OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Undeniably ours is an age in which fond memory fills not only the heart of man but the shelves of the circulating libraries to a degree bordering upon excess. But, let reminiscences be even more frequent than they are, there would yet remain a welcome for such a book as Mr. W.H. Mallock's attractive Memoirs of Life and Literature (Chapman and Hall). The reason of this lies not more in the interest of what is told than in the fact that these memories have the advantage of being recalled by one who is master of a singularly engaging pen. Nothing in the book better displays its quality of charm than the opening chapters, with their picture of an old-world Devonshire, and in particular the group of related houses in which the boyhood of the future anti-socialist was so delightfully spent. Gracious homes have always had a special appeal to the author of The New Republic, as you are here reminded in a score of happy recollections. Then comes Oxford, and that meeting with Swinburne in the Balliol drawing-room that seems to have been the common experience of memoir-writers. Some entertaining chapters give a cheerful picture of London life when Mr. Mallock entered it, and Society, still Polite, opened its most exclusive doors to the young explorer. The rest of the book is devoted to a record of friendships, travel, an analysis of the writer's literary activities, and a host of good stories. Perhaps I have just space for one quotation—the prayer delivered by the local minister in the hall of Ardverike: "God bless Sir John; God bless also her dear Leddyship; bless the tender youth of the two young leddies likewise. We also unite in begging Thee to have mercy on the puir governess." A book of singular fragrance and individuality.
The Victorians used to talk, perhaps do still, about the lure of the stage; but I am inclined to suppose this was as nothing beside the lure of the stage-novel. All our writers apparently feel it, and in most cases their bones whiten the fields of failure. But amongst those of whom this certainly cannot be said is Mr. Horace A. Vachell, whose new book, The Fourth Dimension (Murray), has both pleased and astonished me by its freedom from those defects that so often ruin the theatrical story. For one thing, of course, the explanation of this lies in my sustaining confidence that I was being handed out the genuine stuff. When a dramatist of Mr. Vachell's experience says that stage-life is thus and thus, well, I have to believe him. As a fact I seldom read so convincing a word-picture of that removed and esoteric existence. The title (not too happy) means the world beyond the theatre, that which so many players count well lost for the compensations of applause and fame; and the story is of a young and phenomenally successful actress, Jess Yeo, in whom the claims of domesticity and the love of her dramatist husband are shown in conflict with the attractions of West-End stardom and photographs in the illustrated papers. Eventually—but I suppose I can hardly tell that without spoiling for you what goes before the event. Anyhow, if I admit that the ending did not inspire me with any sanguine hope of happiness ever after, it at least put a pleasant finish on an attractive and successful tale.
In the Mountains (Macmillan) is one of those pleasant books of which the best review would be a long string of quotations, and that is a very complimentary thing to say about any novel. Written in diary form, on the whole successfully, it tells little of doing and much of being, and a great deal more of feeling than of either. It is scarcely necessary after that to add that it is discursive. As a matter of fact I found that for me that half of its charm which did not lie in being whisked off, as it were by magic, to sit in the sunshine of Switzerland lay in its author's reflections upon subjects quite unconnected with her story, and as far apart from each other as Law's Serious Call and the effect of different kinds of underclothing on the outward demeanour of the wearer. From the human document point of view it is as a picture of the convalescence of a soul sick with grief that In the Mountains deserves attention. I cannot imagine that anyone who has ever got well again after sorrow will fail to recognise its truth. The little mystery and the slender love-story which hold the discursiveness together are just sufficient but so slight that they shall not even be hinted at here. For the rest the book is whimsical, thoughtful, sentimental by turns and, in spite of its tolerance, a shade superior; with now and then a phrase which left me wondering whether a blushing cheek would deserve the Garter motto's rebuke; in fact it resembles more than anything else on earth what the "German garden" of a certain "Elizabeth" might grow into if she transplanted it to a Swiss mountain-top.
Peregrine in Love (Hodder and Stoughton) is a story whose sentimental title does it considerably less than justice. It gives no indication of what is really an admirably vivacious comedy of courtship and intrigue, with a colonial setting that is engagingly novel. Miss C. Fox Smith seems to know Victoria and the island of Vancouver with the intimacy of long affection; her pen-pictures and her idiom are both of them convincingly genuine. The result for the reader is a twofold interest, half in seeing what will be to most an unfamiliar place under expert guidance, half in the briskly moving intrigue supposed to be going on there. I say "supposed," because, to be frank, Miss Fox Smith's story, good fun as it is, hardly convinces like her setting. You may, for example, feel that you have met before in fiction the lonely hero who rescues the solitary maiden, his shipmate, from undesirable society, and falls in love with her, only to learn that she is voyaging to meet her betrothed. At this point I suppose most novel-readers would have given fairly long odds against the betrothed in question keeping the appointment, and I may add that they would have won their money. Not that Peregrine was going to find the course of his love run smooth in spite of this; being a hero and a gentleman he had for one thing to try, and keep on trying, to bring the affianced pair together, and thus provide the tale with another than its clearly predestined end. Of course he doesn't succeed, but the attempt furnishes capital entertainment for everybody concerned, and proves that Mr. Punch's "C.F.S." can write prose too.
The title of Gold Must be Tried by Fire (Macmillan) might be called axiomatic for the precise type of fiction represented by the story. Because, if gold hadn't to be tried by fire, you might obviously marry the hero and heroine on the first page and save everybody much trouble and expense. Mr. Richard Aumerle Maher, however, knows his job better than that. True, he marries his heroine early, but to the wrong man, the Labour leader and crook, Will Lewis, who vanishes just before the entrance of the strong but unsilent hero, only to reappear (under an alias) in time to get shot in a strike riot. Mr. Maher's book comes, as you may already have guessed, from that great country where they have replaced alcohol by sugar, and where (perhaps in consequence) heroines of such super-sentimentality as Daidie Grattan have no terrors for them. Personally I found her and her exploits on burning ships, besieged mills and the like a trifle sticky. For the rest you have some interesting details of the workings of the paper industry; a style that to the unfamiliar eye is at times startling (as when, on page 282, the hero's head "snapped erect"); and lots and lots of love. As for the ending, to relieve any apprehensions on your part, let me quote it. "Taking her swiftly in his arms, he questioned: 'Has the gold come free from the fire at last, my darling?' 'Gold or dross,' she whispered as she yielded, 'it is your own.'" Ah!
Love's Triumph (Methuen) is concerned to a great extent with the development of a raw Kentucky lad into an attractive and resourceful man; but its chief interest lies rather with his trainer. When Victor McCalloway arrived in Kentucky and took Boone Wellver under his wing it became obvious enough that he was bent on reconstructing his own life as well as moulding Boone's. McCalloway, when the seal of his past is broken, turns out to be Sir Hector Dinwiddie, D.S.O., K.C.B., a tradesman's son who was generally believed to have killed himself in Paris. I must assume that Mr. Charles Neville Buck intended us to recognise in Sir Hector a certain General whose name acquired a painful notoriety not so long ago. The reader may form what opinion he likes of the good taste of all this, but there can be no question that the author has drawn a fine character. At the outset his style is so jumpy that the story is difficult to follow, but presently its course grows clearer and I fancy that you will follow it keenly, as I did, to the end.
WORRIES OF THE DARK AGES.
Peaceful Knight (who has called to ask his way at a strange castle). "Oh, confound it! I wish I'd read the notice before I blew the horn. I don't feel a bit like fighting giants to-day, and besides I promised to be home early for dinner."