It must be admitted that Mrs. Belloc Lowndes’s young ladies enjoy singularly poor luck, as is shown notably by their habit when in foreign parts of picking up the worst people and generally surrounding themselves with a society that it would be flattery to call dubious. The latest victim to this tendency is Lily, heroine of The Lonely House (Hutchinson). It was situate, as you might not expect from its name, at Monte Carlo, and Lily had come there as the paying guest of a courtesy uncle and aunt of foreign extraction, about whom she really knew far too little. They had tried to postpone her visit at least for a couple of days, the awkward fact being that the evening of her arrival was already earmarked for an engagement that Auntie euphemistically called “seeing a friend off on a long journey.” If you know Mrs. Belloc Lowndes at her creepiest, you can imagine the spinal chill produced by this discovery. Gradually it transpires (though how I shall not say) that whenever the Count and Countess Polda were in want of a little ready cash they were in the habit of “seeing off” some unaccompanied tourist known to have well-filled pockets. So you can suppose the rest. If I have a criticism for Mrs. Lowndes’ otherwise admirable handling of the affair it is that she depends too much on the involuntary eavesdropper; before long, indeed, I was forced to conclude either that Lily possessed a miraculous sense of overhearing, or that the acoustic properties of the lonely house rendered it conspicuously unsuited for the maturing of felonious little plans. But this is a trifle compared with the delights of such a feast of first quality thrills.
The extraordinary cleverness of A Woman’s Man (Heinemann) is the thing which most impresses me about this life story of a French man of letters, at the height of his fame somewhere in the eighteen-nineties. He is made to tell his own story, and pitfalls for the author must have abounded in such a scheme, but Miss Marjorie Patterson seems to have fallen into very few of them. Armand de Vaucourt is a self-deceiving sensualist who justifies his amours as necessary to literary inspiration and neglects his wife only to find, too late, that she has been his guardian angel, her love the source of all that was worth while in his life and work. There have been such characters as Armand in fiction who yet made some appeal to the reader’s affection; it is the book’s worst defect that Armand makes none. His recurring despairs and passions grow tedious; his final but rather incomplete change of heart left me sceptical as to how long it would have lasted had the book carried his history any further. Armand as a study of a certain type of egoist is supreme; my difficulty was that I had no desire to study him. Even Maria-Thérèse Colbert, the decadent wife of his publisher, a very monster among women, is more interesting. Miss Patterson is on the side of the angels, but she makes her way to them through some nasty mire, calling spades spades with a vigour which seems to have prevented her from paying much attention to some beautiful and hopeful things which also have everyday names.
Germany’s High Sea Fleet in the World War (Cassell), which is Admiral Scheer’s addition to the entertaining series, “How we really won after all,” by German Military and Naval commanders, gives you, on the whole, the impression of an honest sailor-man telling the truth as he sees it and only occasionally remembering that he must work in one of the set pieces of official propaganda. To a mere layman this record is of immense and continual interest; to the professional, keen to know what his opposite number was doing at a given time, it must be positively enthralling, especially the chapter on the U-boats, with its discreet excerpts from selected logs. Incidentally one can’t withhold tribute of reluctant admiration for the technical achievements of the submarines and the courage, skill and tenacity of their commanders and crews. Most readers will find themselves turning first to the account of the Jutland battle. The tale is told not too boastfully, though the Admiral claims too much. Perhaps that may be forgiven him, as he certainly took his long odds gamely and fought his fleet with conspicuous dexterity. Also the German naval architects and ordnance folk proved to have a good thing or two up their sleeves, and the gunnery, for a time at any rate, was unexpectedly excellent. Naturally perhaps Admiral Scheer may be claimed as supporting the Beattyites rather than the Jellicoists. But he is biassed and goes further than the most extreme of the former school. For his real grievance against the British Navy, constantly finding vent, is that it did not ride bravely in, with bands playing, to the perfectly good battleground prepared with good old German thoroughness under the guns of Heligoland.
No pioneer work was ever more persistently attacked by the weapons of ridicule and contempt than that of the Salvation Army, and I suggest that all who sat in the hostile camp should read William Booth, Founder of the Salvation Army (Macmillan), and see for themselves what ideas and ideals they were opposing. Mr. Harold Begbie has done his work well, and the only fault to be found with him is that his ardour has sometimes beguiled him into recording trivialities; and this error strikes one the more as Booth, both in his strength and in his weakness, was not trivial. When this, however, is said, nothing but praise remains for a careful study both of the man and of his methods. The instrument upon which Booth played was human nature, and he played upon it with a sure hand because he understood how difficult it is to touch the spirit when the body is suffering from physical degradation. To this must be added a genuine spiritual exaltation and love of his fellow-man and also an indomitable courage. Few men could have emerged with hope and enthusiasm unquenched from such a childhood as Booth’s; but we know how he lived to conquer all opposition and to promote and organise what is perhaps the greatest movement of modern times. In paying our tribute to him for his successful crusade against misery and evil we are not to forget his wife, whose unfailing love and devotion were his constant support.