(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
I seem to remember that, in the old days of peace, when a friend was
run down or in want of thorough rest, it was a commonplace of advice
to suggest a long voyage in a sailing ship. Somehow I do not think
that, even when mines and traffic raiders are no more, I shall be
quite so ready with this counsel after reading _The Mutiny of the
Elsinore_ (MILLS AND BOON). Of course I know that a voyage in nautical
fiction can never be wholly uneventful, also that one is justified in
looking to Mr. JACK LONDON for something rather strenuous. But really
the _Elsinore_ appears to touch the limit in this kind. I wish I could
tell you properly about her crew. (Mr. LONDON takes chapters and
chapters in which to do it). I suppose that every possible variety of
undesirable was represented among them, from dangerous maniacs
downwards. And their behaviour was what you might expect. The
disquieting thing about the book is that the author gives to its most
horrific episodes a cold and calculated air of truth. "_Experto
crede_," he seems to say; "thus and thus is the real life of ships."
So I had to believe him. There was only one passenger on board the
_Elsinore_, and he finished the voyage in command of her. This was
after the Captain had gone wrong in the head, and the First Officer
had discovered the Second to be the murderer of one whom he had sworn
to avenge. By this time also the voyage (which might be called one of
attrition) had considerably reduced the _Elsinore's_ company; while
the survivors were mostly engaged in hurling bombs and vitriol at each
other. What one might call an active, open-air book. But, though I am
far from denying its grim strength, it will not be my favourite among
its author's always interesting romances.
* * *
Mr. GILBERT CANNAN offers us in _Young Earnest_ (SECKER) an extremely
conscientious and plausible study of a talented, sensitive and, I am
afraid, rather "superior" youth whose love affairs preoccupy him too
exclusively and whose demands on life are so exacting that nothing can
ever bring him content. I feel so sure from the good deal which I now
know of young _Fourmy_ and his behaviour to his wife, _Linda_, that
brilliant suburban, and to _Ann_, the factory girl, that he never
found with _Cathleen_ the perfect peace which his creator alleges; or
perhaps, more justly, that he never could have found it without a
struggle and self-discipline, of which there are few signs. It is
surely one of the fallacies of a common philosophy of romance--a
fallacy much too crude for Mr. CANNAN'S unusually careful method--that
while this, that and the other relation, opening delightfully, becomes
sordid or impossible some final selection is to prove automatically
and permanently blissful, even if there be no legal ties to chafe
against on principle. The fact is your _Fourmys_ are in this difficult
matter of the affections doomed to trouble as the sparks fly upward,
and of course the perceptive author knows this perfectly well and his
happy ending is only a "let's pretend." I have been fascinated by the
skill of a series of uncannily clear-cut portraits; I know no other
writer who has the power in so singular a degree of getting right down
below surface traits to depths of mood and character. Analyse it and
you will find that Mr. CANNAN gives you no descriptions but merely
lets his characters unfold themselves in their talk. There's much in
that "merely."
_Oliver_, the hero of _The Woman who Looked Back_ (STANLEY PAUL),
seems to have been a person of exceptional credulity. Having as a boy
married a quite undesirable foreigner, he subsequently went to India,
and on his return accepted without question his mother's statement
that he was a widower. So he married _Sara_, the heroine of the tale,
and lived in great placidity for some eight years with her, till the
expected happened, and the discovery of an old letter proved that wife
No. 1 was very much alive. It is at this dramatic crisis that M.
HAMILTON raises the curtain upon his (or her) story. If I treat it
with flippancy it is not from any dislike of it; on the contrary it
seems to me both interesting and human, especially human. The dialogue
is profoundly and movingly natural; in every chapter I have felt that,
given the postulated situation, the characters would talk exactly
thus, which simply means that M. HAMILTON is an adept in her (or his)
art. The situation is complicated by the fact that, though _Oliver_
had accepted his second marriage as an ideally happy one, _Sara_ in
her secret heart was becoming monstrously bored. Indeed in a soft,
play-with-fire fashion she believed herself in love with _Oliver's_
friend _George_, who himself adored her passionately. Naturally,
therefore, when the bomb burst and _Sara_ was no longer the wife of
anybody, _George_ thought his moment had come. I shall not carry the
story of their three-cornered fight further. It remains
three-cornered. Contrary to every accepted custom, the original and
only genuine wife never once appears upon the stage. This strikes me
as constituting a record in the avoidance of the _scène-à-faire_.
Incidentally also it confirms me in my opinion of M. HAMILTON as an
author of originality and honesty, whose picture of _Sara_ in
particular shows that she understands a great deal about her own sex.
* * *
My enjoyment of a book that is frankly a study on a special subject is
always limited by the interest of the subject itself, however prettily
the theme be embroidered. The most eloquent disquisition on postage
stamps, for example, would leave me unmoved. MARGARET PETERSON needs
no introduction as a most eloquent writer on things Indian; yet
"Eurasia," her set study in _Tony Bellew_ (MELROSE)--I am not likening
it to philately, and should be sorry to be disrespectful to either--so
swamps her story, and is in itself so little agreeable, that I cannot
feel much enthusiasm for her latest work. That it is dry and barren
cannot be said of a single page; indeed, I could even wish that such
adjectives might be applicable here and there as a relief from
the--shall I say?--clammy fungoid atmosphere that permeates, and is
intended to permeate, the world that lies between the covers of this
volume. The central figure--certainly not hero, and wanting something
to be man--exhales in his fickle violences just this miasma; and
rightly so, if the general conception of the book be just, for he is
born of a Bengali mother. Even his final sacrifice to save _Joan_,
herself about the only character one would care to meet, is hysterical
and unnecessary, and does little to redeem him. I would gladly believe
that the picture of her unpleasant experiences is as false as, I think
you will agree, it is on the whole ugly and unsympathetic; though I
admit that a lack of sympathy is as much against the intention of the
writer as a certain unpleasantness is the deliberate object of her
able craftsmanship. I must place it in your hands at that, with the
advice to read or pass by according to your interest in the subject.
* * *
_The Wise Virgins_ (ARNOLD) is one of those quaint old-world stories
of the day when there were artists and individualists who despised
convention and the stiffness of ordinary morality and wanted to
realise themselves and occupied quite a lot of our attention. To read
it is to plunge back through the mists of time into the early summer
of 1914 A.D. And even then I have my doubts as to whether I should
have been persuaded to share the sympathy which L. F. WOOLF appears to
feel for _Harry Davis_, the young Richstead painter. The two types of
people among whom his lot is cast are cleverly if much too bitterly
and unkindly contrasted--the _Garlands_, pre-eminently suburban,
unable and (all except _Gwen_) unwilling to leave their monotonous
groove, and the _Lawrences_, too cultured and full of æsthetic
sensibilities to do anything but sit still and talk. _Harry_ combines
the æsthetic sense with a restless vitality which he attributes to his
Jewish origin, and is desirous of action and enterprise. And so,
rejected by _Camilla Lawrence_, he talks to _Gwen_ until she almost
compels him to compromise her, and the book closes with the mockery of
a forced marriage in deference to the sentiments of Philistia. In
spite of some skilful and penetrating satire, I fancy that 1915 will
consider _The Wise Virgins_ neither a very nice nor a very necessary
book.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Teashop Waitress_ (_feeling the pinch of War_). "JUST
LOOK AT THAT LOT, EDNA! NOT FIVE MINUTES' CHAT IN THE WHOLE CROWD."]
* * * * *