Chapter II: Part 2

Ye who have travelled the wilderness, ye who have followed the chase,
Whom the voice of the forest comforts and the touch of the lonely place;
Ye who are sib to the jungle and know it and hold it good--
Praise ye the name of NIMROD, a Fellow Who Understood.

H.B.

* * * * *

THE HOUSE-AGENT'S FORLORN HOPE.

"TWO-AND-A-HALF MILES FROM STATION WITH NON-STOP TRAINS."--_Weekly Paper._

* * * * *

A TRAGIC COINCIDENCE.

"TEN PROFESSORSHIPS VACANT

IN SYDNEY UNIVERSITY.

Lausanne, Monday.

The giant British aeroplane G.E.A.T.L., from Cricklewood aerodrome,
London, landed at Blecherette, Lausanne, at 6-5 this evening."--_Irish
Paper._

Did all the ten Sydney Professors fall out of it together?

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"THE PRUDE'S FALL."

Though the hero is French and takes up his residence in an English cathedral town in order to rectify our British prudery and show us how to make love, there is practically nothing here that is calculated to bring a blush to the cheek of modesty. It is true that from time to time _Captain le Briquet_ kisses various outlying portions of his "_ange adoré_," but it is all very decorous and his ultimate intentions are strictly respectable.

You see, he was really just playing a game. Big game was his speciality (Africa) and this one was to be as big as an elephant. It consisted in the correction of a flaw which he had found in the object of his worship, the lovely young Widow _Audley,_ who had refused in his very presence to receive a woman, an old friend of hers, who had preferred love to reputation. He, the gallant Captain, proposed to amend this error. By his French methods he would reduce the Widow to such a state of helplessness that she would consent to become his mistress. The fact that he happened to be a bachelor, and perfectly free to marry her, should not be allowed to stand in the way of his scheme. He would explain that the exigencies of his vocation as a hunter of big game demanded a greater measure of liberty than was practicable within the bonds of matrimony. He would be "faithful but free."

In the course of a brief month (the interval between the First and Second Acts, for we are not permitted to see how he does it) she has become as putty in his hands. She consents to be his mistress, and is indeed so determined to adopt this informal style of union that when he produces a special marriage licence she is indignant at such a concession to the proprieties. But once again the Captain proves irresistible with his French methods and all ends well.

_Captain le Briquet_ ... Mr. GERALD DU MAURIER.

_Sir Nevil Moreton, Bart._ ... Mr. FRANKLIN DYALL.]

Mr. GERALD DU MAURIER was the life and soul of the play, which would have been a dullish business without him. His reappearances were always hailed as a joyous relief to the prevailing depression. Even _Dean Carey_--most delightful in the person of Mr. GILBERT HARE--became at one time a gloomy Dean; and Miss LILIAN BRAITHWAITE, who played very tenderly in the part of _Mrs. Westonry_ (the lady who had lost her reputation), could not hope to be very entertaining with her reminiscences of a lover whom we had never had the pleasure of meeting.

_Mrs. Audley_ again (treated naturally and with a pleasant artlessness by Miss EMILY BROOKE) did not take very kindly to the conquest of her scruples and gave little suggestion of the rapture of surrender. Further, the authors paid a poor compliment to English gentlemen by providing the Captain with a dull boor for his rival. The contrast was a little too patent. Even so Mr. FRANKLIN DYALL might perhaps have made the _rôle_ of _Sir Nevil Moreton_ appear a little less impossible. But, however good he may be in character parts or where melodrama is indicated, he never allowed us to mistake him for a British Baronet. The only person (apart from _le Briquet_) who contributed nothing to the general gloom was the Dean's wife, played with the most attractive grace and humour by Miss NINA BOUCICAULT.

A note of piquancy was given to Mr. DU MAURIER'S part by his broken English. "Broken" is perhaps not quite the word, unless we may speak of a torrent as being broken by pebbles in its bed. There were momentary hesitancies, and a few easy French words, such as _pardon?_ _pourquoi donc?_ _c'est permis?_ _alors_, were introduced to flatter the comprehension of the audience; but for the rest his fluency--and at all junctures, even the most unlikely--was simply astounding. Few people, speaking in their native tongue, can ever have commanded so facile an eloquence. What chance had a mere Englishman against him?

The action of _The Prude's Fall_ was supposed to take place in 1919, but its atmosphere was clearly ante-bellum. Anyhow there was no sign of the alleged damage done to our moral standards by the War. But nobody will quarrel on that ground with Mr. BESIER and Miss EDGINTON, the clever authors of this very interesting play. And if we have to be taught how to behave by a Frenchman, to the detriment of our British _amour propre_, there is nobody who can do it so nicely and painlessly as Mr. DU MAURIER.

"WEDDING BELLS."

I begin to suspect that the possible situations of marital farce are becoming exhausted. Certainly we have lost the power of being staggered by the emergence of an old wife out of the past. But Mr. SALISBURY FIELD, who wrote _Wedding Bells_ for America, is not content with a single repetition of this ancient device; he must needs give us these intrusions in triplicate, showing how they affect the career of (1) the hero, (2) his man-servant, (3) a poet-friend. True he only produces two old wives; but one of them, being a bigamist, was able to intrude "in two places" (as the auctioneers say).

The wife of _Reginald Carter_ (Mr. OWEN NARES), having first run right away from him and then apparently divorced him for desertion (I told you the play was American), turns up on the eve of his marriage to another. He has barely recovered from his failure to keep his future wife in ignorance of his past when he has to start taxing his brains all over again in order to keep his past wife in ignorance of his future.

The First Act went well enough and was full of good words--not very subtle perhaps, but the kind that invites intelligent laughter. Later the play degenerated into something too improbable for comedy and not boisterous enough for pure farce. The two most disintegrating elements were furnished by a love-sick poet (a figure that should have been _vieux jeu_ in the last century) and an English maid who could never have existed outside the imagination of an American. I make no complaint of the fact that in a chequered past she had married both _Carter's_ man-servant and the antiquated poet; but I do complain that her Cockney accent was imperfectly consistent both with her rustic origin an apple-cheeked lass, we were told, from somewhere in Kent) and her situation as maid to a very smart American.

You will naturally ask what Mr. OWEN NARES was doing in this galley; and I cannot tell you. I can only say that he was very brave about it all. In a sense it was a serious performance, the only one of its kind in the play; yet not serious enough to serve as a foil for the general frivolity, for he was constantly bringing his own high sentiments into ridicule, and so burlesquing the OWEN NARES that we love to take seriously.

On the other hand, Miss GLADYS COOPER, as _Rosalie_, his late wife, was untroubled by high sentiment; she was content to be wayward and unseizable, confident in the obvious power of her charm to retrieve him from the very altar-rails. Her own heart never seemed to come into the question, and her motive in setting herself to recover him was not much clearer than her reason for deserting him.

Some of the minor characters gave good entertainment. There was a dude (is that what they call them now in America?) who dressed very perfectly and said a great many funny things all well within the range of his own, and our, intelligence. Mr. DEVERELL played the part with admirable restraint. And we could ill have spared the humours of _Carter's_ man _Jackson_ (Mr. WILL WEST), whose wide experience in matrimony, resulting in an attitude alternately timorous and prehensile towards female society in the servants' hall, was the source of many poignant generalisations. Miss EDITH EVANS, as a mother-in-law _manquée_, showed a touch of real artistry; and Mr. GEORGE CARR had no difficulty in getting fun out of the part of a Japanese house-boy, almost the only novelty which we owed to the American origin of the play.

When _Carter_ was turned down by a clergyman who refused to perform the marriage rites for a divorced man, there was something very attractive (to a golfer) in his protest against these "local rules." This was one of many good things said; but the play had its dull times too, and there were one or two lapses made in the pursuit of the easy laugh. For instance:--

_Carter._ "Do you believe in God?"

_Wills._ "Good God!" (laughter).

[Carter _here kneels down to get something from under the sofa._

_Wills._ "Are you going to pray?" (laughter).

Personality, of course, counts for much, and both Miss GLADYS COOPER and Mr. OWEN NARES have enough admirers to ensure a success for this rather moderate farce. But not a triumph, I fear; for, after all, the play counts for something too and, though all the Faithful may be trusted to put in one appearance, I doubt if many outside the ranks of the Very Faithful will turn again at the sound of these _Wedding Bells_.

O.S.

* * * * *

"'COS IT'S 'AROLD'S TURN FOR THE COLLAR."]

* * * * *

MORE DIRECT ACTION.

"Northumberland Miners' Executive have decided to have Mr. Robert
Smillie's portrait painted in oils for Burt Hall, Newcastle.

Other matter relating to the coal crisis appears on Page Eleven."--
_Daily Telegraph._

* * * * *

"DAY BY DAY.

Well, did you get your gun and have a shot at the pheasants and the
partridges yesterday?"--_Scotch Paper, Sept. 2nd._

Naturally; the same gun with which we knocked the grouse over in July.

* * * * *

"TEMP. IN SHADE.--Max. of past 24 hours. Hyderabad (Sind) ... 941·2."--
_Indian Paper._

Good for the Sinders.

* * * * *

"One Dog with fairy tail came to my house, ----, Srimanta Dey's Lane,
may be restored to the owner on satisfactory proof."--_Statesman
(Calcutta)._

The evidence of a dog like that would of course be useless.

* * * * *

"The Cathedral Choristers received a flattening reception."--
_Provincial Paper._

That should "learn" them to sing sharp.

* * * * *

There was a young man of Combe Florey
Who wrote such a gruesome short story,
_The English Review_
Found it rather too blue
And MASEFIELD pronounced it too gory.

* * * * *

TO GENERAL OI.

(_The Japanese Commander-in-Chief_.)

The famous commanders of old
Were highly and duly extolled,
But their names, as recorded in song,
As a rule were excessively long--
Unlike that new broth of a boy,
The Japanese General OI.

For we've bettered in numerous ways
Those polysyllabic old days,
And the names that confounded the Bosch
Were monosyllabic--like FOCH;
But for brevity minus alloy
Give me Generalissimo OI.

NAPOLEON now is napoo;
ALEXANDER, THEMISTOCLES, too;
And you could not find space on the screen
For MILTIADES, plucky old bean,
Or the names of the heroes of Troy;
But there's plenty of room for an OI.

I picture him frugal of speech,
But in action a regular peach--
A figure that might be compared
With a Highlander, chieftain or laird,
Like THE MACKINTOSH, monarch of Moy,
Redoubtable General OI.

Anyhow, with so striking a name
You'd be sure of success if you came
To our shores, and might get an invite
To Elmwood to stay for the night,
And sit for your portrait to "POY,"
Irresistible General OI.

So here's to you, excellent chief,
Whose name is so tunefully brief.
May your rule be productive of peace,
Like that of our good _Captain Reece_,
And no murmur, no [Greek: otototoi]
Be raised over General OI!

* * * * *

THE BRITISH TARPON.

_By our Piscatorial Expert._

I have read with great interest, tempered by a little disappointment, the article of Mr. F.A. MITCHELL-HEDGES on "Big Game Fishing in British Waters," in _The Daily Mail_ of September 1st. He tells us of his experiences in catching the "tope," a little-known fish of the shark genus which may be caught this month at such places as Herne Bay, Deal, Margate, Ramsgate, Brighton and Bournemouth, where he has captured specimens measuring 7-1/2 feet long within two hundred-and-fifty yards of the shore.

Personally I have a great respect for the tope and for the topiary art, but I cannot help regretting that Mr. MITCHELL-HEDGES has omitted all mention of another splendid fish, the stoot, which visits our shores every year in the late summer and may be caught at places as widely distant as Barmouth and Great Yarmouth, Porthcawl and Kylescue.

The stoot, be it noted, is a cross between the porpoise and the cuttle- fish; hence its local name of the porputtle. It is a clean feeder, a great fighter and a great delicacy, tasting rather like a mixture of the pilchard, the anchovy and the Bombay duck.

For tackle I recommend a strong greenheart bamboo pole, like those used in pole-jumping, about eighteen feet in length, and about three hundred yards of wire hawser, with a Strathspey foursome reel sufficiently large to hold it. Do not be afraid of the size of the hook. The stoot-fisher cannot afford to take any risks. I do not wish to dogmatise, but it must be big enough to cover the bait. And the stoot is extremely voracious. Almost anything will do for bait, if one remembers, as I have said above, that the stoot is a clean feeder. At different times I have tried a large square of corridor soap, a simulation pancake, three pounds of tough beefsteak or American bacon, or a volume of Sir HENRY HOWORTH'S _History of the Mongols_, and never without satisfactory results.

On arriving at the feeding ground of the stoot, cast your line well out from the boat with a small howitzer. You wait anxiously for the first bite; suddenly the hawser runs taut and there is a scream from the reel. But do not be afraid of the reel screaming. In the circumstances it is a very good sign. Plant the butt of your rod or pole firmly in the socket fitted for the purpose in all motor-stooter boats and let the fish run for about a parasang, and then strike and strike hard. The battle is now begun. Be prepared for a series of tremendous rushes. You will see the stoot's huge bulk dash out of the water; you will hear his voice, which resembles that of the gorilla. This may go on for a long time: if the stoot be full-grown it will take you quite an hour to bring him alongside the boat. Then comes the problem of how to get him in--the hardest of all. The gaff, if possible a good French _gaffe_, is indispensable, but the kilbin, a marine life-preserver resembling a heavy niblick, is a handy weapon at this stage of the conflict. Strike the fish on the head repeatedly--but never on the tail--until he is paralysed and then grasp him firmly by the metatarsal fin or, failing that, by the medulla oblongata, but keep your hands away from his mouth. The teeth of the stoot are terribly sharp and pyorrhoea is not unknown in this species.

Having got the fish on board you will need a spell of rest. An hour's battle with a stoot is the most sudorific experience that I know, even more so than my contests with red snappers at Mazatlan, in Mexico, or bat-fish off the coasts of Florida. A complete change is necessary.

I have already spoken of the eating qualities of the stoot, which exceed those of the tope. One is enough to provide sustenance for a small country congregation. Cooked _en casserole_, or filleted, or grilled and stuffed with Carlsbad plums, it is delicious.

And lastly it lends itself admirably to curing or preserving. Bottled stoot is in its way as nutritious as Guinness's.

* * * * *

FLOWERS' NAMES.

LONDON PRIDE.

There was a haughty maiden
Who lived in London Town,
With gems her shoes were laden,
With gold her silken gown.
"In all the jewelled Indies,
In all the scented East,
Where the hot and spicy wind is,
No lady of the best
Can vie with me," said None-so-pretty
As down she walked through London City.

"Our walls stand grey and stately;
Our city gates stand high;
Our lords spend wide and greatly;
Our dames go sweeping by;
Our heavy-laden barges
Float down the quiet flood
Where on the pleasant marges
Gay flowers bloom and bud.
Oh, there's no place like London City,
And I'm its crown," said None-so-pretty.

The fairies heard her boasting,
And that they cannot bear;
So off they went a-posting
For charms to bind her there.
They wove their spells around her,
The maiden pink and white;
With magic fast they bound her,
And flowers sprang to sight
All white and pink, called None-so-pretty,
The Pride of dusty London City.

* * * * *

"A City pigeon swooped down suddenly out of nowhere and all but took
the cap off a bricklayer at the rate of forty miles an hour."--_Daily
Paper._

It will be observed that the speed was that of the bird and not the bricklayer.

* * * * *

"At ---- Church, on Monday last, a very interesting wedding was
solemnised, the contracting parties being Mr. Richard ----, eldest son
of Mr. and Mrs. ----, and a bouquet of pink carnations."--_Welsh
Paper._

There has been nothing like this since GILBERT wrote of--

"An attachment _à la_ Plato
For a bashful young potato."

* * * * *

"YOU'RE QUITE MISTAKEN; I--I WOULDN'T DO SUCH A THING."

"WOT YER MEAN--_WOULDN'T_? SHE'S THE BEST-LOOKIN' WOMAN ON THE BEACH."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks_.)

Miss SHEILA KAYE-SMITH continues to be the chronicler and brief abstractor of Sussex country life. Her latest story, _Green Apple Harvest_ (CASSELL), may lack the brilliant focus of _Tamarisk Town_, but it is more genuine and of the soil. There indeed you have the dominant quality of this tale of three farming brothers. Never was a book more redolent of earth; hardly (and I mean this as a compliment) will you close it without an instinctive impulse to wipe your boots. The brothers are _Jim_, the eldest, hereditary master of the great farm of Bodingmares; _Clem_, the youngest, living contentedly in the position of his brother's labourer; and _Bob_, the central character, whose dark and changing fortunes make the matter of the book, as his final crop of tragedy gives to it the at first puzzling title. There is too much variety of incident in _Bob's_ uneasy life for me to follow it in detail. The tale is sad--such a harvesting of green apples gives little excuse for festival--but at each turn, in his devouring and fatal love for the gipsy, _Hannah_, in his abandonment by her, and most of all in his breaking adventures of the soul, now saved, now damned, he remains a tragically moving figure. Miss KAYE-SMITH, in short, has written a novel that lacks the sunshine of its predecessors, but shows a notable gathering of strength.

* * * * *

Would you not have thought that at this date motor-cars had definitely joined umbrellas and mothers-in-law as themes in which no further humour was to be found? Yet here is Miss JESSIE CHAMPION writing a whole book, _The Ramshackle Adventure_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), all about the comical vagaries of a cheap car--a history that, while it has inevitably its dull moments, has many more that are both amusing and full of a kind of charm that the funny-book too often conspicuously lacks. I think this must be because almost all the characters are such human and kindly folk, not the lay figures of galvanic farce that one had only too much reason to expect. For example, the owner of the car is a curate, whose wife is supposed to relate the story, and _George_ has to drive the Bishop in his unreliable machine. Naturally one anticipates (a little drearily) upsets and ditches and episcopal fury, instead of which--well, I think I won't tell you what happens instead, but it is something at once far more probable and pleasant. I must not forget to mention that the cast also includes a pair of engaging lovers whom eventually the agency of the car unites. Indeed, to pass over the lady would display on my part the blackest ingratitude, since among her many attractive peculiarities it is expressly mentioned that she (be still, O leaping heart!) reads the letter-press in _Punch_.

* * * * *

Mrs. EDITH MARY MOORE has devoted her great abilities to proving in _The Blind Marksman_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) how shockingly bad the little god's shooting became towards the end of last century. She proves it by the frustrated hopes of _Jane_, her heroine, who in utter ignorance of life marries a man whose pedestrian attitude of mind is quite unfitted to keep pace with her own passionate and eager hurry of idealism. She becomes household drudge to a master who cannot even talk the language which she speaks naturally, and discovers in a man she has known all her life the lover she should have married, only to lose him in the European War. Here you have both _Jane_ and the ineffective husband--for whom I was sincerely sorry, because he asked so very little of life and didn't even get that--badly left, and the case against Cupid looks black. Mrs. MOORE does what she can for him by blaming our Victorian ancestors and their habits of mind; but I think it is only fair to add that, delightful as _Jane_ is, she was not made for happiness any more than the people who enjoy poor health have it in them to be robust, and that, true as much of the author's criticism is, she has not been able to give _The Blind Marksman_, for his future improvement, any very helpful ideas as to how he is to shoot.

* * * * *

The Devil, in so far as I have met him in fiction, has usually been a highly successful intriguer on behalf of anyone prepared to make the necessary bargain. Sir RONALD ROSS, however, to judge from the rather confused mediæval happenings in the Alps which are faithfully described in _The Revels of Orsera_ (MURRAY), has rather a low opinion of the intelligence of Mephistopheles. Anyhow, a certain _Zozimo_, deformed in body but of great romantic sensibility, appears to have exchanged his outward presence for that of a rich and handsome young Count, and in this guise wooed the _Lady Lelita,_ for whose sake her father had devised a magnificent contest of suitors at Andermatt in the year 1495. After a great deal of preliminary bungling the supposititious Count, with the Devil in _Zozimo's_ shape as his body-servant, was just about to secure the object of his affections when _Zozimo_ was stabbed by his mother, with the result that the double identity was fused and the _Lady Lelita_ was left with a dying dwarf as her knight. If the plot of _The Revels of Orsera_ is a little unsatisfying the elaboration of scenic description and mediæval pageantry is conscientious in the extreme, and the laughter which followed the malicious pranks of _Gangogo_, the professional jester of the tourney, must, if _I_ am to take the author's word for it, have made the glaciers ring. There is a great deal in the way of philosophy and psychology that is very baffling in this book, but of one thing I feel certain, and that is that the Elemental Spirits of the Heights, to whom frequent allusion is made, must find the winter sports of a later age a sorry substitute for the rare old frolics of the fifteenth century.

* * * * *

It can at least be claimed for Mrs. MARGARET BAILLIE SAUNDERS that she has provided an original setting and "chorus" for her new novel, _Becky & Co_. (HUTCHINSON). Tales of City courtship have been written often enough, but the combination here of a millinery establishment and a community of Little Sisters of St. Francis under one roof in the Minories, gives a stimulating atmosphere to a story otherwise not specially distinguished. _Becky_ was, as perhaps you may have guessed, head of the millinery business, next door to which was housed the firm of _Ray, St. Cloud & Stiggany_, leather- dressers, the three partners in which all presently become suitors for the hand of _Becky._ This in effect is the story--under which thimble will the heart of the heroine be eventually found?--a problem that, in view of the obviously superior claims of young _St. Cloud_ over his two elderly rivals, will not leave you long guessing. An element of novel complication is however furnished by the device of making _St. Cloud_ at first engaged to _Ray's_ daughter, who, subsequently retiring into the Franciscan sisterhood, left her _fiancé_ free to become the rival of her widowed father. (As the late DAN LENO used to observe, this is a little intricate!) For the rest, as I have said, an agreeable, very feminine story of mingled sentiment, commerce and ecclesiastical interest, the last predominating.

* * * * *

It is possible that _The Sea Bride_ (MILLS AND BOON) may be too violent to suit all tastes, for Mr. BEN AMES WILLIAMS writes of men primitive in their loves and hates, and he describes them graphically. The scenes of this story are set on the whaler _Sally_, commanded by a man of mighty renown in the whaling world. When we meet him he has passed his prime and has just taken unto himself a young wife. She goes with him in the _Sally_, and the way in which Mr. WILLIAMS shows how her courage increases as her husband's character weakens wins my most sincere admiration. His tale would be nothing out of the common but for his skill in giving individuality to his characters. Things happen on the _Sally_, bloodthirsty, sinister, terrible things, which the author neither glosses nor gloats over, being content to make them appear essential to the development of the story. I am going to keep my eye on Mr. WILLIAMS, chiefly because he can write enthrallingly, but partly to see if he will accept a word of advice and be a little more sparing in his use of those little dots ... which are the first and last infirmity of writers who have no sense of punctuation.

* * * * *

When a young man sets out to London to make money for his relations he usually (in a novel) writes a book which sells prodigiously--quite an easy thing to do in a novel. Mr. John Wilberforce, however, avoids the beaten track in _The Champion of the Family_ (FISHER UNWIN). _Jack Brockhurst_, the champion in question, became a member of the Stock Exchange, and, if you will accept my invitation and follow his fortunes, I can promise you a fluttering time. Mr. WILBERFORCE'S name is unknown to me, and I judge him more experienced in the mysteries of the Stock Exchange than in the art of fiction; but I like his constructive ability and I like his courage. He does not hesitate to make his champion a prig, which is exactly what a youth so idolised by his family would be likely to become. But, though a prig by training, _Jack_ was not by nature a bore, and his relations (especially his father and sister) are delightful people. Altogether I find this a most promising performance.

* * * * *

"I _HAVE_ ONE FRIEND--BUT I HATE HIM."]