Punch (73.1877)

July 14, 1877.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

9

THE PALACE OP AET.

{New Version.)
Paet II.

Yet oft the riddle of Art's real drift

Flashed through me as I sat and gazed.
But not the less some season I made shift
To keep my wits undazed.

And so I mused and mooned ; for three long weeks

I stood it: on the fourth I fell.
All trace of natural colour fled my cheeks,
And I felt—far from well.

"When I would gush, where'er I turned my sight

A mocking hand confusion wrought;
Wrote " Meaning ? Meaning ? " till I felt me quite
Dyspeptic and distraught.

Deep dread and loathing of my mystic hrood

Fell on me ; from which mood was born
Scorn of my taste ; again, from out that mood,
Laughter at such self-scorn.

" "What! _ Is not this my Home of Art P " I said.

" My Aideiin of aesthetic joy ?
Surely, sweet Self, you must be off your head !

What ails you, Self, my boy ? "

For in the corners of my Aidenn stood

Uncanny shapes ; and unawares
I came on phantom heads dripping with blood,
And dim nocturnal mares.

Hollow-cheeked, hectic, rufous-headed dames,

With opiate eyes, and foreheads all
As wan as corpses', but with wings like flames,
Glared on me from each wall.

Those fixed orbs haunted me; I grew to hate

Those square and skinny jaws, those high cheek-bones.
Nocturnes in soot and symphonies in slate
Moved me to sighs and groans.

Queer convolutions of dim drapery
Inwrapt me like a Nessus-snare.
I seemed enmeshed in tangles hot and dry
Of copper-coloured hair.

I loathed the pallid Yenuses and Eves,

Nymph-nudity, and Sorceress and Thrall;
The Wings prismatic, the metallic Leaves—
I loathed them one and all.

I howled aloud, " Let me no more behold

A witch, an angel, or a saint.
Aught mediosval-mystic, classic-cold,
Or cinque-cento quaint.

" It may be that my taste has come to grief,

But if the spectral, dismal, dry,
Do constitute ' High Art,' 'tis my belief
High Art is all my eye."

So when four weeks were wholly finished,

I from my gallery turned away.
" Give me green leaves and flesh and blood," I said,
" Fresh air and light of day.

" I pine for Nature, sad and sick at heart

Of the affected, strained, and queer.
What was to me Ambrosia of Art

Hath grown as drugged small-beer.

" Yet pull not down my galleries rich and rare:

When Art abjures the crude and dim,
I yet may house the High Ideal there,

Purged from preposterous Whim ! "

ce0ss-questions of conscience.

It is a mistake to suppose that cross-examination in
Protestant England is limited to the Witness-box, and
conducted only by Lawyers. The reverend members of the

Society of the Holy Cross," are accustomed to cross-exa-
mine their disciples in their counterfeit Confessional.

LORD'S AND LADIES;

OE, WHAT A DAY WE'VE BEEN HAVING!

Deab Punch,

E~ _ Punch? I suppose

TaraSak. ' 3 1 ought'but 1 feel
jBatffBSaL ~ - - more at home be-

mamBHBtt^ "' ^innin8- without
—mmmmmmmT' \ V" ceremony.)
ISSSSSf iiSSSSSSSli ' Youknow-orat

'■■l7/ - / /^■■■■■■■■*\ .; «e parler, because

IBS?/ /// Ii252£"«£M t—-^ you can no* know

yet —I am not
witty. No woman
ever is, of course;
but I often say
things which the
~jk boys (one is in the
it Guards—that 's
'II Douglas; the other
// is in the Foreign
/ Office —that 's
ff Hugh) declare I
ought to send to
I Punch.

I have my doubts
about that awfully
terrible waste-
paper basket you
threxten us with,
and I dare say, if
the truth were
really known—but
we. never shall
know the truth in

this quite too dreadfully false age—not so very many people, after all, write to
you any correspondence at all. Now do they ? Be honest for once. Of
course that is a joke, because I know Punch is honest. I thought perhaps,
after all, I might have a literary turn, and as I noticed that your " staff "—
I believe that is the correct title for your combination of authors and artists,
is it not ?—never said much about cricket, and as that nice—quite too awfully
nice—Loed Spaeeowbeain had offered to take us (the boys, me, and Mamma)
to Lord's, to see the Oxford and Cambridge Match last week, it would be a
good opportunity—as I quite, oh! quite, understand the game, and both the
boys were at Oxford—to try and write an account of the Grand Inter-Univer-
sity Contest—that really does look awfully well, doesn't it ?—which I witnessed
from the box-seat (think of that, dear old Punch—I was really on Loed
Spaeeowbeain's box!) of the best turned-out drag on the ground.

I had never been on a box-seat on a coach before. I could not be on a box-
seat behind, you know, could I ? That's one of the things the boys encored, but
I will not say anything that looks like vanity—I do hate it so. There's Bella
Teossity, who was on the coach with her sister, Mes. Thistledown, came in such
a Gainsborough hat! If you had seen it, or Me. Du Maueiee had been there,
you know, he must have put her into his book there and then—hat and all.
This child was very particular about her get-up, I assure you ; in fact, Spae-
eowbeain confided to me there was not another toilette on the ground after
mine. The others weren't in it.

Let me see. I think I said we arrived at Lord's, and of course you don't
want, or your readers either, to hear all the Lord's shop about the Pavilion, and
the old players, the health of the Secretary, or the death of Adhieal Rous.
What you want is cricket. Oh ! that reminds me of what that wretch Majoe
Killbobin, who amused me so awfully much more than poor dear Spaeeow,
who is awfully nice all the same, and I know admires me, said to me—that he
feared I was "a wicket little thing, he would go bail." Not to be behindhand
and by no means, oh ! dear.no ! to be shut up, I told the Major—he really has
a love of [a moustache and an eye—Je ne dis que ca, as Theeesa would say
—two eyes, indeed, and I am quite too afraid I looked into them—more than
once. Oh ! I quite forgot to say that as Loed Spaeeowbeain had most kindly
asked his mother, the Countess of Laekspue, to invite Mamma to a Clerical
Aid Society's Meeting, she most unfortunately, for her, poor dear Mamma,
was conspicuous by her absence, and the boys were left to chaperone me, which
of course I took care they did, only Douglas, the horror, would run off half
the time to flirt with Lady Seabloom, and HueH,took far, quite too far, too
much interest in a retired widow, who had a villa in the neighbourhood—Try
back, old man—that's it, notto be shut up I told the Major that " he was bold,"
and if Mes. Killbobin " caught him out," I fancied he would be " stumped."
Now, honour bright, don't you think that is quite up to the average of feminine
repartee, not to say a long way to the front, bit between the teeth, hands
down, and all the rest of it r

Poor dear Spaeeow didn't like it at all when the Major would take my
hand in his, only to satisfy himself as to the number of my gloves, for of course
I had. backed Oxford, and equally of course I should not allow even that good-
looking wretch Killbobin to take my hand. Well, I could not help the squeeze,