Chapter 4

Once upon a time King James, being annoyed with the City because it wouldn't lend him money, summoned the Lord Mayor and Aldermen to his presence and, "being somewhat transported," threatened to remove his Court to some other place. To this the Lord Mayor very politely but readily retorted, "Your Majesty hath power to do what you please and your City of London will obey accordingly: but she humbly desires that when your Majesty shall remove your Court you would please to leave the Thames behind you." I think this single instance from the history of the City goes far to explain that peculiar pride in it which the Londoner instinctively feels without exactly knowing why. I have not space to argue with Sir Laurence Gomme upon his main point, its continuity of policy and purpose from the Roman Empire till to-day, shown by the records of London's past. I leave it to the scholar and antiquary. It is my purpose to persuade the man in the street, to whom the names of Palgrave, Freeman and Stubbs are not household words, to buy a copy of _London_ (Williams and Norgate) for inclusion in his permanent library. If I should insist upon his reading it then and there he would reply, as one ignorant fellow to another, that he had not the necessary understanding of the remote past and was too preoccupied with the affairs of the present. Be it so, but none the less let him buy it and at any rate glance at its many curious and admirable illustrations. Later he will dip into it in search of further episodes after the manner of that I quote, and lastly he will do the thing thoroughly, to find that he is much more concerned with the past than ever he supposed; that now he understands that "greatness which is London," and that he is infinitely obliged for the recommendation of a not-too-learned clerk who shared his own diffidence, even reluctance, in approaching so learned and weighty a treatise.

I am sure that Miss Constance Holme has, in _The Lonely Plough_ (Mills and Boon), written a clever and amusing novel. What she has not done is to make herself intelligible. Some of the mist that enwraps the background of her frontispiece has obscured her story and her characters. I know that she is writing about lively and entertaining people because there emerges, now and then, a page of dialogue that is witty and alive; and I know that her story is dramatic because she tells us now that someone "let out a screech," and now that he "uttered sharp little sounds remarkably like oaths." I know, too, that the sea is encroaching upon somebody's dwelling-place, and that someone else tries to keep the waves in their place, but is no more successful than was the great King Knut of blessed memory. Then there is a fine figure of a land-agent and several ladies who talk the snappiest of slang. But the mist and the sea have swept across Miss Holme's pages and blotted out the rest of the affair. Not Meredith nor Robert Browning at their most complex have been more baffling. I must admit, however, that the description of a game of mixed hockey, somewhere in the middle of the book, was delightfully fresh and vivid. Here, for a page or two, I could rest from my grapplings with the story and join in all the excitement and peril, that mixed hockey provides. Then there is _Harriet_, who says, "Stow all that piffle." I should like to know more about _Harriet_, who from that brief glimpse of her seems a lively vigorous person, but the encroaching sea swallows her with the others, and there is an end. I repeat that Miss Holme has written a clever dramatic story, but the title is certainly the clearest thing about it.

When Mr. Calthrop's at his best He weaves you tales of fauns and elves, And ancient gods come back to test Their humour on our modern selves; He finds romance in common clay; He lifts the veil from fairy rings, And points the unfamiliar way Of looking at familiar things.

And at his second best, or less, His graceful manner still redeems With easy charm and cheerfulness More hackneyed, less seductive themes; Each page has something witty, wise, Well-turned, fantastic or jocose-- Each page of _Breadandbutterflies_, From Mills and Boon, six shillings (gross).

Even though it has been seared by the tragic end of a youthful _liaison_ ("It was in France, you know," and that seems to explain all to _Minella Drake_, daughter of the Vicar of Goldringham) the heart of a Sussex taxidermist appears to be exceptionally tender. Seldom can _Tom Murrow_, through whose eyes we view the scenes and incidents of Mr. Tickner Edwardes' _Tansy_ (Hutchinson), have sealed up badger or squirrel in its glass _morgue_ without shedding on the fur some glistening tribute of tears over a village sorrow. So much of his time in fact is occupied by conversations of a sentimental nature with the two _Wilverleys_ (whose aged father, _Mark_, by the way, having retired from active life on his farm, habitually talks in rhymed couplets) that he can have had as little leisure for stuffing specimens as he had to discern the love gradually growing up for him in the bosom of _Minella_, his guileless _confidante_. The background of _Tansy_ consists in the shepherd's seasons of the Sussex downs (for _Tansy_, a splendid type of advanced though rustic womanhood, is a shepherdess), and the plot of the story is that of _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_, with the convenient variation that the villain of the piece, having his pockets stuffed with cartridges, disappears (as villains should) in a cloud of malodorous smoke. Mr. Tickner Edwardes' knowledge of rural life and scenes is as thorough as his description of them is charming, and, if the general impression conveyed by _Tansy_ is a little too idyllic for those who have been brought up in the rough school of Wessex agriculture, it is pleasant for a moment to lend ourselves to the illusion of his sunny romance.

Unattractive as _Sophia Ree_ was in many ways, I frankly admit that she was a lady of mettle. A stockbroker's typist, with a fortune of £2,000 and a salary of a few shillings a week, she no sooner obtained inside information about the floating of _The South Seas Coastal Rubber Development Company_ than she decided to apply for 2000 shares. They were allotted to her, and in consequence she became a most important person. In fact, she had only to say "_Gugenheim_" to her employers and she had them at her feet. Why this was so you must discover for yourselves; all that I, who am no expert in financial matters, can tell you is that somehow her 2000 shares seem to have given her a position of enormous power in the company, and that the _Gugenheim_ man wanted to buy her out. Her sister _Judith_ kept bees and was an extremely good woman. I never got really to understand her; and her wonderful power of seeing into the future, which does not often go with apiculture, left me unimpressed. The trouble with this book of Mr. E. R. Punshon's is that the parts of it do not seem to fit into a symmetrical whole, but, at any rate, a study of _The Crowning Glory_ (Hodder and Stoughton) has greatly improved my knowledge of the behaviour of bears and bulls and bees.

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GOLF AND THE DRAMA.