Punch: Punch (56.1869)

May 1, 186!)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

181

BIRDS, BEASTS, AND FISHES.

CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH.—THE JOLLY OLD COCK AGAIN—GOOSEY—

LADY LYNX—HER MANAGEMENT—MR. RABYT—MISS GUINEA PIGG—

MISS WEASEL-SIR GUY FOX—SERGEANT TURKEY.

Old Barndoor, the Jolly Old Cock, was there, hearty and honest
as ever. Goosey was somewhat troubled in his mind as to what his
parent’s reception of him would be, seeing that, on their last parting,
he, Goosey, had, so to speak, been kicked out of doors. To see Old
Barndoor salute his son in his heartiest manner, was, as Lady Lynx
observed, really quite touching; and then how courteous and pleasant
■ he was with Miss Ida Drake, in whom he had then no idea that he
was welcoming a future daughter-in-law. But Lady Lynx saw it all,
knew it all, every bit of it, better than we did, who were, to a certain
I extent, in the secret.

Lady Lynx having disposed of her own encumbrances to advan-
i tage, undertakes matrimonial speculations for friends, as it were, on
commission. No one who knows her Ladyship would urge, for a
moment, that marriages are made in Heaven ; unless he were inclined
to flattery, when an explanatory addition could be made to this effect:

! “ Or in your Ladyship’s drawing-room, which is the same thing.” If
such speculations were a thoroughly recognised business, then on
I Lady Lynx’s cards would be inscribed, “Matrimonial Promoter.
Managing Directress of the Holy Alliance Company. Unlimited.”

How many excellent matches has not this enterprising woman made!
Of how much misery has she not been the cause !

Misery! Bah! That’s their affair: not hers. She brings them
together. She introduces Mister Rabyt to Miss Guinea Pigg, the
Scotch heiress, gauche and gawky, with red hair and an irritable nose ;
she brings them together, throws them together, leaves them together,
drops hints of Rabyt’s passion for Miss Pigg, and regrets that she
(Lady Lynx) having been made the confidante of Rabyt’s secret,

cannot betray him to her: though- And here she will break off and

exclaim that she wonders how some people can be so blind. Then she
gives Miss Pigg a little smart kiss on the forehead, and two little
good-natured taps with her fan on her arm, just as the servant enters
announcing “ Mr. Rabyt.”

“ How curious are these coincidences ! We were only this moment
speaking of you.” And here my Lady casts a significant glance at
Mr. Rabyt, who utterly fails in an attempt to appear at his ease; while
Miss Pigg, in shaking hands with the visitor, can hardly trust herself
to throw her large eyes up at him, lest he should then and there go
down on his knees on one of the large flowers in the pattern of the
carpet, and make an impassioned declaration.

If Mr. Rabyt, aged twenty-two and with plenty of money (“ Money
clings to money,” says Lady Lynx) is led to propose to the Scotch
heiress with a Jamaican fortune, well, they deliver themselves to each
other of their own will, by their own act and deed. Cupid lights a
hymeneal torch, and, being a universal lamplighter, has to run off,
ladder and all, to the next post, and thence to the next street. If
there’s a poor supply of oil, out goes the lamp. It is hard to blame
| Lady Lynx in such instances : yet they do. The parties themselves
blame her, and wish they’d never entered the Dowager’s drawing-
i room, or been placed under her chaperonage.

She knows this—no one better. “ But, my dear,” she says, quietly
nodding her head, “ they come to me in their difficulties.” And,
assuredly, many a domestic rent has this invaluable woman patched up.
Aristocratic clothes-carts, with baskets crammed full of dirty linen, are
driven up to the Lynx laundry, where the washing and cleaning is
carried on with the greatest possible secresy.

When Lady Lynx chats with you (she is delightfully chatty), she
merely indicates her knowledge of a scandal here and there, as baits to
draw you out, and discover what you may know about the affair, what-
ever it is. She took up Miss Weasel, a very wide-awake young lady,
without a fraction of a consol in her possession, and married her to
i Sir Guy Pox, the Catholic baronet, of ancient lineage, with one of the
finest estates in England, which he had some idea of giving up to his
j brother and entering into the ecclesiastical state, had it not been that
while he was debating the subject with himself, he paid a visit to his
cousin, Lord St. Reynard’s, where Lady Lynx came, bringing as her
companion Miss Weasel, who, professiug intense dissent from the
baronet’s religious opinions, showed an under-current of inclination
, towards being converted to the tenets of his faith.
i “ Catch Miss Weasel fast asleep,” said her Ladyship, playfully, to
i Sir Guy, “ and win a pair of gloves of her.” And the guileless baronet
did it too.

When Miss Weasel became Lady Fox, her kind friend, Lady
! Lynx, “who had been a second mother to her,” (her lirst being in a
j very humble sphere of life, and kept judiciously in the background,)
was always gushingly welcomed at Holecastle, Sir Guy’s seat, which
Lad been in the Fox family for centuries. But, after a time, a coldness
grew up between them, and when, in two years’ time, little Guy was
born, the Old Fairy didn’t receive her invitation to the christening.

She did not arrive, however, in a chariot drawn by dragons, and did not
prophesy any ill to the child. She only said in confidence to Lady
Dodo, “ Nelly Weasel will want me one of these days. I know her.
I am told Sir Guy is very devout, and is giving up all balls and par-
ties. She is not made for a dull life. They tell me Lord Moth has
been staying at Holecastle lately.”

Lady Lynx could have pointed out to Old Barndoor the Little
Duck as his daughter-in-law, with the very time and place of the pro-
posal that evening, had it served her purpose to notice such small
game.

Within a week the Dormouses, in whose family you may remember
Miss Drake was governess, knew all about it, and communicated with
the Rev. Mr. Drake, her father, in the country. Then Goosey had
to go through the ordeal of a visit to the Jolly Old Cock, when that
amiable old gentleman told him that he was. throwing himself away,
that he had expected, from the society in which he had seen him, he
would have made a good match, and more to the same old purpose,
finishing by condemning himself, in a most Christian spirit, to a fate
worse than that of Hamlet’s father’s ghost, if he should ever allow one
sixpence to a son who was so blankedly ungrateful.

The fact was, he wanted all the sixpences which should in time have
come to Goosey, for his own present use and benelit; and what more
natural reason for his own justification in this matter could there be,
than the unfilial conduct of his son ? For, as every one, who knew
Old Barndoor’s parties and dinners, concluded, “There must be
something wrong in a lad who could behave badly to such a kind,
good, Jolly Old Cock as that.”

The above interview with the parent bird was, as I have said, a week
or more after this party at the Macaws, but it was here that he
politely yielded his place at the supper table, to a portly, middle-aged
gentleman, with whom he fell into conversation, and to whom he was
subsequently introduced by Mr. Dormouse Senior, when,, to poor
Goosey’s dismay, he found he had been discussing legal points with
the great Serjeant Turkey himself, whose name as a Quarter
Sessional Judge, is a terror to prisoners, and whose presence is an
ornament to any bench of magistrates.

{To he Continued.)

SISTERS-IN-LOVE v. SISTERS-IN-LAW.

“ The announcement of the majority of 99 for Second Reading of the Bill
(for Legalising Marriage with a Deceased Wife’s Sister) was followed by
rattling of fans, clapping of hands, and something very like cheering behind
the lattice of the ladies’ cage.”—Parliamentary Report.

When Tom Chambers and Bright, with unhallowed delight,

Broke the barriers ’twixt husband and sister-in-law,

Behind the cage bars, in Lord Charles’s* despite,

Fans rattled, sounds rose ’twixt “ hear, hear ! ” and “ haw, haw ! ”

Were those earthly fans in live hands that so rattled ?

Came that eldritch laugh from live feminine throats ?

Or was’t bodiless spirits that giggled and prattled
Their delight in those speeches, their joy in those votes ?

Were they ghosts of dead wives, smart of. old raws diverting
With the thought of this new matrimonial blister,—

Of a wife, with the mission at once of asserting
The rights of her sex, and the wrongs of her sister ?

Were they ghosts of wives’ sisters, who wed in their life-times
Cared neither for status nor statutes a straw ;

Now exulting in prospect of legalised wife-times,

For sisters-in-love who are sisters-in-law ?

Be those sounds from live women or spirits of dead ones,

Woman has made her voice heard in Parliament’s halls ;

And the gain of one mother-in-law for two dread ones,

Must be set ’gainst the chances of sisterly squalls.

* Lord Charles Russell, the Sergeant-at-Arms.

A Wonderful Feat in High Art for Lowe.

{Subject for a Grand Cartoon in the Salle des Pas Perdus of the Neio
Law Courts.)

As a Pendant to Samson carrying off the Gates of Gaza—Bob Lowe
with Inigo Jones’s front upon his back !

Too Vague.

At the last meeting of the Geographical Society a paper was read
giving an account of a “Journey through the Afar Country.” There
are so many countries which are “afar” interesting to geographers,
that a rather more precise indication of the particular region meant
might, perhaps, have been desirable.

Vol. 56.

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