Punch (45.1863)

November 28, 18B3.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

223

THE DANISH DIFFICULTY EXPLAINED.

oung persons who
dine out, and wish
to be considered
well-informed young
diners-out, must de-
sire to be able to
answer, in a few
simple words, the
question so fre-
quently put as to
the real value of the
difficulty about the
King ofDenmark’s
succession to the
Schleswig - Holstein
duchies, Mr. Punch
will explain the mat-
ter in a moment. The
case is this. King
Christian, being an
agnate, is the col-
lateral heir male of
the German Diet,
and consequently the
Duchy of Holstein,
being mediatised,
could only have
ascended _ to the
Landgravine of
Hesse in default of
consanguinity in the
younger branch of |
the Sonderburg-Glucksburgs, and therefore Schleswig, by the surrender
of the Dure op Saxe-Coburg Gotha, was acquired as a lief in remainder
by the morganatic marriage of Frederick the Seventh. This is
clear enough, of course. The difficulty, however, arises from the fact
that while the Danish protocol of 1852, which was drawn up by Lord
Palmerston, but signed by Lord Malmesbury, repudiated ex post
facto the claims of Princess Mary of Anhalt, as remainder-woman
to the Electoress op Augustenburg, it only operated as a uti
possidetis in reference to the interests of Prince Christian of Schles-
wig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, while Baron Bunsen’s protest
against Catholicism, under the terms of the Edict of Nantes, of course
barred the whole of the lineal ancestry of the Grand Duke from claiming
by virtue of the Salic clause of the Pragmatic Sanction. The question
is therefore exhaustively reduced to a very narrow con pass, and the
dispute simply is, whether an agnate who is not consanguineous, can, as a
Lutheran, hold a fief which is clothed by mediatisation with the character
of a neutral belligerent. This is really all that is at issue, and those
who seek to complicate the case by introducing the extraneous state-
ment, true no doubt in itself, that the Princess of Wales, who is
the daughter of the present King of Denmark made no public
renunciation of either the duchies, or the ivory hairbrushes, when she
dined with Lord Mayor Hose, are simply endeavouring to throw
dust in the eyes of Europe.

GAME-MURDER MADE EASY.

What does the Times mean by the heading of this paragraph ?—

“ Good Sport.—The Duke of C-, Lord G. M-, General H-, Colonel

M-, and Colonel N-, Lave shot this week over the L- preserves, near

N-, and made a hag of 636 head—viz., 332 pheasants, 256 hares and rabbits,

and 48 partridges. On a second day (the same party shot in three hours in C-

Park, 190 pheasants, 60 hares, 23 rabbits, two partridges, and one woodcock. The

Ddke of C- has also shot over the covers of General H-, in the same

neighbourhood, with the Duke of B-, Lord M. C-, Lord S-, the Mar-
quis of S-, and Colonel M-. In two days 1,260 pheasants, 324 hares, 101

rabbits, and 10 partridges were shot, making a total of 1,695 head.” '

“ Good sport! ” Good gracious ! Can you call such wholesale
butchery as this “good sport”? That six guns in two days should
kill (five wanting only) seventeen hundred head of game, is an act that
appertains less to a sportsman than a slaughterer; indeed is quite
unworthy to be spoken of as sport. There can surely be no sport in
destroying hares and pheasants where they exist in such abundance,
that a man can shoot well nigh two hundred of them in a day. To bag
a brace or two of pheasants with a couple of good spaniels, to see your
dogs work well, to flush your game yourself, and to follow it up skil-
fully—this you may call “ good sport,” and Punch will not complain of
you. But Punch never will allow that lounging by a covert-side, and
firing at tame pheasants is an employment that can rightly be looked
upon as sport. No, no, my noble sportsmen. Walk your birds up
ourselves, and use more dogs and fewer beaters, and you will get a
etter appetite for dinner, and have less chance of getting headaches

from the banging of your guns. If mere rapidity in killing be con-
sidered as good sport,” wiiy don’t you use blunderbusses in the lieu
of common fowling-pieces, and have your hares and rabbits penned up
in a sheepfold before you begin shooting, so that you may slaughter,
say, a dozen at a shot. The same thing might be done with your par-
tridges and pheasants, which are so tame in large preserves that they
might easily be caught by the gamekeepers at feeding-time, when their
wings might just be clipped enough to stop their flying, so that when
the day for killing came, they might be huddled into poultry-pens and
shot upon the ground. Larger bags in this way might be made in
shorter time than is possible at present, and, to judge by the reports
winch are paraded in the newspapers, some “sportsmen” seem to
think that the only aim in shooting is to make up a big bag.

OPERA IN CHANCERY.

What is all this quarrel in which Colonel Knox
Against Mu. Gye is uplifting his Yox?

One’s sense of the fitness of things it quite shocks
When Harmony’s friends give each other hard knocks.

Why, the case is just this. The brave Colonel had crocks
Eull of gold, and no end of consols in the stocks,

And debentures, for aught that I know, in the Docks ;

Of which tin, with true friendship (like that of Miss Tox)

He advanced heavy sums, but demanded a box,

To be kept every night, which in Latin is nox,

For his own occupation, no matter what flucks
Should crowd to the Opera and ask for it. Mox,

One night of a run upon Leader and Cock’s,

And other librarians, for boxes ; when rocks
Had melted at prayers of young ladies in frocks
In the height of the fashion,—a keeper unlocks
The box set apart for the brave Colonel Knox.

It was nine of the night by the watches and clocks,

When he comes to the house, with his elegant hocks
Invested in O the most beautiful socks,

And finds in possession a party that blocks
His entrance, and all his remonstrances mocks.

He might have gone off and beheld Box and Cox,

Or to chapel, to Spurgeon’s, to Binney’s, or Brock’s,

Or home to a novel of old Paul de Kock’s,

Or to read rare Ben Jonson’s fine play of The Fox,

Or to Tatt’s and made bets upon horses and jocks,

Or to good Paddi Green’s to hear music of Locke’s ;

But no, on his mouth there hath tramped the Big Ox,

And he says there’s a partnership. Firm: “ Gve and Knox.”

FINE WORDS FOR FOUL WORKS.

There seems to be a growing fashion now for calling foul things by
fine names, and a word or two from Punch perhaps may aid in checking
it. A murder, for example, is seldom called a murder, it is generally
spoken of as an “ appalling tragedy.” Now this word “tragedy” has
far too much of staginess about it to fit it to give force when used in
real life. By calling murders “ tragedies,” you class them, as it were,
among dramatic unrealities, and so weaken the abhorrence wherewith
we should regard them. The penny-a-liners are of course the chief de-
linquents in this way, and that their example appears to be infectious
we may infer from the letters which have lately been in print about the
murders in the cab. From one of these communications, inserted in
the Daily Telegraph, and signed by a writer who adds M.D. to his
name, we quote the following words: —

“ The question then arises who [sic] did the poisoner commence with in offering
the fatal chalice—the mother or the children ? ”

The “ fatal chalice” here referred to was a common pewter pint pot
from a public house, and we can see no reason here for calling that
utensil by any finer name. On the contrary, indeed, we see strong
reason for not doing so; for the words “ fatal chalice ” have a stagy
smack about them, and are entirely out of place in a medical analysis of
the evidence brought forward in an actual case of crime. People who
can speak of a murder as a “ tragedy ” of course may be expected to
extend their paraphrasing, and talk of “fatal chalices” where they
mean common pewter pois. Such poetry is apt to put a stage gloss
upon criminals, and to make us view their villanies as merely stage
effects. Many a man would shrink from murder, who, were it simply
called a tragedy, might feel a smaller dread of acting in it; and to our
thinking the threat of being “ launched into eternity ” sounds a good
deal less intimidating than the threat of being hanged. If people go
on speaking of a murder as a tragedy, they will soon talk of a murderer
as simply a tragedian; and an act that should excite the deepest
feelings of abhorrence, may in time be merely viewed as a theatrical
performance, and if carried through with cleverness, as not unworthy
of applause.