Punch: Punch (70.1876)

May 13, 1876.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

193

A CRUEL CLAUSE.

" All the Ladies 'twixt forty and sixty

Said, ' Oh, what a sweet pretty plan !' "

Mediceval Hymn.

wtiet Mr. Botch:,
I am a girl
'twixt '' sixteen
and forty." I
have always
fondly loved the
Clergy of my
native Isle, and
my highest am-
bition has been
to wed one of
those dear
Bishops, who
wear such loves
of long frocks
and little darling
aprons. Judge
then of my just
indignation on
hearing that the
Synod of Ireland
have actually
obliged us to
carry weight for
age in the race

for the Matrimonial Sweep-stakes, and have gone in for the Old
Trots.

Church op Ireland General Synod.

" The House assembled at one o'clock yesterday. The Bishop of Down
presiding-. The House proceeded to the orders of the day.

" Mr. Nunn moved the House go into Committee on his Bill to establish a
plan for making provision for Widows and Orphans of Clergy.

" The following clauses were considered :—■

" 1. The "Widow of every Clergyman, at the time of his death in the service
of the Church of Ireland, or if he shall have been permitted to retire, shall
receive an annuity of £33 a year, to cease absolutely on re-marriage, subject
to the following conditions :—

" (a) The busband at the time of his first appointment to a benefice or
curacy in the Church of Ireland, being under forty years of age and un-
married, or a widower without family.

" (b) At time of marriage being under sixty years of age.
" (c) Not more than twenty-Jive years older than his wife"

I remain, dear Mr. Punch, yours always,

Sweet Seventeen".
P.S.—Do abuse these naughty men, there's a dear old love.

GONE WEONG!

A new novel. by miss rhody dendron,

Authoress of " Cometh Down like a Shower," " Bed in the Nose is She,"
" Good/ Buy Sweet Tart! " " Not Slily, But don't Tell."

Chapter XI.— What the Author says.

A tall woman, silk-and-velvet skirted, with serpentine-trailing
garments sweeping amply round her ; a woman not old, not young,
not middle-aged ; neither ail here nor all there ; a mistress of arts
and_ graces. Diana being taken to her morning bathe in her bath
chair, wheeled by a knee-plush-ultra Titan, could not have been
more bewitchingly, more deadlily attractive than this lissom,
undulating empress, whose every movement was a poem—unnatural
if you like, but a triumph of Art over Time, who, bald, ruthless,
envious though he is, has not yet straightened the curving outline of
that Grecian bend—

" Time writes no wriggle on thy azure bow."

And the man ? Aye—one with a dark, ugly face; beardless, but
with a deep-toned picturesque, blue, southern shade mantling over
his upper lip and chin—the warm, Mediterranean blue, that was the
glory of Fra Angelico's art—the blue that Titian revelled in, and
Giotto loved to paint; a man you would infallibly turn to look back
at in the street, if he had struck you in passing. One who
approached more nearly in physical conformation the glorious beauty
of the Hydeparkian Achilles, than do most men, whom one sees, and
pities, now-a-days. _ With sinewy veins for streamlets, and swelling
muscles for rivers, with an incurving canal between twojdiains of

Pyrenean mountains of shoulders, he was mapped out Atlas-like
from Northern pole—where the white powder lay like a glory of
arctic snow—to Southern, where there was a wealth of sunny,
golden plush; and, as her eyes fell on him, she felt that never,
except one, had she seen a human form so like the deathless
dying athlete of antiquity, the Gladiator of the Forum, fitted with
faultless taste by some noted West-End tailor, proud of his mission
to clothe so magnificent a being—this Diskobolos of a man, this
Agamemnon in livery, this Enceladus ad vitulos .' *

Yes, it was he, after all, thought the girl, as she cowered and shook
among the laurels. There are not many like him.

Surely she could not have been mistaken ?

A piano sounded within the house. The Bath-chair stopped. The
splendid, god-like, statuesque creature in livery ceased to impel it
along the path, and the Lady, with a wave of her hand, dismissed
this canary-clad Colossus of roads.

A window on the ground-floor was suddenly opened, and a pair of
legs appeared over the window-sill, whereat the Lady in the chair—
the Lady Virginia Creeper, niece of Sir Get Focksday—raised
her fan, and a faint peach-coloured blush passed upward over her
marble-veined throat and smooth, pearl-powdered cheek.

" Were dat you a playing the piano ? " she asked, with an air of
cold surprise, and the frigid dignity of a Christy Minstrel.

" It were," laughingly replied her cousin, the Hon. Pebcy Short -
wynd, sliding on to the ground. " I was playing A Major, and so
you didn't expect to see A Captain ? "

Her pink-tipped ears went back, and a zebra-like expression came
into the Lady Virginia's face, as, quitting the chair, she gave a
little kick out behind with her high heels, and replied, with a little,
factitious cough,

" No ; knowing it was you, Percy, I expected to see A Flat."

" Thank you; you are as amiable as usual."

" And you are duller than usual," retorts the hard, cold beauty,
with ladylike exasperation. " But what does it matter ? We are
going to be married very soon! " and pointing two long, shapely,
white fingers, she thrusts them sharply, and with a knowledge of
anatomy, scarcely to be expected of her, beneath her cousin's fifth
rib, then withdraws them as suddenly.

Percy Secortwynd winces as he gasps out, drily, " We are ; but
do not do that again."

Virginia smiles, and the bright brooch, and chain of exquisite
Lowther Arcade workmanship, rise and fall in a soft, even, me-
chanical modulation on her Tussaud-like waxen breast.

While they are standing here—a colourless, marble, clean-cut,
immovable, expressionless-featured woman, and a full-toned, under-
sized, short-cut, importable, wide-whiskered man—a loud voice
from the hall breaks upon their silence.

"Here! hi! you! Confound you all! Hang it! dash it! blow
it! Why the doose—where are those blooming idiots ? "

It is old Sir Gtjy who speaks. He is a real, high-bred, old
country gentleman, and, it being past four o'clock, he is calling
Virginia to give him his brandy-and-water hot, as all high-bred
old English gentlemen invariably do. On leaving the bushes where
he had been hiding, he had passed into the hall.t

" Come ! " she said to Percy, who replied to her cold, chaste smile
by placing his hand on his heart, with all the courtliness of the old
school—he resembled his father, Sir Gtjy, in this respect—bending
his head nearly down to his toes, and elevating his coat-tails.

The Lady Virginia passed into the house, and disappeared.
Percy, preparing to follow, caught sight of Bella as she hastily
quitted the laurels. One of her glances gave him an odd sensation
about the midriff, and, not feeling quite well, he staggered into the
house.

Can I love him ? " asked Bella, of herself, as she stood before
the front door ; " and can he love me ? " She smiles to herself, as
she places her small hand on the bell-pull, and prepares to make
her first call in her new character of a lady-help in an old English
gentleman's family.

* Wliat the Editor says.—" Nothing we love so much as classical allusions,
and we feel the greatest possible gratification to witness so much culture in
one of the most talented of the softer sex. But—we own our ignorance on
this particular point, and neither Smith nor Lempriere has been able to
throw any light on it—what is the allusion in ' Enceladus ad vitulos' f Of
course we know all about' Enceladus,' but ' ad vitulos '—eh ? "—Ed.

What the Authoress says.—" About Enceladus you know all. Soit. What
is the Latin for a calf? What for calves ? Wasn't my hero a Footman-or,
rather, not un valet de pied, but un homme aux veaux et tin vaurien ? Com-
prenez-vous ?"—K. D.

t From all the Editorial Committee to Miss R. J).—" We cannot allow
your picture of an old English gentleman to appear without protest. The
Committee, after reading your description, went purposely, all over England,
paying visits everywhere, and were most cordially received. In not one single
instance did the fine old English gentleman dodge behind bushes on our
arrival, or use bad language all over the place, or call for hot brandy and
water in the afternoon. Where do you find your type ?

Miss B. D. to the above.—" Where do I find my type ? Why the printer
finds it for me. Do not ask idle questions."—R, D.