PUNCH’S REVIEW.
THE MEMOIRS OF MADAME LAFFARGE.
The title, I think, will strike. The fashion, you know, now, is to do away with old prejudices, and to rescue certain characters from the illiberal odium with which custom has marked them. Thus we have a generous Israelite, an amiable cynic, and so on. Now, Sir, I call my play—The Humane Footpad.—SYLVESTER DAGGERWOOD.
Some four or five seasons since, the eccentric Buckstone produced a three-act farce, which, by dint of its after title—The School for Sympathy—and of much highly comic woe, exhibited in the acting of Farren and Nisbett, was presented to uproariously-affected audiences during some score nights. The hinge of the mirth was made to turn upon the irresistible drollery of one man’s running away with another man’s wife, and the outrageous fun of the consequent suicide of the injured husband; the bons mots being most tragically humorous, and the aphorisms of the several characters facetiously concatenative of the nouns contained in the leading name of the piece—“Love and Murder.”
Now this was a magnificent idea—one of those brilliant efforts which cannot but tend to lift the theatre in the estimation of every man of delicacy and education. A new source of attraction was at once discovered,—a vast fund of available fuel was suddenly found to recruit the cinerulent embers of the drama withal. It became evident that, after Joe Miller, the ordinary of Newgate was the funniest dog in the world. Manslaughter, arson, and the more practical jokes in the Calendar, were already familiar to the stage; it was a refinement of the Haymarket authors to introduce those livelier sallies of wit—crim. con. and felo-de-se. The “immense coalitions” of all manner of crimes and vices in the subsequent “highway school”—the gradual development of every unnatural tendency in the youthful Jack Sheppard (another immor-t-al work by the author of the afore-lauded comedy)—the celebration, by a classic chaunt, of his reaching the pinnacle of depravity; this was the ne plus ultra of dramatic invention. Robbers and murderers began to be treated, after the Catholic fashion, with extreme unction; audiences were intoxicated with the new drop; sympathy became epidemic; everybody was bewildered and improved; and nobody went and threw themselves off the Monument with a copy of the baleful drama in his pocket!
But the magnificence of the discovery was too large to be grasped by even the gluttonous eye of the managers, The Adelphi might overflow—the Surrey might quake with reiterated “pitsfull”—still there remained over and above the feast-crumbs sufficient for the battenings of other than theatrical appetites. Immediately the press-gang—we beg pardon, the press—arose, and with a mighty throe spawned many monsters. Great drama! Greater Press! GREATEST PUBLIC!
Now this was all excellent well as far as it went; but still there was something wanted of more reality than the improvisations of a romancist. Ainsworth might dip his pen in the grossest epithets; Boz might dabble in the mysterious dens of Hebrew iniquity; even Bulwer might hash up to us his recollections of St. Giles’s dialogue; and yet it was evident that they were all the while only “shamming”—only cooking up some dainty dish according to a recipe, or, as it is still frequently pronounced, a receipt,—which last, with such writers, will ever be the guide-post of their track.
But something more was wanted; and here it is—here, in the Memoirs of Marie Cappelle.
This lady, perhaps the most remarkable woman of her age, has published a book—half farce, half novel—in which she treats by turns with the clap-trap agony of a Bulwer, the quaint sneer of a Dickens, and the effrontery of an Ainsworth, that serious charge which employed the careful investigation of the most experienced men in France for many weeks, and which excited a degree of interest in domestic England almost unexampled in the history of foreign trials. This work is published by a gentleman who calls himself “Publisher in ordinary to her Majesty,” and may be procured at any book-seller’s by all such as have a guinea and a day’s leisure at the mercy of the literary charlatan who contrived it.
In the strictest confidence we would suggest, that if a treaty could be ratified with Madame Marie Cappelle Laffarge, we do not doubt that our nursery—yea, our laundry—maids would learn to spell the precious sentences, to their own great edification and that of the children placed under their charge.
OUR TRADE REPORT.
Coals are a shade blacker than they were last week, but not quite so heavy; and turnips are much lighter than they have been known for a very considerable period.
Great complaints are made of the ticketing system; and persons going to purchase shawls, as they supposed, at nine-pence three-farthings each, are disgusted at being referred to a very small one pound sixteen marked very lightly in pencil immediately before the 9¾d., which is very large and in very black ink. There were several transactions of this kind during the whole morning.
The depressed state of the Gossamer-market has long been a subject of conversation among the four-and-niners who frequent the cheap coffee-shops in the City; but no one knows the cause of what has taken place, nor can they exactly state what the occurrence is that they are so loudly complaining of.
Bones continue to fetch a penny for two pounds; but great murmurs are heard of the difficulty of making up a pound equal to the very liberal weights which the marine-store keepers use when making their purchases; they, however, make up for it by using much lighter weights when they sell, which is so far fair and satisfactory.
The arrivals in baked potatoes have been very numerous; fifty cans were entered outwards on Saturday.
RELATIVE GENTILITY.
Two ladies of St. Giles’s disputing lately on the respectability of each other’s family, concluded the debate in the following way:—“Mrs. Doyle, ma’am, I’d have you know that I’ve an uncle a bannister of the law.” “Much about your bannister,” retorted Mrs. Doyle; “haven’t I a first cousin a corridor in the navy?”
KEEPING IT DARK.
Jim Bones, a free nigger of New York, has a child so exceedingly dark that he cannot be seen on the lightest day.