Chapter II: Part 2

The scene (perhaps the best part of the whole show) was laid in "An Ancient Grove" adjacent to a German University. (The catalogue, peculiarly reticent about proper names, offers my memory no refreshment.) This "Ancient Grove," unchanged throughout the play, served a number of useful purposes. It made excuse for the intermittent apparition (otherwise inexplicable) of a little woodland figure that played upon a pipe. Its proximity to an hotel afforded occasion for meal after meal _en plein air_. Its proximity to a University Town encouraged the frequent passage of German students, vivacious and vocal; also the convenient appearance of any foreign resident or visitor at a moment's notice. Its Statue of Venus (fully draped) afforded an authentic incitement to the making of love. Its environs enabled Mr. Jerome to dispose of his puppets whenever their presence became undesirable. They simply said, "Let us stroll in the woods;" or "Come for a walk with me," and he was rid of them. Finally the "Ancient Grove" contained a central patch of boscage in whose cover one of the duellists, arriving on the _terrain_ a little before the time, remained _perdu_ in slumber, undisturbed by a loud conversation carried on within a few feet of him by all the other parties to the combat.

Indeed the scenery put in some good work, and I really don't know what we should have done without it.

_The Great Gamble_ was, of course, the lottery of marriage. But for some of us it meant the risk we ran in attending the first night of a play by Mr. Jerome after our bitter experience of his _Rowena in Search of a Father_. To say that his present work is an improvement upon his last would be to damn it with a fainter praise than it deserves. _The Great Gamble_ is a strange and inscrutable medley, but it has its exhilarating moments, and the humour of its dialogue, though it is mitigated by the Professor's contributions, is worthy of a much better design.

O. S.

* * * * *

"Now that Miss Cecil Leitch has won the Ladies' Golf
Championship after seven years' unsuccessful striving, it may be
suggested that she might alter the spelling of her name to
Leach. Just to show how she stuck to it!"--_Glasgow Evening
News._

The writer should have stuck to his dictionary.

* * * * *

"It was officially stated yesterday that Dr. Herbert William
Moxon, the son of a former prominent Unionist in West
Derbyshire, had consented to address a meeting of Liberals with
a view to his adaptation as Liberal candidate for West
Derbyshire."

_Daily Mail._

These adaptable politicians.

* * * * *

"Mr. Palmer would still deserve to be crowned with unfading
laurels."--_Times._

Palmer _qui meruit ferat_.

* * * * *

Latest Cannibal News.

"Djaraboub ordinarily contains only 350 inhabitants but these
are swollen by pilgrims."

_Siam Observer._

* * * * *

_Bill._ "Yuss; 'ad bloomin' rough weather, too; but it's all right if ye 'old on to this 'ere forestay."]

* * * * *

VERY MUCH GREATER LONDON.

[_One result of the introduction of the Bachelet flying train should certainly be the extension of London's suburbs. We extract the following from a season-ticket holder's diary of the near future._]

_Dundee._--Strap-hung again to-day; London train abominably crowded. That is the worst of living in these inner suburbs. Men who live on the other side of the Orkney Tunnel tell me the train only begins seriously to fill up at Caithness; before that, one has reasonable hope of a seat. Brown, for instance, says that, coming up from Kirkwall and entering train before pressure begins, he rarely has to use strap. Don't know how the poor wretches at Newcastle and Durham ever get to town at all, though, living so close to King's Cross, they can perhaps afford to stand for the few minutes they are in train....

No change for better, so have been studying agents' lists; some items attractive. For example:--

_Belgian Tunnel Line._--Antwerp and Liverpool Street in 29 minutes; low season-ticket rates; excellent mid-day service, enabling business men to take luncheon at home.

_Charming Maisonettes_ in fine healthy suburb, S.W. London (Penzance district); bath h. and c.; Company's water; two minutes Bachelet Railway-station; 25 minutes Paddington and City.

_Sunny Cairo, S.E._--Nice self-contained flats; charming desert view; low rents; ninety-five minutes Charing Cross; five minutes Sahara golf links (inland course but real sand bunkers).

_Week-End Cottage for Harassed City Worker, Siberia (near London_).--To be let furnished; bracing air; perfect quiet.

* * * * *

SYNTHETIC MUTTON.

In view of the impending scarcity of meat, so vividly foreshadowed in a recent article in _The Times_, it is most reassuring to learn that a new comestible, palatable and nutritious, yet entirely free from the drawbacks of all flesh foods, has been invented by a German scientist and will shortly be put upon the market at a price which will bring it within the reach of the humblest household.

Professor Schafskopf, the inventor, has long been engaged on experiments with a view to the production of synthetic mutton, and his diligent efforts have now been crowned with success. The basis of the new food is compressed peat, which is so permeated with a variety of nutritive juices, applied at high pressure by a grouting machine, as to be practically indistinguishable from the best Southdown mutton.

By way of putting his discovery to the test Professor Schafskopf entertained a number of distinguished guests at the Fitz Hotel last week, and with hardly an exception they were astonished at the succulent and sumptuous flavour of the new food, which is called by the attractive name of "Supermut."

Professor Bino Byles, interviewed at the close of the banquet, said that "Supermut" was a distinct success. It had all the digestibility of tripe with an added aroma of Harris Tweed.

Mr. Gullick, the famous motorist, said that "Supermut" reminded him of the best cormorant. He believed that it could also be used for making unpuncturable tyres.

Lord Findhorn, the eminent Scots Judge, said that "Supermut" had converted him to carnivorous food, though he was an hereditary vegetarian.

Finally we note that _The Forceps_ in a laudatory article pays a handsome tribute to the new food, and says, "It must be conceded that a very reliable substitute for mutton has at length been produced. We found it hard to distinguish it from a saddle."

* * * * *

A MAY PICNIC.

Someone has settled (it's not my fault;
And, whatever we do, let's take some salt)--
Someone has settled, don't you see,
Without referring the thing to me,
That this is a day to be bright and hearty,
And to take our lunch as a picnic party--
To take our lunch with toil and care
Away from home in the open air.

Now I maintain that it can't be right,
When there isn't a single wasp in sight,
To have mint-sauce and a joint of lamb,
Some currant cake and a pot of jam,
A gooseberry tart, with sugar and cream,
And some salad dressing, a bottled dream--
All the things that a wasp loves best
When he buzzes away from his hidden nest;
And you all shout "Wasp!" and flick at the fellow,
And you miss his black and you miss his yellow,
And only succeed in turning over
Your glass of drink on the thirsty clover.
A picnic? Pooh! Why, you merely waste it
When there isn't a wasp to come and taste it.

However, a picnic's got to be,
Though they haven't referred the thing to me.
There's a boat and we put our parcels in it,
And off we push in another minute.
And our pace is certainly rather slow,
For everybody wants to row;
And there's any amount of laugh and chatter,
And crabs are caught, but it doesn't matter;
For we're all afloat
In an open boat,
And the breeze is light and the sky is blue,
And the sun is toasting us through and through.

By a buttercup field we came to land
And every passenger lent a hand
To unload our food and spread it out,
While the cows stood flapping their tails about.
And Peggy as waitress played her part,
And John fell into the gooseberry tart.
I can't explain, though I wish I could,
Why everything tasted twice as good?
As it does at home in the cheerful gloom
Of the old familiar dining-room.
Every picnicky thing was there,
Including the girls and the son and heir,
A red-cheeked frivolous knife-and-fork's crew,
Who hadn't forgotten, oh joy, the corkscrew!
And, last, we furbished our feasting-green,
And left no paper to spoil the scene,
Did up the remains in a tidy pack
And took to our boat and drifted back.

R. C. L.

* * * * *

THE CORNCRAKE.

The corncrake has arrived. As I turned in at the gate last night he reported himself in the usual way. So now we are in for it. The priceless boon of silence in the hours of darkness will be denied to us for many weeks to come.

I do not know how to describe his utterance. It could not without extravagance be called a note, still less a chirp, and least of all a song. It is not a bark--not quite. It is hardly a growl or a grunt or a snort; I should be sorry to call it a bray or a yelp. And yet I am not going to admit that it is a quack or a bleat; and it isn't a screech or a squeal or a sob. Nor is it a croak, though now we are getting nearer to it. The puzzling thing about it is that it was clearly meant by Nature to be an interjection. Uttered once, suddenly, from the far side of a hedge it would admirably convey such a sentiment as, "Hi!" "What ho!" or "Here we are again!" But in practice it is the one sound in the whole landscape that never interjects. It is a monument of barren reiteration.

I wonder why he does it. No doubt he has some end in view. He must get something out of it--some bodily ease or mental stimulus or spiritual consolation. But he must surely have been born with a prodigious passion for monotony. It may surprise you to learn that in the course of the season he will make that same remark over two million times. I have worked it out. Two million is a conservative estimate. It only allows for eight hours' work out of the twenty-four, for a term of six weeks: so that it is well within the mark.

Our corncrake--I don't know what the usual standard may be--does ninety-eight to the minute. He is as regular as the ticking of a clock. You can't hustle him and you can't wear him out. At times when I have thought he might be getting tired and thirsty I have imagined that he was slowing down; but he never gets below ninety-six; and in his most active and feverish moments he very rarely touches the hundred. At short measured intervals he punctuates the night with his dry delivery, unhasting yet unresting, his sole idea to get his forty-seven-thousand up without a break before the morning. He just doesn't know the meaning of the word emphasis; he has absolutely no sense of rhythm. Once I tried to believe that he was talking in three-four time, or at least that he was occasionally accenting a note. But he never does. He gets no louder or softer, higher or lower, quicker or slower--he just keeps on.

You need not suppose that I have meekly sat down under this thing. This is his sixth year, and I have been at war with him all the time. But finally he holds the field, and my only hope now is that his powers may begin to fail as old age creeps on. Even if he dropped to eighty a minute it would be an intense relief. But I dare say he means to bequeath the pitch to a successor at his death--perhaps to a relative.

At first I used to throw things at him out of the bedroom window--hairbrushes and slippers and books and all sorts of odds and ends. I had to go round with a basket after breakfast collecting them. But it was no good; he never dropped a beat. Then I deliberately devastated the garden, with a view to deprive him of cover. I had all the bushes taken up and the flowerbeds removed, and I laid down, just under my bedroom window, a wide expanse of tar-macadam, as bald and flat as a mirror--a beetle couldn't have hidden himself on it. (I had to call this a hard tennis-court for the sake of appearances. We do as a matter of fact play on it sometimes.) But it had no effect on the corncrake. Of course the truth is that I never have the least idea where he is; no one has. No one has over seen him or ever will. He is endowed with great ventriloquial powers. That is a provision of Nature, and if you will reflect a moment you will see that it must be so. For, granted that he is to go on talking like that, if he could not throw his voice about from place to place and thus make it impossible to get at him, the species would become extinct.

There is nothing more that I can do, and it is only fair to admit that the whole thing is my own fault. When I built my house six years ago I might have shown a little common foresight in this matter. I got everything else right as far as I could. My rooms are well placed for sunshine and they have the best of the view. The water-supply is good; there is plenty of fall for the drainage system; we are well out of the motor dust. But I omitted one precaution. I should have had the ground surveyed for corncrakes.

* * * * *

_Late Reveller._ "Let it break--and put it down in the bill, waiter."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerics._)

In _The World Set Free_ (Macmillan) Mr. H. G. Wells has seen a vision--the vision of a world plunged into blazing and crumbling chaos by the ultimate logical issues of military violence. Defence, becoming always less and less effective against attack, which is always more and more a matter of the laboratory, finally succumbs before _Holsten's_ discovery of "Carolinum" and its final disastrous application in the "atomic bombs." Romancing on a theme out of Soddy's _Interpretation of Radium_, Mr. Wells, with those deft strokes of allusive and imaginative realism--so convincing is he that realism is the only apt word for his daring constructions of the future--depicts the shattering of the headquarters of the War Control in Paris, followed by a swift counterstroke against the Central European Control in Berlin by the aviation corps, the destruction of capital after capital, and the final great battle in the air, with the bombing of the Dutch sea walls. Thereafter comes the attempt at reconstruction by the Council of Brissago, a convention of the governing folk of the world--the dream and deed of the Frenchman _Leblanc_, "a little bald, spectacled man," a peacemonger whom, till that day of ruin, everyone had thought an amiable fool. One monarch, "The Slavic Fox," sees in the assembly a chance to strike for world sovereignty, and the failure of his bomb-fraught planes and his final undoing in the secret arsenal are breathless pieces of description.

A subject for wonder is the astonishing advance in the author's technique. _The World Set Free_ is on an altogether different plane from _The War of the Worlds_ and those other gorgeous pot-boilers. It combines the alert philosophy and adroit criticism of the _Tono Bungay_ phase with the luminous vision of _Anticipations_ and the romantic interest of his eccentric books of adventure. The seer in Mr. Wells comes uppermost, and I almost think that when the history of the latter half of the twentieth century comes to be written it will be found not merely that he has prophesied surely, but that his visions have actually tended to shape the course of events. Short of _Holsten's_ "atomic bombs" (which may or may not be developed) Mr. Wells makes a fair foreshadowing of the uprush of subliminal sanity which may very well be timed to appear before 1999. I can't take my hat off to Mr. Wells because I've had it in my hand out of respect for him these last few years. So I touch my forelock.

* * * * *

_Roding Rectory_ (Stanley Paul) is in many respects the best novel Mr. Archibald Marshall has written. Those who remember _Exton Manor_ and the three books dealing with the lives and deeds of the _Clintons_ will consider this to be high praise, as, indeed, it is meant to be. Mr. Marshall preserves the ease and amenity of style which we have learnt to expect of him; he creates his characters--ordinary English men and women, animated by ordinary English motives--with all his old skill, and he sets them to work out their destinies in that pleasant atmosphere of English country life which no one since Trollope's death has reproduced with greater truth and delicacy than Mr. Marshall. This time, however, the clash of temperaments and traditions is more severe, the story cuts deeper into humanity, and the narration of it is, I think, more closely knit. The Rector of Roding, the _Rev. Henry French_, is a fine figure of a man honourably devoted to the duties of his parish and abounding in good works. It is sad to see him cast down from his pride of place by the sudden revelation of an ill deed done in his thoughtless youth at Oxford. In an interview managed with an admirable sense of dramatic fitness he is faced by a son, the living embodiment of his all-but-forgotten sin, and soon the whole parish knows of it. But the Rector, with the aid of his wife, fights his fight and in the end wins back his self-respect and the respect of his neighbours. He is helped, too, by _Dr. Merrow_, the Congregational minister, a beautiful character drawn with deep sympathy. Indeed, it is _Dr. Merrow_ who has the _beau rôle_, and, I must add, deserves it. For the rest I must let Mr. Marshall's book speak for itself. He has written a very powerful and interesting story.

* * * * *

Among reviewers of books there is a convention by which the matter of a first edition--whether a single story or a collection of stories--which has been reproduced from a magazine or magazines, is treated as if it were a novelty. It is a sound and benevolent convention, because the stuff of magazines only receives at best a very sketchy notice. Miss May Sinclair, however, is apparently prepared; to risk the loss of any advantage to be derived from it, for her collection of short and middle-sized stones republished under the title of the first of them, _The Judgment of Eve_ (Hutchinson), is prefaced by an article in which she replies to those critics who took notice of some of them at the time of their appearance in magazine form. By this recognition of judgment already passed she sets me free to regard her stories as old matter, and to confine myself to a review of her introduction. In this answer to her critics I cannot feel that she has been well advised. Even in a second edition critics are best left alone, unless the author can correct them on a point of fact or interpretation of fact. Here it is on a matter of opinion that she joins issue with them. They seem (the misguided ones) to have rashly said that "The Judgment of Eve" was "a novel boiled down," and that "The Wrackham Memoirs," on the other hand, was "a short story spun out." But Miss Sinclair is very sure that she knew what she was about. She can "lay her hand on her heart and swear that 'The Judgment of Eve' would have lost by any words that could conceivably have been added to it;" she is certain that "Charles Wrackham required the precise amount of room that has been given him." I dare say she is right, but I wish she could have left someone else to say so. For myself I should have thought it obvious that a story dealing with character and its development by circumstance demanded more room in which to spread itself than one that dealt with a situation, dramatic or psychologic; yet "The Wrackham Memoirs," which, whatever its complexity, belongs to the latter type, takes up very nearly as much space as "The Judgment of Eve," which belongs to the former. Of course no critic of even moderate intelligence would propose to fix a limit of length for every type of story, but it may safely be said that, if you take Maupassant for a standard, the best short stories have concerned themselves with situation rather than with character; and, though I have not had the privilege of reading the criticisms which are the subject of Miss Sinclair's rebuke, I can easily believe that they were governed by this elementary reflection. It must have occurred to Miss Sinclair herself, even if she did not find it convenient to take cognisance of it in her reply. Perhaps she will have something to say on this subject in some future edition of her very interesting book, and I should indeed be flattered if she would consent, in a brief phrase or two, to review my review of her review of her reviewers.

* * * * *

* * * * *

Good costume novels are not so common nowadays that I can pass _Desmond O'Connor_ (Long) without a most hearty welcome. For it is an excellent example of its class--full of rescues, of swashbuckling and of midnight escapes; with a gallant hero (and Irish at that), a lovely heroine, two bold bad villains and a sufficiency of kings and other historical celebrities to fill the background picturesquely. In fact Mr. George H. Jessop has seen to it that no ingredient proper to this kind of dish shall be wanting, and I have great pleasure in congratulating him upon the result. _Desmond_ was a soldier of fortune, a captain in the gallant Irish Brigade that served King Louis XIV. against the Allies. During the siege of Bruges the young captain chanced to see one morning at mass the fair _Margaret, Countess of Anhalt_. She had lately fled to the town to frustrate the intentions of _Louis_, who would have given her hand to an equally unwilling suitor. There was also, hanging about, a certain _De Brissac_, who in the event of the countess's death or imprisonment would succeed to her estates. So off we go, cut and thrust, sword, cloak and rapier, all to the right jingle of tushery, till the last chapter, in which _King Louis_ relents and does what kings (of France especially) always do in the last chapters of historical romances. Really it seems sometimes as though the Louvre under the Monarchy must have been run as a kind of superior matrimonial agency in a large way of business. Anyhow he rings down the curtain upon a bustling tale that should add to the reputation of its author.

* * * * *

The Conqueror of Ouimet.

As the grief of a lioness reft of her cubs,
Or a general ragged by the rawest of subs,
Or a rigid supporter of temperance clubs
Accused of frequenting the lowest of pubs,
Or a burglar defied by the skill that is Chubb's,
Is America's grief at the triumph of Tubbs.