The Transfiguration of Mister Punch (3 page)

Read the following amateur poem, in free-form verse, which I found thirty five years ago. It proves that all kinds of wild, nigh impossible cross-references may turn up, and are findable, though they be not readable:

‘On Life’s dulling dust grey shelves,

The secretly sparkling Imp sits frozen

’Pon his ledge watching dewey pates,

Waiting for rampant friend and foe Mister Punch to

return to sleeping Lincoln where they might

merrily lay waste our dreams,

in haste.’

Speculations of a Highwayman by W.V.
Privately Printed, Feosole, 1902

I have had a lifelong attraction, a magnetic pull toward the human instinct and fascination with the Grotesque both lofty and lowest. This takes glorious form in the
human face
, the manic, the open-eyed, wide-eyed, bug eyed, pop-eyed one. The earsplitting smile, the skull-like grin that never ends. The Cheshire maniac, the galloping jesting, mocking thing of bronze in the Forest. The thin and the twisted. Roots and gnarled burl of tree. Torturous and sensual shapes within forests.

The moss walls are dripping with violet dew, inviting us into the cave of the fae. There was a market every other Sunday in the town next to our village. My mother would take me there, and it was a special treat to see the variety of odd objects that people would discover in their attics and hope to sell there. The leering
face.
The beauty of a gorgeous, twisted, ecstatic human mug. The carnivalesque visage of intense exaggeration and ultimate drama. Give me the grotesque over the commonplace any-day. When the two find the luck to meet upon the sickly crossroad, such wonders I see, octopi fireworks, such stained glass anemone, such pearlescent plums screaming blue. A fist shaking “Yes!” at life, outraged at the cards we have been dealt. We shall deal them back to the world starting now. Each card bears an etched engraving of The Joker who has taken on the form of hunchbacked Punch, laying on his back, grinning insanely and juggling planet earth with his cap and bell’d feet.

Forgive the sidetrack. Need I apologize? What is the point of living without curious and forgotten byways? Is a tangent not merely another leaf of delightful curiosity? Of exploration? I have found that one goes to the strangest, most exciting and unexpected places when strange roads of unfamiliar hue are pursued. If you lock eyes with something beautiful and strange across the room, and it reaches out its hand to you, you’d best take it, whatever the price.

Knowledge of many diverse rural festivals, gargoyles, stone phenomena, sacred wells, druidic tracks, medieval harvest rituals lingering on in honey-thick woods... all of these seem more important than ever. The Lincoln Imp is a rebellious figure, a creature spawned from the abyss who, with a companion imp, sought to bring some of the Infernal Chaos to the tranquility of a medieval cathedral. If Mr. Punch had but wings some would fancy he might find kinship with such Pagan trickster myths. Others tend to call such gropings hogwash, preferring to keep the Red Nosed One firmly rooted within the British puppet theatre tradition, with not so amorphous Italian roots.

“It’s all jest a pile a’ knockabout fun, ’ats all it ever was an’ is. Such fancy thoughts as yours ’av no place beside the seaside, Sir.”

I beg to differ. Not only is the story and tradition of Punch and Judy very old, it is beyond time. It is older than age. As the history has been written well a dozen times or more, I will not belabor you with endless footnotes. I shall, however, share with you the highlights and discoveries I made that led to... what it all led to.

In his book,
Mr. Punch
, Philip John Stead offers us this stirring passage. ‘Seen through Christian eyes, the anarchy of Paganism appeared as the grotesque; and as such it is perpetuated in the gargoyles of cathedral gutters and the medieval drama. Perhaps Punch is such a perpetuation of the pagan world: Dr. Johnson asserted that he was the descendant of the Vice of the morality plays, who is in turn a descendant of the Devil.’

For forty or fifty years I have delved into the dustiest of corners, the shelves where forgotten links of broken chain remain. Between living in many peculiar ways, in the world, I have lived beneath tents, make-shift shacks that barred not the pelting rain. I have also lived between the covers of books. Books, my friends, books, the rare minds and souls. Certain books capture the fancy at different times in Life. As a young man I carried an old copy of nature mystic Richard Jefferie’s wondrous ‘The Story of My Heart’ in my pocket, as I roamed the countrysides performing my first year of traveling puppet and magic shows. Other unique and odd books became important companions along the way, and I shall try to name a few as they come to mind. Would that I had time I should have liked to include a full bibliography of works I found useful, though I worry it would be as long as the manuscript itself.

It was during one of these early rambles that I would meet her. I was performing Punch and Judy on St. Patrick’s day, that much I recall. It was late at night, but still I was performing. There was singing and fine food and drink. Close to the stroke of midnight a woman with hair the colour of sunlight entered the dark room and all turned to blinding amber. Our eyes locked and we became inseparable. We had been carved from the same fallen willow. I will not tell you her name, nor will I tell you what happened to her. Suffice to say that no one has ever loved nor understood me more, nor ever could. She sewed new costumes when the puppets started looking raggedy. She created our children and... In a similar manner, I will speak little of Judy in this book of Punch, though she be half of his story and the ruler of his warped little heart. I love her.

There are so many touching little anecdotes and outlandish, unexplainable phenomena connected with puppetry and puppets, once you begin to really delve into these subjects. Most things in this world reveal the strangest truths, if we take the time to hold their hand. A single sweet insect becomes a thing of horror, once multiplied by the tens of thousands. We are left secret notes to meet ourselves in secrets fields, only to discover these notes in unopened envelopes decades later.

The great British magician and Punch and Judy man, Sydney De Hempsey, wrote an excellent ‘textbook’,
HOW TO DO PUNCH & JUDY
, Wonderful books such as this inspired and helped new generations of Punch performers. It was also a controversial book, for it divulged the greatest secrets of this ancient society. The public now learned how to make the secret voice, and do the proper ‘motions.’

I found this slim pamphlet well worth discovering, if only for several touching anecdotes of life on the road. Before he gets down to the real information on making the puppets and doing the show, De Hempsey shares some his life with the reader. He was walking through the town of Hailsham. He tells us, ‘Toby always sat on the show with a nice coloured ribbon around her neck, and she looked really happy. A dear old lady came out of a very large house, and to my surprise she approached and stopped me saying, “Would Toby like something to eat?” I said “perhaps he would.”’ The showman’s money collector is sent in with the dog. Shortly they return with, a very large parcel. ‘There, all for Toby, was a large cooked chicken, some cooked sausages and two pints of beer. Tied around the chicken’s leg was a small envelope, which when we opened it we found contained two half crowns and a small card with these words: ‘Good luck from an old puppet worker’s wife.’ I regret that I never saw that dear lady again, but I carried the card for years in my pocket book and lost it in France during the last war.’

One book, I must point out, changed my life. This would be Walter Wilkinsons
THE PEEP SHOW.
This is the first in a series of a traveling puppet-man’s memoirs of life on the road. Wilkinson rambled about rural England during the first half of the twentieth century. He begins in Haresfield, Gloucestershire. From there he pushed the frame of his show, on wheels, to Bristol. He takes a steamer, and from Minehead he adventures with his amusingly named ‘Encumbrance’ all the way to Bath, passing and performing through many hamlets. His dream and goal was to help revive the lost world of the traveling puppet performer. In another time, in a sweet velvet fog shrouded world we can barely access, men roamed like gypsies with their wondrous puppet, magic and mystery shows. Walter demanded that we bring back the magic. He pushed a hand cart with a collapsible puppet show frame in it, covering many counties including Sussex, Yorkshire and Lancashire. Subsequent volumes detail his adventures performing in Wales, Ireland, Scotland and the United States. Few books could have thrilled and ignited my wanderlust more. To lovingly create one’s own puppets, like he did! To build the frame of your little stage; their little world. To map out your travels. The details. How shall you eat and sleep? Are you prepared for storms, or dogs lifting their legs on the red and white stripes as you perform?

Origins 2/25

Audience in pit

and box delight

applaud and shout

out delighted at dance profane

giant belly and tiny arms

and in that distant

dancing-mouse past

the Heavenly Trumpets trill

as the Chin

arches sacredly to

meet thy Nose.

I knew that I was ready and so inspired and so I took up the actual performing of Punch and Judy in my twenties. Just as so many had done before me, I went through the necessary baptism by fire and error. I would never sculpt my Punch out of papier-mâché. No, he had to be durable. Able to take thousands of knocks, and to deal just as many murderous blows. The finest of all woods to use when carving Punch is Willow. It is not difficult to carve, yet strong and hard. It is light of weight as well, and this means a lot when you are carrying a dozen puppets and props about with you all day, for your living.

My first Punch beckoned me from the tree. I saw the hook nose and chin itching to be set free, almost jutting out of the wood like blisters or strange, needy growths. My carving knife would bring the sleeping, long lost friend to life, to me once more. So I set to my task. As I cut out a large section to allow for Punch’s head, I was astonished to find a small, round glass object half embedded in the wood! It was a glass marble. The centre contained a magic swirl of colors that felt as if they came from a lost world. I reasoned that some lad must have stuck a favorite and rare ‘lucky’ Italian glass marble into a knot or furrow in the same tree for safekeeping years ago. The tree grew and had enveloped the marble, but it was positioned to fit perfectly in the face as an unusual glass eye! It was too good and inspired a plan, and clearly meant to be. Thus the reason my first Punch puppet was famed for a shiny, almost alive, left eye.

My love of Punch and Judy led me to a lifetime of research. I spent the best part of my decades traversing the globe for hints and clues, in between creating puppets, performing with puppets and dreaming of puppets. How many hours in trance like, scholarly bliss, spent in the incomparable reading room of the British Museum, researching the roots and earliest origins of Punch and Judy?

Months of reading resulted in a familiarity with every printed tract, broadside and even unpublished versions of the Punch drama and earlier forms. I was ready to give up my seat in the Museum library when I found some unique notes in an obscure, early nineteenth-century armchair travel memoir. This book, which has several rich and untapped pages of Punch lore and speculation, is typically and grandly entitled:

SCENES AND SKETCHES OF CONTINENTAL EUROPE:
EMBRACING DESCRIPTIONS OF FRANCE, PORTUGAL, SPAIN, ITALY, SICILY, SWITZERLAND, BELGIUM, AND HOLLAND, TOGETHER WITH INTERESTING NOTICES OF THEIR PRINCIPAL CITIES AND TOWNS. CAREFULLY PREPARED FROM THE BEST AND LATEST SOURCES,

BY
ROBERT SEARS.

I quote at length from this nearly lost and very real book, for where else but here may it be preserved? This outstanding clue to Mister Punch’s lost origin’s is not mentioned in the standard P & J history texts by Speaight, Leach or Byrom. These kinds of books are wonderful. You can get lost in another land and time for hours. The writing is often vivid, be it Loti or one of endless thousands of vanished travelers who thought their adventures in exotic realms thrilling enough to preserve for future generations. Let the Seeker find the seeds of Knowledge as did I. Tee hee.

‘Punch is a universality, and of a remote and indisputable antiquity. He is found in so many countries and at such distant periods of time, that it is impossible to say where or when he had his origin. He is as popular in Egypt, and Syria, and Turkey, as ever he was in Rome or Naples. Under the name of Karaguse, or Black-Snout, he has amused and edified the grave, bearded citizens of Cairo and Constantinople for many an age. Some living traces of him have been found in Nubia, and in other countries far above the cataracts of the Nile; while types or symbols of him have, according to some interpreters, been discovered among the hieroglyphics of the ancient Egyptians. In Lost Irem, City of Pillars, he is said to have devised the “Unspeakable Red Sacrifice.” He was popular at Algiers ages before the French went to conquer that country. The children of the wandering Arabs of the desert know him and cherish him. He is quite at home among the lively Persians, and beyond the Red sea and the Persian gulf, and the Indian ocean, Karaguse, or Black-Snout, is found slightly travestied in Hindustan, Siam and Pegu, Ava and Cochin-China, China Proper and Japan. The Tartars behind the great wall of China are not unacquainted with him, nor are the Kamschatkans, who ominously whisper of their own Punch saying, “He is the Locust Gate.” He has recently been discovered leading an uncomfortable sort of existence among some of the Afghan tribes, to whom no doubt he has been introduced by the Persians.

‘We rather lean to the opinion of those who maintain that, like the Dalai Lama in Tibet, Punch is, without question, the great “Undying One”. Some of the learned have opined that Punch and the whole family of burattini, or puppets, were originally introduced into Europe from the East at the time of the Crusades; but their hypothesis seems to be deficient in any solid foundation of fact. Others, perplexed with the difficulty of his genealogy, have supposed that Punch must have had several fathers, or several distinct origins at different times and in different parts of the world; and as Punch is made up of the stuff which is found wherever man is, this seems to be a good theory.’

R. Sears - ‘Scenes’ page. 352