[Mr. St. Loe Strachey has written an article in the Nineteenth Century, entitled, "The Seven Lord Roseberies."]
(With Apologies to the Author of "Another Woman's Eyes," in the "Illustrated News.")
(A Suggestion not necessarily Founded upon Facts.)
Scene—The Interior of a Police Court: a case is in course of disposal. The Magistrate has made up his mind to deal summarily in the matter.
Magistrate. And so you say that the prisoner has a bad record?
Policeman X. A very bad one, your Worship. We have strong reasons for believing that he has been in every prison in the kingdom for crimes of varying gravity.
Magistrate. By the new anthropometrical system, you can identify him?
Policeman X. Certainly. I have here certificates from no less than two hundred gaol governors declaring his hair to be the colour of pea-green.
Magistrate. And I notice the prisoner has hair of that peculiar hue.
Policeman X. Certainly, your worship; and on that account I claim that you impose upon this man the heaviest punishment within your jurisdiction.
Magistrate. And now prisoner what have you to say?
Prisoner. Merely this, that the man who last night broke into the jeweller's shop was not myself but another. I had nought to do with the crime. The constable has sworn that the caitiff had pea-green hair. Now I have not pea-green hair; my locks are black.
Magistrate. Assertion is not proof. By the anthropometrical system we can spot you. Look at yourself in the glass and you will see that your hair is pea-green.
Prisoner. You are wrong, Sir. You see my curls are of raven black. (Removes his wig.) Am I not right? Am I not entitled to release?
Magistrate. Certainly. Officers, do your duty. Release your prisoner!
[The accused is liberated, and, in the company of some trusted pals, leaves the Court without a stain upon his character, and with the intention of doing a little more burgling before he is many hours older. Curtain.
A SEPARATE IRISH CHAMBER!
(After a rough Sketch by the Right Hon. J. Ch-mb-rl-n!)
["Since the defeat of the Home Rule Bill they (the Irish Party) have all been engaged in blackening each other's characters, and painting each other's portraits; and I venture to say that the result of that is not a gallery of pictures, but a Chamber of Horrors."]
WE'VE NOT COME TO THAT YET.
She. "I was so glad to hear of your Marriage! Do come to us and bring your Wife. By the way, what is your Name now?"
He. "Oh, I haven't changed my Name. It's She, you know!"
(By a Well-Plucked One.)
(A Fragment from the Romance of the Near Future.)
He had waited up until two in the morning. He had watched the hands of the clock as they passed round the face from hour to hour. He had put a cloth over the supper, knowing, however, that the meat would be disregarded, and only the brandy and soda-water touched by the expected one. The poor man gazed sadly at the children's toys, the tradesmen's books that were beside him.
"Not home yet," he murmured. "Ah, those dinners at the club!"
Then he considered his past life. He remembered his wedding-day, when it seemed so bright and fair. He was a happy husband, with every prospect of a long life of wedded bliss. He loved and respected his wife, and felt that side by side they could travel along the road of existence without a rock to arrest their progress, without a discordant note to spoil the harmony of their song, until that song had ceased its music in the hush of silence. Tears, suppressed until now, flooded his eyes as he remembered the waning of the honeymoon. He recollected the anxiety of Alice to get back to town, to be off into the City. Of course he could not follow his wife into her business haunts; it would be immodest—nay, even improper. Still, he had been treated kindly, in a rough, condescending sort of way. He had had a Brougham, and had been allowed to visit his gentlemen friends. He had plenty of chats, and occasionally Alice had accompanied him round the park. Then he had seen a good deal of his children. His daughter, however, had now gone to school, and his sons were always with their nursery tutor. The clock struck once again. "Three, and not home yet!"
Early morning was breaking. The poor man, pale and careworn, re-arranged his necktie, and putting on an extra overcoat, prepared once more to resume the reading of a novel that had been attracting his attention earlier in the evening. It was called "Bobby," and related the adventures of a wild, thoughtless man, who was setting the laws of society at open defiance.
"How can men write of men like this?" he murmured. "I am not surprised that women think badly of us when we thus paint ourselves. Visiting a music-hall with his female cousin! Going to the Zoological Gardens unattended! Oh, Bobby, Bobby, what a creation!" Then he started. There was a noise at the street-door, and the sound of scraping on the outside as if a latch-key were vainly seeking the key-hole. Then the portal slowly opened and a cloaked figure lurched rather than walked in.
"Oh Alice!" cried the frightened husband, wringing his hands in dismay. "Is there anything the matter?"
"Nothing, absolutely nothing," was the indistinct reply. "Fact is I don't think the salmon——"
And then the new-comer entered the dining-room, and there was the sound of the effervescence of soda-water.
The poor husband sighed, mournfully turned off the gas, and went quietly to bed.
"Oh wife," murmured the aggrieved husband, as he mounted the stairs, "you cannot help bringing woe to man, for unless you did so you would not be a woe-man."
And bursting into tears at this sad pleasantry, the poor chap disappeared into the darkness.
Dear Sir,—May I draw your attention to a series of domestic occurrences which illustrate the distressing and increasing tendency of this fin-de-siècle age? I say fin-de-siècle because as it has got to come in somehow, it may as well be said at once. At breakfast yesterday the bacon was wretchedly cooked. My wife said, "It's the fault of the New Cook," which was all the satisfaction or explanation that I got. I found my study disguised in an apparent tidiness, achieved at the cost of a complete confusion of my papers, which had been tidied away in a manner that completely defied detection. My wife only answered, "Oh, it's that New Housemaid." That night we went to the theatre. The name of the play was The New Woman. Then I understood the true inwardness of all my previous experiences. The moral is so clear that I do not propose to draw any.
The Cedars, Sept. 29.
Dearest Marjorie,—It is really quite time you gave me some more of your valuable advice. Thanks to you, I was not such an utter failure in my first season as I expected. After a month at home (my people loathe the new way I do my hair, and it seemed, I am ashamed to say, a little dull there), I have come to stay again with the Lyon Taymers at their country house.
You remember I refused the man who did conjuring tricks? He has written to me since to say he sees now how right I was—rather crushing! I also fully intended to refuse Captain Mashington. But he went to Dinard without giving me the opportunity, and I hear he has been playing tennis there the whole day with Mrs. Lorne Hopper. I am sure I hope he enjoyed it. She is what you or I would consider rather old, but is said to be perfectly charming, and of course looks fifteen years younger than her youngest daughter.
It seems rather strange, doesn't it, Marjorie, that after being so wonderfully sensible all the season, I should suddenly do something quite idiotic in September? However, I have; and I want you to help me out of it. I'll tell you all, if you'll promise not to laugh. When I first came, I was "thrown," as people say, a good deal with the Taymer's nephew—Oriel Crampton who has just left Oxford. I was told he was very serious, rather shy, philanthropic, and has "views"; also that he had done a great deal of good in the West End. This interested me, and I tried to draw him out. They had omitted to mention that he was dreadfully susceptible. We talked for hours in the garden, nearly all the time—at first—about the housing of the rich and horrible cases of over-crowding—at London parties. He was very earnest and ascetic (he never drinks anything but hot water, and doesn't smoke); he lent me books—he is rather handsome—and—gradually—somehow I found I had drifted into an absurd sort of private half-engagement! Yes—I have actually a bangle rivetted on—with a date inside—the date I was insane enough to agree——Isn't it dreadful?
Oriel will be well off, but he intends to spend all his money on founding model slums, where the people are to be teetotallers and do bootmaking or something, and be a happy little colony. Oriel's views may necessitate his doing a little cobbling himself—just to set an example. I was enormously impressed by this at first; but I am afraid I have become frivolous again. Some other people have come here, including a nice boy they call Baby Beaumont. He is really almost nineteen, but wonderfully well preserved, very clever, and so cynical that he is quite an optimist. Almost directly, he asked me how long I had known Oriel Crampton. I said about a fortnight. "Ah! then you must be engaged to him. Poor old Oriel! He's really quite extraordinarily old-fashioned."
"How old is he?" I asked, in faltering tones.
"He has rather a way of pretending to be young, I fancy. But he must be four-and-twenty if he is a day. You need not say I told you."
It's evidently the fashion to be very young—for men, at least. Sometimes I wish it were the fashion to be old enough to know better. If Oriel really has been engaged before, and may be again, and if getting engaged to people is only a sort of habit of his, perhaps he would not mind so very much if I were to break it off.
Baby Beaumont is (he says himself) "frankly Pagan." He thinks Oriel too serious for me, and advises me to marry at leisure, as I am quite sure, anyhow, to repent in haste. He wanted to send a paragraph to the Post to say "A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly be broken off, between Mr. Oriel Crampton and Miss Gladys Mayfield, younger daughter," and so on.
Last night, when we were playing games, Oriel went out while we thought of a word, and he got quite angry with me because I had said the moon was "vegetable" and he said it was "mineral." He may be right, or he may not—I daresay he is—but still he need not be touchy, and refuse to play any more, and sulk all the evening.
I am afraid I should not be happy with him. He collects postage stamps, too, which depresses me dreadfully.
Please write and tell me what to do—or rather, how to do it. Can one get a bangle rivetted off?... I have just heard that the Lorne Hoppers and Captain Mashington are coming to play tennis on Sunday! Of course, I shall show absolute indifference. I wired at once to town for my new dress. Mrs. Hopper may as well see it.
Baby Beaumont is always changing his clothes, and has two button-holes sent down from London daily. He says he "intends to revive the gardenia."... Oriel has just gone out for a "brisk walk before dinner." Aren't we utterly unsuited to each other?
Your loving friend,.
P.S.—Is the moon mineral?
Capital £100,000,000, in 20,000,000 Shares of £5 each.
This Company has been formed to acquire, combine into one, and carry on the various old-established businesses of literary reviewing hitherto carried on separately by Messrs. Andrew Lang (who will join the Board after allotment), Grant Allen, W. E. Gladstone, H. D. Traill, T. P. O'Connor, Walter Besant, Elkin Mathews, John Lane, Q., A.T.Q.C., Quiller Couch, Richard Le Gallienne, and others. All these gentlemen have consented to act as Directors. The advantages of the scheme are obvious. Hitherto critical opinion, as printed in the daily, weekly, and monthly press, has been so diversified as to make it impossible for the public to form a settled judgment on books. For instance, a work may be described in one place as "possessing in the highest degree the master qualities of brilliant humour and profound pathos"; while, in another notice, published on the same day, it may be condemned as "an essay in stupid buffoonery, which mistakes inversion for paradox, and makes a parade of sentiment as laughable as its efforts at humour are melancholy." It is the intention of the Directors to change all this. Frequent Board-Meetings will be held, at which all books sent for review will be carefully considered, with a view to deciding how they shall be treated. The decisions thus come to will be carried out in a series of articles extending with absolute uniformity over the whole field of contemporary literature.
Profits.
The profits of the business to be thus carried on must be gigantic. After a careful inspection of the books of all British newspapers the well-known accountants Messrs. Leger and Ballance have informed the Directors that the gains of these papers from reviewing and literary gossip alone amount to £10,632,009 12s. 7d. annually. As these papers will henceforth, on their literary side, be worked by the Directors with all the latest improvements, even larger gains may be looked for in the immediate future.
Booming.
This department will be managed by a paragraphist of unrivalled experience, who will have under his orders a large staff of skilled assistants thoroughly instructed in the use of the new patent mitrailleuse Boomerangs, ten of which will be fixed in the chief office of the Company at No. 1, Log Rolls Yard. Literary shareholders to the amount of £500 and upwards will be entitled to a preferential boom by way of bonus.
Bludgeon Work.
For this style of reviewing a separate department has been established, under the joint management of three well-known literary failures, Messrs. Scribley, Fibley And Glibley. By a careful imitation of the worst models, and by assiduously cultivating their own natural coarseness, the managers anticipate very remarkable results. Style will be no object, but every worker in this department will be expected to provide his own rhinoceros hide and stock of allusions to Rabelais. All holders of less than three shares will come under the operation of this department. The Company intend shortly, however, to issue £10 debentures, the owners of which will be permitted once a year to ballot for the privilege of reviewing the book of one of their friends.
Insurance Scheme.
The Directors propose to organise a scheme of insurance against hostile reviews and obdurate editors. For an annual payment of £24 an insurer will be entitled to one favourable review during the year; for £30 he will be absolutely guaranteed against unfavourable criticism. A small yearly payment, varying according to age, will entitle his widow to claim £1000 at his death upon furnishing a certificate, signed by Mr. Besant and the family doctor, that he died after reading an unfavourable notice of one of his books. All literary men, however, are recommended to subscribe £30 a year, thus obtaining a life-long immunity from depreciation.
Female Branch.
This will be known as the "George Department," and will be controlled by four new women of advanced views. Cigarettes, latch-keys, and a summary of divorce court proceedings will be kept on the premises. Novels turned out while you wait. Mrs. Lynn Linton will not be admitted during office hours.
Something New in the Drama.—Mr. Henry Irving, it appears, has made a great hit in a one-part piece written by Dr. Conan Doyle, entitled A Story of Waterloo. Probably Mr. J. L. Toole will follow it up with A Story of Brandy-and-Waterloo, in which our cheerful comedian will appear as a regular Wetter'un.
Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.