The Mystery of His Birth—Previous Unsuccessful Attempts at Solution—Proposal for a "London Charivari"—Ebenezer Landells and His Notion—Joseph Last Consults with Henry Mayhew—Whose Imagination is Fired—Staff Formed—Prospectus—Punch is Born and Christened—The First Number.
It should be counted against neither the fair fame nor the reputation of Punch that the facts of his birth have never yet been definitely and honourably established. It is not that his parentage has been lost to history in a discreet and charitable silence; on the contrary, it is rather that that honour has been claimed by over-many, covetous of the distinction. He seems to come within the category of Defoe's true-born Englishman, "whose parents were the Lord knows who," not because there should be any doubt upon the subject, but because none suspected at the time the latent importance of the bantling and the circumstances of his birth until it seemed too late to decide by demonstration or simple affirmation who was father and who the sponsors. Had it then been known that Punch was born for immortality, I should not now be at the pains of setting forth, at greater length than would otherwise be necessary or justifiable, the proofs of his parentage and of his natal place.
"Great Homer's birth seven rival cities claim,
Too mighty such monopoly of Fame."
Rubens was born both at Antwerp and Cologne. One knows it to be so, when one has visited both houses. Hans Memling, again, was native of Bruges and Mömelingen too. It is hardly surprising, then, that several roof-trees claim the honour of having sheltered the new-born Punch, and that many men have contended for his paternity.
I say "his" paternity; for the absolute personality of Punch has long been recognised. It has been the usual custom of comic papers to indulge in a similar fiction, mildly humorous and conveniently anonymous—"Figaro in London," "Pasquin," "The Puppet Show"-man, "The Man in the Moon," and the rest. But Punch was not only a personality himself, but at the outset began by introducing the rest of his family to the public. Nowadays he ignores his wife, especially since a contemporary has appropriated her name. But this was not always so. In his prospectus he announces that his department of "Fashion" will be conducted by Mrs. J. Punch, whose portrait, drawn by Leech's pencil, appeared in 1844 (p. 19, Vol. VI.), and who was seen again, under the name of Judina, in honourable companionship with her husband, in the preface to Vol. XLVII., for 1864, and once more in "Mrs. Punch's Letters to Her Daughter." His daughter Julia, too, being then, in 1841, "in service," wrote a letter to the journal in that style of damaged orthography afterwards adopted by the immortal Jeames and his American cousin, Artemus Ward. But it was not long before Punch took a rise in the social scale, and many men of distinction in literature have claimed him for their child with all the emphasis of groundless assertion.
According to the "City Press" (June 27th, 1892), Mr. C. Mitchell frequently declared that Punch originated with him, Shirley Brooks, Henry Mayhew, and Ebenezer Landells, in his office in Red Lion Court, the latter drawing the original sketch of the pink monthly cover of Punch. But as Shirley Brooks did not come on the scene till thirteen years later, and as the cover in question is the one designed, and signed, by Sir John Gilbert in 1842, the claim may be dismissed, except in so far as it may support Landells' statement that he prepared the scheme of such a paper and submitted it to several publishers before he and his associates determined upon carrying it themselves into execution. And soon after it was started, as will be seen, the services of a speculative printer were anxiously sought.
Mr. Hatton declares that Mark Lemon "always spoke of it to me as a project of himself and Henry Mayhew," wherein he is followed by the "Dictionary of National Biography;" and the Hon. T. T. à Beckett gives the exclusive honour to Henry Mayhew (wherein he is followed by the same authority in the notice of the latter writer), but admits the further founder's claim of Stirling Coyne.
The writer of the well-known, but sadly inaccurate, pamphlet entitled "Mr. Punch, His Origin and Career," which was published in 1882 as a memorial of Mark Lemon, explains circumstantially that it was Mr. Last, the printer, who proposed the idea to Henry Mayhew, who "readily accepted it." The book is generally accredited to Sidney Blanchard; but when I explain that the printer of it, now deceased, informed me that it was written and brought to him by Last's son, the transfer of the central interest from Landells and Henry Mayhew becomes intelligible.
The late Mr. R. B. Postans, the house-chum of Henry Mayhew, "his companion from morning to night," and George Hodder, in his oft-quoted "Memories of My Time," agree in according undivided credit to Henry Mayhew; but they unfortunately disagree in essentials, and contradict each other, and indirectly confirm my own conclusions. Hodder further declares that Mayhew invented the paper and its name simultaneously, which sprang Minerva-like, full-titled, from his brain—which we know to be untrue, as the name was not decided upon until a subsequent meeting. Indeed, on the final prospectus, written with Mark Lemon's hand, as may be seen on p. [20], the present title was only inserted as an after-thought.
Then comes the version of Henry Mayhew's son, Mr. Athol Mayhew, who claims everything for his father in a statement of some length, in some respects authentic, but in many details entirely erroneous. He carries back Mayhew's idea of a "London Charivari" to the year 1835; but, as will be seen a little further on, Orrin Smith, Jerrold, Thackeray, and several more of the wags of the day afterwards combined in a stillborn effort to start a similar paper based on the same model. The writer bases his case far too much on Hodder's "Memories," which, entertaining though they are, do not universally command the trust and respect with which Mr. Athol Mayhew regards them. "A more sanguine man than my father," he says, "never breathed, and in his arrangement with Hodder appears to have taken everything for granted, although the scheme had not as yet been even breathed to Messrs. Landells and Last [the engraver and printer]; for when the latter gentleman agreed to enter into the speculation, Mayhew had removed to Clement's Inn." But the writer, who would appear to have inherited the paternal characteristic of "taking everything for granted," has not considered that Hodder declared that his visit to Hemming's Row, by which occasion it is alleged that the new Punch had sprung to Mayhew's brain, was "in the summer". As Punch appeared in the middle of July, and, according to the draft prospectus, was first arranged to appear on June 10th (though this may possibly have been a lapsus calami), it requires more than ordinary sanguineness to accept the statement that not a word had been breathed to persons so paramount in such a newspaper enterprise as the printer and engraver—especially when the paper was to make its appearance in a few days' time. And yet Mr. Mayhew adds that matters did not progress even so rapidly as his authority, George Hodder, narrates.