Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920
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Various >> Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920
_Attendant._ "I MUST ASK YOU TO FIND THE TICKET, SIR, PLEASE. THE HAT
THAT YOU INDICATE IS QUITE NEW."]
* * * * *
THE REVIVAL OF OLLENDORFF.
FROM the memories of my mid-Victorian childhood, before the instruction
of a governess had reached a point at which the plunge was made into a
preparatory school, three names emerge with remarkable distinctness.
"Little Arthur," from whom I derived my earliest knowledge of the
History of England; "Henry," by whom I was grounded in the rudiments of
the dead Latin tongue (but who must be carefully distinguished from
JAMES HENRY, the Virgilian, who in turn had nothing whatever to do with
HENRY JAMES the novelist), and OLLENDORFF, the illustrious author of a
series of manuals for the teaching of living foreign languages.
OLLENDORFF, I fear, is not even the shadow of a name to the present
generation. There is no mention of him in _The Encyclopaedia Britannica_
or in _Chambers_. Even in his own country he seems to have lapsed into
obscurity, and in MENDEL'S voluminous _Conversations-Lexikon_ there is
only a brief reference to the Ollendorffian method, but no account of
the man or his history.
Yet he must have existed; OLLENDORFF cannot have been a mere symbol. And
as students of SHAKSPEARE have endeavoured to reconstruct the man from
his plays so I feel sure that the character of OLLENDORFF, his interests
and politics, might very well be reconstructed from a study of his
dialogues. One must admit that his Teutonic patronymic is an obstacle to
his revival, but that difficulty can be surmounted by the adoption of an
_alias_. For example, by the omission of one of the "f's" and the
transposition of one other letter his name, read backwards, becomes
Frondello, which is at once euphonious and void of all racial offence.
The Ollendorffian method, it may be noted for the benefit of the
ignorant, did not merely depend on the employment of question and
answer; it aimed at conveying information drawn from the homely affairs
of daily life and the relations between persons belonging to different
trades and occupations. "Have you," OLLENDORFF would ask, "the hat of
the gardener's son?" And when this had been duly and correctly
translated into German or French the pupil proceeded to the answer, "No,
but I have the boots of the grocer's brother-in-law."
I think OLLENDORFF built better than he knew; or perhaps he did know. A
strong vein of Socialism runs through all his examples, which seem to
show a lively appreciation of the Communistic principle. To him there
was nothing wrong or dangerous in this mutual interchange and enjoyment
of property. He drew no hard-and-fast lines between _meum_ and _tuum_.
We cannot help thinking that, at a time when so much depends on the
fusion of classes, a new edition of these immortal dialogues, brought up
to date so as to meet the exigencies of the new poor, the new rich, the
old aristocracy and the new plutocracy, would be fraught with the most
salutary results.
The following are some crude suggestions of the lines on which the
revision might be carried out:--
"Have you the leathern waistcoat of the taxi-driver?--"No, but I have
the reach-me-down trousers of an inferior quality to those worn by the
village postman."
"Have you the smooth-running automobile of the prosperous grocer?"--"No,
but I have the loan of the push-bicycle of my former under-gardener's
uncle."
"Are you going to marry the beautiful daughter of the shoemaker?"--"Yes,
and her brother has just become engaged to the widow of my cousin the
marquis."
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Mr. Arthur Wontner_ (_to himself_). "WELL, I DON'T THINK
MUCH OF YOUR TASTE IN CLOTHES."]
* * * * *
AT THE PLAY.
"THE ROMANTIC AGE."
I HOPE that Mr. ALAN MILNE is a good enough critic to agree with me in
thinking that this is the best play he has so far given us. Not that the
idea of it is as new as that of his _Mr. Pim_ or his _Wurzel-Flummery_,
but because, without sacrificing his lightness of touch and his sense of
fun, he has, for the first time, produced a serious scheme.
People will tell you that his Second Act was the weak spot in the play;
that the others were brilliant, but that this one, for its first half,
was tedious and delayed the action. They will say this because they are
familiar with A. A. M.'s humour, but not with his sentiment. Yet it was
in this middle Act that he gave us the best passage of all, in
presenting the philosophy of his pedlar, which had in it something of
the dewy freshness of the early morning scene in the wood ("morning's at
seven," as _Pippa_--not _Mr. Pim_--said _en passant_). There was no real
delay in the action here, for the pedlar was providing the hero with the
argument without which he could never have persuaded the lady to yield;
could never have made her understand that Romance is not confined to the
trunk-and-hose period, or any age, so named, of chivalry, but is to be
found wherever there is a true companionship of hearts. Unfortunately
the effect of this passage was a little spoilt by what had just gone
before--a rather slow and superfluous scene with the village idiot--and
some of the audience imagined that the author was still marking time.
Mr. MILNE has an individual manner so distinct that he can well afford
to acknowledge his debt to Sir JAMES BARRIE. As in _Mary Rose_, so here
(though there are no supernatural forces at work) we have the sharp
contrast between commonplace life, as lived by the rest, and the life of
Fairyland, as coming within the vision of one only. And we were reminded
too of the Midsummer-madness that overtook the company in _Dear Brutus_.
I won't say that it wasn't natural enough for _Melisande_, under the
fascination of a moonlit Midsummer Eve, to imagine, when she chanced
upon a gentleman in fancy dress of the right period, that at last she
had realised her dream of a hero of romance; but she was stark
Midsummer-mad to suppose, when she met him early next morning with his
costume unchanged, that he would keep it on till he came to tea with the
family, and then, still wearing it, waft her off to Faerie.
But not even BARRIE has ever made a better scene than that which showed
us the disillusionment of the visionary when she is confronted with her
blue-and-gold hero of romance now transformed into a plain Stock
Exchange man, his air of banality enhanced by the last word in golf
suitings. The humour of this scene, in which she made conventional
conversation without any real effort to conceal her sense of the bathos
of the situation, was very perfect. The relatively simple humour of the
match-making mother--not so simple, all the same, as its spontaneity
made it appear--had the distinction which one expects of Mr. MILNE; but
this was far the funniest feature in the play.
It would have been an easy matter to make cheap fun, as MARK TWAIN did
in _A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur_, out of the popular view of
the Age of Romance, but A. A. M. avoided that obvious lure. Indeed, in
his natural anxiety not to be taken too seriously in his first attempt
to be serious, he rather tended to make light of his own theory of
modern romance, laying a little too much stress at the end on the
culinary aspect of conjugal felicity.
I am not sure that Mr. ARTHUR WONTNER (to whom my best wishes for his
new managership) quite realised, in his doublet and long hose, my idea
of a figure of mediaeval romance. In fact I am free to confess that I
disagreed with _Melisande_ and preferred him in his golf-clothes. But
perhaps that was part of the idea, and Mr. MILNE meant me to feel like
that. Miss BARBARA HOFFE'S _Melisande_--a difficult part, because she
was the only other-worldly person in the play and the only one in
desperate earnest--was very cleverly handled. In her most exalted
moments of poetic rapture she was never too precious, and when called
upon for a touch of corrective humour was quick to respond.
Miss LOTTIE VENNE laid herself out in her inimitable way for a broad
interpretation of the visionary's very earthly mother; indeed once or
twice she almost laid herself out of the picture; but she still remained
irresistible. As a pair of light-hearted young lovers Miss DOROTHY
TETLEY and Mr. JOHN WILLIAMS played really well in parts that were not
nearly so easy as they looked. And there was the dry humour of Mr.
BROMLEY-DAVENPORT, as the father (I fear he must have missed the romance
of twin souls) and the open-air charm of Mr. NICHOLSON'S performance as
_Gentleman Susan_, the pedlar. In a word, my grateful compliments
embrace as good a cast as ever caught--and held--the spirit of an
author.
"PRISCILLA AND THE PROFLIGATE."
When you have been jilted by _Cynthia_ at the church-door and, two days
afterwards, in a fit of pique marry _Priscilla_ at sight (of course you
can't always get a _Priscilla_ to consent to this arrangement; but _Mr.
Bensley Stuart Gore_ had a young ward at school who wanted her freedom;
so that was all right), you may think to persuade the Faithless One that
you have given solid proof of your indifference to her. But you mustn't
dash off to Africa an hour after your wedding with the declared
intention of being eaten by wild men or wilder beasts, because, if you
do that, you give your scheme away and _Cynthia_ will have the
satisfaction of knowing that she has driven you to desperate courses.
Yet that is what _Mr. Bensley Stuart Gore_ did (he was the "Profligate"
of the title, though he never gave any noticeable sign of profligacy).
After this strain on my credulity I felt prepared for anything, and was
not in the least surprised to find him, six years older and still
intact, on the terrace of the Hotel Casa Bellini, by the dear old shores
of Lake Maggiore, which, as the programme advised me, is in Italy. It
seemed, too, the most natural thing in the world that the author, Miss
LAURA WILDIG, should have collected _Priscilla_ and _Cynthia_ (the
latter in tow of a third-rate millionaire husband whom she loathed) at
the same address.
It was at this juncture that _Mr. Bensley Stuart Gore_ was inspired
with a Great Thought. In order to set _Priscilla_ free (I ought to say
that he hadn't recognised her) he would elope with _Cynthia_. How
_Priscilla_ set out to frustrate this noble sacrifice and secure her
husband for herself; how she bribed the caretaker to lock him up with
her in the "Bloody Turret" of an adjacent ruin; how subsequently, at 2
A.M., in the public lounge of the hotel, she tried to work upon his
emotions by appearing in a black night-dress (surely this rather vulgar
form of allurement is _demode_ by now even in the suburbs, or, anyhow,
is not so freshly daring as she seemed to think it), I will leave you to
imagine. Even Miss IRIS HOEY'S nice soft voice and pleasant _calineries_
could not quite carry off this rather machine-made trifle. If anything
saved it, it was the acting of Mr. FRANK DENTON as _Jimmy Forde_.
Starting as _Bensley's_ "best man," he missed the wedding ceremony
through going to the wrong church, but after that he stuck close to his
friend for the remainder of the plot, and greatly endeared himself to
the audience by the excellent way in which he played the silly ass.
As for _Bensley_ himself, you might have thought that he had a
sufficiently chequered career, yet Mr. CYRIL RAYMOND got very little
colour out of the part. For the rest, Mr. H. DE LANGE, as the
millionaire, got a certain amount out of the subject of his wife's
indigestion, which was a sort of _leit-motif_ with him; but most of the
colour seemed to have gone into the scenery, admirably designed and
painted by Mr. MCCLEERY and Mr. WALTER HANN.
O. S.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Diner._ "I SAY, WAITER, I'VE ASKED THREE TIMES FOR
POTATOES."
_Waiter_ (_still under the influence of military discipline_). "BEG
PARDON, SIR, BUT I'M TOLD OFF TO CONCENTRATE ON THE CABBAGE."]
* * * * *
"LOGS TO BURN."
"_Logs to burn; logs to burn;
Logs to save the coal a turn._"
HERE's a word to make you wise
When you hear the wood-man's cries;
Never heed his usual tale
That he has splendid logs for sale,
But read these lines and really learn
The proper kinds of logs to burn.
Oak logs will warm you well
If they're old and dry;
Larch logs of pine woods smell,
But the sparks will fly.
Beech logs for Christmas-time,
Yew logs heat well;
"Scotch" logs it is a crime
For anyone to sell.
Birch logs will burn too fast,
Chestnut scarce at all;
Hawthorn logs are good to last
If cut in the Fall.
Holly logs will burn like wax,
You should burn them green;
Elm logs like smouldering flax,
No flame to be seen.
Pear logs and apple logs,
They will scent your room;
Cherry logs across the dogs
Smell like flowers in bloom.
But Ash logs, all smooth and grey,
Burn them green or old;
Buy up all that come your way,
They're worth their weight in gold.
* * * * *
"GIRL EYE-MAKER."
_Picture-title in Daily Paper._
Perhaps we ought to mention that the eyes she makes are artificial,
not "glad."
* * * * *
Our Discreet Press.
"Mystery surrounds the Russo-Polish peace negotiations at Riga.
According to a Central News message from Warsaw Marshal Pilsudski
has had a conference with??????????, the Premier, as to whether
demobilisation should take place shortly."--_Evening Paper._
* * * * *
"When he [Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree] was prepared to play _Martin
Chuzzlewit_ he wrote to me (and doubtless explained to others) that
he was going to present _Mr. Micawber_ as 'a sort of
fairy.'"--_Sunday Paper._
We suppose if Sir HERBERT had staged _David Copperfield_ he would have
cast himself for the husband of _Mrs. Harris_.
* * * * *
THE PRIVATE FILM.
MY attention has been drawn to the most recent and perhaps the most
terrible development of the Cinema by an advertisement, from which I
take the following extracts:--
HAVE YOUR OWN FILM TAKEN.
THE MOST MODERN METHOD OF GAINING PUBLICITY.
_To Members of Parliament, Mayors, Lecturers and other Public Men
and Women._
"The Cinema has become the cheapest, the surest and most rapid road
to publicity. It is estimated that a third of the population attend
the Cinema once a week. Messrs. Mump and Gump have therefore fitted
up a special studio for film work, in which you can now have your
own film taken, representing you in any action you may desire. This
method of publicity is specially recommended to Members of
Parliament. For instance one can be filmed writing a letter, which
can be closed down and handed to a messenger, which action can be
followed by the letter itself being thrown on the screen.... Think
what this means to a prospective Candidate when he goes to a
constituency where he is unknown. He takes with him twenty or more
films. Your constituents must see and know you before you can hope
for their vote. The Cinema introduces your personality and your
policy.
"Your film will cost you--
First reel ... Three guineas.
Each extra reel. One guinea."
The more I see of business-men the less they seem to me to know about
business. I never read an advertisement without thinking, "How much
better I (or even you) could have done that!" Yet they will tell you
that it is their advertisements which make the money. It only shows....
However. Messrs. Mump and Gump, for instance, have scarcely skimmed the
surface possibilities of their brilliant notion. This invention is going
to make politics tolerable at last. No man minds being in the House of
Commons; it is being in his constituency which is so dreadful. _And now
he need never go there._
For instance, when the constituency is tired of the letter-film, he can
be filmed making a speech, which can be taken down and handed to a
typist, which action can be followed by the speech itself being thrown
on the screen--in instalments. The constituency will enjoy this, because
it will take much less time to read it than it would to listen to it,
and they can argue out loud about the meaning of Early English phrases
like Datum-line and Functional Representation. In fact they can go on
arguing during the _Whips of Sin_ which will follow.
As for the public man, it won't take him two minutes to be filmed making
the speech, unless, of course, he has any very complicated gestures; and
it won't take him any time at all to compose it, because the private
secretary will do that; and the private secretary will be able to make
sure that his joke about JEREBOAM is not turned into a joke about
JEHOSHAPHAT at the last minute, or simply shelved in favour of a
peroration on rainbows. After the speech the M.P. can be filmed opening
a flowershow and, if necessary, writing a cheque to the local
hortiphilist society, which cheque can be thrown on the screen amid loud
applause, but need not, of course, go any further.
There is one other point, but it is rather a delicate matter: Messrs.
Mump and Gump say to the prospective Candidate, "Your constituents must
see and know you before you can hope for their vote." Are they quite
right? I have seen a good many Candidates in my time, and I can think of
some to whom I should have said, "Your constituents must _never_ see you
if you hope for a single vote." I mean, when one looks round the present
House of Commons, one really marvels how.... But perhaps I had better
not go on with that. The point is that a Candidate of that kind never
_need_ be seen by his constituents now. A handsome young private
secretary, uniformed and beribboned, and the film does the rest.
Then I rather resent the assumption that Members of Parliament, Mayors,
Lecturers and Actors are the only people who require publicity. I should
have thought that those who spend their time writing things in the
public Press, which are read by the public (if anybody), might have had
at least the courtesy title of Public Man. Anyhow, I am going to have
three guineas' worth. The only question is, what sort of picture will
most thoroughly "get" my personality before a third of the population
once a week? The moment when I am most characteristic is when I am lying
in a hot bath, and to-morrow is Sunday; but I doubt if even a sixth of
the population would be really keen on that. I don't mind writing a
letter or two, only, if it meant an extra reel every time I decided to
write it to-morrow instead, it would be rather a costly advertisement.
Really, I suppose, one ought to be done _At Work in His Study_; but even
that would require a good deal of faking. Ought one, for instance, to
remove the golf-balls and the cocoa-cup (and the rhyming dictionary)
from The Desk? Then I always write with a decayed pencil, and that would
look so bad. Messrs. Mump and Gump would have to throw in a quill-pen.
And I have no Study. I work in the drawingroom, when the children are
not playing in it. To go into The Study I simply walk over to my table
and put up a large notice: "THE STUDY. DO NOT SPEAK TO ME. I AM
THINKING." Do you think that had better be in the film?
Or I wonder if a Comic would be more effective--a Shaving reel or a
Dressing reel? It is the small incidents of every-day life that one
should look to for the key to the character of a Public Man; and once a
whole third of the population had seen for themselves what pain it gives
me to put links and studs and all those things in a clean shirt, they
would understand the strange note of melancholy which runs through this
article.
But of course an author should have several different reels
corresponding to the different kinds of work which he wants to
publicitise. (That is a new word which I have just invented, but you
will find it in common use in a month or two.) People like Mr. BELLOC
will probably require the full politician's ration of twenty or more,
but the ordinary writer might rub along with four or five.
When his _Pug, Wog and Pussy_ is on the market there will be a Family
reel, in which he is pretending to be a tree and the children are
climbing it. And when he has just published _The Cruise of the Cow_;
or, _Seven Hours at Sea_, he will be seen with an intense expression
tying a bowline on a bight or madly hauling on the throat-halyard--at
Messrs. Mump and Gump's specially-equipped ponds. And for his
passionate romance, _The Borrowed Bride_---- But I don't know what he
will do then.
And even now we have not exhausted the list of Public Men. There are
clergymen. Don't you feel that some of those sermons might be thrown on
the screen--and left there? A. P. H.
* * * * *
The Merry Bishop.
The Dean of CAPE TOWN with a critical frown
To the jests of St. Albans' gay Bishop demurs;
But the Bishop denies the offence and implies
'Tis the way of all asses to nibble at FURSE.
* * * * *
"Harvest Festival celebrations took place at St. John's Church on
Sunday evening, when the choir rendered the anthem 'Praise the young
ladies of the choir.'"--_Yorkshire Paper._
And we have no doubt they deserved it.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Butcher_ (_at conclusion of scathing criticism of
horse_). "WELL, THAT'S MY OPINION, ANYWAY. AND I OUGHT TO KNOW SOMETHING
BY NOW ABOUT A BIT OF 'ORSEFLESH WHEN I SEES IT."
_Groom._ "YES--AND SO OUGHT YOUR CUSTOMERS TOO."]
* * * * *
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
How you regard Miss MAY SINCLAIR'S latest story, _The Romantic_
(COLLINS), will entirely depend upon your attitude towards the
long-vexed question of the permissible in art. If you hold that all life
(which in this association generally means something disagreeable) is
its legitimate province and that genius can transmute an ugly study of
morbid pathology into a romance, you will admire the force of this vivid
little book; otherwise, I warn you frankly, you are like to be repelled
by the whole business. The title, to begin with, is an irony as grim as
anything that follows, in what sense you will find as the story reveals
itself. _The Romantic_ is a picture--what do I say? a vivisection--of
cowardice, seen through the horrified eyes of a woman who loved the
subject of it. The scene is the Belgian battlefields, to which _John
Conway_, being unfitted for active service, had taken out a
motor-ambulance, with _Charlotte Redhead_ as one of his drivers. All the
background of this part of the tale is wonderfully realised, a thing of
actual and unforgetable experience. Here gradually the first tragedy of
_Conway_ is made clear, though shielded and ignored as long as possible
by the loyalty of fellow-workers and the obstinate disbelief of the
girl. Perhaps you think I am making too much of it all; treacherous
nerves were the lot of many spiritually noble men in that hell. But
little by little conviction of a deeper, less understandable, horror
creeps upon the reader, only to be explained and confirmed on the last
page. To be honest, _The Romantic_ is an ugly, a detestably ugly book,
but of its cleverness there can be no question.
* * * * *
It would appear that Mr. A. E. W. MASON is another of those who hold
that the day of war-novels is not yet done. Anyhow, _The Summons_
(HODDER AND STOUGHTON) shows him dealing out all the old familiar cards,
spies and counter-spies, submarines and petrol bases and secret ink. It
must be admitted that the result is unexpectedly archaic. Perhaps also
Mr. MASON hardly gives himself a fair chance. The "summons" to his hero
(who, being familiar with the Spanish coast, is required when War breaks
out to use this knowledge for submarine-thwarting) is too long delayed,
and all the non-active service part of the tale suffers from a very dull
love-interest and some even more dreary racing humour. Archaic or not,
however, _Hillyard's_ anti-spy adventures, in an exquisite setting that
the author evidently knows as well as his hero, are good fun enough. But
the home scenes had (for me at least) a lack of grip and conviction by
no means to be looked for from a writer of Mr. MASON'S experience. His
big thrill, the suicide of the lady who first sends by car to the local
paper the story of her end and then waits to confirm this by telephone
before making it true, left me incredulous. I'm afraid _The Summons_ can
hardly be said to have found Mr. MASON in his customary form.
* * * * *
"To write another person's life-history in the first person, and yet
give to it the verisimilitude of a genuine autobiography, would under
ordinary circumstances be a difficult if not impossible undertaking." So
Mr. C. E. GOULDSBURY tells us in a note to _Reminiscences of a Stowaway_
(CHAPMAN AND HALL), and most of us will cordially agree with him. But,
after reading this volume of reminiscences, I think you will also agree
that Mr. GOULDSBURY has acquitted himself admirably of a most difficult
task. The man into whose skin, if I may so express it, he has
temporarily tried to fit himself was Mr. ALEXANDER DOUGLAS LARYMORE, who
started his adventurous career as a stowaway in an "old iron tub," and
eventually became Inspector-General of Jails in India. For nearly forty
years Mr. GOULDSBURY was Mr. LARYMORE'S intimate friend, and has had
sufficient data at his disposal to do justice to what was a remarkably
full and interesting life. Possibly those of us who retain a tender spot
in our hearts for stowaways may regret that Mr. LARYMORE grew tired of
the sea; but his adventures were as numerous and amusing on land as on
water, and they are also valuable for the strong light they throw on the
India of some years ago. Mr. GOULDSBURY has at once provided a lasting
tribute to the memory of his friend and written a book which both in
style and matter would be hard to beat.