Punch has altogether had some two-score actions commenced, or threatened, against it, by business firms or aggrieved persons or, more often still, by newspapers on the ground of libel and kindred wrongdoing. But then, consider how many there are in the world, and in England especially, who will not see a joke!
A subject upon which Punch has for some years been persistently twitted is the personality of "Mrs. Ramsbotham"—Thackeray's Mrs. Julia Dorothea Ramsbottom of "The Snob" (No. 7, May, 1829)—a homely sort of Mrs. Malaprop, whose constant misquotations and misapplication of words of somewhat similar sound to those she intends to use give constant amusement to one section of Punch's readers, and irritation quite as constant to the other. She is the lady who suffers from a "torpedo liver;" who complains of being "a mere siphon in her own house;" who discharges her gardener because his answers to her questions are so "amphibious;" and who does not understand how there can be "illegal distress" in a free country where people may be as unhappy as they like. There have, of course, been many originals to this unconscious humorist—and are still. One lady, it has been declared, is not unknown in society, who has held forth to a surprised circle of her acquaintances on the operation of "trigonometry" (tracheotomy)—who, when she imparted a bit of scandal would add, "but that, you know, as the lawyers say, is inter alias"—and who wished that people would always say what they meant, and not talk paregorically (metaphorically).
"Mrs. Ramsbotham" is obviously descended, through Mrs. Malaprop, from Dogberry, and has many a time been "condemned to everlasting redemption," at least by the genus irritabile. One critic cast his protest in the form of a poetic appeal to Punch, and published it in an Oxford journal:—
"Of Mrs. Ram I wish to speak,
You dear old London Charivari;
Don't ram her down our throats each week.
Of sameness do be chary. Vary."
A broader and severer hint was offered by the lively Poet of the London "Globe":—
To Mrs. Ramsbotham.
A few there be who still delight,
O Mrs. R., in Punch's page,
Who like a joke to wear the blight
Of age.
Who, if they find a grain of wheat,
Are well content to pass the chaff,
And, every week, at least complete
One laugh.
But even they who swallow pun
Unmurm'ring, now and then declare,
Henceforward they must seek their fun
Elsewhere.
It is when you have multiplied
Your misconceptions, Mrs. Ram.,
That patience, sorely thus o'er-tried,
Says "——."