(_BY MR. PUNCH'S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS._)
The latest of the now so fashionable short-story volumes to come my
way is one called _Our Casualty, Etc._ (SKEFFINGTON). Much virtue in
that "_Etc._," which covers other fifteen little tales in the best, or
nearly the best, "Birmingham" manner. I say "nearly," because for its
happiest expression the art of "Mr. GEORGE BIRMINGHAM" demands space
to tangle events into more complicated confusion than can be contrived
in the dozen pages of these episodes. But within their limitations
they are all excellent fun, partly concerned with the War (usually
with an Irishman involved), partly recalled from the piping and
whisky-drinking times of peace, at Inishmore and elsewhere. One
can only treat them after the manner of the schoolboy who declined
to distinguish between the Major and Minor Prophets. But I
rather specially enjoyed the title-piece, which tells how the
super-patriotism of an aged volunteer defeated the kindly plans of
those who would have saved him fatigue by assigning to him the rôle
of casualty in a trench-relief practice. Casualties also figure in
"Getting Even," an improbable but highly entertaining fiction of the
score practised by an ingenious Medical Officer (Irish, I need hardly
say) upon an over-zealous C.O., who, to keep him busy during a field
day, flooded his "clearing station" with all sorts of complicated
imaginary cases, only to find the fictitious victims arranged
comfortably in rows under the shade of the trees to await the Padre
and a burying party, the M.O. reporting that they had all died before
reaching him. It couldn't possibly happen as here told, but that
matters little, since, so far as I am concerned, a "Birmingham" tale
can always well afford to dispense with credibility.
* * * * *
I am distinctly grateful to ROSE MACAULAY for _What Not_ (CONSTABLE).
It brought me the pleasantest end to anything but a perfect English
Spring day. She has wit, not so common a gift that you can afford
just to take it for granted; she knows when to stop, selecting not
exhausting; and she makes her epigrams by the way, as it were,
without exposing the process of manufacture. (Other epigrammatists
please copy.) Miss MACAULAY'S "prophetic comedy" is a joyous rag
of Government office routine, flappery, Pelmania, Tribunals, State
advertising, the Lower Journalism and "What Not." That audacious
eugenist, _Nicky Chester_, first Minister of Brains in the post-war
period of official attempts to raise the nation from C3 to something
nearer A1 on the intellectual plane, happens, because of his family
history, to be uncertified for marriage. He also happens to fall very
desperately in love with his secretary, _Kitty Grammont_, and the
conflict between duty and desire becomes the theme--perhaps just a
little too heavy--of an extravaganza that is happiest in its lighter
and more irreverent moments. Which is to say that _What Not_ wanders
out of the key. But what on earth does that matter if one is made to
laugh quite often and to smile almost continuously at a very shrewd
piece of observation, whimsicality and tempered malice? And you will
like the serene _Pansy Ponsonby_ (out of "Hullo, Peace!"), who could
scarcely be called _Kitty's_ "sister-in-law," but was of the most
faithful. The odd thing is that under all her gibing the author
seems to have a queer furtive admiration for her precious Ministry
of Brains.
* * * * *
Among the many things I like in DORETHEA CONYERS' novels is the
artistic subtlety, achieved by few of our other novelists, with which
she manages to write them as it were in character. I am quite sure
that if _Berenice Ermyntrude Nicosia Nevin_, who is called by her
initials on the cover and inside by what they spell, had tried to
write a novel it would have been remarkably like _B.E.N._ (METHUEN).
There would have been the same keen delight in horses, hunting and
Irish scenery, and the same cheerful disregard for such trifles as
spelling or such conventions as making quite sure that your reader
knows which character is speaking at any given moment, and the same
excellent humour, which, if it is at the expense of the Irish, is
kindly enough for all that. It seems to me that in her new novel Mrs.
CONYERS, wisely refusing to stray to that suburbia in which her gifts
lack this charm, has recaptured much of the careless rapture of her
earliest books; and very careless and very rapturous they wore. But I
am not quite sure that in real life even _Ben_, when as second whip to
the East Cara hounds she lost her horse, would have found an aeroplane
useful to catch up with. In case it should be objected that anything
so funny as the tea at _Miss Talty's_ never could happen, even in the
Caher Valley district, I want to put it on record here and now that it
could and does.
* * * * *
_The Mystery Keepers_ (LANE), by MARION FOX, reminds me of the old
riddle, "What is it that has feathers and two legs, and barks like
a dog?"--the answer being a stork. People who protest that a stork
doesn't bark like a dog are told that that part is put in to make
it harder. I find that the greater part of the mystery kept by _The
Mystery Keepers_ is put in to make it harder. The Abbey at Clynch St.
Mary has a "coise" put on it by the last Abbess, and every direct
male heir expires punctually on his twenty-first birthday. The actual
agency is a poisoned ring concealed in the frame of a portrait of
the malevolent Abbess and is in the custody of the _Otway_ family,
who enjoy a prescriptive if nebulous right to be stewards of the
property. Just how or why the _Otways_--noble fellows, we are given to
understand--carry out the deceased Abbess's nefarious wishes with such
precision and despatch is not explained. Anyway the mother of the last
victim, who has found out the secret, steals the ring, murders the
_Otway_ of the period, and retires to a lunatic asylum after her son
has himself stolen the ring from her workbox and poisoned himself into
the next world. That finishes it. The ring retires to a museum and the
proper people marry each other. It is a slender and quite impossible
story, but told in a clever way which goes far to redeem its lack of
substance.
* * * * *
_The Graftons_ (COLLINS) is a sequel to Mr. ARCHIBALD MARSHALL'S
former chronicle of the same pleasant family. Herein you shall find
them, pursuing the even tenor of their prosperous way, father, son and
charming daughters, and arriving placidly at the point where, in the
natural sequence of events, these daughters leave the paternal nest
for others provided by eligible mates. Their courtships, and some mild
uncertainty as to whether papa _Grafton_, well-preserved and wealthy
widower, will or will not follow the example of his female offspring,
provide the entire matter of the book. For the rest Mr. MARSHALL is
content to mark time (and very pleasantly) with pictures of English
country life at its most comfortable, and in particular with some
comedy scenes, excellently done, turning upon the often delicate
relationship of Hall and Parsonage. There are a couple of clerical
portraits in the book that seem to me as lifelike as anything of the
kind since _Barchester_. Apart from this the outstanding virtue of
the _Graftons_ is the reality of their dialogue. Precisely thus do,
or did, actual people speak in the quiet old times before the War;
precisely thus also did nothing whatever of any consequence happen
to the vast majority of them. Since, however, the truth and charm of
the tale depend upon this absence of the sensational, I must the more
regret that Messrs. COLLINS, who have printed it exquisitely, should
have been betrayed into a coloured wrapper of almost grotesque
ineptitude.
* * * * *
In _Graduation_ (CHATTO AND WINDUS) there is an essential femininity
about Miss IRENE RUTHERFORD McLEOD'S style and general attitude that
imposes limitations; it is a quality that shows itself not only in
her plot, but in her characters, the three reputed males who figure
therein being as fine examples of true womanliness as you need wish
to meet. _Frieda_ was the heroine (a name somehow significant); and of
the trouser-wearers, the first, _Geoffrey_, was a cat-like deceiver,
who fascinated poor _Frieda_ for ends unspecified, pretended (the
minx!) to be keen on the Suffrage movement, which he wasn't, and
concealed a wife; the second was a Being too perfect to endure beyond
Chapter 10, where he expires eloquently of heart-failure, leaving
_Alan_, the third, to bear the white man's burden and clasp _Frieda_
to his maidenly heart. This sentimental progress is, I suppose, what
is implied by the title and the symbolic staircase (if it _is_ a
staircase?) on the wrapper. But my trouble was that I could never
discern in the sweet girl-graduate any development of character from
the pretentious futility of her earliest appearance. Perhaps I am
prejudiced. Undeniably Miss McLEOD can draw a certain type of prig
with a horrible facility. But the antiquated modernity of her scheme,
flooded as it is with the New Dawn of, say, a decade ago, and its
bland disregard of everything that has happened since, ended by
violently irritating me. Others may have better luck.
* * * * *
Spring has been slow in coming, but I got something more than a whiff
of actual summer when _Under Blue Skies_ (HUTCHINSON) came my way. Mr.
DE VERD STACPOOLE is at the top of his form, and it is a real pleasure
to recommend an author who brings to his tales of adventure so nice
a sense of style and so keen a feeling for character. In "The Frigate
Bird" the rapscallions who seize a schooner and, without any knowledge
of navigation, sail the high seas, are full-blooded adventurers; but
there is all the difference in the world between the character of the
educated _Carlyon_ and that of the simple-minded and ignorant _Finn_.
This yarn occupies nearly half of the book, and the other stories
should give food for thought to those who allege that no Englishman
can write a short story. Apart from one charming little tale of a
haunted French _château_ Mr. STACPOOLE allows us to bask here in the
eternal summer of Pacific skies. I am very grateful for my sun-bath.
* * * * *
In _Poems of the Great War_, by Mrs. ROBERTSON-GLASGOW, readers
of _Punch_ will recognise some of the best serious poems that have
appeared in these pages of recent years. The little half-crown volume
in which they reappear has been admirably printed at S. Aldhelm's
Home for Boys, Frome, and may be bought at SMITH'S in Kensington High
Street.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Voice of Tommy in audience_. "NAH THEN, MATE, WHY
DON'T YER DIG YERSELF IN?"]