DOI issue:
January to June, 1851
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16607#0061
PUNCH. OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
53
NO NEWS FROM PARIS.
by a cynical correspondent.
Cafi des Aveugles, Feb. 1.
ertainly it is as well for
people who wish to lead
an easy life in the world,
that the inventions actu-
ally produced and per-
fected by men of genius
are by no means so nume-
rous as their plans; and
that the Patent-office con-
tains such a number of
specifications of disco-
veries, the knowledge of
which is not carried be-
yond the proprietor and
transcriber of the sheets
of stamped paper out of
which the Government
takes its profit. If every
man's discoveries were
practicable, and put in
execution, what a restless,
feverish, and uncomfort-
able world ours would be,
and how odious to those
who are lazy, or fond of
old practices and customs,
or desire to be quiet!
Suppose, for instance,
Captain Warner's long
range were to come into
play next week: suppose
the week after the steam-
carriage forLondonstreets
were to drive up and smoke the cabs and omnibuses out of the
town: suppose, ten days after, that the new system for warming and
lighting London simultaneously with gas made from egg-shells or
potato-peelings, or what not, should be brought into use; and then
suppose that the aerial machines were completed, and every man had
his balloon and steam-engine in his back-yard ready to take him to
business every morning after his breakfast. Could we live with any
comfort, or keep pace with a world, where the progress of discovery was
so abominably rapid ? Warner's machine being brought into action,
it is evident that the standing army, and our "wooden walls," England's
pride, the dock-yards, barracks, and Woolwich arsenals, the Guards'
Club, in Pall Mall, the Duke of Wellington, the sentries, and the valu-
able clock at the Horse Guards, would all be blowu to annihilation ;—
there would be no use in Woolwich without artillery, no use for a
Guards' Club without any guards, no heroes in jack-boots to put into
the sentry-boxes at Whitehall; nobody to wind up the clock there, and so
forth. Then the steam-carriages would knock up the omnibus and horse-
dealers : then the aerial locomotives would drive the steam-carriages
proprietors into the gazette: then the gas companies would be extin-
guished, and go out in bankruptcy and darkness: then the coal pro-
prietors would have no sale for their black diamonds : the wharf owners
would not get their rents: the bargees would drown themselves from
their useless vessels : and the great parties at Wallsend House would
be given up : then the coal-whippers would drink no more beer—so that
the aristocracy and the commonalty, the milliners, the lightermen,
Messrs. Barclay and Perkins, and the penny-a-liners who describe
the magnificent entertainments at Wallsend House aforesaid, would all
suffer by the new invention, and have their present means of livelihood
cut off. I am of a timid, or, if you please, conservative turn: I like the
pace of improvement to be so slow as scarcely to be felt: I am not sure
that I don't admire Lord John Russell. At any rate, who would
live in a country which gasps from one revolution into another, and in its
progress perpetually tumbles down, has a fit, has the doctor fetched and
is bled, and then rises up and staggers on to the next convulsion ?
My dear Mr. Punch, it has been my fortune to live in Paris for the last
few weeks. I have seen M. Thiers walking in the Tuilleries Gardens;
the President of the Republic made me (and a hundred others) a very
polite bow in the Champs Elysees on Monday ; I dined in the very
next cabinet to M. Carlier, the Prefect of Police, and a party at
Philippis, in the Rue Montorgueil, on Wednesday last; and the con-
clusion to which I have come, after thus mixing with the highest
French society, is, that I thank my fate I am an Englishman, and not
born under the baleful star of the Legion of Honour. Who knows
what explosive machines are getting ready to sweep down institutions
here ? Who knows what new method for firing Paris streets may be
put into practice any day ? what flying wonders are in the air ?
Henri V., or the Comte de Paris, may drop out of a balloon some
morning, or the President go off in one ! The changes in this country
are so rapid; the lulls and tempests so surprising and sudden; the
fierce quarrels so easily healed; the firm friendships so soon broken;
the alliances so quickly made and dissolved; the illustrious reputation
of yesterday so entirely forgotten to-day, to re-appear and resplend
to-morrow, perhaps, and without any assignable reason—that I say we
may thank our stars that we live in a grave country, where the people
have not such prodigious powers of inventing and destroying; and
where demolition and edification do not recur so restlessly.
A fortnight ago—or is it a month ?—or is it ten years ?—or was it
before the Empire or the Revolution ?—the illustrious Changarnier,
his dismissal, his wrath, and the woes unnumbered of which it was to
be the direful spring to Erance, was the subject of every newspaper
discussion and drawing-room conversation. What will the Illustrious
do ? Will the President dare to do without him ? Will the Chamber
not rally round the Illustrious Sword? Will the Chamber and the
Illustrious Sword together not turn the President out of doors, and
send him to Vincennes or the frontier? Sir, we trembled at the
withdrawal of the Llustrious Sword; that removed, people said the
whole body politic which hung round it would collapse and fall to
the ground. This is but a fortnight ago—a week since the majority of the
which the * Government Chamber, which had taken such offence at the dismissal of their cashiered
champion, did not even mention his name in the debate in which they
stormed the Government—and to-day he is no more talked about than
General Kleber or Marshal Turenne. He is illustrious—c'est bien ;
Erance has such a number of illustrious Captains: you may see por-
traits of three thousand of them in the Museum at Versailles.
Changarnier, Thiers, Burgraves, coalition of parties, attack on the
Government, determined stand against the Empire—these sounds, so
familiar at every cafe table, talked of by every woman in every drawing-
room, heard in every group of Champs Elysees promenaders, or in the
pit or the balcon at the play,—are as if they had never been. If Chan-
garnier sulks in his tents, who cares? If the Burgraves wag their
venerable heads together and prophecy too, who minds ? The Titans
of the coalition stormed and carried Olympus,—and, then!—and then
they marched out again, leaving Jove in possession, and unruffled.
Coalition and combat, and victory, and failure are nine days old, and
the public does not care for them one jot. Sir, Mr. Punch, I am an
old Paris man, and I tell you that the excitement produced in the
country by Monte Christo, or the fight, between the " Chourineur," and
Rodolphe, in the Mysteres de Paris, was infinitely more great and durable
than the sparring-match between M. Thiers and M. Baroche the other
day. Parlez-moi de suffrage universel! The nation has elected the
Chamber, and having elected it, cares about its proceedings no more
than about a theatrical feuilleton in the Journal des Debats. The
representatives talk, and vote, and shout, and drink eau sucree, and they
have lively interpellations, agitations, and so forth—but nobody goes to
their Theatre Historique. Thiers comes out in the spectacles, Chan-
garnier waves the grim sword, and brandishes his moustachios, Dupin
rings the bell—but the audience doesn't care. La France possede sa
Chambre—and what happens after possession?—after courtship, and
enthusiasm, and marriage before the Mayor of the arrondissement ?
The Femme legitime sits at home, keeps her chamber, and Monsieur goes
out and walks on the Boulevard, and ogles the little coupes in the Bois.
Now, suppose a man, remarkable for coolness, simplicity, courage, a
clear head, whom chance or luck has placed at the head of a Government
like this ;—and to this opinion of the Presiding Officer of the French Re-
public, you, Mr. Punch, and almost all persons of sense in England, have
come ;—suppose a man endowed with all these qualities; and what great
desire can such a one have to be called Emperor, or to be crowned at
Rheims or Notre Dame ? Would he be the better off, or the more secure,
if anointed ever so much ; or if the Pope consecrated him; or if the
Chamber voted, or the whole nation elected him Emperor for ever and
ever ? Every prince and bis heirs for ever has been elected and re-
ceived with cries of joy, and rallied round, and turned out; and from
the Throne Boom of the Tuilleries to the back door, and the hackney-
coach in the yard, seems to be the certain course of all Erench dynasties.
It is Arrivee du Roi—Sacre de sa Majeste—Euite du Boi—Arrivee de
M. le Lieutenant-General du Royaume, &c,—over and over again. I!
it had been his Majesty Napoleon the Second or Third—(which is it) ?—
meditating an assault upon the privileges of parliament and the liberties
of the country, whom the coalition attacked the other day, his majesty's
hackney-coach would have been ordered out, and he would have arrived
in England as Mr. Jones—leaving the field to the allies, white, red, and
tri-color; and it was because there was no emperor that the President was
safe, and that those balked conspirators, took nothing by their victory.
And so, Sir, as I look from this place at the course of events, and
listen to the conversation of the people round me, I feel myself to be
as incredulous as any man of the company, the highest and the lowest;
I fancy the old Burgraves grinning to each other; the President
yawning with a languid smile; and the porters at the gates of the
Ministeres, eying cynically out of their holes the passing folks who
take possession of the ministerial portfolio for to-day, and are gone to-
morrow, after playing their little part iu the comedy—the comedy to
which nobody listens, or for which nobody cares any more.
53
NO NEWS FROM PARIS.
by a cynical correspondent.
Cafi des Aveugles, Feb. 1.
ertainly it is as well for
people who wish to lead
an easy life in the world,
that the inventions actu-
ally produced and per-
fected by men of genius
are by no means so nume-
rous as their plans; and
that the Patent-office con-
tains such a number of
specifications of disco-
veries, the knowledge of
which is not carried be-
yond the proprietor and
transcriber of the sheets
of stamped paper out of
which the Government
takes its profit. If every
man's discoveries were
practicable, and put in
execution, what a restless,
feverish, and uncomfort-
able world ours would be,
and how odious to those
who are lazy, or fond of
old practices and customs,
or desire to be quiet!
Suppose, for instance,
Captain Warner's long
range were to come into
play next week: suppose
the week after the steam-
carriage forLondonstreets
were to drive up and smoke the cabs and omnibuses out of the
town: suppose, ten days after, that the new system for warming and
lighting London simultaneously with gas made from egg-shells or
potato-peelings, or what not, should be brought into use; and then
suppose that the aerial machines were completed, and every man had
his balloon and steam-engine in his back-yard ready to take him to
business every morning after his breakfast. Could we live with any
comfort, or keep pace with a world, where the progress of discovery was
so abominably rapid ? Warner's machine being brought into action,
it is evident that the standing army, and our "wooden walls," England's
pride, the dock-yards, barracks, and Woolwich arsenals, the Guards'
Club, in Pall Mall, the Duke of Wellington, the sentries, and the valu-
able clock at the Horse Guards, would all be blowu to annihilation ;—
there would be no use in Woolwich without artillery, no use for a
Guards' Club without any guards, no heroes in jack-boots to put into
the sentry-boxes at Whitehall; nobody to wind up the clock there, and so
forth. Then the steam-carriages would knock up the omnibus and horse-
dealers : then the aerial locomotives would drive the steam-carriages
proprietors into the gazette: then the gas companies would be extin-
guished, and go out in bankruptcy and darkness: then the coal pro-
prietors would have no sale for their black diamonds : the wharf owners
would not get their rents: the bargees would drown themselves from
their useless vessels : and the great parties at Wallsend House would
be given up : then the coal-whippers would drink no more beer—so that
the aristocracy and the commonalty, the milliners, the lightermen,
Messrs. Barclay and Perkins, and the penny-a-liners who describe
the magnificent entertainments at Wallsend House aforesaid, would all
suffer by the new invention, and have their present means of livelihood
cut off. I am of a timid, or, if you please, conservative turn: I like the
pace of improvement to be so slow as scarcely to be felt: I am not sure
that I don't admire Lord John Russell. At any rate, who would
live in a country which gasps from one revolution into another, and in its
progress perpetually tumbles down, has a fit, has the doctor fetched and
is bled, and then rises up and staggers on to the next convulsion ?
My dear Mr. Punch, it has been my fortune to live in Paris for the last
few weeks. I have seen M. Thiers walking in the Tuilleries Gardens;
the President of the Republic made me (and a hundred others) a very
polite bow in the Champs Elysees on Monday ; I dined in the very
next cabinet to M. Carlier, the Prefect of Police, and a party at
Philippis, in the Rue Montorgueil, on Wednesday last; and the con-
clusion to which I have come, after thus mixing with the highest
French society, is, that I thank my fate I am an Englishman, and not
born under the baleful star of the Legion of Honour. Who knows
what explosive machines are getting ready to sweep down institutions
here ? Who knows what new method for firing Paris streets may be
put into practice any day ? what flying wonders are in the air ?
Henri V., or the Comte de Paris, may drop out of a balloon some
morning, or the President go off in one ! The changes in this country
are so rapid; the lulls and tempests so surprising and sudden; the
fierce quarrels so easily healed; the firm friendships so soon broken;
the alliances so quickly made and dissolved; the illustrious reputation
of yesterday so entirely forgotten to-day, to re-appear and resplend
to-morrow, perhaps, and without any assignable reason—that I say we
may thank our stars that we live in a grave country, where the people
have not such prodigious powers of inventing and destroying; and
where demolition and edification do not recur so restlessly.
A fortnight ago—or is it a month ?—or is it ten years ?—or was it
before the Empire or the Revolution ?—the illustrious Changarnier,
his dismissal, his wrath, and the woes unnumbered of which it was to
be the direful spring to Erance, was the subject of every newspaper
discussion and drawing-room conversation. What will the Illustrious
do ? Will the President dare to do without him ? Will the Chamber
not rally round the Illustrious Sword? Will the Chamber and the
Illustrious Sword together not turn the President out of doors, and
send him to Vincennes or the frontier? Sir, we trembled at the
withdrawal of the Llustrious Sword; that removed, people said the
whole body politic which hung round it would collapse and fall to
the ground. This is but a fortnight ago—a week since the majority of the
which the * Government Chamber, which had taken such offence at the dismissal of their cashiered
champion, did not even mention his name in the debate in which they
stormed the Government—and to-day he is no more talked about than
General Kleber or Marshal Turenne. He is illustrious—c'est bien ;
Erance has such a number of illustrious Captains: you may see por-
traits of three thousand of them in the Museum at Versailles.
Changarnier, Thiers, Burgraves, coalition of parties, attack on the
Government, determined stand against the Empire—these sounds, so
familiar at every cafe table, talked of by every woman in every drawing-
room, heard in every group of Champs Elysees promenaders, or in the
pit or the balcon at the play,—are as if they had never been. If Chan-
garnier sulks in his tents, who cares? If the Burgraves wag their
venerable heads together and prophecy too, who minds ? The Titans
of the coalition stormed and carried Olympus,—and, then!—and then
they marched out again, leaving Jove in possession, and unruffled.
Coalition and combat, and victory, and failure are nine days old, and
the public does not care for them one jot. Sir, Mr. Punch, I am an
old Paris man, and I tell you that the excitement produced in the
country by Monte Christo, or the fight, between the " Chourineur," and
Rodolphe, in the Mysteres de Paris, was infinitely more great and durable
than the sparring-match between M. Thiers and M. Baroche the other
day. Parlez-moi de suffrage universel! The nation has elected the
Chamber, and having elected it, cares about its proceedings no more
than about a theatrical feuilleton in the Journal des Debats. The
representatives talk, and vote, and shout, and drink eau sucree, and they
have lively interpellations, agitations, and so forth—but nobody goes to
their Theatre Historique. Thiers comes out in the spectacles, Chan-
garnier waves the grim sword, and brandishes his moustachios, Dupin
rings the bell—but the audience doesn't care. La France possede sa
Chambre—and what happens after possession?—after courtship, and
enthusiasm, and marriage before the Mayor of the arrondissement ?
The Femme legitime sits at home, keeps her chamber, and Monsieur goes
out and walks on the Boulevard, and ogles the little coupes in the Bois.
Now, suppose a man, remarkable for coolness, simplicity, courage, a
clear head, whom chance or luck has placed at the head of a Government
like this ;—and to this opinion of the Presiding Officer of the French Re-
public, you, Mr. Punch, and almost all persons of sense in England, have
come ;—suppose a man endowed with all these qualities; and what great
desire can such a one have to be called Emperor, or to be crowned at
Rheims or Notre Dame ? Would he be the better off, or the more secure,
if anointed ever so much ; or if the Pope consecrated him; or if the
Chamber voted, or the whole nation elected him Emperor for ever and
ever ? Every prince and bis heirs for ever has been elected and re-
ceived with cries of joy, and rallied round, and turned out; and from
the Throne Boom of the Tuilleries to the back door, and the hackney-
coach in the yard, seems to be the certain course of all Erench dynasties.
It is Arrivee du Roi—Sacre de sa Majeste—Euite du Boi—Arrivee de
M. le Lieutenant-General du Royaume, &c,—over and over again. I!
it had been his Majesty Napoleon the Second or Third—(which is it) ?—
meditating an assault upon the privileges of parliament and the liberties
of the country, whom the coalition attacked the other day, his majesty's
hackney-coach would have been ordered out, and he would have arrived
in England as Mr. Jones—leaving the field to the allies, white, red, and
tri-color; and it was because there was no emperor that the President was
safe, and that those balked conspirators, took nothing by their victory.
And so, Sir, as I look from this place at the course of events, and
listen to the conversation of the people round me, I feel myself to be
as incredulous as any man of the company, the highest and the lowest;
I fancy the old Burgraves grinning to each other; the President
yawning with a languid smile; and the porters at the gates of the
Ministeres, eying cynically out of their holes the passing folks who
take possession of the ministerial portfolio for to-day, and are gone to-
morrow, after playing their little part iu the comedy—the comedy to
which nobody listens, or for which nobody cares any more.