Chapter I

The lark he trills his song on high,
A tiny speck on a wide blue sky;
"Tira-lir, it's sweet up here,
It's sweet up here, my dear, my dear."

The turtle-dove's in love and so
Is anxious all his world should know
And follow his example too:--
"Look at us two. Oh do, oh do."

Woodpeckers make their thirsty cry
Of "Pluie, pluie, pluie," to a sunlit sky;
But sure enough they have their way
For rain, rain, rain will fall next day.

The blackbird also craves a boon,
Says "Bring a cherry, bring a cherry, soon, soon, soon;"
And there in answer to his call
The cherry blooms on the garden wall.

The thrush of all the birds that sing
Of nests and little wives in Spring
Alone confides the secret way:--
"What does she _line_ it with? Why, clay."

The willow wren she sings a song
Just like her mate, though not so long,
But both sing in all winds and weathers,
"Sing to me; bring to me little brown feathers."

* * * * *

SPRING AT KEW.

I am not one of those who believe in going down to the country to look at this Spring of which there is so much talk. Wanting in business organisation and coherent effort, Spring in the country is a poor affair at the best; there may be half-a-dozen daffodils in flower in one spinney, but you have to tramp over two or three muddy fields after that to find a button-hole of primroses, and so onwards over a stile and a ditch to the place where the blackthorn has blossomed and the green woodpecker is pecking the greenwood tree.

And very likely there are gates. Judging from statements in novels you might suppose a gate to be a bright and simple piece of mechanism, swung on by rosy-cheeked children and easily opened by Lord Hugo with his riding-crop so that Lady Hermione may jog through it on her practically priceless bay. That is quite wrong. It rests on the primary fallacy that gates are meant to be opened, whereas they are really meant to be kept shut. What actually happens when you want to open one is that you plunge halfway through a deep quagmire, climb on to a slippery stone, wrestle with a piece of hoop-iron, some barbed wire and some pieces of furze, lift the gate up by the bottom bar and wade through the rest of the quagmire carrying it on your shoulder.

If you are riding like Lord Hugo you hook the fastening of the gate with the handle of your crop and make your horse shunt slowly backwards by applying the reverse clutch with your feet. As the gate refuses to give, you are, of course, drawn gently over the animal's head until you tumble into the bog like a man whose punt-pole is stuck in the bottom of the stream.

That is why I like going down to Kew, where the Spring is tidy and concentrated, and there is a squared map, just like France, at the turnstile gate to direct you to the magnolia dump, and little notices pointing you to the Temperate Houses, though this is really unnecessary, because there are no licensed premises in the Gardens at Kew. All is quiet and calm. You are not even compelled to leave the gravel-walks and tread on the damp grass, unless you have a desire to go to the river's edge and see how stiffly the tail of the Duke of NORTHUMBERLAND'S stone lion sticks out on the further bank between the two peel towers from which his crossbowmen contemplate the Surrey marshes.

I used to know a man who had mugged up all the trees and plants, so that when you said to him, "What a funny juniper that is over there, with blue peach-blossoms on it," he would reply, "You mean the _Pyrofoliata persica corylus_," and explain how it was first introduced into England by JEREMY TAYLOR in 1658. Then when you went up to look at the placard on the tree you not only found that he was perfectly right, but obtained the additional information that the wood was of a particularly hard and durable nature, and only used for making the heads of croquet mallets and the seats on the tops of motor omnibuses.

I like this plan of putting placards upon trees, and I think it might well be carried out in the country too. There would be none of that standing about in the wet then, and arguing whether the thing is a beech or an oak, when all the time it is a horse-chestnut and laughing up its bark at you.

One must not forget either at Kew the great conservatories, though I do not care for these so much because there are men in them watching to see that you do not pick the cactuses or the palms to put in your button-hole; nor the magnificent Pagoda, which accommodates the Observator, who watches for the flowers to come out, and the Curator, who writes appreciative little notices to stick on the beds; nor the piebald swans in the artificial lake.

But the great glory of Kew is the Pump-room. It is surrounded by marble-topped tables and green seats, and I am aware that it is not called a Pump-room, though a noise proceeds from inside it very like the panting of a pump. They tell me that this is an hydraulic machine for washing up the cups and plates; but I do not believe them, because so many people who take tea round the Pump-room drink left-handed, as if the reverse side of the cup had belonged to somebody else.

Anyhow it is a very jolly and democratic assemblage that sits and drinks tea under the trees and eats cakes that have no placard on them to say at what date they were introduced into England. Here you may see the prosperous docker with his wife and family sitting quite unostentatiously at the next table to the needy scientist who has come to make notes about the purple narcissi. And a little further on is the novelist who is getting local colour for his great rustic love-scene which he is going to say took place in the heart of Devonshire.

But it was not for the purpose of providing you with tea and cakes that the Pump-room was founded. Just as you may read in your morning paper that the Honourable Miss Muffet has proceeded to Harrogate to take the waters, so it is with Kew. One goes to Kew to take the watercresses. I have found out by exhaustive inquiries from one of the waitresses that, though you may substitute rolls and butter for bread and margarine, and may have marmalade with either or both, and though it is optional to eat even the cakes with yellow sugar upon them, there is no way of evading the watercresses. There is a strong feeling amongst the waitresses that it is just these compulsory watercresses which have made us Englishmen what we are. The whole vast pleasure-ground really centres round them, and the reason why Londoners flock (as the papers say) to Kew is that they are hungry for the medicinal virtues of this aquaceous plant.

After you have taken the watercresses you are allowed to wander about the Gardens again and look at QUEEN VICTORIA'S cottage, round which there is always an eager and admiring crowd examining it from every point of view and wondering what premium they would have to pay for it if it were on the market now. And then you will want to go home and be unable to find the gate; but after a little time the Observator will observe you with his telescope from the top of the Pagoda and mention it to the Curator, who will direct a bronzed and amiable man in a blue uniform to lead you to the turnstile.

I am told that there are some people who do not care to sample their Spring at Kew or in the country either, but prefer to go to San Remo or spend Saturday afternoon toiling in their own back-garden. Let them mind their peas, I say, while I go down to Kew.

EVOE.

* * * * *

THE CAUTIOUS AMORIST

(_Showing the effect of official phraseology on love-letters._)

Dearest Mary, this delay
In the fixing of the day
Drives all happiness away
From my ken.
If you _only_ will decide
When you'll be my blushing bride
You will see me glorified--
If and when.

They have promised me a rise
When the senior partner dies;
He is eighty and he lies
Very ill;
But until you seal your "Yes"
By a notice in the Press
I shall not feel safe--unless
And until.

* * * * *

"Bicycles of old-fashioned design acquired a new lease of life, and
took to the road, where they were joined by pony traps in which father,
mother and many children, all with crimped hair and white pinafores,
were tightly packed."--_Daily Paper_.

Father, we are told, looked a perfect darling.

* * * * *

_Absentee._ "I WAS PLAYING FOOT-BA' IN THE STREET, AND THE POLICE TOOK AND LOCKED ME UP FOR FOUR HOURS."

_Teacher._ "DID YOU GET ANYTHING TO EAT?"

_Absentee._ "AY--A HARD ROLL."

_Teacher_. "WHAT DID YOU DO WITH IT?"

_Absentee_. "PLAYED FOOT-BA'."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

The title, somewhat puzzling at first, which Miss F.E. MILLS YOUNG has given to her latest story, _The Almonds of Life_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), turns out to be based upon a Chinese proverb to the effect that "almonds came to those who have no teeth." This rather devastating sample of philosophy (which I have put by for use against the next person who attempts to work off upon me the adage about those who wait) forms the text of a well-told tale of misplaced affections. As you may expect, if you know Miss YOUNG'S former work, it is a South African story, not concerned however with Boers and natives and the trackless veld, but with coastwise civilization and suburban garden-parties. As before, the author excellently conveys the place-feeling, so well indeed that I was sorry when the love intrigues of the two protagonists necessitated their quitting Africa for a more conventional Italian setting. I may summarise the plot by telling you that the particular almond that fell too late to the heroine was somebody else's husband. But it wasn't so much that she was unable to eat him as that he proved indigestible when swallowed. The lady was _Gerda_, young and dazzling bride of the middle-aged _Fred Wooten_, and the gentleman one of her husband's closest friends, also (before the arrival of _Gerda_) happily married to a wife whom I found the most attractive person in the book. I need not further detail the crooked course of untrue love, though I may hint at a fault in balance, where your sympathy, previously and rightly enlisted for poor betrayed _Fred_, is demanded for _Gerda_ in her difficulty with the almond. As usual, Miss YOUNG unfolds her plot with admirable directness, chiefly through a natural and unforced dialogue, so easy that it disguises its own art.

* * * * *

If any reasonable man still possesses a grain of sympathy with Bolshevism I invite him to purge himself by reading _With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia_ (CASSELL). In August, 1918, Colonel JOHN WARD, M.P., reached Vladivostok in command of the 25th Battalion Middlesex Regiment, and from the time of his arrival until his departure nearly a year later his position was almost grotesquely difficult. Of our Allies in Siberia and of their policy he writes with justifiable frankness. Our own is not excused, but he lets us clearly see that however ineffectual it may have been there was honesty of purpose underlying it. In the medley of confusion which prevailed we were lucky to have in Colonel WARD as senior British officer a man who was not afraid to shoulder his responsibility. Under conditions so exasperating that anyone might have been excused if he had been overwhelmed with anger and bewilderment he was resolved to uphold our prestige. Upon the Bolshevist horrors in Siberia he does not dwell, but he says enough in passing to make one shudder. Colonel WARD is a true friend of Russia. "This great people are bound to recover, and become all the stronger for their present trials," are the concluding words of his preface. That this prophecy may come true must be the prayer of all of us who remember what we owed to Russia during the earlier part of the War.

* * * * *

It was perhaps my misfortune that, not having read the book in which Mr. EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS recorded the earlier adventures of his hero, _John Carter_, in the red planet Mars, when that gentleman precipitated himself thither (from the banks of the Hudson, of all places), I found myself in more senses than one out of my element. Not that it really matters; since the Martian existence of _Mr. Carter_ was apparently of that wild and whirling character, familiar to patrons of the Continuous Programme, in which one thrill follows upon another so fast that their precise order becomes of small moment. When I tell you that the opening chapters of this remarkable nightmare--_The Gods of Mars_ (METHUEN)--contain monsters with one white eye and mouths in their hands, flying pirates, an air-ship that sinks down a volcano, an ageless witch who--but why continue? The publishers call these happenings "bold;" but this is a pitiful understatement. Really they are of a character to make the wildest imaginings of JULES VERNE, friend of my youth, or Mr. WELLS, companion of my riper years, read like the peaceful annals of a country rectory. To quote again from the publishers, "only the man who created _Tarzan_ could write such stories." If _Tarzan_ were in any way comparable with the present volume, it would perhaps not be unfair to add the corollary that only those readers who appreciated the one could swallow the other. Mercifully, Mr. BURROUGHS writes so continually at the top of his voice that after a time the clatter comes to have an effect merely soporific.

* * * * *

Since Major-General Sir C.E. CALLWELL has, in _The Dardanelles_ (CONSTABLE), added a volume to a series called _Campaigns and Their Lessons_, it is clear that he is writing mainly for military students, but none the less at least one man in the street--meaning myself--has been glad, after reading plenty of merely descriptive accounts of the Gallipoli affair, to find a book that frankly and justifiably does lay claim to technical proficiency. The exponents of vivid narrative, modestly disclaiming expert knowledge, have been painfully liable to break off just short of what one wanted most to know. They told us how things happened, or, at any rate, how it seemed they happened, but the reason why of things they had to leave to others. In this book we really do get at the why, and even more the why not, of the magnificent failure. Of actual incident and human interest General CALLWELL'S account, which in a sense is only supplementary to the others, adds little to our previous knowledge. The only point of the sort I picked up is his notice of the characteristic reluctance shown by Anzacs to report themselves as sick when urged to do so with a view to the gradual removal of troops without withdrawal of entire units. It is hardly necessary to add that the author is an old literary hand, with a pleasantly clear and luminous style of his own, though one is free to admit he splits his infinitives almost as much as Sir IAN HAMILTON split his forces, and with less justification.

* * * * *

In the very improving books which I had to read long ago the hero or heroine usually had a cross to bear. They bore it with great fortitude, and frequently died young. When therefore I opened Mr. JEROME K. JEROME'S _All Roads Lead to Calvary_ (HUTCHINSON) I fancied I knew what to expect. I read that _Joan Allway_ was possessed of remarkable beauty, a "Stevensonian touch" and suitable introductions to editors and newspaper proprietors, and that from the pulpit of a column in the evening Press, with her photograph at the top, she attempted to reform the world. I don't know how the photograph came out, but there was apparently no martyrdom so far. Afterwards she began to encourage and inspire _Robert Phillips_, a Labour M.P. and future Cabinet Minister, and at the same time to be kind to and educate _Mrs. Phillips_, who was good-natured, vulgar and middle-aged. Falling gradually in love with the politician, she withdrew only just in time, nursed in a French hospital, married a journalist friend and settled down happily with him to reform a little bit of the world at a time, and that the part nearest to hand. And now I am left wondering what _Joan Allway's_ cross was. Would avoiding the Divorce Court be counted the roughest path of self-denial in a moral anecdote of to-day?

* * * * *

_Running Wild_ (SIMPKIN) is the expressive title of a collection of child-memories by the late Mr. BERTRAM SMITH, whom readers of _Punch_ will remember by the pseudonym "BIS." They can here learn from a sympathetic little introduction by Mr. WARD MUIR under what conditions of a brave but losing battle with ill-health this delicate and vivacious work was written. When I say that these recollections (which I decline to call by any word implying more artifice) illustrate their author, I give you their measure for honesty and charm combined. Honesty first of all; Mr. SMITH'S young barbarians running wild and, one conjectures, rapidly reducing their elders to a like condition, have the compelling effect of unsentimental truth. Few clouds of glory, for example, trail about the protagonists of "A Day," a tribute to the joyous intoxication of a day-long orgie of naughtiness deliberate and wholly unrepented. You will find much in these pages to waken half-forgotten and perhaps secret pleasures. Thus there was for me a personal echo in the rejection as a seaside entertainment of castle-building and the ordered sequence of the tides in favour of the infinitely more variable delight of running water and a sufficiency of mud. Perhaps I have said enough to suggest the charm of an engaging volume, itself a memorial of one whose kindly laughter will be missed by many.

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