No More Learning

The removal of this disability of English engravers
was chiefly due to the artist and print-seller, John Boydell.
Boydell began his successful career by engraving small landscapes,
which, because print-shops were few, he exhibited in the windows
of toy-shops. From small landscapes he went on to large views
of London, Oxford and Cambridge and other places; and, in
1751, having done well with a volume of views in England and
Wales, he set up as a print-seller. Ardent in his encouragement
of British talent, and aided in the early years of the reign of
George III by a bounty allowed to English prints for sale in
France, Boydell succeeded in turning the print-trade with that
country from an import trade to an export trade with an annual
revenue of £200,000. The impulse given to English engraving was,
naturally, very strong; and it lasted after the outbreak of the
French revolution had destroyed the trade with France. Boydell's
illustrated edition of Shakespeare was published in 1802; but he
had begun to collect materials for it so early as 1786. His object
was to encourage English painting, as he had encouraged English
engraving; and he employed the most eminent artists of his day.
With Boydell, the print-seller first developed into the patron
and employer, and the development was to have an important, if
indirect, influence upon the relations of pictorial art to literature.
The large number of capable artists whom the new conditions
had brought into being gave pictorial art the power, as it were, of
dictating to literature. These artists were accustomed (amid the
barrenness and mock-antique solemnity of the academic art of the
day) to deal freely and naturally with the common scenes, whether
topographical or human, of the world about them. They worked
for the people, not for connoisseurs; and, in time, they came to
find the need of a literature that should form a vehicle for their
productions. This movement was greatly advanced by Rudolph


## p. 216 (#246) ############################################

216 Caricature and Sport [CH.
Ackermann, a German by origin, who, in 1795, opened a print-
shop in the Strand. Among Ackermann's achievements was the
establishment in England of lithography as a fine art. He used
the process largely in his monthly publication, The Repository
of Arts, Literature, Fashions, Manufactures, which ran from
1809 to 1828. More important to the present subject is the
fact that he turned to caricaturists for the provision of illus-
trated books; and among the earliest that he published was
Bunbury's work, Academy for Grown Horsemen . . . . by Geoffry
Gambado, Esq. William Henry Bunbury, sportsman, caricaturist
and writer, was already known for his admirable chalk-drawings
of scenes in real life, most of which were engraved for him by
other artists—Ryland, Gillray, Rowlandson, Watson, Bartolozzi,
Bretherton the print-seller and Dickinson. Never treating politi-
cal matters, he had done good work in social subjects, such as
the seven plates entitled The propagation of a lie, burlesque
designs for Tristram Shandy, the plate named A Chop House,
which contains one of the many caricature portraits of Samuel
Johnson, and A Long Minuet (as danced at Bath). Boydell
had employed him to make designs for Shakespeare's comedies.
To Ackermann, he brought a series of comic plates of horse-
manship (a subject that he well understood), accompanied by
a descriptive letterpress that is still of a fresh and ingenious
humour. Geoffry Gambado, the supposed author, is described as
‘Master of the Horse, Riding Master, and Grand Equerry to the
Doge of Venice,' and he is presented as having been drowned at
sea while on his way to teach horsemanship to the English. The
frontispiece shows him as exceedingly corpulent. The advice
given by this worthy Venetian, and the letters supposed to be
addressed to him by horsemen anxious for his advice, make up a
small and constantly entertaining volume, which is important
from several points of view. It is an early example of the litera-
ture of sport, in which the succeeding half century was to be rich;
it was read and enjoyed by Apperley, Surtees, Smedley and other
authors of novels of sport; and it was the first of the illustrated
humorous books for which Ackermann's publishing house became
famous. Bunbury was far more draughtsman than writer; and,
though both letterpress and illustrations were his work, this book
must be regarded as an early instance of pictorial art calling
literature into being. A few years later, caricature was to
prove, through Ackermann again, more markedly the patron of
literature in the domain of comedy. Among the artists working


## p. 217 (#247) ############################################

vi]
Rowlandson and Combe
217
in London was a young man, Thomas Rowlandson, who, after
studying, to the great advantage of his art, in Paris, had given up
portrait-painting for caricature, or genre-painting, in oils, and for
brilliant comic sketches, which he tossed off in great quantity.
Dissipated and improvident, he was incapable of managing his
own affairs, and was all the better for attaching himself to a
taskmaster of Ackermann's good sense and acumen. His carica-
ture was occasionally brutal; but he lived in a 'hard-hitting,
hard-riding, hard-drinking age,' and he portrayed it faithfully.
His friend, John Bannister, the actor, is said to have suggested to
him a series of plates representing a country curate travelling
about England. Travels were popular at the time. Much of Acker-
mann's success was won from his series of picturesque tours, to
which further reference will be made later; and, whether the idea
were Bannister's, or Rowlandson's, or another's, there can be little
doubt that it was inspired by the very popular books of travel in
England written and illustrated between 1782 and 1809 by William
Gilpin. On approving of the idea, Ackermann entrusted the writing
of the letterpress to William Combe.
William Combe had begun bis literary career with The Dia-
boliad (1776), a savage satire in verse on a nobleman (said to
have been Simon, lord Irnham), whose, cast-off mistress he had
married on a promise of money, that was not paid. Its successors,
The Diabo-lady and The Anti-Diabo-lady, are equally spirited.
Combe, as a satirist, is still readable for the vigour and rapidity of
his verse; but he had not the temperament nor the talent to
achieve greatness. In life and letters alike he was unprincipled ;
and among his deceptions are the spurious Letters of the late
Lord Lyttelton, and the spurious Letters of Sterne to Eliza, in
writing which, no doubt, he drew upon the acquaintance with
Sterne which he had formed in Italy. As a hack-writer for
a publisher he was valuable, and never more so than when he
wrote for Ackermann the verses that were to accompany
Rowlandson's drawings of the adventures of Dr Syntax, as the
travelling clergyman was named. The work was done, by both
artist and author, under extraordinary conditions. A certain
quantity had to be supplied monthly for publication in Ackermann's
Poetical Magazine. One drawing at a time only was sent to
Combe, then a man of sixty and confined for debt in the King's
Bench prison. Combe, thereupon, wrote, or dictated, the requisite
number of lines (the printer, as the story goes, waiting in Combe's
presence for his 'copy' lest the dilatory author should postpone


## p. 218 (#248) ############################################

218
[CH.
Caricature and Sport
his task). In this disjointed fashion, these two very unsystematic
workers produced a poem of nearly ten thousand lines, illustrated
by thirty plates and a pictorial frontispiece. It would be juster
to say that they produced thirty plates and a pictorial frontis-
piece illustrated by nearly ten thousand lines. The ideas were
Rowlandson’s ; Combe, the writer, played the part usually played
by the illustrator ; and the combination provides a capital early
instance of an imaginative work written to fit pictures already
drawn. The practice continued. This was the genesis of The
Pickwick Papers; and the modern writer of serial stories for
illustrated magazines suffers (if he may be said to suffer) in good
company.
Under the title The Tour of Dr Syntax in search of the
Picturesque, the joint work of Rowlandson and Combe was
published in The Poetical Magazine in 1809 and onwards, and
first appeared as a separate volume in 1812. Its popularity was
immediate and very great. The figure of the lean curate and
schoolmaster in his scratch wig and his rusty black suit, with his
long nose and chin, caught the public fancy; and, doubtless, the
device of representing him as a man of learning and of some
dignity added to the fun of the ridiculous mishaps into which he
fell. In the character of Syntax, Combe attempted to combine Don
Quixote with parson Adams; and, though the attempt revealed
his shortcomings in imagination and humour, he so far succeeded
that Syntax remains good company to this day. Feeling the pinch
of poverty, the reverend doctor announces to his busy and
shrewish wife that, while his pupils are at home for the summer
holidays, he intends to make a tour.
“I'll make a TOUR—and then I'll WRITE IT.
You well know what my pen can do,
And I'll employ my pencil too:-
I'll ride and write, and sketch and print,
And thus create a real mint;
I'll prose it here, I'll verse it there,
And picturesque it ev'ry where.
I'll do what all have done before;
I think I shall-and somewhat more.
So off he sets on his old mare, Grizzle. He falls among robbers;
he is pursued by a bull; he mistakes a gentleman's house for an
he falls, more than once, into mud or water; he is robbed at
a race-meeting ; he is carried by Grizzle at full gallop among the
cavalry at a review ; and he suffers other amusing troubles. But,
also, he shows on many occasions learning and good sense beneath
inn;


## p. 219 (#249) ############################################

>
vi]
Dr Syntax
219
his simplicity. A great eater, a great smoker and a great talker,
he is loved for his companionable spirit. He makes powerful
friends, and at the close has won not only a handsome price for
his book but ecclesiastical preferment which will make him easy
for life. Combe's verse ambles along with the very paces of
the doctor's Grizzle. It is (like most dictated work) frequently
flaccid; and it moralises at too great length and with too little
force for modern taste. But it seldom goes for long without wit
and sense.
It is the verse of an able journalist, as might be said
today, who knows what people in the world are talking about.
Take, for instance, Syntax's soliloquy on the picturesque. He
will paint the cottage, the coppice and the elm-trees; but he will
omit the pigs.
For, to say truth, I don't inherit
This self-same picturesquish spirit,
That looks to nought but what is rough,
And ne'er thinks Nature coarse enough.
Their system does my genius shock,
Who see such graces in a dock;
Whose eye the picturesque admires
In straggling brambles, and in briers;
Nay, can a real beauty see
In a decay'd and rotten tree.
People were talking in those days about the picturesque, the
'trim' of art and so forth; and Combe knew what would interest
his readers.
So successful a work was sure to find imitators. Among them
were The Tour of Dr Syntax through London, Dr Syntax in
Paris and The Adventures of Dr Comicus, a parody of Combe's
verses, illustrated by burlesques of Rowlandson's engravings.
Ackermann, finding the collaboration profitable, set the same
pair to work upon other productions. Rowlandson drew a series
of designs of The Dance of Death, with the View of applying
it exclusively to the Manners, Customs, and Character of this
Country'; and, as before, Combe 'accompanied with Metrical
Illustrations' the drawings as they were delivered to him. Issued
originally in successive numbers, The English Dance of Death was
published in two volumes in 1815—16. Describing the death-scenes
of a number of different characters, the verse shows Combe in his
most serious mood; but it lacks both impressiveness and variety,
while, on the other hand, the plates by Rowlandson are various,
impressive and full of the peculiar beauty of this artist's best
work. In 1816 came, also, The Dance of Life, by Rowlandson and
6


## p. 220 (#250) ############################################

220
(CH.
Caricature and Sport
Combe. The poem and the plates recount the life of a young man
of position. Since part of the story concerns a period of dissipa-
tion in London, it touches a kind of work to which reference will
be made later, and, by comparison, shows Combe, who could be
coarse upon occasion, as a writer of some taste and reticence.
The two fellow-workers had, by this time, made each other's
acquaintance ; and Combe implies, in his advertisement prefixed
to the poem, that he had suggested to Rowlandson some of the
ideas, though, in the main, they had followed their old plan of
working. He makes the claim more strongly in the introduction
to a second tale of Dr Syntax, to whom they returned in 1819–20.
Issued, as a book, in 1820, The Second Tour of Dr Syntax in
Search of Consolation narrates how the reverend doctor, having
lost his vulgar but valued wife, is persuaded by his friends to seek
relief in another tour. In the Lakes, Bath, London and else-
where, Syntax visits scenes and people of interest; and, of such
humour as there is, beyond the lively and homely circumstances
of Mrs Syntax's death, much is supplied by the Irish manservant
who accompanies his master. But Combe was now nearly eighty.
A well-read man, he makes free use of his knowledge, but dilutes
his originals excessively. His verse is garrulous and spiritless,
compared with that of the first tour, and Rowlandson's invention
was either flagging or too closely bounded by the scenes that he
thought fit to introduce. The work is dull, and was not so popular
as its predecessor. In The Third Tour of Dr Syntax in Search
of a Wife, however, published, as a book, in 1821, both artist and
verse-maker revived; the studies of various kinds of women are
full of character and give no little information about the feminine
types of the day. Finally, in 1822, Rowlandson and Combe
produced Johnny Quae Genus, the Foundling of the late Dr
Syntax, which is the feeblest, and was the least popular, of the
series.
Two other series of drawings, which Rowlandson made in
lighter vein, may be mentioned here. In 1815, he drew a set of
plates for The Military Adventures of Johnny Newcome, the
letterpress for which was written, probably, by colonel David
Roberts, who became a writer after a wound, received in the
Peninsular war, had incapacitated him for military service. In
1818 appeared The Adventures of Johnny Newcome in the
Navy, in which Rowlandson's sixteen plates were accompanied
by a poem in four cantos by 'Alfred Burton,' a pseudonym of
John Mitford, author of The Poems of a British Sailor and
#
6


## p. 221 (#251) ############################################

yı]
Gilpin
221
a contributor to The Scourge, the journal for which George
Cruikshank, also, worked. Mitford, who had served in the navy,
was worthy of collaborating with Rowlandson in such a book
as this. Verses and drawings alike are full of hearty humour, and
there is dramatic quality in their exposition of the troubles of
a new hand, of 'larks’ at sea and on shore and of the tyranny
and brutality that marked the naval service in those days.
Comic drawings, the development of his caricature, were not
the only work that Rowlandson did for Ackermann and other
publishers. This was an age in which illustrated books of travel
became popular; and Dr Syntax, as we have seen, satirised
a general taste. The fashion owed much to the books of
William Gilpin, a clergyman, who, in 1782, published his Obser-
vations on the River Wye and several parts of South Wales,
where the picturesque was easily found. Gilpin, who, in his
views on education and on poor-law reform, was in advance of
his time, was in advance of it, also, in his drawings, which have
been described as studies for landscape rather than portraits of
particular places. With the pen, like Dr Syntax, he 'prosed it
here and versed it there,' his descriptions erring, as Combe
thought, in excess of poetical diction, but being enriched with
many ingenious reflections. This handsome work was followed
by others of the same kind from his pen and pencil. Volumes
on Cumberland and Westmorland, on Hampshire, Sussex and
Kent, and on Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, were
published during his life or posthumously; in 1790, he issued
Remarks on Forest Scenery and other Woodland Views (relat-
ing chiefly to picturesque beauty), illustrated in the scenes of
the New Forest, with plates by his nephew, William Sawrey
Gilpin, who was the first president of the Royal Society of
Painters in Water-Colours, or the 'Old Society'; and, in 1798,
Picturesque Remarks on the Western Parts of England and
the Isle of Wight. Gilpin, in fact, was the apostle of the
picturesque ; and the illustrated tour (which brought Dr Syntax
a handsome sum of money) was a fashion of the day. Boydell
had followed up his volume of views in England and Wales with
two volumes (1794 and 1796) on the Thames, in which the letter-
press was written by William Combe; and illustrated books of
travel were among the most successful publications of Ackermann,
who issued a series of 'picturesque tours' on the Rhine, the Seine,
the Thames, in the English Lakes, in India and other works. For
his great publication of 1821—6, The World in Miniature, the


## p. 222 (#252) ############################################

222
[CH.
Caricature and Sport
earlier of the 637 plates were the work of Rowlandson, and
the others of William Henry Pyne. To Pyne, who was both
painter and writer, Ackermann owed at least the idea of his
Picturesque Sketches of Rustic Scenery, and his Views of Cottages
and Farm Houses in England and Wales ; Pyne himself wrote
the text of Royal Residences, which Ackermann issued in 1829
with 100 coloured engravings, and, under the pseudonym Ephraim
Hardcastle, was the author of Wine and Walnuts, an anecdotal
book published in 1823. In antiquarian works, again, literature
owed much to the needs of engraving. Pyne and Combe to-
gether wrote the text of Ackermann's important publications,
the histories of Westminster Abbey, of The University of
Oxford and of The University of Cambridge. Rowlandson and
Combe were, again, together connected with one of Ackermann's
most interesting and valuable works, The Microcosm of London,
which was issued, in and after 1808, in three volumes. In the
many coloured plates that illustrate, or constitute, this work, the
figures were drawn by Rowlandson, and the architecture by
Augustus Charles Pugin, while the text was written by William
Combe. The work is concerned not only with the antiquities of
London, but with its contemporary life. It takes in Astley's
and the Royal Cockpit, as well as the Charterhouse and West-
minster abbey, and to this day remains full of information and
interest.
The Microcosm of London was dedicated to the prince of
Wales, afterwards George IV. So, also, in the year after his
accession to the throne, was a less august work, which still, in
its way, reflects the interest in London and the interest in
ordinary life, both of which had been fostered by the influence of
caricature and the increasing popularity of illustrated books. The
book referred to was Pierce Egan's Life in London; or, The Day
and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, Esq. and his elegant friend
Corinthian Tom, accompanied by Bob Logic, The Oxonian, in
their Rambles and Sprees through the Metropolis, a work
which was issued in and after July 1821, in shilling numbers.
Of Pierce Egan, the author of this work, more will be said in
connection with books on sport. A journalist, and a wellknown
character in his day, he wrote nothing so popular as this Life
in London. Indeed, the taste for it amounted to a craze. For
his illustrations, Egan went to two brothers, Isaac Robert and
George Cruikshank, sons of a Scottish artist who had settled in
London. George Cruikshank, the younger and abler brother, had


## p. 223 (#253) ############################################

a
vi]
Life in London
223
already maintained the succession from Gillray and Rowlandson as
a political caricaturist. His designs in The Scourge and The
Meteor; his plates in William Combe’s ‘hudibrastic poem'
The Life of Napoleon (1814–15); his coloured etchings in The
Humourist, a collection of comic tales published in 1819–21, and
his many caricatures of Napoleon, of the prince regent and his
wife, of Frenchmen and of the excesses of English fashion, had
laid the foundations of a fame which was greatly increased by his
work for Life in London. Each of the coloured plates is stated
to be by I. R. and G. Cruikshank; but, later in his life, George
Cruikshank, by then a reformed character and an ardent teetotaller,
declared that his doubts about the morality of Egan's work had
caused bim to leave two-thirds of the illustration to be done by his
brother Robert. Be that as it may, the success of the work was
so great that the artists could not colour the engravings fast enough
for the demand. It suited the taste of the time, when a 'fast' life
had become a sophisticated and conscious aim. Life in London
is a guide to a fast life. Egan was a 'sporting' man who did not
sport. Except for a jejunely described run with hounds, a state-
ment that Corinthian Tom had a set-to with John Jackson, the
ex-champion pugilist of England, at his rooms in Bond street,
and some praise from Tom's friends for his 'superior style' and
'coolness and skill’in a fencing-bout with O'Shaunessy, there is
not a word of true sport in the book. The remainder is mainly
drinking, gambling, rioting, cock-fighting and other branches of
debauchery, either practised or contemplated by the friends. It
is significant that, of the three adventurers, the name of Corinthian
Tom appears in the largest type upon the title-page. Tom, indeed,
is the hero of the tale. He is the ideal ‘man about town'; and,
however lavishly the author may praise his elegance and ac-
complishment, he remains the type of the polished blackguard,
unworthy to associate with his country cousin, Jerry Hawthorn,
the cheery fool to whom he shows the pleasures of the town,
and only a shade more tolerable than the bestial creature, Bob
Logic, who is intended for a model of good-humour and wit. In
his first chapter, or 'invocation, Egan appeals to Fielding,
'
Goldsmith, Smollett and Sterne ('Come, then,' he characteristi-
cally writes, 'thou shades of departed talent'). His book, with its
leer and wink of knowing vice, its sickly affectation of warning
young men from the haunts and pursuits that it lusciously
describes, would have disgusted even Sterne in the moments
when his physical weakness was most perverting his facile
>


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224
[CH.
Caricature and Sport
imagination. The candid rogues of great picaresque fiction would
be ashamed to own Tom or Logic for their kin. Thackeray,
indulging in sentimental reminiscences in days when the literary
contents of the book' had passed sheer away from his memory,
declared that, in the days when the work appeared,
we firmly believed the three heroes above named to be types of the most
elegant, fashionable young fellows the town afforded, and thought their
occupations and amusements were those of all high-bred English gentlemen,
Twenty years later, when he had read 'the literary contents of the
book' again, he said:
But the style of the writing, I own, was not pleasing to me; I even
thought it a little vulgar . . . and as a description of the sports and amuse-
ments of London in the ancient times, more curious than amusing.
6
Thackeray, therefore, nowhere has a good word to say for anything
about Life in London except the pictures. “More curious than
amusing' is a just criticism. The work is curious, partly for the
details that it furnishes of London life in a period when manners
were very pompous or very vulgar; and partly for its wealth in
the slang of the time. Egan was a master of the 'flash' and the
flashy; and Life in London contains as many slang phrases as he
could put into it. Two years later, he was to furnish the slang
phrases to Francis Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
(1823); and one of his two illustrators, George Cruikshank, had
already drawn a plate for Andrewes's Dictionary of the Slang
and Cant Languages (1809).
Part of the success enjoyed by the work was due, no doubt,
to its readers' belief that they could name the originals of the
fictitious characters. Imitations came swift and frequent. In the
summer of 1822 plays founded upon the story were being acted at
no less than ten theatres in and about London ; and among the
adapters were Charles Dibdin, whose version was played at the
Olympic, and W. T. Moncrieff, whose play ran for more than 300
nights at the Adelphi theatre. It was Moncrieff who, in answer
to the accusation that Egan and he had made their age the age of
flash, replied in the wellknown but inconclusive saying, 'Any age
is better than the age of cant'-cant implying, of course, the pro-
,
tests of certain portions of the press and of some religious bodies.
Egan himself produced, in 1822, a dramatic version of the story,
which was played without success (save for a pony-race round the
theatre) at Astley's. The book was, also, translated into French.
Out of the sixty-five imitations of it which Egan stated that he had


## p. 225 (#255) ############################################

vi]
The English Spy
225
reckoned, the most important was Real Life in London, or, the
Rambles and Adventures of Bob Tallyho, Esq. and his cousin,
the Hon. Tom Dashall, through the Metropolis ; exhibiting a
living picture of fashionable characters, manners, and amuse-
ments in high and low life, which was published in sixpenny
numbers in 1821, with excellent illustrations by Heath, Alken,
Dighton, Rowlandson and others. Real Life in London is a
pleasanter book than its prototype. Some have held that Egan
wrote it; but the author had a purer style, a cleaner mind
and a wider knowledge of London than Egan. The book shows
many more sides of London life than his; though the formal
descriptions of wellknown scenes or buildings, here and there
inserted amid matter of a very different character, recall very
forcibly Mr Bouncer's letters to his aunt in Verdant Green.
Another imitation was Life in Paris: The Rambles of Dick
Wildfire (1821), written, it is suspected, by David Carey, and
illustrated by George Cruikshank, who had never been to Paris,
but was accustomed to drawing his own idea of French people in
his caricatures, and took his scenes from the drawings and paintings
of other artists. An offshoot of Life in London was The
English Spy: An Original Work, Characteristic, Satirical, and
Humorous, illustrated with many coloured plates, of which the
greater number are by ‘Robert Transit' (i. e. Robert Cruikshank),
at least one (not in his pleasantest vein) by Rowlandson and a
few by other hands, and written by 'Bernard Blackmantle,' a
pseudonym for Charles Molloy Westmacott. Westmacott, whose
Points of Misery (1823) was illustrated by George Cruikshank,
appears to have been a blackmailer ; but he was a spirited and
amusing writer, and, though The English Spy, both in text and
in illustrations, is sometimes as coarse as ever was Smollett in
word or Gillray in drawing, it contains many lively representations
of life, high and low, gives much curious information about the
customs and manners of the day and about real people still
recognisable under their fictitious names, and preserves many tales
of a past age. It attempts to do for many places in England
what Life in London and Real Life in London had done for
the metropolis. Eton and Westminster schools, the university
of Oxford, Brighton, Bath and Cheltenham, London and the
suburbs of London, Cowes, Portsmouth and Doncaster races, all
find a place in Westmacott's racy pages; and Robert Cruikshank's
plates are as full of vigour and variety as the author's prose and
In or about 1823, a young artist, named Theodore Lane,
15
6
verse.
E. L. XIV.
CH, VỊ.


## p. 226 (#256) ############################################

226
[CH.
Caricature and Sport
brought to Pierce Egan a series of original and effective designs
representing the life of an actor from his stage-struck days to his
triumph; and round them Egan wrote The Life of an Actor,
which was published in 1824. Though it suffers from all the
faults of Egan's flashy style, the book is well designed and inte-
resting, while the footnotes are full of theatrical stories of various
merit. It was Lane, also, who illustrated Egan's Anecdotes,
Original and Selected, of the Turf, the Chase, the Ring, and the
Stage, published in 1827. In the following year, Egan brought
out The Finish to the Adventures of Tom, Jerry, and Logic,
in their Pursuits through Life In and Out of London, with
illustrations by Robert Cruikshank. To some extent, the work
was intended as a sop to those who had attacked the im-
morality of Life in London. Logic dies, at which no one would
be surprised, though it is difficult not to resent the attempt to
make his end pathetic. Corinthian Tom, attempting a little
genuine sport, breaks his neck in the hunting-field ; his cast-off
mistress, Corinthian Kate, dies of drink and starvation, and
Jerry alone is left alive, to settle down in the country with a
virtuous wife. The illustrations are admirable; and the text is
more amusing, less vulgarly written and less offensive in subject
than that of Life in London. Among the books on life in London
during the end of the eighteenth and the early years of the nine-
teenth centuries, one other demands notice, A Book for a Rainy
Day, or Recollections of the Events of the Years 1766—1833 by
John Thomas Smith. John Thomas Smith, who was born in a
hackney coach on the way from Earl street, Seven Dials, to Great
Portland street, on a June evening in 1766 and died in April
1833, was an artist, a writer and a Londoner, and wrote a life
of his father's master, the sculptor Nollekens, which is unmatched
for malicious candour and vivid detail.
Art-student, portrait-
painter, sightseer, writer, gossip, and keeper of the prints in the
British museum, Smith spent his sixty-seven years in close touch
with the artistic and literary life of London. He had a keen
curiosity about things and people past and present, a retentive
memory and a gift for gossip; and his book is one of the most
entertaining and most trustworthy memorials of his period. Pub-
lished twelve years after his death, it forms a valuable corrective
to the flashy fictions of Egan and his like.
It is significant that, within twelve hours of the appearance of
Life in London, the title, the names and the story were seized
upon by James Catnach, who put forth, from his printing-house


## p. 227 (#257) ############################################

VI]
James Catnach
227
verses.
6
in Monmouth court, Seven Dials, a twopenny broadside, entitled
Life in London; or, the Sprees of Tom and Jerry; attempted in
cuts and verse, with twelve plates very roughly imitated from the
Cruikshanks. James Catnach had long been doing for the poor
what Egan attempted to do for the rich-provide them with
highly seasoned literature. The son of a north-country printer
who, at Alnwick, had issued volumes illustrated by the wood-
cuts of Bewick and Clennell, James Catnach set up as a printer
of popular literature in Seven Dials in the year 1813. He was
the most eminent and successful of his class, though the rivalry
of the older business of Pitts, in Great St Andrew street hard
by, was at first severe. In those days, when newspapers cost
7d. or 8}d. , and good cheap literature was all but unknown,
Catnach performed an important service for the working classes.
He printed and sold illustrated books for children, some at a
farthing, some at a halfpenny, some at a few pence; and very
good, in their way, they were, with their simple renderings of
famous fairy stories, their moral lessons and improving or amusing
He wrote, or procured for so much as 28. 6d. apiece from
the street poets, ballads on passing events—the battle of Waterloo,
the death of princess Charlotte, the attempt to rid Covent garden
theatre of what Tom and Jerry called 'gay Cyprians,' while
Tom Dashall and Bob Tallyho knew them as 'dashing. Catnach
sold history at one penny a sheet; he mourned the death of
Jack Randall, the eminent pugilist; he published very interesting
cuts of the cries of London ; he gave, from day to day, a vivid
and various picture of the life of his times; and in his broadsheets
and flysheets may be found the mind of the labouring and the
criminal classes of his period. To Catnach one may turn for
information about coaching, about omnibuses, about Sir Robert
Peel's new and derided police-about all the turbulent life of the
London streets. He dealt, also, largely in fiction disguised as
truth-much as a modern newspaper does. Part of the handsome
fortune that he made must have arisen from the dreadful scandals,
the duels between ladies of fashion, the elopements and so forth,
that he invented for the delectation of his readers' hearty appetites.
But chiefly he was known for his works on crime. Those were the
days of highwaymen; and about highwaymen, whom the educated
classes knew to be pitiful scoundrels, there is practically no con-
temporary literature except that of the kind published by Catnach
or Pitts. Those were the days of public executions, when not only
a gay demeanour but a confession and ‘last words' were expected
15-2


## p. 228 (#258) ############################################

228
Caricature and Sport [CH.
of the criminal. The ordinary of Newgate usually published a
paper; but his accounts were jejune, compared with those that
Catnach or Pitts could produce. There was a safe and brisk
.
market for 'Last Sorrowful Lamentations,' with portrait, con-
fession and a woeful ballad, all on one sheet. In the description
of murders Catnach excelled. On the occasion of the famous
'Red Barn' murder, in 1828, Catnach sold, it is said, more than
one million copies of the murderer Corder's confession and a
ballad. Previously, he had done very well with the yet more
famous murder of Weare by Thurtell, in 1823.
Catnach, however, did not enjoy the field of murder all to
himself. At this period, the interest in brutal crime and more
brutal punishment was, perhaps, even livelier in all classes than it
is today. On the Cato street conspiracy of 1820 The Observer
newspaper sailed to triumph. Clement, the proprietor, not only
gave pictures of the stable and hayloft in Cato street where
the conspirators were captured, but defied the law by publishing
a full account of the trial before the verdict was given. On the
occasion of the murder of Weare by Thurtell, he was yet more
lavish, and was, indeed, held to have overstepped the mark of
propriety. The objections, which were levelled chiefly at the
illustrations, may be held to have been captious, and even inspired,
to some extent, by the envy of less enterprising newspapers; for
these were days when no reputable journal was ashamed to
give great prominence to reports of crime: even The Annual
Register published the evidence and the verdict in important
cases. These were the days, too, when The Newgate Calendar
was brought out. The original series, The Newgate Calendar; or,
Malefactors' Bloody Register, published in or about 1774, con-
tained in its five volumes notorious crimes from 1700 to the date
of publication. Between 1824 and 1826, Andrew Knapp and
William Baldwin, attorneys-at-law, issued, in four volumes, The
Newgate Calendar, comprising interesting memoirs of the most
notorious characters; and, in or about 1826, they issued, in six
volumes, The New Newgate Calendar, which consisted of their
original series much enlarged and with the preface abbreviated.
The Calendar consists of the lives, crimes, trials and (where
inflicted) tortures and executions, of criminals of many kinds,
from miserable thieves or forgers to murderers, from murderers
to those accused of rebellion and high treason. It is, indeed,
as Sir Walter Scott's little friend, Marjory Fleming, said, 'a book
that contains all the Murders: all the Murders did I say, nay all


## p. 229 (#259) ############################################

vi]
The Newgate Calendar
229
6
Thefts and Forgeries that ever were committed. Of The Newgate
Calendar, there is no better critic than Marjory Fleming. "The
Newgate Calender,' she writes, “is very instructive [and] Amusing,
and shews us the nesesity of doing good and not evil. ' "The
history of all the Malcontents that ever was hanged is very
amusing,' she writes later ; but, at the same time, it 'fills me
with horror and consternation. The author of the very improving
preface to the first series could have said no more. Knapp and
Baldwin, in the preface to their earlier series, attempt to connect
their labours with the protest, then being raised, against the
severity of the English law; but Marjory Fleming goes to the
root of the matter. The Newgate Calendar stands at the head
of the English literature of crime. It was worth the while of
attorneys-at-law to do for the educated classes what Catnach and
others had long been doing for the poor; and The Newgate
Calendar was developed out of the sheets sold by hawkers at
public executions.
The success of Life in London was partly due, no doubt,
to Pierce Egan's great personal popularity ; he was known as
Glorious Pierce,' and the prince regent had commanded that
he should be presented at court. For Egan was the first great
sporting journalist, in days when journalism had discovered the
dignity and the beneficence of sport. To understand Egan's
eminence in this field, it is necessary to go back some years. The
eighteenth century—the century, in England, of reason and system-
systematised, to some extent, English sport. From the eighteenth
century, the then distinctively English sport of pugilism received
organisation and science. In the reign of George I, fighting with
fists had begun to take the place of the combats with sword
or cudgel. James Fig, 'the father of the ring,' who opened in
1719 the Academy in Tottenham-court road, where the famous
captain Godfrey and other athletes exhibited their skill, was
swordsman as well as boxer. It remained for Jack Broughton,
the champion from 1734 to 1750, to reduce boxing to an accurate
science; and Daniel Mendoza, champion from 1784 to 1820, intro-
duced 'a new, a more rapid, and more elegant style of boxing, and
a more artistic technique. By the close of the eighteenth century,
boxing had not only, like hunting, become systematised ; thanks
to the pleasure taken in the prize-ring by the prince of Wales and
his brothers, pugilism was the most fashionable of amusements
and of spectacles. The passion for this form of sport ran through
all classes, and was more ardent even than the modern passion for


## p. 230 (#260) ############################################

230
[CH.
Caricature and Sport
football. On the one hand, it may be remembered that the last
desire expressed before execution by Thurtell, the murderer of
Weare, was 'to read Pierce Egan's account of the great fight
yesterday. On the other hand, a man of intellect, like William
Hazlitt, was a genuine lover of sport, and would take infinite
trouble to see a prize-fight. In The New Monthly Magazine for
February 1822', Hazlitt describes how he travelled on a cold and
wet December night to Hungerford, and went bedless, in order to
see 'the Gas-man' (Thomas Hickman) fight Bill Neate. The paper
gives what is, perhaps, the most vivid description of a prize-fight
ever written. The reader may realise by its means all the details
of prize-fighting that to modern taste appear brutal and disgusting;
but he will be left in no doubt about the pluck and endurance
displayed by the fighters, and, in Hazlitt's comments upon
Hickman’s ‘vapouring and swaggering,' he will find an admirable
statement of the virtues of the true sportsman. Indeed, the
whole position of sport had changed. That athletic exercises
were considered worthy of serious attention, the great illustrated
work of the artist and antiquary, Joseph Strutt, The Sports
and Pastimes of the People of England from the earliest
period (first published in 1801) is a sign. And to pugilism, even
more than to hunting, the patriots of the day liked to point, as
both proving and developing those qualities—courage, endurance,
'bottom,' or unquenchable spirit—which were held to make the
true Briton the equal of any three or more Frenchmen. In the
rooms of John Jackson (Byron's tribute to Jackson as man and as
boxer will be remembered), Tom and Jerry were shown a picture
of an assassination in Rome, the victim having been stabbed with
a dagger; and Logic's comment was :
When comparisons are made, the above plate speaks volumes in favour
of the manly and generous mode resorted to by Englishmen to resent an
insult or to decide a quarrel.
Pugilism, though already subject to attack as brutal and ferocious,
had the great heart of the country behind it. In the service of
pugilism Egan made his fame. He was not, of course, the first
writer on boxing. Captain Godfrey brought out, in or about 1740,
a small Treatise on the Useful Art of Self-defence. Paul Whitehead
had sung of the art in The Gymnasiad (1757); John Byrom,
Robert Barclay and others, had celebrated it in prose or verse;
and the journals, including The Gentleman's Magazine, The Flying
1 Collected Works of William Hazlitt, ed. Waller and Glover, vol. XII, p. 1.


## p. 231 (#261) ############################################

vi]
Literature of Pugilism
231
6
Post, The World and others, had published accounts of prize-
fights. But Egan was the first to make a name for himself as a
sporting journalist. Writing in a florid, slipshod style, by no
means devoid of vigour and vividness, he described the fights with
understanding and at the same time with what many of his readers
probably mistook for 'a literary touch'; and his example has not
yet completely faded from journalism. In 1824, he began editing
a weekly paper, Pierce Egan's Life in London and Sporting
Guide, which, later, developed into the more famous sporting
journal Bell's Life in London. Egan's Book of Sports and
Mirror of Life (1832) is a valuable compilation ; but his most
successful work on sport was his illustrated book, Boxiana; or,
Sketches of Antient and Modern Pugilism, from the days of the
renowned Broughton and Slack, to the championship of Crib.
The work was founded on an earlier work of the same title, pro-
duced by George Smeeton in 1812. The first two volumes of
Egan's book were issued in 1818; and a third in 1821. A new
series', in two volumes, was issued in 1828 and 1829. Here may
be read the lives and achievements of Fig, Broughton, Jackson,
Gulley, Mendoza, Molineaux, Tom Crib, Tom Spring, Jem Ward-
of all the great and lesser heroes of 'the fancy. ' Henry Downes
Miles, who, in 1906, published Pugilistica, the three volumes of
which carried the story of British boxing down to Sayers and Tom
King and the end of the prize-ring, frequently accuses Egan of
inaccuracy; but his book, for nearly a century, was the standard
history of the art, and, in his own day, was the classic work upon
the principal British sport. Among many other publications of
the time concerned with boxing, an honourable place is held by
the illustrated journal, The Fancy, which, between 1821 and 1826,
published memoirs of famous pugilists, accounts of fights, general
sporting intelligence and a few pages of miscellaneous news, all of
which are rich in information on the vigorous and not squeamish
sporting activities of the period.
Hunting, like pugilism, though in a less degree, was systematised
by the eighteenth century, and became a subject of popular, as
well as practical, literature. During the first half, or more, of the
century, every country gentleman hunted, but very many country
gentlemen kept their own packs, which were small and not choicely
bred. Few of them, probably, were maintained on even so steady,
if so nicely 'humorous' a principle as those musical fellows of
Coverly hall in Warwickshire. Squire Western's hounds have
· For bibliographical details, see Pugilistica, 1906, p. xi.
a


## p. 232 (#262) ############################################

232
[CH.
Caricature and Sport
not been closely described; but it is not unlikely that, in spite of
Gervase Markham's works, and Richard Blome's The Gentleman's
Recreation of 1683, and the amount of science displayed by
Somervile in The Chace, such hounds as those of lord Scattercash
were not so rare in the mid-eighteenth century as in the mid-
nineteenth. Then came a remarkable master of hounds-one
who, according to a writer commonly supposed to be Sir Egerton
Brydges, could ‘bag a fox in Greek, find a hare in Latin, inspect
his kennels in Italian, and direct the economy of his stables in
exquisite French'-a scholar and a sportsman, Peter Beckford.
Beckford, in 1781, published at Salisbury a quarto volume,
Thoughts upon Hare and Fox Hunting, which has been held
to 'mark an era not only in the literature but in the history of
hunting. This work, and the same author's Essays on Hunting,
laid the foundation of the art of hunting ; and Peter Beckford's
name has been held in veneration not only by 'Nimrod’ and
other writers on the sport, but by all serious students and
practitioners of the art. After Beckford, good books on hunting
became fairly numerous ; and among them should be mentioned
The British Sportsman by Samuel Howitt, a sportsman and
artist, who married a sister of Rowlandson and worked in close
contact with his brother-in-law. Hunting, coaching, and all
sports with horses offered an attractive field to the artists of
the day, as well as to the writers; and Bunbury proved to be the
ancestor of a long and numerous line, which includes George
Cruikshank, Leech, Robert Seymour and many other famous
names. Among the earliest successors of Bunbury is Henry
Alken, who did excellent sporting pictures between 1816 and
1831. A man of obscure origin (he is supposed to have been stud-
groom or trainer to the duke of Beaufort before he won fame as
an artist), Alken was commended by a writer (probably Christopher
North) in Blackwood's Magazine for his understanding of English
gentlemen—a subject in which George Cruikshank was held to
fail. In the great popularity of sport, Alken found ready employ-
ment as draughtsman. His National Sports of Great Britain
contains fifty admirable coloured engravings, in which his accurate
knowledge and his artistic sense are cleverly combined ; to The
Analysis of the Hunting Field, a volume of papers on the com-
ponents of a hunt reprinted from Bell's Life in London, he
contributed six of his finest designs; and his comic series,
Specimens of Riding, Symptoms of being amazed and others,
deserve the popularity they achieved. If Alken could draw like
1


## p. 233 (#263) ############################################

VI]
Literature of Hunting
233
a gentleman, he was soon to be associated with one who could
write like a gentleman. When Lockhart said of ‘Nimrod' that
he could 'hunt like Hugo Meynell and write like Walter Scott,' he
was doubtless excited into exaggeration by the pleasure of having
hit upon a man who could write of sport without the vulgarity
of Egan. “Nimrod,' whose name was Charles James Apperley
was a man of education, a country squire and a genuine sports-
man. Loss of means turned him to literature; he contributed
articles on sport to The Sporting Magazine, The Quarterly
Review and other journals; but is best known by his two books,
The Life of a Sportsman, and Memoirs of the Life of John
Mytton, both of which were illustrated with coloured engravings
by Alken. The Life of a Sportsman, published in 1842, con-
tains a very pleasant account of country life in days when sport
was no longer confused with debauchery; while its descriptions of
runs to hounds, its lore of hunting and of four-in-hand driving
and its variety of incident and anecdote make it still both valuable
and agreeable. Apperley, though not a Walter Scott, was a good
writer; he knew his subject thoroughly, on both the scientific
and the personal sides, and this work of fiction, though poor in
plot, is rich in interest. Memoirs of the life of John Mytton
appeared as a book in 1837, a portion of the work having been
printed in The New Sporting Magazine in 1835. It shows a
difficult task performed with fidelity and tact. Apperley had been
Mytton's neighbour in Shropshire, and had extended to him
all the care that was possible when both were living in Calais
in order to avoid their creditors. Apperley's task was to write
the life of a man who, while he was one of the most heroic
sportsmen that ever lived, was also drunken, diseased and insane;
and he performed the task with admirable judgment.
Before the death of Apperley, a new sporting writer, of a more
humorous turn, had begun a brilliant career. Like ‘Nimrod,'
,
Robert Smith Surtees was both sporting writer and sportsman.
The second son (and, in his fortieth year, the successor) of a
Yorkshire landowner, he contributed in youth to The Sporting
Magazine, and, in 1831, started, with Rudolf Ackermann the
younger, The New Sporting Magazine, which he edited till 1856.
Here first appeared the comic papers, which, in 1838, were published
in a book under the title of Jorrocks Jaunts and Jollities,
with coloured plates by Alken. Lockhart shared the general
1 For the driving of stage-coaches, see Cross, Thomas, The Autobiography of a Stage
Coachman, 1861.


## p. 234 (#264) ############################################

234
[CH.
Caricature and Sport
a
admiration for these comic sketches of sporting life, and urged Sur-
tees to write a book. Surtees made further use of the conception
of Mr Jorrocks, the grocer of sporting tastes, and produced
Handley Cross, or the Spa Hunt, which was enlarged into
Handley Cross, or Mr Jorrocks' Hunt, with pictures by John
Leech. Then came Hawbuck Grange, illustrated by 'Phiz’
(Hablot Knight Browne); Ask Mamma, or The Richest Commoner
in England; Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour, illustrated by Leech;
and Mr Facey Romford's Hounds, illustrated by Leech and
Browne, besides other novels. Surtees was also the author of
the papers in Bell's Life in London, some of which were issued,
with illustrations by Alken, in a volume mentioned above, The
Analysis of the Hunting Field. It is possible that the true worth of
Surtees's work has been a little obscured by the fame of the author of
Pickwick, of which the original idea, a tale of cockney sporting life,
was to some extent suggested by the adventures of Mr Jorrocks.
Surtees is a comic writer of a broad and hearty humour and a
deft and subtle touch. In the invention of comic character and
speech, he comes second only to Dickens. Mr Jorrocks, ‘Facey'
Romford, lord Scamperdale and his friend Jack Spraggon,
Mr Sponge, Mr Jawleyford of Jawleyford court—these, with
nearly every character that Surtees troubles to elaborate, are rich
in humour; while the dialogue in these novels has a force and a
flavour comparable only with that in Dickens, or in some piece of
flourishing invective in Nashe or Greene. Surtees's comedy is,
doubtless, like that of Dickens, mainly a comedy of 'humours' or
personal oddities; and Surtees, it must be admitted, was careless
about construction and about such necessary ingredients of a novel
a
as did not interest him ; but all the fun is rooted in human nature,
and set out with abounding energy. Surtees was fortunate in the
assistance of two young artists who were then carrying on the
succession of Alken and George Cruikshank. Both John Leech
and H. K. Browne were keen sportsmen and good artists; and,
though Leech never learned to draw a horse, while Browne's horses
were as good as Alken’s, both men were comic draughtsmen of
inventiveness and humour. Browne found good material in the
novels of another sporting writer, Francis Edward Smedley, a
cripple with a taste for sporting literature. Smedley, who was for
three years editor of George Cruikshank's Magazine, wrote three
novels of high spirits and rapid comedy, Frank Fairleigh, Lewis
Arundel and Harry Coverdale's Courtship; of which the first is
still, and deservedly, popular.


## p. 235 (#265) ############################################

VI]
Punch
235
The illustrations to the books of which mention has been
made were etched and then coloured by hand. Meanwhile, the
art of wood-engraving, which had become degraded and neglected,
was revived about the close of the eighteenth century by Thomas
Bewick. Bewick and his pupils spread abroad the practice of the
art; and thus there came into being a means of illustration in
black and white very serviceable for the use of the periodical
press. Much as the vitality of pictorial art had helped to bring
into being the literature of the various kinds that have been
described above, so the existence of a number of able engravers
on wood helped to bring into being an illustrated press. In the
early years of the nineteenth century, The Observer, Bell's Life in
London and other papers owned by William Clement, had made a
special feature of their illustrations; and The Observer was quick
to take advantage of the revival in the art of wood-engraving.
At the same time, the refinement of taste and manners brought
the need of a comic journalism that should be free of scurrility
and other offence; and, before the middle of the nineteenth
century, the two influences had combined to produce the most
famous of comic journals, Punch. To the making of Punch and
its various component parts, several streams flowed. Some of
them have already been noticed in this chapter : the burlesque of
the illustrated tour; the illustrated comedy of sport; the political
or social caricature; the book of anecdote and jest. George
Cruikshank, who, in the art of comic draughtsmanship, marks
the transition from the brutality of Gillray or Rowlandson to the
delicate humour of du Maurier or Tenniel, issued, for some years
after 1835, a Comic Almanack, to which eminent authors, among
them Thackeray, contributed ; and Thomas Hood had founded
his famous Comic Annual in 1830. Account must, also, be taken
of certain comic journals that had preceded Punch, among them,
especially, the Figaro and the Charivari of Paris. The honour
of producing the first English comic journal comparable with
Punch belongs to Gilbert Abbott à Beckett, one of many lively
young humourists, the majority of whom became contributors to
the most successful of comic papers. À Beckett, who was a
barrister, and became a police magistrate, started, in 1813, an
illustrated comic journal entitled Figaro in London, which was
illustrated by Robert Seymour and, after him, by Robert Cruik-
shank. This journal à Beckett conducted for three years, and
among his many other ventures were The Wag and The Comic
Magazine. One of his literary contributors was his successor as


## p. 236 (#266) ############################################

236
[CH.
Caricature and Sport
editor of Figaro, Henry Mayhew, and one of his artists William
Newman, who afterwards did valuable work for Punch. Punchi-
nello, illustrated by Robert Cruikshank, was another, and a short-
lived, predecessor of Punch. Douglas Jerrold's Punch in London
was yet another. In 1830 and onwards, a large amount of young
and eager comic talent, both in art and in literature, was finding
expression; and, in 1841, the best of it combined in the production
of the most respectable and most popular of comic journals. The
facts of the founding of Punch have been disputed. The authorised
view is that Ebenezer Landells, a newspaper projector, and a wood-
engraver who had learned his art from Bewick, had the idea of a
comic journal similar to the Paris Charivari-an idea that had
previously been all but brought to fruit by Douglas Jerrold,
Thackeray, Kenny Meadows, Leech and others. After suggesting
the idea to several publishers in vain, Landells took it to the
printer, Joseph Last, who entertained it favourably, and sent him
to see Henry Mayhew, the son of Last's legal adviser. Mayhew
took him on to see Mark Lemon, a publican turned dramatist,
and the list of the staff was thereupon drawn up. At the next
meeting, Mayhew, Lemon and Stirling Coyne were appointed
joint-editors; Archibald S. Henning, cartoonist; Brine, John
Phillips and William Newman artists in ordinary, and Lemon,
Coyne, Mayhew, Gilbert Abbott à Beckett and W. H. Wills (who
was subsequently secretary to Charles Dickens), the literary staff.
The first number, which appeared on 17 July 1841, contained con-
tributions, also, by Henry Grattan (whose full name was Henry
Grattan Plunkett, and whose pseudonym was ‘Fusbos '), Joseph
Allen, an artist, and F. G. Tomlins. Before the appearance of the
second number the staff had been joined by Douglas Jerrold.
Later additions to the list of contributors in the early days of the
journal's existence were Percival Leigh (whose pseudonym was
'Paul Prendergast'), the author of The Comic Latin Grammar,
a doctor by profession, and a scholarly and gentle-minded wit ;
Albert Smith, well known for his popular lectures on the ascent
of Mont Blanc; H. A. Kennedy; William Maginn; John Oxenford,
dramatic critic; Thackeray and Horace Mayhew, younger brother
of Henry Mayhew.
To the influence of Henry Mayhew has been ascribed the
geniality of tone which differentiated Punch from Charivari ;
but that geniality was tempered, in and after the second number,
by the work of the most remarkable among the early writers for
Spielmann, M. H. , The History of Punch, 1895, chap. I.
1


## p. 237 (#267) ############################################

vi]
Contributors to Punch
237
Punch. Douglas William Jerrold was a dramatist and wit who
had already made his mark with his play, Black-eyed Susan, and
his studies of Men of Character (1838), for which Thackeray
drew illustrations. His papers in Punch, signed 'Q;' the first,
of which appeared on 12 September 1841, were the contri-
butions that attracted attention to the paper; and Jerrold's
work, thenceforth, gave Punch its tone. Here appeared, in
1843, Punch's letters to his son; in 1845, Punch's Complete
Letter-writer; and Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures, which was
issued as a book in 1846. Jerrold wrote several other serial
works for Punch, yet none so popular as Mrs Caudle. This
series, more genially humorous and less satirical than most of
Jerrold's work, made the fortune of Punch. But, in the earlier
years of the paper, it was not Jerrold's comedy but his more
serious writing—the social and political articles signed 'Q'—that
gave the journal its character and distinction. Jerrold was a
man of hasty temper and caustic tongue, but of a warm heart
and of quick sympathy with the oppressed. In his political
philosophy, there may have been some traces of the school of
Godwin ; but his leading idea (or sentiment) was the wickedness
of the rich and the oppressed innocence of the poor. With
satire (sometimes personal) and invective, he fought hard and
fearlessly, if not always wisely, in a good cause; and he gave to
Punch its trend towards liberalism in politics. Thackeray began
his connection with Punch with Miss Tickletoby's Lectures on
English History, and drawings to illustrate, occasionally other
people’s, but usually his own, writings. In Punch, too, appeared
his Diary of Fitz-Jeames de la Pluche ; his Snobs of England,
and his Punch's Prize Novelists. His regular connection with
Punch practically ended in 1851, though his last contribution
to it was published in 1854. In Miss Tickletoby's Lectures
some have seen the germ of The Comic History of England
and The Comic History of Rome, written by Gilbert Abbott
à Beckett, and illustrated by John Leech. Besides these two
prolonged efforts of humour, which, considering the extent and
nature of the task, is wonderfully well maintained, à Beckett
wrote a brilliant piece of parody, The Comic Blackstone, illustrated
by George Cruikshank and John Leech, which, even more than the
Histories, has an instructive, as well as a comic, value, and has even
been recommended as a text-book of law. Some of à Beckett's best
work for Punch consisted of the articles on the trials of a young
barrister which were signed ‘Mr Briefless': a series which gave


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238
[CH.
Caricature and Sport
rise, many years later, to the letters of 'A. Briefless, Junior,'
contributed to Punch by Gilbert Abbott à Beckett's son, Arthur
William à Beckett, who, with his brother, Gilbert Arthur à Beckett,
was to join the staff of Punch in later years.
Thomas Hood' began to contribute to Punch in 1843, and
amused himself and his readers with his attacks on the plagiarist,
lord William Lennox, at whom Jerrold and other wits also
had their fling. Hood is best known, however, as a contributor
to Punch, by the famous Song of the Shirt, which appeared in
the Christmas number of the year 1843.