From the Court, the Camp, the Senate,
And plain Gentlemen and Ladies.”
* * * * *
A long political parody appeared in Punch, February 23, 1867, entitled “The Great Medicine-Man; a new Canto of Hiawatha.” This was apropos of Mr. Disraeli’s Reform proposals, then submitted to the House of Commons in Thirteen Resolutions.
On page 95, Part VI., a long extract was given from a parody of Hiawatha, entitled The Song of Big Ben, which appeared in Truth, February 15, 1877. It was descriptive of the opening of Parliament, and the subsequent proceedings in the Houses have since been related in the same metre, and under the same title, in many other numbers of Truth. On page 80 reference was made to a parody which appeared in Tom Hood’s Comic Annual for 1877; unfortunately, it is much too long to give in full. The following short extract will, however, give an idea of its style:—
Revenge. A Rhythmic Recollection.
If you ask me where I found it, found this very dreadful legend, with its strange coincidences and its tragic repetitions, I should answer, I should tell you, in the columns of the “Pleecenoos,” in the pages of the “Standard,” in the Organ of the Knife Board, in all sheets of published scandal, published in the month of August, published in the midst of Fleet Street, where the tide of life rolls onward, whilst the modest newsman murmurs low amid the noise of traffic, “Buy the ‘Hecker,’ fifth edition! Buy the ‘Standard,’ latest war news! Buy the Organ of the Knife Board!”
’Twas the pleasant April weather, and a coach was bound for Cambridge, and four youths alike in feature sat together in the rumble; each alike was bound for Cambridge, each alike in air was noble, each alike in hair was curly, each in speech was Hebraistic, and they all were bound for Cambridge.
Never had they met before this, though their fathers in four townships wide apart had heard the rumours of each other’s great successes in the art of habit-making, famed for thirteen-shilling trousers; and each parent, little recking of the others’ great successes, said, “My son shall rise to swelldom; he shall have his fling at college, and shall dwell among the nobles who, by my fair art made nobler, wear my thirteen-shilling trousers.”