Punch: Punch (33.1857)

41 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [August 1, 1S57.

THE ROUND HAT AT A REVIEW.

Officer {blandly, but with firmness). "We must trouble you, if you please, Ladies, to take your Hats off. The Gentlemen

behind complain that they can't see."

THE SOCIAL TREADMILL. No. 12. ^ a musical party ! These four hundred bored blase, over-heated

over-crowded, sunerers—and at the upper end 01 tiie room that knot
" From my own social experience I should be inclined to say that of dark-whiskered, blue-chinned, black-moustached, short-cropped men
' a little music '—like ' a little knowledge '—is ' a dangerous thing.' —looking like the lately discharged cargo of a continental convict-ship
1 suppose we shall all agree that of the many varieties of the evening- —and that cluster of hard-featured, hollow-eyed, foreign women
partv-punishment, none can well be more severe than that to which entrenched behind the rampart of an Erard's or Broadwood s grand
one is sentenced by a card, with the apparently innocent word pianoforte, much bethumped by the long-haired Teutonic or Gallic, or
'Music' at the bottom of it. Let me enumerate the different in-, Italian accompanyist, at a pound for the evening, and refreshments!
ructions of social torture included in this insidious dissyllable. | No, you deceive yourself, Mr. Bull. This is not music. YUat

"Imprimis. It means crowding four hundred people, of both sexes musical appreciation there may be m this audience—what musical
and all ages, into a space sufficient to accommodate about half the utterance there may be in the soul, or throat or fingers of these
number. I vocalists or instrumentalists—finds no outlet m this place under these

"Secondly. It means that all these four hundred unfortunates are to conditions. The man who bought Punch from the puppet-show-man
be planted in chairs, so placed, that not one of the four hundred can and thought he would squeak, and speak, and break everybody s head,
get un without disturbing all the rest—Like Wordsworth's cloud, the without the ingenious artist m the show-box, was not more out in
mass must ' move all together, if it move at all.' nis calculation than my Lord Duke or Drearycourt, or His Grace

" Thirdly. It means, either, enduring trash vocal or crash instru- THE Marquis of Cararas, or Mr. Moneypenny, the great City
mental, which it is pure waste of time, and degradation of human cars, capitalist, when he hires Herr Blausenbalg, and Signor Squal-
to listen to, or, lini, and Signora Danari Guadagna, at ten guineas per song, m the

"■Fourthly. Hearing sweet melodies and noble harmonies under con-! expectation of getting music out of them. These people have a con

ditions of discomfort and distraction, which utterly destroy the
exquisiteness of the one, and the grandeur of the other.
"Fifthly. It means conversation prevented.

"Sixthly. It means confining one's view of the ladies to their back

tempt for their magnificent employer, as they sit there, in their scorn-
ful isolation, behind the grand piano. Their music ought to translate
itself—both for them and for you—into the clink of sovereigns. 'Sing
a Song of Sixpence,' is the motto of both employers and employed.

hair, or the floral and leguminous ornaments which embellish the They g|,ve tlieir notes in exchange for yours. Hear them talk of
female nuqve now-a-days. England; they are at no pains to conceal their contempt for every

" Seventhly. It implies, in nine cases out of ten, an insufferable thinS in and about the country,—but its guineas; and you have no
displav either of amateur impudence, or artistic mediocrity. j nght to blame them. You buy their songs, just as you buy your pine-

" Eighthly. It shows John Bull in some of his most offensive 1 apples, and your plate and your pictures : because opera-singers and

phases of snobbishness, and purse-pride.
"Ninthly. It is tedious
" Tenthly. It is costly

pine-apples, and plate and pictures, are types and symbols of wealth
and consequence.

There have been times when England was musical. But they

And to conclude, it encourages bad music; keeps up the mis- came long before the epoch of operas, and ' nobility's concerts,' and
chievous delusion that the English are a musical nation; and brings over ( ' musical evenings.' Those were the daj's of good Queen Bess, when
annually to these shores a set of impudent and incapable pretenders, \ scarce a man or woman, high or low, but could bear a part in glee or
a divine art, and laugh at the British beard. Music ! I madrigal or part-song—when in manor, and farm, and village aleiouse,