(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks_.)
Mr. S.P.B. MAIS, in a dedicatory letter to _Interlude_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL),
tells us that he has "simply tried to show what a man constituted like
Shelley would have made of his life had he bean alive in 1917." Without any
doubt his attempt has succeeded. I am, however, bound to add this warning
(if Mr. MAIS'S is not enough), that a novel with such a purpose is not, and
could not be, milk for babes. Nothing that I had previously read of Mr.
MAIS'S had prepared me for the proficiency he shows here. Obviously
attached to the modern school of novelists, he has many of its faults and
more of its virtues. One may accept his main point of view, yet be offended
sometimes by his details. But the fact remains that in _Geoffrey Battersby_
he has given us a piece of character-drawing almost flawlessly perfect. Not
for a very long time has it been my good fortune to attend such a triumph,
and I wish to proclaim it. The women by whom _Geoffrey_, the weak and the
wayward, was attracted hither and thither are also well drawn; but here Mr.
MAIS shows his present limitations. Nevertheless I feel sure that he has
within him the qualities that go to make a great novelist, and that if he
will free himself from certain marked prejudices his future lies straight
and clear before him.
* * * * *
It was a happy idea of the Sisters MARY and JANE FINDLATER to call their
new book of short stories _Seen and Heard_ (SMITH, ELDER), with the
sub-title, _Before and After 1914_. I say short stories, but actually these
have so far outgrown the term that a half-dozen of them make up the volume.
They are all examples of the same gentle and painstaking craft that their
writers have before now exhibited elsewhere. Here are no sensational
happenings; the drama of the tales is wholly emotional. My own favourites
are the first, called "The Little Tinker," a half-ironical study of the
temptation of a tramp mother to surrender her child to the blessings of
civilisation; and how, by the intervention of a terrible old woman, the
queen of the tribe, this momentary weakness was overcome. My other choice,
the last tale in the collection (and the only one contributed by Miss MARY
FINDLATER), is a dour little comedy of the regeneration, through poverty
and hard work, of two underemployed and unpleasant elderly ladies. A
restful book, such as will keep no one awake at nights, but will give
pleasure to all who appreciate slight studies of ordinary life sketched
with precise and careful finish.
* * * * *
_Their Lives_ (STANLEY PAUL) has at least this point of originality, that
it ends with the wedding of somebody other than the heroine, or rather, I
should say, the chief heroine, because, strictly speaking, all three
daughters of _Mr._ and _Mrs. Radmall_ might be said jointly to fill this
post, but it is _Christina_, the eldest, who fills most of it. The other
two were named _Virgilia_ and _Orinthia_, and I can't say that these
horrific labels did them any injustice. As for the story of "their lives,"
as VIOLET HUNT tells it, there is really nothing very much to charm in a
history of three disagreeable children developing into detestable young
women. Perhaps it may have some value as a study of feminine adolescence,
but I defy anyone to call the result attractive. Its chief incident, which
is (not to mince matters) the attempted seduction by _Christina_ of a
middle-aged man, the father of one of her friends, mercifully comes to
nothing. I like to believe that this sort of thing is as unusual as it is
unpleasant. For the rest, the picture of the "artistic" household in which
the children grew up, of their managing mother, and the slightly soured and
disappointed painter their father, is drawn vividly enough. But what
unamiable people they all are! "MILES IGNOTUS," who supplies a quaintly
attractive little preface, in which he speaks of having read the book in
proof under shell-fire, affects to discover in them a kinship with Prussia.
Certainly they are almost frightful enough.
* * * * *
Having read all about _The Rise of Ledgar Dunstan_ (DUCKWORTH) from
obscurity to wealth, literary success and aristocratic wedlock, I should be
infinitely content to leave him at that and have done; but Mr. ALFRED
TRESIDDER SHEPPARD warns us that there is more to follow, and even hints
that the sequel, opening in July, 1914, may in many respects be far indeed
from the dulness of happily-ever-after. If _Ledgar_ had been satisfied to
marry the sweetheart of his school-days there might have been some danger
of such a disaster; but, having put his humble past, including his
Nonconformist conscience, too diligently behind him for that, he will have
to face whatever his author and the KAISER may have in store, supported
only by a wife who is going, I trust and believe, to revenge on him all the
irritation which she and I both felt at his attitude of unemotional
superiority towards all the world. Some people may think it almost a pity
that the lady cannot deal similarly with Mr. SHEPPARD himself in just
reprisal for his long-winded and nebulous way of talking about Anti-Christ
and Armageddon, and for his revolting incidents of murder and insanity
introduced without any excuse of necessity. The book contains a
considerable element of lively if undiscriminating humour, but its
insistence on the gruesome is so unfortunate that unless his hero's future
fate be already irrevocably fixed in manuscript one would like to remind
the author that essays in this kind are the easiest form of all literary
effort and the least supportable.
* * * * *
_With Serbia into Exile_ (MELROSE) is a book that will suffer little from
the fact that its tragic tale has already been told by several other pens.
Mr. FORTIER JONES, the writer, has much that is fresh to say, and a very
fresh and vigorous way of saying it. His book and himself are both American
of the best kind--which is to say, wonderfully resourceful, observant,
sympathetic and alive. From a newspaper flung away by a stranger on the
Broadway Express, Mr. JONES first became aware that men were wanted for
relief work in Serbia, and "in an hour I had become part of the
expedition." That is a phrase characteristic of the whole book. Though the
matter of it is the story, "incredibly hideous and incredibly heroic," of a
nation going into exile, Mr. JONES has always a keen eye for the
picturesque and even humorous aspects of the tragedy; he has a quick sense
of the effective which enables him to touch in many haunting pictures--the
delusive peace of a sunny Autumn day among the Bosnian mountains; the face
of KING PETER seen for a moment by lamplight amid a crowd of refugees; and
countless others. More than a passing mention also is due to the many quite
admirable snapshots with which the volume is illustrated. The author seems
successfully to have communicated his own gifts of observation and
selection to his camera, an instrument only too apt to betray those who
look to it for support. One is glad for many reasons to think that our
American cousins will read this book.
* * * * *
_The Man in the Fog_ (HEATH, CRANTON) is a book that I find exceedingly
hard to classify. Its author, Mr. HARRY TIGHE, has several previous stories
to his credit, all of which seem to have moved the critics to pleasant
sayings. But for my own part I have frankly to confess that I found _The
Man in the Fog_ somewhat wheezy company. The _Man_ of the title was a kind
of Northern Joseph, dismissed from a promising partnership with Potiphar
after a domestic intrigue on the lines of the original. The fog happens
when, years later, he meets the daughter of Mrs. Potiphar returning to her
mother's house, and (at the risk of the poor girl catching her death)
detains her on the front step with foggy allusions to the mysterious past.
I may mention that his own conduct in the interval had been such as I can
only regard as a lamentable relapse from the altitude of the earlier
chapters. But it is all vastly serious--it would perhaps be unkind to say
sententious--and wholly unruffled by the faintest suggestion of comedy. For
which reason I should never be startled to learn that HARRY TIGHE was
either youthful, Scotch, or female (or indeed, for that matter, all three).
In any case I can only hope that he, or she, will not resent my parting
advice to cultivate a somewhat lighter touch, and the selection of such
words as come easily from the tongue. Some of the dialogue in the present
book is painfully unhuman.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "GOD BLESS THE OLD WOMAN! SHE _IS_ THOUGHTFUL. I TOLD 'ER
THERE WAS ICE IN THE TRENCHES THE LARST TIME I WROTE, AND I'M BLEST IF SHE
'ASN'T SENT ME A PAIR OF SKATES!"]
* * * * *
A Great Problem Solved.
Some carry their season tickets in their hat-bands, others fasten them on
their wrists, others wear them attached to cords. A correspondent writes:--
"In my own overcoat I find an ingenious arrangement excellently suited
for the purpose of carrying a season ticket, so that it shall be at
once secure and easily accessible. The tailor has made a horizontal
slit, about two-and-a-half inches wide, in the right side of the coat,
and cunningly inserted a small rectangular bag or pouch of linen, the
whole thing being strongly stitched and neatly finished off with a
flap. It makes an admirable receptacle for a season ticket of ordinary
dimensions, and I recommend this contrivance to those who may not be
acquainted with it."
* * * * *
"Well-fed as we are at home, and conscious that the men who are
fighting our battles are the best provisioned forces who ever took the
field, we can contemplate the continuance of the coldest weather for
twenty years with equanimity."--_Daily Chronicle_.
Or even for the duration of the War.