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Page 5
DEAREST MR. PUNCH,
We have all been _so_ delighted to read your articles about shooting.
I read them to Papa after dinner in the drawing-room. Mamma says she
doesn't understand such matters; but, of course, things have altered
_very much_ since her young days, as she is always telling us. Now
I want to ask your opinion about an important point. _Do_ you think
girls ought to go out and join the men at lunch? We all think it _so_
delightful, but FRED, my eldest brother, makes himself _extremely_
disagreeable about it--at least he did till last week, when EMILY
RAYBURN, who is my very _dearest_ friend, was staying with us. Then
he told me we might come for a change, but we were to go home again
directly afterwards. Generally he says that women are _a bore_ out
shooting. _Please_ tell us, dear _Mr. Punch_, what you really think
about it.
With much love, yours always,
ROSE LARKING.
P.S.--I am so glad you write the word "lunch," and not "luncheon." I
told FRED that--but he went to _Johnson's Dictionary_, and read out
something about "Lunch" being only a colloquial form of "luncheon."
Still, I don't care a little bit. Dr. JOHNSON lived so long ago, and
couldn't possibly know _everything_--could he?
R.L.
My darling young lady, I reply, your letter has made a deep impression
on me. Dr. JOHNSON did, as you say, live many years ago; so many years
ago, in fact, that (as a little friend of _Mr. Punch_ once said, with
a sigh, on hearing that someone would have been one hundred and fifty
years old if he had been alive at the present day) he must be "a orfle
old angel now." The word "lunch" is short, crisp, and appetising. The
word "luncheon" is of a certain pomposity, which, though it may suit
the mansions of the great, is out of place when applied to the meals
of active sportsmen. So we will continue, if you please, to speak
of "lunch." And now for your question. My charming ROSE, this little
treatise does not profess to do anything more than teach young
sportsmen how to converse. I assume that they have learnt shooting
from other instructors. And as to the details of shooting-parties,
how they should be composed, what they should do or avoid, and how
they should bear themselves generally--the subject is too great, too
solemn, too noble to be entered upon with a light heart. At any rate,
that is not my purpose here. It was rude--_very_ rude--of FRED to
say you were a bore--and I am sure it wasn't true. I can picture
you tripping daintily along with your pretty companions to the lunch
_rendezvous_. You are dressed in a perfectly fitting, tailor-made
dress, cut short in the skirt, and displaying the very neatest and
smallest pair of ankles that ever were seen. And your dear little nose
is just a leetle--not red, no, certainly not red, but just delicately
pink on its jolly little tip, having gallantly braved the north wind
without a veil. To call _you_ a bore is absurd. But men are _such_
brutes, and it is as certain as that two and two (even at our public
schools) make four, that ladies are--what shall I say?--not so popular
as they always ought to be when they come amongst shooters engaged
in their sport. Even at lunch they are not _always_ welcomed with
enthusiasm. This is, perhaps, wrong, for, after all, they can do no
harm there.
But, darling ROSE, I am sure FRED was perfectly right to send you home
again directly the meal was over, though it must have wrung his manly
heart to part from EMILY RAYBURN. Even, I, the veteran sportsman
_Punch_, have qualms when a poor bird has been merely wounded, or
when a maimed hare shrieks as the dog seizes it. I cannot, as I say,
discuss the ethics of the question. The good shot is the merciful
shot. But, after all, in killing of every kind, whether by the gun or
the butcher's knife, there is an element of cruelty. And therefore,
my pretty ROSE, _you_ must keep away from the shooting. Besides, have
I not seen a good shot "tailor" half-a-dozen pheasants in succession,
merely because a chattering lady--not a dear, pleasant little lump of
delight like you, ROSE--had posted herself beside him, and made him
nervous? By all means come to lunch if you must, but, equally by all
means, leave the guns to themselves afterwards. As for ladies who
themselves shoot, why the best I can wish them is, that they should
promptly shoot themselves. I can't abide them. Away with them!
But, in order that the purpose of this work may be fulfilled,
and the conversational method inculcated, I here give a short
"Ladies-at-lunch-dialogue," phonographically recorded, as a party of
five guns was approaching the place of lunch, at about 1:30 P.M.
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