Punch: Punch (83.1882)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [September 23, 1882.

CLUB CAROLS.—No. I.

THE GRAMPUS IN SEPTEMBER.

“ The Grampus is one of the few
Clubs which never closes for repairs.’’
— Weekly Paper.

If you are a Member,

You ’ll find, in September,

The Grampus all turned upside
down!

And that is the reason,

When closed is the Season,

You never should linger in town.

The hall is invaded,

The stairs barricaded,

And white-washers come by the
score:

There’s slishing and sloshing,
And scraping and washing,

And painting from ceiling to floor!

The smoking-room’s dusty,

The Members are crusty.

The dining-room smells of white
lead;

The home of the Rubber
Is food for the scrubber ;

All peace and all quiet have fled !

All ways are you baffled
By staging or scaffold;

You can’t play at billiards or pool!
And though you may grumble,
O'er paint-pots you stumble—
And sit on the floor like a fool!

All comfort is shattered,

My new hat bespattered,

I sit and I weep on the stairs !

0 gracious Committee,

Now list to my ditty,

And next year pray ‘ ‘ close for
repairs” !

The Troopers of the Household
Cavalry, who cut Egyptians in two
as if they had been sheep at an
assault-of-arms exhibition, ought
to be made Generals of Division.

PUNCH’S FANCY PORTRAITS-No. 102.

SIR DRUMMING WOLFF, M.P.

AN ULTRAMARINE EFFECT.

The Times Correspondent at
Ismailia deserves credit for a piece
of word-painting remarkable for
a splendid stroke of colour :—

“ There was no moon, and thus,
almost within cannon-shot, the two
armies were resting peacefully, the
one side dreaming probably little of
the terrible scene of the awakening,
when, their rest at length rudely dis-
turbed, they awoke to see swiftly
advancing upon them from every side
an endless line of dreaded red-coats,
broken by the even more fearful blue
of the Marines.”

The bits of blue thus dashed in
amongst the red are as telling as
anything Ruskin could possibly
praise ; and they have the addi-
tional merit of suggestiveness.
Every reader must see that the
blue in bright contrast with the
red uniforms was also in brilliant
keeping with the blue funk into
which the sudden appearance of
Sir Garnet Wolseley’s troops
threw Arabi’s followers.

Yes, Followers. That is the'
word. Arabi, as soon as he saw
how matters were going, ran
away, and his forces ran after
him, quite discoloured all over, if
not “distilled almost to jelly with
the effect of fear ” (Shakspeare).

Generalissimo Punch’s Happy
(Thought) Despatch to his
brave Soldiers in the East.—
Mr. Punch is delighted at being
able to announce that, last
Saturday, Eighty-two Half-yearly
volumes, being an entire collec-
tion of His Periodical, from July,
1841, to June, 1882, were for-
warded from His Fleet Street
Residence, for the use of our sick
and wounded in the Military
Hospital at Cyprus.

JUSTICE TO PUNCH AND IRELAND !

{Before the L. J. Public Opinion.)

At the opening of the Court, Mr. Punch rose and said that
he wished to make a personal explanation.

The Lord Justice said that he thought such a course hardly neces-
sary. . For more than forty years, Mr. Punch had been the pioneer
of civilisation, and the champion of Right and Truth. {Cheers.)

Mr. Punch thanked his Lordship. Unhappily, however, there
were those, who had misrepresented him—he could not say misun-
derstood him, for all he wrote and drew was as clear as crystal to
the unperverted intelligence—and he appeared that day to set those
imsrepresenters right, once and for all.

The Lord Justice. But is it worth the trouble F

Air. Punch replied, that, for the sake of the veracious historian of
the future, and not simply for his own sake in the present, it was
incumbent upon him to ref ute.the statements to which he had alluded.
The misrepresentation of which he justly and seriously complained
had been disseminated by such respectable organs of thought as
the Spectator and the Nineteenth Century. In the latter a para-
graph appeared a short time since to the following effect:—“No
Savages have ever been so mercilessly held up to loathing mockery
as the Irish Peasants by the one comic paper in Europe which has
been most honourably distinguished for its restraint, and decorum,
and good-nature.” The Spectator, too, had a paragraph to much
the same purpose.

The Lord Justice. But surely, Mr. Punch, there must be some
mistake. The typical figures of Irish Peasants that have appeared
in your cartoons from time to time have always struck me as
peculiarly pleasing personages—either hard-working fellows strug-
gling manfully with poverty.and adversity, or (in your smaller cuts)

as the sort of “boys” with whom readers of Lever and Lover and
admirers of Boucicault are familiar.

Mr. Punch said that His Lordship was quite accurate in his
description, and nothing could be more absurd than the paragraph
he had quoted. He might add that, whenever Hibernia appeared,
it was always in the character of a beautiful and lovable girl, some-
times smiling, but more often thoughtful, anxious, and sad. [At
this point the Lady herself rose in Court, and created a profound
sensation by requesting to be allowed to give her evidence on behalf
of her old and true friend, Mr. Punch.]

Hibernia said that she first made her appearance in Mr. Punch's
pages on the 25th of April, 1846, or more than six-and-thirty years
ago. .

The Lord Justice (gallantly). Impossible Why, you can scarcely'
be one-and-twenty at the present time !

Hibernia blushingly thanked his Lordship, but added with a sigh
that it was a wonder to herself and her friends that her eyes were
not dimmed with tears and her face worn with care. She attri-
buted her present youthful appearance to the fire of hope which had
never been quenched in her heart, and it was this light in her eye
that Mr. Leech, and Mr. Doyle, in the past, had so lovingly caught,
and which Mr. John Tenniel, who always made her look her very
best, had perpetuated, she had almost said stereotyped, in the present.
She took this opportunity of thanking him, for his truthful pencil had
seldom flattered but always encouraged her. It was, however, in
1846 that she first appeared in Mr. Punch's pages, in the Cartoon
of “The Irish Cinderella and her haughty sisters, Britannia and
Caledonia.” This was drawn by Mr. John Leech, who, Hibernia
explained, had his own types of good and bad among her sons. In
this she herself was depicted as a sad, gentle girl, seated before an
empty grate, while her two ugly sisters—as old as they were con-
temptuous—haughtily turned their backs upon her. In the previous
number, Irish peasants, represented by pretty little girls and funny