Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 153, October 17, 1917

Excerpt

THE CARP AT MIRAMEL.

[In the following article all actual names, personal, geographical and regimental, have been duly camouflaged.]

The carp that live in the moat of the Château de Miramel (in the zone of the armies in France) are of an age and ugliness incredible and of a superlative cynicism. One of them—local tradition pointed to a one-eyed old reprobate with a yellow face—is the richer these hundred years past by an English peeress's diamond ring.

From the bottom of the moat one world-war is like another, and none of them very different from peace. It is but a row of grinning red healthy faces over the coping and a shower of bread and biscuit.

When the nightmare of BONAPARTE was ended in the Autumn of 1815, the 22nd K.R. Lancers, commanded by an English peer, billeted themselves in and around the Château de Miramel. The English peer, finding time hang heavy on his hands, or my lady's letters proving insistent, sent for her to come out to him at Miramel. You could do that sort of homely thing in 1815.

So my lady comes to Miramel, and the very first day, as she leans out of window in the round tower, mishandles her diamond ring (gift of my lord) and drops it into the moat. Her host, the good Comte de Miramel, dredged and drained, but no trace of the diamond ring was ever found. But old Cyclops, the carp, grinned horribly.

In due course my lord and lady went home to the Isle of Fogs, and thence they sent their portraits to their host as a souvenir of their stay. Here indeed the portraits still hang, very graceful in the style of the period. And to the appreciative visitor Madame de Miramel (of to-day) shows a missive of thanks, written in indifferent bad French, in which my lady refers sorrowfully to "ma bague diamantée."

Once again the 22nd K.R. Lancers are billeted in Miramel. The other day I noticed on a worn stone pillar at the great door the following half-obliterated words:—

"ED. WYNN, pikeman of the dashing 22nd King's Ryol ridgemet of lanciers. Sept. 1815";

and freshly scratched above the inscription:—

"Better at piking than at speling.

22nd K.R. Lancers. JAS. BARNET. Sept. 1917."

The old carp seems to be right, and one war is very like another. There is no radical change in the orthography of the 22nd King's Royal Lancers, and some-one else's wall is still the medium for self-expression.

Old Cyclops must be throwing his mind back a hundred years or so. There is a rain of bread and biscuits into the moat and a ring of red grinning faces above the coping. Yesterday I threw a disused safety-razor blade over the old scoundrel's nose. And "Bless my soul!" he said, as he lazily bolted it, "there hasn't been such a year for minnows since 1815."

But Armageddon 1917 holds surprises even for those who live at the bottom of a moat. For very early this morning a bauble fell into the moat that Cyclops himself couldn't digest. The old cynic was found floating, scarred belly upwards, on the surface of the water.

The mess-waiter took charge of the post-mortem....