Mr. Punch's History of Modern England. Volume 3 of 4.—1874-1892

Times are so bad, that the Stanley de Vere Talbots have to give up their Carriage. They go about (Grandpapa included) all over London on those nice Omnibuses with proper Staircases behind and Chairs on the top instead of a Knife-board, and find it much less monotonous than eternally driving round the Park. Their Carriage Acquaintances still bow to them; perhaps because they are still Stanley de Vere Talbots!

There is much less abuse of the imperfections of public vehicles in this period, though they are by no means exempt from censure. In 1875 Punch quotes at length the account of an exceptionally honest cabman with the additional information that his name was Isaacs. The frequency of cab accidents in 1880 elicits the fact, if it was a fact, that cabs were not obliged to carry lights! The congestion of horse-drawn traffic at the Marble Arch and the Piccadilly end of Hamilton Place clamoured for a remedy, but Punch was more concerned by the discreditable congestion of pedestrian traffic in the neighbourhood of Piccadilly Circus, and the nocturnal orgies enacted there. These belonged to the scenes and institutions calculated to bring London into disrepute, of which Punch made a list in 1882 under the heading, "Things to Show Cetewayo." To return to the vehicles, the hansom still retained its popularity – witness Du Maurier's picture – and taximeter cabs introduced in Paris by 1890 aroused hopes not destined to be fulfilled until much later. The "growler" still held its own. Punch had no love for it or its driver, but supported the plea for more cab-shelters. As for the omnibuses, the abolition of the "knife-board" and the introduction of garden-seats and proper staircases were handsomely acknowledged by Punch, though he still resented the importunities of rival conductors. Only those who can remember the atmosphere on the old and unelectrified Underground can properly appreciate Punch's tirades against the dirt and discomfort of subterranean travel in the 'eighties. They were aggravated, moreover, by an outbreak of hooliganism, which became a serious nuisance in 1881. Nor was it any comfort to the semi-asphyxiated passenger to be assured that the underground officials were singularly free from bronchial affections.

The Tyranny of King Fog

In this atmospheric context the question of London fog and the smoke nuisance naturally emerges. The table of the total number of days of fog in London from 1871 onwards published in the Meteorological Society's Journal shows a decline in the 'seventies and a recrudescence in the 'eighties and early 'nineties. In 1878 Punch notes ironically that the London fogs made it impossible to see colours at a dressmaker's, but did not interfere with "doing" the Old Masters. There are frequent allusions in his pages to the Conference on Smoke and Fog held in 1880, but at the end of the decade, when the nuisance was unusually acute, Punch launched out in a long, sardonic, and spirited doggerel tribute to the unimpaired sovereignty of the demon King Fog. The occasion was the visitation of January 9th-13th, 1888, when a heavy fog settled over England and a great part of Ireland, traffic by sea and land being greatly impeded and many accidents reported from all parts of the country. But London, as usual, suffered most. Punch describes how King Fog, having summoned all his attendant demons, determined to surpass all his previous efforts in torturing "miserable mortals," and succeeded.

Unpromising Individual (suddenly, his voice vibrating with passion): "She's moy Unney; Oi'm 'er Joy!"

The fog of January, 1888, was equalled, if not eclipsed, by that of Christmas, 1904, but the table of statistics already referred to records a marked decline from 1900 onwards. Statistics, however, are a poor consolation. The late Director of the Meteorological Society, writing in 1910, frankly owns that no statistics of the "frequency occurrence" of fog warrant the inference that the atmosphere of London is approaching that of the surrounding districts as regards transparency. It is true that an absolute approximation was made in the spring and early summer of 1921, but it was purchased at a cost which even in these days must be regarded as exorbitant.

Sir William Harcourt's Bill for the reform of the Government of London, introduced in April, 1884, and withdrawn in July, fell between two stools; it exasperated the Obstructives and failed to satisfy the Reformers. Punch, however, seized the opportunity to indulge in a burlesque prophetic account of the first meeting of the reformed Corporation, illustrating the embarrassment created by the damnosa hæreditas of the Metropolitan Board of Works, and, in general, indicating the immense amount of work to be done, and the rooted disinclination of the old gang to undertake it. Yet when the new authority was established five years later, and the first elections to the London County Council were held in January, 1889, it cannot be said that Punch exhibited any great enthusiasm. It is true that in his verses on the "London County Council Dream," widespread improvements and reforms are foreshadowed, but they end up on a note of tempered optimism.

A Mixed Epitaph

Indignant Citizen (who had expected great things of the London County Council after the extinction of the Metropolitan Board of Works and the abolition of the Wine and Coal Dues, receives an application for Rates amounting to 2s. 8-3/4d. in the pound): "D – ! D – !! D – !!!"

In the very next month the mood of disillusionment is apparent in the cartoon revealing friction and the delight of the ex-Bumble and ex-member of the Metropolitan Board of Works. Not that Punch regretted the Board, though he rendered justice to its greatest achievements in the decidedly mixed epitaph composed for its tombstone, to be surmounted by an armed figure labelled "Black Mail" and headed "Peace to Its Hashes": —

 
To the Melancholy Memory of
The Metropolitan Board of Works.
It was an Unfortunate Institution.
Flushed in the earlier years of its Existence,
With a laudable Ambition
To command the Respect and Admiration of the Ratepayers,
It gave an Embankment to the Thames,
Drained London,
And suddenly showed the world
How jobbery could be elevated to the level of the Fine Arts;
Thus Fighting to the End, it was more anxious
To leave an Inheritance of Spite to its Successor,
Than to retire from the Scene of its Late Labours with Dignity to itself.
Unwept, Unrepentant, yet Unhung,
It has Passed for Good and Aye to that Oblivion
From which it is Possible the More Thoughtful and
Philosophical Ratepayer
May think it would have been as Well
For the Interests of Municipal Honesty
That it had Never Emerged.
 

The series of articles on "County Councildom" are by no means sympathetic; and the indignation of the ratepayer, who had expected a reduction in his burdens and was proportionately disappointed, is vividly and vocally expressed in Du Maurier's picture of "Reaction." The resignation of Sir John Lubbock and later on of Lord Rosebery,⁶ the Chairman of the L.C.C., lent point to Punch's allusions to the jubilation of "Bumble" and his confident hope that he will have to come back. "Bumble's" idea is that the "toffs" and "big pots" were "hooking it" in disgust at the bad manners and arrogance of the "Progressives." But if the truth be told, it was not the methods of the L.C.C. in dealing with ordinary affairs of administration that disappointed and exasperated Punch: it was the spirit in which the Progressives addressed themselves to the task of regulating theatres and places of entertainment. In his verses "Ye Moderates of England" he inveighs against the grand-maternal rule of the Puritan L.C.C., and more especially Messrs. McDougall and Lidgett: —

 
When Lidgett and McDougall
Are censors of the play,
We can patronize the drama
In a strictly proper way.
When Parkinson's Inspector
Of Ballets, we shall know
He will stop
Any hop
If he sees a dancer's toe.
 

That was in March, 1892, and in the cartoon of "The Bogie Man" in the previous number, Gog and Magog are seen shaking in their shoes before the Progressives, who had been returned with a largely increased majority. Lord Rosebery had declared his intention of not offering himself for re-election to the L.C.C. in consequence of the announcement that the election would be fought on Party lines. Punch made no secret of his disappointment, for he believed that Progressivism was merely extravagance writ large, and had advised everyone to vote for the Moderates: —

 
Oh, Rosebery turned traitor,
And Lubbock seemed to cool,
McDougall, now, and Parkinson
May proudly play the fool.
London's delivered to be ruled
On the "Progressive" plan,
And "Ben" can bear the honoured name —
Ye gods! – of Alderman!!!
 

"Ben" was Mr. Ben Tillett. As a matter of fact, Lord Rosebery was re-elected Chairman, and held the post for a few months longer.

The Cockney Dialect

 

To conclude this survey of London between 1874 and 1892, one may note that the changes included not only a new form of self-government, but a new lingo. The progressive development of the Cockney dialect is far too large a subject to be treated in a paragraph. Let it suffice to say that while in Dickens's time the distinguishing mark of the Cockney was the interchange of the "v" and "w," in the 'eighties and 'nineties he turned his attention to the other end of the alphabet, replaced "a" by "y," and began that "general post" of the vowels which is the despair of those who seek to erect a true phonetic standard.

"Do you sell Type?"

"Type, Sir? No, Sir. This is an Ironmonger's. You'll find Type at the Linendryper's over the w'y!"

"I don't mean Tape, Man! Type, for Printing!"

"Oh, Toype yer mean! I beg yer pardon, Sir!"

 
"Hush! Hush! Hush!
Here comes the bogie man!"
 
 
"Then hide your heads, my darlings,
He'll catch you if he can!"
 

RAILWAYS AND INVENTIONS: FORECASTS AND NOVELTIES

Railways continue to be a fertile seed plot of grievances. In 1876 Charles Keene devises a patent costume for collisions, closely resembling that of a diver. This was the year in which Captain Tyler's report on the Long Ashton accident to the "Flying Dutchman" on July 27 prompted Punch to a scathing set of verses on the G.W.R. directors, of which the motto was, "Westward Ho! with grim Death." The introduction of the Pullman dining-car in 1879 is welcomed in a lyrical effusion, to the air of "The Low-backed Car," in which Punch contrasts the discomforts of "Mugby Junction" days with the new amenities of travel: —

 
Five minutes, a frantic fixture,
You strove with might and main
To gulp some scalding mixture,
While the bell rang – for the train!
Your tea or soup you swallowed,
As much as did not fly
On your shirt-front or your waistcoat,
From the dense crowd hustling by.
While the minxes at Mugby Bar
Smiled, serene, upon the war,
For they'd learnt the art,
And looked the part —
Of "We are your betters far."
 
 
But in Pullman's dining-car, Sir,
Now run on the Northern Line,
You've a soup, and a roast, and entrées,
And your cheese and your pint of wine.
At his table snug the passenger sits,
Or to the smoke-room moves,
While on either side the landscape flits,
Like a world in well-greased grooves.
Thanks to Pullman's dining-car,
No more Mugby Junction Bar —
No more tough ham and chicken,
Nor passenger-pickin'
For the minxes behind the Bar!
 

Punch is a Railway Critic

Punch's jubilation was short-lived; and in 1883 his discontent takes the form of a wholesale indictment of unnecessary noises, draughts, dismal chilly waiting-rooms, atrocious refreshment-rooms, undistinguishable station-names. The regulations and adjustments of Railwaydom, he sums up, "can only be praised in the same spirit as that in which Charles Kingsley lauded the British North-Easter." On the question of Railways in the Lake District, about which Ruskin had raised an exceeding bitter cry, Punch seems rather to favour the Philistine view: —

 
Let sentimental Ruskinites the thing disparage,
Most scenery afoot you miss – it cannot be denied:
The Nature-lover's point of view's a third-class smoking carriage,
'Twould be a blot if there were not a line to Ambleside.
 

"Justice at Fault," a cartoon in 1887, based on a recent inquiry, reiterates Punch's familiar complaint: overworked signalmen are punished, while the directors go scot free. No jarring note, however, is struck in the cartoon in the same year on the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway – "the New North-West Passage," or in the verses in which Britannia and Canada exchange mutual compliments and indulge in hopeful auguries. The opening of the first electric underground railway in England by the Prince of Wales on November 4, 1890, passed unnoticed by Punch, but he rendered full justice in 1891 to the historic conclusion of the famous "Battle of the Gauges," when Stephenson's triumph over Brunel was finally crowned by the abandonment of the broad gauge on the Great Western. It had been an heroic contest, and Punch treated the defeated champion with dignity and respect, quoting the words, "Good-bye, poor old Broad Gauge, God bless you!" which were found written on the G.W. track.

The record of novelties, inventions and discoveries opens modestly in 1875 with the mention of hot-water bottles in bed as "a new idea." They have long since ousted the warming-pan, which until recently maintained a precarious existence in old-fashioned inns, and is now merely a picturesque antique. Lovers of The Rose and the Ring will remember its use as a weapon, and romantics will deplore its abandonment, for there is no romance in a hot-water bottle. I have dealt with the bicycle under the head of Pastime, but may supplement what I have said elsewhere with a few further observations on this momentous innovation. What I believe to be the first mention of the word occurs towards the end of 1878. Before that we only hear of velocipedes or "rantoones," and in the year 1879 an epigram refers to the "Bycicle." Punch's early references to the "steel horse" and the "public wheel" are decidedly friendly, and he contrasts the bicyclist favourably with the hangers-on of the noble animal: —

 
No slinking knaves environ him
And dog his ins and outs;
No jockeys, ostlers, stable-boys,
No tipsters and no touts.
 

Another substitute for the horse, I may remark in parenthesis, comes in for notice at the time of our Egyptian campaigns.

The rules for the road in 1878 are farcical, their only interest being the reference to proprietors of 64-in. machines, for this was the day of the old "ordinary." The use of bells was first made obligatory in Liverpool in 1877. Twelve years later, when the "safety" bicycle was coming in, Punch addressed a warning to enthusiasts in the form of a skeleton cyclist stooping over the handles, in the approved attitude, with an alarming curvation of the spine. In the same year allusion is made to the thrill caused by the Bishop of Chester's taking to the bicycle; but the rumour was exaggerated, for Dr. Jayne only patronized the tricycle. A propos of skeletons, it may be noted that Mr. (afterwards Sir) Seymour Haden's advocacy of burial in wicker coffins and the exhibition held at Stafford House to popularize the scheme in 1875 merely served Punch as an occasion for punning on the projector's name, and suggesting that the funeral march of the future seemed likely to be Haydn's "With Verdure Clad," as the wicker baskets were to be filled with moss and ferns.

Tommy Atkins (to Mate, who had been told off to the same refractory Animal): "Oh, look here, Bill, here's this cussed Beast has been playing 'Cup and Ball' with me for the last Two Hours! Missed me ever so many times!"

(Vide Special Correspondence from the Soudan.)

Flying Machines

Of more topical interest to the readers of to-day is the account given by Punch in the autumn of 1876 of a flying machine invented by a Mr. Ralph Stott of Dover. Under the heading, "A Dædalus at Dover," Punch forecasts the use of the flying machine as an engine of war. Mr. Stott, who claimed that his machine was capable of speed up to one hundred miles an hour, and of hovering in mid-air, went to Berlin to see Bismarck, but backed out of the proposed trial ascent when the German Government declined to pay him £1,000 in advance. This recalled to Punch the old story of "Twopence more and up goes the donkey"; for the rest, while suspending judgment on the invention, he observes that its use in war will constitute a "fearfully costly addition to already bloated armaments: but the cheap defence of nations is now no longer possible, and Governments, in their martial preparations, are obliged to be regardless of expense."

Punch was not an inventor himself; he never even put a hat on the market; but almost every new invention or discovery prompted him to indulge in forecasts, often farcical or fantastical, but, when read in the light of subsequent views, sometimes proving that he prophesied better than he knew. This is specially true of the development of scientific warfare. The warship of the future, designed by Sambourne in 1875, is not nearly so wonderful as some of the "blisters" of the late war. In the following year the eighty-one-ton guns made at Woolwich prompt an account of an imaginary sea-fight in which battleships engage at fourteen miles distance. In 1879 Victor Hugo declared that the twentieth century would see war abolished, along with capital punishment, monarchy, dogmas and frontiers. Punch replied with a satirical forecast, in Hugo's manner, of a twentieth-century invasion of Paris based on the pacificist assumption that, given non-resistance, it would result in a "fraternal walk-over." The Channel Tunnel scheme, revived in the early 'eighties, was the subject of much discussion and debate, until in 1883 the Joint Select Committee of the Lords and Commons decided by a majority that it was inexpedient to give Parliamentary sanction to a submarine communication between England and France. In 1881 Punch notes the acute divergence of views between various experts, and the military opposition headed by the Duke of Cambridge and Lord Wolseley. He summed up the views of the majority in a picture of Britannia saying that she was glad to lunch with Sir Edward Watkin – the indefatigable champion of the scheme – any day, but drew the line at the tunnel. Early in 1883, under the heading, "After it is Open," Punch, in a vein of laboured and fantastic irony, records the evidence given before a "Channel Tunnel Closing Committee." Here by a complete change of front Lord Wolseley is represented as urging the maintenance of the tunnel, and John Bright as opposing it – both on account of the unforeseen consequences of its having been made. The alternative and subsequent scheme of a ferry or bridge is dealt with in 1890 by Du Maurier in a picture of a cross-Channel gigantic Pullman car labelled, "Electric Plate-glass Express." Du Maurier's fantasies were always fascinating, but the nightmare element robs them of any pretence to realism. This applies also to the "Tale for the Submarines in A.D. 2086" with Sambourne's illustration, published in February, 1886. The forecast of a naval battle given in 1891 under the title "Who'd be a Sailor? A Story of Blood and Battle," is a slightly more circumstantial attempt to realize the possibilities of marine warfare fifty years later. Punch's description of the devastating effect of high explosives is not too extravagant, though it is meant to be farcical. Points of more real interest in this fantasy are the idea of a Federation of Anglo-Saxon nations – England, the Dominions and the United States – and the well-merited recognition by name of the late Mr. Stead as an advocate of the maintenance of Great Britain's naval supremacy.

"Mr. Nordenfeldt, if he has not actually made a discovery that will revolutionize naval warfare, is on the track of one." —Daily Paper.

Gas v. Electricity

In 1881 Punch published a cartoon with the title "What will he grow to?" in which King Steam and King Coal are seen sulkily contemplating the new and portentous infant Electricity. The question has only been partially answered in the ensuing forty years, but Punch found ample material for comment and speculation in the achievements of the 'seventies and 'eighties. In his "Ode to the Coming Light" in 1878 delight is expressed at the possibility of a clean substitute for gas. Yet he showed a wise caution as well as true foresight in the verses accompanying the cartoon inspired by the slump in gas shares in the same year. The notion that gas is likely to go utterly to the wall is discouraged, and the panic-stricken share-holders typified by the silly birds clustering round the Electric Lighthouse are advised not to knock their brains out against the "Edison Light." Things would work themselves out right in the end, and they did. Night has not yet been turned into day, though a football match was played by electric light at Sheffield more than forty years ago, and fresh comfort for holders of gas shares was furnished in 1882 when the eminent Dr. Siemens recommended the use of gas stoves for cookery. The Electric Exhibition in 1881 is celebrated in an explosion of jocular optimism; and in a burlesque fantasia on electricity in the house in 1883, Punch anticipates the time when everything will be done by electricity – shaving, boot-cleaning, carpet-beating – down or up to an "Electric Family Prayer Reader," though not without frequent accidents, as when the last-named machine gives the same chapter of Genesis three mornings running. It was in the same year, by the way, that sixpenny telegrams were first introduced – one of the many vanished privileges which inspire envy in the harassed Georgian citizen.

References of the telephone abound through these years. The prevailing temper of Punch is shown in one of his earliest allusions to what he calls "The Coming Agony," in 1877. An experiment in long-distance telephoning is described in which a newspaper reporter is quoted as saying, "On putting the instrument to my ear, I felt somewhat as if a regiment of the line had fired a volley, at a hundred yards, into that member." The Almanack of 1878 has a page of telephone pictures, illustrating bottled composers and singers – Gounod, Patti, Nilsson, Santley, Henschel and De Soria – talks with the antipodes, etc. Mary starts a "tallyphone" in the kitchen to converse with her young man; and in another picture, suggested by the phonograph, Du Maurier foreshadows the coming of the gramophone. A more friendly note is struck in the article "Good-bye, Telephone," in 1881, lamenting that vested interests were, by legal decision, ousting the telephone in order to perpetuate the inefficiency of the telegraph: —

We may read about scientific progress, but we must go abroad to see it. The wire that misspells a message, and the street Arab who delivers it at his leisure, are all we shall get in this country till the day when we are conquered by the Irish.

On the whole I am inclined to think that this is the strangest of Punch's many strange prophecies.

In the illustration of the "Photophone," the long-promised and culminating development of the film, Du Maurier in 1881 depicts the romance of long-distance courtship between Boulogne and Folkestone. The "Telephone Trials" of 1885 are hardly distinguishable from those of to-day. Telephonic communication with Paris was first established in March, 1891, and Punch represents Lord Salisbury and President Carnot conversing over the wire about "outstanding questions." For the ordinary person it was an expensive luxury, even in those days of cheapness, and the lonely wife in Du Maurier's picture, on being reassured by her husband (just off to Paris) that she can talk to him over the telephone, but that it was rather costly, suggests he had better leave her some blank cheques. A cartoon in the following year, 1892, represents the telephone as the Cinderella of the Post Office; but Punch boldly predicts her final triumph over her "ugly sisters" – the Telegraph and the Letter Post. The imperfections of the telephone were simultaneously "guyed" in a delightful burlesque on "Telephonic Theatre-goers," suggested by performances of the "Theatrophone" at the Electrical Exhibition held in that year. The experiences of auditors of different types are ludicrously reproduced, notably those of the Irritable Person who is just beginning to hear the dialogue of an exciting melodrama: —

Ghostly Voices (in the Irritable Person's ear as before): "Your wife?" "Yes, my wife, and the only woman in the world I ever loved!"

The Irr. P. (pleased, to himself): "Come, now I'm getting accustomed to it, I can hear capitally."

The Voices: "Then why have you – ?.. I will tell you all. Twenty-five years ago, when a shinder foodle in the Borjeezlers I – "

A Still Small Voice (in everybody's ear): "Time, Please."

Unconscious Crime

In the realm of discovery the return of the Arctic Expedition of the Alert and the Discovery under Nares was an outstanding event of 1876 and was commemorated in two cartoons. As a mountain had been named after Punch he was naturally inclined to be proud of an expedition which had given him something to be proud of. In 1880 a plan for a new Arctic Expedition in which balloons should take part attracted a good deal of notice, but Punch was reluctantly sceptical of the feasibility of this "wild scheme," expounded before the Lord Mayor by a deputation mainly of sailors, but including Coxwell the famous aeronaut. In 1885 we catch the first murmurs of modern psychological jargon in a ballade on "The Unconscious Self": —

 
'Tis a famous idea of Myers,
The Spectator attempts to explain,
There's a hitch in the cerebral wires
That the burden of thinking sustain;
One "hemisphere" bustles amain,
While the other is laid on the shelf,
And what tenants these cells of the Brain?
It is just the Unconscious Self!
 
 
Now suppose that this essence inspires
All acts that give Moralists pain,
That ferocious passions it fires,
Why the sinner may guiltless remain!
He may forge, and may hurry to Spain
With a parcel of alien pelf,
But the culprit's that Side of his Brain,
It is just the Unconscious Self!
 
 
What a comfort to ladies and squires
When their scutcheon is under a stain!
They must answer whoever inquires,
With apology none can disdain,
"Automatic vagaries arraign,
But acquit the poor innocent elf.
Ananias is guiltless, and Cain,
It is just the Unconscious Self!"
 
 
Prince, surely the notion is plain
To the critical mind of a Guelph,
When we sin 'tis a kink in the brain.
It is just the Unconscious Self!
 

Write "Subconscious" for "Unconscious," and Punch's lines remain an excellent exposition and criticism of the fashionable doctrine of Psycho-Analysis of to-day.

Lodger: "Dear me, Mrs. Cribbles, your cat's been at this mutton again!"

Landlady: "Oh no, Mum, it can't be the cat. My 'usband says he b'lieves it's the Collerlarda Beetle."

The arrival of the Colorado Beetle, a "newcomer" the reverse of "blithe," is turned to humorous account by Keene in 1877. It was not Punch, however, who was responsible for the unfeeling suggestion that a young man, who had little to recommend him but the size of his feet, and was in need of employment, should emigrate to Colorado to crush the Beetle. Inoculation was already sufficiently advanced by 1881 for Punch to make it the subject of what no doubt seemed to him burlesque treatment. A lady, whose nephew is going out to Sierra Leone, comes to buy him some Yellow Fever from her chemist, who offers her the Traveller's half-guinea assortment of six of the Commonest Zymotics, to be supplemented with most of the Tropical diseases at 5s. each. In the light of the development of medical science the burlesque is not so fantastic after all. Of the alternative method of cure by suggestion or hypnotism Punch was sceptically critical, though he exhibits in 1889 an ironical preference for the hypnotic treatment of dipsomaniacs as compared with the repressive laws advocated by temperance extremists.

Drugs, Diet, and Speed

In 1890 influenza attained the proportions of an epidemic, and under the heading, "Refreshments in Vogue," a butler is shown saying to a lady, "Quinine or Antipyrin, my lady?" A propos of refreshments, it is to be noted that Punch, while no teetotaller, bestowed a somewhat lukewarm benediction on Vegetarianism in 1886, when a Vegetarian Restaurant was opened in the Strand opposite the Law Courts. The movement was supported by several eminent medical men, including Sir Henry Thompson and Sir James Crichton-Browne, on the ground that we ought to eat less meat. Of late years Sir James Crichton-Browne has shown more benevolence to carnivorous habits.

The general speeding-up of traffic on land and sea by improved methods of locomotion inspired Punch with mixed feelings. He was far-sighted enough to recognize the need of raising the status of the engineer in the Royal Navy long years before the introduction of the system of the "common entry," but when he read in 1883 that a ship was being built to cross the Atlantic in five days, he remarked that we were reducing our periods of astonishment: "It's only a five days' wonder now." Wonder gives place to protest, in 1889, against the racing of great Atlantic liners; and the following passage has a curiously prophetic ring when one thinks of the tragedy of the Titanic: —

RACING THE "RECORD"

(Suggestion for a brief Mid-Atlantic Cantata)

"Tearing ahead with the green sea sweeping the decks from end to end, never slacking speed in the face of the heaviest weather, regardless alike of the risk of crashing into some coming vessel and of the chance of splitting in half on some suddenly appearing iceberg, as of the dense fog which conceals both; with fires blazing and stokers fainting over the stress of work that is wrung out of them – the passage is made, from start to finish, at high-pressure pace. What is gained is a few hours' triumph in time over the performance of some rival Company, and the cost, if the practice be not speedily checked, will, sooner or later, most assuredly be the loss in Mid-Atlantic of a whole shipload of loudly protesting but as yet helpless and totally unheeded passengers." – Notes of some recent Atlantic Passages taken at random from the Daily Papers.

The speeding-up of agriculture by machinery found little favour in Punch's eyes. In the two pictures representing the "Delights of the Peaceful Country" in 1884, the point of view is that of the sportsman. Horses, maddened by the noise and smoke of steam ploughs and traction engines, are seen bolting in all directions. The leader of a tandem is shown standing on his hind-legs. Nowadays we expect to see sensitive motorcars behaving in a similar way in the presence of Highland cattle.