OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
MR. ARNOLD BENNETT'S new novel, The Roll Call (HUTCHINSON), is a continuation of the Clayhanger series to the extent that its hero, George Cannon, is the stepson of Edwin, who himself makes a perfunctory appearance at the close of the tale. The scene is, however, now London, where we watch George winning fame and fortune, quite in the masterful Five-Towns manner, as an architect. The change is, I think, beneficial. That quality of unstalable astonishment, native to Mr. BENNETT's folk, accords better with the complexities of the wonderful city than to places where it had at times only indifferent matter upon which to work. But it is noticeable that Mr. BENNETT can communicate this surprise not only to his characters but to his readers. There is an enthusiasm, real or apparent, in his art which, like the beam celestial, "evermore makes all things new," so that when he tells us, as here, that there are studios in Chelsea or that the lamps in the Queen's Hall have red shades, these facts acquire the thrill of sudden and almost startling discovery. I suppose this to be one reason for the pleasure that I always have in his books; another is certainly the intense, even passionate sympathy that he lavishes upon the central character. In the present example the affairs of George Cannon are shown developing largely under the stimulus of four women, of whom the least seen is certainly the most interesting, while Lois, the masterful young female whom George marries, promises as a personality more than she fulfils. We conduct George's fortunes as far as the crisis produced in them by the War, and leave him contemplating a changed life as a subaltern in the R.F.A. It is therefore permissible to hope that in a year or two we may expect the story of his reconstruction. I shall read it with delight.
Iron Times with the Guards (MURRAY), by an O.E., is emphatically one of the books which one won't turn out from one's war-book shelf. It fills in blanks which appear in more ambitious and more orderly narratives. This particular old Etonian, entering the new Army by way of the Territorials in the first days of the War, was transferred, in the March of 1915, to the Coldstreams and was in the fighting line in April of the same year. A way they had in the Army of those great days. Details of the routine of training, reported barrack-square jests and dug-out conversations, vignettes of trench and field, disquisitions on many strictly relevant and less relevant topics, reflections of that fine pride in the regiment which marks the best of soldiers, an occasional more ambitious survey of a battle or a campaign—all this from a ready but not pretentious pen, guided by a sound intelligence and some power of observation, makes an admirable commentary. Our author's narrative carries us to those days of the great hopes of the Spring of 1917, hopes so tragically deferred. Perhaps the best thing in an interesting sheaf is the description of the attack of the Guards Division—as it had become—on the Transloy-Lesboeufs-Ginchy road, with its glory and its carnage.
It is to be feared that Battle Days (BLACKWOOD), a new work by Mr. ARTHUR FETTERLESS, author of Gog, will lose a good many readers as the result of the armistice. There are battle stories and battle books that are not stories that will live far into the piping times of peace because they are human documents or have the stamp of genius. These attractions are not present in Battle Days, which in truth is rather a prosy affair, though ambitious withal. It is not fiction in the ordinary sense. Mr. FETTERLESS essays to conduct the reader through every phase of a big "Push." Pushes were complicated affairs, and the author does not spare us many of the complications. And unless the reader happens to be an ardent militarist he is apt to push off into slumberland. Cadets should be made to read this book as a matter of instruction; for, though it lacks the subtle humour that endeared Duffer's Drift to us, it provides a striking analysis of modern trench warfare.
The Curtain of Steel (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is the fourth book which the author of In the Northern Mists has given us during the War, and in essentials it is the most valuable of the quartette. For here we have real history, served, it is true, with some trimmings, but none the less a true record of the doings of our Grand Fleet since the day when the "curtain" was lowered. "Nothing," our author says, "nauseates a naval man so much as the attempt to represent him as a hero or to theatricalise him and his profession." It behoves me then to choose my words with the utmost circumspection, and I beg him to forgive my audacity when I say that, if I were Book-Controller, a copy of The Curtain of Steel would be in (and out of) the library of every school in the Empire. I find courage to make this statement because I see that he does not deny that a part of our "disease of ignorance" concerning the Senior Service is due to the modesty of Naval men. If he will please go on correcting that ignorance, and in the same inspiring style, I wish an even greater access of power to his elbow.
"I am allowed the reputation of a tolerable guide in writing and style, and I can certainly help you to produce clear English." These words, written in 1881, are to be found in a letter of GEORGE MEREDITH to his eldest son. They show how wildly mistaken even the best of us may be with regard to our own qualities and gifts; for if there is one thing that MEREDITH could not produce, that thing is clear English. Mr. S.M. ELLIS agrees with me in this particular point, and has written George Meredith: His Life and Friends in Relation to his Work (GRANT RICHARDS) to prove that this is so. The book is a curious compound. At one moment Mr. ELLIS sets out in detail the Meredithian genealogy, and shows that MEREDITH was the son and grandson of tailors and did not relish the relationship; at another moment he describes MEREDITH'S delightful and exuberantly youthful characteristics as a friend; and again he shows how badly MEREDITH behaved in regard to his first wife (though she was much more in fault), and also in regard to his first son, Arthur. Still the book is extremely interesting and, though it does not profess to deal in elaborate criticism, it contains some very shrewd comments on MEREDITH'S work and the reasons that made his novels so many sealed books to the British public. Here and there Mr. ELLIS allows himself almost to write a passage or two in the style of the master. This is one of them: "As he [Maurice Fitzgerald] was the gourmetic instrument that brought Mrs. Ockenden's art to perfect expression, he appropriately attained immortalisation jointly with her at the hands of the friend who had shared with him the joys of that good woman's superlative cookery in Seaford days."