In June, 1913, the office of Laureate fell vacant by the death of Mr. Alfred Austin. After Southey, Wordsworth and Tennyson, the anti-climax had been so painful that _Punch_ may well be excused for the cartoon in which Pegasus appeals to Ringmaster Asquith to disestablish him: the Steed of the Muses was tired of being harnessed to the Royal Circus. There are some who think that, in the best interests of the distinguished author who was appointed, it would have been well if _Punch's_ advice had been followed. VANITY FAIR In the fifty years that had passed since _Punch's_ birth in 1841, "Society," as it was then understood, had undergone a revolution which not only changed its structure but altered the meaning of the word. It had, in Mr. A. B. Walkley's phrase, become one of those "discoloured" words like "respectable" and "genteel," in which the new "connotation" strove with and gradually supplanted the old. "Society," in the old limited sense, stood for a limited, exclusive and predominantly aristocratic set, arrogant at times, but not wanting in a certain self-respect. But by the 'nineties it had become amorphous, unwieldy, cosmopolitan and plutocratic. Du Maurier, the finest and best equipped of the commentators and critics of the old _régime_, who recognized its distinction and its drawbacks, and satirized with impartial ridicule decadent aristocrats and vulgar intruders, was perhaps _felix opportunitate mortis_:-- He brought from two great lands the best of both In one fine nature blent. Lover of English strength and Gallic grace, Of British beauty, or of soul or face, Yet with that subtler something born of race That charm to cleanness lent. A Thackeray of the pencil! So men said. His reverence high for the great Titan dead Put by such praise with ease; But social satire of the subtler sort Was his, too. Not the shop, the slum, the court, But gay saloons gave quarry for his sport. 'Twas in such scenes as these His hectoring Midas, and his high-nosed earl, His worldly matron, and his winsome girl, Were found, and pictured clear, With skill creative and with strength restrained. They live, his butts, cold-hearted, shallow-brained. In his own chosen walk Du Maurier reigned Supreme, without a peer. [Sidenote: _The Social Jungle_] The tribute was fully earned; but Du Maurier was not one of those who enjoyed plying the scourge, and he was fortunate in that he did not live to see the "Gay Saloon" turned into the Social Jungle, as foreshadowed in _Punch's_ adaptation of Mr. Kipling's poem in 1894, which ends with the couplet:-- Because of his age and his cunning, his grip and his power of jaw, In all that the Law leaveth open the word of King Mammon is Law.