Punch: Punch (32.1857)

194

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[May 16, 1857.

HOPE FOR THE NEAPOLITANS.

The Marquess Townshend, moving the
Address, said among other things—

"Although it waa dreadful to contemplate the infamous
baibarities which were committed in Naples, the people
of this country could only look on, and trust that Pro-
vidence might see fit, in its own good time, to restrain
the excesses of the Neapolitan Government."

A trust in Providence is, doubtless, religious;
pious. " Hope," said Coleridge, and he never
said a finer thing, " is a duty;" but action is no
less a duty. If the Marquess Townshend had
a dear friend smitten with a fever, shivering with
an ague fit, it would of course be his duty to
trust for his friend's restoration to health to the
beneficence of Providence; but nevertheless, we
take it, he would not fail to send for the doctor;
who might administer pills, powders, and quinine.
Now, we take it that when we withdrew our
Ambassador, the Neapolitans expected of us
something more in their favour than our trust in
Providence. We think it in no way improbable
that they rather looked for the threatened
prescription of powder and ball and bark of
British broadsides.

Mamma. " Why, Tom ! What are you doing with that nasty Dust-pan and Broom ! "

Tom. " Brother Fred told me to bking it in and Sweep up all the H's Mrs. Mopus
had dropped about ! "—(N.B. Great Expectations from Mrs. M'.)

Convocation.

We understand that at the last performance of
i this ceremony, Mr. Charles Kean was present,
! and has resolved to reproduce it between the
third and fourth acts of Henry VIII., himself
taking the part of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
He will, with pardonable licence, introduce a
jester; though for ourselves, we think at this
time of day, the ceremony itself is quite beyond
a joke.

MARRIAGE AND ITS DIFFICULTIES.

" Mr. Punch,

" As one of the unprotected sex, allow me to say a few words
i ipon some very nice letters that have appeared in the Times upon what
I will venture to call Marriage and its Difficulties. Marriages would
be easy enough, and the difficulties none, if they were not set up by
the pride, and show, and folly of the people themselves. Whereas
how many a fair creature born for the milk of maternal kindness has
had her name written on the old maid's list in lemon-juice ? But the
great difficulty of marriage—and never was the difficulty so great, and
I must add, so wicked, as at the present time—is dress, the wife's
dress. Gowns, Mr. Punch, are at the bottom of the evil, as, if you use
your eyes—as I and all the world know you do—you cannot but see.

" Some time ago, they talked of the Prench coming over and invading
us. Mr. Punch, we have been invaded, and nobody knows what
trouble and anxiety carried among tens of thousands of people. To
be sure, we haven't had our house-tops knocked off by bomb-shells ; and
haven't had to pack dragoons into our best bed-rooms, as I have read
Napoleon always insisted upon, carrying fire and bayonets into the
bosoms of peaceful families. But I don't know if we haven't had a
much worse invasion than this ; for we've been invaded and carried
right off our feet bv the Prench Empress and an army of milliners.
Don't tell me; band-boxes may be worse than bomb-shells.

" In the first place, look how the Empress, by the manner of dressing
lujr hair, has turned the heads of EngHshwomen. With their hair
pulled so far back that they can't see even the tips of their shoes, they
look like so many half-shaven owls, only notlring half so wise. Yet
all this I could forgive, but for the Empress's petticoat that makes
every woman who wears it look like a diving bell and nothing else:
a petticoat that, when it isn't blown up with bellows—as if a woman
was no better than an omelette sovfflee—is fenced round about with
steel. I shall soon expect to see petticoats of nothing else but
woven wire, like a meat-safe. But as it is, I ask is it pretty, is it
comely, is it modest, for a woman to take to herself more than ten
times the space in the world than ever nature intended for her ? And
you will see wives and mothers do this !—Mothers, I say, of families,
with petticoats like hencoops about them. But this—this we owe
to the invasion of the Prench.

" I now come, Mr. Punch, to gowns. How is it possible that,
taking one with the other, women can afford to wear the gowns they
do? But their fathers and their husbands can't afford it; and we
know nothing of the pinching, and the misery and too often the total

destruction that, I'm sure of it, comes of this peacock love of show
with all the eyes of the world upon it. You shall see the wife of a
clerk of a couple of hundred a-year with a gown upon her back that
cost ten pounds over the counter, without the trimming. Talk of a
skeleton in the house ! How often is this skeleton drest in the wife's
gown! And it is this love of finery on the part of women that
frightens sensible men of moderate means from having anything to do
with them. And then you shall hear women complain that they are
not, as they call it, intellectually considered! With some of them,
if I were a man, I should as soon think of the intellect of a humming-
bird—the brains of a parrot. But this love of fine feathers has
become such amaduess that, as I once heard the Rev. Mr. Mannalips
declare, there are some women who would rather go to Pandemonium
in full dress than to Paradise in a gingham.

" And it is this desire for show, this stupid cowardice, that has
yielded to the Prench invasion, that makes many of the difficulties of
marriage. Oh, Mr. Punch, when shall I see anything like the sim-
plicity of my youth, when the sweet English face was clustered_ about
by curls, and the pretty creature looked so pure and happy in her
modest gown of white muslin and her quiet little cottage bonnet of
chip, and on her head, besides ? Tell me when I shall see tins, and
you will make entirely happy

" Your constant reader,

" Jane Matilda"

A British Nursery Rhyme.

Suggested by the late Proceedings in Bankruptcy.

Humphry so glumpy obeyed the Court's call,
And the song he there sang was exceedingly small:
Now all the Queen's Counsel, with tongue or with pen,
Couldn't bring back to Humphry his good name agam.

A Yankee Vatican.

The Mormons regard Brigham Young as the successor of Joe
Smith, and Joe Smith as the vicegerent of Heaven. It would be an
interesting question to propound to a rapping spirit, whether Mor-
monism will, or not, ever become a great ecclesiastical organisation,
and, if it does, whether the United States will not one of these days,
have to conclude a Concordat with Utah *