"Bless 'im! Ain't 'e a little patriarch?"
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks)
I am a little puzzled as to the authorship of Action Front (Smith, Elder), which is stated to be written by Boyd Cable, author of Between the Lines. First of all there was a Mr. Boyd Cable, but he didn't last, for he soon turned into "Boyd Cable" without the Mr., the inverted commas indicating, I suppose, that this was a mere nom de guerre. At or about the same time there was an author known as "Action Front," whose writings were hardly to be distinguished from those of "Boyd Cable." And now Action Front becomes the title of a book by Boyd Cable. For my own part I can only say that, whoever he may be, Boyd Cable—let us try him without the inverts—has a most remarkable gift for the writing of vivid and exciting war-stories. He takes a phrase from the communiqués and shows you with a seemingly careless art, of which he holds the secret, what moving incidents, what heroism, what self-sacrifice and glorious endurance are concealed behind the bald official announcement. Moreover, he has a true appreciation of the reckless and humorous courage that characterises the British fighting man, the splendid human material out of which great events are fashioned. If you add to these high qualities a talent for making you visualise the scenes and the sequence of incidents which he describes you will obtain some conception of the methods of this most interesting writer. He holds you in his grip from the moment he starts, and there is no relaxation from then to the finish. Each little story is an admirable piece of literary architecture. If I had to class them I should place "Drill" and "The Signallers" by themselves in the first division of the first class. I will hint only one fault: it is too great a tax on one's credulity to be asked to believe that a French officer could have addressed an English private as mon beau Anglaise. Otherwise I have nothing but praise for Action Front, though I am still as far as ever from knowing who wrote it.
I feel I am beginning to know something of romantic Russia and the Russians from the perpetual and jolly spate of Mr. Stephen Graham's books. Through Russian Central Asia (Cassell) is the very latest to hand. I like his easy pace, his gentle universal friendliness, his fearlessness, his untidy but interesting mind. He is a tramp of tramps. With a thin wallet of notes and no weapon but a fountain-pen he travels a couple of thousand miles or so and back, faring on his own feet, steaming down stretches of navigable river, taking the rail for a space, begging a lift in some prehistoric conveyance, right from the Caspian, by magical many-hued Bokhara and storied Samarkand that holds the bones of Tamerlane, on through the flower-starred highlands of the Seven Rivers Land to the Irtish river and Siberian plains, sleeping under the stars or in a Khirgiz tent of felt, or a riverside cave—surely a happy careless man. And he has made an interesting book of it, intelligently packed with admirable photographs. He still keeps to his fine theme, the interpretation of Russia and the plea for friendliness, trust and a large co-operation with her on our part over the problems of peace and power. Among such problems he drifts about with a disarming naïvetè, a little out of depth and more than a little sagacious. An excellent specimen of the converted "Radical-Imperialist."
There used, I believe, to be an old controversy as to how many angels could dance on the point of a needle. Somehow, this antique problem is always brought to my mind by the short stories of Mr. Barry Pain, perhaps because he seems to have the power of marshalling more angels of pity and fear and laughter in the restricted area of a few printed pages than almost any other writer. How true this is you have now a fine opportunity of judging, since the first volume of his Collected Tales (Secker) contains a baker's dozen of samples selected by himself. Of these the most considerable (in point of length) is "Wilmay," which might almost be considered a very short novel. It is also to my mind the weakest thing in the volume; not even Mr. Barry Pain can impart much freshness to the middle-aged guardian who remains, till the final chapter, blind to the obvious devotion of his attractive ward. Elsewhere, by way of compensation, we have several little studies of rare quality: "Ellen Rider," exquisite in its restraint and genuine feeling; "The Undying Thing," that small masterpiece of the unpleasant, and "The Night of Glory," a savage and utterly merciless piece of anti-sentimentalism with a moral. Mr. Pain says in his preface that he has not included any example of his humorous work. Perhaps he was looking the other way when "Sparkling Burgundy" added itself to the collection. Anyhow, I am glad it eluded him, as it is one of the happiest things in a most attractive volume.