"CHARLES ——
This week, Driven From Home.
Next week, At Sea."Daily Paper.
Surely this pitiable case ought to be brought to the attention of the Actors' Benevolent Association.
Epicurean. "Ah, you little realise how these April showers bring on the peas."
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
I have a mild grievance against that talented lady, Miss Marjorie Bowen, for labelling her latest novel "a romantic fantasy." Because, like all her other stories, The Cheats (Collins) moves with such an air of truth, its personages are so human, that I could delightfully persuade myself that it was all true, and that I had really shared, with a sometimes quickened pulse, the strange fortunes of the sombre young hero. But—fantasy! That is to show the strings and give away the whole game. However, if you can forget that, the coils of an admirably woven intrigue will grip your attention and sympathy throughout. The central figure is one Jaques, who comes to town as a penniless and love-lorn romantic, to be confronted with the revelation that he is himself the eldest son, unacknowledged but legitimate, of His Majesty King Charles the Second, then holding Court at Whitehall. It is from the plots and counter-plots, the machinations and subterfuges that follow that Miss Bowen justifies her title. Certainly The Cheats establishes her in my mind as our first writer of historical fiction. The character-drawing is admirable (especially of poor weak-willed vacillating Jaques, a wonderfully observed study of the Stuart temperament). More than ever, also, Miss Bowen might here be said to write her descriptions with a paint-brush; the whole tale goes by in a series of glowing pictures, most richly coloured. The Cheats is not a merry book; its treatment of the foolish heroine in particular abates nothing of grim justice; but of its art there can be no two opinions. I wish again that I had been allowed to believe in it.