Punch: Punch (17.1849)

66

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

PROPER PRIDE.

a. sketch at a railway station.

THE MARC ANTONY OF THE SECOND LIEE GUARDS.

All the newspapers "understand from undoubted authority"
that the Marquess of Londonderry, Colonel of the 2d,
intensely anxious for the spotlessness of pipe-clay, addressed a
letter to Her Majesty on the nuptials of Lieutenant Heald
with Lola Montes. The letter prayed Her Majesty would
command the Lieutenant to wheel about, right face, and cut the
corps. The worthy Marquess is known to be an enthusiastic
Shakspearean; and it is said that, in the subjoined quotation, he
paralleled the case of Lieutenant Heald with that of Captain
Marc Antony:—

"-those his goodly eyes,

That o'er the files and musters of the ' Park,'
Have glow'd like plated Maks, now bend, now turn
The office and devotion of their view,
Upon a tawny front."

For our own part, we think the extreme humility, the self-
denying modesty of the Countess of Landsfeldt has been un-
gratefully forgotten in the indignation of the respectable. There
can be no doubt that the Countess had in her sufficient genius,
sufficient audacity, to attack and marry whom she would. Had
she taken it into her head to invest Apsley House, it cannot be
questioned that even the Iron Duke must, in due time, have sur-
rendered at indiscretion. Seeing, then, ihe many matches that
lay before her (no vendor of lucifers could grasp a choice from a
greater number,) we think the Donna Countess has shown con-
siderable humility. She might have carried off a Generalissimo,
and she is content with, certainly, the very smallest of Lieu-
tenants. Very self-denying this of the Bavarian Broom Girl.

How Prejudices Linger.

On going through the portrait gallery of Hardwick Hall we
st opt to admire the venerable head of an old main. " Whose portrait
is that ? " we inquired of the guide, and the explanation was,

" That's Hobbes, the Infidel! "

to drive away crickets.

We notice in the country papers a recipe for the above purpose.
The Government, however, can claim the credit of the best plan,
for if one thing has been more fatal to cricket than another, it
has certainly been—The Commons' Enclosure Act.

MR. BROWN'S LETTERS TO A YOUNG MAN ABOUT TOWN.

out of town.

areering during the season from
one party to another, from one
great dinner of twenty covers to
another of eighteen guests ; from
. Lady Hustlebury's rout to
Mrs. Packington's soiree—
friendship, to a man about town,
becomes impossible from Febru-
ary to August: it is only his
acquaintances he can cultivate
during those six months of
turmoil.

In the last fortnight, one has
had leisure to recur to more
tender emotions : in other words,
as nobody has asked me to din-
ner, I have been about seeking
dinners from my old friends.
And very glad are they to see
you : very kindly and hospitable
are they disposed to be, very
pleasant are those little calm
reunions in the quiet summer-
evenings, when the beloved
friend of your youth and you sip
a bottle of claret together lei-
surely without candles, and ascend to the drawing-room where the
friend of your youth's wife sits blandly presiding over the tea-pot.
What matters that it is the metal tea-pot, the silver utensils being
packed off to the banker's ? what matters that the hangings are down,
and the lustre in a brown-hollands bag? Intimacy increases by this
artless confidence—you are admitted to a family en deshabille. In an

honest man's house, the wine is never sent to the banker's; he can
always go to the cellar for that. And so we drink and prattle in quiet
—about the past season, about our sons at college, and what not. We
become intimate again, because Fate, which has long separated us,
throws us once more together. I say the dull season is a kind season;
gentle and amiable, friendly and full of quiet enjoyment.

Among these pleasant little meetings, for which the present season
has given time and opportunity, I shall mention one, Sir, which took
place last Wednesday, and which during the very dinner itself I vowed
I would describe, if the venerable Mr. Punch would grant me leave and
space, in the columns of a journal which has for its object the promo-
tion of mirth and good will.

In the year eighteen hundred and something, Sir, there lived at a
villa, at a short distance from London, a certain gentleman and lady who
had many acquaintances and friends, among whom was your humble
servant. For to become acquainted with this young woman was to
become her friend, so friendly was she, so kind, so gentle, so full of
natural genius, and graceful feminine accomplishment. Whatever she did
she did charmingly • her life was decorated with a hundred pretty gifts,
with which, as one would fancy, kind fairies had endowed her cradle;
music and pictures seemed to flow naturally out from her hand, as she
laid it on the piano or the drawing-board. She sang exquisitely, and with
a full heart, and as if she couldn't help it any more than a bird. I have
an image of this fair creature before me now, a calm, sunshiny evening, a
green lawn flaring with roses and geraniums, and a half-dozen gentlemen
sauntering thereon in a state of great contentment, or gathered under
the verandah, by the open French window; near by she sits singing at
the piano. _ She is in a pink dress: she has gigot sleeves ; a little child
in a prodigious sash is playing about at her mother's knee. She sings
song after song; the sun goes down behind the black fir-trees that belt
the lawn, and Missy in the blue sash vanishes to the nursery; the room
darkens in the twilight; the stars appear in the heaven—and the tips of

t