Punch, Or The London Charivari | Page 2

At one of our last speaking interviews (we only nod distantly now when we meet), he hinted that in the next distribution of honours his name might be expected. It appeared, but, alas for gratitude, he had to satisfy himself with a paltry K.C.M.G., which his wife (I forgot to say that he married ELVIRA) despises. He is now a disappointed man whom his friends, if he had any, would pity. He is getting on in life; the affectations he so laboriously cultivated no longer amuse. The witlings of his Clubs remark openly upon his ridiculous desire to pose as an earth-shaking personage, and when he goes home he has to listen to a series of bitter home-truths from the acrid ELVIRA. Would it not, I ask, have been better for Sir GERVASE BLENKINSOP, K.C.M.G., to have continued his ancient and aimless existence, than to have had a fallacious greatness dangled before his eyes to the end of his disappointed, but aspiring life?
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One more instance, and I have done. Do you remember TOMMY TIPSTAFF at Trinity? I do. He was, of course, a foolish youth, but he might have had a pleasant life in the fat living for which his family intended him. In his second year at the University, he met Sir JAMES SPOOF, an undergraduate Baronet, of great wealth, and dissolute habits. Poor TOMMY was dazzled by his new friend's specious glare and glitter, and his slapdash manner of scattering his money. They became inseparable. The same dealer supplied them with immense cigars, they went to race meetings, and tried to break the ring. When Sir JAMES wished to gamble, TOMMY was always ready to keep the bank. And all the time poor Mrs. TIPSTAFF, in her country home, was overjoyed at her darling's success in what she told me once was the most brilliant and remarkable set at Cambridge.
Where is TOMMY now? The other day a ragged man shambled up to me, with a request that I should buy a box of lights from him. There was a familiar something about him. Could it be TOMMY? The question was indirectly answered, for, before I could extract a penny, or say a word, he looked hard at me, turned his head away, and made off as fast as his rickety legs would carry him. Most men must have had a similar experience, but few know, as I do, that you, my dear SOCIAL AMBITION, urged the wretched TOMMY to his destruction.
On the whole, I dislike you. Those who obey you become the meanest of God's creatures.
Pardon my candour, and believe me, Yours, without respect, DIOGENES ROBINSON.
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AUTHOR! AUTHOR!
LORD COLERIDGE's summing up to the Jury in the action taken by Jones (author of burlesques) v. Roberts (player of the same) was excellent common sense, a quality much needed in the case. Mr. JONES,--not our ENERY HAUTHOR, whose contempt for Burlesque generally is as well known as he can make it,--wrote to Mr. ARTHUR ROBERTS, formerly of the Music Halls and now of the legitimate Stage, styling him "Governor," and professed that he would "fit him to a T." _Poeta nascitur non "fit_."--and the born burlesque-versifier was true to what would probably be his comic version of the Latin proverb. But the inimitable ARTHUR, who does so much for himself on the stage, hardly required any extraneous help, and at last rejected the result of poor JONES's three months' hard labour at the Joe-Millery mill. This, however, was no joke to JONES, who straightway decided that this time he would give the inimitable ARTHUR something quite new in the way of a jest; and so, dropping the dialogue, he came to "the action," which, in this instance, was an action-at-law. Whatever Mr. ROBERTS may have thought of the words, he will hardly have considered the result of this case as "good business" from his own private and peculiar point of view. But all Dramatic Authors,--with the solitary exception of Mr. YARDLEY, formerly famous in the field, but now better known in "The Lane," at pantomime time, than to any Court where he has a legal right to appear in wig and gown,--from the smallest, who write to please a "Governor," up to the biggest, who write to please themselves, should rejoice at the decision in the case of Jones v. Roberts.
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AN OMISSION AT THE GUILDHALL LUNCHEON.--On the occasion of the Civic Banquet to the German EMPEROR, an Alderman, distinguished for his courtesy to strangers, and his appreciation of good dishes, especially of anything at all spicy, wished to know why, as a compliment to their Imperial guest, they had omitted "pickelhaubes" from the bill of fare? He had understood, from well-informed friends, that the EMPEROR seldom went anywhere without some "pickelhaubes," whatever they