This I partly attribute to general impression--which I do not condescend to deny--that, at home, I occupy the social status of a Rajah, or some a.n.a.logous kind of big native pot.
So, on a recent Sat.u.r.day afternoon, she invited me to escort her and a similar young virginal lady friend, by name Miss PRISCILLA PRIMMETT, to Burlington House, Piccadilly, and, as _Prince Hamlet_ appositely remarks, "Look here upon this picture and on this." Which I joyfully accepted, being head-over-heels in love with Art, and the possessor of two magnificent coloured photo-lithographs, representing a steeplechase in the act of jumping a trench, and a water-nymph in the very _decollete_ undress of "_puris naturalibus_," weltering on a rushy bed.
We proceeded thither upon the giddy summit of a Royal Oak omnibus, and on arriving in the vestibulum, were peremptorily commanded to undergo total abstinence from our umbrellas.
Being accompanied by the span-new silken affair with the golden head, which, as I have narrated _supra_, I was so lucky to obtain promiscuously after witnessing the Adelphi of the Westminster college boys, I naturally protested vehemently against such arbitrary and tyrannical regulations, urging the risk of my unprotected umbrella being feloniously abducted during unavoidable absence by some unprincipled and illegitimate claimant.
But, alack! I was confronted with the official ultimatum and _sine qua non_, and have subsequently learnt that the cause of this self-denying ordinance is due to the uncontrollable enthusiasm of British Public for works of art, which leads them to signify approbation by puncturing innumerable orifices by dint of sticks or umbrellas in the process of pointing out t.i.t-bits of painting, and on account of the detrimental influence on the marketable value of pictures thus distinguished by the plerophory of the _Vox Populi_.
Nevertheless, my heart was oppressed with many misgivings at having to hand over three hostage umbrellas--one being masculine and two feminine gender--and receiving nothing in exchange but a wooden medallion of no intrinsic worth, bearing the utterly disproportionate number of over one thousand! Next, after, at Miss JESSIMINA"S bidding, having purchased a sixpenny index, we ascended the staircase, and on sh.e.l.ling out three shillings cash payment, were consecutively squeezed through a restricted wicket as if needles going through the eye of a camel.
I will vouchsafe to aver that my interior sensations on penetrating the first gallery were those of acute and indignant disappointment, for will it be credited that a working majority of the exhibits were second, or even third and fourth-hand mechanisms of an unparagoned dingitude, and fit only for the lumbering room?
Perhaps I shall be told that this wintry exhibition is a mere stopgap and makeshift, until a fresh supply of bright new paintings can be procured, and that it is _ultra vires_ to obtain such for love or money before the merry month of May.
Still I must persist in denouncing the penny wisdom and pound foolery of the Academicals in foisting off upon the public such ancient and fish-like articles that have long ceased to be _bon ton_ and in the fashion, since it is undeniable that many are over fifty years, and some several centuries behind the times!
It is to be hoped that these parsimonious Misters will soon recognise that it is not possible for modern up-to-date Art to be florescent under this retrograde and fossilized system, and be warned that such untradesmanlike goings-on will deservedly forfeit the confidence and patronage of their most fastidious customers.
Miss JESSIMINA remarked more than once that such and such a picture was not in _her_ taste and she would never have chosen it personally, while Miss PRIMMETT declared that she would not have had her likeness taken by Hon"ble Sir JOSH GAINSBORO, or Misters VELASKY and VANd.i.c.k, not even if they implored her on their bended marrowbones, and that, as for a certain individual effeminately named ETTY, it was a wonderment to her how respectable people could stand in front of such brazen performances!
These remarks are trivial, perhaps, but even straws will serve as c.o.c.ks of the weather on occasions, and, moreover, I shall certify that the most general tone was of a critical and disapproving severity, and it was quite evident that the greater portion of the spectators could have done the job better themselves.
A certain Mister TURNER came in for the BENJAMIN"S mess of obloquy, having represented Pluto, the G.o.d of wealth, in the act of carrying off a female Proserpine, but the figures so Lilliputian, and in such a disproportionate expansion of confused sceneries, that the elopement produced but a very paltry impression. The slipshod carelessness of this painter may be realised from the fact that in a composition styled "_Blue Lights to Warn Steamboats off Shoal Water_," the blue lights are conspicuous by their total absence, and the mistiness of the atmospherical conditions renders it difficult to distinguish either the steamers or the shoals with even tolerable accuracy!
In the ulterior room were sundry productions from Umbrian and Milanese and other schools, such being presumptively the teaching establishments over which Hon"ble REYNOLDS and TURNER and GREUZY and Co. predominated as Old Masters. But surely it is unfair, and like seething a kid in the maternal nutriment, to cla.s.s such crude and hobbardyhoy performances with works by more senile hands!
Here I observed a painting to ill.u.s.trate scenes in the life of an important celebrity, who was childishly represented many times over having separate adventures in the s.p.a.ce of a few square feet, and of a Brobdingnacian bulkiness compared to his perspective surroundings.
Had this been the work of an Indian artist, native gentlemen out there would simply have smiled pitiably at such ignorance, and given him the gentle admonishment that he was only to make a fool of himself for his pains. There was also a picture of a Diptych, in two portions, with a background of gilt, but the figure of the Diptych himself very poorly represented as an anatomy.
Where all is so so-so, and below par, it is perhaps invidious to single out any for hon"ble mention; but loyalty as a British subject obliges me to speak favourably of a concern lent by Her Majesty the QUEEN, and representing a bombastical youth engaged in a snip-snap with a meek and inoffensive schoolfellow, who supports himself on one leg, and is occupied in sheltering his nose behind his arm, until his widowed and aged mother can arrive to rescue her beloved offspring from his grave crisis.
This at least can be commended as being true to nature, as I can attest from personal experience of similar boyish loggerheads, although, owing to preserving my _sang froid_, I was generally able to remove myself with phenomenal rapidity from vicinity of shocking kicks by my truculent a.s.sailant.
Let me not omit to mention a painting of "_Polichinelle_" by a Gallic artist, which Miss PRIMMETT said was the French equivalent to _Punch_.
At which, speaking loudly for instruction of bystanders, I a.s.sured them, as one familiarly connected with Hon"ble _Punch_, who regarded me as a son, such a portrait was the very antipode to his majestic lineaments, nor was it reasonable to suppose that he would allow his counterfeit presentment to be depicted in the undignified garbage of a buffoon!
I trust that I may be gratefully remembered by my Liege Lord, and that he will be gracious enough to entertain me favourably with something in the shape of prize or bonus in reward for such open testimony as the above.
I have only to add that the custodian preserved the inviolability of our umbrellas with honorable fidelity, and that we moistened the drooping clay of our internal tenements at an Aerated Tea Company with a profusion of confectionaries, for which my fair friends with amiable blandness permitted me the privilege of forking out.
V
_In which Mr Jabberjee expresses his Opinions on Bicycling as a Pastime._
In consequence of the increasing demands of the incomparable Miss JESSIMINA upon the dancing attendance of your humble servant, I am lately become as idle as a newly painted ship, and have not drunk in the legal wisdom of the learned _Moonshees_ who lecture in the hall of my Inn of Court, or opened the ponderous treatise of Hon"ble Justice BLACKSTONE or ADDISON on _Torts_, for many a blank day.
Still, as Philosopher PLATO observed, "_Nihil humani alienum a me puto_," and my time has not been actually squandered in the theft of Procrastination, but rather employed in the proper study of Mankind, and acquiring a more complete knowingness in _Ars Vivendi_.
So I think it worth to direct public attention to the dangers of a practice which threatens to develop into an epidemical kind of plague, and carry the deteriorating trails of a serpent over our household families, unless promptly scotched by benevolent firmness of a paternal Government.
Need I explain I am alluding to the nowaday pa.s.sion for propelling oneself at a severe speed by dint of unstable and most precarious machinery? It is now the exception which breaks the rule to take the air in the streets without being startled by the unseemly spectacles of go-ahead citizens straddled upon such revolutionary contrivances, threading their way with breakneck velocity under the very noses of omnibus and other horses, and ringing the shrill welkin of a tintinnabulating gong!
Nay, even after the Curfew has taken its toll from the knell of parting day, and darkness reigns supreme, they will urge on their wild career, illuminated by the dim religious light of a small oil lamp!
I possess no knack of medical knowledge, but I boldly state my opinion that such daredevilry must necessarily inflict a deleterious result to the nervous organisms of these riders; and, who knows, of their posterity?
For no one can expect to have hairbreadth escapes from the running gauntlet continuously, without suffering a shattering internal panic, while catastrophes of fatal injury to life and limb have become _de rigueur_.
_Experto crede_--for I can support my _obiter dictum_ by the crushing weight of personal experience. A few mornings since I had the honour to escort Miss JESSIMINA MANKLETOW and a middle-aged select female boarder into the interior of Hyde Park. The day was fine, though frigid, and I was wearing my fur-lined overcoat, with boots of patent j.a.pan leather, and a Bombay gold-embroidered cap, so that I was a mould of form and the howling n.o.b.
Picture my amazement when, as I promenaded the path beside the waters of the Serpentine lake, I beheld a wheeled cavalcade of every conceivable age, s.e.x, and appearance; senile gaffers and baby buntings; mult.i.tudinous women, some plump as a duckling, others thin as a paper-thread; aye, and even priests in sanctimonious black and milk-white cravats, rolling swiftly upon two wheels, and all agog to dash through thick and thin!
On seeing which, the matured lady boarder did exclaim upon the difficulties of the performance, and the vast crowd that had collected to view such a _tour de force_, but I, perceiving that those seated upon the machines used no exorbitant exertions, and, indeed, appeared to be wholly engrossed in social intercourse, responded that no skill was required to circulate these bicycles, which, owing to being surrounded with air-cushions, would proceed _proprio motu_ and without meandering.
Thereupon Miss MANKLETOW expressed an ardent desire to behold myself upon one of these same machines, and--as we were now close to the effigy of Hon"ble Duke of WELLINGTON disguised as an Achilles, near which were certain _bunniahs_ trafficking with bicycles--I, wishing to pleasure my fair companion, approached one of these contractors and bargained with him for the sole user of his vehicle for the s.p.a.ce of one calendar hour, to which he consented at the _honorarium_ of one rupee four annas.
But, on receiving the bicycle from his hands, I at once perceived myself under a total impossibility of achieving its ascent--for no sooner had I protruded one leg over the saddle than the foremost wheel averted itself, and the entire machine bit the dust, which afforded lively and infinite entertainment to my feminine companions.
I, however, reproached the _bunniah_ for furnishing a worn-out effete affair that was not in working order or a going concern, but he, by a.s.suring me that it was all right, cajoled me into trying once more.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "I INSTANTANEOUSLY ENDURED THE TOTAL UPSET!"]
So, divesting myself of my fur-lined overcoat, which I commanded a hobbardyhoy of the sweeper cla.s.s to hold, I again mounted upon the saddle, while the proprietor of the machine sustained it in a position of rect.i.tude, and then, supporting me by the superfluity of my pantaloons, he propelled me from the rear, counselling me to press my feet vigorously upon the paddles. But it all proved as the labour of Sisyphus, for the seat was of sadly insufficient dimensions and adamantine hardihood, and whenever the bicycle-man released his hold, I instantaneously endured the total upset!
Then again I reproved him for his _Punica fides_, informing him that I required a machine that would run with smooth progressiveness, precisely similar to those I beheld in motion around me. To which he replied that I must not expect to be able to ride _impromptu_ as well as individuals who had only mastered the accomplishment by long continuity of practice and industry.
"Oh, man of wily tongue!" I addressed him. "Not thus will you bamboozle my supposed simplicity! For if the art were indeed so difficult as you pretend, how should it be acquired by so many timid and delicate feminines and mere nurselings? This machine of yours is nothing but an obsolete _hors de combat_ with which it is not humanly possible to work the oracle!"
At which, waxing with indignation, he leaped upon it, and to my surprise, did easily propel it in whatsoever direction he pleased, and its motive power appeared to be similar in every respect to the rest; so, beguiled by his representations that, under his instructions, I should speedily become a _chef-d"oeuvre_, I once more suffered myself to mount the machine; but whether from superabundant energy of my foot-paddling, or the alarming fact that we were upon the descent of a precipitous slope, I was soon horrified at finding that my instructor was stripped out, and I abandoned to the lurch of my Caudine fork!
Oh, my goodness! My heart turns to water at the nude recollection of such an unparalleled predicament, for the now unrestrained bicycle _vires acquirit eundo_, and in seven-league boots! While I, wet as a clout with anxiety and perspiration, did grasp the handles like the horns of a dilemma, calling out in agonised accents to the bystanders,--"Help! I am running away with myself! Half a rupee for my life-preserver!"
But they were all as if to burst with laughter, and none had the ordinary heroism to intervene, and I with ever increasing rapidity was borne helplessly down the declivity towards the gates of Hyde Park Corner, when, by the benevolence of Providence, the anterior wheel ran under a railing, and I flew off like a tangent into the comparative security of a mud-barrow!
On my return and solicitous inquiry for my fur-lined overcoat, I had the further shock to discover that it was _solvitur ambulando_!
After such a shuddering experience and narrow squeak of my safety, I confidently appeal to the authorities to extinguish this highly dangerous and foolhardy sort of so-called amus.e.m.e.nt, or at the very least to issue paternal orders that, in future, no one shall be permitted to ride upon any bicycle possessing less than three wheels, or guilty of a greater celerity than three (or four) miles per hour.
The fair Miss MANKLETOW amended this proposal by suggesting that the Public should be restricted at once to perambulators; but this is, perhaps, _majori cautela_, and an instance of the over-solicitude of the female intellect, for it is not feasible to treat an adult, who has a.s.sumed the _toga virilis_ and tall hat, as if he was still mewling and puking in a tucker and bib.
VI