Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 by Mr. Various (best ebook reader for laptop TXT) 📕

LETTERS TO ABSTRACTIONS.

No. VI.--TO VANITY.

DEAR VANITY,

I think I can see you smirking and posturing before the abstract mirror,

which is your constant companion. It pleases you, no doubt, to think that

anybody should pay you the compliment of making you the object and the

subject of a whole letter. Perhaps when you have read it to the end you

will alter your mood, since it cannot please you to listen to the truth

about yourself. None of those whom you infect here below ever did like it.

Sometimes, to be sure, it had to be endured with many grimaces, but it was

extraordinary to note how the clouds caused by the aggravated truth-teller

passed away as soon as his departure had enabled the object of these

reproaches to recover his or her false self again. What boots it, after

all, to tell the truth? For those whom you protect are clad in armour,

which is proof against the sharpest lance, and they can thus bid defiance

to all the clumsy attacks of the merely honest and downright--for a time;

but in the end their punishment comes, not always in the manner that their

friends predict, but none the less inevitable in one manner or another. For

they all fashion a ridiculous monster out of affectations, strivings and

falsehoods, and label it "Myself;" and in the end the monster takes breath,

and lives and crushes his despised maker, and immediately vanishes into

space.

Permit me to proceed in my usual way, and to offer you an example or two.

And I begin with HERMIONE MAYBLOOM. HERMIONE was one of a large family of

delightful daughters. Their father was the well-known Dr. MAYBLOOM, who was

Dean of Archester Cathedral. His massive and convincing volumes on _The

Fauna and Flora of the Mosaic Books in their Relation to Modern Botanical

Investigation_, must be within your recollection. It was followed, you

remember, by _The Dean's Duty_, which, being published at a time when there

was, so to speak, a boom in religious novels, was ordered by many readers

under the impression that it was likely to upset their mature religious

convictions by its assaults on orthodoxy. Their disappointment when two

stout tomes, dealing historically with the _status_ and duties of Deans,

were delivered to them, was the theme of cheerful comment amongst the

light-hearted members of the Dean's own family.

Was there ever in this world so delightful a family circle as that of the

Deanery? The daughters were all pretty, but that was their smallest merit.

They were all clever, and well-read, without a tinge of the bluestocking,

and most of them were musical to the tips of their slender fingers. How

merrily their laughter used to ring across the ancient close, and how

playfully and gently they used to rally the dear learned old Dean who had

watched over them and cared for them since Mrs. MAYBLOOM'S death, many

years before, with all the tender care of the most devoted mother. And of

this fair and smiling throng, "my only rosary," as the Dean used to call

them, HERMIONE was, I think, the prettiest, as she was certainly the most

accomplished. Every kind of gift had been showered upon her by Nature. When

she played her violin, accompanied by her elder sister on the piano, tears

trickled unbidden down the aquiline nose of the militant Bishop of

Archester, the chapter stood hushed to a man, and the surrounding curates

were only prevented by a salutary fear of ruining their chances of

preferment from laying themselves, their pittances, and their garnered

store of slippers at her pretty feet. Then in a fit of charming petulance,

she would break off in the middle of the piece, lay down her violin, and,

with a pretty imperiousness, command a younger sister to fetch her zither,

on which to complete the subjugation of her adorers. And then her

caricatures--summer-lightning flashes of pencilled wit, as I heard the

Reverend SIMEON COPE describe them in a moment of enthusiasm after she had

shown us her sketch of his rival, the Reverend STEPHEN HANKINSON.

But even in those days, while she still had about her all the fascinations

of peerless beauty and fresh and glowing youth, I mistrusted her. Alone of

all the sisters she seemed to me to be wanting in heart. I heard her

several times attempt to snub her father, and once I noted how she spent a

whole evening in moody silence, and refused to play a note, for no other

reason that I could see except that Captain ARBLAST, of the 30th Lancers,

the dashing first-born of the Bishop, who happened to be spending a few

days of his long leave in Archester, devoted himself with all the assiduity

of his military nature to twirling his heavy moustache in the immediate

neighbourhood of SOPHY MAYBLOOM, and not in that of HERMIONE. Indeed, I

have reason to know that, after the guests had departed, poor SOPHY had to

endure from her sister a dreadful scene, the harsh details of which have

not yet faded from her memory. And then I remembered, too, how it was a

matter of family chaff against HERMIONE that once, not very long after she

had entered upon her teens, she had sobbed convulsively through a whole

night, because she had discovered that her juvenile arms were thin and

mottled, and she imagined that she would never be able to wear a low dress,

or shine in Society.

Such, then, was the beautiful HERMIONE, who for some years rode rough-shod

over the hearts of all the males in Archester. Space fails me to enumerate

all her engagements. She broke them one after another without a thought,

and cast her admirers away as if they had been dresses of last year's

fashion. Most of them, it must be said, recovered quickly enough, but the

miserable COPE became a hopeless hypochondriac, and never smiled again. He

died the other day, and HERMIONE's sketch of HANKINSON was found, frayed

and soiled, in an ancient pocket-book which he always carried about with

him. HANKINSON'S fate seemed at first to be worse. He took to poetry,

morbid, passionate, yearning, unhealthy poetry, of the skimmed SWINBURNE

variety, and for a time was gloomy enough. Having, however, engaged in a

paper conflict with one of his critics, he forgot his sorrows, and though

he still declares an overwhelming desire for death and oblivion about six

times a year, in various magazines, he seemed, when I last saw him, fairly

comfortable and happy. But, of course, he has never secured a vicarage.

To return to HERMIONE. She at last married a certain Mr. PARDOE, a

barrister practising on the Archester Circuit, and established herself in

town. Shortly afterwards she became the rage. Her beauty, her wit, her

music, her dinners, her diamonds, were spoken of with enthusiasm. All the

elderly _roués_, whose leathery hearts had been offered up at hundreds of

shrines, became her temporary slaves. She coaxed them, cajoled them, and

fooled them, did this innocent daughter of a simple-minded Dean, to the top

of their various bents. She schemed successfully against countless rivals,

in order to maintain her pre-eminence in the admiration of her circle. Her

ambition knew no bounds. She changed her so-called friends every week; she

cultivated grand passions for actors, authors, musicians, and even for

professors. Sometimes she played to select audiences with all her old

ravishing skill, but this happened more and more rarely, until at last she

utterly declined, and even went so far as to flout H.S.H. the Duke of

KALBSKOPF, who had been specially invited to meet her.

Then suddenly came the crash. She left her husband, in company with CHARLIE

FITZHUBERT, the heir presumptive to the wealthy earldom of Battersea. On

the following day Mr. PARDOE blew out his brains, leaving ten thousand

pounds of debt and three young children. Six months afterwards the

venerable Dean died, and sentimental people spoke of a broken heart. Then

the Earl of BATTERSEA, in a fit of indignation, married, and was blessed

with a son, the present Earl. CHARLIE FITZHUBERT married HERMIONE, but they

are as poor as curates, and he hates her. I saw her two days ago in a

shabby hired carriage. She is getting prematurely old, and grey, and

wrinkled, and everybody avoids her, except her sister SOPHY, who still

visits her, and suffers her ill-humour.

Charming story, isn't it? I shall write again soon.

Yours, in the meantime,

DIOGENES ROBINSON.

NIGHT-MAILING.--"Night Mail between London and Paris" has been recently

announced in all the papers as now ready and willing to take night-mailers

from Victoria, L.C. & D., to the French Capital. It is to be a Third-class

Night Mail, though a Knight of the First Class can, of course, travel by it

should he be so disposed. Thirty shillings through fare for "a single;" but

as the tariff doesn't explicitly inform us whether the passenger will be

asked the question, "Married or single?" and so be charged accordingly, we

may presume that a margin is left for a little surprise. The train of Night

Mails--a kind of gay bachelor train, no females being of the party--is to

start at 8:15 P.M., and to be in Paris at 5:50 A.M.

DRAWING THE BADGER.

(_A Natural History Note_.)

The Badger (_Meles-Taxus_) is at once one of the most inoffensive and (in

one sense) offensive of our few remaining British Carnivora. He is

described by NAPIER of Merchiston, in his _Book of Nature and of Man_, as a

"quiet nocturnal beast, but if much 'badgered' becoming obstinate, and

fighting to the last, in which it is a type of a large class of Britons,

who like to be let alone, but when ill used can fight."

That great new authority on Natural History, Mr. G.A. HENTY (author of

_Those Other Animals_), should be able to tell us much about the Badger.

Therewith he would be able, in his own favourite fashion, to "point a

moral" (against the Demogorgon Democracy), and "adorn a tale" (of laboured

waggery). He might find the subject as suggestive of sardonic chaff as

American women and Republican institutions.

What says the popular WOOD? He describes the Badger as "slow and clumsy in

its actions," and as "rolling along so awkwardly that it may easily be

mistaken for a young pig in the dusk of the evening." Woe, however, to

whomsoever _does_ take the creature for "a young pig." "Being naturally as

harmless an animal as can be imagined, it is a terrible antagonist when

provoked to use the means of defence with which it is so well provided."

We tax the patience of poor _Meles-Taxus_,

Until he turns with tooth and claws and whacks us.

The natural home of _Taxus_--the Exchequer--

Harbours a creature that keeps up its pecker.

"For the purpose of so-called 'sport,' the Badger used to be captured and

put into a cage ready to be tormented; at the cruel will of every ruffian

who might chose to risk his dog against the sharp teeth of the captive

animal."

This particular sort of "sport" is a little out of date. But "drawing a

Badger" is not unknown even in these humanitarian days. Dogs will sometimes

voluntarily rush in to risk their hides and muzzles against the aforesaid

sharp teeth, &c. Look at those in the picture!

The two small, if aggressive, terriers seem unequally matched against the

"clumsy" but strong-jawed and terribly-toothed Badger. They have drawn him,

indeed, out of his hole, and one of them, at least, seems rather sorry for

it, if you may judge by the way in which he turns tail and makes for his

protector, the big Bull-Terrier. The ventripotent broken-haired tyke looks

more valorous--for the moment. Yap! yap! yap! _Meles-Taxus_ takes little

notice of him, however. His eyes are on that sturdy specimen of _Canis

familiaris_ there, whose bold eyes in turn are on _him_. Both, perhaps,

experience--

That stern joy which warriors feel

In foemen worthy of their steel."

"Drawn by those two tiny yelpers? Not a bit of it! But _you_, my complacent

canine Colossus--come on if you dare!" And he _does_ dare, evidently.

Whether he'll regret his daring remains to be seen.

The Memory of Milton.

MILTON forgotten? Nay, my BESANT, nay;

Not wholly, even in this petty day,

When learning snips, when criticism snaps,

And the great bulk of readers feed on scraps.

Still, still he finds his "audience fit, though few,"

The rest _forget_ not since they never knew.

The Off-Portsmouth Phrase-Book.

Have you caught a fish?

No, but I have bagged a cannon-ball.

Is the sea too rough for your boat?

No, the sea is not too rough, but the Torpedoes are decidedly embarrassing.

Is that a pretty shell that you are going