OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
From what is known of the tastes of Sir Ian Hamilton it might have been supposed that he wrote his Gallipoli Diary (Arnold) lest his pen-hand should lose its cunning while wielding the sword. Indeed he tells us of a rumour among his officers "that I spend my time composing poetry, especially during our battles." But that he did not write for the sake of writing must be clear to anyone who reads the book, even if the author had not declared his motive in the preface. Here he admits that, though "soldiers think of nothing so little as failure," it was in fact the thought of possible failure that determined him, at the very start, to prepare from day to day his defence. Perhaps this is not quite the attitude of one who stakes all upon the great chance. In another significant passage of self-revelation he tells us how, on a tour of inspection in Egypt, he met Rupert Brooke, "the most distinguished of the Georgians." "He looked extraordinarily handsome ... stretched out there on the sand, with the only world that counts at his feet." Whether in ordinary times the world of art is or is not the "only world that counts," I cannot say, but I am certain that to a soldier entrusted with an enterprise of so great moment the only world that should have "counted" at that hour was the world of war. If the chapter which describes the failure that followed the landing in Suvla Bay exposes the incapacity of some of his officers to inspire their men with that little more energy which would have ensured a great victory, it seems also to expose a certain want of compelling personality in the High Command. But of the military questions here raised I make no pretence to judge, and in any case judgment has been passed on them already. The interest of the diary lies in its appeal as a human document. It is the apologia of a man who, for all his criticism, often apparently justified, of the authorities at home (there are passages which he must surely have suppressed if Lord Kitchner had still been living), sets down scarce a word in malice and but few in bitterness of spirit; who appreciates at its high worth the devotion and gallantry of his officers and men; who, whatever qualities he may have lacked for his difficult task, reveals himself as loyal at heart and generous by nature.
Miss Ruth Holt Boucicault (a name with a double theatrical association) has written, in The Rose of Jericho (Putnam), a novel of American stage life which I should suppose comes as near to being a true picture as such stories can. She derives her title from the convenient habit of the desert rose of detaching itself from uncongenial or exhausted soil, subsiding into a compact mass and travelling before the wind to more profitable surroundings. It will be admitted that the author has at least hit upon a picturesque metaphor for a touring company, which on this analogy becomes a very garden of (Jericho) roses. Actually, however, she no doubt intended it to apply more to the disposition of her heroine, and in particular to her power of transferring her young affections, flower, leaf and root, from one object to another, with undiminished enthusiasm. Sheelah's capacity for being off with the old and on with the new is almost preternatural; her progress from stage-child to leading lady is accompanied by such various essays in unconventional domesticity that the reader may well experience a sense of confusion, or at least feel some difficulty in sustaining the first freshness of his sympathy. The story is at times almost startlingly American, as when the original betrayer of the heroine is excused on the ground that, being English, his morality would naturally not rise to native level (I swear I'm not laughing—see page 168); and so full of the idiom of the Transatlantic stage as to be a perfect vade mecum for visiting mimes from this side. For the rest, vivacious, wildly sentimental and obviously written from first-hand experience.
By calling her Potterism (Collins) "a tragi-farcical tract" Miss Rose Macaulay disarms our criticism that she conducts too heavy a discussion from too light a platform. I don't think the author of What Not is likely to write anything dull, anything I shan't be pleased to read. She has a keen eye, a candid soul, a sharp-pointed pen. She is deliciously modern. And she dislikes Potterism, which is sentimental lack of precision in thought. It is much more (or much less) than this, but I get the definition by inverting a phrase of her dedication. Potter, by the way, or Lord Pinkerton, as he is now, owns a series of newspapers "not so good as The Times nor so bad as The Weekly Dispatch" (guileless piece of camouflage this!), and Mrs. Potter ("Leila Yorke") is a novelist who might have written The Rosary. Two of the young Potters, Jane and Johnny, though they both when up at Oxford joined the Anti-Potter League, do not thereby escape being Potterites. They cling to materialistic Potter values. Whereas an aristocratic clergyman, a woman scientist, a Jew journalist (this last an admirable study) do in varying degrees contrive to avoid the deadly infection. This tract needed writing. I have a feeling that it could be better done and by Rose Macaulay. But it makes excellent reading as it is.... The pachyderm will wince, shake himself and be left grinning.
Mr. Arnold Palmer derives the title of My Profitable Friends (Selwyn and Blount) from a verse, new to me, in which the poet, apparently when launching her wares, concludes,
"But who has pain has songs to sell;
My Profitable Friends, farewell!"
which I take to be the pleasantest way in the world of calling them pot-boilers. But whether they were so intended or not, there can be no question of the very agreeable dexterity that Mr. Palmer brings to the composition of his tales. Save for a few experiments (which I should call the least successful in the collection) his formula is not the episodical "slice of life," with crumbly edges. His choice is for the well-made, with usually some ingenious little twist at the finish, and (so to speak) a neatly tied bow to end all. As an instance of this kind I commend to your notice the admirably shaped little yarn called "Two-penn'orth." Mr. Palmer has a pretty wit (perhaps here and there a trifle thin), shown nowhere to better advantage than in "A Picked Eleven," one of the most entertaining, and at the same time human, short stories that I have ever read. Further, his tales are essentially of the friendly order, and the public will be in fault if they do not also prove profitable, since we have none too many writers capable of getting such deft results with the same economy of means.
In most stories constructed on the Enoch Arden principle one of the husbands or wives (whichever it may be of whom there are too many) is usually a very nasty person. Miss Sophie Cole, in The Cypress Tree (Mills and Boon), makes all three of her entangled characters quite attractive; in fact, though I fear she would not wish me to say so, I really liked the unsuccessful competitor better than the winner. Books made up of the little homely things which might happen to anybody and distinguished by their pleasant atmosphere have been Miss Cole's speciality in the past; this time she has, without abating a jot of her pleasantness, added a touch of the occult in the shape of an old black-letter volume which infects everyone who gets possession of it with a mildly insane determination to keep it. An honourable man steals it and a nice woman smacks her baby for holding it, so you can see how really baleful its influence must have been when you consider that they were both Miss Cole's characters. A very little of the occult will excuse a good deal of improbability, and the small amount that has crept into The Cypress Tree does not spoil the effect of a truly "nice" tale.
As an admirer of the Spud Tamson books it irks me to have to say that Winnie McLeod (Hutchinson) contains too much solid sermon to appeal to me. I gather that R. W. Campbell wants to show how dangerous life may be for a poor and beautiful girl, and as a warning Winnie can be confidently recommended. But sound and wholesome as the preaching is it seems to me more suitable for a tract than for a novel. Moreover it is not easy to feel full sympathy with a hero who is frankly called an Adonis, who "played a good bat at cricket," and also in a strenuous rugger match "dropped a beauty through the Edinburgh sticks." Altogether the picture suffers from the prodigious amount of paint that has been spent on it; yet I am confident it will afford edification to many people whose tastes I respect but cannot share.
"Ninety-six per cent. of men employed in the gas undertakings voted in favour of a strike. Four per cent. were against such action and the neutrals formed an infinitesimal number,"—Daily Paper.
A mere cipher, in fact.
"Required, immediately, man with intimate knowledge of colours to call on consumers with ochres from the French Alps."
Daily Paper.
Personally, we always prefer to consume raw umbers from the Apennines.
Customer. "But if these watches cost ten bob to make, and you are selling them at the same price, where does your profit come in?"
Watchmaker. "We get it repairing them."
| Transcriber's Note: Corrections are indicated by a dotted line underneath the correction. Scroll the mouse over the word and the original text will appear. Correction: p. 1.: 'say' corrected to 'says' ... 'says a Government official.' |