Mr. Bridges deliberately adopts the attitude of the laudator temporis acti se puero. The worst of this prose is that, just as it may attract the sympathy of men of his own generation, it inevitably repels slightly those of a younger. Nothing is more tiresome than to listen to judgments on life and manners whose chief point lies in the opening words, "Well, I tell you in 185—we did not," or "we did"—such criticism automatically provokes the retort, "Well, this isn't 185—," whereat your ancient growls, "I would to God it were," and youth and eld stand back to uncomfortable back, with no chance of doing any useful work.
Fortunately Mr. Bridges, although angry at the modern depreciation of things Victorian, is better than his threat. He is not too comparative, and although overfond of censure, his blame has a humorous quality which keeps it inoffensive. At times the humour is unconscious, as in Mr. Bridges' charming suggestion that the beauty of the primrose is more noticed and "more respected" because ardent Tory enthusiasm associated Peter Bell's flower with the late Lord Beaconsfield: but Mr. Bridges' essentially "pawky" quality of mind—we use the word in an amiable sense—crops out not infrequently as, for instance, in his grave statement that he would be "in favour of a law forbidding anyone to own more than 150 newspapers."
Mr. Bridges gives an account of his schooldays under a flogging master, which adds yet another count to the indictment against Victorian methods of education. He does not tell us much that is unfamiliar, either of Eton or Oxford, though many will be glad to have his description of the old-time Don, and the Dean Gaisford's letter to a noble father who enquired after his son's University progress:
"My Lord, Such letters give much trouble to
"Your humble servant,
"The Dean of Christ Church."
In the late fifties Mr. Bridges visited Canada and the United States, and he records his conviction that Senator Douglas was Lincoln's "superior as speaker and politician," a verdict which makes one wonder a little what his standards of oratory are, and how a politician, obviously inferior in moral character, who also fails to keep his country's confidence can be called the inferior of one who wins its trust. Mr. Bridges abandoned his plan to settle in the New World, and returned to England and started farming, first in the Eastern counties and subsequently in Shropshire. In the chapters dealing with his life in rural England he sketches some village types for the reader with a genuine feeling for character. Particularly good is the final chapter, "A Survival," with its touching picture of Old Tom, "the last survivor hereabouts of the old-style agricultural labourer." Whatever one's political colour, one cannot help sympathising with Mr. Bridges and Old Tom in their lament at the decay of rural England, and at the growth of conditions which made it possible for "more and more people to wax rich in London and in the big towns, while no one can earn a living in the country." Though the latter ceased to be true during the war, one is yet uncertain how far the prosperity then enjoyed by the farmer will continue as war conditions slowly depart.
THE LIFE OF LIZA LEHMANN. By Herself. T. Fisher Unwin. 10s. 6d. net.
Born in London, daughter of a Scotswoman, educated in Italy, married to an Englishman, Liza Lehmann's heart—and she was a woman who always let her heart rule her head—was unconsciously fixed in England. Yet as we turn the pages of her autobiography there is hardly one in which we do not feel conscious that she belonged by unalterable temperament to the land of Die Gartenlaube and Familie Buchholz. Many English singers and audiences in the happy days before the war have felt that for all their devotion to Schumann, the domestic intimacies of Frauenliebe und Leben were too intensely German for an English sense of proportion and sense of humour. Let them read The Life of Liza Lehmann in their own tongue, and they will turn with relief to the reticence and dignity of Chamisso's lyrics. It is evident that she was a woman who never did an act, never cherished a thought, that was not a kind one. She collaborated in an opera with Mr. Laurence Housman; he considered that she had wrecked his play, she thought that he had wrecked her music; but she records the awkward incident without the least trace of ill-will, nay, without the least supposition that he or anyone else in the world could have borne ill-will to her. Liszt, Brahms, Browning, and Verdi were among her acquaintances; but she has little to tell us about them. They counted for far less in her life than Madame Clara Butt, Mr. Kennerley Rumford, Mr. Arthur Boosey, and Mr. Landon Ronald; and even these were unsubstantial shadows compared to her mother, her husband, and her sons. A large proportion of her book is taken up with newspaper criticisms and interviews, mostly American. They gave the authoress no little pleasure, and they will give the reader no little amusement; indeed, as studies of American literary style, they are most instructive. The final chapter, dealing with the death of her elder son, so shortly to be followed by her own, can hardly be touched upon in a review; it seems an intrusion to read it.
THE GLORY OF THE COMING. By Irvin S. Cobb. Hodder & Stoughton. 7s. net.
THE 25TH DIVISION IN FRANCE AND FLANDERS. Harrison. 4s. net.
These two war books, extremely dissimilar, belong to two well-known types. Mr. Cobb is an American journalist, and he gives a lively, journalistic account of the coming and doing of the American armies in France. The other book is a detailed and somewhat bare record of the doings of the 25th Division, by Lieut.-Col. M. Kincaid-Smith. The 25th Division made a great name for itself in the war; this book shows that it was not unearned.