PUNCH,
OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

Vol. 100.

March 21, 1891.

MY LADY.

KENSINGTON CORRESPONDENCE.

I.

Instead of the Sub-Kensington Gardens Railway scheme as proposed, why not a Sub-Serpentine Line? Start it from the South Kensington Station, District-cum-Metropolitan system, run it with one station well-underground in the middle of Exhibition Road, whence an easy ascent to the Imperial Exhibition, when passengers would come up to "carp the vital airs," then right away again, branching off left and right, thus bringing the mild Southerners into rapid, easy communication, at all reasonable hours, and at reasonable prices, with the rugged denizens of the Northern districts, East and West. If Kensington Gardens are to be touched at all—and, not being sacred groves, there is no reason why they should not be, faute de mieux—a transverse tunnelling from Kensington High Street to Queen's Road would do the trick. We will be happy to render any assistance in our power, and are,—Yours truly,

WILL HONEYCOMB, MOLE, FERRET & CO.,

(Burrow-Knights.)

II.

O sir,—Pleese don't let us ave no nasty railwaies and tunels in Kinsinton Gardins, were we now are so skludid, and the childern can play about, an no danger from nothink sep dogs, wich is mosley musseled, or led with a string, an we ain't trubbled about them, an can ave a word to say to a frend, or a cuzzin, you unnerstan, unner the treeses, so nice an quite, wich it wold not be wen disterbd by ingins, an smoke, skreeges, an steem-wizzels. O, Mr. P., don't let um do it.

Yours obeegentlee, SARA JANE, (Unner Nursrymade.)

III.

Sir,—The Railway underneath Kensington Gardens won't be noticed if only taken down deep enough below the surface. No blow-holes, of course. No disfigurement. Take it under the centre path, where there are no trees, then turn to the left outside the gate and burrow away to S. Kensington Station. I can then get across the park in three minutes for a penny; and now I have to walk, for which I haven't the time, or take a cab, for which I haven't the money.

Yours, A PRACTICAL PAUPER.

IV.

Sir,—I take this opportunity of pointing out that if anything at all is to be done with Kensington Gardens, why not make a real good Rotten Row there? That would he a blessing and a convenience. We're all so sick and tired of that squirrel-in-a-cage ride, round and round Hyde Park, and that half-and-half affair in St. James's Park. No, Sir; now's the time, and now's the hour. There's plenty of space for all equestrian wants, without interfering with the sylvan delights of nurserymaids, children, lovers of nature, and all sorts of lovers too. For my part, if this is not put forward as an alternative scheme, I shall vote for tunnelling under the Gardens out of simple cussedness. If the reply, authoritatively given, be that the two schemes can go and must go together, then I will vote for both, only let's have the equestrian arrangement first.

Yours, JOLTIN TROTT,

Mount, Street, W, Captain 1st Lights and Liver Brigade.

THE TRIUMPH OF BLACK AND WHITE.

"After all, the best of KEENE's life-work is to be found in the innumerable cuts which he contributed to Punch during a period of nearly forty years; and still more in the originals of these, the masterly pen-and-ink drawings which are now for the first time shown in a collected form to the Public."

So says Mr. CLAUDE PHILLIPS, in his "Prefatory Note," to the "Catalogue of a Collection of Drawings of the late CHARLES KEENE," now on view at the Rooms of the Fine Arts Society, 148, New Bond Street.

If the British Public possess that "taste for Art" and that "sense of humour" which some claim for and others deny to it, it (the B.P.) will throng the comfortable and well-lighted Gallery in New Bond Street, where hang some hundreds of specimens of the later work of the most unaffected humorist, and most masterly "Black-and-White" artist of his time. Walk up, Ladies and Gentlemen, and see—such miracles of delineation, such witcheries of effect, as were never before put on paper by simple pen-and-ink!

It is difficult to realise sometimes that it is pen and ink, and that only—all the delightful display of fresh English landscape and unsophisticated British humanity, teeming with effects of distance, hints of atmosphere, and suggestions of colour. Many a much-belauded brush is but a fumbling and ineffective tool, compared with the ink-charged crowquill handled by CHARLES KEENE. Look at "Grandiloquence!" (No. 220) There's composition! There's effect! Stretch of sea, schooner, PAT's petty craft, grandiloquent PAT himself, a nautical Colossus astride on his own cock-boat, with stable sea-legs firmly dispread, the swirl of the sea, the swish of the waves, the very whiff of the wind so vividly suggested!—and all in some few square inches of "Black-and-White!"

Look, again, at the breadth of treatment, the power of humorous characterisation, the strong charm of technique, the colour, the action, the marvellous ease and accuracy of street perspective in No. 16 ("The Penny Toy!"). Action? Why, you can see the old lady jump, let alone the frog! Fix your eye on the frightened dame's foot, and you'll swear it jerks in time to the leap of the "horrid reptile."

Or at that vivid bit of London "hoarding," and London low life, and London street-distance in "'Andicapped!" (No. 25.) Good as is the "gaol-bird," is not the wonderfully real "hoarding" almost better?

Who now can draw—or, for that matter, paint—such a shopkeeper, such a shop, such a child customer as those in "All Alive!" (No. 41), where the Little Girl a-tip-toe with a wedge of cheap "Cheddar" at the counter, comes down upon him of the apron with the crusher, "Oh, mother's sent back this piece o' cheese, 'cause father says if he wants any bait when he's goin' a fishin', he can dig 'em up in our garden!"

Are you a fisherman, reader? Then will you feel your angling as well as your artistic heart warmed by No. 75 ("The Old Adam") and No. 6 ("Wet and Dry"), the former especially! What water,