Madame Eulalie’s Rare PlumsEvening News (London), October 27, 1906
“THE MARTYRS.”
————♦————
Some Letters the “Evening
News” Has NOT Received.
To the Editor of the “Evening News.”
As many of your readers may be suffragettes, allow me to indicate what I consider the best form of training for an encounter with the police. No suffragette can hope to grapple successfully with a fifteen-stone constable unless she has nourished her strength on a carefully-chosen diet. A three weeks’ course of lentils and beans, varied by an occasional nut-butter orgie will render the slimmest suffragette capable of making the entire force wish that they had never been born. —Yours faithfully,
Eustace H. M.–les.
In connection with this deplorable affair, may I point out that the tomb of the illustrious lexicographer, John James Bilger, is in a state of lamentable ruin. You may say that this has no connection with the suffragette question. In this you may possibly be right, but the habit of years is not to be broken in a moment. I always have written about tombs, and I suppose I always shall. —Yours,
Algernon –shton.
P.S.—This brings my total up to 1,036,547 letters and one picture postcard for year beginning January, 1906.
Telegram: Address of Miss Pankhurst with great eagerness desire. To put her on to Prince Hohenlohe ardently wish. She him what was what would teach. Hoch!
Kaiser Wilhelm.
I gues we kud do with a few of yor sufragets over this side. They lead the most Strenuous Life of enny that I ever hurd of. —Yours phonetically,
T Ruzvelt.
Please find enclosed long article showing that the violence of the suffragettes is really, when philosophically examined, due to an excessive mildness of disposition. —Yours paradoxically, G. K. Ch–sterton.
To mollify the suffragettes it is essential that soft soap should be used. I can supply this at moderate rates. I shall give you fifteen ounces when you pay for a pound, but that is all my fun. —Yours faithfully,
W. H. L–ver, M.P.
I shall be glad to teach suffragettes Ju-Jitsu at the usual rates. After a month at my school they will be able to use the police as dumb-bells. —Yours,
Tarro Myaki.
If the suffragettes were Sandow girls they would be able to throw a policeman across a lobby as easily as I lift a property iron bar. —Yours,
Carrie M––re.
“How does the suffragette the policeman knock so?
She has very sensibly trained on –Xo.”
—(Advt.)
Please contradict the rumour that we intend to play a match during November with a team of suffragettes. We wish to preserve our unbeaten certificate, so have declined their challenge. Yours Springbuckishly,
P. R––s (captain).
It seems to me that too much notice has been taken in the Press of Miss Billington. Miss Pankhurst is the real star of the company, and I strongly advise her to throw up her part. —Yours, Edna M–y.
I have more than a suspicion that the suffragette disturbances are the work of the “Times” Book Club. They are always up to something. —Yours,
W. P––lten.
(Sec. Publishers’ Association.)
It is plain to me that these disorderly proceedings are directly inspired by the Publishers’ Association. They are always up to something. —Yours,
L. C. M–b–rly B–ll.
(Manager “Times” Book Club.)
If the authorities do not give me a complete suit of chain armour, I resign from the force to-morrow. —Yours,
X 008.
I consider that the suffragettes should have been taken to Marlborough-street, not to Westminster. I have not a word to say against Mr. Horace Smith as an administrator of the law, but there is manifestly only one magistrate in London capable of handling such a situation as this as it should be handled. —Yours disappointedly,
[signature cut off on available microfilm scan]
Entered by Wodehouse in Money Received for Literary Work.
For more background on the suffragettes and their leaders, see “Oh, Woman! Wodehouse and the Suffragettes” by John Dawson.
Eustace H. Miles: British player (1868–1948) of real tennis, and a prolific author on food and health including Muscle, Brain, and Diet and Failures of Vegetarianism.
Algernon Ashton: British composer (1859–1937) with an active hobby of writing letters to newspapers urging that the gravesites of distinguished persons be kept in repair.
President Theodore Roosevelt was a proponent of simplified phonetic spelling of the English language. In 1906 he ordered the Government Printing Office to adopt the recommendations of the Simplified Spelling Board, but this was overruled by Congress later in the year.
The philosophic paradoxes of G. K. Chesterton’s early writing were mentioned in Wodehouse’s “By the Way” column in the Globe.
William H. Lever (1851–1925) was a British industrialist and politician, founder with his brother James of Lever Brothers, a large soap-making corporation. In 1906 he and other manufacturers attempted to monopolize the industry through a trust, and tried to hide a price increase by putting only fifteen ounces of soap in packages which had previously contained a pound. The public and press outcry led to the breakup of the trust.
Taro Miyake (c. 1881–1935), a Japanese professional wrestler, came to London in 1905 and opened a jiu-jitsu school there after defeating the reigning champion in that style.
Carrie Moore (1883–1956), Australian singer/actress, came to London in 1903. In 1906, she appeared as “The Sandow Girl,” an example of “beautiful feminine muscularity,” in The Dairymaids at the Apollo Theatre, London.
Oxo was then a concentrated liquid extract of beef; later products of the brand included bouillon cubes, spices, gravy mixes, and the like.
Captain Paul Roos of the South African national rugby team chose the Springbok as the team emblem during their 1906–07 tour of Great Britain.
Edna May (1878–1948) was an American singer/actress who achieved great success in London in such musical comedies as The Belle of New York (1898) and her 1906 hit The Belle of Mayfair. But she resigned the title role in The Belle of Mayfair in pique that Camille Clifford, another actress in the musical, had been given publicity out of proportion to the importance of her role.
William Poulten served as Secretary of the Publisher’s Association from its founding in 1896 for nearly forty years.
C. F. Moberly Bell (1847–1911) was managing director of The Times and supported the creation of the Times Book Club in 1905. Whether “L. C.” was a family member or merely a misprint is unknown. For more on the Times Book Club and the publishers’ controversy, see “The Philanthropists” and the notes to it.
X 008 is intended to represent the badge number of a fictional London constable.
Magistrate Horace Smith on October 23, 1906 at first sentenced several suffragists who had disrupted Parliament to be bound over to keep the peace for six months or forfeit £5. Several of the women protested and were given additional sentences for disorderly conduct in court.
The last item’s signature is cut off on the copy we have, but the tops of the initial letters are visible and would be consistent with the name of “G. Denman,” who was magistrate at Marlborough Street police court at the time.