Punch (94.1888)

60

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [February 4, 1888.

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

The "Whirligig of Time is bringing about its revenges in this " so-
called nineteenth century," when the dusty papers of the Record

Offices at home and abroad, and the
Manuscript treasures, both of ancient
houses and of private collections, are
freely placed in the hands of lynx-
eyed experts, who, in the enthusiasm
of their plodding perseverance, are
continually cinder-sifting the dust-
bins and exhaustively inspecting the
waste-paper baskets of the past—not
to "make history," but to reveal truth
plain and irresistible. One of the
results of this laborious process comes
before us" in the shape of the first volume of Gasquet's Henry the
Eighth and the English Monasteries, which stating only hard facts,
and dealing straightforwardly with the contemporary records,
justifies beyond question the opinion now gradually, but surely,
gaining ground, that some of the heroes of that epoch, such as Cbum-
weix and his creatures, Legh, Layton, Ap Rice, and London-,
were unmitigated scoundrels, that their Royal Master was every way
worthy of them, and that the shape assumed by the Reformation in
England was made possible by Wolsey, of whose character Shaks-
peabe. by the mouths of Queen K athekine and of faithful Griffith,
formed so just, and yet so charitable an estimate. That there was
some basis for the modern popular notion expressed in the first verse
of a once well-known song, set to a catching tune, recounting how

" Many have told
Of the Monks of old,
"What a jovial set they wore,"

is certain, as this first volume proves. But "of the many who told,"
very few were worthy of credit, and their stories, even then, were
only of " 'some' Monks of old," not all, just as Collegiate bodies,
Guilds, and even Metropolitan Boards, may become lax and corrupt,
and their conduct necessitate a commission of inquiry with a view
to correction of abuses. And at such a period how conspicuously
stands out the incorruptible honesty of the honest men! How
virtuous it was at such a time to be virtuous! How difficult to be
oonstant to a principle ! How easy to save a head by giving way
just enough to avoid the block! When a stroke of the pen might
ward off a stroke of the axe, the alternative between " Is Life worth
living," or Death worth dying, was not one which ordinary men
could choose without considerable sacrifice one way or the other.
Gassuet's Henry the Eighth is to be completed in two volumes, and
will be a valuable work for historical reference.

By the way, the publications of the Record Office and modern
research into these old letters and pipers,—and "there are lots more
where those come from,"—show that our old friend, Cobbett,
whose work has been shelved for some time, was pretty accu-
rate in his history, and had warrant for the strength of his con-
victions and the force of his expressions. There was an attempt
some little time ago—whose it was I forget—to whitewash Richard
the Third, but it was only theoretical, and did not deal with facts
such as are afforded by the litera scripta of the Record Office, and in
reading the life of Lady Jane Dormer, transcribed from tbe ancient
M3. notes of Henry Cliffoed in Lord Dobmer's possession, I find
that the Tudor Queen, whom we have all been taught to regard as
"Bloody Maky," was, in the opinion of her Lady-m-Waiting and
intimate companion, a charming Princess, and everything that was
kind and considerate as compared with her haughty and violent sister,
Elizabeth, whose conduct as a girl seems to have been scandalous.
What will the Private History of our own "Victorian Era " be when
a century or two hence the cinder-sifters have taken the records in
hand! However, it will not matter to us of the present day, at
all events, who won't be there to contradict or applaud the verdict
whatever it may be. And now to lighter themes.

Having read Mabion's, I should say Marzio's Crucifix, and
recorded my delight in no stinted terms of praise, I determined to
read Marion Crauford's Paul Patoff. It has lain on my table for
three weeks, and I have been perpetually trying to sit down to its
perusal. Something has invariably prevented me. Once, having to
leave town, I took away a volume with me, which on settling myself
comfortably in an arm-chair, I discovered was the third volume.
When I returned I made a spare hour, and took up Vol. I. Scarcely
had I cut its pages than a visitor was ushered in to see me on
important business. The next day I searched everywhere for it: in
vain. All three volumes had disappeared. " Where, Madame," said I,
addressing the Baroness, "is my Paul Patoff— three volumes, blue
cover ? " She explained that, thinking I had finished it, she had
lent it to a friend. It was returned in three days: again and again
I tried to snatch a few moments just to make a beginning ; but no.
fate was against me until one morning I exclaimed brilliantly, "If
I defer it any longer I shall call it Paul Putoff," and seizing the first

volume I commenced reading, and as far as I have gone I am charmed
by the style, and thoroughly interested.in the story.

" Please look at this," said the Baroness, who is a novel-devourer,
to me, at the same time handing me a book by Rowland Gbey,
entitled, By Virtue of His Office, in which she had marked certain
passages. In one of them there is deserved praise bestowed by one
of the characters on The Children's Cry, which appeared in one of
Mr. Punch's numbers. But Miss Elizabeth Verity, the heroine of
the novel (which the Baroness informed me interested her, though
she is not sure if I should care so much for it) blushingly takes to
herself the credit of having written The Children's Cry. Sorry to
contradict a lady whose name is " Verity," but I fancy Mr. Punch
will tell us that it wasn't written by a feminine hand, and has since
been republished in a collection of poems by the same author. Is it
not so? Connie, the minor heroine, observes that she "only reads
Punch and The World." A well-disciplined mind, evidently. But
in spite of these attractions, I must return to Paul Patoff, or I shall
lose the thread of the narrative. So no more, until I've done with
these Russian Blue-books, from

Yours studiously, Baron De Booe; Worms.

A BIT OF GRAPHIC.

(0/ the Regulation Pattern.)

The woodland ways, lately so golden-glorious in their radiant
array, are now sorrowful in their solemn silence. The poly-
chromatic Oread-haunted obscurities of October, the neutral-tinted
nymph-trodden nebulosities of November have given place to the
damp desolation and dreary drippingness of December, dismally
prolonged into what is ironically called the Opening Year I

Chill rain-pools lie in steely stillness in rust-hued argillaceous
ruts. Here the broad slowly-circling wheel of the rustic wain has
weightily wound its deep-indenting way. Sparse and sodden spear-
lets of consumptive-looking grass droop limply along the reeking
sidewalk. Nature, indeed, seems stricken as with phthisis. Like
an almost pulseless poitrinaire, she lies limply on her tear-stained
oouch, dying, dying, dying !

A belated bluebottle, buzzing blindly athwart a leafless forest
vista, blunders incontinently into a broken rain-gemmed spider's
web. The emaciated Arachne of the woods is all too weak
and woesome to spring with the old obese ogreishness upon its
prismatic prey. But the purblind, cold, palsied lump of azure
iridescence, erst the swift and sonorous offal-hunter of ardent
August, gives up the ghost nevertheless, too weak to whir a wing,
too weary to unwind one clinging manacle of mucilaginous
gossamer.

What is that lying at the gnarled serpentining root of yonder inky-
barked elm? A frowsy fungus, the foul-smelling "agaric of the
holt ? " No! It is something of equal unsavouriness, of parallel
unpicturesqueness, yet of infinitely greater human interest. It is
the rusty remnant of a tramp's abandoned highlow. A discarded
shoe, no more ! Yet how it teems with suggestion! Heel has it
none, of sole scarcely a scrap, its frayed "uppers" hint not even
distantly of Day and Martin, its gaping ankle-pieces ungainly gape
and uncomely curl and brutally bulge. But it once held a human
foot!

" Tou may break you may batter the boot as you will,
But the trace of ' the human.' will cling to it still,"

as a less meretricious and more genuinely graphic Moore might have
sung—had he been man enough.

It is the only suggestion of "poor humanity" within sight, this
damp and disintegrated highlow. But how it redeems mere Nature
from negation and nullity! That is because " the low sad music of
humanity" breathes through its gaping soul—I should say sole—and
age-worn eyes—that is to say, eyelet-holes; It transmutes the
languid lyric of Niobe-like Nature at once into a stirring epic of
soul-fiushed Life I The Roman was right :—

" Homo sum : humani nihil a me alienum puto."

not even a human highlow! It speaks of poverty, it whispers of
the wars of Class, it hints not indistinctly of the Unemployed! It
bears a warning to the autocratic Warren, and the truculent
trunoheon-bearers of Trafalgar Square 1 So here in the lonely slush-
sodden heart of the leafless wintry woods, there wells up from the
chill, but oracular lips of unpleasantly damp and diaggled, but ever
sublime and sympathetic Nature, a message to caste-ruled, cosily
housed, but alwavs despotically-disposed Man,—proud man, dressed
in a little brief (Tory) authority, which soon the indignant voice of
a too-patient, but omnipotent proletariat, shall, hurl-

[No thank you! This is " hooking it to some useful end," with a vengeance.
The article was evidently intended for a penny paper. A " blend" of
graphic gush badly imitated from poor Jefperies, and partisan spite of the
regulation political pattern, will not suit Mr. Punch.—Ed.]

HOTICE.—Eejected Communications or Contributions, whether MS., Printed Matter, Drawings, ox Pictures of any description, will
in no case be returned, not even when accompanied fey a Stamped and Addressed Envelope, Cover, or Wrapper. To this rule
there will be no exception.