Punch: Punch (69.1875)

68

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[August 21, 1875.

the aid, at least, of that very convenient distinction of " ordinary "
and "extraordinary" expenditure. Last year's anticipated deficit
is likely to end in a modest surplus.

Mr. Smollett made a savage onslaught on the Public Works
Department, and charged Expenditure on Public Works—his red rag,
much after the taurine manner—with his eyes shut.

Save this belated Budget, there is nothing more to note, heyond
the happv flight of the House on Friday—the pilgrims to the shrine
of Saint Grouse (all but the poor Office-hacks) having sped on their
devotions before the formal fall of the curtain.

A GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT.

From a Representative Root.
"Our wondrous roots."—Me. Disraeli at the Mansion House.
Dear Punch,

One may hail without show of servility
A tribute from genius to humble utility ;
And Dizzy, that master of phrases and flourishes,
At last does us justice. The tuber which nourishes
Patriots par excellence, begs on behalf of
All roots to acknowledge the compliment. Chaff of
Sour critics to carp at his diction as tumid,
And tell us he said that our climate was humid
In sentences pompous and sesquipedalian,
Pit for some dull dithyrambic Deucalion
Telling the tale of his deluge!—these fellows I
Doubt not are moved by professional jealousy.
"Wondrous roots!" 'Tis henceforward a watchword among us.
What poet (save Gwyer, of Penge) has e'er sung us ?
Our blessings on Benjamtn: Mangel and Swede,
Prime " Regent," poor radish, all hope he HI succeed.
May the " split " Opposition, like rain-beaten corn—
As he phrased it—be "desolate, prostrate, forlorn."
May he dish all his foes, from the gout to K/enealy,
May his critics be mute, may his "murphies " be mealy.
Bulb, tuber, or radix, he has all our suffrages.
(Roots are not radical!) Many a muff rages
Hotly against him, he heeds not their chatter,
Well knowing he's right in the " root of the matter."
For me, every eye I possess shed a tear
While his eloquent tribute I gloried to hear,
To a much-tried Potato such kindness is balm
For the ills we are heir to in tuber and haulm.
Though blight may beset us, and beetles affright,
While Benjamin blesses us all shall be right.
A fig for the fears I have long been a prey to !
Colorado be blowed! I am Tours,

_ A Potato.

FASHION-BLINDNESS.

{A Contribution to the Philosophy of Ugliness. By a Social Seer.)

Dear Punch,

The Saturday Review says that—

"Ladies can never see ugliness in a dress, so long as it is made in the
height of the reigning fashion."

Why, of course they cannot; and I hold that their inability to do
so is a beneficent ordiuance of Providence. Free taste and bondage
to la mode are simply incompatible. Fashion has not—never has
had, and probably never will have—anything directly to do with
Beauty. It is here that would-be satirists of the sex shoot beside
the mark. Why does a Woman dress ? In order to look beautiful ?
Not at all. _ Not one woman in a hundred cares a snapped hair-pin
for Beauty in itself. Your average she-creature has as little sense
of pure loveliness—in dress, at least—as of pure humour or abstract
honouf. To be in the fashion is the great primary object of the
woman who dresses: to attract attention, to eclipse rivals, and to
spend money, are strong but subordinate motives.

The love of change is perhaps at the bottom of the business.
The sphere of mere Beauty is not wide enough to give full play to
this feminine craving, and so Woman makes bold incursions into the
illimitable realms of Ugliness. But—and here comes in the provi-
dential provision I have referred to—she is not conscious of the
difference between the two worlds. Some people are afflicted with a
disease known as colour-blindness. Well, the great majority of
women are what I call "fashion-blind." If they were not so, if
they were at all aware what frights—there is no stronger or more
awful word in the feminine vocabulary—they make of themselves
in their devotion to Fashion, their lives would be a burden to them.

Art and Fashion together are'fast forcing on a sort of apotheosis of
Ugliness. Our picture galleries, our illustrated books, and our

shops and streets, furnish daily multiplying proofs of the truth of
this assertion. The Artists—save the mark!—deserve unsparing
blame, but the Women are rather to be pitied. They have, for the
most part, no real sense of the beautiful or the becoming as such,
and that iswhy all satire or argument addressed to them from this
point of view is as futile as paper pellets puffed against a pachy-
derm, or, more aptly, as a mitrailleuse fired at a mollusc. Belinda
buys an unbecoming bonnet. As a natural consequence, Belinda
looks a guy, and, probably, courts a cold. But prove to her that it
is ugly, demonstrate that it is unhealthy, and the dear creature is
smilingly immoveable as Atlas. You miss the point, I repeat.
Belinda does not want a becoming or a convenient bonnet, but
simply a fashionable one. A Fashionable Fright is to her an absurd
self-contradiction in terms. When the Fashion changes, she will
freely own that it was monstrous; the spell of Fashion-blindness is
no longer upon her with regard to that particular mode at least, and
Free Taste has a chance. But Free Taste against Fashion—pooh !
'Tis Lombard Street to a China orange with a vengeance!

Satire has couched many a keen and glittering lance against
the Fool-goddess Fashion, but always, and inevitably, in vain. I
think I have shown why. Saturday Reviewers, and other pseudo-
satirical Mentors, please copy. If Woman care infinitely less for
beauty or health than for "the height of the reigning fashion,"
where is the use of proving to her that the height of the reigning
fashion is ugly or injurious ? Against Fashion-blindness, as against
stupidity, even the Gods fight in vain. Q. E. D.

Yours,

Cancer.

THE HOUSE AND THE HOME;

OR, HINTS TOWARDS A GRAMMAR OP DECORATIVE ART.

By Leonardo Della Robbia de Tudor Westpond Tumpxyns,
Esq., S.A.S., A.R.F., M.U.F., and Hon. Member of the DulK-
dillitanty Society,

Expense should be no object. My aim is to create a National
taste in internal and external House Decoration. My hints, there-
fore, will be as applicable to the dwellings of the Poor (to which I
intend to give considerable attention) as to the mansions of the Rich.

Here, for instance, is a plan for a Bed, and a Bedroom, which can
be equally adapted for the poor, the middling, and the very wealthy.
Its great merit is its originality and its cheapness.

The Early Italian Style.

Four posts supporting candelabra at the feet and oriental fans
at the head.

Pointed hangings, with bells attached, to be set by machinery to
tunes and time. These could form a perfect carillon.

Between the posts, at the bed-head, is a suspended circular per-
forated pan to hold cold water. A string hangs down, which, at a
pull from the person in bed, will release the water, and immediately
a refreshing douche will be given. This can also be used as a bath
by a person above without disturbing the sleeper below.

The pillow forms a writing-desk.

The mattress is easily opened in the centre by pressing a spring,
and allows the sleeper to descend suddenly into a full-length bath