Eminent Musician: "You play, I believe?"
Swell Amateur: "Ya-as!"
Eminent Musician: "Concertina?"
Swell Amateur: "No—comb!"(Reduced from the Drawing by G. du Maurier in "Punch," 20th June, 1868.)
It is often thus that Punch's ranks are recruited, and that Mr. Lucy, Mr. Lehmann, Mr. Partridge, Mr. Phil May, and others have been drawn into the agreeable vortex of Whitefriars.
On at least one occasion, however, Punch threw his kerchief in vain, for Mr. Bristed tells us, in his "Five Years at an English University," how the Epigram Club, of Oxford, was invited by the Editor to send its productions to Punch, but that "with true English reserve" the Society came to an agreement that all their transactions should remain in manuscript.
Beside the editor of a comic journal stalks a demon on either hand—the Belial of Plagiarism and the Beelzebub of Repetition. The public looks to him to be a wit and a humorist, with a knowledge of every witticism that ever was made. If he suffer an old joke to appear, some "constant reader" will surely find him out, and publish the fact abroad with malignant glee. There are few vices so deeply resented as the telling of an old joke; in an editor it is recognised as amounting to crime. But those who judge so severely have clearly never made a scientific study of the Joke. It is not sufficient to analyse a witticism and dissect it, in the cold spirit of that terrible book called "A Theory of Wit and Humour," till its humour flies, like the delicate bouquet from uncorked wine. The genealogy of jokes and twists of humour and of thought, of form and application, must be traced; and the student will find that in respect to a great proportion of our verbal jests of to-day they may be tracked up to the Middle Ages, back to Classic times, and lost perchance in the Oriental recesses of a jocular past. It is not only a case of mere unconscious repetition or of brazen-faced plagiarism that is the principle involved; it has its root in the chameleon-like variety of aspect possible to a piece of fooling or a flash of wit. Jokes are as adaptable to times and circumstances, as the human race itself; and to identify them and pin them down on a specimen card, one must be another Pastor Aristæus, alert and skilful, in pursuit of a lightning Proteus, infinitely various and hopelessly volatile.
But even that is not enough. Suppose the editor to be a scholar, deeply read in the Classics and in Oriental writings, and endowed besides with a memory so prodigious as to be able to recognise every joke that turns up, he has still to guard against the contributor, on whom he is to a considerable extent dependent. The jest-purveyor may be honest when he unwittingly sends in a joke that has already gone the rounds, and has appeared perhaps in some country paper; or he may be deliberately dishonest; or he may simply be impatient at not seeing his contribution printed (perhaps, after all, it is only being kept back for an illustration to be drawn to accompany it), and may send it off elsewhere—anticipating its publication in the paper of his original choice. Or a group of jokes may form the stock-in-trade of a newly accepted contributor, who, as the seaside landladies say, "must have brought them in his portmantel." And then there are recurring events that naturally give recurring birth to jokes they almost necessarily suggest. There is thus no standard, no system of identification for the thousand disguises in which a joke may lurk; and unconscious plagiarism and repetition deserve greater indulgence than that which they commonly receive. Mr. Burnand, probably the most prolific punster of the age, once wrote to a contributor, "For goodness' sake, send no more puns; they have all been made!" Indeed, Punch has given us more "pre-historic peeps" of humour than he or Mr. Reed have any notion of. "Bless you," said Punch in his third number, "half the proverbs given to Solomon are mine!"
It was the fashion when Punch was young for the comic papers to indulge in fierce recrimination and bitter charge and counter-charge of plagiarism. At that time it was thought that a satirical paper could be launched into public favour on its abuse of rivals—so that all the drowning journals caught at the straws of the others' reputations. Nowadays they more practically apply for an injunction. Punch, in point of fact, has sought the protection of the law on more than one occasion. As early as 1844 the Vice-Chancellor's Court was the scene of the action of the Proprietors of Punch v. Marshall and Another, when Mr. Bethell, afterwards Lord Westbury, complained that the defendants had published a "Punch's Steamboat Companion" (an excessively vulgar production) with intention to deceive the public. The judge brilliantly remarked, "Well, this certainly is an excuse for the Court taking punch in the morning. (Great laughter.) I think you have made out a sufficient case for your injunction, Mr. Bethell;" and the injunction was accordingly granted. In the following year (July, 1845) steps had to be taken to protect Mr. and Mrs. Caudle from the wholesale piracy to which they were subjected on every side. Mr. Bethell again made a comic speech, directed primarily against the "Hereford Times" and the "Southport Visitor," in which the eighth and ninth lectures, illustrations and all, had been coolly reproduced, without a word of acknowledgment. As before, the serio-comic pleader was successful, and obtained the desired injunctions. Again, in 1872 Mr. J. C. Hotten was stopped from publishing "The Story of the Life of Napoleon, told by the Popular Caricaturists of the Last 30 Years," inasmuch as the compiler had annexed from Punch all he desired for the work. (Law Reports 8, Exchequer 7.) Sir Henry Hawkins was for Punch, and Serjeant Parry defended. The judge, Lord Bramwell, and jury, too, believed in the sacred rights of property, and a farthing damages was awarded in addition to the forty shillings paid into Court. So Punch won his case and gained his costs—and Hotten went on publishing his book just as if nothing had occurred. Another case, against the "Ludgate Monthly," need only be mentioned for the sake of a rival's remark that the idea of Punch having published a joke worth copying and going to law about was the greatest joke of all.
During his minority Punch made and sustained many an open charge of plagiarism. They were the amenities of comic literature, of which, however, the public soon tired; and Punch, recognising that newspaper readers will not be troubled to take part or sides in an Eatanswill warfare that does not concern them, practically dropped a campaign with which the rest continued to persevere. But Punch's silence was misunderstood. At any rate, it was presumed upon. When he could stand the audacity of the poachers no longer, he broke out, as recounted, in the summer of 1844, again in the following year, and once more in 1847, into a practical prosecution. Douglas Jerrold's caustic pen had full play in his all-round denunciation of the pilferers, and in Punch's name he let fly at big game. "First and foremost," he declared, "the great juggler of Printing-House Square walks in like a sheriff and takes our comic effects;" and Newman's pencil added point to the comprehensiveness of the assault. Of numerous frauds, too, Punch had to complain. "Punch's Almanacs" of a vile and indecent sort, with which he had nothing in the world to do, had been issued to his detriment, and several papers were produced in close imitation of his own; but it was the circumstance of his stolen jokes that wounded him most of all, and caused him to lay his bâton about him with lusty vigour. The incriminated journals, thoroughly in their element, retorted with well-feigned indignation. Prominent among them "Joe Miller the Younger" had professed for him at first a particular friendship which, when contemptuously rejected, turned, like the love of a woman scorned, to hate. It might have been retorted that Punch, in the words of his prospectus, had frankly owned that he would give "asylum for superannuated Joe Millers," and even that Mr. Birket Foster had been actually employed in 1842 in "adapting" and anglicising Gavarni's drawings for Punch's pages. Instead, "Joe Miller" defended the size of his page, which was, he said, like Punch's own, copied from the "Athenæum," and protested against any attempt at monopoly, pointing out that the sub-title "Charivari" was itself a plagiarism. If anyone, he went on, could prove that he bought a Punch in mistake for a "Joe Miller," he would willingly pay £5 for each copy so sold, in order "to compensate the Punch purchaser for his disappointment."
From this moment until his death he never left Punch alone, and constantly pointed out many of his delinquencies, plagiarisms apparently so gross and frequent that it can hardly be doubted that some intrigue was afoot. For example, on August 2nd, 1845, there appeared in both papers a cartoon almost identical, with the attitudes reversed, entitled "The Political Pas de Quatre"—after the existing ballet at Her Majesty's Theatre, danced by Grisi, Taglioni, Grahn, and Cerito—representing four ballet-skirted danseuses in a grotesque pose or tableau. Those in the Punch cartoon (which, by the way, was suggested at the Table by Gilbert à Beckett, and was executed by Leech) were impersonated by Lord Brougham, Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, and Daniel O'Connell; while in the other appeared Lord Brougham, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, and Daniel O'Connell; but, unless carefully compared, the one might certainly be mistaken for the other. The "Joe Miller" block was drawn by A. S. Henning, who had quitted the service of Punch three years before; and it was claimed by his paper that the original drawing was exhibited in their window a week before Punch's appeared. But abuse of Punch for this and other curious coincidences did not save him, and "Joe Miller the Younger" soon announced his metamorphosis into "Mephystopheles," which proved an inferior and still shorter-lived concern.
CARTOON ENTITLED "THE POLITICAL PAS DE QUATRE."