Mr. Punch's History of Modern England. Volume 2 of 4.—1857-1874

Masculine Dress

Throughout the period dealt with in the previous volume man, in Punch, was the predominant partner in the domain of dress. From 1857 onwards the balance is handsomely redressed in favour of the women. And as Punch was staffed by men, we may fairly attribute this change to the standardizing of male attire which dates from the middle of the nineteenth century. The difference between the dress of men to-day and in 1860 is immensely less than that between the dress of women at the same two dates. Beaver hats were still worn in 1858; they are 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 knee-breeches of the Dutchmen in Cruickshank's illustrations to Washington Irving's History of New York.

Enter Mamma and Aunt Ellen.

Mamma (to old woman): "Pray, have you met two ladies and a gentleman?"

Old Woman: "Well, I met three people – but, la! there, I can't tell ladies from gentlemen nowadays – when I was a gal, etc., etc."

In a letter to The Times in May, 1859, Lord Elcho recommends "nickerbockers" – so he spells the word – as a substitute for trousers for volunteers. Charles Kingsley in the same year derived them from country-made – and badly made – puffed trunk-hose. But their utility and convenience for country wear and sport were soon established, though the dreadful abbreviation "Knickers" did not come into use for some twenty years. The shortening of ladies' dresses and the bagginess of men's knickerbockers afforded Punch some excuse for professing to be unable to distinguish the sexes at a distance, but the actual assumption of knickerbockers by women belonged to a later generation.

Lord Dundreary

It is rather in the fashion of wearing their hair than in their dress that the changes effected in the appearance of men in the last sixty years can be best studied. Beards came in after the Crimean War, but they were not universally popular. The Bishop of Rochester took up so strong a line on the subject in 1861 that Punch was moved to protest: —

 
Good Doctor Wigram (Rochestere),
At Parsons' beards is raving:
We sadly fear that we shall hear
The Bishop's head needs shaving.
 

First Swell: "A-a-wah! Waw! Waw! How did you like him?"

Second Ditto: "Waw-waw-waw. No fellaw evaw saw such a fellaw. Gwoss cawicature-waw!"

But whiskers were the great feature of the 'sixties. They had been "ambrosial" before, but now the thing became a monstrosity in its profuse luxuriance. For this was the age of "Piccadilly Weepers," and of Lord Dundreary, the eccentric stage peer created by Sothern in Our American Cousin. Sothern, be it remembered, was a hunting-man and a persona grata in fashionable circles; and allowing for the element of caricature in his impersonation, it was at least based on firsthand knowledge of the type satirized. There is an interesting notice of the first production at the Haymarket of Our American Cousin in which Lord Dundreary is described as "a double eye-glassed dandy, with dyed whiskers which he paws and throws over his shoulder," but the critic admits that in spite of all Mr. Sothern's "funny and fantastic caricaturing, there is a something true to nature in his almost every touch." The hold that Sothern's impersonation took upon public fancy is shown by the fact that for several years Punch adopted "Dundreary" as a synonym for a vacuous, solemn, well-bred and prodigiously whiskered dandy, and in the Preface to Vol. xlii. Lord Dundreary is introduced as interlocutor in the usual dialogue.

Tailors' pseudo-classical nomenclature was already a frequent theme with Punch. In the same year Punch quotes a tailor's advertisement of a "Negligé Milled Tweed suit, consisting of cape jacket, vest and trousers for £2 2s. 0d.," which arouses the envy of the post-war Englishman. Hair-brushing by machinery is noted as a novelty in the autumn of 1863; we trust that the customers contrived to keep their whiskers out of the way of the brush. For the rest, we may briefly note the advent of the "Ulster" in 1871, and the prevalence of the single eye-glass in 1873.

SPORT AND PASTIME

Grandpapa: "Bless his heart – just like me! Spare the Nimrod – spoil the child, I say."

In the region of sport fox-hunting continues to dominate the scene. Leech's pictures are largely devoted to satirizing cockney sportsmen, but they render full justice to the enterprise and intrepidity of the younger generation and of hard-riding young ladies. He is less happy or at any rate less genial in ridiculing the irregularities of the "Mossoo" in the hunting field. The exploits and adventures of the ubiquitous Mr. Briggs form an agreeable pendant and supplement to the novels of Surtees. Mr. Briggs was not an aristocrat, but he was more of a gentleman if less of a personality than Jorrocks. But Leech's premature death left a tremendous gap, for both in humour and draughtsmanship the artists who took his place as delineators of the chase were immeasurably his inferiors. In connexion with the "noble animal" we may note that the advent of Rarey, the famous horse-tamer, was warmly welcomed by Punch and Leech in 1858. The possibilities of the treatment are developed in a variety of ways, but there is more than mere burlesque in the suggestion that it could be profitably applied to stablemen and horsebreakers. And here we may note a crude foreshadowing of winter-sports in Leech's picture of the frozen-out foxhunter who builds a "treboggin" and, with his groom seated behind, careers down hill and across country in a machine about 12 feet long and not 2 feet wide with a splash-board in front.

Sporting Militaire recalls to mind his Canadian experiences (the ground being deep with snow), builds a treboggin, and for the moment ceases to swear at the frost, or to regret the six hunters he has eating their heads off in the stable.

In Praise of the Ring

Punch was in the main a supporter of "muscular Christianity" and had already noted, with more sympathy than hostility, the encouragement of boxing as an integral part of the education of the ingenuous youth. Disraeli's Parliamentary duel with Palmerston in 1858 is described in pugilistic terms, in which the victory is given to the former "on points." But, in view of his generally humane and humanitarian outlook, he had hardly prepared us for his remarkable eulogy of the Prize Ring in the year 1860. For it was in that year that the historic fight took place between the American Heenan (the "Benicia Boy") and Tom Sayers at Farnborough on April 17, and it was chronicled at full length in Punch. "The Fight of Sayerius and Heenanus: A Lay of Ancient London" in the style of Macaulay occupies a whole page. Its chief interest to modern readers resides in the fact that it is "supposed to be recounted to Great-grand-children, April 17, A.D. 1920, by an Ancient Gladiator." The narrative is put in the mouth of "Crawleius" well known "in the Domus Savilliana³⁶ among the sporting men," presumably a relative real or imaginary of Peter Crawley, a well-known prize fighter. But the speaker did a gross injustice to the next generation but one when he wrote: —

 
'Tis but some sixty years since
The times whereof I speak,
And yet the words I'm using
Will sound to you like Greek.
What know ye, race of milksops,
Untaught of the P.R.,
What stopping, lunging, countering,
Fibbing or rallying are?
 
 
What boots to use the lingo
When you have not the thing?
How paint to you the glories
Of Belcher, Cribb, or Spring,
To you, whose sire turns up his eyes
At mention of the Ring?
 

The train journey to Farnborough in the grey dawn, the company, and the fight itself are, however, described with spirit: —

 
Not only fighting covies,
But sporting swells besides —
Dukes, Lords, M.P.'s and Guardsmen,
With county beaks besides;
And tongues that sway our Senators
And hands the pen that wield
Were cheering on the Champions
Upon that morning's field.
 

We pass over the details of the fight – how Sayers was floored nine times, and had his right arm crippled; how Heenan had both eyes put in mourning – to come to the last stage: —

 
Two hours and more the fight had sped,
Near unto ten it drew,
But still opposed – one-armed to blind —
They stood, the dauntless two.
Ah me! that I have lived to hear
Such men as ruffians scorned,
Such deeds of valour brutal called,
Canted, preached down and mourned!
Ah, that these old eyes ne'er again
A gallant mill shall see!
No more behold the ropes and stakes,
With colours flying free!
But I forget the combat —
How shall I tell its close,
That left the Champion's belt in doubt
Between those well-matched foes?
Fain would I shroud the tale in night, —
The meddling Blues³⁷ that thrust in sight, —
The ring-keepers o'erthrown; —
The broken ring, – the cumbered fight, —
Heenanus' sudden, blinded flight, —
Sayerius pausing, as he might,
Just when ten minutes used aright
Had made the fight his own!
 

Bull Fight at Islington

This curious document, valuable as contemporary evidence, worthless as prophecy, serves to show how strangely Punch's humanitarianism was leavened and influenced by primitive instincts in the domain of sport.

Pigeon-shooting and bull-fighting were another matter altogether. In 1870 an abortive attempt was made to introduce the latter at the Agricultural Hall, Islington, and the Islington-Spanish bull-fight is treated with a happy mixture of ridicule and contempt in a contribution to Punch's "Evenings from Home." The proceedings appear to have been tame enough, and the bulls were probably "doped," yet enough of the real thing remained to warrant the hostile reception which the entertainment received. At its close the "Islington Spaniards" dispersed to the Islington public-houses. Punch returned to the subject a month later. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had interfered to good purpose. The Islington bull-fighters had been summoned before a magistrate and fined, and their "entertainment" had been stopped. Punch seized the occasion to add a comment which, on the very day on which, in 1921, I write these lines, is as timely as it was more than fifty years ago: —

From Islington to Wormwood Scrubbs is not far, and it is much to be feared by the tame-pigeon-shooting nobility and gentry that the officers of an impartial Association, vigilant to protect poor animals from cruelty, will as soon as possible be down upon the Gun Club.

Enthusiastic Cricketer: "Ah, last season was a good one! I'd both eyes blacked in one match, and two fingers smashed in the return match the same week! But give me 1870 over again. I got the ball on my forehead at 'short leg,' and was senseless for three-quarters of an hour!"

Cricket and Football

Turning to cricket, we find that "over-hand bowling flung from the elbow" was mentioned by Punch as a novelty in the late 'fifties. Cricket was still played in tall hats at that time; but by the 'sixties caps had come in. The dangers of the game are a not infrequent subject of comment, and, before the days of billiard-table pitches, the ball was capable of a good deal of awkward bumping; but to judge from Punch's pictures the resultant contusions were regarded with equanimity by the players as part of the day's work or play. Cricket was extending its domain, and à propos of the establishment of clubs at Lisbon and Oporto Punch quotes an entertaining account of a game between these clubs by a Lisbon sporting journalist for the instruction of his countrymen. The incident is taken by Punch as an occasion for suggesting international games of cricket: Turks and Chinamen, Dutch and Japanese. The Dutch have long been votaries of cricket; and though it has not caught on with the Japanese and Chinese, both these races have of late years cultivated lawn tennis with considerable success. Here, then, as so often happens, a mock prophecy is fulfilled in a way in which the prophet never expected. A critical year in the annals of Lord's was reached in 1864 when there was a danger of the ground being sold for building purposes. A sum of £10,000 was needed to secure the interests of cricket, and Punch, in an imaginary dialogue between a countryman and a cockney, represents the former as ready to contribute 5s. to avoid a national disgrace and "zave Lard's cricket ground."

References to football are confined to comments, mostly humorous but occasionally serious, on the practice of shinning or hacking. The Rules of the "West Shynnington Football Club" are conveniently used as a vehicle for a number of bad puns, but the trials of the modern referee are foreshadowed in the suggestion that "a Police Magistrate should always be in attendance to dispose of all charges made by players." Punch in more serious mood discerns in the letter of "A Surgeon" to The Times the disastrous results of hacking as then permitted by the Rugby code. "Hacking," in Punch's view, was simply an unfair form of fighting and should be abolished.

The outstanding event in rowing circles during these years was the famous race between the Oxford and Harvard fours on August 27, 1869. Punch celebrated the victory of Oxford in a notice giving the names of those who took part in the contest, congratulating Oxford, and wishing health to both crews, the accompanying cartoon representing a gigantic brawny John Bull shaking hands with a muscular but comparatively slim Uncle Sam, both in rowing trim, with the legend "Well Rowed All!" Punch, as umpire, remarks: "Ha, dear boys, you've only to pull together to lick all the world!" The sentiment is better than the treatment. Unluckily the race led to some acrimonious comment in the New York papers on British sportsmanship, and Punch, in his rejoinder, was more vigorous than polite. River "aquatics" have not always been free from recrimination. The origin of the famous retort to bargees, "Who ate puppy pie under Marlow Bridge?" is obscure; but it is mentioned as far back as the Almanack for 1858.

Leonora: "Dear! Dear! How the arrow sticks!"

Captain Blank (with a sigh of the deepest): "It does, indeed!"

Croquet and Flirtation

"Golf Sticks" are alluded to in January, 1858, but during the rest of this period I find no further mention of golf. Of social pastimes archery is still in favour, but croquet is by far the most frequently referred to. To judge from the pictures, croquet, then in its unscientific infancy, was played on lawns innocent of mowing machines or scythes. It was mainly an excuse for flirtation between Charles and Clara; and the cheating earlier mentioned was regarded as quite fair game. Punch dealt with it in a serial poem of heroic proportions in the year 1863. This epic – for it was little less – ran to seven numbers, but it is not memorable apart from its length. When the Croquet Tournament was held at Wimbledon in 1870, Punch was ready to acknowledge the presence of Queens of Beauty, but could not accord the men players a higher title than that of Carpet Knights.

Chorus of Offended Maidens: "Well! If Clara and Captain de Holster are going on in that ridiculous manner – we may as well leave off playing."

Miss Maud: "How do we stand?"

Captain Lovelace: "They are six to our love; and 'love' always means nothing, you know."

Miss Maud: "Always?"

Lawn Tennis

"Aunt Sally" – alleged to have been introduced by the Duke of Beaufort – is portrayed as a novel adjunct to the amenities of garden parties in 1860 by Leech. Roller-skating came in about 1873, and about the same time lawn tennis having survived its early name of "Sphairistikè," began to attract the attention of Punch's artists. The implements employed have a prehistoric appearance, but the pastime, thought still in its insular, garden-party and "pat-ball" stage, inspired some graceful lines in 1874: —

LAWN TENNIS

 
Now the long shadows of September come,
And idle for a time the scribbler's pen is,
He passes from the Town's discordant hum,
From garrulous gossip of the kettle-drum,³⁸
From orators who should have been born dumb,
To watch upon green lawns the girls play tennis.
 
 
Robins are trilling in the faded trees,
The flitting swallows of their voyage chatter,
Testing their wings before they dare the seas,
For Nile's dun marge or blue-girt Cyclades;
The sportsman's shots come frequent on the breeze,
The flying balls keep up a pleasant clatter.
 
 
Croquet's a merry game for those who flirt
(Who doesn't, pray —Punch, poet, peer, or parson?),
But Tennis, when the ladies are alert,
Follow the swift ball with a looped-up skirt,
Strike it on high with graceful arm expert,
Burns up the masculine heart with sudden arson.
 
 
So, pour some icy fluid in a glass
Tinged with deep mulberry stain, true work of Venice:
And Mr. Punch will let the soft hours pass,
Watching with tranquil eyes each lovely lass
Flit like an Oread o'er the smooth green grass,
And win his old heart as she wins at Tennis.