Punch (50.1866)

January 20, 1866.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

23

RUSSIA TO PRUSSIA.

No, Sir, my Brother, be content
To leave alone those Duchies;

Think not, from Denmark though you rent.
To keep them in your clutches.

It suited me to let you split
Your neighbour’s realm asunder.

And from his crown detach a bit:

But now—hands off the plunder!

You chose to do a wicked thing,

’Twas not my cue to stop it.

You slew the Danes and robbed their King
Must yield the prey: so drop it.

You stole, whilst 1 the theft surveyed.

What you shall hold no longer.

Denmark the weaker you have made ;

Must not make Prussia stronger.

Thanksgiving for the spoil and slain.

As bound in pious duty,

You rendered, half, at least, in vain .

You must restore the booty.

Meanwhile remains a little bill.

Whose dread you’ll hardly smother.

Thank One for slaughter if you will,

You’ll have to pay another.

For bloodshed and expense you’ve naught
To show your angry nation,

Whose discontent may give you thought.
But gives me no vexation.

Now see to Bismabck what you owe :

A bubble : and how hollow !

He to the deuce had better go,

And you as well might follow.

Native Wit.

Painter. “ You don’t mean to Say you want Me to Sign it, when I tell
you 1 did not Paint it? And a Beastly Copy it is, too!"

Picture-Dealer. “ Yy not, goot Sir? vy not? Tut ! tut ! tut! I only vish
you Artis’s vos Men of Bis’ness ! ”

Brown, being advised for the benefit of his palate In
taste an oyster roasted in a thin slice of bacon, passed a
sleepless night in trying to concoct a feeble joke about
the oddity of putting the spat upon the spit.

A Great Hit.—The man who first
have been Rowland.

struck ile ” must

A MARKET FOR HIGH ART.

Mr. Punch,

On the memory of a certain wooden painter, who should have
been West—a certain joker of jokes joked the following joke, to wit

“ He died and made no sign."

Sign-painting, Sir, has hitherto been regarded as an inferior exercise of
the pencil, and nobody but a shallow jester would say that the elevation
at which signboards are generally suspended entitles them to be con-
sidered works of High Art. But circumstances have arisen under
which any British Artist who has only genius enough might be enabled
to paint signboards which would rival the finest pictures of Michael
Angelo.

Let me, Sir, direct your attention to those large public-houses, the
vast joint-stock hotels. They are inns whose landlords are lords and
dukes and other members of the landed aristocracy. They are kept by
the nobility and gentry. In the fine English of these days they are
called “ palatial edifices.” Let these palatial public-houses be embel-
lished. with signs. As a palace is to an ordinary tavern, so might
the sign of the palatial public-house be to that of a common one ; larger
and more beautiful.

The sign of the huge hotel should of course be executed in fresco, to
stand the weather. The grandest hotels might be adorned with signs
of corresponding grandeur. What if the Langham Place Hotel were
to be called the Queen’s Head ? Why, t hen, any requisite alteration
having been made in the architecture of the building, its principal
entrance might be surmounted, by way of sign, with the best portrait
of Her Majesty that could be painted by a distinguished R.A. Or,
the sign of the Queen’s Head might be a painting commemorative of
postage-reform. In like manner the Alexandra Hotel might have for
its sign a grand historical picture of Her Royal Highness the Princess
of Wales landing in England. For that of the Westminster Palace
Hotel no end of subjects might be taken from the History of England
tor the last eight hundred years. Suppose the new Richmond Hotel
were named the Cat and Fiddle, the Dog and Duck, the Goat and

Compasses, the White Hart, the Blue Boar, or the Red Lion, its sign
might exhibit a masterpiece of animal painting, executed by a Landseer
or an Ansdell.

A great advantage of sign-painting, practised as a branch of genuine
art, would be the plentiful variety of subject which it would afford the
artist. Eruit and flower painters, even, would thus find scope for their
specialty in the production of such signs as the Rose and Thistle, or
the Bunch of Grapes.

Altar-pieces are no longer painted, because there is nobody to pay
for them, all the money that is given for pious uses going in church
extension, clergy-multiplication, and other means of supplying spiritual
destitution with spiritual necessaries. Sign-boards for splendid hotels
would supply their places in the world of art, and, generally adopted,
would create an ample and remunerative market for British Artists.
If every great joint-stock hotel displayed a sign that was a first-rate
painting, it would do no more than its proprietary could very well
afford. Rising hotels would encourage rising talent, and redeem this
country from the reproach of being a nation of shareholders engrossed
in trying to get money, and with eating and drinking.

I offer you the foregoing suggestion, Mr. Punch, in the hope that you
will communicate it to the School of Design, and cause the Directors of
that institution to begin reducing the notion of High Art signboards to
practice, by offering to the competition of British Artists a considerable
sum of money as a prize for the best sign of the Marquis of Granby.
I love to take mine ease in mine inn, Mr. Punch, albeit I am,

Habitans in Sicco.

N.B. A good dry Skittle Ground.

Begat Elevation—Singular Case.

From Rolls we learn this lesson brief—
A Romilly, with rare luck gifted,
Shows how a lawyer like a leaf
Is by a little rustle lifted.