(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
I HAVE a mild grievance against that talented lady, Miss MARJORIE BOWEN,
for labelling her latest novel "a romantic fantasy." Because, like all
her other stories, _The Cheats_ (COLLINS) moves with such an air of
truth, its personages are so human, that I could delightfully persuade
myself that it was all true, and that I had really shared, with a
sometimes quickened pulse, the strange fortunes of the sombre young
hero. But--fantasy! That is to show the strings and give away the whole
game. However, if you can forget that, the coils of an admirably woven
intrigue will grip your attention and sympathy throughout. The central
figure is one _Jaques_, who comes to town as a penniless and love-lorn
romantic, to be confronted with the revelation that he is himself the
eldest son, unacknowledged but legitimate, of His Majesty KING CHARLES
THE SECOND, then holding Court at Whitehall. It is from the plots and
counter-plots, the machinations and subterfuges that follow that Miss
BOWEN justifies her title. Certainly _The Cheats_ establishes her in my
mind as our first writer of historical fiction. The character-drawing is
admirable (especially of poor weak-willed vacillating _Jaques_, a
wonderfully observed study of the STUART temperament). More than ever,
also, Miss BOWEN might here be said to write her descriptions with a
paint-brush; the whole tale goes by in a series of glowing pictures,
most richly coloured. _The Cheats_ is not a merry book; its treatment of
the foolish heroine in particular abates nothing of grim justice; but of
its art there can be no two opinions. I wish again that I had been
allowed to believe in it.
It must be unusual in war for a commander-in-chief to be regarded by his
opponents with the respect and admiration that the British forces in
East Africa felt towards VON LETTOW-VORBECK; from General SMUTS, who
congratulated him on his Order "Pour le Merite," down to the British
Tommy who promised to salute him "if ever 'e's copped." The fact that
VON LETTOW held out from August, 1914, till after the Armistice with a
small force mainly composed of native askaris, and with hardly any
assistance from overseas, is proof in itself of his organizing ability,
his military leadership and his indomitable determination. As these are
qualities which are valued by his late enemies his story of the
campaign, _My Reminiscences of East Africa_ (HURST AND BLACKETT), should
appeal to a large public, especially as it is written on the whole in a
sporting spirit and not without some sense of humour. His descriptions
of the natural difficulties of the country and the methods he adopted
for handling them are interesting and instructive. But in military
matters his story is not altogether convincing; for if his "victories"
were as "decisive" as he represents them how is it that they were
followed almost invariably by retirement? The results are attributed in
these pages to "slight mischances" or "unfavourable conditions" or
merely to "pressure of circumstances." Would it not have been better,
while he was about it, to claim boldly that he was luring us on? This is
a question on which one naturally refers to the maps, and it is
therefore all the more regrettable that these contain no scale of
mileage, an omission which renders them almost meaningless. How many
readers, for instance, will realise that German East Africa was almost
twice the size of Germany? The translation on the whole is good, though
some phrases such as "the at times barely sufficient ration" are rather
too redolent of the Fatherland.
* * * * *
I see that on the title-page of his latest story Mr. W. E. NORRIS is
credited with having already written two others (specified by name),
etc. Much virtue in that "etc." I cannot therefore regard _The Triumphs
of Sara_ (HUTCHINSON) precisely as the work of a beginner, though it has
a freshness and sense of enjoyment about it that might well belong to a
first book rather than to--I doubt whether even Mr. NORRIS himself could
say offhand what its number is. _Sara_ and her circle are eminently
characteristic of their creator. You have here the same well-bred
well-to-do persons, pleasantly true to their decorous type, retaining
always, despite modernity of clothes and circumstance, a gentle aroma of
late Victorianism. Perhaps _Sara_ is the most immediate of Mr. NORRIS'S
heroines so far. Her money-bags had been filled in Manchester, and from
time to time in her history you are reminded of this circumstance. It
explains much; though hardly her marriage with _Euan Leppington_, whose
attraction apparently lay in being one of the few males of her
acquaintance whom _Sara_ did not find it fatally easy to bring to heel.
Anyhow, after marriage she quickly grew bored to death of him; so much
so that it required an attempt (badly bungled) by another woman to get
_Euan_ to elope with her, and a providential collapse of the very
unwilling Lothario, to bring about that happy ending that my experience
of kind Mr. NORRIS has taught me to expect. I may add that he has never
done anything more quietly entertaining than the frustrated elopement;
the luncheon scene at the Metropole, Brighton, between the angry but
amused _Sara_ and a husband incapacitated by rage, remorse and chill, is
an especially well-handled little comedy of manners.
* * * * *
Sir JULIAN CORBETT, in writing the first volume of _Naval Operations_
(LONGMANS), has carried the semi-official history of the War at sea only
as far as the Battle of the Falklands; but if the other three or four
volumes--the number is still uncertain--are to be as full of romance as
this the complete work will be a library of adventure in itself. Hardly
ever turning aside to praise or blame, he says with almost unqualified
baldness a multitude of astounding things--things we half knew, or
guessed, or longed to have explained, or dared not whisper, or, most of
all, never dreamt of. Here is a gold-mine for the makers of boys' books
of all future generations to quarry in. Think, for instance, of the
liner _Ortega_ shaking off a German cruiser by bolting into an uncharted
tide-race near the Horn; or the _Southport_, left for disabled by her
captors, crawling two thousand miles to safety with only half an engine;
or the triumphant raider _Karlsruhe_, her pursuers baffled, full to the
hatches with captured luxuries, bands playing, flags flying, suddenly
blown up in mid-Atlantic. The game of hide-and-seek, as played by the
_Emden_ and her like, naturally figures very largely in a volume which
HENTY could hardly have bettered. The author's veracious narrative,
leaving all picturesque detail to the imagination, gets home every time
by the sheer weight of its material. The War in Home waters is no less
fascinatingly reconstructed, and the case of maps contains in itself
living epics for all who study them with understanding.
* * * * *
In writing her second book Miss HILDA M. SHARP has allowed herself what
is, I suspect, the lady novelist's greatest treat, the extraordinary
achievement of using the first person singular and making it masculine.
She has done it very well too, and I am happy to recall that, in another
place, I was among the many who prophesied good concerning her future
when she made her _debut_ as a novelist with _The Stars in their
Courses_ in Mr. FISHER UNWIN'S "First Novel Library." _A Pawn in Pawn_
comes very properly from the same publisher. It has one of those plots
which it is most particularly a reviewer's business, in the reader's own
interest, not to reveal, but it is permissible to explain that the
"pawn" of the title is a little girl adopted from an orphanage, where,
as someone says, "the orphans aren't really orphans," by _Julian
Tarrant_, whom a select circle acknowledged as the greatest poet that
the last years of the nineteenth century produced. Miss SHARP earns my
special admiration by getting through the inevitable description of the
beginning of the Great War in fewer words than anybody whose attempt I
have yet encountered, and steers throughout a pleasant course midway
between a "bestseller" and a "high-brow." _Lydia_, the "pawn," is very
charming, but quite possibly so, and though, of course, she must marry
one of the three men interested in her adoption Miss SHARP will probably
keep most of her readers, as she did me, in doubt as to which it is to
be until quite the end of the book. I think that he may prove an
acquired taste with most readers; but directly I found that he was apt
to quote the reviews in _Punch_ I realised that he was a man of
discrimination and deserved his good luck.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "PROPER FED UP WIV YOU, I AM. CRY, CRY,
CRY ALL DAY LONG. I'D 'IT YER OVER THE 'EAD WIV THE
BOTTLE IF I WOS A MODERN WOMAN."]
* * * * *
An Urgent Request.
"---- CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY, LTD.
Members are requested to hand in their Share Pass Books
for Audit Purposes to the Head Office on or before AT
ONCE."--_Local Paper._
* * * * *
"Rev. ---- writes:--'I have a Cousin residing in the
Transvaal who has been living on three plates of
porridge made of ---- for five years, and is well and
strong on it.'"--_South African Paper._
It sounds very sustaining.