(_BY MR. PUNCH'S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS._)
Just as one may say of certain novelists that they write at the top
of their voices, so, I think, one might describe Miss VIOLA MEYNELL
as writing in a whisper. This certainly is the effect that _Modern
Lovers_ (SECKER) produced upon me. The gentle method of it invested
the story--which of itself is a very slight thing--with an odd
significance almost impossible to communicate in criticism; but the
reading of a few pages will show you what I mean. The title is apt
enough, for the tale is about nothing but love, as it affects a group
of five young people, three men and two girls. Of the girls, who are
sisters, _Effie Rutherglen_ is the more important and detailed figure.
_Effie_, in the time before the story opens, had an affair with
_Oliver Bligh_; then, summoned North to live with her futile and
uncomprehending parents, she fell (as did her sister _Milly_ and most
of the local spinsters) under the fascination of one _Clive Maxwell_,
who was an author and had appealing eyes and obviously a way with him.
Then _Oliver_ turned up again, and poor _Effie_ didn't know which of
them she wanted. I speak lightly, but, if you think all this made
for comedy, your conception of Miss MEYNELL's methods is very much
at fault. Love to her is very much what it was to _Patience_ in the
opera--by no means a wholly enviable boon. I can hardly praise too
much the exquisite refinement and restraint of her treatment of
commonplace things. But one small point baffled me: _Oliver_ appears
to have been a professional diver and bath-keeper--we are told,
indeed, that he had occupied that position at Rugby (a statement
that I have private and personal reasons for discrediting)--yet we
find him staying as a welcome and honoured guest in the house of the
_Rutherglens_, whom I take to be more or less "county." Surely this,
though of no real importance, is at least remarkable?
* * * * *
"What," I asked myself, "is just the matter with this apparently quite
nice book?" (It was _Joan's Green Year_, and written by E.L. DOON and
published by MACMILLAN.) It is the kind of book that grows out of a
romantic disposition and an assiduously stuffed commonplace book. It
consists of letters from _Joan_, a paying guest in the Manor House
Farm at Pelton, to her brother _Keith_, a soldier in India, telling
him all about her year of holiday and "soul discipline" in the
country, the village gossip, her proposals and her one acceptance, and
giving a sort of farmer's calendar of the seasons as interpreted by
the guileless amateur. _Joan_ has what is known as a nice mind. But
to tell truth she has chosen a difficult and dangerous if alluring art
form. Of course letters enable you to evade some of the difficulties
of the novelist's task, to be discursive, allusive and incomplete. But
you can't be let off anything of the precision and subtlety of your
characterisation. On the contrary. And _Joan_ makes everyone in Pelton
(except the rustics, whose authenticity I gravely suspect) talk
as _Joan_ writes. They have nearly all seen her commonplace book,
I judge. Then, again, you must not have (like _Joan_) a large list
of acquaintances, or you breed confusion and dissipate interest
accordingly. _Joan_ is very young in many ways. She is extravagant in
the matter of the equipment of her heroes. _Bob Ingleby_, the farmer
(a gentleman, because he had been at Winchester), is a "great comely
giant," yet wins events one and three of the Hunt Steeplechase, though
thrown badly in number two. I have a suspicion that this work is
really _Joan's_ tee shot, and that after a notable recovery, which on
the best of her present form I can safely prophesy, she will reach her
green year next time.
* * * * *
Mrs. T.P. O'CONNOR has written a fascinating book. _My Beloved South_
she calls it, and PUTNAMS publish it. There is not a lifeless page
in the 427 that make up a bountiful feast. Every one contains vivid
reproductions of incidents in social life in the South "befo' de
wa'" and after. At the outset we make the acquaintance of a typical
Southron, Mrs. O'CONNOR's grandfather, Governor of Florida when it
was still a Territory, with native Indians fighting fiercely for their
land and homes. Mrs. O'CONNOR was, of course, not to the fore in those
early days. But so steeped is she in lore of the South, much of it
gained from the lips of nurses and out-door servants, so keen is her
sympathy, so quick and true her instinct that she is able to revivify
the old scenes and reproduce the atmosphere of the time. The darkey
nurse of earliest childhood lives again, sometimes bringing with
her plantation songs like "Voodoo-Bogey-Boo," quaintly musical. Many
passages of the grandfather's conversations are preserved, in which we
may detect the voice of the gifted granddaughter. But the influence of
heredity is strong, more especially "down South." Also there are many
charming stories redolent of the South. I was about to mention the
page on which will be found the thrilling history of a mule aptly
named "Satan." On reflection I won't spoil the reader's pleasure in
unexpectedly coming upon it somewhere about the middle of the book.
Nobody--man or woman, girl or boy--who begins to read _My Beloved
South_ will skip a page. So the story cannot be overlooked.
* * * * *
In _Lost Diaries_ (DUCKWORTH) Mr. MAURICE BARING travels by an easy
road to humour, and he does not pound it with too laborious feet. This
is perhaps a fortunate thing, for a farcical reconstruction of history
in the light of modern sentiment and circumstances might easily tire;
a Comic History of England, for instance, is stiffer reading to-day
than GARDNER or GREEN. Sometimes, however, Mr. BARING seems to carry
to extreme lengths his conscientious avoidance of efforts to be funny;
and in the imaginary records of one or two of his subjects there is
little more to laugh at than the unaided fancy of the student has long
ago perceived. _Tristram_ loved two _Iseults_, and JOHN MILTON was
an exasperating husband; but these things I knew, and the author of
_Lost Diaries_ has made no more capital out of the situations than
the eternal merriment which the bare statement of the facts inspires.
But where Mr. BARING, pleasantly disdainful alike of consistency
and taste, examines the pocket-book of the "Man in the Iron Mask,"
and finds him complaining of the noise and disturbance in dungeon
after dungeon until he is removed at last to the lotus island of the
Bastille; or records the blameless botanical pursuits of TIBERIUS in
seclusion; or the first consumption of the Colla di Gallo by COLUMBUS
in the newly discovered West, he is, for all the simplicity of his
methods, amusing enough. Yet even so I am inclined to think that the
first of his essays, which reads like an actual transcript from the
jottings of a nineteenth-century private-school boy, is the diary
which I most heartily congratulate Mr. BARING on having rediscovered,
and which I should be least willing for him to lose again.
* * * * *
With the Land Question staring us in the face, _Folk of the Furrow_
(SMITH ELDER) should attract the attention of those who wish
thoroughly to understand what the agricultural labourer wants and
why he wants it. Mr. CHRISTOPHER HOLDENBY is no amateur, for as Mr.
STEPHEN REYNOLDS has lived with fishermen and shared their daily lives
so he has lodged in labourers' cottages and hoed and dug with the
best (and worst) of them. The result is a book that is stamped with
the hall-mark of a great sincerity; and three facts at least can be
gathered from it by the very dullest of gleaners. First, and I think
foremost, that the decencies of life cannot be observed if children
of very various ages are to be crowded into cottages too small to hold
them; secondly, that it is useless to expect morality from youths who
have few or no amusements provided for them; thirdly, that the passing
of the old families and the advent of the week-end "merchant princes"
do not make a change for the better. All which may be stale news, but
after reading this book I think that you will admit that Mr. HOLDENBY
has contrived to make an old tale very impressive. In some instances
it is true that I could bring evidence directly in opposition to his,
but on the whole he deserves well for the way in which he has won the
confidence of a class naturally suspicious and silent, and for his
manner of stating his case. Had I for my sins to cram our M.P.'s for
the debates that lie before them, I should feed them liberally upon
_Folk of the Furrow_.
* * * * *
[Illustration: CONSCIENTIOUS REFEREE ORDERING HIMSELF OFF THE GROUND
FOR BEING HASTY TO AN IMPERTINENT PLAYER.]
* * * * *