Papa (who is not æsthetic): "Ah! hope you like it, I'm sure!"
Sophronia Cassandra: "Very much, papa—only we never hit the ball!"
Punch was already a convert to the higher education of women within certain limits. His reservations are shown in 1875 in an interview between Professor Punch and an ideal candidate for the Ladies' University as it should be. Domestic economy comes first in the curriculum, the humanities second. A picture in the following year would seem to indicate that Punch's ideal was inverted, for one Girton student is shown reading to another a valentine headed with the famous lines from the Antigone of Sophocles beginning Ερωϛ ἁνἱκατε μἁχαντ.[3] "How much jollier," she observes, "than those silly English verses fellows used to send!" Classics were still the predominant partner, and in 1878 Punch notes and resents the attempted revival of classical costume inaugurated by a fashionable poetess. 'Arry's tirade against the higher education of women in 1879, blaspheming against the whole movement as ridiculous and unnatural, is heavily ironical, for in the same year Punch has some friendly verses on the extension of Girton and Newnham, and in 1880 congratulates Miss Scott on being bracketed eighth Wrangler. Punch simultaneously congratulated Mrs., afterwards Lady Butler, on being elected an A.R.A., and rejoiced that the doors of the Academy had been reopened to the sex once honoured in the days of Sir Joshua:—
Mrs. Butler, née Elizabeth Thompson, Punch takes off his hat to you as the first Lady Associate. Your predecessors, Angelica Kauffmann and Mary Moser, sprang into being full-blown R.A.'s.
This is as it should be. At last Punch may say, and with pride he says it, the Ladies are looking up—looking up to the high places of Science and Art, which should never have been held beyond their reach, and which will be graced by their occupancy.
But when the Academy doors are reopened to the Ladies, let them be opened to their full width. Let us not hear of any petty restrictions or exclusions from this or that function or privilege of R.A. What these letters bring men let them bring to women.
Punch's congratulations were premature. Forty years have elapsed, and no women have yet been elected Associates.
A Song of Degrees
It was in 1880 again that Punch backed the appeal of Girton for funds to carry out the extension scheme and supported the petition of women for university degrees. Here he represents the would-be woman graduate as Vivien endeavouring to win over the recalcitrant academic Merlin:—
In Arts, if once examiners be ours,