PUNCH,
OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

Vol. 146.

February 11, 1914.

CHARIVARIA.

Sir Edward Grey is to accompany the King on his visit to Paris in April next. Nobody will grudge the Foreign Minister this little treat, which he has thoroughly well earned.

According to The Express the South African police discovered an elaborate plot for kidnapping all the Ministers as a preliminary to declaring a Labour Republic. In Labour circles, however, it is declared that the scheme was drawn up for a joke. To this the South African Government will no doubt retort that the kidnapping of the Labour leaders was also a joke—and so the whole matter will end in genial laughter.

Speaking at Toronto, ex-President Taft stated that the world would have been much worse off without England. We believe that this is so. Without England there might have been no American nation to speak of.

Sir Edward Grey remarked at Manchester that at "the time when we built the first Dreadnoughts Dreadnoughts were in the air." So our backwardness in naval aviation is no new thing.

An attempt is to be made to raise thirteen French warships which were sunk when the English and Dutch fleets routed the French off Cape La Hogue. It is feared in nervous quarters that this may be used by the Germans as an excuse for further increasing their fleet.

Although it is frequently stated that our army is fit to cope with the army of any Foreign Power it is evident that the War Office itself is not quite satisfied, and reforms are instituted from time to time. For instance last week it was officially announced that the title of Deputy-Adjutant-General, Royal Marines, had been altered to Adjutant-General, Royal Marines.

"Arising out of" Kid Lewis's victory last week over Paul Til, it is the opinion among a good many Germans that the French Government, being determined that the Entente should not be imperilled, decided to send over a French boxer whom an Englishman could defeat.

Letchworth Garden City is now considered large enough to possess its own police court, and the Herts County Council has sanctioned its erection. Four Letchworth residents have been made J.P.'s, and it is now up to the residue to supply sufficient criminals to make the venture a success.

Last week, in the City of London Court, a man was ordered to pay £15 damages and costs for pouring a basin of thick ox-tail soup over another man. We are glad that this action has been held to be illegal, as thick ox-tail is such nasty sticky stuff.

Meanwhile what the law is as to clear soup is a point which still remains to be tested.

According to figures published in our bright little contemporary, Fire, property amounting to £359,875 was destroyed by fire in Great Britain during the past year. This seems to us more than enough, but it is not easy to satisfy a militant suffragette.

Mr. "Mark Allerton" has suggested that London ought to have a special golf course for beginners. If it could be arranged for spectators to be admitted at a moderate charge we believe this might become one of the most successful places of amusement in the Metropolis.

A suggestion that school children shall be taken to museums, as a reward for good school work, has been made by Lord Sudeley. This is scarcely a new idea. We remember that when we were at school there was a feeling that the very good boys ought to be in a museum.

We have been favoured with the sight of a letter from a money-lender, in which the following remarkable passage occurs:—"The above terms are for short periods, to be repaid as mutually agreed upon before the advance is made." The italics are ours, but the proleptic idea is a happy invention of the author himself.

"Spring in the Air."

Daily Mail.

We are sorry not to oblige our contemporary, but advancing years have taken something from our resiliency.

Another Impending Apology.

"Dr. Glover, in giving up the Editorship of this most valuable periodical, has earned the grateful thanks of the whole Diocese."

Chichester Diocesan Gazette.

"A ridiculous fad that some society ladies are adopting at the present time is not to place any month on the date of their correspondence, simply giving the day of the year. Thus to-day will be marked '34, 1914.' This is not very difficult, but when it comes to, say, '271, 14,' it will need more than a little calculation to discover the actual date."

Pall Mall Gazette (Feb. 4th).

Even "to-day" is too difficult for our contemporary.

"Potatoes, Potateos."

Advt. in "Bedale Chronicle" (its full title being "Bedale, Leyburn and Hawes Chronicle," but that would make the name of the paper longer than the quotation from it—always a mistake.)

We don't care for the second helping.

"'Ha! ha!' the others laugh in their native tongue."—Evening Dispatch.

You should hear us gargle in German.

The Editor of Punch has reproved his Dramatic Critic for referring to It, in The Darling of the Gods, as "a precocious babe." He is assured that Mr. Burtie, who plays this neutral part, "has seen some five-and-twenty summers, and has advanced intellectual views about most things." Mr. Punch's Dramatic Critic has been instructed to "give him double bowing" by way of deferential compensation.

BOWLES WITHOUT A BIAS.

[With the author's congratulations to "Cap'n" Tommy Bowles on the appearance of his new quarterly review, The Candid, whose declared aim is "to deal with Public Affairs faithfully and frankly ... and without Party bias." Among its contents are articles on "The New Corruption: The Caucus and the Sale of Honours," and "An Opposition Impotent."]

O. S.

THE CABINET MEETS.

Mr. Asquith. Perhaps the most important point before us, now that the Naval Estimates are settled satisfactorily, is the question how we're to get through the Session. The Labour Party seems discontented.

Mr. Harcourt (airily). I like talking over their denunciations with them as they walk through the lobby with us afterwards.

Mr. Asquith. Yes, I agree that their altitude is not of overwhelming importance. Oh, by the way, I have had an interview with Mr. Redmond. He is pleased to say that at present he is favourably disposed to us.

All (except Lord Crewe). That's all right.

Lord Crewe. H'm.

Mr. John Burns. I——

Mr. Asquith. Pardon me if I interrupt, but there is a bad feeling in the country. A paper known as The Spectator even suggests the impeachment of the Government.

Mr. Lloyd George. I am not surprised. Unprincipled attacks are often made on me by political muckrakers. I sometimes think that I shall give up politics.

Lord Crewe. H'm.

Mr. Birrell. And suggestions are made that Ministers should be hanged in Downing Street. Now in Dublin one allows a certain latitude, but in Downing Street!

Mr. McKenna. I have consulted the police authorities on the point. They inform me that the lamp-posts would only bear an exceedingly light weight.

Lord Haldane. That is most reassuring.

Colonel Seeley. There's another threat. They talk of the Lords throwing out the Army Bill.

Mr. Lloyd George. Good—a saving of thirty (or is it fifty?) millions—a great democratic Budget—and an election-winning cry, "The Lords destroy the Army."

Lord Crewe. H'm.

Colonel Seeley. But we need the Army.

Mr. Lloyd George. What for? Its elimination would be a great moral example to Germany. Some nation must take the lead in the peace movement.

Mr. Churchill. The third great election-winner! I suppose National Insurance and Land go back to the stable.

Mr. Burns. I——

Mr. Birrell (hastily). But there's Ulster. What about Ulster?

Mr. Churchill. The solution is simple. We revive the Heptarchy.

Mr. Lloyd George. The Heptarchy was a Saxon institution. It makes no appeal to the ardent, fervid intensely religious Celt.

Lord Crewe. H'm.

Mr. Burns. I——

Mr. Harcourt (interrupting). But what are we to do about Ulster?

Mr. Asquith. We must await the reply to our offer.

Mr. Birrell. But have we made an offer? I said we had, but have we?

Mr. McKenna. (acutely). We might await a reply to our tentative offer of an offer.

Mr. Asquith. Good, McKenna, very good. I appreciate the delicate distinction.

Lord Haldane (aside to Lord Morley). Had McKenna been caught young and forcibly educated, he would have made a metaphysician.

Mr. Asquith. We have not yet considered whether anything can be done to remedy the temporary unpopularity of the Government.

Colonel Seeley. Suppose Hobhouse resigned. (A hum of approval.)

Mr. Asquith. Say, rather, accepted a lofty Imperial post.

Mr. Hobhouse. And made room for Lloyd George's Man Friday! It would mean a by-election in Bethnal Green, where he comes from. (Consternation.)

Mr. Burns. I——

Mr. Asquith (suddenly). I accept your resignation with great regret, Burns.

Mr. Burns (indignantly). I was about to say that under no circumstances would I resign.

Mr. Asquith (sadly). Pardon me. I thought you were anxious for leisure to complete your autobiography. Well, if there are no resignations, I think we have ended the business of the day.

A CLEAN SLATE.

THE CLUB MUSIC HALL.

The Royal Automobile Club having decided to enter into serious competition with the Music Halls in order to encourage active membership, it is rumoured that one or two other clubs are determined not to be left behind, and the following announcements may be expected shortly:—

PATHÉNAEUM CLUB.

Notice to Bishops-Elect.

Every Evening at 8 and Matinées (Weds. and Sats.) at 2.30:

"SHOULD A WOMAN CONFESS?"

Kinoplastieon drama by The Dean of Tooting.

Evenings at 10:

"The Sarum Lily" in her marvellous Ecclesiastical Dances.

THE UNITED DIVERSITIES CLUB.

Every Afternoon at 2.30 and Every Evening at 9:

Grand Co-operative Concert and Variety Entertainment.

Davy Lloyd in His Great Land Act, with Troupe of Performing Scotch Woodcocks.

The Retrograde.

"He wanted to see the town grow larger and the dates grow less."

Birmingham Daily Post.

"Come where the dates grow smaller!"

A KEY TO CUBISM.

The chief exponent of "the new geometric art" explains the whole movement in the following passage, as reproduced in The Observer:—

"Primitive space has entered into us, as it were.... Against that space within us, as against the space that appalled the savage from without, we erect always more hard and logical images.... All brute material, animate and inanimate, of earth, becomes an organism to confront the soul. Formerly the soul as a simple figure, like a ballet, faced the environing vagueness.

"Appearance then, at present, becomes a dyke around the invision from within. And, as a consequence even of this, the appearance, as it is seen in art to-day, tends to be more removed from everyday objective reality than at any former period of art. A new religion is being built up, girder by girder, around the vague spirit. Space, the physical space of savage shyness, is now on our side."

The comment of the writer in The Observer runs thus: "This, at any rate, is the language of people who know what they are about."

Mr. Punch, being a little fearful lest the average reader of the above passage may not share this knowledge of "what they are about," ventures to add his own views on Cubism, confident that even those who disagree will applaud his clarity.

From Raphael until Pceszy Turgidoff (the brilliant young Slav whose canvas has recently been acquired by the Royal Geological Museum) all true artists have striven to adumbrate the eternal conflict between the morbid pathology of Realism and the poignant simplicity of Nihilism. In other and shorter words, chaos must ever be on the side of the angels. But, until the advent of the new Truth, the whole mission of art had trickled into a very delta of arid sentiment. The critic could walk all the galleries of Europe and find nothing to lighten his melancholy until he entered one of those caverns of earliest man and stood in ecstatic reverence before the incomparable masterpieces wherein the first of the Futurists created (with perfect parsimony of a sharpened flint) Man, not as he is to his own dull eye, but Man as he is to the inner retina of the universe. Man, the simple triangle on two stilts, the creature on one plane and of one dimension, an outline without entity, a nothingness staring, faceless, at the nothingness which baffles his soul.

Emotion, idealism, beauty—these have been always the evil spirits that have fettered art. The new art has so exorcised them that they have fled from it with demoniac cries. Pulziacco's splendid rhomboid, "Cleopatra"; Weber-Damm's tender parallelograms, "The Daughters of James Bowles, Esq., J.P"; Todwarden Jones's rectilineal wizardry, "A Basket of Oranges"; and Arabella Machicu's triumph of astigmatism, "The Revolving Bookcase," are examples of this conquest of the inner retina over the brutal insistences of form and matter.

Of still deeper significance is that terribly sad picture of Philip Martini, "The Mumpers: a Group at Lloyds." Nothing is more illustrative of the courage demanded for the struggle of the new art against convention than this poignant work, wherein, true to the verities, the artist has confounded realism in its own domain by the unrecognisable faces of his sitters.

Let us sum up the new movement so clearly that the dullest will apprehend. Surely the inhibition of all apperceptions in art is correlative to the inner ego? That simple postulate granted, it will be unquestioned that the true focus of vision should co-ordinate the invisible. Faith we must have, or we faint by the roadside of the intelligible. The only altruism is that which can defy the cold brutality of things as they are, and convince us with things as they are not. Thus alone can the contemplation of art bring us back to primal infelicity, and restore in our souls the perfect vacuity of infants and cows. Thus only can we achieve the suffusion of vision of the happy inebriate.

THE TROPHY.

Two quotations from The Publisher's Circular:—

"Mr. Robert Bowes (who by the way is in his sixty-seventh year)...."

"Mr. Robert Bowes is in his seventy-ninth year.... But then he is much younger than many older men."

So are all of us. Mr. Bowes's distinction is in being twelve years younger than himself.

ALL'S WELL THAT BEGINS WELL.

THE LESSON.

I was showing Celia a few fancy strokes on the billiard table. The other members of the house-party were in the library, learning their parts for some approaching theatricals—that is to say, they were sitting round the fire and saying to each other, "This is a rotten play." We had been offered the position of auditors to several of the company, but we were going to see Parsifal on the next day, and I was afraid that the constant excitement would be bad for Celia.

"Why don't you ask me to play with you?" she asked. "You never teach mo anything."

"There's ingratitude. Why, I gave you your first lesson at golf only last Thursday."

"So you did. I know golf. Now show me billiards."

I looked at my watch.

"We've only twenty minutes. I'll play you thirty up."

"Right-o... What do you give me—a ball or a bisque or what?"

"I can't spare you a ball, I'm afraid. I shall want all three when I get going. You may have fifteen start, and I'll tell you what to do."

"Well, what do I do first?"

"Select a cue."

She went over to the rack and inspected them.

"This seems a nice brown one. Now then, you begin."

"Celia, you've got the half-butt. Put it back and take a younger one."

"I thought it seemed taller than the others." She took another. "How's this? Good. Then off you go."

"Will you be spot or plain?" I said, chalking my cue.

"Does it matter?"

"Not very much. They're both the same shape."

"Then what's the difference?"

"Well, one is more spotted than the other."

"Then I'll be less spotted."

I went to the table.

"I think," I said, "I'll try and screw in off the red." (I did this once by accident and I've always wanted to do it again). "Or perhaps," I corrected myself, as soon as the ball had left me, "I had better give a safety miss."

I did. My ball avoided the red and came swiftly back into the left-hand bottom pocket.

"That's three to you," I said without enthusiasm.

Celia seemed surprised.

"But I haven't begun yet," she said. "Well, I suppose you know the rules, but it seems funny. What would you like me to do?"

"Well, there isn't much on. You'd better just try and hit the red ball."

"Right." She leant over the table and took long and careful aim. I held my breath.... Still she aimed.... Then, keeping her chin on the cue, she slowly turned her head and looked up at me with a thoughtful expression.

"Oughtn't there to be three balls on the table?" she said, wrinkling her forehead.

"No," I answered shortly.

"But why not?"

"Because I went down by mistake."

"But you said that when you got going, you wanted—I can't argue bending down like this." She raised herself slowly. "You said—Oh, all right, I expect you know. Anyhow, I have scored some already, haven't I?"

"Yes. You're eighteen to my nothing."

"Yes. Well, now I shall have to aim all over again." She bent slowly over her cue. "Does it matter where I hit the red?"

"Not much. As long as you hit it on the red part."

She hit it hard on the side, and both balls came into baulk.

"Too good," I said.

"Does either of us get anything for it?"

"No." The red and the white were close together, and I went up the table and down again on the off-chance of a cannon. I misjudged it, however.

"That's three to you," I said stiffly, as I took my ball out of the right-hand bottom pocket. "Twenty-one to nothing."

"Funny how I'm doing all the scoring," said Celia meditatively. "And I've practically never played before. I shall hit the red hard now and see what happens to it."

She hit, and the red coursed madly about the table, coming to rest near the top right-hand pocket and close to the cushion. With a forcing shot I could get in.

"This will want a lot of chalk," I said pleasantly to Celia, and gave it plenty. Then I let fly....

"Why did that want a lot of chalk?" said Celia with interest.

I went to the fireplace and picked my ball out of the fender.

"That's three to you," I said coldly. "Twenty-four to nothing."

"Am I winning?"

"You're leading," I explained. "Only, you see, I may make a twenty at any moment."

"Oh!" She thought this over. "Well, I may make my three at any moment."

She chalked her cue and went over to her ball.

"What shall I do?"

"Just touch the red on the right-hand side," I said, "and you'll go into the pocket."

"The right-hand side? Do you mean my right-hand side, or the ball's?"

"The right-hand side of the ball, of course; that is to say, the side opposite your right hand."

"But its right-hand side is opposite my left hand, if the ball is facing this way."

"Take it," I said wearily, "that the ball has its back to you."

"How rude of it," said Celia, and hit it on the left-hand side, and sank it. "Was that what you meant?"

"Well ... it's another way of doing it."

"I thought it was. What do I give you for that?"

"You get three."

"Oh, I thought the other person always got the marks. I know the last three times——"

"Go on," I said freezingly. "You have another turn."

"Oh, is it like rounders?"

"Something. Go on, there's a dear. It's getting late."

She went, and left the red over the middle pocket.

"A-ha!" I said. I found a nice place in the "D" for my ball. "Now then. This is the Gray stroke, you know."

I suppose I was nervous. Anyhow, I just nicked the red ball gently on the wrong side and left it hanging over the pocket. The white travelled slowly up the table.

"Why is that called the grey stroke?" asked Celia with great interest.

"Because once, when Sir Edward Grey was playing the German Ambassador—but it's rather a long story. I'll tell you another time."

"Oh! Well, anyhow, did the German Ambassador got anything for it?"

"No."

"Then I suppose I don't. Bother."

"But you've only got to knock the red in for game."

"Oh!.... There, what's that?"

"That's a miscue. I get one."

"Oh!.... Oh well," she added magnanimously, "I'm glad you've started scoring. It will make it more interesting for you."

There was just room to creep in off the red, leaving it still over the pocket. With Celia's ball nicely over the other pocket there was a chance of my twenty break. "Let's see," I said, "how many do I want?"

"Twenty-nine," replied Celia.

"Ah," I said.... and I crept in.

"That's three to you," I said icily. "Game."

A. A. M.

OUR READY WRITERS.

The astonishing rapidity attained by Mr. Walter Melville in the composition of his plays as revealed in the evidence given in court last week has suggested an appeal to other leading authors for information as to their rate of production. We append the results herewith:—

Mr. Max Pemberton observed that the speed of composition varied with the literary quality of the work produced. Personally he found that by far the most laborious and protracted mental effort was entailed in the writing of Revues. He had calculated that the amount of brain force he had spent on his last masterpiece was fully as large as that expended by Gibbon on his monumental History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In evidence of the strain he added the following interesting statistics. He had worn out thirteen of the costliest gold-nibbed fountain pens; seven expert typists had been so exhausted that they had to undergo a rest-cure; and finally he himself had consumed no fewer than nineteen seven-and-sixpenny bottles of Blunker's Sanguinogen.

Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence, Bart., poohpoohed the notion that the moderns were more rapid producers than their forefathers. As the result of his investigations he had conclusively proved that Bacon was an infinitely more rapid producer than any living author. His time-table worked out as follows. Bacon wrote Chaucer in a little less than three weeks. He completed the Faerie Queene in one sitting, allowing for refreshments, of seventy-four hours. The Plays of Shakspeare occupied him from first to last not more than ten months. Montaigne was dashed off in just a fortnight, while Beaumont and Fletcher, Marlowe, Greene, Webster and Ben Jonson took him exactly 37-1/2 days. Next to Shakspeare's Plays the Divina Commedia was his most protracted effort, costing him nearly four months of unremitting labour. Sir Edwin added in pathetic proof of the degeneracy of the moderns that his own famous pamphlet had taken him twice as long to compose as Chaucer had taken Bacon.

Mr. Hall Caine strongly deprecated the tendency to put a premium on rapid composition, as though there were any special virtue in speed. His own novels, which were written with his heart's blood, represented in their ultimate form a rigorous condensation of materials ten or even fifteen times as bulky. It was in this process of condensation that the self-sacrificing side of true genius was most convincingly shown. But, great as was the strain involved in this painful process, even greater was that imposed on a successful author by the cruel importunity of the interviewer on the eve of publication. Such methods were absolutely alien to his nature, but he had to set against his own convenience the immeasurable disappointment which his refusal would cause his readers. It was one of the most pathetic tragedies of genius that the dictates of an austere reticence were so often set at nought by the impulses of a tender heart.

Sir H. H. Howorth said that the 6,500 columns of The Times which he had filled in the last thirty years had been covered in exactly 3,000 minutes or 500 hours. In his contributions to The Morning Post, where he was accorded a larger type, he had attained a slightly greater velocity, almost equalling that of Lope de Vega, the most prolific writer on record. On the other hand, in his History of the Mongols he had adopted a rate of progress more in keeping with the leisurely habits of the race whose records he was collating. He added the interesting fact that, in spite of the saying nomen omen, both Dean Swift and Archdeacon Hare were slow composers.

THE SECRET OF OUR COMMERCIAL SUPREMACY.

"Coroners' juries have frequently placed on record their disapproval of amateur doctring."

Manchester Guardian.

Which, in the opinion of Mrs. Gamp, they ought to mind their own business and not interfere with matters connected with religion.

MANES À LA MODE.

(A vision suggested by the inspiriting rumour that green hair is about to become fashionable.)

Evoe.

A Gold Coast Nut.

(Copy of Letter addressed to a London Tailor.)

"Dear Sir—I beg to say these words to you. I deem you will not have any vexation about my requirement. You may be pleased for my saying, your name having recommened to me by a certain friend of mine. He knows very well, else he could not give your name to me. Because no one knows you in this Gold Coast, with exception of him. That you are the best tailor at city called London. I desiderate to deal with in England. On the receipt of this note, genial forward me your samples by returning mail together with price list. I will be pleased to open a great business with you.... I will gladly submit your good reply by my great opportunities, hoping you will not fail. Yours faithfully ——"

"To name a girl after a battle or other public event," says The Daily News, "is positively wicked, as it gives away her age. The numerous 'Almas' christened during the Crimean War had good reason to know this; so have the 'Jubilees' and the 'Trafalgars.'" Quite so. We know a dear lady who might easily pass for twenty if her parents had not named her "Ramillies."