VOL. 93. SEPTEMBER 17, 1887***


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PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI

VOLUME 93.

SEPTEMBER 17, 1887.


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OUR IGNOBLE SELVES.

(_Lament by a Reader of "Letters to the Papers."_)

[Illustration]

  OH! bless us and save us! Like men to behave us
    We Britons once held it our glory;
  Now Party bids fair to befool and enslave us.
    We're lost between Liberal and Tory!
  Some quidnunc inditeth a letter to GLADSTONE,
    The style of it, "Stand and deliver!"
  Its speech may be rude, and its tone quite a cad's tone,
    Its logic may make a man shiver.
  _Au contraire_ it _may_ be most lucid and modest,
    In taste and in pertinence equal
  (Though such a conjunction would be of the oddest),
    But what, anyhow, is the sequel?
  Rad papers _all_ cry, "We've once more before us
    An instance of folly inrushing."
  Whilst _all_ the Conservative Journals in chorus
    Declare "it is perfectly crushing!"
  "Little Pedlington's" snubbed by the Liberal Press,
    And urged such fool tricks to abandon.
  Cry Tories, "I guess the Old Man's in a mess,
    He hasn't a leg left to stand on!"
  Oh! save us and bless us! The shirt of old Nessus,
    Was not such a snare to the hero,
  As poisonous faction. Crass fools we confess us,
    With sense and with spirit at zero.
  If thus we comport us like blind sprawling kittens,
    Or pitiful partisan poodles,
  'Twill prove Party makes e'en of freeminded Britons,
    A race of incontinent noodles!

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"TO TEAPOT BAY AND BACK."

LONDONERS who like but are weary of the attractions of Eastend-on-Mud,
and want a change, can scarcely do better than spend twenty-four hours
in that rising watering-place Teapot Bay. I say advisedly "rising,"
because the operation has been going on for more than forty years. In
these very pages a description of the "juvenile town," appeared nearly
half a century ago. Then it was said that the place was "so infantine
that many of the houses were not out of their scaffold-poles, whilst
others had not yet cut their windows," and the place has been growing
ever since--but very gradually. The "ground plan of the High Street" of
those days would still be useful as a guide, although it is only fair to
say that several of the fields then occupied by cabbages are now to some
extent covered with empty villas labelled "To Let." In the past the High
Street was intersected by roads described as "a street, half houses,
half potatoes," "a street apparently doing a good stroke of business,"
"a street, but no houses," "a street indigent, but houseless," "a street
which appears to have been nipped in the kitchens," "a street thickly
populated with three inhabitants," and last but not least, "a street in
such a flourishing condition that it has started a boarding-house and
seminary." The present condition of Teapot Bay is much the same--the
roads running between two lines of cellars (contributions to houses that
have yet to be built) are numerous and testify to good intentions never
fulfilled. There is the same meaningless tower with a small illuminated
clock at the top of it, and if the pier is not quite so long as it was
thirty or forty years ago, it still seems to be occupying the same site.

[Illustration: Cheap and Picturesque Roots for Tourists.]

The means of getting to Teapot Bay is by railway