Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 156, March 26, 1919

Excerpt

THE PRELIMINARY DOVE: ITS PROSPECTS.

Within a little week or two,

So all our sanguine prints declare,

The Dove (or Bird of Peace) is due

To spread its wings and take the air,

Like Mr. THOMAS when he flew

Across the firmamental blue

To join the PREMIER in communion

Touching the Railway Workers' Union.

We've waited many a weary week

With bulging eyes and fevered brow,

While WILSON pressed upon its beak

His League-of-Nations' olive bough,

Wondering what amount of weight

Its efforts could negotiate,

How much, in fact, the bird would stand

Without collapsing on the land.

And, even though it should contrive

To keep its pinions on the flap,

And by a tour de force survive

This devastating handicap,

Yet are there perils in the skies

Whereon we blandly shut our eyes,

But which are bound to be incurred,

And, notably, the Bolshy-bird.

This brand of vulture, most obscene,

May have designs upon the Dove;

Its carrion taste was never keen

On the Millennial reign of Love;

And I, for one, am stiff with fear

About our little friend's career,

Lest that disgusting fowl should maul

And eat it, olive-branch and all.

I mention this to mark the quaint

Notion of "Peace" the public has,

That wants to smear the Town with paint,

To whoop and jubilate and jazz;

And while our flappers beat the floor

There's Russia soaked in seas of gore,

And LENIN waxing beastly fat;

Nobody seems to think of that.

O.S.

which may be reproduced (with the permission of Mr. Punch) in any forthcoming volume of Anybody's Reminiscences.

"You do things so sketchily and casually," said FRITH to WHISTLER one day. "Now when I paint a picture I take pains. 'The Derby Day' cost me weeks and months of sleeplessness. I did nothing else; I gave my whole mind to it." "Oh," said WHISTLER, "that's where it's gone to, is it?"

When Mr. BERNARD SHAW made his tour of the ports in order to popularise Socialism in the Navy, he was courteously received at Portsmouth by Sir HEDWORTH MEUX. The talk happened to turn on the theatre, and the Admiral was candid enough to confess himself somewhat at sea with regard to the merits of contemporary writers. "Now, Mr. SHAW," he said in his breezy way, "I wish you would tell me who is the most eminent of the playwrights of to-day?" "Ay, ay, Sir," said Mr. SHAW promptly.

Dr. Brotherton told me that he was once with MATTHEW ARNOLD in an election crowd at Oxford, when the Professor of Poetry accidentally collided with a working-man flown with Radicalism and beer. "Go to blazes!" said the proletarian. "My friend," replied ARNOLD, "we are well met. In me you see the official representative of Literature, whereas you, I perceive, stand for Dogma."

Mrs. Brown of Newquay, who claims to be the original Mrs. Partington, told me that SYDNEY SMITH'S last years were overclouded by his inability to discover the riddle to which the answer is contained in the words, "The one rode a horse and the other rode a dendron."

Probably few people remember a Nottinghamshire poet of an earlier day who fulfilled with much conscientiousness the duties of local laureate....