The History of "Punch"

by M. H. Spielmann

From the beginning, one of Thackeray's strong points on the Staff was that he was a "pen-and-pencil man," that he worked indifferently as artist or as writer, and not only as a writer, but as a prose-and-poem man. It has been said, with authority, that Thackeray never illustrated any articles but his own; but that is wholly incorrect. If you open Volume VIII., at p. 266, you will find a drawing of his showing Jack Tar and his Poll waltzing an accompaniment to an article on the "Debate on the Navy," which was written by Gilbert à Beckett. To the same writer's chapter on "The Footman," in his series of "Punch's Guide to Servants" (p. 40, Volume IX.), is a characteristic illustration by Thackeray, and again on the following page to "The Gomersal Museum." A little farther on, on p. 56, is a clever cut of a lovers' tête-à-tête beside a tea-table, to accompany Percival Leigh's ballad of "The Lowly Bard to his Lady Love;" and many similar results will reward a more extended search.

Thackeray's own opinion of his powers as a draughtsman is not easy to determine. We know, of course, from his own lips, his (? affected) surprise at Dickens not finding his art good enough to illustrate "Pickwick" vice Seymour, deceased. But in the interval between this application in 1836 and his later work he probably came to a more critical estimate of the real value of his draughtsmanship—that work which had been so laboriously and earnestly evolved from his studies in the Louvre and elsewhere. When Vizetelly was engraving Thackeray's designs to "Mrs. Perkin's Ball," which on account of their unsophisticated artistic character, were re-touched by a clever young draughtsman, the artist wrote that there was a "je ne sais quoi" in his "vile drawing" which was worth retaining. "Somehow," he said, "I prefer my Nuremberg dolls to Mr. Thwaites's superfine wax models." After Edmund Yates had started that brilliant little journal or magazine, which was not destined, however, to live as long as it deserved, Thackeray wrote to him: "You have a new artist on 'The Train,' I see, my dear Yates. I have been looking at his work, and I have solved a problem. I find there is a man alive who draws worse than myself!" Yet he continued to draw for Punch with zeal; but when an acquaintance told him, probably in all sincerity, "but you can draw," Thackeray brusquely put down the compliment to the toadyism of a "snob." Trollope declares that Thackeray "never learned to draw—perhaps, never could have learned;" but he did not see that in the art of illustration, especially of a humorous character, there is something more important than academic correctness and technical mastery. He moved his pencil slowly, with a deliberate broad touch, without haste, and with no more attempt at refinement than was natural to him. Yet his hand was capable of astonishing delicacy of touch; and I have seen the Lord's Prayer written by him one day at the Punch Table, within the space of a threepenny-piece, which is a marvel of legibility. There is a character about Thackeray's work—his "je ne sais quoi"—that makes us forgive him his glaring faults—indeed, we almost come to love him for them—when once we have frankly recognised that it was in great measure his facility in drawing that was his artistic ruin. There is always something of the caricaturist in his most serious and important sketches—most of all, perhaps, in his etchings. It is in his smallest cuts that he is seen to the best advantage, and in them he occasionally challenges comparison with Doyle and Leech himself.

In the execution of his Punch sketches, in nearly all the three hundred and eighty of them, Thackeray was as summary as in the turning of a ballad, and I describe elsewhere how he would make a drawing on the wood while the engraver waited and chatted over a cigar. It was clearly not his opinion that, as is nowadays adjudged to be the proper course, elaborate studies should first be made from the life-model, even for the execution of a simple Punch picture. He preferred, when possible, to confine his pencil to the illustration of his own text; but on occasion he would produce a "social" cut—a drawing, that is to say, with a joke printed beneath. Sometimes it would be in the manner of Leech, as in the joke in Volume IX. (p. 3) called "The Ascot Cup Day," wherein a hot-potato-seller asks a small boy with a broom, "Why are you on the crossing, James? Is your father Hill?" and is informed "No. He's drove mother down to Hascot." More personal was such work as "The Stags, a Drama of To-day," in which a retired thimblerigger and an unfortunate costermonger, under a magnificent alias, take advantage of the railway mania to make their application for shares—for which they could not pay, of course, if things went wrong—in accordance with the game of "heads I win, tails I vanish," at that time extensively played throughout the country. Later on (in Volume XV.), following "The Heavies," he gave, in seven scenes, a panorama of an "Author's Miseries." In 1847 (Volume XII., p. 59) Thackeray contributed a "social" picture which is to this day a wonder to all beholders. It is entitled "Horrid Tragedy in Private Life," and represents a room in which two ladies, or a lady and a servant, are in a state of the greatest alarm. What the meaning of it all is there is nothing whatever to indicate (unless it be that something has fallen on the taller lady's dress); and on its appearance the "Man in the Moon" offered a reward of £500 and a free pardon to anyone who would publish an explanation. The reward was never claimed; and Thackeray's contribution remains one of Punch's Prize Puzzles, unsolved, and, apparently, unsolvable.

It was in No. 137—that notable part which contained "The Song of the Shirt"—that Thackeray appeared in his own right, as belonging not only to the Staff, but to the Table. The contribution was a "Singular Letter from the Regent of Spain;" and with it Thackeray took his place at the Dinner as an excellent substitute for Albert Smith. That writer, who had found his successor "a very jolly fellow with no High Art about him," and a charming companion at "the Cider Cellars," a month later disappeared for ever from Punch as a contributor, refiguring only in its pages from time to time as an object of attack.

Thackeray's work on Punch covered every corner of Punch's field. Burlesques of history and parodies of literature, ballads and songs, stories and jokes, papers and paragraphs, pleasantry and pathos, criticisms and conundrums, travels in the East and raillery in the West, political skits and social satire—from a column to a single line—such was the sum of Thackeray's contribution to Punch. Less prolific than either Jerrold or Gilbert à Beckett, he produced, nevertheless, an enormous amount of "copy" that was always readable, even when it was not his best. He wrote from Paris to his friend, Mrs. Brookfield (September 2nd, 1849): "I won't give you an historical disquisition in the Titmarsh manner upon this, but reserve it for Punch—for whom, on Thursday [I have written] an article that I think is quite unexampled for dulness, even in that Journal, and that beats the dullest Jerrold. What a jaunty, offhand, satiric rogue I am, to be sure—and a gay young dog!" But he did not think his work half so uninteresting as he pretended; he even regarded with satisfaction that which he produced when greatly out of the vein. "It is but a hasty letter I send you, my dear lady," he wrote to the same correspondent, in 1850, "but my hand is weary with writing 'Pendennis'—and my head boiling up with some nonsense that I must do after dinner for Punch. Isn't it strange that, in the midst of all the selfishness, that of doing one's business is the strongest of all. What funny songs I've written when fit to hang myself!"

His first contributions to Punch, after those already mentioned, were "Mr. Spec's Remonstrance," Volume IV., p. 70 (omitting "Assumption of Aristocracy," which has hitherto been credited to him, but was really sent in by Gilbert à Beckett), "Singular Letter from the Regent of Spain," with the three amusing cuts of sailors who, having found a bottle at sea, speculate as to its contents as they open it—"Sherry, perhaps," "Rum, I hope!" "Tracts, by Jove!!" Then, to select the chief and longest series, came "The History of the Next French Revolution," in nine parts (Volume VI.), contributions which were leavened by pleasant attacks levelled at Lytton, and at "Jenkins" of the "Morning Post." Then followed, in Volumes VII. and VIII., "Travelling Notes, by our Fat Contributor" (for Thackeray loved to call himself so, or "Our Stout Commissioner," or "Titmarsh," "Policeman X," "Jeames," "Paul Pindar," or other whimsical pseudonym), and "Punch in the East"—the record of a journey undertaken by Thackeray at the invitation of the P. and O. Company, who offered him a free passage to Egypt.

At this time the railway mania was at its height, and Thackeray took his share in Punch in stemming the fatal tide, so far as ridicule could be used to do so. One of his first papers on the subject was the "Letter from Jeames, of Buckly Square," signed by "Fitz-Jeames de la Pluche"—the famous Jeames who, first created by Thackeray in the pages of "The Britannia" in 1841, under the title of "Mr. Yellowplush, my lord's body-servant," began in the same Vol. IX. (1845) his immortal "Diary." One of the successes of this epistle was what, to Thackeray's delight, was seriously complained of as the "deplorable" inaccurate orthography of the illiterate flunkey. Thackeray was certainly not the first to use the device, but he was the first to achieve great success with it, and Arthur Sketchley, Artemus Ward, Mr. Deputy Bedford ("Robert"), and all the American humorists who have adopted the same idea, are but followers where the great Titmarsh led. Jeames's weakness became a strength in Thackeray's hands, and at one time was turned with effect upon Sir Isaac Pitman's "Spelling Reform," which was then a novel butt for the satirist. The incident has been thus gravely recorded in the pages of the "Phonetic Journal":—

"Ten years ago Mr. Punch had meni a meri kakinashon at the ekspens ov Mr. Pitman and the 'Phonetic News,' which he leiked tu kall the 'Fanatic Nuz.' Here is wun of his sneerz:—'Voltaire sed ov the Inglish that they save two ourz a day bei kontrakting all their wurdz. The "Fonetic Nuz" woz not then in eksistens. If we save two ourz,' kontiniuz the kaustik pupet, 'in the dayz ov Voltaire, we must save siks ourz at least nou that we hav our improved plan ov speling, az originali invented bei Winifred Jenkins, and karid to its greatest heit bei Jeames, with the assistans ov Yellowplush and Pitman.' But Punch, who, leik the 'Thunderer,' never goez agenst publik opinion, sneerz no longer at the Speling Reform moovment, and sensibel men, who ar not fonetik men at all, admit at last that our prezent sistem ov orthografi is bei no meanz perfekt."

There is little wonder that Thackeray seized on the comic side of this movement, for whimsical spelling always delighted him. On one occasion, indeed, he was so proud of an uncompromising cold that had "sat down" in his head that he wrote to a friend in these terms:—"Br. Lettsob (attaché to the Egglish Legatiob at Washigtol) has beel kild elough to probise to dile with be ol Bulday lext at 6 o'clock—if you would joil hib aid take a portiol of a plail joilt ald a puddl, it wd. give great pleasure."