Smith (member of bowling club). "Do you know these balls cost five guineas each?"
Jones (golfer). "By Jove! I hope you don't lose many in the 'rough.'"
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Undeniably ours is an age in which fond memory fills not only the heart of man but the shelves of the circulating libraries to a degree bordering upon excess. But, let reminiscences be even more frequent than they are, there would yet remain a welcome for such a book as Mr. W.H. Mallock's attractive Memoirs of Life and Literature (Chapman and Hall). The reason of this lies not more in the interest of what is told than in the fact that these memories have the advantage of being recalled by one who is master of a singularly engaging pen. Nothing in the book better displays its quality of charm than the opening chapters, with their picture of an old-world Devonshire, and in particular the group of related houses in which the boyhood of the future anti-socialist was so delightfully spent. Gracious homes have always had a special appeal to the author of The New Republic, as you are here reminded in a score of happy recollections. Then comes Oxford, and that meeting with Swinburne in the Balliol drawing-room that seems to have been the common experience of memoir-writers. Some entertaining chapters give a cheerful picture of London life when Mr. Mallock entered it, and Society, still Polite, opened its most exclusive doors to the young explorer. The rest of the book is devoted to a record of friendships, travel, an analysis of the writer's literary activities, and a host of good stories. Perhaps I have just space for one quotation—the prayer delivered by the local minister in the hall of Ardverike: "God bless Sir John; God bless also her dear Leddyship; bless the tender youth of the two young leddies likewise. We also unite in begging Thee to have mercy on the puir governess." A book of singular fragrance and individuality.
The Victorians used to talk, perhaps do still, about the lure of the stage; but I am inclined to suppose this was as nothing beside the lure of the stage-novel. All our writers apparently feel it, and in most cases their bones whiten the fields of failure. But amongst those of whom this certainly cannot be said is Mr. Horace A. Vachell, whose new book, The Fourth Dimension (Murray), has both pleased and astonished me by its freedom from those defects that so often ruin the theatrical story. For one thing, of course, the explanation of this lies in my sustaining confidence that I was being handed out the genuine stuff. When a dramatist of Mr. Vachell's experience says that stage-life is thus and thus, well, I have to believe him. As a fact I seldom read so convincing a word-picture of that removed and esoteric existence. The title (not too happy) means the world beyond the theatre, that which so many players count well lost for the compensations of applause and fame; and the story is of a young and phenomenally successful actress, Jess Yeo, in whom the claims of domesticity and the love of her dramatist husband are shown in conflict with the attractions of West-End stardom and photographs in the illustrated papers. Eventually—but I suppose I can hardly tell that without spoiling for you what goes before the event. Anyhow, if I admit that the ending did not inspire me with any sanguine hope of happiness ever after, it at least put a pleasant finish on an attractive and successful tale.
In the Mountains (Macmillan) is one of those pleasant books of which the best review would be a long string of quotations, and that is a very complimentary thing to say about any novel. Written in diary form, on the whole successfully, it tells little of doing and much of being, and a great deal more of feeling than of either. It is scarcely necessary after that to add that it is discursive. As a matter of fact I found that for me that half of its charm which did not lie in being whisked off, as it were by magic, to sit in the sunshine of Switzerland lay in its author's reflections upon subjects quite unconnected with her story, and as far apart from each other as Law's Serious Call and the effect of different kinds of underclothing on the outward demeanour of the wearer. From the human document point of view it is as a picture of the convalescence of a soul sick with grief that In the Mountains deserves attention. I cannot imagine that anyone who has ever got well again after sorrow will fail to recognise its truth. The little mystery and the slender love-story which hold the discursiveness together are just sufficient but so slight that they shall not even be hinted at here. For the rest the book is whimsical, thoughtful, sentimental by turns and, in spite of its tolerance, a shade superior; with now and then a phrase which left me wondering whether a blushing cheek would deserve the Garter motto's rebuke; in fact it resembles more than anything else on earth what the "German garden" of a certain "Elizabeth" might grow into if she transplanted it to a Swiss mountain-top.