OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Books dealing with life at the Front have naturally somewhat slackened in volume of late. Perhaps this accounts for some part of my interest in Pushed and the Return Push (BLACKWOOD). But more must be put down to the lure of the subject, and most of all to the admirable way in which the writer, who chooses to be known as "QUEX," has dealt with it. Briefly, the book is a record of the two great sensational movements of 1918, and of the writer's experiences as an officer of an Artillery Brigade in the retreat forced upon the Fifth Army by the break through of the Germans on March 21st, and subsequently in the return push which broke the Hindenburg Lino and ended the War. The publishers say that this is the only account yet written by a participator in these happenings; I hardly think that any will appear more vivid and moving. The amazing sequence of the events with which it deals gives to the book the thrill of arranged drama, in which disaster is balanced by the triumphant ending. However unskilfully told, such a history could hardly fail of its effect; by good fortune, however, it finds in "QUEX" a chronicler able to do it justice. Simply and without apparent effort he conveys the suspense of the days before the attack (a couple of chapters here are as breathlessly exciting as anything that I have yet read in the literature of the War), the long trial of the retreat, and finally the retaliation and the ever-quickening rush forward from victory to victory that makes last autumn seem like an age of miracles. It is essentially a soldier's story, at times technical, throughout filled with the unflurried all-in-the-day's-work philosophy that upheld our armies in every change of fortune. For many reasons a volume that should find its place in any collection of the smaller histories of the Great War.
Until I had very nearly reached the end of The Cormorant (MELROSE) I could not, though I tried, make up my mind as to which of three possible claimants was filling the title-role. When I did discover the "Cormorant's" identity with a fourth person quite unsuspected, I found myself just a little inclined to wonder whether perhaps the authoress had not had the mystification of her readers as her real aim when she chose her title, and merely introduced a pleasant American, who called people names with a sincerity few of us would dare to imitate, in order to justify her choice. But all the same I am not going to tell her secret here, for I feel that much will be added to the interest of a very pleasant book if readers will pause long enough at the end of chapter sixteen to try to "spot" the "Cormorant" and—as I hope and believe—guess wrong. Miss ANN (or ANNE, for her publishers seem to be in two minds about it) WEAVER has compounded her tale from the somewhat ordinary ingredients of a heroine, as aggressively red-haired as only red-haired heroines can be; a philandering but finally faithful hero; a worthless but charming married man, and a number of less important people, many of whom are well drawn, though I think that I have met that scheming and malicious French maid before. The Cormorant's lines are chiefly laid in country houses of the more delightful sort and the story is well told. When Miss WEAVER invents a more distinguished plot she should do something very good indeed.
Mr. HORACE BLEACKLEY'S Anymoon (LANE) is a reasonably diverting because superbly improbable account of England under the new Socialist Commonwealth, with Joseph Anymoon, a highly popular Cockney plebeian, as President. Follows an era of feminist control and a Bolshevist revolution contrived by one Cohen (with the authentic properties, "Crimson Guards" and purple morality), and finally the Restoration through the loyalist Navy, the complacent Anymoon consoling himself with the reflection that if he was a failure as CROMWELL he can at least be a success as General MONK. Perhaps the wilder critics of the present order have no reason to complain if their impatient generalisations are marshalled, however disingenuously, against them. But the judicious folk of every school who are now trying to take their bearings may wonder if much is to be gained by putting up and knocking down such flimsy figures of straw. Mr. HAROLD COX contributes a rather too solemn preface, which labels this otherwise irresponsible novel as a serious tract. I rather think that the engaging spectacle of the biographer of WILKES and the editor of The Edinburgh (the author of The New Republic surely somewhere in the offing) crouching among the headstones with a candle in a hollow turnip will make a certain appeal to those with a sense of humour and proportion ... The others may like it even better.
Nothing could be more attractive than the central idea of The Love Spinner (METHUEN), which is to tell the war-time adventures of a little old lady—the good fairy of her circle—whose interest in the heart-affairs of her friends wins her this pleasant if slightly sentimental title. But, ungrateful as is the task of breaking so innocent a butterfly upon the wheel of criticism, I'm afraid I must add that I think Miss CLARA TURNBULL has hardly carried out her purpose with sufficient discrimination. In plain fact she has allowed her sympathies to run away with her. Such a character as Miss Jessie, who goes about doing good, and producing incidentally the most benevolent reactions in confirmed misanthropes, demands to be handled with the nicest care if sentimentality is to be avoided. Let me put it that Miss TURNBULL has not always been entirely successful in this respect. Thus, despite some agreeable scenes, the book remains one for the unsophisticated, or for those whose appetite for fictional glucose is robust. There is not very much that can be called plot; what there is concerns itself with the fortunes of Miss Jessie's tenants, the chief objects of her ministrations. In the end an air-raid, of which the details are surely unusual, provides Miss Jessie with the opportunity for a deed of heroism that I am still trying to visualize (her nephew had thrown her down and was protecting her body with his own; but the heroine, seeing this, changed places with her defender "between the flash of the shell's impact and the explosion") and finishes, with an appropriately tearful death-scene, a tale that would have been improved by more restraint in the telling.
In The Thunderbolt (UNWIN) Georgina Bonham, at home and amongst her intimates, delighted in small-talk. It flowed in an unceasing stream, particularly when Dr. Rayke, her chief adviser and confidant, came to tea and ate his favourite currant-and-sultana cake. Everything, in fact, prepares you for one of the tamest of all tame novels, when suddenly the "Thunderbolt" of the title remembers its attributes and bursts from a clear sky. Thenceforward Mr. GEORGE COLMORE'S book is of a particularly painful character. For the horrors which here accumulate on horror's head I find no adequate excuse, even though the villain of the story is a German.
Blanche Maddison, the heroine of The Obstinate Lady (HUTCHINSON), might without any excess of rudeness be called pig-headed. With her case in my mind let me advise women who have married disgusting men to seek whatever shelter the law may give them rather than adopt her persistently cold and aloof manner. I hardly wonder that her husband found her a little exasperating. We all know Mr. W.E. NORRIS as a novelist who can be trusted not only to tell an intriguing story, but also to construct it irreproachably. But here, I think, he has penalised himself with the materials he has chosen. However he sets bravely to work to wipe off his handicap, and very nearly succeeds. If I cannot credit him with complete success it is because the subsidiary tale of love which he gives us is really too anaemic. Yet I can conceive of people so fed up with the makers of blood-heat fiction that Mr. NORRIS'S lukewarm method will afford them a pleasant change.
However cleverly Mr. WILLIAM CAINE may treat his theme, The Wife Who Came Alive (JENKINS) is only another version of the antiquated mother-in-law business. Doll Brackett was a beautiful American girl, and if she had not been idiotically idolised by her mother and could have realised the difference between pounds and pence she might have made an excellent wife for George March, of Hampstead, portrait-painter. Mrs. Brackett was not actively hostile to this marriage, but after losing her fortune she began to disapprove of the economy which March preached and tried in vain to practise. Persuaded that her idol was no longer becomingly enshrined, she proceeded to make trouble between husband and wife, and they separated. Then followed a very lean time both for Mrs. Brackett and her daughter, until at last the former made such an outrageous proposal that Doll came to her senses. You will easily believe that this sort of subject offers no very favourable outlet for Mr. CAINE'S particular gifts, but the confidential style in which he tells the story is distinctly engaging, and as a warning to foolish mothers-in-law it is something more than adequate.
Bus Conductor. "ANYBODY WANT THE ALBERT 'ALL?"
Weary Househunter (absent-mindedly). "IT'S RATHER LARGE, BUT PERHAPS I MIGHT BE ALLOWED TO SUB-LET A PART."