Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 by Various
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Various >> Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917
Judging by the crowded state of all the myriad places of entertainment in
this city there are millions who are like them. But I couldn't help
thinking that if so much money seems really to be needed, and this Mr. LAW
is really a public benefactor, it might not be a bad idea to try to divert
some of the thousands of pounds being paid every day in London alone for
sheer amusement. Of course if England had the misfortune to be at war most
of these places would naturally be shut up.
By the way, Germans are strangely unpopular in London just now. I have
heard numbers of people, all in different places, such as the Tube and
omni-buses and tea-shops, using very strong terms about them. It has been
quite a series of coincidences.
No more for the present from
Your affectionate
LOUISA.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "NOW, BOBBY, BE A GOOD BOY AND COME AND SAY YOUR PRAYERS."
"I DON'T WANT TO."
"BUT YOU MUST, BOBBY. COME ALONG AT ONCE."
"ALL RIGHT, THEN. I SHALL PRAY FOR THE GERMANS."]
* * * * *
SONGS OF FOOD PRODUCTION.
III.
Tub-swill, tub-swill! _have_ you any tub-swill?
I will send my footman to fetch it, if I may;
For I'm hoping _all_ the restaurants and all the nicest clubs will
Give me broken victuals, if I send for them each day;
In the Park, in Piccadilly,
Down at Ascot, in the Shires,
We've been up in terms like "filly,"
"Dams" and "sires,"
"Smooths" and "wires;"
Now it's "gilts" and it's "boars"
And it's "suckers" and it's "stores"--
The terms that one acquires
Now we're keeping pigs to pay.
Hog-wash, hog-wash! _are_ you selling hog-wash
In a pretty bottle with a nice pneumatic spray?
Nevermore in perfume shall a useless little dog wash;
In my heart and boudoir precious piggy's holding sway.
Oh, indeed, it's _worse_ than silly
If a person now admires
An inedible young filly,
Dams and sires,
Smooths and wires;
For in gilts and in boars
And in suckers and in stores
Proper keenness one acquires
Now we're keeping pigs to pay.
* * * * *
"A Berlin telegram says that the Kaiser has created the Austrian
Emperor a Field-Marshal.
The material damage done was insignificant."--_Glasgow Evening Times_.
But the moral effect was tremendous.
* * * * *
"More Food.--Wanted, Partner, either sex, to increase stock open-air
pig-farm."--_Morning Paper_.
An opening for one of the Food Hogs we read so much about.
* * * * *
OXFORD REVISITED.
Last week, a prey to military duty,
I turned my lagging footsteps to the West;
I have a natural taste for scenic beauty,
And all my pent emotions may be guessed
To find myself again
At Didcot, loathliest junction of the plain.
But all things come unto the patient waiter,
"Behold!" I cried, "in yon contiguous blue
Beetle the antique spires of Alma Mater
Almost exactly as they used to do
In 1898,
When I became an undergraduate.
"O joys whereto I went as to a bridal,
With Youth's fair aureole clustering on a brow
That no amount of culture (herpecidal)
Will coax the semblance of a crop from now,
Once more I make ye mine;
There is a train that leaves at half-past nine.
"In a rude land where life among the boys is
One long glad round of cards and coffin juice,
And any sort of intellectual poise is
The constant butt of well-expressed abuse,
And it is no disgrace
To put a table-knife inside one's face,
"I have remembered picnics on the Isis,
Bonfires and bumps and BOFFIN'S cakes and tea,
Nor ever dreamed a European crisis
Would make a British soldier out of me--
The mute inglorious kind
That push the beastly war on from behind.
"But here I am" (I mused) "and quad and cloister
Are beckoning to me with the old allure;
The lovely world of Youth shall be mine oyster
Which I for one-and-ninepence can secure,
Reaching on Memory's wing
Parnassus' groves and Wisdom's fabled spring."
But oh, the facts! How doomed to disillusion
The dreams that cheat the mind's responsive eye!
Where are the undergrads in gay profusion
Whose waistcoats made melodious the High,
All the _jeunesse doree_
That shed the glamour of an elder day?
Can this be Oxford? And is that my college
That vomits khaki through its sacred gate?
Are those the schools where once I aired my knowledge
Where nurses pass and ambulances wait?
Ah! sick ones, pale of face,
I too have suffered tortures in that place!
In Tom his quad the Bloods no longer flourish;
Balliol is bare of all but mild Hindoos;
The stalwart oars that Isis used to nourish
Are in the trenches giving Fritz the Blues,
And many a stout D.D.
Is digging trenches with the V.T.C.
Why press the search when every hallowed close is
Cluttered with youthful soldiers forming fours;
While the drum stutters and the bugler blows his
Loud summons, and the hoarse bull-sergeant roars,
While almost out of view
The thrumming biplane cleaves the astonished blue?
It is a sight to stir the pulse of poet,
These splendid youths with zeal and courage fired,
But as for Private Me, M.A.--why, blow it!
The very sight of soldiers makes me tired;
Learning--detached, apart--
I sought, not War's reverberating art.
Yain search! But see! One ancient institution
Still doing business at the same old stand;
'Tis Messrs. Barclay's Bank, or I'm a Proossian,
That erst dispensed my slender cash-in-hand;
I'll borrow of their pelf
And buy some War Loan to console myself.
ALGOL.
* * * * *
THE GREAT INVESTMENT.
I am a fair man, even to Huns. When Germany pays an indemnity of
L2,000,000,000 I think we might knock off a tenner or so because the KAISER
has done so much to beautify our banks. Once they were cold cheerless
places. A suspicion of an overdraft always swept through them. Now I love
to go to the bank and see the beautiful blonde and brown and auburn heads
bent over the ledgers. If I could be quite certain that they were not
looking up the details of my account I should be perfectly happy.
Somebody told me that I could buy War Loan at 5-1/4 per cent. by borrowing
money from my bank at five per cent. This seemed to be the kind of
investment I had been looking for. I found that if I took a million on
those terms I should draw a net income of L2,500 a year. But I am a
patriot. It seemed to me that L2,500 a year was rather more than I was
worth to the nation. Was I better value than six M.P.'s? Of course I might
be worth six RAMSAY MACDONALDS. However I resolved to avoid greed and ask
for a simple hundred thousand.
So I went to my bank and said to a blue-eyed, Watteau type of beauty, "I
want to see the manager, please. Concerning an important investment in War
Loan," I added hastily, fearing lest the damsel should conclude that I
wanted an ordinary overdraft.
I was ushered into the manager's private room.
"About this War Loan," I began. "I understand that you advance money at
five per cent. to make the purchase."
"Yes, that is so," said the manager, beaming.
I leapt for joy. I had thought that there must be a catch somewhere.
"Put me down for a hundred thousand," I said.
The manager nearly fell out of his swing-chair. "My dear Sir," he gasped,
"have you any prospect of being able to save a hundred thousand during the
next year or so?"
"Am I a milk-dealer or a munition-worker?" I replied. "I should be both
surprised and gratified if I saved that sum in a year. Still I might do it,
you know. I should have to give up tobacco, of course. Or suppose relations
hitherto unknown to me died and left me handsome legacies. You are always
seeing these things in the papers. 'Baker Inherits Half-Million From Lost
Australian Uncle.'"
"A hundred," amended the manager. "Shall we say a hundred? You need not pay
a deposit. I'll give you a form."
"Where's your patriotism?" I demanded. "A hundred, you say? Well, I decline
your overdraft. Keep your ill-gotten much-grudged gain. I'll pay cash."
I left the bank sadly. I had thought of intimating to the blonde, brown and
auburn beauties that I had just put a hundred thousand in War Loan. I had
imagined their eyes gleaming at the spectacle of one-tenth of a
millionaire.
And now I can't go to the bank again. At least not till I have worked up my
balance a little above its present total, namely L2 _1s. 9d._
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Instructor_ (_to very nervous lady, who, with a view to
war-work, is inquiring about tuition_). "OF COURSE YOU WOULD BEGIN ON A
LOW-POWERED CAR, AND THEN WE SHOULD TAKE YOU IN A 40--50, AND FINISH YOU
OFF IN TRAFFIC."]
* * * * *
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks_.)
_If Wishes were Horses_ (HURST AND BLACKETT) is one of the most engaging
novels that I have met for some time. The matter of it, perhaps, is nothing
very new: a story of expanding fortunes and contracting sympathies. But the
writer, Countess BARCYNSKA, has, before all else, the inestimable gift of
making you believe in her people. All the characters are vigorously alive.
The result is that one follows with quite unusual interest the chequered
career of her central figure, _Martin Leffley_, from his introduction as a
frankly unpleasant youth, very red about the ears, "which was where he
always blushed," to the final glimpse of him, titled, an M.P., and,
incidentally, a bowed and better man, purified by the wonderful devotion of
_Rose_, the wife whom throughout the tale he has bullied and undervalued.
Nor is _Rose_ herself, with her unwavering belief in her clay idol, a less
memorable figure. Of the others, my chief affection went to _Aunt Polly_,
the kindly dealer in old clothes, who imagined the Savile to be a night
club. But, as I say, the whole cast is astonishingly real. Only once did I
fear for the story, when it seemed as though the machinations of a
super-villainous M.P. were about to lead it astray into the paths of
melodrama. But the danger proved to be brief, and the unexpected beauty and
dignity of the closing chapter would have redeemed a more serious lapse.
* * * * *
_Forced to Fight_ (HEINEMANN) is the record of a Schleswig Dane set forth
by ERICH ERICHSEN and very capably translated from the Danish by INGEBORG
LUND. It is a book that with a singular skill and with a passion that never
gets out of hand so as to convey the impression of hysterical exaggeration
lays bare the heart of a youth who was at the storming of Liege, fought in
Flanders, then on the Russian Front and again in the Argonne, whence a
shattered elbow sent him home broken and _aged_--that is what his
chronicler emphasises--not by the wound, but by the long horror and fatigue
of the successive campaigns. The poignancy of his sufferings lay in the
fact that as a Dane he went without any of the great hopes and passions
that inspired his German comrades, of whom however he speaks with no
ill-will. He took part by order in some of the "punishments" of Belgian
villages, loathing the savage cruelties of them and deeply convinced that
the rape of Belgium was an inexpiable wrong which the world will remember
to the lasting dishonour of the German name. You get an impression of the
added horror of this War for the imaginative temperamental, and some
pathetic pictures of all the suffering among simple innocent machine-driven
people on the other side, who had no will to war and no illusions as to the
splendour of world-dominion--a vision of desolate homes and countrysides
empty of all but very old men.
* * * * *
The first lines of _Still Life_ (CONSTABLE), which begins in "the night
train from the German frontier to Paris," gave me much the same impression
of impossibility (was there ever such a train?) that I should have felt
about a story that opened in the moon. But the shock of this was nothing to
some, different in character, that were to follow. Frankly, I confess that
Mr. MIDDLETON MURRY'S book has me baffled. Others perhaps may admire the
pains lavished by the author in analysing the emotions of a group of
characters whose temperaments certainly give him every opportunity for this
exercise. An impressionist, and impressionable, youth, whom I have
(reluctantly) to call hero, intrigues his unpleasant way through the plot;
first in Paris--where you may make a shrewd guess at his
pre-occupations--then in an English village, to which he has eloped with
the wife of a friend; in France again, and so on. The emotions to which
these amorous adventures expose him are handled by the author with a care
that suggests rather the naughtiness of the antique nineties than anything
belonging to these more vigorous days. I am far from suggesting that, as a
study in super-sensibility, the book lacks skill. There are indeed scenes
of almost painful cleverness. My complaint is that it is out of date, or (I
should perhaps better say) conspicuously out of harmony with the present
time. But if you hanker for these pictures of the past that is another
matter. I will merely issue a warning that you should preserve this book on
some shelf not too accessible by those who are still young enough to
overestimate its importance.
* * * * *
It was an odd experience to turn, as I did, directly from the new Haymarket
play, of which the late TOM GALLON was part author, to what I suppose was
the last story he ever wrote, _The Lady in the Black Mask_ (MILLS AND
BOON), which begins in a theatre with the heroine watching a play. It
begins, moreover, very well and excitingly; much better, I regret to add,
than it goes on. When the heroine arrived home from the theatre, the girl
whose companion she was, pleading fatigue, persuaded her to go out again to
a masked ball, wearing the dress and indeed assuming the personality of her
mistress. The two girls, _Ruth_, the heroine, and _Damia_, lived in a
gloomy house with old _Mr. Verinder_, who was _Damia's_ guardian. But when
_Ruth_ returned from the ball she found that this arrangement no longer
held good, _Verinder_ having been melodramatically stabbed during her
absence. And as no one knew, or would ever believe, that it was _Damia_ and
not herself who had remained at home you recognise a very pretty gambit of
intrigue. Unfortunately, as I said above, the tension is not quite
sustained, partly because the characters all behave in an increasingly
foolish and improbable fashion (even for tales of this genre); partly
because there is never sufficient uncertainty as to who it was (not, of
course, _Damia_) who really killed _Verinder_. Still, of its kind, as the
sort of shocker that used to be valued at a shilling, but appears, like
everything else, to have risen in price, _The Lady in the Black Mask_ is
fairly up to the average. I fancy her profits might have been greater
before the discouragement of railway travelling. That is precisely the
environment for which she is best fitted.
* * * * *
In the series of "Chap" books which is emerging from The Bodley Head I have
no doubt that _Canada Chaps_ will be welcome. I hope, however, that Mrs.
SIME will not mind my saying that the best of her tales are those which
have more to do with Canada than its "chaps." Her stories of fighting and
of fighters seem to me to have a note in them that does not ring quite
true. It is just the difference between the soldier telling his own artless
and rugged tale and someone else telling it for him with a touch of
artifice. But when the author merely uses the War as her background she
writes with real power. The straining for effect vanishes, and so little do
the later stories resemble the earlier that I should not have guessed that
they were written by the same hand. "Citoyenne Michelle" and "The King's
Gift," for instance, are true gems, and they are offered to you at the
price of paste. Nowhere will you find a better bargain for your shilling.
* * * * *
HELEN MACKAY, in _A Journal of Small Things_ (MELROSE), sets before us
with, it might seem, almost too deliberate simplicity of idiom little
scenes and remembered reflections of her days in France since the July of
the terrible year. An American to whom France has come to be her adopted
and most tenderly loved foster-country, she tells of little things, chiefly
sad little things, seen in the hospitals she served or by the wayside or in
the houses of the simple and the great, shadowed alike by the all-embracing
desolation of the War. The writer has a singular power of selecting the
significant details of an incident, and a delicate sensitiveness to beauty
and to suffering which gives distinction to this charming book. Less happy
perhaps and much less in the picture are the episodes learnt only at second
hand and suggesting the technique and unreality of the imagined short
story.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE PRICELESS PLUMBER--AN INCIDENT OF LAST WEEK'S THAW.
_Troubled Householder (writing)._ "THERE IS A SLIGHT LEAKAGE IN ONE OF OUR
WATER-PIPES. KINDLY PUT MY NAME DOWN AS A HUMBLE CANDIDATE FOR YOUR
ESTEEMED SERVICES."]
* * * * *
ANOTHER IMPENDING APOLOGY.
From a paragraph about Mr. JOHN BUCHAN:--
"It is said that he writes his novels as a cure for insomnia."--_News
of the World._
* * * * *
THE CENSOR ABROAD.
"When the High Court is sitting, the Resident Magistrate's Court is
held in a room about upteen feet long by about upteen feet
wide."--_East African Standard._
* * * * *
"CURES STOMACH TROUBLE OR MONEY BACK."--_Advt. in South African Paper._
This "Money Back" seems a new disease.
* * * * *
From an article in the _Berliner Tageblatt_ descriptive of life on the
Western Front:--
"Perhaps the sun will soon bring warm wind, and how glad one would be
of a thaw in the trenches. But then the accursed time will come again
when the whole surface of Northern France sticks to the boot of the
German soldier."--_The Times._
Our brave police must look to their laurels.