Chapter 4

To my mind, amongst the least forgettable books of the present year will be that to which Mr. SETON GORDON, F.Z.S., has given the title of _The Land of the Hills and the Glens_ (CASSELL). Mr. GORDON has already a considerable reputation as a chronicler of the birds and beasts (especially the less approachable birds) of his native Highlands. The present volume is chiefly the result of spare-moment activities during his service as coast-watcher among the Hebrides. Despite its unpropitious title, I must describe it without hyperbole as a production of wonder and delight. Of its forty-eight photographic illustrations not one is short of amazing. We are become used to fine achievement in this kind, but I am inclined to think Mr. GORDON goes one better, both in the "atmosphere" of his mountain pictures and in his studies of birds at home upon their nests. To judge, indeed, by the unruffled domesticity of these latter, one would suppose Mr. GORDON to have been regarded less as the prying ornithologist than as the trusted family photographer. I except the golden eagle, last of European autocrats, whose greeting appears always as a super-imperial scowl. Chiefly these happy results seem to have been due to a triumph of patient camouflage, concerning which the author suggests the interesting theory that birds do not count beyond unity, _i.e._, if two stalkers enter an ambush and one subsequently emerges, the vigilance of the feathered watchers is immediately relaxed. Should this be true, I can only hope that Mr. GORDON will get in another book before the spread of higher education increases his difficulties.

* * * * *

I should be inclined to call Mr. NORMAN DOUGLAS our only example of the romantic satirist, though, unless you have some previous knowledge of his work, I almost despair of condensing the significance of this into a paragraph. For one thing the mere exuberance of his imagination is a rare refreshment in this restricted age. His latest book, with the stimulating title of _They Went_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL), is an admirable example of this. Certainly no one else could have created this exotic city with its painted palaces and copper-encrusted towers, a vision of sea-mists and rainbows; or peopled it with so iridescent a company--the strange princess; the queen, her mother; the senile king who should have been (but wasn't) her father; _Theophilus_, the Greek artist; the philosophic old Druidess, and the dwarfs who "chanted squeaky hymns amid sacrifices of mushrooms and gold-dust." Perhaps this random quotation may hint at the fantastic nature of the tale; it can give no idea of the intelligence that directs it, mocking, iconoclastic, almost violently individual. Plot, I fancy, seldom troubles Mr. DOUGLAS greatly; it happens, or it does not. Meanwhile he is far more concerned in fitting a double meaning (at least) to the most simple-sounding phrase. To sum up, _They Went_ is perhaps not for idle, certainly not for unintelligent, reading; for those who can appreciate quality in a strange guise it will provide a feast of unfamiliar flavours that may well create an appetite for more.

* * * * *

That clever writer, Mr. A. P. HERBERT, would lightly describe his story, _The House by the River_ (METHUEN), as a "shocker." But there are ways and ways of shocking. He might wish to show us the embarrassments of a fairly respectable member of the intellectual classes, living in a highly respectable environment, when he finds that he has committed homicide; and he might make the details as gruesome as he liked. But there was no need to shock the sensitive when he made his choice of the circumstances in which the poet, _Stephen Byrne_, inadvertently throttles his housemaid. It is a fault, too, that his scheme only interests him so far as it concerns _Stephen_ and his society, and that the horror of the tragedy from what one may loosely call the victim's point of view does not seem to affect him at all. Otherwise, even for the sake of brevity, he could not so flippantly refer to the body, sewn in a sack and thrown into the river, as just "Eliza." He may argue that he never thought of the corpse as a real one and that the whole thing was merely an experiment in imaginative art; but his details are too well realised for that, and so is his admirable picture of the society of Hammerton Chase, W., a thin disguise for a riverside neighbourhood easy to recognise. I could never get myself quite to believe that _Stephen's_ friend, _Egerton_, accessory after the fact, would so long and so tamely have borne the suspicion of it; but for the rest Mr. HERBERT'S study of his milieu shows a very intimate observation. If his _Stephen_, in whom the highest poetic talents are found tainted with a touch of coarseness, may not always be credible, the passion for self-expression which leads him on to versify his own experience in the form of a mediæval idyll, and so give himself away, is true to life. But my final impression of Mr. HERBERT'S book--he will perhaps think I am taking him too seriously--is that his many gifts and notably his humour, whose gaiety I prefer to its grimness, are here exercised on a rather unworthy theme.

* * * * *

* * * * *

=Fashions for Proxy-Fathers.=

"The bride entered the church on the arm of Mr. T. ----, of Happy Valley (who acted in loco parentis and was charmingly attired in crepe-de-chine)."--_South African Paper._

* * * * *

"Is there anyone amongst the thousands of men who will benefit who will be some an (please let the word remain, Mr. Editor) as not to show his appreciation in the same way?"--_Educational Paper._

Personally we think the Editor was a little too complaisant.

* * * * *

[Transcriber's Note:

Page 361: Changed "corresponent" to "correspondent"

(A corresponent writes to a contemporary)

Page 362: Removed extraneous single closing quote.

("Sir Harry Johnston's 'The Gay Donkeys' has passed its fifth edition in London.'"--_Australian Magazine_.)

Page 368: Changed "Pulman" to "Pullman"

(a ticket for a seat in the Pulman car)]