Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/600

Tommy (to neighbour) "This is a bit of 'ard luck. 'Ere I've been invalided 'ome after two months in the trenches, and this is the bloomin outlook I've got!"

Dearest Daphne,―The sinking of all political differences, the fusion of parties, and all that sort of thing, is altogether splendid from one point of view, but, my dear, there's another side to the picture―the social side. I put it to you―how is Society to survive if we're all to be dear friends, not criticising anybody and not finding fault with anything? Life will lose all its snap, and Society may as well be wound up by the Lord Chancellor, or whoever it is winds up bankrupt concerns, and its goods sold for the benefit of its creditors. It's all very well to talk of the lion lying down with the lamb, but of course it makes life a distinctly duller business both for the lion and the lamb.

For instance, Mr. Arkwright and the Duke of Clackmannan have not only been prominent in opposite camps; their political hostility extended to their private life. It was the funniest thing to see them when they met at people's houses and had to speak! Stella Clackmannan, who simply adores the Duke, and Mary Arkwright, who thinks her husband easily the greatest man there's ever been, took sides with all their hearts, and enjoyed an almost perfect enmity. Oh, the dear little pinpricks and the innumerable small ruses de guerre that made their lives bright and snappy! Once, when it was Stella's turn to lecture at the Garden Talks of the Anti-Banalites, Mary Arkwright asked her what she was going to talk to us about; and Stella, who was dabbling in Oriental mysticism just then, said her subject was, "Which is the more desirable state of being―Nirvana, or the Final Negation of Moksha?" "Ah," said Mary, "then I read a meaning into that delightful frock of yours, duchess dear; the deep folded waistband is meant to suggest a lifebelt, as you're sure to get out of your depth!"

Stella got a bit of her own back the week after, however. You remember that marvellous boy, Popperitzky, who played the flute with his mouth and sang to it through his nose, and sent London quite wild? Mary Arkwright had secured him for one of her big affairs at their official home, and, while he was actually on his way to Upping Street, Stella had him kidnapped to Clackmannan House to play and sing to her crowd.

Clackmannan never opened his lips in public or private without attacking George Arkwright, and George Arkwright used to speak of the Duke as "a surviving relic of the monstrous and effete old feudal system," and now these two are colleagues in public and friends in private! The newly-created Minister for Remembering Things, with £5,000 a year and a seat in the Cabinet (the duties are to think of everything that other State Departments have forgotten) is no other than the Duke of Clackmannan, and he and George Arkwright are always conferring together and dining together! Stella C. and Mary A. have buried everything even remotely resembling a hatchet; they're for ever consulting about war-bazaars and matinées, and it's "Mary, dear, I meant to fix the 25th for my concert in aid of Wobbly Neutrals Who Can't Make Up Their Minds, but I thought I'd ask first if you want that date;' and it's "How very thoughtful of you, dearest! No, I've nothing at all for the 25th."

I saw them driving together in the Park yesterday, and as my car passed theirs I called out, "Hallo, Coalition; you both look rather dismal." "No wonder," Mary Arkwright called back; "each of us has lost her best enemy!"

People are whispering quite an amusing little storyette about Popsy, Lady Ramsgate, and the Alamode Theatre. The Alamode has long specialised in jeunes premiers; its leading men have always been acknowledged beauty-boys, postcard heroes and matinée idols. And of the whole series Lionel Lestrange (some people say his real name is Sam Hodges) was the biggest draw. His wavy hair, his eyebrows and his dazzling socks and smile were quite national property, and no jeune premier ever had half so many notes of admiration! Popsy, Lady R., and others of our frisky juvenile-antiques have always patronised the Alamode; indeed, Popsy has been so important there that the manager used to consult her about a new "find," and be guided by her verdict: for, as he once said, "What Popsy, Lady Ramsgate, says to-day about a young actor the matinée-girl will say to-morrow."

From the first she was quite éprise of Lionel Lestrange. Two or three times a week her curls and binoculars (the latter always at her eyes and always fixed on Lionel) might be seen in the Ramsgate box, and she grew so pointed in her attentions that it's said the rest of the company nicknamed Lestrange "The Dowager Earl!" And then one day, after thinking it over for about ten months, our postcard hero suddenly realised that his country was at war and wanted him, and he shed his bright socks and his stage smile and got into khaki. There was wailing and gnashing of teeth among the patronesses of the Alamode. But a successor soon bobbed up. "Mr. Claude Clitherow" was billed to play lead in Boys will be Boys, vice Lionel Lestrange gone to play a man's part elsewhere.

The first night went off well. The new star twinkled all right. The house was full, and innumerable feminine whispers went about, "What a darling Claude Clitherow is!" "Handsomer than Lionel Lestrange―or at least quite as handsome." Popsy, Lady R. sent for the manager in the interval, had the new boy presented to her, and took him out to supper after the show.

Shortly, however, there began to be rumours. And Popsy, who was completely off with the old love and on with the new, went flying off to see the manager of the Alamode one day in a flaming fury―"Have you dared play such a trick on the public, Morris Jacobson? I thought Claude Clitherow's face was somehow familiar to me! Yes, I see it's true!" "Hush, my lady," pleaded Jacobson, tearing his black ringlets in an agony; "don't give me away! I was at my wits' end! All our attractive young men are enlisting. Yes, it's true. Claude Clitherow is Daisy Bell of our chorus."

The Ramsgate box and almost all the other boxes at the Alamode are To Let now!

Ever thine,