DOI Heft:
June 21, 1884
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17756#0295
290
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
[Junk 21, 1884.
CLASSICAL.
JEsthetic Hairdresser (to Irritable Customer, who said he was in a hurry). “ I beg your pardon, Sir, but I don’t mind any
Trouble tor a Harmonious Effect ! I flatter myself there ’s no other Artist in this City can so well arrange this
Drapery to imitate the Roman Toga ! ! ”
OUR INSANE-ITARY GUIDE TO THE HEALTH
EXHIBITION.
Part II.—“ The Eat-eries.”
As, seemingly, the great object of nine-tenths of the Exhibitors
at South Kensington is to excite the appetite of the passer-by, it is
not surprising that by eight o’clock he becomes ravenous. From the
moment of his entrance his senses have been dazzled with displays of
the most seductively-arranged food. Now his eyes have rested gloat-
ingly upon vast piles of bon-bons, now gazed greedily at seemingly
uncounted stores of wedding-cake. He has paused for a moment,
and some enthusiastic inventor of compressed vegetables or wafer-
biscuits has forced earnestly, nay, almost brutally, a specimen of
the “ extract of cucumbers ” or the “ skeleton picnic ” into his unre-
sisting mouth. But although these oppressively gratuitous morsels
may appease for a moment, they cannot stave off the desire for
dinner. As this Handbook is nothing if not practical, the Earnest
Seeker after Health shall be told how to proceed in his search for
substantial food.
Say, then, it is eight o’clock on a Wednesday evening. The
subject of my care has just returned from the Albert Hall, where he
has listened to Bismarck’s Cuirassiers defiantly blowing their own
trumpets. He has made mental notes of the remarks he has heard
about their broad shoulders, their white uniforms, and their want of
medals. He has joined in the burst of admiration that has rewarded
their efforts to play music written for the sweetest of strings upon
the brassiest of brass. He has grown so accustomed to their tours de
force that were he told that they were just going to imitate on a
couple of dozen trombones the bleating of a lamb or the warbling of
a nightingale, he would receive the intelligence without the faintest
soupcon of astonishment. He has noticed their cavalry swagger and
their fondness for beer, and has returned to the Entrance-Hall.
Before him is the Southern Gallery. In the distance he sees little
groups, composed of the heads of families and their wives and
daughters, gravely tasting this and tasting that. One old gentleman
is sipping, seemingly much against his will, a new kind of coffee,
while another, with no better grace, is gloomily regaling on con-
densed milk. Our Earnest Seeker after Health pulls himself together,
and makes for the Dining-Saloons.
His first visit is to the apartment devoted to ‘‘ cuts off the joint ” and
“plainest dinners.” He knows from experience that here he can
usually get a fair meal—if he likes to take pains over it, a very good
one. But to-day is Wednesday, and the crowd is what “ Robert ”
would call “ tremenjus.” Every table is occupied. Sad would-be
diners stand at the entrance, gazing with savage resignation at
those who are feasting. Hungry Dowagers vainly seek for redress—
some try to wheedle a passing waiter to get them a place, others
attempt to bully the Manager. But neither course brings with it
dinner. There is no room for the Public, so no on£ wants its com-
pany. So the Health-seeker gazes with respect at the fortunate
possessor of a plate of hot boiled beef, and mournfully passes away.
Having left Salon I. he comes to Salon II., where an even more
desperate crowd are waiting for food. Were it not Wednesday—a
half-crown day—some alarm might be felt at the angry spirit of the
crowd. The enhanced price of admission, no doubt, has secured a
better class of people than those who usually patronise the place on a
shilling day; still there is mischief in the air. It only wants a
William Tell or a Masaniello to constitute himself leader of the wild
and hungry throng to carry the tables by storm, capture the joints,
and possibly massacre the waiters. After pausing in vain for some
ten or twenty minutes, to see whether Fortune will smile upon him,
and give him a place, the Health-seeker turns his back upon “ cuts
from the joint,” not only in sorrow, but in anger, and continues his
promenade along the South Gallery.
Rather roughly refusing the ministrations of a charitable Gentle-
man, who would feed him with several mouthfuls of some patent
food or other, he comes to a crowd of well-dressed people hovering
near a turnstile, who are evidently victims to the demon Indecision.
Now some of these individuals advance, and peer into an apartment
beyond the turnstile, and then hurriedly retire, as if they had seen,
like Virgil and Dante in the Inferno, some terrible sight; ultimately
they all disappear towards the Machinery in Motion, with heads
bowed down, glistening eyes, and other symptoms suggesting the
mournfulest dejection. But the Earnest Health-seeker is not to be
turned aside by the deportment of these “feeble ones” (as the
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
[Junk 21, 1884.
CLASSICAL.
JEsthetic Hairdresser (to Irritable Customer, who said he was in a hurry). “ I beg your pardon, Sir, but I don’t mind any
Trouble tor a Harmonious Effect ! I flatter myself there ’s no other Artist in this City can so well arrange this
Drapery to imitate the Roman Toga ! ! ”
OUR INSANE-ITARY GUIDE TO THE HEALTH
EXHIBITION.
Part II.—“ The Eat-eries.”
As, seemingly, the great object of nine-tenths of the Exhibitors
at South Kensington is to excite the appetite of the passer-by, it is
not surprising that by eight o’clock he becomes ravenous. From the
moment of his entrance his senses have been dazzled with displays of
the most seductively-arranged food. Now his eyes have rested gloat-
ingly upon vast piles of bon-bons, now gazed greedily at seemingly
uncounted stores of wedding-cake. He has paused for a moment,
and some enthusiastic inventor of compressed vegetables or wafer-
biscuits has forced earnestly, nay, almost brutally, a specimen of
the “ extract of cucumbers ” or the “ skeleton picnic ” into his unre-
sisting mouth. But although these oppressively gratuitous morsels
may appease for a moment, they cannot stave off the desire for
dinner. As this Handbook is nothing if not practical, the Earnest
Seeker after Health shall be told how to proceed in his search for
substantial food.
Say, then, it is eight o’clock on a Wednesday evening. The
subject of my care has just returned from the Albert Hall, where he
has listened to Bismarck’s Cuirassiers defiantly blowing their own
trumpets. He has made mental notes of the remarks he has heard
about their broad shoulders, their white uniforms, and their want of
medals. He has joined in the burst of admiration that has rewarded
their efforts to play music written for the sweetest of strings upon
the brassiest of brass. He has grown so accustomed to their tours de
force that were he told that they were just going to imitate on a
couple of dozen trombones the bleating of a lamb or the warbling of
a nightingale, he would receive the intelligence without the faintest
soupcon of astonishment. He has noticed their cavalry swagger and
their fondness for beer, and has returned to the Entrance-Hall.
Before him is the Southern Gallery. In the distance he sees little
groups, composed of the heads of families and their wives and
daughters, gravely tasting this and tasting that. One old gentleman
is sipping, seemingly much against his will, a new kind of coffee,
while another, with no better grace, is gloomily regaling on con-
densed milk. Our Earnest Seeker after Health pulls himself together,
and makes for the Dining-Saloons.
His first visit is to the apartment devoted to ‘‘ cuts off the joint ” and
“plainest dinners.” He knows from experience that here he can
usually get a fair meal—if he likes to take pains over it, a very good
one. But to-day is Wednesday, and the crowd is what “ Robert ”
would call “ tremenjus.” Every table is occupied. Sad would-be
diners stand at the entrance, gazing with savage resignation at
those who are feasting. Hungry Dowagers vainly seek for redress—
some try to wheedle a passing waiter to get them a place, others
attempt to bully the Manager. But neither course brings with it
dinner. There is no room for the Public, so no on£ wants its com-
pany. So the Health-seeker gazes with respect at the fortunate
possessor of a plate of hot boiled beef, and mournfully passes away.
Having left Salon I. he comes to Salon II., where an even more
desperate crowd are waiting for food. Were it not Wednesday—a
half-crown day—some alarm might be felt at the angry spirit of the
crowd. The enhanced price of admission, no doubt, has secured a
better class of people than those who usually patronise the place on a
shilling day; still there is mischief in the air. It only wants a
William Tell or a Masaniello to constitute himself leader of the wild
and hungry throng to carry the tables by storm, capture the joints,
and possibly massacre the waiters. After pausing in vain for some
ten or twenty minutes, to see whether Fortune will smile upon him,
and give him a place, the Health-seeker turns his back upon “ cuts
from the joint,” not only in sorrow, but in anger, and continues his
promenade along the South Gallery.
Rather roughly refusing the ministrations of a charitable Gentle-
man, who would feed him with several mouthfuls of some patent
food or other, he comes to a crowd of well-dressed people hovering
near a turnstile, who are evidently victims to the demon Indecision.
Now some of these individuals advance, and peer into an apartment
beyond the turnstile, and then hurriedly retire, as if they had seen,
like Virgil and Dante in the Inferno, some terrible sight; ultimately
they all disappear towards the Machinery in Motion, with heads
bowed down, glistening eyes, and other symptoms suggesting the
mournfulest dejection. But the Earnest Health-seeker is not to be
turned aside by the deportment of these “feeble ones” (as the