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"THE MAHOGANY TREE."

(By Linley Sambourne. From "Punch's" Jubilee Number, by special
permission of Sir William Agnew, Bart., Owner of the original drawing.) (See page [536].)

The History of "Punch"

BY

M. H. SPIELMANN

With Numerous Illustrations

CASSELL and COMPANY, Limited
LONDON, PARIS, & MELBOURNE
1895

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TO MY SON

PERCY EDWIN SPIELMANN

Drawn by George du Maurier.

PREFACE.

The prevailing idea of the origin and history of Punch has hitherto rested mainly on three productions: the "Memories" of George Hodder, "Mr. Punch's Origin and Career," and Mr. Joseph Hatton's delightful but fragmentary papers, entitled "The True Story of Punch." So far as the last-named is based upon the others, it is untrustworthy in its details; but the statements founded on the writer's own knowledge and on the documentary matter in his hands, as well as upon his intimacy with Mark Lemon, possess a distinct and individual value, and I have not failed to avail myself in the following pages of Mr. Hatton's courteous permission to make such use of them as might be desirable.

During the four years in which I have been engaged upon this book, my correspondents have been numbered by hundreds. Hardly a man living whom I suspected of having worked for Punch, but I have communicated with him; scarce one but has afforded all the information within his knowledge in response to my application. Editor and members of the Punch Staff, past and present—"outsiders," equally with those belonging to "the Table"—the relations and friends of such as are dead, all have given their help, and have shown an interest in the work which I hope the result may be thought to justify. All this mass of material—all the evidence, published and unpublished, that was adduced in order to establish certain points and refute others—had to be carefully sifted and collated, contrary testimony weighed, and the truth determined. Especially was this the case in dealing with the valuable reminiscences imparted by Punch's earliest collaborators, still or till lately living. Of undoubted contributors and their work, it may be stated, more than two hundred and fifty are here dealt with. A further number cheerfully submitted to cross-examination on one or other of the many subjects touched upon; and probably as many more were approached with only negative results.

My special thanks are due to Mrs. Chaplin, the daughter of the late Mr. Ebenezer Landells, who unreservedly placed in my hands all the Punch documents, legal and otherwise, accounts, and letters, concerning the origin and early editorships of Punch, which have been preserved in the family; and to Messrs. Bradbury and Agnew, who have supplemented these with similar assistance, as well as with books of the Firm establishing points of literary interest not hitherto suspected, together with the letters of Thackeray which illustrate his early connection with and final secession from the Staff. Apart from their general interest, these documents, taken together, establish the facts of such very vexed questions as the origin and the early editorships of Punch. This is the more satisfactory, perhaps, by reason of the numerous unfounded claims—or founded chiefly on family tradition or filial pride and affection—which are still being made on behalf of supposed originators of the Paper. Even these partisan historians, it is believed, will hardly be able to resist the proofs here set forth; although attested fact does not, with them, necessarily carry conviction. For such services, and for their ready and sympathetic acquiescence in the requests I have made for permission to quote text or reproduce engraving, my hearty thanks to Messrs. Bradbury, Agnew and Co. are due. To them and to all my numerous correspondents I here repeat the assurance of gratitude for their courtesy which I have privately expressed before.

I have reproduced no more pictures from Punch than were rendered necessary by the topics under discussion. I would rather send the reader, for Punch's pictures, to the ever-fresh pages of Punch itself. Nor, I may add, did I seek information and assistance from its Proprietors until this book was well advanced, preferring to make independent research and to test statements on my own account.

My primary inducement to the writing of this book has been the interest surrounding Punch, the study of which has not begotten in me the hero-worship that can see no fault. How far I have succeeded, it rests with the readers of this volume to decide.

September, 1895.

M. H. Spielmann.

AN INTRODUCTION.
(From the First Sketch by Charles H. Bennett.)

CONTENTS.

MR. PUNCH.
(Drawn by Harry Furniss.)

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

The engravings here borrowed from Punch are reproduced (in all cases in smaller sizes) by special permission of the Proprietors, Messrs. Bradbury, Agnew & Co. The Portrait of Charles Keene by J. D. Watson, and of Himself with the Bagpipes, were first published in Black and White, through whose courtesy they appear here. To all who have accorded the various permissions for reproductions, or who have lent drawings for the better illustration of this volume, the acknowledgments of the writer are gratefully recorded. The Copyright of the illustrations is in every case strictly reserved.

THE

HISTORY OF "PUNCH."

[Contents]INTRODUCTORY.

"If humour only meant laughter," said Thackeray, in his essay on the English humorists, "you would scarcely feel more interest about humorous writers than the life of poor Harlequin, who possesses with these the power of making you laugh. But the men regarding whose lives and stories you have curiosity and sympathy appeal to a great number of our other faculties, besides our mere sense of ridicule. The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness; your scorn of untruth, pretension, imposture; your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy. To the best of his means and ability he comments on all the ordinary actions and passions of life almost."

It may surely be claimed that these words, consecrated to his mighty predecessors by the Great Humorist of Punch, may be applied without undue exaggeration to his colleagues on the paper. Though posing at first only as the puppet who waded knee-deep in comic vice, Punch has worked as a teacher as well as a jester—a leader, and a preacher of kindness. Nor was it simple humour that was Punch's profession at the beginning; he always had a more serious and, so to say, a worthier object in view. This may be gathered from the very first article in the very first number, the manifesto of the band of men who started it, contributed by Mark Lemon, under the title of—

"THE MORAL OF PUNCH."

"As we hope, gentle public, to pass many happy hours in your society, we think it right that you should know something of our character and intentions. Our title, at a first glance, may have misled you into a belief that we have no other intention than the amusement of a thoughtless crowd, and the collection of pence. We have a higher object. Few of the admirers of our prototype, merry Master Punch, have looked upon his vagaries but as the practical outpourings of a rude and boisterous mirth. We have considered him as a teacher of no mean pretensions, and have, therefore, adopted him as the sponsor for our weekly sheet of pleasant instruction. When we have seen him parading in the glories of his motley, flourishing his bâton in time with his own unrivalled discord, by which he seeks to win the attention and admiration of the crowd, what visions of graver puppetry have passed before our eyes!... Our ears have rung with the noisy frothiness of those who have bought their fellow-men as beasts in the market-place, and found their reward in the sycophancy of a degraded constituency, or the patronage of a venal ministry—no matter of what creed, for party must destroy patriotism....

"There is one portion of Punch's drama we wish was omitted, for it always saddens us—we allude to the prison scene. Punch, it is true, sings in durance, but we hear the ring of the bars mingling with the song. We are advocates for the correction of offenders; but how many generous and kindly beings are there pining within the walls of a prison whose only crimes are poverty and misfortune!...

"We now come to the last great lesson of our motley teacher—the gallows; that accursed tree which has its root in injuries. How clearly Punch exposes the fallacy of that dreadful law which authorises the destruction of life! Punch sometimes destroys the hangman, and why not? Where is the divine injunction against the shedder of man's blood to rest? None can answer! To us there is but One disposer of life. At other times Punch hangs the devil: this is as it should be. Destroy the principle of evil by increasing the means of cultivating the good, and the gallows will then become as much a wonder as it is now a jest....

"As on the stage of Punch's theatre many characters appear to fill up the interstices of the more important story, so our pages will be interspersed with trifles that have no other object than the moment's approbation—an end which will never be sought for at the expense of others, beyond the evanescent smile of a harmless satire."

A portion of this programme was duly eliminated by the abolition of the Fleet and the Marshalsea; and it must be admitted that Punch has long since forgotten his declared crusade against capital punishment. But he has been otherwise busy. His sympathy for the poor, the starving, the ill-housed, and the oppressed; for the ill-paid curate and the worse-paid clerk; for the sempstress, the governess, the shop-girl, has been with him not only a religion, but a passion. Professor Ruskin, judging only by Punch's pictures, and that a little narrowly, has thought otherwise. Punch "has never in a single instance," says he in his "Art of England," "endeavoured to represent the beauty of the poor. On the contrary, his witness to their degradation, as inevitable consequences of their London life, is constant and, for the most part, contemptuous."

Truth to tell, Punch has been kindly from the first; and a man of mettle, too. None has been too exalted or too powerful for attack; withal, his assaults, in comparison with those of his scurrilous contemporaries, have been moderate and gentlemanly in tone. He has attacked abuses from the highest to the lowest. Sham gentility, vulgar ostentation, crazes and fads, linked æstheticism long drawn out, foolish costume, silly affectations of fashion in compliment and language—all have been set up as targets for his shafts of ridicule or scorn. He has been a moral reformer and a disinterested critic. A liberal-minded patriot, he has ever opposed the advocacy of "Little Peddlington" in Imperial politics; and municipal maladministration is a perennial subject for his denunciations. He has been a kindly cauteriser of social sores; caustic, but rarely vindictive. Spiritualism, Socialism, Ibsenism, Walt Whitmania—all the movements and sensations of the day, social, political, and artistic, in so far as they are follies—have been shot at as they rose. And having conquered his position, Punch has known how to retain it. "The clown," says Oliver Wendell Holmes, "knows his place to be at the tail of the procession." It is to Punch's honour that with conscious dignity—and, of course, with conscious impudence—he took his place at its head. And there he has stayed; and transforming his pages into the Royal Academy of pictorial satire, his alone among all the comic papers has forced its way into the library and taken up its position in the boudoir. His workers are the best available in the land; and when in course of time one contributor falls away, another is ready to step quickly into his place—uno avulso non deficit alter.

So Punch—who for many years past has set up as the incarnation of all that is best in wit and virtue—is a scholar and a gentleman. He is, moreover, on his own showing, a perfect combination of humour, wisdom, and honour; and yet, in spite of it all, not a bit of a prig. It is true that when he donned the dress-coat, and "Punch" and "Toby" put on airs as "Mr. Punch" and "Toby, M.P.," he became milder at the expense of some of his political influence. Yet what he lost in power he gained in respectability, as well as in the affection of his countrymen. He appealed to a higher class, to the greater constituency of the whole nation; and remembering that a jest's prosperity lies in the ear that hears it, he transferred some of his allegiance from pit to stalls, and was content with the well-bred smile where before he had been eager for noisy laughter and loud applause.

People say—among them Mr. du Maurier himself—that there does not seem quite as much fun and jollity in the world as when John Leech was alive; but that surely is only the wail of the middle-aged. Englishmen never were uproarious in their mirth, as Froissart once reminded us. But it is true that Punch does not indulge so much as once he did in caricature—which after all, as Carlyle has pointed out, is not Humour at all, but Drollery. Caricature, one must remember, has two mortal enemies—a small and a great: artistic excellence of draughtsmanship, and national prosperity with its consequent contentment. Good harvests beget good-humour. They stifle all motive for genuine caricature, for "satire thrives only on the wrath of the multitude." A joke may be only a joke—or a comedy, or a tragedy; but the greatest caricature (which need by no means display the greatest art) is necessarily that which goes straightest to the heart and mind. No drawing is true caricature which does not make the beholder think, whether it springs simply from good-humour or has its source in the passion of contempt, hatred, or revenge, of hope or despair. Mere amusement, said Swift, "is the happiness of those who cannot think," while Humour, to quote Carlyle again, "is properly the exponent of low things; that which first renders them poetical to the mind." Through this truth we may see how Punch has so continually dealt with vulgarity without being vulgar; while many of his so-called rivals, touching the self-same subjects, have so tainted themselves as to render them fitter for the kitchen than the drawing-room, through lack of this saving grace. Fun may have been in their jokes, but not true humour. Punch thus became to London much what the Old Comedy was to Athens; and, whatever individual critics may say, he is recognised as the Nation's Jester, though he has always sought to do what Swift declared was futile—to work upon the feelings of the vulgar with fine sense, which "is like endeavouring to hew blocks with a razor."

If there is one thing more than another on which Punch prides himself—on which, nevertheless, he is constantly reproached by those who would see his pages a remorseless mirror of human weakness and vice—it is his purity and cleanness; his abstention from the unsavoury subjects which form the principal stock-in-trade of the French humorist. This trait was Thackeray's delight. "As for your morality, sir," he wrote to Mr. Punch, "it does not become me to compliment you on it before your venerable face; but permit me to say that there never was before published in this world so many volumes that contained so much cause for laughing, and so little for blushing; so many jokes, and so little harm. Why, sir, say even that your modesty, which astonishes me more and more every time I regard you, is calculated, and not a virtue naturally inherent in you, that very fact would argue for the high sense of the public morality among us. We will laugh in the company of our wives and children; we will tolerate no indecorum; we like that our matrons and girls should be pure."

It was not till the great occasion of his Jubilee that the Merry Old Gentleman of Fleet Street, who "hath no Party save Mankind; no Leader—but Himself," discovered the full measure of his popularity. The day broke for him amid a chorus of greeting—a perfect pæan of triumph, in which his own trumpet was not the softest blown. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Press of the world welcomed the fiftieth anniversary of his birth, and that with a cordiality and unanimity never before accorded to any paper. Hardly a journal in the English-speaking world but commented on the event with kindly sympathy; hardly one that marred the celebration with an ill-humoured reflection. Pencil as well as pen was put to it to do honour to the greatest comic paper in the world, and demonstrate in touching friendliness the confraternity of the Press.

For the public, Punch issued his "Jubilee number" and, in accordance with the promise given in the first volume fifty years before, he produced in his hundredth a brief history of his career and the names of the men who made it, modestly advising his readers to secure a set of his back volumes as the real "Hundred Best Books." For himself, he dined with the Staff at the "Ship Hotel" at Greenwich, when the Editor, who occupied the chair, was fêted by the proprietors of the paper and received a suitable memento of the glorious event.

MR. PUNCH PORTRAYED BY DIFFERENT HANDS.

See p.[9].

And what may appear to some as the most curious celebration of all was a solemn religious celebration—nothing less than a Te Deum—in honour of the occasion. It sounds at first, perhaps, a little like a joke—though not in good enough taste to be one of Mr. Punch's own; but the service was held; and when regarded in the light shed upon it by the Rev. J. de Kewer Williams, the incongruity of it almost disappears. "I led my people yesterday," he wrote, "in giving thanks on the occasion of your Jubilee, praying that you might ever be as discreet and as kindly as you have always been." The prayer spoken in the pulpit appropriately ended as follows: "For it is so easy to be witty and wicked, and so hard to be witty and wise. May its satire ever be as good and genial, and the other papers follow its excellent example!"

The public tribute was not less cordial and sincere, and poetic effusions flowed in a gushing stream. But none of these verses, doggerel and otherwise, expressed more felicitously the general feeling than those which had been written some years before by Henry J. Byron—(who had himself attempted to establish a rival to Punch, but had been crushed by the greater weight)—one of his verses running:—

"From 'Forty-one to present times
How much these pages speak,
And Punch still bids us look into
The middle of next week;
And that's a Wednesday, as we know,
When still our friend appears,
As honest, fearless, bright, and pure
As in the bygone years."

But greater far than the public esteem is the affection of the Staff, who naturally enough regard the personality of Punch with a good deal more than ordinary loyal sentiment and esprit de corps. It is interesting to observe the different views the artists have severally taken of it, for most of them in turn have attempted his portrayal. Brine regarded him as a mere buffoon, devoid of either dignity or breeding; Crowquill, as a grinning, drum-beating Showman; Doyle, Thackeray, and others adhered to the idea of the Merry, but certainly not uproarious, Hunchback; Sir John Tenniel showed him as a vivified puppet, all that was earnest, responsible, and wise, laughing and high-minded; Keene looked on him generally as a youngish, bright-eyed, but apparently brainless gentleman, afflicted with a pitiable deformity of chin, and sometimes of spine; Sir John Gilbert as a rollicking Polichinelle, and Kenny Meadows as Punchinello; John Leech's conception, originally inspired, no doubt, by George Cruikshank's celebrated etchings, was the embodiment of everything that was jolly and all that was just, on occasion terribly severe, half flesh, half wood—the father, manifestly, of Sir John Tenniel's improved figure of more recent times. Every artist—Mr. du Maurier, Mr. Sambourne, Mr. Furniss, and the rest—has had his own ideal; and it is curious to observe that in his realisation of it, each has illustrated or betrayed in just measure the strength or weakness of his own imagination.

Some of these portraits, characteristic examples of Punch's leading artists, are reproduced on page [7], arranged according to authorship, thus:—

[Contents]CHAPTER I.

PUNCH'S BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.

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.

Yet although it was not, as will appear, Henry Mayhew who was the actual initiator of Punch, it was unquestionably he to whom the whole credit belongs of having developed Landells' specific idea of a "Charivari," and of its conception in the form it took. Though not the absolute author of its existence, he was certainly the author of its literary and artistic being, and to that degree, as he was wont to claim, he was its founder.

From all these versions (which, after all, vary hardly more than the accounts of other incidents of Punch life[1]) it is not very easy at first sight to sift the truth. There is a story of the tutor of an Heir-Apparent who asked his pupil, by way of examination, what was the date of the battle of Agincourt. "1560," promptly replied the Prince. "The date which your Royal Highness has mentioned," said the tutor, "is perfectly correct, but I would venture to point out that it has no application to the subject under discussion." A like criticism might fairly be passed on each existing reading of the genesis of Punch. It has been worth while, for the first time, and it is to be hoped the last, to collate and compare these statements, and ascertain the facts as far as possible. Claims have been set up, variously and severally, for Henry Mayhew, Mark Lemon, Joseph Last, Ebenezer Landells, and Stirling Coyne; even Douglas Jerrold and Gilbert à Beckett have been declared originators, though no such pretentions came directly from them. Otherwise than in the spirit of the Scottish minister who exclaimed, "Brethren, let us look our difficulties boldly and fairly in the face—and pass on," I propose to take those portions of the stories which tally with the facts I have ascertained and verified beyond all doubt, and, disentangling the general confusion as briefly as may be, to present one consistent version, which must stand untainted by claims of friendship, by pride of kinship, or filial respect.

It had occurred to many of the wits, literary and artistic, who well understood the cause of mortality in the so-called comic press that had gone before, that a paper might succeed which was decently and cleanly conducted. It might be as slashing in its wit and as fearless in its opinions as it pleased, so long as those opinions were honest and their expression restrained. Their idea was founded rather on Philipon's Paris "Charivari" than on anything that had appeared in England; but they plainly saw that to attract and hold the public the paper which they imagined must be a weekly and not a daily one. The Staff which was brought together consisted of Douglas Jerrold, Thackeray, Laman Blanchard, Percival Leigh, and Poole, author of "Paul Pry"—authors; and Kenny Meadows, Leech, and perhaps Crowquill—artists; with Orrin Smith as engraver. The whole scheme of this new "London Charivari" was in a forward state of preparation, even to pages of text being set up, when it suddenly collapsed through a mistaken notion of Thackeray's that each co-partner—there being no "capitalist" thought of—would be liable for the private debts of his colleagues. The suggestion was too much for the faith of the schemers in one another's discretion, and "The London Charivari" was incontinently dropped; yet unquestionably it had some indirect influence on the subsequent constitution and career of Mr. Punch.

EBENEZER LANDELLS.

For some years the success of the Paris "Charivari" had attracted the attention of Mr. Ebenezer Landells, wood-engraver, draughtsman, and newspaper projector. He had been a favourite pupil of the great Bewick himself, and had come up to London, where he soon made his mark as John Jackson's and Harvey's chief lieutenant and obtained an entrance into literary and artistic circles. A man of great originality and initiative ability, of unflagging energy and industry, of considerable artistic taste, and of great amiability, he also had the defect of the creative quality of his mind, so that, owing to that lack of business talent which the public generally associates with the artistic temperament, he did not ultimately prove himself more than a moderate financial success. As Jerrold, Thackeray, and the rest had done before him, he believed in a "Charivari" for England, and pondered how the Parisian success might be emulated and achieved. In his house at 22, Bidborough Street, St. Pancras (where most of the early Punch blocks were cut), he had a ready-made staff of engravers that included some names destined to become better known—Mr. Birket Foster; Mr. Edmund Evans, best known nowadays in connection with Miss Kate Greenaway's delightful children's books; J. Greenaway, her father, who became a master engraver himself; and William Gaiter, who afterwards took Orders; while "outside" were Edward and George Dalziel, T. Armstrong, and Charles Gorway. With these young men the handsome, tall engraver was extremely popular; they called him "the Skipper," or "Old Tooch-it-oop" behind his back, in token of his Northumbrian accent, but to his friends he was generally known as "Daddy Longlegs," or "Daddy Landells."

So Landells took the idea, which he determined upon carrying out, to one or two well-established publishers, Wright of Fleet Street amongst them, but none could see the germ of a first-rate property in it. It was objected that the temperament of the English people so differed from that of the French that they certainly would neither appreciate nor encourage the requisite style of writing, even supposing—which they did not believe—that the necessary talent were forthcoming. Moreover, they would not credit that a comic paper could succeed without the scurrility, and often enough the indecencies, that had distinguished earlier satirical prints; and although the popularity of Hood's "Comic Annual" and Cruikshank's "Comic Almanac" was pointed to, they would have nothing to do with a weekly, however much it professed to supersede previous ribaldry with clean wit and healthy humour.

As it happened, early in 1841 Landells was concerned, with his friend Joseph Last, printer, of 3, Crane Court, Fleet Street, in projecting a periodical known as "The Cosmorama," an illustrated journal of life and manners of the day, and to him Landells imparted his conviction that such a journal as he imagined would certainly succeed. The enterprising printer lent a readier ear than others had done (perhaps, in view of his limited capital and still more limited ideas of speculation, altogether too ready an ear), and agreed with Landells to take up so excellent a notion. Now, in the little world of comic writing a brilliant humorist was at work—Henry Mayhew, one of several brothers of ability, a man whose resource was equal to his wit. He was already known to Last as the son of the leading member of the firm of Mayhew, Johnston, and Mayhew, of Carey Street, his legal advisers. He was residing at the time at Hemming's Row, over a haberdasher's shop, and, with F. W. N. Bayley and others, he had been secured as writer on "The Cosmorama." Landells, introduced to him by Last, approached him on the subject of the "Charivari." Mayhew grasped the conception at once, and, as the sequel proved, saw it more completely, and perhaps appreciated its literary and artistic possibilities more clearly, than either its material originator or his ambassador had done. He immediately advised dropping "The Cosmorama," and directing on to the new comic all the energy and resources that were to have been put into the more commonplace publication. In due course he imparted the new idea to his friend Postans, who shared his room, and to other visitors; but he forgot to mention how the idea had been brought to him, so that his friends not unnaturally counted it as another of Harry's many happy, but usually impracticable, thoughts. But in this instance Mayhew made his personality felt, for the character of the paper, instead of partaking of that acidulated, sardonic satire which was distinctive of Philipon's journal, on which it was to have been modelled, took its tone from Mayhew's genial temperament, and from the first became, or aimed at becoming, a budget of wit, fun, and kindly humour, and of honest opposition based upon fairness and justice.

As for the Staff of such a paper as he imagined, Mayhew urged that he could secure the services of Douglas Jerrold, Gilbert à Beckett, Mark Lemon, Stirling Coyne, and others, in addition to those already engaged; and then adjournment was proposed to Mark Lemon's rooms in Newcastle Street, Strand. "The Shakespeare's Head," in Wych Street, had previously been Lemon's place of business. It was the meeting-place of the little "quoting, quipping, quaffing" club of fellow-workers in Bohemia; and Lemon, it was explained, had dabbled both in verse and the lighter drama, efforts which were "not half bad." Little did the writer dream that his modest Muse had marked him out for the editorship of the greatest comic journal the world has seen! To the duties of tavern-keeper Lemon, who was enamoured of literature and the drama, had been condemned by a fate more than usually unkind. He had found himself nearly penniless when Mr. Very, his stepfather, offered him a clerical position in his brewery in Kentish Town. But the brewery failed, and with it Lemon's livelihood, and he was only rescued by a jovial tavern-keeper named Roper, one of his stepfather's customers, and by him put into charge—disastrously for both—of the Wych Street public-house. Then he married, having borrowed five pounds to do it with, and by his wife's advice kept in touch with his literary acquaintance; and by the acceptance of a five-act comedy by Charles Mathews at Covent Garden—which was to be played by a cast including the great comedian's self, Mme. Vestris, and "Old" Farren—he received a hundred pounds down, and was tided over his difficulties until the starting of Punch gave him permanent employment.

So to Mark Lemon they went, and a full list was quickly drawn up. Mayhew undertook to communicate with Douglas Jerrold, who, then better known to the public as the successful dramatist than as the great satirist, was staying at Boulogne for the sake of his young family's education; and a charming picture has been drawn by his son of how, on the visit of à Beckett, Charles Dickens, and the rest, he would throw off his clothes and swim with them in the sea, or challenge them to a game of leap-frog on the sands—a curious contrast to his own declaration that the only exercise he cared for was cribbage.[2]

Stirling Coyne, Daily, W. H. Wills, H. P. Grattan (H. Plunkett, otherwise "Fusbos"), Henning, Henry Baylis, and "Paul Prendergast"—whose "Comic Latin Grammar" had been attracting much attention—were proposed, and Hodder was told off to wait upon the latter. At the adjourned meeting at the "Edinburgh Castle" tavern in the Strand, Somerset House, Postans, William Newman, Baylis (afterwards president of the "Punch Club"), Stirling Coyne, Henning, Mayhew, Landells, and Hodder were present. The latter then explained that "Prendergast" was a young medical man, Percival Leigh by name, who preferred to wait before giving his adhesion until he was satisfied as to the character of the publication; and "Phiz" had returned a similar reply to Mark Lemon—though later on he was glad enough to accept little commissions in the way of drawing initial letters for the paper.

Henning was then nominated cartoonist; Brine, Phillips, and Newman, artists-in-ordinary; and Lemon, Coyne, Mayhew, à Beckett, and Wills, the literary Staff, until the advent of the others, whose adhesion was anxiously awaited. Henry Mayhew, Mark Lemon, and Stirling Coyne were to be joint editors; Last, of course, was to be printer, and Landells engraver; and W. Bryant publisher. Several more meetings were held—at the "Crown" in Vinegar Yard, at Landells' house, and elsewhere—and in due course Mark Lemon produced the draft prospectus, consisting of three folios of blue paper, which probably contains a good deal more of Mayhew and Coyne than of Mark Lemon. Edmund Yates estimated its chemical composition thus:—

And his estimate was probably correct. This interesting document is here shown in reduced facsimile:—

DRAFT OF THE PUNCH PROSPECTUS, IN MARK LEMON'S HANDWRITING

(Original size of page 5¼ x 3¾ inches.)

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At the head of this announcement there was a woodcut of Lord Morpeth, Lord Melbourne (Prime Minister), and Lord John Russell, who were then in office, but were popularly, and correctly, supposed to be in imminent danger of defeat. The price originally proposed was twopence—the usual price of similar papers of the day—but it was altered to "the irresistibly comic charge of threepence!!" and the title was being given as "The Fun——," when the writer stopped short and erased it. It is generally believed that the intention was to call the paper "The Funny Dog—with Comic Tales," as appears in the final line of the prospectus; a title, moreover, that was employed in 1857 for a book in which more than one Punch man co-operated. A reduced copy of the now rare leaflet as it was printed and circulated by tens of thousands is given on the previous page. "Vates," it should be explained, was the nom de plume of the notorious sporting tipster then attached to "Bell's Life in London."

Preliminary Leaflet
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As to the origin of Punch's name, there are as many versions as of the origin of Punch itself. Hodder declares that it was Mayhew's sudden inspiration. Last asserted that when "somebody" at the "Edinburgh Castle" meeting spoke of the paper, like a good mixture of punch, being nothing without Lemon, Mayhew caught at the idea and cried, "A capital idea! We'll call it Punch!" Jovial Hal Baylis it was, says another, who, when refreshment time came round (it was always coming round with him), gave the hint so readily taken. Mrs. Brezzi, wife of the sculptor, lays the scene of the first meeting in the "Wrekin Tavern," Broad Street, Longacre, and writes that the founders were only prevented from calling the paper "Cupid," with Lord Brougham in that character on the title-page [presumably a mistake for Lord Palmerston, who subsequently was so shown in Punch by Brine, picking his teeth with his arrow] by the sight from Joseph Allen's window of a Punch and Judy show in the north-eastern corner of Trafalgar Square. Mrs. Bacon, Mark Lemon's niece, informs me that she distinctly remembers being seated among the gentlemen who met at his rooms in Newcastle Street, and hearing Henry Mayhew suddenly exclaim, "Let the name be 'Punch'!"—a fact engraven on her memory through her childish passion for the reprobate old puppet. Mr. E. Stirling Coyne claims that it was his father who suggested the title at the memorable meeting at Allen's. This, at least, in Lemon's words, is certain: "It was called Punch because it was short and sweet. And Punch is an English institution. Everyone loves Punch, and will be drawn aside to listen to it. All our ideas connected with Punch are happy ones." The decision was not set aside when it was found that Jerrold had edited a "Punch in London" years before, proposed to him a few months earlier by Mr. Mills (of Mills, Jowett, and Mills). But the favour with which the title was received was not universal. "I remember," Mr. Birket Foster tells me, "Landells coming into the workshop and saying, 'Well, boys, the title for the new work is to be Punch.' When he was gone, we said it was a very stupid one, little thinking what a great thing it was to become."

SIGNATURES ON DOCUMENT BY WHICH PUNCH WAS FOUNDED.
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([See Appendix I.])

The business plan was to be a co-operative one. Mayhew, Lemon, and Coyne, it was finally agreed, were to be co-editors and own one-third share as payment.[3] Last was to find the printing and own one share, and Landells was to find drawings and engraving, and own one share. The claims of outside contributors (among whom were Jerrold and à Beckett) and the paper-maker's bill were to be the first charge on the proceeds; and if these were not enough, Landells and Last were to make up the deficiency. So, on the same plan as the first abortive attempt of a "London Charivari," the new paper was embarked on, by men who with but little capital ("it was started with £25—which I found!" says Landells) yet threw themselves into it, and became their own publishers. Advertising to the extent of £111 12s. was ventured on, including "billing in 6 Mags.," "page in 'Master Humphrey's Clock' twice," 100,000 of the prospectuses reproduced on p. [23],[4] and 2,000 window-bills that bore the design which Henning drew for Punch's cover, after a rough sketch by Landells.

It was a busy fortnight; and it may well be doubted if any other journal of such great eventual popularity has ever been launched with so little preparation. Every technical detail identical with what was employed up to recent years was settled; Henning drew his ill-composed cartoon of "Parliamentary Candidates under Different Heads," roughly done, but not ill-cut; and Mark Lemon, Henry Mayhew, Henry Grattan, Joseph Allen, F. G. Tomlins, Gilbert à Beckett, and W. H. Wills (the biting epigram "To the Black-balled of the United Service Club," i.e. Lord Cardigan, was his), all contributed to the first number. It is an axiom of newspaper conductors that "the first number is always the worst number," and Punch did nothing to disprove the rule. Nevertheless, it was a great success. The tone and quality were far higher in dignity and excellence than was common to an avowedly smart and comic paper—far different from what is suggested by the word "Charivari;" and the public admitted that here was a novel school of comic writing, by a motley moralist and punning philosopher, and hailed with pleasure the advent of a "New Humour."

COVER OF THE FIRST VOLUME OF PUNCH.
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(Designed by A. S. Henning.)

"Out came the first number," wrote Landells. "I shall never forget the excitement of that first number! It was so great that Mr. Mayhew, Mr. Lemon, and myself, sat up all night at the printer's, waiting to see it printed." When "our Mr. Bryant," as the publisher was called, opened the publishing office on that memorable 17th of July, at 13, Wellington Street, Strand, the unexpected demand for the paper raised the expectations and enthusiasm of the confederates to the highest pitch. Mayhew, with Hodder and Landells, walked up and down outside the office and in the neighbouring Strand, discussing the paper and its prospects, and constantly calling to hear from Bryant how things were progressing. At news of each fresh thousand sold, their spirits rose, and their anxiety became satisfaction when the whole edition of five thousand had been taken up by the trade, and another like edition was called for, and, on the following day, was sold out. Ten thousand copies! Ten thousand proofs, they took it, of public sympathy and encouragement.

Such is the outline of Punch's conception and birth, based on many original documents and a mass of evidence, as well as on the independent testimony collected from survivors. In the words of Mr. Jabez Hogg, "Landells and Henry Mayhew were certainly the founders"—the former conceiving the idea of the paper which was presently established, and the latter developing it, as set forth, according to his original views—founding the tradition and personality of "Mr. Punch," and converting him from a mere strolling puppet, an irresponsible jester, into the laughing philosopher and man of letters, the essence of all wit, the concentration of all wisdom, the soul of honour, the fountain of goodness, and the paragon of every virtue.

[Contents]CHAPTER II.

PUNCH'S EARLY PROGRESS AND VICISSITUDES.

Reception of Punch—Early Struggles—Financial Help Invoked—The First Almanac—Its Enormous Success—Transfer of Punch to Bradbury and Evans—Terms of Settlement—The New Firm—Punch's Special Efforts—Succession of Covers—"Valentines," "Holidays," "Records of the Great Exhibition," and "At the Paris Exhibition."

The public reception of the first number of Punch was varied in character. Mr. Watts, R.A., once told me that the paper was regarded with but little encouragement by the occupants of an omnibus in which he was riding, one gentleman, after looking gravely through its pages, tossing it aside with the remark, "One of those ephemeral things they bring out; won't last a fortnight!" Dr. Thompson, Master of Trinity, informed Professor Herkomer that he, too, was riding in an omnibus on the famous 17th of July, when he bought a copy from a paper-boy, and began to look at it with curiosity. When he chuckled at the quaint wit of the thing, "Do you find it amusing, sir?" asked a lady, who was observing him narrowly. "Oh, yes." "I'm so glad," she replied; "my husband has been appointed editor; he gets twenty pounds a week!" One may well wonder who was this sanguine and trustful lady. Mr. Frith describes how, having overheard Joe Allen tell a friend, in the gallery of the Society of British Artists, to "look out for our first number; we shall take the town by storm!" he duly looked out, but was disappointed at finding nothing in it by Leech; and how when he went to a shop for the second number, to see if his idol had drawn anything for it, the newsman replied, "'What paper, sir? Oh, Punch! Yes, I took a few of the first number; but it's no go. You see, they billed it about a good deal' (how well I recollect that expression!), 'so I wanted to see what it was like. It won't do; it's no go.'"

The reception by the press was more encouraging—that is to say, by the provincial press, for the London papers took mighty little notice of the newcomer. The "Morning Advertiser," it is true, quaintly declared in praise of the "exquisite woodcuts, serious and comic," that they were "executed in the first style of art, at a price so low that we really blush to name it;" while the "Sunday Times" and a number of provincial papers of some slight account in their day professed astonishment at the absence of grossness, partisanship, profanity, indelicacy, and malice from its pages. "It is the first comic we ever saw," said the "Somerset County Gazette," "which was not vulgar. It will provoke many a hearty laugh, but never call a blush to the most delicate cheek." They vied with each other in their vocabulary of praise; and as to Punch's quips and sallies, his puns, his propriety, his "pencillings," and his cuts—they simply defied description; you just cracked your sides with laughter at the jokes, and that was all about it.

Yet, notwithstanding all this praise, the paper did not prosper; but whether it was that the price did not suit the public, although the "Advertiser" really blushed to name it, or that Punch had not yet educated his Party, cannot be decided. The support of the public did not lift it above a circulation of from five to six thousand, and on the appearance of the fifth number Jerrold muttered with a snort, "I wonder if there will ever be a tenth!" Everything that could be done to command attention, with the limited funds at disposal, was done. No sooner was Lord Melbourne's Administration defeated and discredited (for the Premier was angrily denounced for hanging on to office), than Punch displayed a huge placard across the front of his offices inscribed, "Why is Punch like the late Government? Because it is Just Out!!" And no device of the sort, or other artifice that could be suggested to the resourceful minds in Punch's cabinet, was left untried. Things were against Punch. It was not only that the public was neglectful, unappreciative. There was prejudice to live down; there were stamp duty, advertisement duty, and paper duty to stand up to; and there were no Smiths or Willings, or other great distributing agencies, to assist.

While Bryant was playing his uphill game, Punch, written by educated men, was doing his best not only to attract politicians and lovers of humour and satire, but to enlist also the support of scholars, to whom at that time no comic paper had avowedly appealed; and it is doubtless due to the assumption that his readers, like his writers, were gentlemen of education, that he quickly gained the reputation of being entitled to a place in the library and drawing-room, diffusing, so to speak, an odour of culture even in those early days of his first democratic fervour. We had a German "Punchlied," Greek Anakreontics, and plenty of Latin—not merely Leigh's mock-classic verses, but efforts of a higher humour and a purer kind, such, among many more, as the "Petronius," and the clever interlinear burlesque translations of Horace which came from the pen of H. A. Kennedy. Then "Answers to Correspondents" were maintained for a while inside the wrapper, which were witty enough to justify their existence. But it was felt that something more was wanted to make the paper "move;" and the first "Almanac" was decided upon.

The circulation meanwhile had not risen above six thousand, and ten thousand were required to make the paper pay. Stationer and contributors had all been paid, and "stock" was now valued at £250. That there was a constant demand for these back numbers (on September 27th, 1841, for example, £1 3s. 4½d.-worth were sold "over the counter"), was held to prove that the work was worth pushing; but it seemed that for want of capital it would go the way of many another promising concern. The difficulties into which Punch had fallen soon got noised abroad, and offers of assistance, not by any means disinterested, were not wanting to remind the stragglers of their position. Helping hands were certainly put out, but only that money might be dropped in. Then Last declined to go on. He had neither the patience nor the speculative courage of the Northumbrian engraver, and money had, not without great difficulty and delay, been found to pay him for his share—which had hitherto been a share only of loss. The firm of Bradbury and Evans had been looked to as a deus ex machinâ to take over the printing, and lift Punch out of the quagmire by acquiring Last's share and interest for £150. The offer was entertained, and an agreement drafted on September 25th, when, on the very same day, Bradbury and Evans wrote to withdraw, on the ground that they found the proposed acquisition "would involve them in the probable loss of one of their most valuable connections." Landells, who always regarded this action—without any definite grounds that I can discover—as a diplomatic move to involve him and his friends still more, so that more advantageous salvage terms might be made, hurriedly cast about for other succour, and alighted on one William Wood, printer, who lent money, but whose agreement as a whole was not executed, as it was considered "either usurious or exorbitant" by their solicitors, who characteristically concluded their bill thus:—"Afterwards attending at the office in Wellington Street to see as to making the tender, and to advise you on the sufficiency thereof, but you were not there; afterwards attending at Mr. H. Mayhew's lodging, but he was out; afterwards attending at Mr. Lemon's, and he was out; and we were given to understand you had all gone to Gravesend"—showing the one touch of nature which made all Punch-men kin.

In due course Landells acquired Last's share, and the printing was executed successively by Mr. Mitchell and by Mills, Jowett, and Mills, until it slid by a sort of natural gravitation into the hands of Bradbury and Evans. Landells had endeavoured to interest his friends in the paper, but soon discovered the fatal truth that one's closest friends are never so close as when it is a question of money.

Then came the Almanac, upon which were based many hopes that were destined to be more than realised. It has hitherto been considered as the work of Dr. Maginn, at that time, as at many others, an unwilling sojourner in a debtor's prison. But H. P. Grattan has since claimed the distinction of being, like the doctor, an inmate of the retreat known as Her Majesty's Fleet, where he was visited by Henry Mayhew. Mayhew, he said, lived surreptitiously with him for a week, and during that time, without any assistance from Dr. Maginn, they brought the whole work to a brilliant termination. Thirty-five jokes a day to each man's credit for seven consecutive days in the melancholy privacy of a prison cell is certainly a very remarkable feat—hardly less so than the alleged fact that Mayhew, who proposed the Almanac, as he proposed so many other good things for Punch, should have gone to the incarcerated Grattan for sole assistance, when he and his co-editors had so many capable colleagues at large. The claim does not deserve full credence, especially in face of Landells' declaration that "everyone engaged on it worked so admirably together, and it was done so well, that the town was taken by surprise, and the circulation went up in that one week from 6,000 to 90,000—an increase, I believe, unprecedented in the annals of publishing." The Almanac became at once the talk of the day; everybody had read it, and a contemporary critic declared that its cuts "would elicit laughter from toothache, and render gout oblivious of his toe."

Now, although Bradbury and Evans had hesitated to become proprietors, they had had no objection to act as printers and publishers, and when the editors approached them they lent a ready ear. "It was Uncle Mark," said "Pater" Evans at the "Gentleman's Magazine" dinner in 1868, "who was the chief conspirator when they brought Punch to Whitefriars; it was his eloquence alone that induced us to buy Punch. Jerrold did not say much, but he supported his friend, you may be sure. They talked us over very easily." They bought the editors' share for £200, which they advanced on the security of the whole. Into the circumstances of the subsequent squabbles between Landells and the firm it is not needful to enter. He bitterly complained that he could obtain neither statements of accounts nor satisfactory arrangement, while the firm withheld their favourable consideration of the agreements his solicitors sent them to sign. The negotiations proceeded wearily from April, 1842, to December 24th, with rising wrath on the part of the good-hearted, impatient Northumbrian, who could neither understand nor brook the repeated delays, and fairly boiled over with indignation, suspicion, and wrath. In despair, so Landells recorded, that his lawyers could get no satisfaction, and yet "not willing to put the whole thing into Chancery," he blurted out that he should buy back Bradbury and Evans' share or they acquire his. As cool business men they promptly asked his price. He named £450, ultimately reducing it to £400, and further to £350, on the understanding, he says, that he should continue to act as engraver; and great were his anger and humiliation when he found after the second week of the new régime that the engraving was taken from him. But it is only fair to say that in his lawyer's instructions there is evidence that Bradbury and Evans persistently declined to give up their freedom in the matter of the engraving. The transfer then took place.[5] On December 23rd, 1842, the firm was already speaking with some authority; the voice was the voice of the printers, but the tone was the tone of proprietors. And that was the passing of Punch. Earlier in the year Landells had made an effort to save the paper by persuading those who worked for it to take shares. With a few he was successful; others were less speculative, so the writer was informed by the late H. G. Hine. "Landells," he said, "asked me to take a share in the paper, but, not being a business man, I declined. When the paper changed hands, Bradbury and Evans bought it for so small an increase on the actual losses and debts, that each man, when the profits were divided, received two-and-sixpence each." Not long after Landells ceased his connection with Punch, Douglas Jerrold met Vizetelly, and acquainted him with the turn of the tide. "Punch is getting on all right now," he said; and added, in his saturnine way, "It began to do so immediately we threw that engraving Jonah overboard!" Yet Jerrold was glad enough to take advantage of the engraving Jonah's influence the following year, when Landells, with Herbert Ingram, N. Cooke, T. Roberts, W. Little, and R. Palmer started the "Illuminated Magazine," and installed him as editor at a handsome salary.

The following page from Landells' rather rough-and-ready accounts will give some idea of how financial matters stood between the parties at the time of the transfer:—

[Note.—The schedule of documents and legal papers connected with the matters here dealt with, now in possession of Messrs. Bradbury, Agnew and Co., Ltd. (which confirm the particulars derived from Landells' papers) are:—

1. The original Agreement between the original founders of Punch already enumerated. This is dated July 14th, 1841—only three days before the appearance of the paper. It is printed at length as Appendix 1 to this volume.

2. Agreement between Bradbury and Evans and "Punchites," whereby in consideration of a loan of £150 the printing of the paper is assured to the firm. This is dated Oct., 1841, the signatories being E. Landells, Mark Lemon, Henry Mayhew, and Stirling Coyne, with W. H. Wills and G. Windsor as witnesses.

3. The assignment to Landells of Punch and the stock-in-trade by Lemon, Mayhew, and Stirling Coyne. Dated December 6th, 1841.

4. Assignment to Bradbury and Evans by Landells of his two-thirds share of Punch. Dated, July 25th, 1842.

5. Assignment of his remaining one-third to Bradbury and Evans by Landells, in consideration of £100 cash and their acceptance for £250 due Jan. 31st, 1843, their mortgage on this share to be cancelled. This deed is dated Dec. 29th, 1842, and is in the terms of Landells' letter of agreement of the previous 24th.]

The new proprietors, when they acquired their interest in Punch, were not then distinguished publishers such as they soon became; they were essentially printers, and had few connections to assist them in making it into a paying property. They had, however, W. S. Orr & Co. (the London agents of Chambers, of Edinburgh), who had fallen into financial difficulties, and looked to Bradbury and Evans to help them out; and through their organisation Punch was taken up by the trade "on sale or return." To work up the sale of a threepenny publication was at that time a formidable task; but Orr certainly accomplished it, and for a time Punch undoubtedly owed more to his efforts than to Jerrold's pen or Leech's pencil. The head of the firm, in both senses, was William Bradbury, the keenest man of business that ever trod the flags of Fleet Street, and the founder of a dynastic line nearly as long and eminent as that of John Murray himself. His portrait may be seen in Punch more than once—for example, in Tenniel's drawing of the Staff at play at the beginning of Vol. XXVII, 1854, where his tall, imposing figure contrasts with that of his partner, Frederick Mullett ("Pater") Evans, who appears with shining spectacles, beaming countenance, and convex waistcoat. Jolly old "Pater," who died in 1870, was the model of Leech's pater-familias; and it is remembered to his credit that he never resented the liberty taken with him by Thackeray in "The Kickleburys on the Rhine." It has always been the graceful and feeling practice of Punch, ever since the death of Dr. Maginn, to whom a kindly obituary was devoted in 1842, to do honour in his pages to each of his lieutenants as they drop out of the ranks, recognising misfortune and death—both "devil's inventions," as Ruskin calls them—as toll-gates on the path of life, with sorrow as the tax; so that these more solemn articles and mortuary elegies seem to mark the way, like milestones set by loving hands. To Evans one of these was raised, and we read in it that "they who inscribe these lines to his memory will never lament a more kind, more genial, or more loyal friend."

BRADBURY AND EVANS

(From Photographs by A. Bassano Limited.)

The next head of the firm was William Hardwick Bradbury, who had been at school with Mr. Justice Romer, the husband of Mark Lemon's daughter; and the house then became Bradbury, Evans & Co. He married the daughter of Mr. Thomas Agnew; and when, in 1872, Mr. F. M. Evans (the son of "Pater") left the firm, after having attended the Dinner for five years as the son of his father, and sat for another seven years at the tail of the Table by right of proprietorship, the business was reinforced by the inclusion of the house of Agnew. It then became Bradbury, Agnew & Co., and it has been thought that Sir William Agnew's personality has tended to colour Punch up to a certain point with just a shade of his own Liberal political opinions. Messrs. W. H. Bradbury, William Agnew, Thomas Agnew, and John Henry Agnew were then the members of the firm, which a few years since was converted into a limited company; and on the death of the first-named, Mr. W. Lawrence Bradbury took his father's place as managing head of the house, with Mr. Philip Agnew as colleague: young men, surely, to succeed to the direction of a house which had been the publisher of Thackeray and Dickens, founders of "The Field," "The Army and Navy Gazette," printers of the "Family Herald" and "London Journal," of the "Daily News," the "English Encyclopedia," and other huge undertakings. With the advent of the younger generation came some of those technical alterations and improvements which have brought the production of Punch abreast of the times; but the older traditions, in particular that great institution of the Punch Dinner, have been reverently and lovingly retained in all their admirable features.

BRADBURY, AGNEW and Co.

(From Photographs by A. Bassano, Limited.)

It is not surprising that after the striking success of the experiment the Almanac became a permanent annual institution. Into so important a publication did it develop, commercially speaking, that a special "Almanac Dinner" has up to recent years always been considered necessary, at which its chief contents are arranged, just as at the ordinary weekly Dinner. Hine, Kenny Meadows, and others assisted in the production of the first two or three Almanacs; but after that, and for many years, practically the whole of the illustrative work usually fell on the broad and entirely competent shoulders of John Leech, especially after Doyle's secession. From time to time experiments have been made in the direction of novelty. Thus in 1848, in consequence of the great popularity of the issue, a luxurious edition was prepared, at the price of five shillings for the coloured and half that sum for the uncoloured copies, wherein, it was claimed, "full effect is given to the artists' designs." It was certainly an imposing affair, with meadows of margin, and printed on one side only of the thick paper; and it now commands a price in the bookshops of five or six times its original cost.

Humour for private as well as for public consumption has always been a rule in the Punch circle; and in 1865, a year in which influenza colds were extremely prevalent, this pleasing faculty was given full scope. Most of the Staff that Christmas were afflicted with severe colds; so with amiable consideration the copies of the Almanac provided for them and for some of the chief contributors were printed upon linen—lest their supply of handkerchiefs should run short. They were charming and cheerful in appearance, being handsomely bound and stitched with red, and presented unusual advantages in the way of utility and entertainment. Of recent years the Almanacs have had admirably drawn wrappers, specially designed. In 1882 Mr. Burnand tested the powers of our humorous painters outside, in addition to Punch's own Staff, including Mr. Stacy Marks, R.A., Mr. G. A. Storey, A.R.A., and Sir John Gilbert, R.A.; but the result was an argument in favour of Staff-work over outside contribution. Among other experiments, colour was tried with a view to rendering further homage to Sir John Tenniel's cartoon, by printing it on a tinted background, in the manner of Matt Morgan's famous designs in the "Tomahawk." But the idea, which originated with the late Mr. Bradbury, did not answer expectations, and the attempt was abandoned.

The success that immediately attended the Almanac naturally attracted the attention of the pirates, and hatched the brood of spurious and coarse imitations given forth by such notorious printers and publishers as Goode, Lloyd, and Lyle. But Punch had a short legal way with him that soon scared them off, and the merry Hunchback is now left supreme in his own sphere. He not only, as the "Times" said, "commences the winter season for us with the 'Almanac,' but he continues the tradition of Charles Dickens by retaining for Christmastide much of the fine hearty old flavour which the great novelist imparted to it—that jovial, tender, charitable, roast-goose spirit that exhales from it, the Spirits of Christmas Present and Christmas Past." "Christmas without the Christmas number of Punch," exclaimed the "Saturday Review" not long ago, "would be a Christmas without plum-pudding, mince-pies, turkey, and children's parties—it would not be Christmas at all!"

Another result of the constant search for freshness was the changing of the design on the cover of each consecutive volume. Any change from that of Henning could only be a change for the better, so a second application was made to Hablôt Knight Browne ("Phiz") for his collaboration. Well satisfied by this time with the tone of the paper, he gladly responded. The result was a refined and artistic page, crowded with figures, rather graceful and quaint than funny; and although, to Leech's horror, a barrel-organ figured in it, it served its purpose admirably.

PUNCH'S SECOND WRAPPER, DESIGNED BY "PHIZ." JANUARY, 1842.
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PROPOSED WRAPPER FOR THIRD VOLUME. SKETCH BY H. G. HINE. NOT ADOPTED.
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For the next volume a sketch was made by H. G. Hine, based on a slighter one by Landells. It was not used, however, as intended, but adapted as the index-heading; and William Harvey, the Shakespearian illustrator, was requested to undertake a design to replace it. This, though yet more graceful than Browne's, was less suitable than ever. Babes like amorini toying with Punch's cap and bâton, bells and mask, were very pretty and charming, but a good deal too much in the style of Rubens or Stothard; and what was thought more unsuitable still was the price. Mr. Birket Foster has borne witness to the consternation in the office when the charge of twelve guineas was sent in with the design—nearly half the total capital with which Landells a year before had begun the concern!

PUNCH'S THIRD WRAPPER, DESIGNED BY WILLIAM HARVEY. JULY, 1842.
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PUNCH'S FOURTH WRAPPER. DESIGNED BY SIR JOHN GILBERT. JANUARY, 1843.
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PUNCH'S FIFTH WRAPPER, DESIGNED BY KENNY MEADOWS. JULY, 1843.
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PUNCH'S SIXTH WRAPPER, DESIGNED BY RICHARD DOYLE. FIRST DESIGN. JANUARY, 1844.
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Six months later Sir John Gilbert—then a youth doing great things for the "Illustrated London News"—was commissioned to draw another front page. This was subsequently used until recent years as the pink cover of Punch's monthly parts. A cover was produced by Kenny Meadows, and then for January, 1844, Richard Doyle, the latest recruit, whose merit had been quickly gauged, was employed to execute the new one. This wrapper was far more in accord with the true spirit of Punch. More sportive and rollicking, and with less attempt at grace, it threw over the style of the "Newcastle School"—of which Landells was a member—and gave the general idea of the latest of all covers. This was not executed until January, 1849, when several changes of detail were made, including the substitution of the smug lion's head for that of Judy in the canvas—the whole so successful that it may safely be predicted that it will never be superseded.

PUNCH'S SIXTH AND LAST WRAPPER, DESIGNED BY RICHARD DOYLE. SECOND DESIGN. JANUARY, 1849.
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Such are the covers—comprising what Mr. W. Bradbury used to call "our wardrobe of old coats"—which, though interesting enough in themselves, certainly included nothing to equal the last design, by which Doyle's name is best known throughout the artistic world.

Guided by the success of the first Almanac, the conductors decided to work the same oracle by publishing "extra numbers" at every promising opportunity. "Mr. Mayhew, Mr. Jerrold, and I," says Landells, "happened to spend a few days in the summer at Herne Bay, and there 'Punch's Visit to the Watering Places' was projected. These articles gave Punch another great lift. Messrs. Mayhew, Mark Lemon, Douglas Jerrold, and I, did Herne Bay, Margate, Broadstairs, and Ramsgate, and I never enjoyed myself more than on this, to me, memorable occasion. Albert Smith did Brighton. Punch thenceforth became an established favourite with the public, and the weekly circulation averaged over 30,000."

Just before this lucky stroke, another not less fortunate as a succes d'estime, if nothing more, was "Punch's Valentines"—at that time considered a most remarkable production; for there were no fewer than twelve half-page engravings within its full-page borders—a generous amount that puzzled the public far more than ten times as much and as good would do to-day. Kenny Meadows, "Phiz,"[6] Leech, Crowquill, Henning, and Newman, contributed each two "valentines," which were addressed to various sorts and conditions of people, accompanied by verses of considerable humour and more than average merit. Thus, to the lawyer—whom "Phiz" has represented as a mixture, in equal parts, of Squeers, Brass, and Quilp—the lines begin in a manner not unworthy of Hood himself:—

"Lend me your ears, thou man of law,
While I my declaration draw,
Your heart in fee surrender;
As plaintiff I my suit prefer,
'Twould be uncivil to demur,
Then let your plea be—tender."

The invocation which follows, to a gorgeous footman, by some love-smitten serving-maid, ends—

"But now fare thee well!—with your ultimate breath,
When you answer the door to the knocking of Death,
On your conscience, believe me, 'twill terribly dwell,
If now you refuse to attend to the belle!"

In August, 1850, in the extra number called "Punch's Holidays," that was done for the outskirts of London which eight years before had been done for the watering-places. It was illustrated by Leech and Doyle, and, it may be added, the Hampton Court section was written by Thackeray. Then when the great Shakespeare Tercentenary was being celebrated, with singularly little éclat so far as the Shakespeare Committee itself was concerned, Punch produced his "Tercentenary Number." It was in all respects admirable, and Tenniel's double-page cartoon was a striking success—as might have been expected from a Staff so remarkably well versed in Shakespeare. In that cartoon the poet's triumphal car, drawn by twin Pegasi and driven by Mr. Punch, is followed by a motley procession, in which Mark Lemon, in the character of John Bull, appears adapted as Prospero (one of the best of the many portraits of the editor that have appeared in the paper), while a typically malignant organ-grinder is Caliban, and all the leading statesmen and sovereigns are represented in Shakespearian character appropriate to the circumstances; the "Standard" and "Morning Herald," two of Punch's pet aversions and journalistic butts, bringing up the rear as the Witches in "Macbeth," Mesdames Gamp and Harris. The illustrators of this exceptionally happy number were—besides Sir John Tenniel—Charles Keene, Mr. du Maurier, and Mr. Fairfield.

Then came the unwieldy "Records of the Great Exhibition, extracted from Punch" on October 4th, 1851. Punch had made a dead-set against the exhibition in Hyde Park (until his friend Paxton was appointed its architect, subsequently earning £20,000 by the work), and, according to Mr. Justin McCarthy, "was hardly ever weary of making fun of it ... and nothing short of complete success could save it from falling under a mountain of ridicule. The Prince did not despair, however, and the project went on." And when it was a fait accompli, Punch, good man of business that he was, at once put it to the best possible advantage, by issuing his enormous "extra" of nine previously-published cartoons by Tenniel and Leech, and many other cuts besides—the whole, in point of its double-folio size, more suitable for street display than library reading. The price was sixpence, and with all the special matter it contained it was one of the cheapest productions ever issued from that office.

With the special Paris Exhibition number, produced in celebration of the Exhibition of 1889, the list of extra numbers issued by Punch for general circulation comes to a close. Nearly the whole of the Staff, including the proprietors, travelled to Paris together—how luxuriously, Mr. Furniss's drawing of their dining-saloon gives a good notion; it contains (with Sir John Tenniel and Mr. Lucy) portraits of all who were present. Charles Keene had stayed at home; he felt unequal to the jaunt, and was, in fact, sickening for the mortal illness which soon had him in its grip. The "Paris Sketches" in the number that bear his signature were—like the "war correspondence from the front" concocted in Fleet Street—quietly drawn at home down at Chelsea. One thing primarily the number showed: that Punch's national prejudices have mellowed with time, and that a Frenchman may be accepted as a cultivated gentleman and a genial companion—a very different being to him whom Leech habitually drew as a flabby-faced refugee in Leicester Square, "with estaminet clearly written across his features," while Thackeray applauded the conception in his most righteous hatred and contempt for all things vile.

Two other special means has Punch adopted with the view of pleasing his constituents and confounding his enemies, exclusive of the mock Mulready envelope known as the "Anti-Graham Envelope" and the "Wafers," which are elsewhere referred to. The first of these was the music occasionally printed in his pages from the hand of his own particular maestro, Tully, the well-known member of the Punch Club, whose musical setting of "The Queen's Speech, as it is to be sung by the Lord Chancellor," appeared in 1843; the polka, at the time when that dance was a novel and a national craze, dedicated to the well-known dancing-master, Baron Nathan; "Punch's Mazurka," in Vol. VIII. (1845); and one or two other pieces besides. The other was a coloured picture representing a "plate"—a satire on the poor and inartistic "coloured plates" then being issued by S. C. Hall's "Art Union." It was a clever lithographic copy of an ordinary "willow pattern" plate; a homely piece of crockery, broken and riveted, beneath which is inscribed: "To the Subscribers to the Art Union this beautiful plate (from the original in the possession of the Artist) is presented, as the finest specimen of British Art, by Punch." It was designed by Horace Mayhew; but the edition was extremely limited—not a hundred copies, it is understood—on account of the expense, which it was thought was not justified by the excellence or the likely popularity of the joke.

Such have been some of Punch's efforts outside the usual routine, and the result has been the continual popularisation of the paper. Volume after volume, too, in various forms, has been republished, culminating in the "Victorian Era," "Pictures from Punch," and "Sir John Tenniel's Cartoons;" and each one has but served to attract the favourable notice of the public to the ordinary issue. So Punch has developed his power and his resources. To him one might almost apply what a Welshman said of his friend: "I knew him when he wass a ferry poor man—quite a poor man walking about in the village; and now he drives in his carriage and twice!"

[Contents]CHAPTER III.

"Here let us sport,
Boys, as we sit;
Laughter and wit
Flashing so free.
Life is but short—
When we are gone,
Let them sing on,
Round the old tree."
—Thackeray's "Mahogany Tree."

THE PUNCH DINNER AND THE PUNCH CLUB.

Origin and Antiquity of the Meal—Place of Celebration—The "Crown"—In Bouverie Street and Elsewhere—The Dining-Hall—The Table—And Plans—Jokes and Amenities—Jerrold and his "Bark"—A Night at the Dinner—From Mr. Henry Silver's Diary—Loyalty and Perseverance of Diners—Charles H. Bennett and the Jeu d'esprit—Keene Holds Aloof—Business—Evolution of the Cartoon—Honours Divided—Guests—Special Dinners, "Jubilee," "Thackeray," "Burnand," and "Tenniel"—Dinners to Punch—The Punch Club—Exit Albert Smith—High Spirits—"The Whistling Oyster"—Baylis as a Prophet—"Two Pins Club."

Among the Parliaments of Wits and the Conclaves of Humorists the weekly convention known as "the Punch Dinner" holds highest rank, if importance is to be judged by results and pre-eminence by renown. For three-and-fifty years have these illustrious functions been held, fifty to the year. And those two thousand six hundred and fifty meals mark off, week by week, the progress of English humour during the Victorian era—not the humour of literature alone, but the humour, as well as the technical excellence, of one of the noblest and most vigorous and delightful of all the sections of English art.

This solemn festivity, therefore, has a solid claim to being included among the scenes of English artist-life. If it be conceded, as I think it must, that Punch has been for half a century an effective, even a glorious, school of art—of drawing in black-and-white and of wood-cutting alike—it follows that the weekly repast which has helped to bring these things about claims attention and respect among the Diets of the world, and demands a first place in virtue of public service and by right of artistic performance.

But it is not in the spirit nor with the fashionable view of the Royal Academicians and their imposing banquet that the members of the Punch staff hold their weekly junket. "We English," said Douglas Jerrold, "would dine to celebrate the engulfing of England." Yet if "the Punchites" share the feeling of old Timon that "we must dine together," it is neither for purposes of self-congratulation, nor yet of hospitality. Though good-fellowship is near the genesis of the institution, work and serious aim are at the root of it all, and in the midst of all the merry-making are never for a moment forgotten.

Nevertheless, conviviality, you may be sure, counted for something in the arrangement when Queen Victoria's reign was young. Clubs there were not a few about Fleet Street and the Strand, where the men who founded Punch, and their friends and enemies alike in similar walks of life, would hob-nob together, and where the sharp concussions of their diamond-cut-diamond wit would emit the sparks and flashes that were remembered and straightway converted into "copy." In those early days the flow of soul was closely regulated by the flow of liquor, and the most modest of Dinners was food at once to body and to mind. "What things," wrote Beaumont in his Letter to Ben Jonson—

"What things have we seen
Done at the 'Mermaid'! Heard words that have been
So nimble and so full of subtile flame,
As if that every one from whom they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life."

As in Elizabethan times, so in the days of Victoria. The Punch Dinners of the last few decades would, in their excellence and refinement, have astonished the merry crew of old; but the entertainment is now but the prelude to business, and not, as in the earlier struggling months, the powder that served to fire off the great guns of humour. The weekly Dinner was evolved from the gatherings that were held nearly every evening, as well as Saturday-nightly, in the anxious days that preceded—and immediately succeeded, too—the laboured birth of Punch. The first of these—the very first "Punch Dinner," strictly so-called—was held at "La Belle Sauvage," Ludgate Hill, on the spot now occupied by the publishing firm of Cassell and Company. Hine was one of those present at this historic feast, having been already impressed by Landells into the service of the paper. I may add, as a matter of minor history, that Mr. Price, the owner of the hostelry, advertised his house in the early numbers of Punch: a fact which suggests (perhaps unjustly) a mysterious financial understanding on the score of his bill—especially as Mr. Price was a brother-in-law of Bradbury the First. These tavern repasts were soon divided up between those who wished to work and those who wished to play; and the Punch Dinner and the "Punch Club" were in due course established as separate institutions. For all that, the meetings of both were held in the "Crown Inn" in Vinegar Yard, just off Drury Lane, and the "Club" was not long after (1843) celebrated in the pages of Punch itself by the "Professor," Percival Leigh, in his choicest dog-Latin—his most elegant latin de cuisine—or, as he himself called it, "Anglo-Græco-Canino-Latinum." The lines, a parody of Goldsmith's "Retaliation," begin thus:—

"Sunt quidam jolly dogs, Saturday qui nocte frequentant
Antiqui Στἑφανον qui stat prope mœnia Drurî,
Βουλὁμενοι cum prog distendere rather,
Indulgere jocis, necnon Baccho atque tobacco..."

—lines which, with a few of the succeeding ones, I may render thus, the spirit and the text being followed as closely as may be:—

"Some jolly dogs on Saturdays at fall of night are fain
To haunt the 'Crown' beside old Drury, hard by Drury Lane;
Their object, to expand themselves with dainties of the feed
And give the hour to jest and wine, and smoke the fragrant weed.
Such fellows, sure, ne'er graced before that jovial mundane hole.
To them I sing this song of praise—those mighty men of soul,
Whose fame henceforth shall spread abroad, so long as time shall roll.

"The 'Crown' stands in a quiet yard, yet near the noisy street;
'Tis their local habitation—in its dining-room they meet.
The massive table, brightly spread, groans with the mighty feast.
The viands change. To-day 'tis beef with Yorkshire pudding dressed;
Next week perchance the dish that Hodge will grinningly define
As 'leg o' mutton, boiled, with trimmings.' Heartily they dine.
Here flows the Double X, and flows the Barclay-Perkins brew;
Nor is there lack of modern sack that best is known to you
When waiters call it 'off-n-off'—which waiters mostly do."

Here it was that the wits of pen and pencil first laid their heads together in the service of Mr. Punch; and when they left for more private, if not more venerable, quarters, the room was occupied, first, by comrades of the same order of wit—among whom Augustus Mayhew, James Hannay, Watts Phillips, and others started a short-lived comic broad-sheet called "The Journal for Laughter;" and then by "The Reunion Club"—a côterie which, in 1857, was to become far more widely known under the style and title of the "Savage Club." It was situated next door to the "Whistling Oyster," and faced a side entrance to Drury Lane Theatre—a fairly large first-floor room, looking larger by reason of its low ceiling, but well lighted by its three high windows. When I visited it in 1893, the wooden staircase had been replaced by a steep stone-way; but the approach and the ascent were still steep enough to make one wonder how the portly Lemon could, without difficulty or fear of accident, scale the classic heights, and twist his body to the needful turns.

PUNCH'S FIRST DINING-ROOM, "CROWN INN," VINEGAR YARD.

Although, as I have said, conviviality and convenience were essentially identified with the Punch Dinner, especially in its embryonic stage, when frequent interviews were necessary and the daily occupations of many of the Staff precluded an earlier attendance, it was quickly seen that the chief practical use and effect of the Dinner was to broaden the men's view of things, to produce harmony of tone and singleness of aim, to keep the Editor constantly in touch with his whole Staff, and through them with the public; and thus to secure the fullest advantage which their combined wit and counsel could afford. When the transfer of the paper was completed from Ebenezer Landells to the house of Bradbury and Evans, the regular Dinners were soon established at No. 11, Bouverie Street, E.C., now given over to the Posts and Telegraphs. The second floor was considered not too undignified for the purpose; but the descent to the first was made in good time, Mark Lemon taking the vacated room for his editorial office; and when in 1867 a general removal was effected to No. 10, the present dining-room—or Banqueting-Hall, as it was finely called—was specially constructed for its high purpose. At first these repasts were held on Saturday night, when the paper was made up and sent away to press. But when the true value of the meetings became apparent, the day was changed to Wednesday. The Dinner was established ostensibly for the discussion and determining of the "big cut," and the function became as exclusive and esoteric as a Masonic initiation. From that day to this it has, with few exceptions, been held januis clausis; and beside it the Literary Ladies' Dinner and Bluebeard's Chamber are as open to the world and free from mystery as the public streets at noon.

PUNCH'S PRESENT DINING-HALL IN BOUVERIE STREET, WHITEFRIARS.

The room in which it was held, so long the Temple of the Comic Muse, had little in itself to command the attention of the superficial observer. The stairs which Thackeray trod, and which resounded to the quick light step of Jerrold and to the heavier tread of Leech, exist no longer; but the classic shrine is practically as it was when the "Fat Contributor," pushing roughly past the young 'prentice engraver who opened the door to his ring, gave no thought to him who was soon to make the name of Birket Foster famous in the land.

MARK LEMON'S MONOGRAM,
CUT ON THE PUNCH TABLE.

To-day a large—one might say an imposing—apartment on the first floor looking upon the street is approached, as most front offices in London City are approached, from a landing leading through an open office. Upon the table are a water-jug and a couple of goblets of cheap and distinctly unlovely Bohemian glass. A tobacco-box, hardly less ugly (coëval, one would say, with the room itself), a snuff-box, and long pipes serve to recall that respect for the past and for tradition which is one of the most delightful, as it is one of the most successful, elements in Punch's composition. Here you may see Sir John Tenniel's long churchwarden, with his initials marked upon it, and Charles Keene's little pipe—for these two men would ever prefer a stem between their teeth to a cigar-stump. Statuettes in plaster of John Leech and of Thackeray, by Sir Edgar Boehm, as well as a bust of Douglas Jerrold, decorate the mantelpiece or the dwarf-cupboard; and on the walls are many frames of abiding interest.

PERCIVAL LEIGH'S MONOGRAM.

JOHN LEECH'S INITIALS AND CYPHER.

Here you have the portraits of the four editors—that of Mark Lemon painted by Fred Chester, son of his life-long friend George Chester, and the likenesses of Shirley Brooks, Tom Taylor, and Mr. Burnand in photography. The portraits of the Staff, taken by Bassano in 1891 at Mr. William Agnew's request, to the number of fourteen or fifteen, hang separately in their dark frames. The original of one of Tenniel's Almanac designs; a masterly drawing, two feet long, by Keene, bought by the late Mr. Bradbury at a sale—the (unused) cartoon of Disraeli leading the principal financiers of the day in hats and frock-coats across the Red Sea ("Come along, it's getting shallower"); the original of Leech's celebrated "Mr. Punch's Fancy Ball," and a series of the enlarged coloured prints of his hunting sketches; a caricature of Mr. Furniss by Mr. Sambourne, made in Paris; another of Mr. Sambourne by Mr. Furniss; and a third of Mr. Sambourne by himself; a caricature in pen-and-ink and colour of the Punch Staff marching along in Paris, by Mr. Furniss; a black-and-white sketch by the same artist of the same distinguished company in the train on the return journey; and another souvenir of the Paris trip by Mr. du Maurier, including the portraits of himself, Mr. Burnand, Mr. Arthur à Beckett, and Mr. W. Bradbury. The trophy-frame of specimen proofs of some of the finest of Swain's cuts of the artistic Staff's best work, gathered together for show in one of the great exhibitions, has been removed to make room for photographs of Gilbert à Beckett, "Ponny" (Horace) Mayhew, Charles Keene, Tom Taylor, Percival Leigh, Charles H. Bennett, R. F. Sketchley, John Henry Agnew, Thomas Agnew and William Bradbury, Mr. Fred Evans and Sir William Agnew; while photographic groups of the Staff and a fine autotype of Thackeray complete the wall decoration of one of the most interesting apartments in London City.

W. M. THACKERAY'S MONOGRAM

HORACE MAYHEW'S INITIALS.

And in the corner, on the locker farthest from the street, besides a little papier-mâché figure of a Japanese Punch—sent by an admirer in the Land of the Rising Sun—and a group charmingly modelled from Sir John Tenniel's beautiful cartoon of "Peace and the New Year," stands the statue of the Great Hunchback himself, which in a fit of enthusiasm a young German sculptor, named Adolph Fleischmann, wrought and presented to the object of his admiration. It is a work of no little grotesqueness and ingenuity (well modelled and coloured, and fitted with springs that permit of the working of arms and eyes and head), which, endowed with a white favour, has played its part in the decoration of the publishing office on the occasion of certain royal weddings and public rejoicing, and during the blocking of Fleet Street has been utilised in the direction of comic self-advertisement.

Then there is a real "Royal Patent" appropriately framed, "hereby appointing Master Punch unto the Place and Quality of Joke Maker Extraordinary to her Majesty," duly signed and sealed by the Lord Chamberlain, and countersigned "J. A. N. D. Martin." It is undoubtedly a genuine certificate—up to a point; but how it was obtained, and how Punch's name came to be filled in, remains to this day a mystery. Such is the room, with its pleasant decoration of red and black and gold, with its large windows and its sunlight gaselier; but, take it for all in all, it is about as unlike Mr. Sambourne's classic representation of the Roman atrium in his Jubilee drawing as well could be imagined.

TOM TAYLOR'S INITIALS

SIR JOHN TENNIEL'S MONOGRAM.

And the Table itself—the Table—the famous board of which we all have heard, yet none, or but very few of us, have seen—I myself amongst the fortunate few! As a piece of furniture this hospitable, but rather primitive, piece of joinery is not of much account, the top being of plain deal (pace Thackeray's "Mahogany Tree"), oblong in shape, with rounded ends. But its associations render it a treasure among treasures, a rich and priceless gem. For at this Table nearly every man upon the Staff has, from the day it was made, sat and carved his initials upon it with a penknife, when officially elevated to Punch's peerage. As each has died, his successor has taken his place—just as the Institut de France creates Immortals to fill the chairs made vacant by death—and he has cut his initials or his mark close by those of the men who occupied the place before him. There they are, staring at you from the Table like so many abecedarian skeletons at the feast; and if you take a furtive and hasty peep from the doorway and lift the green protective cloth you catch sight nearest you of a "D. M." in close company with a beautifully-cut "W. M. T." and a monogrammatic leech inside a bottle flanked by a J. and an L.; and you gaze with deep interest on the handiwork of them and of the rest, many of whom have carved their names, as on that Table, deep into England's roll of fame; and of others, too, who, with less of genius but equal zeal and effort, have a strong claim on the gratitude and the recollection of a kindly and laughter-loving people.[7]

SHIRLEY BROOKS' MONOGRAM.

WILLIAM BRADBURY'S INITIALS.

For more than forty years, then, this Table has week by week, with few exceptions, been surrounded by the Staff of the day; and the chair, the self-same old-fashioned wooden editorial armchair, has been filled by the reigning Editor. "With few exceptions," I said; for Bouverie Street has not invariably been the hatching-place of the Cartoon, nor have its walls resounded with absolute regularity to the laughter and the jests of the merry-makers. During the summer the Dinner has been, now and again, and still is, held at Greenwich, at Richmond, Maidenhead, or elsewhere—Hampton Court and Dulwich rather frequently of old, as well as once at Harrow, and sometimes at Purfleet, Windsor, and Rosherville. Sometimes, when occasion has demanded—in the "dead season," maybe, when the attendance at the Table has dwindled, though for no sustained period (it is even on record that the "Dinner" has consisted of a tête-à-tête between Sir John Tenniel and Mr. Arthur à Beckett)—not more than three or four consecutive weeks, certainly—the "Sussex," or more often the old "Bedford Hotel," or latterly the "First Avenue," has been the scene of the feast; while "special dinners" (and they have been many) have been held in special places. And not invariably has the weekly repast been a "dinner" at all, be it observed; for on certain rare occasions, when some important Parliamentary matter has intervened, a luncheon has been held instead. Once, in September, 1845, it was postponed from the Saturday night at the intercession of Charles Dickens, so that a new play by Macready might be produced with the full advantage of the Punch men's presence. And the Dinner was once more made a movable feast, and was held on the Tuesday instead of the Wednesday, on the occasion of the production of Mr. Burnand's and Sir Arthur Sullivan's opera of "The Chieftain" in December, 1894.

F. M. EVANS' INITIALS.
(Unfinished)

HENRY SILVER'S INITIALS.

In the "Bedford Hotel"—beloved of Thackeray, for in it he wrote much of "Henry Esmond," and stayed there when his house was in the painters' hands—the room occupied was that known as the "Dryden." Here the Staff would make no attempt at self-repression; and I have been told how the idle and the curious would congregate outside upon the pavement and listen to the voices of the wits within, and wait to gape at them as they passed in and out.

The places at Table once occupied by the members of the Staff are nowadays regarded as theirs by right. But in earlier days the places were often shuffled, as at a game of "general post." Proof of it may be had from the following plans of the Table between 1855 and 1865—perhaps the most interesting years in the history of Punch, as demonstrating the transitional stage, when the ancient order of things was rapidly developing into the modern as we know them to-day. In 1855, then, the disposition was as follows:—

—only two artists and a half (Thackeray being a commixture of writer and draughtsman) to seven writers and a half!

Five years later—in 1860—the places had changed, partly through death, partly through rearrangement:—

Here the artistic element is seen to be asserting itself to some extent, the proportion between artist and writer being further readjusted after the lapse of another five years: for in 1865 the constitution of the table became—

—the Editor for the first time taking his proper place at the table, although, it is true, it was only at the foot.

To-day the number of the staff has been increased, and the right proportion struck between the pen and the pencil—the Editor, too, presiding.

* Proprietors

F. C. BURNAND'S INITIALS.
(1) On joining the Table, and
(2) on appointment as Editor.

In the decade or so following the death of Douglas Jerrold—roughly corresponding with the period within which the arrangements varied as I have shown—six new appointments were made to the table. These Were: Mr. Henry Silver, In August, 1857; Charles Keene, February, 1860 (after a nine years' probationership); Mr. F. C. Burnand, June, 1863; Mr. G. Du Maurier, November, 1864; Charles H. Bennett, February, 1865 (though ill-health prevented him from taking his place until the following June); and Mr. R. F. Sketchley (till 1894 of the South Kensington Museum), January, 1868. The present Staff, I may add, since Mr. du Maurier's accession, have taken their places at the Table in the following order: Mr. Linley Sambourne, Mr. Arthur à Beckett, Mr. E. J. Milliken, Gilbert à Beckett, Mr. Reginald Shirley Brooks (until 1884), Mr. Henry Lucy, Mr. F. Anstey, Mr. R. C. Lehmann, Mr. E. T. Reed, Mr. Bernard Partridge, and in February, 1895, Mr. Phil May. As Mr. Punch approached man's estate, and arrived at years of artistic discretion, he cultivated a pretty taste in epicurism; until to-day, if report be true, the Dinners (prepared and sent in by Spiers and Pond), the Ayala, and the cigars, are all worthy of the palates of the men whose wit it is theirs to stimulate and nourish. To summon the Staff to these feasts of reason it was in later years the practice to issue printed notices, which after 1870 were superseded by invitation cards drawn by Mr. du Maurier—the design representing Mr. Punch ringing his bell, while the faithful fly hurriedly to respond to the behest. But owing to the number of portraits it contained of old friends now departed, and the painful recollections it consequently aroused, its later use has been discontinued.

GEORGE DU MAURIER'S MONOGRAM.

LINLEY SAMBOURNE'S MONOGRAM.

But when our Democritus boasted fewer years, there was not so much ceremony in his banquet, neither was there so much state; nor was the friendship less keen or the intimacy less enjoyable in Leigh's humbler days of "off-n-off." A wonderful company—a brilliant company; with flashing wit and dazzling sallies, with many "a skirmish of wit between them." From more, the quieter flow of genial humour. And among the rest, the listeners; men—some of them—who prefer to attend than to talk, even to the point of reserve and almost of taciturnity. Such men were John Leech, Richard Doyle, and Charles Keene—whose silence, however, masked subtle minds that were teeming with droll ideas, and as appreciative of humour as the sprightliest. What jokes have been made, what stories told that never have found their way into print! What chaff, what squibs, what caricatures—which it surpasses the wit of a Halsbury or a MacNeill to imagine or condone!

Of what the Punch Dinner was at the time when Thackeray was still of the band, an idea may be formed from the following extract from Mr. Silver's Diary, with which I have been favoured by the writer, who for several years sat at it by right. He calls it—

"A NIGHT AT THE ROUND TABLE."

Scene: Mr. Punch's Banquet Hall at No. 11, Bouverie Street.

Time: Wednesday, March 2nd, 1859, six o'clock p.m.

	F. M. EVANS
W. M. THACKERAY		JOHN LEECH
HORACE MAYHEW		TOM TAYLOR
SHIRLEY BROOKS		HENRY SILVER
PERCIVAL LEIGH		JOHN TENNIEL
	MARK LEMON

'Turbot and haunch of venison—what a good dinner!' says Tenniel, reading menu. Tantalising to Tom Taylor, who has to dine elsewhere; and Thackeray leaves early, to go to an 'episcopal tea-fight,' as he tells us—a jump 'from lively to severe,' to Fulham Palace from the Punch Table.

CHARLES KEENE, R. F. SKETCHLEY,
F. C. BURNAND, SHIRLEY BROOKS, TOM TAYLOR, HORACE MAYHEW, PERCIVAL LEIGH
G. DU MAURIER, JOHN TENNIEL

PUNCH DINNER INVITATION CARD. DRAWN BY G. DU MAURIER.

	F. M. EVANS
W. M. THACKERAY		JOHN LEECH
HORACE MAYHEW		TOM TAYLOR
SHIRLEY BROOKS		HENRY SILVER
PERCIVAL LEIGH		JOHN TENNIEL
	MARK LEMON

Tom merely looks in 'to hear what you fellows say about the Reform Bill,' which Dizzy introduced on Monday. So we begin discussing politics even with the venison. 'Ponny' Mayhew condemns the Bill: does nothing for the working man, he says. Tom thinks that people look to Punch for guidance, and that we ought to be plain-speaking, and take a decided course. 'Professor' Leigh and Mark agree in thinking that we rather should stand by awhile, and see how the stream runs. All seem of opinion that Walpole acted as a man of honour in resigning, not being rich enough to make money of no matter to him.

'Seria mista jocis' being Mr. Punch's motto (though it never has been sanctioned by the Heralds' College), Shirley, apropos of money, asks, 'Why is Lord Overstone like copper?' 'Because he is a Lloyd with tin.' Whereat Thackeray laughs heartily.

ARTHUR À BECKETT'S INITIALS.

E. J. MILLIKEN'S INITIALS.

Odd that there should now be three old Carthusians in Mr. Punch's Council of Ten. Thackeray observes this to the other two of them [J. L. and H. S.], and proceeds to say, 'I went to Charterhouse the other day. Hadn't seen School come out since I left. Saw a touching scene there—a little fellow with his hands held tenderly behind him, and a tear or two still trickling down his rosy cheek, and two little cronies with their arms around his neck; and I well knew what had happened, and how they'd take him away privily, and make him show his cuts!'

'Talking of cuts, Mark, how about the Large one?' Thackeray suggests Lawyer, Doctor, and Schoolmaster, standing in a row as prize boys, and Dizzy presenting them with votes. I propose Diz trying to launch a lop-sided 'Reform' ship, with the title 'Will it Swim?' Mark suggests D. joining hands of artisan and yeoman, giving each of them a vote. Thackeray thinks of workman coming among gentlemen of Parliament and asking, 'What have you done for me?' Professor Leigh considers situation might be shown by Bright and Dizzy poking up the British Lion, for clearly he wants rousing. 'Yes,' says Shirley, 'and when he's roused, you know, we can have another picture of him with his tail and monkey up.' Idea gradually takes shape, and is approved,[8] though Tenniel hardly likes it, and Leech wants to know if Ponny (Mayhew) would not prefer a good old-fashioned tragic cartoon of the virtuous and starving British Workman, with ragged wife and children, and Death a ghastly apparition in the background.

GILBERT À BECKETT'S INITIALS.

HARRY FURNISS'S INITIALS.

This leads to a little spar between Ponny and 'Pater' Evans. Ponny lets fly with great vigour: 'Punch is standing still now; used to take the lead, but no longer dares to do so. Avançons!' waving hand excitedly. Pater calmly answers that the times are altered, and that Punch is going with them. Strong words have done their work, and there's no longer need of them. Nobody now talks about the trampled working man, nor goes trumpeting abroad the dignity of labour. Then Ponny shifts his ground, and complains that many clever fellows who are workers with the pen are now hardly earning more than many workers with the pickaxe. 'Well, it's their own fault,' says Pater; 'they might easily earn more if they were not so idle.' Penny replies they don't want luxuries, being men of simple tastes, and anything but Sybarites. 'So am I,' cries Leech; 'my tastes are very simple. Give me a good day's hunting, and some good claret after it—nothing can be simpler, and I'm really quite contented.'

But Ponny harks back to his 'deuced clever fellows,' applauding one of them especially, a Bohemian friend of his, who, he says politely, is far cleverer a fellow than any at the Punch Table. 'But what has he done?' asks Leech. 'Tell you what he doesn't do,' says Shirley; 'he may write a lot, but he certainly doesn't wash much.' Somebody wonders, if he were proposed for White's Club, whether members would blackball him: and Shirley quotes Charles Lamb's remark, 'What splendid hands he'd hold, if only dirt were trumps!' Then Ponny shouts indignantly, 'There, never mind his hands: think what a clever head he has.'

Here Professor gives a little lecture on phrenology, impelled thereto by Penny's capital allusion. Talking like a book, as his frequent manner is, he expounds in fluent phrase his deeply-rooted faith in this neglected science. To give idea of its importance, he vows he wouldn't keep a housemaid who had a bad head. 'No more would I,' says Shirley; 'I'd send her to the doctor.' 'I mean, a head ill-shapen,' explains Professor blandly, being 'the mildest-mannered man that ever cut a throat'—in argument. 'A well-proportioned head betokens a fine brain: whereas a skull that is cramped contains probably a mean one.' Avows belief not so much in the localisation of organs as in their general development. Here Leech, who hates street music, professes horror at the possible development of organs, and wishes they were localised where nobody could hear them. Paying no heed to this flippancy, Professor explains gravely that peculiar formations incline to special acts, and that the development of certain cranial organs—vulgarly termed 'bumps'—may be lessened or augmented in the course of early schooling. 'Well, I do believe in "bumps,"' says Shirley, speaking with solemnity, 'yes, even in schoolboys' heads—if you knock them well together.'

H. W. LUCY'S INITIALS.

ANSTEY GUTHRIE'S INITIALS.

Mark next has an innings, and tells some of his stage stories. He tells them very funnily, and imitates Macready and many other actors in their vocal mannerisms. And he mimics operatic singers capitally, with sonorous words in mock Italian basso recitative. Among his tales is one of a half-tipsy actor playing in the 'Corsican Brothers' and explaining their fraternal peculiarity—'My brother in Paris is now feeling—hic—precishly shame senshations—hic—as myshelf!' Also tells of his once bringing out a farce called 'Punch' at the Strand Theatre, wherein a parrot played a prominent part. One night a new parrot took its place, and used most dreadful language when the curtain rose.

Story-telling being now the order of the evening, Silver tells of the gun trick being tried in the Far West. One day, just as the conjuror had caught the bullet in his teeth, another whizzed close to his head, and a voice came from the gallery, 'Guess, I nearly had you then, old hoss!' At the next performance a placard was displayed, and gentlemen were begged to leave their rifles with the doorkeeper. Shirley enjoys this, and says, 'Now, don't cry "connu" Ponny! You're always crying "connu" when anyone says anything. And you're always cracking up your chums. If a world was wanted anywhere, you'd say your brother had discovered one and had better be consulted.'

E. T. REED'S INITIALS.

R. C. LEHMANN'S INITIALS.

Ponny then breaks out again with his bilingual vehemence and Parisian gestures. (Some people never can talk French without trying to shrug shoulders.) Brandishing his dessert-knife, he shouts, 'Avançons, mes amis! go ahead, my boys! En avant! Excusez-moi,' and scatters scraps of French about, till Leech cries, 'There, don't talk like a lady's-maid, Ponny; why can't you speak English?' And, to change the talk, he tells of a French sport'man taking his first fences here, with rather a fresh horse which has been lent him. After coming a couple of bad 'croppers,' which he conceives to be the usual style of leaping here in England, he says a little sadly, 'My friend, I t'ank you for your 'orse, bot I t'ink dat I s'all jomp no more at present.'

Somebody caps this with tale of a 'Mossoo' who manifests deep sorrow at the death of an old hare, slain by an English visitor. 'Hélas! il est mort enfin! Mon pauvre vieux! I have shot at him for years! He was all the game I had!'

And Leech tells another story of a foreigner of distinction hunting in the Midlands, and hearing the cry 'Stole away!' and shouting out excitedly, 'Aha, stole a vay, has he, de old t'ief! Den I suppose we s'all not find a vay to him, and so we must go home!' ... Which we do.

J. BERNARD PARTRIDGE'S INITIALS.

Thus, for half a century has Wednesday evening been passed in the editorial office of Punch, just when its readers are discussing the merits of the previous week's issue; and according to the verdict of those readers was attuned the merriment of the Staff. It is on record how Douglas Jerrold would go radiant to the Dinners as "Mrs. Caudle" was sending up Punch's circulation at a rapid rate; "and was one of the happiest among them all." Thackeray, too, first tasted the delights of wide popularity in the success of his "Snob Papers," and he showed the pleasure he felt in his demeanour at the board. At one time these two men sat side by side, and there was as little love as space between them; but with the good-humoured philosophy which is a tradition of that institution, the occasional differences of opinion, and the harder knocks of wit, and sometimes, even, the still sharper encounters of temper, were all glossed over. As Thackeray so truly remarked himself—"What is the use of quarrelling with a man if you have to meet him every Wednesday at dinner?" Nevertheless, in course of time he changed his seat from between Jerrold and Gilbert Abbott à Beckett, and, crossing over, faced his friend the enemy, while Mark Lemon, watchful and alert beneath the cloak of geniality, was quick to cast a damping word on inflammable conversation and—so far as he could persuade them to listen to a man so greatly their inferior in genius and intellect—to stem the threatened outburst. As a matter of fact, Jerrold always regarded Thackeray as a bit of a snob and viewed his entrance into Society—against which Jerrold had for years been hurling his bitterest darts—with very grave suspicion. "I have known Thackeray," he would say, "for eighteen years, and I don't know him yet"—almost in the despairing words in which I have heard a distinguished Academician speak of his still more distinguished President. On the other hand, Mr. Arthur à Beckett has declared to me, "I never knew my brother so well as when I met him at the Punch Table."

PHIL MAY'S INITIALS.

COMMENCEMENT OF
C. H. BENNETT'S MONOGRAM.

In the earliest weeks of Punch's existence Kenny Meadows had been the Nestor of the least; but when Jerrold joined the Staff three months later, he took by force of character and wit, and power of lung, a leading position on the paper and at the Table—a position which he never resigned. Notwithstanding his biting sallies, we may be sure that it was not Jerrold's primary object to make his victims wince. There is no doubt that the "little wine" that so stimulated him to witty and brilliant conversation full of flash and repartee, sometimes turned sour upon his lips, and changed the kindness that was in his heart into a semblance of gall. Mr. Sidney Cooper has gravely set it on record how on leaving the Punch Dinner Jerrold would tie a label with his name and address upon it round his neck, so that, should he in his homeward course be tempted to stray into the path of undue conviviality, he might sooner or later be safely delivered at his destination. Although the statement is in a measure confirmed in the memoirs of Hodder and of Blanchard Jerrold himself, one cannot help being struck at the conflict between it and the story of Jerrold's reply to the drunken young sparks who met him in the street at midnight, and asked him the way to the entertainment known as "Judge and Jury"—"Straight on, straight on as you are going, young gentlemen—you can't miss them!" He was himself greatly pleased with his milder witticisms, and, it is said, chuckled complacently at the neatness of his conceit when toasting Mr. Punch, at one of the Wednesday Dinners, in which he declared that "he would never require spirit while he had such good Lemon-aid." He loved the paper as few others loved it, and very, very rarely missed the weekly gathering—attending it, indeed, up to within a week or so of his death.

Not less scrupulous in his attendance was Gilbert Abbott à Beckett, who, when residing at holiday-times at Boulogne, would regularly come up to town for their Cabinet Council; and if ill-chance unavoidably prevented his wished-for presence, he would write—after the custom adopted by many of his colleagues—a full explanation and apology. But the necessity very seldom arose. True son of his father, Gilbert à Beckett was equally faithful to the Table, and in spite of the paralysis of the legs from which he suffered (and for which he was for a time duly chaffed by the advice of Percival Leigh, lest there might be hysteria about the disease) he attended the Wednesday gatherings with what regularity he could up to within a fortnight before he died. Thackeray, too, for many years after he ceased writing for Punch would weekly join the Staff, and always received a cordial and affectionate welcome. The gentle Leech—who, according to Shirley Brooks, attended the Dinner for more than twenty years without uttering an unkind or an angry word—was at the Table within a few days of his death, but, in Brooks's words, "scarcely seemed to understand what was going on." And yet another member of the Old Guard, who stood by his post to the end, was "The Professor," Percival Leigh, whose sense of wit was dulled with age, but whose mind was otherwise as bright as ever. But at the Dinners the genial, courteous old gentleman was listened to, as ever, with deference by his younger collaborators, and from them he never had cause for suspicion that his powers were failing—

"Full well they laughed, with counterfeited glee,
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he."

Another of Punch's favourite sons was Charles H. Bennett. His life was a hard yet happy one, and his career was short, though not too short for fame; and the last two years during which he sat at the Table were perhaps the merriest of them all. But his attendances, really owing to the illness which ultimately bore him down, were irregular. This irregularity, combined with his habit—then commoner even than now among artists—of wearing his hair very long, brought him one day a letter from his friends and fellow-diners in the following terms:—

"Punch" Council, October 24th, 1866.

"Resolved"—

That this meeting deeply sympathises with C. H. Bennett on the state of his hair.

That this meeting appreciates the feeling which detains the said Bennett from the Council until his hair shall have been cut.

That this meeting deplores the impecuniosity which prevents the said Bennett from attending a Barber.

That this meeting, anxious to receive the said Bennett to its bosom, once more organises a subscription to enable him to attend the said Barber.

That this company, having (limited) confidence in Mr. Mark Lemon, entrusts him with the following subscriptions in aid of the above object, and requests him to communicate with the aforesaid Bennett to the end that he may have his dam hair cut and rejoin the assembly of the brethren.