The Voluble Topsy: 1928–1947

Lovers of classic British humor will positively convulse over this appallingly delinquent omnibus of Herbert’s Punch columns from the 1920s to 1940s, featuring the rampantly italicized, creatively spelled missives of the loquacious flapper Topsy Trout to her boon confidante, Trix. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, so the Bible instructs, and the irrepressible Topsy holds ingenuously forth on such wide-ranging topics as Turkish baths, jury duty, children (“a bit superfluous”), modern art, transatlantic flight, dog races, handsy men, evolution, and Othello, which gets a definitive one-star rating. Aghast at the hypocritical moralizing of moth-eaten nimrods simply mad for “bird-murder and fishicide,” Topsy ventures, “To be perfectly frank I’d sooner have the gin-habit than the gun-habit.” Herbert himself appears as Albert Haddock, a “most narcotic man” whose tasteful influence adds variety to Topsy’s misadventures, eventually landing her in a seat in Parliament.