(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
Not for a long time have I got so great a pleasure from any collection
of short sketches as now from Miss ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK'S _Autumn
Crocuses_ (SECKER). Not only has the whole book a pleasant title, but
each of these stories is happily called after some flower that plays a
part in its development. I am aware of the primly Victorian sound of
such a description applied to art so modern as that of Miss SEDGWICK.
You know already (I hope) how wonderfully delicate is her almost
passionate sensibility to the finer shades of a situation. It is,
I suppose, this quality in her writing that makes me still have
reminiscent shivers when I think about that horrible little
bogie-tale, _The Third Window_; and these "Flower Pieces" (as 1860
might have called them) are no whit less subtle. I wish I had space to
give you the plots of some of them; "Daffodils," for instance, a quite
unexpected and thrilling treatment of perhaps the oldest situation of
literature; or "Staking a Larkspur," the only instance in which Miss
Sedgwick's gently smiling humour crystallizes definitely into comedy;
or "Carnations," the most brilliantly written of all. As this liberty
is denied me you must accept a plain record of very rare enjoyment and
take steps to share it.
* * * * *
Chief among the _Secrets of Crewe House_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON),
now divulged to the mere public, are the marvellous efficiency and
superhuman success achieved by the British Enemy Propaganda Committee,
which operated in Lord CREWE'S London house under the directorate of
Lord NORTHCLIFFE. "What is propaganda?" the author asks himself on an
early page, and the right answer could have been made in four letters:
ADVT. It is endorsed by the eulogistic manner in which the Committee's
work is written up by one of them, Sir CAMPBELL STUART, K.B.E., and
illustrated by photographs of Lord NORTHCLIFFE (looking positively
Napoleonic) and of the sub-supermen. As in all great achievements, the
main principle was a simple one. A good article is best advertised by
truth; and it was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the
truth which the Committee, with admirable conciseness and no little
ingenuity, so promulgated that it could no longer escape notice even
in the Central Empires. Not the least of the Committee's difficulties
and achievements was to get the truth of our cause and policy so
defined as to be susceptible of unequivocal statement by poster,
leaflet, film and gramophone record. Sir CAMPBELL STUART perhaps tends
to underrate the rival show, the German propaganda organization, whose
work, if it did Germany little good, has done and is still doing
colossal harm to us. Also he tends to forget that Lord HAIG and his
little lot in France at any rate helped the Committee to effect the
breakdown of the German _moral_ in 1918 and so to win the war.
* * * * *
I feel that Miss MARGARET SYMONDS had a purpose in writing _A Child of
the Alps_ (FISHER UNWIN), but, unless it was to show how mistaken
it is, as _Basil_, the Swiss farmer, puts it, "to think when thou
shouldst have been living," it has evaded me. The book begins with a
romantic marriage between an Englishwoman of some breeding and a Swiss
peasant who is a doctor, and tells the history of their daughter until
she is about to marry _Basil_, her original sweetheart. I cannot be
more definite or tell you how her first marriage--with an English
cousin--turned out, because _Linda's_ own account of this is all
we get, and that is somewhat vague. A great many descriptions of
beautiful scenery, Swiss and Italian, come into the book, and a great
many people, some of them very individual and lifelike; but the
author's concentration on _Linda_ gives them, people and scenery
alike, an unreal and irritating effect of having been called into
being solely to influence her heroine, and that lessens their
fascination. Yet it is a book which makes a distinct impression, and
once read will not easily be forgotten. It seems a strange comment to
make on a new volume of a "First Novel Library," but _A Child of
the Alps_, as you will realise if you have been reading novels long
enough, is almost exactly the sort of book its title would have
suggested had it appeared thirty years ago.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Prospective Employer._ "HOW OLD ARE YOU?" _Applicant
for Post._ "FOURTEEN--AND UNMARRIED."]
* * * * *
These wrapper-artists should really exercise a little more discretion.
To depict on the outside of a book the facsimile of a cheque for ten
thousand pounds might well be to excite in some readers a mood of
wistfulness only too apt to interfere with their appreciation of the
contents. Fortunately, _Uncle Simon_ (HUTCHINSON) is a story quite
cheery enough even to banish reflections on the Profiteer. A
middle-aged and ultra-respectable London solicitor, whose thwarted
youth periodically awakes in him and insists upon his indulging all
those follies that should have been safely finished forty-odd years
before--here, you will admit, is a figure simply bursting with every
kind of possibility. Fortunately, moreover, MARGARET and H. DE VERE
STACPOOLE have shown themselves not only fully alive to all the
humorous chances of their theme, but inspired with an infectious
delight in them. It is, for example, a singularly happy touch that the
wild oats that _Uncle Simon_ tries to retrieve are not of to-day but
from the long-vanished pastures of mid-Victorian London. Of course
such a fantasy can't properly be ended. Having extracted (as I
gratefully admit) the last ounce of entertainment from him, the
authors simply wake _Uncle Simon_ up and go home. As a small literary
coincidence I may perhaps add that it was my fortune to read the book
in the very garden (of that admirable Shaftesbury inn) which, under
a transparent disguise, is the scene of _Uncle Simon's_ restoration.
Naturally this enhanced my enjoyment of a sportive little comedy,
which I can most cordially commend.
* * * * *
Mr. ST. JOHN G. ERVINE is a versatile author who exhibits that
unevenness of quality which is generally the besetting sin of
versatile authors. When he is good he is very good indeed, and in _The
Foolish Lovers_ (COLLINS) he is at his best. The Ulsterman is seldom
either a lovable or an interesting character. He has certain rude
virtues which command respect and other qualities, not in
themselves virtues--such as clan conceit and an intensely narrow
provincialism--that beget the virtues of industry, honesty and
frugality. But to the philosopher and student of character all types
are interesting, and Mr. ERVINE'S skill lies in his ability not merely
to draw his Ballyards hero to the life but to interest us in his
unsuccessful efforts to become a successful writer. It is merely clan
conceit that drives him forward in the pursuit of this purpose, for
circumstances have clearly intended him to carry on the grocery
business in which the family have achieved some success and a full
measure of local esteem. The _MacDermotts_ never failed to accomplish
their purpose; he, as a _MacDermott_, proposed to achieve fame as a
novelist. It was quite simple. But it turned out to be not at all
simple. The quite provincial young _MacDermott_ cannot make London
accept him at his own valuation and his novels are poor stuff. His
wife, loyal to him but still more loyal to the _MacDermott_ clan into
which she has married and which now includes a little _MacDermott_, is
the first to recognise that her husband had best seek romance in the
family grocery business. Then the _MacDermott_ himself, with that
shrewdness which may be late in coming to an Ulsterman but never fails
him altogether, realises it too and the story is finished.
* * * * *
The main object of the characters in _The Courts of Idleness_ (WARD,
LOCK) was to amuse themselves, and as their sprightly conversations
were often punctuated by laughter I take it that they succeeded. To
give Mr. DORNFORD YATES his due he is expert in light banter; but some
three hundred pages of such entertainment tend to create a sense of
surfeit. The first part of the book is called, "How some passed out
of the Courts for ever," and then comes an interlude, in which we are
given at least one stirring war-incident. I imagine that Mr. YATES
desires to show that, although certain people could frivol with the
worst, they could also fight and die bravely. The second part, "How
others left the Courts only to return," introduces a new set of people
but with similar conversational attainments. Mr. YATES can be strongly
recommended to anyone who thinks that the British take themselves too
seriously.
* * * * *
=A Burning Question.=
"The Germans have singed the Protocol."--_China Advertiser_.
* * * * *
=A Master of Deduction.=
"At 11.30 last night a black iron safe, 22 inches by 18, was found
by the roadside at Leaves Green-road, Keston. When examined it was
found that the bottom of the safe had been cut out. A burglary is
suspected."--_Evening Paper_.
* * * * *