Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. by Various
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Various >> Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917.
Let us take it that a cat is chosen--a quiet thing in cats--crimson on
a green-and-white chess-board background. Forthwith (as adjutants say)
a crimson cat on a green-and-white chess-board background is painted
and embroidered on everything that can be painted and embroidered
on--limbers and waggons and hand-carts and arm-bands and the
tin-hats of the Staff. And the Division goes forth as it were masked,
disguised, just like one of Mr. LE QUEUX'S diplomatist heroes at a
fancy-dress ball, wearing a domino. You perceive the mystery of it?
None of your naked numbers for us B.E.F. men. The Division marches
through a village, and the dear old Man Who Knows, cropping up again
in the army, says, "Ha! A red cat on a green-and-white chess-board
back-ground? That's the Seventeenth Division."
You see it now? The enemy agent overhears. The false news is sent
crackling through the ether to Berlin (wireless, my dear, in the
cellar, of course). The German General Staff looks up the village on
a map, and sticks into it a flag marked 17. Not 580, mark you. And
the General Staff frowns, and Majesty pushes the ends of its moustache
into its eyes at the knowledge that the Seventeenth Division is in
----.
And all the time it is in ----! And the agent pockets his cheque. So
wars are won and lost.
Just conceive the romance of it. It is heraldry gone mad.
Myself, however, I incline to another theory as to the origin of these
symbols.
A Higher Command enters his office. Higher Commands always enter. The
office is hung, like a studio in one of Mr. GEORGE MORROW'S pictures,
with diagrams of circles and triangles and crosses and straight lines.
The Higher Command, being a man of like passions with ourselves,
has just finished tinned Oxford marmalade and a cigarette. He heads
for the "IN" basket on his desk and takes from it the "Arrivals and
Departures" paper. "Ha!" says he to the lady secretary, "I see six
new divisions landed yesterday." He pauses. Outside there is no sound
to be heard save the loud and continuous crash of the sentry's hand
against his rifle as he salutes the passing A.D.C.'s. "What about
signs?" says the Higher Command. The lady secretary says nothing. She
floods the carburettor of the typewriter preparatory to thumping out
"Ref. attached correspondence" on it.
The Higher Command stares at the diagrams on the wall. He is feeling
strangely light-hearted this morning. He has won five francs at bridge
the night before from the D.A.D.M.O. A.D.G.S. And mere circles and
squares have somehow lost their savour for him. He plunges. "What
about a lion?" he says.
The lady secretary opens the throttle and plays a few bars on the
"cap." key.
"A red lion?" says the Higher Command seductively.
"It has already been done," says the lady secretary coldly.
"Who by--I mean by whom?" inquires the H.C. indignantly.
"By the Deputy Assistant Director of Higher Commands, when you were
on leave last week," she tells him.
He mutters a military oath against the D.A.D.H.C. Then his face
clears.
"Tigers?" he suggests hopefully.
"We might do a green tiger," she says reluctantly.
"With yellow stripes!" shouts the H.C.
"On a mauve background," says she, warming to it.
And so one division is disposed of. But it is not always so, of
course.
After a Hun counter-attack, for instance, the H.C. may gaze morosely
on his geometrical figures and throw off a little thing in triangles
and St. Andrew's crosses. Or when the moon is at the full you may
have a violet allotted to you as your symbol. One never knows. My
own divisional sign, for instance, is an iddy-umpty plain on a field
plainer. We vary the heraldry by ringing changes on the colours. On
our brigade arm-band it becomes an iddy-umpty gules on a field azure.
If I could be quite sure of the heraldic slang for puce I would tell
you what it is on our Army Corps arm-band. On a waggon it used to be
an iddy-umpty blank on a field muddy. But administrative genius has
changed all that. A routine order, the other day, ordered a pink
border to be painted round it, and this first simple essay of the
departed Morse goes now through the villages of France in a bed of
roses.
We wish sometimes that our conditions were changed as easily as our
signs.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Dugal._ "I DOOT, TAMMAS, THERE'S SOME INFORMEESHUN
THAT MAN LLOYD GEORGE HAS GOT THAT WE HAVENA GOT."]
* * * * *
ANOTHER IMPENDING APOLOGY.
"The Lord Provost will preside over the meeting at which Mr.
Churchill will speak in Dundee this afternoon.
Many thousands of people are leaving Dundee for their annual
holiday."--_Manchester Daily Dispatch_.
* * * * *
"Mr. Alderman Domoney, in remanding at the Guildhall to-day
two boys charged with theft, said he always liked to deal
leniently with boys so young and to give the ma fresh start
in life."--_Evening Paper_.
Not a word about the pa, you observe; yet we daresay he was equally
responsible.
* * * * *
From the Orders of a Battalion in France:--
"The undermentioned N.C.O.'s and men will parade at 10.30
a.m., bringing with them their gas-helmets and the unexpired
portion of their rations."
It is surmised that this refers to the cheese-issue.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Basil_. "MUMMY, AREN'T WE EXCEEDING THE SPEED
RATION?"]
* * * * *
BULLINGTON.
It was in the high midsummer and the sun was shining strong,
And the lane was rather flinty and the lane was rather long,
When, up and down the gentle hills beside the stripling Test,
I chanced to come to Bullington and stayed a while to rest.
It was drowned in peace and quiet, as the river reeds were drowned
In the water clear as crystal, flowing by with scarce a sound;
And the air was like a posy with the sweet haymaking smells,
And the Roses and Sweet-Williams and Canterbury Bells.
Far away as some strange planet seemed the old world's dust and din,
And the trout in sun-warmed shallows hardly seemed to stir a fin,
And there's never a clock to tell you how the hurrying world goes on
In the little ivied steeple down in drowsy Bullington.
Small and sleepy there it nestled, seeming far from hastening Time,
As a teeny-tiny village in some quaint old nursery rhyme,
And a teeny-tiny river by a teeny-tiny weir
Sang a teeny-tiny ditty that I stayed a while to hear:--
"Oh the stream runs to the river and the river to the sea;
But the reedy banks of Bullington are good enough for me;
Oh the road runs to the highway and the highway o'er the down,
But it's just as good in Bullington as mighty London town."
Then high above an aeroplane in humming flight went by,
With the droning of its engines filling all the cloudless sky;
And like the booming of a knell across that perfect day
There came the guns' dull thunder from the ranges far away.
And, while I lay and listened, oh the river's sleepy tune
Seemed to change its rippling music, like the cuckoo's stave in June,
And the cannon's distant thunder and the engines' warlike drone
Seemed to mingle with its burthen in a solemn undertone:--
"Oh the stream runs to the river, and the river to the sea,
And there's war on land and water, and there's work for you and me;
And on many a field of glory there are gallant lives laid down
As well for sleepy Bullington as mighty London Town."
So I roused me from my daydream, for I knew the song spoke true,
That it isn't time for dreaming while there's duty still to do;
And I turned into the highroad where it meets the flinty lane,
And the world of wars and sorrows was about me once again.
C.F.S.
* * * * *
REMEMBRANCE.
"Stop, Francesca," I cried. "Don't talk; don't budge; don't blink.
Give me time. I've all but--"
"What _are_ you up to?" she said.
"There," I said, "you've done it. I had it on the tip of my tongue,
and now it has gone back for ever into the limbo of forgotten things,
and all because you couldn't keep silent for the least little fraction
of a second."
"My poor dear," she said, "I _am_ sorry. But why didn't you tell me
you were trying to remember something?"
"That," I said, "would have been just as fatal to it. These things are
only remembered in an atmosphere of perfect silence. The mental effort
must have room to develop."
"Don't tell me," she said tragically, "that I have checked the
development of a mental effort. That would be too awful."
"Well," I said, "that's exactly what you _have_ done, that and nothing
less. I feel just as if I'd tried to go upstairs where there wasn't a
step."
"Or downstairs."
"Yes," I said, "it's equally painful and dislocating."
"But you're not the only one," she said, "who's forgotten things. I've
done quite a lot in that line myself. I've forgotten the measles and
sugar and Lord RHONDDA and the Irish trouble and your Aunt Matilda,
and where I left my _pince-nez_ and what's become of the letters I
received this morning, and whom I promised to meet where and when to
talk over what. You needn't think you're the only forgetter in the
world. I can meet you on that and any other ground."
"But," I said, "the thing you made me forget--"
"I didn't."
"You did."
"No, for you hadn't remembered it."
"Well, anyhow I shall put it on to you, and I want you to realise that
it's not like one of your trivialities--"
"This man," said Francesca, "refers to his Aunt Matilda and Lord
RHONDDA as trivialities."
"It is not," I continued inexorably, "like one of your trivialities.
It's a most important thing, and it begins with a 'B.'"
"Are you sure of that?"
"Yes, I'm sure it begins with a 'B'--or perhaps a 'W.' Yes, I'm sure
it's a 'W' now."
"I'm going," said Francesca with enthusiasm, "to coax that word or
thing, or whatever it is, back to the tip of your tongue and beyond
it. So let's have all you know about it. Firstly, then, it begins with
a 'W.'"
"Yes, it begins with a 'W,' and I feel it's got something to do with
Lord RHONDDA."
"That doesn't help much. So far as I can see, everything now is more
or less nearly connected with Lord RHONDDA."
"But my forgotten thing isn't bread or meat. It's something remoter."
"Is it Mr. KENNEDY-JONES?" said Francesca. "He's just resigned, you
know."
"No, it's not Mr. KENNEDY-JONES. How could it be? Mr. KENNEDY-JONES
doesn't begin with a 'W.'"
"If I were you, I shouldn't insist too much on that 'W.' I should keep
it in the background, for it's about ten to one you'll find in the
end that it doesn't begin with a 'W.' At any rate we've made two short
advances; we know it isn't Mr. KENNEDY-JONES, because he doesn't begin
with a 'W,' and we are not very sure that it begins with a 'W.'"
"Keep quiet," I said, flushing with anticipation. "I'm getting it ...
your last remark has put me on the track.... Silence.... Ah ... it's
_DEVONSHIRE CREAM!_ There--I've got it at last. I feel an overwhelming
desire for Devonshire cream."
"The sort that begins with a 'W.'"
"Well, it's got a 'V' in it, anyhow."
"And it isn't Devonshire cream at all. It's really Cornish cream--at
least Mary Penruddock says it is."
"Cornish or Devonshire, that's what I must have, if Lord RHONDDA'S
rules allow it."
"All right, I'll get you a pot or two if I can. But are you sure you
won't forget it again?"
"If I do," I said, "I can always remember it by the W.'"
R.C.L.
* * * * *
THE CHANGE CURE.
["The only way to make domestic service popular is for
a duchess to become a tweeny-maid."--_Evening Paper_.]
It may be that a modern _Mene, Mene_
Will force the Duchess to become a tweeny;
But, ere this democratic transformation
Secures the "old nobility's" salvation,
Some other changes are not less but more
Needful to aid our progress in the War.
For instance, with what rapture were we blest
If Some-one gave his nimble tongue a rest
And, turning Trappist, stanched the fearsome gush
Of egotistic and thrasonic slush;
Or if Lord X. eschewed his daily speeches
And took to canning Californian peaches;
Or if egregious LYNCH could but abstain
From "ruining along the illimitable inane"
At Question-time, and try to render PLATO'S
_Republic_ into Erse, or grow potatoes;
Or if our novelists wrote cheerful books,
Instead of joining those superfluous cooks
Who spoil our daily journalistic broth
By lashing it into a fiery froth.
Counsels of sheer perfection, you will say,
In times when ev'ry mad dog has his day,
Yet none the less inviting as the theme
Of a millennial visionary's dream.
And as for Duchesses turned tweeny-maids
Or following other unobtrusive trades
There's nothing very wonderful or new
Or difficult to credit in the view;
For DICKENS--whom I never fail to bless
For solace in these days of storm and stress--
Found his best slavey in _The Marchioness_.
* * * * *
WHO INVENTED THE NAME "SAMMIES"?
"They are 'Sammies' now, and the name probably will stick
along with 'Tommy,' 'poilu' and 'Fritz.' ... The christening
was one of those spontaneous affairs, coming nobody knows
how."--_Kansas City Star_.
Mr. Punch, ever reluctant to take credit to himself, feels
nevertheless bound to say that the suggestion of the name "Sammies"
for our American Allies appeared in his columns as long ago as June
13th. On page 384 of that issue (after quoting _The Daily News_ as
having said, "We shall want a name for the American 'Tommies' when
they come; but do not call them 'Yankees'; they none of them like it")
he wrote: "As a term of distinction and endearment, Mr. Punch suggests
'Sammies'--after their uncle."
* * * * *
"London.-- ---- House. Bed, breakfast 4s., per week 24s. 6d.
No other meals at present."
This should encourage the FOOD-CONTROLLER.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Transport Officer_. "CONFOUND IT, MAN! WHAT ARE YOU
DOING? DON'T TEASE THE ANIMALS!"]
* * * * *
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(_BY MR. PUNCH'S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS_.)
HANSI, the Alsatian caricaturist and patriot, who escaped a few months
before the War, after being condemned by the German courts to fifteen
months' imprisonment for playing off an innocent little joke on four
German officers, and did his share of fighting with the French in the
early part of the War, is the darling of the Boulevards. They adore
his supreme skill in thrusting the irritating lancet of his humour
into bulging excrescences on the flank of that monstrous pachyderm
of Europe, the German. _Professor Knatschke_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON),
aptly translated by Professor R.L. CREWE, is a joyous rag. It purports
to be the correspondence of a Hun Professor, full of an egregious
self-sufficiency and humourlessness and greatly solicitous for the
unhappy Alsatian who is ignorant and misguided enough to prefer the
Welsch (i.e. foreign) "culture-swindle" to the glorious paternal
Kultur of the German occupation. And HANSI illustrates his witty text
with as witty and competent a pencil. HANSI has, in effect, the full
status of an Ally all by himself. He adds out of the abundance of his
heart a diary and novel by _Knatschke's_ daughter, _Elsa_, full of
the artless sentimentality of the German virgin. It is even better fun
than the Professor's part of the business. Naturally the full flavour
of both jokes must be missed by the outsider. HANSI is the more
effective in that he chuckles quietly, never guffaws and never rails.
Fun of the best.
* * * * *
There is not much left for me to say in praise of Mr. JACK LONDON'S
dog-stories; and anyhow, if his name on the cover of _Jerry of the
Islands_ (MILLS AND BOON) is not enough, no persuasion of mine
will induce you to read it. Those of us to whom dogs are merely
animals--just that--will find this history of an Irish terrier dull
enough; but others who have in their time given their "heart to a dog
to tear" will recognise and joyously welcome Mr. LONDON'S sympathetic
understanding of his hero. _Jerry's_ adventurous life as here told
was spent in the Solomon Islands, which is not, I gather, the most
civilized part of the globe. He had been brought up to dislike
niggers, and when he disliked anyone he did not hesitate to show his
feelings and his teeth. So it is possible that for some tastes he
left his marks a little too frequently; but in the end he thoroughly
justified his inclination to indulge in what looked like unprovoked
attacks upon bare legs. For unless he had kept his teeth in by
constant practice he might never have contrived to save his beloved
master and mistress from a very cowardly and crafty attack. Good dog,
_Jerry_!
* * * * *
I admit that the fact of its publishers having branded _The Road to
Understanding_ (CONSTABLE) as "A Pure Love Story" did not increase the
hopes with which I opened it. Let me however hasten also to admit that
half of it certainly bettered expectation. That was the first half,
in which _Burke Denby_, the heir to (dollar) millions, romantically
defied his father and married his aunt's nursery governess, and
immediately started to live the reverse of happy-ever after. All this,
the contrast between ideals in a mansion and love in a jerry-built
villa, and the thousand ways in which _Mrs. Denby_ got upon her
husband's nerves and generally blighted his existence, are told with
an excellently human and sympathetic understanding, upon which I make
my cordial congratulations to Miss ELEANOR H. PORTER. But because
the book, however human, belongs, after all, to the category of "Best
Sellers" it appears to have been found needful to furbish up this
excellent matter with an incredible ending. That _Mrs. Denby_ should
retire with her infant to Europe, in order to educate herself to her
husband's level, I did not mind. This thing has been done before now
even in real life. But that, on returning after the lapse of years,
she should introduce the now grown-up daughter, unrecognised, as
secretary to her father! "Somehow ... you remind me strangely.... Tell
me of your parents." "My daddy ... I never knew him." Or words to that
effect. It is all there, spoiling a tale that deserved better.
* * * * *
The voracious novel-reader is apt to hold detective stories in the
same regard that the Scotchman is supposed to entertain towards
whisky--some are better than others, but there are no really bad ones.
_The Pointing Man_ (HUTCHINSON) is better than most, in the first
place because it takes us "east of Suez"--a pleasant change from
the four-mile radius to which the popular sleuths of fiction mostly
confine their activities; and, secondly, because it combines a maximum
of sinister mystery with a minimum of actual bloodshed; and, lastly,
because our credulity is not strained unduly either by the superhuman
ingenuity of the hunter or an excess of diabolical cunning on the part
of the quarry. Otherwise the story possesses the usual features. There
is the clever young detective, in whose company we expectantly scour
the bazaars and alleys of Mangadone in search of a missing boy. There
are Chinamen and Burmese, opium dens and curio shops, temples and
go-downs. Miss MARJORIE DOUIE has more than a superficial knowledge
of her stage setting, and gets plenty of movement and colour into
it. And if she has elaborated the characters and inter-play of her
Anglo-Burmese colony to an extent that is not justified either by
their connection with the plot or the necessity of mystifying the
reader we must forgive her because she does it very well--so well
indeed that we may hope to see _The Pointing Man_, excellent as it is
in its way, succeeded by a contribution to Anglo-Oriental literature
that will do ampler justice to Miss DOUIE'S unquestionable gifts.
* * * * *
Our writers appear willing converts to my own favourite theory that
the public is, like a child, best pleased to hear the tales that it
already knows by heart. The latest exponent of this is the lady who
prefers to be called only "The Author of _An Odd Farmhouse_." Her new
little book, _Your Unprofitable Servant_ (WESTALL), is a record of
domestic happenings and impressions during the early phases of the
War. The thing is skilfully done, and in the result carries you with
interest from page to page; though (as I hint) the history of those
August days, when Barbarism came forth to battle and Civilisation
regretfully unpacked its holiday suit-cases, can hardly appeal now
with the freshness of revelation. Still, the writer brings undeniable
gifts to her more than twice-told tale. She has, for example,
perception and a turn of phrase very pleasant, as when she speaks
of the shops in darkened London conducting the last hour of business
under lowered awnings, "as if it were a liaison." There are many such
rewarding passages, some perhaps a little facile, but, taken together,
quite enough to make this unpretentious little volume a very agreeable
companion for the few moments of leisure which are all that most of us
can get in these strenuous days.
* * * * *
I enjoyed at a pleasant sitting the whole of Mr. FRANK SWINNERTON'S
_Nocturne_ (SECKER). I don't quite know (and I don't see how
the author can quite know) whether his portraits of pretty
self-willed _Jenny_ and plain love-hungry _Emmy_, the daughters
of the superannuated iron-moulder, are true to life, but they are
extraordinarily plausible. Not a word or a mood or a move in the
inter-play of five characters in four hours of a single night, the
two girls and "_Pa_," and _Alf_ and _Keith_, the sailor and almost
gentleman who was _Jenny's_ lover, seemed to me out of place. The
little scene in the cabin of the yacht between _Jenny_ and _Keith_
is a quite brilliant study in selective realism. Take the trouble to
look back on the finished chapters and see how much Mr. SWINNERTON has
told you in how few strokes, and you will realise the fine and precise
artistry of this attractive volume. I can see the lights, the silver
and the red glow of the wine; and I follow the flashes and pouts
and tearful pride of _Jenny_, and _Keith's_ patient, embarrassed,
masterful wooing as if I had been shamefully eavesdropping.
* * * * *
_Fool Divine_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) stands to some extent in
a position unique among novels in that its heroine is also its
villainess, or at least the wrecker of its hero. _Nevile del Varna_,
the lady in question, is indeed the only female character in the
tale, and has therefore naturally to work double tides. What happened
was that young _Christopher_, a superman and hero, dedicate, as a
volunteer, to the unending warfare of science against the evil goddess
of the Tropics, yellow fever, met this more human divinity when on
his journey to the scene of action, and, like a more celebrated
predecessor, "turned aside to her." Then, naturally enough, when
_Nevile_ has gotten him for her husband and when love of her has
caused him to abandon his project of self-sacrifice, she repays
him with scorn. And as the unhappy _Christopher_ already scorns
himself the rest of the book (till the final chapters) is a record
of deterioration more clever than exactly cheerful. The moral of it
all being, I suppose, that if you are wedded to an ideal you should
beware of taking to yourself a mortal wife, for that means bigamy.
Incidentally the book contains some wonderfully impressive pictures of
tropical life and of the general beastliness of existence on a rubber
plantation. At the end, as I have indicated, regeneration comes for
_Christopher_--though I will not reveal just how this happens. There
is also a subsidiary interest in the revolutionary affairs of Cuba,
which the much-employed _Nevile_ appears to manage, as a local Joan of
Arc, in her spare moments; and altogether the book can be recommended
as one that will at least take you well away from the discomforts of
here and now.
* * * * *
[Illustration: TALE OF A GREAT OFFENSIVE.
"'E SEZ TO ME, 'YOU'LL GET A THICK EAR!' I SEZ, 'WHO?' 'E SEZ, 'YOU!'
I SEZ, 'ME?' 'E SEZ 'YUS!' I SEZ 'HO!'"]