OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Mr. S.P.B. MAIS, in a dedicatory letter to Interlude (CHAPMAN AND HALL), tells us that he has "simply tried to show what a man constituted like Shelley would have made of his life had he bean alive in 1917." Without any doubt his attempt has succeeded. I am, however, bound to add this warning (if Mr. MAIS'S is not enough), that a novel with such a purpose is not, and could not be, milk for babes. Nothing that I had previously read of Mr. MAIS'S had prepared me for the proficiency he shows here. Obviously attached to the modern school of novelists, he has many of its faults and more of its virtues. One may accept his main point of view, yet be offended sometimes by his details. But the fact remains that in Geoffrey Battersby he has given us a piece of character-drawing almost flawlessly perfect. Not for a very long time has it been my good fortune to attend such a triumph, and I wish to proclaim it. The women by whom Geoffrey, the weak and the wayward, was attracted hither and thither are also well drawn; but here Mr. MAIS shows his present limitations. Nevertheless I feel sure that he has within him the qualities that go to make a great novelist, and that if he will free himself from certain marked prejudices his future lies straight and clear before him.
It was a happy idea of the Sisters MARY and JANE FINDLATER to call their new book of short stories Seen and Heard (SMITH, ELDER), with the sub-title, Before and After 1914. I say short stories, but actually these have so far outgrown the term that a half-dozen of them make up the volume. They are all examples of the same gentle and painstaking craft that their writers have before now exhibited elsewhere. Here are no sensational happenings; the drama of the tales is wholly emotional. My own favourites are the first, called "The Little Tinker," a half-ironical study of the temptation of a tramp mother to surrender her child to the blessings of civilisation; and how, by the intervention of a terrible old woman, the queen of the tribe, this momentary weakness was overcome. My other choice, the last tale in the collection (and the only one contributed by Miss MARY FINDLATER), is a dour little comedy of the regeneration, through poverty and hard work, of two underemployed and unpleasant elderly ladies. A restful book, such as will keep no one awake at nights, but will give pleasure to all who appreciate slight studies of ordinary life sketched with precise and careful finish.
Their Lives (STANLEY PAUL) has at least this point of originality, that it ends with the wedding of somebody other than the heroine, or rather, I should say, the chief heroine, because, strictly speaking, all three daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Radmall might be said jointly to fill this post, but it is Christina, the eldest, who fills most of it. The other two were named Virgilia and Orinthia, and I can't say that these horrific labels did them any injustice. As for the story of "their lives," as VIOLET HUNT tells it, there is really nothing very much to charm in a history of three disagreeable children developing into detestable young women. Perhaps it may have some value as a study of feminine adolescence, but I defy anyone to call the result attractive. Its chief incident, which is (not to mince matters) the attempted seduction by Christina of a middle-aged man, the father of one of her friends, mercifully comes to nothing. I like to believe that this sort of thing is as unusual as it is unpleasant. For the rest, the picture of the "artistic" household in which the children grew up, of their managing mother, and the slightly soured and disappointed painter their father, is drawn vividly enough. But what unamiable people they all are! "MILES IGNOTUS," who supplies a quaintly attractive little preface, in which he speaks of having read the book in proof under shell-fire, affects to discover in them a kinship with Prussia. Certainly they are almost frightful enough.
Having read all about The Rise of Ledgar Dunstan (DUCKWORTH) from obscurity to wealth, literary success and aristocratic wedlock, I should be infinitely content to leave him at that and have done; but Mr. ALFRED TRESIDDER SHEPPARD warns us that there is more to follow, and even hints that the sequel, opening in July, 1914, may in many respects be far indeed from the dulness of happily-ever-after. If Ledgar had been satisfied to marry the sweetheart of his school-days there might have been some danger of such a disaster; but, having put his humble past, including his Nonconformist conscience, too diligently behind him for that, he will have to face whatever his author and the KAISER may have in store, supported only by a wife who is going, I trust and believe, to revenge on him all the irritation which she and I both felt at his attitude of unemotional superiority towards all the world. Some people may think it almost a pity that the lady cannot deal similarly with Mr. SHEPPARD himself in just reprisal for his long-winded and nebulous way of talking about Anti-Christ and Armageddon, and for his revolting incidents of murder and insanity introduced without any excuse of necessity. The book contains a considerable element of lively if undiscriminating humour, but its insistence on the gruesome is so unfortunate that unless his hero's future fate be already irrevocably fixed in manuscript one would like to remind the author that essays in this kind are the easiest form of all literary effort and the least supportable.