In these years, and for a good many years to come, Punch hunted in couples with The Times.
Neglect of Native Talent
The neglect of native talent and the encouragement of foreign artists, musicians, men of letters, is harped upon in number after number for year after year. Here again the method is sometimes direct, sometimes oblique, as in the fictitious list of people invited to the Court: Dickens, Hood, Mrs. Somerville, and Maria Edgeworth. Another opportunity was when it was announced that the Danish Royal family had attended the funeral of Thorwaldsen in deep mourning, Punch exclaims, "imagine for a moment English Royalty in deep mourning for departed genius!" The often-repeated visits of "General Tom Thumb" to Court in 1844 made him very angry. At the second "command" performance the General "personated Napoleon amid great mirth, and this was followed by a representation of Grecian statues, after which he danced a nautical hornpipe, and sang several of his favourite songs" in the presence, as Punch notes, of the Queen of the Belgians, daughter of Louis Philippe. But Punch had his revenge on this curious and deep-rooted interest of Royalty in dwarfs—Queen Isabella of Spain had one permanently attached to her staff—by indulging in a delightful speculation on the happy results that would have ensued if George IV, like General Tom Thumb, had stopped growing at the age of five months:—
How much we should have been spared had George IV only weighed 15 lbs. and stopped at 25 inches! How much would have been saved merely in tailors' bills, and how many pavilions for his dwarf majesty might have been built at a hundredth part of the cost that was swallowed by the royal folly at Brighton!
The Georges, it may be remarked, were no favourites of Punch, nor was this to be wondered at when one recalls their treatment at the hands of Thackeray, the least democratic member of the staff. Punch considered that Brummell was a better man than his "fat friend," and consigned the latter to infamy in the following caustic epitaph, one of a series on the Four Georges:—
GEORGIUS ULTIMUS
He left an example for age and for youth
To avoid.
He never acted well by Man or Woman,