Chapter 1

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Punch, or the London Charivari

Volume 158, Jan-Jul 1920

June 2, 1920

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CHARIVARIA.

Some idea of the heat experienced in this country last week can be deduced from the fact that several bricklayers were distinctly seen to wipe their brows in their own time.

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It is all very well for LENIN to talk about Great Britain recognising Russia, while his followers are doing their best to render the place almost unrecognisable.

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Normally, says Dr. GEOFFREY KEYNES, a person has fifteen thousand millions of blood corpuscles circulating in his body. People suffering with insomnia might try counting them in bed.

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According to a scientific journal, tests recently made show that microbes cannot live long on coins. "Middle Class" writes to say this is nothing new to him, as no germ could live on his salary.

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The promoters of the Milk and Dairies Bill hope to ensure clean milk for the public. They seem to have thought out an improvement on the present system by which certain dairymen are in the habit of washing their milk.

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It took nature several million years, says _The New York World_, to make a ton of coal. It looks as if she has arranged to charge us retrospectively by the hour for the stuff.

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A gold wedding-ring has been found inside a large doe rabbit which was shot recently in a wheat-field near Wilbury. The question arises, "Do modern rabbits go through the marriage ceremony?"

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The latest fad of the American golfer is to have a small painting made of himself in the act of driving. We feel, however, that it will be some time before English golfers will place orders for plaster casts of their language.

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Nearly all the extra firemen required for the London Fire Brigade have been engaged. Clients are assured that arrears of fires will now be worked off with all speed.

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According to a daily paper a severe thunderstorm which recently visited Luton was not heard by the audience in a local concert hall. It is rumoured that a performer was at the time reciting a chapter of Lord FISHER'S autobiography.

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A strike of incubator-makers is threatened and many grocers who stock breakfast-eggs fear that a lot of chicks may come out in sympathy.

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According to an evening paper a young lady who was chased by a bull in a provincial meadow ran a quarter of a mile and jumped a stream sixteen feet wide before gaining safety. Not much of a jump, surely, considering the long run she took.

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"Whilst motoring between Baldock and Grantham one is struck by the greenness of the growing wheat and barley," states a writer in a motor journal. The regularity with which these cereal grasses adopt this colour is certainly worthy of attention.

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Our heart goes out to the American travellers who set foot on our shores at Southampton one day last week just five minutes after closing-time.

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In their recent match against Sussex the first four Middlesex batsmen each scored a century. We understand that in order to obviate a recurrence of this sort of thing a movement is on foot to increase the number of runs in a century to a hundred and fifty.

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We are informed that "a man arrested by Dutch fishermen in the belief that it was the CROWN PRINCE making his escape turned out to be a notorious jewel thief." The error seems to have been excusable.

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The case of the dock labourer who appeared at a County Court in a tail coat and white waistcoat is now explained. The man's valet, who usually looks after these things for him, had gone on strike for more wages.

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Charged with taking one hundred and forty-five pounds of his employers' money a Newcastle office-boy was stated to have been reading trashy novels. It was thought to be only fair to the financial papers that the public should know where he got the idea from.

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"I reckon I can drink fifty pints a day, easy," a witness told the Portsmouth magistrates. He may do it for a while, but sooner or later his arm is bound to go back on him.

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"Under British guidance," says a contemporary, "Persia's future is bright with promise." We know nothing of its future, but its present seems to be scintillating with performance under Bolshevik direction.

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"Cave exploration," declares a writer in _The Daily Mail_, "is a most fascinating sport." There is always the thrilling possibility that you may find another Liberal principle hidden away somewhere.

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Owing to the increased cost of living it is said that burglars will now only book jewel robberies of two thousand pounds and over.

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"NEW POLICY IN IRELAND.

NO TRIALS WITHOUT ARRESTS."

_Dublin Paper._

A good idea, but it was anticipated in the matter of jugged hare.

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"Register as a regular reader of _The Daily ----_, and you at once disqualify for £3 a week during disablement."--_Daily Paper._

We shall be careful not to register.

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ODYSSEUS AT THE DERBY.

[Racing men will not need to be reminded that Polumetis (many-counselled) is named after a common epithet of the hero of the _Odyssey_.]

At times the pulse of memory is stirred Out of a chronic state of coma By just a poignant tune, a rhythmic word, A whiff of some refined aroma, And lo! the brain is made aware Of records which it didn't know were there.

So in a sudden moment I was shot Back to my boyhood and the highly Instructive works of HOMER, long forgot, And with the late _Odysseus_ (wily) Ploughed once again the wine-red deep On drawing Polumetis in a sweep.

Oh, "many-counselled" hero! if a horse Your attributes may also borrow, Lend him your cunning round the Derby course, Teach him a thing or two to-morrow, That at the end it may be said: "He did a great performance with his head."

As you contrived by tricks of crafty skill Ever to down your foes and flatten 'em, So may he lie low going up the hill, Secure the inside berth at Tattenham, And do a finish up the straight Swift as your shafts that sealed the suitors' fate!

Fortune attend his name, though some deplore Its pedantry, and I assume it is Likely, from what I know of bookies' lore, That on the rails he'll be "Poloometis"; For me, I do not care two pins How they pronounce him, if he only wins.

O. S.

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THE SERENE BATSMAN.

It is a common fallacy among cricketing coaches and their pupils that when the young batsman has mastered all the strokes that can be imparted to him at the nets his education is complete. So far from that being the case, it has barely begun. Under the prevailing system, the psychological factor, the most important of all, is entirely neglected. The most trying moment of a cricketer's life is when he first steps forth alone from the pavilion of a public ground. In that moment all that the old pro has taught him of cuts and drives, forward play and back play, will not prevent his knees from weakening as he totters to the wicket, whereas the following hints may enable him to face the occasion with confidence if not contempt.

Remember that for a public performer a good entrance is more than half the battle; the first impression on the spectators is the most lasting.

Nothing looks worse than a batsman hurrying out at a furtive trot, as if he were going to pawn his bat. When your turn comes to go in, take care to be just within the regulation two minutes, but school yourself to emerge from the pavilion at a leisurely stride with more than a suspicion of swagger in it. The bat should not be carried as a shy curate carries a shabby umbrella, but either boldly across the shoulder, like a rifle, or tucked under the armpit, so that you may do up your batting-gloves in your progress across the greensward. An excellent effect will be produced if you pause half-way and execute a few fancy strokes at an imaginary ball. Besides, you may not have another opportunity of displaying your accomplishment.

Having, as it were, reported yourself at the wicket, it is a good plan to discover that you need a new batting-glove. This will afford you an excuse for a return journey to the pavilion, during which your gait will lose nothing in stateliness if you can manage to adopt the goose-step. On your return to the wicket you will probably find, if the weather is mild and the grass dry, that the fieldsmen are reclining on the ground; it will enhance your reputation for nonchalance and good-fellowship if you can contrive to give one of them a playful pat with your bat in passing, especially if he is a total stranger to you and much your senior.

On your second arrival at the wicket, you might get the wicket-keeper to take his gloves off and adjust the straps of your pads. This is one of many subtle ways of demoralising the fielding side and whetting the interest of the onlookers.

After taking middle with such scrupulous exactitude as to imply that you suspect the umpire's eyesight, take one of the bails and scratch a block deep enough to plant something in. Then beckon to the square-leg umpire to come and replace the bail. In this you will be strictly within the law, and nobody can suspect you of the surreptitious use of a little cobbler's wax.

Your next move should be to summon the other batsman to a whispered conference in the middle of the pitch. It doesn't much matter what you say to him; a new funny story or the plot of a play you saw last week will serve to make him assume an air of thoughtful attention.

After a chat of about five minutes, you will return slowly to your crease, there to scrutinise the slip fieldsmen, and then to gaze all round the ground as if to make sure that the other side is not playing more than eleven men.

When taking your stance you will do well to give full effect to some such mannerism as Mr. WARNER'S trick of hitching up the left side of the trousers and tapping the ground seven times. And just as the bowler is about to start his run you can disconcert him by suddenly whipping round to see if they have moved another man over to the leg side while your back was turned.

As soon as the bowler has covered half his course to the wicket you should raise your hand to arrest his career. Then you must stroll about a third of the way up the pitch and give the ground a good slapping with the face of your bat.

If you feel so inclined, there is no reason why you should not repeat this man[oe]uvre. Nothing is more calculated to upset a highly-strung bowler. And when the ball does come down the chances are that it will be a wide, in which case you will have earned one run for your side. If, on the other hand, it should happen to knock your middle stump out of the ground, there is nothing more to be done, but you will have the satisfactory feeling that your little turn in the limelight has not been utterly inglorious.

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[Gothic: In Memoriam.]

CECIL CLAY.

Athlete and wit, whose genial tongue Cheered and refreshed but never stung; Maker of mirth and wholesome jokes; Fit mate of dear ROSINA VOKES; Creator, to our endless joy, Of priceless _Arthur Pomeroy_-- Light lie the earth above his head Who lightened many a heart of lead; Courteous and chivalrous and gay, In very truth no common Clay.

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We learn with regret of the death of Mr. A. CHANTREY CORBOULD, whose work as a sporting artist was familiar to an earlier generation of _Punch's_ readers.

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THE RISE AND FALL OF AN AMATEUR EXAMINER.

The Nabobs is, I suppose, one of the best girls' schools in England. Anyhow it is perhaps the most exclusive unless you have money enough. But, as the prospectus says, "it commands an extensive view of the English Channel," and I suppose these things have to be paid for. At all events there is no doubt that the principal, Miss Penn-Cushing, has her heart in her work and is a splendid disciplinarian, and so I sent my niece Mollie there to be finished (her mother being in India).

I have an idea at times that it is Mollie who will finish Miss Penn-Cushing, but I try to preserve a benevolent neutrality combined with a regular supply of food parcels to my niece.

Miss Penn-Cushing is LL.A. of one University and LL.B. of another, and, I think, LL.C. of a third, so that she ought to be more than a match for six Mollies.

I have always had the impression that Miss Penn-Cushing regarded me as a humble entomological specimen until the other day when she paid me a staggering compliment. She herself teaches all the English literature in her academy, and each class in turn goes up to her room to receive its daily dose. Mollie says that when she grows up she is going to give up English literature for ever and read something interesting.

I am glad that the revered Principal is never present to hear Mollie's blasphemies, at which I as an uncle have to shudder. Since the publication of _The Cambridge History of English Literature_ Miss Penn-Cushing has been steadily absorbing it, to help her in her daily task, and has apparently reached the chapter in which is suitably acknowledged the debt of English literature to _Punch_.

So at least I judge, for she gave the girls a long serious talk on humour in literature, how to detect it and what should be done about it. One rather sensitive child began to cry, but Mollie, who has never kept a secret in her life and in fact loves to drag her uncle's skeletons out of cupboards, blurted out, "Uncle writes for _Punch_!"

I was somewhat alarmed when I heard of this, for I did not know how Miss Penn-Cushing, who keeps all the girls' uncles in order, might take it. My fears were groundless, perhaps stupid, for the immediate result was an invitation to examine Mollie's form in literature at the forthcoming Christmas examination. I felt uplifted in spirit; I felt that people were beginning to understand me. I even entertained an hallucination that perhaps Mollie might now treat my intellect with respect and stop calling me "Old dear." Three inches taller I sat down to my desk and, thanking Miss Penn-Cushing for the honour paid me, I promised I would do my best, although it would be my first appearance in the _rôle_.

I determined, however, not to allow this distinction to make me overbearing to my inferiors at our next speech-day. I would be affable to ordinary uncles, common parents and guardians of the other girls, but I would lead the conversation artfully on to other literary critics and examiners of the past. As a preparation I read up MATTHEW ARNOLD.

It is not easy to be an examiner, I found. I would rather write ten leading articles than one examination-paper. It appeared that I had to set themes for essays as well as questions in literature. We never learnt literature when I was young and I didn't know you could, but I borrowed a text-book from Mollie and did my best.

The result was a crushing letter from the lady principal. She said that "The Ten Points of a good Doll" seemed a preposterous subject for senior students of literature to write about, and "My Favourite Elopement in Fiction" would be outside the purview of any of her girls. She would substitute instead (with my permission), "The Debt of Literature (as well as Science) to DARWIN" and "My Favourite Piece of Epic Poetry." In fine, if I did not really mind, she would herself set all the questions and I should examine the answers. She thought that the more fructiferous course.

How to mark was my chief difficulty. How many marks should one give a darling with brown eyes and a musical laugh (Mollie has brought her to tea often) who signs herself "Norah O'Brien," and winds up delightful irrelevances about DARWIN and her abhorrence of reptiles with a personal appeal to the examiner. I do not know what other examiners do in such cases. It was a beautifully worded and most respectful appeal. I decided to give her forty for Norah and forty for O'Brien. Both names have always appealed to me.

This made it necessary for me to give eighty marks to her sister Kathleen, who wrote really an excellent essay on a subject we had stupidly forgotten to set. It was an excellent subject, and she has even browner eyes than Norah, but as an examiner one must be rigid and impartial.

Eunice came next. This name recalled dear memories of the past and of what might have been. But as an examiner I could not let old dreams weigh down my impartial scales, so I refused to give her more than eighty. Finally, for they are really charming girls and know far more about literature than I do, I gave eighty to everybody except Mollie, and for being Mollie I gave her eighty-two.

I forgot. There was one perfectly horrid little girl called Katie de Pinnock. She never shared her chocolates with anyone; the fact was notorious. She wrote in a copperplate hand sentiments like these: "MILTON awes me; SHELLEY thrills me; BLAKE, the prophet of self-sacrifice, is ever my consolation and my guide. I ask for nothing beyond." I gave her nineteen.

And now comes the tragedy. Miss Penn-Cushing's letter of thanks was icy. She feared I had been "a thought nepotic," and (with my permission) she would revise my marks.

She dealt me the final blow at our Speech-Day. "I have decided," she gave out, "to award the first prize in Literature to Miss Katie de Pinnock. I am sure, though, that you will not be surprised to hear that Mr. Marcus O'Reilly, our examiner, was so impressed with the literary excellence of all your papers that he has presented the whole class with consolation prizes. We tender him our heartiest thanks."

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Commercial Candour.

Extract from a Canadian business-circular:--

"What intelligent car owners have been looking for is a tire that will give them a minimum amount of service for a maximum amount of expenditure. You can get that tire from us."

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"THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS.

BY THE RT. HON. C. F. G. MASTERMAN.

'Die, thou children of stormy dawn,' cries the Prime Minister to-day, as he stamps out the life of his little land taxes."--_Daily News._

According to his critic Mr. LLOYD GEORGE seems to have done great violence to his syntax as well as to his little land taxes.

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"The bride, a tall brunette, looked a vision of golden beauty as she advanced up the aisle on the arm of her father."--_Evening Paper._

We do not think that this was the right occasion for an exposure of feminine camouflage.

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THE ART OF POETRY.

I.

Many people have said to me, "I wish I could write poems. I often try, but----" They mean, I gather, that the impulse, the creative itch, is in them, but they don't know how to satisfy it. My own position is that I know how to write poetry, but I can't be bothered. I have not got the itch. The least I can do, however, is to try to help those who have.

A mistake commonly committed by novices is to make up their minds what it is they are going to say before they begin. This is superfluous effort, tending to cramp the style. It is permissible, if not essential, to select a _subject_--say, MUD--but any detailed argument or plan which may restrict the free development of metre and rhyme (if any) is to be discouraged.

With that understanding, let us now write a poem about MUD.

I should begin in this sort of way:--

Mud, mud, Nothing but mud, O my God!

It will be seen at once that we are not going to have much rhyme in this poem; or if we do we shall very soon be compelled to strike a sinister note, because almost the only rhymes to _mud_ are _blood_ and _flood_; while, as the authors of our hymns have discovered, there are very few satisfactory rhymes to _God_. They shamefully evaded the difficulty by using words like _road_, but in first-class poetry one cannot do that. On the whole, therefore, this poem had better be _vers libre_. That will take much less time and be more dramatic, without plunging us into a flood of blood or anything drastic like that. We now go on with a little descriptive business:--

Into the sunset, swallowing up the sun, Crawling, creeping, The naked flats----

Now there ought to be a verb. That is the worst of _vers libre_; one gets carried away by beautiful phrases and is brought up suddenly by a complete absence of verbs. However at a pinch one can do without a verb; that is the best of _vers libre_:--

Amber and gold, Deep-stained in mystery And the colours of mystery, Inapprehensible, Golden like wet-gold, Amber like a woman of Arabia That has in her breast The forsaken treasures of old Time, Love and Destruction, Oblivion and Decay, And bully-beef tins, Tin upon tin, Old boots, and bottles that hold no more Their richness in them. And I----

We might do a good deal more of this descriptive business, bringing in something about dead bodies, mud of course being full of dead bodies. But we had better get on. We strike now the personal note:--

And I, I too am no more than a bottle, An empty bottle, Heaving helpless on the mud of life, Without a label and without a cork, Empty I am, yet no man troubles To return me. And why? Because there is not sixpence on me. Bah! The sun goes down in the West (Or is it the East?) But I remain here, Drifting empty under the night, Drifting----

When one is well away with this part of the poem it is almost impossible to stop. When you are writing in metre you come eventually to the eighth line of the last verse and you have to stop; but in _vers libre_ you have no assistance of that kind. This particular poem is being written for instructional purposes in a journal of limited capacity, so it will probably have to stop fairly soon; but in practice it would go on for a long time yet. In any case, however, it would end in the same way, like this:--

Mud, mud, Nothing but mud, O, my God!

That reasserts, you see, in a striking manner, the original _motif_, and somehow expresses in a few words the poignant melancholy of the whole poem. Another advantage in finishing a long poem, such as this would be, in the same way as you began it is that it makes it clear to the reader that he is still reading the same poem. Sometimes, and especially in _vers libre_ of an emotional and digressive character, the reader has a hideous fear that he has turned over two pages and got into another poem altogether. This little trick reassures him; and if you are writing _vers libre_ you must not lose any legitimate opportunity of reassuring the reader.

To treat the same theme in metre and rhyme will be a much more difficult matter. The great thing will be to avoid getting _mud_ at the end of a line, for the reasons already given. We had better have long ten-syllable lines, and we had better have four of them in each verse. GRAY wrote an elegy in that metre which has given general satisfaction. We will begin:--