Various - Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920
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Various >> Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
VOL. 159.
September 15th, 1920.
CHARIVARIA.
Prohibition meetings in Scotland, says an official, have been attended
by fifty thousand people. We should not have thought there were so
many aliens in Scotland.
* * *
At an Oldbury wedding the other day a brick was thrown at the
bridegroom. There is no excuse for this sort of thing with confetti so
cheap.
* * *
One of the Pacific Islands, we read, is so small that the House of
Commons could not be planted on it. A great pity.
* * *
"Do hotel chefs use cookery-books?" asks a home journal. Our own
opinion is that quite a large proportion of them cook by ear.
* * *
Fourteen thousand artificial teeth recently stolen from premises in
East London have not been recovered. While not attempting to indicate
the guilty party, we cannot refrain from pointing out that several
Labour leaders have recently been showing a good many more teeth than
they were thought entitled to possess.
* * *
At the Trades Union Congress a protest was made against the
Unemployment Insurance Act. This must not be confused with the miners'
threat to strike. That is merely a method of ensuring unemployment.
* * *
The arrangement by which a hundred-and-fifty amateur brass bands are
to play at the Crystal Palace on September 25th looks like an attempt
to distract us from the miners' strike fixed for that day.
* * *
A Ramsgate man charged with shooting a cat denied that he fired at it.
The animal is said to have dashed at the bullet and impaled himself
upon it.
* * *
It has been agreed, says a news item, that milk shall be tenpence a
quart this winter. Not by us.
* * *
The War Office announces that Arabs in Southern Mesopotamia have
captured a British armoured train. It should be pointed out to these
Arab rebels that it is such behaviour as this that discourages the
tourist spirit.
* * *
Upon reading that another lady had failed in her attempt to swim the
Channel a Scotsman inquires whether the Cross-Channel steamer rates
have been increased, like everything else.
* * *
We are informed that at a football match recently played in the
Rhondda Valley the referee won.
* * *
General OBREGON, says an unofficial message, has been elected
President of Mexico. The startling report that he has decided to
reverse the safe policy of his predecessors and recognise the United
States requires corroboration.
* * *
Everybody should economise after a great war, says an American film
producer. We always do our best after every great war.
* * *
According to an official report only fifty policemen were bitten by
dogs in London last week. The falling off is said to be due to the
fact that it has been rather a good year for young and tender postmen.
* * *
Some highly-strung persons, says a medical writer, are even afraid of
inanimate objects. This accounts for many nervous people being afraid
of venturing too near a plumber.
* * *
"I only want the potatoes in the allotment and not the earth," said a
complainant at Deptford. It is evident that, if this man is a trade
unionist, he is a raw amateur.
* * *
Doctors at Vicenza have threatened to strike. This means that people
in that neighbourhood will have to die without medical assistance.
* * *
"Chief Hailstorm," of the Texas Rangers, has arrived in London. His
brother, Chief Rainstorm, has, of course, been with us most of the
summer.
* * *
Girls, declares a well-known City caterer, are acquiring bigger
appetites. We somehow suspected that the demand for a return of the
wasp waist had influential interests behind it.
* * *
The wife of a miner in Warwickshire has recently presented her husband
with three baby boys. We understand that Mr. SMILLIE is sorry to have
missed three extra strike-votes which he would have obtained had the
boys been born a little earlier.
* * *
An extraordinary story reaches us from North London. It appears that
during the building of a house a brick slipped unnoticed from a
hod and fell into its correct position, with the result that the
accountant employed by the bricklayers could not balance his books at
the end of the day.
* * *
"As science measures time," declares an eminent geologist, "the Garden
of Eden was a thing of yesterday." All we can say is, "Where was
Councillor CLARK yesterday?"
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Special Correspondent._ "WHEN THEY RELEASED ME THEY
SAID THAT IF I SHOWED MY FACE IN IRELAND AGAIN I SHOULD BE SHOT."
_Editor._ "I'LL LET THESE SINN FEINERS SEE THAT I'M NOT TO BE
INTIMIDATED. YOU'LL GO BACK BY THE NEXT TRAIN."]
* * * * *
"POLES OVER THE LINE."
_Evening Paper._
So _that_ accounts for the weather.
* * * * *
"Whatever other defects may be alleged against the scarlet
uniform, it certainly makes for two things--discipline and
smartness--and these two are very important factors in
discipline."
_"Civil and Military Gazette," Lahore._
Especially the former.
* * * * *
"During the night, she [Mrs. Hamilton, the Channel swimmer] said,
'I occasionally took hot drinks and ate cold roast chicken, the
small bones of which I kept chewing, as it seemed to assist
me....'
A strict vegetarian, Mrs. Hamilton will sometimes swim five miles
before dinner, and skips for a few minutes every day."
_Scotch Paper._
She should skip the chicken if she wants us to be excited about her
strict vegetarianism.
* * * * *
DOGGEREL.
TO THE PRIME MINISTER'S ST. BERNARD PUP.
Ere your native country figured as the home of winter sport,
Paradise of spies and agents, and for kings a last resort;
Ere the hospitable chamois lent his haunts to Bolsh and Hun
Or the queue of rash toboggans took the curve of Cresta Run;
Long before a locomotive climbed the Rigi, cog by cog,
Fame had mentioned your forefathers--such a noble breed of dog,
How they tracked the lonely traveller with their nimble, sleuthy snouts,
Till beneath a billowy snowdrift they remarked his whereabouts.
How they dug him out of cold-store like a Canterbury sheep,
Took their tongues and kindly licked him where his nose
had gone to sleep,
Called attention to the cognac which they wore in little kegs
And remobilised the stagnant circulation in his legs.
How they lifted up their voices, baying like an iron bell,
Till the monks of good St. Bernard heard the same and ran like hell--
Ran and bore him to their hospice, where they put him into bed
And applied a holy posset stiff enough to wake the dead.
Heir to this superb tradition, born to such a pride of race,
From the doggy _flair_ that tells you what a lineage you can trace
You will draw, I trust, a solace for the strange and alien scene
Where you undergo purgation in a stuffy quarantine.
Further, if a homesick feeling sets you itching in the scalp
With a wave of poignant longing for the odour of an Alp,
Let this thought (a thing of splendour) help to keep your pecker up--
You have had a high promotion; you are now a Premier's pup!
You shall guard his sacred portals, you shall eat from off his plate,
Mix with private secretaries, move behind the veil of State,
And at Ministerial councils, as a special form of treat,
You shall sniff at WINSTON'S trousers, you shall fondle CURZON'S feet.
You may even serve your master as an expert, one who knows
All the rules regarding salvage in the Great St. Bernard snows,
Do him good by utilising your hereditary gift
To retrieve his Coalition from a constant state of drift.
O.S.
* * * * *
THE PRODIGIES.
We--Great-aunts Emily and Louisa--had in our innocence been telling a
few old fairy stories at bedtime to those three precocities whom our
hosts call their children.
We knew that they talked Latin and Greek in their sleep and were too
much for their parents in argument, but we thought that at least, at
the story hour----
We were stopped by Drusilla. "I don't think much of the moral of that
one," she remarked. "It would seem to illustrate the Evil Consequences
of Benevolence!"
"But she came alive again," said Evadne, the youngest, in extenuation.
"And the wolf was killed," we ventured in defence of our old story.
"Still," persisted Drusilla, "you couldn't call it encouraging."
"Then in the other case," went on Claude thoughtfully, "considering
that she had been left in sole charge of the house and had no business
to go out and leave it to the mercy of burglars, what moral are we to
draw from the fact that she married a Prince and lived happily ever
afterwards?"
"Most of them have that sort of moral," said Drusilla. "And they
are every one of them devoid of humour, except of the most obvious
kind--no subtlety."
"When _I_ was your age," said poor Louisa gently, "I used to laugh
very heartily over the adventures of _Tom Thumb_."
Claude seemed touched. "There are some capital situations in certain
of them," he conceded, "which might be quite effectively treated."
"How?" we asked weakly.
It was Drusilla, the most alarming of the children, who finally
undertook to sketch us out an example.
After a short meditation, "Something like this," she said. "The
situation, of course, you have met with before, but as remodelled you
might call it--
THE TRIUMPH OF VIRTUE;
OR,
THE BAD FAIRY FOILED.
A certain King and Queen had one daughter, to whose christening
they invited a large company, forgetting as usual a particularly
important and bad-tempered Fairy, who signified her annoyance in
the usual manner.
The attendants of the little Princess (having read their
story-books) were preparing dolefully enough to fall asleep for a
hundred years, when the Fairy, with a contemptuous sniff, remarked
that the spell would not take effect for some time yet.
They breathed again and had almost forgotten the affair by the
time the Princess had grown up. But the Fairy had so arranged it
that the spell fell upon the Princess at the time when she was
engaged in making her choice of a husband from among the suitors
who had arrived at her father's Court.
The Princess was now bewitched in this way--that good men appeared
bad, ugly men handsome, and _vice versa_. The Fairy had hoped that
she would thus make a mess of her matrimonial affairs and live
unhappily ever after.
But she had reckoned without the disposition of the Princess, a
kind good girl with an overpowering sense of duty. When pressed
to choose, she replied firmly, "I will have no other than Prince
Felix."
To her his ugliness seemed pathetic and his character evidently
needed reformation so urgently that she longed to be at the job.
No one wondered at her choice, for he was, of course, the most
handsome and excellent of men.
Ultimately the Fairy broke her spell in a fit of exasperation, but
without any gratifying result. The Princess seemed happier than
ever and would sometimes say to a slightly puzzled friend:--
"Hasn't Felix improved _wonderfully_ since I married him?"
* * * * *
"From 1910 to 1916 he was Viceroy in India, governing the
Dependency through very critical years and enjoying general
esteem, as was made clear in 1912, when an attempt was made to
assassinate him at Delhi."--"_Daily Mail" on Lord Hardinge_.
It sounds like a _succes d'estime_.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE PUBLIC BENEFACTOR.
MR. SMILLIE. "I CAN'T BEAR TO THINK OF YOUR PAYING SO MUCH FOR YOUR COAL.
I MUST PUT THAT RIGHT; I MUST SEE THAT YOU DON'T GET ANY."]
* * * * *
[Illustration: _First Tramp_. "IN THIS BIT O' NOOSPAPER IT SAYS:
'THE 'OLE CAUSE OF THE WORLD'S PRESENT DISORDER IS THE UNIVERSAL
SPIRIT OF UNREST. I WONDER IF THAT'S TRUE?"
_Second Tramp_. "I AIN'T NOTICED IT."]
* * * * *
THE COAL CUP.
It seems to me that we all take a great deal of interest in the miners
when they strike, but not nearly enough when they hew. And yet
this business of hacking large lumps of fuel out of a hole, since
civilisation really depends on it, ought to be represented to us from
day to day as the beautiful and thrilling thing that it really is. Yet
if we put aside for a moment Mr. SMILLIE'S present demands, we find
the main topics of discussion in the daily Press as I write are
roughly these:--
(1) The prospects of League Football and the Cup Ties.
(2) Ireland.
(3) The prevalence of deafness amongst blue-eyed cats.
(4) Mesopotamia.
(5) The Fall of Man.
(6) The sale of _The Daily Mail_, whose circulation during
the coming winter is for some reason or other supposed to be almost
as important to the children of England as their own.
Of all these topics the first is, of course, by far the most
absorbing, and almost everyone has remarked how the love of sport, for
which Britons are famous, is growing more passionate than ever. It is
not only cricket and football, of course; only the other day there was
a shilling sweepstake on the St. Leger in our office and, from what
I hear of the form of Westmorland in the County Croquet Championship
during the past season--but I have no time to discuss these things
now.
The point is that, whilst this excitement over games grows greater
and greater, the country is suffering, say the economists, from
under-production and the inflation of the wage-bill. This means that
everyone is trying to do less work and get more money for it, a very
natural ambition which nobody can blame the miners from sharing. I
suppose that if they all stopped mining and we had to depend for
warmth on wrapping ourselves up in moleskins, the molliers, or
whatever they are called, would strike for a two-shillings rise as
well.
The worst of it is that under-production, say the economists again
(there is no keeping anything from these smart lads), sends prices up.
Obviously then there is only one thing to do: we must take advantage
of the prevailing passion and make mining (and other industries too
for that matter) a form of sport. The daily papers should find very
little difficulty in doing this.
WHO HEWS HARDEST?
CLAIM BY A LANARKSHIRE COLLIER
would do very well for the headings of a preliminary article; and
the claim of the Lanarkshire collier would, I am sure, be instantly
challenged. After a few letters we might have a suggestion, say from
Wales, that no team of eleven miners could hew so hard and so much
as a Welsh one. And from that it would be only a short step to the
formation of district league competitions and an international
championship. Or the old-time system under which cricketers were
matched for a stake by sporting patrons might be revived, and we
should have headlines in the evening Press after this fashion:--
HUGE HEWING CONTEST.
NOTTS FOREST v. NEWCASTLE UNITED.
TREMENDOUS WAGER BETWEEN
THE DUKES OF PORTLAND AND
NORTHUMBERLAND
and all the glades of Sherwood and the banks where the wild Tyne flows
would be glad.
It will be objected, of course, that the hewing of coal is not a
spectacular affair. You cannot pack sixty thousand spectators into a
mine to watch a hewing match, and even if you could the lighting is
bad; but that is just where the skill of the reporters would come in.
After all, we do not most of us see the races on which we bet, nor
the Golf Championship, nor even BECKETT and WELLS. But there would be
articles on the correct swing whilst hewing, and the proper stance,
and how far the toes should be turned in; the chances of every team
would be discussed; the current odds would be quoted, and, whoever
won, the consumer would score, whilst the strongest hewers would
become popular heroes and be photographed on the back-page standing
beside their hews.
I admit that the South of England and London in particular would have
very little share in these competitions, and we should depend for
local interest mainly upon the promising young colts from the Kentish
nurseries. But we could find out from our dealers where our coals
came from and follow from afar the fortunes of our adopted teams; and
Cabinet Ministers, at any rate, could distribute their patronage and
their presence with tact over the various areas involved.
MR. BALFOUR HEWS OFF AT
DURHAM
is another headline which seems to suggest itself, and I should
strongly urge the PRIME MINISTER, who has returned, I hear, with a St.
Bernard from the Alps, to lose no time in selecting a more appropriate
playmate.
PREMIER AT TONYPANDY.
MR. LLOYD GEORGE PATS PET
PIT-PONY
is the kind of thing I mean, and very hard also to say six times
quickly without making a mistake.
Obviously the result of all this would be that not only would the
miners be justified in asking for more money, but that the country
would be able to afford it; and similar competitive leagues, to
supersede trade unions, would soon be formed by other trades. One
seems to hear faintly the loud plaudits of the onlookers as two crack
teams of West-end road-menders step smartly into the arena....
EVOE.
* * * * *
=Our Bolshevik Colonies.=
"Married Shepherd, used hilly country and all farm and station
work, desires Situation; wife would cook one or two men."
"_The Press," Christchurch, N.Z._
"Miss ----, a soubrette, whose songs lean towards the voluptuous,
sank 'Somebody's Baby.' Her encore number, 'You'd be Surprised,'
was even more so."
"_The Dominion," Wellington, N.Z._
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Woodland Sprite (from Stepney, to eminent botanist)._
"PLEASE, MISTER, MAGGIE WANTS TO KNOW WHAT YOU CHARGE FOR TAKING
TWINS?"]
* * * * *
THE PASSING OF THE CRADLE.
[According to a report which recently appeared in a daily paper,
cradles for infants are becoming a thing of the past.]
Snug retreat for mother's treasure,
Shall I pine as I repeat
Rumour's strange report, which says you're
Virtually obsolete?
Shall these lips a doleful lyric
Proffer at your ghostly bier,
Or compose a panegyric
Moistened with a minstrel's tear?
Me the theme leaves too unshaken,
Though "some" father more or less;
Better 'twere if undertaken
By my wife (a poetess);
And, if I be asked, Why vainly
Occupy, then, so much space?
My concern, I'll say, is mainly
With the woman in the case.
For, when she and you shall sever
(Though 'tis early yet to crow),
Your departure may for ever
Lay her proudest triumph low;
Yes, while men (I'm much afraid) 'll
Round her fingers still be twirled,
If her hand can't rock a cradle
It may cease to boss the world.
* * * * *
=Commercial Candour.=
"Irate Householders, why be swindled in a clumsy manner? Fetch
your second-hand clothing to me and be done in the most approved
style."--_Daily Paper_.
* * * * *
"MORE LITERARY HEREDITY.
Fresh literary fame seems to be pending for the Maurice Hewlett
family circle.
Mr. Robin Richards, the son-in-law of the famous novelist, is
about to appeal to fiction readers with his first novel."--_Daily
Paper_.
No more of the old-fashioned DARWIN and GALTON nonsense about fathers
and children.
* * * * *
SEVEN WHITEBAIT.
Here and there in the drab routine of modern existence it is still
possible to catch an occasional glimpse of romance and courageous
living, and in the volume which lies before us as we write we are
given a generous measure of peril and adventure in faery seas forlorn.
_From Whitebait to Kipper: The Story of Seven Lives_, is the vivid
record of a family of herrings, set down (posthumously, it would seem)
with refreshing simplicity by Walter Herring, the youngest and perhaps
the most brilliant of the family. The story begins with the early
childhood of Walter, John, Isabel, Margaret, Rupert, Stephanie and
little Foch, the last of whom was so named because he was born on the
anniversary of the Armistice. (As a matter of fact they were all born
on the same day, but for some reason which is not explained only one
of them was called Foch.)
You, reader, are one of those ignorant people who do so much discredit
to our Public Schools. You fondly think that the whitebait is a
special kind of fish, that there are father whitebaits and mother
whitebaits and baby whitebaits. You are wrong. There are only baby
whitebaits. At least there are baby herrings and baby pilchards, and
these are called whitebait because they are eaten by the mackerel and
because they look white when they are swimming upside down.
Anyhow Walter and John and Isabel and Margaret and Rupert and
Stephanie and little Foch began life as whitebait. They used to charge
about the Cornish seas with whole platefuls of other whitebait,
millions of them, and wherever they went they were pursued by
thousands of mackerel, who wanted to eat them. One day John felt that
the moment was very near when he would be eaten by a mackerel, and he
was quite right. Isabel felt the same thing, but she was wrong.
She jumped out of the water and was eaten by a sea-gull. When the
fishermen saw Isabel leaping into the air they came out and caught
the mackerel in a net. They also caught Margaret with a lot of other
whitebait; and she was eaten by a barrister at "Claridge's."
There were now four of the family who had not been eaten by anyone. It
is extraordinary when you come to think of it that any herring ever
contrives to reach maturity at all. What with the mackerel and the
seagulls and the barristers, everybody seems to be against it.
However, Walter, Rupert and Foch succeeded. Stephanie just missed.
Walter and Rupert and Foch had jolly soft roes, a fact which is
recorded in a cynical little poem by the precocious Foch, believed
to be the only literary work of a whitebait now extant. We have only
space here to quote the opening couplet:--
The herrings with the nice soft rows
Are gentlemen; the rest are does.
The survivors of the family had now to choose a career. From the
beginning it seems to have been recognised that Stephanie at least
would have to be content with a humbler sphere than her more gifted
brothers. She had a hard roe and was rather looked down upon. But she
was an independent little thing and her pride revolted at a life of
subjection at home; so while still a girl she went off on her own and
got mixed up with some pilchards who were just being caught in a net.
Stephanie was caught too and became a sardine. She was carefully oiled
and put in a tin, and she was eaten at a picnic near Hampton Court.
But there is every reason to suppose that she was eaten happy, since
in those less exacting circles nobody seemed to mind about her hard
roe, which had been a perpetual bugbear to her in the herring world.
Meanwhile the remaining three had decided on a career. They were
determined to be fresh herrings. This is of course the highest
ambition of all herrings, though sadly few succeed in attaining it.
One herring in his time plays many parts (SHAKESPEARE); he can seldom
say with confidence what exactly he will be to-morrow; but he can
be fairly certain that it won't be a fresh herring. Of our three
survivors Rupert alone was to win the coveted distinction. He grew
to be a fine boy and was eaten at Hammersmith, where his plump but
delicate roe gave the greatest satisfaction. It was not eaten in the
ordinary humdrum way, but was thickly spread on a piece of buttered
toast, generously peppered, and _devoured_. And when his "wish" was
placed on the kitchen-range, swelled rapidly and burst with a loud
report, his cup of happiness was full.
Little Foch, alas, failed to fulfil his youthful promise and became a
common bloater. Worse than that, he was bloated too thoroughly and was
almost impossible to eat. Even his lovely roe, the pride of his heart,
became so salt that the Rector of Chitlings finally rejected it with
ignominy, though not before he had consumed so much of it that he had
to drink the whole of his sermon-water before he began to preach.
But it was Walter, Walter the chronicler, Walter the clever, the
daring, the ambitious, leader in every escapade, adviser in every
difficulty, who was to suffer the crowning humiliation. Walter became
a kipper. If there is one thing that a herring cannot stand it is to
be separated from his roe. Walter's roe was ruthlessly torn from him
and served up separate on toast, with nothing to show that it was
the glorious roe of Walter. It was eaten at the Criterion by a
stockbroker, and it might have been anybody's roe. Meanwhile the
mutilated frame, the empty shell of Walter, was squashed flat in a
wooden box with a mass of others and sold at an auction by the pound.
It broke his heart.