Chapter II: Part 2

Here, then, is a short Bablingo examination paper for the use of mothers and nurses. I do not at present see my way to including fathers.

(1) On what principles is the language which you use in your nursery formed? Did you (a) acquire it, or (b) find yourself unconsciously in possession of it?

(2) Give a list of the characteristic features which distinguish Bablingo from the dialects employed by Prehistoric Man.

(3) What justification can you allege for the conversion of the words _little thing_ into the words _ickle sing_? Are the spelling and pronunciation of these two words intended to be a concession to the feeble understanding of an infant?

(4) _Wasums and didums, then? Was it a ickle birdie, then?_ Expand the above into a four-line verse with rhymes, and explain why the language as spoken and written is nearly always in the past tense, and rarely in the present or future.

(5)(a) _Did he woz-a-woz, then; a Mum's own woz-man?_ (b) _'Oose queenie-mouse was 'oo?_ Write a short story on one of the above texts.

(6) _Did she try to hit her ickle bruzzer on his nosie-posie wiz a mug? She was a Tartar, and did she want to break him up into bitsy-witsies?_ Construct a scene from a typical nursery drama on the above motive. What theories do you base on the extract with regard to the girl's temper and the boy's courage and endurance?

* * * * *

A REALLY CANDID CANDIDATE.

"TO THE ELECTORS OF ---- WARD.

"Ladies and Gentlemen,--I beg to thank you for returning me
as your member at the Election on Monday last. Nothing shall
be wanting on my part to betray the confidence thus reposed
in me."--_Provincial Paper_.

* * * * *

A YEAR'S REPRISALS.

When I sent Aunt Emily--from whom I have expectations--a pincushion at Christmas and she retaliated with a pen-wiper on New Year's Day, I thought that was the end of it.

Not so.

Aunt Emily reopened hostilities on my birthday with a purple satin letter-case embroidered with a sprig of rosemary and the word "Remembrance." That fresh offensive occurred on January 27th, which, I repeat, is my birthday. Readers please note.

When was Aunt Emily's birthday? Frenzied search in antique birthday books revealed not the horrid secret. Probing my diary for other suitable anniversaries, I came to February 1st--"Partridge and Pheasant Shooting ends."

I passed this as being inappropriate, and then--the very thing--February 14th, St. Valentine's. Also Full Moon.

To arrive on that day, I despatched, carefully packed, the white marble clock from the spare-room. When well shaken it will tick for an hour. Aunt Emily had never seen it, I knew.

Then I sounded the All Clear.

But on Easter Eve a heavy packing-case was bumped onto my doorstep. From wrappings of sacking there emerged a large model of Eddystone lighthouse; a thermometer was embedded in its chest, minus the mercury, I noted. And Aunt Emily wished me as per enclosed card "A joyous Easter."

With groans and lamentations another anniversary must be found by me. Ah! Here we have it! KING GEOKGE V. born June 3rd. On the dark roof of my spare-room wardrobe loomed an Indian vase--bright yellow with red blobs--very rare and very hideous, with a bulge in its middle. Obviously unique, because when the Indian made it his fellow-Indians slew him to prevent repetitions of the offence. I packed it in the middle of a crate and much straw, calculated to make an appalling mess when released.

To dear Aunt Emily it went, with love, and a few topical remarks about the Monarchy.

But Aunt Emily evidently had a diary too. On the 21st of October--anniversary of Trafalgar--my heart sank as the railway delivery van drew up at my door. The angry driver toiled into my passage with a packing-case (bristling with splinters and nails). When it was open and the chisel broken I picked the splinters out of my fingers and contemplated the battered horn of a gramophone emerging from sawdust and shavings.

The mess created was indescribable when the horn was drawn forth. Shavings flew everywhere. The sawdust was like a butcher's shop. There were records too, some broken, all scratched. When set going it made a noise like a cockatoo with a cold. Decently covered with a cloth it was interned in the loft.

Next please. One more effort and I should be one up and Aunt Emily to play. And her turn would be Christmas. Once she sent me five pounds at Christmas.

The diary again. A poor hatch of anniversaries for November. A partial eclipse of the moon, partially visible at Greenwich, was down for the 22nd. But eclipses are too ominous.

I fell back on KING EDWARD VII., born November 9th, 1841. Twenty-three volumes of Goodworthy's _History of England_ should commemorate this. There had once been twenty-four, but the puppy ate one.

Gratitude came by return of post, and I sat down in peace to await Christmas and a cheque.

But on December 19th came another dreadful and splintery packing-case. Desperately I gouged it open. Out of it, through a cloud of shavings, emerged my own loathsome yellow-and-red Indian vase! No word with it--not a word, not a note. Not a funeral note.

Rage overtook me. I disinterred Aunt Emily's own gramophone and records. I packed the horn anyhow. Such of the records as seemed difficult to get in I broke into small pieces and shoved in corners. I nailed the packing-case up with the same nails and addressed it in the boldest and fiercest of characters to Aunt Emily and caught the railway-van on the rebound. The deed was done.

I laughed "Ha, ha!" I laughed "Ho, ho!" I would teach Aunt Emily to return me my own vase.

Next morning came a letter. As I read it perspiration burst out on my forehead. Language the most awful burst from my lips.

And yet it was a simple letter--from my little cousin Dolly.

"DEAR BOB," it said,--"I sent you a yellow-and-red vase for Christmas. Your Aunt Emily gave it me as a wedding present. It is not my style and must be yours, because I have seen one like it in your house. Perhaps you collect them. Don't tell your Aunt, but I really couldn't bear it. I forgot to put any note in the box. Happy Christmas.

"Love, DOLLY."

And Aunt Emily would have opened my case by now.

On Christmas Day I received a letter from her which I opened with cold and clammy fingers.

She thanked me for sending back the gramophone. She was sorry I did not care for it. She was now sending it to a hospital for shell-shocked officers. And she wished me a Blithe Yuletide on a penny card. And she was very sincerely mine.

Anyone can have her for aught I care.

* * * * *

WHEN YOU CAME HOME ON LEAVE YOUR DOG, UNLIKE SOME HUMANS, NEVER EXPRESSED SURPRISE AT SEEING YOU _STILL IN ENGLAND_.

NEVER INDULGED IN DEMOBILISATION TALK.

OR HANDED OUT "CHESTNUTS."

OR INTRODUCED YOU TO YOUR C.O. (ALSO ON PASS).

OR BORED YOU WITH HIS OWN DOMESTIC TROUBLES ("LEFT A BOOT-JACK IN MY DRINKING-TROUGH, SHE DID").

OR INTRUDED HIS PRESENCE AT INOPPORTUNE MOMENTS.

BUT SIMPLY WELCOMED YOU--

--IN HIS OWN--

--INIMITABLE MANNER.]

* * * * *

A SOUTH SEA BUBBLE.

"I want you," said my hostess, "to take in Mrs. Blank. She is charming. All through the War she has been with her husband in the South Seas. London is a new place to her."

Mrs. Blank did not look too promising. She was pretty in her way--"elegant" an American would have called her--but she lacked animation. However, the South Seas...! Anyone fresh from the Pacific must have enough to tell to see soup, fish and _entrée_ safely through.

I began by remarking that she must find London a very complete change after the sun and placidity that she had come from.

"It's certainly noisier," she said; "but we had our share of rain."

"I thought it was always fine there," I remarked; but she laughed a denial and relapsed into silence.

She was one of those women who don't take soup, and this made the economy of her utterances the more unfair.

Racking my brain for a new start I fell back on those useful fellows, the authors. Presuming that anyone who had lived in that fascinating region--the promised land (if land is the word) of so many of us who are weary of English climatic treacheries--would be familiar with the literature of it. I went boldly to work.

"The first book about the South Seas that I ever read," I said, "was BALLANTYNE'S _Coral Island_."

"Indeed!" she replied.

I asked her if she too had not been brought up on BALLANTYNE, and she said no. She did not even know his name.

"He wrote for boys," I explained rather lamely.

"I read poetry chiefly as a girl," she said.

"But surely you know STEVENSON'S _Island Nights' Entertainment_?" I said.

No, she did not. Was it nice?

"It's extraordinary," I said. "It gives you more of the atmosphere of the South Seas than any other work. And Louis BECKE--you must have read him?" I continued.

No, she had not. She read very little. The last book she had read was on spiritualism.

"Not even CONRAD?" I pursued. "No one has so described the calms and storms of the Pacific."

No, she remembered no story called _Conrad_.

I was about to explain that CONRAD was the writer, not the written; but it seemed a waste of words, and we fell into a stillness broken only by the sound of knife and fork.

"Hang it! you shall talk," I said to myself; and then aloud, "Tell me all about copra. I have longed to know what copra is; how it grows, what it looks like, what it is for."

"You have come to the wrong person," she replied, with wide eyes. "I never heard of it. Or did you say 'cobra'? Of course I know what a cobra is--it's a snake. I've seen them at the Zoo."

I put her right. "Copra, the stuff that the traders in the South Seas deal in."

"I never heard of it," she said. "But then why should I? I know nothing about the South Seas."

My stock fell thirty points and I crumbled bread nervously, hoping for something sensible to say; but at this moment "half-time" mercifully set in. My partner on the other side turned to me suavely and asked if I thought the verses in _Abraham Lincoln_ were a beauty or a blemish; and with the assistance of the London stage, the flight to America, Mrs. FULTON'S _Blight_, Mr. WALPOLE'S _Secret City_ and the prospects of the new Academy, I sailed serenely into port. She was as easy and agreeable a woman as that other was difficult, and before she left for the drawing-room she had invited me to lunch and I had accepted.

As I said Good-night to my hostess I asked why she had told me that my first partner had been in the South Seas. She said that she had said nothing of the sort; what she had said was that during the War she had been stationed with her husband, Colonel Blank, at Southsea.

* * * * *

THE MESSAGE OF HULL.

The Hull Election has been keenly discussed in various papers, but by none with more enthusiasm than _The Daily News_. In a special article from the luminous pen of "A.G.G.," in the issue of April 12th, the true inwardness of the portent is thus revealed:--

"The message of Hull is a message for all the world. It is the announcement that this country, whatever its Government may do, will not have a French peace. It is a declaration to America that the English people are with her in her determination to have a League of Nations' settlement and no other. It is the repudiation of Conscription, of war on Russia, of the permanent military occupation of Germany, of imperialism and grab, of war policy in Ireland, of repression in Egypt, of the reckless profligacy and corruption that are plunging Europe into Bolshevism and hurrying this country to irretrievable ruin."

We confess that we are staggered by the moderation, not to say modesty, of "A.G.G." as an interpreter of the meaning of the Hull Election. He has omitted infinitely more than he has inscribed in his list.

The return of Commander KENWORTHY stands, of course, for all these things, but for many others of at least equal importance.

It means the disappearance of influenza, the ravages of which are clearly traceable to the political virus disseminated by the Coalition.

It means the rehabilitation of Mr. BIRRELL and his return to public life as English Ambassador to the Court of King Valeroso I.

It foreshadows the wholesale gratuitous distribution of cigarettes, marmalade and gramophones.

It means the prohibition of the use of the French horn in orchestras and all places where they play, the reinstatement of the German flute and the restoration of the German Fleet.

Lastly, it means the compulsory prohibition of all Greek except "Alpha of the Plough."

* * * * *

TO A SEVEN-YEAR-OLD

(_WITH HIS FIRST CRICKET SET_).

Here's a gift to take and treasure,
England's gift as well as mine,
Symbol of her clean-spent leisure,
Of her youth and strength a sign;
Gleams of sunlight on old meadows
O'er these varnished toys are cast,
And within that box's shadows
Stir the triumphs of the Past.

Still the ancient tale entrances,
Giving us in golden dower
ULYETT'S drives and IVO's glances,
JACKSON'S dash and THORNTON'S power;
Skill of LYTTELTONS and LACEYS,
Grit of SHREWSBURYS and GUNNS;
Pride of STUDDS and STEELS and GRACES
Piling up their English runs.

Take these simple toys as token
Of the champions that have been,
Stalwart in defence unbroken,
Hefty hitters, hitting clean;
And, when capped in Life's eleven,
May you stand as firm as they;
May you, little son of seven,
Play the game the English way.

W.H.O.

* * * * *

"It seems to be a ruling passion amongst certain writers
to portray anybody connected with commerce as being an
ungrammatical ignoramus. Even Kipling panders to this notion
in his conception of a drapery assistant in the person of
'Kipps.'"--_Draper's Organiser_.

But did not Mr. WELLS do something to redress the balance in _Kim_?

* * * * *

"IT'S NO GOOD, INSTRUCTOR; I AIN'T GOT NO HEAD FOR HEIGHTS."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_BY MR. PUNCH'S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS._)

The latest of the now so fashionable short-story volumes to come my way is one called _Our Casualty, Etc._ (SKEFFINGTON). Much virtue in that "_Etc._," which covers other fifteen little tales in the best, or nearly the best, "Birmingham" manner. I say "nearly," because for its happiest expression the art of "Mr. GEORGE BIRMINGHAM" demands space to tangle events into more complicated confusion than can be contrived in the dozen pages of these episodes. But within their limitations they are all excellent fun, partly concerned with the War (usually with an Irishman involved), partly recalled from the piping and whisky-drinking times of peace, at Inishmore and elsewhere. One can only treat them after the manner of the schoolboy who declined to distinguish between the Major and Minor Prophets. But I rather specially enjoyed the title-piece, which tells how the super-patriotism of an aged volunteer defeated the kindly plans of those who would have saved him fatigue by assigning to him the rôle of casualty in a trench-relief practice. Casualties also figure in "Getting Even," an improbable but highly entertaining fiction of the score practised by an ingenious Medical Officer (Irish, I need hardly say) upon an over-zealous C.O., who, to keep him busy during a field day, flooded his "clearing station" with all sorts of complicated imaginary cases, only to find the fictitious victims arranged comfortably in rows under the shade of the trees to await the Padre and a burying party, the M.O. reporting that they had all died before reaching him. It couldn't possibly happen as here told, but that matters little, since, so far as I am concerned, a "Birmingham" tale can always well afford to dispense with credibility.

* * * * *

I am distinctly grateful to ROSE MACAULAY for _What Not_ (CONSTABLE). It brought me the pleasantest end to anything but a perfect English Spring day. She has wit, not so common a gift that you can afford just to take it for granted; she knows when to stop, selecting not exhausting; and she makes her epigrams by the way, as it were, without exposing the process of manufacture. (Other epigrammatists please copy.) Miss MACAULAY'S "prophetic comedy" is a joyous rag of Government office routine, flappery, Pelmania, Tribunals, State advertising, the Lower Journalism and "What Not." That audacious eugenist, _Nicky Chester_, first Minister of Brains in the post-war period of official attempts to raise the nation from C3 to something nearer A1 on the intellectual plane, happens, because of his family history, to be uncertified for marriage. He also happens to fall very desperately in love with his secretary, _Kitty Grammont_, and the conflict between duty and desire becomes the theme--perhaps just a little too heavy--of an extravaganza that is happiest in its lighter and more irreverent moments. Which is to say that _What Not_ wanders out of the key. But what on earth does that matter if one is made to laugh quite often and to smile almost continuously at a very shrewd piece of observation, whimsicality and tempered malice? And you will like the serene _Pansy Ponsonby_ (out of "Hullo, Peace!"), who could scarcely be called _Kitty's_ "sister-in-law," but was of the most faithful. The odd thing is that under all her gibing the author seems to have a queer furtive admiration for her precious Ministry of Brains.

* * * * *

Among the many things I like in DORETHEA CONYERS' novels is the artistic subtlety, achieved by few of our other novelists, with which she manages to write them as it were in character. I am quite sure that if _Berenice Ermyntrude Nicosia Nevin_, who is called by her initials on the cover and inside by what they spell, had tried to write a novel it would have been remarkably like _B.E.N._ (METHUEN). There would have been the same keen delight in horses, hunting and Irish scenery, and the same cheerful disregard for such trifles as spelling or such conventions as making quite sure that your reader knows which character is speaking at any given moment, and the same excellent humour, which, if it is at the expense of the Irish, is kindly enough for all that. It seems to me that in her new novel Mrs. CONYERS, wisely refusing to stray to that suburbia in which her gifts lack this charm, has recaptured much of the careless rapture of her earliest books; and very careless and very rapturous they wore. But I am not quite sure that in real life even _Ben_, when as second whip to the East Cara hounds she lost her horse, would have found an aeroplane useful to catch up with. In case it should be objected that anything so funny as the tea at _Miss Talty's_ never could happen, even in the Caher Valley district, I want to put it on record here and now that it could and does.

* * * * *

_The Mystery Keepers_ (LANE), by MARION FOX, reminds me of the old riddle, "What is it that has feathers and two legs, and barks like a dog?"--the answer being a stork. People who protest that a stork doesn't bark like a dog are told that that part is put in to make it harder. I find that the greater part of the mystery kept by _The Mystery Keepers_ is put in to make it harder. The Abbey at Clynch St. Mary has a "coise" put on it by the last Abbess, and every direct male heir expires punctually on his twenty-first birthday. The actual agency is a poisoned ring concealed in the frame of a portrait of the malevolent Abbess and is in the custody of the _Otway_ family, who enjoy a prescriptive if nebulous right to be stewards of the property. Just how or why the _Otways_--noble fellows, we are given to understand--carry out the deceased Abbess's nefarious wishes with such precision and despatch is not explained. Anyway the mother of the last victim, who has found out the secret, steals the ring, murders the _Otway_ of the period, and retires to a lunatic asylum after her son has himself stolen the ring from her workbox and poisoned himself into the next world. That finishes it. The ring retires to a museum and the proper people marry each other. It is a slender and quite impossible story, but told in a clever way which goes far to redeem its lack of substance.

* * * * *

_The Graftons_ (COLLINS) is a sequel to Mr. ARCHIBALD MARSHALL'S former chronicle of the same pleasant family. Herein you shall find them, pursuing the even tenor of their prosperous way, father, son and charming daughters, and arriving placidly at the point where, in the natural sequence of events, these daughters leave the paternal nest for others provided by eligible mates. Their courtships, and some mild uncertainty as to whether papa _Grafton_, well-preserved and wealthy widower, will or will not follow the example of his female offspring, provide the entire matter of the book. For the rest Mr. MARSHALL is content to mark time (and very pleasantly) with pictures of English country life at its most comfortable, and in particular with some comedy scenes, excellently done, turning upon the often delicate relationship of Hall and Parsonage. There are a couple of clerical portraits in the book that seem to me as lifelike as anything of the kind since _Barchester_. Apart from this the outstanding virtue of the _Graftons_ is the reality of their dialogue. Precisely thus do, or did, actual people speak in the quiet old times before the War; precisely thus also did nothing whatever of any consequence happen to the vast majority of them. Since, however, the truth and charm of the tale depend upon this absence of the sensational, I must the more regret that Messrs. COLLINS, who have printed it exquisitely, should have been betrayed into a coloured wrapper of almost grotesque ineptitude.

* * * * *

In _Graduation_ (CHATTO AND WINDUS) there is an essential femininity about Miss IRENE RUTHERFORD McLEOD'S style and general attitude that imposes limitations; it is a quality that shows itself not only in her plot, but in her characters, the three reputed males who figure therein being as fine examples of true womanliness as you need wish to meet. _Frieda_ was the heroine (a name somehow significant); and of the trouser-wearers, the first, _Geoffrey_, was a cat-like deceiver, who fascinated poor _Frieda_ for ends unspecified, pretended (the minx!) to be keen on the Suffrage movement, which he wasn't, and concealed a wife; the second was a Being too perfect to endure beyond Chapter 10, where he expires eloquently of heart-failure, leaving _Alan_, the third, to bear the white man's burden and clasp _Frieda_ to his maidenly heart. This sentimental progress is, I suppose, what is implied by the title and the symbolic staircase (if it _is_ a staircase?) on the wrapper. But my trouble was that I could never discern in the sweet girl-graduate any development of character from the pretentious futility of her earliest appearance. Perhaps I am prejudiced. Undeniably Miss McLEOD can draw a certain type of prig with a horrible facility. But the antiquated modernity of her scheme, flooded as it is with the New Dawn of, say, a decade ago, and its bland disregard of everything that has happened since, ended by violently irritating me. Others may have better luck.

* * * * *

Spring has been slow in coming, but I got something more than a whiff of actual summer when _Under Blue Skies_ (HUTCHINSON) came my way. Mr. DE VERD STACPOOLE is at the top of his form, and it is a real pleasure to recommend an author who brings to his tales of adventure so nice a sense of style and so keen a feeling for character. In "The Frigate Bird" the rapscallions who seize a schooner and, without any knowledge of navigation, sail the high seas, are full-blooded adventurers; but there is all the difference in the world between the character of the educated _Carlyon_ and that of the simple-minded and ignorant _Finn_. This yarn occupies nearly half of the book, and the other stories should give food for thought to those who allege that no Englishman can write a short story. Apart from one charming little tale of a haunted French _château_ Mr. STACPOOLE allows us to bask here in the eternal summer of Pacific skies. I am very grateful for my sun-bath.

* * * * *

In _Poems of the Great War_, by Mrs. ROBERTSON-GLASGOW, readers of _Punch_ will recognise some of the best serious poems that have appeared in these pages of recent years. The little half-crown volume in which they reappear has been admirably printed at S. Aldhelm's Home for Boys, Frome, and may be bought at SMITH'S in Kensington High Street.

* * * * *