Of junctions where no union is effected;
Of coaches meeting trains that never come;
Of trains to catch a coach that never goes;
Of trains that start after they have arrived;
Of trains arriving long before they leave.
He bids us "see" some page that can't be found;
Or if 'tis found, it speaks of spots remote
From those we seek to reach! By Bradshaw's aid
You've tried to get to London—I attempted
To get to Liverpool—and here we are,
At Chester—'Tis a junction—I'm content
Our union—at this junction—to cement.
And let us hope, nor you nor I again
May be attacked with Bradshaw on the brain.
Leonora. I'm happy now! My husband!
Orlando. Ah, my bride!
Henceforth take me—not Bradshaw—for your guide.
The curtain falls.
"Orlando's" speech is a good summary of the humours of Bradshaw as analysed in Punch's "Comic Guide" some years later.
From steam to electricity the transition is obvious. Punch notes the adoption of the "Electro-Magnetic Telegraph" by the Great Western Railway in the summer of 1844. In 1845 we read of an electric gun to fire 1,000 balls a minute. The laying of a submarine cable from Dover to Calais is discussed in 1846, but was not realized till five years afterwards, when Punch hailed the completion of the scheme as a new link between the two countries and celebrated it in a cartoon and a sonnet.
Already the influence of electricity on international relations had been foreshadowed, and in the same year in which Palmerston repudiated responsibility for the welcome of Kossuth in England Punch rudely described his message as "electric lying." The days of "wireless diplomacy" in the old sense of the epithet were passing, to the embarrassment of representatives who were within immediate hail of the central Government. Soon we begin to hear complaints of the new service on the score of delays and excessive charges, and when an earthquake shock was felt "for the first time" in Ireland in the winter of 1852, Punch notes that a writer in the Limerick Chronicle attributed it to the atmospheric influence of the electric telegraph! Electricity as an illuminant elicited an optimistic if somewhat previous eulogy in 1849; and cooking by electricity is foreshadowed in 1857. The laying of the transatlantic cable is welcomed long before it was an accomplished fact, but Punch's compliments had a sting in their tail when he wrote the following lines:—
AMERICAN JOURNALISM IN A NEW LINE
It is much to be hoped that the telegraph wire,
About to be laid down, will not form a lyre,
On which to strike discord 'twixt the old world and new;
Though scarce can we hope all its messages true,
For then t'other side would have nothing to do.
Punch's interest in aeronautics dates from his earliest infancy, though his mixture of prophecy and satire is rather confusing. Designs of aerial steamships abound in his columns; and one of them is not too bad an anticipation of the aeroplane.
AERIAL STEAM CARRIAGE
Aviation Forecasts
In 1845 there was actually a periodical called The Balloon, though Punch is jocular at the expense of its very limited clientèle. Still, though the number of aeronauts was few, their enterprise attracted a great deal of attention, and Green, who made 526 ascents between 1821 and 1852, including his famous trip from Vauxhall to Weilburg in Nassau, is frequently mentioned. Punch, to his credit, inveighed vehemently against the senseless inhumanity of aeronautic acrobats who made a practice of taking up animals with them. He was less fortunate in his dogmatic pronouncement in 1851 that the balloon was a "perfectly useless invention," and in his scornful dismissal, four years later, of the suggestion that it might be useful in warfare:—
Everybody, including, of course, all the nobodies, would seem to have some peculiar plan for finishing off the war in a successful and expeditious manner. The last place we should look for the means of carrying on hostilities with vigour is up in the air; but, nevertheless, an aeronaut has "stepped in" upon the public with a suggestion that balloons are the means required for the siege of Sebastopol and the smashing of Cronstadt. If this theory is correct, Lord Raglan ought at once to be superseded by the "veteran Green" or the "intrepid" Mrs. Graham.
One of the "intrepids," who has gained a high position by his balloon, has published a dialogue between himself and a general, who is, of course, represented as soon beating a retreat in an argument against the employment of balloons in battle. The aeronaut proposes to hover in his balloon over the enemy's position, and take observations of what is passing, but he forgets that a passing shot might happen to catch his eye in a rather disagreeable manner. The aeronaut undertakes not only to observe, but to make himself the subject of observation by a series of signals, through the medium of which he proposes to point out the movements of the enemy. This is to be effected by an apparatus which, as it would of course be at the mercy of the wind, would be blown about in all directions possibly, except that which it ought to take, and thus the signals would be converted into signal failures. The aeronaut also proposes using his balloon for "destructive purposes," by taking up some shells, which should be "light to lift but terrible to fall," and so arranged as to avoid the fate of Captain Warner's invention, "whose balloon," we are told by the aeronaut himself, "went off in an opposite direction to what he had intended."
"And by what means," answers the general, "would you let off your missiles?"
"Either by fuses," answers the aeronaut, "a liberating trigger, or an electric communication, or by another contrivance which you must excuse me, general, for not mentioning, as I hold it a secret."
This "secret" will probably be kept to all eternity, and, at all events, until it is revealed we must be excused for refusing to call on Lord Aberdeen to adopt balloons for warfare, or to blow up the Commander-in-Chief literally sky high, till he makes the air the basis of military operations.
Some enthusiasts certainly laid themselves open to ridicule. In 1849 a certain J. Browne advertised a "balloon railway to California" as both "safe and cheap." Captain Warner, again, ruled himself out of court by his refusal to explain the secret of his alleged inventions—the long-range torpedo and the bomb-dropping balloon—to the committee appointed to report thereon until he had been assured of the payment of £200,000 for each. Still, he cannot be denied the credit, such as it is, of having foreshadowed two of the deadliest and most destructive engines of modern warfare. Punch at first lent Warner a certain measure of support, until careful inquiry had shown him to be both untrustworthy and intractable.
EFFECT OF THE SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH; OR, PEACE AND GOOD WILL BETWEEN ENGLAND AND FRANCE
Ye Wild Goose Chase after Ye Golden Calfe. THE GOLD CRAZE IN 1849
The railway "boom" had stimulated that first infirmity of ignoble minds—the desire to "get rich quick"—and cupidity, balked of its expectations, turned eagerly towards the goldfields to satisfy its longings. In 1849 California was the Mecca of the gold craze, and there is hardly a number of Punch in this year which does not refer to the