Chapter 4

I fancy that Miss JOAN THOMPSON had some design of symbolism in the choice of a name for her heroine, _Mary England_ (METHUEN). The publishers indeed consider that she might be called "Every Woman," so typical is she of her sex, and "so like to the emotional careers of so many English girls is her own." Perhaps, on the other hand (without disparagement to the skill of Miss THOMPSON'S portraiture), I should have expected the typical maiden of _Mary's_ class to show greater initiative. Many things nearly happened to _Mary_; practically nothing in her life was fashioned by her own intent. Of the two men who might have made her happy, one didn't propose at all, and one did it in the wrong fashion. Other two, who seemed possibly menacing, both drifted away with their evil purpose (if any) unfulfilled. I am wrong, though, in recalling _Mary_ as invariably passive. She was once roused to the action of destroying the manuscript of a novel, in which the writer, the man who didn't propose, had too faithfully revealed his perception of herself. But though, as a reviewer, I may applaud this achievement on general grounds, it provided no kind of solution for the problem of her existence. This was left to be settled, very much offhand, by a detached iceberg, which sank the ship in which _Mary_ was emigrating. I thought that iceberg rather an evasion on the part of Miss THOMPSON. Perhaps however all this effect of drift is part of a subtle intention. I can certainly call the book admirably written, with restraint and an emotional sympathy that impressed me as the outcome probably of an intimate knowledge of the scenes and persons described. Whether her lethargy is "typical" or not, as a study _Mary England_ will hold you at least sufficiently curious to deplore its arbitrary end.

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Sir HARRY JOHNSTON has written a book which I find it difficult to define. His publishers and Mr. H.G. WELLS call it a novel, but bits of a biography and an autobiography and an African explorer's account of his travels have all somehow squeezed themselves into it, and for readers whose birthdays began before the last quarter of the nineteenth century _The Gay-Dombeys_ (CHATTO AND WINDUS) will best justify itself as a _chronique scandaleuse_. To penetrate the thin disguises in which the author has dressed his notabilities and to sort the composite or hybrid personalities into their component parts should provide the initiated with congenial if not very edifying occupation. The reader who is also a DICKENS enthusiast will be, according to temperament, delighted or outraged to find that Sir HARRY JOHNSTON has made his book as it were a continuation of _Dombey and Son_. Many of his characters are either the creations of Boz or their children and he contrives to carry on the interweaving of their lives to an unbelievable extent--even when the fullest allowance has been made for the smallness of the world. _Florence Dombey_ and _Walter Gay_, as _Mr._ and _Mrs. Gay-Dombey_, actually survive well into the present book, while Sir HARRY JOHNSTON'S _Eustace Morven_, who tells us that he has reverted to the ancient spelling of his name, is the son of _Harriet Carker_ and that hazel-eyed bachelor, _Mr. Morfin_, who lived and loved in _Dombey and Son_. But save in the chapter describing _Eustace Morven's_ appearance at the annual dinner-party given by _Florence_ and _Walter_ to celebrate the re-establishment of the firm, Sir HARRY JOHNSTON'S work has not a very pronounced flavour of DICKENS. It is to be hoped that this method of writing novels will not become popular. A series of sequels to everybody by somebody else opens up an intimidating prospect, at least for the reviewer.

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Mr. PHILIP GIBBS has gathered together, under the title. _Open Warfare, the Way to Victory_ (HEINEMANN), his despatches written from the Western front during the last year of the War. What strikes one most on seeing them again in book form is the obscurity in which they veil the events they record. They so shine, as it were, with a luminous mist that they seem to reveal everything, yet in sober truth very often it is only in the light of later knowledge that they reveal anything at all. Congratulations, therefore, to Mr. GIBBS, the perfect war correspondent! I defy anyone from these papers alone (apart from the plentiful and excellent maps) to form anything like an adequate conception of the disaster that swept down upon the British Armies in the Spring of 1918. And yet in a sense it is all there, gorgeously camouflaged under the control--I daresay the wise and necessary control--of the censorship. The author, watching the very moulding of history with every advantage of proximity, has written down, if not much bare statement, yet an amazing sequence of heroic detail, associated with such stirring names as Arras or Givenchy or Cambrai. Curiously enough, though each chapter is intensely vivid, they become, through much instancing of the same unconquerable spirit, something monotonous, though never wearisome, in bulk. One trusts that a future generation will realise that the value of a book of this order consists in its first-hand record of such incidents of valour; it would be pitiful to have it hastily assumed, because so much is slurred or omitted to deceive the enemy, that England was so feeble-hearted as to require her evil news predigested before consumption in this manner. It should be added that the writer gives us a good sound introduction that goes a long way to fill the yawning gaps.

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"GIRL WANTED.--A reliable girl for the summer months to go across the Arm."--_Halifax Evening Mail_.

To prevent misapprehension we ought to say that the western part of the bay at Halifax, Nova Scotia, is locally known as the "Arm."

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END.