For another view of the suburbs one may turn to the drab and depressing realism of George Gissing's novels. Punch himself did not always look at them through rose-coloured spectacles, and a year later, under the heading "Green Pastures or Piccadilly?" (adapted from a book by William Black), emphasizes the drawbacks of a bad train service, exorbitant tradesmen, imperfect drainage, and the desolation of a region in which, from 9 A.M.. to 6 P.M.., "not a single male human being is visible, all of them being in town."
ABOLITION OF SECOND-CLASS CARRIAGES
"Are there any second-class carriages on this line, Rogers?"
"No, my lord."
"Ah! Then take two first-class tickets and two third."
"Beg pardon, my lord! But is me and Mrs. Parker expected to go third-class?"
"Gracious heavens! No, Rogers! Not for the world! The third-class tickets are for my lady and me!"
At the beginning of this period foreign travel had ceased to be the exclusive privilege of the "classes." The days of cheap trips to "Lovely Lucerne" were yet to come, but Cook was already a power in the land, and as early as the close of 1874 we find Punch frankly expressing his opinion that travel agencies had assisted to "lower middle-class-Englishize the Continent." The value of travel as a corrective of insularity and a means of promoting a better understanding of our foreign neighbours is not recognized. Residence on the Continent was another matter, and the series of articles, "Elizabeth's residence in a French country house," indicate the possibilities of enlightenment on various points. In particular stress is laid on the fact that there was no spoiling of women in France; in that country they were the real workers. At home the increase of excursion trains only served to excite Punch's wrath against their discomfort and overcrowding and the greed of directors. Yet these drawbacks did not prevent impecunious or economical aristocrats from travelling third class, though their domestics had to go first.
The everlasting servant problem recurs again and again in the 'eighties. Complaints of inadequate wages are seldom heard. In 1876 Punch refers to a letter of Charles Reade on the comparative luxury of the lives of servants contrasted with those of dressmakers. In 1875 Mrs. Crawshay, of Cyfarthfa, had read a paper before the British Association advocating the introduction of "Lady Helps," but Punch was not convinced by her arguments, and turned the suggestion to something like ridicule in his burlesque extension of the idea in a series of advertisements of "Gentlemen Helps." "Jeames" was still a target, but a dwindling target of Punch's satire. When the Morning Post was reduced to a penny in 1881, "Jeames" tells the policeman that on hearing the news "you might have knocked me down with a peacock's feather." As of old, Punch found the real root of flunkeyism in the snobbery of masters and mistresses, and the worst offenders in this period were the parvenus, like Sir Gorgius Midas, who surrounded themselves with flunkeys even at picnics, and exaggerated the ostentation of the class whose manners they crudely aped. The shabbily dressed peer is contrasted with the bediamonded parvenu, and in one of Du Maurier's "Social Problem" pictures the problem is to tell the butler from the lord, the former being a most aristocratic-looking person, while his master—a new creation—is an unmistakable "bounder." Towards the growing self-assertion of female servants Punch was much more tolerant. In 1877, when the problem was already acute, he praises an independent attitude in a servant as being merely business-like, and later on sides with Mary Ann against despotic mistresses who advertised for parlourmaids and cooks who must not wear fringes. In 1891 Punch published a set of verses inspired by the dismissal, after nine days, of a maid who refused to wear a cap. But the extremists who would make the mistress the "woman" and the servant the "lady" found no favour in his sight; he was no more a supporter of tyrannical servants than of exacting mistresses, and in 1884 our sympathies are distinctly enlisted on the side of the graceful young wife, terrified at the prospect of having to give warning to a formidable cook, and begging the page-boy to stand by during the ordeal.