OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
The Secret Corps (Murray) is the title of a book on espionage, before and especially during the War, every page of which I have read with the greatest possible entertainment—the greatest possible, that is, for anyone at home. To get the real maximum out of Captain Ferdinand Tuchy's astonishing anecdotes one would, I suppose, need to be under a table in Berlin while they were being perused by the ex-chiefs of Intelligence on the other side. It is a book so stuffed with good stories and revealed (or partly revealed) mysteries that I should require pages of quotation to do it anything like justice. It can certainly be claimed for Captain Tuchy that he writes of what he himself knows at first hand, and that his knowledge, like that of another expert, is both extensive and peculiar, gleaned as it was from personal service in Russia, Poland, Austria, Belgium, France, England, Italy, Salonica, Palestine, Mesopotamia and several neutral States. Still, absorbing as his book is, it suffers perhaps from being what its publishers call "the first authentic and detailed record." One feels now and then that posterity (which gets all the good things) may score again in the revelation of yet more amazing details for which the hour is not yet. Meanwhile, here to go on with is a fund of thrilling information that will not only hold your delighted interest, but (if you make haste before it becomes too widely known) ensure your popularity as a remunerative diner-out.
One after Another (Hutchinson), by Mr. Stacy Aumonier, is a tale of social progress: of the steps—I imagine this is where the name justifies itself—by which the son and daughter of a Camden Town publican rise to higher or at least more brilliant things. You might suppose this plan to promise comedy, but the fact is otherwise. Really it is an angry book, and though there is laughter in places it is mostly angry laughter, with a sting in it. Somehow, whether speaking in his own person or through the voice of his hero, Mr. Aumonier gives me here (perhaps unjustly) the impression of having a grievance against life. Yet it cannot be said that Tom and Laura Purbeck found their climb from Camden Town unduly arduous, since in a comparatively short time one has made a position and pots of money as a fashionable house-decorator, and the other is a famous concert star and the wife of a marquis. I think my impression of unamiability must be derived from the fact that the entire cast contains not one really sympathetic character. Old Purbeck, who ruled his bar like an autocrat and believed in honest alcohol (and fortunately for himself died some years ago), comes nearest to it. Laura, of whom the author gives us spasmodic glimpses, is vividly interesting, but repellent. Tom, the protagonist, I found frankly dull. Perhaps I have dwelt overmuch on defects. Certainly the story held my attention throughout, even after my-disappointment at finding nobody to like in it.
A lot of diaries make very poor reading, because people who are conscientious enough to keep them at all keep them conscientiously and fill them with nothing but facts. Mr. Maurice Baring of course has no empty scruples of this kind, and R.F.C. H.Q. 1914-1918 (Bell and Sons), though it has plenty of statistics in it and technical details as well, is in the main a delightful jumble of stunts and talks and quotations from Mr. Maurice Baring and other people, culinary details, troubles about chilblains and wasp-bites, and here and there an excellently written memoir of some friend who fell fighting. The main historical fact is, of course, that our airmen from small beginnings reached a complete ascendancy at the end of 1916, and then suffered a set-back, reaching their own again when the mastery of the Fokker was overcome. The author himself was liaison officer and interpreter at H.Q., and stuck to General Trenchard throughout, although he was urgently requested to go to Russia. Scores of eminent people make brief appearances in his book, and the following is a fair sample of his method:—"January 3rd, 1917.—An Army Commanders' Conference took place at Rollencourt. My indiarubber sponge was eaten by rats." Happily his diary escaped.
Lieut.-Colonel John Buchan, in his now familiar rôle of the serious historian, has been officially commissioned to tell a tale more thrilling in heroisms, if perhaps a trifle less madcap, than anything his unofficial imagination has given us. His latest volume, The South African Forces in France (Nelson), though naturally it does not break much new ground, still contains a good deal that was well worth sifting from the mass of war history and is written with a vigour that could not be excelled. The proudest claims of the South Africans are, it seems, that they finished "further East" when the cease-fire sounded (I wonder if this will go unchallenged), that they were three times practically exterminated, and that they were the most modest unit in the field—the author of course being solely responsible for letting us know this last. Their terrible fights, not only at Delville Wood, but even more at Marrière Wood and Messines, are beyond question amongst the greatest feats of arms of the War, and on the last two occasions their stand in the face of odds went far to save the Allied cause in the black months of 1918. Since, as the author joyously notes, Dutch and English elements in the South African forces lived and died on the field like brothers, we may all agree with him, politics or no politics, that there has been something fundamentally right for once about the Empire's treatment of their country. This alone would give the book importance and interest outside the Southern dominions to which it is first addressed. In Capetown and Pretoria it will be the history of the War.
In John Bull, Junior (Methuen) Mr. F. Wren Child sets out to record the difficulties which a "home-trained boy encounters at a public school." Whether his picture of school-life as it was some years ago is true or not, it is unlikely that there will be keen competition among public schools to claim the original of St. Lucian's; and I do not think that tender-hearted mothers need fear that their own children will be beset by the temptations which Brant had to encounter, for in his hectic career he was unfortunate enough to have card-sharpers, whisky-drinkers and other unusual types of boyhood among his fellow-pupils, and with such company it is not to be wondered at that he was more often in than out of trouble. But, since he helped to solve the mystery which was perplexing St. Lucian's, it would seem that whatever happened to his soul he contrived to keep his head. Boys with a taste for amateur detective work might derive enjoyment from this tale, and to them I recommend it.
The Novice. "I am a little absent-minded, so you must give me a shout if I prove to be a winner."
Stephen Manaton, heir to great possessions, found that his wealth and worldly position were slipping away from him, but as compensation against his losses he had the supreme satisfaction of discovering that the girl of his choice loved him solely for himself. So with the best will in the world I could not shed tears over The Manaton Disaster (Heath Cranton), though I admit that Miss Phillippa Tyler does her strenuous best to set my sympathy in motion. Possibly she tries a shade too hard, and in future I hope that she will cut shorter—or even cut out completely—the soliloquies of her heroes. Miss Tyler has the dramatic sense, and an author who can write over a hundred-and-fifty words without a full-stop is not to be thwarted by trifles; but she dissipates her forces and fails to reach the catastrophic climax at which she apparently aimed.
The ways of the humorist are hard indeed, and it must be particularly exasperating, even if you are a clergyman, to be told by some disgruntled reviewer, as "George A. Birmingham" must, I am afraid, here be told, that his latest, Good Conduct (Murray), is not up to standard. Virginia Tempest, the tomboy, the extremely unworthy recipient of the good conduct prize at Miss Merridew's academy, has her points, but her pranks are played with or against such dull folk: an editor and assistant editor for whom I blush; an emporium owner who is kinder and wealthier and stupider than he is diverting; an assistant schoolmistress, a surgeon, a Futurist-painter, a bishop. None of these worthy people commands my respect or laughter. The high spirits seem not entirely genuine. A casual lapse into Brummagem, I take it.
"Wanted, for 3 months, nice Bedroom and small paddock for pony."
"Six Acres Freehold Land, with Two Cottages, near Southampton; suitable pigs and poultry."
Provincial Paper.
With bedrooms for ponies and cottages for pigs, what chance has a human of getting housed?