MERRY MILESTONES

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3193, 18 September 1917, Page 3

MERRY MILESTONES

THROUGH TIME WITH "PUNCH" (By Jessie Maekay.) IL~ 1851. For ten years has "Dteky" Doyle's immortal frontispiece been the "Open. Sesame" for a strolling player into kings' holies, i'or us, to n-Jiom "Punch" lias never been loss than "Punch,' , it is hard to realise the during )x>iiliomie of those iji.llant spirits of 1841, who took for their sign the street puppet beloved of tho million ami scorned by the patrician. Moreover, five yenrs before, England took from Mr. Punch's ladle tiio goutle gmel of eatire in Thackeray's "Snob lapeis," and throve on the medicine. "Punch" hub not "levelled up" in vain. It is 1851, the Great Exhibition y«ar, 'the fruition of food Princo Albert's great peace idea, timely, but, alas! temporary. Tho nations walked each other's industrial, courts lor sixty years after, and then caine Armageddon! But John Bull s insular mind opened much more than, a crack that year; for all that. "Punch" puts it in his own picturesque way: hero a- an international restaurant, where kilted Arnaut, dandy Zouave, lxaid«d Russian, and African with his knobkevrie, all partake of John's hospitality. A cciuplaisant waiter patters oft' to a bland Chinaman, "Very nice-birds' met soup, sir. yes, sir; rat pio just up. Tea air, and a nice little dog to folier." What did the Crystal Palace mean to provincials like tho Haycock family, uprooted from their native turniD field, and to the breezy Mr. Briggi, following the fashionable mirage of sport? A little wore, at last, perchance, than Mite Haycock's easily broken heart over a bogus I'rench count, and Hie bill A!r. Briggs paid for .debris after riding Ins horse over the diuing-rooin table—a lingering Mohawk tradition 'from I'ue oigntuonth century. From echoes of Christmas we gather 'fl'hat JSlr. Dunup visited his 'wide' oa Christmas Eve, and pledged the cup of friendship, a silver one given l:im by his godmother." Also, ".i'iiat Mr. BrieHess followed the . fuhion, of the dav by giving some private tbeairicals at'his chambers in the Temple. The entertainment consisted of a monopoiyiogue -in which Mr. Briefless sustained the parts of his own clerk and laundress, the audience being on the other side of the outer door, and listening to the performance through the keyhole. Among the visitors, we observed several of the learned gentleman's creditor;;, including some of the most respectable tradesmen of the htiHhbonrhood." 1851 was the El Dorado year of the West. What that meant to California is indicated by sundry clippings from "Punch's" foreign post bag:— "Already gold-fish are quoted at Hungerford market at a lower price than silver. lit Europe we go to great expenso watering the roads to lay tho dust,, but the goia dust of California is so valuable that no water-carts are employed, and when a man'comes home he has only to shake his coat to shake a. good sound sum into his pocket. In California the housemaids stipulate for the dust as | a perquisite." ■ ■ ' But Mr. Punch discourses after another fashion in his "sermons for tradesmen." How much tho England of 1851 needed a Pure Food Act is shown in the "Sermon to a Baker":— "Give us this day our dally bread. 0, Master Baker, a field of wheat is God'a field, but your loaves—loaves with alum, chalk, and plaster—are loaves of tho devil. And, 0, Master Baker, dealer in chalk, plaster, and so forth, what an admirable book-keeper is the. devil. ; Not the benefit, tho after-benefit, of a single loaf will you lose." • In a lighter but still minatory style does "Punch attack the truly mediaeval levies of seventy years ago. In "Dramas of Everyday Life," a perplexed Chancellor bemoans the novel embarrassment which threatenr, to'make his life a proy to the proletariat pounding on tho door of the Treasury:— Chancellor, loquitur:— Was over Minister so much porjileiwd? This horrid surplus overcomes me quite. Now had it chanced to be a defioit I should have felt moat perfectly at homo. He falls asleep. A. jumber of ghosts appear: — Ghost of Window Tax:— How canst thou sleep whilo I still stelk abroad? Ify troubled spirit irith. its weight of conscience Can never, never rest till thou has laid me, Seest thou that wretched horel where a '■' group Of miserable beTngs closely packed Are huddled in » foetid atrao3phcre? And when the sufferer seeks a ouror air, He seeks in vain, for I, the Window Tax, Shut up tho wholesome vents <hat should supply All Nature's sustenance, the breath of life. Ghost of Income Tax:— Luxurious easo oft nothing I deprive, !ut careful Labour's wants lr;nehcnrtail. 0. make of me tho thing I ought to be! Let mo assess tho rich, not rob the -poor. The Ghosts of the Taxes on Knowledge advance and speak their part—tho Paper Duty, the Advertisement Duty, the Newspaper Duty, etc. Then follow an insistent legion of spectres from the Customs:— , • ■Chancellor: — Be silent. Soap! I know what thou ■ would'st urge— ' That Health and Cleanliness go l'.and-in-hand. Tea, Tea, avant, I say! I know thy suit. Leaving the Chancellor at grips with his airy foes, wo nole.l'urther on a sober item that has a strangely familiar sound:—"Sir. Gladstone waited upon Lord Aberdeen, and it was generally understood that everybody declined having anything to do with everybody, and accordingly orders were sent to the washerwomen of tho late Ministers'to things as usual'to Downing Street." Here we come upon "A Museum of Extinct liaces." England is still glowing with victory over the Corn Laws, repealed not quite three years before, Naturally, the first exhibit in the catalogue is tho Protectionist:—"The animal is getting every day more scarce, and it is' only by walking into our show at once that you will witness the greatest wonder of the world—this freak of'human nature which is fast disappearing from British soil. ... The creature is no longer counted tho friend ot man, and is wild, snappy, and spiteful, but it can'be approached without danger, and may often be led by. the nose by those who understand its treatment. Un> chancy prophesying, this, in view of current controversy now! But "Punch" was not with tho prophots at all when 'the next exhibit is written up thus:— '. "This is tho greatest curiosity of the whole, from the fact of the sudden disappearance of the tribe, which until recently was very numerous. This is an Irish Repealer. As some tribes recede before the setting sun, this tribute has been rapidly disappearing before the rising <un of intelligence." There "Punch" spoke without tno book, as did his countrymen jn> block at that time. . . The yclaiins of the Pope and tho ; chameleon tints of Puseyism, now at its - height, fill "Punch" with the fire of the frainers of the Thirty-nine Articles. Hβ is' not afraid of the sanctities of gaiters and apron, for' here is a bland, tut bishop airily replying to the excited query "Which is Popery and which w Puseyism?" in the oracular words, "Whichever you like, my little dear. 1851 is a year of fate for France, lhe shadow of coming events is discerned < first in the sporting item:— "4 Two-year-Old, just entered for the- < Emperor's Cup-The French Republic. Shortly follows a cartoon-the Bruinmngein "Bonaparte Out for a Kido-gal- i lopfng over a prostrate body towards a precipice. The new Code Napoleon, it i will be seen, took no chances of lese '""Any person who looks out of window i shall bo shot. , ' "\ny person who refuses to look out ot ■ window shall -be suspected of treason. ' "\ny dog found barking in the presence or within the hearing of the l.mneror will be looked upon as an enemy of the State and shot" (and so on lor 1 twenty clauses more). Those unquiet ; times'inspire tho bi-li"gual muse ot I'oot- 1 man John Thomas, writing to his inanior- , ata in England:— ; 0 mary Ann! 0 Mary Ann! ', Well you may bless your stars You're living in a nuiet land Away from Cooflvtars. j You'd never sucer a-l homo and wish j

That you were hero instead, If you only knew what iielty pangs Is a Frenchman's daily bread. 0, when I think what Xoolisli talk This city do contain. I can't quite fathom why it's called Department of tho Sane. Some think tlio Socialists will rise And end his troubled days, And take him in a chaise and panAway to Pare la Shava. But as for me, I've seen enough, Nor longer wish to roam, And while they make so free abroad. I'll be a slave at home. Holy church did not always smooth the road to thft_hymeneal altar .seventy years ngo. The "Morning Post" had stated that the Vicar of Leigh (a wore vertebrate doctrinaire than him of Bray) refused (o marry anyone who could not repeat the Catechism, or who had not become a regular communicant. In vipw of the great.moral value of such a regulation. Mr. Punch proposed That the Bishop of London should adopt it at bt. George's Hanover Square. Kossuth, the Hungarian exile and patriot, was now in London., and t<" e Co o m_ mon people heard him gladly. But hqciety was cold, so cold tha.t "Punchbroke forth in protest:— Who will call Kosauth a Knave. Who traduce the Rood and brave? Who would be that Eussian slave But Gentility! Who for Haynau's martial law Fiction's bow will boldly draw, Oat with woman-scratching claw, Here may live to see. TTar eoho of present thunder, this. For Hayn.au was the infamous Austrian tyrant who flogged women in the market places of Lombardy. And, as tterinany is paying on the Somme, and at Hessines, for the Bins of Bismarck, so Austria is paying in Italia Irredenta, for the sins of Haynau. • The telegraph is still new and notable, and Mr. Punch supplies with a flourish an unpublished tolegram from Bowling Street to Vienna—delightfully characteristic, of course, of the sturdy Palnierston:— , "Kossuth no longer cumbers English ground. He was stealthily conveyed in a rum oask on board the Washington, an American steamer." Many are the shafts of wit directed at fliat emancipator of the West, Mrs. Amelia Bloomer, very specially in a Yankee version of "Godiva." In 1851 Englishmen read their own Laureate, since they parodied him with such facility Lastly, we. catch Mr. Chesterton redhand in thieving. Readers of "Tho Napoleon of Notting Hill" remember the searching of heart in those purists who. have grown scrupulous as to shedding the green blood of the cabbage," and lend «n ear to the contention. Why Should Salt Suffer?" (G. K. C. keeps his own Lent in 6eason, and not beyond). But here is the kernel of the matter. A Mr. Brotherton was even Chen the head of a pale little company of early vegetarians, and "Punch," noting "that carrots were the root'of all goodness," questioned the insensibility to pain of "green meat,"- and foreshadowed a race of Stone Eaters. (To be Continued.)