OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
We have had many studies of the War, in various aspects, from our own army. Now in My ·75 (Heinemann) there comes a record of the impressions of a French gunner during the first year of fighting. It is a book of which I should find it difficult to speak too highly. Paul Lintier, the writer, had, it is clear, a gift for recording things seen with quite unusual sharpness of effect. His word-pictures of the mobilisation, the departure for the Front, and the fighting from the Marne to the Aisne (where he was wounded and sent home) carry one along with a suspense and interest and quite personal emotion that are a tribute to their artistry. His death (the short preface tells us that, having returned to the Front, he was killed in action in March, 1916) has certainly robbed France of one who should have made a notable figure in her literature. The style, very distinctive, shows poetic feeling and a rare and beautiful tenderness of thought, mingled with an acceptance of the brutality of life and war that is seen in the vivid descriptions of incidents that our own gentler writers would have left untold. The horror of some of these passages makes the book (I should warn you) not one for shaken nerves. But there can be no question of its very unusual interest, nor of the skill with which its translator, who should surely be acknowledged upon the title-page, has preserved the vitality and appeal of the original.
Tommy (who has made a find in a German dug-out). "Now, Albert, aren't you glad you came? why, these cigars in London would cost you close on a tanner apiece."
The author of Helen of Four Gates (Jenkins) has chosen to hide her identity and call herself simply "An Ex-Mill Girl." I am sufficiently sorry for this to hope that, if the story meets with the success that I should certainly predict for it, a lady of such unusual gifts may allow us to know her name. Of these gifts I have no doubt whatever. As a tale Helen of Four Gates is crude, unnatural, melodramatic; but the power (brutality, if you prefer) of its telling takes away the critical breath. Whether in real life anyone could have nursed a lifelong hatred as old Mason did (personally I cherish the belief that hatred is too evanescent an emotion for a life-tenancy of the human mind; but I may be wrong); whether he would have bribed a casual tramp to marry and torment the reputed daughter who was the object of his loathing, or whether Day and Helen herself would actually so have played into his hands, are all rather questionable problems. Far more real, human and moving is the wild passion of Helen for Martin, whom (again questionably as to truth) her enemies frighten away from her. A grim story, you begin to observe, but one altogether worth reading. To compare things small (as yet) with great, I might call it a lineal descendant of Wuthering Heights, both in setting and treatment. There is indeed more than a hint of the Brontë touch about the Ex-Mill Girl. For that and other things I send her (whoever she is) my felicitations and good wishes.
I wonder if Mr. (or Mrs. or Miss) E.K. Weekes would understand me if I put my verdict upon The Massareen Affair (Arnold) into the form of a suggestion that in future its author would be well advised to keep quiet, Not with any meaning that he or she should desist from the pursuit of fiction; on the contrary, there are aspects of The Massareen Affair that are more than promising—vigorous and unconventional characters, a gift of lively talk, and so on. But all this only operates so long as the tale remains in the calm waters of the ordinary; later, when it puts forth upon the sea of melodrama, I am sorry to record that this promising vessel comes as near shipwreck as makes no difference. To drop metaphor, the group of persons surrounding the unhappily-wedded Anthony Massareen—Claudia, who attempts to rescue him and his two boys, the boys themselves, and the clerical family whose fortunes are affected by their proximity to the Massareens—all these are well and credibly drawn. But when we arrive at the fanatic wife of Anthony, in her Welsh castle, surrounded by rocks and blow-holes, and finally to that last great scene, where (if I followed events accurately) she trusses her ex-husband like a fowl, and trundles him in a wheel-barrow to the pyre of sacrifice, not the best will in the world could keep me convinced or even decorously thrilled. So I will content myself with repeating my advice to a clever writer in future to ride imagination on the curb, and leave you to endorse this or not as taste suggests.
I am seriously thinking of chaining Grand Fleet Days (Hodder and Stoughton) to my bookcase, for it is written by the author of In the Northern Mists, a book which has destroyed the morality of my friends. Be assured that I am not formulating any grave charge against the anonymous Chaplain of the Fleet who has provided us with these two delightful volumes; I merely wish to say that nothing can prevent people from purloining the first, and that drastic measures will have to be taken if I am to retain the second. In these dialogues and sketches I do not find quite so much spontaneity as in the first volume; once or twice it is even possible to imagine that the author, after taking pen in hand, was a little perplexed to find a subject to write about. But that is the beginning and the end of my complaint. Once again we have a broad-minded humour and the revelation of a most attractive personality. Above all we see our Grand Fleet as it is; and, if the grumblers would only read and soundly digest what our Chaplain has to say their question would be, "What is our Navy not doing?"
"The sight was wonderful. From the grand lodge entrance to the lake-side quite 3,000 blue-breeched khaki-coated men and nurses lined one side of the long drive."—Manchester Evening News.
It must indeed have been a wonderful sight. Nevertheless we hope that nurses generally will stick to their traditional uniform.