I have not many remarks to offer on this illustration, which is sufficiently true to Nature to pass muster.
Monkeys are not usually permitted to be present at these encounters, but it is quite credible that the one in the picture was a particular pet of Duchess Dickinson's and therefore the chartered libertine.
Only I am strongly of opinion that she would have ordered him off the line of fire, for fear that he might receive his quietus from some stray bullet.
Mr Bodgers ought not to have been drawn in a sun-helmet. He wore, of course, the more ceremonious covering of chimney-pot pattern. But poor Mr Pahtridhji could not perhaps be expected to know this!
H. B. J.
AUTHOR'S NOTE ON ILLUSTRATION No. V.
Once more I stand agog before the overweaned self-confidence with which Mr Pahtridhji sets out to depict scenes and episodes requiring the most exhaustive familiarity with West End London habits, if the artist is to escape the risum teneatis of a shocking fiasco!
There is scarcely any habitué of Hyde Park who could not point the finger of scorn at some howling piece of inaccuracy in this soi-disant representation of Mr Bhosh on his cantankerous gifthorse.
The figure of the hero himself is passably correct, though I may hint to Mr P. that no rider in Rotten Row who belongs to the bon ton would wear golden tassels attached to his riding topboots.
But how am I to excuse such a Leviathan lapsus linguæ as the figure of the equestrian mounted upon a cow? It is true that Honble Hampden was so upset at having to pay sheep-money that he rode a cow, but not all his social influence could launch so stagnant a quadruped as a successful competitor with the swifter and more spirited horse, and consequently it has long been disused as the beast of pleasure, even by riders of the funkiest temperaments.