Punch (71.1876)

December 16, 1876.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

269

YOUNG, BUT PRACTICAL.

" What ! Harry ! not in Bed yet, and it's Nine o'Clock ! "What will Papa say
when he comes home ? "

"Oh, Papa! .ZZe'll say, 'Supper! Supper! What's for Supper?'"

HAWK v. FALCON.

The gratitude of all narrators of anec-
dotes and quoters of facetious sayings and
witticisms, the thanks especially of.diners-
out having to entertain their company, are
eminently due to the Lord Chief Baron
for his recent ruling in the Exchequer
Division of the High Court of Justice, as
to the privileges of Counsel. Aggrieved
by a certain statement made by Mr. Napier
Higgins, Q,.C, during he conduct of a case
before Vice-Chancellor Mallns, Me.
Lewis, an eminent Solicitor, brings an
action for malicious defamation against
Mr. Higgins. Though "hawks," as a rule,
" winna pick out hawks' een," yet a So-
licitor can occasionally sue a Barrister.
The Chief Baron ruled that, as the words
complained of were spoken by Mr. Hig-
gins in his character of Counsel before a
Judge in a Court of Justice, an action on
account of them could not be maintained,
whether they were false or true. Like
a thing of beauty, a good joke is a joy for
ever, and will bear endless repetition, not
everywhere, not, for example, ordinarily
in these pages, but always m proper time
and place. Now only consider what would
have happened had the Lord Chief Baron
laid down the law contrariwise to the effect
foregoing? Counsel would have been, and
would remain for ever debarred from the
practical repetition of that capital old joke,
once embodied in a brief, for its brevity a
brief indeed: "No case—abuse the plain-
tiff's attorney." But now and henceforth,
as the law declared by the Chief Baron
stands, an advocate acting in his pro-
fessional capacity remains privileged and
entitled to abuse the Attorney on the oppo-
site side, or any other Attorney or Solicitor,
or person ad libitum, without fear, and
with perfect impunity. Hooray, Brother
Buzfuz, for the Lord Chief Baron !

Shakspearian Programmes for the
Conference. — {Pessimists'1) Much Ado
About Nothing, followed by The Tempest.
(Punch''s) Measure for Measure, followed
by All's Well that Ends Well.

opportunity of showing her rare command of the lighter and graver
notes of emotion. She is as true in the one as the other. Nor do I
think too great praise can be awarded to Mrs. Gaston Murray for
her performance of Lady Matilda, the presiding genius of the family,
the far-seeing fashionable mother with a daughter to marry. The
Authors have placed her in sharp contrast with the vulgarian Mrs.
Bunter; but there would have been great inducement for a less
conscientious artist to lose sight of the contrast, and to have estab-
lished a rivalship. A very little exaggeration and the part would
have degenerated into a mere colourless repetition of the hackneyed
stage type of the scheming mother and over-bearing wife, which
found its place in Robertson's Society in the person of Lady Ptar-
migan, mated to that impossible aristocratic dormouse, which in
Mr. Hare's hands was one of the "hits" of that amusing and
excellent after-piece, the first of the great successes, in the early
days of Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft's reign.

By the way, I should imagine that the part of Lord Ptarmigan
was not much, if at all, longer than that of Marmaduke Vavasour
in this piece. To have little or nothing to do in a play, and yet to
impress the audience with the idea that the performance would be,
somehow, incomplete without you, is an artistic triumph on which,
in the present instance, Mr. Hare is to be congratulated.

Mr. Kelly's honest, upright, generous, but rather inarticulate,
Liverpool Merchant,—calling to mind occasionally the character of
John Mildmay, in Still Waters—is as thorough an impersonation
as can be_ seen on any stage, French or English. Mr. Anson's
Bunter will be justly appreciated by those who saw him in Brothers.
Most carefully does he avoid the pitfalls into which the broad Low
Comedian might so easily tumble. Mr. Ersser Jones's German
adventurer is a capital bit of character; and Mr. Cathcart
might be trusted as a Solicitor off the Stage, so totally unlike is he
to the conventional Stage Attorney. Mrs. Stephens, with her bad

grammar and malapropisms, is as amusing as she was in The Ticket
of Leave. Mr. Conway seems a trifle too old, too knowing,
and too manly for Bertie, though it would be difficult to mention
any one who could fill the part better. Miss Kate Aubrey, in her
anxiety to give a stamp of originality to the character of Fanny
Bunter, shows a slight tendency to exaggeration, which is, perhaps,
under the circumstances, pardonable. And so, Sir, I have done.
You may probably disagree with me on many points ; but differences
of opinion will never deter me from signing myself now as ever,

Your Representative.

P.S.—Wouldn't that last line, beginning with "differences of
opinion," &c, make a good exit speech ? I shall register it.

SPIRITUALISM AND SWINDLING.

Pending the Slade prosecution, it may be unsuitable to discuss
the question whether a Medium, in accepting fees for any consider-
ation whatsoever alleged to be spiritual, receives money under false
pretences. Some people think he doesn't; others think he does.
What will the latter say to the following telegram from Rome :—

" The Unitd Catholica announces that the widow of the Duke de GallierA
has laid the sum of 1,000,000 francs at the feet of the Holy Father, in the
names of herself and her son Philip, imploring the Apostolic benediction on
the suffering' soul of her deceased husband."

Unless the foregoing intelligence is a dish of wild duck, a point to
be mooted is whether the tender of the sum therein mentioned was
accepted, and His Holiness has got the money. If so, let us trust
that he is a Medium who really believes in his own mediumship of
communication with the spiritual world; and in the efficacy of his
benediction to benefit suffering souls in it.