The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 2 by Harry Furniss (best ereader for comics TXT) 📗
- Author: Harry Furniss
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These paragraphs rather frightened me. What had I let myself in for? Where would it all end?
Then other notices, inspired no doubt by the President, made their appearance from time to time, and heaped upon my devoted head all manner of responsibilities. Waiters suffering from obliquity of vision were to be sought out and fastened on to me:
"The Secretary of the London Thirteen Club has requested the manager of the Holborn Restaurant to provide, if possible, cross-eyed waiters on the occasion of the New Year's dinner of[Pg 261] the Club over which Mr. Harry Furniss is announced to preside on the 13th inst. Mr. Hamp, the manager, while undertaking that the Chairman's table shall be waitered as requested, has grave doubts whether the supply of waiters blessed in the way described will be equal to the large demand so suddenly sprung upon him."
THE BROKEN LOOKING-GLASS. THE BADGE.
Other dreadful proposals there were, too, "too gruesome to mention." I may at once frankly admit that I do not like the introduction of the "gruesome" graveyard element. The ladder we all had to walk under, the peacock's feathers, the black cat, the spilling of salt, breaking of mirrors, presenting of knives, wearing of green ties (not that I wore one—the colour doesn't suit my complexion) or opal rings, are fair fun, and I think that in future it would be as well to limit the satire to these ceremonies, to the exclusion of the funereal part of the business. For badges each wore in his button-hole a small coffin to which dangled a skeleton, and peacock's feathers. In my opinion the peacock's feathers would have been sufficient for the purpose of the Club: the only object I had in going to the dinner was to help to prove that these stupid[Pg 262] superstitions should be killed by ridicule. I detest Humbug, and Superstition is but another name for Humbug. I am a believer in cremation, but that is no reason why I should hold up to ridicule the clumsier and more unhealthy churchyard burials about which so much sentiment exists.
It was amusing to note my absent superstitious friends' excuses for their non-appearance. One declined because he had an important engagement that he could not possibly put off on any account. Late on the evening of the dinner I heard this same gentleman grumbling because no one had turned up at his club to play a game of billiards with him! Another had fallen asleep and did not wake in time, and a third had been unlucky with his speculations of late, which he attributed to having seen the new moon through glass, and therefore he declined to tempt the fates further. Mr. George R. Sims, the well-known "Dagonet," betrayed sheer fright, as the following letter will testify:
"My Dear Sir,—At the last moment my courage fails me, and I return the dinner ticket you have so kindly sent me.
"If I had only myself to think of, I would gladly come and defy the fates, and do all that the members are pleased to do except wear the green necktie suggested by my friend Mr. Sala (that would not suit my complexion). But I have others to think of—dogs and cats and horses—who if anything happened to me would be alone in the world.
"For their sakes I must not run the risks that a faithful carrying out of your programme implies.
"Trusting that nothing very terrible will happen to any of you in after life,
"Believe me,
"Sincerely yours,
"(Signed) Geo. R. Sims."
I confess my real and only reason was to protest. In England superstition is harmlessly idiotic, but elsewhere it is cruel and brutal, and a committee should be formed to try the lunatics—everyday men of the world—who suffer from it, for there is no doubt that they and their families are made miserable through superstitious belief. Nothing kills like ridicule, and it is the Club's object by this means to kill superstition. Some, like Mr. Andrew Lang, may think it a[Pg 263] pity to interfere with this humbug, but I venture to think it is a charity when one considers the absurdity of educated men of the present day making themselves unhappy through the stupid nonsense of the dark ages. For instance, take two of my most intimate friends. One in particular suffered in mind and body through having a supposed fatal number. This number was 56, and as he approached that age he felt that that year would be his last. Fancy that for a man of the world, who is also a public man, and a member of the Government at the time of the dinner! He was also a charming companion and a delightful friend, and no man I knew had a wider circle of acquaintance. I happened to accompany him in a six weeks' tour on the Continent during the year he believed fatal to him, or perhaps it may have been the year previous; anyway, he was suffering from that horrible complaint, superstition. He first made me aware of it the night we arrived in Paris by thumping at my door in a terrible state to implore me to change rooms with him—his number was 56, and it terrified him! Next day we travelled in a carriage numbered 56, and my friend was miserable. At the theatre his seat was 56, the ticket for his coat was 56, 56 was the number of the first shop he entered to buy some trifle I suggested to him. Indeed, I may at once confess that I took care that 56 should crop up as often as possible, as I thought that that would be the best way to cure the patient. Not a bit of it; he got worse, and was really ill until his 56th birthday was passed.
To take the chair at this "most unique" banquet, as the papers styled it, was no easy task, and to be waited upon by cross-eyed menials was quite enough to make a sensitive,[Pg 264] imitative being like myself very nervous. Some of this band of gentlemen who had neglected to go to the Ophthalmic Hospital seemed to consider that their being bought up for the occasion was a great honour, and one youth in particular, with black hair, a large sharp nose—and oh! such a squint!—whose duty it was to open the door of the reception-room, at which I stood to receive the guests as they arrived, was positively proud of his unfortunate disfigurement, and every time he opened the door he flashed his weirdly set eyes upon me to such an extent that I felt myself unintentionally squinting at every guest I shook hands with.
When dinner was served a huge looking-glass was flung at my feet, where it shattered into a thousand fragments with a tremendous crash, giving one a shock so far removed from any superstitious feeling as to act on one as an appetiser before dinner.
Then whilst everybody else is enjoying his dinner without let or hindrance, the poor Chairman has to hold himself prepared for various surprises. Telegrams of all sorts and descriptions were handed to me.
But perhaps the most interesting of all the postal and telegraph deliveries brought me during the dinner was a letter from my old and valued friend "'Arry" of Punch, who had accepted an invitation, and was to have proposed the health of the Chairman, but unfortunately was laid up with a sore throat:
"Try and make my kind and would-be hosts understand that as 'Arry would say, there is 'no kid about this.' I enclose a few doggerel verses penned painfully on a pad perched on a pillow, which—if you can read 'em—you are welcome to do so.
"My elbow's sore
And so no more
At present, from yore
Old friend (and bore)
"E. J. Milliken."
[Pg 265]
Here is the "painfully-penned" doggerel:—
"Lying to-day on my pillow, I am weary and ill at ease,
And the Gargles fail to soothe me,
And the Inhalations tease. I know not what is the matter;
To swallow is perfect pain,
And my Vocal Chords seem palsied!—
Shall I ever use them again?
"So I can't propose your health, friend,
Or drink to the 'Thirteen's' luck.
I must dine on—Eucalyptus,
And Sulphur, or some such muck.
I have no Salt to be spilling;
My only knife is a spoon;
And I have not the smallest notion
If there is, or isn't, a Moon!
"But I picture you on your legs, there,
And the 'Thirteens' ranged around;
And I feel I could sound your praises,
If these Vocal Chords would sound.
But I know that in guttural gurgling
The point of my jokes you would miss;
If I tried to lead the cheers, friend,
My 'hooray' you'd take for a hiss.
"So 'tis just as well as it is, friend,
And doubtless 'the other chap'
Will do you the fullest justice;
So I'll turn and try for a nap.
But before I resume my gargle,
And my throttle with unguents rub,
I'll drink—in a glass of Thirteen port—
[Pg 266]To the health of the 'Thirteen Club.'
"It may be that some bright Thirteenth
They may ask me to Dinner again;
It may be I then shall be able
To speak without perfect pain.
It may be my unstrung larynx
May speak once again with words:
For the present, excuse me—along of
My poor Lost (Vocal) Chords!!!"
I was relieved and amused to find one present even a little more embarrassed than myself. He was a rotund, happy-looking man of the world, and he had to sit isolated during part of the dinner, as his guests were afraid to attend the uncanny banquet. However, the Secretary, being a man of resource, ordered two of the cross-eyed attendants to fill the vacant places. I shall never forget the face of the poor man sandwiched between them. During the course of the dinner the black-edged business card of an "Undertaker and Funeral Furnisher," of Theobald's Road, Bloomsbury, was brought to me. Under the impression that he had supplied the coffin-shaped salt-cellars, and wished to be paid for them, I sent to enquire his business, whereupon the undertaker sent me in the following telegram he had just received from Cambridge:
"Call upon Harry Furniss this evening Holborn Restaurant Thirteen Club Dinner for orders re funeral arrangements."
The receiver of the telegram, I learnt from his card, had been in business fifty-four years, but evidently this was the first time he had been the victim of this Theodore Hookish joke. I called[Pg 267] the funeral furnisher in. Unobserved by the green-tied guests and the cross-eyed waiters, he walked through the banqueting hall, and as soon as he arrived at the chair, black-gloved, hat in hand, with the ominous foot rule projecting from the pocket of his funereal overcoat, I stood up and introduced him to the company, read the telegram, and invited him to go round the tables and take the orders. Whether it was that the man of coffins met
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