Certainly Violet Hunt and Ford Madox Hueffer have one achievement to their credit. They have evolved an entirely new and original setting in which to bring together a number of short stories. What is supposed to happen is that sundry persons who did not feel exactly drawn towards bed before 2 A.M. on those summer nights when Zeppelins were about, meet for bridge and sandwiches and incidentally to listen to certain stories read aloud by their author. In this way they are able to forget their apprehensions of the gas-bags (dare I put it that they lose Count?) and spend a pleasant series of evenings with history. For the stories in Zeppelin Nights (Lane) are all historical of a kind. Mostly they deal with the byways of history, or rather with the emotions of ordinary people who are just on the outer edge of historical happenings. For example, the central figure of the first is a slave whose basket of figs is upset by Pheidippides running from Marathon; while the last concerns an insignificant little anti-militarist who finds himself cheering for the army on the outbreak of the Boer War. That is the kind of tales they are, slight and momentary things, with no plot but plenty of atmosphere, and in their style remarkably well done. Whether they would actually keep the nerve-ridden oblivious of bombs for the thousand-and-one nights that might have seen raids and didn't is a matter that need not concern us. For my part, I liked as much as any the pages in which Miss Hunt or Mr. Hueffer folded up her or his manuscript and allowed the other (whichever it was) to tell us about the very pleasant and human audience. I had only one disappointment, but that was acute. I did want just once for them to hear a distant bang, and see what happened. I rather doubt whether the placid and literary charm of the tales would have sufficed to keep them within doors had there been anything to see outside.
"In his hot indignation his yellowish face had in places turned blackish: literally, black streaks ran from the corners of his lips upwards and downwards, and from the inner corners of his eyes." If you read that sentence in a novel with Mr. Edgar Jepson's name on the cover, and found that the passage was a description of a man named Shadrach Penny, would you not, as I did, settle down comfortably in your armchair and wait with perfect confidence for the human zebra to murder somebody in the most fascinatingly brutal manner? But he did not do anything of the kind. I think that the fact that I was disappointed in, and even seriously bored by, The Man Who Came Back (Hutchinson) was largely due to the mild, dull way in which the story developed. And yet I think I could have forgiven the absence of lurid sensationalism if the book had been a good book of its kind. It is not. It is so crude and amateurish that it is difficult to believe that a professional writer could have written it. Mr. Jepson, like most other authors, has had the idea of modernising the story of the Prodigal Son. He adheres to the original story closely in one respect, for Roland Penny's first meal in his old home consists of roast veal, but he departs from it in making Roland, so far from wasting his substance, amass a large fortune among the husks and swine. I do not know how to classify The Man Who Came Back. It is not a novel of incident, for nothing happens in it. It is not a novel of character, for there is no attempt at any but the crudest character-drawing. It is just a six-shilling novel, and I do not see what else one can say of it. Mr. Jepson must do one of two things. He must either brace up and make his style less irritatingly slipshod, or he must give us a few more murders. If we cannot have literary elegance he must give us blood.
Lieutenant L. B. Rundall, of the 1st Gurkha Rifles, author of The Ilex of Stra-Ping (Macmillan), was not only a soldier and a sportsman, but a writer with a most keen sense of the beauty of nature and the beauty of words. Children should love these Himalayan sketches, for Mr. Rundall, from material which in some cases was admittedly slight, could weave a tale full of magic and charm. The story of the old brown bear in "The Scape-goat" may not greatly stir the heart with the thrill of adventure, but the hero has attractions that no child and no man that has not forgotten his childhood could resist. An inconspicuous notice in the book tells us that the author fell in action towards the close of 1914. I salute his memory. Rich as we are to-day in authors who can write enchantingly of birds and animals, I feel a sense of personal sorrow in the loss of one whose work gave so fair a promise of high achievement.
When you take up Russian Folk-Tales (Kegan, Paul), don't allow yourself to be subdued by the deplorably learned preface of the translator, Mr. Leonard Magnus, LL.B., because it is not the proper attitude really. Forget how little business a Bachelor of Law has to lay his sceptical hands on such inappropriate material, and plunge into a jolly, bewildering tangle of tales of magic and adventure, bloodthirstiness and treachery, simple charity, vodka and genial superstition. You will be led from one to the other, puzzled but, I dare conjecture, highly entertained. I think you may take it, too, that a certain healthy sort of children will like to have these queer stories read aloud. The villainies of the Bába Yagá, an old witch of terrific resourcefulness, and the oddly inconsequent animal stories should make particular appeal. But you will be hard put to it to answer the questions which will be thrust at you; and (by the way) perhaps you will discreetly have to leave out a phrase or two for prudence' sake. On no account let the youngsters read the preface. I am not really quite sure whether you ought to read it yourself.
Recruit. "Aw—I say Sergeant—I'm afraid this horse is a bit too tall for me."