Punch: Punch (75.1878)

208

PUNCH, OE THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[November 9, 1878.

ALL IN A CARTE.

Scene— The Waiting Room of a Publishing Photographer's. Popular
Celebrities discovered in readiness for their Sittings. Enter
Mrs. Peacock, who is received by Polite Employe at the door.

r^lTZrV^ * MERMAID and 4'JvTS. Oolite Em-

I ^ ^^^^^

• " * —— in decollete cos-

tume.

Mrs. Peacock. My Mai* lias, 1 believe, the larger part of my
wardrobe in boxes in the ball.

Polite Employe. A thousand thanks, Madam! Mr. Kammerer
will have the honour to attend upon you immediately.

Aristocratic Pride {in ivhiie satin and orange blossoms). I trust
that Mr. Kammerer will see me as soon as possible. I have been
waiting here for some time.

Polite Employe. Certainly, my Lady, certainly. But you see
there will be a greater demand for Mrs. Peacock's carte than for
yours for the moment. Mr. Kammerer thinks it better to keep your
Ladyship's picture back until after your Ladyship's marriage. It
will be published simultaneously with the account of your Ladyship's
nuptials and wedding presents in the morning papers.

Aristocratic Bride {with an unpleasant look at Mrs. Peacock).
I can't help feeling that Mr. Kammerer is neglecting me for others.

Polite Employe. On the contrary, my Lady, Mr. Kammerer is
most anxious to take a really popular portrait of your Ladyship.
He has ordered a special back-ground, representing the Castle in
which your Ladyship purposes spending your honey-moon.

Mrs. Peacock {ivith a scornful glance at Aristocratic Bride). I
must have a castle in the back-ground, too. If Mr. Kammerer
does not provide one, I shall go off at once to Messrs. Strtjtt and
Stareleigh. They have been boring me for weeks to give them a
sitting.

Polite Employe. Certainly, Madam. You shall have any back-
ground you please ; although Mr. Kammerer thought that perhaps
the sea-shore would be appropriate to one of your cartes—with,
perhaps, a bathing-machine in the middle distance.

Clerical Dignitary. I hope that Mr. Kammerer will not keep me

waiting much longer. I have a Missionary Meeting to attend, and-

Polite Employe. Certainly, my Lord". I think you wish to be
taken in your vestments. (Clerical Dignitary looks displeased.) I
beg pardon. I was mixing up your Lordship with the Ritualists.
I should have said lawn-sleeves.

Miss Sallie Plantagenet, nee Sarah S?iooks {entering briskly). Now,
then, young man, look sharp ! I have got a rehearsal on at the
Revelry Theatre at eleven, and I shall only just have fifteen minutes
to slip on my togs, give the guv'nor a sitting, pop into my brougham,
and get to the stage-door in time to save a fine.
Aristocratic Bride. ) ( Surely, Mr. Kammerer will not

Mrs. Peacock. > together. < presume to give this young per-
Uerical Dignitary.) ( son a sitting before any of us f

Miss Sallie Plantagenet. Come, I say, who are you calling "a
young person ? As young as you please—but person, indeed ! I am
sure my cartes sell just as well as Mrs. Peacock's, or any of the
swell beauty-women; and as to the Bishop's, why he's just no-
where. But there, don't let's quarrel. I daresay this young man
will settle it for us somehow. Won't you, my dear ?

Polite Employe. Certainly, Madam, I hope your Ladyship will
excuse the delay. {To Mrs. Peacock and Aristocratic Bride.) Oh,
pray don t think of going, Ladies. Mr. Kammerer will be so

distressed, and the Public will be so disappointed. Oh, do think of
Mr. Kammerer and the Public!

Miss Sallie Plantagenet {good-naturedly). Don't get the poor
young man into trouble. I say—what rot our nagging like this,
when we shall all be next-door neighbours in the shop windows
for the next two years! (To Aristocratic Bride.) Look here, you
are togged already, and she {pointing to Mrs. Peacock) is readier
than me, as I have to make up my face and get into my never-
mention-'ems, so you two shall be taken first; and, by the time you
are done, the Reverend gent and me will be in our war-paint. There,
that's real jam! Don't you see—while Kammerer is knocking off
your two be-oo-tiful nobs, the Bishop can be putting on his lawn
sleeves, and I can be getting into my tights.

{Scene closes in upon the arrangement.)

LOVE IN THE MIST.

A Romantic Reverie. By Miss Lackaday.
" Such stuff as dreams are made of."
III.

He always teas angry when other men were kind to me. Now
that I am older, and see things more clearly, I think he must have
been jealous; but it did not occur to me then that he could have
a fault. . . .

I wish I could put him clearly before the reader; but to be clear
is always my difficulty. . . . There was nothing salient about
him—no trick, no mannerisms—no fault, as I thought then, unless
this were a fault in itself. I sometimes wondered whether it was so.
It was certainly that that made it so difficult for me to distinguish
him from the other. And the other was so vivid. He had all sorts
of ways about him that compelled you to recognise his presence—He
would stumble over the coal-scuttle as he came into the room, and
make us all start up to welcome him—Then he was irritable—and
when he was contradicted, he used to flap his coat-tails—or some-
times he would suddenly untie his neck-tie, and then Myrtle would
go up to him in her gentle, cat-like manner, and tie it again, and
that always seemed to soothe him somehow. Then there was his
bicycle.—Altogether, he was a man you could not mistake.—It teas
a magnetism. But the other—my man I mean—I think I must caU
him A., for I have forgotten his real name, and people tell me
that my style gets confused when I call them both "the other."
A. had no tricks, and no faults. If he had not always worn brown
velveteen, I should not have known him from the butler. What a
mysterious thing identity is ! We all say, " I am I." But is that
all ?—Am not I you also ? Are not you me f Does not a common
emotion make us one ? Surely it must have been something of this
kind that Shakspeare was thinking of, when he said, "One touch
of nature makes the whole world kin." I used to talk of this to A.
sometimes, but never could get him to understand me. There was
some dear kind sort of stupidity about him that was a barrier to
full sympathy.—I think that was what I loved him for.—I have
always felt that there is a pathos in the stupidity of kind-hearted
men—something that softens us towards them, and makes us feel
about them as we do about big dogs and cart-horses, and all the
rough, uncouth creatures that fetch and carry for us in this weary,

toiling world.

******

Poor stupid A. ! You need not have been so jealous. In my
heart I always loved you better than clever B. But B. had a way
of coming on his bicycle that I could not resist; and besides there
was a likeness between you. It was not in figure, for he was tall
(you never were) ; and I don't think it was in features. But there
was a look about you both—an intensity, a hidden flash, a word, a
way ! How shaU I describe'it ? How make_ people know the fasci-
nation those two men had for me, and the impossibility it was to
me to tell one from the other, till they were both gone, and I was
left alone to think it over, and over, and over. . . . Sometimes, as I
think of it, I seem to be a child in a fairy story, that has gone put
alone, and got lost.—A crowd hustles and jostles, — rough voices
swear, big feet trample, the little one begins to cry. A kind hand
stretches out, and it feels saved.—But its eyes are fuU of tears;
and before it can wipe them away, the hand is gone, and another is
in its place.—It cannot see this one more than the other. What does
that matter ? Both are kind hands.—It loves both.—Either will
take it home. . . . Only with me both hands went at once, and I had
to come home alone.

IV.

_ An, that dreary coming home ! I remember the chillness in the
air when I opened my window before breakfast.—It was like the
first autumn frost, and yet it was June as usual and the roses
were in their glory. We had sat up late the night before—quarrel-
ling and forgiving, and quarrelling again. He said I was false—
that I had talked to B. from the window—that I had broken