OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Not infrequently our novelists will follow success with a boy hero by a sequel showing the same character grown up. Mr. E.F. BENSON, however, has reversed this process, and in a second book about David Blaize introduces him grown not up, but down. So far down, indeed, as to be able to pass through a door conveniently situated under his own pillow and leading to a dreamland of the most varied enchantments. I know, of course, what you are about to say; I can see your lips already forming upon the word Alice. But while I admit that David Blaize and the Blue Door (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is frankly built after that famous plan this means no more than that Mr. BENSON has used, so to speak, the CARROLL formula as a medium for his agreeable fancies. These are altogether original and filled with the proper dream-spirit of inconsequence. Moreover the author has a pretty gift for remembering just the stuff that childhood's dreams are made of—such transfigured delights as swimming like fishes or flying in a company of birds; he knows too the odd tags of speech that linger there from daytime, things meaningless and full of meaning—"Rod-pole-or-perch," for example, or that thrice-blessed word, "Popocatapetl." Best of all, he has resisted the subtle temptation to be even momentarily too clever for his audience (you know the devastating effect that may be produced if a grown-up pauses on the edge of the circle and reminds the story-teller that he has a reputation for wit). In fine, this early dream of David's shows him fortunate in having an old family friend like Mr. Benson to write it down; also—what I must on no account forget—so sympathetic an artist as Mr. H.J. FORD to make it into pictures.
Those who have learnt to value their "TAFFRAIL" will find matter very much to their mind in his latest book, A Little Ship (CHAMBERS). I do not wish to institute any invidious comparisons between the marine mixture as provided by "TAFFRAIL" and that of other nautical writers, but this much I may say with perfect confidence: the men to be found in "TAFFRAIL'S" stories are true human stuff, sturdy, dogged in doing their duty, and brave almost beyond recklessness; but they are men all the time, and not solemn and consecrated angels. That is, I suppose, why I find that "TAFFRAIL'S" stories go straight to the mark and make their effect with no undue waste of time; and, if a little bit of laughter is occasionally worked in, so much the better. The last chapter in the book gives an account of the Zeebrugge expedition. The story is so bravely told that a man can hardly refrain from shouting in apprehension and exultation as he reads it.
I have a grudge against the publishers of Miss Mink's Soldier (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) because they have printed on its wrapper, "By the Author of Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch," which led me, perhaps foolishly, to hope that Mrs. Wiggs and I were to foregather once more, and when we didn't made me just a little surly towards a book of short tales which, opened with any other expectation, would have seemed much above the average. There are eight stories in the book, and in almost all of them is found that blend of pathos and humour that Mrs. ALICE HEGAN RICE has taught us to expect. I liked "Cupid Goes Slumming," because it was almost Cabbage Patch; but "Hoodooed," the story of an old negro who believed himself the victim of a spell which involved the presence of a cricket in his leg, delighted me even more. His wife removes the charm with a vacuum cleaner, in which she has previously secreted a cricket, and the victim recovers. It pleased me very much to learn that among "white folk's superstitions" is the theory that it is "bad luck to sleep with the windows shet," and, when I come to think of it, I believe that it is very bad luck indeed.
I should have liked GABRIELLE VALLINGS' Tumult (HUTCHINSON) a good deal better if she could have managed it without the aid of a Pan who wandered, emitting a strong smell, chiefly in the demesne of a very expensive and over-cultivated French noble. It was his daughter (by an Australian wife) who was suffering from an inordinate perplexity as to which half of her blood had the real call. The Australian half suggested that she should marry a gentleman-rider who won the Grand Prix in a canter, but fell at the winning-post because his horse shied at the irrepressible Pan. The French half—and both her parents—urged a dissolute and anaemic aristocrat—blue blood and a gold lining. Her grandfather, a strong unsilent sheep-rancher, was against this inept decadent and converted to his view that saintly worldling, the gorgeous Cardinal Camperioni. A neo-futurist of the most bizarre type prances through the pages upon his head, causing enough "tumult" to satisfy any one. So why drag in Pan? Miss VALLINGS can tell a story, cannot keep down the volume of her puppets' talk, has a sense of movement and colour, and ought to win for herself a good circulating library constituency.
For myself I have never yet lived in a sailing barge, and under the providence of Heaven trust to continue in this immunity. There are however those who regard the matter differently; and for their benefit I have no hesitation in recommending most warmly A Floating Home (CHATTO AND WINDUS), written by CYRIL IONIDES and J.B. ATKINS, and illustrated partly with photographs, partly with water-colour sketches by that various craftsman, Mr. ARNOLD BENNETT. Let me say at once that you have no need to be an amateur bargee, either by practice or desire, to enjoy this most entertaining volume. Witness my own case, who read every page of it with delight. It is a reasonable contention that a writer possessing the enthusiasm, the humour and the persuasive gifts of Mr. IONIDES, with a twelve-and-sixpenny book for their display, could present a case that would give some theoretic and superficial charm to the most uncomfortable conditions of existence. Not that A Floating Home is a work only of theory; on the contrary, nothing could be more practical than its account of the purchase, conversion and enjoyment of the Ark Royal. The most prejudiced—again I speak personally—will find pleasure in the author's zestful story of how the dingy, foul-smelling Will Arding, full of cement (and worse things), was transformed into the spick-and-span Ark Royal, with a piano in the saloon and Queen Anne silver on the breakfast-table; while for the persuadable there are added plans, scales of expense and the like, which bring the whole matter to a working basis. The book, in short, is propaganda at its best (was it perhaps this that attracted Mr. BENNETT?) and as such well entitled to its toll of converts.
Warriors and Statesmen (MURRAY) is a book selected from the "gleanings" of the late Lord BRASSEY. Such gleanings depend so largely on the personality of the gleaner that they may be worth anything or nothing; so let me say at once that Lord BRASSEY had too sound a taste to be a collector of ill-considered trifles. Although warriors have the place of honour in the title they are given but little space in the book. Still, in these days the soldier can well afford to let the statesman have the advantage in a collection that does not deal with the living. This limitation may explain the absence of all mention of Lord ROBERTS, who was probably still alive when the gleanings were completed. Apart from the evidence it gives of a fine mind the book preserves much that is worth remembering and presents it in a convenient form. For this we have in part to thank Mr. HORACE HUTCHINSON, to whom Lord BRASSEY entrusted the work of selecting these literary sheaves.
From the Home Front (CONSTABLE) is a further, and rather belated, selection from the War verses that have appeared from week to week on the second page of Punch. Conscious of cherishing a natural prejudice in favour of his own productions, Mr. Punch forbears to commend this little volume, but he may permit himself to say that, in the judgment of The Daily News, which is above suspicion of bias, it is calculated to provoke "a sorrow chequered by disgust."
Topical Huckster. "'ERE YOU ARE, LADY—AS CHEWED BY THE PRESIDENT."
"This royal throne of kings,
Quotation by Miss MARIE CORELLI in "The Pall Mall Gazette."
This sceptical isle, this seat of Mars."
No man is a prophet in his own country, and this is how Shakespeare gets treated at Stratford-on-Avon.