First Thruster (guiltily conscious of having rather pressed on hounds): "Now we're goin' to catch it; that's the master comin', isn't it?"
Second Thruster (his host): "It's all right. We've got two masters. That's the one that supplies the money; the other supplies the language."
The vogue of Bridge dates from the last years of the old century. According to the veracious Daily Mail, in 1899 a Cambridge Professor was earning handsome fees by giving instruction in the game to members of the University, and Punch embroiders the text according to his wont. In 1901 Punch's cartoon "Discarded" shows Fashion, in her fool's cap, accosting "Mr. Bridge": "Come along, Partner! That dear old Mister Whist is such a bore! He is so vieux jeu!" Bridge figures as a gallant and picturesque cavalier, while Whist is a sour-visaged old pedant. Punch was not always of one mind about the triumphant new-comer, but he cordially echoed the sentiments of the Morning Post when that journal asserted that Bridge made for the abolition of the drawing-room ballad and the drawing-room ballad-monger; and it gave him abundant scope for comment and parody, e.g. his perversion of Longfellow's lines into "I played on at Bridge at midnight." Bridge, however, had not always a monopoly of attraction even in the days when its tyranny was at its height. In 1902 we encounter the tragedy of the four men driven to the nursery to play Bridge because "they are playing Ping-Pong in the dining-room, and 'Fives' in the billiard-room, Jack's trying to imitate Dan Leno in the drawing-room, Dick's got that infernal gramophone of his going in the hall, and they are laying supper in the smoking-room."
Hunting and Prize-fighting
It is a relief to turn from these mostly futile indoor pastimes to the robuster sports of the chase, the turf and the prize-ring. Punch was fortunate in this period in having at his command, in Mr. Armour, an artist who restored the hunting pictures to a higher level of draughtsmanship than they had ever reached before. This implies no disparagement of the incomparable geniality of Leech's drawings, which in that respect have never been equalled, unless by Randolph Caldecott. But for the correct drawing of hounds, horses and riders, and for the discreet handling of the hunting landscape, Mr. Armour's equipment is above reproach. References to the turf in the early years of this period are mostly connected with Lord Rosebery. His success in winning the Derby with Ladas in 1894 lends point to the "highly improbable anticipation" of Punch's artist in which the Premier, in parson's garb, announces his conversion to the tenets of the Nonconformist conscience. In September of the same year we have the wail of a "disgusted backer" over the defeat of the favourite in the St. Leger:—
Ladas, Ladas,
Go along with you, do.
I'm now stone-broke