DOI Heft:
November 3, 1883
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17755#0225
November 3, 1883.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 213
TRICKS OF THE LANDING-STAGE.
(The whole Bag of ’em.)
Bogus Club, New York, 29th Oct., 1883.
Mr. Punch,—Sir,—Having seen in your British papers the account,
cabled off at the time to date, of the arrival of Henry J. Irving,
Ellen B. Terry, and the rest of that distinguished intellectual
footlight consignment, I am franking you these lines to tell you that,
from a general desire freely expressed all round to avoid painful
vulgar publicity, it was that delicately garbled, that though con-
siderably on the spot myself that morning, I should not have recog-
nised it in the afternoon sheets with a twenty-four-inch binocular.
No, Mr. Punch, a two-cent slice of the truth, one-horse quality, is
all that you have yet had of those remarkable proceedings ; and
under the circumstances you will, I guess, be glad and grateful to
cast your eye over a few genuine straight-hand notes taken in the
neighbourhood of that there ship Britannic, on that morning in
question by Your watchful and reliable Correspondent,
The First Man up the Side.
* * * * * *
S a.m.—Woke by heavy firing of harbour batteries. Jumped up
and put my head out. Procession half a mile long, with three brass
bands and five Circus elephants picked out in electric light, passing
quietly along somewhere. Fancy it’s Coleridge going to bed.
Wrong. Irving’s in sight. Fly into my clothes, and off to wharf
like a tickled rocket.
★ * * * * *
Seventy-five launches starting together. Pushing smart. Water
full of interviewers. The most cursedest crush to get on board, but
manage it, and am off first. Note rival screw creeping up fast.
Explain to Captain that ‘ ‘ he may as well bust as get me up along-
side in a back row.” That does him. He’s on the safety-valve like
a piece of hot butter. Pace improved. Cannot see the other craft.
Hope he’s run on to a torpedo. Ha ! here’s the Britannic ! Now,
then. Hullo! what’s this? Funnel—spars—bits of the Captain
fiying all over the place, and nothing to sit on but five tons of steam !
I do believe she’s bust!
******
Yes, she has ! Most convenient. Here I am come down on hoard.
Ptight in the very midst of all the bosses on the bridge. Shake hands
all round and ask for Henry K. Irving and Ellen -J. Terry. _ Cap-
tain, a thin, long, gentlemanly looking cuss, with ffowing hair and
glasses fixed up on his nose, says something with a white smile, and
beckons a short and stout party, well mustachioed wfith a dark beard,
to come up and join us. This, then, is the great British tragedian!
Looks like it. Don’t see though how he’s to collar King Lear with-
out a clean shave. Owing to the seventeen warships In attendance
all playing “ Hail, Columbia /” together, can’t catch plainly what
the pale Captain says, hut think he calls him “Joseph.” Proper-
style then, Henry Joseph Irving. Make a note of it. Interview
him rapidly. Denies that he has come to the States solely to buy up
tinned oysters. Has never tried to knock Booth down flat with a
left-hander, but thinks he could. Wears merino hose in summer
months. Likes artichokes. Believes Vanderbilt could stand a
week’s “bearing,” and toss the Duke of Westminster five-dollar bits
to cents with ’vantage coin any time he likes to name afterwards.
Has never tasted devilled walrus Hopes to take some home with
him. Would go back by land if he could. Thinks Shakspeare
could give the Editor of Tribune five laps in a mile and lick him into
apple shavings. Says the reason he isn’t like the published cartes of
Henry Irving is because his name is Joseph Hatton. Use bad
language and leave him at a bound, in search of Ellen Terry.
* * * *- * *
Owing to that slipped-in interview with Joseph B. Hatton, chance
gone. Every blessed one of the seventy-five launches alongside now.
Interviewers, cheers, guns, Military bands, and floating triumphal
arches—loose for miles in every direction. Read on one, ‘ ‘ Mag
Heaven bless Bram Stoker.” Must find him out at any pace. Safe
to be in the engine-room. Down we go.
******
Hullo, here’s luck! Miss Ellen P. Terry at last! She seems to
be taking tongue sandwiches and porter freely in front of the coal-
bunkers, finding it cold aloft. Looks a fine well-grown woman of
about five-and-forty by the glare. To at her straight, and ask her
which she finds her biggest part, Beatrice or Juliet. Tells me “to
get along with my nonsense.” Turn to a cuss, with a smut-set
face, sniggering by the furnace, for information. Says “she’s a
Stewardess.” Ask him if he’s Bram Stoker. Says he’s stoker,
“ but as to Bram,—not if he knows it.” Out of that as quick as I
can, and up the shaft as slick as lubricated lightning.
******
After a free fight, and a little handling of my six-shooter, got near
Henry ^ W. Irving and Ellen A. Terry at' last. Take the Lady
first. Cries bitterly when I talk of the rough weather she had after
she got off from Liverpool. When asked whether she thinks she ’ll
take the shine out of Coleridge, says she “ rather hopes she will.”
Is fond, too, of Pears’s soap, and thinks if Gould is put up for the
next Presidency it ought to be more than even betting. Takes
molasses with her tea, and believes Booth could play Macbeth on a
bicycle if he tried hard. Was continuing my questions neatly, but
was here handed backwards through a skylight.
******
A little damaged, but soon up again, with the assistance of the
saloon-poker. Get hold of Henry Y. Irving at last. Went for him
like a cobra on the drink. Here is his examination in full:—
1. Says he thinks he has gained a good deal of flesh on this trip.
2. Is a better sailor in quiet water than most men. (This includes
Coleridge.)
3. Says Bram Stoker is Bram Stoker, and that’s all he’s got to
say about him.
4. Speaks with a good deal of kindly feeling of Joseph B. Hatton.
Says, when he and Abbey, and a cuss from the Lotus, and a lot more
he didn’t know from Adam, all came on board together, and fell on his
neck with tears of welcome, all of ’em, “ so broke down like a child,”
that you could have heard the sobbing right away at Sandy Hook.
5. Hopes they won’t pelt him with dead cats because he wouldn't
play First Gravedigger to Booth’s Hamlet down in the London Strand.
6. Doesn’t think if the British Ministry come over, with the
Speaker and other properties, that they ’ll spoil his business—unless
they get at Bram Stoker—which is a moral, they won’t, not even
with travelling expenses and a per-centage on the National Debt.
7. Finds the interviewing business “ a nice, pleasant, modest,
retiring high-class sort of work,” and perfect top-boots as cheap
advertising.
8. Admits he has brought a pile of sets with him, but not the
Lyceum Stage and the Gaiety Restaurant—as maliciously reported
by Coleridge.
* t* * * * ^
--was about to ask him his opinion on Sea Bathing and Hop
Bitters when at this point I was again handed backwards dowu
through a skylight, and badly figured with splinters.
8 P.M.—On shore again. Just got the glass out in time to take a
stroll, and pick up a bit more news. Such a crush in Broadway that
I got fixed up in a gutter on top of some cuss who said he wras a bit
of a poet, and wanted “sweetness and light.” Gave him five cents
of green corn-candy and a fusee.
******
9 p.m.—Here they are! Skyrockets, firemen, banners, balloons,
Bengal lights, deputations, brass bands, and the whole select scum
out on the full swing! Here they come! Henry Ia. Irving and
Ellen J. Terry just landed ! Ask the poet if he ’ll let me just step
on his head for five minutes for fifteen dollars. Says he’s never let
out his head at such a low figure.” Ask the cuss his name.
“Matthew Arnold.” Well, I am blest! Pick him up, and get
him quietly to an hotel in a back street, -with the help of a few
friends. Says, feebly, he likes “ smoky London best.” Promise to
come and hear all about it to-morrow. Guess I will, too.
Hullo-! Here they come! Down I go. Up again, and behind
Bram Stoker on a fire-engine.
******
More about what I ’ve got out of him by next cable.
A Seal Cold Place.
“Negretti and Zambra!” exclaimed a Gentleman up from his
charming marine residence at Beachington. “Negretti and Zambra,'
how cold it has been ! ”
“ Dear me ! ” observed a friend, “I’m sorry to hear that. I was
thinking of trying Beachington in the winter.”
‘ ‘ Beachington is more likely to try you," was the encouraging reply.
“ But,” said the friend, “ when you have a West wind it must tie
delicious.”
“West wind!” exclaimed the chilly person. “ By Zambra ! we
never have a West wind. With us at Beachington what you call the
West wind is only the East ivind coming back again ! Ugh ! ”
MOTTO EOR OUR FANCY PORTRAIT ARTIST.
“ Nor be it ever of my Portraits told—
‘ Here the strong lines of malice we behold.’ ”
Crabbe d'ulit, sedit, inventedit, rimedit, and rot it, 1810.
0 Immortal punster Tom Hood ! We refer to the notice in last
Saturday’s Times of hitherto unpublished Charles Dickens’ cor-
respondence, in which there is a quotation from a letter of Hood’s to
the great novelist, explaining why he had objected at first to the
Pickwick Papers, on account of their supposed “ PickwickednessW
What a splendid sample of “ Hood's Own ” !
TRICKS OF THE LANDING-STAGE.
(The whole Bag of ’em.)
Bogus Club, New York, 29th Oct., 1883.
Mr. Punch,—Sir,—Having seen in your British papers the account,
cabled off at the time to date, of the arrival of Henry J. Irving,
Ellen B. Terry, and the rest of that distinguished intellectual
footlight consignment, I am franking you these lines to tell you that,
from a general desire freely expressed all round to avoid painful
vulgar publicity, it was that delicately garbled, that though con-
siderably on the spot myself that morning, I should not have recog-
nised it in the afternoon sheets with a twenty-four-inch binocular.
No, Mr. Punch, a two-cent slice of the truth, one-horse quality, is
all that you have yet had of those remarkable proceedings ; and
under the circumstances you will, I guess, be glad and grateful to
cast your eye over a few genuine straight-hand notes taken in the
neighbourhood of that there ship Britannic, on that morning in
question by Your watchful and reliable Correspondent,
The First Man up the Side.
* * * * * *
S a.m.—Woke by heavy firing of harbour batteries. Jumped up
and put my head out. Procession half a mile long, with three brass
bands and five Circus elephants picked out in electric light, passing
quietly along somewhere. Fancy it’s Coleridge going to bed.
Wrong. Irving’s in sight. Fly into my clothes, and off to wharf
like a tickled rocket.
★ * * * * *
Seventy-five launches starting together. Pushing smart. Water
full of interviewers. The most cursedest crush to get on board, but
manage it, and am off first. Note rival screw creeping up fast.
Explain to Captain that ‘ ‘ he may as well bust as get me up along-
side in a back row.” That does him. He’s on the safety-valve like
a piece of hot butter. Pace improved. Cannot see the other craft.
Hope he’s run on to a torpedo. Ha ! here’s the Britannic ! Now,
then. Hullo! what’s this? Funnel—spars—bits of the Captain
fiying all over the place, and nothing to sit on but five tons of steam !
I do believe she’s bust!
******
Yes, she has ! Most convenient. Here I am come down on hoard.
Ptight in the very midst of all the bosses on the bridge. Shake hands
all round and ask for Henry K. Irving and Ellen -J. Terry. _ Cap-
tain, a thin, long, gentlemanly looking cuss, with ffowing hair and
glasses fixed up on his nose, says something with a white smile, and
beckons a short and stout party, well mustachioed wfith a dark beard,
to come up and join us. This, then, is the great British tragedian!
Looks like it. Don’t see though how he’s to collar King Lear with-
out a clean shave. Owing to the seventeen warships In attendance
all playing “ Hail, Columbia /” together, can’t catch plainly what
the pale Captain says, hut think he calls him “Joseph.” Proper-
style then, Henry Joseph Irving. Make a note of it. Interview
him rapidly. Denies that he has come to the States solely to buy up
tinned oysters. Has never tried to knock Booth down flat with a
left-hander, but thinks he could. Wears merino hose in summer
months. Likes artichokes. Believes Vanderbilt could stand a
week’s “bearing,” and toss the Duke of Westminster five-dollar bits
to cents with ’vantage coin any time he likes to name afterwards.
Has never tasted devilled walrus Hopes to take some home with
him. Would go back by land if he could. Thinks Shakspeare
could give the Editor of Tribune five laps in a mile and lick him into
apple shavings. Says the reason he isn’t like the published cartes of
Henry Irving is because his name is Joseph Hatton. Use bad
language and leave him at a bound, in search of Ellen Terry.
* * * *- * *
Owing to that slipped-in interview with Joseph B. Hatton, chance
gone. Every blessed one of the seventy-five launches alongside now.
Interviewers, cheers, guns, Military bands, and floating triumphal
arches—loose for miles in every direction. Read on one, ‘ ‘ Mag
Heaven bless Bram Stoker.” Must find him out at any pace. Safe
to be in the engine-room. Down we go.
******
Hullo, here’s luck! Miss Ellen P. Terry at last! She seems to
be taking tongue sandwiches and porter freely in front of the coal-
bunkers, finding it cold aloft. Looks a fine well-grown woman of
about five-and-forty by the glare. To at her straight, and ask her
which she finds her biggest part, Beatrice or Juliet. Tells me “to
get along with my nonsense.” Turn to a cuss, with a smut-set
face, sniggering by the furnace, for information. Says “she’s a
Stewardess.” Ask him if he’s Bram Stoker. Says he’s stoker,
“ but as to Bram,—not if he knows it.” Out of that as quick as I
can, and up the shaft as slick as lubricated lightning.
******
After a free fight, and a little handling of my six-shooter, got near
Henry ^ W. Irving and Ellen A. Terry at' last. Take the Lady
first. Cries bitterly when I talk of the rough weather she had after
she got off from Liverpool. When asked whether she thinks she ’ll
take the shine out of Coleridge, says she “ rather hopes she will.”
Is fond, too, of Pears’s soap, and thinks if Gould is put up for the
next Presidency it ought to be more than even betting. Takes
molasses with her tea, and believes Booth could play Macbeth on a
bicycle if he tried hard. Was continuing my questions neatly, but
was here handed backwards through a skylight.
******
A little damaged, but soon up again, with the assistance of the
saloon-poker. Get hold of Henry Y. Irving at last. Went for him
like a cobra on the drink. Here is his examination in full:—
1. Says he thinks he has gained a good deal of flesh on this trip.
2. Is a better sailor in quiet water than most men. (This includes
Coleridge.)
3. Says Bram Stoker is Bram Stoker, and that’s all he’s got to
say about him.
4. Speaks with a good deal of kindly feeling of Joseph B. Hatton.
Says, when he and Abbey, and a cuss from the Lotus, and a lot more
he didn’t know from Adam, all came on board together, and fell on his
neck with tears of welcome, all of ’em, “ so broke down like a child,”
that you could have heard the sobbing right away at Sandy Hook.
5. Hopes they won’t pelt him with dead cats because he wouldn't
play First Gravedigger to Booth’s Hamlet down in the London Strand.
6. Doesn’t think if the British Ministry come over, with the
Speaker and other properties, that they ’ll spoil his business—unless
they get at Bram Stoker—which is a moral, they won’t, not even
with travelling expenses and a per-centage on the National Debt.
7. Finds the interviewing business “ a nice, pleasant, modest,
retiring high-class sort of work,” and perfect top-boots as cheap
advertising.
8. Admits he has brought a pile of sets with him, but not the
Lyceum Stage and the Gaiety Restaurant—as maliciously reported
by Coleridge.
* t* * * * ^
--was about to ask him his opinion on Sea Bathing and Hop
Bitters when at this point I was again handed backwards dowu
through a skylight, and badly figured with splinters.
8 P.M.—On shore again. Just got the glass out in time to take a
stroll, and pick up a bit more news. Such a crush in Broadway that
I got fixed up in a gutter on top of some cuss who said he wras a bit
of a poet, and wanted “sweetness and light.” Gave him five cents
of green corn-candy and a fusee.
******
9 p.m.—Here they are! Skyrockets, firemen, banners, balloons,
Bengal lights, deputations, brass bands, and the whole select scum
out on the full swing! Here they come! Henry Ia. Irving and
Ellen J. Terry just landed ! Ask the poet if he ’ll let me just step
on his head for five minutes for fifteen dollars. Says he’s never let
out his head at such a low figure.” Ask the cuss his name.
“Matthew Arnold.” Well, I am blest! Pick him up, and get
him quietly to an hotel in a back street, -with the help of a few
friends. Says, feebly, he likes “ smoky London best.” Promise to
come and hear all about it to-morrow. Guess I will, too.
Hullo-! Here they come! Down I go. Up again, and behind
Bram Stoker on a fire-engine.
******
More about what I ’ve got out of him by next cable.
A Seal Cold Place.
“Negretti and Zambra!” exclaimed a Gentleman up from his
charming marine residence at Beachington. “Negretti and Zambra,'
how cold it has been ! ”
“ Dear me ! ” observed a friend, “I’m sorry to hear that. I was
thinking of trying Beachington in the winter.”
‘ ‘ Beachington is more likely to try you," was the encouraging reply.
“ But,” said the friend, “ when you have a West wind it must tie
delicious.”
“West wind!” exclaimed the chilly person. “ By Zambra ! we
never have a West wind. With us at Beachington what you call the
West wind is only the East ivind coming back again ! Ugh ! ”
MOTTO EOR OUR FANCY PORTRAIT ARTIST.
“ Nor be it ever of my Portraits told—
‘ Here the strong lines of malice we behold.’ ”
Crabbe d'ulit, sedit, inventedit, rimedit, and rot it, 1810.
0 Immortal punster Tom Hood ! We refer to the notice in last
Saturday’s Times of hitherto unpublished Charles Dickens’ cor-
respondence, in which there is a quotation from a letter of Hood’s to
the great novelist, explaining why he had objected at first to the
Pickwick Papers, on account of their supposed “ PickwickednessW
What a splendid sample of “ Hood's Own ” !