THE IMP,
June, 1925.
EDITORS. E.FAWCETT. P. O'FARRELL.
COMMITTEE. Third Year Representative—K. ALLSOP. Second Year Representative—A. HADFIELD. First Year Representative—R.0, HAYNES.
TREASURER. W. DINGWALL.
THE IMP No. 19.
Trinity Term.
1925.
EDITORIAL.
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N heat and in haste, and actually in the Schools, we snatch up once more the editorial quill to say ave Yatque vale to The Imp, his readers and contributors. We had thought that an epitaph would have had a wide appeal for writers to The Imp, who is so frequently in a precarious and pining condition ; but the choice inscriptions, of which the prize goes to the Logician's tombstone, were all too few ; which we suppose we must take as a good omen for the long life and prosperous career still in waiting for The Imp. We have no new competition to propose. Let the brain of the new editor devise some subtler lure for the thoughts and pens of illusive competitors. We wish her less uneasiness than we have felt in the seventh week of each term as to whether The Imp is capable of making his appearance at all ; and we wish all her troubles as well overweighed as ours have been by the pleasure and amusement of compiling him. Good luck to The Imp then shall be our last wish as the inexorable doors close upon us, equipped only with Dryden's description of a student's mind : ' The more informed the less he understood.' And with the unfailing answer provided by Wordsworth to all examination questions : ' I cannot tell, I wish I could.'
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THE IMP. GAMES NOTICES. S. H. C. L. T. C. Captain—B. M. C. MORGAN.
Secretary—M.
COWELL-SMITH.
The weather has been so unusually good that we have only had to scratch two matches this season, and the new En-tout-cas Coui-t proved a great boon early in the term when the grass courts were still wet. The standard of play of the 1st VI is not very high on the whole. The team lacks steadiness and the match-winning temperament. We are fortunate in having M. Slaney, the Oxford Captain, still playing for us, and -take this opportunity of congratulating her on winning the Singles in the Inter-Collegiate Tournament for the second year in succession. A. Brunyate is also to be congratulated on playing for Oxford throughout the term, and getting her Blue.' Of the rest of the VI, A. Huxley is good when on her game. M. Cowell-Smith and D. Neal have the makings of a good couple and played well in the Cupper, but they lack self-confidence. The 2nd VI is erratic throughout, but has won most of its matches. The teams are as follows :I ST VI.—i st couple, M. Slaney and B. Morgan ; znd couple, A. 8runyate and A. Huxley ; 3rd couple, M. Cowell-Smith and D. Neal. 2ND VI.—ISt couple, V. Foster and E. Bonner • 2nd couple, J. Cartwright and I. Shrigley ; 3rd couple, M. Dean and D. Neville-Rolfe. H. Moss played as substitute for E. Bonner in the Cupper against Somerville. The following have also played in matches : R. Greenhill, M. Wardell, J. Machlin, D. Taylor and E. Fulford. The following matches have been played :— 1ST VI. v. L.M.H. Won, 5-0. v. Somerville. Won, 4-2. v. University College, Reading. Lost, 4-5. v. Park's Club. Lost, I-8. v. Somerville (Cupper). Lost, 4-5. v. Yellowhammers. Lost, 3-6. v. Manor Park Club. Won, 5-4. Matches have also been played with St. John's and Oriel.
THE IMP. 2ND VI. v. Somerville. Won, 7-2. v. Oxford High School. Won, 9—o. v. Somerville (Cupper). Lost, 2-7. v. Downe House. Won, 5-4. v. Park's Club. Lost, 4-5. v. Headington School. Won. •■ •■ •■■ • ■ •••■■ ••••■
S.H.C.C.C. Captain—V. Vice-Captain—J. Secretary—H.
RUSSELL. S. BUDENBERG. OSBORNE.
The Cricket Club this season consists of twenty members. The team as a whole shows improvement. There is a great need of overarm bowlers for, with the exception of Budenberg, who has been most erratic, we have to rely entirely on underarm ; and although Machin and Kent have been fairly successful, lobs are never really effective against good batting. The strong point of the team is its fielding, which has been consistently good. The batting is a great deal better than it was last season, the top averages being 58, 21.5 and 17.8, compared with 15.6, 13.7 and 12.5 for last year. Horn and Ogilvie have made some useful first wicket stands and Budenberg has played several good innings. The latter has been a very valuable all-round member of the team and will be greatly missed next year. The whole Club has shown great keenness both in coming regularly to nets and in scoring• and umpiring for matches. Match Results :— v. Milham•Ford. Lost, 86-69. v. Oxford High School. Won by 6 wickets. v. St. Mary's, Wantage. Won by 7 wickets. v. St. Michael's. Won by an innings and 8 wickets. v. Headington. Won by 7 wickets.
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THE IMP. THE FIRST YEAR ENTERTAINMENT. We should like to congratulate the First Year most heartily
on an evening's real entertainment. The programme was admirably varied and could not have • been bettered whether for Tragedy, Pastoral, or Comical-Topical. The Follies, one felt, might have come up by express train from any pleasure resort along the sunny South Coast ; we loved their inter-carminal business,' but their well-chosen words went straight to our hearts ; moreover, now we shall know exactly what to do when we meet a Proctor or an Undergradu-ate. The Sleeping Beauty' was an admirable adaptation of an old theme ; we felt that a strange Eastern influence had-crept over the well-known words ; our senses were pleasantly lulled into another world where all that mattered was for Beauty to keep her lustrous eyes, where unpunctuality was scarce counted a fault, and where radiant Princes, ex machina, might arrive at any moment. We felt that the Famous Women were chosen with consummate taste. If it is possible to mention one above the rest, we are sure that the Princess's manipulation of her food would have gone to Chaucer's heart. The table of Examiners, who rightly realised that neatness and good handwriting are as essential to every Candidate as a black tie, was a detail that did not go by unappreciated. It is on touches like this that the ultimate success of such an entertainment depends. The Cautionary Tables caused us perhaps more ,intense joy than any other item. The chorus sang extremely well, and brought out their words so clearly that we never felt that we needed to strain our ears to hear them. Matilda and her Aunt, and Henry King, and Jim with his Nurse and Parents were, we thought, just what Mr. Belloc would have wished them to be. The last play was delicately constructed, but we are afraid that we did not quite grasp the significance of the Green Cat, nor why he should have been able to save everyone at the end. However, the Rainhouse was a delight no less than its occupants. Ma y we congratulate Mrs. on her skill with the umbrella, and her inimitable way of saying James Rainhouse!' We wondered on what • Green Bank the lambs had learnt their plaintive bleat ; they were so youthful and soft and woolly. Those who are Riding an old bike down to the Schools' this week, will, in black moments, remember the entertainment. May we thank the First Year very much for the trouble they must have taken to produce a show that was—to borrow the only word which seems eminently suitable—' fruity.'
M. L. E.
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THE IMP. COMPETITION. EPITAPH On George Brewis All men we know return to dust, George Brewis was a man, His end is in accordance with The syllogistic plan. N.B.W. EPITAPH on Percy Simpson, M.A. (Author of a monograph on Shakespeare's Punctuation.) Pray you for one who tied his points with care, Yet now disbanded lies beneath the sod, Lest Punctuation damn his patient soul And stand a 'comma 'twixt himself and God. M.A.R. EPITAPH on Two Types One took delight to spend laborious days : One spent laborious days to take delight. What did it matter, either blame or praise? Calm, at the-end of those divergent ways Stood Death, and swallowed both up into Night.
WHAT'S IN A NAME. [Authors' Note.—We would wish it to be fully understood that this is in no sense a treatise on the Shakespere-Baconian controversy (too much has already been said on the subject), but merely a few random thoughts that we trust may prove of interest.] The man whom the world calls Shakespere once said : ' What's in a name? ' The remark, we believe, has been much quoted, but it is only through the result 'of recent investigation that its extraordinary significance becomes plain to us. Man has, from pre-historic days, been morbidly sensitive of his name. We know, of course, but too well the old story of how the Brontosaurus meeting Stonehenge Whelks emerging from his cave, smiled maliciously and passed by, saying : Ic haf you gemeat at Ramszeatu.' Whelks, blind with rage, rushed to the Runic Monolith, round which the Druids were practising
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a new glide, raising their back vowels and breaking and contracting their velars. They were lining up into an E formation when the sudden shock of Whelks' approach scattered them and they were discovered in the form of a perfect I. It was an omen. Stonehenge was not slow to catch its significance. Not Whelks,' he shouted, ' but Wilks,' and rushed from the scene. Thus it has ever been with the weaker section of mankind. Others there are who would rather suffer than mutate. To this noble race belong the Younghusbands, Sidebottoms and Puddyfoots. Perhaps the man who has suffered most acutely is Francis Bacon. With him suffering takes the form of a repression ; with a grim, sardonic humour he tortures his sensitive soul. The morbid dwelling on his name and the ideas that centre round it, gives rise to so many allusions—nay, so colour all the so-called Shakespere plays, that it is impossible for a thinking man to believe for an instant that their author can be other than the man—Bacon. What an outcry is there in the words : Let us be sacrificers but not butchers, Caius Cassius. The agony of the man is awful. It is almost as though he writes the words in blood. Illustrations are too numerous to mention. Let us show one all-sufficient example. What is his masterpiece? Hamlet. It is the tragedy of a man's soul—his own—and the title he forced himself to choose means—what? A little Ham. Why,' posterity has asked, apropos of the great controversy, was his conduct not that which the magnanimity shown in his plays leads us to expect? ' Francis Bacon once attended a Masquerade in a particoloured suit, half-white, half-red. The Virgin Queen, rapping him heavily on the shoulders with her knuckles, remarked in strident tones, and with the playful humour of the Tudors : Ha! My streaky Bacon ! ' Bowing low, in order to avoid the mortification which flooded his face, Francis replied : ' Ay, Madam, streaky it shall be.' We can use no more graphic word to describe his political conduct than this—streaky. We find, as we go through life, that conduct is often explicable by anecdote. It is grossly unfair to judge of a man's character before hearing the little personal details that mean so much. How, indeed, can we ever censure Bacon for hardness of heart, when, in reality, life was to him just one bitter repression, occasioned by his name. T. and M.W.
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MEDEA. A Fly on my window waved its legs, And through that leg-waving Suddenly my narrow room grew dark with blood ; World's horror, world's cruelty And no escape. So I tore my hair out by the roots And scattered it round the room— Yellow fluff— And gnashed my teeth and bit my nails, And made incisions in my palms With what remained. And still that fly on the window0 horrid woman-fly, knitting, knitting, Knitting With eyes that glow and burn at me, Knitting, for ever knitting, Relentless, inexorable.
RIDICULOUS RIDDLES,
etc.
I. How did the Baker make a Platt? Burnett on the Hobbs. II. Who fed Babbs on Allsopp? Alleyne I did it. III. Why did the Mercer Sell Lace?' Because Lacey things Thelwell.
UNPUBLISHED WORKS OF MISS E. M. DELL. SERIES I. All Peshawar swooned in the intense heat of one of India's most burning suns. The ground was parched and hard as the scales of the crocodiles which sought relief in the Ganges. Life was stifled. To Maud Murgatroyd the breathless atmosphere seemed like some evil spirit, hot from hell, whose arms were pressed around her. She crouched low in her chair and stared with vacant eyes at the bamboo mat on the wall opposite, mentally reviewing the crowded events of the day. The morning
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had found her a care-free maid, and now she was married—a shudder ran through her—and broken-hearted. Her parents were dead and she had been staying with friends ; they had been cabled for to return to England immediately ; they could not take her and on the other hand they could not leave her unprotected behind. Then Humbert Murgatroyd had stepped into the breach and offered her marriage. It seemed the only way out, but even now she could not think how she had ever brought herself to do it. She had always hated and feared him. She recalled him as he had stood beside her in the church— red-haired, green-eyed, diabolically ugly, with a short muscular form, legs bowed with hard riding on the polo field, and those strange long arms of his whose fingers touched his knees. There had been no difficulty about the wedding. The regimental chaplain had murmured something about banns, but Murgatroyd had merely pierced him with one of those strange magnetic glances of his which Maud had learned to fear, and he had made them man and wife. She had gone through the ceremony in a half-swoon, then they had returned to the house and inside the door he had turned and seized her in his arms. God 1 how she hated him. And yet the whole regiment would follow their Sahib into the jaws of hell if needs be. Soon he would be back from polo—she could not face him—her thoughts grew frenzied. The punk-punk of the punka irritated her to desperation. Heaven ! was she going mad? The four walls seemed to be closing in on her ; frantically she rushed to the door and flung it open, then madly, without a glance behind, she fled. . . . Suddenly dark fell. To Maud, whose eyes were blinded with weariness and fear, it was hardly noticeable. Drops of Indian rain, big as rupees, splashed down on her. A tropical storm swept over the land. Her sand-coloured hair hung matted down her back, the lids hung heayy over her strange walnut-coloured eyes, an unbearable pain racked her chest. Was that an arm stretched out to seize her? She shrieked wildly, stumbled and fell over the low branch of a banyan tree. Night intensified. She was back in the house lying on the camp bed before the fire ; it was cold now. There was a strange pain in her head and one arm felt numb. She tried to think. Ah, yes, she remembered she had fled from the house—fled for miles it seemed ; then darkness ; then she remembered vaguely strong arms that held her oh ! so gently, and a low tender voice. Could it have been Humbert, so changed, so altered? She opened her eyes
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and saw she had his rough tweed coat round her ; how wet he must have got in the storm A tear slipped down her cheek ; she was too weak to wipe it away. Life was inexplicable. And then he came in, quiet and impassive, but emanating masculinity from every pore ; he stood beside her. Only his eyes shot green light. Ah you are better,' he said. I can leave you safely.' ' Leave? ' She looked up questioningly. I am going away,' he said in the dull toneless voice of one repeating a lesson. I thought I. could make you love me ; I know now my very presence is hateful to you. I will set you free and you can then marry whom you please.' He turned and bent to poke the fire. Maud blanched. She knew he meant what he said. He would go away and she . . . . She realised now that she loved him with her whole soul ; without him life would be but dust and ashes. A sob strangled in her throat. She looked at his dear red head and massive shoulders as he knelt before the fire ; had she killed his love? What she could not see was the iron which he held in his strong nervous fingers twisted into a thousand knots and the slight contraction of his nostrils which betokened an almost superhuman self-control. He rose. I am going,' he said, good-bye.' She tried to speak but could not. He had reached the door. In another minute he would be gone and she would never see him. again. Humbert,' she breathed, ah ! don't leave me ! ' The words were too low for any but the ear of love to hear— he heard and turned. She stood erect holding out beseeching hands, pathetically small and helpless, to him. He looked deep into her eyes and read there what she dared not tell him. The long arms held her close., the green eyes flashed fire into hers. She thrilled at his magnetic touch. My girl,' he breathed. My man.'
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i. Nunky, why are you worried? 2. You're in for promotion. 3. Fade out. 4. Steap stanhlitho. 5. Beowulf, biter and gebolgen. 6. Brimwylm onfeng hilderinc,
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BEOWULF. (A stirring drama of the Middle North. To be released shortly by the Early English Text Society.) ALL STAR CASTE featuring : RUDOLF MIX. LADY DAPHNE BUFF-ORPINGTON. Arranged by : JULIUS ZUPITZA. ADOLPHE DARKBANKS. Producer : Scenario :
SWEET.
WRIGHT. Photography : ONION'S.
No expense has been spared to make this an accurate representation of the conditions of life in the cold and inhospitable North 2,000 years ago. 200,060 tons of cement alone were used for the making of the set of the first scene. Among the pine trees of the North, Hothgar's shoulder companions hold highrevel. For Britons lived like brothers In the brave days of old. Hothgar is seen seated among his Thanes, and the banquet proceeds with great festivity. On his right hand sits 2Eschere, a muscular virile type of warrior [close-up lEschere--Adolphe Darkbanks], on his left, Rowena, 2Eschere's sister, a charming maid of some sixteen summers [featuring Lady Daphne BuffOrpington]. But Hothgar knows that all is not well. Nunky, why are you worried? ' says Pretty Rowena. But Night steals o'er the happy scene. The mailed warriors sink to sleep. Bed-time—Rowena. A clock rings the hour of midnight. Evil is abroad. It's an Early English Picture. Grendel's mother is seen crossing the heath with mighty strides. She bears aghastly burden. N.B.—It cannot be too strongly emphasised that this film is for adults only. Morning. Sunrise on the heath is particularly well produced. A churl is seen bearing a jug of shaving water to Aschere's room. But 2Eschere has shaved for the last time [Dead March on orchestra]. Who has done it? Grendel's mother, says Rotwena's womanly intuition. Send to the hotel for Beowulf.
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Rudolf Mix has surpassed himself in his rendering of this clean-limbed athletic young Nord. Beowulf is awakened from sleep. He hurries out. His friends gather round him, their cloaks stream in the wind. You're in for promotion at last, old son,'
says Yrmenlef of the Iron Grasp, wringing his hand. Here follows an affecting, scene between Hothgar and Beowulf. Hothgar offers the contract to Beowulf for disposing of Grendel's mother. I will give you $i,000,000,' says Hothgar. Done,' says Beowulf.
The contract is solemnised in the lofty hall of Hothgar. [A careful reproduction from plans in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, England.] Then comes a touching farewell scene between the noble young hero and the sister of the murdered man. ` There's a. log but up in the North, Miss Rowena. Will you share it? '
Fade out. It's an Early English Picture. One did not travel in Pullman cars then. Beowulf leaps upon his mustang, Hard-hoofed Hagen. The party ride over the blasted heath towards the narrow one-man-paths by the canyon. Here follows some very fine under-water photography of the sea-beasts of the canyon. After an exciting chase Beowulf, rejoicing in his young strength, kills one; and amid scenes of the wildest enthusiasm hauls it up on to the beach. IEschere's head is discovered by the purling brook. Beowulf's jaw stiffens [close up of Beowulf registering annoyance]. ' Ten cents to the man who puts me wise as to this vamp's location.'
Eadward, an aged Thane : She lives at the bottom of the river.' iEschere was my pal,' says the young warrior simply.
Slow music and a terrific splash as Beowulf dives in. The horny-handed warriors wipe the tears from their eyes . . . To be continued. It's an Early English Picture.
A.H. and P.M.W.
1101 MET T. PRESS, ALFRED STREET, OXFORD.
CONSTITUTION OF THE COLLEGE MAGAZINE. i.—That the Magazine shall be called
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the officers of the Magazine shall be an Editor and a Treasurer, elected by the J.C.R., and an elected representative from each year.
2.—That
3.—Contributions shall be accepted or refused by the decision of the majority of the Committee, the Editor reserving the right of the casting vote. 4.—The Committee shall not be held responsible for any opinions expressed in the Magazine. 5.—Nothing of intrinsic merit shall be excluded on account of views expressed therein. 6.—The anonymous character of contributions shall be respected when required. 7.—Contributions are eligible from the Senior and Junior Common Rooms, past and present. 8.—The Committee shall be empowered at their discretion to invite contributions from anyone not a member of the College.