Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/87

 ii s. iv. JULY 29, i9ii.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

81

LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 29, 1911.

CONTENTS. No. 83.

NOTES: 'Punch,' 1841-1911, 81 Chaucer's 'Pardoner's Tale': African Analogue, 82 Shakespeariana, 83 The Royal Standard Dr. Edmond Halley's Marriage -" Fr." in Marriage Registers, 85 American Indian Place-Names Millinery in 1911 " Tout cpmprendre c'est tout par- donner" Proofs seen by Elizabethan Atithors Arch- deacon Plume and the ' D.N.B.,' 86.

QUERIES: Thermometer King George V.'s Ancestors- Knights Hospitallers in Kent 'Tweedside,' Song and Metre, 87 Belgian Coin with Flemish Inscriptions Cross-legged Effigies Authors Wanted 'The Letter,' Poem Chess and Duty, 88 Jo. Ben. on Orkney ' Pickwick ' : Miss Bolo Lady Elizabeth Stuart, Darnley's Sister Board of Green Cloth John Napier of Merchis- ton Overing Surname Grinling Gibbons Dumbleton, Place - Name Deer-leaps Herringman Hicks, 89 Emerson and Manchester Saint-Just Lithography and Sir J. W. Gordon Tumble-Down Dick " 4 ' Master of Garra way's "Elizabethan Seal Seal with Crest, 90.

RR PLIES: Gray's 'Elegy,' 90 -St. Expeditus Pitt's Buildings: Wright's Buildings -Crown Agents, 92 Peter de Wint, 93 -" J'y suis, j'y reste " St. Swithin's Day 'Alpine Lyrics' 'Lyrics and Lays' Authors Wanted-Sheridan's ' Critic ' : T. Vaughan-D'Urfey and Allan Ramsay, 94 Touching a Corpse Grimaldi as a Canary, 95" O for the life of a soMier ! " " Agasonic " "Haywra" "Souchy " Cuckoo and its Call Cuckoo Rimes, 96 Port Henderson : Corrie Bhreachan "Tertium Quid "Sir John Arundel " Though Christ a thousand times be slain" "Le Whacok," 97 Military Executions St. Dunstan and Tunbridge Wells Rev. T. Clarke, 98.

NOTES ON BOOKS :-' An Introduction to the Study of Local History.'

Booksellers' Catalogues. Notices to Correspondents.


 * PUNCH,' 1841-1911.

READERS of "dear old Notes and Queries" will join most heartily in wishing Punch many happy returns of his 70th birthday. Long may our old friend flourish ! as he is sure to do, for has he not the promise of perpetual growth ?

Looking back, one can hardly realize the long years that have passed since Punch first voiced the nation both in joy and sorrow. For while there have been a few who have considered that Punch should always wear the cap and bells, the world has looked for, and has found, the sympathetic note. It is curious to remember that its rise in popu- larity dates from' December 16th, 1843, on which day H >od's * Song of the Shirt ' appeared, and the sale was trebled. This was but the beginning of its advocacy of the cause of the oppressed throughout the world, whether politically or socially.

One special feature should be noted, and that is the good taste of its obituary records of either friends or those from whom Punch has differed. In the life of F. D. Maurice his son writes :

" Punch more than once struck in vigorously on my father's side of questions ; perhaps the most beautiful lines of poetry that were writtten after his death appeared in Punch, so that his friends have no cause to complain of his treatment by the great comic paper."

As an illustration of the readiness of the staff of Punch to find a rhyme, The Daily Chronicle on the 20th inst. records the way in which Punch got over the difficulty as to the name of Ruskin in the painter's lament: I paints and paints, Hears no complaints,

And sells afore I' m dry, Till savage Ruskin, Stuck his tusk in,

And nobody 'ill buy.

"The 'tusk' had reason as well as rhyme, for a wild boar figured in Ruskin's ancestral coat of arms."

Punch has been a household word to me from my earliest recollection, for my father used to look eagerly for his early copy, and would read it aloud from cover to cover to friends in his home above The Athenceum office in Wellington Street each week, frequently having to stop to enjoy a good laugh. Apart from this enjoyment of the paper, my father regarded it with special interest, for, like The Athenceum, it was one of the few papers allowed to have a stamped and unstamped issue. These were regarded as quasi-newspapers. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, stated in the House of Commons on the 19th of March, 1855, that hi the year 1854, 425,000 stamped copies of Punch were published, "and I understand," continued the Chancellor, " that out of a weekly circulation of about 40,000 copies, 8,000 are published in stamped and 32,000 are unstamped." Amid laughter, he added that he had had an interview with the mana- ger of the paper.

Punch always advocated the repeal of the taxes on the press, and at the time of the agitation for the repeal of the advertise- ment duty, suggested that it should be taken off as a memorial to the. Queen Dowager, who died at that time. In the case of the paper duties it expressed the opinion that " the heaviest paper weight " was the duty upon paper, and went dead against The Times and its movement to retain the duty. It made great fun of the alarm expressed by The Times as to the scarcity of materials