Punch or The London charivari (4.1843)

196

PUNCH. OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

wondrous vegetable is getting very strong throughout the neighbour-
THE JENKINS' "NETTLES." hood. If matters go on as at present for another week, all the blood
.—.- | of all "Whitechapel will be of as fine a quality as the blood of May-
Fair. All honour to Jenkins !
Your obedient Servant,
Whitechapel, May 8th. PETER GoOSETO.v, T tilor.

Our readers cannot forget that The Morning Post—(nay, The Morn-
ing Jenkins1 for by such amended name, thanks to Punch, is that great
diurnal now known to all men)—recently recommended a plentiful
meal of "young nettle tops" as the very best thing for purifying the
blood, and thereby purging all the land of what dear Jenkins would
call its canaille. Great is Jenkins, whether he wield pasteboard
thunderbolts, or, pant and dilate upon the glories of his own virtuosi
and ballerine ! Jenkins—like another most meek and most domestic
animal—cannot open his mouth without being heard around. The
prescription brayed by Jenkins has penetrated the recesses of
Whitechapel—has struck upon the heart-strings of Shoreditch

Sir,—I was a shoemaker with a hump-back. I was 'prtsnticed
from Shoreditch parisli ; but by the blessing of hard work and wax
set up on my own account. Having for several years heel-tapped
Mr. Jenkins's boots for the Opera, I got a taste for that place. Never-
theless, my visits to the pit (especially when I took my wife with
me) were not without their sting, as I could not but feel that I was a
shoemaker, and that my wife was—" frowsy."

launch feels glorious that he can produce proofs of this, and here they \ 0h' sir' 1 sha11 alwa>'s keeP the return of the day with thanks-
are in grateful letters from correspondents. | S^g—that day> when 1 first r?ad Mr. Jenkins's recipe of nettles.
Mr. Punch,—I am a tailor, sir, married, with a family of two W? bave aU llved xlPon tlieir )'ounS "tops" for this past ten days,
sons and two daughters. I have, in my time, been called a very I and, the consequence is I have entirely lost my vulgar hump-back,
leel myself as good as any Earl, and believe my wife Margery to be
as sweet as any perfume as is.
I do, sir, but consider it a duty to make known this wonderful cure
—a duty of love towards my unfortunate fellow-creatures, and a duty
of gratitude towards the benevolent Mr. Jenkins.
I am. sir, your obedient Servant,
Shoreditch, May (ith. " Alexander Nob3y, Shoemaker.
Talk about the triumphs of vaccination ! Why, only give Jen-
kins a field of nettles, and he would in a trice make a House of
Peers from a body of costermongers. We have the Order of the
Thistle—there ought to be the Order of the Nettle, and Jenkins—
immortal Jenkins, for he shall never die—should be its chancellor !


BFl-'OKK TAKING THE NETTLES.

DEATH AND MAMMON!

common-looking man, and my wife a ditto woman. Our children,
sir, did also partake of the look of that sort of human mud, of which | The subjoined ghastly paragraph (on the easy authority of an
Mr. Jenkins would insinuate, common folks are made. Sir, the
mud is gone—I, my wife, my sons and daughters, are now tip-top
clay. The " frowsiness " of which Mr. Jenkins spoke is utterly
evaporated, given place to a delicious smell of something between
lavender-water and musk ; this, as I am told, being the real odour of
high life. Well, sir, and how do you think all this blessed change
has been brought about? By nettle-tops, nothing but nettle-tops.
There was a long-standing (though small) account between Mr.
Jenkins and myself for turning an opera-waistcoat, and I therefore
put myself and family under his treatment as a sort of set-off. For
a whole week, sir, Mr. Jenkins came to Whitechapel, to su-
perintend the boiling of the nettles ; and the result is, mv blood
is purified to something very like the blood of a baronet —


AFTER TAKING THE NETTLES.

my wife's blood (as she herself declares) feels very like the blood of a
baronet's lady whilst my dear girls, Margarita and Sophinisba, full of
nettles, consider themselves no less than the daughters of a marquess.
My boy Ralph has changed his name into Alphonso, and Dick goes
now to the Opera gallery as Ella, the door-keepers verily believing
him to be the tenth in a zig-zag descent from a German prince !
And all this—all with Jenkins's nettles. The craving for the

Evening Paper) is to be seen in all the journals :—
"The Missing ' President.' —Perhaps no event connected with the sea excited
such intense interest and anxiety as the mysterious disappearance of the ' President' ;
and the conjectures that her supposed fate has called forth are innumerable. If the mosi
ample room for fancy afford the fairest JieJd for fiction, never was a theme more aptly-
suited to the pen of the romance writer. We have been given to understand in literary-
circles, that the well-known author of ' Cavendish ' has availed himself of this powerful
incident as the chief subject of hi3 new naval romance, called ' The Lost Ship '—a cir-
cumstance that will no doubt create the greatest interest towards this new production
of his popular pen,"—Evening Paper.
Who the author of Cavendish may be we know not ; but he must be
something more than a bold man who would turn the penny upon a
subject which must renew the agony of the surviving relatives and
friends of those who perished ill the President. It is, however, qttite
of a piece with the trading selfishness of the age. Anything for
monev. Never mind broken hearts—look only to the breeches
pocket.
We will suppose the " Author of Carendish " to be Ferdinand in
The T> mpest. We will suppose him listening to the song of Ariel—
" Full fathom five thy father lies ;
Of his bones are corul made:
Those are pearls that were his e> es,
Nothing of him but doth fade ! "
The song ended, the " Author of Carendish" rubs his hands with
inexpressible gratification, and animated by the spirit which induces
him to turn the horror of the President into hard cash —we can ima-
gine him willing to take the said " bones" in "coral" to the gold-
smith's, and the said "eyes" turned to "pearls" to the jeweller's.^
The father being drowned, becomes more valuable ; as the bones of
those wrecked in the President are, to the " Author of Carendish," a
more money-making commodity than if clothed with living flesh,
and moving amongst living kindred.

Silk Gowns.—Mrs. Sarah Bird, a lunatic, was a few days since ex-
amined by a Commission. The gentlewoman observed, amongst other
matters,—" As for the Lord Chancellor, only let him come and see me
cook a dinner. What a fool he must be to allow himself to be imposed
upon." Punch is authorized to state that the unfortunate lady had no
intention by these words to reflect upon the present of a silk goicn recently
made by Lord Lyndhurst to Mr. Roebuck.
Fashionable Movement.
The elephant at the Surrey Gardens entertained Jenkins by t.\rrymg
him iwnnd the grounds on his tusks. The zebra at the same time e>
presseu iu him a cordial note of recognition.