The History of "Punch"

by M. H. Spielmann

J. ASHBY-STERRY.
(From a Photograph by Samuel A. Walker.)

A complete contrast to Mr. Bedford became a contributor to Punch a fortnight after him—Mr. J. Ashby-Sterry. Twenty-nine years had passed since his boyish drawings had been accepted; and during the interval he had relinquished the pencil for the pen, had become a well-known journalist, and the author of sundry volumes of light literature. He was one of the first to be summoned by the new Editor, and he responded nobly to the call. Since August 28th, 1880, he has contributed as largely as any outsider to Punch's pages. Innumerable picture-shows, new books, articles of all kinds, and countless verses of every description on every possible topic, with paragraphs long and short, are, so to speak, the hors d'œuvres of his contribution. Many series of poems and papers are his, of which the best-known is that of the "Lays of a Lazy Minstrel" (begun August 28th, 1880), with their riverside idylls and love-carols; but to his hand also are to be credited "Simple Stories for Little Gentlefolk," "Holiday Haunts, by Jingle Junior on the Jaunt," "Club Carols," "Uncle Bulger's Moral Tales," "Songs of the Streets," "Rambling Rondeaux," and "Paper-knife Poems." But it is his fluent, melodious, and unpretentious verse that has made him popular in Punch.

Reginald Shirley Brooks, the son of Mr. Burnand's brilliant predecessor, was working for Punch in 1880, and the following year he was called to the Table, and remained there without much distinction until 1884. He wrote some smart papers, but his groove was not that of the sober and respectable Fleet Street Sage. He preferred wilder spirits, and he accordingly retired, taking with him the sympathy of his companions. He died soon after.

After the escapade of Mr. George Augustus Sala in respect to Alfred Bunn's quarrel with Punch and the resultant "Word with Punch" of half a century ago (which was illustrated by Mr. Sala's lively pencil, as is explained in another chapter), none would ever have thought that his pen would have been driven in Punch's service. Lemon had declared him a "graceless young whelp," and nothing that Mr. Sala ever cared to do had tended to change that opinion. Shirley Brooks and Tom Taylor carried on the sentiment as a sort of dynastic vendetta, and Mr. Sala's name was kept on Punch's Index Expurgatorius until the accession of Mr. Burnand. Punch was then no longer the close borough, and the new Editor sought talent where he could find it. He invited Mr. Sala to contribute, and the invitation has been responded to whenever anything "Punchy" has occurred to the writer—as in the rhymed travesty of Tennyson's opening verses of "The Princess." It is an amusing fact that on one occasion Mr. Sala contributed a skit on himself—felicitously entitled "Egos of the Week"—with the startling and satisfactory result that one or two papers, taking the thing au sérieux, commented on the fact, and expressed their pleasure that "at last Mr. George Augustus Sala has had the drubbing by Punch he has so long and so richly deserved"!

Mr. Clement Scott, the doyen of the dramatic critics, Civil Servant (like so many of the Punch Staff), member of the clever band that nurtured "Fun" into life, and brother-in-law of Mr. du Maurier, also had to wait till Mr. Burnand was Editor before he was given the opportunity to write for Punch. "It struck him," writes Mr. Scott, "that he might mingle among the essentially comic pages an occasional poem that might ventilate some grievance in a pathetic manner or describe some heroic subject in the ballad style.... The first subject Burnand sent me was the overworked and underpaid clerks in London. It took my fancy, and in three hours after I received his letter I sent him 'The Cry of the Clerk!' To my intense surprise, the morning after it appeared in Punch I found it quoted in extenso in 'The Times'—an unusual honour. I believe Dr. Chinery the instant he read the poem clipped it out with his own scissors and said, 'I don't know if this has ever been done before, but we must quote the poem to-morrow morning.' The sub-editor was aghast, but the poem was printed as from Punch."

These verses, indeed, struck people's consciences, as Thomas Hood had struck them years ago with "The Song of the Shirt." It brought into relief the enforced "respectability" of the men who earn but a few shillings a week, and yet are supposed to be "above charity."

It was the last verse that most struck home:—

"Why did I marry? In mercy's name, in the form of my brother was I not born?
Are wife and child to be given to him, and love to be taken from me with scorn?
It is not for them that I plead, for theirs are the only voices that break my sorrow,
That lighten my pathway, make me pause 'twixt the sad to-day and grim to-morrow.
The Sun and the Sea are not given to me, nor joys like yours as you flit together
Away to the woods and the downs, and across the endless acres of purple heather.
But I've love, thank Heaven! and mercy, too; 'tis for justice only I bid you hark
To the tale of a penniless man like me—to the wounded cry of a London Clerk!"

Then he took the part of the shop-girls who are never allowed to sit down ("Weary Womankind"); of the London children who cry for fresh air ("The Children's Cry"), and described as well many a deed of daring by sea and land, in which sailors, soldiers, engine-drivers, policemen, life-boatmen, and coastguardsmen were concerned. In his little volume of "Lays and Lyrics" nearly a score of these Punch poems are republished.

The Parliamentary phase of Punch is the one which has remained constant from the beginning of the paper. All else has been subject to change—the quality of its satire, the character of its literature, the intention of its art, and the class of its humour. But in his attendance upon Parliament Punch has been persistently assiduous and consistently frank, neither awed by its majesty nor sickened by its follies. Parliament has always been regarded in his pages in the spirit of benevolent patronage and control, which, though unquestionably pedagogic, has always been just and sympathetic in tone. It was in order to continue the chain forged by Shirley Brooks and Tom Taylor in their "Essence of Parliament," without the dropping of a link, that Mr. Burnand's first Staff appointment was made with a view to filling the place that had been left vacant by Tom Taylor's death. His attention, like that of many others, had long been attracted to the brilliant weekly articles in the "Observer," entitled "From the Cross Benches"—papers that dealt with the week's Parliamentary proceedings with singular cleverness, humour, and originality—and at the proper moment he sought out the author of them, Mr. Henry W. Lucy, of the "Daily News."