September 2, 1876.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
91
grandeur long1 since faded. There is a worn-out, tired look about the stair-
carpets, which says plaintively, "We 've been long trodden beneath the
feet of the Saxon oppressor, but we are passive, and so we have never been
taken up. Yet, see, we are kept down by rods." _
The bed-rooms are nobly proportioned, and it is quite a little promenade
from the drawers to the washingstand. I sigh for the comfortably-furnished
appearance of a chambre a coucher in a good French hotel, with its clock on the
mantelpiece that was meant only for ornament, and never goes, its curtains, its
impracticable shutters and startling window-blinds, its marble-topped chest of
drawers, its easy chair, its velvet couch, and its two tables of stone—I mean
of marble—I say.I sigh for these things, as real comforts for which the old style
of hotel has no equivalents.
As a rule, let the inexperienced in travelling take my advice, and invariably
avoid any hotel whose sole recommendation is'that it is one of the good old-
fashioned sort, where the Landlord makes you feel quite at home, and you 're
not treated merely as No. 99 in the books, and stowed away as so much luggage.
Believe me that for every personal attention on the Landlord's part, the Visitor
will have to pay extra. Politeness costs the Landlord nothing, and therefore,
any profit on it is clear gain and no risk. "When I enter one of these " Old
Established Houses," and see the smiling Landlord, in evening dress perhaps,
rubbing his hands, bowing and bending, and waving me onwards as he con-
fides me, gracefully, to the care of an elderly, acid-looking female, in starchy
cotton dress and a primly trimmed cap,'then I tremble for my pocket; but still
I hope for the best. But if during my dinner that affable and professionally
genial Landlord comes up to my table, concerns himself about my meat and
drink, and, without reference to price, recommends to me, by way of a great
favour, about which I must keep silence to the other guests, a bonne-bouche,
a magnificent old Burgundy, which, moreover, he insists on decanting and
pouring out for me himself, with an encomium on its colour and condition,
then I know that ruin stares me in the face, and that the sooner I am out of
that Fine Old English Hostelrie and away from that Fine Old English Landlord,
the better for the modest sum that I have set apart for my holiday trip. So
much for the Old Fashioned Hotels, and hosts " of the Old School."
A large old-fashioned sash-window gives on to the thoroughfare, and
commands a view of a fine building, which at first sight strikes me as so like
the British Museum that I begin to think that establishment must have been
taken bodily off its basement and steps and sent across the sea. Judging from
first impressions, I conclude that it is either a.Museum, or a Hospital.
I ask the Boots who has shown me to my room, "What is that place ?"
Up to this moment the Boots has treated me for an habitue. I never saw a man
more taken aback than that Boots when I asked him for the above information.
"What's that ? " he almost shrieked, as though I had found a blackbeetle,
or something smaller and more terrible.
"Yes," I say ; " the building opposite."
" That, Sorr," he explains proudly, "is Thrinity College."
Trinity College ! Here's an illusion gone ! Is this modern-looking building a
College ? Oh Trin. Coll. Cam.!—be mediaeval!—be happy! The only College that
I can_ recollect in an English University at all resembling Trinity, Dublin, is
Downing, Cambridge.
People are beginning to wake up. There are signs of life in the street.
But—I can't help it—whether it is that, contrary to my custom, I was quite
well but very sleepy after the sea voyage, or whether it is the dulness of the
weather, or the keenness of the East wind, or the "faded flower" air about
Morrison's,—I don't know, in fact, what it is,—but I am melancholy—I am
desillusione ■—I am sad. I begin to meditate on the wrongs of Ireland. I lie
down to do so, purposing to get up again in ten minutes exactly, and on no
account to go to sleep. It is now nine o'clock. I am experiencing a new and
peculiar sensation—a consciousness of a gradual change of nationality which
is coming over me — I am slowly casting off the slough of the Englishman,
and entering upon an Irish phase of existence. I have been the worm, I am
the chrysalis, or the cocoon . . . Both excellent Irish names—" Misther
O'Chrtsalis," and " The Cocoon of Cocoon." ... I drop off to doze . . .
Less and less English ... I am sleeping off my English drowsiness to awake to
Irish liveliness . . . Shades of Burke and Goldsmith (the only Oliver that
Ireland had any reason to love), Shade of Curran, Soul o' Grattan, Ghost of
Savift, inspire my slumbers!
9.30.—I awake. Beady and willing. No longer The Cocoon of Cocoon, no
nor Misther O'Chrtsalis—but the real genuine Barney O'Butterflt !
Now to sip the dew off the Shamrock, and taste the sweets of the flowers of
Irish Life!
I refer to Keppel Birkett's introductions, and commence my career. Away !
Electric" Fluid Farming.
The late storms of thunder and lightning'may be regarded as at least not
unseasonable. This, however, is more than can be said of the behaviour of
atmospheric electricity as thus reported in the Devon Evening Express :—
" The flashes of lightning followed each other so quickly that it seemed one continuous
glare, and the thunder -which followed on the instant was like the simultaneous discharge
of a whole park of artillery. A field close to Ballybeg House was ploughed up by the
electric fluid."
Obviously a most inappropriate act on the electric fluid's part. "What,"
as a South-Western agriculturist asked, "was the good o' the lightnin'a
ploughun up a vield in harvust time ? If so be 'a'd ha' took and rip'd a crop
o' earn now, food ha' ben zummut like."
A COCKNEY ON COCK-CROWING.
" The cock, indeed, is by many dwellers in town regarded as
an unmitigated nuisance, to be abated or suppressed by any
means that the law provides. . . . It is we who have degenerated
when we cannot bear the sounds in which our ancestors took
pleasure."—Dalit/ News.
Degenerated ? Man's a dolt!
Shindy makes a blood-horse bolt.
" Cocktail" doesn't care a mite.
Mortals must have sleep o' night;
Beastly fowl forbids it. Moral:
Exit Rooster ! Districts rural
May delight in noise nocturnal;
Here in Town the bore's infernal;
Ergo, let the "tame villatic
Fowl," whose voice from base to attic
Fills the house and murders sleep,
To the rural districts keep.
Poets may protest perhaps ;—
Never understand those chaps.
Gush on " Cock-a-doodle-doo " ?
Ehapsodise and rave ? Go to !
Bard apostrophise that bird ? He
Might as well the hurdy-gurdy.
Bosh about the beast's shrill clarion ! "
Ought to hear the creatures carry on
Here at Highgate. Six in chorus
Every morn (12'20) bore us
With responsive charivari.
Wish their " clarions" at Old Harry.
What's to summon ghosts who roam ?
Let the spirits stop at home !
Can't be bored with shrill-voiced Bantams
To accommodate the phantoms.
Bards seem awful fond of " shines."
Better keep them for their "lines."
Let them, if they like the same,
Play the Cock-a-doodle game ;
One 'gainst t'other crow in crackjaw,
Till sound sense shall bid them slack jaw.
But loud Chanticleer in ToAvn
Is a pest to be put down.
" Songs before sunrise " ? Songs like those
Need the Police to interpose.
PRIESTCRAFT AND PROG.
The following "Want," extracted from the Universe,
should be explained :—
SITUATION WANTED, by a respectable middle-aged
PERSON as HOUSEKEEPER to a Priest, who can cook
well.—Mrs.-, &c.
Does the advertiser, then, presume that Priests, as
such, are also, from professional training or peculiar bias,
in general apt to be cooks ? She might; for mental as
well as bodily health would be much promoted by due
ministration to the stomach. Still, as a rule, it seems too
much to expect a Priest to cook for his Housekeeper.
The only cookery, however, that has ever been heard of
as a special element in Priestcraft is that cooking of
scientific and historical fact in,the preparation and supply
of food for the mind, which in order that they may
practise, our friends the Priests are so exceedingly
anxious to get the control of education.
"Railway Coupling."—When the Porter marries
the Young Lady in the Refreshment Department.
91
grandeur long1 since faded. There is a worn-out, tired look about the stair-
carpets, which says plaintively, "We 've been long trodden beneath the
feet of the Saxon oppressor, but we are passive, and so we have never been
taken up. Yet, see, we are kept down by rods." _
The bed-rooms are nobly proportioned, and it is quite a little promenade
from the drawers to the washingstand. I sigh for the comfortably-furnished
appearance of a chambre a coucher in a good French hotel, with its clock on the
mantelpiece that was meant only for ornament, and never goes, its curtains, its
impracticable shutters and startling window-blinds, its marble-topped chest of
drawers, its easy chair, its velvet couch, and its two tables of stone—I mean
of marble—I say.I sigh for these things, as real comforts for which the old style
of hotel has no equivalents.
As a rule, let the inexperienced in travelling take my advice, and invariably
avoid any hotel whose sole recommendation is'that it is one of the good old-
fashioned sort, where the Landlord makes you feel quite at home, and you 're
not treated merely as No. 99 in the books, and stowed away as so much luggage.
Believe me that for every personal attention on the Landlord's part, the Visitor
will have to pay extra. Politeness costs the Landlord nothing, and therefore,
any profit on it is clear gain and no risk. "When I enter one of these " Old
Established Houses," and see the smiling Landlord, in evening dress perhaps,
rubbing his hands, bowing and bending, and waving me onwards as he con-
fides me, gracefully, to the care of an elderly, acid-looking female, in starchy
cotton dress and a primly trimmed cap,'then I tremble for my pocket; but still
I hope for the best. But if during my dinner that affable and professionally
genial Landlord comes up to my table, concerns himself about my meat and
drink, and, without reference to price, recommends to me, by way of a great
favour, about which I must keep silence to the other guests, a bonne-bouche,
a magnificent old Burgundy, which, moreover, he insists on decanting and
pouring out for me himself, with an encomium on its colour and condition,
then I know that ruin stares me in the face, and that the sooner I am out of
that Fine Old English Hostelrie and away from that Fine Old English Landlord,
the better for the modest sum that I have set apart for my holiday trip. So
much for the Old Fashioned Hotels, and hosts " of the Old School."
A large old-fashioned sash-window gives on to the thoroughfare, and
commands a view of a fine building, which at first sight strikes me as so like
the British Museum that I begin to think that establishment must have been
taken bodily off its basement and steps and sent across the sea. Judging from
first impressions, I conclude that it is either a.Museum, or a Hospital.
I ask the Boots who has shown me to my room, "What is that place ?"
Up to this moment the Boots has treated me for an habitue. I never saw a man
more taken aback than that Boots when I asked him for the above information.
"What's that ? " he almost shrieked, as though I had found a blackbeetle,
or something smaller and more terrible.
"Yes," I say ; " the building opposite."
" That, Sorr," he explains proudly, "is Thrinity College."
Trinity College ! Here's an illusion gone ! Is this modern-looking building a
College ? Oh Trin. Coll. Cam.!—be mediaeval!—be happy! The only College that
I can_ recollect in an English University at all resembling Trinity, Dublin, is
Downing, Cambridge.
People are beginning to wake up. There are signs of life in the street.
But—I can't help it—whether it is that, contrary to my custom, I was quite
well but very sleepy after the sea voyage, or whether it is the dulness of the
weather, or the keenness of the East wind, or the "faded flower" air about
Morrison's,—I don't know, in fact, what it is,—but I am melancholy—I am
desillusione ■—I am sad. I begin to meditate on the wrongs of Ireland. I lie
down to do so, purposing to get up again in ten minutes exactly, and on no
account to go to sleep. It is now nine o'clock. I am experiencing a new and
peculiar sensation—a consciousness of a gradual change of nationality which
is coming over me — I am slowly casting off the slough of the Englishman,
and entering upon an Irish phase of existence. I have been the worm, I am
the chrysalis, or the cocoon . . . Both excellent Irish names—" Misther
O'Chrtsalis," and " The Cocoon of Cocoon." ... I drop off to doze . . .
Less and less English ... I am sleeping off my English drowsiness to awake to
Irish liveliness . . . Shades of Burke and Goldsmith (the only Oliver that
Ireland had any reason to love), Shade of Curran, Soul o' Grattan, Ghost of
Savift, inspire my slumbers!
9.30.—I awake. Beady and willing. No longer The Cocoon of Cocoon, no
nor Misther O'Chrtsalis—but the real genuine Barney O'Butterflt !
Now to sip the dew off the Shamrock, and taste the sweets of the flowers of
Irish Life!
I refer to Keppel Birkett's introductions, and commence my career. Away !
Electric" Fluid Farming.
The late storms of thunder and lightning'may be regarded as at least not
unseasonable. This, however, is more than can be said of the behaviour of
atmospheric electricity as thus reported in the Devon Evening Express :—
" The flashes of lightning followed each other so quickly that it seemed one continuous
glare, and the thunder -which followed on the instant was like the simultaneous discharge
of a whole park of artillery. A field close to Ballybeg House was ploughed up by the
electric fluid."
Obviously a most inappropriate act on the electric fluid's part. "What,"
as a South-Western agriculturist asked, "was the good o' the lightnin'a
ploughun up a vield in harvust time ? If so be 'a'd ha' took and rip'd a crop
o' earn now, food ha' ben zummut like."
A COCKNEY ON COCK-CROWING.
" The cock, indeed, is by many dwellers in town regarded as
an unmitigated nuisance, to be abated or suppressed by any
means that the law provides. . . . It is we who have degenerated
when we cannot bear the sounds in which our ancestors took
pleasure."—Dalit/ News.
Degenerated ? Man's a dolt!
Shindy makes a blood-horse bolt.
" Cocktail" doesn't care a mite.
Mortals must have sleep o' night;
Beastly fowl forbids it. Moral:
Exit Rooster ! Districts rural
May delight in noise nocturnal;
Here in Town the bore's infernal;
Ergo, let the "tame villatic
Fowl," whose voice from base to attic
Fills the house and murders sleep,
To the rural districts keep.
Poets may protest perhaps ;—
Never understand those chaps.
Gush on " Cock-a-doodle-doo " ?
Ehapsodise and rave ? Go to !
Bard apostrophise that bird ? He
Might as well the hurdy-gurdy.
Bosh about the beast's shrill clarion ! "
Ought to hear the creatures carry on
Here at Highgate. Six in chorus
Every morn (12'20) bore us
With responsive charivari.
Wish their " clarions" at Old Harry.
What's to summon ghosts who roam ?
Let the spirits stop at home !
Can't be bored with shrill-voiced Bantams
To accommodate the phantoms.
Bards seem awful fond of " shines."
Better keep them for their "lines."
Let them, if they like the same,
Play the Cock-a-doodle game ;
One 'gainst t'other crow in crackjaw,
Till sound sense shall bid them slack jaw.
But loud Chanticleer in ToAvn
Is a pest to be put down.
" Songs before sunrise " ? Songs like those
Need the Police to interpose.
PRIESTCRAFT AND PROG.
The following "Want," extracted from the Universe,
should be explained :—
SITUATION WANTED, by a respectable middle-aged
PERSON as HOUSEKEEPER to a Priest, who can cook
well.—Mrs.-, &c.
Does the advertiser, then, presume that Priests, as
such, are also, from professional training or peculiar bias,
in general apt to be cooks ? She might; for mental as
well as bodily health would be much promoted by due
ministration to the stomach. Still, as a rule, it seems too
much to expect a Priest to cook for his Housekeeper.
The only cookery, however, that has ever been heard of
as a special element in Priestcraft is that cooking of
scientific and historical fact in,the preparation and supply
of food for the mind, which in order that they may
practise, our friends the Priests are so exceedingly
anxious to get the control of education.
"Railway Coupling."—When the Porter marries
the Young Lady in the Refreshment Department.