(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
MR. JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER, for whose work as a novelist I have more
than once expressed high admiration, has now brought together seven
long-short stories under the collective title of _The Happy End_
(HEINEMANN). Lest however this name and the little preface, in which
the writer asserts that his wares "have but one purpose--to give
pleasure," should lead you to expect that species of happy ending in
which Jack shall have Jill and naught shall go ill, I think a word of
warning may not be wasted. In only three of the tales is the finish
a matter of conventional happiness. Elsewhere you have a deserted
husband, who has tracked his betrayer to a nigger saloon in Atlantic
City, wrested from his purpose of murder by a revivalist hymn; a young
lad, having avenged the destruction of his home, returning to his
widowed mother to await, one supposes, the process of the law; or an
over-fed war profiteer stricken with apoplexy at sight of a boat full
of the starved victims of a submarine outrage. You observe perhaps
that the epithet "happy" is one to which the artist and the casual
reader may attach a different significance. But let not anything I
have said be considered as reflecting upon the tales themselves, which
indeed seem to me to be masterpieces of their kind. Personally my
choice would rest on the last, "The Thrush in the Hedge," a simple
history of how the voice of a young tramp was revealed by his chance
meeting with a blind and drug-sodden fiddler who had once played in
opera--a thing of such unforced art that its concluding pages, when
the discovery is put to a final test, shake the mind with apprehension
and hope. A writer who can make a short story do that comes near to
genius.
* * * * *
If you wish to play the now fashionable game of
newspaper-proprietor-baiting you can, with Miss ROSE MACAULAY, create
a possible but not actual figure like _Potter_ and, using it for
stalking-horse, duly point your moral; or, with Mr. W. L. GEORGE in
_Caliban_ (METHUEN), you can begin by mentioning all the well-known
figures in the journalistic world by way of easy camouflage, so as to
evade the law of libel, call your hero-villain _Bulmer_, attach to
him all the legends about actual newspaper kings, add some malicious
distortion to make them more exciting and impossible, and thoroughly
let yourself go. Good taste alone will decide which is the cleaner
sport, and good taste does not happen to be the fashion in certain
literary circles at the moment. Of course Mr. GEORGE, being a novelist
of some skill, has provided a background out of his imagination. The
most interesting episode, excellently conceived and worked out, is
the only unsuccessful passage in _Lord Bulmer's_ life, the wooing of
_Janet Willoughby_. The awkward thing for Mr. GEORGE is that he has so
splashed the yellow over _Bulmer_ in the office that there is no
use in his pretending that the _Bulmer_ in _Mrs. Willoughby's_
drawing-room is the same man in another mood. He just isn't.
Incidentally the author gives us the best defence of the saffron
school of journalism I've read--a defence that's a little too good
to believe; and some shrewd blows above (and, as I have hinted,
occasionally below) the belt.
* * * * *
I want to give the epithet "lush" to _The Breathless Moment_ (LANE),
and, although the dictionary asks me as far as in me lies to reserve
that adjective for grass, I really don't see why, just for once, I
shouldn't do what I like with it. Lush grass is generally long and
brightly coloured--"luxuriant and succulent," the dictionary says--and
that is exactly what MISS MURIEL HINE'S book is. She tells the story
of _Sabine Fane_, who, loving _Mark Vallance_, persuaded him to pass
a honeymoon month with her before he went to the Front, though his
undesirable wife was still alive. In allowing her heroine to suffer
the penalty of this action Miss HINE would appear, as far as plot is
concerned, to discourage such adventures. But _Sabine_ is so charming,
her troubles end so happily and the setting of West Country scenery is
so beautiful that, taken as a whole, I should expect the book to have
the opposite effect. The picture of a tall green wave propelling
a very solid rainbow, which adorns the paper wrapper and as an
advertisement has cheered travellers on the Tube for some weeks past,
has no real connection with the story, but perhaps is meant to be
symbolical of the book, which, clever and well written as it is, is
almost as little like what happens in real life.
* * * * *
_The Uses of Diversity_ (METHUEN) is the title of a little volume in
which Mr. G. K. CHESTERTON has reprinted a selection of his shorter
essays, fugitive pieces of journalism, over which indeed the casual
reader may experience some natural bewilderment at finding, what is
inevitable in such work, the trivialities of the day before yesterday
treated with the respect of contemporary regard. Many of the papers
are inspired by the appearance of a particular book or play. I can
best illustrate what I have said above by a quotation from one of
them, in which the author wrote (_a propos_ of the silver goblets in
_Henry VIII._ at His Majesty's) that he supposed such realism might
be extended to include "a real Jew to act _Shylock_." For those who
recall a recent triumph, this flight of imagination will now have an
oddly archaic effect. It is by no means the only passage to remind us
sharply that much canvas has gone over the stage rollers since these
appreciations were written. Unquestionably Mr. CHESTERTON, with the
unstaled entertainment of his verbal acrobatics, stands the ordeal of
such revival better than most. Even when he is upon a theme so outworn
as the "Pageants that have adorned England of late," he can always
astonish with some grave paradox. But for all that I still doubt
whether journalism so much of the moment as this had not more fitly
been left for the pleasure of casual rediscovery in its original home
than served up with the slightly overweighting dignity of even so
small a volume.
* * * * *
In _A Tale That Is Told_ (COLLINS), Mr. FREDERICK NIVEN throws himself
into the personality of _Harold Grey_, who is the youngest son of an
"eminent Scottish divine," and constitutes himself the annalist of
the family, its private affairs and its professional business in the
commerce of literature and art. The right of the family to its annals,
notwithstanding that its members are little involved in furious
adventures or thrilling romance, is established at once by the very
remarkable character of the _Reverend Thomas Grey_. The duty upon you
to read them depends, as the prologue hints, upon whether you are
greatly interested in life and not exclusively intent on fiction. When
I realised that I must expect no more than an account, without climax,
of years spent as a tale that is told, I accepted the conditions
subject to certain terms of my own. The family must be an interesting
one and not too ordinary; the sons, _Thomas_ (whose creed was "Give
yourself," and whose application of it was such that it usually
wrecked the person to whom the gift was made), _Dick_ the artist, and
_John_ the novelist, must be very much alive; if the big adventures
were missing the little problems must be faced; the question of sex
must not be overlooked; and of humour none of the characters must be
devoid, and the historian himself must be full. Mr. NIVEN failed me in
no particular.
* * * * *
Miss F. E. MILLS YOUNG, in _Imprudence_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), is not
at the top of her form, but a neat and effective finish makes some
amends for a performance which is, like the wind in a weather report,
mainly moderate or light. The heroine, _Prudence Graynor_, was the
child of her father's second marriage, and she was afflicted with
a battalion of elderly half-sisters and one quite detestable
half-brother. This battalion was commanded by one _Agatha_, and it
submitted to her orders and caprices in a way incomprehensible to
_Prudence_--and incidentally to me. The _Graynors_ and also the
_Morgans_ were of "influential commercial stock," and both families
were so essentially Victorian in their outlook and manner of living
that I was surprised when 1914 was announced. The trouble with this
story is that too many of the characters are drawn from the stock-pot.
But I admit that, before we have done with them, they acquire a
certain distinction from the adroitness with which the author
extricates them from apparently hopeless situations.
* * * * *
[Illustration: MORE WORRIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
_The Goat._ "WHO ARE YOU?"
_The Man_ (_greatly disturbed_). "WHO? ME? I--I'M THE NEW GAMEKEEPER."
_The Goat._ "WELL, I'M THE LATE GAMEKEEPER. YOU SEE, OLD BILKS THE
SORCERER TOOK TO POACHING LATELY, AND I WAS FOOL ENOUGH TO CATCH HIM
AT IT."]
* * * * *
=Praise from "The Times."=
"The Chancellor of the Exchequer, with that absence of commercial
training which is essential to one occupying such a position..."
* * * * *
=Another Sex-Problem=.
"WANTED.--Six White Leghorn Cockerels; 6 Black Minorca Cockerels.
Must lay eggs."--_Times of Ceylon._
* * * * *
"A dreamy professor in a dim romantic laboratory may light upon
a placid formula and, like Aladdin, roll back the portals of the
enchanted fastness with a tranquil open sesame."--_Magazine._
But why should his laboratory be dim when he has _Ali Baba's_
wonderful lamp to light it?
* * * * *