Punch (99.1890)

112

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI [September 6, 1890.

' IT'S AN ILL WIND» &c.

" Partridge-shooting will be postponed in several districts till the middle of September."

Daily Telegraph, August, 28.

Chorus of Partridges. " Lons may it rain !'

Now I Ve pitched the Manual away that got

me in this mess,
And in ingenious pantomime my wishes I

express.

They take me for an,idiot mute, an error I
deplore;

But still—i" 'm better understood than e'er
I was before !

MISLED BY A MANUAL !
(The Lament of a "Would-be Linouist.)

When on my Continental tour preparing to depart,
I bought a Conversation-Book, and got it up by heart;
A handy manual it seemed, convenient and neat,
And gave for each contingency a dialogue complete.

Upon the weather—wet or fine—I could at will discourse,
Or bargain for a bonnet, or a boot-jack, or a horse ;
Tell dentists, in three languages, which tooth it is that hurts ;
Or chide a laundress for the lack of starch upon my shirts.

I landed full of idioms, which I fondly hoped to air —

But crushing disappointment met my efforts everywhere.

The waiters I in fluent French addressed at each hotel

Would answer me in English, and—confound 'em!—spoke it well.

Those phrases I was furnished with, for Germany or France,

I realised, with bitterness, would never have a chance !

I swore that they should hear me yet, and proudly turned my back

On polyglots in swallowtails, and left the beaten track.....

They spoke the native language now; but—it was too absurd—

Of none of their own idioms they apparently had heard!

My most colloquial phrases fell, I found, extremely flat.

They may have come out wrong-side up, but none the worse for that.

I tried them with my Manual; it was but little good ;

For not one word of their replies I ever understood.

They never said the sentences that should have followed next:

I found it quite impossible to keep them to the text!

Besides, unblushing reference to a Conversation-Book

Imparts to social intercourse an artificial look.

So I let the beggars have their way. 'Twas everywhere the same;

I led the proper openings—they wouldn't play the game.

A PRODUCT OF THE SILLY SEASON.

Deab Mr. Punch,

London at the end of August is
not particularly inviting, save in one respect
—it is negatively pleasant to find that
Matinees are all but suspended. I should
say quite, were it not that the Shaftesbury
Theatre on the 27th opened its doors at a
quarter to three o'clock in the afternoon,
for the performance of The Violin Makers,
an adaptation of Le Luthier de Cremone,
and the production of a "new and original
Comedy sketch," in two Acts, called The
Deacon, by Henby Abthub Jones. The
first piece I had already seen at the Bushey
Theatre, with Professor Herkomeb, E.A.,
in the principal character. I had now an
opportunity of comparing the Artist-Actor
with the Manager-Actor, and must confess
that I liked the former better than the
latter. Mr. Wildabd as Filippo, was Mr.
Wiixabd, but Professor Hebkomeb, shaved
for the occasion, seemed to be anyone other
than Professor Hebkomeb. The mounting
of the piece at Bushey was also_ greatly to
be preferred to the mise-en-scene in Shaftes-
bury Avenue, and as the accomplished
Artist-Actor had also supplied some exceed-
ingly touching music to his version of
Fbanqois Coppee's Poetical Play, which
was wanting two hundred yards from Pio-
cadilly Circus, I was altogether better
pleased with the entertainment served up
with sauce d la Serkomer. I may be wrong
in preferring the amateur to the profes-
sional, or I may be right—after all, it is
merely a matter of opinion.

Mr. Jones is entirely justified in call-
ing The Deacon a "sketch," as it can
scarcely claim greater histrionic importance. I think I may take
it for granted that a sausage-maker, from the nature of his
employment, is usually presumed to be a man not absolutely
without guile, and, therefore, Abraham Boothroyd, " Wholesale
bacon-factor, Mayor of Chipping Padbury on the Wold, and Senior
Deacon of Ebenezer Chapel," may perhaps be counted one of those
exceptions that are said to prove the rule. According to Mr. Jones,
this eccentrio individual comes up to town to attend an indignation
meeting held with a view to protesting against the conversion of
Exeter Hall into a temple of the drama, and after dining with "a
Juliet of fifteen years ago," and a new and quaint sort of Barrister,
accompanies them to the play, and is so greatly pleased with the
performances presented to him, that, before the curtain falls, he
announces his intention of repeating his visit to the theatre every
evening until further notice! This may be true to human nature,
because there is authority for believing that the said human nature is
occasionally a "rum un"; but, without the precedent I have
quoted, it is difficult to accept the sudden conversion of Mr. Booth-
royd as quite convincing. I could scarcely have believed that
Mr. Jones, who has done such excellent work in Judah, and The
Middleman, could have been the author of The Deacon, had not his
name appeared prominently on the playbill, and had not a rumour
reached me that this " comedy sketch" had adorned for years, in
MS. form, a corner of some book-shelves. I think, if the rumour is
to be believed, that it is almost a pity that there was any interference
with that corner—I fancy The Deacon might have rested in peaoe on
the book-shelves indefinitely, without causing serious injury to
anyone. But this is a fancy, and only a fancy.

I may add that Mr. Wltjcabd made the most of the materials
provided for him; but whether that most was much or little is, and
must remain, a matter of conjecture. On the whole, if I had
understood aright what the sad sea waves were evidently attempting
to say to me, I think I would not have attended on the 27th of
August a London Matinee. But this is a thought, and nothing more.
Believe me, dear Mr. Punch, yours, more in sorrow than in anger,

A Cbitic, Ltjbed to Town pbom the Cot/ntby.