Chapter 1

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PUNCH,

OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOL. 158.

March 31, 1920.

CHARIVARIA.

We were glad to see that two of our most important Universities were again successful in obtaining first and second places in this year's boat-race. (As this was written before the race we crave the indulgence of our readers if our prophecy should prove incorrect.)

* * *

Bradford Corporation is selling white collars to its citizens at sixpence a-piece. How the Labour Party proposes to combat this subtle form of capitalist propaganda is not known.

* * *

"I have been knocked down twice by the same bus, but fortunately have sustained no serious injury," stated a plaintiff at a London police-court the other day. The bus in question, we understand, will be given one more try, and in the event of failure will be debarred from all further contests of the same nature.

* * *

"Quite a lot of American bacon is being smoked in London," says a news item. We are glad they have found a use for it, but at the risk of appearing fastidious we must say we much prefer Havannah tobacco.

* * *

The Variety Artists' Federation has passed a resolution against the engagement of Germans in the profession. With yet another avenue of industry closed against him General LUDENDORFF is said to be contemplating a dignified retirement.

* * *

"Should uglier husbands have heavier damages?" was a question raised in a recent divorce action. The better opinion is that the fact that the ugly man must have gone out of his way to get married should tell against him.

* * *

Signs of Spring are everywhere. A couple of telephone mechanics have made their nest on the roof of a house in West Kensington.

* * *

At Question-Time in the House there was trouble over the pronunciation of Bryngwran and Gwalchmai. One of the Welsh Members present said he could have played them if he had had his harp with him.

* * *

Saturday afternoon funerals have been stopped at Bexhill. We are very pleased to note this, because if there is one thing which mars the enjoyment of the week-end it is being buried.

* * *

The Hon. JOHN COLLIER will shortly explain why he painted the famous picture, "The Fallen Idol." If only some of our minor artists would be equally frank.

* * *

A weekly paper is offering a prize to anybody who discovers the oldest living fish. It is just as well that no prize is offered for the oldest dead fish.

* * *

"Large dumps of valuable material which is slowly rotting are to be met all along the main road in Northern France to-day," complains a morning paper. A responsible Government official now admits that whilst motoring in that district last week he noticed that the road was bumpy in places.

* * *

There is some talk of the Americans having a League of Notions of their own.

* * *

M. CHARLES NORDMANN states that the world will end in ten thousand million years. It will be interesting to see if America will refuse to take part in this as well.

* * *

Our horticultural expert informs us that during the next two or three weeks all wooden houses should be carefully pruned.

* * *

The rumour that Mr. MALLABY-DEELEY, M.P., will be asked to design a new uniform for the Royal Air Force is without foundation.

* * *

It is feared that, owing to the sudden appearance of Summer weather last week, the POET LAUREATE will once again be obliged to hold over his Spring poem.

* * *

It seems a pity that eight of the nine bricklayers who entered for the recent brick-laying contest should have collapsed, allowing the ninth an easy walk-over with seven bricks to his credit.

* * *

Statistics show a remarkable increase in the Welsh birthrate as compared with previous years. As usual, nothing is being done about it.

* * *

There are several ways, says Sir JAMES MACKENZIE, the eminent specialist, of tracing heart weakness. One way is to charge the owner of the heart seven-and-six for a pound of butter. If he faints he has a weak heart; if he pays he is merely weak in the head.

* * *

A Bill has been introduced in the New York Legislature to confine the headlines in murder cases to thirty-six points. The limit for international headliners is still fourteen points.

* * *

The Government, says a contemporary, is about to start growing tobacco in Norfolk. Whether it is to be sold as Coalition Mixture or Carlton Club has not yet been decided.

* * *

The Royal Academy have issued a notice that frames other than gilt will be admissible this year. Many people, it is thought, who never felt attracted by the old-fashioned gilt frames will now visit the exhibition.

* * *

An auctioneer's clerk has been summoned for throwing a bun at a railway buffet waitress. It was a thoughtless thing to do. He might have broken it.

* * *

We have just heard of a Scottish engineer who has decided to strike out along novel lines. Although only twenty-two years of age he has arranged to settle down in Scotland.

* * * * *

* * * * *

From a fashion-advertisement:--

"PARIS MOVES THE WAIST-LINE."

_American Paper._

But it is believed that the young man's strong right arm will succeed in rediscovering it.

* * * * *

"SUMMER-TIME"

(_with some moral reflections_).

To-day I left my downy lair An hour before my wont; But do I consequently wear An unctuous smile? I don't. If with the early lark's ascent I soared from out my bed, it Is to an Act of Parliament That I must give the credit.

When I escape, in butter's dearth, The fault of waxing fat, Calmly I view my modest girth And take no praise for that; Not mine the glory when my soul Abjures its ruling passion; 'Tis his, the lord of Food-control, Who fixed my sugar-ration.

Hampered by regulations for The chastisement of crime-- Arson and theft and marrying more Than one wife at a time-- I like to feel some sins there be For which the law can't hurt you, In whose regard your heart is free To follow vice or virtue.

Of one temptation I rejoice Especially to think, That leaves me loose to take my choice-- My reference is to DRINK; Here, where as yet no rules apply By Pussyfeet dictated, The merit's mine whenever I Am not inebriated.

O. S.

* * * * *

THE PERSONAL ELEMENT AT A MOTOR SHOW.

Not to be outdone by Olympia we have just held a motor show in our provincial Town Hall. What though the motoring magazines, obese with the rich diet of advertisement, grew no fatter in its honour, it was at least the most successful social function we have known since the War began. The Town Hall externally was magnificent with flags by day and coloured lamps by night, and within was a blaze of bunting and greenstuff. The band of the Free Shepherds played popular music, and the luncheon and tea rooms were the scene of most delightful little gatherings. Besides all this, quite a number of cars were to be found amongst the decorations.

Nearly every demobilised officer in the county seems to have taken up an agency for a car or two, and bought himself spats on the strength of a prospective fortune. Jimmy Wrigley and I are amongst them. Wrigley in the Great War was M.T., R.A.S.C., and knows so much about cars that he can tell the make of lamps from the track of the tyres; while I was a cavalryman and know so little that I judge Jimmy's cleverness only by other people's incredulity. On our stand at the show we exhibited two cars, which, as I carefully learned beforehand from the book of the words, were a Byng-Beatty and a Tanglefoot, these being the cars for which we are what they call concessionaires. (The _bât_ is tricky, but one picks it up loafing about garages.)

As a rule Jimmy and I do the correspondence between us--Jimmy contributing the technique and I the punctuation; but for the three days of the show his cousin Sheila volunteered to preside at a dainty little table and make jottings of our orders. Sheila is always ornamental, and as we had the stand draped to tone with her hair, and she wore a dress which harmonized like soft music with the pale heliotrope of the Tanglefoot's body-work, our display was a magnet from the word "Go."

And then on the morning of the opening day Jimmy went down with his Lake Doiran malaria and left me to it!

I am as brave as most people, but this calamity unmanned me. "Sheila," I said to a pair of pitying grey eyes, as the crowd, having heard the show declared open, massed about our stand--"Sheila, the situation is desperate. These people will ask me about the cars. They will expect me to answer them intelligently, and it's no use in the world talking horse to them--I can see that from their sordid looks. I shall disappear. You can say I have gone out on a trial run, which won't be a lie, only an understatement. And you can just hand them out the little books and let them paw the varnish. Silence will be better than anything I could say. Probably it is better than what any conscientious man could say about the Tanglefoot."

"I'll carry on, Nobby," said Sheila. "You go and buy buns for Miss Hurdlewing, and be happy. Fly! here's a purchaser."

Sheila's whisper dispersed me into the crowd and I strolled away, while she bestowed a smile and a specification pamphlet on the first of the crowd to step on to our stand.

I found it impossible to keep away for long. Sheila looked so well against the heliotrope Tanglefoot limousine that I had to go back to look at her.

The stand was surrounded by a throng, hushed and breathless with interest. Sheila was talking volubly. Hardened motorists listened with their mouths open; zealots, feverish to expend their excess profits on motoring because it was a novelty and expensive, stood spell-bound; a rival agent drank in her words with tears in his eyes--tears for his old innocence--and his cheek flushed with a sudden and splendid determination to amalgamate with our firm.

"This chassis, gentlemen," Sheila was saying, with a glance towards the Byng-Beatty, "has the most exclusive features. The torque-tube being fitted with an automatic lighter, it is possible to change tyres without leaving your seat; while by a simple adjustment of the universal joint the car will take any reasonable obstacle gracefully and without any inconvenience to the occupants. The clutch is of the Alabama type. This new pattern created a great sensation at Olympia, owing to the ease with which it permits even the amateur driver to convert the present body into a _char-à-banc_ or a tipping-waggon. The hood is reversible, so that passengers may be sheltered from the wind when the car runs backwards. In the rear of the boot, concealed by a door flush with the panels, is an EINSTEIN parachute, by means of which a passenger may leave the car before an imminent accident or when tired of the company."

I could not move; I did not want to either; and I certainly dared not interrupt.

"The Tanglefoot," continued Sheila, while a sigh of sheer rapture rose from the crowd, "is pre-eminently the car for a medical man or pushful undertaker. No horn is supplied, though this will be fitted if desired. The car is not cheap, but properly used will soon repay itself. Amongst the accessories supplied with the standard chassis I should like to call your attention to the collapsible game-bag and landing-net."

This went on for a long, long time, and I stayed till a man in the crowd recognised me and showed symptoms of coming out of his trance. I fled, and returned only at the luncheon interval.

"Sheila," I said--"Sheila, this may be fun for you, but James Wrigley and I may sing in the streets to pay for it."

"You great stupid"--her eyes were sparking as she spoke--"I've booked more orders than you will be able to carry out before you've learned wisdom. Look!" It was practically a nominal roll of the local capitalists that she showed me. "Nobody believes what you say about a car, so you can say what you like. The thing is to get it noticed."

"Did they study these cars much before they let you take their names?"

Sheila looked into my eyes and laughed happily.

W. K. H.

* * * * *

Our Eccentric Advertisers.

"Youth Wanted to Strike."

_Provincial Paper._

* * * * *

* * * * *

* * * * *

ABOUT BATHROOMS.

Of all the beautiful things which are to be seen in shop windows perhaps the most beautiful are those luxurious baths in white enamel, hedged round with attachments and conveniences in burnished metal. Whenever I see one of them I stand and covet it for a long time. Yet even these super-baths fall far short of what a bath should be; and as for the perfect bathroom I question if anyone has even imagined it.

The whole attitude of modern civilisation to the bathroom is wrong. Why, for one thing, is it always the smallest and barest room in the house? The Romans understood these things; we don't. I have never yet been in a bathroom which was big enough to do my exercises in without either breaking the light or barking my knuckles against a wall. It ought to be a _big_ room and opulently furnished. There ought to be pictures in it, so that one could lie back and contemplate them--a picture of troops going up to the trenches, and another picture of a bus-queue standing in the rain, and another picture of a windy day with some snow in it. Then one would really enjoy one's baths.

And there ought to be rich rugs in it and profound chairs; one would walk about in bare feet on the rich rugs while the bath was running; and one would sit in the profound chairs while drying the ears.

The fact is, a bathroom ought to be equipped for comfort, like a drawing-room, a good, full, velvety room; and as things are it is solely equipped for singing. In the drawing-room, where we want to sing, we put so many curtains and carpets and things that most of us can't sing at all; and then we wonder that there is no music in England. Nothing is more maddening than to hear several men refusing to join in a simple chorus after dinner, when you know perfectly well that every one of them has been singing in a high tenor in his bath before dinner. We all know the reason, but we don't take the obvious remedy. The only thing to do is to take all the furniture out of the drawing-room and put it in the bathroom--all except the piano and a few cane chairs. Then we shouldn't have those terrible noises in the early morning, and in the evening everybody would be a singer. I suppose that is what they do in Wales.

But if we cannot make the bathroom what it ought to be, the supreme and perfect shrine of the supreme moment of the day, the one spot in the house on which no expense or trouble is spared, we can at least bring the bath itself up to date. I don't now, as I did, lay much stress on having a bath with fifteen different taps. I once stayed in a house with a bath like that. There was a hot tap and a cold tap, and hot sea-water and cold sea-water, and PLUNGE and SPRAY and SHOWER and WAVE and FLOOD, and one or two more. To turn on the top tap you had to stand on a step-ladder, and they were all very highly polished. I was naturally excited by this, and an hour before it was time to dress for dinner I slunk upstairs and hurried into the bathroom and locked myself in and turned on all the taps at once. It was strangely disappointing. The sea-water was mythical. Many of the taps refused to function at the same time as any other, and the only two which were really effective were WAVE and FLOOD. WAVE shot out a thin jet of boiling water which caught me in the chest, and FLOOD filled the bath with cold water long before it could be identified and turned off.

No, taps are not of the first importance, though, properly polished, they look well. But no bath is complete without one of those attractive bridges or trays where one puts the sponges and the soap. Conveniences like that are a direct stimulus to washing. The first time I met one I washed myself all over two or three times simply to make the most of knowing where the soap was. Now and then, in fact, in a sort of bravado I deliberately lost it, so as to be able to catch it again and put it back in full view on the tray. You can also rest your feet on the tray when you are washing them, and so avoid cramp.

Again, I like a bathroom where there is an electric bell just above the bath, which you can ring with the big toe. This is for use when one has gone to sleep in the bath and the water has frozen, or when one has begun to commit suicide and thought better of it. Apart from these two occasions it can be used for Morsing instructions about breakfast to the cook--supposing you have a cook. And if you haven't a cook a little bell-ringing in the basement does no harm.

But the most extraordinary thing about the modern bath is that there is no provision for shaving in it. Shaving in the bath I regard as the last word in systematic luxury. But in the ordinary bath it is very difficult. There is nowhere to put anything. There ought to be a kind of shaving tray attached to every bath, which you could swing in on a flexible arm, complete with mirror and soap and strop, new blades and shaving-papers and all the other confounded paraphernalia. Then, I think, shaving would be almost tolerable, and there wouldn't be so many of these horrible beards about.

The same applies to smoking. It is incredible that to-day in the twentieth century there should be no recognised way of disposing of a cigarette-end in the bath. Personally I only smoke pipes in the bath, but it is impossible to find a place in which to deposit even a pipe so that it will not roll off into the water. But I have a brother-in-law who smokes cigars in the bath, a disgusting habit. I have often wondered where he hid the ends, and I find now that he has made a _cache_ of them in the gas-ring of the geyser. One day the ash will get into the burners and then the geyser will explode.

Next door to the shaving and smoking tray should be the book-rest. I don't myself do much reading in the bath, but I have several sisters-in-law who keep on coming to stay, and they all do it. Few things make the leaves of a book stick together so easily as being dropped in a hot bath, so they had better have a book-rest; and if they go to sleep I shall set in motion my emergency waste mechanism, by which the bath can be emptied in malice from outside.

Another of my inventions is the Progress Indicator. It works like the indicators outside lifts, which show where the lift is and what it is doing. My machine shows what stage the man inside has reached--the washing stage or the merely wallowing stage, or the drying stage, or the exercises stage. It shows you at a glance whether it is worth while to go back to bed or whether it is time to dig yourself in on the mat. The machine is specially suitable for hotels and large country houses where you can't find out by hammering on the door and asking, because nobody takes any notice.

When you have properly fitted out the bathroom on these lines all that remains is to put the telephone in and have your meals there; or rather to have your meals there and not put the telephone in. It must still remain the one room where a man is safe from that.

A. P. H.

* * * * *

* * * * *

NATIONAL COAL.

A great deal of nonsense is being talked about our coal-mines. I should like therefore to throw a little helpful light on the subject of nationalisation. Speaking as an owner and not as a miner (I have at the present moment at least six coals and a pound or two of assorted mineral rubbish), I want to consider some of the pros and cons of this debatable proposition. I take it, first of all, that we shall pay for our coal along with our taxes and in proportion to our income. This will come rather hard, of course, on the kind of people who insist on warming their rooms with three large electric vegetable marrows, or by means of a number of small skeletons pickled in gas. But such people will no doubt be able to claim rebates, and rebating is one of the most healthy and instructive of our British parlour games. Let us pass on, then, to the means of distribution.

I greatly doubt whether under State organisation the practice of opening up those romantic and circular caverns in the middle of the pavement and suddenly filling our cellars with smoke, rain and thunder will be allowed to continue. Rather, I expect, at the moment when John Postman pushes the budget of bills through the slit in the front-door, William Coalman, walking along the roof, will be dropping a couple of Derby Brights, in the mode of Santa Claus, down the chimney. This will get over the basement trouble, and deliveries of course will occur frequently, if irregularly, throughout the day at such times as the Government consider them to be necessary for making up the fire.

But whatever happens about deliveries the Inspector of Grates will be an infernal nuisance. Nothing makes a man more unpopular than interference in a quarrel between husband and wife, and I imagine that there will be many little suburban tragedies like the following:--

SCENE.--_A Kensington drawing-room._ Mr. _and_ Mrs. Smith _are discovered shivering over the fire_.

_Mr. Smith._ No, no. Not like that at all. You must break up that big lump first.

_Mrs. Smith_ (_coldly_). This is the way my mother taught me to make up fires.

_Mr. Smith._ Your mother! Ha!

[_Snatches the poker from her hand._

_Mary_ (_entering_). The Coal Inspector has called.

_Enter_ Coal Inspector.

_Taking the poker from_ Mr. Smith's _nerveless grasp, with three vicious thrusts he assassinates the already moribund fire. They watch him with faces of horror. As he turns to go they glance at each other, and with a simultaneous impulse seize the tongs and shovel and strike him with all their strength on the back of the head._

Mr. Smith _rings the bell. Enter Mary._

_Mr. Smith._ Please sweep that up.

[_She does so. He takes up the poker and resumes the altercation._

But let us turn again to the brighter side of things. Nothing fills a house-holder with such deep pleasure as a legitimate grievance against the Government on minor counts, especially when such grievances are properly ventilated in the daily Press. Thus:--

MORE GOVERNMENT CARELESSNESS.

SPARK FALLS ON A HEARTHRUG AT CROYDON.

Or

PRIME MINISTER ENCOURAGES PNEUMONIA.

FIRE GOES OUT AT PONDER'S END.

These are specimens of the headlines we may confidently expect, and little forms like the following will be found in the more popular dailies:--

PROTEST TO YOUR M.P.

I protest against the continued refusal of my fire to burn up, for which Government maladministration is responsible. I urge you to do all in your power to see that a warm ruddy glow is cast continually over my dining-room. The men, women and children of your constituency will judge you at the next election by your action in this matter.