Punch (43.1862)

November 15, 1862.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.


Mrs. N. (unheeding). And after what you confessed at Brighton of the
state of your affairs, I felt that it was not for two of us, Henry, to be
spending money in travelling and at hotels. If you require that costly
recreation, it is for your wife to make up for it by economy and self-
denial.

Mr. M. If you can spoil my holiday, either when with you or without
you, Maria, you do. Had 1 the slightest wish to ..shorten your
sea-visit ?

Mrs. N'. (in hopeless resignation). I—don’t—know, but you took the
most direct means to do it. You must be out of your senses to think
that I should be staying at the Bedford while you are living, at the
Louvre. That is indeed what you would, I suppose, call igniting the
candle at each extremity.

Mr. If. The Louvre ! You might as well say that I had been at the
Tuileries. We went to a quiet third class bachelor hotel behind the
Opera Comique, and dined at three francs. I saved so much upon the
Brighton week that I actually bought you a ring with the surplus.

Mrs. N. As I detest Palais Royal jewellery, perhaps you will get rid
of it in some other way. I am not quite a baby, to be insulted for a
week, and then to have my mouth stopped with a piece of paste.

Mr. N. What do you mean by insulted, Mrs. Naggleton ?

Mrs. If. What I say. A man who leaves his wife under a false
pretence that he is going to town for the night, and then skulks off to
Paris without giving her the chance of accompanying him, may not be
the sort of person to understand that he insults her, but if he has any
respectable friends he had better ask their opinion. I could see what
■Captain and Mrs. Silverdale thought about it, though they had too
much good taste to say anything.

Mr. N. Captain Silverdale’s opinion of what is due to a woman is
certainly valuable, for his first wife had to sue him for maintenance.

Mrs. N. The mind that delights in the reproduction of forgotten
scandals must be indeed low, but I suppose such information is part of
the advantages of your bachelor travelling. . I

Mr. N. Yes, and another part is my having been absent for a week
from the grating, grating influence of your incessant reproaches.

Mrs. N. Do not say that word, Henry. The time for reproaching
you has long gone by—we reproach only where we hope to impress.
Sometimes in self-defence against unjust charges, I may venture on a
word, but it is met with a violence which makes me shudder, and it is j
but seldom that I risk it.

Mr. W. I never used a violent expression to you in all my life, but
by Jove, if you can’t see that it would make any fellow angry.to get no
answer to his letters, and be made, run up and down to Brighton for
nothing-

Mrs. If. What is the fare to Brighton and back ?

Mr. N. It isn’t that, and you know it, a sovereign is nothing, but—

Mrs. If. Stop the amount out of the next cheque you give me
for my housekeeping, and please say no more about it. I will gladly
sacrifice some little personal comfort for the sake of a cessation of
attack.

Mr. N. Such a cruel and unfair speech requires no answer.

Mrs. N. Being neither cruel nor unfair, it admits of none. How long
have you been home ?

Mr. N. Above two hours.

Mrs. If. And what train did you go down to Brighton by ?

Mr. N. The three o’clock.

Mrs. If. Ah! Then with all your hurry you managed to stay and
dine at the Bedford, and I hope you enjoyed yourself. Perhaps you
took Mr. Windham Wareham, and treated him, out of gratitude for
his taking care of you at the Louvre.

Mr. N. I repeat, Mrs. Naggleton, that I never set my foot in the
Louvre, and as for dinner, I had had nothing to eat since an exceedingly
bad breakfast at Boulogne.

Mrs. N. Pray don’t apologise to me. If I ever petition against the
squandering of money I am instantly silenced by a fierce reminder that
it is you who earn it. I suppose that the children will be brought up,
or dragged up, some way, though I suppose I ought not to mention
the children to a father who comes home and never even asks after
•them.

Mr. N. As if I had not seen them all two hours ago, while their
mother was diverting herself at a ball.

Mrs. N. You don’t mean that you have been cruel enough to disturb
them at this time of night. Are you wild ?

Mr. N. (triumphantly). The fact was you woke them all up with your
ringing bells and calling servants, while you were getting ready to go
out at eleven, instead of going to bed as you ought to have done, and
they were all alive and rejoiced to see me. Also, they were good enough
not to reject some little things I brought them over.

Mrs. If. {seriously enraged). Upon my word, Henry., you do not
deserve to have children. I declare I never heard of anything so
wantonly wicked in the whole course of my life.

Mr. If. Rather a strong expression, considering that you read the
papers.

Mrs. N. Don’t tell me, I don’t believe that there is a single father in
the whole district of the Seven Dials who, to gratify his own selfishness,

would rush in and wake up a set of poor little children in their first
sleep.

Mr. If. Ha! ha! No, my dear, not their first, but waiting for what
would have been their second, if their mother had been a little less noisy
in her eagerness to go out and dance among the other young people.

Mrs. N. It may be enough answer to your coarseness to say that I
have not danced the whole evening.

Mr. If. l am glad that you—or partners—had so much sense of the
fitness ot things. I trust that you made a good supper.

Mrs. If. Yes, for, Mr. Snotchley knows howto give a good supper,
and is neither profuse or niggardly in the wrong place. He considers
that half his guests are ladies, and arranges for their comfort, instead of
thinking mainly of providing his male friends with the means of taking
too much. It was a beautiful supper, and though its merits would have
been lost upon you, I wished you had been there to take example from
Mr. Snotchley how to attend to everybody.

Mr. If. Ah ! dear man, and it is the more to his credit, as everybody
makes a point of not attending to him when he gets on liis legs.

Mrs. N. If you mean that he is too much of a gentleman to conde-
scend to retail jokes, and to repeat prepared buffoonery, you are right:
he has mixed in the best society.

Mr. N. Mixed what F Punch, or only grog? I know he was some-
thing in some Swell’s household.

Mrs. If. He was tutor to an Earl and a Viscount.

Mr. If. I never expected to feel so much pity for the aristocracy.

Mrs. If. You may sneer, but ladies know how to distinguish between
vulgar smartness and the highbred pleasantness of one who has moved
in good circles. A lady near me said that Mr. Snotchley’s manner
reminded her very much of the Bishoe oe Oxford.

Mr. N. I don’t know why it shouldn’t, for Snotchley’s father was a
soap-boiler.

Mrs. Naggleton considers for a moment, and then the effect of this
climax of irreverence and vulgarity is too much for her, and she retires
hastily, i

Mr. If. (enjoying his vile victory). Well, the idea of likening that
platitudinous ass to a splendid fellow like Saponaceous Samuel ! but
women are as great fools in their likes as their dislikes.

[Exit, to get in a rage becattse his slippers have been poked away
somewhere.

A BIT OF SPANISH FLY.

an there, your Emi-
nence Cardinal
Wiseman, can
there, Sir George
Bowyer, be any
truth whatever in
. the annexed news-
I paper paragraph?—

“ Liberty of the
Press in Spain.— The
Clamor Publico, pub-
lished at Madrid, was
recently seized for pub-
lishing the following
paragraphs in allusion
to the persecution of
Protestants in Spain.:
—‘ The Emperor of
China has published a
decree establishing
freedom of worship in
his dominions. And
in Spain what is being
done in respect to the
same question ? They
will give information
in some of the pro-
vinces of Andalusia.
For ourselves, remem-
bering the vulgar say-
ing ‘ Comparisons are
odious,’ we make none,
because we do not
wish to he odious to
anybody.”

Surely, your Eminence, surely. Sir George, some enemy has invented
the foregoing statement with a view to excite a No Popery cry through-
out Europe, demanding the withdrawal of the French from Rome. Of
course, if the Holy Father knew that his spiritual subjects the rulers
of Spain were capable of the intolerance above ascribed to them, he
would instantly fulminate a bull at them which would put a stop to it.
No reasonable person can for a moment suppose that Dapoleon the
Third would prostitute the arms of France to the support of such a
system as popery would be if it were exemplified by the atrocities
alleged to be committed under the influence of the dominant Church of
Spain.

Vol, 43.

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