Punch (77.1879)

January 3, 1880.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

IHAD been reading Alphonse Daudex's Rois en Exil.
I had laid down the book, heavy of heart, and no wonder, from its powerful pictures of effete Kingship and Queen,
ship, heroic, but heart-broken in the hopeless struggle with crowned cowardice, effeminate profligacy, and Paris-pampered lust.

Methought, had the Author wanted materials for a second series, here is my Lord Beaconsfield busy in piling
them up for him.

Tis true the Kings he is dethroning are black or brown, and more or less barbaric. But what capital food for the
satirist in the contact with European civilisation of Cetewato and Secoccent, Yakoob Khan and Ismail Pasha,—and
those -who may yet be added to their number, if rope for adventures is still to be allowed the adventurous.

As I tried to set the tale of discrowned monarchs and desperate strife of Christian with Heathen to the tunc of the
Christmas bells, methought I was suddenly rapt—if in the spirit of my own blue-fiery bowl I know not—to the foot of
my own Christmas-Tree !

Dazzling were the lights that sparkled among its leaves as I stood full in their splendour, presiding over the distribu-
tion of the fruit of Wit and Wisdom from its well-laden boughs.

Punch, like the Pope, appeals, " Urli et Orbi,"—to a public numerous and dense as the population of London, and
wide-reaching as the World !

But it was the dim, discrowned Kings I chiefly kept my eye on. They were numerous, and new ones kept coming in
every minute, thanks to our imperiam in imperio, et extra imperium. Their wives, I was glad to see, had as a rule stuck to
the poor potentates in their downfall. Cetewato, above all, was blessed with a numerous train of Kaffir Venuses. His
prayer, when made prisoner, had not been, like Ajax's, for " more light," but for " more wives." His better-halves, or
rather twentieth-parts, for th?y ran to scores, had followed him to Punch's Christmas-Tree.

The light was reflected from their rounded forms as from life-size Florentine bronzes, with more dazzling effect than
could be matched in any West-End ball-room—the dresses being less in the way, and the colouring at once warmer and
more au naturel.

More chary of their charms, but not less faithful to their Lord in exile, were the harems of Yakoob Khan and Ismail
Pasha. But I am bound to say that the yashmaks of the Egyptian beauties were anything but opaque, and that in this
respect the charmers of Cabul showed themselves less civilised than the belles of Cairo.