Buffalo Bill's "Wild West" Show in West Kensington in 1887 struck a somewhat new note. Punch was impressed by the buck-jumping, but the rest smelt too much of footlights and sawdust, and he asks, "Why should Noble Savages be always beaten by the Cowboys?" Still "Buffalo Bill" was a picturesque figure, with a not undistinguished record of active service; the Queen's visit is appropriately described in the "Hiawatha" metre, and Du Maurier, in a spirited fantasy, hints that the introduction of a team of buck-jumping ponies would brighten the monotonous decorum of the meets of the Four-in-Hand Club.
The absurdities of the annual Exhibitions did not escape Punch in their earlier days. At the "Healtheries" he describes a representation of a street in Old London, in which there was a girl in Tudor costume selling photographs! The strange miscellaneous international exhibitions which followed the first four were rich in material for ridicule. A prominent attraction at the Anglo-Danish Exhibition of 1888 was a "grotto of Mystery," consisting chiefly of skeletons. At the Italian Exhibition which followed, the great feature was the "Triumph of Titus," a representation of a gladiatorial contest, and chariot races by "wild omnibus horses." The sons of Belial, as represented by Master Freddy, who was disappointed because "they didn't have lions and—and real martyrs," were dissatisfied, but Mr. Anstey in his "Voces Populi" had a glorious time.
Ridicule predominates in the notice of the Spanish Exhibition in 1889, and in the same year Punch devoted a special number to the Paris Exhibition, containing the impressions of his staff, and bristling with references to the Eiffel Tower, Paulus, the comic singer, and other delights. In 1889 also Barnum returned, "the greatest Showman," in Punch's opinion, "of this or any other age"; and the autobiographic speech which he made on the occasion of the opening of his show at Olympia prompted Punch to revive old memories:—
Forty-five years ago Albert Smith wrote in Bentley's Miscellany a paper entitled "A Go-a-head Day with Barnum." The article wound up by saying: "As we expressed our fatigue at supper, Barnum said, 'Well, I don't know what you call work in England; but if you don't make thirty hours out of the twenty-four in Merekey, I don't know where you'd be at the year's end. If a man can't beat himself in running, he'll never go ahead; and if he don't go ahead, he's done.'" The Great Barnum is apparently as active in 1889 as he was in 1844. He is as enthusiastic on the wrong side of eighty as he was on the right side of forty. If he has not beaten himself in running, he has allowed no one to beat him. He has caught most people, but the old bird himself has never yet been caught. If you look in just now at Olympia, you will find him up to time and smiling, and going ahead more than ever.
The last and one of the very best of the Exhibitions in this period that I have to record was held at Chelsea in 1891. Punch renders justice to the Royal Naval Exhibition in light-hearted style, but "Robert, the City Waiter," is righteously indignant that none but German waiters were employed.
The increasing predominance of pastime throughout this period is faithfully illustrated in the pages of Punch. It is true that he never was much of a racing man, though always ready to find parallels in the classic events for political situations, and, as we have noted elsewhere, anxious to safeguard the privileges of the equestrian. But hunting and fishing cuts are far less frequent than in the days of Leech and Mr. Briggs, and in 1881 we find Punch lamenting the degeneracy of modern sports-big battues, champagne luncheons on the moors, the lavish refreshment of the shooters and the facile butchery of tame birds.
Futile Feats
In 1882 we meet a series of sporting illustrations from the victims' point of view—e.g., a coursing match as envisaged by the hare with a crowd of yelling "sportsmen" looking on. Punch had respected and admired the pugilists of the old school, but here, again, he found signs of decadence. In 1890 Slavin, an Australian, fought Jem Smith in France, and the crowd intervened and ill-treated the former, who won. Punch treats the affair in a neo-Virgilian episode (somewhat in the style of his lay on the Sayers-Heenan contest), which takes the form of a dialogue between "Punchius" and "Sayerius" in the Elysian Fields; and when Punch, after narrating the fight, asks the shade of Sayers what he thought of it, Sayers thinks the sooner the P.R. is put down the better. The craze for contests for futile endurance met with no encouragement from Punch. When swimming for women was advocated in the Medical Press and Circular in 1878, Punch printed a letter on "Maids and Mermaids" in the style and over the signature of "William Cobbett" vigorously recommending this exercise. But a year or so later, when Miss Beckwith swam for a hundred hours in a tank, Punch registered a vehement protest against these "agony-point Amusements." The spectacle of a girl of eighteen floundering in a tank for a hundred hours at a stretch was to him as objectless as it was penitential, as ungraceful as it was degrading. The exploits of Gale, the pedestrian, at Lillie Bridge in 1880 only disgusted Punch, who marvelled at the folly of the promoters of a "stupid, cruel, degrading piece of tomfoolery" in sending him tickets to witness it. "I knew," he says, "that were a horse treated as this man consented to be treated, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would interfere. But there's no Royal Society and no power in the world that can prevent a man making an ass of himself if he chooses to do so." Even in the noble sport of mountaineering Punch found symptoms of a vainglorious love of self-advertisement. His tribute to Mr. Whymper in 1880 is decidedly two-edged. Under title of "Excelsior, Excelsissimus" Punch salutes his achievements with a strong undercurrent of satire, suggesting, e.g., that he should "change his name from Whymper to Crow and take for his crest a Chanticleer struttant, chantant on a mountain reduced to a molehill." Punch winds up on the same disparaging note;—
If ever a Gentleman was entitled to advertise himself as "in the perpetual Snow line," Whymper is the man, a self with no Company. We propose that the Empire he has so proudly assisted over the old-established inaccessibilities of the world should be recognized as a higher form of Imperialism—Whymperialism.