Chapter 1

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOL. 156.

May 28, 1919.

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CHARIVARIA.

It was the pig, says an eminent Danish economist, that lost Germany the War. His omission to specify which pig seems almost certain to provoke further recriminations among the German High Command.

***

After all, the War _may_ have wakened a new spirit in the nation. Up to the time of writing no one has attempted to corner mint-sauce.

***

A movement, we hear, is on foot to give a public welcome to the cheeses on their return to our midst. It is thought that a march-past could easily be arranged.

***

Hackney will supply electricity to consumers at a special rate during the Peace celebrations. The present price of one-and-sixpence per kilowatt-and-soda practically inhibits anything like deep-seated festivity.

***

A Miners' Association in the North has decided not to establish a weekly newspaper. Pending other arrangements they will do a little light mining, but it must not be taken as a precedent.

***

At a meeting of Hassocks allotment-holders a speaker stated that he had seen rabbits jump a fence five feet high. Experts declare that this is at least three feet over proof.

***

As the outcome of suggestions by the Economy Committee at Eton Dr. ALINGTON has made certain restrictions in regard to various articles of dress, notably socks and mufflers. Henceforward only such socks as do not require muffling will be worn.

***

The cow that walked into the lending library at Walton Heath has since explained that it merely wanted to look up "Manchuria" in the encyclopaedia.

***

It is said that the question of neutrality has caused most of the delay in the formation of the League of Nations. We certainly realise the difficulty in deciding how Norway and Switzerland could come to grips, in the event of a War between these two countries, without infringing the laws of neutrality.

***

"No harm to the moon will result from the eclipse of the sun on May 28th," states a writer in an evening paper. This is good news for those who have mining shares there.

***

There is a falling off in the tanning of kids in India, says _The Shoe and Leather Trades Record_. Smith minor talks of migrating to the Orient.

***

Government ale, says a trade paper, will shortly be on sale in some parts of Ireland. This certainly ought to be a lesson to them.

***

Two Parisians who had previously arranged to fight a duel have refused to meet. It is supposed that they have quarrelled.

***

As we go to press we are informed on good authority that the cat that developed rabies last week has now been successfully killed eight times, and it is expected that its final execution will have taken place by the time this appears in print.

***

We understand that the Tredegar Fire Brigade strike is settled. Patrons are asked to bear with the Brigade, who have promised to work off arrears of fires in strict rotation.

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A Surrey Church magazine appeals for funds to renovate the church exits. For ourselves, if we were a parson, we shouldn't worry about getting people out of church so long as we got them in.

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A Scottish Chamber of Commerce has passed a resolution in favour of smaller One Pound Treasury Notes. If at the same time they could be made a bit cheaper the movement would be a popular one.

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A taxi-driver who knocked down a pedestrian in Edgware Road and then drove off has been summoned. His defence is that he mistook the unfortunate man for an intending fare.

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The Northumberland Miners' Council has passed a resolution calling on the Government to evacuate our troops from Russia, drop the Conscription Bill, remove the blockade and release conscientious objectors. Their silence on the subject of Dalmatia is being much commented on.

***

A report reaches us that Jazz is about to be made a notifiable disease.

* * * * *

A SPRING IDYLL.

If wound stripes were given to soldiers on becoming casualties to Cupid's archery barrage, Ronnie Morgan's sleeve would be stiff with gilt embroidery. The spring offensive claimed him as an early victim. When be became an extensive purchaser of drab segments of fossilized soap, bottles of sticky brilliantine with a chemical odour, and postcards worked with polychromatic silk, the billet began to make inquiries.

"It's that little mam'zelle at the shop in the Rue de la République," reported Jim Brown. "He spends all his pay and as much as he can borrow of mine to get excuses for speaking to her."

There was a period of regular visits and intense literary activity on the part of Ronnie, followed by the sudden disappearance of Mam'zelle and an endeavour by the disconsolate swain to liquidate his debts in kind.

"I owe you seven francs, Jim," said he. "If you give me another three francs and I give you two bottles of brilliantine and a cake of vanilla-flavoured soap we'll be straight."

"Not me!" said Jim firmly. "I've no wish to be a scented fly-paper. Have you frightened her away?"

"She's been _swept_ away on a flood of my eloquence," said Ronnie sadly. "But in the wrong direction; and after I'd bought enough pomatum from her to grease the keel of a battleship, and enough soap to wash it all off again. Good soap it is too, me lad; lathers well if you soak it in hot water overnight."

"How did you come to lose her?" asked Jim, steering the conversation out of commercial channels.

"The loss is hers," said Ronnie; "I wore holes in my tunic leaning over the counter talking to her, and I made about as much progress as a Peace Conference. I got soap instead of sympathy and scent instead of sentiment. However, she must have got used to me, because one day she asked if I would translate an English letter she'd received into French.

"'Now's your chance to make good,' I thought, language being my strong suit; but I felt sick when I found it was a love-letter from a presumptuous blighter at Calais, who signed himself 'Your devoted Horace.' Still, to make another opportunity of talking to her, I offered to write it out in French. She sold me a block of letter-paper for the purpose, and I went home and wrote a lifelike translation.

"She gave me a dazzling smile and warm welcome when I took it in, but on the balance I didn't feel that I'd done myself much good. And next day I'm dashed if she didn't give me another letter to translate, this time signed 'Your loving Herbert.' Herbert, I discovered, was a sapper who'd been transferred to Boulogne and, judging by his hand, was better with a shovel than a pen. As an amateur in style I couldn't translate his drivel word for word. Like _Cyrano_, the artist in me rose supreme, and I manicured and curled his letter, painted and embroidered it, and nearly finished by signing 'Ronnie' instead of 'Herbert.'

"She was quite surprised when she read the translation.

"_'C'est gentil, n'est-ce-pas_?' said she, kissing it and stuffing it away in her belt. 'I did not think,' she went on in French, 'that the dear stupid 'Erbert had so much eloquence.' I saw my error. I had made a probable of a horse that hadn't previously got an earthly. So, to adjust things, I refrigerated the next letter--which happened to be from 'Orace--to the temperature of codfish on an ice block. And the consequence was that Georgette sulked and would scarcely speak to me for three whole days.

"The situation, coldly reviewed, appeared to be like this. When 'Orace or 'Erbert pleased her I got a share of the sunshine, but when their love-making cooled her displeasure was visited on poor Ronnie. Any advances on my own part were countered with sales of soap, customers apparently being rarer than lovers. So I had to bide my time.

"But one day letters from 'Orace and 'Erbert arrived simultaneously, and were duly handed to the fourth party for necessary action. It occurred to me that when the time came for me to enter the race on my own behalf I need have little fear of 'Erbert as a rival, so I determined to cut 'Orace out of the running.

"I translated his letter first. I censored the tender parts, spun out the padding and served it up like cold-hash. Then I set to work on 'Erbert. I got the tremolo stop out and the soft pedal on and made a symphony of it. I made it a stream of trickling melody--blue skies, yellow sunshine and scent of roses, with Georgette perched like a sugar goddess on a silver cloud and 'Erbert trying to clamber up to her on a silk ladder. To read it would have made a Frenchman proud of his own language. Then, for dramatic effect, I took the letters, put them on the counter and walked out without a word. 'That,' thought I, 'will do 'Orace's business--and then for 'Erbert!'

"Next day, when I went to see the result, to my surprise I found that her place behind the counter was taken by that little red-haired Celestine.

"'Where's Georgette?' said I.

"'Ah, M'sieur, she has gone,' said Celestine. 'Figure to yourself, this 'Orace, who used to write with ardour and spirit, sent her yesterday a poor pitiful note. It made one's heart bleed to read it, such halting appeal, such inarticulate sentiment. _"Le pauvre garçon!"_ cried Georgette, "his passion is so strong he cannot find words for it. He is stricken dumb with excess of feeling. I must be at his side to comfort him." And she has flown like the wind to Calais, that she may be affianced to him. But if M'sieur desires to buy the soap I know the kind you prefer.'

"So you see me," concluded Ronnie plaintively, "bankrupt in love and money. Three francs, Jim, and I'll chuck in a packet of post-cards."

* * * * *

SONGS OF SIMLA.

I.--THE BUREAUCRAT.

Along a narrow mountain track Stalking supreme, alone, Head upwards, hands behind his back, He swings his sixteen stone.

Quit of the tinsel and the glare That lit his forbears' lives, His tweed-clad shoulders amply bear The burden that was CLIVE'S.

A man of few and simple needs He smokes a briar--and yet His rugged signature precedes The half an alphabet.

Across these green Elysian slopes The Secretariat gleams, The playground of his youthful hopes, The workshop of his schemes.

He sees the misty depths below, Where plain and foothills, meet, And smiles a wistful smile to know The world is at his feet;

To know that England calls him back; To know that glory's path Is leading to a _cul de sac_ In Cheltenham or Bath;

To know that all he helped to found, The India of his prayers, Has now become the tilting ground Of MILL-bred doctrinaires.

But his the inalienable years Of faith that stirred the blood, Of zeal that won through toil and tears, And after him--the flood.

J.M.S.

* * * * *

OUR FEMININE ATHLETES.

"Wanted, Young Lady, vaults bar.--Apply personally, Mrs. -----, Oddfellows' Arms."--_Provincial Paper_.

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BLANCHE'S LETTERS.

PEACE AND OTHER COMPLICATIONS.

_Park Lane_.

DEAREST DAPHNE,--Already everyone's got peace-strain and what state we shall all be in by the time it's actually signed I haven't the dimmest. People have their own ideas of how they mean to celebrate it, and when they find that other people have the same ideas and mean to do the same things at the same time there are alarums and excursions, and things are said, and quite several people who were dear friends during the War don't speak now owing to the peace!

_Par exemple_, marches and processions being so much in the air, I'd planned a lovely Procession of Knitters; two enormous gilt knitting-needles to be carried by the leaders and a banner with "We Knitted our Way to Victory!" and myself on a triumphal car dressed in white silk-knitting. And then, just as everything was being arranged at our "Knitters' Peace Procession" committee meetings, I found that Beryl Clarges had _stolen my idea_ and was arranging a "Crochet Peace Procession," with an immense gilt crochet-hook to be carried in front, and a banner with some nonsense about crochet on it, and herself on a triumphal car dressed in crochet!

I said exactly what I thought before I left off speaking to her.

Then, again, everyone wants to give a dance on peace night. I'd settled to give a big affair with some perfectly new departures, and all the nicest people I wanted have said, "Sorry, dearest, but I'm giving one myself that night." I've no patience with the silliness and selfishness of everybody.

Talking of dances, one's getting a bit _dégoûtée_ of Jazz bands and steps. When _ces autres_ get hold of anything it always begins to leave off being amusing. There's really a new step, however, the Peace Leap, that hasn't yet been quite _usé_ and spoilt by the outlying tribes. The origin of it was a little funny. Chippy Havilland was at one of Kickshaw's Jazz dinners one night, where people fly out of their seats to one-step and two-step between the courses and during the courses and all the time. Well, while Chippy was eating his fish the band struck up that catchy Jazz-stagger, "She's corns on her toes," and Chippy, his mouth full of fish, jumped up and began to dance. _Of course_ several fish-bones flew down his throat, and while he was choking he did such fearful and wonderful things that the whole room, not dreaming the poor dear was at his _dernier soupir_, broke out clapping and shouting and then imitated him, and by the time Chippy felt better he found himself famous and everybody doing the Peace Leap, which has completely cut out the Jazz-stagger, the Wolf's Prowl and everything else.

Oh, my dearest, who _do_ you think are among the crowd of married people who're going to celebrate peace by dissolving partnership? The Algy Mallowdenes! Our prize couple! The _flitchiest_ of Dunmow Flitch pairs! The _turtlest_ of turtle--doves! Whenever people spoke of marriage as played out other people always weighed in with, "Well, but look at the Algy Mallowdenes."

They married on war-bread and Government cheese and kisses (unrationed). Seriously, though, _m'amie_, I believe they'd scarcely anything beyond his two thousand pounds a year as Permanent Irremovable Assistant Under-Secretary at the No-Use-Coming-Here Office. Certainly an "official residence" and a staff of servants were allowed 'em, but when poor Lallie asked to have a ball-room built, and Algy said he simply _must_ have a billiard-room and smoke-room added, one of those fearful red-flag creatures got up in the House just as the money was going to be voted and made such an uproar that the matter was dropped.

And then, having heaps of spare time at the No-Use-Coming-Here Office, Algy began to write novels and found himself at once. You've read some of them, of course? Life with a big L, my dear. Every kind of world while you wait, the upper, the under, and the half. Lallie was very glad of the money that came rolling in, but I believe she said wistfully, "How does my gentle quiet Algy know so much about this, that and the other?" And her gentle quiet Algy made answer: "Intuition, dear; imagination; the novelist's temperament."

By-and-by, however, she began to hear of his being seen at the Umpty Club and Gaston's, chatting with Pearl Preston (one of those people, you know, Daphne, who're immensely talked about but never mentioned). And then a "certain liveliness" set in at the official residence of the Permanent Irremovable Assistant Under-Secretary.

"You silly little goosey!" said Algy; "don't you see that it's not as a man who admires her but as a novelist who's studying her that I talk to Pearl Preston? She's my next heroine. A heroine like that is a _sine quâ non_ in a novel of the Modernist school."

But Lallie _couldn't_ see the dif between a man and a novelist, and Algy _couldn't_ write his best seller without studying its heroine, and so--and so--at last our poor prize couple are in that long list that an overworked judge complained of the other day. And if you ask for the moral I suppose it's "Don't try to study character where there isn't any."

This is emphatically a season for _arms_, my Daphne, which seems quite a good little idea for peace-time! Faces and figures don't count; it's the arm, the whole arm and nothing but the arm! There are all sorts of stunts for attracting attention to round white arms, and if one has the other kind one had better go and do a rest-cure. Your Blanche is beyond criticism in that respect, as you know, and the other night at the opera I'd a _succès fou_ with a big black-enamel beetle, held in place by an invisible platinum chain, crawling on my upper arm.

Lady Manoeuvrer is simply _ravie de joie_ at the rage for arms, for her Daffodil, who's been a great worry to her (she's the only clever one, you know, all the others being pretty), has the best arms of the whole bunch. She's taken Madame Fallalerie's course, "The Fascination of the Arms," and is made to flourish hers about from morn to night, poor child, till she sometimes does a small weep from sheer exhaustion. The other day at Kempford Races, in a no-sleeved coatee with a black sticking-plaster racehorse in full gallop on her upper arm, she attracted plenty of attention and had two offers, I hear. Arms and the man, again!

_À propos_, Lady Manoeuvrer told me yesterday she'd sent a thank-offering to one of the hospitals. "But how sweet of you!" I said. "For the restoration of Peace, I suppose?" "No, dearest," she whispered; "for the restoration of the London Season!"

Ever thine, BLANCHE.

* * * * *

* * * * *

"LETTS TAKE RIGA."

_Daily Mail._

Yes, and let's keep it.

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* * * * *

MURMAN AMENITIES.

This was to have been an essay from an igloo, describing the awful privations of the writer and the primitive savagery of his surroundings on the Murman coast. It was to have wrung the sympathetic heart of the public and at the same time to have enthralled the student of barbaric life with its wealth of exotic detail. While embodying all the best-known newspaper _clichés_ appropriated to these latitudes it was to have included others specially and laboriously prepared after a fascinating study of Arctic literature.

But circumstances have blighted its early inspiration, and the article it was to have been will never be written, the telling word-pictures designed on board the transport never executed.

Figure the disgust of five adventurers who, landing at the Murman base, sternly braced to encounter the last extremity of peril and of hardship, to sleep in the snow and dig one another out o' mornings, to give the weakest of their number the warmest icicle to suck, the longest candle to chew--found themselves billeted in a room which the landladies of home would delight to advertise! Its walls were hung with such pictures as give cheap lodgings half their horror; it was encumbered with countless frail chairs and "kiggly" tables, and upon every flat surface had settled a swarm of albums, framed photographs, china dogs, wax flowers, penholder-stands, and all the choicest by-products of civilization struggling towards culture. As we were not to be frozen by exposure or immediately attacked by Bolshies, we might reasonably have expected to be asphyxiated by the Russian stove; but even this consolation was denied us, since Madame, convinced that the English are mad in their love of fresh air, consented to leave it unlit.

When first we arrived, five large soldiers with five large kits, the aspect of the room filled us with terror. The fiercest frost or foe we could have faced, but the bravest man may quail before wax-flowers and fragile tables top-heavy with ornaments and knick-knacks, and all felt that to encounter such things within the Arctic Circle was an unfair test of our fortitude. Why had not the War Office or some newspaper correspondent warned us?

Madame, however, proved to have a sense of proportion or humour; or perhaps the collection was not her own. In any case she showed no reluctance to displace family photographs or china dogs, and rapidly had the room cleared for action; so that now, when we roll about the floor in friendly struggle, it is only someone's toilet tackle that crashes with its spidery table, instead of cherished artificial fauna and flora.

Thanks to our serviceable and becoming Arctic kit and the steady approach of the Spring thaw, heralded by the preparation of spare bridges to replace the existing ones, we can defy the eccentricities of the climate. Even the language begins to reveal what might be termed hand-holds; though possibly, when the natives echo our words of greeting, painfully acquired from textbooks on Russian, they are simply imitating the sounds we make under the impression that they are learning a little English.

More difficult problems arise, however, regarding questions of military etiquette. Not King's Regulations, nor Military Law, nor any handbook devotes even a sub-paragraph to light and leading upon certain points which we have here to consider every day. For example, if a subaltern glissading on ski down the village street, maintaining his precarious balance by the aid of a "stick" in each hand, meets a General, also on ski and also a novice, what should happen? What _does_ happen we know by demonstration: the subaltern brandishes both sticks round his head, slides forward five yards, smartly crosses the points of his ski and then, plunging forward, buries his head in the wayside drift, while the General Officer sits down and says what he thinks. But we do not know if these gestures of natural courtesy are such as our mentors would approve. No authority has set up for us any ideal in such matters. From official rules of deportment the British soldier knows how to salute when on foot or mounted on bicycle, horse, mule, camel, elephant, motor-lorry or yak, but no provision has been made for the case of an army scooting on ski. So here we are at large in the Arctic Circle, coping with new conditions by the light of nature, and paying such perilous "compliments" to senior officers as our innate courtesy and sense, of balance suggest and permit.