(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
ELLEN MELICENT COBDEN can certainly not be accused of writing too
hurriedly. I don't know how many years it is since, as "MILES AMBER,"
she captured my admiration with that wonderful first novel, _Wistons_;
and now here is her second, _Sylvia Saxon_ (UNWIN), only just
appearing. I may say at once that it entirely confirms my impression
that she is a writer of very real and original gifts. _Sylvia Saxon_
is not a pleasant book. It is hard, more than a little bitter, and
deliberately unsympathetic in treatment. But it is grimly real.
_Sylvia_ herself is a character that lives, and her mother, Rachel,
almost eclipses her in this same quality of tragic vitality. The
whole tale is a tragedy of empty and meaningless lives passed in
an atmosphere of too much money and too little significance. The
"society" of a Northern manufacturing plutocracy, the display and
rivalry, the marriages between the enriched families, the absence of
any standard except wealth--all these things are set down with
the minute realism that must come, I am sure, of intimate personal
knowledge. _Sylvia_ is the offspring of one such family, and mated to
the decadent heir of another. Her tragedy is that too late she meets a
man whom she supposes capable of giving her the fuller, more complete
life for which she has always ignorantly yearned. Then there is
_Anne_, the penniless girl, hired as a child to be a playfellow for
_Sylvia_, who herself loves the same man, and dies when his
dawning affection is ruthlessly swept away from her by the dominant
personality of _Sylvia_. A tale, one might call it, of unhappy women;
not made the less grim by the fact that the man for whom they fought
is shown as wholly unworthy of such emotion. A powerful, disturbing
and highly original story.
* * * * *
"SAKI" has been now for a number of years a great delight to me, and
his last work, _Beasts and Super-Beasts_ (LANE), is as good as any
of its predecessors. Clothed in the elegant garments of _Clovis_ or
_Reginald_, Mr. MUNRO makes plain to us how lovely this world might be
were we only a little bolder about our practical jokes. In the art
of introducing bears into the boudoir of a countess or pigs into the
study of a diplomat, and then clinching the matter with the wittiest
of epigrams, _Clovis_ is supreme. He knows, too, an immense amount
about the vengeance that children may take upon their relations,
and ladies upon their lady friends. I like him especially when he
manoeuvres some stupid but kind-hearted woman into a situation of
whose peril she herself is only cloudily aware, while the reader knows
all about it. That is the fun of the whole thing. The reader is for
ever assisting _Clovis_ and _Reginald_; in the course of their daring
adventures he connives from behind curtains, through key-holes, from
ambushes in trees, and always, whilst the poor creature is being
harried by wild boars or terrified by menacing kittens, _Clovis_ may
be observed, with finger on lip, begging of the intelligent reader
that he will not give things away. Of the present collection of
stories I like best "A Touch of Realism," "The Byzantine Omelette,"
"The Boar-Pig," and "The Dreamer;" but all are good, and I can only
hope that it will not be too long before _Clovis_ once again invites
us to further delightful conspiracies.
* * * * *
_Ars est celara artem_, and not to define and emphasise it in a
foreword to the reader. The motive of _The Last Shot_ (CHAPMAN AND
HALL) appears in due course in the narrative; I would have preferred
to discover it gradually for myself rather than have the essence of
it extracted and poured into me in advance. The preface has not the
excuse of a mere advertisement; to open this book at any point is to
read the whole, and every page is the strongest possible incentive
to the reading of the others. If (as is not admitted) any personal
explanation was necessary, it should have been put at the end and in
small type so that those who, like myself, detest explanations might
have avoided this one. I am the more severe about this, because
there can be no two opinions as to Mr. FREDERICK PALMER'S success
in achieving his purpose, which, obviously, was to conceive modern
warfare as between two First-class Powers, fighting in the midst of
civilisation, and to reduce it to terms of exact realism, showing the
latest devices of destruction at work, but carefully excluding those
improbable and impossible agencies which the more exuberant but less
informed novelist loves to imagine and put in play. Mr. PALMER'S
conception, though based upon some experience, is for the most
part speculative, of course, but I am confident that he gives us an
excellent idea of how the military machine would work in practice, how
its human constituent parts would feel inwardly, and what physical and
moral effects a battle would have upon those civilians who inhabited
and owned the battlefield. Whether or no the future will prove the
truth of the author's somewhat Utopian conclusions, he certainly
founds them upon a most exciting and convincing story, in which the
"love interest" is as powerful as could be desired.
* * * * *
Would you like to pay a round of visits to some delightful Shropshire
houses, as the friend and guest of a charming woman, who knows all
about what is most interesting in all of them, and has a pleasantly
chatty manner of telling it? Of course you would; so would anyone.
That is why I predict another success for Lady CATHERINE MILNES
GASKELL'S latest house-book, _Friends Round the Wrekin_ (SMITH,
ELDER). Perhaps you have pleasant memories of her former volumes in
the same kind; if so, I need say no more by way of introduction; but,
if not, I must tell you that her new book is very fairly described,
in the words of the publisher, as "a further collection of history and
legend, garden lore and character study." What the publishers modestly
refrain from mentioning is the real charm with which it has been
written, a quality that makes all the difference. There are also
photographs of a number of wholly fascinating houses (the kind that
make me wistful when I see them in the auctioneers' windows), and the
author has some personal anecdote or quaint scrap of legend to tell
you about each. I am quite willing to admit that the rambling book
has increased lately to an extent imperfectly justified by its average
quality. Too many of them confuse rambling with drivelling. But for
the reflections of a cultivated woman, one who has steeped herself in
the lore of a country she evidently loves, and can transcribe it with
such tender and persuasive charm, there should always be room. I may
add--and your own tastes must decide whether this is a flaw or a fresh
merit--that Lady CATHERINE'S sympathies, political and social, are
undisguisedly with the past, and that the "Education of the People"
comes in, upon almost every other page, for as shrewd raps as her
gentle nature will allow her to administer.
* * * * *
I wish I were Mr. JUSTUS MILES FORMAN. Because then, if I ever chanced
to wake up suddenly and find that I had been drugged in my sleep,
and the six immense rubies, brought here from the East by a far-off
ancestor and set in a black agate shield above my bed, to represent
the "six _gouttes_ (or drops) _gules_ on a field _sable_" of my
immemorial coat-of-arms, had been rudely reaved from me in the night
by my cousin, who had sent one each to his six sons, I should have no
fear. I should feel perfectly convinced that in a short time, by my
own personal exertions, but without exercising the least particle
of intelligence, I should recover those six rubies (representing six
_gouttes_ or drops _gules_) and replace them in the black agate
shield (representing a field _sable_); and naturally enough, like the
autobiographical hero of _The Six Rubies_ (representing----I beg
your pardon, I mean, published by WARD, LOCK), I should not dream
of calling in the aid of the police. Another jolly thing that would
inspirit me would be the fact that each of my adventures in search of
the missing jewels would conform to a separate and well-known type of
magazine story: there would be one fire, one notorious cracksman, one
haunted castle, one cabinet with a secret drawer, and so on. There
would be plenty of excitement, plenty of hairbreadth escapes. But
I think that, when collating my experiences and putting them into
six-shilling form, I should delete some of the tautologous references
to the past which are one of the stern necessities of serial
publication. Otherwise my readers might begin to feel slightly
fatigued by my six ancestral _gouttes_. They might even begin to feel
that they did not much care if I had hereditary sciatica.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Lady (to Nut who has talked of joining the Nationalist
Volunteers)._ "BUT YOU DON'T MEAN TO SAY, SURELY, YOU'RE GOING TO
FIGHT?"
_Nut._ "WELL I RATHER THOUGHT OF PAIRING WITH ONE OF THE ULSTER
FELLOWS."]
* * * * *
"In addition to excellent port, which furnished many prominent
features, the attendance was perhaps the best ever seen on a
like occasion."--_Sportsman._
The most prominent feature would, of course, be the nose.
* * * * *