Chapter 3

"Il faut m'adresser à tous les deux en même temps," pronounced Jeanne, taking a sheet of note-paper. "J'écris directement au général" (since time and space have to be allowed for in earthly negotiations, the order must be thus)--"et je prie le bon Dieu en personne." That both positions should be assailed simultaneously, operations must be begun in this quarter in the morning, at the hour of the first postal delivery.

"Point de saints, ni de colonels--maintenant je comprends--l'_é-tat-ma-jor_ dans l'Armée et les saints au Paradis, c'est tout comme!"

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AT THE PLAY.

"PUSS IN NEW BOOTS."

Five hours is a great space out of a man's life, but that was precisely the time taken by Mr. ARTHUR COLLINS to present his _Puss in New Boots_, so that I had leisure to study the book of the words, sold shamelessly to the unsuspecting (of whom I was not one), and compare the rough sketches of our three standard authors of the Lane, Messrs. COLLINS, SIMS and DIX with the version, by no manner of means final, of the comedians. A pantomime book is on the whole rather a mournfully unsubtle document. The thing is frankly not meant to be read when the blood is cool. It is the Action, Action and again Action of such hefty knock-abouts as WILL EVANS, ROBERT HALE and STANLEY LUPINO that makes the dry bones live and the old squibs crackle. And it is good fun to watch the audience at their share of authorship, setting the seal of their approval upon the happy wheeze, the well-contrived business, and blue-pencilling with their silence the wash-out or the too obscure allusion.

The show is substantially new throughout--new songs, new scenery, new japes, new acrobatics. A new Puss, too, as well as new boots; and, without any reflection on little Miss LENNIE DEANE, who was quite an adequate Puss of pantomime, we may regret Miss RENÉE MAYER.

Miss FLORENCE SMITHSON still delights the curious with her Swedish exercises in alt, and makes a very pretty lady of high degree for a pantomime marquis, who is no other than Miss MADGE TITHERADGE stepping down from the "legitimate" and bringing an air and an elocution unusual and admirable. She made her excellent speaking voice do duty in recitative for song, and the innovation is not unpleasing. If it be fair in frivolous public places to dig down to those thoughts that better lie too deep for tears, Mr. ALFRED NOYES' _A Song of England_, clear spoken by her with tenderness and spirit, is a better instrument than most.

Mr. HALE's _Baroness_ challenges comparison with Mr. GEORGE GRAVES's. She is perhaps more womanly ("no ordinary" type), less grotesquely irrelevant and profane--though she does her bit. On the other hand, she is more active and less repetitive. When, the good fairy endowing her with beauty, she appeared as DORIS KEANE in _Romance_, that was an applauded stroke. And when she lied beneath the tree of truth and the chestnuts fell each time truth was mishandled, thickest of all when it was asserted that a certain Scotch comedian had refused his salary, this was also very well received. On the whole, then, a satisfactory Baroness.

Mr. LUPINO (the miller's second son) is really an exquisite droll, and I don't remember to have seen him in better form. He has some of the authentic ingredients of the old circus clown--a very valuable inheritance.

Mr. WILL EVANS is always good to watch, always has that air of enjoying himself immensely that is the readiest way to favour. He seemed at times to be, as it were, looking wistfully for his old pal, GRAVES; missed probably that companionable nose and those reliable _da capos_ which give such opportunity for the manufacture of gags; whereas Mr. HALE is a "thruster." But cooking the _recherché_ dinner in the gas cooker that becomes a tank, and putting up the blind and laying the carpet--here was the WILL EVANS that the children of all ages applaud.

I always find the Lane big scenes and ballets more full of competing colour and restless movement than of controlled design. But the Hall of Fantasy, with its spiral staircases reaching to the flies, was an ambitious effort crowned with success. The dance of the eight tiny zanies was the best of the ballet. The Shakspearean pageant at the end might be (1) shortened, and (2) brightened by the characters throwing a little more conviction into their respective aspects--notably the ghost of _Hamlet's_ father. However, as a popular tercentenary tribute to "our Shakspeare" the scheme is to be commended and was as such approved.

T.

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THE SPIRITUAL SPORTSMAN.

[The Executive of the German Sporting Clubs and Athletic Associations have issued a manifesto expressing satisfaction at the substitution of German for English words and phrases. "German sport," it declares, "in future places itself unreservedly on the side of those who would further German Kultur. German Song and German Art will in future find a home in German sport." This new patriotic programme has been greatly applauded in the Press, the _Berliner Tageblatt_ observing that the culture of soul and body must proceed _pari passu_, with the result that "not only will the German sportsman become a beautiful body, but a beautiful soul as well. Every club must have its library, not filled with sensational novels, but with works of art. And before all else the club-house must be architecturally beautiful--an object from which he may obtain spiritual edification."]

The German is seldom amusing, Since humour is hardly his forte, But I've frequently smiled in perusing His latest pronouncement on sport; For it seems that he thinks it the duty Of sportsmen to aim at the goal Of adding to bodily beauty A beauty of soul.

They've made a good start by proscribing All English and Anglicised terms, To counter the risk of imbibing Debased philological germs; And they've coined a new wonderful lingo, Which only a Teuton can talk, Resembling the yelp of a dingo, A cormorant's squawk.

But in spite of his prowess Titanic, His marvellous physical gift, The soul of the athlete Germanic Still clamours for moral uplift; So we learn without any emotion That, his ultimate aim to secure, He must bathe in the bountiful ocean Of German _Kultur_.

In the process of character-building Hun Art (_Simplicissimus_ brand), With its _rococo_ carving and gilding, Must ever advance hand in hand With its sister, Hun Song, that inspiring And exquisite engine of Hate, Whose efforts we've all been admiring So largely of late.

Thus, freed from all sentiment sickly, The sportsman whom Germany needs Will help to exterminate quickly All weak and effeminate breeds; And, trained in the gospel of BISSING, Will cleave to the Hun decalogue Which rivets the link, rarely missing, 'Twixt him and the hog.

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"Parlourmaid wanted for Sussex; under parlourmaid kept; Roman Catholic and spectacles objected to."

Our own preference is for a Plymouth Sister with _pince-nez_.

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_BY MR. PUNCH'S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS._)

Miss ETHEL SIDGWICK (long life to her as one of our optimist conquerors!) still keeps her preference for the creation of charming people and her rare talent for making them alive. But I wonder if she is not refining her brilliant technique to the point of occasional obscurity of intention. At least I know I had to re-read a good many passages to be quite sure what was in fact intended. An implied compliment, no doubt; but are all readers so virtuous? ("or so dull?" quoth she). _Hatchways_ (SIDGWICK AND JACKSON) is one of those happily comfortable, just right houses with a hostess, _Ernestine_, whom everybody loves and nobody (save her husband, and he not in this book) makes love to. Holmer, on the other hand, is the adjoining ducal mansion with a distinctly uncomfortable dowager still in command who can't even arrange her dinner-parties and fails to marry her sons to the right people. Perpetually Hatchways is wiping the eye of Holmer, and this touches the nerve of the great lady. Her sons, _Wickford_, the authentic but hardly reigning duke, and _Lord Iveagh Suir_, the queer impressionable (on whom the author has spent much pains to excellent effect), both take their troubles to _Ernestine_. And a young French aviator (this is a pre-War story), guest at Hatchways, analyses and discusses situations and characters from his coign of privilege--a device adroitly handled by the discreet author, who adds two charming girls, coquette _Lise_, _Iveagh's_ first love, and wise, loyal, perceptive _Bess_, whom he found at last. To those who appreciate subtle portraiture let me commend this study.... I feel just as if I had been for a long week-end at Hatchways, anxiously wondering, as I write my "roofer," if I shall be so lucky as to be asked again.

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I think there is little doubt that you will agree with me in calling _The Flaming Sword_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) as noble and absorbing a story of fine work finely done as any that the War has produced. It is the history, told by herself, of Mrs. ST. CLAIR STOBART's Red Cross Mission "in Serbia and Elsewhere." The frontispiece, Mr. GEORGE HANKIN's moving picture of _The Lady of the Black Horse_ (a name always to be honoured among our Allies), catches the spirit of the heroic tale and prepares you for what the _Lady_ herself has to tell. Mrs. STOBART is no sentimentalist; fighting and the overcoming of obstacles are, one would say, congenial to her mettle; time and again, even in the midst of her story of the terrible retreat, with the German guns ever thundering nearer, she can yet spare a moment to strike shrewdly and hard for her own side in the other struggle towards feminine emancipation which is always obviously close to her heart. Certainly she has well earned the right to be heard with respect. Read this high-spirited account of the difficulties--mud, disease, prejudice, famine--through which the writer brought her charge triumphantly to safety, and you will be inclined, with me, to throw your critical cap into the air and thank Heaven for such women of our race, which would be to invite, not unsuccessfully, some withering snub from the very lady you were endeavouring to praise. But that can't be helped. Meantime of her exploit and the book that recounts it I can sum up my verdict in the only Serbian that I have gleaned from its pages--_Dobro, Dobro!_ For a translation of which you know where to apply.

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So many battle books have been pouring from the press lately that it is difficult to keep pace with them, and harder still to find something fresh to say of each; but _quot homines tot_ points of individual interest, and for those whose concern lies more especially with the New Zealand Forces and their campaigns I can very safely recommend a volume which the official war correspondent to that contingent and his son have jointly published under the title of _Light and Shade in War_ (ARNOLD). Whether it is Mr. MALCOLM ROSS who supplies the light, and Mr. NOEL ROSS the shade, or _vice versa_, we are given no means of ascertaining. Between them they have certainly put together an agreeable patchwork of small and easily read pieces, most of which have already appeared in journalistic form. It is perhaps parental prejudice that makes Mr. Punch consider the best of the bunch to be "Abdul," one of three slight sketches that originally saw the light in his own pages. _Abdul_ is a joy, also a thief, a society entertainer, and a Cairo hospital orderly. I can only hope that the story of how he displayed his patient's sun-browned knees as a raree show to the convulsed G.O.C. and lady, who were visiting the hospital, is at least founded on fact. The publishers are entirely justified in saying that these impressions, made often under actual fire, have both colour and intimacy. So I wish them good luck in the campaign for popular favour.

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_François Villon, His Life and Times_ (HUTCHINSON) is one of those fortunate volumes that arrive to fill a long vacant corner. So far as I know, with the exception perhaps of STEVENSON's study, there has been no means by which the casual reader, as apart from the student, could correct his probably very vague ideas about the Father of Realism. Mr. H. DE VERE STACPOOLE, approaching the subject not for the first time, here essays a brief life and appreciation of the poet, told in picturesque but simple style. Sometimes indeed the simplicity is apt to appear overdone, so that one gets a suggestion that the story is being presented to us in thoughts of one syllable. Apart from this, however, there is much to be said for Mr. STACPOOLE's vivid reconstruction of mediæval France, and the Paris that sheltered VILLON himself, TABARY, MONTIGNY and the others--that group of shadows whom we see only by the lightning of genius. They and their contemporaries pass before us here like a pageant woven upon tapestry. Occasionally indeed Mr. STACPOOLE looks suddenly round the tapestry, even (one might say) tears a hole in it and pushes his head through, with a startling effect. But as he has always the good excuse of sympathy with his subject one easily forgives him these generous impulses. As I said before, a book that has had its place long reserved.

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If you happen to remember that most excellent book, _Brother-in-Law to Potts_, you may recall that the principal motive in it is the spiritualising influence of a certain Lady Beautiful, very lightly and even intangibly presented, on the lives of some other persons of a more material clay. In _Obstacles_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL), Mrs. "PARRY TRUSCOTT" has returned to her previous subject, but with the notable difference that she now traces the influence brought in turn to bear upon the lady herself, who emerges from her semi-divine obscurity to become the heroine of the story. If in her background sketch of the munitions factory where _Susannah_ elects to work the writer does not trouble much about technical detail or even attempt to suggest any particular acquaintance with such matters as lathes or shell bodies, yet she does convey, with striking simplicity and naturalness, the impression of a world at war, and for the rest she is content to bring her heroine in contact with the lives that are to affect her and the environment of comparative poverty that is to help her to a decision. What that decision was, and how unnecessary too, is sufficiently indicated if I say that she was blessed with most understanding parents, who positively preferred that her suitor should be a poor man. And so the happy future that surely no authoress and most certainly no male reader could have the heart to refuse to so delightful a _Susannah_ is available to complete a picture touched throughout with singular grace and charm. In particular the little snap-shots of two ideal family households, the one that includes the heroine, and another, much humbler, which she enters as an honoured guest, go to make this volume, all too short though it is, one that I can recommend with quite unusual pleasure and confidence.

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OUR CITIZEN SOLDIERS.

"Lord George H. Cholmondeley, M.C., Hotts Royal Horse Artillery, who has just been promoted to the rank of mayor in that Territorial Corps."--_Cheshire Observer_.

We congratulate His Worship and also the Hotts.

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"The General Committee and all clergy and ministers (as well as the choir) are invited to sit on the orchestra."--_Western Morning News_.

We are afraid the orchestra has not been doing its best.

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"WRAPPING paper (in sheets and reels) and Twins; large stock. Please state size required, and we will quote best cash terms."--_Irish Paper_.

An obvious attempt to cut into the trade of the dairyman whose speciality is "Families Supplied."