LAUDS AND LIBELS

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

• THE HAWARDEN HORACE
• MORE HAWARDEN HORACE
• HUMOURS OF THE FRAY
• PARTY PORTRAITS
• THE BRAIN OF THE NATION
• WAR’S SURPRISES

LAUDS AND LIBELS

BY
C. L. GRAVES

LONDON
SIDGWICK & JACKSON, LTD.
1918

CONTENTS

NOTE

Acknowledgment is due to the Proprietors and Editor of “Punch”
for their courtesy in allowing me to reprint these pieces.

C. L. G.

MEN, WOMEN, AND BOOKS

PICCADILLY

Gay shops, stately palaces, bustle and breeze,

The whirring of wheels and the murmur of trees;

By night or by day, whether noisy or stilly,

Whatever my mood is—I love Piccadilly.

Thus carolled Fred Locker, just sixty years back,

In a year (’57) when the outlook was black,

And even to-day the war-weariest Willie

Recovers his spirits in dear Piccadilly.

We haven’t the belles with their Gainsborough hats,

Or the Regency bucks with their wondrous cravats,

But now that the weather no longer is chilly

There’s much to enchant us in New Piccadilly.

As I sit in my club and partake of my “ration,”

No longer I’m vexed by the follies of fashion;

The dandified Johnnies so precious and silly—

You seek them in vain in the New Piccadilly.

The men are alert and upstanding and fit,

They’ve most of them done or they’re doing their bit;

With the eye of a hawk and the stride of a gillie

They add a new lustre to Old Piccadilly.

And the crippled but gay-hearted heroes in blue

Are a far finer product than wicked “old Q,”

Who ought to have lived in a prison on skilly

Instead of a palace in mid Piccadilly.

The women are splendid, so quiet and strong,

As with resolute purpose they hurry along—

Excepting the flappers, who chatter as shrilly

As parrots let loose to distract Piccadilly.

Thus I muse as I watch with a reverent eye

The New Generation sweep steadily by,

And judge him an ass or a born Silly Billy

Who’d barter the New for the Old Piccadilly.

TO “MARTIN ROSS”

(After reading “Irish Memories.”)

Two Irish cousins greet us here

From Bushe “the silver-tongued” descended,

Whose lives for close on thirty year

Were indistinguishably blended;

Scorning the rule that holds for cooks,

They pooled their brains and joined their forces,

And wrote a dozen gorgeous books

On men and women, hounds and horses.

They superseded Handley Cross;

They glorified the “hunting fever”;

They purged their pages of the dross,

While bettering the fun, of Lever;

With many a priceless turn of phrase

They stirred us to Homeric laughter,

When painting Ireland in the days

Before Sinn Fein bewitched and “strafed” her.

With them we watched good Major Yeates

Contending with litigious peasants,

With “hidden hands” within his gates,

With claims for foxes and for pheasants;

We saw Leigh Kelway drop his chin—

That precious English super-tripper—

In shocked amazement drinking in

The lurid narrative of Slipper.

Philippa’s piercing peacock squeals,

Uttered in moments of expansion;

The grime and splendour of the meals

Of Mrs. Knox and of her mansion;

The secrets of horse-coping lore,

The loves of Sally and of Flurry—

All these delights and hundreds more

Are not forgotten in a hurry.

Yet the same genial pens that freight

Our memories with joyous magic

Gave us the tale of Francie’s fate—

So vulgar, lovable and tragic;

Just to the land that gave them birth

They showed her smiling, sad and sullen,

And turning from the paths of mirth

Probed the dark soul of Charlotte Mullen.

Alas! the tie, so close, so dear,

Two years ago death rent asunder;

Hushed is the voice so gay and clear

Which moved us once to joy and wonder;

Yet, though they chronicle a loss

Whose pang no lapse of time assuages,

The spirit of brave “Martin Ross”

Shines like a star throughout these pages.

Here in her letters may one trace

The generous scorn, the gentle pity,

The easy unaffected grace,

The wisdom that was always witty;

Here, mirrored in a sister soul,

One sees the comrade, strong yet tender,

Who marched unfaltering to her goal

Through sacrifice and self-surrender.

TO STEPHEN LEACOCK

(Professor of Political Economy at McGill University, Montreal, and author of “Further Foolishness” and other notable works of humour.)

The life that is flagrantly double,

Conflicting in conduct and aim,

Is seldom untainted by trouble

And commonly closes in shame;

But no such anxieties pester

Your dual existence, which links

The functions of don and of jester—

High thoughts and high jinks.

Your earliest venture perhaps is

Unique in the rapture intense

Displayed in these riotous Lapses

From all that could savour of sense,

Recalling the “goaks” and the gladness

Of one whom we elders adored—

The methodical midsummer madness

Of Artemus Ward.

With you, O enchanting Canadian,

We laughed till you gave us a stitch

In our sides at the wondrous Arcadian

Exploits of the indolent rich;

We loved your satirical sniping,

And followed, far over “the pond,”

The lure of your whimsical piping

Behind the Beyond.

In place of the squalor that stretches

Unchanged o’er the realist’s page,

The sunshine that glows in your Sketches

Is potent our griefs to assuage;

And when, on your mettlesome charger,

Full tilt against reason you go,

Your Lunacy’s finer and Larger

Than any I know.

The faults of ephemeral fiction,

Exotic, erotic or smart,

The vice of delirious diction,

The latest excesses of Art—

You flay in felicitous fashion,

With dexterous choice of your tools,

A scourge for unsavoury passion,

A hammer for fools.

And yet, though so freakish and dashing,

You are not the slave of your fun,

For there’s nobody better at lashing

The crimes and the cant of the Hun;

Anyhow, I’d be proud as a peacock

To have it inscribed on my tomb:

“He followed the footsteps of Leacock

In banishing gloom.”

TO “BARTIMEUS”

(From a grateful Landsman.)

Although the movements of the sea

Have always been a grief to me

And still at times disastrously

Affect my corpus vile,

Sailors of high and low degree

I long have honoured highly.

But now we honour them far more

Than ever in the days of yore

For all they’re doing in the War

To guard and shield and free us;

And this is where the man on shore

Can learn from “Bartimeus.”

For lately, when I couldn’t stick

A “fearless” book which made me sick

And positively long to kick

The author to the ceiling,

By luck I chanced on your Long Trick

And found immediate healing.

Relentless realists protest

You only have one type—the best,

Drawn from the Islands of the Blest—

Of comrades, sons and mothers;

They’d rather see you foul your nest

Than praise the “band of brothers.”

No matter; leave their ink to flow;

It cannot work you weal or woe;

The verdict of the men who know

The truth in its essentials

Should make the armchair critic slow

To challenge your credentials.

The naval officer you paint

Is not at all a plaster saint;

He doesn’t always brook restraint;

He isn’t prim or stolid;

But still he’s void of any taint

That’s mean or low or squalid.

And then you write of wondrous things

That pluck our hearts’ most secret strings—

The tender grace that childhood flings

On scenes of stern endeavour;

The news that joy and comfort brings

Or chills the heart for ever.

So when young writers, void of ruth,

Portray the flower of England’s youth

As ill-conditioned and uncouth—

In short as Huns might see us—

I turn for solace and for truth

To you, good “Bartimeus.”

ON RE-READING “BARCHESTER TOWERS”

In days when Bellona less madly

The wheels of her chariot drave,

To you, Father Anthony, gladly

My doggerel homage I gave;

And again uncontrollably yearning

For solace in desolate hours

I find a brief respite in turning

To Barchester Towers.

How good are the women, how various,

As slowly their natures unfold!—

The feudal Miss Thorne; the gregarious

And amiable Eleanor Bold;

Mrs. Quiverful, dauntless though dowdy,

With fourteen young ravens to feed,

Who managed to melt Mrs. Proudie,

So great was her need.

Mrs. Proudie, of course, is prodigious,

A terror to friends and to foes,

Ambitious, correctly religious,

Yet leading her lord by the nose;

Very far from an angel or jewel,

Very near to a feminine Pope,

And priceless in waging the duel

That smashed Mr. Slope.

And who would not willingly linger

With you, O Signora, who twirled

Round the tip of your white little finger

Staid clerics and men of the world!

Commanding the spells of a Circe;

Bewitching, though crippled and lame;

Redeeming your malice with mercy

And playing the game.

The clergy—Tractarian, Erastian,

Low Churchmen—you faithfully paint

Reveal to our view no Sebastian,

No martyr, and hardly a saint;

Though perhaps, by so freely discarding

Preferment and riches and fame,

The guileless and good Mr. Harding

Is worthy the name.

You looked upon country and city

With kindly and tolerant eyes;

You never set out to be witty,

Though seldom you failed to be wise;

You were neither ornate nor elliptic,

But most unaffectedly shrewd,

For the art that is consciously cryptic

You strictly tabooed.

Your outlook is certainly narrowed

To lives that are never sublime;

Our hearts are not haunted or harrowed

With desperate anguish or crime;

But a mutual trust is for ever

’Twixt author and reader maintained,

And we know all along we shall never

Be wantonly pained.

“BLEAK HOUSE”

There was a time when, posing as a purist,

I thought it fine to criticize and crab

Charles Dickens as a crude caricaturist,

Who laid his colours on too thick and slab,

Who lacked the temper of a judge or jurist

And made life lurid when it should be drab;

In short I branded as a brilliant dauber

The man who gave us Pecksniff and Micawber.

True, there are blots—like spots upon the sun—

And genius, lavish of imagination,

In sheer profusion always has outrun

The bounds of strict artistic concentration;

But when detraction’s worst is said and done,

How much remains for fervent admiration,

How much that never palls or wounds or sickens