Jan Ross, grey-haired at twenty-seven, but sweet of face and of a most taking way, found herself unexpectedly confronted, a year or two ago, with a "job." It was eventually to include the looking after a certain Peter, of the Indian Civil Service, a thoroughly good sort, who by now is making her as happy as she deserves; but in the first place it meant the care of a little motherless niece and nephew and their protection from a scoundrelly father. How successfully she has been doing it and what charmingly human babies are her charges, Tony and Fay, you will realise when I say that it is Mrs. L. ALLEN HARKER who has been telling me all about Jan and Her Job (MURRAY). You will understand, too, how pleasantly peaceful, how utterly removed from the artificially forced crispness of the special correspondent, is the telling of the story; but you must read it yourself to learn how simply and naturally the writer has used the coming of the War for her last chapter, and above all to get to know not only Jan herself but also that most loyal of comrades, her pal Meg. Meg, indeed, is almost as much in the middle of the stage as the friend whose nursemaid she has elected to become; and as the completion of her own private happiness has to remain in doubt until the coming of peace, since Mrs. HARKER has resolutely refused to guarantee the survival of the soldier-sweetheart, you must join me in wishing him the best of good fortune. He is still rubbing it into the Bosches. Perhaps some day the author will be able to reassure us.
When I have said that Twentieth-Century France (CHAPMAN AND HALL) is rather over-weighted by its title my grumble is made. To deal adequately with twentieth-century France in a volume of little more than two hundred amply-margined pages is beyond the powers of Miss M. BETHAM-EDWARDS or of any other writer. But, under any title, whatever she writes about France must be worth reading, and to-day of all times the French need to be explained to us almost as much as we need to be explained to them. Miss BETHAM-EDWARDS can be trusted to do this good work with admirable sympathy and discretion. Here she writes intimately of many people whose names are already household words in France. The more books we have of the kind the better. VOLTAIRE, we are reminded, once said that "when a Frenchman and an Englishman agree upon any subject we may be quite sure they have reason on their side." Well, they are agreeing at present upon a certain subject with what the Huns must regard as considerable unanimity. If in the last century there was any misunderstanding between us and our neighbours it is now in a fair way to be removed to the back of beyond; and in this removal Miss EDWARDS has lent a very helping hand.
What chiefly impressed me about Marshdikes (UNWIN) was what I can only call the blazing indiscretion of the chief characters. To begin with, you have a happily married young couple asking a nice man down for the week-end to meet a girl, and as good as telling him that the party has been arranged, as the advertisements put it, with a view to matrimony. Passing from this, we find a doctor (surely unique) blurting out to a fellow-guest at dinner that a mutual friend had consulted him for heart trouble. To crown all, when the match arranged by the young couple has got as far as an engagement, the wife must needs go and tell the girl that the whole affair was manœuvred by herself. Which naturally upset that apple-cart. It had also the effect of making me a somewhat impatient spectator of the subsequent developments, mainly political, of the plot. I smiled, though, when the hero was worsted in his by-election. After all, with a set of supporters so destitute of elementary tact.... But, of course, I know quite well what is my real grievance. Miss HELEN ASHTON began her story with a chapter so full of sparkle that I am peevish at being disappointed of the comedy that this promised. Perhaps next time she will take the hint, and give us an entire novel in the key which, I am sure, suits her best.
A Little World Apart (LANE) is one of those gentle stories that please as much by reminding you of others like them as by any qualities of their own. Indeed you might call it, with no disparagement intended, a fragrant pot-pourri of many rustic romances—Our Village, for example, and more than a touch of Cranford. Your literary memory may also suggest to you another scene in fiction almost startlingly like the one here, in which the gently-born lover (named Arthur) of the village beauty is forced to combat by her rustic suitor. Fortunately, however, Mr. GEORGE STEVENSON has no tragedy like that of Hetty in store for his Rose. His picture of rural life is more mellow than melodramatic; and his tale reaches a happy end, unchequered by anything more sensational than a mild outbreak of scandal from the local wag-tongues. There are many pleasant, if rather familiar, characters; though I own to a certain sense of repletion arising from the elderly and domineering dowagers of fiction, of whom Lady Crane may be regarded as embodying the common form. A Little World Apart, in short, is no very sensational discovery, but good enough as a quiet corner for repose.
