THE LIBERAL PROFESSIONS
Mr. Punch`s history of modern England, Volume I—1841-1857 | ||
4. THE LIBERAL PROFESSIONS
AS a mirror of public opinion on the status and importance of the learned and liberal professions Punch, when due allowance has been made for his limitations, his prejudices and even his passions, cannot be overlooked by the student of social history. A whole book has been written on his attitude towards the Church; in another section of this chronicle I have dealt at some length with his hostility to Pluralism, Sabbatarianism, Ritualism, and endeavoured to show how a generally tolerant and "hang theology" attitude was in the early 'fifties exchanged for one of fierce anti-Vaticanism. The "No Popery" drum was banged with great fury, and when the Roman Catholic hierarchy was reestablished in England in 1850, Punch supported the Ecclesiastical Titles Act which declared the assumption of titles connected with places in the realm illegal and imposed heavy penalties on the persons assuming them. This Act, passed in 1851, remained a dead letter until 1871, when it was repealed. As for the law and lawyers the record of Punch is more consistent and creditable, and, as we have seen, he was from the first an unflinching advocate of cheap justice and the removal of irregularities which pressed hardest on the poor, an unrelenting critic of barbarous and oppressive penalties. No one was too great or small to escape his legal pillory, or to secure recognition for reforming zeal or humane administration—from Lord Brougham and Lord St. Leonards down to unpaid magistrates. To what has been said elsewhere it may be added that the series of papers written by Gilbert à Beckett, under the heading of "The Comic Blackstone," are much better than their title, for they contain a good deal of shrewd satire and sound sense. Punch had good reason to be proud of his own legal representative, the humane and genial Gilbert à Beckett. He welcomed
On the other hand, judges who jested on the Bench, indulged in judicial clap-trap, or encouraged the public to regard the Courts of Justice as substitutes for theatrical entertainments, are severely handled. Judex jocosus odiosus; but the type is, apparently, impervious to satire. Another anticipation of latter-day criticism is to be found in the remark made in 1856: "There was once a Parliament—(we do not live in such times now!)— in which there were few or no lawyers." Even more red-hot in its up-to-dateness is Punch's sarcastic dismissal of the cult of "efficiency" sixty-five years ago:—
Mr. Punch's reverence for the business powers of so-called men of business is not abject. The "practical men," who smile compassionately at schemers and visionaries, are the men who perpetually make the most frightful smashes and blunders. No attorney, for instance, can keep, or comprehend accounts, and a stock-jobber, the supposed incarnation of shrewdness, is the most credulous gebemouche in London.
With University authorities, professors, dons, and academics generally, we look in vain for any sign of sympathy, save that Punch condemned the rule which then prevented Fellows from marrying. For the rest, he looked on the older Universities as the homes of mediæval obscurantism, stubbornly opposed to reforms long overdue. Of the two, Oxford fared the worse at his hands on account of the Tractarian movement, Pusey, and Newman. This antagonism was based on political and religious divergences, not on any hostility to learning or the classical curriculum, of which Punch was a supporter, to the extent of
I will not, this hot weather, weary your lordship by specifying every case, but will sum up the account as I find it divided:
To Science, Literature, and Art | ...£275 | |
To sundries | 925 | |
— | ||
£1,200 | ||
Deduct sundries | 925 | |
— | £275 | |
Due to, Science, Literature, and Art | 925 | |
Total Civil List ... ... | £1,200 |
Equally creditable is the reiterated plea—from 1847 onward —for the establishment of International Copyright, to guard English authors from the piracy of American publishers, amongst whom Putnam is singled out as an honourable exception. It may be fairly claimed for Punch that he made very few mistakes in appraising the merits of the authors of his time or of the rising stars. He failed to render justice to Disraeli as a writer, and he curtly dismissed Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass as "a mad book by an American rough." But literary values prove him substantially right in his distaste for the flamboyant exuberance of Bulwer Lytton, and absolutely sound in his castigation of the tripe-and-oniony flavour of Samuel Warren's books, one of which he held up to not undeserved obloquy under the ferocious misnomer of "The Diarrhœa of a Late Physician." He was a veritable malleus stultorum in dealing alike with the futilities of incompetent aristocrats and the homely puerilities of Martin Tupper and Poet Close. The famous campaign
Dog does not eat dog, but the unwritten etiquette in accordance with which one newspaper does not directly attack another was much less strictly observed sixty or seventy years ago. Delane, the editor of The Times, exercised a greater political influence than any other journalist before or since, and for a good many years Punch acted as a sort of free-lance ally of the great daily,[1] drawing liberally from its columns in the way of extracts and illustrations, and, according to his habitual practice, underlining its policy while pretending to be shocked at it. Several of the men on Punch were contributors to The Times. Gilbert à Beckett's name stands first in the list of the principal contributors and members of the staff of The Times under Delane given in Mr. Dasent's biography. Yet I have searched the pages of the biography and the index in vain for a single reference to Punch. None the less the relations of the two papers were close and cordial, and "Billy" Russell, the Times war correspondent and unsparing critic of mismanagement in the
JENKINS AT HOME
[Description: Cartoon of "Jenkins at Home." Jenkins, who is sitting at a table that is decorated with a wine bottle and a vase of flowers, wears an elaborate dressing gown and holds a handkerchief in one hand, a quill in the other. Posters advertising ballet hang on the walls, and a small dog warms himself by the fire. ]But of all the professions, none looms larger in the early pages of Punch than that of medicine. Here, again, a broad distinction is drawn between the heads of the profession and those who are preparing for it; between legitimate and illegitimate practitioners. Men like Harvey and Jenner are extolled as heroes and benefactors of humanity at large, and their recognition by the State is urged as a national duty. The maintenance of the status and dignity of physicians and surgeons, civil,
Great outcry has been raised of late, in the Lancet and other journals, against Quacks and Quackery. Let them not flatter themselves that it is possible to put either down. The Quack is a personage too essential to the comfort of a large class of society to be deprived of his vocation. He is, in fact, the Physician of the Fools—a body whose numbers and respectability are by far too great to admit of anything of the kind. However, as there are some people in the world who are not fools, and who will not, when they want a doctor, have recourse to a Quack, if they can help it, the practice of the latter ought certainly to be limited to its proper sphere. For this end we could certainly go rather farther than Sir James Graham's sympathies permitted him to proceed last session. We propose that every Quack should not only not be suffered to call himself what he is not, but should be compelled to call himself what he is. We would not only prevent him from assuming the title of a medical man, but we would oblige him to take that of Quack.
This was written in 1845. The Sir James Graham referred to was one of the blackest of all Punch's bêtes noires—in consequence of the postal censorship which earned for him the title of "The Breaker (not the Keeper) of the Seals," and prompted the savage cartoon of "Peel's Dirty Little Boy." He never had friendly treatment at the hands of Punch. Elsewhere it is insinuated that the measure played the game of the quacks, and the history of attempts to regulate their activities in the last seventy years goes far to justify Punch's scepticism. But his censure was not confined to quacks; he says hard things of doctors who exploited and traded on malades imaginaires, and more than once exhibits impatience at the failure of medical science to arrive at any definite conclusions as to the causes or cure of the cholera epidemic in 1849. And when Mr. Muntz brought foward a motion in 1845 to oblige doctors to write their prescriptions in English and put English
SOMETHING LIKE A HOLIDAY
PASTRYCOOK: —What have you had, Sir?"
BOY: "I've had two jellies, seven of these, eleven of these, and six of
those, and four Bath buns, a sausage roll, ten almond cakes—and a
bottle of ginger beer."
[Description: This cartoon shows a plump boy in a sailor suit pointing dourly at
a cabinet of pastries, reporting "I've had two jellies, seven of these, eleven of these, and six of
those, and four Bath buns, a sausage roll, ten almond cakes—and a
bottle of ginger beer."]By far the largest number of the references to medicine, however, are concerned with the manners and customs of medical students, and if corroboration be needed for the unflattering picture of this class which has been drawn in Pickwick, the pages of Punch supply it in distressing abundance. The counterparts
THE MEDICAL STUDENT
[Description: In this cartoon, entitled "The Medical Student," a young man smoking a cigar and holding a mug of beer stands facing a woman who appears to be sewing. ]Thus, under the heading Hospitals we read:—
The attributes of the gentlemen walking the various hospitals may be thus enumerated:
Guy's | Half-and-half, anatomical fracas, and billiards. |
St. Thomas's | Half-and-half, anatomical fracas, and billiards. |
St. George's | Doings at Tattersall's. |
London | Too remote to be ascertained. |
University | Conjuring, juggling, and mesmerism. |
Bartholomew's | State of Smithfield Markets. |
Middlesex | Convivial harmony. |
Charing Cross | Dancing at the Lowther-rooms. |
King's College | Has not yet acquired any peculiarity. |
Westminster | Dashes of all the others combined. |
Even when all allowance has been made for the exaggeration of the satirist, there was undoubtedly a serious warrant for this indictment, and we may congratulate ourselves that it is a gross libel on the medical students of to-day. They may be exuberant, noisy, and rowdy on occasion, but they are neither grubby nor callous, and the unfortunate episode of their treatment of Mr. "Pussyfoot" Johnson may be regarded, we believe, as a blot on the scutcheon of their sportsmanship which the great majority regretted and reprobated.
On the occasion of Punch's jubilee, in 1891, The Times remarked "May we be excused for noting the fact that he (Punch) has generally, in regard to public affairs, taken his cue from The Times?" That was substantially true of The Times under the old régime when Delane was editor. Mr. Herbert Paul, himself a strong Liberal, writes in his History of Modern England that "Delane's chief quality was his independence." Mr. Dasent, in his biography, gives good grounds for his assertion that Delane was at no time what could be called a party man, though his instincts were essentially Liberal, and notes that "if charged with inconsistency, Delane would merely remind his critics that The Times was the organ of no party, and that every issue was complete in itself."
THE LIBERAL PROFESSIONS
Mr. Punch`s history of modern England, Volume I—1841-1857 | ||