Chapter 3

["When _Chu Chin Chow_ reaches its 2,000th representation on the 29th, it will have run for 1,582 days, 26 days longer than the War." _Sunday Times._]

Behind its pendent curtain folds We know not what the future holds; We only know that worlds have gone Since _Chu Chin Chow_ was first put on.

Mid all our stress and strife and change This strikes me as extremely strange; I think when plays go on like this There ought to be an artistice.

But, when we have another war After the peace we've toiled so for, And empires break and thrones are bust And nations tumble in the dust,

And culture, rising from the East, On tottering Europe is released, And Chinamen at last shall rule In Dublin, Warsaw and Stamboul,

Soon as the roar of cannon ends And all men once again are friends, I must fulfil my ancient vow And go and visit _Chu Chin Chow_.

* * * * *

ST. CECILIA OF CREMONA.

_Punch_ has no desire to plunge into the controversy which has arisen over the employment of women in professional orchestras, especially as the cause has already been practically won, and here, at any rate, the saying, "What Lancashire thinks to-day England will think to-morrow," has failed to justify itself. The example of Manchester is not being followed in London, and what is deemed advisable for the Free Trade Hall in one city is not to dominate the policy of the Queen's Hall in the other.

But without going into the arguable points of this latest duel of the sexes, Mr. Punch, already in the last year which completes his fourth score, may be allowed to indulge in an old man's privilege of retrospect and incidentally to congratulate the ladies on the wonderful and triumphant progress they have made in instrumental art since the roaring 'forties. For in the 'forties women, though still supreme on the lyric stage, had hardly begun to assert themselves as executants, save on the pianoforte. _Punch_ well remembers LISZT--with the spelling of whose name he had considerable difficulty--in his meteoric pianofortitude. But the young WILMA NERUDA, who visited London in 1849, escaped his benevolent notice. She was then only ten. It was not until twenty years later that, as Madame NORMAN-NERUDA, she revisited London, proved that consummate skill could be combined with admirable grace in a woman-violinist, took her place as a leader of the quartet at the Monday "Pops," upset the tyranny of the pianoforte and harp as the only instruments suitable for the young person, and virtually created the professional woman-violinist. Indeed, she may be said to have at once made the fiddle fashionable and profitable for girls.

On its invasion of Mayfair the pencil of DU MAURIER furnishes the best comment. Before 1869, woman-violinists were only single spies; now they are to be reckoned in battalions. And they no longer "play the easiest passages with the greatest difficulty," as was once said of an incompetent male pianist, but in all departments of technique and interpretation have fully earned Sir HENRY WOOD'S tribute to their skill, sincerity and delicacy. When the eminent conductor goes on, in his catalogue of their excellences, to say, "They do not drink, and they do not smoke as much as men," he reminds Mr. Punch of two historic sayings of a famous foreign conductor. The first was uttered at a rehearsal of the Venusberg music from _Tannhäuser_: "Gentlemen, you play it as if you were teetotalers--_which you are not_." The other was his lament over a fine but uncertain wind-instrument player: "With ---- it is always Quench, Quench, Quench."

Mr. Punch is old-fashioned enough to hope that, whether teetotalers or not, the ladies will leave trombones and tubas severely alone, and confine their instrumental energies mainly to the nice conduct of the leading strings--the aristocrats of the orchestra, the sovereigns of the chamber concert.

* * * * *

From a butcher's advertisement:--

"SPECIAL PRE-WAR PORK, AND BEEF, SAUSAGES."--_Local Paper._

While all in favour of old-fashioned Christmas fare, here we draw the line.

* * * * *

"Enough butter to cover 265,000,000 slices of bread was produced in Manitoba this year. Of 8,250,000,000 pounds produced, 4,100,000 has been exported."--_Canadian Paper._

Thirty-one pounds of butter to the slice is certainly the most tempting inducement to Canadian immigration we have yet noticed.

* * * * *

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

_(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)_

I can't help thinking that Mr. H. G. HIBBERT has not chosen altogether the right name for his second volume of theatrical and Bohemian gossip, _A Playgoer's Memories_ (GRANT RICHARDS). It is not so unsophisticated as the title had somehow led me to expect. Indeed "unsophisticated" is perhaps the last epithet that could justly be applied to Mr. HIBBERT'S memories. I fancy I had unconsciously been looking for something more in the style of my own ignorant playgoing. "How wonderful she was in that scene with the broker's man," or "Do you remember the opening of the Third Act?" Not thus Mr. HIBBERT. For him the play itself is far less the thing than a peg upon which to hang all sorts of tags and bobtails of recollection, financial, technical and just not scandalous because of the discretion of the telling. His book is a repository of theatrical information, but the great part of it of more absorbing concern for the manager's-room or the stage-door than, say, the dress circle. But I must not be wanting in gratitude for the entertainment which, for all this carping, I certainly derived from it. As an expert on stage finance, for example, to-day and forty years back, Mr. HIBBERT has revelations that may well cause the least concerned to marvel. And there is an appendix, which gives a list of Drury Lane pantomimes, with casts, for half a century, including, of course, the incomparable first one; but that is not a memory of this world. A book to be kept for odd references in two senses.

* * * * *

[Transcriber's Note: The captions were reversed.]

* * * * *

What most interfered with my peace of mind over _The Happy Highways_ (HEINEMANN) was, I think, its almost entire absence of highway, and the exceedingly unhappy nature of its confused and uncharted lanes. Indeed, I am wondering now if the title may not have been an instance of bitter irony on the part of Miss STORM JAMESON. Certainly a more formless mass of writing never within my experience masqueraded as a novel. There are ideas and reflections--these last mostly angry and vaguely socialistic--and here and there glimpses of illusory narrative about a group of young persons, brothers and a girl-friend, who live at Herne Hill, attend King's College and talk (oh, but interminably) the worst pamphlet-talk of the pre-war age. It is, I take it, a reviewer's job to stifle his boredom and push on resolutely through the dust to find what good, if any, may be hidden by it. I will admit therefore some vague interest in the record of how the War hit such persons as these. Also (to the credit of the author as tale-teller) she does allow one of the young men to earn a scholarship, and for no sane reason to depart instantly thereupon before the mast of a sailing-ship; also another, the central figure, to fall in love with the girl. The book is in three parts, of which the third is superfluously specialized as "chaos." Whether Miss JAMESON will yet write a story I am unable to say; I rather wonder, however, that Messrs. HEINEMANN did not suggest to her that these heterogeneous pages would furnish excellent material for the experiment.

* * * * *

I have discovered that Miss PEGGY WEBLING has quite a remarkable talent for making ordinary places and people seem improbable. She achieves this in _Comedy Corner_ (HUTCHINSON) by sketching in her scenery quite competently and then allowing her characters to live lives, amongst it, so fraught with coincidence, so swayed by the most unlikely impulses, that a small draper's shop, a West End "Hattery" and an almshouse for old actresses become the most extraordinary places on earth, where anything might happen and nobody would be surprised. _Winnie_, her heroine, behaves more improbably than anyone else, but she is such a dear little goose that most amiable readers will be quite glad that she doesn't have to suffer as much as such geese would if they existed in real life. You can see from this that it is one of those books that are full of real niceness and goodwill, and it has besides plenty of plot and lots of interesting characters, and yet somehow it gives you the feeling of being out of focus. You read on, expecting every moment that clever Miss WEBLING will give things a little push in the right direction and make them seem true, and, while you are reading and hoping, you come to the happy ending.

* * * * *

Should you enter _The Gates of Tien T'ze_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) you will not regret it, but it is possible that you may be--as I was--a little breathless before the end of this vehement story is reached. The average tale of criminals and detectives is not apt to move slowly, but here Mr. LESLIE HOWARD GORDON maintains the speed of a half-mile relay race. I am not going to reveal his mystery except to say that _Tien T'ze_ was a Chinese organisation which perpetrated crimes, and that _Donald Craig_, _Kyrle Durand_--his secretary (female) and cousin--and _Bruce MacIvor_, superintendent of the Criminal Investigation Department, were employed in tracking it down and smashing it to pieces. Never have I met anyone in fiction (let fact alone) so clever as _Kyrle_ in getting herself and her friends out of tight places. When _Craig_ and _MacIvor_ were so beset by _Tien T'ze_ that their last hour seemed to have come I found myself saying, "It is time for _Kyrle_ to emerge from her machine," and she emerged. In a novel of this _genre_ it is essential that the excitement should never fall below fever-heat, but Mr. GORDON'S book does better than that; its temperature would, I think, burst any ordinary thermometer.

* * * * *

"The Vicar's Study Circle is now engaged in considering the teaching of what is known as the 'Higher Criticism.' All interested are invited to attend, whatever sex they may claim to possess."

--_Parish Magazine._

The Vicar evidently possesses the open mind so necessary for discussions of this sort.

* * * * *

AS WE SEE OTHERS: A CANDID APPRECIATION OF U.S.A.

The liner _de luxe_ had swung in past Sandy Hook, and the tender had already come alongside with its mail and Press-gang. There ensued a furious race to interview the most distinguished passenger, and it was by the representative of _The Democratic Elevator_, who got there first, that the Sage, in the very act of recording the emotions provoked by his first sky-scraper, was _abordé_.

"Mr. Punch, I guess?" said he. "Pleased to meet you, Sir. And what do you think of the American nation?"

"Shall I tell you now," asked Mr. Punch, "or wait till I've actually seen it?"

"Right here," said the interviewer, and drew his note-book.

"Well," began Mr. Punch, "I think a good deal of it--I mean, I think a good deal about it. And it nearly always makes me smile. Of course you won't understand why it nearly always makes me smile, because we don't see fun in the same things. You don't appreciate our humour, and therefore you say that we haven't any. And if we don't appreciate your humour that proves again that we haven't any. So you'll never understand why it makes me smile, sometimes gently and sometimes rather bitterly, to think about your nation; but I'll tell you just the same.

"In the first place, what you call 'America' is only a small fraction of the American continent, not even as large as British North America. And in the second place what you call your 'nation'--well, some rude person once said of it that it isn't really a nation at all, but just a picnic. I won't go so far as that, but I hardly suppose you will be much better pleased if I call it a League of Nations. That is a phrase that you hate, because your President WILSON loves it.

"By the way, I must be very careful how I speak of your President, because you're so sensitive on that subject. You allow yourselves to abuse him as the head of a political party, but if other nations so much as question his omniscience he suddenly becomes the Head of a Sovereign State. An English Cabinet Minister once told me how an American gave vent in conversation to the most violent language in regard to the policy of the President of the day, and when at the end the Englishman very quietly said, 'I am inclined to agree with you,' the American turned on him in a fury, saying: 'Sir, I didn't come here to have my country insulted!'

"However, to return to your League of Nations. In England (where I come from) they are just now reviving a play by Mr. ISRAEL ZANGWILL, in which, if I recall it rightly, he makes out your country to be the Melting Pot into which every sort of fancy alien type is thrown, and turned out a pattern American citizen, a member of a United Family. I wish I could believe it. It seems to us that your German, even after passing through the Melting Pot, remains a German; that your Irishman, however much he Americanises himself for purposes of political power and graft, remains an Irishman. You never seem to get together as a nation, except when you go to war, and even then you don't keep it up, for you're not together now, although you're still at war with Germany. The rest of the time you seem to spend in having Elections and 'placating' (I think that's what you call it) the German interest, or the negro interest, or the Sinn Fein interest.

"And this brings me to the point that makes me smile most of all--when it doesn't make me weep. Isn't it a pathetic thing that a really great and strong people like you should be so weak and little as to let your Press sympathise blatantly with the campaign of murder in Ireland; to suffer that campaign to be actively assisted by American gunmen; to look on while it is being financed by American money, here employed in conjunction with the resources of that very Bolshevism which you take care to treat as criminal in your own country?

"Isn't it pitiful that you should regard reprisals (hateful though they may be) as worse than the hideous murders which provoked them; forgetting your own addiction to lynch law; forgetting too (as some of our own people forget) that the sanctity of the law depends as much upon the goodwill and assistance of the populace as it does upon the police, and cannot else be maintained?

"Indeed your memory is not very good. Your Monroe Doctrine, which insists that nobody from outside shall interfere with your affairs, escapes you whenever you want to interfere with other people's. You even forget, at convenient times, your own Civil War. Just as there was not a protest made by you against the methods of our blockade of Germany for which an answer could not be found in some precedent set by you in that War of North and South, so now the best answer to your sympathy with the preposterous claims of an Irish Republic is to be found in those four years in which you fought so bloodily to preserve the integrity of your own Union.

"Yet you let men like DE VALERA go at large proclaiming the brutal tyranny of the alien Saxon and advertising his country as a Sovereign State--all because you have to 'placate' the Irish interest. I should very much like to hear what you would think of us if at our Elections we ran an Anti-You campaign and even made Intervention a plank in our platform (as one of your Parties did) for the sake of 'placating' the niggers or the Cubans or the Filipinos or any other sort of Dago in our midst.

"Of course we are told--and of course I believe it--that the 'best' American sentiment is all right. But, if so, it must be cherished by a very select few, or they would never tolerate a condition of things so rotten that, unless your coming President finds some cure for it, you are like to become the laughing-stock of Europe. I am almost tempted to go into the Melting Pot myself and show you, as none but an American citizen would ever be allowed to show you, how it is to be done. Unfortunately I am too busy elsewhere, putting my own country right.

"But to conclude--for I see that we are drawing close to the landing-stage--I do hope that in my desire to be genial I have not been too flattering. No true friend ever flatters. And in my heart, which has some of our common blood in it (notoriously thicker than water), I cannot help loving your country, and would love it better still if only it gave me a better chance. Indeed, I belong at home to a Society for the Promotion of Anglo-American Friendship. More than that"--and here the Sage was seen to probe into a voluminous and bulging breast-pocket--"I have brought with me a token of affection designed to stimulate a mutual cordiality."

"_Not_ a flask of whisky?" exclaimed the representative of _The Democratic Elevator_, suddenly moved to animation.

"No, not that, not that, my child," said Mr. Punch, "but something far, far better for you; something that gives you, among other less serious matter, a record of the way in which we in England, with private troubles of our own no easier than yours to bear, and exhausted with twice as many years of sacrifice in the War of Liberty (whose colossal effigy I have just had the pleasure to remark), still try to play an honourable part in that society of nations from which you have apparently resolved, for your better ease and comfort, to cut yourselves off. Be good enough to accept, in the spirit of benevolence in which I offer it, this copy of my

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-NINTH VOLUME."

* * * * *

CARTOONS.

PARTRIDGE, BERNARD Aladdin and the Miner's Lamp 311 Bad for the Bull 51 Cap of Liberty: Le Dernier Cri 191 Close Corporation (A) 351 Economists (The) 471 Experts (The) 291 Folly of Athens (The) 411 German Invasion (A) 431 Great Repudiation (The) 231 "House"-Breaker (The) 151 If Winston Set the Fashion-- 111 League of Youth (The) 91 Micawber and Son 511 Moral Suasion 71 Prince Comes Home (The) 271 Problem (The) 131 Road to Economy (The) 451 Salvage 251 Scales of Justice (The) 331 Session of Common Sense (A) 171 Shrine of Honour (The) 371 Snowed Under 211 Verdun 491 Worth a Trial 391

RAVEN-HILL, L. Abysmalists (The) 383 Balm for the Sick Man 423 Blue Ribbon of the Sea (The) 83 Boblet (The) 463 Encourage Home Industries 363 Evil Communications 43 Good Fairy Georgina (The) 503 Iconoclast (The) 123 I. O. U. 11 Labor Omnia Vincit 443 Last Straw (The) 403 "Lion of Lucerne (The)" 143 Our Parish Church 31 Our Village Sign 343 Out of the Frying-Pan 183 Polish Hug (The) 283 Prospective Jonah? (A) 263 Public Benefactor (The) 203 Real Music (The) 103 Resources of Civilisation (The) 303 Road to Ruin (The) 163 Sing a Song of Drachmas 483 Tartarin dans les Indes 243 Too-Free Country (A) 323

REYNOLDS, FRANK Under a Cloud (with a Golden Lining) 223

TOWNSEND, F. H. L'Enfant Terrible 3 Sea-view of the Situation (A) 63 Subject to Revision 23

ARTICLES.

ALLEN, INGLIS Difference of Class (A) 208

ANDERSON, MISS E. V. M. Mudford Blight (The) 188

ARMSTRONG, H. Working for Peace 330

BELL, NEIL Cage (The) 349

BIDDULPH, MISS VIOLET In Defence of Dorothy 102

BIRD, A. W. Cricket Mannerism (A) 22 Edward and the B.O.F. 98 Fine Old Fruity (The) 490 Stuttfield and the Reds 374 Twenty Years On 55

BLAIKLEY, MISS E. L. Pamela's Alphabet 270

BRETHERTON, CYRIL Charivaria weekly To Isis 76 Vignettes of Scottish Sport 458

BROWN, C. L. M. Our Invincible Navy 362

BROWN, HILTON Blue Mountains (The) 136 Nimrod 195 Santamingoes 24

BRYANT, A. W. M. Kings and Queens 224

BUDGEN, C. G. Language for Logic (The) 422

CAMERON, C. F. Taxation of Virtue (The) 214

CASSON, C. R. Eve Victorious 466 Humourist (The) 488 Light Fantastic (The) 366 Word Chains 28

CHALMERS, P. R. Kelpie (The) 149 Visionary (The) 124

CHANDLER, MISS B. W. Coup for _The Daily Trail_ (A) 182 Our Pastoral 36

CLARK, DUDLEY Badly Synged 82

CROSS, W. H. Cures for Insomnia 470

DARMADY, E. S. Peculiar Case of Toller (The) 75

DARMADY, E. S. & J. Human City and Suburban (The) 184 Superfection Laundry (The) 342

DAVIES, MISS S. M. Prodigies (The) 202 Sources of Laughter 385

DYER, A. E. R. Knell of the Navy (The) 246 Passing of Alfred (The) 298

EASTWOOD, CAPTAIN Rabbits' Game (The) 144

ECKERSLEY, ARTHUR Squatters 105

FARROW, R. S. New Journalism (The) 370

FAY, S. J. Authorship for All 46, 66 Dissimulation of Suzanne 176 My Right-Hand Man 234 Sayings of Barbara (The) 388

FOX-SMITH, MISS C. All Sorts 46 Nitrates 86 Ship in a Bottle (A) 230 Yarns 390

FRANKLIN, BERNARD Ballad of the Early Worm (A) 265

FYLEMAN, MISS ROSE Check by the Queen 306 Consolation 264 Fairy Tailor (The) 482 Queen's Counsel 88 Rainy Morning 253 Wedding Presents 186

GARLAND, A. P. Patient's Library (The) 118 Place of the Trombone in the Band (The) 428 Romance of Book-making (The) 2 Timon 1

GARSTIN, CROSBIE Barrel of Beef (The) 456 Down Channel 77 Fair (The) 110 Letter to the Back-Blocks 324 Old Woman's House Rock, Scilly 213 Our Heavy-Waits 464 Reefs (The) 30 Spanish Ledges 237

GILLMAN, W. H. Counter-Irritant (The) 108 Headlining 318 Very Personal 255

GOODHART, MRS. H. Logs to Burn 337

GRAVES, C. L. Between Two Stools 226 British Tarpon (The) 198 Changes in Club-Land 130 Cry of the Adult Author (The) 345 Cures Worth Making 38 Fashion and Physique 210 Footnote to the "Bab Ballads" 408 From Spa and Shore 122 Happy Gardener (The) 398 Mixed Meteorological Maxims 269 New Utopia (The) 366 Our Lucky Dippers 442 Our Natural History Column 69 Prawling's Theory 316 Puss at the Palace 490 Revival of the Fittest (The) 116 Revival of Ollendorff 335 Revolt of Youth (The) 168 St. Cecilia of Cremona 514 State and the Screen (The) 50 To Certain Cautious Prophets 256 To General Oi 198 Tragedy of Reaction (A) 19 Two Studies in Musical Criticism 276 When and If 289

GREENLAND, GEORGE Miriam's Two Babies 254

HARWOOD, A. C. How to Build a House 176

HASELDEN, PERCY Old Beer Flagon (The) 358