Less of a pleasure place for the rich
And more of a treasure place for the people.
It was the "pleasure and treasure" rhyme that made the success of that particular tag, he said, and I was quite willing to believe him. But even as he spoke tears came into his eyes, and he added, "You will hardly believe me, sir, when I tell you the agony I have gone through in trying to find a rhyme for 'people.' It is one of the most difficult words in the English language to get a rhyme for. There are many rhymes for the abhorred rich, but none suitable for 'people.' There is 'steeple,' but I think that is about all; and it is dreadfully difficult to work in 'steeple.' I worked at it for three nights and then gave it up in despair. However, the thing in its final form did well enough, as I have told you."
I suggested to him that he might have turned the difficulty by using some other word for "people," as, for instance, hoipolloi, mob, populace, gutter-snipes, boors, dregs, dross, scum and other accurate and suitable words, but he at once stopped me. "None of these will do," he said, "because the People do not like being called those names." "Then," said I, "there is 'citizens,' 'the Britons,' 'Britishers,' and so forth"; but he still wagged his beard from side to side, saying that none of them would fit, "besides which," he added, "they are just as difficult to rhyme to as the other. It can't be done."
I asked him whether he had made Harmsworth's phrase "Rolling the French in mud and blood." He said yes, but he had originally written it with a blank—"Rolling the (blank) in mud and blood," and had hawked it all round London for years according as our foreign policy changed. The mud and the blood made a very good rhyme, and any old nation would do to fit into the blank. He had used the words "Russians" and "Spaniards," and even—I say it with horror—"Yankees," for he was at work as long ago as the Alabama claim, which I wasn't. He only wished he had lived long enough to put "Germans," but it happened just to fit in with the French at the moment he wrote it. He sold it to Harmsworth (he told me), and it came out in his papers, "We will roll the French in mud and blood." It did great service, for it frightened the French to death and kept them out of Morocco in 1899.
I next asked him if he had written the famous rhyme—
We don't want to fight,
But by jingo if we do,
—which is one of the happiest memories of my childhood. He was immensely flattered—but had to deny the authorship.
"I only wish I had written it, sir," he said (he called me "sir" the whole time, and it pleases me to remember the honour he paid me). "I only wish I had written it! That was a real corker! None of the others led to anything so big: this one very nearly made a war and moved a whole fleet at immense expense from one part of the Mediterranean to the other. No small feat! But what I did write, sir, if you will believe me—and I never got the credit for it—was a most excellent tag called 'Ninepence for fourpence.' It occurred to me in this way. I was sitting in one of Lockhart's cafés, which I patronised in those days, drinking a stir of brown with a slab of thick." I nodded, for the terms were familiar to me; and he continued: "As I did so a man came in with a shilling and said he would have a scone and a cup of tea and a pat of butter (in those days, sir, we had not the advantage of margarine. You young folks have a better time than ever we had!) The man came in, I say, with a shilling and put it down and said he would have a scone and a cup of tea and a pat of butter, and that was threepence. Then they gave him ninepence change. Then he put it back again and said he had changed his mind (the shilling was still lying on the counter), and asked what he could get for one-and-ninepence. The woman who was serving was very flurried with the crush of people, and she said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'One and ninepence. I have paid threepence—that is one and three and nine, makes ... no, I'll tell you what!'—putting down another shilling—'That makes two and ninepence together. Look here, that's too much.' Then he shifted the coins about a bit while she served other people in her hurry, and then she looked at him again all fussed and said, 'Now then! Make up your mind!' and he said, 'Well, I will tell you what, I think I can afford fourpence. Will you give me a sausage with some bread and a cup of tea?'; and she said, 'Oh, how you do pester!' Then he put down fourpence, picked up the ninepence change and the shillings, and in this way, after he had had his sausage and tea and bread and butter, he won ninepence by risking fourpence. He was a wizened-looking man with a cunning look and a fixed smile. I have always remembered him; and that is how I got my idea of ninepence for fourpence; but if you will believe me, sir, I sent that into the Central Office and they used it and never paid me!"