PUNCH,
OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
Vol. 100.
February 14, 1891.
MODERN TYPES.
(By Mr. Punch's Own Type Writer.)
No. XXIII.—THE TOLERATED HUSBAND.
It is customary for the self-righteous moralists who puff themselves into a state of Jingo complacency over the failings of foreign nations, to declare with considerable unction that the domestic hearth, which every Frenchman habitually tramples upon, is maintained in unviolated purity in every British household. The rude shocks which Mr. Justice BUTT occasionally administers to the national conscience are readily forgotten, and the chorus of patriotic adulation is stimulated by the visits which the British censor finds it necessary to pay (in mufti) to the courts of wickedness in continental capitals. It may be that among our unimaginative race the lack of virtue is not presented in the gaudy trappings that delight our neighbours. Our wickedness is coarser and less attractive. It gutters like a cheap candle when contrasted with the steady brilliancy of the Parisian article. Public opinion, too, holds amongst us a more formidable lash, and wields it with a sterner and more frequent severity. But it is impossible to deny that our society, however strict its professed code may be, can and does produce examples of those lapses from propriety which the superficial public deems to be typically and exclusively continental. Not only are they produced, but their production and their continuance are tolerated by a certain class, possibly limited, but certainly influential.