(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
In looking at the title-page of _John Seneschal's Margaret_ (HODDER
AND STOUGHTON) no lover of good stories but will be saddened by the
reflection that the superscription, "by AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE," is
there seen for the last time. The double signature, herald of how much
pleasure in the past, is here attached to a cheerfully improbable
but well-told tale of the after-war about a returned soldier who was
mistaken for his dead fellow-prisoner and hailed as son, heir and
_fiancé_ by the different members of the welcoming group in the home
that wasn't his. The descriptions of this home, by the way--a house
whose identification will be easy enough for those who know the
beautiful North-Dorset country--are as good as any part of the book.
If you protest that the resulting situation is not only wildly
improbable but becoming a stock-in-trade of our novelists, I must
admit the first charge, but point out that the authors here secure
originality by making the deception an unintended one. _John Tempest_,
who in the hardships of his escape has lost memory of his own
identity, never ceases to protest that he is at least not the other
_John_ for whom the members of the _Seneschal_ family persist in
taking him--a twist that makes for piquancy if hardly for added
probability. However, the inevitable solution of the problem provides
a story entertaining enough, though not, I think, one that will
obliterate your memory of others, incomparable, from hands to which we
all owe a debt of long enjoyment.
I read _Inisheeny_ (METHUEN), as I believe I have read every story by
the same hand, at one sitting. Whose was the hand I will ask you to
guess. Characters: one Church of Ireland parson, drily humorous, as
narrator; one lively heroine with archæological father, hunting for
relics; one schoolboy; one young and over-zealous R.I.C. officer on
the look-out for concealed arms; poachers, innkeepers, peasants, etc.
Action, mostly amphibious, passes between the mainland of Western
Ireland and a small islet off the coast. Will the gentleman who said
"GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM" kindly consider himself entitled to ten nuts?
I suppose it was the mention of an islet that finally gave away my
simple secret. Mr. "BIRMINGHAM" is one of the too few authors who
understand what emotion an island of the proper size and right
distance from the coast can raise in the human breast. _Inisheeny_
delightfully fulfilled every condition in this respect; not to mention
sheltering an illicit still and being the home of Keltic treasure.
Precisely in fact the right kind of place, and the sort of story that
hardly anyone can put down unfinished. I am bound to add that, perhaps
a hundred pages from the actual end, the humour of the affair seems to
lose spontaneity and become forced. But till the real climax of the
tale, the triumphant return of the various hunters from _Inisheeny_, I
can promise that you will find never a dull page.
* * * * *
There were moments in _The Headland_ (HEINEMANN) when, with _Roma
Lennox_, the "companion" and heroine, I "shivered, feeling that
London, compared with the old house on the Headland and the family
inhabiting it, was a clean place with a clear atmosphere and inhabited
by robust, sane, straightforward persons. You felt homesick." Cornwall
is notoriously inhabited by queer people, and the _Pendragon_ family
was not merely queer but hereditarily rotten and decadent: the old
father, who burns a valuable old book of his own to appease his
violent temper; the granddaughter a kleptomaniac; the son of forty
addicted to hideous cruelties. Unpleasant but well drawn, all of them.
Mrs. C. A. DAWSON SCOTT has powerfully suggested the atmosphere of
the strange and tragic household, mourning its dead mistress; and she
understands the peculiar quality of the Cornish people and the Cornish
seas. I have not read her other novels, but, if she will promise to
wrestle with one or two rather irritating mannerisms, I will promise
to look out for her next one. I have no prejudice against the Wellsian
triplet of dots, but really Mrs. Scott does overdo it. And a good deal
of her quite penetrating psycho-thingummy was spoiled for me by her
trick of conveying nearly every impression and reflection of her
characters through an impersonal "you" or "one." This means an economy
of words and for a short time a certain vividness, but it soon becomes
tedious. One knows what a tangle you get into if one starts using
"one's" and "you's" in your letters; and you find that the author
has been caught once or twice. However, the story is good enough to
survive that.
* * * * *
The title of _The Lady of The Lawn_ (JENKINS) has "the ornament of
alliteration," but beyond that there doesn't seem to be any particular
reason why Mr. W. RILEY should have chosen it. Certainly in his story
there is an old lady who spends more of the winter on a lawn than any
old lady of my acquaintance could be induced to, even with rugs and a
summer-house to make up for the comforts of the fireside; but _Miss
Barbara_ and her site really have not so much to do with the tale as
its title seems to imply. The love affairs of a young officer who,
while blind from wounds, fell in love with his nurse to the extent of
becoming engaged to her and didn't recognise her when they met again,
are Mr. RILEY'S real concern. _Eric_, who is quite as priggish as
his name suggests, falls in love with his sweetheart, as a lady of
leisure, all over again, and goes through agonies of remorse on
account of his own faithlessness to her as a nurse. _Marion_ or
_Constance_, for she uses two names to help the confusion, lets him
suffer a while for the good of his soul, but the happy ending, the
promise of which is breathed from every line of the book, is duly
brought about. His publisher asserts that "there is no living author
who writes about Yorkshire as does Mr. RILEY." I daresay he is quite
right, but at least as far as the present book is concerned I don't
think that I should have bothered to mention it.
* * * * *
Those--and I suspect they are many--whose first real enthusiasm for
ABRAHAM LINCOLN was kindled by Mr. JOHN DRINKWATER'S romantic morality
play can profitably take up Mr. IRVING BACHELLER'S _A Man for the
Ages_ (CONSTABLE) for an engaging account of the early days of the
great Democrat. They will forgive a certain flamboyance about the
author's preliminaries. Hero-worship, if the hero be worthy, is a very
pardonable weakness, and they should certainly admire the skill and
humour with which he has patched together, or invented where seemly,
the story of lanky ABE, with his axeman's skill, his immense physical
strength, his poor head for shopkeeping, his passion for books, his
lean purse and "shrinking pants," his wit, courage and resource. A
romance of reasonable interest and plausibility is woven round young
Lincoln's story. Perhaps Mr. BACHELLER makes his hero speak a little
too sententiously at times, and certainly some of his other folk say
queer things, such as, "What so vile as a cheap aristocracy, growing
up in idleness, too noble to be restrained, with every brutal passion
broad-blown as flush as May?" What indeed! The picture of pioneering
America in the thirties is a fresh and interesting one.
* * * * *
To few of those who visit Switzerland, with its incomparable
mountains, can it have occurred that, once a man is kept there against
his will, it can be a prison as damnable as any other; possibly even
more damnable by reason of those same inevitable mountains. British
prisoners of war interned there knew that. Mr. R. O. PROWSE, in _A
Gift of the Dusk_ (COLLINS), speaks with subtle penetration for those
other prisoners, interned victims of the dreadful malady. Of necessity
he writes sadly; but yet he writes as a very genial philosopher,
permitting himself candidly "just that little cynicism which helps
to keep one tolerant." He is of the old and entertaining school of
sentimental travellers, but he is far from being old-fashioned. The
story running through his observations and modern instances is so
frail and delicate a thing that I hesitate to touch it and to risk
disturbing its bloom. All readers, save the very young and the very
old, will do well to travel with him, from Charing Cross ("I have a
childlike fondness for trains. I like to be in them, I like to see
them go by") to the peaceful, almost happy end, at the mountain refuge
by the valley of the Rhone. They will not regret an inch of the way;
and they will derive some very positive enjoyment from the picture of
that most melancholy hotel where the story is set.
* * * * *
[Illustration: WORRIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
_Mounted Gentleman_ (_who has come to grief in a morass_). "IF I
ESCAPE THIS PERIL I SUPPOSE I SHALL HAVE TO BUILD A CHURCH HERE AS A
THANK-OFFERING. AN ILL SITE, I FEAR."]
* * * * *
A New Safety Model.
"Lady's strong cycle, 23-in. frame, 28 wheels."--_Cycling._
* * * * *
From an account of the M.C.C. team's match at Colombo:
"When the unlucky thirteen was reached, Hobbs, who was sleeping
finely, fell to a great catch at mid-on by Gunasekera."--_Ceylon
Paper._
Happily HOBBS appears to have waked up when he got to Australia.
* * * * *