DOI Heft:
January 31, 1863
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16871#0049
January 31, 1863.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
41
1
BLANKETS AND BROAD SHEETS.
Among the hundred hints put daily forth to
help our suffering poor, we notice a suggestion
in the Manchester Examiner, that people without
blankets should use newspapers instead of them.
One correspondent states that, having placed a
couple of journals underneath his counterpane,
he was as comfortably warm as with an extra
pair of blankets: and another writer mentions
how, his blankets having been consigned to the
keeping of his uncle, he used newspapers instead
of them, and slept like a top.
We hope the knowledge of these facts will
in no way check the charitable flow of blankets
to the North; for however warm a newspaper
may be by way of covering, we should fancy a
weil woven Witney blanket must be warmer.
Still, people without blankets may find comfort
in the broad sheets of the Times and other jour-
nals ; and those of us who don’t know what to
do with our waste paper, might as well send it to
Manchester as let it lie useless at home. We
wonder if the warmth which a newspaper im-
parts be affected by its politics or the style used
by its writers. The cold cynicism, say, of the
Slashaway Review, must surely be less warming
than the genial glow diffused throughout the
drawings and the literature of Punch. There
may, however, be advantage in using rather
heavy writings for a bed-cover. Eor instance, we
conceive that the poetry of Tupper would, no
matter how applied, be found a first-rate soporific.
POOR FELLOW!
A QUESTION TO BE ASKEB.
Frank. “I know this—I can’t stand many more Evening Parties, and if I don’t get
into the Country and have a few days’ Hunting, I shall knock up ! ”
How about Mr. Peabody’s donation to the
London Poor ?
STORY OF AN EARL.
Mr. Punch invites M. Victor Hugo to read the report of the case
in which their brother nobleman, the Earl of Egmont, seeks to recover
certain property from the representatives of a solicitor named Tierney.
There are some points in the story which would enable M. Victor
Hugo to frame another of those marvellous mixtures of poetry, prose,
and prosing which he is pleased to consider as novels. Mr. Punch,
having some little weakness in favour of conventional proprieties, will
not forestall the judgment of Sir Page Wood, Vice-Chancellor, or
even direct that Judge what to do; but merely for the benefit of M. V.
Hugo, and in gratitude for the pleasure Mr. P. has experienced in
reading the readable portions of Les Miserables (a grand book yes.
Quarterly, and you are quite wrong and very rude, Edinburgh) will
indicate to him the phase most likely to be attractive to M. Hugo.
There was a drunken and vulgar Earl of Egmont, who liked low
pleasures, Cider Cellars (happily extinct), and worse. He had Irish
estates, but they were largely encumbered. He had a solicitor and
friend, named Tierney. According to the allegations of the present
Lord Egmont, the solicitor, an Irishman, who managed the property,
gave the objectionable Earl but little money, represented that there was
no more, and spent the more, of which there was a great deal, in im -
proving the estates and making^ the tenantry happy. This surreptitious
philanthropy was rewarded, indeed the philanthropical Tierney took
care it should be, by a will, in which the objectionable Earl gave the
estates, of whose value he was unaware, to his friend and solicitor.
Then the Tower of London obligingly caught fire, the objectionable
Earl caught cold in looking at it, and did not cure himself by a course
of low pleasures, in which he sought consolation for the misfortune to
his country. In fact, he made way for another Earl. The estates were
taken by Mr, Tierney, who gave them to his own family, and went
where the good solicitors go. The Egmont family, after a long time,
discover that the arrangement was not by any means for their benefit,
get hold of evidence which is a good deal to the point, state what
Mr. Punch, who has no knowledge and forms no judgment in the matter,
has given as their case, and pray to have the objectionable Earl’s will
upset. The people who took after Mr. Tierney (or Sir Edward
Tierney, for he succeeded to a doctor’s baronetcy) are of course on
their mettle, defend all that was done, propose to do dreadful things to
the witnesses, and point out—this you will note, M. Victor Hugo—
that instead of allowing the income of the estates to be wasted upon
Cider Cellar blackguards and the like, Mr. Tierney applied much
of it to the estates, “turned a desert into a garden,” and made a
respectable tenantry.
Now, we should not think of suggesting any details to a great artist,
but we should like to knowhow this story strikes M. Victor Hugo.
Suppose we accept it as truly set out, and then go to work. This
Tierney, regarded in a novelist’s point of view, is a great and good
man. Nobody will say that money ought to be spent in debauchery,
no worthy man but will endeavour to prevent that. Then, how much
better that a happy peasantry should live in clean cottages than
that an Earl should wallow in dirty pleasures. “ The Desert and the
Garden” is at once a title for a chapter. As for the machinery,
M. Hugo sees it all as he reads these lines—the man created Lord
Egmont in 1733 had turned a Tierney of that day into the road,
where he died, leaving a legacy of vengeance. It was accepted, but
worked out brutally, until the solicitor Tierney appeared, who resolved
upon a nobler revenge. That road runs through a street of smiling
cottages, but they have been wrenched from the Egmonts. But how
about keeping them for one’s own family P Here is an opportunity for a
scene of self-examination and resolve. Then, as usual, comes some love.
A beautiful being, an Irish darling, but, alas, a plebeian, and the secret
idol of Tierney’s earliest youth, was taken to a ball at the Castle. A
member of the Egmont family, young, haughty, admired—but we are
ashamed of troubling M. Hugo with such crude notions. Tierney
swore to keep the estates, and did. It would add to the probabilities,
if Sir Page Wood should weep over the story, pronounce the solicitor
to be a saintly hero, and beg to put up a monument to him at Sir P.’s
own expense in the Vice-Chancellor’s Court. Will not M. Hugo
oblige us ? He is quite at liberty to introduce, as necessary to the
story, a History of Ireland, a history of the Egmont peerage, a few
hundred pages of satire on the Court of Chancery, and a general
demolition of the character of England. Eor all that, he will make a
glorious book, which, in spite of a great deal of the same kind,
Mr. Punch affirms Les Miserables to be.
“An Officious Cuss.”
Le Pays says that the Emperor of the Prench has written to
Washington, proposing “ officiously ” a mode of ending the American
war. We are afraid that the Americans know so little of the refine-
ments of language that they will interpret the word in its impolite sense,
and reply accordingly. To hazard a bold and novel remark, “ Nous
verrons.”
Vol. 44.
41
1
BLANKETS AND BROAD SHEETS.
Among the hundred hints put daily forth to
help our suffering poor, we notice a suggestion
in the Manchester Examiner, that people without
blankets should use newspapers instead of them.
One correspondent states that, having placed a
couple of journals underneath his counterpane,
he was as comfortably warm as with an extra
pair of blankets: and another writer mentions
how, his blankets having been consigned to the
keeping of his uncle, he used newspapers instead
of them, and slept like a top.
We hope the knowledge of these facts will
in no way check the charitable flow of blankets
to the North; for however warm a newspaper
may be by way of covering, we should fancy a
weil woven Witney blanket must be warmer.
Still, people without blankets may find comfort
in the broad sheets of the Times and other jour-
nals ; and those of us who don’t know what to
do with our waste paper, might as well send it to
Manchester as let it lie useless at home. We
wonder if the warmth which a newspaper im-
parts be affected by its politics or the style used
by its writers. The cold cynicism, say, of the
Slashaway Review, must surely be less warming
than the genial glow diffused throughout the
drawings and the literature of Punch. There
may, however, be advantage in using rather
heavy writings for a bed-cover. Eor instance, we
conceive that the poetry of Tupper would, no
matter how applied, be found a first-rate soporific.
POOR FELLOW!
A QUESTION TO BE ASKEB.
Frank. “I know this—I can’t stand many more Evening Parties, and if I don’t get
into the Country and have a few days’ Hunting, I shall knock up ! ”
How about Mr. Peabody’s donation to the
London Poor ?
STORY OF AN EARL.
Mr. Punch invites M. Victor Hugo to read the report of the case
in which their brother nobleman, the Earl of Egmont, seeks to recover
certain property from the representatives of a solicitor named Tierney.
There are some points in the story which would enable M. Victor
Hugo to frame another of those marvellous mixtures of poetry, prose,
and prosing which he is pleased to consider as novels. Mr. Punch,
having some little weakness in favour of conventional proprieties, will
not forestall the judgment of Sir Page Wood, Vice-Chancellor, or
even direct that Judge what to do; but merely for the benefit of M. V.
Hugo, and in gratitude for the pleasure Mr. P. has experienced in
reading the readable portions of Les Miserables (a grand book yes.
Quarterly, and you are quite wrong and very rude, Edinburgh) will
indicate to him the phase most likely to be attractive to M. Hugo.
There was a drunken and vulgar Earl of Egmont, who liked low
pleasures, Cider Cellars (happily extinct), and worse. He had Irish
estates, but they were largely encumbered. He had a solicitor and
friend, named Tierney. According to the allegations of the present
Lord Egmont, the solicitor, an Irishman, who managed the property,
gave the objectionable Earl but little money, represented that there was
no more, and spent the more, of which there was a great deal, in im -
proving the estates and making^ the tenantry happy. This surreptitious
philanthropy was rewarded, indeed the philanthropical Tierney took
care it should be, by a will, in which the objectionable Earl gave the
estates, of whose value he was unaware, to his friend and solicitor.
Then the Tower of London obligingly caught fire, the objectionable
Earl caught cold in looking at it, and did not cure himself by a course
of low pleasures, in which he sought consolation for the misfortune to
his country. In fact, he made way for another Earl. The estates were
taken by Mr, Tierney, who gave them to his own family, and went
where the good solicitors go. The Egmont family, after a long time,
discover that the arrangement was not by any means for their benefit,
get hold of evidence which is a good deal to the point, state what
Mr. Punch, who has no knowledge and forms no judgment in the matter,
has given as their case, and pray to have the objectionable Earl’s will
upset. The people who took after Mr. Tierney (or Sir Edward
Tierney, for he succeeded to a doctor’s baronetcy) are of course on
their mettle, defend all that was done, propose to do dreadful things to
the witnesses, and point out—this you will note, M. Victor Hugo—
that instead of allowing the income of the estates to be wasted upon
Cider Cellar blackguards and the like, Mr. Tierney applied much
of it to the estates, “turned a desert into a garden,” and made a
respectable tenantry.
Now, we should not think of suggesting any details to a great artist,
but we should like to knowhow this story strikes M. Victor Hugo.
Suppose we accept it as truly set out, and then go to work. This
Tierney, regarded in a novelist’s point of view, is a great and good
man. Nobody will say that money ought to be spent in debauchery,
no worthy man but will endeavour to prevent that. Then, how much
better that a happy peasantry should live in clean cottages than
that an Earl should wallow in dirty pleasures. “ The Desert and the
Garden” is at once a title for a chapter. As for the machinery,
M. Hugo sees it all as he reads these lines—the man created Lord
Egmont in 1733 had turned a Tierney of that day into the road,
where he died, leaving a legacy of vengeance. It was accepted, but
worked out brutally, until the solicitor Tierney appeared, who resolved
upon a nobler revenge. That road runs through a street of smiling
cottages, but they have been wrenched from the Egmonts. But how
about keeping them for one’s own family P Here is an opportunity for a
scene of self-examination and resolve. Then, as usual, comes some love.
A beautiful being, an Irish darling, but, alas, a plebeian, and the secret
idol of Tierney’s earliest youth, was taken to a ball at the Castle. A
member of the Egmont family, young, haughty, admired—but we are
ashamed of troubling M. Hugo with such crude notions. Tierney
swore to keep the estates, and did. It would add to the probabilities,
if Sir Page Wood should weep over the story, pronounce the solicitor
to be a saintly hero, and beg to put up a monument to him at Sir P.’s
own expense in the Vice-Chancellor’s Court. Will not M. Hugo
oblige us ? He is quite at liberty to introduce, as necessary to the
story, a History of Ireland, a history of the Egmont peerage, a few
hundred pages of satire on the Court of Chancery, and a general
demolition of the character of England. Eor all that, he will make a
glorious book, which, in spite of a great deal of the same kind,
Mr. Punch affirms Les Miserables to be.
“An Officious Cuss.”
Le Pays says that the Emperor of the Prench has written to
Washington, proposing “ officiously ” a mode of ending the American
war. We are afraid that the Americans know so little of the refine-
ments of language that they will interpret the word in its impolite sense,
and reply accordingly. To hazard a bold and novel remark, “ Nous
verrons.”
Vol. 44.