A LANCASHIRE WATERING-PLACE.
POPULAR SONGS RE-SUNG;
OR, MISS BOWDLER AT THE MUSIC HALLS.
INTRODUCTORY.
DEAR MR. PUNCH,
In these progressive days earnest reformers, especially those of the London County Council type, yearn to chasten and æstheticise the Muse of the Music Hall, who is perhaps the only really popular Muse of the period. My name gives me a sort of hereditary right to take exceptional interest in such matters, though indeed my respected, and respectable, ancestor is not in all things the model of his more catholic and cosmopolitan descendant. The McDougall regimen would doubtless be a little too drastic. To improve the Music-hall Song off the face of the earth, is an attempt which could only suggest itself to puritan fanaticism in its most arbitrary administrative form. The proletariat will not "willingly let die" the only Muse whose ministrations really "come home to its business and its bosom." No, Sir, the People's Pegasus cannot, must not be ruthlessly consigned to the knackers. But may it not be gently bitted, discreetly bridled, and taught to trot or amble with park-hack paces in the harness of Respectability?
It is in this hope and faith that the following drawing-room versions of some of "the most popular Comic (and Sentimental) Songs of the Day" have been attempted by
Your respectful admirer,
VIRGINIA BOWDLER.