Volume 158 — A STORM IN A TEA-SHOP.
Reading edition
A New Tale of a Grandfather.
You ask me, Tommy, to tell you the really bravest deed That was ever yet accomplished by one of the bull-dog breed, And, although the hero was never so much as an O.B.E., I think I can safely pronounce it the bravest known to me. It was not done in the trenches, nor yet in a submarine, Mine-sweeper or battle-cruiser; it was not filmed on the screen; For, though the man who performed it had three gold stripes on his sleeve, It happened in Nineteen-Twenty, when he was in town on leave. He was strolling along the pavement, a pavement packed to the kerb, When he felt a sudden craving for China's fragrant herb, So he turned into a tea-shop—as he said, "like a silly fool"— Which was patronised by the leaders of the ultra-Georgian school. He ordered his tea and muffin, and, as he munched and sipped, Strange scraps of conversation his errant fancy gripped, Strange talk of form and metre, of "Wheels" and of Sherard Vines, And scorn of Tennyson, Browning and Swinburne (of The Pines). He listened awhile in silence, but at last the fire grew hot, When he heard "The Lotus-Eaters" described as "luscious rot"; And he shouted out in the madness that is one of Truth's allies, "Old Tennyson's little finger is thicker than all your thighs." A hush fell on the tea-shop, and then the storm arose As a chunk of old dry seed-cake took him plumb upon the nose, And a cup, a generous jorum, of boiling cocoa nibs, Hurled by a brawny Georgian, struck squarely on his ribs. For several hectic minutes the air was thick with buns, It was almost as bad, so he told me, as the shelling of the Huns, But our gallant Tennysonian held on until a clout In the eye from a metal teapot knocked him ultimately out. A sympathetic waitress fled off to fetch the police, Whose opportune arrival caused hostilities to cease, And they carefully conveyed him to a hospital hard by Where a skilful surgeon managed to preserve his wounded eye. It was from the self-same surgeon that I subsequently learned The first remark of the victim when his consciousness returned:— "The Georgians may shine at shying the crumpet and the scone, But as poets they're just No Earthly compared with Tennyson." He never got a medal for his exploit, or a star, And his only decoration was an ugly frontal scar; But still I hold him highest among heroic men, This lone Victorian champion in the Georgian lions' den.
"Bed, Sir? Here is a genuine Jacobean, for which we are asking only two hundred and fifty guineas."
"Well, to tell you the truth I wasn't wanting to buy one. But I can't get a bed anywhere in London, and I was just wondering if you could let me sleep in it to-night."
DOMESTIC STRATEGY.
I will admit that it was I who gave Mrs. Brackett the idea. But to blame me for the very unfortunate dénouement is ridiculous.
I met Mrs. Blackett in Sloane Street.
"I'm on my way to a registry-office," she said. "No, not that kind of registry-office; I'm not about to commit bigamy. I mean the kind where domestic assistants are sought, but mostly in vain. I suppose you don't know of a cook, a kitchenmaid, a housemaid, a parlourmaid and a tweeny?"
I confessed that I did not. But I told her the story of some friends of mine who had been in a similar position and had succeeded in reorganising their establishment by an ingenious strategy.
"The wife went away to stay with friends in the country," I said, "and the husband went to the registry-office, representing himself to be a bachelor, a rather easy-going bachelor. It seems that such establishments are popular with the few domestic servants still at large. After a short time he let it be known that he was really married, but separated from his wife; and after a further interval he called his household together and with tears in his voice informed them that he and his wife had composed their differences and that she was returning to him on the morrow. I understand that it was a complete success."
Mrs. Brackett was very much impressed by this story.
"If I don't find anyone to-day I shall try it," she said as we parted.
She did not find anyone, and, she did try it. She left home the following day, as I learnt from Brackett when I met him a week later.
"Your tip's come off absolutely A 1," he said, "and I'm most awfully obliged. The worry was getting on my wife's nerves. As it is I filled up my establishment a couple of days ago and, as everything is going well, I've wired my wife to come home to-morrow."
"Have you broken it to the maids?" I asked doubtfully.
"Oh, no; but I shall just tell 'em in the morning," said Brackett. "That'll be all right."
I felt at the time that he was being far too precipitate, but he seemed so confident that I didn't interfere. The sequel was disastrous.
In the first place Brackett, in his casual way, omitted to say anything about his being married until Mrs. Brackett was actually in the house. Even then he seems to have been rather ambiguous in his explanations. Anyway the new maids were, or affected to be, profoundly shocked. They intimated that they would never have entered so irregular an establishment had they known, and departed en masse after spreading a scandal among the tradespeople which will take the Bracketts twenty years to live down.
The Arresting Power of Beauty.
"You dreamed of someone with whiskers who made your heart stop beating in your tiny waist every time he looked at you."—Home Notes.
"General, good plain cook; £45; flat, Maida Vale; constant hot water."—Times.
But why tell the poor woman beforehand?
"It recalls the distressing aphorism:
'Life is real, life is earnest, And things are not what they seem.'"
Liverpool Post and Mercury.
For example, this may seem like a quotation from the "Psalm of Life," but it isn't.
A TEST OF SAGACITY.
Mr. Lloyd George. "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WITH THE LETTERS I HAVE PLACED BEFORE HIM OUR LEARNED FRIEND WILL NOW SPELL OUT SOMETHING THAT SIGNIFIES THE GREATEST HAPPINESS FOR IRELAND."
The Pig. "I CAN'T MAKE THE BEASTLY THING SPELL 'REPUBLIC.'"