This case caused a lot of discussion at the time. The drawing is meant to be ironic. The two women students are taking on the role of their mothers’ moral guardian. In fact I think it’s quite possible that their mothers had read it a generation earlier. The book – in English - was copiously available in Paris during the 1930s.
Sometime during my student days (1949 – 1952) it was reviewed in the college magazine. The reviewer took the precaution of saying that he had read it while abroad on holiday. I am almost sure that he said that it was in Paris.
This joke exposes the dilemma in the popular mind. If it really is such a noble, life enhancing book then what is all the fuss about?
The scene is another indication of the dawn of the ‘permissive society’ of the 1960s not only in the periodicals on offer but also their representation in the pages of Punch.
With just the Penguin logo to go on we can positively identify the books being delivered and the one word ‘quotation’ being uttered by the man on the right of the picture.
Really?
He’s just had a heavy pile of books dropped on his foot and he instinctively makes a one word comment to the culprit. I feel quite certain about which word the cartoonist had in mind and it also happens to be a word which had notoriously appeared in the book.
I can’t access today’s cartoon. Photobucket assure me that their technical problem will soon be resolved. They have a good track record. I will have to wait before I can post today’s joke.
In the first place one can easily think of an innocent explanation. Why shouldn’t husband and wife have just arrived from their different jobs in different countries? Alternatively she may have been visiting her mother in Amsterdam while he was working in the USA.
In the second place what has any of this this to do with the hotel? 1960 is rather a late date to persist with Victorian ideas of morality. I suppose the justification that would have been offered was to avoid giving the hotel a bad name.
This kind of thinking was soon to be consigned to the dustbin.
Husbands hogging the newspaper have appeared several times in Punch. Separate sections were to arrive by the mid-1960s and they are definitely here to stay.
The speaker has clearly been bossing people about while still alive. The cloud and the halo don’t seem to be an adequate compensation for what he has lost.
This is not the first cartoon in which we see house occupants hiding from unwanted visitors. The vogue for huge picture windows and minimalist furniture makes this difficult. The mouse has created an intolerable dilemma for the woman hiding (for the moment) successfully. But, for how long will this continue?
I must admit that sometimes Mrs M. is inclined to include me in some such sentiment without actually consulting me. I like to think that I am not often as out of it as Clive.
It isn’t funny: we shouldn’t laugh. We can see that it is late on Saturday night and there needs to be a sermon ready on Sunday. It would indeed be difficult to think of something new and interesting to say every single week.
There were books available containing sermons given by celebrated preachers. No doubt these days there are websites dedicated to satisfying this need.
Anton has gone surreal. These toffs haven’t dressed themselves up to the nines in order to perform acrobatic feats. Not to say dangerous – look at her winkle picker shoes.
This cartoon is quite funny but it is a complete travesty of what actually happened.
Firstly, the post-colonial participants didn’t look like that. The new rulers all dressed like Europeans. The former colonial administrators had also modernised their clothes. Pith helmets were definitely out.
Secondly, those that ‘stayed on’ (as the saying went) were there because the new rulers genuinely felt in need of their expertise. It didn’t last long but they really did help to make the transition work more smoothly.
Unfortunately their legacy didn’t last, largely because of the nature of politics in the newly independent countries.
