In his new satirical study of certain modern cranks and their unpleasantness Mr. Oliver Onions has, I think, allowed his bitterness to outrun his sense of proportion. A Crooked Mile (Methuen) is a sequel to his earlier book, The Two Kisses. We meet again those two young women, Dorothy and Amory, and the natural characteristics that they once presented seem now to be tortured into caricature. Amory has indeed all my sympathy, so badgered is she by Mr. Onions, so relentlessly forced into ignominious positions; and I cannot feel, as I should do, that she would have achieved those ignominies without Mr. Onions' impelling hand behind her. I have myself considerable sympathy for cranks, and perhaps that is why I regard Mr. Onions' satire as a dry, gritty business. His humour is, of course, always a delightful thing, but here I fancy that he has not drawn the true line between comedy and farce, between satire that preserves the probabilities and indiscriminate exaggeration. Of the three Mr. Onionses who have at different times given me pleasure—the author of Widdershins, the author of In Accordance with the Evidence, and the author of Little Devil Doubt—I greatly prefer the first. In A Crooked Mile there is one chapter worthy of all three of them—that chapter where Amory discovers that her lover is going away with another woman. That is fine work. For the rest I hope that he will grow tired of his social satire and soon give us again some more of his delicate imagination and fancy.
What I felt about The Girl on the Green (Methuen) was that, however charming and capable, she was not quite likely, after but a few short months of golf, to have put up such a good fight in her great match with the crack amateur, Jim Beverley, who was giving her a half. I couldn't manage to believe it. However, that was not my business, but Mark Allerton's. According to him, Frank took her match to the last green, in spite of a number of cats, headed by the Vicar's wife, who did their best to put her off her game. Yes, you are right to presume that what began as a single developed into a flirtsome, and that the twain lived happily ever after in a nice little dormy house, and that Jim bested the Hiltons and the Ouimets, while Frank put permanently out of joint all the noses of all the Misses Leitch. Those who not only play but talk, dream, read and generally live for golf will, I can say with confidence, be grateful to Mr. Mark Allerton for this easy, hopeful narrative.
Vendor of studs and buttons (to vendor of inflating baby). "Now then, Father, not so much of it. Give an old batchiler a charnst, carn't yer?"
The Morning Post on the Army and Navy Boxing Championships:—
"These men's middles were full of good things."