(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
Murders, divorces, by-elections and new insurance schemes from time to
time occupy the most conspicuous columns of the daily Press and receive
our deep attention, but these things occur suddenly and are soon
forgotten. Civil war in Mexico preceded and outlives them all as a
matter of sensation, and the psychological moment in the career of that
other "distressful country" is interminable. How the revolutions began,
in what manner they continue and when they are likely to end, are
questions which agitate the minds of men when they read their morning
papers at breakfast, their evening papers after dinner and their reviews
over the week-end. It was obvious that some qualified student of affairs
should forget the events of the moment, visit Mexico at whatever risk to
himself, personally witness the internecine squabbles in progress, and,
if he was lucky enough to survive the experience, write up the matter in
a compact and entertaining volume for our better understanding of the
whole. Having regard to the present condition of the country as I now
understand it, I should say there was no rush of applications for the
job; certainly if my Editor should ask me to go out there and test the
accuracy of Mr. H. HAMILTON FYFE'S observations, as expressed in _The
Real Mexico: a Study on the Spot_ (HEINEMANN), I should at once discover
an important engagement to prevent my accepting his kind invitation. Mr.
FYFE'S narrative is, however, too graphic and his description too real
to admit of doubt; I am glad that there was no competition and his
subject has been left to be dealt with by the best man for the purpose.
Given the title of the book and the name of the author, there is no more
need of recommendation to the English public; but I beg Messrs. WILSON
and BRYAN (of the U.S.A.) to read, mark, learn and, if their physique is
capable of the feat, inwardly digest it. They should know, in glaring
detail, the ills general and individual resulting from what the American
resident in Mexico calls their "grape-juice" policy.
* * * * *
Four imprisonments of varying lengths, one of them including forcible
feeding, presumably give Lady CONSTANCE LYTTON a right to record her
experiences, and the chronicle she presents in _Prisons and Prisoners_
(HEINEMANN) is telling through its very simplicity and directness. Such
a tale would be hardly likely to prove other than "an indictment of our
existing prison system" (as orators have it); but Lady CONSTANCE LYTTON
is careful to punctiliousness in her recognition of the kindness and
natural sympathy of many of the officials, even while she condemns the
rules and regulations which tend to cramp and stifle the gentler side of
human nature. Still, our prison system has had to stand a good deal of
attack before this. We should most of us be thankful to change it if we
knew how, and I need never despise hints in this direction. The interest
of the book, however, is by far the greatest when it is regarded as a
running commentary on the modern feminist movement. It is impossible to
read such a book seriously without feeling a strong admiration for the
courage, self-sacrifice and resolution it reflects, and at the same time
a quite appalling sense of waste. When a way has been found to apply to
the needs of our bewildered country the powers of such women as form the
heroines of Lady CONSTANCE LYTTON'S book, I for one shall not be
surprised if things begin to happen. But at present the results that
they have achieved, even upon their own showing and apart from all
criticism of methods, seem quite incommensurate with the amount of
trouble and pain.
* * * * *
In _The Custody of the Child_ (HUTCHINSON) Mr. PHILIP GIBBS has chosen a
difficult theme--the story of a broken home, told from the child's point
of view, and he has handled it like an artist. Of the three books into
which this biography of _Nicholas Barton_ is divided, the first is so
much the best that the second seems a little tame. This was, of course,
inevitable, for the first book is the thunderstorm, the second the
gentle rain which follows it. I have another reason for deriving
particular pleasure from the opening book, and that is that the scene is
laid in a Battersea Park flat. I have long since marked down Battersea
as one of London's most romantic neighbourhoods. To a child, the
curiously mingled intimacy and exclusiveness of life among the
cliff-dwellers of that long road facing the Park, where you drop your
toys out of your front garden (which house-agents call a balcony) and
see them impounded as legitimate gifts that have dropped from Heaven by
a perfect stranger in the front garden of the ground-floor flat, must be
a perpetual wonder. Mr. GIBBS has brought this out so persuasively that
I have shaken hands with him after each sentence. There is not an
incident in Book I. that is not exactly right. The rest of the story,
with its courageous avoidance of unmitigated happiness in the ending,
never fails to arrest, unless for a moment or so in the middle; but for
me at least the real charm of the volume lies in Book I.
* * * * *
"Let us try to avoid the detestable trick of sentimentality when dealing
with this beloved, presuming, gallant, unhappy man." So Mrs. EVAN NEPEAN
adjures us and herself; and it must be confessed that the warning was
needed. For the man was JAMES, Duke of MONMOUTH, a study of whom she has
written under the title of _On the Left of a Throne_ (LANE); and of all
the Stuarts he is the one about whom it is most difficult to avoid being
sentimental. Mrs. NEPEAN has perhaps just succeeded, but only just; and
we will agree, therefore, to call her style vividly enthusiastic. She is
quite frankly in love with MONMOUTH throughout. That wonderful,
dangerous beauty fascinates her; and who, looking at the delightful
portraits with which the book abounds, is going to blame her or anyone
else for yielding to its charm? One fortunate result of this attitude is
that the Fairy Prince of the seventeenth century lives again in the pages
of this fervent admirer as he would never have lived in those of a
colder historian. Dancing, riding, hunting, raking and fighting, we are
bound to feel about him much as old PEPYS did, who called him, in a
memorable and picturesque phrase, "skittish and leaping," and, for all
his righteous disapproval, admired with the best. "How he would have
loved flying!" is Mrs. NEPEAN'S very characteristic comment upon a
record of her hero's graceful activities. For one thing especially does
the writer of this study deserve gratitude. She dwells purposely as
little as possible upon the details of the rebellion; but she has made
it her duty to win back for MONMOUTH some of the credit for personal
courage of which popular history has been too ready to deprive him. Here
you may read how, after the short agony of nerves was over, he faced
death with a placid and untheatrical bravery, than which the long
records of the scaffold show nothing finer. It is a profoundly moving
end to a fascinating story.
* * * * *
[Illustration: OUR CURIO CRANKS.