Chapter 3

The next thing I want to tell you is that most of our ideas of London are wrong. You remember how we used to be told about its wonderful lighting at night, and the comfort of its hotels, and the bright shops, and the crowds of taxis, and so on. Well, this isn't true at all. So far from being well-lighted, I assure you that our few little streets and market square are a blaze compared with this city. Some streets here are absolutely dark, and even in the great thoroughfares there is so little light that crossing the road is most perilous. The thing could be put right in a moment if they would only see to it that the lamps were cleaned; I looked closely at several of them and I could see exactly what was wrong--a coat of grimy stuff has accumulated on the glass. Now to get this off would be quite easy, but it does not seem to have occurred to anyone to do it. I suppose that London is very badly managed; and here again I think the advantage lies with us, for I am certain that our District Council would never allow such a state of things. Probably the LORD MAYOR is lazy.

The funny thing is that there is plenty of good light, only they don't know how to apply it. Every night, directly it begins to be dark, great streams of light are turned on from all parts of the city; but would you believe it, they are directed, not downwards so that they could illumine the street, but upwards into the empty sky! If the Chairman of our District Council could see this, how he would laugh! I wish you would tell him.

Then there is coal. I went, as we arranged, first to the Jerusalem Hotel, but it was like ice. When I asked the hotel people why the central heating was not on, they said that there is no coal. At least it seems that there is coal, but no one to deliver it. Just think of our coal-merchant returning such a reply to us when the cellar was getting empty. But in London they seem to be ready to put up with any excuse. Why the men who ought to deliver the coals are not made to, I can't imagine. Anyhow, as I was freezing, I moved into lodgings, where there is coal, although an exorbitant price is asked for each scuttle.

The great topic of conversation everywhere has been some new speculation called the War Loan, and I have to confess that as it is so well spoken of and is to pay the large dividend of 5-1/4 per cent. I have arranged to invest something for each of us in it. I don't know who the promoter--a Mr. BONAR LAW--is, but it would be awful for us if he turned out to be a JABEZ BALFOUR in disguise. Still, nearly all investment is a gamble, and we can only hope for the best. He must have some peculiar position or the papers would not support his venture as they do; and there is even a campaign of public speakers through the country, I am told, taking his prospectus as their text and literally imploring the people to invest. Quite like the South Sea Bubble we read of in MACAULAY; but please Heaven it won't turn out to be another.

I asked the landlady here about it, but she knew nothing, except that her family could not afford to put anything in. "But your daughters earn very good money," I said. "That's true," she replied, "but all that they have over after their clothes, poor girls, they spend on the theatre or the pictures; and I'm glad to think they can do so. I wouldn't grudge them their pleasures, not I."

Judging by the crowded state of all the myriad places of entertainment in this city there are millions who are like them. But I couldn't help thinking that if so much money seems really to be needed, and this Mr. LAW is really a public benefactor, it might not be a bad idea to try to divert some of the thousands of pounds being paid every day in London alone for sheer amusement. Of course if England had the misfortune to be at war most of these places would naturally be shut up.

By the way, Germans are strangely unpopular in London just now. I have heard numbers of people, all in different places, such as the Tube and omni-buses and tea-shops, using very strong terms about them. It has been quite a series of coincidences.

No more for the present from

Your affectionate

LOUISA.

* * * * *

* * * * *

SONGS OF FOOD PRODUCTION.

III.

Tub-swill, tub-swill! _have_ you any tub-swill? I will send my footman to fetch it, if I may; For I'm hoping _all_ the restaurants and all the nicest clubs will Give me broken victuals, if I send for them each day; In the Park, in Piccadilly, Down at Ascot, in the Shires, We've been up in terms like "filly," "Dams" and "sires," "Smooths" and "wires;" Now it's "gilts" and it's "boars" And it's "suckers" and it's "stores"-- The terms that one acquires Now we're keeping pigs to pay.

Hog-wash, hog-wash! _are_ you selling hog-wash In a pretty bottle with a nice pneumatic spray? Nevermore in perfume shall a useless little dog wash; In my heart and boudoir precious piggy's holding sway. Oh, indeed, it's _worse_ than silly If a person now admires An inedible young filly, Dams and sires, Smooths and wires; For in gilts and in boars And in suckers and in stores Proper keenness one acquires Now we're keeping pigs to pay.

* * * * *

"A Berlin telegram says that the Kaiser has created the Austrian Emperor a Field-Marshal.

The material damage done was insignificant."--_Glasgow Evening Times_.

But the moral effect was tremendous.

* * * * *

"More Food.--Wanted, Partner, either sex, to increase stock open-air pig-farm."--_Morning Paper_.

An opening for one of the Food Hogs we read so much about.

* * * * *

OXFORD REVISITED.

Last week, a prey to military duty, I turned my lagging footsteps to the West; I have a natural taste for scenic beauty, And all my pent emotions may be guessed To find myself again At Didcot, loathliest junction of the plain.

But all things come unto the patient waiter, "Behold!" I cried, "in yon contiguous blue Beetle the antique spires of Alma Mater Almost exactly as they used to do In 1898, When I became an undergraduate.

"O joys whereto I went as to a bridal, With Youth's fair aureole clustering on a brow That no amount of culture (herpecidal) Will coax the semblance of a crop from now, Once more I make ye mine; There is a train that leaves at half-past nine.

"In a rude land where life among the boys is One long glad round of cards and coffin juice, And any sort of intellectual poise is The constant butt of well-expressed abuse, And it is no disgrace To put a table-knife inside one's face,

"I have remembered picnics on the Isis, Bonfires and bumps and BOFFIN'S cakes and tea, Nor ever dreamed a European crisis Would make a British soldier out of me-- The mute inglorious kind That push the beastly war on from behind.

"But here I am" (I mused) "and quad and cloister Are beckoning to me with the old allure; The lovely world of Youth shall be mine oyster Which I for one-and-ninepence can secure, Reaching on Memory's wing Parnassus' groves and Wisdom's fabled spring."

But oh, the facts! How doomed to disillusion The dreams that cheat the mind's responsive eye! Where are the undergrads in gay profusion Whose waistcoats made melodious the High, All the _jeunesse dorée_ That shed the glamour of an elder day?

Can this be Oxford? And is that my college That vomits khaki through its sacred gate? Are those the schools where once I aired my knowledge Where nurses pass and ambulances wait? Ah! sick ones, pale of face, I too have suffered tortures in that place!

In Tom his quad the Bloods no longer flourish; Balliol is bare of all but mild Hindoos; The stalwart oars that Isis used to nourish Are in the trenches giving Fritz the Blues, And many a stout D.D. Is digging trenches with the V.T.C.

Why press the search when every hallowed close is Cluttered with youthful soldiers forming fours; While the drum stutters and the bugler blows his Loud summons, and the hoarse bull-sergeant roars, While almost out of view The thrumming biplane cleaves the astonished blue?

It is a sight to stir the pulse of poet, These splendid youths with zeal and courage fired, But as for Private Me, M.A.--why, blow it! The very sight of soldiers makes me tired; Learning--detached, apart-- I sought, not War's reverberating art.

Yain search! But see! One ancient institution Still doing business at the same old stand; 'Tis Messrs. Barclay's Bank, or I'm a Proossian, That erst dispensed my slender cash-in-hand; I'll borrow of their pelf And buy some War Loan to console myself.

ALGOL.

* * * * *

THE GREAT INVESTMENT.

I am a fair man, even to Huns. When Germany pays an indemnity of £2,000,000,000 I think we might knock off a tenner or so because the KAISER has done so much to beautify our banks. Once they were cold cheerless places. A suspicion of an overdraft always swept through them. Now I love to go to the bank and see the beautiful blonde and brown and auburn heads bent over the ledgers. If I could be quite certain that they were not looking up the details of my account I should be perfectly happy.

Somebody told me that I could buy War Loan at 5-1/4 per cent. by borrowing money from my bank at five per cent. This seemed to be the kind of investment I had been looking for. I found that if I took a million on those terms I should draw a net income of £2,500 a year. But I am a patriot. It seemed to me that £2,500 a year was rather more than I was worth to the nation. Was I better value than six M.P.'s? Of course I might be worth six RAMSAY MACDONALDS. However I resolved to avoid greed and ask for a simple hundred thousand.

So I went to my bank and said to a blue-eyed, Watteau type of beauty, "I want to see the manager, please. Concerning an important investment in War Loan," I added hastily, fearing lest the damsel should conclude that I wanted an ordinary overdraft.

I was ushered into the manager's private room.

"About this War Loan," I began. "I understand that you advance money at five per cent. to make the purchase."

"Yes, that is so," said the manager, beaming.

I leapt for joy. I had thought that there must be a catch somewhere.

"Put me down for a hundred thousand," I said.

The manager nearly fell out of his swing-chair. "My dear Sir," he gasped, "have you any prospect of being able to save a hundred thousand during the next year or so?"

"Am I a milk-dealer or a munition-worker?" I replied. "I should be both surprised and gratified if I saved that sum in a year. Still I might do it, you know. I should have to give up tobacco, of course. Or suppose relations hitherto unknown to me died and left me handsome legacies. You are always seeing these things in the papers. 'Baker Inherits Half-Million From Lost Australian Uncle.'"

"A hundred," amended the manager. "Shall we say a hundred? You need not pay a deposit. I'll give you a form."

"Where's your patriotism?" I demanded. "A hundred, you say? Well, I decline your overdraft. Keep your ill-gotten much-grudged gain. I'll pay cash."

I left the bank sadly. I had thought of intimating to the blonde, brown and auburn beauties that I had just put a hundred thousand in War Loan. I had imagined their eyes gleaming at the spectacle of one-tenth of a millionaire.

And now I can't go to the bank again. At least not till I have worked up my balance a little above its present total, namely £2 _1s. 9d._

* * * * *

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks_.)

_If Wishes were Horses_ (HURST AND BLACKETT) is one of the most engaging novels that I have met for some time. The matter of it, perhaps, is nothing very new: a story of expanding fortunes and contracting sympathies. But the writer, Countess BARCYNSKA, has, before all else, the inestimable gift of making you believe in her people. All the characters are vigorously alive. The result is that one follows with quite unusual interest the chequered career of her central figure, _Martin Leffley_, from his introduction as a frankly unpleasant youth, very red about the ears, "which was where he always blushed," to the final glimpse of him, titled, an M.P., and, incidentally, a bowed and better man, purified by the wonderful devotion of _Rose_, the wife whom throughout the tale he has bullied and undervalued. Nor is _Rose_ herself, with her unwavering belief in her clay idol, a less memorable figure. Of the others, my chief affection went to _Aunt Polly_, the kindly dealer in old clothes, who imagined the Savile to be a night club. But, as I say, the whole cast is astonishingly real. Only once did I fear for the story, when it seemed as though the machinations of a super-villainous M.P. were about to lead it astray into the paths of melodrama. But the danger proved to be brief, and the unexpected beauty and dignity of the closing chapter would have redeemed a more serious lapse.

* * * * *

_Forced to Fight_ (HEINEMANN) is the record of a Schleswig Dane set forth by ERICH ERICHSEN and very capably translated from the Danish by INGEBORG LUND. It is a book that with a singular skill and with a passion that never gets out of hand so as to convey the impression of hysterical exaggeration lays bare the heart of a youth who was at the storming of Liége, fought in Flanders, then on the Russian Front and again in the Argonne, whence a shattered elbow sent him home broken and _aged_--that is what his chronicler emphasises--not by the wound, but by the long horror and fatigue of the successive campaigns. The poignancy of his sufferings lay in the fact that as a Dane he went without any of the great hopes and passions that inspired his German comrades, of whom however he speaks with no ill-will. He took part by order in some of the "punishments" of Belgian villages, loathing the savage cruelties of them and deeply convinced that the rape of Belgium was an inexpiable wrong which the world will remember to the lasting dishonour of the German name. You get an impression of the added horror of this War for the imaginative temperamental, and some pathetic pictures of all the suffering among simple innocent machine-driven people on the other side, who had no will to war and no illusions as to the splendour of world-dominion--a vision of desolate homes and countrysides empty of all but very old men.

* * * * *

The first lines of _Still Life_ (CONSTABLE), which begins in "the night train from the German frontier to Paris," gave me much the same impression of impossibility (was there ever such a train?) that I should have felt about a story that opened in the moon. But the shock of this was nothing to some, different in character, that were to follow. Frankly, I confess that Mr. MIDDLETON MURRY'S book has me baffled. Others perhaps may admire the pains lavished by the author in analysing the emotions of a group of characters whose temperaments certainly give him every opportunity for this exercise. An impressionist, and impressionable, youth, whom I have (reluctantly) to call hero, intrigues his unpleasant way through the plot; first in Paris--where you may make a shrewd guess at his pre-occupations--then in an English village, to which he has eloped with the wife of a friend; in France again, and so on. The emotions to which these amorous adventures expose him are handled by the author with a care that suggests rather the naughtiness of the antique nineties than anything belonging to these more vigorous days. I am far from suggesting that, as a study in super-sensibility, the book lacks skill. There are indeed scenes of almost painful cleverness. My complaint is that it is out of date, or (I should perhaps better say) conspicuously out of harmony with the present time. But if you hanker for these pictures of the past that is another matter. I will merely issue a warning that you should preserve this book on some shelf not too accessible by those who are still young enough to overestimate its importance.

* * * * *

It was an odd experience to turn, as I did, directly from the new Haymarket play, of which the late TOM GALLON was part author, to what I suppose was the last story he ever wrote, _The Lady in the Black Mask_ (MILLS AND BOON), which begins in a theatre with the heroine watching a play. It begins, moreover, very well and excitingly; much better, I regret to add, than it goes on. When the heroine arrived home from the theatre, the girl whose companion she was, pleading fatigue, persuaded her to go out again to a masked ball, wearing the dress and indeed assuming the personality of her mistress. The two girls, _Ruth_, the heroine, and _Damia_, lived in a gloomy house with old _Mr. Verinder_, who was _Damia's_ guardian. But when _Ruth_ returned from the ball she found that this arrangement no longer held good, _Verinder_ having been melodramatically stabbed during her absence. And as no one knew, or would ever believe, that it was _Damia_ and not herself who had remained at home you recognise a very pretty gambit of intrigue. Unfortunately, as I said above, the tension is not quite sustained, partly because the characters all behave in an increasingly foolish and improbable fashion (even for tales of this genre); partly because there is never sufficient uncertainty as to who it was (not, of course, _Damia_) who really killed _Verinder_. Still, of its kind, as the sort of shocker that used to be valued at a shilling, but appears, like everything else, to have risen in price, _The Lady in the Black Mask_ is fairly up to the average. I fancy her profits might have been greater before the discouragement of railway travelling. That is precisely the environment for which she is best fitted.

* * * * *

In the series of "Chap" books which is emerging from The Bodley Head I have no doubt that _Canada Chaps_ will be welcome. I hope, however, that Mrs. SIME will not mind my saying that the best of her tales are those which have more to do with Canada than its "chaps." Her stories of fighting and of fighters seem to me to have a note in them that does not ring quite true. It is just the difference between the soldier telling his own artless and rugged tale and someone else telling it for him with a touch of artifice. But when the author merely uses the War as her background she writes with real power. The straining for effect vanishes, and so little do the later stories resemble the earlier that I should not have guessed that they were written by the same hand. "Citoyenne Michelle" and "The King's Gift," for instance, are true gems, and they are offered to you at the price of paste. Nowhere will you find a better bargain for your shilling.

* * * * *

HELEN MACKAY, in _A Journal of Small Things_ (MELROSE), sets before us with, it might seem, almost too deliberate simplicity of idiom little scenes and remembered reflections of her days in France since the July of the terrible year. An American to whom France has come to be her adopted and most tenderly loved foster-country, she tells of little things, chiefly sad little things, seen in the hospitals she served or by the wayside or in the houses of the simple and the great, shadowed alike by the all-embracing desolation of the War. The writer has a singular power of selecting the significant details of an incident, and a delicate sensitiveness to beauty and to suffering which gives distinction to this charming book. Less happy perhaps and much less in the picture are the episodes learnt only at second hand and suggesting the technique and unreality of the imagined short story.

* * * * *

* * * * *

ANOTHER IMPENDING APOLOGY.

From a paragraph about Mr. JOHN BUCHAN:--

"It is said that he writes his novels as a cure for insomnia."--_News of the World._

* * * * *

THE CENSOR ABROAD.

"When the High Court is sitting, the Resident Magistrate's Court is held in a room about upteen feet long by about upteen feet wide."--_East African Standard._

* * * * *

"CURES STOMACH TROUBLE OR MONEY BACK."--_Advt. in South African Paper._

This "Money Back" seems a new disease.

* * * * *

From an article in the _Berliner Tageblatt_ descriptive of life on the Western Front:--

"Perhaps the sun will soon bring warm wind, and how glad one would be of a thaw in the trenches. But then the accursed time will come again when the whole surface of Northern France sticks to the boot of the German soldier."--_The Times._

Our brave police must look to their laurels.