"'Peccavi! I've Scinde,' said Lord Ellen[44] so proud—
Dalhousie, more modest, said 'Vovi, I've Oude!'"
This brilliant couplet, according to the "Times," is said to have been contended for by "both Punch and Thomas Hood;" and it never was finally decided which of the two great humorists followed the other. Their claims, indeed, are not irreconcilable. Latterly, the credit has been claimed, with some show of authority, for Barry, who was generally regarded in his day as one of Jerrold's peers in wit. It is curious to observe that in the House of Commons debate on the Candahar question, Mr. P. J. Smyth was reported to have referred to "the unexampled brevity of the General's despatch after he had won his great victory on the Indus," in the quaint belief that the first half-line of the epigram was Lord Ellenborough's actual report.
The Very Rev. Reynolds Hole, Dean of Rochester, always a spoilt child of Punch's, and the intimate friend of Leech, was more of a Punch man than most contributors, as he was one of the very few outsiders who were ever entertained at the Wednesday Dinner.[45] "Some six-and-thirty years ago," he informed me, "Mark Lemon wrote to me, 'Punch is proud of such a contributor,' and I have his letter. I wrote a few short paragraphs about Oxford, and some longer articles in verse, entitled 'The Sportsman's Dream' and 'My Butler.' Leech told me, 'You are an honorary member of our weekly meetings, and will be always welcome.'" His charming book, "A Little Tour in Ireland," written "by an Oxonian," had the advantage of Leech's pencil, and by his friendship with that artist, as well as with Thackeray and others of the Staff, he was for a time identified in some measure with Punch itself, besides obtaining recognition as the beau-ideal of "the genial, jolly parson." That he did not become a regular contributor to the paper was due, it is believed, to a subsequent misunderstanding.
In "Jack Easel," the writer of a number of delightful letters upon artistic and social topics at home and abroad, it is difficult to recognise Mr. Charles L. Eastlake, the able Keeper of the National Gallery. From 1859 to the autumn of 1862 Mr. Eastlake contributed eight-and-twenty articles of importance, one of them in verse, and the majority headed "Our Roving Correspondent." "Jack Easel on the Continent" and "The Royal Academy Exhibition" were the subjects of many of them, and their note was lively enough to cause his papers to be looked forward to by Punch's readers.
Mr. Francis Cowley Burnand, when he first appeared in Punch, in 1863, was no mere recruit; he was a proved humorist, though of short standing, and his début was an astonishing success. His début, that is to say, as a Punch writer, for eight years previously he had sent up from Cambridge a couple of drawings which Leech had made artistically suitable for publication.
Mr. Burnand was born in 1837—having been too gallant, it was said, to come into the world before his Queen had ascended the throne, and too loyal and zealous to delay his appearance after she had taken her place. He was sent to Eton, where, however, he did not care much for football, being, as he expressed it, "more shinned against than shinning;" and thence, at the age of seventeen, he went into Trinity College, Cambridge. In three years he had graduated and had founded the still flourishing "A.D.C.;" at the same time, he determined to enter the Church. He placed himself under the Rev. H. P. (afterwards Canon) Liddon; but soon left for the seminary of the Oblates of St. Charles, at Bayswater, the head of which was Dr. (Cardinal) Manning. While there his passion for playwriting was too strong to be resisted, and before he left Dr. Manning confessed that he feared his young friend had no "vocation," i.e. for the ecclesiastical state. Mr. Burnand, taking a wider view of the term, entirely acquiesced with Dr. Manning, and added rather timidly that he "thought he had a vocation for the stage." Dr. Manning raised his eyebrows, wrinkled his forehead, sniffed, and then said: "A 'vocation' concerns the spiritual welfare. You cannot speak of 'going on the stage' as a 'vocation.' You might as well call 'being a cobbler' a 'vocation.'" "Well, yes, Dr. Manning," rejoined Mr. Burnand very nervously; "but—if I were a cobbler I should still have the cure of soles."
F. C. BURNAND.
(From a Photograph by F. T. Palmer, Ramsgate.)
An unsuccessful trial of the stage at Edinburgh, and a call to the Bar in 1862, indirectly shaped Mr. Burnand's career, and, throwing him into playwriting and humorous journalism, led him quickly into a talented circle. With Mr. W. S. Gilbert, H. J. Byron, Matt Morgan, Jeff Prowse, and others, Mr. Burnand helped to strengthen Tom Hood's additional staff of "Fun," then newly established, under the proprietorship of a looking-glass maker, named Maclean—whom, by reason of his expansive smile and shining teeth, Byron used to call "Maclean teeth." Mr. Burnand's fresh and bright productions sparkled on the pages and caught the eye of Mark Lemon; but it was an unusually happy and original idea that was to bring the two men closely together. Mr. Burnand had conceived a series of burlesque stories, satirising the sensational style of the day, to be accompanied by an equally burlesque imitation of the illustrations that were to be seen in publications such as the "London Journal." To his own daughter, as "one of his oldest friends," Mr. Burnand once confided the following facts and circumstances for publication:—
"The astute proprietor of 'Fun,' in which I had achieved some success, observed that 'Mokeanna' wouldn't do. I am not sure but that he was right; but if he had been a literary editor he would have seen the idea in a rough copy, and would have suggested improvement. This good he did me, however—I read it to a friend, who thought some of it good and most of it the contrary, and so, in a temper, I burnt the entire manuscript, and, being quite sure of the humour of the idea, commenced rewriting it. Then I communicated with Mark Lemon; he jumped at the idea—determined to say nothing to anybody, except those who had to illustrate it, and the first number of 'Mokeanna' appeared on February 21st, 1863, with an illustration by Sir John Gilbert, burlesquing his own style, whilst the page in Punch was, in arrangement, a facsimile of the 'London Journal.' The proprietors rushed down to the office, terrified with the thought that, by accident, the 'London Journal' had been sewn up with Punch, and it took a lot of explanation in Mark Lemon's best manner to make them see the joke in its right light. The success of the experiment was immediate. Thackeray was supposed to have perpetrated the burlesque imitation, but Thackeray knew nothing whatever about it, though, as I have since learnt, he was greatly tickled by it and, subsequently, was personally most kind to the 'New Boy,' as he called me, on the Punch Staff."