Chapter II: Part 2

Yet be not afraid, my lively lad,
For you shall renew the tooth you had;
The vacant place shall be filled, you'll find,
With another back tooth of a larger kind.
But a time will come when, if you lose
A tooth, as indeed you can't but choose,
You must go about
For ever without;
And, front or back, it returns to you never;
You have lost that tooth for ever and ever.
So stick to your teeth and accept my apology
For this easy lesson in odontology.

* * * * *

PUNCH'S ROLL OF HONOUR.

CAPTAIN A.W. LLOYD, 25th Royal Fusiliers, has been awarded the Military Cross for Distinguished Service in the East African Campaign. Before the War, for which he volunteered at once, joining the Public Schools Battalion, Captain LLOYD illustrated the Essence of Parliament in these pages. Mr. Punch offers him his most sincere congratulations upon the high distinction he has won, and is delighted to know that he is completely recovered from the severe head-wound which he received last year.

* * * * *

_Little Girl_. "NO, MUMMIE, ONLY THE ONE THE HENS USE FOR A PATTERN."]

* * * * *

THE BEAUTIFUL WORDS.

I have to tell an unvarnished tale of real and recent life in London. When the absence of impulsive benevolence and public virtue is so often insisted upon it is my duty to put the following facts on record.

It was, as it now always is, a wet day. The humidity not only descended from a pitiless sky, but ascended from the cruel pavements which cover the stony heart of that inexorable stepmother, London. Need I say that under these conditions no cabs were obtainable? In other words it was one of those days, so common of late, when other people engage the cabs first. They were plentiful enough, full. One could have been run over and killed by them twenty times between Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus, but all teemed with selfish life. Men of ferocious concentration and women detestable in their purposefulness were to be seen through the passing windows. It was a day on which no one ever got out of a cab at all, except to tell it to wait. No flag was ever up. Since the blessing of peace began to be ours these days have been the rule.

Not only were the cabs all taken and reserved till to-morrow, but the 'buses were overcrowded too. A line of swaying men, steaming from the deluge, intervened in every 'bus between two rows of seated women, also steaming. It was a day on which the conductors and conductresses were always ringing the bell three times.

There was also (for we are very thorough in England) a strike on the Tube and the Underground.

Having to get to Harley Street, I walked up Regent Street, doing my best to shelter beneath an umbrella, and (being a believer in miracles) turning my head back at every other step in the hope that a cab with its flag up might suddenly materialise; but hoping against hope. It was miserable, it was depressing, and it was really rather shameful: by the year 1919 A.D. (I thought) more should have been achieved by boastful mankind in the direction of weather control.

And then the strange thing happened which it is my purpose and pride to relate. A taxi drew up beside me and I was hailed by its occupant. In a novel the hailing voice would be that of a lady or a Caliph _incog._, and it would lure me to adventure or romance. But this was desperately real damp beastly normal life, and the speaker was merely a man like myself.

"Hullo!" he said, calling me by name, and following the salutation by the most grateful and comforting words that the human tongue could at that moment utter.

Every one has seen the Confession Albums, where complacent or polite visitors are asked to state what in their opinion is the most beautiful this and that and the other, always including "the most beautiful form of words." Serious people quote from DANTE or KEATS or SHAKSPEARE; flippant persons write "Not guilty" or "Will you have it in notes or cash?" or "This way to the exit." Henceforth I shall be in no doubt as to my own reply. I shall set down the words used by this amazing god in the machine, this prince among all princely bolts from the blue. "Hullo," he said, "let me give you a lift."

I could have sobbed with joy as I entered the cab--perhaps I did sob with joy--and heard him telling the driver the number in Harley Street for which I was bound.

That is the story--true and rare. How could I refrain from telling it when impulsive benevolence and public virtue are so rare? It was my duty.

* * * * *

* * * * *

BOOK-BOOMING.

(_WITH GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TO THE LEADING MASTERS OF THIS DELECTABLE ART._)

Messrs. Puffington and Co. beg to announce the immediate issue of _Charity Blueblood_, by Faith Redfern. Speaking _ex cathedra_, with a full consciousness of their responsibilities, they have no hesitation in pronouncing their assured conviction that this novel will take its place above all the classics of fiction.

Here is not only a Thing of Beauty, but a Joy for Ever, wrought by elfin fingers, fashioned of gossamer threads at once fine and prehensile. Yet so Gargantuan and Goliardic that the reader holds his breath, lest the whole beatific caboodle should vanish into thin air and leave him lamenting like a Peril shut out from Paradise.

But this is more than a Paradise. It is a Pandemonium, a Pantosocratic Pantechnicon and a Pantheon as well. For here, within the narrow compass of 750 pages (price 7s. 11¾d.), we find all the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome; the Olympian serenity of HOMER, the pity and terror of ÆSCHYLUS, the poignancy of CATULLUS, the saucy mirth of ARISTOPHANES, the sanity of SHAKSPEARE, the _macabre_ gruesomeness of BAUDELAIRE, the sardonic _rictus_ of HEINE and the geniality of TROLLOPE. All this and much more.

Here, as we turn every page, we expect to meet _Rosalind_ and _Jeanie Deans_, _Tom Jones_ and _Aramis_, _Mr. Micawber_ and _Madame Bovary_, _Eugenie Grandet_ and _Colonel Newcome_, _Casanova_ and _Casablanca_, _Consuelo_ and "CAGLIOSTRO," and, if we do not meet them, we encounter new and more radiant figures, compared with whom the others are as water to wine.

Here, with its bliss and agony, its cacophony and cachinnation, is Life, such as you and I know it, not life in absolute _déshabillé_, but enveloped in the iridescent upholstery of genius, sublimated by the wizardry of a transcendental polyphony.

Here, soaring high above the cenotaph in which the roses and rapture of our youth lie entombed in one red burial blent, we see the shimmering strands of St. Martin's Summer drawn athwart the happenless days of Autumn, with the dewdrops of cosmic unction sparkling in the rays of a sunshine never yet seen on land or sea, but reflecting as in a magic mirror that far off El Dorado, that land where Summer always is "i-cumen in," for which each and all of us feel a perpetual nostalgia.

Here, in fine, gentle reader, is a work of such colossal force that to render justice to its abysmal greatness we have ransacked the vocabulary of superlative laudation in vain. SWINBURNE, compared to the needs of the situation, is as a shape of quivering jelly alongside of the Rock of Gibraltar. And here, O captious critic, is a Wonderwork which not only disarms but staggers, paralyses and annihilates all possibilities of animadversion, unless you wish to share the fate of Marsyas, by pitting your puny strength against the overwhelming panoply of divine and immortal genius.

* * * * *

"A bricklayer's labourer was remanded yesterday on a charge of
stealing, as bailee, two matches, value £3, the property of the
Vicar of ----."--_Provincial Paper_.

We fear there has been bad profiteering somewhere; even in London they have not touched that price.

* * * * *

"Howells' new violin conato (E flat), which followed, is sincere
music ... whatever there is it is possible to bear."--_Times_.

The fololwing of a conata, like the bombination of a chimæra, apparently puts some strain upon the attention of an audience.

* * * * *

_LE FRANÇAIS TEL QUE L'ON LE PARLE._

It was on my journey to Paris that I ran across little Prior in the train. He too was going, he said, on Peace Conference work. His is a communicative disposition and before we had fairly started on our journey he had unfolded his plans. He said the Conference was bound to last a long time, and as a resident in a foreign country he had a splendid opportunity to learn the language. He meant, he said, to get to know it thoroughly later on. He then produced his French Pronouncing Handbook.

I thought I knew French pretty well until I saw that book. It gave Prior expressions to use in the most casual conversation that I have never heard of in my life. It had a wonderful choice of words. Only an experienced philologist could have told you their exact origin.

The handbook had foreseen every situation likely to arise abroad; and I think it overrated one's ordinary experiences. I have known people who have resided in France for years and never once had occasion to ask a billiard-marker if he would "_Envoyer-nous des crachoirs_." Most people can rub along on a holiday quite cheerfully without a spittoon; but then the handbook never meant you to be deprived of home comforts for the want of asking.

Nor did it intend, with all its oily phraseology, that you should be imposed on. There is a scene in a "print-shop" over the authenticity of an engraving which gets to an exceedingly painful climax.

A good deal of reliance is placed on the innate courtesy of the French. For it appears that, after an entire morning spent at the stationer's, when the shop-keeper has discussed every article he has for sale, you wind up by saying, "_Je prendrai une petite bouteille d'encre noire,_" and all that long-suffering man retorts is, "_J'voo zangvairay ler pah-kay,_" which is not nearly so bolshevistic as it looks.

Prior said he was going to start to speak French directly he got on board the steamer--he had learnt that part off by heart already. The first remark he must make was, "Send the Captain to me at once." There is no indication of riot or uproar at this. Evidently the Captain is brought without the slightest difficulty, for in the very next line we find Prior saying, "_Êtes-vous le Capitaine?_" and he goes on to inquire about his berth.

The Captain tells him everything there is to know about berths and then apparently offers to take down his luggage, for Prior is commanding, "Take care of my carpet-bag, if you please."

They then begin to discuss the weather. "In what quarter is the wind?" asks the indefatigable Prior.

"The wind," says the Captain, "is in the north, in the south, in the east, in the south-west. It will be a rough passage. It will be very calm."

Prior does not seem to observe that the Captain appears to be hedging. This wealth of information even pleases him, and then quite abruptly he demands, "_Donnez-moi une couverture,_" because, as he goes on to explain, he "feels very sick." This gives the "Capitaine" an opportunity to escape. He says, "I will send the munitionnaire."

Undoubtedly that Captain has a sense of the ridiculous. I like the man. Anyone who could, on the spur of the moment, describe the steward as the munitionnaire deserves to rank as one of the world's humourists. But Prior is apparently in no condition to see a joke. He says he will have the munitionnaire instantly bringing in his hand "_un verre d'eau de vie._"

I was really sorry that in the bustle of embarking I lost sight of Prior and therefore could not witness the meeting between him and the Captain. It would have made me happy for the whole day.

The crossing was prolonged, for we took a zig-zag course to avoid any little remembrances Fritz might have left us in the form of mines. When we were nearing land I saw Prior again. He was stretched out on a deck-chair and looked up with a ghastly smile as he caught sight of me.

"Hullo, you're alone!" I said rather cruelly. "Is this the stage where the Captain goes to find the munitionnaire?"

Then he spoke, but it was not in the words of the phrase-book. It was in clear, concise, unmistakable English.

"Can you tell me," he asked, and behind his words lay a suggestion of quiet force of despair, "about what hour of the day or night this cursed boat is likely to get to Boolong?"

* * * * *

"Evens are moving rapidly in connection with the plan by
the Government, announced only yesterday, to call a national
industrial conference."--_Daily Paper_.

We are glad the odds are not against it.

* * * * *

Notice in a German shop-window (British zone):--

"Jon can have jour SAFETY RAZOR BLADES reset, throug hare
experient workman any System."

The Germans seem to be getting over their dislike to British steel.

* * * * *

COMMERCIAL COMFORT.

["Mines are spottily good. Oils maintain a healthy
undertone."--_Stock Exchange Report_.]

O welcome message of the tape!
O words of comfortable cheer!
You bring us promise of escape
Into a balmier atmosphere;
Though Ireland with sedition boils
And shrieks aloud, "Ourselves Alone";
Still mines are good in spots, and oils
Maintain a healthy undertone.

Though dismal Jeremiahs wail
Of Bolshevists within our gates,
And, though the Master of _The M**l_
In sad seclusion vegetates,
The rising tide of gloom recoils
Once the inspiring news is known
That mines are good in spots, and oils
Maintain a healthy undertone.

An over-sanguine mood is wrong
And ought to be severely banned;
Yet spots, if good, cannot belong
To the pernicious leopard brand;
But no such reservation spoils
The sequel; doubt is overthrown
By the explicit statement, "Oils
Maintain a healthy undertone."

Not, you'll remark, the savage growl
Of the exasperated bear,
Nor the profound blood-curdling howl
Of the gorilla in its lair;
Nor yet the roar in civic broils
That surges round a tyrant's throne--
Oh, no, the organ voice of oils
Is healthy in its undertone.

O blessed jargon of the mart!
Though your commercial meaning's hid
From me, a layman, to my heart
You bring a soothing _nescio quid_;
Amid the flux of strikes and plots
Two things at present stand like stone:
In mines the goodness of their spots,
In oils their healthy undertone.

* * * * *

Extract from a recent story:--

"Noiselessly we crept from the tent. The sands, the sea, the
cliffs, were bathed in silver white by a glorious tropical
moon. Noiselessly we levelled it to the ground, rolled it up,
and carried it to the boat."

And that night the Gothas were foiled.

* * * * *

"The subject of a war memorial was considered at a St. Sidwell's,
Exeter, parish meeting. Many suggestions were offered, among
them one that the present seating in the parish church should be
replaced by plush-covered tip-up seats, such as are in use at
kinemas and other places of entertainment."--_Western Morning
News_.

If the suggestion is adopted it is presumed that the name of the church will be altered to St. Sitwell.

* * * * *

_Mike_ (_not stirring_). "IT'S SORRY I AM, FATHER, BUT I DO BE DRAWIN' THE OUT-OF-WORK MONEY, AND I DARE NOT HOULD HER. BUT I'LL SAY 'STAND' TO HER FOR YOU, FATHER, IF I SEE HER ANYWAYS UNAISY."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_BY MR. PUNCH'S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERICS._)

In _Forty Days in 1914_ (CONSTABLE), Major-General Sir F. MAURICE does more than revive our fading recollections of the retreat from Mons and the marvellous recovery on the Marne. A careful study of the German documents relating to VON KLUCK'S dash for Paris has led the author to form a new theory to account for the German defeat. Hitherto we have been asked to believe that VON KLUCK'S fatal change of direction, just when he seemed to have Paris at his mercy, was due to an urgent call for assistance from the CROWN PRINCE. General MAURICE holds, on the contrary, that it was deliberately adopted, at a moment when the CROWN PRINCE'S army was undefeated, in the belief that the French Fifth Army could be enveloped and destroyed, in which event "the whole French line would be rolled up and Paris entered after a victory such as history had never yet recorded." Thus, not for the first time, a too rigid adherence to MOLTKE'S theory of envelopment proved disastrous to the Germans' chances of success. It had first caused them to invade Belgium, and so brought Britain into the War at the very outset; it had next caused VON KLUCK to continue his westward sweep after Mons at a juncture when a vigorous pursuit by his cavalry might have turned the British retreat into a rout; and finally it caused him to execute the notoriously dangerous manoeuvre of changing front before an unbeaten foe, and to give JOFFRE the opportunity for which he had been patiently waiting. The fact was that VON KLUCK did not think the British were unbeaten. He could not conceive that men who had just endured such a harassing experience as the seven days' continuous retreat could possibly be in a condition to turn and fight. Not for the first or last time in the War German psychology was woefully at fault. Whether General MAURICE'S theory is correct or not, it is most attractively set forth, and, thanks to the excellent; maps with which the volume is provided, can be easily followed even by the non-military reader.

* * * * *

There was at first a little danger of my being put off _Fruit of Earth_ (METHUEN) by the uneasy manner of its opening chapters and a style that it is permissible to call distinctly "fruity." Thus on page 5 J. MILLS WHITHAM is found writing about "an astonishment that nearly smudged the last spark of vitality from a hunger-bitten author," and a good deal more in the same style. But I am glad to say that the tale subsequently pulls itself together, and, despite some occasional high-falutin, becomes an interesting and human affair. It is a story of country life, the main theme of which is a twofold jealousy, that of the chronic invalid, _Mrs. Linsell_, towards the girl _Mary_, whom she rightly suspects of displacing her in the thoughts of _Inglebury_; and that of _Amos_, who marries _Mary_, towards _Inglebury_, whom he rightly suspects of occupying too much room in the reflections of his wife. In other words, the simple life at its most suspicious, with the rude forefathers of the hamlet supplying a scandalous chorus. The strongest part of the story is the tragedy, suggested with a poignancy almost too vivid, of the wretched elder woman, tortured in mind and body, morbidly aware of the contrast between her own decay and the vitality of her rival. As to _Inglebury_ and _Mary_, the causes of all the pother, they struck me as conspicuously unworth so much fussing over; and, when their final flight together landed them--well, where it did, I could only feel that the neighbourhood was to be congratulated. But, as you see, I had by this time become unwillingly interested. So there you have it; an unequal book, about people unattractive but alive.

* * * * *

When the literary Roll of Honour of all the belligerents comes to be considered quietly, in the steady light of Peace, not many names will stand higher in any country than that of our English writer, HECTOR HUGH MUNRO, whose subtle and witty satires, stories and fantasies were put forth under the pseudonym "SAKI." I have but to name _The Chronicles of Clovis_ for discriminating readers to know what their loss was when MUNRO (who, although over age, had enlisted as a private and refused a commission) fell fighting in the Beaumont-Hamel action in November 1916. Mr. JOHN LANE has brought out, under the title _The Toys of Peace_, a last collection of "SAKI'S" fugitive works, with a sympathetic but all too brief memoir by Mr. ROTHAY REYNOLDS. Although "SAKI" is only occasionally at his very best in this volume--on the grim side, in "The Interlopers," and in his more familiar irresponsible and high-spirited way in "A Bread-and-Butter Miss" and "The Seven Cream Jugs;" although there may be no masterpiece of fun or raillery to put beside, say, "Esmé;" there is in every story a phrase or fancy marked by his own inimitable felicity, audacity or humour. It is good news that a complete uniform edition of his books is in preparation.

* * * * *

I can't help feeling that ISABEL ECCLESTONE MACKAY'S chief aim in _Up the Hill and Over_ (HURST AND BLAOKETT) was to write a convincing tract for the times on a subject which is achieving unhappy prominence in America as in our own police-courts. A worthy aim, I doubt not. One of the chief characters is a drug-taker; and as if that were not enough another is "out of her head," while a third, _Dr. Callandar_, the Montreal specialist, is in the throes of a nervous breakdown. This seems to me to be distinctly overdoing it. It is the doctor's love-story (a story so complicated that I cannot attempt a _précis_) which is the designedly central but actually subordinate theme. I have the absurd idea that this might really have begun life as a pathological thesis and suffered conversion into a novel. The author has no conscience in the matter of the employment of the much-abused device of coincidence. And I don't think the story would cure anyone of drug-taking. On the contrary.

* * * * *

_The Three Black Pennys_ (HEINEMANN) is a story that began by perplexing and ended by making a complete conquest of me. Its author, Mr. JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER, is, I think, new to this side of the Atlantic; the publishers tell me (and, to prevent any natural misapprehension, I pass on the information at once) that he belongs to "a Pennsylvania Dutch family, settled for many generations in Philadelphia." Which being so, one can enjoy his work with a free conscience. It certainly seems to me very unusual in quality. The theme of the tale is the history of the _Penny_ family, or rather of the periodical outcrop in it of a certain strain that produces _Pennys_ dark of countenance and incalculable of conduct. This recurrence is shown in three examples: the first, _Howart Penny_, in the days when men wore powder and the _Penny_ forge had just been started in what was then a British colony; the next, _Jasper_, involved in a murder trial in the sixties; and; last of the black _Pennys_, another _Howart_, in whom the family energy has thinned to a dilettante appreciation of the arts, dying alone amongst his collections. You can see from this outline that the book is incidentally liable to confound the skipper, who may find himself confronted with (apparently) the same character tying a periwig on one page and hiring a taxi on another. I am mistaken though if you will feel inclined to skip a single page of a novel at once so original and well-told. As a detail of criticism I had the feeling that the "blackness" of the _Penny_ exceptions would have shown up better had we seen more of the family in its ordinary rule; but of the power behind Mr. HERGESHEIMER'S work there can be no question. He is, I am sure, an artist upon a quite unusual scale, from whom great things may be anticipated.

* * * * *

If neither book of short stories before me is what Americans call "the goods," I can, at any rate, say that _Ancient Mariners_ (MILLS AND BOON) does infinite credit to Mr. MORLEY ROBERTS'S imagination. These yarns of seafaring men are salt with the savour of the sea and with the language thereof. Of the seven my favourite is "Potter's Plan," which not only contains the qualities to be found in the other half-dozen, but also has an ingenuity all its own. But perhaps you will prefer "A Bay Dog-Watch," as coming home to the general bosom, for it deals with a ferocious hunt after matches which recalls the deadly days of the shortage. Of the five stories in Mr. WARWICK DEEPING'S _Countess Glika_ (CASSELL) the best is "Bitter Silence." Here the author deals with essentials, and gives us a tale entirely free from artificiality. The remaining stories are marred by their lack of naturalness; but Mr. DEEPING is never at a loss for incident, and he can write dialogue which is often gay and sometimes witty.

* * * * *