Chapter 1

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOL. 153.

JULY 11, 1917.

CHARIVARIA.

"It is more dangerous to be a baby in London than a soldier in France," said Mrs. H. B. IRVING at the National Baby Week Exhibition. The same disability--namely, middle-age--has prevented us from taking up either of these perilous _rôles_.

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L.C.C. tram-tickets, says a news item, are now thinner. Other means of increasing the space available for passengers are also under consideration.

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Over one thousand penny dreadfuls were found in the possession of a boy of sixteen who was sentenced to three months' imprisonment for theft. The commonplace nature of the sentence has disgusted the lad.

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The report that Mr. CHARLES CHAPLIN had signed a contract to serve in the British Army at 1s. 1d. a day is denied.

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As an outcome of Baby Week the Anti-Comforter League has been formed. The suggestion that Mr. HOGGE, M.P., would make an admirable first President has not been followed up.

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Humanitarians who have been urging the Government not to stain its hands with the more painful forms of reprisal, have received a nasty shock. A German spy has been arrested in London!

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The rubber cushions of billiard tables are now being taken by the German military authorities. Meanwhile the enemy Press continues to take its cue from HINDENBURG.

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A notorious Petrograd anarchist is reported to be ill, and has been ordered to take a complete rest by his doctor. He has therefore decided not to throw any bombs for awhile at least.

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Further evidence of the Eastern talent for adopting Western ideas and improving on them comes from China, where the EX-EMPEROR HSUAN TUNG has celebrated Baby Week by issuing a decree announcing his return to the Throne.

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"The only plumber, electrician, hot-water-fitter, gas-fitter, bell-hanger, zinc-worker, blacksmith and locksmith we have left"--such was an employer's description of a C1 workman. We understand that the War Office will mobilise him as a special corps as soon as they can think of a sufficiently comprehensive title for him.

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Several milkmen have reduced their prices from sixpence to fivepence. Other good results from the timely rains are expected.

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A miner, fined one pound for wasting bread, was said to have thrown his dinner--a mutton chop, onion sauce, and two slices of bread--on the fire because he could not have potatoes. There is a strong feeling that the Censor should prohibit publication of these glaring cases of hardship on the ground that they are likely to encourage the Germans to prolong the War.

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Large quantities of food have been carried off by a burglar from several houses in the Heathfield district. Knowing our War bread, we are confident that it did not give in without a struggle.

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We are sorry to find _The Globe_ making playful reference to the many postponements of certain music-hall revues. Mr. Justice DARLING will agree that these things cannot be postponed too often.

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"How can I distinguish poisonous from edible fungi?" asks a correspondent of _The Daily Mail_. The most satisfactory test is to look for them. If you find them they are likely to be poisonous. If they have been already gathered they were probably edible.

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It is now admitted that the conscientious objectors undergoing sentence at Dartmoor are allowed to have week-ends occasionally. This concession, it appears, had to be granted as several of them threatened to leave the place.

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The pessimists who maintain that this will be a long war are feeling pretty cheap just now. An American scientific journal declares that the world can only last another fifteen million years.

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Roughly speaking, says a weekly paper, there is a policeman for every sixteen square miles. This gives them plenty of room to turn round in.

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It is reported that ex-KING CONSTANTINO is to receive £20,000 a year unemployment benefit.

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We have heard so little of the Hidden Hand this past week or so that we are tempted to ask whether it is suffering from writer's cramp.

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It is reported that three large jam factories have been commandeered by the Military. A soldier writes to ask whether it is proposed to include jam in the list of field punishments.

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"Justices cannot guarantee results to litigants in advance," said the Willesden magistrate recently. Not without trespassing on the privileges of the Bar.

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As a demonstration of allegiance to their country's cause the Apaches of Northern America are to hold a great "Devil Dance" in Arizona. It only needed this to convince us that all was well with America.

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A flask of wine of the year A.D. 17, found in a Roman tomb in Bavaria, is said to be the oldest extant vintage. It antedates Sir FREDERICK BANBURY'S brand of Toryism by several years.

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"Mrs. ----, who has just entered her 192nd year, reads without glasses, writes to her grandchildren fighting abroad, and knits articles for King George's Military Hospital."--_Daily Express (Dublin)_.

Those grandchildren must be getting a little old for active service.

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TINO IN EXILE.

[As indicated on another page, TINO'S actual opinion of his Imperial brother-in-law is probably not too amiable; but it has to be disguised in his letters, which are liable to be censored by his wife.]

Thank you, dear William, I am fairly well. The climate suits me and the simple life-- No diplomats to spoil the scenery's spell, And only faintest echoes of the strife; The Alps are mirrored in a lake of blue; Over my straw-crowned poll the blue skies laugh; A waterfall (no charge) completes a view Equal to any German oleograph.

There are no bugle blares to make me jump, But just the jodler calling to his kine; A few good Teuton toadies, loud and plump, More than suffice me in the _levée_ line; And, when poor ALEXANDER, there in Greece, Writes of your "agents" rounded up and sacked, I am content with privacy and peace, Having, at worst, retained my head intact.

SOPHIE and I have thought of you a lot (We have so very few distractions here; We chat about the weather, which is hot, And then we turn to talk of your career); For rumour says this bloody war will last Until the Hohenzollerns get the boot; And through my brain the bright idea has passed That you had better do an early scoot.

Were it not wise, dear WILLIAM, ere the day When Revolution goes for crowns and things, To cut your loss betimes and come this way And start a coterie of Exiled Kings? You might (the choice of safe retreats is poor) Do worse than join me in this happy land, And spend your last phase, careless, if obscure, With your devoted TINO hand-in-hand.

O. S.

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MONSIEUR JOSEPH.

On the day that I left hospital, with a month's sick leave in hand, I went to dine at my favourite Soho restaurant, the Mazarin, which I always liked because it provided an excellent meal for an extremely modest sum. But this evening my steps turned towards the old place because I wanted a word with Monsieur Joseph, the head-waiter.

I found him the same genial soul as ever, though a shade stouter perhaps and greyer at the temples, and I flatter myself that it was with a smile of genuine pleasure that he led me to my old table in a corner of the room.

When the crowd of diners had thinned he came to me for a chat.

"It is indeed a pleasure to see M'sieur after so long a time," said he, "for, alas, there are so many others of our old clients who will not ever return."

I told him that I too was glad to be sitting in the comparative quiet of the Mazarin, and asked him how he fared.

Joseph smiled. "I 'ave a surprise for M'sieur," he said--"yes, a great surprise. There are ten, fifteen years that I work in thees place, and in four more weeks _le patron_ will retire and I become the proprietor. Oh, it is bee-utiful," he continued, clasping his hands rapturously, "to think that in so leetle time I, who came to London a poor waiter, shall be _patron_ of one of its finest restaurants."

I offered him my warmest congratulations. If ever a man deserved success it was he, and it was good to see the look of pleasure on his face as I told him so.

"And now," said I presently, "I also have a surprise for you, Joseph."

He laughed. "Eh bien, M'sieur, it is your turn to take my breath away."

"My last billet in France, before being wounded," I told him, "was in a Picardy village called Fléchinelle."

He raised his hands. "Mon Dieu," he cried, "it is my own village!"

"More than that," I continued, "for nearly six weeks I lodged just behind the church, in a whitewashed cottage with a stock of oranges, pipes and boot-laces for sale in the window."

"It is my mother's shop!" he exclaimed breathlessly.

I nodded my head, and then proceeded to give him the hundred-and-one messages that I had received from the little old lady as soon as she discovered that I knew her son.

"It is so long since I 'ave seen 'er," said Monsieur Joseph, blowing his nose violently. "So 'ard I work in London these ten, fifteen years that only once have I gone 'ome since my father died."

Then I told him how bent and old his mother was, and how lonesome she had seemed all by herself in the cottage, and as I spoke of the shop which she still kept going in her front-room the tears fairly rained down his face.

"But, M'sieur," said he, "that which you tell me is indeed strange; for those letters which she writes to me week by week are always gay, and it 'as seemed to me that my mother was well content."

Then he struck his fist on the table. "I 'ave it," he said. "She shall come to live 'ere with me in Londres. All that she desires shall be 'ers, for am I not a rich man?"

I shook my head. "She would never leave her village now," I told him. "And I know well that she desires nothing in the world except to see you again."

Then as I rose to go, "Good night, M'sieur," said Joseph a little sadly. "Be very sure that there is always a welcome for you 'ere."

The next time that I dined at the Mazarin was some four weeks later, on the eve of my return to the Front. A strange waiter showed me to my place, and Joseph was nowhere to be seen. Indeed a wholly different air seemed to pervade the place since my last visit. Presently I beckoned to a waiter whom I recognised as having served under the old _régime_. "Where is Monsieur Joseph?" I asked him.

"Where indeed, Sir!" the man replied. "It is all so strange. One day it is arranged that he shall take over the restaurant and its staff, and on the next he come to say 'Good-bye' to us all, and then leave for France. Oh, it is _drôle_. So good a business man to lose the chance that comes once only in a life! He is too old to fight. Yet who knows? Maybe he heard of something better out there...."

As the man spoke the gold-and-white walls of the restaurant faded, the clatter of plates and dishes died away, and I was back again in a tiny village shop in Picardy. Across the counter, packed with its curious stock, I saw Monsieur Joseph, with shirt-sleeves rolled up, gravely handing a stick of chocolate to a child, and taking its sou in return. In the diminutive kitchen behind sat a little white-haired old lady with such a look of content on her face as I have rarely seen.

Then suddenly I found myself back again in the London restaurant.

"Yes," I said to the waiter, "it is possible, as you say, that Monsieur Joseph heard of something better in France."

And raising my glass I drank a silent toast.

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THE MUD LARKS.

You have all seen it in the latest V.C. list--"The Reverend Paul Grayne, Chaplain to the Forces, for conspicuous bravery and gallant example in the face of desperate circumstances."

You have all pictured him, the beau-ideal of muscular Christian, the Fighting Parson, eighteen hands high, terrific in wind and limb, with a golden mane and a Greek profile; a Pekinese in the drawing-room, a bull-dog in the arena; a soupçon of Saint FRANCIS with a dash of JOHN L. SULLIVAN--and all that.

But we who have met heroes know that they are very seldom of the type which achieves the immortality of the picture post-card.

The stalwart with pearly teeth, lilac eyes and curly lashes is C3 at Lloyd's (Sir FRANCIS), and may be heard twice daily at the Frivolity singing, "My Goo-goo Girl from Honolulu" to entranced flappers; while the lad who has Fritzie D. Hun backed on the ropes, clinching for time, is usually gifted with bow legs, freckles, a dented proboscis and a coiffure after the manner of a wire-haired terrier.

The Reverend Paul Grayne, V.C., sometime curate of Thorpington Parva, in the county of Hampshire, was no exception to this rule. Æsthetically he was a blot on the landscape; among all the heroes I have met I never saw anything less heroically moulded.

He stood about five feet nought and tipped the beam at seven stone nothing. He had a mild chinless face and his long beaky nose, round large spectacles, and trick of cocking his head sideways when conversing, gave him the appearance of an intelligent little dicky-bird.

I remember very well the occasion of our first meeting. I was in my troop lines one afternoon, blackguarding a farrier, when a loud nicker sounded on the road and a black cob, bearing a feebly protesting padre upon his fat back, trotted through the gate, up to the lines and began to swop How d'y'do's with my hairies. The little Padre cocked his head on one side and oozed apologies from every pore.

He hadn't meant to intrude, he twittered; Peter had brought him; it was Peter's fault; Peter was very eccentric.

Peter, I gathered, was the fat cob, who by this time had butted into the lines and was tearing at a hay net as if he hadn't had a meal for years.

His alleged master looked at me hopeless, helpless. What was he to do? "Well, since Peter is evidently stopping to tea with my horses," said I, "the only thing you can do is to come to tea with us." So I lifted him down and bore him off to the cow-shed inhabited by our mess at the time and regaled him on chlorinated Mazawattee, marmalade and dog biscuit. An hour later, Peter willing, he left us.

We saw a lot of the Padre after that. Peter, it appeared, had taken quite a fancy to us and frequently brought him round to meals. The Padre had no word of say in the matter. He confessed that, when he embarked upon Peter in the morning, he had not the vaguest idea where mid-day would find him. Nothing but the black cob's fortunate rule of going home to supper saved the Padre from being posted as a deserter.

He had an uneasy feeling that Peter would one day suddenly sicken of the war and that he would find himself in Paris or on the Riviera. We had an uneasy feeling that Peter would one day develop a curiosity as to the Bosch horse rations, and stroll across the line, and we should lose the Padre, a thing we could ill afford to do, for by this time he had taken us under his wing spiritually and bodily. On Sundays he would appear in our midst dragging a folding harmonium and hold Church Parade, leading the hymns in his twittering bird-like voice.

Then the spinster ladies of his old parish of Thorpington Parva gave him a Ford car, and with this he scoured back areas for provisions and threaded his tin buggy in and out of columns of dusty infantry and clattering ammunition limbers, spectacles gleaming, cap slightly awry, while his batman (a wag) perched precariously a-top of a rocking pile of biscuit tins, cigarette cases and boxes of tinned fruit, and shouted after the fashion of railway porters, "By your leave! Fags for the firin' line. Way for the Woodbine Express."

But if we saw a lot of the Padre it was the Antrims who looked upon him as their special property. They were line infantry, of the type which gets most of the work and none of the Press notices, a hard-bitten, unregenerate crowd, who cared not a whit whether Belgium bled or not, but loved fighting for its own sake and put their faith in bayonet and butt. And wherever these Antrims went thither went the Padre also, his harmonium and his Woodbines. I have a story that, when they were in a certain part of the line where the trenches were only thirty yards apart (so close indeed that the opposing forces greeted each other by their first names and borrowed one another's wiring tools), the Padre dragged the harmonium into the front line and held service there, and the Germans over the way joined lustily in the hymns. He kept the men of the Antrims going on canteen delicacies and their officers in a constant bubble of joy. He swallowed their tall stories without a gulp; they pulled one leg and he offered the other; he fell headlong into every silly trap they set for him. Also they achieved merit in other messes by peddling yarns of his wonderful innocence and his incredible absent-mindedness.

"Came to me yesterday, the Dicky Bird did," one of them would relate; "wanted advice about that fat fraud of his, Peter. 'He's got an abrasion on the knob of his right-hand front paw,' says he. 'Dicky Bird,' says I, 'that is no way to describe the anatomy of a horse after all the teaching I've given you.' 'I am so forgetful and horsey terms are so confusing,' he moans. 'Oh, I recollect now--his starboard ankle!' The dear babe!"

In the course of time the Antrims went into the Push, but on this occasion they refused to take the Padre with them, explaining that Pushes were noisy affairs with messy accidents happening in even the best regulated battalions.

The Padre was up at midnight to see them go, his spectacles misty. They went over the bags at dawn, reached their objective in twenty minutes and scratched themselves in. The Padre rejoined them ten minutes later, very badly winded, but bringing a case of Woodbines along with him.

My friend Patrick grabbed him by the leg and dragged him into a shell-hole. Nothing but an inherent respect for his cloth restrained Patrick from giving the Dicky Bird the spanking of his life. At 8 A.M. the Hun countered heavily and hove the Antrims out. Patrick retreated in good order, leading the Padre by an ear. The Antrims sat down, licked their cuts, puffed some of the Woodbines, then went back and pitchforked the Bosch in his tender spots. The Bosch collected fresh help and bobbed up again. Business continued brisk all day, and when night fell the Antrims were left masters of the position.

At 1 A.M. they were relieved by the Rutland Rifles, and a dog weary battered remnant of the battalion crawled back to camp in a sunken road a mile in the rear. One or two found bivouacs left by the Rutlands, but the majority dropped where they halted. My friend Patrick found a bivouac, wormed into it and went to sleep. The next thing he remembers was the roof of his abode caving in with the weight of two men struggling violently. Patrick extricated himself somehow and rolled out into the grey dawn to find the sunken road filled with grey figures, in among the bivouacs and shell holes, stabbing at the sleeping Antrims. Here and there men were locked together, struggling tooth and claw; the air was vibrant with a ghastly pandemonium of grunts and shrieks; the sunken road ran like a slaughter-house gutter. There was only one thing to do, and that was to get out, so Patrick did so, driving before him what men he could collect.

A man staggered past him, blowing like a walrus. It was the Padre's batman, and he had his master tucked under one arm, in his underclothes, kicking feebly.

Patrick halted his men beyond the hill crest, and there the Colonel joined him, trotting on his stockinged feet. Other officers arrived, herding men. "They must have rushed the Ruts., Sir," Patrick panted; "must be after those guns just behind us." "They'll get 'em too," said the Colonel grimly. "We can't stop 'em," said the Senior Captain. "If we counter at once we might give the Loamshires time to come up--they're in support, Sir--but--but, if they attack us, they'll get those guns--run right over us."

The Colonel nodded. "Man, I know, I know; but look at 'em"--he pointed to the pathetic remnant of his battalion lying out behind the crest--"they're dropping asleep where they lie--they're beat to a finish--not another kick left in 'em."

He sat down and buried his face in his hands. The redoubtable Antrims had come to the end.

Suddenly came a shout from the Senior Captain, "Good Lord, what's that fellow after? Who the devil is it?"

They all turned and saw a tiny figure, clad only in underclothes, marching deliberately over the ridge towards the Germans.

"Who is it?" the Colonel repeated. "Beggin' your pardon, the Reverend, Sir," said the Padre's batman as he strode past the group of officers. "'E give me the slip, Sir. Gawd knows wot 'e's up to now." He lifted up his voice and wailed after his master, "'Ere, you come back this minute, Sir. You'll get yourself in trouble again. Do you 'ear me, Sir?" But the Padre apparently did not hear him, for he plodded steadily on his way. The batman gave a sob of despair and broke into a double.

The Colonel sprang to his feet, "Hey, stop him, somebody! Those swine'll shoot him in a second--child murder!"

Two subalterns ran forward, followed by a trio of N.C.O.'s. All along the line men lifted their weary heads from the ground and saw the tiny figure on the ridge silhouetted against the red east.

"Oo's that blinkin' fool?"

"The Padre."

"Wot's 'e doin' of?"

"Gawd knows."

A man rose to his knees, from his knees to his feet, and stumbled forward, mumbling, "'E give me a packet of fags when I was broke." "Me too," growled another, and followed his chum. "They'll shoot 'im in a minute," a voice shouted, suddenly frightened. "'Ere, this ain't war, this is blasted baby-killin'."

In another five seconds the whole line was up and jogging forward at a lurching double. "And a little child shall lead them," murmured the Colonel happily, as he put his best foot forwards; a miracle had happened, and his dear ruffians would go down in glory.

But as they topped the hill crest came the shrill of a whistle from the opposite ridge, and there was half a battalion of the Rutlands back-casting for the enemy that had broken through their posts. With wild yells both parties charged downwards into the sunken road.

When the tumult and shouting had died Patrick went in quest of the little Padre.

He discovered him sitting on the wreck of his bivouac of the night; he was clasping some small article to his bosom, and the look in his face was that of a man who had found his heart's desire.

Patrick sat himself down on a box of bombs, and looked humbly at the Reverend Paul. It is an awful thing for a man suddenly to find he has been entertaining a hero unawares.

"Oh, Dicky Bird, Dicky Bird, why did you do it?" he inquired softly.

The Padre cocked his head on one side and commenced to ooze apologies from every pore.

"Oh dear--you know how absurdly absent-minded I am; well, I suddenly remembered I had left my teeth behind."

PATLANDER.

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