PUNCH'S WRITERS: 1841.

Mark Lemon—As Others Saw Him—His Duties—His Industry—His Staff and their Apportioned Work—Lemon as an Editor—And Diplomatist—A Testimonial—And a Practical Joke—Henry Mayhew—His Great Powers and Little Weaknesses—Disappointment and Retirement—Stirling Coyne—Gilbert Abbott à Beckett—His Early Career—Tremendous Industry—À Beckett and Robert Seymour—Appointed Magistrate—Locked In—Angus B. Reach.

MARK LEMON
(From a private photograph.)

Mark Lemon was thirty-one when he found himself co-editor of Punch. His salary, it is true, was not more than thirty shillings a week; but it was to rise before his death to fifteen hundred pounds a year—a higher amount, it is said, than has been received by any other "weekly editor," before or since. However, he had found financial salvation; for although his playwriting had not been unsuccessful—and by the time he died his pieces were to be numbered by the score—the drama in the days of short runs was not a remunerative form of literature. His natural bonhomie stood him in good stead; it charmed his friends and non-plussed his enemies. Of the latter, it must be admitted, he had more than enough—or, at least, men to whom he was intensely antipathetic. One eminent journalist—more eminent than Mark himself—writes him down "a mealy-mouthed sycophant;" and another, hardly less popular, went further still in his denunciation, and, if he were to be believed, Mark Lemon must have been one of the most accomplished humbugs of his time. "There was nothing good about Mark," said a distinguished draughtsman, who worked with the Punch Editor for many a long year, "but his laugh." But against this criticism—which was that of men whose judgment ought to be clear and sound, and was, moreover, shared by others—there is an overwhelming mass of evidence in favour of Lemon's extreme amiability, kindness, and geniality. He, naturally, was the butt of rival comic papers, who would taunt him with his Jewish descent, with the mildness of his jokes and humour, and the bitterness of his false friendship. A favourite form was to print among supposed "Births" such a line as this: "On Wednesday, the 26th ult., at Whitefriars, Mr. Mark Lemon, of a joke, stillborn."

But Lemon could well afford to ignore all such attacks. Mr. George Chester, his life-long friend, pronounced him the prince of cronies, and I have seen many letters from him instinct with affection and jovial humour. One of them, by the way, gives information that "our nursemaid has the chicken-pock, and we expect to see her throw out feathers to-morrow." When he entered the composing-room he was invariably received with a cheer by the men, whom he called "my Caxtonian Bees." Charles Dickens believed in him as "a most affectionate and true-hearted fellow," and so described him to Sir A. H. Layard (in whose interest Dickens arranged for Tenniel's fine "Nineveh Bull" cartoon to be published); and though he quarrelled with him, because Lemon had the courage, chivalry, and uprightness to take Mrs. Dickens's side against her husband, he brought the estrangement to a close with a kindly message when Lemon first appeared as Falstaff. Mr. Joseph Hatton carries his friendly admiration almost to the point of Lemonolatry; and the man who could inspire such friendship must assuredly have been endowed with sterling qualities and with a lovable nature.

"Mr. Lemon impressed me," writes Mr. E. J. Ellis, "as the kindest and most lovable elderly boy I had ever seen. He evidently accepted my little sketches only for the promise, not the performance, of them. Some were rejected. This was done so genially that I found myself hastening to refuse my own drawings for him rather than put him to the effort of sparing my feelings while doing so. 'Here I sit,' he said, 'like a great ogre, eating up people's little hopes.' Then he showed me his waste-paper basket, and added—'But what am I to do? Look here!' I confess I never saw, except on pavement in coloured chalks, such nerve-twisting horrors as the paper sketches people sent." It is obvious from this that the writer never watched the pictures entering the Royal Academy on Sending-in Day.

Mark Lemon loved Punch; as well he ought. He refused to visit America to give his readings on terms that were highly alluring, as he could not find it in his heart to abandon the command, even for a time, nor bear to miss his two days a week at Whitefriars. When he said truly that he and Punch were made for each other, and that he "would not have succeeded in any other way," he might fairly have added, had he wished, how hard he had laboured for that success. Mr. Birket Foster has drawn me a vivid picture of how in those early days he had to visit Lemon in his Newcastle Street lodgings, and, mounting to the topmost storey, found him in an untidy, undusted room, sitting in his shirt-sleeves, with Horace Mayhew by his side plying the scissors, working at the weekly "make-up" of Punch with the desperate eagerness that was, in time, to bear so rich a harvest.

How Mark Lemon helped to bring together the original Staff has already been seen. It was, doubtless, his sound display of business capacity and character, in addition to his literary aptitude, that induced Henry Mayhew and Landells to nominate him as one of the co-editors—for that was a quality in which both Henry Mayhew and Stirling Coyne were confessedly deficient. "There are forty men of wit," says Swift, "for one man of sense." So the paper was started, and the very first article, "The Moral of Punch," was Lemon's;[29] but neither then nor after did he write much for it, though he still contributed a certain amount of graceful, serious verse, under the title of "Songs for the Sentimental," with a farcical last line which affects the reader suddenly like a cold douche. He wrote, as well, many short epigrams, paragraphs, and the like, besides being a fairly prolific suggestor of the cartoons; but the sum of his literary labours on the paper would not compare with that of the members on the Staff. To him fell the organisation, administration, and practical making-up of the paper.

In the early days of Punch, during those infantile convulsions to which the paper threatened to succumb, Mark Lemon assured his position by the great zeal with which he carried out his duties; and at the transfer of Punch he was left sole Editor, by the fiat of the new proprietors. Stirling Coyne left without real regret, though in considerable dudgeon at his treatment; he had many other irons in the fire, and the conditions of journal-weaning were unattractive to him. But to Henry Mayhew it was a bitter disappointment. It was he who had made Punch what it was; he found himself ousted from his legitimate position, and he considered, in his own words, that Mark Lemon "had allowed himself to be bought over," so that a coolness sprang up between the two men which was never quite removed.