(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
I was some way into _Thorgills of Treadholt_ (WARD, LOCK), thinking
what an unusually plausible and imaginative yarn it was, when I turned
back for possible enlightenment, and found a note to the effect that
it was a transcription of an Icelandic saga. Those old fellows knew
their business. I am not sagacious enough to guess where Mr. MAURICE
HEWLETT has passed beyond transcription to creation, but I can tell
you that he offers his readers a very charming and finished piece of
work. Boys of all ages should delight in this record of the fights and
wanderings and stout diplomacy of the chieftain _Thorgills_, who was
destined from his cradle to be a notable leader of men. His marriage
with _Thorey_ was a romance of as exquisite a flavour as any that our
sophisticated age can show, and its tragic end wrings the heart with
its infinite pathos. By some singular discretion Mr. HEWLETT has
chosen to eschew the least approach to Wardour-Street idiom, and
this gives the narrative a simplicity, a sanity and a vivid sense of
reality which are extraordinarily more effective than the goodliest
tushery, of which flamboyant art Mr. HEWLETT is no mean master. I
am sure he has chosen this time a more excellent way. There are
transcriptions and transcriptions. This is brilliantly done.
* * * * *
I cannot help regretting that Miss RHODA BROUGHTON has not thought fit
to publish her total fictional tonnage (if without disrespect I may
employ a metaphor of the moment) on the title-page of her latest
volume. Certainly the tale of her output must by this time reach
impressive dimensions. And the wonder is that _A Thorn in the Flesh_
(STANLEY PAUL) betrays absolutely no evidence of staleness. If the
outlook here is a thought less romantic than in certain novels that
drew sighs from my adolescent breast, this is a change inherent in
the theme. For the matter of the present work is a study in conjugal
tedium. _Parthenope_ (name of ill-omen) was one of those unhappy and
devastating beings who go through life fated to bore their nearest
and dearest to the verge of lunacy. So that her marriage to poor
well-meaning _Willy Steele_ had not endured for more than a matter of
weeks before the wretched man fled from his newly-made nest, with the
heart-cry (uttered to _Parthenope's_ female relatives, themselves
too sympathetic to resent it), "I cannot stand her any longer!"
This unfortunate _débâcle_ is very ingeniously contrasted with the
courtship of another couple, immune from the curse; and the whole
story is as fresh as it is amusing. Perhaps it might have been told in
fewer words; at times the slender theme seems a trifle overladen. But
probably your true Broughtonians (who must be reckoned in thousands)
would condemn such a suggestion as heresy; and, if they be satisfied,
as they certainly will be, then all is well.
* * * * *
It is a tribute at once to the art of her treatment and the actuality
of her theme that, after reading the delicate little study of modern
romance that ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL calls _The Lovers_ (HEINEMANN),
I cannot determine whether the clever writer was reproducing or
inventing--she begins so convincingly with the statement that it was
her first chapter, itself an article in _The Century_, describing the
life of The Lovers as she watched it from her window, that brought
about her friendship with the originals, and thus her knowledge of
their further history. Anyhow, true or not, it is the kind of story
that has been going on all round us in these days of love and heroism.
Mrs. PENNELL first began to watch her pair of _amoureux_ in their
attic, which was overlooked from her higher window (most readers
could probably make a shrewd guess at its postal district) in those
seemingly so distant years when the young champions of artistic London
used to meet at a certain _café_, wonderfully clad, to consume vast
quantities of milk. Then came the War; the boy-husband enlisted, went
to the Front--and the end is as we all have known it many and many
times. In this little book the too familiar story is given with a
restraint and absence of striving after effect that leave me, as I
say, uncertain whether its appeal is due to art or actuality. But in
either case Mrs. PENNELL has told it very well.
* * * * *
"Father, what is the difference between Tories and Radicals?"
"Radicals, my dear, are the infamous crew who wish to destroy all the
noble institutions for which the Tories would give their life-blood."
"And which are you, Father?" I have inflicted this ancient (and, I
always think, rather touching) scrap of dialogue upon you because it
exactly illustrates my impression of _The Soul of Ulster_ (HURST
AND BLACKETT). In other words, this little book, written as ably and
attractively as you would expect from the author of _The First Seven
Divisions_, is really less a dispassionate survey of the Home Rule
difficulty than a piece of special pleading for the Northern cause.
According, therefore, to your own attitude towards this problem will
characters occupies her rural stage--an old grandmother, be your
estimate of Lord ERNEST HAMILTON'S arguments. To the bigoted (or
confirmed) Orangeman they will seem revelation; to the confirmed (or
bigoted) Nationalist they will as clearly seem rubbish. Even I, who
admit the justice of the author's contentions, fancied now and again
(as in the matter of the "Peep-o'-Day Boys," for example) that a
slightly more generous admission of faults on his own side would have
strengthened the presentation of his case. One of the most interesting
chapters of a quite short volume is that in which the author explains
his belief, at first rather startling, that the eventual solution of
the vexed question may be provided through the Sinn Fein movement.
That hope, and the reasons for it, are certainly alone worth the
half-crown for which you can examine them.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "SEE THAT, SIR? 'FARM LABOURERS, MINIMUM TWENTY-FIVE
SHILLINGS A WEEK.' NOW, SIR, WOULD YOU ADVISE ME TO LEAVE MY PRESENT
OCCUPATION AND TAKE UP FARM-WORK?"]
* * * * *
SERGE AKSAKOFF, a distinguished Russian writer of the first half of
the nineteenth century, gave the world a portrait of his grandfather.
It is now translated with a singular felicity by Mr. J.D. DUFF, under
the title, _A Russian Gentleman_ (ARNOLD), and I should like to say
that I, who have suffered something from translations out of the
Russian, have very rarely read one which ran with such plausible
smoothness and gave so clear an impression of a charming original.
STEFAN MIHAILOVITCH BAGROFF was reckoned a good sort and a just
if rather uncompromising man. His character is drawn with faithful
exactness and praised with simple filial appreciation. The foibles
of this worthy patriarch, such as the dragging of his wife along the
floor when he was excessively annoyed, so that she went with her head
bound for a year thereafter, are excused on the ground of his general
decency. And indeed he was a lovable old boy, and the simple and
unselfconscious artistry with which the author develops his character,
and that of his daughter-in-law, SOFYA NIKOLAYEVNA, delights the jaded
literary palate. AKSAKOFF has a quite singular power of selecting just
the incident, the phrase, the gesture, the feature of the landscape
which make you exclaim with a start, "Why, I'm seeing and hearing all
this!" It is such a book as an historian of the modern school would
delight in, more engrossing than fiction of the most realistic type.
There is incident in it too--as of the degenerate KUROLYESSOFF, a
cousin-in-law of MIHAILOVITCH, who used to flog his serfs, sometimes
to death, for the pleasure of seeing them suffer; while the opening
pages, describing the trekking of the family out of far-eastern
Orenburg into the adjoining province of Ufa, and the building of the
mill and the dam, are astonishingly vivid and agreeable.
* * * * *
_A Maid o' Dorset_ (CASSELL) can be recommended to anyone in need of
light refreshment after a course of sterner literature. Here we are
back again in the world of small things; but if "M.E. FRANCIS'S" theme
is trivial there is no denying the art with which she handles it.
Just a quartette of characters occupies her rural stage--an old
grandmother, wise with the wisdom of years, her granddaughter, a
middle-aged farmer and a young gipsy "dairy-chap." To the horror of
her relations the Maid o' Dorset conceives an infatuation for the
gipsy, a clever rogue but no match for the grandmother. I have met
a good many farmers in my time, but never one so simple-minded as
_Solomon Blanchard_. It is all very Franciscan, and seems easy enough,
but if you think, for that reason, that you could do it yourself, you
couldn't. Its charm lies in its fragrance, and that is a quality which
is not lightly come by.
* * * * *