Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 by Various
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Various >> Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919
* * * * *
TO A VEGETABLE-MARROW.
O monstrous, O Gargantuan, overgrown!
O huge! O gross! O squat!
Whose one redeeming virtue--one alone--
Is that you weigh a lot;
Who will not thrive upon the common soil,
So that the patient digger e'en must toil
To raise a special mound
Above the level ground
That you may sun yourself upon the sloping earth
And, like the wicked, wax to an uncommon girth.
But it is not your vast circumference
That stirs this passing strain;
I would not sing although, to move you hence,
They fetched their biggest crane;
It is that men should shovel tons of _that_
Into the maws of some capacious vat,
Add sugar (half-a-pound)
And stir it round and round;
Then, at the last, throw in some ginger with a spade
And label the result as "Lemon Marmalade."
* * * * *
From a description of the first flight of R 33:--
"Alas, the meteorological conditions, at first considered
probable, turned out worse."--_Yorkshire Paper_.
Nothing so likely as the improbable.
* * * * *
[Illustration: SENSATIONAL SURPRISE STRIKE OF HEROES IN CINEMA-LAND.
PICKETS OF HEROES PREVENT BLACKLEG COLLEAGUE FROM WORKING WHEN THE
HEROINE MOST PARTICULARLY NEEDS HELP.]
* * * * *
THE BIBLE IN PAIN.
MR. H.G. WELLS' new novel, based on the Book of Job, and Mr. ARNOLD
BENNETT'S new play dealing with the story of JUDITH and HOLOFERNES,
by no means exhaust the Biblical and Apocryphal motives from which our
popular writers are now drawing inspiration.
Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD'S next novel will be a minutely analytical study of
the contrasted temperaments of ESAU and JACOB, the one standing for
revolt and the other for a rather smooth and supple orthodoxy.
Mr. E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM is turning his attention to a new spy
romance woven about the experiences of CALEB and JOSHUA.
Professor CHALMERS MITCHELL has long been engaged on a monograph on
the Ark and its inmates, in which the famous zoologist will explain
the conditions under which the animals lived, the segregation and food
problems, and how the complexities following disembarcation were dealt
with by NOAH and his family. Lord PIRRIE is contributing a chapter
on the structure of the vessel, and there will be an appendix on the
dangers of overcrowding by Sir ARTHUR NEWSHOLME.
Mr. GALSWORTHY has also been turning his attention to the Ark, and
the inhumane congestion of the creatures that were packed into it.
The result should be a very interesting psychological and sociological
work, the leading character being HAM'S wife, whom the novelist
figures as a protester to her father-in-law against his treatment of
all the animals, but in particular of the two Pekinese spaniels.
Mr. ALEC WAUGH has nearly completed an indictment of private tuition
based on the story of SAMUEL and ELI.
Mr. H.B. IRVING, turning aside for the moment from the study of more
recent turpitude, is preparing an analytical memoir on the first
murder, that of ABEL by CAIN. With all his well-known thoroughness he
reconstructs the crime and shows in what particulars CAIN, although an
innovator, proved himself also an adept.
Mr. GEORGE MOORE is meditating a revised version of the story of
JOSEPH and his Brethren, which in his opinion is sadly in need of
re-writing, suffering as it does from an unsophisticated simplicity of
diction and thought.
Mr. CONRAD is busy with a new romance treating of JONAH and the whale,
in which, for the sake of verisimilitude, JONAH will himself recount
his strange adventure to a few personal friends. As the narrative runs
to over a hundred thousand words the reader may be sure that no detail
of realism is omitted from the description of the luckless voyage.
Mrs. ELINOR GLYN'S new novel will be called _The Heart of Solomon_.
The movie-producers are not idle. After the greatest difficulty in
procuring an actor of prophetic mien willing to undertake the rather
trying part of DANIEL, an intrepid _dompteur_ has been found in France
and the story of the Lions' Den is to be filmed at once. Possibly some
assistance from the drug whose power was illustrated by Mr. GEORGE
MORROW in last week's _Punch_ may be called for.
Meanwhile a company is being formed for the exploitation of a new
system of muscular development under the name of "Samsonism," and
a powerful company of public men is being enlisted to write daily
articles in its praise.
* * * * *
ANOTHER IMPENDING APOLOGY.
"London's Premier Turn Coat Specialist."--_Advt. in Daily
Paper_.
* * * * *
"Writers, mostly town-bred, infatuated with the country-side,
have raved of the statuesque repose of the rural maiden. A
statute is no doubt a beautiful object, but you do not want to
take it to a dance."--_Daily Paper_.
We shouldn't, but the LORD CHANCELLOR might.
* * * * *
AT THE PLAY.
"THE HOUSE OF PERIL."
The maker of a plot that turns upon murder and drugging in the
neighbourhood of a Continental gambling haunt must be aware that his
work is not going to be brought to the test of common experience, and
he is therefore less likely to be hampered by the laws of probability.
But there are limits even to the British public's gift of credulity.
How far Mrs. BELLOC LOWNDES may have enjoyed special privileges in the
search for her material I cannot say; but for myself I confess that a
modest acquaintance with the atmosphere of European casinos has left
me in absolute ignorance of any such society as that of the hosts
of The House of Peril. Perhaps Mrs. LOWNDES'S book (which I have not
read) may throw light on this dark mystery; but in the play--and the
play's the only thing that concerns us here--I could trace nothing
to indicate to my poor intelligence how it was that two decently-bred
ladies and their escort, a perfectly honest French officer, ever came
to find themselves on terms of easy intercourse with the frowsy old
German couple who lived at the Chalet des Muguets, Lacville, on the
proceeds of robbery.
Any obstacle which these repellent Teutons may have had to overcome in
the ultimate execution of their nefarious designs must have been the
merest child's-play compared with the initial difficulty of inducing
the right kind of victim to penetrate so fifth-rate an interior. One
never even began to get over the inherent improbability of such an
attraction.
And I was the less disposed to take things for granted because of the
rather irritating obscurity that veiled the opening of the Second Act,
in which we are introduced to The House of Peril and are left for a
long time in doubt as to the nature of the place and its relation to
anything that has gone before. I think this must have been the fault
of the adapter, Mr. VACHELL. He seems to have assumed in his audience
a general knowledge of the original story--dangerous confidence, even
in the case of so clever and popular a writer as Mrs. BELLOC LOWNDES.
It certainly was his fault that the end of the play was like nothing
ever seen off the stage. Let me briefly put the scene before you. A
young Englishwoman, paying a farewell call upon the criminals of The
House of Peril, has been drugged by them. She wakes up prematurely to
find them collecting her pearl necklace--four thousand pounds' worth
of it. Murder is in the air, when suddenly, to the surprise of
the villains (but not to ours, for we had had fair warning of the
_denouement_), enter to the rescue two admirers of the lady. In the
excitement attendant upon her recovery from a swoon the druggists
are suffered to pass out through the door into the arms of a posse of
constabulary.
At this juncture, the lady having been restored to her senses, you
might suppose that the rescue-party would take at least some fleeting
interest in the disposal of their prisoners. There you would be in
error. The final curtain is due and there are peremptory affairs of
the heart to be wound up before we can get away. So, to clear the
ground, one of the admirers makes a gallant statement which redeems
the other's character from a false suspicion, and, rightly regarding
himself as _de trop_, goes off by another exit and shows no further
concern in either of the two developments--on or off the stage.
The remaining admirer, left alone in the company of the lady, ignores
with a fine detachment the impotent rage that his captives are
presumably venting in the passage just outside, and declares the
ardour of his passion as a man might do in the breathless calm of
a moonlit solitude _a deux_. And on this idyllic scene the curtain
descends.
[Illustration: "PAP-PA" AND "POOSY-CAT."
_Wachner_ . . . . . MR. NORMAN MCKINNEL.
_Madame Wachner_ . . MISS ANNIE SCHLETTER.]
The most satisfying thing in the play was the acting of Miss ANNIE
SCHLETTER as "_Madame" Wachner_ of the Chalet des Muguets, an
extraordinarily clever study of the doting _Hausfrau,_ much busied
about the service of her lord. Mr. NORMAN MCKINNEL as _Wachner_ easily
contrived to convey the typically Teuton blend of brutishness, and
domestic sentimentality, combined with the heavy playfulness which by
a curious delusion, ineradicably racial, is mistaken over there for
humour. "Ja, ja," he says complacently, "I have the humour-sense."
It was regrettable that the cosmopolitan _Anna Wolsky,_ acted with
great animation by Miss MARGARET HALSTAN, had to withdraw from the
scene at an early stage in consequence of being murdered--I don't
know how, as we neither saw nor heard the details. Her friend, _Sylvia
Bailey_, however, stayed on to the finish, and Miss EMILY BROOKE saw
her nicely through her troubles. A very level performance.
[Illustration: "CHARGE, CHESTER--CHARGE!"
_Count Paul de Virieu_ . . . MR. OWEN NARES.
_William Chester_ . . . . . MR. JOHN HOWELL.]
To the rather wooden part of _William Chester_ (foil to hero) Mr. JOHN
HOWELL brought a certain unliveliness of his own. A better chance was
taken by Miss STELLA RHO, who gave proof of a vivid personality in
her brief sketch of a professional fortune-teller who admitted to her
clients (this must be very unusual) that she nearly always made a mess
of her crystal-gazing.
Finally, Mr. OWEN NARES, looking pretty and not too warlike in the gay
uniform of a French Officer of Cavalry, played the hero's part with a
very natural and fluent charm. I join in the general hope that this,
the first play under his actor-management, will go well. It ought to,
for though, in point of power to thrill, it did not quite confirm the
promise of its sinister name and theme it was never for a moment dull,
and its faults were the kind of stage-faults about which, while they
give the critic a chance of being unkind, a British audience never
worries too much.
O.S.
* * * * *
A matinee of _Romeo and Juliet_ will be given at the Royal Court
Theatre on Sunday, March 30th, at 2.30 P.M., in aid of the Notting
Hill Day Nursery, which has done such admirable service among the poor
of "The Potteries." Help is greatly needed to enable the promoters of
this good work (for which Mr. Punch has before now appealed) to pay
off a mortgage and to start a fund for a convalescent cottage-home.
Among the cast of the matinee will be Miss MONA MAUGHAN, Mr. DENNIS
NEILSON-TERRY and Mr. OTHO STUART, who produces it. Tickets may be
obtained from the Hon. Sec., 22, Paulton's Square, Chelsea, S.W.
* * * * *
[Illustration: LEAVES FROM A SPECIAL'S REMINISCENCES OF THE GREAT WAR.
_Small Girl (on morning after air-raid)._ "HI, MISTER, _'E_ BROKE THAT
WINDER!"]
* * * * *
"STAGE-STRUCK NOVELISTS.
"LILLAH MCCARTHY AS EXECUTIONER."--_Sunday Paper_.
Well, they can't say they haven't had a fair warning.
* * * * *
"Scotsmen the world over possess to a remarkable degree the
spirit of clamishness."--_Times of India_.
A good many of them have certainly made the world their oyster.
* * * * *
"OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE.
"BOOT RACE TO BE ROWED THIS YEAR AT HENLEY REGATTA."--_Daily
Paper_.
A very suitable _venue_ for the contest, which, we presume, will be
conducted in pairs.
* * * * *
"---- CATTLE MARKET.
"Messrs. ---- beg to announce that they will hold their usual
Sale of Fat and Store Stock at above.
"Present Entries include:
"80 Pairs Men's, Women's and Children's New Boots, assorted
sizes."--_Provincial Paper_.
These, of course, will be entered with the calves.
* * * * *
TO A MARCH BROWN, SWALLOWED ALIVE.
Rash insect with your jaunty air
The troubled stream serenely riding,
How guessed you not that Death was there
Nor feared the hungry trout in hiding?
Did instinct, friend of helpless things,
Not bid you rise and use your wings?
Alas, the widening ripple showed
Around the spot which lately bore you,
And down you went the deadly road
Where many a fly has gone before you,
One victim more to swell the pride
Of golden tum and spotted side.
Yet know (if any ghost of you
Or delicate spirit's left to know it)
That I've a fly which never flew
(Your likeness) and the skill to throw it;
And I that saw the fatal rise
Marked where a fat half-pounder lies.
Thither will I with reel and rod
And cure his taste for dainty dishes
By favour of whatever god
Decides the destiny of fishes;
And that were vengeance passing sweet--
Your captor on your counterfeit!
* * * * *
DAISY.
He was always called Daisy. We hated the name, but the christening
"just happened" with the suddenness of influenza or an earthquake.
Percy was the culprit, for he knocked all our pre-arranged plans for
a name on the head by his passion for what he calls "apt quotation."
When he (Daisy) emerged from his basket we saw that, like NELSON,
he was blind of an eye. Percy, immediately inspired, quoted from
WORDSWORTH'S _Ode to the Daisy_, "A little Cyclops with one eye"--and
the result was inevitable. Daisy resented the name from the first, for
at the very font, so to speak, he drew blood from us both, and then,
utterly indifferent to our feelings, settled himself on the top of an
empty beer barrel and there performed his evening ablutions.
It was a curious coincidence that made him select a beer barrel, for
thereby hung a tragic tale. He and his twin-brother had been adopted
from infancy by the Sergeants' Mess and had lived in peace and
plenty--in fact in too much plenty, for I regret to say that Daisy's
brother died of drink from having formed the discreditable habit
of emptying all the dregs of the Sergeants' beer mugs into his own
inside. However, he was granted military obsequies, which were so
successfully performed that an account of them found its way into one
of the daily papers. This so delighted the amateur undertakers that
Daisy's brother was at once exhumed and re-buried with further pomp
and circumstance. Daisy meanwhile, feeling himself of less consequence
than the departed hero, began to mope; so to save life and reason he
was sent to us "to cheer and cherish," as the Sergeants put it.
An egotistical irascible bachelor seagull; yet his vices, and he was
made up of them, became virtues in our eyes.
The morning after his arrival he went for a solemn tour of
investigation, finally taking up his abode in the middle of the
tennis-court, as being to his mind the most salubrious spot--and from
there he ruled despotically. "That blooming bird fears neither man nor
devil," Cook was heard to mutter, after he had embedded his beak in
her ankle; and it was quite true. He so terrified Horatio, our portly
bull-dog, by pecking at his sensitive kinky tail from behind when he
was absent-mindedly lapping water from Daisy's bath, that he never
again ventured alone on to the lawn. I say "alone," for he dared once
more, emboldened by the presence of his unwilling young wife, who
accompanied him, tied by a rope to his collar.
Percy and I watched them advance from afar and waited in suspense
for the sequel. Daisy was taking a post-prandial nap inside his beer
barrel. There was a breathless hush, followed by a pandemonium of
sound, masculine and feminine cries of distress mingled with raucous
shrieks of anger, and then we saw our valiant couple in slow but
ignominious retreat. Horatio was dragging his spouse along on her
back, with legs in air and bulging eyes! What had happened in the
interim we never knew, but both Mr. and Mrs. Horatio bore marks of
battle, and they were sadder and wiser dogs for many days to come.
Percy, always deprecatingly anxious to find favour in Daisy's eyes,
tore down to the shore one morning before breakfast and returned with
a large pailful of salt water, which he laid--so to speak--at Daisy's
feet. Daisy glanced at it and at Percy with his cold grey eye, and
then stepped lightly into his fresh-water tub, which was always at
hand. Percy however, being of an unsnubbable disposition, tried again
to find a way into Daisy's heart, and this time he brought Hengist
and Horsa, two young seagulls that he had found derelict on the rocks,
hoping that he would take a paternal interest in their loneliness;
but, like his great prototype, Daisy clapped his glass to his
sightless eye, and "I'm damned if I see them," he said. But he saw
them all right at meal times, when he would whisk round suddenly as
their portion of fish was flung to them, and swiftly gobble it up!
So Daisy prospered and grew sleek and fat, and his days were long in
the land. He consented indeed to partake of our hospitality for over
a year, won many hearts, but kept his own intact, until the following
spring, when a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love;
then be preened his white waistcoat and sallied forth.
***
Did I say he was a bachelor? The last we beard of him was from a
fisherman friend who, when in search of sea-birds' eggs, saw and
recognised our Daisy by the fierceness of his one eye. He was
reluctantly taking his turn on the family egg while Mrs. Daisy
stretched and titivated herself after her domestic labours.
Does he sometimes, we wonder, think regretfully of his celibate days
and the beer barrel, where he lived _en garcon?_
* * * * *
"Widower, 35, abstainer, would like to correspond with
respectable widow, or otherwise, view matrimony."--_Provincial
Paper_.
He seems an easy-going fellow who would make any woman happy.
* * * * *
DEMOBILISED DAYDREAMS.
At 10 A.M. or so (in bed,
With lowered blinds and curtains drawn),
There wander lightly through my head
Memories of ruddy dawn--
A thing I never could have said
Before we warred against the Hun,
For then, although I may have heard
That this phenomenon occurred,
I had no notion how the thing was done.
A stranger to the birth of day,
How many have I watched since then!
At least a thousand, I should say
(It seems to me like ten);
On Salisbury Plain, austere and grey,
Breaking night's gloom and deepening mine,
When, crawling forth, I used to see
Stonehenge all shaken visibly
By the rude Sergeant's bellow, "_Rise and shine!_"
Gilding the foam of distant seas--
And humbly then I bowed my neck
And sank forlornly to my knees
To swab the blooming deck;
A wealth of flaming pageantries,
When, in a dusty Indian fort,
I went to early morning jerks,[A]
Cursing the sun and all his works
And dripping perspiration by the quart;
In Egypt, too, a pallid glow
Through swirls of desolating dust--
There often have I watched it grow,
Fed up enough to bust;
In Palestine, uncertain, slow
(While standing-to, with drowsy eyes),
Herald of shells and, what was worse,
Waking the ancient Eastern curse,
A hundred thousand million ravenous flies.
Sombre, inspiring, radiant, chill,
Mysterious, wild, inert, ablaze,
A thousand times on plain and hill
The dawn has held my gaze;
Idly I dream of it, until
A sterner mood invades my brain
And I grow resolute. Here and now
I register a mighty vow
_Never_ to see the beastly thing again.
ONE OF THE _PUNCH_ BRIGADE.
[Footnote A: Physical training.]
* * * * *
"The Home Secretary gives notice that summer time will be
brought into force this year on the morning of Sunday, March
30, and will continue until the night of Sunday-Monday;
September 28129."--_Scots Paper_.
By which time, it is confidently expected, the Peace Conference will
be over.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Road Sweeper_. "WOT'S BECOME O' BILL? I 'AVEN'T SEEN
'IM FOR MONTHS."
_Female ditto_. "BILL! WHY, 'AVEN'T YOU HEARD? 'E'S PROMOTED. 'E'S ON
THE BINS."]
* * * * *
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
_(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)_
MR. H.M. HYNDMAN brings to _Clemenceau: the Man and his Time_ (GRANT
RICHARDS) a specialised knowledge of the intricacies of French
politics, personal friendship with his subject and a sympathy not
discounted by profound differences of opinion. Here is one veteran
fighting man writing a brilliant (I don't use the word as a _cliche_)
chronicle and commentary of the battles of another, battles which
cover the same period and were fought broadly for the same causes. But
the French Radical extremist could never see his way to subscribe
to the Socialist creed. His stalwart individualism, in part
temperamental, was also as a political working faith the result of a
distrust of logic divorced from the experience and responsibility
of actual administration. Somewhat similarly the English Socialist
refused to let logic press him into the premature Internationalism of
so many of his associates, nor did he share their trust, so ruthlessly
betrayed, in German Social Democracy as having either the power or
the serious intention of thwarting German Imperialism. If a man's
achievement be rightly gauged by the difficulties he has overcome,
then M. CLEMENCEAU, called unwillingly and unwilling at the most
desperate crisis of the destiny of a distracted and dispirited France
hammered by the enemy's legions and with the pass ready for sale by
false friends, may well justify Mr. HYNDMAN'S verdict on him as _the_
statesman of the Great War. The man who came into the War a mere Tiger
will go out of it an authentic Lion.
* * * * *
"Miss BERTA RUCK" is among the few writers from whom I can really
enjoy stories about the War. She has an engaging way with her that can
turn even that (at least the more endurable aspects of it) to favour
and prettiness. And in _The Land Girl's Love Story_ (HODDER AND
STOUGHTON), a theme after her own heart, she has given us what is, I
think, her best achievement so far. It is an excellent slight tale
of two heroines who took their patriotic turn at the work of the land
army on a Welsh farm, and the adventures, agricultural and (of course)
amorous, that befell them there. It is all the best-humoured affair
imaginable, refreshingly full of country airs and brisked up with a
fine flavour of romance. "Miss RUCK" has the neatest hand for this
kind of thing; she permits no loose ends to the series of love-knots
that she ties so amusingly. So the finish of the comedy deserves the
epithet "engaging" in more senses than one: with a Jack to every Jill,
and the harvest moon (as promised in the cover picture) beaming upon
all, the couples paired off to everyone's entire satisfaction. A tale
that will be safe for a _succes fou_ with all who have worn the
smock and the green armlet; while I can well imagine that ladies
less fortunate may find their enjoyment of it tempered with a certain
wistfulness.
* * * * *
_German Days_ (MURRAY) is a plain tale of everyday life in Germany
before the War, with just those gaps in it which would naturally occur
in the narrative of any one observer who also hadn't been aware at the
time that she was observing. "A POLISH GIRL (C.B.)" has written
this account with an engaging frankness and an apparent lack of
exaggeration which distinguish it among books of its kind. It is
largely a record of school days, and "C.B.," as the child of a Polish
Jew of good standing living in Posen, suffered slights and insults
and met with injustices which a "true German" would not have had to
endure; but she does not seem embittered. Her picture of the German at
home has not made me yearn to renew my acquaintance with him, but it
seems to explain the origin of some of his most unpleasant qualities.
Since, as "C.B." and other writers would have us know, the German
soldier was cowed by physical suffering in peace-time it is small
matter for wonder that he became a brute in war, or that the citizen,
to whom everything used to be _verboten_, has, since the bureaucracy
which regulated his smallest actions went to pieces, shown very little
ability to regulate them for himself. The terrible pact, by which
in the ten years preceding the War thousands of German women bound
themselves to combat the predominance of the landed classes, which
was making life for ordinary people a slow starvation, is one of the
things which I am induced to believe, because "C.B." has dealt so
faithfully with others of which I knew already. Of books on Germany
from within there have been very many, but there is still room for
such books as this.