Little Rays of Moonshine
BOOKS BY A. P. HERBERT
THE BOMBER GIPSY
THE SECRET BATTLE
THE HOUSE-BY-THE-RIVER
LITTLE RAYS OF MOONSHINE
New York: Alfred A. Knopf
Little Rays of Moonshine
By
A. P. Herbert
New York
Alfred · A. · Knopf
1921
Copyright, 1921, by
ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
DEDICATED WITH RESPECT
TO
LESLIE SCOTT, K.C., M.P.
Most of these pieces have appeared in the pages
of Punch, and I have to thank the Proprietors
of that paper for their courtesy in permitting
me to republish. “The Book of Jonah”
appeared in The London Mercury, “The Supreme
Court” in The Outlook, “The Art of
Drawing” and “Reading Without Tears” in
Land and Water, which perished a few weeks
later. I thank them all. A.P.H.
Contents
| Wrong Numbers |
9 |
| The Genius of Mr. Bradshaw |
17 |
| Five Inches |
23 |
| Reading Without Tears |
28 |
| On With the Dance |
35 |
| The Autobiography |
42 |
| The White Spat |
47 |
| The Art of Drawing |
55 |
| About Bathrooms |
61 |
| A Criminal Type |
67 |
| The Art of Poetry |
73 |
| The Book of Jonah |
94 |
| The Mystery of the Apple-pie Beds |
105 |
| The Grasshopper |
112 |
| Little Bits of London |
118 |
| I The Supreme Court |
118 |
| II “The Bear Garden” |
126 |
| III Billingsgate |
133 |
| IV The Bloater Show |
140 |
| V Bond Street |
145 |
| The Little Guiggols |
151 |
I HAVE invented a new telephone game. It
is a thoroughly discreditable, anti-social
game, and I am not proud of it, but it has
been forced upon me by circumstances. It is now
clear that my telephone number is the only one
the operators know, and my game follows the lines
of all the best modern movements, the principle
of which is that, if you cannot hit the man you
are annoyed with, you hit somebody else instead.
Nowadays, when some perfect stranger is introduced
to me in error on the telephone, I no longer
murmur, “Wrong number, I’m afraid,” in my
usual accents of sweet sympathy, cool resignation,
irritation, hatred or black despair; I pretend that
it is the right number. I lead my fellow-victim on
into a morass of mystification; I worm out his
precious secrets; I waste his precious time. If
you can square your conscience you will find it is
a glorious game, though I ought to add that considerable
skill is required. It is best, perhaps, to
make a general rule of answering the call in the[Pg 10]
first instance in a high feminine voice, as much like
a housemaid, or a charwoman, or a Government
typist as possible; then you are prepared for any
development.
The following are some of the best matches
I have played:——
I
Me. Hullo!
A Voice. Is that the Midland Railway?
Me. Yes, Madam. Which department do you
require?
A V. It’s about some eggs. An egg-box was
despatched from Hitchin——
Me (obsequious). I will put you through to
the Goods and Transit Department, Madam.
A V. (fervent). Oh, thank you!
Me (after a short stroll round the garden—in
a gruff railway-voice). Hullo! Motor-vans and
Haulage Department——
A V. Oh, it’s about some eggs. An egg-box——
Me (more in sorrow than in anger). You require
the Goods and Transit Department. I will
put you through.
A V. Oh, thank you!
Me (after planting a few more of those confounded
[Pg 11]cuttings—very suddenly). The 4.45 to
Bunby Major is suspended, Sir.
A V. (apologetic). I want to speak about some
eggs——
Me (horrified). Some legs!
A V. (patient). No, some eggs:—E—double
G—S, eggs. An egg-box was despatched from
Hitchin by a friend of mine on the 21st——
Me (sharply). What name, Madam?
A V. Major Bludyer. It was despatched
on——
Me. Is he one of the Buckinghamshire Bludyers?
A V. What? Hullo!... Hullo! It was
despatched on——
Me. I mean, is he the Major Bludyer—that
well-grown old boy? From what I know of his
eggs——
A V. (growing fainter). I can’t hear you very
well. It’s about some eggs——
Me. Well, I’m very glad to have had this little
talk. Remember me to old Bludyer. Good-bye.
II
Me (squeaky). Hullo!
A Voice (business-like, in a great hurry).
Hullo! Is that you, Mortimer?
[Pg 12]
Me (very deliberate). Mr. Mortimer is in the
next room. If you will hold the line I will fetch
him. Who is it speaking, please?
A V. Oh, never mind that.
Me (firm). Who is it speaking, please?
A V. Oh, da——! Say it’s George. And be
quick, please.
Me (after a good deal of unavoidable delay).
Hullo, George!
A V. Hullo, Mortimer! You have been a
time! Look here—about this meeting: have you
got your minutes ready yet?
Me. Not quite. Practically. I was just doing
them——
A V. Oh! Well, it’s like this: I’ve had a talk
with Sir Donald and he thinks you’d better leave
out that scene about Atkins and the Debentures.
He thinks we might have trouble with the Manchester
lot if you read that out, but if you don’t
say anything about it they’ll never know——
Me. You dirty dog!
A V. What’s that?
Me (innocent). I didn’t say anything. I think
there’s someone on the line—(in a brand-new
voice) Cuckoo!
A V. (indignant). I say, Sir, do you mind getting
off the line? Hullo! Hullo!... He’s
gone now. Well, don’t forget that. So long, old[Pg 13]
man. Sorry you couldn’t come round the other
night; I wanted you to meet my fiancée—you
haven’t, have you?
Me. Which one.
A V. (skittishly). You old ass—Miss Tickle,
of course.
Me.. Oh, I know her. As a matter of fact I
was engaged to her myself once—but that’s many
years ago.
A V. What’s that? You sound as if you’d got
a cold.
Me. I rather think I have. You always make
such a draught down the telephone. Good-bye,
old man.
III
A Voice. Is that the Box-Office?
Me. Which Box-Office?
A V. Is that the Paragon Theatre?
Me. Yes, Madam.
A V. Oh, have you two seats for next Thursday?
Me. Yes, Madam. There is a stall in row D,
and I have one seat left in the back row in the
dress-circle—a very good view of the stage,
Madam.
A V. Oh, but I want them together.
[Pg 14]
Me. I’m afraid we never sell seats together,
Madam. The Lord Chamberlain——
A V. Oh, but——
Me. May I ask why you want to see this play,
Madam?
A V. I can’t hear you.... Hullo!
Me. I mean, between ourselves, it’s a thoroughly
bad adaptation of a thoroughly bad foreign
play thoroughly badly acted by a rotten lot
of actors. Letty Loo is perfectly awful, and
there’s no room for your legs, unless you would
care for a box, and there isn’t one if you would;
so if I were you I should stay quietly at home with
Henry. Au revoir!
IV
A Voice (most important). Hullo! Is that
the Treasury?
Me (sweetly feminine). Treasury speaking.
A V. (as if the end of the world was in sight).
I want to speak to the Prime Minister’s Private
Secretary.
Me. The Prime Minister’s Private Secretary
is engaged. I can put you through to the Whips’
Office.
A V. (angrily). I don’t want the Whips’ Office.
I want——
[Pg 15]
Me. One moment, please.
[A good many moments pass.]
A V. (menacing). Hullo! Hullo! Hullo!
Me (sweetly, as if conferring some priceless
boon). Put three pennies in the slot and turn the
handle, please.
A V. (spluttering). Look here, put me through
to the supervisor at once.
Me (very far off). Supervisor speaking.
A V. (with suppressed passion, yet pompous
withal). Look here—I’m a Member of Parliament.
I’ve been——
Me (gently). Do not shout into the receiver,
please.
A V. Hullo! I’m a——
Me. Do not say “Hullo!”
A V. (maddened). What’s that? Hullo!
Look here—I’m a Member of Parliament, and
I’ve been trying for half an hour to get through
to the Prime Minister’s——
Me. I am sorry you have been trrrr-roubled.
You are thrrrrough now.
A V. Hullo! Is that the Prime Minister’s
Private Secretary?
Me (quiet, weary and competent). Which one
do you want?
A V. Hullo! Sir Thingummy Jig speaking.
I want to speak to the Prime Minister’s——
[Pg 16]
Me. Yes, I heard that. But do you want the
Principal Private Secretary, or the Assistant Principal
Private Secretary, or one of the Personal
Private Secretaries? I mean there are forty-seven
of us altogether and it makes a lot of difference——
A V. (weakening). I can’t quite hear. Perhaps
you can help me. It’s about——
Me. One moment, please. Here is the Prime
Minister himself. Would you mind speaking to
him? I’m rather busy.
A V. (awestruck). Of course.... Hullo!
Me. Hullo!... The Prime Minister speaking....
Look here, Jig, I want to have a word
with you. Would you mind holding the line a moment
while I speak to my secretary?
A V. (fawning). By all means.... There’s
no hurry—no hurry at all.
· · · · ·
As far as I know the poor fellow is holding still.
[Pg 17]
The Genius of Mr. Bradshaw
NO one will be surprised to hear that the
Christian name of Mr. Bradshaw was
George. Indeed, it is difficult to think what
other name a man of his calibre could have had.
But many people will be surprised to hear that
Mr. Bradshaw is no longer alive. Whatever one
thinks of his work one is inclined to think of him
as a living personality, working laboriously at
some terminus—probably at the Charing Cross
Hotel. But it is not so. He died, in fact, in 1853.
His first book—or rather the first edition of his
book[1]—was published in 1839; yet, unlike the
author, it still lives. He is, in fact, the supreme
example of the posthumous serial writer. I have
no information about Mr. Debrett and Mr.
Burke, but the style and substance of their work
are relatively so flimsy that one is justified, I think,
in neglecting them. In any case their public is a
limited one. So, of course, is Mr. Bradshaw’s;[Pg 18]
but it is better than theirs. Mr. Debrett’s book
we read idly in an idle hour; when we read Mr.
Bradshaw’s it is because we feel that we simply
must; and that perhaps is the surest test of genius.
It is no wonder that in some circles Mr. Bradshaw
holds a position comparable only to the
position of Homer. I once knew an elderly clergyman
who knew the whole of Mr. Bradshaw’s book
by heart. He could tell you without hesitation
the time of any train from anywhere to anywhere
else. He looked forward each month to the new
number as other people look forward to the new
numbers of magazines. When it came he skimmed
eagerly through its pages and noted with a fierce
excitement that they had taken off the 5.30 from
Larne Harbour, or that the 7.30 from Galashiels
was stopping that month at Shankend. He knew
all the connections; he knew all the restaurant
trains; and, if you mentioned the 6.15 to Little
Buxton, he could tell you offhand whether it was
a Saturdays Only or a Saturdays Excepted.
This is the exact truth, and I gathered that he
was not unique. It seems that there is a Bradshaw
cult; there may even be a Bradshaw club,
where they meet at intervals for Bradshaw dinners,
after which a paper is read on “Changes
I have made, with some Observations on Salisbury.”
I suppose some of them have first editions,[Pg 19]
and talk about them very proudly; and they
have hot academic discussions on the best way to
get from Barnham Junction to Cardiff without
going through Bristol. Then they drink the toast
of “The Master” and go home in omnibuses. My
friend was a schoolmaster and took a small class
of boys in Bradshaw; he said they knew as much
about it as he did. I call that corrupting the
young.
But apart from this little band of admirers I
am afraid that the book does suffer from neglect.
Who is there, for example, who has read the
“Directions” on page 1, where we are actually
shown the method of reading tentatively suggested
by the author himself? The odinary
reader, coming across a certain kind of thin line,
lightly dismisses it as a misprint or a restaurant
car on Fridays. If he had read the Preface he
would know that it meant a SHUNT. He would
know that a SHUNT means that passengers are
enabled to continue their journey by changing into
the next train. Whether he would know what that
means I do not know. The best authorities suppose
it to be a poetical way of saying that you have
to change—what is called an euphemism.
No, you must not neglect the Preface; and you
must not neglect the Appendix on Hotels. As
sometimes happens in works of a philanthropic[Pg 20]
character, Mr. Bradshaw’s Appendix has a human
charm that is lacking in his treatment of his principal
theme, the arrival and departure of trains.
To the careful student it reveals also a high degree
of organization among his collaborators, the
hotel-managers. It is obvious, for example, that
at Bournemouth there must be at least one hotel
which has the finest situation on the south coast.
Indeed one would expect to find that there was
more than one. But no; Bournemouth, exceptionally
fortunate in having at once the most select
hotel on the south coast, the largest and best-appointed
hotel on the south coast and the largest
and most up-to-date hotel on the south coast,
has positively only one which has the finest position
on the south coast. Indeed, there is only
one of these in the whole of England, though there
are two which have the finest position on the east
coast.
How is it, we wonder that with so much variation
on a single theme such artistic restraint is
achieved? It is clear, I think, that before they
send in their manuscripts the hotel-managers
must meet somewhere and agree together the
exact terms of their contributions to the book.
“The George” agrees that for the coming year
“The Crown” shall have the “finest cuisine in
England,” provided “The George” may have[Pg 21]
“the most charming situation imaginable,” and
so on. I should like to be at one of those meetings.
This is the only theory which accounts for the
curious phrases we find so frequently in the text:
“Acknowledged to be the finest”; “Admittedly in
the best position.” Who is it that acknowledges
or admits these things? It must be the other
managers at these annual meetings. Yes, the restraint
of the collaborators is wonderful, and in
one point only has it broken down. There are no
fewer than seventeen hotels with an Unrivalled
Situation, and two of these are at Harrogate. For
a small place like the British Isles it seems to me
that this is too many.
For the rest, what imagery, what exaltation we
find in this Appendix! Dazed with imagined
beauty we pass from one splendid haunt to another.
One of them has three golf-courses of its
own; several are replete with every comfort (and
is not “replete” the perfect epithet?). Here is a
seductive one “on the sea-edge,” and another
whose principal glory is its sanitary certificate.
Another stands on the spot where Tennyson received
his inspiration for the Idylls of the King,
and leaves it at that. In such a spot even “cuisine”
is negligible.
On the whole, from a literary point of view,[Pg 22]
the hydros come out better than the mere hotels.
But of course they have unequalled advantages.
With such material as Dowsing Radiant Heat,
D’Arsonval High Frequency and Fango Mud
Treatment almost any writer could be sensational.
What is High Frequency, I wonder? It is clear,
at any rate, that it would be madness to have a
hydro without it.
Well, I have selected my hotel—on purely literary
grounds. Or rather I have selected two.
One is the place where they have the Famous
Whirlpool Baths. I shall go there at once.
The manager of the other is a great artist;
alone among the collaborators he understands
simplicity. His contribution occupies a whole
page; but there is practically nothing in it; nothing
about cuisine or sanitation, or elegance, or comfort.
Only, in the middle, he writes, quite simply:
The Most Perfect Hotel in the World.[Pg 23]
Five Inches
THE GREAT JOKE
THEY came and split a turkey with us on
Boxing Day, ten old soldiers, all out of a
job, and only ten legs between them. At
least there were only ten real legs; two of them
had admirable imitation ones, and there were sixteen
excellent crutches. One of them was a miner—was,
of course; just now he is not mining much;
perhaps that is why he seemed such a decent
fellow, not at all violent or unpleasant, as one
knows those practising miners are. In fact he
reminded one of the miners one used to have in
one’s platoon. Personally I had the honour to
have a whole platoon of them. Odd, isn’t it, what
capital fellows they were then, and how sadly they
deteriorate when they get back to the mines? And
it was odd, too, to hear this fellow say that he
wished he could be back in the pits; I thought it
was such a hateful and dangerous occupation.
Yes, he was a nice miner, and so were the rest[Pg 24]
of them, very cheerful and respectful. But they
didn’t talk much—at first. It was strangely difficult
to find a safe subject. A few years ago
there would have been no difficulty; one would
have talked war-shop. “Were you ever at
Ypres?” “I was on Gallipoli.” “Did you know
Captain ——?” and so on. We did a little of
this, but it didn’t go very well.
In the dining-room I keep a large coloured
photograph of the top of the Vimy Ridge on the
day of a battle—you know the sort of thing, a
hideous expanse of broken brown earth, that
dreadful endless brown, with walls of smoke all
round the horizon, shells bursting in the middle
distance, a battered trench in the foreground, with
a few scattered men climbing out of it, gazing at
the camera with expressionless faces, stretcher-bearers
stooping on the parapet with their
stretchers on their shoulders, odd men straying
everywhere like lost sheep across the chocolate
wilderness, looking aimless, looking small.
Our guests were interested in that picture; it
was wonderfully like, they said; but I felt that
my usual remark about it was hardly suitable.
Usually I tell my guests, and it is true, that I keep
the picture as a kind of chastener, so that, when
I am moved to complain at the troubles of this
world, I can look at the picture and think, “At[Pg 25]
any rate life is better than it was then——.” It
was on the tip of my tongue to say so to the one-legged
men when it came to me that for them,
perhaps, at the moment, it wasn’t true.
After the turkey and the pudding and the
crackers, and of course the beer, there was a
slight thaw, but it was still very difficult. We tried
to get them to sing. Only a few years ago how
easy it was. There was “Tipperary” and many
another rousing chorus. One was familiar in
those times with the popular songs of the day.
Unfortunately these were the only songs we could
produce now. And they didn’t suit. “Keep the
Home-fires Burning,” for instance—one didn’t
like to suggest that. The chief minstrel of the
one-legged men, who was also the chief comedian,
disinterred from a heap of old music, “Your King
and Country Need You.” “How would that go,
Bert?” he said. He said it without bitterness, I
don’t know why, and Bert’s answer was a silent
grin, and one felt that Bert was right. “Pack up
your Troubles in your old Kit-bag,” “Till the
Boys Come Home”—all the old titles had a certain
ironic underlining in that company.
So we abandoned singing and we sat rather
silent. There was some desultory conversation
about the various “trades” to which a grateful
State had trained them, and left it at that; there[Pg 26]
was some mild chaff of Bill, who had been too
old (at thirty-five) to be trained at all, though
not too old to learn musketry and lose a leg; but
socially one felt the “party” was drifting to disaster.
It was saved, like many parties, by “shop,” and
not war-shop, at least not exactly. What sort of
shop will amuse ten one-legged men? Why, one-legged
shop, of course. Somebody said, “Is your
leg comfortable?” and that set the ball rolling.
All the tongues wagged gleefully at once; all the
technical details of one-legedness, all the points
of the various kinds of “legs,” were brought out
and tossed about and hotly contested as if we had
been a number of golfers arguing the merits of
different makes of putters. Some of us wear
“stump-socks”; some of us can’t stand the things.
Some of us have “buckets” (graphically described)
which we can comfortably pad, and some
of us have something else not nearly so good.
Some of us are excited about the new “aluminium”
legs, four pounds lighter, which are soon to be
available, though we think it a terrible waste of
money now that we have most of us got wooden
ones. Here is a chance for the “economising”
campaigners! Now then, Lord Rothermere, “No
Aluminium Legs!” What a war-cry! Altogether[Pg 27]
it is an enthralling topic; there is no more awkwardness....
And it is so amusing. Gad, how we laughed!
There was the story of the man on the Underground,
a friend of ours. Someone trod on his
false foot in the crowded train and, scrambling
out in a hurry at a station, he found himself footless
on the platform, while the train slid away
with the other fellow still standing on his foot.
Ha, ha! how we laughed.
But most of us are “above the knee,” and that
provides the best joke of all. You see it all depends
on the length of your stump (or “stoomp”).
If you have five inches left you get an eighty per
cent pension; if you have more you get less—even
if it is only five and a quarter. That quarter of
an inch makes all the difference, financially, though
practically it isn’t a great deal of use. How much
have you got? Ah, you’re unlucky. I’m four and
three-quarters—a near thing, eh? Peals of
laughter. “You go back and have another inch
off. Ho, ho, ho!” We roll about in our chairs.
Well, well, it’s a queer world; but the party was
a great success after all.
[Pg 28]
Reading Without Tears
I AM teaching my daughter to read. It is very
difficult. I cannot imagine how I learned to
read myself. And when I look at the classic
called Reading Without Tears, which was, I understand,
the foundation of my learning, I am yet
more puzzled. The author of the book seems to
believe strongly in original sin. In the Preface I
read: “Tears must be shed by sinful little creatures
subject to waywardness and deserving so many reproofs
and corrections”; but reading need not be
such an occasion; and again, “Observe their minutest
actions; shut not your eyes to their sinful
nature; nor believe them incapable of injustice or
unkindness, of deceit of covetousness.” Perhaps
this attitude explains the book.
The author’s great idea is pictures. A is like a
hut with a window upstairs. B, on the other
hand, is like a house with two windows; and little
b is like a child with a wide frock coming to you.
When I look at the pictures opposite I see what
the author means, but when I look at A and B and[Pg 29]
little b dispassionately by themselves they suggest
nothing at all to me. I simply cannot imagine the
hut or the house or the child with the wide frock.
“Did we really...?”
A is like a hut
with a window
upstairs
B is like a
house with two
windows
C is like
an open mouth
But let us look at some more. D is like an old
man leaning on a stick; E is like a carriage with a
little seat for the driver; G is like a monkey eating
a cake. These are no better. Try as I may, I
cannot see the little seat for the driver; or if I
do, I see it just as vividly in F. But F is like a
tree with a seat for a child. So I know that I am
wrong.
Now the pictorial memory is a valuable thing;[Pg 30]
and this pictorial method of teaching is no doubt
valuable. But surely the pictures are of no real
use unless there is some inevitable connection,
however slight, between the form of the thing
which it is desired to impress on the memory and
the picture with which it is compared. My daughter’s
imagination is, of course, much more vivid
than mine, but, even so, I cannot imagine her looking
coolly at the naked D and saying, “Yes, that
is the old man leaning on a stick.” She is more
likely to say, “That is the ground-floor of the
house with two windows,” for she has a logical
mind. And even if she does not remember the
futile picture of the old man in a long shirt with
his body bent at right angles to his legs, I don’t
see why, even then, she should connect him with
D. There is nothing peculiarly D-ish about an
old man. Yet it seems that I learned my alphabet
in this way. I was a clever child, though sinful,
I fear.
Then we get on to words. The book follows
the first principle of all teachers of languages in
arranging that among the first words which the
child learns there are as many words as possible
which he will never use as a child, and, indeed,
will probably never encounter in his entire career.
Prominent among the first words in this book are
such favourites as pap, bin, hob, sob, and sop, emmet
[Pg 31]and tome. Each of these is printed three
times, in a column, like this:
| Pat |
Pan |
Pap |
| PAT |
PAN |
PAP |
| pat |
pan |
pap |
Over each column is a little picture. When you
are teaching the child pap you say to her: “P-aP,
pap—do you see the pretty picture? That is a
nanny with a baby in her lap. She is giving the
baby a bottle. The bottle has pap in it. At least,
it is not pap, really, but it is called pap for the
purposes of the alphabet. You remember the
letters, don’t you? First there is a big P—you
know, like a man with a pack on his back. Then a
little a, which is like a goose on the water. Then
a little p; that is like another man coming to you
with a pack on his back. Now we have it all in
big letters. Maggie, read them out.”
Maggie (firmly). K.
You. No, no, not K. Don’t you remember the
picture?
Maggie. Yes, it was a nanny with a baby.
You. No, not that one. It was a man with a
pack on his back—P.
Maggie. P.
You. That’s right. What comes next?
Maggie. A goose on the water.
You. No, that was a little a. This is a big[Pg 32]
letter. Don’t you remember the dear little hut
with the window upstairs? What letter was that?
Maggie. B.
You. No, no, that was a house, not a hut, and
it had two windows. Don’t be so inaccurate. This
is a big A. Now, what’s next?
Maggie. A little house with a nanny inside.
And there’s a goose in the garden. And a baby.
You (patiently). No, this is another P. He
is like a man with a pack on his back. P-A-P pap—there
you are. That’s very good.
Maggie. May I go into the garden now?
You. Yes.
After that we learn sentences, and we raise in
the child’s mind a few more simple pictures of
Nature by repeating several times such statements
as:
The author introduces us to Ben, who can sup
sop. Ben, however, has a fat pup, and this pup
cannot sip sop. My daughter, as I said, has a
logical mind, and she immediately asked if Ben’s
pup could sup sop. She had perceived at once
that if he could neither sip nor sup the unfortunate
animal was cut off from sop altogether. I said I
didn’t know. I don’t. But I see that Ben fed
Poll on bun, so I expect he gave the pup some too.
[Pg 33]
It is a pity that the author could not provide
pictures for some of the more striking incidents
she records. Some of these would do:
I met a cat in a bog
I sat in a bog
A hog is in a bog
A wig is in a bog
A pen is in a bog
I had a red bed
Ten men had a pen
I had a wet hen
I fed ten men in a den
I should have thought that by appropriate illustrations
the child might have been helped to a
greater knowledge, not only of letters, but of life.
But perhaps the most vivid of all these pages is
page 99, which I produce verbatim:
A bun is in a tun
A gun is in a tun
A dog is in a tun
A hog is in a tun
A pig is in a tun
A wig is in a tun
A hen is in a tun
A pen is in a tun
Note.—Let the child begin the book again, if it likes.
What is a tun? Until I started out to educate
my daughter I did not know. But then, I am not
a sinful child. For hush! it seems to be a sort of
barrel. I have drawn rather a jolly tun myself.
[Pg 34]
If we could only look back into our childish
minds and really recapture the impressions of life
(if any) which inhabitated us at the end of a day
when we had triumphantly mastered page 99 and
similar pages, and if one could set those impressions
down in print, what rich romances might be
born into the world!
But is there no Society for the Protection of
Children from This Sort of Book?
A pen is in a tun.”
[Pg 35]
On With the Dance
I HAVE been to a dance; or rather I have
been to a fashionable restaurant where dancing
is done. I was not invited to a dance—there
are very good reasons for that; I was invited
to dinner. But many of my fellow-guests
have invested a lot of money in dancing. That is
to say, they keep on paying dancing-instructors to
teach them new tricks; and the dancing-instructors,
who know their business, keep on inventing new
tricks. As soon as they have taught everybody a
new step they say it is unfashionable and invent
a new one. This is all very well, but it means that,
in order to keep up with them and get your
money’s worth out of the last trick you learned,
it is necessary during its brief life of respectability
to dance at every available opportunity. You
dance as many nights a week as is physically possible;
you dance on week-days and you dance on
Sundays; you begin dancing in the afternoon and
you dance during tea in the coffee-rooms of expensive
restaurants, whirling your precarious way[Pg 36]
through littered and abandoned tea-tables; and at
dinner-time you leap up madly before the fish and
dance like variety artistes in a highly polished
arena before a crowd of complete strangers eating
their food; or, as if seized with an uncontrollable
craving for the dance, you fling out after the joint
for one wild gallop in an outer room, from which
you return, perspiring and dyspeptic, to the consumption
of an ice-pudding, before dashing forth
to the final orgy at a picture-gallery, where the
walls are appropriately covered with pictures of
barbaric women dressed for the hot weather.
That is what happened at this dinner. As soon
as you had started a nice conversation with a lady
a sort of roaring was heard without; her eyes
gleamed, her nostrils quivered like a horse planning
a gallop, and in the middle of one of your
best sentences she simply faded away with some
horrible man at the other end of the table who
was probably “the only man in London who can
do the Double Straddle properly.” This went on
the whole of the meal, and it made connected conversation
quite difficult. For my own part I went
on eating, and when I had properly digested I
went out and looked at the little victims getting
their money’s worth.
From the door of the room where the dancing
was done a confused uproar overflowed, as if several[Pg 37]
men of powerful physique were banging a
number of pokers against a number of saucepans,
and blowing whistles, and occasional catcalls, and
now and then beating a drum and several sets of
huge cymbals, and ceaselessly twanging at innumerable
banjos, and at the same time singing in a
foreign language, and shouting curses or exhortations
or street cries, or imitating hunting-calls and
the cry of the hyena, or uniting suddenly in the
war-whoop of some pitiless Sudan tribe.
It was a really terrible noise. It hit you like
the back-blast of an explosion as you entered the
room. There was no distinguishable tune. It
was simply an enormous noise. But there was
a kind of savage rhythm about it which made one
think immediately of Indians and fierce men and
the native camps one used to visit at the Earl’s
Court Exhibition. And this was not surprising.
For the musicians included one genuine negro and
three men with their faces blacked; and the noise
and the rhythm were the authentic music of a
negro village in South Africa, and the words
which some genius had once set to the noise were
an exhortation to go to the place where the negroes
dwelt.
To judge by their movements, many of the
dancers had, in fact, been there, and had carefully
studied the best indigenous models. They were[Pg 38]
doing some quite extraordinary things. No two
couples were doing quite the same thing for more
than a few seconds so that there was endless variety
of extraordinary postures. Some of them
shuffled secretly along the edges of the room, their
faces tense, their shoulders swaying like reeds in
a light wind, their progress almost imperceptible;
they did not rotate, they did not speak, but sometimes
the tremor of a skirt or the slight stirring
of a patent-leather shoe showed that they were indeed
alive and in motion, though that motion was
as the motion of a glacier, not to be measured in
minutes or yards.
And some in a kind of fever rushed hither and
thither among the thick crowd, avoiding disaster
with marvellous dexterity; and sometimes they revolved
slowly and sometimes quickly and sometimes
spun giddily round for a moment like gyroscopic
tops. Then they too would be seized with
a kind of trance, or it may be with sheer shortness
of breath, and hung motionless for a little in the
centre of the room, while the mad throng jostled
and flowed about them like the leaves in autumn
round a dead bird.
And some did not revolve at all, but charged
straightly up and down; and some of these thrust
their loves forever before them, as the Prussians
thrust the villagers in the face of the enemy, and[Pg 39]
some forever navigated themselves backwards
like moving breakwaters to protect their darlings
from the rude, precipitate seas.
Some of them kept themselves as upright as
possible, swaying slightly like willows from the
hips, and some of them contorted themselves into
strange and angular shapes, now leaning perilously
forward till they were practically lying upon their
terrified partners, and now bending sideways as
a man bends who has water in one ear after bathing.
All of them clutched each other in a close
and intimate manner, but some, as if by separation
to intensify the joy of their union, or perhaps to
secure greater freedom for some particular
spacious manœuvre, would part suddenly in the
middle of the room and, clinging distantly with
their hands, execute a number of complicated side-steps
in opposite directions, or aim a series of vicious
kicks at each other, after which they would
reunite in a passionate embrace and gallop in a
frenzy round the room, or fall into a trance, or
simply fall down. If they fell down they lay still
for a moment in the fearful expectation of death,
as men lie who fall under a horse; and then they
would creep on hands and knees to the wall
through the whirling and indifferent crowd.
Watching them, you could not tell what any
one couple would do next. The most placid and[Pg 40]
dignified among them might at any moment fling
a leg out behind them and almost kneel in mutual
adoration, and then, as if nothing unusual had
happened, shuffle onward through the press; or,
as though some electric mechanism had been set
in motion, they would suddenly lift a foot sideways
and stand on one leg. Poised pathetically,
as if waiting for the happy signal when they might
put the other leg down, these men looked very sad,
and I wished that the Medusa’s head might be
smuggled somehow into the room for their attitudes
to be imperishably recorded in cold stone;
it would have been a valuable addition to modern
sculpture.
Upon this whirlpool I embarked with the
greatest misgiving and a strange young woman
clinging to my person. The noise was deafening.
The four black men were now all shouting at once
and playing all their instruments at once, working
up to the inconceivable uproar of the finale; and
all the dancers began to dance with a last desperate
fury. Bodies buffeted one from behind, and
while one was yet looking round in apology or
anger more bodies buffeted one from the flank.
It was like swimming in a choppy sea, where there
is no time to get the last wave out of your mouth
before the next one hits you.
Close beside us a couple fell down with a great[Pg 41]
crash. I looked at them with concern, but no one
else took any notice. On with the dance! Faster
and faster the black men played. I was dimly
aware now that they were standing on their chairs,
bellowing, and fancied the end must be near.
Then we were washed into a quiet backwater, in
a corner, and from here I determined never to
issue until the Last Banjo should indeed sound.
Here I sidled vaguely about for a long time, hoping
that I looked like a man preparing for some
culminating feat, a side-step or a buzz or a double
Jazz-spin or an ordinary fall down.
The noise suddenly ceased; the four black men
had exploded.
“Very good exercise,” my partner said.
“Quite,” said I.
[Pg 42]
The Autobiography
JOHN ANTONY GRUNCH was one of the
mildest, most innocent men I ever knew. He
had a wife to whom he was devoted with a
dog-like devotion; he went to church; he was shy
and reserved, and he held a mediocre position in
a firm of envelope-makers in the City. But he
had a romantic soul, and whenever the public
craving for envelopes fell off—and that is seldom—he
used to allay his secret passion for danger,
devilry and excitement by writing sensational
novels. One of these was recently published, and
John Antony is now dead. The novel did it.
Yet it was a very mild sort of “shocker,” about
a very ordinary murder. The villian simply slew
one of his typists in the counting-house with a
sword-umbrella and concealed his guilt by putting
her in a pillar-box. But it had “power,” and it
was very favourably reviewed. One critic said
that “the author, who was obviously a woman,
had treated with singular delicacy and feeling the
ever-urgent problem of female employment in[Pg 43]
our great industrial centres.” Another said that
the book was “a brilliant burlesque of the fashionable
type of detective fiction.” Another wrote
that “it was a conscientious analysis of a perplexing
phase of agricultural life.” John thought that
must refer to the page where he had described
the allotments at Shepherd’s Bush. But he was
pleased and surprised by what they said.
What he did not like was interpretation offered
by his family and his friends, who at once decided
that the work was the autobiography of John Antony.
You see, the scene was laid in London, and
John lived in London; the murdered girl was a
typist, and there were two typists in John’s office;
and, to crown all, the villian in the book had a
boar-hound, and John himself had a Skye terrier.
The thing was as plain as could be. Men he met
in the City said, “How’s that boar-hound of
yours?” or “I like that bit where you hit the
policeman. When did you do that?” “You,”
mark you. Old friends took him aside and whispered,
“Very sorry to hear you don’t hit it off with
Mrs. Grunch; I always thought you were such
a happy couple.” His wife’s family said, “Poor
Gladys! what a life she must have had!” His own
family said, “Poor John! what a life she must
have led him to make him go off with that adventuress!”
Several people identified the adventuress[Pg 44]
as Miss Crook, the Secretary of the local Mother’s
Welfare League, of which John was a vice-president.
The fog of suspicion swelled and spread and
penetrated into every cranny and level of society.
No servants would come near the house, of if they
did they soon stumbled on a copy of the shocker
while doing the drawing-room, read it voraciously
and rushed screaming out of the front door.
When he took a parcel of washing to the post-office
the officials refused to accept it until he had
opened it and shown that there were no bodies
in it.
The animal kingdom is very sensitive to the
suspicion of guilt. John noticed that dogs avoided
him, horses neighed at him, earwigs fled from him
in horror, caterpillars madly spun themselves
into cocoons as he approached, owls hooted, snakes
hissed. Only Mrs. Grunch remained faithful.
But one morning at breakfast Mrs. Grunch
said, “Pass the salt, please, John.” John didn’t
hear. He was reading a letter. Mrs. Grunch
said again, “Pass the salt, please, John.” John
was still engrossed. Mrs. Grunch wanted the salt
pretty badly, so she got up and fetched it. As
she did so she noticed that the handwriting of the
letter was the handwriting of A Woman. Worse,
it was written on the embossed paper of the[Pg 45]
Mother’s Welfare League. It must be from
Miss Crook. And it was. It was about the annual
outing. “Ah, ha!” said Mrs. Grunch. (I
am afraid that “Ah, ha!” doesn’t really convey
to you the sort of sound she made, but you must
just imagine.) “Ah, ha! So that’s why you
couldn’t pass the salt!”
Mad with rage, hatred, fear, chagrin, pique,
jealousy and indigestion, John rushed out of the
house and went to the office. At the door of the
office he met one of the typists. He held the
door open for her. She simpered and refused to
go in front of him. Being still mad with rage,
hatred, chagrin and all those other things, John
made a cross gesture with his umbrella. With a
shrill, shuddering shriek of “Murder!” the girl
cantered violently down Ludgate Hill and was
never seen again. Entering the office, John found
two detectives waiting to ask him a few questions
in connection with the Newcastle Pig-sty Murder,
which had been done with some pointed instrument,
probably an umbrella.
After that The Daily Horror rang up and
asked if he would contribute an article to their
series on “Is Bigamy Worth While?”
Having had enough rushing for one day John
walked slowly out into the street, trying to remember
the various ways in which his characters[Pg 46]
had committed suicide. He threw himself over
the Embankment wall into the river, but fell in a
dinghy which he had not noticed; he bought some
poison, but the chemist recognised his face from
a photograph in the Literary Column of The
Druggist and gave him ipecacuanha (none of you
can spell that); he thought of cutting his throat,
but broke his thumb-nail trying to open the big
blade, and gave it up. Desperate, he decided to
go home. At Victoria he was hustled along the
platform on the pretence that there is more room
in the rear of trains. Finally he was hustled on
to the line and electrocuted.
And everybody said, “So it was true.”
WHEN it is remembered how large a part
has been played in history by revolutionary
and political songs it is both lamentable
and strange that at the present time only
one of the numerous political faiths has a hymn
of its own—“The Red Flag.” The author of the
words owes a good deal, I should say, to the
author of “Rule Britannia,” though I am inclined
to think he has gone one better. The tune is that
gentle old tune which we used to know as “Maryland,”
and by itself it rather suggests a number
of tired sheep waiting to go through a gate than a
lot of people thinking very redly. I fancy the
author realised this, and he has got over it by putting
in some good powerful words like “scarlet,”
“traitors,” “flinch” and “dungeon,” whenever the
tune is particularly sheepish. The effect is effective.
Just imagine if the Middle Classes Union
could march down the middle of the Strand singing
that fine chorus:—
“Then raise the scarlet standard high
Beneath its shade we’ll live and die;
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer
We’ll keep the Red Flag flying here.”
[Pg 48]
Well, I have set myself to supply some other
parties with songs, and I have begun with “The
White Spat,” which is to be the party-hymn of the
High Tories (if any). I have written it to the
same tune as “The Red Flag,” because, when the
lion finally does lie down with the lamb, it will
be much more convenient if they can bleat and
roar in the same metre, and I shall hope to hear
Mr. Robert Williams and Lord Robert Cecil singing
these two songs at once one day. I am not
wholly satisfied with “The White Spat,” but I
think I have caught the true spirit, or, at any
rate, the proper inconsequence of these things:—
The White Spat.
Air—Maryland.
The spats we wear are pure as snow—
We are so careful where we go;
We don’t go near the vulgar bus
Because it always splashes us.
Chorus. We take the road with trustful hearts,
Avoiding all the messy parts;
However dirty you may get
We’ll keep the White Spat spotless yet.
At night there shines a special star
To show us where the puddles are;
The crossing-sweeper sweeps the floor—
That’s what the crossing-sweeper’s for.
Chorus. Then take the road, etc., etc.
[Pg 49]
I know it doesn’t look much, just written down
on paper; but you try singing it and you’ll find
you’re carried away.
Of course there ought to be an international
verse, but I’m afraid I can’t compete with the one
in my model:—
“Look round: the Frenchman loves its blaze,
The sturdy German chants its praise;
In Moscow’s vaults its hymns are sung;
Chicago swells the surging throng.”
“From Russia’s snows to Afric’s sun
The race of spatriots is one;
One faith unites their alien blood—
There’s nothing to be said for mud.”
Now we have the song of the Wee Frees. I
wanted this to be rather pathetic, but I’m not sure
that I haven’t overdone it. The symbolism,
though, is well-nigh perfect, and, after all, the
symbolism is the chief thing. This goes to the
tune of “Annie Laurie”:—
The Old Black Brolly.
Air—Annie Laurie
Under the Old Umbrella,
Beneath the leaking gamp,
Wrapped up in woolly phrases
We battle with the damp.
Come, gather round the gamp!
Observe, it is pre-war;[Pg 50]
And beneath the old Black Brolly
There’s room for several more.
Shameless calumniators
Calumniate like mad;
Detractors keep detracting;
It really is too bad;
It really is too bad.
To show we’re not quite dead,
We wave the old Black Brolly
And hit them on the head.
Then we have the Nationalist Party. I am
rather vague about the National Party, but I
know they are frightfully military, and they keep
on having Mass Rallies in Kensington—complete
with drums, I expect. Where all the masses come
from I don’t quite know, as a prolonged search
has failed to reveal anyone who knows anyone who
is actually a member of the party. Everybody
tells me, though, that there is at least one Brigadier-General
(Tempy.) mixed up with it, if not
two, and at least one Lord, though possibly one
of the Brigadiers is the same as the Lord; but
after all they represent the Nation, so they ought
to have a song. They have nothing but “Rule
Britannia” now, I suppose.
Their song goes to the tune of “The British
Grenadiers.” I have written it as a duet, but
no doubt other parts could be added if the occasion
should ever arise.[2]
[Pg 51]
The National.
Air—The British Grenadiers.
Some talk of Coalitions,
Of Tories and all that;
They are but cheap editions
Of the one and only Nat.;
Our Party has no equals,
Though of course it has its peers,
With a tow, row, row, row, row, row
For the British Brigadiers.
You have no idea how difficult it is to write
down the right number of rows first time; however
I daresay the General wouldn’t mind a few extra
ones.
We represent the Nation
As no one else can do;
Without exaggeration
Our membership is two,
We rally in our masses
And give three hearty cheers,
With a tow, row, row, row, row, row
For the National Brigadiers.
There could be a great deal more of that, but
perhaps you have had enough.
Of course, if you don’t think the poetry of my
songs is good enough, I shall just have to quote
some of “The International” words to show you
that it’s the tune that matters.
[Pg 52]
Here you are:—
“Arise! ye starvelings from your slumbers,
Arise! ye criminals of want,
For reason in revolt now thunders,
And at last ends the age of cant.”
If people can grow excited singing that, my
songs would send them crazy.
Then there is the Coalition. I have had a good
deal of difficulty about this, but I think that at
last I have hit the right note; all my first efforts
were too dignified. This goes to a darkie tune:—
The Piebald Mare.
Air—Camptown Ladies.
Down-town darkies all declare,
Doo-dah, doo-dah,
There never was a hoss like the piebald mare
Doo-dah, doo-dah day!
One half dark and the other half pale,
Doo-dah, doo-dah,
Two fat heads and a great big tail,
Doo-dah, doo-dah day!
Chorus. Gwine to run all night,
Gwine to run all day!
I put my money on the piebald mare
Because she run both way.
Little old Dave he ride that hoss,
[Pg 53]Doo-dah, doo-dah,
Where’ll she be if he takes a toss?
Doo-dah, doo-dah day!
De people try to push him off,
Doo-dah, doo-dah,
De more dey push de more he scoff,
Doo-dah, doo-dah day!
Chorus. Gwine to run, etc.
Over the largest fence they bound,
Doo-dah, doo-dah,
Things exploding all around!
Doo-dah, doo-dah day!
One fine day dat hoss will burst,
Doo-dah, doo-dah,
But little old Dave he’ll walk in first,
Doo-dah, doo-dah day!
Chorus. Gwine to run, etc.
Once again, merely written down, the words
do not thrill, but I hope none of the parties will
definitely reject these hymns till they have heard
them actually sung: if necessary I will give a
trial rendering myself.
The other day, when we were playing charades
and had to act L, we did Lloyd George and the
Coalition; and the people who were acting the
Coalition sang the above song with really wonderful
effect. It is true that the other side thought
we were acting Legion and the Gadarene Swine,
but that must have been because of something[Pg 54]
faulty in our make-up. The sound of this great
anthem was sufficiently impressive to make one
long to hear the real Coalition shouting it all along
Downing Street. It is a solo with chorus, you
understand, and the Coalition come in with a
great roar of excitement and fervour on doo-dah!
doo-dah!
Yes, I like that.
[Pg 55]
The Art of Drawing
IT is commonly said that everybody can sing in
the bathroom; and this is true. Singing is
very easy. Drawing, though, is much more
difficult. I have devoted a good deal of time to
Drawing, one way and another; I have to attend
a great many committees and public meetings,
and at such functions I find that Drawing is almost
the only Art one can satisfactorily pursue during
the speeches. One really cannot sing during the
speeches; so as a rule I draw. I do not say
that I am an expert yet, but after a few more
meetings I calculate that I shall know Drawing
as well as it can be known.
The first thing, of course, is to get on to a really
good committee; and by a good committee I mean
a committee that provides decent materials. An
ordinary departmental committee is no use; generally
they only give you a couple of pages of
lined foolscap and no white blotting-paper, and
very often the pencils are quite soft. White blotting-paper
is essential. I know of no material the[Pg 56]
spoiling of which gives so much artistic pleasure—except
perhaps snow. Indeed, if I was asked to
choose between making pencil-marks on a sheet
of white blotting-paper and making foot-marks
on a sheet of white snow I shall be in a quandary.
Much of the best committees from the point of
view of material are committees about business
which meet at business premises—shipping offices,
for choice. One of the Pacific Lines has the best
white blotting-paper I know; and the pencils there
are a dream. I am sure the directors of that firm
are Drawers; for they always give you two pencils,
one hard for doing noses, and one soft for doing
hair.
Fig. 1
When you have selected your committee
and the speeches are well away, the Drawing
begins. Much the best thing to draw
is a man. Not the chairman, or Lord Pommery
Quint, or any member of the committee,
but just A Man. Many novices
make the mistake of selecting a subject for their
Art before they begin. Usually they select the
chairman; and when they find it is more
like Mr. Gladstone they are discouraged.
If they had waited a little it could have
been Mr. Gladstone officially.
Fig. 2
As a rule I begin with the forehead
and work down to the chin (Fig. 1).
[Pg 57]
When I have done the outline I put in the eye.
This is one of the most difficult parts of Drawing;
one is never quite sure where the eye goes. If,
however, it is not a good eye, a useful tip is to give
the man spectacles; this generally makes him a
clergyman, but it helps the eye (Fig. 2).
Now you have to outline the rest of the head,
and this is rather a gamble. Personally, I go in
for strong heads. (Fig. 3).
I am afraid it is not a strong neck; I expect he
is an author, and is not well fed. But that is the
worst of strong heads; they make it so difficult to
join up the chin and the back of the neck.
The next thing to do is to put in
the ear; and once you have done this
the rest is easy. Ears are much more
difficult than eyes (Fig. 4).
Fig. 3
I hope that is right. It seems to
me to be a little too far to the southward.
But it is done now. And once
you have put in the ear you can’t go back: not
unless you are on a very good committee which
provides india-rubber as well as pencils.
Now I do the hair. Hair may either be very
fuzzy and black, or lightish and thin. It depends
chiefly on what sort of pencils are provided. For
myself I prefer black hair, because then the parting
shows up better (Fig. 5).
[Pg 58]
Until one draws hair, one never realizes what
large heads people have. Doing the hair takes
the whole of a speech, usually even one of the
chairman’s speeches.
Fig. 4 Fig. 5
Fig. 6
This is not one of my best men; I am sure the
ear is in the wrong place. And I am inclined to
think he ought to have spectacles. Only then he
would be a clergyman, and I have decided that he
is Sir Philip Gibbs at the age of twenty. So he
must carry on with his eye as it is.
I find that all my best men face to the west;
it is a curious thing. Sometimes I draw two men
facing each other; but the one facing east is never
good.
[Pg 59]
There, you see (Fig 6)? The one on the right
is a Bolshevik; he has a low forehead and beetling
brows—a most unpleasant man. Yet he has a
powerful face. The one on the left was meant
to be another Bolshevik, arguing with him. But
he has turned out to be a lady, so I have had to
give her a “bun.” She is a lady solicitor; but I
don’t know how she came to be talking to the
Bolshevik. Here are some more men facing east.
They are all a little unconvincing, you see.
When you have learned how to do Men, the
only other things in Drawing are Perspective
and Landscape.
Fig. 7
[Pg 60]
Perspective is great fun: the best thing to do is
a long French road with telegraph poles (Fig. 7).
I have put in a fence as well. Unstable, I fear.
Landscape is chiefly composed of hills and trees.
Trees are the most amusing, especially fluffy trees.
Here is a Landscape (Fig. 8).
Somehow or other a man has got into this landscape;
and, as luck would have it, it is Napoleon.
Apart from this it is not a bad one.
Fig. 8
But it takes a very long speech to get an ambitious
piece of work like this through.
There is one other thing I ought to have said.
Never attempt to draw a man front-face. It
can’t be done.
OF all the beautiful things which are to be
seen in shop windows perhaps the most
beautiful are those luxurious baths in white
enamel, hedged around with attachments and conveniences
in burnished metal. Whenever I see
one of them I stand and covet it for a long time.
Yet even these super-baths fall far short of what
a bath should be; and as for the perfect bathroom
I question if anyone has even imagined it.
The whole attitude of modern civilization to
the bathroom is wrong. Why, for one thing, is it
always the smallest and barest room in the house?
The Romans understood these things; we don’t.
I have never yet been in a bathroom which was
big enough to do my exercises in without either
breaking the light or barking my knuckles against
a wall. It ought to be a big room and opulently
furnished. There ought to be pictures in it, so
that one could lie back and contemplate them—a
picture of troops going up to the trenches, and
another picture of a bus-queue standing in the rain,[Pg 62]
and another picture of a windy day with some
snow in it. Then one would really enjoy one’s
baths.
And there ought to be rich rugs in it and profound
chairs; one would walk about in bare feet
on the rich rugs while the bath was running; and
one would sit in the profound chairs while drying
the ears.
The fact is, a bathroom ought to be equipped
for comfort, like a drawing-room, a good, full,
velvety room; and as things are it is solely
equipped for singing. In the drawing-room,
where we want to sing, we put so many curtains
and carpets and things that most of us can’t sing
at all; and then we wonder that there is no music
in England. Nothing is more maddening than to
hear several men refusing to join in a simple
chorus after dinner, when you know perfectly
well that every one of them has been singing in
a high tenor in his bath before dinner. We all
know the reason, but we don’t take the obvious
remedy. The only thing to do is to take all the
furniture out of the drawing-room and put it
in the bathroom—all except the piano and a
few cane chairs. Then we shouldn’t have those
terrible noises in the early morning, and in the
evening everybody would be a singer. I suppose
that is what they do in Wales.
[Pg 63]
But if we cannot make the bathroom what it
ought to be, the supreme and perfect shrine of
the supreme moment of the day, the one spot in
the house on which no expense or trouble is spared,
we can at least bring the bath itself up to date.
I don’t now, as I did, lay much stress on having
a bath with fifteen different taps. I once stayed
in a house with a bath like that. There was
a hot tap and a cold tap, and hot sea-water and
cold sea-water, and PLUNGE and SPRAY and
SHOWER and WAVE and FLOOD, and one or two
more. To turn on the top tap you had to stand
on a step-ladder, and they were all very highly
polished. I was naturally excited by this, and an
hour before it was time to dress for dinner I
slunk upstairs and hurried into the bathroom and
locked myself in and turned on all the taps at
once. It was strangely disappointing. The sea-water
was mythical. Many of the taps refused to
function at the same time as any other, and the
only two which were really effective were WAVE
and FLOOD. Wave shot out a thin jet of boiling
water which caught me in the chest, and FLOOD
filled the bath with cold water long before it could
be identified and turned off.
No, taps are not of the first importance, though,
properly polished, they look well. But no bath
is complete without one of these attractive bridges[Pg 64]
or trays where one puts the sponges and the soap.
Conveniences like that are a direct stimulus to
washing. The first time I met one I washed myself
all over two or three times simply to make
the most of knowing where the soap was. Now
and then, in fact, in a sort of bravado I deliberately
lost it, so as to be able to catch it again and
put it back in full view on the tray. You can also
rest your feet on the tray when you are washing
them, and so avoid cramp.
Again I like a bathroom where there is an
electric bell just above the bath, which you can
ring with the big toe. This is for use when one
has gone to sleep in the bath and the water is
frozen, or when one has begun to commit suicide
and thought better of it. Apart from these two
occasions it can be used for Morsing instructions
about breakfast to the cook—supposing you have
a cook. And if you haven’t a cook a little bell-ringing
in the basement does no harm.
But the most extraordinary thing about the
modern bath is that there is no provision for
shaving in it. Shaving in the bath I regard as the
last word in systematic luxury. But in the ordinary
bath it is very difficult. There is nowhere to
put anything. There ought to be a kind of shaving
tray attached to every bath, which you could
swing in on a flexible arm, complete with mirror[Pg 65]
and soap and strop, new blades and shaving-papers
and all the other confounded paraphernalia.
Then, I think, shaving would be almost tolerable,
and there wouldn’t be so many of these horrible
beards about.
The same applies to smoking. It is incredible
that to-day in the twentieth century there should
be no recognised way of disposing of cigarette-ends
in the bath. Personally I only smoke pipes in
the bath, but it is impossible to find a place in
which to deposit even a pipe so that it will not
roll off into the water. But I have a brother-in-law
who smokes cigars in the bath, a disgusting
habit. I have often wondered where he hid the
ends, and I find now that he has made a cache of
them in the gas-ring of the geyser. One day the
ash will get into the burners and then the geyser
will explode.
Next door to the shaving and smoking tray
should be the book-rest. I don’t myself do much
reading in the bath, but I have several sisters-in-law
who keep on coming to stay, and they all do
it. Few things make the leaves of a book stick together
so easily as being dropped in a hot bath,
so they had better have a book-rest; and if they
go to sleep I shall set in motion my emergency
waste mechanism, by which the bath can be
emptied in malice from outside.
[Pg 66]
Another of my inventions is the Progress Indicator.
It works like the indicators outside lifts,
which show where the lift is and what it is doing.
My machine shows what stage the man inside has
reached—the washing stage or the merely wallowing
stage, or the drying stage, or the exercises
stage. It shows you at a glance whether it is
worth while to go back to bed or whether it is
time to dig yourself in on the mat. The machine
is specially suitable for hotels and large country
houses where you can’t find out by hammering on
the door and asking, because nobody takes any
notice.
When you have properly fitted out the bathroom
on these lines all that remains is to put the telephone
in and have your meals there; or rather to
have your meals there and not put the telephone
in. It must still remain the one room where a
man is safe from that.
TO-DAY I am MAKing aN inno6£vation.
as you mayalready have guessed, I am typlng
this article myself Zz½lnstead of writing it,
The idea is to save time and exvBKpense, also to
demonstyap demonBTrike= =damn, to demonstratO
that I can type /ust as well as any blessed
girl 1f I give my mInd to iT”” Typlng while
you compose is really extraoraordinarrily easy,
though composing whilr you typE is more difficut.
I rather think my typing style is going to be different
froM my u6sual style, but Idaresay noone
will mind that much. looking back i see that we
made rather a hash of that awfuul wurd extraorordinnaryk?
in the middle of a woRd like thaton
N-e gets quite lost? 2hy do I keep putting questionmarks
instead of fulstopSI wonder. Now
you see i have put a fulllstop instead Of a question
mark it nevvvver reins but it yours.
the typewriter to me has always been a mustery£?
and even now that I have gained a perfect
mastery over the machine in gront of me i have[Pg 68]
npt th3 faintest idea hoW it workss% &or instance
why does the thingonthetop the klnd of
overhead Wailway arrangement move along one
pace afterr every word; I haVe exam aaa ined
the mechanism from all points of view but there
seeems to be noreason atall whyit shouould do
t£is . damn that £, it keeps butting in: it is Just
lik real life. then there are all kinds oF attractive
devisesand levers andbuttons of which is amanvel
in itself, and does somethI5g useful without lettin
on how it does iT.
Forinstance on this machinE which is Ami/et
a mijge7 imean a mi/dgt,made of alumium,, and
very light sothat you caN CARRY it about on
your £olidays (there is that £ again) and typeout
your poems onthe Moon immmmediately, and
there is onely one lot of keys for capITals and
ordinay latters; when you want todoa Capital
you press down a special key marked cap i mean
CAP with the lefft hand and yo7 press down
the letter withthe other, like that abcd, no,
ABCDEFG . how jolly that looks . as a mattr
of fact th is takes a little gettingintoas all the
letters on the keys are printed incapitals so now
and then one forgets topress downthe SPecial
capit al key. not often, though. on the other
hand onceone £as got it down and has written
anice nam e in capitals like LLOYdgeORGE IT[Pg 69]
IS VERY DIFFICULT TO REmemBER TO
PUT IT DOWN AGAIN ANDTHE N YOU
GET THIS SORT OF THING WHICH
SPOILS THE LOOOK OF THE HOLE
PAGE . or els insted of preSSing down the key
marked CAP onepresses down the key m arked
FIG and then instead of LLOYDGEORGE you
find that you have written ½½96%:394:3. this is
very dissheartening and £t is no wonder that
typists are sooften sououred in ther youth.
Apart fromthat though the key marked FIG is
rather fun , since you can rite such amusing things
withit, things like % and @ and dear old & not to
mention = and ¼ and ¾ and ! ! ! i find that inones
ordinarry (i never get that word right) cor orresponden£c
one doesnt use expressions like @@ and
%%% nearly enough. typewriting gives you a
new ideaof possibilities o fthe engli£h language;
thE more i look at % the more beautiful it seems
to Be: and like the simple flowers of england itis
per£aps most beauti£ul when seeen in the masss,
Look atit
% % % % % % % % % % % %
% % % % % % % % % % % %
% % % % % % % % % % % %
% % % % % % % % % % % %
% % % % % % % % % % % %
how would thatdo for a BAThrooM wallpaper?[Pg 70]
it could be produced verery cheaply and
itcould be calld the CHERRYdesigN damn,
imeant to put all that in capitals. iam afraid this
articleis spoilt now but butt bUt curse . But perhaps
the most excitingthing a£out this mac£ine is
that you can by pressing alittle switch suddenly
writein redor green instead of in black; I donvt
understanh how £t is done butit is very jollY?
busisisness men us e the device a gre t deal wen
writing to their membersof PARLIAment, in order
to emphasasise the pointin wich the in£ustice
is worSe than anyone elses in£ustice . wen they
come to WE ARE RUINED they burst out into
red and wen they come to WE w WOULD remIND
YOU tHAT ATtHE LAST E£ECTION
yoU UNDERTOOk they burst into GReeN.
thei r typists must enjoy doing those letters. with
this arrang ment of corse one coul d do allkinds
of capital wallpapers. for lnstance wat about a
scheme of red £’s and black %’s and gReen &’s?
this sort of thing
£ % £ % £ % £ % £ %
& £ & £ & £ & £ & £
£ % £ % £ % £ % £ %
& £ & £ & £ & £ & £
Manya poor man would be glad to £ave that in
his parLour ratherthan wat he has got now. of
corse, you wont be ab?e to apreciate the fulll[Pg 71]
bauty of the design since i underst and that the
retched paper which is going to print this has no
redink and no green inq either; so you must £ust
immagine that the £’s are red and the &’s are
green. it is extroarordinarry (wat a t errible-word!!!)
how backward in MAny waYs these up-todate
papers are wwww¼¼¼¼¼¼½=¾ now how did
that happen i wond er; i was experimenting with
the BACK SPACE key; if that is wat it is for i
dont thinq i shall use it again. iI wonder if i am
impriving at this½ sometimes i thinq i am and so
metimes i thinq iam not. we have not had so
many £’s lately but i notice that theere have been
one or two misplaced q’s & icannot remember to
write i in capital s there it goes again.
O curse the typewriter itself is not wolly giltless
½ike all mac&ines it has amind of it sown and
is of like passsions with ourselves. i could put
that into greek if only the machine was not so
hopelessly MOdern. it’s chief failing is that it
cannot write m’sdecently and instead of h it will
keep putting that confounded £. as amatter of
fact ithas been doing m’s rather better today
butthat is only its cusssedusssedness and because
i have been opening my shoul ders wenever we
have come to an m; or should it be A m? who
can tell; little peculiuliarities like making indifferent
m’s are very important & w£en one is bying[Pg 72]
a typewriter one s£ould make careful enquiries
about themc; because it is things of that sort wich
so often give criminals away. there is notHing
a detective likes so much as a type riter with an
idiosxz an idioynq damit an idiotyncrasy. for instance
if i commit a murder i s£ould not thinq of
writing a litter about it with this of all typewriters
becusa because that fool ofa £ would give me
away at once I daresay scotland Yard have got
specimens of my trypewriting locked up in some
pigeon-hole allready. if they £avent they ought
to; it ought to be part of my dosossier.
i thing the place of the hypewriter in ART is
inshufficiently apreciated. Modern art i understand
is chiefly sumbolical expression and straigt
lines. a typwriter can do strait lines with the under
lining mark) and there are few more atractive
symbols thaN the symbols i have used in this articel;
i merely thro out the sugestion
I dont tink i shal do many more articles like
this it is tooo much like work? but I am glad I
have got out of that £ habit;
A. P. £.
[Pg 73]
The Art of Poetry
I
MANY people have said to me, “I wish I
could write poems. I often try, but——”
They mean, I gather, that the impulse, the
creative itch, is in them, but they don’t know how
to satisfy it. My own position is that I know
how to write poetry, but I can’t be bothered. I
have not got the itch. The least I can do, however,
is to try to help those who have.
A mistake commonly committed by novices is
to make up their minds what it is they are going
to say before they begin. This is superfluous
effort, tending to cramp the style. It is permissible,
if not essential, to select a subject—say,
MUD—but any detailed argument or plan which
may restrict the free development of metre and
rhyme (if any) is to be discouraged.
With that understanding, let us now write a
poem about MUD.
I should begin in this sort of way:—
Mud, mud,
Nothing but mud,
O my God!
[Pg 74]
It will be seen at once that we are not going to
have much rhyme in this poem; or if we do we
shall very soon be compelled to strike a sinister
note, because almost the only rhymes to mud are
blood and flood; while, as the authors of our
hymns have discovered, there are very satisfactory
rhymes to God. They shamefully evaded
the difficulty by using words like road, but in first-class
poetry one cannot do that. On the whole,
therefore, this poem had better be vers libre.
That will take much less time and be more dramatic,
without plunging us into a flood of blood or
anything drastic like that. We now go on with
a little descriptive business:—
Into the sunset, swallowing up the sun,
Crawling, creeping,
The naked flats——
Now there ought to be a verb. That is the worst
of vers libre; one gets carried away by beautiful
phrases and is brought up suddenly by a complete
absence of verbs. However at a pinch one can
do without a verb; that is the best of vers libre:—
Amber and gold,
Deep-stained in mystery,
And the colours of mystery,
Inapprehensible,
Golden like wet-gold,
Amber like a woman of Arabia[Pg 75]
That has in her breast
The forsaken treasures of old Time,
Love and Destruction,
Oblivion and Decay,
And immemorial tins,
Tin upon tin,
Old boots and bottles that hold no more
Their richness in them.
And I——
We might do a good deal more of this descriptive
business, bringing in something about dead
bodies, mud of course being full of dead bodies.
But we had better go on. We strike now the
personal note:—
And I,
I too am no more than a bottle,
An empty bottle,
Heaving helpless on the mud of life,
Without a label and without a cork,
Empty I am, yet no man troubles
To return me.
And why?
Because there is not sixpence on me.
Bah!
The sun goes down,
The birds wheel home,
But I remain here,
Drifting empty under the night,
Drifting——
When one is well away with this part of the
poem it is almost impossible to stop. When you[Pg 76]
are writing in metre you come eventually to the
eighth line of the last verse and you have to stop;
but in vers libre you have no assistance of that
kind. This particular poem is being written for
instructional purposes in a journal of limited capacity,
so it will probably have to stop fairly soon;
but in practice it would go on for a long time yet.
In any case, however, it would end in the same
way, like this:—
Mud, mud,
Nothing but mud,
O, my God!
That reasserts, you see, in a striking manner, the
original motif, and somehow expresses in a few
words the poignant melancholy of the whole
poem. Another advantage in finishing a long
poem, such as this would be, in the same way as
you began it is that it makes it clear to the reader
that he is still reading the same poem. Sometimes,
and especially in vers libre of an emotional
and digressive character, the reader has a hideous
fear that he has turned over two pages and got
into another poem altogether. This little trick
reassures him; and if you are writing vers libre
you must not lose any legitimate opportunity of
reassuring the reader.
To treat the same theme in metre and rhyme[Pg 77]
will be a much more difficult matter. The great
thing will be to avoid having mud at the end of a
line, for the reasons already given. We had better
have long ten-syllable lines, and we had better
have four of them in each verse. Gray wrote an
elegy in that metre which has given general satisfaction.
We will begin:—
As I came down through Chintonbury Hole
The tide rolled out from Wurzel to the sea.
In a serious poem of this kind it is essential to
establish a locality atmosphere at once; therefore
one mentions a few places by name to show that
one has been there. If the reader has been there
too he will like the poem, and if he hasn’t no harm
is done. The only thing is that locally Chintonbury
is probably pronounced Chun’bury, in which
case it will not scan. One cannot be too careful
about that sort of thing. However, as an illustration
Chintonbury will serve.
It is now necessary to show somehow in this
verse that the poem is about mud; it is also necessary
to organize a rhyme for “Hole” and a rhyme
for “sea,” and of the two this is the more important.
I shall do it like this:—
And like the unclothèd levels of my soul
The yellow mud lay mourning nakedly.
There is a good deal to be said against these[Pg 78]
two lines. For one thing I am not sure that the
mud ought to be yellow; it will remind people of
Covent Garden Tube Station, and no one wants to
be reminded of that. However, it does suggest
the inexpressible biliousness of the theme.
I think “levels” is a little weak. It is a good
poetical word and doesn’t mean anything in particular;
but we have too many words of that kind
in this verse. “Deserts” would do, except that
deserts and mud don’t go very well together.
However, that sort of point must be left to the
individual writer.
At first sight the student may think that
“nakedly” is not a good rhyme for “sea.” Nor
is it. If you do that kind of thing in comic poetry
no Editor will give you money. But in serious
poetry it is quite legitimate; in fact it is rather
encouraged. That is why serious poetry is so
much easier than comic poetry. In my next lecture
I shall deal with comic poetry.
I don’t think I shall finish this poem now. The
fact is, I am not feeling so inspired as I was. It
is very hot. Besides, I have got hay-fever and
keep on sneezing. Constant sneezing knocks all
the inspiration out of a man. At the same time
a tendency to hay-fever is a sign of intellect and
culture, and all the great poets were martyrs to
it. That is why none of them grew very lyrical[Pg 79]
about hay. Corn excited them a good deal, and
even straw, but hay hardly ever.
So the student must finish this poem as best he
can, and I shall be glad to consider and criticize
what he does, though I may say at once that
there will be no prize. It ought to go on for another
eight verses or so, though that is not essential
in these days, for if it simply won’t go on it
can just stop in the middle. Only then it must
be headed “Mud: A Fragment.”
And in any case, in the bottom left-hand corner,
the student must write:
Chintonbury, May 28th, 1920.
II
In this lecture I propose to explain how comic
poetry is written.
Comic poetry, as I think I pointed out in my
last lecture, is much more difficult than serious
poetry, because there are all sorts of rules. In
serious poetry there are practically no rules, and
what rules there are may be shattered with impunity
as soon as they become at all inconvenient.
Rhyme, for instance. A well-known Irish poet
once wrote a poem which ran like this:—
“Hands, do as you’re bid,
Draw the balloon of the mind
That bellies and sags in the wind
Into its narrow shed.”
[Pg 80]
This was printed in a serious paper; but if the
poet had sent it up to a humorous paper (as he
might well have done) the Editor would have
said, “Do you pronounce it shid?” and the poet
would have had no answer. You see, he started
out, as serious poets do, with every intention of
organizing a good rhyme for bid—or perhaps for
shed—but he found this was more difficult than
he expected. And then, no doubt, somebody
drove all his cattle on to his croquet-lawn, or
somebody else’s croquet-lawn, and he abandoned
the struggle. I shouldn’t complain of that; what
I do complain of is the deceitfulness of the whole
thing. If a man can’t find a better rhyme than
shed for a simple word like bid, let him give up
the idea of having a rhyme at all; let him write—
Hands, do as you’re TOLD,
or
Into its narrow HUT (or even HANGAR).
That at least would be an honest confession of
failure. But to write bid and shed is simply a sinister
attempt to gain credit for writing a rhymed
poem without doing it at all.
Well, that kind of thing is not allowed in comic
poetry. When I opened my well-known military
epic, “Riddles of the King,” with the couplet—
Full dress (with decorations) will be worn
When General Officers are shot at dawn.
[Pg 81]
the Editor wrote cuttingly in the margin, “Do you
say dorn?”
The correct answer would have been, of course,
“Well, as a matter of fact I do”; but you cannot
make answers of that kind to Editors; they don’t
understand it. And that brings you to the real
drawback of comic poetry; it means constant truck
with Editors. But I must not be drawn into a discussion
about them. In a special lecture—two
special lectures—— Quite.
The lowest form of comic poetry is, of
course, the Limerick; but it is a mistake to suppose
that it is the easiest. It is more difficult to
finish a Limerick than to finish anything in the
world. You see, in a Limerick you cannot begin:—
There was an old man of West Ham
and go on
Who formed an original plan.
finishing the last line with limb or hen or bun.
A serious writer could do that with impunity, and
indeed with praise, but the more exacting traditions
of Limerical composition insist that, having
fixed on Ham as the end of the first line, you must
find two other rhymes to Ham, and good rhymes
too. This is why there is so large a body of uncompleted[Pg 82]
Limericks. For many years I have
been trying to finish the following unfinished
masterpiece:—
There was a young man who said “Hell!
I don’t think I feel very well——”
That was composed on the Gallipoli Peninsula;
in fact it was composed under fire; indeed I remember
now that we were going over the top at
the time. But in the quiet days of Peace I can get
no further with it. It only shows how much
easier it is to begin a Limerick than to end it.
Apart from the subtle phrasing of the second
line this poem is noteworthy because it is cast in
the classic form. All the best Limericks are about
a young man, or else an old one, who said some
short sharp monosyllable in the first line. For
example:—
There was a young man who said “If——
Now what are the rhymes to if? Looking up my
Rhyming Dictionary I see they are:—
| cliff |
hieroglyph |
hippogriff |
| skiff |
sniff stiff |
tiff whiff |
Of these one may reject hippogriff at once, as it is
in the wrong metre. Hieroglyph is attractive, and
we might do worse than:—
There was a young man who said “If
One murdered a hieroglyph——”
[Pg 83]
Having, however, no very clear idea of the nature
of a hieroglyph I am afraid that this will also
join the long list of unfinished masterpieces. Personally
I should incline to something of this
kind:—
There was a young man who said “If
I threw myself over a cliff
I do not believe
One person would grieve——”
Now the last line is going to be very difficult.
The tragic loneliness, the utter disillusion of this
young man is so vividly outlined in the first part
of the poem that to avoid an anticlimax a really
powerful last line is required. But there are no
powerful rhymes. A serious poet, of course, could
finish up with death or faith, or some powerful
word like that. But we are limited to skiff, sniff,
tiff and whiff. And what can you do with those?
Students, I hope, will see what they can do. My
own tentative solution is printed, by arrangement
with the Publisher, on another page (87). I do
not pretend that it is perfect; in fact it seems to
me to strike rather a vulgar note. At the same
time it is copyright, and must not be set to music
in the U.S.A.
I have left little time for comic poetry other
than Limericks, but most of the above profound
observations are equally applicable to both, except[Pg 84]
that in the case of the former it is usual to
think of the last line first. Having done that you
think of some good rhymes to the last line and
hang them up in mid-air, so to speak. Then you
think of something to say which will fit on to those
rhymes. It is just like Limericks, only you start
at the other end; indeed it is much easier than
Limericks, though, I am glad to say, nobody believes
this. If they did it would be even harder
to get money out of Editors than it is already.
We will now write a comic poem about Spring
Cleaning. We will have verses of six lines, five
ten-syllable lines and one six-syllable. As the last
line for the first verse I suggest
Where have they put my hat?
We now require two rhymes to hat. In the present
context flat will obviously be one, and cat or
drat will be another. Our resources at present are
therefore as follows:—
| Line |
1— |
—— |
| “ |
2— |
... flat. |
| “ |
3— |
—— |
| “ |
4— |
... cat or drat. |
| “ |
5— |
—— |
| “ |
6— |
Where have they put my hat? |
As for the blank lines, wife is certain to come in
sooner or later, and we had better put that down,[Pg 85]
supported by life (“What a life!”), and knife or
strife. There are no other rhymes, except rife,
which is a useless word.
We now hold another parade:—-
Terumti—umti—umti—umti—wife,
Terumti—umti—umti—umti—flat;
Teroodle—oodle—oodle—What a life!
Terumti—oodle—umti—oodle—cat (or drat);
Teroodle—umti—oodle—umti—knife (or strife);
Where have they put my hat?
All that remains now is to fill in the umti-oodles,
and I can’t be bothered to do that. There is nothing
in it.
III
In this lecture I shall deal with the production
of Lyrics, Blank Verse and (if I am allowed)
Hymns (Ancient and Modern).
First we will write a humorous lyric for the
Stage, bearing in mind, of course, the peculiar
foibles, idiosyncrasies and whims of Mr. Alf Bubble,
who will sing it (we hope). Mr. Bubble’s
principal source of fun is the personal appearance
of his fellow-citizens. Whenever a new character
comes on the stage he makes some remark
about the character’s “face.” Whenever he does
this the entire audience rolls about on its seat,
and cackles and gurgles and wipes its eyes, and[Pg 86]
repeats in a hoarse whisper, with variations of its
own, the uproarious phrasing of Mr. Bubble’s
remark. If Mr. Bubble says, “But look at his
face!” the audience, fearful lest its neighbours
may have missed the cream of the thing, splutters
hysterically in the intervals of eye-wiping and
coughing and choking and sneezing, “He said,
‘What a face!’” or “He said, ‘Did you see his
face?’” or “He said, ‘Is it a face?’”
All this we have got to remember when we are
writing a lyric for Mr. Bubble. Why Mr. Bubble
of all people should find so much mirth in other
men’s faces I can’t say, but there it is. If we
write a song embodying this great joke we may
be certain that it will please Mr. Bubble; so we
will do it.
Somebody, I think, will have made some slighting
remark about the Government, and that will
give the cue for the first verse, which will be
political.
We will begin:—
I don’t know why the people in humorous lyrics
are always called Thompson (or Brown), but they
are.
Thompson, being indigent,
Thought that it was time he went
Into England’s Parliament,
To earn his daily bread....
[Pg 87]
That is a joke against Parliament, you see—Payment
of Members and all that; it is good. At
the same time it is usual to reserve one’s jokes for
the chorus. The composer, you see, reserves his
tune for the chorus, and, if the author puts too
much into the verse, there will be trouble between
their Unions.
Now we introduce the face-motif:—
Thompson’s features were not neat;
When he canvassed dahn our street
Things were said I won’t repeat,
And my old moth-ah said:—
This verse, you notice, is both in metre and
rhyme; I don’t know how that has happened; it
ought not to be.
Now we have the chorus:—
“Oh, Mr. Thompson,
It isn’t any good;
I shouldn’t like to vote for you,
So I won’t pretend I should;
I know that you’re the noblest
Of all the human race....”
That shows the audience that face is coming
very soon, and they all get ready to burst themselves.
“I haven’t a doubt, if you get in,
The Golden Age will soon begin—
But I DON’T LIKE—your FACE.”
* Solution: It comes of my having a sniff (see page 83).
[Pg 88]
At this point several of the audience will simply
slide off their seats on to the floor and wallow
about there, snorting.
The next verse had better be a love-verse.
Thompson wooed a lovely maid
Every evening in the shade,
Meaning, I am much afraid,
To hide his ugly head...
Head is not very good, I admit, but we must
have said in the last line, and as we were mad
enough to have rhymes in the first verse we have
got to go on with it.
But when he proposed one night—
Did it by electric light—
Mabel, who retained her sight,
Just looked at him and said:—
Now you see the idea?
“Oh, Mr. Thompson,
It isn’t any good;
I shouldn’t like to marry you,
So I won’t pretend I should;
I know that you have riches
And a house in Eaton Place ...
(Here all the audience pulls out its handkerchief)
I haven’t a doubt that you must be
The properest possible match for me,
But I DON’T LIKE—your FACE.”
[Pg 89]
I have got another verse to this song, but I will
not give it to you now, as I think the Editor is
rather bored with it. It is fortunate for Mr.
Bubble that he does not have to perform before
an audience of Editors.
Having written the lyric the next thing to do
is to get a composer to compose music for it, and
then you get it published. This is most difficult,
as composers are people who don’t ever keep
appointments, and music publishers like locking
up lyrics in drawers till the mice have got at the
chorus and the whole thing is out of date.
By the time that this song is ready Mr. Bubble
may quite possibly have exhausted the face-motif
altogether and struck a new vein. Then we shall
have wasted our labour. In that case we will
arrange to have it buried in somebody’s grave
(Mr. Bubble’s for choice), and in A.D. 2000 it will
be dug up by antiquaries and deciphered. Even
a lyric like this may become an Old Manuscript
in time. I ought to add that I myself have composed
the music for this lyric, but I really cannot
undertake to explain composing as well as poetry.
The serious lyric or Queen’s Hall ballad is a
much easier affair. But I must first warn the student
that there are some peculiar customs attaching
to this traffic which may at first sight appear
discouraging. When you have written a good[Pg 90]
lyric and induced someone to compose a tune for
it your first thought will be, “I will get Mr.
Throstle to sing this, and he will pay me a small
fee or royalty per performance”; and this indeed
would be a good arrangement to make. The only
objection is that Mr. Throstle, so far from paying
any money to the student, will expect to be
paid about fifty pounds by the student for singing
his lyric. I do not know the origin of this
quaint old custom, but the student had better
not borrow any money on the security of his first
lyric.
For a serious or Queen’s Hall lyric all that is
necessary is to think of some natural objects like
the sun, the birds, the flowers or the trees, mention
them briefly in the first verse and then in the
second verse draw a sort of analogy or comparison
between the natural object and something to do
with love. The verses can be extremely short,
since in this class of music the composer is allowed
to spread himself indefinitely and can eke out the
tiniest words.
Here is a perfect lyric I have written. It is
called, quite simply, Evening:—
Sunshine in the forest,
Blossom on the tree,
And all the brave birds singing
[Pg 91]For you—and me.
Kisses in the sunshine,
Laughter in the dew,
And all the brave world singing
For me—and you.
I see now that the dew has got into the second
verse, so it had better be called quite simply “The
Dawn.”
You notice the artistic parallelism of this lyric;
I mean, “The brave birds singing” in one verse
and “The brave world singing” in the next, That
is a tip I got from Hebrew poetry, especially the
Psalms: “One day telleth another; and one night
certifieth another,” and so on. It is a useful trick
to remember, and is employed freely by many
modern writers, the author of “The King’s Regulations,”
for example, who in Regulation 1680
has the fine line:—
“Disembarkations are carried out in a similar manner to
embarkations.”
That goes well to the Chant in C major by Mr. P.
Humphreys.
But I am wandering. It is becoming clear to
me now that I shall not have time to do Blank
Verse or Hymns (Ancient and Modern) in this
lecture, after all, so I will give you a rough outline
of that special kind of lyric, the Topical Song.
All that is required for this class of work is a[Pg 92]
good refrain or central idea; when you have got
that, you see how many topics you can tack on
to it. But if you can tack on Mr. Winston
Churchill you need not bother about the others.
Our central idea will be “Rations,” and the
song will be called “Heaps and Heaps”:—
(always begin like that)
Now Jimmy Brown
He went to town,
But all the people said,
“We’re rationed in our jam, you know,
Likewise our cheese and bread;
But we’ve lot of politicians
And Ministers galore,
We’ve got enough of them and, gee!
We don’t want any more.”
Chorus.
We’ve had heaps and heaps and heaps of Mr. Smillie
(Loud cheers);
We’ve had heaps and heaps and heaps of our M.P.
(Significant chuckles);
At political carouses
We’ve had heaps of (paper) houses
But though we WAIT, no houses do we SEE (Bitter laughter).
The khaki-boys were good enough for fighting,
But now we hear the khaki-coat is barred;
If they ration us in Mr. Winston Churchill,
Why, anyone may have my ration-card! (Uproar.)
[Pg 93]
All you have to do now is to work in some more
topics. I don’t think I shall do any more now.
The truth is, that that verse has rather taken it
out of me.
I feel all barren.
[Pg 94]
The Book of Jonah
(As almost any modern Irishman would have
written it)
(The circumlocution of the play—there is no
action—takes place I don’t know where and I
can’t think when. But the scene is the corner of
the village square. Mrs. Joner is discovered sitting
in front of her house, knitting, washing socks,
or perhaps just thinking. In the distance can be
seen the figure of a male statue, very new, with a
long inscription on the pedestal. Timothy James
O’Leary walks by, gazing at the statue.)
T.J. Good day to you, Bridget Ellen Joner.
And it’s many’s the day since I was seeing you.
(With a jerk of his head.) And isn’t it the fine
statue you have on himself there?
Mrs. J. It is so. Though, indeed, it is like no
husband I ever had—or ever will have, I’m
hoping.
T.J. It is not—and why would it be? Who
wants likenesses in a statue when they have all[Pg 95]
that writing and printing below to tell who it is
above—(piously)—“Michael Flannigan Joner,
that gave his life for his fellow-travelers”?
Mrs. J. Aye, it was the only time he ever gave
anything away in his life, to my knowing, unless
it would be them sermons and prophecies that he
would be handing to the folk in the public street,
and none wanting them any more than the cows
in the bog.
T. J. Ah, it was a queer thing entirely! Have
you heard any more now what was the way of it,
for I am not understanding how it was at all.
Mrs. J. It was the sailors of the ship that did
be saying they would sail the ship no longer when
they found that himself was in the Post Office,
and him travelling for the Government. And
there was a great storm and the ship was tossing
the way you wouldn’t know was she a ship at all,
or a cork that a boy throws in the water out of a
bottle; and the sailors said it was the English
Government—and why would it not be?—and
they cried out against himself and said it was having
the ship sunk on them he would be, and he
rose up out of his bed and “Is it sinking the ship
I would be?” he said, and he threw himself over
the side into the water—and that was the way
of it.
T. J. (reflectively). And him with the rheumatics—God[Pg 96]
rest his soul! And have you any
pension taken from the Government?
Mrs. J. I have so. And it’s worth more to me
he is now he’s dead than ever he was when he was
alive with all his praying and preaching and
prophesying——
T. J. Maybe it’s thinking of marrying again
you might be?
Mrs. J. And how would I be marrying again,
Timothy James, and I a lone widow woman with
no money to pay for the roof over my head—let
alone weddings?
T. J. And why would you not be? Sure, you
have the pension for himself, and what better use
can a woman find for a pension that is for her
man that is dead than to get another that is alive
and well?
Mrs. J. Will you tell me now where I would
find a husband that would be the equal of a man
who gave his life for his fellow-travellers—and
him with the rheumatics?
T. J. Sure, it’s the grand position you have
entirely now, and every man and woman in the
whole country-side scheming and scraping to give
a few pennies to the collection for the statue, and
the Lord-Lieutenant himself coming down for the
unveiling—and it’s difficult it would be to find a
man that was fine enough to marry you at all—but—but[Pg 97]
(looking round) don’t I know the very man
for you?
Mrs. J. And who might that be, for goodness
sake?
T. J. (confidentially). Come within now and
I’ll tell you. I’d be fearful here that one of the
lads would maybe hear me.
(They go into the house.)
(A man strolls along the road, looking about
him with keen interest; he is wild and mysterious
of aspect, with shaggy hair and travel-stained,
untidy clothes. He stops with a start
in front of the statue and gazes at it with
amazement; then he slowly reads the inscription.)
Mr. J. “Michael Flannigan Joner, who gave
his life for his fellow-travellers.” (In stupefaction.)
Glory be to God! (Turning to the house.)
Bridget Ellen—are you within there? (He turns
and gazes at the statue again.)
(There is a sound of laughter in the house.
Mrs. J. and Timothy J. come out, arm-in-arm
and affectionate; they see the man and stop
dead in the doorway.)
T. J. Glory be to God!
Mrs. J. The Saints preserve us!
T. J. If it isn’t Michael Joner himself!
[Pg 98]
Mr. J. It is so (pointing indignantly). And
what call had you to make a graven image of him
in the public street the like of the Kings of England
or Parnell himself?
Mrs. J. And what call had you to come back
from the dead without a word of warning and I
after promising myself to a better man?
Mr. J. (still full of statue). “Gave his life for
his fellow-trav——” And is it mad you all are?
Mrs. J. Then you did not do so? (To T. J.)
Wasn’t I telling you?
Mr. J. I did not indeed. And why would I—the
low heathen—and I that had my fare paid to
Tarshish?
Mrs. J. and T. J. raise their eyebrows at this
suspicious utterance.
Mrs. T. J. Tarshish! Sure it’s drunk he
is!... Then how came you lepping into the
water like a young dog or a boy that does be diving
in the hot weather, and you with——
Mr. J. It was not lepping I was nor diving
neither, but it’s thrown in I was by a lot of heathen
sailors because I was after prophesying the wrath
of the Lord upon them——
Mrs. J. Didn’t I tell you now that no good
would come of the prophesying, and you that was
brought up a decent lad by your own father in
Kilbay?
[Pg 99]
T. J. And what happened to you when you
were thrown in at all?
Mr. J. Sure, I was swallowed by a great whale,
and the Lord said to the whale——
T. J. Holy Mother! It’s mad he is and not
drunk at all!
Mr. J. It is not mad I am nor drunk either.
Wasn’t I three days and three nights in the belly
of the whale, and the sea roaring without, the
same as a man would lie in his warm bed and it
raining——
Mrs. J. Three days and three nights!—and
isn’t it nine months since you lepped out of the
ship? Will you tell me now where you have been
in the meanwhile and what you were doing at all?
Mr. J. Sure the Lord spoke to the whale, and
the whale threw me up on the dry land——
Mrs. J. (suspicious soul). And where would
that be now?
Mr. J. Sure I don’t know now——
Mrs. J. I should think not indeed——
Mr. J. —but it was a small little island and
devil a ship came there at all to take me away——
Mrs. J. (to T. J., lifting her hands). Did you
ever hear the like of that? And were there any
fine young ladies or mermaids maybe on that same
small little island?
[Pg 100]
Mr. J. There were not then—nor statues
either.
T. J. (humouring him). And what might ye
be doing while you were in the belly of the whale,
Michael Flannigan?
Mr. J. And why wouldn’t I be prophesying
and praying unto the Lord, the way he would calm
the whale, and it roaring and lepping in the sea
like a trout that has the hook swallowed, and it
tickling...?
Mrs. J. It’s well you might be praying unto the
Lord, Michael Flannigan, for it’s a queer thing
entirely if a lone widow woman can no more be
left in peace without her man coming back from
the dead to frighten her out of her wits with
whales and the like, the way she would be the
laughing stock of the whole country-side! And
it’s devil a penny will I have from the Government
now seeing you are alive again and not dead
at all.
T. J. It’s a true word, Michael Flannigan, and
it’s queer uneasy I am myself that had set my
heart on marrying your own wife.
Mrs. J. And will you tell me now what will we
be after doing with the grand statue we have put
up on you, Michael Flannigan, and it’s myself that
has the flesh worn from my fingers with working
to put a few shillings together to pay for it?
[Pg 101]
Mr. J. (infuriated). Is it I that was asking
for a statue at all? (He regards it.) But sure it
is a fine thing entirely—and why would it not stay
where it is?
Mrs. J. And the whole world coming here by
the train to make a mock of me, the way they
would be seeing the statue of the man who “gave
his life for his fellow-travellers,” and him sleeping
in his own bed all the time like a common
man!
Mr. J. Common, is it? Is it every day you
have a man coming from the dead that was three
days and three nights in the belly of a whale?
Mrs. J. It is not—thanks be to God!
T. J. What ails you now, Bridget Ellen!
Why wouldn’t we be altering the writing that is
below the statue and write down this story about
the whale, or any other fairy-story that he might
be thinking of in the night and him lying awake—for
sure it is a grand story and I wouldn’t wonder
would the folk be travelling out from the big
towns to see the man that was in the belly of a
whale, when they wouldn’t walk across the road
to see a man that gave his life for his fellow-travellers,
and they English as like as not.
Mrs. J. It’s little the money I’ll be getting
out of that, I’m thinking.
T. J. And why will you not? It could be that[Pg 102]
them music-halls in the big towns and the theayters
themselves would pay money to Michael Flannigan
for no more than walking on the stage and
telling the people what went on while he was in the
whale—the same as they would for a cow that has
five legs or the smallest woman in the world.
Sure, didn’t they give Peter O’Flaherty three
pounds for the loan of his duck that had no legs
at all?
Mrs. J. It could be that they might, Timothy
James.
Mr. J. There is money in them whales, ’tis
true, and they full of whalebone, the same as the
fine ladies do use in Dublin for their dress and all.
And when I was smoking my tobacco-pipe in the
whale, the oil did be running down the inside of
the creature the way I was afeered he would take
fire and the two of us be destroyed altogether.
T. J. (admiringly). Did you ever hear the like
of that? There’s them at the theayters that
would pay you a mint of money for that same
story, Michael Flannigan!
Mr. J. They might so.
T. J. But tell me now, Michael Flannigan, is
it the truth or no that them whales have the queer
small throats on them, the way they couldn’t swallow
a little whiting, let alone a big man? It
could be that one of them writing fellows would[Pg 103]
rise up in the theayter and say there was no man
yet was swallowed by a whale, nor will be neither,
because of the queer small throat they have on
them! How would it be if you were to give it out
that you were swallowed by a big fish, the way the
ignorant folk would guess it was a whale and the
people that do understand whales wouldn’t be able
to say you were telling a lie?
Mr. J. ’Tis a great head you have on you,
Timothy James, and it’s sorry I am it was myself
was in the whale and not you.
T. J. Faith, ’tis glad I am I was never in a
whale, for they do say they belong to the English
King, the creatures, and God knows what may
come of the like of that!
Mr. J. Is it the King of England’s they are?
Then, Glory be to God, I’ll have no more to do
with them!
T. J. Sure, and there’s nothing wrong with the
King’s money, is there? And it’s plenty of that
there will be, I’m thinking. I tell you, it’s the
grand story they’ll make in the history-books till
the world’s end of Michael Flannigan Joner that
was ate by a whale!
Mrs. J. And devil a word will they say of
Bridget Ellen, his wife, that was married to a
mad fellow.
T. J. Let you not be vexing yourself now. I[Pg 104]
wouldn’t wonder would one of them writing fellows
be writing a book about you, or maybe a play,
and it’s the grand talk there will be of Joner’s
wife at the latter end.
Mrs. J. It might.
(CURTAIN)
[Pg 105]
The Mystery of the
Apple-pie Beds
(LEAVES FROM A HOLIDAY DIARY)
I
AN outrage has occurred in the hotel. Late
on Monday night ten innocent visitors discovered
themselves the possessors of apple-pie
beds. The beds were not of the offensive
hair-brush variety, but they were very cleverly
constructed, the under-sheet being pulled up in
the good old way and turned over at the top as if
it were the top-sheet.
I had one myself. The lights go out at eleven
and I got into bed in the dark. When one is very
old and has not been to school for a long time
or had an apple-pie bed for longer still, there is
something very uncanny in the sensation, especially
if it is dark. I did not like it at all. My
young brother-in-law, Denys, laughed immoderately
in the other bed at my flounderings and imprecations.
He did not have one. I suspect
him....
[Pg 106]
II
Naturally the hotel is very much excited. It is
the most thrilling event since the mixed foursomes.
Nothing else has been discussed since breakfast.
Ten people had beds and about ten people are
suspected. The really extraordinary thing is that
numbers of people seem to suspect me! That is
the worst of being a professional humorist; everything
is put down to you. When I was accompanying
Mrs. F. to-day she suddenly stopped fiddling
and said hotly that someone had been tampering
with her violin. I know she suspected me.
Fortunately, however, I have a very good answer
to this apple-pie bed charge. Eric says that his
bed must have been done after dinner, and I was
to be seen at the dance in the lounge all the evening.
I have an alibi.
Besides, I had a bed myself; surely they don’t
believe that even a professional humorist could
be so bursting with humour as to make himself
an apple-pie bed and not make one for his brother-in-law
in the same room! It would be too much
like overtime.
But they say that only shows my cleverness....
III
Then there is the question of the Barkers.
Most of the Victims were young people, who could[Pg 107]
not possibly mind. But the Barkers had two,
and the Barkers are a respected middle-aged
couple, and nobody could possibly make them
apple-pie beds who did not know them very well.
That shows you it can’t have been me—I—me—that
shows you I couldn’t have done it. I have
only spoken to them once.
They say Mr. Barker was rather annoyed. He
has rheumatism and went to bed early. Mrs.
Barker discovered about her bed before she got
in, but she didn’t let on. She put out the candle,
and allowed her lord to get into his apple-pie in
the dark. I think I shall like her.
They couldn’t find the matches. I believe he
was quite angry....
IV
I suspect Denys and Joan. They are engaged,
and people in that state are capable of anything.
Neither of them had one, and they were seen
slipping upstairs during the dance. They say they
went out on the balcony—a pretty story....
V
I suspect the Barkers. You know, that story
about Mrs. B. letting Mr. B. get into his without
warning him was pretty thin. Can you imagine an[Pg 108]
English wife doing a thing of that kind? If you
can it ought to be a ground for divorce under the
new Bill. But you can’t.
Then all that stuff about the rheumatism—clever
but unconvincing. Mr. Barker stayed in
his room all the next morning when the awkward
questions were being asked. Not well; oh, no!
But he was down for lunch and conducting for a
glee-party in the drawing-room afterwards, as
perky and active as a professional. Besides, the
really unanswerable problem is, who could have
dared to make the Barkers’ apple-pie beds? And
the answer is, nobody—except the Barkers.
And there must have been a lady in it, it was so
neatly done. Everybody says no man could have
done it. So that shows you it couldn’t have been
me—I....
VI
I suspect Mr. Winthrop. Mr. Winthrop is
fifty-three. He has been in the hotel since this
time last year, and he makes accurate forecasts of
the weather. My experience is that a man who
makes accurate forecasts of the weather may get
up to any deviltry. And he protests too much.
He keeps coming up to me and making long
speeches to prove that he didn’t do it. But I never
said he did. Somebody else started that rumour,[Pg 109]
but of course he thinks that I did. That comes
of being a professional humorist.
But I do believe he did it. You see he is fifty-three
and doesn’t dance, so he had the whole evening
to do it in.
To-night we are going to have a Court of Inquiry....
VII
We have had the Inquiry. I was judge. I
started with Denys and Joan in the dock, as I
thought we must have somebody there and it
would look better if it was somebody in the family.
The first witness was Mrs. Barker. Her evidence
was so unsatisfactory that I had to have her
put in the dock too. So was Mr. Barker’s. I
was sorry to put him in the dock, as he still had
rheumatics. But he had to go.
So did Mr. Winthrop. I had no qualms about
him. For a man of his age to do a thing like that
seems to me really deplorable. And the barefaced
evasiveness of his evidence! He simply could not
account for his movements during the evening at
all. When I asked him what he had been doing
at 9.21, and where, he actually said he didn’t
know.
Rather curious—very few people can account
for their movements, or anyone else’s. In most[Pg 110]
criminal trials the witnesses remember to a minute,
years after the event, exactly what time they went
upstairs and when they passed the prisoner in the
lounge, but nobody seems to remember anything in
this affair. No doubt it will come in time.
The trial was very realistic. I was able to
make one or two excellent judicial jokes. Right
at the beginning I said to the prosecuting counsel,
“What is an apple-pie bed?” and when he had
explained I said with a meaning look, “You mean
that the bed was not in apple-pie order?” Ha,
ha! Everybody laughed heartily....
VIII
In my address to the jury of matrons I was able
to show pretty clearly that the crime was the work
of a gang. I proved that Denys and Joan must
have done the bulk of the dirty work, under the
tactical direction of the Barkers, who did the rest;
while in the background was the sinister figure of
Mr. Winthrop, the strategical genius, the lurking
Macchiavelli of the gang.
The jury were not long in considering their
verdict. They said: “We find, your Lordship,
that you did it yourself, with some lady or ladies
unknown.”
That comes of being a professional humorist....
[Pg 111]
IX
I ignored the verdict. I addressed the prisoners
very severely and sentenced them to do the Chasm
hole from 6.0 a.m. to 6.0 p.m. every day for a
week, to take out cards and play out every stroke.
“You, Winthrop,” I said, “with your gentlemanly
cunning, your subtle pretensions of righteousness——”
But there is no space for that....
X
As a matter of fact the jury were quite right.
In company with a lady who shall be nameless I
did do it. At least, at one time I thought I did.
Only we have proved so often that somebody else
did it, we have shown so conclusively that we can’t
have done it, that we find ourselves wondering if
we really did.
Perhaps we didn’t.
If we did we apologize to all concerned—except,
of course, to Mr. Winthrop. I suspect him.
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[Pg 113]
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
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 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 phenomena 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[Pg 114]
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[Pg 115]
at that. He said that Lord Northcliffe was not
only a grasshopper but a something something
grasshopper, grasshopping here and grasshopping
there—you know the 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[Pg 116]
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[Pg 117]
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,” or the one in Ecclesiastes: “And the grasshopper
shall be a burden.” I do not know. On
the other hand, 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.”
[Pg 118]
Little Bits of London
I
THE SUPREME COURT
AMONG those curious corners of London
life which anyone may go to see but nobody
does, one of the most curious, and
(for about five minutes) interesting, is the House
of Lords sitting as the Supreme Court of Appeal.
It is one of the ordinary things which go on and
on unnoticed for a lifetime because they have gone
on so long, till one day one begins to think about
them and realizes suddenly that they were really
extraordinary all the time—just as one pronounces
sometimes with a startling sense of its
absurdity some common English word. But no
sight-seer, no student of our institutions, and particularly
no one who is interested in the ways and
customs of individual trades, should fail to visit
the Supreme Appellate Tribunal of this great
country.
The funny thing about the House of Lords[Pg 119]
sitting as a court is that it actually sits in the
House of Lords. Entering the great red chamber—as
anybody may do if he can find the way—one
receives the impression that it is perfectly empty,
save for the knot of barristers’ clerks, solicitors’
clerks, pressmen and casual onlookers who are
huddled round the entrance. Beyond them are
miles, and miles, and miles of red leather benches,
silent, mournful, untenanted, dead. But no! A
low monotonous drone reaches you—like the
voice of a priest intoning at the other end of a
cathedral. Guided by this sound you discover
faint traces of life on one of the vast red benches.
There is an old man sitting on the bench, a pleasant,
bearded old man; he does not look at all
legal, and he is dressed in every-day clothes, huddled
up in front of a sort of small card-table covered
with huge tomes. He is speaking apparently
into space—in a kind of squeaky hum, if you can
imagine the sound—fumbling all the time with
the large brown tomes.
Look again. Beyond him, a very long way off,
is another old man, a very, very jolly old man,
with another beard, another card-table, and more
tomes. He is staring with profundity at the
bench opposite. Following his gaze, you detect
with amazement another old man, all alone on the
great red bench. No, not alone. With something[Pg 120]
of the sensations of a man who stands by a stagnant
pond or looks at a drop of drinking water
through a microscope to discover that it is teeming
with life, you detect yet a fourth old man
on the very same bench, though, of course, a long
way away. Both of them are equipped as the
others, though one of them, for some reason which
does not appear, has no beard. You are ready
for anything now, so quite quickly you find the
fifth old man, far, far away in the distance, all
alone on an island in the emptiness, so far off that
he seems to be cut off from all communication with
the other old men, or anyone else. Yet suddenly
his lips move, and it is seen that he is speaking.
He is the presiding old man, and he begins speaking
while the first old man is still droning. From
the faint movement of his head and the far gleam
of his eyes you draw the conclusion that he is
speaking to some living creature in your own
neighborhood; and, sure enough, you find that
close to you, but curtained off, there are seven or
eight men shut up in a wooden pen about seven
feet square. These must be the prisoners, and
that is the dock, you think. But no, it is the barristers;
as the House of Lords is very holy they
are only allowed to huddle on the doorstep. One
of them is standing in front of the pen at a sort
of lectern, wearing a big wig (the special House[Pg 121]
of Lords wig), and waiting patiently till the old
men have stopped squeaking. Most of the other
men in the pen are asleep, but two of them are
crouching intently behind the other one, and they
keep tugging at his gown, or poking him in the
back, and whispering suggestions at him. When
they do this he whispers back with an aspect of
calm, “Yes, yes—I follow,” but you know he does
not follow, and you know he is really in a great
rage, because he is trying to hear with the other
ear what the old man is saying, and the old man is
so far away and his voice is so gentle, and his
sentences are so long and so full of parentheses,
very often in Latin, that it is hard enough to have
to follow him, without being whispered at from
the rear.
At last the old man shuts his mouth very firmly
in a legal manner, and it is clear that he has
stopped speaking. It is the barrister’s turn. He
starts off with a huge sentence about “the presumption
of intent under the Drains and Mortgages
(Consolidation) Act, 1892,” but when he
is right in the middle of it the fourth old man,
whom everybody supposed to be fast asleep, wakes
up and asks the barrister an awkward question
about the Amending Act of 1899, just to show
that he has got a grip of the whole thing. The
barrister has not the faintest idea what the answer[Pg 122]
is, but he begins one immediately, as if it was
quite easy, for that is the game. While he is
groping about in the middle of a huge remark
which means nothing at present but may very likely
lead him to the right answer in the end, the third
old man, in order to confuse the barrister, makes
an interjection which he pretends is on the same
point, but is really on a totally different point,
which the barrister did not propose to deal with
for days and days to come. When I say “interjection”
I mean that he delivers extremely slowly
a sentence of inconceivable duration, a sentence
so long that it seems really as if it would never
end. Finally, the presiding old man decides that
it is time it did end, so he interrupts rather testily.
Then all the old men frankly abandon the pretence
that the barrister has got anything to do
with it, and they just argue quietly with each other
across the vast red spaces. Meanwhile, the poor
men in the pen try to stretch their legs, and mutter
fiercely at each other. Four or five of them are
immensely distinguished K.C.’s, earning thousands
and thousands a year, the very first men in their
profession. Yet they tamely submit to being confined
in a tiny space where there is no room for
their papers, or their tomes, let alone their legs,
for days and days and sometimes weeks, with the
whole of the House of Lords empty in front of[Pg 123]
them except for the five old men who spend the
day badgering them at ease from comfortable
sofas.
To argue a case in the House of Lords must
be one of the severest strains to which middle-aged
men are ever subjected; it requires tremendous
qualities of concentration and patience and intellectual
quickness (not to speak of the labour
of preparing the cases beforehand). At half-past
one, when they have endured this for three hours,
they dash out to lunch; they are lucky if they get
anything to eat before twenty minutes to two,
but at two (presumably because the House of
Lords is required for legislative purposes when
they have done with it) they have to dash back
to the pen again, where digestion must be quite
impossible, even if you are not required to argue
with the old men. No manual labourer in the
world would tolerate such conditions for a day.
Either he would break out of the pen and put
up his feet on the red benches, or, very sensibly,
he would insist that the House of Lords, when
sitting as a court, must sit in a place which was
suitable for a court, if it was only a committee-room
in the upper purlieus of the House.
I cannot imagine why the barristers do not say
that. It is not as if there was any impressive
pomp or ceremony connected with this archaic survival;[Pg 124]
if there were, it might be worth it. But
nothing could be less impressive than these old
men mumbling desolately in everyday clothes and
beards at rows and rows of empty red sofas. I
am told that when the Lord Chancellor presides
he does wear robes, but the other Lords still wear
mufti. That must be a great sight, but not, I
should think, extravagantly solemn.
But perhaps that is the real secret of the British
Constitution—our capacity to extract solemnity
from the incongruous or the merely dull. I once
heard the House of Lords deliver judgment—after
days and days of argument—in a case of
the highest constitutional importance, involving
the rights of the Crown, and what remain of the
rights of the subject. All England was waiting
with real interest for the issue. One by one the
old men read out their long opinions, opinions of
great profundity and learning and care, opinions
of the greatest judges in the land, universally and
rightly respected, opinions that will be quoted in
every history and text-book, in every constitutional
case, for hundreds of years to come. It took
nearly a day to read them. While they were being
read, the old men who were not reading, the
barristers, the odd dozen of “the public,” the
clerks, everybody—sat or stood in a sort of coma
of stupefied boredom, gazing at nothing. No one[Pg 125]
stirred. Only, Very far away, the gentle voice of
the old man might have been heard rolling up to
the roof, and squeaking about in the corners, and
buzzing about like a sleepy bee under the benches—and
always with a faint note of querulous
amazement, as if the old man could not believe
that anyone was listening to what he was saying.
And he was right—for nobody was.
We are a marvellous nation.
[Pg 126]
Little Bits of London
II
“THE BEAR GARDEN”
THE authors of the guide-books have signally
failed to discover the really interesting
parts of Law-land. I have looked
through several of these books and not one of
them refers, for example, to the “Bear-Garden,”
which is the place where the preliminary skirmishes
of litigation are carried out. The Bear-Garden
is the name given to it by the legal profession, so
I am quite in order in using the title. In fact, if
you want to get to it, you have to use that title.
The proper title would be something like The
Place where Masters in Chambers function at
Half-past One: but if you go into the Law Courts
and ask one of the attendants where that is, he
will say, rather pityingly, “Do you mean the Bear-Garden?”
And you will know at once that you
have lost caste. Caste is a thing you should be
very careful of in these days; so the best thing is[Pg 127]
to ask for the Bear-Garden straightaway. It is
in the purlieus of the Law Courts, and very hard
to find. It is up a lot of very dingy back staircases
and down a lot of very dingy passages. The
Law Courts are like all our public buildings. The
parts where the public is allowed to go are fairly
respectable, if not beautiful, but the purlieus and
the basements and the upper floors are scenes of
unimaginable dinginess and decay. The Law
Courts’ purlieus are worse than the Houses of
Parliament purlieus; and it seems to me that even
more disgraceful things are done in them. It only
shows you the dangers of Nationalization.
On the way to the Bear-Garden you pass the
King’s Remembrancer’s rooms; this is the man
who reminds His Majesty about people’s birthdays;
and in a large family like that he must be
kept busy. Not far from the King’s Remembrancer
there is a Commissioner for Oaths; you
can go into this room and have a really good
swear for about half a crown. This is cheaper
than having it in the street—that is, if you are
a gentleman; for by the Profane Oaths Act, 1745,
swearing and cursing is punishable by a fine of
1s. for every day-labourer, soldier or seaman; 2s.
for every other person under the degree of gentleman;
and 5s. for every person far above the degree
of gentleman. This is not generally known.[Pg 128]
The Commissioner for Oaths is a very broad-minded
man, and there is literally no limit to what
you may swear before him. The only thing is
that he insists on your filing it before you actually
say it. This may cause delay, so that if you are
feeling particularly strongly about anything, it is
probably better to have it out in the street and risk
being taken for a gentleman.
There are a number of other interesting functionaries
on the way to the Bear-Garden; but we
must get on. When you have wandered about
in the purlieus for a long time you will hear a tremendous
noise, a sort of combined snarling and
roaring and legal conversation. When you hear
that you will know that you are very near the
bears. They are all snarling and roaring in a large
preliminary arena, where the bears prepare themselves
for the struggle; all round it are smaller
cages or arenæ, where the struggle takes place.
If possible, you ought to go early so that you can
watch the animals massing. Lawyers, as I have
had occasion to observe before, are the most long-suffering
profession in the country, and the things
they do in the Bear-Garden they have to do in the
luncheon-hour, or rather in the luncheon half-hour,
1.30 to 2. This accounts, perhaps, for the
extreme frenzy of the proceedings. They hurry
in in a frenzy up the back stairs about 1.25, and[Pg 129]
they pace up and down in a frenzy till the time
comes. There are all sorts of bears, most of them
rather seedy old bears, with shaggy and unkempt
coats. These are solicitors’ clerks, and they all
come straight out of Dickens. They have shiny
little private-school handbags, each inherited, no
doubt, through a long line of ancestral solicitors’
clerks; and they all have the draggled sort of
moustache that tells you when it is going to rain.
While they are pacing up and down the arena they
all try to get rid of these moustaches by pulling
violently at alternate ends; but the only result is
to make it look more like rain than ever. Some
of the bears are robust old bears, with well-kept
coats and loud roars; these are solicitors’ clerks
too, only better-fed; or else they are real solicitors.
And a few of the bears are perky young creatures—in
barrister’s robes—either for the first time—when
they look very self-conscious—or for the
second time—when they look very self-confident.
All the bears are telling each other about their
cases. They are saying, “We are a deceased
wife’s sister suing in forma pauperis,” or, I am a
discharged bankrupt, three times convicted of perjury,
but I am claiming damages under the Diseases
of Pigs Act, 1862,” or “You are the crew of
a merchant ship and we are the editor of a newspaper——”
Just at first it is rather disturbing to[Pg 130]
hear snatches of conversation like that, but there
is no real cause for alarm; they are only identifying
themselves with the interests of their clients,
and when one realizes that one is a little touched.
At last one of the keepers at the entrance to the
small cages begins to shout very loudly. It is not
at all clear what he is shouting, but apparently it
is the pet-names of the bears, for there is a wild
rush for the various cages. Attaching himself to
this rush the observer is swept with a struggling
mass of bears past the keeper into a cage. Across
the middle of the cage a stout barricade has been
erected, and behind the barricade sits the Master,
pale but defiant. Masters in Chambers are barristers
who have not the proper legal faces and
have had to give up being ordinary barristers on
that account; in the obscurity and excitement of
the Bear-Garden nobody notices that their faces
are all wrong. The two chief bears rush at the
Master and the other bears jostle round them,
egging them on. When they see that they cannot
get at the Master they begin snarling. One
of them snarls quietly out of a long document
about the Statement of Claim. He throws a copy
of this at the Master, and the Master tries to
get the hang of it while the bear is snarling; but
the other bear is by now beside himself With rage
and he begins putting in what are called interlocutory[Pg 131]
snarls, so that the Master gets terribly confused,
though he doesn’t let on. By and by all
pretence of formality and order is put aside, and
the battle really begins. At this stage of the proceedings
the rule is that not less than two of the
protagonists must be roaring at the same time, of
which one must be the Master. But the more
general practice is for all three of them to roar
at the same time. Sometimes, it is true, by sheer
roar-power, the Master succeeds in silencing one
of the bears for a moment, but he can never be
said to succeed in cowing a bear. If anybody is
cowed it is the Master. Meanwhile, the lesser
bears press closer and closer, pulling at the damp
ends of their rainy moustaches and making whispered
suggestions for new devilries in the ears of
the chief bears, who nod their heads emphatically,
but don’t pay any attention. The final stage is the
stage of physical violence, when the chief bears
lean over the barricade and shake their paws at
the Master; they think they are only making
legal gestures, but the Master knows very well
that they are getting out of hand; he knows then
that it is time he threw them a bun. So he says
a soothing word to each of them and runs his pen
savagely through almost everything on their
papers. The bears growl in stupefaction and rage,
and take deep breaths to begin again. But meanwhile[Pg 132]
the keeper has shouted for a fresh set of
bears, who surge wildly into the room. The old
bears are swept aside and creep out, grunting.
What the result of it all is I don’t know. Nobody
knows. The new bears begin snarling....
[Pg 133]
Little Bits of London
III
BILLINGSGATE
IN order to see Billingsgate properly in action
it is necessary to get up at half-past four and
travel on the Underground by the first train
East, which is an adventure in itself. The first
train East goes at three minutes past five, and
there are large numbers of people who travel in
it every day; by Charing Cross it is almost
crowded. It is full of Bolshevists; and I do not
wonder. One sits with one’s feet up in a first-class
carriage, clutching a nice cheap workman’s
ticket and trying hard to look as if, like the Bolshevists,
one did this every day.
On arriving at the Monument Station one walks
briskly past the seductive announcement that “The
Monument is Now Open,” and plunges into a
world of fish. I have never been able to understand
why fish are so funny. On the comic stage
a casual reference to fish is almost certain to provoke[Pg 134]
a shout of laughter; in practice, and especially
in the mass, it is not so funny; it is like the
Government, an inexhaustible source of humour
at a distance, and in the flesh extraordinarily dull.
Over the small streets which surround the market
hangs a heavy pall of fishy vapour. The
streets are full of carts; the carts are full of fish.
The houses in the streets are fish-dealers’ places,
more or less full of fish. The pavements are full
of fish-porters, carrying fish, smelling of fish.
Fragments of conversation are heard, all about
fish. Fish lie sadly in the gutters. The scales of
fish glitter on the pavements. A little vigorous
swimming through the outlying fisheries brings
you to the actual market, which is even more wonderful.
Imagine a place like Covent Garden, and
nearly as big, but entirely devoted to fish. In the
place of those enchanting perspectives of flower-stalls,
imagine enormous regiments of fish-stalls,
paraded in close order and groaning with halibut
and conger-eel, with whiting and lobsters and huge
crabs. Round these stalls the wholesale dealers
wade ankle-deep in fish. Steadily, maliciously, the
great fish slide off the stalls on to the floor; steadily
the dealers recover them and pile them up on
their small counters, or cast them through the
air on to other counters, or fling them into baskets
in rage or mortification or sheer bravado.
[Pg 135]
The dealers are men with business-faces, in long
white coats, surprisingly clean. Every now and
then they stop throwing crabs into baskets or retrieving
halibut from the floor, and make little
entries in long note-books. I do not know exactly
what entries they make, but I think they must all
be in for some competition, and are making notes
about their scores; one man I watched had obviously
just beaten the record for halibut retrieving.
He retrieved so many in about a minute that the
tops of his boots were just beginning to show.
When he had done that he made such long notes
in his book about it that most of the halibut slide
on to the floor again while he was doing it. Then
he began all over again. But I expect he won
the prize.
Meanwhile about a million fish-porters are
dashing up and down the narrow avenues between
the fish-stalls, porting millions of boxes of fish.
Nearly all of them, I am glad to say, have been in
the army or have had a relative in the army; for
they are nearly all wearing the full uniform of a
company cook, which needs no description. On
their heads they have a kind of india-rubber hat,
and on the india-rubber hat they have a large box
of fish weighing about six stone—six stone, I tell
you. This box they handle as if it was a box of
cigars. They pick it up with a careless gesture;[Pg 136]
they carry it as if it was a slightly uncomfortable
hat, and they throw it down with another careless
gesture, usually on to another box of fish;
this explains why so many of one’s herrings appear
to have been maimed at sea.
When they have finished throwing the boxes
about they too take out a notebook and make notes
about it all. This, it seems, is to make sure that
they are paid something for throwing each box
about. I don’t blame them. It must be a hard
life. Yet if I thought I could pick up six stone
of salmon and plaice and throw it about I should
sign on at Billingsgate at once. It is true they
start work about five; but they stop work, it seems,
about ten, and they earn a pound and over for
that. Then they can go home. Most of them, I
imagine, are stockbrokers during the rest of the
day.
And they are a refined and gentlemanly body of
men. I hope the old legend that the fish-porter of
Billingsgate expresses himself in terms too forcible
for the ordinary man is now exploded; for it is
a slander. In fact, it is a slander to call him a
“porter”; at least in these days I suppose it is
libellous to connect a man falsely with the N.U.R.,
if only by verbal implication. But, however that
may be, I here assert that the Billingsgate fish-porter
is a comparatively smooth and courteous[Pg 137]
personage, and, considering his constant association
with fish in bulk, I think it is wonderful.
At the far end of the market is the river
Thames; and on the river Thames there is a ship
or two, chockful of fish. Fish-porters with a kind
of blasé animation run up and down a long gangway
to the ship with six-stone boxes of fine fresh
whiting on their heads. These boxes they pile up
on a chute (carefully noting each box in their notebooks),
after which an auctioneer auctions the
boxes. This is the really exciting part of the show.
The dealers or the dealers’ agents stand round in
a hungry ring and buy the boxes of fish as they
slide down the chute. The dealers seem to detail
a less cultured type of man for this purpose, and
few of the bidders come up to the standard of refinement
of the fish-porters. But the auctioneer
understands them, and he knows all their Christian
names. He can tell at a glance whether it is
Mossy Isaacs or Sam Isaacs. He is a very clever
man.
They stand round looking at the boxes of fish,
and when one of them twitches the flesh of his
nose or faintly moves one of his eyelashes it means
that he has bought six stone of whiting for thirty
shillings. That is the only kind of sign they give,
and the visitor will be wise not to catch the auctioneer’s
eye, or blow his nose or do any overt[Pg 138]
action like that, or he may find that he has bought
six stone of salmon and halibut for forty-five shillings.
At an auction of fish it is true to say that a
nod is as good as a wink; in fact, it is worse.
The dealers are silent, motionless men; but nobody
else is. Everybody else is dashing about
and shouting as loud as he can. As each box of
fish is sold the porters dash at it and shout at it
(of course in a very gentlemanly way) and carry
it off in all directions. It is quite clear that nobody
knows who has bought it or where it is going.
The idea of the whole thing is to impress
the visitor with the mobility of fish, and this object
is successfully attained. No doubt when the
visitors have gone away they settle down and decide
definitely who is to have the fish.
It is now about half-past six. Fish is still rushing
in at one end from the ship and is rushing in
at the other from the rail-vans. The porters are
throwing the fish at the dealers’ stalls (registering
each hit in their notebooks), and the dealers are
throwing it on to the floor or throwing it at each
other or trying to throw it at a retailer, who always
puts on a haughty air and passes on to the
next stall, till he gets too entangled in the game
and finds that he has bought twenty-four stone of
whiting at twopence a pound; then he throws it
at some more porters, and the porters dash outside[Pg 139]
and throw it at the carts, and the carts clatter
away to Kensington, and my wife buys a whiting
at tenpence a pound, and the circle of fish organization
is complete.
At about this point it is a good thing to pass
on to Covent Garden and buy some flowers.
[Pg 140]
Little Bits of London
IV
THE BLOATER SHOW
THE last time I was at Olympia—as everybody
says at the door—it was a Horse
Show. But this time it is much the same.
There they stand in their stalls, the dear, magnificent,
patient creatures, with their glossy coats
and their beautiful curves, their sensitive radiators
sniffing for something over the velvet ropes. Panting,
I know they are, to be out in the open again;
and yet I fancy they enjoy it all in a way. It would
be ungrateful if they did not; for, after all, the
whole thing has been arranged for them. The
whole idea of the Show is to let the motors inspect
the bloaters—and not what you think. (You
don’t know what bloaters are? Well, I can’t explain
without being rude.)
All the year round they can study ad nauseam
their own individual bloaters; but this is the only
occasion on which they have the whole world of[Pg 141]
bloaters paraded in front of them for inspection.
Now only can they compare notes and exchange
grievances.
And how closely they study the parade. Here
is a pretty limousine, a blonde; see how she
watches the two huge exhibits in front of her.
They are very new bloaters, and one of them—oh,
horror!—one of them is going to buy. He
has never bought before; she knows his sort. He
will drive her to death; he may even drive her
himself; he will stroke her lovely coat in a familiar,
proprietary fashion; he will show her off unceasingly
to other bloaters till she is hot all over
and the water boils in her radiator. He will hold
forth with a horrible intimacy and a yet more horrible
ignorance on the most private secrets of her
inner life. Not one throb of her young cylinders
will be sacred, yet never will he understand her as
she would like to be understood. He will mess
her with his muddy boots; He will scratch her
paint; he will drop tobacco-ash all over the cushions—though
not from pipes; cigars only....
There—he has bought her. It is a tragedy.
Let us move on.
Here is a little coupé—a smart young creature
with a nice blue coat, fond of town, I should say,
but quite at home in the country. She also is
inspecting two bloaters. But these two are very[Pg 142]
shy. In fact, they are not really bloaters at all;
they are rather a pair of nicemannered fresh herrings,
not long mated. The male had something
to do with that war, I should think; the coupé
would help him a good deal. The lady likes her
because she is dark-blue. The other one likes her
because of something to do with her works; but he
is very reverent and tactful about it. He seems to
know that he is being scrutinized, for he is nervous,
and scarcely dares to speak about her to the
groom in the top-hat. He will drive her himself;
he will look after her himself; he will know all
about her, all about her moods and fancies and
secret failings; he will humour and coax her, and
she will serve him very nobly.
Already, you see, they have given her a name—“Jane,”
I think they said; they will creep off into
the country with her when the summer comes, all
by themselves; they will plunge into the middle of
thick forests and sit down happily in the shade at
midday and look at her; and she will love them.
But the question is—— Ah, they are shaking
their heads; they are edging away. She is too
much. They look back sadly as they go. Another
tragedy....
Now I am going to be a bloater myself. Here
is a jolly one, though her stable-name is much too
long. She is a Saloon-de-Luxe and she only costs[Pg 143]
£2125 (why 5, I wonder—why not 6?). I can
run to that, surely. At any rate I can climb up
and sit down on her cushions; none of the grooms
are looking. Dark blue, I see, like Jane. That
is the sort of car I prefer. I am like the lady herring;
I don’t approve of all this talk about the
insides of things; it seems to me to be rather indecent—unless,
of course, you do it very nicely,
like that young herring. When you go and look at
a horse you don’t ask how its sweetbread is arranged,
or what is the principle of its lever. Then
why should you...?
Well, here we are, and very comfortable too.
But why do none of these cars have any means of
communication between the owner and the man
next to the chauffeur? There is always a telephone
to the chauffeur, but none to the overflow
guest on the box. So that when the host sees an
old manor-house which he thinks the guest hasn’t
noticed he has to hammer on the glass and do semaphore;
and the guest thinks he is being asked if
he is warm enough.
Otherwise, though, this is a nice car. It is very
cosy in here. Dark, and quiet, and warm. I
could go to sleep in here.
******
What? What’s that? No, I don’t really want
to buy it, thank you. I just wanted to see if it[Pg 144]
was a good sleeping car. As a matter of fact I
think it is. But I don’t like the colour. And what
I really want is a cabriolet. Good afternoon.
thank you....
A pleasant gentleman, that. I wish I could have
bought the saloon. She would have liked me. So
would he, I expect.
Well, we had better go home. I shan’t buy any
more cars today. And we won’t go up to the
gallery; there is nothing but oleo-plugs and graphite-grease
up there. That sort of thing spoils
the romance.
Ah, here is dear Jane again! What a pity it
was— Hullo, they have come back—that nice
young couple. They are bargaining—they are
beating him down. No, he is beating them up.
Go on—go on. Yes, you can run to that—of
course you can. Sell those oil shares. Look at
her—look at her! You can’t leave her here for
one of the bloaters. He wavers; he consults.
“Such a lovely colour.” Ah, that’s done it! He
has decided. He has bought. She has bought.
They have bought. Hurrah!
[Pg 145]
Little Bits of London
V
BOND STREET
I FIND it very difficult to walk slowly down
Bond Street as one ought to do; I always
feel so guilty. Most of the people there
look scornfully at me as if I belonged to Whitechapel,
and the rest look suspiciously at me as if
I belonged to Bond Street. My clothes are neither
good enough or bad enough. So I hurry through
with the tense expression of a man who is merely
using Bond Street as a thoroughfare, because it
is the way to his dentist—as indeed in my case it
is. But recently I did saunter in the proper way,
and I took a most thrilling inventory of the principal
classes of shops, the results of which have
now been tabulated by my statistical department.
For instance, do you know how many shops in
the street sell things for ladies to wear (not including
boots, jewellery or shoes)? No? Well,
there are thirty-three. Not many, is it? But then[Pg 146]
there are twenty-one jewellers (including pearl
shops) and eight boot and/or shoe shops; so that,
with two sort of linen places, which may fairly
be reckoned as female, the ladies’ total is sixty-four.
I only counted a hundred and fifty shops
altogether. Of that total, nine are places where
men can buy things to wear, and ten are places
where they can buy things to smoke; I have charitably
debited all the cigarette-shops to the men,
even the ones where the cigarettes are tipped with
rose-leaves and violet petals. But even if I do
that and give the men the two places where you
can buy guns and throw in the one garden-seat
shop, we are left with the following result:—
| Feminine Shops. |
|
Masculine Shops. |
|
| Dress |
33 |
Dress |
9 |
| Jewellers |
21 |
Tobacco |
10 |
| Boots and Shoes |
8 |
Motors |
9 |
| Sort of Linen Places |
2 |
Guns |
2 |
| Dog Bureau |
1 |
Garden Seats |
1 |
|
— |
|
— |
|
65 |
|
31 |
From these figures a firm of Manchester actuaries
has drawn the startling conclusion that Bond
Street is more used by women than by men. It
may be so. But a more interesting question is,
how do all these duplicates manage to carry on,
considering the very reasonable prices they[Pg 147]
charge? At one point there are three jewellers
in a row, with another one opposite. Not far off
there are three cigarette-shops together, madly
defying each other with gold-tips and silver-tips,
cork-tips and velvet-tips, rose-tips and lily-tips.
There is only one book-shop, of course, but there
are about nine picture-places. How do they all
exist? It is mysterious.
Especially when you consider how much trouble
they take to avoid attracting attention. There
are still one or two window-dressers who lower
the whole tone of the street by adhering to the
gaudy-overcrowded style; but the majority in a
violent reaction from that, seem to have rushed
to the wildest extremes of the simple-unobtrusive.
They are delightful, I think, those reverent little
windows with the chaste curtains and floors of
polished walnut, in the middle of which reposes
delicately a single toque, a single chocolate, or a
single pearl. Some of the picture-places are
among the most modest. There is one window
which suggests nothing but the obscure branch
of a highly decayed bank in the dimmest cathedral
town. On the dingy screen which entirely
fills the window is written simply in letters which
time has almost erased, “John Smith—Pictures.”
Nothing could be less enticing. Yet inside, I
daresay, fortunes are made daily. I noticed no[Pg 148]
trace of this method at the Advertisers’ Exhibition;
they might give it a trial.
Now no doubt you fondly think that Bond
Street is wholly devoted to luxuries; perhaps you
have abandoned your dream of actually buying
something in Bond Street? You are wrong. To
begin with, there are about ten places where you
can buy food, and, though there is no pub, now,
there is a café (with a license). There are two
grocers and a poulterer. There is even a fish-shop—you
didn’t know that, did you? I am bound
to say it seemed to have only the very largest fish,
but they were obviously fish.
Anyone can go shopping in Bond Street. I
knew a clergyman once who went in and asked for
a back-stud. He was afterwards unfrocked for
riotous living, but the stud was produced. You
can buy a cauliflower in Bond Street—if you know
the ropes. There is a shop which merely looks
like a very beautiful florist’s. There are potatoes
in the window, it is true, but they are “hot-house”
ones; inside there is no trace of a common vegetable.
But if you ask facetiously for a cauliflower
(as I did) the young lady will disappear below
ground and actually return with a real cauliflower
(de luxe, of course). I remember few more embarassing
episodes.
And if you like to inquire at the magnificent[Pg 149]
provision-merchant’s, he too will conjure up from
the magic cellars boot-cream and metal-polish and
all those vulgar groceries which make life possible.
That is the secret of Bond Street. Beneath that
glittering display of luxurious trivialities there are
vast reserves of solid prosaic necessaries, only
waiting to be asked for. A man could live exclusively
on Bond Street. I don’t know where
you would buy your butcher’s meat, but I have a
proud fancy that, if you went in and said something
to one of those sleek and sorrowful jewellers,
he too would vanish underground and blandly
return to you with a jewelled steak or a plush
chop.
Many years ago, they tell me, there was a
butcher in Bond Street. Perhaps you dealt there.
For my part I was not eating much meat in those
days. But I can imagine his window—a perfect
little grotto of jasper and onyx, with stalactites
of pure gold, and in the middle, resting on a genuine
block of Arctic ice, an exquisite beef-sausage.
I wish he could come back.
It is difficult to realize that there is anything
but shop-windows in Bond Street, but I like to
think that, up there in those upper stories which
one never sees, there does dwell a self-contained
little community for whom Bond Street is merely
the village street, down which the housewives pass[Pg 150]
gossiping each morning to the greengrocer’s or
the fishmonger’s, and never purchase any pearls
at all.
When the butcher comes back I think I shall
join them.
[Pg 151]
The Little Guiggols
[I understand that there is a dearth of the kind of horrible
little plays which the public really wants. It ought
not to be difficult to meet that want. Nearly everybody I
know is good at dialogues but can’t do plots; personally I
teem with plots, but am not so good at dialogue. So I
propose to present you with the ground plan—the scenario—of
a few really sensational, thrilling and, on the whole,
unpleasant playlets, and you can do the rest.]
I
THE MISSING STAR
(Based on an old legend, and also, I am sorry to say, on
fact.)
THE scene is the interior of a small tent at
a country fair. Through the open door
can be seen the back of Bert, who is shouting
madly, “Walk up! Walk up! Now showin’—the
Performin’ Fleas! Edward! Edward!
Does everything but talk. Walk up! Walk up!”
Seven or eight people file sheepishly into the tent
and stand reverently in front of the small table
under the single bright light—a soldier and his[Pg 152]
love, two small boys, a highly respectable mater
and paterfamilias, with Reginald in an Eton collar,
also a young man who may be a barrister, or possibly
one of those writing fellows. They do not
look at each other; they are ashamed.
The red velvet curtain is drawn across the door
of the tent, muffling the wild noises of the fair.
Mr. Slint, the little showman, adjusts his gold
pincenez and speaks; the audience close round the
table and crane their necks. Mr. Slint speaks in
the patronizing, almost contemptuous, tones of
the expert lecturer who has something unique to
ofter.
Mr. Slint (quietly). I now show you the Performing
Fleas. The fleas are common fleas,
trained by myself. Perseverance and patience is
alone required.
The Writing Fellow (intelligently). You
never use the whip?
Mr. Slint (taking no notice). Now the nature
of the flea is to ’op; it is not the nature of the flea
to walk. I ’ave trained the fleas to walk. I will
now show you the flea as newly captured. Being
still untrained, ’e still ’ops, you see.
He produces a miniature kennel, to which is
attached “by a ’uman ’air” an undeniable flea.
The flea hops gallantly, but is clearly impeded
from doing its best jumps by the human hair.
[Pg 153]
We are now shown a second flea which is “only
half-trained.” He has certainly forgotten how
to hop. Indeed he seems to be suffering from
congenital inertia. He scrambles a centimetre or
two and sometimes makes a sort of flutter off the
ground, but he rather suggests a solicitor learning
to fly than a flea learning to walk.
Mr. S. I will now show you the flea when fully
trained.
He opens a small cardboard box which seems to
be full of toy four-wheelers and hansom-cabs.
They are made of some metal, brightly painted,
with substantial metal wheels. One of these vehicles
is placed on the lighted board and begins to
move. It is drawn by Eustace. It moves at a
steady pace towards the materfamilias.
Reginald (suddenly, in a high piping voice).
How does he feed them, mother?
The Materfamilias. Hush, dear.
Mr. S. (impassive). The fleas are fed on the
’uman arm. (An after-thought) My own.
Reginald (an imaginative child). Does he
feed them one at a time or all together, mother?
The M.F. Hush, dear.
Mr. S. I will now show you Edward, champion
flea of the world.
Edward is indeed a magnificent creature. He
is drawing a light racing hansom and he shows an[Pg 154]
amazing turn of speed. Eustace with his heavy
old four-wheeler has a long start, but in a moment
Edward is up with him; he has passed him.
Reginald (breathlessly). Mother, he’s running!
And so he is. He is making a bee-line for the
M.F. Will he reach her? No. Mr. Slint has
coolly picked up Edward’s hansom and is showing
him to the spectators through a magnifying-glass.
The limelight is thrown on to Edward’s swarthy
features and by an ingenious use of the cinema we
are now shown a striking “close-up” of Edward’s
expression as he is passed round before the people
in the tent, hanging in his tiny collar at the end
of the human hair. Rage, hatred, mortification,
boredom, and what can only be described as the
lust for blood are indicated in turn by the rolling
eyes, the mobile lips. And, as he passes before
the M.F., he wears a look of thwarted ambition
which makes one shudder.
Now comes the final spectacle. Out of the
little box Mr. Slint rapidly takes cab after cab
and sets them on the white board, line abreast.
Each cab is drawn by a single devoted flea. On the
right of the line is Edward, on the left is Eustace.
In perfect order the fleas advance, dressing by the
right....
It is a moving sight. There is something very[Pg 155]
sinister in that steady, noiseless, calculated progress—for
I need not say that the fleas are moving
away from Mr. Slint: they are moving with
machine-like precision towards Reginald. No,
they have changed direction. Edward has given
them “Right incline!” They are moving with
machine-gun precision, silent, inexorable, cabs and
all, towards the materfamilias.
R. (Shrilly, still worried). Do they have to be
unharnessed for meals, mother?
The M.F. Hush, dear.
Mr. Slint purrs on about his patience and perseverance.
Suddenly there is a stir on the right
of the line; there has been an accident; Edward’s
wheels are locked with the careless four-wheeler’s
on his left. A scurry, a sharp cry from Mr. Slint
and Edward has disappeared.
Mr. Slint acts promptly. The door of the tent
is barred. He announces to the cowering spectators
that a valuable artiste is missing and that
those present are to be searched before leaving.
(He suspects foul play.)
Suddenly he makes a dart at the M.F. and from
her shoulder—oh, horror!—he takes a Thing.
“Larceny!” he cries; “I mean abduction. Quick
Bert, the police.”
The Paterfamilias. Spare her, sir. She is a
mother.
[Pg 156]
A policeman (entering). Now then, what’s
this ’ere?
Mr. S. (moved by who knows what chivalrous
impulse). Madam, I have wronged you. This
is not Edward. It is one of yours. (He replaces
the Thing.)
The M.F. (shrieking). Oh, oh! The shame
of it!
Reginald. I know, mother! Put it on the
table. If it’s Edward it will walk: if it’s one of—if
it’s not, it will hop.
The Thing is placed solemnly upon the table.
All crowd around and watch for the issue. The
flea does not walk. On the other hand it does
not hop. Nothing happens. The flea is dead.
So no one will ever know.
The M.F. swoons away....
CURTAIN
[Pg 157]
The Little Guiggols
II
THE LURCH
[Tyltyl. “It seems hardly worth while, then, to take
so much trouble.”—The Betrothal.]
I AM afraid this little Guiggol has somehow
got mixed up With M. Maeterlinck; but the
two schools have, of course, a good deal in
common, so it should work out fairly well.
The play opens in The Place Which is Neither
Here nor There; it seems to be a high hill entirely
surrounded by fog. The unfortunate Bill Tyl and
his sister Methyl[3] are doing their utmost to die,
driven on by the sinister figure of Indigestion,
which grows larger and larger as the play progresses.
They meet with a good deal of opposition
in their simple project, and when the play begins
they have already been to the House of[Pg 158]
Uncles and The Abode of the Half-Baked for
permission to die; but they always find that before
they can do it they have to go to just one more
place for information and advice. It is like walking
up one of those tiresome mountains which
never seem to have a top; or it is like trying to
find out which Government Department is really
responsible; or it is like.... But enough.
Bill and Methyl have now been told that they
cannot die until they have gone down and rescued
all the people who have been left in The Lurch
during their lives; so they are discovered standing
on the hill preparing to go down to The Lurch.
Indigestion endeavours to dissuade them, saying
that they had much better go down the other side
of the hill into The Limbo. But the seductive
figure of Food intervenes, gorgeously, dressed in
aspic, and eventually prevails.
At this point there is a jolly bit of dialogue.—
Bill (profoundly). Food is good.
The Oldest Uncle (I forget how he got there).
Food is very good.
Food (mysteriously). The food which you eat
is good, but the food which you do not eat is
better.
Methyl (frightened). What does she mean?
Bill. I do not know what she means.
Food. I do not know what I mean.
[Pg 159]
The O. U. I do not know what the author
means.
M. Does anybody know what he means?
Indigestion. He does not mean anything.
Bill. Oh, oh! I wish he would mean something.
Ind. He is pulling your leg.
The next scene is The Lurch itself, a very horrible
place, where we see all the people who have
been left in it wishing they could get out of it;
or at least we don’t see them because the whole
place is full of a dense fog; but they are there,
groping about and contemplating unutterably the
opaque immensities of boredom. Their hands
move visibly through the vast gloom, plying the
instruments of Destiny; most of them knitting.
You see, they are nearly all old maids. None of
them can be got out of The Lurch until those who
left them in it remember them and return. There
are also, of course, large crowds of old men in
all stages of decay. Many of them are Colonels
who have been left in The Lurch by the Government
and naturally there is no hope for them. It
is all extremely sad.
In low tones they do a little dialogue, like sheep
bleating on the Mountains of Eternity.
The Oldest Old Maid. Will he never come?
[Pg 160]
The Oldest Old Maid But One. He will never
come.
A Frightfully Old Man. The fog is very foggy.
The O. O. M. It is difficult to see things in a
fog.
The O. O. M. B. O. If he came I should not
see him.
An Awfully Old Colonel. You are lucky.
The O. O. M. B. O. I am not lucky.
The O. O. M. She is not lucky.
A. F. O. M. There must be some mistake.
An A. O. C. You are not waiting for the Government.
That is what I meant.
The O. O. M. Oh, oh! He meant something.
A. F. O. M. There must be some mistake.
The O. O. M. B. O. Oh, oh! Somebody is
coming.
Bill and his party come in on all-fours. You
cannot see them because of the fog, but you can
hear them coughing. It is terrible. There is a
scene of intense intensity while Bill Tyl and
Methyl crawl about trying to find the people they
have come to find. Bill keeps finding the Awfully
Old Colonel by mistake, and this causes a great
deal of emotion. The one he is after is The Oldest
Old Maid But One, and, as she says nothing
but “Oh, Oh, I cannot smell him,” instead of saying,[Pg 161]
“Here I am, Bill,” it is very difficult to identify
her.
But suddenly Methyl remembers that in all her
blameless life she has never left anyone in The
Lurch. (Wood-wind, sotto voce—and strings,
vibrato.) The rule is that anyone who comes
down to The Lurch and remembers things like
that may rescue everyone who is in The Lurch at
the time.
This gives general satisfaction and the whole
party sets off to the top, Old Maids and all.
In the next scene we are back at The Place
Which Is Neither Here Nor There again, only
now we have a splendid view of The Place of
Ecstasy and The Golden Sea. Also a little to the
left we see the yawning chasms of The Limbo
(which is only one better than The Lurch).
The Place of Ecstacy is top-hole. Gleaming
unspeakably in the unimaginable radiance of the
inconceivable light (80 watts), immense columns
of barley-sugar melt away into space, avenue by
avenue, while just below in The Golden Sea, which
is entirely composed of the finest golden syrup,
wallow in a refined manner Those Who Have Arrived.
The travellers feast their eyes on this vision of
bliss. And now comes the terrible, Guiggolian
thrill. There has been a good deal of dialogue[Pg 162]
on the way up from The Lurch, and poor Bill has
been brooding gloomily over the prospect of
spending eternity in the same company.
All the Old Birds are standing in a Violet haze
of ineffable gladness on the brink, with joyous
springs of orangeade bubbling at their feet and
castor sugar descending in showers all round,
when Bill has a very naughty impulse, which I
regret to say he makes no attempt to resist.
He rushes the whole crowd of Old Birds over
into The Limbo. Then with a great cry of joy
he and Methyl plunge into the Golden Sea.
Food and Indigestion are left behind—immutable,
eternal....
CURTAIN
[Pg 163]
The Little Guiggols
III
NUMBER SEVEN
(Based on an old legend)
A Room in the East. Some time ago. A Man
and a Woman having supper.
She. You eat heartily, my pomegranate.
He. Yes, I am hungry. And I am happy, for
is it not our bridal feast?
She. That reminds me. There is something
I want to tell you. As a matter of fact I meant
to tell you before, but I have been so busy buying
clothes.
He. Oh, what is that? Pass the salt.
She (passing). The fact is, you are not my
first husband; at least, not exactly.
He. How do you mean?
She. As a matter of fact you are the—the first
but five.
[Pg 164]
He (working it out). I see. I take it the
others are away from home.
She (gently). No. They died. Have some
more salad?
He. Thank you. I’m sorry. At least, you
know what I mean.
She. The odd thing was that they all died at
the same time—in a way.
He. Oh! Was there an epidemic, or what?
She. Oh, no. What I mean is they each died
the night we were married.
He. That is curious. Why did they die?
She. Nobody knows. They just died. It’s
given me a great deal of bother.
He. But I suppose you’ve been able to use the
same trousseau in each case.
She. But nay; for I have invariably embroidered
every garment in gold and silver with the
name and image of my love.
He. By Jove, what a bore! I say, have you
embroidered any garments with my name and
image? I’d like to see them.
She (sadly). Nay, my beloved. This time I
have embroidered nothing. It seems such a waste.
He. Yes, yes, of course. All the same——You
know, my olive branch, I can’t help wishing
you’d told me about this before we were wed.
She. I am sorry, my love. I can’t think how it[Pg 165]
slipped my memory. But there was so much shopping
to be done, and what with one thing and
another——Do have some more salad.
He. Thanks; its delicious. By the way, who
made it?
She. With her own fair hands your lily contrived
it.
He. Oh! Perhaps, after all, I won’t have any
more. I don’t feel so hungry as I thought I did.
She. The last but two used to love my salads.
All his married life——
He (musing). By the way, when you say
“night,” what time of night do you mean? When
did the last but two, for instance——
She. I should have said “evening” really; it
was careless of me. Usually about nine——
He (looking at hour-glass). Curious—I don’t
feel nearly so well. I wonder if——
[The curtains falls to denote the passage of a
few months. When it rises two people are discovered
at supper—a Woman (the same one)
and a Man (a different one).
She. You eat heartily, my pomegranate.
He. Who would not eat heartily on the day of
his espousal to such a maid as thee.
She. That reminds me. I knew there was
something I wanted to tell you, but the wedding
put it quite out of my head.
[Pg 166]
He. Truly, what shouldst thou think of at thy
espousal but thy spouse?
She. Do you minding saying “you”? None of
the others have said “thou.”
He. As you will, beloved. But of what
“others” speakest thou?
She. Well, that’s really the point. The fact
is, my tangerine, you are not my first spouse—at
least, not quite.
He. How so? What delicious salad!
She. Have some more. No, you are—let me
see—one, two, three, four—yes, you are the first
but six. It’s rather a curious story; I wonder if
it will bore you?
He. What tale from thy sweet lips could tedious be?
She. I wish you’d get out of that “thy” habit;
it’s so irritating. Well, the fact is that all your
predecessors died on the evening of our wedding—I
mean weddings—and nobody quite knows why.
He. Truly a strange tale. May I have just
one more go at the salad?
She. Of course. I’m so glad you like it. Curiously
enough, the one before you was very fond
of it too; in fact I’ve often wondered——Well,
there it is. Now I do hope that nothing is going
to happen to you, my dear, because I should so
hate to think that you had been put to any inconvenience[Pg 167]
on my account. Besides, it upsets the
servants.
He. Have no fear, beloved. For I too have a
secret. I know thy—your—tragic history; a
witch has revealed it unto me.
She. You know? Well, I do think you might
have told me. I meant it to be a surprise.
He. Further, she has given me a magic charm
to protect us both.
She. I say, what’s that mess in the corner?
There—on the plate.
He. That is the heart and liver of a fish, my
apple.
She. I hope you haven’t brought a cat into the
house; father can’t bear them.
He. Nay, my love, that is the charm.
She. It looks a very large one. What fish
is it?
He. It is the heart and liver of a sturgeon.
She. I suppose it couldn’t have been done with
an anchovy?
He. Nay, nay. For the witch enjoined me;
first I must burn it——
She. Yes, I think you’d better.
He. See? (Burns.) The ashes thereof will
drive away the evil spirit that molests you.
She (recoiling). And I don’t wonder.
[Pg 168]
[The Curtain falls, and rises again the next
morning. The room is full of smoke.
He (shaving). Who is that man digging in the
garden?
She. Oh, that’s father. He’s digging a grave
for you. It’s become a sort of habit with him.
He. Wilt thou not tell him it is not required?
She (through the window). Father, we shan’t
want it this time. Sorry.
He. I thank thee.
She (irritable). Oh, do stop saying “thee.”
And will you please take these horrible ashes and
throw them away at once? Really, I can hardly
breathe.
He. Nay, my love. They are our charm
against danger. Art not thou—aren’t you, I
mean—grateful?
She. Yes, of course. But they’ve done the
trick by now. We can’t spend our whole married
life in this atmosphere.
He. But indeed we must. The witch enjoined
me that, unless they were preserved, I should perish,
even as those before me.
She. Well, I’m extremely sorry, but I really
can’t stand this. (Through the window.) Father,
you might bury this, will you? (throws down the
ashes). Thank you. Oh, and don’t fill up the
hole yet. We may want it after all.
CURTAIN
Transcriber’s Notes:
Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
Perceived typographical errors have been changed.
