A Parody on Patience — Themes and Context

From Aestheticism to Buttons

The parody replaces the aesthetic poets of the original with a single comic peculiarity: Deacon Fitney's 'unreasonable fondness for Buttons.' The narrator notes that he 'adorned his apparel with more buttons than even the law requires,' including a 'nice gold headed button on his neatly tied satin scarf.' This substitution reduces the high-flown aestheticism of Gilbert and Sullivan to a mundane, almost absurd fixation. The Deacon's button mania is presented as an unexplained quirk—'nobody could ever find out what prompted this peculiarity'—which mirrors the inexplicable devotion of the original's aesthetic characters while grounding it in a trivial, material detail.

Railroad Boosterism as Comic Backdrop

The parody is saturated with the language of railroad promotion. The Deacon declares the Michigan Central Railroad 'the only way to go,' promising to explain its advantages on the train. The text itself is punctuated by advertisements for railway supplies: the Baragwanath 'Steam Jacket' Feed Water Heater, the Hewitt Box Lid, and the Gardner Perforated Settees for passenger depots. These ads, printed alongside the narrative, create a collage of commercial enthusiasm that mirrors the parody's own promotional energy. The train is not merely a setting but a spectacle of industrial progress, with its 'five sleepers, three coaches, a palace dining car and a couple of baggage cars' enumerated like inventory.

A Patchwork of Parody and Commerce

The text's structure is itself a parody of Victorian publishing conventions. The narrative is interleaved with full-page advertisements for Chicago businesses—Marshall Field & Co., Palmer, Fuller & Co., and the Chicago Malleable Iron Co.—that seem to have no connection to the plot. This juxtaposition creates a tension between the fictional excursion and the real commercial world of 1880s Chicago. The ads, with their detailed claims about paint, heaters, and box lids, read as a second, parallel text. The parody thus becomes a hybrid: part theatrical burlesque, part railroad brochure, part city directory. The reader must navigate between the story of the Trevellyan family and the relentless promotion of local industry.

Readers familiar with Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience will find the parody's substitutions instructive: the aesthetic poet replaced by a button-loving deacon, the pastoral setting exchanged for a railway car. But the work also rewards attention to its material context—the advertisements and boosterish asides that frame the narrative. The parody is as much about Chicago's commercial ambition as it is about musical comedy.

It's funny, the things that stay with you. I read that Niagara parody once—all that shiny railroad hustle wrapped around something so delicate—and later, wandering through An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber, Volume 1 (of 2) Written by Himself. A New Edition with Notes and Supplement — Themes and Context, I felt the same quiet ache: the performances we put on, just to keep moving forward.