PUNCH,
OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

Vol. 101.

July 18, 1891.

LETTERS TO ABSTRACTIONS.

No. II.—TO SOCIAL AMBITION.

DEAR SIR, OR MADAM,

I had not intended to annoy you with another letter. But since I addressed you last week I have received one or two communications—not from you, bien entendu, for you are too wary to dispute the accuracy of what I have written; but from concrete human beings, who pretend to speak on your behalf, and deny that I have "proved my case." I might answer by saying that I never set out to prove a case—that I wished merely to enjoy a friendly chat with you, and to appeal to your clemency on behalf of the large class whom I ventured to represent by the DABCHICKS. "But," says one of my detractors, in a letter now lying before me, "you have only given one instance. You have talked grandly about Queens, and Dukes, and actresses, and, in the end, you have put us off with a wretched story about the parvenu DABCHICK. For my part, I refuse to admit your authority until you prove, in greater detail, that you really know something of the subject on which you presumed to write." "Sir," I reply, "you are brusque, and somewhat offensive in the style you use towards me. For my part I do not admit that you are entitled to an answer from me, and I have felt disposed to pass you by in silence. But since there may be other weak vessels of your sort, I will do violence to myself, and pen another letter." And thus, my dear SOCIAL AMBITION, I once more take the liberty of addressing you, not without an inward tremor lest you should pounce upon me unawares, and cause me to expiate my rashness by driving me from the calm seclusion in which I spend my days, to mingle with the feverish throng who wrangle for place and precedence, myself the most feverish wrangler of them all. But, on the principle that we are both, in some sort, hawks, I think I may trust you to spare my eyes, while I remind you of one or two incidents in which you bore a part.

And first BLENKINSOP knocks at the door of my memory. I bid him enter, and I see a tall slim youth, not ill-favoured, wearing well-cut clothes, and carrying a most beautiful, gold-topped Malacca cane delicately in his hand. He is smoking a cigar, and complains to me that his life is a succession of aimless days, and that he cannot find any employment to turn his hand to. That very night, I remember, he dined with me. We went to the play together, and afterwards looked in at Lady ALICIA PARBOIL's dance. Dear Lady ALICIA, how plump she was, and how good-natured, and how well she married her fiddle-headed daughters. Her husband too, that clumsy, heavy-witted oaf, how cunningly and how successfully withal she schemed for his advancement. Quid plura? you knew her well, she was devoted to you. I only speak of her to remind you that it was in her hospitable rooms that GERVASE BLENKINSOP met you—and his fate. He had danced for the second time that evening with ELVIRA PARBOIL, and, having returned that blushing virgin to her accustomed corner, was just about to depart when the ample form of Lady ALICIA bore down upon him: "Oh, Mr. BLENKINSOP," her Ladyship began, "I really cannot allow you to go before I introduce you to Mr. WILBRAHAM. I hear," she continued, "he has just lost his Private Secretary, and who knows but that—" Here she paused, and archly tapping her protégé's cheek with her fan, she bore him off to introduce him to the Cabinet Minister. I watched the ceremony. Something whispered to me that BLENKINSOP was lost. Must I go through the whole painful story? He became Private Secretary to his new Right Honourable friend, and from that moment he was a changed man. His cheery good-nature vanished. Instead of it he cultivated an air of pompous importance. One by one he weeded out his useless friends, and attached to himself dull but potentially useful big wigs who possessed titles and influence. 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?

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.

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