Punch (99.1890)

September 6, 1890.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 119

PICTURESQUE LONDON; OR, SKY-SIQNS OF THE TIMES.

(An Extract from the " Trivia" of the Future.)

" But when the swinging signs your ears offend,
With creaking noise."

Gay's Trivia; or, The Art of Walking
the Streets of London.

Offend out ears t Pedestrian Muse of Gat,
Had you foreseen the London of to-day,
How had you shuddered with ashamed sur-
prise

At ''swinging signs" which now offend our

eyes J

Long have Advertisement's ohtrueive arts
Pervaded our huge maze of malls and marts ;

But now the " swinging signs " of ogre Trade,
Even the smoke-veiled vault of heaven invade,
And sprawling legends of the tasteless orew
Soar to the clouds and spread across the blue.
See—if you can—where Paul's colossal dome
Rises o'er realms that dwarf Imperial Rome.
Cooped, cramped, half hid, the glorious

And plaster, had they power, kind heaven's

clear vault
"With vulgar vaunts of Sausages or Salt.
Picture the proud and spacious city given
Wholly to Shopdom's hands! 'Twixt earth

and heaven
Forests of tall and spindly poles arise,
work of Ween With swinging signs that almost hide the skies.

Lent grandeur once to huckstering haunts of Huge letterings hang disfiguring all the blue
men, To vaunt the grace of Snobkins's high-heel'd

Though _ on its splendour Shopdom's rule Shoe.

impinged, i A pair of gloves soar to a monstrous height,

/

Long have its letterings large, its pictures vile,
Possessed the mammoth city mile on mile ;
Made horrors of its hoardings, and its walls
Disfigured from the Abbey to St. Paul's,
And far beyond where'er a vacant space
Allowed Boeotian Commerce to displace
Scant Urban Beauty from its last frail hold,
On a Metropolis given up to Gold.
But till of late our sky at least was clear
(Such sky as coal-reek leaves the civic year)
If not of smoke at least of flaming lies,
And florid vaunts of quacks who advertise.

Wot these sky-horrors, huge and noisy-
hinged,

Shamed the still air about it, or obscured
Its every view. Is it to be endured,
0 much-enduring Briton f There be those
Who'd scrawl advertisements of Hogs or
Hose

Across the sun-disc as it flames at noon,
Or daub the praise of Pickles o'er the moon.
Unmoved by civic pride, unchecked by taste,
They'd smear the general sky with poster's
paste

And at Dan Phcebus seem to " tat e a sight."
Colossal bottles blot the air, to tell
That Muckson's Temperance drink is a great
sell.

Here's a huge hat, as black as sombre Styx,
Flanked by the winsome legend, "Ten and

Six." [Socks,
Other Sky-signs praise Carpets, Ginghams,
Mugg's Music-hall, and " Essence of the Ox."
Bah! Gat's trim Muse might sicken of her

rhymes

Had she to read these Sky-signs of the Times!

IN THE KNOW.

(By Mr. Punch's Own Prophet.)

I was aware that Mr. J. was a semolina-brained impostor, but I
should never have conceived that even he, the jelly-faced chief of the
ehowder-heads, could have attained to such a pitch of folly as to
inform me that " the Prix Monty on is not a medal, and cannot be
worn at Court." These are his words. Did I ever say it was a
medal ? I remarked that the Queen had given me permission to
wear it at Court. That is true. But I never said that I would or
could so wear it. As for Her Most Gracious Majesty's permission, it
was conveyed to me in a document beginning, "Viciobia, by the

grace of," &c, and containing the signature of Lord Haisbtjby, the
Lord Chancellor-No, by the way, that is another Royal commu-
nication. The Permission begins, "To our right trusty and well-
beloved." What beautif ul, confiding, affectionate words are these !
Who can wonder that a Queen who habitually makes use of them
should reign in the hearts of her subjects ?

Since I returned from France I have been on a further and more
extensive Continental tour, and have received more marks of dis-
tinction from various Crowned Heads. Did you hear the strange
story of what took place at the meeting of the German Emperob with
the Czab of Russia ? It was the hour of the mid-day meal. The
Empebor, at the head of his Wyborg Regiment, had performed
prodigies of valour. Mounted on his fiery Tchinovick (a Circassian