Part 1

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PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOL. 150

JUNE 28, 1916.

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CHARIVARIA.

Two sailors charged with stealing a barrel of beer from a public-house at Dover explained that it was only a joke. The prosecution however pointed out that when the defendants were arrested a large part of the joke was found to be on them.

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An applicant to the London Appeal Tribunal asked for exemption on the ground that he was engaged in the business, previously monopolized by Germans, of filling Santa Claus stockings. The Tribunal however concluded that for the present he would be better employed in the business, also largely a German monopoly before the War, of filling a tunic.

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Herr BETHMANN-HOLLWEG has explained to members of the German _Flottenvereins_ that after the War Germany will require a strong Fleet to "guard the transatlantic lanes of commerce." This of course explains why they have refrained up to the present from annihilating the British Fleet. They expect to use it in their coming war with Portugal.

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"The pair of swans on the lake at Hampton Court," says a news item, "have hatched out seven young cygnets." Ordinary swans of course only hatch out goslings or ducklets.

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A defendant who was fined £1 at Woking for shooting a wild-duck pleaded that he was an enthusiastic ornithologist and wanted the bird for comparison with other specimens. We ourselves in former times were in the habit of mounting our wild ducks in sets, but since the outbreak of the War the exorbitant prices charged by the local taxidermist have deprived us of the pleasures of comparative ornithology.

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A Bill introduced into the House of Commons last week enables the Crown to continue for a limited time after the War (three years, with a possible extension to another four) in possession of land occupied during the War for defence purposes. We understand that in the framing of this measure the feelings of TINO were not consulted.

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The _Berlingske Tidende_ declares that the British authorities are collecting vast quantities of coffee in Sweden which will be sent to Germany after the War. It is also generally believed, on the strength of the reports of the Paris Conference, that equally large quantities of beans are being assembled in France and elsewhere which will be handed to Germany immediately after the conclusion of the struggle.

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A Willesden man, charged with being disorderly at a music-hall, pleaded that the performance was so jolly that he had to dance. That sort of thing is all right in places like Willesden, but we trust that our West End managers will continue to eliminate from their programmes anything likely to be provocative of similar behaviour.

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The report that Mexico has sent an ultimatum to the United States is probably exaggerated. The Mexican authorities are said to be of the opinion that a policy of firmness combined with moderation will bring their unruly neighbour to reason.

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A turtle weighing a ton has been caught off the Scilly Isles. The animal, which made no attempt to resist capture, stated that it was tired of being mistaken for a submarine.

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From an account of the Russian advance:--

"The enemy is desisting furiously, particularly in the region of Torgovitsa."

_Provincial Paper._

Just as the German High Seas Fleet did off the coast of Jutland.

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THE SENIOR PARTNER.

_As viewed by Franz Josef, Junior Partner._

I hate the horrid roller used by our offensive foe, Which goes so very much more fast than most steam-rollers go; Just now it's got us in a hole particularly tight, But HINDENBURG, brave HINDENBURG, is sure to put us right.

Some time ago it snorted up Carpathia's rugged steeps, It tooted through Przemysl Town and Cracow had the creeps; And even in Vienna we were turning rather sick, But MACKENSEN, good MACKENSEN, he saved us in the nick.

Our stout Ally's behaviour may contain a touch of swank, But, when we leave a vacuum upon his dexter flank, Although with simulated grief he'd chuck us if he could, His HINDENBURG (or MACKENSEN) has got to make it good.

Yet if I do my best to win a battle on my own, And barge about Trentino, which is my peculiar zone, Should anything occur to push my eagle off its perch Then WILLIAM TWO, dear WILLIAM TWO, would leave me in the lurch.

But now that I am knocked again on our united front, Which incidentally disturbs his adumbrated stunt, His heart (from quite a distance) yearns to soothe the painful spot, And HINDENBURG, old HINDENBURG, is sent to stop the rot.

O.S.

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WHAT THE PRESSMEN SAW.

(BY OUR NAVAL EXPERT).

I have passed a week rich in experiences. The things I've seen! As one of a party of journalists accorded the privilege of a visit to the Trawler Fleet I am able to-day at last to lift the curtain and tell the public what is going on. It is true that there are some restrictions as to what may be published, but I think you will find that I am free to relate the best bits.

The Trawler Fleet! The Trawler Fleet is a power of great and diverse capabilities. But my visit was paid not so much to estimate its fighting value as to plumb its spiritual depths (which are not so likely to be interfered with by the Censor). The very heart of British sea power, the epitome of modern naval war, is to be found in a little port somewhere on the ---- Coast. Here cluster just ordinary little one-funnelled trawlers, grimy little every-day vessels. These are the real thing. They come and go, these trawlers, in and out, back and forth, up and down, round and round; but they are being wrought into the weft and woof of history, every one of them.

I contemplated them. On one I found an old tar cleaning his shore-going boots. We entered into conversation, the ice being broken by a friendly query of his as to whether the adoption of Summer Time had affected the prohibited hours. And I--with intention--asked him if he had been fishing.

"Fishing?" said he; and he looked at me and winked. There was heroism in his wink with a dash of humour, as is the way with men of our race.

On another I found a mere boy. His job, I gathered, was to help the cook and wash up. "The War," he considered, "'adn't made no sort o' difference to 'im. His job went on much the same."

Well, I took off my hat to him--I couldn't resist it. Never have I been more thrilled at the thought of the indomitable spirit of our race. No difference!

I questioned him further, but he evinced all the admirable and impenetrable reticence of the Service in war-time.

Deeply moved by these experiences I next accosted a brawny stoker covered with the grime of his calling. "The life seems to suit you all right," I cried, and slapped him on the back. The result was noteworthy. He made absolutely no reply of any sort but spat over the side.

And finally I must tell the story of the trawler and the mine. We all heard it, and most of the best people are telling it. It reveals better than anything perhaps the spiritual depths. It was related by an officer who had taken charge of our party and who actually showed us a photograph of the mine in question in a little museum of relics he had established on the quay, which contained also a part of a chronometer, said to be German, and a loaf of potato bread, captured and brought home under conditions that will make a stirring story after the War. The mine had been towed in by a fisherman who had flung a rope round its horns. "Cool hand, that fisherman," the narrator concluded. (It is only fair to say that in some versions given to the public the expression is set down as "Offhand chap" or "Careless old card," but I believe these to be incorrect.) "He said it must be safe enough for he had towed it for fourteen miles." (There has been some little discrepancy as to the mileage also, one sensational writer in the Yellow Press even putting it as high as nineteen.)

A wonderful week! It is folly to draw great conclusions from a hasty visit. All the same this is my considered message to the British Public--_Trust the Trawlers._

BIS.

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S.O.S.

"We may indeed say with another meaning, _Sos monumentum requiras circumspice_."--_The Builder._

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Hun Candour.

From a description of Czernowitz in the _Berliner Tageblatt_:--

"Since Saturday evening everyone wanted to go away, Christian, Jew, German."

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"An Edmonton barber, who was given temporary exemption, stated that he had tried a female assistant, but she took half-an-hour to shave one man."--_Evening Paper._

As the result, we suspect, of too much "chin-wagging."

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The following letter was received from a Chinese store-keeper, in response to an order for benzine:--

"MADAM,--Very sorry we have no Benzine, but we have Ground Cloves, Nutmegs, Cinnamon and Ginger. Hoping to be excused for the trouble."

Victims of the petrol-census may be glad to know of these substitutes.

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"Wanted good Navies. Several months work. 7d.--Apply Ganger, Northampton."

We suspect "Ganger, Northampton," to be a _nom de guerre_ for "Admiral of the Atlantic, Wilhelmshaven," who is notoriously hard up both for ships and money.

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"The evidence of the police was to the effect that about 400 people marched in procession through Dame Street and Westmoreland Street, followed by a crowd of 2,000 girls, who led the processionists."

_Daily Mirror._

There is precedent for this in higher circles, where leaders have been known to follow the crowd.

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KITCHEN RHYMES.

THE CROWNING ART.

It's fine to be a Bishop with a shovel-hat and gaiters; It's fine to be an Author with a style like WALTER PATER'S; It's very fine to be a Judge like DARLING or like AVORY, But it's finer far to be a cook who understands a savoury.

TOO MANY COOKS?

The broth was spoiled, so said the ancient books, By the employment of "too many cooks"; But nowadays we think the saying funny, When cooks can not be had for love or money.

HIGHER EDUCATION.

I can't afford to send my sons to Eton; The fees are now prohibitively high; But I'll send my girls to study _Mrs. Beeton_, And hope to reap the profits ere I die.

LOSS AND GAIN.

In good VICTORIA'S golden reign Cooks were not lured, by love of gain, From their professional domain To making war munitions; But they had compensations too Denied by law to me and you, And used to supplement their screw By secret trade commissions.

FIRELESS COOKERY.

When I was young, in days far hence, The heat of the kitchen was most intense, But now, by the use of electric connections Our cooks are able to keep their complexions.

A DIETETIC TRAGEDY.

Jack Sprat on nuts grew fat; His wife ate nothing but prunes; The Butler drank quarts Of his master's ports, And the Cook ran away with the spoons.

BEFORE THE WAR.

Master's at his broker's thinking of a flutter; Mistress, she's out golfing, trying her new putter; Cook is at a matinee, laughing at the songs; Why keep a cook when you can feed at restaurongs?

DURING THE WAR.

Master's in the trenches with his only son; Mistress manages the farm and keeps a poultry run; Miss Belinda roasts and bakes and answers all the bells, For Cook and House-and Kitchen-maid are all making shells.

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"To-day we hear that the elevation to the Peerage of Mr. H. J. TENNANT, M.P. for Berwickshire, is certain. We hope the tile he assumes will be a local one."

_Berwick Journal._

A Tweed Cap, we presume.

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"The list of these Canadian doctors is a long one.... It includes ... Major Meakins and Captain Thomas Cotton, the distinguished cardiologists, who are now attached to the Hampstead Hospital for the study of the Soldier's Heart."--_The Times._

This subject must be far and away the most popular at the present time, and we have an idea that the finest experts are not attached to the Medical profession.

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HIS LADY FRIEND.

When the post came in Private Grimes was sitting alone, hammering a strip of metal with a stone. During the eight months that this solitary and silent man had been in Flanders he had not received so much as a picture-postcard, and he expected nothing now. But to the surprise not only of himself but of all the men who saw it, this post brought him a letter:--

"DEER HENERY she is in the best off helth i thort you mite be wunderin' the wether heer is shokin' As it leeves me at presant BILL."

Grimes read it with obvious satisfaction and put it in his pocket; soon he took it out and read it again.

In the group round the fire that night Grimes was again working on his piece of metal.

"'Eard from 'is girl at last," said Private Brant to the others, indicating Grimes by a jerk of the head. "'Dear 'Arold, when are you goin' to send me the bewtiful ring you're makin'?' she says."

"Ring, is it?" said Parker. "Looks as if it would be more like a kid's 'oop, when it's finished. She must 'ave a finger like two thumbs. Grimes, old son, you can take it from me she won't give you a blanky thank-you for it. Lummy, look at the jools!"--and in the firelight they saw the glint of red and blue against the polished strip of metal.

"Is she young and fair, Grimes?" asked a humourist.

"If she was 'ere she'd teach you manners," said Private Grimes.

The jewels were pieces of glass from a shattered church-window. Grimes was pleased with them, and even whistled a note or two as he worked. "Won't give me a thank-you, eh?" he thought, with a bit of a smile.

Three weeks later he went home on leave. She was not at Victoria (whoever she was). His visit would be a surprise for her. He got off the tram at Vauxhall and turned into the narrow side-streets.

From the yard of a brewery in the distance a van was emerging. A big red-faced man was on the dickey, and on a barrel beside him was something white. Grimes whistled; and the white patch leapt into vigorous life, giving out glad barks and little impatient whines. "Wot cher, Grimey!" called the driver, as he pulled up to lower the wriggling patch of white to the road; and Bess, an ecstatic bull-terrier, with the gladdest of pink-rimmed eyes, came bounding towards the soldier.

He caught her up and took a good look at her. She licked his unwashed unshaven face.

"Looks all right, don't she, Grimey?" asked the other a little anxiously. "Never 'ad a thing to eat but wot you said, all the time."

"Looks a treat, Bill," said Bess's master; and Bill knew that this was high-praise.

"'Ere, Bess, 'ere's a sooveneer," said Grimes. He put her down and, taking her paw in his hand, bent and fastened into place that strip of waste war-metal, ornamented with bits of saints from an old church window in Flanders.

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The Preparatory Course.

Application just received on behalf of a young lady who is anxious to do War-service as a teacher in an elementary school:--

"She has had some little test of her powers of discipline, as she has started and trained a pack of Wolf Cubs in the parish."

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AT THE PLAY.

"THE RIDDLE."

For a woman who has barely scraped through a charge of poisoning her husband and has had to change her name and dye her hair from yellow to sable (contrary to the customary order of things) and lead "the wolf's life"--preying, that is, on innocent lambs--there might be worse hells on earth than the Sleeve Ard Hotel, Ardcastle, Co. Down, with its pleasant lake and mountain scenery, its golf and its real Irish waiter. And it was a cruel stroke of bad luck that into this quiet fold, teeming with woolly lambs of all ages in their crisp fleeces of fivers and tenners, there should have intruded (1) a vulgar blackmailer who knew all about her lurid past, and (2) a K.C. with a deadly memory for the details of _causes célèbres_. And (3) it was a heart-breaking coincidence that the youngest lamb of all should have borne such a striking resemblance to the lady-wolf's dead lover that she wanted to embrace him instead of fleecing him; and (4) that his betrothed should have been the god-daughter of the K.C. with the terrible recording tablets.

But what would you? We are not talking of life, but of a stage-play; and from the moment of the curtain's rise, when Miss Elsom sat down at the piano and sang, without any provocation, a little thing by Mr. LANDON RONALD, for the sole benefit of the Irish waiter, to the juncture when the K.C. and the blackmailer got through a game of billiards in about four minutes, we were seldom allowed to forget that we were seeing things in a light that never was on any land but stageland.

Like so many theatrical plays it was written up to what the profession calls a "strong scene." Even the weather was pressed into a shameless collusion; for it was a wet afternoon that gave the K.C. his opportunity, as it might have been in the house on the road to Fiesole, of narrating, with lavish detail and the whole hotel for audience, the story of the murder trial in which "_Mrs. Lytton_" (the wolf) had figured as the prisoner; and frankly indicating that, if he had been the prosecutor, he could have established her guilt. His object, more moral than humane, and more histrionic than either, was to confound the wretched woman, to expose her identity and so, by a sudden disillusionment, to restore her lamb to the fold. The end, as it turned out for the general good, did actually seem to justify the means; but at the time it was not a very edifying exhibition.

"One likes to show the truth for the truth; That the woman was light is very true; But suppose she says, Never mind that youth! What wrong have I done to you?"

"Well, anyhow" (as BROWNING also said) it was an effective piece of stage-work, and the result tallied with the best conventions by which youth is reclaimed from the snares of a baffled and repentant vampire.

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The staginess of things infected or seemed to infect even Miss IRENE VANBRUGH. In the first Act I found her a little spasmodic. And all through the play the authors were most arbitrary about the way in which they made her meet the various attacks that were sprung upon her. Thus, at a small shock, she would suddenly start and drop something; but when you expected her at least to swoon on finding that her true name had been discovered, she bore the blow with superb aplomb. And after enduring the K.C.'s interminable recitation with only here and there a sign of personal interest, she finally gave herself away in a loud and voluble protest against the idea that any woman purposing to administer poison to her husband could have been callous enough to try it first on a favourite dog.

There was inconsistency too in the pace at which the performance was conducted. All obvious things were taken quite leisurely; but the speed at which really difficult and complex details were rushed, was simply torrential.

Miss IRENE VANBRUGH had her own reputation to compete with in the kind of part in which we know her so well, and to say that she was equal to it is praise enough. She was best, perhaps, because most womanly and least wolfish, in the scene of her confession. As for Mr. DION BOUCICAULT I would not go so far as to say that his manner deceived me into supposing that he was a real K.C. I have mixed with many real K.C.'s on the parade-ground or in the trenches (home defence), but even in the disguise of a uniform, and under conditions that might tend to obscure the outward signs of legal distinction, I have always observed a certain manner which betrayed their high calling. That manner was not very saliently marked in Mr. DION BOUCICAULT. But he had an exceptional chance as an actor and grasped it firmly.

The part of _Mr. Rigg_, blackmailer, the mystery of whose personality, aggravated by a _penchant_ for "hovering" with intent, constituted a darker "Riddle" than that of "_Mrs. Lytton_," was played by Mr. OSWALD MARSHALL with admirable ease and reserve; and Mr. STANLEY DREWITT'S _Professor Beveridge_, an antique lamb who confided to the wolf his views on "discontinuous variations," and by way of reprisal was touched by her for a couple of ten-pound notes, had a pleasant air of naïve sincerity. The others were sufficiently sound on the old accepted lines.

The dialogue had too many long sentences for spontaneity, and when I say that the humour was largely confined to the vague inconsequences of the mother-in-law-to-be you will kindly understand that it was neither profuse nor sparkling.

I shall not venture to predict the length of _The Riddle's_ run; but I suspect that the public may rise superior to the judgment of the critics. Plays that are purely actors' plays have a habit, however familiar their formulas, of coming home to the British bosom; and this one may stick there. O. S.

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