DOI Heft:
January to June, 1850
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16605#0095
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
87
TAKING STEPS FOR THEIR OWN COMEORT.
"Well, My Friends, you seem to hold an Ordinary at the steps
of my door every day at 12."
CLIMBING UP THE NORTH POLE.
Of all foreign climes there must be none so difficult to get to the top
of as the North Pole. We feel convinced that no one but a Bedouin
Arab will ever do it, unless perhaps it is Mr. Stilt, for, in standing on
his head on the top of a pole, that gentleman bas reached the very
summit of his profession. By the way, what a position for a brilliant
display of fireworks!
As lor ourselves, knowing "how hard it is to climb," we shall leave
the North Pole in the hands of others. We are perfectly content with
Mr. Burford's Panorama. An iceberg is a kind of obstacle we should
never attempt to get through, especially with the chilly conviction that
we should only be met on the opposite side with another iceberg. An
ocean, with a splitting, stunning set of icebergs, continuallydancing reels
and quadrilles, is not exactly the kind of society we feel anxious to plunge
into. We prefer Almack's, with the ices provided byGuNTER.
It is true that the Aurora Borealis is a very magnificent", sight, and
we imagine Mr. Burford must have borrowed Aurora's rosy fingers to
have painted the beautiful one he has hung round his Arctic first-floor.
Still the feeling that if you put your head out of window to look at it,
you immediately lose your nose, must take away a great deal from the
pleasure, for the wind is so cutting on those Snow Hills, that no Turk's
Head could possibly hang out for an hour without being cut to pieces.
Besides, loujours Aurora Borealis must eventually prove a bore, for
however successful a thing may be on its first appearance, very few of
us would like to sit if. out for 200 consecutive nights and days. The
Aurora Borealis is a substitute for the sun, or rather it is a sun done
in colours. _ The effect is not unlike the reflection at night from a
chemist's window. Fancy Trafalgar Square lighted up with a string of'
Savory and Moore's green and pink bottles, and you have the Aurora
Borealis brought at one coup d'oeil to your mind's eye, but with this
improvement, that there is not anything half so ugly at the North Pole,
as the National Gallery.
The streets, and lanes, and courts, and squares, are all formed in the
Arctic Regions, of ice,—of immense high walls of ice. Picking your way
is very difficult, as none of the streets are named, or the houses num-
bered, and you lose yourself before you know where you are. Building
is carried there to a greater extent, even than it is round London. You
go to sleep in an open field of water, and, on waking up, find yourself
hemmed in by a floating row of crescents and towering palaces of ice
that must strike a chill into the boldest heart. It must be very
awkward when a ship gets into a cul-de-sac! What a turn it must
give them, or rather, what would they not give to be able to turn and
get themselves out of their awkward scrape. We cannot imagine a
greater "tarnation fix." There the ship is held between the two dead
walls of crystal as in a nut-cracker, and if the walls close in the least,
the ship is cracked as easy as a monkey cracks a nut. The narrow streets oi
the City are bad enough when one of Pickford's vans comes galloping
down, and you have only just time to nail your body to the wall as thiD
as a picture, to save yourself being crushed; but what must it be theD
at the North Pole, where there are no Mews, nor a single shop where you
can run into!
Mr. Burford's Panorama suggests all these frozen ho rrors_ without
painting them. The water is so natural, that you cannot believe it is
done in oil. The ice sets everybody's teeth on the chatter; the ladies1
teeth, with the proverbial loquacity of the sex, chattering, of course,
more than the gentlemen's. Taken altogether, it is the most beautiful
bit of frieze-painting our eyes ever watered in looking at. In
summer, it will be quite a Magnetic Pole, for the coolness of the spot
will be sure to attract all London to it. What a superb luncheon-
room it would make for Farrance during the dog-days !
N.B. There is a long pole exhibited with some fur dresses in the
room ; and as many persons have allowed their curiosity to be stirred
up by this long Pole, and handle it and look upon it evidently as a
very great curiosity, we are requested by Mr. Btjrford to state, that
the pole in question is not the North Pole, nor has it, for what he
knows, any connexion with it.
PUPF PASTE.
Our eyes have lately been arrested by what may be termed the very
mean process of a summons to stay our further proceedings, and turn
into sundry small shops in the metropolis to eat A Free-Trade Pie.
This alleged luxury is advertised as juicy with the meats of SmHi field,
succulent with the savoury kidney, ambrosial with the fish of Billings-
gate, and gushing with the luscious syrup starting from the plethoric
pores of the vernal rhubarb. Such is the confidence of the speculators
in these puff-paraded patties, that a reward of £5000 is offered to any
one who can produce (at the price) " a larger and a better" pie. The
connection between Free Trade and the pie in question is by no means
obvious, nor has any attempt been made in the placard before us to
explain where, how, why, or in what respect such connection exists.
There is a pretended quotation from Epicurus, and several great
men of antiquity are cited apropos of the pie, but the only hero of
the past whose name is appropriate to pastry—we mean, of course, our
old friend PlE-us ./Eneas—is by some accident overlooked. We have
in our time had much experience in articles of this description, and
there was a time, ere sooer reflection had taught us to curb the
sharpness of our expressions, that we were seldom long without some-
thing tart in our mouth.
We have learnt at the cost of experience—and many halfpence—that
size is no test of quality, and that in pastry, as in mankind, excellence
is not always to those looked upon as the great. If we had known how
to moralise upon a pie before eating it—which we never could—we
should have said " Trust not to that which seems externally overflowing
with goodness, for the sweetness that is always ready to rise to the
surface is soon exhausted, and is often a proof of hollowness within."
Apropos of pies, we will conclude with one fact in Natural History,
founded on long observation, and we should be glad if Von Humboldt,
Tide-man, Untidy-man, or any man, would explain to us the mystery
which we have discovered.
We want to know, and we ask the simple question of the whole of
the natural historians now living, how it is that all pigeons of which
pigeon pies are made, have each four legs. It there is any doubt as to
'he fact being as we have stated, let any one buy a pigeon pie at a
pastry-cook's, let him compare the protruding claws or " tootens " with
the number of birds below the crust, and if it is not found that there
are four of the former to one of the latter, we will eat our own words,
and—what will be worse still—a Free-Trade pie.
THE INDUSTRY OF ALL NATIONS.
The admirable proposition of Prince Albert to hold in this country
an Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations has excited unusual interest,
which has extended even to the chevaliers d'industrie of France,—an
order which it is expected will be largrly represented at the forthcoming
gathering. These gentlemen will, it is expected, exhibit various proofs
of their industry, which is emphatically the industry of all nations, for
there is not a nation on the earth which does not_ contain among its
people several who have at their fingers' ends the industry alluded to.
Such arrangements will, however, no doubt, be adopted, as will restrain
the specimens of this sort of industry within as narrow limits as possible,
and any chevalier found in the practice will, whatever his apparent
station, be brought at once to the station of police in the immediate
neighbourhood. It is said that most of the American States will con-
tribute specimens of their ingenuity, but Pennsylvania declines sending
anything to England, which contains already so many proofs of what it
can do, in the shape of numerous creditors who have been done by its
cunning device of repudiation.
87
TAKING STEPS FOR THEIR OWN COMEORT.
"Well, My Friends, you seem to hold an Ordinary at the steps
of my door every day at 12."
CLIMBING UP THE NORTH POLE.
Of all foreign climes there must be none so difficult to get to the top
of as the North Pole. We feel convinced that no one but a Bedouin
Arab will ever do it, unless perhaps it is Mr. Stilt, for, in standing on
his head on the top of a pole, that gentleman bas reached the very
summit of his profession. By the way, what a position for a brilliant
display of fireworks!
As lor ourselves, knowing "how hard it is to climb," we shall leave
the North Pole in the hands of others. We are perfectly content with
Mr. Burford's Panorama. An iceberg is a kind of obstacle we should
never attempt to get through, especially with the chilly conviction that
we should only be met on the opposite side with another iceberg. An
ocean, with a splitting, stunning set of icebergs, continuallydancing reels
and quadrilles, is not exactly the kind of society we feel anxious to plunge
into. We prefer Almack's, with the ices provided byGuNTER.
It is true that the Aurora Borealis is a very magnificent", sight, and
we imagine Mr. Burford must have borrowed Aurora's rosy fingers to
have painted the beautiful one he has hung round his Arctic first-floor.
Still the feeling that if you put your head out of window to look at it,
you immediately lose your nose, must take away a great deal from the
pleasure, for the wind is so cutting on those Snow Hills, that no Turk's
Head could possibly hang out for an hour without being cut to pieces.
Besides, loujours Aurora Borealis must eventually prove a bore, for
however successful a thing may be on its first appearance, very few of
us would like to sit if. out for 200 consecutive nights and days. The
Aurora Borealis is a substitute for the sun, or rather it is a sun done
in colours. _ The effect is not unlike the reflection at night from a
chemist's window. Fancy Trafalgar Square lighted up with a string of'
Savory and Moore's green and pink bottles, and you have the Aurora
Borealis brought at one coup d'oeil to your mind's eye, but with this
improvement, that there is not anything half so ugly at the North Pole,
as the National Gallery.
The streets, and lanes, and courts, and squares, are all formed in the
Arctic Regions, of ice,—of immense high walls of ice. Picking your way
is very difficult, as none of the streets are named, or the houses num-
bered, and you lose yourself before you know where you are. Building
is carried there to a greater extent, even than it is round London. You
go to sleep in an open field of water, and, on waking up, find yourself
hemmed in by a floating row of crescents and towering palaces of ice
that must strike a chill into the boldest heart. It must be very
awkward when a ship gets into a cul-de-sac! What a turn it must
give them, or rather, what would they not give to be able to turn and
get themselves out of their awkward scrape. We cannot imagine a
greater "tarnation fix." There the ship is held between the two dead
walls of crystal as in a nut-cracker, and if the walls close in the least,
the ship is cracked as easy as a monkey cracks a nut. The narrow streets oi
the City are bad enough when one of Pickford's vans comes galloping
down, and you have only just time to nail your body to the wall as thiD
as a picture, to save yourself being crushed; but what must it be theD
at the North Pole, where there are no Mews, nor a single shop where you
can run into!
Mr. Burford's Panorama suggests all these frozen ho rrors_ without
painting them. The water is so natural, that you cannot believe it is
done in oil. The ice sets everybody's teeth on the chatter; the ladies1
teeth, with the proverbial loquacity of the sex, chattering, of course,
more than the gentlemen's. Taken altogether, it is the most beautiful
bit of frieze-painting our eyes ever watered in looking at. In
summer, it will be quite a Magnetic Pole, for the coolness of the spot
will be sure to attract all London to it. What a superb luncheon-
room it would make for Farrance during the dog-days !
N.B. There is a long pole exhibited with some fur dresses in the
room ; and as many persons have allowed their curiosity to be stirred
up by this long Pole, and handle it and look upon it evidently as a
very great curiosity, we are requested by Mr. Btjrford to state, that
the pole in question is not the North Pole, nor has it, for what he
knows, any connexion with it.
PUPF PASTE.
Our eyes have lately been arrested by what may be termed the very
mean process of a summons to stay our further proceedings, and turn
into sundry small shops in the metropolis to eat A Free-Trade Pie.
This alleged luxury is advertised as juicy with the meats of SmHi field,
succulent with the savoury kidney, ambrosial with the fish of Billings-
gate, and gushing with the luscious syrup starting from the plethoric
pores of the vernal rhubarb. Such is the confidence of the speculators
in these puff-paraded patties, that a reward of £5000 is offered to any
one who can produce (at the price) " a larger and a better" pie. The
connection between Free Trade and the pie in question is by no means
obvious, nor has any attempt been made in the placard before us to
explain where, how, why, or in what respect such connection exists.
There is a pretended quotation from Epicurus, and several great
men of antiquity are cited apropos of the pie, but the only hero of
the past whose name is appropriate to pastry—we mean, of course, our
old friend PlE-us ./Eneas—is by some accident overlooked. We have
in our time had much experience in articles of this description, and
there was a time, ere sooer reflection had taught us to curb the
sharpness of our expressions, that we were seldom long without some-
thing tart in our mouth.
We have learnt at the cost of experience—and many halfpence—that
size is no test of quality, and that in pastry, as in mankind, excellence
is not always to those looked upon as the great. If we had known how
to moralise upon a pie before eating it—which we never could—we
should have said " Trust not to that which seems externally overflowing
with goodness, for the sweetness that is always ready to rise to the
surface is soon exhausted, and is often a proof of hollowness within."
Apropos of pies, we will conclude with one fact in Natural History,
founded on long observation, and we should be glad if Von Humboldt,
Tide-man, Untidy-man, or any man, would explain to us the mystery
which we have discovered.
We want to know, and we ask the simple question of the whole of
the natural historians now living, how it is that all pigeons of which
pigeon pies are made, have each four legs. It there is any doubt as to
'he fact being as we have stated, let any one buy a pigeon pie at a
pastry-cook's, let him compare the protruding claws or " tootens " with
the number of birds below the crust, and if it is not found that there
are four of the former to one of the latter, we will eat our own words,
and—what will be worse still—a Free-Trade pie.
THE INDUSTRY OF ALL NATIONS.
The admirable proposition of Prince Albert to hold in this country
an Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations has excited unusual interest,
which has extended even to the chevaliers d'industrie of France,—an
order which it is expected will be largrly represented at the forthcoming
gathering. These gentlemen will, it is expected, exhibit various proofs
of their industry, which is emphatically the industry of all nations, for
there is not a nation on the earth which does not_ contain among its
people several who have at their fingers' ends the industry alluded to.
Such arrangements will, however, no doubt, be adopted, as will restrain
the specimens of this sort of industry within as narrow limits as possible,
and any chevalier found in the practice will, whatever his apparent
station, be brought at once to the station of police in the immediate
neighbourhood. It is said that most of the American States will con-
tribute specimens of their ingenuity, but Pennsylvania declines sending
anything to England, which contains already so many proofs of what it
can do, in the shape of numerous creditors who have been done by its
cunning device of repudiation.