(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
If it should ever be your lot, which pray Heaven forbid, to be stranded
on the coast of Panama, seek out Miss WINIFRED JAMES as your hostess,
for she can teach you how to tolerate, and even in a way enjoy, an
existence one might have thought unendurable. She lives, I gather, some
two hundred miles or so from the Canal, in a town that is going to be
built some fine day on a site that has to be prepared by filling up a
marsh with clay and sand. In the meantime, until the day and the town
arrive, she rightly describes herself as _A Woman in the Wilderness_
(CHAPMAN AND HALL). Civilisation is turned back to front out there, for
although such comforts as refrigerators and electric light are a matter
of course, there is still lacking to _Mrs. Henry de Jan_ and her rather
shadowy _William_ anything, for instance, in the nature of a road on
which to walk, or indeed any approach to their own verandah except,
floating on the clay, a narrow plank gangway that has to serve as a
hustling high-road for a mixed and dusky populace. Under the
circumstances she has done nobly well to arm herself with the twin
defences of cheerfulness and humour; and if the cheerfulness comes at
times near to being that of a martyr on the rack, while the fun is
perilously apt to swing from themes that are nice for a lady's wit to
others that are not so nice, and back to sheer triviality, what, in the
name of a population of sand-flies and negroes, can you expect? It is
much that so lifelike a picture of a region so desolate should be
presented on the whole with sweetness and charm, when no better material
is available than the myriad misdeeds of her coloured servants, the
antics of her puppies and an occasional reminiscence of home.
* * * * *
Certainly VIOLET HUNT and FORD MADOX HUEFFER have one achievement to
their credit. They have evolved an entirely new and original setting in
which to bring together a number of short stories. What is supposed to
happen is that sundry persons who did not feel exactly drawn towards bed
before 2 A.M. on those summer nights when Zeppelins were about, meet for
bridge and sandwiches and incidentally to listen to certain stories read
aloud by their author. In this way they are able to forget their
apprehensions of the gas-bags (dare I put it that they lose Count?) and
spend a pleasant series of evenings with history. For the stories in
_Zeppelin Nights_ (LANE) are all historical of a kind. Mostly they deal
with the byways of history, or rather with the emotions of ordinary
people who are just on the outer edge of historical happenings. For
example, the central figure of the first is a slave whose basket of figs
is upset by PHEIDIPPIDES running from Marathon; while the last concerns
an insignificant little anti-militarist who finds himself cheering for
the army on the outbreak of the Boer War. That is the kind of tales they
are, slight and momentary things, with no plot but plenty of atmosphere,
and in their style remarkably well done. Whether they would actually
keep the nerve-ridden oblivious of bombs for the thousand-and-one nights
that might have seen raids and didn't is a matter that need not concern
us. For my part, I liked as much as any the pages in which Miss HUNT or
Mr. HUEFFER folded up her or his manuscript and allowed the other
(whichever it was) to tell us about the very pleasant and human
audience. I had only one disappointment, but that was acute. I did want
just once for them to hear a distant bang, and see what happened. I
rather doubt whether the placid and literary charm of the tales would
have sufficed to keep them within doors had there been anything to see
outside.
* * * * *
"In his hot indignation his yellowish face had in places turned
blackish: literally, black streaks ran from the corners of his lips
upwards and downwards, and from the inner corners of his eyes." If you
read that sentence in a novel with Mr. EDGAR JEPSON'S name on the cover,
and found that the passage was a description of a man named _Shadrach
Penny_, would you not, as I did, settle down comfortably in your
armchair and wait with perfect confidence for the human zebra to murder
somebody in the most fascinatingly brutal manner? But he did not do
anything of the kind. I think that the fact that I was disappointed in,
and even seriously bored by, _The Man Who Came Back_ (HUTCHINSON) was
largely due to the mild, dull way in which the story developed. And yet
I think I could have forgiven the absence of lurid sensationalism if the
book had been a good book of its kind. It is not. It is so crude and
amateurish that it is difficult to believe that a professional writer
could have written it. Mr. JEPSON, like most other authors, has had the
idea of modernising the story of the Prodigal Son. He adheres to the
original story closely in one respect, for _Roland Penny's_ first meal
in his old home consists of roast veal, but he departs from it in making
_Roland_, so far from wasting his substance, amass a large fortune among
the husks and swine. I do not know how to classify _The Man Who Came
Back_. It is not a novel of incident, for nothing happens in it. It is
not a novel of character, for there is no attempt at any but the crudest
character-drawing. It is just a six-shilling novel, and I do not see
what else one can say of it. Mr. JEPSON must do one of two things. He
must either brace up and make his style less irritatingly slipshod, or
he must give us a few more murders. If we cannot have literary elegance
he must give us blood.
* * * * *
Lieutenant L. B. RUNDALL, of the 1st Gurkha Rifles, author of _The Ilex
of Stra-Ping_ (MACMILLAN), was not only a soldier and a sportsman, but a
writer with a most keen sense of the beauty of nature and the beauty of
words. Children should love these Himalayan sketches, for Mr. RUNDALL,
from material which in some cases was admittedly slight, could weave a
tale full of magic and charm. The story of the old brown bear in "The
Scape-goat" may not greatly stir the heart with the thrill of adventure,
but the hero has attractions that no child and no man that has not
forgotten his childhood could resist. An inconspicuous notice in the
book tells us that the author fell in action towards the close of 1914.
I salute his memory. Rich as we are to-day in authors who can write
enchantingly of birds and animals, I feel a sense of personal sorrow in
the loss of one whose work gave so fair a promise of high achievement.
* * * * *
When you take up _Russian Folk-Tales_ (KEGAN, PAUL), don't allow
yourself to be subdued by the deplorably learned preface of the
translator, Mr. LEONARD MAGNUS, LL.B., because it is not the proper
attitude really. Forget how little business a Bachelor of Law has to lay
his sceptical hands on such inappropriate material, and plunge into a
jolly, bewildering tangle of tales of magic and adventure,
bloodthirstiness and treachery, simple charity, _vodka_ and genial
superstition. You will be led from one to the other, puzzled but, I dare
conjecture, highly entertained. I think you may take it, too, that a
certain healthy sort of children will like to have these queer stories
read aloud. The villainies of the _Bába Yagá_, an old witch of terrific
resourcefulness, and the oddly inconsequent animal stories should make
particular appeal. But you will be hard put to it to answer the
questions which will be thrust at you; and (by the way) perhaps you will
discreetly have to leave out a phrase or two for prudence' sake. On no
account let the youngsters read the preface. I am not really quite sure
whether you ought to read it yourself.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Recruit._ "Aw--I say Sergeant--I'm afraid this horse is
a bit too tall for me."
_Sergeant_ (_old school_). "Oh! And does the _colour_ suit you, Sir?"]
* * * * *
The Charge of the Six Hundred.
Some three-score years or so ago six hundred gallant men
Made a charge that cost old England dear, they lost four hundred then;
To-day six hundred make a charge that costs the country dear,
But now they take four hundred each--four hundred pounds a year.
* * * * *
"Somebody to steal of my cabbage, cauliflower, old potato, new
potato, and a small rake and hooks, fork. Everything. Somebody
snatch on Thursday and Saturday night. Perhaps anybody to see
the steal man to take something from my garden to tell me about
that is I will reward five pounds truth, £3 for tell-tale.--Wong
Long."
_Poverty Bay Herald._
Wong Long apparently differs from the accepted authorities as to the
value of hearsay evidence.