Chapter 3

Almost the last thing that you expect in a starting-price bookie is a strong penchant for poetry. It is true that I have before me, as I write, a Turf Commissioner's telegraphic code which contains some rather picturesque symbols. Thus "amber" is the codeword for £1; "heliotrope" for £20; "rainbow" for "win and 1, 2." Still I do not think it probable that if the author of this code should go bankrupt as a bookie--and this he is never likely to do as far as I am concerned--he would be able to retrieve his fortunes by taking up the profession of a publisher of poetical works. Yet this is just what happened, in Mr. MONCKTON HOFFE'S play, with the firm of _Wilberforce Brothers_, Turf Commissioners. In the first Act we find them in such straits that they can barely scrape together enough petty cash to satisfy the demands of a Water-Rate Collector, insistent on the door-step. In the next Act, a year later, they are all flourishing like green bay-trees as a firm of Poetry Commissioners trading under the name of _The Lotus Publishing Company_. This amazing result they have achieved by foisting on the office typewriter--_trés gamine_--the poetical output of one of their own number, and exploiting her as a prodigy under the auspices of a patron of the arts--one _Lord Glandeville_. How this Mæcenas, this connoisseur in taste, was ever imposed upon by the masquerading of such incredible types, and how they could have amassed all that wealth by the publication of serious poetry, the most notorious of drugs on the market--these are among the "things" that we should all "like to know" in case our own professions should fail us.

What worried me most was that Mr. HOFFE should have so poor an idea of my intelligence as to suppose it possible to impart an atmosphere of probability to a scheme that was pure farce. Yet that was what he tried to do; he wanted me to believe that I was assisting at a comedy. There was no knockabout business; nobody entered the room with a somersault, tripped over a pin or hung his hat on the scenery. They all behaved as if they were presenting us with what is known as a human document, to be regarded _au grand_ (or, at worst, _au petit_) _sérieux_. The fun--and there were some very pleasant touches--was not so much the fun of a huge and preposterous joke, but rather the humour of character or incidental detail. The part of _Lord Glandeville_, who might have been made the most ridiculous butt of imposture, was treated quite solemnly. Indeed, our sympathies were provoked for a man whose finest instincts had been trifled with; who had been suffered to fall in love with the poet-soul of a girl only to find that she was the tool of a gang of rogues. One of them, _Dick Gilder_, might tell him that he (_Glandeville_) was an egoist and that he ought to have fallen in love with the girl's body, as he (_Gilder_) had done, instead of her supposed soul; but that did not help matters much, or prevent our feeling that this treatment of _Glandeville_ was no matter for laughter. And when I go and see a production of Mr. HAWTREY'S I want matter for laughter and nothing else.

The best individual performances were those of Mr. LYSTON LYLE--really excellent as a soldier of fortune--and Miss HELEN HAYE as _Lord Glandeville's_ aunt who lays herself out to defeat the matrimonial designs of the prodigy. Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY was not perhaps at his very best as _Dick Gilder._ He wore an air of detachment and indulged his old habit of looking over the heads of his stage-audience. He had too many set speeches and was not always quite sure what word came next. Still his mere presence is always irresistible.

As _Lord Glandeville_, Mr. VANE TEMPEST, most admirable of buffoons, must have longed to be allowed to make us laugh, but solemnity was his order of the day and he carried it out like a hero. As for Mr. WENMAN, who played the partner that introduced _Lord Glandeville_ to the rest of the "Lotus Publishing Company" (though how that refined nobleman ever made the acquaintance of such a rough diamond is another of the "things we'd like to know"), his face is a gift and he used its mobility to good purpose.

Finally, Miss DOROTHY MINTO, as _Dorothy Gedge_, typewriter (with the _nom de guerre_ of _Gedage_), was a little angular, and the motive of her spasmodic excursions across the stage was not always apparent. But she was extremely funny in her inimitable way when she had a chance of exhibiting the unreasonableness of her selection as a mouthpiece of the Muses. At the end, when she wonders if she could have been happy with _Glandeville_ and knows that she would be happy with _Gilder_, she showed an extremely pretty vein of sentiment. And here, too, I must heartily compliment the author on a scene which threatened to be commonplace and tedious, but was handled with a most engaging freshness and a very unusual sense of what was just right and enough.

O. S.

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* * * * *

_ARGUMENTUM AD FEMINAM._

Once, unless the tale's a myth, Chloe danced mid rustic song Indefatigably with Amorous Damon all day long. This was all the joy she knew (Quite enough, no doubt), and yet, Phyllis, when _you_ gambol, _you_ Rather gamble at roulette.

Simple 'twas in suchlike days Wooing Chloe. Now, alas, _You_'ve no taste for simple ways, Much prefer green baize to grass. Fled your interest in swains; Nothing for my sighs you care; All your joy is little trains, Oddly dubbed "chemin de fer."

Phyllis, if your fixed intent Is that you forsake the dance, Quit Arcadian merriment For exciting games of chance, I've the best of 'em by heaps: Come with me, my dear, and call At the Registrar's; he keeps One big gamble worth them all.

* * * * *

CON.

Con was the conjurer of the king Ere the coming of Padraig Mor, And a wand he had, and a golden ring, And a five-prong crown he wore; And his robe was trimmed with minever-- His robe of the royal blue, For Con was the wonderful conjuror In the days when the tricks were new.

He could pick a rabbit from out of a poke Where never had rabbit lain; He could pulp your watch like an egg's red yoke And could give it you whole again; And the king he laughed, "Ha-ha," he laughed, Till they thumped on his back anon; And the other magicians went dancing daft To see the magic of Con.

Now Con he climbed on a moonbeam grey To the dusk of the god's great shop, And he stole the Elixir of Life away, And he drank it, every drop; He poured the draught in a golden cup On a wonderful day that's gone, And he swilled it round and he tossed it up, And that was the curse of Con.

And the old king died at ninety-six And his son he reigned instead; But Con he conjured the same old tricks, And his hair crow-black on his head; And the new king died, and another king, And another king after he, But Con went on with his conjuring The same as it used to be.

When the fifth king came (he was long of limb And a hasty man) he swore, When Con he conjured his tricks for him, And he kicked Con through the door; For that's in the songs the minstrels sung, And thus is the story told, For "Con," said the king, "you're none so young, And your tricks are plaguey old!"

* * *

Now Con he tramps from shire to shire, And he must till the crack of doom; He takes the road in the dust and mire, And he sleeps in the windy broom; He's no address and he's no abode, And his jacket's the worse o' wear; And I've met him once on the Portsmouth Road, And once at a Wicklow fair.

When the roundabouts and the swings are slow And a conjuring chap draws near, And there's nothing about his mug to show That it's seen five thousand year (For that's the way that the songs were sung, And thus is the story told), You'll know it's Con and he's none so young For his tricks are plaguey old.

* * * * *

* * * * *

From a list of new books:--

"Woman and Crime (Adam)."

Well, he ought to know.

* * * * *

From a pamphlet on "The 'King's Own' Mission":--

"MADAM ADA BACON, Soloist for Easter Sunday Evening.

Please send some eggs."

The writer has been carried away by the association of ideas. The singing will not really be so bad as that.

* * * * *

Two conflicting announcements from _The Observer_:--

"VILLA'S VICTORY. FOUR DAYS OF FURIOUS FIGHTING."

"HOW THE VILLA WERE BEATEN. LIVERPOOL'S SUPERIOR PACE."

* * * * *

EXILE.

"And how long," said the lady of the house from behind her rampart of breakfast things, "shall you want to be away?"

"Away?" I said. "Who said anything about being away?"

"Well," she said, "if you want to go to all those annual dinners and things you'll have to go to London, and if you go to London you'll have to be away from here."

"'Plato,'" I said, "'thou reasonest well.' Helen, pass me the butter."

"Why deny it, then?" said Helen's mother. "If you're going to be away you're going to be away, and there's an end of it."

"You're wrong there," I said. "There isn't an end of it. I can go away and come back on the same day. By the last train, you know. The last train is intended for that very purpose."

"What very purpose?"

"For coming back by the last train. That's what it's there for. Fathers of families who come back by it sleep in their own beds instead of sleeping in strange beds in clubs or hotels. Let us sing the praises of the last train. Rosie, push over the marmalade, and don't upset the spoon on the table-cloth."

It is not easy to converse with marmalade in one's mouth. I did not make the attempt, so there was a short pause in the argument. It was resumed by the lady of the house.

"You'll lose a lot of sleep, you know," she said. "The last train doesn't get you here till one o'clock in the morning."

"No matter," I said, "I can bear it. The thought of meeting my family at breakfast will sustain me."

"But you never do meet us. After a last train night you 're always half-an-hour late, and by that time the girls are gone."

"But you remain," I said. "To see you pouring out coffee is a liberal education in patience."

"But it's tepid coffee."

"I like tepid coffee as a change."

"And the eggs and bacon are cold."

"Pooh!" I said. "There is always the toast."

"And the toast is limp."

"If," I said, "you are so sure of these discomforts why not order me a fresh breakfast?"

"And that," she said, "will make work for the servants."

"Work," I said, "is for the workers. Besides the cook will like me to show an independent spirit."

"The nature of cooks," she said, "is not one of your strong points. No, I am sure you will do better to stay in London."

"But I can give up my dinners," I said.

"And do you think I could ask you to make such a sacrifice? Old friends whom you meet only once a year! Certainly you must go."

"But----"

"If you don't turn up they'll put it down to me, and that wouldn't be fair."

"I don't know," I said, "why you are so keen on my staying in London. There's something behind this--something more than meets the eye."

"Nonsense," she said, "it's only your comfort; but men never can be reasonable."

"Dad," said Helen to Rosie, "is going to have a holiday given him."

"Yes," said Rosie; "but he doesn't seem to want it very much."

"And it's not going to be a very long one," said Peggy, who generally supports my side of the battle.

"And we'll do his packing," said their mother; "won't we, girls?"

"Hurrah!" said Peggy.

"Peggy," I said, "I am sorry to cast a cold shower on your enthusiasm, but there are limits. You and your mother are great and undeniable packers, but your ways are not my ways."

"Anyhow," said Helen, "we should do it better than Swabey."

"No," I said, "you would do it worse. Swabey has his faults, but I know them. He always forgets white ties and handkerchiefs, but these I can buy, borrow or steal. You would forget white shirts and dress trousers, which mean nothing to you, but are all the world to me. Swabey packs my shaving-brush and my safety razor into my dress shoes, where I come upon them eventually. You would leave them out altogether. I am grateful to you all for your generous offer, but Swabey shall do my packing--that is if I go."

It is unnecessary to say that I went. The dinners were, as usual, a great success. We all became young again in our own eyes, and on the whole I was not sorry to have a bedroom in London. But why had it been forced on me against my will? The reason will appear in a letter from Peggy which I received on the second morning of my compulsory freedom;--

"DEAREST DAD,--We are geting on alright. The maids are now in the libary and everything has been put somwere else. A lot of your papers got blown about, but we ran after them and got most of them. Our meels are in your den. Their going into the dining room direckly. The dust is dredfull and the dogs don't like it. It is a spring cleening with love from your loving

PEGGY." R. C. L.

* * * * *

LAID.

He was no commonplace suburban spook Content to rap on table-tops; he cherished The memory of days when at his look Princes and peers incontinently perished; Stuck in his heart a jewelled knife dripped red; Flames had been known to issue from his head.

The Moated Grange, now ruinous and drear, He roamed, constrained to bitter self-effacement, Until one midnight his enraptured ear Detected mortal accents in the basement. Downstairs he crept; beside the cheerless grate Sat four or five old men in keen debate.

Softly he chuckled, "Here's a bit of luck!" And beat a warning rattle on his tabor That once had made the stoutest run amok; Then each old boy sat up and nudged his neighbour; Calm and collected round the chimney-piece They showed no sign of imminent decease.

In vain he practised all his horrid lore And rolled his eyes and beckoned with distort hand; In vain his dagger dripped with gouts of gore, They only beamed and took a note in shorthand; When in despair he loosed his flaming jet One smiled and lit therefrom a cigarette.

That was the end! With agonising shriek He turned and fled, the spectral perspiration Dewing his brow and coursing down his cheek; Fled, and was lost to man's investigation (For full discussion of his little tricks See Psychical Research Reports, vol. vi.).

* * * * *

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerics._)

Has Mr. W. J. LOCKE'S hand--the hand that created vagabond _Paragot_ for tears and laughter, and the resourceful _Aristide_--has it lost its particular cunning that he should begin his romance of _The Fortunate Youth_ (LANE) in a mood of heavy and misplaced facetiousness, and drift by way of Family Heraldry into an atmosphere of sham politics and a bright general glow of ineffectual snobbery? _Paul Savelli_, the fortunate youth, with his incredible beauty, his dreams, his accomplishments beyond all discernible cause, his faintly Disraelian airs, never once carried me out of my chair. And to what other end is romance ordained? Nor did his Princess, with her mastery of the easier French idioms; nor _Barney Bill_, the kind-hearted stage-tramp. Indeed, I found Mr. LOCKE constantly making statements about his people that were not substantiated, as about _Ursula Winwood_, the egregiously competent, the _confidante_ of troubled ministers, bishops and generals. _Jane_ alone, an early simple friend of _Paul_, I found credible and charming, and thanked heaven for her sake that _Paul_ married his Princess. It is indeed a romance gone wrong. Perhaps it is a more difficult thing plausibly and readily to sustain one's fancy in a modern setting, with modern folk, than in the fair realm of Tushery with rapier-wielding demigods. Yet I think that the dead HARLAND and the living HOPE (himself no mean Tusher) might have brought off their _Paul_. As a matter of fact, so I believe could Mr. LOCKE; that is just the pity of it. I merely record the fact that he has not done so.

* * * * *

There are, of course, short stories and short stories. On a perusal of those that Mr. RICHARD DEHAN has collected in volume form under the title of _The Cost of Wings_ (HEINEMANN), I am bound to record my conviction that most of them are profoundly unworthy of the author of _The Dop Doctor_. Few of them even aspire to anything beyond "first serial" quality; and though there is often present a certain easy flippancy of phrase it impressed me only as the crackling of thorns in a pot-boiler. Perhaps the best is the first or title tale, which tells of a young wife goaded to hard words by her constant anxiety for an aviator-husband. There is some genuine feeling here; but the climax, in which the pair decide only to fly in company, was dangerously like the end of a stage duologue. Moreover, so swift now-a-days is the flight of time--or the time of flight--that aviation stories very soon come to sound antiquated. Still, after all, there is at least plenty of variety in this volume, and it will be hard if, in a collection of twenty-six brief tales, you do not come upon something to your individual taste. But one word of gentle protest. I fancy the stage has at last agreed upon a close time for supposed infants, against whose arrival from India nurses and rocking-horses are engaged, and who turn out on appearance to be young persons of mature years. Well, I am convinced that it is high time for a similar prohibition in fiction. Mr. DEHAN at least has proved himself far too clever for me to tolerate this threadbare theme, not very illuminatingly treated, from his valuable pen.

* * * * *

_Mr. Anthony Venning_ was a young man of remarkable tact. Taking advantage of his position as a consultant engineer, at the beginning of _The Sentence Absolute_ (NISBET), he pocketed an advance commission for recommending the tender of a certain firm of contractors to the Welsh mill-owner who was employing his professional services. Whether this practice is common amongst engineers, as the authoress would seem to suggest, I cannot say, but at any rate it was hardly to be expected in the circumstances that _Mr. Venning_ should not fall in love with _Mr. Powell's_ extremely beautiful daughter, or that the boilers in _Mr. Powell's_ mill should hesitate in the fulness of time to explode. But the lover had the native good sense to be present at the moment of the inevitable catastrophe and to be the only person seriously damaged; and since it was his first real lapse from the paths of rectitude, and he was otherwise amiable, athletic, presentable and brave, who shall complain if, after confessing in a manly way and being put into a state of thorough repair, he found happiness in the end? Miss MARGARET MACAULAY tells her story in a pleasant enough way, and describes with some skill its idyllic setting (for _Mr. Powell_ was first a country squire, and only secondly a manufacturer); but since she neither indulges in satire, social and economic speculation, nor any pretence of subtlety in psychological probings, there is a curiously old-fashioned air about her novel. And when I mention that _Mr. Venning_ and _Miss Powell_ were actually cut off by the tide on a treacherous reef of the Cambrian coast it will be realised that _The Sentence Absolute_ is a book for one of those softer moods in which we do not desire to be startled or stung to profound meditation on the meaning of life.

* * * * *

* * * * *

I hope that Mr. VAUGHAN KESTER, author of _John o' Jamestown_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), is innocent of intent to do the dreadful thing that he has done. With the book itself I have no fault to find; it is quite a good historical novel, and tells with a fair amount of excitement the story of _Captain John Smith_ and the early settlers in Virginia, not omitting _Pocahontas_. Mr. KESTER'S crime consists not in his novel, but in the fact that he has probably plunged America into all the horrors of a new outbreak of historical fiction. A few years ago every adult in the United States was writing historical novels. Those were the black days at the beginning of this century, still spoken of with a shudder from Maine to Tennessee. Gradually the horror spent itself; the country became pacified. Except for an occasional sporadic outbreak, the plague was stamped out. It got about that the historical novel was "a dead one," and young America turned to something else. Now you begin to see what Mr. KESTER has done. While Messrs. HODDER AND STOUGHTON are publishing _John o' Jamestown_ over in England, another firm is flooding the States with it. Mr. KESTER is a confirmed "best-seller" on the other side of the Atlantic. Probably his American publishers have issued a first edition of a hundred thousand of this story. The result may be imagined. Wild-eyed literary agents will carry the fiery cross throughout the country, crying that the historical novel is not dead after all, that there is still money in it; and thousands of estimable young men who might have been turning out quite decent stories of American life will thrust paper into their typewriters and begin, "Of the days when I followed my dear lord through many a hard-fought fray it ill becomes me, plain rude man that I am, to speak...." And it will be Mr. KESTER'S fault. It would not matter so much if the great army of American writers could do the thing even half as well as he has done it in _John o' Jamestown_; but they cannot. I know them, and that is why a great trembling runs through me so that I can scarce hold my pen to complete this review.

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