Editor (after reading it). “Yes, it is funny; but I prefer the drawing that was published with it in the ’seventies!”
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch’s Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Three numbers of The South Polar Times were brought out at Cape Evans, the winter quarters of Captain Scott, during 1911. Mr. Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the editor, has now presented them to a wider circle under the auspices of Smith, Elder, hoping that they will prove “a source of interest and pleasure to the friends of the expedition.” He need have no fears. Of course a paper produced under such conditions is in its nature esoteric, and many of its jokes are lost if you “don’t know Jimson.” But if you have previously read Scott’s Last Expedition then you will “know Jimson”; you will feel that every man at Cape Evans in 1911 was a personal friend of yours, and you will be delighted with this facsimile reproduction of the paper which delighted them. Personally I cannot read or see too much of the men who are my heroes; and in a world where an ordinary school-girl is allowed twenty-seven photographs of Mr. Lewis Waller I shall not consider myself surfeited with two caricatures and a humorous character-sketch of Lieutenant Bowers. But there are contributions to The South Polar Times which have an interest other than the merely personal. Mr. Griffith Taylor, a tower of strength on the literary side, is really funny in The Bipes—a paper (on the wingless bipeds of Cape Evans) supposed to have been read by Oates’ escaped rabbit to the Royal Society of Rabbits. Mr. Taylor, as a recorder of history in Scott’s Last Expedition, was, I thought, a little too familiar; in these and other articles he is much more at home. But it is upon Dr. Wilson’s pictures (both serious and comic) that The South Polar Times can most justly pride itself. I envy Mr. Cherry-Garrard so prolific and brilliant a contributor. Still more I envy him (and all his colleagues at Cape Evans) the knowledge of such a man. The more I get to know of “Bill” Wilson, the more I understand that he was of the very salt of the earth—a man to love whom was indeed a liberal education, and to be loved by whom was a passport to the little company of the elect.
When John Barleycorn (Mills and Boon) came my way, I noticed that the publishers had shown a reticence, unusual in these days, on the outside paper cover; they didn’t say a word as to the quality or character of the contents. They had three good reasons: first, given the name of Jack London, there was no need of further advertisement or lure; second, if they had started describing the book they would have been unable to say with strict truth that it was or was not a novel, for it isn’t and it is; third, and best, they couldn’t, as honest men, have avoided mentioning that it is in a way a sermon on alcoholism, and that, being said, might have acted as a deterrent, unless they had explained (as they wouldn’t have had room to do) how and why, when they said “sermon,” they didn’t really mean “sermon.” So they lay low and said nothing, and I almost wish I had done the same, for no one who has the lightest interest, practical or theoretical, in John Barleycorn ought to be put off these alcoholic memoirs. The diarist purports to have been first drunk at the age of five, again at the age of seven, almost perpetually for a spell of years from the age of fifteen, and yet to have taken over a quarter of a century to acquire a liking for alcohol. That sounds odd, but is not unique. Not only in California and not only in the lower grades of society, is Youth, vigorous and unspoilt, bound to acquire the taste if it would foregather on lively and intimate terms with its fellows; and not only in the saloons of the Oakland water-front are fine youngsters drinking themselves permanently silly because it is their only way of being men among men, jolly good fellows among jolly good fellows. A sound enough text for any sermon; and, I may honestly add, a sound enough sermon for any text, with a strong smell of the sea and of adventure about it. But I ask myself for what purpose the photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Jack London is inserted as a frontispiece? As well, I think, have had a portrait of Mr. Mills, with Mr. Boon inset.
Isn’t The Youngest World (Bell) an engaging title for a book? It caught my interest at once. I am not altogether sure that the story itself is as good as its name, but that still leaves a margin of quality, and I for one have enjoyed it greatly—in patches. Let Mr. Robert Dunn not too hastily condemn me if I say that he has written a fatiguing tale. Partly I mean this as a high compliment. The descriptions of hardships borne and physical difficulties overcome by his hero are so vivid that they convey a sensation of actual bodily strain in a manner that only one other living writer can equal. There are chapters in the book that leave one aching all over. So long, in fact, as Mr. Dunn’s characters are content to do things, to climb mountains, to ford rivers, to endure hunger and cold and weariness, I am in close bodily sympathy with them; it is when they begin to talk and to explain their mental states that my keenness is threatened by another and less pleasing fatigue. It is not that the scope of the story—a man’s regeneration by love and hardship—isn’t a good one: quite the contrary. It is that I simply do not believe that human beings, especially those that figure in this book, would ever talk about themselves in this particular way. “In the name of our own blood,” she uttered softly, “of Love, the Future, and Victory....” That is a random sentence from the last page, and very typical of Mr. Dunn’s dialogue. It is full of gracious qualities, thoughtful, and throughout on a high literary level, but as a realistic transcription of frontier talk it leaves me incredulous. Still the setting, I repeat, is quite wonderful. You shall read the chapters that tell of Gail’s ascent of Mount Lincoln, and see if they don’t stir your blood, especially where he reaches the top, alone (and therefore unable to talk), and sees the world at his feet. You will exult in this.