The Fritillary, 10 November 1928 by Oxford Women's Colleges Hub

FRITILLARY NOVEMBER i o 1

928

Price SIXPENCE

Editor: R. FLOYD (Somerville).

Treasurer: R. M. J. CAMPBELL (St. Hugh's).

Committee : J. H. 째M. MURRAY (Lady Margaret Hall). E. J. SCOVELL (Somerville). L. FIELDING (St. Hilda's). E. SCOTT HARSTON (St. Hugh's). L. BELLAMY (O. H.S.).

FRITILLARY Magazine of the Oxford Women's Colleges

NOVEMBER, 1928 CONTENTS Page

.. .. Editorial The Exiled Race .. .• .. Pursuit •• Lover in Sunset .. A Cat Lucilla .. .. Who Fly the Mean .. Lincoln Minster .. Epitaph

i i 9 to to 12 12

16 16

Page

How to Write for a Varsity Paper On Someone who is Very Beautiful Correspondence •. Modern Music .. Book Review Music Notes .. Playhouse Reviews English Club .. College News

17 17 17 18 19 19 20

23 23

Editorial

HE epigram is a very tempting form of expression to the amateur

critic. Your epigram sounds as if the gift of neat phrasing were in you combined with the power of seizing immediately upon fundamental qualities, but in fact you are not giving your author a fair chance and you are sacrificing him to your own desire for applause. You are wilfully intruding your own talent on your readers when you should be modestly leaving them to discover it for themselves. You are presumptuously putting yourself in the show-case so that the public can admire you first with your author as a bad second. Juvenile and amateur criticism would be so winning if it behaved with more diffidence : decent humility is very disarming, but the plague of it is that when you feel you have been concise yet adequate, you have not the heart to cross out your intolerant, bumptious little bon-mot.

The Exiled Race In the middle of the nineteenth century a young man of great intelligence and uncertain reputation was sailing his yacht along the coast of Thessaly. He landed, late one afternoon, in a small bay, and there surprised a company of nymphs who had come down from the wooded lands a little way behind and were feasting and dancing on the sand. They were very willing to entertain him, and gave him grapes and sweet, strong wine : and he, as a return for their hospitality, invited them to visit his yacht. When they were on board, the fantastic humour for which he was after-

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wards notorious urged him to take them back with him and transplant them into his own estate, instead of the deer and the black cows. He spoke quietly to the sailors, and they, without surprise, immediately set sail for England. He was popular among his guests. Even the children, who were at first hostile, listened to his stories in the end, and played quoits with him on the deck. But as they rounded Spain, his habitual ennui reasserted itself. He thought it was the children's fault, for although no one remembered which child, or which mother, was hers, their presence alone gave to the party a touch of domesticity. He landed them in Kent, and when they were eating and drinking on the sand, he returned to the yacht under the pretext of fetching his handkerchief. The sailors made no comment on his hasty orders, and the yacht was soon under way. Till he forgot this incident of his crowded life, he took a delicate melancholy pleasure in the thought of the nymphs' desolation. How they must miss him But in this he was mistaken. One looked slowly round the little crowd as if she missed some bit of it that she couldn't remember ; and another repeated his name, like a tune she sang without knowing. Then, like a flock of starlings that have chattered and wasted their time for days and days, and suddenly, without any preparation, go ; so the nymphs jumped from the ground, and shook their draperies, and danced inland. In twenty years all of them had died of distaste. All of them but one ; and she lived wild and solitary in a wood on the northern boundary of Hampshire. Here the last of her companions had died ; but she, because she was younger than they were, and could not remember how to be homesick for Thessaly, or perhaps because she was made of tougher fibre, went on living. She slept in hollow trees or among the rushes at the edge of a stream, and ate nuts and berries and roots, and sometimes nothing at all, for she was not often hungry. The village people knew there was more in the woods than rabbits, and some of the young men, when they collected on Sunday evenings at the cross-roads, were able to boast of a very light step they had heard that seemed to track them through the wood, or of a sweet, shy face that had peered out at them through parted branches. But the girls tossed their heads, and said it was silly. Only, while they were talking to each other, or sewing in their cottage windows, they watched to see who went up towards the wood, and when he came back they would not speak to him or smile. Yet George, whom they all thought mad, because when his mother had died he had not had good sense enough to marry, went up by the field path again and again, and no one noticed. Nor was there any gossip when he said he must go away on a visit to his grandmother, since everyone knew he had got a grandmother, and that she lived in Dorchester. About a week later, at that time of the afternoon when it is not yet beginning to be evening, but when you cannot see so clearly, the postmistress was talking to the postman as he emptied the letter-box. Suddenly she clutched his shoulder and pointed down the road. ' Who's that?' she said. The postman dropped his bag and straightened his back. That's George,' said the postman. ' Not George I didn't mean, but the other one. It's a girl, isn't it?' ' Yes, it's a girl,' said the postman. The postmistress ran over to the sweet-shop. Here's George coming, and he's got a girl.'

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' Well I never,' said the sweet-shop woman, waddling as fast as she could to take up a position on the doorstep. ' He's got luggage,' shouted the postman, bending to fill his bag. ' You never know,' said the sweet-shop woman, sneering : but she was ready to speak to them, and patronise the poor young thing. She might have asked them in to a cup of tea. But George and the girl went, without looking at her, into their own house, and drew the curtains before they lit the candles. ' You didn't ought to say things,' said the postmistress. Lily, who was the fat woman's daughter and a parlourmaid at the vicarage, came down the road. She looked carelessly over her shoulder at the yellow slit of light at the join of the curtains. So George has come back, has he?' Don't you get wanting to know too much about other people's doings,' said the fat woman. ' I don't particularly,' said Lily, in her cramped, refined speech, but I saw them going in and thought you might know something more.' It was getting dark, and they did not see Lily's young man till he passed into the circle of light that came from the lamp in the shop. Well,' said Lily, in a hard voice. Well, William,' said her mother, looking from one to the other and smiling. William slouched with his hands in his pockets. He did not look at anyone, but at the gaps between them. I've been at the station,' he said. The postmistress, with a not very misleading pretence of indifference, asked Is the Colonel home yet?' That girl came, who's been in the wood all summer,' said William, turning his eyes towards Lily, but still letting them swerve from side to side. Lily hunched her shoulders. That's not what I call right,' said the postmistress. William raised his eyebrows and looked away. The sweet-shop woman noticed how he looked sidelong at Lily, and reminded her, in a shrill voice, of the recipe for currant-jelly that she ought to have got from the other end M the village. She had forgotten the shut door and the thick curtains on the other side of the road, where the last of the nymphs moved like a flame through the house, singing softly to her lover, and George, dazed by his own fortune, could do nothing but watch her, wondering at her beauty and the tenderness of her love. The Vicar's wife did not know what she should do. She even asked the Vicar for advice. James,' she said, Lily has just given me the most singular news. You know the absurd legend people tell about the west wood? Well, apparently George Simpson has married her. At least she lives in his house, but I didn't like to ask Lily too much for fear of suggesting something ! ' Impossible,' said the Vicar. You had better go there to-morrow and see if there is anything in it.' So the Vicar's wife went down to the village, and found the nymph in her own front garden sitting on the grass under the apple tree. Good morning,' said the Vicar's wife. May I come in and have a little talk? My name is Mrs. Keatinge.'

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Mine is Polyxena,' said the nymph. Won't you sit down?' Thank you,' said the Vicar's wife, and looked for a chair. But Polyxena lay on the grass, and looked up at her with lovely troubling eyes and did nothing. Mrs. Keatinge sank on to the grass. She said, So you are . . . living here?' Yes.' My dear,' said Mrs. Keatinge, edging towards her, and forcing out her voice with a kind of confidential huskiness, ' I don't want to be prying, but confide in me. . . . Tell me, has George married you?' Yes, we have married each other, of course,' said Polyxena. Mrs. Keatinge felt her faith in language shaken. She thought (but oh, how disgusting !) that they were meaning different things. She frowned and fidgeted, and Polyxena was puzzled, till at last, with a scream of delight, she said : Oh, you mean the man in white who said things out of a book ! ' You are very ignorant,' said the Vicar's wife. Polyxena laughed and shook her wind-blown hair and danced wildly round the apple tree. She was singing, and Mrs. Keatinge could not at first make out the words, but when she found there was only one word, and that ' good-bye,' she went away, for she had some tact of a primitive sort. The village did not stop resenting George's wife. She was awake so early, and went walking no one knew where. But she was always ready for milking as soon as anyone, and the farm did better than ever. But when it became so wet and cold that George could not let her stay out in the garden, she went, not as she should, to the kitchen, but to the parlour ; and the people of the village, by drawing their thick lace curtains a little way apart, could see her sitting there, looking up at the pictures of George's mother and father, or touching with love and admiration the row of plump tassels along the e edg of the mantelpiece. When spring came she sat again under the apple tree, and the people of the village, peeping through their curtains with their little dark eyes, said to each other : Now perhaps she will Settle Down ' And when they saw she was sewing under the apple tree, and remembered how in the autumn she had done nothing but dance, they said to each other : She is Settling Down.' But all she was sewing was a black satin tea-cosy with pink roses, and that was a disappointment to the rest of the village. By midsummer she had given birth to twins, and the people of the village were angry, because the Women's Institute had had to give her whole baskets full of clothes. And it wasn't as though she had ever come to the meetings, or tried to grow a hyacinth for the Easter competition. They're very small,' said George, thinking a little of her pain, and more of his own unfamiliar agony of mind, as he had stood in the cowshed, hoping that she would not scream again, and pushed his knuckles against his teeth. What shall we call them?' said George. My mother's name was Mildred.' Polyxena thought of the clear soft voices she had heard somewhere, and names which sounded hard and bright when you shouted them down misty English valleys. That one will be Syrinx,' she said, and the other Arsinoe. '

FRITILLARY George put his arm clumsily round her shoulders and kissed her. He wasn't the man to argue, just at the moment, but they were very awkward names. ' We shall have them done at the beginning of the month,' said George. ' Done?' Aha,' said George, with a sly expression, you'll have to come to church for that.' They were both notorious Sabbath-breakers ; but George knew that it was a wife's duty to bring up the average of piety. If it was something in church, the sooner it was over the better. Let's go to-morrow,' said Polyxena. It's too soon,' said the Doctor. She's up already,' said the sweet-shop woman. ' She'll have complications, I shouldn't be surprised.' But Polyxena felt better than she had for months, as she sat in the stuffy church, negligently holding Arsinoe, and watching a green and yellow lozenge of light on the floor. She thought of the church, and the priest, and the words read out of a book, as if they were without a meaning, like a stone, or a flower, or an agreeable pattern. But George, she knew, e must be thought that religion was something to be understood. (` Ther something in it, sir,' said George to the Vicar ; and the Vicar replied, It has helped a lot of better men than you or I.') Perhaps it would help Arsinoe and Syrinx. But what help would they want? You went on doing things ; walking barefoot in the early morning, or laughing in your mind at the people you couldn't help meeting, or screaming if anything hurt you, and . . . Name this child,' said the Vicar. George looked secretly at Polyxena. Syrinx and Arsinoe were such awkward names. Mildred,' he said, in a hushed, furtive voice. They lifted Arsinoe from Polyxena's arms. Betty,' said George. He was glad they were baptized. It made him feel for some reason more as if he owned them. But he knew in his heart that their finer spirits had little to do with his. When he played with them they wrinkled up their eyes as if for an exquisite soundless laughter, which was not free from mockery. Polyxena, he knew, loved him, though her mind was still baffling. But Betty and Milred neglected him. However cleverly he cajoled them, they smiled at him, pushing their tangled hair from their bright, startled eyes, and ran away. When they go to school they will be more like other children,' he thought, and the Vicar agreed with him. But Polyxena, when she looked out of her window and saw the school-children go home, fighting and shrieking and giggling, thought that they must never be like that. One morning she took them to the cross-roads and spoke to them of things she could hardly remember. She gave them a loaf of bread, and put them on the right way ; they walked along it lightly, not looking back, and seeing this she was as much glad as sorry. They lived in the wood as Polyxena had done before. Sometimes they slept together with their faces turned to each other ; and sometimes they slept alone with their closed eyes looking at the stars. Sometimes they walked alone, but they were glad when they met, though they never knew they were lonely. They ran and jumped among the leaves in autumn, and

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searched for the earliest signs of spring, the green leaf-bud and the snowdrop. In the summer their white bodies were like moonshine under the trees, and in the winter they glowed like the morning sunlight. But they did not always go naked, for they liked to make themselves ornaments of berries and leaves and plaited grasses. Syrinx was best pleased with rose hips, for these, when she leant over a pool, she could see shining in her dark hair. But Arsinoe, whose hair was fair and very long, was happiest to twist it with forget-me-nots. They lived many years like this, forgetting each day as it passed, and never noticing how they grew taller and more beautiful. Nothing happened to them ; except that at the end of winter they were always seized with a vague unrest which they knew was the beginning of springtime. One year it troubled them so much that they noticed their own feelings and spoke of their thoughts. ' ' What is it? What is it?' said Arsinoe, looking at the clear sky and the wind-shaken budding branches. I don't know,' said Syrinx, dancing round her on the moss. She leaped in the air and laughed. ' It's gone now,' she said. What is it ? ' said Arsinoe, in the next day's early dawn ; but Syrinx turned and ran from her, and would not answer. For many days Arsinoe did not see her ; but she did not feel alone. The wood seemed full sometimes of hidden creatures. She heard fleeting footsteps, and strange hushed voices. Once she called, and when the echoes of her call fell quiet, the whole wood seemed holding its breath. Once, on a turn in a narrow path, she â&#x20AC;˘ metâ&#x20AC;˘ her and began to speak, but Syrinx shouted over her shoulder and plunged into the bushes. When Arsinoe saw her next, she was crying at the foot of a tree, lying as still as if she had no life in her ; but again when she saw Arsinoe she fled. That day Arsinoe, without knowing why, looked as she walked to the right hand and the left, and stopped often to listen. At last she thought she heard a faint sound of breathing, and she saw suddenly in the shadows two little eyes, bright and dark and eager. Breathless, she ran from them, twisting and doubling through the wood ; but however she ran, she still heard, when she paused and stood tiptoe to listen, the sound of someone who was moving as fast as .she. At last she fell on the grass. I will wait here,' she thought, and see what happens.' The creature came up with her and stood grinning. His legs were like an animal's, and covered with. fur ; but she no longer wanted to escape. She went with him when he beckoned, and when they saw Syrinx lying on a bank with her face pressed against the moss, she did not turn aside. But he did not stay for ever. When the leaves grew dark, and the primrose petals withered up at the edges, he went with no word. Arsinoe and Syrinx were again together in the wood. But they never met. For if they heard a crackling branch they retreated, and tried to hide themselves in the thickets. Once, when Arsinoe came out in a long ride, she saw Syrinx crossing it too, dim in the distance and the green leafy light. Before, they would have shouted to each other, and run down the green pathway to meet in the middle ; but now they turned away their heads and pretended that they had not seen. By and by, Arsinoe began to notice that Syrinx was not so shamefaced as she was herself. Now Syrinx called through the wood, and it was she who did not answer. But one day, as she walked among the trees, an

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oak-apple fell on her head, and when she looked up she saw Syrinx swinging on a branch and laughing. There are five squirrels here,' said Syrinx. Come up.' Come down,' said Arsinoe. Syrinx jumped . She came to Arsinoe and kissed her. ' I couldn't find you,' she said, for a long time.' Arsinoe kissed her too â&#x20AC;˘' but it was for tenderness, not for love. The touch of a hazel-catkin on her cheek was as much to her as any kisses of Syrinx. Bue went on living, eating occasionally, and sleeping, and running in the wind. But she was not so happy, though it was not for years and years that her unhappiness came into her mind. But at last, suddenly, she said to Syrinx : I must go and look.' Look? ' said Syrinx, but for what? It is too early for nuts, and too late for anemones.' I must go at once,' said Arsinoe ; to-day.' Oh, not to-day. To-day's so good. You must stay till to-morrow. That can't matter.' So Arsinoe stayed, and played at being like Syrinx. They danced through the wood till evening, and lay down side by side. When it was dark, Arsinoe got up, and, when she had kissed Syrinx, she went. It was early morning when she got to the village, and nobody was yet about to notice how strangely she was clothed. In the middle of the village was a house with an apple tree in the front garden, gnd she went in at the gate. She saw there a green dress hanging on a clothes-line, and though it was stiff with summer frost, she put it on, because she knew that the people among whom she would be going would expect it of her. She closed the gate, and went on through the village. A woman came out of the house and shouted to her ; so she started to run, because she was afraid she might be angry. The road lay southward, so that the course of the sun made day by day an arch across her head. She asked many people if they had ever seen this creature who had come into the wood. But they sneered at her, and she thought they said cruel things, but did not understand them altogether. One day she met a young woman carrying milkpails from the cowshed to the dairy. Have you seen,' she said, a man with pointed ears? ' The woman started, so that the milk splashed on the path. I did once,' she said, but thanks be I never did again.' Tell me,' said Arsinoe, when was it, and where did he go? ' The year before I married it happened,' said the young woman, three years ago that would be. He came by with all that gipsy troupe, playing on tambourines they were and singing. I was for going with them, and I picked up my skirts and opened my mouth to sing. He came up to me smiling, and his hair fallen back from his ears. Pan they called him. And he took my arm. But my young man, that's my husband now, he pushed him away and took me indoors, and scolded me for being so wild. We were both angry, but I'm glad of it now . . Where did they go?' said Arsinoe. The woman pointed southwards. But I wouldn't be following them,' she said, not if I was you.' But Arsinoe took no notice and went on towards the south, till she came to a great town, where she was quite bewildered. It was a harbour, but she could not find the sea, so at last she sat down to rest on a bench

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which faced over a brick embankment, and a stretch of mud, and a thin thread of water. After a while a woman in black came and sat beside her, with her hands over her face. She seemed to be crying. Arsinoe stretched out her white hand and touched her arm. ' I'm going to drown myself,' said the woman. Don't you stop me. I won't stay to see them starve. Three of them there are, and not one of them two years old, and my daughter died this morning. It's a bloody world.' She held up two fingers. Either,' she said, I can go out charring all day and leave them to fall into the sea, or else I can look after them and have no money for food.' I will come and help you,' said Arsinoe ; but have you seen a man with pointed ears? ' See you damned,' said the woman ; I can't have girls like you about the place.' Arsinoe did not understand her ; and, as she had risen and tottered against the bench, she took her arm. Together they went to a dismal little red house in a dismal streak of a road. See you damned,' said the woman in a friendly voice, as Arsinoe put her to bed. So Arsinoe stayed and washed the children and fed them, and sometimes went out charring. But, as she grew more knowing, she stopped speaking of the man with pointed ears, and though she listened when the old men sucked their pipes and talked of the past, and when the women screamed reminiscences from one house door to another, she never heard anything of him. Her youth went, and all her beauty. The boys got jobs in motor-works, and the girl, who had never been able to speak properly, was taken to a Home. Arsinoe stayed to look after the woman, for she had forgotten all her past, and lived, as she had done then, from day to day, without hope or memory. On fine days they went out together, grasping each other's arms. They walked up and down, and looked at the ships. The queerest ship I ever saw,' said the woman, was the day my daughter was married. (Hell of a time she had.) In the evening it was lying in harbour, and nobody knew how it came. Sails it had, and the sun shone on them, and after dark it was all lit up. But nobody was on it then. Midnight, there was a great noise and shouting in the street, and I looked out of my window. I never saw such people. They had mistletoe in their hair, and their clothes half off them. And there was a man there with great hairy legs and little bright eyes.' Why didn't you tell me before?' said Arsinoe. What's it got to do with you, I'd like to know? Long time ago it was. They went away that night, and the lights got as small as pins' heads over the sea, and the shouting as thin as a cricket's. Where've you got to now? ' said the woman. Here, give me your hand ; I'm feeling bad.' But Arsinoe was half way down the road, for she had decided to go back to the wood when she heard how Pan had gone. She walked northward, and the sun marked out an arch above her head. She came to the village, and the house with the apple tree, and under it a very old woman sat knitting. Come in, my dear,' said the very old woman. I hear your step and I know who you are. I saw you twenty years ago, when you took the green dress off the line. You should have stayed then. Come in, and let

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me look closely at your face. I am very blind, and I can't see out into the road. Arsinoe went in and knelt beside her chair. The old woman looked at her, and over her face came a look of pain and horror and disgust. That's not my little one. That's not my pretty one. Syrinx are you? or Arsinoe ? You can't be either of them, for it's this I saved them from. I sent them away. We're old, you and I ; and I'm as blind as a bat, and you're as ugly as a raven. But they're away in the wood, as young as they ever were, and more beautiful than any of the angels. You'll die soon, and I sooner ; but they'll not die. I used to dance the same way as they're dancing now . . . ' I don't like to look at you,' said the old woman. They might have been as ugly as that if I hadn't thought in time ; but it is a great sorrow to me that I have never seen them.' I will fetch them,' said Arsinoe ; at least, I will fetch one of them.' She went up to the wood. Syrinx lay at the edge of it, on a moss bank, sleeping, and she was as young and as beautiful as ever. Arsinoe bent over her. She woke with a scream, waving her hands as if she were warding off a nightmare. She ran away, but once or twice looked back over her shoulder, startled and resentful. Syrinx, Syrinx,' called Arsinoe. Syrinx paused. Funny old woman,' she said. Arsinoe did not see her any more. She knew she was still in the wood, for she heard at first her mocking laughter, and afterwards her quick footsteps as she went about her own pursuits. But Arsinoe stayed till nightfall, calling in a faint, shrill voice through the twilight. Syrinx, . . . this is Arsinoe.' E. M. CRAWFORD.

Pursuit The heart grows tired that stirred when beauty came, The brain grows dull that followed her so long. We have cast life to feed her altar-flame, And still the unimaginable song Has not been sung—beauty's beyond our blame. 'Twas we, who thought to seize her, did the wrong. Beauty's a tale that slips the memory, Beauty's a song in silence and a dream, Beauty's the fall of dying melody, Beauty's the drowned moon in the shadowy stream : So near in sleep, she fled from us on waking ; We in the web of words of our own making Stumbled again, and lost her flying feet : Others take up the chase, our hearts are slowing— Young, they follow the silver bugles blowing— Yet when we leave the quest at last, unknowing, Beauty herself shall crown us in defeat. L. FIELDING.

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Lover in Sunset When kings and lions stalked the self-same way They brushed the branches of the virgin may, And on their flaming manes and hair, The faint white fell and shrivelled where they lay. Within the cool dark wood, the flare Of hunting kings and scarlet lions their peers Echoed the setting sun, drum-beater of the years, And we sang together with voices like polished spears. For I too was a hunter then ; in pride I sang, your fierce face close to mine ; The great red lion we loved went by our side, The kings our sires in front with rhythmic stride. And now, dim potency of the red may tree ! For though its scent be bitter, leonine, Its flower repeat the sunset brazenly, It bears us nothing but a memory. Yet were there lions for us to hunt with now Then we again were kings beneath the bough.

H.M.

A Cat Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Wilkinson had taken a house for the holidays at the seaside. They brought their dog. In the evening they used to read newspapers. Outside on the wall sat a cat. It had very dark eyes, and when the sky grew pale yellow after sunset, green lights blazed across them. It was fourteen years old. ' I hate that cat,' said Mrs. Stanley Wilkinson. Mr. Stanley Wilkinson only crackled his paper. Even more than other cats,' said Mrs. Stanley Wilkinson. Benjy'll look after it. Don't you worry,' grunted Mr. Stanley Wilkinson. Benjy was the dog. The cat sat on, unheeding. It was black, with beautiful tufted ears. Sometimes in the evenings it would go for walks, but generally it sat and thought. It was occupied chiefly in conquering the Time-Spirit. Vulgar people thought it was thinking of fish. Though it was an educated and independent cat, however, and though its whiskers exceeded the width of its body, it was not proud, only very lonely and sad. The only other cat it had spoken to was a yellow, historical cat down the road. Since then it had lived quite by itself, eating its meals, going for walks, and listening to the sea. Once when it was a kitten it had padded up to the big yellow cat, blinking on the fence, and said, Where's God ? ' The yellow cat never quite opened its eyes, but went on blinking in the sun, miawing almost

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inaudibly, ' Isis and Osiris—Isis and Osiris—Gone—gone are the Gods of Egypt. Dead and forgotten. Ashamed and forsaken. Run away, little one, and catch sparrows.' And it had wandered home feeling miserable. But that was nearly fourteen years ago. To-night it was feeling peculiarly restless. Whether it was Benjy's snuffs, or Mr. Stanley Wilkinson's cigarette (he had left his pipe behind and Mrs. Stanley Wilkinson had bought some very nasty cigarettes at the station) I do not know, but it got up and went down to the sea. It was very grey and cold, and there were long clouds like lizards stretched out on the amber of the sky, and the wind was scooping up great handfuls of foam and splashing them on the cat's paws. A clergyman was on the beach, looking for cornelians. The cat went up to him. Where's God ? it said. The clergyman's spectacles gleamed blankly. Everywhere,' he murmured, mechanically. Then he suddenly recollected himself. ' But you're only a cat,' he said. It did not answer but walked on, so lightly that the stones did not even crunch beneath its pads. The lizard clouds became darker, and the sky was turning green and gray. The cat turned away from the seashore and wandered inland over the fields. It found a colt eating grass, a woolly colt with very long legs. Where's God ? ' said the cat. I don't know. I should try over there in that wood. That's where I go when I've lost things,' replied the colt. The cat purred Thank you,' and went on. In the wood it met God. What are you doing here ? ' said God. If it had been an ordinary cat it would have probably have adapted the saying, A cat may look at a king,' but being an independent and selfcontrolled cat it merely lifted its tail ever so slightly and miaowed, You know.' God smiled, but he only said, You're a good cat. But now go back and help Mrs. Stanley Wilkinson, because she's only a human being and she hasn't conquered the Time-Spirit like you have.' As you have,' corrected the cat, who was a purist. Hush,' said God, ' what would the old gentleman on the beach say if he heard you ? '

When the cat got back, it found that Mr. Stanley Wilkinson had gone to bed. So had Benjy. But Mrs. Stanley Wilkinson was looking out of the window and yawning. She was rather fat and she had been comfortable all her life and she had no children, and she had finished reading the newspaper and there was nothing else to do. The cat climbed back on to the gatepost and looked at her gravely and kindly. For fully five minutes it did this. Then a deep growling rumble broke out in its throat. Mrs. Stanley Wilkinson stopped in the middle of a yawn. Then she got up and went out of the door, feeling suddenly happy. You know,' she said, running down the scale, as people do at the end of a yawn, you're rather a nice cat after all.' All the green had left the cat's eyes. They were turning sapphire-blue in the night. K. C.

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Lucilla She walks serene In some Arcadian pasture sweet and green, A corotial of wild flowers on her hair. Though no one heeds She plays on her pipe of reeds A song that hovers in the morning air, A melody strange and far As the song of a falling star, Plaintive and keen. In Arcady, where the young shepherds are, She walks serene. M. S. S.

Who Fly the Mean No,' said Boris, no one ever dies satisfied unless he is already dead ' ; and he took a large bite of bread and cheese. Explain your moribund paradox ! ' cried Richard. Boris stared at his beer. His strange eyes seemed to take in some of its amber luminosity. ' I mean,' he began slowly, this : each one of us has within him a sort of amorous nightingale which some force perverse presses upon the thorn of unhappiness. It is something in us that desires divine quintessences and only attains unending pain, that soak superb in a chaos of misery and sings impassioned in a cage of convention. That is what I call the life of man, and that is what we all kill deliberately . . . ' Richard tilted his beautiful head and grinned at Anne over his shoulder. He can't avoid the " this youngest and starriest of our poets " manner,' he said. How do we kill our nightingales ? ' Lucienne asked, softly. Middleness ! ' cried Boris, kills them. Sooner than any gin or snare. When we are young we are drunk with extremes of things. We reel along high roads and low roads—never take the middle road—the respectable rail-road and the first-class upholstered carriages. When we are young the world is ours indeed, the whole of it, because we only think of the unseen glory. But soon we begin to think how nice it would be to own a good substantial bit of the earth rent-free. We forget the wine and roses that sometimes come our way ; and we are ashamed of the more frequent and amicable herbs ; we begin to consider growing our own asparagus. That is middle age, middle intellect, middle joy: So safe, so safe. But nightingales cannot live on asparagus.' Don't be silly, Boris,' Anne said in her deliberate voice. Wine and roses end in the Poor House. They needn't. There is Death—the proper kind of death : the dying unsatisfied.' Lucienne shivered in the spring sunshine. When I die,' laughed Richard, I hope to die a beautiful death, surrounded by weeping grand-children and a sorrowing nation.'

FRITILLARY ' What is your future career to be ? ' asked Boris. ' As I have mentioned many times before,' said Richard, politics.' You will become our foremost statesman. And Anne ? She will marry a Great Success and make him an even greater one. You will both die satisfied, but you won't die happy.' And I ? ' asked Lucienne. Oh, you! ' said Boris, fiercely. Some mundane monster will clothe you in pearls and pomeranians till you die of boredom at forty.' They were all silent. The spring sunshine was hot upon the open balcony, for the vine above twisted bare arms around the wires, in its agony of creation sweating drops of pale life-blood which were the new leaves. The sunshine lay in bands of light on Anne's smooth black hair, and Lucienne's, straight and primrose pale, was the mirror of a hundred wanton sunbeams. She drooped her head a little, considering through her sun-filled lashes the primitive red and yellow flowers on her painted plate. Richard lit a cigarette. A little wind blew the smoke across his face, which seemed to Boris to be like a strong and lovely ship : a ship that would hold calmly on its way unmoved by any smoke of flying foam. Are you happy, Lucienne ? ' Boris suddenly asked. Miserably so,' she said. Ah, you understand,' he said, and laughed. This funny balcony ! ' said Anne. She opened her grey eyes wide and stretched her lithe body. `I've enjoyed my bread and cheese and beer, Boris. You have some good ideas sometimes. I've got one now. In romance and faded tales of continental life it's always customary for a party like us to arrange to meet again in the same place forty years on.' Oh, not forty ! ' cried Boris, aghast. I hope to be in the cool earth by then ! ' Let's say twenty, then,' said Richard. Jolly good idea of yours, Anne. At noon, on the znd of April, twenty years on !' II. Afterwards they climbed the slopes behind the town. They wandered into someone's unfenced orchard and sat down on the bright spring grass beneath the grey-barked fruit trees. Some little way off a blackbird balanced like a juggler on a tight-rope and twirled his notes in and out the apple-twigs or flung them up into blue inaudibility. Everything is in patterns to-day,' said Lucienne, pressing her head back against the trunk of a cherry-tree. Look at the bare twigs—an untraceable maze of a pattern upon the sky.' And the grass,' agreed Richard, so freshly formal—just like a Botticelli foreground.' Primroses had been arranged seriously in little irregular groups ; between them there were wild blue scillas severely separated from conventional violets by white crocuses. Lucienne looks as if all the primroses had suddenly flown into the air and settled on her hair and dress like a swarm of bees in love.' Many as may be your faults, Boris,' sighed Anne, you do have nice ideas.' But anyone may ! ' Boris flung a pebble at a smirking crocus. It's Middleness that prevents them. I live in a world of " nice ideas." At present we are all as inconsequent as motes in a sunbeam. Look at the mountains and the lake and the sky—how they seem to us one blue, giddy, irridescent

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bubble—and we in the midst of it all. But one day we shall see it all so differently ; we shall see that the lake is some flat water flanked by flat and solid mountains with some flat-looking blue ether over all. Middleness will have caught us—or rather you, for I shall escape. I shall fling myself into the unhappiness which is in the extremes of things ; I shall escape the horror of the golden mean ; I shall remain alive until my death.' And what do you think you will gain by this ? ' asked Anne. Something which 'has no name, something I cannot explain.' An invisible cockle-shell,' suggested Lucienne. Exactly,' said Boris, and got up. Where are you going ? ' asked Richard, sharply. Away. To become Prince or Pauper : to escape the golden mean : to remain alive.' And he walked away down the slope. Lucienne opened her lips to call him back desperately, but could not find her voice. He disappeared beyond the grey orchards. III. It hasn't changed much,' said Richard. Not as much as we have,' said Anne. ' The vine is hoarier,' said Lucienne. Let's sit by the railing.' I don't suppose he will come,' said Richard, but we may as well take a table for four.' Lucienne drew off her gloves and looked at Richard. Yes, Richard, you are still very beautiful,' she said. And so, my dear, are you,' he answered. And Anne is more than ever our nursery ideal of the perfect little duchess.' Anne smiled her charming smile. A thin and shabby waiter came slowly towards them and stood beside Lucienne. She looked up and then slipped her hand through his arm, drawing him down into the empty chair. Sit down, Boris,' she said, I knew you would come.'

IV. And so those are the things I have experienced,' concluded Boris. Into twenty years I have put the active and passive experiences of forty. It seemed to me, when I walked away and left you sitting there in the orchard, that what I was doing was a brave, an original thing. Of course it wasn't ; and it has ended as tritely as it could. The men who disappear ' always turn up again as worn-out waiters to the considerable annoyance of their friends. But the internal part of it all has ended somewhat as I anticipated.' Ended ? ' broke in Lucienne. This morning, when I woke up in my yellow pine bedroom—you should see that attic, Richard, it would disgust you—I looked at it with the eye of a lover. The bedcover is almost as dirty as the rag of a carpet beneath it, but this morning, when the crack in my small mirror caught the sunlight like a star, even dirtiness had a beauty. I could not have looked more happily at my mistress' feet than I did at the backs of my atrocious yellow shoes—a present from my last American employer—appearing from beneath the chest of drawers. And I knew when I turned on my elbow I should see through the narrow window the topmost boughs of a cherrytree in bloom, and behind, and even whiter and fresher than the cherry

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flowers, the Dent du Midi. I was in love with them all because I knew that at last I could enter into their dumb existence and have all their incurious serenity. I had, it seemed, a right to be dumb because I have suffered as all have suffered since creation, and a right to serenity because I have made my piece of creation—no tangible thing, only a life. But it seemed better for me to have lived these things than to have written them—to have experienced all things both actually and potentially. There is nothing I desire to know because I have not known it—except Death. My hair is greyer than yours, Richard—almost white. Which is as it should be, for I have stopped being young—just this morning. I have escaped middleage. Up till now my life has been youth. When I left you under the apple-tree that day, Lucienne Yes, Boris—left me. Did it never occur to you that I might have wanted to come with you ? ' ' It did, Lucienne ; but I was too selfish to say " Come." You I wanted to prove my theory, to find the waters of youth, and I thought that by denying myself you I might find the great unhappiness necessary to achievement. So indeed I did, but more selfishly than I could have conceived possible.' And now ? ' asked Lucienne. A few tables off a bishop in holiday mufti rang his ring against his glass and called Waiter ! ' in a voice of bland irritation. Boris got up and wandered respectfully towards him. ,

V. It was getting cold and the vines were warped black against the white snows of the far peaks when Lucienne climbed again up to the terrace. The patron was walking slowly up and down between the empty tables. Lucienne asked him about Boris. It is nearly two hours since I have seen him,' he told her, but here is his boy, he will know.' A small, thin creature who might have been any age from six to twelve got slowly off a chair by the railings and came slowly towards her. The first thing Lucienne saw of him were his eyes, as strange and wild as Boris' were, staring at her from below his long and tangled hair. Eyes, hair, and skin of a dusty amber shade gave him a somewhat Eastern appearance, and made Lucienne think of hot and dusty streets between blind houses, an impression which was strengthened when she saw that beneath his patched black cloak and loose blue overall his brown toes were clinging inside a large pair of red mules. Gravely he handed her an envelope. Lucienne opened it and read. Twenty years ago, Lucienne, I did a selfish thing ; and so now I am asking you to be generous. When I said I had done only one work towards my part of creation I was wrong. I have done two—here is the other. Bring up my son, Lucienne. He is a very individual work, and I know that you will not bind him with convention.—Boris.' Lucienne turned to the boy. Where is your father ? ' she asked— almost querulously, the patron thought. He was upstairs,' answered the boy. Lucienne addressed the patron. I must see him,' she said, perhaps I might go upstairs.' Lucienne had once been very beautiful, and the patron presently assented. They climbed up to the attics of the little hotel. The door of

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Boris' room was closed. Lucienne knocked and got no answer. Again she knocked and called ' Boris' in her charming voice, The house was very still. Then Lucienne was suddenly afraid ; she beat the door with her fists calling Boris by name shrilly again and again. ' Pardon,' said the patron and, gently pushing her away, he opened the door. A great tabby cat jumped off the window-sill and ran towards them with small relieved cat-noises. The room was very still and rather stuffy. The Dent du Midi glittered keen and cold through the dirty window-pane, and an urgent fly was running from corner to corner across the window, in a restless passion to get out of the room towards the light and the far whiteness. Boris was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Lucienne hurried to the bed. Boris,' she cried, Boris, Boris ! ' ' But Madame,' said the patron, ' he is dead.' They went downstairs. Lucienne looked at the boy. She would have to take him back with her to her hotel, she supposed. And in those amazing garments. It would be difficult to get a taxi. They would have to go by tramcar. Really, Boris might have dressed the boy in a more normal fashion ; people would stare so. And public schools ; he would probably know nothing ; it would be difficult to get him in anywhere . . . H. M.

Lincoln Minster Lord, who hast granted me such measure Of Thy upbuilding grace, that when I stand Within Thy house and seek the treasure Arches encompass, all the wonderland Of worship is unfolded. Where the sun Falls, slanting, stain-glass-mellowed, on the wall There springs true longing in Thy race to run, And courage to run on in spite of fall. Thus, as the Spirit came at Whitsuntide, Thy carven symphony inspires my prayerâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Lord, when my heart at length is purified, Build Thou, I pray, Thy perfect Minster there. M.J.R.

Epitaph The lips of lovers kiss the final earth, The arms of love are empty now and still ; Even the bird of sorrow does not sing. I who was born a man and lived a king Go down a man to my low place of birth. Wind is the everlasting thing. DOROTHEA MATTHEWS.

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How to Write for a Varsity Paper I have often wondered how they write for Varsity papers. I have found out. This is how they do it :One of the men's colleges is observed to have a new barbed-wire entanglement somewhere. Why? The Editor of The Distillery has challenged the Editor-to-be of The Crisis to a duel. The Crisis is a paper which is in danger of coming into being. Mopplechoke Q. Stimmitz is coming soon Don't miss him ! The sun rose and the cock crew on the morning I don't know how long ago when Miss A A. . . B . . ., goalkeeper of the St. Tanquerville's College, came into the world. The cock died the same day, and the sun has not felt the same since. Mopplechoke Q. Stimmitz is on his way ! At the annual dinner of the S.P.C.U. [Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Undergraduates] a new dish was served called Progs in Aspic.' The company donned academic dress to eat it. There is no truth in the statement that the Sub-Editor of The Capillary is to become Public Orator. [Melloids for singers and public-speakers. Remove that husky feeling. 6d. Advt.] The magazine which calls itself The Meantwell ought to know better. We shall say no more. Mopplechoke . . . . [We take you at your word.â&#x20AC;&#x201D;ED.] M. V.

On Someone who is Very Beautiful Though some censorious persons trace A shocking discord in your face, Wherein two beauties, they contend, While co-existing do not blendâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; This dual beauty holds my heart, Your Nature first, and then your Art. E. M.

CRAWFORD.

Correspondence To the Editor of The Fritillary. DEAR MADAM,

May I say a few words in explanation of the Mary Somerville Research Fellowship? This was the first Fellowship for Oxford women, and was founded in 1902 by old students of Somerville College. It has been maintained ever since by subscriptions from past and present students. The Fellowship is open to graduates from all the Women's Colleges, and to candidates for the degrees of B.Litt., B.Sc., and D.Phil. The present value of the Fellowship is .250 per annum for three years, with free board and residence in Somerville for one year, and free board

FRITILLARY for forty weeks in each of the other two years. The Council has about 'i,000 in investments, and the object of the concerts arranged is to build up an endowment fund so that the Fellowship may be independent of an annual subscription list. As an old Somervillian I am actively interested, and am helping the Principal of Somerville College in the promotion of these concerts. We shall be most grateful if you will give these concerts your support, and make them known through your columns. Yours faithfully, C. MIREIO LEGGE. 115 Banbury Road, Oxford.

Modern Music Oxford has honoured M. Maurice Ravel by conferring on him the degree of Doctor of Music, and by giving a concert of his works. Somebody has questioned whether this was a sincere mark of appreciation. Did the authorities honour him because they think him a great musician, or because he is a writer of modern music, not too far away from orthodox modernity? Has not the public become conscious that the music of to-day can no longer be looked upon as a strange dragon defacing a beautiful pasture-land ? Is it not ' done ' now, to like modern music, just as it is ' done ' to worship Bach and admire the Dolmetsches ? But still people regard modern music as a dragon, even if a domesticated one ; and they expect the dragon's roar to sound like the bellow of a bull. I am convinced that we listen to modern music in the light of ' classical ' music. We hear a strange sound (strange, because we have not heard it in classical music) and we squirm and feel like a timid schoolboy who has seen a more daring comrade break a rule, and we whisper inside ourselves (probably unconsciously) ' consecutive fifths ! ' This is all a mistake. Music cannot be bound by the rules of the past. Music to-day has its own idiom and its own assonances. The writer of the analytical notes for the Ravel Concert, in describing the Sonata for Violin and Piano, Ravel's most recent work, talks of ' the use of fundamental dissonances such as the major seventh as though they were concords.' They are concords if Ravel makes them so. If a major common chord were played in the middle of a piece written in the modern idiom, it would be relatively a dissonance. This is not a defence of modern music, but a defence of good modern music. It is very easy to be insincere nowadays. With the classical idiom in your mind you can write a ' modern ' piece by altering notes and making dissonances. But what are dissonances in the classical idiom may sound modern, but will not necessarily be the same thing as assonances in the modern idiom. It has been suggested to me that nobody will ever be able to appreciate both modern and older music at their true value until all these false ideas of schools and rules are done away with. Our conception of music is weakened by association, and we really do not know what we think of it. The ideal would be to have children brought up in a School of Music where they were never told that Palestrina lived in the sixteenth century,

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or that Haydn was the father of the Symphony, or that there were such things as consecutive fifths and suspended sevenths. They alone would be able to judge. MYRA VERNEY.

Book Review BLACK SPARTA.

By Naomi Mitchison. (Jonathan Cape.)

Black Sparta is the same kind of book as Mrs. Mitchison's others. It

consists of stories which treat Greeks as if they were alive now. This is, of course, the only way to treat Greeks if you are going to put them into a novel, and Mrs. Mitchison does it perfectly. Black Sparta is, to her other novels, what The Egoist is to Meredith's other novels. People will be told to read it as her most characteristic work, though it will probably be no one's favourite. It is excelled emotionally by The Conquered and When the Bough Breaks, and artistically by Cloud Cuckoo Land. But it is more completely and concentratedly Mrs. Mitchison than any of the others. The stories Take Back your Bay Wreath and 0 Lucky Thessaly illustrate her preoccupation with emotions of a particularly complicated and unsatisfying kind, which she probably chooses because they give full scope to her power for detailed emotional analysis. They show what is obviously a female and a twentieth century conception of sentiments which in a Greek boy would have been existent but unconscious. Mrs. Mitchison has a genius for creating atmosphere, and she does it with particular effect when she is describing the contrast between happiness and horror, as in Krypteia and Black Sparta. One feels the Spartan cruelty, made more terrible by mystery. In the poems she seems to be making too great an effort to be Greek. They are too full of words,' and one is distracted from the beauty and meaning that are probably there by the excitement of discovering the rhymes. An added disadvantage is that they are put between the stories in a manner reminiscent of Kipling. The fascination of Mrs. Mitchison's work does not, as one might expect, wear off. It is an insult to call her a historical novelist. It is not for the novelty of her subjects that she has gained universal admiration, but for her own genius.

Music Notes Oxford Subscription Concert.

At the first Oxford Subscription Concert of the season, on November Elisabeth Schumann sang Mozart and Schubert. Madame Schumann's singing is of the finest. She has a very beautiful voice and is a musician to her finger-tips. I can never forget my first hearing of Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier ' when in the trio of the last act her top notes stood out with a distressingly beautiful quality which even those of Lotte Lehmann and Delia Rheinhardt, who were singing with her, could not match. Madame Schumann's Mozart could not have been more finished and delicately conceived. I liked best ' An Chloe ' and ' Der Zauberer,' a delightful song which I have never heard before. i st,

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The artiste's singing of two Schubert groups made me realise how much Schubert depends on the singer. Unless the singer can get the song across ' it falls flat. The other day I heard quite a good singer in Der Jangling and die Quelle,' and I thought it a rather boring song. When I heard Elisabeth Schumann sing it I thought it truly delightful. In spite of the perfect singing, I went away feeling that Schubert's songs are overrated. Madame Schumann paid a very graceful compliment by singing two English songs, The Maid and the Miller,' by Bax, and The Shoemaker,' as encores. Mr. George Reeves accompanied admirably. Ladies' Musical Society. At the first concert of the term I heard M. Rene Bergeon, a French flautist new to England. All the flautists I have heard could well learn how to produce tone from M. Bergeon. I have never before heard such quality and variety of tone from a flute ; I did not think the instrument capable of it. M. Bergeon played Bach, Handel, Gluck and Loeillet (a delightful writer who should be heard more often). By a faulty arrangement the Bach Sonata was placed first, and the artist was not able to do himself justice in this exceedingly difficult piece on a cold flute. I had the privilege of hearing M. Bergeon on the previous night at a private concert ; I thought he was in better form there than at the Ladies' Musical. Perhaps the audience put him out. It is enough to shatter anyone's nerves. I shall never be able to hear any flautist now without hoping for M. Bergeon's almost violin-like tone. Mr. Mark Raphael sang Schubert adequately and some Elizabethan songs well. Dowland's ' Weep you no more, sad Fountains,' which was more beautiful than and twice as atmospheric as any of the Schubert songs, shows us that we have no need to be ashamed of English music. M.V.

Playhouse Reviews TO HAVE THE HONOUR.' By A. A. MILNE. In a comedy of this kind the acting must be detailed down to the last shade of refinement ; for although the plot mainly turns upon the relationship between two people, the atmosphere of the play is really contained in the particular reactions of a group of people. They are not quite types, and yet each in his own person shows up human nature in its most ludicrous lights when preparing to meet a prince, yes—a real prince. Only Angela—so British : I'm Angela Battersby ; take me or leave me '—refuses to allow the coming of this prince to ruffle her. With such nonchalance and such inscrutability did Miss Marguerite Young play the part that she was so British as to be almost sphinx-like. Mr. Aubrey Burnard did not seem, except at one or two moments, to be very comfortable as Simon Battersby ; the part of genial old age sat stiffly upon him. Miss Olga Martin and Mr. Valentine Ware as Gennifer and Prince Michael created an increasing liveliness about the serious kernel

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of the plot, and Mr. Ware was particularly successful in his alternating from plain Mr. X to his own invented character. It wasn't just a matter of accent ; Prince Michael was a warm and passionate man ; Mr. X sadly lacked fire. The part of Imogen Faith full, a quite conceivable and amusing character, was overplayed to the point of the grotesque ; in contrast to which Mr. Tim Brooke as Captain Robert Holt did a clever piece of caricature which in the beginning offered just as great opportunities for exaggeration. Happily he did not take them. There is never any reason to turn comedy into farce, and this is more especially the case with a play by A. A. Milne, where the etching is delicate and restraint is all to the good. The majority of the cast fell into line well with the Milne convention, and in spite of the rather small audience one could count it a successful opening for the new season. MARY CROZIER. ' You Never Can Tell ' is Bernard Shaw's ' As You Like It.' It contains all the ingredients of a popular comedy, including mislaid relatives and a comic waiter. It sets out to be amusing, and it is amusing, in spite of the fact that it ' dates ' badly, with its references to rational dress and women's rights. Before very long it will have to be played in appropriate costume. Patricia Hayes seemed thoroughly to enjoy her part as Dolly Clandon. She was always lively and spontaneous. Marguerite Young had a part which suited her in Gloria,. It is a delight to look at her. Tim Brooke acted cheerfully and competently as Valentine. William, the comic waiter, is a part rich in opportunities, some of which Robert Newton missed. It is inconceivable that a really efficient waiter should walk about with his hands raised in a gesture almost pontificial. The performance of ' The Pigeon was one of the best that I have seen at the Playhouse. The play is not a well-known one, but it is typical of Galsworthy in its insistence on social problemsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in this instance, the problem of how to deal with vagabonds. The players co-operated so well that it is needless to single out anyone for special praise. All three down-andouts were good, but Valentine Ware, who had the best part in the play as Ferrand, the French vagrant, acted particularly well. His imitation of a Frenchman's pronunciation of English was really convincing, and he managed to give his long dissertations on Galsworthy's favourite themes a semblance of sincerity and even of probability. The play was very short, but it was worth acting, and the Playhouse Company may be congratulated on their performance. MARGARET SAUMAREZ SMITH. CINEMA REVIEW. The Oxford Cinema has entertained us in the last three weeks with an engaging variety of films, ranging from Light to Excessive comedy ; from romance of the Rocky Pinnacle setting to that of the rather blatantly exotic Mantilla-Carnation genre. And there have been Big Names. The successive appearance of Charlie Chaplin in ' The Circus ' and of Harold Lloyd in ' Girl Shy ' would tempt Providence, if not the critic, to one of those reckless but exquisite comparisons. Of course, Charlie is an immortal. I believe that opinion has been expressed befo re. But he is also, and I think this first impressed me in his last venture, a very nice little man. In this quaint, rather unreal, spectacle of a Circus which Charlie produced for us, there was the anticipated plot of the cruel circus-manager, the beautiful, ill-treated daughter â&#x20AC;&#x201D;who, by the way, might have been cast with a rather more prolonged

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search for the film face—the handsome tight-rope walker, and the inevitable conclusion when Charlie, having brought the girl and the tight-rope walker together again, was left behind to watch the receding circuswaggons and to satisfy our comic lust for pathos by a last helpless gesture which was quaint enough to supercede mere resignation. If this were to be his last film, Charlie would have chosen the moment of his departure dramatically and unforgettably. In The Gold Rush' there were touches of pathos and much self-exhausting humour • but there was none of the real tension of drama which recurs throughout this film. And then—Harold. It was unfortunate perhaps that the setting of Girl Shy ' was so obviously that of two or three years ago. Is this an argument for the greater chance of immortality of the orthodox theatre? Or will there be, say in A.D. 2001, a series of letters to the Sunday Times for and against the revival, in defect of Hamlet, of Tinder-Keepers ' in modern clothes? But this is not merely an old film ; it is quite definitely a bad one. There were incidents which evoked laughter, and even that hearty, delightful enthusiasm which one does associate with the Super audiences. But the photography was defective and the minor characters badly chosen, while the plot itself was too intricate really to sustain interest. In spite of the usual Harold Lloyd effects in speed and acrobatics, one was conscious of a feeling of rebellion against the conventional focussing of attention on the human element. For instance, in the almost elephantine purpose of the runaway tram, it was hardly material that Harold was demonstrating comedy at the wheel. I liked that tram. And the career of the two cart horses also deserves praise. This was charmingly reminiscent of Ben Hur.' Ramona ' was inevitably centred in the personality of Dolores del Rio. In the title-part she gave us a combination of elfin spirit and detached beauty, and the plot allowed her ample scope for those emotional scenes in which she excels. This actress has suggested comparison with a more recently established Mexican star, Lupe Velez, who has also appeared this term in Stand and Deliver.' But, in Ramona' at any rate, Dolores shows an infinitely greater capacity for expressive and memorable acting. The prologue made an interesting claim that, as simplicity was acknowledged to be the highest form of art, this love tragedy was produced with this intent. But I would question the sincerity of the director in this. It was possibly a difficult story to adapt ; but the cuts in the film plot were not well planned, and we were continually being presented with deceptive prospects of an early conclusion. Also, it would have satisfied one's in stinct for drama, and possibly have stimulated more respect for filmartistry, had Ramona perished on the hiss of the dying Indian rather than have revived later on that of the long-suffering Felipe. The anti-climax was irritating. And a minor point—was it really necessary in the allusion to the senora's death to state that she was ' lying asleep under the peppertree ' ? Space only permits a brief reference to the excellent rendering by Lon Chaney of the part of a malformed revolutionary servant in Mockery,' a drama of the Russian' Revolution. In a rather sketchy plot he displayed adequately those almost hypnotic powers and animal-like movements which characterise all his film parts. Lovely ' Laura la Plante entertained us passably in Finders—Keepers,' a mediocre film, which contained, however, something akin to genius in the parlour-trick of one of the minor actors. I think his name was Eddie Phillips. He spat little bullets beautifully—very beautifully. E. S. H.

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English Club On Wednesday, October 31st, Mr, Harold Acton addressed the English Club on the tendencies of modern English Literature. Mr. Acton divided present writers into Edwardians and Georgians, those who write under the influence of the last decade, and those who, as a result of the late war, grope in the dark, uncertain where to turn. Mr. Acton read a number of representative extracts, some happily chosen, others not, but except for the work of Mrs. Virginia Woolf, for which he has a profound admiration, he views the trend of modern literature with an assumption of pessimism more suited to Wilde, of whom he is, consciously or unconsciously, a close imitator, than to the present day.

College News LADY MARGARET HALL. The most noticeable feature so far in the life of the Hall is naturally freshers. They have flooded out the Dramatic Society and the Beaufort Debating Society ; they play hockey, lacrosse, and netball, they row, they even swim, with incredible enthusiasm. They produced the traditional First Year Entertainment with apparently as much enjoyment on their side as on that of the audience. We love to see it. SOMERVILLE COLLEGE. On the evening of November 4th the Music Club gave a short, private concert in the Hall. Miss Gravestock played a Chopin Scherzo in B minor, and Miss Joseph played a flute solo, the Andante from a Handel Sonata. The Club sang two three-part madrigals, ' Come, shepherd swains,' by Witbye, and ' Late is my rash accounting,' by Weelkes, and a hymn by Palestrina, Jesu, Rex admirabilis.' All these were excellently performed, and the audience enjoyed them very much. Lady Helen Asquith has been elected President of the Club for this year, and Miss B. C. Smith Secretary. 4

The College dance, which was attended chiefly by members of the first and second year, was held on November 3rd. The J.C.R. of the College has been redecorated in shades of pink and grey. HOCKEY CLUB. Practices have been held regularly this term, and also an extra game on Tuesdays. The First Year have produced some useful defence, but unfortunately not so many forwards. A Second XI match against Cricklade on November 3rd, was won by the Somerville team. 9-2. The Second XI forward-line is to be congratulated on its greatly improved play.

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LACROSSE CLUB. Captain—N. KENYON. Secretary—N. LEE. Treasurer—P. WILBERFORCE.

The Freshers' Match was twice postponed on account of the weather, and even on the actual day was broken off by rain about a quarter of an hour before the end. The game went in favour of the Seniors, but among the Freshers some showed considerable promise, particularly N. Johnson, J. Young, J. Bainbridge, D. Moran and D. Pleydell Bouverie. The game was an enjoyable one, and very fast considering the state of the ground. The First XII have played one match against Lady Margaret Hall, which they won 9-4. On the whole the individual standard was high, but the defences lacked combination and there was some very wild shooting among the attacks. Gloucester Training College of Domestic Science came down to play our ' A ' team and were defeated with some difficulty after an extremely good game. Both First and Second XII promise well this year, but they still need a great deal of practice in combination, tackling and shooting. N. KENYON. OXFORD HOME STUDENTS. On June loth and 21st, in the Trinity Term, the O.H.S. Dramatic Society gave two performances of Sheridan's ' Critic ' in the Common Room. These were well attended and were apparently much enjoyed. An O.H.S. Ping-Pong Club was formed in the Trinity Term, and already has a large membership. Miss Jones and Miss Glaze have been elected third and second year representatives on the Junior Common Room Committee of O.H.S. The O.H.S. Third Year Dance will be held in the J.C.R. on November i7th. There will be an O.H.S. Old Students' Dinner on Saturday, November 3rd. In connection with the need for funds for the equipment of the new Games Field in Marston Ferry Road, it was proposed and carried at the last General Meeting of O.H.S. that a committee of Ways and Means shall be appointed with power to supervise the collection and administration of funds for objects not specially dealt with under the powers of the Treasurer of the J.C.R. This committee is to be appointed at the end of the Michaelmas Term, and is to hold office for one year. It shall be thus constituted :a Chairman, who shall be the Treasurer of the J.C.R., and one third year, three second and two first year representatives. The O.H.S. Debating Society will entertain New College on Wednesday, November 7th, to debate on the motion, ' That this House does not believe in keeping up appearances.' There will be a joint debate with Merton on, November 14th to discuss, ' That this House wishes to live dangerously.' On November 21st will be hel d a League of Nations debate, to which the President hopes to invite members of other women's colleges. On Wednesday, October 31st, there was a debate in theJ.C.R., J.C.R. the subject being, ' That this House deplores the Labour programme.' an extremely exciting debate, the motion was defeated by one vote.

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ST. HUGH'S COLLEGE. Most of the third year students have taken possession of the new wing, which was opened two days before term began. The Congress of American Women Teachers, which was lodged in St. Hugh's during part of the summer vacation, has made a present to the College of two long mirrors and a picture, which will shortly adorn the new J. C. R. There have been two meetings of the College English Club, at which Strindberg's ' Spook Sonata ' and Ibsen's ' Enemy of the People ' were read. The College Dance was held on Saturday, November 3rd, from 7.3o to ii p.m. A hockey match was played at home against St. Mary's, Wantage, and resulted in a victory of z r goals to 3. The lacrosse match with Bedales had to be scratched owing to unfavourable weather, but the team very much enjoyed being shown over the school. ST. HILDA'S. Bad weather has caused most of the hockey matches to be scratched so far, but St. Hilda's ' A ' team played the Banbury Ladies on Tuesday, October 3oth, and won by five goals to four. The lacrosse team have not played any matches yet. On Saturday, October 27th, the freshers presented their play, a skit on Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress,' written by Miss Peattie. It dealt with the progress of the fresher from school to college and through the River of the Preliminary Examination, and contained a number of good topical hits. There was a slight outbreak of fire in the Hall Building on the afternoon of Friday, November 2nd. The Oxford Fire Brigade were called, but the outbreak was confined to one room and soon extinguished.

PIOLYWELL PRESS, ALFRED STREET, OXFORD.