OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
It may be as well for me to confess at once the humiliating fact that I am not, and never have been, an Etonian. If that be a serious disqualification for life in general, how much more serious must it be for the particular task of reviewing a book which is of Eton all compact, a book, for example, like Memories of Eton Sixty Years Ago, by A.C. Ainger, with contributions from N.G. Lyttelton and John Murray (Murray). For I have never been "up to" anybody; I have never been present at "absence"; I have no real understanding of the difference between a "tutor" and a "dame"; I call a "pœna" by the plebeian name of "imposition"; and, until I had read Mr. Aingers's book, I had never heard of the verb "to brosier" or the noun substantive "bever." Altogether my condition is most deplorable. Yet there are some alleviations in my lot, and one of them has been the reading of this delightful book. I found it most interesting, and can easily imagine how Etonians will be absorbed in it, for it will revive for them many an old and joyful memory of the days that are gone. Mr. Ainger discourses, with a mitis sapientia that is very attractive, on the fashions and manners of the past and the gradual process of their development into the Eton of the present. He is proud, as every good Etonian must be, of Eton as it exists, but now and again he hints that the Eton of an older time was in some respects a simpler and a better place. The mood, however, never lasts long, and no one can quarrel with the way in which it is expressed. General Lyttelton, too, in one of his contributions, relates how on his return from a long stay in India he visited Eton, expecting to be modestly welcomed by shy and ingenuous youths, and how, instead, he was received and patronised by young but sophisticated men of the world. The General, I gather, was somewhat chilled by his experience. Altogether this book is emphatically one without which no Etonian's library can be considered complete.
Perhaps of all our War correspondents Mr. Philip Gibbs contrives to give in his despatches the liveliest sense of the movement, the pageantry and the abominable horror of war. Pageantry there is, for all the evil boredom and weariness of this pit-and-ditch business, and Mr. Gibbs sees finely and has an honest pen that avoids the easy cliché. You might truthfully describe his book, The Battles of the Somme (Heinemann), as an epic of the New Armies. He never seems to lose his wonder at their courage and their spirit, and always with an undercurrent of sincerely modest apology for his own presence there with his notebook, a mere chronicler of others' gallantry. This chronicle begins at the glorious 1st of July and ends just before Beaumont-Hamel, which the author miserably missed, being sent home on sick leave. It is a book that may well be one of those preserved and read a generation hence by men who want to know what the great War was really like. God knows it ought to help them to do something to prevent another. Yet there is nothing morbid in it. As the sergeant thigh-deep in a flooded trench said, "You know, Sir, it doesn't do to take this war seriously." The armies of a nation that takes its pleasures sadly take their bitter pains with a grin; and that grin is what has made them such an unexpectedly tough proposition to the All-Seriousest.
An old adage warns us never to buy a "pig in a poke." Equally good advice for the heroines of fiction or drama would be never under any circumstances to marry a bridegroom in a mask. In more cases than I can recall, neglect of this simple precaution has led to a peck of trouble. I am thinking now of Yvonne, leading lady in The Mark of Vraye (Hutchinson). I admit that poor Yvonne had more excuse than most. Hers was what you might call a hard case. On the one hand there was the villain Philippe, a most naughty man, swearing that she was in his power, and calling for instant marriage at the hands of Father Simon, who happened to be present. On the other hand, the gentleman in the mask revealed a pair of eyes that poor Yvonne rashly supposed to belong to someone for whom she had more than a partiality. So when he suggested that the proposed ceremony should take place during Philippe's temporary absence from the stage, with himself as substitute, Yvonne (astonished perhaps at her own luck so early in the plot) simply jumped at the idea. Then, of course, the deed being done, off comes the mask, and behold the triumphant countenance of her bitterest foe, Charles de Montbrison, whom she herself had disfigured as the (supposed) murderer of her brother. Act drop and ten minutes' interval. Need I detail for you the subsequent course of this marriage of inconvenience? The courage and magnanimity of one side, the feminine cruelty melting at last to love, and finally the inevitable duologue of reconciliation, through which I can never help hearing the rustle of opera-cloaks and the distant cab-whistles. Charming, charming. Mr. H.B. Somerville has furnished a pleasant entertainment, and one that (like all good readers or spectators) you will enjoy none the less because of its entire familiarity.
The Flight of Mariette (Chapman and Hall) is a slender volume, whose simplicity gives it a poignancy both incongruous and grim. Much of it you might compare to the diary of a butterfly before and whilst being broken on the wheel. Mariette, the jolly little maid of Antwerp, was so tender and harmless a butterfly; and the machine that broke her life and drove her to the martyrdom of exile was so huge and cruel a thing. How cruel in its effects it is well for us just now to be again reminded, lest, in these days of hurrying horrors, remembrance should be weakened. To that extent therefore Miss Gertrude E.M. Vaughan has done good service in compiling this human document of accusation. In a preface Mr. John Galsworthy pleads the cause of our refugee guests, not so much for charity as for comprehension. Certainly, The Flight of Mariette will do much to further such understanding. I think I need only add that half the proceeds of its sale will go to feed the seven million Belgians still in Belgium (prey to the twin wolves of Prussia and starvation) for you to see that three shillings and sixpence could hardly be better used than in the purchase of a copy.
I was beginning to wonder whether Mr. Eden Phillpotts was suffering from writer's cramp, so much longer than usual does it seem since I heard from him. Now, however, my anxiety is relieved by My Devon Year (Scott), a delightful book which could have come from no other pen than his. It is a marvel how many fragrant things he still finds to say, and with what inexhaustible freshness, about his beloved county. I hesitate to give these sketches an indiscriminate recommendation, because to those who walk through the country with closed eyes they will have little or no meaning; but if you are in love with beauty and can appreciate its translation into exquisite language you will draw from them a real and lasting joy. Let me confess now that I once asked Mr. Phillpotts to give Devonshire a rest, and that I accept My Devon Year as a convincing proof that this request was ill-considered.
I wish Mr. Douglas Sladen would not throw so many bouquets at his characters. Roger Wynyard, the hero of Grace Lorraine (Hutchinson), was really just a very ordinary youth, but when I discovered that he was "the fine flower of our Public-School system," "as chivalrous as a Bayard," and so forth, I began—unfairly, perhaps, but quite irresistibly—to entertain a considerable prejudice against him. Let me hasten, however, to add that Mr. Sladen has packed his novel with the kind of incident which appeals to the popular mind, though his conclusion may cause a shock to those who think that our divorce-laws are in need of reform. In the matter of style Mr. Sladen is content with something short of perfection. "It was easier for her to forgive a man, with his happy-go-lucky nature, for getting into trouble, than to forgive his getting out again by not being sufficiently careful not to add to the other person's misfortune." For myself, I do not find it so easy to forgive these happy-go-lucky methods in a writer who ought to know better by now.
Sentry. "Who goes there?"
Tommy. "Friend."
Sentry (on recognising voice). "Friend! I don't think. Why, you're the chap who bagged my mess-tin before the last kit-inspection."
The War Loan; a Last Appeal.
Now, by the memory of our gallant dead,
And by our hopes of peace through victory won,
Lend of your substance; let it not be said
You left your part undone.
Lend all and gladly. If this bitter strife
May so by one brief hour be sooner stayed,
Then is your offering, spent to ransom life,
A thousand times repaid.