We went to Murray’s (pronounced Mowrey’s) Club for lunch, though no one in the party was a member and you have to sign checks to get anything. Unlike most clubs, however, you pay cash simultaneously with signing the check, so we weren’t cheating. I signed “Charles Chaplin” to one check and it went unchallenged.
Gene’s two sons are in the British army, and the conversation was confined to them. I was told they were the best two sons a man ever had, but I knew better.
Murray’s Club’s orchestra is jazz and it gave Mr. O’Flaherty and me an acute attack of homesickness.
From there we rode to the National Sporting Club, of which Mr. Corri is king. He asked me to put on the gloves with him, but I’m not one of the kind that picks on people five or six times my age.
On Mr. Payne’s advice, Mr. O’Flaherty and I purchased seats for a show called Seven Day’s Leave, and that’s where we’ve been tonight, we and another scribe, Mr. Miller of Dowagiac, Michigan, which, as everyone knows, is a suburb of Niles.
The show is a melodrama with so many plots that the author forgot to unravel two or three hundred of them. Of the fifteen characters, one is the hero and the rest are German spies, male and female. The hero is a British officer. Everybody wanted to kill him, and so far as I could see there was nothing to prevent. But he was still alive when the final curtain fell. The actors made all their speeches directly to the audience, and many of them (the speeches) were in the soliloquy form ruled off the American stage several years ago.
In the last act the hero pretends to be blotto (British for spiflicated), so that, while he is apparently dead to the world, he can eavesdrop on a dialogue between two of the boche plotters and obtain information invaluable to England. The boches were completely deceived, which is more than can be said of the audience.
Wednesday, September 19. London.
Took a walk past Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace and found they looked just like their postcard pictures.
It’s almost as bad crossing streets here as in Paris. The taxis don’t go as fast, but their habit of sticking to the left side keeps an American on what are known as tenterhooks.
Mr. O’Flaherty loomed up at noon and guided me to the office of a friend with money. This rara avis honored a check on an American bank, and now I think there’s enough cash on hand to see me through. The only trouble is that my education in English money has been neglected and I don’t know when I’m being short-changed. Constantly, I presume.
Living conditions here have it on those in Paris. There are no meatless days, and a hot bath is always available. The town is dark at night, but it’s said to be not for the purpose of saving fuel, but as a measure of protection against air raids.
One of those things was staged last week and a bomb fell uncomfortably close to ye hotel. The dent it made in Mother Earth is clearly visible to the naked eye. I trust the bombers take every other week off. At dinner we met two American naval officers—a captain from Baltimore and a lieutenant from Rockford, which is in Illinois. What they told us was the most interesting stuff I’ve heard yet. But, like all interesting stuff, it’s forbidden to write it.
Thursday, September 20. London.
The American naval officers took me to luncheon. After luncheon I went to the American consul’s where I was viséed. Thence to the Bow Street station for final registration.
This evening to The Boy, a musical play which could use some of the plot so prodigally expended in Seven Days’ Leave. But the music isn’t bad.
Friday, September 21. London.
The naval officers and three of us holdup men had a bitter argument over the respective merits of Baltimore, Dowagiac, Rockford, Niles, and What Cheer, Iowa, of which Mr. O’Flaherty is a native, and, so far as I know, the only one. It was finally voted to award What Cheer first prize for beauty of name, Dowagiac for handsome young men, Niles for scenic grandeur, Rockford for social gaieties, and Baltimore for tunnels.
I wanted to do some work, but the rest of the crowd seemed to think my room was open house for the balance of the day, and here they stuck despite all efforts to oust them.
Tonight it was Chu Chin Chow at His Majesty’s Theater. You have to keep going to theaters in London. They’re the only places that are lit up.
Chu Chin Chow is a musical comedy based on The Forty Thieves, and the music, according to our unanimous opinion, is the best since The Merry Widow. I seem to have resigned as war correspondent to accept a position as dramatic critic. But, as Mr. O’Flaherty says, there’s nothing to write about the war, and what you do write the censors massacre.
Our ship still thinks it’s going to sail tomorrow night, and the train leaves at nine-thirty in the morning. I am to be convoyed to port by the captain and the lieutenant, whose holiday is over.
Saturday, September 22. In Bond.
We’re anchored in the middle of the river and have no apparent intention of moving tonight. And everybody’s out of cigarettes, and it’s illegal to sell them while we’re in bond, whatever that may mean. But I guess I’d rather be in it than in a spy’s cell, which seemed to be my destination at one time today.
The United States naval gentlemen were down at the train early and commandeered the best compartment on it. They had saved a seat for me and an extra one on general principles. This was awarded to Mr. Hanson, one of the active members of
