OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerics.)
In The World Set Free (Macmillan) Mr. H. G. Wells has seen a vision—the vision of a world plunged into blazing and crumbling chaos by the ultimate logical issues of military violence. Defence, becoming always less and less effective against attack, which is always more and more a matter of the laboratory, finally succumbs before Holsten's discovery of "Carolinum" and its final disastrous application in the "atomic bombs." Romancing on a theme out of Soddy's Interpretation of Radium, Mr. Wells, with those deft strokes of allusive and imaginative realism—so convincing is he that realism is the only apt word for his daring constructions of the future—depicts the shattering of the headquarters of the War Control in Paris, followed by a swift counterstroke against the Central European Control in Berlin by the aviation corps, the destruction of capital after capital, and the final great battle in the air, with the bombing of the Dutch sea walls. Thereafter comes the attempt at reconstruction by the Council of Brissago, a convention of the governing folk of the world—the dream and deed of the Frenchman Leblanc, "a little bald, spectacled man," a peacemonger whom, till that day of ruin, everyone had thought an amiable fool. One monarch, "The Slavic Fox," sees in the assembly a chance to strike for world sovereignty, and the failure of his bomb-fraught planes and his final undoing in the secret arsenal are breathless pieces of description.
A subject for wonder is the astonishing advance in the author's technique. The World Set Free is on an altogether different plane from The War of the Worlds and those other gorgeous pot-boilers. It combines the alert philosophy and adroit criticism of the Tono Bungay phase with the luminous vision of Anticipations and the romantic interest of his eccentric books of adventure. The seer in Mr. Wells comes uppermost, and I almost think that when the history of the latter half of the twentieth century comes to be written it will be found not merely that he has prophesied surely, but that his visions have actually tended to shape the course of events. Short of Holsten's "atomic bombs" (which may or may not be developed) Mr. Wells makes a fair foreshadowing of the uprush of subliminal sanity which may very well be timed to appear before 1999. I can't take my hat off to Mr. Wells because I've had it in my hand out of respect for him these last few years. So I touch my forelock.
Roding Rectory (Stanley Paul) is in many respects the best novel Mr. Archibald Marshall has written. Those who remember Exton Manor and the three books dealing with the lives and deeds of the Clintons will consider this to be high praise, as, indeed, it is meant to be. Mr. Marshall preserves the ease and amenity of style which we have learnt to expect of him; he creates his characters—ordinary English men and women, animated by ordinary English motives—with all his old skill, and he sets them to work out their destinies in that pleasant atmosphere of English country life which no one since Trollope's death has reproduced with greater truth and delicacy than Mr. Marshall. This time, however, the clash of temperaments and traditions is more severe, the story cuts deeper into humanity, and the narration of it is, I think, more closely knit. The Rector of Roding, the Rev. Henry French, is a fine figure of a man honourably devoted to the duties of his parish and abounding in good works. It is sad to see him cast down from his pride of place by the sudden revelation of an ill deed done in his thoughtless youth at Oxford. In an interview managed with an admirable sense of dramatic fitness he is faced by a son, the living embodiment of his all-but-forgotten sin, and soon the whole parish knows of it. But the Rector, with the aid of his wife, fights his fight and in the end wins back his self-respect and the respect of his neighbours. He is helped, too, by Dr. Merrow, the Congregational minister, a beautiful character drawn with deep sympathy. Indeed, it is Dr. Merrow who has the beau rôle, and, I must add, deserves it. For the rest I must let Mr. Marshall's book speak for itself. He has written a very powerful and interesting story.
Among reviewers of books there is a convention by which the matter of a first edition—whether a single story or a collection of stories—which has been reproduced from a magazine or magazines, is treated as if it were a novelty. It is a sound and benevolent convention, because the stuff of magazines only receives at best a very sketchy notice. Miss May Sinclair, however, is apparently prepared; to risk the loss of any advantage to be derived from it, for her collection of short and middle-sized stones republished under the title of the first of them, The Judgment of Eve (Hutchinson), is prefaced by an article in which she replies to those critics who took notice of some of them at the time of their appearance in magazine form. By this recognition of judgment already passed she sets me free to regard her stories as old matter, and to confine myself to a review of her introduction. In this answer to her critics I cannot feel that she has been well advised. Even in a second edition critics are best left alone, unless the author can correct them on a point of fact or interpretation of fact. Here it is on a matter of opinion that she joins issue with them. They seem (the misguided ones) to have rashly said that "The Judgment of Eve" was "a novel boiled down," and that "The Wrackham Memoirs," on the other hand, was "a short story spun out." But Miss Sinclair is very sure that she knew what she was about. She can "lay her hand on her heart and swear that 'The Judgment of Eve' would have lost by any words that could conceivably have been added to it;" she is certain that "Charles Wrackham required the precise amount of room that has been given him." I dare say she is right, but I wish she could have left someone else to say so. For myself I should have thought it obvious that a story dealing with character and its development by circumstance demanded more room in which to spread itself than one that dealt with a situation, dramatic or psychologic; yet "The Wrackham Memoirs," which, whatever its complexity, belongs to the latter type, takes up very nearly as much space as "The Judgment of Eve," which belongs to the former. Of course no critic of even moderate intelligence would propose to fix a limit of length for every type of story, but it may safely be said that, if you take Maupassant for a standard, the best short stories have concerned themselves with situation rather than with character; and, though I have not had the privilege of reading the criticisms which are the subject of Miss Sinclair's rebuke, I can easily believe that they were governed by this elementary reflection. It must have occurred to Miss Sinclair herself, even if she did not find it convenient to take cognisance of it in her reply. Perhaps she will have something to say on this subject in some future edition of her very interesting book, and I should indeed be flattered if she would consent, in a brief phrase or two, to review my review of her review of her reviewers.
The new Cash Register as used at the Royal College of Music for calculating the value per minute of voices in the vocal training department.
Good costume novels are not so common nowadays that I can pass Desmond O'Connor (Long) without a most hearty welcome. For it is an excellent example of its class—full of rescues, of swashbuckling and of midnight escapes; with a gallant hero (and Irish at that), a lovely heroine, two bold bad villains and a sufficiency of kings and other historical celebrities to fill the background picturesquely. In fact Mr. George H. Jessop has seen to it that no ingredient proper to this kind of dish shall be wanting, and I have great pleasure in congratulating him upon the result. Desmond was a soldier of fortune, a captain in the gallant Irish Brigade that served King Louis XIV. against the Allies. During the siege of Bruges the young captain chanced to see one morning at mass the fair Margaret, Countess of Anhalt. She had lately fled to the town to frustrate the intentions of Louis, who would have given her hand to an equally unwilling suitor. There was also, hanging about, a certain De Brissac, who in the event of the countess's death or imprisonment would succeed to her estates. So off we go, cut and thrust, sword, cloak and rapier, all to the right jingle of tushery, till the last chapter, in which King Louis relents and does what kings (of France especially) always do in the last chapters of historical romances. Really it seems sometimes as though the Louvre under the Monarchy must have been run as a kind of superior matrimonial agency in a large way of business. Anyhow he rings down the curtain upon a bustling tale that should add to the reputation of its author.