(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
_Zella Sees Herself_ (HEINEMANN) is an unusual and very subtle analysis of
a single character. The author, E.M. DELAFIELD, has made an almost
uncannily penetrating study of the development of a _poseuse_. _Zella_
posed instinctively, from the days when as a child she alienated her father
by attitudinising (with the best intentions) about her mother's funeral. It
became a habit with her. In Rome, before the Arch of Titus, she thought
more of what she might acceptably say about it than of any wonder or beauty
in the thing itself. She fooled the honest man who imagined he was in love
with her by making herself, for the time, just what her fatal facility for
such perception told her he would most like her to be. The skill of the
book is proved by the increasing anxiety, and even agitation, with which
one awaits the moment that shall fulfil the title. It comes, bringing with
it that almost intolerable tragedy of the soul, the black loneliness that
waits upon insincerity. Then poor deluded _Zella_, seeing herself, sees
also the fate that eventually befalls those who have deliberately falsified
the signals by which alone one human heart can speak to and assist another.
That is all the plot of the story, told with remarkable insight and a care
that is both sympathetic and wholly unsparing. I am mistaken if you will
not find it one of the most absorbing within recent experience. But I am
not saying that it may not leave you just a little uncomfortable.
* * * * *
BOYD CABLE is already one of the prose Laureates of the War, having earned
his wreath by _Between the Lines_ and _Action Front_. He now proves that he
is still entitled to it by _Grapes of Wrath_ (SMITH, ELDER). The two former
books gave us detached articles all relating to the one great subject. The
present book is a continuous story, the episodes of which are held together
by the deeds and characters of a quartette of friends, _Larry Arundel_,
_Billy Simson_, _Pug Sneath_, and the noble and adventurous American,
_Kentucky Lee_, who had enlisted in our Army to prove that "too proud to
fight" was a phrase which did not agree with the traditions of an old
Kentucky family. These four and the rest of the regiment, the Stonewalls,
are plunged into one of the big "pushes" of the British Army, and their
achievements in one form or another are thick on every page of the book.
The author has reduced the description of a modern battle to a fine art. No
one can describe more vividly the noise, the squalor, the terror, the high
courage, the self-sacrifice and again the nerve-shattering noise, that go
to make up the fierce confusion of trench-fighting. How anyone succeeds in
surviving when so many instruments are used for his destruction is a
mystery. The book is very certainly one to be read and re-read.
* * * * *
_Separation_ (CASSELL) is another of those intimate studies of Anglo-Indian
life that ALICE PERRIN has made specially her own. The tragedy of it is
sufficiently conveyed by the title. Separation, of husband from wife or
parent from child, is of course the spectre that haunts the Anglo-Indian
home. It was, chiefly at least, for the health of their child _Winnie_ that
_Guy Bassett_ was forced to let her and his wife abide permanently in
Kensington while he himself continued his Eastern career as a
grass-widower. Very naturally, the result was all sorts of trouble. This
first took the form of a flirtation, only half serious, with an artful
young woman of the type with which Mr. KIPLING has made us familiar.
Unfortunately poor _Bassett_ escapes from this emotional frying-pan only to
plunge into the fire of a much more scorching attachment. But I will not
spoil for you an ingenious plot. For one thing at least the book is worth
reading, and that is the picture, admirably drawn, of the half-caste
_Orchard_ family, whose ways and speech and general outlook you will find
an abiding joy. Mrs. PERRIN has nothing better in her whole gallery, which
is saying much.
* * * * *
You probably know Mr. BLACKWOOD'S elusive method of mystery-mongering by
now. None of his characters can ever _quite_ make out whether the latest
noise is a mewing cat, the wind in the trees or the Great God Pan flirting
with the Hamadryads. He meets in Egypt a Russian, consumptive with a hooked
nose and a rotten bad temper, and persists in seeing him as a hawk-man
dedicated to the wingéd god, Horus. "No one could say exactly what
happened." (They never can.) But it was something very solemn and
important, and in the end the Russian, in a fancy dress of feathers, was
found dead at the foot of the cliff, whither he had flown (or was it
danced?--well, no one quite knew). He all but carried with him little
golden-haired _Vera_, who was all but a dove. This is a quite
characteristic sample out of _Day and Night Stories_ (CASSELL). And the
conclusion I came to was that Mr. BLACKWOOD must get a lot of fun out of
staying in "cosmopolitan hotels." You need a special attitude for the
proper enjoyment of these mystical yarns. I read them all conscientiously
through, and I got far the best thrill out of "The Occupant of the Room,"
which, attempting less, was much more successful. "H.S.H.," His Satanic
Majesty, of course, who was climbing the Devil's Saddle and turned in to
the Club hut for desultory conversation about his lost kingdom with a
stranded mountaineer, left me inappropriately cold. I suppose I am immune,
a bad subject: but I feel as sure as I've felt about anything in the realm
of light letters that a charming writer is overworking an unprofitable
vein.
* * * * *
_Mrs. Vernon's Daughter_ (METHUEN) is what one might call a story of
situation. That is to say, it leads up to, and declines from, one big
_scène à faire_. The scene, in this instance, is that in which _Demaris_,
who has always previously imagined her mother to be an undervalued heroine,
finds that on the contrary she is really no better (indeed a good deal
worse) than she should be. And as if this disillusion were not enough the
poor girl gets almost simultaneously the further shock of learning that the
same adored parent, supposed by her to be a tragédienne of the first water,
is in fact no more than a handsome stick, and unable (as they say) to act
for nuts. Jesting apart, I am bound to admit that Lady TROUBRIDGE has risen
admirably to the demands of her theme, and written a story both direct and
appealing. Perhaps (dare I say?) its emotion is rather more secure than its
grammar. The fact that she makes a duchess allude to "these kind of things"
struck me at first as a subtlety of characterization, till I discovered
that, some pages later, the author fell herself into the identical pit. But
I suppose there is hardly any one of us wholly innocent of this offence;
anyhow, it is only a small blemish upon a pleasant and (in its mild way)
interesting story.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Lady of rather uncertain age (filling in application form
for employment)._ "COULD YOU TELL ME WHAT YEAR I SHOULD HAVE TO BE BORN IN
TO MAKE ME TWENTY-EIGHT?"]
* * * * *
"A large assortment of real fur soft felt cats (Clerical)."--_Advt. in
"Glasgow Herald."_
The tame kind, we suppose, so popular at tea-parties.