Chapter 3

It was rather impudent of Mr. ADAMSON, who has just been instrumental in throwing out of work some hundreds of thousands of his fellow-citizens, to initiate a debate on unemployment. Most of the speakers endeavoured to throw the blame on "the other fellow"--the Government on the trade unions, the trade unionists on the employers, and the employers on the Government. A welcome exception was Mr. HOPKINSON, who boldly blamed the short-sighted selfishness of some of his own class. Employes would not work their hardest to "make the boss a millionaire." As a fitting _finale_ to an inconclusive debate the PRIME MINISTER announced that in order to force a settlement of the coal-strike the railwaymen--Mr. THOMAS, apparently, dissenting--had threatened to join the unemployed.

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Our Erudite Contemporaries.

"Willard was game and well trained, and in stature he was Goliath to the Daniel of Dempsey."--_Evening Paper._

A DAVID come to judgment!

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"The rate plague has developed to an alarming extent in Thanet, and considerable anxiety is felt, especially as there appears to be no effective preparation of poison to exterminate them."--_Evening Paper._

And Thanet is not the only place.

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THE TYPE-SLINGER.

BITING and keen as any razor The fluent pen of LOVAT FRASER; And swift as arrows, thick as hail, His outbursts in _The Daily Mail_, Exposing in impassioned phrase The PREMIER'S wild and wicked ways. And yet the PREMIER doesn't squirm, No, not a bit--the pachyderm! But goes about with cheerful mien, As if such things had never been.

So LOVAT FRASER grows emphatic In efforts to be more dogmatic, And down the column, once a week, _His shrill italics fairly shriek._ But does the PREMIER bow his back And go and give himself the sack? Not he. Indeed, for all he troubles, His critic might be blowing bubbles.

It's up to LOVAT FRASER now To make an even bigger row; I'd like to see the sturdy fellow Write articles that simply bellow. I think the PREMIER might perhaps Shiver and possibly collapse IF LOVAT GOT TO WORK IN "CAPS."

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The Black Swan of Avon.

"A NATIVE DRAMA Entitled 'Inu vere ki pani'

(Popularly known as Merchant of Venice, but beautified and enlarged to local taste), Interspersed with Popular Dialogues, latest Songs, etc. Will (D. V.) be rendered by the ---- Guild."--_West African Poster._

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THE REVIVAL OF OLLENDORFF.

FROM the memories of my mid-Victorian childhood, before the instruction of a governess had reached a point at which the plunge was made into a preparatory school, three names emerge with remarkable distinctness. "Little Arthur," from whom I derived my earliest knowledge of the History of England; "Henry," by whom I was grounded in the rudiments of the dead Latin tongue (but who must be carefully distinguished from JAMES HENRY, the Virgilian, who in turn had nothing whatever to do with HENRY JAMES the novelist), and OLLENDORFF, the illustrious author of a series of manuals for the teaching of living foreign languages.

OLLENDORFF, I fear, is not even the shadow of a name to the present generation. There is no mention of him in _The Encyclopaedia Britannica_ or in _Chambers_. Even in his own country he seems to have lapsed into obscurity, and in MENDEL'S voluminous _Conversations-Lexikon_ there is only a brief reference to the Ollendorffian method, but no account of the man or his history.

Yet he must have existed; OLLENDORFF cannot have been a mere symbol. And as students of SHAKSPEARE have endeavoured to reconstruct the man from his plays so I feel sure that the character of OLLENDORFF, his interests and politics, might very well be reconstructed from a study of his dialogues. One must admit that his Teutonic patronymic is an obstacle to his revival, but that difficulty can be surmounted by the adoption of an _alias_. For example, by the omission of one of the "f's" and the transposition of one other letter his name, read backwards, becomes Frondello, which is at once euphonious and void of all racial offence.

The Ollendorffian method, it may be noted for the benefit of the ignorant, did not merely depend on the employment of question and answer; it aimed at conveying information drawn from the homely affairs of daily life and the relations between persons belonging to different trades and occupations. "Have you," OLLENDORFF would ask, "the hat of the gardener's son?" And when this had been duly and correctly translated into German or French the pupil proceeded to the answer, "No, but I have the boots of the grocer's brother-in-law."

I think OLLENDORFF built better than he knew; or perhaps he did know. A strong vein of Socialism runs through all his examples, which seem to show a lively appreciation of the Communistic principle. To him there was nothing wrong or dangerous in this mutual interchange and enjoyment of property. He drew no hard-and-fast lines between _meum_ and _tuum_. We cannot help thinking that, at a time when so much depends on the fusion of classes, a new edition of these immortal dialogues, brought up to date so as to meet the exigencies of the new poor, the new rich, the old aristocracy and the new plutocracy, would be fraught with the most salutary results.

The following are some crude suggestions of the lines on which the revision might be carried out:--

"Have you the leathern waistcoat of the taxi-driver?--"No, but I have the reach-me-down trousers of an inferior quality to those worn by the village postman."

"Have you the smooth-running automobile of the prosperous grocer?"--"No, but I have the loan of the push-bicycle of my former under-gardener's uncle."

"Are you going to marry the beautiful daughter of the shoemaker?"--"Yes, and her brother has just become engaged to the widow of my cousin the marquis."

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* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"THE ROMANTIC AGE."

I HOPE that Mr. ALAN MILNE is a good enough critic to agree with me in thinking that this is the best play he has so far given us. Not that the idea of it is as new as that of his _Mr. Pim_ or his _Wurzel-Flummery_, but because, without sacrificing his lightness of touch and his sense of fun, he has, for the first time, produced a serious scheme.

People will tell you that his Second Act was the weak spot in the play; that the others were brilliant, but that this one, for its first half, was tedious and delayed the action. They will say this because they are familiar with A. A. M.'s humour, but not with his sentiment. Yet it was in this middle Act that he gave us the best passage of all, in presenting the philosophy of his pedlar, which had in it something of the dewy freshness of the early morning scene in the wood ("morning's at seven," as _Pippa_--not _Mr. Pim_--said _en passant_). There was no real delay in the action here, for the pedlar was providing the hero with the argument without which he could never have persuaded the lady to yield; could never have made her understand that Romance is not confined to the trunk-and-hose period, or any age, so named, of chivalry, but is to be found wherever there is a true companionship of hearts. Unfortunately the effect of this passage was a little spoilt by what had just gone before--a rather slow and superfluous scene with the village idiot--and some of the audience imagined that the author was still marking time.

Mr. MILNE has an individual manner so distinct that he can well afford to acknowledge his debt to Sir JAMES BARRIE. As in _Mary Rose_, so here (though there are no supernatural forces at work) we have the sharp contrast between commonplace life, as lived by the rest, and the life of Fairyland, as coming within the vision of one only. And we were reminded too of the Midsummer-madness that overtook the company in _Dear Brutus_. I won't say that it wasn't natural enough for _Melisande_, under the fascination of a moonlit Midsummer Eve, to imagine, when she chanced upon a gentleman in fancy dress of the right period, that at last she had realised her dream of a hero of romance; but she was stark Midsummer-mad to suppose, when she met him early next morning with his costume unchanged, that he would keep it on till he came to tea with the family, and then, still wearing it, waft her off to Faerie.

But not even BARRIE has ever made a better scene than that which showed us the disillusionment of the visionary when she is confronted with her blue-and-gold hero of romance now transformed into a plain Stock Exchange man, his air of banality enhanced by the last word in golf suitings. The humour of this scene, in which she made conventional conversation without any real effort to conceal her sense of the bathos of the situation, was very perfect. The relatively simple humour of the match-making mother--not so simple, all the same, as its spontaneity made it appear--had the distinction which one expects of Mr. MILNE; but this was far the funniest feature in the play.

It would have been an easy matter to make cheap fun, as MARK TWAIN did in _A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur_, out of the popular view of the Age of Romance, but A. A. M. avoided that obvious lure. Indeed, in his natural anxiety not to be taken too seriously in his first attempt to be serious, he rather tended to make light of his own theory of modern romance, laying a little too much stress at the end on the culinary aspect of conjugal felicity.

I am not sure that Mr. ARTHUR WONTNER (to whom my best wishes for his new managership) quite realised, in his doublet and long hose, my idea of a figure of mediaeval romance. In fact I am free to confess that I disagreed with _Melisande_ and preferred him in his golf-clothes. But perhaps that was part of the idea, and Mr. MILNE meant me to feel like that. Miss BARBARA HOFFE'S _Melisande_--a difficult part, because she was the only other-worldly person in the play and the only one in desperate earnest--was very cleverly handled. In her most exalted moments of poetic rapture she was never too precious, and when called upon for a touch of corrective humour was quick to respond.

Miss LOTTIE VENNE laid herself out in her inimitable way for a broad interpretation of the visionary's very earthly mother; indeed once or twice she almost laid herself out of the picture; but she still remained irresistible. As a pair of light-hearted young lovers Miss DOROTHY TETLEY and Mr. JOHN WILLIAMS played really well in parts that were not nearly so easy as they looked. And there was the dry humour of Mr. BROMLEY-DAVENPORT, as the father (I fear he must have missed the romance of twin souls) and the open-air charm of Mr. NICHOLSON'S performance as _Gentleman Susan_, the pedlar. In a word, my grateful compliments embrace as good a cast as ever caught--and held--the spirit of an author.

"PRISCILLA AND THE PROFLIGATE."

When you have been jilted by _Cynthia_ at the church-door and, two days afterwards, in a fit of pique marry _Priscilla_ at sight (of course you can't always get a _Priscilla_ to consent to this arrangement; but _Mr. Bensley Stuart Gore_ had a young ward at school who wanted her freedom; so that was all right), you may think to persuade the Faithless One that you have given solid proof of your indifference to her. But you mustn't dash off to Africa an hour after your wedding with the declared intention of being eaten by wild men or wilder beasts, because, if you do that, you give your scheme away and _Cynthia_ will have the satisfaction of knowing that she has driven you to desperate courses. Yet that is what _Mr. Bensley Stuart Gore_ did (he was the "Profligate" of the title, though he never gave any noticeable sign of profligacy).

After this strain on my credulity I felt prepared for anything, and was not in the least surprised to find him, six years older and still intact, on the terrace of the Hotel Casa Bellini, by the dear old shores of Lake Maggiore, which, as the programme advised me, is in Italy. It seemed, too, the most natural thing in the world that the author, Miss LAURA WILDIG, should have collected _Priscilla_ and _Cynthia_ (the latter in tow of a third-rate millionaire husband whom she loathed) at the same address.

It was at this juncture that _Mr. Bensley Stuart Gore_ was inspired with a Great Thought. In order to set _Priscilla_ free (I ought to say that he hadn't recognised her) he would elope with _Cynthia_. How _Priscilla_ set out to frustrate this noble sacrifice and secure her husband for herself; how she bribed the caretaker to lock him up with her in the "Bloody Turret" of an adjacent ruin; how subsequently, at 2 A.M., in the public lounge of the hotel, she tried to work upon his emotions by appearing in a black night-dress (surely this rather vulgar form of allurement is _demode_ by now even in the suburbs, or, anyhow, is not so freshly daring as she seemed to think it), I will leave you to imagine. Even Miss IRIS HOEY'S nice soft voice and pleasant _calineries_ could not quite carry off this rather machine-made trifle. If anything saved it, it was the acting of Mr. FRANK DENTON as _Jimmy Forde_. Starting as _Bensley's_ "best man," he missed the wedding ceremony through going to the wrong church, but after that he stuck close to his friend for the remainder of the plot, and greatly endeared himself to the audience by the excellent way in which he played the silly ass.

As for _Bensley_ himself, you might have thought that he had a sufficiently chequered career, yet Mr. CYRIL RAYMOND got very little colour out of the part. For the rest, Mr. H. DE LANGE, as the millionaire, got a certain amount out of the subject of his wife's indigestion, which was a sort of _leit-motif_ with him; but most of the colour seemed to have gone into the scenery, admirably designed and painted by Mr. MCCLEERY and Mr. WALTER HANN.

O. S.

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* * * * *

"LOGS TO BURN."

"_Logs to burn; logs to burn; Logs to save the coal a turn._"

HERE's a word to make you wise When you hear the wood-man's cries; Never heed his usual tale That he has splendid logs for sale, But read these lines and really learn The proper kinds of logs to burn.

Oak logs will warm you well If they're old and dry; Larch logs of pine woods smell, But the sparks will fly. Beech logs for Christmas-time, Yew logs heat well; "Scotch" logs it is a crime For anyone to sell. Birch logs will burn too fast, Chestnut scarce at all; Hawthorn logs are good to last If cut in the Fall. Holly logs will burn like wax, You should burn them green; Elm logs like smouldering flax, No flame to be seen. Pear logs and apple logs, They will scent your room; Cherry logs across the dogs Smell like flowers in bloom. But Ash logs, all smooth and grey, Burn them green or old; Buy up all that come your way, They're worth their weight in gold.

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"GIRL EYE-MAKER."

_Picture-title in Daily Paper._

Perhaps we ought to mention that the eyes she makes are artificial, not "glad."

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Our Discreet Press.

"Mystery surrounds the Russo-Polish peace negotiations at Riga. According to a Central News message from Warsaw Marshal Pilsudski has had a conference with??????????, the Premier, as to whether demobilisation should take place shortly."--_Evening Paper._

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"When he [Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree] was prepared to play _Martin Chuzzlewit_ he wrote to me (and doubtless explained to others) that he was going to present _Mr. Micawber_ as 'a sort of fairy.'"--_Sunday Paper._

We suppose if Sir HERBERT had staged _David Copperfield_ he would have cast himself for the husband of _Mrs. Harris_.

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THE PRIVATE FILM.

MY attention has been drawn to the most recent and perhaps the most terrible development of the Cinema by an advertisement, from which I take the following extracts:--

HAVE YOUR OWN FILM TAKEN.

THE MOST MODERN METHOD OF GAINING PUBLICITY.

_To Members of Parliament, Mayors, Lecturers and other Public Men and Women._

"The Cinema has become the cheapest, the surest and most rapid road to publicity. It is estimated that a third of the population attend the Cinema once a week. Messrs. Mump and Gump have therefore fitted up a special studio for film work, in which you can now have your own film taken, representing you in any action you may desire. This method of publicity is specially recommended to Members of Parliament. For instance one can be filmed writing a letter, which can be closed down and handed to a messenger, which action can be followed by the letter itself being thrown on the screen.... Think what this means to a prospective Candidate when he goes to a constituency where he is unknown. He takes with him twenty or more films. Your constituents must see and know you before you can hope for their vote. The Cinema introduces your personality and your policy.

"Your film will cost you-- First reel ... Three guineas. Each extra reel. One guinea."

The more I see of business-men the less they seem to me to know about business. I never read an advertisement without thinking, "How much better I (or even you) could have done that!" Yet they will tell you that it is their advertisements which make the money. It only shows.... However. Messrs. Mump and Gump, for instance, have scarcely skimmed the surface possibilities of their brilliant notion. This invention is going to make politics tolerable at last. No man minds being in the House of Commons; it is being in his constituency which is so dreadful. _And now he need never go there._

For instance, when the constituency is tired of the letter-film, he can be filmed making a speech, which can be taken down and handed to a typist, which action can be followed by the speech itself being thrown on the screen--in instalments. The constituency will enjoy this, because it will take much less time to read it than it would to listen to it, and they can argue out loud about the meaning of Early English phrases like Datum-line and Functional Representation. In fact they can go on arguing during the _Whips of Sin_ which will follow.

As for the public man, it won't take him two minutes to be filmed making the speech, unless, of course, he has any very complicated gestures; and it won't take him any time at all to compose it, because the private secretary will do that; and the private secretary will be able to make sure that his joke about JEREBOAM is not turned into a joke about JEHOSHAPHAT at the last minute, or simply shelved in favour of a peroration on rainbows. After the speech the M.P. can be filmed opening a flowershow and, if necessary, writing a cheque to the local hortiphilist society, which cheque can be thrown on the screen amid loud applause, but need not, of course, go any further.

There is one other point, but it is rather a delicate matter: Messrs. Mump and Gump say to the prospective Candidate, "Your constituents must see and know you before you can hope for their vote." Are they quite right? I have seen a good many Candidates in my time, and I can think of some to whom I should have said, "Your constituents must _never_ see you if you hope for a single vote." I mean, when one looks round the present House of Commons, one really marvels how.... But perhaps I had better not go on with that. The point is that a Candidate of that kind never _need_ be seen by his constituents now. A handsome young private secretary, uniformed and beribboned, and the film does the rest.

Then I rather resent the assumption that Members of Parliament, Mayors, Lecturers and Actors are the only people who require publicity. I should have thought that those who spend their time writing things in the public Press, which are read by the public (if anybody), might have had at least the courtesy title of Public Man. Anyhow, I am going to have three guineas' worth. The only question is, what sort of picture will most thoroughly "get" my personality before a third of the population once a week? The moment when I am most characteristic is when I am lying in a hot bath, and to-morrow is Sunday; but I doubt if even a sixth of the population would be really keen on that. I don't mind writing a letter or two, only, if it meant an extra reel every time I decided to write it to-morrow instead, it would be rather a costly advertisement.

Really, I suppose, one ought to be done _At Work in His Study_; but even that would require a good deal of faking. Ought one, for instance, to remove the golf-balls and the cocoa-cup (and the rhyming dictionary) from The Desk? Then I always write with a decayed pencil, and that would look so bad. Messrs. Mump and Gump would have to throw in a quill-pen. And I have no Study. I work in the drawingroom, when the children are not playing in it. To go into The Study I simply walk over to my table and put up a large notice: "THE STUDY. DO NOT SPEAK TO ME. I AM THINKING." Do you think that had better be in the film?

Or I wonder if a Comic would be more effective--a Shaving reel or a Dressing reel? It is the small incidents of every-day life that one should look to for the key to the character of a Public Man; and once a whole third of the population had seen for themselves what pain it gives me to put links and studs and all those things in a clean shirt, they would understand the strange note of melancholy which runs through this article.

But of course an author should have several different reels corresponding to the different kinds of work which he wants to publicitise. (That is a new word which I have just invented, but you will find it in common use in a month or two.) People like Mr. BELLOC will probably require the full politician's ration of twenty or more, but the ordinary writer might rub along with four or five.

When his _Pug, Wog and Pussy_ is on the market there will be a Family reel, in which he is pretending to be a tree and the children are climbing it. And when he has just published _The Cruise of the Cow_; or, _Seven Hours at Sea_, he will be seen with an intense expression tying a bowline on a bight or madly hauling on the throat-halyard--at Messrs. Mump and Gump's specially-equipped ponds. And for his passionate romance, _The Borrowed Bride_---- But I don't know what he will do then.

And even now we have not exhausted the list of Public Men. There are clergymen. Don't you feel that some of those sermons might be thrown on the screen--and left there? A. P. H.

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The Merry Bishop.

The Dean of CAPE TOWN with a critical frown To the jests of St. Albans' gay Bishop demurs; But the Bishop denies the offence and implies 'Tis the way of all asses to nibble at FURSE.

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