Chapter 3

If Messrs. SIMS, DIX and COLLINS did in fact, as they claim, make the book of this year's pantomime at the Lane, Mr. GEORGE GRAVES gagged and bound it. This popular annual festival indeed tends to become more and more of a GRAVES solo (with of course the innumerable customary _da capos_) and a bright sketchy EVANS _obbligato_. As a Grand Duchess and Duke respectively the genial twain present themselves. Mr. GEORGE GRAVES, in a flounced skirt of green tartan check, copper curls and mahogany features, is a delectable creation; says some strangely unlady-like things (as is expected of him); is still oddly preoccupied with "gear-boxes" and other anatomical detail; and generally indulges in a fine careless rapture of reminiscence and improvisation--zealously assisted by Mr. WILL EVANS' familiar tip-tilted nose and bland refusal to be perturbed by entirely unrehearsed effects and obviously irregular cues. A jovial and irreverent pair of potentates, crowned by public laughter.

There is, of course, a sort of background to all this audacious fooling, more definitely directed _virginibus puerisque_. The new principal boy, Mr. ERIC MARSHALL, woos his princess with a romantic air and a mellow tenor, in which emotion somewhat overshadows tone. Miss FLORENCE SMITHSON, an accepted Drury Lane favourite, looks very charming, makes love in pretty kitten wise and still indulges in those queer harmonics of hers--virtuosity rather than artistry, shall we call it?--but is altogether quite a nice princess of pantomime. Little RENÉE MAYER is the Puss. Nothing could well be daintier. But I hope she will let me tell her (in a whisper, so that the others won't hear), that she doesn't _quite_ realise what a jolly part she has got. I would implore her to spend an hour or two at serious play with any decent young cat and study the grace and variety of its beautiful, imitable gestures. Then she will assuredly pounce on her magician turned mouse, and fawn on her master and friends, with a greater air of conviction. And she will mightily please all the other nice children in the house.

Of the great _ensemble_ scenes unquestionably the finest was the Fairy Garden, with a quite beautiful back-cloth by R. MCCLEERY and a bewildering (and, to tell truth, largely bewildered) bevy of butterflies, decked by COMELLI, fluttering in a flowery pleasaunce. And there was also a clever variation on the now inevitable staircase _motif_ as a _finale_. But the Harlequinade of happy memory has deplorably declined to something like a mere display of advertisements--a sad business.

* * * * *

"The Starlight Express."

It would be uncandid to pretend that Mr. ALGERNON BLACKWOOD gets everything he has to say in _The Starlight Express_ safely across the footlights--those fateful barriers that trap so many excellent intentions. But he so evidently _has_ something to say, and the saying is so gallantly attempted, that he must emphatically be credited with something done--something rather well done really. The little play has beautiful moments--and that is to say a great deal.

This novelist turned playwright wishes to make you see that "the Earth's forgotten it's a Star." In plainer words he wants to present you with a cure for "wumbledness." People who look at the black side of things, who think chiefly of themselves--these are the wumbled. The cure is star-dust--which is sympathy. The treatment was discovered by the children of a poor author in a cheap Swiss _pension_ and by "Cousinenry," a successful business man of a quite unusual sort. You have to get out into the cave where the starlight is stored, gather it--with the help of the Organ Grinder, who loves all children and sings his cheery way to the stars; and the Gardener, who makes good things grow and plucks up all weeds; and the Lamplighter, who lights up heads and hearts and stars impartially; and the Sweep, who sweeps away all blacks and blues over the edge of the world, and the Dustman, with his sack of Dream-dust that is Star-dust (or isn't it?), and so forth. Then you sprinkle the precious stuff on people, and they become miracles of content and unselfishness. (The fact that life isn't in the very least like that is a thing you have just got to make yourself forget for three hours or so.)

The author was well served by his associates. Sir EDWARD ELGAR wove a delightfully patterned music of mysterious import through the queer tangle of the scenes and gave us an atmosphere loaded with the finest star-dust. Lighting and setting were admirably contrived; and the grouping of the little prologue scenes, where that kindly handsome giant of an organ-grinder (Mr. CHARLES MOTT), with the superbly cut corduroys, sang so tunefully to as sweet a flock of little maids as one could wish to see, was particularly effective.

Of the players I would especially commend the delicately sensitive performance of Miss MERCIA CAMERON (a name and talent quite new to me) as _Jane Anne_, the chief opponent of wumbledom. She was, I think, responsible more than any other for getting some of the mystery of the authentic Black-woodcraft across to the audience. The jolly spontaneity of RONALD HAMMOND as young _Bimbo_ was a pleasant thing, and ELISE HALL, concealing less successfully her careful training in the part, prettily co-operated as his sister _Monkey_. The part of _Daddy_, the congested author who was either "going to light the world or burst," was in O. B. CLARENCE'S clever sympathetic hands. Mr. OWEN ROUGHWOOD gave you a sense of his belief in the efficacy of star-dust. On what a difficult rail our author was occasionally driving his express you may judge when he makes this excellent but not particularly fragile British type exclaim, "I am melting down in dew." The flippant hearer had always to be inhibiting irreverent speculations occasioned by such speeches.

I couldn't guess if the children in the audience liked it. I hope they didn't feel they had been spoofed, as MAETERLINCK so basely spoofed them in _The Blue Bird_, by offering them a grown-ups' play "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." But the bigger children gave the piece a good welcome, and called and acclaimed the shrinking author. T.

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* * * * *

"36 Magnificent, Acclimatised, Well-bred Dairy Cows, &c. Many of these were bred on the Premises, and others were purchased from a renowned Breeder of Friesland Cattle, and they need no comment from the Auctioneers, but will speak for themselves."

_Natal Mercury._

Blowing their own horns, so to speak.

* * * * *

* * * * *

THEY.

Just lately I have been thinking often of Them. But Their image has never been more vividly in my mind than now, when I sit here among the aftermath of festival. I wonder, for example, are the homes in which They live pervaded with this same _débris_ of Christmas (or, as They themselves are so fond of calling it, Yuletide)? Does dismembered turkey coldly furnish forth Their meals? Are there too many calendars, and a litter of crumpled paper? And cards--do They send each other cards? Stupendous thought!

Most of all is my fancy busy with Them to-morrow, Tuesday, December the twenty-eighth. I see Them rising, a little wearily, perhaps, and heavy-eyed. Breakfast They snatch, and so out into the winter morning towards that place where, unknown and unrecognised, They pursue throughout the year Their changeless toil. I imagine Them gathering with mutual greetings in the workroom--a little company about whose features I have so often speculated. Poets are there, and artists; probably some among the men may wear their hair a trifle longer than the military fashion of to-day; but the greater part of the crowd are almost certainly women. Now the talk dies down; presently They are all once more bending in silence over Their appointed tasks.

Yes, here at one desk is the artist to whose genius we owe the obese robin perched upon a horse-shoe, or the churchyard by moonlight after (apparently) a severe spangle-storm. Here again a poet, whose eye in a fine frenzy rolling proclaims an inspiration, or at least some subtle variant upon a familiar theme. He stoops and, even as I watch, has traced swiftly, with vibrant pen, this couplet:--

"The old, old wish I send to thee, Jocund may thy Xmas be!"

Then, with a little sigh, he leans back, satisfied that for him the holiday intermission had not rusted the fine edge of originality. "Jocund" proved that.

Behind him perhaps sits a maiden like Fate, who with abhorred shears fashions strange shapes and borderings of foliage unknown to mere nature. And further still, in yonder obscure and shadowy corner, is one who by her art can penetrate the future and outstrip the foot of Time himself. For see, upon her cards, there is already written--

"With every blessing good and true May the New Year be packed, And 1917 bring to you What 1916 lacked."

I wonder--how does their work seem to Them upon this morning after Boxing-day?

* * * * *

What to do with our Boys.

"Bun-Prover wanted, 20-25 Trays Capacity."

_Portsmouth Evening News._

* * * * *

Not from the Cocoa Press.

"At a concert given in the sick bay, H.M.S. Crystal Palace, 34 large boxes of chocolates were distributed among the patients. Mr. Balfour sent a telegram wishing the men a speedy recovery."--_The Times._

* * * * *

The following advertisement appeared on Dec. 23:--

"Lady recommends her Companion-Hosekeeper."--_Morning Paper._

She was not going to risk her own Christmas stocking.

* * * * *

"It is no easy thing to replace an artist of the quality of Miss Lily Elsie, who, in spite of the warmth of her reception at His Majesty's Theatre, recently took so severe a chill that the doctor would not hear of her playing again for some time."--_Daily Mail._

The figurative has no chance with the actual.

* * * * *

AT THE SOURCE.

"Oh," said Francesca, coming into the library, "I see you're busy with your papers. Don't let me disturb you."

"If," I said, "it depended on me I wouldn't. I'd take you at your word and have you out of the room in two-twos. But you wouldn't like that, now, would you?"

"I'm afraid I should have to enter a protest. That's right, isn't it? Protests _are_ things that have to be entered, aren't they?"

"Yes," I said, "they're like candidates for examinations, or rooms, only some rooms oughtn't to be entered, but are."

"Jocose?" said Francesca.

"No," I said; "I was thinking of Blue Beard. I daresay you remember about him. He was a very uxorious man, you know, and most domestic. Something of a traveller, and when"--

"We won't worry about Blue Beard," she said. "I think I know the outlines of his family history."

"Well then," I said, "why can't you leave me alone? You see I'm busy and yet you insist on staying here and interrupting me. Do you call that being a helpmeet?"

"Well," she said, "I call it joining myself unto you, and that's what we were told to do to one another in the marriage service."

"You're wrong," I said. "I was told to do that unto you, but you were told to submit yourself unto me and to reverence me."

"It's all the same," she said. "All I'm doing is to help you to obey the Prayer-Book."

"Anyhow," I said, "you've sat down and you mean to stay here. Is that what it comes to?"

"It is," she said. "You're in tremendous guessing form to-day."

"All I know," I said gloomily, "is that if my return for Income Tax contains many mistakes it'll be your fault, not mine; and I shall take care so to inform the CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER. I shall put down in the Exemptions and Abatements, 'Interrupted by wife. Abatement claimed, £100.' The CHANCELLOR will understand. He's a married man himself."

"So you're doing your Income Tax," she said dreamily. "I've often wondered how that was done. Do you like it?"

"No, Francesca," I said, "I do not like it. To be quite frank with you I detest it."

"But you're helping the War," she said. "That ought to buck you up like anything. Every extra penny you pay is a smack in the eye for the KAISER, so cheer up and make a good big return."

"I will do," I said, "what is strictly fair between myself and the Government. I can afford to be just to the CHANCELLOR, but, by Heaven, I cannot afford to be generous. Generosity has no place in an Income Tax return."

"Go ahead with it then," she said. "I don't know what's stopping you."

"You," I said, "are stopping me--you and that part of my income from which the tax is not deducted at the source."

"That sounds quite poetical," she said. "It runs into metre directly. Listen:--

No man can well be rude or even coarse Who has his tax deducted at the source.

But I wish you'd tell me what it means."

"Francesca," I said bitterly, "you are pleased to be a rhymer. You are, in fact, rhyming while the exchequer is burning; and then you add insult to injury by asking me the meaning of an elementary financial phrase."

"Well, what _does_ it mean?"

"It means," I said, "that if your money is invested in public companies or things of that nature, then when your half-yearly dividend--You know what a dividend is?"

"Rather," she said. "It comes in on blue paper or pink, and you say, 'That's something to be thankful for;' and you write your name on one half of it and you send that half to the bank, and you tear off the other half and lose it in the next spring-cleaning. I know what a dividend is all right."

"Francesca," I said, "your knowledge is very wonderful. But if you suppose that that is the whole dividend, you are much mistaken. It is the dividend minus the tax. The company saves you trouble by deducting the tax and pays it to the CHANCELLOR for you."

"Bravo the company!" said Francesca.

"And so say I. You see you never get that part of your money, so there's no temptation to spend it--in fact you don't spend it."

"That," she said, "sounds highly plausible."

"Yes, but listen. Suppose you've got some little job at, say, two hundred and fifty pounds a year"--

"Like the little job you were so pleased to get a few years ago."

"Yes," I said, "more or less like that."

"Not so honourable, of course," said Francesca.

"No, of course not, but similar as to emoluments. Well, in that case you get the whole amount, and you spend it in perfectly useless things and forget all about it after you've put it down in your return; and then suddenly some Surveyor of Taxes writes and demands Income Tax on those two hundred and fifty pounds, actually demands something like forty pounds. I tell you, it goes through you like a knife."

"Haven't you any remedy?"

"Of course I could chuck the job," I said, "or do it for nothing. Yes, I think I'll chuck it. It'll be a lesson to them."

"Yes," she said, "it would probably make the Government sit up--but, on the whole, I don't think I should go so far if I were you. You see"--

"Go on," I said, for she was hesitating. "Let us strip ourselves of everything at once and throw ourselves on the charity of our neighbours."

"Well," she said, "I'd go on for a bit. A job's a job even if it does make you pay. You've had £210 on balance, and you ought to be thankful to have been allowed to pay forty pounds for munitions."

"And now," I said, "perhaps you'll let me get on with my work."

R. C. L.

* * * * *

The Pull-Through:

_Being a paraphrase of an answer in an O.T.C. examination._

Just one long pull, a straight strong pull--no other pull will do; A man must never take two pulls to pull the pull-through through.

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Village Amenities.

"The hearty congregational stinging was a feature of church life to be proud of."--_Parish Magazine._

* * * * *

"WANTED.--Comfortable Home with private family for Gentleman who is not strong in Brighton, Eastbourne, or St. Leonards."

_The Times._

The poor fellow should try Bournemouth or Torquay.

* * * * *

GETTING EVEN.

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

If it should ever be your lot, which pray Heaven forbid, to be stranded on the coast of Panama, seek out Miss WINIFRED JAMES as your hostess, for she can teach you how to tolerate, and even in a way enjoy, an existence one might have thought unendurable. She lives, I gather, some two hundred miles or so from the Canal, in a town that is going to be built some fine day on a site that has to be prepared by filling up a marsh with clay and sand. In the meantime, until the day and the town arrive, she rightly describes herself as _A Woman in the Wilderness_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL). Civilisation is turned back to front out there, for although such comforts as refrigerators and electric light are a matter of course, there is still lacking to _Mrs. Henry de Jan_ and her rather shadowy _William_ anything, for instance, in the nature of a road on which to walk, or indeed any approach to their own verandah except, floating on the clay, a narrow plank gangway that has to serve as a hustling high-road for a mixed and dusky populace. Under the circumstances she has done nobly well to arm herself with the twin defences of cheerfulness and humour; and if the cheerfulness comes at times near to being that of a martyr on the rack, while the fun is perilously apt to swing from themes that are nice for a lady's wit to others that are not so nice, and back to sheer triviality, what, in the name of a population of sand-flies and negroes, can you expect? It is much that so lifelike a picture of a region so desolate should be presented on the whole with sweetness and charm, when no better material is available than the myriad misdeeds of her coloured servants, the antics of her puppies and an occasional reminiscence of home.

* * * * *

Certainly VIOLET HUNT and FORD MADOX HUEFFER have one achievement to their credit. They have evolved an entirely new and original setting in which to bring together a number of short stories. What is supposed to happen is that sundry persons who did not feel exactly drawn towards bed before 2 A.M. on those summer nights when Zeppelins were about, meet for bridge and sandwiches and incidentally to listen to certain stories read aloud by their author. In this way they are able to forget their apprehensions of the gas-bags (dare I put it that they lose Count?) and spend a pleasant series of evenings with history. For the stories in _Zeppelin Nights_ (LANE) are all historical of a kind. Mostly they deal with the byways of history, or rather with the emotions of ordinary people who are just on the outer edge of historical happenings. For example, the central figure of the first is a slave whose basket of figs is upset by PHEIDIPPIDES running from Marathon; while the last concerns an insignificant little anti-militarist who finds himself cheering for the army on the outbreak of the Boer War. That is the kind of tales they are, slight and momentary things, with no plot but plenty of atmosphere, and in their style remarkably well done. Whether they would actually keep the nerve-ridden oblivious of bombs for the thousand-and-one nights that might have seen raids and didn't is a matter that need not concern us. For my part, I liked as much as any the pages in which Miss HUNT or Mr. HUEFFER folded up her or his manuscript and allowed the other (whichever it was) to tell us about the very pleasant and human audience. I had only one disappointment, but that was acute. I did want just once for them to hear a distant bang, and see what happened. I rather doubt whether the placid and literary charm of the tales would have sufficed to keep them within doors had there been anything to see outside.

* * * * *

"In his hot indignation his yellowish face had in places turned blackish: literally, black streaks ran from the corners of his lips upwards and downwards, and from the inner corners of his eyes." If you read that sentence in a novel with Mr. EDGAR JEPSON'S name on the cover, and found that the passage was a description of a man named _Shadrach Penny_, would you not, as I did, settle down comfortably in your armchair and wait with perfect confidence for the human zebra to murder somebody in the most fascinatingly brutal manner? But he did not do anything of the kind. I think that the fact that I was disappointed in, and even seriously bored by, _The Man Who Came Back_ (HUTCHINSON) was largely due to the mild, dull way in which the story developed. And yet I think I could have forgiven the absence of lurid sensationalism if the book had been a good book of its kind. It is not. It is so crude and amateurish that it is difficult to believe that a professional writer could have written it. Mr. JEPSON, like most other authors, has had the idea of modernising the story of the Prodigal Son. He adheres to the original story closely in one respect, for _Roland Penny's_ first meal in his old home consists of roast veal, but he departs from it in making _Roland_, so far from wasting his substance, amass a large fortune among the husks and swine. I do not know how to classify _The Man Who Came Back_. It is not a novel of incident, for nothing happens in it. It is not a novel of character, for there is no attempt at any but the crudest character-drawing. It is just a six-shilling novel, and I do not see what else one can say of it. Mr. JEPSON must do one of two things. He must either brace up and make his style less irritatingly slipshod, or he must give us a few more murders. If we cannot have literary elegance he must give us blood.

* * * * *

Lieutenant L. B. RUNDALL, of the 1st Gurkha Rifles, author of _The Ilex of Stra-Ping_ (MACMILLAN), was not only a soldier and a sportsman, but a writer with a most keen sense of the beauty of nature and the beauty of words. Children should love these Himalayan sketches, for Mr. RUNDALL, from material which in some cases was admittedly slight, could weave a tale full of magic and charm. The story of the old brown bear in "The Scape-goat" may not greatly stir the heart with the thrill of adventure, but the hero has attractions that no child and no man that has not forgotten his childhood could resist. An inconspicuous notice in the book tells us that the author fell in action towards the close of 1914. I salute his memory. Rich as we are to-day in authors who can write enchantingly of birds and animals, I feel a sense of personal sorrow in the loss of one whose work gave so fair a promise of high achievement.

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