Jib. BUM- gise PUBLISHED FOR'THE BYSTANDERf BY HODDER © STOUGHTON YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THE LIBRARY ASSOCIATES Gift of PAUL M. ATKINS ..." From a photo hy\ IF A. Swmne, New Bond Street. W. CAPTAIN BRUCE BAIRNSFATHER. [Frottiispiece. BAIRNSFATHER A Few Fragments from His Life COLLECTED BY A FRIEND With some Critical Chapters by VIVIAN CARTER Editor of 'The Bystander' NEW YORK G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS LONDON THE BYSTANDER CONTENTS THE FIRST FRAGMENT The Man and His Vogue .... PAGE 9 THE SECOND FRAGMENT Early Days . THE THIRD FRAGMENT Days of Adventure THE FOURTH FRAGMENT BAIRNSFATHER AS A FRAGMENT IN FRANCE THE FIFTH FRAGMENT Days of Discovery THE SIXTH FRAGMENT The Essence of 'Fragments': A Real Conversation 5 • 19 31 ¦ 47 • 63 • 79 £H, THE FIRST FRAGMENT THE MAN AND HIS VOGUE IF only we can get them laughing.' So remarks to himself the individual who has a difficult * crowd ' to manage — a crowd out of humour, critical, peevish, bored and disillusioned. Were the affairs of the Great Nations in the hands of practical men, laughter would be one of the muni tions of war, and the recruiting of humorists would be the job of a special department in Whitehall. c Instead of which ' the humorist has been, in our country since the war, perhaps, regarded askance until — well, until the subject of this booklet appeared on the horizon, Bruce Bairnsfather, Captain of the Royal Warwicks. Bairnsfather has been the unsolicited and unexpected laughter- maker-in-ordinary to the forces of the British Empire at war — a volunteer laughter-maker, who combined laughter-making with fighting, and extracted mirth and drollery from the most horrible situations ever endured by human man, situations which have made words of profanity, for the duration of the war, the King's English. io FRAGMENTS At first, while the Army received them with unrestrained delight, the public at home received his sketches — which were originally published weekly in the Bystander, and afterwards in book-form under the title Fragments from France — with amused bewilderment. That they were the c real thing ' so far as fidelity goes, was obvious enough, for who but a man who had been out there would have depicted trenches and dug-outs, Johnson holes, battered tin pots, derelict buildings, dead cats, as did this man ? Who else would have shown, in the fore ground of devastation, an old boot resting on a candlestick on one side of a Johnson 'ole, with a cheap timepiece on the other ? Who but a man who had been there would ever even have dreamed, in his wildest nightmare, of the officer's sword being used as a toasting-fork? Realistic as the sketches were, the stay-at-home public at first found it difficult to believe that there could breathe a ' chiel,' living in such an atmosphere of death, who was able to tak' such notes, and to print them. Yet as the weeks wore on it became obvious that there was such a man, and all doubt as to his actual identity was speedily set at rest by men who had seen him themselves. Besides, the papers published his photograph, in uniform, and at the front. So there must be such a man ! One knows that people at home, safely out of danger, can dig out humour from anything if they work hard enough, and keep FRAGMENTS N their eyes well away from But who is the man who Bairnsfather was blown up of Ypres — that can laugh at it himself, to laugh ? For Bairnsfather has not Britain and the trenches of all the America and the neutral countries. German prisoners' camp in Siberia, ' thanks ' of the enemy in terms that ensuing chapter. He has been the tion in the House,' and the recipient from highly placed personages. It that he has been worth several Army by virtue of the stimulus he has imparted to the always latent good- humour of the British soldier. He \ has carried on, in quaint pictorial form, what Kipling originated, the tradition of Tommy Atkins the man. Yes, but what kind of man is this who makes war — the most awful tragedy in human experience — seem screamingly funny? That is what you probably want to know, and that is what it is the object n anything sickening. has been through it — at the second Battle and compel others only convulsed Great fronts, but also He has reached a and received the are quoted in an subject of a ' Ques- of remarkable letters has been said of him Corps to the Allies 12 FRAGMENTS of this little book to tell you. First, as to the man as he is to-day. He is twenty-eight, and doesn't look it. He is slight of build, and his face has a refined intuitive look, with eyes that are clearly enough noting anything there is to be noted about yourself. A more closely observant man does not exist: his sense of detail in character is almost Dickensian. If, at an interview with a ' personality,' you have noted nine things out of ten, Bairnsfather will have got the whole ten, and the tenth will be the salient feature, the essential note. Yet, as with most humorists, the last thing you would suspect Bairnsfather to be would be a — humorist. He is anything but a trade-mark of his own wares. If a sudden * strafe ' threw you together into the same Johnson 'ole, the last person you would suspect your com panion to be on the arrival of * another hopeless dawn ' would be the creator of ' Fragments.' Like all true humor ists, the source of his FRAGMENTS 13 inspiration is deep down in his nature. His inspiration is not from the thing casually seen or heard, but from the thing constantly felt. Very few of his sketches have struck him * all of a sudden like.' To oblige his editor, thirsting for contributions, he is never at a loss. At a luncheon or dinner table, at the request of a fellow guest, on a menu-card or in one of those awful albums, he rarely fails to deliver the requisite goods. That is because, as will afterwards be mentioned, he has a stage instinct and habit, and much of the actor's desire to please and to keep ever handy the emergency gag or prop. Yet a more naturally unaffected man does not breathe, and if he is not an obvious soldier-type, neither is he an obvious type of anything else. He possesses the magic quality of individuality, though to get to know precisely what it is requires you to have the persistency of a geologist. To discover a humorist to be present in Bairnsfather, the best way is to conduct a con versation on the subject least humorous in the world; and to get him to give you his impressions of Tommy the best way is to start on the causes, BAI0p,SIV}T|I1E^gs IDEA conduct, and probable issue of the Great War. thew^ /™ 14 FRAGMENTS He will talk strategy and tactics with the usual frankness of the man who has sampled them on the spot, but sooner or later you will see a little glint in his eye, and you may register the fact that he has thought of a ' Fragment.' Probably he won't tell you what it is, for he dislikes to display anything until it is finished. But in the course of the conversation on the war, we have talked of soldier types, and Bairnsfather will have suddenly remembered something one of them once said to him, or some situation he was once in. You will also realize that it is for the soldier-man himself, the private, that Bairnsfather has all his affection, and his best pictures are those which display together the two types, Bert, the novice from home, and Bill, who has been out since Mons. Bert is clean-shaved and has a cigarette drooping from his lips and an innocent look of inquiry on his face, while Bill is broad, notable chiefly for his scrubby moustache and that ' fed-up ' look in his eyes. Though himself, in his own words, ' disguised as that screaming absurdity a captain,' it is to Bill and Bert that his heart goes out. He and his class have been through the same experiences that are depicted in the Bystander, but Bairnsfather regards that as the normal business of the officer. whereas he regards Bill and Bert as persons who are in the war, dug right into it, without any previous thought or intention of their own. These ' jungle-folk,' as he affectionately 'THOUGHT YOU SAID YOUR UNCLE WAS A-SENDING YOU AN UMBRELLA.' A CHARACTERISTIC 'FRAGMENT FROM FRANCE.' [To face p. 14. FRAGMENTS 15 calls the men in the trenches, are as a sort of army of Alices in Wonderland, doing the most marvellous things, and enduring the most amazing experiences, but all the time wondering. The following ' Fragments ' from his life are from material jotted down by various of his friends and associates. No serious biography is attempted — Bruce Bairnsfather is too young to be biographed ' — but only a sketch of the career and personality, the thoughts and ideas, of one who has made his mark, in his own individual way, while taking part in the greatest war of history. The illustrations have been collected from a variety of sources, and represent, on the whole, the trend of the humorist's fancy before the war brought him fame. THE SECOND FRAGMENT EARLY DAYS CHARLES BRUCE BAIRNSFATHER is the eldest son of Major Thomas Bairnsfather, of the Cheshires, many years a resident at Bishopton, Stratford-on- Avon, and now acting as District Recruiting Officer in the home of Shakespeare. Bruce is towards the end of his twenties, and was schooled at the school of Stalky & Co. — Westward Ho! — having been, like the earlier depicter of the moods of Tommy — the old-type Tommy — Rudyard Kipling, born in India rand trans planted home to be educated. Major Bairnsfather himself combined soldiering with painting and musical composition, and was the producer of several successful musical comedies at Simla, the best known having been the ' Mahatma,' the score of which the writer ran through recently with considerable interest and admiration. Mrs. Bairns father having been herself a painter of taste, completed the hereditary influence. So that if Bruce didn't draw, or do something artistic, there was really no excuse for him. Nobody has, however, been more astonished at the precise form his art 19 20 FRAGMENTS has taken than his devoted parents, and to their credit be it said, none have shown more pleasure and appreciation than they. Any tendencies to ' art ' shown in a marked form before EARLY DAYS IN INDIA. ' I DIDN'T KNOW OF A BETTER "OLE, SO C0ULDNT GO TO IT.' the war were in the direction of the stage, for Bairnsfather is an amateur comedian of some merit, and was one of the prime successes at a famous pantomime given at Compton Verney, by 'THIS OUGHT TO CATCH YOUR EYE.' FRAGMENTS 21 Lord and Lady Willoughby de Broke. His love of the stage runs to the variety theatre rather than the legitimate, but in the latter direction he compensates for any deficiencies by a deep love of the Bard of Avon in all his moods, and an intimate knowledge of his resorts : — Piping Pebworth, dancing Marston, Haunted Hillborough, hungry Grafton, Dodging Exhall, Papist Wixford, Beggarly Broom, and Drunken Bidford, He did his bit for the ' Stratford movement '—which is un fairly the subject of a certain amount of local satire — by designing two of the Festival posters. At Stratford itself, he figured in the Aladdin pantomime; also toured the locality with an ' Ali Baba ' of his own. One of his peace-trophies at Bishopton is his ' Bishopton Empire '—a toy contrived with every working detail, with cardboard marionette of George Robey, Vesta Tilley, Billy Merson, Harry Lauder, and most of the other famous stars of the pre-war period. Bairnsfather confesses to an intimate love of the variety show. He has an intuitive sympathy with the human element c behind ' and a most surprisingly complete knowledge of the geography of music-halldom, in London and the provinces. So that, had he chosen the stage as profession, his neighbours would have * told each other so ' with a vengeance. Had he even come out 22 FRAGMENTS as a comedian himself, the locality would have had to bear it with or without grinning. Bruce Bairnsfather was born at Strawberry Bank Cottage at Murree in the Himalayas. A keen desire for adventure was with him from the beginning of his career. He instinctively selected for his birth a room where the roof leaked in five places. Few have given such early evidence of a predilection for ' roughing it,' all which foreshadowed the Trenches, as any psychologist might detect. Again, in his second year, he burst forth along the line of least resistance and took his mother away from Murree to Chungla Gully. There has never been a greater devotion to a parent than this. It beats Sir James Barrie's. Off he went in a ' dandy,' a sort of native sedan-chair pecuhar to his mountain environment. Strange as it may seem, of these incidents in a crowded career he has no vivid recol lection ; but the cholera having broken out in their midst, he was nothing loath to play the hero as readily as a true strate gist, and retired for military reasons. At Chungla Gully Bruce and his mother lived in a one-roomed * hut,' again a fore shadow of the Great European War, where he was to occupy and vacate hurriedly a villa known as Shrapnel View — with shooting. For three weeks at Chungla Gully, with no furniture save a bed, table, and bucket, abided mother and son. Then further went they into the Gullies, where for six weeks the terrific FRAGMENTS struggle for existence went on, and only by robbing the Government mules was life sus tained. The name of his dwelling was Batungi Lodge. His life up to then was full of such Indian words. Though in an Oriental atmosphere ^g g|P and speaking Hindustani better than Eng Ush, there is no blot on his copy-book, nothing to cause the blush of shame to mount to the most expert cheek. Then back to India again : to Umballa, where his father was Cantonment Magistrate; all which may not be important, but all which helped to shape the exceptional talent which has become a factor in the present European fight. Those were the subtle influences which began his knowledge of life, and made his outlook a wide one. Whence came Colonel Chutney, V.C., who, desiring to keep in touch with dug-out life, sleeps while home on short leave in the cucumber frames, if he did not come from Umballa ? And there he also during these seven years, accompanied by his 24 FRAGMENTS father, went on shooting expeditions, and made the acquaintance of the elephant at its most energetic stage. When the parents this time returned to India they left young Bruce behind at a vicarage far from towns. Thornbury Vicarage, near Bromyard in Worcestershire, was a discipline for the boy from which he could not get away. He tells how even to-day he can't read a passage from the Bible without hearing the bells of Thornbury Church tolling him to service. The place got on his nerves ; and that which gets on our nerves is disciphne, and generally is good for us. Living that submerged life he was disappointed in ' home ' at first, but at length learnt there to love the country and to develop a dislike of society. To India he sent sketches of his parochial hfe, thumbnail snatches of humanity, just as he sent back to England those unpublished impressions of trench-life in France, for the family to inspect, more accurate and living than any letters could be. The interest in all these childish efforts is the marvellous power of observation, and the terse, inexplicable manner in which he dressed his ideas with humour, the way a salad is prepared with vinegar and oils. Blunt also, but any thing which is true is like a blow to one who is trained by convention to think untruthfully. But all is seen humorously, never in bitterness, never hurtingly. Yet in those days, as now, he wanted to be merry. What normal boy does not ? His A FRAGMENT. 25 FRAGMENTS 27 spirit bubbled up like the air in a cushion : pushed down in one place, it came up in another. The environment could not weight him exactly, and if he dare not draw impressions in Hymns Ancient and Modem, he could do so in Mrs. Beetorfs Cookery Book, as witness that busy and buxom creature sketched on the flyleaf of that literary lady's contribution to la joie de mvre, which he found in the vicarage kitchen. He didn't like parties in England, much as he had loved them, especially the fancy-dress ones, at Umballa. But he learnt to love the rural parts, to study its types and its features. In an atmosphere which culti vated self-consciousness, he showed no sign of egoism then, more than he does to-day. Remember, though, it was the cook who got his tribute, not the great lady of the manor. Sym pathy and appetite are a strong combination. And once he sent to India a picture of a milk maid ! Now we note new Early Days in India BAIRNSFATHER'S CAMELRY. 28 FRAGMENTS evidences. Family greatly agitated. He was at this time 8§ years old. Precocity ! Forerunner of that dreaming soldier in ' Fragments ' who had the ' bitter ' disappointment of finding both barmaid and beverage had disappeared on waking. And so, soon after, this buoyant spirit — which at Thornbury was like a kite with too heavy a tail — was wafted away to school —to 'Westward Ho! College.' See Kipling's 'Stalky & Co.,' which Bairnsfather declares got absolutely the spirit of the school. Here we find the usual things happening, an interest in everything which interests schoolmasters not at all; a gift for caricature which was, strange to say, greatly appreciated both by his associates and instructors, proof of real good humour ; at games, rotten ; at mechanical devices, expert ; at entertaining in his own way, by drawing, constantly drawing, he was popular. He loved his school-days, but for all his sense of fun and the melancholy of exile at Thornbury, he loved the country best, and longed for its milkmaids, its cooks ; in short its * types.' From Westward Ho ! he went to Trinity College, Stratford-on-Avon. His family came from India and settled in the country near the same old town; so, gradually Bruce was getting more and more at home in England, and coming more and more into his own. AS HE SAW HIMSELF IN THE UNIFORM OF THE WARWICKS. ==> '-I €a- -^a^<'"a ~ STUDENT DAYS SPECIMENS OF BAIRNSFATHER'S EARLY WORK. [7"o face p. 28 THE TKIRID FRAGMENT DAYS OF ADVENTURE AFTER leaving Trinity College, Bairnsfather became the victim of the family inheritances, that is on the mar tial side, and that was, in his case, on both sides, for he sprang from stock who for long time had considered the sword far mightier than the pen ; so there seemed nothing for him to do but still maintain the family prejudices. He there fore passed the Army qualifying examinations, and after under going a certain amount of training with the Warwickshire Special Reserve, he was attached to his father's old regiment, the Cheshires, and went to Lichfield, where his life mainly consisted of bayonet practice with a sergeant. After a Httle time spent at lunging about trying to puncture the alert N.C.O., the whole circus migrated to Aldershot and more time passed with drilling all over that area, till at length fed-upedness hit him so hard that he decided to take up engineering. It was a practical thing, and while not greatly appealing to him, it held out the inducement of opportunities 31 32 FRAGMENTS for drawing, which the Army in peace time did not offer. It was while wandering up and down the country in the employ of an engineering firm, that he prosecuted his quest of ' the type ' in music hall and byway from Wigan to Cardiff, just as later he sought it along the Johnson-pitted roads of France. Back to Warwickshire for an interval of sketching and drawing, then he would hit the highway again, always studying, always engrossed in those who had succeeded with brush or pencil, getting into the depths of his subject as deeply as he was able, and cultivating that spontaneous technique which was to give his work its directness and vitality, all which things in this case the conventions of the Peace Army would have stifled. Engineer ing was a stepping-stone for him : his energy and sympathy did the rest. None of the art work he did during this long period of application to his pencil and his type was what might be called for concert purposes. Yet they were of the same nature and led to the same end as the ceaseless piano practice which makes the virtuoso. By sketching on theatre programmes, pro ducing amateur pantomimes, in sauntering through slums, in dining at great houses, in analysing absorbingly the works of Forain, Georges Scott, Fabiano, Barribal, Tom Browne, Herou- ard and the rest, he kept in touch with his own talent so com pletely as to give us that unique thing — a humorist of the first order amid the tragedy of war. lis:'^** &A ¦¦ \s 'A¥.a^'-: '¦,*¦• ;,-¦¦ ^^'"'''^v^^-*"^- ''^ A '¦-:-: ^^AA-- ^;. ;-*? S: I .,¦:. ; "¦-". t>'~ A r; [5 • * ". -'¦¦.¦¦-* .'•->' t/:' fe ?*'"-. *_ A *-: vi1 '¦A V ..:.. ¦--.-..¦> J' ..,>-'_-..v,./-. . '?.::.'¦_ ... .>-'-'-¦ ¦¦¦&.-*>^ ¦:.' 'Ar.AA^-A-^A'i THE TAUNT. 'AND »7/0 WAS IT SAT ON A GOLF BALL FOR THREE WEEKS?" 33 ¦ FRAGMENTS FROM CAPTAIN BAIRNSFATHER'S SKETCH BOOK. 34 FRAGMENTS 35 And so, once upon a time, in that spirit of adventure and with the now well-known humorous method of attack, Bairnsfather took a voyage across the Atlantic. During his engineeringperiod an oc casion arose for some work to be done in Newfoundland. No one else in the firm seemed keen to go, but the pro ject appealed strongly to him. He im mediately had visions of docks, forests, fishermen — in short, Jadven- THE BIRTH OF ' FRAGMENTS.' 36 FRAGMENTS ture, and was all on for it. So, armed with tools and instruments, he proceeded to Liverpool, determined to see the New World, or at least re-discover it. All problems for him have ever been solved by laughter — so he faced with grinning determination the ugly business of sea-sickness, that bane of the temperamental, for there is no surer sign of artistic gifts and great imagination than a proneness to be abnormal on the ocean wave. To Bairnsfather trench life is a Bacchic festival compared with one hour at sea. So it was scarcely with a light heart or a steady head that he set out on an Allan liner for Newfoundland. Prospects were grim, to say the least, and had he known how the voyage was to be pro tracted by the presence of icebergs and rough weather, which brought to his lively fancy vivid ever-moving films of the then recent Titanic calamity, he might have thought a third time before setting sail from Liverpool. But there is no turn ing back in a sea-trip, any more than from the tracks of Time, so he lazed and qualmed and retched till he reached St. John's, on one of those slimy, slippery, foggy mornings, when there isn't any good in any of us. Here he searched around for petrol, and soon started on his two days' jaunt by road to Spruce Brook, near Port Baques. Under normal circum stances Spruce Brook would have meant a world of wild and woolly adventure to his mind, but under the ever-present conditions of slush he was dampened to the marrow, as one MORE FRAGMENTS FROM BAIRNSFATHER'S SKETCH BOOK. C2"o face p. 37 FRAGMENTS 37 who leaves hope outside with his umbrella when he entereth in. Very Httle of the alluringly artistic happened at Spruce Brook. While there he explored the fastness and did his job, for he went out to fit up a lighting plant of some sort at an hotel known as The Log Cabin, which was not an hotel in the ordinary sense of the word, but a lodge in a vast wilderness designed to accommodate those who might care to hunt big game : but all the big game he found there was solitude, and that proved a case of the fox hunting the hound, for it pursued him with home-sickness. He longed for his studio in Warwick shire, his nights at Wigan, and the Hghts of the Empire and his types. The one outstanding drawing perpetrated at The Log Cabin was a luggage label for that hostelry, showing it to be far from the crowd, with nothing for society but a mur muring pine and a moose. The label is effective, a log cabin house, some pine trees and a deer's head, and all apparently ten thousand miles from a piece of elastic. It must, though, have served as a good advertising decoy for any one who wanted to cultivate that sort of sohtude. But to a man who liked towns there could only be one word, the American one : * Gee ! ' Bairnsfather did like it — for a time — but he did not find it a wrench to break away from its fatal fascinations ; and his busi ness there accomphshed, he was back in St. John's. 38 FRAGMENTS Precarious is the shipping service in that dangerous part of the coast, and he was obliged to wait for his boat, and spent his time studying the old Newfoundland town, always sketching, busily sketching. He got to know the fisher-folk and Hstened to their yarns. Everybody seemed engaged in fishing there. There was nothing else to do but to fish, catching or not catch ing, as the case may be. Cod was the one theme of the com munity; and here codding — that trick of poking fun and joking at which Bairnsfather was always so adept — took on a more serious aspect in the form of fish — and fish and ever more fish. It was the topic and tonic of the natives. The very mattresses seemed stuffed with cod. Cod was the parson's text and the doctor's remedy. At meals his was all cod : fried cod, boiled co:1, cod cakes, cod chowder, and just cod. He did not get so filled up with his fisher friends and the hale and hearty folk of St. John's and their manners and customs and lore, as with their cod ; and so, weary of waiting for his boat, which was probably tangled up somewhere in icebergs and fogs, and not finding great scope for open-mindedness, grace and cheerfulness, he arranged to get home or bust, on a species of tramp ship, which carried besides only a cargo of wood, pulp and lobsters, and as he felt like all three of these commodities, he risked the ordeal, and said farewell to St. John's. It was a boat that had made many crossings. Having been informed of 'OUR NEW FUR WAISTCOATS ARE EXCELLENT FOR SURPRISE EFFECTS. FRAGMENTS 4i Bairnsfather's fondness for the sea, we can appreciate the more his untoward sympathy with the bad sailor in the Bystander cartoon, where his pure and brotherly feeling for the dis comfited victims of the wave is so touchingly depicted ; and we can easily imagine his cold shivers when he found that his berth on this shifting tramp was just over the propeller. It was like sleep ing in Big Ben for ten days. To him it was not so much like beginning existence over again as Hving the hereafter in advance. When able, he constituted him- ^ self the Hfe of the ship — a drawing-room entertainer afloat — and became the pet of the crew, by making sketches of them from various angles of their daily routine, and distributing his drawings like tracts. And while he sat on bales of pulp a la Jacobs, watching the cook peel potatoes, he thought how the County at home around its comfortable ' seven coursers ' envied him his ' yachting experience ' ! At last the coast of Ireland hove into view. We shall not dwell longer on the incidents of the sea. The hesita ting ship : the near horizon : the far-off glimpse of home : the Hght in the window. Limp by limp the vessel waged its EARLY SKETCH OF 'BILL.' A familiar feature of many of the 'Fragments-' 42 FRAGMENTS heavy bulk against the offending tide, till at length the Irish Sea clasped a million lobsters in its salty arms. Steady the old rusty tramp took its way for Liverpool, and Bairnsfather, like a ship wrecked hero, waited on deck, in pyjamas, for home and beauty. No man kisses his native soil with the same gratitude and patriotism as the man who can't help being sea-sick. Sea sickness might even be found, in some deeply thinking Teutonic mind, to be the origin of patriotism — the beginning of na tionality — the love of Fatherland and Mother Earth. It is easily understandable ! And no man ever felt this emotion more fundamentally than Bairnsfather. All which, as any one can see, makes England to him a land specially worth fighting for, and accounts perhaps for his patriotic presence in the Trenches, where he recognized that there is another elementary illness quite as harrowing as sea-sickness, namely, land-sickness. Do these fighting men ever need a doctor ? ' No,' he said to himself ; ' laughter is the physic of hard lines.' So he gave them laughter. Nothing can purify like laughter, and above all laughter at one's self; for to see himself humorously is the greatest purifier a man can have. To be held up to ridicule does not cleanse. Wit, as society plays practise it, is of no physical or social value ; but humour, a good-natured sympa thetic joking with a man, lifts him out of the dumps — and the Slough of Despond. Just as he cheered the crew on the FRAGMENTS 43 Battered Nancy labouring under the burden of pulp and lob sters, so has Bairnsfather given stimulus to the men in France, making them forget their home-longing by showing them them selves at home in the Trenches : by helping their spirits to shape so that their bodies may continue equal to their burdens. At the same time he has visualized the war for us in England. The only way he can be repaid is for some cartoonist to find a similar jocular cure for sea-sickness. The strangeness of life, the vigour of hope, the immortahty of good spirits among men, the vagary of careers, the good in all of us — these are the Bairnsfather themes. He has raised pluck to a virtue, and a golden text. The soldier speaks for him and tells you this fact wherever you meet him and talk to him of Bairnsfather. And yet while not in any sense have his days been exciting ones, there is a kind of thrill in them — the thrill of uncertainty existing in aU who live by their gifts, which is another way of living by what is known as one's wits, in the Hves of all who give strength to others by means of their sympathy and imagination. Imagine our soldier 44 FRAGMENTS philosopher in Plug Street, somewhere in France, just a Httle while ago part of a cargo of lobsters on the Atlantic, and next year, perhaps, reading the lessons in St. Paul's. One never knows, and that is what makes life fascinating to Bairnsfather, and mean while he says : ' Let's be merry.' And we are. ' I am afraid the great legitimate actors, whom I admire so much, could not have taught me the frontal attack of Life so weU as those fearless comedians of the HaUs,' he said briefly, when I asked him if any of his music-haU investigations had stood him in stead as a soldier. The way they butt up against an audience takes courage of no ordinary sort. You may shake off a bulldog if you shake long enough, but you can't get free from the determined and experienced comedian whose Hving is dependent upon making you relax your face, because it's the comedian who is doing the shaking. ' Your laughter or your Hfe ' is the threat which makes his success. Fighting requires much the same method. Amid these comics, low and high, Bairnsfather found his lessons, so far as the war was concerned; so he turned them to good purpose in the cause of Old England. "ALT 'OO GOES THERE?' [To face p. 44 THE FOURTH FRAGMENT BAIRNSFATHER AS A FRAGMENT IN FRANCE THE outbreak of the great war found Bruce Bairnsfather, with hundreds and thousands of his class and temperament immediately at the post of duty. Naturally, it was to his old regiment that he reverted. After a short time at a mobiliza tion station, Bairnsfather left Southampton for the port of Havre almost before he knew what had happened, on a ship crowded with troops. Those were great days. Nothing thrills in the same way as uncertainty and determination backed up by a wrong to right. He tells now of two glad nights in Havre, which many thought would be their last plunge into the delights of this world, judging from the news which filtered through. While in England, to those favoured few who went first into the slush, broil and conflict of the thing, the spirit of knight-errantry, and a sober sense of duty had impressed them 47 48 FRAGMENTS with almost religious intention. At Havre they heard the note of honest adventure being sounded with contrasting fanfare and all the accustomed atmosphere of a military nation. Pell-mell was in the air, making a harmony of discordant elements. It, too, was a spirit derived from things we imagined in our poor know ledge of manners and men were long dead. Havre presented a scene which the elder Dumas would have loved and which only he could describe, with its sweeping colour, its mystery, its subtle interplay of human passion, patriotism, excitement, indignation and awe. It was a soldiers' town, peopled by soldier souls. Cafes were like bee-hives ; the streets swarmed with women of aU sorts, all keen, tumultuously keen — a bas les Boches! Only patriotic airs sounded from the orchestras in the cafes, only patriotic songs were to be heard being sung above the din and confusion of the street traffic. The men in regimental equipment walked with the tread of soldiers. It was France, the old France, the fascinating, always alluring France, and the spirit of Les Trois Mousquetaires dominated the French world. Chivalry was also awake there in a more martial if not a less religious form than in England. And there they were, those among the first British who went forth, having two glad nights in Havre, thoroughly conscious of the fact that these two glad nights might be their last on this good, kind earth. Bairnsfather, en route to * Somewhere,' noted these things and saw the irony, tragedy, and heroic fun of the situation of FRAGMENTS 49 which he was part and parcel. This was the love of adventure which all his life he had longed to satisfy ; which he had loved to read about in old books. From Havre to Rouen ! in Summer a tender scene, with timid and caressing green, for no green grows old like the green of apple tree leaves in Normandy, singing themselves to silver ; in Autumn a scene red as blood and yellow as gold and as gentle as moss in those famed forests; in War, a scene brave with hurrying men from hamlet and farm, with churches busy with prayer and only silent where grass grows over graves. At Rouen Bairnsfather secured a passport, which provided for his being dumped at a siding in Flanders ; and from there he went straight into the Trenches. The Trenches ! And this was the Garden of Europe ! It is hard to imagine what he felt when he ' took to the mud.' For dreariness and darkness and slush and water, this particular Trench was the cesspool of the world : a world steeped in dereHction, dank and despair. There was the close unfriendly contact with Death. There was the penetrating greyness, the ugly aroma of stagnation and depression. And this was the horror which men out there actually got used to, and in which Bairnsfather saw so much to make them laugh. He was billeted on a farm, a type with which his drawings have made us famiHar. He was too much occupied with the 4 50 FRAGMENTS business of war to think anything about drawing, although that impulse had always been a chief one in his Hfe from his earHest youth. Besides the monotonous or exciting routine, as the case may be, of the day, there was Httle in the rotten turnip field in which he was planted to rouse an inspiration. Some three months passed before he could draw any pictures, and then he only sketched incidents on scraps of paper and sent them along the Trench to amuse and cheer the men, or sent them in Heu of letters to friends at home. He drew cartoons of a sort on the waUs of the farmhouse, and these pleased his companions mightily. AU this dismalness was before any pronounced organization had taken place, and the horrid primitiveness of the conditions of Hfe then revolted far more than they attracted him. It was a grey world : there was grumbling at everything — except the glorious fact that they were out to ' do ' the enemy. The guns never ceased their convincing argument night or day. There was no hate, no bitterness among the men. OLD BILL IN TROUBLE. FRAGMENTS 5i They were all fine fellows at bottom. At length even their grumbling became picturesque to Bairnsfather : later it became humorous, and in the end excruciatingly funny, because he saw what kept them at it steady and certain : their courage ous determination and gallantry. To him finally they were War Jesters. They sewed clumsily, but wittily, they ragged wittily, they snored wittily, they cooked wittily ; if they hated the enemy at all, they hated him wittily. ' Hate,' he declares, ' varies inversely with the square of the dis tance from the Front.' And these men, who at first appeared to him in this age of civilization as a kind of aggravated Ravage BERT IN DIFFICULTIES. 52 FRAGMENTS a conducting a troglodyte war with less than the dignity of moles, all brought back to Nature with a thud, suddenly struck him as getting the very best out of such a Hfe as they were obliged to live there. They were getting, in spite of cir cumstances, in spite of death and appalling sadness, fun out of c the whole blooming busi ness.' And while he felt sorry for the real feUow — the bloke who has to stick it out — he got much satis faction from the fact that there was many a hearty laugh left in those tried and courageous breasts. That the enemy had wilfully flung the world back into primitive condi tions tended to embitter some of the men, but not for long, not at any rate while there was anything to make them laugh. So months and months of mud and bully beef were grumbled through good-naturedly : and then they were moved from trench to trench, all revolting to any one with an imagina tion at all. And during this migrating period, when hardships often became more than could be humanly borne, Bairnsfather noted the fearful struggle with self which each of these men was fighting. 'IN MUFTI': A bit of Bairnsfather that suggests Phil May. A FRIEND OF THE ARTIST HAVING COMPOSED A BANJO MARCH. PLAYED IT TO BAIRNS- FATHER, WHO DESCRIBED IT AS A ZULU'S NIGHTMARE, AND WHEN CHALLENGED TO PRODUCE A COVER FOR THE MARCH, PROMPTLY REPLIED WITH THIS SKETCH. IT WAS ADOPTED— WITH WHAT RESULT TO THE SALES IS NOT RECORDED. [To face page 53. FRAGMENTS 53 AU were enduring the same, and this common battle within each had produced a comradeship among them which was almost beautiful and invariably expressed itself in jest, in laughter; and when things seemed to have touched rock bottom, misery some way found out its fellows and so came the pearl from the diseased oyster, the priceless pearl of fun. Bairnsfather describes those long days in the Trenches as more harrowing and devitalizing than any great offensive could possibly be. To any one with a particle of imagination they were the Hmitless Hmit, Hke an endless succession of funerals where you are both corpse and mourner. There's — so — much — time — to — think ! There you are, day in, day out, gnawed by sus pense and monotony, hanging in mid-air, as it were, between sky and earth, with Heaven as a possibility and War as a cer tainty. The curious restlessness it all produced, like wanting to scratch and having no place to scratch. In your resignation you find humour. It is said that at his last moment a drowning man Hves his whole life over in a flash like a vivid film before the mind. In the Trenches one lives one's life over every minute in the day and night. Truly they also serve who only stand and wait. The absolute soldier — the absolute callousness — the absolute hopelessness — why not laugh ? It is not 54 FRAGMENTS only a philosophical kismet, it is the British birthright. And those who have had the nastiest experiences laugh the most at the Bairnsfather cartoons. That a hopeless predicament can be patheticaUy funny he has proved to us — as no other man of his time or any time has yet done. Such is the psychology of humour in the Trenches, and, in fact, the whole psychology of the British soldier. It was the war which revealed these men to themselves. Why, to stare at a dead cow from a dangerous ' parapet ' for consecutive months must become funny. The cow, with legs sticking up like a four-poster, had so Httle concern for the diplomatic affairs in the Balkans, and yet, what a real thing War had been to that cow! So Bairnsfather, after months of slime and grime, came to the conclusions which resulted in his drawing his first picture, and the manner and consequences of its reception in London are subjects of a following chapter. The War, as weU as the conditions of life it created, were getting worse and worse, for the battaHon was moved into the Ypres saHent, and here in the second battle of Ypres our Cap tain came very near cracking the joke of his life. It's not a long story, and runs in this wise. They had entered the struggle about four in the morning. An awful din fiUed the air, deafening and choking. The atmosphere was venomous with buUets ; bodies of the dead everywhere ; Ypres a mass of CM THE GENESIS OF A 'FRAGMENT.' ' FRAGMENTS 57 yellow flame ; the world clutched by the throat was staggering and finding it hard to breathe. So was it when the dawn broke with stern greyness, bringing no light to that smoke- driven country. Bairnsfather was doing no more than every man was doing at that moment, and they were all doing every thing in their power to do their duty. He was in charge of machine guns as usual. Two in one place, two in another position on a hill. He must run frequently between these. With dawn the attack began — down in an expanse of field facing the Germans, one of those Hell rehearsals which no pen can describe. He was hurrying along the moat of a farm when a Canadian officer dashed by him, obviously carrying a message. BuUets were falling like green fruit from an apple tree in a tornado. About fifty yards on Bairnsfather saw the Canadian collapse in a heap. He didn't move. The battle had come to a standstill for a moment, although the machine guns were busy ; the world, exhausted and sore, seemed taking a deep breath. On the farm behind, the bullets were falling through the roof about two a minute. There was a strange, unearthly calm over everything, mocked only by the machine 58 FRAGMENTS guns. Bairnsfather ran out to where he had seen the officer faU. It was not an action of any risk. It was what any one would have done in like circumstances. It was what everybody was doing on aU sides. It was the higher development of that camaraderie which produces humour and at length reduces the Army and at the same time lifts it to the simple term Man. He tried to drag the Canadian to a safer ditch, but rinding such a tug beyond him, he cut off the equipment and cut the clothes to make sure just what had happened. A buUet had entered under the feUow's right arm and had come out on the left side of his chest. There was the gurgling noise — worse to hear than aU the perdition of a great offensive; there was the pale greenish colour in the face. A gunner was haUed and told to throw a water-bottle over. The gunner, MiUs by name, ' an exceUent chap,' came himself. The wounded soldier was propped up and left in MiUs' care whUe Bairnsfather ran back to the farm for a stretcher. There he found the house crowded with wounded. He spoke with a Canadian colonel, to whom he gave the papers taken from the officer. Could he have a stretcher ? Certainly ! A young Ueutenant was ordered to accompany him back. They returned along the edge of the moat to avoid machine gun fire. The wounded man on the stretcher was at length got to the farmhouse, where aU was an agony of confusion. It was aU so easy to do, this kind of thing, when everybody else was doing FRAGMENTS 59 it. The sensations of war were to him at once so terrible and so simple, so sad, so ironical. Then Bairnsfather got back to his job, dead beat. It was by this 5.30 a.m. He started along the front of the farm by the side of a ditch which went out on to the Fortuin Road, and when he had gone about forty yards one of the sheUs aimed at the farm exploded right along side him. He was knocked down and lay for some time absolutely done in, but managed to drag himself by a double row of dead men, relics of previous fighting, got some water, and was helped by an orderly to a dressing station at St. Jean. And so that grey dawn had turned to a grey noon ; and such is the day's work every man does at the Front ; where, before and after such bickerings, every man who can laugh becomes more and more the captain of his own soul. Such is the psychology of the Trenches ; for Laughter is the invigorating handmaid of Pluck. ^k •)!» r MORE FRAGMENTS FROM BAIRNSFATHER'S SKETCH BOOK. 111 S" [To /u« p. 60. THE FIFTH FRAGMENT DAYS OF DISCOVERY FOR a man engaged in the Great Adventure of War, in prospect of winning undying fame on the battlefield, the mere honours of publicity in so minor a thing as Art may seem to the romantic-minded civilian to be of a paltry kind. To the unromantic-minded soldier, it is otherwise. The honours of the battlefield may come, or probably may not come, in the day's march, and may be enjoyed either in this world or the next, or on the border line between both. It has been said by cynics that the soldier in modern war cares little or nothing about the honours in question, and that if he has any feehng for them it is rather one of distrust. This is not alto gether true. Still, it does often happen that the hero of the picture papers is not at all the hero of the trenches, and the deed not the one which Tommy himself would have selected for honour. Tommy is too much Tommy to regard war in any romantic light at aU, and the thoughts of Tommy in the trenches or thereabouts 63 64 FRAGMENTS are thoughts mostly of home. If Tommy is ambitious, it is likely to be in directions apris la guerre. Therefore, should any thing written or sketched by Tommy find its way into print at home, may it be said the day of its appearance is a greater day in his life than the day on which he may have achieved some unrecorded glory at the Front? Viewed in this Hght, the storming of the ramparts of London picture-journalism by Bairnsfather of the Warwicks is an achievement of which the Army at the Front is at least as proud as it would have been of his storming of, say, Dead-pig Farm in the battle of Vin Ordinaire, and the story of how it came to be may rank high in any future record of ' Great Deeds of the Great War.' It is, at aU events, one of the most remarkable feats in the whole history of journalism for a completely unknown man to have won for his own talent so instantaneous a recognition, and such universal approbation. It has already been said that Bairnsfather had a sketching habit, for which throughout his school and professional days he was known to his friends. Also, those friends doubtless foresaw that perhaps one day he might find his way into print as some sort of a comic humorist. They did not foresee that a Great War would have to happen first, and that his arrival in print would be the result of a bomb explosion. One of the most painfully fanuliar of all situations at the THE LAST STRAW. ' Let's see ; it would be this time last week I was dining at Pagani's with dear old ' Voice from the Shadows : ' There's only bully to-night, sir. They aren't giving us bread this time, but there's plenty of biscuits if the water 'asn't got to 'em.' [To last p. 6. FRAGMENTS 65 Front is that in which a quiet and dismal little party in a dug out are shaken out of their seven senses by something hurtling over their heads and the flying of fragments, when there rushes to every Hp the words ' Where did that one go to ? ' In no sense in itself a humorous situation : on the contrary, a tragic one. During one of the intervals between repetitions of this particular experience, Bruce Bairnsfather sketched it upon paper, and handed it round. It was voted a truthful record of an actuahty, and it was suggested that Bairnsfather should c send it up somewhere.' To * send something up somewhere ' was not altogether a thing unthought of at any time by Bruce Bairnsfather. On the contrary, it had occurred to him often that he might do this selfsame thing. In the case of this particular sketch, however, the soldier-artist had thoughts at the back of his mind. Cer tainly he would ' send it up somewhere,' but precisely where ? To a comic paper ? WeU, perhaps : it might amuse the readers of one week's issue, be passed on, and forgotten. No, reasoned Bairnsfather, this sketch shall go to London, but it shall do more than merely amuse a minute fraction of London in its tram or 'bus, or tea-shop. It shaU make a considerable portion of London think : realize something, even in jest, of what really is at this place they vaguely talk of as ' The Front,' and of what are the true feehngs of the real human Tommy who has gone ther§8 Oil k&y os^A s Iajm^[ aUjuliA c^tlma ok WAcJfvdi c>vu leJl Um -W^lh cJC \ioAjl . gaU *fe, ail NW £ . 6 Q KxiT" tU 52- lot CnuyLi HjpiuvK -tfe luVf" CU/vta/tf ui-y>f% - h 0^ &Ut~~ , , "jut oja ^Avf-rFc: LETTERS TO A FRIEND WRITTEN _FROM A CAMP IN ENGLAND. 68 FRAGMENTS An Ulustrated paper it had to be, and various processes of reason ing led him to decide' on the Bystander, which had, as a matter of fact, announced its eagerness to receive humorous sketches from artists on active service. The sketch was immediately accepted, and was reproduced in the Bystander of March 31st. On the ninth of AprU off went another. ' I herewith enclose you another black-and-white sketch entitled " They've evidently seen me," ' wrote Bairnsfather. ' I hope it wiU meet with your approval. Although I do not observe from a chimney myself, yet at the present time I happen to cc live " in a house. By cc live " I mean waiting for the next shell to come through the roof.' This letter revealed to the editor of the Bystander what he had hardly dared to hope, i.e., that not only was his new and sudden ' discovery,' if the word may be used without patronage, a humorist in Hne but also in word. Consequently a series of other transactions followed in which Bairnsfather fired each time, and did not once miss the buU. The uniform acceptability of his work became a joyous monotony in the editorial office. What was something of a revelation, however, was the instant appreciation that greeted his early sketches from the mihtary itself. A storm of enthusiasm too rare, alas! in readers of iUustrated papers, broke over the offices of the Bystander as 3 result of the fjrst of the Bairnsfather ' Fragments,' o ^tAfarodld o\