(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
Although _Madeline of the Desert_ (UNWIN) is published in the First
Novel series, it by no means follows that Mr. ARTHUR WEIGALL can be
considered a beginner in authorship, his various activities already
including some volumes on Egyptology that have made for him a wide
circle of appreciative readers. You will therefore be correct in
guessing that the Desert of the title is Egyptian; also that the story
is one in which the setting and the local colour are treated with
expert knowledge and an infectious enthusiasm. Of _Madeline_ herself I
should say at once that nothing in her life, as shown here, became her
like the beginning of it. Her entrance into the tale, arriving out of
the desert to consult the recluse, _Father Gregory_, whose nephew
she afterwards marries, does very strikingly achieve an effect of
personality. _Madeline_ was a product of Port Said and, when we first
meet her, an adventuress of international reputation, or lack of
it. Then _Robin_ rescues, marries and educates her. It was the last
process that started the trouble. _Madeline_ took to education more
readily than a duck to water; and the worst of it was that she was by
no means willing to keep the results and her conclusions therefrom to
herself; indeed she developed the lecturing habit to an extent that
almost (but not quite) ruined her charm. Mr. WEIGALL is so obviously
sincere in all this that, though I cannot exonerate him from a charge
of using _Madeline_ as the mouthpiece of his own sociological and
religious views, I must acknowledge his good intentions, while
deploring what seems to me an artistic error. But, all said, the book
is very far from being ordinary; its quality in the portrayal both of
place and character is of the richest promise for future stories,
in which I hope the author will give us more pictures of the land he
understands so well.
* * * * *
I certainly admit that the publishers of _The Strangeness of Noel
Carton_ (JENKINS) have every justification for speaking of it as "a
new note in a novel." Indeed that clever writer, Mr. WILLIAM CAINE,
has here sounded as new, original and (for all its surface humour)
horrible a note as any I have heard in fiction for some time. My
trouble is that I can hardly indicate it without giving away the
whole business. Very briefly the tale is of one _Noel Carton_, who has
married beneath him for not quite enough money to gild a detestable
union, and, being an unstable egoist and waster, presently seeks
consolation (and pocket money) by writing a novel founded in part on
his own position. One may note in passing that Mr. CAINE seems to have
but a modest idea of the mental equipment required for such a task.
Still I suppose he knows, and anyway that isn't the point. The point
is that, once _Noel_ has got himself properly projected into his
novel, all sorts of the queerest and most bogie coincidences begin to
occur. Again to quote the puff preliminary, "as the book develops the
reader has a suspicion which becomes almost a certainty, until the
great and astounding climax is reached;" concerning which you may
justly remark that no reader with a certainty would regard its
verification as "astounding." But this takes nothing from the craft
with which, on looking back, you see the climax to have been prepared.
I could hardly call the tale altogether pleasant, but it is undeniably
new and vastly original.
* * * * *
The good Sioux glories in his scalps, and Mr. ISAAC F. MARCOSSON,
of Louisville, must surely be the Great Chief of interviewers.
Interviewing, he tells us, is, after all, only a form of reporting,
and so are history, poetry and romance. What, he asks, were MOMMSEN
and GIBBON, WORDSWORTH and KEATS but reporters, and I can only answer,
What indeed? To have been found worthy of tonsure by Mr. MARCOSSON it
is necessary to be very eminent, and to win his highest praise it
is essential also to be a good "imparter," though he has a kind of
sneaking admiration for the paleface who insists on handing him a
written statement and declines to speak. Such a one was Sir EDWARD
CARSON. Hanging to Mr. MARCOSSON'S girdle are the _chevelures_ of
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE, Lord HAIG, Marshal FOCH, Sir JAMES BARRIE and Mr.
ROOSEVELT, to name no more. Naturally _Adventures in Interviewing_
(LANE) is full of side-lights on the recent war. How could it be
otherwise when so many celebrated brains are laid bare? One quotation
I cannot refrain from giving. Speaking of Lord BEAVERBROOK he
says, "He had come to London a decade ago, to live 'the life of a
gentleman,' but was drawn irresistibly into politics." I challenge our
literature to produce a more beautiful "but."
* * * * *
Miss EDITH DART has grouped against her Dartmoor setting in _Sareel_
(PHILIP ALLAN) just the characters to act out the well-worn story of
the mutual infatuation of a young man of birth and an ignorant country
maid. But though _Sareel_, the little workhouse-reared servant at the
farm, falls in love in the accepted fashion with the best-looking of
the three young men who lodge there on a reading tour, and though he
duly falls in love with her, the innocence of her soul keeps their
passion on the highest plane. What is more, when _Alan_, as such young
gentlemen in fiction generally do, changes his mind Miss DART provides
a happy ending, without even a suicide to spoil it, and without
inconsistency either in her own point of view or in that of her
characters. I don't really believe that Devonshire people say that
they like things "brave and well" quite as often as Miss DART makes
hers, and I wish she had not so great a fondness for the word "such"
that she must invent phrases as weird as "though he had not sought
such" in order to bring it in; but apart from these trifles _Sareel_,
as something like a feminine version of a book by Mr. EDEN PHILLPOTTS
arranged for family reading, will certainly please a great many
people.
* * * * *
If you would like to see a white lady ride on a white horse to Banbury
Cross and elsewhere with a body-guard of men in tin hats, carrying
_The Banner_ (COLLINS) and proclaiming the League of Youth (against
war and other evils) and forcible retirement from all offices of
profit or power under the Crown at the age of forty, get Mr. HUGH F.
SPENDER'S new and, as it seems to me, rather ingenuous novel. Love is
not neglected, for a peer's son, deaf and dumb through shell-shock,
so responds to the counter-irritant of seeing this modern JOAN riding
through Piccadilly that he recovers both speech and hearing and
promptly uses them to put her a leading question and understand her
version of "But this is so sudden. However----" There is a people's
army; a rose-water revolution with the King accepting it as all in the
day's dull work; a fight or rather an arming of a few last-ditchers
of the old order, and much else that is not likely to happen outside
Ruritania. Also candid expression of the opinions of (I take it) the
"Wee Frees" concerning _Glamorgan Jones_.
* * * * *
If Mr. ALAN GRAHAM does not unsettle my conviction that it is easier
to begin a story of hidden treasure than it is to finish it, I can
nevertheless promise you a good day with the sleuth-hounds, should you
decide to _Follow the Little Pictures_ (BLACKWOOD). For some not
too lucid reason I went to the meet with a fear in my heart that the
command in the title referred to the "movies," and my relief was great
on discovering that it was taken from a cipher containing the key to
the treasure. The scene of this hunt is laid in Scotland, and the most
notable figure among its followers is a certain _Laird Tanish_. The
pecuniary fortunes of the _Tanish_ clan were at a low ebb, and in his
determination to improve them by winning the prize the _Laird_ broke
all the rules of the game and gave way to terrific outbursts of rage
in the manner of those explosive gentlemen with whom Miss ETHEL DELL
has familiarised us. There is both ingenuity and originality in
this story, and I should be doing the author and his readers a great
disservice if I disclosed the details of the plot. Anyone with a bent
for treasure-hunting will be missing a fine opportunity if he refuses
to have a day (or a night) with Mr. GRAHAM'S hounds.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Mistress._ "NORAH, DO YOU EVER REPEAT ANYTHING YOU
HEAR THE MASTER AND MYSELF SAY TO EACH OTHER WHEN WE HAVE A SLIGHT
DIFFERENCE OF OPINION?"
_Domestic._ "THE SAINTS FORBID, MUM!"]
* * * * *
A Sympathetic Auditor.
"Dr. R. C. Ghostley, of Edmonton, was in the city last week
and attended Sir Oliver Lodge's lecture."--_Canadian Paper._
* * * * *
"W. W. ----, the Rugby International forward, won his third
success in four days at Chesham Oddfellows' and Foresters'
sports yesterday, when he took first prize in the 10 yards
open event, with 7-1/2 yards start, in 9-2/5 sec."--_Daily
Paper._
His strong point, we gather, is not speed but staying-power.
* * * * *
_A propos_ of the DE KEYSER case:--
"Unfortunately, the Dora regulations against free speech
and printing were never taken before the High Court, and our
ancestors will wonder at our timidity."--_Daily Herald._
We understand that Sir A. CONAN DOYLE has already received several
urgent messages on the subject.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Note:
p. 438: Removed extraneous "'s" from "GASTON'S" ...
[M. GASTON LEROUX'S]
p. 440: Changed "9 2-5" to "9-2/5" ...
[in 9-2/5 sec."--_Daily Paper_.]