DOI issue:
March 13, 1875
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16940#0118
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
I
[March 13, 1875.
IGNORANCE AND BLISS,” &c.
“What is it, John?”
“ WHY, AS FUR AS I CAN MAKE OUT, IT’S ONE o’ THESE ’ERE ‘SCHOOL
Boards ’ as a’ been set up all over the Country, and there’s been so
MUCH ABOUT IN THE NEWSPAPERS, YOU KNOW ! ”
“ Ah ! ”
PETTICOATS IN PARLIAMENT.
O, Mr. Punch ! Now, wasn’t it a shame of them to
laugh at that dear darling, Serjeant Sherlock, when
he brought forward his Notion (I fancy that’s the pro-
per word)—
“ That it is expedient to remove the grating in front of
the Ladies’ Gallery.”
You can’t think what a blessing it would he to us poor
caged and dooped-up creatures, who feel like that poor
darling of a starling in the Sentimental Journey, inclined
to sing “ I can’t get out! ” when we go into the House.
Besides half stifling us, you know the grating really grates
upon our nerves. And then it stops the sound so, we
can hardly hear the speeches, unless we keep our ears
on tiptoe, as it were, and try with all our might. I’m
sure the House would look much nicer if the grating
were removed, for it hides our pretty dresses, and our
pretty faces, too, and prevents the fact of our presence
being felt. If the ladies were but seen, although not
allowed to speak, they might hope to have some influence
on the course of a debate. I should so like to applaud
when I won’t say who is speaking; and I think the
savage rustling of our indignant fans would frighten
odious men from calling us mere persons, as they some-
times do when talking of the fairer sex.
Your constant reader and admirer,
Amy Amelia.
P. S.—Papa calls our gallery a Chamber of Horrors:
Not very polite, is it ? If he said it was a Gallery of
the Pictures of Intelligence, it would he far nearer the
truth.
Brittle!
(What our quondam Wooden Walls have come to !)
In Lloyd’s list of Wrecks and Casualties, Feb. 22nd,
we read that, on the Luxor steam-ship for Alexandria
coming into collision with the Cyprian off the Bell
Buoy, the former received considerable damage, “two
plates being broken.”
To what a pitch have we now brought the niceties of
navigation, when a ship is considered to have suffered
severely on a voyage by the loss of a little crockery !
Motto, for Married Men {in certain savage districts).
—“ Here we are, all alive and kicking! ”
show, so the big House dwindled to a little one, to hear Me.
Cowper-Temple move his Bill to admit Women to Degrees in the
Scotch Universities. The weight of Scotch opinion—above all, of
Scotch University opinion—is dead against the Bill. The Scotch
Universities do not see their way to mixed classes of both sexes in
Anatomy and Pathology, and cannot undertake to provide separate
classes for Ladies.
In the meantime, it is hardly fair to ascribe the opposition to the
Bill, as both Mr. Forsyth and Mr. Roebuck did, to nothing better
than Trades-Unionism. The Princess’s Female University, with its
“ Prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,
And sweet girl-graduates with golden hair,”
.is, as yet, a dream of the Poet-Laureate and the future. “ Che
sard, sar«”—if it must come, it will come. “ The readiness is all,”
as Hamlet says; _ but it is not to be wondered at, if a good many
Lords of the Creation, quite innocent of Trade-Union jealousy, decline
to help forward what they deem a movement for doing away with
Nature s distinctions, between its Lords and its Ladies—assisting
m an unsexmg operation, in fact. In the existing state of feeling on
Iri8?! eci’ 111 anc^ ou^ the House, it is not to be wondered at
that Mr. Cowper-Teaiple’s Bill was thrown out by 194 to 151.
Thursday.—- Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione querentes f ” asks
Juvenal. Nothing we like better,” say Peers and Commons.
i)R. Kenealy may boast that he has drawn the most fashionable
as well as the biggest House of the season—
Members to right of him,
Members to left of him.
Members in front of him,
Sniggered and wondered!
All the galleries filled, all the gangways crowded: Peers ur
stairs, and the Prince over the clock!
Had not the Doctor some right to call himself a lion ?—thoug
Dr. Percy may find it difficult to explain where, under the actual
system of ventilation at Westminster, he is to get the dew-drops for
shaking off his mane.
The Doctor arraigns Mr. Evelyn Ashley, for having asked a
knot of the Doctor’s friends at Ryde, who hissed some uncompli-
mentary reference to him as an undesirable Member of Parlia-
ment—
“What! Do you think that that man would make a good representative
who is tbe Editor of the Englishman, and who put a false witness into the
box ? ”
Mr. Lowe did good service in recalling the House to a sense of its
situation under the new liabilities imposed on it by the suscepti-
bility of Members like Mr. Sullivan and Dr. Kenealy—of an
ermine-like horror of soil, nice, even to delicacy, as to the proprieties,
and of a sensitiveness so shrinking that it cannot bear the least rush
of the cold air that often comes in with the naked truth. .He re-
minded Honourable Members that breach of privilege is confined to
imputation of discreditable deed or word by Member to Member as
Member. If Mr. Ashley had slandered Dr. Kenealy, Jthe Courts
of Law were open to him. The Doctor contended, logica sua, that
Mr. Ashley’s words, being spoken of him before he became a Mem-
ber, must have been spoken of him as a Member. He did not believe
in Courts of Law, and would see them all—far enough—ere he went
into one for vindication of his character. He asked till to-morrow
to comment on Mr. Ashley’s admissions. But the House preferred,
on Mr. Disraeli’s motion, to pass to the ord.er of the day, and leave
well—truth’s well, which Mr. Ashley maintained he had drawn
from—alone. And so the battle ended (after a very guarded admis-
sion from Mr. Ashley that he might not have chosen the very best
audience to speak the truth to)—re infecta. But it must be allowed
that the irrepressible Doctor fully maintained his status as Lion of
the evening. He bearded Lowe, sneered at Disraeli, defied those
who called him to order, upheld the Englishman, attacked the Chief
I
[March 13, 1875.
IGNORANCE AND BLISS,” &c.
“What is it, John?”
“ WHY, AS FUR AS I CAN MAKE OUT, IT’S ONE o’ THESE ’ERE ‘SCHOOL
Boards ’ as a’ been set up all over the Country, and there’s been so
MUCH ABOUT IN THE NEWSPAPERS, YOU KNOW ! ”
“ Ah ! ”
PETTICOATS IN PARLIAMENT.
O, Mr. Punch ! Now, wasn’t it a shame of them to
laugh at that dear darling, Serjeant Sherlock, when
he brought forward his Notion (I fancy that’s the pro-
per word)—
“ That it is expedient to remove the grating in front of
the Ladies’ Gallery.”
You can’t think what a blessing it would he to us poor
caged and dooped-up creatures, who feel like that poor
darling of a starling in the Sentimental Journey, inclined
to sing “ I can’t get out! ” when we go into the House.
Besides half stifling us, you know the grating really grates
upon our nerves. And then it stops the sound so, we
can hardly hear the speeches, unless we keep our ears
on tiptoe, as it were, and try with all our might. I’m
sure the House would look much nicer if the grating
were removed, for it hides our pretty dresses, and our
pretty faces, too, and prevents the fact of our presence
being felt. If the ladies were but seen, although not
allowed to speak, they might hope to have some influence
on the course of a debate. I should so like to applaud
when I won’t say who is speaking; and I think the
savage rustling of our indignant fans would frighten
odious men from calling us mere persons, as they some-
times do when talking of the fairer sex.
Your constant reader and admirer,
Amy Amelia.
P. S.—Papa calls our gallery a Chamber of Horrors:
Not very polite, is it ? If he said it was a Gallery of
the Pictures of Intelligence, it would he far nearer the
truth.
Brittle!
(What our quondam Wooden Walls have come to !)
In Lloyd’s list of Wrecks and Casualties, Feb. 22nd,
we read that, on the Luxor steam-ship for Alexandria
coming into collision with the Cyprian off the Bell
Buoy, the former received considerable damage, “two
plates being broken.”
To what a pitch have we now brought the niceties of
navigation, when a ship is considered to have suffered
severely on a voyage by the loss of a little crockery !
Motto, for Married Men {in certain savage districts).
—“ Here we are, all alive and kicking! ”
show, so the big House dwindled to a little one, to hear Me.
Cowper-Temple move his Bill to admit Women to Degrees in the
Scotch Universities. The weight of Scotch opinion—above all, of
Scotch University opinion—is dead against the Bill. The Scotch
Universities do not see their way to mixed classes of both sexes in
Anatomy and Pathology, and cannot undertake to provide separate
classes for Ladies.
In the meantime, it is hardly fair to ascribe the opposition to the
Bill, as both Mr. Forsyth and Mr. Roebuck did, to nothing better
than Trades-Unionism. The Princess’s Female University, with its
“ Prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,
And sweet girl-graduates with golden hair,”
.is, as yet, a dream of the Poet-Laureate and the future. “ Che
sard, sar«”—if it must come, it will come. “ The readiness is all,”
as Hamlet says; _ but it is not to be wondered at, if a good many
Lords of the Creation, quite innocent of Trade-Union jealousy, decline
to help forward what they deem a movement for doing away with
Nature s distinctions, between its Lords and its Ladies—assisting
m an unsexmg operation, in fact. In the existing state of feeling on
Iri8?! eci’ 111 anc^ ou^ the House, it is not to be wondered at
that Mr. Cowper-Teaiple’s Bill was thrown out by 194 to 151.
Thursday.—- Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione querentes f ” asks
Juvenal. Nothing we like better,” say Peers and Commons.
i)R. Kenealy may boast that he has drawn the most fashionable
as well as the biggest House of the season—
Members to right of him,
Members to left of him.
Members in front of him,
Sniggered and wondered!
All the galleries filled, all the gangways crowded: Peers ur
stairs, and the Prince over the clock!
Had not the Doctor some right to call himself a lion ?—thoug
Dr. Percy may find it difficult to explain where, under the actual
system of ventilation at Westminster, he is to get the dew-drops for
shaking off his mane.
The Doctor arraigns Mr. Evelyn Ashley, for having asked a
knot of the Doctor’s friends at Ryde, who hissed some uncompli-
mentary reference to him as an undesirable Member of Parlia-
ment—
“What! Do you think that that man would make a good representative
who is tbe Editor of the Englishman, and who put a false witness into the
box ? ”
Mr. Lowe did good service in recalling the House to a sense of its
situation under the new liabilities imposed on it by the suscepti-
bility of Members like Mr. Sullivan and Dr. Kenealy—of an
ermine-like horror of soil, nice, even to delicacy, as to the proprieties,
and of a sensitiveness so shrinking that it cannot bear the least rush
of the cold air that often comes in with the naked truth. .He re-
minded Honourable Members that breach of privilege is confined to
imputation of discreditable deed or word by Member to Member as
Member. If Mr. Ashley had slandered Dr. Kenealy, Jthe Courts
of Law were open to him. The Doctor contended, logica sua, that
Mr. Ashley’s words, being spoken of him before he became a Mem-
ber, must have been spoken of him as a Member. He did not believe
in Courts of Law, and would see them all—far enough—ere he went
into one for vindication of his character. He asked till to-morrow
to comment on Mr. Ashley’s admissions. But the House preferred,
on Mr. Disraeli’s motion, to pass to the ord.er of the day, and leave
well—truth’s well, which Mr. Ashley maintained he had drawn
from—alone. And so the battle ended (after a very guarded admis-
sion from Mr. Ashley that he might not have chosen the very best
audience to speak the truth to)—re infecta. But it must be allowed
that the irrepressible Doctor fully maintained his status as Lion of
the evening. He bearded Lowe, sneered at Disraeli, defied those
who called him to order, upheld the Englishman, attacked the Chief