OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
The Candid Courtship (LANE) is a story full of good talk; by which I do not at all mean brilliant epigram and verbal fireworks, but direct and genuine conversation, just so far manipulated by the author that it advances the business in hand without becoming artificial. I must add, however, that Miss MADGE MEARS occasionally displays the defects of her qualities, to the extent of sacrificing syntax to ease, even in passages of pure narrative, with results that might offend the precisionist. But after all it is what she has to say that matters most; and the story of The Candid Courtship will hold you amused and curious to the end. I will not spoil it by re-telling, save to indicate that (as the title implies) it is about a suitor who, in proposing to the girl of his choice, confessed to her that he had a past. Not a very lurid past, but quite bad enough for the G.O.H.C., who happened to entertain strong views on sex-equality. So, as vulgar persons say, the fat was in the fire—more especially when the lady of the past turned up again, not past at all, but very pleasantly intriguing with another, and that other own brother to the girl herself. A pretty complication, and leading up to an admirable scene of tragi-comedy over a double elopement and a pursuit, which you must certainly read. Do not, however, be led to think that the story is at all farcically treated; Miss MEARS is far too serious an artist to neglect the graver aspects of her theme. Briefly, an excellently human and stimulating novel, whose only drawback is that recent events have caused the suffrage atmosphere in which it is sat to taste somewhat stale.
Between anarchy and anarchy the history of unhappy Mexico is spanned for the space of a generation by the colossal figure of the soldier-president, Diaz (CONSTABLE). Mr. DAVID HANNAY, writing with exquisite literary workmanship in the series of biographies entitled collectively Makers of the Nineteenth Century, presents this typically "strong" man as neither hero nor villain, but as a human being with human limitations, even more as a Mexican with the characteristics of a Mexican. Amongst a populace hopelessly divided by race, untrained in self-government and cursed with a natural twist for lawlessness only equalled by its hatred of work, Diaz stands for a tyranny certainly, but for a unified orderly tyranny, preferable, one might think, to a myriad petty outlawries. If little of the country's wealth found its way beyond the narrowest of circles during his long control, and if certain Indian tribes were shamefully enslaved—a fact which is neither denied nor condoned—still railways and harbours did get themselves built and the dictator himself lived a life of uncorrupt simplicity. He has been blamed for failure to establish enduringly the civilisation that Europe thought bad been attained, but on this the author's verdict is an unhesitating acquittal. Only a god could have done better, he thinks, and, in a series of illuminating analyses of the material to be moulded he shows how anything more than a superficial improvement was humanly impossible. Until that day of absorption in the United States which Mr. HANNAY considers fortunately inevitable, Mexico has no chance, he maintains, of even a moderately good government except under a firm dictatorship; and so he renders no small homage to the man who, all his failures notwithstanding, did for a time lift his country from the anarchy to which in his old age it reverted. Sober reading in all conscience, but for the manner of the writing one can have nothing but joyous praise.
His own modesty must preclude Mr. Punch from indicating those chapters in Soldier Men (LANE) that appear to him the most worthy of praise. But of course, if you specially want to know, a glance at the preliminary acknowledgments ... Anyhow, parental prejudice apart, these studies of military life, mostly on the Egyptian Front, form a sufficiently entertaining and interesting volume. In this war of many fronts and facets, literature seems a little to have deserted the desert; it is therefore good that a writer so well equipped as "YEO" should tell us a little of what our soldiers there are doing for the cause, the special variety of beastliness that they are enduring (to read the chapter called "Plagues of Egypt" is enough to make one seek out an English wasp and embrace it with tears of affection), and the courage and humour that support them in their task. Something more than this, too; the wholly illogical and baffling humanity that—one likes to think—helps to differentiate the British fighting man, and must surely cause certain European people such bewildered qualms, if they ever hear of it. Read, for example, that grim and moving story of the Corporal who thought shooting was too good for Bedouin rebels, and what he actually did to a family of them who interrupted these reflections. But I forgot; this is one of the chapters that I was not going to mention.
Miss MARGARET PETERSON's Fate and the Watcher (HURST AND BLACKETT) was already reminding me strongly of The Broken Road when I found that one of her characters had been struck by this same idea: "Lady Daring was not easy in mind, remembering the look in Prince Channa's eyes the evening of the ball. She had a vague memory of a novel by Mason that she had once read which dealt more or less with the same situation." This naïve admission must be my excuse for making odious comparisons between the two books and saying that Mr. MASON'S novel, which also treats of a native prince's love for an English girl, is on bigger and broader lines. In Fate and the Watcher the heroine and the cause of all the trouble is a waif taken literally from the gutter. She develops into a most unscrupulous minx, and, although we are led to suppose that her defects of character were largely due to her origin, I am prepared to allot to Sir Henry and Lady Daring, who adopted her, their fair share in the blame. A girl of the sweet type, endowed liberally with virtues, is produced as an antidote to the minx, but is no match for her. The present is not perhaps the most happily chosen time for a novel with such a theme, but I can at least say that Miss PETERSON is an expert in her subject and is never at a loss for incident. And Ruth (if that will console you) pays full price for her sins.
Mr. HERBERT VIVIAN is the complete partisan. He will believe always the worst of an enemy, the best of a friend—a credulous loyal fellow. And in Italy at War (DENT) he sets out to tell us a good deal that is interesting about the fine feats of our Italian Allies, especially of those Titanic gymnasts, the heaven-scaling Alpini. It is fair to warn the reader that it is a rather desultory scrap-book of the type the War has made common; fair also to add that some of the chapters least connected with the War are exceedingly interesting, as that about the elaborate sport of pigeon-netting at Cava dei Terreni. What I like least about our ready author is his fatuous little jokes, such as "Noli remained a sovereign republic for centuries ... had her own bishopric (hence the phrase 'Noli episcopari')"; or, "Briand came to Rome the other day with much brio." And inconsequences like this: "One of Disraeli's heroes discovered two nations: the rich and the poor. In a similar spirit General February may be said to command two distinct armies." All the same, an interesting book.
I am no pacificist, but I am bound to admit that the moment seems distinctly ripe for a cessation in one minor War product, namely the trench-book. Perhaps some form of armistice might be arranged, to last, say, six months; at the end of which time (should the War last so long) the changed conditions of campaigning on German soil might at least give our impressionists a chance of originality. I have been inspired to these comments by a perusal of Mud and Khaki (SIMPKIN), in which Mr. VERNON BARTLETT has reprinted from The Daily Mail and elsewhere a number of vigorous and realistic studies of life on the Western Front. Perhaps, as a whole, the collection is a little more grim than most; but there are not wanting touches of light comedy, in, for example, the comments of an admirable philosopher named "Pongo" Simpson. For the rest the book is precisely what you can gather from its title. In his preface the author tells us that his object in writing it has partly been to correct a lack of appreciation among stay-at-homes of the hardships and heroism of their defenders. But does there really breathe a man with soul so dead as to belittle these to-day? I should be ashamed to think so. Still, do not suppose that I regret that Mr. BARTLETT should have been goaded by whatever motive into print. Far from it, for he is clearly a writer of gifts. But I suggest that he should next time exhibit them to us in some (dare I say?) less trenchant guise.
Returned Soldier. "WELL, JOHN, I DON'T SEE MUCH CHANGE IN THE OLD PLACE SINCE I WENT AWAY."
Old Villager. "OH, WE AIN'T SUCH STICK-IN-THE-MUDS AS YOU MAKE OUT, MY LAD. W'Y AIN'T YOU NOTICED THAT OLD MRS. HUBBLE 'AS GOT A NEW PAIR O' SPECS?"
"CHRISTENING LUCK.
While going down the Canongate one day last year, I was presented with a parcel by a lady carrying a baby, which contained bread and cheese, cakes, and a threepenny piece."—Scots Paper.
Thrifty little beggar!