Appearing in the October 12, 1872 issue of Once a Week, the acrobatic Arnold is shown in circus tights, high above the stage and audience-filled boxes, leaping cooly (or "disinterestedly") to the trapeze bar labelled "Philosophy." In the distance, the still-swinging bars of "Criticism" and "Poetry" suggest that he has just made another agile leap from one to the other. Captioned "Sweetness and Light," the cartoon is accompanied by a brief and generally complimentary biographical sketch which suggests that his more enduring popularity will come less from his poetry than from his "remarkable" prose essays.3 The caricaturist obviously sees Arnold as a performer in a fairly elite circus held in a theatre with a posh interior. In addition to the Once A Week cartoon, the year 1872 also welcomed W.H. Mallock's anonymously published first edition of Every Man His Own Poet; Or, The Inspired Singer's Recipe Book. Thanks to Barry V. Qualls and Victorian Poetry, Mallock's Oxford undergraduate satire is now available and contains a brief “recipe” on "How to Make a Poem Like Mr. Matthew Arnold," which deserves reprinting in this "Charivari.” Take one soulful of involuntary unbelief, which has been previously well flavoured with self-satisfied despair. Add to this one beautiful text of Scripture. Mix these well together; and as soon as ebullition commences, grate in finely a few regretful allusions to the New Testament and the Lake of Tiberias, one constellation of stars, half-a-dozen allusions to the nineteenth century, one to Goethe, one to Mont Blanc, or the Lake of Geneva; and one also, if possible, to some personal bereavement. Flavour the whole with a mouthful of "faiths" and "infinites," and a mixed mouthful of "passions," "finites," and "yearnings." This class of poem is concluded usually with some question, about which we have to observe only that it shall be impossible to answer.4 Collecting and selecting examples for this "Charivari" has been an exercise in resisting the temptation to include everything that we have found and continue to find on Arnold in parody and caricature. The amount of available material, however, suggests the possibility for a volume on Arnold comparable to Postma's book, Tennyson As Seen by His Parodists (1926; rpt. New York: Haskell House, 1966). Our purpose here is to be suggestive, not exhaustive. Therefore, we turn next to the magazine which, next to Punch, was probably the most popular British periodical for parody, satire, and caricature. Vanity Fair, a society journal launched in 1868, limited its early visual offerings almost exclusively to its weekly colored lithographs of marvelously caricatured personalities, including Arnold and many persons closely associated with him. At this point, several of Vanity Fair's parodies in prose and poetry are worth noting. The July 5, 1882 issue carried a series of parodies of Tennyson, Arnold and others, centering on the "Crisis" in Egypt which sent British expeditionary forces to Cairo, to negotiate and also to protect English interests there. In what may be one of the best parodies of Arnold's prose, especially his tendency to repeat phrases, Vanity Fair offers an obviously exaggerated "Sample Opinion on the 'Crisis' by Mr. Matthew Arnold": So seeing that the representatives of the middle class, with their crippled sense of justice, their boisterous rejection of refinement, have chosen to approach this question with rudeness and want of calm, it is only fitting that a simpleminded person should remind them of their duty. For their crippled sense of justice and their boisterous rejection of refinement can only be rendered harmless by the simplicity of those who do not approach the question with rudeness and want of calm. How an Englishman with his rudeness and want of calm can be expected to influence the Eastern mind of Arabi is not apparent to any but the Philistine mind. We must get into the air and regard the matter serenely, and not from the point of view of the Englishman with his crippled sense of justice, his boisterous rejection of refinement. Let men be sent from the home of repose, from Oxford; let them be men of simplicity and sweetness; bind them in by no rules framed by thinkers whose aspirations in life are limited to marrying a deceased wife's sister. When these men with their calm and their simplicity present themselves at Cairo, the sensitive Colonels will at once feel the presence of higher souls, and will cease to follow the keen unscrupulous course. Then the middle class with their crippled sense of justice, their boisterous rejection of refinement, will receive their dividends, and will thus be able to afford a marriage with a deceased wife's sister, while the Author of the Mysterious World will see that it is better for Him to be content with Oxford, since He can make nothing sweeter or fuller of light. The reference to the "marriage with a deceased wife's sister" is to an issue which Arnold himself enjoyed ridiculing because of its absurdity. "Arminius von Thunder-ten-Tronckh,” in Friendship's Garland, Speaks of the Liberals' House of Commons bill enabling a man to marry his deceased wife's sister as just another bit of political "pabulum." With hyperbolic delight, Arnold, in Culture and Anarchy, reports his "advantage" at being present when Thomas Chambers introduced the bill with a plea for personal liberty. Another supporter of the bill, Hepworth Dixon, is labeled by Arnold "the Colenso of love and marriage."8 Bishop Colenso's book on his discoveries of problems in biblical arithmetic among the Zulus had provided Arnold with a vulnerable object for satire. As R. H. Super rightly observes, "Arnold's sense of humor brought him, then, into the heart of the religious controversies of his day, this time in prose, not verse." From his earliest prose until his last, Arnold continued to use the "deceased wife's sister" issue and the Colenso affair whenever a touch of satire was needed. And never was his comic touch better than when he dealt with pettyness in politics and religion. 10 Contrary to Punch's parodic portrait of Arnold as a weeping dandy with a cold and dismal outlook on life, Arnold's wit and humor never left him and is obvious both in his letters and in nearly all of his prose from the 1863 "The Bishop and the Philosopher" to his final essays of the late 1880s. 11 At times, Arnold too must have appreciated the milder sorts of ridicule he received from such magazines as Punch and Vanity Fair. Sometimes, however, the popular press went beyond playful parody to downright devilishness and deliberate distortion of his ideas. For example, in response to Arnold's Whitechapel Address of November 29, 1884, Vanity Fair printed the following anonymous "poetic" critique of Arnold's artprating in the December 6 issue: Oh, Matthew! when you prate of Art, Appears to me that you're a most Uncomfortable prophet. You prophesy a coming change: Society is "rocking": It "sways and cracks," you say--how strange! I really hope you mayn't be right; Is only fair to make some slight You think it for the workman's good Poor devil! what he needs is food, He who wants this, must work (it seems The working man you'd doubtless bid 'Tis thus, I think, your vision runs: -- "On wheels let every workman roll, Too long he's had his wrongs to bear, The Rough shall revel in Mayfair!! The Peer starve in Whitechapel!!!"'12 |