_(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)_
That audacious paraphrase of the Book of Job, _The Undying Fire_
(CASSELL), seems to me to be marred by a fundamentally false note. I am
sure that Mr. WELLS is as serious about his new God in the Heart of
Man as he was about the Invisible King--I've no sort of intention of
sneering--but I cannot credit him with belief in the Adversary, who by
arrangement with the Almighty (as set forth in a discreetly flippant
prologue with something of the flavour of those irreverent yarns
invented and retailed by Italian ecclesiastics about Dominiddio) visits
_Job Huss_, the headmaster of Woldingstanton, with the plagues of his
desperate trial. However I take it that the author was anxious that his
parody should be as complete in form as possible, and, being rather
impressed by the insouciance, not to say insolence, of the Satan of the
original, seized his chance of bizarre characterisation and "celestial
badinage" and let consistency go hang for the time. Certainly the
theological disquisitions of Mr. WELLS are remarkable not for their
formal logic, but for their provocative quality and the very real
eloquence of detached passages of the rambling argument. In particular,
taking up again the thread of _Joan and Peter_, he gives such a survey
of the scope and glories of a new education that is to salve the world's
wounds as would move the heart of a jelly-fish. Mr. WELLS has his own
methods of justifying the ways of God to man. He may be discursive,
impatient, rash, perhaps a little shallow; but he has an undying fire of
his own. He is certainly not dull. And therefore orthodox divines and
pedagogues may perhaps have a real grievance against him. But I can't
imagine any serious-minded man in a serious time reading this book and
not getting hope and courage from it.
* * * * *
_Victory Over Blindness_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is a book whose title
gives you at once the key to its contents and to the spirit that
animates them. It is the record by Sir ARTHUR PEARSON of one of the most
finely successful enterprises that the War has called forth. Everyone
to-day has at least a vague idea of the work carried on at St.
Dunstan's, "the biggest individual business," Sir ARTHUR terms it, "that
I have ever conducted." A study of these pages will transform that vague
idea into wonder and admiration. Big the business might well be called,
since it is nothing less than the bringing back, almost to normal life,
of men apparently condemned to an existence of helpless inactivity and
dependence. Few things will strike you more forcibly in this book than
its practical common sense. That and an unsentimental optimism seem to
be the dominant notes of all Sir ARTHUR'S effort. Without doubt the
success of this has been beyond measure helped by the fact that the
originator was himself a sharer in the adversity that it was designed
to lessen. Two chapters especially in the book, called "Learning to be
Blind," a brief manual of practical suggestions by one whom experience
has rendered expert, supply a clue to the difference between the work
at St. Dunstan's and the best-intentioned efforts of outside sympathy,
_Victory Over Blindness_ is a proud and rewarding motto; this little
volume will show how thoroughly it has been earned.
* * * * *
I fancy that Miss JOAN THOMPSON had some design of symbolism in the
choice of a name for her heroine, _Mary England_ (METHUEN). The
publishers indeed consider that she might be called "Every Woman," so
typical is she of her sex, and "so like to the emotional careers of so
many English girls is her own." Perhaps, on the other hand (without
disparagement to the skill of Miss THOMPSON'S portraiture), I should
have expected the typical maiden of _Mary's_ class to show greater
initiative. Many things nearly happened to _Mary_; practically nothing
in her life was fashioned by her own intent. Of the two men who might
have made her happy, one didn't propose at all, and one did it in the
wrong fashion. Other two, who seemed possibly menacing, both drifted
away with their evil purpose (if any) unfulfilled. I am wrong, though,
in recalling _Mary_ as invariably passive. She was once roused to the
action of destroying the manuscript of a novel, in which the writer, the
man who didn't propose, had too faithfully revealed his perception of
herself. But though, as a reviewer, I may applaud this achievement on
general grounds, it provided no kind of solution for the problem of her
existence. This was left to be settled, very much offhand, by a detached
iceberg, which sank the ship in which _Mary_ was emigrating. I thought
that iceberg rather an evasion on the part of Miss THOMPSON. Perhaps
however all this effect of drift is part of a subtle intention. I
can certainly call the book admirably written, with restraint and an
emotional sympathy that impressed me as the outcome probably of an
intimate knowledge of the scenes and persons described. Whether her
lethargy is "typical" or not, as a study _Mary England_ will hold you at
least sufficiently curious to deplore its arbitrary end.
* * * * *
Sir HARRY JOHNSTON has written a book which I find it difficult to
define. His publishers and Mr. H.G. WELLS call it a novel, but bits of a
biography and an autobiography and an African explorer's account of his
travels have all somehow squeezed themselves into it, and for readers
whose birthdays began before the last quarter of the nineteenth century
_The Gay-Dombeys_ (CHATTO AND WINDUS) will best justify itself as a
_chronique scandaleuse_. To penetrate the thin disguises in which the
author has dressed his notabilities and to sort the composite or hybrid
personalities into their component parts should provide the initiated
with congenial if not very edifying occupation. The reader who is also
a DICKENS enthusiast will be, according to temperament, delighted or
outraged to find that Sir HARRY JOHNSTON has made his book as it were a
continuation of _Dombey and Son_. Many of his characters are either the
creations of Boz or their children and he contrives to carry on the
interweaving of their lives to an unbelievable extent--even when
the fullest allowance has been made for the smallness of the world.
_Florence Dombey_ and _Walter Gay_, as _Mr._ and _Mrs. Gay-Dombey_,
actually survive well into the present book, while Sir HARRY JOHNSTON'S
_Eustace Morven_, who tells us that he has reverted to the ancient
spelling of his name, is the son of _Harriet Carker_ and that hazel-eyed
bachelor, _Mr. Morfin_, who lived and loved in _Dombey and Son_. But
save in the chapter describing _Eustace Morven's_ appearance at the
annual dinner-party given by _Florence_ and _Walter_ to celebrate the
re-establishment of the firm, Sir HARRY JOHNSTON'S work has not a very
pronounced flavour of DICKENS. It is to be hoped that this method of
writing novels will not become popular. A series of sequels to everybody
by somebody else opens up an intimidating prospect, at least for the
reviewer.
* * * * *
Mr. PHILIP GIBBS has gathered together, under the title. _Open Warfare,
the Way to Victory_ (HEINEMANN), his despatches written from the Western
front during the last year of the War. What strikes one most on seeing
them again in book form is the obscurity in which they veil the events
they record. They so shine, as it were, with a luminous mist that they
seem to reveal everything, yet in sober truth very often it is only
in the light of later knowledge that they reveal anything at all.
Congratulations, therefore, to Mr. GIBBS, the perfect war correspondent!
I defy anyone from these papers alone (apart from the plentiful and
excellent maps) to form anything like an adequate conception of the
disaster that swept down upon the British Armies in the Spring of 1918.
And yet in a sense it is all there, gorgeously camouflaged under the
control--I daresay the wise and necessary control--of the censorship.
The author, watching the very moulding of history with every advantage
of proximity, has written down, if not much bare statement, yet an
amazing sequence of heroic detail, associated with such stirring names
as Arras or Givenchy or Cambrai. Curiously enough, though each chapter
is intensely vivid, they become, through much instancing of the same
unconquerable spirit, something monotonous, though never wearisome, in
bulk. One trusts that a future generation will realise that the value of
a book of this order consists in its first-hand record of such incidents
of valour; it would be pitiful to have it hastily assumed, because so
much is slurred or omitted to deceive the enemy, that England was
so feeble-hearted as to require her evil news predigested before
consumption in this manner. It should be added that the writer gives us
a good sound introduction that goes a long way to fill the yawning gaps.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Gatekeeper (at castle of unpopular baron--to new
grocer's boy)._ "YOU SILLY IDIOT! WHY DON'T YOU GO ROUND TO THE
TRADESMEN'S GATE? GOOD THING YOU DIDN'T PULL THE BELL, OR YOU'D 'AVE
GOT A 'ALF TON OF BOILING LEAD ON TOP OF YOU. THIS IS THE _VISITORS_'
DOOR!"]
* * * * *
"GIRL WANTED.--A reliable girl for the summer months to go across
the Arm."--_Halifax Evening Mail_.
To prevent misapprehension we ought to say that the western part of the
bay at Halifax, Nova Scotia, is locally known as the "Arm."
* * * * *