The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 2, Harry Furniss [affordable ebook reader txt] 📗

longer portion being the dining-room, and the smaller one the card-room, and on Saturday evenings, when they all sat[Pg 160] round smoking their calumets, and singing their songs, and dancing their war-dances, the room was tried to its utmost capacity, and as on the occasion to which I am referring the tribe paid me the compliment of assembling in its numbers, the whole room was required. It was late in the evening when I arrived, and I found the lanternist in a state of agitation because the partition was not down, and he was, therefore, unable to put up the screen, as the card-players vigorously protested against any disturbance.

Now it has always struck me, perhaps more forcibly on this occasion than on any other, that the most selfish men on the face of the earth are to be found in the card-rooms of clubs. The time was close at hand for me to make my maiden effort in public lecturing, and I was not going to be baffled by a handful of card-players; so, backed by the authority of the secretary, I ordered them in Cromwellian tones to "Take away that partition!" The players were all but invisible, surrounded as they were by volumes of smoke, out of which there issued incalculable quantities of great big D's intermixed with the fumes of poisonous nicotine. Down went the partition, up went the screen, on went the game. I firmly believe they would not have looked up had Cavendish come to deliver a discourse from the platform on whist. I was quite prepared to proceed without disturbing their game, but a difficulty arose—there was no platform, and I required their tables for the purpose. The grumbling gamblers had to submit at last, and cards in hand they betook themselves to another room, so I was able to mount my first platform—a collection of tables. Now I don't know how it is, but it is a fact that there is nothing more unnerving than to stand on a table. The infantile prodigy who is put up on a table for the first time so as to be better admired by fair visitors, and who has previously struggled manfully from one end of the room to the other on the floor, totters and falls at the first step when raised to this higher elevation. Anyone can with ease stand on a chair and hang up a picture or anything of the sort, but standing on a table has the effect of making you grow weak in the knees and light in the head. This is not the effect of the[Pg 161] extra height, but the knowledge that the table was constructed so that you could put your feet under it, and, therefore, they have no right on top of it.

Have you ever been in a court of justice in Ireland and seen a witness perched upon a table? In that enlightened country a table takes the place of the witness-box. The result is delightful. Standing in a witness-box and leaning comfortably over the bar, you can be comparatively at your ease, your legs can tremble unobserved, and you seem to be in a measure protected from the searching gaze of the public. Not so in the Emerald Isle. The chair is placed in the centre of the table in the well of the court between the judges and the counsel, and the unfortunate witness, finding himself in this elevated and awkward position, becomes nervous in the extreme. His feet are a great source of discomfort to him. He doesn't seem to know what to do with them. First he tucks them under the chair, then he crosses them, then he turns his toes out, then he turns them in, and just when he is beginning to get accustomed to his embarrassing situation, the cross-examination begins, and he is at the counsel's mercy:

"Now thin, don't be gaping at the jury, sir; why arrn't you respectful and keep your eye on his lordship?"

"Now, sir, attind to me whin I'm speaking, look me straight in the face, and answer me!"

"D'ye see this gintleman on me right? Now, now, don't hisitate, keep cool!"

It is more than the poor witness can do to keep on the chair. The judge is on his right, the counsel on the left, and the jury in front of him, and after vainly trying to keep his eye on them all at the same time, in obedience to his counsel's injunctions, he is requested by the opposing counsel to observe some witness in the court behind him. In my opinion the witness ought to be provided with a swivel chair, or else the clerks who sit round ought to be adepts in the art of table-turning.

Some years later I had another experience of speaking from an impromptu platform; perhaps the most unique audience I ever addressed. It was at Merchant Taylors' Hall, when a reception[Pg 162] was given to hospital nurses from all over the kingdom. My pencil perhaps can give a better idea of the sundry and various varieties of the "nursus hospitalicus" from the different nurseries of the country. There was no proper platform or stage, so the attendants had the task of moving all the heavy tables in the splendid hall together, so as to form a substitute. This I thought very efficient, but when I mounted it I found that I could much better have given an exhibition of fancy sliding or skating than illustrations of the pedestrian peculiarities of Members of Parliament. I was inwardly pleased to think that my audience was entirely composed of skilled nurses, who were close at hand should anything happen, for I had serious misgivings about the slippery surface of my improvised stage. Visions of myself with a broken arm or leg floated before me,[Pg 163] and, indeed, I don't think I should have been so very sorry had an accident occurred, so enraptured was I by the sight of so much feminine beauty.