R. F.

* * * * *

A MASTER OF GROTESQUE.

The Leicester Galleries for laughter just now!  For the walls of the inner room are hung with drawings by Mr. H.M.  BATEMAN, not a few of which—­such as “The Leave Wangler,” and “The Man who Clung to the Railings,” and “The Infectious Hornpipe”—­have already rejoiced the readers of Punch.

Mr. BATEMAN’S appeal is double, for, having enjoyed his broad or subtle farce and his keen satirical observations, one may turn to the admiration of his technique, or vice versa*.  He did not invent the idea of the humorous sequence—­the accumulative pictorial comedy; CARAN D’ACHE had come before, and before CARAN D’ACHE was WILHELM BUSCH, the German; but he has made it his own to-day.  Some of his series are irresistible.  As a delineator of types, accurate beneath the caricature, he is deadly; particularly, perhaps, when he turns his attention to the Senior Service.  But his Brigadiers and his Clubmen are also always within an ace of being identifiable.

For anyone in the dumps Mr. Punch prescribes a speedy visit to the Leicester Galleries.

* * * * *

    OUR PLUTOCRATIC CLERGY.

    “Curate wanted.  L22. 2 churches.  E.P.”

    Church Times.

[Illustration:  Mabel (to newly-married sister). “YOU DON’T MIND ME STILL CALLING YOU ‘SYBIL,’ DO YOU?”]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(By Mr. Punch’s Staff of Learned Clerks.)

MR. JOHN GALSWORTHY is a most deceptive writer.  He lures a reader on by a display of gentleness and smoothness and moderation, and then turns on him and makes it plain that he is really a most provocative fellow and is engaged in matching his mind against yours.  He tries to commit you to some such statement as this:  “The allegiance of the workman in time of peace is not rendered to the State, but to himself and his own class.”  Or this:  “I think editors, journalists, old gentlemen and women will be brutalised [by the War] in larger numbers than our soldiers.”  Or this:  “This is at once a spiritual link with America and yet one of the great barriers to friendship between the two peoples.  We are not sure whether we are better men than Americans.”  Or this:  “My mind is open, and when one says that, one generally means that it is shut.”  Disconcerting, very, and all to be found in Another Sheaf (HEINEMANN).  Mr. GALSWORTHY’S chief object in his little book is to arouse us to the disgrace and destruction of our State and race if we continue to allow ourselves to be fed, not by our own resources, but by alien corn and meat, which may so easily become hostile corn and meat.  Incidentally Mr. GALSWORTHY finds that we are in the mass far too ugly.  For instance, how few of us have chiselled nostrils!  We ought not to eat so much pure white flour.