Though e'en the Temple of Solomon fell.
Hostility to General Booth
"Atlas" of the World denounced the "Salvation Army nuisance" in the autumn of 1884. It had spoilt a season at Worthing and might do so at Brighton. Punch, welcoming the pious Mr. Edmund Yates as an ally, proposed as a remedy the prohibition of all processions, excepting only those of State requirements, as a relic of barbarism and an anachronism:—
Let the Salvation Army, with their ensigns and captains and uniforms, and drums and trumpets, assemble in their Barracks just as Christians, Jews, Turks and Heathens do in their Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples; and let their recruiting sergeants go about where they list, or where they are likely to 'list; but let this out-of-door irreligious movement, this outrageous travesty of Ecclesiastical symbolism, with its fanatic war-cries, its fanfares, its martial hymns, and brass-band accompaniment, leading to riot and bloodshed on the Lord's Day, let this be forthwith suppressed, as it can be, we believe, by existing law; and if not, let the law be made. Of course that harmless body of publicans and sinners, the Freemasons, would be sufferers by such a regulation; but with His Royal Highness of Wales, their Grand Master, at their head, they would be willing to bear the privation of being occasionally deprived of an open-air display of sashes, aprons and emblems for the sake of law and order.
Punch's animosity towards the Salvationists showed little abatement right on into the 'nineties. General Booth was twice caricatured: in 1885 as "His own Trumpeter" blowing an instrument like a French horn in mid air, and in 1892 as "General Boombastes"—a composite title of derision founded on Bombastes Furioso and General Boum of the Grande Duchesse—in connexion with a great demonstration held by the Salvation Army in Hyde Park in February of that year. Sarcastic references occur from time to time to the finance of the Army, which in those years lent itself to criticism. But science and intellect, cynicism and fastidiousness were routed or converted in the sequel. The Salvation Army came nearer success in reclaiming "the submerged tenth" than any other sect or church: it outlived derision, criticism and scepticism, and earned the tribute of imitation in the organization of the Church Army. No finer example of this conversion is to be found than in the life of Frank Crossley, the senior partner in the great Manchester engineering firm, that noble and benevolent philanthropist, who began in antipathy to the methods of the Salvation Army and devoted the end of his life to intimate, self-sacrificing and cordial co-operation with them in the slums of Ancoats.
Burnand, who succeeded to the editorship of Punch in 1880, was a Roman Catholic; but it cannot be asserted that he abused his opportunities any more than Charles Cooper, who was a Romanist when he joined the editorial staff of the Scotsman, a much more delicate position for a member of that communion. Punch became perhaps less aggressively Protestant, but there was no substantial change in the theological policy of the paper, or in its mainly Erastian attitude in regard to the relations of Church and State. No serious exception can be taken to the verdict on the Revised Version—completed in 1880—as "a very qualified success if not an absolute failure," coupled with a wish to know what were the suggestions for improvements made by our American cousins. The verses in the same year on "A Life's Work and a Life's Wage," recounting the sad experience of a Devonshire curate who after thirty years' work, applied for an order to enter the workhouse as a pauper—are only a renewal of Punch's familiar complaints on the scandal of underpaid clergy. Eleven years later, in 1891, he takes up the same parable à propos of a statement by Mr. Gladstone to the effect that "if the priest is to live, he must beg, earn or steal," comparing the needy vicar, with eighty pounds a year, and the bishop with five thousand. Yet in the same number, under the heading of "Mitred Misery," Punch has an article on the heavy and extortionate fees incurred by bishops on their installation or translation. The victim is represented as just managing to meet the expenses of his elevation to one episcopal see and his translation to another, but declining an archbishopric on the ground that it would land him in the Bankruptcy Court. In an earlier year the contrast between the well-to-do cleric and the poor is ironically emphasized in the "Consolation" administered by Mr. Dean: "Ah, my poor fellow, your case is very sad, no doubt! But remember that the rich have their troubles too. I dare say, now, you can scarcely realize what it is not to know where to find an investment which will combine adequate security with a decent interest on one's money."
Disestablishment
Doctrinal opportunism is satirized in Du Maurier's picture of the vicar of a seaside town who was "High Church during the season, and Low all the rest of the year." Much in the same spirit is the list of qualifications necessary for a curate in a country parish: the chief desideratum being that he must be able to play tennis with the vicar's daughters. These jests were almost common form at the close of the Victorian age. A more serious situation arose in 1885 owing to the demand for Disestablishment put forward by the Radicals, but Punch refused to treat it seriously. His cartoon, "A False Alarm," shows a chorus of Conservative owls—including Lord Salisbury and Mr. Cross—crying, "Too-whit, too-whoo, Church in Danger."
