OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
MR. CONRAD'S new hero is an unnamed chief-mate who gets his first command to a sailing vessel, also unnamed—queer and of course quite deliberate instance of the author's reticent, allusive method which is so entirely plausible. Her last captain, who had some mad savage hatred of ship and crew, died aboard her and was buried in latitude 8° 20'. The chief-mate, who got the vessel back to port and remained under her new captain, is convinced that the dead man haunts her vengefully; and one desperate accident after another, racking a crew overwhelmed with fever, almost persuades the captain to share the mate's illusion that 8° 20'—The Shadow Line (DENT)—is possessed by the dead scoundrel. I found the book less interesting as a yarn than as an example of the astonishingly conscious and perfect artistry of this really great master of the ways of men and words. Mr. CONRAD never made me believe that the new captain would go so near sharing his mate's superstitious panic (which is perhaps because I know little of sailor-men save what he has taught me); and in the incident, so curiously and deliberately detailed, of his finding the quinine bottles filled with a worthless substitute, and letting them "each in turn" slip to ground, I had again the most unusual shock of being unable to accept the credibility of his invention. This is so rare an experience that it only throws into relief for me the fine craft of this most brilliant of our impressionists, who tells so much with such delicate strokes, so conscientiously considered, so unerringly conveyed.
This is the End (MACMILLAN) is the kind of book that only youth can write—youth at its best. It has the qualities and defects of its parentage; but the qualities, a fine careless rapture, sensitive vision, a wayward and jolly fantasy, challenging provocativeness, faintly malicious humour, are dominant. Miss STELLA BENSON will grow out of her youthful cynicisms and intolerances, will focus her effects, without losing any of her substantial equipment. This is by no means the end. It is the second step of a very brilliant beginning. Already it shows improvement upon her first clever book, I Pose; a surer touch, a finer restraint. What is it all about? Does that matter? It is the manner of the telling rather than what is told that constitutes the charm. If I tell, you that Jay runs away from a respectable home, and, after a grievous experiment as a bolster-filler, becomes a bus-conductor, has a romantic friendship with a middle-aged married man, and marries the faithful Mr. Morgan, her dead brother's soldier friend, I have told you just nothing at all. I will merely add that you will be foolish if you miss this book.
I have to begin by confessing that, despite its most attractive title, my first glance into French Windows (ARNOLD) produced in me some feeling of prejudice. It was not that I failed to recognise both dignity and beauty of phrase in the writing; on the contrary, I told myself that "Mr. JOHN AYSCOUGH" had been betrayed by his own appreciation of beautiful phrases into an indulgence in "style," a deliberate arrangement of his war-pictures that was somehow out of harmony with the stark and horrible simplicity of their subject. But I hasten to make confession that this was but a passing and, I am convinced, a wrong judgment. Indeed, the abiding impression that the book has left upon me is one of enormous sincerity. Both as a soldier and a priest, the writer enjoyed (as his publishers quite justly say) special opportunities for getting into touch with men of all sorts and conditions. This, aided by his own gift of sympathy and comradeship, has resulted in a book that is very largely a record of fleeting but genuine friendships, made with individual soldiers, both French and English, in the Western battle. Many of them contain portraits and character-studies (a pedantic term for anything so sensitive and sympathetic as these tributes to nameless heroes, but I can find no better) that linger in the memory. I defy you, for example, to forget soon the story of that winter walk taken by the writer and certain officer-boys of his unit to the Cistercian Monastery, and what Chutney said by the way; and what happened afterwards. For the sake of such sincere and memorable sketches as this I am more than ready to forgive what seemed like a touch of artifice elsewhere.
Mr. GEORGE MOORE, continuing his labours as reviser and editor-in-chief of the Moorish masterpieces, has now directed his attention to A Modern Lover. Finding this (presumably) not modern enough, he has refashioned and republished it under the admirably comprehensive title of Lewis Seymour and Some Women (HEINEMANN). Not having the original at hand, I am unable to indulge in comparisons; but there seems good reason to suppose that Lewis Seymour's relations with the three amiable ladies who assist his artistic and amatory career remain very much what they probably were in the beginning. As for the tale itself, that too will hardly belie your expectation, being full of cleverness, carried off with an infectious gaiety, and boasting (I use the word advisedly) more than a sufficiency of that rather assertive and school-boy impropriety which the charitable might quote as evidence of our author's perpetual youth. It is an interesting, though perhaps futile, speculation to reflect how Mr. THOMAS HARDY, to whose plots the present bears some resemblance, might have handled it. Had Lewis Seymour pursued his education in womanhood under the guidance of the wizard of Dorchester there would probably have been less of the atmosphere of holiday humour; but, on the other hand, we should almost certainly have been spared the quite superfluous naughtiness of the Parisian scenes. By the way, talking of Paris, surely I am right in supposing that the vision of a revived Versailles was an experience of two ladies? It is unexpected to find Mr. MOORE denying anything to "the sex."
Of the late Mr. JACK LONDON'S alternative methods of writing, the defiantly propagandist and the joyously adventurous, I, being an average reader, have always preferred the latter; so that, remembering how separate and distinct he usually kept his two styles, I expected, in taking up The Strength of the Strong (MILLS AND BOON), to be immediately either disappointed or gratified. But, as it turns out, the half-dozen essay-stories that make up this slender volume are by no means characteristic, for there is very little plot in any, and even less attempt forcibly to extract a moral; and amongst them are two not very successful North of Ireland studies that seem to have no connection at all with the author's usual manner. The volume is made up of social pictures, all (as Mr. LONDON liked to pretend) within his own experience, presented impartially for you to study, and draw, if you choose, your own conclusions. That experience ranges, comprehensively enough, from a first-hand sketch of primeval man attempting rather unhappily to group himself in clans and tribes, to a journalistic note of the Yellow Peril that materialised, we learn, somewhere late in the twentieth century and was overcome by science liberating disease—a Hunnish method no longer novel. Of the series I like best the tale of the San Francisco professor of dual personality, who by dint of much practical study of labour problems came at last to cut loose from his own circle and disappear in the army of industry. In this chapter alone is there a spark of the volcanic fire, now unhappily no longer in eruption, that blazes in such great stories as The Sea Wolf, Adventure and Burning Daylight.
Though there may be no very particular reason why you should be invited to read The Love Story of Guillaume-Marc (HUTCHINSON) it is, I vouch, a vivid enough tale of its genre. Squeamish folk, perhaps, may think that this is not the most opportune time at which to draw attention to the blood-lust that was so marked a feature of the French Revolution. But, granted that you do not suffer from squeams, you will find Miss MARIAN BOWER a deft weaver of romance. Here love and adventure walk firmly hand-in-hand, and from the moment Guillaume-Marc makes his entrance upon the stage until the happy ending is reached any day might have been his last. The villain, too, is a satisfactory scoundrel, and cunning withal. "Brains," he considered, "may conceive revolutions, but it is the empty stomach which propagates them." I wonder whether they have the brains for it in Berlin.
Helen (who has been reckoning termination of the War by counting opposite diner's prune stones). "MOTHER, I DO BELIEVE IT'S GOING TO BE THIS YEAR!"
According to a recent official communiqué from Petrograd, among the captures on the Caucasian Front was "an apomecometer (an instrument for estimating altitudes)." It is understood that the latest Turkish estimate of the "All Highest" was captured with the instrument, but was found to be unfit for publication.
"The Weser Zeitung now reports from Berlin that deliberations by the State authorities have led to the decision that from April 15 the meat ration will be increased to half a kilometre (about 17½ ozs.) per week."—Liverpool Daily Post.
This must refer to the sausage-ration, which by reason of its length and tenuity is now advertised by the butchers (civilian) of Berlin as "The HINDENBURG line."
"STEAM LUNCH—50 ft. x 7¼ ft., fast, liquid fuel."—Yachting Monthly.
A meal of these dimensions should surely attract the attention both of the FOOD CONTROLLER and the Liquor Control Board.