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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Terribly Intimate Portraits, by Noel Coward
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Terribly Intimate Portraits
+
+Author: Noel Coward
+
+Illustrator: Lorn MacNaughtan
+
+Release Date: September 17, 2008 [EBook #26649]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TERRIBLY INTIMATE PORTRAITS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TERRIBLY INTIMATE PORTRAITS
+
+COMPILED BY
+
+NOEL COWARD
+
+WITH SIXTEEN
+REPRODUCTIONS FROM OLD MASTERS BY
+LORN MACNAUGHTAN
+
+BONI AND LIVERIGHT
+
+PUBLISHERS : NEW YORK
+
+TERRIBLY INTIMATE PORTRAITS
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
+BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC.
+
+_Printed in the United States of America_
+
+_To_
+
+GLADYS BARBER
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S NOTE
+
+
+In view of the fact that I have received many
+tiresome and even carping letters from the
+more captious critics of this child of my brain, I
+feel in justice to myself and Miss Macnaughtan
+that it is incumbent upon me to protest, in no
+measured terms, against what is not only an organised
+opposition and a pusillanimous display of
+superficial egotism, but a dirty trick.
+
+I have been taunted with my inaccuracies; I
+have been called a fool; an idiot; an uneducated
+dolt; and an illiterate cow! This is far from kind,
+and I resent it.
+
+My concentrated researches prove these memoirs
+to be absolutely accurate in every historical detail.
+
+I refute utterly these criticisms, fostered by
+naught but the basest jealousy.
+
+My parents and other relatives consider the book
+excellent.
+
+NOEL COWARD.
+
+"THE HOLLIES,"
+MARINE CRESCENT,
+ROME.
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+I have endeavoured in writing and compiling this book, to emphasize not
+only actual deeds and historical facts, but to aspire to an even higher
+goal--to conjure to life for a few brief moments the "Souls" of my
+subjects, stark in all their deathless beauty. What task could be nobler
+than to delve in these vivid famous lives and bring to light, perhaps,
+some hitherto undiscovered motive--some delicate and radiant action
+which so far has escaped the common historian and lain unplucked like a
+wee wood violet in an old, old garden!
+
+Modern realists would have us believe that romance and beauty are dead,
+that the spirit of heroic achievement and chivalry has been crushed by
+the juggernautic wheels of civilisation. Poor blind, sad-hearted
+fools--their dreary, unlovely minds have risen like gaunt weeds from the
+ashes of their wasted opportunities. Romance dead? Never! And in order
+to disprove their dismal forebodings, I have included in my portrait
+gallery studies of such national heroes as--Snurge, Spout, Puffwater and
+Plinge. Men selected purposely not merely for the glory of their
+achievements but for the individual dissimilarity of their fundamental
+characteristics, and to illustrate to doubting minds the amazing
+resemblance between the signal courage and romanticism of our forebears,
+and the innate present day spirit of high endeavour.
+
+Take for example "Madcap Moll," Eighth Duchess of Wapping, and her
+famous ride to Norwich--and compare it with Jabez Puffwater's ride to
+the succour of his old Aunt Topsy. Or E. Maxwell Snurge's celebrated
+national appeal in West Forty-Second street, and Sarah, Lady
+Tunnell-Penge's dramatic speech from Tower Hill to the turbulent people
+of London.
+
+All, all are impregnated through and through with the never failing
+spirit of public heroism, and staunch loyalty to existing standards, and
+all will stand for beauty, romance, and nobility of purpose until the
+end of time.
+
+Ring up the curtain. Bring to life the faded tapestries of yesterday
+side by side with the vivid multi-coloured bas-reliefs of to-day! The
+frou-frou of brocade and lavender adown bygone corridors, and the sharp
+toned clarion call of Twentieth Century heroism and daring-do!
+
+NOEL COWARD
+
+"THE HOLLIES,"
+MARINE CRESCENT,
+ROME.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PAGE
+
+FOREWORD
+
+1. MY AMERICAN DIARY
+
+2. JULIE DE POOPINAC
+
+3. MADCAP MOLL, EIGHTH DUCHESS OF WAPPING
+
+4. E. MAXWELL SNURGE, AN INTIMATE STUDY
+
+5. BIANCA DI PIANNO-FORTI
+
+6. SARAH, LADY TUNNELL-PENGE ("WINSOME SAL")
+
+7. JABEZ PUFFWATER
+
+8. FURSTIN LIEBERWURST ZU SCHWEINEN-KALBER
+
+9. JAKE D'ANNUNZIO SPOUT
+
+10. DONNA ISABELLA ANGELA Y BANANAS
+
+11. MAGGIE MACWHISTLE
+
+12. THE EDUCATION OF RUPERT PLINGE
+
+13. ANNA PODD
+
+14. SOPHIE, THE UNCROWNED QUEEN OF HENRY VIII
+
+15. "LA BIBI"
+
+16. AH! AH!, QUEEN OF THE RUDE ISLANDS
+
+GLOSSARY
+
+PRESS NOTICES
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[Illustration: NOEL COWARD _Author of "My American Diary_"]
+
+
+
+
+TERRIBLY INTIMATE PORTRAITS
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+"MY AMERICAN DIARY"
+
+
+_SATURDAY_
+
+I felt that some sort of scene was necessary in order to celebrate my
+first entrance into America, so I said "Little lamb, who made thee?" to
+a customs official. A fracas ensued far exceeding my wildest dreams,
+during which he delved down--with malice aforethought--to the bottom of
+my trunk and discovered the oddest things in my sponge bag. I think I'm
+going to like America.
+
+I have very good letters to Daniel Blood, Dolores Hoofer, Senator
+Pinchbeck, Violet Curzon-Meyer, and Julia Pescod, so I ought to get
+along all right socially at any rate.
+
+It would be quite impossible to give an adequate description of one's
+first glimpse of Broadway at night--I should like to have a little
+pocket memory of it to take out and look at whenever I feel depressed. I
+shall feel awfully offended for Piccadilly Circus when I get back.
+
+God! How I love frosted chocolate!
+
+
+_WEDNESDAY_
+
+For a really jolly evening, recommend me to the Times Square subway
+station. You get into any train with that delicious sensation of
+breathless uncertainty as to where exactly you are going to be conveyed.
+To approach an official is sheer folly, as any tentative question is
+quickly calculated to work him up into a frenzy of rage and violence,
+while to ask your fellow passengers is equally useless as they are
+generally as dazed as you are. The great thing is to keep calm and at
+all costs avoid expresses.
+
+As another means of locomotion the Elevated possesses a rugged charm
+which is all its own, the serene pleasure of gazing into frowsy bedroom
+windows at elderly coloured ladies in bust bodices and flannel
+petticoats, being only equalled by the sudden thrill you experience when
+the two front carriages hurtle down into the street in flames.
+
+I took three of my plays to Fred Latham at the Globe Theatre. He didn't
+accept them for immediate production, but he told me of two delightful
+bus rides, one going up Riverside Drive, and the other coming down
+Riverside Drive. I was very grateful as the busses, though slow moving,
+are more or less tranquil and filled with the wittiest
+advertisements--especially the little notices about official civility,
+which made everyone rock with laughter.
+
+
+_FRIDAY_
+
+Met Alexander Woollcott and Heywood Broun at a first night--we were
+roguish together for hours--Alexander Woollcott says that each new play
+is a fresh joy to him, but the question is whether he's a fresh joy to
+each new play!--I wonder.
+
+
+_TUESDAY_
+
+Spent all last night at Coney Island--I've never known such an
+atmosphere of genuine carnival. We went on "The Whip," the sudden
+convulsions of which drove the metal clasp of my braces sharply into my
+back, I think scarring me for life. Then we went into "The Haunted
+House" where a board gave way beneath my feet and ricked my ankle, the
+"Giant Dipper" was comparatively tame as I only bruised my side and cut
+my cheek. After this we had "hot dog" and stout, which the others seemed
+to enjoy immensely, then--laughing gaily--we all ran through a revolving
+wooden wheel, at least the others did, I inadvertently caught my foot
+and fell, which caused a lot of amusement. I shall not go out again with
+a sharp edged cigarette case in my pocket.
+
+
+_THURSDAY_
+
+Went down to Chinatown with a jolly party all in deep evening dress
+which I thought was rather inappropriate. Mrs. Vernon Bale dropped her
+side comb into the chop suey which occasioned much laughter--Jeffery was
+very tiresome and refused to be impressed, saying repeatedly that he'd
+seen it all before in "Aladdin!"
+
+We all went to "Montmartre" afterwards. Ina Claire was there looking
+lovely as usual. Marie Prune was sitting at the next table squinting
+dreadfully and, I think, rather drunk and obviously upset about her
+sister running away with a Chinaman--poor dear, she's had a lot of
+trouble but still even that's no excuse for looking like a blanc mange
+slipping off the dish, she should cultivate a little more vitality and
+never wear pink.
+
+
+_MONDAY_
+
+Just back from a week-end at Southampton with Mrs. Vernon Bale. Apart
+from coming down to breakfast she's a perfect hostess. We played the
+most peculiar games on Sunday evening and she and Florrie Wick did a
+Nautch dance which was most entertaining and bizarre! How hospitable
+Americans are, I've fixed up heaps of luncheon engagements for next
+week--Edgar Peopthatch was particularly kind--he offered to introduce me
+to Carl Van Vechten and Sophie Tucker both of whom I've been longing to
+meet.
+
+
+_THURSDAY_
+
+Such a busy day! Had plays refused by Edgar Selwyn and William Harris,
+and this book turned down by Scribner's. I also fell off a bus, being
+unused to getting out on the right-hand side. I just love America.
+
+
+_SUNDAY_
+
+Went with Lester to hear Tom Burke sing at the Hippodrome. His voice is
+better than it's ever been and he sang exceedingly good stuff. Poor John
+MacCormack with his winsome Irish ballads.
+
+
+_TUESDAY_
+
+Lunched at the Coffee House--what an atmosphere--even the veal and ham
+pie tasted of the best American literature, and there was a lovely
+signed photograph of Hugh Walpole. I do hope I shall be taken again.
+
+The "Vanity Fair" offices impressed me a lot, they're so comfortable,
+artistic, and full of deathless endeavour. They took the proofs of this
+book in order to publish one or two extracts from it and sent it back
+full of the loveliest corrections. I was duly grateful as Mr. Bishop had
+told me a _lot_ about burlesque during the afternoon.
+
+
+_WEDNESDAY_
+
+Lynn Fontanne took me to tea at Neysa McMein's studio which was most
+attractive, she is a charming hostess and there was an air of pleasing
+bohemianism about the whole affair which went far towards making me take
+another cake--in more formal surroundings I should naturally have
+refrained. After tea I played and sang and everybody talked. It was all
+great fun. I liked F. P. A. enormously, he really ought to write for the
+papers.
+
+
+_SATURDAY_
+
+If I had money I should buy the English rights of "Dulcy" and drag Lynn
+back to England by sheer force--we have few enough good actresses
+without letting those we have, fly away. There's no denying that
+America's the place to get on--this book was refused by Harcourt Brace
+only yesterday.
+
+Met the Theatre Guild this morning and played hide and seek with them in
+the park--such a merry set of rascals! Teresa Helburn invented a new
+prank--she took all my MSS. and hid them in a tin box for two
+months--how we laughed!
+
+
+_THURSDAY_
+
+Apparently all the theatrical "Elite" congregate at the Algonquin for
+supper, I noticed Elsie and Mrs. Janis, Irving Berlin, Frances Carson,
+and Desiree Bibble who looked appalling in probably the rudest hat that
+has ever been worn by man, woman, or child.
+
+Marc Connelly made me laugh for twenty minutes over a friend's
+funeral--_what_ a sense of humour!
+
+
+_TUESDAY_
+
+Spent all day on an island in the middle of the Sound with a lot of old
+gentlemen in towels--returned very sunburned and in great pain--now I
+know what Jeffery suffered when he embarked for England looking like a
+fire engine.
+
+Went to the first night of "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife" with Alfred
+Lunt--in which Barry Baxter made an enormous hit, he is now a brilliant
+light comedian. I think one or two of his sworn acquaintances in England
+will be _quite_ cross when I tell them.
+
+
+_SATURDAY_
+
+Had my first experience of surf bathing to-day, at Easthampton. Apart
+from spraining my wrist, being grazed all over, stunned by a breaker,
+and finally swept several miles out to sea, I enjoyed it thoroughly.
+
+
+_MONDAY_
+
+Met Mr. Liveright--what a dear!
+
+
+
+
+JULIE DE POOPINAC
+
+[Illustration: JULIE DE POOPINAC
+
+_From a Miniature_]
+
+
+For several years all France rang with the name of Julie de Poopinac--or
+to give her her full title, Angelique Yvonne Mathilde Clementine
+Virginie Celeste Julie, Vicomtesse de Poopinac. As the most peerless of
+all the beauties at Court during the last years of a desperately
+tottering throne, she has been hailed and heralded (and is still in some
+outlying villages in Old Provence and Old Normandy) as almost an
+enchantress, so great was her beauty and her wit. Born in a stately
+chateau in Old Picardy, she was brought up in comparative seclusion; her
+father, the Duc de Potache,[1] spent his time at Court, so that her
+radiant loveliness was left to mature and develop unnoticed. Her
+childhood was uneventful, but at the age of seventeen this ravishing
+creature was wedded by proxy to Gustave de Poopinac, a dashing young
+officer in the Garde du Corps,[2] and at twenty-five she came to Court
+in order to see her husband; but alas! Fate, seated securely in
+Destiny's irreproachable turret, willed it that her journey should be in
+vain. She left Old Picardy a merry, laughing married woman--and arrived
+at Versailles a widow. Gustave, the husband whose love she would never
+know, perished at an early hour on the morning of her arrival, at an
+adversary's sword-point behind a potting-shed near the Petit Trianon.
+Rumour whispered that it was on account of a woman that he fought and
+lost, but this last blow of Providence's hatchet was spared his girl
+bride, innocent, secure in her supreme purity and innate virginity. If
+evil tongues had even mentioned the word "woman" to her, she would not
+have known what they meant.
+
+Gradually the pain of her loss grew less. She commenced to enter into
+Court life with a certain amount of zest. Ben-Hepple tells us that it
+was during a masked carnival in the Park of Versailles that she first
+attracted the attention of the amorous King. He had dropped behind Du
+Barry for a moment to tie up his bootlace, and Julie, running girlishly
+along the moonlit path, bumped violently into his arched back. With a
+muttered exclamation he straightened himself and tore off her mask.
+Ben-Hepple goes on to say that his Majesty went from scarlet to white,
+from white to green, and then back again to scarlet before he made his
+world-famed remark, "_Mon Dieu! Quel visage!_" At this moment Du Barry
+appeared, furious at being left, and dragged her royal paramour away.
+But the mischief was done. The wheel of circumstance had turned once
+more--and a few days later Julie changed her _appartements_ for some on
+a higher landing.
+
+What vice! What intrigue! What corruption! Versailles seemed but a vast
+conservatory sheltering the vile soil from which sprang the lilies of
+France--La Belle France, as Edgar Sheepmeadow so eloquently puts it.
+Did any single bloom escape the blight of ineffable depravity? No--not
+one! Occasionally some fresh young thing would appear at
+Court--appealing and innocent. Then the atmosphere would begin to take
+effect: some one would whisper something to her--she would leer almost
+unconsciously; a few days later she would be discovered carrying on
+anyhow!
+
+Julie de Poopinac, beautiful, accomplished and incredibly witty, queened
+it in this _melee_ of appalling degeneracy; she was not at heart wicked,
+but her environment closed in upon her pinched and wasted heart,
+crushing the youth and sweetness from it.
+
+She held between her slim fingers the reins of government, and womanlike
+she twisted them this way and that, her foolish head slightly turned by
+adulation and flattery. Louis adored her: he gave her a cameo brooch, a
+beaded footstool (which his mother had used), and the loveliest cock
+linnet, which used to fly about all over the place, singing songs of its
+own composition.
+
+All the world knows of her celebrated scene with Marie Antoinette, but
+Edgar Sheepmeadow recounts it so deliciously in Volume III of "Women
+Large and Women Small" that it would be a sin not to quote it. "They
+met," he says, "on the Grand Staircase. The Dauphine, with her usual
+hauteur, was mounting with her head held high. Julie, by some
+misfortune, happened to get in her way. The Dauphine, not seeing her,
+trod heavily on her foot, then jogged her in the ribs with her elbow.
+Though realising who it was, the great lady could not but apologise.
+Drawing herself up as high as possible, she said in icy tones, 'I beg
+your pardon!' Quick as thought Julie replied, 'Granted as soon as
+asked!' Then with a toss of her curls she ran down the stairs, leaving
+the haughty Princess's mind a vortex of tumultuous feelings."
+
+A few words of description should undoubtedly be vouchsafed to the
+decoration of her apartments at Versailles. Artistic from birth, Julie
+de Poopinac inaugurated almost a revolution in colour schemes: her
+_salle des populaces_ (room of the people), where she received
+supplicants for alms and various other favours, was upholstered in
+Godstone blue, with hangings of griffin pink; her _salle a manger_
+(dining-room) was a tasteful _melange_ of elephant green, cerise, and
+burnt umber. Her _salle de bain_ (bathroom) deserves special mention,
+owing to its bizarre mixture of mustard colour and vetch purple--while
+her _chambre a coucher_ (bedroom) was a truly fitting setting for so
+brilliant a gem. The walls were lined with costly Bridgeport tapestries
+in brown and black, picked out here and there with beads and tufts of
+gloriously coloured wool. The bed curtains were of soft Norwegian
+yellow, with massive tassels of crab mauve, while the carpet and
+upholstery were almost entirely Spanish crimson with head-rests of
+Liverpool plush! It was here, of course, that she wrote most of her
+poems.[3]
+
+Her world-renowned "Idyl to Summer":--
+
+        "Dawn,
+    The poplars droop and sway and droop,
+        A lazy bee
+    With wings athread with gold and green
+        His merry way with esctasy
+      He takes, amid the garden blooms--
+    Ah me, ah God, ah God, ah me!
+            Dawn...."
+
+And the perfectly delicious light poem dedicated to Louis--
+
+    "Beloved, it is morn--I rise
+      To smell the roses sweet;
+    Emphatic are my hips and thighs,
+      Phlegmatic are my feet.
+    Ten thousand roses have I got
+      Within a garden small,
+    Give me but strength to smell the lot,
+      Oh, let me sniff them all!"
+
+Then her rather sordid realistic poem to Louis's death-bed commencing
+
+                "Oh, Bed
+    Wherein he frequently disposed
+    His weary limbs when day was done,
+    His last long sleep has murmured down--
+    Oh Bed--beneath your silken pall,
+    His eyes aglaze with death, and dim
+    With age--are closed.
+                Oh, Bed!"
+
+It was of course after Louis's death that Julie was forced to seek
+retirement in her chateau in Old Brittany. There for many years she
+lived in almost complete seclusion, writing her books which were the
+inspired outpourings of a tortured soul: "Lilith: the Story of a Woman";
+"The Hopeless Quest," an allegorical tale of the St. Malo sand-dunes,
+then unexplored; and "The Pig-Sty," a biting satire on life at Court.
+
+Then the storm-cloud of the revolution broke athwart the length and
+breadth of fair France, relentless, and indomitable and irredeemable.
+Julie was arrested while blackberrying in a Dolly Varden hat. With a
+brave smile, Ben-Hepple tells us, she flung the berries away. "I am
+ready!" she said.
+
+You all know of her journey to Paris, and her mockery of a trial before
+the tribunal--her pitiful bravery when the inhuman monsters tried to
+make her say "_A la lanterne!_" Nothing would induce her to--she had the
+firmness of many ancestors behind her.
+
+We will quote Ben-Hepple's vivid description of her execution:--
+
+"The day dawned grey with heavy clouds to the east," he says. "About
+five minutes past ten, a few rain-drops fell. The tumbrils were already
+rattling along amidst the frenzied jeers of the crowd. The first one
+contained a group of _ci-devant_ aristos, laughing and singing--one
+elderly vicomtesse was playing on a mouth-organ. In the second tumbril
+sat two women--one, Marie Topinambour, a poor dancer, was weeping; the
+other, Julie de Poopinac, was playing at cat's cradles. Her dress was of
+sprigged muslin, and she wore a rather battered Dolly Varden hat. She
+was haughtily impervious to the vile epithets of this mob. Upon reaching
+the guillotine, Marie Topinambour became panic-stricken, and swarmed up
+one of the posts before any one could stop her. In bell-like tones,
+Julie bade her descend. 'Fear nothing, _ma petite_,' she cried. 'See, I
+am smiling!' The terrified Marie looked down and was at once calmed.
+Julie was indeed smiling. One or two marquises who were waiting their
+turn were in hysterics. Marie slowly descended, and was quickly
+executed. Then Julie stepped forward. '_Vive le Roi!_' she cried,
+forgetting in her excitement that he was already dead, and flinging her
+Dolly Varden hat in the very teeth of the crowd, she laid her head in
+the prescribed notch. A woman in the mob said '_Pauvre_' and somebody
+else said '_A bas!_' The knife fell...."
+
+
+
+
+MADCAP MOLL
+
+EIGHTH DUCHESS OF WAPPING
+
+[Illustration: THE DUCHESS OF WAPPING
+
+_From the world-famous portrait by Sir Oswald Cronk, Bart._]
+
+
+Nobody who knew George I. could help loving him--he possessed that
+peculiar charm of manner which had the effect of subjugating all who
+came near him into immediate slavery. Madcap Moll--his true love, his
+one love (England still resounds with her gay laugh)--adored him with
+such devotion as falls to the lot of few men, be they kings or beggars.
+
+They met first in the New Forest, where Norman Bramp informs us, in his
+celebrated hunting memoirs "Up and Away," the radiant Juniper spent her
+wild, unfettered childhood. She was ever a care-free, undisciplined
+creature, snapping her shapely fingers at bad weather, and riding for
+preference without a saddle--as hoydenish a girl as one could encounter
+on a day's march. Her auburn ringlets ablow in the autumn wind, her
+cheeks whipped to a flush by the breeze's caress, and her eyes sparkling
+and brimful of tomboyish mischief and roguery! This, then, was the
+picture that must have met the King's gaze as he rode with a few trusty
+friends through the forest for his annual week of otter shooting. Upon
+seeing him, Madcap Moll gave a merry laugh, and crying "Chase me,
+George!" in provocative tones, she rode swiftly away on her pony. Many
+of the courtiers trembled at such a daring exhibition of _lese majeste_,
+but the King, provoked only by her winning smile, tossed his gun to Lord
+Twirp and set off in hot pursuit. Eventually he caught his roguish
+quarry by the banks of a sunlit pool. She had flung herself off her
+mount and flung herself on the trunk of a tree, which she bestrode as
+though it were a better and more fiery steed. The King cast an
+appraising glance at her shapely legs, and then tethered his horse to an
+old oak.
+
+"Are you a creature of the woods?" he said.
+
+Madcap Moll tossed her curls. "Ask me!" she cried derisively.
+
+"I am asking you," replied the King.
+
+"Odds fudge--you have spindleshanks!" cried Madcap Moll irrelevantly.
+The King was charmed. He leant towards her.
+
+"One kiss, mistress!" he implored. At that she slapped his face and made
+his nose bleed. He was captivated.
+
+"I'faith, art a daring girl," he cried delightedly. "Knowest who I am?"
+
+"I care not!" replied the girl.
+
+"George the First!" said the King, rising. Madcap Moll blanched.
+
+"Sire," she murmured, "I did not know--a poor, unwitting country
+lass--have mercy!"
+
+The King touched her lightly on the nape.
+
+"Get up," he said gently; "you are as loyal and spirited a girl as one
+could meet in all Hampshire, I'll warrant. Hast a liking for Court?"
+
+"Oh, sire!" answered the girl.
+
+Thus did the King meet her who was to mean everything in his life, and
+more....
+
+It was twilight in the forest, Raymond Waffle tells us, when the King
+rode away. In the opposite direction rode a pensive girl, her eyes aglow
+with something deeper than had ever before illumined their translucency.
+
+Budde Towers, according to Plabbin's "Guide to Hampshire," lay in the
+heart of the forest. Built in the days of William the Conqueror, 1066,
+and William Rufus, 1087, by Sir Francis Budde, it had been inhabited by
+none but Buddes of each successive generation. Madcap Moll's
+great-grandfather, Lord Edmund Budde,[4] added a tower here and there
+when he felt inclined, while her uncle Robert Budde--known from
+Bournemouth to Lyndhurst as Bounding Bob--built the celebrated picture
+gallery (which can be viewed to this day by genealogical enthusiasts),
+the family portraits up to then having been stored in the box-room.
+
+Old Earl Budde, Moll's father, was as crusty an old curmudgeon as one
+could find in a county. His wife (the lovely Evelyn Wormgate, a daughter
+of the Duke of Bognor and Wormgate) had died while the radiant Moll was
+but a puling infant. Thus it was that, knowing no hand of motherly
+authority, the child perforce ran wild throughout her dazzling
+adolescence.
+
+The trees were her playmates, the twittering of the birds her music--all
+the wild things of the forest loved her, specially dogs and children.
+She knew every woodcutter for miles round by his Christian name. "Why,
+here's Madcap Moll!" they would say, as the beautiful girl came
+galloping athwart her mustang, untamed and headstrong as she herself.
+
+This, then, was the priceless jewel which George I., spurred on by an
+overmastering passion, ordered to be transferred from its rough and
+homely setting to the ornate luxury of life at Court, where he
+immediately bestowed upon her the title of Eighth Duchess of Wapping.
+
+It was about a month after her arrival in London that Sir Oswald Cronk
+painted his celebrated life-size portrait of her in the costly
+riding-habit which was one of the many gifts of her royal lover. Sir
+Oswald, with his amazing technique, has managed to convey that
+suggestion of determination and resolution, one might almost say
+obstinacy, lying behind the gay, devil-may-care roguishness of her
+bewitching glance. Her slim, girlish figure he has portrayed with
+amazing accuracy, also the beautiful negligent manner in which she
+invariably carried her hunting-crop; her left hand is lovingly caressing
+the head of her faithful hound, Roger, who, Raymond Waffle informs us,
+after his mistress's death refused to bury bones anywhere else but on
+her grave. Ah me! Would that some of our human friends were as
+unflagging in their affections as the faithful Roger!
+
+Her reign as morganatic queen was remarkable for several scientific
+inventions of great utility[5]--notably the "pushfast," a machine
+designed exclusively for the fixing of leather buttons in church
+hassocks; also Dr. Snaggletooth's cunning device for separating the
+rind from Camembert cheese without messing the hands! There were in
+addition to the examples here quoted many minor inventions which, though
+perhaps not of any individually intrinsic value, went far to illustrate
+Madcap Moll's influence on the progress of the civilisation of her time.
+
+In Raymond Waffle's rather long-winded record of her life he dwells for
+several chapters upon the Papist plots which menaced her position at
+Court. After a visit to several of London's museums, I have discovered
+that most of the facts he quotes are naught but fallacies. There were
+undoubtedly plots, but nothing in the least Papist. She had her
+enemies--who has not? But, as far as religion was concerned, Papists,
+Protestants, Wesleyans, and occasionally Mahommedans, all joined
+together in unstinting praise of her character and judgment.
+
+Any faults or acts of thoughtlessness committed during her brilliant
+life were amply compensated for by the supreme deed of loyalty and
+patriotism which, alas! marked the tragic close of her all too short
+career. Her ride to Norwich--show me the man whose pulses do not thrill
+at the mention of that heroic achievement! That wonderful, wonderful
+ride--that amazing, glorious _tour de force_ which caused her name to be
+revered and hallowed in every sleepy hamlet and hovel of Old
+England--her ride to Norwich on Piebald Polly, her thoroughbred mare!
+On, on through the night--a fitful moon scrambling aslant the
+cloud-blown heavens, the wind whistling past her ears, and the tune of
+"God Save the King" ringing in her brain, the rhythm set by the
+convulsive movements of Piebald Polly. On, on, through towns and
+villages, and then once more the open country--what is that noise? The
+roaring of water! Torrents are unloosed--the dam has burst! Miller's
+Leap. Can she do it?--can she?--can she? She can--and has. Dawn shows in
+the eastern sky--the lights of Norwich--Norwich at last![6]
+
+Poor Moll! the day that dawned as she sped along those weary roads was
+to prove itself her last. Her exhaustion was so great on reaching the
+city gates that she fell from Piebald Polly's drooping back and never
+regained consciousness.
+
+Rumour asserts that the King plunged the country in mourning for several
+weeks--some say he never smiled again. Madcap Moll, Eighth Duchess of
+Wapping, left behind her no children, but she left engraved upon the
+hearts of all who knew her the memory of a beautiful, noble, and winsome
+woman.
+
+
+
+
+E. MAXWELL SNURGE
+
+AN INTIMATE STUDY
+
+[Illustration: E. MAXWELL SNURGE, EMINENT POLITICIAN]
+
+
+I will not seek to write of E. Maxwell Snurge as his friends have
+written of him, tall, courageous, and vitally intelligent. Nor as his
+enemies have chronicled him, short, fat and intensely stupid. I will
+endeavour with a few brief flourishes of the pen, to portray the various
+intricacies of his character as I see them, clearly and dispassionately
+with the eyes of a psychological observer, whose hand is uncorrupted by
+the bribes of ruthless profiteers, grafters and the like.
+
+It is my desire to convey to the reader the real E. Maxwell Snurge shorn
+of tawdry trappings of party politics and the illusion and glamour of
+public idolatry--a man--just a man--but _what_ a man!
+
+To dwell on the widely circulated story of his life would be needless,
+and to follow his political career, merely futile. What is there left?
+you ask. And I answer you with extreme firmness, there is one aspect of
+E. Maxwell Snurge which has never been seriously analysed--his soul! And
+it is that and that alone which will be the foundation stone of my
+structural portrayal of his character.
+
+Why wasn't E. Maxwell Snurge president of the United States? Many have
+asked that question, he frequently used to ask it himself, and his
+wife--the sainted Amy Snurge of ever revered memory--would rest her
+thin, ascetic hand upon his coat sleeve and answer him with yearning
+sympathy but little satisfaction--Why?
+
+Let us turn to an early episode in his career in our search for the key
+to the complexities of his mind, an episode slight in itself but well
+worthy of recording if only for the illumination it throws upon the much
+questioned motives of his later actions. He was spending a week-end with
+friends on Long Island--a fishing week-end. Mrs. Jake Van Opus (formerly
+the lovely Consuelo Root) out of consideration for her eminent guest
+and with great tact and charm, immediately he arrived made a point of
+forbidding politics as a subject for discussion in the house, and
+confined the general conversation exclusively to fish. That this
+thoughtful act was appreciated by the overworked politician it is
+needless to remark; he settled down to his brief respite with a tranquil
+contentment and complete blankness of mind which only the cleverest of
+us can assume at will.
+
+Athletic from birth, Snurge cast his line repeatedly far out to sea with
+the strength and dogged perseverance which characterised his every
+deed--but alas, nearly fifteen hours went by before his patience was
+rewarded. Day had turned to dusk and the sun was setting when he was
+suddenly jerked from the fishing stand into the water. With an exultant
+shout, he clambered on to a rock still clasping his rod--"A Bite, a
+Bite!" he cried in tones strangely alien from those he customarily
+employed when addressing a civic conference. "A Bite at last!" Playing
+his submarine quarry with extraordinary finesse, he eventually, amid
+laudatory shouts and frantic cheering, landed an exquisitely striped
+bass, which lay at his feet gasping, apparently quite exhausted by its
+struggles to evade captivity. Now comes the point of the story, Snurge
+surveyed his catch quietly for a few moments--those standing near by
+noticed sternly repressed tears in his eyes--then he said a thing which
+come what may will eternally prove him the possessor of unparalleled
+insight and humanity. Touching the recumbent fish gently with his foot
+he sighed deeply--
+
+"This bass is Democracy," he murmured, "And see what I have done with
+it!" Superstitious observers state that at this point the bass closed
+its eyes wearily, but this may only be a fanatical exaggeration.
+
+Then with a set face he lifted the fish high above his head and flung it
+back into its native element, thereby undoing the efforts of many hours'
+untiring labour and patience.
+
+I have told this story in order to illustrate definitely the initial
+weakness in his lifelong policy, call it folly if you like, or even
+imbecility, but I prefer to assign to it the one all embracing
+word--"Generosity." He was too generous, all through his career he
+sacrificed everything through his generous capacity for seeing and
+sympathising with both sides of every question. Many, many times he
+would shelve the carefully formulated schemes of months on the sudden
+realisation of what the Opposition would suffer if he carried them
+through.
+
+Think--as I sometimes think--what a sad thing, what a vortex of
+conflicting emotions the heart of Amy Snurge must have been during those
+hard years, knowing her husband's strength and resource, deploring yet
+loving his weakness, encouraging, aiding and abetting his every act with
+the feminine pertinacity which has characterized the world's greatest
+heroines. Poor woman, no wonder the grave claimed her so soon, for like
+the bass--like Democracy, her vitality was exhausted by the destructive
+and constructive force of Snurge. Only unlike the bass she couldn't swim
+well, and unlike Democracy she had the man to contend with as well as
+the politician.
+
+Snurge was by no means a revolutionary; he possessed too many ideals
+and too little passion, he was essentially a passionless man--except of
+course the one historic occasion during his campaign against prohibition
+when he completely lost control, and flying low in a government
+aeroplane broke a bottle of green chartreuse over the head of the Statue
+of Liberty.
+
+The uproar which was the natural outcome of this defiant protest, was
+abruptly stemmed by the sudden reversal of his tactics on the day
+following the event, when he made a spirited appeal in West Forty-Second
+Street _for_ prohibition! This resulted in a hopeless gloom enveloping
+the metropolis. The populace commenced to realise in a measure the
+unreliability of Snurge as a saviour of the state, while at the same
+time fully appreciating his many sterling qualities.
+
+Dark things were whispered in the White House.
+
+One need not go far then to seek the reason for his fall from grace, his
+utter failure as a Republican candidate for the presidency--it was his
+generosity, his innate humanity, and his extraordinary breadth and
+clarity of vision.
+
+If this man had but been president in 1914 there might not have been any
+war. Had he been president in 1776 there might not have been any
+revolution, and had he but been president in 1491 God knows what there
+might not have been.
+
+
+                           REFERENCE
+
+America in Sunshine and Shadow  _B. F. Bramp_. 2 Vols.
+The Roguish Royalist            _Anonymous_
+Mirrors of Salt Lake City       _By the Gentleman with the Cuspidor. 5 Vols._
+Amy Snurge, a Grand Woman       _Ernest Frapple_. 2 Vols.
+"Columbia Beware!"              _Weedheim._
+
+_I am also deeply indebted to Esther Throtch for her unlimited energy
+and devoted assistance._
+
+
+
+
+BIANCA DI PIANNO-FORTI
+
+[Illustration: BIANCA DI PIANNO-FORTI
+
+_After an engraving by Vittorio Campanele_]
+
+
+Mediaeval Italy has in its time boasted many beautiful women, but there
+is one who must take her place before them all, one whose name is a
+byword to this day in every corner of that sun-washed country--Bianca di
+Pianno-Forti. One shudders at that name--so radiant was she, and yet so
+incredibly evil. Her tragic death somehow seems a fitting ending to a
+life such as hers--a life so without mercy, so without pity, and yet so
+amazingly vivid that it seems to be emblazoned on Italy's very heart.
+
+She first saw the light in Florence. Her father, Allegro, of the
+celebrated house of Andante Caprioso, married at the age of fourteen
+Giulia Presto, of Verona, at the age of nine. At the birth of Bianca her
+mother died, leaving her to the care of her broken-hearted father and
+brother Pizzicato (destined later on to make the world ring with his
+music). Perhaps the only thing to be said in excuse of Bianca's later
+conduct is the fact that she never knew a mother's love. The nuns at the
+convent wherein she spent her ripening childhood were kind; but, alas!
+they were not mothers--at least, not all of them. Bianca left the
+convent when she was sixteen. Slim, lissom, sinuous, with those
+arresting eyes that seemed, so Fibinio tells us, to search out the very
+souls of all who came near her. Her first love affair occured about a
+week after her arrival in her home in Florence. She was in the habit of
+walking to mass at the cathedral with her maid Vivace. One morning, so
+Poliolioli relates, a handsome soldier stepped out of the shadows of an
+adjoining buttress and looked at her. Bianca at once swooned. The same
+thing happened again--and again--and yet again. One night she heard the
+shutters of her bedchamber rattle! "Who is there?" she cried, yet not
+too loudly, because her woman's instinct warned her to be wary. The
+shutters were flung open, and the young soldier stepped flamboyantly
+into the room. "I am here, _cara, cara mia_!" he cried. "I, Vibrato
+Adagio!" With a sibilant cry she fell into his out-stretched arms.
+"_Mio, mio,_" she echoed in ecstasy, "I am yours and you are mine!" So
+lightly was the first stepping-stone passed on her reckless path of
+immorality and vice. Her fickle heart soon tired of the debonair
+Vibrato, and in a fit of satiated pique she had his ears cut off and his
+tongue removed and tied to his big toe. Thus was her ever-increasing
+lust for bloodshed apparent even at that early age. Her next _affaire_
+occured when she was travelling to Rome with her brother Pizzicato, who
+was to become a chorister at the Vatican. On stopping for refreshment at
+a wayside tavern, Bianca was struck by the arresting looks of the ostler
+who was tending their steaming steeds. Beckoning to him, she asked of
+him his name; he turned his vacant eyes round and round wonderingly for
+a moment. "Crescendo," he replied. Bianca's eyes flashed fire.
+"_Accelerato!_" she cried imperiously, and, hypnotised into submission,
+the scared man fled upstairs, Bianca following.
+
+Upon arriving in Rome, Bianca and Pizzicato repaired to their father's
+brother-in-law, who was well known as a lavish entertainer. He was one
+Rapidamente Tempo di Valse, a widower, living with his two sons, Lento
+and Comprino, handsome lads both in the first flush of manhood, and both
+destined to fall victims to Bianca's compelling attractions.
+Contemporary history informs us that Bianca stayed in the Palazzo Tempo
+di Valse for seven years, visiting Pizzicato from time to time, and
+employing herself with various love affairs.
+
+In June she became betrothed to Duke Crazioso di Pianno-Forti, of the
+famous family of Moderato e Diminuendo--indirectly descended from the
+Cardinal Appassionato Tutti. Tutti was the great-uncle of the infamous
+Con Spirito, well known to posterity as the lover of the lovely but
+passionate Violenza Allargando, destined to become the mother of Largo
+con Craviata, the fearless captain of Dolcissimo's light horse under
+General Lamento Agitato, whose grandmother, Sempre Calando, was
+notorious for her illicit liaison with Pesante e Stentato, a union
+which was to bear fruit in the shape of Lusingando Molto.
+
+Bianca's wedding was celebrated with enormous rejoicing in Venice, where
+was situated the ducal palace of the Pianno-Fortis. Mention should be
+made of the life led by Bianca during the first years of her marriage,
+of her pet staghounds, of her tapestried bedchamber with bloodthirsty
+scenes of the chase depicted thereon--how she loved blood, this
+beautiful girl!
+
+Her portrait herein reproduced is after an engraving by Campanele; note
+the sinister line of the cheek-bone and the passionate beauty of the
+nethermost lip! One can visualise her--radiant at the head of crowded
+dining-tables, drinking from gem-encrusted goblets, accepting glances
+fraught with ardent desire from one or other of the male guests.
+
+All the world knows of her famous visit to the Pope, and how he died a
+few hours later; while it would be mere repetition of general knowledge
+to enlarge on her sojourn with the Doge, and his subsequent demise. Let
+us touch ever so lightly on her three children, Poco, Confuoco, and
+Strepitoso. How could they help being beautiful with such a mother, poor
+mites, branded from birth with the sense of their impending fate! After
+a while Bianca became aware that tongues were a-wag in Venice, sullying
+her name with foul calumnies. Her decision for their downfall was swift
+and terrible. She persuaded her easy-going husband to ride to Naples;
+then, free of his cumbersome authority, she set to work on the
+preparations for her world-famous supper party. Picture it if you will:
+five hundred and eighty-three guests[7] all seated laughingly in the
+immense banqueting-hall--Bianca at the head of the table, superb,
+incomparable, her corsage a glittering mass of gems, her breast chilled
+by the countless diamonds on her camisole, her smile radiant and a
+peach-like flush on the ivory pallor of her face. This was indeed her
+hour--her triumph--her subtle revenge. Her heart thrilled with the
+knowledge of that inward secret that was hers immutably, for every
+morsel of food and drink upon that festive board was impregnated with
+the deadliest poison--all except the two pieces of toast with which she
+regaled herself, having dined earlier and alone.
+
+Historians tell us that following close on that event some rather ugly
+rumours were noised abroad--in fact, some of the relatives of the
+poisoned guests even went so far as to complain to various people in
+authority and stir up strife in every way possible. Bianca was naturally
+furious. Some say that it was her sudden rage on hearing this that
+caused her to burn her children to death; others say her act was merely
+due to bad temper owing to a sick headache. Anyhow, as later events go
+to show, she had chosen the very worst time to murder her children. More
+ugly rumours were at once noised abroad by those who were jealous of
+her. Upon her husband's return from Naples he was immediately arrested,
+and a few days later hung. Too late the hapless Bianca sought to make
+her escape; she was caught and taken prisoner while swimming across the
+Grand Canal with her clothes and a few personal effects in a bundle in
+her mouth. She was carried shrieking to Milan, where she endured a
+mockery of a trial; on political grounds she was sentenced to being torn
+to pieces by she-goats at Genoa. Poor, beautiful Bianca! On the
+fulfilment of her unjust and barbarous sentence it is too horrible to
+dwell at any length. This glorious creature, this resplendent vision,
+this divine goddess--she-goats! Dreadful, degrading, unutterable!!!
+
+The day for her death[8] dawned fair over the Mediterranean. Bianca,
+garbed in white, walked with dignity into the meadow wherein the
+she-goats anxiously awaited her. She bravely repressed a shudder, and
+fell upon her knees. History tells us that every goat turned away, as
+though ashamed of the part it was destined to play. Then, with a look of
+ineffable peace stealing over her waxen face, Bianca rose to her full
+height, and, flinging her arms heavenwards, she delivered that
+celebrated and heartrending speech which has lived after her for so
+long:--
+
+"_Dio mio, concerto--concerto!_"
+
+One by one the she-goats advanced....
+
+
+
+
+SARAH, LADY TUNNELL-PENGE
+
+("WINSOME SAL")
+
+[Illustration: SARAH, LADY TUNNELL-PENGE
+
+_From a painting by Augustus Punter_]
+
+
+Ffraddle of 1643 was very different from the Ffraddle of 1789, and still
+more different from the Ffraddle of 1832. At a time when civil war was
+raging between Jacobites and Papists and Roundheads and Ironsides and
+everything, Ffraddle stood grey, silent and indomitable--the very spirit
+of peace allied with strength seemed embodied in its grim masonry. The
+clash of arms and the death cries from millions of rebellious throats
+which echoed athwart the length and breadth of young England were unable
+to pierce the stillness of Ffraddle's moated security. Owls murmured on
+its battered turrets, sparrows perched on its portcullis, cuckoos cooed
+all over it, heedless indeed of the turmoil and frenzied strife raging
+outside its feudal gates.
+
+What a birthplace for one of history's most priceless pearls--Sarah
+Twig! The heart of every lover of beauty leaps and jumps and starts at
+the sound of that name--Sarah Twig. Why are some destined for so much
+while others are destined, alas! for so little? Who knows? Sarah--a
+rose-leaf, a crumpled atom, dropped as it were from some heavenly garden
+into the black times of the Merry Monarch--when, according to
+Bloodworthy, virtue was laughed to scorn and evil went unpunished; when,
+according to Follygob, virginity was a scream, and harlotry a hobby; and
+when, according to Sheepmeadow, homeliness was sin, and beauty but a
+gilded casket concealing vice and depravity unutterable.
+
+History relates that though food was scarce and light hearts hard to
+find, at the birth of Sarah Twig there was no dearth of these
+commodities. The snow was on the ground, Follygob says--the woods and
+coppices and hills lay slumbering beneath a glistening white mantle.
+What a mind! To have written those words! It was undoubtedly Follygob's
+artistic style and phraseology that branded him once and for all as the
+master-chronicler of his time.
+
+Sarah Twig was born in the east wing, a lofty room which can be viewed
+to this day by all true lovers of historical architecture. To describe
+it adequately is indeed difficult. Some say there was a bed in it and an
+early Norman window; others have it that there was no bed but a late
+Gothic fireplace; while a few outstanding writers insist that there was
+nothing at all in the room but a very old Roman washstand.[9]
+
+The night of Sarah's birth was indeed a wild one--snow and sleet eddied
+and swirled around the massive structure destined to harbour one whose
+radiant beauty was to be a byword in all Europe. The wind, so Follygob
+with his incomparable style tells us, lashed itself to a livid fury
+against the sturdy Ffraddle turrets and mullions, whilst outside beyond
+the keep and raised drawbridge the beacons and camp fires stained the
+frost-laden air with vivid streaks of red and yellow--colours which
+formed the background of the Ffraddle coat of arms, thus presenting an
+omen to the startled inhabitants which history relates they were not
+slow to recognise.
+
+Bloodworthy describes for us the plan by which Lord Ffraddle was to
+acquaint the village with the sex of the child. If it were a boy, red
+fire was to be burnt on the south turret, and if a girl, green fire was
+to be burnt on the north turret; but unfortunately, he goes on to tell
+us, owing to some misadventure blue fire was firmly burnt on all the
+turrets. Imagine the horror of the superstitious populace! Some left the
+country never to return, crying aloud that a chameleon had been born to
+their beloved chatelaine!
+
+Of Sarah's youth historians tell us little. She was, apart from her
+beauty, a very knowing child. Often when missing from the
+banqueting-hall she would be discovered in the library reading and
+studying the political works of the period.[10] Often Lord Ffraddle was
+known to remark in his usual witty way, "In sooth, the child will soon
+have as much knowledge as her father," a sally which was invariably
+received with shrieks of delight by the infant Sarah, whose brilliant
+sense of humour was plainly apparent, even at that early age.
+
+Her adolescence was remarkable for little save the rapid development of
+her supple loveliness, some idea of which can be gauged from the
+reproduction of Punter's famous portrait on page 74. Though painted at a
+somewhat later date, this masterpiece still presents us with most of the
+leading characteristics of its ravishing model. Note the eyes--the
+dreamy, cognisant expression; glance at the pretty mouth and the dainty
+ears. Her demeanour is obviously that of a meek and modest woman, but
+Punter, with his true genius, has caught that glint of inward fire, that
+fleeting look of shy mischief that earned for her the world-famous
+nickname of "Winsome Sal."
+
+It was when she was eighteen[11] that Destiny, with inhuman cunning,
+caught up in his net the fragile ball of her life.
+
+The handsome, devil-may-care Julius Fenchurch-Streete applied to Lord
+Ffraddle for a secretaryship, which was ultimately granted to him.
+Imagine the situation--this rake, this dark-eyed ne'er-do-well,
+notorious all down Cheapside for his relentless dalliance with the fair,
+placed in intimate proximity with one of England's most glorious
+specimens of ripening womanhood. It was, Sheepmeadow writes, like the
+meeting of flint and tinder--these two so widely different in the
+essentials and yet so akin in their physical beauty. As was inevitable,
+from the first they loved--he with the flaming passion of a hell-rake,
+she with the sweet, appealing purity of one whose whole life had been
+peculiarly virginal. There followed swiftly upon their ardent
+confessions the determination to elope together. The night they bade
+adieu to Ffraddle and all it held is well known to young and old of
+every generation. They crept from their rooms at midnight and met at the
+top of the grand staircase, down which they proceeded to crawl on all
+fours. A few moments later they were on a sturdy mare, she riding
+pillion, he riding anyhow. Not a sound had been heard, not a dog had
+barked, not a bird had called. Once, Sheepmeadow informs us, Lady
+Ffraddle turned over in her sleep.[12] Poor, unsuspecting mother! On and
+on through the snow rode the feckless couple. Once Sarah rested her hand
+lightly on her lover's arm. "Whither are we bound?" she inquired. "Only
+the mare knows that," Julius replied, and in shaken silence they rode
+on.
+
+History is not very enlightening as to how long Julius Fenchurch-Streete
+lived with Sarah Twig--poor Sarah, the bubble of her romance soon was to
+be pricked. For three weeks they lived gloriously, radiantly, at the old
+sign of "The Cod and Haddock" in Egham. "My heart is a pool of ecstasy,"
+she wrote in her diary. Pitiful pool, so soon to be drained of its joy!
+
+Then the storm-clouds gathered, the sun withdrew its gold. Julius rode
+away--Sarah was alone, alone in Egham, her love unblessed by any sort of
+church, no name for the child to come--a sorry, sorry plight. The buxom
+proprietress of "The Cod and Haddock," little dreaming her real
+identity, set her to work. Work! for those fair hands, those
+inexpressibly filbert nails!
+
+Was it the sudden relenting of malleable fate that caused the Merry
+Monarch to come riding blithely through sleepy Egham, followed by his
+equerry, Lord Francis Tunnell-Penge, and several of his suite? Halting
+outside the inn, Bloodworthy relates that his Majesty was immediately
+struck by a winsome face at an upper window. "Lud!" he cried
+laconically, and dismounted, taking several dogs from his hat as he did
+so, and one from his pocket; for he was devoted to animals, Bloodworthy
+goes on to say, and often spent days stroking their soft ears
+abstractedly. Then, seized by a sudden inspiration, he inquired of the
+landlady as to whose was the face he had seen. In a trice the story was
+told--the King waved his hand imperiously and took a pinch of snuff.
+"Send her to me," he said.
+
+When Sarah entered, all hot from her manual labours, Charles started to
+his feet. Here was no scullion, no plaything of an idle hour. Here was
+breeding, dignity and beauty. Ah! Beauty! Probably these cold shores
+will never again shelter beauty like Sarah Twig's. On seeing the King
+she curtsied low. He bowed with the stately elegance for which he was
+famed.
+
+"Your name?" he asked.
+
+The glorious vision veiled her eyes.
+
+"I have no name, sire--now." With these words, spoken from a heart
+surcharged with bitterest sorrow, the poor woman swooned away.
+
+"Lud!" remarked the King irritably, "the girl must have a name. You must
+marry her, Francis--she shall be Lady Tunnell-Penge." Then the impulsive
+monarch stooped, and, opening a locket on the unconscious woman's
+breast, read the name Sarah in blue diamonds on an opaque background.
+"But," he added softly under his breath, "I shall know her only as
+'Winsome Sal'!"
+
+Thus Sarah Twig, so nearly an outcast through her own girlish folly,
+became possessor of a name honoured and even adored throughout England.
+
+The first few years of her life at Court were more or less
+uneventful--she saw little of her husband and lots of the King. He and
+she used to wander along the river side, simply loaded with different
+dogs. Whenever there were theatricals given, Sheepmeadow tells us, Sarah
+invariably appeared as Diana or Minerva, preferring these parts on
+account of their suitability to her youth and figure. All these events
+took place long after Punter's portrait, though several others were done
+latterly. Her wit and gaiety were of course world-famed, and her
+political treatises are preserved to this day.[13]
+
+On one dramatic occasion her brilliant political knowledge and presence
+of mind were the means of saving England from turmoil or worse. Hearing
+that the people were hungry and restless, Sarah rushed to the King.
+"What's to do?" she cried breathlessly.
+
+"God knows," replied Charles, adding "Lud!" as an afterthought. Then he
+went on fondling the long silky ears of one of his lap-dogs with which
+the room was strewn.
+
+Heartbroken, Sarah left the room and rushed out of Whitehall as fast as
+her legs could carry her, heeding not the jeers of the crowd. She made
+for Tower Hill, from the summit of which she delivered her world-famous
+political speech, ending with the stirring words, "Sift your corn
+through sieves!"
+
+How that speech sends a throb to one's heart--the defiance of it, the
+subtlety of it, and yet the intense womanliness of it! The people
+cheered her back to the palace. She went straight to the King's room--he
+was feeding his dogs.
+
+"I've saved England!" cried Sarah exultantly.
+
+"Lud!" replied the King, and handed her some cat's-meat. No wonder women
+loved him!
+
+Incidents like these went to make up the multi-coloured mosaic of Sarah,
+Lady Tunnell-Penge's life. Her children were many--Arthur, later on Lord
+Crumpingfax; Muriel, later the Duchess of Dripp; and various others.
+
+She died at the age of seventy-nine,[14] thus outliving her Royal
+paramour. A beautiful life, a noble life, a gentle life--yet was there
+something missing? Sometimes I gaze at her portrait and wonder.
+
+
+
+
+JABEZ PUFFWATER
+
+[Illustration: JABEZ PUFFWATER, OF OGGSVILLE, KENTUCKY]
+
+
+Jabez Puffwater might have been so much physically, mentally and
+publicly and has been so little any way that a tattered moral must hang
+sadly upon the gaunt tree of his career.
+
+He might have been many things--he might have been a successful
+theatrical manager, or only an artistic one--he might have been a naval
+commander, or a psychoanalyst, or a Christian Science healer--he might
+have imparted to the United States Senate that infinitesimal something
+which would probably have proved to be the greatest comfort, especially
+in the cold weather.
+
+If Mr. Belasco had not preferred Mr. David Warfield, Jabez Puffwater
+might have made an enormous success in "The Return of Peter Grimm"--had
+he but possessed an aptitude for histrionic achievement. He might have
+sung at the Metropolitan year after year without ceasing if Miss
+Geraldine Farrar had not taken an instantaneous dislike to him at
+sight--and had he but possessed a flamboyant temperament and an
+elementary knowledge of Puccini. In fact there is almost nothing he
+couldn't have been if only Fate had but weaned him at the breast of
+opportunity instead of ordaining his life drama to be played out in
+lonely dignity in the drab but intensely political village of Oggsville,
+Ken.
+
+Oggsville, Ken. has been for many years a hotbed of occasionally
+seditious, but always subtle intrigue, the constructive and progressive
+policy of the upper part of the town, near the railway bridge, being in
+direct opposition to the destructive statesmanship and constitutional
+conventionality of the lower residential quarter embracing the
+timber-yard, Elijah Square, and Aunt Martha's Soda Fountain. Naturally
+Jabez Puffwater, whose modest store stood figuratively and literally at
+the crossing of the ways, was always in a somewhat uncertain state of
+mind as to which side he should ultimately pin his colours. Perhaps on
+a Tuesday St. John Eddle, a staunch upholder of the C. and P.P., would
+enter Jabez's store and hit him in the face because he'd sent a tin of
+sardines to the Furdlehoe Mansion on the other side of the River. And
+maybe on a Friday Moses Whortleberry, a leading light of the D. S. and
+C. C. would belabour him with one of his own hams for daring to acquaint
+old Hiram Holdit, the station master, with the result of the cocoa
+coupon competition.
+
+One thing stood out firmly amid the turmoil of Jabez's environment--and
+that was his idealistic and almost fanatical admiration of the exploits
+of Buffalo Bill as depicted on the screen and retailed in small
+paper-bound books. Indeed so struck was he by the verve and virility of
+this astounding man that he took to attiring his lower limbs--which
+seldom showed above the counter--in the breeches, leggings, belt and
+pistol so well known to all lovers of the limitless prairie. The
+infinite pathos of Jabez Puffwater's blind devotion to one whom he had
+never seen will not fail to strike home to the stoniest heart. The
+tragedy of this man whose dauntless spirit so far outgrew his physical
+appearance--being compelled to sell cheeses, hams, molasses, etc, in
+order to live, is far more pitiful to me than the stern virginity of
+Queen Elizabeth, or even the nose of Cyrano de Bergerac.
+
+It was when Jabez Puffwater had just reached his forty-third birthday
+that he first became seriously implicated in that political bombshell,
+the Goodge-Keewee Treaty made out with masterful cunning by Albert
+Goodge and Nicholas Keewee, with the sole motive of undermining the
+transcontinental railroad system to a devastating degree. The various
+reasons both for and against this daring policy are so excellently and
+clearly put forward in Vernon Treeby's "When Southern Blood is Dripping"
+that I will not attempt to go into it here. Enough that it caused an
+unparalleled sensation in Oggsville, Ken. and was indirectly the means
+of introducing into the heart of Jabez Puffwater the secret fear which
+was destined to grow ever larger and larger until eventually its black
+wings beat his battered soul into eternity. "The fear of a Black
+Rising!" Jabez was undoubtedly a man of more than average courage but
+after reading the Goodge-Keewee Treaty he went back to his store a
+harassed man. What did it all mean? Nobody knew. Ah, God! If only Jabez
+Puffwater had possessed the inspiring rhetoric of a Bernard Proon, or
+the imposing presence of a Freddie Hooter, what a lot he could have
+done. As it was he just went home--aching--yet withal as yet
+subconsciously--for the ability to be of use in some way, the
+opportunity of distinguishing himself and saving his beloved home town
+from the awful effects of the fear that was fated from now onward to be
+with him always--the dreaded Black Rising.
+
+For many years after that fateful conference Jabez was to be seen every
+evening seated outside his store with a horse pistol in his hand ever
+pointed in the direction of the wooded hills to the Southward. Little
+boys on their way home from school would throw mud at him, but he never
+heeded them; little girls would make rude noises quite near him with
+their rubber overshoes, but he ignored them utterly. I often wonder on
+looking back what Douglas Bogtoe would have been had he but possessed
+one half of Puffwater's concentrated repose. That celebrated appeal for
+the Louisiana Canal installation would have been worded very differently
+and as for his world-famed piscatorial argument with Olaf Campbell in
+the Brooke Club--that would have probably been approached from an
+entirely opposite angle.
+
+To analyse and compare Bogtoe's electrical psychology with the
+phlegmatic determination and boyish zeal of Puffwater would take, alas,
+too long; so I will not seek to say more than that had the two widely
+differentiated spirits but been combined within the same material
+tissues--that a quainter nor a more peculiar juxtaposition of entities
+it would have been hard to find, search where you may.
+
+I try occasionally to picture to myself the lonely horror-stricken
+nights Jabez Puffwater must have endured with that appalling fear always
+crouching within him, egging him on towards the culminating tragedy of
+his sad career.
+
+There had been talk of a lynching in New Orleans and of a shooting in
+Old Virginia and there were even whispers of a slapping in Alabama.
+
+Jabez was priming his pistol one morning while he hastily scanned the
+elevating disclosures--social and otherwise--of the New York American,
+when a breathless woman rode up to the store on a tricycle. She
+delivered a note to Jabez and waited while he read it.
+
+"Come at once--am exceedingly ill--Aunt Topsy."
+
+Jabez thought for a moment--then crushing down his rising apprehensions
+he mounted his mare Buffalo Babs and made for the hills.
+
+Ten miles there and ten miles back, and the fear always with him--the
+fear of the Black Rising.
+
+Many psychoanalysts have endeavoured to discover the exact motive for
+Jabez Puffwater's sudden and unexpected slaying of his old Aunt
+Topsy--whose coal-black arms had fondled him as a baby. Many theories
+have been put forward, but none of them--with the exception, perhaps, of
+Herman Pipper--possess the ring of truth. Pipper's deduction of the
+circumstantial evidence is that it was all the outcome of a naughty
+practical joke played by little Michael Drisher who appeared suddenly
+during Jabez's interview with his Aunt and burst the awful news upon
+them that there had been a fearful Black Rising in Oggsville, Ken. and
+that debauch--murder--and worse were going on all over the globe.
+
+"With a great cry," Pipper tells us, "Jabez smote his brow. 'At last!'
+he moaned in deep anguish. 'At last it has come!' Then he turned, and
+seizing a large milk bottle he battered the head of Aunt Topsy, crying
+the while in the voice of a fanatic, 'For my home town! For my home
+town! This is a just reprisal!!!' Then with a last look at the havoc he
+had wrought he went out of the house and into the wilderness--"
+
+Pipper's imaginative description ends too abruptly to be really
+satisfactory; but one fact about the life of Jabez Puffwater will remain
+emblazoned on America's history for time immemorial--that if he had only
+possessed the rhetoric of a Proon--the presence of a Hooter--the
+education of a Floop--the racial understanding of a Bogtoe and the
+mentality of a Snurge--he would not only have proved himself invaluable
+to the home constituency of Oggsville, Ken. but have been an entirely
+different man altogether.
+
+
+
+
+FURSTIN LIEBERWURST ZU SCHWEINEN-KALBER
+
+[Illustration: GRETCHEN LIEBERWURST ZU SCHWEINEN-KALBER
+
+_From the famous etching by Grobmeyer_]
+
+
+How strange it seems that she of whom we write is dust and less than
+dust below the fertile soil of her so beloved Prussia--Furstin
+Lieberwurst zu Schweinen-Kalber! Can you not rise from the grave once
+more to charm us with the magic of your voice? Are those deep, mellowed
+tones, so sonorous and appealing, never to be heard again? Ah, me! Why,
+indeed, should such divinity be so short lived? Who could play Juliet as
+she could? Nobody! Her enemies laughed and said that her chronic
+adenoids utterly destroyed all the beauty of the part. Jealousy! Vile
+jealousy! Genius always has that to contend with. Every one has
+failings. Gretchen Lieberwurst zu Schweinen-Kalber made of Juliet a
+woman--a pulsating, human woman, with failings like the rest of us, the
+chief of which happened to be adenoids.[15]
+
+To trace this soul-stirring actress to her obscure birth has indeed been
+a labour--but withal, a labour of love! For who could help experiencing
+exquisite joy at unearthing trinkets and miniatures and broken memories
+of such a radiant being?
+
+Nuremburg, red-roofed and gleaming in the sunlight, was the place
+wherein she first saw the light of day. Her father, Peter Schmidt, was
+by trade a sausage-moulder, for in those far-off days there was not the
+vast machinery of civilisation to wield the good meat into the requisite
+shape. Gretchen, when a girl, often used to watch her father as he plied
+his trade and recite to him verses she had learnt at her dame
+school--fragments from the Teutonic masterpieces of the time--"Kruschen
+Kruschen," and--
+
+    "Baby white and baby red,
+      Like a moon convulsive
+    Rolling up and down the bed,
+      Utterly repulsive!"--
+
+a beautiful little lullaby of Herman Veigel's. Gretchen used to recite
+it with the tears pouring down her cheeks, so poignantly affected was
+she by the sensitive beauty of it. Her father also used to weep
+hopelessly--also her mother, if she happened to be near; and Heinrich,
+the cat, invariably retreated under the sofa, unutterably moved.
+
+Life dragged on with some monotony for Gretchen. She often used to help
+her mother in the kitchen--and occasionally in the sitting-room. One day
+she became a woman! Every one noticed it. Neighbours used to meet her
+mother in the _strasse_ and say, "Frau Schmidt, your Gretchen is a
+woman." Frau Schmidt would nod proudly and reply, "Yes, we have seen
+that; my Peter and I--we are very happy." Thus Gretchen left her
+girlhood behind her. It was her habit, so Grundelheim tells us, to walk
+out in the forest with one Hans Breitel, an actor at the municipal
+theatre. He used to teach her to talk to the birds, and when she
+besought him ardently to tell her stories of the theatre, he would
+relate to her the parts he had nearly played. Gretchen's heart
+thrilled--oh to be an actress, an actress! On her twenty-fourth birthday
+von Bottiburgen[16] tells us, Gretchen left home, and went to Berlin.
+She wanted to get an interview with Goethe. One day, after she had been
+in Berlin a little while, she found him. Brampenrich describes the scene
+for us, so beautifully and with such truly exquisite rotundity of
+style:--
+
+"The Great Goethe ate at his lunch. What was that noise? He swiftly put
+down his knife: the door bursts open; Gretchen Schmidt enters, her
+lovely hair awry, her cheeks flushed. 'I will act!' she cries in
+bell-like tones. '_Ach, ach!_' cries Goethe. Then Gretchen, with a
+superb gesture, hangs her hat on the door handle, and recites to the
+amazed man his beloved 'Faust,' word for word, syllable for syllable!"
+
+Thus Brampenrich shows us, with his supreme word imagery, what really
+happened.
+
+Gretchen never saw Goethe again; he left Berlin almost immediately for
+the Black Forest. Gretchen, alone in the great capital, alone and a
+woman, what could she do? Grundelheim, in his celebrated "Toilers who
+have Toiled," relates how desperately hard she worked with her mangle in
+the Konigstrasse. Then one day, when things seemed at their blackest,
+Romance, with its multi-coloured finger, poked a hole in the bubble of
+her existence. The King of Prussia drove along the Konigstrasse, bowing
+to right and left. Gretchen stepped lightly over her mangle and dropped
+a curtsey. The King was immediately captivated, and a few hours later
+the happy girl found herself in the Royal Palace. After that events
+moved rapidly. At the lax German Court Gretchen soon forgot her austere
+upbringing, and entered into the round games and charades with untold
+abandon! Alas! the fickle heart of the King was soon turned from her.
+Realising this Gretchen seized upon a noble much enamoured of her, Furst
+Lieberwurst zu Schweinen-Kalber, and married him one spring morning in
+the Chapel Royal. For three months they lived together in the Austrian
+Tyrol; then Gretchen, heeding at last the persistent call of her art,
+left him, and fled back to Berlin, where she obtained an engagement to
+play Juliet. It was from that moment that her real passion for her part
+developed. It grew to be an obsession--she was feted, lauded, mentioned
+in several public speeches. For sixty-five years she played it all over
+Germany, never tiring, never weakening. People gibbered over her; then
+came her tragic death at the age of ninety-two in the balcony scene. She
+stumbled forward, Grundelheim says, then backward, then forward, then
+backward again, and then forward for the last time. The balcony gave
+way, and she fell at Romeo's feet (it was the great Fritz Schnotter,
+with whom she had been playing for two years: in private life he was, of
+course, her lover--she always insisted on that).
+
+History tells us that he caught her in his arms--Bottiburgen contests
+that he caught her in the middle of his chest; anyhow, the house is said
+to have risen and cheered, thinking it was a new scene suddenly
+interpolated. Then the curtain slowly fell, and they realised the
+truth--they would never see their idolised Gretchen again.
+
+In passing, it would perhaps be as well to mention some of the famous
+Romeos who played opposite this bewitcher of all sexes. There was
+Reginald Bug, a young Englishman, who loved her passionately for a few
+years; then the renowned Pierre Dentifrice from the Comedie Francaise;
+then Angelo Carlini, and Basto Caballero (founder of the Shakespearean
+Theatre in Barcelona); then Dimitri Chuggski, a very temperamental,
+highly strung Russian (it is in Volume VIII. of Edgar Sheepmeadow's
+"Beds and their Inmates" that he relates the story of Chuggski's
+desertion of Gretchen; he contends that he left her because she always
+slept with her mouth open).
+
+Her last and most famous lover on and off the stage was the
+aforementioned Fritz Schnotter; he is treated lavishly in three volumes
+of Bottiburgen.
+
+Her portrait on page 100 is a reproduction of Grobmeyer's etching. The
+original could formerly be viewed, I believe, by applying to the Kaiser
+for permission and paying 18,000 marks.
+
+
+
+
+JAKE D'ANNUNZIO SPOUT
+
+[Illustration: JAKE D'ANNUNZIO SPOUT, WORLD-FAMED WRITER]
+
+
+Why is it that to some are vouchsafed such supreme gifts while other
+have perforce to drag out their lives in the hideous monotony of offices
+and banks and the like?
+
+Jake D'Annunzio Spout--even he, Jake the glorious--Spout the
+magnificent--commenced his career behind the counter of a delicatessen
+on Ninth Avenue--and now--his name and glory have waved across America
+like a pennon of victory. I do not intend as others have done to
+describe every small detail of his early life[17]--I merely wish with a
+few brief and decided strokes of the pen to expose to the public his
+mastery of psychology, his exquisite grace of style and above all his
+amazing supremacy of grammar. No writer since Steve Montespan Pligger
+has achieved such stupendous feats of literature and even
+he--Pligger--failed over his well-remembered attack on an English
+Duchess, "The Fall of a Bloated Aristocrat." According to contemporary
+criticisms it appears that through lack of familiarity with his subject
+he was unable to make her bloated enough--which was a pity as the main
+bulk of the book was intensely interesting, but Pligger, great as he
+undoubtedly was, could never aspire to the heights of Spout. Many people
+on reading Spout's first volume of poems in prose "Autumn in my Garden"
+were heard to say with a shake of the head, "Pligger's sun has set, we
+are at the Dawn of a new Era--the Spout Era!" Perhaps the greatest
+factor in Spout's greatness is his amazing versatility. No one reading
+"Marie of Chinatown" for the first time would believe the author capable
+of "Across the Sound for a Wife"! The realistic sordidity of the former
+balanced against the breathless adventure of the latter, combine in
+stamping Spout as a genius of the highest order.
+
+The three books he wrote while still working in the delicatessen store
+are indelibly stamped with the pathos of his environment--"Thoughts in
+Vinegar," a bitter satire on bohemianism--"Three Little Pickles," an
+autobiography of the Barrymores as children and "The lonely Anchovy," a
+whimsical fantasy which if we are to believe Town Topics made Sir James
+Barrie quite furious.
+
+The story of the sudden recognition of Jake D'Annunzio Spout's genius by
+the more advanced literary coterie of New York City, etc., is widely
+known but too charming to leave unmentioned. He was, so we are told,
+seated on an upturned wooden box behind a pile of cheeses, sunk in a
+reverie, when suddenly the door opened and three men came into the
+store.
+
+"We wish to see Jake D'Annunzio Spout," said the foremost with a rich
+Harvard accent.
+
+Jake rose shyly, knocking a Camembert to the ground in his
+embarrassment. "I am he," he said blushing.
+
+A grey-haired man sniffed and waved his hand comprehensively. "You must
+leave these sordid surroundings," he said in a beautifully modulated
+voice in which a bad cold and a Yale intonation struggled for
+precedence, "and come with us."
+
+"Where to?" cried Jake clutching a salami sausage with boyish
+excitement.
+
+All three men doffed their hats.
+
+"To the Coffee House," they said reverently.
+
+"At this point," says Earl Hank in his exquisite study, 'Spout Through
+and Through,' tears of ecstasy gushed down the boy's cheeks. 'At last,'
+he cried in a choked voice and swooned.
+
+The three men gathered him up tenderly and carried him out towards the
+Elevated--"
+
+Of course the salient feature of Hank's study of Spout is the deep love
+and affection for his subject which permeates every page. Nobody but a
+true enthusiast and lover of beauty could ever have been so inspired. It
+was not until reaching the intellectually austere atmosphere of the
+Coffee House that Spout regained consciousness: he opened his eyes
+wearily, but the light of dazzled amazement replaced fatigue when he
+beheld the company that surrounded him--every man's face seemed to be
+stamped indelibly with the ineffaceable mark of artistic achievement.
+Spout rose in happy, awed wonderment.
+
+Hands were stretched forth to him in welcome and friendship--one of the
+younger members gave vent to a furtive cheer but was instantly
+suppressed. Lunch, we are told, was to the newly-discovered poet a long
+dream of ecstasy, with the exception of one incident which, though
+somewhat painful, it is necessary to retail in order to illustrate what
+havoc habit can work on even the brightest psychologies. Earl Bowles (a
+descendant of Senator Didcot Bowles--beloved by all) in his rather wordy
+dissertation on "Intellects of the Hour" presents to us perhaps the most
+vivid picture of the scene.
+
+"Harvey Pricklebott, for several years editor of 'Art in the Home,'
+leant forward to the dazed Spout and requested him to pass a plate of
+cold tongue which was lying near. With businesslike alacrity Spout did
+so--and then before anyone could prevent it--detached from his belt a
+delicatessen payment check for 25 cents and pushed it across the table."
+
+"There was a dreadful silence--Spout realising his appalling error
+endeavoured to pass it off by humming the Jewel Song from Faust. For a
+moment his nonchalance amazed everyone then as though a veil had been
+suddenly snatched from their eyes they gave a great cry: 'This is Spout!
+What Humour! What Roguery! Spout the Brilliant!'"
+
+After this serio-comic contretemps every remark Spout made was hailed by
+all as a gem of superlative wit.
+
+From the moment of his entrance into the Coffee House, Spout's career
+was assured--encouraged by his amazing success in a milieu to which many
+aspired but few attained, he at once wrote about it, probably his most
+world-famed novel, "The Continuous Fall of Harriet Ramsbotham." To say
+that this daring attack upon existing social conditions caused a
+sensation is to put the case mildly--it was a positive literary _tour de
+force_. Take for example the extraordinarily vital passage in volume
+two--when Harriet is insulted by Donald at a soda fountain, or the
+sordidly realistic moment in volume three when she is horsewhipped by
+Frederick on Long Beach--and above all perhaps those few tense seconds
+in volume one when Norman having lured her to Childs' for supper brands
+her left thigh with a flat-iron. Immediately upon publication of this
+masterpiece Spout received five hundred and ninety-four letters from
+anxious mothers, eight hundred and two requests for sexual advice from
+oppressed governesses and several threatening telegrams from the police.
+
+The ordinary everyday novelist would at once have become bombastic and
+conceited at being the cause of such a universal upheaval--not so Spout.
+He retired quite quietly to his cosy kitchenette apartment in Harlem and
+wrote that charming and winsome essay in sentiment "Mollie's
+Holiday"--which in due course he followed with his celebrated treatise
+on reincarnation "A Drop of Blood" and "To Horse, to Horse" a stirring
+romance of the Civil War.
+
+I will not seek with convincing falsehoods and unscrupulous sophistry to
+hide the fact that Jake D'Annunzio Spout was never quite a gentleman.
+Others have endeavoured to do this and to my mind it is not only
+degrading but quite unworthy of the man's genius to dwell on such paltry
+failings as bad table manners, slight personal uncleanliness and the
+like. Many of the greatest men in the world have bitten their nails, and
+if we are to believe contemporary biographers, even the gloriously
+verbose Carlyle was known to expectorate frequently and with the utmost
+abandon while writing his world-famed fantasy "The French Revolution."
+
+Jake Spout was perhaps twenty-six when he met H. Mackenzie Kump the
+philanthropic millionaire whose intimate study "Spout, as I Knew Him"
+met with such a brilliant success last year. Kump it was who cajoled and
+eventually almost by force persuaded Jake to make a tour of the world.
+Kump it was who nursed him devotedly through malaria in Mombasa,
+dysentery in Delhi, hernia in Hong Kong, cramp in Cape Town and acute
+earache in Edinburgh, and who soothed his bedside with almost womanly
+tenderness during his fearful outbreak of varicose veins in Vancouver.
+The work Spout accomplished in spite of slightly adverse circumstances
+while abroad was quite stupendous and had it not been for his tragic
+marriage would doubtless have been published with alacrity and read by
+millions. It was presumably the will of an unkind fate that he should be
+pursued and eventually captured by Esme Chaddle--a woman not only
+without scruples of any description but possessing a revoltingly ugly
+face and the temper of a fiend. It was on their honeymoon that she
+became suddenly cross at breakfast and burnt all the unpublished MSS.
+that she could find in the back yard, thereby destroying heartlessly the
+luscious fruits of untold labour while abroad. Spout with the
+contradictory stubbornness characteristic of so many geniuses
+continued--though very hurt--to adore his vixenish wife with the blind
+concentrated passion which for so many years had impregnated his work
+and now, alas, was running to waste on such an unyielding desert. His
+literary friends and admirers one and all shook their heads sadly,
+perceiving reluctantly that the end was in sight. For two years Spout
+wrote nothing but three short articles,[18] then as though some
+premonition of impending disaster touched with flaming wings the
+sleeping carcase of his talent he sat down and wrote his soul-searching
+national appeal "Hist." This he completed on his thirty-first birthday.
+
+For a true and sincere description of that last tragic night we must
+turn to Richard Floop--whose love for Spout has lent his pen so much
+glamour and poetry.
+
+"Dusk was falling when Jake stole softly out through the scullery door
+and clambered on the char-a-banc for Coney Island. On arrival at that
+home of gaiety and irresponsibility he forgot his troubles--his sordid
+domestic upheavals--even his talent he suppressed and merged himself
+like an ordinary human being into the mad spirit of carnival. With
+boyish shouts he rolled on the joy-wheel; with childish gurgles he
+bestrode strange and jolting painted horses and waved his hat daringly
+when the merry-go-round was at its fastest. His excitement on the
+helter-skelter knew no bounds--while his delighted screams in the river
+caves called forth many appreciative raspberries from the friendly
+crowds. With no presentiment that this evening of unadulterated ecstasy
+was to be the culminating and final sensation in his eventful life he
+stepped into that fatal compartment on the big wheel--from which a
+quarter of an hour later he hurtled when at an enormous height from the
+ground!"
+
+There ends Floop's beautiful and heart-breaking picture of the death of
+a great and wonderful man. Some say it was suicide--others that he was
+merely leaning out too far in admiration of the view. Who knows what
+really inspired that sudden fierce rush to death? But whatever the cause
+there is one fact that remains--shining like a star above the squalid
+wreck of his latter years--he died happy. The indisputable proof of this
+can be obtained from perusal of the first line of a poem which was
+discovered in his breast pocket:
+
+    "All Hail to Fun and Merriment--"
+
+The less widely-known works of Jake D'Annunzio Spout are as follows:
+
+    "Sun-dappled Dreams," a book of poems.
+    "Through Bavaria with a Note-book."
+    "The Sin of Pharoah Bubster."
+
+and:
+
+    "With Lincoln in Calcutta," a Fantasy.
+
+Fountain-pen pieces and ever-sharp pencil in collection of H. Mackenzie
+Kump.
+
+
+
+
+DONNA ISABELLA ANGELICA Y BANANAS
+
+[Illustration: DONNA ISABELLA ANGELICA Y BANANAS
+
+_From the portrait by Baloona (early Spanish)_]
+
+
+Spain has ever been the home of romance and beauty and fiery passion,
+but never in its whole history has it bred such a tremulously beautiful
+love story as that of Donna Isabella Angelica y Bananas. A romance of
+two passionate hearts in such a vivid setting cannot but fail to make
+the eye kindle and the pulses throb. Compared to it, Lancelot and Elaine
+become cardboard puppets, Dante and Beatrice figures of clay utterly
+devoid of life, while Paolo and Francesca appear merely idiotic.
+
+Picture to yourself, if you will, the Spain of the Middle Ages; if you
+can't, it doesn't matter. Isabella Angelica was born at Seville in 1582,
+the daughter of Don Juan de Cabarajal and Maria his wife. Don Juan owned
+the Castello del Hurtado, having been left it by his infamous but regal
+uncle, Don Lopez a Basastos.
+
+The Castello lay surrounded in the foreground by turrets and moats, in
+the middle distance by orange groves and extraordinarily verdant
+meadows; while in the background the majestic Pyrenees, rearing their
+snowy peaks in serried ranks of symmetrical splendour, imparted to the
+whole thing the semblance of rugged grandeur which is the birthright of
+every true Spaniard. Isabella Angelica's childhood dawned and waned in
+these exquisite surroundings: she would play with her tutors various
+games, some of them traditional, such as "catch orange" and
+"_raralara_,"[19] and now and then frolics of her own invention, for
+history tells us she was ever a merry little trickster. It was not until
+she was seventeen that the true radiance of her beauty became apparent.
+Her mother had been wiser to guard the child more closely than she did,
+for do we not read in Dr. Polata's "From Girl to Woman" that between the
+ages of nineteen and twenty she was constantly seen mounting the
+Pyrenees in a daring fashion and entirely unattended? But still,
+doubtless owing to her charming nature, which was a sweet composition
+of mischief and kindliness, she remained unspoilt by this undesirable
+contact with a rude world which should, until her marriage, have been
+outside her girlish ken.
+
+When she reached the age of twenty--"the very threshold of womanhood,"
+as Fernando Lope so beautifully puts it--she was betrothed to Pedro y
+Bananas, a noble fresh from the vice and debauchery of the Court at
+Valladolid. Knowing naught of love or passion, she consented without
+hesitation, being but a tool in the hands of her parents, and a few
+months later the wedding took place with enormous pomp in the Cathedral
+at Seville.
+
+After the ceremony the bride and bridegroom repaired to the Palazza
+Bananas, the country seat of Pedro, who, though poor himself, had had
+many costly estates handed down to him.
+
+Here, so report tells us, after subjecting Isabella Angelica for three
+years to the vilest insults and utmost cruelty, Pedro left her
+temporarily and returned to the Court, now at Castille. Poor Isabella
+Angelica! This was the gay world she had dreamed of--the ecstatic life
+she had hoped and fully expected to live!
+
+Then suddenly with the departure of her husband, she found peace--peace
+in the rocky solitudes, in the scented gardens and rolling foothills;
+and here this poor, lonely woman found fulfilment of all her maiden
+dreams--"Love!"
+
+No one knows the authentic story of her first meeting with Enrique
+Baloona. Some say he was fishing for _bolawallas_[20] and she came
+graciously up and asked him the time; others aver that he was passing
+beneath her lattice and she dropped a fluted hair-tidy at his feet. But
+anyhow, from the time they first met they never parted until it was
+absolutely necessary. They pursued the course of their love through the
+long, tranquil summer days and nights--every word they uttered one to
+the other was sheer poetry. Enrique, who was a fully qualified
+academician, painted the portrait reproduced on page 124. It is alas!
+the only one in existence, all the others having been destroyed by the
+Inquisition.
+
+But alack! as is the way with all beauty, it is but short-lived. The end
+of their peaceful passion came with the announcement of Pedro's return
+from the Court, now at Aragon. Isabella Angelica, history relates, was
+beside herself with misery. Enrique also was considerably upset.
+Together the doomed couple arranged a plan of escape. They flew together
+to the Villa Morla, a notorious abode of illicit lovers. It was here
+that the enraged Pedro caught up with them and killed Enrique with a
+look. Isabella Angelica was then taken against her will to join the
+Court. At last at Madrid. For two years, Dr. Polata tells us, her heart
+was numb with anguish; then gradually the life at Court, still at
+Madrid, began to take effect on her malleable character. She became
+intensely vicious: much of the sweetness portrayed in Enrique's portrait
+vanished, leaving her expression cross and occasionally even sullen. All
+the world knows of her meeting with the Infanta, so we will not dwell
+upon it. One day her husband died unexpectedly. Cruel-minded courtiers
+suspected Isabella Angelica, but she was so obviously crushed that their
+suspicions were allayed. Her heart exulted--she had killed him with a
+poisoned pen-wiper. No one knew. Poor Isabella Angelica! Her tragic love
+affair had indeed transformed her from the appealing girl of yesterday
+to the recklessly unhappy woman of to-day, forced on to the path of
+cruelty and vice by unlooked-for circumstances. She performed this deed
+and that with almost mechanical diabolicism; some say she knew not one
+day from another. In 1597 she was offered an exceedingly good position
+by the Inquisition, which she immediately accepted. It was, she felt,
+her only chance of happiness--to have the opportunity of inventing a few
+good tortures would comfort her; and why not? People of to-day, narrow
+and unsympathetic, may censure her as being spiteful and unkind, but in
+those days things were--oh, so different!
+
+She sent for her little brother and had him burnt; this eased the pain
+at her heart a little. Then her aunt was conveyed to her from Majorca,
+and on arrival was pierced by several bodkins and ultimately buried in
+hot tar. Isabella Angelica almost gave vent to a wan smile.
+
+She supervised her father's death, the actual work being performed by
+her colleagues of the Inquisition. He was cut in moderate-sized snippets
+and toasted on one side only.
+
+It says much for Isabella Angelica's charm and personality that the
+populace, in spite of their knowledge of her deeds, one and all adored
+her--to the end of her life the unstinting love and adulation of all who
+came in contact with her was hers irretrievably.
+
+It was during the personal mutilation of her third cousin that she
+caught the influenza cold which cost her her life. Poor, doomed Isabella
+Angelica: her death-bed was surrounded by heart-broken mourners who had
+flocked from all parts of sunny Spain to pay tribute to the dying
+beauty; the Inquisition issued an edict that no eyes were to be put out
+for a whole week in honour of her.
+
+She died peacefully, clasping an ivory rosary and a faded miniature on
+elephant's hide, portraying a handsome, debonair young man. Could it
+have been Enrique Baloona?
+
+Thus lived and died one of Spain's most entrancing specimens of feminine
+beauty.
+
+
+
+
+MAGGIE McWHISTLE
+
+
+Born in an obscure Scotch manse of Jacobite parents, Maggie McWhistle
+goes down to immortality as perhaps the greatest heroine of Scottish
+history; and perhaps not. We read of her austere Gallic beauty in every
+record and tome of the period--one of the noble women whose paths were
+lit for them from birth by Destiny's relentless lamp. What did Maggie
+know of the part she was to play in the history of her country? Nothing.
+She lived through her girlhood unheeding; she helped her mother with the
+baps and her father with the haggis; occasionally she would be given a
+new plaidie--she who might have had baps, haggis, and plaidies ten
+thousandfold for the asking. A word must be said of her parents. Her
+father, Jaimie, known all along Deeside as Handsome Jaimie--how the
+light-hearted village girls mourned when he turned minister: he was
+high, high above them. Of his meeting with Janey McToddle, the Pride of
+Bonny Donside, very little is written. Some say that they met in a
+snowstorm on Ben Lomond, where she was tending her kine; others say that
+they met on the high road to Aberdeen and his collie Jeannie bit her
+collie Jock--thus cementing a friendship that was later on to ripen into
+more and more--and even Maggie. Some years later they were wed, and
+Jaimie led his girl-bride to the little manse which was destined to be
+the birthplace of one of Scotland's saviours. History tells us little of
+Maggie McWhistle's childhood: she apparently lived and breathed like any
+more ordinary girl--her griddle cakes were famous adown the length and
+breadth of Aberdeen. Gradually a little path came to be worn between the
+manse and the kirk, seven miles away, where Maggie's feet so often trod
+their way to their devotions. She was intensely religious.
+
+One day a stranger came to Aberdeen. He had braw, braw red knees and
+bonnie, bonnie red hair. History tells us that on first seeing Maggie
+in her plaidie he smiled, and that the second time he saw her he
+guffawed, so light-hearted was he.
+
+One day he called at the manse, chucked Maggie under the chin, and ate
+one of her baps. Eight years later he came again, and, after tweaking
+her nose, ate a little haggis. By then something seemed to have told her
+that he was her hero.
+
+One dark night, so the story runs, there came a hammering on the door.
+Maggie leapt out of her truckle, and wrapping the plaidie round her, for
+she was a modest girl, she ran to the window.
+
+"Wha is there?" she cried in Scotch.
+
+The answer came back through the darkness, thrilling her to the marrow:
+
+"Bonnie Prince Charlie!"
+
+Maggie gave a cry, and, running down-stairs, opened the door and let him
+in. She looked at him in the light shed by her homely candle. His brow
+was amuck with sweat: he was trembling in every limb; his ears were
+scarlet.
+
+"What has happened?"
+
+"I am pursued," he replied, hoarse with exertion and weariness. "Hide
+me, bonnie lassie, hide me, hide me!"
+
+Quick as thought, Maggie hid him behind the door, and not a moment too
+soon. Then she displayed that strength of will and courage which was to
+stamp her as a heroine for all time. There came a fresh hammering on the
+door. Maggie opened it defiantly, and never flinched at the sight of so
+many brawny men; she only wrapped her plaidie more tightly round her.
+
+"We want Bonnie Prince Charlie," said the leader, in Scotch.
+
+Then came Maggie's well-known answer, also in Scotch.
+
+"Know you not that this is a manse?"
+
+History has it that the man fell back as though struck, and one by one,
+awed by the still purity of the white-faced girl, the legions departed
+into the night whence they had come. Thus Maggie McWhistle proved
+herself the saviour of Bonnie Prince Charlie for the first time.
+
+There were many occasions after that in which she was able to prove
+herself a heroine for his sake. She would conceal him up the chimney or
+in the oven at the slightest provocation. Soon there were no trees for
+thirty miles round in which she had not hidden him at some period or
+another.[21]
+
+Poor Maggie--perchance she is finding in heaven the peaceful rest which
+was so lacking in her life on earth. For legend hath it that she never
+had two consecutive nights' sleep for fifteen years, so busy was she
+saving Bonnie Prince Charlie.
+
+Then came that great deed which even now finds an exultant echo in the
+heart of every true Scotsman--that deed which none but a bonnie, hardy
+Highland lassie could have got away with.... You all know of the massing
+of James' troops at Carlisle, and later at Glasgow, and later still at
+Aberdeen. Poor Prince Charlie--so sonsie and braw, a fugitive in his own
+land--he fled to Loch Morich, followed by Maggie McWhistle in her
+plaidie, carrying some haggis and baps to comfort him in his exile.
+History is rather hazy as to exactly what happened; but anyhow, Maggie,
+with the tattered banner of her country fast unfurling in her heart,
+decided to save her hero for the last time; and it was well she did not
+tarry longer, for he was sore pressed. History relates that two tears
+fell from his eyes on to the shore.[22] Then Maggie, with a brave smile,
+handed him a bap.
+
+"Eat," she said in Scotch; "you are probably very hungry."
+
+These simple words, spoken straight from her heart, had the effect, so
+chroniclers inform us, of pulling him together a bit.
+
+"Where can I hide?" he asked.
+
+Maggie looked at him fearlessly for a moment.
+
+"You shall hide in a tree," she cried, with sudden inspiration.
+
+Bonnie Prince Charlie fell on his braw red knees.
+
+"Please," he cried pleadingly, "could it be an elm? I'm so tired of
+gnarled oaks."
+
+"Yes!" cried the courageous girl exultantly. "Quick, we will trick them
+yet."
+
+Then came the supreme moment--the act of sheer devotion that was to
+brand that simple soul through the ages as a noble martyr in, alas! a
+lost cause. Shading her eyes with her hand, she perceived a legion of
+the enemy encamped on the one island of which the lonely Gallic loch
+boasted. Her woman's wit had devised a plan. Flinging baps and haggis to
+the winds, she leapt into a boat and began to row--you all know the
+story of that fateful row. Round and round the island she went for three
+weeks,[23] never heeding her tired arms and weary hands; blisters came
+and went, but she felt them not; her hat flew off, but the lion-hearted
+woman never stopped;[24] and all to convince the troops on the island
+that it was a fleet approaching under the command of Bonnie Prince
+Charlie. Completely routed, every officer and man swam to the mainland
+and beat a retreat, and not until the last of them had gone did Maggie
+relinquish her hold on the creaking oars.
+
+Thus did the strategy of a simple Highland lassie defeat the aims of
+generals whose hearts and souls had been steeped from birth in the
+sanguinary ways of war. Of her journey home with the Prince you all
+know; and what her white-haired father said when she arrived you've
+heard hundreds of times. There has been a lot of argument as to the
+exact form the Prince's gratitude took. Some say he unwrapped her
+plaidie and went away with it; others write that he cut a lock of his
+braw red hair and gave it to her with his usual merry smile; but the
+authentic version of that moving scene is that of the burnt scone.
+Maggie had baked a scone and handed it to him; then, after he had bitten
+it, he handed it back.
+
+"Nay, lassie, nay," he is said to have remarked. "My purse is empty but
+my heart is full. Take this scone imprinted by my royal teeth, and
+treasure it."
+
+Then with a debonair bow and a ready laugh, a mocking shout and
+whimsical wink, he went out into dreary Galway--a homeless wanderer.
+
+Of Maggie's death very little is known. Some say she died of hay-fever;
+others say it was nasal catarrh; but only her old mother, with a woman's
+unerring instinct, guessed the truth: in reality she died of a broken
+heart and a burnt scone.
+
+
+
+
+THE EDUCATION OF RUPERT PLINGE
+
+[Illustration: RUPERT PLINGE, AGED 9 MONTHS AND 4 YEARS, RESPECTIVELY]
+
+
+Under the blue-grey shadow of the Didcot Bowles bungalow, with beech
+trees and pussy willows fringing the banks of the river Sippe which
+runs, or ran before it was dammed, down past old Caesar Earwhacker's
+bicycle shed, three miles from the village of Sagrada, Conn., to the
+West and eight miles from Roosefelt under the hill to the North leaving
+the South free for a Black Rising and the East for the Civil War;--there
+in the seventeenth cottage, with green shutters, below the bridge--with
+the pine cones occasionally tap-tapping against the pantry window--owing
+to a strange combination of circumstances Rupert Plinge's elder sister
+first saw the light of day. Rupert himself being born ten months later
+at Guffle Hoe.
+
+Had he been born on the lower reaches of the Yukon and baptised by a
+remittance man in a Wesleyan Chapel, he would probably not have
+suffered so acutely from the cold as he did at Guffle Hoe, nor could he
+have been more persistently victimised and handicapped in after life by
+bronchial asthma and pyorrhoea of the gums.
+
+Though coldness for a baby was unpleasant in 1870 it was infinitely more
+tiresome in 1592 and perfectly devastating in 1306. But Guffle Hoe--try
+to reflect if possible the troglodytic fun of being born within earshot
+and eyeshot of people such as Granville Boo, General Udby, Ex-President
+Sumplethock, Senator Mills-Tweeper and Harriet Beecher Stowe; and places
+such as Mount Knitting, Mudlake West, Pigeon Park and Appleblossom
+Villa. These influential factors combined were undoubtedly the
+foundations of the enormous mathematical ability which became apparent
+long before the boy attained the age of three, but unfortunately for the
+level development of his mentality, the repulsive plainness of Senator
+Mills-Tweeper coupled with the innate idiocy of General Udby, completely
+overshadowed the girlish charm of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Had Rupert
+been consulted would he have liked playing the game at all--holding the
+cards in the wrong hand as he did from the very start without the
+slightest conception of what the game really was and why they were
+playing it? But it is quite obvious now to anyone looking back over the
+years that had the cards of his life been shuffled by his Auntie Gracie
+before her elopement to the Klondyke with Ex-Senator Fortescue, the
+ultimate stakes would have been immeasurably dissimilar. At this time
+the harsh political spirit of Guffle Hoe was morally if not physically
+and perhaps mentally inflamed by the appearance of several tramp
+steamers in the mouth of the Sippe, a new hay-cart at Oozeworthy Farm,
+and the flashing of the electrifying news across the newly erected
+telegraph wires that Peter Rotepillar and Henry Plugg had, apart from
+their dramatic refusal to enter themselves as candidates for the
+Presidency, declined to take any further interest in politics at all and
+had set up a flourishing bee nursery in Bokewood, Mass. This was on a
+Friday. Rupert was two months old and naturally sensitive--living and
+sometimes breathing in such a political atmosphere--to the far-reaching
+effects of such a shattering blow to the constituency. Of all this that
+was being performed to complicate his education he became suddenly
+conscious of an innate sense of the roundness of the whole universe. He
+began to find himself continually oppressed by the protuberant nearness
+and corresponding magnitude of his mother's face, which grafted itself
+upon his infant psychology by looming with maddening regularity over his
+cot and consciousness. The peculiar rotundity of this good woman's
+countenance seemed to illustrate to the rising sun of his genius the
+ethics of that science at which--had he but lived seventy years
+later--he might have become so famous:--Geography.
+
+On September 9th, 1871, he developed croup, which in due course promoted
+him to one of the first steps of artistic education--Colour.
+
+For several days he hung between life and death, turning an exquisite
+shade of purple and black as each new coughing fit seized him. This not
+unusual phenomenon impressed its vivid seal upon the plastic wax of his
+unfledged memories with extraordinary precision. In after life, for a
+long while, he was quite unable to gaze at an ordinary muscat grape or a
+coal-scuttle without either biting his comforter right through or being
+extremely sick. Naturally this disability coupled with the physical
+weakness and sense of impotence that he invariably experienced when in
+the company of his older companions occasioned him much unhappiness; in
+fact, many of the intense sorrows of his childhood were caused by the
+thoughtless mockery of his sister Leah Clara, aged nineteen months.
+
+To the uninitiated spectator it would appear when gazing casually at
+young Rupert Plinge that the psychologically educational environment
+surrounding him was deeply impregnated with the spirit of political
+reformation which, though neither Elizabethan in tone nor strictly
+Cromwellian in atmosphere, was strongly suggestive to the lay mind of
+the Second Empire. The subconscious force of this abstract influence
+went far toward moulding the delicate shoots of his rapidly developing
+mentality into a brilliant knowledge of weights and measures, decimals,
+and the native population of Borneo.
+
+Whether Rupert was enjoying his rubber comforter on the cool green
+grass, or on the slightly painful gravel, or on the fiercely hot
+asphalt, summer was to him a season of unsurpassed sensuality, flooding
+his character with rich productive thought and a passionate adoration
+for his great-aunt Maud, who was wont to beguile the long sun-stained
+hours by lying amid cushions among the foliage, humming "The
+Star-Spangled Banner," while she removed with the point of her
+nail-scissors caramels and other adhesive morsels from the gutta-percha
+plate of her new false teeth which lay in her lap.
+
+With an amazing clarity of perception which, though generally supposed
+to be inherited from his great-uncle Miles, for fifty-four years
+Unitarian minister in the Red Lamp district of Honolulu, would
+undoubtedly in the searching light of twentieth century vision be mainly
+attributed to prenatal influences and astronomical premonitions, he
+realised that the atmosphere was exceedingly chilly in the winter.
+
+Later biographists have exposed with somewhat malicious emphasis the one
+weak point in an otherwise magnificently constructed intelligence--to
+wit, the peculiar inability to recognise the inner psychology and
+spiritual determination of his great-grandfather--Bobbie Plinge--who as
+all the world knows met a tragic death at the hands of Great Brown
+Spratt, the last but _one_ of the Mohicans, some fifteen years before
+the birth of Rupert himself. This deficiency in one of the greatest of
+all American characters was in a measure remedied by his excessive
+appreciation of his grandfather O'Callaghan Soddle's luxurious house in
+Boob Street, later on when the abode of stupendous intellect had been
+completely gutted by fire and soaked in water. The boy Rupert, then aged
+two years and a fortnight, exercised a fiercely dominant influence upon
+the ground charts, plans, etc., for the new palatial residence which was
+soon to rear its mighty pillars and porticos not so very far from the
+ivy-grown cottage which in the past had on several occasions sheltered
+the wistful personality of Harriet Beecher Stowe.
+
+The inherent passion for beauty thus crystallized in the mellowing
+virility of the boy's finely wrought temperament went far toward
+satisfying his deep-rooted and well-nigh insatiable yearning for city
+splendour.
+
+In the strange juxtaposition to his unequalled comprehension of national
+political problems was a surprising streak of frank insouciance and
+happy-hearted boyishness, which frequently expressed itself in the open
+defiance of authority in the shape of his great-aunt Maud, his slightly
+dropsical mother (nee Sheila Soddle) and his two resident cousins,
+Alexander Chaffinch and Dorothy Bonk, who at moments were entirely
+unable even to bend the finely tempered steel of his inflexible will,
+therefore on the one occasion when his decisive plans were unexpectedly
+frustrated an impression was photographed with extraordinary bas-relief
+upon his mind of the omnipotence of his quite infirm Grandfather
+Soddle--and of power as a concrete argument. The incident being the
+removal of a half-sucked tin soldier from his hand by the subtle device
+of striking his knuckles sharply with the fire tongs. Then and always
+the boy insisted that this method of reprimand justified his apparent
+submission; the emptiness of his hand and the smarting of his knuckles
+indubitably marking probably the only occasion in his life when all his
+strategical points abruptly turned inward. Contrary to the suppositions
+of impartial psychologists, far from breeding the slightest resentment
+against old Mr. Soddle, this occurrence inspired an active dislike to
+great-aunt Maud who had indulged in her ever-irritating laugh at his
+expense. He expressed his natural anger by filling her handkerchief-case
+with bacon fat, and other boyish revenges of a like nature.
+
+A child whose soaring entity had been nourished and over tended in such
+an exotic forcing house of accumulated endeavour and democratic
+emancipation must indubitably have been the first to realise that the
+austerity of his massive intellect was within measurable distance of
+completing that predestined cycle of universal knowledge and aspiring
+ultimately to the glorious pinnacle of political achievement.
+
+Rupert Plinge's fourth birthday had scarce dawned across the hills of
+time when the long drawn out shadow of earthly obscurity completely
+enveloped the brightest flower of nineteenth century America. The almost
+morbid cultivation of his superluminary brain reached its devastating
+climax while committing to memory the anatomy of the common grub in
+order to demonstrate to the Eastern constituency the fundamental
+principles of fiscal autonomy. Lying in his cot, his large pale eyes
+fixed grimly on a visionary goal, he realised with an intuitive pang
+that the hour of dismissal was at hand. Calling his mother to him he
+asked his last illuminating question, his mind groping still in search
+of truth's flaming beacon:
+
+"Mother, why am I dying?"
+
+Mrs. Plinge leant over him and whispered impressively, "You are dying of
+dropsy caused by over-education!" And turning on her heel she went
+slowly out of the room.
+
+Delirium entered the darkening nursery. Rupert, clasping his hot-water
+bottle raptly, murmured dreamily as he merged into the Great Unknown,
+the crystallisation of the subconscious influence which had permeated
+his whole career--
+
+    "Dropsy, Dropsy,
+    Topsy, Topsy--
+    Harriet Beecher Stowe."
+
+
+
+
+ANNA PODD
+
+[Illustration: ANNA PODD
+
+_From a very old Russian oleograph_]
+
+
+Though of humble origin, though poor and unblessed with any of life's
+luxuries, Anna Podd made her way in the world with unfaltering
+determination. The tragedy of her life was perhaps her ambition, but who
+could blame her for wishing to better herself? She had nothing--nothing
+but her beauty. What a woman's beauty can do for herself and her country
+is amply portrayed in the kaleidoscopic pageant of Anna Podd's life. The
+only existing picture of her (here reproduced) was discovered in Moscow
+after Ivan Buminoff's well-remembered siege, lasting seventeen years.
+Poor Anna! Destiny seemed ruthlessly determined to lead her so far and
+no further. A Tsar loved her, which is more than falls to the lot of
+some women, yet fate's unrelenting finger was forever placed upon the
+pulse of her career.
+
+Of her parents nothing is known. We first hear of her in a low cabaret
+in St. Petersburg West. All night, so Serge Tadski tells us in "Russian
+Realism," it was her sordid duty to flaunt that exquisite loveliness
+which Heaven had bestowed upon her before the devouring eyes of every
+sort and description of Russian man. She was wont to sway rhythmically
+and sinuously to the crazy band which played for her; now and then, with
+pain in her heart and a merry laugh on her lips, she would leap onto the
+tables and snap her fingers indiscriminately.
+
+Often it was her duty to drink off glass after glass of champagne; but
+she never became inebriated.[25] Her purpose in life was too set--she
+meant to break away. In Nicholas Klick's "Life of Anna Podd" he states
+that she met the Tsar at a ball, whence she was hired professionally.
+This statement is entirely untrue; and I am more than surprised that
+such a talented man as Klick should have made such a grievous error.
+
+It has been absolutely impossible to unearth the true story of her
+meeting with the Tsar.
+
+It was after their meeting that the real progress of her career
+commenced. Her Royal master established her in the palace as
+serving-maid to the ailing Tsarina, a generous but somewhat tactless act
+on his part. Somehow or other, history whispers, Anna fell foul of the
+Tsarina--they simply hated one another. Occasionally the Tsarina would
+throw hot water over Anna for sheer spite. Poor Anna, her beauty was
+alike her joy and her terror. The Tsarina, Klick informs us, was
+somewhat plain, and knew it--hence her distaste for the dazzling Anna.
+
+One day, the Tsarina died--no one knew why. Anna, guileless and innocent
+enough, was at once suspected by all as having poisoned her, except the
+Tsar, who, to avert further suspicion, promptly created her Duchess of
+Poddoff. This mark of royal esteem had the effect of quieting the people
+for a while at least. Life went on much as usual at the Royal Palace.
+Anna was kept in close seclusion for safety's sake. The Tsar loved her
+with a steady, burning devotion which caused him to have all his
+children by the Tsarina rechristened "Anna," indiscriminately of sex.
+
+One day a messenger arrived in blue and yellow uniform[26] to bid the
+Tsar gird himself for war. When the luckless Anna heard the news, she
+was with her women (all ladies of title): some say she swooned; others
+aver that she merely sat down rather suddenly. Fate had indeed dealt her
+a smashing blow. Once her Imperial lover left her side she would at once
+be taken prisoner and flung God knows where. This she knew
+instinctively, intuitively. Klick describes for us her dramatic scene
+with the Tsar.
+
+"He was just retiring to bed," he writes, "preparatory to making an
+early start the next morning, when the door burst open, and Anna,
+tear-stained and sobbing, threw herself into the room and, hurling
+herself to the bed, flung herself at his feet, which, owing to his
+immensity of stature, were protruding slightly over the end of the
+mattress. 'Take me with you!' she cried repeatedly. 'No, no, no!'
+replied the Tsar, equally repeatedly. At length, worn out by her
+pleading, the poor woman fell asleep. It was dawn when the Tsar,
+stepping over her recumbent form, bade her a silent good-bye and went
+out to face unknown horror. Half an hour later Anna was flung into a
+dungeon, preceding her long and tiring journey to Siberia."
+
+Thus Klick describes for us the pulsating horror of perhaps one of the
+most pitiful nights in Russian history.
+
+In those days the journey to Siberia was infinitely more wearisome than
+it is now. Poor Anna! She was conveyed so far in a litter, and so far in
+a sleigh, and when the prancing dogs grew tired she had perforce to
+walk. Heaven indeed have pity on those unfortunate women from whom the
+eye of an Emperor has been removed.
+
+For thirty long years Anna slaved in Siberia. She drew water from the
+well, swept the floor of the crazy dwelling wherein she lived, lit the
+fire, and polished the samovar when necessary. In her heart the bird of
+hope occasionally fluttered a draggled wing: would he send for
+her--would he? If only the war were ended! But no! Rumours came of
+fierce fighting near Itchbanhar, where the troops of General Codski were
+quartered. It was, of course, the winter following the fearful siege of
+Mootch. According to Brattlevitch in Volume II. of "War and Why," the
+General had arranged three battalions in a "frat" or large semi-circle,
+in the comparative shelter of a "boz" or low-lying hill, in order to
+cover the stealthy advance of several minor divisions who were thus able
+to execute a miraculous "yombott" or flank movement, so as to gain the
+temporary vantage ground of an adjacent "bluggard" or coppice. All this,
+of course, though having nothing material to do with the life of Anna
+Podd, goes to show the reader what a serious crisis Russia was going
+through at the time.
+
+It was fifteen years after peace was declared that the Tsar sent a
+messenger to Siberia commanding Anna's immediate release and return, and
+also conferring upon her the time-honoured title of Podski. Anna was
+hysterical with joy, and filled herself a flask of vodka against the
+journey home. Poor Anna--she was destined never to see St. Petersburg
+again.
+
+It was while they were changing sleighs at a wayside inn that she was
+attacked by a "mipwip" or white wolf,[27] which consumed quite a lot of
+the hapless woman before anyone noticed.
+
+Brattlevitch tells us that the Tsar was utterly dazed by this cruel
+bereavement. He had Anna's remains embalmed with great pomp and buried
+in a public park, where they were subsequently dug up by frenzied
+anarchists.[28] He also conferred upon her in death the deeds and title
+of Poddioskovitch, thus proving how a poor cabaret girl rose to be one
+of the greatest ladies in the land.
+
+
+
+
+SOPHIE, UNCROWNED QUEEN OF HENRY VIII
+
+[Illustration: SOPHIE]
+
+
+Contemporary history tell us little of Sophie, later chronicles tell us
+still less, while the present-day historians know nothing whatever about
+her. It is only owing to concentrated research and indomitable patience
+that we have succeeded in unearthing a few facts which will serve to
+distinguish her from that noble band of unknown heroines who have lived,
+paid the price, and died, unnoted and unsung!
+
+She was born at Esher. The name of her parents it has been impossible to
+discover, and as to what part of Esher she first inhabited we are also
+hopelessly undecided.
+
+As a child some say she was merry and playful, while others describe her
+as solemn and morose. The reproduction on page 170 is from an old print
+discovered by some ardent antiquaries hanging upside down in a disused
+wharf at Wapping.
+
+It was obviously achieved when she was somewhere between the ages of
+twenty and forty. The unknown artist has caught the fleeting look of
+ineffable sadness, as though she entertained some inward premonition of
+her destiny and her spirit was rebelling dumbly against what was
+inevitable.
+
+Esher in those days was but a tiny hamlet--a few houses clustered here,
+and a few more clustered there. London, then a graceful city set upon a
+hill, could be seen on a clear day from the northernmost point of Esher.
+On anything but a clear day it was, of course, impossible to see it at
+all. Esher is now, and always has been, remarkable for its foliage. In
+those days, when the spring touched the earth with its joyous wand, all
+the trees round and about the village blossomed forth into a mass of
+green. The river wound its way through verdant meadows and pastures. In
+winter-time--providing that the frost was very strong--it would become
+covered in ice, thus forming a charming contrast to early spring and
+late autumn, when the rain was wont to transform it into a swirling
+torrent, which often, so historians tell us, rose so high that it
+overflowed its banks and caused much alarm to the inhabitants of Esher
+proper. We do not use the expression "Esher proper" from any prudish
+reason, but merely because Little Esher, a mile down the road, might in
+the reader's mind become a factor to promote muddle if we did not take
+care to indicate clearly its close proximity.
+
+Esher, owing to its remarkable superabundance of trees, was in
+summertime famous for its delightful variety of birds: magpies,
+jackdaws, thrushes and wagtails, in addition to the usual sparrows and
+tom-tits, were seen frequently; occasionally a lark or a starling would
+charm the villagers with its song.
+
+The soil of Esher, contrary to the usual supposition, was not as fertile
+as one could have wished. Often, unless planted at exactly the right
+time, fruit and vegetables would refuse to grow at all. The main road
+through Esher proper, passing later through Little Esher, was much used
+by those desiring to reach Portsmouth or Swanage or any of the Hampshire
+resorts. Of course, travellers wishing to visit Cromer or Southend or
+even Felixstowe would naturally leave London by another route entirely.
+
+Dick Turpin was frequently seen tearing through Esher, with his face
+muffled, and a large hat and a long cloak, riding a horse, at
+night--there was no mistaking him.
+
+According to Sophie's diary, written by her every day with unfailing
+regularity for thirty-five years, she always just missed seeing Dick
+Turpin. This was apparently a source of great grief to her; often she
+would pause by the roadside and weep gently at the thought of him. Poor
+Sophie! One was to ride along that very road who was destined to mean
+much more to her than bold Dick Turpin. But we anticipate.
+
+It was perhaps early autumn that saw Esher at its best--how brown
+everything was, and yet, in some cases, how yellow! As a hunting centre
+it was very little used, though occasionally a stag or wild boar would,
+like Dick Turpin, pass through it.
+
+One evening, when the trees were soughing in the wind and the sun had
+sunk to rest, Sophie went out with her basket. It was too late to buy
+anything, but she felt the need of air; not that the basket was
+necessary in order to obtain this, but somehow she felt she couldn't
+bear to be without it, such a habit had it become. The darkness was
+rapidly drawing in. Sophie paused and spoke to a frog she saw in a
+puddle; it didn't answer, so she passed on.
+
+Suddenly she heard from the direction of London the sound of hoofs!
+"Dick Turpin!" her heart cried, and she at once commenced to climb an
+elm the better to see him pass; but it was not Dick Turpin--it was a
+shorter man with a beard. On seeing the intrepid girl, he reined in his
+roan chestnut-spotted filly. "Hi!" he cried. Sophie slowly climbed down.
+"Who are you?" she asked, after she had dusted the bark from her fichu.
+"Henry the Eighth!" cried the man with a ready laugh, and, leaping off
+his charger, took her in his arms. "Oh, sire!" she said, and would have
+swooned but that his strength upheld her. History tells us little about
+that interview. Suffice to say that later on Sophie walked gravely back
+to Esher proper, alas! without her basket, but carrying proudly in her
+hand a brooch cunningly wrought into the shape of a raspberry.
+
+It is known as an authentic fact that Sophie never saw her Royal lover
+again. He rode away that night, perhaps to Woking, perhaps to Virginia
+Water--who knows?
+
+Sophie lived on in Esher until the age of thirty-nine, when she was
+taken to London and flung into the Tower, where she remained a closely
+guarded prisoner for a year. Every one loved her and used to visit her
+in her cell. She was exceedingly industrious, and managed to get through
+quite a lot of tatting during her captivity.
+
+The day of her execution dawned fair over St. Paul's Cathedral. Sophie
+in her little cell rose early and turned her fichu. "Why do you do
+that?" asked the gaoler. "Because I am going to meet my end," Sophie
+gently replied. The man staggered dumbly away, fighting down the lump
+which would come in his hardened throat.
+
+When the time came Sophie left her cell with a light step. She walked to
+Tower Hill amidst a body of Beefeaters. "The way is long," she said
+bravely. Every Beefeater bowed his head.
+
+There was a dense crowd round the scaffold. Sophie heeded them not; she
+ran girlishly up the steps to where the executioner was leaning on his
+axe. "Where do I put my head?" she asked simply. The executioner pointed
+to the block. "There!" said he. "Where did you think you put it?" Sophie
+reproved him with a look and knelt down. Then she gazed sweetly at the
+gaoler, who for a year had stinted her in everything. "The past is
+buried," she said sweetly. "To you I bequeath my tatting!" With these
+charitable words still hovering on her lips, she laid her head upon the
+fatal block; from that trying position she threw the executioner a dumb
+look. "Do your duty, my friend," she said, and shut her eyes and her
+mouth.
+
+Mastering his emotion with an effort, the headsman raised his axe;
+through a mist of tears, it fell.
+
+
+
+
+"LA BIBI"
+
+[Illustration: "LA BIBI"
+
+_From the pastel by Coddle_]
+
+
+Hortense Poissons--"La Bibi," What memories that name conjures up! The
+incomparable--the lightsome--the effervescent--her life a rose-coloured
+smear across the history of France--her smile--tier upon tier of
+sparkling teeth--her heart, that delicate organ for which kings fought
+in the streets like common dukes--but enough; let us trace her to her
+obscure parentage. You all know the Place de la Concorde--she was not
+born there. You have all visited the Champs Elysees--she was not born
+there. And there's probably no one who doesn't know of the Faubourg St.
+Honore--but she was not born there. Sufficient to say that she was born.
+Her mother, poor, honest, _gauche_, an unpretentious seamstress; she
+seamed and seamed until her death in 1682 or 1683: Bibi, at the age of
+ten, flung on to the world homeless, motherless, with nothing but her
+amazing beauty between her and starvation or worse. Who can blame her
+for what she did--who can question or condemn her motives? She was
+alone. Then Armand Brochet (who shall be nameless) entered the panorama
+of her career. What was she to do--refuse the roof he offered her? This
+waif (later on to be the glory of France), this leaf blown hither and
+thither by the winds of Destiny--what was she to do? Enough that she
+did.
+
+Paris, a city of seething vice and corruption--her home, the place
+wherein she danced her first catoucha, that catoucha which was so soon
+to be followed by her famous Japanese schottische, and later still by
+her celebrated Peruvian minuet. Voltaire wrote a lot, but he didn't
+mention her; Jean Jacques Rousseau scribbled hours, but never so much as
+referred to her; even Moliere was so reticent on the subject of her
+undoubted charms that no single word about her can be found in any of
+his works.[29]
+
+Her life with Armand Brochet (who shall still be nameless) three years
+before she stepped on to the boards--how well we all know it! Her famous
+epigram at the breakfast table: "Armand, my friend, this egg is not only
+soft--but damn soft." How that remark convulsed Europe!
+
+Her first appearance on the stage was in Paris, 1690, at the Opera.
+Bovine writes of her: "This airy, fairy thing danced into our hearts;
+her movements are those of a gossamer gadfly--she is the embodiment of
+spring, summer, autumn and winter." By this one can clearly see that in
+a trice she had Paris at her feet--and what feet! Pierre Dugaz, the
+celebrated chiropodist, describes them for us. "They were ordinary flesh
+colour," he tells us, "with blue veins, and toe-nails which, had they
+not been cut in time, would have grown several yards long and thus
+interfered with her dancing."
+
+What a sidelight on her character!--gay, bohemian, care-free as a child,
+not even heeding her feet, her means of livelihood. Oh, Bibi--"Bibi
+Coeur d'Or," as she was called so frequently by her multitudinous
+adorers--would that in these mundane days you could revisit us with your
+girlish laugh and supple dancing form! Look at the portrait of her,
+painted by Coddle at the height of her amazing beauty: note the
+sensitive nostrils, the delicate little mouth, and those eyes--the
+gayest, merriest eyes that ever charmed a king's heart; and her
+hair--that "mass of waving corn," as Bloodworthy describes it in his
+celebrated book of "International Beauties." But we must follow her
+through her wonderful life--destined, if not to alter the whole history
+of France, why not?
+
+After her appearance in Paris she journeyed to Vienna, where she met
+Herman Veigel: you all know the story of that meeting, so I will not
+enlarge upon it--enough that they met. It was, of course, before he
+wrote his "Ode to an Unknown Flower" and "My Gretchen has Large Flat
+Ears," poems which were destined to live almost forever. Bibi left
+Vienna and journeyed to London--London, so cold and grim after Paris
+the Gay and Vienna the Wicked. In her letter to Madame Perrier she says,
+"My dear--London's awful"; and "Ludgate Circus--I ask you!" But still,
+despite her dislike of the city itself, she stayed for eight years, her
+whole being warmed by the love and adulation of the populace. She
+appeared in the ballet after the opera. "Her dancing," writes Follygob,
+"is unbelievable, incredible; she takes one completely by surprise--her
+butterfly dance was a revelation." This from Follygob. Then Henry Pidd
+wrote of her, "She is a woman." This from H. Pidd!
+
+Then back to Paris--home, the place of her birth. Fresh conquests. In
+November, 1701, she introduced her world-famed Bavarian fandango, which
+literally took Paris by storm--it was in her dressing-room afterward
+that she made her celebrated remark to Maria Pippello (her only rival).
+Maria came ostensibly to congratulate her on her success, but in reality
+to insult her. "_Ma petite_," she said, sneering, "_l'hibou est-il sur
+le haie?_" Quick as thought Bibi turned round and replied with a gay
+toss of her curls, "_Non, mais j'ai la plume de ma tante!_" Oh, witty,
+sharp-tongued Bibi! A word must be said of the glorious ballets she
+originated which charmed France for nearly thirty years. There were
+"Life of a Rain Drop," "Hope Triumphant," and "Angels Visiting Ruined
+Monastery at Night." This last was an amazing creation for one so
+uneducated and uncultured as La Jolie Bibi; people flocked to the Opera
+again and again in order to see it and applaud the ravishing originator.
+Then came her meeting with the King in his private box. We are told she
+curtsied low, and, glancing up at him coyly from between her bent knees,
+gave forth her world-renowned epigram, "_Comment va, Papa?_" Louis was
+charmed by this exquisite exhibition of drollery and _diablerie_, and
+three weeks later she was brought to dance at Versailles. This was a
+triumph indeed--La Belle Bibi was certainly not one to miss
+opportunities. A month later she found herself installed at Court--the
+King's Right Hand. Then began that amazing reign of hers--short lived,
+but oh, how triumphant, dukes, duchesses, countesses, even princes,
+paying homage at the feet of La Bibi the dancer, now Hortense, Duchesse
+de Mal-Moulle! Did she abuse her power? Some say she did, some say she
+didn't; some say she might have, some say she might not have; but there
+is no denying that her beauty and gaiety won every heart that was
+brought into contact with her. Every afternoon regularly Louis was wont
+to visit her by the private staircase to her apartments; together they
+would pore over the maps and campaigns of war drawn up and submitted by
+the various generals. Then when Louis was weary Bibi would put the maps
+in the drawer, draw his head onto her breast, and sing to him songs of
+her youth, in the attractive cracked voice that was the bequest of her
+mother who used to sing daily whilst she seamed and seamed. Meanwhile,
+intrigue was placing its evil fingers upon the strings of her fate.
+Lampoons were launched against her, pasquinades were written of her;
+when she went out driving, fruit and vegetables were often hurled at
+her. Thus were the fickle hearts of the people she loved turned against
+their Bibi by the poisonous tongues of those jealous courtiers who so
+ardently sought her downfall.
+
+You all know the pitiful story of her fall from favour--how the King,
+enraged by the stories he had heard of her, came to her room just as she
+was going to bed.
+
+"You've got to go," he said.
+
+"Why?" she answered.
+
+History writes that this ingenuous remark so unmanned him that his eyes
+filled with tears, and he dashed from the room, closing the door after
+him in order that her appealing eyes might not cause him to deflect from
+his purpose.
+
+Poor Bibi--your rose path has come to an end, your day is nearly done.
+Back to Paris, back to the squalor and dirt of your early life. Bibi,
+now in her forty-seventh year, with the memories of her recent
+splendours still in her heart, decided to return to the stage, to the
+public who had loved and feted her. Alas! she had returned too late.
+Something was missing--the audience laughed every time she came on, and
+applauded her only when she went off. Oh, Bibi, Bibi Coeur d'Or, even
+now in this cold age our hearts ache for you. Volauvent writes in the
+_Journal_ of the period: "Bibi can dance no longer." Veaux caps it by
+saying "She never could," while S. Kayrille, well known for his wit and
+kindly humour, reviewed her in the Berlin _Gazette_ of the period by
+remarking, in his customarily brilliant manner, "She is very plain and
+no longer in her first youth." This subtle criticism of her dancing,
+though convulsing the Teutonic capital, was in reality the cause of her
+leaving the stage and retiring with her one maid to a small house in
+Montmartre, where history has it she petered out the last years of her
+eventful career.
+
+Absinthe was her one consolation, together with a miniature of Louis in
+full regalia. Who is this haggard wretch with still the vestiges of her
+wondrous beauty discernible in her perfectly moulded features?--not La
+Belle Bibi! Oh, Fate--Destiny--how cruel are you who guided her straying
+feet through the mazes of life! Why could she not have died at her
+zenith--when her portrait was painted?
+
+But still her gay humour was with her to the end. As she lay on her
+crazy bed, surrounded by priests, she made the supreme and crowning _bon
+mot_ of her brilliant life. Stretching out her wasted arm to the nearly
+empty absinthe bottle by her bed, she made a slightly resentful _moue_
+and murmured "_Encore une!_"
+
+Oh, brave, witty Bibi!
+
+
+
+
+AH! AH! QUEEN OF THE RUDE ISLANDS
+
+[Illustration: AH! AH! QUEEN OF THE RUDE ISLANDS]
+
+
+The "Rude" Islands! what a thrill that name awakes in the heart of every
+wanderer--lying as they do in the very heart of the rolling Pacific. Was
+it two or three hundred years ago that brave Joshua Mortlake discovered
+and christened them? History has it that he was standing on the poop
+deck of his schooner the "Whoops-a-Daisy" when he first beheld those
+pocket Paradises of the Pacific. He shaded his eyes with his hand and
+turned to his bosom friend--Eagle Trott:
+
+"What exactly do those islands remind you of?" he asked.
+
+Eagle looked down bashfully. "I'd rather not say," he replied.
+
+At this Joshua slapped him heartily on the back.
+
+"Stap me," he cried, using a colloquialism of the period, "if I do not
+name them the Rude Islands." And from that moment they have been known
+as nothing else.
+
+To attempt to describe the wild untameable beauty of the coast scenery
+would be almost as absurd as to endeavour to portray the seductive
+sensuality and exotic perfection of the interior landscapes--but a brief
+catalogue of some of the outstanding horticultural marvels will do no
+harm to anyone and perhaps convey to the lay mind a slight conception of
+the atmosphere in which Ah! Ah! was born and bred. For instance, the
+flowering kaia-ooh! with its exquisite perfume (suggestive of the
+Californian Poppy), the veemuawees (a small hard fruit suggestive of the
+oak apple), and the perennial "Pooh!" (merely suggestive) all combined
+to enwrap the infant Ah! Ah! in a somnolent cocoon of sensual
+languidness, from which in after life she was hard put to it to escape.
+To say that her dazzling beauty completely hypnotised any native for
+miles round into instant submission--would perhaps be exaggerating; but
+if one is to judge from the accounts of contemporary chroniclers she was
+undoubtedly attractive.
+
+For those interested in queer native traditions and legends, the origin
+of her name must indeed prove an instructive object
+lesson--intermingling as it does the austerity and reproach of the North
+with the quaint domestic charm of the further South. The story runs
+thus:
+
+When quite a child this lithe supple young thing was as full of mischief
+and engaging roguery as any tortoiseshell kitten--with elfin glee her
+favourite sport was to fill her grandmother's bed with "ouliaries" (Good
+God! berries, so called because on sudden contact with bare flesh they
+burst with a loud explosion causing the victim to shout "Good God!" from
+sheer surprise). For three months this winsome game went undetected
+until one day her mother--Kia-oopoo--discovered her creeping in at her
+grandmother's door with a basket full of "ouliaries." Catching her
+daughter by the scruff of the neck she proceeded to administer several
+sharp slaps with great precision--the while murmuring "Ah! Ah!" in tones
+of rebuke. And thus, we are informed, was originated a name that was
+destined to be handed down to every reigning queen of the Rude Islands
+until the devastating tidal wave of 1889.
+
+Ah! Ah!'s childhood was spent running completely wild with her three
+sisters "Beaoui" (meaning "Heavens Above"), "Sua-sua" (meaning "Shut
+your Face") and young "Goop" (meaning in American "Park your Fanny" and
+in English, "Sit Down").
+
+Through the long languid sunny hours they would romp in the "lovieeah"
+(long grass), or play "uou" (toss the cocoa-nut) in the "haeeiuol"
+(short grass). On moonlight nights when the tide was high they would
+fish from the reef--catching generally either "youis" (the Pacific
+haddock) or merely the common "choop" (or dab). Life was one long round
+of sport and play--until one day--to quote Hans Burdle in his
+world-famed book of Travel, "Set Sail ahoy" "the radiant Ah! Ah! awoke
+and found herself to be a woman--with a woman's joys, a woman's sorrows
+and withal the touch of a woman's hand."
+
+From that moment life in the Rude Islands became a different matter. No
+more was she to paddle in the "ku-ku" (small stream or rivulet) or chase
+the playful "erieuah" (or hooped snake, which when pursued by its
+enemies executes the most peculiar antics eventually disappearing amid a
+cloud of smoke). The responsibilities of a greater existence were
+suddenly thrust upon her--she was crowned queen.
+
+The story of the unexpected arrival of a Presbyterian missionery in the
+midst of her coronation feast is too well known to repeat--and the tale
+of the landing of eight Bhuddist monks during the christening of her
+first child is now so hackneyed as to be irritating; therefore we will
+skip the minor incidents of the early part of her reign and mention a
+few of the progressive improvements on existing conditions which found
+their source in her tireless and fertile brain.
+
+To begin with she abolished the "plozza" (or notched club), substituting
+in its place the "sneep" (a subtle instrument of torture which by means
+of the sudden expenditure of the breath would cover one's enemies with
+"noonies") (or red ants).
+
+Then, though flying in the face of time-honoured tradition, the
+courageous woman completely forbade cannibalism among blood relations;
+condemning this practice under the heading of "gavonah" (or incestuous
+conduct) and thereby putting an end to many rowdy Sunday evenings.
+
+Not content with these vast changes in the fundamental Island habits she
+concentrated her unfailing energies on the reformation of the marriage
+laws, which at that time were in a deplorably decadent condition, and
+encouraged with all her might the trade of "fuahs" and "aeious" (nose
+rings and hair tidies) with the "Bauoacha" Islands a few miles off.
+Until the ripe age of eighty-seven she ruled her subjects trustingly and
+lovingly--yet withal firmly--earning for herself from all the British
+traders the nickname of "Queen Bess of the Pacific."
+
+After her death her eldest illegitimate son, Boo-ah (Goodness Gracious)
+ascended the throne, and--if we are to believe Professor Furch's "With
+Dusky Friends"--went far towards undoing the unbelievable good worked by
+his unflinching mother.
+
+* * *
+
+I have included Ah! Ah! in these memoirs--in the face of almost
+overwhelming opposition (mainly on account of race prejudice) in the
+first place because she was as beautiful and authoritative as any of the
+European queens--and secondly because Ah! Ah! for me stands for
+something ineffably noble, inspiring--not perhaps for what she has
+done--maybe more for the things she left undone.
+
+
+
+
+GLOSSARY
+
+
+BALOONA, ENRIQUE. Artist and _dilettante_, famous for his "Portrait of
+Isabella Angelica," "Spanish Peaks," and "Half-Caste Child with Orange."
+
+BEN-HEPPLE, NICHOLAS. Eighteenth century historian. Author of "Julie de
+Poopinac" (17 vols.).
+
+BLOODWORTHY, STEPHEN. Author of "International Beauties," "Then and
+Now," and "Now and Then."
+
+BOGTOE, DOUGLAS. Company promoter and basket-work expert.
+
+BONK, DOROTHY. First cousin to Rupert Plinge--incidentally the first New
+England girl to say "Gosh!"
+
+BOO, A. RANVILLE. Celebrated XIXth century sanitary inspector.
+
+BOTTIBURGEN, HANS VON. Science master, Munich College. Author of "Our
+Women," "Do Actresses Mind Much?" and "Life of Fritz Schnotter" (3
+vols.).
+
+BOTTLE, ELIZABETH. Adapter and translator of several works of the
+period.
+
+BOVINE, GUSTAVE. Author of "French without Tears" and "Vive les
+Vacances," etc.
+
+BOWLES, EARL. "Intellects of the Hour," "Cheese Cookery in All Its
+Branches."
+
+BRAMP, B. F. "America in Sunshine and Shadow," "Pinafore Days."
+
+BRAMP, NORMAN. Author of "Up and Away," "Reynard, the Story of a Fox,"
+"Tantivoy," and "Female Influence and Why?" (5 vols.).
+
+BRAMPENRICH, FRITZ. German historian.
+
+BRATTLEVITCH, BORIS. Russian author. Books: "War and Why," "Women of
+Russia." Several good cooking recipes.
+
+BUG, REGINALD. Actor--occasional property man. Parts he played: "Romeo,"
+"Bottom," "Third Guest" in "The Berlin Girl," "Norman" in "Oh,
+Charles--a Satire on the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew," and others.
+Hobbies: Cup-and-ball, tilting, and fretwork.
+
+BURDLE, HANS. Bulgarian author; Works: "Set Sail Ahoy," "Abaft,"
+"Belay," etc.
+
+CABALLERO, BASTA. Actor and founder of Shakespearean Theatre in
+Barcelona.
+
+CAMPANELE, VITTORIO. Florentine engraver, "Early Portrait of Bianca di
+Pianno-Forti," "Raised Pansies on China Plaque," etc.
+
+CAMPBELL, OLAF. Keen angler and piscatorial expert.
+
+CARLINI, ANGELO. Italian actor--formerly plumber during the Renaissance.
+
+CHADDLE, ESME. Daughter of Avery Chaddle, and subsequently Mrs. J. D.
+Spout.
+
+CHAFFINCH, ALEXANDER. Second cousin to Rupert Plinge; second man to say
+"Gee!" in Virginia.
+
+CHUGGSKI, DIMITRI. Russian actor.
+
+CODDLE, HUMPHREY. Artist, well known for his "Cows Grazing outside
+Dover," "Playmates," and "Daddy's Darling."
+
+CRONK, OSWALD, BART. Painter of "Madcap Moll, Eighth Duchess of
+Wapping," "Pine Trees near Ascot," and "Esther Lollop as 'Cymbeline.'"
+
+DENTIFRICE, PIERRE. Actor--French (early).
+
+DUGAZ, PIERRE. Court chiropodist, seventeenth century. Author of "Feet
+and Fashion," "The Valley of Waving Corns," etc.
+
+EARWHACKER, CAESAR. Owner of Old World Bicycle Shed.
+
+FIBINIO, PIETRO. Italian--author of "Bianca," "God Bless the Pope," etc.
+
+FLOOP, RICHARD. "Spout, the Man" (3 vols.); "The Girls of Marley Manor"
+and "Janet's Prank."
+
+FOLLYGOB, ALAN. English Dramatic Critic. Clubs: "The Union Jack" and
+"The What-Ho" in Jermyn Street.
+
+FORTESCUE, EX-SENATOR. Celebrated for eloping with Rupert Plinge's
+Auntie Gracie.
+
+FRAPPLE, ERNEST. "Amy Snurge, A Grand Woman" (2 vols.) and a political
+satire, "Don't Vote Till Tuesday!"
+
+FURCH, PROFESSOR, "With Dusky Friends" and "Where Palm Trees Sway."
+
+GERPHIPPS, RONALD. Very old Scotch painter--famous for "Portrait of
+Maggie McWhistle," "Evening on Loch Lomond," and "Glasgow, my Glasgow!"
+
+GOETHE. Obscure German author. Suspected of having written "Faust."
+
+GOODGE, ALBERT. Friend of Nicholas Kewee.
+
+GROBMEYER, CARL. Early German etcher.
+
+GRUNDELHEIM, PAUL. German author and historian. Principal works:
+"Toilers who have Toiled," "Women of Wurtemburg," and "Byways of the
+Black Forest."
+
+HOOTER, FREDDIE. Renowned for physical appearance but flat feet.
+
+HOSPER, SHOLTO Z. "Jake the Climber" (7 vols.) and "Diet or Die."
+
+KAYRILLE, SIEGFRIED. Born in Berlin, 1670. Disappointed playwright, and
+subsequent art critic.
+
+KEWEE, NICHOLAS. Friend of Albert Goodge.
+
+KLICK, NICHOLAS. Russian--author of "Life of Anna Podd" (6 vols.), and
+"Was Ivan Terrible?"
+
+KUMP, H. MACKENZIE. Keen philanthropist and insatiable globe-trotter.
+
+LINCOLN, ABRAHAM. President and man.
+
+MACTWEED, SANDY. Scotch actor of some note.
+
+MARY, BLOODY. Queen of England.
+
+METTLETHORP, RUPERT. Compiler of "Asiatic Soldiery" (23 vols.).
+
+MILLS-TWEEPER, SENATOR. Famed for hideousness, but kind-hearted and a
+great insect lover.
+
+MORTLAKE, JOSHUA. Explorer and discoverer of the Rude Islands.
+
+PIDD, HENRY. Severe dramatic critic--English.
+
+PIPPER, HERMAN. "Poor Puffwater,--A Brown Study."
+
+PLIGGER, STEVE MONTESPAN. "The Fall of a Bloated Aristocrat," "Crab
+Apples," "Deadly Nightshade," "Don't Tell Aunt Hester," "Under the Moon,
+or Revels by a Dutch Canal," "America From Behind"; Books of Verse:
+"Adown the Ganges," "The First Primrose," "Pussy, Pussy, Lap Your Milk"
+and "Raspberry Time."
+
+PLINGE, BOBBIE. Killed during Red Indian foray by Great Brown Spratt.
+
+PLINGE, MILES. Unitarian minister in Red Lamp District, Honolulu.
+
+PLUGG, HENRY. One time candidate for the Presidency, subsequently
+successful bee-farmer.
+
+POLATA, JOSE. Professor--Spanish. Author of "From Girl to Woman,"
+"Spanish Olives, and How," etc., etc.
+
+POLIOLIOLI, GIUSEPPE. Author of "Women of Italy" and "Nelly of Naples,"
+a musical comedy of the period.
+
+PRICKLEBOTT, HARVEY. Editor of "Art in the Home" and "Mother Week by
+Week."
+
+PROON, BERNARD. Well-known speaker, intimate friend of Roosevelt's
+brother-in-law.
+
+PUNTER, AUGUSTUS. Seventeenth century painter, famous for "Sarah, Lady
+Tunnell-Penge, with Dog," "Gravesend by Night," and various crayon
+portraits, notably "A Merry Girl" and "The Drowsy Sentry."
+
+ROOSEVELT, THEODORE. Man and President.
+
+ROTEPILLAR, PETER. Friend of Henry Plugg and author and compiler of
+"Algebra with Many a Laugh!"
+
+ROUSSEAU, JEAN JACQUES. French writer of some note. See Carlyle's
+"French Revolution."
+
+SCHNOTTER, FRITZ. German actor, sixteenth century.
+
+SHEEPMEADOW, EDGAR. English writer--author of "Beds and their Inmates"
+(18 vols.), "The Corn Chandler," "Women Large and Women Small" (10
+vols.).
+
+SODDLE, O'CALLAGHAN. Gentleman architect of the XIXth century.
+
+SPRATT, GREAT BROWN. Indian of the period.
+
+STOWE, HARRIET BEECHER. Author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
+
+SUMPLETHOCK, EX-PRESIDENT. Spaniel trainer and "raconteur."
+
+TADSKI, SERGE. Early, fairly. Russian. Author and compiler of the
+following: "Russian Realism," "Natural Mammals of the Steppes," "Flora
+and Fauna of Siberia," etc., and light verse.
+
+THROTCH, ESTHER. Well-known XXth century "literateur."
+
+TOSSELE, YVONNE, MME. First female mezzotinter of the Revolutionary Era.
+
+TROTT, EAGLE. Mate and pal of Joshua Mortlake.
+
+TURPIN, DICK. Highwayman--English. Inventor of straw sun hats for hot
+horses.
+
+UDEY, GENERAL. Congenital idiot of the XIXth century (and very mean).
+
+VEAUX, PAUL. Art critic--Paris.
+
+VEIGEL, HERMAN. German poet--famous for "Twilight Fancies," "There was a
+Garden," and "Collected Poems, including 'The Ballad of Crazy Bertha.'"
+
+VOLAUVENT, ARMAND. Art critic--Paris.
+
+VOLTAIRE (Christian name unknown). Old writer--French.
+
+WAFFLE, RAYMOND. Georgian writer. Author of "Our Dogs," "Canine Cameos,"
+and "Pretty Rover, the Story of a Boarhound."
+
+WEEDHEIN, H. "Columbia, Beware!" (8 vols.).
+
+
+
+
+PRESS NOTICES
+
+
+CLAGMOUTH CHRONICLE: "A book to be taken up and put down again."
+
+EAST BROMLEY ADVERTISER: "This is a book!"
+
+THE GIRLS' GLOBE: "Every young girl should read this."
+
+_Doctor Cheval_ in ADVICE TO A MOTHER: "No bedside table is complete
+without 'Terribly Intimate Portraits.'"
+
+_Joe Bogworth_ in CAPITAL AND LABOUR says: "This book is perhaps the
+greatest power for good or evil in democratic England or aristocratic
+America either, for that matter. Though obviously the work of a thinker,
+should it by any chance fall into the wrong hands it would go far
+towards undermining not only the League of Nations, but the London
+County Council to boot!"
+
+_Aunt Hilda_ in FIRESIDE FUN says: "Darling chicks, get your mumsie to
+buy you 'Terribly Intimate Portraits' for your birthday."
+
+_Lady Minerva Stuffe_ in UNDIES writes: "Well-dressed women will eagerly
+peruse these fascinating memoirs."
+
+THE PLAYING FIELD: "'Chaps'! Read this book."
+
+THE POLITICAL GAZETTE: "Well done, Noel Coward! Bravo, Lorn
+Macnaughtan!"
+
+_Herr von Grob_ in THE AUSTRIAN TYROL: "Gott in Himmel!"
+
+CHICKEN CHAT: "I advise keen poultry keepers to buy and read 'Terribly
+Intimate Portraits.'"
+
+CRI DE PARIS: "Ce livre n'est pas seulement stupide, mais c'est
+excessivement irritant, et absolument sans humeur." (Translation: "This
+book is not only charming, but it is excessively entertaining and
+brilliantly humorous.")
+
+CLAYBANK COURIER: "Once read--never forgotten."
+
+WIGAN WORLD: "Splendid for those just learning to read."
+
+BOXING WEEKLY: "Dam' good!"
+
+
+WHAT THE AMERICAN PRESS MAY SAY:
+
+VANITY FAIR: "A book for ladies and gentlemen."
+
+NEW YORK TIMES: "This book treats a delicate theme in the most
+indelicate fashion possible."
+
+THE DIAL: "The parabolics are unevenly balanced."
+
+_George Jean Nathan_: "Eugene O'Neill remains our only dramatist."
+
+LIFE: "Noel Coward's first and best book."
+
+PAPER TRADE JOURNAL: "The sulphite used in the paper of 'Terribly
+Intimate Portraits' is of excellent quality."
+
+JUDGE: "Two hundred and twelve pages."
+
+REVIEW OF REVIEWS: "Some of it is better than the rest."
+
+THE WORLD: "H. the 3d says that this book makes better paper dolls than
+any he has read for a long time."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Famous for being the means of introducing hornless cattle into the
+Gironde.
+
+[2] Nicholas Ben-Hepple declares that he married her solely on account
+of her "dot"!
+
+[3] The extracts here quoted translated by Elizabeth Bottle.
+
+[4] Lord Edmunde Budde married the notorious Gertrude Pippin: see
+"Family Failings," by Bloody Mary.
+
+[5] See Norman Bramp's "Female Influence, and Why," Vol. V.
+
+[6] It has never yet been ascertained exactly why Madcap Moll rode to
+Norwich, but many conjectures have been hazarded.
+
+[7] Poliolioli contends that there were five hundred and eighty-five
+guests. This, I think, may be treated as a moot point.
+
+[8] October 14th. Poliolioli contests that it was the 17th, but this, I
+venture to say, is even a "mooter" point than the other.
+
+[9] Excavated B.C. 8.
+
+[10] Periodicals:--"The Corn Chandler," by Sheepmeadow; "Sidelights on
+the Salic Law," Anonymous; "The Stage versus the Church," edited
+alternately by Nell Gwyn and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
+
+[11] Two years before Punter's portrait.
+
+[12] "Beds and their Inmates," Vol. III., by Edgar Sheepmeadow (18
+vols).
+
+[13] These are all in the Brighton Aquarium.
+
+[14] At Pragg Castle, near Hull.
+
+[15] See Sheepmeadow's "Heroines and their Diseases."
+
+[16] Von Bottiburgen, science master at the Munich College, author and
+compiler of the following:--"Our Women"; "Do Actresses Mind Much?";
+"Life of Fritz Schnotter."
+
+[17] For example, "Spout the Man," 3 vols.--Richard Floop; "Jake the
+Climber," 7 vols.--Sholto Z. Hosper.
+
+[18] "Fruit as a Decoration," "With Shaggy Four Legged Playmates" and
+"Bhuddism as Opposed to Electricity."
+
+[19] Spanish equivalent to "tag" or "he."
+
+[20] Bolawalla--Spanish equivalent for "mullet."
+
+[21] Bloodworthy says: "It was her fond boast that she never hid him in
+the same tree twice."
+
+[22] Bloodworthy, in telling the story, says that only one tear fell;
+but Bloodworthy, brilliant recorder as he was, was occasionally
+prejudiced.
+
+[23] The reproduction on page 134 from the celebrated picture by
+Gerphipps--in oils at the National Gallery, in water colour at the Tate
+Gallery, and in Paripan at the Edinburgh Art Museum.
+
+[24] The picture represents Maggie at the end of the second week.
+
+[25] Except on one occasion. For particulars, see Boris Brattlevitch's
+"Women of Russia."
+
+[26] According to Mettlethorp's "Asiatic Soldiery," Vol. VII.
+
+[27] See Tadski's "Natural Mammals of the Steppes."
+
+[28] During the celebrated rising in 1682.
+
+[29] For full reference, see Dulwich Library--'buses Nos. 48 and 75 and
+L.C.C. trams; change at Camberwell Green.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Terribly Intimate Portraits, by Noel Coward
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TERRIBLY INTIMATE PORTRAITS ***
+
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