(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks_.)
Even those who have overloaded their shelves with books about the War
must, I think, find a place for _From Mons to Ypres with French_, by
FREDERIC COLEMAN (SAMPSON LOW). It is a most remarkably vivid and varied
record of the writer's experiences, set down in a very simple and direct
style, without the least effort at flummery and high-falutin. I can
speak for one reader at any rate on whom it made a very deep impression.
Mr. COLEMAN is, by his own account, an American and an automobilist.
Those who get his book will judge him, by the unadorned account of what
he did, to be a man of great courage and modesty, with an imperturbable
shrewdness and a humour proof against all dangers and disappointments.
Driving, as he did, a motor-car for the British Headquarters, and in
particular for General DE LISLE, he saw as much fighting as any man need
wish for and had magnificent opportunities of forming a judgment on the
effects of German shell-fire. There is a pathetic photograph of his car
hit by a shell outside Messines. I have spoken of the simplicity and
directness of Mr. COLEMAN'S style; he himself describes his book as a
plain tale. It has, indeed, that kind of plainness which in dealing with
enterprises of great pith and moment has a peculiar brilliancy of its
own. The account, for instance, of the Cambrai--Le Cateau battle, with
all its vicissitudes, is extraordinarily graphic and interesting, and
the story of the charge of some fifty men of the 9th Lancers against
more than twice their number of German Dragoons of the Guard stirs the
blood as with the sound of a trumpet. Delightful too is the narrative of
how Major BRIDGES found two hundred completely exhausted stragglers
seated despairingly upon the pavement of the square at St. Quentin, and
how by means of a penny whistle and a toy drum he got them to move and
brought them eventually to Roye and safety. Altogether a capital book.
* * * * *
_A Great Success_ (SMITH, ELDER) is about a new-risen literary star,
_Arthur Meadows_, his loving, unbrilliant wife, and a coruscating
society lion-huntress, _Lady Dunstable_. Having heard this much, you
will hardly need to be told that _Lady D._ takes up the author
violently, that he is dazzled by the glitter of her conversational
snares, and that the story resolves itself into a duel between her
ladyship and (I quote the publishers) "the wife whom she despises and
tries to set down." Nor are you likely to be in any uncertainty about
the final victory. This is brought about, with the assistance of the
long arm of coincidence, by _Doris_, the neglected wife, finding herself
in a position to prevent her rival's unsatisfactory son from contracting
matrimony with a very undesirable alien. _Doris_ indeed, and another
female victim of _Lady Dunstable_ (also deposited on the scene by the
same obliging arm), get busy unearthing so various a past for the
undesirable one that she retires baffled, epigrammatic brilliance bites
the dust, and domesticity is left triumphant. It is a jolly little
story, very short, refreshingly simple, and constructed throughout on
the most approved library lines. If the writer's name were not Mrs.
HUMPHRY WARD, I should say that she ought to be encouraged to persevere,
and even recommended to try her hand next time at something a little
more substantial.
* * * * *
Let me recommend Mr. ROTHAY REYNOLDS' _My Slav Friends_ (MILLS AND BOON)
as a corrective to Mr. STEPHEN GRAHAM's _Holy Russia_, which I
prescribed some while ago with faint reservations. Both writers set out
to interpret our mysterious ally to us. Mr. GRAHAM always looks through
a rosy-tinted monocle. Mr. REYNOLDS takes the road of balanced
appreciations, candour and kindly humour--unquestionably more effective
in the matter of making sincere proselytes. He has produced a
fascinating book, discreetly discursive--a book that seems to let you
into the real secrets of a people's soul. He believes in the sincerity
of Russian promises to Poland, and claims that the Poles share his
belief, but he does not pretend that this most unfortunate of nations
has no grievances against its suzerain. I wonder whether our perverse
Intelligences are capable of making the deduction that, if the
progressives in Russia can forget their quarrel with reaction for sake
of our great common cause, they themselves might mitigate some of the
severity of their anti-tsarism. Mr. REYNOLDS has much that is to the
point to say about the good old British legends of darkest Russia now
chiefly kept going by third-rate novelists and unscrupulous journalists.
He makes it clear that, though there is much to change, changes are
coming as fast as they can be assimilated, indeed even a little faster.
Finally I wish that those who control the destinies of our theatre might
read what is written here of the traditions of the stage in a country
where the drama is an art, not a mere speculation.
* * * * *
Despite its name there is a simple directness about the theme of Mr.
WARWICK DEEPING'S _Unrest_ (CASSELL) that I found refreshing. _Martin
Frensham_ was a dramatist, and the fortunate possessor of an adoring
wife, a charming home and a successful reputation. So quite naturally he
grew bored with all three. Then there came on the scene one _Judith
Ruddiger_, a widow, with red lips, who drove a great touring-car with
abandon, played masculine golf and generally appealed in _Frensham_ to
the elemental what-d'you-call-'ems. So these two decided to plunge into
the freer life by the process of elopement. I was a little disappointed
here. There had been so much chat about the Big Things that I had
expected a rather more expansive setting to their adventure than Monte
Carlo, followed by a round of first-class hotels. Moreover _Judith_, had
a way of addressing her companion as "partner," which emphasised her
wild Western personality to a degree that must have been almost painful
at a winter-sports' resort full of schoolmasters. So I was hardly at all
astonished when before long _Frensham_ grew more bored than ever.
Meanwhile the adoring wife (whom the author has sketched very
sympathetically and well) had refused to divorce him; and so in the long
run--well, you can see from the start where the long-run is destined to
end. But you will probably not like a pleasant tale the less for this.
Mr. DEEPING certainly has courage. There is a scene or two in which he
takes his amazonian _Judith_ to the very edge of bathos. "She could
shoot straight with a pistol, and proved it by bringing a revolver to
the summer-house, and making _Frensham_ hang his hat on the rail-fence
that ran along the wood." Rough wooing for timid dramatists! I couldn't
resist picturing how the late Mr. PÉLISSIER would have handled this
situation.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Contributor to "Poet's Corner" in country paper_. "I'm
afraid I'll have to charge something for my poems now that paper has
gone up."]
* * * * *
I wonder whether EVELYN BRAXSCOMBE PETTER just decided that her novel
could not be up to date without a German spy and so forth, or whether
she really set out to do her bit for the War by commenting on the
Teutonic idea of honour. Anyhow, one must admit that her _Gretchen
Meyer_ is drawn with rather uncommon skill, even if her subterranean
mental processes are never exactly elucidated in _Miss Velanty's
Disclosure_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL). Though educated in England and
dependent, to their misfortune, on English friends for maintenance,
there always lurked in _Gretchen's_ attitude of impartial selfishness a
certain muffled hostility to the ways of this country, and particularly
to an objectionable habit she found in us of placing an exaggerated
value on straightforward dealing. This culminated in a quite gratuitous,
and indeed even insane, demand on the man who for his sins was in love
with her that he should surrender either his English ideal or her. That
he did as wisely as honestly in letting her go and be d----d to her, I
for one had no doubt, nor I think had the authoress, for, although she
could never quite forget that _Gretchen_ was her heroine, endowing her
with a kind of beauty and even baldly labelling her attractive, it is
really, on the whole, a designedly repulsive person she has presented to
us. Though an interesting study in Teuton perfidy and certainly better
written than the columns of most evening papers, I can hardly recommend
the book as a restful change from that class of literature.
* * * * *
Mr. H. B. MARRIOTT WATSON has invented a gentleman of the road, _Dick
Ryder_, of whom his publishers, METHUEN, confess themselves very proud
in that nice way they have. Armed with a bodkin and a barker he rushes
and tushes his way through life, slitting weasands and dubbing every
cully he meets a muckworm in the pleasant idiom current (so I take it on
faith) in the time of our second JAMES. I should have been more
impressed with this hero's feats in the first few tales of _As it
Chanced_ if they had been in the very faintest degree plausible. Never
surely were such preposterous fights, in which the whole action of a
score of desperate opponents is completely suspended while the
redoubtable one brings off his splendid stunts. I gratefully remember
once having been helped through a dull day by _The House on the Downs_.
Unless memory gilds my judgment the author put some reasonable amount of
invention into that. But these collected tales are rather indifferent
pot-boiling if you are to take any other standard but that of the
gallery's formula for yarns of adventure. Perhaps, "as it chanced," my
war lunch did not agree with me. But anyway I really cannot quite
honestly commend this volume to any but the most stalwart of Mr.
MARRIOTT WATSON'S many loyal friends.