(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks_.)
The Great Man is, I suppose, among the most difficult themes to treat
convincingly in fiction. To name but one handicap, the author has in
such cases to postulate at least some degree of acquaintance on the
part of the reader with his celebrated subject. "Everyone is now
familiar," he will observe, "with the sensational triumph achieved by
the work of X----;" whereat the reader, uneasily conscious of never
having heard of him, inclines to condemn the whole business beforehand
as an impossible fable. I fancy Mr. SOMERSET MAUGHAM felt something of
this difficulty with regard to the protagonist of his quaintly-called
_The Moon and Sixpence_ (HEINEMANN), since, for all his sly pretence
of quoting imaginary authorities, we have really only his unsupported
word for the superlative genius of _Charles Strickland_,
the stockbroker who abandoned respectable London to become a
Post-impressionist master, a vagabond and ultimately a Pacific
Islander. The more credit then to Mr. MAUGHAM that he does quite
definitely make us accept the fellow at his valuation. He owes this,
perhaps, to the unsparing realism of the portrait. Heartless, utterly
egotistical, without conscience or scruple or a single redeeming
feature beyond the one consuming purpose of his art, _Strickland_ is
alive as few figures in recent fiction have been; a genuinely great
though repellent personality--a man whom it would have been at once
an event to have met and a pleasure to have kicked. Mr. MAUGHAM has
certainly done nothing better than this book about him; the drily
sardonic humour of his method makes the picture not only credible but
compelling. I liked especially the characteristic touch that
shows _Strickland_ escaping, not so much from the dull routine of
stockbroking (genius has done that often enough in stories before now)
as from the pseudo-artistic atmosphere of a flat in Westminster and a
wife who collected blue china and mild celebrities. _Mrs. Strickland_
indeed is among the best of the slighter characters in a tale with a
singularly small cast; though it is, of course, by the central figure
that it stands or falls. My own verdict is an unhesitating _stet_.
* * * * *
If there be any who still cherish a pleasant memory of the Bonnie
Prince CHARLIE of the Jacobite legend, Miss MARJORIE BOWEN'S _Mr.
Misfortunate_ (COLLINS) will dispose of it. She gives us a study of
the YOUNG PRETENDER in the decade following Culloden. Figures such as
LOCHIEL, KEITH, GORING, the dour KELLY, HENRY STUART, LOUIS XV., with
sundry courtiers and mistresses, move across the film. I should say
the author's sympathy is with her main subject, but her conscience
is too much for her. I find myself increasingly exercised over
this conscience of Miss BOWEN'S. She seems to me to be deliberately
committing herself to what I can only describe as a staccato method.
This was notably the case with _The Burning Glass_, her last novel.
Her narratives no longer seem to flow. She will give you catalogues
of furniture and raiment, with short scenes interspersed, for all the
world as if she were transcribing from carefully taken notes. Quite
probably she is, and I am being authentically instructed and should
be duly grateful, but I find myself longing for the exuberance of her
earlier method. I feel quite sure this competent author can find a
way of respecting historical truth without killing the full-blooded
flavour of romance.
* * * * *
There is a smack of the Early Besantine about the earnest scion of
a noble house who decides to share the lives and lot of common and
unwashed men with an eye to the imminent appearance of the True Spirit
of Democracy in our midst. Such a one is the hero of Miss MAUD DIVER'S
latest novel, _Strange Roads_ (CONSTABLE); but it is only fair to
say that _Derek Blunt_ (_né_ Blount), second son of the _Earl of
Avonleigh_, is no prig, but, on the contrary, a very pleasant fellow.
For a protagonist he obtrudes himself only moderately in a rather
discursive story which involves a number of other people who do
nothing in particular over a good many chapters. We are halfway
through before _Derek_ takes the plunge, and then we find, him, not
in the slums of some industrial quarter, but in Western Canada, where
class distinctions are founded less on soap than on simoleons. At the
end of the volume the War has "bruk out," and our hero, apart from
having led a healthy outdoor life and chivalrously married and been
left a widower by a pathetic child with consumption and no morals,
is just about where he started. I say "at the end of the volume," for
there I find a publisher's note to the effect that in consequence
of the paper shortage the further adventures of our hero have been
postponed to a subsequent volume. It is to be entitled _The Strong
Hours_, and will doubtless provide a satisfactory _raison d'être_ for
all the other people who did nothing in particular in Vol. I.
* * * * *
If you had numbered _Elizabeth_, the heroine of _A Maiden in Malaya_
(MELROSE), among your friends, I can fancy your calling upon her to
"hear about her adventures in the East." I can see her delightedly
telling you of the voyage, of the people she met on board (including
the charming young man upon whom you would already have congratulated
her), of how he and she bought curios at Port Said, of her arrival, of
her sister's children and their quaint sayings, of Singapore and its
sights, of Malaya and how she was taken to see the tapping on a rubber
plantation--here I picture a gleam of revived interest, possibly
financial in origin, appearing in your face--of the club, of dinner
parties and a thousand other details, all highly entertaining to
herself and involving a sufficiency of native words to impress the
stay-at-home. And perhaps, just as you were considering your chance of
an escape before tea, she would continue "and now I must tell you all
about the dreadful time I had in the rising!" which she would then
vivaciously proceed to do; and not only that, but all about the
dreadful time (the same dreadful time) that all her friends had in
the same rising, chapters of it, so that in the end it might be six
o'clock or later before you got away. I hope this is not an unfair
_résumé_ of the impression produced upon me by Miss ISOBEL MOUNTAIN'S
prattling pages. To sum up, if you have an insatiable curiosity for
the small talk of other people's travel, _A Maiden in Malaya_ may not
prove too much for it. If otherwise, otherwise.
* * * * *
I wish Col. JOHN BUCHAN could have been jogging Mrs. A.C. INCHBOLD'S
elbow while she was writing _Love and the Crescent_ (HUTCHINSON), All
the essential people in his _Greenmantle_, which deals, towards the
end at any rate, with just about the same scenes and circumstances as
her story, are so confoundedly efficient, have so undeniably learnt
the trick of making the most of their dashing opportunities. In Mrs.
INCHBOLD's book the trouble is that with much greater advantages in
the way of local knowledge and with all manner of excitement, founded
on fact, going a-begging, nothing really thrilling or convincing
ever quite materialises. The heroine, Armenian and beautiful, is
as ineffective as the hero, who is French and heroic, both of them
displaying the same unfortunate tendency to be carried off captive by
the other side and to indulge in small talk when they should be most
splendid. And the majority of the other figures follow suit. On the
face of it the volume is stuffed with all the material of melodrama;
but somehow the authoress seems to strive after effects that don't
come naturally to her. What does come naturally to her is seen in a
background sketch of the unhappy countries of Asia Minor in the hands
of the Turk and the Hun, which is so much the abler part of the book
that one would almost rather the too intrusive narrative were brushed
aside entirely. Personally, at any rate, I think I should prefer Mrs.
INCHBOLD in essay or historical form.
* * * * *
Madame ALBANESI, in _Tony's Wife_ (HOLDEN AND HARDINGHAM), has
provided her admirers with a goodly collection of sound Albanesians,
but she has also given them a villain in whom, I cannot help thinking,
they will find themselves hard-pressed to believe. _Richard Savile_
was deprived of a great inheritance by _Tony's_ birth, and as his
guardian spent long years in nourishing revenge. He was not, we know,
the first guardian to play this game, but that he could completely
deceive so many people for such a long time seems to prove him far
cleverer than appears from any actual evidence furnished. If, however,
this portrait is not in the artist's best manner, I can praise without
reserve the picture of _Lady Féo_, a little Society butterfly, very
frivolous on the surface, but concealing a lot of nice intuition and
sympathy, and I welcome her as a set-off to the silly caricatures we
commonly get of the class to which she belonged. Let me add that
in the telling of this tale Madame ALBANESI retains her quiet and
individual charm.
* * * * *
[Illustration: A MARCH-PAST AS PORTRAYED BY OUR TYPIST ON HER
MACHINE.]
* * * * *