(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
STEVENSON, in one of his Fables, imagines a court presided over by the
Great White Magistrate. It was a very brief session, and the novelist
did not again use the idea. Mr. HUGH CARTON, whose name, we are informed
by the wrapper of the book, that new and most trustworthy medium of
communication between the candid publisher (unwilling that merit should
shine unobserved) and the hesitating purchaser (who needs only the truth
to send his hand to his purse) is a pseudonym covering the identity of
"one of the leading clerics of our day," has however made a whole book
of it. In _The Grand Assize_ (HEINEMANN) Mr. CARTON imagines a Day of
Judgment, on which the careers and influences of a number of social
types are weighed and punishment inflicted--for all are guilty. The
Plutocrat, the Daughter of Joy, the Bookmaker, the Party Politician, the
Musical Comedy entrepreneur, the Agitator, even the Cleric (although
not, I am sure, he of the wrapper) are called to justice. Everything for
and against them is then said, either by themselves or the advocate, and
sentence is passed. The result is a book curiously rich in sympathy,
fearless and fine, and provocative of much thought. That it is in
essence a tract is nothing against it; for many of the best novels
belong to that genus, and HOGARTH, of whom now and then the reader is
forced to think, was a tractarian to the core. I take off my hat to
"HUGH CARTON" and wish that more parsons were as humane and
understanding as he.
* * *
Mr. ALGERNON BLACKWOOD seems as a writer to possess two quite distinct
literary methods. There is his style high-fantastical, which at its best
touches a kind of fairylike inspiration, unique and charming--the style,
for example, of _Jimbo_. Then, on a lower plane, there is the frankly
bogie creepiness of _John Silence_. Between the two he has created a
position for himself, half trickster, half wizard, that none else in
modern literature could fill. His new book, _Incredible Adventures_
(MACMILLAN), is a combination of both methods. Four of the five
adventures are of the mystically gruesome kind, removed however from
being commonplace ghost-stories by a certain dignity of conception. It
is to be admitted that but for this dignity two at least would fall into
some peril of bathos. Take the first, _The Regeneration of Lord Ernie_,
in which a young tutor, bear-leading a spiritless scion of nobility
through Europe, brings his bored charge to a strange mountain village
where the inhabitants worship the forces of fire and wind. If you know
Mr. BLACKWOOD'S work, as you surely do, I need not detail to you what
happens. Told as he tells it, at considerable, even undue, length, but
with a wonderful sense of the mysterious, of the feeling of the
wind-swept mountain and its roaring fires, the thing is undeniably
impressive. But in other less expert hands it would become ludicrous.
There is one tale of finer texture than the others. It is called
_Wayfarers_, and is a quite beautiful little fantasy on the old theme
that love is longer than life. This is what Mr. BLACKWOOD can do to
perfection. It redeems a volume that, for all its originality, does not
otherwise display his art quite at its best.
* * *
_Antarctic Adventure_ (FISHER UNWIN), by RAYMOND E. PRIESTLEY, tells the
story of SCOTT'S Northern party. That party, as you probably remember,
spent an unexpected winter underground, owing to the failure of the ship
to relieve it. Its story was shortly told by its leader, Lieutenant
CAMPBELL, in _Scott's Last Expedition_--the official report of a sailor
to his commanding officer. Mr. PRIESTLEY is more communicative. As one
of the famous six who went through it, he gives us, from his comfortable
rooms in Cambridge, the full tale of that extraordinary adventure. He
had a good angle of observation in the igloo, for it was he who doled
out the eight birthday lumps of sugar and the other few ridiculous
luxuries which relieved the monotony of seal. He was, in fact, the
commissariat officer. How he must have been loved--and hated! To what a
large extent also (one begins to realise) the ultimate safety of the
party must have been due to his management. I recommend to boys and
grown-ups a story as absorbing as _Robinson Crusoe_, and as heartening
to the pride of Englishmen as the other stories which we are hearing now
from places less remote. For boys in particular _The Voyages of Captain
Scott_ (SMITH ELDER) has been written by CHARLES TURLEY, a compilation
excellently made from the original diaries; to which Sir J. M. BARRIE
has written a true BARRIE preface describing the boyhood of SCOTT. I can
think of no better present for a nephew.
* * *
_The Woman in the Bazaar_ (CASSELL), by Mrs. PERRIN, is a story of the
Anglo-Indian life in which she always moves at ease. It is _Captain
George Coventry's_ first wife, the golden-haired and "phenomenally" (as
the newspaper-men will go on saying) innocent _Rafella_ of the
high-perched Cotswold vicarage, who eventually finds her deplorable way
down to the Bazaar. If _George_ (that beastly prig) at the psychological
moment of their first serious quarrel, instead of threatening and
laughing like a drunken man and reeling back into the room, had reeled
forward and gone into the matter quietly, the entirely virtuous, if
idiotic, _Rafella_ would not have flown into the practised arms of that
unscrupulous barrister, _Kennard_, who, as everybody knew, had left a
mournful trail of dishonoured wives all over India, his legal knowledge
presumably saving him at once from the inconvenience of marrying his
victims and from the physical violence of outraged Anglo-Indian
chivalry. And when _George_, now a colonel and on the verge of a quarrel
with the second _Mrs. Coventry_ about a young ass of a _tertium quid_,
caught sight of poor _Rafella_ at a window in the Bazaar, he was so
genuinely upset that he rushed back to his wife, forgave her (nothing in
particular) and lived happily ever after. Which, of course, is just one
of those things that thrusts the avenging hatchet into the hand of the
Militant.
* * *
I suppose that the "culture" (using this word in the strictly English
sense) of Streatham Hill may perhaps be a trifle thinner than that of
certain other suburbs, and, keeping this well in mind, I must try to
believe that _Candytuft--I mean Veronica_ (HUTCHINSON) is meant for
romantic comedy and is not a one-Act farce hastily expanded by its
author into three-hundred-page fiction form. The plot turns on a not
very serious marital estrangement. _C. I. M. V._ (she had called herself
_Veronica_ suddenly one day after reading RUSKIN) decided that she must
have an intellectual companion and (rather daringly) that he must be of
the male sex. So her husband's best friend dressed himself up as a
fantastic and extremely repulsive-looking poet with a red wig and padded
waistcoat and indulged in fantastic rhodomantades in order to
disillusionise her. Well enough on the knock-about stage, of course.
But, if I am to treat _C. I. M. V._ from the mildly satiric standpoint,
which I fancy that MABEL BARNES-GRUNDY would prefer me to adopt, _Mr.
Shakespeare Waddilove_ is rather a big mouthful to swallow, even if I
can accommodate my throat to the supposition that the lady would have
allowed her husband to choose her Platonic friend for her and promise
beforehand to give him a two months' trial. She did come from Streatham,
I know, before she went to live in the country; but still the trams run
all the way from Streatham to Charing Cross--and that padded waistcoat!
However there are some amusing passages in _Candytuft--I mean Veronica_,
and so I shut both eyes and gulped as hard as I could.
* * *
Do you know _Mrs. Shovell? Violet Ashwin_ she was, and married young
_Charlie Shovell_, some sort of a publisher and really rather a nice
fool. She is an absolute dear. Gay and loyal and adorably kind. No, not
a bit sentimental. Shy and yet has a way with her, and, thank Heaven,
not the least bit of a scalp-hunter. We did think that _Master Charles_,
who was distinctly by way of being a philanderer, mightn't perhaps run
quite straight. But she's done wonders with him. Might I introduce you?
Certainly? Then get _Duke Jones_ (SIDGWICK AND JACKSON), by ETHEL
SIDGWICK. She's entirely responsible for these nice people, and for
_Lady Ashwin, Violet's_ utter beast of a mother, and _Sir Claude_, that
brick of a man and doctor, and insufferable _Honoria_ and naughty
bewitching _Lisette_, who came badly to grief and was pulled out of a
really rotten hole by _Jones. E. M. Jones_ (_M_ for _Marmaduke_) was the
fellow who worshipped _Violet_ at sight and was ever after her faithful
dog.... I've put down this book with real regret. I can't help worrying
as to whether there really is such a person as _Violet_ because I might
have the fortune to meet her. Really, Miss SIDGWICK has an extraordinary
power of making you feel friends (or bitter enemies) with her puppets,
who aren't puppets at all. I've had the bad luck to miss _A Lady of
Leisure_, to which _Duke Jones_ is a sequel, but I'll readily take the
responsibility of advising you to get it first.
* * *
Those who do not accept Archbishop LANG'S view that the KAISER is too
sacred a subject for mirth should spend sixpence and a quarter of an
hour on _Keep Smiling_ (NASH). In dealing with the inexhaustible theme
of WILLIAM'S Lie Factory, Messrs. WALTER EMANUEL and JOHN HASSALL are at
their best.
* * * * *
Illustration:
_Sergeant Instructor._ "WHAT'S YER NAME?"
_Sir Angelo Frampington, R.A._ "FRAMPINGTON."
_Sergeant._ "WELL, 'OLD YER 'EAD UP, FRAMPINGTON."
* * * * *