Punch (9.1845)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

123

leered at Mrs. Blobby's handsome nursery-maid, who was passing
with about eleven of B.'s youngest children.

It can't be helped. Do what you will, you can't respect French-
men. It's well of us to talk of equality and amity. But we can't
keep up the farce of equality with them at all. And my opinion is,
that the reason why they hate us, and will hate us, and ought to
hate us for ever, is the consciousness of this truth on one side or the
other. It is not only in history and in battles, but we are domineer-
ing over them in every table d'hote in Europe at this moment. We
go into their own houses, and bully them there. We can't be
brought to believe that a Frenchman is equal to an Englishman. Is
there any man in England who thinks so in his heart ? If so, let him
send his name to the publishers.

This huge desert of a London is abominable. Everybody is gone •
Everybody. It's heart-breaking to pass from house to house, and
think glasses are covered, the carpets are up, the jolly Turkey-rug
French cook has got leave of absence, and ' gone from under the hospitable mahogany,'neath which your legs-
I^believe the^hall porter is gone^ to the j have reposed so often, and the only inhabitant of the mansion a

snuffy char-woman. How to pass your evenings ? In theatres—to-
see clumsy translations from the French—to see vulgarised multi-
plications of Mrs. Caudle. The passion for the Stage is like the
love of gooseberry-fool—strongest in youth. The only thing in the
dramatic art which has survived early youth in my love, is Widdi-
combe, and he is ahcays new. But you can not do, Widdicombe.,,
more than six times in a season.

MEDITATIONS ON SOLITUDE.

by our stout commissioner.

ur drawing-room at the Regent is a desert.
You can't get a rubber of whist in the
evening, for the card-players are all gone.
Puffins is the only man left in the
smoking-room, and he is such a bore, that
solitude is pleasant compared to his fright-
ful conversation. All the house-carpets
are up, and the place infested with abomi-
nable scourers, gilders, and whitewashers.
The house-steward is out of town : the

Moors. It is September in a word, and I
am alone and deserted.
All the familiar places where you get dinner during the season are
shut up. They are painting Hobanob's house. Carver's shutters
are closed in Portland Place, and the parlour-blinds are pinned up
with newspapers. I wonder whether the Bogles like frying at
Naples as well as their cool pleasant house in Hyde Park Terrace ?
What capital 34 Claret that Avas of Bogle's ; that last batch from
Carbonel's, I mean. Dear Emily Bogle ! I thought there was a
tear in her eye as I led her down to the carriage at Lady Kicksey's,
and said farewell. I wish to Heaven Bogle would come back.
Not so much about Emily ; but his cook makes the best white-soup
in England.

Why the deuce did not Sir John Kicksey ask me down to Kick-
Bey Acres. I gave him hints enough. I told him I could not go
abroad this autumn—that I thought of going to shoot in his neigh-
bourhood at old Hawcock's. I told the old brute as much three
times, and he always turned the conversation. Does he fancy there
is anything serious between me and Eliza ? Psha ! I can't marry
twelve thousand pound. The girl was rather sweet on me, I confess.
But her mother is bent upon marrying her to a title ; and the way
in which she is manoeuvring poor little Tufto, makes all London
laugh.

Out of the six red-jacketed villains who used to hold your horse
opposite the palace in St. James's Street, (the claret at the guards'
mess has been remarkably good this year, and I warrant you there's
no stint,) only two are left. I asked where the head of the gang
was—the squinting one ? He is gone abroad, upon my conscience !
To Baden-Baden, or the Pyrenees, no doubt.

The number of men growing moustachios during the last two
weeks of August, was quite facetious. Snuffy upper lips met you
everywhere. I met Swinney, the artist—snuffy upper lip ; his hair
is of a light hue, and the incipient whisker looked like a smear of
Welsh High-dried. He was going up the Rhine, he told me, and
blushed as I sneeringly pointed to the ornament beginning to deco-
rate his jolly face. I met Quackle, the barrister—snuffy upper lip.
He has made nine or ten thousand in the committees this year, and
is off for three weeks' pleasuring. I warrant he didn't blush when I
alluded to the black stubble sprouting under his beak of a nose.
Quackle blush, indeed ! I went into Bulter and Vogel's, my
tailors', in Clifford Street—snuffy upper lip again ; not Bulter's,
who is a family man, and has his villa at Roehampton ; but Vdgel's
moustache bids fair to be as long as that of Timour the Tartar.
He has a right to the whiskers, however, being a tailor, and a Count
of the empire.

But the best of the moustachios that I have heard of is that of old
Wafshot, our tutor at Oxford, who was detected in Belgium,
whiskered, in a green-frogged coat, and calling himself Colonel
Waldemar.

If our people are invading the Continent in great force, on the
other hand, the influx of Frenchmen hitherwards is prodigious. I
never saw so many of the little smug, self-satisfied, high-heeled,
narrow-ribbed, be-stayed, be-whiskered, be-curling-ironed, under-
sized generation. They are jabbering about every corner of
Leicester Square and Regent Street; and you see the little ricketty
creatures peering in at the empty club-house doors, or chaffering
with cabmen for their fares.

I saw two of them standing on Richmond Hill the other day, and
patronizing it. Cest joli, says one ; c'est pas mal, says the other ; as if,
low they had given their opinion, the view might pass muster. And

I could not leave town or its neighbourhood, being (between our-
selves) chairman of the Diddlesex Junction ; and exceedingly anxious
about the Great Pedlington line, (with a branch to Muffborough and
Stagg's End). And the above observations were written in the
deepest despondency, as I sate at dessert, alone, in the enormous-
coffee-room of the Regent Club : when suddenly, the bright idea rose
to my mind,—if London is empty, why not go to the watering-places ?'
Have you ever been at Bagnigge Wells, you who know Baden so well ?
Have you who have beheld the pyramids (ille ego qui quondam, &c),
ever glanced at Rosherville Gardens ? Tivoli is a very nice place ;
but what do you say, my lad, to Tunbridge ? You who have seen the
caverns of Posilipo, say, have you beheld the Swiss Cottage and
Grotto, Shoreham, near Brighton ? Go out, and be a Commissioner
for Punch at the watering-places of this great kingdom.—And my
soul was refreshed at the thought, and I knew the first moment of
happiness I have enjoyed (for the Diddlesex Junctions are somehow
low in the market) since the end of the term.

THE DYING ONE.

There is a kid-glove cleaner in Gravesend who says, in one of his-
circulars, that " he has had the honour of dyeing for the Royal Family,
and scouring for the House of Lords for the last twenty-six years."

We really think this worthy fellow is entitled to a pension. His dying
so repeatedly for Her Majesty surely deserves some national acknow-
ledgment, but his being employed for such a number of years in keeping.
the° House of Lords clean would make any extravagant sum that was
given to him appear dirt-cheap. After the situation of the Clerk, who-
is obliged to listen to Lord Brougham making five speeches on each
question, we can imagine no duty in the House more laborious than that
of keeping it continually clean. Cleaning the Augean Stables must have-
been an old charwoman's work compared to it; and yet we will be bound
to say, this modern Hercules is modestly employed at Gravesend, like a
second Cincinnatus, in cultivating his summer cabbages, unconscious of
the great good he has dene his country. Let Sir Robert Peel give
another proof of his active appreciation of merit by finding out this noble
successor of our Hampdens, and elevating him to that House his whole
energies and knees have been bent upon for six-and-twenty years. Surely,,
after cleaning the whole House for a quarter of a century, no one would
be mean enough to deny him a seat in it ?

The Awkward Squadron.

It seems the vessels of the Experimental Squadron are dreadful slow
coaches. Some of them only go eight miles an hour. We propose
that their names be altered to suit their intuitive powers of slowness, for
it looks like mockery to call a vessel The Monkey, when it goes no faster
than a night cab-horse. We suggest that the Grampus be re-cnristened
the Tortoise—that the Jachal be changed into the Snail— and that the
slowest of the lot be appropriately called The Omnibus, or The Chancery-
Suit. The Monkey steamer might take the name of Prince JoinvMe?
out of compliment to his pamphlet for invading England, for we must say
theii one of the little dwarfs curled his waxed moustache, md j wc never knew anything in nautical matters slower than that