Abstract
The transatlantic vogue of French fixed-form verse in the 1870s and 1880s championed by Andrew Lang and Austin Dobson generated its carnivalesque inversion in fixed-form verse in the comic magazines Fun and Punch. These anonymous jeux d’esprit exploded the pretensions of finical forms by their mastery of intricate verses used in service of political, literary, and social satire. Class formations and their contestations were central to elite and anti-elite fixed forms alike. Ironically, Andrew Lang himself joined the ranks of the anti-elite when he penned an anonymous jibe at the new Underground and Irish dynamiters in a Punch ballade that blatantly violated the rules of fixed forms he enforced as a public critic elsewhere. In so doing, Lang proved the adaptability of fixed forms to humor despite the demands they made on the versifying humorist.
I thank Dana Shaaban and Sofia Prado Huggins, Addie Levy Research Associates, for research assistance respectively with fixed-form poems in Fun and in Punch.
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Notes
- 1.
Thomas Hood, The Rules of Rhyme (London: James Hogg, 1869), 54.
- 2.
“Enclosing Forms, Opening Spaces: the 1880s Fixed-Verse Revival,” Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1880s, ed. Penny Fielding and Andrew Taylor (Cambridge University Press, 2020), 34–52.
- 3.
No one would have accused the prolific bookmen Lang and Dobson (who worked at London’s Board of Trade) of being aesthetes. But their attention to literary form chimed with aestheticism’s greater interest in surface and decorative qualities as opposed to mid-Victorian moral messaging.
- 4.
Issues of Fun cost only a penny, whereas Punch issues cost three pence; see Jane W. Stedman, “Fun,” British Literary Magazines: The Victorian and Edwardian Age, 1837–1913, ed. Alvin Sullivan (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984), 135.
- 5.
Brian Maidment, “Fun (1861–1901),” Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism, ed. Laurel Brake and Marysa Demoor (Gent and London: Academia Press and the British Library, 2009), 237–38.
- 6.
Adam Mazel, “The Age of Rhyme: The Verse Culture of Victorian Cambridge,” Nineteenth-Century Literature 72.3 (2017), 378–9.
- 7.
Lee Behlman, “The Case of Light Verse, or Vers de Société,” Victorian Poetry 56.4 (Winter 2018), 485.
- 8.
To locate the forty-one fixed-form poems on which I base this chapter, I searched the ProQuest British Periodicals I-IV database using the terms “ballade,” “sonnet,” “rondeau,” “triolet,” “villanelle,” and “rondel” and the document “poem.” Punch is less easily searchable with these terms in its Gale database. I used the same date range and specific journal title, plus the term “poem” (on a “fuzzy” setting of “high”). Altogether my search returned only 138 hits, in contrast to the 4839 hits using “poem” alone in Fun. Neither periodical featured massive numbers of fixed-form poems; the surprise that any at all were published remains.
- 9.
“The Detached Train,” Fun, 29 March 1882, 136.
- 10.
Possibly Charles Davison Dalziel (1857–1938); see Stedman, “Fun,” 138.
- 11.
My thanks to Patrick Leary for pointing me toward the updated Curran Index, currently edited by Lars Atkin and Emily Bell. The Punch data were uploaded to the Index by former editor Gary Simons. No contributor’s ledger has been located for Fun.
- 12.
[Evelyn Douglas Jerrold], “Ballade de l’Anglophobie,” Punch,16 September 1882, 125.
- 13.
Britain had agreed to the takeover at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, so was complicit in the trickery, as the poem acknowledges: “And who tricked Tunis may try virtuous screeds / Before the Egyptian trickery of Saint James” (lines 17–18).
- 14.
The image may also indicate one of the Envoy’s “Princes of Finance.” A sequel and highly imitative ballade appeared in the 21 March 1883 issue of Fun, “Lesseps and Cook. A Ballade,” which borrowed the presumption of French speakers, the pun on hissons and “Princes of Finance,” substituting Puffons for Feedons in the refrain, and the five-line envoy. It was less sly in its political references and less hostile to France. See Fun, 21 March 1883, 128.
- 15.
“Recent London Explosion,” New York Times, 5 January 1885, 1–2.
- 16.
“BY UNDERGROUND! / (Quite a new sort of Ballade—Our Own Invention.),” Punch, 17 Jan 1885, 34. “Beak” was a slang term for justice of the peace or magistrate, cited in Oliver Twist and Thomas Hood’s Tale of a Trumpet in the OED.
- 17.
See the Curran Index, which can be searched by author and date as well as title of periodical.
- 18.
See Hughes, “Enclosing Forms,” 38.
- 19.
[Andrew Lang], “The Manhood of Great Boys,” Punch, 17 January 1885, 25.
- 20.
“Great Glove Fight,” The York Herald, 12 November 1889, 8. Jackson won in only six minutes and, as the York newspaper reported, was loudly cheered by the London audience.
- 21.
“A Ballade of Biceps,” Fun, 13 November 1889, 215.
- 22.
Andrew Lang, XXII Ballades of Blue China (London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1880), 50. Whether Lang was presupposing a female critic or preemptively calling a critic effeminate is unclear in his adoption of “shrew.”
- 23.
“Ballade of Blue Pill. / By the Author of “Ballades of Blue Cochin Chinas,’” Fun, 5 January 1881, 3.
- 24.
William Frazer, Elements of Materia Medica, containing the Chemistry and Natural History of Drugs (Dublin: William Frazer, 1851), 173–4. A poem about a purgative could risk scatological associations, but the common use of the pill among Victorians may have distanced them from contemplating its results.
- 25.
Jackie Rosenhek, “Popping Pills,” Doctor’s Review, October 2012, http://www.doctorsreview.com/history/popping-pills/
- 26.
Hugh Kenner, “Rhyme: An Unfinished Monograph,” Common Knowledge 10.3 (Fall 2004), 414.
- 27.
[Joseph Ashby-Sterry], “PAPER-KNIFE POEMS. / By Our Special Book-Marker,” Punch, 3 January 1885, 2.
- 28.
Andrew Lang, Rhymes à la Mode (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1885).
- 29.
Lang’s Rhymes à la Mode also included a villanelle addressed to “M. Joseph Boulmier, Author of ‘Les Villanelles.’” It alternately asks “Villanelle, why art thou mute” and “Hath the Master lost his lute?” (55–56).
- 30.
These, too, are practices from which Lang knowingly departs in the anonymous “BY UNDERGROUND!”
- 31.
Cosmo Monkhouse, rev. of Ballades and Rondeaus, Academy, 15 October 1887, 246–7.
- 32.
Rev. of Ballades and Rondeaus, Saturday Review, 3 December 1887, 769–70.
- 33.
[Theodore Watts], rev. of Victorian Poets, by E. C. Stedman, and Ballades and Rondeaus, Athenaeum, 7 January 1888, 12–15.
- 34.
Andrew Lang, “At the Sign of the Ship,” Longman’s Magazine 11 (December 1887), 238.
- 35.
Though this contribution is noted in the Punch contributors’ ledger, the author is not identified.
- 36.
“THE MUSE IN MANACLES,” Punch, 22 October 1887, 192.
References
[Ashby-Sterry, Joseph]. 3 January 1885. PAPER-KNIFE POEMS. / By Our Special Book-Marker. Punch: 2.
Behlman, Lee. 2018. The Case of Light Verse, or Vers de Société. Victorian Poetry 56: 477–491.
Frazer, William. 1851. Elements of Materia Medica, Containing the Chemistry and Natural History of Drugs. Dublin: William Frazer.
Hood, Thomas. 1869. The Rules of Rhyme. London: James Hogg.
Hughes, Linda K. 2020. Enclosing Forms, Opening Spaces: The 1880s Fixed-Verse Revival. In Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1880s, ed. Penny Fielding and Andrew Taylor, 34–52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[Jerrold, Evelyn Douglas]. 16 September 1882. Ballade de l’Anglophobie. Punch: 125.
Kenner, Hugh. 2004. RHYME: AN UNFINISHED MONOGRAPH. Common Knowledge 10: 377–425.
Lang, Andrew. 1880. XXII Ballades of Blue China. London: Kegan Paul & Co.
———. 1885a. Rhymes à la Mode. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.
[Lang, Andrew]. 17 January 1885b. BY UNDERGROUND! / (Quite a New Sort of Ballade—Our Own Invention.) Punch: 34.
———. 1887. At the Sign of the Ship. Longman’s Magazine 11: 234–240.
Maidment, Brian. Fun (1861–1901). 2009. Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism, ed. Laurel Brake and Marysa Demoor, 237–238. Gent and London: Academia Press and the British Library.
Mazel, Adam. 2017. The Age of Rhyme: The Verse Culture of Victorian Cambridge. Nineteenth-Century Literature 72: 374–401.
Monkhouse, Cosmo. 15 October 1887. Review of Ballades and Rondeaus. Academy: 246–247.
Rosenhek, Jackie. 2012. Popping Pills. Doctor’s Review. Accessed 6 December 2019. http://www.doctorsreview.com/history/popping-pills/
Stedman, Jane W. 1984. Fun. In British Literary Magazines: The Victorian and Edwardian Age, 1837–1913, ed. Alvin Sullivan, 135–138. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Unsigned. 21 March 1833. Lesseps and Cook. A ballade. Fun: 128.
———. 5 January 1881. Ballade of Blue Pill. / By the Author of “Ballades of Blue Cochin Chinas. Fun: 3.
———. 29 March 1882. The Detached Train. Fun: 136.
———. 5 January 1885. Recent London Explosion. New York Times: 1–2.
———. 22 October 1887a. The Muse in Manacles. Punch: 192.
———. 3 December 1887b. Review of Ballades and Rondeaus. Saturday Review: 769–770.
———. 12 November 1889a. Great Glove Fight. The York Herald: 8.
———. 13 November 1889b. A Ballade of Biceps. Fun: 215.
[Watts, Theodore.] 7 January 1888. Review of Victorian Poets, by E. C. Stedman, and Ballades and Rondeaus. Athenaeum: 12–15.
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Hughes, L.K. (2023). Anti-Elitist Elitist Verse: Comic Ballades, Rondeaus &c. in Punch and Fun. In: Behlman, L., Loksing Moy, O. (eds) Victorian Verse. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29696-3_9
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