OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
I can't help thinking that Gyp, the central figure in Mr. JOHN GALSWORTHY'S new story, Beyond (HEINEMANN), was unhappy in her encounters with the opposite sex. But if memory serves me this is an experience familiar to Mr. GALSWORTHY'S heroines. Men were always wanting to kiss Gyp, or to marry her, or both, and after a time kept going off and repeating the process with somebody else; so that one can't fairly be astonished if towards the end of the book her outlook had become rather cynical. The character who might have preserved her estimate of mankind in general, and the best and most sympathetically drawn figure in the book, is Gyp's perfectly delightful old father, who throughout the conspicuous failure of her two unions, legitimate and other, retained his fine and chivalrous regard and unfailing care for a daughter who might well have been a thorn in the flesh of a conventional parent. But the relations of these two were never conventional. Gyp had been herself a love-child, and the knowledge of this is shown very clearly in its influence upon their mutual attitude. As for her own affairs, these were, first—to her father's unbounded astonishment—marriage with a temperamental violinist, who ran rapidly down the scale from adoration of his own wife to intrigue with another's; second, clandestine relations with a man of her own race and breed, who loved her to idolatry, and within a few months was found embracing his cousin. Poor Gyp! I jest; but you will need no telling that for sincerity and beauty of writing here is a book that you cannot afford to miss. Sometimes I am a little uncertain what Mr. GALSWORTHY is driving at, but I never fail to admire his drive.
Unless Mr. S.P.B. MAIS learns to curb his enthusiasms and to rid himself of certain prejudices he will be wantonly seeking trouble. Rebellion (GRANT RICHARDS) is in some respects a more thoughtful and promising book than Interlude, but it is marred by what can only be called the same narrow point of view. With everybody and everything modern Mr. MAIS shows an ardent sympathy, but if he is ever to give a comprehensive picture of life he must contrive to be more patient with the old-fashioned. Here his strong personality obtrudes itself too often, and he is inclined to forget that he is a novelist and not a preacher. I could imagine him throwing off a fine comminatory sermon from the text, "Cursed be he who does not admire the genius of Mr. COMPTON MACKENZIE." This homily is drawn from me with reluctance, because in the main I am a strong believer in Mr. MAIS, and (with his connivance) have every intention of retaining that attitude. With all its faults Rebellion remains gloriously distinct from the rubbish-heap of fiction by virtue of its intense sincerity and its frequent flashes of fine descriptive writing. The question of sex dominates it, and those of us who still think that such problems are merely sustenance for the prurient-minded may cast it impatiently aside. But others who like to watch a clever man feeling his way towards the light, and regard a novel as neither a bait nor a bauble, can be confidently advised to read it. They may be irritated, but they will be intrigued.
On the cover of One Woman's Hero (METHUEN) you will read that "This book has been designed to cheer and strengthen those for whom, from bereavement owing to the War, the days and nights are sometimes only a procession of sad and torturing visions." Which of course disarms criticism, other than what may be expressed in a question whether a book less exclusively preoccupied by the War might not more surely have attained this end. But again, of course, maybe it wouldn't. The tale (for all our pretendings) is not yet written that can actually bring oblivion to bereavement, so perhaps the next best thing is topical chatter of the bright and unsentimental kind with which SYBIL CAMPBELL LETHBRIDGE has filled her entertaining pages. Chatter is the only term for it, though it is quite good of its style; the form being a series of letters written to a friend by the young wife of a soldier at the front. Her neighbours, their households and dinners and affectations and courage, are what she writes about; especially do I commend her handling of the "Let us Forget and Forgive" tribe. To all such (and most of us know at least one) I should suggest the posting of a copy of One Woman's Hero, with the page turned down (an act permissible in so good a cause) at the report of the annihilation of one of these well-intentioned but infuriating philosophers. The combined logic and equity of this suggest that the Government might do worse than commandeer the services of Miss LETHBRIDGE as a dinner-table propagandist.
I think BEATRICE GRIMSHAW tortures overmuch her tough bronzed Australian hero, who "could fight his weight in wild cats," and her beautiful slender heroine, "daughter of castles, descendant of crusaders." First the twain fall desperately in love, and Edith, the Catholic, discovers Ben to be an innocent divorcé. Marriage impossible, they part. But it is apparently quite in order for her to marry, without loving, a cocoa king who drinks—anything but cocoa; which done, to add to the bitterness of the cup, Ben's wife is reported dead. Whereafter the king in a drunken fit poisons himself, and the widow, fearing to be suspect, flies with her big Ben to his secret Nobody's Island (HURST AND BLACKETT), off the New Guinea coast, where they live comfortably off ambergris. Eventually tracked down by the dead king's brother, who allows himself to be persuaded of Edith's innocence on what seems to me the most inadequate evidence, the lovers, after protracted mental agonies and physical dangers, are about to enjoy deserved peace when Ben's wife turns up again, necessitating further separation; till finally Edith, with a handsome babe and the news that after all Ben's first wife wasn't a wife at all, finds her way back to Nobody's Island. Now that does seem to be rather overdoing it. But I hasten to credit the writer with a very happy gift of description, which brings the Papuan forests and mountains (or something plausibly like them) vividly before the reader, while the characters, including a boy villain ingenuously bizarre, are amusing puppets capably manipulated.
Mrs. BARNES-GRUNDY possesses a wonderful supply of sprightly humour. Her Mad Month (HUTCHINSON) is funny without being flippant, and although the heroine is very naughty she is never naughty enough to shock her creator's unhyphened namesake. Perhaps Charmian's exploits in escaping from a severe grandmother, and going unchaperoned to Harrogate (where a very pretty piece of philandering ensued), do not amount to much when seriously considered, but it is one of Mrs. BARNES-GRUNDY'S strong points that you cannot take her seriously. I am on her side all the time when she is giving me light comedy, but when she leaves that vein and bathes her heroine in tears I cannot conjure up any real sympathy. I never for a moment doubted that Charmian's lover, though reported as having "died from wounds," would turn up again. I am afraid the War is responsible for a great deal of rather obvious fiction.
Miss MARIE HARRISON has investigated the condition of Ireland, and in Dawn in Ireland (MELROSE) she presents the results of her studies. The book is inspired by a great deal of the right kind of enthusiasm, and the advice given is so excellent as to arouse the fear that it will not be taken. Yet Miss HARRISON is justified of her endeavours. She shows how often the English governors of Ireland have failed, in spite of the best intentions, only because they applied their remedy too late and thus, to their own great surprise, wasted the generosity of which they were perhaps too conscious. According to Miss HARRISON the gombeenman is the curse of Ireland, the serpent whose presence, if only he can be reduced to being an absentee, warrants us in regarding Ireland as a possible Eden. Miss HARRISON will please to take the preceding sentence as proving my entire sympathy with Irish modes of thought and expression and, generally, with Ireland. Against the gombeener (who is a shop-keeper running his business on the long-credit system) she invokes a vision of the blessings of co-operation. One of her heroes is Sir HORACE PLUNKETT, and, indeed, the work of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, over which he has presided, has been an unmixed benefit to Ireland. I heartily endorse Miss HARRISON'S hope that "at no distant period all will be well with Ireland." Her book should certainly help towards this result.
Captain VERE SHORTT fell at Loos in September of 1915, and left twelve chapters of a story, The Rod of the Snake (LANE), which his sister has finished and very capably finished; helped by the recollection of many intimate conversations about the plot and its development. It tells how young Charlie Shandross, bidding his preposterous soldier uncle be hanged, shook the stale dust of Ballybar off his feet, served three years in the C.M.R., and so prepared himself for the deadly adventure of the rod of the snake, the image of the ape, the Haytian attaché and the sinister priestess of Voodoo rites—Paris its setting. I won't spoil your pleasure by giving the details away; I will only say it is all very splendidly incredible, but not unplausible, and the authors do take pains with their puzzles, as where the hero and his party find the secret spring of the panel in the vault by the blood tracks of their enemy, who has been thoughtfully wounded in the hand. A small point but significant; too many writers in this kind being given to whisking their favourites out of danger in the most arbitrary manner. A good railway book, of the sort you can confidently pass on to the soldiers' hospitals after reading it.
