Punch (25.1853)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

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211

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KING LEOPOLD REPORTS PROGRESS.

he King of the Belgians opened liis
Chambers last week, and it is to be regretted
that King Leopold’s excellent speech has
been so incorrectly translated by the
London newspapers. No wonder that Lord
Clarendon complains of the inadequate
way in which the journalists render iiis
despatches. An English dramatic author,
hurried in his rapine, could hardly have
adapted a French speech more clumsily
than it has been done for our papers. W e
subjoin a literal translation :

“ Gentlemen,

“ I am charmed to meet you again.
When we separated, you were_ so kind as to
express your entire satisfaction with the
marriage I told you I had then in view for
my son, the Duke of Brabant. I need not
inform you that the match has since come
off, because I do not suppose yon will easily
forget the portentous (effroyable) disturb-
ance we made about it. But you will be
happy to hear that I have taken Mary
Henrietta of Austria and her husband
over to England, and that our charming
friend and relative Queen Victoria
was quite pleased with the bride, and considers Brabant a fortunate
young fellow.

“ It is, I hope, unnecessary for me to say that it was not merely, or
chiefly, to introduce a young wife to a young matron that I endured
the perilous voyage from Ostend to Portsmouth. You will do your
King more justice.

“Allied with the House of Austria, I found in that marriage the
strongest reason why my voice should be heard in England at a
conjuncture (crise) when Austria needed an advocate there. But this
is not all. You know how long and how sedulously I have laboured
to get the Emperor Nicholas to accredit an ambassador from Russia
to Belgium. His Majesty has, for years, disdained my request with
Northern haughtiness (fierteJ, but, either for reasons of mine or his
own, he has at last accorded the favour. Since that boon, it is well
known to you that Russia has had only to ask and to have in Belgium.
I was therefore doubly bound to undertake my English mission, charged
as I was with the interests of Austria and of Russia.

“ That the Prince Consort of England and myself retired into the
shooting field together—for the Sovereign of England has a certain
straightforwardness (droiture) which makes it difficult to urge diplo-
matic considerations in her hearing—you may have learned. If I
alluded to the danger which might accrue to Saxe Gotha in the event
of Russia, Austria, and Prussia not regarding its princes as their
friends, I am sure the august sportsman to whom I addressed such a
speculation will not have listened to me in vain. The friends of Mary
Henrietta and of our newly-arrived ambassador have no reason to be
dissatisfied with the effect I produced.

“ I may therefore felicitate you. Gentlemen, and myself, on the
perfect concord which exists between Russia, Austria, Saxe Gotha, and
Belgium, and I am glad to add that the aged and accomplished prime
minister of England, the good Aberdeen, fully concurs in the
sentiments of those four powers.

“ Details of your own finance and other topics affecting yourselves
will be supplied by my Ministers, but I could not refrain from
personally informing you of the quadruple alliance which I, and our
charming Mary Henrietta, have done so much to cement, and which
I trust you will remember should we ask for any little addition to the
estimates.

“ That the blessing of, &c.”

THE “ GOD OP RUSSIA.”

Nicholas is the acknowledged deity of the Muscovites. A god
standing six feet lour in his sacied stockings. The manner in which
he recruits his army to carry on his Holy Wars is very celestial.
Sometimes he causes his angelic Cossacks to surround a boys’ school
and carry off the scholars, promoting them from the birch to the knout,
in one particular case two boys, one 12 and the other 14, were carried
away, their old grandmother of 85 raising her hands, doubtless in
prayer lor the Cod ol Russia. Who can doubt the Christianity of an
Emperor, who is at once the heart and soul of such a system ? Poor
fellow. In his last proclamation he says “ He has been goaded into
war by the Porte.” Goaded is the word. Only think of the nasty

red-wattled turkey gobbling at and goading a poor, harmless, innocent
bear ! We shall next have the Christian dove pecking out the eyes of
the twin-headed eagle.

THE INNKEEPER RHYMER.

Now that every British Innkeeper clearly holds himself privileged
to take as many people in continually as his house will hold, it has be-
come a question of quite national importance how most effectually to
check their chousing. In our position of Adviser-General to the
Nation, we have of course been nationally consulted in the matter, and
we therefore feel called upon to give our readers— we mean of course
the nation—our opinion on the subject.

It being generally admitted, by everybody but themselves, that the
present system of our Innkeepers has become, like a baby, quite a crying
nuisance, we think it may most properly be dealt with in t he cradle :
and we would therefore have our rising generation early prepared for the
fleecing that awaits them. We are sure that by judicious treatment a
wholesome horror of hotels might be easily impressed upon the infant
mind. VYe would have the landlord take the place of the infantine
“ Old Bogy,” and figure in our fairy tales as the terrible old Ogre, who
lives upon the unsuspecting travellers who come to him : while in all the
juvenile editions of our Natural History he might be represented as a
species, only known in England, of the Ornithorynchus, or Beast with a
Bill. Instead of the deeds of mythic “ Eorty Thieves,” our nursemaids
should recount the rogueries of an inn; and, instead of threatening a
“ dark room ” by way of penal settlement for the fractious, they in future
might condemn them to a “ private ” one at an hotel, lit with nominal
wax candles at half-a-crown an inch. “ Reform yotir Landlord’s Bills ”
should be, of course, an early round-hand copy, and the first thing hi
the spelling-book a spell against extortion. In short, no means should
be spared to represent an hotel as a sort of inhumane mantrap, which it
is impossible to get out of without considerable bleediug.

The same wholesome warning might be given through the medium
of those senseless lyrics which are known to us, collectively, as our
Nursery Rhymes. We have long had a contempt for these unmeaning
Humpty-Bumptys, and have long considered them a national disgrace.
They were an insult to our cradlehood, and are still continually an
annoyance to our maturer ears. The proverbial wisdom of our ances-
tors is but little shown, we think, in having Handed them down to us.
It is humiliating to think that in this era of enlightenment, this present
March—or, we should rather say, November—of Intellect, such nonsense
can be tolerated. Any well-regulated baby must, we are persuaded,
feel itself disgraced by it.

In the position we hold as national benefactors, we have long been
anxious to reform these truly “nonsense verses,” and we are resolved
that when our stereotyped “ want of space ” no longer afflicts us, we
will “ seriously incline ” our pen to an attempt at their amendment.
Meanwhile, upon a subject so suggestive as the present, we can’t resist
throwing a little reason in the rhymes ; and we feel we shall be doing
the infant state some service by printing, as a specimen, our Innkeeper
Rhymer.

Air.—“ Hushaby Baby."

Chouse away, innkeeper, while you’ve the chance,

Eor you’ll very soon drive all the tourists to France :

A crown for a breakfast—eight shillings for lunch—

Pay him his bill, and expose him in Punch.

Air.—“ Ride a Cock-horse."

Dine at the Cross off steak tough as horse,

And charged at the rate of a crown for a course ;

With bills ever high, and bows ever low,

You shall have chousing wherever you go.

Air.—“ Sing a Song of Sixpence'.'

Sing a song of fleecing:

A pocket full of gold
In four-and-twenty hours

Will be quite cleaned out, I’m told.

Would you stay a fortnight,

A fortune you must bring,

Eor while they serve you like a Commoner,

They charge you like a King.

Two shillings for a cup of tea,

And sixpence more for “ honey ; ”

And however light your dinner be,

A heavy sum of money.

Half-a-crown for wax-lights.

Tallowy in smell:

So wherever you Ye admitted,

You are taken in as well.

Following the Fashion.—The French start the Fashions, and the
English follow them.