(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks_.)
I should like to commend with extraordinarily little reserve Mr.
FIELDING-HALL'S _The Way of Peace_ (HURST AND BLACKETT) to the kind of
reader that is drawing plans in his head for a New England. No wonder
that in these great days the impatient idealist rushes forth with his
bag of dreams. The author of _The Soul of a People_ is extreme but
sane--an extremist in common sense, say. He stakes on the fact of human
solidarity as the cure for the bitternesses and crookednesses of
politics; declares life and men to be good, not evil (how right he is!);
wants an England rescued from the Puritans on the one hand and the mere
musical comedians on the other; an England chaste because freer, less
ignorant; good beer in easeful inns; the village or township as the unit
of government and of fellowship; a return to music and the dance, not as
a plasmon-fed high-brow proposition but as the natural expression of a
joy of life returned; a clear fount of honour; a representative House of
Commons; justice, respect, common sense and responsibility instead of
charity; some place other than the streets for our young men and maidens
to make love in; a recognition of crime as mainly a social, not an
individual, disease; a law simplified and scales of justice not weighted
against the poor; and a host of other good and wise and nearly possible
things. Here is not the barren politics of manipulation but an ideal of
living citizenship. I commend it to all believers in new days and all
honourable disgruntlers; not perhaps as a programme but as a tonic.
* * * * *
Do not, please, run away with the idea that _The Nursery_ (HEINEMANN)
presents us with Mr. EDEN PHILLPOTTS' views on baby culture. The
background of his story, the scenes of which are laid in and around
Colchester a year or so ago, is composed of gardens and oyster-beds. On
these he gives a lot of information, and, as he could not be pedantic
even if he tried to be, I browsed pleasantly upon the store of knowledge
set before me. Also I liked the restraint he shows in dealing with the
War, and commend his exemplary method to some of our more blatant
novelists. When, however, I came to the inhabitants of _The Nursery_ I
failed to find in them that rare and delightful quality with which Mr.
PHILLPOTTS usually succeeds in endowing his characters. Readers of his
novels must know by this time that he is not exactly in love with _Mrs.
Grundy_, but here he seems to be insurgent against something, and for
the life of me I don't know quite what it is. Perhaps it is insincerity,
which is a very good thing to be in rebellion against. There is one very
amusing and delightful character, a bibulous old sinner who defied law
and order and almost at the last gasp ladled out what he considered
justice in a most dramatic manner. His name is _William Ambrose_, and it
is worth your while to make his disreputable acqaintance.
* * * * *
One fact at once awakened in me a fellow-feeling for Mr. BERTRAM
SMITH--the discovery of his appreciation (shared by myself, the elder
STEVENSON, and other persons of discernment) for the romantic
possibilities of the map. There is an excellent map in the beginning of
Days of Discovery (CONSTABLE), showing the peculiar domain of
childhood, the garden, in terms that will hardly fail to win your
sympathy. But not in this alone does Mr. SMITH show that he has the
heart of the matter in him; every page of these reminiscences of
nursery life proclaims a genuine memory, not a make-believe childhood
faked up for literary ends. Who that has once been young can read
unstirred by envy the chapter on "Devices and Contrivances," with its
entrancing triumph of the chain of mirrors arranged (during the
providential absence of those in authority) from the night nursery,
down two flights of stairs, to the store-room in the basement? I know a
reviewer whom nothing, but moral cowardice restrained from testing the
possibility of this delightful plan by personal experiment. Fireworks
too--Mr. SMITH has remembered them with a proper regard that is, of
course, wholly different from that of those who understand them only in
their pyrotechnic aspect, not as objects loved for themselves alone,
for their shape and feel, and the glamour of weeks of hoarding and
barter. In short, a real nursery book for the study; not one perhaps
that actual children would care for (quite possibly they might resent
it as betrayal), but one that for the less fortunate will reopen a door
of which too many of us have long lost the key.
* * * * *
What I found strangest in the _Transactions of Lord Louis Lewis_
(MURRAY) is that it is a story, or rather series of stories, about
rogues, in which trickery is invariably vanquished--a refreshing
contrast to the methods of most of our romanticists, who are given to a
certain courtier-like attitude towards the lawbreaker. Certainly that
various artist, Mr. ROLAND PERTWEE, has contrived to put together a
highly entertaining collection of diamond-cut-diamond yarns, adventure
tales that have the great advantage (for these days) of being concerned,
not with bloodshed and mysterious murders, but with the wiles of dealers
in the spurious antique and the exploits of _Lord Louis_ in defeating
them. This _Lord Louis_ is indeed a very pleasant as well as a very
ingenious gentleman. From the rotundity of his conversational periods
and a certain general suavity of demeanour I suspect him of having made
a careful study of the methods of his distinguished predecessor in
rogue-reducing, _Prince Florizel of Bohemia._ But he is, of course, none
the worse company for that. Once, however, he shocked me badly, when, in
perusing an eighteenth-century MS., he--I can hardly bring myself to
quote the passage!--he "moistened his fingers and turned over three
pages." And this of a nobleman and a connoisseur! Oh, Mr. PERTWEE!
Having said so much, it is only fair that I should call your special
attention to one of the stories, "The House in Bath," an exquisite
little gem of considerably higher art than is usually associated with
such "Exploits of the Event."
* * * * *
You might perhaps allow yourself to be put off by such a title as _Home
Truths about the War_ (ALLEN), because it, or something like it, has so
often been used as the preliminary to alarming or disagreeable
statements that we have grown excusably suspicious. But to avoid on this
account the letters that the Rev. HUGH CHAPMAN has here brought together
would be to miss a very original and inspiring little book. Let me say
once that Mr. CHAPMAN (whom you may know is energetic and popular
chaplain of the Savoy; also as already, under a pseudonym, an author)
has deliberately essayed the impossible. Self-revelation, especially in
letters, can hardly ever be made convincing. But putting this on one
side, and accepting these, not as the letters that would be written from
one man to another, but rather (to speak without irreverence) such as
the human heart might address to its Creator, you will find them full of
interest and encouragement. All sorts and conditions of men and women
are here shown, in their varied reaction to the great acid that for
these three years past has been biting into the life of the world. The
priest, the actor, the profiteer, the society-woman, even the
conscientious objector, are all touched lightly, tactfully, and with a
kindly humour that saves the book from its very obvious danger of
becoming pedantic. In his brief preface Mr. CHAPMAN has crystallised
very happily into a couple of words his ideal for the British attitude
towards the War--buoyant sternness. It is the reflection of that quality
in its pages that gives this little book its tonic value.
* * * * *
Mr. ARNOLD WRIGHT'S main work in _Early English Adventurers in the East_
(MELROSE) has been that of making good. Most of us know something, at
any rate, of the men who brought our Eastern Empire into actual
existence, but I tell myself hopefully that my ignorance of those daring
pioneers, whom Mr. WRIGHT describes as humble adventurers of the
seventeenth century, is not exceptional. It has now been satisfactorily
removed, and, after reading this excellently written history of stirring
deeds, I must believe that even men of learning will thank him for
rescuing many good names from the oblivion which threatened them. And
Mr. WRIGHT is not only to be congratulated on this act of salvage, but
also on the admirable way in which he has performed it. A restrained
style and a temperate judgment are equally at his command. I cannot
better commend his book to Imperialists than by saying that all Little
Englanders will detest it.
* * * * *
On internal evidence I had set down _Root and Branch_ (ALLEN AND UNWIN),
by R. ALLATINI, as the very clever first book of a very clever and
observant writer of the (alleged) weaker sex. But I find the title-page
gives two previous novels to her pen--I still guess a woman's hand. And
I by no means withdraw the "clever." The characterisation of the various
members of the _Arenski_ family--the branches are better done than the
root, old _Paul Arenski, K.C._, idealist and orator--is uncannily good.
There's wit and humour and diversity of gifts. What suggested the "first
book" idea was an uncertainty of method, a hesitation between the new
realism and the older romanticism. In both moods the author is
successful, but the joints show something clumsily. This, however, is
technical merely. I commend the book to all who are interested,
approvingly or critically, in the Jew. A dramatic theme runs through the
book, the ethical question as to whether a man may be justified in
killing, at her passionate request, a woman dearly loved who is slowly
dying of a terrible disease.
* * * * *
[Illustration]
_Angry Customer (who has been induced by an advertisement to purchase a
portrait enlargement)._ "YOUR ADVERTISEMENT SAYS, 'MONEY RETURNED IF NOT
SATISFIED.' I'M _NOT_ SATISFIED, AND I WANT MY MONEY BACK."
_The Eureka Portrait Company (placidly)_ "I'M SORRY YOU DON'T LIKE
IT, MADAM; BUT IF YOU WILL READ THE ADVERTISEMENT CAREFULLY YOU WILL
NOTE THAT IT DOES NOT SPECIFY _WHO_ IS TO BE SATISFIED--AND I ASSURE
YOU I _AM_."