DOI issue:
October 1, 1864
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16874#0147
140
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
(October 1, 1864.
THE SAFEST WAY OF TAKING A LADY DOWN TO DINNER.
MAIN DRAINAGE IN VAIN.
Cowper, our Edile, declare to what end it is
London with catacombs we undermine.
Why many millions of money to spend it is
Needful for sending our dregs to the Brine,
If Kingston-on-Thames shall deliver
Her sediment into the river ?
If it be lawful for Hampton, the flourishing
Towns above, Twick’nham and Richmond below,
Brentford, Kew, Mortlake, to bid streams of nourishing
Pulp, that should feed the crops, wastefully flow,
Destroying the fish, from their sewers
Down into the vats of our brewers P
What! Can such places afford the Thames prettier
Tributaries of unspeakable mud
Than those which now by the turtle-fed City are
Rendered, alloying its once silver flood
With bronze, but that current is any
Thing rather than clean as a penny ?
Let Father Thames, jolly old River Deity
Pour, from no pail, but an elegant urnj
Water of crystalline diaphaneity,
Free from all taint that the nose can discern.
His feeders from sources all rural
Derived, and from none intramural.
v From Denmark.
(From, Somebody else’s Specml Correspondent)
The Danish Clergy, as is generally known, are entrusted
with secular offices. You are not perhaps acquainted with
the fact that a clergyman may possess the highest military
dignity. That such, however, is the case, I am informed
by a member of the Court, who tells me, that, among the dis-
tinguished personages who were awaiting the arrival of
the Prince and Princess of Wales, at the Christiansborg
Palace, there was a General Reverence.
FROM BADEN-BADEN.
“ All the world is at Baden-Baden,” wrote a Corre-
spondent to M. Bismarck. “ That can hardly be,” said
the Minister, “ seeing that I ’ve sent the demi-monde
away.”
OUR DRAMATIC CORRESPONDENT.
Dear Punch,
Everybody knows that there is nobody now in London,
excepting some two millions of scribblers, shopkeepers and such folk,
who, of course, are nobody. So the man who is obliged to pass a night
in Town on his journey from the moors to the turnip-fields and stubbles,
may find it difficult to know where and how to spend the evening.
After a solitary dinner d la Crusoe at his Club, where he will hardly see
a living thing except blackbeetles, he will in despair be forced to look
into the newspaper, to see what there is to see that he has not seen at
the theatres.
Beginning alphabetically, A stands for the Adelphi.so call a hansom cab
and go to the Adelphi, and see Toole in Stephen Bigges. Many people
fancy that when an actor takes to playing in broad farce, he quite unfits
himself for any other kind of piece. But Mr. Toole can act well with-
out trying to be funny, and has something in him beyond the mere
capacity to raise a vacant laugh.
But supposing that our friend has been to the Adelphi, and has thus
exhausted A in his dramatic alphabet, he may wish to know how doth
the busy B improve an after-dinner hour for the benefit of playgoers. The
Britannia is the only playhouse that begins with B, and this stands so
remote in the far East that to travel there from Clubland were a journey
not unlike that of the author of Mthen. However, Swells occasionally
do the strangest things when there is nobody to see them, and so a tour
to the Britannia may be suggested as a way of killing time for a few
hours, in the interval occurring between grouse and partridge slaughter.
The plays most popular at this house are chiefly of the blood-and-brim-
stone, mystery-and-murder sort, with very commonly a ghost in them,
or, as the bills prefer to call it, in big type, an AWFUL APPARI-
TION ! ! ! To the traveller from Clubland the audience will, however,
afford as strange a sight as any on the stage. It is really worth the
journey to see that mass of faces all intent upon the play, and staring
their sixpennyworth with all their main ana might. There are some
three thousand people nightly crammed in that great “ minor ” theatre,
and, excepting when the comic man inclines their throats to laughter,
or when a baby wakes and squalls and is clamoured into silence, scarce
a foot is heard to shuffle or a tongue to speak. How many babies
there are nightly to be seen at the Britannia 1 am afraid to guess, and
how many drops of poison—that is, gin pr other “ soothing syrup ”—
are given to keep them quiet, I dread still more to conceive. But the
babies survive somehow, at least many of them do; though if a law
were made to prohibit the admission of babies to a theatre, or music
hall, or concert-room, or any other stifling place where grown-up people
closely congregate, I think the Registrar would soon report the death-
rate had decreased.
To quote, not quite correctly, an old song I remember -
“ C stands for Covent Garden, of the drama now bereft,
D for Drury Lane, where our Shakspeare still is left.”
At the first of these two theatres the solitary Swell who is on his way
to Stubbleshire may go to one of Mr. Alfred Mellon’s cheap but
charming Concerts, where, besides some pleasant dance-tunes which, if
he be young enough, will set his toes a-tingling, he will hear some real
music by Beethoven or Mendelssohn, performed to a good audience
by a famously good band. Moreover, he will hear Carlotta Patti,
who sings so high at times that you expect her, like a skylark, to sing
clean out of sight; and he will hear the wondrous Turkophone played
by Ali Ben Soualle so early in the evening that by ten o’clock or so
he may criticise its merits in company with a cigar and with his old
friend Paddy Green. N.B. Friends at a distance had better accept
the intimation that Mr. Mellon’s Concerts will only last a few more
nights, for the English Opera Company (Limited) will soon take pos-
session of the theatre, and Mr. Mellon will descend from the throne
which he now occupies to his old Conductor’s chair.
With respect to Drury Lane (and if its promises be well performed,
I shall have a great respect for it) Shakspeare migrated last Season to
its stage from Sadler’s Wells, and his stay proved so successful that it
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
(October 1, 1864.
THE SAFEST WAY OF TAKING A LADY DOWN TO DINNER.
MAIN DRAINAGE IN VAIN.
Cowper, our Edile, declare to what end it is
London with catacombs we undermine.
Why many millions of money to spend it is
Needful for sending our dregs to the Brine,
If Kingston-on-Thames shall deliver
Her sediment into the river ?
If it be lawful for Hampton, the flourishing
Towns above, Twick’nham and Richmond below,
Brentford, Kew, Mortlake, to bid streams of nourishing
Pulp, that should feed the crops, wastefully flow,
Destroying the fish, from their sewers
Down into the vats of our brewers P
What! Can such places afford the Thames prettier
Tributaries of unspeakable mud
Than those which now by the turtle-fed City are
Rendered, alloying its once silver flood
With bronze, but that current is any
Thing rather than clean as a penny ?
Let Father Thames, jolly old River Deity
Pour, from no pail, but an elegant urnj
Water of crystalline diaphaneity,
Free from all taint that the nose can discern.
His feeders from sources all rural
Derived, and from none intramural.
v From Denmark.
(From, Somebody else’s Specml Correspondent)
The Danish Clergy, as is generally known, are entrusted
with secular offices. You are not perhaps acquainted with
the fact that a clergyman may possess the highest military
dignity. That such, however, is the case, I am informed
by a member of the Court, who tells me, that, among the dis-
tinguished personages who were awaiting the arrival of
the Prince and Princess of Wales, at the Christiansborg
Palace, there was a General Reverence.
FROM BADEN-BADEN.
“ All the world is at Baden-Baden,” wrote a Corre-
spondent to M. Bismarck. “ That can hardly be,” said
the Minister, “ seeing that I ’ve sent the demi-monde
away.”
OUR DRAMATIC CORRESPONDENT.
Dear Punch,
Everybody knows that there is nobody now in London,
excepting some two millions of scribblers, shopkeepers and such folk,
who, of course, are nobody. So the man who is obliged to pass a night
in Town on his journey from the moors to the turnip-fields and stubbles,
may find it difficult to know where and how to spend the evening.
After a solitary dinner d la Crusoe at his Club, where he will hardly see
a living thing except blackbeetles, he will in despair be forced to look
into the newspaper, to see what there is to see that he has not seen at
the theatres.
Beginning alphabetically, A stands for the Adelphi.so call a hansom cab
and go to the Adelphi, and see Toole in Stephen Bigges. Many people
fancy that when an actor takes to playing in broad farce, he quite unfits
himself for any other kind of piece. But Mr. Toole can act well with-
out trying to be funny, and has something in him beyond the mere
capacity to raise a vacant laugh.
But supposing that our friend has been to the Adelphi, and has thus
exhausted A in his dramatic alphabet, he may wish to know how doth
the busy B improve an after-dinner hour for the benefit of playgoers. The
Britannia is the only playhouse that begins with B, and this stands so
remote in the far East that to travel there from Clubland were a journey
not unlike that of the author of Mthen. However, Swells occasionally
do the strangest things when there is nobody to see them, and so a tour
to the Britannia may be suggested as a way of killing time for a few
hours, in the interval occurring between grouse and partridge slaughter.
The plays most popular at this house are chiefly of the blood-and-brim-
stone, mystery-and-murder sort, with very commonly a ghost in them,
or, as the bills prefer to call it, in big type, an AWFUL APPARI-
TION ! ! ! To the traveller from Clubland the audience will, however,
afford as strange a sight as any on the stage. It is really worth the
journey to see that mass of faces all intent upon the play, and staring
their sixpennyworth with all their main ana might. There are some
three thousand people nightly crammed in that great “ minor ” theatre,
and, excepting when the comic man inclines their throats to laughter,
or when a baby wakes and squalls and is clamoured into silence, scarce
a foot is heard to shuffle or a tongue to speak. How many babies
there are nightly to be seen at the Britannia 1 am afraid to guess, and
how many drops of poison—that is, gin pr other “ soothing syrup ”—
are given to keep them quiet, I dread still more to conceive. But the
babies survive somehow, at least many of them do; though if a law
were made to prohibit the admission of babies to a theatre, or music
hall, or concert-room, or any other stifling place where grown-up people
closely congregate, I think the Registrar would soon report the death-
rate had decreased.
To quote, not quite correctly, an old song I remember -
“ C stands for Covent Garden, of the drama now bereft,
D for Drury Lane, where our Shakspeare still is left.”
At the first of these two theatres the solitary Swell who is on his way
to Stubbleshire may go to one of Mr. Alfred Mellon’s cheap but
charming Concerts, where, besides some pleasant dance-tunes which, if
he be young enough, will set his toes a-tingling, he will hear some real
music by Beethoven or Mendelssohn, performed to a good audience
by a famously good band. Moreover, he will hear Carlotta Patti,
who sings so high at times that you expect her, like a skylark, to sing
clean out of sight; and he will hear the wondrous Turkophone played
by Ali Ben Soualle so early in the evening that by ten o’clock or so
he may criticise its merits in company with a cigar and with his old
friend Paddy Green. N.B. Friends at a distance had better accept
the intimation that Mr. Mellon’s Concerts will only last a few more
nights, for the English Opera Company (Limited) will soon take pos-
session of the theatre, and Mr. Mellon will descend from the throne
which he now occupies to his old Conductor’s chair.
With respect to Drury Lane (and if its promises be well performed,
I shall have a great respect for it) Shakspeare migrated last Season to
its stage from Sadler’s Wells, and his stay proved so successful that it