OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Not every regiment has the good luck to find for chronicler one who is not only a distinguished soldier but a practical and experienced man of letters. This fortune is enjoyed by The Gold Coast Regiment (Murray) in securing for its historian Sir Hugh Clifford, K.C.M.G., from whose book you may obtain a vivid picture of a phase of the Empire's effort about which the average Briton has heard comparatively little. The very strenuous compaigns of the G.C.R., the endurance and achievements of its brave and light-hearted troops, and the heroism and fostering care of its officers, make an inspiring story. Almost for the first time one gains some real idea of the difficulties of the East African campaign, that prolonged tiger hunt, in which every advantage of mobility, of choice of ground, ambush and the like lay with the enemy; and over very tough physical obstacles, as, for example, rivers so variable that, in the author's incisive phrase, they "can rarely be relied upon, for very long together, either to furnish drinking-water or to refrain from impeding transport." It is interesting to note that Sir Hugh, while giving every credit to the remarkable personality of the German commander, entirely demolishes the theory, so grateful to our sentimentalists, that the absence of surrenders on the part of the enemy's black troops was due to any devotion to Von Lettow-Vorbeck as leader; the explanation being the characteristic German dodge of creating from the natives a military caste so highly privileged, and consequently unpopular with their fellows, that surrender, involving return to native civilian life, became a practical impossibility.
Much the best part, and a good best, of Sir Harry (Collins) is the opening, which is not only delightful in itself but contains almost the sole example of a chapter-long letter (of the kind usually so unconvincing in fiction) in which I have found it possible to believe as being actually written by one character to another. The explanation of which is that this one is supposed to be sent to his wife by the new Vicar of Royd, himself a successful novelist, on a visit of inspection to his future parish. The efforts of Mrs. Grant, at home, to disentangle essential facts from the complications of the literary manner form as pleasant and human an introduction to a story as any I remember. The story itself is one highly characteristic of its author, Mr. Archibald Marshall, both in charm and truth to life, as also in one minor drawback, of which I have taken occasion to speak before. Nothing could be better done than the picture of the household at Royd Castle, the boy owner, Sir Harry, sheltered by the almost too-encompassing care of the three elder inmates, mother, grandmother and tutor. When the fictionally inevitable happens and an Eve breaks into this protected Eden there follow some boy-and-girl love-scenes that may perhaps remind you—and what praise could be higher?—of the collapse of another system on the meeting of Richard and Lucy. I will not anticipate the end of a sympathetically told story, which I myself should have enjoyed even more but for Mr. Marshall's habit (hinted at above) of following real life somewhat too closely in the matter of non-progressive discussion. How I should like him to lay his next scene in a community of Trappists!
The Haunted Bookshop (Chapman and Hall) is a daring, perhaps too daring, mixture of a browse in a second-hand bookshop and a breathless bustle among international criminals. To estimate the accuracy of its technical details the critic must be a secret service specialist, the mustiest of bookworms and a highly-trained expert in the science and language of the American advertising business. Speaking as a general practitioner, I like Mr. Christopher Morley best when he is being cinematographic; he hits a very happy mean with his spies and his sleuths, giving a nice proportion of skill and error, failure and success, to both. There is a strong love-interest which will be made much of and probably spoilt by the purchasers of the film-rights; and, though strong men will doubtless applaud hoarsely and women will weep copiously, as the bomb in the bookshop throws the young lovers into each other's arms, I feel that the book gives a more attractive portrait of Titania Chapman, the plutocrat's daughter, than ever can be materialised in the film-man's "close-up." I am afraid that Mr. Morley will not thank me for praising his brisk melodrama at the cost of his ramblings in literature. But, if he has the knowledge, he lacks the fragrance; not to put too fine a point on it, he is long-winded and tends to bore in his disquisitions upon books and bookishness; which is no proper material for a novelist. The story is all about America and is thoroughly American; inevitably therefore there is some ambitious word-coining. The only novelty which sticks in my memory and earns my gratitude is the title for the female Bolshevik, to wit, Bolshevixen.
Wayward and capricious heroines who marry young are entitled, I think, to a certain amount of introspective treatment by their authors. Without some knowledge of their mental working it is not very easy for the reader to have patience with them. I was introduced to Anne (Heinemann) when she was fifteen, and in the act of snatching a loaf of bread from a baker's cart and running away with it merely to annoy the baker; and, as she had large blue eyes and two young men as self-appointed guardians, I was prepared for a certain amount of heart trouble later on. One of these heroes she married at the age of seventeen, and, after various innocent but compromising vagaries (including a flight to Paris after the death of her son in order to study art), she followed the other one, still innocently, to Ireland, because he had been in prison and she was sorry for him. Both these guardians discharged their duty to Anne at least as well as Olga Hartley, who chronicles but does not explain; and this is a pity, for with a rather different treatment she might have made her heroine a very likeable person. Looked at from another point of view, Anne may be taken as a mild piece of propaganda against divorce. I am glad it didn't come to that, of course, but I do feel that a cross-examining K.C. would have discovered a good deal more about Anne's soul for me than I learnt from the writer of her story.
John Fitzhenry (Mills and Boon) is one of those pleasant stories about people who live in big country houses, a subject that seems to have a particular attraction for the large and ungrudging public which lives in villas. We have already several novelists who tell them very ably, and I feel that some one among them has served as Miss Ella MacMahon's model. The tale deals with the affairs of a showy fickle cousin and a silent constant cousin who compete for the love of the same delightful if rather nebulous young woman, and moves to its dénouement, against a background of the great War, which Miss MacMahon has very sensibly decided to view entirely from the home front. It contains some fine thinking and some bad writing (the phrase telling of the middle-aged smart woman who "waved her foot impatiently" gives a just idea of the author's occasional inability to say what she means), some quite extraneous incidents and some scenes very well touched in. The people, with a few exceptions, are of the race which inhabits this sort of book, and, as we have long agreed with our novelists that "the county" is just like that, I don't see why Miss MacMahon should be blamed for it.
Mr. Cosmo Hamilton lays the scene of His Friend and His Wife (Hurst and Blackett) in the Quaker Hill Colony of Connecticut, the members of which were typically "nice" and took themselves very seriously. So when one of them brought a divorce suit against her husband there was a feeling that the colony's reputation had been irremediably besmirched. Mr. Hamilton can be trusted to create tense situations out of the indiscretions of an erring couple, but he also contrives, in spite of its artificial atmosphere, to make us believe in this society, though he tried me rather hard with a scandalmongress of the type we happily meet less often in life than in fiction. I hope he will not be quite so dental in his next book. I didn't so much mind Mrs. Hopper's teeth, which "flashed like an electric advertisement," but when he made two golfers also flash "triumphant teeth" I recoiled.
The Golden Bird of Miss Dorothy Easton (Heinemann) is indeed lucky to set out on its flight with a favouring pat from Mr. John Galsworthy. He asserts that these short studies of people and things in England and France are very well done indeed; that moreover, though the short sketch may look, and the bad short sketch may be, one of the easiest of literary feats, the good short sketch is in fact one of the most difficult. Now who should know this if not Mr. Galsworthy, and who am I that I should presume to disagree? As a matter of fact I don't. Quite the contrary. But naturally I shall get no credit for that. I will only add that Miss Easton has not a majority mind, that she sees the sad thing more easily than the gay, that I like her work best in her more objective moods, and that, like so many writers of perception, she finds the quintessence of England's beauty in happy Sussex.
IN OLD VERSAILLES.
Mother. "Good news, my son! Even as I pondered whether I should eat our last crust the ever-kind Abbé called to say he had found thee a highly-paid appointment at Court."
Son. "Yes—but did he tell you it was as Food-Taster to His Majesty, who daily expects to be poisoned?"