Punch: Punch (57.1869)

198

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON

CHARIVARI. [Novkmbrr -io, 1«69.

FASHIONABLE SUICIDE.

eed to this morsel of Pari-
sian statistics, ladies who
are wishful to enjoy lon-
gevity:—

" Since stays have gone out
of fashion, female mortality
has decreased eighteen per
cent. But chignons have
increased brain-fever nearly
seventy-three per cent."

Small waists and large
chignons are each of them
a form of fashionable sui-
" cide; and although the
former have gone out of
vogue in Paris, they are
in fashion here in London
to the deadliest extent.

Ladies gradually kill
themselves in striving to
look killing ; and, in order
to obey the dictates of the
dressmaker, they willingly
make sacrifice of happiness
and health. Torture and discomfort they will cheerfully enduie, to enjoy the
great distinction of showing a small waist.

As for the assertion that, chignons breed brain-fever, one really may believe it
when let into the secret of how chiguons are now made :—

" All the hair purchased off doubtful heads, picked up here, there, and everywhere,
cut off in the hospital, collected from the comb, or thrown into the street and caught up
by the chiffonnier's hook, is sorted in shades, divided according to its length, and after a
cleansing process which does not make it much nicer, it is sent to St. Pelagie, where
prisoners pass their day in fixing it on silken threads, and clustering it according to the
rules of art."

He must be a bold man who could ask a fashionable beauty for a lovelock of
her hair, which, the chance is, has been previously cropped off in a hospital, or
swept up in the slums. The old joke of the cholera being in the hair might be
found a grim reality in French fashionable life. A number of diseases as deadly
as brain-fever might, we fancy, spring from chignons which have, bit by bit,
been picked out of a gutter and put together in a gaol.

SUCCESS TO SAMUEL !

May difference of opinion never alter Churchmansliip ! That sentiment all sober,
but not totally abstinent, members of the Church of England will concur in
associating with the toast of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce's jolly good health
on his translation from Oxon to Winton. It is an aspiration suggested by a
simile occurring in the admirable farewell visitation charge delivered by his
Lordship the other day in Oxford Cathedral. Referring to the diversity of views
inseparable from diversity of tempers, the Right Reverend Samuel declared
that :—

" Instead of that divergency in our Church being an evil, he held that it was a sign
of life, and he would no more make every voice in a diocese speak in the same tone than
he would abolish the music of nature by requiring the same note from every songster."

It is not, however, hypercritical to point out that the feathered choir and sur-
pliced body are just now very far from resembling each other in one very essen-
tial particular—harmony. There is the reverse of any analogy between the music
of Nature and the hubbub in the Church. Nor even in the best old times of
concord were our clergy ever supposed to be represented by Nature's songsters
in general. They had, however, in the popular idea, their special representative
in Parson Rook. At present how delighted everybody would be, except Stiggins,
Buadlaugh, Manning, and their partisans, respectively, if the sum of clerical
voices, in every diocese, were a clamour as euphonical as the cawing of a rookery !

With rooks jackdaws usually flock together in some proportion, birds of a
feather, of the same order, relatively a sort of minor canons. Wouldn't they pitch
into one of their number that had pranked himself in peacock's feathers F But
that no jackdaw ever does; and here again the similitude between a diocese and
a rookery fails. All's one for that. Here's the Lord Bishop of Oxford—that
is to be Winchester's very good health! Let us drink it in a tumbler of
Gladstone's best claret.

The Last Theatrical Phrase.

" Sensational " has become an admitted term in the theatrical bill. It is a
stupid word, but there it is. But the last " invention of the enemy " to the
admirer of plain English in play-acting matters is "complexional." A "coloured"
artist advertises his style of piece—Othello, The Black Doctor, and so on, as " the
complexional drama." We shall hear soon, we suppose, of the Sartorial Drama, the
Toiletteian Drama, the Piscatorial Drama, the Quadrupedal Drama and the
Criminal Drama; the last being of course divided into Penal acts.

BUMBLE DEFYING THE THUNDER.

{Dedicated without respect to the majority of the St. Pancras
Board of Guardians.)

Give paupers full allowance of air,

All the same as you'd give their betters!
And the newspapers a-backiu' 'em up,

And the Doctors a-writin' letters !
And everybody a-cryin' shame

On us, poor over-taxed Guardians,—
Instead of us, let 'em try a Board

Of their Goschen and Gathorne-Haudy'uiis !

With their stuff about stenches and stiflin'—

As if Paupers knew any differ—
Didn't like their air, as they likes their grog

All the more, as you mixes it stiffer.
As if the houses they lives in

Warn't worse than our wards, by a deal!
As if paupers had noses to smell with,

Any more than they've feelin's to feel!

We puts 'em on short allowance

Of wittles and also of drink,
And to put 'em on short allowance

Of air's only fair, I think.
Why the more of 'em we gets rid of

The lighter we makes the rate,
And instead of bad language we really

Deserves our pieces of plate.

They calls in old Sam Solly

To testify to the stinks —
Which it would be the height of folly

To be guided by what he thinks.
Fresh air in a well-to-do house

Or a horspital's werry well,
But a vurk-'us must smell like a vurk-'us,

And it ain't a pleasant, smell.

And as for paupers grumblin'

At lyin' upon the floor,
And a ketchin' cold and rheumatics,

And complainin' of ache and sore—
1 say they 're a nasty, sarcy,

Discontented, pampered lot;
And there ain't a thing but's too good for 'em,

Of all the things they've got !

Yet there's our doctors and nusses,

And the master and coroner, too,
And the Times and Punch and the Pall Mall Gazette,

Are all in a tale untrue !
And the Poor-Law Board.bullyrag?

To spend rates on sick wards and scnools,
Set up pauper bodies and pauper minds !—

Do they take us for downright fools F

They say we 're a public scandal,

And St. P mcras a public scorn-
But I can't -elieve things has altered

So much jince I was born.
So L means to uphold the Board and myself,

And keep rates and paupers down,
And if That there Goschen doesn't take care,

We '11 impeach him afore the Crown.

Triplets.

" Thiple Birth.—The wife of a Mk. Pill was delivered of
three children on Saturday."

Three pills at a time ! What a dose for the poor man !
The three sovereigns which it is customary for Majesty to
send on these interesting occasions will, however, do some-
thing towards gilding the little pills.

Another Fine Old Institution Going

" It is not at all improbable that the rank of ensign may
disappear from the Army List after the passing of the next esti-
mates."

What revolutionary times we live in! No class of
society is safe from the iron grasp of innovation. Whose turn
will it be to disappear next ? Perhaps Beadles—or Deans !