Chapter 1

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PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOL. 159.

August 25th, 1920.

CHARIVARIA.

"What we have got to do," says Lord ROTHERMERE, "is to keep calm and mind our own business, instead of worrying about the affairs of every other nation." It seems only fair to point out that _The Daily News_ thought of this as long ago as August, 1914.

* * *

Gooseberries the size of bantams' eggs, says a news item, won a prize at the Deeside Horticultural Show. When we remember the giant gooseberries of a decade ago it rather looks as if the nation were losing its nerve.

* * *

With reference to the messenger seen running in Whitehall the other day a satisfactory explanation has now been given. He was doing it for the cinema.

* * *

The average Scot, says an Anti-Prohibition writer, cannot stand many drinks. Our experience supports this view; but he can be stood a good many.

* * *

A picture-paper gossip states that Mr. CHURCHILL enjoys very good health. Just a touch of writer's cramp now and then, of course.

* * *

In a recent riot in Londonderry, it is stated, a number of inoffensive neutrals were set upon and beaten by rowdies of both factions. We have constantly maintained that Irish unity can always be secured when there is something really worth uniting over.

* * *

A lighthouse is advertised for sale in _The Times_. It is said to be just the kind of residence for a tall man with sloping shoulders.

* * *

A correspondent asks in the weekly press for a new name for charabancs. We wish we could think there was any use in calling them names.

* * *

Seaside bathers are advised not to enter the water after a heavy meal. The seaside visitor who could pay for such a meal would naturally not have enough left to pay for a bathing-machine.

* * *

A Thames bargee was knocked down by a taxi-cab at Kingston-on-Thames last week. A well-known firm has offered to publish his remarks in fortnightly parts.

* * *

The West Dulwich man who struck a rate-collector on the head with a telephone claims credit for finding some use for these instruments.

* * *

Sir ERIC DRUMMOND has purchased the largest hotel in Geneva on behalf of the League of Nations. It is said that he has been taking lessons from Sir ALFRED MOND.

* * *

Following closely upon the announcement of the noiseless gun invented in New York comes the news that they have now invented some sound-proof bacon for export to this country.

* * *

It is stated that the man who last week said he understood the Rent Act was eventually pinned down by some friends and handed over to the care of his relatives.

* * *

According to a morning paper another Antarctic expedition is to be organised very shortly. We understand that only those who can stand a northern wind on all four sides need apply.

* * *

It is reported that a poultry-farmer in the West of England is making a fortune by giving his hens whisky to drink and then exporting their eggs to the United States.

* * *

A golf-ball was recently driven through the window of an express train near Knebworth. We are informed however that the player who struck the ball still maintains that the engine-driver deliberately ignored his shout of "Fore."

* * *

An amazing report reaches us from Yorkshire. It appears that a centenarian has been discovered who is unable to read without glasses or even to walk to market once a week.

* * *

The unveiling of one of the largest Peace memorials in the country is to take place on Armistice day this year. We hear that both the PREMIER and Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL have expressed a desire to attend unless prevented by the War.

* * *

Smart furriers, declares a fashion-paper, are pushing Beveren blue rabbit as one of the chic furs for the coming winter. The rabbit, our contemporary goes on to explain (superfluously, as it seems to us), is naturally blue.

* * *

On a recent occasion a meeting of the Dolgelly Rural Council had to be postponed, the members being absent hay-making. Parliament, on the other hand, has had to stop making hay owing to the Members being away in the country.

* * *

The Ministry of Food states that the period of normal supplies seems to come round in cycles of four years. Meanwhile the period of abnormal prices continues to come round in cycles of once a week. A movement in favour of postponing the cycle of payment till we get the cycle of plenty is not receiving adequate support from the provision trade.

* * *

Agricultural labourers near Peterborough have refused to work with Irishmen on the ground that the latter are troublesome. We always said that sooner or later someone would come round to Mr. LLOYD GEORGE'S view on this point.

* * *

A newspaper reports the case of a waiter who refused a tip. It is said that the gentleman who offered it is making a slow recovery and may be able to take a little fish this week.

* * * * *

* * * * *

THE GROWTH OF THE SIDE-CAR.

"MOTOR CARS, CYCLES, _&c._

ARGYLL.--2 Bedrooms and sitting-room, with attendance."--_Scotch Paper._

* * * * *

"BRIGHTON ELECTRIC RAILWAY.

PALACE PIER AND KEMP TOWN CARS EVERY FIVE YEARS."--_Local Paper._

It is inferred that the Ministry of Transport has assumed control.

* * * * *

AN APOLOGY TO THE BENCH.

_Humbly addressed to T.E.S._

If ever, where you hold the Seat of Doom, I stand, my Lord, before you at the Bar, And my forensic fame, a virgin bloom, Lies in your awful hands to make or mar, Let it not prejudice my case, I pray, If you should call to mind a previous meeting When on a champion course the other day I gave your Lordship four strokes and a beating.

I own it savoured of contempt of court, Hinted of disrespect toward the Bench, That I should chuckle when your pitch was short Or smile to see you in the sanded trench; But Golf (so I extenuate my sin) Brings all men level, like the greens they putt on; One common bunker makes the whole world kin, And Bar may scrap with Beak, and I with SCR-TT-N.

Nor did I give myself superior airs; I made allowance for defective sight; "The bandage which impartial Justice wears Leaves you," I said, "a stranger to the light; Habituated to the sword and scales, If you commit some pardonable blunder, If" (I remarked) "your nerve at moments fails With grosser ironmongery, where's the wonder?"

So may the Law's High Majesty o'erlook My rash presumption; may the memory die Of how I won the match (and further took The liberty of mopping up the bye); Remember just a happy morning's round, Also the fact that this alleged old fogey Played at the last hole like a book and downed The barely human feat of Colonel Bogey.

O.S.

* * * * *

IF WE ALL TOOK TO MARGOTRY.

[Mrs. ASQUITH'S feuilleton, which for so many people has transformed Sunday into a day of unrest, sets up a new method of autobiography, in which the protagonist is, so to speak, both JOHNSON and BOSWELL too. Successful models being always imitated we may expect to see a general use of her lively methods; and as a matter of fact I have been able already, through the use of a patent futurist reading-glass (invented by Signer Margoni), to get glimpses of two forthcoming reminiscent works of the future which, but for the _chronique égoïstique_ of the moment might never have been written, and certainly not in their present interlocutory shape.]

I.

FROM "FIRST AID TO LITERATURE."

By _Edmund Gosse_.

... Not the least interesting and delicate of my duties as a confidential adviser were connected with a work of reminiscences which created some stir in the nineteen-twenties. How it came about I cannot recollect, but it was thought that my poor assistance as a friendly censor of a too florid exuberance in candour might not be of disservice to the book, and I accepted the invitation. The volume being by no means yet relegated to oblivion's dusty shelves I am naturally reluctant to refer to it with such particularity as might enable my argus-eyed reader to identify it and my own unworthy share therein, and therefore in the following dialogue, typical of many between the author and myself, I disguise her name under an initial. _Quis custodiet?_ It would be grotesque indeed if one whose special mission was to correct the high spirits of others should himself fail in good taste.

_Mrs. A. (laying down the MS. with a bang)._ I see nothing but blue pencil marks, and blue was never my colour. Why are you so anxious that I should be discreet? Indiscretion is the better part of authorship.

_EDMUND (earnestly)._ It is your fame of which I am thinking. If you adopt my emendations you will go down to history as the writer of the best book of reminiscences in English.

_Mrs. A. (with fervour)._ I don't want to go down to history. I want to stay here and make it. And you (_with emotion_)--you have cramped my style. I can't think why I asked you to help.

_EDMUND._ Everyone asks me to help. It is my destiny. I am the Muses' _amicus curiæ_.

_Mrs. A._ Oh, blow Latin! (_Lighting two cigarettes at once_) What's the good of reminiscences of to-day, by me, without anything about L.G.?

_EDMUND._ Dear lady, it would never have done. Be reasonable. There are occasions when reticence is imperative.

_Mrs. A._ Reticence! What words you use!

(_Cætera desunt._)

II.

FROM "A WEEK IN LOVELY LUCERNE."

By _D. Lloyd George_.

... I do not say that the mountains hereabout are not more considerable than those of our own beloved Wales, but as material to be employed in perorations they are far inferior. There is not the requisite mist (which may symbolise ignorance or obstinacy or any temporary disturbance or opposition), later to be dispelled by the strong beams of the sun (representing either progress generally or prime-ministerial genius or pure Coalitionism). Other local features I felt, however, I might find rhetorically useful, such as THORWALDSEN'S Lion, so noble, so--so leonine, but doomed ever to adhere to the rock, how symbolic of a strong idealist unable to translate his ameliorative plans into action! The old bridge too, uniting the two sides of the city, as one can attempt to link Radicalism and Coalitionism--how long could it endure? And so on. One's brain was never idle.

It was while we were at Lucerne that LORD RIDDELL and I had some of our most significant conversations. I set them down just as they occurred, extenuating nothing and concealing nothing.

_LORD RIDDELL (with emotion)._ You are in excellent form to-day. Lucerne now has two lions--one of them free.

_DAVID (surprised)._ I free? (_Sadly_) You forget that GIOLITTI is coming.

_LORD RIDDELL._ But that is nothing to you. Try him with your Italian and he will soon go.

_DAVID._ You are a true friend. You always hearten me.

_LORD RIDDELL (with more emotion)._ But you are so wonderful, so wonderful! And now for to-day's amusements. Where shall we go? Up Mount Pilatus or to WILLIAM TELL'S Chapel?

_DAVID._ There is something irresistible to a Welshman in the word chapel. Let us go there. And WILLIAM TELL, was he not a patriot? Did he not defy the tyrant? I am sure that in his modest conventicle I can think of a thousand eloquent things. Let us go there.

_LORD RIDDELL._ My hero! my dauntless hero!

E.V.L.

* * * * *

"Even with a round of 73 in the morning Ray fell behind Vardon, who accomplished a remarkable round of 17 to lead the field."--_Provincial Paper._

This is believed to be the first occasion on which any golfer has accomplished two holes in one shot.

* * * * *

* * * * *

* * * * *

THE RABBITS GAME.

"Don't forget to say 'Rabbits' to-morrow," said Angela. Angela is aged nine and my younger sister; I am thirteen and my name is Anne.

We both looked inquiringly at Father, and, as he didn't seem to remember, Angela in pained surprise began to explain. "If you say 'Rabbits' before you say anything else on the first day of a month you get a present during the month, but you mustn't say anything else first, or you won't."

It all came out in one breath and, though it looks clear enough now, Father was very stupid.

"I dislike rabbits," he said, "and I am very busy; your Mother will probably be glad of them for the servants."

The rebuke in Angela's eyes was severe. "We haven't got any rabbits," she said; "we are only going to say 'Rabbits' to-morrow morning when we wake up and we thought you might like to do the same."

"Oh, I should," said Father; "thank you very much, I won't forget." And he wrote "Rabbits" down on his blotting-paper. "Now go and tell your Mother; she would like to say 'Rabbits' too, I know."

That seemed to terminate the interview, so we left him; but altogether it was not very satisfactory. You see, when we had "Bon-jour-Philippines," Father used to provide the presents; at least that was some time ago; we haven't had any "Bon-jour-Philippines" lately. The last time we did, Jack, that is my brother at Oxford, found one and split it with Father, and the next morning he said, "Bon-jour-Philippine" first and then asked for a present. Father asked him what he wanted, and he gave Father a letter that he had had that morning. Father got very angry and said that it was a disgrace the way tailors allowed credit to young wasters nowadays. He didn't say it quite like that, it was rather worse, and Mother said, "Hush, dear; remember the children," and Father said that they were all as bad and in the conspiracy to ruin him, and he went out of the room and banged the door.

Mother told Jack that he should have chosen a better moment, and Jack owned he had made a mistake and said that he ought to have got it in before Father had looked at the paper and seen the latest news of LLOYD GEORGE. I don't quite know what he meant, but Father often talks about LLOYD GEORGE, and he must be a beast.

I asked Jack later if he got his present, and he said that he had, but--and here he copied Father's voice so well that I had to laugh--"It is the very last time, my boy; when I was at Oxford I used to consider my Father, and I would have worked in the fields and earned money sooner than have given him bills to pay." Jack said that he knew one of the dons at Oxford who knew Father, and from what he said he thought that Father must have spent as long in the fields as NEBUCHADNEZZAR did.

I remembered all this as I went to find mother about "Rabbits," and I wasn't quite sure that we should get our present even if we did say it, so I told Angela, and she had a brilliant idea. "We will make Father say 'Rabbits' and give him a present ourselves, and he is sure to give us something in return." Angela is younger than I am, but she often thinks quite clever things like that, and they come in very useful sometimes.

We went to the summer-house in the garden to make plans. First we thought what would be the best present to give Father. Last Christmas we gave him a pipe, and he said that it was just what he wanted; it cost ninepence and was made like a man's head, and you put the tobacco in a hole in his hat.

Father lit it at once after breakfast, but two days after I saw Jakes the gardener smoking it. We thought at first that he had stolen it, and I went to Father, but he said that Jakes had thirteen children, and when a man was in trouble like that you ought to give up what you valued most to try to make that man happy, and that Jakes was awfully pleased when he gave him the pipe.

You see that made it very difficult, as we had to get something that Father would like and Jakes too, as he still had thirteen children; and then I remembered that Mrs. Jakes had once looked at a woollen jumper that I had on, and said that it would be just the thing for her Mary Ann, who had a delicate chest, and Jakes would be sure to like what Mrs. Jakes liked, or else he wouldn't have married her. Of course a jumper wasn't really the sort of thing that Father could wear, but I thought he might wrap his foot up in it when he next had gout, and besides I shouldn't be wanting it much more myself, as the summer was coming on.

Angela said that she thought that would do well, and she wouldn't mind giving Father her jumper next month if he said "Rabbits," and it would do for Mrs. Jakes' next little girl.

So that was decided, and then we had to arrange the plan. The most important thing was for us to wake before Father, so that we could wake him and remind him before he had time to say anything else, and Angela remembered that Ellen, that's the housemaid, had an alarm clock, which she used to set at a quarter to six each morning. We waited until Ellen had gone downstairs and then took it and hid it in Angela's bed.

Next morning the clock went off. We were both rather frightened, and it was very cold and the room looked funny, as the blinds hadn't been pulled up, but we put our dressing-gowns on. Then Angela said that she had heard that if you woke a person who was walking in their sleep they sometimes called out, so I took a pair of stockings from the basket that had just come back from the wash to hold over Father's mouth while we woke him. They were waiting to be mended and had a hole in them, but that didn't matter much, as I screwed them up tight, and then we went into Father's room. They were both asleep, and Father had his mouth open all ready for the stockings, which was very lucky, as I was wondering how I could get them in.

We crept up to the bed, and I know I shivered, and I think Angela did too, as I was holding her hand. Then she called out "Boo" as loud as she could, and I stuffed the stockings into Father's mouth, and then they both woke up, and everything went wrong.

Mother thought the house was on fire and screamed, and it made Angela begin to cry. I quite forgot to tell Father to say "Rabbits," and just pressed the stockings further into his mouth.

Father struggled and made awful noises, and when he did get the stockings out the things he said weren't a bit like "Rabbits," and the only thing that he did say that I could write down here was that he thought he was going to be sick. The rest was dreadful.

We were both sent back to bed, and that morning as a punishment we were not allowed into the dining-room until Father and Mother had finished their breakfast; and Angela, who often thinks quite clever things, said that we had better not do "Rabbits" again for a good long time. But after all it didn't matter much as the weather got a great deal colder, and I wore my jumper a lot, and so did Angela.

* * * * *

* * * * *

FLOWERS' NAMES.

DAME'S DELIGHT.

There was a Lady walked a wood; She never smiled, nor never could. One day a sunbeam from the South Kissed full her petulant proud mouth; She laughed, and there, beneath the trees, Fluttering in the April breeze, Spread tracts of blossom, green and white, Curtseying to the golden light-- The broken laugh of Dame's Delight.

* * * * *

FIRST LOVE AND LAST.

[It is pointed out by a contemporary that the dressmaker's waxen model has quite lost her old insipid air. The latest examples of the modeller's art show the "glad eye" and features with which "any man might fall in love."]

In the days when I started to toddle I loved with a frenzy sublime A dressmaker's beauteous model-- I think I was three at the time; She was fair in the foolish old fashion, And they found me again and again With my nose in an access of passion Glued tight to the pane.

But I thought they were gone past returning Till Time should go back on his tracks, Those days of a child's undiscerning But fervent devotion to wax; Could a heart, though admittedly restive, Recapture that innocent mood At sixty next birthday? I'm blest if I thought that it could.

But Art, ever bent on progression, Has taken the model in hand, And brought in the line of succession A figure more pleasingly planned; Her eyes with the gladdest of glances, Her lips and her hair and her cheek Can puncture like so many lances A bosom of teak.

* * * * *

HARD TIMES FOR HEROINES.

"Oh, Bertram," breathed Eunice as she glided into his arms, "if Ernest knew, what would he think?"

At this point of my story I admit that I was held up. I myself couldn't help wondering how Ernest would regard the situation. He was a perfectly good husband and, personally, I preferred him to Bertram the lover. I might get unpopular with my readers, however, if they suspected this, so I continued:--

"Ernest can never appreciate you as I do, dearest," Bertram whispered hoarsely; "he is cold, hard, indifferent--"

Again I paused. If Eunice had been the really nice girl I meant her to be she would have asked Bertram what on earth he meant by saying such things about her husband, and would have told him the shortest cut to the front-door. In which case she might never have got into print.

The fact is the poor heroine of fiction has a hard time of it nowadays. Someone ought to write a treatise on "How to be Happy though a Heroine," or uphold her cause in some way. Twenty-five years ago she lived in a halo of romance. Her wooers were tender, respectful and adoring; she was never without a chaperon. Her love-story was conventional and ended in wedding bells. To-day--just see how her position has altered. Generally she begins by being married already. Then her lover comes along to place her in awkward predicaments and put her to no end of inconvenience, very often only to make her realise that she prefers her husband after all. Or, on the other hand, the modern writer does not mind killing off, on the barest pretext, a husband who is perfectly sound in wind and limb and had never suffered from anything in his life until the lover appeared. The poor girl will tell you herself that it isn't natural.

Then there is the compromising situation. Magazine editors clamour for it--in fiction, I mean. We find the heroine flung on a desert island, with the one man above all others in the world that she detests as her sole companion. It is rather rough on her, but often still more rough on other people, as it may necessitate drowning the entire crew and passengers of a large liner just in order to leave the couple alone for a while to get to know each other better. And not until they find that they care for one another after all does the rescue party arrive. It will cruise about, or be at anchor round the corner, for weeks and weeks, so that it can appear on the horizon at the moment of the first embrace. This situation is so popular at present that it is surprising that there are enough desert islands to go round.