(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
Inevitably one's first thought on sighting _A Naval History of the War_
(HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is that he must be a brave skipper indeed who
would take out a lone ship, however excellently found, to cruise such
controversial waters. But Sir HENRY NEWBOLT is an experienced hand,
and, though (so to speak) one finds him at times conscious of Sir
JULIAN CORBETT on the sky-line, he brings off his self-appointed task
triumphantly. To drop metaphor, here is a temperate and clearly-written
history, midway between the technical and the popular, of a kind
precisely suited to the plain man who wishes a comprehensive _résumé_
of the course of the War at sea. For this purpose its arrangement is
admirable, the story being presented first in a general survey under
dates, then in special chapters devoted to episodes or aspects, e.g.,
Coronel and the Falklands (that unmatchable drama of disaster and
revenge), the submarines and their countering, and finally Jutland.
Throughout, as I have said, Sir HENRY, having one of the best stories
in the world to tell, is at pains to avoid anything that even remotely
approaches fine writing. Only once have I even detected the literary
man, when, in describing the strange finish of the _Königsberg_,
he permits himself the pleasure of calling it "the sea fight in the
forest." For the rest, the "strength and splendour" of England's
greatest naval war are left to make their own impression. I shall be
astonished if such a book, having figured brilliantly as a present
this Christmas, is not treasured for generations as a work of family
reference in hundreds of British homes.
* * *
The name of Mrs. BELLOC LOWNDES on the outside would alone have made me
open _From the Vasty Deep_ (HUTCHINSON) with a pleasant anticipation of
creepiness, even without the generous measure of bogies depicted on the
coloured wrapper. Having now read the story, I am bound to add (and
I can only hope that Mrs. LOWNDES will take my admission for the
compliment that it really is) that the net result has been one of slight
disappointment. Briefly, I continue to prefer the writer as a criminal,
rather than a psychic, "Fat Boy." After all, once grant your ghost and
anyone can conjure it, with appropriate circumstance, at the proper
moments. Wyndfell Hall was full enough of ghosts, all ready to appear at
the voluntary or involuntary instance of a young lady named _Bubbles_,
who was one of the Christmas house-party and the owner of a rather
uncomfortable gift of spook-raising. But beyond making themselves an
occasional nuisance to the guests I couldn't find that the phantoms did
anything practical to help along such plot as there was. Even the quite
palpable fact that the host was at least a double murderer came to
proof by the ordinary process of law rather than by any supernatural
revelation. Before this I have gratefully owed to Mrs. LOWNDES the
raising of my remaining hairs like quills upon the fretful porcupine,
but the ca'-canny bogies of her present story are too perfunctory to
excuse even a shiver in any but the most unsophisticated reader.
* * *
It may, I suppose, be accounted for righteousness to Major-General Sir
ARCHIBALD ANSON that in _About Others and Myself_ (MURRAY) he is so
little of an egotist as to convey scarcely any impression of what manner
of man he is or what he thinks of this or that. Much more clear from her
quoted letters is the character of his grandmother, who vainly tried
to keep the over-gallant First Gentleman of Europe out of mischief. Our
autobiographer gives us a plain, blunt, not to say bald record of what
must have been an interesting life. He was at Eton under KEATE; a cadet
at Woolwich, where he saw a gunner receive two hundred lashes; a gunnery
subaltern in the Crimea, where he saw many queer and unedifying things;
a successful administrator in Madagascar, Mauritius and Penang, and
finally Governor of the Straits Settlements, with a K.C.M.G. and
honourable retirement to follow. But he is a man of action rather than
words, and his faculty of observation is but too often exercised upon
such slender matters as that "Poor Captain Powlett met with a misfortune
on the way to Kedah. His servant laid the dinner things on the deck
of the gunboat, then went below for something and, coming up again,
accidentally walked into the middle of the crockery and glass,
causing considerable destruction." Also, I think he quotes
his testimonials--those never very candid and always very dull
documents--much too freely. The best of the book is concerned with his
administration work in Penang and district, where on the evidence he
seems to have kept his end up with skill and no small zeal for good
government.
* * *
The title of Lady (LAURA) TROUBRIDGE'S new novel, _O Perfect Love_
(METHUEN), applies to her V. C. hero only; with his wife it is a case of
O Very Imperfect Love. _Jean Chartres_ is a common product of the age,
the sort of girl that insists on "having a good time" and "living her
life" and "being herself" (how well one knows the jargon!). Less common,
let us hope, is the woman who would desert her husband, as _Jean_ did,
because the injuries he had received in the War prevented him from
giving her the kind of life for which she craved. Foolish rather than
vicious, she drifts into a relationship which could have had only one
conclusion, if her lover, tiring of platonics, had not prematurely
pressed his demands. Thoroughly scared by his violence she runs away
and finds sanctuary with the "perfect love" of the title. In this happy
solution she had better fortune than she deserved. It is not every woman
who has the good luck, when rushing blindly out of the House of Peril
into the wintry night (in a ball-dress), to find--what had apparently
escaped _Jean's_ memory for the moment--that her faithful husband's
estate is in the immediate neighbourhood. Though Lady TROUBRIDGE'S sense
of style is not impeccable she can tell a good tale; her dialogue rings
true and her characters are well observed. The trouble with most authors
of Society novels is that either they know their subject but can't
write, or that they can write but know nothing of their subject. Lady
TROUBRIDGE is one of the very few writers in this kind who both know
their world and how to portray it.
* * *
Mr. B. BENNION follows the vogue for confidentially descriptive covers
in announcing, as a title to his volume of angling reminiscences, that
_The Trout are Rising in England and South Africa_ (LANE) and suggesting
that here is "a book for slippered ease." One is certainly warned not
to expect anything very strenuous in its course, and indeed so placidly
flow its waters that few, perhaps, but devotees of the craft will
follow it to the end. Not but what there are metaphorical trout in it,
too--enticing descriptions of bits of rivers, for instance--but on the
whole they are easy-going fish that come to bank without showing very
much sporting spirit. Here is no manual of precise information, though
even old fishermen may gather a hint or two; nor yet a guide-book to the
trout-streams of two continents; not even a collection of good stories,
though anyone may come across some old friends in it. The author's yarns
indeed are numerous and, on the whole, as an angler's yarns should be,
picturesque. If he does seem to enjoy the rather feeble joke or incident
as much as the other sort, that may be natural in a book of ease,
whether slippered or not. Indeed one half suspects it is as a book for
his own ease that the writer is mainly considering it, yet, taken in the
right spirit and especially if you are an enticer of trout, it may
be for your ease too. Of course, if you are not an angler and if your
spirit is not right, the slipper may not fit.
* * *
In the course of a long study of detective fiction I have never met
any sleuths with a gift of loquacity like that of _Messrs. Corson_ and
_Gibbs_, who during the first part of _In the Onyx Lobby_ (HODDER AND
STOUGHTON) make futile efforts to trace the murderer of _Sir Herbert
Binney_, proprietor of Binney's Buns. _Sir Herbert_ had gone to New York
to persuade his nephew to become the manager of an American branch of
a Binney Bun factory, and, on returning late at night to his
apartment-house, was stabbed to death. Fortunately Miss CAROLYN WELLS
seems to have grown as tired of them as I did, and they give way to one
_Pennington Wise_ (whose name did not prepossess me in his favour) and
his assistant, _Zizi_. This couple have the authentic sleuth-touch, and
their detection of those implicated in the murder is a very ingenious
piece of work. There is so much padding in this book that if _Sir
Herbert_ had worn a tithe of it no stabber could even have scratched
him; but with judicious skipping it will wile away two or three idle
hours. And, as I said, the solution is a really skilful piece of work.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "I 'EAR SHE'S 'AD A LEGACY O' TWENTY POUNDS LEFT 'ER."
"YES, SHE 'AS. BUT ONE GOOD THING ABOUT 'ER IS, 'ER WEALTH AIN'T SPOILT
'ER."]
* * * * *
Extract from an account of the unveiling of the portrait of Mr. ----,
M.P.:--
"It was a happy idea to unveil the portrait in a darkened room."
_Local Paper._
But after the LEVERHULME-JOHN episode we ought to have been told whose
was the happy idea, the artist's or the sitter's?