THE OLD YOUNG WOMAN AND THE NEW.
"Providence has granted what I dared not hope for," wrote Cecilia to the
President.
"If she had hoped for it, Providence would not have granted it,"
interpolated the Honorary Trier.
"This is hardly the moment for jesting," said Lillie, with marked pique.
"Pardon me. The moment for jesting is surely when you have received a
blow. In a happy crisis jesting is a waste of good jokes. The retiring
candidate does not state _what_ Providence has granted, does she?"
"No," said Lillie savagely. "She was extremely reticent about her
history--reticent almost to the point of indiscretion. But I daresay
it's a husband."
"Ah, then it can hardly be Providence that has granted it," said
Silverdale.
"Providence is not always kindly," said Lillie laughing. The gibe at
Benedicts restored her good-humor and when the millionaire strolled into
the Club she did not immediately expel him.
"Well, Lillie," he said, "when are you going to give the _soirée_ to
celebrate the foundation of the Club? I am staying in town expressly for
it."
"As soon as possible, father. I am only waiting for some more members."
"Why, have you any difficulty about getting enough? I seem always to be
meeting young ladies on the staircases."
"We are so exclusive."
"So it seems. You exclude even me," grumbled the millionaire. "I can't
make out why you are so hard to please. A more desirable lot of young
ladies I never wish to see. I should never have believed it possible
that such a number of pretty girls would be anxious to remain single
merely for the sake of a principle."
"You see!" said Lillie eagerly, "we shall be a standing proof to men of
how little they have understood our sex."
"Men do not need any proof of that," remarked Lord Silverdale dryly.
This time it was Lillie whom Turple the magnificent prevented from
making the retort which was not on the tip of her tongue.
"A gentleman who gives his name as a lady is waiting in the ante-room,"
he announced.
They all stared hard at Turple the magnificent, almost tempted to
believe he was joking and that the end of the world was at hand.
But the countenance of Turple the magnificent was as stolid and
expressionless as a Bath bun. He might have been beaming behind his
face, possibly even the Old Maids' Club tickled him vastly, so that his
mental midriff was agitated convulsively; but this could not be known by
outsiders.
Lillie took the card he tendered her and read aloud: "Nelly Nimrod."
"Nelly Nimrod!" cried the Honorary Trier. "Why, that's the famous girl
who travelled from Charing Cross to China-Tartary on an elephant and
wrote a book about it under the pen-name of Wee Winnie."
"Shall I show him in?" interposed Turple the magnificent.
"Certainly," said Lillie eagerly. "Father, you must go."
"Oh, no! Not if it's only a gentleman."
"It may be only no lady," murmured Silverdale. Lillie caught the words
and turned upon him the dusky splendors of her fulminant eyes.
"_Et tu, Brute!_" she said. "Do you too hold that false theory that
womanliness consists in childishness?"
"No, nor that other false theory that it consists in manliness,"
retorted the Honorary Trier.
The entry of Nelly Nimrod put an end to the dispute. In the excitement
of the moment no one noticed that the millionaire was still leaning
against an epigram.
"Good-morning, Miss Dulcimer. I am charmed to make your acquaintance,"
said Wee Winnie, gripping the President's soft hand with painful
cordiality. She was elegantly attired in a white double-breasted
waistcoat, a zouave jacket, a check-tweed skirt, gaiters, a three inch
collar, a tricorner hat, a pair of tanned gloves and an eyeglass. In her
hand she carried an ebony stick. Her hair was parted at the side. Nelly
was nothing if not original, so that when the spectator looked down for
the divided skirt he was astonished not to find it. Wee Winnie in fact
considered it ungraceful and _Divide et Impera_ a contradiction in
terms. She was a tall girl, and looked handsome even under the most
masculine conditions.
"I am happy to make yours," returned the President. "Is it to join the
Old Maids' Club that you have called?"
"It is. Wherever there is a crusade you will always find me in the van.
I don't precisely know your objects yet, but any woman who strikes out
anything new commands my warmest sympathies."
"Be seated, Miss Nimrod. Allow me to introduce Lord Silverdale--an old
friend of mine."
"And of mine," replied Nelly, bowing with a sweet smile.
"Indeed!" cried Lillie flushing.
"In the spirit, only in the spirit," said Nelly. "His lordship's 'Poems
of Passion' formed my sole reading in the deserts of China-Tartary."
"In the letter, you should say then," said the peer. "By the way, you
are confusing me with a minor poet, Silverplume, and his book is not
called Poems of Passion but Poems of Compassion."
"Ah well, there isn't much difference," said Nelly.
"No, according to the proverb Compassion _is_ akin to Passion," admitted
Silverdale.
"Well, Miss Nimrod," put in Lillie, "our object is easily defined. We
are an association of young and beautiful girls devoted to celibacy in
order to modify the meaning of the term 'Old Maid.'"
Nelly Nimrod started up enthusiastically.
"Bravo, old girl!" she cried, slapping the President on the back. "Put
me down for a flag. I catch the conception of the campaign. It is
magnificent."
"But it is not war," said Lillie. "Our methods are peaceful,
unaggressive. Our platform is merely metaphorical. Our lesson is the
self-sufficiency of spinsterhood. We preach it by existing."
"Not exist by preaching it," added Silverdale. "This is not one of the
cliques of the shrieking sisterhood?"
"What do you mean by the term shrieking sisterhood," said Nelly. "I use
it to denote the mice-fearing classes."
"Hear, hear," said Lillie. "It is true, Miss Nimrod, that our members
are required not to exhibit in public, but only because that is a part
of the old unhappy signification of 'Old Maid.'"
"I quite understand. You would not call a book a public exhibition of
oneself, I suppose."
"Certainly not--if it is an autobiography," said Silverdale.
"That's all right then. My book _is_ autobiographical."
"I knew a celebrity once," said Silverdale, "a dreadfully shy person.
All his life he lived retired from the world, and even after his death
he concealed himself behind an autobiography."
Lillie frowned at these ironical insinuations, though Miss Nimrod
appeared impervious to them.
"I have not concealed myself," she said simply. "All I thought and did
is written in my book."
"I liked that part about the fleas," murmured the millionaire.
"What's that? Didn't catch that," said Nelly, looking round in the
direction of the voice.
"Good gracious, father, haven't you gone?" cried Lillie, no less
startled. "It's too bad. You are spoiling one of my best epigrams.
Couldn't you lean against something else?"
Before the millionaire could be got rid of, Turple the magnificent
reappeared.
"A lady who gives the name of a gentleman," he said.
The assemblage pricked up its ears.
"What name?" asked Lillie.
"Miss Jack, she said."
"That's her surname," said Lillie, in a disappointed tone.
Turple the magnificent stood reproved a moment, then he went out to
fetch the lady. The gathering was already so large that Lillie thought
there was nothing to be gained by keeping her waiting.
Miss Jack proved to be an extremely eligible candidate so far as
appearances went. She bowed stiffly on being introduced to Miss Nimrod.
"May I ask if that is to be the uniform of the Old Maids' Club?" she
inquired of the President. "Because if so I am afraid I have made a
mistaken journey. It is as a protest against unconventional females that
I designed to join you."
[Illustration: "_Is that the uniform of the Old Maids' Club?_"]
"Is it to me you are referring as an unconventional female?" asked Miss
Nimrod, bridling up.
"Certainly," replied Miss Jack, with exquisite politeness. "I lay stress
upon your sex, merely because it is not obvious."
"Well, I _am_ an unconventional female, and I glory in it," said Nelly
Nimrod, seating herself astride the sofa. "I did not expect to hear the
provincial suburban note struck within these walls. I claim the right of
every woman to lead her own life in her own toilettes."
"And a pretty life you have led!"
"I have, indeed!" cried Miss Nimrod, goaded almost to oratory by Miss
Jack's taunts. "Not the ugly, unlovely life of the average woman. I have
exhausted all the sensations which are the common guerdon of youth and
health and high spirits, and which have for the most part been selfishly
monopolized by man. The splendid audacity of youth has burnt in my veins
and fired me to burst my swaddling clothes and strike for the
emancipation of my sex. I have not merely played cricket in a white
shirt and lawn tennis in a blue serge skirt, I have not only skated in
low-heeled boots and fenced in corduroy knickerbockers, but I have
sailed the seas in an oil-skin jacket and a sou'-wester and swum them in
nothing and walked beneath them in the diver's mail. I have waded after
salmon in long boots and caught trout in tweed knickerbockers and spats.
Nay, more! I have proclaimed the dignity of womanhood upon the moors,
and have shot grouse in brown leather gaiters and a sweet Norfolk jacket
with half-inch tucks. But this is not the climax, I have----"
[Illustration: _Wee Winnie on her Travels._]
"Yes, I know. You are Wee Winnie. You travelled alone from Charing Cross
to China-Tartary. I have not read your book, but I have heard of it."
"And what have you heard of it?"
"That it is in bad taste."
"Your remark is in worse," interposed Lillie severely.
"Ladies, ladies!" murmured Silverdale. "This is the first time we have
had two of them in the room together," he thought. "I suppose when the
thing is once started we shall change the name to the Kilkenny Cats'
Club."
"In bad taste, is it?" said Miss Nimrod, promptly whipping a book out of
her skirt pocket. "Well, here is the book. If you can find one passage
in bad taste I'll--I'll delete it in the next edition. There!"
She pushed the book into the hands of Miss Jack, who took it rather
reluctantly.
"What's this?" asked Miss Jack, pointing to a weird illustration.
"That's a picture of me on my elephant, sketched by myself. Do you mean
to say there's any bad taste about that?"
"Oh, no; I merely asked for information. I didn't know what animal it
was."
"You astonish me," said the artist. "Have you never been to a circus?
Yes, this is Mumbo Jumbo himself."
"Surely, Miss Jack," said Lord Silverdale gravely. "You must have heard,
if you have not read, how Miss Nimrod chartered an elephant, packed up
her Kodak and a few bonnet-boxes and rode him on the curb through
Central Asia. But may I ask, Miss Nimrod, why you did not enrich the
book with more sketches? There is only this one. All the rest are
Kodaks."
"Well, you see, Lord Silverdale, it's simpler to photograph."
"Perhaps, but your readers miss the artistic quality that pervades this
sketch. I am glad you made an exception in its favor."
"Oh, only because one can't Kodak oneself. Everything else I caught as I
flew past."
"Did you catch any Tartars?"
"Hundreds. I destroyed most of them."
"By the way, you did not come across Mr. Fladpick in Tartary?"
"The English Shakespeare? Oh, yes! I lunched with him. He is charm----"
"Ah, here are the fleas!" interrupted Miss Jack.
The millionaire started as if he had been stung.
"I won't have them taken apart from the context, I warn you. That
wouldn't be fair," said Miss Nimrod.
"Very well, I will read the whole passage," said Miss Jack.
"'Mumbo Jumbo bucked violently (_see illustration_) but I settled myself
tightly on the saddle and gave myself up to meditations on the vanity of
Life-guardsmen. Mumbo Jumbo seemed, however, determined to have his
fling, and bounded about with the agility of an india-rubber ball. At
last his convulsions became so terrific that I grew quite nervous about
my fragile bonnet-boxes. They might easily dash one another to bits. I
determined to have leather hat-boxes the next time I travelled in
untrodden paths. "Steady, my beauty, steady!" I cried. Recognizing my
familiar accents, my pet easied a little. To pacify him entirely I
whistled 'Ba, ba, ba, boodle-dee,' to him, but his contortions
recommenced and became quite grotesque. First he lifted one paw high in
the air, then he twirled his trunk round the corner, then the first paw
came down with a thud that shook the desert, while the other three paws
flew up towards the sky. It suddenly occurred to me that he was dancing
to the air of 'Ba, ba, ba, boodle-dee,' and I laughed so loud and long,
that any stray Mahatma who happened to be smoking at the door of his
cave in the cool of the evening must have thought me mad. But while I
was laughing, Mumbo Jumbo continued to stand upon his tail, so that I
saw it could not be 'Ba, ba, ba, boodle-dee' he was suffering from. I
wondered whether perhaps he could be teething--or should I say, tusking?
I do not know whether elephants get a second set, or whether they cut
their wisdom tusks, but, as they are so sagacious, I suppose they do.
Suddenly the consciousness of what was really the matter with him
flashed sharply upon my brain. I looked down upon my hand, and there,
poised lightly yet firmly, like a butterfly on a lily, was a giant flea.
Instantly, without uttering a single cry or reeling in my saddle, I
grasped the situation; and coolly seizing the noxious insect with my
other hand, I choked the life out of him, while Mumbo Jumbo cantered
along in restored calm. The sensitive beast had evidently been suffering
untold agonies.'"
"Now, Lord Silverdale," said Miss Nimrod, "I appeal to you. Is there
anything in that passage in the least calculated to bring a blush to the
cheek of the young person?"
"No, there is not," said his lordship emphatically. "Only I wish you had
caught that flea with your Kodak."
"Why?" said Miss Nimrod.
"Because I have always longed to see him. A flea that could penetrate
the pachydermatous hide of an elephant must have been, indeed, a
monster. In England we only see that sort under microscopes. They seem
to thrive nowhere else. Yours must have been one that had escaped from
under the lens. He was magnified three thousand diameters and he never
recovered from it. You probably took him over in your trunk."
"Oh, no, I'm sure I didn't," protested Miss Nimrod.
"Well, then, Mumbo Jumbo did in his."
"Excuse me," interposed Miss Jack. "We are getting off the point. I did
not say the passage was calculated to raise a blush, I said it was a
grave error of taste."
"It is a mere flea-bite," broke in the millionaire, impatiently. "I
liked it when I first read it, and I like it now I hear it again. It is
a touch of nature that brings the Tartary traveller home to every
fireside."
"Besides," added Lord Silverdale. "The introduction of the butterfly and
the lily makes it quite poetical."
"Ladies and gentlemen," interposed the President, at last, "we are not
here to discuss entomology or æsthetics. You stated, Miss Jack, that you
thought of joining us as a protest against female unconventionally."
"I said unconventional females," persisted Miss Jack.
"Even so, I do not follow you," said Lillie.
"It is extremely simple. I am unable to marry because I have a frank
nature, not given to feigning or fawning. I cannot bring a husband what
he expects nowadays in a wife."
"What is that?" inquired Lillie curiously.
"A chum," answered Miss Jack. "Formerly a man wanted a wife, now he
wants a woman to sympathize with his intellectual interests, to talk
with him intelligently about his business, discuss politics with
him--nay, almost to smoke with him. Tobacco for two is destined to be
the ideal of the immediate future. The girls he favors are those who
flatter him by imitating him. It is women like Wee Winnie who have
depraved his taste. There is nothing the natural man craves less for
than a clever, learned wife. Only he has been talked over into believing
that he needs intellectual companionship, and now he won't be happy till
he gets it. I have escaped politics and affairs all my life, and I am
determined not to marry into them."
"What a humiliating confession!" sneered Miss Nimrod. "It is a pity you
don't wear doll's-clothes."
"I claim for every woman the right to live her own life in her own
toilettes," retorted Miss Jack. "The sneers about dolls are threadbare.
I have watched these intellectual camaraderies, and I say they are a
worse injustice to woman than any you decry."
"That sounds a promising paradox," muttered Lord Silverdale.
"The man expects the woman to talk politics--but he refuses to take a
reciprocal interest in the woman's sphere of work. He will not talk
nursery or servants. He will preach economy, but he will not talk it."
"That is true," said Lillie impressed. "What reply would you make to
that, Miss Nimrod?"
"There is no possible reply," said Miss Jack hurriedly. "So much for the
mock equality which is the cant of the new husbandry. How stands the
account with the new young womanhood? The young ladies who are clamoring
for equality with men want to eat their cake and to have it too. They
want to wear masculine hats, yet to keep them on in the presence of
gentlemen; to compete with men in the market-place, yet to take their
seats inside omnibuses on wet days and outside them on sunny; to be
'pals' with men in theatres and restaurants and shirk their share of the
expenses. I once knew a girl named Miss Friscoe who cultivated Platonic
relations with young men, but never once did she pay her half of the
hansom."
"Pardon me," interrupted Wee Winnie. "My whole life gives the lie to
your superficial sarcasm. In my anxiety to escape these obvious
objurgations I have even, I admit it, gone to the opposite extreme. I
have made it a point to do unto men as they would have done unto me, if
I had not anticipated them. I always defray the bill at the restaurants,
buy the stalls at the box-office and receive the curses of the cabman.
If I see a young gentleman to the train, I always get his ticket for him
and help him into the carriage. If I convey him to a ball, I bring him a
button-hole, compliment him upon his costume and say soft nothings about
his moustache, while if I go to a dance alone I stroll in about one in
the morning, survey mankind through my eyeglass, loll a few minutes in
the doorway, then go downstairs to interview the supper, and having
sated myself with chicken, champagne and trifle return to my club."
"To your club!" exclaimed the millionaire.
"Yes--do you think the Old Maids' is the only one in London? Mine is the
Lady Travellers'--do you know it, Miss Dulcimer?"
"No--o," said Lillie shamefacedly. "I only know the Writers'."
"Why, are you a member of that? I'm a member, too. It's getting a great
club now, what with Ellaline Rand (Andrew Dibdin, you know) and Frank
Maddox and Lillie Dulcimer. I wonder we haven't met there."
"I'm so taken up with my own club," explained Lillie.
"Naturally. But you must come and dine with me some evening at the Lady
Travellers'--snug little club--much cosier than the Junior Widows', and
they give you a better bottle of wine, and then the decorations are so
sweetly pretty. The only advantage the Junior Widows' has over the Lady
Travellers' is the lovely smoking-room lined with mirrors, which makes
it much nicer when you have men to dinner. I always ask them there."
"Why, are you allowed to have men?" asked Miss Jack.
"Certainly--in the dining and smoking rooms. Then of course there are
special gentlemen's nights. We get down a lot of music-hall talent just
to let them have a peep into Bohemia."
"But how can you be a member of the Junior Widows'?" asked the
millionaire.
"Oh, I'm not an original member. But when they were in want of funds
they let a lot of married women and girls in, without asking questions."
"I suppose, though, they all look forward to becoming widows in time,"
observed Silverdale cheerfully.
"Oh no," replied Miss Nimrod emphatically. "I don't say that if they
hadn't let me in, the lovely smoking-room lined with mirrors mightn't
have tempted me to marry so as to qualify myself. But as it is, thank
Heaven, I'm an Old Maid for life. Why should I give up my freedom and
the comforts of my club and saddle myself with a husband who would want
to monopolize my society and who would be jealous of my bachelor friends
and want me to cut them, who would hanker to read my letters, who would
watch my comings and goings, and open my parcels of cosmetics marked
confectionery? Doubtless in the bad old times which Miss Jack has the
inaptitude to regret, marriage was the key to comparative freedom, but
in these days when woman has at last emancipated herself from the
thraldom of mothers, it would be the height of folly to replace them by
husbands. Will you tell me, Miss Jack, what marriage has to offer to a
woman like me?"
"Nothing," replied Miss Jack.
"Aha! You admit it!" cried Miss Nimrod triumphantly. "Why should I
embrace a profession to which I feel no call? Marriage has practically
nothing to offer any independent woman except a trousseau, wedding
presents, and the jealousy of her female friends. But what are these
weighed against the cramping of her individuality? Perhaps even children
come to fetter her life still more and she has daughters who grow up to
be younger than herself. No, the future lies with the Old Maid; the
woman who will retain her youth and her individuality till death; who
dies, but does not surrender. The ebbing tide is with you, Miss Jack;
the flowing tide is with us. The Old Maids' Club will be the keystone of
the arch of the civilization of to-morrow, and Miss Dulcimer's name will
go down to posterity linked with----"
"Lord Silverdale's," said the millionaire.
"Father! What are you saying?" murmured Lillie, abashed before her
visitors.
"I was reminding Miss Nimrod of the part his lordship has played in the
movement. It is not fair posterity should give you all the credit."
"I have done nothing for the club--nothing," said the peer modestly.
"And I will do the same," said Miss Jack. "I came here under the
delusion that I was going to associate myself with a protest against the
defeminization of my sex, with a band of noble women who were resolved
never to marry till the good old times were restored and marriages
became true marriages once more. But instead of that I find--Wee
Winnie."
"You are, indeed, fortunate beyond your deserts," replied that lady.
"You may even hope to encounter a suitable husband some day."
"I do hope," said Miss Jack frankly. "But I will never marry till I meet
a thoroughly conventional man."
"There I have the advantage of you," said Miss Nimrod. "I shall never
marry till I meet a thoroughly _un_conventional man."
"A thoroughly unconventional man would never want to marry at all," said
Lillie.
"Of course not. That is the beauty of the situation. That is the paradox
which guarantees my spinsterhood. Well, I've had a charming afternoon,
Miss Dulcimer, but I must really run away now. I hate keeping men
waiting, and I have an appointment with a couple of friends at the
Junior Widows'. Such fun! While riding in the park before lunch, I met
Guy Fledgely out for a constitutional with his father, the baronet. I
asked Guy if he would have a chop with me at the club this evening, and
what do you think? The baronet coughed and looked at Guy meaningly, and
Guy blushed and hemmed and hawed and looked sheepish and at last gave me
to understand he never went out to dine with a lady unless accompanied
by his father. So I had to ask the old man, too. Isn't it awful? By the
way, Miss Jack, I should be awfully delighted if you would join our
party!"
[Illustration: "I asked them to have a chop at the club with me."]
"Thank you, Wee Winnie," said Miss Jack, disdainfully.
"But think how thoroughly conventional the baronet is! He won't even let
his son go out without a chaperon."
"That is true," admitted Miss Jack, visibly impressed. "He is about the
most conventional man I ever heard of."
"A widower, too," pursued Miss Nimrod, pressing her advantage.
Miss Jack hesitated.
"And he dines seven sharp at the Junior Widows'."
"Ah then, there is no time to lose," said Miss Jack. They went out arm
in arm.
* * * * *
"Have you seen Patrick Boyle's poem in the _Playgoers' Review_?" asked
Lillie, when the club was clear.
"You mean the great dramatic critic's? No, I haven't seen it, but I have
seen extracts and eulogies in every paper."
"I have it here complete," said Lillie. "It is quite interesting to find
there is a heart beneath the critic's waistcoat. Read it aloud. No, you
don't want the banjo!"
Lord Silverdale obeyed. The poem was entitled.
CRITICUS IN STABULIS (?).
Rallying-point of all playgoers earnest,
Packed with incongruous types of humanity,
Easily pleased, yet of critics the sternest,
Crudely ignoring that all things are vanity.
Pit, in thee laughter and tears blend in medley--
Would I could sit in thy cozy concavity!
No! to the stalls I am drawn, to the deadly
Centre of gravity.
Florin, or shilling, or sixpence admission,
Often I've paid in my raw juvenility,
Purchasing Banbury cakes in addition,
Ginger-beer, too, to my highest ability.
Villains I hissed like a venomous gander,
Virtue I loved next to cheesecakes or chocolate;
Now no atrocity raises my dander,
No crime can shock o' late.
Then I could dote on a red melodrama,
Now I demand but limelight on Philosophy,
Learned allusions to Buddha and Brahma,
Science and Faith and a touch of Theosophy.
Farces I slate, on Burlesque I am scathing,
Pantomime shakes for a week my serenity;
Nothing restores my composure but bathing
Deep in Ibsenity.
Actors were Gods to my boyish devotion,
Actresses angels--in tights and low bodices;
Drowned is that pretty and puerile notion,
Thrown overboard in the first of my Odysseys.
Syrens may sing submarine fascinations,
Adult Ulysses remain analytical,
Flat notes recording, or reedy vibrations,
Tranquilly critical.
Here in the stalls we are stiff as if starch, meant
Only for shirt-fronts, to faces had mounted up;
Dowagers' wills may be read on their parchment,
Beautiful busts on your thumbs may be counted up.
Girls in the pit are remarkably rosy,
Each claspt by lover who passes the paper-bag;
Here I can't even, the girls are so prosy,
One digit taper bag.
Yet could I sit in the pit of the Surrey,
Munching an orange or spooning with 'Arriet;
Sadly I fear I should be in no hurry
Backward to drive my existence's chariot.
"Squeezes" are ill compensated by crushes--
Stalls may be dull, but they're jolly luxurious;
Really the way o'er past joys we can gush is
Awfully curious!
Life is a chaos of comic confusion,
Past things alone take a halo harmonious;
So from illusion we wake to illusion,
Each as the rest just as true and erroneous.
_Fin de siècle_ I am, and so be it!
Here's to the problems of sad sociology!
This is my weird,--like a man I must dree it,
Great is chronology!
Even so, once the great drama allured me,
Which we all play on the stage universal;
"Going behind" the "green" curtain has cured me.
All my hope now is 'tis not a _rehearsal_.
Still I've played on; to old men's parts I grew from
Juvenile lead, as I'd risen from small-boy,
So I'll play on till I get my last cue from
Death, the old call-boy.
"Hum! Not at all bad," concluded Lord Silverdale. "I wonder who wrote
it."