ECHOES OF THE COAL STRIKE.
"What's the kid shouting about? There ain't no racing."
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
"Two households, both alike in dignity...." I ask you, could the novel, of which this quotation is the text, have been written by anyone but Mr. John Galsworthy? Actually indeed the disputants belong to two branches of the same family, that grim tribe of Forsytes, whom you remember in The Man of Property, and of whose collective history the present book is a further instalment (not, I fancy, the last). I should certainly advise anyone not already familiar with the former work to get up his Forsytes therein before attacking this; otherwise he may risk some discouragement from the plunge into so numerous a clan, known for the most part only by Christian names, with their complex relationships and the mass of bygone happenings that unites or separates them. This stage of the tribal history is called In Chancery (Heinemann), chiefly from the state of suspended animation experienced by the now middle-aged Soames ("Man of Property") with regard to his never-divorced runaway wife Irene. Following the ruling Forsyte instinct, Soames wants a son who will keep together and even increase his great possessions, while continuing his personality. The expiring generation, represented by James, is urgent upon this duty to the family. You may imagine what Mr. Galsworthy makes of it all. These possessive persons, with their wealth, their hatred and affections and their various strongholds in the more eminently desirable parts of residential London, affect one like portions of some monstrous stone-fronted edifice, impressive but repellent. I have some curiosity to see, with Mr. Galsworthy's help, how the Forsyte castle stands the disintegration of 1914-18.
What with the scientists who explain things on the assumption that we know nearly as much as they do and those who explain things on the assumption that we know nothing, it is very difficult for you and me to persevere in our original determination to learn something. But I have always felt that Sir Ray Lankester is one of the very few who do understand us, and I feel it still more strongly now that I have read his Secrets of Earth and Sea (Methuen). He is instructive but human; he does not take it for granted that we know what miscegenation means, but he does credit us with a little intelligence. And he realises how many arguments we have had about questions like "Why does the sea look blue?" Personally I rushed at that chapter, though I must say that I was a little disappointed to find that the gist of his answer was "Because water is blue." You see, if you had a tooth-glass fifteen feet high and filled it with water—But you must find out for yourself. Then I went on to the chapter on Coal, and discovered that "it is fairly certain that the blacker coal which we find in strata of great geological age was so produced by the action of special kinds of bacteria upon peat-like masses of vegetable refuse." I wonder if Mr. Smillie knows that. It might help him to a sense of proportion. The author is constantly setting up a surprising but stimulating relation between the naturalist's researches and the problems of human life, as when he observes that "the 'colour bar' is not merely the invention of human prejudice, but already exists in wild plants and animals," and in his remarks on mongrels and the regrettable subjection of the males of many species. There are chapters on Wheel Animalcules, Vesuvius, Prehistoric Art—everything—and all are admirably illustrated. A fascinating book.
The Diary of a Journalist (Murray) is a volume of which the title is its own sufficient description, save that it leaves unsuggested the interest that such briskly written and comprehensive comments as these of our old friend, Sir Henry Lucy, must command. His book differs from most of those in the flood of recollections that has lately broken upon us in being a selection from "impressions of the moment written without knowledge of the ultimate result." In these stray moments between the years 1885 and 1917 I find at least two examples in which this ignorance of the final event adds much to the interest of the immediate record—the startling forecast of the ex-Kaiser's destiny, entered in the Diary under November '98; and the mention, long before the actual illness of King Edward declared itself, of the growing belief in certain circles that his coronation would never take place. It is at once obvious that not even "Toby's" three previous volumes have by any means exhausted his fund of good stories, the scenes of which range from Westminster to Bouverie Street, and round half the stately (or, at least, interesting) homes of England. Of them all—not forgetting Disraeli and the peacocks and a new W. S. Gilbert—my personal choice would be for the mystery of the Unknown Guest, who not only took a place, but was persuaded to speak, at a private dinner given by Sir John Hare at the Garrick Club, without anyone ever knowing who he was or how he came there. A genial lucky-bag book, which (despite unusually full chapter headings) would be improved by an index to its many prizes.