Much aristocratic distress prevails towards the end of the month, and gangs of hungry Peers infesting the public thoroughfares are prosecuted daily by the Secretary of the Charity Organisation Society, and ultimately shipped to a Coral Island in the Pacific.

Mr. Gladstone's seventy-fifth birthday on December 29, 1884, was welcomed in a set of verses in which the eulogy is only tempered by a faint reserve as to his lack of youthful resolution and his excess of caution. Had the anniversary fallen a few weeks later, Punch might have found it harder to pay such generous homage, for on February 7 appeared the unlucky cartoon which assumed that Gordon had been relieved. Yet even then, when the truth became known and while raising the cry of "Too late," Punch, though condemning delay and caution, deprecated party rancour: —

Not this the hour to echo faction's cry
Of half-exultant chiding, or to ply
The Party-phraser's venomed word-lash. No!
But laggard wills, counsels confused and slow
Should need no sharper spur, no keener goad
Than this to urge them on plain Honour's road.

The Tragedy of Khartoum

Punch's contribution to the Gordon "Memorial" was an ode from which we may quote one stanza: —

Gordon! A name to gild our island story,
Opulent yet in many a noble name,
With lustre brighter than mere statecraft's fame,
More radiant than the warrior's glittering glory.
Such lesser lights eclipse them in the fine
Sun-glow of selfless valour such as thine,
Soldier whose sword, like Galahad's, was not used
To hew out honour, but to champion right;
Plan-shaper who, in council as in fight,
Wast endlessly resourceful, yet refused,
Death-snared, an easy flight!

Other pens were busy over this episode, which inspired perhaps the most scarifying epigram of our times: —

Judas despairing died, his guilt confessed,
But had he lived in this our age and city,
He surely would have figured with the best
Upon a Christ Memorial Committee.

The disaster, however, had one heartening result in the offer of military assistance from Canada, Victoria and New South Wales, duly recorded by Punch in his cartoon of the Lion and the Colonial cubs. The year 1885 had opened with a sinister display of activity by dynamiters, and Punch rebuked Sir William Harcourt for his alleged apathy and imperious resentment of criticism by calling him the "Not-at-Home Secretary." America promptly took legislative action, refusing sanctuary to dynamiters, and was loudly applauded, while Mr. Parnell, in Punch's opinion, missed a golden opportunity for disavowing and condemning these outrages. In "What Mr. Parnell might have said" Punch printed the speech which he did not make but ought to have made, "as a man, an Irishman and a Christian."

Mrs. Gummidge-Gladstone: "I ain't what I could wish myself to be. My troubles has made me contrairy. I feel my troubles, and they make me contrairy. I make the house uncomfortable. I don't wonder at it!!!"

John Peggotty-Bull (deeply sympathizing aside): "She's been thinking of the old 'un!" —David Copperfield.

The days of the Gladstone administration were numbered, and the motion in favour of Proportional Representation excited but a languid and academic interest. Punch thought the system far too complicated, and sought to reduce it to absurdity by a practical illustration. He was much more serious in his resentment at the hectoring attitude of Bismarck à propos of a recent speech of the Imperial Chancellor. In "Lecturing a Lecturer – a Friendly Tip to the Teuton Titan," he showed Bismarck standing in a truculent pose before a map of Europe while Punch looks on in amusement. The point of the accompanying verses is that Britain was not to be scared or scolded into submission: —

Orbilian Colossus,
You'd chide us and spank us and goad us and toss us,
But when Polyphemus world-wigging would try
He may – pardon the argot– get "one in the eye."
And Punch, Herr Professor, whose point seldom misses,
Is ready if needful to play the Ulysses.

The attempt to represent Bismarck as a professor might not seem to show a very acute reading of the facts were it not that German professors proved the chief inflamers of militarism. It must be added that, as a set off to this expostulation, Punch indited a remarkably genial poem to Bismarck a couple of weeks later on the occasion of his seventieth birthday. But this can hardly have atoned for the extremely acid and acute satire on the Spirit of German Colonization published about the same time. Here Germania declares her intentions to the native races in language which the treatment of the Herreros in German South-West Africa proved to be well within the mark: —

I haf brought you German culture for the poddy and the mind,
Die erhabene Kultur of efery sort and efery kind;
All the pessimistic dogtrines of the Schopenhauer school
And the blessings of a bureaucratish-military rule.
I shall teach you shplendit knowledge, vot you hitherto haf lacked,
That religion is a fantasy, vhilst sausage is a fact;
Ja, the mysteries of sauerkraut to you shall be made clear,
And your souls shall learn to float on foaming waves of Lager-Bier!

I do not intend to long-while you mit missionary rant,
But to brighten up your intellects mit Hegel and mit Kant.
Mit our Army-Service system I'll begift you by-and-by,
And mit all the priceless blessings of our Hohe Polizei.
Ach! I lofes you as a moder, and your happiness, I shwear,
Shall forefer be the von surpassing object of my care.
I'll civilize you, Kinder, mid dem edlen Gerstenbrei,
And mit discipline, Potztausend! – or I'll know the reason vhy!

And then die hehre Göttin, hof'ring in the aether blue,
Vill summon up her gunboats and her Pickelhauben too,
Her bearded brawny varriors, vot nefer knew no fear,
And troops of learned bureaucrats, all buttoned-up to here.
Then if the shtupit natifes don't attend to vot she said,
And makes themselves unpleasant, they must all be shooted dead;
For trifles in the vay of German culture must not shtand —
Hoch soll der Bismarck leben! I drinks, "Our Fatherland!"

Lord Randolph Churchill

When the Government was defeated in June "on the Budget Stakes," as Punch put it, he went so far as to accuse Gladstone of "riding to lose," and resented this action as not quite on the square. A month earlier he had shown Gladstone as the political Mrs. Gummidge, the "Old 'un" being Disraeli, whose portrait hangs on the wall. There was a rumour of Mr. Gladstone going to the Lords, and Punch had a picture of Tennyson, in his robes in the "gay garden of elegant earls," inviting W. E. G. to "come into the garden," but Mr. Gladstone declines, preferring to paddle his own canoe. Lord Randolph was included in the Salisbury administration, which held office for six months, as Secretary of State for India, but his elevation to Cabinet rank did not appease Punch's distrust – rather the reverse. He was not really an undersized man, but he invariably appears in Punch about this time as a boy, a mannikin or some diminutive pest, while the vehemence of his language is resented in bitter criticism of his "mud-spattering" abuse, vulgar invective, and "Billingsgate Babel." In particular a speech which he delivered at a Conservative gathering at Canford Manor, Wimborne, excited Punch's wrath, and prompted the picture of "Funny Little Randolph," as a "star comique" singing a topical song, "I don't care a rap," and exulting in his grimaces and bad manners. In the previous year Punch had fallen foul of the "windy ravings of Loyalist Speakers" in Ireland, "the Loyalist Cæsar, and the Nationalist Pompey seem 'very much alike' indeed – in the matter of noisy mischief… One feels that the Orange Champions would not hate 'disloyalty' so much did they not hate their 'Green' fellow countrymen more."

Dick: "I've chose my Three Acres – next to the Parson's. I mean to dig and grow 'Taters. Where 'ave you chose yours?"

Harry: "I ain't chose no Land. I shan't grow no 'Taters. I shall take your 'Taters!"

Yet in the autumn of 1885, when Lord Carnarvon was Viceroy, Punch developed a strong distrust of the conciliatory policy of the Conservatives. In one cartoon he shows Captain Moonlight masked and armed at an open door, the bar of the Crimes Act having been removed. In October he wrote, "when Tyranny alone is free where is the safety – save for slaves." In another cartoon he showed the National League as the Irish Vampire, hovering over Hibernia in her uneasy sleep, and bade her awake and banish the hideous monster that was sapping her strength. Mr. Punch's "Political Address," issued shortly before the resignation of the Salisbury Cabinet, claimed that he was the only real Independent Candidate, the nominee of no party, section, or sect; bound to no programme, but "all for the four P's – Principle, Progress, Patriotism and Peace" – in fine, "whichever Party he returned to office, Mr. Punch, the non-partisan Member for Everywhere, will be in power." The new cry of "Three Acres and a Cow" raised at the close of 1885 left him cold, witness Du Maurier's "Sauce for the Goose." The verses in the same number on "New Words and Old Songs" imply that it was a mere vote-catching device, and at the same time mock at the cadging tactics of the Knights and Dames of the Primrose League founded in 1884.

Home Rule Rejected

On the resignation of the Salisbury Cabinet, Mr. Gladstone returned to power with Mr. Morley as Chief Secretary for Ireland. The story of his conversion to Home Rule, his failure to convert his colleagues, the split in the Cabinet and the introduction and rejection of the Home Rule Bill of 1886 is well told in the series of cartoons which begin with "At the Cross Roads" in February. There Gladstone is shown hesitating between Land Purchase and Home Rule, while Chamberlain as the cowboy advises the former. In "The Thanes fly from me" we see Gladstone as Macbeth asking Morley (Seyton) to give him his armour: "This push will cheer me ever or disseat me now." The Home Rule Bill is typified as the "Divided Skirt." Gladstone as the Grand Old Man Milliner is trying in vain to reconcile Britannia to her new dress. The sequel is shown in the "Actæon" cartoon in which Gladstone is pulled down by his own hounds – Chamberlain, Hartington, Goschen – and in the adaptation of Meissonier's "Retreat from Moscow," where Gladstone figures as the defeated Napoleon. It is rather curious, by the way, to note that during the debates Punch, in his "Essence of Parliament," describes Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Mr. Labouchere as the "two drolls of the House" at Question time.

Grand Old Man-Milliner (persuasively): "Fits beautifully, Madam! A little alteration here and there!"

Mrs. Britannia: "It's very uncomfortable, and I'm sure it isn't becoming. I shall never get along with it as it is!!"

On the merits of Home Rule Punch is rather non-committal, and speaks with more than one voice. The secession of the Liberal Unionists impressed him greatly; but he was bitterly antagonistic to the Ulster extremists, witness this epigram printed in May: —

Lucus a non Lucendo

Loyal? Nay, Ulster, you, for very shame
Should cede your long monopoly of that name.
Loyal – to whom – to what? To power, to pelf,
To place, to privilege, in a word, to self.
They who assume, absorb, control, enjoy all,
Must find it vastly pleasant to be "loyal."

Lord Randolph Churchill's famous jingle: "Ulster will fight. Ulster will be right," inspired a prophetic forecast of the result of such action, in which Ulster does fight and is defeated: —

The battle had been severe, but it was over at last. Belfast was taken. Derry was in ruins. Everywhere the Orange faction had been outnumbered and worsted. The reverse was crushing and complete. "We shall now," said the General commanding the National forces, "be suffered, perhaps, to hold our Parliament on College Green in peace." He turned to a batch of captured officers as he spoke. They were a motley crew. Among them figured several wearing the Queen's uniform, while here and there stood some distinguished sympathizer with the beaten cause, who had thrown in his lot to support rebellion against Queen and Empire. Among these latter a scion of a Ducal House and former well-known Member of the House of Commons, was weeping over a broken drumhead. The General singled him out, and beckoned him to approach. He drew near, surlily: "Well, my Lord," continued the Commander, in a tone of banter. "How about your prophecy? Ulster will fight. Ulster will be right. Ulster has fought. Ha! Ha!"

"And she has been wrong!" was the submissive and humble reply.

Lord Randolph at the Tresury

This squib was written before the rejection of the Home Rule Bill, a result which Punch, or the writer, probably did not anticipate. The accuracy of the forecast, however, remains still to be tested.

The Elections went against the Government, and Lord Salisbury was returned to power, with Lord Randolph as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons. The verses which accompany and expand the cartoon of "The Grand Young Man" with the shade of Dizzy looking on, almost deviate into geniality. Punch fancies that Randolph, in spite of his defects of taste and manners, is "more than a mere mime," but, in contrasting his career with that of Lord Beaconsfield, points out that he was born in the purple and that his rise to power was easier and quicker. This comparatively friendly mood soon gave way to the old distrust, and by October, in "Swag, or the political Jack Sheppard," we see Lord Randolph, anxious to eclipse Dizzy as a Tory Turpin and "disher" of the Whigs, rifling a chest labelled "Liberal Measures," while Mr. Gladstone peers into the room at the back. Punch's distrust was partly justified by Lord Randolph's impetuous resignation in December. What might have been a great career was wrecked by an impatient temper. Immense ability, industry, courage and reforming zeal were there, and it was hardly fair to represent him as a modern Curtius leaping into the pit of Popularity. The Treasury was not the only Government Office in which reform was thwarted by obstruction and mismanagement. Punch attacked the War Office in the autumn of 1886 for setting its face "not merely against change, but against experiments pointing to change," and scouting all inventors as nuisances. He simultaneously proposed the foundation of an official organ of the Admiralty to be called "Dowb," the burlesque prospectus of which obliquely satirizes the abuse of perquisites, bad stores, muddled finance, futile commissions of inquiry and general incompetence in high places. Home politics engrossed attention throughout the year, but Punch did not fail to note the gathering clouds in the Balkans, when Prince Alexander of Battenberg, the hero of Slivnitza, a gallant and picturesque figure, had abdicated the throne of Bulgaria, Russian jealousy having rendered his position untenable. In the cartoon of "The Vanishing Lady," the Tsar is shown as a juggler using the cloak of diplomacy to extinguish the freedom of the country he had helped to emancipate. The same year which witnessed the disappearance from the political scene of Prince Alexander was marked by the birth of Alfonso XIII of Spain, and Punch offered his ceremonial greeting to one of the few sovereigns who survived the monarchical débâcle of the Great War of 1914.

The Victorian age reached its grand climacteric in 1887, the year of the Queen's Golden Jubilee and the gathering of the Kings and Captains. Of the celebrations we speak elsewhere. Punch, no longer anti-Papist, linked them with those at the Vatican – in honour of Leo XIII, who had been ordained priest in 1837 – in his lines on "Two Jubilees": —

St. Peter's and St. James's face to face
Exchanging with a more than courtly grace
Their mutual gifts and greetings!

A sight to stir the bigot; but the wise
Regard with cheerful and complacent eyes
This pleasantest of meetings.

And so on with praise of the Good Queen and Holy Father, Punch, as a "true freeman unfettered by servile fear or hate's poor purblind heat," being free to celebrate them both.

It was also the Centenary year of the United States, welcomed by Punch in John Bull's song on Miss Columbia's Hundredth birthday to the air of "I'm getting a big boy now." Mr. Gladstone was invited to the celebrations but did not cross the Atlantic. John Bull abounds in professions of good-will, but there is a slight sting in the last chorus: —

You are getting a great girl now,
May you prosper, and keep out of row;
Shun Bunkum and bawl
All that's shoddy and small,
For you're getting a great girl now.

The Salisbury Cabinet was strengthened by the inclusion of Mr. Goschen as Chancellor of the Exchequer – Mr. Goschen whom Lord Randolph "forgot," and whom Punch styled the "Emergency man," a phrase now also forgotten, but then applied to the volunteers who assisted boycotted farmers and loyalists in Ireland. Mr. Balfour was at the Irish Office, the scene of his greatest administrative successes, and the Crimes Act and the Land Act were the two principal measures of the Session. In those days The Times was the great champion of the Unionist policy, and in the summer of 1887 is shown prodding on Lord Salisbury and Mr. Balfour, armed with Crimes Act blunderbusses, in their attack on the Land League wild boar. The Land League was "proclaimed" in August; and already the controversy had begun between Mr. Parnell and The Times over the former's alleged participation in the responsibility for the Phoenix Park murders. The question was raised in a series of articles on "Parnellism and Crime"; but the charges were not made specific until the following year. John Bright's secession from the Gladstonian Liberals had been a serious blow, and his contributions to the Unionist armoury were so vigorous and pointed, that it is rather strange to find Punch assailing him in March, 1887, for his pacificist tendencies: —

The white flag, John, may bid all battle cease,
Not the white feather! In defence of right,
Despite your dogmas, men perforce must fight
With swords as well as words: be it their care
With either, to heed honour, and fight fair.
You would "speak daggers" only; be it so;
But a word-stab may be a felon blow.

John Bright certainly spoke daggers against those who, in his own phrase, kept the rebellion pot always on the boil.

Germany's Momentous Year

The Earl of Iddesleigh, better known as Sir Stafford Northcote, died in January. There is an unmistakable reference to Lord Randolph Churchill's treatment of his one-time leader in the verses in which Punch paid homage to a statesman "worn yet selfless, disparaged and dispraised," yet a "pattern of proud but gentle chivalry": —