_(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)_
_Madam Constantia_ (LONGMANS) is a war story, but of an earlier and
more picturesque war. A simple tale, I am bound to call it, revolving
entirely round a situation not altogether unknown to fiction, in which
the hero and heroine, being of opposite sides, love and fight one
another simultaneously. Actually the scene is set during the American
struggle for independence, thus providing a sufficiency of pomp and
circumstance in the way of fine uniforms and pretty frocks; and
the protagonists are _Captain Carter_, of the British service, and
_Constantia Wilmer_, daughter of the American who had captured him.
Perhaps you may recall that the identical campaign has already provided
a very similar position (reversed) in _Miss Elizabeth's Prisoner_. It is
only a deserved tribute to the skill with which Mr. JEFFERSON CARTER
has told this adventure of his namesake to admit that I am left with an
uncertainty, not usual to the reviewing experience, whether it is in
fact a true or an imagined affair. In any event its development follows
a well-trodden path. We have the captive, jealous in honour, susceptible
and exasperatingly Quixotic, doubly enchained by his word and the charms
of his fair wardress; the lady's conspicuous ill-treatment of him at
the first, a slight mystery, some escapes and counterplots, and on the
appointed page the matrimonial finish that hardly the most pessimistic
reader can ever have felt as other than assured. Fact or fiction, you
may spend an agreeable hour in watching the course of _Captain Carter's_
courtship overcoming its rather obvious obstacles.
* * * * *
Because I have so great an admiration for their beneficent activities, I
have always wanted to meet a novel with a lot about dentists in it,
and now Miss DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON, in _The Tunnel_ (DUCKWORTH), has
satisfied my desire. Dentists--a houseful of them--spittoons, revolving
basins; patients going upstairs with sinking feelings; wondering at the
pattern on the wallpaper; going down triumphant. Teeth. Appointment
books. Dentists everywhere. This is not a quotation, but very like
one, for Miss RICHARDSON affects the modern manner. Though one of the
dentists is quite the most agreeable person in the book, he isn't the
hero, because the author is much too clever to have anything of the
sort. Her method, exploited some time ago in that remarkable book,
_Pointed Roofs_, is to get right inside one _Miriam Henderson_ and
keep on writing out her thoughts with as little explanation of her
circumstances as possible, so that _The Tunnel_, to anyone who has
missed the earlier books, must be very nearly unintelligible. Even the
sincere admirer of Miss RICHARDSON'S talent will begin to wonder how
many more books at the present rate of progress must be required to
bring _Miriam_ to, say, threescore years and ten. My own belief is that
if her creator is ever so ill-advised as to put her beneath a 'bus or
drop her down a lift-well, she herself will be gone too; and for that I
should be sorry, since I agree with almost all the nice things Miss MAY
SINCLAIR says of the earlier books in an appreciation here reprinted
from _The Egoist_. Miss RICHARDSON has evolved a way of writing a novel
which somehow suggests the Futurist way of painting a picture; but _The
Tunnel_ has left me wondering whether she has not carried her method a
little too far. It seems to me that some of her heroine's thoughts were
not worth recording; but perhaps when another four or five books have
been added to _Miriam's_ life-history I may discover what the scheme may
be that lies behind them all, and change my mind.
* * * * *
More than once before this I have enjoyed the dexterity of Miss VIOLET
HUNT in a certain type of social satire; but I regret to say that the
expectation with which I opened _The Last Ditch_ (STANLEY PAUL) was
doomed to some disappointment. The idea was promising enough--a study of
our British best people confronting the ordeal of world-war; but somehow
it failed to capture me. For one reason it is told in a series of
letters--a dangerous method at any time. As usual, these are far too
long and literary to be genuine; though they keep up a rather irritating
pretence of reality by repetitions of the same events in correspondence
from different writers. Moreover, letters whose concern is the progress
of recruiting or the novelty of war can hardly at this time avoid an
effect of having been delayed in the post. But all this would have
mattered little if Miss HUNT had chosen her aristocrats from persons in
whom it was possible to take more interest. But the plain fact is that
you never met so tedious a set. They are not witty; they are not even
wicked to any significant extent. They simply produce (at least in my
case) no effect whatever. Perhaps this may all be of intention; the
author may have meant to harrow us with the spectacle of our old
nobility expiring as nonentities. But in that case the picture
is manifestly unfair. And it is certainly dull--dull as the last
ditch-water.
* * * * *
In _America in France_ (MURRAY) Lieut. Col. FREDERICK PALMER, a member
of the Staff Corps of the United States Army, sets out to tell the story
of the making of an army. This is the first book by Colonel PALMER that
has come my way, but I find that he has written four others, all of
which I judge by their titles to be concerned with the War. Be that as
it may, I welcome _America in France_ both because it gives a narrative
of America's tremendous effort, and because the book is written with a
modesty which is very pleasing. America came to the job of fighting as a
learner. Her soldiers did not boast of what they were going to do, but
sat down solidly to learn, in order that she might be useful in the
fighting-line. How she achieved her purpose the world now knows. If any
fault is to be found with the author's style, it is that the limpidity
and evenness of its flow make great events less easy of distinction than
perhaps they might be; but most people will hail this as a merit rather
than a fault, and I agree with them. Colonel PALMER records the names of
the first three Americans who died fighting. The French General to whose
unit they were attached ordered a ceremonial parade and made a speech
in which he asked that the mortal remains of these young men be left in
France. "We will," he continued, "inscribe on their tombs, 'Here lie the
first soldiers of the United States to fall on the soil of France for
Justice and Liberty' ... Corporal Gresham, Private Enright, Private Hay,
in the name of France I thank you." As another matter of historical
interest it may be stated that the first shot of the War on the American
side was fired by Battery C of the 6th Field Artillery, "without waiting
on going into position at the time set. The men dragged a gun forward in
the early morning of October 23rd, and sent a shell at the enemy. There
was no particular target. The aim was in the general direction of
Berlin. The gun has been sent to West Point as a relic."
* * * * *
I must assume that _Such Stuff as Dreams_ (MURRAY) was written by C.E.W.
LAWRENCE with a purpose, but it remains obscure to me. A smart young
married clerk in the oil business falls off the top of a bus on to his
head and, from a confirmed materialist, becomes something not unlike a
confirmed lunatic, with a faculty for seeing flaming emanations which
enable him to place the owners of them in the true scale of human and
spiritual values. He discovers that his wife's uncle, a whimsical but
essentially tedious drunkard, is a better man than the egregious New
Religionist pastor--a discovery I made for myself without falling off
a bus. I was forced to the conclusion that these and equally dull, or
duller, folk must exist or have existed, and that it could not possibly
have been necessary to invent them. And if I am right then it obviously
needs a greater sympathy than I can command to do justice to this type
of narrative, with its presuppositions and inferences. Sir A. CONAN
DOYLE has much to answer for.
* * * * *
I do not remember the precise number of murders which occur in _Droonin'
Watter_ (ALLEN AND UNWIN), but readers of this sensational story can
accept my assurance that Mr. J.S. FLETCHER has a quick and decisive way
of meting out justice (or injustice) to his characters. In fact, from
the very start, when a man with a black patch over his eye walks into
Berwick-upon-Tweed and takes lodgings with _Mrs. Moneylaws_ (the mother
of the man who tells the tale), the pace is red-hot. It is easy enough
to discover improbabilities in such a yarn as this, but the only
important question is whether one wants to discover what happens in the
end, and I confess without a blush that I did want to follow Mr. J.S.
FLETCHER to the last page. Let me however beg him in his next book to
give the word "yon" a rest; four "yons" in eleven lines is a clear case
of overcrowding; and I invite the attention of the Limited Labour Party
to this scandal.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Young Sub (a very earnest pilgrim)._ "PLEASE SEND A
LARGE BUNCH OF ROSES TO THE ADDRESS ON THAT CARD AND CHARGE IT TO ME."
_Florist._ "YES, SIR--AND YOUR NAME?"
_Sub._ "OH, NEVER MIND MY NAME--SHE'LL UNDERSTAND."]
* * * * *
"Any owner whose dog shows signs of illness should be chained up
securely."--_Bradford Daily Argus_.
And every other _Argus_ will say the same.