OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Not the least attractive feature in Madame Waddington's new book, My First Years as a Frenchwoman (Smith, Elder), is the revelation, undesignedly made, of a keen-sighted, vivacious, exceedingly womanly woman. During her residence in France as the wife of a highly placed Minister she had rare opportunity of watching the progress of historic events from a favoured standpoint behind the scenes. When she married M. Waddington, in later years known to this country as French Ambassador, the National Assembly was sitting at Versailles. Thiers, first President of the Republic, had been overthrown and MacMahon reigned in his stead. Madame Waddington was brought into personal touch with these statesmen, with their successors, Jules Grévy, de Freycinet, Carnot and with their varied entourage. Of each she has something shrewd, sprightly and informing to say. While immersed in international politics, perhaps not wholly free from anxious conviction that she was in some measure responsible for their direction, she had a seeing eye for frocks. Frequently, when describing social gatherings at the height of political crises, she stops to tell you how some lady was dressed and how the apparel suited her. Amongst other men of the epoch she has something to say about Blowitz, the famous Paris correspondent of The Times. It is evident that, without premeditation, he managed to offend the lady. She reports how Prince Hohenlohe expressed a high opinion of the journalist, remarking, "He is marvellously well-informed of all that is going on." "It was curious," writes Madame, "how a keen clever man like the Prince attached so much importance to anything Blowitz said." For the side-lights which it flashes on high life in Paris at a critical period of the Republic the volume possesses exceptional value.
The subtleties of human motives, the fine problems of temperament, the delicate interplay of masculine logic and feminine intuition, what are these compared to blood, thunder, plots, counter-plots, earthquakes and, from the final chaos, the salvage of the "sweetest woman on earth" effected in the nick of time by a herculean and always imperturbable hero? Mr. Frank Savile is not out to analyse souls. The opening chapter of The Red Wall (Nelson) plunges us into a fray, irrelevant to the narrative save in so far as it introduces Dick Blake and Eileen O'Creagh and removes any possible doubt that might ever have been felt as to their respective merits and their mutual suitability. That preliminary complete, we proceed to the real business of the agenda, and momentous, passionate, nefarious, diabolical, mysterious and incessantly exciting business it is, covering the gamut of private emotions and international complications. In such narratives I demand three things: the first, that my author should combine a graphic (and grammatical) style with the professional knack of imparting an air of probability to his tale; the second, that things should go all wrong in the beginning and come all right in the end; the third, that if any German schemers are involved these should be eventually outwitted. Mr. Savile has abundantly satisfied me in all particulars; although I incline to carp at the opportuneness with which nature is made to erupt from time to time, and I venture to suggest that men and women never were and are probably never going to be like Dick and Eileen. The book is, however, of the sort which is to be read and enjoyed but not considered further.
Joe Quinney, the curiosity shop man in Mr. Horace Annesley Vachell's Quinneys' (Murray), is undoubtedly a "card," not unrelated, I should say, to Mr. Bennett's Machen. He is an entertaining fellow with his enthusiasms, his truculences, his fluctuating standards of honesty. Mr. Vachell didn't quite get me to believe in Joe's expert knowledge, which indeed seemed to be turned on and off in rather an arbitrary way as the exigencies of the story rather than the development and experience of the character dictated; but he did make me see and like the fellow. Mrs. Quinney, that faithful timid soul, is admirably drawn, both in her courtship and her matronly days. But I found Quinney a little hypocritical in his denunciation of Miggott, the chair-faker, who was not really sailing half so close to the wind or so profitably as Quinney and his bibulous friend of a dealer, Tamlin. There are some interesting side-lights upon the astonishing tricks of the furniture trade, which are reflected by the authentic experience of the bitten wise. An entertaining and clever book; but why, why should H. A. V. drop from his Hill into the discreditable fellowship of those who have misquoted "honoured in the breach"?
Anybody can understand how extremely annoying and inconvenient the complete disappearance of a husband would be to a wife after a mere fortnight or so of married existence, before he had even begun to complain of the—well, anyhow that is what happens in Mrs. Belloc Lowndes's latest novel, The End of Her Honeymoon (Methuen). The Dampiers arrive in Paris, a Paris en féte and crowded beyond all custom because of the state visit of the Tsar, and are obliged to occupy rooms on different floors of the Poulains' hotel. Next morning Mrs. Dampier awakes to find herself in the awkward predicament of Ariadne on the beach of Naxos, with the aggravation (spared to Theseus' bride) that the hotel people absolutely deny that she came with a husband at all. A punctilious if sceptical American senator (refreshingly guiltless of accent) and his enthusiastic son and daughter take pity on her, and the rest of the book resolves itself into a detective story, saved from conventionality by the pleasantly distinguished style in which the author writes and the intimate knowledge which she appears to possess of the Paris préfecture de police. Gerald Burton, the young American, not entirely platonic in his solicitude, is baffled; Salgas, a famous enquiry agent, is baffled; and I am ready to take very long odds against the reader's unravelling the mystery, unless he happens to be familiar with a certain legend of the plague (though no plague comes in here). Indeed, it is only a chance conversation in the last chapter that throws light, my dear Watson, on this particularly bizarre affair. And what then, you ask, had happened to Jack Dampier after all? Ah!
I wonder why it is that so many books about walking tours should be written in much the same style. At least I don't really wonder at all, since it is quite apparent that R. L. S. and Modestine are the models responsible for this state of things. And, since the style in itself is pleasant enough, I don't know that any one need complain. What put me upon this reflection was Vagabonds in Perigord (Constable), which, for the modulation of its prose, might almost have been an unacknowledged work of the Master, but is actually written by Mr. H. H. Bashford. It concerns the wanderings on foot of certain pleasure pilgrims along the course of the river Dordogne; and is, for those that like such things, one of the most attractive volumes I have met this great while. I liked especially the author's happy gift of filling his pages with a holiday atmosphere; there is, indeed, so much fresh air and sunshine in them that the sympathetic reader will emerge feeling mentally bronzed. Nor does Mr. Bashford lack an agreeable humour of phrase. "Those wonderful three-franc dinners that seem to fall like manna upon France at seven o'clock every evening" is an example that lingers in my memory. Moreover, running through the whole is a hidden joke, and very cunningly hidden too, only to be revealed in the last paragraphs. Not for worlds would I reveal it here; I content myself with admitting that I for one was entirely fooled. I am less sure whether as a record of travel the book tempts to emulation. The drawbacks are perhaps too vividly rendered for this—heat and thirst through the flaming June days, and by night not wholly unbroken repose. But I am delighted to read about it all.
Bram Stoker, whose too early cutting off saddened a wide circle of friends, was the Fat Boy of modern writers of fiction. He knew how to provide opportunity in fullest measure for making your flesh creep. A series of stories named after the first, Dracula's Guest (Routledge), is a marvellous collection of weird fancies wrought with ingenuity, related with graphic power, that come as near Edgar Allan Poe as anything I am acquainted with. There are nine, widely varying in subject and plot. I have read them all, and am not ashamed to confess that, finishing one before commencing another of the fascinating series, I found it convenient and agreeable to turn aside for a while and glance over less exciting pages. Not the least marvellous thing about the banquet is that it is provided at the modest charge of a shilling.
(A nervous individual, having been advised by a specialist that he must undergo an operation, calls upon his own doctor to ask him to administer the anæsthetic.)
The Doctor (a conscientious practitioner). "Well! I will administer the anæsthetic, but—you know, I never like doing it. The jury are always down on the anæsthetist."