Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 by Various
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Various >> Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917
"Mr. Gates helped us," said the boy meanly.
"Mr. Gates doesn't know all the facts," said the father.
"He can guess one or two of them," said Mr. Gates, jingling his
pocket.
"Fred is so quick," said his admiring wife.
"Well, and what are the others?" the mother asked. "There's Mr. Brown
and Mrs. Venning. Why shouldn't Mr. Brown have the whisky one? I'm
sure he'd laugh. But you couldn't send Mrs. Venning the old maid."
"We got this for Mr. Brown," said the boy. "The nurse bringing the
father twins and calling them two 'pink forms.'"
"That's dashed good," said Mr. Gates, "don't you think?"
"Very smart," said the father. "That's all right. And what about Mrs.
Venning?"
"Well," said the girl, "we thought she'd like this one--a man and a
woman kissing in a tunnel, and he says the tunnel cost ten thousand
pounds to make, and she says it's worth it, every penny."
"Very good," said the father; "I like that. Get me another of those
and I'll send it to a friend of mine in the City. And I'll go to the
shop myself and help you to choose the local views for your Uncle and
Aunt Tilly. It's a case where care is necessary."
* * * * *
THREE DAUGHTERS OF FRANCE.
_Chateau ----, France_.
_To_ M. PUNCH.
CHER MONSIEUR,--Shall I write to you of the toil, the fatigues which
my sisters and I must endure at the hands of our country's Allies,
without kindling in your breast that flame of chivalry which is the
common glory of our two races? _C'est incroyable_.
Let us then to my complaint.
We lived for many years, my two sisters and I, in the service of our
dear master, who owned a beautiful chateau in the North of France.
Our duties were simple--to entertain the guests of M. le Vicomte after
dinner on those evenings upon which he gathered his friends around
him.
For the rest we lived in the ease which his kind generosity knew how
to provide. We loved our own particular boudoir, with its books, its
pictures, its comfortable fauteuils and its soft green cushions.
Oh, Monsieur, it makes me to weep when I think of my beautiful
sisters--the one with her laughing rosy cheeks, the other pale as
ivory, save for one little black spot, which no man surely could
call a blemish.
Those were happy days. Often we kissed, my sisters and I, for very
joy.
Then it came--this terrible War. M. le Vicomte was called away in the
cause of _la belle France_; but we would not desert our home. One day,
we said, it shall be as of old.
And as the months went by it was whispered that the English would make
of our chateau a house of rest for their officers who were recovering
themselves of their wounds. And we were glad, for we promised
ourselves to entertain our brave Allies. Thus might we too serve _la
patrie_.
They came. _Mon Dieu!_ Is it now a hundred years that we hurry to and
fro in their service? A House of Rest! _Ma foi!_ Morning, noon and
night they come, these countrymen of yours. Never can we rest. Hither
and thither do they drive us. No longer are our cushions soft and
caressing; the cloth upon our table is stained, and see--here is a
hole.
Ah, it is cruel! Our beauty is decayed. The cheeks of my poor sister,
that once were so rosy, have lost their colour and our figures their
rounded grace.
We are loyal, Monsieur, and, though we are no longer pleasing to look
upon, we do not grudge our service. But we beg of you, kind M. Punch,
to procure for us a respite from our labours, that we may recover
something of our former lustre. Thus shall you merit the undying
gratitude and your countrymen regain the devoted services of what
were at one time three of France's fairest billiard-balls.
_Agreez, cher Monsieur, etc., etc._
* * * * *
[Illustration: _First Actor (in khaki, to second ditto)_. "HULLO, OLD
BOY--WORKING?"
_Second Actor_. "YES, OLD CHAP, AND HAIG HAS BOOKED ME FOR THE AUTUMN
TOO."]
* * * * *
THE FATAL EMBRACE.
"There is a good story of how at an election meeting in Cork
a few years ago, when he was a candidate, one of a crowd of
working women pushed her way into a brake from which he was
addressing a throng in the market square and suddenly put her
arm round his neck and killed him."--_Times of India_.
* * * * *
"At the Port Elizabeth Town Council meeting, Mr. Mackay asked
could nothing be done to the seats at Homewood? The resin
was oozing out of them. He had had a valuable pair of pants
completely ruined, and the same thing might happen to any
lady."--_South African Paper_.
Our trousered Amazons must not be discouraged.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "PRISONER, WHEN ARRESTED, CLUNG TO THE RAILINGS."]
* * * * *
[Illustration: "PRISONER, WHEN ARRESTED, CLUNG TO THE RAILINGS."]
THE TWELFTH--NEW STYLE.
(_DREAMT IN A DUG-OUT_.)
In my dream it was my first Twelfth after the ending of the War.
The party moved off in file up the slope of the moor, Sir Percy on
his pony in front, then the guests with rifles at the trail, next
the bearers and orderlies, and in the rear the ammunition-limbers and
regimental baggage. A ration-party would follow later. There was to be
no singing on the march, but pipes were allowed.
Just as we neared the crest of the hill, at a notice bearing the
legend, "Keep below," the whole party entered a deep "boyau" leading
right up to the trenches in front, from which branched off various
passages to the gun pits, or butts, as we used to call them.
Our position was semi-circular in form and about three-quarters
of a mile long; its main strength lay in a chain of machine-gun
emplacements at intervals of about two hundred yards. These were,
needless to say, all armoured, but it was nevertheless considered bad
form to fire along the line.
Further back there were a couple of Archies and a battery of
eighteen-pounders.
Our instructions had been as follows: "At 10 A.M. the artillery will
open on enemy's main positions with H.E., and at the same time the
Archies will maintain a barrage along the far side, to keep them from
breaking away to Smithson's moor (a poor sportsman, Smithson; uses
lachrymatories. All the birds we got off his place last year actually
had tears in their eyes still). At 10.15 you will open fire with
machine guns and rifles on anything under three hundred yards. At
10.30 the firing will stop and you will make your way to the assembly
trenches, where bombs will be served out. At 10.35 the entire force
will advance in open order. No prisoners will be taken."
My personal instructions were to hold my position with two men.
Hastily lighting a cigarette and adjusting my map-case, I was
standing-to, when the telephone bell tinkled. "Hello," said Sir
Percy's voice, "all ready? The planes are out." I glanced up at the
two 500 h.p. Liddell and Scott monoplanes, which circled high up
over the moor. "What do they report?" I asked. "Birds in force at
a.2.B.c.d., x.y.z.6 and A.b.3.m., and small parties in and near the
Heather Redoubt."
At 10.30 I left my smoking weapon and an empty flask, and at 10.35
went over the top. A little later I brought down no fewer than seven
of the enemy with one beautifully timed bomb, and stole a furtive
glance at the others. Nobody had seen me do it. However, I thought,
I shall be able to tell them about it at least three times to-night.
Meanwhile our bearers were collecting the enemy's dead and finishing
off his wounded. Away to the left Sir Percy and half-a-dozen more were
gathered round what I took to be the Heather Redoubt, and every now
and then a little white puff of smoke broke from the ground.
"What's the idea?" I asked over the telephone. "Rabbit warren,"
answered Sir Percy. "Bombing 'em out. I always bomb 'em out. Smithson
uses gas--poor sportsman, Smithson."
* * * * *
I was dozing lazily in the smoking-room, vaguely wondering if I could
tell them about it a fourth time, when suddenly the dressing gong
went, and someone shook me roughly by the shoulder. Outside a voice
was shouting, "Gas!"
"Poor sportsman, Smithson," I muttered, struggling into my mask.
* * * * *
EXPERIENCES.
There are few of my friends whom I hold in higher respect than the
Fladworths. Fladworth is a prosperous accountant, quite in the front
rank of his profession, and for the last three years an indefatigable
War-worker. His two sons joined up on the day War was declared; his
three daughters are all nursing, and for the last two years their
town house has been a convalescent home. Mrs. Fladworth is a saint of
hospitality, and their country house is always full for the week-end
with people who want a rest. And one can accept this hospitality with
a good conscience, because they can afford it. It does not involve
the painful self-sacrifice shown by some people, of whom it has been
happily said that, when their supplies are short, they will insist on
your staying for a meal, "even if they have to kill a rabbit with a
Christian name."
The Fladworths are charming hosts, but they have a weakness--a passion
for intellectual games, serious variants, for the most part, on
"Consequences," and a most trying ordeal for persons who cannot spell
or are ignorant of history or general information. Moreover, to add to
the strain, Fladworth is always inventing new games, "so that all may
start fair." This happened on the occasion of my last visit, when he
introduced the company to "Experiences." Every one, having contributed
sixpence to the pool, was expected to describe the most interesting
or exciting event in his or her life. One of the party, who did not
compete, then decided which was the best experience, and the winner
pocketed the pool.
I cannot remember all the episodes recounted, though they were for
the most part serious and impressive. Mrs. Fladworth had heard Mr.
GLADSTONE read the lessons in church; Fladworth had heard TENNYSON
recite "Come into the Garden, Maud" at a friend's house in the Isle
of Wight; a young invalid airman, who was known to have had the most
thrilling adventures, but, after the manner of his kind, never talked
of his own achievements, told us how frightened he had been by the
giant in his first pantomime. My turn came last, but I was not in
the least helped by having had the longest time to prepare. I have
a wonderful memory for futilities, and when called on could think of
nothing better than my recollection of the arrival of _Hiawatha_ at
the Channel Islands and the delirium of the populace.
You can imagine my feelings when old Mr. Fladworth, _aet._ eighty-four
and rather deaf, who was acting as judge, awarded me the prize on the
ground that nothing was more interesting than the effect of poetry
on the masses. I hadn't the courage to explain that it was not
LONGFELLOW'S poem, but that terrible tarantellating American tune
which electrified the Channel Islanders some ten years back. As none
of the company was able or disposed to correct him there was nothing
left for me to do but to rake in the sixpences. After all, the
total only amounted to five and sixpence, and I compounded with my
conscience by putting it in the plate on the following morning.
* * * * *
A TALE OF THE HORSE MARINES.
"The crew of the submarine made great efforts to refloat the
vessel, but were unsuccessful. The cavalry advanced towards
the spot and surrounded both the submarine and her crew, who
surrendered."--_Daily Paper_.
* * * * *
"Lord Lambourne, in a farewell address to his late
constituents at Waltham Abbey, said the honour which had been
conferred on him was not degraded by a farthing of his money.
Licensed victualler, of Queen's Road."--_Woodford Times_.
Are we to infer that the late Chairman of the Commons' Kitchen
Committee is now in business on his own account?
* * * * *
"One of my informants says that he was awakened by
shells passing beside his window which rushed screaming
inland."--_Daily Paper_.
This was evidently "a magic casement opening on the foam of perilous
seas." A French window would have shown more courage.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "GOOD GRACIOUS, BABY, HERE ARE SOME PEOPLE COMING! GET
BACK TO YOUR DRESSING-ROOM AT ONCE."]
* * * * *
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(_BY MR. PUNCH'S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS._)
It was a special duty of the late JOHN F. MACDONALD, who was cut off
in his prime after incautiously adding to his journalistic labours
in Paris the voluntary and too exacting duties of entertaining the
wounded, to emphasize the _Entente Cordiale_. Ever since KING EDWARD
laid the foundation of that understanding between England and France,
it was Mr. MACDONALD'S delight as well as his livelihood to study
every facet of it, both in Paris and in London, and with unfailing
humour and spirit, fortified by swift insight, to present each in
turn to his readers. The two best papers in the first volume of the
posthumous collection of his writings are those which describe in
vivid kindly strokes the triumphant impact of the late KING on the
Parisians some fourteen years ago, and the visit, not long after, of
five hundred London school-children to the French capital. Had Mr.
MACDONALD been spared to prepare this book himself, there is no doubt
that he would have subjected his essays to revision and brought them
into a more harmonious whole; but as they stand, gathered together
in this volume, _Two Towns--One City_ (GRANT RICHARDS), by the proud
hands of his mother, they have charm and vitality and the authenticity
of first-hand knowledge and lively sympathy. The War, as we have just
been reminded by an impressive memorial service, has made deep gaps in
the ranks of English journalists, and the loss of JOHN F. MACDONALD'S
quick eyes, happy choice of words, and intensely human apprehensions
was far from being the least.
* * * * *
Whether you enjoy _The House in Marylebone_ (DUCKWORTH) will depend
entirely upon your taste for the society of a number of hardworking
but sentimental "business girls." For this is the whole matter of
Mrs. W.K. CLIFFORD'S book. I call her girls sentimental, because (for
all that they are supposed to be chiefly concerned with living their
own lives) you will be struck at once with the extent to which they
contrive to mix themselves up with the lives of any male creatures
who venture over the horizon. "Our little republic," says one of its
inmates towards the end of the book, "is firmly feminine and hasn't
done much falling in love." Well, well--I suppose this is a question
that turns upon your definition of the word "much;" to me personally
they seldom seemed to be doing, or thinking about, anything else. Nor
could I help reflecting how much fuller and more vigorous all Mrs.
CLIFFORD'S cast would have found their existence to-day. Perhaps this
feeling explains a slight impatience which the society of so much
struggling femininity eventually produced in me. Young women still
live in houses in the Marylebone Road; they still proclaim republics
of hardworking celibacy, and fall briskly in love with the first
eligible bachelor; but their vocations and their citizenship have
both (_Hoch der KAISER!_) grown out of all knowledge. So that charming
writer, Mrs. CLIFFORD, must forgive me if I could find only an
historical interest, and no very robust one at that, in her amiable
retrospect.
* * * * *
AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE have certainly been well advised about
their sub-title to _The Black Office and other Chapters of Romance_
(MURRAY). For that is precisely what the tales are; and excellently
romantic and thrilling chapters too, for the most part dated in
the decade following the great Anglo-French peace of a century ago.
Probably you couldn't say off-hand what the Black Office was. Let me
whisper. It was, amongst other things, a postal censorship that opened
and perused all letters intended to cross the Channel. With what
natural indignation would you, in July three years ago, have read of
such monstrous activities! Truly, as the authors say, there is some
interest in the comparison of then and now. Of the other stories, my
own favourites would he "The Resurrectionist" and "The Smile on the
Portrait." The first of these is a haunting affair of body-snatching,
or rather of an early escapade of the notorious BURKE, who was
asked to supply a red-haired corpse, and not finding one produced
instead a gentleman who had yet to fulfil the condition precedent
to body-snatching, i.e. who had to be killed first and snatched
afterwards. This is certainly as grim as anything I have met over the
Castellated signature. Beside it, "The Smile on the Portrait," the
tale of a jealous husband who becomes a maniac, is almost soothing.
They had clearly their little worries even a century ago. The CASTLES,
as everybody knows, have always had the trick of adventurous fiction;
_The Black Office, etc._, proves that their hands have lost nothing of
their cunning.
* * * * *
One has heard so often of works of "absorbing interest" that appeared
at "the psychological moment" that one feels a bit squeamish about
applying these phrases even to such a book as Mr. HARRY DE WINDT'S
_Russia as I Know It_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL); but honestly their
appropriateness cannot be denied in view of the author's peculiar
knowledge of the too mysterious country on which interest just now
is so poignantly concentrated. He has not only traversed Siberia as
few, even Russians, have done--that is an old though still thrilling
story--but he has ranged at large over the whole country from Finland
to the Crimea (the only two parts, by the way, which he has made me
thirst to visit), and has gone with his eyes open. In the present
volume, touching only incidentally on his journeyings and still less
on politics, he has tried to satisfy the thousand-and-one questioners
who, one imagines, have been plaguing him not a little lately as to
those intimate details that really count in the life of a nation. He
tells us for instance how the Russians do business and keep out the
cold; how many of the women you could call pretty, and how much mutton
a Kirghiz can eat. Though some of this is not new, yet the book has,
as a whole, a most vivid freshness, and, if in the end the main effect
is to make one content to live out of Russia, that is a tribute to the
writer's frankness. At the least one is able to rejoice in his final
verdict of unqualified enthusiasm for his hosts, since he found not
merely acquaintances ready to welcome the popular English, but true
and trustworthy friends in all classes of the community.
* * * * *
MRS. OLIVER ONIONS has a light puckish humour and a smooth if
over-hasty pen, and I don't think she quite does her own intelligence
(or ours) full justice in _The Bridge of Kisses_ (HUTCHINSON). I liked
her flapper heroine, _Joey_, and the naughty nephews, the _O.U.2's_,
and her sapper lover, _The Bridge Builder_, who was a confoundedly
long time over his work, by the way, but ultimately came into his own
over his own bridge of kisses, built under a heavy barrage of needless
misunderstandings. But _Joey's_ pipsqueak shirker _fiance_, _Hilary_,
was altogether too foolish a travesty of a man ever to have gained her
hand or, having gained it, to have held it against any real male in
or out of khaki. The fact is that "BERTHA RUCK" can achieve something
better than these meandering methods and this spinelessness of
characterisation; and it is distinctly disappointing to see her
content with the curate's egg standard.
* * * * *
It is time that some of our novelists put up a statue to NAPOLEON for
services rendered to the cause of fiction. In Miss MAY WYNNE'S A _Spy
for Napoleon_ (JARROLD) his misdeeds and those of his minions are made
to serve the purpose of emphasizing the loyalty of the heroine to her
lover. This lover was an Englishman of a type sufficiently familiar in
novels--cold and masterful, but, for some reason not apparent to me,
extremely attractive. As he seemed to be roaming about France with the
object of getting NAPOLEON out of the way by any means available, I am
not certain that he was playing the game, even when we remember that
the rules of it were lax enough at the beginning of the nineteenth
century. But we are not asked to weigh carefully the merits of
character. It is just a romance of incident, in which a hot pace is
set at the start and kept up to the finish. In short you get a good
run for your money, and that is all about it.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE THEORIST.]
* * * * *
From a review of a novel:--
"Joan is pretty, and Stewart Austen ... asks her to marry
him. Joan refuses indignantly on the ground that his views
and conduct are opposed to those which as a member of a
Suffrage Society she is pledged to eradicate."--_The
Saturday Westminster_.
Why the lady should resent her lover's endorsement of her own opinions
is just one of those things that no fellah (unless he is a reviewer)
can understand.
* * * * *
"Besides being Paul Von Hindenburg's second self, Ludendorff
is the transportation expert of the Central Powers. He was
ordered to go to the industrial cities along the Rhine and
the Rhone rivers."--_Evening Paper_.
It is a pity that the second part of this enterprise had for
geographical reasons to be abandoned, for we understand that Lyons
would have given him a particularly warm reception.
* * * * *
"The Canadian Club gave a luncheon to-day in honour of the
Canadian Highlanders, who have been a picturesque feature
of the British recruiting week in New York....
"An exciting incident occurred during the luncheon, when two
German waiters were ejected from the room. The Highlanders
now go to Chicago to make a similar demonstration."--_Morning
Paper_.
As nothing more has been heard of the matter, it is supposed that the
Germans in Chicago prudently refused to wait for them.