DOI Heft:
March 9, 1889
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17687#0121
March 9, 1889.]
PUNCH, OP THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
ill
RE ALA.
Another Study from Life, after “ Ideala."
She came among ns with a flourish of trumpets, and
we have never been able to get rid of her since. We
have leaped over her, careered around her, and yelled at
her. Yet there was nothing very remarkable about her.
I think something was wrong with her hair. But she had
those lustrous and translucent eyes, like great saucers
of whelks, which thrill yet confound the unobservant
spectator with a sense as of some remote and ill-disci-
plined longing. She had curious notions on the subject
of dress, and it was never easy to say exactly what she
had got on. Sometimes she would appear in a sort of
loose bed-curtain that fitted her like a sack ; sometimes
in a cretonne tea-gown bouillonne, with a ruching of
antimacassars ; but whatever she wore it was sure to he
staring and inappropriate. “It isn’t the clothes that
make the woman, hut the woman that makes the clothes,”
she said to me one afternoon, throwing off with her rich
aluminium laugh one of those profound philosophical
aphorisms that used to fall from her so plentifully at
about this time ; and we all clapped our hands and capered
after her.
It was at a garden-party at the Bishop’s that I first
met her, and she was in one of her absent moods. A
performance of Punch and Judy had been provided for
the entertainment of the guests, and she was seated
opposite this watching the progress of the story with a
rapt and earnest gaze, slowly helping herself the mean-
while from a large plate of muffins that she had uncon-
sciously appropriated and held on her lap. At length she
reached the last half-slice that made up the dozen, and
apparently realised the feat she had accomplished, for
she rose with an impatient sweep of her head, and made
for the house. I don’t think she can have been feeling
very well after that, but we were anxious to see what she
would be up to next, and we followed her. Reala was
in a curious mood that afternoon. She found the dear
good old Bishop fast asleep in an American rocking-chair
with his feet on the drawing-room mantelpiece ; and she
tilted him out of it under the grate. We quickly rescued
him, and sat him up on a sofa, and rubbed his legs for
him, but on being informed what had happened, he only
smiled feebly and shook his good old head, and said, ‘ ‘ It
was so like Reala ! ” Reala meantime was supremely
unconscious of the whole incident. She had taken the
red-hot poker from the fire, and in a dreamy abstracted
manner was drawing patterns with it on a blue satin
ottoman. On one of us pointing out to her the damage she
was doing, she suddenly looked up with a surprised smile,
and saying, “ Dear me, I thought I was stirring the fire ! ”
deposited the poker, still red-hot, in the gold-fish globe.
In less than two minutes the fish were boiled, and as she
swept out of the room, humming the refrain of a low
music-hall comic song, we all with one accord, echoed the
good old Bishop’s words, and said, “How like Reala!”
*****
But a great change had come over Reala latterly. We
had all noted it, and agreed that her moral nature had
undergone a pantomimic-transformation scene. The truth
was she had met Jerrymander. I don’t know where she
picked him up. “I just saw him, and went for him,”
Reala had said to me one day, with her own marvellous
incisiveness of expression, when I asked her about him.
She had found him at the Pauper’s Cosmopolitan Palace
of Superfluous Delights, a colossal undertaking to which
he had been appointed managing director. She was at that
time thinking of putting Bradshaw's Railway Guide into
blank verse, and I fancy she went to him to give her a
hint or two how to set about it. They took in the half-
penny papers at the palace, and so she would naturally
nave had these to faU back upon as' a library of
reference.
But it was a peculiar institution. It had been founded
by several millionnaires, for the purpose of supplying
indigent paupers with useless commodities. These were
arriving aU day, at the front entrance, in waggon-loads ;
and Jerrymander’s spacious eight-windowed room, to
which they were continuaUy being transferred, afforded
a spectacle of chaos and confusion that defies description.
The splendid Louis Thirteenth silk-brocaded furniture
of the apartment was literaUy covered with piles of jam
tarts, diamonds, pork chops, heads of celery, unstrung
pearls, rich Eastern silks, choice objets de vertu, patent
WHAT OUR ARTIST HAS TO PUT UP WITH.
Re. “By Jove, it’s the best Thing I ’ve ever Painted !—and I ’ll tell
YOU WHAT ; I’ve A GOOD MIND TO GIVE IT TO MARY MORISON FOR HER WED-
DING Present ! ”
His Wifey. “Oh, but, my Love, the Morisons have always been so
HOSPITABLE TO US ! YOU OUGHT TO GIVE HER A REAL PRESENT, YOU KNOW—
A Fan, or a Scent-bottle, or something of that sort!”
blacking-bottles, polishing-paste, jewellery of the most delicate description,
kitchen utensils, cases of British wine, and a thousand-and-one other miscel-
laneous articles.
Here Reala would sit watching Jerrymander as he rushed raving about the
room, tearing his hair, and maddened by the confusion and disorder which he
was powerless to control. They would be for hours together like this, then he
would suddenly start up and say, “ There is no means of getting a sandwich in
this confounded establishment; let us come to the railway buffet round the
corner, and have a regular champagne luncheon.” Reala asked no questions,
but followed him. And this went on daily. But things came to an end at last.
One afternoon, when the customary champagne lunch was over, and they had
returned again to his quarters, Jerrymander, looking at her almost savagely,
said, “ I tell you what, this can’t go on.”
Reala faced him steadily, and drank him in with her large melting saucer eyes.
“ Can’t you guess ? ” he hissed, slowly. Then he groaned and tore his hair,
and rolled about the floor, in a paroxysm of uncontrollable emotion, knocking
over chairs and tables as he proceeded, and scattering pearls, pork chops,
diamonds, patent medicines, mechanical toys, and new potatoes in every direc-
tion in his progress. Reala got on a chair and watched nim.
“I guess,” she said softly, to herself, “ I had better get out of this.” Then
she left him.
After this, she disappeared for several years ; but one evening, when we had
invited a few dozen friends to meet the Bishop at a quiet little dinner, she sud-
denly turned up with the railway omnibus, and took us all by surprise. We
rushed at her in a body, gave her three cheers, and carried her up in triumph
to the drawing-room. She bounded from us, and came down with a heavy
Sirouette upon the good old Bishop’s toe. He started with the pain, and, rubbing
is glasses, said,.“Why! bless me, if this isn’t Reala ! ” “ Yes, my Lord,” she
answered, chucking him, in her old familiar manner, playfully under the chin—
“ and, what is more, I’ve come to stay for six months.” She had—for she is with
us still—and how we shall ever get rid of her again—Goodness only knows !
PUNCH, OP THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
ill
RE ALA.
Another Study from Life, after “ Ideala."
She came among ns with a flourish of trumpets, and
we have never been able to get rid of her since. We
have leaped over her, careered around her, and yelled at
her. Yet there was nothing very remarkable about her.
I think something was wrong with her hair. But she had
those lustrous and translucent eyes, like great saucers
of whelks, which thrill yet confound the unobservant
spectator with a sense as of some remote and ill-disci-
plined longing. She had curious notions on the subject
of dress, and it was never easy to say exactly what she
had got on. Sometimes she would appear in a sort of
loose bed-curtain that fitted her like a sack ; sometimes
in a cretonne tea-gown bouillonne, with a ruching of
antimacassars ; but whatever she wore it was sure to he
staring and inappropriate. “It isn’t the clothes that
make the woman, hut the woman that makes the clothes,”
she said to me one afternoon, throwing off with her rich
aluminium laugh one of those profound philosophical
aphorisms that used to fall from her so plentifully at
about this time ; and we all clapped our hands and capered
after her.
It was at a garden-party at the Bishop’s that I first
met her, and she was in one of her absent moods. A
performance of Punch and Judy had been provided for
the entertainment of the guests, and she was seated
opposite this watching the progress of the story with a
rapt and earnest gaze, slowly helping herself the mean-
while from a large plate of muffins that she had uncon-
sciously appropriated and held on her lap. At length she
reached the last half-slice that made up the dozen, and
apparently realised the feat she had accomplished, for
she rose with an impatient sweep of her head, and made
for the house. I don’t think she can have been feeling
very well after that, but we were anxious to see what she
would be up to next, and we followed her. Reala was
in a curious mood that afternoon. She found the dear
good old Bishop fast asleep in an American rocking-chair
with his feet on the drawing-room mantelpiece ; and she
tilted him out of it under the grate. We quickly rescued
him, and sat him up on a sofa, and rubbed his legs for
him, but on being informed what had happened, he only
smiled feebly and shook his good old head, and said, ‘ ‘ It
was so like Reala ! ” Reala meantime was supremely
unconscious of the whole incident. She had taken the
red-hot poker from the fire, and in a dreamy abstracted
manner was drawing patterns with it on a blue satin
ottoman. On one of us pointing out to her the damage she
was doing, she suddenly looked up with a surprised smile,
and saying, “ Dear me, I thought I was stirring the fire ! ”
deposited the poker, still red-hot, in the gold-fish globe.
In less than two minutes the fish were boiled, and as she
swept out of the room, humming the refrain of a low
music-hall comic song, we all with one accord, echoed the
good old Bishop’s words, and said, “How like Reala!”
*****
But a great change had come over Reala latterly. We
had all noted it, and agreed that her moral nature had
undergone a pantomimic-transformation scene. The truth
was she had met Jerrymander. I don’t know where she
picked him up. “I just saw him, and went for him,”
Reala had said to me one day, with her own marvellous
incisiveness of expression, when I asked her about him.
She had found him at the Pauper’s Cosmopolitan Palace
of Superfluous Delights, a colossal undertaking to which
he had been appointed managing director. She was at that
time thinking of putting Bradshaw's Railway Guide into
blank verse, and I fancy she went to him to give her a
hint or two how to set about it. They took in the half-
penny papers at the palace, and so she would naturally
nave had these to faU back upon as' a library of
reference.
But it was a peculiar institution. It had been founded
by several millionnaires, for the purpose of supplying
indigent paupers with useless commodities. These were
arriving aU day, at the front entrance, in waggon-loads ;
and Jerrymander’s spacious eight-windowed room, to
which they were continuaUy being transferred, afforded
a spectacle of chaos and confusion that defies description.
The splendid Louis Thirteenth silk-brocaded furniture
of the apartment was literaUy covered with piles of jam
tarts, diamonds, pork chops, heads of celery, unstrung
pearls, rich Eastern silks, choice objets de vertu, patent
WHAT OUR ARTIST HAS TO PUT UP WITH.
Re. “By Jove, it’s the best Thing I ’ve ever Painted !—and I ’ll tell
YOU WHAT ; I’ve A GOOD MIND TO GIVE IT TO MARY MORISON FOR HER WED-
DING Present ! ”
His Wifey. “Oh, but, my Love, the Morisons have always been so
HOSPITABLE TO US ! YOU OUGHT TO GIVE HER A REAL PRESENT, YOU KNOW—
A Fan, or a Scent-bottle, or something of that sort!”
blacking-bottles, polishing-paste, jewellery of the most delicate description,
kitchen utensils, cases of British wine, and a thousand-and-one other miscel-
laneous articles.
Here Reala would sit watching Jerrymander as he rushed raving about the
room, tearing his hair, and maddened by the confusion and disorder which he
was powerless to control. They would be for hours together like this, then he
would suddenly start up and say, “ There is no means of getting a sandwich in
this confounded establishment; let us come to the railway buffet round the
corner, and have a regular champagne luncheon.” Reala asked no questions,
but followed him. And this went on daily. But things came to an end at last.
One afternoon, when the customary champagne lunch was over, and they had
returned again to his quarters, Jerrymander, looking at her almost savagely,
said, “ I tell you what, this can’t go on.”
Reala faced him steadily, and drank him in with her large melting saucer eyes.
“ Can’t you guess ? ” he hissed, slowly. Then he groaned and tore his hair,
and rolled about the floor, in a paroxysm of uncontrollable emotion, knocking
over chairs and tables as he proceeded, and scattering pearls, pork chops,
diamonds, patent medicines, mechanical toys, and new potatoes in every direc-
tion in his progress. Reala got on a chair and watched nim.
“I guess,” she said softly, to herself, “ I had better get out of this.” Then
she left him.
After this, she disappeared for several years ; but one evening, when we had
invited a few dozen friends to meet the Bishop at a quiet little dinner, she sud-
denly turned up with the railway omnibus, and took us all by surprise. We
rushed at her in a body, gave her three cheers, and carried her up in triumph
to the drawing-room. She bounded from us, and came down with a heavy
Sirouette upon the good old Bishop’s toe. He started with the pain, and, rubbing
is glasses, said,.“Why! bless me, if this isn’t Reala ! ” “ Yes, my Lord,” she
answered, chucking him, in her old familiar manner, playfully under the chin—
“ and, what is more, I’ve come to stay for six months.” She had—for she is with
us still—and how we shall ever get rid of her again—Goodness only knows !