TASTE
Shop Girl (who had been expected to procure Tennyson's "Miller's Daughter"): "No, Miss! We've not got the Miller's, but here's the 'Ratcatcher's Daughter,' just published!"
Beadles, Broadsheets and Advertisements
The Zoological Gardens had been opened in 1828 and were already a most popular resort; the hippopotamus at one time almost rivalling "General" Tom Thumb as the most run-after celebrity. "Good David Mitchell," who was secretary to the Zoological Society from 1847 to 1859, was a prime favourite with Punch, and is never mentioned without a friendly word. But of all officials concerned with the administration of London none stood higher in his esteem than Sir Benjamin Hall, M.P. for Marylebone from 1837 to 1859, when he was created Lord Llandovery, President of the Board of Health in 1854, and Chief Commissioner of Works from 1855 to 1858. "Ben Hall's" services in adding to the amenities of the parks and introducing bands on Sundays were celebrated by Punch in prose and verse. It was he who brought in a Bill for the sorely needed better management of the Metropolis in March, 1855, and Punch more than once applauded him for castigating the follies of the Central Metropolitan Board, whose vagaries in suggesting names for streets roused Punch's special ire in 1856. A nomenclator like the late Sir Laurence Gomme, who combined official authority with a fine historical sense, only emerges once in a century. Among the minor officials of the time beadles were conspicuous. Punch devotes a special article to those of the Burlington and Lowther Arcades, the Quadrant and the British Museum, but these gorgeous uniformed functionaries, splendid in scarlet and gold, are now only memories of the elderly or the aged. Gone, too, are the broadsheets, "dying speeches" and ballads of Catnach, the Seven Dials bookseller; gone also are the "mock auctions" which were held in the Strand up to the war. London had no picture-palaces in the 'forties and 'fifties, but there was an abundance of panoramas, which Punch noted as a reaction against the cult of dwarfs. The fogs cannot have been worse than those which prevailed for nearly a week one winter at the close of the 'nineties, but the smoke nuisance was perhaps more acute because entirely unregulated. Punch defended the intermission of postal deliveries on Sunday, on the ground that it promoted the blessed dullness of that day, and here at least the chronicler has no change to record. On the growth of the great modern art of advertising Punch is a most instructive commentator. As early as December, 1842, he printed an essay on its theory and practice in which the following passage occurs:—
The Kentish Herald lately contained the following notice: "Ranelagh Gardens, Margate—last night of Mount Vesuvius, in consequence of an engagement with the Patagonians." This is tragical enough; but The Times outdoes it in horror by informing us that "The Nunhead Cemetery is now open for general interment"; and immediately afterwards comes an advertisement of "The London General Mourning Warehouse, Oxford Street"; and then, to crown all, Mr. Simpson, of Long Acre, declares himself ready to make "Distresses in Town and Country, so as to give general satisfaction."
In 1847 Punch recurs to the subject in a spirit foreshadowing the activities of that excellent society which of late years has striven to restrain the excesses of the advertiser:—
Advertisements are spreading all over England—they have crept under the bridges—have planted themselves right in the middle of the Thames—have usurped the greatest thoroughfares—and are now just on the point of invading the omnibuses. Advertising is certainly the great vehicle for the age. Go where you will, you are stopped by a monster cart running over with advertisements, or are nearly knocked down by an advertising house put upon wheels, which calls upon you, when too late, not to forget "Number One." These vehicles, one would think, were more than enough to satisfy the most greedy lover of advertisements, but it seems that there is such an extraordinary run for them that omnibuses are to be lined and stuffed with nothing else.
We have long acquiesced in this invasion of the sanctity of the omnibus. It is the desecration of the countryside that chiefly disgusts the fastidious of to-day.