Chapter II: Part 2

By an equal piece of good fortune Toller had taken a course of mind training and his memory was exceptionally retentive. His _Life of Rodman_ achieved instant success, a far greater than _Rodman's Collected Works_. The undomesticities of a poet's life naturally excite greater interest in the cultured than his utterances on Love, Destiny and other topics on which poets are apt to discourse. Toller, until then a struggling journalist, became all at once a minor literary celebrity, much in demand at conversaziones and places where they chatter. Sympathy for Rodman aroused curiosity which only Toller could satisfy.

His memory, continually stimulated by questions, gained further in strength. The more he was asked the more he remembered, and so on in a virtuous circle. His Rodmaniana provided him with a comfortable income. He removed from Earl's Court to luxurious chambers off Jermyn Street, from which he poured out article after article on the deceased poet.

Then suddenly, without warning, probably from overstrain, his memory gave way. Everything in the past, Rodman included, vanished from his mind. A greater calamity one could not conceive. It was as though a violinist had lost a hand, a popular preacher his voice. His livelihood was gone. Much as his babble about Rodman had bored me I could not but feel some sorrow for him, fallen from his little pinnacle of fame and affluence. Judge, then, of my surprise when I passed him about a fortnight ago faultlessly dressed and wearing an air of great prosperity. He showed of course not the smallest recollection of me.

"How does Toller manage to live?" I asked Cardew, who knows him better than I do.

"He still writes," was the reply.

"What--without a memory?"

"Yes, he finds it an advantage. You see, since the fusion of the old parties and the formation of new ones, the possession of a memory is often a source of considerable embarrassment to a leader writer. Toller now does the political articles for a prominent morning paper. The proprietors consider him a wonderful find."

* * * * *

BUCKLER'S.

To acquire an estate is, even in these days of inflated prices and competitive house-hunters, an easy matter compared with finding a name for it when it is yours. It is then that the real trouble sets in.

Take the case of my friend Buckler.

A little while ago he purchased a property, a few acres on the very top of a hill not too far from London and only half-a-mile from his present habitation, and there he is now building a home. At least the plans are done and the ground has been pegged out. "Here," he will say, quite unmindful of the clouds emptying themselves all over us--with all an enthusiast's disregard for others, and an enthusiast, moreover, who has his abode close by, full of changes of raiment--"here," setting his foot firmly in the mud, "is where the dining-room will be. Here," moving away a few yards through the slush, "is the billiard-room." Then, pointing towards the zenith with his stick, "Above it"--here you look up into the pitiless sky as well as the deluge will permit--"are two spare rooms, one of which will be yours when you come to see us." And so forth.

He then leads the way round the place, through brake fern wetter than waves, to indicate the position of the tennis-courts, and in course of time you are allowed to return to the dry and spend the rest of the day in borrowed clothes.

Everyone knows these Kubla Khans decreeing pleasure domes and enlarging upon them in advance of the builders, and never are they so eloquent and unmindful of rain and discomforts as when their listeners are poor and condemned to a squalid London existence for ever.

But that is beside the mark. It is the naming of these new country seats that leads to such difficulties.

That night at dinner the question arose again.

"As it is on the top of the hill," said a gentle wistful lady, "why not call it 'Hill Top'? I'm sure I've seen that name before. It is expressive and simple."

"So simple," said Buckler, "that my nearest neighbour has already appropriated it."

"I suppose that would be an objection," said the lady, and we all agreed.

"Why not," said another guest, "call it 'The Summit'? or, more concisely, just 'Summit'?"

"Or why not go further," said a frivolous voice, "and suggest hospitality too--and Buckler's hospitality is notorious--by calling it 'Summit-to- Eat'?"

Our silence was properly contemptuous of this sally.

"If you didn't like that you might call it 'Summit-to-Drink,'" the frivolous voice impenitently continued. "Then you would get all the Americans there too."

The voice's glass having been replenished (which, I fancy, was its inner purpose) we became serious again.

"As it is on the top of the hill," said the first lady, "there will probably be a view. Why not call it, for example, 'Bellevue'? 'Bellevue' is a charming word."

"A little French, isn't it?" someone inquired.

"Oh, yes, it's French," she admitted. "But it's all right, isn't it? It's quite nice French."

We assured her that, for a French phrase, it was singularly free from impropriety.

"But of course," she said, "there's an Italian equivalent, 'Bella Vista.' 'Bella Vista' is delightful."

"I passed a 'Bella Vista' in Surbiton yesterday," said the frivolous voice, "and an errand-boy had done his worst with it with a very black lead pencil."

"What could he do?" the gentle lady asked wonderingly, with big violet eyes distended.

"It is not for me to explain," said the frivolous voice; "but the final vowel of the first word dissatisfied him and he substituted another. The capabilities of errand-boys with pencil or chalk should never be lost sight of when one is choosing a name for a front gate."

"I am all at sea," said the lady plaintively. Then she brightened. "Is there no prominent landmark visible from the new house?" she asked. "It is so high there must be."

Our hostess said that by cutting down two trees it would be possible to see Windsor Castle.

"Oh, then, do cut them down," said the lady, "and call it 'Castle View.' That would be perfect."

During the panic that followed I made a suggestion. "The best name for it," I said, "is 'Buckler's.' That is what the country people will call it, and so you may as well forestall them and be resigned to it. Besides, it's the right kind of name. It's the way most of the farms all over England once were named--after their owners, and where the owner was a man of character and force the name persisted. Call it 'Buckler's' and you will help everyone, from the postman to the strange guest who might otherwise tour the neighbourhood for miles searching for you long after lunch was finished."

"But isn't it too practical?" the first lady asked. "There's no poetry in it."

"No," I said, "there isn't. The poetry is in its owner. Any man who can stand in an open field under a July rainstorm and show another man where his bedroom is to be in a year's time is poet enough."

E.V.L.

* * * * *

TO ISIS.

Isis, beside thine ambient rill
How oft I've snuffed the Berkshire breezes,
Or, prone on some adjoining hill,
Thrown off with my accustomed skill
The weekly fytte of polished wheezes;
How oft in summer's languorous days,
With some fair creature at the pole, I
Have thrid the Cherwell's murmurous ways
And dared with lobster mayonnaise
The onslaughts of Bacillus Coli?

Once--it was done at duty's call--
My labouring oar explored thy reaches;
They said I was no good at all
And coaches noting me would bawl
Things about "angleworms and breeches;"
But oh! the shouts of heartfelt glee
That rang on thine astonished marges
As we bore (rolling woundily)
Full in the wake of Brasenose III.
And bumped them soundly at the barges.

That night on Oxenford there burst
A sound of strong men at their revels,
And stroke, in vinous lore unversed,
Retired, if you must know the worst,
On feet that swam at different levels,
Nor knew till morning brought its cares
That, while the cup was freely flowing,
He'd scaled a flight of moving stairs
And commandeered his tutor's chairs
To keep the college bonfire going.

Immortal youth it was that bound
Us twain together, beauteous river;
And, though these limbs just crawl around
That once would scarcely touch the ground,
And alcohol upsets my liver,
Still, in a punt or lithe canoe
I can revive my vernal heyday,
Pretend the sky's ethereal blue,
The golden kingcups' cheery hue,
Spell my, as well as Nature's, Mayday.

The evening glows, the swallow skims
Between the water and the willows;
The blackbirds pipe their evening hymns,
A punt awaits at Mr. Tims'
With generous tea and lots of pillows,
And of all girls the first, the best
To play at youth with this old fossil;
Then Isis, as we glide to rest
Upon thy shadow-dappled breast,
We'll pledge thee in a generous wassail.

ALGOL.

* * * * *

_Maid._ "EVERYTHINK, MUM, 'CEPT THE 'ADDICK, WHICH IS COMING ON BY ITSELF LATER."]

* * * * *

ENGLAND UNBENDS.

REPORTS FROM SPA AND SHORE.

SCARGATE.--This famous Yorkshire Spa is now in a condition of hectic activity and offers a plethora of attractions. A recent analysis of the waters shows that the proportion of sapid ovaloid particles and sulphuretted trinitrotoluene is larger than ever. Lieutenant Platt- Stithers' stincopated anthropoid orchestra plays four times daily--in the early morning and at noon for the relief of the water-drinkers, and in the afternoon and evening in the rotating Jazz Hall. Special attractions this week include cinema lectures daily on the domestic life of the Solomon Islanders by Mr. Nicholas Ould; a recital on the Bolophone on Thursday by Mr. Tertius Quodling, and, at the Grand Opera House, _Pope Joan_ and _The Flip-Flappers_. On Saturday the Stridcar Golf Club will hold a series of competitions in rational fancy dress for the benefit of the Phonetic Spelling Association.

FALLALMOUTH.--Visitors to this romantic resort are offered a wide field of entertainment and moral uplift. The steamer excursions embrace trips up the lovely river Fallal to Gongor, famous for the prehistoric remains of the shrine of Saint Opodeldoc, and to beauty spots in the harbour like Glumgallion, Trehenna and Pangofflin Creek. There are also excursions in armed motor-char-à-bancs to Boscagel, Cadgerack and Flapperack. To-day visitors can view the gardens at Poljerrick, where many super-tropical plants, including man-eating cacti, are growing in the most unbridled luxuriance. There is a fine sporting nine-hole golf-course on the shingle strand at Grogwalloe, where the test of niblick play is more severe than on any links save those of the Culbin Sands near Nairn. Among other attractive features are the brilliant displays of aurora borealis over the Bay, which have been arranged at considerable cost by the Corporation in conjunction with the Meteorological Society.

BORECAMBE.--The demand for bathing-machines and tents continues to increase, though the shopkeepers are complaining of a decreasing spending power on the part of the visitors and a disinclination to pay more than a shilling a head for shrimps. The practice of dispensing with head-gear is also much resented by local outfitters, but otherwise the situation is well in hand. On Monday last Mr. Silas Pargeter, an old resident, caught a fine conger-eel, weighing fifty-six pounds, which he has presented to the Museum. As Borecambe is a good jumping-off ground for the Lake District there are daily char-à-banc excursions to the land of WORDSWORTH and RUSKIN, each passenger being supplied with a megaphone and a pea-shooter.

* * * * *

DOWN CHANNEL.

The chime of country steeples,
The scent of gorse and musk,
The drone of sleepy breakers
Come mingled with the dusk;
A ruddy moon is rising
Like a ripe pomegranate husk.

The coast-wise lights are wheeling
White sword-blades in the sky,
The misty hills grow dimmer,
The last lights blink and die;
Oh, land of home and beauty,
Good-bye, my dear, good-bye!

PATLANDER.

* * * * *

HOW TO BE LONELY THOUGH MARRIED.

"Lonely Officer (married, with three children) wants Sealyham Terrier
Dog."--_Times._

* * * * *

_Caddie_ (_fed up_). "DINNA FASH YERSEL' ABOOT BOGEY. YE'VE PLAYED FUFTEEN AN' YE'RE NO DEID YET--(_aside_) WORSE LUCK."]

* * * * *

MY DROMEDARY.

I see by _The Times_ that dromedaries are on sale at sixty-five pounds apiece.

In these days, when commodities of all kinds are so expensive, one cannot afford to overlook bargains of whatever nature they may be. And it seems to me that a dromedary at sixty-five pounds is really rather cheap.

For after all sixty-five pounds to-day is little more than thirty pounds in pre-war times. Considering their trifling cost I am surprised that more people do not possess dromedaries. Most of my neighbours during the past two years have built garages, but not one, so far as I am aware, has built a dromedary-drome.

I think I shall buy one of these attractive pets if my pass-book encourages me. Cheaper than a motor-car and far more intelligent and responsive to human affection, a dromedary will add distinction to my establishment and afford pleasant occupation for my leisure. It brings no attendant annoyance from the Inland Revenue authorities; there are no tiresome registration fees or regulations as to the dimensions of a number-plate.

As long as I can remember I have lived in a state of uncertainty as to whether a dromedary has two humps and a camel one, or a camel two humps and a dromedary one. With one of these exotic quadrupeds tethered only a few yards away from the kitchen door that condition of doubt need not exist in the future for more than a few moments. In a good light it should be perfectly easy to count the humps or hump. Then again a dromedary will come for a walk on a fine evening without involving one in a dog-fight. It will provide quiet yet healthful exercise for the two children. If it turns out that the type possesses two humps it will be able to convey Edgar and Marigold at one and the same time, thus saving delay and inconvenience.

It will be a protection to the house. When we have gone to bed the faithful creature will lie on guard in the hall, and no amount of poisoned liver thrust through the letter-box will assuage its ferocity or weaken its determination to protect the hearth and home of its master against marauders. For the dromedary is not only a strict teetotaler and non- smoker, but a lifelong vegetarian. Famous for its browsing propensities, a dromedary about the garden will save untold labour and expense, keeping the lawn trimmed and the hedges clipped. And indoors its height will serve me admirably in enabling me, while seated on its hump or one of its humps, to attend in comfort to a little whitewashing job which will not brook further postponement.

I will look at my pass-book to-morrow.

* * * * *

FLOWERS' NAMES.

COLT'S FOOT.

When the four Horses of the Sun
Were little leggy things,
When they could only jump and run
And hadn't grown their wings,
The Sun-God sent them out to play
In a field one July day.

Oh, the four Horses of the Sun
They galloped and they rolled,
They leapt into the air for fun
And felt so brave and bold;
And when they'd done their gallopings
They'd grown four splendid pairs of wings.

The Sun-God fetched them in again
To draw his car of gold;
But you can still see very plain
Where each one leapt and rolled;
For from each hoof-mark, every one,
There sprang a little golden sun,
And that same little golden flower
People call Colt's Foot to this hour.

* * * * *

"The stove will stand by itself anywhere. It omits neither smoke nor
smell."--_Provincial Paper._

We know that stove.

* * * * *

_Shopwalker._ "MEN'S FURNISHING DEPARTMENT ON THE NEXT FLOOR, MADAM."

_Lady._ "WELL, I DON'T KNOW. THE GIFT IS FOR MY HUSBAND."

_Shopwalker._ "OH, PARDON, MADAM. BARGAIN COUNTER IN THE BASEMENT."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

Not every regiment has the good luck to find for chronicler one who is not only a distinguished soldier but a practical and experienced man of letters. This fortune is enjoyed by _The Gold Coast Regiment_ (MURRAY) in securing for its historian Sir HUGH CLIFFORD, K.C.M.G., from whose book you may obtain a vivid picture of a phase of the Empire's effort about which the average Briton has heard comparatively little. The very strenuous compaigns of the G.C.R., the endurance and achievements of its brave and light-hearted troops, and the heroism and fostering care of its officers, make an inspiring story. Almost for the first time one gains some real idea of the difficulties of the East African campaign, that prolonged tiger hunt, in which every advantage of mobility, of choice of ground, ambush and the like lay with the enemy; and over very tough physical obstacles, as, for example, rivers so variable that, in the author's incisive phrase, they "can rarely be relied upon, for very long together, either to furnish drinking-water or to refrain from impeding transport." It is interesting to note that Sir HUGH, while giving every credit to the remarkable personality of the German commander, entirely demolishes the theory, so grateful to our sentimentalists, that the absence of surrenders on the part of the enemy's black troops was due to any devotion to VON LETTOW-VORBECK as leader; the explanation being the characteristic German dodge of creating from the natives a military caste so highly privileged, and consequently unpopular with their fellows, that surrender, involving return to native civilian life, became a practical impossibility.

* * * * *

Much the best part, and a good best, of _Sir Harry_ (COLLINS) is the opening, which is not only delightful in itself but contains almost the sole example of a chapter-long letter (of the kind usually so unconvincing in fiction) in which I have found it possible to believe as being actually written by one character to another. The explanation of which is that this one is supposed to be sent to his wife by the new _Vicar of Royd_, himself a successful novelist, on a visit of inspection to his future parish. The efforts of _Mrs. Grant_, at home, to disentangle essential facts from the complications of the literary manner form as pleasant and human an introduction to a story as any I remember. The story itself is one highly characteristic of its author, Mr. ARCHIBALD MARSHALL, both in charm and truth to life, as also in one minor drawback, of which I have taken occasion to speak before. Nothing could be better done than the picture of the household at Royd Castle, the boy owner, _Sir Harry_, sheltered by the almost too-encompassing care of the three elder inmates, mother, grandmother and tutor. When the fictionally inevitable happens and an Eve breaks into this protected Eden there follow some boy-and-girl love-scenes that may perhaps remind you--and what praise could be higher?--of the collapse of another system on the meeting of _Richard_ and _Lucy_. I will not anticipate the end of a sympathetically told story, which I myself should have enjoyed even more but for Mr. MARSHALL'S habit (hinted at above) of following real life somewhat too closely in the matter of non-progressive discussion. How I should like him to lay his next scene in a community of Trappists!

* * * * *

_The Haunted Bookshop_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL) is a daring, perhaps too daring, mixture of a browse in a second-hand bookshop and a breathless bustle among international criminals. To estimate the accuracy of its technical details the critic must be a secret service specialist, the mustiest of bookworms and a highly-trained expert in the science and language of the American advertising business. Speaking as a general practitioner, I like Mr. CHRISTOPHER MORLEY best when he is being cinematographic; he hits a very happy mean with his spies and his sleuths, giving a nice proportion of skill and error, failure and success, to both. There is a strong love- interest which will be made much of and probably spoilt by the purchasers of the film-rights; and, though strong men will doubtless applaud hoarsely and women will weep copiously, as the bomb in the bookshop throws the young lovers into each other's arms, I feel that the book gives a more attractive portrait of _Titania Chapman_, the plutocrat's daughter, than ever can be materialised in the film-man's "close-up." I am afraid that Mr. MORLEY will not thank me for praising his brisk melodrama at the cost of his ramblings in literature. But, if he has the knowledge, he lacks the fragrance; not to put too fine a point on it, he is long-winded and tends to bore in his disquisitions upon books and bookishness; which is no proper material for a novelist. The story is all about America and is thoroughly American; inevitably therefore there is some ambitious word-coining. The only novelty which sticks in my memory and earns my gratitude is the title for the female Bolshevik, to wit, Bolshevixen.

* * * * *

Wayward and capricious heroines who marry young are entitled, I think, to a certain amount of introspective treatment by their authors. Without some knowledge of their mental working it is not very easy for the reader to have patience with them. I was introduced to _Anne_ (HEINEMANN) when she was fifteen, and in the act of snatching a loaf of bread from a baker's cart and running away with it merely to annoy the baker; and, as she had large blue eyes and two young men as self-appointed guardians, I was prepared for a certain amount of heart trouble later on. One of these heroes she married at the age of seventeen, and, after various innocent but compromising vagaries (including a flight to Paris after the death of her son in order to study art), she followed the other one, still innocently, to Ireland, because he had been in prison and she was sorry for him. Both these guardians discharged their duty to _Anne_ at least as well as OLGA HARTLEY, who chronicles but does not explain; and this is a pity, for with a rather different treatment she might have made her heroine a very likeable person. Looked at from another point of view, _Anne_ may be taken as a mild piece of propaganda against divorce. I am glad it didn't come to that, of course, but I do feel that a cross-examining K.C. would have discovered a good deal more about Anne's soul for me than I learnt from the writer of her story.

* * * * *

_John Fitzhenry_ (MILLS AND BOON) is one of those pleasant stories about people who live in big country houses, a subject that seems to have a particular attraction for the large and ungrudging public which lives in villas. We have already several novelists who tell them very ably, and I feel that some one among them has served as Miss ELLA MACMAHON'S model. The tale deals with the affairs of a showy fickle cousin and a silent constant cousin who compete for the love of the same delightful if rather nebulous young woman, and moves to its _dénouement_, against a background of the great War, which Miss MACMAHON has very sensibly decided to view entirely from the home front. It contains some fine thinking and some bad writing (the phrase telling of the middle-aged smart woman who "waved her foot impatiently" gives a just idea of the author's occasional inability to say what she means), some quite extraneous incidents and some scenes very well touched in. The people, with a few exceptions, are of the race which inhabits this sort of book, and, as we have long agreed with our novelists that "the county" is just like that, I don't see why Miss MACMAHON should be blamed for it.

* * * * *

Mr. COSMO HAMILTON lays the scene of _His Friend and His Wife_ (HURST AND BLACKETT) in the Quaker Hill Colony of Connecticut, the members of which were typically "nice" and took themselves very seriously. So when one of them brought a divorce suit against her husband there was a feeling that the colony's reputation had been irremediably besmirched. Mr. HAMILTON can be trusted to create tense situations out of the indiscretions of an erring couple, but he also contrives, in spite of its artificial atmosphere, to make us believe in this society, though he tried me rather hard with a scandalmongress of the type we happily meet less often in life than in fiction. I hope he will not be quite so dental in his next book. I didn't so much mind _Mrs. Hopper's_ teeth, which "flashed like an electric advertisement," but when he made two golfers also flash "triumphant teeth" I recoiled.

* * * * *

_The Golden Bird_ of Miss DOROTHY EASTON (HEINEMANN) is indeed lucky to set out on its flight with a favouring pat from Mr. JOHN GALSWORTHY. He asserts that these short studies of people and things in England and France are very well done indeed; that moreover, though the short sketch may look, and the bad short sketch may be, one of the easiest of literary feats, the good short sketch is in fact one of the most difficult. Now who should know this if not Mr. GALSWORTHY, and who am I that I should presume to disagree? As a matter of fact I don't. Quite the contrary. But naturally I shall get no credit for that. I will only add that Miss EASTON has not a majority mind, that she sees the sad thing more easily than the gay, that I like her work best in her more objective moods, and that, like so many writers of perception, she finds the quintessence of England's beauty in happy Sussex.

* * * * *

_Mother._ "GOOD NEWS, MY SON! EVEN AS I PONDERED WHETHER I SHOULD EAT OUR LAST CRUST THE EVER-KIND ABBÉ CALLED TO SAY HE HAD FOUND THEE A HIGHLY-PAID APPOINTMENT AT COURT."

_Son._ "YES--BUT DID HE TELL YOU IT WAS AS FOOD-TASTER TO HIS MAJESTY, WHO DAILY EXPECTS TO BE POISONED?"]