Punch (37.1859)

October 29, 1859.]

179

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VISIBLE ORATORY.

Ever anxious as we are to promote the peace of mind and happiness
of everybody, and do our utmost to remove the nuisances which worry
- them, it delights us to announce that we have hit upon a plan by
which perhaps the greatest bore in England may be extirpated.. We
allude, as the intelligent of course will have surmised, to the nuisance
of political and other public speaking. Any reasonable mode by which
the parliamentary debates may be contracted, and orators in general be
indueed to “ cut it short,” must certainly be deemed a boon and
blessing to the nation; and this it is now happily within our power to
■confer.

• We propose then, that in future all our public speakers (with the
exception of Lord Brougham and some three others worth the listening
to) shall when they get upon their legs in St. Stephens or elsewhere,
■have permission only to express themselves by pantomime. Like
Mendelssohn’s delicious Lieder ohne Worte, public speeches shall be
■henceforth speeches without words. In Parliament or out of it, with
the exception we have mentioned, any orator who wishes to express
his sentiments, must submit to have his tongue tied, or else to wear a
-silence-cap. To prevent untoward utterance, the Cuffia di Silenzio,
invented lor King Bomba, shall be kept in every room where public
■speaking is permitted. Not to be confounded with an instrument of
torture, the head-piece shall be called the Cap of Maintenance of
Peace. In either house of Parliament muscular debates shall be the
■order of the day, and, in sittings after nightfall, the order of the night.
The only oratory suffered shall be Visible Oratory. “No speaking
aloud ” shall be the first rule of the Speaker. Any rising Member
: will be ordered to sit down if a syllable escapes him. No matter who

is on his legs, if he says but half a word he will at once have to get off:
them. He must address himself in speaking to the eye and not the !
■ear. To be visible, not .audible, must limit his ambition.

There may be a question with weakly-minded people, and perhaps still
'more a doubt with weakly-bodied ones, whether the suggestions we have
made can be adopted, seeing that most orators would find it too exhaus-
tive for them. It might be argued, and with certainly some slight show
-of reason, that few gentlemen of England who dine at home at ease, and
By dint of their good living can scarcely see their knees, would be able
to sustain a leading part in a debate, where the only mode of argument
■was physical exertion. There are, doubtless, many orators of great
j 'weight in the House who would soon be overcome in a muscular
■debate, and find themselves unequal to much pantomimic speaking.
We know several standing counsel who would soon have to sit down,
if bodily contortions were their only mode of utterance. Were visible
oratory the rule at public meetings, speakers even with fall heads
«ould never make much use of them, the while they had full habits.
Their pinguitude, of course, would put a stopper on their panto-
mime, and they would always have to give in to their slimmer-limbed
| 'antagonists.

A few words will, however, serve to answer these objections. When
-surplus fat is found to be an obstacle to oratory, there are abundant
•means at hand to lessen or remove it. By simply taking exercise and
altering his diet, a Daniel Lambert who aspires to come out as a
Demosthenes, may in a month or two, at most, attain the height of
>his ambition. Until he makes the effort, he scarcely would believe what
wonders may be worked by a judicious course of training. Total
abstinence from turtle and the like enriching condiments, and a regu-
lation diet of unvarying cold mutton, would do marvels in reducing his
rotundity of body, and bring him down with speed into good speaking
j condition.

Moreover, some degree of latitude might in fairness be accorded
to such overburdened orators, as a balance to the weight of
j -solid flesh they labour under. It would be easy to devise a sliding-
-scale of breathing-time, to be allowed them in proportion to their
| -surplus ponderosity. For every half stone or so beyond a certain
weight, an extra thirty seconds might be reasonably given them.
They would thus be relieved from undue pressure on their lungs, and
be placed more on a footing with their leaner-bodied rivals.

So few public speakers now-a-days say anything worth hearing, that
■it will be no great loss to any one if they are stopped from saying any-
thing at all. On the contrary, indeed, we think that our suggestion, if
1 ■rightly carried out, will occasion no small gain to our countrymen in
general. So much time now is wasted in reading stupid speeches,

| which for want of something better get stuck into the newspapers,
i that the prevention of such waste would be a national advantage, in
the benefit of which all Great (and little) Britons to a certainty would
•share. If the Times were daily published without a single speech in it,

4 how many persons would be spared the task of useless reading, and
■what a saving there would therein be of unproductive labour. Deports
of visible orations might always be confined to half a dozen sentences,
by which some notion of the pantomime might be sufficiently con-
veyed. Let the meditative mind but consider what time-saving this
would nationally occasion, and the meditative mind will very probably
agree with us, in determining that wre who are the authors of the

notion will certainly thereby have done the State great service, and
will deserve a no small public recognition of the fact.

Admitting our deserts, we, howrever, must decline to have them
nationally recognised. Testimonials and statues are now the only
methods of rewarding public merit, and these have grown so common
that anvbody anywhere may have them for the asking. However
vastly therefore we may benefit our country, we trust that nobody will
publicly take notice of the fact; for as we have little wish to rank
among the Anybodies, we mean to keep ourselves from being buttered
or bestatued, however great the risk we weekly run of being so.

TREE DOM TOR THE POPISH PRESS.

My Ally and big Brother, Napoleon tiie Third,

Why silence the Ultrarnontanes ?

Let them say what they please; let them print every word:

We owe them great thanks for their pains.

Wrould you hinder the viper from hissing, and lack
The hint to beware of its trail ?

Or stifle the.howling of wolves on your track ?

Let the'friars and Jesuits rail!

Let tigers grin wide as they please .; let them show
Their fangs ; let them growl: it is good.

Their sweet dispositions they thus let us know,

. And what they would do if they could.

If the priests spoke not out, and so kept us awrake,

To the top of the tree they might wind,

And once more burn people alive at the stake,

As men did when their Church ruled Man’s mind.

So let Veuillot rave on as I suffer MTTale,

And allow frantic Cullen his fling.

I say, let the rattlesnake rattle its tail.

And warn us ’tis ready to sting.

Give them all rope enough, and their own necks they ’ll stretch.
Their own weasands morally close,

And save us the need of employing Jack Ketch,

Which treason, in act, might impose.

ODORITEROUS PLANTS ON BOW COMMON.

Mr. Croll’s Metropolitan Aluru Works, on Bow Common, have
escaped abatement as a nuisance by reason that they are only one
great nuisance among a variety of greater nuisances. The operation
in which the plant of Me, Croll is concerned is the extract ion of alum
from the refuse liquor of gas-works. In yielding alum, the gas-liquor
gives off an insufferable stench, insomuch that Mr. Croll’s neighbours
pulled him up in the person of his attorney before Mr. Yardley the
other day, averring, by their own advocate, that really there were such
nasty smells that came from the Metropolitan Alum Works, that, they
must beg the Magistrate to deodorise them by the arm of the law. In
the same way that, a gentleman of colour pleaded that an unpleasant-
ness with which he was personally chargeable, was not so bad as that
acquired by a certain white person in the exercise of a particular calling,
Mr. Croll defended the effluvia of his own works by those of adjoining
establishments ; and he got off for the present.

But, as the case may be carried to the Court above, it may be advisable
for Mr. Croll to take any measures that he can to compel any and all
complainants to stay proceedings. There is a plan that he might
adopt with that view which would more than satisfy those troublesome
parties. Erom the very liquor out, of which he gets alum attended
with foul exhalations, Chemistry is capable of extracting the most
exquisite scents. Let him combine Perfume-Works with Alum-Works
and thus diffuse around his vicinity a sweet savour which shall over-
power all offensive emanations. The surrounding inhabitants will then
no longer be under the necessity of stopping either his works or their
noses, and, instead of being poisoned by sulphurous acid or sulphuretted
hydrogen, will be only ready to die in aromatic pain of fragrance more
delicious than that of llondeletia or Kiss-Me-Quick.

Pop goes the Emperor.

Lombardy', birthplace of pawnbrokers, is now herself in pawn.
Austria has advanced ten millions, English, upon her. Mr. Punch is
horribly afraid that poor Lombardvywill be an addition to the number
of his friend Louis Napoleon’s Unredeemed Pledges.

a thought that struck us on the leg on the boulevards.

“By JoY'e, French women were fair enough before; but now, ever
since this abominable Crinoline came in, they are not even passable /”