THE THIRTY-ONE-AND-SIXPENNY DREADFUL.
(By Mr. Punch's Own High-Class Police News Reporter.)
At the Grosvenor Square Criminal Court the case of Lady d'Edbroke came on for hearing at the head of the list. Interest in this alleged crime in high life drew together a vast galaxy of Society women, and His Worship was with difficulty accommodated with a seat on the bench. Opera-glasses ruled from one-and-sixpence-in-the-slot. The first charge brought against her ladyship was that of refusing alimony to her husband. A second dealt with the desertion of her children.
The prosecution undertook to prove that Sir Benedick had been found at night on the doorstep of the d'Edbroke Mansion without a latchkey or other visible means of subsistence. Lady d'Edbroke (née Swag) was described as the daughter of a wealthy Birmingham manufacturer of antiques. By her marriage into the ancient and honourable house of the d'Edbrokes she had relieved the fortunes of the three-and-twentieth baronet, whose assets at the moment had been nil. Two children had been born of the marriage, and these had recently been discovered in a state of emaciation in a Park Lane crèche.
Counsel would call her ladyship's maid to give evidence of the kind of literature to which her mistress had been addicted. That domestic would admit that she (the domestic), being bored by the feeble and fatuous character of the Penny Dreadful as a guide to immorality, had been in the habit of utilizing her mistress's left-off thirty-one-and-sixpenny and other expensive shockers. He hoped to show that this class of work, though not above the level of the Penny Dreadful in point of literary qualities, was of a mere seductive piquancy. At the time of the prisoner's arrest her drawing-room and boudoir were littered with printed matter, from the titles of which he would select four specimens: A Melodrama of Spasms, The Superfluous Male, A Neo-Platonic Passion, An Edenless Adam. From the last of these he ventured to read an extract or two, in the selection of which he had been assisted by the pencil marks and marginal comments of the prisoner. The book, he might add, was from a lending library.
"A veritable Dian, flame-red with the shame of maternity, the young mother of twins faced her cowed and miserable husband. Mentally she threw up the sponge ready for the next round, for she had still a shot in her locker with which to run a mucker."
Council here explained that the writer, a simple woman, was still feeling her way in the use of sporting language.
"'James,' she said, 'I was an ignorant girl when I married you for your wealth, you me for my beauty of soul. There I thought that the bargain had ended. How was I to know that women have a tendency to bear children? No one ever pointed out to me any precedent for this. In my innocence it had never occurred to me that I might myself have been originally born.'"
Here a Juror intervened to request that he might, as a family man, be allowed to retire. Leave being refused, he then asked if ladies ought to listen to such extracts. His Worship thereupon ordered all decent women to leave the court. No one moved, and the extract was resumed.
"'And now, in the full pride of my sexlessness, I have had a painful fall. I am branded with the mark of servitude. The laughing-stock of my emancipated sisters, I shall go down to posterity as a mother!'
"Lord James winced. The mother of twins continued.
"'Had mine been the wealth and yours the beauty of soul—and of this you can never have even been suspected—my course would be plain. I should, by the right of the Married Women's Impropriety Act, banish you from this house. Never should you darken these doors again, though you might linger on the doorstep, an Edenless Adam, a worm, a periwinkle at the gate of Paradise! As it is, being compelled from lack of filthy lucre to tolerate existence under your roof, I insist that these signs of my degradation'—here she pointed defiantly at the twins, who howled—'be kept for ever from my eyes under the tutelage of hired menials, in a nursery with padded walls to be built out over the billiard-room. Otherwise I propose to leave you and become a Tableau Vivant!'"
At this point the usher rebuked applause in the galleries.
A second extract ran as follows:—"A year later, in the height of the season at Battersea Park, a remarkable tandem was the object of universal comment. It consisted of Lord and Lady James, or, more strictly, Lady and Lord James, for Lady James steered from the front, clad in high collar, starched shirt, breeches and gaiters, while Lord James followed in a blouse and divided skirt, doing all the work. A symbol this of the conditions under which he was now admitted to the privilege of communion with her. That the man should be compelled to do the work, itself a mark of serfdom, was but one of many conditions laid down by the predominant partner. Another was that he should not offend decency by appearing in the recognised costume of a woman. Hence the blouse and divided skirt, lately relegated to male use."
Here His Worship observed that this extract failed to bear upon the issue, and it was then shown that the pencil-mark, with the comment "Good again!" was the work of another subscriber to Mudie's. A third extract, taken from a new book of the Six-Shilling-Shocker series—A Melodrama of Spasms—began: "I am glad that these sins of your magenta breeding are no irony of fate." The foreman of the jury demanded an elucidation, which Counsel was unable to produce. Court still working at enigma when report left.
A Hyde-ous Danger.—"Hyde Park" should be our Show Park. At present it is the Hiding Park for all the scum of the town. Mr. P. summons First Commissioner of Works, Commissioner of Police, and "George Ranger," who, he believes, has not yet retired from this office, to step out at once and do their duty.
Brother Jonathan. "Say, John! you'd better go into Training again!"
