The History of "Punch" Part 11

Scene--London.

Time supposed to be occupied, from the noon of the first day to the afternoon of the second.

And, lastly, may be mentioned the performance of Ben Jonson's play at Knebworth, in which, says Vizetelly, Douglas Jerrold, as Master Stephen, showed real talent and power. But the piece is not an entertaining one, as Lord Melbourne--with his bad habit of thinking aloud--bore disconcerting witness in his stall: "I knew well enough that the play would be dull, but not so d.a.m.nably dull as this!"

KNEBWORTH.

ON MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18th, 1850,

WILL BE PERFORMED

BEN JONSON'S COMEDY

OF

EVERY MAN

IN

HIS HUMOUR.

Costumiers. Messers. NATHAN, of t.i.tchborne Street. Perruqiuer. Mr.

WILSON, of the Strand.

Knowell, (_an Old Gentleman_) Mr. DELME RADCLIFFE, Edward Knowell, (_his Son_) Mr. HENRY HAWKINS, Brainworm, (_the Father's Man_) Mr. MARK LEMON, George Downright, (_a Plain Squire_) Mr. FRANK STONE, Wellbred, (_his Half-brother_) Mr. HENRY HALE, Kitely, (_a Merchant_) Mr. JOHN FORSTER, Captain Bobadil, (_a Paul's Man_) Mr. CHARLES d.i.c.kENS, Master Stephen, (_a Country Gull_) Mr. DOUGLAS JERROLD, Master Matthew, (_the Town Gull_) Mr. JOHN LEECH, Thomas Cash, (_Kitely's Cas.h.i.+er_) Mr. FREDERICK d.i.c.kENS, Oliver Cobb, (_a Water-bearer_) Mr. AUGUSTUS EGG, Justice Clement, (_an old merry Magistrate_) The HON. ELIOT YORKE, Roger Formal, (_his Clerk_) Mr. PHANTOM, Dame Kitely, (_Kitely's Wife_) Miss ANNE ROMER, Mistress Bridget, (_his Sister_) Miss HOGARTH, Tib, (_Cob's Wife_) Mrs. MARK LEMON, (Who has most kindly consented to act, in lieu of Mrs. CHARLES d.i.c.kENS, disabled by an accident.)

THE EPILOGUE BY MR. DELME RADCLIFFE.

To conclude with MRS. INCHBALD'S Farce of

ANIMAL MAGNETISM.

The Doctor Mr. CHARLES d.i.c.kENS, La Fleur Mr. MARK LEMON, The Marquis de Lancy Mr. JOHN LEECH, Jeffery Mr. AUGUSTUS EGG, Constance Miss HOGARTH, Lisette Miss ANNE ROMER.

Stage Manager, MR. CHARLES d.i.c.kENS.

The Theatre will be open at HALF-PAST SIX. The Performance will begin precisely at HALF-PAST SEVEN.

=G.o.d SAVE THE QUEEN!=

FOR THE GUILD OF LITERATURE AND ART. (_See p. 135._)

CHAPTER VI.

_PUNCH'S_ JOKES--THEIR ORIGIN, PEDIGREE, AND APPROPRIATION.

"The Unknown Man"--Jokes from Scotland--"Bang went Saxpence"--"Advice to Persons about to Marry"--Claimants and True Authors.h.i.+p--Origin of some of _Punch's_ Jokes and Pictures--Contributors of Witty Things--A Grim Coincidence--"I Used Your Soap Two Years Ago"--Charles Keene Offended--The Serjeant-at-Arms and Mr. Furniss's Beetle--Mr. Birket Foster and Mr. Andrew Tuer--Plagiarism and Repet.i.tion--The Seamy Side of Joke-editing--_Punch_ Invokes the Law--Rape of Mrs. Caudle--_Sturm und Drang_--Plagiarism or Coincidence?--Antic.i.p.ations of the "Puppet-Show" and "The Arrow"--Of Joe Miller--And Others--_Punch_-baiting--Impossibility of Joke-identification--Repet.i.tions and Improvements.

It may fairly be said that not three per cent.--probably not one per cent.--of the jokes sent in to _Punch_ "from outside" are worthy either of publication as they stand, or even of being considered raw material for manipulation by the editor or his artists. In this low estimate, of course, are not included the work of the few regular contributors who are recognised, though "unattached," as well as of the others who make a practice of sending every good new joke they hear to such a friend as they may happen to have on the Staff. These two cla.s.ses are not numerous; but they are, and have for years formed, a little body of bright-witted, laughter-loving persons, to whom _Punch_ and _Punch_ readers are under an equal debt of grat.i.tude.

In the United States the providing of jokes for ill.u.s.tration in the comic press is to some extent a recognised, if a limited and illiberal, profession, he who follows it being commonly described as the "Unknown Man." Endowed with natural wit and invention, but denied the gift of draughtsmans.h.i.+p, this "dumb orator" is supposed to turn out jokes as other men would turn out chair-legs, and sends them in priced, like gloves, at so much a dozen, "on approval--for sale or return," with a suggested _mise en scene_ complete, which the ill.u.s.trator is recommended to adopt. How far the system answers its purpose I am unable to judge; but if the experience of Mr. Phil May may be taken as an example, there is every reason why the Man should remain Unknown.

For, at the suggestion of a fellow-artist, he ordered five dollars-worth of original jokes, the price being quoted at a dollar per joke. His order was executed with punctuality and despatch, when Mr. May found, to his amus.e.m.e.nt and dismay, that three of the jokes were former _Punch_ friends, and the remaining two were old ones of his own invention!

In the United Kingdom the joke-contributor is as a rule a disinterested person, usually seeking neither pay nor recognition; and so far as his estimate bears upon the value of his contribution, it must be admitted that his judgment is generally sound. But of the accepted jokes from unattached contributors, it is a notable fact that at least seventy-five per cent. come from North of the Tweed. Dr. Johnson, ponderous enough in his own humour, admitted that "much may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young;" and it is probable that to him, as well as to Walpole--who suggested that proverbial surgical operation--is owing much of the false impression entertained in England as to Scottish appreciation of humour and of "wut." Some may retort that it is just the preponderance of Scotch collaboration that has rendered _Punch_ at times a trifle dull. Certain it is that _Punch_ is keenly appreciated in the North. In one of the public libraries of Glasgow it has been ascertained that it was second favourite of all the papers there examined by the public; and it has been a.s.serted that in one portion of the moors and waters gillies have more than once been heard to say, "Eh, but that's a guid ane! Send that to Charlie Keene!"

Nevertheless, it must be admitted that _Punch's_ dialect has not always pleased up there, where "the execrable attempts at broad Scotch which appear weekly in our old friend _Punch_" have before now been authoritatively denounced. Under the heading of "Probable Deduction"

_Punch_ had the following paragraph:--"A pertinacious Salvation Army captain was worrying a Scotch farmer, whom he met in the train, with perpetual inquiries as to whether 'he had been born again of Water and the Spirit.' At last McSandy replied, 'Aweel, I dinna reetly ken how that may be, but my good old feyther and mither took their toddy releegiously every nicht, the noo." Referring to this story--first cousin surely to Lover's joke in "Handy Andy" of the Irish witness who, when pressed as to his mother's religion, promptly replied, "She tuk whuskey in her tay!"--the critic remarks, "It is pretty wit; for _Punch_. But McSandy ought to speak in the Scottish tongue. Now, if 'night' is 'nicht,' why is 'right' 'reet'--either 'the noo' or at any other time? Hoots awa." Yet _Punch_ has usually taken great pains to verify his dialects, and Charles Keene--to whom the legends usually came from his friends ready-made and carefully elaborated--would, as a rule, seek to have them confirmed by one or other of his Scottish friends in town.

Perhaps the greatest service that any Scot ever rendered to _Punch_ (apart from drawing for it) was the "puir bodie" who explained that he found Lunnon so awfu' extravagant that he hadna been in it more than a few hours "_when bang went saxpence!_" The reader will be interested to learn that this expression--which may truthfully be said to have pa.s.sed into the language--did really issue from the lips of a visitor from the neighbourhood of Glasgow. It was Sir John Gilbert who heard it, and repeated it to Mr. Birket Foster while they were seated resting from their labours of "hanging" in the galleries of the Royal Water Colour Society. On the private-view day that followed, Mr. Foster tried the effect of the joke on two ladies whom he accompanied into Bond Street to take tea; and as they exploded with laughter, he concluded that it was good enough for his friend Keene, to whom he thereupon sent it. The immediate success of the joke was amazing; and Mr. Foster was therefore the more surprised and amused a year afterwards to overhear a young "masher" calmly inform a barmaid serving on the Brighton pier that he was the originator of it, and that he possessed the original drawing!

Another favourite Scotch picture of Keene's is that in which a drunken workman, remonstrated with by the parson, protests that the latter is always blaming him for his drinking, but "You forget my droth!" This incident really occurred at Pitlochrie, and was told by the minister himself to Mr. Birket Foster, who handed it on to Keene; but--and here comes out one of the charming qualities of Keene's character--the real offender was not a man, but a woman. It was a chivalrous practice of Charles Keene's never to show a woman in a really undignified position; and when he was remonstrated with on the subject, on the ground that he distorted the truth unnecessarily, he would reply that "he could not be hard on the s.e.x." But though "bang went saxpence" is a notable _Punch_ joke--and it may be remarked that it is not less beloved of the political economist than of the Sat.u.r.day Reviewer--it is not quite the best known. That position is easily attained by what is undoubtedly the most successful (that is to say, the most popular) _mot_ of its kind ever composed in the English language.

It appeared in the Almanac for 1845 under "January," and, based upon the ingenious wording of an advertis.e.m.e.nt widely put forth by Eamonson & Co., well-known house furnishers of the day, ran as follows:--

WORTHY OF ATTENTION.

ADVICE TO PERSONS ABOUT TO MARRY,--Don't![13]

It is doubtful whether any line from any author is so often quoted as "_Punch's_ advice." It crops up continually, almost continuously, though not exactly when least to be expected, as experience teaches us to expect it always; and I may a.s.sert from my own observation that it appears in one or other of the papers of the kingdom on an average twice or thrice a week. Perhaps what has lent additional piquancy to _Punch's_ piece of quaint philosophy is the mystery hitherto surrounding its authors.h.i.+p. An inquirer who endeavoured a few years ago to solve the problem set on record the result of his researches, by which, according to a Scotch authority, he is said to have found the author in (1) a policeman of Glasgow, (2) a bricklayer of Edinburgh, (3) a railway official at Perth, (4) a compositor in Dundee, (5) an hotel-keeper in Inverness, and (6) a "Free Press" reporter in Aberdeen. English and Irish evidently had no chance. A letter, professing to explain the whole mystery, which lies before me from a medical correspondent, under date April 7th, 1895, runs as follows: "When in practice as a medical man at Neath, in S. Wales, it was well known to have been written by Mr.

Charles Waring, a Quaker living at 'The Darran,' near Neath Abbey. Mr.

Waring removed from there to the neighbourhood of Bristol about twenty-two years ago. The proprietors of _Punch_ were so pleased, they sent him a _douceur_ of 10 for the contribution!" Further inquiry shows that the late Mr. Waring was merely in the habit of quoting, not of claiming, the joke.

Hearing Charles Keene's emphatic opinion that the author was a Miss Frances D----, who many years ago was living in a remote village in the North of England, and who had been paid 5 for the line, I appealed to the Post Office for help to trace the lady out; and through the kindly a.s.sistance of the officials at St. Martin's-le-Grand and elsewhere, although nearly half a century had elapsed, I discovered her in another village equally remote, the Post Office having courteously obtained her permission to place me in communication with her. But the information was of a negative kind. She was, she protested, quite innocent of the credit of _Punch's_ Monumental Cynicism, and consequently had never been the recipient of the fantastic payment of 5 per line. But since that time chance has placed in my possession the authoritative information; and so far from any outsider, anonymous or declared, paid or unpaid, being concerned in it at all, the line simply came in the ordinary way from one of the Staff--from the man who, with Landells, had conceived _Punch_ and shaped it from the beginning, and had invented that first Almanac which had saved the paper's life--Henry Mayhew.

To trace the history of much of _Punch's_ original humour would hardly be desirable, even were it possible. But there are many examples of it which, while essentially original to _Punch_, have yet sprung from circ.u.mstances independent of it, and are in themselves amusing enough to be related, or which otherwise present points of interest. To some of these I call attention, for they ill.u.s.trate _Punch's_ own aphorism that "it is easier to make new friends than new jokes."

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 ill.u.s.trated 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 pa.s.sing 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.), ill.u.s.trated by Charles Keene, under the t.i.tle 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 ill.u.s.trated by Eltze's pencil in 1861, when a pa.s.senger 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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 a.s.sured 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt), 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 establis.h.i.+ng his authors.h.i.+p of "The Song of the s.h.i.+rt" 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 s.e.x.