Chapter III

The robin helps to brighten Winter days
And, if you listen carefully, he says,
"Oh please, oh please do leave some crumbs for me;"
It's greed, but still he says it cheerily.

The starling rolls his "r's" with unctuous joy
And, preening, wonders whom he may annoy,
Then imitates a hen, a water-fowl
And next the "Be quick" of a white barn-owl.

The heron has a fierce and yellow eye
And eats up all our fishes on the sly;
There seems to be but one he deigns to like,
For all I hear him say is simply "Pike."

Tree-creepers, like some busy brown field-mice,
Unwearying chase the furtive fat wood-lice,
Then round the oak-tree's bole they slyly peep
And tell you what you thought you knew--"We creep."

This is the way the sparrow calls his mate;
He says it early and he says it late,
He says it softly, but he says it clear:
"Come unto me, come unto me, my dear."

* * * * *

DRESS AT THE CURZON WEDDING.

"Princess ---- wore a black hat, a cloak of tailless ermine,
and a black and silver toque."

_Daily Telegraph._

"Then came Mrs. ---- in a dull golf hat."

_Daily Graphic._

As a protest, we suppose, against the other lady's extravagance in wearing a couple of hats.

***

"John ----, a coloured man, was charged with using obscure
language in Maria Street. The magistrates fined him
5s."--_Welsh Paper._

Most unfair! Lots of men do the very same thing in Parliament and get paid four hundred pounds a year for it.

***

Heading from pp. 516, 517 of _Punch's_ official rival, _The Telephone Directory_:

"SUBSCRIBERS SHOULD NOT ENGAGE ****** THE TELEPHONISTS IN
CONVERSATION."

We should ourselves have placed the asterisks after the word "THE."

* * * * *

ROYAL ACADEMY--SECOND DEPRESSIONS.

_Queen Elinor._ "QUITE RIGHT, BUT IT'S ONLY TO HEIGHTEN THE DRAMATIC EFFECT. I KNEW YOU WOULD PREFER POISON."]

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"WHY MARRY?"

This is a protracted discussion of a venerable topic and takes place in a sun-parlour, which I regret to say is the brightest thing about it.

_John_ is a dollar-snob--it is _John's_ parlour--and has two sisters, _Jean_ and _Helen_. _John_ is easily the heavy-weight champion in stage brothers. Sister _Jean_, who is entirely dependent on _John_, loves a poor man, but under _John's_ guidance traps a rich one. Sister _Helen_ (who has a job) also loves a poor man, but thinks marriage not good enough. This was, I imagine, due chiefly to living with _John_ and _Mrs. John_. She may have got a touch of the sun-parlour. Her man is a terrific young scientist, who once with four colleagues deliberately let a dangerous Cuban mosquito nibble his arm. The colleagues died while _Ernest_ survived, which I regretted. However he became demonstrator at the Institute of Bacteriology, with _Helen_ as his assistant, and in the excitement of the imminent discovery of his new bacillus the two spend the night in the laboratory totally unchaperoned. The discovery saved thousands of American babes, but it ruined _Helen's_ reputation.

Here the narrative becomes confused, but anyhow _John_, who was a trustee of the Institute, spent the three Acts in alternately sacking and reinstating _Helen_ and _Ernest_, in thinking of a salary, doubling it, adding thousands of dollars to it and taking away the salary first thought of, together with the additions (and so _da capo_), according as he wished to prevent the marriage because of _Ernest's_ poverty, or bring it off because of _Ernest's_ disposition to take _Helen_ to Paris (France) and dispense with empty rites, or postpone it to gain time, or, on the contrary, have it celebrated between the dressing and the dinner gongs in order to announce it to important members of the family, who, if I understood the butler aright, had already fallen on their food while host and hostess, two pairs of lovers, Uncle _Everett_ and Cousin _John_ were bickering in the sun-parlour.

Cousin _Theodore_, a guileless and dollarless clergyman, padded about on the outskirts of the discussion, making obvious remarks about the sanctity of marriage and enunciating the highest principles, which he promptly swallowed. But it was Uncle _Everett_, the judge (the only human figure in the bunch), who grasped the fact (long after I did, but let that pass) that the two principal young egotists simply loved being talked over at such gross length. To put an end to the business he used a trick whereby, apparently according to the law of the unnamed State in which the parlour was situate, the two were legally married without intending it. They had the tact to accept this solution, and this softened my heart towards them for the first time.

It was amusing to see Mr. AUBREY SMITH wondering how on earth he had got into this play, and Mr. A. E. GEORGE prowling about the stage intent apparently on showing how many ways there are of uttering "Pshaw!" and "Tut-tut!" or noise to that effect. It isn't as easy as it ought to be to do justice to players playing impossible parts; to Miss HENRIETTA WATSON struggling pluckily and skilfully with her _Mrs. John_; or to Mr. COWLEY WRIGHT or Miss ROSA LYND, so perfectly appalling did _Ernest_ and _Helen_ seem to me and so anxious was I to get them off to Paris respectably or otherwise. They never, by the way, gave me the faintest impression that they could ever have done work of any value in their laboratory.

I have no idea what the moral of this modern mystery play may be, but I did gather that the authoress was seriously perplexed, not perhaps in any startlingly new way, about the difficulties of marriage and the conventional hypocrisies that hedge round that honourable institution, but just forgot that serious argument cannot easily be conveyed through the medium of fantastically impossible and uninteresting people in an extravagantly farcical situation. The play was kindly received.

T.

* * * * *

_Mr. C. AUBREY SMITH (Uncle Everett)._ "DO _YOU_ KNOW THE ANSWER?"

_Miss HENRIETTA WATSON (Lucy)._ "THERE ARE A GOOD MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS PLAY THAT I WOULDN'T CARE TO HAVE TO ANSWER."]

* * * * *

THE MADNESS OF THE MACNAMARA.

(_From the Gaelic--with apologies to BON GAULTIER._)

Weefrees swore a feud
Against the clan McGeorgy;
Marched to Leamington
To hold a pious orgy;
For they did resolve
To extirpate the vipers
With thirty stout M.P.s
And all the Northsquith "pipers."

"Lads," said HOGGE and BENN
To their faithful scholars,
"We shall need to fight
To retain the dollars;
Here's MHIC-MAC-NAMARA
Coming with his henchmen,
HEWART, KELLAWAY
And several Front-Bench men."

***

"Coot-tay to you, Sirs,"
Said MHIC-MAC-NAMARA
In a voice that reached
From Leamington to Tara;
"So you'd drum us out
To enjoy your plunder,
Adding to a crime
Suicidal blunder."

But the brave Weefrees,
Heedless of his bawling,
Drowned him with the storm
Of their caterwauling;
So MHIC-MAC-NAMARA
And the valiant KELLAWAY
Gave some warlike howls
And in haste got well away.

In this sorry style
Died ta Liberal Party,
Which in days of old
Had been strong and hearty;
This, good Mr. Punch,
Is ta true edition;
Here's your fery coot health
And--bless ta Coalition!

* * * * *

Another Impending Apology.

"We are glad to be able to state in reference to our Pastor
that, though much improved in health, he is still unfit to
resume his work amongst us."-- ---- _Congregational Magazine._

***

"This should bring joy to the heart of every resolutionary
Socialist."

_The Workers' Dreadnought._

All the Socialists we have met answer to this description.

* * * * *

_P.-W. S. (otter-hunting for the first time)._ "TIRED? COOKED TO A TURN! I WOULDN'T 'AVE COME SO FAR BUT ONE OF YOUR CHAPS TOLD ME YOU 'AD A STRONG DRAG UP THE RIVER AND I THOUGHT WE MIGHT ALL GO 'OME IN IT. AND NOW 'E SAYS IT'S ONLY A SMELL 'E MEANT."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

I should certainly call Mr. COMPTON MACKENZIE our first living expositor of London in fiction. Indeed the precision with which, from his Italian home, he can recapture the aspect and atmosphere of London neighbourhoods is itself an astonishing feat. In _The Vanity Girl_ (CASSELL) he has happily abandoned the rather breathless manner induced by the migratious _Sylvia Scarlett_, and returns to the West Kensington of _Sinister Street_, blended subsequently with that theatrical Bohemia in which _Jenny Pearl_ danced her little tragedy. There is something (though by no means all) of the interest of _Carnival_ in the new stage story; that the adventures of _Dorothy_ lack the compelling charm of her predecessor is inevitable from the difference in temperament of the two heroines and the fact that Mr. MACKENZIE with all his art has been unable to rouse more than dispassionate interest in what is really a study of successful egotism. From the moment when, in the first chapter, we encounter _Dorothy_ (whose real name was _Norah_) washing her hair at a window in Lonsdale Road, an eligible _cul-de-sac_ ending in a railway line, beyond which a high rampart marked the reverse of the Earl's Court Exhibition panorama, to that final page on which we take leave of her as a widowed countess, sacrificing her future for the sake of an Earl's Court of a different _genre_, her career, sentimental, financial and matrimonial, is told with amazing vivacity but a rather conspicuous lack of emotional appeal. It is perhaps an unequal book; in parts as good as the author's best, in others hurried and perfunctory. One of our more superior Reviews was lately debating Mr. MACKENZIE'S command of the "memorable phrase." There are a score here that I should delight to quote, even if the setting is not always entirely worthy of them.

***

So long as "BERTA RUCK" will write for us such pretty books as _Sweethearts Unmet_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), we need never feel ourselves dependent on America for our supply of sugary novels. This home-grown variety is just as sweet, and really, I think, may be guaranteed not only harmless but positively beneficial. The authoress has evidently a tender pity for the young men and women whom our social conditions doom either to have no companions among their contemporaries or only the wrong ones. Her heroine represents the too-much-sheltered girl alone in an elderly circle, her hero the lonely young man who has no means of getting to know people of his own sort (I can't say class, because the authoress seems rather uncertain about that herself). Her story is written in alternate instalments by "the boy" and "the girl," a method which encourages intimacy in the telling as well as a sort of gushing attention to the reader not so pleasant. Miss NORA SCHLEGEL has drawn a pretty picture of _Julia_ and _Jack_ to adorn the wrapper, and I can assure everyone who cares to know it that they are just as nice as they look; _Jack's_ passion for abbreviation ("rhodos" for rhododendrons) being the only ground of quarrel I have with them or their creator.

***

In _Passion_ (DUCKWORTH) Mr. SHAW DESMOND desperately wants to say something terrific about love, money and power. His violence makes one feel that one is reading under a shower of brickbats, and it is the effort of dodging these which perhaps distracts the mind from his message. (Is he a Marinettist, I wonder?) There are not enough words in the language for him, so he invents fresh ones at will; while as for grammar and syntax he passionately throttled them in Chapter I.; nor did they recover. I will own that notwithstanding all this the author has a way of making you read on to find out what it is all about. You don't find out; but there, life's like that, isn't it? The author's ideas of the operations of high finance are ingenuous. The _Mandrill_ (do I rightly guess this to be a portrait distorted from the life?), who is out to corner copper and "do down" the _Squid_ (head of the opposing copper group), is, if you are to judge by his passionate exuberance at board meetings, about as likely to corner the green cheese in the moon. I imagine the author saying, "_Mandrills_ mayn't be like that, but that's how I see 'em. It's my vision and mood that matter. Take it or leave it." Well, on the whole I should advise you to take it, first putting on a sort of mental tin hat. You'll at least have gathered that Mr. DESMOND is a lively writer.

***

Of a war-story reviewed in these pages some months ago I remember taking occasion to say that the author had damaged his effect by a too obvious wish to injure the reputation of a certain cavalry brigade (or words to that effect). Well, a book that I have just been reading, _The Squadroon_ (LANE), might in some sense be regarded as a counterblast to the former volume, since its writer, Major ARDERN BEAMAN, D.S.O., has admittedly intended it as a vindication of the work of the cavalry in the Great War. I can say at once that the defence could scarcely have found a better advocate. Major BEAMAN (who, I think superfluously, figures in his own pages in the fictional character of Padre) has written one of the most interesting records that I have read of personal experience on the Western Front. Partly this is explained by his fortunate possession of a style at once sincere, sanely balanced and always engaging. Also his story, apart from the matter of it, reveals in the men of whom he writes (and incidentally in the writer himself) a combination of just those qualities that we like to call essentially British. Cavalrymen of course will read it with a special fervour; but I am mistaken if its genial temper does not disarm even so difficult a critic as the ex-infantry Lieutenant--than which I could hardly say more. In short, _The Squadroon_ is a belated war book in which the most weary of such matters may well recapture their interest.

***

Written in the last great ebb and flow of the War, when the censorship still prevented anything like carping criticism of matters near the battle-front, _The Glory of the Coming_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) naturally resolves itself into a paean of praise of the French and British armies in general and the American troops in particular, both white and black. Mr. IRVIN S. COBB brings good credentials to his task, for he saw the advance of the German army through Belgium in 1914, and in this book he describes the combined resistance to their last great effort before defeat. The accident, if we may so call it, to the Fifth Army has had nowhere a more eloquent apologist. "They were like ants; they were like flies," he says of the Germans; "they left their dead lying so thickly behind that finally the ground seemed as though it were covered with a grey carpet." There are interesting strictures in the later chapters on some of the quaint semi-official delegations and personages who persuaded the United States Government to let them come over and visit the War; and there are a number of quite good yarns of the Yankee private, related in the Yankee style. But better than all the American stories I think I like that of the Bedfordshire soldier who, when asked by the writer to direct him to Blerincourt during the chaos of the great retreat, replied, "I am rather a stranger in these parts myself." Perhaps by the way I ought to make it quite clear that the title refers to the coming of the American troops, and that, although the line, "He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored," is also quoted in the prefatory stanza, there is nothing in the book about Mr. "PUSSYFOOT" JOHNSON.

***

I suppose the War did throw up a great number of worthy pomposities genuinely eager to serve their country in some conspicuous and applauded way, and old _Mr. Thompson_, the principal figure in _Young Hearts_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), may be taken, on the authority of J. E. BUCKROSE, as an East Riding variant of the type. He had always some patent scheme for winning the War or improving the Peace, and no doubt deserved all the ragging he got, though I lost my zest in the matter before the author did. _Mr. Thompson_ had two daughters: a minx (almost too minx-like for belief) and a never-told-her-love maiden of sterling worth. The latter marries the good-young-man-under-a-cloud (the cloud was, of course, a misapprehension or, alternatively, had a silver lining), though the minx shamelessly tried to "bag him," as she did every eligible male, the good sister tamely submitting under the impression apparently that the other was a perfect darling. I indeed seemed to be the only person who really understood what a little beast she was--and possibly the author, who finally allotted to her the beautiful unsatisfactory young man with the emotional tenor. Commended for easy seaside reading.

* * * * *

TO RECALCITRANT HOUSE-OWNERS: Let and let live.

* * * * *

_Waiter (with anticipative tact) to holiday customer._ "ANY HORSE DOOVERS, SIR?"]

* * * * *