First Lieutenant. "WHAT WAS THIS MAN BEFORE HE JOINED?" Petty Officer. "OPTICIAN, SIR."
First Lieutenant. "WHAT HAD WE BETTER GIVE HIM TO DO?" Petty Officer. "THERE'S THEM PRISMATIC SPOTTING GLASSES, SIR. THE LEATHER STRAP IS BROKEN OFF THEM. HE COULD SPLICE IN A PIECE O' COD LINE."
THE poilus of France on the Western Front are brave as brave can be,
Whether they hail from rich Provence or from ruined Picardie;
It's the self-same heart from the lazy Loire and the busy banks of Seine,
Undaunted by perpetual mud or cold or gas or pain;
And all are as gay as men know how whose wealth and friends are gone,
But the gayest of all is a little white dog that came from Carcassonne.
He was brought as a pup by a Midi man to a sector along the Aisne,
But his man laid the wire one pitch-black night and never came back again.
The pup stood by with one ear down and the other a question mark,
And at times he licked his dead friend's face and at times he tried to bark,
Till the listening sentry heard the sound, and when the daylight shone
He looked abroad and cried, "Bon Guieu! C'est le poilu de Carcassonne!"
So the dead man's copains kept the dog on the strength of the company.
And whoever went short it was not the pup, though a greedy pup was he;
They gave him their choicest bits of sinje and drops of pinard too;
He was warm and safe when he crept beneath a cloak of horizon-blue;
They clipped fresh brisques in his rough white coat as the weary months dragged on,
And all the sector knows him now as le Poilu de Carcassonne.
And in return he keeps their hearts from that haunting foe, l'ennui;
He's their plaything, friend, and sentry too, and a lover of devilry;
He helps them to hunt out rats or Boches; he burrows and sniffs for mines,
And he growls when the murderous shrapnel flies screaming above the lines;
His little black nose is a-quiver with glee whenever a raid is on,
And they say with pride, "C'est la guerre elle-même, notre Poilu de Carcassonne!"
There was none more glad when they went to rest in their billet, a ruined shack,
But when they returned to the front-line trench he was just as pleased to be back;
He's the spirit of fun itself, and so when other men feel blue,
His friends remark, "Le cafard, quoi? On l'connait pas chez nous!"
So when you drink to the valiant French and the glorious fights they've won
Just raise your glass to a little white dog that came from Carcassonne.
"LOYALTY."
If you are a pernickety intellectual (soi-disant) you may really permit yourself to be faintly amused at the fiery zeal of the mystery-wrapt author of Loyalty for his (or, quite possibly, her) country's cause in this difficult hour. If you are cast in the common human mould that nowadays is seen for the glorious thing it is, you will respond to many single-minded, wholesome thoughts in the impassioned statement of his thesis. And if you happen to belong to that simple discredited breed, the English, so long overshadowed by the nimbler Britons, you may have quite a nice little private thrill of your own, a thrill of pride in your precious stone, and begin to think with seriousness of the advantages of "home rule all round" in an England-for-the-English mood, and of the value of a nationalism that is as irrational as conjugal or mother love—and as fine.
The author's hero is an Englishman of the wandering type, assistant editor on a crank paper. The play is a protracted debate in four sessions, June, 1914; July, 1914; August, 1914; September, 1916. And here the author makes his most serious mistake, the mistake made by Mr. HENRY ARTHUR JONES in his recent squib. If he had contrived his Little Navy folk, the proprietor, editor and revolving cranks as something more than mere caricatures, brands of straw prepared for his consuming bonfires, he would have strengthened, not weakened, his excellent case. He has quoted his enemies' mistakes without their excuses, their texts without their contexts. And that is a form of propaganda which can only touch the converted, or such of them as are not stirred by a sporting instinct to a certain mood of protest and a wish that the other fellow should be given a better start in the heresy hunt.
The dramatis personae, then, divide themselves into the men of straw and the right sort. Of the former you have first Sir Andrew Craig, chairman of the party in his constituency and editor of The New Standard (there were indeed altogether new standards of efficiency, mentality and hospitality in that rather imaginative newspaper office of the First Act). Mr. FISHER WHITE gave us the courtly-obstinate old man to the life (this player has a way of removing straw). In the dramatic passage in which, returning after being broken in a German prison, he relates some of the horrors of which it is good for us to be reminded, he rose to the height of his fine talent. His exquisite elocution—a remarkable feat of virtuosity—was in itself a sheer delight.
Mr. Stutchbury, the editor, pacifist and sentimental democrat, was dealt to Mr. LENNOX PAWLE. He played his hand well. There was never such an editor outside Bedlam; but Mr. PAWLE is a resourceful person and by a score of clever tricks of gesture and business made a reasonable figure of fun for our obloquy. All but broken in the end, but still claiming that he had "the larger vision" (as he certainly had the larger diameter), there was a certain dignity of pathos in his exit, a late amende by an otherwise remorseless puppet-maker. Mr. SYDNEY PAXTON as a pillar of Nonconformity offered a clever study in the unctuous-grotesque; Mr. VINCENT STERNROYD sketched a portrait of a nut-consuming impenitent disarmamentist. The author is the first, so far as I know, to give public emphasis to the queer fact of natural history that there is some connection between extreme opinions and the prominence of the Adam's apple of the holder of them—a fact on which I have often pondered.
Mr. M. MORAND, the aggressive Scots member of the election committee, inspired to great heights of insobriety by the return of his London-Scottish nephew from the Front, sounded a welcome human note, as did Mr. SAM LIVESEY, the Labour Member of the committee, shaken out of his detachment into an extreme explicitness of language by a Zeppelin raid experience. Mr. GEORGE BELLAMY'S Welsh Disestablisher and Mr. GRIFFITH HUMPHREYS' exuberant German press-agent of the pre-war period were both really shrewd studies.
Of the right sort there were but five—and one of these, the editor's secretary, at heart an honest patriot, but in fact eating the bread of shame, was perhaps not altogether of the right sort. Still he did get off his chest at last the pent-up passion of years, and very well he did it, with the help of Mr. RANDLE AYRTON, whose subtle little touches, building up a picture of a disheartened hack, were very adroit indeed.
Then there was young Henry Craig, at the beginning an undergraduate in his last term, at the end a V.C. in his last resting-place. Mr. PERCIVAL CLARKE'S was an adequate pleasant study. So also was Mr. PHILIP ANTHONY'S of a Canadian, full of strange idioms, who butted in to just the wrong corner of Fleet Street to put the editor wise about the intentions of a Germany in which he had spent his last two years. And then there was splendidly English Frank Aylett, exile returned, unspoilt by the cynicism of party and paper, whose fortune came to him just at the psychological moment, enabling him to give his proprietor notice and fight and win a by-election in the astonied man's own constituency, besides carrying off his daughter (Miss VIOLA TREE), who was the fifth of the right sort. What more plausible English hero than Mr. C. AUBREY SMITH, except that he had to talk a good deal more than seemed appropriate to his type? There was a well-managed post-election scene when he was at his best (as was the author). And all through there was good and sometimes glorious sense for those to hear who had ears.
The programme promised us about a month's interval between Acts I. and II. It was actually less than that; but if Mr. J.H. SQUIRE's musicianly orchestra had not been there to charm us we might conceivably have been bored.
"FOR SALE.—A 45 H.P., 6 cyl.—Car, touring body, fitted with every latest convenience. Exceptionally well sprung. Just purchased by owner and run under 1,000 miles. Guaranteed over 25-galls. to the mile by Agents. Rs. 11,000."—Indian Paper.
If the question were put to a company of young women, "What is the most thrilling experience you can have in a London street?" the odds are a thousand to one that they would reply that nothing could be more thrilling than to meet a famous actor in plain clothes and identify him. I am not a young woman myself, but I should be inclined to share their opinion. There is something about an actor in real life, moving along like a human being—one of us—that always stirs my pulse. It is exciting enough to see Mr. LLOYD GEORGE or Mr. ASQUITH or Sir OLIVER LODGE; but no one stirs the imagination like an actor.
That is why I still tremble a little whenever I think of my good fortune the other afternoon in the Haymarket, and why my pen shakes as I commit the adventure to paper. For I met face to face two of the most successful actors in London—at the present moment, in the world.
I was walking up the Haymarket in the rain, hoping, in spite of the new prohibitive rates, that I might see an empty cab, when I met them coming down. They were walking with a man whom I did not recognise, and, like me, were getting wet. One thinks of successful actors as riding always in taxis; but taxis are very rare nowadays, particularly in the wet, and somehow it did not seem unnatural that they should be on foot. I am glad enough that they were, or I should have missed my frisson; and others would have suffered a similar loss, for the recognition was not only on my part but on that of several passers-by, and it was instantaneous. Indeed, I heard one lady tell her companion the name of the play they are in and the extraordinary length of its run, and since she spoke loudly I thought how delightful it must be to be a theatrical celebrity and hear cordial things like that as you move about. Neither of them paid any attention, however, although their friend showed signs that the flattery had not escaped him; the two Illustrions (to coin a word) merely walked on, superior to our homage, and disappeared into Charles Street, where the stage door of His Majesty's is.
Pouring though it was, and grovelling admirer of footlight favourites as I am, somehow I never thought to offer either of them my umbrella. But then one doesn't offer an umbrella to a donkey or a camel, even though they are two of the stars of Chu Chin Chow.
From a Sinn Fein speech:—
"When Ireland was silent England did not hear her cry out."—Wicklow News-Letter.
"WHY SHOULD A RABBIT COST 2s. 3d.?
"This question from a reader induces me to postpone until next week my analysis of the high cost of onions."—Empire News.
On the principle that it is better to make sure of the rabbit before arranging about the stuffing.
"Stockholm, Tuesday.
"News from Finland shows that the Socialist leaders have lost control of the workmen, and all kinds of excesses are taking place. The present Commandant at Tornea was a sailor, the head of the passport office was a tailor, and the chief telegraphic censor a tinker."—Central News.
We miss the soldier, to say nothing of "apothecary, ploughboy, thief."
"Scholars and tragedians between them seem to have appropriated the right to keep Shakespeare's memory green. But there are other Richmonds in the field, humble Richmonds, not well read ... John of Gaunt, crying that his England 'never did nor never shall lie at the proud foot of a conqueror....'"—The Times.
The writer who thus deprived the Bastard in King John of his famous lines was, we infer, one of the "other Richmonds."
AN ELEGIAC ODE.
Queen of the palate! Universal Sweet!
Gastronomy's delectable Gioconda!
Since with submission loyally I greet
And follow out the regimen of RHONDDA,
I cannot be considered indiscreet
If I essay, but never go beyond, a
Brief elegiac tribute to a sway
By sterner needs now largely swept away.
Thy candy soothes the infant in its pram;
Thou addest mellowness to old brown sherry;
Thou glorifiest marmalade, on Cam
And Isis making breakfast-tables merry;
Thou lendest magic to the meanest jam
Compounded of the most insipid berry;
And canst convert the sourest crabs and quinces
To jellies fit for epicures and princes.
Thou charmest unalloyed, in loaf or lumps
Or crystals; brown and moist, or white and pounded;
I never was so deeply in the dumps
That, once thy fount of sweetness I had sounded,
Courage returned not; even with the mumps
I still could view with gratitude unbounded
The navigators of heroic Spain
Who found the New World—and the sugar-cane.
Sprinkled on buttered bread thou dost excite
In human boys insatiable cravings;
On Turkish (I regret to say) Delight
Thou lurest them to dissipate their savings,
Instead of banking them, or sitting tight,
Or buying useful books and good engravings;
And lastly, mixed with strawberries and cream,
Thou art more than a dish, thou art a dream.
Before necessity, that knows no ruth,
Ordained thy frugal use in tea and coffee,
Some Stoics banned thee—men who in their youth
Showed an unnatural dislike of toffee;
For sweetness charms the normal human tooth,
Sweetness inspires the singer's tenderest strophe,
Since old LUCRETIUS musically chid
The curse of life—amari aliquid.
Eau sucrée, I admit, is rather tame
Compared with beer or whisky blent with soda;
But gallant Frenchmen, experts at this game,
Commend it highly either as a coda
Or prelude to their meals, and much the same
Is sherbet, which the Gaekwar of Baroda
And other Oriental satraps quaff
In preference to ale or half-and-half.
Nor must I fail, O potent saccharin!
Thou chemic offspring of by-products coaly,
Late comer on the culinary scene,
To hail thy aid, although it may be lowly
Even compared with beet; for thou hast been
Employed in sweetening my roly-poly—
Thou whom I once regarded as a dose
And now the active rival of glucose!
But still I hear some jaundiced critic say,
Some rigid self-appointed censor morum,
"Why harp upon the pleasures of a day
When freely sweetened was each cup and jorum,
Ere stern controllers had begun to stay
The genial outflow of the fons leporum?
Now sugar's scarce, and we must do without it,
Why let regretful fancy play about it?"
True, yet it greatly goes against the grain,
Unless one has the patience of Ulysses,
Wholly and resolutely to refrain
From dwelling on the memory of past blisses;
Forbidden fruits allure the strong and sane;
Joys loved but lost are what one chiefly misses;
This is my best excuse if I deplore
"So sad, so sweet, the days that are no more."
SCENE: At "The Plough and Horses."
"You seen Parson lately, George?"
"Not lately I ain't, Luther."
"Not since 'is 'taters be out o' ground?"
"No. Finest crop in village, some do say."
"That be right—sev'ral ton of 'em there be."
"What to goodness do 'e want 'em all for, then? 'Im an' 's wife an' a maid 'll never eat all them 'taters."
"I'll tell you what 'e says to me, for 'appen 'e'll say it to you, George, when 'e comes acrost you next. 'E says to me, 'I've growed as many potatoes as I've had strength to grow, an' they've prospered exceedin'ly,' 'e says, 'thank God! So if any deservin' folk in my parish gets through wi' their own crop an' wants more later on they 'as only to come to me, for I've growed more 'an my 'ouse'old 'll eat if they was to eat all day.'"
"'E be proud o' that?"
"Fine an' proud 'e be."
"An' yet it be some'at unfort'nate too. For all of us as is left in this 'ere parish 'as growed as many 'taters as they'll be like to need, same as 'e. So I don't see nought but disappointment for Parson an' a lot o' good 'taters lyin' to rot in their pies."
"Some there be too fond o' Parson to let that 'appen. Me an' my wife be sendin' few of ours to London ev'ry week or so. So in due season we shall be free to go to Parson an' 'elp 'im through wi' 'is, same as 'e wants us to. I 'ears as others is doin' some'at the same as us—fear is as too many'll tumble to the idea, which is why I'd 'ave you keep it fro' goin' further, George."
"Silent as th' grave I'll be. So you're givin' your 'taters 'way to please Parson? Yet I do allus say as 'taters what a man grows wi' sweat of 'is own brow do beat all others in t' eatin'."
"That may be; but us can't afford to be so mighty pernickerty in time o' war. Nor we ain't givin' nothin 'way in manner o' speakin'. Fair market price they gives for 'em in London. So it be somethin' in 'and in these 'ard times as well as savin' Parson from a bitter disappointment what 'e ain't done nothin' to deserve, so far as I can see."
"Two organ grinders, aged 23 and 16, were taken to Charing Cross Hospital to-day with bad injuries and severe shock, the result of a barrel organ getting out of control in Rosebery-avenue."—Evening Paper.
They should try a less dangerous instrument next time.
"'Seed potatoes' means potatoes grown in Scotland or Ireland in the year 1917, or grown in England or Wales in the year 1917 from seed grown in Scotland or Ireland in the year 1916, which will pass through a riddle having a 1-5/8-in. mesh, and will not pass through a riddle having a 1-5/8-in. mesh."—Journal of the Board of Agriculture.
We ourselves cannot get through any riddle of this kind.
Sergeant (instructing squad of volunteers in physical drill). "THIS 'ERE HEXERCISE IS INTENDED TO 'ARDEN THE MUSCLES OF THE STUMMICK AND MAKE IT HIMPERVIOUS TO GERMAN BULLETS HIN CASE OF HINVASION."
(By Mr, Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
It is difficult within the ordinary limits of a review in these columns to say all that one feels or even to express adequately one's gratitude after reading the two volumes of Lord MORLEY'S generous and delightful Recollections (MACMILLAN). I seem to have been sitting with him in a large and comfortable library while the great Viscount rolled me out his mind, now breaking out into a glowing eulogy of GEORGE MEREDITH, JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN or LESLIE STEPHEN, or again dashing off with a few firm and skilful strokes a portrait of JOHN MILL or HERBERT SPENCER, or some other intellectual giant of that nineteenth century which Lord MORLEY nobly defends and of which he himself was grande decus columenque. The book is crammed with passages that arouse and maintain pleasure in the reader and clamour for quotation on the part of the reviewer. "Meredith," we are told, "who did not know Mill in person, once spoke to me of him, with the confident intuition proper to imaginative genius, as partaking of the Spinster. Disraeli, when Mill made an early speech in Parliament, raised his eye-glass and murmured to a neighbour on the bench, 'Ah, the Finishing Governess.'" Or we are introduced to SPENCER at MILL'S table: "The host said to him at dessert that Grote, who was present, would like to hear him explain one or more of his views about the equilibration of molecules in some relation or other. Spencer, after an instant of good-natured hesitation, complied with unbroken fluency for a quarter-of-an-hour or more. Grote followed every word intently, and in the end expressed himself as well satisfied. Mill, as we moved off into the drawing-room, declared to me his admiration of a wonderful piece of lucid exposition. Fawcett, in a whisper, asked me if I understood a word of it, for he did not. Luckily I had no time to answer." Or again: "Another contributor [to The Saturday Review] was the important man who became Lord SALISBURY. He and I were alone together in the editorial anteroom every Tuesday morning, awaiting our commissions, but he too had a talent for silence, and we exchanged no words, either now or on any future occasion." How charming a picture is this of two shy British publicists maintaining towards one another, against every possible discouragement, an inviolable silence. Not even the weather could tempt them to break it. Yet the great characteristic of this book is the large-hearted tolerance of comment and judgment which makes it emphatically a friendly book. As such I commend it with all the warmth in my power.
For her new story, Missing (COLLINS), Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD has used her knowledge, already proved elsewhere, of two settings, the English Lakes and a Base Hospital somewhere in France. Also perhaps her knowledge of human nature, though I like to think that there are not many elder sisters so calculatingly callous as Bridget. The bother about her was that she sadly wanted her attractive younger sister to marry a sufficient establishment, not, I fear, from wholly altruistic motives. So she was not altogether sorry when the impecunious soldier-husband, whom Nelly had personally preferred, was reported missing, thus leaving that to chance once again open. Then, just as her plans seemed to be prospering, word came secretly to her that there was a man shattered and with memory lost in a base hospital who might possibly be the brother-in-law whom she so emphatically didn't want. What happens upon this you shall find out for yourself. Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD, as you will notice, has no fear of a dramatic, even melodramatic, situation; handles it, indeed, with a skill that the most popular might envy. Thence onwards the story, perhaps a trifle slow in starting, gathers force. The two visits to the camp at X—— (a very thin disguise for a place that no Englishman of our time will ever forget) are admirably vivid; the last chapters especially being as moving as anything that Mrs. WARD has given us, whether in her popular, profound or propagandist manner.
Lately, Mr. E.F. BENSON seems to have been devoting himself almost wholly to chronicling the short and simple annals of the middle-aged. With one exception, all his recent protagonists have been, if not exactly in the sere and yellow, at least ripely mature. So that such a title as that of his latest novel, An Autumn Solving (COLLINS), produced in me rather a feeling of familiar expectancy than of surprise. Also when the wrapper artist clothes a volume with a picture of an elderly gentleman obviously giving up an attractive young woman of perhaps one-third his years it is idle to pretend that the contents retain all the thrill of the unforeseen. Having said so much, I can let myself go in praise (as how often before) of those qualities of insight and gently sub-acid humour that make a BENSON novel an interlude of pure enjoyment to the "jaded reviewer." In case the indiscreet cover may happily have been removed before the volume reaches your hands, I do not propose to give away the plot in any detail. The autumn sowing of course produces a crop not exactly of wild oats, but of romantic tares that springs in the hitherto barren heart of one Keeling, prosperous tradesman, husband, father, mayor, public benefactor and baronet, by reason of the too sympathetic damsel who types his letters and catalogues his library. That library shows Mr. BENSON'S genius; without it I should hardly have been able to believe in the subsequent happenings, but, given this "secret garden," all the tragedy is explained. I have left myself no space in which to do justice to some admirable characterization. Keeling's wife is worthy of a place in the author's long gallery of woolly-witted matrons; while in Silverdale he has given a study of clerical futility and egotism almost savage in its detestability, a portrait at which one laughs and shudders together. Of course the book will have, and deserve, a huge welcome.
The union of scholarship and sympathy, enthusiasm and eloquence, is rare; yet these qualities are to be found in perfect harmony in the stately volume on the poets' poet which has just been published under the style, on the cover, Life of John Keats, and on the title-page, John Keats, His Life and Poetry, His Friends, Critics and After-Fame (MACMILLAN)—a volume upon which Sir SIDNEY COLVIN has been engaged ever since his retirement from the Print Room of the British Museum, and may be said to have been preparing to write all his days, ever since, as a boy, he first opened the "magic casement." A book representing so long and ardent a devotion, and written by one whose loyalties have always been so cordially sustained and acknowledged, could not but glow; and it is its warmth of feeling which, to my mind, peculiarly marks this very distinguished work. It is more than a life; it is a "companion" to KEATS so complete and understanding that one can with confidence apply to it the abused word, "definitive." Critical essays on the poet no doubt will continue to appear, but this is the last biographical monument likely to be raised to him.
Your enjoyment of The Head of the Family (METHUEN) may in a measure depend upon your capacity to appreciate William Linkhorn and the glory of his "great flaming beard." To me, unhappily, William was an uncouth rustic, just that and very little else; but he possessed some mysterious attraction for women; so, at any rate, Mrs. HENRY DUDENEY tells me, though she does not explain to my satisfaction what it was. Phoebe-Louisa married him partly because she wanted a man to help in her greengrocery; but what charm he had for her soon waned, and she smote hard when she caught him philandering with Beausire Fillery. It was all the lady's fault; William had, so to speak, only to wave his beard and she was at his feet. But if the hirsute feature of this story leaves me cold it is easy enough to enjoy and admire the rest. The Firebraces, spoken of here as "The Family," are most admirably drawn. Never has the condescension of county people to those less exalted in birth been described with more delightful irony. True that some of the Firebraces kicked over the traces and married whom they listed, but the family as a whole was rooted deep enough to stand shocks which would have devastated people of less assured position. The scenes of the story are laid in and around Lewes, a part of England dear to Mrs. DUDENEY'S heart, and of which she writes with real comprehension and devotion.
By a self-denying ordinance Mr. Punch declines, as a general rule, to review in these columns the work of his Staff. But he may permit himself to announce to all lovers of the gay humour of "A.A.M." that Messrs. HODDER AND STOUGHTON have just brought out a new novel, Once on a Time, by Mr. ALAN A. MILNE, with illustrations by Mr. H. M. BROCK.
A CONSOLING THOUGHT.
Belated Traveller (surprised by a bull when taking a short cut to the station). "BY JOVE! I BELIEVE I SHALL CATCH THAT TRAIN AFTER ALL."
"Alexander had his 'Plutarch' always under his pillow."—British Weekly.
This must have been a very early edition.
"Colombo is suffering from an attack of rabies and there have been 38 cases reported so far. In the first six months of the year 1,300 days were destroyed."—Singapore Free Press.
Let us hope that every day had its dog.