DOI Heft:
February 5, 1859
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16623#0062
5i
[February 5, 1859.
GRANB BURNS' FESTIVAL.—BROWN ENTERTAINS HIS FRIENB WT A HAGGIS
LINES ON AN AUSPICIOUS EVENT.
Our Princess, and Prussia's, lias got a fine boy,
And two nations are shouting "Hooray! "
Can't our Laureate express in a poem our joy ?
Is there nothing at all he can say ?
Let us try, then. Sing, Albert is now a Grandsire,
Come, none of your gibes and your taunts ;
Our Princes are Uncles ; Princesses acquire,
How jolly ! the title of Aunts.
Ping the bells, fire the guns, light the lamps, let the gas
Into day turn the night of our towns;
For the happy event which has just come to pass
Will unite two great Protestant crowns.
Oil! blest is the Uncle, with years who unbent
Hears his nephew saluted as "Pa."
A Great Grandmother now is the Duchess of Kent,
And the Queen—think of that—Grandmamma!
WOMAN FOPt EVER !
" So, Mr. Punch, it is a woman who has carried off the prize for the
Burns' Centenary Ode ! Your facetious rhymester of last week, in his
ribald ballad on this subject, did not anticipate this result when lie
wound up one of his ridiculous fyttes, as he calls them.—He is quite
right to throw himself into fits, for I am sure he will not throw his
readers—with the insolent words, applied to the expected winner of
'That's the Max!" You see what comes of it directly the woman
has a fair chance. Here the competition was anonymous. No 'Mr.,'
or/Mrs.,' or 'Miss,'—no Christian names, to betray the sex of the
writers and pervert the minds of the judges. Of course the successful
competitor is a woman- and more than this, I am glad to hear that two
out of the five second-best poems are by toymen also. I beg to say, that
I did not compete myself; but if Iliad done so, I see no reason to doubt
that, if I had not borne off the prize, I should have been found with my
two sisters, in the rank immediately after the first.
"I am quite prepared for a flood of far-fetched ribaldry on the occa-
sion in your own pages. I know we shall be told,
" And dark as winter was the flow
Of ha rolling rapidly; "
Or we may, perhaps, have the ' deaf as Ailsa Craig,' from Burns'
Duncan Grey turned into some ingenious jingle of ' Deaf as Lsa
Craig,' in allusion to the magnanimous backwardness in coming for-
ward exhibited by my modest and gifted sister. I am delighted
to see that she sets your sex another example, by the admirable
way in which she discharges the duties of Assistant Secretary to the
Sociological Association,—a body to which I myself have the honour
to belong, though they did not think proper to print my essay_ on
Woman's Rights and Woman's Wrongs in the publication of the Birming-
ham Transactions of the Society, and this, notwithstanding that I had
condensed my views on the subject into a compass that could not much
have exceeded 200 octavo pages of close type. I should like to know
what salary my gifted sister receives for her services, and how much she
does of the Secretary's work.
"I feel doubly the triumph of our sex, in that it has been won in
doing honour to a bard, who, whatever his errors and imprudences, had
a proper esteem for woman, and has left an impressive record of this in
the lines—more read and quoted than practically recognised by the
Lords of the creation:—
" His prentice ban' he tried on man,
And then he made the lasses, oh ! "
"I know it will be said that the poet referred only to our outward
beauties in this couplet; but I have yet to learn that literature is
incompatible with proper attention to dress and looks. Your artist
seems to take a mean and malicious pleasure in always representing
what he would call 'strong-minded women' as plain and dowdy. It is
clear that his experience has been -unfortunate. I would take the liberty
of enclosing a likeness of myself, in proof of my assertion that literature
and looks are not mutually destructive, but 1 forbear, fearing the mis-
construction which newspaper editors, like the rest of their sex, never
lose an opportunity of putting upon the conduct and motives of women.
" I have the honour to be, Sir, your faithful servant,
" Thalestris Hardlines."
[February 5, 1859.
GRANB BURNS' FESTIVAL.—BROWN ENTERTAINS HIS FRIENB WT A HAGGIS
LINES ON AN AUSPICIOUS EVENT.
Our Princess, and Prussia's, lias got a fine boy,
And two nations are shouting "Hooray! "
Can't our Laureate express in a poem our joy ?
Is there nothing at all he can say ?
Let us try, then. Sing, Albert is now a Grandsire,
Come, none of your gibes and your taunts ;
Our Princes are Uncles ; Princesses acquire,
How jolly ! the title of Aunts.
Ping the bells, fire the guns, light the lamps, let the gas
Into day turn the night of our towns;
For the happy event which has just come to pass
Will unite two great Protestant crowns.
Oil! blest is the Uncle, with years who unbent
Hears his nephew saluted as "Pa."
A Great Grandmother now is the Duchess of Kent,
And the Queen—think of that—Grandmamma!
WOMAN FOPt EVER !
" So, Mr. Punch, it is a woman who has carried off the prize for the
Burns' Centenary Ode ! Your facetious rhymester of last week, in his
ribald ballad on this subject, did not anticipate this result when lie
wound up one of his ridiculous fyttes, as he calls them.—He is quite
right to throw himself into fits, for I am sure he will not throw his
readers—with the insolent words, applied to the expected winner of
'That's the Max!" You see what comes of it directly the woman
has a fair chance. Here the competition was anonymous. No 'Mr.,'
or/Mrs.,' or 'Miss,'—no Christian names, to betray the sex of the
writers and pervert the minds of the judges. Of course the successful
competitor is a woman- and more than this, I am glad to hear that two
out of the five second-best poems are by toymen also. I beg to say, that
I did not compete myself; but if Iliad done so, I see no reason to doubt
that, if I had not borne off the prize, I should have been found with my
two sisters, in the rank immediately after the first.
"I am quite prepared for a flood of far-fetched ribaldry on the occa-
sion in your own pages. I know we shall be told,
" And dark as winter was the flow
Of ha rolling rapidly; "
Or we may, perhaps, have the ' deaf as Ailsa Craig,' from Burns'
Duncan Grey turned into some ingenious jingle of ' Deaf as Lsa
Craig,' in allusion to the magnanimous backwardness in coming for-
ward exhibited by my modest and gifted sister. I am delighted
to see that she sets your sex another example, by the admirable
way in which she discharges the duties of Assistant Secretary to the
Sociological Association,—a body to which I myself have the honour
to belong, though they did not think proper to print my essay_ on
Woman's Rights and Woman's Wrongs in the publication of the Birming-
ham Transactions of the Society, and this, notwithstanding that I had
condensed my views on the subject into a compass that could not much
have exceeded 200 octavo pages of close type. I should like to know
what salary my gifted sister receives for her services, and how much she
does of the Secretary's work.
"I feel doubly the triumph of our sex, in that it has been won in
doing honour to a bard, who, whatever his errors and imprudences, had
a proper esteem for woman, and has left an impressive record of this in
the lines—more read and quoted than practically recognised by the
Lords of the creation:—
" His prentice ban' he tried on man,
And then he made the lasses, oh ! "
"I know it will be said that the poet referred only to our outward
beauties in this couplet; but I have yet to learn that literature is
incompatible with proper attention to dress and looks. Your artist
seems to take a mean and malicious pleasure in always representing
what he would call 'strong-minded women' as plain and dowdy. It is
clear that his experience has been -unfortunate. I would take the liberty
of enclosing a likeness of myself, in proof of my assertion that literature
and looks are not mutually destructive, but 1 forbear, fearing the mis-
construction which newspaper editors, like the rest of their sex, never
lose an opportunity of putting upon the conduct and motives of women.
" I have the honour to be, Sir, your faithful servant,
" Thalestris Hardlines."