A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL OF YOU!!!"
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
One of the Baron's Critical Faculty sends him his opinion of our Mr. DU MAURIER's latest novel, which is also his first. And here let it be published urbi et orbi that there is no truth whatever in a report which appeared in an evening paper to the effect that Mr. DU MAURIER, however retiring he may be, was about to retire or had retired from Mr. Punch's Staff. The St. James's Gazette has already "authoritatively" denied the assertion; and this denial the Baron for Mr. Punch, decisively confirms. Now, to the notice of the book above-mentioned. Here it is:—
"There has been a certain deliberateness in Mr. DU MAURIER's incursion into literature that speaks eloquently for his modesty. He is, to our certain knowledge, at least 40 years old, and Peter Ibbetson, which Messrs. OSGOOD & CO. present in two daintily dressed volumes, is his first essay in romantic writing. Reading the book, it is hard to conceive this to be the fact. The work is entirely free from those traces of amateurishness, almost inseparable from a first effort. The literary style is considerably above the average modern novelist; the plot is marked by audacious invention, worked out with great skill; the hero is a madman, not in itself an attractive arrangement, but there is such admirable method in his madness, such fine poetic feeling in the conception of character, and the ghosts who flit through the pages of the story are so exceedingly human, that one feels quite at home with Peter, and is really sorry when, all too soon, his madness passes away, and he awakes to a new life, to find himself an old man. Apart from its strong dramatic interest, Peter Ibbetson has rare value, from the pictures of Old Paris in the last days of LOUIS-PHILIPPE, which crowd in charming succession through the first volume. Mr. GEORGE DU MAURIER, the well-known artist in black and white, has generously assisted Mr. GEORGE DU MAURIER, the rising novelist, by profusely illustrating the work. 'Tis a pretty rivalry; hard to say which has the better of it. Wherein a discerning Public, long familiar with DU MAURIER's sketches, will recognise a note of highest praise for the new departure."
The Baron recommends Mrs. OLIPHANT's The Railway Man and his Children, which is a good story, with just such a dash of the improbable—but there, who can bring improbability as a charge against the plot constructed by any novelist after this great Jewel Case so recently tried? Mrs. OLIPHANT's types are well drawn; but the story is drawn out by just one volume too much. "For a one-volume novel commend me," quoth the Baron, "to Miss RHODA-BROUGHTON-CUM-ELIZABETH-BISLAND's A Widower Indeed. But ... wait till after the festivities are over to read it, as the tale is sad." En attendant, A Happy New Year to everyone, says
THE BENIGN BARON DE BOOK-WORMS.