DOI Heft:
May 9, 1863
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16871#0194
May 9, 1863.1
7 j
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
187
VEILED SATIRE.
“7 say, Master, jist ring this ’ere Fust-floor Fell for us, tvill yer t I can’t reach it.”
A LOW STYLE OE NIMROD.
Everybody knows that the Jockey Club has warned “Argus,” the Sporting
Correspondent of the Morning Post, off the Heath at Newmarket for the high
crime and misdemeanor of having called the judicial conduct of the Club in question;
with considerable reason, as events afterwards proved, for so doing.
The magnanimity of this act of revenge is enthusiastically asserted by a wor-
shipper of the Jockey Club in a remarkable letter which he writes to the Post
under the signature of “Oxonian.” Who “Oxonian” is, we need not say;
what he is will be apparent to everybody from the subjoined effusions of his
veneration for that aristocratic body whose imperious treatment of a Member
of the Press he defends. “ Without them,” he says, “the Turf would soon become
a harbour for thieves, into which no gentleman could intrude without blackening
bis character.” Very likely. And what then? Why, then, says “ Oxonian :”—
“ Surely, then, any attempt to sneer at their decisions, or lower their noble influence, by
which alooe the Turf is preserved from utter corruption, deserves reprobation.”
The authority of the Jockey Club is supreme. Its decisions are to be reverenced
as the decrees of Omniscience. Any expression of disrespect for them is pre-
sumptuous, and “ deserves reprobation.” Does not Oxonian always go down
upon his knees when he ventures to address any person belonging to the Jockey
Club? At any rate he stoops low enough in thus, as it were blacking, not to say
licking, the boots of that society:—
“ Even granting that they were not absolutely right in their decision—for no one sets up for
infallibility— still they were more likely to be in the right than your single-handed correspondent.
If humiliation was what galled ‘ Argus,’ let him reflect that it were better that our Turf
Reporter should lower his colours than a whole body of Turf reformers.”
The Turf Reporter is to knock under to the Jockey Club, even if the Reporter is
right and the Club is wrong. “ Oxonian ” concludes the unrighteous flunkeyisms
above cited with a maxim which the reader would naturally suppose to have been
appended to them by Punch .—
“ Fair-play is a jewel.”
Enough has been said to show what “ Oxonian ” is. He is a character notorious
enough by name at the University which can scarcely be proud of him. “ Oxonian ”
is evidently a mighty hunter before the nobility. He is, however, no mere Fox-
hunter. The object of his pursuit is not the Brush, but the Tuft.
A HAIL EROM ADMIRAL NELSON.
From his mast-head gazed the Admiral
Down on Trafalgar Square,
Where from his base the buttresses
Diverged all blank and bare.
“ They have got down the hoarding
That screened the man and hoy,
They have got up the bas-reliefs
That formed their life’s employ
“ But yet I wait the Lions
That should keep watch below:
Still latent in Sir Edwin’s brain,
Till into bronze they grow.
If Statue pun may venture,
Thus pondered in their plan,
They should be the most ponderous,
Lions e’er cast by man.
“ Had I been long in taking
The guns of which I’m cast,
As they’ve been slow in making
And rigging up my mast,
Britannia would have grumbled.
My bull-dogs would have growled
Johnny Crataud been radiant,
While John Bull stormed and scowled.
“ What care I if bronze-lion-less
My statue still they leave:
With Britannia’s airy Lion
Beside my empty sleeve.
What bronze can match that lion
Which every Briton sees
When he looks up to my image,
And thinks upon the seas P
“ But now the buzz arises
Of a monument to be
To a good Prince and a gracious,
I say—be warned by me !
Heave, oh—with a will, boys—cheerily,
Pay out—hand over hand;
But your course laid down, hold to it
As long as sticks will stand.
“We sailors have a saying
Of folks with fickle brain.
That they work Tom Cox’s traverse,
Of ‘ there and back again.’
That’s John Bull’s favourite traverse.
When a public work’s in view;
What to-day has done, to-morrow
Takes a pleasure to undo.
“ Of Academic artists
Distrust the world allows,
With National Gallery a-starn.
And Havelock ’neath my bows.
I well may venture warning,
Who the contrast have to bear.
Of my Trafalgar battle,
And your Trafalgar Square,
“ So here I seize my trumpet,
To try if ’twill avail
With R. A.s and M.P.s, alike
To try a roaring hail.
’Yast heaving, you Committees :
You artists, there, belay!
Clerks of the works, stop planning,
And Mister Bull, stop pay.
“ Though here I stand surrounded,
By all bad taste can do,
Of waste, delay, and jobbery
Examples full in view—
Make oath ‘ So help you, Elaxman,’
Make oath ‘ So help you, Wren,’
What shrine and statue has been
Shall never be again.
Seize on this chance for proving,
England’s not quite so dull,
Guys to make all her statues,
Each monument a mull!
7 j
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
187
VEILED SATIRE.
“7 say, Master, jist ring this ’ere Fust-floor Fell for us, tvill yer t I can’t reach it.”
A LOW STYLE OE NIMROD.
Everybody knows that the Jockey Club has warned “Argus,” the Sporting
Correspondent of the Morning Post, off the Heath at Newmarket for the high
crime and misdemeanor of having called the judicial conduct of the Club in question;
with considerable reason, as events afterwards proved, for so doing.
The magnanimity of this act of revenge is enthusiastically asserted by a wor-
shipper of the Jockey Club in a remarkable letter which he writes to the Post
under the signature of “Oxonian.” Who “Oxonian” is, we need not say;
what he is will be apparent to everybody from the subjoined effusions of his
veneration for that aristocratic body whose imperious treatment of a Member
of the Press he defends. “ Without them,” he says, “the Turf would soon become
a harbour for thieves, into which no gentleman could intrude without blackening
bis character.” Very likely. And what then? Why, then, says “ Oxonian :”—
“ Surely, then, any attempt to sneer at their decisions, or lower their noble influence, by
which alooe the Turf is preserved from utter corruption, deserves reprobation.”
The authority of the Jockey Club is supreme. Its decisions are to be reverenced
as the decrees of Omniscience. Any expression of disrespect for them is pre-
sumptuous, and “ deserves reprobation.” Does not Oxonian always go down
upon his knees when he ventures to address any person belonging to the Jockey
Club? At any rate he stoops low enough in thus, as it were blacking, not to say
licking, the boots of that society:—
“ Even granting that they were not absolutely right in their decision—for no one sets up for
infallibility— still they were more likely to be in the right than your single-handed correspondent.
If humiliation was what galled ‘ Argus,’ let him reflect that it were better that our Turf
Reporter should lower his colours than a whole body of Turf reformers.”
The Turf Reporter is to knock under to the Jockey Club, even if the Reporter is
right and the Club is wrong. “ Oxonian ” concludes the unrighteous flunkeyisms
above cited with a maxim which the reader would naturally suppose to have been
appended to them by Punch .—
“ Fair-play is a jewel.”
Enough has been said to show what “ Oxonian ” is. He is a character notorious
enough by name at the University which can scarcely be proud of him. “ Oxonian ”
is evidently a mighty hunter before the nobility. He is, however, no mere Fox-
hunter. The object of his pursuit is not the Brush, but the Tuft.
A HAIL EROM ADMIRAL NELSON.
From his mast-head gazed the Admiral
Down on Trafalgar Square,
Where from his base the buttresses
Diverged all blank and bare.
“ They have got down the hoarding
That screened the man and hoy,
They have got up the bas-reliefs
That formed their life’s employ
“ But yet I wait the Lions
That should keep watch below:
Still latent in Sir Edwin’s brain,
Till into bronze they grow.
If Statue pun may venture,
Thus pondered in their plan,
They should be the most ponderous,
Lions e’er cast by man.
“ Had I been long in taking
The guns of which I’m cast,
As they’ve been slow in making
And rigging up my mast,
Britannia would have grumbled.
My bull-dogs would have growled
Johnny Crataud been radiant,
While John Bull stormed and scowled.
“ What care I if bronze-lion-less
My statue still they leave:
With Britannia’s airy Lion
Beside my empty sleeve.
What bronze can match that lion
Which every Briton sees
When he looks up to my image,
And thinks upon the seas P
“ But now the buzz arises
Of a monument to be
To a good Prince and a gracious,
I say—be warned by me !
Heave, oh—with a will, boys—cheerily,
Pay out—hand over hand;
But your course laid down, hold to it
As long as sticks will stand.
“We sailors have a saying
Of folks with fickle brain.
That they work Tom Cox’s traverse,
Of ‘ there and back again.’
That’s John Bull’s favourite traverse.
When a public work’s in view;
What to-day has done, to-morrow
Takes a pleasure to undo.
“ Of Academic artists
Distrust the world allows,
With National Gallery a-starn.
And Havelock ’neath my bows.
I well may venture warning,
Who the contrast have to bear.
Of my Trafalgar battle,
And your Trafalgar Square,
“ So here I seize my trumpet,
To try if ’twill avail
With R. A.s and M.P.s, alike
To try a roaring hail.
’Yast heaving, you Committees :
You artists, there, belay!
Clerks of the works, stop planning,
And Mister Bull, stop pay.
“ Though here I stand surrounded,
By all bad taste can do,
Of waste, delay, and jobbery
Examples full in view—
Make oath ‘ So help you, Elaxman,’
Make oath ‘ So help you, Wren,’
What shrine and statue has been
Shall never be again.
Seize on this chance for proving,
England’s not quite so dull,
Guys to make all her statues,
Each monument a mull!