DOI Heft:
November 21, 1863
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16872#0222
PUNCH:. OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
211
November 21, l^63 j
Dr. P. Pardon the allusion, Sire. If you can get a Congress into
Paris I dare say a good many Frenchmen, especially those m the com-
mercial and hotel line, will be convinced that their patrotism was a
mistake
The Emp. Well, am I to have a Congress? That’s what I sent for
you to ask, but you are so full of your self-glorification that there s no
edging in a word. , , , ,
Dr. P. Consider, Sire, a struggle of nearly half a century crowned
by my finding myself the Victor of r he Victor of the world.
The Emp. Very well, Du. Johnson, and now answer my question.
Dr. P. Well, Sire, if you come to that, there are several preliminary
inquiries which I must make, and the first is, what time does your
Majesty dine? .
The Emp. We ’ll ascertain, and then have a quiet weed in the
pavilion. .
Dr. P. I am at your Majesty’s orders. You will not regret having
followed the Doctor’s Advice. [Exeunt.
HADJI HERE AND HADJI THERE 1
A Most gratifying evidence of progress in Turkey is afforded by the
subjoined advertisement, extracted from the Terjuman Ahval, a journal
published at Constantinople:—
“Headaches, toothaches, lumbago, eye-sores, fever, &c., cured by a celebrated
divine just arrived froia Asia Minor, by breathing on the patient and by charms.
Address, &c.
The Mussulmans are even with the British Aristocracy in medical
enlightenment. There are also in this capital advertising Mesmerists,
though they do not include any clergymen of the Church of England,
that we know of; and Dr. Cumming himself has never yet put forth
such pretensions as those which are asserted by the “ Celebrated
Divine” of the Mahometan persuasion at Stamboul, where he has “just
arrived from Asia Minor.” The “ Clergyman of Cambridge University ”
who offered to cure people of nervous and mental complaints, “ from
benevolence rather than gain,” has long since departed to that clime
where quacks no longer advertise, and his cassock has fallen on no
successor in orders.
It is true the Turks have no Holloway whose pills and ointment
(the pills, we suppose, rubbed in behind the ears, and the ointment
taken night and morning on toast) cure eruptive fevers and small-pox.
They have no Morison, who, being dead, yet cureth all diseases by his
Universal Vegetable Medicine, which is, as we all know, an effectual
substitute for vaccination. And, above all, they have no Government
which endorses the advertisements of Holloway, and Morison, and
Old Parr, and Kaye’s Worsdell, and Dixon, and Hooper, and ail
the other nostrum vendors whose patent medicines yield a tribute
which is inodorous to the nostrils of the Chancellor op the
Exchequer.
If the fortunes of Professor Holloway and his brotherhood
should ever turn Turk with them, let them change with their fortunes,
turn Turks too, and set up at Constantinople, where the celebrity of
the Divine who has just arrived from Asia Minor to practise on the
Faithful is an assurance that they will prosper.
“ OUI, MONSIEUR.”
Monsieur,
Having been residuary in your Metrolipos for half a sentry 1
myself never make ornithological errors in spelling your langage, there-
fore it is permit to me to riddicule a native when he is not capable to
spell in public like that wise man who have painted on the board at
Hypark Corner that such is the way to the Crystal Place at what he
pleases himself to call
SYDNEHAM.
Aha! Alia! In the future shall you riddicule a former who cannot
spell your barbarous propper names.
„ ., ... 7T J , Agreez, Monsieur, &c.
babionmere Hotel. Alcibiades Dumont.
OUR DRAMATIC CORRESPONDENT.
Dear Punch,
You have seen King Lear, but have you seen Queen Leah ?
for a queen she clearly is in her command over her audience, and the
power wherewith she sways them to a sympathy with her. If you have
not, go at once and take a stall and see her, and you will come away as
I did and own yourself her subject, though, thanks to the insufferable
badness of the drama, not till the fifth act will your allegiance be con-
fessed.
Pray don’t fear from this beginning that I am going to let my admi-
ration run away with me. Miss Bateman has been puffed and
pamphlet,ed enough, and I have little wish to be regarded as her butter-
man. A young actress who aspires to queen it on the boards will
always have a court of foolish flatterers about her, and much damage
may be done her by their overflow of praise. Still, without predicting
that Miss Bateman will surpass a Rachel or a Siddons, I am not
afraid to say, that I think she has great talent, and there is the more
promise of her proving a great actress that in spite of all the schooling
with which she has been trained, she is natural and simple in producing
her effects. As we have spoken of her elsewhere, we will now turn to
clever Monsieur Fechter, who has re-opened the Lyceum, and the town
is ringing with his Bel Demonio—o, Bel whereof I hardly know a critic
but has acted as a clapper. I am sorry 1 can’t lend a hand in this
applauding peal. Not that I object to the way the Bel is cast, but
that, to my thinking, it is not of good metal. Metaphor apart, the
piece is all bombast and bustle, and, unlike the Duke's Motto, gives no
whit of scope for acting. Now, when one has an actor so good as
M. Fechter, one hates to see his talent wasted by his taking a bad
part; and his part in the new play is all bosh and bravado, and, except-
ing one short love-scene, has nothing that calls forth his careful
subtlety and skill. The piece is chokeful of “sensations,” and abounds
in hot pursuits and perilous escapes; but its misty plot is made the
more incomprehensible by being served up in short spasms, with
nothing to connect them, and just as you begin to take some little
interest in the bustle of the story, down comes the act-drop and
knocks it clean out of your head. The only thing, in fact, that really
pleased me in the play was to see the skill with which it has been put
upon the new stage. How many hundred thousands have been laid
out since last summer upon this new piece of mechanism I leave
dramatic statisticians to calculate and state; but, lavish as it has been,
I have no doubt the expenditure will bear abundant profit, for every
playgoer in London ought to go to the Lyceum, if it be only to
applaud some of the stage reforms there introduced. Farewell to the
old foot-lights, which are now sunk out of sight; and farewell to the
old dingy, dusty, dismal, dirty skies that used to dangle down eternally
in front, no matter if the scene were a dungeon or a drawing-room, or any-
where in nature where a sky could not be seen*; and farewell to the foot-
men who moved the chairs and tables at the changing of the scenes, and
were made nervous in so doing by the plaudits of the Gods; and fare-
well to the soapless shirt-sleeves of the carpenters, which have always
hitherto been terribly conspicuous in the shifting of a scene, and have
destroyed so much illusion in so many a fairy piece. Thanks to common
sense and men like Monsieur Fechter and Mr. Webster, the stage
is being cleared from many an old nuisance and conventional absurdity,
and improved in every way that gives a.life-look to a scene. I only
hope M. Feciiter’s stage improvements will not blind him to the fact
that, in spite of the sensationists, there are still playgoers among us
who like to see good acting even better than good scenery, and care
more for the moulding than the mounting of a play. When he sees
this he, perhaps, will, look a whit more sharply at the new pieces sub-
mitted to him; and if he turns his eyes up for a happy inspiration, he
may see upon his ceiling the names of some old dramatists who are
worthy to be taken down and put upon his stage.
With every wish for his well-doing, and for that of all good actors, I
sign myself, as heretofore, my dear Punch, One who Pays.
P.S. In my next I hope to speak of Mr. Balee’s new opera, and
I may also say a word about the Opera di Camera, which I find all the
great critics unanimous in praising, and which, in my small judgment, is
as pretty a piece of music as we have had for many a day.
Ecclesiastical Intelligence.
Lo,r5 Shaftesbury having been pleased to grant to the Ministry a
conge delire in respect of the Archbishopric of Dublin, and having been
lurther pleased to recommend Dr. Richard Chenevix Trench for
such office. Bishop Punch has also been pleased. Specially, as the
new Archbishop is going to Ireland, it is well that he is thoroughly up
m the Queen s Lnglish, which (like the Queen’s subjects), is often
rather wantonly massacred in that country. The appointment of Canon
STANLEY to the Deanery of Westminster is beyond all praise, for who
but a man who has writ admirably on Palestine should sit in the
Jerusalem Chamber?
* The Adelphi was the first theatre to do away with this deformity
Chorus of Jack Tars.
Ye Gentlemen of England,
Who. live at home at ease,
To save poor shipwrecked sailors
From the dangers of the seas,
Subscribe unto the Life Boat
Institution, if you please.
The Spanish Duke’s Motto.—“ Onion is Strength.”
I he Proposed Panacea. It a European Congress can preserve
peace, that is more than an American one has been able to do.
211
November 21, l^63 j
Dr. P. Pardon the allusion, Sire. If you can get a Congress into
Paris I dare say a good many Frenchmen, especially those m the com-
mercial and hotel line, will be convinced that their patrotism was a
mistake
The Emp. Well, am I to have a Congress? That’s what I sent for
you to ask, but you are so full of your self-glorification that there s no
edging in a word. , , , ,
Dr. P. Consider, Sire, a struggle of nearly half a century crowned
by my finding myself the Victor of r he Victor of the world.
The Emp. Very well, Du. Johnson, and now answer my question.
Dr. P. Well, Sire, if you come to that, there are several preliminary
inquiries which I must make, and the first is, what time does your
Majesty dine? .
The Emp. We ’ll ascertain, and then have a quiet weed in the
pavilion. .
Dr. P. I am at your Majesty’s orders. You will not regret having
followed the Doctor’s Advice. [Exeunt.
HADJI HERE AND HADJI THERE 1
A Most gratifying evidence of progress in Turkey is afforded by the
subjoined advertisement, extracted from the Terjuman Ahval, a journal
published at Constantinople:—
“Headaches, toothaches, lumbago, eye-sores, fever, &c., cured by a celebrated
divine just arrived froia Asia Minor, by breathing on the patient and by charms.
Address, &c.
The Mussulmans are even with the British Aristocracy in medical
enlightenment. There are also in this capital advertising Mesmerists,
though they do not include any clergymen of the Church of England,
that we know of; and Dr. Cumming himself has never yet put forth
such pretensions as those which are asserted by the “ Celebrated
Divine” of the Mahometan persuasion at Stamboul, where he has “just
arrived from Asia Minor.” The “ Clergyman of Cambridge University ”
who offered to cure people of nervous and mental complaints, “ from
benevolence rather than gain,” has long since departed to that clime
where quacks no longer advertise, and his cassock has fallen on no
successor in orders.
It is true the Turks have no Holloway whose pills and ointment
(the pills, we suppose, rubbed in behind the ears, and the ointment
taken night and morning on toast) cure eruptive fevers and small-pox.
They have no Morison, who, being dead, yet cureth all diseases by his
Universal Vegetable Medicine, which is, as we all know, an effectual
substitute for vaccination. And, above all, they have no Government
which endorses the advertisements of Holloway, and Morison, and
Old Parr, and Kaye’s Worsdell, and Dixon, and Hooper, and ail
the other nostrum vendors whose patent medicines yield a tribute
which is inodorous to the nostrils of the Chancellor op the
Exchequer.
If the fortunes of Professor Holloway and his brotherhood
should ever turn Turk with them, let them change with their fortunes,
turn Turks too, and set up at Constantinople, where the celebrity of
the Divine who has just arrived from Asia Minor to practise on the
Faithful is an assurance that they will prosper.
“ OUI, MONSIEUR.”
Monsieur,
Having been residuary in your Metrolipos for half a sentry 1
myself never make ornithological errors in spelling your langage, there-
fore it is permit to me to riddicule a native when he is not capable to
spell in public like that wise man who have painted on the board at
Hypark Corner that such is the way to the Crystal Place at what he
pleases himself to call
SYDNEHAM.
Aha! Alia! In the future shall you riddicule a former who cannot
spell your barbarous propper names.
„ ., ... 7T J , Agreez, Monsieur, &c.
babionmere Hotel. Alcibiades Dumont.
OUR DRAMATIC CORRESPONDENT.
Dear Punch,
You have seen King Lear, but have you seen Queen Leah ?
for a queen she clearly is in her command over her audience, and the
power wherewith she sways them to a sympathy with her. If you have
not, go at once and take a stall and see her, and you will come away as
I did and own yourself her subject, though, thanks to the insufferable
badness of the drama, not till the fifth act will your allegiance be con-
fessed.
Pray don’t fear from this beginning that I am going to let my admi-
ration run away with me. Miss Bateman has been puffed and
pamphlet,ed enough, and I have little wish to be regarded as her butter-
man. A young actress who aspires to queen it on the boards will
always have a court of foolish flatterers about her, and much damage
may be done her by their overflow of praise. Still, without predicting
that Miss Bateman will surpass a Rachel or a Siddons, I am not
afraid to say, that I think she has great talent, and there is the more
promise of her proving a great actress that in spite of all the schooling
with which she has been trained, she is natural and simple in producing
her effects. As we have spoken of her elsewhere, we will now turn to
clever Monsieur Fechter, who has re-opened the Lyceum, and the town
is ringing with his Bel Demonio—o, Bel whereof I hardly know a critic
but has acted as a clapper. I am sorry 1 can’t lend a hand in this
applauding peal. Not that I object to the way the Bel is cast, but
that, to my thinking, it is not of good metal. Metaphor apart, the
piece is all bombast and bustle, and, unlike the Duke's Motto, gives no
whit of scope for acting. Now, when one has an actor so good as
M. Fechter, one hates to see his talent wasted by his taking a bad
part; and his part in the new play is all bosh and bravado, and, except-
ing one short love-scene, has nothing that calls forth his careful
subtlety and skill. The piece is chokeful of “sensations,” and abounds
in hot pursuits and perilous escapes; but its misty plot is made the
more incomprehensible by being served up in short spasms, with
nothing to connect them, and just as you begin to take some little
interest in the bustle of the story, down comes the act-drop and
knocks it clean out of your head. The only thing, in fact, that really
pleased me in the play was to see the skill with which it has been put
upon the new stage. How many hundred thousands have been laid
out since last summer upon this new piece of mechanism I leave
dramatic statisticians to calculate and state; but, lavish as it has been,
I have no doubt the expenditure will bear abundant profit, for every
playgoer in London ought to go to the Lyceum, if it be only to
applaud some of the stage reforms there introduced. Farewell to the
old foot-lights, which are now sunk out of sight; and farewell to the
old dingy, dusty, dismal, dirty skies that used to dangle down eternally
in front, no matter if the scene were a dungeon or a drawing-room, or any-
where in nature where a sky could not be seen*; and farewell to the foot-
men who moved the chairs and tables at the changing of the scenes, and
were made nervous in so doing by the plaudits of the Gods; and fare-
well to the soapless shirt-sleeves of the carpenters, which have always
hitherto been terribly conspicuous in the shifting of a scene, and have
destroyed so much illusion in so many a fairy piece. Thanks to common
sense and men like Monsieur Fechter and Mr. Webster, the stage
is being cleared from many an old nuisance and conventional absurdity,
and improved in every way that gives a.life-look to a scene. I only
hope M. Feciiter’s stage improvements will not blind him to the fact
that, in spite of the sensationists, there are still playgoers among us
who like to see good acting even better than good scenery, and care
more for the moulding than the mounting of a play. When he sees
this he, perhaps, will, look a whit more sharply at the new pieces sub-
mitted to him; and if he turns his eyes up for a happy inspiration, he
may see upon his ceiling the names of some old dramatists who are
worthy to be taken down and put upon his stage.
With every wish for his well-doing, and for that of all good actors, I
sign myself, as heretofore, my dear Punch, One who Pays.
P.S. In my next I hope to speak of Mr. Balee’s new opera, and
I may also say a word about the Opera di Camera, which I find all the
great critics unanimous in praising, and which, in my small judgment, is
as pretty a piece of music as we have had for many a day.
Ecclesiastical Intelligence.
Lo,r5 Shaftesbury having been pleased to grant to the Ministry a
conge delire in respect of the Archbishopric of Dublin, and having been
lurther pleased to recommend Dr. Richard Chenevix Trench for
such office. Bishop Punch has also been pleased. Specially, as the
new Archbishop is going to Ireland, it is well that he is thoroughly up
m the Queen s Lnglish, which (like the Queen’s subjects), is often
rather wantonly massacred in that country. The appointment of Canon
STANLEY to the Deanery of Westminster is beyond all praise, for who
but a man who has writ admirably on Palestine should sit in the
Jerusalem Chamber?
* The Adelphi was the first theatre to do away with this deformity
Chorus of Jack Tars.
Ye Gentlemen of England,
Who. live at home at ease,
To save poor shipwrecked sailors
From the dangers of the seas,
Subscribe unto the Life Boat
Institution, if you please.
The Spanish Duke’s Motto.—“ Onion is Strength.”
I he Proposed Panacea. It a European Congress can preserve
peace, that is more than an American one has been able to do.