"At the Church-gate." (Du Maurier, in Punch, 1872.)
"So now you've been to church, Ethel! And which part of it all do you like best?"
"This part, mamma!"
All this has now become merely interesting as a curiosity of misinterpretation. The American people know something of England through her art, her literature, and press; but England has extremely imperfect means of knowing us. No American periodical, probably, circulates in Great Britain two hundred copies. We have no Dickens, no Thackeray, no George Eliot, no Punch, to make our best and our worst familiar in the homes of Christendom; and what little indigenous literature we have is more likely to mislead foreigners than enlighten them. Cooper's men, women, and Indians, if they ever existed, exist no more. Mr. Lowell's Yankee is extinct. Uncle Tom is now a freeman, raising his own bale of cotton. Mark Twain and Bret Harte would hardly recognize their own California. It is the literature, the art, and the science of a country which make it known to other lands; and we shall have neither of these in adequate development until much more of the work is done of smoothing off this rough continent, and educating the people that come to us, at the rate of a cityful a month, from the continent over the sea. At present it is nearly as much as we can do to find spelling-books for so many.
To most Americans the smaller pictures of Leech and others in Punch, which gently satirize the foibles and fashions of the time, are more interesting than the political cartoons. How different the life of the English people, as exhibited in these thousands of amusing scenes, from the life of America! We see, upon turning over a single volume, how much more the English play and laugh than we do. It is not merely that there is a large class in England who have nothing to do except to amuse themselves, but the whole people seem interested in sport, and very frequently to abandon themselves to innocent pleasures. Here is a young lady in the hunting field in full gallop, who cries gayly to her companion, "Come along, Mr. Green; I want a lead at the brook;" which makes "Mr. Green think that women have no business in hunting." England generally thinks otherwise, and Mr. Punch loves to exhibit his countrywomen "in mid-air" leaping a ditch, or bounding across a field with huntsmen and hounds about them. He does not object to a hunting parson. A churchwarden meets an "old sporting rector" on the road, and says, "Tell ye what 'tis, sir, the congregation do wish you wouldn't put that 'ere curate up in pulpit; nobody can't hear un." To which the old sporting parson on his pony replies, "Well, Blunt, the fact is, Tweedler's such a good fellow for parish work, I'm obliged to give him a mount sometimes." And in the distance we see poor Tweedler trudging briskly along, umbrella in hand, upon some parish errand. Another sporting picture shows us three gentlemen at dinner, one of whom is a clergyman whose mind is so peculiarly constituted that his thoughts run a little upon the duties of his office. Perhaps he is Tweedler himself. One of the laymen, a fox-hunter, says to the other, "That was a fine forty minutes yesterday." The other replies, "Yes; didn't seem so long either." Punch remarks that "the curate is puzzled, and wonders, do they refer to his lecture in the school-room?"
An Early Quibble. (Du Maurier, in Punch, 1872.)
George. "There, Aunt Mary! what do you think of that? I drew the horse, and Ethel drew the jockey!"
Aunt Mary. "H'm! But what would mamma say to your drawing jockeys on a Sunday?"