There is a capital story in Mr. Le Fanu's "Seventy Years of Irish Life," in which the author tells of a man who was accidentally knocked down by the buffer of a locomotive near Bray Station. He was not seriously hurt, and but partially stunned; and the porters who quickly ran to the spot determined to take him to the station at once. The hero of the accident, overhearing where they were carrying him, imagined that he was being given in charge. "What do you want to take me to the station for?" he asked. "You know me; and if I've done any damage to your d——d engine, sure I'm ready to pay for it!" This story of Mr. Le Fanu's reached Keene's ears long before the author incorporated it in his book, and with the change of hardly a word it illustrated one of the best drawings the artist ever drew.

Though undoubtedly many of Punch's jokes are deliberately manufactured, or else improved from actual incidents, a vast number—like that quoted just now—are used with but slight textual editing, just as they occurred. Thus Joe Allen it was—the light-hearted artist who contributed an article to Punch's first number—who provided Mr. du Maurier years afterwards with that "social agony" in which a great lover of children, invited to a juvenile party, bursts into the room with the cry of "Here we are again"—walking in on his hands like a clown—to find that he had come to the wrong house next door, and was scandalising a sedate and stately dinner party. Henry Mayhew had a story of which a facetious police officer of his acquaintance was the hero. The latter was driving "Black Maria" along the street when he was hailed by a waggish omnibus-driver who affected to mistake the depressing character of the passing vehicle. "Any room?" he asked. "Yes," replied the officer, with a grin, "we've kept a place on purpose for you. Jump inside!" "What's the fare?" inquired the humorist, a little "non-plushed," as Jeames expressed it, at the unexpected retort. "Same as you had before—bread and water, and skilly o' Sundays!" The joke duly appeared in Punch after a long interval (Vol. XLVI.), illustrated by Charles Keene, under the title of "Frightful Levity."

Another omnibus story, printed just as it occurred, was that in which a conductor replies to an old gentleman in the south of London, whose destination was the "Elephant and Castle." "Yus—you go on to the Circus, and change into a Helephant." "Oh, mamma!" exclaims a little girl seated near the door, "do let's go too!" "Go where?" "To the circus, and see the old gentleman change into an elephant!" A similar incident, it may be observed, was illustrated by Eltze's pencil in 1861, when a passenger in the "Highbury Bus" asks the conductor to "change him into a Hangel." Jack Harris has often appeared in Punch. He was a driver beside whom Mr. Edmund Yates often rode—"a wonderfully humorous fellow, whose queer views of the world and real native wit afforded me the greatest amusement. A dozen of the best omnibus sketches were founded on scenes which had occurred with this fellow, and which I described to John Leech, whose usually grave face would light up as he listened, and who would reproduce them with inimitable fun."

The horrified swell of Leech's who is implored by an onion-hawker to "take the last rope" was in reality his friend Mr. Horsley, R.A., by whom the artist was provided with a number of humorous subjects. The unfailing advantage taken by Leech of all such contributions, which his friends assured him were "not copyright," has been universally recognised. Among the subjects suggested to him by Dean Hole was that in which his coachman, "unaccustomed to act as waiter, watched, with great agony of mind, the jelly which he bore swaying to and fro, and set it down upon the table with a gentle remonstrance of 'Who—a, who—a, who—a,' as though it were a restive horse." By a curious coincidence, as I have heard from the lips of a member of one of the great brewing firms, on the very day before the appearance of Mr. du Maurier's drawing[14] the identical incident had occurred in his own house, and it was hard to believe on the following morning that the subject of his plunging blanc-mange, similarly apostrophised, had not been imported by some sort of magic into Punch's page. A similar coincidence, far graver in its first suggestion, has been given me by Mr. Arnold-Forster. A friend of his sent in to Punch a comic sketch of the Tsar travelling by railway, while he sent a decoy train in the opposite direction—which was blown up! The paper containing the sketch was printed by the Monday, and before it was published that had really occurred which Punch had playfully invented. Until the following week, when an explanation was published, a certain section of the public criticised, with justifiable severity, what they took to be the bad taste and ill-timed fooling of the Jester.

From Mr. Harry Furniss's pen came an oft-quoted drawing (lately used as an advertisement), the idea of which reached him from an anonymous correspondent. It is that of the grimy, unshaven, unwashed, mangy-looking tramp, who sits down to write, with a broken quill, a testimonial for a firm of soap-makers: "I used your Soap two years ago; since then I've used no other." A further point of interest about this famous sketch was that Charles Keene was deeply offended by it at first—in the groundless belief that it was intended as a skit upon himself. It must at least be admitted that the head is not unlike what one might have expected to belong to a dissipated and dilapidated Charles Keene. But the nature of Mr. Furniss's work was of such a kind, and the artist himself has always overflowed with so prodigal a flood of original quaintness, that comparatively few sketches were ever sent in to him, or, being sent, were used. The origin of one of his creations—that of the Sergeant-at-Arms as a beetle—is an example of the lightness and quickness of his fancy. This representation, it has been said, was generally supposed to bear some spiteful sort of reference to the shape of Captain Gosset's legs, which in breeches and silk stockings did not perhaps appear to the best advantage; and, further, that the idea was suggested by the appearance on the floor of the House of Commons, in the course of a particularly wearisome debate, of a monster black-beetle marching slowly across under the eyes of the Representatives of the People, breaking the monotony of the proceedings, and arousing altogether disproportionate interest among the yawning members; that the "stranger" was quickly spied by the artist, who about this time had to complain that certain facilities had been refused him by the Sergeant-at-Arms, and who, in retaliation, professed thenceforward to believe that the two creatures were identical. But the insinuation was untrue. For the Sergeant was already an established insect in Punch before the appearance of the genuine black-beetle; and, moreover, so little did he resent it, that he used to stick the amusing little libels all round his mantelpiece.

The national practice of sending in alleged jokes to Punch—a practice, I imagine, of which the result is sufficient to prove how deficient in wit, if not in humour, is the English people considered as a community—is doubtless a convenient one to the many persons who live upon a fraudulent reputation of being "outside," and of course anonymous, Punch contributors. "How clever of you!" said a lady in one well-authenticated case to just such an impostor; "how very clever you must be! And what is it you write in Punch?" "Oh, all the best things are mine." The difficulty which Thomas Hood actually experienced in establishing his authorship of "The Song of the Shirt" is recorded in its proper place; while, among other things, Mr. Milliken's "Childe Chappie" was claimed, as was afterwards ascertained, by a literary ghoul whose strange taste it was to batten upon the comic writings of others, and to use his borrowed reputation to ingratiate himself with the fair and trusting sex.

Not a few of Punch's jokes have been sent in by men who were destined a little later on to become members of the Staff and diners at the Table. Mr. Furniss's first drawing, as is duly explained elsewhere, was re-drawn by Mr. du Maurier, and Mr. Burnand's initial contribution—a little sketch of 'Varsity life—was re-drawn by Leech. But quite a number of non-professional wits and humorists have acted as disinterested friends, whose benevolent assistance has gone far to colour Punch with the characteristics of their own vis comica. The chief of these no doubt is Mr. Joseph Crawhall, of Newcastle, whose devoted service to his friend Charles Keene was an important factor in the artist's Punch-life. From his other friends, Mr. Birket Foster and Mr. Andrew Tuer, Keene was in receipt of a great number of jokes—from the latter they came almost as regularly as the weekly paper. It was also from Mr. Tuer that he received, among many others, that happy thought, so happily realised, of the gentleman who one day paid an unaccustomed visit to his stables to give an order, and asking his coachman's child, "Well, my little man, do you know who I am?" received for answer, "Yes, you're the man who rides in our carriage." This story was quoted seven years later by Lord Aberdeen in a public speech, in which he attributed the adventure—though on what grounds did not appear—to "a celebrated physician," apparently Sir Andrew Clark.

After Charles Keene's death Mr. Tuer's humorous vein was turned on to others of the Staff. One of his contributions may be quoted as illustrating how unintentional are the originals of some of Punch's jokes. In 1889 appeared a picture entitled "A New Trade," in which a country maid, on being asked what her last employer was, replied, "He kept a Vicarage." The circumstance had actually taken place in Mr. Tuer's own house. When the number appeared, the legend was read out to the maid, and it was explained to her that it was her joke. She showed no enthusiasm, not even appreciation; but on seeing the others laugh, she said, with perfect gravity, yet still with hopeful perseverance, "Well, I must try and make some more!"

To Canon Ainger, also, among a crowd of willing helpers, has Mr. du Maurier often been indebted—for jokes rather scholarly than farcical, such as the parody spoken by a wretched passenger leaving the steamboat—

"Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee— I've been as ill as any three!"

Most, perhaps, resembling the "Unknown Man" of the United States already spoken of is Mr. Henry Walker, of Worcester, a gentleman of wit and artistic knowledge. It had for many years been his practice, whenever inspired with a good idea for a humorous drawing, to make a sketch of it in his album; and thus he had collected a goodly number. At first he would send his sketches to Keene from time to time, receiving due pecuniary acknowledgment in return, but later on he left the whole book with Mark Lemon to draw from as he listed. Altogether, between the years 1867 and 1869, Keene made fifteen drawings from Mr. Walker's book, in some cases keeping close to the original designs, in others entirely altering them; but in that re-drawn by Mr. du Maurier from the sketch here reproduced, the original has been greatly departed from and improved.



It may be added that when Punch artists re-draw and touch up an outsider's sketch, it is their usual practice not to sign their drawings, but to leave them without any indication of their authorship.

Apart from these willing contributors are those from whom the Editor, always on the look-out for new blood and fresh wit, invites contributions, having seen good work of theirs elsewhere.



It is often thus that Punch's ranks are recruited, and that Mr. Lucy, Mr. Lehmann, Mr. Partridge, Mr. Phil May, and others have been drawn into the agreeable vortex of Whitefriars.

On at least one occasion, however, Punch threw his kerchief in vain, for Mr. Bristed tells us, in his "Five Years at an English University," how the Epigram Club, of Oxford, was invited by the Editor to send its productions to Punch, but that "with true English reserve" the Society came to an agreement that all their transactions should remain in manuscript.

Beside the editor of a comic journal stalks a demon on either hand—the Belial of Plagiarism and the Beelzebub of Repetition. The public looks to him to be a wit and a humorist, with a knowledge of every witticism that ever was made. If he suffer an old joke to appear, some "constant reader" will surely find him out, and publish the fact abroad with malignant glee. There are few vices so deeply resented as the telling of an old joke; in an editor it is recognised as amounting to crime. But those who judge so severely have clearly never made a scientific study of the Joke. It is not sufficient to analyse a witticism and dissect it, in the cold spirit of that terrible book called "A Theory of Wit and Humour," till its humour flies, like the delicate bouquet from uncorked wine. The genealogy of jokes and twists of humour and of thought, of form and application, must be traced; and the student will find that in respect to a great proportion of our verbal jests of to-day they may be tracked up to the Middle Ages, back to Classic times, and lost perchance in the Oriental recesses of a jocular past. It is not only a case of mere unconscious repetition or of brazen-faced plagiarism that is the principle involved; it has its root in the chameleon-like variety of aspect possible to a piece of fooling or a flash of wit. Jokes are as adaptable to times and circumstances, as the human race itself; and to identify them and pin them down on a specimen card, one must be another Pastor Aristaeus, alert and skilful, in pursuit of a lightning Proteus, infinitely various and hopelessly volatile.

But even that is not enough. Suppose the editor to be a scholar, deeply read in the Classics and in Oriental writings, and endowed besides with a memory so prodigious as to be able to recognise every joke that turns up, he has still to guard against the contributor, on whom he is to a considerable extent dependent. The jest-purveyor may be honest when he unwittingly sends in a joke that has already gone the rounds, and has appeared perhaps in some country paper; or he may be deliberately dishonest; or he may simply be impatient at not seeing his contribution printed (perhaps, after all, it is only being kept back for an illustration to be drawn to accompany it), and may send it off elsewhere—anticipating its publication in the paper of his original choice. Or a group of jokes may form the stock-in-trade of a newly accepted contributor, who, as the seaside landladies say, "must have brought them in his portmantel." And then there are recurring events that naturally give recurring birth to jokes they almost necessarily suggest. There is thus no standard, no system of identification for the thousand disguises in which a joke may lurk; and unconscious plagiarism and repetition deserve greater indulgence than that which they commonly receive. Mr. Burnand, probably the most prolific punster of the age, once wrote to a contributor, "For goodness' sake, send no more puns; they have all been made!" Indeed, Punch has given us more "pre-historic peeps" of humour than he or Mr. Reed have any notion of. "Bless you," said Punch in his third number, "half the proverbs given to Solomon are mine!"

It was the fashion when Punch was young for the comic papers to indulge in fierce recrimination and bitter charge and counter-charge of plagiarism. At that time it was thought that a satirical paper could be launched into public favour on its abuse of rivals—so that all the drowning journals caught at the straws of the others' reputations. Nowadays they more practically apply for an injunction. Punch, in point of fact, has sought the protection of the law on more than one occasion. As early as 1844 the Vice-Chancellor's Court was the scene of the action of the Proprietors of Punch v. Marshall and Another, when Mr. Bethell, afterwards Lord Westbury, complained that the defendants had published a "Punch's Steamboat Companion" (an excessively vulgar production) with intention to deceive the public. The judge brilliantly remarked, "Well, this certainly is an excuse for the Court taking punch in the morning. (Great laughter.) I think you have made out a sufficient case for your injunction, Mr. Bethell;" and the injunction was accordingly granted. In the following year (July, 1845) steps had to be taken to protect Mr. and Mrs. Caudle from the wholesale piracy to which they were subjected on every side. Mr. Bethell again made a comic speech, directed primarily against the "Hereford Times" and the "Southport Visitor," in which the eighth and ninth lectures, illustrations and all, had been coolly reproduced, without a word of acknowledgment. As before, the serio-comic pleader was successful, and obtained the desired injunctions. Again, in 1872 Mr. J. C. Hotten was stopped from publishing "The Story of the Life of Napoleon, told by the Popular Caricaturists of the Last 30 Years," inasmuch as the compiler had annexed from Punch all he desired for the work. (Law Reports 8, Exchequer 7.) Sir Henry Hawkins was for Punch, and Serjeant Parry defended. The judge, Lord Bramwell, and jury, too, believed in the sacred rights of property, and a farthing damages was awarded in addition to the forty shillings paid into Court. So Punch won his case and gained his costs—and Hotten went on publishing his book just as if nothing had occurred. Another case, against the "Ludgate Monthly," need only be mentioned for the sake of a rival's remark that the idea of Punch having published a joke worth copying and going to law about was the greatest joke of all.

During his minority Punch made and sustained many an open charge of plagiarism. They were the amenities of comic literature, of which, however, the public soon tired; and Punch, recognising that newspaper readers will not be troubled to take part or sides in an Eatanswill warfare that does not concern them, practically dropped a campaign with which the rest continued to persevere. But Punch's silence was misunderstood. At any rate, it was presumed upon. When he could stand the audacity of the poachers no longer, he broke out, as recounted, in the summer of 1844, again in the following year, and once more in 1847, into a practical prosecution. Douglas Jerrold's caustic pen had full play in his all-round denunciation of the pilferers, and in Punch's name he let fly at big game. "First and foremost," he declared, "the great juggler of Printing-House Square walks in like a sheriff and takes our comic effects;" and Newman's pencil added point to the comprehensiveness of the assault. Of numerous frauds, too, Punch had to complain. "Punch's Almanacs" of a vile and indecent sort, with which he had nothing in the world to do, had been issued to his detriment, and several papers were produced in close imitation of his own; but it was the circumstance of his stolen jokes that wounded him most of all, and caused him to lay his baton about him with lusty vigour. The incriminated journals, thoroughly in their element, retorted with well-feigned indignation. Prominent among them "Joe Miller the Younger" had professed for him at first a particular friendship which, when contemptuously rejected, turned, like the love of a woman scorned, to hate. It might have been retorted that Punch, in the words of his prospectus, had frankly owned that he would give "asylum for superannuated Joe Millers," and even that Mr. Birket Foster had been actually employed in 1842 in "adapting" and anglicising Gavarni's drawings for Punch's pages. Instead, "Joe Miller" defended the size of his page, which was, he said, like Punch's own, copied from the "Athenaeum," and protested against any attempt at monopoly, pointing out that the sub-title "Charivari" was itself a plagiarism. If anyone, he went on, could prove that he bought a Punch in mistake for a "Joe Miller," he would willingly pay L5 for each copy so sold, in order "to compensate the Punch purchaser for his disappointment."

From this moment until his death he never left Punch alone, and constantly pointed out many of his delinquencies, plagiarisms apparently so gross and frequent that it can hardly be doubted that some intrigue was afoot. For example, on August 2nd, 1845, there appeared in both papers a cartoon almost identical, with the attitudes reversed, entitled "The Political Pas de Quatre"—after the existing ballet at Her Majesty's Theatre, danced by Grisi, Taglioni, Grahn, and Cerito—representing four ballet-skirted danseuses in a grotesque pose or tableau. Those in the Punch cartoon (which, by the way, was suggested at the Table by Gilbert a Beckett, and was executed by Leech) were impersonated by Lord Brougham, Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, and Daniel O'Connell; while in the other appeared Lord Brougham, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, and Daniel O'Connell; but, unless carefully compared, the one might certainly be mistaken for the other. The "Joe Miller" block was drawn by A. S. Henning, who had quitted the service of Punch three years before; and it was claimed by his paper that the original drawing was exhibited in their window a week before Punch's appeared. But abuse of Punch for this and other curious coincidences did not save him, and "Joe Miller the Younger" soon announced his metamorphosis into "Mephystopheles," which proved an inferior and still shorter-lived concern.



Then followed the bright and able little monthly "The Man in the Moon," from which Punch had some of the hardest knocks he ever received, for on its Staff were to be found most of the clever men of the day (including Shirley Brooks) for whom Punch could find no room. Month after month examples were given of Punch's alleged pilfering, which really only proved how the minds of humorists run in grooves, especially when dealing with topical subjects; and a cutting representation of Punch as an old clo'man begging bits of comic manuscript, with the plaintive cry of "Any Jo', Jo'—any old Jo'?" scored a great success. "The Man in the Moon" chaffed Bulwer Lytton on his initials, "E.L.B.L.B.L.B.," and Thackeray followed in Punch with "E.L.B.L.B.L.B.B.L.L. B.B.B." And one of Leech's sketches of "The Rising Generation"—a small boy saying, "Aw—hairdresser, when you've finished my hair, just take off my beard, will you?" (Vol. XII., p. 104, 1847)—was also represented as a gross infringement. The title of a poem, "What are the Wild Waves Saying?" (with the reply, "We'd better have stayed at home"), issued in "The Man in the Moon," was seen in Punch soon after; while the superiority of our "New Street-Sweeping Machines" over those then in use abroad (by which, of course, cannon was intended) appeared in Punch's pages a fortnight afterwards. It is an interesting fact that this self-same idea of the Street-Sweeping Machines gave Charles Keene the subject for his first Punch drawing just three years later.



But, apart from charges of direct plagiarism, "The Man in the Moon" certainly anticipated Punch in some of his well-known cuts. The "Patent Railway-Director Buffer," which consisted in the tying of a railway director on the front of the locomotive, was certainly the "Moon's" invention in February, 1847. In March, 1853, Leech showed the world in his cartoon "How to Ensure against Railway Accidents," by lashing a director across the engine a la Mazeppa; and as late as 1857 (p. 24, Vol. XXXIII.) Sir John Tenniel showed a "Patent Railway Safety Buffer" precisely similar to the original device. Again, in "The Man in the Moon" (January, 1848) the little joke—Park-keeper (St. James's Park): "You can't come in!" Boy: "Vot do yer mean? Ain't it us as keeps yer?"—is surely related to Sir John Tenniel's cut (p. 181, Vol. XXXII., 1857), in which a delightful Hodge gazes open-mouthed at the sentry at the Horse Guards, and replies, when asked what he's staring at, "Wy shouldn't I stare? I pays vor yer!"

The "Puppet Show," too, kept up a running fire at Punch, and delighted in retorting upon his charge of "picking and stealing" by printing their jokes and his alleged belated ones in parallel columns. Among the pictures, too, the "Puppet Show"-man was sometimes first, as in the sketch of the fat old lady who enters an omnibus and, sitting down promiscuously somewhere between two gentlemen, says, "Don't disturb yourselves; I'll shake down"—an idea textually repeated in Punch in 1864 by Mr. Fred Barnard. The "Puppet Show" (1848) is also to be remembered for its joke of the choleric old gentleman, indignant at the delay of an omnibus in which he has taken his seat, crying impatiently to the conductor, "Is this omnibus going on?" and being quietly answered, "No, sir; it's stopping perfectly still"—a joke illustrated by Mr. du Maurier in Punch for 1871 (p. 208, Vol. LXI.); and for the picture of the City clerk in pink, who, surprised by his employer, is accosted with the significant words, "So that's the costume you are going to your uncle's funeral in?" Charles Keene used a similar joke forty-one years later, only with time the festival had changed into that of an aunt. In the "Showman's" pages, too, first appeared the Frenchman who accounts for his sore-throat by explaining that "Yesterday morning I have wash my neck!" And the Duke of Wellington, in one of the cartoons (May, 1849), cries, "Cobden, spare that tree," just as Beaconsfield pleaded with Gladstone in Tenniel's picture of thirty years later. Again, a man with a gorgeous black-eye enters a room, and when it is remarked on, expresses his surprise that anyone should have noticed it. Six years later Leech repeated the idea in Punch. In his parting shot the "Showman" says, "The Punch writers say they can't understand our jokes. We feel assured that the world will admit that they take them fast enough"—itself a pun, by the way, which Punch had himself used in the postscript to his first volume: "Ours hasn't been a bed of roses—we've had our rivals and our troubles. We came as a great hint, and everybody took us."

In "The Arrow," a clever fortnightly rival which existed (it cannot be said to have "flourished") in the year 1864, Punch was severely handled for "plagiarising" two of that journal's jokes two or three weeks after their original publication. One of these had reference to the "Fight with Fate," which was then being played at the Surrey Theatre; and as Mr. Banting and his famous cure (the stout undertaker lived but two doors from Leech, in The Terrace at Kensington, and struck up a pleasing friendship with the artist) were then the talk of the town, "The Arrow" suggested a revised version, "A Fight with Fat," with a disciple of Mr. Banting as the chief character. Punch followed suit with the entire idea. Thereupon the rival editor, Henry S. Leigh—the lines are manifestly his—apostrophised Mr. Banting thus:—

"Take mental exertion—fight shy of diversion (Remember, the proverb says 'Laugh and grow fat'); You may venture securely on Punch, because surely There can't be much fear of your laughing at that."

Anyone who possesses the original "Joe Miller's Jest-book" will be able, if he cares to look, to recognise a goodly number of the most popular jokes of the day, even including a number of Punch jokes. He will there find set forth in quaint terms the retort of the non-churchgoer that if he is not a pillar of the church, he is certainly one of the buttresses, for he stops outside—used in due time by Charles Keene; he will find the repartee placed by Punch in the drawing by the same artist (May 4th, 1872) in the mouth of an Irish beggar-woman who had been refused alms by a pug-nosed gentleman, "The Lord preserve your eyesight, for you've no nose to carry spectacles;" as well as that witticism usually ascribed to Curran when addressing a jury in the face of a dissenting judge, "He shakes his head, but there's nothing in it;" besides other favourite jokes of similar antiquity and renown. Robert Seymour, too, in whose work, strangely enough, Leech is said to have found no humour, shines out posthumously now and again from Punch's pages. "Move on—here's threepence," says a butler. "Threepence?" retorts the street-flutist contemptuously, "d'you think I don't know the value of peace and quietness?" That was originally Seymour's, together with the drawing of an Englishman's notion of "A Day's Pleasure"—a labouring-man dragging a cartload of children up a steep hill on a hot Sunday—an idea which was afterwards the subject of a Punch cartoon.

Two jokes which from their universality of treatment and the unfailing welcome accorded them at every reappearance might almost be considered classic and generic jests, were greatly assisted in their popularity by Seymour's pencil, before Punch obtained for them still wider recognition. The first represents a fat man, between whose legs the dog he is whistling to has taken his faithful stand. The old gentleman whistles and whistles again, anxiously exclaiming, "Wherever can that dog be?" After Seymour had done with it, Alfred Crowquill took it up; and in 1854 (p. 71 of the second volume) Sir John Tenniel introduced it into Punch under the title of "Where, and oh where!" It was not yet worn out, however, though it doubtless had seen its best days; and so the "Fliegende Blaetter" revived it in 1894 as a typical example of recent German humour. For the other joke two men are required: the one an unmistakable ruffian, a grim and dirty robber, and the other a weak, nervous, timid youth of insignificant stature, the scene representing the entrance to a dark lane as night closes in. "This is a werry lonely spot, sir," says Seymour's footpad; "I wonder you ain't afeard of being robbed!"—and the young man's hair stands on end, and lifts his hat above his head. Leech in 1853 (p. 100, first volume) alters the dialogue for Punch by introducing the pleasing possibility of a greater tragedy, by the footpad asking the youth to buy a razor; and Captain Howard the following spring makes the ruffian inquire if he may accompany his victim "to hear the nightingale." In "Diogenes" (December, 1854) the pristine simplicity is restored by the naif request that he "may go a little way" with the young gentleman; and finally, in 1857, Leech once more resurrects and renovates it with his astonishing talent and freshness for use in the Almanac.

"Are you comin' home?" asks an indignant wife of her tipsy spouse, in Mr. Phil May's admirable drawing of February 16th, 1895. "I'll do ellythik you like in reasol, M'ria (hic). But I won't come 'ome." In the previous year, however, the following had appeared in "Fun":—"Guid Wife.-'Come hame, Jock; ye'll be doing nae guid here.' Jock.—'Onything in reason, Jenny, ma woman, but hame I wall nae gang!'" On the other hand, in the "Echo," in March, 1895, appeared the following item of news:—"There is a curious report of a dialogue in a Chinese medical paper:—Doctor: 'H'm. You are run down, sir. You need an ocean voyage. What is your business?' Patient: 'Second mate of the Anna Maria, just in from Hong Kong.'" But more than a quarter of a century before, Punch had treated his readers to the same.—"Doctor Cockshure (advising a nervous patient): 'My good sir, what you want is a thorough alteration of climate; the only thing to cure you is a long sea-voyage.' Patient: 'That's rather inconvenient. You see, I'm only just home from a sea-voyage round the world!'"

It is amusing for one endowed with a taste for the history of humour, and gifted with the requisite memory, to follow some of these interesting revivals or re-births of comic ideas. Sir John Tenniel's vision of "The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street," in the "Pocket Book" of 1880, was a familiar conception to those who remembered "Cruikshank's Omnibus" of 1841; while Leech's sea-sick Frenchman, in p. 76 of the second volume for 1851, was almost the counterpart of "Glorious George's" important etching "A very good man, no doubt, but a Bad Sailor." Again, one of the most brilliant things that ever appeared in a comic journal was the short dialogue supposed to pass between an inquiring child and his philosophical though impatient parent:—

"What is mind?" "No matter."

"What is matter?" "Never mind."

"This well-known definition," says Dr. Furnivall, "according to the 'Academy,' was by Professor T. Hewitt Key; he sent it to Punch, and of course it was printed forthwith—I suppose, somewhere about the 'Sixties." But as a matter of fact this mot, which has also been attributed to Kenny, had already been published in "The Month" as early as August, 1851 (page 147, Vol. I.); and I may add that though I remember hearing Professor Key quote it more than once, I never heard him pretend to its authorship.

Then, the belated Foozle returning home drunk, and offering to fight his aggressive-looking hat-stand, appeared in H. J. Byron's "Comic News" (October 3rd, 1863), as well as in Punch by Keene's pencil (1875); and the humorous chess-problem in the latter paper, in which White had to mate in a certain number of moves, if Black interposed no serious obstacle, was an echo of "White to play and check if Black doesn't prevent him" in "The Man in the Moon" of 1847, and of "White to play and check if Black doesn't mate him before" in "The Month" of October, 1851. Mr. Sambourne's famous "cartoon junior" of Mr. Gladstone in the character of the child in the soap advertisement, who "Won't be happy till he gets It" (i.e. the cake of Home Rule, just out of his reach), was found, to his subsequent annoyance and surprise, to have been anticipated by a week or two by the now defunct "Funny Folks;" and Sir John Tenniel's cartoon representing Mr. Goschen, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, as a hen sitting on her eggs—an idea which was not new even to him, as he had used it in 1880, ten years before—appeared some days after a similar one had been issued in the "Pall Mall Budget;" though, of course, Punch's picture had, in accordance with the mechanical routine of the office, been decided on a week before publication.

Punch's advice to vocalists, "Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves" (November, 1892), had, curiously enough, been spoken years before by the eccentric Duchess in "Alice in Wonderland;" and his conceit that there is no fear for the prosperity of Ireland under Home Rule "so long as her capital's D(o)ublin'" dates from still earlier times. Then there was the fine old Scotch joke of a Glasgow baillie who, replying to the toast of the "Law," remarked that "all our greatest law-givers are dead—Moses is dead, Solon is dead, Confucius and Justinian are dead—and I'm nae feelin' that vera weel mysel'," which in March, 1893, Punch republished, adapting it, however, to modern literature—the speaker quaintly including George Eliot amongst our deceased "best men." More recently a precisely parallel anecdote has been attributed to Dr. McCosh, apropos of Leibnitz's theory of evil ("Westminster Gazette," January, 1895). And again, there is an old story of Baron Rothschild, who when very busy received the visit of a business acquaintance. "Take a chair," quoth the Baron. "Can't," said his visitor, "I'm in a hurry." "Then take two chairs," suggested the Baron, still engrossed. In 1871 the same joke was sent in to Punch in a remodelled form, and duly published. "Call me a cab!" says an excited gentleman. "You're too late, sir," replies the servant; "a cab couldn't do it." "Confound you!" cries the other, "call two cabs, then!"

In 1892 a catastrophe befell Punch, a double faux pas. An excellent child story had been printed in "Vanity Fair" of October 15th, in which a little girl at a Sunday-school class was asked to define a parable: "Please, miss," replies the child, "a parable's a 'eavenly story with no earthly meaning!" A fortnight later Punch, who had been victimised, had the misfortune, not only to come out with the same joke, but by a typographical slip to spoil it by making the child define a parable as "a heavenly story with an earthly meaning"—the result being to evoke a paean of exultation from the few papers whose favourite sport it is to keep a malevolent weather-eye on Punch in perpetual hope of catching him tripping. Just such a little chorus of mischievous delight greeted the publication of Mr. du Maurier's joke in which an old maid complains that a serious drawback to the charming view from her windows is the tourists bathing on the opposite shore. It is true, as her friend reminds her, that the distance is very great—"but with a telescope, you know!" But years before, Charles Keene had illustrated the same idea, taking, however, a cricket dressing-tent instead of a bathing shore; and long before that it had been scoffed at for its antiquity.

In like fashion another Punch-baiter complained a quarter of a century ago that an American paper printed a joke which Punch duly used as a "social," and which has since been revived as follows: "Harriet Hosmer tells of an incident which occurred in her studio, where her statue of Apollo rested. An old lady was being shown around, a Mrs. Raggles, and she paused before this masterpiece a long time. Finally she exclaimed, 'So that's Apoller, is it?' She was assured that it was. 'Supposed to be the handsomest man in the world, warn't he?' The surmise was assented to. Then turning away disgustedly, 'Wal,' she said, 'I've seen Apoller and I've seen Raggles—an' I say, Give me Raggles!'"

One of the stories told of Dominique was once printed in Punch as original. This was when he took a bath by the doctor's order, and being asked how he felt, replied, "Rather wet." The jokelet, curiously enough, had already been printed in "Mark Lemon's Jest-Book," and was so far a classic that it is to be found in the "Arlequina" of 1694. Again, the story of the boy who, when ordered by a "swell" to hold his horse, asked if it bit, or kicked, or took two to hold, and when reassured on each point, replied, "Then hold him yourself," is older still; for it is to be found in "Mery Tales, Wittie Questions and Quicke Answeres Very pleasant to be Readde" (published by H. Wilkes in 1567), under the heading, "Of the Courtier that bad the boy holde his horse, xliii." This little book, by the way, is included in Hazlitt's collection of Shakespeare's Jest-books.

In drawing attention to these incidents in Punch's career—examples of which might easily be multiplied—it is not my purpose to expose shortcomings, but rather to insist on the difficulty of the humorist's path and the pitfalls that beset genuine originality. "The late Mark Lemon," wrote Mr. Hatton, "had a kind of editorial instinct for an old joke. He could identify the spurious article as easily as an expert detects counterfeit money. Lemon's soul was in Punch, and he had a keen memory for every line that had appeared in its columns. He edited a book of humorous anecdotes, but even he overlooked numerous doubles, and left not a few errors for the detection of the critics;" in fact, was fallible too, as in the nature of things he was bound to be. And Shirley Brooks, although with his wide knowledge of comic literature and "happy thoughts" he was successful too, had nevertheless humiliation to bear for blunders not a few. Tom Taylor neither knew nor cared; as Mr. Labouchere severely said, "he had no sense of humour," and the jokes had to take their chance. But to-day a careful eye is kept to this question of originality, and so far as cartoons are concerned, Sir John Tenniel has always been trusted to see that subjects for cartoons are not used over again.

Although Punch has tripped now and again, he has been the comic quarry which the nation and the nation's press have worked for half a century, quoting, borrowing, stealing, a thousand times to his once. His best ideas are enjoyed and used, and in due time are sent back, often quite innocently, for re-issue. Nay, even what is popularly known in England as "modern American humour" has been claimed as a leaf out of Punch's book, quaint exaggeration forming its staple feature, as in the case where we are told that "a young artist in Picayune takes such perfect likenesses that a lady married the portrait of her lover instead of the original."

Lastly, a couple of drawings by Mr. du Maurier may be referred to (second volume for 1872, and first volume for 1894), which created a good deal of amusement at the time of their publication. In the first case a visitor calls to inquire after the condition of a happy mother. And the babe, is it a boy? "No," says the page. Ah! a girl. "No," repeats the lad. What is it, then? asks the startled visitor. "If you please," replies the intelligent retainer, "the doctor said it was a Heir!" Now, this joke almost textually reproduces a circumstance attending the birth of that Earl of Dudley of whom Rogers wrote the epigram which Byron thought "unsurpassable":—

"Ward has no heart, they say; but I deny it; He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it."

The second drawing reproduces a story (long since forgotten) of the first Duke of Wellington, who joined a notorious gambling club, with the express view, it was said, to black-balling his son, the Marquis of Douro, a likely candidate—and then went complacently and told him so.

Much the same difficulty attending the identification and indexing of the jokes of the past is experienced in respect to Punch itself. Consider for a moment. That work consisted in the summer of 1895 of 108 volumes. At the moderate estimate of four jokes per column, attempted and made, we reach a grand total of nearly 270,000 jokes—a total bewildering in its vastness, and representing, one would think, all the humour that ever was produced since this melancholy world began. The mind refuses to grasp such a mass of comicality; how, then, would you classify this prodigious joviality and sarcasm? How detect a joke that may reappear under a hundred disguises of time, place, condition, and application—yet the same root-joke after all? Is it surprising that the same ideas recur—and, recurring, sometimes escape the shrewd eye of Punch's investigation department?

It has already been said that to Sir John Tenniel it has fallen to prevent the repetition of subjects in respect to the cartoons. Yet it must not be imagined that others on the Staff are not as earnest students of Punch's pages, that they have not graduated as Masters of his Arts. Yet, for all their vigilance, repetitions have often recurred. You remember Tenniel's superb cartoon of the noble savage manacled with the chains of slavery taking refuge on a British ship with clasped hands uplifted to the commander? It was at the time of Mr. Ward Hunt's slavery circular, and was entitled "Am I not a Man and a Brother?" A like subject with the same title was contributed by Leech on June 1st, 1844, when a manacled negro appeals to Lord Brougham, who, making "a long nose," hurries off to the Privy Council Office. Similarly have we had two "Vigils"—one in the spring of 1854, and the other thirty-four years later. And Punch's exclusion from France, figuratively at Calais Pier, has been the subject of two drawings—the first in 1843,[15] and the other, by Mr. Linley Sambourne, on January 12th, 1878. The repetitions at such long intervals lose, of course, any such significance as the critical might feel inclined to attribute; but in Punch's nonage the self-same engravings have more than once been actually used a second time, such as "Deaf Burke"—the celebrated prize-fighter of Windmill Street—who was shown twice in the first volume, certainly not for his beauty's sake; a drawing by Hine, which was similarly employed in the same year; and in 1842 a cut by Gagniet, which had been bought from a French publication. Perhaps the nearest modern approach to this was when in 1872 Mr. Sambourne practically repeated his figure of Mr. Punch turning round from his easel to face the reader.

At the time when the Russo-Turkish War was drawing to a close, one of the most powerful of Tenniel's cartoons—which made a great impression on the country, as giving keen point to Mr. Gladstone's agitation against Lord Beaconsfield's attitude at that period—was the drawing of the Prime Minister, leaning back comfortably reading in his armchair, declaring that he can see nothing at all about "Bulgarian Atrocities" in the Blue Books, though the background of the picture itself is all violence and butchery. Yet nobody recalled the fact that the artist had made a similar cartoon of Cobden and Palmerston in the spring of 1857.

Charles Keene certainly had not studied his Punch as he ought. Of that there is abundant proof; for although the care he took to obtain good and original jokes was conscientious in the extreme, he over and over again re-drew his own and other people's drolleries. The British grumble of the British farmer who under no circumstances can be appeased or contented was typified by Leech in a picture wherein the farmer was represented as looking at a splendid field of heavy golden corn (p. 96, Vol. XXVII, 1854), but was not satisfied even then. "Ah!" he grumbles, "see what it'll cost me to get it in!" The idea tickled Keene so greatly when he heard it that, entirely unmindful of Leech's page, he made a drawing of the same subject on p. 268 of the first volume for 1878; and then, forgetting all about it, eleven years later (p. 35 of the second volume for 1889) he actually did it all over again!

"What do you mean by coming home at this time of night?" asks an indignant wife of her tipsy husband. "My dear," replies the prodigal, with a generous attempt at candour and conciliation, "all other places shu'rup!" Keene drew this admirably in 1871 (p. 71, Vol. LXI), and Mr. du Maurier most delightfully again in 1883 (p. 14, Vol. LXXXIV.). These and many more examples of unconscious receptivity and reproduction by professional humorists will strike the attentive reader of Punch's pages. He will see how to both Leech and Mr. Ralston occurred the idea of an over-dressed vulgarian in morning clothes protesting in angry dismay against the opera-house officials' suggestion that he is not in "full dress;" how both Miss Georgina Bowers (1870) and Mr. du Maurier were tickled by the retort to the economical dictum that it is extravagant to have both butter and jam on a slice of bread—"Extravagant? Economical!—same piece of bread does for both!"; how "Childe Chappie's Pilgrimage" of our day was preceded by "Child Snobson's Pilgrimage" of 1842; how Mr. du Maurier in November, 1888, and again in the Almanac for 1895 repeated the joke of a husband declaring that he would be "extremely annoyed" if in the event of his death his wife did not invite certain of his particular friends to his funeral; how Poe's "Bells" maintain their power to attract the parodist; how curiously tempting to the punster is the idea of a bashful policeman in the National Gallery being asked where "the fine new Constable is" (for Mr. Burnand, Charles Keene, and Sir Frank Lockwood have all done it, in the order indicated); and many other amusing slips of the sort. And he must not on any account miss those twin jokes—for they are both of them good and in their essence identical—of John Leech and Mr. du Maurier.

In Mr. du Maurier's version we have a poor woman touting for a bottle of wine for her sick husband. The doctor had recommended port, she says—"and it doesn't matter how old it is, sir!" In Leech's the host is impressing on his youthful guest that "that wine has been in my cellar four-and-twenty years come last Christmas—four-and-twenty years, sir!" And the guileless youth gushingly makes answer, in the belief that he is making himself remarkably pleasant, "Has it really, sir? What it must have been when it was new!"

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Compare Shirley Brooks's couplet (1857):—

"MARRY (AND DON'T) COME UP.

"A fellow that's single, a fine fellow's he; But a fellow that's married's a felo de se."

[14] See Punch, p. 235, Vol. LXI., 1861.

[15] See p. 191.



CHAPTER VII.

CARTOONS—CARTOONISTS AND THEIR WORK.

The Cartoon takes Shape—"The Parish Councils Cockatoo"—Cartoonists and their Relative Achievements—John Leech's First—Rapidity in Design "General Fevrier turned Traitor"—"The United Service"—Sir John Tenniel's Animal Types—"The British Lion Smells a Rat"—The Indian Mutiny—A Cartoon of Vengeance—Punch and Cousin Jonathan—"Ave Caesar!"—The Franco-Prussian War—The Russo-Turkish War—"The Political 'Mrs. Gummidge'"—"Dropping the Pilot," its Origin and Present Ownership—"Forlorn Hope"—"The Old Crusaders"—Troubles of the Cartoonist—The Obituary Cartoon.

In describing the Punch Dinner I show how the merry meeting lapses, by a natural transition, from pleasure to work, and ends with the evolution of the cartoon; how the mist of talk, vague perhaps and undecided at first, slowly develops a bright nebulous point, round which the discussion revolves and revolves, until at last it takes form, slowly and carefully, though changed a dozen times, and finally, after being threshed and threshed again, stands in the ultimate form in which next week it meets the public eye.

For when the meal is done, and cigars and pipes are duly lighted, subjects are deliberately proposed in half-a-dozen quarters, until quite a number may be before the Staff. They are fought all round the Table, and, unless obviously and strikingly good, are probably rejected or attacked with the good-humoured ridicule and withering scorn distinctive of true friendship and cordial intimacy. Then is each fully and formally debated, every tussle advancing it a stage, and none finally accepted until all the others have fallen in the battledore-and-shuttlecock process to which they have been subjected. Then, when the subject is settled, comes the consideration of the details—what should the grouping be? what the accessories? how many figures?—(during the hunting season John Leech would decline to introduce more than two, as his week-end would otherwise be spoiled)—and other minor yet still important considerations; and then each man's opinion has its proper weight in the Council of Punch. In this year of grace Mr. Lucy is listened to with the respect due to his extraordinary Parliamentary knowledge; Mr. Milliken is the chief literary authority since "the Professor" (Percival Leigh) went to his rest; and so each man is counted upon for the special or expert knowledge he may bring to bear on the particular subject then before the meeting.

And when the subject of the cartoon is a political one, the debate grows hot and the fun more furious, and it usually ends by Tories and Radicals accepting a compromise—for the parties are pretty evenly balanced at the Table; while Mr. Burnand assails both sides with perfect indifference. At last, when the intellectual tug-of-war, lasting usually from half-past eight for just an hour and three-quarters by the clock, is brought to a conclusion, the cartoon in all its details is discussed and determined; and then comes the fight over the title and the "cackle," amid all the good-natured chaff and banter of a pack of boisterous, high-spirited schoolboys.

More than once it has happened that notwithstanding a subject being well on the way to becoming a cartoon—the raw material of an idea having been almost hammered into a presentable political missile or social criticism by the heads of the company—a side remark may arrest further labour, and turn attention in an entirely different direction. Such was the case with one of the most successful cartoons of recent years. The topic of the week was the Parish Councils Bill, which was then before the Lords, and was receiving severe handling in that House. In the course of discussion came an "aside" from Mr. Arthur a Beckett, to the effect that "Gladstone is having a deuce of a time." "Like the cockatoo," assented Mr. Lehmann, referring to the story of the unhappy bird which was left for a short while alone with a monkey, and which, when the owner returned to the room and found his bird clean plucked of its feathers by the monkey—all but a single plume in the tail—looked up dejectedly, and croaked in tones of almost voiceless horror, "I've been having a doose of a time!" The remarks were caught at by Mr. Burnand as a happy thought, and the new idea was tossed like a ball from one to another until there issued from it the well-known design of the monkey in its coronet, as the House of Lords, having plucked the cockatoo-Bill of most of its feather-clauses—a drawing which, under the title of "The Parish Councils Cockatoo," hit off the situation with singular felicity, and reaped the reward of the public applause. In a similar manner there developed Mr. Sambourne's peculiarly happy "Cartoon Junior," representing Mr. Gladstone, newly retired, looking up from the perusal of the first speech made by Lord Rosebery on his promotion to the Premiership—a speech some of the points of which he afterwards had to withdraw or explain away—with the words, "Pity a Prime Minister should be so ambiguous!" In the arrangement of these second cartoons, which, as is elsewhere described, immediately follows the handing of the written-out subject of the main picture to Sir John Tenniel, a contrast is always the first thing sought for. If the first deals with foreign politics, the second must treat of home matters, political or social; if the "senior" is social, the "junior" will be political; if Sir John is realistic, Mr. Sambourne is idealistic. And if it is impossible so to differentiate them, the prominent figures at least which appear in the one are carefully avoided in the other.

But in the early years of Punch the method was not so democratic. The matter was discussed, but the preponderance of two or three of the Staff made their opinions felt to such a degree that when a subject was proposed by one of them, that subject, when it appeared, was unmistakably theirs and nobody else's. I have before me the full details of these matters during a considerable period, and I find that on the whole Douglas Jerrold was the most prolific of suggestors, while Henry Mayhew (so long as he remained), Gilbert Abbot a Beckett, Mark Lemon, and Horace Mayhew, roughly speaking, divided the honours between them. Thackeray seldom made a suggestion, and it is not very often that the entry "Leech solus" is credited to the great cartoonist before 1848. During the years 1845, 1846, and 1847, for instance, Leech alone proposed eleven subjects, Mark Lemon thirty-five, Henry Mayhew twenty, Horace Mayhew fifteen, Douglas Jerrold sixteen, Thackeray four, Tom Taylor four, Gilbert a Beckett two, and Percival Leigh two, leaving the rest to be shared by the united Staff.

The men who have borne the title of Punch's Cartoonist are fifteen in number. Taking them in the chronological order of their first contribution, not of drawings, but of cartoons to the paper, they are: 1841, A. S. Henning, W. Newman, Brine, John Leech, and Birket Foster; 1842, A. "Crowquill," Kenny Meadows, H. G. Hine, and H. Heath; 1843, R. J. Hamerton; 1844, R. Doyle; 1851, John Tenniel; 1852, W. McConnell; 1864, Charles Keene; and 1884 and 1894, Linley Sambourne.[16]

From March 4th, 1843, to September 30th, 1848 (after which, with the exception of one cartoon in 1849 from Newman, and a few from McConnell in 1852, John Leech and John Tenniel shared the cartoon-drawing absolutely between them—no other hand making one at all for six-and-thirty years), there appeared 314 cartoons in about 286 weeks. It sometimes happened that Punch appeared without a cartoon at all, especially in those parlous cashless days of 1842, and again in 1846 and 1848; but, on the other hand, two cartoons were frequently given in the same number, usually from different hands, though occasionally Leech would do both. The 314 designs were made up thus:—

J. Leech 223

R. Doyle 53

Kenny Meadows 14

R. J. Hamerton 10

H. G. Hine 8

W. Newman 6

—— 314 (exclusive of the Almanacs)

—Hamerton having taken Hine's place, Doyle having superseded Hamerton, and Meadows, after 1844, having disappeared. Roughly speaking, from the commencement of Punch to the end of 1894, there have been 2,750 cartoons in all, and these have been contributed approximately thus:

Sir John Tenniel 1,860

John Leech 720

R. Doyle 70

Other Cartoonists 100

—— 2,750

—representing an amount of thought and artistic achievement colossal in the aggregate, and perfectly appalling in the case of Leech and Tenniel.

Does it not speak well for the good sense and good digestion of these men that in all these hundreds and thousands of skits—satires going by their very nature into personal motives and perhaps into private actions—that the lapses and the mistakes have been nearly as rare as great auks' eggs? Mr. Gladstone had good reason to say, as he did one day at dinner, that "in his early days, when an artist was engaged to produce political satires, he nearly always descended to gross personal caricature, and sometimes to indecency. To-day he noted in the humorous press (speaking more particularly of Punch) a total absence of vulgarity and a fairer treatment, which made this department of warfare always pleasing"—which is all very true if we admit that the function of ridicule and banter as political weapons is to be merely "pleasing." At any rate, if it be so, it is the knell of all great satire—with the corresponding effect of making the more caustic and grosser sides of men like Swift impossible. Yet, on the other hand, so late as 1860, according to Sir Theodore Martin, Punch more than any other paper reflected the national feeling in such matters as our naval defences; so that in its support of Lord Lyndhurst in his patriotic agitation it greatly assisted in strengthening the hands of the Government.

It is interesting, when you know your Punch as you should your Bible, to lean back in your chair and recall the most striking and important among the three thousand designs, more or less, that stand out as landmarks in Punch's pages.

The first, of course, for association's sake, is that pageful of "Foreign Affairs" which introduced Leech to Punch's readers. It appeared in the fourth number, on August 7th, 1841. The "Foreign Affairs" consist chiefly of groups of foreign refugees to be seen at that time, and even now in some measure, in the vicinity of Soho and Leicester Square—the political scum of Paris ("Parisites," may they not be called?) and of Berlin. The scroll bearing the title in the middle of the page is fully signed, with the addition of the artist's sign-manual, which was afterwards to become known throughout the whole artistic and laughter-loving world—a leech wriggling in a water-bottle. This debut did little justice to Percival Leigh's introduction, for the block was delivered so late that, containing as it did a considerable amount of work, it made it impossible for the engraver to finish it in time for the ordinary publishing hour. The usual means of publication and despatch were consequently missed, and the result was a very serious fall in that week's circulation. For some time after that Leech drew no more, learning meanwhile the elementary lesson that large blocks take longer to cut than small ones—or, at least, did then, before Charles Wells had introduced his great invention of a block that could be taken to pieces in order that each small square might be given to different hands to engrave. Nevertheless, even to the end Leech always had a tendency to be late with his cartoons, and half Mark Lemon's time, according to Edmund Yates and others, was passed in hansom-cabs bowling away to Notting Hill, Brunswick Square, or to Kensington, where in succession Leech resided.

Yet he could be astonishingly rapid when he liked, and often would he complete a cartoon on the wood while his Editor smoked a cigar at his elbow. Such a drawing—such a feat—was that remarkable block of "L'Empire c'est la Paix" (1859), representing Louis Napoleon as a hedgehog bristling with bayonets, admirable in expression and execution, yet not original in idea—though it is as likely as not that Leech had never seen, or else had forgotten, the cartoon in the "Puppet Show" (June, 1854), wherein the Tsar Nicholas appears in a manner precisely similar. The Dinner had by exception been held on Thursday (March 10th, 1859) instead of on the previous day; every moment was precious; and Leech proposed the idea for the cartoon, drew it in two hours, and caught his midday train on the following day, speeding away into the country with John Tenniel for their usual Saturday hunt.

But in accordance with that strange law of memory that horror, ugliness, and power should spring to the mind before humour, grace, or beauty, it is the tragic side and passionate purpose of Punch's career as shown in his cartoons that first arise in one's recollection. And it is (with but one or two exceptions) exclusively in his cartoons that Leech showed his tragic power. "The Poor Man's Friend" (1845), in which Death, gaunt and grisly, comes to the relief of a wretch in the very desolation of misery and poverty, tells as much in one page as Jerrold's pen, with all its strength and intensity, could make us feel in a score. Ten years later the same idea was splendidly developed and magnificently realised in the cartoon entitled "General Fevrier turned Traitor," which not more than once or twice in the whole of Punch's history has been surpassed either in loftiness of conception or depth of tragedy, or in the tremendous effect that immediately attended its publication throughout the country.

During the Crimean War the winter of 1854-55 was terrible in its severity, and the sufferings of our soldiers were appalling. The suspense at home increased the country's emotion as to the terrors they knew of in the field. The callous statement of the Tsar, therefore, about that time reported, that "Russia has two generals in whom she can confide—Generals Janvier and Fevrier," struck indignation and disgust into every British soul. On February 2nd the news arrived of the death of the Emperor. Popular excitement was intense. Consols rose 2 per cent., and the foreign market was in a state of such confusion that brokers refused to cite even a nominal quotation. Eight days later appeared Leech's cartoon, with its double meaning of superb power, though it was, no doubt, not the most favourable specimen of the draughtsman's art. Received by most with wild enthusiasm, by others with condemnation as a cruel use of a cruel fate, it none the less electrified the country. "Never," writes Mr. Frith, "can I forget the impression that Leech's drawing made upon me! There lay the Tsar, a noble figure in death, as he was in life, and by his side a stronger King than he—a bony figure, in General's uniform, snow-besprinkled, who 'beckons him away.' Of all Leech's work, this seems to be the finest example. Think how savage Gillray or vulgar Rowlandson would have handled such a theme!—the Emperor would have been caricatured into a repulsive monster, and Death would have lost his terrors."



Ruskin compares this cartoon for impressiveness in the perfect manifestation of the grotesque and caricature in art with Hood's "Song of the Shirt" in poetry. "The reception of the last-named wood-cut," says he, "was in several respects a curious test of modern feeling.... There are some points to be regretted in the execution of the design, but the thought was a grand one; the memory of the word spoken and of its answer, could hardly in any more impressive way have been recorded for the people; and I believe that to all persons accustomed to the earnest forms of art it contained a profound and touching lesson. The notable thing was, however, that it offended persons not in earnest, and was loudly cried out against by the polite journalism of Society. This fate is, I believe, the almost inevitable one of thoroughly genuine work in these days, whether poetry or painting; but what added to the singularity in this case was that coarse heartlessness was even more offended than polite heartlessness."

Just before this Tenniel had given us a fine drawing of England and France—the new allies—as typified by two splendid specimens of Guards of both nations, standing back to back in friendly rivalry of height; and the cut achieved such popularity that, under its title of "The United Service," it was reproduced broadcast on many articles of use, and decorated the backs of playing-cards.

The following year Sir John Tenniel (who though hardly more convincing than Leech, yet by his power of draughtsmanship and bigness of conception could be far more imposing) produced the earliest of his magnificent studies of what may be called his "Animal Types" in "The British Lion Smells a Rat" (1856). This heralded what are in some respects his masterpieces, the Cawnpore cartoons (1857), the chief of which is "The British Lion's Vengeance on the Bengal Tiger." Once this fine drawing is seen, of the royal beast springing on its snarling foe, whose victims lie mangled under its paw, it can never be forgotten. It is a double-page cartoon, splendidly wrought by the artist at the suggestion of Shirley Brooks; and while it responded and gave expression to the feelings of revenge which agitated England at the awful events that had passed at the time of the Indian Mutiny, and served as a banner when they raised the cry of vengeance, it alarmed the authorities, who feared that they would thereby be forced on a road which both policy and the gentler dictates of civilisation forbade. Vengeance was the cry; and the wise and humane counsels of Lord Canning met only with contempt and anger, and rendered him the most unpopular man of the day.

Soon it was Tenniel's destiny to shine alone in the cartoons of Punch. Leech, in the last few years of his life, tired with the strain of over-work and ill-health, withdrew more and more from the making of "big cuts," till towards the end they were left almost entirely in the hands of his well-loved colleague. Tenniel rose to the position and to the full height of the great events that courted his pencil. The great American struggle of North and South gave unlimited opportunity, and for four years Punch, first taking sides hotly against slave-trading, became at times simply pedagogic in his attitude towards both the combatants. From the time (January 26th, 1861) when there was published "Mrs. Carolina asserting her Right to Larrup her Nigger," down to the crowning cartoon of "Habet"—the combatants as gladiators before the enthroned and imperial negroes ("Ave Caesar!")—many fine cartoons were issued; but the last-named has been held by many to be the finest that has ever issued from the artist's pencil. But, in sentiment at least, a greater was to come—one which helped to melt for us in a measure the hardened heart of the American nation, at that time distrustful of England, and righteously indignant at many a taunt that had been launched against her. This was the affecting picture of Britannia's tribute and Punch's amende honorable, called simply, "Abraham Lincoln: Foully Assassinated April 14th, 1865," while Shirley Brooks's verses which accompany them take highest rank among poetry of its kind—lines which, rugged perhaps in themselves, come straight from the heart, and speak to a whole nation with true emotion and deep sincerity.



Then came "A Leap in the Dark" (1867)—Britannia on her hunter, Dizzy, "going blind" through the hedge of Reform; and soon after the series on the Franco-Prussian War and the situation that immediately preceded the outbreak of hostilities, more particularly that (proposed by Mr. du Maurier) in which the shade of the great Napoleon stands warningly in the path of the infatuated Emperor; while those that illustrated the close of the struggle, aroused a deeper sympathy for France than all the leading-articles and descriptive essays put together. Tenniel's hell-hounds of war, who menace the fallen figure of France distraught, are again seen in the series, almost as fine, that accompanied and followed the Russo-Turkish struggle. A few months later heroics were once more set aside for humour, and the celebrated cartoon representing the successful termination of the Berlin Treaty was given forth—"The Pas de Deux" (1878)—in which Lords Beaconsfield and Salisbury in official dress are executing their pas de triomphe with characteristic grace and ineffable mock-seriousness of mien.

Another cartoon that attracted general attention for its exquisite fooling, and that still haunts the mind of those who can appreciate a completely happy adaptation of text to subject and situation, is "The Political 'Mrs. Gummidge'" (May, 1885). Mr. Gladstone, as Mrs. Gummidge, sits in the Peggotty boathouse by the fire, on which a pot of Russian stew is simmering, while her knitting, marked "Egypt," has fallen from her weary hands, and, the very picture of misery, moans out: "I ain't what I could wish to be. My troubles make me contrairy. I feel my troubles, and they make me contrairy. I make the House uncomfortable. I don't wonder at it!!!" To which Mr. John Peggotty-Bull, pointing with his pipe-stem at the portrait of Beaconsfield on the wall, mutters (deeply sympathising, aside), "She's been thinking of the old 'un!" It was proposed by Mr. Burnand.

But Sir John Tenniel's greatest success of all in recent years—artistically and popularly successful—is undoubtedly the great picture illustrative of Prince Bismarck's resignation in 1889, entitled "Dropping the Pilot." The subject, it may be stated, was not a suggestion made at the Table, but it was handed in from the late Gilbert Arthur a Beckett, who was too ill to attend the Dinner—(he died very soon after)—and who thus, as so many other Punch contributors have done—Thomas Hood, Artemus Ward, Leech, Gilbert Abbott a Beckett, Charles Bennett, and others—sent in one of the most valuable of all his suggestions just as his career was drawing to its close. The idea was immediately accepted, and its excellence fully appreciated. It was decided that it should occupy a double-page; and Sir John Tenniel, who has always risen to a great occasion, did the fullest justice to the subject. When the paper was sent round to the Staff, as it always is, on the Monday night, they foresaw with delight that here was a great coup, and their conviction received ample confirmation on the publishing-day from the country at large. There was a world of pathos in the weather-beaten old mariner who goes thoughtfully, full of doubt and care, down the side of the ship he had originally designed and had since piloted so long and so well—now discharged as no longer wanted; and there was a world of meaning in the ambitious and self-reliant young Commander who looks over the ship's bulwark and gazes at the bent figure of his departing counsellor. The cartoon, said Mr. Smalley, pleased equally the Emperor and the Prince, for there was that in it which both felt and sought for. The original sketch for the drawing on the wood was finished by the artist as a commission from Lord Rosebery, who then presented it to Prince Bismarck. In acknowledging the drawing the ex-Chancellor declared, "It is indeed a fine one!" "The Hidden Hand"—a criticism on Irish political crime and its incitement—was another of Gilbert a Beckett's most striking suggestions. It appears on p. 103, Vol. LXXXIV., 1883.

Next I would mention—besides Mr. Sambourne's admirable Jubilee picture of "The Mahogany Tree," in which the Proprietors and Staff are gathered round the Table as they toast triumphant Punch (see Frontispiece)—another cartoon which, nobly conceived, if not quite so fine in execution, under the title of "Forlorn Hope" (October, 1893—proposed by Mr. Milliken), has been held by some as second only to "Dropping the Pilot." It is the pathetic picture of Mr. Gladstone at the moment of his retirement leading the attack against the House of Lords. A grand old fortress crowning an enormous cliff stands out strongly in evening light against the distant sky, and the grand old warrior, in coat of mail, is struggling up the steep and slippery side—a hopeless task, eloquent of the courage of despair.



Last of all upon this list, on May 15th, 1895, was the grand design, also suggested by Mr. Milliken, entitled "The Old Crusaders!"—Mr. Gladstone and the Duke of Argyll "brothers-in-arms again" in their crusade against the Turkish persecutions in Christian Armenia—the full significance being insisted on by parallel dates—"Bulgaria 1876: Armenia 1895." There is an air of unsurpassable dignity in the design of the two old comrade-statesmen, mounted knights armed cap a pie, riding forth, representative of Christendom and the nation's conscience. Immediately on seeing the week's Punch the Marquis of Lorne telegraphed from Windsor to Sir John Tenniel, asking to be allowed to acquire the original drawing; but he had been forestalled by the other Champion's son, Mr. Henry Gladstone, who was then in town, and had secured the prize for his family an hour or two before.

It must not be imagined that the Punch cartoons have always been matters, so to speak, of routine. The unexpected has more than once left Punch in a terribly awkward fix. On one occasion, in 1877, it was confidently expected that Lord Beaconsfield's Government would be thrown out on the Monday night or Tuesday morning, when, of course, it would be too late to begin to think of drawing and engraving a cartoon; besides, the matter was a foregone conclusion. So Beaconsfield was represented in his robes, leaning back "in a heap" upon his bench, his chin on his breast, and his hands thrust deep into his breeches pockets, the very picture of a beaten Minister. But, as it happened, the Government was not defeated—and there was the cartoon! Providentially, however, the Government had been severely badgered about some matter of trivial importance, such as the amount of sealing-wax employed in Her Majesty's Stationery Office, and the cartoon was used with a legend to the effect: "After all the big things I have been in, to be pulled up for this!" The public wondered, and thought that Punch had taken the situation a little too seriously; but it was a pis-aller, and the best had been made of a shocking bad job.

Mr. Linley Sambourne, writing on this very matter in the "Magazine of Art," tells something more of Punch's tribulations: "Difficulties in the production of cartoons sometimes arise in the impossibilities of foretelling what, not a day only, but a week may bring forth. In December, 1871, when His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, to the profound sorrow of the entire nation, hovered between life and death, Tenniel drew two cartoons, to be used as events might dictate. To the intense relief and joy of all, the one that was issued was called 'Suspense,' with some beautiful verses entitled 'Queen, People, and Princess: "Three Hearts in One";' while the other, a grief-stricken figure of Britannia, lay almost forgotten in the engraver's bureau, but was remembered, and had unhappily occasion to appear thirteen years after, on April 5th, 1884, to note the sudden loss of His Royal Highness the Duke of Albany. Punch is not infallible. The most serious slip he ever made in the 'cock-sure' line was a cartoon appearing on February 7th, 1885, representing the lamented General Gordon shaking hands with General Sir Henry Stewart (who himself lay stiff and cold after glorious action) inside the fated city of Khartoum. When the number appeared (although at the moment unconfirmed), Gordon himself had been butchered by the Mahdi's fanatics; and another whole week had to elapse before it could be corrected by a cartoon of baffled Britannia, with the heading 'Too Late!' I well remember being inside a picture gallery in Bond Street with the Editor, and hearing newsboys shouting without; the Editor turned to me and smilingly said, 'All right for our cut. There! they're shouting "The fall of Khartoum"!' When we got outside, our faces fell on finding the boot was on the other leg with a vengeance."

A more recent example of the tricks played upon Punch by Fate was on August 11th, 1894 (p. 66, Vol. CVII.), when Sir William Harcourt was represented as an artilleryman mowing down the host of amendments put upon the paper against the Irish Evictions Bill with a Gatling gun labelled "Closure." Closure had, indeed, been promised, and upon that the cartoon was based; but the Tory tactics threw out all calculations, for the party declined to move their amendments, and took no further part in the proceedings, so that there was no question whatever of closure. The Bill passed en bloc, and the Gatling remained silent.

Finally, there is that class of cartoon always graceful in intention, and invariably received by the public with respect and approval—the Obituary Cartoon. It was invented by Punch when Wellington died. The nation was overpowered with a sense of its loss, and Punch, with his finger, as ever, on the public pulse, reflected the national emotion with a deep and noble sincerity that was gratefully felt and recognised. From that day onwards the great occasions of a people's loss—either of our own mourning or of our sympathy with that of others—have been touched with a dignity and grace in accord with their lofty and solemn purpose, in drawings which have rarely failed to touch a responsive chord in the people's heart, and which, judged as compositions, have often marked the highest point to which Sir John Tenniel's art has reached.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] Contributed one cartoon on July 12th, 1884, and another November 3rd, 1894, when the expected death of the Tsar Alexander III., on the subject of which Sir John Tenniel's cartoon had been prepared, did not occur. "Cartoon Junior" was then promoted to "Cartoon Senior."



CHAPTER VIII.

CARTOONS AND THEIR EFFECT.

Origin and Growth of the Cartoon—Origin of its Name—Its Reflection of Popular Opinion—Source of Punch's Power—Punch's Downrightness offends France—Germany—And Russia—Lord Augustus Loftus's Fix—Lord John Russell and "No Popery"—Mr. Gladstone and Professor Ruskin on Punch's Cartoons—Their Effect on Mr. Disraeli—His Advances and Magnanimity—Rough Handling of Lord Brougham—Sir Robert Peel—Lord Palmerston's Straw—Mr. Bright's Eye-glass—Difficulties of Portraiture—John Bull alias Mark Lemon—Sir John Tenniel's Types.

Were you to ask the Editor, Staff, or Proprietors of Punch whether they regarded the political or the social section of the paper as the more important, from the public point of view and their own, the answer would probably be—that they could not tell you. Power and popularity, even in a newspaper—especially in a newspaper—are not synonymous terms, and a great circulation does not necessarily carry influence along with it. It may safely be taken that while the social section of Punch, artistic and literary combined, earned for him his vast popularity, his power, which at one time was great almost beyond present belief, was obtained chiefly by his political satires with pen and pencil. Nowadays, no doubt, their relative importance is more evenly balanced, and what preponderating interest the cartoon may have for "Pater" is equalled by the special fascination exercised by the social picture over "familias."

It has been the mission of Punch, as of many another great and original writer, to invent and import into the language words and expressions which are surely destined to remain. It has already been recorded how it was he who christened the great conservatory now at Sydenham "The Crystal Palace"—though he was not so complimentary until he had cultivated the personal friendship of Sir Joseph Paxton over the "Daily News" affair. It is he who, in his most laconic manner, has given his immortal counsel for all time to intending maries; it is he who has crystallised the exaggerated idea of Scottish thrift and economy in "bang went saxpence"—to the circumstances of all of which I have already referred. Mr. Punch, in short, has left the English language richer than he found it, not only in word, but in idea. So, again, the present application of the word "cartoon" is in reality a creation of Punch's.

At the birth of the modern satirical print—that is to say, in the reign of Charles I.—we see it called "A Mad Designe;" eighty years later, when George II. was King, it was known as a "hieroglyphic;" and then onwards, through the caustic and venomous days of the mighty Gillray and Rowlandson, and even of George Cruikshank, and their contemporaries, "caricature" was the term applied to the separate copper-plate broadsides that were issued, crudely coloured, from the famous shops of Mrs. Humphreys, of Ackermann, of Fores, and of McLean, and displayed in their windows to the delight and savage applause of a laughing crowd. Then "HB" had followed, Dicky Doyle's clever father, whose political lithographs had begun to appear in 1830, and continued until 1851—ceased, that is to say, when Punch was ten years old. The wonder about them was that, even before the days of photography, the likenesses of his subjects were so admirable, and his thrusts so happy, while his art, criticised strictly, was so very poor and amateurish. But as exaggeration found no trace in his designs, and his compositions aimed at raising little more than a suspicion of a smile in the beholder (save in the subjects of them), the word "cartoon" was more applicable to them than to any that preceded or have followed them. Mr. Austin Dobson, it is true, speaks of them as "caricatures;" but their publisher more correctly defined them as "Political Sketches."

Then, after the little wood-cut "caricatures" by Robert Seymour, came Punch with his full-page designs. Announced also as "caricatures," for a long while they were known as "pencillings;" but it was some time before they became an invariable feature of the paper. For several consecutive weeks, indeed, in 1843 there was no full-page cut at all, until John Leech recommenced them with a series of "Social Miseries," the first of which represented "Thoughts during Pastorale." But the most successful and the best remembered was "The Pleasures of Folding Doors" when "The Battle of Prague" is being thumped out relentlessly on the other side.

Now in July of 1843 the first great exhibition of cartoons for the Houses of Parliament was held. These gigantic designs handled the loftiest subjects, executed in the most elevated spirit of the highest art, with a view to ultimate execution in fresco on the walls of the palace of Westminster. It was not in nature for Punch to allow so excellent an opportunity to pass by without taking sarcastic advantage of it. He—conformably with his role of Sir Oracle, omniscient and omnifarious—must have his "cartoons" too; and so on p. 22 of the second volume for the same year (No. 105 of the journal) he appeared with No. 1 of his series. It was from Leech's pencil, entitled "Substance and Shadow," with the legend "The Poor ask for Bread, and the Philanthropy of the State accords—an Exhibition." The cartoon represents a humble crowd of needy visitors to the exhibition of pictures on a suggested "free day," in accordance with the recommendation of the Government. This design, a suggestion of Jerrold's, affords an excellent example of the warm-hearted, wrong-headed sympathy with the poor which led him so often cruelly to misjudge and misrepresent the acts and lives of persons in authority whose views were not, like his own, spontaneously, kindly, and impulsively unpractical. The series of six cartoons was directed against abuses, the last, dealing with the subject of duelling, being entitled "The Satisfaction of a Gentleman"—in which two duellists appear attended by seconds wearing caps and bells, while the hangman awaits the victor in one corner, and Death digs a grave for his victim in the other.

After this series Punch for a long while dropped the word "cartoon," but the public remembered it, and has clung to it ever since. It is a remarkable thing that while the "Encyclopaedic Dictionary" entirely ignores the word in its modern application to satirical prints, Dr. Murray's monumental lexicon has as its earliest use of the word a reference made by Miss Braddon to Leech's cartoons in the year 1863—or twenty years after it was first coined!

But the very first number of Punch, as we have seen, rejoiced in a cartoon as we now understand it—that is to say, a large full-page or double-page block of a satirical nature, usually placed in the middle opening of the paper, and for the most part still further dignified by being "unbacked" by other printing. It has been stated that Henry Mayhew at the very beginning insisted on this being a special feature of the paper, defeating the opposition of "Daddy" Landells, who was all for a number of little "coots," as he pronounced them, sprinkled plentifully over the pages. But inasmuch as Landells was an engraver, who would have delighted in the opportunity offered to his apprentices by a "big cut," as he was anxious above all things to follow the Paris "Charivari" (the very raison d'etre of which was the large political cartoon), and as, moreover, the original "dummy" of the paper makes provision for such a cartoon, the statement is not to be accepted.

It was really a poor thing, that first cartoon—"Candidates under Different Phases;" but it possessed over the little "caricatures" by Robert Seymour in Gilbert a Beckett's "Figaro in London," that had gone before, the important advantage of size. It was smaller than the hideously vulgar cuts in the "Penny Satirist," but—in tone, at least—this harmless satire on Parliamentary candidates displayed a refreshing and a highly appreciated decency and moderation. And since that time, whether satirical or frankly funny, sarcastic or witty, compassionate or denunciatory, eulogistic, sympathetic, indignant, or merely expository, the cartoons have rarely overstepped the boundary of good taste, or done aught but express fearlessly, honestly, and so far as may be gracefully, the popular feeling of the moment.

It is just this happy ability of Punch's to reflect the opinion of the country that gave it the great power it attained and won it the respect of every successive Government. It is true that of late years Mr. Punch has rather followed public opinion than led it; and it is equally true that he now represents a higher stratum of society than at first, when Jerrold week after week pleaded the cause of the poor. Yet the Governments of the day might have applied to him Addison's words—

"In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow, Thou'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow; Hast so much wit and mirth and spleen about thee, There is no living with thee, nor without thee"—

and esteemed themselves happy when Punch smiled upon them. "What Punch says" appears to be a good deal to the Great Ones of our world, thick-skinned though they be; for even outside politics, they have, generally speaking, accepted as an axiom "Vox Punchii, vox Populi;" while Cabinet Ministers, from the Premier downwards, have hoped from his benevolence and feared from his hostility! When Mr. Mundella publicly declared that "Punch is almost the most dangerous antagonist that a politician could have opposed to him—for myself I would rather have Punch at my back in any political or social undertaking than half the politicians of the House of Commons," he was merely expressing a conviction on the part of statesmen that many of them have given evidence of. It is another proof of the power of the caricaturist—a very proper respect for the smile which brings popularity and for the ridicule which kills.

We all know the effect of Gillray's, Rowlandson's, and George Cruikshank's etching-needles upon their victims—how these latter would writhe under a stab that was often virulent in its brutality, merciless, scurrilous, and cruel. We know how money passed—at least, in their earlier years—to influence the political opinions of the caricaturists, less in the hope of damaging "the other side" than with the view to diluting with a little milk of human kindness their etchers' aquafortis; and we know how Cruikshank's sudden abandonment of political caricature has been generally attributed (without drawing forth any denial) to a very special communication of a remunerative sort from Windsor Castle. That, however, was owing rather to his remorseless gibbeting of the follies and scandals of the Court than to political attack or personal persecution; but other circumstances of a more serious, because of an international, character have now and again attended the publication of a caricature. For example, like the Hi-Talleyrand episode, Leech's famous cartoon of "Cock-a-doodle-do!" (February 13th, 1858) promised at one time—less directly, it is true—to bring unpleasant consequences in its train. In the spirit of the Prince de Joinville, whose bombastic language towards England in 1848 had set an example not to be resisted, were the fire-eating words of a few French officers, who offered to "unsheathe their swords and place them at their sovereign's disposal," and so forth. Leech replied with a cartoon of a Gallic cock, capped and spurred, flapping its epaulettes and crowing its loudest, while Napoleon the Third curses the "Crowing Colonel" under his breath. "Diable!" he says, "the noisy bird will awake my neighbour;" and the point is emphasised by a quotation from the Moniteur. The hit, if not quite original (for Doyle had made a precisely similar sketch of "Le Coq Gaulois" twelve years before in "The Almanac of the Month") was, at any rate, a fair one. But some unscrupulous British patriot so took the matter into his own scurvy hands that the following advertisement was published in "The Times" of March 10th:—

"Fifty Pounds Reward.—It having come to the knowledge of the Committee of the Army and Navy Club that a caricature, with most coarse and vulgar language appended thereto, was sent to an officer in command of a French regiment, accompanied with a forged message from the club, the above reward will, within six weeks from this date, be paid by the Secretary of the Club on the conviction and punishment of the offender."

And so the affair was amicably settled, but not before correspondence of a lively character had passed between both the insulted parties, and it was feared that the matter might be taken up as "an insult to the French Army."

Many a time has Punch been excluded from France—beginning as early as February 11th, 1843—by reason of his political cuts. In the first half-volume for that year a cartoon entitled "Punch turned out of France"—showing a very sea-sick puppet received on Boulogne quay at the point of a bayonet—first made public the severity of his struggle with Louis Philippe. There is no doubt that his denunciations approached about as near to scurrility as ever he was guilty of; and it is equally true that the French King winced under the attacks made with such acerbity upon his well-known parsimony. In due time, on April 7th, the embargo was lifted, but again in the following year an article by Thackeray, entitled "A Case of Real Distress," in which Punch offers to open a subscription for the poor beggar, with a cut by the same hand representing the King as a "Pauvre Malheureux," had the effect of a fresh exclusion. Punch responded vigorously, his first proceeding being to advertise, "Wanted—A Few Bold Smugglers" in order that he "may continue to disseminate the civilisation of his pages throughout benighted France."

And so on several occasions, especially during the period of his long hostility to Napoleon III., was Punch turned back from the French frontier, though later on the authorities permitted him to enter, on the condition that, like a Mahometan who leaves his slippers at the temple door, he tore out his cartoon before he passed inside. Of late years, however, Punch has on the whole been on excellent terms with "Mme. la Republique," chiefly through his own forbearance during the period of what promised to be the Anglo-Congolese Difficulty. It is true that the cartoon of November, 1894, showing the French Wolf about to spring upon the Madagascar Lamb, aroused fine indignation in Paris at this English version of the methods of French colonial expansion; and that the famous picture of Marshal MacMahon of a score of years before, in which the President was shown stuck fast in the political mud, obstinately satisfied with his impossible position ("J'y suis!—J'y reste!"?), gave equal offence on the boulevards; and although in the latter case the fairness of the hit was acknowledged, Punch was again, as he had several times recently been, placed under ban. Again, at the time of the Franco-Russian rapprochement and consequent fetes, the drawing of the Bear and Republic in cordial tete-a-tete, the former disclosing the true source and object of his new-found affection by hinting, with a sly wink and a smirk, about a "little loan," gave rise to real anger, and was deeply resented—probably with the more annoyance that the cutting truth with which Punch had hit off the situation was secretly and unwillingly recognised. But save on one occasion no official expulsion or repulse has in recent times been Punch's lot. Moreover, his splendid series of cartoons, nobly conceived and full of generous sympathy, which he published towards the close of the Franco-Prussian War, are still remembered with some approach to gratitude in a country which has rarely, if ever, returned us the compliment of kindliness or friendship, or even of courtesy, in its satiric press.

Even in Germany, though Punch has not often been denied admittance, he has had at least one distinguished door closed against him. This was when in March, 1892 (p. 110 in the first half-yearly volume), Mr. Linley Sambourne's "cartoon junior" was published, satirising the German Emperor in "The Modern Alexander's Feast; or, The Power of Sound"—

"With ravished ears The Monarch hears; Assumes the god, Affects to nod, And seems to shake the spheres."

The German Army Bill agitation—the struggle between Emperor and Reichstag, which was followed with so much interest in England—was then at its height; and the monarch had no mind for trivialities. Punch's candour in illustrating the title given him in this country of "The Shouting Emperor," so it is alleged, annoyed him. "For nearly forty years," said one authority, "Punch has been regularly taken in at the Prussian royal palaces in Berlin and Potsdam. The Emperor William has just issued a private order that Punch is to be struck off the list of journals which are supplied to him; and the Empress Frederick, Prince Henry of Prussia, and all the members of the Royal Family who are in the habit of reading English journals, have been desired by their aristocratic relation to discontinue the obnoxious periodical. It is understood at Berlin that the Emperor's wrath has been excited by some jocular allusions to his Majesty's oratorical indiscretions which recently appeared in Punch." If the members of the Imperial Family scrupulously obeyed the alleged command, they lost the enjoyment of a hearty laugh over Punch's retort—for it is Punch's habit always to retort in matters of this sort when his fun is misunderstood or his irony, in his opinion, taken in ill-part. This was the much-talked-of "Wilful Wilhelm"—representing the Emperor, a la Struuwelpeter, as a passionate fractious child, screaming amid his toy soldiers and drums:

"Take the nasty Punch away; I won't have any Punch to-day."

Nor would he leave him alone for a while; but returning a year later to the charge, and taking as a text the Emperor's words—

"It was impossible for me to anticipate the rejection of the Army Bills, so fully did I rely upon the patriotism of the Imperial Diet to accept them unreservedly. A patriotic minority has been unable to prevail against the majority.... I was compelled to resort to a dissolution, and I look forward to the acceptance of the Bills by the new Reichstag. Should this expectation be again disappointed, I am determined to use every means in my power to achieve my purpose...."

Punch promptly produced his cartoon a third time, by Mr. Sambourne's pencil, of "Nana would not give me a bow-wow!—A Pretty Little Song for Pettish Little Emperors," as the latest Teutonic version of the music-hall ditty then in vogue. And later on there was Sir John Tenniel's contribution to the pretty little quarrel, in which in "Alexander and Diogenes" (October, 1893) the Emperor asks, "Is there anything I can do for you? Castle? or anything of that sort?" and Bismarck Diogenes grunts his reply, "No—only leave me to my tub!" But the Emperor's anger did not last long—if it ever existed at all—for it was announced that he again received his Punch regularly, but, to save appearances, it arrived from London every week in an official-looking envelope, which was opened by the Kaiser's own hands, and by him duly stowed away in his library.

If Punch, by his outspoken criticism, has succeeded in raising the ire of two of the most civilised of the Great Powers, it was not to be expected that he should escape the blacking-roller of the Russian censor of the press. The touchiness of that official does credit rather to his zeal than to his judgment—and, besides, he is obviously no humorist. The Russians have had little opportunity of learning what is thought of them and their governors at 85, Fleet Street. Time after time has the cartoon been destroyed; and Mr. Sambourne, journeying in the country, learned by personal experience that Moscow and St. Petersburg were not as London and Paris. "Should it happen," he writes, "that any cartoon or cut at all trenched on Russian subjects, and especially his Majesty the Tsar, the page was either torn out or erased in the blackest manner by the Bear's paw. I have seen some of Mr. Tenniel's cartoons so maltreated, and have myself been frequently honoured in the same way." It is therefore rather amusing that while such drawings as Sir John Tenniel produced when the great Nihilistic wave was sweeping over Russia, just before the renewed application of the repressive system during the reign of Alexander III. and during the horrors of the Jewish persecutions, Punch would appear on the Tsar's table with cartoons far more severe and humiliating than the majority of those which appealed to the censor's sense of despotism. Of this Lord Augustus Loftus gives a remarkable example—remarkable, too, for the Ambassador's diplomatic ingenuity—his story referring to a period on the eve of the Russo-Turkish War.