(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
It is pleasant to find that even in these days the revival of interest
in volumes of short stories still continues. But of course the stories
must have a certain quality. I am glad to think that _Traveller's
Samples_ (MILLS AND BOON) will help forward the movement. Mrs. HENRY
DUDENEY has a quite excellent touch for this sort of thing; her tales
are both atmospheric and, for their length, astonishingly full of
character. Also she has an engaging habit of avoiding the expected. Take
one of the best in this present book, called "_John_," for instance. It
is the slightest possible thing, just a picture of a schoolboy's
hopeless love for a shallow cruel-brained girl eight years older than
himself, who is in process of getting engaged to an eligible bachelor.
But every figure in the little group lives. And the second part, which
tells the return of the boy-lover twelve years later, shows you what I
mean about Mrs. DUDENEY'S refreshing originality. I doubt if there are
many writers who would have finished off the story in her very
satisfactory way. There is one quality characteristic of most of the
tales--a feeling for middle-age in men and women; many of them seem to
be variations upon the same theme of a love that comes by waiting. Mrs.
DUDENEY can handle this situation with unfailing charm. Her confessed
comedies are by far the weakest things in the book; there is one of them
indeed that seemed to me amazingly pointless. But with this exception I
can commend her volume whole-heartedly, and only hope that the author
will continue to send out goods of such excellent workmanship, "as per"
(whatever that means) these attractive samples.
Those who search for minor compensations have affected to find one in
the idea that the actual happening of the World War has removed from us
the old fictional scares, novels of German super-spies, and unsuspecting
islanders taken unprepared. But to think this is to reckon without the
ingenuity of such writers as Mr. RIDGWELL CULLUM. He, for example, has
but to postulate that worst nightmare of all, an inconclusive peace, and
we are back in the former terrors, blacker than ever. Suppose the Polish
inventor of German undersea craft to have been so stricken with remorse
at the frightful results thereof that he determines to hand all his
secrets to the English Government, in the person of a young gentleman
who combines the positions of Cabinet Minister, son and heir to a great
shipbuilder, and hero of the story; suppose, moreover, that the said
inventor was blessed with an only daughter, of radiant beauty and the
rather conspicuous name of _Vita Vladimir_; suppose the inevitable
romance, a secret submarine expedition to the island where Germany is
maturing her felonious little plans, the destruction of the latest
frightfulness, retaliation by Prussian myrmidons, abductions, murders,
and I don't know what besides--and you will have some faint idea of the
tumultuous episodes of _The Men Who Wrought_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL). To say
that the story moves is vastly to understate its headlong rapidity of
action. And, while I hardly fancy that the characters themselves will
carry overwhelming conviction, there remains, in the theory of the
submersible liner and application to political facts, enough genuine
wisdom to lift the tale out of the company of six-shilling shockers. To
this extent at least _The Men Who Wrought_ combines instruction with
entertainment.
* * * * *
_Inter-Arma_ (HEINEMANN) is the title that Mr. EDMUND GOSSE has given to
his latest volume of essays, reprinted from _The Edinburgh Review_. No
one who loves clarity of style will need assurance about the quality of
these studies, which, with one exception, are concerned with some or
other aspect of the world-struggle. In "War and Literature," a paper
dated during the black days of October, 1914, the author attempts to
realise what will be the probable literary effect of the catastrophe by
recounting the various ways in which French writers suffered from that
of 1870. An interesting prediction, too, as recalling what many of us
believed at the beginning of the war, is this about the future of
English letters: "What we must really face is the fact that this harvest
of volumes [the autumn publishings of 1914] will mark the end of what is
called 'current literature' for the remaining duration of the war. There
can be no aftermath, we can aspire to no revival. The book which does
not deal directly and crudely with the complexities of warfare and the
various branches of strategy will, from Christmas onwards, not be
published at all." As they stand, these words might well serve as a mild
tonic for "current pessimism"; not even the paper famine has brought
them to fulfilment. Elsewhere in the volume is an instructive paper on
"The Neutrality of Sweden" (valuable but vexatious, as are all the
indictments of our insular apathy in the matter of influencing foreign
opinion), and two or three interesting studies of French life and
letters under the conditions of war. In fine, a book full of scholarly
grace, such as may well achieve the writer's hope, expressed in his
preface, of renewing the friendship he has already made with those
readers "whose minds have become attuned to his," though they are now
"separated from him by leagues of sea and occupied in noble and
unprecedented service."
* * * * *
The author of _The Dop Doctor_, with her expansive style, always seems
cramped in any story of under a couple of hundred thousand words or so.
Perhaps the best things in her new book of short stories, _Earth to
Earth_ (HEINEMANN), concern _The Macwaugh_, a shocking bad artist with
an immense thirst and the heftiest of Scotch accents. I don't think that
there ever was or could be anybody like _Macwaugh_, or indeed that
people talk or act like the majority of the characters in this book; but
that's where, perhaps, "RICHARD DEHAN" scores a point or two off those
realists who mistake accuracy of detail for art. This amiable drunkard,
though absurd, lives and moves. The author is evidently attached to him,
and that helps. She has, indeed, something of the Dickensian exuberance
which carries off absurdities and crudities that would otherwise be
intolerably tiresome. She even seems to get some fun out of this kind of
thing:--"'Write,' commanded the Zanouka with a double-barrelled flash of
her great eyes;" or, again, "It's all poppycock and bumblepuppy,"
meaning, just, it isn't true.
* * * * *
If you are writing or intending to write a book about boys let me beg
you not to follow the prevailing fashion and call your hero David.
Within the last few weeks I have read DAVID PENSTEPHEN, DAVID BLAISE,
and now it is Miss ELEANOR PORTER'S _Just David_ (CONSTABLE) and I am
beginning to want a rest from the name. _David III._, if he may be
called so, has saved me from utter confusion of mind by being an
American product and having a charm that is peculiarly his own. Cynics
indeed may find his perfection a little cloying, and may say with some
justification that no human child ever radiated so much joy and
happiness. All the same, this simple tale of childhood will appeal
irresistibly to those who do not draw too fine a distinction between
sentiment and sentimentality. On the whole Miss PORTER, although
hovering near the border, does not pass into the swamps of sloppiness,
and as an antidote to War fiction I can recommend _Just David_ without
any further qualification.
* * * * *
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS will, alas, entertain us no more with his
easy-flowing pen. These short stories, _Somewhere in France_
(DUCKWORTH), must be his farewell to us. And it is good to feel that his
sympathies are so whole-heartedly on the right side. The first of the
stories (the only one that has anything to do with the War) is a
spirited yarn of the turning of the tables on a German secret service
agent, with plenty of atmosphere and hurrying action. The rest are light
studies of American life, of which I chiefly commend an extravaganza set
in Hayti with a resourceful Yankee electrician, as hero, in conflict
with the President in the matter of overdue wages; and the final item of
a tussle between a stern and upright District Attorney and the might of
Tammany, in which the author seems to have a rather whimsical mistrust
of both sides. I always like to think of Tammany when our croakers are
holding up everything in this poor little island to obloquy.
* * * * *
The God in the Car.
"Rumania asked permission for the passage through Bulgaria of
several wagons of grain bought from Greece. Bulgaria agreed on
condition that Rumania should release over 200 wagons of
Bulgarian gods detained in Rumania."
* * * * *
"An extract of squills, which has been used by the French
Government in the trenches for two or three months, is to be
used in a Berwickshire County Council experiment to exterminate
rates."
_Provincial Paper._
We should like to hear of something equally deadly to taxes.
* * * * *
"Miss Ruby Miller is in gorgeous green, to match her gorgeous
red hair."--_Sunday Pictorial._
It is perhaps just as well that some people, notably engine-drivers, do
not see things in this way.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Chauffeur (ex-coachman, to master, who has been
influenced by economy posters)._ "A run or two now and again, Sir, would
be good for the car. You see, if I might so express it, she's just
eating her bonnet off."]