OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
"In a few days," says the puff preliminary of The Coming (CHATTO AND WINDUS), "you and all your friends will be reading and discussing this most strange and prophetic novel." Perhaps. But what we shall be saying about it depends largely, I suppose, upon our definition of the term prophetic; also a little upon our feeling with regard to good taste and the permissible in fiction. My own contribution will be a sincere regret that a writer as gifted as Mr. J.C. SNAITH should have attempted the obviously impossible. His theme, symbolised by a wrapper-design of three figures silhouetted against a golden sunrise, is a second advent of the Messiah, embodied in the person of a village carpenter named (with palpable significance) John Smith, whom local prejudice sends, not inexcusably, to a madhouse, where he dies, after converting the inmates and instituting a campaign of universal peace. Frankly, the chief interest of such a wildly fantastic idea lies in watching just how far Mr. SNAITH can carry it without too flagrant offence. That his treatment is both sincere and careful hardly lessens my feeling that the whole attempt is one to be deplored. Humour of the intentional kind has, of course, no place in the author's scheme. How remote is its banishment you may judge when I tell you that the Divine message is represented as given to mankind in the form of a wonderful play, which instantly achieves world-wide fame, being performed by no fewer than fifty companies in America alone. The problem (to name but one) of the resulting struggle between plenary inspiration and the conditions of a fit-up tour is only another proof of my contention that there are more things in heaven and earth than can be treated in realistic fiction, and that Mr. SNAITH'S good intentions have unfortunately betrayed him into selecting the least possible.
If Humphrey Thorncot and his sister Edith had not bored one another and grown touchy—I judge by their reported conversations—in a house with green shutters in Chelsea, they would never have gone to St. Elizabeth, which is a Swiss resort, and would never have met the East-Prussian family of the von Ludwigs in the year before the War. And Humphrey would never have fallen (temporarily) in love with Hulda von Ludwig, nor would Karl von Ludwig have fallen (permanently) in love with Edith Thorncot. The troubles and miseries of this latter couple are related by Mr. HUGH SPENDER in The Gulf (COLLINS). Papa von Ludwig objects so violently to all this love-making that he eventually succumbs to a regular East-Prussian stroke of apoplexy which all but leads to a charge of parricide against Karl by his base brother, Wilhelm. Karl is really too good for this world. He objects to atrocities and refuses at the risk of his own life to shoot innocent Belgian villagers. Being imprisoned, he escapes by means of a secret sliding panel and an underground passage which leads him, not immediately, but after many vicissitudes, to America. There he is joined by his faithful Edith, who defies the Gulf caused by the War, and marries him. Mr. SPENDER appears to have been in some doubt as to whether he should write the story of two souls or the history of the first few weeks of the War. Eventually he elects to do both, and his novel consequently suffers somewhat in grip. He certainly paints a very vivid picture of events in the first period of active operations. May I hint a doubt, by the way, whether in 1913 a French Professor would have mentioned HINDENBURG as one of Germany's most important men? Whatever he may have been in Germany, HINDENBURG was for the outside world a later discovery.
Further Memories (HUTCHINSON) is justly called by its publishers a "fascinating volume." The designation will not surprise those who enjoyed the late Lord REDESDALE'S former book of recollections. The present collection is a little haphazard (but none the worse for that), its chapters ranging over such diverse subjects as Gardens and Trees, QUEEN VICTORIA, BUDDHA, and the Commune. Certainly not the least interesting is that devoted to the story of the Wallace Collection, of which Lord REDESDALE was one of the trustees. His account of the origin and devolution of the famous treasures will invest them with a new interest in the happy days when they shall again be visible. Mr. EDMUND GOSSE contributes a foreword to the present volume, in which he draws a pathetic picture of the author, still unconquerably young, despite his years, facing the future with only one fear, that of the unemployment to which his increasing deafness, and the break-up of the world as it was before the War, seemed to be condemning him. Further Memories was, we are told, undertaken as some sort of a safeguard against this menace of stagnation. It was a measure for which we may all be glad, as we can share Mr. GOSSE'S thanksgiving that the writer's death, coming when it did, saved him, as he had wished, "from all consciousness of decrepitude."
When an unstable young wife, getting tired of a pedantic husband in the way so familiar to students of novels, goes off with a companion more to her taste, anyone can foresee trouble, or what would there be to write about? When, further, her detestable lover, seeking change and fearing the financial lash of his properly indignant parent, terminates the arrangement, even an observer of real life can guess that her return to her rightful lord and master must entail disagreeables; but only a reader well brazened in modern fiction could expect Don Juan promptly to make love to and marry the husband's sister without a word of apology to anyone. This kind of rather unsavoury dabbling in problems best left to themselves generally concludes with the decease of most of the characters and a sort of clearing up, and to this rule, after many years and pages of discomfort, MARY E. MANN'S new story, The Victim (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), is no exception. Not a very attractive programme, but all the same the volume has one or two redeeming features. For one thing, the sister is clearly and attractively drawn, and so is the picture on the wrapper, though it represents no particular incident to be traced in the pages of the volume which it adorns. Writing more strongly than is perhaps her wont, Mrs. MANN has taken some trouble to emphasise the fact that in these cases of uncontrolled passion the major penalty of guilt is borne not by the offenders themselves but by the first generation succeeding. This does need saying occasionally, I suppose, and to that extent The Victim redeems itself from the charge of trivial unpleasantness.