The second half of the nineteenth century was not only notable for the organization of Labour. It was also the age of the organization of Recreation, the age of Exhibitions. The Exhibition of 1851 was a serious affair in which entertainment was subordinated to the demands of Commerce, Industry and Science. The series of Exhibitions which marked the decade of the 'eighties, though their names and their avowed aims were serious, practical or scientific, were run with an ever increasing tendency to emphasize the spectacular element, to cater for the amusement and entertainment (in all senses) of the public.

Punch summarized this tendency happily enough in the phrase that he applied to the possibilities of the Imperial Institute – "Commerce v. Cremorne." He had already deplored the decline of institutions, such as the Crystal Palace, which beginning with high educational aims, had come to rest their popular appeal on dangerous acrobatics and freak performances. He was even more outspoken in his comments on the degeneracy of the Aquarium at Westminster in 1879 and 1880.

References to "Zazel," the acrobat who was nightly shot from a cannon, and to Zazel's successor, "Zæo," abound in protests not only against the enterprising manager, and the cynical indifference of the Home Secretary, but above all against the public who went simply because of the risk, the chance of seeing accidents. "Zazel's" performance, as a matter of fact, was not as dangerous as it appeared; it proved a theme of fruitful burlesque on the part of Nellie Farren at the Gaiety Theatre; and when it was rumoured that Zazel was going to marry an Archdeacon, Punch did not refrain from a ribald allusion to her passing "out of the mouth of a Canon into the arms of an Archdeacon." At the same time he was equally critical of the ostentatiously labelled "Entertainments for the People" organized as a sort of compromise between High Art, the Penny Reading and the Variety Stage. The efforts of the Kyrle Society to "bring Beauty home to the working-classes" left him cold or facetiously intolerant of patronizing preciosity. So, too, the performances at the Victoria Coffee Music-Hall in 1881 are damned with less than faint praise in a criticism put into the mouth of one of the class they were intended to reach, on the grounds that they were not only teetotal, but third-rate music-hall, and dull at that. The whole thing was spoiled by an atmosphere of conscious edification and of condescending patronage.

Punch's attitude to the series of annual exhibitions which began with the "Fisheries" in 1883, underwent many phases. It began in hope and mild praise, but ended in disillusion, as the side-shows, al fresco entertainments, bands and illuminations, and the everlasting "Welcome Club," became the stereotyped and dominating attractions of each successive show. Punch wanted the site of the Fisheries made into a permanent Public Garden with a shilling gate money. But while he applauded the good intention of the promoters, he represented the West End fishmonger as "none the worse for it": the price of fish had not come down as it was thought it would.

Exhibition Absurdities

The "Healtheries" and "Inventories" followed in 1884 and 1885, and Punch's verdict was that "The Fisheries and the Healtheries were very much the same, especially the Inventories." The Colonial and Indian Exhibition (the "Colinderies" as Punch christened it) in 1886 prompts the usual mock-serious account of the opening ceremony. Some distrust was excited by the suggestion of the Prince of Wales that the Exhibition should be given a permanent existence as an Imperial Institute, to be founded as a Jubilee Memorial, and Punch gave his blessing to a proposal which was carried into effect. The subsequent history of the Imperial Institute affords an interesting commentary on the fear, expressed by Punch in 1888, that it would degenerate into another popular Exhibition, with bands, side-shows, etc. He regarded it at the moment as "a big-sounding name, signifying nothing; to conjure with but nothing more"; and some of the names of the organizing committee filled him with astonishment at the ineptitude of their choice.

Buffalo Bill's "Wild West" Show in West Kensington in 1887 struck a somewhat new note. Punch was impressed by the buck-jumping, but the rest smelt too much of footlights and sawdust, and he asks, "Why should Noble Savages be always beaten by the Cowboys?" Still "Buffalo Bill" was a picturesque figure, with a not undistinguished record of active service; the Queen's visit is appropriately described in the "Hiawatha" metre, and Du Maurier, in a spirited fantasy, hints that the introduction of a team of buck-jumping ponies would brighten the monotonous decorum of the meets of the Four-in-Hand Club.

The absurdities of the annual Exhibitions did not escape Punch in their earlier days. At the "Healtheries" he describes a representation of a street in Old London, in which there was a girl in Tudor costume selling photographs! The strange miscellaneous international exhibitions which followed the first four were rich in material for ridicule. A prominent attraction at the Anglo-Danish Exhibition of 1888 was a "grotto of Mystery," consisting chiefly of skeletons. At the Italian Exhibition which followed, the great feature was the "Triumph of Titus," a representation of a gladiatorial contest, and chariot races by "wild omnibus horses." The sons of Belial, as represented by Master Freddy, who was disappointed because "they didn't have lions and – and real martyrs," were dissatisfied, but Mr. Anstey in his "Voces Populi" had a glorious time.

Ridicule predominates in the notice of the Spanish Exhibition in 1889, and in the same year Punch devoted a special number to the Paris Exhibition, containing the impressions of his staff, and bristling with references to the Eiffel Tower, Paulus, the comic singer, and other delights. In 1889 also Barnum returned, "the greatest Showman," in Punch's opinion, "of this or any other age"; and the autobiographic speech which he made on the occasion of the opening of his show at Olympia prompted Punch to revive old memories: —

Forty-five years ago Albert Smith wrote in Bentley's Miscellany a paper entitled "A Go-a-head Day with Barnum." The article wound up by saying: "As we expressed our fatigue at supper, Barnum said, 'Well, I don't know what you call work in England; but if you don't make thirty hours out of the twenty-four in Merekey, I don't know where you'd be at the year's end. If a man can't beat himself in running, he'll never go ahead; and if he don't go ahead, he's done.'" The Great Barnum is apparently as active in 1889 as he was in 1844. He is as enthusiastic on the wrong side of eighty as he was on the right side of forty. If he has not beaten himself in running, he has allowed no one to beat him. He has caught most people, but the old bird himself has never yet been caught. If you look in just now at Olympia, you will find him up to time and smiling, and going ahead more than ever.

The last and one of the very best of the Exhibitions in this period that I have to record was held at Chelsea in 1891. Punch renders justice to the Royal Naval Exhibition in light-hearted style, but "Robert, the City Waiter," is righteously indignant that none but German waiters were employed.

The increasing predominance of pastime throughout this period is faithfully illustrated in the pages of Punch. It is true that he never was much of a racing man, though always ready to find parallels in the classic events for political situations, and, as we have noted elsewhere, anxious to safeguard the privileges of the equestrian. But hunting and fishing cuts are far less frequent than in the days of Leech and Mr. Briggs, and in 1881 we find Punch lamenting the degeneracy of modern sports-big battues, champagne luncheons on the moors, the lavish refreshment of the shooters and the facile butchery of tame birds.

Futile Feats

In 1882 we meet a series of sporting illustrations from the victims' point of view – e.g., a coursing match as envisaged by the hare with a crowd of yelling "sportsmen" looking on. Punch had respected and admired the pugilists of the old school, but here, again, he found signs of decadence. In 1890 Slavin, an Australian, fought Jem Smith in France, and the crowd intervened and ill-treated the former, who won. Punch treats the affair in a neo-Virgilian episode (somewhat in the style of his lay on the Sayers-Heenan contest), which takes the form of a dialogue between "Punchius" and "Sayerius" in the Elysian Fields; and when Punch, after narrating the fight, asks the shade of Sayers what he thought of it, Sayers thinks the sooner the P.R. is put down the better. The craze for contests for futile endurance met with no encouragement from Punch. When swimming for women was advocated in the Medical Press and Circular in 1878, Punch printed a letter on "Maids and Mermaids" in the style and over the signature of "William Cobbett" vigorously recommending this exercise. But a year or so later, when Miss Beckwith swam for a hundred hours in a tank, Punch registered a vehement protest against these "agony-point Amusements." The spectacle of a girl of eighteen floundering in a tank for a hundred hours at a stretch was to him as objectless as it was penitential, as ungraceful as it was degrading. The exploits of Gale, the pedestrian, at Lillie Bridge in 1880 only disgusted Punch, who marvelled at the folly of the promoters of a "stupid, cruel, degrading piece of tomfoolery" in sending him tickets to witness it. "I knew," he says, "that were a horse treated as this man consented to be treated, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would interfere. But there's no Royal Society and no power in the world that can prevent a man making an ass of himself if he chooses to do so." Even in the noble sport of mountaineering Punch found symptoms of a vainglorious love of self-advertisement. His tribute to Mr. Whymper in 1880 is decidedly two-edged. Under title of "Excelsior, Excelsissimus" Punch salutes his achievements with a strong undercurrent of satire, suggesting, e.g., that he should "change his name from Whymper to Crow and take for his crest a Chanticleer struttant, chantant on a mountain reduced to a molehill." Punch winds up on the same disparaging note; —

If ever a Gentleman was entitled to advertise himself as "in the perpetual Snow line," Whymper is the man, a self with no Company. We propose that the Empire he has so proudly assisted over the old-established inaccessibilities of the world should be recognized as a higher form of Imperialism – Whymperialism.

The overdoing of athletics at schools is a favourite topic in these years, but on the whole Punch acquiesced in the new and formidable organization of pastimes of all sorts that went on in the 'seventies and 'eighties. He saw nothing but wholesome rivalry in contests with the Dominions. The early visits of the Australian cricket teams are dealt with at great length. In 1878, the year of Spofforth's "demoniacal" exploits, we read how,

The Australians came down like a wolf on the fold,
The Mary'bone cracks for a trifle were bowled;
Our Grace before dinner was very soon done,
And our Grace after dinner did not get a run.

Criticism was not wanting, but it was not directed against the visitors. At the close of the season Punch gives wholesome advice to English cricketers to repair their bad taste, bad management and bad play, and the advice is not without its point in 1921. Punch had already adapted Byron for his purpose; now he turned to Campbell: —

The Cricketers of England!
They yet may have their turn,
When pique, and fuss, and funk depart
And good pluck and luck return.
Meanwhile, ye smart Australian lads,
Our parting cup shall flow
To the fame of your name,
Who have laid our wickets low;
Who have bowled great Grace, and scored from Shaw,
And laid all our wickets low!

Dr. W. G. Grace

In the valedictory lines a week later Punch wishes the Australians godspeed on their homeward journey, with special mention of Spofforth, Gregory, Bannerman, Blackham and Boyle. They returned in 1880, and the match at the Oval inspired the usual Lion and Kangaroo cut. W. G. Grace made 152 and Murdoch 153, but England won. Punch celebrates the heroic contest in the manner of Macaulay. "W. G." was now one of Punch's special heroes. He had even in 1878 bracketed him with Mr. Gladstone in "The Two W. G.'s" (based on "The Two Obadiahs," a popular song of the hour), and in July, 1880, the verses on "Grace: an Ode à la mode," are a good picture of W. G. in his large mastery of the grand style: —

Or Many-Centuried Marvel of the Modern (Cricket) World, in his high-soaring, top-scoring, Summer-day Flight. (Dr. William Gilbert Grace.)

As Champion him the whole World hails,
Lords! How he smites and thumps!
It takes a week to reach the Bails
When he's before the Stumps.

"Chevy Chase" (revised)

Praxiteles should have sculped thee, not that thou
Art slim, soft-moulded, sleek-limbed, epicene,
Nay, faith, but swart, square-shouldered, stalwart, keen,
With bellying shirt back-blown and beaded brow,
Brawny bat-gripping hands, and crisp-curled beard
As black as Vulcan's own.

Fair Batter (ætat. 18): "Now, just look here, Algy Jones – none of your Patronage! You dare to Bowl to me with your Left Hand again, and I'll Box your Ears!"

Two Views of Lord's

In 1888 when Grace made 215 runs at Brighton Punch saluted him as "my black-bearded, cricketing Titan," and in 1889 he figures in a fancy portrait as "The Leviathan Bat" with scores on his wings. From 1880 onwards notices of matches abound; Eton and Harrow, and the Canterbury Week in 1881, and in 1882 Southey is laid under contribution to celebrate the "famous victory" of Australia at the Oval with Spofforth as hero of the occasion. Surrey v. Notts in 1887 inspires a column of verses from an enthusiastic Surreyite with due praise of W. W. Read, K. J. Key and the exhilarating and intrepid George Lohmann. But even in these years Punch had his moments of misgiving, his cold as well as his hot fits. The lines professing to bewail the feminine invasion of man's last stronghold in pastime – cricket – in 1884, are facetious, or semi-ironical. Women had competed in croquet, roller-skating and lawn tennis, and man had successively yielded these various fields of pastime, hoping to retain the mastery of the cricket field, now threatened. But the verses on "Lord's" in the same year contain a serious and even ponderous indictment of the fetish-worship of athleticism, "the Muscle-Cultus forced into a fever," with a lurid portrait of the "adipose Old Blue," and the decline of the popular compiler of centuries into that "unvirile vaurien a Town-dangler" with no profession, no intellectual resources, no interests save his own past. Yet in the very next year Punch glorified Lord's in an illustration of the Pavilion crowded with portraits of cricketing celebrities – "W. G.," I. D. Walker, A. J. Webbe, Lord Harris, A. P. Lucas, C. J. Thornton, Alfred Lyttelton, A. G. Steel, C. T. Studd, etc. Whether this was intended as an amende or not, I cannot say, but it was certainly a considerable advertisement.

If space is limited, there is no reason why one shouldn't play with one's next-door neighbours, over the garden wall. (One needn't visit them, you know.)

Passing on to 1892, we find that Punch was petrified in that year by the exploits of "Ranji," who scored eleven centuries in that season. His laudatory ode, however, is largely taken up with efforts to wrestle with the spelling and pronunciation of the hero's name, for the now familiar abbreviation had not been generally adopted.

Cricket was still the national pastime par excellence, but new rivals were already creeping up. Lawn tennis, even in 1878, had ceased to be the monopoly of fashionable circles; it was already invading the suburbs. In 1885 Punch sang, after Tennyson,

For other games may come and go,
Lawn Tennis lives for ever.

Two years later Du Maurier satirized the social importance attached to the stars of the "Lawn-Tennis world." Football was not yet regarded, by Punch at any rate, as a serious competitor. Professionalism was as yet in its infancy. Punch greeted the Maori team which visited England in 1888, and complimented them on their successes over Surrey and Kent: —

Your kicking, brother Maoris,
Has given us the kick;
You're well matched all, well "on the ball,"
And strong, and straight, and quick.
By Jove, this is a rum age,
When a New Zealand team
Licks Bull at goal and scrummage!
It beats Macaulay's dream.

You're welcome, brother Maoris,
Here's wishing you good luck!
With you there pace and power is,
And skill, and lots of pluck.
A trifle "rough." Why, just so!
But that you'll mend, no doubt,
And win, all Sportsmen trust so,
In many a friendly bout.

Baseball Arrives

The allusion to rough play is not an isolated mention; John Bull is shown protesting in the same month (October, 1888) against "this brutal sort of thing," in a cut in which the players are arrayed in knee-breeches and long stockings; and a year later two football players, after losing the match, are shown carrying off the referee in a bag. Lacrosse was already acclimatized in England in the early 'eighties, and the visit of the Toronto Club in 1888 gave impetus to a fine game which has never seriously threatened the popularity of cricket and football.

The American baseball team who came over in the spring of 1889 not only failed to impress Punch, they excited him to hostile and unsympathetic comment on a game which he didn't understand and didn't want to. Still, he had the grace to admit that he was a prejudiced spectator; also that the players were as agile as cats and threw like catapults. He had not the vision to foresee a time when "baseball results" would be a daily feature of the tape and an Exalted Personage would be credited with the confession that he thought it was a better game to watch than cricket, adding, however, "for goodness' sake, don't say that I said so, or there might be a Revolution."

"I say, Uncle, that was Young Baldock that went by – Wilmington Baldock, you know – !"

"Who the dickens is he?"

"What! Haven't you heard of him? Hang it! He's making himself a very first-rate position in the Lawn-Tennis world, I can tell you!"

Lawn Tennis v. Golf

Pastime was not only being organized, systematized, commercialized. It was beginning to be the subject of serious literary and scientific study. The Badminton Library series dates from 1885, when the first three volumes were published. Punch made excellent fun of the Duke of Beaufort's preface, repeated in each volume, with its glowing account of the Prince of Wales's accomplishments as a sportsman, and of the literary lapses of the Duke and his editors. The volume on Golf, by Horace Hutchinson, with contributions by Mr. Balfour and Andrew Lang, certainly did not lay itself open to this rebuke. It was a delightful tribute to the charm of a pastime which had invaded England seriously in the 'eighties. Golf had been played sporadically in the south ever since the days of James I. But until the 'eighties, the golfer was looked upon as a species of lunatic. Punch's first notable acknowledgment of the fascinations of the Royal and Ancient Game dates from 1885, when Du Maurier in "The Golf Stream" shows the stream of all ages and both sexes that "flows along the Eastern Coast of Scotland during the summer and autumn."

Flows along the Eastern Coast of Scotland during the summer and autumn.

(Vide Report of British Association – Section V.)

The jealousy of the votaries of other pastimes is made vocal in Keene's lawn-tennis player, who sees no fun in a game which consists in "knockin' a ball into a bush and then 'untin' about for it." Even in 1890 Du Maurier represents the newcomer in an invidious light when he makes a weedy little man say to an Amazonian lady lawn-tennis player that "golf is the only game for men nowadays. Lawn tennis is only for girls." Punch prophesied more truly in the verses, "Golf Victor!" at the close of the same year. There it is the ladies who say, "Golf is the game for the girls": —

Henceforward, then, Golf is the game for the fair —
At home, and abroad, or in pastures Colonial,
And the shouts of the ladies will quite fill the air
For the Links that will turn into bonds Matrimonial,
And for husbands our daughters in future will seek
With the powerful aid of the putter and cleek!

In 1892 the confessions of the "Duffer" at Golf after forty years' experience are interesting from the classified gradations of competence: —

The Learned have divided golf into several categories. There is Professional golf, the best Amateur golf, enthusiasts' golf, golf, Beginners' golf, Ladies' golf, Infant golf, Parlour golf, the golf of Scotch Professors. But the true Duffer's Golf is far, far below that. The born Duffer is incurable. No amount of odds will put him on the level of even Scotch Professors.

To-day these categories need revising; the ladies have gone up two or three classes; amateurs have not for the first time held their own with the best professionals, and even the infants are becoming formidable.

Mentions of cycling in the 'eighties are mainly confined to the tricycle. There is a strange picture of a kind of tricycle for four in 1882. Du Maurier's Pillion-Bicycle is a romantic anticipation of the "Flapper-rack" of a later age. The four chapters on "Cyclomania" in 1885, including an account of a "spin" to Brighton ending in a smash, are largely burlesque, but indicate that, though clubs were multiplying, the cult had not yet outgrown its fashionable phase, or established itself on a democratic basis.

Signs of advancing popularity, however, are manifest in 1887, when the old Scotswoman in Keene's picture observes: "Ah dinna ken what's come ower the Kirk. Ah canna bide to see our Minister spankin' aboot on yon cyclopaedy!" The publication of a new edition of Mr. Sturmey's Handbook of Bicycling in the same year inspires a set of verses reviewing the immense progress made since the days of the old "bone-shaker," the expansion of the industry at Coventry, and the exploits on the racing track of Keen and other professionals. The safety bicycle associated with the name of J. K. Starley dates from 1885, but it was not until the invention of the pneumatic tyre by Dunlop in 1888 that what had been a pastime was revolutionized and became an universal mode of locomotion. Punch celebrates the coming of the "Safety" in October, 1890, in "Breaking a record on the Wheel" (after Tennyson's "Break, break"), but his admiration of the exploits of Messrs. Mecredy and Osmond is tempered by regret for the heroes of the "ordinary" – Keen and the Hon. Ion Keith Falconer. Punch was not aware that he was in the presence of an epoch-making invention, the most wide-reaching in its influence in our time between the railway engine and the coming of the motor. The verses make no mention of the pneumatic tyre; the present writer saw a bicycle race in 1891 at Eastbourne at which all the competitors save one rode on the high model, and he proved the winner.

"Do you evah Wink, Miss Evangeline?"

"Do I ever what, Mr. Smythe?"

"Wink?"

"What do you mean, Sir?"

"Well, skate, if you pwefer the expwession!"

The Vicissitudes of Pastime

In contrast with the ever-increasing speeding-up of life one may note Punch's tribute in 1889 to the charms of caravanning; its inevitable slowness being compensated by freedom from hotel bandits and extortionate lodging-house keepers.

Rifle-shooting is a serious pursuit rather than a pastime or sport, but may claim a word of notice in this survey. The National Rifle Association came of age in 1881, and Punch celebrated the event in a cartoon in which he toasts a handsome young rifleman in a Jeroboam of Perrier-Jouet, 1859, and in verses congratulating the comrades of the rifle on their long survival and triumph over official snubbing.

Lastly I may note that in the Jubilee number of Punch in 1891 the popular or rather fashionable recreations in the 'sixties, 'seventies, 'eighties and 'nineties are shown in four illustrations of croquet, roller-skating, lawn tennis and golf. Of these roller-skating has temporarily disappeared. In the 'seventies "Rinkomania" was a short-lived but acute malady. It led to a good many accidents and much speculation, mostly disastrous. Much money was made and more lost by the financiers who embarked on rink-building. At the end of 1875 Punch notes a report that the Albert Hall was to be converted into a Grand Skating Rink. At the moment the rumour was by no means incredible; and the scenes of social and political revelry enacted in that building of recent years must have often disturbed the manes of its eponymous hero.

Lawn tennis and golf have become democratic, international and spectacular pastimes; while croquet continues to hold its own in a select, scientific and secluded circle of votaries.