(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
There is certainly this to be said of Mr. HUGH WALPOLE--that, having
devised a tale of gloom, he allows no weak consideration for his
readers' feelings to deter him from making the worst of it. I write,
having but now emerged, blinking a little at the familiar sunlight (yet
oddly invigorated too), from a perusal of the four-hundred-and-seventy
pages of his _Captives_ (MACMILLAN). Of course I have nothing like space
to detail for you its plot. Summarised, it tells the life of a young
woman, _Maggie Cardinal_, whom one may briefly call the bemused victim
of religions--and relations. You never knew any well-intentioned heroine
who had such abysmal luck with both. Her clergyman father, a bad hat,
who spared us his acquaintance by expiring on the first page; her
semi-moribund aunts in their detestable London home; the circle of the
Inner Saints, with their intrigues that centred in the ugly little
meeting-house; the seaside parish with its spiritually-dead atmosphere,
in which _Maggie's_ hopeless married life is spent--all these and more
are realised with an art that is almost devastating in its unforced
effect. Sometimes I hoped that such universal drabness was too bad to be
true; one caught touches of manipulation, times in which these poor
_Captives_ seemed bound less by the chains of circumstance than by the
wires of Mr. WALPOLE. The queer result was that I found myself believing
in his compellingly human characters, but protesting that such unbroken
misfortune could not, or need not, have encompassed them. To take an
example, when _Maggie's_ "tipsy" uncle was shown into the Vicarage
drawing-room on her "At Home day," no other guests had yet arrived.
Surely therefore (save for peremptory orders from Mr. WALPOLE) she might
somehow have removed the culprit to another room, or at least denied
herself to subsequent callers, who included (of course) the most
influential and scandal-mongering of the parish ladies. That is the kind
of rather piled-up agony that made me suspect Mr. WALPOLE of letting his
fortitude get at times the better of his commonsense. But he has written
a big book.
* * * * *
Mr. E. F. BENSON, of whom it might justly be said that he produces not
books but libraries (and the quality of his output under these
circumstances remains for me amongst the literary wonders of the age),
has been at it again. Hardly have I finished laughing over _Queen
Lucia_, when I find him claiming a wholly different interest with a
volume of personal recollections called _Our Family Affairs_ (CASSELL).
By its theme and treatment this is work standing naturally a little
outside criticism; but I can say at once that Mr. BENSON has never
written with a more sympathetic charm than in these pictures of the
childhood of himself and his sister and brothers; of the various
scholastic and ecclesiastical homes to which the increasing dignities of
that rather alarming parent, the Archbishop, transported his family; and
(quite the best and most attractive portrait in the collection) of the
mother whom all of them united to adore. There is an actual photograph
of her here, taken at the age of twenty, which goes far to explain how
she came to be the heroine of the story; the lurking gaiety and laughter
of it quaintly foretelling the great ecclesiastical lady who, on one
occasion when the Archbishop was absent, could announce to her
enraptured children that family prayers should be remitted, "as a
treat!" Schooldays at Wellington; Cambridge; some topical memoirs of the
Georgian _regime_ in Athens, and (what will interest many readers most
of all) the history of the origin of that famous lady, _Dodo_--these are
but a selection from the contents of a volume that should find hosts of
friends.
* * * * *
_The Girl in Fancy Dress_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) was so very much
disguised in one way and another that _Anthony_, the hero, when he asked
her to marry him, even for the second time, was taking considerable
risks. The speed of the affair must also have been bewildering.
_Cynthia_, the heiress, arrives on a Thursday to stay with his people,
but, having tumbled out of a motor-car into a wet ditch on her way, she
is dressed, rather like a stage coster-girl, in garments borrowed from a
cottager. Naturally, as of course a nursery-governess is much more
likely than an heiress to look like that, _Anthony's_ people mistake her
for a poor country cousin who is also expected, and _Cynthia_,
discovering that her host and hostess and their dreary daughters intend
the heiress to marry _Anthony_ and, worse than that, that he has called
her "the goose with the golden eggs," fosters the mistake and does her
best to pay them all out. She leaves on the following Tuesday, but
before that _Anthony_ has taken her to one dance as a peasant girl and
she has talked to him at another disguised as a green domino, and he has
proposed to her as his cousin and withdrawn his declaration when he
finds she isn't. Next he sees her as _Lady Teazle_ in amateur
theatricals, and then comes his final meeting with her in her proper
person, which brings about a satisfactory ending for everyone but
_Cynthia's_ other lover. I don't say that all these things couldn't have
happened; I only say that as a rule they don't. Apart from that, the
bright bustling action of Mrs. J. E. BUCKROSE'S story has a cheerful
charm of its own, and _Cynthia_, as poor relation of one of the
anxiously best families in a little country town, provides some amusing
situations--for the reader.
* * * * *
If the shade of ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON is jealous of its rights and its
copyrights, Mr. JEFFREY FARNOL may look to be hauled up before the
Recording Angel, on his arrival, in the matter of his _Black Bartlemy's
Treasure_ (SAMPSON LOW), which he might just as well have called _Black
Bartlemy's Treasure Island_ and have done. Never was such frank adoption
of ideas; and yet no God-fearing, adventure-loving Englishman will
regret it. For all my devotion to R. L. S. I heartily enjoyed this
elaboration of his idea, split me (to quote the thorough-going language
of it)--split me crosswise else! There are forty-seven chapters and a
bloody fight in every one of them, save in the dozen set apart for an
interval of refreshment and romance in the middle. Nay, but was not the
primitive romance a gentler combat, itself, between _Martin Conisby_ and
_Lady Joan Brandon_, marooned, solitary, upon the Island where they did
find (and lose) a treasure even greater than _Black Bartlemy's_? After
having "consorted with pirates and like rogues" and having "endured much
of harms and dangers, as battle, shipwreck, prison and solitude," it
seemed we had sighted happiness at last. But even at the very end things
took an ill turn and our _Martin_, our dear _Martin_, is left stranded
and in sorry plight. Yet must there be a sequel to this. Had he been
left to die on the Island he could not have told us his story thus far;
moreover his last word is that the tale is yet to finish. May I be there
to hear!
* * * * *
I rather think that the lady who elects to write under the name of O.
DOUGLAS did less than justice to the peculiar quality of her own gifts
in calling her last story _Penny Plain_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON). Because
really such confectionery as this, covered inches deep with the sweetest
and smoothest and pinkest of sugar, could never in these days be bought
for many pennies, while as for "plain"...! Most of the plot (which
really isn't at all the right word for such caramel-stuff) takes place
in a small Scottish town, where lives a family of book-children,
mothered by an elder sister named _Jean_, all of them rich in char-r-rm
but poor in cash. To this town comes, first, a pleasant single lady with
a lord for her brother; secondly an aged man full of money; and, because
the family (and the tale) is what it is, _Jean_, in fewer chapters than
you would easily credit, has clasped the young lord to her breast and is
saying the correct things to the family lawyer of the aged man
concerning the responsibilities of being his heiress. So there you have
it. I doubt whether anything even temporarily unpleasant so much as
suggests itself; for "O. DOUGLAS" has apparently discovered that, in a
world still struggling with stale peace-bread, her pink sugar-cakes are
not only cheerful to cook but likely to prove highly remunerative.
* * * * *
Illustration: TACT IN TIME.
_King Alfred_ (_to shopman_). "AH! I SEE YOU STOCK MY PATENT
CANDLE-CLOCKS. HOW ARE THEY SELLING?"
_Shopman._ "THEY'RE SELLING LIKE HOT----I MEAN THERE'S QUITE A RUN ON
THEM, YOUR MAJESTY."
* * * * *
A Confession.
"The ---- Manufacturing Co. (The Profiteering Stranglers)." _Advt. in
Provincial Paper._
* * * * *
"Wanted, 1,000 pairs running shoes for local expeditionary force
about to be organised."--_North China Daily News._
The wise commander always prepares for a retreat.
* * * * *
The limits of age for entrance to the [Royal Air Force] college will
be from 157-1/2 to 1 years."--_Daily Paper._
"Percy ---- has recently joined the R. A. F. He is only 199 years of
age."--_Local Paper._
We are sorry for PERCY, who will probably get the "push" as soon as the
authorities find out that he has exceeded their very liberal age-limit.
* * * * *