Parodies of the works of English & American authors, vol. VI

by Unknown

BENJAMIN DISRAELI,

Lord Beaconsfield.

It must be confessed that the burlesques of the novels of Disraeli are not, as a rule, very amusing, but there is one brilliant exception, namely, that written by Bret Harte.

It is entitled “Lothaw, or the Adventures of a Young Gentleman in Search of a Religion,” by Mr. Benjamins. This was first printed in England by the late Mr. J. C. Hotten in 1871. It consists of nine short chapters.

Lothaw.

Chapter I.

“I remember him a little boy,” said the Duchess. “His mother was a dear friend of mine: you know, she was one of my bridesmaids.”

“And you have never seen him since, mamma?” asked the oldest married daughter, who did not look a day older than her mother.

“Never; he was an orphan shortly after. I have often reproached myself, but it is so difficult to see boys.”

This simple yet first-class conversation existed in the morning-room of Plusham, where the mistress of the palatial mansion sat involved in the sacred privacy of a circle of her married daughters.

One dexterously applied golden knitting-needles to the fabrication of a purse of floss silk of the rarest texture, which none who knew the almost fabulous wealth of the Duke would believe was ever destined to hold in its silken meshes a less sum than £1,000,000 sterling; another adorned a slipper exclusively with seed pearls; a third emblazoned a page with rare pigments and the finest quality of gold-leaf.

Beautiful forms leaned over frames glowing with embroidery, and beautiful frames leaned over forms inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

Others, more remote, occasionally burst into melody as they tried the passages of a new and exclusive air given to them in MS. by some titled and devoted friend, for the private use of the aristocracy alone, and absolutely prohibited for publication.

The Duchess, herself the superlative of beauty, wealth, and position, was married to the highest noble in the Three Kingdoms.

Those who talked about such matters said that their progeny were exactly like their parents—a peculiarity of the aristocratic and wealthy.

They all looked like brothers and sisters, except their parents, who, such was their purity of blood, the perfection of their manners, and the opulence of their condition, might have been taken for their own children’s elder son and daughter.

The daughters, with one exception, were all married to the highest nobles in the land.

That exception was the Lady Coriander, who—there being no vacancy above a marquis and a rental of £1,000,000—waited.

Gathered around the refined and sacred circle of their breakfast-table, with their glittering coronets, which, in filial respect to their father’s Tory instinct and their mother’s Ritualistic tastes, they always wore on their regal brows, the effect was dazzling as it was refined.

It was this peculiarity and their strong family resemblance which led their brother-in-law, the good-humoured St. Addlegourd, to say that, “’Pon my soul, you know, the whole precious mob looked like a ghastly pack of court cards—don’t you know?”

St. Addlegourd was a radical.

Having a rent-roll of £15,000,000, and belonging to one of the oldest families in Britain, he could afford to be.

“Mamma, I’ve just dropped a pearl,” said the Lady Coriander, bending over the Persian hearth-rug.

“From your lips, sweet friend,” said Lothaw, who came of age and entered the room at the same moment.

“No, from my work. It was a very valuable pearl, mamma; papa gave Isaacs and Sons £50,000 for the two.”

“Ah, indeed,” said the Duchess, languidly rising; “let us go to luncheon.”

“But your Grace,” interposed Lothaw, who was still quite young, and had dropped on all-fours on the carpet in search of the missing gem, “consider the value——”

“Dear friend,” interposed the Duchess, with infinite tact, gently lifting him by the tails of his dress-coat, “I am waiting for your arm.”

Chapter II.

Lothaw was immensely rich.

The possessor of seventeen castles, fifteen villas, nine shooting-boxes, and seven town houses, he had other estates of which he had not even heard.

Everybody at Plusham played croquet, and none badly.

Next to their purity of blood and great wealth, the family were famous for this accomplishment.

Yet Lothaw soon tired of the game, and after seriously damaging his aristocratically large foot in an attempt to “tight croquet” the Lady Aniseed’s ball, he limped away to join the Duchess.

“I’m going to the hennery,” she said.

“Let me go with you. I dearly love fowls——

*  *  *  *  *

broiled,” he added, thoughtfully.

“The Duke gave Lady Montairy some large Cochins the other day,” continued the Duchess, changing the subject with delicate tact.

“Lady Montairy,

Quite contrairy,

How do your cochins grow?”

sang Lothaw gaily.

The Duchess looked shocked. After a prolonged silence, Lothaw abruptly and gravely said—

“If you please, ma’am, when I come into my property I should like to build some improved dwellings for the poor, and marry Lady Coriander.”

“You amaze me, dear friend, and yet both your aspirations are noble and eminently proper,” said the Duchess; “Coriander is but a child—and yet,” she added, looking graciously upon her companion, “for the matter of that, so are you.”

Chapter III.

Mr. Putney Padwick’s was Lothaw’s first grand dinner-party.

Yet, by carefully watching the others, he managed to acquit himself creditably, and avoided drinking out of the finger-bowl by first secretly testing its contents with a spoon.

The conversation was peculiar, and singularly interesting.

“Then you think that monogamy is simply a question of the thermometer?” said Mrs. Putney Padwick to her companion.

“I certainly think that polygamy should be limited by isothermal lines,” replied Lothaw.

“I should say it was a matter of latitude,” observed a loud, talkative man opposite.

He was an Oxford Professor, with a taste for satire, and had made himself very obnoxious to the company, during dinner, by speaking disparagingly of a former well-known Chancellor of the Exchequer—a great statesman, and brilliant novelist,—whom he feared and hated.

Suddenly there was a sensation in the room; among the females it absolutely amounted to a nervous thrill.

His Eminence, the Cardinal, was announced.

He entered with great suavity of manner, and after shaking hands with everybody, asking after their relatives, and chucking the more delicate females under the chin with a high-bred grace peculiar to his profession, he sat down, saying—

“And how do we all find ourselves this evening, my dears?” in several different languages, which he spoke fluently.

Lothaw’s heart was touched.

His deeply religious convictions were impressed.

He instantly went up to this gifted being, confessed, and received absolution.

“To-morrow,” he said to himself, “I will partake of the Communion, and endow the Church with my vast estates. For the present I’ll let the improved cottages go.”

*  *  *  *  *

Novels by Eminent Hands, a series of burlesques upon the works of Bulwer Lytton, Harry Lorrequer, G. P. R. James, and B. Disraeli, which first appeared in Punch were written by W. M. Thackeray. That upon Disraeli came out in 1847, it commenced thus:—

Codlingsby.

By B. De Shrewsbury.

The noise in the old town was terrific; Great Tom was booming sullenly over the uproar; the bell of Saint Mary’s was clanging with alarm; St. Giles’s tocsin chimed furiously; howls, curses, flights of brickbats, stones shivering windows, groans of wounded men, cries of frightened females, cheers of either contending party as it charged the enemy from Carfax to Trumpington Street, proclaimed that the battle was at its height.

In Berlin they would have said it was a revolution, and the cuirassiers would have been charging, sabre in hand, amidst that infuriate mob. In France they would have brought down artillery, and played on it with twenty-four-pounders. In Cambridge nobody heeded the disturbance—it was a Town and Gown row.

The row arose at a boat-race. The Town boat (manned by eight stout bargees, with the redoubted Rullock for stroke) had bumped the Brazennose light oar, usually at the head of the river. High words arose regarding the dispute. After returning from Granchester, when the boats pulled back to Christchurch meadows, the disturbance between the Townsmen and the University youths—their invariable opponents—grew louder and more violent, until it broke out in open battle. Sparring and skirmishing took place along the pleasant fields that lead from the University gate down to the broad and shining waters of the Cam, and under the walls of Baliol and Sidney Sussex. The Duke of Bellamont (then a dashing young sizar at Exeter) had a couple of rounds with Billy Butt, the bow oar of the Bargee boat. Vavasour of Brazennose was engaged with a powerful butcher, a well-known champion of the Town party, when, the great University bells ringing to dinner, truce was called between the combatants, and they retired to their several colleges for refection.

During the boat-race, a gentleman pulling in a canoe, and smoking a Nargilly, had attracted no ordinary attention. He rowed about a hundred yards ahead of the boats in the race, so that he could have a good view of that curious pastime. If the eight-oars neared him, with a few rapid strokes of his flashing paddles his boat shot a furlong ahead; then he would wait, surveying the race, and sending up volumes of odour from his cool Nargilly.

“Who is he?” asked the crowds who panted along the shore, encouraging, according to Cambridge wont, the efforts of the oarsmen in the race. Town and Gown, alike asked who it was, who, with an ease so provoking, in a barque so singular, with a form seemingly so slight, but a skill so prodigious, beat their best men. No answer could be given to the query, save that a gentleman in a dark travelling-chariot, preceded by six fourgons and a courier, had arrived the day before at the Hoop Inn, opposite Brazennose, and that the stranger of the canoe seemed to be the individual in question.

No wonder the boat, that all admired so, could compete with any that ever was wrought by Cambridge artificer or Putney workmen. That boat—slim, shining, and shooting through the water like a pike after a small fish—was a caique from Tophana; it had distanced the Sultan’s oarsmen, and the best crews of the Capitan Pasha in the Bosphorus; it was the workmanship of Togrul-Beg, Caikjee Bashee of his Highness. The Bashee had refused fifty thousand tomauns from Count Boutenieff, the Russian Ambassador, for that little marvel. When his head was taken off, the Father of Believers presented the boat to Rafael Mendoza.

*  *  *  *  *

——:o:——

Nihilism in Russia.

(In imitation of Disraeli’s Sybil.)

For there opposed each other but two elements in this society at once strange and simple. Around the throne of the Great Peter, and in the marble city which is his monument, the gay circles of the Aristocracy frittered away a frivolous existence amid the blaze of diamonds, the strains of music, and all those Circean enchantments that dull the energy and bid care repose. Here was wealth to make life easy, and here luxury to give it splendour; here was beauty to stir the pulse of youth, and here wit to waken even the most thoughtless to a sense that for them too there were pleasures of the intellect. So lived the lords of those vast plains, whose immensity made aptly significant the proud title of “All the Russias.” And the tiller of those plains, what of him? Surrounded by the sad and sombre Steppe, that breathed its melancholy over him from the cradle, broken by toil and of untutored mind, his life was suffering without interval of enjoyment, degradation without hope of change. Too brutish for the aspirations of Religion, he was well-nigh bereft of that supreme solace wherewith the ingenuity of the sophistical rhetorician may seek to sooth even the aged pauper of St. Pancras. And yet Revolution was as impossible for him as content. For Revolution is the explosion of an Idea, that overturns Society in its struggle to the light. To the Scythian serf was altogether wanting the initial force of the fulminating Idea. Steeped in ignorance, he was also isolated. Through his dreary continent had never permeated the Secret Societies of other lands, and for him there was no magic potency in the mysterious name of “Mary-Anne.” So he thought not of overturning Society, but of effacing it. For the first time in man’s history was seen that portentous birth, an Apostle of Nothing. In a word, he was a Nihilist!

Vainly was it attempted to divert his purposes by the lure of foreign conquest and a fresh Crusade; in vain was dangled before him by the astute Ministers of Muscovy the long-sought guerdon of his efforts—the sacred city of the Sultans. One was on the watch who came of a race not lightly to be beguiled, a race that was ancient thirty centuries before these Scythian hordes had claimed to be a nation. The Great Minister of the West, strong with the might and majesty of England, saw that it was reserved for him to crown that Royal Mistress, on whose brow he had recently set a new and Imperial coronet, with the fresh garland of a bloodless triumph. In the lofty language of the sacred records of his people, ‘Let there be Peace!’ he said; and that which he achieved became known to the world in his own historic phrase of “Peace with Honour!”

BROUGHSHANE.

This imitation won the first prize in a parody competition, in The World, September 17, 1879.

——:o:——

De Tankard.

By Benjamin Dizzyreally, Esq., M.P.

Chapter XL.

“What majority had they last night, my lord?” asked a fair young man in the Carlton, from a stately personage who was sitting at a table near him, occupied with a bottle of Lafitte.

“Fifty-two,” was the reply.

“How did Peel look when he heard it?”

“Oh, he smiled in his usual quiet triumphant way,” said Lord Mannerley.

“Ah! while Peel is sultan there will be no want of ruined villages for our political owls to make their nests in,” remarked the youth.

“Yes, these cursed free-traders flourish on the ruins of the agriculturalists,” said Lord Mannerly savagely.

“And they will be soon howling like jackals in the ruins of the constitution,” added his young companion, with a sigh.

“This Lafitte is capital,” said the ruined landowner.

At this moment a young man approached the table. His bearing was proud, his eyes dark and luminous, his figure stately as a palm-tree. His aquiline nose betrayed his superb organisation. You saw at once that he was of the purest Caucasian race. Yes! his lineage sprung from the families who peopled the noble mountain which received the Divine Ark, and cherished the snowy dove that spread its white wings over the waters, that had swallowed up the inhabitants of a world! As he passed up the noble room, how insignificant in his presence appeared the children of the semi-civilized barbarians, spawned in a northern swamp!

“May I offer you a glass of claret, De Tankard?” asked Lord Mannerley.

“Thank you, I only drink sherbet, just now,” replied the youth.

“You can get some Persian sherbet at a penny a glass,” said a witty Milesian lord.

De Tankard smiled compassionately on the aristocratic buffoon. “’Tis doubtless worthy of your English civilization,” was his calm scornful reply.

*  *  *  *  *

Chapter XLIV.

De Tankard stood at the window of a small country inn, and watched the storm raging in the forest. Lithely bent the straight poplar with a low wail beneath the breath of the north wind. The oak roared, the beech howled, and the wild leaves, caught in the eddies of the winds, were wreathed by them into chaplets, as though the Spirit of the Storm wished to crown with them the noble gazer on his work.

“’Tis a great spectacle,” remarked De Tankard, to a man who stood beside him, of an air—oh, how grand!

Benonia (for it was indeed he!) sneered. “Have you ever seen a Mediterranean white squall, or a whirlwind in the Desert?” he asked.

“Alas, no!” was the reply. “I must soon visit the glorious East, the parent of religion, civilization, science, and art,” and the dark eyes of De Tankard glowed with Eastern fire.

“Ah, you are young,” exclaimed Benonia, with enthusiasm. “Glorious youth! By youth have all great deeds been accomplished. Ransack the history of ages. The fact is stamped on every line. The Trojan, Paris, was but a youth when he ran away with the fair Grecian, and got his native town destroyed for it ten years after! Cæsar was in the freshness of life when he destroyed the Republic and founded a despotism. Nero developed his villany early, and Heliogabalus was a confirmed glutton before his minority was over! Nay, to come to our own country, what was the age of the Boy Jones when he passed the sacred precincts of a Royal palace, and stood where none but Royal feet had ever trod before?—Barely sixteen! Look at Lord William Lennox—how young he was when he wrote his great works!”

Benonia paused. De Tankard dropped a warm and sparkling tear. “I will start to the East to-morrow!” he exclaimed.

“You had better have a couple of millions,” said Benonia. “I have got about half-a-dozen in my pocket to carry me over the night.”

*  *  *  *  *

Chapter XLVIII.

Silence reigns beneath the brilliant azure of an Oriental sky;—silence, broken only by the silver tinkling of the camel’s bell. A noble creature is the camel. Compared with that Caucasian of beasts, the shapeless quadruped of the Northern, is but an ass!

Ever and anon, through the moist perfumed twilight, steals a delicious breeze. Delicious, but melancholy. For in that breeze floats a prophet’s sigh. The cypress moans as it passes; and the palm-tree bows its proud head in honour to it, as it flies along! On the holy barrenness of the saintly brow of Lebanon, the moon’s rays fall reverently, and Lebanon looks holier under their light.

In the court in front of the counting-house of an Emir, sits De Tankard. From among the round pebbles of the pavement, springs a fresh fountain. On the branches of the trees gleam ripe oranges.

The young man looked sad and solemn. He had that morning seen an angel, as usual! By his side was a lovely female, and near him the lively young Emir Baboo smoked his nargilly.

“Do you often see angels, De Tankard?” he asked, laughing.

“Peace!” was the reply.

“I have a combination!” cried out the Emir, jumping up with a violence which smashed the nargilly. “Let us get the Druses and Maronites to unite, and we’ll go down to Djouni, and seize the English frigate there! What would Palmerston say to that?”

De Tankard laughed. “The East is the cradle of glory,” said he after a pause, with an enthusiastic look.

The Emir stared.

“Ah”! said he, “I had a brave chase yesterday, and ran off with the baggage of a caravan.”

The lady frowned. The Emir fell at her feet, and began to cry.

Next day, De Tankard started off with him on an excursion.

When employed in these ennobling diversions, he learned that his rich maiden aunt had arrived at Jerusalem.

*  *  *  *  *

From The Puppet-Showman’s Album. London.

---

Another parody on Tancred, written by “Cuthbert Bede” (the Rev. Edward Bradley), appeared in The Shilling Book of Beauty, it was entitled “Tancredi; or, the New Party.” By the Right Hon. B. Bendizzy, M.P.

In 1887, Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein & Co., London, published a shilling volume of prose burlesque novels, written by H. F. Lester. The first, entitled Ben D’ymion, was a parody of Lord Beaconsfield’s novel Endymion. The other authors imitated in this collection were William Black, George Elliot, Henry James, Thomas Hardy, and J. H. Shorthouse.

Ben D’ymion had originally appeared in Punch in 1880.

——:o:——

The Age of Lawn-Tennis.

(After Lord Beaconsfield’s “Sybil”.)

Chapter I.

“Advantage, we win,” shouted Sphairistikos.

“Never,” replied Retiarius, as he made his favourite stroke, which came speeding, whirling, hissing, the one-thousandth part of an inch over the top of the net, and fell twisting, twirling, shooting, in the extreme left-hand corner of the great twelve-yard court, only to be returned, however, by the flexibility of a wrist which had been famous in Harrow’s playing-fields in days of yore.

“Forty-thirty.”

“Deuce.”

“’Vantage against you!” “Game and set!” Such were the Babel-like cries which greeted our ears, as we approached Tong Castle’s level lawn, one fine autumnal afternoon.

And what was the scene that confronted us?

Ambitious adversaries, on all sides, were hitting to and fro, in alternated strokes, a gyratory ball, and loudly vociferating amœbean numerals as either side became involved in some reticular difficulty.

Here was to be seen, in variegated garb, such a galaxy of beauty as Shropshire seldom sees, assembled to render homage to the great Lawn-Tennis Champion, and to witness the feats of some of England’s doughtiest players.

Here were to be seen the eagle-eyed volleyer, the deft half-volleyer, the swift server, and the nimble net-player; while here, too, the quick cut, the treacherous twister, and the brilliant back-hander were exhibited on all sides in their purest perfection.

“Advantage, we win,” repeated Sphairistikos.

“Deuce,” said Retiarius, as his great stroke passed and shot lightning-like past his adversary’s racket.

And so they played and played on, till the balls began to glance in the golden light of a glorious sunset, and then to grow dimmer and dimmer in the deepening shadows of a rich twilight.

Chapter II.

But to what was all this tending, and to what condition had the Lawn-Tennis players brought the Great Western State which they inhabited?

A monarch on the throne, whose age alone prevented her from casting in her lot with an aristocracy of wealth and learning, who had already commenced to narrow life within the limits of the twelve-yard court!!

A gentler sex, forsaking the sacred duties of domesticity that they might lend grace and elegance to the all-prevailing pastime!!

A degraded peasantry, living but to delineate on level lawns the bounds past which England’s greatest and noblest born must not propel the gyrating sphere!!

A rustic generation, rising but to collect for their oppressors the distant-driven ball, and developing into manhood merely to tend and trim the smooth-shaven Lawn-Tennis ground, which had now become a necessary adjunct alike to glebe and manor!!

It was an age of Lawn-Tennis!!

“My prophetical instincts tell me,” said Retiarius, as he and his friends were waiting for the nets to be arranged,—“My prophetical instincts tell me that the great coming stroke will be the volley.”

“Why, so?” said Sphairistikos.

“It is as yet,” replied he, “only half-developed. A nation young in Lawn-Tennis has much to learn; much to forget. My impression is that the volley, properly understood, will convulse the future.”

“I believe in service for my part,” remarked Sphairistikos,—“Secure your first stroke. Demoralize first, win afterwards; I would borrow from the great nation which gave us Tennis, and say, ‘Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coûte.’”

“But I am looking to a distant future,” continued Retiarius. “We shall see great changes. There will be hereditary volleyers. The theories of Darwin must prevail. Volleyers will play with volleyers. The pastimes of a country lead to its courtships. It has always been so. A generation of volleyers will rise up who will volley from the service-line as accurately as their grandfathers have done from the nets.”

“What news from Afghanistan?” asked a fair player, who was putting on her shoes.

“Fifteen, the Government loses,” replied a Tennis-steeped youth; “they have served two faults,—one into Afghanistan; one into Zululand.”

“Bother Afghanistan,” said another damsel in short petticoats, “I want the scoring question settled.”

But the attendants now announced that the courts were ready.

“Fifteen, I win.”

“Fifteen, all.”

And so on, and on, and on, the adversaries played, with constantly-varying fortunes, till another day was nearly done, and they were once more compelled to surrender before the flickering blaze of a vanishing sun.

From Tennis Cuts and Quips. Edited by Julian Marshall. London. Field and Tuer.

——:o:——

It was known that Lord Beaconsfield had drawn many of the characters in Endymion from prominent members of society, and much curiosity was felt as to the identification of these individuals. Notes and Queries published a conjectural list of them, but it must be borne in mind that Lord Beaconsfield was sufficiently cautious not to paint his portraits too distinctly like his originals, in fact some of his puppets represent two or three individuals merged into one

Endymion	Benjamin Disraeli
Zenobia	Lady Jersey
Berengaria (Lady Montfort)	Hon. Mrs. Norton
Agrippina	Queen Hortense
Adriana Neufchatel	Lady Burdett Coutts
The Neufchatels	The Rothschilds
Col. Albert (Prince Florestan)	Napoleon III
Lord Roehampton	Lord Palmerston
Myra Roehampton	Empress Eugenie
Enoch Craggs	Co-operation.
Lord Montfort	The late Lord Hertford
Lord Rawchester	Earl Granville
Earl of Beaumaris	The late Earl of Derby
Mr. Bertie Tremaine	Lord Houghton
Count of Ferroll	Prince Bismarck
Nigel Penruddock	Cardinal Manning
Mr. Ferrars (the grandfather)	Rt. Hon. George Rose
George Waldershare	Mr. George Smythe (afterwards Lord Strangford)
Job Thornberry	Richard Cobden
Mr. Vigo	Mr. Poole
Mr. Jorrocks	Mr. Milner Gibson
Hortensius	Sir W. Vernon Harcourt
Sidney Wilton	Sidney Herbert
Mr. Sainte Barbe	W. M. Thackeray
Mr. Gushy	Charles Dickens
Topsy Turvy	Vanity Fair
Scaramouch	Punch

——:o:——

A curious story of a plagiarism is related of Disraeli in the Life of Mr. Abraham Hayward, Q.C., who was formerly on the staff of the Morning Chronicle.

Early in the “fifties,” Mr. Disraeli made sundry depreciatory remarks on the speeches of military members of Parliament, classing them contemptuously as effusions of “the military mind.” The men of the Morning Chronicle replied to Mr. Disraeli’s attack on the intellect of soldiers by printing a translation of a magnificent eulogium on the Maréchal de St. Cyr by M. Thiers, setting forth the qualities necessary to a military commander. Mr. Disraeli was evidently struck by the brilliancy of the counter hit, for a few years later, when the Duke of Wellington died, he interpolated the translation, errors and all, in the oration which as leader of the House of Commons it was his duty to deliver on the death of that great general. The old writers of the Chronicle secured the insertion of the speech and the translated passage in the Globe. Mr. Disraeli’s friends made every attempt to explain away the plagiarism till an article in Fraser’s Magazine, written by Mr. Hayward, showed clearly that the passage was not even taken from the French original, but directly from the translation which appeared in the Morning Chronicle. Mr. Hayward was very proud of this article of his, in which he also handled Mr. Disraeli’s “Revolutionary Epick” very roughly.

---

The Woman in Tights.

By Wilkie Collins.

The narrative commenced by Walter Heartbright, teacher of jig-dancing, of Fulwood’s-rents, Holborn. This is a story of what a woman’s impatience can procure, and what a man’s irresolution can achieve. If the law were not such a blundering battering-ram the events which fill these pages might have merited its attention. I live with my mother, who keeps a general shop. Events alter my life. I go to Cumberland to attend on a gentleman. The story continued by Mr. Bearly, Gummeridge House, Cumberland: I am all self, etchings, and nerves. Why? I know not. Perhaps Laura knows, or Sir Pursefull. I am asked to make a statement. Aided by a galvanic battery I make it. Laura has gone on the stage. I am worried. Why should I be? I give it up. Thank you. Don’t bang. Send Heartbright here. I would see him dance. Statement by Hester Teecloth, cook at Count Bosco’s: I remember a lady being brought to our house last June. She came in a temper and a brougham. She was laid on the sofa. She looked wildlike, and kept shouting “There they go, millions of ’em.” When the doctor saw her he winked at the count and whispered, “Delicious trimmings,” but the poor thing was plainly dressed. That’s all I know. Heartbright finishes the story: We are to be married in a week’s time. Laura’s faculties have returned. Mr. Bearly and his nerves have found Nirvana. Sir Pursefull was drowned while showing off a lifebelt of his own invention. Bosco is in an asylum. His time is occupied in plucking green mice from his beard, and chirruping to pink canaries which he fancies he sees on the wall. My mother, always of a retiring disposition, has given up business. I am heir of Gummeridge House. Thus it ends.

William Evison Rose.

The Weekly Dispatch. February 25, 1883.

In this parody competition the compositions were limited to 300 words, a regulation which sadly hampered the competitors.

In Bret Harte’s Sensation Novels Condensed, there is a parody of Wilkie Collins, called “No Title.”

The Luck of Tory Camp.

By Bread Tart.

There was commotion in Tory Camp. Outside a rude cabin waited an excited crowd, headed by Solly, a stalwart digger, with a Raphael face and profusion of dark beard, whose duel with Harden Bill, the Rad-Dog Woodcutter, was still talked of with bated breath. The name of a woman was on every lip, a name familiar in the camp—Poll Icy. The less said of her the better; no better than she should be perhaps; half foreign, half Ingin; but yet the only woman in camp, and now in woman’s direst extremity. Suddenly an excited Celestial joined the group. “Lemme investigate, John,” said he; “me Pal-Mal, me washee-washee dirty linen, me go see her.” “Scoot, you dern skunk!” thundered Solly; “none but a down-east johnny-cake ’ud trust you with any woman nowadays.” At that moment a wail, feeble, yet sufficient to quell the laughter that greeted Solly’s sally, announced a birth in Tory Camp.… Little Randy, or the Luck—for by these names the frolicsome miners had christened the infant (in beer)—grew and throve, and soon became a power in the camp. His childish jokes with Sairey Gamp, his nurse, were the delight of the brawny getters of gold from quartz (s), and even Solly smiled when the Luck “tackled the old ’un,” which he did when Harden Bill visited the camp now and then. “Rastled with Bill’s little finger, the derned little cuss,” roared Solly; “rastled with it, dern my skin.”

The winter of 1885 will long be remembered in California. One night Tea-Pot Gulch and Rad-Dog Fork leaped suddenly over their banks, and descended in ruin upon Tory Camp. When morning dawned the Luck lay lifeless in Solly’s arms, and Harden Bill smiled grimly as he watched the strangely assorted pair floating quietly towards the Sea of Oblivion.

J. C. Rose.

The Weekly Dispatch. September 13, 1885.

There is a parody on Bret Harte’s prose in The Shotover Papers (Oxford, 1874) entitled His Finger, but it is not sufficiently characteristic to merit reprinting.

Mr. Midshipman Breezy.

A Naval Officer.

By Captain Marryat, R.N.

CHAPTER I.

My father was a north-country surgeon. He had retired, a widower from Her Majesty’s navy many years before, and had a small practice in his native village. When I was seven years old he employed me to carry medicines to his patients. Being of a lively disposition, I sometimes amused myself, during my daily rounds, by mixing the contents of the different phials. Although I had no reason to doubt that the general result of this practice was beneficial, yet, as the death of a consumptive curate followed the addition of a strong mercurial lotion to his expectorant, my father concluded to withdraw me from the profession and send me to school.

Grubbins, the schoolmaster, was a tyrant, and it was not long before my impetuous and self-willed nature rebelled against his authority. I soon began to form plans of revenge. In this I was assisted by Tom Snaffle—a school-fellow. One day Tom suggested:

“Suppose we blow him up. I’ve got two pounds of gun-powder!”

“No, that’s too noisy,” I replied.

Tom was silent for a minute, and again spoke.

“You remember how you flattened out the curate, Pills! Couldn’t you give Grubbins something—something to make him leathery sick—eh?”

A flash of inspiration crossed my mind. I went to the shop of the village apothecary. He knew me; I had often purchased vitriol, which I poured into Grubbins’s inkstand to corrode his pens and burn up his coat-tail, on which he was in the habit of wiping them. I boldly asked for an ounce of chloroform. The young apothecary winked and handed me the bottle.

It was Grubbins’s custom to throw his handkerchief over his head, recline in his chair, and take a short nap during recess. Watching my opportunity, as he dozed, I managed to slip his handkerchief from his face and substitute my own, moistened with chloroform. In a few minutes he was insensible. Tom and I then quickly shaved his head, beard, and eyebrows, blackened his face with a mixture of vitriol and burnt cork, and fled. There was a row and scandal the next day. My father always excused me by asserting that Grubbins had got drunk—but somehow found it convenient to procure me an appointment in Her Majesty’s navy at an early day.

CHAPTER II.

An official letter, with the Admiralty seal, informed me that I was expected to join H.M. ship Belcher, Captain Boltrope, at Portsmouth, without delay. In a few days I presented myself to a tall, stern-visaged man, who was slowly pacing the leeward side of the quarter-deck. As I touched my hat he eyed me sternly:

“So ho! Another young suckling. The service is going to the devil. Nothing but babes in the cockpit and grannies in the board. Boatswain’s mate, pass the word for Mr. Cheek!”

Mr. Cheek, the steward, appeared and touched his hat.

“Introduce Mr. Breezy to the young gentlemen. Stop! Where’s Mr. Swizzle?”

“At the masthead, sir.”

“Where’s Mr. Lankey?”

“At the masthead, sir.”

“Mr. Briggs?”

“Masthead, too, sir.”

“And the rest of the young gentlemen?” roared the enraged officer.

“All masthead, sir.”

“Ah!” said Captain Boltrope, as he smiled grimly, “under the circumstances, Mr. Breezy, you had better go to the masthead too.”

CHAPTER III.

At the masthead I made the acquaintance of two youngsters of about my own age, one of whom informed me that he had been there 332 days out of the year.

“In rough weather, when the old cock is out of sorts, you know, we never come down,” added a young gentleman of nine years, with a dirk nearly as long as himself, who had been introduced to me as Mr. Briggs. “By the way, Pills,” he continued, “how did you come to omit giving the captain a naval salute!”

“Why, I touched my hat,” I said, innocently.

“Yes, but that isn’t enough, you know. That will do very well at other times. He expects the naval salute when you first come on board—greeny!”

I began to feel alarmed, and begged him to explain.

“Why, you see, after touching your hat, you should have touched him lightly with your forefinger in his waistcoat, so, and asked, ‘How’s his nibs?’—you see?”

“How’s his nibs?” I repeated.

“Exactly. He would have drawn back a little, and then you should have repeated the salute, remarking ‘How’s his royal nibs?’ asking cautiously after his wife and family, and requesting to be introduced to the gunner’s daughter.”

“The gunner’s daughter?”

“The same; you know she takes care of us young gentlemen; now don’t forget, Pillsy!”

When we were called down to the deck I thought it a good chance to profit by this instruction. I approached Captain Boltrope and repeated the salute without conscientiously omitting a single detail. He remained for a moment livid and speechless. At length he gasped out:

“Boatswain’s mate!”

“If you please, sir,” I asked, tremulously, “I should like to be introduced to the gunner’s daughter!”

“O, very good, sir!” screamed Captain Boltrope, rubbing his hands and absolutely capering about the deck with rage. “O d—n you! Of course you shall! O ho! the gunner’s daughter! O, h—ll! this is too much! Boatswain’s mate!” Before I well knew where I was, I was seized, borne to an eightpounder, tied upon it and flogged!

*  *  *  *  *

From Sensation Novels Condensed, by Bret Harte. London. Ward, Lock and Co.

The Pale-Faced Warriors.

By Captain Mayne Reid.

CHAPTER I.

“I feel kinder dull,” said Tiger Tom to me one day. “Let us go and kill some ‘Injins.’” We soon reached the forest, but not a Redskin was in sight. Tom examined the trail closely, and with an old backwoodsman’s unerring instinct declared we should see no “Injins” that day. As I was complimenting him upon his wonderful sagacity, we were suddenly surprised by a band of the dreaded Chickatoos. With one thought for those at home Tom took to his heels and vanished. The savages bound me to a tree, and told me not to run away. I promised not to.

CHAPTER II.

An exciting discussion upon cookery, of which I was the central object, followed. One advocated roasting, another baking me! I did not favour either. Between them I got into a stew. At night, whilst the rascals slept, I perceived an Indian maiden by my side. She unbound me, and gave me the full dress of a chief, and some pigment to stain my skin with. To disguise myself was the work of a minute and three-quarters, when the savages awoke, and missing me, set up a terrific yell, and started in pursuit. To avoid observation, I accompanied them.

CHAPTER III.

The chase was particularly close. I was anxiously awaiting nightfall to escape them, when, horror! something wet touched my cheek. It was raining. The rain fell in torrents, and as it washed my colour off and I gradually became white, the Chickatoos saw through my disguise. Seizing his rifle, the chief told me to stand apart. He fired, but missed me. I feigned to be hit, and springing into the air, turned sixteen distinct somersaults. Before they recovered from their surprise, I disappeared in the forest.

F. P. Delafond.

The Weekly Dispatch Competition. February 25, 1883.

In this competition, the compositions were limited to 300 words, which prevented the authors from giving more than a very rough caricature of their originals. But in 1867, Mr. Walter Parke contributed a parody of Captain Mayne Reid to Judy free from any such harrassing restriction, and succeeded in producing a most blood-curdling romance. It was entitled “The Skull Hunters: A Terrific Tale of the Prairie!!” By Captain Rayne Meade; and consisted of twenty-one chapters of thrilling adventures, and daring exploits with illustrations to match. This was published in book form in 1868, another and revised edition was brought out in 1887, during the excitement about Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. This had a tremendous sale, it was called “sportmans; or, The Warriors of the Wild West.” Judy Office, London.

---

ANTICIPATIONS OF THE DERBY.

By a French Visitor.

I. L’Homme qui Rit.

“In England, everything is great, even that which is not good, even oligarchy itself!” Thought profound and sublime of the Master; apothegm initiatory and bitter of the Man who Laughs—who laughs, but who can also bite.

For Genius, as for Ambition—for Prometheus who thinks, as for Prometheus who wields the great battalions—seems it not that there is reserved, by the derisive irony of Fate, an expiatory rock, an island exile?

For Victor Hugo, this rock, expiatory but glorious, calls itself Guernsey.

For Napoleon, it had two names; it was Elba, and it was Ste. Hélène.

Patience, Master! Watching the brumous clouds, tainted with Britannic fogs, that roll around the Islands of the Sleeve in the crepusculary sadness of an English spring—listening to the breeze, keen, acute, Arctic, Polar, which groans, which growls, which howls, which whistles menacing but impuissant, around the walls of Hauteville House—remember thyself, Master, that History, as for Ambition, so for Genius, repeats herself, in moments, for the one of remorse, for the other of caprice!

After Elba, the Hundred Days.

After Ste. Hélène, the voyage of the Belle-Poule.

“He laughs best who laughs last,” says the Proverb.

Proverbs are the wisdom of nations.

And thou, oh Master, oh author of the Man who Laughs, thy laugh is as the laugh of Gwynplaine, sombre but not cynical, permanent but full of pity, of compassion—a laughter broken with tears—above all, a laughter which endures!

II. The Solidarity of the Sportmans.

Yes; in England, everything is great. Even in her sports, she is the Titaness of the Ocean.

There is a solidarity of peoples; above all, there is a solidarity amongst the votaries of Diana, huntress pale, chaste, ferocious, formidable, but ravishing, but divine!

The sportmans of France, the sportmans of England, they are as the brothers of Corsica. What says your Williams? “As we were being washed by nurse, we got completely mixed!”

Touching and tender fantasy of this grand old Swan of Stratford-upon-Thames! Or, what say I—of Corsica? Of Siam—melancholy but affecting type of the rudimentary solidarity of the Orient!

I had long desired to watch you insularies in the sports of the hippodrome, in which I am myself not without skill; but the furious storms of the Sleeve twice detained me at Calais, and once at Boulogne. I consoled myself in the hope that everything comes to him who knows how to wait.

I knew how to wait. I waited.

After Chantilly, Epsom’s courses!

The sea appeared calm; not a wrinkle in the folds of the steel-blue Sleeve.

I embarked myself, with my luggage in my left hand and my “Ruff’s Guide to the Turf” in my right.

I shall see them, then, at last—these courses, sacred in the past by the memory of Eclipse and the Flying Admiral Childers, dear to the patriotic heart of France in the present days by the triumph of Gladiateur!

III. Ocean less Perfidious than the Aristocracy of Albion.

The sun was shining. The Ocean stirred gently in its sleep. Its ripples were as tender, as voluptuous, as the sighs of pleasure which scarcely derange the diaphanous scarf that lies upon the bosom of beauty. Oh, Phœbus! Oh, Neptunus! Oh, Venus!

I told you the sun was shining. My heart also. That I was gay! Gaiety premature, unreasonable, absurd!

As we cross Calais Bar the vessel rolls. I like it not. Can she be strong enough for the traverse, often fearful and stormy, to Douvres? I begin to marvel whether she is made of iron, or only made of wood.

I address the question, politely, to a young English sportmans by my side—“Pardon, Mister! but what is the vessel made of?”

A spasm of uncertainty, if not of pain, passes across his face as he points to an inscription inside the paddle-boxes.

One can only die one time; nevertheless, it is permitted to exclaim against the perfidy of the Steam-Lords of the Board of Commerce for London and Douvres. I read the inscription. Hope abandons me. The vessel is not made of iron!

She is not even made of wood!!

She is only “Maid of Kent!!!”

IV. Portentosum Mare.

An agitation which I have never felt before seems to seize upon me.

The further we go, the more it increases.

The young English sportmans, with the cynical indifference of the patrician, contemplates my sufferings, and lights his cigar. Is it that he calls that “solidarity”?

Two blonde misses with their papa—oligarch, fat, and without sympathy—sit near me. They talk to each other freely. At times they laugh. I laugh not, I!

Nor would they laugh, spoilt infants of Fashion, if I were to express the ideas that are struggling in my bosom—if I were to show them all that is within me!

V. After Convulsion, Despair.

I have shown them all that was within me.

They have moved away—it was a prudent step.

Now that they are gone, I could almost wish that I were dead!

VI. Noblesse Oblige.

The young English sportmans is, after all, a good infant. He brings me a big goblet and a biscuit, which comfort me, and tries to speak to me in French.

Words sympathetic, but mysterious.

“Ah, Monsieur,” he says, “il faut décidément maintenir votre pivert!”

Enigma! “I must keep up my wood-pecker?” I have no wood-pecker! I tell him so in his own tongue; adding that I am very fond of shooting at the doves.

“Ah,” he rejoins, “we don’t call ’em Doves, we call ’em les hiboux du coiffeur—Barbers’ Owls!”

We become more and more friendly, as the pain subsides. When we reach Douvres, I give him my card.

He says that he has forgotten his; but that I shall have no difficulty in finding him at any of the tambours de la chasse—Sporting Drums—especially if I ask for Lord William Wiggins, of Wapping.

What a droll of a name! Not facile to pronounce, that! Let us essay, with the help of the dictionary of pronunciation:

“Ouilliam Ouiggins—of Ouapping.”

VII. The Babylon of Britain.

Yes: in England everything is great. Behold this London, confused and chaotic amalgamation of bourg upon bourg, of city upon city, almost of county upon county—behold its administration, vague, contradictory, without doubt, but immense, but Titanic, but sublime.

To-day London has but one heart, which palpitates—one thought, which engrosses—one dream, which possesses—one hope, which enchants. To the heart, the thought, the dream, the hope, there is one key.

It is the Epsom’s Courses, at Derby!

VIII. Explications.

Questions to resolve:

“Who is Epsom?”

“And where is Derby?”

Mystery strange and inexplicable, this Epsom! Not one of my interlocutors, of French or English, can give me any particulars of his life. Oh fame, oh renown, oh fickleness of popular affection! We go to the Courses he has founded; and yet the very day of his death is forgotten or unknown!

Another mystery. Derby is a hundred and twenty miles from London; and yet many of my friends assure that they will drive down without a single change of horses! Ah, then, it is no marvel, this predominance of the old England in the hippic arena, when even the ordinary horses of the carriage can travel a hundred and twenty miles—two hundred kilomètres—without fatigue.

These facts were new to me. They were also new to most of my countrymen with whom I conversed.

The Unknown—behold the Redoubtable!

IX. Vieille Ecole, Bonne Ecole.

Happily, I encounter Lord Ouiggins.

He is an aristocrat of the old rock—a little mocking, perchance, a little reserved, cold, indifferent, proud, but of an antique probity, a disinterestedness more than Roman.

He takes me under his charge.

I had been deceived. They were mocking themselves of me, those who told me the courses were at Derby. They are run on Epsom’s Salt-Downs.

“Derby” is only the title of their founder, one of those English eccentrics of whom the type is so familiar in France—poet, politician, jockey—Premier Minister of Great Britain until he was overthrown by the intrigues of Sir Benjamin Gladstone!

After one thunder-stroke, another:

Gladiateur is not to run!

Is this, then, the old Britannic chivalry—the love of what the poet has proudly called “Greenwich Fair-Play”? Is this the entente cordiale? I survey Lord Ouiggins. He can scarcely meet my eye. He turns aside.

Let us hope it is to blush!

He tries to defend the invidious exclusion. He pretends that in the Derby-Course the horses must not exceed a certain age; also that Gladiateur was at least quite sufficiently near that age when he did run. Puerile evasion! False pride of nationality!

What is to become of the money I have wagered?

Lord Ouiggins tells me to console myself. He has private information. He will not see a foreign gentleman wronged.

X. Les Nuits de Londres.

We are inseparable.

Milord has backed a favourite to win him thousands of sterlings.

Curious, almost cynical nomenclature of the Turf!

The horse is named Ventre-Tambour, Bellydrum!!

He is assured to win; Milord dreamt, last night, that he saw him four lengths ahead at Tattenham-court-road Corner.

I wager freely on Ventre-Tambour.

Lord Ouiggins says we had better not go down to his baronial hall at Ouapping, but “make a night” and start early.

Ah, nights of London, you have not, effectively, stolen your reputation! What contrasts, fascinating but terrible—here, the noblesse, like Ouiggins quaffing champagne with visitors from France; and there the miserables, the Tom-Dick-Harries drinking gin—the blonde misses, casting aside the Puritanic pudor of the saloon, and dancing freely with foreign gentlemans at the Duke of Argyle’s Casino—what contrasts, but also, alas, what jealousies still existing, what internecine hatred still in rage!

That the English should hate the Irish is but natural.

We always hate those whom we have wronged!

It is less reasonable that they should continue to hate the children of Cambria, with whom they have been so long in friendly union.

And yet, more than once during this exciting evening, I have heard Lord Ouiggins spoken of—my patrician pur sang—as a Welsher, with evident contempt.

Brutal antipathies unworthy of the century!

They shall have no influence on the mind of a son of France.

“Lord Ouilliam,” I exclaimed, “regard them not! Generous compatriot of Llewellyn, I pledge thee in another bumper to the victory of Ventre-Tambour!”

——:o:——

Realities of the Derby.

I. Selters waters, or S. and B?

After Light, Shadow; after Pleasure, Pain; sad but inevitable oscillations of the pendulum of life!

Alas, to wake—it is to remember, and to remember is to repent.

Last night, I banqueted with the merchant-princes of London and with the ancient nobility of Wales; the leaders of the Fashion World, the Sport, the Turf, the boxers of the most renowned, the comics of the musical saloons—Lord Ouiggins signalised them all to me. Foaming, sparkling, vivacious, the wines of Champagne led the way for the stronger Grogs. A vision, confused indeed, but magnificent in its confusion, will long recall to me the night before the Derby.

I awoke.

Sad and supreme moment of mortality when awakening means isolation!

For some time, I knew not where I found myself. Presently, as the dim light of the dawn penetrated, first through the folds of the fog, and next through the dirt of the windows, I recollected that Lord Ouiggins had advised me to stay with him at a fashionable hotel, adding that his own drag would call for us in the morning.

It was still of a good hour. I turned myself to sleep; but heard, with dreamy ears, the fall—or so it seemed—of cataracts of rain, around me, beside me, overhead. The sound gave me a strange sensation of thirst, which I cannot otherwise explain.

Instinctively, I rang the bell, and shouted “Selters! Selters! Selters!”

A tap at my door; and Lord Ouilliam, in half-toilette, appeared. I saluted him.

“Is it that the rain will make to be deferred the Courses?”

“What rain?”

“Listen, then!”

“That? Why, it’s only the men tubbing!” (Idiom untranslatable.)

“What did you ring for?” pursued Lord Ouilliam.

“But, for Selters then!”

“Tout droit.” he rejoined. “Vous etiez horriblement coupé, mon ami; bien roide!”

Strange and picturesque argot of intoxication: “awfully cut,” “very tight.”

“Listen,” continued Milord, “My carriage is not yet arrived. It has probably been stopped by the Thames Embankment, which is to run outside my park at Ouapping. Look you, I will take places for two, outside an omnibus. It is the usual plan amongst nobility. Admiral Rous will be one of us. You may easily know him by his wearing a white hat, a veil, and a flower in his button-hole. Meanwhile, better not have Selters. Try S. and B!”

Enigma, of which the solution—when it came—was far from disagreeable.

II. Lux.

The morning at first was dull and brumous. The spleen of Britannia seemed to possess me. I had atrocious pains in my head. Every noise bore upon my nerves. The very sight of food seemed to nauseate me.

Lord Ouiggins, on the contrary, made a breakfast of the most substantial.

I cannot say much in favour of the cuisine at this fashionable hotel, one of the first in London, the well-known “Spotted Dog” in the aristocratic quarter. Route de la Chapelle Blanche (White-Chapel-road), the Faubourg St. Germain of London. Strange: the hotel is not mentioned in any of the ordinary London Guides.

We take our places. The best seat is reserved for the Admiral—that famous old warrior, who turned the fortune of the day at Chillianwallah by his historical charge at the head of the Naval Reserve and the Royal Horse Marines. Combination eccentric, but not without precedent. The horse was sacred to Neptunus. This Rous, see you, this Admiral so passionately equine in his tastes, he is Jean-Bart and he is also Murat; he is Kellermann and he is also La Pérouse! All the great men touch, and recognise one another!

The light still brightens. Behold us then effectively departed!

Hourrah! Hep, hep, hep!

Vive Ventre-Tambour!

III. Nothing is Certain to Happen but that which is Unforeseen.

We have gone a few miles on our road, still through the streets of the fashionable quarter, to-day as democratic as the Faubourg St. Antoine, and crowded with other Derbyites, before we speak much to each other. Reserve characteristic of the oldest and proudest aristocracy on earth.

At length Lord Ouiggins whispers me—

“I knew I had forgotten something. I’ve left my purse on the piano!”

For the moment I wished that I had done the same.

Suspicion dishonouring and ignoble!

IV. Si Jeunesse Savait.

Fog, obscurity, cold—yes, you will find them all in the climate of Great Britain; in England, in Scotland, in Ireland, and in the mountains of Wales, the cradle of Lord Ouilliam! It is true, but it is not the only verity. Great Britain also has her moments of fine weather. There are no such trees in the world as the tall poplars of my own, my beautiful France—none planted in such mathematical, such symmetrical order, so methodical, logical, and straight. Nevertheless, Nature is infinite. Even the chestnuts, hawthorns, lilacs, and laburnums of the Surrey lanes are not absolutely offensive to the eye. To-day, also, Phœbus pierces. Lux!

There are no women in the world like those of Paris; but there is still a pleasant freshness in the faces of the young pensionaries who watch us, at times, over garden walls. To several of these, I kiss my hand. They smile in reply. Laugh, rosy daughters of Albion, laugh; for it is still day, and you are young—too young for reverie.

V. When Poverty becomes ironical, let Wealth take care.

The old Britannic humour, as exhibited in Samuel Benjamin Jonson, in Jonathan Smith, and Dean Sydney Swift, is not absolutely extinct upon the road.

More than one little Arab of the highway shouts out to me, “I’ll have your hat!” Wild caprice of the imagination, playfully misrepresenting the probable eventualities of the future, and yet, at bottom, profound, almost terrible—a mockery, yes, but a menace—a jest, without doubt, but a threat also—the voice, grotesque but strident, of the Miserables.

I impart the reflections to Lord Ouiggins. Alas, to what good? The pride of his class is too strong for him. His natural instincts are noble; but he is spoiled by the mephitic atmosphere of the Upper Chamber. With a laugh cold, sardonic, and glacial, he replies:—

“Throw the little beggar a copper, and let him go!”

He does not even, generous though he is, offer to provide the copper.

Again, ignoble suspicion! I forget that he has left his purse on the piano!

The Arab—delirious with joy—saved, perhaps, from starvation by the casual bounty of a foreign sportmans, would fain express his thanks. His emotion overpowers him. He staggers; horror, he falls! No! again! Gallant child of Poverty, the struggle is vain. Once more he wavers, he oscillates, he falls, and turning wildly head over heels, in the convulsion of his death agony, he disappears in a cloud of dust—doubtless to be driven over by the omnibuses of the haughty, and the phaetons of the Stock Exchange!

Shocked, but masking my horror under the veil of a politeness a little cynical I say to Lord Ouiggins.

“And well, then, Milord, did you see what he did? and do you know what will be his fate?”

Question terrible!

He does not even remove the cigar from his mouth, this impassive patrician, as he answers, with a laconism which lacerates, which vibrates on my nerves, which almost makes me bound.

“Yes; cart-wheel!”

VI. London at Epsom.

Dust, heat, emotion—all stimulate thirst.

I soon forget the little Arab. There are plenty of others remaining! There are worse things in the world, too, than bottled stout. Lord Ouilliam tells me that none of the aristocracy now drink champagne in public. It excites a feeling of envy among the lower orders. On Derby’s Day, the populace gives the tone to the peerage.

The crowd; my faith, and what a crowd! There are two things in the world which a man never forgets: his first sight of the sea, and his first sight of the multitude on Epsom Downs!

What a sound, as of ocean! What infinite discords, subdued, by very force of number and of contradiction, into one sublime monotone! What minstrelsy, cosmopolitan and comprehensive—the audible expression of a Colonial System unparalleled in grandeur and extent! The Hindoo may think in his heart of the days when he fought for his country’s municipal freedom under the banner of Rammohun Roy and Nana Sahib; but look! Plaintively submissive, he strikes his tom-tom to amuse the destroyers of his race.

VII. Messieurs, faites votrejeu! Le jeu est fait!

“Would you like to see the horses a little nearer?” says Lord Ouiggins. “You had better buy a couple of tickets for the Padwick.” I do so. The Padwick—so called of an eminent British sportmans—is an enclosed space in which the true connoisseurs survey the horses before they start. As I gaze at Ventre-Tambour, I can hardly refrain from shouting, amongst all these impassible patricians, “Hourrah! Hep, hep, hep!”

Lord Ouilliam Ouiggins comes to me, hurriedly, and whispers, “Hush, I have just got the straight tip from the Admiral himself. It’s a moral; and the horse at twenty-five to one! We must get on every sov. we have. There is barely time before they start. Quick.” I hand him my purse—not without a moment of hesitation—of which I am speedily ashamed.

VIII. Rien ne va plus.

A minute sometimes seems like hours. Fortune was in my grasp.

The interval of suspense was horrible; and yet its termination, when it did come, seemed abrupt, sudden, incredible.

I was still struggling with the crowd, when a hoarse sound suddenly rose like the roar of a tempest on a rocky coast—it rose, and rose, and grew stronger; I looked; I saw a wonderful white flash of faces as the heads of the multitude turned all, in one instant, one way; and my pulses seemed as though they would kill me with their throbbing as, with one voice, that innumerable assemblage cried—

“They’re Off!”

IX. The Word of the Enigma.

They were indeed; and so was Lord Ouilliam Ouiggins of Ouapping!

Anonymous, 1869.

——:o:——

One-and-Three.

In 1874, Punch published a novel under the above title ascribed to “Fictor Nogo,” but which was popularly (and correctly) attributed to Mr. F. C. Burnand. Later on it was published in book form by Bradbury and Co. The fun is rather long drawn out, but Hugo’s style is admirably parodied. The following is an extract from the preface:—

Letter from M. Fictor Nogo (author of “Une-et-trois”) to our eminent translator:—“My Honourable Co-Labourer,—Your noble and glorious translation of my immortal work touches me profoundly. I felicitate London. London, in publishing a work of mine, draws to itself the attention of the civilised world. London swells with pride under the benignant sway of a Lord Mayor. The Lord Mayor crowns poets, glorifies literature. He decks you with turtle, and this does homage to genius. You represent genius, for you represent me. Thus I am shadowed: for this I embrace you in spirit, You have co-mingled your ideas with mine. You and I, the Translator and the Translated, the Adapter and the Adapted, it is grand. More than grand—it is stupendous. More than stupendous—it is colossal.”

——:o:——

“Thirty-one.”

(By the Author of “93,” “The History of a Grime,” &c., &c.)

Chapter I.—Searching.

She was lost! In this world nothing is lost. It is only mislaid. She was Miss Lade: yet she was lost! Where was she? She was in London. London is in England. It is a great city—as large as Paris! It is as hard to discover a person in London as “to find a needle in a bottle of hay.” This is an English phrase. They bottle hay, and rack it, like wine! It is made into chaff. The people are fond of chaff. The Scotchman lives on oats, the Irishman on potatoes, the Englishman on chaff.

Tom Harry sought her. He wanted to marry her! He hoped she also wanted Tom Harry. But he had lost her. He knew she was in London, therefore he was in London. He inquired of many. They gave him chaff. He could not find the needle in it. She was his needle. He was a Pole—an English naturalized Pole. He would stick at nothing to find her. They were true to each other as Needle and Pole! but were now as far apart as two Poles!

Chapter II.—Cum Grano Salis.

The world is always large. Society is small. But Tom Harry and Miss Lade were in the world. They were not in Society! He had to seek her out of Society. Endeavour to catch a globule of mercury in a drawer. It flies—it escapes—it separates into atoms—it joins again and rolls away—it is lost—it is found—it is never secured! It eludes you—it is a demon—a wild spirit that vanishes as you think you grasp it! So was Miss Lade to Tom Harry! He thought that he saw her—but she became invisible! He could not find her. She found herself—it was in furnished apartments!

Chapter III.—Arithmetic.

He had a clue! But what was a clue in so wild a maze as the great London? In Paris the police would have found her, In London there were, at that time, no police. They were “reserved forces,” and had been called out in case of war! When so used there are no police. The authorities then make constables of the prisoners. It is a maxim of English law, “Set a thief to catch a thief.” But Miss Lade was not a thief—except that she had stolen the heart of Tom Harry! This was not a legal felony—therefore the police could not catch her! The clue was a piece of paper found in her room in Paris. On it was written the number “31” and “London.” That was all!

Chapter IV.—Circumambient.

How to find this number 31? That was the problem. Tom Harry had graduated at Oxford—not Cambridge. This was the error! A Cambridge man would have been able to calculate the probabilities, and obtained a result. Tom Harry had to discover her equation. She was X (an unknown quantity). He was A, but he was also—C (that is minus cash)! The postulate was that A - C + B = X. What was the B in the equation?—probably a book. What book?—decidedly a London directory! He bought one. It is a large book—a heavy one! He could not carry it—yet it was a necessary work of reference. Difficulties must be conquered. Man was made to overcome them! Tom Harry succeeded! He purchased a “single” perambulator—not a “double”—one they double up! The leaves of the directory were doubled down. Therefore the perambulator and the book were in accord! He wheel’d about his book. It was his child!—he had bought it! They allow this in England, where they sell wives at Smithfield! He found his way about. This child was his guide! Is not childhood the very best and purest guide to manhood? and does not manhood only lead us into a second childhood? But among all the numbers “thirty-one,” he had not found her! He was in a fog. She was mist. He was in a London fog! It was dark and thick as Erebus! But he could not see e’er a “bus.” They could not run; nor could he. He had lost Miss Lade—he had now lost himself? He asked a sweeper of crossings where was he? He was told that he was at the corner of the Park of Hyde! It was true.

Chapter V.—What Happens is Always the Unforeseen.

There are dark periods in the history of nations. It is the same with individuals. It was so with Tom Harry. He was at the Park of Hyde—at one corner of it! It was a place to hide in—hence the name. Was she hidden there? It was a natural thought. He would search it, and would find her! But how? He knew not the way! Here steps in Fate, which governs all things. It was a policeman! There were only two left of the reserves—one to guard the Tower, where the Queen resides; the other in charge of Constitution Hill, which is by the corner of Hyde Park. Under ordinary circumstances the police of London are not permitted to talk. They are only allowed to say, “Move on!” This is the Englishman’s watchword! The Americans have the same, in effect; they say, “Go ahead!” The policeman in charge of Constitution Hill was absolved from this rule by an Order in Council. It was an important office. The preservation of the Queen and Constitution (which is kept on the Hill named from it) is of the greatest national consequence. Therefore the policeman was a high official, and allowed to speak. Tom Harry addressed him, explaining his position and quest for Miss Lade. The policeman pointed to his collar and the figures on it, exclaimed—“I am number ‘31’! Miss Lade lodges with my wife!” The clue was right! She was found!

Finis.

C. H. Waring.

Fun. August 14, 1878.

——:o:——

In Bret Harte’s Sensation Novels Condensed there is an imitation of Victor Hugo, in ten chapters, entitled “Fantine.” The Prologue is as follows:—

“As long as there shall exist three paradoxes—a moral Frenchman, a religious Atheist, and a believing sceptic—so long, in fact, as booksellers shall wait—say twenty-five years for a new gospel; so long as paper shall remain cheap and ink at three sous a bottle, I have no hesitation in saying that such books as these are not utterly profitless!

Victor Hugo.”

“Grinplaine, or the man who doesn’t laugh.” A serial burlesque of Victor Hugo’s “L’homme qui rit,” by Walter Parke, appeared in Funny Folks, 1875.

The Bat of June 2, 1885, contained a parody of Victor Hugo, called Quel bonheur Marie (What Cheer ’Ria?) somewhat coarse in tone, and not very amusing.

——:o:——

The House that Victor Built.

On January 24, 1885, the following announcement appeared in Punch:—

It being reported that Victor Hugo has just purchased for the sum of £13,000 a piece of land in the immediate vicinity of his present abode, with a view of building on it an entirely new house “of his own designing,” the following extract from a preliminary letter of instructions to the contractor who has undertaken the work will be read with interest.

*  *  *  *  *

“You will ask me whether I am an Architect; and I reply to you, ‘An Architect is one who constructs.’ Do I construct? Yes. What? Never mind; let us proceed. To construct a house you require a basement. This is the language of the Contractor. But the Poet meets him with a rejoinder. A basement is a prison, and Liberty can not breathe through a grating. This was the case at the Bastille! What has been done at the Bastille does not repeat itself. What then? You will commence the house on the first floor.”

Does this stagger the Architect? Unquestionably! Yet to commence a house on the first-floor is easy enough. To the Contractor? No. To the Poet? Yes. How? By a flight. Two flights will take anyone somewhere. Upstairs? Yes. Downstairs? Certainly! In my lady’s chamber? Why not? This is a phenomenon, and surprises you. Just now you were on the stare. Now you are on the first-floor landing. Therefore, you have taken a rise. Out of whom—the Architect? Possibly. Let us resume.

And now for the drawing-room.

This will be colossal. Why? Because the furniture in it will be stupendous. To talk of stupendous furniture is to suggest the opening scene of a Pantomime. A big head! Whose? No matter. But you will inquire as to this furniture. You will probably say, ‘Will there be chairs?’ No. ‘Arm-chairs?’ Useless. ‘Sofas with six legs?’ A phantom! ‘What then? Canopied thrones for four-and-twenty, with one of a superior make and quality?’ Quite so. ‘Why?’ Because it is here that Genius, after dinner, will meet the Kings and Emperors that aspire to pay it homage. ‘Will there be windows?’ Rather—and there is this convenient thing besides—eight-and-forty balconies. You will say at once, ‘Two a-piece?’ But you will quickly add—‘What of the gardens beneath?’ To this there is only one answer possible—‘Fireworks!’

Roman candles, rockets, and Bengal lights? No.—A set piece? Yes. Representing what? Somebody! Now there is this advantage about a set-piece that represents somebody—if carefully prepared, regardless of expense, and covering an area of 90 feet by 120. It may be permanent. Some one whispers ‘Advertisement.’ To this I make a supreme reply, ‘Fame!’

And now let us pass to another room. Shall we put our foot in it? Yes. Why? Because it is the kitchen.

——:o:——

The Spoiler of the Sea.

By Victor Hugo.

Chapter I. Gaillard was a wrecker, a smuggler. He was an honest man. Ships are the effect and cause of commerce. Commerce cheats, commerce adulterates, commerce is bad. To wreck ships engaged in knavery is good. Gaillard the smuggler robbed the revenue, you say; so do monarchs. You take off your hat to a king. I raise mine to Gaillard—to a man. You call me crazy. Keep your temper; I keep mine. You are an idiot. I should like to punch your head. Chapter II. Gaillard was considered ugly. He was not. He had a bump. A dromedary has a hump. The dromedary is beautiful. He had a squint—it is better to squint than to be blind. His eyes were green—that is the colour of Nature’s beauteous sylvan dress. His mouth was extremely large—so is that of the hippopotamus. The hippopotamus is a charming fellow. Gaillard had the beauty of the dromedary, the loveliness of Nature in his eyes, the charm of the hippopotamus. Gaillard was sublime. Chapter III. Gaillard sprang into the sea to bathe; this happened once a year. You will admit that once in three hundred and sixty-five days was not too often. An octopus—a devil fish—was watching him. Man and monster, they eyed each other. Gaillard trembled at its glance—he was not brave. I saw it once, and did not tremble; I am brave. It was at the Aquarium. The octopus has eight legs; Gaillard wished for eighty, but his two sufficed. Fear gave them the swiftness of two hundred. He ran. You would have run. Should I have done so? Everything is possible. It is possible I should have run.

F. P. Delafond.

The Weekly Dispatch. September 13, 1885.

——:o:——

The Cat.

The cat is the concrete symbol of a vacillating politician.

It is always on the fence.

It is the feline embodiment of one of the profoundest human principles wrenched from the circumambience of the Unknown, and hurled into the bosom of consciousness.

Nine tailors make one man. The cat has nine times the life of one man, for it has nine lives. Possession, also, is nine points of the law. Behold a legal possession of existence equal to the span of eighty-one clothiers’ lives.

Let us bow reverently before this august fact.

The wanderer by the midnight seashore, when the moon—that argent cornucopia of heaven—is streaming forth her flowers and fruits of radiance, and the illimitable is illuminated by the ineffable, will have remarked the phosphorescent ridges that scintillate along the billows’ tops, until the breakers seem to curve and snort like horses’ necks with manes of lightning clad.

So, O man, when in the darkness of thine own chamber, thou passeth thine hand along the furry spine of this feline phantom of the back yard, the electric sparks dart forth, and a flash of lightning fuses together the fingers and the fur.

Exquisite antithesis of Nature! The fireside embraces the ocean. The hearthstone is paved with seashells. The monsters of the deep disport, reflected in the glowing embers. The infinite Abroad is brought into amalgamation with the finite at Home.

The ocean roars.

The cat only purrs.

The billows rise and culminate and break.

The cat’s back rises. The feline tide is up, and we have a permanent billow of fur and flesh.

O impossible co-existence of uncontradictory contradictions!

The duke of Wellington was pronounced the greatest captain of his age. Gen. Grant is pronounced the greatest captain of his.

The greatest captain of any age was the captain with his whiskers.

Let us not call this the tergiversation of history. Call it rather the tergiversation of nature.

The whiskers of the captain.

The whiskers of the cat.

The hirsute exponent of martial supremacy. The feline symbolism of the Bearded Lady, crossing her claws before the family fire.

Jealousy has been called the green-eyed monster.

The cat is the green-eyed monster.

Both lie in wait. Neither destroys its victim without toying with it. One is the foe, the other the friend, of the fireside. Either is to be met with in almost every family. Each is of both sexes.

“Old Tom” gin, in excess, is one of man’s bitterest bibulous foes; man is the bitterest bibulous foe of old tom cats.

Osculations between sky and earth! O lips of the Seen touching the lips of the Unseen! O wave of thought careering through the asymptotes of cloudland, crystalizing into angelic foci the tangents of humanity.

The stars are out at night.

So are cats!

——:o:——

A MANIFESTO BY HICTOR VUGO

We live and move and have our being. By we I express civilisation, which consists first of Paris, then the world at large. We are born with generous instincts. We are naturally humane. I call upon the French Revolution of ’92-3 to prove this theory. We cannot all be Arabis. That would be too supreme a dream. But we can all admire him at a distance. Those horrible canaille the English have warred against a weak race of striplings, descendants of the glorious mummies. They have fought, and aided by the magnificent single-minded abstinent France have won. Mon dieu! Why was I not there? With one impassioned foot firmly planted on the escarpment of Tel-el-Kebir, I would have kept these British brutes at bay. I would have quoted one of my rhythmic poems, and they would have piled arms, awe-stricken and listened. Or, perhaps, these island savages in their ignorance, would have shot me. They are sufficiently unrefined for that. Ah! the thought is too dreadful. France, my beloved France, would in such a case have died also, for with me will perish all the ideas which go to make a great race—Adolphe, bring me a cigarette and a café noir. I would be calm.

The Ninety-nine Guardsmen.

By Alexandre Dumas.

This parody, which is to be found in Bret Harte’s Sensation Novels Condensed is an ingenious mixture of “The Three Musqueteers” and “The Vicomte de Bragelonne.”

The second chapter is the best:—

Chapter II.

THE COMBAT.

On leaving Provins the first musketeer proceeded to Nangis, where he was reinforced by thirty-three followers. The second musketeer, arriving at Nangis at the same moment, placed himself at the head of thirty-three more. The third guest of the landlord of Provins arrived at Nangis in time to assemble together thirty-three other musketeers.

The first stranger led the troops of his Eminence.

The second led the troops of the Queen.

The third led the troops of the King.

The fight commenced. It raged terribly for seven hours. The first musketeer killed thirty of the Queen’s troops. The second musketeer killed thirty of the King’s troops. The third musketeer killed thirty of his Eminence’s troops.

By this time it will be perceived the number of musketeers had been narrowed down to four on each side.

Naturally the three principal warriors approached each other.

They simultaneously uttered a cry:

“Aramis!”

“Athos!”

“D’Artagnan!”

They fell into each others arms.

“And it seems that we are fighting against each other, my children,” said the Count de la Fere, mournfully.

“How singular!” exclaimed Aramis and D’Artagnan.

“Let us stop this fratricidal warfare,” said Athos.

“We will!” they exclaimed together.

“But how to disband our followers?” queried D’Artagnan.

Aramis winked. They understood each other. “Let us cut ’em down!”

They cut ’em down. Aramis killed three. D’Artagnan three. Athos three.

The friends again embraced. “How like old times!” said Aramis. “How touching!” exclaimed the serious and philosophic Count de la Fere.

The galloping of hoofs caused them to withdraw from each other’s embraces. A gigantic figure rapidly approached.

“The innkeeper of Provins!” they cried, drawing their swords.

“Perigord, down with him!” shouted D’Artagnan.

“Stay,” said Athos.

The gigantic figure was beside them. He uttered a cry.

“Athos, Aramis, D’Artagnan!”

“Porthos!” exclaimed the astonished trio.

“The same.” They all fell in each other’s arms.

The Count de la Fere slowly raised his hands to Heaven. “Bless you! Bless us, my children! However different our opinions may be in regard to politics, we have but one opinion in regard to our own merits. Where can you find a better man than Aramis?”

“Than Porthos?” said Aramis.

“Than D’Artagnan?” said Porthos.

“Than Athos?” said D’Artagnan.

——:o:——

Eugene Sue.

Sir Brown: A mystery of London, by Mons. Dernier Sou. (Illustrated). See The Shilling Book of Beauty by Cuthbert Bede.

Parodie du Juif Errant, par Ch. Philipon et Louis Huart. 300 Vignettes par Cham. Bruxelles, 1845. This is a remarkable book, it consists of 291 pages octavo, and the illustrations are very droll.

This was translated, and published in London, 1846, by E. Appleyard, under the title The Parody of the Wandering Jew by Charles Philipon and Louis Huart.

The first four chapters contained some copies of the illustrations of Cham very badly executed, the other half of the book had no illustrations.

IZAAK WALTON’S COMPLETE(LY) DONE ANGLER.

Ghost of Piscator.   Ghost of Viator.

Viator. Whither away, Master? A good morning to you! I have stretched my legs to catch the train to Tottenham and here I find you with rod and basket, as of old.

Piscator. Faith, Scholar, I have even been too long an angler with Nero, in the lake of darkness, and would fain take a chub, Tottenham way, and see mine old haunts.

Viator. Then have with you, Master; and I do mind me of pretty Maudlin that hereabouts would sing us, “Come, Shepherds, deck your heads!”

Piscator. Ay, Scholar, methinks Maudlin was the Siren that led thee to the River Lea more than all my wisdom. But here we are got to Tottenham, and to the waterside.

Viator. Oh, oh, Master, what place is this, and what smell cometh to my nostrils? See, see, Master, here be no chub, but two dead dogs and one departed cat!

Piscator. In sooth, Scholar, the country seemeth strange, and no man may live, nor fish neither, hard by such an open sewer. Can this be the Lea! Nay, Scholars, this is no place for honest anglers more. But hither walks Corydon. Let us ask him what makes this blackness in the water, and the smell that abides here, as they say frankincense and myrrh do cling, more sweetly, to the shores of the blessed Arabia. What ho, Corydon, what cheer?

Corydon.[54] Sir, the condition of the River Lea is something really fearful. From Tottenham downwards the water is a mere open sewer, emitting the most noxious exhalations. Boating and bathing have ceased, and the River is now only a danger to the neighbourhood.

Piscator. Say you so? And what maketh that it should be so?

Corydon. Ah, Master, the drainage of Tottenham is turned bodily into the stream, and, in spite of Local Boards, the nuisance continues unaltered.

Piscator. And why right they not this wrong; for, marry, the poor folk here will die, and a pestilence be bred, if ye live not more cleanly.

Corydon. Sir, no man knows this better than the Tottenham Authorities themselves, who cause a horrible, disgusting nuisance to the dwellers on the Lea. They simply sow disease broadcast among thousands of helpless people, to save the expenditure of a certain sum of money.

Piscator. Penny wise, and pound foolish—penny wise, and pound foolish! Soon shall we have the Great Plague here again, and none to blame but the chuckled-headed “Authorities,” my Masters! Come away, Scholars, come away. The silver Lea is bedraggled. ’Tis no place for peaceful ghosts, that would be quiet, and go a-fishing.

[They vanish.

Punch. August, 15, 1885.

The Incompleat Angler, after Master Isaak Walton, by F. C. Burnand, also appeared in Punch. It was afterwards published in book form by Bradbury Agnew & Co., London, in 1876, and again, with numerous illustrations by Harry Furniss, in 1887.

Walton’s Angler Imitated, in several Parts, another parody, appeared in Punch and Judy, London, 1869.

——:o:——

LORD LYTTON.

In Volume V. of this Collection, (p. 222) parodies upon Lord Lytton’s Poems and Plays were given, burlesques upon his prose works remain to be noted.

Praises of the Ideal, the Beautiful, the True, and the Virtuous, abound in Lord Lytton’s Novels, of which desirable qualities his own life and character were singularly destitute.

Tennyson satirised him as a fop, whilst Thackeray treated him with well-merited ridicule and contempt, both in the “Epistles to the Literati,” and in “Novels by Eminent Hands.” The latter series originally appeared in Punch, and the parody of Lytton was entitled “George de Barnwell.” In this, a paltry thief and murderer was elevated into a hero, in much the same manner that Lytton had treated Eugene Aram.

It is quite unnecessary to give any extract from this well-known and accessible burlesque.

In connection with Thackeray’s well-known burlesque criticism on The Sea Captain by Lord Lytton (p. 225. Vol. V.) it should be mentioned that when that play was reproduced at the Lyceum Theatre under the lessee-ship of Mr. E. T. Smith, a continuation of Thackeray’s criticism appeared in The Mask, London, November 1868.

In this Thackeray’s style and orthography were mimicked, and Mr. Bandmann, who took the part of the prating hero Vivyan, was severely criticised for his stagey acting.

The Sea Captain had been damned in 1839, and The Rightful Heir scarcely merited a better fate, but it gave rise to a splendid burlesque, The Frightful Hair, by F. C. Burnand produced at The Haymarket Theatre, in December 1868, with Compton, Kendal, and Miss Ione Burke in the Cast.

The Diamond Death.

By Sir Pelham Little Bulwer, Bart.

Alphonsine Fleury, modiste of Paris, determined that she should die. And, all things considered, it was hardly wonderful that the pretty little girl should come to such a conclusion. Poor child. Fickle woman! Thou hast hardly known Life these eighteen winters, and, yet, would’st be already toying with his brother Death! Die, then, child, if such be thy will. Facilis descensus Averni.

Everybody must admit that she had reason. She called him her lover, that false and whiskered Jules, hero of the barricades, best polker at the Chaumière. And he had sworn to love her, and perhaps he meant it. For between Truth and Falsehood, there lies the Paradise of the Purposeless (shrouded, as the Doric poets sing, in a sapphire cloud), and there are kept the vows which expire on earth for lack of the vivifying presence of the undying Earnest.

Jules was false, and Alphonsine would die. But when one has decided on doing a thing, one has still to decide on the way of doing it. And in regard to dying, one ought really to be careful; because (so far as one sees) there is no way, if one does it awkwardly, of repairing the blunder. The Biggest can die but once. There ran the Seine, and the Pont-Neuf was toll-less, which was a consideration, as Alphonsine’s last sou had gone to purchase her last roll. But the Seine was so muddy, and then the Morgue, and its wet marble. The poor child shuddered at the thought. And the costume, too, for she was French, and, moreover, had instinctive delicacy. Clearly not the Seine.

The towers of Notre Dame. Better, certainly; and she would go rushing into the arms of Death, with a heart full of Victor Hugo, Peer of France. But no! Why, she had been quite ill going down one of the montagnes Russes at the last carnival, even though Jules had held her in the car. She would never be able to look down from the giant tower. Could it shake its grim head and hurl her quivering away, it might be done. But a leap thence! M. D. Lamartine himself never dreamed of such a Chute d’un ange.

Poison. But Jules had taken her to see Frederic Lemaitre, poisoned by la Dame de St. Tropez. His contortions under the arsenic—quel horreur! There would be nobody to see her make faces, certainly, but what of that? Is one to lose all self-respect because one is going to kill oneself? Alphonsine’s mind rejected the poison.

It should be charcoal. Certainly, charcoal. Alphonsine would die like a Countess who had betrayed her husband, gambled away her fortune, and found a pimple on her nose. It was a lady’s death; and Alphonsine, a skilful little milliner, had been among ladies until she had taken measure of their minds as well as of their waists. So she would leave the world gracefully, and comme il faut.

Glow, thou ebon incense for the Altar of Doom; glow in thy little censer there beside her, in other days the lid of her saucepan. Glow, for there lies the poor child, Bride of Death, expectant of her Bridegroom. She has arrayed her mansarde so neatly, that, when the rough Commissaires de Police force the door, they will pause upon the threshold—perhaps touch their hats. And she lies with clasped hands, and upon her maiden bosom rests a daguerreotype of her faithless lover. Glow, dark charcoal, glow, and let thy fames waft her spirit from this cold world, to realms where Anteros smiles upon the True and the Beautiful.

She is dying. But, O kindly Mother of the Dead, thou sendest through the Portal of Ivory a gentle Dream. Through the closing eyes of Alphonsine that Dream looks forth, and its look falls upon that glowing censer, which glares like the eye of a Demon. Full into that Demon-eye looks the Dream, unscared, and what sees it there? Alphonsine dreams that a mighty and a pitying Voice hath come forth from the Treasure-house of Fate, and hath said unto that fiery charcoal, Be as thou wert wont to be.

The modest charcoal knows its Lord, and blushes. Then, suddenly paling its fires, they soften into crystal light; and as they subside, the charcoal glitters in its other and more glorious form, the Diamond! Countless treasures roll at the feet of the expiring Alphonsine. * * *

Expiring?—Oh, no! The world has rose-joy for her yet. Jules, repentant and terrified, has shattered her door, has dashed her window into air, has kicked her charcoal to earth: and as he restores her to life with cold water and warm kisses, he shows her a ticket for them both for to-night’s Bal Masqué.

Clouds and sunrays, ye are Life! But beyond, beyond, whirls and roars the dread Maelstrom of Inexplicability.

The Puppet Showman’s Album. London. No date.

---

The Dweller of the Threshold.

By Sir Ed-d L-tt-n B-lw-r.

BOOK I.

The Promptings of the Ideal.

It was noon, Sir Edward had stepped from his brougham and was proceeding on foot down the Strand. He was dressed with his usual faultless taste, but in alighting from his vehicle his foot had slipped, and a small round disc of conglomerated soil, which instantly appeared on his high arched instep, marred the harmonious glitter of his boots. Sir Edward was fastidious. Casting his eyes around, at a little distance he perceived the stand of a youthful bootblack. Thither he sauntered, and carelessly placing his foot on the low stool, he waited the application of the polisher’s Art. “Tis true,” said Sir Edward to himself, yet half aloud, “the contact of the Foul and the Disgusting mars the general effect of the Shiny and the Beautiful—and yet, why am I here? I repeat it, calmly and deliberately—why am I here? Ha! Boy!”

The Boy looked up—his dark Italian eyes glanced intelligently at the Philosopher, and, as with one hand he tossed back his glossy curls from his marble brow, and with the other he spread the equally glossy Day and Martin over the Baronet’s boot, he answered in deep rich tones: “The Ideal is subjective to the Real. The exercise of apperception gives a distinctiveness to idiocracy, which is, however, subject to the limits of Me. You are an admirer of the Beautiful, sir. You wish your boots blacked. The Beautiful is attainable by means of the Coin.”

“Ah,” said Sir Edward thoughtfully, gazing upon the almost supernal beauty of the Child before him; “you speak well. You have read Kant.”

The Boy blushed deeply. He drew a copy of Kant from his bosom, but in his confusion several other volumes dropped from his bosom on the ground. The Baronet picked them up.

“Ah!” said the Philosopher, “what’s this? Cicero’s De Senectute, and at your age, too? Martial’s Epigrams, Cæsar’s Commentaries. What! a classical scholar?”

“E pluribus Unum. Nux vomica. Nil desperandum. Nihil fit!” said the Boy, enthusiastically. The Philosopher gazed at the Child. A strange presence seemed to transfuse and possess him. Over the brow of the Boy glittered the pale nimbus of the Student.

“Ah, and Schiller’s Robbers too?” queried the Philosopher.

“Das ist ausgespielt,” said the Boy modestly.

“Then you have read my translation of Schiller’s Ballads?” continued the Baronet, with some show of interest.

“I have, and infinitely prefer them to the original,” said the Boy with intellectual warmth. “You have shown how in Actual life we strive for a Goal we cannot reach; how in the Ideal the Goal is attainable, and there effort is victory. You have given us the Antithesis which is a key to the Remainder, and constantly balances before us the conditions of the Actual and the privileges of the Ideal.”

“My very words,” said the Baronet; “wonderful, wonderful!” and he gazed fondly at the Italian boy, who again resumed his menial employment. Alas! the wings of the Ideal were folded. The Student had been absorbed in the Boy.

But Sir Edward’s boots were blacked, and he turned to depart. Placing his hand upon the clustering tendrils that surrounded the classic nob of the infant Italian, he said softly, like a strain of distant music:

“Boy, you have done well. Love the Good. Protect the Innocent. Provide for The Indigent. Respect the Philosopher.”... “Stay! Can you tell me what is The True, The Beautiful, The Innocent, The Virtuous?”

“They are things that commence with a capital letter,” said the Boy, promptly.

“Enough! Respect everything that commences with a capital letter! Respect Me!” and dropping a halfpenny in the hand of the Boy, he departed.

The Boy gazed fixedly at the coin. A frightful and instantaneous change overspread his features. His noble brow was corrugated with baser lines of calculation. His black eye, serpent-like, glittered with suppressed passion. Dropping upon his hands and feet, he crawled to the curbstone and hissed after the retreating form of the Baronet, the single word:

“Bilk!”

*  *  *  *  *

There are three more Chapters of this amusing parody to be found in Bret Harte’s Sensation Novels Condensed.

Another imitation of Lytton’s prose was published in The Individual November 8, 1836 (Cambridge), but it is not of sufficient interest to reprint.

---

On a Toasted Muffin.

By Sir E. L. B. L. B. L. B. Little, Bart.

Object belov’d! when day to eve gives place,

And life’s best nectar thy fond vot’ry sips,

How sweet to gaze upon thy shining face,

And press thy tender form unto my lips!

Fair as the Naiad of the Grecian stream,

And beautiful as Oread of the lawn;

Bright-beaming as the iv’ry palac’d dream,

And melting as the Dewy Urns of dawn.

For thee I strike the sounding Lyre of song,

And hymn the Beautiful, the Good, the True;

The dying notes of thankfulness prolong,

And light the Beacon-fires of praise for you.

Butter’d Ideal of Life’s coarser food!

Thou calm Egeria in a world of strife!

Antigone of Crumpets! mild as good,

Decent in death, and beautiful in life!

Fairest where all is fare! shine on me still,

And gild the dark To-Morrow of my days;

In public Marts and crowded Senates thrill,

My soul, with Tea-time thoughts and Muffin lays.

Cuthbert Bede.

The Shilling Book of Beauty. London. J. Blackwood & Co.

——:o:——

LORD CHESTERFIELD.

Chesterfield Travestie; or School for Modern Manners. Anonymous. Dedicated to George Colman, whose name is incorrectly spelt “Coleman,” on the title page. London, Thomas Tegg, 1808.

This has ten Caricatures drawn by Rowlandson. A later and enlarged edition was published entitled Chesterfield Burlesqued.

Lady Chesterfield’s Letters to her Daughter, by George Augustus Sala. London, Houlston and Wright, 1860.

The first edition of this humorous, but rather lengthy burlesque (it consists of fourteen chapters), contains many excellent woodcuts by Phiz, and is now very scarce.

Good Manners; or, the Art of being Agreeable.

(Being Maxims and Extracts from Lord Jesterfield’s Letters.)[55]

On Conversation.—The basis of all conversation is Flat Contradiction. The flatter and the stronger the contradiction, the more certain and secure is the basis on which the structure of Conversation is to rise.

Where there is no contradiction, “nothing more need be said,” and consequently there and then is an end of all conversation.

The word conversation in itself expresses and implies an assertion of a fact and a denial. It is compounded of two Latin words, “verso” to turn, and “con” together, and means, therefore, two people turning together, or having “a turn at one another,” or a “set-to.” Were everybody to agree with everybody else, it is evident that there would be no matter for discussion, and, therefore, no real conversation.

Persons in love, who are, for the time being, in perfect agreement with each other, never converse. They can’t. It is from this universally-observed fact that in every language may be found the significant proverb, “Silence gives consent,” i.e., where all agree there is, as we have said, no conversation.

A knowledge of Human Nature is absolutely necessary for the cultivation of good manners, and for getting oneself generally liked in all sorts and varieties of Society.—This is an extensive subject, but its study will well repay the most attentive perusal:—

Rules and Advice.—In whatever society you may be, a moderate share of penetration will enable you to find out everybody’s weak points. You may not hit upon them all at once, but make your own private list, and then try them all round. Enter any room as though you were a general practitioner called in to pronounce on everybody’s ailments. You do not want to see their tongues, but only hear how they use them. You can feel the pulse of each one discreetly.

How to make yourself Agreeable with a Nouveau Riche.—Be playfully familiar. Lower yourself to his level; so as not to appear proud of your superior birth and training. Ascertain how he made his money, what was his origin; and, if unable to discover what he sprang from, you can make a safe guess in supposing him to have been a scavenger, a dustman, or as boy engaged in sweeping out an office (many illustrious men who have discharged the highest offices, may have themselves been discharged from the lowest offices for not having kept them clean and tidy), and on this supposition you can at once address him, and proceed to compare his former state of abject poverty with his present apparently inexhaustible wealth, a subject that must afford him the greatest possible pleasure, especially in a mixed company.

*  *  *  *  *

Punch. April 26, 1884.

——:o:——

THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

His extraordinary work The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater published in 1822, (having originally appeared in the London Magazine), was the subject of an exceedingly clever parody in Blackwood for December, 1856, attributed to the pen of Sir E. G. Hamley.

“A Recent Confession of an Opium-Eater” tells how the O.E., somewhere about the year 1828, found himself in the sixteenth storey of a house in the old town of Edinburgh in company with three most unprepossessing personages, one of the feminine gender. He is at first disposed to entertain a favourable opinion of the intellectual status of his entertainers by the sympathising reception accorded to some appreciative remarks offered by him on the greatness of Burke, but afterwards sees reason to question whether their Burke and his were the same person. By-and-by it becomes apparent that his companions are intent upon drugging him. The idea of anyone presuming to hocus the opium-eater tickles his fancy immensely; he enters into the joke, toasts his hosts in laudanum, and obliges them to respond, and in due time has them all under the table. As he goes down-stairs, a little misadventure occurs with a candle, and by next morning the sixteen storeys and the occupants have entirely disappeared. The style of the parody is excellent, a compound of the Opium-Eater and “Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts.”

——:o:——

LADY MORGAN.

As a specimen of her eccentric style take the following passage from “The Wild Irish Girl:” “I was chez moi, inhaling the odeur musquée of my scented boudoir, when the Prince de Z—— entered. He found me in my demi-toilette blasée sur tout, and pensively engaged in solitary conjugation of the verb s’ennuyer, and, though he had never been one of my habitués, or by any means des nôtres, I was not disinclined, at this moment of délassement, to glide with him into the crocchio ristretto of familiar chat.” The above has been done into French by M. H. Cocheris in the following style: “J’etais at home, aspirant la musky smell de mon private room lorsque le Prince Z—— entra. Il me trouva en simple dress, fatigued with everything, tristement occupée à conjuguer le verbe to be weary, et quoique je ne l’eusse jamais compté au nombre de mes intimates, et qu’il n’etait, en aucune façon, of our set, j’etais assez disposée à entrer avec lui dans le crocchio ristretto d’une causerie familière.”

——:o:——

ARCHIBALD FORBES.

An American paper has the following amusing burlesque of Mr. Archibald Forbes’ style. Mr. Forbes is supposed to be replying to the toast of the English press. “Mr. Chairman—I am Mr. Archibald Forbes. I have been everywhere. I have done everything. I am a very smart fellow. I am not to be out-done. I know the Emperor of China. I know the King of the Cannibal Islands. I am intimately acquainted with the Grand Llama. I have lived with the Shah of Persia. I am the dearest friend of the Emperor of Russia.” The report comes abruptly to an end with the editorial remark. “Here our sorts of I’s gave out.”

——:o:——

COOKERY BOOKS.

During the Crimean War, when there was a great outcry about the starving condition of our troops, and the utter breakdown of the Commissariat, the following parody on Mr. A. Soyer’s cookery book appeared in “Our Miscellany,” by Yates and Brough:—

Camp Cookery.

By Alicksus Sawder

To boil cabbage.—It is necessary to procure a cabbage. Wash in cold water; which, throw down a gutter, or outside a tent if no gutter be procurable. Be careful not to splash trousers, especially in frosty weather. Stick a two-pronged fork boldly into the cabbage (a bayonet will do equally well), and plunge it into a saucepan of water just at boiling point. When it has boiled for eight minutes, twenty-five seconds, throw eleven-fifteenths of a teaspoonful of salt into the water. Let the cabbage boil till it is thoroughly done. At that moment be on the watch to take it out of the saucepan (taking care to avert the face from the steam), and place in a vegetable dish. Put the cover on, and serve up with roast beef, ortolans, venison, pickled pork, or whatever may come handiest. An old helmet will supply the place of a saucepan. Cauliflowers may be cooked in the same manner; and, indeed, most things.

To fry Bacon.—Cut your bacon into long strips, or rashers. Wipe your frying-pan out with a coarse towel, or lining of old dressing-gown. Then place it gently (so as not to knock the bottom out) over a brisk fire. Place the rashers in, one by one. When they are done on one side, turn them over to do on the other. When they have attained a rich brown, take them out and arrange them on a dish, or slice of bread, or anything. Watch your rashers, so that the sentinel outside doesn’t get at them; and eat when you feel inclined. The gravy may be sopped up from the frying-pan with crumbs of bread. If only biscuit is to be obtained, use the fingers, which lick carefully. The rind may be preserved in the waistcoat pocket, for sucking while on duty.

Roast Potatoes.—Put your potatoes under the stove, and rake hot embers over them. While they are cooking get as much butter as the commissariat will allow you, and put it on a clean dish, or, a dirty one, with half a sheet of writing-paper on it (indeed, in an extreme case, the writing-paper will enable you to dispense with the dish altogether). Taste the butter, but don’t eat it all up till the potatoes are done. Great care will be required for the observance of the latter regulation. Cut the butter into dice of from six to seven-eighths of a cubic inch. When the potatoes are done, cut them open and insert a dice of butter in each, closing the potato rapidly to prevent evaporation. Eat with pepper and salt, or whatever you can get.

Another Method.—If you can’t get any butter, do without it.

Potatoes and Point.—This is a very popular dish in Ireland, and one which I have frequently partaken of in that country. The method of preparing it in the Crimea is as follows:—Boil a dish of potatoes, and serve up hot, with a watch-glass full of powdered salt. When they are ready for eating, point, with the fore-finger of the right hand, in a north-westerly direction, where the regions of beef are supposed to exist.

*  *  *  *  *

There was also an old parody, by Dr. King, on The Art of Cookery.

---

The Military Cookery-Book.

How to make a Recruit.—Take a raw lad from the country (the younger the better) and fill his head with military froth. Add a shilling and as much beer as will be covered by the bounty-money. Let him simmer, and serve him up thick before a Magistrate the next morning. Let him be sworn in, and he then will be nicely done.

How to make a Soldier.—Take your recruit, and thrust him roughly into a depôt. Mix him up well with recruits from other regiments until he has lost any esprit de corps which may have been floating upon the surface when he enlisted. Now let him lie idle for a few years until his strength is exhausted, and then, at ten minutes’ notice, pack him off to India.

Another Method.—Take your recruit, and place him at headquarters. Let him mix freely with all the bad characters that have been carefully kept in the regiment, until his nature has become assimilated to theirs. For three years pay him rather less than a ploughboy’s wages, and make him work rather harder than a costermonger’s donkey. Your soldier having now reached perfection, you will turn him out of the Service with Economical Dressing.

How to make a Deserter.—A very simple and popular dish. Take a soldier, see that he is perfectly free from any mark by which he may be identified, and fill his head with grievances. Now add a little opportunity, and you have, or, rather, you have not, your deserter.

Another and Simpler Method.—Take a recruit, without inquiring into his antecedents. Give him his kit and bounty-money and close your eyes. The same recruit may be used for this dish (which will be found to be a fine military hash) any number of times.

How to make an Army.—Take a few scores of Infantry Regiments and carefully proceed to under-man them. Add some troopers without horses, and some batteries without guns. Throw in a number of unattached Generals, and serve up the whole with a plentiful supply of Control Mixture.

Another and Easier Method.—Get a little ink, a pen, and a sheet of paper. Now dip your pen in the ink, and with it trace figures upon your sheet of paper. The accompaniment to this dish is usually hot water.

How to make a Panic.—Take one or two influential newspapers in the dead season of the year, and fill them with smartly written letters. Add a few pointed leading articles, and pull your Army into pieces. Let the whole simmer until the opening of Parliament. This once popular mess is now found to be rather insipid, unless it is produced nicely garnished with plenty of Continental sauce, mixed with just an idea of Invasion relish. With these zests, however, it is always found to be toothsome, although extremely expensive.

Punch. November 21, 1874.

——:o:——

Henry Labouchere and Edmund Yates.

It is customary for the Editors of Truth and The World to publish the latest on dits of Society, and each delights in contradicting the other on little matters of detail. This sport does not much interest the general public, but it appears to afford great amusement to the two Editors. Some of their paragraphs are scarcely less absurd than the following:—

[“Henry” has promised that he will go and see “Edmund” in Holloway Prison.]

Extract I. (From “Truth.”)

“I made a pilgrimage to Holloway Castle one day last week, and was pleased to find poor Edmund in excellent spirits. He was lounging in a handsomely upholstered chair from Gillow’s, while he smoked a capital Manilla.From “Truth.” In the course of our conversation, I learnt that it is his intention to publish a volume of ‘Prison Recollections’ when he again emerges into the outer world. Edmund has lost flesh, but is otherwise in his usual health.”

Extract II. (From “The World.”)

“Really, Henry, I am getting quite tired of correcting your blunders. The chair in which you found me seated was supplied to me by Maple, whom I much prefer to Gillow. You have also put your foot in it about the cigar, which was an Intimidad and not a Manilla. Thirdly, I don’t intend to publish any ‘Prison Recollections;’ and as for my having lost flesh, that is pure rubbish. How can one lose flesh when one continues to feed as well as usual, and is at the same time obliged to drop one’s horse exercise in the Row?”

Extract III. (From “Truth.”)

“I have always maintained that you are far too impetuous, Edmund. Perhaps you are correct about your not having lost flesh, though I could have sworn that I counted one chin less than usual upon your face. I may also have been in error regarding the ‘Recollections’ and the chair, but I cannot for a moment admit that your Manilla was an Intimidad. You are no judge of tobacco. I am, and the illustrated advertisement of Somebody’s cigarettes is sufficient proof of the fact.”

Extract IV. (From “The World.”)

“Upon certain subjects, Henry, pig-headed ass is not the name for you. Don’t visit me again, please.”

Extract V. (From “Truth.”)

“Catch me at it, my dear Edmund.”

Funny Folks, January 31, 1885.

——:o:——

The Real Little Lord Fauntleroy.

A short parody, having the above title appeared in Punch, May 19, 1888, with an illustration by Linley Sambourne, representing Lord Randolph Churchill, and the Duke of Cambridge. At the time it appeared Lord Randolph was posing as an advocate of Retrenchment and Reform. That a member of the Marlborough family of national bloodsuckers should appear as the advocate of economy was a joke that was far too good to last, and Lord Randolph having remained in the cabinet long enough to earn a pension, found it convenient to resign.

(An imaginary conversation. With apologies to Mrs. F. H. Burnett.)

And then the Duke looked up.

What Little Grandolph saw was a portly old man, with scanty white hair and bushy whiskers, and a nose like a florid bulb between his prominent imperious eyes.

What the Duke saw was a smart, small figure in a jaunt, suit, with a large collar, and with trim, accurately-parted locks curved carefully about the curiously canine little face whose equally protuberant eyes met his with a look of—well, perhaps the Duke would have found it difficult exactly to define the character of that look, but it combined in an emphatic way the interrogative and the ironical.

It was thought that Little Lord Fauntleroy was himself rather like a small copy of a grander and older original, and he himself was supposed to be well aware of the fact. But there was a sudden glow of emotion in the irascible old Duke’s face as he saw what a sturdy, self-confident little fellow Lord Fauntleroy was, and how unhesitatingly he stood to his guns in all circumstances. It moved the grim old nobleman that the youngster should show no shyness or fear, either of the situation or of himself.

“Are you the Duke?” he said. “I’m a Duke’s son, you see, and know something about such things. I’m Lord Grandolph Fauntleroy.”

He nodded affably, because he knew it to be the polite and proper thing to do, even from young and clever Lords to old and (the adjective he mentally used may be suppressed) Dukes. “I hope you—and the Army—are all right,” he continued, with the utmost airiness. “I’m very glad to see you here.”

“Glad to see me, are you?” said the Duke.

“Yes,” answered Lord Fauntleroy, “very.”

There was a chair at the head of the table, and he sat down on it; it was a big chair, and, physically, he hardly filled it perhaps; but he seemed quite at his ease as he sat there, and regarded a Monarch’s august relative intently and confidently.

“I’ve often wondered what a Commander-in-Chief would look like when being cross-examined,” he remarked. “I’ve wondered whether he’d be anything like my great ancestor of the Queen Anne epoch.”

“Am I?” asked the Duke.

“Well,” Grandolph replied, “I’ve only seen pictures of him, of course, and I can’t exactly say how he would have looked in a similar case, but I don’t think you are much like him.”

“You are disappointed, I suppose?” suggested his august interlocutor.

“Oh no!” replied Grandolph, politely. “Of course you would like any great military contemporary to look like your own illustrious ancestor; but of course you might admire the way your great military contemporary looked, even if he wasn’t like your illustrious ancestor. You know how it is yourself, about admiring your contemporaries.”

The Duke stared. He could hardly be said to know how it was about admiring his contemporaries, many of whom he didn’t admire at all, and some of whom did not altogether admire him.

“Well, and how’s our bit of an Army getting on?” asked little Lord Fauntleroy, airily.

“Our—bit—of—an—Army?” repeated the Duke, in a scattered sort of way.

“Yes,” explained Grandolph, “the bit of an Army we pay such a pile of money for?”

“Ha!” ejaculated his Lordship. “That’s it, is it? The money isn’t spent as you like. You’d like to have the spending of it. What would you buy with it? I should like to hear something about that.”

“Doubtless,” replied Lord Fauntleroy, coolly. “Some day you may. At present I’m asking questions, and your business is to answer them.”

“The D——!” began the Duke, hotly.

“Quite so—the D—— etails,” interjected Little Lord Fauntleroy, blandly. “As you were doubtless about to say, the details are the things! All very well to say in a general sort of way that the Army is going to—its usual destination, Duke; that Party Spirit and Financial Cheese-paring are the cause of it, and that more men and money are urgently required. That won’t do for me. I want to know—so does the Country—much more than that. How? Why? What? When? How many? How much? These, my dear Duke, are the pertinent questions to which we—the Country and I—demand precise answers. When we get them, instead of vague denunciation and big D’s, we shall know what to do.”

The sensations of his Royal Highness the Duke, could scarcely be described. He was not an old nobleman who was very easily taken aback, because he had seen a great deal of the official world; but here was something he found so novel that it almost took his lordly breath away, and caused him some singular emotions. A civilian had always seemed to him a most objectionable creature—impertinent, parsimonious, and with inadequate conceptions of discipline. But this composed, precise, insolently interrogative little personage was a portent. The Duke’s martinet manner was quite shaken by this startling surprise.

*  *  *  *  *

The Standard (London) in 1885 ventured to criticise the political character and conduct of Lord Randolph Churchill, but three years later it contained an article which read like a parody of its former utterances about this Boulanger of the Fourth Party:—

(From the Standard,
July 31, 1885.)

It is time to speak plainly. Lord Randolph Churchill has been puffed by his friends in the daily and weekly press with admirable assiduity. He has dined with them and they have dined with him, and the well-organised claque are ready to cry “Prodigious!” whenever he opens his mouth. But it is all in vain. We no longer live in days when the public can be gulled by such arts.… The truth is, that Lord Randolph Churchill is a much over-rated man. He is now verging upon middle-age and has reached a time of life when even flighty minds ought to sober down. But this is what he cannot do. His almost incredible ignorance of affairs, his boyish delight in offering the crudest insults to men who have been fifty years in the service of the State, his pranks, his blunders, are ceasing to amuse.… Instead of his being broken in by his colleagues, his colleagues have been broken in by him, and he has been able to make them adopt as the deliberate and well-digested convictions of sagacious and practical Englishmen, the crude conceits of a political neophyte, which his own little Senate labour hard to represent as the language of a new Tory gospel.… We will follow Lord Salisbury, but we will not be governed by a sort of overgrown schoolboy, who thinks he is witty when he is only impudent, and who really does not seem to possess sufficient knowledge even to fathom the depths of his own ignorance of everything worthy of the name of statesmanship.

(From the Standard,
July 29, 1888.)

The interest excited by the other appointments sinks into nothing compared with that which must be felt in the promotion of Lord R. Churchill to the Chancellorship of the Exchequer and the leadership of the House of Commons. There is, doubtless, much that may be said against the appointment to so responsible a position of one who has had so brief an experience of official life, and who has hitherto been more remarkable for brilliancy than discretion. On the other hand, Lord Randolph Churchill possesses the debating power and the dauntless spirit which are indispensable to a successful leader. There are times and seasons when self-confidence, readiness, and a command of that pungent rhetoric which often tells better in the House of Commons than the closest and most judicial argument, are of more service to a party than any other qualities which a Parliamentary statesman can possess. Lord Randolph Churchill moreover, is eminently popular with “the masses,” and so far has a title to confront Mr. Gladstone which no other man on the Conservative side of the House can show. In short, he is an orator and a wit; and in a popular assembly these are titles to pre-eminence which it is not very easy to dispute. It remains for Lord Randolph Churchill to demonstrate that the great confidence that has been reposed in him has not been misplaced.

Taken in connection with the above extracts, it is amusing to read the leader which appeared in The Standard, July 31, 1889:—

Lord Randolph Churchill used his opportunities at Birmingham yesterday to illustrate, on a more ambitious scale than he has yet attempted, his constitutional incapacity for public life. A Statesman should be discreet; and even the hack politician is expected to be loyal to his associates. Lord Randolph has been at some pains to prove that no colleagues can trust him, and that no school of opinion can rely upon him for six weeks together. He made several speeches yesterday, and discussed at considerable length, and with an air of dogmatic assurance, a variety of topics. But the miscellaneous heads were all firmly held together by one pervading principle. Lord Randolph Churchill, his position and prospects, and the supreme importance of improving both at any cost, constituted the informing element of the whole medley. It does not, of course, follow that because Lord Randolph played a selfish game, he played a wise one. His addresses, we imagine, will strike him as poor reading by daylight. Even in the atmosphere of the City Hall, the reception was not altogether encouraging. It is not flattering to an orator to find that sayings which he meant to be oracular provoked merriment; that his serious things were taken as jokes and his jokes as serious things; and that solemn declarations of policy, which were designed to draw ringing cheers, were listened to in chilling silence, or, still worse, excited immediate and emphatic protest.

——:o:——

H. Rider Haggard.

He, by the author of “It,” “King Solomon’s Wives,” “Bess,” and other Romances. London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1887. This, of course, is a parody of “She; a History of Adventure,” by H. Rider Haggard, author of “King Solomon’s mines,” etc. Also published by Longmans and Co. London.

She was also dramatised, and produced at the Gaiety Theatre, London, in September, 1888.

Punch had a humorous skit on this adaptation (September 15, 1888) entitled “She-that-ought-not-to-be-played! A Story of Gloomy Gaiety.”

A burlesque of “She” had also previously appeared in Punch, February 26, 1887, entitled “Hee! Hee!” by Walker Weird, author of “Solomon’s Ewers.”

American publishers not only pirated the popular works of Mr. Rider Haggard, but one firm proceeded to father upon him a work of which he knew nothing. This was entitled “Me, a companion to She.” By H. Rider Haggard; published by Butler Brothers, of New York and Chicago. In justice to that firm, however, it must be said that they withdrew the work from circulation as soon as they discovered that Mr. Haggard objected to having his name coupled with it. Copies of this are consequently very difficult to procure.

King Solomon’s Wives; or, The Phantom Mines. By Hyder Ragged. With numerous illustrations by Linley Sambourne. London, Vizetelly and Co., 1887.

The jocular introduction to this is signed A. Quaterman.

——:o:——

Samuel Richardson.

It is well known that Fielding’s Joseph Andrews was written with the intention of ridiculing Richardson’s tediously moral novel Pamela, of which to a certain extent it is a parody, Joseph, the virtuous footman, being the brother of Pamela, and subjected to similar temptations. Fielding had a contempt for the priggish tone of Richardson’s works, and his ridicule succeeded in almost killing Pamela.

There was another curious attack on Richardson entitled “Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews, in which the Falsehoods of Pamela are Exposed, together with a full Account of all that passed between her and Parson Williams,” by Mr. Conny Keyber. 1741.

The History of Clorana, the Beautiful Arcadian, or Virtue Triumphant, 1737. (Pamela, with slight variations.)

——:o:——

MISS BRADDON.

Dr. Marchmont’s Misery.

This was a burlesque of “Lady Audley’s Secret” which appeared in Judy, 1868. It was written by Mr. Walter Parke. The following is an extract from this humorous work:—

Chapter xii.

Day had broken (though Martin was still solvent) and was casting brilliant Holborn Bars of light through the windows of Tredethlyn Abbey on to the artistic Phiz of Lady Aurorabella.

She was very very weary—tired of her own life, and of several other people’s lives, also she had not the heart to eat, and probably would not have eaten it if she had. Beyond trifling with the wing of a rabbit, cutting a morsel from a cold surloin of grouse, and drinking a single glass of Chiaroscuro, her breakfast was untouched.

For she had just received intelligence that, in spite of all her exertions, her Five Husbands were again at liberty!

“Oh! why did they not all perish?” she sobbed. “I have tried to get rid of them over and over again by every species of assassination, but now I am tired of mild measures. I must do something Desperate!”

So she summoned that ubiquitous detective officer, Inspector Weasel, who, from any quarter of the globe, would come by telegraph to obey her slightest word.

“Weasel” she said “I can endure this no longer, I have made a resolve. By the tyrannical laws of this hateful country, my quintette of husbands have been allowed to keep the marriage certificates. Once in possession of them, I could defy the world. If you value my peace or your own, you must get them for me.”

“I will,” replied the all accomplished detective and he set about it at once.

First, to pursue the fugitive Dr. Marchmont, “Ah” murmured the Detective “my experience tells me that when a fellow on the bolt says he is going to one place, he is certain to set off in exactly the opposite direction. Let me see,” And he carefully examined his Government survey of the World.

*  *  *  *  *

Inspector Weasel hastened to the Snoozington Railway Station.

“What time does the next train start for Kamtschatka?” “At 6.85,” was the reply.

The detective chafed with impatience. Two minutes to wait! It seemed an eternity-and-a-half to him! At length the train arrived and the detective jumped up behind the Engine Driver. “Off we go!” he cried, “bother stations, and signals, and all that sort of thing, never mind bursting the engine, or blowing up the passengers. I’m in a hurry!”

——:o:——

THE POLITE LETTER WRITER.

At the distribution of prizes to the art classes at Chesterfield in November, 1880, the secretary read a communication purporting to come from Mr. John Ruskin, in answer to one asking him to give them a lecture. It was as follows:—

“Harlesden, London, Friday.

“My dear Sir,—Your letter reaches me here. I have just returned from Venice, where I have ruminated in the pasturages of the home of art; the loveliest and holiest of lovely and holy cities, where the very stones cry out, eloquent in the elegancies of Iambics. I could not if I would go to Chesterfield, and I much doubt whether I would go if I could. I do not hire myself out—after the fashion of a brainless long tongued puppet—for filthy ducats. You, and those who told you to write me, want me, I presume, to come that you may make money for your art class; and if I should get you much money, you will then tolerate some good advice from me. No, I will not come.

“I have heard of Chesterfield. Hath it not a steeple-abomination, and is it not the home—if not the cradle—of that arch abomination-creator, Stephenson? To him are we indebted for the screeching and howling and shrieking fiends fit only for a Pandemonium, called locomotives, that disfigure the loveliest spots of God’s own land.

“I will not come to Chesterfield. Tell your students that art is a holy luxury, and they must pay for it. Tell them to study, to ponder, and to work with a single thought for perfection, observing loving and strict obedience to the monitions of their teacher. Let them learn to do things rightly and humbly, and then, by the conviction that they can never do them as well as they have been done by others, they may be profited.

“My good young people, this is pre-eminently the foolishest—yes, quite the foolishest—notion that you can get into your empty little egg-shells of heads; that you can be a Titian, or a Raphael, or a Phidias; or that you can write like Seneca. But because you cannot be great, that is no reason why you should not aspire to greatness. In joy, humility, and humbleness, work together. Only don’t study art because it will pay, and do not ask for payment because you study art. Art will make you all wiser and happier, and is worth paying for. If you are in debt—as I suppose you are, or why pester me?—pay off your debts yourselves. If you write to me only that you may get money, you are on the foolishest of all errands. Wisdom is more precious than rubies, and is offered to you as a blessing in herself. She is the reward of industry, kindness and modesty. She is the prize of prizes, the strength of your life now, and an earnest of the life that is to come. This advice is better than money, and I give it to you gratis. Ponder it and profit by it.—Ever faithfully yours,

John Ruskin.”

Many were the comments which this letter, widely published, as it was, created; for scarcely any one doubted the authenticity of the letter addressed to Chesterfield, a name which recals that of a celebrated Earl who also wrote letters, but his were on the art of politeness.

But a few days afterwards Mr. Ruskin denied that he had composed the epistle; it is, therefore, only of interest now as so clever a parody of his style that the whole London press was deceived by it. The following letter, however, was certainly genuine. In June 1886, a circular was addressed to Mr. Ruskin appealing for subscriptions towards extinquishing the debt of the Baptist Church at Richmond, to which he replied:—

Sir,—I am sorrowfully amused at your appeal to me, of all people in the world the precisely least likely to give you a farthing. My first word to all men and boys who care to hear me is “Don’t get into debt. Starve, and go to heaven; but don’t borrow. Try first begging. I don’t mind, if it’s really needful, stealing. But don’t buy things you can’t pay for.” And of all manner of debtors, pious people building churches they can’t pay for are the most detestable nonsense to me. Can’t you preach and pray behind the hedges, or in a sandpit, or in a coal-hole first? And of all manner of churches thus idiotically built, iron churches are the damnablest to me. And of all the sects and believers in any ruling spirit, Hindoos, Turks, Feather Idolators, and Mumbo Jumbo Log and Fire Worshippers, who want churches, your modern English Evangelical sect is the most absurd and entirely objectionable and unendurable to me. All which you might very easily have found out from my books. Any other sort of sect would, before bothering me to write it to them.—Ever, nevertheless, and in all this saying, your faithful servant,

John Ruskin.

Having enumerated the most important parodies of our great novelists, and given such extracts as the limits of space would permit, it only remains to mention such other prose parodies of works of fiction, which are either of less merit in themselves, or mimic authors of less importance than those already dealt with. This list can only be approximately complete, as there are hundreds of such parodies buried away in the back numbers of the Magazines and Comic Journals.

W. Harrison Ainsworth.

The Age of Lawn Tennis. A fragment after Harrison Ainsworth’s “Rookwood.” See Tennis Cuts and Quips.

Old Temple Bar; by W, Harrissing Ainsworth. See The Puppet Showman’s Album.

Blueacre. A Romance, by W. Harrising Painsworth. See Our Miscellany, by E. H. Yates and R. B. Brough.

William Black.

In Silk Attire. By W——m B——k. See The Tomahawk, July 17, 1869.

There was also a parody of Mr. Black, in The World.

A Princess of Lundy. By W——m B——k. See Ben D’Ymion and other Novelettes, by H. F. Lester. London, Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1887.

This volume also contains:—

Muddlemarsh, by George Eliot.

The Portrait of a Hybrid, by Henry James.

A Rustic Zenobia, by Thomas Hardy.

James Fribblesaint, by J. H Shorthouse.

Countess of Blessington.

Portraits of Children of the Mobility, drawn from Nature, with Memoirs and Characteristic Sketches by the Author of the “Comic English Grammar” (Gilbert A. à Beckett), plates by John Leech. London, 1841.

A remarkably clever parody upon a publication entitled “Children of the Nobility,” issued under the auspices of the Countess of Blessington, the first Edition of which is scarce.

Charlotte Brontë.

Miss Mix. By Charlotte Brontë. See Sensation Novels Condensed, by Bret Harte.

Miss Braddon.

Selina Sedilia. By Miss M. E. Braddon and Mrs. Henry Wood. See Sensation Novels Condensed, by Bret Harte.

Miss Rhoda Broughton.

Gone Wrong. A new Novel by Miss Rhody Dendron, Authoress of “Cometh down like a Shower,” “Red in the Nose is She,” etc.

By F. C. Burnand. London, Bradbury, & Co, 1881.

Colonel F. Burnaby.

The Ride to Khiva. By F. C. Burnand. London, Bradbury, Agnew & Co, 1879. This burlesque of Colonel Burnaby’s A Ride to Khiva originally appeared in Punch.

Samuel Butler.

The Irish Hudibras, or Fingallian Prince. 1689.

The Whigs’ Supplication; or, Scotch Hudibras, a mock Poem. By Samuel Colville. First published in 1681, there have since been several editions.

The Lentiad; or, Peter the Pope pommelled and Pounded with a Hudibrastic Cudgel. Edited by Rev. John Allan. (Violently Anti-Catholic.) London, William Freeman, 1863.

Butler’s Ghost; or Hudibras, the fourth part, with reflections upon these times. Tom D’Urfey. 1682.

The Modern Hudibras, a poem in three cantos. By George Linley. London, J. C. Hotten, 1864.

“Cœlebs in search of a Wife.”

Cœlebs Deceived, a Novel. 1817.

Celia in search of a Husband, by a Modern Antique. 1809.

Miguel Cervantes.

A Chapter from the Book called The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha, which by some mischance has not till now been printed. London, George Redway, 1887.

(A curious dissertation on the literature of the Occult Sciences.)

Don Quixote; or, the Knight of the woeful Countenance. A Romantic Drama, in two acts. By George Almar, Surrey Theatre London, April 8, 1833. (Dicks).

Don Quixote was also dramatised at the Alhambra Theatre, London, a few years ago.

Wilkie Collins.

The Moonstone and Moonshine, after Wilkie Collins. This parody appeared in The Mask, London, August 1868.

No Title, by Wilkie Collins. See Sensation Novels Condensed, by Bret Harte.

Thomas Day.

The New History of Sandford and Merton. Being a True Account of the Adventures of “Masters Tommy and Harry,” with their Beloved Tutor, “Mr. Barlow.” By F. C. Burnand, with 76 Illustrations by Linley Sambourne.

London, Bradbury, Agnew & Co. 1871.

Of all Mr. Burnand’s burlesques, this is probably the most humorous; the immortal tutor prig, Mr. Barlow, the funny moral tales, and the equally funny illustrations, can scarcely be surpassed.

Daniel Defoe.

The New Robinson Crusoe, an Instructive and Entertaining History for the Children of both sexes. Thirty-two woodcuts by John Bewick. London, 1811.

Robinson Crusoe was translated into Latin by F. J. Goffaux in 1823, there are several French versions of it, the “Swiss Family Robinson,” and one in German called “Robinson the Younger,” by J. H. Campe.

Robinson the Younger, translated from the German of J. H. Campe. Hamburg, 1781.

Benjamin Disraeli.

Anti-Coningsby, or the New Generation grown old. By an embryo M.P. (Mr. W. North). 1844.

Hythair. By Walter Parke, Funny Folks, 1876.

Splendimion, or, the Asian Mystery. A Grand “Diz”-torical Romance. By Walter Parke. Funny Folks, 1880.

Charles Dickens.

In the list of plays founded on his novels, given on p. 226, the following should have been included:—

A Christmas Carol. By E. Stirling. Adelphi Theatre. February 5, 1844. (Barth.)

The Chimes. By E. Stirling, Lyceum Theatre, December, 26, 1844.

A Christmas Carol. By Charles Webb, (Barth.)

Martin Chuzzlewit. By Harry Minus, Oxford Theatre, Easter Monday, 1878, (Dicks).

These entries have been courteously supplied by Mr. T. F. Dillon Croker.

Hugh Conway.

Much Darker Days. By A. Huge Longway, author of “Scrawled Black,” “Unbound,” etc.

London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1884. Anonymous, preface signed A. H. L.

A later edition of this parody of Hugh Conway’s Dark Days was published in 1885, with an apologetic Preface.

Hauled Back, by his Wife. By Ugo Gone-away Hugaway. (Anonymous) London, J. and R. Maxwell, 1885.

Henry Fielding.

The History of Tom Jones the Foundling, in his Married State, London, 1750.

Tom Jones, a Comic Opera, as performed at Covent Garden Theatre, the words by Joseph Reed.

Tom Jones was also dramatised by Robert Buchanan, as well as Joseph Andrews, the title of which he changed to Joseph’s Sweetheart.

Mrs. Gore.

Mammon’s Marriage, by Mrs. Bore. See The Shilling Book of Beauty, by Cuthbert Bede.

Fergus W. Hume.

A Blood Curdling Romance.

The Mystery of a Wheelbarrow; or, Gaboriau Gaborooed. By W. Humer Ferguson. London, Walter Scott, 1888. A parody of The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, by Fergus W. Hume, of Melbourne, Australia.

G. P. R. James.

The Page. A Romaunt from English history, by Gustavus Penny Royal Jacobus. See Our Miscellany, by E. H. Yates and R. B. Brough.

The Passage of Prawns. A Tale of Picardy, by George Prince Regent James. See The Puppet Showman’s Album.

In Cruikshank’s Almanac for 1846, will be found an article entitled “Hints to Novelists,” in which short imitations are given of G. P. R. James, C. Dickens, and Fennimore Cooper.

Barbazure, by G. P. R. Jeames, Esq. See Novels by Eminent Hands, by W. M. Thackeray. (These originally appeared in Punch.)

Magnum of Burgundy. A Romance of the Fronde. See A Bowl of Punch, by Albert Smith.

The Robber of Idleburg, by Walter Parke. See The Comic News, London. 1864.

Charles Lever.

Phil. Fogarty. A Tale of the Fighting Onety-oneth. By Harry Rollicker. See Novels by Eminent Hands, by W. M. Thackeray.

Terence Deuville, by Charles L—v—r. See Sensation Novels Condensed, by Bret Harte.

Tom Kinnahan, or the Frays and Fights of a Horse Marine. By Charles Heaver, author of the “Confessions of Larry Jollycur,” etc. See The Puppet Showman’s Album.

Lord Lytton.

The Wrongful Heir; or, What will they do with him? A Strange Story. By Walter Parke. Judy, 1869.

Baron Munchausen.

The Travels and Surprising adventures of Baron Munchausen. First English Edition Oxford, 1786.

There can be little doubt but what this amusing piece of nonsense was written to ridicule certain German memoirs, some say those of Baron de Tott, others say those of Baron Von Trenck. The authorship of the work was also the subject of dispute, but it is now generally ascribed to G. A. Bürger, the German poet, who died in 1794.

In 1792 there appeared A Sequel to the Adventures of Baron Munchausen which was humbly dedicated to Mr. Bruce, the celebrated Abyssinian traveller.

The Surprising, Unheard of, and Never-to-be-surpassed Adventures of Young Munchausen, related and illustrated by C. H. Bennett. In twelve “Stories.” London, Routledge & Co., 1865.

This originally appeared in Routledge’s Every Boy’s Annual.

“Ouida.” (Louise de la Ramée.)

Blue Blooded Bertie, or under two fires. A serial burlesque of Ouida’s “Under Two Flags,” by Walter Parke. Funny Folks, 1875.

Samuel Pepys.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys Esq., while an undergraduate at Cambridge. With notes and appendix. Cambridge: Jonathan Palmer, 1864. This clever parody ran through several Editions, it was thought to be the production of Mr. Cooke, a student of Emanuel College, Cambridge.

Mr. Pips, hys Diary. Manners and Customs of ye English, 1849. By Percival Leigh, with illustrations by Richard Doyle.

The University Commission, or, Lord John Russell’s Postbag, containing Mister Anthony Pepys his Diary, he being a member of the said Commission. Oxford, W. Baxter, 1850.

(Written in the style of Pepys’ Diary.)

Charles Reade.

Chikkin Hazard. A Novel by Charles Readit and Dion Bounceycore. This parody on Fowl Play, written by Mr. F. C. Burnand, first appeared in Punch, it was afterwards issued in book form by Bradbury, Agnew & Co., 1881.

Sir Walter Scott.

Rebecca and Rowena. A sequel to Ivanhoe. By W. M. Thackeray.

Pontefract Castle, a novel attributed to Sir W. Scott. Contained in Tales of my Landlord, new series, published in 1820.

Sir Walter Scott formally disavowed this work at the end of his introduction to “The Monastery,” 1830.

Waverley. An abridged edition was published by Knight and Lacy, London, 1827, with the title page “Novels, Tales, and Romances” by Sir Walter Scott, abridged and illustrated by Sholto Percy. This appears to have been a gross piracy.

Moredun: A tale of the Twelve Hundred and Ten, by W. S. This was published in 1855, as a newly discovered Waverley novel.

Walladmor. (2 vols. 1855). A Novel, by De Quincey, which purported to be “Freely translated into German from the English of Sir Walter Scott, and now freely translated from the German into English.” It appears that German readers were actually hoaxed into the belief that this novel was by Scott.

Hawley Smart.

What’s the Odds? or, The Dumb Jockey of Teddington. A sporting novel by Major Jawley Sharp.

By F. C. Burnand, London, Bradbury and Co., 1879.

(This originally appeared in Punch.)

Horace Smith.

Whitehall; or, the Days of George IV. Dedicated to Sir Edmund Nagle, K.C.B. London. W. Marsh, 1827.

Horace Smith, one of the authors of Rejected Addresses, wrote a number of historical novels, most of which are now entirely forgotten. One of these was called Brambletye House, to ridicule which Dr. William Maginn wrote Whitehall.

“The author’s object,” said the Quarterly Review, in January 1828, “is to laugh down the Brambletye House species of novel; and for this purpose we are presented with such an historical romance as an author of Brambletye House, flourishing in Barbadoes 200 or 2,000 years hence, we are not certain which, nor is the circumstance of material moment, might fairly be expected to compose of and concerning the personages, manners, and events of the age and country in which we live * * * * The book is, in fact, a series of parodies upon unfortunate Mr. Horace Smith,—and it is paying the author no compliment to say that his mimicry (with all its imperfections) deserves to outlive the ponderous original.”

But Whitehall is itself, almost as heavy and as tedious, as the work it parodies.

Robert Louis Stevenson

The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson. This weird and powerful story was dramatised by Mr. T. Russell Sullivan, and produced at the Lyceum Theatre in August 1888, Mr. Richard Mansfield performed the two title parts.

Another, but very inferior version, was brought out at the Opera Comique, London, by Mr. Bandmann about the same time, which the critics very unkindly laughed at as a ridiculous burlesque. Legal proceedings, however, soon compelled Mr. Bandmann to withdraw his unfortunate adaptation, and hurriedly close the theatre.

The Strange case of the Prime Minister and Mr. Muldoon, by Arthur Law, (London, 1886) was a sixpenny political pamphlet written to ridicule the Earl of Granville, Lord Hartington, Mr. Parnell and Mr. Gladstone.

The best thing in it was the following little parody:—

“You are old, father William,” the young man said,

“You are not far off eighty, I ween;

And yet you can speak for an hour or two

And no one find out what you mean.”

“In my youth,” father William replied to his son,

“All my scruples I laid on the shelf;

And now to drag from me a plain yes or no

Would puzzle the devil himself.”

The Pirate’s Hand. A Romance of Heredity. By the Author of “The Strange case of Doctor Shuffle and Mister Glyde.” London, “Judy” office, 1888.

Jonathan Swift.

Hints to Servants; being a poetical and modernised version of Dean Swift’s celebrated “Directions to Servants.” By an Upper Servant. 1843.

Swift himself wrote some burlesques, amongst them one in prose, A Meditation on a Broomstick, in imitation of the style of the Hon. Robert Boyle’s Meditations.

His witty Directions to Servants, and The Polite and Ingenious Conversations, satirical and frequently indecent as they are, are also burlesques of their topics, treated in a very original manner.

Various imitations of the Directions to Servants have been written.

Swift’s Tale of a Tub Reversed for the universal improvement of mankind. 1750.

Gulliver Revived; or, the Vice of Lying properly Exposed, containing singular travels, campaigns, adventures, &c. by Baron Munchausen, also, a Sequel to the Adventures dedicated to Bruce, the Abyssinian Traveller. 1789-92.

Lilliput, being a new journey to that celebrated island, with an account of the manners, customs, &c., of those famous little people, by Lemuel Gulliver, 1766.

A political skit. The names are thinly disguised by the transposition of letters.

Voyage to Locuta; a Fragment, with etchings and notes of illustrations. By Lemuel Gulliver Junr. London, J. Hatchard 1818. A curious little grammatical work written in the form of an allegory, and as a sequel to Gulliver’s travels. (Scarce).

Gulliver and Munchausen outdone, by Peter Vangergoose. London, 1807.

W. M. Thackeray.

The Coachman, the Cook, and their Prodigy the Page. By Wm. Breakpeace Thwackaway.

See The Shilling Book of Beauty. This parody was written by the late J. H. Friswell.

Mrs. Tippikens’ Yellow Velvet Cape. By W. M. Thwackaway. (With an illustration by the author).

See The Puppet Showman’s Album. This little brochure also contains prose imitations of Lytton, G. P. R. James, B. Disraeli, C. Dickens, Charles Lever, T. Carlyle, W. H. Ainsworth, Douglas Jerrold, W. S. Landor, Mrs. Trollope, J. W. Croker and Albert Smith, most of which have already been quoted.

Anthony Trollope.

The Beadle! or, the Latest Chronicle of Small-Beerjester, by Anthony Dollop. Punch, 1880.

The Age of Lawn-Tennis. After Anthony Trollope. See Tennis Cuts and Quips. London, Field and Tuer.

Edmund Yates.

Ba! Ba! Black Sheep. An imitation, with a portrait of Mr. Yates, appeared in The Mask. London. June, 1868.

——:o:——

Guy Dyingstone, or the Muscular Patrician. A burlesque Novel by Walter Parke. Funny Folks, 1875.

Guy Deadstone. Another burlesque of “Guy Livingstone,” by the same author, appeared in Judy, 1869.

The Desperado of the Wilderness: or, The Maid, the Murderer, and the Demon Huntsman of Ashantee. This was a thrilling narrative of the “Boys of England” type, it appeared in Gleanings from “The Blue” 1881.

Our Boys Novelist, being stories of Wild Sport for the Youths of all Nations, with illustrations of the correctly exaggerated type by Harry Furniss, appeared in Punch, 1882.

---

The Approach of Winter.

——pull up the wicket and the stake,

And put by the mallet and the ball;

For no more Croquet will be played this year,

It’s getting much too late in the fall.