Chapter I: Introduction

I happen to frequent Captain Berkeley’s company on the cricket field. When he is there, and the wicket is bumpy, it might suitably be called a stricken field. He bowls very fast and very straight.

As his publisher usually keeps wicket for him, I dare not suggest that the crooked ones go for four byes. In any event that parallel would not be necessary here; but the general characteristics of Captain Berkeley’s bowling are certainly in evidence. He goes direct at his object, and when he hits it the middle stump whirls rapidly in the air. He is all for hitting the wicket; slip catches and cunningly arranged chances to cover are not for him. This blunt going for the main point it is that gives his parodies their greatest charm. I like it when I see a reference to “Count Puffendorff Seidlitz, the Megalomanian Minister”: if we are being funny, why not laugh aloud instead of merely tittering? “Lord Miasma” pleases me as a coinage full of meaning in these days; there is a refreshing lack of compromise about the name of the Galsworthy parson, “The Rev. Hardy Heavyweight”; and how better could one name two of Sir James Barrie’s minor characters than by the twin appellations of McVittie and Price, who here take, as they elsewhere give, the biscuit? This agreeable couple appear in one of the mock plays which, to one reader at least, seem to be the very best part of this very miscellaneous volume. Captain Berkeley is himself a successful playwright, and dog has here very entertainingly eaten dog. Mr. Galsworthy’s passion for abstract titles; his hostile preoccupation with the normal sporting man; his agonised sympathy with maltreated women; his determination to load the dice against his heroines: all these things are made clear in language very like his own, and yet in a way that suggests (to return to our imagery) that the bowler, however fast and determined, has a respect for the batsman. I don’t know that it is quite fair to ascribe “the Manchester Drama” especially to Mr. St. John Ervine or even to Manchester; but we know the type, and if a few more blows like this will kill it, so much the better. It is well enough to be harrowed in the theatre, but not to be made to feel as though we had chronic dyspepsia. The Russian Drama is beautifully apt; and “The Slayboy of the Western World” also. They reproduce idioms and mannerisms perfectly, and exhibit limitations unanswerably.

Perhaps the most refreshing thing about this book is its diversity. It is an age (excluding the merely vulgarly versatile) of specialists and specialist labels. A man is not expected to see life whole, much less steadily; he is encouraged to describe himself as “poet,” “parodist,” “politician,” “business man” or what not; and it is regarded as almost improper that a person who takes an interest in Synge should so much as admit a knowledge of Mr. Winston Churchill’s existence. Captain Berkeley refuses to subject himself to any such limitations. He surveys everything around him, and where he sees anything he thinks funny, he has a go at it. This should not be regarded--any more than Canning’s squibs were regarded--as militating against his trustworthiness as a politician. Rather the reverse. A knowledge of humanity and the humanities is serviceable in legislation and administration, and a sense of humour usually goes with the sense which is called common.

J. C. SQUIRE.

CONTENTS

PAGE

UNPARLIAMENTARY PAPERS:--

The Universal Conflict 3

An Eminent Georgian 12

My First Derby 20

On Eternal Life 28

The Next War--and Military Service 31

First Plays for Beginners 39

Hats 45

Shareholders’ Blood 52

The Personal Column 60

Society Sideshows 64

LATTER-DAY DRAMAS:--

Morality 75

Eternity and Post-Eternity 87

The Enchanted Island 101

President Wilson 112

Jemima Bloggs 125

Under Eastern Skies 132

The Vodka Bottle 144

King David I 153

The Slayboy of the Western World 158

IMPOLITICS:--

A Member of Parliament 167

Woes of the Whips 174

Young Men and “Maidens” 180

Front Benches and Back Benches 188

“Order, Order” 196

Lords and Commons 203

IRREVERENT INTERVIEWS AND OTHER IRRELEVANCES:--

With Lord Balfour at the Washington Conference 211

With Monsieur Briand after the Washington Conference 219

With Mr. Lloyd George during his
Premiership 227

With Lord Birkenhead on the Woolsack 235

Old Tory 243

Edward and Eustace 244

The Two Wedgwoods 249

Songs of a Die-Hard 253

Nursery Rhyme 254

The Old Member 255

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

ALLEGED “INTERFERENCE” WITH THE HEAVENLY
TWINS _Frontispiece_

“DONE DOWN ON THE DOWNS” 23

“IN WHICH I SHALL LOOK LESS RIDICULOUS” 47

“AND OBLIGINGLY OVERTURNS DOWN AN EMBANKMENT” 71

“THE INFLUENCE OF THAT MAN SHAW” 89

“LIFE’S VERY HARD” 127

“AH! LITTLE FATHERS, THIS POISON----” 151

“NEW MEMBER, SIR?” 169

EDWARD AND EUSTACE 245

JOVIAL JOSIAH WEDGWOOD AND BOLD WEDGWOOD BENN 251

THE UNIVERSAL CONFLICT

NINETEEN ANYTHING--NINETEEN SOMETHING

ELSE

BY THE RT. HON. WINSOM STUNSTER CHORTILL