Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 by Various
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Various >> Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919
ALGOL.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Pupil_. "WHAT I WANT TO KNOW IS, AM I A BASS OR A
BARITONE?"
_Teacher_. "NO--YOU'RE NOT."]
* * * * *
INTELLIGENT ANTICIPATION.
"If births can be arranged would not mind taking charge of children
in lieu of passage."
_Advt. in "Statesman." (Calcutta)._
* * * * *
"It is unsafe even to curry favour with the French just to spite
your own Prim Minister."
_Sunday Paper_.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE has been called a lot of things in his time, but--prim!
* * * * *
From a concert programme:--
"Recitatif et Grand air D'oedipe a Cologne."
It was after the long march to the Rhine, no doubt, that the hero
acquired the nickname of "Swellfoot."
* * * * *
THE DREAM TELEPHONE.
I go to bed at half-past six
And Nurse says, "No more funny tricks;"
She takes the light and goes away
And all alone up there I stay.
And, as I lie there all alone,
Sometimes I hear the telephone;
I hear them say, "Yes, that's all right,"
Then, "Buzz, buzz, buzz," and then "Good-night."
And sometimes as I lie it seems
That people come into my dreams;
I hear a bell ring far away,
And then I hear the people say:
"Have you a little girl up there,
The room that's by the Nursery stair?
We are the people that she knew
Before she came to live with you.
"Tell her we know she bruised her knee
In falling from the apple-tree;
Tell her that we'll come very soon
And find the missing tea-set spoon.
"She knows we often come and peep
And kiss her when she's fast asleep;
We think you'll suit her soon all right."
Then, "Buzz, buzz, buzz," and then, "Good-night."
* * * * *
ANOTHER KNOCK FOR "THE TIMES."
"_WE_ ARE BACKING NORTHCLIFFE."
_Poster of "John Bull."_
* * * * *
[Illustration: "I SUPPOSE YOUR LANDLORD ASKS A LOT FOR THE RENT OF THIS
PLACE?"
"A LOT! HE ASKS ME FOR IT NEARLY EVERY WEEK."]
* * * * *
DOGS' DELIGHT.
SCENE.--_Interior of shop devoted to the sale of cutlery, leatherware
and dogs' collars, leads, etc. Customers discovered lining the counter,
others in background leading puzzled and suspicious dogs. The proprietor
is endeavouring to serve ordinary purchasers, answer questions, punch
holes in straps and give change simultaneously. A harried assistant in a
white coat is dealing, as well as he can, with overwhelming demands for
muzzles._
_Proprietor_. Yes, Sir, you'll find that razor-strop quite... Six holes
wanted in that strap? (_To Assistant_) Right--leave it here and--Sorry,
Madam, I can't attend to you just now.... Don't happen to have a
_ten_-shilling note, do you, Sir? No? Well, I may be able to manage it
for you.... If you'll speak to my assistant, Madam; _he_'s attending to
the muzzling.
_The Owner of a subdued nondescript (calling Assistant)._ Will you ask
this lady to kindly keep her dog from trying to kill mine, please?
_The Other Lady (whose dog, a powerful and truculent Airedale, seems to
have conceived a sudden and violent dislike for the nondescript)._
Yours must have done _something_ to irritate him--he's generally such a
good-tempered dog.
_Assistant (to the Airedale, which is barking furiously and straining at
his lead)._ 'Ere, sherrup, will you? Allow me, Mum. I'll put 'im where
he can 'ave 'is good temper out to 'imself. _(He hustles the Airedale to
a small office, where he shuts him in--to his and his owner's intense
disapproval. A fox-terrier in another customer's arms becomes hysterical
with sympathy and utters ear-rending barks.)_ Oh, kindly get that dawg
to sherrup, Mum, or we'll 'ave the lot of 'em orf; or could you look in
some day when he's more collected?
_Another Lady_. I say, I want a muzzle for my dog.
_Assistant (sardonically)._ You surprise me, Mum! We're very near sold
out, but if you'll let me 'ave a look at your dawg, p'r'aps--
_The Lady_. Oh, I haven't _brought_ him. Left him at Barnes.
_Assistant. 'Ave_ yer, Mum? Well, yer see, I can't run down to
Barnes--not just now I can't.
_The Lady_. No, but I thought--he's rather a large dog, a Pekinese
spaniel.
_Assistant_. Then I couldn't fit 'im if 'e was 'ere, cos 'e'd want a
short muzzle and we've run out o' them.
_A Customer with a Pekinese_. Then will you find me a muzzle for _this_
one?
_Assistant (with resigned despair)._ You jest 'eard me say we 'ad no
short muzzles, Mum. If you don't mind waiting 'ere an hour or two I'll
send a man to the factory in a taxi to bring back a fresh stock--if
they've got any, which I don't guarantee.
_The Customer with the Pekinese._ But I saw some leather muzzles in the
window; one of those would do beautifully.
_Assistant._ I shall 'ave great pleasure in selling you one, Mum, on'y
Gover'ment says they've got to be wire. 'Owever, it's _your_ risk, not
mine. Well, since you ask me, I think you _'ad_ better wait.
_A Customer (carrying a large brown-and-white dog with lop ears and
soulful eyes)._ I've been kept waiting here two hours, and I think it's
high time--
_Assistant._ If you'll bring 'im along to the back shop, Mum, I _may_
have one left his size.
_A Lady with a lovely complexion and an unlovely griffon (to her
companion)._ So fussy and tiresome of the Government bringing in muzzles
again after all these years!
_Her Companion._ Oh, I don't _know_. We've had a mysterious dog running
about snapping in our district for days.
_The Lady with the complexion._ Ah, but _this_ poor darling _never_
snaps, and, besides, he hasn't been used to muzzles in Belgium. You
needn't _mention_ it, but I got a friend of mine to smuggle him over for
me--such a _dear_ boy, he'll do anything I ask him to.
_Assistant (after attempting to fit the soulful-eyed dog with a muzzle
and narrowly escaping being bitten)._ There, that's enough for _me_,
Mum. Jest take that dawg out at once, please.
_Owner of the dog (which, having gained its point, affects an air of
innocent detachment)._ I shall do nothing of the kind. It was the brutal
way you took hold of her. The _gentlest_ creature! Why, I've _had_ her
three years!
_Assistant._ I don't care if you've 'ad her a century. They're all
angels as come 'ere; but I ain't going to 'ave _my_ thumb bit by no
angels, so will you kindly walk out?
_Owner._ Without a muzzle? Never!
_Assistant._ Then I shall 'ave to call in a constable to make you. I'm
not bound to sell you nothing.
_Owner (with spirit). Call_ a constable then! _I_ don't care. Here I
stay till I get that muzzle.
_Assistant (giving up his idea of calling a constable)._ Then I should
advise you to take a chair, Mum, as we don't close till seven.
_Owner (retreating with dignity)._ All _I_ can say is that I call it
perfectly disgraceful. I shall certainly report your conduct; and I only
hope you won't sell a single other muzzle to-day!
_Assistant._ If I didn't I could bear up. _(To a lady with an elderly
Blenheim)_ If it's a muzzle, Mum--
_The Owner of the Blenheim_. That's just what I want to know. _Must_ he
have a muzzle? You see, he's got no teeth, so he couldn't possibly bite
anyone--now, _could_ he?
_Assistant. I_ dunno, Mum. You take 'im to see the Board of Agriculture.
_They'll_ give you an opinion on 'im. _(To Staff Officer who
approaches)_ Sorry, Sir, but our stock of muzzles--
_Staff Officer._ All I want is a new leather band for this wrist-watch.
Got one?
_Assistant (with joy)._ Thank 'eaven I _'ave_! Gaw bless the Army!
F.A.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Helen's elder Sister._ "YOU KNOW, ALL THE STARS ARE
WORLDS LIKE OURS."
_Helen._ "WELL, I SHOULDN'T LIKE TO LIVE ON ONE--IT WOULD BE SO HORRID
WHEN IT TWINKLED."]
* * * * *
THE REVOLT.
There is a cupboard underneath the stair
Where moth and rust hold undisputed sway,
And here is hid my old civilian wear,
And my wife sits and plays with it all day,
Since Peace is imminent and, I'm advised,
Even the bard may be demobilised.
She is a woman who was clearly born
To be the monarch of a helpless male;
And when she says, "This overcoat is torn,"
"These flannel trousers are beyond the pale,"
"You can't be seen in any of those shirts,"
I acquiesce, but, goodness, how it hurts.
For they are rich with memories of Peace,
The soiled habiliments my lady loathes.
I do not long for trousers with a crease;
I _do not want_ another crowd of clothes--
Particularly as you have to pay
Seventeen guineas for a suit to-day.
We are but worms, we husbands; yet 'tis said,
When the sad worm lies broken and at bay,
There comes a moment when the thing sees red,
And one such moment has occurred to-day;
"Look at this hat," I said, "this old top-hat;
I will not wear another one like that.
"This is the hat I purchased in the High,
Still crude and young and ignorant of sin;
I wooed you in this hat--I don't know why;
This is the hat that I was married in;
In it I walked on Sunday through the parks,
And even then the people made remarks.
"Now it is dead--the last of all its line--
Nothing like this shall mar the poet's Peace;
What have the nations fought for, wet and fine,
If not that ancient tyrannies should cease?
What use the Crowns of Europe coming croppers
If we are still to be the slaves of 'toppers'?
"It speaks to me of many an ancient sore--
Of calls and cards and Sunday afternoon;
Of hideous wanderings from door to door
And choking necks and patent-leather shoon;
'The War is won,' as Mr. ASQUITH said,
And all these evils are or should be dead.
"It moves me not that other men with wives
Have fall'n already in the old abyss,
Have let their women ruin all their lives
And ordered new atrocities like this.
President WILSON will have missed success
If other men determine how I dress.
"Yonder there hangs the helmet of a Hun,
And I will hang this horror at its side;
Twin symbols of an epoch which is done,
These shall remind our children----" My wife sighed,
"You'll have to get another one, I fear;"
And all I said was, "Very well, my dear."
A.P.H.
* * * * *
COMMERCIAL CANDOUR.
Notice in a cobbler's window:--
"Will customers please bring their own paper for repairs?"
* * * * *
"Miss Carnegie wore a gown of white satin and point applique lace,
with a lace veil falling from a light brown coiffeur almost to the
end of the train."--_Daily Mirror_.
It doesn't say whether the light-brown coiffeur was a page or the best
man.
* * * * *
From an account of the British sailors' reception in Paris:--
"Sous les clamations de la foule, les marins gagnent par les
Champs-Elysees, la rue Royale et le boulevard Malesherbes, le Lycee
Carnot, ou M. Breakfast les attend."--_French Local Paper_.
Hospitality personified!
* * * * *
AT THE PLAY.
"BUSINESS BEFORE PLEASURE."
The return of _Abe Potash_ and _Mawruss Perlmutter_ to London is not
an event to be regarded indifferently. The light-hearted pair have
evidently been through some anxious times. _Rosie Potash_ can never have
been a very easy woman to live with. She has not improved. And now that
she has infected _Ruth Perlmutter_ with her morbid jealousies the alert
and as yet unbroken _Mawruss_ begins to know something of what his
long-suffering, not to say occasionally abject, partner, _Abe_, has had
to endure these many years.
It was bad enough in the dress business. But now they have gone into
films it is indefinitely worse. Every reasonable person must know that
you can't produce really moving pictures without an immense amount of
late office hours, dining and supping out and that sort of thing, a
fact which the _Rosies_ and _Ruths_ of this world can't be expected
to appreciate. So that it would be as well, think the ingenuous
_entrepreneurs_, if _The Fatal Murder_ were, so far as the ladies' parts
are concerned, cast from members of the two households. Besides, what
an excellent way of keeping the money in the family. However _The Fatal
Murder_ is a dud; _Rosie_ and _Ruth_ are not the right shape; and film
acting, with the necessary pep, is not a thing you can just acquire by
wishing so.
What is wanted, says the voluble young hustler in the firm, who
alone seems to know anything of the business, is real actresses as
distinguished from members of the directors' families, and above all a
good vampire. A vampire is the very immoral and under-dressed type of
woman that wrecks hearts and homes, and without which no film with a
high moral purpose is conceivable. You must have shadows to throw up the
light. And on this principle all the uplift and moral instruction of
that potent instrument of grace, the cinematograph, is based--a fact
which will not have escaped the notice of cinema-goers.
When _Rita Sismondi_ appears in an evil Futurist black-and-white gown by
Viola you can tell at once she is the goods. But naturally _Abe's_ first
thought is, "What will _Rosie_ say?" His second, shared by _Mawruss_:
"Hang _Rosie_! We shall both like this lady." Finances are not
flourishing, but the crooked manager of the very unbusinesslike bank
that is financing the P. and P. Film Co. harbours designs on the virtue
of _Rita_, who has this commodity in a measure unusual with film
vampires (or usual, I forget which), and is just a slightly adventurous
prude out for a good time. He accordingly advances more money for _The
Guilty Dollar_ on condition that _Rita_ be engaged, and yet more money
on condition that she be not fired by any machinations of jealous wives.
_Rosie_, indeed, says a good deal when she turns up at a rehearsal and
finds the vampire clad in the third of a gown hazardously suspended
on her gracious shoulders by bead straps, and _Mawruss_ and _Abe_
demonstrating how in their opinion the kissing scenes should be
conducted so as to make a really notable production. However, the
vampire's film vices make the success of the company, and her private
virtues bring all to a happy ending.
The story need hardly concern us. It is not plausible, which matters
nothing at all. Mr. YORKE and Mr. LEONARD are the essential outfit, and
it seems to me they are better than ever. One simply _has_ to laugh,
louder and oftener than is seemly for a self-respecting Englishman. No
doubt their authors, Messrs. GLASS and GOODMAN, give them plenty of good
things to say, but it is the astonishing finish and precision of their
technique which make their work so pleasant to watch. If it throws into
awkward relief the amateurishness of some of their associates that can't
be helped. Miss VERA GORDON'S _Rosie_ is a good performance, and Miss
JULIA BRUNS, the vampire, seemed to me to make with considerable skill
and subtlety a real character (within the limits allowed by the farcical
nature of the scheme) out of what might easily have been uninvitingly
crude.
T.
* * * * *
OUR FRIEND THE FISH.
"What is a sardine?" was a question much before the Courts some few
years ago, not unprofitably for certain gentlemen wearing silk, and
the correct solution I never heard; but I can supply, from personal
observation, one answer to the query, and that is, "An essential
ingredient in London humour." For without this small but sapid
fish--whatever he may really be, whether denizen of the Sardinian sea,
immature Cornish pilchard, or mere plebeian sprat well oiled--numbers of
our fellow-men and fellow-women, with all the will in the world, might
never raise a laugh. As it is, thanks to his habit of lying in excessive
compression within his tin tabernacle, and the prevalence in these
congested days of too many passengers on the Tubes, on the Underground
and in the omnibuses, whoever would publicly remove gravity has but to
set up the sardine comparison and be rewarded.
Why creatures so remote from man as fishes--cold-blooded inhabitants of
an element in which man exists only so long as he keeps on the surface;
mute, incredible and incapable of exchanging any intercourse with
him--why these should provide the Cockney, the dweller in the citiest
City of the world, with so much of the material of jocoseness is an
odd problem. But they do. Herrings, when cured either by smoke or sun,
notoriously contribute to the low comedian's success. The mere word
"kipper" has every girl in the gallery in a tittering ecstasy. But
outside the Halls it is the sardine that conquers.
In one day this week I witnessed the triumph of the sardine on three
different occasions, and it was always hearty and complete.
The first time was in a lift at Chancery Lane. It is not normally a very
busy station, but our attendant having, as is now the rule, talked too
long with the attendant of a neighbouring lift, we were more than full
before the descent began. We were also cross and impatient, the rumble,
from below, of trains that we might just us well be in doing nothing to
steady our nerves.
But help came--and came from that strange quarter the mighty ocean, from
Chancery Lane so distant! "Might as well," said a burly labourer (or,
for all I know, burly receiver of unemployment dole)--"might as well be
sardines in a tin!"
Straightway we all laughed and viewed our lost time with more serenity.
Later I was in a 'bus in Victoria Street, on its way to the Strand.
As many persons were inside, seated or standing on their own and on
others' feet, as it should be permitted to hold, but still another two
were let in by the harassed conductress.
"I say, Miss," said the inevitable wag, who was one of the standing
passengers, "steady on. We're more than full up already, you know. Do
you take us for sardines?"
And again mirth rocked us.
Finally, that night I was among the stream of humanity which pours down
Villiers Street from the theatres for half-an-hour or so between 10.40
and 11.10, all in some mysterious way to be absorbed into the trains or
the trams and conveyed home. After some desperate struggles on Charing
Cross platform I found myself a suffering unit in yet another dense
throng in a compartment going West; and again, amid delighted merriment,
some one likened us to sardines.
It is not much of a joke, but you will notice that it so seldom fails
that one wonders why any effort is ever made to invent a better.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "I DIDN'T KNOW YOU KNEW THE FUNNY MAN, SIS."
"I DIDN'T. BUT BY THE TIME I DISCOVERED THAT I DIDN'T--WELL, I DID."]
* * * * *
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
_(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)_
_Madam Constantia_ (LONGMANS) is a war story, but of an earlier and
more picturesque war. A simple tale, I am bound to call it, revolving
entirely round a situation not altogether unknown to fiction, in which
the hero and heroine, being of opposite sides, love and fight one
another simultaneously. Actually the scene is set during the American
struggle for independence, thus providing a sufficiency of pomp and
circumstance in the way of fine uniforms and pretty frocks; and
the protagonists are _Captain Carter_, of the British service, and
_Constantia Wilmer_, daughter of the American who had captured him.
Perhaps you may recall that the identical campaign has already provided
a very similar position (reversed) in _Miss Elizabeth's Prisoner_. It is
only a deserved tribute to the skill with which Mr. JEFFERSON CARTER
has told this adventure of his namesake to admit that I am left with an
uncertainty, not usual to the reviewing experience, whether it is in
fact a true or an imagined affair. In any event its development follows
a well-trodden path. We have the captive, jealous in honour, susceptible
and exasperatingly Quixotic, doubly enchained by his word and the charms
of his fair wardress; the lady's conspicuous ill-treatment of him at
the first, a slight mystery, some escapes and counterplots, and on the
appointed page the matrimonial finish that hardly the most pessimistic
reader can ever have felt as other than assured. Fact or fiction, you
may spend an agreeable hour in watching the course of _Captain Carter's_
courtship overcoming its rather obvious obstacles.
* * * * *
Because I have so great an admiration for their beneficent activities, I
have always wanted to meet a novel with a lot about dentists in it,
and now Miss DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON, in _The Tunnel_ (DUCKWORTH), has
satisfied my desire. Dentists--a houseful of them--spittoons, revolving
basins; patients going upstairs with sinking feelings; wondering at the
pattern on the wallpaper; going down triumphant. Teeth. Appointment
books. Dentists everywhere. This is not a quotation, but very like
one, for Miss RICHARDSON affects the modern manner. Though one of the
dentists is quite the most agreeable person in the book, he isn't the
hero, because the author is much too clever to have anything of the
sort. Her method, exploited some time ago in that remarkable book,
_Pointed Roofs_, is to get right inside one _Miriam Henderson_ and
keep on writing out her thoughts with as little explanation of her
circumstances as possible, so that _The Tunnel_, to anyone who has
missed the earlier books, must be very nearly unintelligible. Even the
sincere admirer of Miss RICHARDSON'S talent will begin to wonder how
many more books at the present rate of progress must be required to
bring _Miriam_ to, say, threescore years and ten. My own belief is that
if her creator is ever so ill-advised as to put her beneath a 'bus or
drop her down a lift-well, she herself will be gone too; and for that I
should be sorry, since I agree with almost all the nice things Miss MAY
SINCLAIR says of the earlier books in an appreciation here reprinted
from _The Egoist_. Miss RICHARDSON has evolved a way of writing a novel
which somehow suggests the Futurist way of painting a picture; but _The
Tunnel_ has left me wondering whether she has not carried her method a
little too far. It seems to me that some of her heroine's thoughts were
not worth recording; but perhaps when another four or five books have
been added to _Miriam's_ life-history I may discover what the scheme may
be that lies behind them all, and change my mind.
* * * * *
More than once before this I have enjoyed the dexterity of Miss VIOLET
HUNT in a certain type of social satire; but I regret to say that the
expectation with which I opened _The Last Ditch_ (STANLEY PAUL) was
doomed to some disappointment. The idea was promising enough--a study of
our British best people confronting the ordeal of world-war; but somehow
it failed to capture me. For one reason it is told in a series of
letters--a dangerous method at any time. As usual, these are far too
long and literary to be genuine; though they keep up a rather irritating
pretence of reality by repetitions of the same events in correspondence
from different writers. Moreover, letters whose concern is the progress
of recruiting or the novelty of war can hardly at this time avoid an
effect of having been delayed in the post. But all this would have
mattered little if Miss HUNT had chosen her aristocrats from persons in
whom it was possible to take more interest. But the plain fact is that
you never met so tedious a set. They are not witty; they are not even
wicked to any significant extent. They simply produce (at least in my
case) no effect whatever. Perhaps this may all be of intention; the
author may have meant to harrow us with the spectacle of our old
nobility expiring as nonentities. But in that case the picture
is manifestly unfair. And it is certainly dull--dull as the last
ditch-water.
* * * * *
In _America in France_ (MURRAY) Lieut. Col. FREDERICK PALMER, a member
of the Staff Corps of the United States Army, sets out to tell the story
of the making of an army. This is the first book by Colonel PALMER that
has come my way, but I find that he has written four others, all of
which I judge by their titles to be concerned with the War. Be that as
it may, I welcome _America in France_ both because it gives a narrative
of America's tremendous effort, and because the book is written with a
modesty which is very pleasing. America came to the job of fighting as a
learner. Her soldiers did not boast of what they were going to do, but
sat down solidly to learn, in order that she might be useful in the
fighting-line. How she achieved her purpose the world now knows. If any
fault is to be found with the author's style, it is that the limpidity
and evenness of its flow make great events less easy of distinction than
perhaps they might be; but most people will hail this as a merit rather
than a fault, and I agree with them. Colonel PALMER records the names of
the first three Americans who died fighting. The French General to whose
unit they were attached ordered a ceremonial parade and made a speech
in which he asked that the mortal remains of these young men be left in
France. "We will," he continued, "inscribe on their tombs, 'Here lie the
first soldiers of the United States to fall on the soil of France for
Justice and Liberty' ... Corporal Gresham, Private Enright, Private Hay,
in the name of France I thank you." As another matter of historical
interest it may be stated that the first shot of the War on the American
side was fired by Battery C of the 6th Field Artillery, "without waiting
on going into position at the time set. The men dragged a gun forward in
the early morning of October 23rd, and sent a shell at the enemy. There
was no particular target. The aim was in the general direction of
Berlin. The gun has been sent to West Point as a relic."