OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
We have had to wait four years for the concluding volumes of The Life of Benjamin Disraeli (Murray), but, as the engaged couple said of the tunnel, "it was worth it," for in the interval Mr. Buckle has been able to enrich his work with a wealth of new material. This includes Disraeli's correspondence with Queen Victoria during his two Premierships, and the still more remarkable letters that he wrote to the two favoured sisters, Anne, Lady Chesterfield, and Selina, Lady Bradford, during the last eight years of his life. To one or other of them he wrote almost every day, and from the sixteen hundred letters that have been preserved Mr. Buckle has selected with happy discretion a multitude of passages which throw a vivid light upon the political events of the time and upon Disraeli's own character. Whereas the first four volumes of the biography might be likened to a good sound Burgundy, thanks to these letters the last two sparkle and stimulate like a vintage champagne. As we read them we seem to be present at the scenes described, to overhear the discussions at the Cabinet, to catch a glimpse of the actors en déshabillé. Mr. Buckle says that "Disraeli, from first to last, regarded his life as a brightly tinted romance, with himself as hero." In one of his letters to Lady Bradford he says, "I live for Power and the Affections." A poseur, no doubt, he was, but not a charlatan. His industry was amazing and his insight almost uncanny. "I know not why Japan should not become the Sardinia of the Mongolian East," he writes in 1875. To the political student these Volumes will be almost as fruitful a field as Burke; for myself, I have found them more fascinating than any novel.
It seams a great pity that Mr. Kipling's Letters of Travel (Macmillan) contains nothing later than 1913. It would have been particularly interesting to see how far the events of the great tragedy might have modified or aggravated his scorn against those who do not see eye to eye with him. In the pre-war Kipling, as we have him here, "Labour" is always the enemy, "Democracy" the hypocritical cant of cranks and slackers. What do they know of England who only Kipling know? Well, they know one side of it, and a fine side. The first sheaf of letters—"From Tideway to Tideway (1892)"—describes a tour through America and Canada, with a rather too obvious bias against the habits and institutions of the former, but with so eloquent a presentation of the dream and fact of imperial pioneering service that it might draw even from a Little Englander, "Almost thou persuadest me!" "Letters to the Family" deals with the Canada of 1907, a very different entity from the Canada of to-day after the later Imperial Conferences and five years' trial of war, but none the less interesting to hear about. A voyage in 1913, undertaken "for no other reason but to discover the sun," is the begetter of the third group, "Egypt and the Egyptians," the first letter of which will not, I imagine, be reprinted and framed by the P. and O. Brilliant word-pictures of things seen, thumbnail sketches of odd characters, clever records of remembered speech, intelligent comment from a well-defined point of view—these you will have expected, and will get.
Lady Dorothy Mills, who has already made some success as a holder of the mirror up to a certain section of ultra-smart society, continues this benevolent work in her new novel, The Laughter of Fools (Duckworth). It is a clever tale, almost horridly well told, about the war-time behaviour of the rottenest idle-rich element, in the disorganised and hectic London of 1917-18. Perhaps the observation is superficial; but, just so far as it pretends to go, Lady Dorothy's method does undoubtedly get home. Her heroine, Louise, is a detestable little egoist, whose vanity and entire lack of moral render her an easy victim to the vampire crowd into which she drifts. The "sensation" scenes, night club orgies, dope parties and the like will probably bring the book a boom of curiosity; but there are not wanting signs, in the author's easy unforced method, that with a larger theme she may one day write a considerably bigger book. The Laughter of Fools, one may say, ends tragically; Louise, after exhausting all her other activities, being left about to join a nursing expedition to Northern Russia. Which, judging by previous revelations of her general incompetence, is where the tragedy comes in—for the prospective patients. A moral rather carefully unmoralised is how I should sum up an unpleasant but shrewdly written tale.
To The Diary of a U-Boat Commander (Hutchinson) "Etienne" adds an introduction and some explanatory notes. In one of these notes we are told that the Diary was left in a locker when the Commander handed over his boat to the British. We are all at liberty to form any opinion we like on the use made of this Diary and I am not going to reveal mine. For, after all, it is the book itself—however produced—that matters, and even those of us who are getting a little shy of literature connected with the War will find something original and intriguing in this Diary. With what seems to me unnecessary frankness the publisher refers to the Commander's "incredible exploits and adventures on the high seas." For my own part my powers of belief in regard to the War are almost unlimited, and the only thing that really staggers me here is the mentality of the diarist. From the record of his purely private life, which is also exposed in these pages, I gather that he was as unfortunate in love as in war; but he seems to have loved with a whole-hearted passion that goes far to redeem him. I must add a word of praise for Mr. Frank Mason's illustrations, which contributed generously to my entertainment.
Alexander (bored). "Life is very dull, my dear Rox. No more worlds to—"
Roxana. "Oh, nonsense, Alec! There's always something to do. I wish you'd go into the kitchen and discharge that Cappadocian cook. She drinks."
