A Week-End With the Recently Rich Showing That a Profiteer Is Without Honour in His Own Country

OUR HERO

Mr. John R. Blivvins, of America, one of the leading figures in that noble band of munitions factory owners who did such yeoman service—for themselves—all through the great conflict. However, even though peace is here, there is still work to be done,—Mr. Blivvins is about to crash in on British Society. By way of a start in the right direction, he has purchased—at 10 per cent discount for cash—an ancestral estate equipped with all the modern conveniences, including built-in butlers, hot and cold running footmen at all hours, and a resident bishop. Everything goes with the estate but the title, and Mr. Blivvins looks to his attractive daughter, Angelica, to furnish that, by marrying one.

A HORRIBLE MOMENT

Up to this moment, everything has gone along beautifully. Angelica has worked up a visiting Duke to the proposal point, and Mr. Blivvins has behaved so conservatively that the dinner guests are on the verge of accepting him. And then he had to wreck the entire works. Led away by too conscientious attention to the products of the ancestral wine-cellar, Mr. B. is, with unfortunate geniality, insisting that the footman try one of his best cigars. The Duke might overlook this, but the footman—never.

THE COMMITTEE OF WELCOME

This moment marks the dawn of a new life for the Blivvins family. Their future seems to be practically assured. Angelica, the one and only daughter, has got in some deadly work on one of the local Dukes, who has been pressed into coming down for the week-end. To make it all delightfully homelike, the Duke has brought along his sister, one of the most unmarried noble-women in the entire United Kingdom. This charming little domestic scene shows the arrival of the guests, just at tea time. Angelica is going strong with the Duke (his is the third figure from the right—the clean-cut, red-blooded lad of barely seventy summers). Mr. Blivvins is welcoming the bishop to the little circle—a bishop is always so ornamental when draped gracefully around a tea-table.

THE EROTIC MOTIVE

This picture does not show the great moment in any one of our popular farces,—it is far more tragic than that. It shows how Mr. Blivvins—always an artist at that sort of thing—has managed to get himself disliked. In an absent-minded moment—all life’s bitter tragedies happen in such moments—our hero has mistaken a door, and walked into the room where the Duke’s sister has retired to her chaste repose. The noble vestal is defending her honor at the point of a curling-iron, shrieking, “Stop, villain, or I fire.”

THE GRAND TOUR

The snappy little evening’s entertainment—Mr. Blivvins takes his guests on a personally conducted tour of the picture galleries, proudly pointing out all of his ancestral portraits—that came with the house, when he bought it. Of course, a little of that sort of thing is perfectly ripping, but, after the first eight miles, picture galleries seem to pall a bit. The Duke’s sister is plainly bored.

ON WITH THE DANCE

Things are looking considerably brighter here. Angelica has had the inspiration of injecting a little jazz into the Duke’s attentions. After all, dukes are but human; they can’t hold out against a jazz. The noble antique has dropped forty years from his age, and is dancing with all the abandon of a chorus man. Nothing could be sweeter, so far as Angelica’s proud parents are concerned, but the bishop and the Duke’s sister,—oh, Heavens!

THE BITTER END

And this is the hideous conclusion of the whole affair. The Duke is indubitably not as young as he used to be, and the jazz dance has brought on a complete breakdown. He has to be ignominiously led away to Mortgaged Towers, the ducal estate, in a bath chair. The Blivvins family plumbs the utmost depths of gloom—and all bets on Angelica’s marriage into the British peerage have been officially declared off.

THE DANCE OF THE GHOULS

A view of the extreme left wing of the balcony, during a piano recital by the newest Russian prodigy. The members of this exclusive little group simply don’t know how they would ever get along without music. If it weren’t for music, they would be absolutely powerless to express their souls. Nothing is over their heads. Debussy to them is just like nothing at all to you or me, and they whistle catchy little tunes by Rimsky-Korsakoff in their bath-tubs. They are shown here still a trifle spent with enthusiasm after the pianist has obliged with one of his own compositions, entitled, “Dance of the Ghouls.”

LONG MAY HE PERMANENTLY WAVE

The world-famous pianist, who was once told that he had a Beethoven-like brow and has been dressing the part ever since. He can only manage to work in one concert annually; the rest of his time is taken up in making phonograph and pianola records, posing for heavily shadowed photographs, paying premiums for the insurance on his hands, and lending atmosphere and tone to the more exclusive studio teas.

NO COAXING

The society soprano—always a feature of the programme for the charity concert. It is pretty to see how gladly she volunteers her services for such events; there is no false modesty about it, no hanging back, no making excuses, no insistence on being coaxed, no niggardliness as to encores. No, she steps right forward, brings her music, supplies her own accompanist, and just lets herself go. She is here portrayed at work, rendering, by her own request, “Baby’s Boat’s the Silver Moon.”