DOI issue:
July 10, 1880
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17764#0020
12
[July 10, 1880.
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
stranger. Of course all the town had read the articles
in the Prometheus ; but truth had triumphed, and virtue
had prevailed. Perhaps, also, Sir Isaac’s opinion had
been published in the latest evening papers. After
shaking hands warmly with numbers, who thronged
around him, how could he refuse to take the chair, that
was offered to him at a party of his sympathisers, who
were gathered together for a supper in his honour ?
How could he help replying several times, when they
proposed his health over and over again between the
intervals of oysters, grilled fowl, kidneys, sausages, and
potatoes ? How could he help playing on his plate “ The
Girl I left behind me ” with the drumstick of a devilled
chicken, and then throwing it at the Proprietor, who
had suddenly forced himself on the company without an
invitation ? How could he refuse to shake hands with
the Proprietor, and propose his health with three times
three, when the latter was so liberal in his entertainment,
and his hosts round the festive board were so hospitable
and so rich r
Then there was more cheering and more toasts; and
he would have risen to his legs for the fiftieth time, but
that, somehow, his legs had risen of themselves, and
were—he couldn’t explain how it was, or when it hap-
pened—above him, high up on the table, while he, a
long way down, was looking up at them. What did
it all mean ? There seemed to be some argument, and
a great deal of buzzing and shuffling and scuffling, and
then it appeared to him that, somehow or another, he was
hack at Beerjester, in full Beadle’s costume, showing a
crowd of Bank-holiday sight-seers over the Cathedral,
and that while he was doing this the organ struck up,
and the Bishop rode in on horseback, and service began,
and that, do what he would, he couldn’t prevent the
holiday folks from singing; “ lie’s a Jolly Good Fellow /”
while somebody got up in the pulpit, with his beadle’s
staff, and began laying about him like Punch in the
show, and then that some one shook him roughly by the
collar, and said, “Come, no more of this!” and he
awokp to find himself held by two Policemen, and con-
fronted by an Inspector, while a third stood by, with his
helmet knocked in, and a black-eye, having, as he pro-
tested, been seriously “damaged by that Gent, there,”—
pointing to the worthy Percentor, who had not as yet
recovered his faculties sufficiently to be able to reply to
the charge. Then he hears the Proprietor request pay-
ment from some one for the supper, and the broken glass,
and the injury done to the reputation of his establishment;
and on the Percentor indignantly turning to inquire why
the people who gave the entertainment didn’t reply, the
Proprietor observed that he didn’t want to be trifled
with, and if he, the Percentor, couldn’t pay the money
down, he must trouble him for his name and address,
before he was taken off to the stationhouse.
Then the Master of Deedler’s bethought him of his
friend, the Attorney-General, and producing a card re-
quested the Inspector to send it at once to Sir Isaac
Allpheeze. At the mention of this name the Inspector
suggested that he, the Proprietor, and the worthy Per-
centor, should all go down to Sir Isaac’s chambers in
a cab, and there being no objection to this proposal, it
was adopted.
Then, on Mr. Simpler’s having endorsed the card
“Testimonial all right, splendid cup and inkstand with
inkscription,” Sir Isaac, without getting off the Wool-
sack where he slept for practice, wrote a judgment in
the Master of Deedler’s favour, threatening the pro-
prietor with a prosecution and the withdrawal of his
licence, and severely reprimanding the Inspector, who
was ordered to see Mr. Simpler home and pay him
every possible attention.
The Master of Deedler’s didn’t get uf) till very late
next morning, and then returned by evening train to
Small-Beerjester; and thus ended his two days in
London.
How in the meantime had Mr. John Bounce been
occupied ?
NEGATIONS AND AFFIRMATIONS.
The House of Commons say that Bradlaugh is to be
allowed to affirm. Punch must be allowed to affirm that
though Bradlaugh is quite wrong, the House is quite
right.
Burrow Members. -Rabbits.
FROM THE STY.
By the Learned Pig.
Learned Pig (laying doivn a modern Novel) loquitur—
I Jrumpb! Hrumph! How, that’s
r1 really delicious; as fragrantly
fine as a sniff
From a long-stored and newly-stirred
dust-hole. Ah ! poets who prate of
the whiff
From the brine, or a mignonette-bed, or
from lilac-buds rain-washed at eve,
You are really quite out of the run-
ning, rococo at least I believe.
Hrumph ! Triumph I think for our
race; we’ve been ridiculed rather
too long
For our appetite wholesomely catholic.
Popular story and song
How find us justification. Gross por-
cine propensities ? Bosh!
Seeing Art now shares the tastes of us
lovers of wallow and wash,
Really worth while to be learned, if
only in order to trace
In modern humanity’s boasted chef-
d'oeuvres the traits of our race !
Here now’s a novel! I’m told it is
sold in all civilised lands,
And comes under modest girl-glances
and passes through honest boy-hands.
Gad! it’s pure dun gheap—delightful!
Ho fat gutter-garbage so rich
’Twould satiate hogdom’s keen greed plus a satyr’s esurient itch.
Roses ? I never liked roses, ana lilies are cold whited lies,
Dreams, too, and dainty ideals, they do not find favour in styes.
Like something solid and succulent, toothsome, and titillant. Dirt P
Hrumph ! ’Tis a useful commodity ; I never found it to hurt.
Dirt ? What is dirt after all ? A comparative thing I suppose,
What do punctilious bards use for growing their lily and rose P
Hate all such finicking fashions. The gushers would tiptoe through life
Like girls o’er a foul City crossing.. How, right realism is rife
With a meaning the mooners all miss, but which hogdom has long ago hit on,
Ah! the sty could have given the cue to romancers from Homer to Lytton.
Aristophanes smacked of our trough, and the Pantagruelian snout
Was a little bit porcine ? Perhaps ! But the sparkle, the symbol flashed out,
And the soft whiff of fragrance spoilt all. Ho, the tub is no place for the gem;
And as for strewn violets—pheugh ! Slabbest hogswash were sicklied by them.
But Zola, now ! Ah ! there’s a writer ! I think, as I wallow and grunt,
That the learnedest Pig of us all need not deem it the slightest affront
To be dubbed Realistic Romancer. It sounds contradictory, too,
But the last avatar of romance is so nakedly, nastily true,
That I vow I mysffelf should scarce grumble at being suspect of a part
In so painting the earth’s ordure-heaps or the squalid back slums of the heart.
Were the world, now, all lamhkins and lilies, all sunshine and snowy-winged
saints,
There might be some excuse for the prig who perfection persistently paints ;
Hay, were sinners all stately of port, clean of linen, and dainty of taste,
With no loathly fag-end to their life, like a siren gross fish to the waist,
Then the moony romanticist’s gush and the smug melodramatist’s rant
Might have a more fit raison-d'etre than the fiat of autocrat cant.
But the new learned Pigs—I beg pardon !—the realist writers, know better.
A fig for the spirit of life high-idealised ! Let’s have the letter,
The facts of the gutter and midden. I have grubbed with luxurious tusk in
An offal-heap rank as the slough so offensive to finical Ruskin,
And found it a capital feeding-ground. Art, ’twould appear, has discovered
The inner swine-secret at last. Far tou long in the clouds she has hovered,
Scornful of soil and of carrion. Pooh ! there are glorious pickings
In what dilettanti call filth. The boobies ! their stumblings and stickiDgs
Whenever life’s road’s a bit miry remind me of cats in wet weather.
Ho ! for the rout and the wallow, the muck-feast and mud-bath together !
And out on fine dolts who can’t dine without forks and the snowiest napery,
Or limn the gross facts of the earth without swathes of fantastical drapery !
How the romancers and lyrists have learned of the Sty, it is glorious !
Porkerdom’s Art-Apotheosis, Swinehood in Letters victorious I
Hrumph ! Will they gird at us now for delighting in wallow and grovel ?
By Gurth and my nose-ring, who dares—after reading a latter-day Hovel ?
Old Times Revived.
Great consternation prevailed abroad on it being reported that a Member of
the English Parliament had been “ sent to the Tower.” The torture, the Sca-
venger’s Daughter, and an execution on Tower Hill, were nervously expected.
A second telegram rectified the omission of the word “ Clock” before Tower.
[July 10, 1880.
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
stranger. Of course all the town had read the articles
in the Prometheus ; but truth had triumphed, and virtue
had prevailed. Perhaps, also, Sir Isaac’s opinion had
been published in the latest evening papers. After
shaking hands warmly with numbers, who thronged
around him, how could he refuse to take the chair, that
was offered to him at a party of his sympathisers, who
were gathered together for a supper in his honour ?
How could he help replying several times, when they
proposed his health over and over again between the
intervals of oysters, grilled fowl, kidneys, sausages, and
potatoes ? How could he help playing on his plate “ The
Girl I left behind me ” with the drumstick of a devilled
chicken, and then throwing it at the Proprietor, who
had suddenly forced himself on the company without an
invitation ? How could he refuse to shake hands with
the Proprietor, and propose his health with three times
three, when the latter was so liberal in his entertainment,
and his hosts round the festive board were so hospitable
and so rich r
Then there was more cheering and more toasts; and
he would have risen to his legs for the fiftieth time, but
that, somehow, his legs had risen of themselves, and
were—he couldn’t explain how it was, or when it hap-
pened—above him, high up on the table, while he, a
long way down, was looking up at them. What did
it all mean ? There seemed to be some argument, and
a great deal of buzzing and shuffling and scuffling, and
then it appeared to him that, somehow or another, he was
hack at Beerjester, in full Beadle’s costume, showing a
crowd of Bank-holiday sight-seers over the Cathedral,
and that while he was doing this the organ struck up,
and the Bishop rode in on horseback, and service began,
and that, do what he would, he couldn’t prevent the
holiday folks from singing; “ lie’s a Jolly Good Fellow /”
while somebody got up in the pulpit, with his beadle’s
staff, and began laying about him like Punch in the
show, and then that some one shook him roughly by the
collar, and said, “Come, no more of this!” and he
awokp to find himself held by two Policemen, and con-
fronted by an Inspector, while a third stood by, with his
helmet knocked in, and a black-eye, having, as he pro-
tested, been seriously “damaged by that Gent, there,”—
pointing to the worthy Percentor, who had not as yet
recovered his faculties sufficiently to be able to reply to
the charge. Then he hears the Proprietor request pay-
ment from some one for the supper, and the broken glass,
and the injury done to the reputation of his establishment;
and on the Percentor indignantly turning to inquire why
the people who gave the entertainment didn’t reply, the
Proprietor observed that he didn’t want to be trifled
with, and if he, the Percentor, couldn’t pay the money
down, he must trouble him for his name and address,
before he was taken off to the stationhouse.
Then the Master of Deedler’s bethought him of his
friend, the Attorney-General, and producing a card re-
quested the Inspector to send it at once to Sir Isaac
Allpheeze. At the mention of this name the Inspector
suggested that he, the Proprietor, and the worthy Per-
centor, should all go down to Sir Isaac’s chambers in
a cab, and there being no objection to this proposal, it
was adopted.
Then, on Mr. Simpler’s having endorsed the card
“Testimonial all right, splendid cup and inkstand with
inkscription,” Sir Isaac, without getting off the Wool-
sack where he slept for practice, wrote a judgment in
the Master of Deedler’s favour, threatening the pro-
prietor with a prosecution and the withdrawal of his
licence, and severely reprimanding the Inspector, who
was ordered to see Mr. Simpler home and pay him
every possible attention.
The Master of Deedler’s didn’t get uf) till very late
next morning, and then returned by evening train to
Small-Beerjester; and thus ended his two days in
London.
How in the meantime had Mr. John Bounce been
occupied ?
NEGATIONS AND AFFIRMATIONS.
The House of Commons say that Bradlaugh is to be
allowed to affirm. Punch must be allowed to affirm that
though Bradlaugh is quite wrong, the House is quite
right.
Burrow Members. -Rabbits.
FROM THE STY.
By the Learned Pig.
Learned Pig (laying doivn a modern Novel) loquitur—
I Jrumpb! Hrumph! How, that’s
r1 really delicious; as fragrantly
fine as a sniff
From a long-stored and newly-stirred
dust-hole. Ah ! poets who prate of
the whiff
From the brine, or a mignonette-bed, or
from lilac-buds rain-washed at eve,
You are really quite out of the run-
ning, rococo at least I believe.
Hrumph ! Triumph I think for our
race; we’ve been ridiculed rather
too long
For our appetite wholesomely catholic.
Popular story and song
How find us justification. Gross por-
cine propensities ? Bosh!
Seeing Art now shares the tastes of us
lovers of wallow and wash,
Really worth while to be learned, if
only in order to trace
In modern humanity’s boasted chef-
d'oeuvres the traits of our race !
Here now’s a novel! I’m told it is
sold in all civilised lands,
And comes under modest girl-glances
and passes through honest boy-hands.
Gad! it’s pure dun gheap—delightful!
Ho fat gutter-garbage so rich
’Twould satiate hogdom’s keen greed plus a satyr’s esurient itch.
Roses ? I never liked roses, ana lilies are cold whited lies,
Dreams, too, and dainty ideals, they do not find favour in styes.
Like something solid and succulent, toothsome, and titillant. Dirt P
Hrumph ! ’Tis a useful commodity ; I never found it to hurt.
Dirt ? What is dirt after all ? A comparative thing I suppose,
What do punctilious bards use for growing their lily and rose P
Hate all such finicking fashions. The gushers would tiptoe through life
Like girls o’er a foul City crossing.. How, right realism is rife
With a meaning the mooners all miss, but which hogdom has long ago hit on,
Ah! the sty could have given the cue to romancers from Homer to Lytton.
Aristophanes smacked of our trough, and the Pantagruelian snout
Was a little bit porcine ? Perhaps ! But the sparkle, the symbol flashed out,
And the soft whiff of fragrance spoilt all. Ho, the tub is no place for the gem;
And as for strewn violets—pheugh ! Slabbest hogswash were sicklied by them.
But Zola, now ! Ah ! there’s a writer ! I think, as I wallow and grunt,
That the learnedest Pig of us all need not deem it the slightest affront
To be dubbed Realistic Romancer. It sounds contradictory, too,
But the last avatar of romance is so nakedly, nastily true,
That I vow I mysffelf should scarce grumble at being suspect of a part
In so painting the earth’s ordure-heaps or the squalid back slums of the heart.
Were the world, now, all lamhkins and lilies, all sunshine and snowy-winged
saints,
There might be some excuse for the prig who perfection persistently paints ;
Hay, were sinners all stately of port, clean of linen, and dainty of taste,
With no loathly fag-end to their life, like a siren gross fish to the waist,
Then the moony romanticist’s gush and the smug melodramatist’s rant
Might have a more fit raison-d'etre than the fiat of autocrat cant.
But the new learned Pigs—I beg pardon !—the realist writers, know better.
A fig for the spirit of life high-idealised ! Let’s have the letter,
The facts of the gutter and midden. I have grubbed with luxurious tusk in
An offal-heap rank as the slough so offensive to finical Ruskin,
And found it a capital feeding-ground. Art, ’twould appear, has discovered
The inner swine-secret at last. Far tou long in the clouds she has hovered,
Scornful of soil and of carrion. Pooh ! there are glorious pickings
In what dilettanti call filth. The boobies ! their stumblings and stickiDgs
Whenever life’s road’s a bit miry remind me of cats in wet weather.
Ho ! for the rout and the wallow, the muck-feast and mud-bath together !
And out on fine dolts who can’t dine without forks and the snowiest napery,
Or limn the gross facts of the earth without swathes of fantastical drapery !
How the romancers and lyrists have learned of the Sty, it is glorious !
Porkerdom’s Art-Apotheosis, Swinehood in Letters victorious I
Hrumph ! Will they gird at us now for delighting in wallow and grovel ?
By Gurth and my nose-ring, who dares—after reading a latter-day Hovel ?
Old Times Revived.
Great consternation prevailed abroad on it being reported that a Member of
the English Parliament had been “ sent to the Tower.” The torture, the Sca-
venger’s Daughter, and an execution on Tower Hill, were nervously expected.
A second telegram rectified the omission of the word “ Clock” before Tower.