DOI issue:
September 13, 1884
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17757#0139
32
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
^September 13, ice*.
THE TOWN.
No. XIII.—Shop versus Sport.
A Business Man was Bazzard !—so men said
With fine finality of compliment,
And that sagacious wag of sapient head
With which the oracles of cent-per-cent
Seal their applausive tributes. He was red,
Rotund, and boisterously confident ;
With eye as cold and blond moustache as pendent
As those of Stagedom’s youthful Squires- attendant.
“ Something in China,” in a spacious way,
His intimates declared him ; but ’twere mockery
To hint that Bazzard’s genius found full play
Within the compass of a trade in Crockery.
That showy Cob, those Orchids, choice and gay,
That natty rose-grown Villa, called “ The Rockery,”
And its presiding spirit doubtless drew
From deeper founts than a smart Salesman’s “ screw.”
“ Pooh! Bazzard knows his book,” smiled Simon Flip,
His constant chum, and crafty monitor.
Simon was nothing, save a splendid “whip,”
A billiard-crack, and fifty small things m ore ;
But any chance those fingers slim let slip,
Any advantage that he failed to score,
Or any quarry that escaped his catching
Was little likely to be worth the snatching.
A Business Man! Civic Philistia
Makes that ideal its peculiar Dagon;
That phrase leaves very little more to say.
What means it ? One who is content to fag on
In Mammon’s dusty mill from day to day.
Play the St. George to Poverty’s grim Dragon,
By toil that relaxation dares not hazard ?
Well, ’twas not altogether so with Bazzard.
But he was sharp, oh, needle-sharp indeed !
No pachyderm who prowled primeval slime on
Was hungrier, or harder in his greed.
Mistrustful too, a very Cockney Timon
Or cynic of the Apemanthian breed.
“ Sharp versus Flat,” opined his Mentor, Simon,
“ Sums human history from Adam down.”
A creed with huge attraction for the Town.
Man’s primal duty as a Business Being—
And what is Being without Business worth ?—
Is not to be a “ Flat,” that dire fate fleeing
As quite the most degrading doom on earth.
It means straight deed, and undistorted seeing,
Faith, kindliness—all themes for crackling mirth.
For truth, and tenderness, and non-avidity
Are only minor phases of Stupidity.
So Bazzard held at heart, so hundreds hold
Who tacitly subscribe Flip’s formulary.
Bazzard was a Bookmaker, shrewd and bold,
At least he fancied so, though judgments vary.
Race meetings knew him well, those glances cold,
Those red smooth cheeks, that raiment light and airy,
Better indeed than seemed to quite comport
With rightly balancing Shop versus Sport.
And what has Babylon with Sport to do ?
Woods hath it none, the fields from it are far gone ;
Thence sallies forth no spear-armed hunting crew
Circling the chariot of some modern Sargon.
And yet from Euston Square to Waterloo,
From Tatter ball’s to tavern-bars, its jargon
Is all-familiar to the lips and ears
Of cits and costers, publicans and Peers.
Sport call they it, the “ Sport of Kings ” forsooth !
When rascalry is royal, fever festive,
The phrase may bear some touch of solid truth.
Now Reason at the hackneyed rot grows restive.
Pale greed-pinched faces of our Golden Youth
Of kingly sportiveness are scarce suggestive,
And old Lord Snapfle, “ waiting for a taker,”
Might sit for Bunyan’s grovelling Muck-raker.
Its spell is o’er the Town, its sordid spell.
It sways men’s minds from squalid Seven Dials
To smug Cheapside and cynical Pall Mall,
Slang-motlied talk of tips, and touts, and trials,
Absorbs the kindred souls of snob and swell;
Statesmen must plunge though War vent all its vials,
And wits would leave a Supper of the Gods
To spot a winner, or consult the odds.
At Tattersall’s or the Victoria, greed
May wear a smarter garb, a smugger grace,
Than ’midst the ragged raffs who crush to read
The earliest record of the latest race
On Fleet’s foul pavement; but the fires that feed
The vagrant’s veins, and flush his harpy face,
Burn in the breasts of Bondsmen of the Pen,
Club-Swells and Clerks, Nobles and Business Men !
Bazzard beneath bis broadcloth felt their flame
In ever-growing force ; the “ modest flutter”
In Trade’s slack intervals grew all too tame ;
The “ Shop” seemed tedious, mere dull bread-and-butter
Dully acquired: he’d fly at higher game—
His luck was good, his failure seldom utter ;
So brooded Bazzard, and if spur or whip
His purpose needed, there was Simon Flip !
If Bazzard found the “ brass,” and Flip the “brains,”
The Business Man was not allowed to guess
That tacit bargain, vanity so reigns
In self-dubbed oracles of knowingness,
That Bazzard might have huffed. But their joint gains
Swelled, and the Cit swelled also, with success.
Until—he burst, as vulgar windbags do,
Floored by the failure of one last grand coup !
Poor Business Man! Where was his sharpness now,
His cynic coolness, and his noisy cheer ?
“ The veriest cocktail! ” Flip declared ; his brow
Damp with despair, his mouth awry with fear !
Flip never turned a hair, Simon somehow
Avoided quarters in the street called Queer ;
But Bazzard, poor struck gull, was bound to drop,
Tumbled ’twist the two stools of Sport and Shop.
The latter no more knew him, and no more
The Rockery’s paths re-echoed his sharp tread.
A stranded wreck on Speculation’s shore,
He lay, a derelict. Toadies he had fed.
At many a feast, from young Lord Blttnderbore
To faithless Flip himself, all cut him dead,
Aye ! even the blatant, coarse Bookmaking crew
Who flock and feed at fusty Waterloo !
Years later, on a chill September day,
A dull suburban race-course echoed loud
To one despairing shriek. What furious fray
Whirls, like some human Maelstrom, that mad crowd f
Tossed hither, thither like a ball in play,
Struck, torn at, garment-rent, pale, crimson-browed,
A hunted wretch in abject terror fled,
Gasped forth a fruitless prayer, and dropped as dead.
The cur-crowd, tiger-hearted, smote and thrust—
A man-hunt, when so safe, is sport most rare !—
Trampled the battered body in the dust,
With broken limbs, eyes'blinded, limp, half bare.
A hideous sight I The brute-mob’s bestial lust
Of cruelty found demonstration there;
There were displayed the civilising sort
Of influences which move the World of Sport!
It was the Business Man! Poor broken knave !
Torn like some stricken wolf by his own pack !
Half that mad throng, so prompt with stone and stave
Were rogues than Bazzard’s self more base and black,
Though in defence of lawless law so brave.
The dread cry, “ Welsher! ” on the victim’s track
That ruthless horde of race-course curs let slip,
And he who raised the cry was—Simon Flip !
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
^September 13, ice*.
THE TOWN.
No. XIII.—Shop versus Sport.
A Business Man was Bazzard !—so men said
With fine finality of compliment,
And that sagacious wag of sapient head
With which the oracles of cent-per-cent
Seal their applausive tributes. He was red,
Rotund, and boisterously confident ;
With eye as cold and blond moustache as pendent
As those of Stagedom’s youthful Squires- attendant.
“ Something in China,” in a spacious way,
His intimates declared him ; but ’twere mockery
To hint that Bazzard’s genius found full play
Within the compass of a trade in Crockery.
That showy Cob, those Orchids, choice and gay,
That natty rose-grown Villa, called “ The Rockery,”
And its presiding spirit doubtless drew
From deeper founts than a smart Salesman’s “ screw.”
“ Pooh! Bazzard knows his book,” smiled Simon Flip,
His constant chum, and crafty monitor.
Simon was nothing, save a splendid “whip,”
A billiard-crack, and fifty small things m ore ;
But any chance those fingers slim let slip,
Any advantage that he failed to score,
Or any quarry that escaped his catching
Was little likely to be worth the snatching.
A Business Man! Civic Philistia
Makes that ideal its peculiar Dagon;
That phrase leaves very little more to say.
What means it ? One who is content to fag on
In Mammon’s dusty mill from day to day.
Play the St. George to Poverty’s grim Dragon,
By toil that relaxation dares not hazard ?
Well, ’twas not altogether so with Bazzard.
But he was sharp, oh, needle-sharp indeed !
No pachyderm who prowled primeval slime on
Was hungrier, or harder in his greed.
Mistrustful too, a very Cockney Timon
Or cynic of the Apemanthian breed.
“ Sharp versus Flat,” opined his Mentor, Simon,
“ Sums human history from Adam down.”
A creed with huge attraction for the Town.
Man’s primal duty as a Business Being—
And what is Being without Business worth ?—
Is not to be a “ Flat,” that dire fate fleeing
As quite the most degrading doom on earth.
It means straight deed, and undistorted seeing,
Faith, kindliness—all themes for crackling mirth.
For truth, and tenderness, and non-avidity
Are only minor phases of Stupidity.
So Bazzard held at heart, so hundreds hold
Who tacitly subscribe Flip’s formulary.
Bazzard was a Bookmaker, shrewd and bold,
At least he fancied so, though judgments vary.
Race meetings knew him well, those glances cold,
Those red smooth cheeks, that raiment light and airy,
Better indeed than seemed to quite comport
With rightly balancing Shop versus Sport.
And what has Babylon with Sport to do ?
Woods hath it none, the fields from it are far gone ;
Thence sallies forth no spear-armed hunting crew
Circling the chariot of some modern Sargon.
And yet from Euston Square to Waterloo,
From Tatter ball’s to tavern-bars, its jargon
Is all-familiar to the lips and ears
Of cits and costers, publicans and Peers.
Sport call they it, the “ Sport of Kings ” forsooth !
When rascalry is royal, fever festive,
The phrase may bear some touch of solid truth.
Now Reason at the hackneyed rot grows restive.
Pale greed-pinched faces of our Golden Youth
Of kingly sportiveness are scarce suggestive,
And old Lord Snapfle, “ waiting for a taker,”
Might sit for Bunyan’s grovelling Muck-raker.
Its spell is o’er the Town, its sordid spell.
It sways men’s minds from squalid Seven Dials
To smug Cheapside and cynical Pall Mall,
Slang-motlied talk of tips, and touts, and trials,
Absorbs the kindred souls of snob and swell;
Statesmen must plunge though War vent all its vials,
And wits would leave a Supper of the Gods
To spot a winner, or consult the odds.
At Tattersall’s or the Victoria, greed
May wear a smarter garb, a smugger grace,
Than ’midst the ragged raffs who crush to read
The earliest record of the latest race
On Fleet’s foul pavement; but the fires that feed
The vagrant’s veins, and flush his harpy face,
Burn in the breasts of Bondsmen of the Pen,
Club-Swells and Clerks, Nobles and Business Men !
Bazzard beneath bis broadcloth felt their flame
In ever-growing force ; the “ modest flutter”
In Trade’s slack intervals grew all too tame ;
The “ Shop” seemed tedious, mere dull bread-and-butter
Dully acquired: he’d fly at higher game—
His luck was good, his failure seldom utter ;
So brooded Bazzard, and if spur or whip
His purpose needed, there was Simon Flip !
If Bazzard found the “ brass,” and Flip the “brains,”
The Business Man was not allowed to guess
That tacit bargain, vanity so reigns
In self-dubbed oracles of knowingness,
That Bazzard might have huffed. But their joint gains
Swelled, and the Cit swelled also, with success.
Until—he burst, as vulgar windbags do,
Floored by the failure of one last grand coup !
Poor Business Man! Where was his sharpness now,
His cynic coolness, and his noisy cheer ?
“ The veriest cocktail! ” Flip declared ; his brow
Damp with despair, his mouth awry with fear !
Flip never turned a hair, Simon somehow
Avoided quarters in the street called Queer ;
But Bazzard, poor struck gull, was bound to drop,
Tumbled ’twist the two stools of Sport and Shop.
The latter no more knew him, and no more
The Rockery’s paths re-echoed his sharp tread.
A stranded wreck on Speculation’s shore,
He lay, a derelict. Toadies he had fed.
At many a feast, from young Lord Blttnderbore
To faithless Flip himself, all cut him dead,
Aye ! even the blatant, coarse Bookmaking crew
Who flock and feed at fusty Waterloo !
Years later, on a chill September day,
A dull suburban race-course echoed loud
To one despairing shriek. What furious fray
Whirls, like some human Maelstrom, that mad crowd f
Tossed hither, thither like a ball in play,
Struck, torn at, garment-rent, pale, crimson-browed,
A hunted wretch in abject terror fled,
Gasped forth a fruitless prayer, and dropped as dead.
The cur-crowd, tiger-hearted, smote and thrust—
A man-hunt, when so safe, is sport most rare !—
Trampled the battered body in the dust,
With broken limbs, eyes'blinded, limp, half bare.
A hideous sight I The brute-mob’s bestial lust
Of cruelty found demonstration there;
There were displayed the civilising sort
Of influences which move the World of Sport!
It was the Business Man! Poor broken knave !
Torn like some stricken wolf by his own pack !
Half that mad throng, so prompt with stone and stave
Were rogues than Bazzard’s self more base and black,
Though in defence of lawless law so brave.
The dread cry, “ Welsher! ” on the victim’s track
That ruthless horde of race-course curs let slip,
And he who raised the cry was—Simon Flip !