OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
I think I never read a story that impressed me as more untimely than this to which Mr. Ivor Brown has given the title of Security (Secker). It is about an Oxford Don, one John Grant, who became, as others have become, irked by the placid routine of Senior Common-Room existence, and yearned for adventure. So he came to London, and got his first dose of it as a labour-agitator and backer of strikes. I suppose that the atmosphere of labour-agitating and strike-backing is skilfully conveyed (that of Oxford donship undoubtedly is), but I can't tell you how antique it all seems. These scornful quotations from an imaginary Capitalist press and the fierce denial that industrial strife was ever assisted by foreign agencies—it all sounds like a voice from ancient history. One rubs one's ears at it. Eventually militant Socialism wearies John as much as academic torpor had done, and to escape from both he marries a wife. More atmosphere, this time of a dreary little seaside town and its so-called society. But John fares no better here; and at last, on his return from a walking holiday, he finds that Mrs. John, unable to put up with him any longer, is putting up without him at a London hotel in company with Another. That seems a situation insecure enough to satisfy the most exacting. But even from this nothing results, and husband and wife drift together again. I like to think that nowadays, what with Zeps and other things, poor old John may grow really contented. Meanwhile, clever as it is, the tale seems oddly anæmic and unreal. It is like those tragically trivial journals of 1914 that still survive in the dusty waiting-rooms of dentists. I don't suggest that Mr. Brown, whose previous book I much admired, should write about the War; but I could wish him a little more in tune with the spirit it has produced.
Faith Tresilion (Ward, Lock) is a book of brave and of some diabolical deeds, but as Mr. Eden Phillpotts sees to it that his murderers and wreckers get their due he leaves me with the hopeful feeling that what happened to super-criminals a hundred years or so ago will also be their fate in this year of grace. Faith is the type of heroine with whom readers of this amazingly industrious author are familiar—a fearless girl who does a man's work without for a moment becoming unsexed. She was in a difficult position enough, for her brother was a smuggler and she was in love, head to heels, with the local gangster. There are other complications, but this is the chief one, and it is worked out in Mr. Phillpotts' best West-country manner. I accept Faith and salute her, but it is before her mother that I completely bow the knee. Mrs. Tresilion was paralysed up to her waist, which was just as well, for if her activities had not been limited she would have swamped the whole book. As it was she lay in bed, drank gin, directed various operations with her eye fixed rather upon this world than the next, and told her visitors precisely what she thought of them. I am thankful not to have met this devastating lady in the flesh, because to be called "a hookery-snidy, trundle-trailed king-crab," and then told to kiss her, would have been more than I could bear.
I feel that Miss Constance Holme will be the first to agree with me on reflection that as a beginning of a chapter in The Old Road from Spain (Mills) the following will not do: "The long bright day idled interminably to its tryst with night. Luis ate his lonely meals in the silent room," etc. It illustrates a defect of her rather over-intense method. She would readily forgive me this stricture if she could know the eagerness with which I read her picturesque pages to find out exactly what was the matter with the Huddlestons of Thorn. From a Spanish ancestor, who had been wrecked with the Armada, they had inherited a curse. It was a very original curse, and I dare not deprive you of the pleasure of finding out what it was for yourself. Miss Holme puts in her background of mystery with skilful touches and handles her characterisation with a good deal more subtlety than your mere mystery-monger can command. She observes both men and things with affection, writes of them with imagination. Rowly Huddleston, the committee-ridden squire of Thorn, looks like a careful portrait from life, and probably somebody also sat for that faithful soul, Crane, the butler. A book to be commended. Its defects are the defects of exuberance, the sort one only begins to notice after one has said, "Hello! this is pretty good!"
The Greater Glory (Hodder and Stoughton) is a collection of very short sketches concerned with the War. They are a little unequal, some being better than others, and others (naturally) being worse than some. They all reveal their author, Miss Evelyn Orchard, as possessed of a pleasantly unforced style, and perhaps rather more ease than imagination. One of them, my own favourite, the story of a parson who enlisted, is conspicuous as containing so admirable a recruiting speech that I can only hope it is transcribed from life. Having said so much, perhaps I may be forgiven by Miss Orchard if I add that I would rather have read her up upon some lighter theme. Her tuneful pipe contains some very pleasant notes, both of sentiment and humour, but is altogether too thin for variations upon so tremendous a motive as she has chosen. I express, of course, only my personal feeling; but I am certain that unless a book can rise to the magnitude of the War it had best leave it alone. Still it may well be that others will find interest, and even consolation, in these little papers. They have at least the charm of simplicity, and are obviously the products of a gentle and sympathetic nature. Thus, Miss Orchard can still see the pathos of the German private. Well, well.