OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
It would seem that "BARTIMEUS" occupies the same relative position towards the silent Navy of 1917 that JOHN STRANGE WINTER did towards the Army of the pre-KIPLING era. All his men are magnificent fellows, his women sympathetic and courageous. The Hun, depicted as an unsportsman-like brute (which he is), invariably gets it in the neck (which, I regret to say, he doesn't). And so all is for the best in the best of all possible services. In the Navy they are nothing if not consistent and, while the military storyteller who did not have his knife into the higher command would be looked upon as a freak, "BARTIMEUS" loyally includes amongst his galaxy of perfect people Lords of the Admiralty no less than the lower ratings. No one knows the Navy and its business better than "BARTIMEUS," and he owes his popularity to that fact. Yet he tells us very little about it, preferring to dwell on the personal attributes of his individual heroes, throwing in just enough incidental detail to give his stories the proper sea tang. Of late a good many people have been busy informing us that the Navy, like GILBERT'S chorus-girl, is no better than it should be. But the fault, if there be one, does not lie with the men that "BARTIMEUS" has selected to write about in his latest novel, The Long Trick (CASSELL), which will therefore lose none of the appreciation it deserves on that account. And with such a leal and brilliant champion to take the part of the Navy afloat, the Navy ashore, whether in Parliament or out of it, may very well be left to take care of itself.
Although Sir ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE calls his collection of detective stories His Last Bow (MURRAY), and also warns us that Sherlock Holmes is "somewhat crippled by occasional attacks of rheumatism," there is not in my lay opinion any cause for alarm. If I may jest about such an austere personage as Sherlock, I should say that there are several strings still left to his bow, and that the ever amenable and admiring Watson means to use them for all they are worth. At any rate I sincerely hope so, for if it is conceivable that some of us grow weary of Sherlock's methods when we are given a long draught of them no one will deny that they are palatable when taken a small dose at a time. Sherlock, in short, is a national institution, and if he is to be closed now and for ever I feel sure that the Bosches will claim to have finished him off. And that would be a pity. Of these eight stories the best are "The Dying Detective" and the "Bruce-Partington Plans," but all of them are good to read, except perhaps "The Devil's Foot," which left a "most sinister impression" on dear old Watson's mind, and incidentally on my own.
Every now and then, out of a mass of War-books grown so vast that no single reader can hope even to keep count of them, there emerges one of particular appeal. This is a claim that may certainly be made for An Airman's Outings (BLACKWOOD), especially just now when everything associated with aviation is—I was about to say sur le tapis, but the phrase is hardly well chosen—so conspicuously in the limelight. The writer of these modest but thrilling records veils his identity under the technical nom de guerre of "CONTACT." With regard to his method I can hardly do better than repeat what is said in a brief preface by Major-General W.S. BRANCKER, Deputy Director-General of Military Aeronautics: "The author depicts the daily life of the flying officer in France, simply and with perfect truth; indeed he describes heroic deeds with such moderation and absence of exaggeration that the reader will scarcely realise," etc. But he will be a reader poor indeed in imagination who is not helped by these pages to realise some part of the debt that we owe to these marvellous winged boys of ours; As for the heroic deeds, they are of a kind to take your breath—tales of battles above the clouds, of trenches captured by aeroplane, of men fatally wounded, thousands of feet above the enemy country, recovering consciousness and working their guns till they sank dead, while their battered machines planed for the security of friendly lines. Surely the whole history of War has no picture to beat this in devotion.
EVELYN BRANSCOMBE PETTER has much that is interesting to say about men and women, and packs her thought (I risk the "her") into a quasi-Meredithian form of phrasing which does not always escape obscurity. But how much better this than a limpid flow of words without notable content! Souls in the Making (CHAPMAN AND HALL) is mainly an analysis of two love episodes in the life of a young man, the liberally educated son of an ambitious self-made soapmaker. The first—with Sue, the pretty waitress—is thwarted by a very persistent and unpleasant clerk; the second—with Virginia, a girl of birth and breeding—is threatened by the intrusion of the girl's cousin, a queerly morbid ne'er-do-well. There is no action to speak of, so one can't speak of it. I can only say that the interest of the shrewd analysis held me, and that if my guess as to the sex of the writer be sound it is noteworthy that more pains and skill are bestowed upon the characters of the men than of the two girls, who are some thing shadowy—charming unfinished sketches. There is a vigour and an effect of personality in the writing that put this novel above the large class of the merely competent.
Odd what a vogue has lately developed for what I might call the ultra-domestic school of fiction. Here is another example, Married Life (CASSELL), in which Miss MAY EDGINTON, following the mode, unites her hero and heroine at the beginning and leaves them to flounder for our edification amid the trials of double blessedness. I am sorry to say it, but her great solution for the eternal problem of How to be Happy though Married appears to be the possession of a sufficient bank-balance to prevent the chain from galling. In other words, not to be too much married. All this love-in-a-cottage talk has clearly no allurement for Miss EDGINTON. With her, the protagonists, Osborne and his young wife, are no sooner wed than their troubles begin—troubles of the domestic budget, of cooking and stove lighting and the rest. (By the way, for all its carefully British topography, I strongly suspect the whole story of an exotic origin, chiefly from certain odd-sounding words that seem to have slipped in here and there. Does our island womanhood really talk of a matinée, in the sense of an article of attire? If so, this is the first I hear of it). To return to the Kerr household. In the midst of their bothers Osborne is given a post as traveller in motor-cars at a big salary. So off he goes, while Marie, like the other little pig of the poem, stays at home, and enjoys herself hugely. When he returns she hardly cares about him at all; and might indeed have continued this attitude of indifference—who knows how long?—had not some Higher Power (perhaps the Paper Controller) decreed a happy ending on page 340. A lesson, I am sure, to us all; but of what character remains ambiguous.
In such a title as The North East Corner (GRANT RICHARDS) there is something bleak and uninviting, something suggestive of the bitter mercies of an average English April, that is by no means confirmed in the story itself. Windy it certainly is—it runs to 496 pages—for I do not remember any other recent volume where the characters really do talk so much "like a book," and though, of course, this may be a true way of presenting the customs of a hundred years ago, one feels that it can be over-done. Frank Hamilton, the magnanimous friend, facile politician and all-but hero, was the worst offender, not only making love to the Marquis's unhandsome daughter in stately periods, and invariably addressing pretty Sarah Owen, who was much too good for his and the author's treatment of her, in the language of a Cabinet meeting (as popularly imagined), but being hardly able even to lose his temper decently in honest ejaculation. Rolfe, his friend, was a Jacobin of the blackest, who preached sedition and the right of tenants to vote as they chose; and the Hamiltons were renegades who gained titles and honours by supporting a failing Ministry, from the most opportunely patriotic of motives. The general drift of the plot is neither very readily to be summarised nor indeed very satisfactory, and one might disagree with Mr. JOHN HERON LEPPER at several points. At the same time, as his many friends would expect, there is much to be grateful for in this quiet study of Irish times and politics very different from our own. There is a ring of sincerity for one thing, matched by a literary grace that saves his chapters from ever becoming irritating even when they move most slowly.
If the vintage to which "Miss KATHARINE TYNAN'S" novels belong is so old that some of its flavour has departed, there is no doubt that many of us are still glad enough to sample it. In these nervous times it is in fact very restful to read a book as calm and detached as Miss Mary (MURRAY). Not that Mary refrained from allowing her heart to flutter in the wrong direction, but even the simplest of us couldn't really be alarmed by this excursion. Mrs. HINKSON seems to take all her nice characters under her protective wing, and to include you and me (if we are nice) in a pleasant family party. So at little outlay you have the chance to go to Ireland and stay quietly and decorously with the de Burghs. There you will meet a very saint in Lady de Burgh, and you will breathe the right local atmosphere, and have, on the whole, a good and tranquillizing time.
