Chapter II: Part 2

But she was always ah intriguing figure. Perhaps, indeed--for the apparel does not always proclaim the man, and the _Eaglet_ was no _Hamlet_ in the matter of his clothes--her rather striking costumes were a source of too much distraction.

Miss MARIE LÖHR.]

In a very large cast, whose identities were here and there a little shadowy, the interest was so distributed that nobody except Miss LÖHR had very much chance. But Mr. FISHER WHITE made a touching picture of the weak old Austrian Emperor, torn between love of his grandchild and fear of _Metternich_. _Metternich_ himself, in the person of Mr. HENRY VIBART, seemed hardly sinister, enough for the part he had to play in keeping the _Eaglet_ under the talons of the "two-headed fowl." But it is perhaps difficult to look really sinister in the full official uniform of a Chancellor.

Mr. LYN HARDING, as _Flambeau_, veteran of NAPOLEON'S Army, introduced a faint suggestion of badly-needed humour, and relieved the general atmosphere of Court artificiality by a touch of nature which almost reconciled us to the improbable burst of eloquence that ROSTAND, with his reckless prodigality, assigned to this rough soldier.

Miss LETTICE FAIRFAX gave a pleasant air of irresponsibility to the shallow _Maria Louisa_, and made her bear very lightly her cross of widowhood (with bar). The briefest possible vision of Miss BETTY FAIRE as _Fanny Elssler_ made me want to see much more of her; but Mr. Louis PARKER had been Napoleonically ruthless with the text. His translation sounded well, though the delivery of it sometimes left me doubtful as to what was prose and what was verse. As for his production of the play, it showed the old skill of a Past-Master of Pageantry.

Altogether Miss MARIE LÖHR has been justified of her courage. In a happy little speech from which we learnt that every one of the voices (off) in the Wagram scene was a demobilised voice from the fighting fronts, she told us that her revival of _L'Aiglon_ was intended as a tribute to Art after all these years of War. We were not, I think, meant to take this as a reflection upon the part played by the British Theatre in sustaining the nation's soul during the War. Anyhow, I for one shall read into her words just a brave promise--not, I hope, too sanguine--of what we may expect from the new birth of the Arts of Peace.

O.S.

* * * * *

ANOTHER PENDING INDEMNITY.

It has been said that the man who for his daily shave resorts habitually to a barber has already become a subject for a drastic moral operation. That may or may not be so, but having chambers in Ryder Street and Alphonse residing within the precincts of St. James's, I would rather have been carved morally into mincemeat than have robbed such an artist of his self-expression.

That is how I felt about it in 1914 and in many preceding years, during which, under the magic spell of Alphonse, the razor fell upon my cheek like thistledown. Even to be lathered by him was an alluring form of hypnosis. Alphonse was a Hokusai of barbers, but he was also a true son of France; and there were Alsace and Lorraine and the arrogance of 1870 still to be accounted for. So Alphonse went, and in his place reigned Ferdinand.

Ferdinand, what there was of him, was a good fellow. He was an old fire-eater. He had lost a leg in Algeria and an eye somewhere else, and he could not comprehend why such trivial matters should disqualify a man for killing pigs. He was, as I have said, a good fellow, but his methods of using a razor were mediaeval. However we were not long for one another, and, as the R.N.V.R. tolerate such things, I grew a beard, an equable, regulation torpedo beard.

Omitting several super-emotional lifetimes, let us speak of a certain day not very remote when I stood, bereft of all sea power, at the top of St. James's Street, considering what was the very best worst thing to do to a body which was bored with the reaction that follows four years' strife upon the narrow seas. I fingered my beard meditatively. Yes, after all there was Alphonse. I had almost forgotten him. I turned my steps towards his exclusive retreat. I entered in, and behold! there as of yore, clothed in his samite raiment, stood the incomparable Alphonse. He had returned. Yet in appearance he was not quite the Alphonse of old. There was something less resilient about him, something more enduring had crept into his personality; his elasticity had somehow turned to bronze. He was slightly grey. Nevertheless he greeted me with a Gallic warmth that gave refreshment to my jaded spirit.

"But M'sieu would be shaved.... Yes, a beard was permissible in time of War, but in Peace--pouf! it was barbaric."

I allowed myself to be robed and tucked comfortably into the chair. Alphonse busied himself with the instruments of his profession.

"Five years ago it was another world, M'sieu," he said, churning a wooden bowl to mountains of lather. "It is never again the same. The Marne ... Verdun ... Soissons. If M'sieu permits I would like to tell him of those years."

I nodded and he advanced upon me with the brush. He spoke of the retreat to Paris and the strategy of JOFFRE which so nearly overthrew three Prussian armies. He brandished his razor and swept the Boches back over the Marne, he swept them through Senlis, he swept them across the Aisne. His intensity was inspiring. The smouldering fires of bygone battles leapt into his eyes. But it was not the mesmeric shave of 1914. He apologised humbly and applied small pieces of plaster.

The next morning we fought a swaying battle in front of Rheims, and for some few following mornings we skirmished about painlessly in the same vicinity. Then came a sanguinary excursion to Flanders which nearly put me into blue overalls.

A few weeks of trench warfare gave me some respite and allowed my worst wounds to heal.

Then came the epic of Verdun. At least it was to have come, but at the last moment I lost my nerve.

To hear the story of that heroic defence from the lips of one who was concerned so intimately with it is one of my greatest desires. But I am a coward. I cannot face the extravaganza that Alphonse would improvise, neither dare I approach him for a mere haircut and so confess to having deserted his other form of artistry.

Yesterday I purchased a safety-razor and a packet of new blades.

* * * * *

* * * * *

A LITTLE SUPPER WITH THE BORGIAS.

"FRUIT SALAD.

"Make some syrup by boiling three-quarters of a pint of water, 1/2
lb. of castor sugar, and the juice from a tinned pineapple. Lay the
pineapple in a glass bowl cut in small slices."--_Weekly Paper_.

* * * * *

ART IN THE ARCTIC.

To know that you can't draw and to be told so by your friends are two very different things. Honnell can't draw, but hates his inseparable Swan to tell him so. Honnell's sketches have hitherto been criticised only by people who also wanted their drawing flattered. Swan learned bluntness on the Yukon. So they are an odd pair to be chumming now in the Arctic circle. They are so friendly that they will tramp together for half a day and exchange scarcely so much as a grunt of conversation.

Swan, of course, feels quite at home in North Russia and smiles at the people who call it cold and its distances big. Honnell has lived in Edinburgh, so doesn't notice the temperature, though he misses the tramway system. Both can say about six words--the same--in Russian, and both have bought a pair of moccasins--Swan because he likes them, and Honnell because he would like to.

Recently they set off together from Kola on the Murman Coast to try to find a village from which jolly little Laplanders and Laplanderesses come sliding and skidding to market behind their stout-hearted reindeer. They left all their picturesque Arctic gear behind them except their moccasins, Swan being one of those trying people who don't care how they look, if only they "mush" along fast enough. Their provisions consisted of a tin of bully and four edible tiles or army biscuits, with some margarine in a Y.M.C.A. envelope.

The story they told on their return--for they did return and in good time for dinner--was mostly Honnell's, but I must admit that Swan could not be got to refute it. As they approached the village--some huts on a white hillside above a frozen lake--a representative of the dog-colony came to meet them, waving his tail with an anti-clockwise circular motion impossible to the dog of temperate zones. Having inspected them he escorted them on their way in a perfectly civilised and even courteous manner.

So far from being resisted, their entry was ignored save by the little fur-capped boys, who collected at their heels as if they had formed the vanguard of a circus, and the little brightly-kerchiefed girls, who bolted for cover. All the adult male inhabitants, fiercely-bearded little men like trolls done up in reindeer-skin from top to toe, appeared to be engrossed in the manufacture of sleighs, although the village was already littered and cluttered up with them; and all the ladies were indoors sewing reindeer-skin into trousers or making tea.

Having exchanged a noise like "_Sdrastetye_" (which in these parts seems to mean "_Bon jour_") with everybody they saw, our two friends sat on a log, and rested, while Honnell set about sketching, as he calls it, the primitive wooden church. The little boys, of course, formed a sort of pyramid on his shoulders to watch. Whether because his fingers were cold and so not completely under his control, or because the vibrations of the human pyramid communicated to his pencil some lucky jerks, the marks Honnell committed to (or on) his note-book were such as supplied the simple children of the snow with a clue as to his intentions, and he was intensely gratified to hear one say to another, "_Tzerhof_!"--knowing that noise to signify "church" in the local tongue.

Swan, perceiving the moral damage likely to be done to his friend by this flattering incident, sought to puncture Honnell's unhealthy pride by saying, "_Plaho?_" (or "bad") as a suggestion to the critics; but this only caused them to say repeatedly and with emphasis, "_Dobra_!"--which was one of Honnell's six words and means "good."

Thus the mischief was done. Honnell returned to his billet a man changed and as it were possessed. To hear him talk now one would suppose culture had fled from the Temperate to the Arctic zone. Of the Lapps' habits and their houses he knows nothing, cares nothing; all his enthusiasm is reserved for the honesty and the innate artistic perception of their children. So seriously has he been affected by this unaided and impartial recognition of the subject of his drawing that some of us wonder if he will not settle down amongst those who alone understand and appreciate him. Returning home what can he hope to be? At best a hero of the Relief Force. But in his Lapp village he could imagine himself an Artist.

* * * * *

"Canon Cooper O'Filley, known as the 'Walking Parson,' has decided
to celebrate his seventieth birthday by walking from Yorkshire to
Madrid."--_Sunday Paper_.

An even better-known "Walking Parson," Mr. COOPER, of Filey, will have to look to his laurels now that this Irish pedestrian has entered the lists.

* * * * *

"Mr. J.B. Fagan has decided to revive 'Twelfth Night' with the
original cast at the Court Theatre."--_Daily Graphic_.

We trust that when Mr. FAGAN revives the "original cast" he will not omit to provide also against the inevitable call of "Author!" and settle the BACON-SHAKSPEARE controversy once for all.

* * * * *

THE VEGES ON STRIKE.

(_A Dream._)

A noise arose of earnest men
Refusing imitation duck;
It was a dreadful moment when
The Beetroot-eaters struck,
And all around untasted stood
Rations of Mr. Kilo's favourite food.

For some forsook the sacred rules
And pulled, despite their master's word,
Ham sandwiches from reticules;
On every side one heard
The sharp staccato lettuce-crunch
Merged in the howls of carnivores at lunch.

And one conspirator leaped up
Amid the clash of tinkling spoons
And poured into a protose cup
His helping of stewed prunes;
And, blood-red presager of doom,
Half a tomato hissed across the room.

And angry "Pshaws" and long "Tut-tuts"
Proceeded from that concourse dense,
And "Nuts," they wailed, "we want more nuts--
More nuts at less expense!"
Till Mr. Ambrose Kilo came
And hushed the berserk banqueters to shame.

"Heroes," he cried, with lifted hand,
"And comrades of the meatless life,
Shall the great cause for which we stand"
(Here someone dropped a knife)
"Fall into disrepute?" (Loud roars
Of "No, not it," from contrite nucivores).

"Bearing aloft a stainless shield
That none may smirch without remorse,
This management declines to yield
To crude displays of force;
Yet, since it seems the general wish,
Mock-cutlets will be five-pence less per dish."

He ceased, and trembling fingers cleared
All vestiges of meat away;
The smiling handmaids reappeared
With mounds of buttered hay;
Silence replaced the storm-tossed scenes;
There was no sound save masticated beans.

EVOE.

* * * * *

From "Answers to Correspondents":

"A bellion, according to the French and American method of
numeration, is a thousand millions, or 1,000,000,000. According
to the English method, it is a million millions, or
1,000,000,000."--_Irish Paper_.

We should have liked to know the estimated value of a re-bellion, according to the Irish method, but we understand that there is no accounting for that.

* * * * *

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks_.)

A book of little novels, or long-shorts, from the pen of Mr. ROBERT HICHENS, will be welcomed with pleasure by a very large public. _Snake-Bite_ (CASSELL) contains a half-dozen various tales, all but one of which are eminently characteristic of their author. It sounds unkind to add that this one is for artistry the best of the bunch; but I mean no more than that Mr. HICHENS has here done very well a slight and delicate sketch of a style not generally associated with his work. In the name-piece his admirers will find themselves on more familiar ground--none other indeed than that well-known desert in which they have enjoyed such delicious thrills in the same company already. When Mr. HICHENS' characters get the sand in their eyes almost anything may be expected of them. Here he has given us a new version of the ancient scheme of two men and a woman, complicated in this instance by a cobra; the problem being, whether a doctor should cure his wife's lover of a snake-bite. More original is the longest story in the collection, one called "The Lost Faith," an affair of mental healing and love and crime too complex for compression. It is admirably told. It leads up to a situation as novel as it is dramatic--the confession of a young fanatic, who believes in a lady-healer so implicitly that he puts typhoid germs into the drink of a celebrated general in order to provide her with an impressive subject. As a sensation this wants some beating; though it failed to shake my own preference for the other story, which you will observe I have purposely left unnamed. You will, I hope, enjoy finding it for yourself.

* * * * *

_Heritage_ (COLLINS) gives me much the same impression that one obtains from the spectacle of a man wire-walking in a sack or painting pictures with his toes--attempting, in short, any task under conditions of the greatest possible handicap. That certainly is what Miss V. SACKVILLE-WEST has been at pains to impose upon herself. With a straightforward, simple and interesting tale and some considerable gifts for reproducing character, she has deliberately sacrificed these advantages by telling her story in the most roundabout and awkward manner imaginable. The theme is the influence of heredity, as shown in the working out of a strain of Spanish blood in a Sussex peasant stock, the victims of this inconvenient blend being _Ruth_ and the young cousin whom half-unwillingly she marries; with devastating results. _Ruth_, as I say, was attracted to _Westmacott_ with only part of her being; the better (or at least less Spanish) elements in her were employed in making soft eyes at two other men, one of whom, _Malory_, is supposed to relate portions of the affair to the quite superfluous outsider who puts them down. This _vivâ-voci_ recital is subsequently rounded off by _Malory_, in what is surely the least credible of all the unlikely letters in fiction, nearly a hundred printed pages of it. So you see the obstacles that Miss SACKSVILLE-WEST has placed in her own and her reader's path. That, despite them all, the interest, and passion of this first novel do get home is an encouraging omen for her success when she has learnt a greater simplicity of attack.

* * * * *

_Wings of the Morning_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) might have been a most recommendable book, for it is in essentials a pleasant story of a great artist who for the crime of his hot-headed youth suffered imprisonment in the United States, and, having "covered his tracks," came home, fell in love with his delightful sister's delightful step-daughter and, after much suffering for them both, told his history and won his lady. But unfortunately the inessentials--and among these I have the temerity to include the great European War, or, at any rate, very much that is here told of it--are so harrowing that they do not accord with the pleasant story to which they are tacked on. I would not ask to be spared the knowledge of anything faced by other people while I sat immune at home, but there are many incidents which cannot with decency or dignity be served up in fiction to add a thrill to the enjoyment of an hour's light reading. Miss JOAN SUTHERLAND would have done well to have left detail to more serious exponents, and to have discarded entirely one scene of bestial cruelty which has no real bearing on her tale. Never in a novel--and seldom in historical accounts of fighting--have I been asked to wallow in so much gore. It is all the more regrettable because when Miss SUTHERLAND uses her imagination on less horrible subjects she is much more successful.

* * * * *

Mr. ARTHUR TURBERVILLE has taken almost over-elaborate pains with his sketch of a type which must have been common enough in the new armies--the young officer of pacifist leanings, who, intellectually convinced of the futility of war and by no means out of sympathy with the ultralogical or illogical (and anyway impossible) position of the Conscientious Objector, yet joins up and makes the very best of a bad job. _Kenneth, Dugdale_ (METHUEN), the prize prig (according to the verdict of his Mess), became a brave and efficient subaltern; and the author's idea of bringing him by means of the discipline of war-training and war itself to a better understanding of the ordinary spontaneous fighting types, and of bringing these by the same discipline to a readier appreciation of the intellectual and idealist position, is well enough worked out. The character-drawing impressed me less favourably. The author, I should say, finds it rather difficult to understand the ordinary good or indifferent fellow with his qualities and their defects. I doubt the possibility of such a snake in the grass as _Lieutenant Seymour_ carrying on without getting kicked. Nor do I think that that simple soldier man, _Fortescue, V.C._, would have so tamely accepted _Dugdale's_ betrayal to the woman they both loved of the fact that he had just seen his rival putting a dubious young lady into a cab in Regent Street at midnight. There is a good deal of thoughtful work in this novel which should be interesting to amateur students of the psychology of war and men of war.

* * * * *

The latest of Mrs. J. B. BUCKROSE'S genial little comedies about a comfortable world is concerned with war-weddings, their cause, and some hints for their successful conduct. She calls it _Marriage While You Wait_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), and illustrates her theme with the case of a young man and maiden, who dashed, like so many others, into matrimony in the breathless haste of short leave, and came dangerously near repenting at leisure. Only near, of course; Mrs. BUCKROSE is too confirmed an optimist not to make it clear that the blackest boredom has a silver lining; and I had never any real fear that her nice young couple were becoming more than quite temporarily estranged. Still, things went so far that _Sophia_ left the cottage where she and _Arthur_ and a cooing dove had proposed to live the idyllic life of happiness-ever-after, and betook herself to the mansion of the local villain; while _Arthur_ cut the throat of the dove (there my sympathies were with him entirely) and relapsed into nervous breakdown. But _Denyer_, being only a BUCKROSE villain, which is a very mild variety, packed _Sophia_ home again; _Arthur_, after the usual crisis, recovered; and the symbolic dove was the only inmate of the cottage for whom the little rift remained unhappily permanent. So there you are; with the gentlest short sermon to wind up, and a blessing to all concerned. Perhaps I have read stories more briskly entertaining from Mrs. BUCKROSE'S flowing pen; one feels that her intent here was not solely laughter. But as a smiling homily, preaching much the same moral that Sir ARTHUR PINERO once treated more caustically in perhaps his best play, her story, _Marriage While You Wait_, should have at least two sympathetic readers in many scores of homes.

* * * * *

Whenever I finish a book by Mr. S.P.B. MAIS I am left with the feeling that he has only to enlarge his horizon to write something worth reading and remembering. If _The Education of a Philanderer_ (GRANT RICHARDS) had been written, by an unknown man I should have welcomed it as work of great promise. But the trouble with Mr. MAIS is that he seems to find it perilously easy to write about young school-masters who fall in and out of love with facility and who are financially at their wits' end. _Rupert Blundell_, the philanderer, described here, is a clear and clever picture of a young man who loved where he listed and listed quite a lot. As far as he goes he can be visualized perfectly both at Oxford and as a schoolmaster. But he does not go far enough and he belongs to a type of which one can easily tire. Mr. MAIS is not so callow as he once was in his judgement of people mentally distasteful to him, but he still needs a wider outlook on life and a wider knowledge, and I sincerely hope that he will take steps to remove the limitations which at present prevent him from giving entire satisfaction to his admirers.

* * * * *

* * * * *

"THE LOST LEADER."

[In this new play, at the Court Theatre, PARNELL is represented as
having survived his own death.]

_Parnell_ at the Court sings the very same tune
As the sluggard of old--"You have waked me too soon."

* * * * *

"If, out of hand, one were asked who, now living, knows most about
the Brontës in a personal way, the answer would probably be, Lord
Crewe."--_The Book Monthly_.

We understand that on the question being put to the Editor of _The Sphere_ his answer was Shorter still.