Chapter 1

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PUNCH,

OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOL. 147.

July 1, 1914.

* * * * *

* * * * *

PROGRESS.

["Giving evidence recently before a Select Committee of the House of Commons, Miss C. E. Collet, of the Home Office, said the commercial laundry was killing the small hand laundry."--_Evening News._]

The little crafts! How soon they die! In cottage doors no shuttle clicks; The hand-loom has been ousted by A large concern with lots more sticks.

The throb of pistons beats around; Great chimneys rise on Thames's banks; The same phenomena are found In Sheffield. (Yorks) and Oldham (Lancs).

No longer now the housewife makes Her rare preserves, for what's the good? The factory round the corner fakes Raspberry jam with chips of wood.

'Tis so with what we eat and wear, Our bread, the boots wherein we splosh 'Tis so with what I deemed most fair, Most virginal of all--the Wash.

'Tis this that chiefly, when I chant, Fulfils my breast with sighs of ruth, To think that engines can supplant The Amazons I loved in youth.

That not with tender care, as erst By spinster females fancy-free, These button-holes of mine get burst Before the shift comes back to me;

That mere machines, and not a maid With fingers fatuously plied, The collars and the cuffs have frayed That still excoriate my hide;

That steam reduces to such states What once was marred by human skill; That socks are sundered from their mates By means of an electric mill;

That not by Cupid's coy advance (Some crone conniving at the fraud), But simply by mechanic chance, I get this handkerchief marked "Maud."

This is, indeed, a striking change; I sometimes wonder if the world Gets better as the skies grow strange With coils of smoke about them curled.

If the old days were not the best Ere printed formulas conveyed Sorrow about that silken vest For all eternity mislaid;

Ere yet the unwieldy motor-van Came clattering round the kerbstone's brink, Its driver dreaming some new plan To make my mauve pyjamas shrink.

Evoe.

* * * * *

THE ENCHANTED CASTLE.

There are warm days in London when even a window-box fails to charm, and one longs for the more open spaces of the country. Besides, one wants to see how the other flowers are getting on. It is on these days that we travel to our Castle of Stopes; as the crow flies, fifteen miles away. Indeed, that is the way we get to it, for it is a castle in the air. And when we are come to it Celia is always in a pink sun-bonnet gathering roses lovingly, and I, not very far off, am speaking strongly to somebody or other about something I want done. By-and-by I shall go into the library and work ... with an occasional glance through the open window at Celia.

To think that a month ago we were quite happy with a few pink geraniums!

Sunday, a month ago, was hot. "Let's take train somewhere," said Celia, "and have lunch under a hedge."

"I know a lovely place for hedges," I said.

"I know a lovely tin of potted grouse," said Celia, and she went off to cut some sandwiches. By twelve o'clock we were getting out of the train.

The first thing we came to was a golf course, and Celia had to drag me past it. Then we came to a wood, and I had to drag her through it. Another mile along a lane, and then we both stopped together.

"Oh!" we said.

It was a cottage, the cottage of a dream. And by a cottage I mean, not four plain rooms and a kitchen, but one surprising room opening into another; rooms all on different levels and of different shapes, with delightful places to bump your head on; open fireplaces; a large square hall, oak-beamed, where your guests can hang about after breakfast, while deciding whether to play golf or sit in the garden. Yet all so cunningly disposed that from outside it looks only a cottage or, at most, two cottages persuaded into one.

And, of course, we only saw it from outside. The little drive, determined to get there as soon as possible, pushed its way straight through an old barn, and arrived at the door simultaneously with the flagged lavender walk for the humble who came on foot. The rhododendrons were ablaze beneath the south windows; a little orchard was running wild on the west; there was a hint at the back of a clean-cut lawn. Also, you remember, there was a golf course, less than two miles away.

"Oh," said Celia with a deep sigh, "but we must live here."

An Irish terrier ran out to inspect us. I bent down and patted it. "With a dog," I added.

"Isn't it all lovely? I wonder who it belongs to, and if----"

"If he'd like to give it to us."

"Perhaps he would if he saw us and admired us very much," said Celia hopefully.

"I don't think Mr. Barlow is that sort of man," I said. "An excellent fellow, but not one to take these sudden fancies."

"Mr. Barlow? How do you know his name?"

"I have these surprising intuitions," I said modestly. "The way the chimneys stand up----"

"I know," cried Celia. "The dog's collar."

"Right, Watson. And the name of the house is Stopes."

She repeated it to herself with a frown.

"What a disappointing name," she said. "Just Stopes."

"Stopes," I said. "Stopes, Stopes. If you keep on saying it, a certain old-world charm seems to gather round it. Stopes."

"Stopes," said Celia. "It _is_ rather jolly."

We said it ten more times each, and it seemed the only possible name for it. Stopes--of course.

"Well?" I asked.

"We must write to Mr. Barlow," said Celia decisively. "'Dear Mr. Barlow, er----Dear Mr. Barlow,----we----' Yes, it will be rather difficult. What do we want to say exactly?"

"'Dear Mr. Barlow,--May we have your house?'"

"Yes," smiled Celia, "but I'm afraid we can hardly ask for it. But we might rent it when--when he doesn't want it any more."

"'Dear Mr. Barlow,'" I amended, "'have you any idea when you're! going to die?' No, that wouldn't do either. And there's another thing--we don't know his initials, or even if he's a 'Mr.' Perhaps he's a knight or a--a duke. Think how offended Duke Barlow would be if we put '---- Barlow, Esq.' on the envelope."

"We could telegraph. 'Barlow. After you with Stopes.'"

"Perhaps there's a young Barlow, a Barlowette or two with expectations. It may have been in the family for years."

"Then we----Oh, let's have lunch." She sat down and began to undo the sandwiches. "Dear o' Stopes," she said with her mouth full.

We lunched outside Stopes. Surely if Earl Barlow had seen us he would have asked us in. But no doubt his dining-room looked the other way; towards the east and north, as I pointed out to Celia, thus being pleasantly cool at lunch-time.

"Ha, Barlow," I said dramatically, "a time will come when _we_ shall be lunching in there, and _you_----bah!" And I tossed a potted-grouse sandwich to his dog.

However, that didn't get us any nearer.

"Will you _promise_," said Celia, "that we shall have lunch in there one day?"

"I promise," I said readily. That gave me about sixty years to do something in.

"I'm like--who was it who saw something of another man's and wouldn't be happy till he got it?"

"The baby in the soap advertisement."

"No, no, some king in history."

"I believe you are thinking of Ahab, but you aren't a bit like him, really. Besides, we're not coveting Stopes. All we want to know is, does Barlow ever let it in the summer?"

"That's it," said Celia eagerly.

"And, if so," I went on, "will he lend us the money to pay the rent with?"

"Er--yes," said Celia. "That's it."

So for a month we have lived in our Castle of Stopes. I see Celia there in her pink sun-bonnet, gathering the flowers lovingly, bringing an armful of them into the hall, disturbing me sometimes in the library with "_Aren't_ they beauties? No, I only just looked in--good luck to you." And she sees me ordering a man about importantly, or waving my hand to her as I ride through the old barn on my road to the golf-course.

But this morning she had an idea.

"Suppose," she said timidly, "you _wrote_ about Stopes, and Mr. Barlow; happened to see it, and knew how much we wanted it, and----"

"Well?"

"Then," said Celia firmly, "if he were a gentleman he would give it to us."

Very well. Now we shall see if Mr. Barlow is a gentleman.

A. A. M.

* * * * *

Correspondence.

"Equal Rights" writes:--

"Dear Sir,--Why are descriptive names confined to boxers, such as Bombardier Wells and Gunboat Smith? Why not Rifleman Redmond, Airman Churchill, Solicitor George, Golfer Asquith, Bushman Wilding, Trundler Hitch, Dude Alexander, Bandsman Beecham, Hunger-Striker Pankhurst? Or, to take Editors----"

[The rest of this communication is omitted owing to considerations of space.--Ed.]

* * * * *

WHEN THE SHIPS COME HOME.

* * * * *

* * * * *

EGYPT IN VENICE.

"_La Légende de Joseph._"

Those who know the kind of attractions that the Russian ballet offers in so many of its themes could have easily guessed, without previous enlightenment, what episode in the life of Joseph had been selected for illustration last week at Drury Lane. But they could never have guessed that Herr Tiessen, author of a shilling guide to the intentions of the composer, would attach a transcendental significance to the conduct of _Potiphar's Wife_. "Through the unknown divine," he informs us, "which is still new and mysterious to her, an imperious desire awakens in her to fathom, to possess this world"--the world, that is to say, which _Joseph's_ imagination creates in the course of an exhibition dance. If this is so, I can only say that her behaviour is strangely misleading.

The scene opens at a party given by _Potiphar_ in Venice. Venice, of course, was not _Potiphar's_ home address; and I marvel a little at the change of _venue_ when I think how much more harmony could have been got out of an Egyptian setting. But then I remind myself that the Russian ballet is nothing if not _bizarre_. The long banqueting-table recalls the canvases of Veronese, but with discordant notes of the Orient and elsewhere. _Potiphar_ himself, seated on a dais, has the air of an Assyrian bull. By his side _Mme. Potiphar_ wears breeches ending above the knee, with white stockings and high clogs.

For the entertainment of the guests there was a dance of nuptial unveiling and a bout between half-a-dozen Turkish boxers. But it was a decadent and _blazé_ company, and something more piquant was needed for their titillation. This was supplied in the shape of an original dance by the fifteen-year-old _Joseph_, whom my guide describes as "graceful, wild and pungent." He was introduced in a recumbent posture, and asleep, on a covered stretcher, and at first I had the clever idea that he was the customary corpse that appeared at Egyptian feasts to remind the company of their liability to die. But when he woke up and began to dance I saw at once that I was wrong.

I now know all about the interpretation of _Joseph's_ dance; but I defy anyone to say at sight and without a showman's assistance what precisely he was after. In the Third Figure (according to my guide-book) "there is in his leaps a feeling of heaviness, as if he were bound to earth, and he stumbles once or twice as one who has missed his goal;" but how was I to guess that this signified that his "searching after God" was still ineffectual? or that when in the Fourth Figure he "leaps with light feet" this meant that "Joseph has found God"? I don't blame the boy for not knowing the rule that forbids one art to trespass on the domain of another; but there is no excuse for Herr Strauss, who must have been well aware that, for the conveyance of any but the most obvious emotions, mute dancing can never be a satisfactory substitute for articulate poetry.

However, _Potiphar's_ guests seemed better instructed than I was, for they threw off their apathy and took quite an intelligent interest in _Joseph's_ _pas seul_. Indeed, one young man (the episode escaped me at the dress rehearsal, but I have it in the guide-book)--one young man, "sobbing, buries his head in his hands, upsetting thereby a dish of fruit." As for _Potiphar_, it failed to stir the sombre depths of his abysmal boredom, but his wife, whose ennui had hitherto been of the most profound, began to sit up and take notice, and at the end of the dance she sent for _Joseph_ and supplemented his rather exiguous costume with a gross necklace of jewels, letting her hand linger awhile on his bare neck. Already, it will be seen, she was intrigued with the "unknown divine." _Joseph_, on the contrary, received her attentions without _empressement_.

In the next scene--after a rather woolly and unintelligible interlude--we see _Joseph_ retiring to his couch in an alcove behind the place where the banqueting-table had been. You will judge how urgent was the lady's keenness to probe the mysteries of his divine nature when I tell you that she could not wait till the morning to pursue her enquiries, but must needs visit him in his chamber at dead of night, and wearing the one garment of the hour. At first, still half dreaming, he mistakes her for an angel (he had already seen one in his sleep), but subsequently, growing suspicious, he repels her with a dignified disdain. For I must tell you that, whatever the guide-book may allege about the loftiness of her designs, the music gave her away. It reverted, in fact, to the motive of those passages which had already accompanied and illustrated the nuptial dance, the dance (as Herr Tiessen calls it) of "burning Love-longing."

At this juncture, _Potiphar_ and his minions break upon the scene. His wife, after denouncing _Joseph_, is distracted between passion of hatred and passion of love, and there is some play (reminding one of _L'Après-midi d'un Faune_) with the purple cloak which _Joseph_ had discarded. Presently she eludes her dilemma by fainting.

Meanwhile it has been the work of a moment to order up a brazier, a pair of pincers, a poker, a headsman and an axe. The instruments of torture waste no time in getting red-hot; and we anticipate the worst. _Joseph_, however, who has ignored these preparations and maintained an attitude of superbly indifferent aloofness, suddenly becomes luminous under great pressure of limelight; and most of the cast, including a ballet of female dervishes, are abashed to the ground.

Now appears, on the open-work entresol at the back of the stage, an archangel. The guide-book is in error where it says that he glides downwards on a shaft of light radiating from a star. As a matter of fact he walks down the main staircase to the ground floor. Approaching _Joseph_ he takes him by the hand and "leads him heavenwards" by the same flight of steps; and we are to understand that, in the opinion of Herr Strauss, the boy's subsequent career, as recorded in the Hebraic Scriptures, may be treated as negligible.

I should like, in excuse of my own flippancy, to assume the same detachment, and to regard this ballet-theme as having practically no relation whatever to Biblical history, but being just one of many themes out of Oriental lore, mostly secular, that lend themselves to the drama of disappointed passion. My only serious protest is against the hypocrisy which pretends, with regard to _Potiphar's Wife_, to see a spiritual significance in what is mere vulgar animalism.

I ought, by the way, to have said that, in a spasm of chagrin, she chokes herself with the pearl necklace which lent the only touch of superfluity to her night attire, and was carried out--but not up the main staircase. Thus ends this sordid tragedy that so well illustrates that quality in Herr Strauss to which my guide refers when he speaks of his realization of a "poignant longing for divine cheerfulness."

O. S.

* * * * *

* * * * *

ENIGMA.

My love to me is cold, And no more seeks my gaze; I wonder why! The smile of welcome that I loved of old No longer lights her eye.

One little week ago I asked no surer guide than Cupid's chart; I said, "Your eyes reveal the depths below, And I can read your heart."

She let her shy gaze fall, And smiling asked, "Is then my face a screed, My brow an open love-letter, where all The world my thoughts may read?"

Said I, "The world, I'll vow, Is blind! Myself alone may see the signs, And know the message written on your brow: I read between the lines."

My dear to me is cold; Gone somewhere is the love-light from her eye; And, when our ways meet, stately she doth hold Her course. I wonder why.

* * * * *

"Curiously, the Australian Minister of Defence in the last Parliament bore the same name as the Prime Minister in that which has just been dissolved."

_Westminster Gazette._

A similar curious coincidence happened in England, the War Minister in the last Parliament bearing the same name as the present Lord Chancellor.

* * * * *

"MEN FOR THE ANTARCTIC.

105 Canadian Dogs to go with Sir E. Shackleton."

_Daily Express._

A gay lot, these Canadians.

* * * * *

A SCANDALMONGRIAN ROMANCE.

(_By Francis Scribble._)

[_The following article, specially written for us by the Author of "Ten Frail Beauties of the Restoration," "Tales Told by a Royal Washerwoman," etc., is another important contribution to the literature of the Royal Dirty-Linen Bag._]

A day or two ago a short notice in the papers told of the death of Mrs. Maria Tubbs at Cannes; but few, if any, of those who read that brief announcement will have recognised in it the close of one of the most amazing careers of the nineteenth century. Yet little surprise need be expressed at this general ignorance, for who would think to find under that somewhat common-place name the ravishingly beautiful Maria Cotherstone, who, forty years ago, was swept by Fate into the track of the late King of Scandalmongria, and well-nigh caused that singularly unstable bark to founder? It is with the kindly object of rescuing her romance from oblivion that this brief chronicle is written.

In 1873 the Scandalmongrian Minister in London was requested to find an English lady to take charge of the two children of his Royal master, and, after searching enquiries, he was successful, and Miss Maria Cotherstone turned her back on England never more to return. She was just twenty-two, fresh and blooming, possessed of the gayest of spirits, delightful manners and the highest accomplishments. Quietly she assumed control of the Royal schoolroom, and by her charm no less than by her firmness she quickly won the respect and love of her charges. Well had it been for her memory if her influence had never spread beyond the walls of her schoolroom; this article had then been unwritten. But alas for human nature! One day His Majesty's eyes fell upon the person of his children's governess, and then began one of the most sordid intrigues it has ever been my pleasure to recall. [A large statement, as readers of our author's _Gleanings from a Royal Dustbin_ will readily acknowledge. However, the succeeding three-quarter of a column of details, here omitted, prove that there is at least some foundation for the remark.]

... And so their romance ended, and His Majesty returned to the bosom of his family and became once more the righteous upholder of the sanctity of the marriage tie. At first his easy-going Court smiled somewhat at the claim; but, when one or two highly-placed officials presumed to follow in the footsteps of their Sovereign, and were in consequence banished irrevocably from his presence, Scandalmongrian Society realised with a pained surprise that what is venial in a monarch may, in a subject, be a damnable offence.

And what of Maria, the charming, fascinating, much injured Maria? For several years she is lost, and then we hear of her marriage at Rome to "John Tubbs, Esq., of London," and once again she vanishes, only to turn up many years later at Cannes. She is a widow now, and a model of all the virtues. Who so staid and respectable as Madam? Who so charitable to the poor? Few, it is to be feared, will have recognised in that handsome old lady, so regular in her attendance at the services of the English Church, the beauteous Maria Cotherstone whose name was once on the lips of everybody from one end of Europe to the other. It nearly happened, indeed, that she went down to her grave with all her scandalous, feverish past forgotten, leaving behind her only the fragrant memory of her later life. But I have saved her. It is a queer story, quite interesting enough to recall.

* * * * *

THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN.

* * * * *

CHARIVARIA.

It is not only misfortune that makes strange bedfellows. Both Earl Beauchamp and Sir Joseph Beecham appear in the recent Honours List.

***

By-the-by, it is denied that Sir Joseph Beecham was in any way responsible for the Government's "Pills for Earthquakes," by which it was hoped to avert the Irish crisis.

***

A New York cable announces that the Duke of Manchester is interesting himself in a cinematograph proposition of a philanthropic nature, and that the company will be known as the "Church and School Social Service Corporation for the Advancement of Moral and Religious Education and Social Uplift Work through the medium of the Higher Art of the Moving Picture." It will of course be possible for the man in a hurry to call it, _tout court_, the "C.&S.S.S.C.F.T.A.O.M.&R.E.&S.U.W.T.T.M.O.T.H.A.O.T.M.P."

***

The penny off the income tax came just in time. It enabled several Liberal plutocrats to buy a rose on Alexandra Day.

***

The balance-sheet of the German Company which had been running a Zeppelin airship passenger service has just been issued, and shows a loss of £10,000 on the year's working. This is not surprising, the difficulty which all aircraft experience to keep their balance.

***

At the launch of the liner _Bismarck_ last week, the bottle of wine--which was thrown by the Countess Hannah von Bismarck missed the vessel, whereupon the Kaiser hauled back the bottle, and with his proverbial good luck hit the target.

***

Five shots were fired last week at Baron Henri de Rothschild. At first it was thought that this was done to stop the author of _Croesus_ from writing more plays, but, when it transpired that the assailant was a man who objected to the "Rothschild Cheap Milk Supply," public sympathy veered round in favour of the Baron.

***