And the ladies! The coal-scuttle bonnet and the incipient crinoline of 1845; the growing crinolines of 1851, larger in 1860, largest of all in 1864; the hair in bands or side-curls of 1852, and in nets in 1862; the bonnets worn almost off the head in 1853, more so in 1854, until Leech drew a picture of two ladies walking out, with footmen carrying their headgear behind them; the "spoon-shaped bonnet" of 1860—"the latest Parisian folly," which the street-boys mistake for "a dustman's 'at;" the archery of 1862, the pork-pie hat, the croquet, the tennis, the golf—every sport, every habit and custom, every change of dress, down to the minutest detail—all is recorded with faithfulness and humour, first by Leech's pencil, and then, in chief measure, by Mr. du Maurier's.
It is curious in turning over Punch's volumes to see how on occasion he could use his power of prophecy with an accuracy that spoke well for the common-sense, sometimes even the statesmanship, to be found among the Staff. "There is but one Punch, and he is his own prophet." It is rather as a social reformer than as a politician that he has exerted his gift, though an example of the latter class of foresight may be pointed to in the cartoon of Sir John Tenniel of April 7th, 1860. This was entitled "A Glimpse of the Future: A Probable and Large Importation of Foreign Rags," in which King Bomba of Naples, the Emperor Louis Napoleon, and the Pope were shown landing on British shores in very sorry plight. And in due time England was to see—at least, as far as the two monarchs were concerned—the realisation of the oracular couplet combined:—
"The time will come when discontent
Will overthrow your Government."
Then the number of inventions and innovations forestalled by Punch's pen are many. In December, 1848, much is made of a proposed "opera telakouphanon"—a forecast of the telephone, phonograph, and theatrophone combined:—
"It would be in the power of Mr. Lumley," says Punch, "during the aproaching holiday time to bring home the Opera to every lady's drawing-room in London. Let him cause to be constructed at the back of Her Majesty's Theatre an apparatus on the principle of the Ear of Dionysius.... Next, having obtained an Act of Parliament for the purpose, let him lay down after the manner of pipes a number of Telakouphona connected—the reader will excuse the apparent vulgarism—with this ear, and extended to the dwellings of all such as may be willing to pay for the accommodation. In this way our domestic establishments might be served with the liquid notes of Jenny Lind as easily as they are with soft water, and could be supplied with music as readily as they can with gas. Then at a soirée or evening party, if a desire were expressed for a little music, we should only have to turn on the Sonnambula or the Puritani, as the case might be," etc.
—a thirty years' prophecy. The following year he represented a lady listening to music by telegraph; and the kinetoscope is only now waiting to fulfil Mr. du Maurier's forecast of many years ago. If Mr. Edison has not yet done quite all that Mr. Punch foretold, is not that rather Mr. Edison's than Punch's fault?
In an unhappy moment in 1847 Punch proposed the use of umbrellas and house-fronts for advertising purposes, and the hint was promptly taken. In the previous year he foretold the use of the Thames Tunnel as a railway conduit; and his sketch of a zebra harnessed to a carriage in the streets of London was realised forty years later. The great "Missing Word Competition" of 1892 was forestalled by Punch by four-and-thirty years (p. 53, Vol. XXXV., August 7th, 1858). Leech's "Mistress of the Hounds," too—how fantastic the idea was thought in those days, and laughed at accordingly!—has since become a hard, astraddle, uncompromising fact; and the lady's safety riding-skirt, that attached itself to the saddle when the lady lost her seat, anticipated by thirty years the patent for a similar contrivance taken out in 1884. Indeed, Punch's picture of November, 1854, was put in as evidence before Mr. Justice Wright in April, 1893, when an action between two sartorial artists turned upon the point of anteriority, and the picture won the case.
Common-sense, and shrewdness of observation and judgment, which are at the root of amateur prophecy, brought as much honour to Punch as ever Old Moore obtained through one of his lucky flukes. In December, 1893, the Prince of Wales opened the Hugh Myddleton Board School, the finest in London, which had been erected on the site of the old Clerkenwell prison; and on the invitation card to the ceremony appeared a reproduction of the Punch picture of May, 1847, which accompanied an altercation between "School and Prison, who've lately risen As opposition teachers." This was published nearly a quarter of a century before Mr. Forster's Education Act, and concludes with the prophecy curiously fulfilled in the case of this particular institution. To this picture, in which the county gaol, untenanted, looks scowlingly at the crowded school, the Prince feelingly referred when he spoke of the scepticism with which the statement was regarded, that the institution of "free" schools would shut the prisons up. But a volume might be filled with instances of the occasions on which Punch has seen with his eyes, and thought with the front of his brain—how his demands for necessary innovations (such, for example, as fever carriages in 1861) were quickly acted upon, and how his serious mood has enforced the respect which mere geniality might have failed to secure.
He is not, of course, entitled to invariable congratulation for his attitude towards art; but he has suffered as well as acted ill. When he derided the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and joined in the storm of ridicule that swirled round the heads of Rossetti and his devoted and courageous friends, he doubtless acted within his rôle; but he utterly failed to see below the surface of the apparent affectation of the artists, and all he had to say of Sir John Millais' "Vale of Rest," in the lines descriptive of the year 1859, was