(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
I think I could best convey my impression of Miss ETHEL SIDGWICK'S
work by quoting the advertisement of a popular magazine which used to
proclaim that "these stories are different." All of Miss SIDGWICK'S
are this, though you might possibly be hard put to it to say exactly
how. It is chiefly an affair of style; there is about all of them
a certain dignity of utterance that combines with their humanity to
produce an effect wholly individual and rare. Take her latest example,
_A Lady of Leisure_ (SIDGWICK AND JACKSON). There is really very
little to arrest attention in the story itself; the characters are
persons whom you could meet every day, but in Miss SIDGWICK'S hands
they become creatures of extraordinary fascination. The result is a
novel by no means easy to criticise; partly because one is left with
the feeling (of course the most subtle compliment to any author) that
the characters have fashioned it themselves. Time and again one
seems to observe Miss SIDGWICK working towards some inevitable
_scene-a-faire_, when bounce! off go her people on an entirely
unexpected tack, which you must yet admit to be the very one they
quite obviously would follow. Never was a cast so incalculably alive.
Naturally for this reason its vagaries (they are almost all in love
and generally with the wrong person) would take too long to recount
in detail. I can only state my personal preference for the group that
consists of the heroine, _Violet Ashwin_, her father, the fashionable
physician, and her brainless but quite wonderful mother. I plump for
the _Ashwin_ household in short as a really brilliant contribution
to the homes in modern fiction. I don't say you will find their charm
easy of assimilation. The society of such clever and elusive folk as
_Violet_ and her father is bound to be hard going at first for
the general. But _Mrs. Ashwin_--oh, she is a joy, a marvel, an
exasperation! You will delight to read about her.
* * * * *
The first thing I have to say about _Initiation_ (HUTCHINSON) is that
it might have been written by Dr. CLIFFORD. The nice people in it
are all Roman Catholics, but a group of Huguenots or of Calvinistic
Methodists would have served the author's purpose equally well. For
ROBERT HUGH BENSON, the novelist, has (so to speak) told Monsignor
BENSON, the priest, to mind his own business, and leave him to
his, which is the telling of a story, and not the advocacy of any
particular form of religion. The second point to notice in the book is
that it divides its characters, and incidentally all characters, into
those who are initiated and those who are not. The initiated are those
who have learnt, chiefly by suffering, the lesson of life, which
is that it treats us as it likes. Because they have learnt it,
they trust, even when they do not understand, the purpose of the
life-giver; because they trust they do not kick against the pricks.
The young Catholic English gentleman, of whose initiation the story
tells, suffers prodigiously under two of the greatest misfortunes,
physical and mental, that a man may endure and live. And yet, when he
comes to die, you feel, and he knows, that they are not misfortunes,
but the opening up of the way of life. The chief cause of his mental
suffering, a young girl of eighteen or nineteen, is described (well on
in the book) as a practically insane egoist. She is, to my mind, the
weak spot in the story. Frankly I don't believe in her. A girl of her
age could not have been so selfishly cruel, and yet have taken in her
world as she did. I will own that she took me in at first; but that
was the author's fault. He ought not to have let me, as his reader,
think her charming and particularly sympathetic when he knew all the
time that she cared for no one but herself. I don't think that is
playing the game. All the I same, I like his book.
* * * * *
Having read Mr. REGINALD BLUNT'S book, _In Cheyne Walk and Thereabout_
(MILLS AND BOON), I am now prepared to pass an examination in the
history and the worthies (or unworthies) of Chelsea. I know that
DON SALTERO was no Spaniard, but an ardent collector of childish
curiosities who for a time kept a coffee-house and a smoking club of
which "the ornaments and apparatus" were eventually offered to CHARLES
LAMB. If I am asked about Dr. MESSENGER MONSEY I shall say that he
"tried hard, but with indifferent success, to popularise his own
method of extracting teeth by tying one end of a piece of catgut to
the offending molar and the other to a perforated bullet, putting the
latter with a full charge of powder into a revolver and then pulling
the trigger." Then again there is BARTHOLOMEW JOSEPH ALEXANDER DE
DOMINICETI, Lord DE CETE ET DE CORTESI, Knight of the Holy Boman
Empire and Noble of Venice in terra firma. How did he with his
resounding name come to be in Chelsea and there establish "baths,
fumigatory stoves and sweating chambers" for the relief of distressed
humanity? This question and a hundred others of a similar nature you
will find answered in Mr. BLUNT'S delightful book. Let Mr. BLUNT take
you by the hand and guide you through his beloved Chelsea. He is
the most urbane and the most agreeably gossiping companion. He will
re-introduce you to Sir THOMAS MORE, Sir HANS SLOANE; to NEILD, the
prison-reformer, and his son JOHN, the famous miser; to the CARLYLES
and their servant JESSIE HEDDLESTONE, and a host of others. And he
will remind you that Dr. JOHNSON endeavoured to manufacture Chelsea
china, and that his _chefs d'oeuvre_ always collapsed in the firing.
Take my advice and acquire Mr. BLUNT'S book.
* * * * *
I suspect that _Mr. Simpson_, who gives his name to the story
_Simpson_ (METHUEN), can hardly have shared my own exhausting
acquaintance with modern fiction, otherwise it is unlikely that he
would have behaved as he did. What happened was this. _Simpson_,
though on the wrong side of forty, well off and eminently lovable, was
unmarried. Finding a charming old house in the country, he conceives
the idea of renting it as a kind of bachelor residential club where he
and other congenial cronies can enjoy the life of ease untroubled
by any form of feminism. Well, that, to start with, one might fairly
describe as "asking for it." But when I add that the old house in
question was the property of a still young and charming widow you will
probably agree with me that poor _Simpson_ hadn't even a dog's chance
from the beginning. It is possible that this fore-dooming may a little
spoil your enjoyment of Miss ELINOR MORDAUNT'S otherwise pleasant
tale. Naturally, so far from women being banished from its pages,
they simply abound; and the tale of the progress of the bachelor club
resolves itself into a chronicle of proposals. There is however an
attractive variety about the love affairs, of which I liked best
that of the youngest couple. With two there is a note of tragedy;
and though the courtship of _Gilbert Strong_, a respectable country
lawyer, and the wild gipsy whom he marries may strike you as
fantastic, the end of their romance is well told with a fine
suggestion of inevitability. On the whole an agreeable and easy-going
tale, though without any unusual claim to distinction.
* * * * *
[Illustration: IT WAS AN AMBITIOUS YOUTH WHO, WHILE TRAVELLING ON
THE CONTINENT, WAS OFFERED THE CROWN OF ONE OF THE SMALLER STATES AND
REFUSED IT, SAYING, HE "DISLIKED THESE BLIND-ALLEY OCCUPATIONS."]
* * * * *
I quite realise that I have not the shadow of a case against Mr.
ALGERNON BLACKWOOD. He frankly calls his book _Ten Minute Stories_
(MURRAY), and that is exactly what they are. Nevertheless I did feel
a little aggrieved when each of them stopped with a jerk just as I
had become absorbed. One has a sense of having been cheated of one's
rights. That is why, though many of these sketches are as good as
they can be, I do not think that the book will be quite so popular
as others of his. But devout Blackwoodsmen will add it to their
collections and re-read the majority of its contents again and again,
as I propose to do. On second thoughts, indeed, I may say that perhaps
Mr. BLACKWOOD is not so unfair to his public as I have suggested,
for he is one of those writers who are not dead and done with after a
first perusal. He can pack a vast deal of food for thought even into
a ten-minute story. A good example of what I mean is to be found
in number fifteen of the collection, "Ancient Lights." Even a
scene-shifter at the Savoy Theatre would believe in fairies after one
reading of that. And if, after studying "If the Cap Fits," you lightly
steal a fellow-member's hat from your club, I shall regard you as a
very reckless dashing fellow. With the awful example of _Field-Martin_
before me, I would not do it for a fortune. I shall buy one of those
frightful plush hats which you see in shops but never out of them, and
I shall have my name in large letters on the inside band. And to the
hat-waiter's insidious "This is just as good, Sir," as he offers
me some sinister bowler or topper with a past, I shall reply with
gestures of disgust and threats to write to the committee.
* * * * *
"Detached 7-roomed horse wanted."--_The Norbury Weekly News._
Where is your one-stalled ox now?
* * * * *
Transcriber's Note: