Arcades ambo.
READER.--God bless us, Mr. PUNCH! who is that tall, fair-haired, somewhat
parrot-faced gentleman, smiling like a schoolboy over a mess of treacle,
and now kissing the tips of his five fingers as gingerly as if he were
doomed to kiss a nettle?
PUNCH.--That, Mr. Reader, is the great cotton-plant, Sir Robert Peel; and
at this moment he has, in his own conceit, seized upon "the white wonder"
of Victoria's hand, and is kissing it with Saint James's devotion.
READER.--What for, Mr. PUNCH?
PUNCH.--What for! At court, Mr. Reader, you always kiss when you obtain an
honour. 'Tis a very old fashion, sir--old as the court of King David. Well
do I recollect what a smack Uriah gave to his majesty when he was appointed
to the post which made Bathsheba a widow. Poor Uriah! as we say of the
stag, that was when his horns were in the velvet.
READER.--_You_ recollect it, Mr. PUNCH!--_you_ at the court of King David!
PUNCH.--I, Mr. Reader, I!--and at every court, from the court of Cain in
Mesopotamia to the court of Victoria in this present, flinty-hearted
London; only the truth is, as I have travelled I have changed my name.
Bless you, half the _Proverbs_ given to Solomon are mine. What I have lost
by keeping company with kings, not even Joseph Hume can calculate.
READER.--And are you really in court confidence at this moment?
PUNCH.--Am I? What! Hav'n't you heard of the elections? Have you not heard
the shouts _Io Punch_? Doesn't my nose glow like coral--ar'n't my chops
radiant as a rainbow--hath not my hunch gone up at least two inches--am I
not, from crown to toe-nails, brightened, sublimated? Like Alexander--he
was a particular friend of mine, that same Alexander, and therefore stole
many of my best sayings--I only know that I am mortal by two sensations--a
yearning for loaves and fishes, and a love for Judy.
READER.--And you really take office under Peel?
PUNCH.--Ha! ha! ha! A good joke! Peel takes office under _me_. Ha! ha! I'm
only thinking what sport I shall have with the bedchamber women. But out
they must go. The constitution gives a minister the selection of his own
petticoats; and therefore there sha'n't be a yard of Welsh flannel about
her Majesty that isn't of my choice.
READER.--Do you really think that the royal bedchamber is in fact a third
house of Parliament--that the affairs of the state are always to be put in
the feminine gender?
PUNCH.--Most certainly: the ropes of the state rudder are nothing more than
cap-ribbons; if the minister hav'n't hold of them, what can he do with the
ship? As for the debates in parliament, they have no more to do with the
real affairs of the country than the gossip of the apple-women in
Palace-yard. They're made, like the maccaroni in Naples, for the poor to
swallow; and so that they gulp down length, they think, poor fellows, they
get strength. But for the real affairs of the country! Who shall tell what
correspondence can be conveyed in a warming-pan, what intelligence--for
"There may be wisdom in a papillote"--
may be wrapt up in the curl-papers of the Crown? What subtle, sinister
advice may, by a crafty disposition of royal pins, be given on the royal
pincushion? What minister shall answer for the sound repose of Royalty, if
he be not permitted to make Royalty's bed? How shall he answer for the
comely appearance of Royalty, if he do not, by his own delegated hands,
lace Royalty's stays? I shudder to think of it; but, without the key of the
bedchamber, could my friend Peel be made responsible for the health of the
Princess? Instead of the very best and most scrupulously-aired diaper,
might not--by negligence or design, it matters not which--the Princess
Royal be rolled in an Act of Parliament, wet from Hansard's press?
READER.--Dreadful, soul perturbing suggestion! Go on, Mr. PUNCH.
PUNCH.--Not but what I think it--if their constitution will stand damp
paper--an admirable way of rearing young princesses. Queen Elizabeth--my
wife Judy was her wet nurse--was reared after that fashion.
READER.--David Hume says nothing of it.
PUNCH.--David Hume was one of the wonders of the earth--he was a lazy
Scotchman; but had he searched the State Paper Office, he would have found
the documents there--yes, the very Acts of Parliament--the very printed
rollers. To those rollers Queen Elizabeth owed her knowledge of the English
Constitution.
READER.--Explain--I can't see how.
PUNCH.--Then you are very dull. Is not Parliament the assembled wisdom of
the country?
READER.--By a fiction, Mr. PUNCH.
PUNCH--Very well, Mr. Reader; what's all the world but a fiction? I say,
the assembled wisdom; an Act of Parliament is the sifted wisdom of the
wise--the essence of an essence. Very well; know you not the mystic, the
medicinal effects of printer's ink? The devil himself isn't proof to a
blister of printer's ink. Well, you take an Act of Parliament--and what is
it but the finest plaster of the finest brains--wet, reeking wet from the
press. Eschewing diaper, you roll the Act round the royal infant; you roll
it up and pin it in the conglomerated wisdom of the nation. Now, consider
the tenderness of a baby's cuticle; the pores are open, and a rapid and
continual absorption takes place, so that long before the Royal infant cuts
its first tooth, it has taken up into its system the whole body of the
Statutes.
READER.--Might not some patriots object to the application of the wisdom of
the country to so domestic a purpose?
PUNCH.--Such patriots are more squeamish than wise. Sir, how many grown up
kings have we had, who have shown no more respect for the laws of the
country, than if they had been swaddled in 'em?
READER.--Do you think your friend Sir Robert is for statute rollers?
PUNCH.--I can answer for Sir Robert on every point. His first attack before
he kisses hands--and he has, as you perceive, been practising this
half-hour--will be upon the women of the bedchamber. The war with
China--the price of sugar--the corn-laws--the fourteen new Bishops about to
be hatched--timber--cotton--a property tax, and the penny post--all these
matters and persons are of secondary importance to this greater
question--whether the female who hands the Queen her gown shall think Lord
Melbourne a "very pretty fellow in his day;" or whether she shall believe
my friend Sir Robert to be as great a conjuror as Roger Bacon or the Wizard
of the North--if the lady can look upon O'Connell and not call for burnt
feathers or scream for _sal volatile_; or if she really thinks the Pope to
be a woman with a naughty name, clothed in most exceptionable scarlet. It
is whether Lady Mary thinks black, or Lady Clementina thinks white; whether
her father who begot her voted with the Marquis of Londonderry or Earl
Grey--_that_ is the grand question to be solved, before my friend Sir
Robert can condescend to be the saviour of his country. To have the
privilege of making a batch of peers, or a handful of bishops is nothing,
positively nothing--no, the crowning work is to manufacture a lady's maid.
What's a mitre to a mob-cap--what the garters of a peer to the garters of
the Lady Adeliza?
READER.--You are getting warm, Mr. PUNCH--very warm.
PUNCH.--I always do get warm when I talk of the delicious sex: for though
now and then I thrash my wife before company, who shall imagine how cosy we
are when we're alone? Do you not remember that great axiom of Sir
Robert's--an axiom that should make Machiavelli howl with envy--that "_the
battle of the Constitution is to fought in the bedchamber_."
READER.--I remember it.
PUNCH.--That was a great sentence. Had Sir Robert known his true fame, he
would never after have opened his mouth.
READER.--Has the Queen sent for Sir Robert yet?
PUNCH.--No: though I know he has staid at home these ten days, and answers
every knock at the door himself, in expectation of a message.
READER.--They say the Queen doesn't like Sir Robert.
PUNCH.--I'm also told that her Majesty has a great antipathy to physic--yet
when the Constitution requires medicine, why--
READER.--Sir Robert must be swallowed.
PUNCH.--Exactly so. We shall have warm work of it, no doubt--but I fear
nothing, when we have once got rid of the women. And then, we have a few
such nice wenches of our own to place about her Majesty; the Queen shall
take Conservatism as she might take measles--without knowing it.
READER.--And when, Mr. PUNCH--when you have got rid of the women, what do
you and Sir Robert purpose then?
PUNCH.--I beg your pardon: we shall meet again next week: it's now two
o'clock. I have an appointment with half-a-dozen of my godsons; I have
promised them all places in the new government, and they're come to take
their choice.
READER.--Do tell me this: Who has Peel selected for Commander of the
Forces?
PUNCH.--Who? Colonel Sibthorp.
READER.--And who for Chancellor of the Exchequer?
PUNCH.--Mr. Henry Moreton Dyer!
* * * * *
PUNCH'S PENCILLINGS.--No. II.
[Illustration: HERCULES TEARING THESEUS FROM THE ROCK TO WHICH HE HAD
GROWN.
(MODERNIZED.)
APOLLODORUS relates that THESEUS sat so long on a rock, that at length he
grew to it, so that when HERCULES tore him forcibly away, he left all the
nether part of the man behind him.]
* * * * *