(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
This paragraph will, I hope, catch your eye in time to be of use as
a guide in the holiday fairy-tale traffic. But at worst there are
always birthdays or, for nursery gifts, those even more apt occasions
known as Nothing-in-particular Days. (_Humpty-Dumpty_, you remember,
a recognised authority, used to call them un-birthdays.) Anyhow, if
you should be looking about for something applicable to Kit or Ursula,
you may take my word that you will find nothing better than _The Dream
Pedlar_ (SIMPKIN, MARSHALL). The letterpress--I beg your pardon,
I should have said the "reading"--is by Lady MARGARET SACKVILLE,
who has clearly a pretty taste in fairy matters, and the pictures
are by FLORENCE ANDERSON in colour, and CLARA SHIRLEY HAYWARD in
black-and-white. I don't say that all these are of equal merit, but the
best of them are delightful. Moreover, although in the modern sumptuous
fashion the colour plates are introduced on brown-paper mounts, still
they have the practical merit of being fixed, and not merely gummed at
one corner, a fashion that simply results in litter for the nursery
floor. The tales themselves are wholly charming, and about quite the
right people, kings and woodcutters and dream-princesses and goblins.
Perhaps now and again Lady MARGARET falls to the temptation of being
a thought too clever with an aside, so to speak, whispered in the ear
of the reader-aloud. But the wise child will forgive her this for the
compelling charm of her simplicities. For me, if I had a favourite in
the tales, it was perhaps _Martin's godmother_, "an attractive old
lady, short, with large fan-like ears, which she would wave to and fro
when amused." There is an enchanting picture of her doing it. I have
not yet known the nursery where that picture would not soon bear the
thumb-marks of popularity.
* * * * *
Not a single word could be conveniently omitted from _Friends and
Memories_ (ARNOLD), but I could easily spare a great many of its
notes of exclamation--nearly all superfluous--for Miss MAUDE VALÉRIE
WHITE'S style of writing needs no such advertisement. And having got
rid of that grumble I feel at liberty to express, without restraint,
my profound admiration of the book and its author. Never, then, has it
been my good fortune to read so many pages that are filled with what I
can only call the fragrance of life. Sorrows and troubles Miss WHITE
has known in abundance--one often sees her smiling through a veil of
tears--but she steadfastly refuses to dwell upon anything but the joy
of living, and the kindness of her many friends. This splendid way of
regarding the world is one of the qualities that has made her welcome
and more than welcome wherever she goes; it is also the quality that
gives an almost unique distinction to her volume of reminiscences. One
can scarcely think of her as an eminent composer whose songs have been
heard throughout the world when the gift, which she obviously values
most and would herself call "priceless," is that of being able to keep
up a cheerful end whatever happens. Her book, therefore, is really both
a tonic and a lesson, but it is a tonic that is as delightful as good
champagne, and it is a lesson that is full of humour and of what is
rarer than humour--good fun. Even in her reticences Miss WHITE cannot
save herself from being amusing, for on her first page she refuses to
tell us her age, though afterwards she gives it away time and again to
anyone inquisitive enough to use a little arithmetic. But she need have
no fears, for she has the spirit of youth which can laugh at figures
and defy the passing years.
Must I believe that the life of anybody, even the hardest worked and
least attractive village girl, is as devoid of exhilaration and good
cheer as was that of _Chrismas Hamlyn?_ Maybe dismal events happen
now and then to individuals which make them wish, with reason, that
they were dead and had never been alive, and I will admit that it
was so with _Chrismas_ at the moment when her second lover proved to
be entirely spurious and to have pretended passion in order to steal
a purse. But I am asked to assume that, apart from and before this
little tragedy, she was necessarily in a state of gloom by reason of
the mere dulness and hardship of the existence of her sort. This is
a proposition which, notwithstanding Mrs. HENRY DUDENEY'S skilful
pleading, I am reluctant to accept. I prefer to think that the girl
found recreation in everyday events, or at least in every other day
events, of her neighbourhood which would make no appeal to Mrs.
DUDENEY or myself; or, indeed, that the brooding over her unhappy lot
in general, and her first love failure in particular, afforded some
satisfaction for which credit has not been allowed. Undoubtedly the
environment of the _Hamlyns_ is studied rather from our view than from
their own, and by that method of analysis a vast amount of human misery
may be discovered which does not always in fact exist. Apart from that,
_What a Woman Wants_ (HEINEMANN) is a convincing study of the sordid
side of things; but I would like to see the admirable gifts of the
authoress directed to the emphasizing of the merrier side of the same
sort of life, so that we might compare the two and form a more balanced
opinion.
* * * * *
_The Bed-Book of Happiness_ is a "Colligation or Assemblage of Cheerful
Writings," colligated by Mr. HAROLD BEGBIE, and published by Messrs.
HODDER AND STOUGHTON. It is a second edition, entitled the Red-Cross
Edition, and it offers itself as an anodyne for the pain and boredom
of wounded heroes. Said heroes, of average British pattern, would, I
think, receive a nasty shock on reading the title and might be tempted
to thrust the volume privily away without more ado. But they need do
no such thing; it is nothing like so bad as that. On the contrary it
is stuffed with most excellent matter for the perceptive, in doses
not long enough to tire and with sufficient variety to stimulate.
Old favourites from HOOD and CALVERLEY; an odd Ingoldsby or two;
whimsicality from SAMUEL BUTLER; absurdities from that other SAMUEL
(CLEMENS); growls from that greatest of the tribe, JOHNSON; cheeriness
from that best of poets and schoolmasters, T. E. BROWN; a little
STERNE, a little DICKENS, a little THACKERAY; _Percy Anecdotes_ and
snippets from GRONOW; translated excerpts from those delightful allies,
DAUDET, SAINT-BEUVE, ANATOLE FRANCE; and so forth and on. Of course no
two colligators of bed-books could agree upon their choice, but I do
think Mr. BEGBIE might have bagged a little from R. L. S. That omission
and the deplorable title are my chief grievances. It is a sound point
that there is no unwholesome invalidy tone about this seasonable
re-issue with additions.
Though I enjoyed _Broken Shackles_ (METHUEN) in a mild degree, I hardly
think that Mr. JOHN OXENHAM has here given us of his best. So little
do I think this that I am the prey of a suspicion--probably quite
unfounded--that the tale is either early work, or has been hastily put
together since the beginning of August. Anyhow, it's about a young
man named _de Valle_, an officer in the Eastern Army of France, who
is married but lives apart from his wife. The time is the winter of
1870, and when the great surrender comes, and the army is forced over
into Switzerland, _de Valle_ is so sick of military muddles that he
determines to settle down as a Swiss civilian and never go back any
more. This (fortune helping him) he is enabled to do. He changes his
name to _Duval_, and starts the simpler life with some pleasant folk
who run a saw-mill in the Brunnen Thal. He even goes so far as to marry
the maid of the mill. Which was rash of him, since he was still legally
tied to his French wife, and (in fiction at least) the course of bigamy
never did run smooth. Inevitably, therefore, not only did he encounter
his wife again, coming out of the casino at Interlaken (she too has not
been idle, having meanwhile married a Russian Prince), but the villain
of the story also saw them both, and looked to make a good thing by it.
But you know how quick and deep the Aar runs at Interlaken? _Duval_
accordingly pushed the inconvenient blackmailer into the water, and
everyone, with this exception, lived happy. The real merit of the book
lies not in this improbable plot, but in its moving chapters upon a
little treated phase of the last Franco-German fighting. These are well
done.
* * * * *
Many gentle readers will be well pleased to hear that AGNES and
EGERTON CASTLE are giving them more news of that engaging heroine,
_Lady Kilcroney_. True, in the new book _Kitty_ herself plays but a
subordinate part, but as her dainty mantle of insolence and charm
appeals to have fallen on the shoulders of a worthy successor no one
need grumble upon that score. The new book is called _The Ways of
Miss Barbara_ (SMITH ELDER), and I daresay that having said so much
I might spare myself the pains of telling precisely what those ways
were. Do you need to hear how _Mistress Barbara_ (who was a kind of
eighteenth-century _Becky Sharp_ without the sting) was befriended
by _Lady Kitty_ and her susceptible lord? How the noble carriage was
waylaid on its journey from Paris to the coast? How the highwayman
was eventually brought to hook by the wiles of _Barbara_, who in
the long run marries a duke, and is left preparing for permanent
prosperity? Whether this last expectation will be fulfilled without
preliminary troubles I take leave to doubt. Indeed, the situation as
regards _Barbara_ and her ducal spouse is left so full of intriguing
possibilities that I could not but suspect those clever campaigners,
the EGERTON CASTLES, of having artfully arranged it as a kind of
concrete foundation from which to attack the public sympathy later on.
This is as may be. Meanwhile here is a pleasantly sparkling comedy with
which, I vow, you are like to find yourself vastly well pleased.
* * * * *
[Illustration: GERMAN SPY REPORTS TO HEADQUARTERS.
"HAVE VISITED ARMY AND NAVY STORES. FIND BRITISH FORCES BEING SUPPLIED
WITH MANY USELESS ARTICLES CALCULATED TO EMBARRASS THEIR MOVEMENTS."]
[Transcriber's Note: