ABSTRACT
In 1842 Anne Thackeray Ritchie began an association with the recently founded periodical Punch, or the London Charivari which, after an unhappy start, became one of the most successful and stimulating of his life. He entered into its inner councils and helped to target its humorous shafts, many of which flew in the direction of Queen Victoria's German consort. Jeames de la Pluche, the arriviste hero of one of Thackeray's series in Punch, goes to court wearing, appropriately, a uniform topped by an 'Albert' hat with a plume 'like a shaving brush'—a kind of ornamentation still known in present-day Germany. A mythical historian is made to claim that the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette escaped from his Temple prison and 'passed a considerable part of his life in Germany; was confined there for thirty years in the dungeon of Spielberg'. Mr Brown has had more enjoyable contacts with Germany and Austria than those at Boppard.
