Punch (36.1859)

May 28, 1859.]

211

LESSON FOR LOVERS.

A Wife to make you happy ?
Soft young man,
Dismiss that hope with all

the speed you can.
The greatest happiness of

married life
Is trying, not in vain, to
please a wife.

Most men, content to try

and not succeed,
The will must render happy

for the deed;
The lady's sighs, not smiles,

requite her lord.
And Love, like Virtue, is
its own reward.

A Late Summer. —
With such a very wet and
cold May, how can any
one be surprised at the
backwardness of July
(Gyulai) ?

THE POLITE NOVELIST.

Our. excellent old friend, the Standard, whose youth is renewed like
a beadle's, shares, with the rest of the Penny Press, the provincial
fault of admitting quantities of correspondence of the most anile and
twaddling kind. Like children, our Penny friends are proud of
receiving a letter, no matter what is in it; and the correspondents of
the Cheap Press are, generally speaking, awful Pumps. But there are
occasional exceptions, and in the Standard, the other day, there
appeared a letter, signed J. C. Hodgson, 13, Durham Street, Scar-
borough, which seems to us to demand the most respectful attention.

It is headed, "A Hint to our Novel Writers," and is an amiable
protest against the practice pursued by certain writers of fiction, in
making the uneducated personages of their stories talk as uneducated
personages do, instead of elevating their diction into purity and
elegance. Our friend (for Mr. Punch, who is always improving every-
body, is the ex officio friend of all philanthropists) must be permitted to
speak in his own delicate way:—

" Sir,—Allow me in your judiciously Conservative and valuable paper, to call the
attention of those novel writers who wish to improve the public taste, and inculcate
a pure and undented mode of speaking in conversation, to the mistaken views they
entertain as to the way of accomplishing this. Let me in all respect tell those gen-
tlemen, that representing the language as it is commonly spoken among the poorer
and uneducated classes is not the most happy way. It may show considerable
ingenuity on the part of the author, but it also shows bad taste, and can only assist
to keep the illiterate and inelegant talker illiterate and inelegant still, by adminis-
tering no corrective, flattering his foibles of speech, and leaving him iu the mire of
his ignorance and lingual imperfection, instead of transmuting the vile elements
that debase his tongue into good matter, that may minister unto edification and
wisdom, by presenting to his Lips the pure and invigorating waters of a refined and
graceful diction."

Surely nothing can be more truly elegant than this passage, and its
logic must carry conviction to every right-minded writer. Why—
but we despair to improve upon the censor:—

" Why not, unlike the author of Adam Bide and many beside him, put such lan-
guage as ought to be spoken into the mouths of characters, whose conversation is
naturally barbarouu and defective, instead of depicting it in all its hideousness and
deformity to the detriment of every reader, whether educated or not—the former it
imperceptibly leavens, the latter it saturates ? Better Grandisonian elegance than

with its mud ? He himself is so convinced that Hodgson is right,
that, by way of supporting that gentleman's arguments by example,
Mr. Punch will somewhat prematurely give to the world an extract
from a novel with which he has been retained, at the sum of £1,000 per
week, to entrance the world, through the columns of a penny journal
of fiction. Por the purposes of the story, it has been necessary to
describe the home of one of the drivers of those vehicles which
inhabitants of the metropolis may engage at a limited stipend, calcu-
lated on the lapse of time or the conquest of distance; and this
conversation, framed on the Hodgsonian principle, takes place :—

" Depositing upon the couch, with some irritation of manner, the
well worn instrument wherewith he was accustomed to stimulate to
rapidity the energies of his reluctant quadruped, William the Omni-
vorous (coarsely called among his equals Gluttony Bill) demanded the
mid-day repast.

"Exacerbation might have been detected in the tone in which the
feminine partner of his life and cares apprised him that his demand
was premature.

" ' You are not more deficient than myself, William,' she said, 'in
the power of ascertaining, by a glance at the dial, how far the day has
advanced; and that consultation will show you that fifteen minutes
have yet to elapse before the sun is at its meridian, the appointed hour
of banquet.'

" ' What I now require, Sarah,' responded the omnivorous one, 'is,
not a statement from your lips, but viands to pass between my own.'

"'And may I ask,' returned the undaunted Sarah, 'whether it be
your desire to receive what you wish for at the present moment, or to
delay until the same be placed before you ?'

"'I would not have you unmindful,' said her stern lord, 'that
unguarded language on your part has, at no more distant date than
the recently passed evening, eventuated in manual remonstrance on
mine, and that what has once occurred is capable of repetition.'

" 'There is no need to apprise me,' replied Mrs. William, 'that the
vice which the ancient Spartans deemed more disgraceful than any
other (need I name cowardice) is not without its antetype under this
roof; but I may add that, upon the present occasion, the ironmonger's
art has furnished me with a means of defence, with which your
phrenological developments will, upon provocation, become unfavour-
ably connected.'

The stern man smiled.

" ' Courage,' he said, 'commands my regard; and I should state that
which is irreconcileable with truth, did I deny that you, Sarah, are,
fundamentally, a favourable specimen of the genus woman.'

"In the cot, as in the palace, woman's heart ever vibrates to the
words of kindness, even as the iEolian harp whispers sweetness to the
kiss of the wandering wind of heaven. In a moment she was sobbing
on his manly bosom.

" But their happiness was as brief as the life of a dew-drop on the
spangled spray, for the next instant an outcry as of pain was heard,
and the faithful Tilburina, the feline guardian of the household (play-
fully christened ' Tib' by the abbreviating fondness of its infantine
members) sprung with a bound from her resting-place, hissing and
spitting as vehemently as the contents of the domestic utensil left by
the affectionate wife to its fate, while she sought her rest on the
heart of her husband.

"' May my place in a future state of existence be other than
Paradisaical,' said he, with a smile, ' if those condemned Hibernian
roots are not escaping from ebullition.' "

And so on. Mr. Punch lias strong thoughts of dedicating his novel
to Mr. Hodgson, of Scarborough.

ENTERTAINMENT IN HIGH LIPE.
The Bight Honourable Sir John Paklngton, M.P., and tiie

iui(ioit;cpuuiv leavens, une latter it saturates : i>etter uraiiuisomaii elegance tnun -y-,. , . Tx ~ i , r, , r n l .1 1 *,

• pre-Raphaelite' barbarity! Better a work of pure ideality than a ' faithful por-1 Right Honourable General Peel, M.P., have recently entertained the
trait ' of the times, a corrupt photographic reality, with ail its tattered aud many j Bight Honourable SlR JaMES GliAHAME, M.P., at dinner.

habiliments hanging about it-a scarecrow to humanity ! " The Bill of Pare was strictly to the taste of the eloquent and

ingenuous Member, and consisted:—

First Course—Of a Pretty Kettle of Pisli of the Honourable Baronet's
own catching, in the Eamont, near Carlisle.

After a little additional touching expostulation to the same effect,
our friend Hodgson bestows a kick upon Sam Stick and Sam Welter, and
remarks that their style is calculated " to propagate and perpetuate
a lingual and moral darkness that may be felt." By a darkness that
may be "felt," he does not mean a black hat, but an Egyptian
obscurity. And he adds, that even if the editor of the Standard
"demurs to the severity" of this criticism, Hodgson trusts that
"insertion will not be refused." Insertion, we are happy to say, was
not refused.

Mr. Punch,—who is the soul of euphuism and elegance, and who
has never from the first day of his birth to the present hour ever set
oue of his diamonds of thoughts except in the purest gold of words,—
can have no kind of objection to the doctrine propounded by his friend
Hodgson. Why should we not all be polite and graceful? Why-
should wc smear our pages with the talk of the streets any more than

Removed by Humble Pie, and followed by entrees the Bight Honour-
able Baronet's cv:u vsords, which were eaten with that hearty appetite
which the Honourable Baronet never fails to bring to this, his favourite,
dish.

"That's the Way the Money Goes!"

" Wull ! I'll wote fur the Karnel, fur he's a man o' mettle!"
exclaimed a free and independent elector of East Suffolk. "Ah, yes ! "
said his canvasser, " The Colonel, as you say, is no doubt a man of
mettle: but here," slapping his breeches pocket, "here is 'metal more
attractive V "