Chapter 1

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PUNCH OR THE LONDON CHARIVARIA.

VOL. 159.

JULY 21, 1920

CHARIVARIA.

To judge by the Spa Conference it looks as if we might be going to have a peace to end peace.

***

It will soon be necessary for the Government to arrange an old-age pension scheme for Peace Conference delegates.

***

It is difficult to know whom or what to blame for the exceptionally wet weather we have been having, says an evening paper. Pending a denial from Mr. Lloyd George, _The Times_ has its own opinion as to who is at the bottom of it.

***

Mr. Stanton pointed out in the House of Commons that, unless increased salaries are given to Members, there will be a strike. Fears are entertained, however, that a settlement will be reached.

***

"The Derry shirt-cutters," says a news item, "have decided to continue to strike." The Derry throat-cutters, on the other hand, have postponed striking to a more favourable opportunity.

***

The way to bring down the price of home-killed meat, the Ministry of Food announces officially, is for the public not to buy it. You can't have your cheap food and eat it.

***

Harborough Rocks, one of the few Druid Circles in the kingdom, has been sold. Heading-for-the-Rocks, the famous Druid Circle at Westminster, has also been sold on several occasions by the Chief Wizard.

***

A gossip writer states that he saw a man carrying two artificial legs while travelling in a Tube train. There is nothing like being prepared for all emergencies while travelling.

***

"The ex-Kaiser," says an American journal, "makes his own clothes to pass the time away." This is better than his old hobby of making wars to pass other people's time away.

***

"Danger of infection from Treasury notes," says _The Weekly Dispatch_, "has been exaggerated." Whenever we see a germ on one of our notes we pat it on the back and tell it to lie down.

***

A West Riding paper states that a postman picked up a pound Treasury note last week. It is said that he intends to have it valued by an expert.

***

An engineer suggests that all roads might be made of rubber. For pedestrians who are knocked down by motor-cars the resilience of this material would be a great boon.

***

According to _The Evening News_ a bishop was seen the other day passing the House of Commons smoking a briar pipe. We can only suppose that he did not recognise the House of Commons.

***

"We can find work for everybody and everything," says a Chicago journal. But what about corkscrews?

***

How strong is the force of habit was illustrated at Liverpool Docks the other day when two Americans, on reaching our shores, immediately fainted, and only recovered when it was explained that spirits were not sold here solely for medical purposes.

***

"Watches are often affected by electrical storms such as we have experienced of late," states a science journal. Only yesterday we heard of a plumber and his mate who arrived at a job simultaneously.

***

We sympathise with the unfortunate housewife who cannot obtain a servant because her reference is considered unsatisfactory. It appears she was only six weeks with her last maid.

***

A pedestrian knocked down by a taxi in Oxford Street last Tuesday managed to regain his feet only to be again bowled over by a motor-bus. Luckily, however, noticing a third vehicle standing by to complete the job, the unfortunate fellow had the presence of mind to remain on the ground.

***

According to a local paper cat-skins are worth about 5½_d._ each. Of course it must be plainly understood that the accuracy of this estimate is not admitted by the cats themselves.

***

"Too much room is taken up by motor-vehicles when turning corners," declares a weekly journal. This is a most unfair charge against those self-respecting motorists who negotiate all corners on the two inside wheels only.

***

An American named J. Thomas Looney has written a book to prove that Shakspeare was really the Earl of Oxford. We cannot help thinking that Shakspeare, who went out of his way to prove that _Ophelia_ was one of the original Looneys, has brought this on himself.

***

Fashionable Parisians, says a correspondent, have decided that the correct thing this year is to be invited to Scotland for July. It may be correct, but it won't be an easy matter if we know our Scotland.

***

American women-bathers with an inclination to embonpoint, it is stated, have taken to painting dimples on their knees. The report that a fashionable New Yorker who does not care for the water has created the necessary illusion by having a lobster painted on her toe is probably premature.

***

A Bridgewater, Somerset, man of eighty (or octogeranium) has cancelled his wedding on the morning of the ceremony. A few more exhibitions of that kind and he will end up by being a bachelor.

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There was a young lady of Beccles Whose face was infested with freckles, But nobody saw Any facial flaw, For she had an abundance of shekels.

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THE GRASSHOPPER.

The Animal Kingdom may be divided into creatures which one can feed and creatures which one cannot feed. Animals which one cannot feed are nearly always unsatisfactory; and the grasshopper is no exception. Anyone who has tried feeding a grasshopper will agree with me.

Yet he is one of the most interesting of British creatures. _The Encyclopædia Britannica_ is as terse and simple as ever about him. "Grasshoppers," it says, "are specially remarkable for their saltatory powers, due to the great development of the hind legs; and also for their stridulation, which is not always an attribute of the male only." To translate, grasshoppers have a habit of hopping ("saltatory powers") and chirping ("stridulation").

It is commonly supposed that the grasshopper stridulates by rubbing his back legs together; but this is not the case. For one thing I have tried it myself and failed to make any kind of noise; and for another, after exhaustive observations, I have established the fact that, though he does move his back legs every time he stridulates, _his back legs do not touch each other_. Now it is a law of friction that you cannot have friction between two back legs if the back legs are not touching; in other words the grasshopper does not rub his back legs together to produce stridulation, or, to put it quite shortly, he does not rub his back legs together _at all_. I hope I have made this point quite clear. If not, a more detailed treatment will be found in the Paper which I read to the Royal Society in 1912.

Nevertheless I have always felt that there was something fishy about the grasshopper's back legs. I mean, why _should_ he wave his back legs about when he is stridulating? My own theory is that it is purely due to the nervous excitement produced by the act of singing. The same phenomenon can be observed in many singers and public speakers. I do not think myself that we need seek for a more elaborate hypothesis. _The Encyclopædia Britannica_, of course, says that "the stridulation or song in the _Acridiidæ_ is produced by friction of the hind legs against portions of the wings or wing-covers," but that is just the sort of statement which the scientific man thinks he can pass off on the public with impunity. Considering that stridulation takes place about every ten seconds, I calculate that the grasshopper must require a new set of wings every ten days. It would be more in keeping with the traditions of our public life if the scientific man simply confessed that he was baffled by this problem of the grasshopper's back legs. Yet, as I have said, if a public speaker may fidget with his back legs while he is stridulating, why not a public grasshopper? The more I see of science the more it strikes me as one large mystification.

But I ought to have mentioned that "the _Acridiidæ_ have the auditory organs on the first abdominal segment," while "the _Locustidæ_ have the auditory organ on the _tibia_ of the first leg." In other words one kind of grasshopper hears with its stomach and the other kind listens with its leg. When a scientific man has committed himself to that kind of statement he would hardly have qualms about a little invention like the back-legs legend.

With this scientific preliminary we now come to the really intriguing part of our subject, and that is the place of the grasshopper in modern politics. And the first question is, Why did Mr. Lloyd George call Lord Northcliffe a grasshopper? I think it was in a speech about Russia that Mr. Lloyd George said, in terms, that Lord Northcliffe was a grasshopper. And he didn't leave it at that. He said that Lord Northcliffe was not only a grasshopper but a something something grasshopper, grasshopping here and grasshopping there--that sort of thing. There was nothing much in the accusation, of course, and Lord Northcliffe made no reply at the time; in fact, so far as I know, he has never publicly stated that he is _not_ a grasshopper; for all we know it may be true. But I know a man whose wife's sister was in service at a place where there was a kitchen-maid whose young man was once a gardener at Lord Northcliffe's, and this man told me--the first man, I mean--that Lord Northcliffe took it to heart terribly. No grasshoppers were allowed in the garden from that day forth; no green that was at all like grasshopper-green was tolerated in the house, and the gardener used to come upon his Lordship muttering in the West Walk: "A grasshopper! He called me a grasshopper--me--a Grasshopper!" The gardener said that his Lordship used to finish up with, "_I_'ll teach him;" but that is hardly the kind of thing a lord would say, and I don't believe it. In fact I don't believe any of it. It is a stupid story.

But this crisis we keep having with France owing to Mr. Lloyd George's infamous conduct does make the story interesting. The suggestion is, you see, that Lord Northcliffe lay low for a long time, till everybody had forgotten about the grasshopper and Mr. Lloyd George thought that Lord Northcliffe had forgotten about the grasshopper, and then, when Mr. Lloyd George was in a hole, Lord Northcliffe said, "_Now_ we'll see if I am a grasshopper or not," and started stridulating at high speed about Mr. Lloyd George. A crude suggestion. But if it were true it would mean that the grasshopper had become a figure of national and international importance. It is wonderful to think that we might stop being friends with France just because of a grasshopper; and, if Lord Northcliffe arranged for a new Government to come in, it might very well be called "The Grasshopper Government." That would look fine in the margins of the history-books.

Yes, it is all very "dramatic." It is exciting to think of an English lord nursing a grievance about a grasshopper for months and months, seeing grasshoppers in every corner, dreaming about grasshoppers.... But we must not waste time over the fantastic tale. We have not yet solved our principal problem. Why did Mr. Lloyd George call him a grasshopper--a modest friendly little grasshopper? Did he mean to suggest that Lord Northcliffe hears with his stomach or stridulates with his back legs?

Why not an earwig, or a black-beetle, or a wood-louse, or a centipede? There are lots of insects more offensive than the grasshopper, and personally I would much rather be called a grasshopper than an earwig, which gets into people's sponges and frightens them to death.

Perhaps he had been reading that nice passage in the Prophet Nahum: "Thy captains are as the great grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun ariseth they flee away, and their place is not known where they are." I do not know. But _The Encyclopædia_ has a suggestive sentence: "All grasshoppers are vegetable feeders and have an incomplete metamorphosis, so that _their destructive powers are continuous from the moment of emergence from the egg until death_."

A.P.H.

* * * * *

"The Mayor gave details showing how the Engineer's salary had increased from £285 when he was appointed in 1811 to £600 at the present time."--_Local Paper._

And think what he must have saved the ratepayers by not taking a pension years ago.

* * * * *

"Mr. ---- thought that the whole Committee would wish to associate themselves with the Cemeteries Sub-Committee in their congratulations to Alderman ---- upon his marriage."--_Local Paper._

We do not quite see why this particular sub-committee should have taken the initiative.

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* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"French Leave."

The Mandarins of the Theatre, who are no wiser than other mandarins (on the contrary), have been long repeating the formula that the public won't look at a War play. If I'm not mistaken it will for many moons be looking at Captain Reginald Berkeley's _French Leave_. He labels it a "light comedy." That's an understatement. It is, as a matter of fact, a very skilful, uproarious and plausible farce, almost too successful in that you can't hear one-third of the jokes because of the laughter at the other two-thirds (and a little because of the indistinct articulation of one or two of the players). Of course when I say "plausible" I don't exactly mean that any Brigade Headquarters was run on the sketchy lines of _General Archibald Root's_, or that the gallant author or anybody else who was in the beastly thing ever thought of the Great War as a devastating joke, but rather that if it be true, as has been rumoured, that not all generals were miracles of wisdom and forbearance; that British subalterns and privates sometimes put on the mask of humour; that _Venus_ did wander, as the observatories punctually reported she did occasionally wander, into the orbit of _Mars_--then _French Leave_ is a piece of artistically justifiable selection. Its absurdity seems the most natural thing in the world and its machinery (rare virtue!) does not creak.

_Rooty Tooty's_ brigade then was resting--if in the circumstances you can call it resting. The rather stodgy Brigade-Major's leave being due, his wife has come over to Paris to wait for him. The leave being cancelled (and you could see how desperately overworked Headquarters was) there suddenly appears what purports to be a niece of the billet landlady's, a _Mdlle. Juliette_, of the Paris stage, with a distinctly coming-on disposition (and frock). The uxorious Brigade-Major, weakly consenting to the deception, suffers the tortures of the damned by reason of the gallantries of the precocious Staff-Captain and the old-enough-to-know-better Brigadier. There is marching and counter-marching of detached units in the small hours; arrival of the Brigade Interpreter with Intelligence's reports; sorrowful conviction in the Brigadier's mind that _Juliette_ is _Olga--Olga Thingummy_, the famous German spy. Confusions; explosions; solutions.

That's a dull account of a bright matter. The players were not, with the exception of Miss Renée Kelly, of the star class and (I don't necessarily say therefore) were almost uniformly admirable. I suppose the honours must go to Mr. M.R. Morand's excellently studied _Brigadier_--the most laughter-compelling performance I have seen on the "legitimate" for some years. But the _Mess Corporal_ (Mr. Charles Groves), the _Staff-Captain_ (Mr. Henry Kendall), the _Brigade-Major_ (Mr. Hylton Allen), the _Interpreter_ (Mr. George de Warfaz) and the _Mess Waiter_ (Mr. Arthur Riscoe)--all deserve mention in despatches. As for the "business" it was positively inspired at times, as when the _Mess Corporal_ retrieved the red-hat (which the passionate _Brigade-Major_ had kicked in his jealous fury) with an address which would have done credit to the admirable Grock. Miss Renée Kelly had her pretty and effective moments, but somebody should ask her (no doubt in vain) to be less tearful in the tearful and just a little less bright in the bright parts--a little less fidgetty and fidgetting and out of key, in fact.

I should say in general that author and producer (Mr. Eille Norwood) would do well to watch the serious passages--always the danger-points in farce. As nobody on our side of the footlights takes these seriously the folk on the other side must substantially dilute the seriousness. The tragically uttered, "O God!" at the end of the Second Act ruined an otherwise excellent curtain. But I must not end on a note of censure. I was much too thoroughly entertained for that. Here's a quite first-rate piece of fooling, with dialogue of humorous rather than smart sayings. And humour's a much rarer and less cheap a gift than smartness.

T.

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* * * * *

Our Considerate Scribes.

"Presumptious is a hard word that I would not readily apply to any man."--_Daily Paper._

* * * * *

"PASSIVE PESSIMISM.

BERLIN'S ATTITUDE TO THE SPAR CONDITIONS."

_Sunday Paper._

But, after all, Berlin does not seem to have taken them lying down.

* * * * *

"At the start he made most of his runs by clever strokes on the leg side, but, once settled down, he drove with fin power." _Sunday Paper._

Cricketers need to be amphibious in these days.

* * * * *

SONGS OF AN OVALITE.

There was a young man who said, "Hobbs Should never be tempted with lobs; He would knock them about Till the bowlers gave out And watered the pitch with their sobs."

There is no one so dreadful as Fender For batmen whose bodies are tender; He gets on their nerves With his murderous swerves That insist upon death or surrender.

When people try googlies on Sandham, You can see he will soon understand 'em; With a laugh at their slows He will murmur, "Here goes," And over the railings will land 'em.

I am always attracted by Harrison When arrayed in his batting caparison; If others look worried He never gets flurried, But quite unconcernedly carries on.

All classes of bowlers have stuck at Their efforts to dislocate Ducat; Their wiliest tricks He despatches for six, Which is what they decidedly buck at.

You should never be down in the dumps When Strudwick is guarding the stumps; His opponents depart One by one at the start, But later in twos or in _clumps_.

"Like father like son," says the fable, And is justified clearly in Abel; No bowling he fears And his surname appears An extremely appropriate label.

If I were tremendously rich I would buy a cathedral in which I would build me a shrine Of a noble design And worship a statue of Hitch.

* * * * *

Our Sleuths Again.

"His wrists were tied together with a piece of webbing, two bricks were in his coat pockets, and, most remarkable of all, the soles of his boots were found to be nailed to his toes.... The police theory is that somebody 'owed the dead man a grudge.'"--_Provincial Paper._

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AUTHORSHIP FOR ALL.

[Being specimens of the work of Mr. Punch's newly-established Literary Ghost Bureau, which supplies appropriate Press contributions on any subject and over any signature.]

III.--Are we going to the Dogs?

_By Vice-Admiral (Retd.) Sir Boniface Bludger, K.C.B_.

I was standing the other day at the window of the only Club in London where they understand (or used to understand) what devilled kidneys really are, musing in post-prandial gloom on the vanished glories of this England of ours. "_Ichabod!_" I cried aloud to the unheeding stream of Piccadilly wayfarers; and echo answered, "_Bod_."

What is wrong with us? Or what is wrong with me? Are we actually going to the dogs, or is it merely that the Club kidneys are going to the devil? Jeremiah or _Mrs. Gummidge_--which am I? Let the facts attest and let posterity decide; thank Heaven I shall not be there to hear the verdict.

After our half-baked victory over the Hun the popular watchword was "Reconstruction." We have now enjoyed a year and more of this "building-up" process, and the net result is that houses for those that lack them are as scarce as iced soda-fountains in the Sahara.

In this work of restoration, we were told, our women voters and legislators would play a leading part. What part are they in truth playing? Their main object apparently is still further to embitter the Drink question, although if they would only put a little more bitter into our national beverage they might help to lubricate matters. Is it not a significant fact that the slackness evidenced in every phase of industry manifests itself at a time when it becomes more and more difficult to get a decent drink? In this respect our progress is not so much to the dogs as to the cats, who sneak along on the padded paws of Prohibition.

The crazy conditions to be observed in the industrial world are well matched by the state of anarchy that prevails in the sphere of the arts. Take music, for example. I do not lay claim to more than a nodding acquaintance with Euterpe, and at a classical concert, I am afraid, the nodding character of the relation becomes especially marked. To me the sweetest music in the world is the roar of a fifteen-inch gun on a day when the visibility is good and plentiful. But I do know enough to be able to say that the wild asses who with their jazz-bands "stamp o'er our heads and will not let us sleep" (slightly to amend my old friend FitzGerald) are nothing less than musical Trotskys.

Music was once regarded as the staple nourishment of the tender passion, and in my younger days the haunting strains of "The Blue Danube" assisted many a budding love-affair to blossom. But these non-stop stridencies of the modern ballroom, even if they left a man with breath enough to propose, would effectually prevent the girl from catching the drift of the avowal. You can't roar, "Will you be mine?" into a maiden's ear as if you were conversing from the quarterdeck, and if you did she'd only think you were ecstatically emulating the coloured gentleman in the orchestra with the implements of torture and the misguided voice.

I will pass over in the silence of despair such other symptoms of national decadence as zigzag painting, whirlpool poetry, cinema star-gazing and the impossibility of procuring a self-respecting Stilton (which assuredly is not "living at this hour"). Nor can I trust myself to speak of the spirit of Bolshevism that seems to animate our so-called Labour Party, though I comfort myself with the conviction that this doctrine will not wash, any more than will its authors.