News You Can Bruise for 2007 December 18 (entry 0)

(9) Tue Dec 18 2007 17:09 Horrid Tragedy In Private Life: Oh, frabjous day. Short-time readers may recall back in July when I heard of an incomprehensible Punch cartoon drawn by W.M. Thackeray, a cartoon so bizarre that "[a] rival magazine helpfully offered five hundred pounds to anybody who could explain the drawing. Nobody could." Since then I've been on a cartoon-hunt (not really), and today I not only found the cartoon, I found out what it means!

Instead of telling you what the cartoon means right now, I thought it would be fun to do some information scarcity reenactment and invite unfounded speculation as to what it means. Leave your theories in comments. I'll post an explanation tomorrow.

If you don't like not knowing something, it's not hard to find the canonical explanation once you know the title. I must warn you that, in the "Cow Tools" tradition, the explanation is quite the anticlimax. Meanwhile, I'll be perfecting my time machine to collect that five hundred pounds.

Comments:

Posted by cola at Tue Dec 18 2007 22:16

it looks like the mischievous little girl has moved her poor blind mother's chair a little bit to the left. if this is the kind of thing that "punch"'s readers enjoy, then i deplore the morals of young people today, and tentatively suggest that blame be placed with the infernal beguilements of Mr. Horner's zoetrope and similar things.

Posted by Caleb Wilson at Wed Dec 19 2007 00:11

A dropped pudding

or

Her brain fell out

Posted by jacob at Wed Dec 19 2007 00:31

i think the message is "there is a lot of nonsense you will have to put up with if you have children so don't bother".

Posted by Nathaniel at Wed Dec 19 2007 01:24

It's early yuri, right...?

Posted by Brendan at Wed Dec 19 2007 01:30

Does it have something to do with the empty chair? Is the man of the family supposed to be there?

Posted by mikepop at Wed Dec 19 2007 09:25

The mom realizes her kid is almost as tall as her now, and is afraid she will start stealing her best petticoats.

Posted by mikepop at Wed Dec 19 2007 09:32

Or, this is a Heroes flashback where the Hero, right, learns she has lost her power to levitate children.

Posted by Susie at Wed Dec 19 2007 13:40

I thought her brain fell out also.