff's contributions were kept as follows, their relative proportions being exactly shown. I take one volume at random, the seventh, that for the second half-year of 1844:—

- - - - - - Total Septem- Octo- Novem- Decem- of Six Weekly Contributors July August ber ber ber ber Months Average - - - - - - Douglas Jerrold 20-1/4 17-1/4 23-1/2 27[30] 20-1/4 31-1/2 139-3/4 5-1/4 Gilbert a Beckett 15-1/4 18 6-1/2 17-1/4 17 19-3/4 94-3/4 3-1/2 Percival Leigh 4-1/2 8-3/4 9 5 5-1/2 6-1/4 39 1-1/2 Thackeray 8 5-3/4 6 4-3/4 24-1/2 1 Horace Mayhew 2-1/2 2-1/2 3-1/2 2 2-1/2 3-3/4 16-3/4 1/2 T. Taylor 3-1/4 3 6-1/4 1/4 Ferguson 1[31] 3/4 1 1-3/4 Editor[32] 5 1-1/4 3 1 2 8 20 3/4 Oxenford 1-1/2 1-1/2 Laman Blanchard 1-3/4 1-3/4 H. Wills 1/2 1/2 1 - - - - - Total of columns in volume 347 -

A more comprehensive view may be had from a glance at the table on the following page, which covers perhaps the most interesting period of Punch's early history.

From this table it will be seen that Douglas Jerrold contributed as much as 139 columns to Vol. VII. and Gilbert a Beckett 122 to the next; and that the Editor's section after Vol. VI. was to some extent split up under the names of the individual contributors who composed it. In addition to these names during the period covered by the table, there may be added those of Tom Hood (3-3/4), T. J. Serle, Charles Lever, Horace Smith, and Doyle.

Another source of trouble to the Editor was the holiday-time as it came round, for the Staff would scatter itself and, though arrangements were made of course beforehand, the paper was sometimes run in a curiously undermanned condition. Thus, for example, on the week of August 12, 1848 (No. 370), Jerrold was at Guernsey, Thackeray was at Brussels, Horace Mayhew at Ramsgate, and Tom Taylor away on circuit. The whole paper was in consequence written by three men—by Gilbert a Beckett and Percival Leigh at home, and by Horace Mayhew, who thoughtfully sent in more than four columns from the country, so that his absence should not be felt.

AMOUNT OF TEXT (IN COLUMNS) CONTRIBUTED BY THE WRITERS INDICATED FROM VOL. VI. TO VOL. XIV. INCLUSIVE—FROM JANUARY, 1844, TO JUNE 24, 1848 (NINE VOLUMES).

KEY: A - Douglas Jerrold B - Gilbert a Becket C - Percival Leigh D - W. M. Thackeray E - John Oxenfold F - Editor G - Horace Mayhew H - Tom Taylor

- - - - - - - -+ Vol. A B C D E F G H -+ - - - - - - - VI. 81-1/4 113-1/4 41-1/2 36-3/4 4-3/4 49-1/2 VII. 139-3/4 94-3/4 39 24-1/2 1-1/2 20 16-3/4 6-1/2 VIII. 91-1/4 122-1/2 36 24 1-3/4 13 17-3/4 11-3/4 IX. 91 108-3/4 32-3/4 43-1/4 4-1/2 15 28-1/2 12 X. 71-3/4 99-1/2 39-3/4 39-1/2 2-3/4 6-1/4 20 18-3/4 XI. 77-1/4 92 35 51-3/4 2 44-3/4 28-3/4 XII. 70-3/4 94-1/4 43 46 47-1/2 23-3/4 XIII. 48-1/4 95-1/4 40-3/4 30-3/4 45 42 XIV. 58-1/4 80 39-3/4 39-1/2 59-1/4 32-1/2 Total 729-1/4 900-1/4 348-1/4 336 15-1/4 105-3/4 270-1/2 175-3/4 - - - - - - - -+ Average 81 100 39-2/3 37-1/3 31 19-1/2 per volume -+ - - - - - - -

I - Ferguson J - Laman Blanchard K - W. H. Wills L - Henry Mayhew M - Higgins (Jacob Omnium) N - Anonymous O - Mark Lemon P - MacGregor

- - - - - - Vol. I J K L M N O P - - - - - - VI. VII. 1-3/4 1-3/4 1 VIII. 4 3/4 1/4 IX. 1-3/4 1/2 X. 9-1/4 XI. 3/4 2 XII. 1-3/4 XIII. 4-3/4 1/2 XIV. 3/4 51-1/2 3-3/4 Total 17-1/2 2-1/2 3-1/4 1/4 2 12 1/2 3-3/4 2,931-1/4 - - - - - - Average per volume - - - - - -



At no time was Lemon's position an easy one, for his team, brilliant as it was, was sometimes wont to jib, and even to kick over the traces, or, most serious of all, to fall ill; whereupon the fountain of inspiration and supply would immediately dry up. When one failed, another would have to be made to fill the space; and all the while susceptibilities had to be nursed and respected as carefully as the well-being of the paper. Thackeray would now and then send a letter of apology instead of his "copy," and Jerrold would fail for a week or two together; and then Gilbert a Beckett with important contributions, and Horace Mayhew with a mass of little ones, were the men who, in the early volumes, would rush quickly to the rescue. Lemon was patience itself—he had no alternative perhaps—and could humour his Staff just as their humour demanded, for he was a born diplomatist as well as editor. Moreover, he had an unerring instinct as to what should and what should not appear in the paper; not alone on the ground of "good taste," as it was then understood, but of public feeling. This invaluable quality was acknowledged by the rest of the Staff, and was probably the secret of Lemon's ability to retain his position so long and with so much dignity, and to impose his will—suaviter in modo as was his habit—on men who would brook such imposition from no one else. It was his moral balance they admired—that judgment which in all his long career of satiric criticism kept him practically free from any action for libel after he had taken his share in piloting the paper through its sea of early troubles. He was watchful and discriminating, both as regards the contents of the paper and the discussions at the board—where he would smooth over such an occasional storm as might threaten, and be deaf to anything that a less skilful tactician than himself might have taken notice of. Nevertheless, Lemon could take his own part if occasion required, and face his opponents with all the vigour of his authority. The Proprietors themselves once felt the strength of his character when they sought to challenge him on a vital point. Mark Lemon quickly assured himself of the support of his Staff, and, rising from his seat, he said in a tone of command, "Boys, follow me!" and made to leave the room. The struggle was over, and Lemon triumphed. Similarly did he make a casus belli of the attempt of the Proprietors on his editorial rights and dignity, when he was requested to appear at their meeting instead of their attending in his room. And he went so far as to instal himself in a room on the other side of the way until his point was conceded. He was, on the whole, a consummate Editor, who could cater for all men, and yet keep his pages practically clean and irreproachable, and almost free from blunder; all the while enlisting for it more and more of popular sympathy, and daily increasing its influence.



Punch did not engage his exclusive energies. He was the first editor of the "Field." Then he edited the "London Journal," and in trying to improve its tone and quality of literature by the republication in its pages of the Waverley novels he well-nigh ruined it. These and other matters he embarked upon, together with a number of small works, such as his volume of "Prose and Verse" (which Jerrold said ought to have been called "Prose and Worse"), and his "Jest Book," on the strength of which, it is said, Hans Christian Andersen, when in England, sought an introduction to him and paid him the compliment of saying, "I am so glad to know you, Mr. Lemon—you are so full of comic!"

Moreover, Lemon acted as a sort of secretary to Herbert Ingram, whom he served with great tact. Ingram was a good deal identified with the Punch circle, sometimes in a friendly and sometimes in a hostile way. He was owner, before he sold it to William and Robert Brough, of "The Man in the Moon," Punch's arch-enemy, and in later years he started the "Comic News," with Edmund Yates as editor, on purpose to oppose him. Yet several of the Punch men, notably Shirley Brooks, worked on his "Illustrated London News," which was started in great measure to push "Parr's Life Pills" (these were constantly mentioned and sometimes attacked in Punch), and Douglas Jerrold found in him the capitalist for the "Illuminated Magazine." Mark Lemon it was who took several of his Staff down to Boston to speak for Ingram during his candidature, an expedition that was a greater electoral than oratorical success; and he again it was, so it is said, who persuaded Mr. Ingram to drop the "Comic News," so that Punch might be rid of what was already a troublesome, and might have become a very damaging, rival.

With equal zeal and skill and genial friendliness to recommend him, Lemon became a great favourite in his own circle, for "Uncle Mark" was always ready to do his friends a good turn. In 1845 the Staff combined to present him with a silver inkstand—an interesting relic now in possession of Mrs. F. W. W. Topham, his daughter—a reproduction of the lid of which is here given; while the locket which, with a more substantial gift, was presented in 1866 to celebrate the Jubilee of Punch (i.e. his fiftieth volume) and to mark the withdrawal of the Heads of the firm, was inscribed as follows: "To Mark Lemon from his old friends W. Bradbury and F. M. Evans, on their retirement, given at a dinner at Maidenhead, June 27th, 1866. Present—W. H. Bradbury, Shirley Brooks, Wm. Agnew, G. du Maurier, F. C. Burnand, J. H. Agnew, C. H. Bennett, John Tenniel, Horace Mayhew, F. M. Evans (Jim.), Henry Silver, T. Agnew (Jim.), Percival Leigh, Chas. Keene, Mark Lemon, Wm. Bradbury, F. M. Evans." There is no doubt that, as time went on, Lemon became more and more popular with his Staff, and each fresh appearance in Punch of his jolly face under the low-crowned hat of John Bull, or the snow-sprinkled peak of Father Christmas, identified him more closely with the paper and endeared him to his workers. Yet they liked to "score off" him when they could, in return for the jokes he played on them. The story is told how, when he had run down for a few days' holiday by the sea, he received the paper by post, and, tearing off its cover, was horrified to find, not the cartoon they had agreed upon, but another, execrable in taste and vile in execution, while undoubted libels and other offences were sprinkled with hideous liberality about the pages. Moreover, the cartoon was awry, the date was wrong, and a paragraph was upside down. Lemon turned cold all down his spine, and gasping "This comes from my being away!" he determined to return to town without the loss of a moment. From this point historians differ. Some say that Mark rushed to the station, quickly bought up every copy of the awful issue that was for sale, and jumped into the railway-carriage with the bundle; and that not before he was well on his way did he dare to open a copy to gaze again on the hideous production; and when he did—he rubbed his eyes, for everything was just as it should be! Then the light broke in upon him that he had been egregiously "sold," and he realised that a copy had been specially prepared for his pleasing edification! Other commentators assert that before Uncle Mark had time to leave for the station a telegram came, mercifully explaining a joke which, it was felt, ought not to be carried too far. The reader will remember a similar incident occurring in "Esmond;" and one wonders if the idea of that dummy copy of the "Spectator" was not suggested by the hour's torture lovingly inflicted upon the Editor of Punch by his affectionate and respectful Staff.

Mark Lemon died on May 23rd, 1870. He had been very ill on one or two previous occasions; even as early as 1848 Jerrold had written to John Forster that "Lemon has been at Death's door—but has kept on the outside." For nine-and-twenty years he had been at the helm; and although he may not have been as paramount on Punch as some aver, there can be no doubt that he entirely merited the compliment paid by Mr. Gladstone to his memory when, awarding a pension of L100 from the Civil List to Mrs. Lemon, he said that he had "raised the level of comic journalism to its present standard." The proprietors, with generous sympathy, recognising the immense services of their friend, at once set about making a collection for the widow and unmarried daughters (for Lemon had been unsuccessful in his investments and speculations) and, with the ready help of the Staff, prosecuted it with so much energy and goodwill that the sum of L1,500 was quickly raised.

He was lowered to rest in a coffin simply inscribed "Mark Lemon—Editor of Punch;" for in Punch he had lived his life. "He believed," said Mr. Hatton, "in one God, one woman, one publication," as his surviving colleagues well knew. "If this journal," they wrote by the hand of Shirley Brooks, "has had the good fortune to be credited with habitual advocacy of truth and justice, if it has been praised for abstinence from the less worthy kind of satire, if it has been trusted by those who keep guard over the purity of womanhood and of youth, we, the best witnesses, turn for a moment from our sorrow to bear the fullest and most willing testimony that the high and noble spirit of Mark Lemon ever prompted generous championship, ever made unworthy onslaught or irreverent jest impossible to the pens of those who were honoured in being coadjutors with him." And in the poem that follows, testimony is borne that—

"... 'Twas his pride to teach us so to bear Our blades, as he bore his—keep the edge keen, But strike above the belt: and ever wear The armour of a conscience clear and clean."



The character of Henry Mayhew, and his share in the production of Punch, have already been somewhat fully set forth. An old friend of his informs me that "he was lovable, jolly, charming, bright, coaxing, and unprincipled. He rarely wrote himself, but would dictate, as he walked to and fro, to his wife, whom he would also leave to confront his creditors. She was deeply attached to him; and when his father died, she found that the careful solicitor had left her a bequest of two pounds a week, payable to herself." And Postans, after he had lost his sight, would now and then exclaim—"Although he treated me so badly, I should love to hear the sound of his dear voice again!" There can be no doubt that Henry Mayhew was a genius, a fascinating companion, and a man of inexhaustible resource and humour—though humour was but one side of his brilliant mind. Indolence was his besetting sin; and his will was untutored.

"An admirable all-round talker," Henry Vizetelly wrote to me shortly before his death, "Henry Mayhew was brimming over with novel ideas on all manner of subjects, from artificial production of diamonds to the reformation of ticket-of-leave men. He was constantly planning some new publication or broaching novel ideas on the most out-of-the-way subjects. He would scheme and ponder all the day long, but he abominated the labour of putting his ideas into tangible shape. He would talk like a book on any subject for hours together if he could only find listeners, but could with difficulty be brought to put pen to paper. Most of his books were written from his ideas by his younger brother Augustus, or were dictated directly to his wife, who acted as his amanuensis. Although he made considerable sums by his writings, he never seemed to have a shilling; and most of the letters he received were from dunning creditors. These missives, however, never troubled him, for he never broke the envelopes of one of them, but handed all his correspondence over to his wife to do as she pleased with and answer such letters as she thought necessary. He was very temperate. Whether he smoked as a young man, I am not aware; but he never smoked at the periodical evening gatherings at his house, when the guests could hardly see each other for the clouds of tobacco-smoke. On these occasions the most abstruse subjects were often discussed, and all we young wiseacres present contributed our modicum of knowledge towards the elucidation of problems that sorely perplexed the thinkers of the epoch. Although Mayhew would sit up till any hour as long as anyone would stay and listen to him, he never allowed this to interfere with his early-rising habits."

The impression made by Mayhew upon his contemporaries was invariably such as to command respect for his intellectual capacity. Considering his deep, philosophic mind, says one critic, if his lines had been cast in more serious places, he might have been a sociologist, the equal of John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer. There is proof enough of this in that wonderful encyclopaedic work of "London Labour and London Poor," which displayed his original mind and his power of research, as much as other books displayed his marvellous invention, fancy, and initiative, and it is the only one of his undertakings which he had perseverance enough to carry through to a triumphant conclusion—so far as it can claim finality. It was while he was engaged on this work that Landells (according to a private letter) visited him and found him, in company with his brother Augustus and William Jerrold, interviewing a "coster"—"drawing him," while Horace Mayhew took down everything the man said.

Such was the man who conceived Punch as it came to be, and who wrote of it when it was established, "I smell lots of tin thereabouts; but our Lemon requires a great deal of squeezing." What was his connection with Punch, how he agreed with Lemon as to the transfer to Bradbury and Evans, how he found himself replaced by (or, as he considered, outwitted by) Mark Lemon in the editorship has already been recited. Nevertheless, he was retained as "Suggestor-in-Chief"—an office which suited him well enough, considering his hatred of the drudgery of writing.

"Mr. Henry Mayhew," writes Punch's ex-Printer, "the special joke-provider for Punch, was a most jocular character. He would stand beside the compositor while he was working at his case, and closely watch every movement of his hand in picking up each letter. He said he could not make out how ever the compositor could keep the alphabetical order of each box in his memory. So to master the mystery he set to work and learned the boxes for himself, and would often find amusement, when waiting for a proof, in setting up a few lines, very slowly at first, but, shifting the composing rule and thoughtlessly laying down the stick the wrong way, generally upset all his work, and so he gave it up in despair. This Mr. Mayhew was very clever in creating and roughly sketching out many of the small comic column illustrations, and would write the witty inscriptions for them. These would then go to the artist, who sketched out the idea and so completed it. In Punch, as in many other similar works, the mind to invent the idea caricatured, and the hand that pencils it, belong to two very different persons and capacities. Mr. Mayhew was very clever in this way, and anything of a comic nature he saw he would at once sketch off and then have a cut made of it. Most of the inimitable cuts in the first few volumes of Punch are of his invention. He was always sketching and taking rough notes of everything he saw. The great John Leech called him his indispensable 'Jack-all, or broad-grin provider.'"

In spite of his disappointment, Henry Mayhew remained with Punch until 1845. His last literary contribution—"A Shaksperean Nursery Rhyme," on the subject of Macready playing Shakespeare in Paris before Louis Philippe and Prince de Joinville—appeared in February of that year; but he still attended the Dinners and made suggestions for cartoons, of which twelve were accepted in that year. With his proposal, however, of the cartoon of "Don Roebucis," which was drawn by Leech (14th March, 1846), his last word was said; and from that time forward his connection with Punch ceased absolutely. He had given the paper its character and tone; he had suggested its first great success, the Almanac; he had supported its transfer, whereby it was firmly established; and he had cracked its biggest joke—the joke which is universally quoted to this very day.[33] He died in 1887, at the age of 75, and his old friend celebrated him in verse, none too correctly, though in the kindliest manner, ending thus:—

".... Farewell! The record of the age's course will tell Of him whose name a double honour bore, Comrade of Punch and champion of the poor."[34]



There was a fund of Irish humour in Joseph Stirling Coyne. He had proved it by his plays long before he undertook his share of the co-editorship which was offered him at that "Edinburgh Castle" meeting where so much of Punch's present and future was arranged. He was at that time eight-and-twenty years of age; and although he was dramatic critic of the "Sunday Times," the drama rather than the press was his natural field of action—indeed, he wrote no fewer than five-and-fifty pieces of various kinds, besides plays in collaboration, and was secretary of the Dramatic Authors' Society, until his death. Nevertheless, he belonged in a manner to the inner circle of the "Punch set," and frequented the taverns that were their clubs; and he even went in double harness with Mark Lemon as co-editor, vice "Alphabet" Bayley, of "The Bude Light"—an English imitation of "Les Guepes." He was, in fact, a man of some celebrity who had already gained public reputation beyond the band of men, brilliant, no doubt, but, for the most part, with their successes yet to come—so that he was accorded the important role which he filled with peculiar modesty. He wrote extremely little, but he seems to have formed some distinct notion of his share in the foundation, for Edmund Yates records how his father once came home and, throwing the first number of Punch on the table, said, "Here is Stirling Coyne's new paper!" At last Coyne was charged by Lemon (who always referred contemptuously to him as "Paddy") with stealing one of his "Puff Papers" from a Dublin paper. At Punch's transfer Coyne quietly, though discontentedly, retired from duties which had hitherto brought him neither reputation nor pleasure, and only a hundred pounds in cash from Landells, and from Douglas Jerrold—as I learn from one who heard it—a savage mot, referring to his somewhat uncleanly appearance, which will undoubtedly adhere—"Stirling Coyne? I call him Filthy Lucre!"



From no choicer spirit than Gilbert Abbott a Beckett could Mayhew have sought for assistance and literary support. He was the first applied to, and of all the Staff he had had by far the most experience in the production of "comic papers," although he was only thirty years of age. His brother, the late Hon. T. T. a Beckett, has told how he and his chum Henry Mayhew, his junior by a year, with a consolidated share capital of three pounds and a mortgage to a printer of future profits, prepared to start a "satirical paper," to be called "The Cerberus"—the joint editors being then still young boys. As it happily befell, Mr. a Beckett, senior, discovered a proof of the first number, and with his solicitorial eye discovered some forty-three clear libels in the four columns. He hastened to the address on the imprint, and set the matter plainly before the printer, who was only too glad to cancel the whole matter that had been "set" upon payment of the bill. So deeply were the lads affronted by this unwarrantable interference with their journalistic spirit and liberty of the subject that they ran away from home to Edinburgh, walking all the way; but soon returned in a woeful plight. From that moment, Gilbert turned journalist—it came to him as a second nature—and thenceforward supported himself by his pen, while establishing a very fair position at the Bar, thanks to the support of his father's firm.

It was in 1831 that he presented himself prominently before the public. Jerrold's "Punch in London" had not yet begun its little life of seventeen numbers, so that the moment was propitious for a Beckett to embark on a venture of his own; and on December 10th it made its first appearance. This was "Figaro in London," in which his youthful ardour and plain speaking found energetic vent. He was always ready, in a humorous, bombastic sort of spirit, to smash the aristocracy, to chaff Alfred Bunn, to abuse low-class Jews, and to discuss the theatre. In these agreeable vocations he hit the popular taste, and certainly achieved a considerable circulation, which, Timbs declares, reached at one time 70,000 copies. Small topical cuts, grandiloquently set down as "magnificent caricatures," were well arranged as a rule, and things were going well enough when editor and artist fell out; Robert Cruikshank took Seymour's place—and a Beckett's monthly adulation of his old "cartoonist's" work turned suddenly to contempt.

All this was meant more than half in fun; it was too violently personal to be serious. Anyway, a Beckett declared in the paper that "it is not true that Robert Seymour has gone out of his mind—he had none to go out of," and Seymour retaliated heartily with a "sharp cut." In due course Seymour resumed his place on "Figaro," and retained it to the end. In December, 1834, a Beckett had handed over the paper, in the height of its prosperity, to Henry Mayhew, who continued it for a time, and in 1839 it came to an end. Yet on so slender a basis as this has been brought against a Beckett the cruel charge that it was these assaults which did at a subsequent period drive Seymour out of his mind and led to his unhappy suicide.

After "Figaro" died, and indeed partly during its continuance, a Beckett launched out into an extraordinary series of extraordinary papers, editing for other proprietors "The Wag," "The Evangelical Penny Magazine," Dibdin's "Penny Trumpet," "The Thief" (under the engaging frankness of whose title we may see the forerunner of "Public Opinion"), "Poor Richard's Journal," and "The People's Penny Pictures;" while on his own account he ran successively "The Terrific Penny Magazine," "The Ghost," "The Lover," "The Gallery of Terrors," "The Figaro Monthly Newspaper," "The Figaro Caricature Gallery," and "The Comic Magazine." But in spite of all this ingenuity in title-devising, and of all this dogged perseverance—though one can hardly call it seriousness—not one of these journals obtained public support. As a matter of fact, they were the journalistic wild oats of a born journalist and an exuberant litterateur, who, as a youthful playwright and a budding barrister, now had his hands quite full, yet—such was the fever of his industry—never full enough.

His first contribution to Punch, according to W. H. Wills' statement, was "The Above Bridge Navy" (p. 35, Volume I., 1841); but it is practically certain that "Commercial Intelligence" in the first number is his. "I recollect well," says the Hon. T. T. a Beckett, in his Reminiscences, "my brother—who wrote for it from the first number to the last that appeared in his life-time—bringing me away from my office on an assurance that if I accompanied him as far as the Strand, he would show me something that would fill me at once with gratification and amazement. He kept me in suspense until I reached Catherine Street, when he stopped short and said, 'Now you shall see me draw a pound from Punch, and if that don't amaze you and gratify you, you must have but a poor sense of the marvellous and very little brotherly sympathy.'"

Just about the period when the negotiations were being carried on with Bradbury and Evans, a Beckett began to fall off in the amount of his contributions, and for a time practically ceased altogether. At this time he edited the "Squib" (28th May, 1842), a folio sheet published at three-halfpence, very respectably conducted and printed, and owned by Last Punch's old printer, illustrated by Henning, Hamerton, and Newman, Punch artists, treating many of Punch's pet subjects in the Punch spirit, including "Physiologies," which the older paper had made its own. It was also stated that several of the Punch Staff were among its contributors. However this may be, the "Squib" went off in December of the same year, and a Beckett thenceforward worked loyally for Punch for the rest of his life, and bequeathed moreover his two sons to Punch's service.

His popular "Songs for the Seedy," a series of eight poems, were published in this year in Punch, as well as "Songs of the Flowers;" and soon his "Ballads of the Briefless" made a considerable stir in Punch's circle. A Beckett had been called to the Bar some time before, so that his ballads as well as the articles from his hand which appeared—and, from time to time, continued—over the signature of "Mr. Briefless," had a touch of verisimilitude which went straight to the soft places in the hearts and imagination of the Great Unbriefed. "Mr. Briefless" became an institution in the paper, as, in other journals, Mr. O. P. Q. Philander Smiff, and again, in a lower social scale, Mr. Alfred Sloper, became recognised by a later generation. This unfortunate gentleman of the Bar—a gentleman always, in spite of his weakness of intellect and character—was shown in all the difficulties germane to his barren profession, and in all the ludicrous situations that came natural to the man. Many of his quaint aphorisms are still remembered, such as that, elsewhere recorded—"As my laundress makes my bed, so I must lie upon it," and "The clerk brings down his master's grey horsehair wig in sorrow to the Court." Yet he was not without self-respect, not to say vanity, for on the occasion of a great political crisis, when the resignation of the Ministry was impending, "Mr. Briefless" somewhat injudiciously left his retreat at Gravesend and came up to London, in order to be on the spot should he be called upon to form or to join the future Cabinet. The only summons he received, however, was from his tailor, and, with the unfailing judgment and good sense that characterised him, he withdrew once more into the country. "Mr. Briefless" and "Mr. Dunup," his friend, were creations that were at once recognised, and were welcomed during the fifteen years of their occasional appearance.

In 1843 his "Punch's Heathen Mythology" followed Wills' chapters on the same subject, and in the following year his "Comic Blackstone"—one of the cleverest burlesques of its kind in the language—served another purpose than to amuse his readers: it forced him to study the commentaries—for the first time, it was facetiously said—and so made a better lawyer of him, and helped to fit him for the magisterial bench, to which he was soon to be summoned. His "Comic Bradshaw" was another success, which Mr. Burnand repeated and improved upon years after in his inimitable "Out of Town." Mr. Arthur a Beckett, speaking of his father's work, tells me: "I remember on one occasion when my father had written a drama descriptive of the mysteries of Bradshaw, Leech, to whom it was sent for illustration, introduced a series of portraits of the author. Lemon, noticing this, suggested that the drama should end by the hero getting his head shaved, more clearly to understand the intricacies of railway traffic. My father adopted the suggestion, and Leech followed the 'copy.'"

It was not in these series that his chief work lay, however, but in the enormous mass of matter he turned into Punch's pages month by month. He was by far the most prolific of all the contributors, almost up to the time of his death. Articles humorous and pungent on every variety of topic, verse graceful, bright, and comic, sparkling puns innumerable, with increasing thought and sense as the man grew older and realised more and more the responsibility of his position and Punch's—all flowed from him in an unceasing, easy stream, distinguished always for its fun and facility. As his average contribution to each volume was a hundred columns, it will be seen that in the time he was working for Punch his total of prose and verse amounted to three thousand feet, or a column nearly as high as the Eiffel Tower! There was, besides, the amount of "outside" work that came from his pen—he was leader-writer to the "Illustrated London News," and as such was the literary father of Shirley Brooks, the grandfather of Mr. Sala, and the great-grandfather of Mr. James Payn. He was also leader-writer on the "Times," and on one occasion actually wrote all the leaders of the day's issue. This strange coincidence arose from his having had a leader "crowded out" from the day before, which was naturally set down for use the next day, when he contributed his usual article without any question arising; and then a sudden appeal upon a subject with which he was specially familiar brought into the paper a third article from him—and that in the days, now fifty years ago, when the influence and position of the "Times" were perhaps even greater, relatively, than they are to-day: at least, when there was no competitor that could seriously pretend to share them. In addition to this he edited Cruikshank's "Table Book," and wrote the Comic Histories of England and Rome. It was, it is generally said, on the occasion of the first of these books being announced that Douglas Jerrold wrote to Charles Dickens: "Punch, I believe, holds its course.... Nevertheless, I do not very cordially agree with its new spirit. I am convinced that the world will get tired (at least, I hope so) of this eternal guffaw at all things. After all, life has something serious in it. It cannot all be a comic history of humanity. Some men would, I believe, write a Comic Sermon on the Mount. Think of a Comic History of England; the drollery of Alfred; the fun of Sir Thomas More in the Tower; the farce of his daughter begging the dear head, and clasping it in her coffin on her bosom! Surely the world will be sick of such blasphemy!... When, moreover, the change comes, unless Punch goes a little back to his occasional gravities, he'll be sure to suffer." And Dickens replied in a letter thanking him for sympathetic reviews, in Punch—"Anent the 'Comic ——' and similar comicalities, I feel exactly with you."

Of course, with the exception of the latter part of Jerrold's outburst, wherein he was undoubtedly right, all this protest is exaggerated nonsense—at least, as applied to a Beckett. One would think that neither Jerrold nor Dickens could bear a burlesque in good taste—Jerrold of all men! But it is just as likely that Jerrold was not referring to a Beckett at all, but to Thackeray, whose "Miss Tickletoby's Comic History" had already made its appearance in Punch, and had been incontinently stopped. In any case, the public did not agree with him, for both works are still popular favourites. Moreover, he liked a Beckett too well to harm him in the mind of a common friend; and he was unquestionably aware that the loftiness of a Beckett's aims and character rendered him unassailable against a charge of irreverence or lack of respect. Certain it is, at least, that when a Beckett died at Boulogne Jerrold felt the blow so deeply that he gave up that town thenceforward as a place of residence, nor would he ever visit it again.

It was at the early age of thirty-eight that a Beckett was appointed police-magistrate, chiefly owing to the masterly report he drew up as Poor-Law Commissioner in respect to the notorious Andover Union Workhouse scandals[35]—"one of the best," said the Home Secretary, "ever presented to Parliament." The appointment was much discussed, for the general feeling had been educated in the views of Lord Selborne, who asserted that no "person" connected with the Press nor any "gentleman in the wine trade" could be permitted to attain to such an honour as the Bench—an absurdity which has long since been dismissed. On one occasion, it is said, when a Beckett lived at No. 10, Hyde Park Gate South, Kensington Gore, he was instructed to hold himself in readiness, as magistrate, to answer a summons to read the Riot Act in Hyde Park to the unruly mob whose methods of protest against a popular grievance constituted the "Beer Bill Riots" of 1855. That summons never came, luckily for him; for later in the day he discovered, to his dismay, that his careful and solicitous wife, with greater respect for her husband's skin than for the needs of Government, Police, and Proletariat combined, had gone out early, after securely locking the unconscious magistrate in his library, and had prudently carried off the key.

A Beckett had been one of the shyest and most nervous men that ever lived, but his appointment to the police-court—first at Greenwich, then at Southwark—removed much of his undue modesty, and he was recognised as being energetic, sagacious, and humane. He was a tremendous worker, incomparably quick, and above all was absolutely punctual in his delivery of "copy"—a virtue quite sufficient to account for his popularity with publishers, who also were attracted by his retiring and distinguished manners. Though his conversation was bright, he preferred to keep his witticisms for his public or private writings, as when, in sending in a parcel of "copy" to Mark Lemon, he wrote on the outside:—

"Dear Mark—I do herewith enclose Some 'copy' both in verse and prose. 'Tis neither very bright nor terse— The verse is bad—the prose is worse. But you, of course, will read and check it. Yours ever, G. etcet'ra Beckett."

This paper passed, as a wrapper, from Lemon to Mr. Birket Foster, and from the hands of that gentleman to an autograph-hunter undiscoverable.

A Beckett's wit was exceedingly nimble, and as a consequence he was a facile punster. One of his happiest jokes of the kind has been set on record. When the election of Louis Napoleon appeared likely, the policy of Punch in respect to it was anxiously discussed at the Table. One of the Staff—Thackeray most likely—declared that it would be wisest to be indefinite. "Nonsense," said a Beckett, "if you're not definite, you'd better be dumb in it!"

While occupied in writing a series of papers called "Mr. Punch's Guide Books to the Crystal Palace," illustrated by Tenniel, Gilbert a Beckett died at Boulogne from typhus fever, his youngest son Walter predeceasing him by two days from the same complaint—the grief of any knowledge of it, however, being happily spared the father. He was buried in Highgate Cemetery, and the inscription engraved upon the tombstone was reproduced in an abbreviated and modified form from the touching obituary notice in which his brother-workers, through Jerrold's pen, testified to his merits and to their affection: "Endowed with a genial, manly spirit; gifted with subtlest powers of wit and humour, they were ever exercised to the healthiest and most innocent purpose. As a Magistrate, his wise, calm, humane administration of the law proved that the fulfilment of the gravest duties is not incompatible with the sportiveness of literary genius. 'His place knows him not,' but his memory is tenderly cherished."

The connection of Angus Bethune Reach with Punch was not of very long duration. With Albert Smith he had been joint editor of "The Man in the Moon," and with Shirley Brooks was one of the special correspondents of the "Morning Chronicle" in the South of France, as well as its Parliamentary reporter. He had followed up Albert Smith's series of "Natural Histories," of "The Gent," "The Flirt," and other specimens of English Society, with "Bores" and "Humbugs," which ran through several editions. He had joined "The Puppet Show" in 1848, while still quite a youth; he had written "The Comic Bradshaw" (which found an echo in Punch years later) and one or two successful novels, and had with Brooks laid siege to a position on Punch's Staff. This, it might almost be said, he carried, as Brooks did, by assault; and having given up the editorship of "The Man in the Moon" with its twenty-eighth number (1849), he was duly summoned to the Punch Table.

His life was at that time hardly a pleasant one, though his industry (for the craze of work was upon him) was as great as his versatility, and his field of labour as wide as his knowledge. When he came to the Punch Table, he found his haven; but he was heckled, of course, by Douglas Jerrold, on the score of his name and its quaint pronunciation. Concerning this name (pronounced Re-ach in the German manner, anglice Re-ack), Angus once asked his father, a Writer to the Signet, in the hearing of my informant, the late H. G. Hine, what on earth it meant. "As in Highland Scotch," was the reply, "'Dhu' means 'black' and 'Roy' means 'red,' so Reach means half-and-half, or 'brown.'" He therefore insisted on its proper pronunciation; with the natural result. Jerrold delighted in teasing him about it, and at a Dinner at the "Ship" at Brighton, where the Punch Staff held one of their meetings, Jerrold[36] leant forward at dessert and asked—"Mr. Re-ack, may I pass you a pe-ack?" And on another occasion, when Reach protested against Jerrold's persistent ill-treatment of his name, the wit replied, "Oh, I see. Re-ack when we speak to you, but reach when we read you!"

At last, in 1854, Reach's incorrigible industry bore its Dead-Sea fruit; broken down with over-work, his mind utterly gave way. Thereupon his friends of the Fielding Club, reinforced by Albert Smith of "The Man in the Moon," joined together to play for his benefit Smith's pantomime burlesque, "Harlequin Guy Fawkes; or, a Match for a King," at the Olympic Theatre, April, 1855. Arthur Smith, Albert's brother, played pantaloon; Bidwell was harlequin; Joseph Robins, clown; Albert Smith, Catesby; Edmund Yates, the lover; and Miss Rosina Wright ("always Rosy, always Wright," wrote Smith) was columbine. The rush, said E. L. Blanchard, was unprecedented, and stalls were cheap at ten pounds. The great broadsword fight between Smith (Catesby) and Robins (Guy Fawkes), in the rich traditions of the Surrey-Crummles School, was the hit of the evening, and has been immortalised by Sir John Tenniel in his drawing for Punch (p. 149, Volume XXVIII.), entitled "The Amateur Olympians." But Reach did not benefit long from the efforts of his friends, and died before he was thirty.

FOOTNOTES:

[29] See p. 2.

[30] Douglas Jerrold writes to Hodder under date September 9th:—"I have been worked to death for Punch, having it all on my shoulders, Mark, a Beckett, and Thackeray being away. Nevertheless, last week it went up 1,500." Jerrold, it may be added, would at that time undertake some of the editorial as well as the literary work.

[31] This was "The Little Frenchman's Second Lesson," an important poem occupying a whole page.

[32] Under "Editor" were entered all, except very special, contributions coming from outside.

[33] See p. 141.

[34] An example of Henry Mayhew's quaint presentation of his own experiences is to be found in the paragraph he contributed under the title of "TAVERN CHARGES AT DOVER":—"Waiter! How much is my glass of brandy-and-water?" "The bill, sir." "What! 10s. 6d.?" "Yes, sir, brandy's 2s.; never charge less." "Well?" "Sugar 6d.; never charge less." "Go on." "Waxlight and apartment, 5s." "Why, I've only been here five minutes." "That's not our fault, sir; we never charge less." "Go on." "Servants, 2s." "What?" "Me, boots and chambermaid; never charge less." "Well, what next?" "The use of plate, glass, and linen, 1s." "What do you mean?" "Teaspoon, tumbler, and table-cloth; never charge less; but—we makes you a present of the biling water." "Very well, there's your 10s. 6d., and I shall write to the 'Times.'" "Yes, sir—pen, ink, and paper, 1s.; never charge less."

[35] A "Petition," supposed to come from the inmates (written by Percival Leigh), appeared in Punch (p. 101, Volume IX.), in which the petitioners begged that some of the kitchen refuse and pigs'-wash, hitherto used to overfatten swine, might be reserved for them. This petition had an admirable effect.

[36] Hodder incorrectly gives the mot to Thackeray.



CHAPTER XIII.

PUNCH'S WRITERS: 1841.

H. P. Grattan—W. H. Wills—R. B. Postans—Bread-Tax and Tooth-Tax—G. Hodder—G. H. B. Rodwell—Douglas Jerrold—His Caustic Wit—The "Q Papers"—A Statesman pour rire—His Sympathy with the Poor and Oppressed—Wins for Punch his Political Influence—Ill-health—"Punch's Letters"—The "Jenkins" and "Pecksniff" Papers—"Mrs. Caudle"—Jerrold's Love of Children, common to the Staff—He Silences his Fellow-wits—And is Routed by a Barmaid—He sends his Love to the Staff—And they prove theirs.

The remaining contributors to the first number were Joseph Allen, H. P. Grattan, and W. H. Wills. The contribution of the first-named has already been indicated. H. P. "Grattan"—whose real name was Plunkett, and whose occasional pseudonym was the familiar "Fusbos"—worked well for the first numbers and for the Almanac. He was a witty versifier and clever dramatist, but he soon tired of the paper and directed his energies into other channels. W. H. Wills—"Harry Wills" he was always called—was a more important and a more faithful contributor. His first verses were "A Quarter-day Cogitation" (p. 5), and for some time he was the regular dramatic critic of Punch, in which a considerable amount of space was accorded to the review of amusements of all kinds, and not a little to Charles Kean and his histrionic deficiencies. Besides "Punch's Theatre," he wrote paragraphs, verses, and criticisms innumerable, including the series of "Punch's Natural History of Courtship," illustrated by the pencils of Sir John Gilbert, Newman, and Gavarni; "Punch's Comic Mythology," "Punch's Information for the People," as well as "Punch's Valentines," and lively skits like "The Burst Boiler and the Broken Heart," and the verses in praise of pawnbrokers, "The Uncles of England." After helping the Almanac for 1846, his Punch connection was interrupted for a period through his being called to Edinburgh to edit "Chambers's Journal;" but on his return to London two years later he resumed his position in a modified form. He became secretary to Charles Dickens, who was then editing the "Daily News," as well as his assistant editor on "Household Words," and subsequently on "All the Year Round," so that little time was left him for humorous composition—though he certainly found leisure to issue "The Family Joe Miller." When he was in Edinburgh he married Robert Chambers' sister—a lady possessed of true Scottish wit, some of whose pithy remarks are still remembered, such as "The ladies who agitate for women's rights are generally men's lefts."

Of the other two writers who aided in the founding of Punch—Postans and George Hodder—there is little to say. The first-named, indeed, has already been sufficiently dealt with, but it may be added that his last contribution was his verses—"A Contribution by Cobden"—on the subject of the removal by Sir Robert Peel of the tax on artificial teeth. Postans saw his chance, for the Repeal of the Corn Laws was already being agitated, and the tooth-tax troubled his mouth less than the tax on bread. His final verse ran—

"Reverse your plan," the Goddess [Commerce] said, And smiling stood in all her beauty; "Give me untaxed my daily bread, And tax my teeth with double duty."

Besides his ambassadorial assistance, and in spite of his presence at the Punch Club, Hodder was not of much account on the paper, either in its formation or its literary production. He was, however, related to Punch by marriage, being the husband of Henning's beautiful daughter, the niece of Kenny Meadows' wife. His last appearances in its pages were in 1843, when four contributions (including "Punch's Phrenology") came from him; and then he resumed his usual work of journalist, became Thackeray's secretary for a time, and died through the upsetting of a coach in Richmond Park.

Passing by Leman Rede and G. H. B. Rodwell (composer, playwright, and ballad writer), neither of whom, so far as I have been able to ascertain, has left any appreciable trace on Punch, we come to the man to whom, more than to anyone else, the paper owed the enormous political influence it once enjoyed, and to whom it is indebted for much of the literary reputation it still retains—Douglas Jerrold.



If he was not exactly the wit of his day—for his mind lacked the wider sympathy, the greater grasp, and gentler refinement of Sydney Smith's—he was certainly the most brilliant professional humorist of his generation—"a wit, if not first, in the very first line." Something of the bitterness and savagery of Gillray's rampant pleasantry afflicted his vis comica; and when a happy thought, however unhappy and painful for the hearer, came to the tip of his tongue, he could no more resist slipping it off than he could wilfully have done him injury.

Mark Lemon used to say, "Punch and I were made for each other." With far more reason could that notion of reciprocity be applied to Jerrold. No man ever gained so much from the paper in which he worked. He simply frolicked in its pages, that fitted his talent as accurately as his genius suited the times in which he lived. It is doubtful whether he would make the same mark in it were he alive to-day; he would have to seek another publication and another public, or else adopt an utter change of tone. But in those lively times, when, obeying the summons addressed to him in Boulogne, he sent his first political paper—beginning characteristically with the introduction of Peel, in time for the second number—he gave his powers full play. And his sparkle was the brighter for its setting and its surroundings. His wit was for the most part caustic and saturnine, and in no other journal could it have so completely identified itself with the ensemble of tone. Without Punch, Jerrold would certainly not have been so distinguished a man; yet he somewhere says in one of his works, with a touch of ingratitude: "If you'd pass for somebody, you must sneer at a play, but idolise Punch"—as though this were the height of priggishness. He was a keen judge of things, and might have held that view; but it was hardly for him, of all men, to publish it.

It is not surprising that, with the enormous reputation for wit which he enjoyed, and up to which he lived with such triumphant ease, all the smarter orphan-jokes of the day were fathered upon him. But there was a ring about the true Jerroldian humour which the connoisseur could hardly mistake. And the public soon became good enough judges of it too, studying it regularly in Punch, and refusing for the most part to be led away to look for it in the other journals which Jerrold edited, with but indifferent success so far as their circulation went. Although his fame was already established as a dramatist before Punch was born, I doubt, without Punch, he would ever have earned the reputation in pure literature which his "Q Papers" helped to found.

It was with these "Q Papers" that he began, and he threw into them some of his strongest and most withering writing, and oftentimes some of his weakest sense. With his soft heart melting for the poor, and his fiery hatred of oppression warping his better judgment, he was led into that unreasoning attack upon property and authority to which Thackeray deprecatingly alludes. Because the poor are unhappy, according to his philosophy, therefore are the rich, most of them, their direct oppressors, and ruling bodies, tyrants. Fiercely upright and aggressively impulsive in his championship of the lowly, he was anything but sound and thorough in his premisses; and had he the power he might have wielded later, his defects as a political economist would infallibly have brought about disaster. "His Radicalism," his son has told us, "was that of a humorist"—that is to say, all his power and all his wit as a writer (and they had few, if any, equals in the press), all his genius for invective and ridicule, and all his commanding influence with the public, were directed against Society and the powers that were, simply from a playful sense of humour! Luckily, the evil, or at least the danger, thus found a corrective for itself; for although Jerrold's power, and with it Punch's, grew with amazing rapidity among all classes, his tirades were felt to come more from the humorist's heart than from the statesman's brain. It is thus easy to draw a comparison between Jerrold and Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, of whom Carlyle says: "He is a humorist from his inmost soul; he thinks as a humorist, he feels, imagines, acts as a humorist. Sport is the element in which his nature lives and works.... A Titan in his sport, as in his earnestness, he oversteps all bounds, and riots without law or measure." The words might almost have been written of Jerrold himself. But, for all that, he was generally recognised as a leading champion of the people's rights and reformer of their wrongs; and to this passionate earnestness, to this keen wit and shrewd sincerity of the unconsciously special pleader, Punch owed most of the early notice he obtained, and much of his influence in the worlds of politics and Society.

These papers, then, of which the first was "Punch and Peel" (July 24th, 1841), were, in fact, political leading-articles, satirical, ironical, bitter, and more often demagogic than humorous, though of wit and humour both there was a generous undercurrent. Punch showed himself at once a fighting man who meant to be in the thick of the fray, a politician as impulsive as Macaulay; and though Jerrold did not begin to sign his articles until the ninth week (which has given grounds to some writers to assert that "Peel Regularly Called In" was the first of his contributions), he soon succeeded in setting up "Q" as a personality every bit as important and influential amongst his readers as Punch himself. The Court, the Church, the Political and Social arena, he included them all in his comprehensive gaze, and not an injustice, a sham, an affectation, or a blunder—or what he happened to regard as such—but came in for exposure and castigation. It was fortunate for him and for Punch, no doubt, that he was "a humorist;" for his own blunders and misjudgments were regarded with the more indulgence for it, or were condoned as the excusable excesses of a chartered jester running playfully amok. But it must not be imagined that though a humorist he was not desperately sincere. His own early struggles, his ghastly experience, as he ever thought it, when as a midshipman in the Navy he saw how authority had to be enforced by flogging, and witnessed all the revolting horrors of the cockpit during an engagement, had imparted intense earnestness to his mind; and he focussed all his brilliancy on the opportunity Punch afforded of tilting at the windmills in the plain. The fact seems to be that Jerrold's heart, and sometimes his logic and his judgment as well, were a good deal of a woman's; distinguished by every estimable and admirable quality, but with little statesmanlike perspicuity and moderation. Such may truly be said of those early "Q Papers," by which, nevertheless, he was able to effect much, then and thereafter, greatly to the good of the people, yet often wrought some of that intolerance and injustice which he was too ready to ascribe to others.

It was he, more than anyone else, who forced on Punch that admixture of Radicalism with his Whiggery which did not wear off for the first years of his life, and which was often enough preached with that picturesqueness of expression which we nowadays would smile at as "high-falutin." But the lofty ideas of the writer carried off this fault of style. His creed was simple and clear: Cant was devilish and Samaritanism godly; to him hypocrisy was the blackest of the vices, and kindness the sum of all the virtues. It mattered little that that kindness misplaced might bring a train of evils in its place; sympathy was the one thing wanted; the quinine of stern justice (except against the great and rich) should ever be watered down with mercy. It was, in fact, the religion less of the practical politician and true reformer, than of the worthy, upright, kind-hearted, unthinking Christian. His very fearlessness made men fear him, as his motives and ability compelled their respect; and the majority, who cared less for political philosophy than for political fervour, applauded him blindfold, and in due time accorded to Punch a place in their esteem second only to that enjoyed by the "Times." Of course, "bitterness" was expected in the satirical papers of that day; and it is not pretended that Jerrold was ever so unreasonable or so anarchical in the pages of Punch as William Brough revealed himself in the brilliant attacks on the propertied classes in which he indulged in his Liverpool journal. He lost, of course, no opportunity of assailing the Duke of Wellington, and Louis Philippe, and the "Morning Post" (articles in which he attacked the snobs of England before Thackeray did), and other of Punch's permanent butts; but his chief merit lies in his having set up the hereditary sins of Society as targets, and shot his barbed darts into them with unerring accuracy of aim. Of his bitterness it was said that it was "healthy—healthy as bark," just as Thackeray—was it not?—had previously said of his own writings in "Britannia."

It was not till a year afterwards (1842) that he began his "Punch's Letters to his Son." They were tender enough, and show little evidence that they were written in weakness and in pain. His health, indeed, gave him periods of agony of a rheumatic character, pain in his hands so great that at one time he could not write, and at another his whole racked body practically paralysed, until a "cure" at Malvern gave him back control of it. On another occasion, but that was in later years, when he was asked how he was, he replied, "As one that is waiting and is waited for," and he often wrote, said his son, when the movement of the pen was fierce pain to him. We may see in this physical torment, perhaps, the mainspring of much of his caustic humour. Mr. Cooper, R.A., would ascribe to over-indulgence much of Jerrold's suffering. "His countenance was open and bright (when sober!), and showed nothing of that satirical bitterness for which he was so eminent.... In accordance with the fashion of the time the man who could not drink his bottle and remain sober, drank his bottle and got drunk." But the Academician, like most teetotalers, would often see drunkenness where Jerrold saw merely drink, and probably knew nothing of the latter's own feelings towards undue indulgence. "Habitual intoxication," wrote Jerrold himself, "is the epitome of every crime;" and elsewhere, "The bottle is the devil's crucible." Yet it must be admitted that he was not averse to what in his day was called "true conviviality," which, as I have heard it remarked, never yet made a man a drunkard, though it may sometimes have made him drunk. "If Bacchus often leads men into quagmires deep as his vats, let us yet do him this justice—he sometimes leads them out. Ask your opponent to take another glass of wine." And did not Thomas Hood suggest, when he was told that by his love of wine he was shortening his days, that anyhow he was lengthening his nights?