Charles L. Graves

Mr. Punch's History of Modern England (Vol. 1-4)


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to the diggings—"the wild-goose chase after the golden calf," as he called it. It was a gold fever in more senses than one, since the diggers suffered terribly from disease, which led to the cynical suggestion that convicts should be sent there, as they were not likely to return. Cobden, still in high favour with Punch as the apostle of national economy, was busy preaching Peace, Retrenchment and Reform, but his efforts were powerless to stem the tide of speculation.

      In 1850 we find a reference to the glut of bullion at the Bank, a state of affairs long strangely unfamiliar. In 1851 the opening of the goldfields in Australia diverted the stream of speculative emigration from California to the antipodes, and this new phase of the auri sacra fames does not escape Punch's notice, though no mention is made of the curious fact that amongst those who were lured to the diggings was Lord Robert Cecil, afterwards Marquess of Salisbury. Alongside of the evidences of the great expansion of commerce and national prosperity we find frequent references to the growth of gambling. In 1852 Punch's pages abound in allusions, in text and illustrations, to the betting mania—to gulls and pigeons and sharks. "Profiteering" was rampant in the Crimean War, and Punch is eloquent in his denunciation of the contractors who supplied shoddy equipment and bad guns. And the aftermath of the war included, besides other familiar sources of discontent, "defalcations, embezzlements and other cases of gross and enormous dishonesty." It was a time of speculation and peculation, of bank smashes and absconding directors—those of the Royal British Bank coming in for special execration. The fraudulent banker is singled out by Punch as the arch-rogue and thief who excited the envy of the burglar, since the banker stole more and escaped unpunished. The brothers Sadleir are specially selected for dishonourable mention in 1856, but John Sadleir, M.P. for Carlow and an ex-Lord of the Treasury, who was the original of Mr. Merdle in Little Dorrit, and was described in The Times after his death as a "national calamity," only escaped punishment by suicide.

       Novelties and Anticipations

      The "new pillar boxes" must be added to the features of 1854; their colour harmonized with the red coats then worn by the postmen; while the scheme to propel mail bags through tubes by atmospheric pressure was put forward as early as 1855. Massage appears as the new "movement cure" by kneading and pressing, vide Punch, 1856, but he, however, was not solely interested in beneficent inventions. Lord Dundonald's famous "secret war plan," originally proposed in 1811, and rejected by a secret Committee presided over by the Duke of York, who pronounced it "infallible, irresistible, but inhuman," was revived after the inventor's readmission to the British Navy, and urged on the Admiralty and Government during the Crimean War. It was again rejected on the score of its inhumanity, though Punch welcomed the plan, without knowing exactly what it was, and besought the Government to cast away scruples and use anything against such an enemy as Russia. Whatever may have been "Dundonald's plan" was never divulged, it remained a nameless mystery. The new nomenclature evolved by the triumphs of applied science in humaner directions led to a good deal of controversy, notably over the introduction of the word "telegram" as a substitute for "telegraphic despatch." The shorter form was first officially used in 1855 (see the Panmure Papers) by Lord Clarendon, but scholars and men of letters protested vigorously against this Yankee barbarism. Shilleto, the famous Cambridge scholar, suggested "telegrapheme." He did not want it, but it was at least properly constructed on Greek analogies. Oxford, as Punch notices in 1857, supported the modern form, and here for once, at any rate, abandoned her traditional espousal of lost causes.

       Telegram or Telegrapheme?

      In general, Punch, as a moderate reformer, deals impartially with the contending claims of science and the classical curriculum. He believed in the liberalizing influence of the humanities, while he denounced academic arrogance, pedantry and exclusiveness. He might be described as a mitigated modernist in these years, in which he advocated the popularization of science by means of Institutes and similar centres of enlightenment, and welcomed new inventions—while reserving to himself the right to burlesque their possibilities, and to ridicule the pretensions of pompous professors and futile philosophers. He was at one with those rationalists who waged war on superstition and credulity, but he realized better than they did how deeply entrenched the enemy was in high places, and how mistaken was the view that the victory was already won. The friendly lines which he addressed to Faraday in 1853 are mere halting doggerel, but they are worth recalling, if only for their sound doctrine, which is as much needed to-day as it was sixty-seven years ago:—

      Oh, Mr. Faraday, simple Mr. Faraday!

      Did you of enlightenment consider this an age?

      Bless your simplicity, deep in electricity,

      But in social matters, unsophisticated sage!

      Weak superstition dead; knocked safely on the head,

      Long since buried deeper than the bed of the Red Sea,

      Did you not fondly fancy? Did you think that necromancy

      Practised now at the expense of any fool could be?

      Oh, Mr. Faraday, simple Mr. Faraday!

      Persons not uneducated—very highly dressed—

      Fine folks as peer and peeress, go and fee a Yankee seeress,

      To evoke their dead relations' Spirits from their rest.

      Also seek cunning men, feigning by mesmeric ken,

      Missing property to trace and indicate the thief,

      Cure ailments, give predictions: all of these enormous fictions

      Are, among our higher classes, matters of belief.

      Oh, Mr. Faraday, simple Mr. Faraday!

      Guided by the steady light which mighty Bacon lit,

      You naturally stare, seeing that so many are

      Following whither fraudulent Jack-with-the-lanterns flit.

      Of scientific lore though you have