Punch (100.1891)

March 21, 1891.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 133

MY LADY.

She is not fair to outward view

As many maidens be ;
(And into such a rage she flew

On learning: this from me ;)
And yet she 's lovely, nay divine,
Judged by her own peculiar line.

She's deeply read. She knows as
much

As average sixth-form boys ;
But not the greatest sage could
touch

The high, aggressive joys [prey.

Not only learning's pure serene
Her soaring mind can charm ;

The tradesman, shrinking from a
Regards her with alarm, [scene,

And many a 'bus conductor owns

The pow'r of her metallic tones.

Contentiously content, she takes
Her strident way through life,
And goodness only knows what
makes

Her choose to be my wife.
Courage, poor heart! Thy yearn-

That imp her wing, like bird of ings stifle.

When in my dates I go astray. She's not a girl with whom to trifle.

KENSINGTON CORRESPONDENCE.

i.

Instead of the Sub-Kensington Gardens Railway scheme as
proposed, why not a Sob-Serpentine Line ? Start it from the South

Kensington Sta-
"0 tion, District-

THE TRIUMPH OP BLACK AND WHITE.

" After all, the best of Keene's life-work ii to be found in the innu-
merable cute which he contributed to Punch during a period of nearly forty
years; and still more in the originals of these the masterly pen-and-ink
drawings which are now for the first time shown in a collected form to the
Public."

So says Mr. Claude Phillips, in his "Prefatory Note," to the
" Catalogue of a Collection of Drawings of the late Chablts Keene,"
now on view at the Rooms of the Fine Arts Society, 1-18, New Bond
Street.

If the British Public possess that "taste for Art" and that
" sense of humour" which some claim for and others deny to it, it
(the B. P.) will throng the comfortable and well-lighted Gallery in
New Bond Street, where hang some hundreds of specimens of the
later work of the most unaffected humorist, and most masterly
" Black-and- White" artist of his time. Walk up, Ladies and
Gentlemen, and see—such miracles of delineation, such witcheries of
effect, as were never before put on paper by simple pen-and-ink!

It is difficult to realise sometimes that it is pen and ink, and that
only—all the delightful display of fresh English landscape and
unsophisticated British humanity, teeming with effects of distance,
hints of atmosphere, and suggestions of colour. Many a much-
belauded brush is but a fumbling and ineffective tool, compared
with the ink-charged crowquill handled by Charles Keene. Look
,~i ~L;' /'^O-ilY cum - Metropoli- at " Grandiloquence ! " (No. 220 ) There's composition! There's
]V;>4;^j it vpT- tan system, run effect!_ Stretch of sea, schooner, Pat's petty craft, grandiloquent

•well-under-
ground in the
middle of Exhi-
bition B,oad,
whence an easy
ascent to the Im-
perial Exhibition,
when passengers
would come up
to "carp the vital
airs," then right
away again,

branching off left and right, thus bringing the mild Southerners
into rapid, easy communication, at all reasonable hours, and
at reasonable prices, with the rugged denizens of the Northern
districts, East and West. If Kensington Gardens are to be touched
at all—and, not being sacred groves, there is no reason why they
should not be, faute de mieux—a transverse tunnelling from Ken-
sington High Street to Queen's Road would do the trick. We will
be happy to render any assistance in our power, and are,—Yours
truly, Will Honeycomb, Mole, Ferret & Co.,

{Burrow-Knights.)

n.

0 Sir,—Pleese don't let us ave'no nasty railwaies and tunels in
Kinsinton Gardins, were we now are so skludid, and the child era
can play about, an no danger from nothink sep dogs, wich is mosley
musseled, or led with a string, an we ain't trubbled about them, an
can ave a word to say to a frend, or a cuzzin, you unnerstan, unner
the treeses, so nice an quite, wich it wold not be wen disterbd by
ingins, an smoke, skreeges, an steem-wizzels. 0, Mr. P., don't let
uoi do it. Yours obeegentlee, Sara Jane,

(Unner Nursrymade.)

m.

Sir,—The Railway underneath Kensington Gardens won't be
noticed if only taken down deep enough below the surface. No
blow-holes, of course. No disfigurement. Take it under the centre
path, where there are no trees, then turn to the left outside the gate
and burrow away to S. Kensington Station. I can then get across
the park in three minutes for a penny; and now I have to walk,
for which I haven't the time, or take a cab, for which I haven't the
money. Yours, A Practical Pauper.

IT,

Sir,—I take this opportunity of pointing out that if anything at
all is to be done with Kensington Gardens, why not make a real
good Rotten Row there f That would be a blessing and a con-
venience. We're all so sick and tired of that squirrel-in-a-cage
ride, round and round Hyde Park, and that half-and-half affair in
St James's Park. No, Sir; now's the time, and now's the hour.
There's plenty of space for all equestrian wants, without interfering
with the sylvan delights of nurserymaids, children, lovers of nature,
and all sorts of lovers too. For my part, if this is not put forward as
an alternative scheme, I shall vote for tunnelling under the Gardens
out of simple cussedness. If the reply, authoritatively given, be
that the two schemes can go and must go together, then I will vote
for both, only let's have the equestrian arrangement first.

Yours, Joltin Trott,

Mount,'Street, W, Captain 1st Lights and Liver Brigade.

it with one station Pat himself, a nautical Colossus astride on his own cock-boat, with
stable sea-legs firmly dispread, the swirl of the sea, the swish of
the waves, the very whiff of the wind so vividly sng'gesttd!—and all
in some few square inches of " Black-and-Wbite ! "

Look, again, at the breadth of treatment, the power of humorous
characterisation, the strong charm of technique, the colour, the action,
the marvellous ease and accuracy of street perspective in No. 16
(" The Penny Toy.'"). Action? Why, you can see the old lady
jump, let alone the frog! Fix your eye on the frightened dame's
foot, and you'll swear it jerks in time to the leap of the "horrid
reptile."

Or at that vivid bit of London "hoarding," and London low
life, and London street-distance in "'Andicapped!" (No. 25 ) Good
as is the "gaol-bird," is not the wonderfully real "hoarding"
almost better ?

Who now can draw—or, for that matter, paint—such a shopkeeper,
such a shop, such a child customer as those in " All Alive!
(No. 41), where the Little Girl a-tip-toe with a wedge of cheap
" Cheddar " at the counter, comes down upon him of the apron with
the crusher, "Oh, mother's sent back this piece o' cheese, 'cause
father says if he wants any bait when he's goin' a fishin', he can dig
'em up in our garden ! "

Are you a fisherman, reader ? Then will you feel your angling
as well as your artistic heart warmed by No. 75 (" The Old Adam")
and No. 6 (" Wet and Dry"), the former especially ! What water,
what Scotch boys, what a "prencipled" (but piscatorial) " Mee-
nister"! Don't you feel your elbow twitch? Don't you want to
snatch the rod from Sandy McDotjgai's hand, and land that " fush "
yourself, Sawbath or no Sawbath ?

But, bless us, one wants to describe, and praise, and purchase
them all! A Keene drawing, almost any Keene drawing, is
"a thing of beauty and a joy for ever " to everyone who has an eye
for admirable art and adorable drollery. And good as is the fun
of these drawings, the graphic force, and breadth, and delicacy, and
freshness, and buoyancy, and breeziness, and masterly ease, and
miraculous open-airiness, and general delightfulness of them, are
yet more marked and marvellous. Time would fail to tell a tithe
of their merits. An essay might be penned on any one of them—
might, but fate forbid it should be, unless a sort of artistic Charles
Lamb could take the task in hand. Better far go again to New Bond
Street and pass another happy hour or two with the ruddy rustics
and 'cute cockneys, the Scotch elders and Anglican curates, the
Btodgy "Old Gents" and broad-backed, bunchy middle-class
matrons, the paunchy port-swigging-buffers, and hungry but alert
street-boys, the stertorous cabbies, and chatty' bus-drivers, the
"festive" diners-out and wary waiters, the Yolunteers and
vauriens, the Artists and 'Arries, the policemen and sportsmen,
amidst the incomparable street scenes, and the equally inimitable
lanes, coppices, turnip-fields and stubbles, green glades and snow-
bound, country roads of wonderful, ever-delightful, and—for his com-
rades and the Public alike—all-too-soon-departed Charles Keene!

Nothing really worthy of his astonishing life-work, of even that
part of it exhibited here, could be written within brief compass,
even by the most appreciative, admiring, and art-loving of his
sorrowing friends or colleagues. Let the British Public go to New
Bond Street, and see for itself, in the very hand-work of this great
artist, what he made manifest during so many years in the pages of
Punch, namely, the supreme triumph of " Black-and-White" in
the achievements of its greatest master.