Chapter 1

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PUNCH,

OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOL. 159.

OCTOBER 13, 1920.

CHARIVARIA.

Mr. RIAZANOV, the successor to KAMENEFF, is now residing in Grosvenor Street. Several readers have written to ask us how his name is pronounced. Wrongly, we believe, in nine cases out of ten.

* * *

We have been given to understand that that versatile pair, the TWO BOBS, are contemplating a tour of the music-halls in the mining district, where they are sure to be given a rousing reception.

* * *

According to _The Evening News_ two miners recently played a quoit match for a hundred pounds. In all probability they are now agitating for the two shillings' increase to enable them to have a little side bet.

* * *

"We cannot choose how we will be born," says a medical writer. No; some are born poor and others are born into a miner's family.

* * *

"Where stands England to-day?" we are asked. While travelling in the Tube we have often thought that most of it was standing on our feet.

* * *

"With the outgoing of September we face once more the month of October, with its falling leaves and autumn gales," states a writer in a daily paper. This, we understand, is according to precedent.

* * *

A Glamorgan collier, summoned for income-tax, stated that he earned eleven pounds a week and wanted every penny of it. It is said that he is saving up to buy a strike of his own.

* * *

A live frog is reported to have been found in a coal seam at a Monmouthshire colliery. It seems to have been greatly concerned at having missed the previous strike ballot.

* * *

With reference to Mr. SPENDER'S interview with Mr. LLOYD GEORGE we regret that no mention is made of the exact date when the PRIME MINISTER will declare the New World open.

* * *

Since it has been so well advertised we understand that the banned poster, "The Unknown," is shortly to be renamed "The Very Well Known."

* * *

The EX-KAISER is reported to have made his will. He has bequeathed his trial to his youngest grandson.

* * *

It is proposed to make Poole a first-class port, at a cost of £3,750,000. We cannot help thinking that hidden away in some Government office is a man who could do it at treble the cost.

* * *

A London firm of pastrycooks have purchased two obsolete tanks from the Disposal Boards. They are said to make excellent utensils for flattening pancakes.

* * *

A dainty little invention has just been tried by the Bolshevists, which consists of a method whereby boiling water from the ship's boiler can be pumped on to sailors who do not obey their officers. It is said to be just the thing to keep their minds off the idea of mutiny.

* * *

"I have all the qualifications for a post in some Government office," writes an Unemployed Ex-Soldier in a contemporary. It is to be hoped that this drawback will be overlooked if his other disqualifications are satisfactory.

* * *

Washable hats for boys is one of the new inventions at the Leather and Shoe Trade Exhibition. Small boys are now going about in fear that the next discovery will be a washable neck.

* * *

Six bandits entered the Central Café, New York, the other day and took one thousand pounds from the diners. The ease with which they did it suggests that they were mistaken for waiters.

* * *

A plumber in Aberdeen is giving lessons to a women's class in knitting. It is said that his treatise on How to Crochet a Burst Bath-Pipe is likely to become a standard work.

* * *

In taking away a safe containing six thousand pounds from a Fenchurch Street office, burglars broke down a door with a thick glass panel. The profession is of the opinion that the blame for this lies with the firm. They had locked the door.

* * *

_The Daily Chronicle_ informs us that a New York couple who were engaged in 1868 have just been married. But surely the wonder is that they were not married long before.

* * *

A woman has told the medical officer of Burnham that rats so like the poison being used that they come out of their holes for it while it is being put down. We always make our rats stand up and beg for it.

* * *

A domestic servant was recently blown out of her mistress's house through the too liberal use of paraffin whilst lighting fires. Luckily, however, it was her day out, so no complications ensued.

* * *

On being asked his recipe for keeping young, a well-known physician refused to reply. In view of the increasing number of precocious authors, the question again arises, "Should a doctor tell?"

* * *

_The Daily Express_ states that there is "very little demand for champagne to-day." We fancy this is due to the fact that a number of people are saving up to buy coffee at Messrs. LYONS'.

* * * * *

* * * * *

"THE PASSIONATE SPECTATOR."

We are asked to say that the above title of a book written by Miss JANE BURR and published by Messrs. DUCKWORTH (it is described on the wrapper as "an entirely unconventional novel founded on original and ultra-modern views concerning life and marriage") has nothing to do with our respected contemporary.

* * * * *

"GOVERNMENT'S STRIKING ATTITUDE. WAITING TILL THE CAR JUMBS?"

_Nigerian Pioneer_.

Personally we always try to get out when this seems to be imminent.

* * * * *

TO OUR PLAY-MAKERS.

[_The Daisy_ and _The Crossing_, which both dealt with the life after death, have come to an untimely end; and, in deference to public feeling, the heroine of _Every Woman's Privilege_ has been furnished with a fresh _fiancé_.]

When in my stall at eve I sit (And these remarks would still apply, Perhaps with greater force, were I Accommodated in the Pit)-- Worn with the long day's dusty strife, I ask a brief surcease of gloom; I want a mirror held to life, But not the life beyond the tomb.

The views of parties who have "crossed" (Meaning to Jordan's further shore), Those, as they say, who've "gone before," But not (unhappily) been "lost"-- They make me ill; they decompose My vital essence at its fount (Excepting BARRIE'S _Mary Rose_, But then, of course, he doesn't count).

Give me the life that quick men lead, Of which I know the hopes and fears Better than those of shadier spheres; And, if at first you don't succeed, If you should hear the critics croak, "As to your heroine's choice, you err," Just hand her to the other bloke-- That's what they did with MARIE LÖHR.

So shall creative art suggest A world where people may revise Their silly past, and realise Those second thoughts which are the best; Where, having seen the larger light, A perfect liberty to hedge And swap the wrong man for the right Is "Every Woman's Privilege."

O. S.

* * * * *

YET ONE MORE PLAN FOR IRELAND.

Feeling rather lonely because almost everybody had entered for the great Irish Problem Competition in the morning and evening press except myself, I sat down and wrote the following solution, which I posted immediately to the Editors of _The Times_ and of _The Westminster Gazette_:--

"SIR"--I began indignantly, for I noticed all the best competitors begin like that. In these Bolshevistic days I should have preferred of course to have started off with "Comrade" or "Brother," or even, since I was writing from the heart of the country, have opened with "Eh bor," as people do in dialect novels, but, fearing I might be disqualified, I began, as I say, "Sir," and went on, much as the other statesmen did:--

"In all the lengthy annals of this Government, vacillation between weakness and tyranny has never proved so disastrous as it is proving in Ireland to-day, and the conduct of that unhappy country's affairs is now plunged in a chaos so profoundly chaotic that it has become a gross misuse of language to call them affairs at all. Out of all this welter and confusion two salient facts are seen to emerge:--

"(1) No two Englishmen are agreed upon a settlement that will at the same time satisfy the just aspirations of Ireland and preserve the integrity of the British Empire.

"(2) No two Irishmen are either.

"At the same time the number of sane and carefully considered plans for the government of Ireland was never so great as it is to-day. When will our incompetent Cabinet perceive that the only way of warding off the stain of perfidy which dogs their footsteps and threatens to overwhelm them is to make use of all these plans? I put aside for the moment the most violent proposals of the extremists on either side, such as that of the annexation of England by the Sinn Fein Empire and that of the deportation of all Irishmen to the Andaman Islands and the re-colonisation of the country with correspondents to the daily press; but between these two extremes there surely lie innumerable solutions which both can and ought to be employed. I will only name here a few of them:--

ASQUITH autonomy. Dominion Home Rule. DUNRAVEN autonomy. GREY autonomy. Red autonomy. Government by Dhail Eireann. Government by Dhail Ymaill. Administration by the L.C.C. Clan warfare.

"And there are infinite shades and variations of all these.

"Every one of the policies I have named, and as many more as possible, should now be adopted at once, one after the other, I suggest, for quarterly periods and in alphabetical order.

"But let there be no mistake. They must be strictly enforced. It must be impossible for Irishmen to come to England in the future and say to her, as they have so often said in the past, 'You made us promises which, when we leant on them, proved a broken reed and turned to dust and ashes in our mouths.'

"One of the bitterest reproaches that is hurled, and hurled justly, at British maladministration is that through all the seeming variations of misgovernment there has been in fact no change. Dublin Castle remains where it did. This must be altered at once. _The site of Dublin Castle must be moved every three months._ There must be infinite change, and it must be infinitely thorough and infinitely systematic, so that, side by side with the continuous grievances of all dissatisfied parties, will be the certain assurance that those grievances will in strict rotation be remedied.

"The objection will, of course, be raised that these continual changes of government will involve a certain amount of disorder; that one system will scarcely be working before it is superseded by another; that the rapid alterations in the _personnel_ of the judicature, civil service and police will be inconvenient; that everything, in fact, will be in a muddle. But by how much is not well-organised muddle to be preferred to unsystematic anarchy? And as each type of government recurs in due course will it not be found to work more simply and satisfactorily?

"To those who shrug their shoulders and say that a series of kaleidoscopic changes in Irish administration would never be approved by the good sense of the British electorate I can only urge that it is precisely this attitude of intolerance towards and ignorance of Irish psychology which has rendered our behaviour to Ireland for so many centuries a by-word not only throughout Europe but the whole civilised world and the United States of America.

"I am, Sir, yours, etc."

Through some accident or other, either because I have not followed exactly the prescribed rules of the competition, such as writing on one side of the paper only, or addressing it from the National Liberal Club, or obtaining the signature of five witnesses, my solution has not yet appeared in _The Times_ or in _The Westminster Gazette_ either. Feeling it a pity, however, that any helpful suggestion should be lost at a time when never in the annals of Irish misgovernment has vacillation vacillated so vacillatingly as it does to-day, I have repeated my strong but simple proposals here.

K.

* * * * *

"Clever forgeries of Fisher notes are in circulation in St. Pancras.

Last night, during the busy period, a number of publications in the Kentish Town district were victimised."--_Evening Paper_.

We had no idea that Kentish Town was such a literary centre.

* * * * *

"Even Paris seems willing this season to add a few inches to the length of skirts, and six to eight inches is becoming the accepted length for street wear. This is an excellent length, not so long as to endanger the chic of the costume, nor so short as to be unbecoming in either sense of the word."--_Fashion Paper_.

We refrain from any speculations as to the previous length of these skirts before the "few inches" were added.

* * * * *

* * * * *

* * * * *

ELIZABETH OUTWITTED.

"An' when I dies they give me fifteen pounds on the nail an' no waitin'," said Elizabeth triumphantly, as she explained her latest insurance scheme.

"On what nail?" I asked distrustfully. I could not understand why Elizabeth felt justified in paying sixpence per week for a benefit fraught with so little ultimate joy to herself. But she is the sort of girl that can never resist the back-door tout. She is constantly being persuaded to buy something for which she pays a small weekly sum. This is entered in a book, and the only conditions are that she must continue paying that sum for the rest of her natural lifetime.

On these lines Elizabeth has "put in" for many articles in the course of her chequered career. She has had fleeting possession of a steel engraving of QUEEN VICTORIA, a watch that never would go--until her payments ceased--a sewing-machine (treadle), a set of vases and a marble timepiece. The timepiece, she explained, was destined for "the bottom drawer," which she had begun to furnish from the moment a young man first inquired which was her night out.

As all these things were taken from her directly her payments fell off, I thought I had better give her the benefit of my ripe judgment. "I shouldn't buy anything on the instalment plan, if I were you," I advised. "Some people seem to be made for the system, but you are not one of them."

"But I 'aven't told you wot I'm buyin' now," she said excitedly, putting a plate on the rack as she spoke. I ought to say she meant to put it on the rack; that it fell two inches short wasn't Elizabeth's fault.

"It was cracked afore," she murmured mechanically as she gathered up the fragments. "Yes, I pays a shillin' a week an' I gets a grammerfone."

"A what?" I gasped.

"A grammerfone--to play, you know."

"Where will it play?" I asked feebly.

"'Ere," she said, waving a comprehensive hand; "an' it won't 'arf liven the place up. My friend 'as 'ers goin' all day long."

I stifled a moan of horror, for I am one of the elect few who loathe gramophones, even at their best and costliest.

"Elizabeth," I cried, tears of anguish rising to my eyes, "let me implore you not to get one of those horr--I mean, not to be imposed on again."

"I've got it," she announced. "I meantersay I've paid the first shillin' an' it's comin' to-morrow. I 'ave it a month on trial."

The month certainly was a trial--for me. Ours is not one of those old-fashioned residences with thick walls that muffle sound, and where servants can be consigned to dwell in the bowels of the earth. Every noise which arises in the kitchen, from Elizabeth's badinage with the butcher's boy to the raucous grind of the knife-machine, echoes through the house _viâ_ the study where I work.

Thus, although Elizabeth kept the kitchen-door shut, I found myself compelled for one-half of the day to consider an insistent demand as to the ultimate destination of flies in the winter-time. The rest of the day the gramophone gave us _K-K-K-Katie_. (Elizabeth had only two records to begin with.)

I became unnerved. My work suffered. It began to trickle back to me accompanied by the regrets of editors; and to writers the regrets of editors are the most poignant in the world.

The situation was saved by the most up-to-date tout of the whole back-door tribe. He persuaded Elizabeth to go in for Spiritualism. Do not misunderstand me. You can be a Spiritualist and also keep a gramophone, but, if you are Elizabeth, you cannot keep the two running at the same time if you must pay a shilling per week for each. When she sought my opinion I strongly advised the séances, which I said were cheap at the price; indeed I thought they were when the gramophone departed.

It was now Elizabeth's turn to become unnerved. She has a mind that is peculiarly open to impressions, and communion with the spirits unbalanced her. She justified her expenditure of a shilling weekly by placing the utmost faith in them.

"I 'ad a message from them there spirits larst night," she informed me one day, "an' they tell me I must change my 'abitation."

"What do you mean?" I asked, startled.

"I put a message through, arskin' them when I should get a settled young man, an' they told me that the fates are agen me in my present dwellin', so if you'll please take my notice from--"

I will not go through the sickening formula. Every housewife must have heard it several times at least in the past year or so. I accepted Elizabeth's resignation and began to concentrate on newspaper announcements. But I took an utter dislike to the spirits and listened with cold aloofness when Elizabeth began, "I was talkin' to the spirit of my young man larst night--"

"I didn't know you had the spirit of any young man," I interrupted.

"Yes, I 'ave. I mean Ned Akroyd, 'oo was drownded."

Now I have never believed in the alleged drowning of the said Ned. The news--conveyed to Elizabeth by his mate--that he had fallen from a ferry-boat near Eel Pie Island seemed unconvincing, especially as it happened shortly after Elizabeth had lent him fifteen-and-six.

"I 'ad quite a long talk with 'im," she went on. "Next time I'm goin' to arst 'im about the fifteen-and-six 'e borrowed, an' see if I can't get it back some'ow."

How the spirit would have considered this proposition is still uncertain, for Elizabeth never returned to the séances. She came to me one day in a state of violent agitation. "I see Ned Akroyd when I was out larst night," she began, "an' would you believe it, 'e's no more dead than I am, the wretch!"

"Well, aren't you glad?" I inquired.

"Glad, an' 'im with another girl an' pretendin' all the time not to see me! Men are 'ounds, that's what they are. An' I'll go to no more seeonces. They're a swindle."

"They were wrong about telling you to change your habitation too, weren't they?" I suggested insinuatingly.

"Course they were." Suddenly her face brightened. "I'll be able to 'ave the grammerfone back now," she said.

* * * * *

At the moment I am writing to the sounds of _K-K-K-Katie_, which, I fear, is giving me rather a syncopated style. But if the Editor is k-k-k-kind he will not banish me from _P-P-P-Punch_ for this reason, as anyone can see my intentions are g-g-g-good.

Stay! _K-K-K-Katie_ has ceased and I can think lucidly. An inspiration has come to me. Has not Elizabeth in her time wrought havoc among my crockery? The hour is ripe for me to retaliate.

To morrow at dawn I shall examine the gramophone records and--_they will come in two in my hands_.

It will be the first time I have broken any record.

* * * * *

* * * * *

"MISUSE OF RESEARCH GRANTS.

By Professor ----, F.R.S."

_Sunday Paper Poster_.

We refuse to believe it.

* * * * *

THE CONSPIRATORS.

III.

MY DEAR CHARLES,--Essential to that millennium which our restless revolutionaries are after is your head on a charger and my head on a charger; provided both heads are present it may be the same charger for all they care. When you think of the importance which we of the detested middle classes attach to our heads and the regrettable violence we might exhibit towards whoever called at our houses to collect them, then it seems to me you must confess to a sneaking admiration for the bravery of the turbulent minority in attacking so big a problem.

But when you get the inside details of their schemes you find that discretion is not only the better part but the whole of their valour. For arms you find incendiary speeches; for ammunition, viperish propaganda, and for epoch-making action you have nothing. In that "nothing" lies their main ingenuity and strong hope. If they can prevail on the masses to do nothing, at the right moment, and to go on doing nothing till there is nothing left, then, say they, they will have civilisation under; and if our heads don't fall off of their own accord then a thousand willing hands will be stretched forward to pull them off.

You ask me how I know all this. Close the doors so that we cannot be overheard, and I will tell you. I buy their continental newspaper--"organ" they prefer to call it, being rather proud of the noise--and there I read all that I want to know. It costs a halfpenny a day, runs to six pages, is well printed and brightly composed and contains no advertisements. There is generally a picture in thick black lines in the centre of the first page. Blood being the easy thing for the printer to "feature," the picture generally deals with the cutting off of heads. If it refers to the past, you and I are cutting off the worker's head, severing from a fine muscular body a noble head with a halo to it. If it refers to the future, the worker is having our heads off, severing from a fat and uncontrolled corpus a most unpleasant excrescence in a very shiny top-hat.

To run a daily newspaper of that "make-up," without advertisements and for subscribers of whom the larger number, like myself, omit to pay their half-penny, is not easy business. In fact it is not business at all. The question being raised as to where the money came from, the producers tried to allay our suspicion by making a great show of an appeal for help. The published results, which I give you in their English equivalent, were much as follows:--