Chapter XXVI: Act I: ――a Midsummer Nightmare

SCENE,――_The Marquis of Salisbury’s House, Arlington Street_.

NORTHCOTE. Are we all met?

SALISBURY. Pat, pat; and this is a marvellous convenient place for our rehearsal. This stuffed settee shall be our Speaker’s chair, these tongs the Mace, and we will do it in action as we will do it before the House.

NORTHCOTE. Salisbury――――

SALISBURY. What say’st thou, bully Stafford?

NORTHCOTE. There are things in this comedy of _Jingo and Whisky_ that will never please. First, Jingo must draw his sword, which Radicals can never abide.

LORD JOHN MANNERS. By’r lakin, a parlous fear.

HICKS-BEACH. I believe we must leave the killing out when all is
done.

SALISBURY. Not a whit. I have a desire to make all well. Write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say we will do no harm with our swords, and for the more better assurance tell them that I, Jingo the Foreign Secretary, am not Jingo, but Salisbury, who barks more than he bites. This will put them out of fear.

GIFFARD. Well, we shall have such a prologue, and it shall be
written for six and eight.

LORD JOHN MANNERS. Will not the ladies be afeard of the tea tax?

SIR R. CROSS. I fear it, I promise you.

NORTHCOTE. Masters, you ought to consider with yourselves. To bring in――God shield us!――a tea tax among ladies, is a dreadful thing, for there is not a more fearful wild fowl living than your tea tax, and we ought to look to it.

LORD JOHN MANNERS. Therefore another prologue must tell he is not
a tax.

NORTHCOTE. Nay, you must name his name, and half his face must be seen in the teapot, and he himself must speak, saying thus, or to the same defect: “Ladies, or fair ladies, I would wish you, or I would request you, or I would entreat you, not to fear, not to tremble. If you think I have come hither as a tax, it were pity of my life; no, I am no such thing; I am an indirect impost, as others are”――and there, indeed, let him name his name, and tell them plainly he is Hicks-Beach, the member for Gloucestershire.

SALISBURY. Well, it shall be so. But there is two hard things; that
is to bring Coercion into Ireland.

HICKS-BEACH. Have we a majority that night we play our play?

SALISBURY. ’Tis doubtful. One must come in with a rifle and a Bobby’s lantern, and say he comes to disfigure, or to present, the person of Coercion. Then there is another thing; we must have a Protection Bill in the great Chamber.

HICKS-BEACH. You can never bring in Protection What say you,
Northcote?

NORTHCOTE. Some man or other――Lowther, say――must present Protection; and let him have some false statistics to signify its benefits. Or let him hold his finger to his nose, and through that sign let “buncombe” thus be known.

SALISBURY. If that may be, then all is well. Come sit down, every
mother’s son, and rehearse your parts.

_Funny Folks_, June 27, 1885.