THE SOCIETY SWEAR
[“Among upper-class women the use of bad language is awful; not only do elderly dowagers say ‘D—n!’ but girls of seventeen make use of that deplorable expression.”—A correspondent to the Daily Express.]
The age is unmistakably profane;
Morality, like trade, is on the wane:
Of late with most profound regret I’ve heard
How that a certain naughty little word,
Quite impolite, and quite unparliament’ry too,
Once vulgar, now’s affected by the gentry too.
From common oaths my tender spirit shrinks,
I foozle when I hear them on the links;
The cabby’s curse my moral system shocks,
I shudder when I hear it from the box;
But that which on the raw more sorely touches is
The swear that’s used by dowagers and duchesses.
When in the case of nobly-bred adults
Age and experience yield these sad results,
What wonder if their daughters (pretty lambs!)
Indulge at times in copying their dams?
(A “play ’po’ words” which serves to render printable
That which, writ otherwise, would be but hintable.)
Is this profanity a passing phase
Like Pigs-in-clover, or the Ping-pong craze?
Will it revert to “Goodness me!” or “Blow!”?
I cannot tell you, for I do not know;
This I do know: a nation grave disaster risks
That lets its women talk in ——s and * * *
Party (who, of course, doesn’t think himself good-looking). “Really, Clara, I can’t think how you can make a pet of such an ugly brute as an Isle of Skye terrier!”
“READY! AYE READY!”
“Ready! Aye Ready!”—Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns. “That lady was evidently intended by nature for a Chinese, Sir Charles! I wonder who she can be?”
Sir Charles. “She happens to be my sister, Lady Plantagenet de la Zouche. May I ask why you think nature intended her for a Chinese?”
Mrs. P. de T. (equal, as usual, to the emergency). “She struck me as having such exquisitely small feet!”
Dreadful State of Affairs at Market Harborough.—Lord Charles Highflyer (despondently). “There’s too much frost to hunt, and not enough ice to skate; all the horses are coughing; the gov’nor writes to say that he’s going to endow a new church; Bingo wires that all seats are booked for a fortnight at any theatre worth going to; Fanny Canterly is engaged to that ass Blinkers; I’ve a bill overdue on Tuesday; Hummingbirdie Belleville threatens an action for breach of promise; Aunt Genista hasn’t weighed in as usual; and some idiot has sent me a card with a robin on it, wishing me ‘All the Compliments of the Season!’”
A FRIEND IN NEED
Bobby Short. “I say—I can’t find my partner, Miss Wilson! Have you seen her?”
Tommy Long. “Don’t know her by sight, even! But, if you like, I’ll lift you up, and you can hunt for yourself!”
Mrs. Gusher. “Oh, good-bye, Sir John. So sorry not to have found your most charming wife at home.”
Sir John. “Thanks—thanks! By the way, let me assure you I’ve only got one,—and——”
[Thinks that the remainder of the sentence is “better understood than expressed.”
Lady of the House (to Bore, who generally calls just as she is about to go shopping). “Won’t you let me ring for a little refreshment for you?”
Bore. “I think I’ll take a little something just before I go.”
Lady of the House. “Oh, then, do have it now!”
THE BRITISH PASSION FOR INEQUALITY.
Sturdy Briton. “It’s all very well to turn up your nose at your own beggarly Counts and Barons, Mossoo. But you can’t find fault with our nobility! Take a man like our Dook o’ Bayswater, now! Why, he could buy up your foreign Dukes and Princes by the dozen! and as for you and me, he’d look upon us as so much dirt beneath his feet! Now, that’s something like a nobleman, that is! That’s a kind o’ nobleman that I, as an Englishman, feel as I’ve got some right to be proud of!”
THE SERPENT’S TOOTH
“Didn’t I send ’im to Heton an’ Hoxford? Didn’t I send ’im into the Harmy, along o’ some o’ the biggest nobs in all Hengland, with an allowance fit for a young Hearl? And what’s the hupshot of it all? Why, he gives dinners to Dooks and Royal ’Ighnesses, an’ don’t even harsk ’is pore old father to meet ’em. ’Ighnesses, indeed! I could buy up the ’ole blessed lot! And, what’s more, I wouldn’t mind tellin’ ’em so to their faces, for two pins!—Ah! just as soon as look at em—and ’e knows it!”