(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
If you only like listening to a talker with whom you agree, who is
of your type and school, then don't bother with _What is Coming?_
(CASSELL), which purports to be H. G. WELLS'S forecasts of things
after the War. It's perhaps hardly so serious as that, but just
good speculative talk, the kind that offers the first thing that is
signalled to the lips from a quick reflective brain without pauses
to consider objections by the way. Yet perhaps, after all, the author
cannot be dismissed too lightly as a prophet. He did see further into
the air than most, at the time when the experts were blandly proving
all sorts of impossibilities; and, as he recalls, he made a lucky shot
in foretelling the immobility of trench warfare. He still believes in
the BLOCH deadlock, and gives victory to the Allies merely for better
staying power. For British training and method he naturally has
nothing but scorn, which takes him further than most of us can follow
him. At least when he says that the university-trained class has been
found "under the fiery test of war an evasive, temporising class of
people, individualistic, ungenerous and unable either to produce or
obey vigorous leadership," he badly needs to justify the confining of
that diagnosis to _that_ particular class. And when he further says of
British administration of subject territories that "the British are
a race coldly aloof. They have nothing to give a black people and
no disposition to give"--well, it isn't an obvious truth. These
are blemishes of a kind to which a quick-thinking man, a little too
anxious to set everybody right by wholesale methods, is naturally
subject. But you will miss a good deal of fresh-air sanity, of
illumination (for the man _can_ see and find the vivid phrase to
express his vision) on war and peace and education and feminism and
internationalism and citizenship, if you let yourself be alienated by
such lapses. So please don't.
* * * * *
"If only those old things could speak, what stories, etc., etc.!"
Most of us, at one time or another, have endured or inflicted that
well-intentioned banality. And here is Miss MARJORIE BOWEN, most
skilful of historical romancers, setting out to tell us precisely what
stories. She calls her volume _Shadows of Yesterday_ (SMITH, ELDER),
explaining in a preface that is by no means the least attractive
chapter that they are supposed to be the histories attached to a
collection of antique oddments in a little Italian museum. No one who
remembers with what persuasive charm Miss BOWEN has handled her long
costume novels will be astonished at the atmosphere with which she
manages to invest these little episodes; a ring, a jewel, a CHARLES
II. jug--these are the materials out of which by aid of fancy she
recreates the past. Of the lot, I myself should give the palm to the
jug's story, a spirited little thing enough, in which a country maid,
awaiting in a cottage the coming of a lover, whom she knows as "Lord
Anthony," meets instead my Lady CASTLEMAINE, who tells her that the
defaulting swain is really His Majesty, and explains that there
exist (to put it tactfully) certain prior engagements of the royal
affection. The end is a brilliant comedy stroke, which I will not
spoil by anticipation for you. It is this capacity for the unexpected
that saves Miss BOWEN from the danger, obviously inherent in her plan,
of being too tightly bound down by the need of forcing her catalogue
of relics into prominence. She has done larger work, but nothing more
agreeable.
* * * * *
I could not, if I would, apply quite the customary severities of
criticism to _Twilight_ (HUTCHINSON). It is too personal, and the
death of its author, the clever woman who elected to be known as FRANK
DANBY, is too fresh in memory for me to regard it with detachment. It
is one of the tragedies of literature that only in her last two books,
this and the one that preceded it, did the author give the world a
taste of her true quality. There is evidence in _Twilight_ of gifts
that might well have raised its writer to a place among the greatest.
But frankly it is not possible to consider it apart from the
circumstances of its origin. Two stories there are in it: one
personal, autobiography at its most intimate; the other a work of
imagination. It is supposed that the writer, a woman novelist, wrecked
with disease and the drugs that bring endurance, goes down into the
country and there becomes obsessed with the history of another woman,
in circumstances much like to her own, who had once lived and loved in
the same remote house. So, side by side, you have the two tragedies,
one of the sick bed, one of the soul, both told with an incisive and
compelling art, and with a realism often painful. But, as at once
a document of fact and imagination, the book is perhaps unique.
Certainly no one can read it without feeling that the death of its
author has left literature poorer by the loss of a personality whose
real power was yet to be shown.
* * * * *
The demand for an eleventh edition of Lord ERNEST HAMILTON'S book,
_The First Seven Divisions_ (HURST AND BLACKETT) is no more than a
deserved tribute to what has already taken rank as the best history,
so far, of the most critical period of the World War. Lord ERNEST
HAMILTON writes as one having authority. He tells the facts as he
knows them--facts in many cases hitherto undisclosed, and given here
with adequate detail and just; enough of explanation to make the
account clear even to the most unmilitary reader. There has been no
attempt by the writer to embellish his theme. It remains a simple
story of sheer heroism, told in a straightforward soldierly
manner--and the reading of it must make the most unemotional Briton
feel the thrill of pride and pity and gratitude. "Nothing," says the
writer, "can ever surpass, as a story of simple sublime pluck, the
history of the first three months of England's participation in the
Great War." This is what you can follow day by day in these pages.
There are many new maps in the present edition, which greatly help to
explain the situation, as it developed from Mons, through the battle
of the Marne, to the trenches before Ypres. I can only say that I hope
there will soon be few school libraries in which this most inspiring
book has not an honourable place.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Elderly Gentleman (alone in a compartment with
fully-armed soldier, next stop one hour)._ "EXCUSE ME, MY MAN, BUT
YOUR FACE IS STRANGELY FAMILIAR TO ME."
_Soldier (with meaning)._ "QUITE LIKELY, SIR, SEEIN' AS YOU WERE
THE GENT IN THE TRIBUNAL WHO MADE GAME OF ME BEIN' A CONSCIENTIOUS
OBJECTOR. BUT YOU'LL BE GLAD TO 'EAR I'VE CHANGED MY MIND, AND I AIN'T
_NOW_ GOT ANY OBJECTION TO TAKIN' 'UMAN LIFE."]
* * * * *
When Mr. FRANKFORT MOORE is not out to be funny I enjoy his novels,
and _The Rise of Raymond_ (HUTCHINSON) is pleasantly free from
humorous intent. _Raymond's_ father, a cheap house-furnisher by trade,
was a terribly blighting person of peculiar religious views. By rod
and rote he tried to instil his narrow creed into his son, and the
latter's suffering during this process is revealed all the more
forcibly because it is not unduly insisted upon. Though _Raymond_ has
his quiverful of virtues, one's powers of belief in them, though taxed
heavily enough, are not super-taxed. It may seem curious that this
young man, whose vocation it was during some of the best years of his
life to handle and sell uninspiring things like linoleum, should have
had artistic tastes; but as the reason for this endowment is not given
away until the very end of the story I prefer not to give it away
at all. In contrast to the scorn and ridicule scattered over the
puritanical sect of which _Raymond's_ parents were members, the Church
of England parson, _Mr. Bosover_, receives a very warm pat on the
back. "The tradition of gentleman is kept alive by the English parson.
He is the only remaining interpreter of that ancient _culte_." So now
you know.
* * * * *
_A Woman in the Balkans_ (HUTCHINSON) is a book of which the
publishers very properly observe that it "will undoubtedly make a wide
appeal at the present moment." These are times when the records of
anybody intelligent "in the Balkans" must be attractive reading; and
Mrs. WILL GORDON (WINIFRED GORDON) is not only intelligent, but--what
is even more important in the writer of a popular memoir--excellent
good company. Her vivid account of her pre-War travels in Serbia,
Bulgaria, and Roumania gives one the feeling of being the fortunate
friend of a correspondent whose views on home-writing are not confined
to picture post-cards. In short a pleasant, not too professional,
record of adventure and observation. The many excellent photographs
that illustrate it are in precisely the same style, being, many of
them, the successful little snapshots of an artistic amateur, such
as often convey a far better impression of places and people than
the more ambitious products of expert science. Not all the pictures,
however, are from the writer's own camera. Two, which, with a
grim sense of drama, are placed next to each other, represent the
Coronation of King PETER of Serbia, and the tragic ride of the Monarch
from his invaded country. There is a whole tremendous chapter of
European history in the contrasted pictures. Small wonder if books
about the Balkans should make "a wide appeal."
* * * * *