(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks_.)
_If Wishes were Horses_ (HURST AND BLACKETT) is one of the most engaging
novels that I have met for some time. The matter of it, perhaps, is nothing
very new: a story of expanding fortunes and contracting sympathies. But the
writer, Countess BARCYNSKA, has, before all else, the inestimable gift of
making you believe in her people. All the characters are vigorously alive.
The result is that one follows with quite unusual interest the chequered
career of her central figure, _Martin Leffley_, from his introduction as a
frankly unpleasant youth, very red about the ears, "which was where he
always blushed," to the final glimpse of him, titled, an M.P., and,
incidentally, a bowed and better man, purified by the wonderful devotion of
_Rose_, the wife whom throughout the tale he has bullied and undervalued.
Nor is _Rose_ herself, with her unwavering belief in her clay idol, a less
memorable figure. Of the others, my chief affection went to _Aunt Polly_,
the kindly dealer in old clothes, who imagined the Savile to be a night
club. But, as I say, the whole cast is astonishingly real. Only once did I
fear for the story, when it seemed as though the machinations of a
super-villainous M.P. were about to lead it astray into the paths of
melodrama. But the danger proved to be brief, and the unexpected beauty and
dignity of the closing chapter would have redeemed a more serious lapse.
* * * * *
_Forced to Fight_ (HEINEMANN) is the record of a Schleswig Dane set forth
by ERICH ERICHSEN and very capably translated from the Danish by INGEBORG
LUND. It is a book that with a singular skill and with a passion that never
gets out of hand so as to convey the impression of hysterical exaggeration
lays bare the heart of a youth who was at the storming of Liége, fought in
Flanders, then on the Russian Front and again in the Argonne, whence a
shattered elbow sent him home broken and _aged_--that is what his
chronicler emphasises--not by the wound, but by the long horror and fatigue
of the successive campaigns. The poignancy of his sufferings lay in the
fact that as a Dane he went without any of the great hopes and passions
that inspired his German comrades, of whom however he speaks with no
ill-will. He took part by order in some of the "punishments" of Belgian
villages, loathing the savage cruelties of them and deeply convinced that
the rape of Belgium was an inexpiable wrong which the world will remember
to the lasting dishonour of the German name. You get an impression of the
added horror of this War for the imaginative temperamental, and some
pathetic pictures of all the suffering among simple innocent machine-driven
people on the other side, who had no will to war and no illusions as to the
splendour of world-dominion--a vision of desolate homes and countrysides
empty of all but very old men.
* * * * *
The first lines of _Still Life_ (CONSTABLE), which begins in "the night
train from the German frontier to Paris," gave me much the same impression
of impossibility (was there ever such a train?) that I should have felt
about a story that opened in the moon. But the shock of this was nothing to
some, different in character, that were to follow. Frankly, I confess that
Mr. MIDDLETON MURRY'S book has me baffled. Others perhaps may admire the
pains lavished by the author in analysing the emotions of a group of
characters whose temperaments certainly give him every opportunity for this
exercise. An impressionist, and impressionable, youth, whom I have
(reluctantly) to call hero, intrigues his unpleasant way through the plot;
first in Paris--where you may make a shrewd guess at his
pre-occupations--then in an English village, to which he has eloped with
the wife of a friend; in France again, and so on. The emotions to which
these amorous adventures expose him are handled by the author with a care
that suggests rather the naughtiness of the antique nineties than anything
belonging to these more vigorous days. I am far from suggesting that, as a
study in super-sensibility, the book lacks skill. There are indeed scenes
of almost painful cleverness. My complaint is that it is out of date, or (I
should perhaps better say) conspicuously out of harmony with the present
time. But if you hanker for these pictures of the past that is another
matter. I will merely issue a warning that you should preserve this book on
some shelf not too accessible by those who are still young enough to
overestimate its importance.
* * * * *
It was an odd experience to turn, as I did, directly from the new Haymarket
play, of which the late TOM GALLON was part author, to what I suppose was
the last story he ever wrote, _The Lady in the Black Mask_ (MILLS AND
BOON), which begins in a theatre with the heroine watching a play. It
begins, moreover, very well and excitingly; much better, I regret to add,
than it goes on. When the heroine arrived home from the theatre, the girl
whose companion she was, pleading fatigue, persuaded her to go out again to
a masked ball, wearing the dress and indeed assuming the personality of her
mistress. The two girls, _Ruth_, the heroine, and _Damia_, lived in a
gloomy house with old _Mr. Verinder_, who was _Damia's_ guardian. But when
_Ruth_ returned from the ball she found that this arrangement no longer
held good, _Verinder_ having been melodramatically stabbed during her
absence. And as no one knew, or would ever believe, that it was _Damia_ and
not herself who had remained at home you recognise a very pretty gambit of
intrigue. Unfortunately, as I said above, the tension is not quite
sustained, partly because the characters all behave in an increasingly
foolish and improbable fashion (even for tales of this genre); partly
because there is never sufficient uncertainty as to who it was (not, of
course, _Damia_) who really killed _Verinder_. Still, of its kind, as the
sort of shocker that used to be valued at a shilling, but appears, like
everything else, to have risen in price, _The Lady in the Black Mask_ is
fairly up to the average. I fancy her profits might have been greater
before the discouragement of railway travelling. That is precisely the
environment for which she is best fitted.
* * * * *
In the series of "Chap" books which is emerging from The Bodley Head I have
no doubt that _Canada Chaps_ will be welcome. I hope, however, that Mrs.
SIME will not mind my saying that the best of her tales are those which
have more to do with Canada than its "chaps." Her stories of fighting and
of fighters seem to me to have a note in them that does not ring quite
true. It is just the difference between the soldier telling his own artless
and rugged tale and someone else telling it for him with a touch of
artifice. But when the author merely uses the War as her background she
writes with real power. The straining for effect vanishes, and so little do
the later stories resemble the earlier that I should not have guessed that
they were written by the same hand. "Citoyenne Michelle" and "The King's
Gift," for instance, are true gems, and they are offered to you at the
price of paste. Nowhere will you find a better bargain for your shilling.
* * * * *
HELEN MACKAY, in _A Journal of Small Things_ (MELROSE), sets before us
with, it might seem, almost too deliberate simplicity of idiom little
scenes and remembered reflections of her days in France since the July of
the terrible year. An American to whom France has come to be her adopted
and most tenderly loved foster-country, she tells of little things, chiefly
sad little things, seen in the hospitals she served or by the wayside or in
the houses of the simple and the great, shadowed alike by the all-embracing
desolation of the War. The writer has a singular power of selecting the
significant details of an incident, and a delicate sensitiveness to beauty
and to suffering which gives distinction to this charming book. Less happy
perhaps and much less in the picture are the episodes learnt only at second
hand and suggesting the technique and unreality of the imagined short
story.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE PRICELESS PLUMBER--AN INCIDENT OF LAST WEEK'S THAW.
_Troubled Householder (writing)._ "THERE IS A SLIGHT LEAKAGE IN ONE OF OUR
WATER-PIPES. KINDLY PUT MY NAME DOWN AS A HUMBLE CANDIDATE FOR YOUR
ESTEEMED SERVICES."]
* * * * *