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Read Ebook: Punch or the London Charivari Volume 100 April 25 1891 by Various
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VOL. 100.
April 25th, 1891.
MR. PUNCH'S POCKET IBSEN.
SONS OF BRITANNIA.
The Yankee Oracle on the Three-Volume Novel.
SONGS OF THE UN-SENTIMENTALIST.
THE TAX-COLLECTOR'S HEART.
I know his step, his ring, his knock, I hear him, too, explain, With emphasis my nerves that shock, That he "won't call again!" I know that bodes a coming storm-- A summons looms a-head! I follow his retreating form, And note his stealthy tread! Some grace to beg, implore, beseech, 'Twere vain! Let him depart! I know no human cry can reach That Tax-Collector's heart!
"MORS ET VITA."--A fine performance, April 15, at Albert Hall, with ALBANI, HILDA WILSON, Messrs. LLOYD, and WATKIN MILLS, and Dr. MACKENZIE, as conductor or con-doctor. I should have given, writes our correspondent, a full and enthusiastic account of it, but that I was bothered all the time by two persons near me, who would talk and wouldn't listen. Thank goodness, they didn't stay throughout the performance. In a theatre they'd have been hushed down, but this is such a big place that a talking duet is heard only in the immediate neighbourhood of the talkers; and then no one wants to have a row during the performance of sacred music. It's like brawling in church.
QUEER QUERIES.
THE TITHES QUESTION.--I am the Vicar of a country Church in Wales; but owing to the total failure of my last attempt to distrain on the stock of a neighbouring farmer, on which occasion I was tossed over a hedge by an infuriated cow, my family and myself are starving. I wish to know if I can legally pawn the lectern, the ancient carved pulpit, and several rare old sedilia in the Church? Or they would be exchanged for an immediate supply of their value in groceries.--URGENT.
ANNOYANCE FROM NEIGHBOUR.--I live in a quiet street, and my next-door neighbour has suddenly converted his house into a Fried Fish Shop. Some of his boxes protrude into my front garden. Have I the right of seizing them, and eating contents, supposing them to be fit for human consumption? My house is perpetually filled with the aroma of questionable herrings, and very pronounced haddocks. I have asked, politely, for compensation, and received only bad language. What should be my next step?--PERPLEXED.
DEED OF GIFT.--Upon my eldest son's marriage I wish to make him a really handsome money present. My idea is to hand over to him ?100, on condition that he repays me ten per cent, as long as I live, my age now being forty-five. Then as to security. Had I better get a Bill of Sale on the furniture, which he has just had given him by his wife's father for their new house, or how can I most effectually bind him?--GENEROUS PARENT.
COMING DRESS.
MODERN TYPES.
The Adulated Clergyman possesses many of the genuine qualities of the domestic cat, in addition to a large stock of the characteristics which tradition has erroneously assigned to that humble hut misunderstood animal. Like a cat, he is generally sleek and has become an adept in the art of ingratiating himself with those who wear skirts and dispense comforts. Like a cat, too, he has an insinuating manner; he can purr quite admirably in luxurious surroundings, and, on the whole, he prefers to attain his objects by a circuitous method rather than by the bluff and uncompromising directness which is employed by dogs and ordinary honest folk of the canine sort. Moreover, he likes a home, but--here comes the difference--the homes of others seem to attract and retain him more strongly than his own. And if it were useful to set out the points of difference in greater detail, it might be said that the genuine as opposed to the traditional cat often shows true affection and quite a dignified resentment of snubs, is never unduly familiar, and makes no pretence of being better than other cats whose coats happen to be of a different colour. But it is better, perhaps, at once to consider the Adulated Clergyman in his own person, and not in his points of resemblance to or difference from other animals.
He who afterwards becomes an Adulated Clergyman has probably been a mean and grubby schoolboy, with a wretched but irresistible inclination to sneak, and to defend himself for so doing on principle. It is of course wrong to break rules at school, authority must be respected, masters must be obeyed, but it is an honourable tradition amongst schoolboys that boys who offend--since offences must come--should owe their consequent punishment to the unassisted efforts of those who hold rule, rather than to the calculating interference of another boy, who, though he may have shared the offence, is unwilling to take his proportion of the result. A sneak, therefore, has in all ages been invested with a badge of infamy, which no amount of strictly scholastic success has ever availed to remove from him; and his fellows, recognising that he has saved his own skin at the expense of theirs, do their best to make up the difference to him in contempt and abuse. Schoolboys are not distinguished for a fastidious reticence. If they dislike, they never hesitate to say so, and they have a painfully downright way of giving reasons for their behaviour, which is apt to jar on a temperament so sensitive that its owner always and only treads the path of high principle when self-interest points him in the same direction.
The school career of the future pastor was not, therefore, a very happy one, for at school there are no feeble women to be captivated by heartrending revelations of a noble nature at war with universal wickedness, and all but shattered by the assaults of an unfeeling world. Nor, strange to say, do schoolmasters, as a rule, value the boy who ranges himself on their side in the eternal war between boys and masters. However, he proceeded in due time to a University. There he let it be known that his ultimate destination was the Church, but he had his own method of qualifying for his profession. He was not afflicted with the possession of great muscular strength, or of a very robust health. Neither the river nor the football-field attracted him. Cricket was a bore, athletic sports were a burden; the rough manners of the ordinary Undergraduates made him shudder. However, since at College there are sets of all sorts and sizes, he soon managed to fashion for himself a little world of effete and mincing idlers, who adored themselves even more than they worshipped one another. They drank deep from the well of modern French literature, and chattered interminably of RICHEPIN, GUY DE MAUPASSANT, PAUL BOURGET, and the rest. They themselves were their own favourite native writers; but their morbid sonnets, their love-lorn elegies, their versified mixtures of passion and a quasi-religious mysticism, were too sacred for print, though they were sometimes adapted to thin and fluttering airs, and sung to sympathisers in private. Most of these gentlemen were "ploughed" in their examination, but the hero of this sketch secured his degree without honours, and departed to read for the Church.
It is unnecessary to add that his subscription-lists flourished, his bazaars prospered, his missions and retreats overflowed with feminine money, and his Church was overloaded with floral tributes. The brutal tribe of men, however, sneered at him, and perversely suspected his motives; nor were they reconciled to him when they saw him relieving the gloom of a generally ascetic existence by dining at a smart restaurant with a galaxy of devoted women, whom he proposed to conduct in person to a theatre. Such, then, is, or was, the Adulated Clergyman. It is unnecessary to pursue his career further. Perhaps he quarrelled with his Bishop, and unfrocked himself; possibly he found himself in a Court of Law, where an unsympathetic jury recorded a painful verdict against him.
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
THE BARON DE BOOK-WORMS.
SILENT SHAKSPEARE.
DEAR MR. EDITOR,
Surely this would be an improvement upon the conventional reading? In this case where speech is silvern, silence would be golden.
Trusting some Manager will take the matter up,
I remain, always yours sincerely,
A DUMB WAITER.
OPERATIC NOTES.
NEDDY RESZK? Not so goblineske,
Somebody or other complained of my writing "GL?CK" instead of "GLUCK," He didn't like the two dots; one too many for the poor chap, already in his dotage, so to relieve him and soothe him, I'll write it "GLUCK," and then he can go to the proprietor of "DAVIDSON'S Libretto Books" and ask him to take the dotlets off the "?" in GL?CK. I wonder if my strongly-spectacle'd fault-finder writes the name of HANDEL correctly? I dare say so correct a person never falls into any sort of error; or if he does, never admits it. I like it done down to dots, as "H?NDEL," myself; it looks so uncommonly learned.
Fine effect at end of First Act, when prancing steeds, with secondhand park-hack saddles, at quite half-a-crown an hour, are brought in, and, on a striking tableau of bold but impecunious warriors refusing to mount, the Curtain descends.
"PLEASE GIVE ME A PENNY, SIR!"
A NEW SONG TO AN OLD TUNE.
The moneyed swells who make "returns," Much at their own sweet will, Don't gauge the poor clerk's scanty purse, The small shopkeeper's till, How hard 'tis to make both ends meet, When hard times tightly nip; Or how small incomes sorely feel The annual sixpenny dip. So please give me a Penny, Sir!
Please give me a Penny, Sir! 'Tis heard on every side, Muttered by poverty's pinched lip, Silent so long--from pride. Ah! listen to their pleadings, Sir, And pity the true poor, Whose life is one long fight to keep The wolf from the house-door. Oh, please give me a Penny, Sir!
"ROOSE IN URBE."--Dr. ROBSON ROOSE has returned to town after a trip to Madeira.
"SWEET STRIFE."
IT was once said that Pianos may now be had on "MOORE and MOORE" easy terms every day. Mrs. WALTER found that those "easy terms" involved such pleasures as returning the instrument she had paid many instalments on, getting an order from the masterful Mr. Commissioner KERR to pay costs as well, and committal to prison for three weeks on the charge of "contempt of Court"--for disobeying an order which Justices SMITH and GRANTHAM declare the genial Commissioner had no sort of right to make!!!
FOR BETTER OR WORSE!
POSSIBLE ROMANCE.
THE OTHER MAN.
My health is good, I know no pain, I am not married to a wife; From all accounts I'm fairly sane, And yet I'm sick to death of life.
The path that leads to wealth and fame Cannot be traversed in a day; I find it twice as hard a game, Because a spectre bars the way.
I met a girl, she seemed to be A kind of vision from above. She wasn't--but, alas! for me, I weakly went and fell in love.
She thrilled me with each lovely look She gave me from behind her fan, She took my heart, and then she took-- The Other Man.
Farewell to Love! I thought I'd try My level best to get a post; The salary was not too high, Two hundred pounds a-year at most.
Committeemen in conclave sat, Their questions all were cut and dried: Oh, was I this? And did I that? And twenty thousand things beside--
As did I smoke? and could I play At golf? or did I get the gout? And--most important--could I say My mother knew that I was out?
Then two were chosen. Should I "do"? Perhaps!--and, just as I began To hope, of course they gave it to The Other Man.
All uselessly I've learnt to swear And use expressions that are vile; In vain, in vain I've torn my hair In quite the most artistic style.
Yet one thing would I gladly learn-- Yes, tell me quickly, if you can-- Shall I be also, in my turn, The Other Man?
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