Chapter I: Front Matter

PUNCH,

OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOL. 100.

March 21, 1891.

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
That imp her wing, like bird of prey,
When in my dates I go astray.

Not only learning's pure serene
Her soaring mind can charm;
The tradesman, shrinking from a scene,
Regards her with alarm,
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 yearnings stifle.
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 Sub-Serpentine Line? Start it from the South Kensington Station, District-cum-Metropolitan system, run it with one station well-underground in the middle of Exhibition Road, whence an easy ascent to the Imperial 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 Kensington 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_.)

II.

O sir,--Pleese don't let us ave no nasty railwaies and tunels in Kinsinton Gardins, were we now are so skludid, and the childern 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. O, _Mr. P._, don't let um do it.

Yours obeegentlee, SARA JANE, (_Unner Nursrymade_.)

III.

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.

IV.

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?_ That would he a blessing and a convenience. 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_.

* * * * *

THE TRIUMPH OF BLACK AND WHITE.

"After all, the best of KEENE's life-work is to be found in the innumerable cuts 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 CHARLES KEENE," now on view at the Rooms of the Fine Arts Society, 148, 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 at "_Grandiloquence_!" (No. 220) There's composition! There's effect! Stretch of sea, schooner, PAT's petty craft, grandiloquent 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 suggested!--and all in some few square inches of "Black-and-White!"

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) "Meenister"! Don't _you_ feel your elbow twitch? Don't _you_ want to snatch the rod from SANDY McDOUGAL'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--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 stodgy "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 Volunteers 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 snowbound country roads of wonderful, ever-delightful, and--for his comrades 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.

* * * * *

AN OLD FABLE REVERSED.]

The Frogs, who lived a free and easy life
(As in the ancient fable)
Though not quite clear from internecine strife,
Fancied they were well able
To do _without_ a King. Batrachian wisdom
Disdains the rule of fogeydom and quizdom,
And Frogs as soon would take to bibs and corals,
As ask a "King who might inspect their morals"
From Jupiter. Then 'twas _Juventus Mundi_;
The true King-maker now is--Mrs. GRUNDY,
And _she_ insisted that our modern Frogs
Should have a King--the woodenest of King Logs.
At first this terrified our Frogs exceedingly,
And, sometimes passionately, sometimes pleadingly,
They grumbled and protested;
But finding soon how placidly Log rested
Prone in the pool with mighty little motion,
Of danger they abandoned the wild notion,
Finding it easy for a Frog to jog
On with a kind King Log.
But in the fulness of the time, there came
A would-be monarch--Legion his fit name;
A Plebs-appointed Autocrat, Stork-throated,
Goggle-eyed, Paul-Pry-coated;
A poking, peering, pompous, petty creature,
A Bumble-King, with beak for its chief feature.
This new King Stork,
With a fierce, fussy appetite for work;
Not satisfied with fixing like a vice
Authority on Town and Country Mice,
Tried to extend his sway to pools and bogs,
And rule the Frogs!
But modern Frogdom, which had champions able,
Had read old-Æsop's fable,
And of King Stork's appearance far from amorous,
Croaked forth a chorus clamorous
Of resonant rebellion. These, upreared
On angry legs, waved arms that nothing feared;
King Log defending. Great CRAUGASIDES,
Among batrachian heroes first with ease,
With ventriloquial vehemence defied
The long-beaked base usurper. At his side
His fond companion, PHYSIGNATHUS swelled
Cheeks humorously defiant;
The ruddy giant
CRAMBOPHAGUS, as tall as is a Tree,
Flouted King Stork with gestures fierce and free,
Sleek CALAMINTHIUS, aper deft of eld,
Against the foe a pungent dart impelled;
HYDROCHARIS too,
(Most Terryble to view),
Fared to the front, whilst smaller, yet as brave
Tiny batrachian brethren, dusk of hue,
PRASSOPHAGUS, PRASSOEUS, staunch and true,
Webbed hands did wildly wave
With the frog-host against the beaky bird--
"_He_ be our King?" they loudly cried.
"Absurd!

Not Mercury, nor Jupiter _we_ beg
For a devouring despot, lank of leg,
Of prying eye, and frog-transfixing beak;
Though singly we seem weak,
United we are strong to smite or scoff.
Off, would-be tyrant, off!!!"

* * * * *

CHURCH AND STAGE.--Let no rabid Churchmen, of any school of thought, ever again take exception to the irreligious character of playhouse entertainments. Let them read the advertisement of the Lyceum Theatre in _The Times_ for March 13:--"During Holy Week this theatre will be closed, re-opening on Saturday, March 28, with _The Bells_, which will also be played on Easter Monday night." Could any arrangement be more thoroughly in harmony with general ecclesiastical practice? Any liturgical student knows that the bells are played once on Holy Saturday, and that they should be played on Easter Monday is a matter of course.

* * * * *

TRACKS FOR THE TIMES.

[A Magistrate has just decided that the Police have a right
to interfere with the growing practice of using the public
roads of the Metropolis at night-time as running-grounds for
athletes.]

I come from haunts of smoke and grime,
I start in some blind alley,
And race each night against Old Time
Enthusiastically!

I dodge past frightened City gents,
And sometimes send them flying,
Which makes them cherish sentiments
Not wholly edifying.

I wind about, and in and out,
Along the crowded pavement,
While here and there the mockers flout
My costume and behavement.

I slip, I slide, I flash, I flee
Amid the teeming traffic,
And drivers often use to me
Idioms extremely graphic.

I murmur when a Lawyer's view
Absurdly tries to hinder
My turning public roads into
A private path of cinder.

Yet still to "spurt," agile, alert,
Shall be my one endeavour;
For Cits may stare, and Jehus swear,
But I run on for ever!

* * * * *

MRS. SELDOM-FESTIVE "AT HOME" (AND THE BEST PLACE TOO!), MARCH 9, 1891.

(_10 to 1 Nobody turns up._)]

* * * * *

A DIARY OF DOVER.

_March, 1891_.--Fearful storm in the Channel, when the _Victoria_ is all but lost. Proposals in all the newspapers for the immediate commencement of an adequate harbour.

_April, 1892_.--Hurricane in the Channel, when seventeen ships are lost, and the Club Train Boat (without passengers) is carried, high and dry, as far as Amiens, by the force of the weather. Renewed suggestions for the immediate building of an adequate harbour.

_May, 1893_.--Cyclone in the Channel, in which the British Fleet disappears. The newspapers once more urge the immediate commencement of the proposed adequate harbour.

_June, 1894_.--Disaster in the Channel. Every single vessel swamped, owing to the terrific weather. Again the Press invites commencement of an adequate harbour.

_July, 1895_.--Members of both Houses of Parliament, invited to take part in a State function at Calais, having been put to considerable inconvenience, immediate orders are given for the prompt commencement of the much-needed adequate harbour at Dover.

_August, 19--_.--Proposed adequate harbour having employed the hands, night and day, of thousands of workmen, at enormous expense (owing to urgent pressure), is at length opened to the public, amidst universal rejoicing.

* * * * *

MR. PUNCH'S POCKET IBSEN.

(_CONDENSED AND REVISED VERSION BY MR. P.'S OWN HARMLESS IBSENITE._)

NO. I.--ROSMERSHÖLM.