Mark Lemon (1809–1870)For our Grandchildren...Mark Lemon is your 1st cousin six times removed. That is the number of direct grandparents.)
He was the child of your Great Great Great Great Great Grandfather. George Mark Lemon's, brother Thomas Martin Lemon.
Mark Lemon with the Dickens family. In the article that follows you will see that Charles Dickens and Mark Lemon were great friends.
In The Times newspaper of the 21st March 1849 there is a transcript of a court case where Charles and Mark were accused by a pickpocket of making their living by buying stolen goods !!
Click on the article to get a larger imageLemon, Mark (1809–1870), magazine editor and playwright, the only child of Martin Lemon (d. 1817) and Alice Collis, was born on 30 November 1809 in Oxford Street, London. Both parents had rural roots.
At the age of eight Mark lost his father and was sent to live with his paternal grandparents Mark and Grace (nee Denyer) at Church House Farm, Hendon, Middlesex.
This is the home in Hendon of our grandchildren's Great Great Great Great Great Great Grandparents. His mother, meanwhile, began a new career as a milliner in Oxford Street. Mark became a boarder at Cheam School for a while and came under the influence of its headmaster, James Wilding. Some of his school experiences were woven into his second novel, Loved at Last (1864). The death of Lemon's grandfather in 1820 was the possible reason for the end of Mark's spell at Cheam. Three years later his grandmother died, and at the age of fourteen he was sent to Boston, Lincolnshire, to learn the hops business under the guidance of his uncle, Thomas Collis.
Early career and the foundation of Punch By 1836 Lemon had returned to London and in March of that year was living in Soho. A year later he was working in a Kentish Town brewery run by the brother of his mother's second husband. From 1834 to 1837 his light verse and sketches under the pen-name Tom Moody appeared in the New Sporting Magazine. From September 1837 he also contributed to Bentley's Miscellany while Charles Dickens was the editor. Lemon saw his first play, a farce entitled The P. L., or, 30, Strand, produced at the Strand Theatre on 25 April 1836. This was followed in July by his first melodrama, Arnold of Winkelreid, which was staged at the Surrey Theatre. A meeting with the actor and composer Frank Romer led to their collaboration on Rob of the Fen (an adaptation of the German Des Falkners Braut), which appeared at the English Opera House in July 1838. Lemon was introduced to one of Romer's sisters, Helen (Nelly) Romer (c.1817–1890), whom he eventually married on 28 September 1839, and with whom he had three sons and seven daughters. However, with the closure of the brewery early in the following year Lemon was left without a regular income, though he was soon found a new post as landlord of the Shakespeare's Head in Wych Street, off Drury Lane, London. Although popular with his ‘guests’, as he preferred to call his clientele of mainly poets, playwrights, artists, and journalists, Lemon proved to be an incompetent businessman, and by the close of 1840 had been sacked.In early June 1841 fellow playwright Henry Mayhew introduced Lemon to Joseph Last, a printer, who had already introduced Mayhew to the engraver Ebenezer Landells. The latter wished to finance the launch of a new comic journal modelled on Philipon's Paris Charivari. This was a bold initiative, given that Figaro in London, the comic newspaper with which the nascent Punch was most commonly compared, had folded two years earlier. Its closure was symbolic of a decline in the fortunes of satirical journalism which was due partly to a period of relative political calm, partly to the death of its most obvious target, George IV, and partly also to the growth of Chartist newspapers, which provided an alternative voice for radicalism. Lemon was none the less attracted by the idea, and over the next few weeks became involved in discussions. Eventually a definite plan emerged. Initially Lemon was to share the editorial responsibilities with Mayhew and the Irish dramatist Stirling Coyne. Last was to be the printer, Landells the engraver, and the publisher was to be William Bryant. Several writers were approached for contributions, including Douglas Jerrold, Gilbert à Beckett, and Percival Leigh. Among the artists were to be Archibald Henning, Birket Foster, and John Leech. The title Punch was chosen after some debate, and Lemon set about preparing a prospectus, which was duly circulated throughout the capital. Lemon saw the new comic weekly, which was due to make its début on 17 July 1841, as ‘a refuge for destitute wit’ and an ‘asylum for the thousands of orphan jokes … the millions of perishing puns, which are now wandering about without so much as a shelf to rest upon’ (Adrian, 30–31). However, he also promised features on politics, fashion, police, reviews, fine arts, music and drama, and sport. The first number of Punch appeared on the date set and the leading article by Lemon expanded on the prospectus. The new paper would provide ‘pleasing instruction’ as well as harmless amusement, and would be conducted in a liberal, humanitarian spirit. Despite the investment of money and talent in it, Punch did not take off as expected, and had Lemon not ploughed back a fee of £30 received for his playlet The Silver Thimble the third issue would not have appeared. The proceeds from a farce by Lemon, Punch, also helped to keep the paper going. As a Punch contributor in this period Lemon was kept busy with his serial ‘The Heir of Applebite’, which ran from August to November 1841.
Editor of PunchWith the acquisition of Punch by Bradbury and Evans in December 1842 Lemon became sole editor, possibly in recognition of his financial help. An embittered Henry Mayhew never adjusted himself to a new subservient role under Lemon, and in 1847 he accused his former friend of welshing on an agreement to share the proceeds from certain plays on which they had collaborated. Under the inspired leadership of Lemon, who possessed a genuine gift for getting the best out of his contributors, Punch prospered. In 1842 William Makepeace Thackeray was recruited to the team; Horace Mayhew arrived a year later, and in 1844 Tom Taylor made his début. John Leech, who began his first Punch cartoon in 1842, and Richard Doyle were the two outstanding artists taken on by Lemon in the first decade. Apart from ‘The Heir of Applebite’ Lemon's own contributions to Punch tended to be short fillers, though he also wrote ‘Songs for the Sentimental’ and similar verse effusions, many of which had a keen social emphasis. Lemon's humanitarianism encouraged social and political satirists, most notably the brilliant Jerrold, to submit their best material to Punch, though the magazine's strong radical flavour was tempered somewhat by the more conservative contributions of men like Thackeray, Tom Taylor, and John Leech. It was Lemon who accepted ‘The Song of the Shirt’, a fierce indictment of the harsh working conditions of seamstresses by Thomas Hood, for the 1843 Christmas number, against the advice of his staff. As a result the circulation of Punch was tripled overnight. Yet behind the magazine's social conscience lurked a genuine philistinism, particularly towards the visual arts, and a narrow jingoism. Lemon oversaw a protracted campaign against Prince Albert, who was ridiculed for collecting pre-Renaissance Italian art, for patronizing the German portraitist Winterhalter, and for dabbling, alongside his wife, in etching. The Art Union and the Schools of Design were also satirized, as was the emerging Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which Punch depicted as an unnatural ‘foreign’ departure from the English tradition in genre painting.Lemon's uncanny instinct for discovering fresh talent led Punch towards even greater prosperity in its second and third decades. Doyle's resignation in 1850 (in protest at the magazine's anti-Catholic campaign) opened the door for John Tenniel, a draughtsman with even greater gifts, and in the following year Lemon recruited the equally gifted Charles Keene. The humorist Shirley Brooks was poached by Lemon from Punch's rival the Man in the Moon at about the same time, and eventually became deputy editor. Henry Silver, whose intimate diary recorded the proceedings at the weekly Punch dinners (another Lemon innovation), arrived in 1857. The artist George du Maurier became a regular in 1864, just after the writer F. C. Burnand was taken onto the staff by Lemon. With the death of Jerrold in 1857 Punch lost its only genuinely radical voice, though by this time the magazine's earlier anti-establishment tone had been replaced by one that reflected the views and aspirations of its largely professional middle-class readership. Punch's respectability was acknowledged by Lemon himself when he admitted that his magazine kept ‘to the gentlemanly view of things’ (Adrian, 58). As editor of Britain's leading comic weekly he received £1500 annually, the highest salary ever paid for such a position up to that time. Courted as a celebrity, he was admitted to the Garrick Club and attended Reform Club dinners presided over by the chef Alexis Soyer. Nevertheless, despite his success he did not jettison his liberalism, and at Punch dinners was often the sole voice of humanitarianism in discussions over social policy.
Lemon's circleLemon's friends outside Punch included Herbert Ingram, whom he had first met while living in Boston as a boy. He acted as Ingram's chief adviser during the launching of the Illustrated London News in May 1842, and thereafter was responsible for each Christmas supplement of the magazine until Ingram's death in 1860. He was Ingram's right-hand man during his successful Liberal campaign for the Boston constituency in 1856, during which he was joined by several of his Punch colleagues. In the following year Ingram turned the editorial work of his recently acquired London Journal over to Lemon, but a decision to reprint the Waverley novels in its pages proved disastrous and Lemon resigned. Lemon was also first editor of The Field, which Bradbury and Evans launched in January 1853. In this part-time post he renewed his association with Robert Surtees, who became his principal hunting correspondent and general adviser, but his own contributions consisted largely of surplus material from Punch and the Illustrated London News. He was replaced as editor by J. H. Walsh at the close of 1857.Lemon's friendship with Charles Dickens was a close and long-lasting one. Although he contributed to Bentley's Miscellany while Dickens was editor, it is unlikely that the two men met until after the first issue of Punch appeared. In April 1843 Lemon was formally invited to dinner by Dickens and their friendship grew. Lemon and Punch stalwart Gilbert à Beckett adapted Dickens's Chimes for the Adelphi in February 1844. The Haunted Man followed in 1848. Lemon and Jerrold probably acted as Dickens's sub-editors during the latter's short stint in charge of the Daily News in January 1846. A shared passion for amateur theatricals cemented their friendship. Lemon appeared as Brainworm and Dickens as Bobadil in Jonson's Every Man in his Humour, which played at the Royalty and at the St James Theatre in the autumn of 1845. The production was transferred to Manchester and Liverpool in the summer of 1847, and in the following year the play was revived in London, alternating with The Merry Wives of Windsor, in which Lemon appeared as Falstaff alongside Dickens. During the more lengthy provincial tour that followed Lemon and Dickens supplemented their Shakespearian repertoire with roles in various farces. In a campaign to raise funds for the Guild of Literature and Art, Lemon and Dickens appeared again in Jonson's play at Lytton's Knebworth in November 1850, and in the following May, after a performance in Lytton's Not So Bad As We Seem, Lemon joined Dickens in Mr Nightingale's Diary, a piece that they had co-written. Further provincial tours followed late in 1851 and in 1852. Lemon also took part in productions at Dickens's small private theatre in Tavistock House, notably in Wilkie Collins's melodramas The Lighthouse (1855) and The Frozen Deep (1857). Lemon and his family had become frequent visitors to Dickens's home since the latter had moved to Tavistock House in November 1851, though the new neighbours were already fellow members of a weekly walking club, had taken nocturnal strolls around London together, and had been on excursions, such as a tour of Salisbury Plain in 1848. In the following year Dickens submitted his one and only contribution to Punch (an attack on the suburban water supply), but Lemon deemed it unsuitable.
Other writings; later lifeThe end of Lemon's long friendship with Dickens came in 1858 when Lemon neglected to publish in Punch his friend's proclamation outlining the reasons for a separation from his wife, Catherine, who had been advised by Lemon. The two men were eventually reconciled in 1867. The break with Dickens coincided with Lemon's move from London to Crawley, Sussex, in May 1858. At the spacious Vine Cottage he entertained his Punch colleagues, including Shirley Brooks, who replaced Dickens in Lemon's affections, and John Tenniel, who modelled his illustrations of Alice in Lewis Caroll's Alice in Wonderland on Lemon's daughter Kate. Lemon also involved himself in parish affairs. He used his influence to bring street lighting to Crawley, helped promote cultural events, resurrected stage-coach travel, and raised money for a new fire engine. At the one-roomed Malthouse, a mile from his home, Lemon wrote prodigiously until his death. He continued to write plays, including the anti-suffragist Women's Suffrage, or, Petticoat Parliament (1867), but the bulk of his output in this period was fiction, and in particular novels. His first book, The Enchanted Doll, a collection of fairy tales, had appeared in 1849, and had been followed by four collections of contributions to periodicals, Prose and Verse (1852), The Heir of Applebite and Our Lodgers (1856), and Betty Morrison's Pocket Book (1856). At Crawley Lemon prepared a collection of Christmas pieces from the Illustrated London News, A Christmas Hamper (1860), which was followed by two novelty items, The Jest Book (1864), a compendium of mainly old jokes, and The New Table Book (1867). He also continued to write for children. The Legends of Number Nip (1864) is a rendering of Johann Karl Musaeus's Rübezahl with illustrations by Punch artist Charles Keene. Tinykin's Transformations (1869) is a fairy tale set in Saxon times. Lemon wrote his first novel in Crawley; Wait for the End (1863) is a moralistic tale centring on the lives of two brothers and their progeny. This was followed by Loved at Last (1864) and the more highly regarded Falkner Lyle (1866), both of which had strong romantic themes. Leyton Hall (1867) was a novella set at the time of Charles I. In the same year appeared a full-length novel, Golden Fetters, which had a contemporary setting. Lemon's final unpublished novel, The Taffeta Petticoat, was completed shortly before his death and drew on years of accumulated knowledge of the theatre, of metropolitan life, and the era of coaching. All Lemon's fiction suffers from unwanted authorial intrusions into the narrative and much of it is marred by a patronizing attitude towards women, extreme prudishness, and a saccharine sentimentality, though his powers of observation and humour are a saving grace.Early in 1862 Lemon delivered a highly successful series of illustrated lectures on the history of London, using as sources such authorities as Stow, Camden, Pepys, and Evelyn. In spring this entertainment toured the provinces, and in 1867 the material was published as Up and Down the London Streets. In 1863 he toured with an adaptation of his own drama Hearts are Trumps. With his heavily bowdlerized interpretation of Shakespeare's Falstaff from Henry IV, Lemon realized a personal ambition to rescue the reputation of a favourite character. On opening in London in October 1868 his Falstaff performances were well received, but provincial tours in the following year resulted in heavy financial losses and were a strain on his declining health. Lemon died at Vine Cottage, Crawley, on 23 May 1870 after a series of short illnesses, and was buried at Ifield church on 27 May.
Mark Lemon's grave Ifield ChurchWealth at death under £800: probate, 14 Jan 1871,
