DOI Heft:
September 7, 1867
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16880#0111
September 7, 1867.]
99
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
A FEW FRIENDS.
(IN SEVERAL TABLEAUX FROM MY PHOTOGRAPHIC BOOK.)
TABLEAU I. (Continued.)
Certainly, “ too many friends spoil the Brighton.” This, by the
way. The key-note for my harping, and so I lay aside the tuning-fork,
having reached the proper pitch. (Pitching into some one, as my
Bunny Friend would say, portrait further on.)
My Hearty Friend invites himself to supper at 10'30, and keeps his
appointment. I hear him in the front hall, two or three flights of
sr.airs down, and round several corners, asking, always heartily, for me.
He knows the landlord, and addresses him heartily. He knows also
what’s the best thing to be had out of the cellar, and suggests it very
heartily. His heartiness is infectious, that is with those who don’t
see him often; it takes with the landlord and the waiters, who almost
cheer him as he goes up-stairs. He meets a natty chambermaid on the
stairs, and there is a laugh and a titter, and in another moment he is
bounding up the last flight to my room. He bursts in as if but a little
more and he’d have had the door down. No obstacle invented by
man shall keep him from his dear friend—me. He’s so glad to see me
again ; as if he had expected me to quit the place for ever, after meet-
ing him in the morning.
He is soon seated—with a bump. I ask him not to bump at eleven
o’clock at night, because the quiet people in the hotel don’t like it. He
begs my pardon, old fellow, so heartily as to make me say, “Oh, never
mind,” which sounds like an encouragement to bump again—which he
does, by the way, after rising for the pickles. I point out that he
needn’t have risen for the pickles, as they are by his side. He says he
is hungry, and the waiter, who has evidently been suborned by His
Heartiness, ignoring me, the giver of the feast, asks him if he’d like
anything beyond what there is on the table? Heavens ! there is beef
enough to support twenty infant schools for a week. There’s chicken,
ham, bread, butter, cheese, parsley (wish he’d limit himself to parsley),
and a tart. (Hope he ’ll take tart, and I shan’t see him again for some
days, probably : knew a man once who took pastry late at night, and—
I forget what happened to him—awful: his hair never curled again, I
believe )
“ You couldn’t get us some ox-tail ? ” he suggests slily to the waiter.
I am on the point of saying, “ Oh, no, he couldn’t,” and adding some-
thing about “ the bar being closed,” only I don’t think they keep ox-tail
in the bar. Before I can come out with my answer the waiter replies
that “ he thinks he could,” this also slily, as if he was going to per-
form a conjuring trick. The waiter quits us, briskly. In his absence
I try to depress His Heartiness (I give him His Heartiness as a title,
you see; I think my Funny Friend, picture further on, would have said
that), by hinting the great improbability of ox-tail being forthcoming.
“ Well, then, old boy,” says he, as heartily as ever, “we’ll have some-
thing else hot.” However, in a whisk of a napkin, so to speak, returns
the waiter with the soup : conjuring trick finished, no deception, no
false bottom, no mechanique, no spring soup (as my Funny Friend, !
picture further on, would say. By the way, try all my indifferent and
doubtful jokes as if perpetrated by my “Funny Friend”) but genuine j
ox-tail.
“ Might manage a cutlet, hey ? ” says my Hearty Friend to me.
We might: but I don’t care for cutlets—at night.
“ What do you say to a filet de boeuf?" he goes on, as if this was
a brilliant notion. “ That’s your style, eh ? ”
I tell him that it is not my style, and, generally, that that is what I
say to filet de bceuf.
The waiter, however, has (conjuring again! quite an entertainment j
by the waiter ; dare say. he’ll do ventriloquism soon) produced cutlets !
from somewhere in a dish. My Hearty Friend supposes I won’t take
any, having just now expressed my dislike for them.
“ As they’re here,” I say, “ I’ll take one.” Meaning, not that if
they weren’t here I would take one, but privately that as they have
been served up at my expense, I may as well get what benefit I can out
of them (by being dyspeptic all night and worse in the morning), and
attack them voraciously, finishing by winning the supper stakes (as
my Funny Friend would say) easily, by one cutlet and a half ahead.
“ Now then,” cries His Heartiness, wiping his mouth, “ for the
Champagne.”
The waiter is ready with a wine-card. I explain, that as I always
myself drink vin ordinaire at Is. 6d. per bottle, I don’t care for Cham-
pagne myself. “ But of course I add, if he likes, why-”
j He does like ; oh doesn't he ! What’s a bottle to my Hearty Friend ?
Nothing, absolutely nothing. Pints he scorns. A good dry Cham-
I pagne he wants.
i suggest the Crown Champagne, a cheap wine, good for cups and
evening parties, or something at 4s. 6d. per pint. I try to keep the
wine list to myself, so that he may not see the names and the prices ;
but he is behind me in a second, so is the waiter. They ’re both in a
plot. It ends in the driest and dearest, half-a-guinea a bottle. It
appears. He invites me (He! invites me! ha! ha!) to join him.
“ Well,” I say, yielding in this matter, as in the cutlets aforesaid,
“ I will take a glass, as it is here.”
It was a strong wine ; a very strong wine. It must have been a very
powerful wine. My bill presented to me lately mentions three bottles
and one pint of the same. I do not recollect the last bottle and a half,
but on tlie other hand feel some delicacy in disputing it.
As to having whiskey hot after this (as my bill asserts we did) I
couldn’t have done such an absurd thing, I’m sure I couldn’t. I don’t
know what my Hearty Friend had ; I do not know, I say, what he had.
Perhaps he went in for whiskey-and-water, or he for whiskey and I for
water.
There is also “ glass broken and one chair mended ” in my bill. My
Hearty Friend danced and did gymnastics, imitating the strong man
(I have a faint recollection of it) at three in the morning, or some other
hour in the morning. I believe he wanted to bathe in the sea with his
clothes on. Did I ?
What I do recollect (because the next day brought it with my
Hearty Friend to my recollection, is that I promised him I would go
and have a dip in the sea at seven o'clock in the morning. Seven
o’clock ! ! ! Two hours before my usual time of rising ! He said, “ that
was the hour for bathing; so fresh, do me good, wake me up, strengthen
me, give new life,” and so forth, until I became as hearty as he, and
promised to accompany him if he’d wake me at a quarter to seven.
What an idiot I was. Why did I put a strong Champagne in my
mouth to steal away my brains ?
Well-
CONVERSION BY BARLEY.
It happened, when last I to market did go,
I met in the High Street wi’ Temperance Joe,
By which means I axed un to come over here.
And said if ’a wood that I’d gie un some beer.
He come, and had dinner, but never a drop.
Sez he, “ I drinks no beer beyond ginger-pop,
Or quenches my thirst wi’ a swig o’ cold tea;
If thee ’st do the same t’ood be better for thee.”
“ Good beer, drunk in reason, don’t do us no harm.
Come, Joe,” I sez, “ have a look over the Farm.”
“ I’m willun,” sez Joe, and wi’ that out we struts.
I show’d un the rye, and the whate, and the wuts.
“ Now look at that grain crop—what is it, dost know ?
That there, ripe for harvest.” “’Tis barley,” sez Joe.
“ Four acres,” I said, “ fine as ever you see.
And well you med fancy wuth zummut to me.
“ ’Tis barley, of all sarts and speeches o’ grain,
As brings to the farmer most profit and gain.
There’s moor land put under’t than ever before,
Of so much advantage it is to the grower.
“ Yo’ see, Joe, that barley’s a sart of a thing,
Don’t need be no wuss for wet autumn or spring.
’Twill do if ’tis sowed at beginnun o’ May,
For whate at laste 'two months too late in the day.
“ A rayther wet harvust don’t do it no ill—
A little rain’s wanted the corns for to fill.
A mellow free pickle the malsters desires—
Dost know, now, Joe, what for they barley requires ?
“ Of barley, friend Joseph, like that in full ear,
Malt’s made in the fust place, and next is made beer.
If beer wusn’t meant for a Christian to drain,
What barley was made for I wish thee’d explain.”
Sez Joe, “ There’s sitch sense in that sayun o’ thine,
Thee well nigh persuad’sl me the pledge to resign,”
I furder praised barley in that sart o’ way,
’Till we at the Barley-Mow finished the day !
Heathen Mythology in a Christian Church.
(Communicated.)
“ There is a Brecentaurfi I hear, “ who sits in a stall in Gloucester
Cathedral. I suppose he is the chief of the Centaurs, who, I always
thought vvere fabulous half-bred people. That’s why they have stalls
there, and why the desk hides the lower half of the Reverend Gentle-
men. Sometimes they ’re quite hoarse in winter.”
The Universal Watchword.—Tick !
99
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
A FEW FRIENDS.
(IN SEVERAL TABLEAUX FROM MY PHOTOGRAPHIC BOOK.)
TABLEAU I. (Continued.)
Certainly, “ too many friends spoil the Brighton.” This, by the
way. The key-note for my harping, and so I lay aside the tuning-fork,
having reached the proper pitch. (Pitching into some one, as my
Bunny Friend would say, portrait further on.)
My Hearty Friend invites himself to supper at 10'30, and keeps his
appointment. I hear him in the front hall, two or three flights of
sr.airs down, and round several corners, asking, always heartily, for me.
He knows the landlord, and addresses him heartily. He knows also
what’s the best thing to be had out of the cellar, and suggests it very
heartily. His heartiness is infectious, that is with those who don’t
see him often; it takes with the landlord and the waiters, who almost
cheer him as he goes up-stairs. He meets a natty chambermaid on the
stairs, and there is a laugh and a titter, and in another moment he is
bounding up the last flight to my room. He bursts in as if but a little
more and he’d have had the door down. No obstacle invented by
man shall keep him from his dear friend—me. He’s so glad to see me
again ; as if he had expected me to quit the place for ever, after meet-
ing him in the morning.
He is soon seated—with a bump. I ask him not to bump at eleven
o’clock at night, because the quiet people in the hotel don’t like it. He
begs my pardon, old fellow, so heartily as to make me say, “Oh, never
mind,” which sounds like an encouragement to bump again—which he
does, by the way, after rising for the pickles. I point out that he
needn’t have risen for the pickles, as they are by his side. He says he
is hungry, and the waiter, who has evidently been suborned by His
Heartiness, ignoring me, the giver of the feast, asks him if he’d like
anything beyond what there is on the table? Heavens ! there is beef
enough to support twenty infant schools for a week. There’s chicken,
ham, bread, butter, cheese, parsley (wish he’d limit himself to parsley),
and a tart. (Hope he ’ll take tart, and I shan’t see him again for some
days, probably : knew a man once who took pastry late at night, and—
I forget what happened to him—awful: his hair never curled again, I
believe )
“ You couldn’t get us some ox-tail ? ” he suggests slily to the waiter.
I am on the point of saying, “ Oh, no, he couldn’t,” and adding some-
thing about “ the bar being closed,” only I don’t think they keep ox-tail
in the bar. Before I can come out with my answer the waiter replies
that “ he thinks he could,” this also slily, as if he was going to per-
form a conjuring trick. The waiter quits us, briskly. In his absence
I try to depress His Heartiness (I give him His Heartiness as a title,
you see; I think my Funny Friend, picture further on, would have said
that), by hinting the great improbability of ox-tail being forthcoming.
“ Well, then, old boy,” says he, as heartily as ever, “we’ll have some-
thing else hot.” However, in a whisk of a napkin, so to speak, returns
the waiter with the soup : conjuring trick finished, no deception, no
false bottom, no mechanique, no spring soup (as my Funny Friend, !
picture further on, would say. By the way, try all my indifferent and
doubtful jokes as if perpetrated by my “Funny Friend”) but genuine j
ox-tail.
“ Might manage a cutlet, hey ? ” says my Hearty Friend to me.
We might: but I don’t care for cutlets—at night.
“ What do you say to a filet de boeuf?" he goes on, as if this was
a brilliant notion. “ That’s your style, eh ? ”
I tell him that it is not my style, and, generally, that that is what I
say to filet de bceuf.
The waiter, however, has (conjuring again! quite an entertainment j
by the waiter ; dare say. he’ll do ventriloquism soon) produced cutlets !
from somewhere in a dish. My Hearty Friend supposes I won’t take
any, having just now expressed my dislike for them.
“ As they’re here,” I say, “ I’ll take one.” Meaning, not that if
they weren’t here I would take one, but privately that as they have
been served up at my expense, I may as well get what benefit I can out
of them (by being dyspeptic all night and worse in the morning), and
attack them voraciously, finishing by winning the supper stakes (as
my Funny Friend would say) easily, by one cutlet and a half ahead.
“ Now then,” cries His Heartiness, wiping his mouth, “ for the
Champagne.”
The waiter is ready with a wine-card. I explain, that as I always
myself drink vin ordinaire at Is. 6d. per bottle, I don’t care for Cham-
pagne myself. “ But of course I add, if he likes, why-”
j He does like ; oh doesn't he ! What’s a bottle to my Hearty Friend ?
Nothing, absolutely nothing. Pints he scorns. A good dry Cham-
I pagne he wants.
i suggest the Crown Champagne, a cheap wine, good for cups and
evening parties, or something at 4s. 6d. per pint. I try to keep the
wine list to myself, so that he may not see the names and the prices ;
but he is behind me in a second, so is the waiter. They ’re both in a
plot. It ends in the driest and dearest, half-a-guinea a bottle. It
appears. He invites me (He! invites me! ha! ha!) to join him.
“ Well,” I say, yielding in this matter, as in the cutlets aforesaid,
“ I will take a glass, as it is here.”
It was a strong wine ; a very strong wine. It must have been a very
powerful wine. My bill presented to me lately mentions three bottles
and one pint of the same. I do not recollect the last bottle and a half,
but on tlie other hand feel some delicacy in disputing it.
As to having whiskey hot after this (as my bill asserts we did) I
couldn’t have done such an absurd thing, I’m sure I couldn’t. I don’t
know what my Hearty Friend had ; I do not know, I say, what he had.
Perhaps he went in for whiskey-and-water, or he for whiskey and I for
water.
There is also “ glass broken and one chair mended ” in my bill. My
Hearty Friend danced and did gymnastics, imitating the strong man
(I have a faint recollection of it) at three in the morning, or some other
hour in the morning. I believe he wanted to bathe in the sea with his
clothes on. Did I ?
What I do recollect (because the next day brought it with my
Hearty Friend to my recollection, is that I promised him I would go
and have a dip in the sea at seven o'clock in the morning. Seven
o’clock ! ! ! Two hours before my usual time of rising ! He said, “ that
was the hour for bathing; so fresh, do me good, wake me up, strengthen
me, give new life,” and so forth, until I became as hearty as he, and
promised to accompany him if he’d wake me at a quarter to seven.
What an idiot I was. Why did I put a strong Champagne in my
mouth to steal away my brains ?
Well-
CONVERSION BY BARLEY.
It happened, when last I to market did go,
I met in the High Street wi’ Temperance Joe,
By which means I axed un to come over here.
And said if ’a wood that I’d gie un some beer.
He come, and had dinner, but never a drop.
Sez he, “ I drinks no beer beyond ginger-pop,
Or quenches my thirst wi’ a swig o’ cold tea;
If thee ’st do the same t’ood be better for thee.”
“ Good beer, drunk in reason, don’t do us no harm.
Come, Joe,” I sez, “ have a look over the Farm.”
“ I’m willun,” sez Joe, and wi’ that out we struts.
I show’d un the rye, and the whate, and the wuts.
“ Now look at that grain crop—what is it, dost know ?
That there, ripe for harvest.” “’Tis barley,” sez Joe.
“ Four acres,” I said, “ fine as ever you see.
And well you med fancy wuth zummut to me.
“ ’Tis barley, of all sarts and speeches o’ grain,
As brings to the farmer most profit and gain.
There’s moor land put under’t than ever before,
Of so much advantage it is to the grower.
“ Yo’ see, Joe, that barley’s a sart of a thing,
Don’t need be no wuss for wet autumn or spring.
’Twill do if ’tis sowed at beginnun o’ May,
For whate at laste 'two months too late in the day.
“ A rayther wet harvust don’t do it no ill—
A little rain’s wanted the corns for to fill.
A mellow free pickle the malsters desires—
Dost know, now, Joe, what for they barley requires ?
“ Of barley, friend Joseph, like that in full ear,
Malt’s made in the fust place, and next is made beer.
If beer wusn’t meant for a Christian to drain,
What barley was made for I wish thee’d explain.”
Sez Joe, “ There’s sitch sense in that sayun o’ thine,
Thee well nigh persuad’sl me the pledge to resign,”
I furder praised barley in that sart o’ way,
’Till we at the Barley-Mow finished the day !
Heathen Mythology in a Christian Church.
(Communicated.)
“ There is a Brecentaurfi I hear, “ who sits in a stall in Gloucester
Cathedral. I suppose he is the chief of the Centaurs, who, I always
thought vvere fabulous half-bred people. That’s why they have stalls
there, and why the desk hides the lower half of the Reverend Gentle-
men. Sometimes they ’re quite hoarse in winter.”
The Universal Watchword.—Tick !