Chapter 1

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PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOL. 159.

August 4th, 1920.

CHARIVARIA.

A drought is reported from India and Eastern Africa. Considering the amount of water which has recently escaped from clouds over here it is not surprising to find that they are feeling the pinch in other countries.

* * *

A correspondent writes to a weekly paper inquiring when Sir ERIC GEDDES was born. We admire the fellow's restraint in not asking "Why?"

* * *

We understand that one wealthy connoisseur has decided to give up buying Old Masters in order to save up for the purchase of a railway ticket.

* * *

_The Daily Mail_ points out that Lord NORTHCLIFFE has left England for the Continent. Sir ERIC GEDDES is said to have remarked that he will catch his lordship coming back.

* * *

A gentleman who is about to travel to a South Coast resort writes to inquire what his position will be if some future Government reduces the railway fares before he arrives at his destination.

* * *

In view of the increased railway fares there is some talk of starting a Mansion House Fund to convey Scotsmen home from England before it is too late.

* * *

Of the new railway rates it can be said that those who go farthest will fare worse.

* * *

With reference to the man who was seen laughing in the Strand the other day, it should be pointed out that he is not an English tax-payer but a Colonial who was catching the boat home next morning.

* * *

A Christmas-card posted at Farnham in December, 1905, has just been delivered at Ivychurch. The theory is that the postal authorities mistook it for a business communication.

* * *

The monocle is coming into fashion once again, and it is thought that a motorist wearing one goggle will soon be quite a common sight.

* * *

In view of their unwieldiness and size it is being urged that motor charabancs should be required to carry a special form of hooter, to be sounded only when there is no room for a vehicle coming in the other direction to pass. A more elaborate system of signals is also suggested, notably two short squawks and a long groan, to signify "My pedestrian, I think."

* * *

According to a County Court judge it is the duty of every motorist who knocks down a pedestrian to go back and ask the man if he is hurt. But surely the victim cannot answer such a question off-hand without first consulting his solicitor.

* * *

A great pilgrimage of house-hunters has visited the enormous marrow which is growing in an allotment at Ingatestone, but the strong military guard sent to protect it has succeeded up to the present in frustrating all attempts to occupy it.

* * *

A motor fire-engine dashed into a draper's shop in the North of London last Tuesday week. We understand that one of the firemen with great presence of mind justified his action by immediately setting fire to the building.

* * *

A petrified fish about fifty feet long has been discovered in Utah. This is said to be the largest sardine and the smallest whale America has ever produced.

* * *

Building operations were interrupted in North London last week, when a couple of sparrows built a nest on some foundations just where a bricklayer was due to lay a brick the next day.

* * *

Six tourists motoring through the mountainous district of Ardèche Department fell a thousand feet down a precipice, but escaped without injury. We understand that in spite of many tempting offers from cinematograph companies the motorists have decided not to repeat the experiment.

* * * * *

* * * * *

SOLVING THE HOLIDAY FARE PROBLEM.

"None but the rich can pay the fare" is as true at this moment as when the words were first penned.

The reference, of course, is to the return fare, for the single fare of tomorrow is hardly more than we paid without complaint in years gone by for the journey there and back.

How comparatively few people seem to be aware that the solution of the difficulty lies in not returning. Could anything be simpler?

Nobody wants to return. In preparing for a holiday our thoughts are concentrated on when to go, where to go and how to get there. Who bothers himself about when to come back, where to come back from, and how to do it? After all, holiday-making is not to be confused with prize-fighting.

That we have come back in the past has been due as much to custom as to anything. Someone introduced the silly fashion of returning from holidays, and we have unthinkingly acquired the habit. Once we shake off this holiday convention the problem of the return fare is solved.

Just stay where you are and all will be well. Sooner or later your friends or your employer (if your return is really considered desirable) will send a money-order. But that is their look-out. The point is that the return fare need not trouble _you_. And you can please yourself as to what you buy with the money-order.

Why all this outcry then about the cost of travelling in the holiday season?

* * * * *

"M. Lappas, the young Greek tenor whose début last season won him a host of fiends."--_Daily Paper._

As _Mephistopheles_, we presume.

* * * * *

"Lost, Monday, July 19th, silver purse containing 10s. note and photographs; also lady's bathing costume."--_Local Paper._

Wrapped up in the "Fisher," no doubt.

* * * * *

I once knew a bowler named Patrick Who, after performing the "hat-trick," Remarked, as he bowed His respects to the crowd, "It's nothing: I often do that trick!"

* * * * *

BADLY SYNGED.

The scene is the morning-room of the Smith-Hybrows' South London residence. It is the day following the final performance of the Smith-Hybrows' strenuous season of J.M. SYNGE drama, undertaken with the laudable intention of familiarising the suburb with the _real_ Irish temperament and the works of the dramatist in question.

Mrs. Smith-Hybrow is seated at the breakfast-table, her head buried behind the coffee urn. She is opening her letters and "keening" softly as she rocks in her chair.

_Mrs. Smith-Hybrow_ (_scanning a letter_). Will I be helping them with the sale of work? It's little enough the like of me will be doing for them the way I was treated at the last Bazaar, when Mrs. McGupperty and Mrs. Glyn-Jones were after destroying me with the cutting of the sandwiches. And was I not there for three days, from the rising of the blessed sun to the shining of the blessed stars, cutting and cutting, and never a soul to bear witness to the destroying labour of it, and the two legs of me like to give way with the great weariness (_keens_)? I'll have no call this year to be giving in to their prayers and beseechings, and I won't care the way the Curate will be after trying to come round me, with his eyes looking at me the way the moon kisses the drops of dew on the hedgerows when the road is white.

[_Opens another letter, keening the while in a slightly higher key. Enter_ Gertrude Smith-Hybrow. _She crosses to the window and stares out._

_Gertrude._ There are black clouds in the sky, and the wind is breaking in the west and making a great stir with the trees, and they are hitting one on the other. And there is rain falling, falling from the clouds, and the roads be wet.

_Mrs. S.-H._ It is your mackintosh you will be wanting when you are after going to the Stores.

_Gertrude_ (_coming to the table and speaking with dull resentment_). And why should I be going to the Stores the way I have enough to do with a meeting of the League for Brighter Homes and a luncheon of the Cubist Encouragement Society? Isn't it a queer hard thing that Dora cannot be going to the Stores, and her with time enough on her hands surely?

[_Sits in her place and begins keening. While she has been speaking Dora has entered hurriedly, buttoning her jumper._

_Dora_ (_vigorously_). And is it you, Gertrude Smith-Hybrow, that will be talking about me having time on my hands? May the saints forgive you for the hard words, and me having to cycle this blessed day to Mrs. Montgomery's lecture on the Dadaist Dramatists, and the méringues and the American creams to be made for to-night's Tchekoff Conversazione. Is it not enough for a girl to be destroyed with the play-acting, and the wind like to be in my face the whole way and the rain falling, falling?

[_Sits in her place and keens._

_Mrs. S.-H._ (_after an interval of keening_). Is it your father that will be missing his train this morning, Dora Smith-Hybrow?

_Dora_ (_rousing herself and selecting an egg_). It is my father that will be missing his train entirely, and it is his son that would this minute be sleeping the blessed daylight away had I not let fall upon him a sponge that I had picked out of the cold, cold water.

_Gertrude._ It is a flapper you are, Dora Smith-Hybrow.

_Dora._ It is a flapper you will never be again, Gertrude Smith-Hybrow, though you be after doing your queer best to look like one.

_Mrs. S.-H._ Whisht! Is it the time for loose talk, with the wind rising, rising, and the rain falling, falling, and the price of butter up another threepence this blessed morning?

[_They all three recommence keening. Enter_ Mr. Smith-Hybrow _followed by_ Cyril.

_Mr. S.-H._ (_staunching a gash in his chin_). Is it not a hard thing for a man to be late for his breakfast and the rain falling, falling, and the wind rising, rising. It's destroyed I am with the loss of blood and no food in my stomach would keep the life in a flea.

[_Sits in his place and opens his letters savagely._ Cyril, _a cadaverous youth, stares gloomily into the depths of the marmalade._

_Cyril_ (_dreamily_). There's gold and gold and gold--caverns of gold. And there's a woman with hair of gold and eyes would pick the locks of a man's soul, and long shining hands like pale seaweed. Is it not a terrible thing that a man would have to go to the City when there is a woman with gold hair waiting for him in the marmalade pot--waiting to draw him down into the cold, cold water?

_Dora._ Is it another spongeful you are wanting, Cyril Smith-Hybrow, and myself destroyed entirely waiting for the marmalade?

[Cyril _blushes, passes the marmalade, sits down languidly and selects an egg._ Mrs. S.-H. _pours out the coffee and resumes her keening._

_Mr. S.-H._ (_glaring at her_). Is it not a nice thing for the wife of a respectable City stockbroker to sit at the breakfast-table making a noise like that of a cow that is waiting to be milked?

_Mrs. S.-H._ (_hurt_). It is keening I am.

_Gertrude_ (_passing him "The Morning Post"_). Is it not enough that the price of butter is up another threepence this blessed day, and the wind rising, rising, and the rain falling, falling?

_Mr. S.-H._ It is destroyed we shall all be entirely.

_Cyril_ (_gazing into the depths of his egg_). There was a strange queer dream I was after having the night that has gone. It was on the rocks I was....

_Mr. S.-H._ (_glaring at the market reports_). It is on the rocks we shall all be.

_Cyril._ ... on the rocks I was by the sea-shore ...

_Dora_ (_slightly hysterically_). With the wind rising, rising?

_Cyril_ (_nodding_). ... and the rain falling, falling. And a woman of the chorus drove up in a taxi, and the man that had the driving of it was eating an orange. The woman came and sat by the side of me, and the peroxide in her hair made it gleam like the pale gold coins that were in the banks before the Great War (_more dreamily_). Never a word said she when I hung a chain of cold, cold sausages about her neck, but her eyes were shining, shining, and into my hands she put a tin of corned beef. And it is destroyed I was with the love of her, and would have kissed her lips but I saw the park-keeper coming, coming out of the sea for tickets, and I fled from the strange queer terror of it, and found myself by a lamp-post in Hackney Wick with the wind rising, rising, and the rain falling, falling.

[_He stops. The others stare at him and at one another in piteous inquiry. The women begin keening._ Mr. S.-H. _seizes the remaining egg and cracks it viciously._

_Mr. S.-H._ (_falling back in his chair_). Damnation!

[_The air is filled with a pungent matter-of-fact odour._ Dora, _holding her handkerchief to her nose, rushes valiantly at the offender and hurls it out of the window on to a flower-bed. The_ SYNGE _spell is broken._

* * * * *

Mr. Punch begs to thank the seven hundred and forty-three correspondents who have so thoughtfully drawn his attention to the too familiar fact that "there's many a slip 'twixt the Cup and the LIPTON."

* * * * *

* * * * *

* * * * *

THE SUCCULENT COMEDIANS.

Among the literary and artistic treasures of American collectors the manuscript of LAMB'S essay on Roast Pig is eminent. I have seen this rarity, which is now in the strong room where Mr. PIERPONT MORGAN keeps his autographs safe equally from fire and from theft--if not from the desire to thieve. Much did I covet in this realm of steel, and LAMB'S MS. not least. The essay occupies both sides of large sheets of foolscap, written in a minute hand, with very few corrections, both the paper and the time occupied in transcription, if not also in actual composition, being, I should guess, the East India Company's. It is not, I imagine, the first draft, but the first fair copy after all the changes had been made and the form was fixed; and its author, if he is in any position to know what is going forward on a planet which he left some six-and-eighty years ago, must have been amused when he heard that so much money--thousands and thousands of dollars--had been given for it at auction the other day.

Reading the essay again, in the faded ink on the yellowing paper, I realised once more that everything that can be said about little pigs, dead and ripe for the eater, had been said here and said finally. But the living? That very evening I was to find little live pigs working for their maintenance under conditions of which I had never dreamed, in an environment less conducive, one would suppose, to porcine activity than any that could be selected.

It was at Coney Island, that astonishing permanent and magnified Earl's Court Exhibition, summer Blackpool and August-Bank-Holiday-Hampstead-Heath, which New York supports for its beguilement. In this domain of switchbacks and chutes, merry-go-rounds and shooting-galleries, dancing-halls and witching waves, vociferous and crowded and lit by a million lamps, I came suddenly upon the Pig Slide and had a new conception of what quadrupeds can do for man.

The Pig Slide, which was in one of the less noisy quarters of Luna Park, consisted of an enclosure in which stood a wooden building of two storeys, some five yards wide and three high. On the upper storey was a row of six or eight cages, in each of which dwelt a little live pig, an infant of a few weeks. In the middle of the row, descending to the ground, was an inclined board, with raised edges, such as is often installed in swimming- baths to make diving automatic, and beneath each cage was a hole a foot in diameter. The spectators and participants crowded outside the enclosure, and the thing was to throw balls, which were hired for the purpose, into the holes. Nothing could exceed the alert and eager interest taken by the little pigs in the efforts of the ball-throwers. They quivered on their little legs; they pressed their little noses against the bars of the cages; their little eyes sparkled; their tails (the only corkscrews left in America) curled and uncurled and curled again: and with reason, for whereas, if you missed--as was only too easy--nothing happened, if you threw accurately the fun began, and the fun was also theirs.

This is what occurred. First a bell rang and then a spring released the door of the cage immediately over the hole which your ball had entered, so that it swung open. The little pig within, after watching the previous infirmity of your aim with dejection, if not contempt, had pricked up his ears on the sound of the bell, and now smiled a gratified smile, irresistible in infectiousness, and trotted out, and, with the smile dissolving into an expression of absolute beatitude, slid voluptuously down the plank: to be gathered in at the foot by an attendant and returned to its cage all ready for another such adventure.

It was for these moments and their concomitant changes of countenance that you paid your money. To taste the triumph of good marksmanship was only a fraction of your joy; the greater part of it consisted in liberating a little prisoner and setting in motion so much ecstasy.

We do not use baby pigs in this entertaining way in England. At the most we hunt them greased. But when other beguilements weary we might. The R.S.P.C.A. could not object, the little pets are so happy. And what a privilege is theirs, both alive and dead, to enchant creation's lord.

* * * * *

* * * * *

"In order to give a lead in economy King George and Queen Mary and a number of peeresses have decided not to wear plumes or tulle veils at the opening of Parliament."--_Australian Paper._

Very self-sacrificing of HIS MAJESTY.

* * * * *

"'My husband says I must leavee teo-night,' said a wife at Acton. 'Oh, hee eceanee't givee you ... notice to quit,' said the magistrate."-- _Evening Paper._

His worship seems to have settled the matter with e's.

* * * * *

THE MINISTERING ANGEL.

[Yawning, it is now claimed, is an excellent thing for the health.]

Stretched prone upon my couch of pain, An ache in every limb, Fell influenza having slain My customary _vim_, I mused, disconsolate, about The pattern of my pall, When lo! I heard a step without And Thomson came to call.

"Your ruddy health," I told him, "mocks A hand too weak to grip The tea-cup with its captive ox And raise it to my lip;" To which he answered he had come To bring for my delight Red posies of geranium And roses pink and white.

'Twas kind of Thomson thus to seek To mitigate my gloom, But why did he proceed to speak Of how he'd reared each bloom, Telling in language far from terse On what his blossoms fed And how he made the greenfly curse The day that it was bred?

He told me how he rose at dawn To titivate the land ('Twas here that I began to yawn Behind a courteous hand), And how he thought his favourite pea Had found the soil too dry (And here I feared my yawns would be Apparent to his eye).

On fruit and blossom good and bad He rambled on unchecked, Until his conversation had Such curative effect That in the end it drove away My weak despondent mood. I clasped his hand and blessed the day He came to do me good.

* * * * *

"MORE DEARER PUBLICATIONS."--_Daily Mail._

More dearer nor what they was? Dear, dear!

* * * * *

From _Young India_, the organ of Mr. GANDHI:--

"In our last issue the number of those in receipt of relief is given at 500. This is a printer's devil. The number is 5,000."

Mr. GANDHI ought to exorcise that devil.

* * * * *

"The tests were entirely satisfactory, and the pilot manoeuvred for a quarter of an hour at a height of 500 metres and a speed of 150 millimetres an hour."--_Aeronautics._

This is believed to be the nearest approach to "hovering" that has yet been achieved by a machine.

* * * * *

NITRATES.

All alone I went a-walking by the London Docks one day, For to see the ships discharging in the basins where they lay; And the cargoes that I saw there they were every sort and kind, Every blessed brand of merchandise a man could bring to mind; There were things in crates and boxes, there was stuff in bags and bales, There were tea-chests wrapped in matting, there were Eastern-looking frails, There were baulks of teak and greenheart, there were stacks of spruce and pine, There was cork and frozen carcasses and casks of Spanish wine, There was rice and spice and cocoa-nuts, and rum enough was there For to warm all London's innards up and leave a drop to spare;

But of all the freights I found there, gathered in from far and wide, All the smells both nice and nasty from the Pool to Barkingside, All the harvest of the harbours from Bombay to Montreal, There was one that took my fancy first and foremost of them all; It was neither choice nor costly, it was neither rich nor rare And, in most ways you can think of, it was neither here nor there, It was nothing over-beautiful to smell nor yet to see-- Only bags of stuffy nitrate--but it meant a lot to me.

I forgot the swarming stevedores, I forgot the dust and din, And the rattle of the winches hoisting cargo out and in, And the rusty tramp before me with her hatches open wide, And the grinding of her derricks as the sacks went overside; I forgot the murk of London and the dull November sky-- I was far, ay, far from England, in a day that's long gone by.

I forgot the thousand changes years have brought in ships and men, And the knots on Time's old log-line that have reeled away since then, And I saw a fast full-rigger with her swelling canvas spread, And the steady trade-wind droning in her royals overhead, Fleecy trade-clouds on the sky-line--high above the Tropic blue-- And the curved arch of her foresail and the ocean gleaming through; I recalled the Cape Stiff weather, when your soul-case seemed to freeze, And the trampling, cursing watches and the pouring, pooping seas, And the ice on spar and jackstay, and the cracking, volleying sail, And the tatters of our voices blowing down the roaring gale ... I recalled the West Coast harbours just as plain as yesteryear-- Nitrate ports, all dry and dusty, where they sell fresh water-dear-- Little cities white and wicked by a bleak and barren shore, With an anchor on the cliff-side for to show you where to moor; And the sour red wine we tasted, and the foolish songs we sung, And the girls we had our fun with in the days when we were young; And the dancing in the evenings down at Dago Bill's saloon, And the stars above the mountains and the sea's eternal tune.

Only bags of stuffy nitrate from a far Pacific shore, From a dreary West Coast harbour that I'll surely fetch no more; Only bags of stuffy nitrate, with its faint familiar smell Bringing back the ships and shipmates that I used to know so well; Half a lifetime lies between us and a thousand leagues of sea, But it called the days departed and my boyhood back to me.

C.F.S.

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