A CAREER.
(The Right Man in the Right Place.)
You should see our son James!
You should just see our James!
As bright as a button, as sharp as a knife!
My wife says to me and I say to my wife,
"You'll never have seen such a son in your life
As our jammy son, James."
He is now three years old;
He's a good three years old;
When the fellow was two you could see by his brow
(At the age of a year, you could guess by the row)
That this was a coming celebrity. Now
He's a stout three-year-old.
Question: What shall he be?
Tell us, what shall he be?
Shall he follow his father and go to the Bar,
Where, passing his father, he's bound to go far?
"But one knows," says his mother,"what barristers are.
Something else he must be!"
Do you fancy a Haig?
Shall our James be a Haig?
The War Office tell me he's late for this war,
Have the honour to add there won't be any more
Since that's what the League of the Nations is for;
So it's off about Haig.
But his mother sees light
(Mothers always see light).
"This League of the Nations we mentioned above,
With the motto, 'Be Quiet,' the trade-mark, a Dove,
Will be wanting a President, won't it, my love?"
Jimmy's mother sees light.
Yes, that could be arranged;
Nay, it must be arranged.
In the matter of years Master Jimmy would meet
Presidential requirements. What age can compete,
In avoiding the gawdy, achieving the neat,
With forty to fifty? Thus, forty-five be't.
Given forty-two years, he'll be finding his feet
And the Treaty of Peace should be getting complete....
And so that's all arranged.
HENRY.
"I am sorry to have to say that this statement is a ———, and if any of my readers have any doubt as to whether I used that strong term without just reason, I invite them to communicate with the Ministry of Shipping on the subject."—Letter in "The Observer."
We respect our contemporary's discretion, but we should like to know what was the "strong term".
"The Literary Class has grown beyond all expectations, the numbers attending the last few meetings averaging nearly 100. Papers have been read and discussed on Dickens' Works, Tess, Tale of Two Cities."
The Highway.
Flushed with success, the Literary Class is expected next to tackle HARDY; Jude the Obscure and The Mystery of Edwin Drood being the first objectives.
NOUVELLES DE PARIS.
Paris, March 3rd, 1919.
DEAREST POPPY,—You know, don't you, that I write for the Press? You must write, ma chère, if you want to be dans le mouvement nowadays. It's getting to be almost as big a craze as jazzing and is quite as exciting. It has its difficulties, of course, but so has the jazz roll. And if you've got a title or have been mixed up in a cause célèbre you can write on anything sans aucune connaissance spéciale. Camilla Blythely says she just sends in her photo and signature and those obliging newspaper people do the rest—which is most helpful to a busy person. But then we can't all be as notorious as dear Camilla.
I hope it isn't getting just a little overdone. But I hear that lots of papers are offering only three guineas a column now for quite important signatures, while others actually insist on contributors writing their own articles.
Quant à moi, I'm writing up the light side of the Peace Conference. I do those snappy pars about LLOYD GEORGE'S ties and CLEMENCEAU'S gloves and all those little domestic touches that people would much rather read about than such remote things as Czecho-Slovaks and Jugo-Slavs. I did a most thrilling three columns about the hats of the delegates, from the bowler of Mr. BONAR LAW to the "coffieh" and "igal" headdress of EMIR FAISUL, the Arab Prince. (It's always so effective if you can stick in a word or two like that that nobody understands. You never need get them right).
Talking of odd words, the latest boutade over here is to find new names and epithets for our dress materials—some of them quite weird. If you want a silk tricot you ask for "djersador," while a coarser texture is "djersacier"; "mousseux" now describes velvet as well as champagne; ninon is known as "vapoureuse"; while to make one of the newest Spring dresses you require only three-and-a-half yards of "Salomé." Some of the couturiers in the Rue de la Paix are issuing fashion-pronouncing handbooks, while others have their own interpreters to assist customers.
The theatres over here are getting extremely—well, what our grandparents termed "risqués," but it really goes further than that. And the worst of it is my countrypeople seem to think it's the smart thing to go to them, which they do most indiscriminately. Heureusement they don't understand the stuff. Whenever I see a most circumspect and highly proper British matron entering one of the Boulevard theatres nowadays I think what a mercy it is that we as a nation rely so much on pronouncing phrase-books for acquiring foreign languages. It keeps one so single-minded in the midst of a wicked world.
But, after all, propriety is a question de localité. Else why do people do things here which would badly shock us at home? Par exemple, dancing between the courses of a meal is our latest caprice here; but I was un peu étonnée, the other evening, to see the Duchess of Mintford, at a restaurant of the most chic, jazzing off the effects of the turbot with light-hearted abandon.
Unfortunately a waiter carrying a tray darted across the track at the very moment when she was involved in that step so embrouillant, the side-roll.
It took quite a long time to collect, and put in their proper order, the waiter, the contents of the tray, her Grace and all the other jazzers who were coming up behind.
But, après tout, little comment was roused because most of the onlookers thought the incident was just part of the dance.
So long, old thing.
Bien à vous,
ANNE.