MORE ADVENTURES OF A POST-WAR SPORTSMAN.
Master. "Hi! you! 'Ware beans. Don't you know beans when you see 'em?"
P.-W.S. "They're the little things they puts in tins with pork, ain't they?"
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
During the past few years the plays and stories, especially the stories, of Anton Tchehov have so triumphantly captured English-speaking readers that there must be many who will welcome with eagerness the volume of his Letters (Chatto and Windus). This happy chance we owe, of course, directly to Mrs. Constance Garnett, who here proves once again that in her hands translation ranks as a fine art. Both the Letters and the Biographical Sketch that precedes them are of extraordinary charm and interest. Because Tchehov's stories are so conspicuously uncoloured by the personality of their writer (his method being, as it were, to lead the reader to a window of absolute transparency and bid him look for himself), it comes almost as a shock to find how vivid and many-hued that personality in fact was. Nor is it less astonishing to observe a nature so alive with sympathy expressing itself in an art so detached. More than once his letters to literary friends are concerned with a defence of this method: "Let the jury judge them; it's my job simply to show what sort of people they are." They are filled also with a thousand instances of the author's delight in nature, in country sights and scents, and of his love and understanding for animals (from which of the Tales is it that one recalls the dog being lifted into the cart "wearing a strained smile"?) Throughout too, if you have already read the eight little volumes that contain the stories—which I certainly advise as a preliminary—you will be continually experiencing the pleasure of recognising the inspiration for this or that remembered scene. In short, one of the most fascinating books that has come my way for a long time.
I needn't pretend that Bed and Black (Methuen), by Grace S. Richmond, is what is known to the superior as a serious work of art or that the men (particularly) of her creating are what would be called likely. But there's a sincerity about the writing which one has to respect. Of her two heroes, Red is Redfield Pepper Burns, the rude and rugged doctor, and Black is the Rev. Robert McPherson Black, the perfect paragon of a padre in an American provincial town. The author's main thesis is that padres are made of the right stuff. Black, who was all for getting into the War from the beginning, rushes off to Europe as chaplain with the first American drafts, gets wounded, decorated and married. The conversion of Red Pepper, the doctor, and of Jane Ray, who became Mrs. Black, is a little too easily contrived to be very convincing. But this is a simple work for simple souls who like a wholesome tale with a distinct list to the side of the angels. Such untoward conduct as here appears is not put in for its own interesting sake, but merely to bring out the white-souled nobility of the principals.
If I had to select an author likely to win the long-distance dialogue race of the British Isles I should, after reading Uncle Lionel (Grant Richards), unhesitatingly vote for Mr. S.P.B. Mais. It is not however so much the verbosity as the gloom of Mr. Mais's characters that leaves me fretful. Nowadays, when a novel begins with a married hero and heroine, we should be sadly archaic if we expected the course of their conjugal love to run smoothly; but I protest that Michael and Patricia overdid their quarrels, or, at any rate, that we are told too many details about them. And when these people were nasty to each other they could be very horrid. All which would not trouble me half so much if I were not sure that Mr. Mais, in his desire to he forceful and modern, is inflicting a quite unnecessary handicap upon himself. At present he is in peril of wrecking his craft upon some dangerous rocks which (though I know it's not the right name for rocks) I will call "The Doldrums." My advice to him is to cheer up. And the sooner the better, for all of us.