Part 4

Mr. GILBERT CANNAN offers us in _Young Earnest_ (SECKER) an extremely conscientious and plausible study of a talented, sensitive and, I am afraid, rather "superior" youth whose love affairs preoccupy him too exclusively and whose demands on life are so exacting that nothing can ever bring him content. I feel so sure from the good deal which I now know of young _Fourmy_ and his behaviour to his wife, _Linda_, that brilliant suburban, and to _Ann_, the factory girl, that he never found with _Cathleen_ the perfect peace which his creator alleges; or perhaps, more justly, that he never could have found it without a struggle and self-discipline, of which there are few signs. It is surely one of the fallacies of a common philosophy of romance--a fallacy much too crude for Mr. CANNAN'S unusually careful method--that while this, that and the other relation, opening delightfully, becomes sordid or impossible some final selection is to prove automatically and permanently blissful, even if there be no legal ties to chafe against on principle. The fact is your _Fourmys_ are in this difficult matter of the affections doomed to trouble as the sparks fly upward, and of course the perceptive author knows this perfectly well and his happy ending is only a "let's pretend." I have been fascinated by the skill of a series of uncannily clear-cut portraits; I know no other writer who has the power in so singular a degree of getting right down below surface traits to depths of mood and character. Analyse it and you will find that Mr. CANNAN gives you no descriptions but merely lets his characters unfold themselves in their talk. There's much in that "merely."

_Oliver_, the hero of _The Woman who Looked Back_ (STANLEY PAUL), seems to have been a person of exceptional credulity. Having as a boy married a quite undesirable foreigner, he subsequently went to India, and on his return accepted without question his mother's statement that he was a widower. So he married _Sara_, the heroine of the tale, and lived in great placidity for some eight years with her, till the expected happened, and the discovery of an old letter proved that wife No. 1 was very much alive. It is at this dramatic crisis that M. HAMILTON raises the curtain upon his (or her) story. If I treat it with flippancy it is not from any dislike of it; on the contrary it seems to me both interesting and human, especially human. The dialogue is profoundly and movingly natural; in every chapter I have felt that, given the postulated situation, the characters would talk exactly thus, which simply means that M. HAMILTON is an adept in her (or his) art. The situation is complicated by the fact that, though _Oliver_ had accepted his second marriage as an ideally happy one, _Sara_ in her secret heart was becoming monstrously bored. Indeed in a soft, play-with-fire fashion she believed herself in love with _Oliver's_ friend _George_, who himself adored her passionately. Naturally, therefore, when the bomb burst and _Sara_ was no longer the wife of anybody, _George_ thought his moment had come. I shall not carry the story of their three-cornered fight further. It remains three-cornered. Contrary to every accepted custom, the original and only genuine wife never once appears upon the stage. This strikes me as constituting a record in the avoidance of the _scène-à-faire_. Incidentally also it confirms me in my opinion of M. HAMILTON as an author of originality and honesty, whose picture of _Sara_ in particular shows that she understands a great deal about her own sex.

* * *

My enjoyment of a book that is frankly a study on a special subject is always limited by the interest of the subject itself, however prettily the theme be embroidered. The most eloquent disquisition on postage stamps, for example, would leave me unmoved. MARGARET PETERSON needs no introduction as a most eloquent writer on things Indian; yet "Eurasia," her set study in _Tony Bellew_ (MELROSE)--I am not likening it to philately, and should be sorry to be disrespectful to either--so swamps her story, and is in itself so little agreeable, that I cannot feel much enthusiasm for her latest work. That it is dry and barren cannot be said of a single page; indeed, I could even wish that such adjectives might be applicable here and there as a relief from the--shall I say?--clammy fungoid atmosphere that permeates, and is intended to permeate, the world that lies between the covers of this volume. The central figure--certainly not hero, and wanting something to be man--exhales in his fickle violences just this miasma; and rightly so, if the general conception of the book be just, for he is born of a Bengali mother. Even his final sacrifice to save _Joan_, herself about the only character one would care to meet, is hysterical and unnecessary, and does little to redeem him. I would gladly believe that the picture of her unpleasant experiences is as false as, I think you will agree, it is on the whole ugly and unsympathetic; though I admit that a lack of sympathy is as much against the intention of the writer as a certain unpleasantness is the deliberate object of her able craftsmanship. I must place it in your hands at that, with the advice to read or pass by according to your interest in the subject.

* * *

_The Wise Virgins_ (ARNOLD) is one of those quaint old-world stories of the day when there were artists and individualists who despised convention and the stiffness of ordinary morality and wanted to realise themselves and occupied quite a lot of our attention. To read it is to plunge back through the mists of time into the early summer of 1914 A.D. And even then I have my doubts as to whether I should have been persuaded to share the sympathy which L. F. WOOLF appears to feel for _Harry Davis_, the young Richstead painter. The two types of people among whom his lot is cast are cleverly if much too bitterly and unkindly contrasted--the _Garlands_, pre-eminently suburban, unable and (all except _Gwen_) unwilling to leave their monotonous groove, and the _Lawrences_, too cultured and full of æsthetic sensibilities to do anything but sit still and talk. _Harry_ combines the æsthetic sense with a restless vitality which he attributes to his Jewish origin, and is desirous of action and enterprise. And so, rejected by _Camilla Lawrence_, he talks to _Gwen_ until she almost compels him to compromise her, and the book closes with the mockery of a forced marriage in deference to the sentiments of Philistia. In spite of some skilful and penetrating satire, I fancy that 1915 will consider _The Wise Virgins_ neither a very nice nor a very necessary book.

* * * * *

* * * * *

IN A GOOD CAUSE.

The claims which have been made by Belgium upon the generosity of the British public have been eagerly met, but the needs of her Army do not seem to have been fully realised. If we owe one debt more than other it is to the fighting men among our Belgian allies. These brave fellows are still in want of warm clothing and those simple comforts--such as tobacco and chocolate--which sound so little and mean so much. _Mr. Punch_, at the risk of seeming importunate in his demands upon the goodness of his readers, begs them to give their help where it is so sorely needed. Gifts in kind should be addressed to Commandant MATON, 23, City Road, E.C., and money gifts (perhaps the more useful form of help) to M. VANDERVELDE, Victoria Hotel, Northumberland Avenue, S.W.

* * *

Tho Honorary Secretary of the Queen's "Work for Women" Fund, 33, Portland Place, W., desires to express her gratitude to those who generously responded to _Mr. Punch's_ appeal for this good cause.

* * * * *