It is enough, by way of explanation, to add that when Punch wrote, the names of Mr. Walter Savage Landor and M. de Rougemont were on every lip. Fifteen years later, actors, boxers and, above all, dancers, male and female, were the favourite quarry of social lion-hunters. There was nothing very new about this tendency: it was as old as ancient Athens and had its roots in the everlasting human love of variety, in the desire at all costs to escape from dullness and routine. In 1909 a girl at Bristol who attempted to commit suicide received eighteen offers of marriage, and the Daily Chronicle reported that Mme. Steinheil, on the mere suspicion of having murdered her husband, was receiving similar proposals every day. This was at a time when, according to the same journal, there were thousands of young women in Bristol with certificates of competency as teachers, wives, and scholars, many of whom could not find husbands. Punch enlarges on this theme with philosophical irony. Security and respectability were apt to be dreary and monotonous, and it must at least be lively to be married to a poisoner.
Turning back to the minor etiquette of Mode, we note that by 1903 evening dress was no longer insisted on in the more expensive seats at the theatres, though in 1906 the Lancet was alleged to have recommended evening dress as indicative of "tone" and conducive to hygiene. Punch had long before declaimed against the tyranny of paying "calls." In 1907 he alludes to the practice as obsolete, and suggests that ladies, instead of having "At Home" days, should be out on certain days, so as to give their friends a safe opportunity for leaving cards.
Punch had for many years ceased from criticizing the manners of medical students, which occupied so much of his attention fifty years earlier; the most serious of his comments on professional manners were excited by "ragging" amongst officers in the Army. The protest, which he printed in 1896, purported to come from the ranks, and is based on the assumption that leadership was impaired when officers forgot to be gentlemen. At the Universities, Punch was evidently concerned by the multiplication of prigs. Early in the new century Balliol was, as usual, singled out as the principal hot-bed for the propagation of this type, but Punch paid that college a remarkable if reluctant tribute. He enumerated all the different species of undergraduates to be found there; keen laborious Scots, Ruskinite road-builders, and converts to Buddhist, Gnostic and Agnostic theories; but admitted that if Balliol contained all the cranks, it also contained the coming men—the men who would count. That curious Balliol product which emerged about this time, the "intellectual 'blood,'" seems to have escaped Punch's notice. At the end of the last century he notes the invasion of schools by the bicycle, and speculates fantastically on its results. As a matter of fact, bikes were afterwards largely proscribed in public and private schools, and the ban has not even yet been wholly removed.
ON THE RHINE
First Tourist: "Care to use these glasses?"
Second Tourist: "No, thanks. Seen it all on the cinema 't 'ome!"
An Appeal to Santa Claus
Fashion has many phases; and children's Christmas presents reflect the popular tastes of the moment. In 1908 Punch printed the appeal of a little girl to Santa Claus to help her to avoid getting as many as possible of the same presents. This last Christmas it had been "perfectly absurd"—an endless iteration of Peter Pan story books, Golliwogs and copies of Alice in Wonderland, illustrated by Rackham and other artists. The sacrilegious attempt to supersede Tenniel's classical designs naturally met with no sympathy from Punch, and, what is more to the point, did not prove a success.
Not a few of Punch's old social butts and pet aversions disappear at the end of the century—including the old "'Arry." One of 'Arry's last efforts was to rejoice over the defeat of women at Oxford, and another was to describe how he was teaching his "best girl" how to pedal. The "Twelve Labours of 'Arry," as depicted by Phil May in the Almanack for 1896, in which he is seen on the rink, the river, hunting, shooting, driving tandem, boxing, playing cricket, golfing, bicycling, etc., introduce a new type indistinguishable from the "new rich" in dress and deportment. The new type of tourist depicted in 1912 lacks the exuberance of the old, and his nil admirari attitude is attributed to the "educative" influence of the "pictures."