The History of "Punch"

by M. H. Spielmann

Hearing Charles Keene's emphatic opinion that the author was a Miss Frances D——, who many years ago was living in a remote village in the North of England, and who had been paid £5 for the line, I appealed to the Post Office for help to trace the lady out; and through the kindly assistance of the officials at St. Martin's-le-Grand and elsewhere, although nearly half a century had elapsed, I discovered her in another village equally remote, the Post Office having courteously obtained her permission to place me in communication with her. But the information was of a negative kind. She was, she protested, quite innocent of the credit of Punch's Monumental Cynicism, and consequently had never been the recipient of the fantastic payment of £5 per line. But since that time chance has placed in my possession the authoritative information; and so far from any outsider, anonymous or declared, paid or unpaid, being concerned in it at all, the line simply came in the ordinary way from one of the Staff—from the man who, with Landells, had conceived Punch and shaped it from the beginning, and had invented that first Almanac which had saved the paper's life—Henry Mayhew.

To trace the history of much of Punch's original humour would hardly be desirable, even were it possible. But there are many examples of it which, while essentially original to Punch, have yet sprung from circumstances independent of it, and are in themselves amusing enough to be related, or which otherwise present points of interest. To some of these I call attention, for they illustrate Punch's own aphorism that "it is easier to make new friends than new jokes."

There is a capital story in Mr. Le Fanu's "Seventy Years of Irish Life," in which the author tells of a man who was accidentally knocked down by the buffer of a locomotive near Bray Station. He was not seriously hurt, and but partially stunned; and the porters who quickly ran to the spot determined to take him to the station at once. The hero of the accident, overhearing where they were carrying him, imagined that he was being given in charge. "What do you want to take me to the station for?" he asked. "You know me; and if I've done any damage to your d——d engine, sure I'm ready to pay for it!" This story of Mr. Le Fanu's reached Keene's ears long before the author incorporated it in his book, and with the change of hardly a word it illustrated one of the best drawings the artist ever drew.

Though undoubtedly many of Punch's jokes are deliberately manufactured, or else improved from actual incidents, a vast number—like that quoted just now—are used with but slight textual editing, just as they occurred. Thus Joe Allen it was—the light-hearted artist who contributed an article to Punch's first number—who provided Mr. du Maurier years afterwards with that "social agony" in which a great lover of children, invited to a juvenile party, bursts into the room with the cry of "Here we are again"—walking in on his hands like a clown—to find that he had come to the wrong house next door, and was scandalising a sedate and stately dinner party. Henry Mayhew had a story of which a facetious police officer of his acquaintance was the hero. The latter was driving "Black Maria" along the street when he was hailed by a waggish omnibus-driver who affected to mistake the depressing character of the passing vehicle. "Any room?" he asked. "Yes," replied the officer, with a grin, "we've kept a place on purpose for you. Jump inside!" "What's the fare?" inquired the humorist, a little "non-plushed," as Jeames expressed it, at the unexpected retort. "Same as you had before—bread and water, and skilly o' Sundays!" The joke duly appeared in Punch after a long interval (Vol. XLVI.), illustrated by Charles Keene, under the title of "Frightful Levity."

Another omnibus story, printed just as it occurred, was that in which a conductor replies to an old gentleman in the south of London, whose destination was the "Elephant and Castle." "Yus—you go on to the Circus, and change into a Helephant." "Oh, mamma!" exclaims a little girl seated near the door, "do let's go too!" "Go where?" "To the circus, and see the old gentleman change into an elephant!" A similar incident, it may be observed, was illustrated by Eltze's pencil in 1861, when a passenger in the "Highbury Bus" asks the conductor to "change him into a Hangel." Jack Harris has often appeared in Punch. He was a driver beside whom Mr. Edmund Yates often rode—"a wonderfully humorous fellow, whose queer views of the world and real native wit afforded me the greatest amusement. A dozen of the best omnibus sketches were founded on scenes which had occurred with this fellow, and which I described to John Leech, whose usually grave face would light up as he listened, and who would reproduce them with inimitable fun."

The horrified swell of Leech's who is implored by an onion-hawker to "take the last rope" was in reality his friend Mr. Horsley, R.A., by whom the artist was provided with a number of humorous subjects. The unfailing advantage taken by Leech of all such contributions, which his friends assured him were "not copyright," has been universally recognised. Among the subjects suggested to him by Dean Hole was that in which his coachman, "unaccustomed to act as waiter, watched, with great agony of mind, the jelly which he bore swaying to and fro, and set it down upon the table with a gentle remonstrance of 'Who—a, who—a, who—a,' as though it were a restive horse." By a curious coincidence, as I have heard from the lips of a member of one of the great brewing firms, on the very day before the appearance of Mr. du Maurier's drawing[14] the identical incident had occurred in his own house, and it was hard to believe on the following morning that the subject of his plunging blanc-mange, similarly apostrophised, had not been imported by some sort of magic into Punch's page. A similar coincidence, far graver in its first suggestion, has been given me by Mr. Arnold-Forster. A friend of his sent in to Punch a comic sketch of the Tsar travelling by railway, while he sent a decoy train in the opposite direction—which was blown up! The paper containing the sketch was printed by the Monday, and before it was published that had really occurred which Punch had playfully invented. Until the following week, when an explanation was published, a certain section of the public criticised, with justifiable severity, what they took to be the bad taste and ill-timed fooling of the Jester.

From Mr. Harry Furniss's pen came an oft-quoted drawing (lately used as an advertisement), the idea of which reached him from an anonymous correspondent. It is that of the grimy, unshaven, unwashed, mangy-looking tramp, who sits down to write, with a broken quill, a testimonial for a firm of soap-makers: "I used your Soap two years ago; since then I've used no other." A further point of interest about this famous sketch was that Charles Keene was deeply offended by it at first—in the groundless belief that it was intended as a skit upon himself. It must at least be admitted that the head is not unlike what one might have expected to belong to a dissipated and dilapidated Charles Keene. But the nature of Mr. Furniss's work was of such a kind, and the artist himself has always overflowed with so prodigal a flood of original quaintness, that comparatively few sketches were ever sent in to him, or, being sent, were used. The origin of one of his creations—that of the Sergeant-at-Arms as a beetle—is an example of the lightness and quickness of his fancy. This representation, it has been said, was generally supposed to bear some spiteful sort of reference to the shape of Captain Gosset's legs, which in breeches and silk stockings did not perhaps appear to the best advantage; and, further, that the idea was suggested by the appearance on the floor of the House of Commons, in the course of a particularly wearisome debate, of a monster black-beetle marching slowly across under the eyes of the Representatives of the People, breaking the monotony of the proceedings, and arousing altogether disproportionate interest among the yawning members; that the "stranger" was quickly spied by the artist, who about this time had to complain that certain facilities had been refused him by the Sergeant-at-Arms, and who, in retaliation, professed thenceforward to believe that the two creatures were identical. But the insinuation was untrue. For the Sergeant was already an established insect in Punch before the appearance of the genuine black-beetle; and, moreover, so little did he resent it, that he used to stick the amusing little libels all round his mantelpiece.

The national practice of sending in alleged jokes to Punch—a practice, I imagine, of which the result is sufficient to prove how deficient in wit, if not in humour, is the English people considered as a community—is doubtless a convenient one to the many persons who live upon a fraudulent reputation of being "outside," and of course anonymous, Punch contributors. "How clever of you!" said a lady in one well-authenticated case to just such an impostor; "how very clever you must be! And what is it you write in Punch?" "Oh, all the best things are mine." The difficulty which Thomas Hood actually experienced in establishing his authorship of "The Song of the Shirt" is recorded in its proper place; while, among other things, Mr. Milliken's "Childe Chappie" was claimed, as was afterwards ascertained, by a literary ghoul whose strange taste it was to batten upon the comic writings of others, and to use his borrowed reputation to ingratiate himself with the fair and trusting sex.

Not a few of Punch's jokes have been sent in by men who were destined a little later on to become members of the Staff and diners at the Table. Mr. Furniss's first drawing, as is duly explained elsewhere, was re-drawn by Mr. du Maurier, and Mr. Burnand's initial contribution—a little sketch of 'Varsity life—was re-drawn by Leech. But quite a number of non-professional wits and humorists have acted as disinterested friends, whose benevolent assistance has gone far to colour Punch with the characteristics of their own vis comica. The chief of these no doubt is Mr. Joseph Crawhall, of Newcastle, whose devoted service to his friend Charles Keene was an important factor in the artist's Punch-life. From his other friends, Mr. Birket Foster and Mr. Andrew Tuer, Keene was in receipt of a great number of jokes—from the latter they came almost as regularly as the weekly paper. It was also from Mr. Tuer that he received, among many others, that happy thought, so happily realised, of the gentleman who one day paid an unaccustomed visit to his stables to give an order, and asking his coachman's child, "Well, my little man, do you know who I am?" received for answer, "Yes, you're the man who rides in our carriage." This story was quoted seven years later by Lord Aberdeen in a public speech, in which he attributed the adventure—though on what grounds did not appear—to "a celebrated physician," apparently Sir Andrew Clark.

After Charles Keene's death Mr. Tuer's humorous vein was turned on to others of the Staff. One of his contributions may be quoted as illustrating how unintentional are the originals of some of Punch's jokes. In 1889 appeared a picture entitled "A New Trade," in which a country maid, on being asked what her last employer was, replied, "He kept a Vicarage." The circumstance had actually taken place in Mr. Tuer's own house. When the number appeared, the legend was read out to the maid, and it was explained to her that it was her joke. She showed no enthusiasm, not even appreciation; but on seeing the others laugh, she said, with perfect gravity, yet still with hopeful perseverance, "Well, I must try and make some more!"