“Whimsical, entertaining and clever. Readers who liked ‘The Gay Dombeys’ will like this.”
+ Booklist 16:348 Jl ’20
“The incidents of the masculine masquerade partake more or less of the nature of a fairy tale, but even though they are not credible, they are delightful in their humor and their vigorous views of passing phases of this world of English art, science and society. Nothing human is alien to Sir Harry Johnston.” E. F. E.
+ Boston Transcript p8 My 29 ’20 2100w
“The single compelling section of the book is the middle one, in which the effects of the Pankhurst leadership are given with circumstantiality; but this is brief, and the rest falls away from it both in matter and tone. It seems curious that Sir Harry could have found so rich a pocket of ore and not have tried to mine it to the rock. ‘Mrs Warren’s daughter’ is a too-simple sketch of a notable subject, and it is nothing more.” C. M. R.
− + Freeman 1:597 S 1 ’20 280w + − Lit D p97 O 9 ’20 1700w
“In ‘The Gay-Dombeys’ there was the high gusto and boyish delight of a gifted man’s successful experiment in a new form of activity. His second book is notably less fresh and engaging.”
+ − Nation 110:950 Je 26 ’20 550w
“Those who knew the zoological, geographical, anthropological, and other learned London societies some thirty or forty years ago will read these books with a double interest, for they will find that Sir Harry’s characters resuscitate past chapters in the history of scientific life in London. The author, it is needless to say, uses a light and nimble pen to draw word-pictures seen from a highly individualistic Harry Johnstonian angle.”
+ Nature 106:339 N 11 ’20 360w