Chapter 3

"Plagues of rates have appeared at Pinsk, and in the British trenches."

_Buenos Ayres Herald._

Even at home we have not entirely escaped the epidemic.

* * * * *

"Floating Baby Found Unarmed."

_Provincial Paper._

Had the Huns known of its defenceless condition they would never have allowed it to escape.

* * * * *

"'Like a poet, a geographer is born, not mad,' once wrote Sir Clements Markham."

_Times of India._

Some poets will be greatly relieved by this doctrine.

* * * * *

* * * * *

LINES TO AN OLD FRIEND.

[Dr. GEORGE PERNET, in a recent treatise on "The Health of the Skin," discusses the continued decline in the popularity of the tall hat.]

O emblem of British decorum, Whose vogue, for a century back, In the Mart, in the House or the Forum Few dared to impugn or attack; 'Tis sad, though the best of our bankers Refuse to allow such a lapse, That our youth irrepressibly hankers For straws and for caps.

_Mr. Seagram_, in _Masterman Ready_, Is pictured in many a hole, And in postures however unsteady, With his chimney-pot hat on his poll; And our highly respected grand-paters, When wielding their golf-clubs or bats, Or proving their prowess as skaters, Wore cylinder hats.

Worn straight by the priggish or surly Thou didst not enthuse or beguile; But tilted a little and curly Of brim--how seductive thy style! And never was pride that is proper Sartorially better expressed Than when an immaculate topper Sat light on one's crest.

The cult of the bicycle, tending To foster a laxer array, And the motor, its influence lending, Both seriously threatened thy sway; But the War, most unfairly combining The motives of comfort and thrift, Thy glory, so sleek and so shining, Has finally biffed.

Yet I cannot observe thy dethroning Or watch thy effulgence depart Without unaffectedly owning A pang of regret in my heart. I know thou wast stuffy, non-porous, Unstable, top-heavy and hot; But O! thou wast grimly decorous; The bowler is not.

* * * * *

Agreed.

"Original and inspiring as are Mr. Chesterton's writings, the man is very much bigger than his works."--_Everyman._

* * * * *

"TOWN PLUNGED IN DARKNESS.

Population Warned by Syrens and buzzards."

_Evening Paper._

"_Our_ little town," writes the correspondent who sends us the above cutting, "was warned by dryads and wombats." And of course there is the well-known case of the Roman geese and the Capitol.

* * * * *

"Organist (willing to help train choir) wanted for country parish. Might suit clergyman's daughter."--_Church Times._

He might, no doubt; but it is not safe to count on these affinities.

* * * * *

"The Manchester City Council on Wednesday decided to accept the free use of Professor W. B. Bottomley's patients for the conversion of raw peat by means of bacteria."

_Provincial Paper._

If we were the patients we should make a small charge for the loan of the germs.

* * * * *

"There has been a naval skirmish in the Baltic, where the elusive Goeben has been engaged by the Russians with the usual result--the escape of the fugitive battle-cruiser behind the mined defences of the Bosphorus."

_The Dominion (Wellington, N.Z.)_

It must have been a fine sight to see this elusive vessel jump right across Russia and back again.

* * * * *

"The _Cologne Gazette_, referring to the simplicity of character displayed by King Ferdinand of Bulgaria, says that frequently when walking about the streets of Sofia he purchases a sausage from a stall and eats it with his fingers as he passes along. Latest advices say he is slowly recovering from his illness."

_Daily Express._

It might have been much worse if he had eaten the sausage with his mouth.

* * * * *

A FLAT OVERTURE.

I.

_3, Fotheringay Court Mansions, S.W. March 1st._

Mrs. Sleight-Spender presents her compliments to Mrs. Crichton and would be obliged if she would prevent what is evidently a schoolroom piano being practised late at night, as it is most disturbing when one has friends.

II.

_7, Fotheringay Court Mansions, S.W. March 1st._

Mrs. Crichton presents her compliments to Mrs. Sleight-Spender and would willingly oblige her, but having neither a schoolroom nor a piano in her flat she finds a difficulty in doing so. Possibly if Mrs. Sleight-Spender addressed her remonstrance to No. 12, she would discover the cause of her complaint and might thereby earn the thanks of her neighbours by inducing Mr. Bogloffsksy to practise less for his concerts.

III.

_3, Fotheringay Court Mansions, S.W. March 2nd._

Dear Mr. BOGLOFFSKY,--Please forgive me for writing on the impulse of the moment in this unconventional way, but I have only just discovered that we are neighbours, for the Directory confirms what the unmistakable tones of a certain piano had long led me to suspect.

Will you very kindly waive all ceremony and join us at a friendly little dinner on the 10th, at 7.30?

Yours sincerely,

Editha Sleight-Spender.

IV.

_12, Fotheringay Court Mansions, S.W. March 2nd._

Dear MRS. SLEIGHT-SPENDER,--Your amiable letter leaves me nothing but pleasure. My poor company shall be agreeable to join your hospitable family.

With respect, I am, Yours sincere,

Serge Bogloffsky.

V.

_From Miss Isolt Sleight-Spender to Miss Marjorie Browne._

(Extract.)

... Oh, my dear, don't reproach me for not having run round. We are simply off our heads. Bogloffsky--_the_ Bogloffsky--is coming to dinner on Friday next, and the Mudder and I have been simply _tearing_. Even the Sticklers have accepted, and we hope to get Sir Henry Say, as the Dudder met him once at a City dinner. Of course _I_ shall have to play something first. Pity me!....

VI.

_From Mrs. Sleight-Spender to Messrs. Rosewood and Sons. March. 3rd._

Mrs. Sleight-Spender requires the use of a _very_ good piano on the 10th. It must be a _grand_, as it is for Mr. Bogloffsky. Under the circumstances Mrs. Sleight-Spender supposes there will be only a nominal charge, if any.

VII.

_From Sir Henry Say to Cuthbert Haddington. March 11th._

My dear Bertie,--Last night I skimmed some of the cream of life, and incidentally got an idea for a _lever de rideau_, of which I make you a present.

Far be it from me to glean from the crop of trouble of a man whose salt I have eaten, but the situation was a gift from the gods, which I will not spoil on a sheet of notepaper. When have you a free evening?

Always, Harry.

VIII.

_From Miss Isolt Sleight-Spender to Miss Marjorie Browne._

(Extract.)

... The Mudder is quite ill. It is all through that woman at No. 7. It must be because we didn't call on her. But what an evening ruined! Bogloffsky behaved like a perfect _pig_ and wouldn't play a note after all the trouble he put us to; and when we got up from the table they say he sniffed at his coffee and pulled some out of his pocket and rubbed it in his hands to make the others smell the difference. Did you ever hear of such a thing?....

IX.

_From Serge Bogloffsky to Stepan Bogloffsky, Moscow._

(Translation.)

_March_ 11th,

My Brother,--The Mazurka has been found beneath the lid of thy pianoforte and is already despatched to thee--that pianoforte, alas! which must now remain silent until thy longed-for return. Greet the worthy Moschki and request him urgently to send the samples of tea, as I have now an opportunity with a wealthy family which may make great business.

That thy affairs prosper is my prayer. All the family embrace thee.

Serge.

* * * * *

"The gunlayer's eye followed it through the air, saw it splash into the sea three hundred yards short of the target, and swore softly."--_Answers._

The gunlayer would seem to have an eloquent eye.

* * * * *

A SOLDIER POLITICIAN.

A Biographical Note.

Considerable promise was shown in the speech delivered before the House of Commons last week by Colonel CHURCHILL. His utterance had the effect of instantly lifting that gallant gentleman from the obscurity of life "somewhere in France" to something approaching notoriety. Surely few soldiers have discovered such a gift of dialectical skill; and the Army must feel proud to learn that it possesses an officer who shows himself to be as able in the realm of politics as in the profession of arms.

Colonel CHURCHILL'S sensational _tour de force_ has aroused a natural interest in his personality. He is still a young man, being only just on the wrong side of forty. In choosing a military career he responded to hereditary impulse, for he is a direct descendant of that great military genius, the Duke of MARLBOROUGH. He entered the army in 1895, when little more than a boy. After seeing service in Cuba and India he fought in the Egyptian Campaign of 1898, and in a journalistic capacity took part in the South African War, the news of his capture being received in this country with much feeling. To his skill as a soldier Colonel CHURCHILL adds no small ability as a writer, and has published more than one book that has attracted favourable notice.

Following upon his remarkable speech of the other night, there has been some discussion as to whether Colonel CHURCHILL will definitely take up a political career, or return to the trenches. We have it on good authority that an old friend, Sir HEDWORTH MEUX, strongly advises him not to sacrifice his military prospects. On the other hand, his colleagues at the Front feel that in the national interest they are prepared to do their best without him, in view of the benefit likely to accrue from his remaining at home. In any case it is confidently asserted by those who know him that Colonel CHURCHILL has gone far towards making a name for himself, and that he is likely to go further still if the opportunity is given to him. His future is certain to be watched with interest.

* * * * *

The Delay Before Verdun.

Bosch (quoting "_unser_ Shakspeare"):

"If it Verdun ven 'tis done, then 't vere vell it Verdun quickly."--_Macbeth, Act_ I. 7.

* * * * *

Music for Conscientious Objectors.

"St. George's Cathedral.--Anthem, 'I was slack when they said unto me' (Elvey)."

_Cape Times._

* * * * *

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)

I never open a book by Mr. ROBERT HALIFAX without a feeling of pleasant anticipation, nor close one without a sense of quickened sympathy for my fellow-mortals, especially those of them who dwell in Camden Town. His latest story, _The Right to Love_ (METHUEN), finds him again on familiar ground; but the inhabitants of Widdiford Street have all the freshness of real human beings. Perhaps more than its predecessors _The Right to Love_ is a story with a purpose and a moral; in it Mr. HALIFAX has illustrated by two groups of characters the vexed question of marriage failures and the hard lot of the unwanted woman. But do not suppose that these characters are merely "cases." On the contrary, it is because they are realized as understandable creations of flesh and blood that the disasters of _Norah_ and _Tom Spain_ and the tragedy of _Letty Summerbee's_ enforced spinsterhood move one to so personal a concern. From the moment when _Norah_ and _Tom_ enter their little house after the short honeymoon to that in which the tormented young wife finally leaves her worthless husband for the protection (word rightly used) of his long-suffering friend one is made to feel that exactly thus and thus the affair happened, and is happening to like persons every day. As for _Letty_, with her restraint, her practical helpfulness and her occasional outbursts of emotion thwarted and suppressed, she is a type only too convincing. Perhaps one might object that Mr. HALIFAX brings an indictment against society without suggesting any practical remedy. Also that--as I have noticed before--his humorous characters have a tendency to edge away from the rest into the regions of farce. But for all that _The Right to Love_ remains a simple, sincere and very moving study.

* * * * *

I like the remark that General JOFFRE made, not to the horse-marines, but to the remnants of the six thousand _Fusiliers Marins_ who made up the Naval Brigade at Dixmude in November, 1914. "You are my best infantrymen," he told them; and, if you want to know why, all you have to do is read _Dixmude_ (HEINEMANN), by CHARLES LE GOFFIC. For four weeks, shrapnel to right of them, "saucepans" to left of them, volleyed and thundered, and for four weeks the six thousand stood in the valley of death at Dixmude and held up six times as many Boches, who came on, as one of them said, like bugs. Forty thousand was the estimate of the number of these marines formed by a German major who was one of their prisoners; when he learnt that they were only six he wept with rage and muttered, "Ah, if we had only known!" Dixmude was not quite such a big affair as Verdun, but the men who held the town, "the young ladies with the red pompoms" on their caps, were first cousins to our own Jack Tars. Bretons or Britons, there is nothing to choose between them. Sailors all, they are the salt of the sea; and this fascinating and circumstantial epic of the French marines is not at all an exaggerated picture of the cheery courage and endurance of the Breton fisherman.

* * * * *

_Sussex Gorse_ (NISBET) is a story about the fight between man and nature. It is told by Miss SHEILA KAYE-SMITH with considerable power and a quickening touch of symbolism that lifts it into romance. The ambition of _Reuben Backfield_ was to enlarge the Sussex farm that he had inherited from his easy-going father till its bounds should include a certain coveted moor. The book shows how his entire life was spent in the achievement of this end; how for it he sacrificed his own ease, and the happiness of his brother, his two wives and his many children, and how finally he triumphed, and in his lonely old age, seeing the desired acres all his own, was content. It is a grim book, with only now and then a touch of suggested poetry to save it from being uniformly sordid and depressing. As it is, the long unsparing struggle takes somehow the dignity of an epic. Only one of _Reuben's_ many sons makes any success out of life--_Richard_, who becomes a barrister, and treats his father to occasional visits of curiosity and amused patronage. There is a chapter of cynical humour in which the intolerant contemptuous old rustic is confronted by the art-loving triflers who gather in his son's drawing-room. Otherwise he is alone. "There's no one gone from here as has ever come back!" But I was glad that Miss KAYE-SMITH had the courage to play fair by her hero, and to give him at last his share of the hard bargain. This is only one of many qualities that make _Sussex Gorse_ a novel to be remembered.

* * * * *

I can't quite make out what made Mr. WILLIAM HEWLETT persist in _Introducing William Allison_ (SECKER). Probably a nice general conviction (rather infectious; I caught it) of his own cleverness. If his work wants a good deal of pulling together separate bits of it are confoundedly well done. The schoolboy conversations (_William_ is a Winchester man, thrown into a lawyer's clerkship straight from the sixth) and the picture of the superbly groomed associates of his friend's brother, _Marmaduke Fenton_, are cases in point, though I don't think Winchester would have been so absurdly abashed by the glories of bachelordom in Half-Moon Street. So too is the lecture of _Parbury_, the neo-decadent, on the cultivation of "that sacred and imperishable flower, the white unsullied bloom of an Intensely Useless Life," even if it be only a belated cutting from _The Green Carnation_. _William's_ first boyish passion for a quite cold shop-minx, with its agonies of self-abasement and rarefied desire, is uncannily clever; and the thoroughly unpleasant episode of our _William_, minx-free, only to be caught in the toils of that insatiable sensualist, Mrs. _Daintree_, is presented with discreet vigour. There is possibly a moral in the fascinating _Marmaduke's_ desperate half-hour in Dr. _Ferox's_ consulting-room. But Mr. HEWLETT never wrote this flippant tale to point a moral. Rather, as I suggest, he seems to have said, "These are samples of several _genres_ in which I can succeed on my head. Some day I will really finish something. Meanwhile pray be amused."

* * * * *

Of Miss ETHEL DELL'S popularity there seems to be no possible doubt, and her publishers, Messrs. HUTCHINSON, assure me that her latest, _The Bars of Iron_, is the best novel she has written. While accepting their unprejudiced judgment I retain the liberty of remaining unimpressed. Miss DELL has an eye for a plot and she can make things move; but her methods are too feverish for my taste. A man-fight in the prologue is followed by a dog-fight in the first chapter, and through the early part of the book the _Rev. S. Lorimer_ beats his numerous family again and again. It is true that, between her explosions, she introduces certain lovable characters, but they fail to correct the general atmosphere of violence. Neither the beauty of _Piers Evesham_ (his naked shoulders looked "like a piece of faultless statuary, god-like, superbly strong"), nor his sympathy with children, offers adequate compensation for his volcanic temperament. If Miss DELL, who seems to have a penchant for tempestuous heroes, would devote some of her superfluous energy to a study of men, so as to get to understand them as well as she understands her own sex, it would be a good thing for the quality both of her work and of her public.

* * * * *

In her latest little volume of verse, modestly entitled _Simple Rhymes for Stirring Times_ (PEARSON), Miss JESSIE POPE shows that she has not only the right spirit, but a sense of form beyond the common. She does not pretend to heroics and she seldom allows herself to touch a note of pathos; her mission is just to inspire other hearts with the infectious gay courage of her own. It finds a natural expression in the easy lilt of her measures. She is fluent rather than polished and never overlays her designs with excess of embroidery. Long practice has made her familiar with a craft which is not so easy as it looks; and in particular she has learnt the art of the final line. Miss POPE may possibly run the risk of over-writing herself; but so long as she brings a discriminating eye to the choice of what is worth preserving--and she has been _quite_ reasonably self-critical in her present selection--the matter that she jettisons is no affair of mine. Judging only by what I see here, I recognise that, in whatever other way she may be helping the cause, through her gift of light-heart verse she is doing--and none more bravely--her share of woman's work.

* * * * *

* * * * *

Journalistic Colour.

"On all hands their preparations for their ultimate victory are being pressed forward with unflagging zest, and nowhere has the white heat of their resolve grown pale"--_Daily Graphic._

* * * * *

Extract from Scottish Command Orders:--

"When marriage has actually taken place, the N.C.O. or man should inform O.C. at once, so as to ensure the necessary documents for separation allowance for the wife being made out, and this casualty should in addition be inserted in Part II. Orders."

_Scotsman._

This appears to confirm the belief that a Scottish marriage is a sort of accident that might happen to anyone.

* * * * *

It is easy to understand why the Zeppelins have a partiality for almshouses. They think it's another name for munition works.

* * * * *

From the report of a music-hall action:--

"In reply to Mr. Justice Darling, he sang comic songs and appeared alone on the stage."--_Morning Paper._

After all the Bench cannot always monopolise the "star turns," even in Mr. JUSTICE DARLING'S court.