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PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOL. 159.

December 22nd, 1920.

CHARIVARIA.

It is pointed out that the display of December meteors is more than usually lavish. Send a postcard to your M.P. about it.

Mr. Lloyd George recently stated that the first prize he ever won was for singing. It is only fair to say that this happened in the pre-Northcliffe era.

An elderly Londoner recalls a Christmas when the cold was so intense that in a Soho restaurant the ices froze.

There has arrived at the Zoo a bird akin to the partridge and excellent for the table, but unable to fly. The very thing for the estate of a sporting profiteer.

"What is the best fire preventative?" asks a weekly journal. The answer is, the present price of coal.

The National Rat Campaign this year, we are told, was a great success. On the other hand we gather that several rats have threatened to issue a minority report.

"There is nothing so enjoyable," says a newspaper correspondent, "as a trip across the water to Ireland." Except, of course, a trip back again.

A number of Huns are receiving Iron Crosses through the post inscribed "Your Fatherland does not forget you." How like Germany! She won't even allow bygones to be bygones.

"Let Christmas come," says a contemporary headline. We have arranged to do so.

A Minneapolis judge rules that a man has the right to declare himself head of the household. Opinion in this country agrees that he has the right but rarely the pluck.

"My faith in the League of Nations is not shaken," says Lord Robert Cecil. This is the dogged spirit which is going to make this country what it used to be.

"It may yet be possible," according to the Water Power Resources Committee, "to harness the moon." This of course would depend upon whether Sir Eric Geddes would let them have it or not.

Cinema stunt actors, says The Manchester Guardian, expect to be paid fifty pounds for a motor smash. It seems an injustice that ordinary pedestrians should have to take part in this sort of thing for nothing.

The continued disappearance of notepaper from a well-known club has now been traced to a large female cat, and most of the paper has been recovered from her sleeping-basket. It is thought that she was probably preparing to write her memoirs.

A burglar who broke into a private house near Hitchin helped himself to a good supper before leaving. It is pleasing to learn, however, that, judging by the disordered state in which the pantry was left, the Stilton cheese must have put up a splendid fight.

It was most unfortunate that Mr. "Fatty" Arbuckle's visit to London should have clashed with the Cattle Show at the Royal Agricultural Hall.

During a recent revue performance in London the conductor accidentally turned over two pages of music at once and the orchestra suddenly ceased playing. Several words of the chorus were actually heard by those sitting in front before the mistake could be rectified.

Green peas in excellent condition, says a contemporary, have been picked at Pentlow, Sussex. It serves them right.

"Although Labour extremists are now much quieter it would take very little to set the ball of discontent into motion once again," states a writer in the Sunday Press. This being so, is it not rather unwise to let Christmas Day fall this year on the workmen's half holiday?

We question the wisdom of drawing the attention of Parliament to the silence of the Poet Laureate. If he is goaded into breaking it we shall know whom to blame.

"If people at home only knew how grateful we are for anything that is sent us," writes a lady from the island of Tristan d'Acunha. If they are as easily pleased as that, the idea of sending them Lieut.-Commander Kenworthy should not be lost sight of.

"The Hexathlon," we read, "is a form of contest new to this country." Mind you get one for the children at Christmas.

A new type of American warship is expected to be able to cross the Atlantic in a little over three days. It will be remembered that the fastest of the 1914 lot took nearly three years.

Large numbers of Filipinos are resisting an edict requiring them to wear trousers. Unfortunately it is impossible to offer to accommodate them all in the ranks of the Chicago Scottish.

Riverside residents remarked that just before the cold set in large flocks of seagulls passed up the Thames. Well, what did they expect? Flamingoes?

Mr. A. B. Walkley has remarked that a prejudice against actors is as old as the stage. It is satisfactory to think that it is no older and that in many cases it may be removed by a change of profession.

"I never dreamed of anything like this when I invented the telephone," said Dr. Bell after a demonstration. Neither as a matter of fact did we when we hired ours.

Owing to the fact that Dr. Bell has experienced no unpleasantness during his stay over here, it is thought that the American genius who invented revues may now risk a visit to our shores.

"THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT."

In Affectionate Memory of F. H. Townsend.

Only a few days before the sudden tragedy which took from us our colleague of the Punch Staff, he made me a small request, very characteristic of his kindly heart. It was that I should put in these pages a notice of The Christmas Spirit, the illustrated annual published in aid of the work of Talbot House ("Toc. H."), in which he had taken a practical interest. In carrying out his wish I want not only to plead in behalf of a good cause, but also to associate this appeal with the memory of one with whom for over fourteen years I have worked in close and happy comradeship.

In case any reader of Punch has yet to be introduced to the idea of Talbot House, let me explain that its purpose is to carry on in peace-time the work that was done by the original "Toc. H.," which from 1915 to 1918, under the management of the Rev. P. R. Clayton, M.C., Garrison Chaplain, provided the comforts of a club and rest-house at Poperinghe for soldiers passing to and fro in the deadly Salient of Ypres. Its objects—I quote from The Christmas Spirit—are:

"(1) To preserve among ex-Service men and to transmit to the younger generation the traditions of Christian Fellowship and Service manifested on Active Service.

(2) To offer opportunities for recreation and the making of friendships to thousands of men who find life a difficult salient to hold.

(3) To provide opportunities for men of all kinds to come together in the Spirit of Service, to study, to discuss and, if possible, to solve the problems of their time.

(4) To offer the help and happiness of club life at a low rate by establishing clubs in many centres throughout the country as the focus of the brotherhood."

The noble work done by Talbot House in Poperinghe and Ypres was gratefully recognised by the scores of thousands of our troops whose needs it served in those hard days, but it was only when the War was over that its story was made known to the public at home in Tales of Talbot House (Chatto and Windus), which received a warm welcome in the review columns of Punch. This was followed recently by The Pilgrim's Guide to the Ypres Salient (Reiach), a little book compiled and written, as a labour of love, entirely by ex-Service men. Besides being actually a present-day guide to the Salient, it contains special articles illustrating the life that was there lived during the War by various branches of the service. And now we have the annual of "Toc. H."—The Christmas Spirit—to which the Prince of Wales has given a foreword and a host of brilliant authors and artists have freely contributed. Here are Rudyard Kipling, Stephen Graham, G. K. Chesterton, E. F. Benson, Ian Hay, Gilbert Frankau, W. Rothenstein, "Spy," Derwent Wood, Heath Robinson and, of Punch artists, F. H. Townsend, Lewis Baumer, G. L. Stampa, George Morrow, G. D. Armour, E. H. Shepard, "Fougasse," Wallis Mills and H. M. Bateman.

The four contributions of F. H. Townsend include a "first study" for a drawing that appeared recently in Punch and a delightful sketch of "The Christmas Spirit," as typified by a St. Bernard dog from whose little keg of brandy a traveller, up to the neck in snow, is reviving himself.

Out of the great scheme in whose aid this remarkable annual has been published have already sprung two Talbot Houses, one in Queen's Gate Gardens, and one in St. George's Square. There is still need of a main headquarters in London and hostels for its branches, more than sixty of them, spread all over the country. "'Toc. H.,'" says its Padre, "is not a charity. Once opened our Hostel Clubs are self-supporting, as our experience already proves. In Edinburgh, Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, Newcastle, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, two thousand pounds will open a house for which our branches in each of these places are crying out. It is only the original outlay, the furniture and the first quarter's rent, which stand between us and a whole series of such houses in the great provincial centres. Fifty pounds will endow a bedroom, where a lad can live cheaper than in the dingiest lodgings, and know something better of a great city than that it is a place where all evil is open to him and all good is behind closed doors.... 'Toc. H.,' we repeat, is not another recurrent charity. It is a wise way of helping to meet our debt of honour; it is a living and growing memorial, charged with the task of making reincarnate in the younger world the qualities which saved us."

Punch ventures to add his voice to this claim upon our honour and gratitude; and, if I may, I would like to make appeal to all who loved the work of our friend who is dead, that they should send some offering to this good cause as a personal tribute to the memory of a man who, in his own form of service, did so much to cheer the hearts of our fighting men in the dark hours that are over.

Contributions should be addressed to the Rev. P. B. Clayton, M.C., Effingham House, Arundel Street, Strand, W.C.2.

O. S.

THE FAIRY TAILOR

.

Sitting on the flower-bed beneath the hollyhocks

I spied the tiny tailor who makes the fairies' frocks;

There he sat a-stitching all the afternoon

And sang a little ditty to a quaint wee tune:

"Grey for the goblins, blue for the elves,

Brown for the little gnomes that live by themselves,

White for the pixies that dance upon the green,

But where shall I find me a robe for the Queen?"

All about the garden his little men he sent,

Up and down and in and out unceasingly they went;

Here they stole a blossom, there they pulled a leaf,

And bound them up with gossamer into a glowing sheaf.

Petals of the pansy for little velvet shoon,

Silk of the poppy for a dance beneath the moon,

Lawn of the jessamine, damask of the rose,

To make their pretty kirtles and airy furbelows.

Never roving pirates back from Southern seas

Brought a store of treasures home beautiful as these;

They heaped them all about him in a sweet gay pile,

But still he kept a-stitching and a-singing all the while:

"Grey for the goblins, blue for the elves,

Brown for the little gnomes that live by themselves,

White for the pixies that dance on the green,

But who shall make a royal gown to deck the Fairy Queen?"

R. F.

"Unless he wishes to raise a hornet's nest about his ears we would advise him to let sleeping dogs lie."

—Local Paper.

Personally we never keep a dog that harbours hornets.

From a concert-programme:—

"Fantastic Symphony ... Berlioz in a Vodka Shop ... Bax."

Birmingham Paper.

This should help to combat the current opinion that Berlioz is dry.

"Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson said there were, in certain places, some forms of light entertainments which, to say the least, wanted carefully watching."

—Daily Paper.

At present, we gather, the wrong people do the watching.

SING A SONG OF DRACHMAS.

(TINO AT ATHENS.)

THE KING WAS IN HIS COUNTING-HOUSE LOOKING FOR HIS MONEY.

Man of Wealth (to his son just home for the holidays). "And why don't you like your fur coat? I'll bet none of the other boys 'ave got one."

Son. "Yes, but none of the other boys have to be called 'Skunky.'"

THOUGHTS IN A COLD SNAP.

It is going to be very cold when I get up, which will be almost immediately—very cold indeed. It was zero yesterday; it may be below the line to-day, twenty or thirty below the line—even more. A little slam, perhaps, in spades. There are icicles hanging from the window-frame; and it is a curious thing, when one comes to think of it, what a lot of things there are that rhyme with icicle: tricycle, bicycle, phthisical, psychical—no, I am wrong, not psychical ...

Anyhow, it is going to be very cold. Some people do not mind the cold. There are people bathing in the Serpentine at this moment, I suppose, and apparently nothing can be done about it. They ju-just break the ice and ju-jump in. And yet it is not their ice; it is the King's. It seems to me that it ought to be made illegal, this breaking of the King's ice, like the breaking of windows in Whitehall. These ice-breakers seem to me as bad as the people who say, "It's going to be a nice old-fashioned Christmas, with Yule-logs and things." Not that I object to Yule-logs. I have some in my own Yule-shed, hand-sawn by myself, though I am not a good hand-sawyer. When I get about halfway through, the saw begins to gnash its teeth and groan at me. It seems to me that what is wanted is a machine for turning the logs round and round while one holds the saw steady. But there is something beautiful in burning the Yule-logs of one's own fashioning that makes one feel like the sculptor when at last the living beauty has burst forth under his chisel from the shapeless stone. Besides, they are cheaper than coal.

As I say, when people talk of "Yule-logs and things," it is not the Yule-logs that I object to. It is the things. Nasty cold things like clean shirts and collars and bedroom door-handles—there ought to be hot water in bedroom door-handles—nasty cold things that make one say "Ugh." I have a theory that the word "Ugh" was invented on some such morning as this. Previously people had been contented with noises like "Ouch" and "Ouf" and "Ur-r," though they realised how inadequate they were. And then one day, one very cold ⁰⁄40 day, inspiration came to the frenzied brain of a genius, and he wrote down that single exquisite heart-cry and hurried it off to the printer. People knew then that the supreme mating of sound and sense, which we have agreed to call poetry, had once more been achieved.

But I have wandered a little from the Serpentine. Has it ever struck you what people who bathe in the Serpentine on days like this are like during the rest of the year?

Suppose it is a balmy spring morning, a mild temperate afternoon in early summer, a soft autumn twilight when everyone else is happy and content, what are they doing then? Positively bathed in perspiration, groaning under the burden of the sun, mopping their shining foreheads and putting cabbage-leaves under their hats. And then at last comes the day they have longed for and looked forward to all through the twelve-months' heat-wave, a beautiful day forty degrees below the belt. They spring out of bed and fling wide the casement. That is what they intend to do, at least. As a matter of fact, of course, it is stuck, and they have to bash it out with a bolster, sending the icicles clinking into the basement. "Delicious!" they say, leaning out and breathing deep. Then they chip a piece of ice out of the water-jug with a hammer, rub it on their faces and begin to shave.

They shave in their cotton pyjamas, with bare feet, humming a song. Then they put on old flannels and a blazer, wrap a towel round their neck, light a cigarette, pick up a mattock and stroll to Hyde Park. When they get there they feloniously break the King's ice. Then they "ugh." The mere thought of these people ughing with a great splash into the Serpentine makes me feel ill. When I think of them afterwards sitting lazily on the bank and letting the blizzard dry their hair, basking in the snow for an hour or two and reading their morning paper, and every now and then throwing a snowball or a piece of "ugh" into the water, I hate them. Nobody ought to be allowed to bathe in the Serpentine on days like this except the swans, who paddle all night to hold the ice at bay. I wonder if I could get a swan and keep it in the water-jug.

Half-past eight? Yes, I did hear, thank you. I am really going to get up very soon now.

What I am going to do is to make one tiger-like leap—tiger-like leap, I say—for the bathroom door and turn the hot-water tap full on until the whole of the upper part of the house is filled with steam.

I am going to do it this very moment. I—yes—ugh.

Now I come to think of it a tiger-like leap would be quite the wrong idea. I am glad I did not do it. Tigers are not cold when they leap. "Tiger, tiger, burning bright." Tiger, tiger——

What did you say? A quarter to nine? What? And the water-pipes frozen? Are they?

Thankugh.

K.

"WIDOW KISSED BY BURGLAR.

Adventure with a Soft-Voiced Giant.

The gurglar took nothing away with him."

Scots Paper.

"Gurglar" seems the mot juste.

"—— Club.

Monthly medal competition. Returns:—

Provincial Paper.

If only the Judicious Hooker had been playing he might have downed them both.

AT THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM.

Mother (trying to calm her lachrymose offspring). "'Ere, Albert—look at the pretty fishes."

NEW RHYMES FOR OLD CHILDREN.

The Pig.

The way in which he eats and drinks

Is so extremely crude

That nearly everybody thinks

The pig enjoys his food.

But when I see how very fast,

Without one single chew,

He gobbles up his huge repast,

I'm sure it isn't true.

Far nobler than your Uncle Joe,

Who simply sits and sits,

Revolving, gluttonous and slow,

The more attractive bits;

Far nobler than your Uncle Dick,

Who likes the choicest food,

And, if he doesn't have the pick,

Is very, very rude;

The pig has not a word to say

To subtleties of taste;

He eats whatever comes his way

With admirable haste.

In fact, the pig may well resent

The insult to his line

When certain of the affluent

Are said to eat like swine.

A. P. H.

"None are much better than others, and some are much worse."

—New Zealand Paper.

We fear the writer is a pessimist.

TAFFY THE FOX.

[Mr. Horatio Bottomley has complained of the war-time efforts of the Poet Laureate, and desires the appointment of a national bard whose mind is more attuned to the soul of the British nation. Recent political events are not of course a very inspiring subject for serious verse, but we have tried to do our feeble best here in faint imitation of one of the manners of Mr. John Masefield.]

Safe and snug from the wind and rain

In a thick of gorse with a tranquil brain

The fox had slept, and his dreams were all

Of the wild Welsh hills and the country's call;

He slept all night in the Wan Tun Waste,

He woke at dawn and about he faced,

He flexed his ears and he flaired the breeze

And scratched with his foot some poor wee fleas;

He sat on his haunches, doubted, stood;

To his left were the lairs of his native wood,

The deep yew darkness of Cowall Itchen;

He flaired, I say, with his nostrils twitching

Till he smelt the sound of the Fleet Street stunt

And over the hillside came the Hunt.

Over the hillside, clop, clip, clep,

And the dappled beauties, Ginger and Pep,

Live Wire, Thruster, Fetch Him and Snatch Him,

They were coming to bite him and pinch him and scratch him,

Whimpering, nosing, scenting his crimes,

The Evening News and The Morning Times.

"Yooi! On to him! Yooi there!" Hounds were in;

He slunk like a ghost to the edge of the whin;

"Hark! Holloa! Hoick!" They were on his trail.

The huntsman, Alfred, rode The Mail,

A bright bay mount, his best of prancers,

Out of Forget-me-not by Answers.

A thick-set man was Alf, and hard;

He chewed a straw from the stable-yard;

He owned a chestnut, The Dispatch,

With one white sock and one white patch;

And had bred a mare called Comic Cuts;

He was a man with fearful guts.

So too was Rother, the first whip,

Nothing could give this man the pip;

He rode The Mirror, a raking horse,

A piebald full of points and force.

All that was best in English life,

All that appealed to man or wife,

Sweet peas or standard bread or sales

These two men loved. They hated Wales.

The fox burst out with a flair of cunning,

He ran like mad and he went on running;

He made his point for the Heroes' Pleasance,

By Hang Bill Copse, where he roused the pheasants.

They rose with a whirr and kuk, kuk, kukkered;

The fox ran on with a mask unpuckered

By Boshale Stump and Uttermost Penny,

Where the grass was short and the tracks were many.

He tried the clay and he tried the marl,

A workman's whippet began to snarl;

Into the Dodder a splash he went;

All that he cared was to change the scent,

And half of the pack from the line he shook

By paddling about in the Beaver Brook.

He swerved to the left at Maynard Keynes,

With an eye to sheep and an eye to drains;

By Old Cole Smiley and Clere St. Thomas,

Without any stops and without any commas;

At Addison's Cots he went so quick,

He startled a bricklayer laying a brick;

He ran over oats and he ran over barleys,

By Moss Cow Puddle and Rushen Parleys;

By Lympne Sassoon and Limpet Farm

He scattered the geese in wild alarm;

He ran with a pain growing under his pinny

Till he heard the sound of a war-horse whinny,

And tried for an earth in the Tory Holts.

The earth was stopped. It was barred with bolts.

He turned again and he passed Spen Valley,

By Paisley Shawls and Leamington Raleigh;

His flanks were wet, he was mire-beslobbered

By Hatfield Yew and by Hatfield Robert;

He tried a hen-coop, he tried a tub,

He tried the National Liberal Club—

A terrier barked and turned him out.

He tried the end of an old drain-spout.

It was much too small. With a bursting heart

He thought of the home where he made his start;

His flanks were heaving, his soul despairing,

He flaired again—he was always flairing

To find the best way of escape and nab it,

He couldn't get out of this flairing habit;

He felt at his back the fiery breath

Of the Kill Gorge pack that had vowed his death;

He turned once more for the shelter good

Of the Wan Tun Waste and the dark yew wood,

The deep yew fastness of Cowall Itchen

And the scuts and heads of hens in his kitchen.

The hounds grew weak and The Mail was blowing;

Rother said, "Alf, this is bad going!"

Past Pemberton Billing, past Kenworthy,

He shook them off, he was damp and earthy;

By Molton Lambert and Platting Clynes——

But I can't go on with these difficult lines.

The night closed down and the hunt was dead,

Alfred and Rother were tucked in bed;

The cold moon rose on a fox's snore

And everything much as it was before.

Evoe.

Our Erudite Contemporaries.

"'Her feet beneath her petticoat like little mice peep in and out.'

Yes, but when Bobbie Burns wrote that the lassies of Scotland didn't wear Louis heels and extremely short skirts."

—Ladies' Paper.

Any more than they did when Sir John Suckling apostrophised the "wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie."