The Early Punch Parodies of Sherlock Holmes

by Bill Peschel

  Under Lemon’s leadership, the magazine worked to foster a spirit of community among the staff and contributors. Everyone had a voice in running the magazine, and the editor – not the owner – held the deciding vote. There was the weekly editorial meeting, where food and drink were served alongside spirited political debates and discussion of the contents of the next issue. Guests were invited to participate in the table talk.

  Another tradition arose for the editors and proprietors to carve their initials into the table. This custom was extended to selected guests, including Prince Charles, Prince Philip, and James Thurber. Only Mark Twain declined, pointing out that William Makepeace Thackeray’s initials already included his own.

  As the years passed, and the middle class grew in size and wealth, Punch rose with them, leaving its radical roots and becoming more Conservative. Alongside its humor, it celebrated men it considered worthy of praise, including Conan Doyle. It demonstrated its loyalty to God and Country, supporting Britain’s entry in the Boer War and the First World War. Punch’s “Coronation Number” in 1911, where Mr. Punch in formal wear is shown bowing to King George V and Queen Mary, displayed a double-page spread by Bernard Partridge of four women representing fortitude, wisdom, justice and peace, armoring the newly crowned king as if he was about to enter a joust. To American eyes, such un-ironic fealty can look alien, even embarrassing, but there’s no doubt that it was heartfelt.

  There were several keys to Punch’s success. Crudity or rudeness was not permitted in its articles. It had to please the Victorian household, where it was, like most printed material, read to the family. An equal-opportunity prankster, it punctured the pretensions of Socialists, Conservatives, royalty, sporting gents, intellectuals, as well as the Scottish, Irish and Welsh.

  The magazine was also well-financed and professionally run. In an early example of line extension and consolidation of its brand, the issues were repackaged in monthly, twice yearly and yearly installments. Articles were reassembled into books on subjects such as sports, cockney humor, after-dinner stories, golf, even a history of World War I. Punch became a brand-name for humor, much like National Lampoon or Mad magazine. By the 1850s, it was already being referred to as an institution.

  Over the years, the magazine’s circulation rose and fell, reaching a high of 184,000 in 1947. But starting in 1968, its numbers started a decline that proved irreversible. After trying a number of changes, including of ownership, the magazine was shut down in 1992. A new owner attempted a revival in 1996, and the experiment lasted six years before Punch was closed for good, leaving behind 16 decades of humor that was at times groundbreaking, sharp, and funny. Not a bad return on £25.

  The Idle Life of R.C. Lehmann

  R.C. “Rudie” Lehmann

  Rudolph Chambers Lehmann, the author of the Picklock Holes series, was a Victorian gentleman to the bone. Known as “Rudie,” he was blessed with money, looks, wit, and a desire to indulge himself in his interests. He lived a happy, comfortable life as evanescent as his humor pieces.

  Lehmann was born near Sheffield on January 3, 1856. His mother was from the Scottish Chambers family, founders of the publishing house that still bears their name. His father was from a family of German Jews accomplished in the arts. When Rudie was 3, his family moved to a townhouse in Berkeley Square. From an early age, he and his siblings became familiar with literary London. Regular visitors included George Eliot and Robert Browning, who offered to buy Rudie a pony. Charles Dickens kissed Rudie after one of his readings. Wilkie Collins told the children stories and took them to the pantomime.

  After attending Eton and Cambridge, Rudie opted for the law. He was accepted at Lincoln’s Inn, but stayed only long enough to be named the profession’s most handsome barrister by a newspaper. His most notable accomplishment during the 1880s were three unsuccessful runs for Parliament as a Liberal candidate.

  In 1889, Rudie helped found at Cambridge University Granta, a literary magazine on the Punch model that is still published. Until his departure in 1895, he contributed a substantial number of articles, up to half in some issues, and succeeded in making a student publication profitable.

  R.C. Lehmann profiled in Vanity Fair magazine, 1895.

  Granta and Punch

  During the 1890s, he laid the foundation for the rest of his life when he began to write for Punch. He displayed a talent for light verse, but was also capable of fighting for Radical causes. He satirized the politics of the day, and in one notable episode created a prince’s mock diary that attacked Queen Victoria’s material selfishness and the tedium of court life. He also parodied the works of popular authors such as Jules Verne, Marie Corelli, Rudyard Kipling and Hall Caine, collected in “‘Mr. Punch’s’ Prize Novels” (1892). He drew on his knowledge of hunting to write a collection of “Conversational Hints for Young Shooters” that were popular with Punch’s rural readership.

  Within four months after his arrival, he was invited to join the editorial staff. Meetings were held at a large oval table where the talk revolved around the magazine, politics and lunch. As one of the few Liberals in the midst of Punch’s Conservatives, his intellect and lightning temper made him a formidable debater.

  The one constant in his life was his passion for rowing. He built Fieldhead, his family home, on the shores of the Thames in Buckinghamshire, to allow him to row regularly. He coached any team that wanted him, refusing to accept a fee. He coached teams at Cambridge and Oxford, as well as crews in Dublin, Berlin and twice at Harvard University.

  He also wrote frequently about rowing. He created manuals of advice that were entertainingly practical. In “Rowing,” he stressed the need to have a crew member capable of acting as a scapegoat for the rest of the crew:

  “I doubt if the importance of a butt in modern boat-racing has been properly recognized . . . the position of butt is a far more important and responsible one than that of stroke or No. 7. If you can find a good, stout, willing butt—a butt who lends himself to nicknames, and has a temper as even as a billiard-table and as long as a tailor’s bill—secure him at once and make him the nucleus of your crew. The butt must therefore be neither silent, nor slack, nor a drawler. Nature will probably have saved him from being a thinker or an orator. He must be simply good-natured without affectation, and ready to allow tempers made stormy by rowing and training to break upon his broad back without flinching.”

  His poetry expressed his love of the sport in a Kipling-esque cadence:

  “To make the rhythm right

  And your feather clean and bright,

  And to slash as if you loved it, though your

  muscles seem to crack;

  And, although your brain is spinning,

  To be sharp with your beginning,

  And to heave your solid body indefatigably back”

  Lehmann was popular enough to be profiled by Vanity Fair magazine in January 17, 1895, as part of a series on notable rowers. His mini-biography gives an accurate description of the public man as well as an idea of what values Victorians considered desirable:

  “He got his second name through his mother, the daughter of Robert Chambers, eight-and-thirty years ago; and as both his father and his mother knew Dickens, George Eliot, Browning, and a host of other such famous writers, it is natural that he should himself be an author. But he is more. From school he went to Cambridge; and having been athletically inclined since he first ran laps round the nursery table, he became First Boat Captain of First Trinity. Having just missed his ‘Blue,’ he left Cambridge and was presently converted into an excellent coach; than whom none is better known on the towpath to this day. He has coached half-a-dozen ‘Varsity Eights, being in as much request with Oxford as with Cambridge, and always ready to do his best for either. He was last year Captain of Leander; he is Secretary of the Amateur Rowing Association; and he is only less well-known at Henley than he is at Bourne End, where he has built for himself and his friends a comfortable house, which he calls Fieldhead. He has also won
trophies with his legs, with his wrists, and with his fists. At an athletic meeting of the Middlesex Yeomanry he won the hundred yards, the quarter-mile, the hurdles, and the cricket ball throw right off; he has gained a prize for regimental swordsmanship; and he was middle and heavy weight boxing champion at Cambridge. He also owns and edits The Granta, wherewith he has succeeded in showing that a University paper may be made to pay; and besides all these athletic attainments he is a good shot who has taught much in his ‘Conversational Hints to Young Shooters.’ Half-a-dozen years back he was asked to join the staff of Punch, and did so; in spite of which he is a merry fellow who can really write funny stuff in the way of bright parody and clever burlesque.

  “He is an all-round sportsman whose house is full of prizes, trophies, medals, presents, and mementoes: in all of which he takes a proper pride. Politically, he is a wicked, ambitious Liberal, who once dared to stand for Cambridge University when he might have been returned for East Hull; but this may be only another sign of the keen sense of humour that is in him. He is a Justice of the Peace for Bucks; a wholesome, sound, fellow whom everyone likes; and an excellent host, who is always ready to help a friend.

  “He loves dogs.”

  His secretary, Archibald Marshall, left behind a contrasting portrait of Rudie as “singularly unenterprising in providing himself with work, or even with amusement”:

  “Before his marriage, when I was very much with him at Bourne End [Fieldhead] . . . he would sit for hours in his big library, absolutely surrounded by books, and read nothing but the papers. We would take the dogs for a walk before lunch and in the afternoon, and that was his day, until we came to the evening, when there were usually others there. In the rowing season, of course, it was different, and for a year or two he had a shoot in Norfolk. He had his Punch work, and the weekly dinner, the affairs of the amateur rowing association took up some of our attention, and during my time with him he wrote a book on rowing, which a publisher had asked him for. . . . Outside all of this one would have to say that his life was definitely an idle one.”

  Marriage and Family Life

  In 1898, Lehmann surprised his family and friends by marrying at 41. Up to this point he had not showed much interest in the opposite sex, or apparently any sex.

  While visiting a university friend in Cambridge, Mass., he fell in love with the tutor to the family’s daughters. Alice Marie Davis was 23 and the daughter of a New England family deep in accomplishment but short of funds. He was drawn to her intelligence and dignity (which tipped over at times into a humorless attitude), and she was charmed by his energy and easy-going attitude.

  According to family legend, his interest in her became so marked that his friend’s wife took him aside, warning him not to trifle with the girl’s affections. He listened politely to her concerns before informing her that “Miss Davis and I are already engaged.” Between 1898 and 1907, they would have four children: Helen, Rosamond, Beatrix and John.

  Fieldhead was paradise to the children, beautiful and bucolic. They were free to roam where they would. When they were ready for school, Rudie had a schoolhouse built for them. He took them out on the river to share his love of rowing. It was an idyllic life. John Lehmann recalled his parents’ “united life, their well-ordered household and contented staff . . . the continual visits of aunts and uncles and cousins . . . the week-end arrival of heroes of the rowing world, of writers who were famous in the pages of Punch, of artists and musicians and political personalities . . . all this made our family life seem the perfect pattern of earthly arrangements and Fieldhead the very hub of the universe.”

  Throughout the 1890s, Rudie wrote for Punch, which published collections of his works. By the end of the decade, he moved into journalism. He bought into a weekly, The Speaker, which was anti-war and pro-Boer, but he was unable to make it profitable. He sold out and bought into the Daily News. But managing a daily newspaper was unsuited to his explosive temper and inability to perform tasks that did not interest him. Within a year, he had moved on.

  In 1906, Lehmann was elected to Parliament. Ill health encouraged him to leave his seat in 1910 and abandon politics. In 1912, he published “Charles Dickens as Editor,” a collection of letters written to W.H. Wills, Dickens’ confidential man of business and sub-editor of his weekly magazines. As Wills’ great-nephew, Lehmann had inherited the letters, and he edited them to reflect the great writer’s business acumen and how he was “always devoted to good causes and perfectly fearless in his efforts to promote them.” (Researchers in the 20th century discovered that Rudie was also careful to excise references in the letters to Ellen Ternan, Dickens’ mistress.)

  The rest of Lehmann’s life was marked by a slow decline in his health. He developed Parkinson’s disease, and retired to his beloved Fieldhead. For his last decade he was an invalid, cared for by his family and servants. He died at home in 1929, aged 73.

  Lehmann’s Influence

  To his family and friends, Rudie Lehmann was a charming, gregarious man, indulgent, complacent, yet emotionally closed to his wife and children. While more involved in his children’s lives than most Victorian fathers, his son John noted that it was also always on his terms: “Our upbringing was the responsibility of our nurses, governesses and mother; as far as we were concerned, we were there to amuse him.”

  His novelist-daughter Rosamund Lehmann saw a tragic side to her father’s life. He was “a charming, cultivated man, his style was lightweight and ephemeral and a dilettante’s disposition coupled with a comfortable patrimony ensured that he never did very much with the talents he was fortunate enough to inherit from a distinguished ancestry.” Rudie would pop up frequently in her novels, defined as an intelligent man, laid back and indulgent about the follies of those around him.

  “When I look at that startling beauty of his face in early photographs,” Rosamund concluded, “I seem to detect in it a fatal excess; and it occurs to me that, though he lived to be 70, and was my father, he died of his fabulous youth.”

  Books by R.C. Lehmann

  1890: “Harry Fludyer at Cambridge: A Series of Family Letters.” London: Chatto & Windus.

  1891: “In Cambridge Courts: Studies of University Life in Prose and Verse.” London: Henry and Co.

  1892: “‘Mr. Punch’s’ Prize Novels: New Series.” London: Bradbury, Agnew.

  1892: “The Billsbury Election and Other Papers from Punch.” London: Henry & Co.

  1894: “Conversational Hints for Young Shooters.” London: Chatto & Windus.

  1897: “Rowing.” With Bertram Robinson. New York: E. Arnold.

  1901: “The Adventures of Picklock Holes: Together with a Perversion and a Burlesque.” London: Bradbury, Agnew & Co.

  1901: “Anni Fugaces: A Book of Verse with Cambridge Interludes.” London: John Lane.

  1903: “Crumbs of Pity and Other Verses: To Which Are Added, Six Lives of Great Men.” Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons.

  1904: “The Sun-Child.” With Thomas Maybank. London: Bradbury, Agnew.

  1908: “The Complete Oarsman.” With F.S. Kelly, R.B. Etherington-Smith and W.H. Eyre. London: Methuen & Co.

  1908: “Memories of Half a Century, a Record of Friendships.” London: Smith.

  1909: “Light and Shade and Other Poems.” Edinburgh: W. Blackwood.

  1912: “Sportsmen and Others.” London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.

  1913: “A Spark Divine: A Book for Animal-Lovers.” New York: E.P. Dutton & Co.

  1918: “The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch.” London: John Lane.

  1929: “Selected Verse of R.C. Lehmann.” Edinburgh: Blackwood.

  1975: “The Adventures of Picklock Holes: A Sherlock Holmes Parody Cycle.” Boulder, Colo.: Aspen Press.

  1979: “His Final Arrow: A Further Adventure of Picklock Holes.” With Brian R. MacDonald. Fairland, Ind.: Brian R. MacDonald.

  1980: “The Return of Picklock Holes.” With Brian R. MacDonald. New York: Magico Magazine.

&n
bsp; The Blossoming of “Plum” Wodehouse

  P.G. Wodehouse, 1904

  At the opening of one of his novels featuring that aristocratic amiable lunkhead Bertie Wooster and the brilliant butler Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse confessed to the reader his concern about the right way to begin one of their stories. Describe Wooster and Jeeves in detail for new readers, and you risk annoying the fans who already know this stuff. Jump in the middle, and the newcomers wonder what all the fuss is about and why their friends are already sniggering at the inside jokes. It is, in short, a conundrum.

  The same thought applies to their creator, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, known as Plum to his friends. It’s common knowledge that he created one of the greatest comic duos of English literature. That he wrote magical sentences that retain their humor even after repeated readings. That he lived a life free from scandal, except for that one bit during World War II when he was accused of treason. That he was genial, amusing, hard-working and happiest when he was writing, blissfully free from the angst and alienation that characterizes this Age of Anxiety.

  Going into detail about these known knowns could turn this into a biography, and there are several good ones already out there. And yet, since he contributed several Sherlock Holmes parodies to Punch, one feels the obligation to say something on his behalf, at least about how he came to write them and how he felt about Sherlock and his creator.

  So now that we’ve covered the high points about his life—the treason bit can be found in my book “Writers Gone Wild”—let’s look at the early part of his life and how he achieved that rarest of goals, becoming a lifelong self-supporting writer. (To those with short attention spans, the answer is hard work, high productivity, a damaging childhood, an ability to be witty, and the luck to be working at a time when print was the dominant form of entertainment.)