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On the position and influence of women in society Punch, as we have already seen, furnishes a critical if not a complete commentary. Extravagance, exclusiveness and arrogance are faithfully dealt with. There is genuine satire in the picture of the fine lady who, on hearing that her pet dog had bitten the footman in the leg, expressed the fervent hope that it would not make the dog ill. Fashionable delicacy is ridiculed, and Punch ranged himself on the side of "S.G.O." (Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne) in his crusade in The Times against Mayfair matrons for not nursing their own offspring, and for employing wet-nurses who, in turn, had to starve their own children. A few years earlier, when the question "Can Women regenerate Society?" was seriously discussed in the same journal, the issue is drowned by Punch in a stream of comic suggestions. There is not much to choose between the "Dolls' House" ideal and that expressed in the sonnet printed in the winter of 1846:—

I idolize the ladies. They are fairies

That spiritualize this earth of ours;

From heavenly hotbeds, most delightful flowers,

Or choice cream-cheeses from celestial dairies.

But learning in its barbarous seminaries,

Gives the dear creatures many wretched hours,

And on their gossamer intellects sternly showers

Science with all its horrid accessaries.

Now, seriously, the only things, I think,

In which young ladies should instructed be,

Are stocking-mending, love, and cookery—

Accomplishments that very soon will sink,

Since Fluxions, now, and Sanscrit conversation,

Always form part of female education.

SOMETHING LIKE A BROTHER

Flora: "What a very pretty waistcoat, Emily!"

Emily: "Yes, dear. It belongs to my brother Charles. When he goes out of town, he puts me on the Free List, as he calls it, of his wardrobe. Isn't it kind?"

Victorian Damsels

But even within the ranks of the social élite signs of a desire for equal rights were not wanting. These, however, were mainly in the direction of aping masculinity in sport and dress. In the same year we read of the Duchess of Marlborough shooting, and a Ladies' Club is mentioned for the first time a few months earlier. References to the mistakenly modern idea of ladies smoking are to be found pretty frequently even before the Crimean War, which is generally held responsible for the introduction of the cigarette, and soon afterwards we have a picture of a lady calmly enjoying a smoke in the train. Fine ladies are satirized for emulating their brothers and husbands by leaving their bills unpaid. It must be owned that woman, if she ventured to step outside the domain of an amiable, decorative, or domestic mode of existence met with little commendation from Punch. He was a strong advocate of schools for cooking long years before the historic advice of "Feed the Brute" appeared in his pages. But the strong-minded female only excited his ridicule and satire, though with unkind inconsistency he was never weary of making fun of the troubles of the helpless "unprotected female." There are hundreds of portraits of charming Victorian damsels in Leech's "Social Cuts," but their predominant trait is health and amiability. Very rarely do they say anything wise or witty or plain spoken—even under great provocation from their pert schoolboy brothers. But we know—even from the pages of Punch—that Victorian women and girls were not all of this yielding and gentle type, and it is to his credit that in his sketch of "The Model Fast Lady," he was able to render justice to a phase of advanced womanhood remote alike from sentimentality and intellectualism:—

The Model Fast Lady

She delights in dogs; not King Charles's, but big dogs that live in kennels. She takes them into the drawing-room, and makes them leap over the chairs. Her mare, too, is never out of her mouth. … If she is intimate with you, she will call you "my dear fellow"; and if she takes a fancy to you, you will be addressed the first time by your Christian name, familiarized very shortly from Henry into Harry. Her father is hailed as "Governor." Her speech, in fact, is a little masculine. If your eyes were shut, you would fancy it was a "Fast Man" speaking, so quick do the "snobs," and "nobs," and "chaps," and "dowdies," "gawkies," "spoonies," "brats," and other cherished members of the Fast Human Family run through her loud conversation. Occasionally, too, a "Deuce take it," vigorously thrown in, or a "Drat it," peculiarly emphasized, will startle you; but they are only used as interjections, and mean nothing but "Alas!" or "Dear me!" or, at the most, "How provoking!"

The MODEL FAST LADY is not particularly attached to dancing. She waltzes as if she had made a wager to go round the room one hundred and fifty times in five minutes and a quarter. If any one is pushed over by the rapidity of her Olga revolutions, she does not stop, but merely laughs, and "hopes no limbs are broken."

By the bye, if she has a weakness, it is on the score—rather a long one—of wagers. She is always betting. It must be mentioned, however, that she is most honourable in the payment of her debts. She would sell her Black Bess sooner than levant.

THE MODEL FAST LADY has, at best, but a superficial knowledge of the art of flirting. Compliments, she calls "stuff"; and sentiment "namby-pamby nonsense." She likes a person to be sensible; and has no idea of being made a fool of.

At a picnic she is invaluable. When your tumbler is empty, she'll take Champagne with you—that is to say, if you're not too proud. You may as well fill her glass; she has no notion of being cheated. Here's better luck to you! and to enforce it, she runs the point of her parasol into your side.

She dislikes smoking? Not she indeed; she's rather fond of it. In fact, she likes a "weed" herself occasionally, and to convince you, will take a whiff or two. Her forefinger is not much needle-marked, and she laughs at Berlin wool, and all such fiddle faddle. She has a pianoforte, but really she has no patience to practise. She can play a short tune on the cornet-à-piston.

Literature is a sealed pleasure to her, though it is but fair to state she reads Bell's Life, and has a few volumes in her bedroom of the Sporting Magazine. She knows there was a horse of the name of Byron.

The FAST LADY rather avoids children. If a baby is put into her hands, she says, "Pray, somebody, come and take this thing, I'm afraid of dropping it." She prefers the society of men, too, to that of her own sex.

Her costume is not regulated much by the fashions, and she is always the first to come down when the ladies have gone upstairs to change their dress.

Her greatest accomplishment is to drive. With the whip in one hand and the reins in the other, and a key-bugle behind, she would not exchange places with the Queen herself.

With all these peculiarities and manly addictions, however, the FAST LADY is good hearted, very good natured, and never guilty of what she would call "a dirty action." Her generosity, too, must be included amongst her other faults, for she gives to all, and increases the gift by sympathy. She is always in good humour, and, like gentle dulness, dearly loves a joke. She is an excellent daughter, and her father dotes on her and lets her do what she likes, for "he knows she will never do anything wrong, though she is a strange girl." In the country she is greatly beloved. The poor people call her "a dear good Miss," and present their petitions and unfold all their little griefs to her. She is continually having more presents of pups sent to her than she knows what to do with. The farmers, too, consult her about their cows and pigs, and she is the godmother to half the children in the parish.

Her deficiencies, after all, are more those of manner than of feeling. She may be too largely gifted with the male virtues, but then she has a very sparing collection of the female vices. Nature may be to blame for having made her one of the weaker vessels, but imperfect and manly as she is, she still retains the inward gentleness of the woman, and many fine ladies, who stand the highest in the pulpits of society, would preach none the less effectively if they had only as good a heart—even with the trumpery straw in which, like a rich fruit, it is enveloped—as the MODEL FAST LADY.

Fast Young Lady (to Old Gent): "Have you such a thing as a lucifer about you, for I've left my cigar lights at home."

This was written seventy years ago, but within the last decade we have seen Miss Compton frequently impersonating rôles of which the leading traits were, in essentials, identical with those of the Model Fast Lady. The model woman, married or unmarried, as represented by the writers and artists of Punch, was feminine, kindly, but colourless, though the "deviations from the norm" are not overlooked—the lion-huntresses of Belgravia; thrusting matrons; willing victims of the social tread-mill and the "petty decalogue of Mode"; cynical high-priestesses of the marriage market.

When we turn to the higher education of women generally the attitude assumed is nearly always one of mild chaff. Punch refused to take it seriously, and propounded his own scheme for a female university, in which the fashionable accomplishments are enumerated in detail:—

French and Italian as spoken in the fashionable circles, music, drawing, fancy-work, and the higher branches of dancing, will form the regular curriculum. A minor examination on these subjects, or a "Little Go," will be instituted before the Spinstership of Arts can be tried for. The examined shall be able to "go on" anywhere in "Télémaque," or in the conversations in Veneroni's Grammar; to play a fantasia of Thalberg's; to work a pair of slippers in Berlin wool; and to dance the Cachuca and Cracovienne.

For the degree of Spinster, the candidate shall be examined in various novels by Paul de Kock, Victor Hugo, Balzac, and others; also in the libretto of the last new opera. She shall be able to play or sing any of the fashionable pieces or airs of the day, and shall give evidence of an extensive acquaintance with Bellini, Donizetti, Labitzky, and Strauss. She shall draw and embroider, in a satisfactory manner, various fruits, flowers, cottages and a wood, Greeks and Mussulmen. Lastly, she shall dance, with correctness and elegance, a "pas de deux" with any young gentleman who may be selected for the purpose.

There shall be likewise, with respect to music and dancing, an annual examination for honours. The candidates shall evince a familiarity with the most admirable feats of Taglioni, and the Ellslers, and with the most difficult compositions of Herz, Czerny, and Bochsa; though if they like they may be allowed to take up, in preference, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Weber.

These examinations shall be called respectively the Musical and the Dancing Tripos. No one shall be admissible to the latter who has not taken honours in the former. The gradations or distinction shall be as follows: In the Musical Tripos the foremost damsel shall be entitled the Senior Warbler; next shall follow the Simple Warblers; the Bravissimas shall come next; then the Bravas; and finally those who barely get their degree.

The first dancer shall be denominated La Sylphide; after her shall be ranked the Sylphs; next to these the first and second Coryphées; and lastly, as before, the merely passable.

MISS WALKER: A FEMALE POLITICIAN, 1842

Women and Politics

This article is fairly typical of the attitude of Punch towards what we now call "Feminism"—a term so new that in the New English Dictionary it is dismissed in half a dozen words as a rare word meaning "the qualities of females"! That definition, however, was given in 1901. Now it would have to be revised to include the movement for political emancipation, economic independence, and admission to the professions. References to female politicians begin in the third volume, where we find the very unsympathetic and even acid sketch here given of Miss Walker, "the female Chartist." Eight years elapsed before ladies were admitted to the gallery of the House of Commons, though, even then, carefully screened from view by the metal work of the "Grille," an Orientally obscuring device which lasted till Georgian days. The possibility of their appearing on the floor of the House is never seriously contemplated; the "Parliamentary female" included amongst the "ladies of creation" in the Almanack for 1852 is modelled on Mrs. Jellyby—Bleak House had been coming out serially from March, 1852, onwards. The pioneers of the invasion of the professions hailed from America. Miss Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D., of Boston,25 is mentioned in 1848, and in the following year Punch welcomed the innovation in verse:—

AN M.D. IN A GOWN

Young ladies all, of every clime,

Especially of Britain,

Who wholly occupy your time

In novels or in knitting,

Whose highest skill is but to play,

Sing, dance, or French to clack well,

Reflect on the example, pray,

Of excellent Miss Blackwell!

For Doctrix Blackwell—that's the way

To dub in rightful gender—

In her profession, ever may

Prosperity attend her!

Punch, a gold-handled parasol

Suggests for presentation,

To one so well deserving all

Esteem and admiration.

The Bloomer Craze

BLOOMERISM—AN AMERICAN CUSTOM

Punch's commendation rather declines in dignity in the last stanza. But we are hardly prepared for his condemnation of women doctors in 1852 merely on the illogical ground that they were unfitted to walk the hospitals or use the scalpel. The better training of nurses had been urged before the days of Florence Nightingale; Punch appreciated the gossiping humours of Mrs. Gamp, but he was very far from regarding her as a ministering angel. To the "strong-minded female," however, he had a strong antipathy, and in his pictures rather ungenerously emphasized the unloveliness, even the scragginess, of the advocates of women's rights. The famous Amelia Jenks Bloomer was a vigorous suffragist and temperance reformer, but Punch was only concerned with her campaign on behalf of "trouserloons." "Bloomers" were a constant theme of comment in pantomime librettos; they were adopted by some barmaids; and a "Bloomer Ball" was actually held in the year 1851. This earliest form of "rational" dress for women was, however, banned by Mayfair. The divided skirt, many years later, was more fortunate in having a Viscountess for its chief advocate. Punch is not only concerned with feminine dress-vagaries. He makes a semi-frivolous suggestion of the appointment of a Poetess Laureate, and the "Letters from Mary Ann," though they form a new departure and indicate an increased readiness to treat the claims of women from the women's point of view, cannot be regarded as a whole-hearted contribution to the cause. Women were already knocking at the door of other professions. In 1855 we find references to ladies at the Bar in America and women preachers in Methodist chapels in England. The first Exhibition of Women Artists is noticed in July, 1857. Punch's anticipation of women policemen in 1851 was probably prompted not by a desire to see the innovation realized, but merely served as a means of guying bloomerism. The female omnibus conductor is another piece of unconscious prophecy, as she was imaginatively represented as being in charge of 'buses for ladies only, to relieve male passengers from the pressure of voluminous dresses and redundant parcels. But while Punch was an opponent of woman suffrage and, at best, a lukewarm supporter of woman's demand for professional employment, he was—as we have shown in other sections of this survey—at least a persistent advocate of the reform of the Divorce Laws—and unwearied in his exposure of the hardships and sufferings of underpaid governesses, sweated sempstresses, and women-workers generally. Brutal assaults on women were, in his view, altogether inadequately punished by fine. He was alive to their wrongs if not to their "rights," and the sneers of some of his contemporaries at the Women's Petition in 1856 moved him to indignation:—

THE CRY OF THE WOMEN

Now, this petition or lamentation—in which Mr. Punch gives willing ear to the cry of weakness and unjust suffering—has been rebuked, pooh-poohed, pished and fiddle-de-dee'd; but in these scoffings Mr. Punch joineth not. He cannot, for the life of him, say, with certain editorial porcupines of the male gender, "Of what avail these lamentations of lamenting women, whose cries are foolishness? Wherefore should women at any time lift up their voices; when is it not manifest from the beginning that women were created to sing small? And finally, if women be beaten by savages, and robbed by sots, what of it? It is better that women should be beaten and crouch in the dust—it is better they should be robbed and sit at home, than go and petition Parliament."

"Punch" Champions Horatia

He espoused the cause of humble heroines, of the neglected widows or orphans of heroes and benefactors like a true knight errant. Elsewhere we have told of his exertions on behalf of Mother Seacole, the brave old sutler in the Crimea, for whose benefit he started a special fund. The scurvy treatment of the widow of Lieutenant Waghorn, the pioneer of the Overland Route, who wore himself out in a work of national importance, moved him to righteous indignation. She was given a pension of £25, afterwards increased to £40.

But none of these palpable wrongs to women stirred Punch so deeply in these years as the tardy and meagre discharge of the nation's debt to Nelson in respect of his daughter Horatia. To this particular bit of narrow-mindedness he recurs again and again in the years 1849 to 1855, when he sums up what had been done to liquidate the debt:—

NELSON'S DAUGHTER AND GRANDCHILDREN

An advertisement in The Times tells the world that the eight children of Nelson's daughter Horatia—Nelson's grandchildren—are "more or less provided for." Perhaps a little less than more; but let that pass. At length a long, long standing debt has been paid, or rather compounded, at something less than nineteen shillings in the pound. The Government, as the Government, has done nothing. The stiff, whalebone virtue that set up the back of Queen Charlotte against Nelson's daughter—George the Third thought Nelson's funeral had too much state in it for a mere subject; such pomp "was for kings"—still kept the Government aloof from all help of Horatia and her children. At length, however, the press spoke out. The "ribald press" for a time laid aside its ribaldry, and condescended to champion the claims of Nelson's daughter upon Nelson's fellow-countrymen. Well, something has been done; and thus much in explanation we take from the advertisement in question:—

"The eight children of Horatia, Mrs. Ward, are all now, more or less, provided for. Her eldest son has been presented to the living of Radstock by the Dowager Countess of Waldegrave; the second son had been previously appointed by Sir W. Burnett Assistant-Surgeon in the Navy; to the third, Lord Chancellor Cranworth has given a clerkship in the Registry-Office; the fourth son received a Cadetcy from Captain Shepherd; His Royal Highness Prince Albert conferred a similar appointment on the youngest son; and Her Majesty has been graciously pleased to settle upon the three daughters a pension of £300 per annum. To this last result the exertions of the late Mr. Hume, M.P., mainly contributed. Messrs. Green, of Blackwall, and Messrs. Smith, of Newcastle, conveyed the two Cadets to India free of expense."

To this may be added a "small cash balance" paid to Mrs. Ward, "after investing £400 in the funds." Altogether some £1,427 have been subscribed in the cause of Nelson's daughter. We state the sum, and will not pause to calculate whether the amount be the tenth of a farthing or even a whole farthing in the pound, for which England is Nelson's debtor. Let us anyway thank those who have helped Horatia's children. They have all done well, from the Dowager Countess to the Queen, ending with the prince ship-owners of Blackwall and Newcastle. Their ships will not have the worst fortune of wreck or storm for having borne, passage-free, the grandsons of Nelson to their Indian work. Let us, too, pause to thank the shade of Joseph Hume—the strong, sound, kind old heart! Joseph, who "mainly contributed," with those earnest, honest fingers of his to undraw the royal purse-strings, so that the three grand-daughters may now keep the wolf from the door, as their immortal grandfather kept the foe from the "silver-girt isle."

We omit the bitter words in which Punch heaps scorn on Nelson's brother, "the first parson Lord Nelson," because the odious charges there made cannot be substantiated. This was not the only occasion on which Punch's zeal was disfigured by the vehemence of his partisanship. But we cannot blame him for his jubilation over the thrashing of General Haynau, the woman-flogger, by the draymen and labourers at Barclay's Brewery on the occasion of his visit to London in 1850, or for the vigour with which he scarified the papers who found excuses and parallels for Haynau's ferocity in the military exigencies of the Peninsular War.

Slavery in America—and England

Foremost amongst Punch's heroines in the 'forties and 'fifties were Jenny Lind, the Swedish, and Florence, the English Nightingale, but of these mention is made elsewhere. In general, the personalities of notable or notorious women were not unfairly exploited in the pages of Punch. The conspicuous isolation of Miss, afterwards Baroness, Burdett Coutts, in virtue of her great wealth, suggests in 1846 the problem, Whom will she marry? which was not settled until 1881. Less restraint is shown in dealing with the arrival in England, after practically ruling Bavaria for more than a year, of the meteoric adventuress, Lola Montez,26 and with her marriage with a young Cornet in the Life Guards in July, 1849. Another visitor, of a very different sort, was the famous Mrs. Beecher-Stowe,27 author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, whose sojourn in England in 1853 brought the question of slavery in America into social prominence and led to the presentation of the "Stafford House Address," initiated by the Duchess of Sutherland, to the women of America. The appeal was not well received, being answered by the "Address of many thousands of the women of the United States," who pointed out the degraded conditions in which the poor in England lived. Two wrongs do not make a right, but there was excuse for the retort. The Southern planters were not all Legrees. Let it be added that, in his indignation at the inadequate sentences passed on wife-beaters, Punch did not fail to pillory cruel mothers who tortured or neglected their children. In the autumn of 1856 he contrasts the sentence of four years on a woman who had tortured her daughter to death with that of fifteen years on a man for mutilating a sheep. Already the problem of the numerical disparity of the sexes and the hard case of the "superfluous woman" had begun to attract attention, and emigration was preached as a panacea. To what has been written elsewhere on the remedy and Punch's belief in it, we may add his remarks on "Our female supernumeraries":—

The Cynical View:—Wherever there is mischief, women are sure to be at the bottom of it. The state of the country bears out this old saying. All our difficulties arise from a superabundance of females. The only remedy for this evil is to pack up bag and baggage, and start them away.

The Alarmist View:—If the surplus female population with which we are overrun increases much more, we shall be eaten up with women. What used to be our better half will soon become our worse nine-tenths; a numerical majority which it will be vain to contend with, and which will reduce our free and glorious constitution to that most degrading of all despotisms, a petticoat government.

Our Own View:—It is lamentable that thousands of poor girls should starve here upon slops, working for slopsellers, and only not dying old maids because dying young, when stalwart mates and solid meals might be found for all in Australia. Doubtless they would fly as fast as the Swedish hen-chaffinches—if only they had the means of flying. It remains with the Government and the country to find them wings.

The Worm Turns

Punch's chivalry to women is beyond question, but it was not untempered by a certain condescension. Throughout these years—with rare exceptions—he remains faithful to the old assumption that no woman could have a sense of humour. Grown-up sisters are frequently represented as being unmercifully chaffed by small brothers without apparently having the slightest power of effectual rejoinder. And this defect is shown in the pictures, where the women are exceedingly pleasant to look at, but nearly always quite expressionless. Yet in moments of generous expansion Punch was capable of crediting them with extremely damaging criticism of their lords and masters. The high-water mark of his sympathy with female emancipation in these years is to be found in the homely remonstrances of "Mrs. Mouser" in "A Bit of my Mind":—

… Well, the hypocrisy of men all over the world, especially the civilized!—for, after all, the savages are really and truly more of the gentlemen. They mean what they say to the sex, and act up to it; they don't call the suffering creatures lilies, and roses, and angels, and jewels of life, and then treat 'em as if they were weeds of the world, and pebbles of the highway. But with civilized nations—as I fling it at Mouser—they all of 'em make women the sign-post pictures of everything that's beautiful and behave to the dear originals as if they were born simpletons. "Look at Liberty, Mr. Mouser," said I, "look, you want to make Liberty look as lovely as it can be done, and what do you do? Why, you're obliged to come to women for the only beautiful Liberty that will serve you. You paint and stamp Liberty as a woman, and then—but it's so like you—then you won't suffer so much as a single petticoat to take her seat in the House of Commons. And next, Mouser"—for I would be heard—"and next, you want the figure of Justice. Woman again. There she is, with her balance and sword, as the sort of public-house sign for law, but—is a poor woman allowed to wear false hair, and put a black gown upon her back, and so much as once open her mouth on the Queen's Bench? May she put a tippet of ermine on herself—may she even find herself in a jury? Oh, no: you can paint Justice, and cut her in stone, but you never let the poor thing say a syllable."

"Are you going?"

"Why, ye-es. The fact is that your party is so slow and I am weally so infernally bored, that I shall go somewhere and smoke a quiet cigar."

"Well, good-night. As you are by no means handsome, a great puppy, and not in the least amusing, I think it is the best thing you can do."

25. Miss Blackwell, as we learn from an In Memoriam notice in The Times, was born in Bristol on February 3, 1821, died at Hastings in 1910, and was buried at Kilmun, Argyllshire. She is there described as "the first woman doctor."

26. The stage name of Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, daughter of an English officer, born at Limerick in 1818, the favourite of the old King Ludwig of Bavaria; dancer, actress, author, lecturer, who died in New York "sincerely penitent" in 1861.

27. See the Examiner and Punch. The following advertisement in the Examiner will be read with interest:—"The arrival of Mrs. Beecher-Stowe has given an impetus to the demand for all Stephen Glover's compositions connected with Uncle Tom: 'The Sea of Glass,' Eliza's song 'Sleep, our child,' 'Eva's Parting Words,' and Topsy's song 'I'm but a little nigger girl.'"