OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Those who appreciate the short story of quality will be pleasantly stirred by the announcement of Island Tales (Mills and Boon), a posthumous volume containing what is probably the last writing of the late Jack London. I can say at once that these seven stories show his art in one aspect of its best. Not here the London, whom some of us might prefer, of the strenuous adventure-tale, with whom there was no respite till, at the end of anything up to a hundred sinew-cracking pages, we won through to the appointed end. That South Sea atmosphere, so insidiously appealing to the literary temperament (from Stevenson to Stacpoole you can see it at work) has steeped these tales in the lotus-leisure of perpetual afternoon, so that the action of them tends to become overlaid by slow reflective talk, old memories and the sense of ancient things. Most notable is this in the first, where the actual romance, quick, human and haunting, does not so much as show its face till after forty pages of old-time local colour. Perhaps of all the seven I myself would prefer the last—"The Kanaka Surf," a slight intrigue, but a perfect epic of such bathing as, I suppose, can be understood nowhere but on these enchanted coasts. To read it is to realise what a loss we suffer in one who could put such jewelled loveliness on to the printed page—and what another loss in not seeing the original for ourselves. I suppose no tribute to the power of genius could be more eloquent.
After the German Revolution of 1918, Karl Kautsky, a prominent Socialist, was appointed by the new Government to examine and edit the documents in the Berlin Foreign Office relating to the outbreak of the War. His work was completed in time for the Peace Conference and would, he believes, if published at that time, have convinced the Allies that the new German Government ought not to be made responsible for the sins of the old one. But it would also have shown that the old Government was the main instigator of the War, and that the German people, having danced to the tune, even if they did not call for it, deserved to pay the piper. For that reason, perhaps, the German Government withheld Herr Kautsky's revelations. Now he has published them on his own account, under the title, The Guilt of William Hohenzollern (Skeffington). A more damning indictment has never been drawn. From the moment of the Archduke's assassination the Kaiser and his advisers determined to make it the pretext for destroying Serbia, and crushing Russia and France if they dared to interfere. Bismarck once said that "never are so many lies told as before a war, during an election and after a shoot." His own manipulation of the Ems telegram was venial compared to the manner in which the German diplomatists, egged on by their ruler—whose marginalia on the despatches furnish the most amusing reading in the volume—used all the arts of chicanery to deceive Europe as to their real intentions and to defeat the efforts of England—on whose neutrality they confidently counted—to secure a peaceful settlement. Though primarily addressed to the German proletariat, Herr Kautsky's book has its value for all of us—"lest we forget."
On page 103 of The White Hen (Mills and Boon) we read that the Duke laughed softly. "'It is just like a romance,' he sighed happily;" which was precisely where, without intending it, the Duke placed his ducal finger upon the weak spot in the whole business. Because if ever a story was "like a romance," and like nothing else on earth, and filled with characters each and all pledged to preserve its unreality at all costs, here is that tale. The plot, of which there is a generous allowance, turns chiefly upon the problem, when is a white hen less a hen than a jewel casket? Answer, when she has swallowed, and is erroneously thought to have retained, a famous diamond, upon which an impoverished but noble (see above) French family had depended for the dot that should enable their daughter to wed a plutocratic but otherwise detestable suitor. I take it you will hardly need telling that this is the moment chosen by Romance, under the expert guidance of Miss Phyllis Campbell, to bring along an even more wealthy young American, mistaken (of course) for his own chauffeur and working such havoc upon the heart of the heroine that, when the latter accidentally recovered the diamond from its feathered cache, she very sensibly decided to say nothing about it. Whereupon, because the other characters, especially an unpleasant Duchess, were unaware that, as the shop announcements say, "Poultry was Down Again," much profitable confusion resulted, though nothing to impugn the justice of the ducal verdict quoted above. So that, if your taste jumps with that of his Grace, you also can "sigh happily;" otherwise you will perhaps omit the adverb—and select a story less exclusively romantic.
There is a spirit of Yorkshire and a spirit, I suppose, characteristic of Suburbia, and on the outskirts of certain large manufacturing towns there must exist a formidable blending of these two. To express the double flavour of this essence requires, I should say, a subtler and more elaborate method than Mr. W. Riley has attempted to use in A Yorkshire Suburb (Jenkins). He has imagined for the purpose of these sketches an architect, Murgatroyd, who in planning most of the houses in the locality has attempted to express in brick and stone the characters of their several occupants. This is a device which becomes rather monotonous as the book proceeds, besides imposing a series of strains which neither architecture nor credulity can easily bear. Since these are rather superior suburbanites, dialect is for the most part absent, and it is hard to feel that they are very different people from those who live about the borders of Manchester or London; a character like Mrs. Flitch, for instance, who is angelic to behold but a spiteful gossip at heart, is, alas! to be found anywhere. And where the dialect does crop out it does not seem to be dependent on suburban soil for its raciness. I don't doubt the accuracy of Mr. Riley's Yorkshiremanship, but I do think he has under-estimated the difficulty of localising the peculiar genius of villadom.
Though billed by her publisher as a merciless analyst, Mrs. Mordaunt is really (if you want to fling this kind of title about) an eclectic synthetist or synthetic symbolist. Her wicked people are prodigiously wicked, wickedness personified, in fact; her good folk are noble-hearted without stint or measure. I don't personally think that anybody could be quite so completely and gratuitously evil as good-looking Charles Hoyland in The Little Soul (Hutchinson); or, being so, could possibly be recommended, still less engaged, as tutor to a sensitive youth; or, being so engaged, tolerated for two days. He certainly could not hold down his job long enough to corrupt his pupil, Anthony Clayton, by exchanging souls with him under the nose of mad but perceptive Mrs. Clayton and sane sister Diana. This conspicuously chaste Diana is an attractive person, and so is the recklessly charitable Dr. McCabe, her appropriate mate, who first had to fly the country through helping a chorus-girl out of a difficulty and then (more or less) won the War by revolutionising bacteriology or something like that. However, Mrs. Mordaunt interests because she is so palpably interested herself.
The scenes of Lure of Contraband (Jarrolds) are laid in the Devonshire of some hundred years ago. It is, as its title suggests, a tale of smuggling, and it contains an account of a hand-to-hand fight between the hero and the villain which I advise all members of the National Sporting Club to read. They may be shocked by the tactics of the villain, but at the same time they will see what a bout of fisticuffs meant in those days. Mr. J. Weare Giffard is a master of atmosphere, and I, at any rate, lived happily in his Appledore, and imagined myself drinking prime (and cheap) French brandy in the Beaver Inn; while Lieutenant Perkins, who commanded the "preventive men," sat in his tall-backed chair by the fireplace and kept his eyes and ears open to detect anything that was suspicious. But he was not foolish enough to ask many questions about the French brandy. An excellent yarn, simply and straight-forwardly told.
Customer. "And what do you think of Lloyd George?"
Barber. "Think of 'im, Sir? With a mop of 'air like 'e's got—a nice example to the nation!"
"A photograph of the Olympic games at Antwerp was transmitted yesterday to Paris, a distance of 200 miles, over a telephone wire. It is in the nature of an experiment, and if it succeeds Messrs. Cook hold out promises of further day trips to the Continent."—Daily Paper.
Intending trippers must, of course, be proficient in the tight-rope wire.