(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks_.)
I SHALL begin by saying straight out that Miss CICELY HAMILTON'S new
book, _William--an Englishman_ (SKEFFINGTON), is one of the finest
war-stories that anyone has yet given us. You know already what
qualities the author brings to her writing; you may believe me
that she has done nothing more real, more nobly conceived, and by
consequence more moving than this short tale. It opens, in a style
of half-humorous irony, with an account of the youth, early life and
courtship of _William_, who, with the girl whom he married, belonged
to the vehement circles of the Labour-Suffragist group, spending a
cheerfully ignorant life in a round of meetings, in hunger-striking
and whole-hearted support of the pacifism that "seeks peace and ensues
it by insisting firmly, and even to blood, that it is the other
side's duty to give way." One small concession you must make to
Miss HAMILTON'S plot. It is improbable that, when such a couple as
_William_ and _Griselda_ left England in July 1914 to take their
honeymoon in a remote valley of the Belgian Ardennes, their friends,
knowing them to be without news and ignorant of all speech save
English, should have made no effort to warn them. But, this granted,
the tragedy that follows becomes inevitable. It is so finely told and
so horrible (the more so for the deliberate restraint of the telling)
that I will say nothing to weaken its effect. From one scene, however,
I cannot withhold my tribute of admiration--that in which _William_,
alone, brokenhearted, and almost crazed with the ruin of everything
that made up his life, creeps home to find his old associates still
glibly echoing the platitudes in which he once believed. A hint here
of insincerity or conscious arrangement would have ruined all; as it
is, the scene holds and haunts one with an impression of absolute
truth, For the end, marked like all by an almost grim avoidance of
sentimentality, I shall only refer you to the book itself. After
reading it you will, I hope, not think me guilty of exaggeration when
I call it, slight though it is, one for which its author has deserved
well of the State.
* * * * *
The dominant impression left upon me by Miss MERIEL BUCHANAN'S
_Petrograd the City of Trouble_ (COLLINS) is that its author is a
sportswoman of the first order. You see her pressing to the windows to
observe the shooting in the streets, going out to shop, to dine, to
dance, during the stormy months of the various phases of the
various Russian Revolutions. And I hasten to add, for fear of
misunderstanding, that there is no suggestion of pose as the heroic
Englishwoman. It was not till the end of 1918 that Sir GEORGE BUCHANAN
withdrew from a country in which ambassadorial functions had obviously
no reasonable scope. But he and his family, including our chronicler,
his spirited daughter, remained long after there was any plausible
reason to hope for the restoration of order and very long after
considerations of personal safety might well have dictated and
justified retreat. Mr. HUGH WALPOLE in his preface points out that
Miss BUCHANAN is the first English writer to give a sense of the
atmosphere of Russia during the New Terror. It is curious, but the
impression she conveys is of something far less formidable than
we have imagined. That may well be due to her high courage which
minimised the ever-present dangers. Another odd impression is that her
accounts of current events, e.g. of the death of RASPUTIN, seem to be
as unplausible as those which have been patched from various reports
and guesses by writers far from the actual scene. It is perhaps the
very nearness of the author to the source of the host of wild rumours
and speculations concerning this strange tragedy that conveys this
sense of the impossible. Have I thereby suggested that the book lacks
interest? On the contrary, it hasn't a dull or insincere page.
* * * * *
_Little Houses_ (METHUEN) is not, as you might excusably suppose, a
treatise upon the problem of the hour, but a novel. I confess that,
when I read in the puff preliminary that it was "minutely observed"
and "drab" in setting, my heart sank. But Mr. WODEN'S book is not made
after that sufficiently-exploited fashion. He has a definite scheme,
and (but for the fault of creating more characters than he can
conveniently manage) tells his simple tale with a mature ease
remarkable in a first novel. The plan of it is the life-story of a
group of persons in a provincial factory town in those Victorian days
when trade-unions were first starting, when the caricaturists lived
upon Mr. GLADSTONE'S collars and the Irish Question was very much in
the same state as it is to-day. We watch the hero, _John Allday_,
developing from a Sunday-school urchin to flourishing owner of his
own business and prospective alderman. Of course I admit that this
synopsis does not sound peculiarly thrilling; also that as a tale it
is by now considerably more than twice told. But I can only repeat
that, for those with a taste for such stories, here is one excellent
of its kind. Whether Mr. WODEN has been drawing upon personal memories
for it, writing in fact that one novel of which every man is said to
be capable, time and the publishing lists will show. I shall certainly
be interested to see. Meanwhile the fact that despite his name
GEORGE--always an object of the gravest suspicion--I accept his
masculinity without question is my tribute both to the balance of his
style and to the admirable drawing of his hero.
* * * * *
That gallant and heroic gentleman, the late Mr. CECIL CHESTERTON,
proved his quality by his service and death in the ranks of our army.
In such scanty leisure as he could command be wrote, quite casually
as it were, _A History of the United Slates_ (CHATTO AND WINDUS). He
seemed to say as _Wemmick_ might have said, "Hullo! Here's a nation!
Let's write its history," which he at once proceeded to do with
immense gusto and considerable accuracy. Americans will not
universally agree with all the views he puts forward. I myself am
of opinion (probably quite wrongly) that I could make a better
argumentative case for the North in the Civil War on the question of
slavery. And in his account of the War of 1812-1814 Mr. CHESTERTON
spends a great deal of indignation over the burning by the British of
some public buildings in Washington, omitting to mention that this was
done in reprisal for the burning by the Americans in the previous
year of the public buildings of Toronto. But in the main this history
brilliantly justifies Mr. CHESTERTON'S courage in undertaking it, and
it is written in a style that carries the reader with it from first
to last. The book is introduced by a moving tribute from Mr. G.K.
CHESTERTON to his dead brother.
* * * * *
We doubt whether Mr. BOOTH TARKINGTON'S many admirers on this side
of the Atlantic will read _The Magnificent Ambersons_ (HODDER AND
STOUGHTON) with any great sense of satisfaction. _George Minafer_ is
a spoilt and egotistical cad, and as we pursue his unpleasant
personality from infancy onward our impatience with the adoring
relatives who allow the impossible little bounder to turn their lives
to tragedy becomes more and more pronounced. In England his "come
uppance" would have commenced at an early age and in the time-honoured
place thereunto provided. But in the case of young American nabobs
these corrective agencies are too often wanting, and though it is
hard to believe that a sophisticated uncle, a soldier grandfather and
various other relatives would have allowed a conceited and overbearing
young boor to wreck his mother's life by separating her from a former
sweetheart, it cannot be said that such cases have not existed or
that the picture is altogether overdrawn. But we do not like _George
Minafer_, and his final reconciliation with his own sweetheart and her
father--the man whom ho has prevented his mother from marrying--leaves
us cold. But if the characters are unpleasing the craftsmanship of
_The Magnificent Ambersons_ is of Mr. BOOTH TARKINGTON'S best, and his
description "of the decline and fall of a locally supreme dynasty
of plutocrats before the hosts of the Goths and Huns of spawning
industrialism is almost a contribution to American social history.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Disturbed Burglar_. "'SORL RIGHT, CONSTABLE. I'M ONLY
'AVIN' A GLOAT OVER ME WHIST-DRIVE PRIZES."]
* * * * *
Of the two tales in _Wild Youth and Another_ (HUTCHINSON) I prefer
the other. In "Wild Youth" Sir GILBERT PARKER gives us the unedifying
picture of a horrible old man married to a young and pretty girl.
Jealous, tyrannical and vicious, this creature--referred to as a
behemoth--is in all conscience unsavoury enough; but no one can read
his story without feeling that he never had a dog's chance; and
although the tale is in many respects well-told, I feel that it
would have been vastly improved if some redeeming qualities had been
vouchsafed to the villain of the piece. "Jordan is a Hard Road" is a
more engaging piece of work. Here we have a man who has walked
through most of the commandments--with especial attention to the
eighth--trying to mend his ways. And he makes rather a sound job of it
until something quite unforeseen happens; and then the old Adam (if
this is quite fair to Adam) asserts himself. From a publisher's
"literary note" enclosed in this book you will learn that Sir
GILBERT'S imagination is "as boundless as the tracts of the Prairie
which he loves and knows how to make his readers love." This is
perhaps rather a large order, but I will content myself by saying that
for the scenes of these stories Sir GILBERT has chosen ground that is
familiar to him, and that knowledge is sometimes even more useful than
imagination.
* * * * *
"HAMLET" AND THE FLU (an appeal to the Government): "Angels and
Ministers of Health defend us!"