(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
I have reason to believe that Scotland Yard has on occasion displayed
considerable intelligence, and I regret that novelists will never allow
it to be as cunning even as myself in guessing the identity of the
villains of their criminal plots. Mrs. Charles Bryce, for instance,
might, without unduly taxing the imagination, have credited the Force
with the coup of bringing to justice the murderer of _Mrs. Vanderstein_,
but she went out of her way to employ that marvellous amateur, _Mr.
Gimblet_, for the purpose. I must believe that he was marvellous,
because she says so; but in this case he did nothing and had little
opportunity of justifying his references. He merely believed what he had
the luck to be told and caused the miscreant to be arrested when of his
own motion he practically offered himself for arrest. There are, after
all, two phases of crime--the first, its commission, and the second, its
detection. Mrs. Bryce would have done better to confine herself to the
former, since she has an exciting tale to tell of _Mrs. Vanderstein's
Jewels_ (Lane) and shows herself well able to curdle the blood in the
telling of it. But, lacking that gift of logic which is essential to the
stating and the solving of detective problems, she endeavours to achieve
her ends by keeping back what are admitted, and not discovered, facts.
She is reduced to telling the same story twice, and I cannot say that I
was nearly as excited the second time as I was the first.
Once upon a time King James, being annoyed with the City because it
wouldn't lend him money, summoned the Lord Mayor and Aldermen to his
presence and, "being somewhat transported," threatened to remove his
Court to some other place. To this the Lord Mayor very politely but
readily retorted, "Your Majesty hath power to do what you please and
your City of London will obey accordingly: but she humbly desires that
when your Majesty shall remove your Court you would please to leave the
Thames behind you." I think this single instance from the history of the
City goes far to explain that peculiar pride in it which the Londoner
instinctively feels without exactly knowing why. I have not space to
argue with Sir Laurence Gomme upon his main point, its continuity of
policy and purpose from the Roman Empire till to-day, shown by the
records of London's past. I leave it to the scholar and antiquary. It is
my purpose to persuade the man in the street, to whom the names of
Palgrave, Freeman and Stubbs are not household words, to buy a copy of
_London_ (Williams and Norgate) for inclusion in his permanent library.
If I should insist upon his reading it then and there he would reply, as
one ignorant fellow to another, that he had not the necessary
understanding of the remote past and was too preoccupied with the
affairs of the present. Be it so, but none the less let him buy it and
at any rate glance at its many curious and admirable illustrations.
Later he will dip into it in search of further episodes after the manner
of that I quote, and lastly he will do the thing thoroughly, to find
that he is much more concerned with the past than ever he supposed; that
now he understands that "greatness which is London," and that he is
infinitely obliged for the recommendation of a not-too-learned clerk who
shared his own diffidence, even reluctance, in approaching so learned
and weighty a treatise.
I am sure that Miss Constance Holme has, in _The Lonely Plough_ (Mills
and Boon), written a clever and amusing novel. What she has not done is
to make herself intelligible. Some of the mist that enwraps the
background of her frontispiece has obscured her story and her
characters. I know that she is writing about lively and entertaining
people because there emerges, now and then, a page of dialogue that is
witty and alive; and I know that her story is dramatic because she tells
us now that someone "let out a screech," and now that he "uttered sharp
little sounds remarkably like oaths." I know, too, that the sea is
encroaching upon somebody's dwelling-place, and that someone else tries
to keep the waves in their place, but is no more successful than was the
great King Knut of blessed memory. Then there is a fine figure of a
land-agent and several ladies who talk the snappiest of slang. But the
mist and the sea have swept across Miss Holme's pages and blotted out
the rest of the affair. Not Meredith nor Robert Browning at their most
complex have been more baffling. I must admit, however, that the
description of a game of mixed hockey, somewhere in the middle of the
book, was delightfully fresh and vivid. Here, for a page or two, I could
rest from my grapplings with the story and join in all the excitement
and peril, that mixed hockey provides. Then there is _Harriet_, who
says, "Stow all that piffle." I should like to know more about
_Harriet_, who from that brief glimpse of her seems a lively vigorous
person, but the encroaching sea swallows her with the others, and there
is an end. I repeat that Miss Holme has written a clever dramatic story,
but the title is certainly the clearest thing about it.
When Mr. Calthrop's at his best
He weaves you tales of fauns and elves,
And ancient gods come back to test
Their humour on our modern selves;
He finds romance in common clay;
He lifts the veil from fairy rings,
And points the unfamiliar way
Of looking at familiar things.
And at his second best, or less,
His graceful manner still redeems
With easy charm and cheerfulness
More hackneyed, less seductive themes;
Each page has something witty, wise,
Well-turned, fantastic or jocose--
Each page of _Breadandbutterflies_,
From Mills and Boon, six shillings (gross).
Even though it has been seared by the tragic end of a youthful _liaison_
("It was in France, you know," and that seems to explain all to _Minella
Drake_, daughter of the Vicar of Goldringham) the heart of a Sussex
taxidermist appears to be exceptionally tender. Seldom can _Tom Murrow_,
through whose eyes we view the scenes and incidents of Mr. Tickner
Edwardes' _Tansy_ (Hutchinson), have sealed up badger or squirrel in its
glass _morgue_ without shedding on the fur some glistening tribute of
tears over a village sorrow. So much of his time in fact is occupied by
conversations of a sentimental nature with the two _Wilverleys_ (whose
aged father, _Mark_, by the way, having retired from active life on his
farm, habitually talks in rhymed couplets) that he can have had as
little leisure for stuffing specimens as he had to discern the love
gradually growing up for him in the bosom of _Minella_, his guileless
_confidante_. The background of _Tansy_ consists in the shepherd's
seasons of the Sussex downs (for _Tansy_, a splendid type of advanced
though rustic womanhood, is a shepherdess), and the plot of the story is
that of _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_, with the convenient variation that
the villain of the piece, having his pockets stuffed with cartridges,
disappears (as villains should) in a cloud of malodorous smoke. Mr.
Tickner Edwardes' knowledge of rural life and scenes is as thorough as
his description of them is charming, and, if the general impression
conveyed by _Tansy_ is a little too idyllic for those who have been
brought up in the rough school of Wessex agriculture, it is pleasant for
a moment to lend ourselves to the illusion of his sunny romance.
Unattractive as _Sophia Ree_ was in many ways, I frankly admit that she
was a lady of mettle. A stockbroker's typist, with a fortune of £2,000
and a salary of a few shillings a week, she no sooner obtained inside
information about the floating of _The South Seas Coastal Rubber
Development Company_ than she decided to apply for 2000 shares. They
were allotted to her, and in consequence she became a most important
person. In fact, she had only to say "_Gugenheim_" to her employers and
she had them at her feet. Why this was so you must discover for
yourselves; all that I, who am no expert in financial matters, can tell
you is that somehow her 2000 shares seem to have given her a position of
enormous power in the company, and that the _Gugenheim_ man wanted to
buy her out. Her sister _Judith_ kept bees and was an extremely good
woman. I never got really to understand her; and her wonderful power of
seeing into the future, which does not often go with apiculture, left me
unimpressed. The trouble with this book of Mr. E. R. Punshon's is that
the parts of it do not seem to fit into a symmetrical whole, but, at any
rate, a study of _The Crowning Glory_ (Hodder and Stoughton) has greatly
improved my knowledge of the behaviour of bears and bulls and bees.
* * * * *