MIDDLE CLASS , HISTORY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18465, 28 January 1922, Page 17

MIDDLE CLASS , HISTORY

MR PUNCH AS HISTORIAN. Perhaps the most amazing fact to be learned from “Mr Punch’s History of Modern England,” by Charles L. Graves (GaCsell, 4 vols.), is-that in the year 1852 Mr Punch (and therefore presumably England) thought that ,the Japanese were as black as Undo Tom. Seventy years is a short period in the world’s history, and it is difficult for us to realise that such a little while ago England practically knew nothing of the Far East. In the first two volumes of his history Mr Graves summarises from the pages of Punch the intimate history of the period from 1841 to 1874. The value of the record is that Mr Punch was, and to a largo extent still is, middle-class England, with its prejudices, its enthusiasms, and its great sense of justice and fair play. Mr Punch has always hated extremists. His is the middle course, though in the past he could bash away at the people whom ' he disliked with almost : unbridled vehgjnence.- Thus, in 1841, a police magistrate of*Viiom Mr Punch disapproved is described as “an insufferable, ignorant, and therefore insolent magisterial cur.” In 1854 the editor of the English Journal of Education was called the brimstonefaced maw-worm.” Spurgeon was described as “the dealer in brimstone with plenty of treacle.” When the University of Oxford conferred on Disraeli the honorary degree of D.C.L. Punch suggested that the initials stood for “deuced clever Levite.” After the publication of Swinburne’s poems and ballads in 1866, Punch. declared that the poet ought to change his name to “Swine-born.” Mid-Yictorian.— In this middle Victorian period Punch had no ,use for dukes and earls, and was consistently critical of the Court, the Prince Consort being a constant subject of his jibes. Ever since the accession of Prince Albert to the Royal Husband-ship of these realms, he has devoted the energies of his mind and the ingenuity of his hands to the manufacture of infantry caps, cavalry trousers, and regulation sabretaches. One of his first measures was to transmogrify the pantaloons of tho Eleventh Hussars; and as the regiment alluded to is Prince Albert’s Own, his Royal Highness may do as he likes with his own, and no one would complain of his bedizening tho legs of the unfortunate Eleventh wtih scarlet cloth and gold door-leather. When, however, the Prince, throwing the 1 whole of his energies into a hat, proposed to encase the heads of the British soldiery in a machine which seemed a decided cross between a muff, a coal scuttle, and a slop pail, then Punch was compelled to interfere,- for the honour of the English Army. Punch was always a little distrustful of new things. The Suez Canal was described as “an impossible trench.” Punch was grossly unfair to Lincoln, and helped not a little in cr'eating •’ bad feeling in this country and tho United States. Punch was always, as I have said,- middle class, caring as little for trade unions as for dukes, bpt with tho sweated, helpless poor Punch was always keenly sympathetic. It was in Punch that Thomas Hood’s poem, “The Song of the Shirt,” was published in 1843, and here is a typical extract from a number, about ten years afterwards : “A Humane magistrate who refused in 1845 to hear if charge- of wood-stealing from a hedge brought against a man earning 7s a week—the common rate at the time for agricultural labourers—stated from the Bench that he knew of good hands in Warwickshire who were earning only 3s and 3s lOd (a week. Meat was a luxury; only the elders got bacon, the children potatoes and salt; bread was lOd a loaf. Yet this was the time when the Duke of Norfolk seriously proposed that the poor should eke out their meagre faro by the use of curry powder, a suggestion that recalls., the historic comment of the French lady, shortly before the Revolution, on hearing that the peasantry had no bread, “Then why don’t they eat cake.” Punch dealt faithfully with this ducal gaffe under tho heading, “A Real Blessing to Landlords” : —■ “The genuine Anti-Appetitive Curry Powder, strongly recommended by the £)uke of, Norfolk, is the labourer’s only true substitute for bread and meat. It possesses the singular property of deluding the empty stomach into a sense of fmlness, and is calculated to relieve those distressing symptoms of vacuity which result from living on seven shillings a week. It may be warranted to supersede potatoes .and bacon; containing,, in fact, in itself, ■ the essence of gammon; and one pinch dissolved in a tumbler of hot water is equal to a pot of beer. Landed-proprietors, not wishing to reduce their rents, will find this preparation admirably calculated to reconcile labourers with their present rate of wages by enabling them almost entirely to dispense with food. Sold in pots at from one shilling. Agricultural societies supplied. “N.B. —A liberal allowance on taking a quantity.” A few years later Punch printed a , cartoon, by Tenniel showing Britannia looking through a telescope across the seas in order to discover, far. away objects for her philanthropy, while a London street Arab asks her: “Please, m’m aren’t we black enough to be cared for?” Here are “captions” from two other cartoons that show Punch’s humane point of view:— WHAT NEXT, INDEED! Grateful Recipient; “Bless you, my lady! May we meet in Heaven!” Haughty Donor: “Good gracious! Drive on, Jarvis!” (She bad evidently read Dr Johnson, who “didn’t want to meet certain pepple anywhere.”) “TRAIN UP A CHILD,” ETC. “Mamma, don’t you think Pug ought to be vaccinated?” “What nonsense, dear! They only vaccinate ■ human beings.” “Why, Lady Fakeaway’s had all her servants vaccinated, Mamma!” —Everyday Discoveries.— The common English • attitude to Darwinist when it was first preached, is shown in a picture of a small child dragging his mother towards, and pointing to, an organ-grinder’s monkey, while he shouts: “Mamma, look dere; dere’s papa.” The everyday discoveries (if one may use the term) which mav affect the general happiness far more than political changes are all recorded in Punch’s pages:— In 1851 the novelties included “electrobiology”—i.e., hypnotism; shoe-blacks; eleqtric clocks; false legs, invented by Palmer, an American: and the supply of tea to the Navy. “Noiseless wheels” in 1853 suggest the advent of the age of rubber; but Robert W. Thomson had taken out his patent for indjarubber tyres in 1845. Steam ploughs, gas-stoves for cooking and central heating for houses followed in rapid succession in 1853 and 1854. Punch’s ironical suggestions in tho latter year for the comfort and convenience of Cockney travellers in the ascent of Snowdon are only one' of many instances where the mocking fancy of one generation becomes the fact of its successor. A patent for pneumatic tyres had been taken out in the ’forties; bicycles and tricycles came in at tho end bf the ’sixties; hut twenty years were to elapse before the boneshaker and the “ordinary”— that wonderful and perilous machine—gave place to the ‘ ‘safety. In 1868 and 1869 references abound to velocipedes—the word “bicycle” had not yet established itself—and in the Almanack for 1869 there is a picture of a strange mechanism called “the Rantoone,” a tricycle with two large wheels behind and a small guiding wheel in front. It is also mentioned in Henry Kingsley’s “Boy in Grey” and Crawley’s “Manly Games for Boys.” But the bicj cle, as we know it, the most momentous addition to the resources of locomo-

tion, between , the ■ coming of .the steamengine and the advent of the petrol-driven' motor, Was only looming, in the future; it was little more than a plaything in the period under review. Telegraphs wires first began to spread their overhead network in London in 1859; the District Telegraph Company was started in 1860. Ten years * later Punch celebrates the reduction of the fee for twenty-word telegram to one shilling. Of the use of telegraphy in war he expressed considerable scepticism, on the ground that fit ■ would-clead to endless contradictory rumours. ; ■ •" \;v —Dresses.— From the pages of this history, too, we can obtain a series of interesting facts of the history of dress;— Trousers were first generally introduced in the army (see, Parke’s “Hygiene”) at the time of the Peninsular War, but pantaloons —the tight-fitting nether garments which superseded knee-breeches late, in the eighteenth century, arid were secured at the ankles with ribbons and straps,_ were fashionable in the ’forties. You will see .no trousers, as wo know them to-day, fin ■the’ illustration to “Pickwick,” and in, the' early ’forties pantaloons . -appear in Punch’s illustrations of fashionable wear at dances. The cut of the “claw-ham-mer” dress-coat does not differ from that of to-day, but it was often of blue cloth with brass buttons; shirts were _ frilled, and waistcoats of gold-sprigged satin. The bow tie was larger, resembling that worn by nigger minstrels. “Gibus,” or crush hats, did not arrive till the late ’forties—they are mentioned in Thackeray’s “Book of Snobs” —and gentlemen always carried their tall hats in their hands at evening parties, and habitually wore them at clubs. For morning wear blue frock-coats, with white drill trousers and straps, were fashionable in 1844, Stocks and cravats and neckcloths had not been ousted by ties. ( The degage lose neck-cloth of the “fast man” in 1848 is ridiculed by Punch, who traces its origin to the neck-wear —-as modern hosiers say—of the British dustman. i X Crinoline at length (in 1865) is jjjpmg out thank goodness; but long, trailing dresses are coming in, thank /badness ! In matters of costume lovely woman rarely ceases to make herself a nuisance; and the length of her skirt now is almost as annoying as, a while ago,' its width was. Robes a queue thev will call these dragging dresses; but it is' not at Kew merely that - people are tormented by them. Everywhere yon walk your footsteps are impeded by .the ladies, who. in Pope’s phrase, “drag their slow length along” the pathway iust in front of you. “Will anybody tread upon the tail of my petticoat?” Tills seems to be the general invitation they now give. Sad enemies to progress they are, in their long dresses; and a Rdo-rm Rill should be passed to make them hold their tails up. Beaver hats were still worn in 1858; they arc even now exhibited in the shop front of a well-known hatter’s in St. James’s street; but the silk chimney-pot had already come to stay. The evening dress suit was indistinguishable from that now worn. There was not much difference in the cut of morning coats. Only in the “nether integuments” is the flux of fashion really marked. “Peg-top trousers were in vogue in 1858, and for a few years subsequently, and Punch attributes their shape to mimicry of the crinoline, though in one passage he professes to. derive it from the contours of the Cochin China fowl. The “Peg-top.” however, did not last. It was otherwise with the introduction of knickerbockers, so called from the resemblance to the kneebreeches of the Dutchmen in Cruikshank’s illustrations -to Washington Irving’s “History of New York.” Whiskers were- the groat features of the 'sixties. They had fcfen "ambrosial” before, but now the, thing became a monstrosity in its profuse luxuriance. Ordinary history books are far too much concerned with- kings and soldiers and Acts of Parliament. Mr Grave’s volumes give us real history—the history of the people —written, maybe, from av somewhat narrow and prejudiced point of view, but none the less ’interesting and none the Jess valuable for that. As one turns fils pages one feel? one knows the England of yesterday better, and with greater knowledge there cornea greater, appreciation and grer,ter : pride.-—Jphp V London Weekly.