OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
It is strange to find the inexhaustible Mr. W.E. NORRIS turning towards the supernatural. Yet there is at least more than a flavouring of this in the composition of Brown Amber (HUTCHINSON), which partly concerns a remarkable bead, having the property of bringing good or evil luck to its various owners. As (after the manner of such things in stories) the charm was for ever being lost, and as the kind of fortune it conferred went in alternations, possession of it was rather in the nature of a gamble. All I have to observe about it is that such hazards consort somewhat better with the world of HANS ANDERSEN or the Arabian Nights than with those quiet and well-bred inhabitants of South-Western London whom one has learnt to associate with the name of NORRIS. Thus, in considering the nice problem of whether Clement Drake (as typical a Norrisian as ever buttoned spats) would or would not escape the entanglements of Mrs. D'Esterre, it simply irritated me to suppose that the event might be determined by the machinations of djins. In a word, East is East and S.W. is S.W., and never the twain shall, or should, be mixed up in a novel that pretends to anything more serious than burlesque. I am not sure also that, for different reasons, I did not regret the introduction of the War; though as a grand climax it has, I admit, a lure that must be almost irresistible to the novelist. For the rest, if you do not share my objection to the (dare I say it?) amberdexterity of the plot, you will find Mr. NORRIS as pleasant as ever in his scenes of drawing-room comedy.
A volume of remarkable interest is In Ruhleben (HURST AND BLACKETT), into which Mr. DOUGLAS SLADEN has gathered a variety of information concerning the life of the English civilian prisoners in Germany, its many hardships and few ameliorations. The greater part of the book is filled with a series of letters sent by one of these prisoners to his mother. Perhaps (one suspects) the writer of these was not altogether an ordinary young man. From whatever reason, the fact remains that his letters are by no means uncheery reading; his books and study, most of all his friendships (with one fellow-captive especially), seem to have kept him contented and even happy. Of course some part of this may well have been coloured for the maternal eye; it is clear that he was greatly concerned that she should not be too anxious about him. A more impartial picture of the conditions at Ruhleben is given in the second part of the volume, and in a letter by Sir TIMOTHY EDEN, reprinted from The Times, on The Case for a wholesale Exchange of Civilian Prisoners. I should add that the book is illustrated with a number of drawings of Ruhleben made by Mr. STANLEY GRIMM, an artist of the Expressionist School (whatever that may mean). These are vigorous and arresting, if, to the unmodern eye, somewhat formless. But they are part of a record that all Englishmen can study with quickened sympathy and a great pride in the courage and resource of our race under conditions needlessly brutal at their worst, and never better than just endurable.
Nothing will ever persuade me that This Way Out (METHUEN) is an attractive title for a novel, however effective it may be as a notice in a railway station. The book itself, however, is intriguing in spite of its gloominess. The grandfather of Jane and John-Andrew Vaguener committed a most cold-blooded murder—this in a prologue. Then, when we get to the real story, we find Jane tapping out popular fiction at an amazing pace, and her brother, John-Andrew, living on the proceeds thereof. Jane is noisy, vulgar, and successful in her own line, and gets on John-Andrew's nerves; and when he discovers that she has for once turned aside from tawdry fiction and written a play that is really good he decides that he can stand it and her no longer. While she was pouring out literary garbage he could just manage to endure his position, but the thought that she would be hailed as a genius while he remained an utter failure was the final stroke that turned him from a mendicant into a madman. I am not going to tell you exactly what happened, but Jane found a "way out," and with her departure from this life my interest in the book evaporated. Mrs. HENRY DUDENEY has notable gifts as a descriptive writer, and my only complaint against her is that vulgar Jane was not allowed to live, for in the Army or out of it she was worth a whole platoon of John-Andrews. The Vagueners, I may add, were not a little mad, but then they were Cornish, and novelists persist in treating Cornwall as if it were a delirious duchy.
I don't think I can honourably recommend Mr. HUGH ELLIOT'S volume on Herbert Spencer (CONSTABLE) as light reading, though the ungodly may wax merry over the philosopher's first swear-word, at the age of thirty-six, in the matter of a tangled fishing-line, and may be kindled at the later picture of a middle-aged sportsman shinning, effectively too, after a Neapolitan who had pinched his opera-glasses. Fine human traits these in a character which will strike the normal man as bewilderingly unlike the general run of the species. The serious-flippant reader, tackling Mr. ELLIOT'S elaborate and acute analyses, may get an impression of an obstinate old apriorist, a sort of White Knight of Philosophyland, with all manner of reasoned-out "inventions" at his saddle-bow (labelled "Homogeneity-Heterogeneity," "Unknowable," "Ghost Theory," "Presentative-Representative"), which don't seem, somehow, as helpful as their inventor assumes. And 'tis certain he took tosses into many of the pits of his dangerous deductive method. I don't present this as Mr. ELLIOT'S view. He is respectful-critical, and makes perhaps the best case for his old master's claim to greatness out of the assumption that SPENCER himself, stark enemy to authority and dogmatism, would have preferred his biographer's critical examination to any mere "master's-voice" reproduction of Spencerian doctrine. I wonder if he would!
Miss F.E. MILLS YOUNG'S newest story has at least this much merit about it, that no one who has seen the title can complain thereafter of having been taken unawares by the course of the narrative. That is perhaps as well, for, having discovered in the opening chapters a sufficiently charming Pamela living in perpetual honeymoon with a partner rich, good-looking and with no particular occupation to interfere with unlimited motor trips and dinner parties, we might have imagined the tale was going to remain a jolly meaningless thing like that all through, and so have been as much shocked as the heroine herself on reading the fatal letter. But, since we knew the book to be called straight out The Bigamist (LANE), we could have no possible difficulty in foreseeing the emergence of that other wife from the buried past ready to pounce down on poor little Pam at her happiest. And of course she duly appeared. Not that such happiness could in any case have lasted long, for the man was, flatly, a cur, not deserving the notice of any of the rather foolish women he managed to attract—there were three of them—and not particularly worth your attention either for that matter. Having said so much I can gladly leave the rest to your perusal, or, better perhaps, your imagination, only hinting that the conclusion has something of dignity that does a little to redeem the volume. But when all is said this is not Miss YOUNG at her best, the characters without exception being unusually stilted, the plot unpleasant, and the South African atmosphere, for which I have gladly praised her before now, so negligible that but for an occasional name and a page or two of railway journey the yarn might as well have been placed in a suburb of London or Manchester as in the land of delectable sunshine.
Mr. JOHN S. MARGERISON, in The Sure Shield (DUCKWORTH) sees to it that our national pride in our Fleet is thoroughly encouraged. Whether he is describing a race against the Germans in times of peace, or a fight against odds with them in these days of war, we always come out top dog. Very good. But, at the same time, I am bound to add that some of his stories compelled me to make considerable drafts on my reserves of credulity before I could swallow them. So improbable are the incidents in one or two of them that I am inclined to believe that they must be founded on fact. However that may be, their author is an expert in his subject, and writes with a vigour that is very bracing and infectious.
Tactful Customer (forestalling a rebuff at a coal order office). "OF COURSE, MISS, I DON'T EXPECT THAT YOU REALLY SELL COALS, BUT I SUPPOSE YOU WOULD HAVE NO OBJECTION TO MAKING THEM A SUBJECT FOR CONVERSATION?"