(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
MR. CONRAD'S new hero is an unnamed chief-mate who gets his first command
to a sailing vessel, also unnamed--queer and of course quite deliberate
instance of the author's reticent, allusive method which is so entirely
plausible. Her last captain, who had some mad savage hatred of ship and
crew, died aboard her and was buried in latitude 8° 20'. The chief-mate,
who got the vessel back to port and remained under her new captain, is
convinced that the dead man haunts her vengefully; and one desperate
accident after another, racking a crew overwhelmed with fever, almost
persuades the captain to share the mate's illusion that 8° 20'--_The Shadow
Line_ (DENT)--is possessed by the dead scoundrel. I found the book less
interesting as a yarn than as an example of the astonishingly conscious and
perfect artistry of this really great master of the ways of men and words.
Mr. CONRAD never made me believe that the new captain would go so near
sharing his mate's superstitious panic (which is perhaps because I know
little of sailor-men save what he has taught me); and in the incident, so
curiously and deliberately detailed, of his finding the quinine bottles
filled with a worthless substitute, and letting them "each in turn" slip to
ground, I had again the most unusual shock of being unable to accept the
credibility of his invention. This is so rare an experience that it only
throws into relief for me the fine craft of this most brilliant of our
impressionists, who tells so much with such delicate strokes, so
conscientiously considered, so unerringly conveyed.
* * * * *
_This is the End_ (MACMILLAN) is the kind of book that only youth can
write--youth at its best. It has the qualities and defects of its
parentage; but the qualities, a fine careless rapture, sensitive vision, a
wayward and jolly fantasy, challenging provocativeness, faintly malicious
humour, are dominant. Miss STELLA BENSON will grow out of her youthful
cynicisms and intolerances, will focus her effects, without losing any of
her substantial equipment. This is by no means the end. It is the second
step of a very brilliant beginning. Already it shows improvement upon her
first clever book, _I Pose_; a surer touch, a finer restraint. What is it
all about? Does that matter? It is the manner of the telling rather than
what is told that constitutes the charm. If I tell, you that _Jay_ runs
away from a respectable home, and, after a grievous experiment as a
bolster-filler, becomes a bus-conductor, has a romantic friendship with a
middle-aged married man, and marries the faithful _Mr. Morgan_, her dead
brother's soldier friend, I have told you just nothing at all. I will
merely add that you will be foolish if you miss this book.
* * * * *
I have to begin by confessing that, despite its most attractive title, my
first glance into _French Windows_ (ARNOLD) produced in me some feeling of
prejudice. It was not that I failed to recognise both dignity and beauty of
phrase in the writing; on the contrary, I told myself that "Mr. JOHN
AYSCOUGH" had been betrayed by his own appreciation of beautiful phrases
into an indulgence in "style," a deliberate arrangement of his war-pictures
that was somehow out of harmony with the stark and horrible simplicity of
their subject. But I hasten to make confession that this was but a passing
and, I am convinced, a wrong judgment. Indeed, the abiding impression that
the book has left upon me is one of enormous sincerity. Both as a soldier
and a priest, the writer enjoyed (as his publishers quite justly say)
special opportunities for getting into touch with men of all sorts and
conditions. This, aided by his own gift of sympathy and comradeship, has
resulted in a book that is very largely a record of fleeting but genuine
friendships, made with individual soldiers, both French and English, in the
Western battle. Many of them contain portraits and character-studies (a
pedantic term for anything so sensitive and sympathetic as these tributes
to nameless heroes, but I can find no better) that linger in the memory. I
defy you, for example, to forget soon the story of that winter walk taken
by the writer and certain officer-boys of his unit to the Cistercian
Monastery, and what _Chutney_ said by the way; and what happened
afterwards. For the sake of such sincere and memorable sketches as this I
am more than ready to forgive what seemed like a touch of artifice
elsewhere.
* * * * *
Mr. GEORGE MOORE, continuing his labours as reviser and editor-in-chief of
the Moorish masterpieces, has now directed his attention to _A Modern
Lover_. Finding this (presumably) not modern enough, he has refashioned and
republished it under the admirably comprehensive title of _Lewis Seymour
and Some Women_ (HEINEMANN). Not having the original at hand, I am unable
to indulge in comparisons; but there seems good reason to suppose that
_Lewis Seymour's_ relations with the three amiable ladies who assist his
artistic and amatory career remain very much what they probably were in the
beginning. As for the tale itself, that too will hardly belie your
expectation, being full of cleverness, carried off with an infectious
gaiety, and boasting (I use the word advisedly) more than a sufficiency of
that rather assertive and school-boy impropriety which the charitable might
quote as evidence of our author's perpetual youth. It is an interesting,
though perhaps futile, speculation to reflect how Mr. THOMAS HARDY, to
whose plots the present bears some resemblance, might have handled it. Had
_Lewis Seymour_ pursued his education in womanhood under the guidance of
the wizard of Dorchester there would probably have been less of the
atmosphere of holiday humour; but, on the other hand, we should almost
certainly have been spared the quite superfluous naughtiness of the
Parisian scenes. By the way, talking of Paris, surely I am right in
supposing that the vision of a revived Versailles was an experience of two
ladies? It is unexpected to find Mr. MOORE denying anything to "the sex."
* * * * *
Of the late Mr. JACK LONDON'S alternative methods of writing, the defiantly
propagandist and the joyously adventurous, I, being an average reader, have
always preferred the latter; so that, remembering how separate and distinct
he usually kept his two styles, I expected, in taking up _The Strength of
the Strong_ (MILLS AND BOON), to be immediately either disappointed or
gratified. But, as it turns out, the half-dozen essay-stories that make up
this slender volume are by no means characteristic, for there is very
little plot in any, and even less attempt forcibly to extract a moral; and
amongst them are two not very successful North of Ireland studies that seem
to have no connection at all with the author's usual manner. The volume is
made up of social pictures, all (as Mr. LONDON liked to pretend) within his
own experience, presented impartially for you to study, and draw, if you
choose, your own conclusions. That experience ranges, comprehensively
enough, from a first-hand sketch of primeval man attempting rather
unhappily to group himself in clans and tribes, to a journalistic note of
the Yellow Peril that materialised, we learn, somewhere late in the
twentieth century and was overcome by science liberating disease--a Hunnish
method no longer novel. Of the series I like best the tale of the San
Francisco professor of dual personality, who by dint of much practical
study of labour problems came at last to cut loose from his own circle and
disappear in the army of industry. In this chapter alone is there a spark
of the volcanic fire, now unhappily no longer in eruption, that blazes in
such great stories as _The Sea Wolf_, _Adventure_ and _Burning Daylight_.
* * * * *
Though there may be no very particular reason why you should be invited to
read _The Love Story of Guillaume-Marc_ (HUTCHINSON) it is, I vouch, a
vivid enough tale of its _genre_. Squeamish folk, perhaps, may think that
this is not the most opportune time at which to draw attention to the
blood-lust that was so marked a feature of the French Revolution. But,
granted that you do not suffer from squeams, you will find Miss MARIAN
BOWER a deft weaver of romance. Here love and adventure walk firmly
hand-in-hand, and from the moment _Guillaume-Marc_ makes his entrance upon
the stage until the happy ending is reached any day might have been his
last. The villain, too, is a satisfactory scoundrel, and cunning withal.
"Brains," he considered, "may conceive revolutions, but it is the empty
stomach which propagates them." I wonder whether they have the brains for
it in Berlin.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Helen_ (_who has been reckoning termination of the War by
counting opposite diner's prune stones_). "MOTHER, I _DO_ BELIEVE IT'S
GOING TO BE _THIS_ YEAR!"]
* * * * *
According to a recent official _communiqué_ from Petrograd, among the
captures on the Caucasian Front was "an apomecometer (an instrument for
estimating altitudes)." It is understood that the latest Turkish estimate
of the "All Highest" was captured with the instrument, but was found to be
unfit for publication.
* * * * *
"The _Weser Zeitung_ now reports from Berlin that deliberations by the
State authorities have led to the decision that from April 15 the meat
ration will be increased to half a kilometre (about 17-1/2 ozs.) per
week."--_Liverpool Daily Post_.
This must refer to the sausage-ration, which by reason of its length and
tenuity is now advertised by the butchers (civilian) of Berlin as "The
HINDENBURG line."
* * * * *
"STEAM LUNCH--50 ft. x 7-1/4 ft., fast, liquid fuel."--_Yachting
Monthly_.
A meal of these dimensions should surely attract the attention both of the
FOOD CONTROLLER and the Liquor Control Board.