Commercialism in high places offended Punch's notion of noblesse oblige. Much the same sentiment inspired his vehement protest against our selling the house in which Napoleon died at St. Helena for 180,000 francs: "We have an especial dislike to this traffic in a great man's grave. It is turning the funeral urn into a money-box with a vengeance—the vengeance of a miserly shopkeeper." On the other hand, complaints of extravagance and waste, though not so strident as of late years, are freely uttered in connexion with official dinners or loyal demonstrations—for example, when the Prince and Princess of Wales visited Chester in 1869, the Mayor's subscription alone amounted to £500.
In the domain of Commerce and Economics no movement in the Victorian age was more fruitful of results than that of co-operation. But a history of the system which began with Owen, took concrete shape in the famous venture of the Rochdale Pioneers in 1844—twenty-eight working men with a capital of £38—and led to the multiplication of Workmen's Co-operative Societies all over the country, is outside the limits of this survey. The movement came from below; Punch was mainly if not entirely interested in its development as it affected the well-to-do classes by the establishment of "the Stores," and their competition with retail shops, and in the grievances of purchasers and their servants who had to carry their parcels home—grievances which reach their climax in the year 1868. In other words, he approaches the subject as an irresponsible social satirist, not as a student of economics. His pages only show the froth of the movement, not its deep underlying current. So, too, with the cult of Social Science. The periodic Congresses furnished him in the main with matter for chaff, though in 1858 he appeals to the moral engineers of the Social Science Association to devise some means of utilizing "social sewage"—swindlers, fraudulent bankers and trustees. The shortcomings of British cookery always found in Punch a candid critic, but he had no sympathy for those journalists who sought to remedy the deficiency by the publication of elaborate and expensive daily menus. Such instruction was a mockery to the poor who had not enough to eat, and did not know how to cook the little they had.
Banting and "Hydros"
An interesting treatise might be written on Victorian diseases and their remedies. The worship of pastime, exercise and athletics was still in its infancy; whatever its drawbacks, it has undoubtedly given a new lease of life to the middle-aged. Obesity, due in great measure to over-eating and lack of exercise, was the nightmare of the well-to-do, and, if proof be required of the statement, one need only refer to the success of the movement initiated by Banting. Inasmuch as he was a fashionable undertaker—he was responsible for the construction of the Duke of Wellington's funeral car—there was an element of disinterestedness in his efforts to promote longevity. He was also a living example of the virtue of his method, for he reduced himself many stones in weight by the use of non-fat-producing foods. "He had a whalebone frame made to fit his once large waistcoats and coats, and wore the whole over his reduced size—removing this armour to produce a full effect."[14] His famous letter to the Press "On Corpulence" rang through the land: his name was a household word in the 'sixties, and he enriched our vocabulary with a noun and verb which are enshrined in the classic pages of the New English Dictionary, though they are practically unknown to the Georgian generation. Hustle and exercise and nerves have removed the evil against which he warred, and in an age in which excessive bulk is a rarity, the name of Banting has passed into semi-oblivion. But Punch's Almanack for 1864 is full of it and him, and for a good many years Banting was as familiar in the mouths of men as Pussyfoot is to-day.
The campaign against over-indulgence was not confined to an attack on starch, fat and sugar. In the 'fifties hydropathy had come to stay, and in the 'sixties hydropathic establishments were to be found all over the British islands and in America, though the abbreviation of "hydro" was not introduced till later. Fortunes were made—and lost—in these institutions, and they still exist, though some of the most sumptuous "hydros" have undergone curious vicissitudes and conversions. One of the best known of all was used as a girls' school during the War. But the rigour of the water-cure treatment was only enforced in the early years of the movement; proprietors gradually realized that it did not pay to run their establishments as uncomfortable hospitals, and with a laxer administration the whole system fell somewhat into discredit. The convivial Punch never smiled on it, as may be gathered from the verses he printed in March, 1869, when hydropathy was still in its prime, on "Sound Port and Principles." They must not, however, be taken to represent Punch's own views, for he was no lover of guzzling. The poem is really a satire, but it is partly inspired by Punch's inveterate dislike of the teetotal fanatics.
Surgery was active, though the days of appendicitis and adenoids were still a long way off. Punch, however, was more interested in mental maladies and the pathology of the social system. The Victorian age had no monopoly of superstition and credulity, but prophets and spiritualists and diviners reaped a rich harvest in the 'fifties and 'sixties. The comet of 1857 caused a good deal of anxiety, so much so, that in December of that year an insolvent butcher gave as a reason for his failure "the loss he had sustained in June, when the comet was expected, by a large quantity of meat being spoilt." Dr. Cumming was assiduous in prophesying the end of the world, but unfortunately Punch ascertained that the doctor had renewed the lease of his house for fifty years, and the prophet's defence of his action did not mend matters:—
Mr. Punch finds in a Liverpool journal the following part of a lecture which Dr. Cumming has been delivering on Prophecy:—
"He had been, he said, taunted in the columns of Punch with having, notwithstanding his belief that the world was to come to an end in 1867, recently renewed the lease of his cottage for 50 years. The accusation, he said, although not literally, was generally true, but his answer to it was, that a belief in prophecy should not override commonsense. The doctor was frequently applauded throughout his eloquent lecture."
And by no person should he have been applauded more loudly than by Mr. Punch, if that gentleman had had the good fortune to be in the schoolroom at Claughton, where the lecture is reported to have been delivered. The last quoted sentence is so admirably frank that Mr. Punch cannot withhold his tribute of veneration. In other words, although it is all very well, in the way of business, to work the old Hebrew scrolls, which boil down into capital stock for the rather thin yet spicy soup vended by our Doctor, he has no notion of eating his own cookery. We wish we were as certain of our friend's orthography as we are of his commonsense, and would give a trifle (say the next three hundred Tupperian sonnets) to know whether, in his private ledger, he does not spell Prophets as worldly people spell the opposite of Losses.
A SPIRIT RAPPING SEANCE!