Punch: Punch (6.1844)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

21

-ANOTHER WORD ON THE SHIRT QUESTION.

" Shirt-wearers, to the Rescue I"

Dear Punch,

While you are engaging the public attention upon
the price paid to sempstresses for the making of shirts, could you not
effect a reform, that, would not merely advantage a small class of
people, viz. the makers, but benefit a vast, I may say considerable
majority, of our population, namely, the wearers of shirts ?

a shikt of mail.

I allude, my dear fellow, to the ucasldng of the same article. My
laundress brought me home mine three weeks since, and I was
charged for it fivepence. Of this I give you my sacred honour : in
fact, I forward you the bill receipted. Is it just, is it consonant
with good feeling, or sound commercial policy, that that should cost
fivepence in the washing, which, in the actual making, costs but
a fifth part of the sum ?

What has been the consequence ? The speculatrix has been dis-
appointed in her infernal scheme upon my purse ; and I, who might
have changed my linen twice, aye, or four times per month, have
been now twenty-three days wearing the garment in question.
Calling upon every Briton to do likewise,

I have the honour to be, Sir,

Your constant reader,

Clarence Club. January, 1844. Philodicky.

REGARDING THE ROYAL GEORGE BILLIARD

TABLE.

The humble Petition of Mr. Punch.

May it please your Most Gracious Majesty :

Although of a humble stock, and although my wife, Madam
Judy, has not been presented at your Majesty's court, yet we humbl}'
declare that the whole court doth not contain two more loyal and
duteous subjects.

May it please your Majesty, we are very old ; we have been in the
custom of mixing for centuries past with every class of the people
of this kingdom, and we are enemies to no manner of sport where-
with they amuse themselves.

Billiards, among others, is a good sport. It has the privilege of
uniting many honourable gentlemen daily together of the army, of
the universities, and of the swell mob, at the watering-places. It
has the eminent merit of leading to the detection of many rogues
and swindlers ; it keeps many ingenious markers, brandy-merchants,
and soda-water venders in honourable maintenance, and is a great
aid and patron of the tobacco trade, thereby vastly increasing the
revenues of your Majesty's Government.

With that sport then we are far from quarrelling. But there is
for this and for all other games a time and place. Thus in the late
Mr. Hogarth's facetious print (I knew the gentleman very well) the
Beadle is represented as caning " the Idle Apprentice" for playing
at marbles—no, not for playing at marbles, but playing on a grave-
stone during Sunday service. In like manner, were I to set up my
show before St. James's Church during service hours, or under your
Majesty's triumphal arch at Pimlico, or in the Bishop of London's
arawing-voorn—it is likely, not that the Beadle would cane me, for
that I would resist, but that persons in blue habiliments, oil-skin
hatted, white-lettered, and pewter-buttoned—policemen in a word,
»ould carry me before one of your Majesty's Justices of the Peace. Windsor Castle.

My crime would be, not the performance of my tragedy of "Punch"
—but its performance in an improper manner and time.

Ah, Madam ! Take this apologue into your royal consideration,
and recollect that as is Punch and Marbles so are billiards.

They too may be played at a wrong place. If it is wrong to play
at marbles on a tombstone, is it jusfc to play at billiards on a cofhn—
an indifferent coffin—anybody's conin ? Is such a sport quite just,
feeling, decorous, and honourable ?

Perhaps your Majesty is not aware, what the wreck of the Royal
George really is. Sixty years ago its fate made no small sensation.
Eight hundred gallant men, your Royal Grandfather's subjects, went
down to death in that great ship. The whole raalm of England war
stirred and terrified by their awful fate—the clergy spoke of it from
their pulpits—the greatest poet then alive wrote one of the noblest
ballads in our language, which as long as the language will endure,
shall perpetuate the melancholy story. Would your Majesty wish
Mr. Thomas Campbell to continue the work of Mr. William Cowper,
and tell what has note become of the wreck ? Lo ! it is a billiard-
table, over which his Royal Highness the Prince de Joinville may be
knocking about red balls and yellow—or his Serenity, the Prince of
Ilohenzollen Sigmaringen may be caramboling with his coat off.
Ah, Madame! may your royal fingers never touch a cue ; it is a losing
hazard that you will play at that board.

The papers say there is somewhere engraved in copper on the
table, a " suitable inscription." What is it ? I fancy it might run
thus :—

" this billiard table is formed of part of the timbers
of the royal george man-of-war, of 100 guns,
which went down on the 29TH august 1782.
eight hundred seamen perished on board,
in the service of their country and i heir king.
honour be to the brave who die in such a service.

as a fitting mark of her sense of these brave men's misfortunes,
as a testimony of sympathy for their fate,
as an encouragement to englishmen
to brave their lives in similar perils,
in hopes that future sovereigns
may award them similar delicate sympathy
above all, as a stern monument
of the vanity of naval glory,
the uselessness op ambition,
and the folly of fidelity,
which expects any reward but itself,

$2cr iHnjcs'tn, ®urcn ©irtona,

has graciously caused this play-ta ble to be made
from the timbers of
the faithful, useless, worn-out old vessel."

Should your Majesty still wish to amuse yourself at your royal
table, your petitioners would suggest, that there are numberless foolish
relics throughout the country that might by an economic and inge-
nious person be made available for purposes of sport.

Thus—the mainmast of the Victory immediately offers itself,
standing as it does quite convenient at Windsor, and supporting the
bust of a person by the name of Nelson. This great, rough, ugly
mast might be made into neat cues to play at the Royal George
billiard-table, and the bust might be turned into marbles for hi3
Royal Highness the Princeof Wales. Whether for matches, humming-
tops, draught or chess-men, Marlborough's baton would be excel-
lently suitable. The Black Prince's helmet would furnish some
admirable tenpenny nails, and the whole nursery might be provided
with masqueradery materials by cutting up a very few AVaterloo flags.

If these changes tend to your Majesty's pleasure, why not effect
them ? The country will look on with approbation ; the news-
papers will applaud with respectful paragraphs ; and your petitioners,
as in duty bound, will ever pray. ^|3tUICf)»

We stop the press, to announce that the billiard-table out of tho
Royal George has been countermanded, and that the remaining cart-
loads of timber have been purchased to decorate the new chapel at