OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerics.)
It is a tragic coincidence that, just as Rupert Brooke's now famous sonnets were published in volume form after his own death, the appearance of his Letters from America (Sidgwick and Jackson) follows immediately upon the death of Mr. Henry James, who had written the preface to them. Thus in one book we have the last work of two writers, widely separated in age and circumstance, but united by a very real bond of artistic and personal sympathy. How generous was the elder man's appreciation of the younger may be seen in this preface; it is at its best and simplest in dealing with that charm of personality by which all who knew Rupert Brooke will most vividly remember him. Elsewhere it must be confessed that the preface is by no means easy reading, so that one emerges at last a little breathless upon the transparent and sunlit stream of the Letters themselves. Many who recall these from their publication in The Westminster Gazette will be glad to meet them again. Those who knew the writer only as the poet of 1914 will perhaps wonder to find him the whimsical and smiling young adventurer who moves with such boyish enjoyment through these pages. There is holiday humour in them, even in the occasional statistics—holiday tasks, these latter; and everywhere the freshness of an unclouded vision. "Only just in time," one thinks, sharing the happiness that his Letters reflect, and grateful for it as for a beautiful thing snatched so narrowly from fate.
Mrs. Belloc Lowndes has written a story of the War that has at least the distinction of being absolutely fair. She has indeed got so far away from the perhaps excusable error of painting Germans uniformly black that her Huns in The Red Cross Barge (Smith, Elder) are made upon the average quite as attractive as their enemies. This by way of warning, so that if you are in no mood to look for pearls amid swine you may avoid some impatience and a feeling that impartiality can be carried too far. Not by any means that The Red Cross Barge is a pro-German book.... There is an attractive sense of atmosphere about Mrs. Lowndes' picture of the little French town in which a group of Germans are left during what appears to them the triumphal march to Paris. Here Herr Doktor Max Keller meets and falls in love with a French girl who is looking after certain wounded of both nations. The peaceful and picturesque air of the little place during this quiet occupation is well contrasted with the horrors that befall it when the draggled and drink-sodden soldiery come surging back in their retreat from the Marne. Eventually, just as the Germans are leaving, Keller is fatally wounded, and dies holding the hand of the enemy who has become so dear to him. One can hardly call the tale anything but sentimental, but it is sentiment of a fragrant and wholesome kind. In the years to come such stories will no doubt multiply indefinitely, but there will be few more gracefully and gently told.
Corporal (alluding to knock-kneed man). "It's no good; 'e never looks smart. Look at 'im now—the top 'alf of 'is legs standing to attention and the bottom 'alf standing at ease!"
Mr. Richard Pryce, true to the fashion of describing the childhood of heroes at great length, has in David Penstephen (Methuen) out-Comptoned Mackenzie. David in fact dallied so persistently in the nursery that I began to wonder if he would ever emerge; but, when he does get a move on, his story is strangely appealing. His father and mother, having ideas of their own, had excused themselves from the formalities of wedlock, and before Mrs. Penstephen broke down under the strain of this omission David and his sister, Georgiana, were born. Subsequently the parents were married, and had another son. But before this legitimate addition to the family a boating accident had deprived the world of two cousins of Penstephen père, and in consequence he inherited a baronetcy. This change of fortune affected his views, and as time passed by he became as orthodox a baronet as any you could wish to find in Burke. All of which was galling to David's mother, who loved and was jealous for those children who were born to suffer for their parents' original morals. The situation required very delicate handling, and Mr. Pryce is to be congratulated warmly upon the manner in which he has developed it. Perhaps a little more humour would have added salt to the tale, but however that may be we have a careful study of a boy and an exquisitely sympathetic portrait of a mother. The latter part of the book is admirable both in what it tells and in what it merely suggests. More is the pity that Mr. Pryce has weighed down David's childish back with too heavy a load of detail. My advice to you is to skip some of the earlier pages, and so husband your strength for the better enjoyment of the remainder.
The Duel (Allen and Unwin) is a study in the Gorky tradition, by Alexander Kuprin, of life in an obscure Russian regiment and an out-of-the-way provincial town before the great awakening that followed Mukden and Port Arthur purged away much dross and prepared the way for these latter days of sacrifice and heroism. It is a mournful document, a piece of devil's advocacy, a Russian counterpart of Lieutenant Bilse's Life in a Garrison Town, identical in temper and astonishingly similar in some of its detail. It is clear that the author, who was for seven years an infantry lieutenant and probably little fitted for the military life even at its best, endured much unhappiness, for the marks of suffering have burnt themselves into the book so savagely that the English translation, though characterized by a crudity which might reasonably be expected to accomplish much in the way of eliminating the personality of the author, cannot quite rob his work of its impression of power and intimate tragedy. Those who are not in search of light refreshment and who will remember that this last decade of Russian national regeneration and reorganisation has rooted up the incompetence, the false standards, the irregular discipline and the inhuman barriers between officers and men here commented upon, may read these bitter chapters with profit. As for the translator, he might do well to study one of the Garnett Turgenieffs, and see how this kind of thing should be done.