(_BY MR. PUNCH'S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS._)
Miss ETHEL SIDGWICK (long life to her as one of our optimist
conquerors!) still keeps her preference for the creation of charming
people and her rare talent for making them alive. But I wonder if she
is not refining her brilliant technique to the point of occasional
obscurity of intention. At least I know I had to re-read a good
many passages to be quite sure what was in fact intended. An implied
compliment, no doubt; but are all readers so virtuous? ("or so dull?"
quoth she). _Hatchways_ (SIDGWICK AND JACKSON) is one of those happily
comfortable, just right houses with a hostess, _Ernestine_, whom
everybody loves and nobody (save her husband, and he not in this
book) makes love to. Holmer, on the other hand, is the adjoining ducal
mansion with a distinctly uncomfortable dowager still in command who
can't even arrange her dinner-parties and fails to marry her sons to
the right people. Perpetually Hatchways is wiping the eye of Holmer,
and this touches the nerve of the great lady. Her sons, _Wickford_,
the authentic but hardly reigning duke, and _Lord Iveagh Suir_, the
queer impressionable (on whom the author has spent much pains to
excellent effect), both take their troubles to _Ernestine_. And a
young French aviator (this is a pre-War story), guest at Hatchways,
analyses and discusses situations and characters from his coign of
privilege--a device adroitly handled by the discreet author, who adds
two charming girls, coquette _Lise_, _Iveagh's_ first love, and
wise, loyal, perceptive _Bess_, whom he found at last. To those who
appreciate subtle portraiture let me commend this study.... I feel
just as if I had been for a long week-end at Hatchways, anxiously
wondering, as I write my "roofer," if I shall be so lucky as to be
asked again.
* * * * *
I think there is little doubt that you will agree with me in calling
_The Flaming Sword_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) as noble and absorbing
a story of fine work finely done as any that the War has produced.
It is the history, told by herself, of Mrs. ST. CLAIR STOBART's Red
Cross Mission "in Serbia and Elsewhere." The frontispiece, Mr. GEORGE
HANKIN's moving picture of _The Lady of the Black Horse_ (a name
always to be honoured among our Allies), catches the spirit of the
heroic tale and prepares you for what the _Lady_ herself has to tell.
Mrs. STOBART is no sentimentalist; fighting and the overcoming of
obstacles are, one would say, congenial to her mettle; time and again,
even in the midst of her story of the terrible retreat, with the
German guns ever thundering nearer, she can yet spare a moment to
strike shrewdly and hard for her own side in the other struggle
towards feminine emancipation which is always obviously close to
her heart. Certainly she has well earned the right to be heard with
respect. Read this high-spirited account of the difficulties--mud,
disease, prejudice, famine--through which the writer brought her
charge triumphantly to safety, and you will be inclined, with me, to
throw your critical cap into the air and thank Heaven for such women
of our race, which would be to invite, not unsuccessfully, some
withering snub from the very lady you were endeavouring to praise.
But that can't be helped. Meantime of her exploit and the book that
recounts it I can sum up my verdict in the only Serbian that I have
gleaned from its pages--_Dobro, Dobro!_ For a translation of which you
know where to apply.
* * * * *
So many battle books have been pouring from the press lately that
it is difficult to keep pace with them, and harder still to find
something fresh to say of each; but _quot homines tot_ points of
individual interest, and for those whose concern lies more especially
with the New Zealand Forces and their campaigns I can very safely
recommend a volume which the official war correspondent to that
contingent and his son have jointly published under the title of
_Light and Shade in War_ (ARNOLD). Whether it is Mr. MALCOLM ROSS who
supplies the light, and Mr. NOEL ROSS the shade, or _vice versa_, we
are given no means of ascertaining. Between them they have certainly
put together an agreeable patchwork of small and easily read pieces,
most of which have already appeared in journalistic form. It is
perhaps parental prejudice that makes Mr. Punch consider the best of
the bunch to be "Abdul," one of three slight sketches that originally
saw the light in his own pages. _Abdul_ is a joy, also a thief, a
society entertainer, and a Cairo hospital orderly. I can only hope
that the story of how he displayed his patient's sun-browned knees as
a raree show to the convulsed G.O.C. and lady, who were visiting the
hospital, is at least founded on fact. The publishers are entirely
justified in saying that these impressions, made often under actual
fire, have both colour and intimacy. So I wish them good luck in the
campaign for popular favour.
* * * * *
_François Villon, His Life and Times_ (HUTCHINSON) is one of those
fortunate volumes that arrive to fill a long vacant corner. So far
as I know, with the exception perhaps of STEVENSON's study, there has
been no means by which the casual reader, as apart from the student,
could correct his probably very vague ideas about the Father of
Realism. Mr. H. DE VERE STACPOOLE, approaching the subject not for
the first time, here essays a brief life and appreciation of the poet,
told in picturesque but simple style. Sometimes indeed the simplicity
is apt to appear overdone, so that one gets a suggestion that the
story is being presented to us in thoughts of one syllable. Apart
from this, however, there is much to be said for Mr. STACPOOLE's vivid
reconstruction of mediæval France, and the Paris that sheltered VILLON
himself, TABARY, MONTIGNY and the others--that group of shadows whom
we see only by the lightning of genius. They and their contemporaries
pass before us here like a pageant woven upon tapestry. Occasionally
indeed Mr. STACPOOLE looks suddenly round the tapestry, even (one
might say) tears a hole in it and pushes his head through, with a
startling effect. But as he has always the good excuse of sympathy
with his subject one easily forgives him these generous impulses. As I
said before, a book that has had its place long reserved.
* * * * *
If you happen to remember that most excellent book, _Brother-in-Law
to Potts_, you may recall that the principal motive in it is the
spiritualising influence of a certain Lady Beautiful, very lightly
and even intangibly presented, on the lives of some other persons of
a more material clay. In _Obstacles_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL), Mrs. "PARRY
TRUSCOTT" has returned to her previous subject, but with the notable
difference that she now traces the influence brought in turn to bear
upon the lady herself, who emerges from her semi-divine obscurity to
become the heroine of the story. If in her background sketch of the
munitions factory where _Susannah_ elects to work the writer does not
trouble much about technical detail or even attempt to suggest any
particular acquaintance with such matters as lathes or shell bodies,
yet she does convey, with striking simplicity and naturalness, the
impression of a world at war, and for the rest she is content to bring
her heroine in contact with the lives that are to affect her and the
environment of comparative poverty that is to help her to a decision.
What that decision was, and how unnecessary too, is sufficiently
indicated if I say that she was blessed with most understanding
parents, who positively preferred that her suitor should be a poor
man. And so the happy future that surely no authoress and most
certainly no male reader could have the heart to refuse to so
delightful a _Susannah_ is available to complete a picture touched
throughout with singular grace and charm. In particular the little
snap-shots of two ideal family households, the one that includes the
heroine, and another, much humbler, which she enters as an honoured
guest, go to make this volume, all too short though it is, one that I
can recommend with quite unusual pleasure and confidence.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Waitress_. "NO, SIR, THE MANAGEMENT 'AS NO REASON
TO THINK THAT LORD DEVONPORT REGARDS BUBBLE AND SQUEAK AS _TWO_
COURSES."]
* * * * *