to touch upon his doings? So it is!
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:
Those scraps are good deeds past.
But the political deeds of the Marquis of Lansdowne are written in the history of his country. After the wear of fifty years, not one spot rests upon his robes. His coronet borrows worth and lustre from the true, manly, English brain that beats—(and in the serene happiness of honoured age may it long continue to beat!)—beneath it.
APPROPRIATE
First Citizen: "I say, Bill—I wonder what he calls hisself?"
Second Ditto: "Blowed if I know!—but I calls him a Bloated Haristocrat."
Educating the House of Lords
As for peers in general, Punch's views may be gathered from his scheme for the Reform of the House of Lords issued in the same year:—
It is an indisputable truth that there can be no such being as a born legislator. As unquestionable is the fact that there may be a born ass.
We are not proving that fact—only stating it—pace your word-snapper on the look-out for a snap.
But your born ass may be born to your legislator's office, and command a seat in the house of legislators by inheritance, as in not a few examples, wherein the coronet hides not the donkey's ears.
The object of a Reform in the House of Lords should be to keep the asinines of the aristocracy out of it: so that the business of the country may be no more impeded by their braying, or harmed by their kicking.
Nobody is a physician by birth. Even the seventh son of a seventh son must undergo an examination before he is allowed to prescribe a dose of physic for an old woman.
But any eldest son, or other male relation, of a person of a certain order is chartered, as such, to physic the body corporate: which is absurd.
Now, the Reform we propose for the House of Lords, is, not to admit any person, whose only claim to membership is that of having been born a Peer, to practise his profession without examination.
Examine him in the Alphabet—there have been Peers who didn't know that. In reading, writing, and arithmetic: you already make a Lord—the Mayor of London—count hobnails. In history—for he is to help furnish materials for its next page. In geography, astronomy, and the use of the globes; which, being indispensable to ladies, are a fortiori to be required of Lords. In political economy, the physiology of the Constitution which he will have to treat. In medicine, that he may understand the analogies of national and individual therapeutics; and also learn not to patronize homœopaths and other quacks. In geology, that he may acquire a philosophical idea of pedigree, by comparing the bones of his ancestors with those of the ichthyosaurus, or the foundation of his house with the granite rocks. In the arts and sciences, generally, which it will be his business to promote, if he does his business. In literature, that he may cultivate it; at least, respect it, and stand up for the liberty of unlicensed printing, instead of insulting and calumniating the Press.
This is our scheme of Peerage Reform, to which the principal objection we anticipate is, that it is impracticable, because it can't be done; and that, warned by the confusion and disorder that has resulted from change in foreign nations, we should shrink from touching a time-honoured institution; which is as much as to say, that because our neighbours have divided their carotid arteries, we had better not shave ourselves.
To "most noble fatuities," "Lord White Sticks," privileged gamblers, extravagant guardsmen, pluralists (among whom the Greys and Elliots are specially attacked), and their fulsome upholders in the Press, scant mercy is shown. Some exceptions are made: Lord Mahon for his interest in the drama and art; Lord Albemarle for his views on the Reform of the Marriage Laws; Lord St. Leonards for cutting down Chancery pleadings and all the "awful and costly machinery of word spinning" connected therewith. With Lord Brougham, who was so long one of Punch's favourite butts, we deal elsewhere. But neither he nor Sugden (Lord St. Leonards) belonged to the "Old Nobility"; they were not ranked with the "snobbish peers" who opposed the education of the masses or the appointment of a Minister of Education, or wanted to keep poor children out of the London parks, a topic referred to more than once.
Aristocratic nepotism is another favourite theme of satire: the classic example being furnished by the famous telegram sent during the Crimean War by Lord Panmure, when Secretary for War, to Lord Raglan: "Take care of Dowb." "Dowb." was Captain Dowbiggin, a relative of Lord Panmure's. Hence the epigram:—
CE N'EST QUE LE PREMIER PAS QUI COÛTE
"The reform of our army," should Panmure ask, "how begin?"
"By not taking," says Punch, "quite so much care of Dowbiggin."
With Bulwer Lytton a long feud was maintained, but it was not as a peer but as a writer and a sophisticated snob that he earned the dislike of Punch, who published (February 28, 1846) Tennyson's retort on his traducer. In later years, however, a complete reconciliation took place.
Thackeray on Great Folks
Punch saw no inherent virtue in peers or peerages. He welcomed the bestowal of one on Macaulay; he applauded the decision of Peel's family in declining the honour after his death. Mentions by name of noble personages in his pages in this period are more often hostile than friendly. He agreed with Tennyson that "kind hearts are more than coronets," but he was far from maintaining that they were incompatible. Thackeray, who, as we know, did not see eye to eye with Douglas Jerrold, and found his constant anti-aristocratic invective tiresome, redressed the balance, notably in "Mr. Brown's Letters to a Young Man about Town." Discoursing on good women, in whose company you can't think evil, he says you may find them in the suburbs and Mayfair, and, again:—
The great comfort of the society of great folks is that they do not trouble themselves about your twopenny little person, as smaller persons do, but take you for what you are—a man kindly and good-natured, or witty and sarcastic, or learned and eloquent, or a good raconteur, or a very handsome man, or an excellent gourmand and judge of wine—or what not. Nobody sets you so quickly at your ease as a fine gentleman. I have seen more noise made about a Knight's lady than about the Duchess of Fitz-Battleaxe herself; and Lady Mountararat, whose family dates from the Deluge, enter and leave a room, with her daughters the lovely Ladies Eve and Lilith D'Arc, with much less pretension, and in much simpler capotes and what-do-you-call-'ems, than Lady de Mogins, or Mrs. Shindy, who quit an assembly in a whirlwind, with trumpets and alarums like a stage King and Queen.
15. Colonel Garwood's selections from the Duke of Wellington's Dispatches.
SOCIETY—EXCLUSIVE, GENTEEL, AND SHABBY GENTEEL
For the manners and customs of High Life in the 'forties and 'fifties Punch cannot be regarded as a first-rate authority for the excellent reason that, with the exception of Thackeray, none of the staff had the entrée to these exalted circles. They were busy, hard-worked, often overworked, journalists and officials, and their recreations and diversions did not bring them into intimate contact with the dwellers in Mayfair or Belgravia. They kept a watchful eye upon the extravagances and vagaries of High Life, but mainly as it revealed itself in its public form or in politics. In the study of the Geology of Society, which appeared in one of his earliest numbers, Punch subdivides the three main strata of Society—High Life, Middle Life, Low Life—into various classes. The superior, or St. James's series, contains people wearing coronets, related to coronets, expecting coronets. Thence we pass to the