Chapter 1

Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Sandra Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

PUNCH,

OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOL. 152.

June 13, 1917.

CHARIVARIA.

Count TISZA has declared his intention of going to the Front for the duration of the War. He denies, however, that he caught the idea from Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL.

***

The Germans announced that Chérisy was impregnable. In view of the fact that the place has since been captured by the British it is felt that Sir DOUGLAS HAIG could not have read the German announcement.

***

Owners of babies are asked to hang out flags from their houses during the forthcoming Baby Week at Croydon. Parents who have only a little Bunting should hang that out instead.

***

A parrot owned by a lady at Ipswich is said to make "poll scratchers" for herself out of small pieces of soft wood. In justice to the bird it must be stated that she has frequently expressed a desire to be allowed to do war-work, but has been discouraged.

***

A Battersea fitter has been committed for trial for breaking into a Kingston jeweller's and stealing goods worth £2,350. There is really no excuse for this sort of thing, as the public have been repeatedly asked by the Government not to go in for expensive jewellery.

***

An Eastbourne coal merchant told the tribunal that a substitute sent to him was "too dirty to cart coals." The department has apologised for the mistake and explained that it was thought the man was required to deliver milk.

***

According to the _Berliner Tageblatt_, twenty-nine houses in Oberreuth have been burned down and a villager aged ninety-seven years has been arrested. The veteran, it appears, puts down his sudden crime to the baneful influence of the cinema.

***

One of the latest Army Orders permits the wearing of leather buttons in place of brass. Our readers should not be too ready to assume that this will have any effect on the existing meat-pie shortage.

***

Recently published statistics of the Zoological Gardens show a marked decrease of mortality among the inmates since they were placed on rations. A nasty rumour is also laid to rest by the declaration that the notices which deal with "Enquiries for Lost Children" and are prominently displayed in the Gardens were actually in vogue before the rationing system was introduced.

***

Paper is one of the principal foods of "Chips," the pet goat of Summer-down Camp. In view of the increasing value of this commodity an attempt is to be made to encourage the animal to accept caviare instead.

***

"Quite good results in the sterilisation of polluted drinking water," says _The British Medical Journal_, "have been obtained by the use of sulphondichloraminobenzoic." It appears that you just mention this name to the germs (stopping for lunch in the middle) and the little beggars are scared to death.

***

In a recent message to General LUDENDORFF, the KAISER refers to the German defence as being "mainly in your hands." And only last April they were professing to find it in HINDENBURG'S feet.

***

It is not yet compulsory under the new Order, but as a precaution it is advisable for the owner of a cheese to have his full name and address written on the collar.

***

The gentleman who advertised last week in a contemporary the loss of two pet dogs will be greatly interested in a little book just published, entitled _How to Keep Dogs_.

***

"It is the most extraordinary case I ever heard of," said the Chairman of the Middlesex Appeal Tribunal, in the case of a one-eyed man passed for general service. The case is not unique, however, for a one-eyed man named NELSON is recorded as having seen some general service in the early part of the nineteenth century.

***

Brazil has entered the War and Germany is now able to shoot in almost any direction without any appreciable risk of hitting a friend.

***

A five-months-old boy having been called up at Hull, the mother took the baby to the recruiting office, where we are told the military were satisfied that a mistake had been made.

***

The author of an article in _The Daily Mail_ stated recently that nine readers of that paper had sent him poems. This of course is only to be expected of a newspaper which advocates reprisals.

***

According to the _Vossische Zeitung_ washing soap is unobtainable in Berlin. Even eating soap, it is rumoured, can be obtained only at prohibitive prices.

***

Before the Law Society Tribunal, Mr. JACOB EPSTEIN, the sculptor, was stated to have passed the medical test. On the other hand Mr. EPSTEIN'S Venus is still regarded as medically unfit.

***

A Devon lady who has just celebrated her one hundredth birthday declares that to drink plenty of water daily is the secret of good health. This is a great triumph for the milk trade.

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THE BEST GAME THE FAIRIES PLAY.

The best game the fairies play, The best game of all, Is sliding down steeples-- You know they're very tall. You fly to the weathercock And when you hear it crow You fold your wings and clutch your things, And then you let go!

They have a million other games; Cloud-catching's one; And mud-mixing after rain Is heaps and heaps of fun; But when you go and stay with them Never mind the rest; Take my advice--they're very nice, But steeple-sliding's best!

* * * * *

"Home wanted for tabby Persian Cat, 3 years old (neutral)."--_Scotch Paper_.

Why doesn't it join the Allies?

* * * * *

A SHORT WAY WITH SUBMARINES.

"A short way with submarines?" said Bill; "oh, yes, we've _got_ one all right; but," he added regretfully, "I don't know as I'm at liberty to tell you. Wot I'm thinkin' about is this 'ere Defence o' the Realm Act--see? Why, there was a feller I knew got ten days' cells for just tellin' a young woman where 'er sweet'eart's ship was."

It was the last day of Bill's "leaf," of which he had spent the greater part warding off the attacks of old acquaintances bent upon finding out something interesting about the Navy. Of course during his absence Bill had written home regularly, but his letters had been models of discretion and confined to matters of the strictest personal interest. Since his return quite a number of temporary coldnesses had arisen as a result of his obstinate reticence, and the retired station-master, after several attacks both in front and flank had ignominiously failed, flew into a rage and said he didn't believe there was any Navy left to tell about, the Germans having sunk it all at the Battle of Jutland.

Bill said they might 'ave done, he really didn't know, not to be certain.

But now, with his bundle handkerchief beside him, just having another drink on his way to the station, Bill really seemed to be relenting a little. The customers of the "Malt House" all leaned forward attentively to listen.

"It's all among friends, Bill," said the landlord encouragingly, "it won't go no further, you can rest easy about that."

"I've 'eard tell as it's this 'ere Mr. Macaroni," began the baker, who took in a twopenny paper every day, and gave himself well-informed airs in consequence.

"If you'd ever been properly eddicated," said Bill, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, "you'd know as the best discoveries 'ave been made by haccident, same as when the feller invented the steam-engine along of an apple tumblin' on 'is 'ead. That's 'ow it is with this 'ere submarine business, an' no macaroni about it an' no cheese neither.

"Sailormen gets a deal o' presents sent 'em nowadays, rangin' from wrist-watches an' cottage-pianners to woolly 'ug-me-tights in double sennit. But the best present we ever 'ad--well, I'll tell you.

"An old lady as was aunt or godmother or something o' the sort to our Navigatin' Lootenant sent him a present of an extra large tin of peppermint 'umbugs. Real 'ot uns, they was, and big--well, I believe you! I've 'ad a deal o' peppermints in my time, but this 'ere consignment from the Navigator's great-aunt fairly put the lid on. You'd ha' thought all 'ands was requirin' dental treatment the day the Navigator shared 'em out, an' when the steersman come off duty, 'e give the course to the feller relievin' the wheel as if 'e'd got an 'ot potato in 'is mouth.

"Well, the peppermints was in full blast an' the ship smellin' like a bloomin' sweet factory when the look-out reported a submarine on our port bow. O' course we was all cleared for haction, an' beginnin' to feel our Iron Crosses burnin' 'oles in our jumpers, when we begun to see as there was something funny about 'er.

"Naturally we was lookin' for 'er to submerge--but not she! There she sat, waitin' for us, an' all 'er crew was pushin' an' fightin' to get their 'eads out of 'er conning tower. We was right on top of 'er in two twos, and all as we 'ad to do was to pick up the officers and crew as if they was a lot o' wasps as 'ad been drinkin' beer, an' tow the submarine--which was in fust-rate goin' order, not a month out o' Kiel dockyard--'ome to a port as I'm not at liberty to mention."

"But 'ow?" began the baker.

"I thought as I'd made it middlin' plain," said Bill severely, "but seein' as some folks wants winders lettin' into their 'eads I suppose I'd better make it plainer. I daresay you've 'eard as they're very short o' sweet-stuff in Germany."

"I 'ave," said the baker triumphantly, "I read it in my paper."

"Well," said Bill, "there was a wind settin' good and strong from us towards the submarine, an' when one of 'em as 'appened to be takin' the air at the time got a sniff of us 'e just couldn't leave off sniffin'. Then 'e passed the word down to the others, an' the hodour of the peppermints was that powerful it knocked 'em all of a 'eap, the same as food on an empty stummnick. See? That's the real reason o' the sugar shortage. There's 'arf-a-dozen factories workin' night an' day on Admiralty contracts, turnin' out nothin' at all only peppermint 'umbugs.

"Simple, ain't it?" Bill concluded, as he paid for his beer and reached for his bundle. "Anyway, it does as well as anything else to tell a lot o' folks as can't let a decent sailorman spend 'is bit o' leaf in peace an' quietness without tryin' to get to know what 'e's got no business to tell 'em nor them to find out."

* * * * *

"Concrete holds its own in the construction of our houses, our public buildings, our brides...."--_New Zealand Paper_.

This ought to cement the affections.

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* * * * *

THE FUNERAL OF M. DE BLANCHET.

"Never let your husband have a grievance," said Madame Marcot, stirring the lump of sugar that she had brought with her to put into her cup of tea. "It destroys the happiness of the most admirable households. Have you heard of the distressing case of the de Blanchets--Victor de Blanchet and his wife?"

We had not.

"Very dear friends of mine," said Madame Marcot vivaciously, delighted at the chance of an uninterrupted innings, "and belonging to a family of the most distinguished. They were a truly devoted couple, and had never been apart during the whole of their married life. As for him, he was an excellent fellow. If he had a fault, it was only that perhaps he was a little near; but still, a good fault, is it not? When he was called to the Front his wife was desolated, simply desolated. And then, poor M. de Blanchet--_not_ the figure for a soldier--of a rotundity, Mesdames!" And Madame Marcot lifted her eyes heavenwards, struck speechless for a moment at the thought of M. de Blanchet's outline. "However, like all good Frenchmen, he made no fuss, but went off to do his duty. He wrote to his wife every day, and she wrote to him.

"All at once his letters ceased, and then, after a long delay, came the official notice, 'Missing.' Imagine the suspense, the anxiety! For weeks she continued to hope against hope, but at last she heard that his body had been found. It had been recognised by the clothes, the identity disc (or whatever you call it), and the stoutness, for, alas, the unfortunate gentleman's head had been nearly blown away by a shell and was quite unrecognisable. Poor Madame de Blanchet's grief was terrible to witness when they brought her his sad clothing, with the embroidered initials upon it worked by her own hand. One thing she insisted on, and that was that his body should be buried at A----, in the family vault of the de Blanchets, who, as I have said before, are very distinguished people. "This meant endless red tape, as you may imagine, and endless correspondence with the authorities, and delays and vexations, but finally she got her wish, and the funeral was the most magnificent ever witnessed in that part of the world. You should have seen the '_faire part_,'" said Madame Marcot, alluding to the black-bordered mourning intimations sent out in France, inscribed with the names of every individual member of the family concerned, from the greatest down to the most insignificant and obscure. "Several pages, I assure you; and everybody came. The cortège was a mile long. M. l'Abbé Colaix officiated; there was a full choral mass; and she got her second cousin once removed, M. Aristide Gérant, who, as you know, is Director of the College of Music at A----, to compose a requiem specially for the occasion; and he did not do it for nothing, you may believe me. In fine, a first-class funeral. But, as she said, when some of her near relations, including her stepmother, who is not of the most generous, remonstrated with her on the score of the expense, 'I would wish to honour my dear husband in death as I honoured him in life.'

"After it was all over she had a magnificent marble monument erected over the tomb, recording all his virtues, and with a bas-relief of herself (a very inaccurate representation, I am told, as it gave her a Madonna-like appearance to which she can lay no claim in real life) shedding tears upon his sarcophagus."

Madame Marcot paused for breath, and, thinking the story finished, we drifted in with appropriate comments. But we were soon cut short.

"Ten months afterwards," continued the lady dramatically, "as Madame de Blanchet, dressed of course in the deepest mourning, was making strawberry jam in the kitchen and weeping over her sorrows, who should walk in but Monsieur?"

"What--her husband?" cried everybody.

"The same," answered Madame Marcot. "He was a spectacle. He had lost an arm; his clothing was in tatters, and he was as thin as a skeleton. But it was Monsieur de Blanchet all the same."

"What had happened?" we shrieked in chorus.

"What has happened more than once in the course of this War. He had been taken prisoner, had been unable to communicate and at last, after many marvellous adventures, had succeeded in escaping."

"But the other?" we cried.

"Ah, now we come to the really desolating part of the affair," said Madame Marcot. "The corpse in M. de Blanchets clothing, what was he but a villainous Boche--stout, as is the way of these messieurs--who had appropriated the clothes of the unfortunate prisoner, uniform, badges, disc and all, in order, no doubt, to get into our lines and play the spy. Happily a shell put an end to his activities; but by the grossest piece of ill-luck it made him completely unrecognisable, so that Madame de Blanchet, as well as the officers who identified him, were naturally led into the mistake of thinking him a good Frenchman, fallen in the exercise of his duty."

"What happiness to see him back!" I remarked.

"I believe you," said Madame Marcot, "and touching was the joy of M. de Blanchet too, until he observed her mourning. He was then inclined to be slightly hurt at her taking his death so readily for granted. However, she soon explained the case; but, when he heard that a nameless member of the unspeakable race was occupying the place in the family vault that he had been reserving for himself for years past at considerable cost, he became exceedingly annoyed; and when, through the medium of his relations, he learned of the first-class funeral, and of the oak coffin studded with silver, and the expensive full choral mass, and the requiem specially written for the occasion, and the marble monument, his wrath was such that in pre-war days, and before he had undergone the reducing influence of the German hunger-diet, he would certainly have had an apoplectic seizure. To a man of his economical turn of mind it was naturally enraging. But the thing that put the climax on his exasperation was the bas-relief of his wife, 'ridiculously svelte' as he remarked, shedding tears over the ashes of a wretched Boche.

"The situation for him and for the family generally," concluded Madame Marcot, "is, as you will readily conceive, one of extreme unpleasantness and delicacy. The cost of exhuming the Hun, after the really outrageous expense of his interment, is one that a thrifty man like M. de Blanchet must naturally shrink from; indeed he assures me that his pocket simply does not permit of it.

"In the meantime he can never go to lay a wreath upon the tombs of his sainted father and mother, or pass through the cemetery on his way to mass (he is a good Catholic), without being reminded of the miserable interloper and all the circumstances of his magnificent first-class funeral. Hence he is a man with a grievance--an undying grievance, I may say--for he is practically certain to have a ghost hereafter haunting the spot that ought to be its resting-place but isn't. Still, it is _chic_ to have a ghost in the family. The de Blanchets will be more distinguished than ever."

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LIFTING AND UPLIFTING.

Our Canadian contemporary, _Jack Canuck_, publishes a protest against the invasion of Canada by British temperance reformers, whom it describes as "uplifters." Immediately below this protest it produces a picture from _Punch_, lifted without any acknowledgment of its origin.

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"On Sunday one British pilot, flying at 1,000 ft., saw four hostile craft at about 5,000 ft., and dived more than a mile directly at them. As he whirled past the nearest machine he opened fire, and saw the observer crumple up in the fusselage as the pilot put the machine into a steep live."--_Dally Sketch_.

While confessing ignorance as to the exact nature of a "live," we are sure it is not as steep as the rest of the story.

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A MUSCULAR CHRISTIAN.

"Vicar, Compton Dando, Bristol, would Let two Fields, or few Yearlings could run with him."--_Bristol Times and Mirror_.

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THE MUSINGS OF MARCUS MULL.

(_IN THE MANNER OF AN ILLUSTRIOUS MENTOR_.)

I.

I noted in last week's issue the persistence of the strange story that Mr. GLADSTONE, in his wrath at his reduced majority in Midlothian, broke chairs when the news arrived. I was careful to add that, as the result of searching investigation, I was in a position to state that Mr. GLADSTONE never did any such thing. Still I cannot altogether regret having alluded to the story in view of the interesting letters on the subject which have reached me from a number of esteemed correspondents.

II.

As an eminent Dundonian divine, who wishes to remain anonymous, remarks, it is a melancholy fact that men of genius have often been prone to violent ebullitions of temper. He recalls the sad case of MILTON, who, while he was dictating his _Areopagitica_, threw an ink-horn at his daughter, "to the complete denigration of her habiliments," as he himself described it. Yet MILTON was a man of high character and replete with moral uplift. I remember that my old master, Professor Cawker of Aberdeen, once told me that as a child he was liable to fits of freakishness, in one of which he secreted himself under the table during a dinner-party at his father's house and sewed the dresses of the ladies together. The result, when they rose to leave the room, was disastrous in the extreme. But Professor Cawker, as I need hardly remind my readers, was a genial and noble-hearted man. I presented him on his marriage with a set of garnet studs. Ever after when I dined at his house he wore them. Nothing was ever said between us, but we both knew, and I shall never forget.

III.

My old friend, Lemmens Porter, whose name I deeply regret not to have read in the Honours List, reminds me of the painful story of SWINBURNE, who, in a fit of temper, hurled two poached eggs at GEORGE MEREDITH for speaking disrespectfully of VICTOR HUGO. The incident is suppressed in Mr. GOSSE'S tactful life, but Mr. Porter had it direct from MEREDITH, whose bath-chair he frequently pulled at Dorking. SWINBURNE was, I regret to say, pagan in his views, but, unlike some pagans, he was incapable of adhering to the golden mean. ARISTOTLE, I feel certain, would never have condescended to the use of such a missile, and it is beyond "imagination's widest stretch" to picture, say, the late Dr. JOSEPH COOK, of Boston, the present Lord ABERDEEN, or the Rev. Dr. Donald McGuffin acting in such a wild and tempestuous manner.

IV.

Still we must admit the existence of high temper even in men of high souls, high aims and high achievements. Everyone may improve his temper. We cannot all emulate the patience of JOB, but we can at least set before us the noble example of Professor Cawker, who redeemed the angular exuberance of his youth by the mellow and mollifying kindliness of his maturity. Even if Mr. GLADSTONE _did_ break chairs, we should not lightly condemn him. You cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs. Besides, chairs cannot retaliate.

MARCUS MULL.

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A CYNICAL HEADLINE.

"NEW BRITISH BLOW.--BIRTHDAY HONOURS LIST."--_Daily Mirror_.

We congratulate our contemporary on its terseness. _The Times_ took nearly a column to say the same thing.

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BALLADE OF INCIPIENT LUNACY.