Punch: Punch (33.1857)

Ock«er 31, 1857.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

183

WILL IT WASH ?

An apparently funny invention has just been patented by a gentle-
man of Manchester, Mr. John de la Haye. It consists in a
contrivance for submerging electric cables. Apparently funny we call
it, because, even if we were not so wise as we should be, and are,
experience, which would have taught even ourselves wisdom, would
have made us know better than to make fun of any invention without
sufficiently understanding it to be quite sure that it involved something
impossible or absurd. There are wiseacres yet living who ought to
blush at a gas-lamp, and hide their faces at the sight of a locomotive.
We will not risk classification in their category, by comparing the
project of Mr. de la Haye with the devices of the Laputan sages—
but its seeming oddity suggests to us a question which appears not to
have occurred to any one of a numerous meeting of engineers to whom,
at the Town-hall, Manchester, the plan was expounded by its inventor :
who, according to the Times, said that—

" The plaa he would adopt would be to encase a cable prepared like that for the
Atlantic Ocean in a soluble compound (the composition of which he would not now
mention), capable of floating it for a time on the surface of the water. The coating
he proposed to use for this purpose he supposed would hold it on the surface of the
waves while about five miles of cable were payed out from the vessel before it began
to dissolve, and as it would dissolve gradually, so the cable would sink gradually to
the bed of the ocean. By this moans he calculated that there would always be about
five miles of cable lying on the surface of the water in the wake of the vessel, and
the remainder would describe an incline to within 100 or 200 feet of the bed of the
ocean, so that there would be comparatively little strain, and consequently less
liability of breakage. The cable would descend into the ocean almost horizontally
instead of perpendicularly."

In the above account there is a little parenthesis which deters us
from recommending Mr. de la Haye to turn his attention to the
problem of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. His soluble com-
pound, he said, was one, "the composition of which he would not now
mention." Iced cream adroitly disposed around a cable would perhaps
support it in the manner above described, if it could be procured in
sufficient quantity, and laid down continuously in weather not too cold
—upon one condition. A dead calm would be required to reign at the
time. At least the operation would not be practicable whilst the waves
were running mountains high, even if the cream were laid down in
long ice-bergs. It would be necessary that the Atlantic should be in
a particularly good humour to enable it to be performed. A large
flock of halcyons or kingfishers would have to be collected and trained,
if possible, to produce the desired effect. With any ordinary substance
it would be impossible to accomplish the design. But perhaps Mr.
de la Haye employs an extraordinary substance, and is prepared to
answer the question :—How about the waves ?

CRINOLINE FOR GENTLEMEN.

0 Bla^k Punch, Esquire.
These with care.

" I Propose, Sir, to call
them the Inflated Pegtops.
Under that name I intend
forthwith to make them Pa-
tent. Had the Manchester
Art Palace continued to be
open, I should have exhibited
these Treasures on my own
lay figure. As it is, I must
resort to other means to show
them to the world ; and I pe-
tition you, Sir, therefore to
allow an illustration of them
to adorn your pages. If you
fear their exhibition will of-
fend your lady-readers, allow
me a few inches of your valu-
able space (space is always
' valuable,' even in the Morn-
ing Herald), and I will tell
them what has tempted me to take this leaf out of their Eashion-
books.

" In the first place, the dear creatures must believe me when I say,
that I am perfectly incapable of joining in a laugh at them. However
near I may unguardedly approach the verge of doing so, my better
nature always is quite sure to get the better of me, and I then recoil
from the enormity as though it were a precipice. When, therefore, I
submit my new invention to their eyes, I do so without fear of their
mistaking* it for ridicule. I should not ask their sanction to my putting
on my pegtops, if I thought they would consider them a take-off of
their petticoats. In fact, if I imagined that the cuts which illustrate
this article would be viewed by the dear creatures as cuts at their
costume, I would rather, Sir, have lived when heads were taken off,
and that myself, and not my sketches, had been brought to the Block.

\ Acquitting me, therefore, of all thought of making f;m of them,
ladies will feel naturally curious to know, why I purpose wearing my
Inflated Pegtops? and what can be the good of their preposterous
expansion ? To these momentous questions permit me, ladies, for the
moment, to return you Quaker answers, by asking why do you wear
Crinoline ? where on earth's the good of it ?

" Now, of course, ladies, I am not so outrageously absurd as to
expect that you will favour me at once with reasonable responses.
The utmost I can hope from any living woman is that, in answer to
my one query, she should say, Because we choose; and, in answer to
my other, she shordd tell me Not to bother. In ladies' logic, these
replies would be accounted 'reasons;' for, as Sydney Smith the
reverend, unflinchingly asserts, the mind female does not reason, in the
sense in which the mind male understands that verb.

" I. will, therefore, ladies, take the liberty of answering my questions
myself, and of seeking out some reasons—bond fide reasons—for you.
Next week, if you please, and if Mr. Punch will let you, you will have
the pleasure in your hands of saying the last word, and of showing, if
you can, that I have jumped to false conclusions.

"Now, why do you wear Crinoline ?—Because your next-door
neighbours do ? Because the Empress op the French does ? This
would only prove what Sydney Smith—-that ungallant divine—has
also said, that ' Woman is at best but an imitative animal.' Would you
have your heads shaved, because your next-door neighbours had ?
Your grandmothers wore hair-powder for no more reasonable reason.
Of the two, I think a head clean shaved would be a sight more comely
than a dust-and-dirt-bepowdered one. And pray, what have you to do
with what the Empress of the Erexcii does ? What's Eugenie to
you, or you to Eugenie ? If an English woman must take a Queen as
her life model, let her be a loyal subject, and not look across the
Channel for one.

"But why do you wear Crinoline ?—Because it is the fashion?
Well, but who sets the fashion? the lady, or the milliner? the wearer,
or the worker ? Are you not all slaves, abject slaves, to your modistes ?
Is not every one of you at the mercy of her dress-maker: under her
thumb and thimble as completely, sleeve and body, as though you
were but serfs, and she enthroned inmisht, Empress of all the Bustles ?
But then there are the fashion-books. Pollowing the fashion, of course
you read the fashion-books. You consult them as your oracles ; and
regard them as infallible (being printed) proofs that Crinoline's ' The
Thing,' let men say what they will of it. But you forget to ask the
question. Who gets up the fashion-books? And might you not be
startled if you learnt that in accepting them as absolute authorities,
and bowing to their nod, you are in fact complacently salaaming to
your dress-makers.

" Why, then, do you wear Crinoline ?—Because you think it is be-
coming to you ? Well, a bread-and-butter Miss might be excused such
miss-concept ion; but that any grown-up Woman, who is passed her
skipping-rope and pinafore, should entertain that thought, it quite
surpasses man's believing. I cannot yield my faith to such a libel on
the sex. The mind female may not reason, but it is not idiotic. The
brain feminine is capable of ocular impression. Mirrors give the
means of outward self-examination; and the lady who can look her
cheval-glass in the face, and say deformity becomes her, must have a
blinding pigstye in her mental vision.

" Then why do you w— No, don't say that. Don't catch me up
so short, that it's ' to please the gentlemen !' I really cannot suffer
you to foster that delusion. After all we've said and written to you,
how can you dream of doing so ? Pick out any number of unbiassed
men you will—by ' unbiassed' I mean, being neither henpecked fools
nor lovers,—put them in a jury-box (an opera one will do), and ask
them what they think of you, in Crinoline and out of it. There would
not be need of much deliberation. Were I their foreman, I should
have to say (however it might pain me to use such harsh expressions)—

" When lovely Woman sfoops to Crinoline, she ceases to be Woman, and
becomes a Monster."

" This would be their verdict. Were a million men empanelled,
still I'd bet you gloves all round you'd not find a dissentient.

" After all, then, I must own the Why you wear your Crinoline ? is
an unguessable conundrum. The mysteries of female dress are not
for men to fathom. To the male eye there is neither use nor beauty
in exuberance of skirt; or, at least, its only use appears to be in hiding
dirty stockings, or some personal defect. Men in general believe, that
the "inventress of Crinoline was a sloven about her ancles, or had pos-
sibly splay feet. And then they draw the cruel inference, that those who
copy her invention are impelled by reasons similar : seeing that no
better have as yet forthcome from them.

" Mais revenons a nos Pegtops. My reasons for inventing them it
needs no blush to palliate. I did so purely out of compliment to your
superior sagacity. As you seem to think that Nature is improved by
wearing Crinoline, let me profit by the thought, and share witn you
the benefit. If the 'human form divine' be beautified by hoops, beinjr
, human I may claim an equal right with you to wear them. For what
i reason should my sex debar me from the privilege ? Why should you