MR. MARK LEMON.
Mark Lemon, from a photograph (Spielmann 254).
From the birthday of Punch till Monday last Mr. Mark Lemon was the chief of the staff of writers and artists who have been shooting folly on the wing, and wounding with "the wasp’s edge of the epigram" every public abuse — or social error — during nearly thirty years. If the lip of a wit be warfare upon earth, how must he have been tried, who, during so many years, has been called upon to hold the balance even among groups of rival wits? If there were nothing to add to Mr. Mark Lemon’s account with the periodical literature of his time beyond his deserts as the hearty, amiable and honest director of a turbulent set of intellects, he would have a strong claim on the grateful remembrance of his generation. To his nice discrimination and his instinctive abhorrence of extremes in opinion and expression, the famous journal of which he was editor from the beginning, owes the services of men much more brilliant than he ever pretended to be; owes very much of the popularity which has marked the thirty years of its existence.
The qualities that enabled Mr. Mark Lemon to maintain his place at the head of the Punch table in the presence of Thackeray and Douglas Jerrold are to be found by a conscientious review of the varieties of literary work which he did, apart from Punch. It is said that Mr. Lemon wrote sixty pieces. Undoubtedly he was a prolific writer for the stage, and the best of his sympathies were given to the boards. He was an excellent actor, as well as an artful and effective dramatist. He had sympathies so quick and warm that a sad event, a misfortune, or the sight of pain or emotion, brought the tears welling to his eyes as quickly as they spring to the lashes of a girl in her teens. Hence, his dramas are strongest where they depend on emotion. The play of his humour was mild, but it was ever gracious and funny. In short, there is in all his dramatic doings the atmosphere of a happy nature. The man was as genial as the dramatist; so that when he turned from the stage, and wrote for children, or for the holiday-makers in the Illustrated London News, he was sure to please. There was a smile upon his page. He seldom made you laugh; but he put you on good terms with the world and the writer and yourself.
Leading figures at Punch shown as a musical ensemble, with Lemon conducting. Among them are (alongside him, top left) the cartoonists John Leech (with the coif) and Richard Doyle on pipes; Thackeray, towards the right above, on the flute; Tom Taylor, playing the piano below and between them; and on the far right is Douglas Jerrold animatedly playing the drums. Source: Spielmann 262.
The natural inclination of Mr. Mark Lemon was not towards comic literature. He had fun in him; his was a merry eye and a laughing lip; but there was a fine warm fibre underlying all, and holding the man together. It was by this element in him that he succeeded in holding satirists and humorists snd caricaturists together. Appointed navigator in troubled waters, he poured out the oil of his gentle nature without stint. His approach brought sunny weather; his voice was balm to the angry; he loved the quiet, orderly, becoming way.
The incidents of Mr. Lemon’s life were few. He was born in 1809, we are told, in the neighbourhood of Oxford Street, and in the middle rank of life. His lot was early cast among theatrical people, and his impulses were all towards the stage. That the boyish fancy never wholly ceased to operate in him is proved by the zest with which he joined Mr. Charles Dickens’s amateur troupe in later life; and by his recent impersonation of Falstaff. Humour with an indulging tenderness was his histrionic quality, and he was a practised and painstaking and discreet performer. He was only thirty-two years of age when he assumed the direction of the most successful satirical and humorous organ of his day; and from that time till his death he rejoiced in the even tenour of his life; in the affection of those whom he controlled; and he was never soured because his lieutenants were greater heroes than their captain. Mr. Lemon had been in feeble health for some time past, but there appeared no cause to fear an immediate end to his life. His mind was busy within a few days of his death, which happened at Crawley, early last Monday morning: he died peacefully and in the midst of his family, of whom he was deservedly the idol.
The writer of sixty dramatic pieces, of a hundred songs, of scores of pleasant essays and stories, may be forgotten not many years hence; but by the help of all these disjecta membra some literary historian may, in the future, raise up a figure of a true, bright and happy worker, under whose benignant eyes something new and valuable in journalism was produced in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Related Material
- Punch, or the London Charivari (1841-1992) — A British Institution
- Victorian Periodicals: Selected Editors and Contributors
- Prologue to Mark Lemon and G. A. A'Beckett's Adaptation of The Chimes by Charles Dickens (1844)
Transcribed, formatted, linked and illustrated by Jacqueline Banerjee. You may use the image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned them and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Bibliography
The Athenaeum No. 2222 (28 May 1870): 708-09. Internet Archive. Web. 8 July 2026.
Spielmann, Marion. The History of Punch. Internet Archive, from a copy in the collections of Harvard University. Web. 8 July 2026.
Created 8 July 2026