Very much En Évidence; or, George in the box, by E. J. Wheeler (fl. 1872-1902), who worked for the magazine from 1880 (see Houfe 495). Source: "By George" in Punch, 19 December 1891: 300. [Click on this and the following image for larger pictures.]
Introduction
This was one of Punch's caricatures of George Meredith in the 1890s. It shows him during a cross-examination in court, during an actual case in which he was called upon to defend the publishers, Chapman and Hall, against libel (see Ellis 215-20). The cartoon is accompanied by a summary of the questioning, followed by a spoof report of his answering the questions in a way that parodies his inimitable writing style. Despite making capital of this difficult style, the cartoon and "report" together betray an appreciation of the novelist's stature, vitality and sheer force of character.
The case was brought by a certain James Pinnock, who saw himself portrayed as an unpleasant character in a book published under Meredith's auspices. Cross-examined by the eminent barrister, Sir Charles Russell (1832-1900), who would become Lord Chief Justice in 1894, Meredith duly explained that he had assumed the character was fictional — delineated, as he explained, with that kind of coarse humour to which the reading public would no doubt respond, although he personally did not (the comment is entirely of a piece with the views in his Essay on Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit). In the spoof report, Russell goes on to quote some particularly impenetrable passages of his latest novel, One of Our Conquerors at him. His point is driven home here in a more subtle way, too. Meredith had happened to say that the only Pinnock he knew was the author of Pinnock's Catechism, which he had read as a child. The catechism, held up for us to see in his inquisitor's hand, is in very plain language quite unlike the author's own.
The joke is definitely at Meredith's expense, yet it should probably be taken as an entertainment rather than a put-down. Meredith himself thought his encounter with Russell went "fairly": he felt that he stood up well to the rigorous questioning. "I had some fun out of Mr C. Russell," he wrote to his friend, the editor and journalist Frederick Greenwood (Cline 1053). The skit has been attributed to Rudolf Lehmann, and described as "a most excellent simulation of Meredith's style" (Ellis 219).
Despite the defence put up by the publishers, the trader was awarded damages. More troubling for Meredith, personally, was the fact that he now lost his long-maintained anonymity as Chapman and Hall's Reader.
By George!
[In a recent libel action, brought against an author by an African merchant, Mr. GEORGE MEREDITH was called as a witness. He said:—
"The story in dispute passed through his hands as reader for the publishers. Asked in cross-examination if he thought that the opening of the story relating to the hero's mother did not offend against the canons of good taste, the witness answered that it was the attempt of a writer of serious mind to be humorous. It might be almost called a stereotype of that form of the element of humour. It was a failure but still passed with the public. — The Judge: A kind of elephantine humour? — The Witness: Quite so. I did not like it, but one would have to object to so much."
There the report of Mr. MEREDITH'S evidence ends. Exigencies of space apparently caused the omission of a great deal of it. Fortunately it is in our power to supply this deficiency. —ED.]
The Judge. Quite so, Mr. MEREDITH. I may say for myself that I fully understand you. But perhaps it would be well to explain yourself a leetle more clearly for the benefit of the jury.
Mr. George Meredith. My Lord, I will put it with a convincing brevity, not indeed a dust-scattering brevity fit only for the mumbling recluse, who perchance in this grey London marching Eastward at break of naked morn, daintily protruding a pinkest foot out of compassing clouds, copiously takes inside of him doses of what is denied to his external bat-resembling vision, but with the sharp brevity of a rotifer astir in that curative compartment of a homoeopathic globule — so I, humorously purposeful in the midst, of sallow—
The Judge. One moment, Mr. MEREDITH. Have you considered—
Mr. G.M. Consideration, my Lord, is of them that sit revolving within themselves the mountainously mouse-productive problems of the overtoppingly catastrophic backward ages of empurpled brain-distorting puzzledom: for puzzles, as I have elsewhere said, come in rattle-boxes, they are actually children's toys, for what they contain, but not the less do they buzz at our understandings and insist that they break or we, and, in either case, to show a mere foolish idle rattle in hollowness. Nor have the antic bobbings —
Sir Charles Russell (cross-examining). Really, Mr. MEREDITH, I fail to follow you. Would it not be possible —
Mr. G.M. Ay, there you have it. In truth, the question looks like a paragraph in a newspaper, upon which a Leading Article sits, dutifully arousing the fat worm of sarcastic humour under the ribs of cradled citizens, with an exposure of its excellent folly. For the word. That is it. The word is Archon, with extended hand summoning the collaboratorically ordained, misbegotten brood of shock-shilling pamphlets to his regal presence —
The Judge (testily). No doubt that would be so, but it brings us no nearer to a decision upon the question of humour in the particular passage of the book which contains the alleged libel.
Sir Charles Russell. Perhaps I can shorten matters, my Lord. Now, Mr. MEREDITH, will you be kind enough to explain the following passage from a book with which you may perhaps be acquainted. (Reads.) "This he can promise to his points. As for otherwhere than at the festive, Commerce invoked is a Goddess that will have the reek of those boards to fill her nostrils, and poet and alderman alike may be dedicate to the sublime, she leads them, after two sniffs of an idea concerning her, for the dive into the turtle-tureen. Heels up they go, poet first — a plummet he!" Is that humorous, or, if not, what is it?
Mr. G.M. Elephantine, I think; yet not elephantine altogether, since of them that crash amid jungle of atrophied semi-consciousness, strivingly set upon an overtopping mastery —
Sir Charles Russell (interrupting). Thank you. The passage is from One of our Conquerors. Here is another:—"Reverting to the father and mother, his idea of a positive injury, that was not without its congratulations, sank him down among his disordered deeper sentiments, which were a diver's wreck, where an armoured livid subtermarine, a monstrous puff-ball of man, wandered seriously light in heaviness; trebling his hundredweights to keep him from dancing like a bladder-block of elastic lumber." And while you are about it, pray inform the Court what you mean by "the vulgarest of our gobble-gobbets," or by "a trebly cataphractic Invisible."
Mr. G.M. Truly, the louder members of the grey public are fraternally instant to spurn at the whip of that which they do not immediately comprehend. But to me, plunged chokingly in translucent profundities of aquamarine splendour, not of a truth that in the heights above splendour resides not, chidingly offering a fat whiskerless cheek to the blows of circumstance, this was ever the problem of problems. How to write. How not to write. This way and that the raging fates tug the hapless reader, pillowed he upon the vast brown bosom of his maternal earth, or lurefully beckoning the dim shadow-shapes of dodecahedronic cataplasmatic centipede fatally conditioned to the everlasting pyramid of a star-pointing necessity. So —
The Judge (with determination). Mr. MEREDITH, the Court is sincerely obliged to you for your extremely valuable evidence. We are unwilling to detain you any longer. Besides, after what you have said, the point is as clear as daylight. Good morning, Mr. MEREDITH, good morning. You may become a trebly cataphractic Invisible.
Conclusion
"Meredith Destroying Literary Form," by E.T. Reed. Source: Punch, 28 July 1894: 37.
A later Punch caricature of 28 July 1894, "Meredith Destroying Literary Form," depicts Meredith as a bull in a china shop (p.37). Among the shards in the cartoon-caricature are four labelled "Form," "Grammar," "Syntax" and "Constru..." (probably "Construction"). This one, by the political cartoonist Edward Tennyson Reed (1860-1933), is also accompanied by a spoof, this time of the recently published Lord Ormont and His Aminta (1894), entitled "Lord Ormont's Mate and Matey's Aminta." It purports to be "Volume I," and two further episodes based on the same novel follow in the next two issues, the third spoof on 11 August ending with the prospect of another novel yet to come: "Likely you will purchase. Readers gape for it. Better than acrostics, they say, fit for fifty puzzle-pages. What price?" (61).
Undeterred, and perhaps – because he did have a keen sense of humour – rather enjoying the wit of these spoofs, Meredith would produce two more novels after Lord Ormond and His Aminta: The Amazing Marriage (1895) and Celt and Saxon (1910).
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Bibliography
"By George!" Punch Vol. 101 (19 December 1891).Internet Archive. Web. 2 September 2026.
Ellis, S.M. George Meredith: His Life and Friends in Relation to His Work. London: Grant Richards, 1919. Internet Archive. Web. 2 September 2026.
Houfe, Simon. The Dictionary of British Illustrators and Caricaturists, 1800-1914. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors' Club, rev. ed. 1981.
"Lord Ormont's Mate and Matey's Aminta." Punch Vol. 107 (28 July 1894 and next two issues).Internet Archive. Web. 2 September 2026.
Meredith, George. The Letters of George Meredith. Edited by C.L. Cline. Vol. II. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1970.
Created 2 September 2026