(_BY MR. PUNCH'S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS._)
I have often pitied the lot of the costume novelist, faced with the
increasing difficulty of providing fresh and unworn trappings for his
characters. Therefore with all the more warmth do I congratulate those
seasoned adventurers, AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE, on their acumen in
discovering such a setting as that of _Wolf-lure_ (CASSELL). The name
alone should be worth many editions. Nor do the contents in any sort
belie it. This remote country of Guyenne, a hundred years ago, with
its forests and caves and subterranean lakes, with, moreover, its
rival wolf-masters, Royal and Imperial, and its wild band of coiners,
is the very stage for any hazardous and romantic exploit. It should
be added at once that the authors have taken full advantage of these
possibilities. From the moment when the wandering English youth who
tells the tale wakes on the hillside to find himself contemplated
by a lovely maiden and a gigantic wolf-hound, the adventure dashes
from thrill to thrill unpausing. One protest however I must
utter. The conduct of the young and lovely heroine (as above) and
her single-minded devotion to her lover may be true to nature,
but somewhat alienated my own sympathies, already given to the
first-person-singular English lad who also adored her, and whom both
she and her chosen mate treated abominably. To my thinking, unrequited
devotion has no business in a tale of this sort. Realistic pathos may
have its _Dobbin_ or _Tom Pinch_, but the wild and whirling episodes
of tushery demand the satisfactory finish hallowed by custom.
With this reservation only I can call _Wolf-lure_ about the best
adventure-novel that the present season has produced.
* * * * *
Since the opening pages of _Calvary Alley_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) are
concerned with choir-boys and a cathedral and a rose-window, things to
which one gives, without sufficient reason, an association exclusively
of the Old World, I was a little startled, as the action proceeded,
by the mention of cops and dimes and trolly-cars. Of course this
only meant that I had forgotten, ungratefully, the country in which
any story by ALICE HEGAN RICE might be expected to be laid. Anyhow,
_Calvary Alley_ proves an admirable entertainment, a tale of a girl's
expanding fortunes, from the grim slum that gives its name to the
book, through many varied experiences of reform schools, a bottling
factory and membership of the ballet, up to the haven of matrimony.
Through them all, _Nance_, the heroine, carries a very human and
engaging personality, so that one is made to see the young woman
who is clasped to the heroic breast on the last page as the logical
development of the ragged urchin stamping her bare foot into the soft
cement of _Calvary Alley_ on the first. Moreover--wonder of wonders
for transatlantic fiction!--the author is able to write about
children, and the contrasted lives of rich and poor city dwellers,
without lapsing into sentimentality, _O si sic omnes!_ But either
American bishops are strangely different from the English variety,
or Mrs. RICE, following Mr. WELLS'S example, has permitted herself
an episcopal burlesque. In either case the resulting portrait is
hardly worthy of an otherwise admirably-drawn collection of original
characters.
* * * * *
_Christine_ (MACMILLAN) contains a very illuminating picture of
Germany in the months immediately preceding the War; but I am
perplexed--and a little provoked--by the way in which it is presented.
The book opens with a pathetic foreword, signed by Miss ALICE
CHOLMONDELEY, in which we read: "My daughter Christine, who wrote
me these letters, died at a hospital in Stuttgart on the morning
of August 8th, 1914, of acute double pneumonia.... I am publishing
the letters just as they came to me, leaving out nothing.... The
war killed Christine, just as surely as if she had been a soldier
in the trenches.... I never saw her again. I had a telegram saying
she was dead. I tried to go to Stuttgart, but was turned back at
the frontier." Then follows a Publishers' note to the effect that
some personal names have been altered. After this one is naturally
surprised to find the book advertised as a "new novel." All I can
say is that, if Miss CHOLMONDELEY'S preface is true, her book is not
a novel, and that, if it is untrue, I do not think the foreword is
fair or in good taste. My opinion, for what it is worth, is that Miss
CHOLMONDELEY was herself in Germany during the summer of 1914, and
has chosen this way of telling us what she saw and heard. Anyhow the
letters are undoubtedly the work of someone who knows Germany and the
inhabitants thereof. And for this excellent reason _Christine_ should
not be missed by anyone who wants to know in what a state of militant
anticipation the Germans were living. The strongest searchlight
has been thrown over the Hun, from the habitués of a middle-class
boarding-house to members of the Junker breed. Whether these letters
ought to be classed as fiction or not they contain facts, and as they
are written in a style at once vivid and engaging my advice to you is
to read them and not worry too much about the foreword.
* * * * *
_The Four Corners of the World_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is emphatically
what I should call a fireside book. On these chill Autumn evenings,
with the rain or the dead leaves or the shrapnel whirling by outside,
you could have few more agreeable companions than Mr. A.E.W. MASON,
when he is, as here, in communicative mood. He has a baker's dozen of
excellent tales to tell, most of them with a fine thrill, out of which
he gets the greatest possible effect, largely by the use of a crisp
and unemotional style that lets the sensational happenings go their
own way to the nerves of the reader. As an example of how to make the
most of a good theme, I commend to you the story pleasantly, if not
very originally, named "The House of Terror." Before now I have been
ensnared to disappointment by precisely this title. But Mr. MASON'S
House holds no deception; it genuinely does terrify; and when at the
climax of its history the two persons concerned see the door swing
slowly inwards, and "the white fog billowed into the room," while
"Glyn felt the hair stir and move upon his scalp," I doubt not that
you will almost certainly partake of some measure of his emotion.
Naturally, in a mixed bag such as this, one can't complain if the
quality of the contents varies. Not all the tales reach the level of
"The House of Terror"; but in every one there is enough artistry to
occupy any spare half-hour you may have for such purposes, without
letting you feel afterwards that it was wasted. And as a hospital
present the collection could hardly be beaten.
* * * * *
Miss MARJORIE BOWEN'S historical romances usually have the merit of
swift movement, and that is precisely the quality I miss in _The Third
Estate_ (METHUEN). It does not march--at least not quick enough.
You will not need to be told that Miss BOWEN has saturated herself
conscientiously in her period--an intensely interesting period
too--and has contrived her atmosphere most competently and plausibly.
But for all that I couldn't make myself greatly interested in the bold
bad Marquis DE SARCEY in those anxious two years before "the Terror,"
with his insufferable pride, his incredible elegance, his fantastic
ideas of love and his idiotic marriage, the negotiations for which,
with the resulting complications, take up so large a space in a
lengthy book. It gives one the impression of being written not
"according to plan" but out of a random fancy, with so hurried a pen
that not merely have irrelevant incidents, absurdities of diction, and
indubitable _longueurs_ escaped excision, but such lapses from the
King's fair English as "save you and I" and "I shoot with my own hand
he who refuses." Even a popular author--indeed, especially a popular
author--owes us more consideration than that.
* * * * *
_The Fortunes of Richard Mahony_ (HEINEMANN) is one of those pleasant
books in which the hero prospers. True, the process as here shown
is very gradual; so much so that the four hundred odd pages of the
present volume only take us as far as "End of Book One." Clearly,
therefore, Mr. H.H. RICHARDSON has more to follow; and, as one should
call no hero fortunate till his author has ceased writing, it is as
yet too early for a final pronouncement upon _Richard Mahony_. My own
honest impression at this stage would be that he is in some danger of
outgrowing his strength. This pathological phrase comes the more aptly
since _Richard's_ fortune, though begun in the goldfields, was not
derived from digging, but from the practice of medicine, and from a
lucky speculation in mining stock (I liked especially the description
of the day when the shares sold at fifty-three, and _Richard_ "went
about feeling a little more than human"). The end of the whole matter,
at least the end for the present, is that, with his wife, and what he
can get together from the remains of the mining _coup_, and the sale
of a somewhat damaged practice, _Richard_ sets forth for England.
Obviously more turns of fortune are in store there for him and _Mary_
and that queer character, his one-time inseparable, _Purdy_. That I
anticipate their future with much interest is a genuine tribute to
the humanity in which Mr. RICHARDSON has clothed his cast. _Richard
Mahony_, in short, is a real man, whose fortunes take a genuine hold
upon one's attention; though I repeat that I could wish his author had
told them less wordily, and--in one glaring instance--with a greater
respect for the decencies of medical reticence.
* * * * *
[Illustration: USING PETROL FOR PLEASURE.