OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Not once or twice have I paid tribute to the craftsmanship of Mr. Neil Lyons, generally as a portrayer of mean urban streets and their inhabitants. His latest volume, however, Moby Lane and Thereabouts (Lane), finds him at large in the Sussex countryside. But the old skill and quick-witted charm serve him equally in these different surroundings. Mr. Lyons, as I have noticed before, achieves his ingenious effects not only by the quaint unexpected things he says but equally by the things that he skilfully omits to say. As an example of the second method I might cite one of the best of the sketches in the book, that called "Viaduct View," after the name of the detestable and dreary little house which a loving aunt has preserved for the problematical return of the nephew who would certainly not endure it for two days. This shows Mr. Lyons at his best—sympathetic, subtle and gently ironical. I am not saying that every one of the thirty-seven chapters is on the same high level. "Befriending Her Ladyship," for instance, a story that tells how a cottage-dweller repaid in kind the interfering house-inspection of the lady from the Hall, though amusingly told, is neither original in idea nor quite fair in execution. Throughout I found indeed that Mr. Lyons's natural good-humour and sympathy were severely tried when they came in contact with squires and the ruling classes; and that now and then he was unable to resist the temptation to burlesque. But for one thing at least he deserves unstinted praise; I know of no other writer who can transfer, as he can, the genuine flavour of dialect into print. Try reading some of the Moby Lane dialogue aloud and you will see what I mean.
If spacious hobbies make for happiness then is Sir Martin Conway the happiest of men. He has been before us at various times of his crowded life, now as an undaunted peak-compeller in Alps and Himalayas, or skiing over Arctic glaciers, or pushing forward into hazardous depths of Tierra del Fuego; now sitting authoritative in the Slade Chair at Cambridge, or contesting an election, or restoring an old castle, or picking up priceless primitives for paltry pence in Paduan pawnshops; and always as a resourceful author setting it all down (in a couple of dozen books or so) with an easy-flowing pen incapable of boring. In The Crowd in Peace and War (Longmans) he makes his bow as the political philosopher. It is a lively essay packed with observation, reflection, modern instances; it intrigues us with audacious and disputable generalisations, acute criticism, and a liberal temper. Solemnity and dulness are banished from it, and it might well serve as a light pendant to the admirable Human Nature in Politics of Mr. Graham Wallas. Let no student (and no mandarin either) neglect it. And we others, however scornful we may profess to be, are all at heart desperately interested in the confounded thing called politics, and can all appreciate this shrewd analysis of the vices and virtues of the crowd "which lacks reason but possesses faith," whose despotism is now on trial as once was that of our kings—"unlimited crowddom being as wretched a state as unlimited monarchy." As a dose of politics without tears I unreservedly commend this book.
I am like Mr. Jacobs' Night Watchman; it's very hard to deceive me. I had read only a few pages of Miss Una Silberrad's The Mystery of Barnard Hanson (Hutchinson) when I guessed who had done the murder. Unfortunately, when I had read a few pages more, I found that I had picked the wrong person. Then I accused another character on perfectly good circumstantial evidence, and he was not the man. After that I decided to withdraw from the detective business and let Miss Silberrad unravel her mystery for herself. If you are of the opinion that a woman cannot keep a secret read The Mystery of Barnard Hanson and become convinced that Miss Silberrad at least is an exception. If I have ever read a more perfectly sustained mystery novel I cannot recall it. There is just a chance that in the last few pages you may get on the right track, but, if you are honest with yourself, you will have to admit that you did it simply by a process of elimination, after you had made an ass of yourself and arrested every innocent person in the book on suspicion. I think it is Miss Silberrad's manner that throws the detective reader out of his stride. She is so detached. She conveys the impression that she herself is just as puzzled as you are, and that, for all she knows, Barnard Hanson may have been murdered by somebody who is not in the book at all. In other words she gives her story just that reality which a murder mystery has when unfolded day by day in the papers. I confess that, when I unwrapped the book and found that a polished artist like Miss Silberrad had written a detective story, I was a little shocked; but I need not have been. There are no dummies in this novel. Each character is as excellently drawn as if delineation of character were the author's main object; and in the matter of style there is no concession to the tastes of the cruder public which makes murder novels its staple diet.
Mistress. "I see you had a card from your young man at the Front, Mary."
Mary. "Yes'm. And wasn't it a saucy one! I wonder it passed the sentry."
In her preface to Morlac of Gascony (Hutchinson) Mrs. Stepney Rawson apologizes for producing an historical novel in these days when the present rather than the past is occupying people's minds. But a good historical novel is never really untimely, and Morlac of Gascony is not only well written but deals with a period of English history not often exploited by the historical novelist—the days of Edward the First, when the future of England as a naval power rested on the energy and determination of the sailors of the Cinque Ports. Although Jehan Morlac, the young Gascon, is the principal character in the story the most arresting figure is that of Edward himself, as dexterous a piece of character-drawing as I have come upon in historical fiction for some time. The plot is cleverly constructed to throw a high light on one of the most interesting personalities in the history of the English monarchy. We see Edward as a young man, wild, reckless and brutal; then, grown to his full powers and sobered by responsibility, making by sheer force of character something abiding and coherent out of the strange welter of warring factions from which Great Britain emerged as a united kingdom. Wales was a hot-bed of rebellion, Scotland the "plague-spot of the North," the Cinque Ports on the verge of going over to France. Only a strong man, with strong men under him, could have saved England then. Morlac of Gascony is not the easy reading which many people insist on in novels which deal with the past, and for this reason it may not be so popular as some historical novels of far less merit; but if you are prepared to make something of an effort to carry the trenches of the earlier portion of the story you will have your reward.
I suppose that what a Crawford doesn't know about Roman society may fairly be dismissed as negligible. Therefore the name of J. Crawford Fraser (in association with Mrs. Hugh Fraser) on the title-page of Her Italian Marriage (Hutchinson) is a sufficient guarantee that the local colour at least will be the genuine article. And it happens that the scheme of the tale, the union between a Roman of the old nobility and an American girl, makes the local colour of special significance. It was just this matter of doing as the Romans do that Elsie Trant found at first one of life's little difficulties. There is a very pleasant scene of the dinner-party at which she was formally presented to her husband's family; the contrast in atmospheres between that of the new-risen West and that of the severely Papal circles to which Prince Pietro belonged being suggested most happily. I wish, though, the authors had been content to leave it at that, as a social comedy about pleasant people getting to understand one another. In an ill-inspired moment, however, they decided to have a dramatic plot, and truth compels me to say that this is a dreary affair, tricked out with such dust-laden devices as secret marriages, missing heirs and concealed papers. There is a steward person who alternately is and isn't the rightful Prince, as we delve deeper into the revelations. Finally, if I followed the intrigue correctly, the long arm of coincidence brought it about that Elsie's mother was the eloping wife of Pietro's uncle. Frankly, all this bored me, because we readers could have been so much more profitably engaged in renewing our Roman memories under such expert guidance. But of course this is a merely personal opinion, which you may not share.