"As a woman and a ratepayer, I realise the importance
of eliminating all unavoidable expenditure in Municipal
undertakings."
_Local Paper._
We trust she will be elected and show how it's done.
* * * * *
"After an interval of seven years, the 'Beasts' Ball, a pre-war
popular annual event in aid of the Royal Society for Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals, is to be held at the Guildhall, on Wednesday,
November 10. Tickets can be obtained from Mrs. Bushe-Fox and from
Mrs. Wolf."--_Cambridge Review._
It sounds just like _Uncle Remus_.
* * * * *
[Illustration: =ECHOES OF THE COAL STRIKE.=
"WHAT'S THE KID SHOUTING ABOUT? THERE AIN'T NO RACING."]
* * * * *
=OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.=
(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
"Two households, both alike in dignity...." I ask you, could the
novel, of which this quotation is the text, have been written by
anyone but Mr. JOHN GALSWORTHY? Actually indeed the disputants belong
to two branches of the same family, that grim tribe of _Forsytes_,
whom you remember in _The Man of Property_, and of whose collective
history the present book is a further instalment (not, I fancy, the
last). I should certainly advise anyone not already familiar with the
former work to get up his _Forsytes_ therein before attacking this;
otherwise he may risk some discouragement from the plunge into so
numerous a clan, known for the most part only by Christian names, with
their complex relationships and the mass of bygone happenings that
unites or separates them. This stage of the tribal history is called
_In Chancery_ (HEINEMANN), chiefly from the state of suspended
animation experienced by the now middle-aged _Soames_ ("Man of
Property") with regard to his never-divorced runaway wife _Irene_.
Following the ruling _Forsyte_ instinct, _Soames_ wants a son who
will keep together and even increase his great possessions, while
continuing his personality. The expiring generation, represented by
_James_, is urgent upon this duty to the family. You may imagine what
Mr. GALSWORTHY makes of it all. These possessive persons, with their
wealth, their hatred and affections and their various strongholds in
the more eminently desirable parts of residential London, affect one
like portions of some monstrous stone-fronted edifice, impressive but
repellent. I have some curiosity to see, with Mr. GALSWORTHY'S help,
how the _Forsyte_ castle stands the disintegration of 1914-18.
* * * * *
What with the scientists who explain things on the assumption that we
know nearly as much as they do and those who explain things on the
assumption that we know nothing, it is very difficult for you and me
to persevere in our original determination to learn _something_. But I
have always felt that Sir RAY LANKESTER is one of the very few who do
understand us, and I feel it still more strongly now that I have read
his _Secrets of Earth and Sea_ (METHUEN). He is instructive but human;
he does not take it for granted that we know what miscegenation means,
but he does credit us with a little intelligence. And he realises how
many arguments we have had about questions like "Why does the sea look
blue?" Personally I rushed at that chapter, though I must say that
I was a little disappointed to find that the gist of his answer was
"Because water _is_ blue." You see, if you had a tooth-glass fifteen
feet high and filled it with water--But you must find out for
yourself. Then I went on to the chapter on Coal, and discovered that
"it is fairly certain that the blacker coal which we find in strata of
great geological age was so produced by the action of special kinds of
bacteria upon peat-like masses of vegetable refuse." I wonder if Mr.
SMILLIE knows that. It might help him to a sense of proportion. The
author is constantly setting up a surprising but stimulating relation
between the naturalist's researches and the problems of human life, as
when he observes that "the 'colour bar' is not merely the invention of
human prejudice, but already exists in wild plants and animals," and
in his remarks on mongrels and the regrettable subjection of the males
of many species. There are chapters on Wheel Animalcules, Vesuvius,
Prehistoric Art--everything--and all are admirably illustrated. A
fascinating book.
* * * * *
_The Diary of a Journalist_ (MURRAY) is a volume of which the title is
its own sufficient description, save that it leaves unsuggested the
interest that such briskly written and comprehensive comments as these
of our old friend, Sir HENRY LUCY, must command. His book differs from
most of those in the flood of recollections that has lately broken
upon us in being a selection from "impressions of the moment written
without knowledge of the ultimate result." In these stray moments
between the years 1885 and 1917 I find at least two examples in which
this ignorance of the final event adds much to the interest of the
immediate record--the startling forecast of the EX-KAISER'S destiny,
entered in the Diary under November '98; and the mention, long before
the actual illness of KING EDWARD declared itself, of the growing
belief in certain circles that his coronation would never take place.
It is at once obvious that not even "TOBY'S" three previous volumes
have by any means exhausted his fund of good stories, the scenes of
which range from Westminster to Bouverie Street, and round half the
stately (or, at least, interesting) homes of England. Of them all--not
forgetting DISRAELI and the peacocks and a new W. S. GILBERT--my
personal choice would be for the mystery of the Unknown Guest, who not
only took a place, but was persuaded to speak, at a private dinner
given by Sir JOHN HARE at the Garrick Club, without anyone ever
knowing who he was or how he came there. A genial lucky-bag book,
which (despite unusually full chapter headings) would be improved by
an index to its many prizes.
* * * * *
Mr. JAMES HILTON is very young and very clever. If, as he grows older,
he learns to be clever about more interesting things he ought to write
some very good novels. _Catherine Herself_ (UNWIN) has red hair, but
then she has a rather more red-haired disposition than most red-haired
heroines have to justify it, so this is not my real objection to
the book. My quarrel is that, though I cannot call it an ugly story
without giving a false impression, it is certainly a quite unbeautiful
one, and at the end of its three hundred and more pages it has
achieved nothing but a full-length portrait of an utterly selfish
woman. Mr. HILTON has dissected her most brilliantly; but I don't
think she is worth it. Catherines, whether they marry or are given in
marriage, or do anything else, are really stationary; and, since the
persons of a story, if it is to be worth telling, must move in some
direction, Mr. HILTON will be well advised in future to choose a
different type of heroine. I want to say too that I don't believe that
it is either so easy or so profitable to become a well-known pianist
"not in the front rank" as he seems to imagine it is. I wish I could
think that no one else would believe him.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Knight_ (_to his henchman_). "EVERYTHING ALL RIGHT,
PERKINS? YOU HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN ANYTHING? WHAT'S THAT?"
_Henchman_. "IT'S THE PORTRAIT OF YOUR LADY, SIR, THAT YOU PROMISED TO
TAKE INTO BATTLE WITH YOU, SIR."
_Knight_. "DID I? WELL, I MUST E'EN KEEP MY WORD. FASTEN IT ON MY
BACK. ONE NEVER KNOWS--IT MAY BE USEFUL IN CASE OF A REVERSE."]
* * * * *
It seems rather a bright idea of C. NINA BOYLE to dedicate "to THEA
and IRENE, whose lives have lain in sheltered ways," a seven-shilling
shocker about ways that are anything but sheltered. Perhaps the
sheltered in general, and Thea and Irene in particular, will take it
from me that the villainies of _Out of the Frying Pan_ are much
larger than life or, at any rate, much more concentrated, and that
pseudo-orphans like _Maisie_ usually have a better chance of getting
out of frying-pans into something cool than the author allows her
heroine. I also submit that there was nothing in _Maisie's_ equipment
to suggest that she would have been quite so slow in separating goats
from sheep. But let me say that THEA and IRENE have had dedicated to
them an exciting and amusing _fritto misto_ of crooks, demi-mondaines,
blackmailers, gamblers, roués, murderers, receivers and decent
congenital idiots of all sorts. The characterisation is adroitly done
and the workmanship avoids that slovenliness which makes nineteen out
of twenty books of this kind a weariness of spirit to the perceptive.
I wonder if _Maisie_ with such a father and mother would have been
such a darling. Perhaps Professor KARL PEARSON will explain.
* * * * *
The _Hon. William Toppys_ (pronounced "Tops"), brother of _Lord
Topsham_, left Devonshire and retired to an island in the Torres
Straits. There he married a Melanesian woman and became the father of
a frizzy-haired and coffee-coloured son. It is a little strange to
me, who think of Mr. BENNET COPPLESTONE as Devonian to the tip of his
pen-finger, that the _Hon. William_ is not rebuked for so shamelessly
deserting his native county. Instead he is almost applauded for his
wisdom, and this despite the fact that he quite spoilt the look of the
family tree with his exotic graft. For in the course of time his
son, insularly known as _Willatopy_, inherited the title and became
twenty-eighth (no less) _Baron of Topsham_. Mr. COPPLESTONE does not
realise the vast difference between light comedy and broad farce, but
apart from this substantial reservation I can vouch that his yarn of
_Madame Gilbert's Cannibal_ (MURRAY) is deftly spun. Should you decide
to follow the famous _Madame Gilbert_ when she visits the island where
the twenty-eighth baron lived you will witness a lively and unusual
entertainment.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Note:
Page 355: "Ruined! the old place mortgaged! faugh!" [double quote
added]. Page 356: "_They_ always do that." [double quote inserted].