Chapter 3

Later in the evening Mr. STANTON indicated that unless the salaries of Members of Parliament were raised he should have seriously to consider the question of returning to his old trade of a coal-hewer, at which I gathered he could make much more money with an infinitely smaller exertion of lung-power.

The vote for Agriculture and Fisheries was supported by Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN in a speech crammed full of miscellaneous information. We learned that the Minister once smoked a pipe of Irish tobacco, and said "Never Again"; that the slipper-limpet, formerly the terror of the oyster-beds had now by the ingenuity of his Department been transformed into a valuable source of poultry-food, and that the roundabout process by which the Germans in bygone days imported eel-fry from the Severn for their own rivers, and then exported the full-grown fish for the delectation of East-end dinner-tables, had been done away with. In the matter of eels this country is now self-supporting.

* * * * *

"The stock markets showed a good deal of uncertainty this morning and dealers marked prices lower in many cases to protect themselves against possible sales on the Budget proposals, particularly the excess profits duty and the corruption tax."--_Provincial Paper._

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN omitted to mention the last-named impost, but no doubt that was his artfulness.

* * * * *

LITTLE BITS OF LONDON.

"THE BEAR-GARDEN."

THE authors of the guide-books have signally failed to discover the really interesting parts of Law-land. I have looked through several of these works and not one of them refers, for example, to the "Bear-Garden," which is the place where the preliminary skirmishes of litigation are carried out. The Bear-Garden is the name given to it by the legal profession, so I am quite in order in using the title. In fact, if you want to get to it, you _have_ to use that title. The proper title would be something like "the place where Masters in Chambers function at half-past one;" but, if you go into the Law Courts and ask one of the attendants where that is, he will say, rather pityingly, "Do you mean the _Bear-Garden_?" and you will know at once that you have lost caste. Caste is a thing you should be very careful of in these days, so the best thing is to ask for the Bear-Garden straightaway.

It is in the purlieus of the Law Courts and very hard to find. It is up a lot of very dingy back-staircases and down a lot of very dingy passages. The Law Courts are like all our public buildings. The parts where the public is allowed to go are fairly respectable, if not beautiful, but the purlieus and the basements and the upper floors are scenes of unimaginable dinginess and decay. The Law Courts' purlieus are worse than the Houses of Parliament's purlieus, and it seems to me that even more disgraceful things are done in them. It only shows you the danger of Nationalisation.

On the way to the Bear-Garden you pass the King's Remembrancer's This is the man who reminds HIS MAJESTY about people's birthdays; and in a large family like that he must be kept busy. Not far from the King's Remembrancer there is a Commissioner for Oaths; you can go into his room and have a really good swear for about half-a-crown. This is cheaper than having it in the street--that is, if you are a gentleman; for by the Profane Oaths Act, 1745, swearing and cursing are punishable by a fine of one shilling for every day-labourer, soldier or seaman; two shillings for every other person under the degree of a gentleman; and five shillings for every person of or above the degree of a gentleman. This is not generally known. The Commissioner of Oaths is a very broad-minded man, and there is literally no limit to what you may swear before him. The only thing is that he insists on your filing it before you actually say it. This may cause delay; so that if you are feeling particularly strongly about anything it is probably better to have it out in the street and risk being taken for a gentleman.

There are a number of other interesting functionaries on the way to the Bear-Garden; but we must get on. When you have wandered about in the purlieus for a long time you will hear a tremendous noise, a sort of combined snarling and roaring and legal conversation. When you hear that, you will know that you are very near the bears. They are all snarling and roaring in a large preliminary arena, where the bears prepare themselves for the struggle; all round it are smaller cages or arenæ, where the struggles take place. If possible you ought to go early, so that you can watch the animals massing. Lawyers, as I have had occasion to observe before, are the most long-suffering profession in the country, and the things they do in the Bear-Garden they have to do in the luncheon-hour, or rather in the luncheon half-hour, between half-past one and two.

This accounts perhaps for the extreme frenzy of the proceedings. They hurry in a frenzy up the back-stairs about 1.25, and they pace up and down in a frenzy till half-past one. There are all sorts of bears, most of them rather seedy old bears, with shaggy and unkempt coats. These are solicitors' clerks, and they all come straight out of DICKENS. They have shiny little private-school handbags, each inherited, no doubt, through a long line of ancestral solicitors' clerks; and they all have the draggled sort of moustache that tells you when it is going to rain. While they are pacing up and down the arena they all try to get rid of these moustaches by pulling violently at alternate ends; but the only result is to make it look more like rain than ever.

Some of the bears are robust old bears, with well-kept coats and loud roars; these are solicitors' clerks too, only better fed; or else they are real solicitors. And a few of the bears are perky young creatures--in barrister's robes, either for the first time, when they look very self-conscious, or for the second time, when they look very self-confident. All the bears are telling each other about their cases. They are saying, "We are a deceased wife's sister suing _in forma pauperis_," or "I am a discharged bankrupt, three times convicted of perjury, but I am claiming damages under the Diseases of Pigs Act, 1862," or "You are the crew of a merchant-ship and we are the editor of a newspaper." Just at first it is rather disturbing to hear snatches of conversation like that, but there is no real cause for alarm; they are only identifying themselves with the interests of their clients; and, when one realises that, one is rather touched.

At long last one of the keepers at the entrance to the small cages begins to shout very loudly. It is not at all clear what he is shouting, but apparently it is the pet-names of the bears, for there is a wild rush for the various cages. Across the middle of the cage a stout barricade has been erected, and behind the barricade sits the Master, pale but defiant. Masters in Chambers are barristers who have not got proper legal faces, and have had to give up being ordinary barristers on that account; in the obscurity and excitement of the Bear-Garden nobody notices that their faces are all wrong. The two chief bears rush at the Master and the other bears jostle round them, egging them on. When they see that they cannot get at the Master they begin snarling. One of them snarls quietly out of a long document about the Statement of Claim. He throws a copy of this at the Master, and the Master tries to get the hang of it while the bear is snarling; but the other bear is by now beside himself with rage, and he begins putting in what are called interlocutory snarls, so that the Master gets terribly confused, though he doesn't let on.

By-and-by all pretence of formality and order is put aside and the battle really begins. At this stage of the proceedings the rule is that no fewer than two of the protagonists must be roaring at the same time, of which one must be the Master. But the more general practice is for all three of them to roar at the same time. Sometimes, it is true, by sheer roar-power the Master succeeds in silencing one of the bears for a moment, but he can never be said to succeed in cowing a bear. If anybody is cowed it is the Master. Meanwhile the lesser bears press closer and closer, pulling at the damp ends of their rainy moustaches and making whispered suggestions for new devilries in the ears of the chief bears, who nod their heads emphatically but don't pay any attention.

The final stage is the stage of physical violence, when the chief bears lean over the barricade and shake their paws at the Master; they think they are only making legal gestures, but the Master knows very well that they are getting out of hand; he knows then that it is time he threw them a bun. So he says a soothing word to each of them and runs his pen savagely through almost everything on their papers. The bears growl in stupefaction and rage, and take deep breaths to begin again. But meanwhile the keeper has shouted for a fresh set of bears, who surge wildly into the room. The old bears are swept aside and creep out, grunting. What the result of it all is I don't know. Nobody knows. But the new bears----

[EDITOR.--I am much bored with this.

AUTHOR.--Oh, very well.]

A. P. H.

* * * * *

* * * * *

From the directions on an omnibus ticket:--

"Passengers are requested not to stand on top of the Bus back seats for smoking."

This is a thing we never do.

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"MARY ROSE."

OF course nobody could possibly suspect Sir JAMES BARRIE of plagiarising (save from himself), yet it will explain something of the atmosphere of _Mary Rose_ if I say that it is a story with such a theme as that admirable ghostmonger, the Provost of Eton, would whole-heartedly approve--thrilling, sinister, inconclusive--with (shall I say?) just a dash of Sir ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE in his other-worldly mood to bring it well into the movement. Naturally the variations are sheer BARRIE and of the most adroit.

_Mary Rose_ is in fact a girl who couldn't grow up, because whenever she visited a little mystery island in the Outer Hebrides "they" who lived in a "lovely, lovely, lovely" vague world beyond these voices would call her vaguely (to Mr. NORMAN O'NEILL'S charming music), and she would as vaguely return with no memory of what had passed and no change in her physical condition. This didn't matter so much when, as a mere child, she disappeared for thirty days; but when, mother of an incomparable heir of two, she was rapt away in the middle of a picnic for twenty-five years, and returned to find a husband, mother and father inexplicably old and changed, and dreadfully silent about her babe--well, you see for yourself how hopeless everything was. As if there were not enough real tragedy in the world and it were necessary to invent!

I don't think it fair to tell you any more. You shouldn't suffer these thrills at second-hand. But I can say that, in spite of making it a point of professional honour to try to keep a warm spine and check the unbidden tear from trickling down my nose (which makes you look such an ass before a cynical colleague during the intervals), I was beaten in both attempts. The "effects" were astonishingly well contrived by both author and producer (Mr. HOLMAN CLARK). You were not let down at the supreme moment by a hurried shuffle of dimly seen forms or the click of an electrician's gear suggesting too solid flesh. The house was in a queer way stunned by the poignancy of the last scene between the young ghost-mother and the long-sought unrecognised son, and had to shake itself before it could reward with due applause the fine playing of as perfect a cast as I have seen for a long time. There's no manner of doubt that Sir JAMES "got it over" (as they say) all right.

Miss FAY COMPTON makes astonishing strides. Her _Mary Rose_ had adorable shy movements, caresses, intonations, wistfulnesses. These were traits of _Mary Rose_, not tricks of Miss COMPTON. And they escaped monotony--supreme achievement in the difficult circumstances. Mr. ROBERT LORAINE in the doubled _rôles_ of _Mary Rose's_ husband and son, showed a very fine skill in his differentiation of the husband's character in three phases of time and development, and of the son's, with its family likeness and individual variation. Mr. ERNEST THESIGER, who seems to touch nothing he does not adorn, gave a fine rendering of as charming a character as ever came out of the BARRIE box--the superstitious, learned, courteous crofter's son, student of Aberdeen University, temporary boatman and (later) minister. He did his best incidentally, by rowing away without casting off, to corroborate the local legend that the queer little island sometimes disappeared. Miss MARY JERROLD was just the perfect BARRIE mother (of _Mary Rose_). Mr. ARTHUR WHITBY'S parson, Mr. NORMAN FORBES' squire, Miss JEAN CADELL'S housekeeper, left no chinks in their armour for a critic's spleenful arrow.

T.

* * * * *

"It was one of those perfect June nights that so seldom occur except in August."

---- _Magazine._

The result of Daylight-saving, no doubt.

* * * * *

* * * * *

* * * * *

THE CONNOISSEUR.

No more to bits of china (though I love it), To coloured prints no more my fancy roams, Or all the works of art I used to covet In other people's homes.

Old first editions, Sheffield plate and brasses, Weapons of CROMWELL'S time and coats of mail, Gate-tables, QUEEN ANNE chairs and aught that passes For craft of CHIPPENDALE--

Such things no more I spend my hard-earned cash on (Fain though the spirit be, the purse is weak); Yet strong within me burns the ruling passion For anything antique.

To haunt the sales for "finds" no more my job is; I've found at length, to satisfy my bent, A wider sphere for this my last of hobbies, Which costs me not a cent;

Where I can see my friends possess the treasure Their souls desire, nor envy them for that; My game's to scan my fellow-man at leisure Divested of his hat;

Among my own coevals, whom at last Time Is taking by the locks at forty-nine, Searching (a quaint but inexpensive pastime) For balder heads than mine.

* * * * *

HINTS ON ADVERTISING.

IN the belief that the numerous signs and notices, such as those containing warnings and advice to the public, with which the eye is so familiar, might be employed as suitable _media_ for commercial advertisement, the following suggestions are offered for what they are worth:--

=LIFT NOT WORKING.=

When you walk upstairs be sure your boots are shod with PUSSYFOOT Rubber Heels.

* * *

=TO STOP THE TRAIN PULL DOWN THE CORD.=

Then light a NAVY LIST Cigarette.

That alone is worth the £5.

* * *

=STICK NO BILLS.=

It's not your job.

Let STIKKOTINE do it.

Sticks anything.

* * *

=THIS RACK IS PROVIDED FOR LIGHT ARTICLES ONLY.=

If your baby is a GLOXO baby keep it on your knee.

GLOXO builds _bulky_ bairns.

* * *

=KEEP OFF THE GRASS.=

Unless you are wearing GUMBOODLE'S Goloshes. Won't wet feet.

* * *

=BEWARE OF THE DOG.=

Wait till he hears HIS MASTER'S VOICE.

* * *

=YOU MAY TELEPHONE FROM HERE.=

Ring up your newsagent and order your DAILY WAIL.

Billion Sale. Order it now. CHU CHIN CHOW.

* * * * *

"CHARLES ----

This week, DRIVEN FROM HOME. Next week, AT SEA."

_Daily Paper._

Surely this pitiable case ought to be brought to the attention of the Actors' Benevolent Association.

* * * * *

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

I HAVE a mild grievance against that talented lady, Miss MARJORIE BOWEN, for labelling her latest novel "a romantic fantasy." Because, like all her other stories, _The Cheats_ (COLLINS) moves with such an air of truth, its personages are so human, that I could delightfully persuade myself that it was all true, and that I had really shared, with a sometimes quickened pulse, the strange fortunes of the sombre young hero. But--fantasy! That is to show the strings and give away the whole game. However, if you can forget that, the coils of an admirably woven intrigue will grip your attention and sympathy throughout. The central figure is one _Jaques_, who comes to town as a penniless and love-lorn romantic, to be confronted with the revelation that he is himself the eldest son, unacknowledged but legitimate, of His Majesty KING CHARLES THE SECOND, then holding Court at Whitehall. It is from the plots and counter-plots, the machinations and subterfuges that follow that Miss BOWEN justifies her title. Certainly _The Cheats_ establishes her in my mind as our first writer of historical fiction. The character-drawing is admirable (especially of poor weak-willed vacillating _Jaques_, a wonderfully observed study of the STUART temperament). More than ever, also, Miss BOWEN might here be said to write her descriptions with a paint-brush; the whole tale goes by in a series of glowing pictures, most richly coloured. _The Cheats_ is not a merry book; its treatment of the foolish heroine in particular abates nothing of grim justice; but of its art there can be no two opinions. I wish again that I had been allowed to believe in it.

It must be unusual in war for a commander-in-chief to be regarded by his opponents with the respect and admiration that the British forces in East Africa felt towards VON LETTOW-VORBECK; from General SMUTS, who congratulated him on his Order "Pour le Mérite," down to the British Tommy who promised to salute him "if ever 'e's copped." The fact that VON LETTOW held out from August, 1914, till after the Armistice with a small force mainly composed of native askaris, and with hardly any assistance from overseas, is proof in itself of his organizing ability, his military leadership and his indomitable determination. As these are qualities which are valued by his late enemies his story of the campaign, _My Reminiscences of East Africa_ (HURST AND BLACKETT), should appeal to a large public, especially as it is written on the whole in a sporting spirit and not without some sense of humour. His descriptions of the natural difficulties of the country and the methods he adopted for handling them are interesting and instructive. But in military matters his story is not altogether convincing; for if his "victories" were as "decisive" as he represents them how is it that they were followed almost invariably by retirement? The results are attributed in these pages to "slight mischances" or "unfavourable conditions" or merely to "pressure of circumstances." Would it not have been better, while he was about it, to claim boldly that he was luring us on? This is a question on which one naturally refers to the maps, and it is therefore all the more regrettable that these contain no scale of mileage, an omission which renders them almost meaningless. How many readers, for instance, will realise that German East Africa was almost twice the size of Germany? The translation on the whole is good, though some phrases such as "the at times barely sufficient ration" are rather too redolent of the Fatherland.

* * * * *

I see that on the title-page of his latest story Mr. W. E. NORRIS is credited with having already written two others (specified by name), etc. Much virtue in that "etc." I cannot therefore regard _The Triumphs of Sara_ (HUTCHINSON) precisely as the work of a beginner, though it has a freshness and sense of enjoyment about it that might well belong to a first book rather than to--I doubt whether even Mr. NORRIS himself could say offhand what its number is. _Sara_ and her circle are eminently characteristic of their creator. You have here the same well-bred well-to-do persons, pleasantly true to their decorous type, retaining always, despite modernity of clothes and circumstance, a gentle aroma of late Victorianism. Perhaps _Sara_ is the most immediate of Mr. NORRIS'S heroines so far. Her money-bags had been filled in Manchester, and from time to time in her history you are reminded of this circumstance. It explains much; though hardly her marriage with _Euan Leppington_, whose attraction apparently lay in being one of the few males of her acquaintance whom _Sara_ did not find it fatally easy to bring to heel. Anyhow, after marriage she quickly grew bored to death of him; so much so that it required an attempt (badly bungled) by another woman to get _Euan_ to elope with her, and a providential collapse of the very unwilling Lothario, to bring about that happy ending that my experience of kind Mr. NORRIS has taught me to expect. I may add that he has never done anything more quietly entertaining than the frustrated elopement; the luncheon scene at the Métropole, Brighton, between the angry but amused _Sara_ and a husband incapacitated by rage, remorse and chill, is an especially well-handled little comedy of manners.

* * * * *