OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Not for a long time have I got so great a pleasure from any collection of short sketches as now from Miss Anne Douglas Sedgwick's Autumn Crocuses (Secker). Not only has the whole book a pleasant title, but each of these stories is happily called after some flower that plays a part in its development. I am aware of the primly Victorian sound of such a description applied to art so modern as that of Miss Sedgwick. You know already (I hope) how wonderfully delicate is her almost passionate sensibility to the finer shades of a situation. It is, I suppose, this quality in her writing that makes me still have reminiscent shivers when I think about that horrible little bogie-tale, The Third Window; and these "Flower Pieces" (as 1860 might have called them) are no whit less subtle. I wish I had space to give you the plots of some of them; "Daffodils," for instance, a quite unexpected and thrilling treatment of perhaps the oldest situation of literature; or "Staking a Larkspur," the only instance in which Miss Sedgwick's gently smiling humour crystallizes definitely into comedy; or "Carnations," the most brilliantly written of all. As this liberty is denied me you must accept a plain record of very rare enjoyment and take steps to share it.
Chief among the Secrets of Crewe House (Hodder and Stoughton), now divulged to the mere public, are the marvellous efficiency and superhuman success achieved by the British Enemy Propaganda Committee, which operated in Lord Crewe's London house under the directorate of Lord Northcliffe. "What is propaganda?" the author asks himself on an early page, and the right answer could have been made in four letters: Advt. It is endorsed by the eulogistic manner in which the Committee's work is written up by one of them, Sir Campbell Stuart, K.B.E., and illustrated by photographs of Lord Northcliffe (looking positively Napoleonic) and of the sub-supermen. As in all great achievements, the main principle was a simple one. A good article is best advertised by truth; and it was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth which the Committee, with admirable conciseness and no little ingenuity, so promulgated that it could no longer escape notice even in the Central Empires. Not the least of the Committee's difficulties and achievements was to get the truth of our cause and policy so defined as to be susceptible of unequivocal statement by poster, leaflet, film and gramophone record. Sir Campbell Stuart perhaps tends to underrate the rival show, the German propaganda organization, whose work, if it did Germany little good, has done and is still doing colossal harm to us. Also he tends to forget that Lord Haig and his little lot in France at any rate helped the Committee to effect the breakdown of the German moral in 1918 and so to win the war.
I feel that Miss Margaret Symonds had a purpose in writing A Child of the Alps (Fisher Unwin), but, unless it was to show how mistaken it is, as Basil, the Swiss farmer, puts it, "to think when thou shouldst have been living," it has evaded me. The book begins with a romantic marriage between an Englishwoman of some breeding and a Swiss peasant who is a doctor, and tells the history of their daughter until she is about to marry Basil, her original sweetheart. I cannot be more definite or tell you how her first marriage—with an English cousin—turned out, because Linda's own account of this is all we get, and that is somewhat vague. A great many descriptions of beautiful scenery, Swiss and Italian, come into the book, and a great many people, some of them very individual and lifelike; but the author's concentration on Linda gives them, people and scenery alike, an unreal and irritating effect of having been called into being solely to influence her heroine, and that lessens their fascination. Yet it is a book which makes a distinct impression, and once read will not easily be forgotten. It seems a strange comment to make on a new volume of a "First Novel Library," but A Child of the Alps, as you will realise if you have been reading novels long enough, is almost exactly the sort of book its title would have suggested had it appeared thirty years ago.
Prospective Employer. "How old are you?" Applicant for Post. "Fourteen—and unmarried."
These wrapper-artists should really exercise a little more discretion. To depict on the outside of a book the facsimile of a cheque for ten thousand pounds might well be to excite in some readers a mood of wistfulness only too apt to interfere with their appreciation of the contents. Fortunately, Uncle Simon (Hutchinson) is a story quite cheery enough even to banish reflections on the Profiteer. A middle-aged and ultra-respectable London solicitor, whose thwarted youth periodically awakes in him and insists upon his indulging all those follies that should have been safely finished forty-odd years before—here, you will admit, is a figure simply bursting with every kind of possibility. Fortunately, moreover, Margaret and H. de Vere Stacpoole have shown themselves not only fully alive to all the humorous chances of their theme, but inspired with an infectious delight in them. It is, for example, a singularly happy touch that the wild oats that Uncle Simon tries to retrieve are not of today but from the long-vanished pastures of mid-Victorian London. Of course such a fantasy can't properly be ended. Having extracted (as I gratefully admit) the last ounce of entertainment from him, the authors simply wake Uncle Simon up and go home. As a small literary coincidence I may perhaps add that it was my fortune to read the book in the very garden (of that admirable Shaftesbury inn) which, under a transparent disguise, is the scene of Uncle Simon's restoration. Naturally this enhanced my enjoyment of a sportive little comedy, which I can most cordially commend.
Mr. St. John G. Ervine is a versatile author who exhibits that unevenness of quality which is generally the besetting sin of versatile authors. When he is good he is very good indeed, and in The Foolish Lovers (Collins) he is at his best. The Ulsterman is seldom either a lovable or an interesting character. He has certain rude virtues which command respect and other qualities, not in themselves virtues—such as clan conceit and an intensely narrow provincialism—that beget the virtues of industry, honesty and frugality. But to the philosopher and student of character all types are interesting, and Mr. Ervine's skill lies in his ability not merely to draw his Ballyards hero to the life but to interest us in his unsuccessful efforts to become a successful writer. It is merely clan conceit that drives him forward in the pursuit of this purpose, for circumstances have clearly intended him to carry on the grocery business in which the family have achieved some success and a full measure of local esteem. The MacDermotts never failed to accomplish their purpose; he, as a MacDermott, proposed to achieve fame as a novelist. It was quite simple. But it turned out to be not at all simple. The quite provincial young MacDermott cannot make London accept him at his own valuation and his novels are poor stuff. His wife, loyal to him but still more loyal to the MacDermott clan into which she has married and which now includes a little MacDermott, is the first to recognise that her husband had best seek romance in the family grocery business. Then the MacDermott himself, with that shrewdness which may be late in coming to an Ulsterman but never fails him altogether, realises it too and the story is finished.
The main object of the characters in The Courts of Idleness (Ward, Lock) was to amuse themselves, and as their sprightly conversations were often punctuated by laughter I take it that they succeeded. To give Mr. Dornford Yates his due he is expert in light banter; but some three hundred pages of such entertainment tend to create a sense of surfeit. The first part of the book is called, "How some passed out of the Courts for ever," and then comes an interlude, in which we are given at least one stirring war-incident. I imagine that Mr. Yates desires to show that, although certain people could frivol with the worst, they could also fight and die bravely. The second part, "How others left the Courts only to return," introduces a new set of people but with similar conversational attainments. Mr. Yates can be strongly recommended to anyone who thinks that the British take themselves too seriously.
A Burning Question.
"The Germans have singed the Protocol."—China Advertiser.
A Master of Deduction.
"At 11.30 last night a black iron safe, 22 inches by 18, was found by the roadside at Leaves Green-road, Keston. When examined it was found that the bottom of the safe had been cut out. A burglary is suspected."—Evening Paper.