[Footnote 26: Reprinted by permission from _Books and Things_, by Philip
Littell. Copyright 1919, by Harcourt, Brace and Howe, Inc.]
Much reading of interviews with returning travellers who had almost seen
Zeppelins over London, and of wireless messages from other travellers who
had come even nearer seeing the great sight, had made me, I suppose,
morbidly desirous of escape from a city where other such travellers were
presumably at large. However that may be, when Mrs. Watkin asked me to
spend Sunday at her place in the country, I broke an old habit and said I'd
go. When last I had visited her house she worshipped success in the arts,
and her recipe was to have a few successes to talk and a lot of us
unsuccessful persons to listen. At that time her æsthetic was easy to
understand. "Every great statue," she said, "is set up in a public place.
Every great picture brings a high price. Every great book has a large sale.
That is what greatness in art means." Her own brand of talk was not in
conflict with what she would have called her then creed. She never said a
thing was very black. She never said it was as black as the ace of spades.
She always said it was as black as the proverbial ace of spades. Once I
ventured to insinuate that perhaps it would be more nobly new to say "as
black as the proverbial ace of proverbial spades," but the suggestion left
her at peace with her custom. Well, when I got to her house last week, and
had a chance to scrutinize the others, they did not look as if she had
chosen them after any particular pattern.
Dinner, however, soon enabled us all to guess the model from which Mrs.
Watkin had striven to copy her occasion. I was greatly relishing the
conversation of my left-hand neighbor, a large-eyed, wondering-eyed woman,
who said little and seemed never to have heard any of the things I usually
say when dining out, and who I dare swear would have looked gratefully
surprised had I confided to her my discovery that in the beginning God
created the heaven and the earth. Before we were far gone with food the
attention of this tactful person was torn from me by our hostess, whose
voice was heard above the other voices: "Oh, Mr. Slicer, do tell us your
experience. I want _all_ our friends to hear it." Mr. Slicer, identifiable
by the throat-clearing look which suffused his bleached, conservative face,
was not deaf to her appeal. He had just returned from London, where he had
been at the time of the Zeppelin raid, and although he had not himself been
so fortunate as to see a Zeppelin, but had merely been a modest witness of
the sporting fortitude with which London endured that visitation, the
Zeppelin-in-chief had actually been visible to the brother of his
daughter's governess. "At the noise of guns," said Mr. Slicer, "we all left
the restaurant where we were dining, Mrs. Humphry Ward, George Moore,
Asquith, Miss Pankhurst and I, and walked, not ran, into the street, where
it was the work of a moment for me to climb a lamp-post, whence I obtained
a nearer view of what was going on overhead. Nothing there but blackness."
Instinctively I glanced at Mrs. Watkin, upon whose lips the passage of
words like "as the proverbial ace of spades" was clearly to be seen. "Of
course," Mr. Slicer went on, "I couldn't indefinitely hold my coign of
vantage, which I relinquished in favor of Mrs. Humphry Ward, to whom at her
laughing request George Moore and I gave a leg up. She remained there a few
moments, one foot on my shoulder and one on Sir Edward Carson's--she is not
a light woman--and then we helped her down, Asquith and I. When I got back
to my lodgings in Half-Moon Street I found that the governess's brother,
who had been lucky enough to see a Zeppelin, had gone home. I shall not
soon forget my experience." This narrative was wonderful to my left-hand
neighbor. It made her feel as if she had really been there and seen it all
with her own eyes.
Mr. Mullinger, who was the next speaker on Mrs. Watkin's list, and who had
returned from Europe on the same boat with Mr. Slicer, had had a different
experience. On the evening of the raid he was in a box at the theatre where
Guitry, who had run over from Paris, was appearing in the little rôle of
_Phèdre_, when the noise of firing was heard above the alexandrines of
Racine. "With great presence of mind," so Mr. Mullinger told us, "Guitry
came down stage, right, and said in quizzical tone to us: '_Eh bien, chère
petite folle et vieux marcheur_, just run up to the roof, will you please,
and tell us what it's all about, don't you know.' The Princess and I stood
up and answered in the same tone, 'Right-o, _mon vieux_,' and were aboard
the lift in no time. From the roof we could see nothing, and as it was
raining and we had no umbrellas, we of course didn't stay. When we got back
I stepped to the front of the box and said: 'The Princess and Mr. Mullinger
beg to report that on the roof it is raining rain.' The words were nothing,
if you like, but I spoke them just like that, with a twinkle in my eye, and
perhaps it was that twinkle which reassured the house and started a roar of
laughter. The performance went on as if nothing remarkable had happened.
Wonderfully poised, the English." And this narrative, too, was so fortunate
as to satisfy my left-hand neighbor. It made her feel as if she had been
there herself, and heard all these wonderful things with her own ears.
After that, until near the end of dinner, it was all Zeppelins, and I hope
I convey to everyone within sound of my voice something of my own patriotic
pride in a country whose natives when abroad among foreigners consort so
freely and easily with the greatest of these. No discordant note was heard
until the very finish, when young Puttins, who as everybody knows has not
been further from New York than Asbury Park all summer, told us that on the
night of the raid he too had been in London, where his only club was the
Athenæum. When the alarm was given he was in the Athenæum pool with Mr.
Hall Caine, in whose company it has for years been his custom to take a
good-night swim. "Imagine my alarm," young Puttins continued, "when I saw
emerging from the surface of the waters, and not five yards away from the
person of my revered master, a slender object which I at once recognized as
a miniature periscope. I shouted to my companion. In vain. Too late. A slim
fountain spurted fountain-high above the pool, a dull report was heard, and
the next instant Mr. Hall Caine had turned turtle and was sinking rapidly
by the bow. When dressed I hastened to notify the authorities. The pool was
drained by noon of the next day but one. We found nothing except, near the
bottom of the pool, the commencement of a tunnel large enough for the
ingress and egress of one of those tiny submersibles the credit for
inventing which neither Mr. Henry Ford nor Professor Parker ever tires of
giving the other. I have since had reason to believe that not one
swimming-pool in Great Britain is secure against visits from these
miniature pests. Indeed, I may say, without naming any names," ... but at
this moment Mrs. Watkin interrupted young Puttins by taking the ladies
away. She looked black as the proverbial.
October, 1915.