Punch (68.1875)

160

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [April 10, 1875.

THE LAST DAY OF HUNTING.

(Stanzas for the First of April.)
ight day to bid a long farewell

To the field’s gladsome glee;

To hang the crop upon its peg,

The saddle on its tree.

All Fools’ the day, all Fools’ the deed,
That hunting’s end doth bring—

With all those stinking violets,

And humbug of the Spring !

Good-bye to pig-skin and to pink,
Good-bye to hound and horse 1
The whimpering music sudden heard
From cover-copse and gorse ;

The feathering stems, the sweeping ears,
The heads to scent laid low,

The find, the burst, the “ Gone-away! ”
The rattling “ Tally-ho! ”

My horses may eat off their heads,

My huntsman eat his heart;

My hounds may dream of kills and runs,
In which they’ve borne their part,
Until the season’s bore is done,

And Parliament set free,

And cub-hunting comes back again
To make a man of me!

OUR REPRESENTATIVE MAN.

At the Royalty—or somewhere else.

My Very Dear Sir,

You will see from this commencement that your Represen-
tative is in a good humour, more than ordinarily good. It’s such a
humour as makes me whistle and sing, and inclines me to smile on
the Peasants of the Sunny South, who, a pair of them, perambulate
the metropolis with a mechanical piano on wheels. It glads the
heart of your Representative to record a success, it glads that organ
—I mean my heart, which is as large and as full-toned in its vox
humana, as the magnificent instrument at the Crystal Palace, or the
Carmelite Church, Kensington,—I say, Sir, it rejoices this har-
monium to record a success, and still more, that this success should
be likely to last.

I am alluding to the present programme of the Royalty Theatre,
where Madame Selina Dolaro is the Manageress, and Mr. D’Oyly
Carte is the Acting Manager. The only thing that casts an occa-
sional gloom over the soul of your Representative, is that his name
can never be D’Oyly Carte. Ah, Mr. Carte, did you but know
how you are envied by the Smiths, the Bodgers, the Btjbkinses,
et hoc genus omne! D’Oyly Carte might do anything, rule the
waves, or be Emperor of the French—in fact, without going any
further I feel sure that he might be at once Emperor of
the French, if he’d only suggest himself for the vacant situa-
tion—and my! what an empire there’d be ! “Were I not some-
body myself, I would be somebody else,” as the great commander
observed of the man in a tub. Success, then, to Mr. Carte-
do, ’tis nothing without the D’Oyly—success to Mr. D’Oyly
Carte—but there, ’tis no use wishing it him, he is safe to have
greatness thrust upon him, and be happy for ever afterwards.
Under such auspices as those of Madame Selina Dolaro—I like
the name of Selina too, it sounds so soft and moony (your Repre-
sentative is thinking of course of Selene—0, isn’t he, I mean my-
seU your. Rep. a real Grecian!!) Well, Sir, to resume,—under
such auspices as those of Selina Madame Dolaro, with her own
Carte, and a good team, what could be more certain than a success-
ful career, which not even the hazardous experiment of La Perichole
has been able to upset. Au contraire (what a linguist I am! but
now a Grecian, now a Frenchman) Madame Dolaro has shown us
that she is possessed of true artistic power, both as an actress and as

o.cantatrice. (Italian, by Jove!! Dutch to follow—you’ll see—-
a clever boy.!) by her impersonation of La Perichole,
which involves ^ situation (I mean the tipsy scene) in which Madame
Schneider at first almost disgusted even a French audience by her
over-acting. Those who have seen Madame Schneider’s Boulotte
will understand this perfectly.

Mr. Fisher is that rarissima avis (Latin, Gentlemen! Believe ?—

what a scholar! !), an English comic tenor ; but as your Represen-
tative has already drawn attention to this gentleman’s performance
at the Philharmonic in Girofle-Girofla, he will say nothing more
about him just now, except to hint to him that with such a career
before him (he is the only comic tenor anything like Dupuis) he
must take care of himself and study, study, study. .He has not got
much to do in Trial by Jury, but throws himself into it with as
much sense of the fun of the thing as he showed when he played
Mr. Gladstone in Happy Land at the Court Theatre. In Trial by
Jury (librettist, W. S. Gilbert ; composer, Arthur Sullivan)
both Mr. Words and Mr. Music have worked together, and for the
first quarter of an hour the Cantata (as they ve called it) is the
funniest bit of nonsense your Representative has seen for a con-
siderable time. That more might have been made of it, and with
increasing effect, your Representative has no doubt, but Messrs.
Words and Music, agreeing with Mr. Weller, junior, as to the art
of brevity in composition, have only given, themselves a little over
half an hour for their musical and dramatic, joke. The hits of the
piece are Mr. Fred. Sullivan’s Judge, “with a song” (and^such a
song! Easy-going music and first-rate words, of which Mr. I rede-
rick Sullivan does not allow the audience to miss a single syllable
in four or five verses) ; the Jury, whose chorus, like that of the
Conspirators in Madame Angot, the old men in Faust, and the
Pirates in Girofle, receives a genuine encore; the Usher, whose
steps are very funny, and the chorus of pretty Bridesmaids, with
the fairest of whom the naughty little Judge establishes, a flirtation,
thereby proving to the public in court and to the auditorium that
“ of beauty he is a good judge too ! ” .

Miss Bromley looks charming and sings nicely as the Plaintiff,
and thoroughly enters into the joke when she accepts that old sly-
boots of a Judge’s invitation to sit on the bench beside him. 0,
then how they do go on, those two !

But I must draw a veil, and finish by advising those whom
Providence has blessed with affluence and a good digestion, to leave
their pleasant dinner-table, and, for the sake of a hearty laugh (it s
to be got there, even though for only a quarter of an hour), to visit
the Royalty, under the management of Signora Selina. (Signora is
Spanish, you ’ll observe! what a command of languages!), La Reina
Dolaro, and her prime minister, Monsieur Le Due D Oyly Carte,
to whom, greeting, mention the name of

Your Representative.

P.S.—Rose Michel at the Gaiety ought not to have been a failure.
Had it been adapted—i.e., cut and compressed—by some old!
experienced hand, and played by—well, let me suggest by Mrs.
Hermann Vezin, as the wife, and Mr. Emery as the murderous
husband, the success of the piece would have been as great
as that of the Two Orphans at the Olympic, or, to go baoR
further, of the Isle of St. Tropez at the St. James s, or, further