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Between the aristocracy as depicted in the pages of Punch and in those of the Morning Post in the 'forties and 'fifties there is a wide gulf. As we have seen, Punch's admiration of the Duke of Wellington stopped a long way this side of idolatry. Yet even when the Duke was criticized most severely as a politician, the recognition of his greatness was not denied. A good example is to be found in the cartoon of the "Giant and the Dwarf," which was inspired by Napoleon's legacy to the subaltern Cantillon, who was charged with an attempt to murder Wellington. Wellington himself had been approached with a view to similar action against Napoleon, and here was his reply:—

"—— wishes to kill him; but I have told him that I shall remonstrate; I have likewise said that, as a private friend, I advised him to have nothing to do with so foul a transaction; and that he and I had acted too distinguished parts in these transactions to become executioners; and that I was determined that, if the sovereigns wished to put him to death, they should appoint an executioner, which would not be me."15

The cartoon is accompanied by this comment:—

The Duke has made his political blunders and in his time talked political nonsense as well as his inferiors. Moreover he exhibits a defective sympathy with the people. … Nevertheless, contrasting Wellington's answer to the proposed death of the ex-Emperor with Napoleon's reward of the would-be assassin of the General (i.e. Wellington himself), need we ask which is the Giant and which is the Dwarf?

Other dukes cut a less dignified figure in the lean years which preceded the repeal of the Corn Laws—whether as coal-owners, Protectionists, or strict enforcers of the Game-Laws.

HENRY MARQUESS OF WATERFORD: A NEW STATUE OF ACHILLES

Cast from Knockers taken in the vicinities of Sackville Street, Vigo Lane, and Waterloo Place.

The first hint of the long campaign against the Dukes of Bedford in connexion with "Mud Salad Market" occurs in February, 1844. The Dukes of Sutherland, Atholl, Norfolk and Buckingham all came under the lash. When Lord William Lennox's plagiarisms from Hood and Scott in his novel The Tuft-hunter were exposed, Punch printed this jingling epigram:—

A Duke once declared—and most solemnly too—

That whatever he liked with his own he would do;

But the son of a Duke has gone farther, and shown

He will do what he likes with what isn't his own!

Marquesses under the Microscope

And the marquesses came off even worse. The eccentric Marquess of Waterford is celebrated for his knocker-hunting exploits in the very first number. The Marquess of Hertford—the original of Thackeray's Marquess of Steyne in Vanity Fair—is subjected to posthumous obloquy, à propos of the claim of his valet on his executors, who "were compelled to bring the dead Marquess into Court, that the loathsome dead may declare the greater loathsomeness of the living." The Marquess of Londonderry came under the lash not merely as a rapacious coal-owner, but as a bad writer: "the most noble but not the most grammatical Marquess." So again we are informed respecting the Marquess of Normanby's novels that "they have just declared a dividend of 2½d. in the pound, which is being paid at all the butter shops." One has to wait for nearly ten years for acknowledgment of virtue in the marquisate, but then it is certainly handsome. The occasion was the entrance into power of the Derby-Disraeli (or "Dilly-Dizzy") Cabinet:—

THE MARQUIS OF LANSDOWNE AND THE NEW MINISTRY

The first act of the Ministry in the House of Lords was done with the worst of grace. The Marquis of Lansdowne took farewell of office and of official life. And who was there, among the new men, to do reverence to the unstudied yet touching ceremony? Nobody, save the Earl of Malmesbury. The Times says, and most truly:

"A public life, which has literally embraced the first half of this century, and which last night was most gracefully concluded, deserved an ampler and richer tribute than our new Foreign Secretary seemed able to bestow."

Nothing could be colder, meaner, and certainly more foreign to the heartiness of English generosity than the chip-chip phrases of Lord Malmesbury. It is such men as the Marquis of Lansdowne who are the true strength of the House of Lords. He is a true Englishman. In fifty years of political life his name has never been mixed with aught mean or jobbing. In the most tempestuous times, his voice has been heard amongst the loudest for right. In days when to be a reformer was to take rank a little above a fanatic and a public despoiler, the Marquis of Lansdowne struck at rotten boroughs. He has ever been a patriot in the noblest sense. And there was nobody but cold-mouthed Malmesbury 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.