(_BY MR. PUNCH'S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS._)
It was a special duty of the late JOHN F. MACDONALD, who was cut off
in his prime after incautiously adding to his journalistic labours
in Paris the voluntary and too exacting duties of entertaining the
wounded, to emphasize the _Entente Cordiale_. Ever since KING EDWARD
laid the foundation of that understanding between England and France,
it was Mr. MACDONALD'S delight as well as his livelihood to study
every facet of it, both in Paris and in London, and with unfailing
humour and spirit, fortified by swift insight, to present each in
turn to his readers. The two best papers in the first volume of the
posthumous collection of his writings are those which describe in
vivid kindly strokes the triumphant impact of the late KING on the
Parisians some fourteen years ago, and the visit, not long after, of
five hundred London school-children to the French capital. Had Mr.
MACDONALD been spared to prepare this book himself, there is no doubt
that he would have subjected his essays to revision and brought them
into a more harmonious whole; but as they stand, gathered together
in this volume, _Two Towns--One City_ (GRANT RICHARDS), by the proud
hands of his mother, they have charm and vitality and the authenticity
of first-hand knowledge and lively sympathy. The War, as we have just
been reminded by an impressive memorial service, has made deep gaps in
the ranks of English journalists, and the loss of JOHN F. MACDONALD'S
quick eyes, happy choice of words, and intensely human apprehensions
was far from being the least.
* * * * *
Whether you enjoy _The House in Marylebone_ (DUCKWORTH) will depend
entirely upon your taste for the society of a number of hardworking
but sentimental "business girls." For this is the whole matter of
Mrs. W.K. CLIFFORD'S book. I call her girls sentimental, because (for
all that they are supposed to be chiefly concerned with living their
own lives) you will be struck at once with the extent to which they
contrive to mix themselves up with the lives of any male creatures
who venture over the horizon. "Our little republic," says one of its
inmates towards the end of the book, "is firmly feminine and hasn't
done much falling in love." Well, well--I suppose this is a question
that turns upon your definition of the word "much;" to me personally
they seldom seemed to be doing, or thinking about, anything else. Nor
could I help reflecting how much fuller and more vigorous all Mrs.
CLIFFORD'S cast would have found their existence to-day. Perhaps this
feeling explains a slight impatience which the society of so much
struggling femininity eventually produced in me. Young women still
live in houses in the Marylebone Road; they still proclaim republics
of hardworking celibacy, and fall briskly in love with the first
eligible bachelor; but their vocations and their citizenship have
both (_Hoch der KAISER!_) grown out of all knowledge. So that charming
writer, Mrs. CLIFFORD, must forgive me if I could find only an
historical interest, and no very robust one at that, in her amiable
retrospect.
* * * * *
AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE have certainly been well advised about
their sub-title to _The Black Office and other Chapters of Romance_
(MURRAY). For that is precisely what the tales are; and excellently
romantic and thrilling chapters too, for the most part dated in
the decade following the great Anglo-French peace of a century ago.
Probably you couldn't say off-hand what the Black Office was. Let me
whisper. It was, amongst other things, a postal censorship that opened
and perused all letters intended to cross the Channel. With what
natural indignation would you, in July three years ago, have read of
such monstrous activities! Truly, as the authors say, there is some
interest in the comparison of then and now. Of the other stories, my
own favourites would he "The Resurrectionist" and "The Smile on the
Portrait." The first of these is a haunting affair of body-snatching,
or rather of an early escapade of the notorious BURKE, who was
asked to supply a red-haired corpse, and not finding one produced
instead a gentleman who had yet to fulfil the condition precedent
to body-snatching, i.e. who had to be killed first and snatched
afterwards. This is certainly as grim as anything I have met over the
Castellated signature. Beside it, "The Smile on the Portrait," the
tale of a jealous husband who becomes a maniac, is almost soothing.
They had clearly their little worries even a century ago. The CASTLES,
as everybody knows, have always had the trick of adventurous fiction;
_The Black Office, etc._, proves that their hands have lost nothing of
their cunning.
* * * * *
One has heard so often of works of "absorbing interest" that appeared
at "the psychological moment" that one feels a bit squeamish about
applying these phrases even to such a book as Mr. HARRY DE WINDT'S
_Russia as I Know It_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL); but honestly their
appropriateness cannot be denied in view of the author's peculiar
knowledge of the too mysterious country on which interest just now
is so poignantly concentrated. He has not only traversed Siberia as
few, even Russians, have done--that is an old though still thrilling
story--but he has ranged at large over the whole country from Finland
to the Crimea (the only two parts, by the way, which he has made me
thirst to visit), and has gone with his eyes open. In the present
volume, touching only incidentally on his journeyings and still less
on politics, he has tried to satisfy the thousand-and-one questioners
who, one imagines, have been plaguing him not a little lately as to
those intimate details that really count in the life of a nation. He
tells us for instance how the Russians do business and keep out the
cold; how many of the women you could call pretty, and how much mutton
a Kirghiz can eat. Though some of this is not new, yet the book has,
as a whole, a most vivid freshness, and, if in the end the main effect
is to make one content to live out of Russia, that is a tribute to the
writer's frankness. At the least one is able to rejoice in his final
verdict of unqualified enthusiasm for his hosts, since he found not
merely acquaintances ready to welcome the popular English, but true
and trustworthy friends in all classes of the community.
* * * * *
MRS. OLIVER ONIONS has a light puckish humour and a smooth if
over-hasty pen, and I don't think she quite does her own intelligence
(or ours) full justice in _The Bridge of Kisses_ (HUTCHINSON). I liked
her flapper heroine, _Joey_, and the naughty nephews, the _O.U.2's_,
and her sapper lover, _The Bridge Builder_, who was a confoundedly
long time over his work, by the way, but ultimately came into his own
over his own bridge of kisses, built under a heavy barrage of needless
misunderstandings. But _Joey's_ pipsqueak shirker _fiancé_, _Hilary_,
was altogether too foolish a travesty of a man ever to have gained her
hand or, having gained it, to have held it against any real male in
or out of khaki. The fact is that "BERTHA RUCK" can achieve something
better than these meandering methods and this spinelessness of
characterisation; and it is distinctly disappointing to see her
content with the curate's egg standard.
* * * * *
It is time that some of our novelists put up a statue to NAPOLEON for
services rendered to the cause of fiction. In Miss MAY WYNNE'S A _Spy
for Napoleon_ (JARROLD) his misdeeds and those of his minions are made
to serve the purpose of emphasizing the loyalty of the heroine to her
lover. This lover was an Englishman of a type sufficiently familiar in
novels--cold and masterful, but, for some reason not apparent to me,
extremely attractive. As he seemed to be roaming about France with the
object of getting NAPOLEON out of the way by any means available, I am
not certain that he was playing the game, even when we remember that
the rules of it were lax enough at the beginning of the nineteenth
century. But we are not asked to weigh carefully the merits of
character. It is just a romance of incident, in which a hot pace is
set at the start and kept up to the finish. In short you get a good
run for your money, and that is all about it.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE THEORIST.]
* * * * *