My friend X. is normally the mildest of men. His temper is under perfect control; and in his favourite part of the angels' advocate he finds palliations and makes allowances for all those defections in the servants of the public which goad men to fury and which, since the War came in to supply incompetence with a cloak and a pretext, have been exasperatingly on the increase. Thus, serene and considerate, has X. gone his uncomplaining way for years.
But yesterday I found him on the kerb in the Strand inarticulate and purple with rage. His face was hardly recognisable, so distorted were those ordinarily placid features. His eyes were fixed on a receding taxi.
Fearing that he might be ill I took his arm; but he flung himself free. "Don't touch me," he said; "I can't bear it." Having reached a point in life when tact is second nature, I waited silently near him until the storm should have passed.
His eyes were still fixed.
After a short time he recovered sufficiently to turn to me and explain.
"I could have killed that fellow," he said.
"What fellow?"
"That taxi-driver. He went by slowly with his flag up and wouldn't look at me. I hailed him, and I know he heard, but he wouldn't look at me. Now I don't mind when they point, or make any kind of sign that they don't want to be hired, or say that they have no petrol, even if I don't believe it; but when they won't turn their heads or pay any attention whatever I could kill them. And there's such a lot of them like that. I swear," he went on, beginning to go purple again—"I swear that, if I had had a revolver just now, I should have shot him. When one man hails another, the man who is hailed must give some kind of an indication. It's only human. Society would fall to pieces if we all behaved like that chap. It's awful, awful! If I'd only thought of taking his number I'd run him in, and I'd carry it to the House of Lords if necessary. Such men—ugh!"
He broke down, smothered by righteous anger.
"Good heavens!" he exclaimed as I was leaving, "if I'd only taken his number! "
The same night a miracle happened. It was very late, and thedébrisof a little charity performance at an assembly-room had to be cleared away. The last guests had gone—in this or that conveyance, or on our best friends in war-time, the feet—and that hunt for a taxi, which has now taken the place of all other sport, was being prosecuted with more or less energy by a policeman, a loafer and two or three amateurs, all of whom returned at intervals while the packing-up was in progress, to say how hopeless the case was and how independent the men had become.
One passing cab I hailed myself, but he did no more than laugh a loud laugh of mere incivility and ironically remark, "Ter-morrer!" signifying, as I understood it, that nothing on earth should interfere with his homeward journey that night, since he had done enough and was tired, but that on the succeeding day, if I still required his services, he was at my disposal.
The various bags and parcels being now all ready, we waited patiently in the hall, and from time to time received reports as to the progress of the chase.
At last, when things seemed really hopeless, a taxi arrived, driven by a young man in spectacles, which were, I am convinced, part of a disguise covering one of the noblest personalities in the land—some Haroun al Raschid, filled with pity for lost Londoners, who is devoting his life to redressing the wrongs inflicted upon poor humanity by taxi tyrants—for he said nothing about having no petrol, nothing about the lateness of the hour, nothing about the direction in which we wished to go, but quietly and efficiently helped to get the things in and on the cab; and then drove swiftly away, and when we got to the other end insisted on carrying some of the bundles up three flights of stairs, and had no objection to make when asked to wait a little longer and go on elsewhere.
All this time I was, I need hardly say, in a dream. Could it be true? Could it?
And when he was at last paid off he said both "Good night" and "Thank you," although it was I in whom gratitude should have thus vocally burned. Perhaps it did; I was too dazed to remember.
How I wish I had taken his number, that all the world might know it and look for it, assured of a gentleman on the box!
So you see there are both kinds of taxi-drivers still—only the bad ones are more difficult to get hold of.
"SMART GIRL, THAT NEW GOVERNESS—GOT ME TO LOOK AT THE TAPESTRY WHILE SHE PINCHED MY BREAD!"
"Leopard for Sale.—A full grown animal, about 6-1/2 feet. Purchaser will have to make his own arrangements for removal."—The Statesman (India).
This species of animal being notoriously unable of its own accord to change its spot.
"There are ninety million tons of tea in bond in the United Kingdom. This is sufficient to supply our needs for about fifteen weeks."—Greenock Telegraph.
May we suggest that our contemporary should spare a few tons for the staffs of other journals?
"One Royal Family Member, who has rendered services to 4 big states as also the Government (and yet in service) and obtained a great deal of experience is entirely willing to accept a respectable post either of a Companion or a Household Controller or A.D.C."—Indian Paper.
Can this be TINO?
"Mr. Herbert Samuel asked if the Government would give an undertaking that nothing would be done to expend public money in this connection before the House had had the opportunity of discussing the question?"—Provincial Paper.
Fie, fie, Mr. SAMUEL.
"It is the new magistrates who have broken the ice, and the supporters of both camps are curiously watching to see if they will now find themselves in hot water."—Liverpool Echo.
We thought this sort of thing only happened in the geyser-region.
"Home offered delicate person on small farm; partner pig, poultry, dairy."—Observer.
This ought to cure any delicacy he might start with.
DEAR LORD RHONDDA,—When you were an unassuming undergraduate at Caius College, spending your leisure-time in an eight- or a pair-oar, and stirring up the muddy shallows of the Cam, as you did to some purpose, I cannot believe that any premonitions of the heights of celebrity to which you would some day attain disturbed your mind. And yet here you are, a survivor from the foul and murderous shattering of theLusitania, a coal-owner, a member of the Government, a peer, and the Food-Controller of a whole nation at war.
Your predecessor, Lord DEVONPORT, had no very happy experience of the post you now hold, and I can well understand that his life during his tenure of it cannot have been a pleasant one. Every crank with an infallible recipe for catching sunbeams in cucumber-frames and turning them into potatoes, or whatever might be the fashionable food at the moment; every grumbler who imagined that every rise in prices must be entirely due to the malignity of men and not to the scarcity of the article; every politician with a grudge to satisfy or an axe to grind—all these pounced upon Lord DEVONPORT as a victim made ready to their hands, and gave him a time which can only be described as a very bad one. Add to this the mistakes almost necessarily made by an office which was entirely new and dealt with unexampled conditions, and it is not on the whole surprising that difficulties were encountered and that the right way for overcoming them was not always taken. Indeed there was or there seemed to be at one time a lively controversy between Lord DEVONPORT and Mr. PROTHERO about the true meaning of the wordsmaximumandminimumas applied to prices, and we were left to infer that these Latin monsters are virtually indistinguishable from one another.
However, all that is now over; Lord RHONDDA reigns in Lord DEVONPORT'S place and can profit by his experience. I don't want to delude you into the belief that all is plain sailing for you. You couldn't be made to believe that if I tried for a month of Sundays, and I don't mean to spend my time to no purpose. But I think the great body of the nation is determined that you shall have fair play and will support you through thick and thin in any policy, no matter how drastic, that you may recommend to their reason and their patriotism. This business of food-controlling is new to us as well as to you, but we are willing to be led, we are even willing to be driven, and we are grateful to you for having engaged your reputation and your skill and your firmness in the task of leading or driving us. And if in the course of your duty you encounter any genuine rascal endeavouring to grind the faces of the poor or to find his own profit in the misery of his fellow-men we look to you to give him short shrift.
I am, my Lord, with all goodwill, your Lordship's obliged and faithful Servant,
THE GATE OF HUMILITY.
Officer (having pulled up recruit for not saluting)."NOW THEN, MY MAN, DON'T THEY TAKE ANY NOTICE OF OFFICERS IN YOUR BATTALION?"Recruit. "WELL, SIR, IT AIN'T THAT EXACTLY; BUT I'VE ALWAYS BEEN ONE, AS YOU MIGHT SAY, TO KEEP MESELF TO MESELF."
"WANTED, Second-hand Invalid's Chair (tired wheels)."—Kentish Mercury.
Just the thing for a second-hand invalid; even the wheels show a sympathetic fatigue.
The Kaiser, prodigal of verbal boons,Congratulates his brave Bayreuth DragoonsUpon their prowess, which, he tells them, yieldsJoy "to old Fritz up in Elysian fields."Perhaps; but what if he is down below?In any case what we should like to knowIs how his modern namesake, Private Fritz,Enjoys the fun of being blown to bitsBecause his Emperor has lost his wits.
"Unfurnished room wanted by elderly lady with gas connections."—Montreal Daily Star.
First a quite charming and, what is not so usual, a quite intelligible fantasy in mime—The Magic Pipe: Pierrot, faithless mistress, despair, sympathetic friend, adoring midinette, and so on. But Mr. JULES DELACRE, who played his own part,Pierrot, with a fine sincerity and a sense of the great tradition in thisgenre, got his effect across to us with an admirable directness. Miss PHYLLIS PINSON looking charming in a mid-Victorian Latin-Quarterly sort of way (which is a very nice way), danced seriously, fantastically, delightfully, and with quite astonishing command of her technique—the sort of thing that nine infallible managers out of ten who know what the public wants would condemn out of hand as impossible. The intelligent tenth must have been consoled by the enthusiastic applause which greeted the little piece. I have a fancy that mime would go far to restore sanity and tradition to the English stage, and every creditable essay in a delightful art deserves the fullest support.
It is amusing to see our solemn Mr. JOHN GALSWORTHY in labour for three Acts over a rude joke. I frankly confess I enjoyed the joke. Cisterns (its theme) have no terrors for me even in mixed company. But the joke was not the really serious thing aboutThe Foundations, a play that starts (some years hence) with a mob of starving people yelling outside the house—dear, stupid, kindlyLord William Dromondy'shouse.Lord Williamwas a god of an infantry captain in the great War, and his four footmen—particularlyJames, the first of them—though revolutionaries at heart, are ready to stand between their master and any other revolutionaries in London town. Well, a bomb is found in the foundations ofLord William'sPark Lane palace, and explodes to embarrassed laughter of shocked stall-holders in the Third Act.
The plot's nothing, and the main joke, as I say, nothing to get excited over. But the whole effect of the tremendous trifle, admirably cast as it was, was diverting in the extreme.
Of course it is like our Mr. GALSWORTHY to assume that things will be as black as ever a few years hence. 'Tis, no doubt, what encourages us to keep our end up in the great War. But we know the customs of leopards, and can forgive our pessimist for his creations (for all the world as if he were a milliner) ofPoulder, Lord William'sbutler, rounded pillar of the eternal old order of things; ofJames, revolutionary but faithful (of courseJamesnever would in fact have kept this absurd job); of a light yellow pressman; of a feckless, torrentially eloquent plumber, whose solution of the class war was loving-kindness and the letting of the blood of all who were not kind.
Mr. EADIE was a beloved vagabond of a plumber doing a fine part on his head, as is his way nowadays. But the thing is so good that it is perhaps ungracious to remind him he could make it better. Mr. SIDNEY PAXTON'S triumph withPoulderwas his admirable restraint—rarest of accomplishments among comic stage butlers. The effect of everything was heightened by this excellent economy. It was a lesson in artistic reticence. An even more notable feat in the same kind wasThe Pressof Mr. LAWRENCE HANRAY. Obviously he could have collected a good deal more of the laughter of the house if he had played less subtly. I should put it as quite the best piece of playing in a well-played piece. Mr. DAWSON MILWARD has made a deserved reputation as the strong silly ass. He sustained it—with something in hand. Mr. STEPHEN EWART'SJameswas a quite excellent performance, not very coherent and consistent in conception on the author's part, perhaps, and on that account all the more difficult. Miss ESMÉ HUBBARD gave us pathos skilfully reserved in her clever study of an old, old countrywoman turned trousers-maker; and little DINKA STARACE showed quite astonishing aptitude (or the most wonderful training) in the part of her granddaughter. Miss BABS FARREN also did well with her rather intrusive part ofLord William'sdaughter.
Box B, by Mr. COSMO GORDON LENNOX, was just a gay trifle to send us home easy-minded to bed.Bobby Stroud, Zepp-strafer, kisses a pretty (oh, ever such a pretty!) widow by mistake. And continues by arrangement. Miss IRIS HOEY was really perfectly irresistible—something ought to be done about it. She would have reduced the whole Flying Corps to dereliction of duty. Mr. FRANK BAYLY had just that air of awkward modesty which is so much more effective than plain swank as an advertisement of gallantry, and Miss MURIEL POPE played a programme-girl with all the skill that an artist thinks is worth putting into little things.
The best evening that I've had in the stalls since the War began ever so long ago.
T.
The Press (Mr. LAWRENCE HANRAY) invites The Nobility (Mr. DAWSON MILWARD) to give its views on things in general.
There used to be fairies in Germany—I know, for I've seen them thereIn a great cool wood where the tall trees stoodWith their heads high up in the air;They scrambled about in the forestAnd nobody seemed to mind;They were dear little things (tho' they didn't have wings)And they smiled and their eyes were kind.What, and oh what were they doingTo let things happen like this?How could it be? And didn't they seeThat folk were going amiss?Were they too busy playing,Or can they perhaps have slept,That never they heard an ominous wordThat stealthily crept and crept?There used to be fairies in Germany—The children will look for them still;They will search all about till the sunlight slips outAnd the trees stand frowning and chill."The flowers," they will say, "have all vanished,And where can the fairies be fledThat played in the fern?"—The flowers will return,But I fear that the fairies are dead.
"A disturbance of rates (when it tends to raise them) is never popular. Father Barry remarked yesterday that Mr. Underhill, as chairman of the Assessment Committee, was the most unpopular man in Plymouth except one, and the other one was the Kaiser."—Western Daily Mercury.
Letter addressed to local Tribunal:—
"Dear Sirs,—The reason for my exemption has been removed and I shall be glad to join your army if there is still a vacancy."
Lady (to doctor, who has volunteered to treat her pet). "AND IF YOU FIND YOU CAN'T CURE HIM, DOCTOR, WILL YOU PLEASE PUT HIM OUT OF PAIN?—AND OF COURSE YOU MUST CHARGE ME JUST AS FOR AN ORDINARY PATIENT."
I should like to commend with extraordinarily little reserve Mr. FIELDING-HALL'SThe Way of Peace(HURST AND BLACKETT) to the kind of reader that is drawing plans in his head for a New England. No wonder that in these great days the impatient idealist rushes forth with his bag of dreams. The author ofThe Soul of a Peopleis extreme but sane—an extremist in common sense, say. He stakes on the fact of human solidarity as the cure for the bitternesses and crookednesses of politics; declares life and men to be good, not evil (how right he is!); wants an England rescued from the Puritans on the one hand and the mere musical comedians on the other; an England chaste because freer, less ignorant; good beer in easeful inns; the village or township as the unit of government and of fellowship; a return to music and the dance, not as a plasmon-fed high-brow proposition but as the natural expression of a joy of life returned; a clear fount of honour; a representative House of Commons; justice, respect, common sense and responsibility instead of charity; some place other than the streets for our young men and maidens to make love in; a recognition of crime as mainly a social, not an individual, disease; a law simplified and scales of justice not weighted against the poor; and a host of other good and wise and nearly possible things. Here is not the barren politics of manipulation but an ideal of living citizenship. I commend it to all believers in new days and all honourable disgruntlers; not perhaps as a programme but as a tonic.
Do not, please, run away with the idea thatThe Nursery(HEINEMANN) presents us with Mr. EDEN PHILLPOTTS' views on baby culture. The background of his story, the scenes of which are laid in and around Colchester a year or so ago, is composed of gardens and oyster-beds. On these he gives a lot of information, and, as he could not be pedantic even if he tried to be, I browsed pleasantly upon the store of knowledge set before me. Also I liked the restraint he shows in dealing with the War, and commend his exemplary method to some of our more blatant novelists. When, however, I came to the inhabitants ofThe NurseryI failed to find in them that rare and delightful quality with which Mr. PHILLPOTTS usually succeeds in endowing his characters. Readers of his novels must know by this time that he is not exactly in love withMrs. Grundy, but here he seems to be insurgent against something, and for the life of me I don't know quite what it is. Perhaps it is insincerity, which is a very good thing to be in rebellion against. There is one very amusing and delightful character, a bibulous old sinner who defied law and order and almost at the last gasp ladled out what he considered justice in a most dramatic manner. His name isWilliam Ambrose, and it is worth your while to make his disreputable acqaintance.
One fact at once awakened in me a fellow-feeling for Mr. BERTRAM SMITH—the discovery of his appreciation (shared by myself, the elder STEVENSON, and other persons of discernment) for the romantic possibilities of the map. There is an excellent map in the beginning of Days of Discovery (CONSTABLE), showing the peculiar domain of childhood, the garden, in terms that will hardly fail to win your sympathy. But not in this alone does Mr. SMITH show that he has the heart of the matter in him; every page of these reminiscences of nursery life proclaims a genuine memory, not a make-believe childhood faked up for literary ends. Who that has once been young can read unstirred by envy the chapter on "Devices and Contrivances," with its entrancing triumph of the chain of mirrors arranged (during the providential absence of those in authority) from the night nursery, down two flights of stairs, to the store-room in the basement? I know a reviewer whom nothing, but moral cowardice restrained from testing the possibility of this delightful plan by personal experiment. Fireworks too—Mr. SMITH has remembered them with a proper regard that is, of course, wholly different from that of those who understand them only in their pyrotechnic aspect, not as objects loved for themselves alone, for their shape and feel, and the glamour of weeks of hoarding and barter. In short, a real nursery book for the study; not one perhaps that actual children would care for (quite possibly they might resent it as betrayal), but one that for the less fortunate will reopen a door of which too many of us have long lost the key.
What I found strangest in theTransactions of Lord Louis Lewis(MURRAY) is that it is a story, or rather series of stories, about rogues, in which trickery is invariably vanquished—a refreshing contrast to the methods of most of our romanticists, who are given to a certain courtier-like attitude towards the lawbreaker. Certainly that various artist, Mr. ROLAND PERTWEE, has contrived to put together a highly entertaining collection of diamond-cut-diamond yarns, adventure tales that have the great advantage (for these days) of being concerned, not with bloodshed and mysterious murders, but with the wiles of dealers in the spurious antique and the exploits ofLord Louisin defeating them. ThisLord Louisis indeed a very pleasant as well as a very ingenious gentleman. From the rotundity of his conversational periods and a certain general suavity of demeanour I suspect him of having made a careful study of the methods of his distinguished predecessor in rogue-reducing,Prince Florizel of Bohemia.But he is, of course, none the worse company for that. Once, however, he shocked me badly, when, in perusing an eighteenth-century MS., he—I can hardly bring myself to quote the passage!—he "moistened his fingers and turned over three pages." And this of a nobleman and a connoisseur! Oh, Mr. PERTWEE! Having said so much, it is only fair that I should call your special attention to one of the stories, "The House in Bath," an exquisite little gem of considerably higher art than is usually associated with such "Exploits of the Event."
You might perhaps allow yourself to be put off by such a title asHome Truths about the War(ALLEN), because it, or something like it, has so often been used as the preliminary to alarming or disagreeable statements that we have grown excusably suspicious. But to avoid on this account the letters that the Rev. HUGH CHAPMAN has here brought together would be to miss a very original and inspiring little book. Let me say once that Mr. CHAPMAN (whom you may know is energetic and popular chaplain of the Savoy; also as already, under a pseudonym, an author) has deliberately essayed the impossible. Self-revelation, especially in letters, can hardly ever be made convincing. But putting this on one side, and accepting these, not as the letters that would be written from one man to another, but rather (to speak without irreverence) such as the human heart might address to its Creator, you will find them full of interest and encouragement. All sorts and conditions of men and women are here shown, in their varied reaction to the great acid that for these three years past has been biting into the life of the world. The priest, the actor, the profiteer, the society-woman, even the conscientious objector, are all touched lightly, tactfully, and with a kindly humour that saves the book from its very obvious danger of becoming pedantic. In his brief preface Mr. CHAPMAN has crystallised very happily into a couple of words his ideal for the British attitude towards the War—buoyant sternness. It is the reflection of that quality in its pages that gives this little book its tonic value.
Mr. ARNOLD WRIGHT'S main work inEarly English Adventurers in the East(MELROSE) has been that of making good. Most of us know something, at any rate, of the men who brought our Eastern Empire into actual existence, but I tell myself hopefully that my ignorance of those daring pioneers, whom Mr. WRIGHT describes as humble adventurers of the seventeenth century, is not exceptional. It has now been satisfactorily removed, and, after reading this excellently written history of stirring deeds, I must believe that even men of learning will thank him for rescuing many good names from the oblivion which threatened them. And Mr. WRIGHT is not only to be congratulated on this act of salvage, but also on the admirable way in which he has performed it. A restrained style and a temperate judgment are equally at his command. I cannot better commend his book to Imperialists than by saying that all Little Englanders will detest it.
On internal evidence I had set downRoot and Branch(ALLEN AND UNWIN), by R. ALLATINI, as the very clever first book of a very clever and observant writer of the (alleged) weaker sex. But I find the title-page gives two previous novels to her pen—I still guess a woman's hand. And I by no means withdraw the "clever." The characterisation of the various members of theArenskifamily—the branches are better done than the root, oldPaul Arenski, K.C., idealist and orator—is uncannily good. There's wit and humour and diversity of gifts. What suggested the "first book" idea was an uncertainty of method, a hesitation between the new realism and the older romanticism. In both moods the author is successful, but the joints show something clumsily. This, however, is technical merely. I commend the book to all who are interested, approvingly or critically, in the Jew. A dramatic theme runs through the book, the ethical question as to whether a man may be justified in killing, at her passionate request, a woman dearly loved who is slowly dying of a terrible disease.
Angry Customer (who has been induced by an advertisement to purchase a portrait enlargement)."YOUR ADVERTISEMENT SAYS, 'MONEY RETURNED IF NOT SATISFIED.' I'MNOTSATISFIED, AND I WANT MY MONEY BACK."The Eureka Portrait Company (placidly)"I'M SORRY YOU DON'T LIKE IT, MADAM; BUT IF YOU WILL READ THE ADVERTISEMENT CAREFULLY YOU WILL NOTE THAT IT DOES NOT SPECIFYWHOIS TO BE SATISFIED—AND I ASSURE YOU IAM."