Chapter V

Our Erudite Contemporaries.

"Slightly to vary the old Greek proverb, we must beware of the
Bishops when they pay us compliments!"--_John Bull._

* * * * *

_Lady_ (_giving the information_). "OH, A CLEAN-SHAVED BLOKE--SAME AS MY 'USBAND 'ERE."]

* * * * *

THE ELFIN TUBE.

I know a solemn secret to keep between ourselves--
I heard it from a sparrow who heard it from the elves--
That always after 2 A.M., before the first cock-crow,
The elfin people fill the Tubes just full to overflow.

The grown-ups do not know it; they put the trains to bed
And never guess that magic will drive them in their stead;
All day the goblin drivers were hiding in the dark
(If mortals catch a fairy's eye they take it for a spark).

Elves patter down the subways; they crowd the moving stairs;
From purses full of tiddly-winks they pay the clerk their fares;
A Brownie checks the tickets and says the proper things:
"Come pass along the car there!" "Now, ladies, mind your wings!"

They're never dull like mortals who read and dream and doze;
The fairies swing head downwards, strap-hanging by their toes;
When _Puck_ is the conductor he also acts as host
And sets them playing Leapfrog or Coach or General Post.

I'd love to travel with them! The sparrow says he thinks
I'd get from here to Golder's Green for three red tiddly-winks;
Two yellows pay to Euston, four whites to Waterloo;
Perhaps I'll go some moonlight night; the question is--will YOU?

* * * * *

AUTHORSHIP FOR ALL.

[Being specimens of the work of Mr. Punch's newly-established
Literary Ghost Bureau, which supplies appropriate Press
contributions on any subject and over any signature.]

II.--THE MIDDLE-CLASS MOTHER.

_By Lady Vi Fitzermine, Leader of Society's Revels._

Are we growing dull? That is a question which in these pip-inducing times of peace one is frequently constrained to ask; and in the view of many, I fear, there can be but one answer.

During the late lamented War it was almost impossible for any rightly constituted woman to experience the pangs of boredom. When one wasn't making things vibrate in the hospitals of France and Flanders there was always abundance of excitement on the Home Front--flag-days, tableaux, theatricals, dances and other junketings in aid of this or that charity. And when the supply of charities threatened to run dry it was always a simple matter to invent new ones. All you had to do was to organise a drawing-room meeting, put the names of the Allied nations in one hat and of the more or less recognised necessaries of life in another and draw out one paper from each receptacle. You there and then registered a new charity out of the result and advertised some thrillingly expensive form of entertainment in support of the Society for the Supply of Chewing-gum to the Czecho-Slovakians, or any other equally pathetic cause.

In those days a charity began at an At Home and usually ended at the Coliseum or the Albert Hall--or (in a few unfortunate cases) in the Bankruptcy Court. Nowadays, however, people are deplorably sceptical on the subject of new appeals to the pocket, and many folk find time hanging heavy on their hands in consequence. It is for us who are of what I may call the organising class to break down the walls of this growing prejudice, which, if not checked in time, threatens to add seriously to the general volume of unrest. Hence it is necessary to scrap a good many of our old ideas and to realise that for all essential purposes the exotic form of charity is played out. To-day a Society woman who wishes to maintain her position as _arbiter elegantiarum_ must tap other sources of inspiration and supply.

It is in these circumstances that I confidently fall back upon the Middle-Class Mother. After all, who was always the chief financial support of my wartime enterprises? The Middle-Class Mother. It was to her heart that the cry of the Croat, the moan of the Montenegrin, the ululation of the Yugo-Slav made its most effective entry. It was she who lavished her husband's pay or profits on the entrancing vision of the Countess of Bustover as Britannia or of Lady Aaronson as England's Girlhood. So I have determined that she shall now have a show to herself, and we shall see whether she will subscribe to her own charity as wholeheartedly as she did to those of our suffering Allies.

Without a doubt the Middle-Class Mother is a very deserving institution and has done extremely good work in the past, which I regret that the space at my disposal does not permit me to particularise. I must perforce content myself with announcing that on her behalf a grand Zoological Fancy Dress Ball will be held next month at Valhalla, which will be converted for the occasion into a realistic representation of a Bear Garden. I myself am appearing as Queen of the Polar Bears, and by way of augmenting the takings I propose to sell hugs at a guinea per head. The whole of the proceeds, after the expenses have been deducted, will go to the Middle-Class Mothers' Mutual Criticism Society, an animated body of which I have the privilege to be founder and hon. president.

* * * * *

MAIDEN'S BOWER ROCKS, SCILLY.

It was an earl's daughter, she lived in a tower
(Ding-dong, ding-a-dong-dey),
And she was as fair as the loveliest flower
That nods in the girdle of May.
The floor of her bower was strewn with green rushes;
Full many knights' banners hung waving above;
And round her young minstrels stood singing like thrushes
Brave ballads of lovers and love,
Dove--
Wooings and cooings of love.
But over their harping and over their singing,
When twilight came mantled in lilac and grey,
Would sound the sweet clangour of chapel-bells ringing
"Ding-dong, ding-a-dong-dey,"
From over the hills and away.

It was an earl's daughter, she lived in a tower
(Ding-dong, ding-a-dong-dey),
But the salt sea arose in a terrible hour
And smothered her singing in spray.
It changed her to rock, and she lies in her chamber,
Her faithful stone minstrels all crouched by her side;
Above her, weed banners of crimson and amber
Wave slow in the sweep of the tide,
Glide
Hither and yon on the tide.
Yet down through the fathoms of twilit green water
Where eerie lights glimmer and strange shadows sway,
The steamer bells ring to the earl's little daughter,
"Ding-dong, ding-a-dong-dey,"
Ring out and sail on and away.

PATLANDER.

* * * * *

THE DUCHESS OF MAYFAIR (AT HEAD OF TABLE) CONVERTS HER TOWN RESIDENCE INTO A BOARDING-HOUSE FOR THE NEW RICH.]

* * * * *

* * * * *

GETTING FIXED.

"Now mind, my boy, what you've got to do is to tell all your friends you are out looking for a job, and they'll give you introductions. Nothing like 'em; a friend at court, you know, and all that." This was from one of the friends to whom I had applied for a post. The advice was all he had to offer me.

I acted on it, and found my friends only too ready to give the required introductions. With alacrity they minuted me on from one to another till I felt as if "passed to you, please" had been scrawled all over me. But I persevered, and eventually weeded out from my list of introductions half-a-dozen that were addressed to solid men, high up in the City, who might be counted on not to miss the chance of a good thing. That is how in the early days of the Peace I was disposed to regard a demobilized young officer who had worn red tabs.

The first name on my selected list was John Pountney, of the firm of Laurence, Pountney & Co. My wife's uncle had been at school with John Pountney's brother, who unfortunately had no connection with the firm. But no matter; I filled up a form in the outer office--"Nature of Business, personal"--and sent it in with my note of introduction attached. John Pountney saw me. He did all the talking in quite an affable manner, told me of his son's experiences in the War, deplored the high price of petrol and his wife's difficulties in obtaining servants, and then: "Well, let's get to business. So you would like good employment in the City? What can you do?"

I began: "Well, Sir, when I was on the Staff----" He interrupted: "Now, don't go on to say that you can organise;" and he shook a finger at me playfully and was off once more with an anecdote about an officer in his son's regiment.

Eventually I found myself being bowed out in a rather dazed condition. Only one thing emerged at all clearly out of the whole interview; and I took from my pocket a sheet of paper, on which I had jotted down my most telling qualifications, and with a stub of blue pencil regretfully but firmly biffed out item No 1, Organising Ability.

I next approached the firm of Walbrook Bros., armed with a letter from a man who had once belonged to the same golf-club as the senior Walbrook brother.

"I can't read your friend's name," said this magnate, "but whoever he is he seems to think that you are the sort of man who might be useful in my business. What can you do?" and he leaned back patiently in his chair, finger-tips to finger-tips, but with all the appearance of one ready to pounce at my first weak statement.

"For the best part of four years," I began, "I have been living in France, and----"

He pounced. "Ah, French! I thought so. Now if you had said Spanish, or even Russian ..."

He frowned as the thought crossed his mind that I might yet say either of them. But I didn't, and he was free to expatiate on the alleged advantages of Spanish and a sound commercial education. The end was that I found myself once more in the street, this time erasing the word "Languages" from my dwindling list.

And so it went on. Mr. Hall, of the firm of Copt and Basing Hall, begged me not to speak of any capacity I might possess for controlling men. (Item No. 3: Disciplinary Power and Habit of Command.) He himself was able to do all the controlling that his staff would be likely to require. Mr. Throgmorton, managing director of the firm of Capel Sons and Threadneedle, Ltd., hoped at the outset that I would not speak of my mathematical proficiency. Many men were inclined to make a fetish of mathematics. He feared I might be one of them from the fact that I had begun to speak of (item No. 4) the tabulation and co-ordination of statistics.

After a week of this sort of thing I had acquired nothing but experience, and my experience now gave me an idea. I drew up a new list of important firms to which I had received no introductions at all, and selected one which I knew was presided over by a man of almost world-wide fame. Taking my courage and nothing else in my hands, I entered the inquiry-office.

"Slip, please," I said briskly to the youth behind the counter, and he handed me the customary form. Disregarding the spaces to be filled in, I scribbled diagonally across the paper the name of the great man, and wrote underneath: "Have called in passing, and cannot stay many minutes."

This I signed and handed to a messenger, remarking in a hurried and off-hand manner, "Say that, if he's engaged, I'd rather come another day, as I don't want to miss the 12.5 to Hatfield."

I had no desire to catch it either; but Hatfield is where the great man lives. This was my ingenious method of getting through the outer defences, and it worked. The youth behind the counter supposed I must be a personal friend (did I mention that I have an "air" and a power of controlling?... Ah, yes, item No. 3), and sped the messenger on his way. Not only so, but my message must have deceived the great one himself, for I was admitted to the Presence immediately.

He stood before me, holding my slip in his hand, with a puzzled frown on his face. The frown deepened as he failed to recognise me.

"You need have no fear," I said; "I have no letter of introduction." And I smiled pleasantly at him.

His look of apprehension vanished, and I continued, unfolding my blue-pencilled list of accomplishments:--"Listen: I am no organiser; my knowledge of French may be dismissed as negligible (this from the man with whom Jeanne Vincent had deigned to converse in her own tongue!); I profess no power of controlling my fellow-men; my mathematical ability isn't worth a rap, and, as to statistics, I neither tabulate nor co-ordinate them with any degree of readiness." Thereupon I bowed, with hands extended, as who should say, "You behold me; that's the sort of man I am."

He smiled faintly. "Excuse me, but what _can_ you do?"

"That," said I, "is for you to discover. If, when I shall have worked in your office for say three months"--he started--"you are unable to find any use for me, then you are not the kind of man I take you for." And I drew myself up, striking what I hoped was a dignified attitude.

He stared at me for some seconds.

"You have references?" he asked.

"Of course," I answered, "but I know enough not to produce them till they are called for."

Then he pressed a bell. "I am going," he said, "to introduce you to my manager. You have certain qualifications which I think may be useful to us."

* * * * *

_Club Waitress._ "SOME SAYS IT IS AND SOME SAYS IT ISN'T; BUT YOU NEVER CAN GO BY WHAT PEOPLE SAY."]

* * * * *

* * * * *

THE ESSENTIALS OF GOLF.

"Do you know anything about golf?" I asked Pottlebury by way of making conversation with a comparative stranger, and immediately afterwards knew I had made a mistake. I should have inquired, "Do you golf?" or "Are you a golfer?" and no evasion would have been possible.

"I should think I do," he replied. "I suppose there's hardly a course between here and Strathpeffer that I haven't visited. English and Scottish, I know them all."

"And which is your favourite course?"

"That is a difficult question," he remarked judicially. "Only last night I was arguing about the comparative merits of Westward Ho! and St. Andrews. Both are easily accessible from the railway, but if you take your car the latter is to be preferred. You get your life bumped out of you on those North Devon roads."

"I wasn't thinking of the travelling facilities," I observed coldly.

"No, of course. It's what you find at the other end that counts. Well then, travelling aside, there is much to be said for Sandwich. The members' quarters are comfortable--very comfortable."

I must have made a disparaging gesture, for he immediately continued:--

"But, if it's only lunch you want, I advise those Lancashire clubs round Southport. They know how to lunch in those parts--Tweed salmon, Welsh mutton and Whitstable oysters."

"No doubt your judgment is correct," I replied, "but I----"

"And at one of them they keep a real French _chef_ who knows his business. I wouldn't wish for a better cuisine anywhere."

"There are other things," I remarked loftily, "besides those you mention."

"Exactly; that's why I like to see a good bridge-room attached and enough tables to accommodate all comers. They have that at Spotworth. You can often get a game of poker as well."

"But don't you see," I exclaimed, "that all these things, are mere accessories and circumstances?"

"That is true," he murmured; "they are but frames as it were of the human interest. After all there's nothing to equal a crowd of jolly good fellows in the smoking-room. I've had some excellent times down at Bambury--stayed yarning away to all hours. Some of the best fellows I ever met belonged to that club."

"You don't talk at all like a golfer," said I.

Pottlebury laughed. "I was forgetting. If it's whisky you want you can't beat Dornoch and Islay. We've nothing in England to touch them. Why, I've met some of the keenest golfers of the day at Islay--nothing less than a bottle a day apiece."

"Sir," said I severely, "it is clear that you have never struggled like grim death with an opponent who was three up at the turn until you were all square at the seventeenth, and then found yourself after a straight drive with an easy baffy shot to----"

"One moment," said Pottlebury; "what exactly _is_ a baffy?"

* * * * *

Asking For It.

"----'s have dozens of other cars available; L65 to L1,700;
call and insult us."

_Motoring Paper._

* * * * *

PERSIA. "THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR ADVICE."

DR. CURZON. "NOT AT ALL. THANK _YOU_ VERY MUCH FOR ASKING FOR IT."]

* * * * *

ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

_Monday, June 14th._--As an Ulster Member, Mr. LINDSAY protested against the availability of return-tickets between Ireland and England having been reduced from six months to two. Sir ERIC GEDDES explained that the change had been made to stop the illicit traffic in return-halves, though he hastened to disclaim any suggestion that Members of Parliament were concerned in it. The grievance is probably not of large dimensions. It is difficult to understand why anyone leaving Ireland in these days should want to go back there.

The PRIME MINISTER did not seem to favour the suggestion, pressed upon him from many quarters, that the Government should cause an estimate to be made of the national income, and then limit public expenditure to a definite proportion of that amount. A private person may cut his coat according to his cloth, but the Government, he argued, is unfortunately obliged by circumstances to reverse the process. Even so the taxpayer may be forgiven for thinking that the State costume still bears some superfluous trimmings.

When economy is proposed, however, it is not always popular. Sir JOHN BUTCHER, in protesting against the Government's proposal to sell the _Brussels_, the late Captain FRYATT'S ship, was expressing a wide-spread feeling. But Colonel LESLIE WILSON disarmed criticism by pointing out that if all British vessels with heroic associations were to be kept as exhibition-ships a large proportion of the British mercantile marine would be laid idle.

A few years ago the General Manager of one of the English railways--the late Sir GEORGE FINDLAY, I think--declared that he could look after the whole of the Irish railways and have three days a week left for fishing. Nowadays, I suppose, the Irish lines are not laid in such pleasant places. At any rate the best part of two days has been occupied in deciding whether in the new scheme for the government of Ireland they should be administered by the Central Council or the two Parliaments, and under the compromise eventually reached they will be more or less subject to all three authorities.

The debate was chiefly remarkable for the evidence it provided that the Ulstermen are developing into the strongest of Home Rulers--almost Sinn Feiners, according to one of their critics--where their own province is concerned.

_Tuesday, June 15th._--Mr. CHURCHILL had again to withstand attacks upon his Army uniform proposals, this time on the ground that the reversion to scarlet and pipeclay would entail extra labour and expense upon the private soldier. His confidence that Mr. Atkins would not grudge the short time spent on cleaning his full dress, so closely bound up with regimental traditions, was endorsed by Mr. BILLING, who said, "The time occupied is about twenty minutes, and I speak from experience."

"ABOUT TWENTY MINUTES, AND I SPEAK FROM EXPERIENCE."--_Mr BILLING._]

A statement that the issue of bagpipes to certain Irish regiments was under consideration brought protests from Scottish Members, who evidently thought that their own national warriors should have a monopoly of this form of frightfulness. But Mr. CHURCHILL pointed out that the Irish Guards were already provided with bagpipes, and Lt.-Commander KENWORTHY horrified the Scots by declaring that the pipes were not an indigenous product of their country, but had been imported from Ireland many centuries ago.

Further progress was made with the Government of Ireland Bill. A proposal to strengthen the representation of the minority in the Southern Parliament was sympathetically received by Mr. LONG, who thought, however, that the Government had a better method. As that consists in a proposal to exact the oath of allegiance from every candidate for election and to give the KING in Council power to dissolve any Parliament in which more than half the members have not taken the oath, it is sufficiently drastic. Having regard to the present disposition of the Sinn Feiners there seems to be mighty little prospect of a Parliament in Dublin before the date known in Ireland as "Tib's Eve."

_Wednesday, June 16th._--In both Houses Addresses were moved praying His Majesty to appoint two additional Judges of the King's Bench Division. The motions met with some opposition, principally on the score of economy, and it was suggested that no additions to the Bench would be required if the existing Judges resumed the old practice of sitting on Saturdays. This drew from the LORD CHANCELLOR the interesting information that the Judges devoted their Saturdays to reading "the very lengthy papers that were contained in their weekly _dossier_." It is no doubt the great length of these documents that accounts for the peculiar shape of the bag that Mr. Justice ----'s attendant was carrying when I met him at Sandwich a few Saturdays ago.

Lord BIRKENHEAD soothed the economists by pointing out that the new Judges would probably more than earn their salaries of five thousand pounds a year. In accordance with the prevailing tendency court-fees are to be raised, and at Temple Bar as in Savile Row our suits will cost us more.

Until Colonel LESLIE WILSON moved the Second Reading of the Nauru Island Agreement Bill I don't suppose a dozen Members of the House of Commons had ever heard of this tiny excrescence in the Western Pacific with its wonderful phosphate deposits. Captured from the Germans during the War, it is now the charge of the British Empire, and the object of the Bill was to confirm an arrangement by which the deposits should be primarily reserved for the agriculturists of Australasia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. It produced a debate of extraordinary ferocity. Young Tories like Mr. ORMSBY-GORE vied with old Liberals like Mr. ASQUITH (on whom the phosphates, plus the Louth election, had a wonderfully tonic effect) in denouncing the iniquity of an arrangement by which (as they said) the principles of the League of Nations were being thrown over, and this country was revealed as a greedy monopolist. Thus assailed both by friend and foe Mr. BONAR LAW required all his cool suavity to bring the House back to a sense of proportion, and to convince it that in securing a supply of manure for British farmers the Government were not committing a crime against the comity of nations.

Answering questions for the Irish Government in these days is rather a melancholy business, but the ATTORNEY-GENERAL for IRELAND resembles Dr. JOHNSON'S friend, in that "cheerfulness will keep breaking in." Thus he excused the Government's non-interference with the Sinn Fein "courts," whose writ now runs over half Ireland, on the ground that for all he knew they might be voluntary courts of arbitration; and when Major O'NEILL expressed the hope that he would at least take steps to protect the British public from the criminals "transported" by sentence of these mysterious tribunals he blithely disclaimed responsibility, and said he was quite content that they should be out of Ireland.

Considering the counter-attraction of the Ascot Gold Cup, Mr. BALFOUR had a surprisingly numerous audience for his discourse on the League of Nations. His enumeration and analysis of the League's various enemies were in his happiest vein of philosophical humour. His conclusion was that the League had much less to fear from its avowed foes than from its fanatical friends, who were already attempting to put upon it tasks for which it was unfitted, and even to supply it with an International Police Force. Its proper weapons were not armies and aircraft, but Delay and Publicity.

This formula, so reminiscent of Wait and See, did not prevent Mr. ASQUITH from hinting in the politest manner that the League was not likely to prevent the wars of the future unless it made some effort to stop those now in progress.

* * * * *

_Aunt._ "I AM, RATHER. YOU SEE, THIS IS ONLY MY THIRD EXPERIENCE OF A MOTOR-CYCLE."

_Nephew._ "WELL, YOU'VE BEAT ME; IT'S ONLY MY FIRST."]

* * * * *

RAW SOUL STUFF.

I don't think I have ever read a short story about a film, so I have made one up myself.

* * * * *

Viviana Smith was born in Battersea. At twelve years old she ran about the streets with holes in her stockings and played a complicated game with chalk squares and a stone. She had the accent of London streets, which is the only accent that can pierce through the noise of London traffic. But she had hair the colour of marsh-marigolds, a Vorticist mouth and patent enlargeable eyes. In the street she made eyes at errand-boys, and at school she made eyes so large that there was no room to dot them.

At the age of seventeen she went in for the Purple Pomegranate film competition, and was selected from five hundred thousand candidates to be a motion-picture star. She starred some. At the beginning she played in romantic comedy films with woodland scenery and rustic bridges and pools where she tickled for trout. She tickled so well that one could almost hear the trout laugh. Later she played in "crook" melodrama, where somebody was always peeping through the door when the secret patent was being taken out of the office safe, and where men always kept arriving in motor-cars and going up flights of steps with their faces turned to the audience and going down flights of steps with their faces turned to the audience and getting into motor-cars again. They never missed a step. There is something about this feat which holds a cinema audience spellbound.

Later she rode on untamed mustangs and fell over cliffs gagged and bound, and sometimes she was even promoted to slide or twirl into a bakehouse and tumble with a talented cast of actors and actresses into a large trough of dough. When they had wiped the dough off they all came back into the bakehouse one after another and tumbled into the dough-trough again. Repetition is the soul of wit.

One day Viviana met Ignatius Vavasour, the poet. For two years he had worshipped her afar on the screen. He had seen her in so many reels that she made him giddy. He had seen her in _Youth's Yodelling May-tide Hour_, length five reels, and in _Hate's Hideous Hand of Crime_, length six reels, and in _Gertie Flips the Flap-jack over_, length seven reels and a half. He had never heard her speak, but he had seen her beautiful lips ripple into a thousand artless expressions of grief and joy. He did not know whether he loved her most when she was tripping through a silvan glade, with meadow-sweet in her hand, or when she was gliding gracefully over Niagara Falls in a tar-barrel; when she was cracking the door of a strong room with a jemmy or when she was getting the dough out of her hair with a rake. But as soon as he had seen her out of the pictures he knew that he loved her best as she was. He knew that he could not live without her. He told her so.

"But, Mr. Vavasour," she protested.

"Call me Iggie," he cried.

"But you have only known me such a short time," she said. "You have seen me, you say, a hundred times on the films, and I daresay you admired me immensely, but tell me this, Iggie, Is it my real character that you love?"

"No, no! A thousand times no!" he exclaimed.

"Then I cannot marry you," she answered coldly, turning away.

Crushed with disappointment Ignatius staggered from the room. He had no thought for poetry now, but wandered feverishly about the streets, searching for some mad excitement to stifle his despair. He played billiards and _vingt-et-un_. He took to drugs and to drink. He even had thoughts of standing for Parliament. But he soon found that the sorrow, gnawing at his heart was one that politics could never assuage nor alcohol drown, not at least at the present price of green Chartreuse.

One day as he slouched miserably along the pavement he saw the advertisement of a lecture outside the door of an institute. "The Ideal in Philosophy and Art," said the placard; and, scarcely knowing what he did, Ignatius went in. But the lecturer had barely begun to expound his theme, which he did in the following forcible words: "The categorical subjectivity of all intuitive apperceptions of the ideal"--when a wild light flashed in the poet's eyes and he started from his seat and rushed madly from the room. The lecturer wondered mildly what had happened, but blinked and went on. What had happened was that Ignatius Vavasour was pounding like a prize American trotter to the nearest telephone box.

"Viviana," he cried an hour later, when he had got through, "you remember what you said the day we met? Is it your real character that I love? And I said 'No.'"

"Yes, Iggie," she said with a catch in her voice.

"Did you mean Rabbits, Eggs, Eggs, Lloyd, or Babbits, Eggs, Albatross, Lloyd?"

"Albatross," she moaned.

"Well, it is. I mean, I do," he cried.

"Viviana, will you marry me?"

"Sure, Iggie," she answered softly. "Good-bye."

* * * * *

And now that I have written this story I am going to get it filmed.

EVOE.

* * * * *

* * * * *

"Could we gather grapes from thorns or pigs from
thistles?"--_Report of Lecture delivered by the
Astronomer-Royal of Scotland._

As far as English thistles are concerned (we cannot speak for Scotland) the answer is in the negative.

* * * * *

IMPORTUNITY.

When the club secretary first wrote and told me that it was proposed to acquire two pictures (one Naval and one Military), which were to hang in the club as worthy reminders of the Great War to future generations--when he wrote and told me this, and suggested (apparently as an afterthought) that a cheque from me would further the project, I was content to keep the matter in view.

When he wrote, some months later, and told it me all over again, accompanying the afterthought on this occasion with a printed subscription form, I took the trouble to reply, letting him know that I was keeping the matter in view.

When he wrote a third time, affording me a glimpse of the guileless faith he had in me, I felt genuinely sorry for the poor chap.

He said there were many possible reasons to account for the non-arrival of my cheque. I might, for example, be abroad, somewhere out of reach of postal facilities, or perhaps the cheque had been lost in the post. Of one thing only he was sure--there had been no parsimonious intent on my part.

I was able in some sort to relieve his mind of anxiety by mentioning that I was still a resident at the address in Cheshire under which I last wrote to him. I even assured him that, so long as my tailor did not forsake his present attitude of friendly remonstrance, it was improbable that I should proceed abroad. Nor had I as yet any reason to suspect that great public institution, the post. The fact was that I still had the matter in view.

As regards the pictures, I said that I had a friend who was in love with the daughter of an A.R.A., and who, in telling me about a financial controversy between himself and his prospective father-in-law, had let slip the information that a slump in artists' prices was imminent. In view of this I suggested that the agreement with the artists commissioned by the club should for the present be a verbal one and elastic in its wording.

In the last part of my letter I reviewed the history of my own connection with the club, covering a period of five years. I recalled the epoch-making day when I received my first letter from Mr. Secretary--a letter acquainting me of the fact that I was a full-blown member--all but, at least. What was thirty guineas? And each year since then, I reminded him, I had disbursed a further ten guineas without a murmur.

On the other side of the account I showed in tabulated form all the change the club had given back:

_d._
Use of soap, 1916 0-1/2
Laundering of towel, ditto 3
Use of soap, 1919 1
Laundering of towel, ditto 3
Fifty per cent. excess for ditto 1-1/2
Stolen: Three matches, one tooth-pick 0-1/4
----
Total 9-1/4

I pleaded a moral right to dispose of the balance. I suggested that seventy-three pounds nine shillings and twopence three-farthings (waiving the question of interest) might be sufficient to buy a third War picture, the interior of a Government office during the tea-hour, or something of that sort. I begged that he would lay the matter before the Committee.

I am not very hopeful about my letter. Probably he has spent that seventy-three pounds odd already on stationery and postage-stamps.

I think that, if it finds its way into print, I may send him half the proceeds of this article. No harm in keeping the matter in view, at all events.

* * * * *

MUSICAL NOTES.

(_By our Modernist Critic_).

A certain amount of dissatisfaction has been expressed with the Negro Rhapsody by Mr. JOHN POWELL, performed by the New York Symphony Orchestra, at their concert last week. According to the analytical programme the composer has sought _inter alia_ to depict "the degenerative frenzy of a Voodoo orgy" and "the physical impulses of the adult human animal," culminating in "a flood of primal sensualism." Yet, if the Press is to be believed, the performance fell lamentably short in the epileptic quality so finely displayed by many of the coloured Jazz-band players now in London. None of the audience had to be removed; _The Morning Post_ only speaks of the "becoming picturesqueness of design" of the Rhapsody; while _The Times'_ critic did not care much for it because it took too long to get to business, and adds that he was not very sure what its business exactly was. This, in view of the extremely explicit statement of the composer's aim given in the programme, seems to us most unjust.

Here is a gifted composer with high and serious aims--for what could be more instructive or spiritual than a musical rendering of "the degenerative frenzy of a Voodoo orgy"?--and the musical critics either evade the issue by talking vaguely of picturesqueness or deny that he means business. Verily the lot of the composer is hard. Quite recently I heard of a native British symphonist who had composed a remarkable orchestral Fantasy dealing with the psychology of members of the N.U.R. engaged in the railway transport of fish and milk. I have not heard the music, because unfortunately it has not yet been performed, but I have read the programme, and nothing more stimulating can be imagined than the final section, in which a terrific cannonade of milk-cans is combined with a marvellous explosion of objurgation from the fish-porters on strike. Yet if it were to be performed _The Morning Post_ would probably dismiss it with a few polysyllabic platitudes and _The Times_ affect ignorance of what it was all about!

In view of the misconceptions and misinterpretations to which serious composers are subject, we are not surprised to hear that a society has been formed for the purpose of giving "silent auditions" of modern masterpieces. No orchestra nor any instrument will be employed, but each member of the audience will be provided with a full score. The first hour will be devoted to the study of the music; the audience will then write down their impressions for half-an-hour; subsequently the composer will expound his aims from the platform; and the price of admission will be returned to the student whose impressions accord most closely with the composer's "programme." In this way the cost of concert-giving will be considerably reduced, and it is also hoped that the consumption of sedative tablets, which has reached formidable dimensions amongst frequenters of symphonic concerts, will be rendered unnecessary.

Our only criticism of this admirable scheme is this--that the number of amateurs who can read a modern full-score at sight is still somewhat limited. The view that "heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter" might be quoted in support of "silent auditions" were it not for the unfortunate fact that KEATS, who expressed it, is now completely out of fashion with our emancipated Georgians. But the broad fact remains that the forces of reaction are by no means crushed. The Handel Festival has been revived at the Crystal Palace; and Handel-worship is anathema to the Modernist, as redolent of roast-beef, middle-class respectability and religious orthodoxy. Only recently a brilliant writer compared his oratorios to mothers'-meetings. The revival of these explosions of pietistic jumbomania is indeed a sad set-back to those ardent reformers who seek to elevate and purify public taste by the musical delineation of "the degenerative frenzy of a Voodoo orgy."

* * * * *

THE INSURANCE AGENT: SHOCK TACTICS.

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"DADDALUMS."

This is a play about a Northampton shoe-manufacturer of Scottish nationality. There is, of course, nothing quite like leather, and I can well believe that the lucrative properties of the boot trade (notwithstanding its alleged association with atheistic principles) must at one time or other have attracted this prehensile race; yet I doubt if Northampton, home of the cobbling industry, ever encouraged a Scot to penetrate its preserves. Mr. LOUIS ANSPACHER, who wrote the play, may have some inside knowledge denied to me, though his name does not vividly indicate a Scots origin; but it is certain, if his _Wallace Craigie_ really came from over the border, that he was no true Scot, for his dialect showed obvious traces of Sassenach pollution.

I have a mind that moves slowly and I hate to be hustled at the opening of a play. I hate an author to plunge me into a whirl of movement and a medley of characters as if he assumed that I was intimate with circumstances known only to himself and his cast. I want to be told, very quietly, where I am, and if he does not tell me I become peevish. But, even if I hadn't been put off at the start, I don't think my sympathies would ever have been very deeply engaged. I soon saw that, whatever happened to anybody, I should easily bear up. Mr. LOUIS CALVERT did all that was humanly possible to correct my indifference, but his _Daddalums_ (as you might gather from such a name) was not one of those heroic figures whose struggles against the perversity of fate are apt to melt even the cold hearts of the gods (Olympian). This old cobbler, suddenly grown rich, whose one ambition was to make his son "_Tammas_" a gentleman (as he understood the term), at any cost to the boy's soul, was asking for trouble from the beginning. And when he got it I was far less sorry for the old fool than I was pleased at the chances which this turn of fortune gave to the versatility of Mr. CALVERT.

But the interest of the play lies not so much in the plot--worked out mechanically, with one or two saving touches of ingenuity, to a conventional conclusion--as in the character of this lovable old boot-maker, whose single aim in life was to give his son the best that money could buy. His heart, I think, began by being fairly large, but got contracted through specialising in this passion. Snobbery is alien to his nature, but he becomes a snob for _Tammas's_ sake. Stubborn and domineering with others, he is as putty in the boy's hands. He has no use for his other child--a girl. She, like himself, must be sacrificed if it suits the young gentleman--as it did.

I won't say that any very nice psychological subtlety was needed for the portrayal of a character whose ruling motive was so clearly advertised, but it had its lights and shadows, responsive to changing conditions, and Mr. CALVERT was quick to seize them all.

The boy's part was too unsympathetic to be played easily. But he had one saving virtue; he never practised his snobbery on the old man who encouraged it. He still called him "Daddalums," and that, I take it, was what the papers would call an "acid test" of his piety. As his fortunes declined Mr. LISTER rose to the occasion. The tighter the corner the better he coped with it.

Mr. HENDRIE'S _Fergus McLarnie_, whose people must have migrated to Northampton from the neighbourhood of Thrums, was an admirable crony; but he insisted too much and too deliberately on a Scottish accent that made for obscurity. In a broader vein Miss AGNES THOMAS played the part of _Ellen, the Maid_ (another Scot), with a humour which even an Englishman (like myself) found no difficulty in appreciating. Miss EDYTH OLIVE, as the hero's neglected daughter, acted with a very nice self-repression, which was all that could be expected of her rather colourless part.

The first-night audience was very warm in its appreciation. Yet I must doubt whether a play that is chiefly concerned with the highly-developed paternity of a boot-manufacturer will make a very poignant appeal to the sentiment of the public.

For one thing they may find the love-interest too sketchy. Of the boy's two fiancees one was impossible, and the other (_Rose_) just a perfunctory phantom that flitted vaguely from time to time across the stage. She must have known it was a play of father and son, where girls didn't really count. Poor _Rose_, so unassertive! How modestly she kept herself in the background in that last scene where _Tammas_, having "dreed his weird" (as they would say in Northampton) and redeemed his past, comes back from Canada, flings himself into his father's arms, remains there listening to a sustained exposition of parental loyalty, and only after a considerable interval remarks the presence of his future wife. She took it very well, but if I know anything of the British public it won't be so easily pleased.

O. S.

* * * * *

_Wallace Craigie_ MR. LOUIS CALVERT.

_Fergus McLarnie_ MR. ERNEST HENDRIE.]

* * * * *

A Matinee in aid of the Housing Association for Officers' Families, of which the QUEEN is a Patron, will be held at the Winter Garden Theatre on Thursday, June 24th, at 2.30 P.M. The programme includes a Mime play, for which Mr. EUGENE GOOSSENS will conduct Mr. ARTHUR CLARKE JERVOISE'S music. Mrs. CHRISTOPHER LOWTHER, who appears in the play, is also arranging "An Elizabeth Episode," in which the STUART-WILSON Sextette will sing.

* * * * *

"Wanted, Lad, about 14 or 15, for telephone. Good wages; good
opportunity to learn confectionery."--_Local Paper._

We often wondered how these telephonists occupy their time.

* * * * *

"Shop Window Wanted within stone's throw of Brook Street and
Bond Street."

_Daily Paper._

With so many Bolshevists about we think the advertiser should have used a less provocative phrase.

* * * * *

_Nurse._ "TOMMY, YOU'RE FORGETTING THE 'G' AGAIN."

_Tommy._ "GEE! THAT'S THE SORT OF DOG I'M HAVIN'."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

_The Secret Corps_ (MURRAY) is the title of a book on espionage, before and especially during the War, every page of which I have read with the greatest possible entertainment--the greatest possible, that is, for anyone at home. To get the real maximum out of Captain FERDINAND TUCHY'S astonishing anecdotes one would, I suppose, need to be under a table in Berlin while they were being perused by the ex-chiefs of Intelligence on the other side. It is a book so stuffed with good stories and revealed (or partly revealed) mysteries that I should require pages of quotation to do it anything like justice. It can certainly be claimed for Captain TUCHY that he writes of what he himself knows at first hand, and that his knowledge, like that of another expert, is both extensive and peculiar, gleaned as it was from personal service in Russia, Poland, Austria, Belgium, France, England, Italy, Salonica, Palestine, Mesopotamia and several neutral States. Still, absorbing as his book is, it suffers perhaps from being what its publishers call "the first authentic and detailed record." One feels now and then that posterity (which gets all the good things) may score again in the revelation of yet more amazing details for which the hour is not yet. Meanwhile, here to go on with is a fund of thrilling information that will not only hold your delighted interest, but (if you make haste before it becomes too widely known) ensure your popularity as a remunerative diner-out.

_One after Another_ (HUTCHINSON), by Mr. STACY AUMONIER, is a tale of social progress: of the steps--I imagine this is where the name justifies itself--by which the son and daughter of a Camden Town publican rise to higher or at least more brilliant things. You might suppose this plan to promise comedy, but the fact is otherwise. Really it is an angry book, and though there is laughter in places it is mostly angry laughter, with a sting in it. Somehow, whether speaking in his own person or through the voice of his hero, Mr. AUMONIER gives me here (perhaps unjustly) the impression of having a grievance against life. Yet it cannot be said that _Tom_ and _Laura Purbeck_ found their climb from Camden Town unduly arduous, since in a comparatively short time one has made a position and pots of money as a fashionable house-decorator, and the other is a famous concert star and the wife of a marquis. I think my impression of unamiability must be derived from the fact that the entire cast contains not one really sympathetic character. Old _Purbeck_, who ruled his bar like an autocrat and believed in honest alcohol (and fortunately for himself died some years ago), comes nearest to it. _Laura_, of whom the author gives us spasmodic glimpses, is vividly interesting, but repellent. _Tom_, the protagonist, I found frankly dull. Perhaps I have dwelt overmuch on defects. Certainly the story held my attention throughout, even after my-disappointment at finding nobody to like in it.

* * * * *

A lot of diaries make very poor reading, because people who are conscientious enough to keep them at all keep them conscientiously and fill them with nothing but facts. Mr. MAURICE BARING of course has no empty scruples of this kind, and _R.F.C. H.Q. 1914-1918_ (BELL AND SONS), though it has plenty of statistics in it and technical details as well, is in the main a delightful jumble of stunts and talks and quotations from Mr. MAURICE BARING and other people, culinary details, troubles about chilblains and wasp-bites, and here and there an excellently written memoir of some friend who fell fighting. The main historical fact is, of course, that our airmen from small beginnings reached a complete ascendancy at the end of 1916, and then suffered a set-back, reaching their own again when the mastery of the Fokker was overcome. The author himself was _liaison_ officer and interpreter at H.Q., and stuck to General TRENCHARD throughout, although he was urgently requested to go to Russia. Scores of eminent people make brief appearances in his book, and the following is a fair sample of his method:--"_January 3rd, 1917._--An Army Commanders' Conference took place at Rollencourt. My indiarubber sponge was eaten by rats." Happily his diary escaped.

* * * * *

Lieut.-Colonel JOHN BUCHAN, in his now familiar _role_ of the serious historian, has been officially commissioned to tell a tale more thrilling in heroisms, if perhaps a trifle less madcap, than anything his unofficial imagination has given us. His latest volume, _The South African Forces in France_ (NELSON), though naturally it does not break much new ground, still contains a good deal that was well worth sifting from the mass of war history and is written with a vigour that could not be excelled. The proudest claims of the South Africans are, it seems, that they finished "further East" when the cease-fire sounded (I wonder if this will go unchallenged), that they were three times practically exterminated, and that they were the most modest unit in the field--the author of course being solely responsible for letting us know this last. Their terrible fights, not only at Delville Wood, but even more at Marriere Wood and Messines, are beyond question amongst the greatest feats of arms of the War, and on the last two occasions their stand in the face of odds went far to save the Allied cause in the black months of 1918. Since, as the author joyously notes, Dutch and English elements in the South African forces lived and died on the field like brothers, we may all agree with him, politics or no politics, that there has been something fundamentally right for once about the Empire's treatment of their country. This alone would give the book importance and interest outside the Southern dominions to which it is first addressed. In Capetown and Pretoria it will be _the_ history of the War.

* * * * *

In _John Bull, Junior_ (METHUEN) Mr. F. WREN CHILD sets out to record the difficulties which a "home-trained boy encounters at a public school." Whether his picture of school-life as it was some years ago is true or not, it is unlikely that there will be keen competition among public schools to claim the original of _St. Lucian's_; and I do not think that tender-hearted mothers need fear that their own children will be beset by the temptations which _Brant_ had to encounter, for in his hectic career he was unfortunate enough to have card-sharpers, whisky-drinkers and other unusual types of boyhood among his fellow-pupils, and with such company it is not to be wondered at that he was more often in than out of trouble. But, since he helped to solve the mystery which was perplexing _St. Lucian's_, it would seem that whatever happened to his soul he contrived to keep his head. Boys with a taste for amateur detective work might derive enjoyment from this tale, and to them I recommend it.

* * * * *

* * * * *

_Stephen Manaton_, heir to great possessions, found that his wealth and worldly position were slipping away from him, but as compensation against his losses he had the supreme satisfaction of discovering that the girl of his choice loved him solely for himself. So with the best will in the world I could not shed tears over _The Manaton Disaster_ (HEATH CRANTON), though I admit that Miss PHILLIPPA TYLER does her strenuous best to set my sympathy in motion. Possibly she tries a shade too hard, and in future I hope that she will cut shorter--or even cut out completely--the soliloquies of her heroes. Miss TYLER has the dramatic sense, and an author who can write over a hundred-and-fifty words without a full-stop is not to be thwarted by trifles; but she dissipates her forces and fails to reach the catastrophic climax at which she apparently aimed.

* * * * *

The ways of the humorist are hard indeed, and it must be particularly exasperating, even if you are a clergyman, to be told by some disgruntled reviewer, as "GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM" must, I am afraid, here be told, that his latest, _Good Conduct_ (MURRAY), is not up to standard. _Virginia Tempest_, the tomboy, the extremely unworthy recipient of the good conduct prize at _Miss Merridew's_ academy, has her points, but her pranks are played with or against such dull folk: an editor and assistant editor for whom I blush; an emporium owner who is kinder and wealthier and stupider than he is diverting; an assistant schoolmistress, a surgeon, a Futurist-painter, a bishop. None of these worthy people commands my respect or laughter. The high spirits seem not entirely genuine. A casual lapse into Brummagem, I take it.

* * * * *

"Wanted, for 3 months, nice Bedroom and small paddock for
pony."

"Six Acres Freehold Land, with Two Cottages, near Southampton;
suitable pigs and poultry."--_Provincial Paper._

With bedrooms for ponies and cottages for pigs, what chance has a human of getting housed?