Knowing that any picnic might dissolve in chaos when attacked by a flying critter, readers of Punch, Britain’s premier satirical magazine, laughed at Leech’s mock tragedy. They might have also smiled patronizingly at the verbal pun “wopps,” the Cockney pronunciation...
At first, Donald Duck’s beach picnic is a pleasant outing. Donald and Pluto set up on the beach for a perfect day. Donald plants an umbrella for shade and spreads a blanket for food. Expectations are high. It doesn’t last, as usual. The picnic turmoil is classic....
Picnic, the phonetic spelling of pique-nique, owes its introduction in English parlance to the Pic Nics, a London club that had a brief run from 1801-1803. We remember Pic Nics now mainly because James Gillray lampooned and mocked them. We remember that this was the...
Round up the usual suspects! Featured Image: George Cruikshank. Pic Nic disturbed by a Swarm of Bees. Aquatint. London: George Humphrey, 1826; http://images.library.yale.edu/walpoleweb/oneitem.asp?imageId=lwlpr12922. A black and white print is the British Museum...
Even after zeppelin attacks on London in May and June, Brits are undeterred and cannot refrain from picnicking even under threat of being gassed. Acid satire by F.H. Townsend. Featured Image: Even under threat of attack, Upper-class Brits cannot refrain from...
The humor of Smith’s picnic fiasco “Slicing the Wasps” is obvious. The legend reads: “Suitable for both sexes, young and old. Fascinating, amusing, skillful exciting, and with that element of danger.” It’s also an allusion to John...
Ants at a picnic always serve for picnic humor not because they have interrupted picnics but because it is cute to presume that they do. But who is really bothered by ants? John O’Brien achieves stasis in “Ants at a Picnic”: his picnickers and ants below them are...
The zany humor of “Just a Picnic at Whipsnade” is Heath Robinson’s trademark. Of the two picnics here, the lion has got the better deal. It also helps to know that Whipsnade is England’s biggest zoo, near Luton, an hour and twenty minutes north of London. Featured...
The London Stock Exchange’s reaction to a current financial panic is the butt of John Leech’s “The Currency Question, or The Exchange Out for a Day.” Leech implies picnicking in troubled times is laughable when buying and selling stocks is a much a gamble as horse...
Henry Worrall’s “Taking and Being Taken” depicts a buffalo unsetting a photographer’s picnic. It’s a topsy-turvy moment in which the buffalo then being exterminated on the American Great Plains gets even, even it is to disrupt a hapless photographer. Worrall’s...