Punch: Punch (69.1875)

138

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[October 9, 1875.

THE HOUSE AND THE HOME:

OR, HINTS TOWARDS A GRAMMAR OF DECORATIVE ART.

By Leonardo Delia Robbia de Tudor "Westpond Ttjhpkyns,
Esq., S.A.S., A.R.F., M.U.F., and Hon. Member of the Dulli-

dillitanty Society.

The Wall-flower Pattern for a ball-room is charming.
Of course you will decide what sort of ball-room it is to be before
settling your pattern.
Shall it be a cricket-ball-room or a tennis-ball-room ? A soft

ball-room, or an elastic ball-room ?
Patterns are at once suggested by
these distinctive appellations.

Summer Room.—Decorate this cool
apartment with a frieze all round.
Get a friezingly polite artist to do
it for you. You can speak of this
as "An ice room." If you don't
speak of it like this, you won't have
your little joke, and you must have
your little joke. [N.B.—You needn't
speak of it at all unless you like.]

A modern writer on paper patterns
says there's "nothing so dreary as
an unrelieved pattern." I beg to
differ from him ; an unrelieved Sen-
try is far more dreary than an un-
relieved pattern. If it's damp, the
Sentry, unrelieved, must stay where
he is ; not so a pattern of unrelieved
colour on a wall, which, in the damp,
can run, and ultimately go away
altogether.

However, if you want to be kind
to a fault, you can relieve your
patterns as they do the sentries at
certain times of the day. The Artist
can (if he likes, and you can shoot
him if he won't do what you want)
indicate this idea on the walls of the
room by portraying a soldier saluting his sergeant and guard, and
saying, with Shakspeabe (who need not be in the picture), "For
this relief, much thanks."

Gold— Gold can be judi-
ciously introduced into
papers. Gold can do any-
thing it likes, in fact. The
effect on the papers will be
—well, start a daily paper,
and see for yourself. JSx-

extra-mural decorations which you put up yourself but don't want,
and which are simply extra ; and (2) those put up for you, outside
chiefly, by streets boys gratuitously.
These latter (specimens of which may be seen on the Pompeian

remains, and belonged also to the earliest
school-time, or out - of - school-time, of
youthful Egyptian arts) consist of such
designs as a portrait of yourself (not
generally flattering), suspended in the air
to a gallows, after the model of the hang-
man whom Mr. Punch, in the old legiti-
mate show, hangs on his own gallows-tree,
with some legend underneath, professing
to give his (the artist's) opinion on you
personally, as, for instance, "Smith is a
fool 1" " Old Smith is a Hass ! " and so
forth.

Intra-mural decoration of the same genre
will be supplied gratis, if you have a
small family in your house, and allow
them lead pencils. They will practise
spelling on your walls. Encourage this
talent if you will. By so doing, you may
be rearing up pupils of a school of Decora-
tive Art of which your countrymen will
be proud (a " Proud Countryman" would be a fine subject for the
wall of a rustic villa, or would make a good sign for an old inn),
and, if this satisfies you,—you are very easily -satisfied, and at a
small cost. {To be continued.)

MACBETH AT THE LYCEUM.

These is little to be said about Mb. Ibving's Macbeth which has
not been said already, with quite unusual accord, by the critics in
the papers. It is a picturesque and energetic performance, based
upon and working out a very distinct conception of the murderous
Scottish thane, as what the Scotch call a "fey" man; that is, a
man borne helplessly along in a career of crime under the sway of
an irresistible fate. But Mb. Irving seems to have overlooked, or
not to admit, that the impressiveness and pathos of such a spectacle
depends mainly on our sense of the height of nobleness from which
the " fey " man has fallen ; and that the strength of the tide which
sweeps him down will be gauged involuntarily by our feeling of the
thews and sinews with which the swimmer buffets and bears up
against it. Those who can conceive Shaespeabe's Macbeth as thin,
pale, and haggard in face, meagre almost to emaciation in frame,
shrill and high-pitched or hollow of voice, feverish and restless of
movement, and hysteric of temperament—those who can clothe in
such hectic and sickly flesh and blood that " minion of valour," that
"Bellona's bridegroom" who drives in flying swarms rebel kernes
<mu_ see iw yuui&eu.. -uu,- J^^^^'-X^^A^^^^^ and gallowglasses before him, and unseams the merciless Macdon-

pei tenia, '• \k y flm^^Sf . tcald from nave to chaps—the Thane whose praises, as a valiant

»™ IllLT t flZtt \'W((iT\mBr M warrior, are poured out, post on post, before the king, till he

any allusion to tomture ||f A » acknowledges him chief of his chiefs -the noble Macbeth, who has

during this disquisition on j_ _ JM ^ , ♦ " won golden opinions from all sorts of men "-may be prepared to

papers, i consider it aavis- rcn , y\ J&nr^^ accept Mb. Ibving's impersonation, if not as consistent with the text

aoie to _ introduce at mis--' 0f Shakspeabe as it stands, at least as within the limits of fair

point a simple rme iorming ^^^^h h,!et «<*■ psychological and histrionic interpretation.

part ot my present Art But &l[ must gee &t once that thig ig Macoeth without the back-

urammar witn regard to . ground of stalwart strength and material courage against which his

Furniture Verbs, which are murderous deeds, if they are to have any relief, must stand bloody

divided into } 0ff; it is, as has been well said, an "abject" Macbeth, exhibiting

Megular, Irregular, ana__S#KfJ fM'SnfW^ before us, in the utmost elaboration, the extremities of physical

defective, - The Regular is r ■ C\ terror, and the most palpable and pitiable writhings and wrenchings

divided into regularly good \\\ «#) of remorse. And, as in Hamlet, Mb. Ibving expunged those passages

and regularly bad- The rule W M&J&tt ■' W of the text which he found in the way of his interpretation, so, in
is to avoid the latter. : Macbeth, the introductory scene, of which Macbeth's fighting feats

j.ne irregular cmeny ap- ^L_--^ f ft tBK are the theme, is bodily struck out, and we lose even our old friend,

plies to docks, which are, of "^^pJJ/UUM MF "the bleeding sergeant," because, for the actor's purpose, the

course, included m the items '^t^J^1^_ thought of Macbeth™ a mighty warrior must not be called up in

°f^A8fe™ ^ <T ^*S^*^ the spectators' mind.

Mb. Irving has gallantly—whether wisely or not is another
matter—chosen in Macbeth a part, with which every one of his
personal peculiarities seems to jar. Now there are some physical
barriers from which the utmost histrionic energy and courage must
fall back baffled and beaten. Such a barrier nature seems to have
raised between the part of Macbeth and the person of Mr. Irving.

He is, by physique and temperament, absolutely unfitted to embody
a rude, stalwart, fierce, fighting, northern warrior of those stormy
times when gracious Duncan ruled. His thews and sinews seem un-
equal to the wielding of heavy bill and battle-axe—his body to the
weight of bull's-hide targe and ringed byrnie. The exhibition of
physical terror and cowering, shrieking remorse, with no suggestion
of strength and manhood behind it, becomes repulsive. We turn
from it with a kind of loathing, largely dashed with contempt.

The Defective will be evi-
dent from the accompanying
illustrations.

1. The Necessity Table. 11 Necessitas non habet Legs."

2. The Old Greenwich Pensioner Chair. Lost a leg. Lost an
arm.

You send one to be mended. The Carpenter tells you that it is
" weak in the back." To which you will reply, " Then it won't be
back in a week ? " This is a side-splitter which will send him into
tight fits.

With the above furniture "thrown in," I can now beg your
attention for a very few moments to the important question of

Mural Decorations. — There are intra-mural and extra-mural
decorations. The latter are divided into two classes—(1) those