(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
_Sinister Street, Vol. II._ (SECKER) is a book for which I have been
waiting impatiently this great while, and I welcomed it with eagerness.
The first volume left off, you may remember, with _Michael_ just about
to go up to Oxford. Knowing what Mr. COMPTON MACKENZIE could do with
such a theme, I have anticipated all these months that to watch his hero
at the university would be to renew my own youth. The book has appeared
now, and I am justified of my faith. I say without hesitation that the
first half of this second volume (which, by the way, to show that it is
a second volume and not a sequel, starts at page 499) is the most
complete and truest picture of modern Oxford that has been or is likely
to be written. For those who, like myself, have their most cherished
memories bound up with the life of which it treats, the actuality of the
whole thing would make criticism impossible. But as a matter of fact
these seventeen chapters seem to me to show Mr. MACKENZIE'S art at its
best. They display just that strange combination of realism and
aloofness that gives to his writing its special charm. No one has ever
(for example) reproduced more perfectly the talk of young men; and this
scattered speech, in what Mr. MACKENZIE himself might call its
infinitely fugacious quality, contrasts effectively with the deliberate,
somewhat mannered beauty of the setting. Mr. MACKENZIE is an overlord of
words, old and new, bending them to strange and unexpected uses, yet
always avoiding affectation by the sheer vitality of his strength. As
for the matter of these first chapters, one might say that nothing
whatever happens in them. They are an epic of adolescence wherein growth
is the only movement. Events are for the second half of the volume. Here
_Michael_ has come down from Oxford, and has set himself to find and
rescue by marriage the girl _Lily_, whom (you remember) he loved as a
boy, and who has since drifted into the underworld. About this part of
the story I will only say that, though the art is still there and the
same haunting melody of style, Mr. MACKENZIE has too strong a sense of
atmosphere to allow him to treat squalor in a fashion that will be
agreeable to the universe. Frankly, the over-nice will be prudent to
take leave of _Michael_ on the Oxford platform. The others, following to
the end, will agree with me that he has placed his creator definitely at
the head of the younger school of English fiction.
* * * * *
For me, the pleasure of travelling consists less in the sight of
museums, cathedrals, picture galleries and landscapes, than in the study
of the native man in the street and his peculiar ways. When abroad, "I
am content to note my little facts," and so is Mr. GEO. A. BIRMINGHAM;
in fact, it was he who first thought of mentioning the matter. The
reverend canon tours in the U.S.A., which is, when you come to think of
it, about the only safe area for the purpose nowadays; he observes the
manners and oddities of the Americans, whether as politicians, pressmen,
hustlers, holiday-makers, hosts, undergraduates, husbands or wives, and
remarks upon them, in _Connaught to Chicago_ (NISBET), with just that
quiet and unboisterous humour which his public has come to demand of him
as of right. His first chapter shows that he has ever in mind the
multitude of his fellow-countrymen who have, in the past, made the same
journey but for good and all. This memory leads him at times into
excessive praise of his subjects, especially the ladies, and so to
apparent disparagement of his people at home. For my part I vastly
prefer the Irish, men, women and children, in Ireland to all or any of
their relatives and friends elsewhere; for when they leave their island
their humour runs to seed and loses that detachment and delicacy which
constitute its unique charm. That Mr. BIRMINGHAM, however, was not
nearly long enough abroad to suffer this deterioration, must be patent
to all who linger over this happy book.
* * * * *
If Miss JESSIE POPE receives her just reward, she will soon have to put
a notice in the daily papers to the effect that she is grateful for kind
enquiries, but is unable at present to answer them. For I think that any
enterprising boy who reads _The Shy Age_ (GRANT RICHARDS) will forthwith
make it his business to find out the name of the school at which _Jack
Venables_ amused himself, and that even if unavoidable circumstances
prevent him from going there he will, at any rate, remain disgruntled
until he can place his finger upon it on the map. After reading those
tales of school and holiday life, I can only say that the school which
harboured me must have been a dull place, and that I should now like to
return there for a term at least--I doubt if I should be allowed to stay
longer--and liven things up. Miss POPE starts with one great advantage
over men who write of boys' schools, because the critics cannot say that
her work is autobiographical, and then proceed to "recognise" most of
her characters. That is the terror lurking by day and night for any man
who dares to write a school-tale. On the other hand, although Miss POPE
has fitted herself remarkably well into the skin of _Jack Venables_, who
tells these stories but is not (thank goodness) the hero of most of
them, she has not been able entirely to avoid what I must call Papal
touches. For instance, I do not believe that a boy of _Jack's_ age and
character would use the word "feasible," and a special society would
have to be started for the prevention of cruelty to any boy who ventured
to talk of his "aunties." On the whole, however, she has a fine
understanding of boy-nature, and if there are some improbabilities in
these ingenious stories, she is armed with the crushing retort that the
chief characteristic of any properly equipped boy is his improbability.
* * * * *
Possibly owing to some personal disinclination towards violent bodily
exertion on the part of his creator, _Father Brown_, the criminal
investigator of Mr. G. K. CHESTERTON'S fancy, is not a fellow of
panther-like physique. For him no sudden pouncing on the frayed
carpet-edge, or the broken collar-stud dyed with gore. He carries no
lens and no revolver. Flashes of psychological insight are more to him
than a meticulous examination of the window-sill. When the motive is
instantly transparent, why bother about the murderer's boots? In the
circumstances it is perhaps fortunate for the reverend sleuth that he
nearly always happens to be in either at the death or immediately after
it, instead of being summoned a day or two later when the grotesque
circumstances of the crime have baffled the panting ingenuity of
Scotland Yard. You find him now in this part of England, and now in
that, now in America, and now in Italy. He is, in fact, a hedge-priest
and has not even a cure of souls in Baker Street. But wherever he goes
with his flapping hat and his umbrella he chances on some fantasy of
guilt. Yet any pangs we may feel for the absence of the familiar
setting--the pale-faced butler in the guarded dining-room of the
country-house and the staggered minions of the local constabulary--are
assuaged by the brilliant narrative manner in which _The Wisdom of
Father Brown_ (CASSELL) is set forth. Here is the paradoxical world of
Mr. CHESTERTON'S imagination described in his own verbiage and proved by
actual and grisly events. In that starry dream of a detective story
which I sometimes have, where sleuth-hounds are pattering along the
Milky Way and pursue at last the Great Bear to his den, _Father Brown_
and _Sherlock Holmes_, the one spectacled, the other lynx-eyed, are
following the prey in leash.
* * * * *
Should you, among wild by-ways of Donegal or Connemara, meet a
procession composed of _Patsy McCann_ the Tinker and the Ass and _Mary_
with _Finaun_ the Archangel, _Caeltia_ the Seraph, _Art_ the Cherub,
_Eileen ni Cooley_ (a savage lady of easy morals), _Billy the Music_,
the Seraph Cuchulain and _Brien O'Brien_, a lost soul who had a
threepenny-bit stolen on him by _Cuchulain_ that same, you would guess
there's only one living man could be behind it--to wit JAMES STEPHENS,
_Crock-of-Gold_ STEPHENS. Fantastic things indeed happen in _The
Demi-Gods_ (MACMILLAN), which is a kind of inspired nightmare, a sort of
Chestertonian inconsequence done into Gaelic, a little less violent and
with a little less malt, but even less coherent. At the risk of being
reckoned among the egregiously imperceptive I would ask Mr. STEPHENS
solemnly whether he is not in danger of letting his fancy take bit
between teeth and land him in some bog of sheer literary chaos. The most
distant of the futurists notwithstanding, there must be some rules to
the game or you don't get your work of art. When those modern wizards of
the halls set themselves to a piece of _bizarre_ juggling, say, with a
string of pearls, a dumb-bell and a rose-petal, they do toss and
catch--don't merely let everything just drop. Mr. STEPHENS will know
what I mean without caring overmuch. There's something in it all the
same. Anyway, there really are in _The Demi-Gods_ delicate shy pearls
and gleams of the authentic gold of the original _Crock_. And after all
it wasn't written for middle-aged gentlemen of the Saxon tribe.
* * * * *
Illustration: GERMAN SPIES TAKING LESSONS FROM CONJURER IN THE ART OF
CONCEALING PIGEONS.
* * * * *
Another Impending Apology.
"The Shipton family were too well known for anything to be said in
their praise."--_Buxton Advertiser._