Chapter 4

Mr. DONALD CALTHROP as _Hedge_ bore the burden of the play with a high hand that had a very sure touch. It was extraordinary with what alertness and confidence he commanded every situation--except, of course, the absurd climax which nobody could hope to handle. Mr. C. V. FRANCE, as the English butler (ex-clergyman) who had taken a long time to learn how to disfigure his aspirates (out of deference to the American legend), gave a very fresh and attractive performance. Some of the best things in the dialogue--not always very humorous--were given to little _Alice Brook_ (aged 14), one of those precocities for which America has always held the world's record. I don't know, and should not think of asking, Miss ANN TREVOR'S age, but she looked to me a little old for the part of this child, however precocious. Miss MARJORIE GORDON played with intelligence as the elder sister, but never for a moment suggested a New York atmosphere. Indeed she adopted just the mincing kind of speech which out there is held to bewray the "Britisher." The only performance that made any real pretence of being American was that of Mr. TURNBULL as the manager of the Efficiency Company.

Still, after all, local colour is no great matter so long as you get some recognisable aspect, though farcically presented, of human nature; but the trouble with this play is that while our sense of the probabilities is never too much outraged so long as the chief character is just a piece of inhuman machinery, the author lapses into the incredible the moment he tries to introduce a little humanity into his scheme. However, I have perhaps taken things too seriously, instead of being properly grateful for some very good entertainment.

O. S.

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FASHIONS FOR MEN.

"Miss ---- takes Orders for Knitted Skirts, Jerseys, and Hats to match. Also, Gent.'s Cardigan Coats and Hand-Painted Blouses."

_Scots Paper._

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"The Rev. W. E. ---- based the subject of his discourse on 'The Foolish Virgins.' A large number were present."

_South African Paper._

We trust they were edified.

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"The discovery of Saturn's rings was made by Galileo in 1610 through his little refractory telescope."--_Welsh Paper._

The difficulty with this kind of instrument is to make it shut up.

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)

Inevitably one's first thought on sighting _A Naval History of the War_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is that he must be a brave skipper indeed who would take out a lone ship, however excellently found, to cruise such controversial waters. But Sir HENRY NEWBOLT is an experienced hand, and, though (so to speak) one finds him at times conscious of Sir JULIAN CORBETT on the sky-line, he brings off his self-appointed task triumphantly. To drop metaphor, here is a temperate and clearly-written history, midway between the technical and the popular, of a kind precisely suited to the plain man who wishes a comprehensive _résumé_ of the course of the War at sea. For this purpose its arrangement is admirable, the story being presented first in a general survey under dates, then in special chapters devoted to episodes or aspects, e.g., Coronel and the Falklands (that unmatchable drama of disaster and revenge), the submarines and their countering, and finally Jutland. Throughout, as I have said, Sir HENRY, having one of the best stories in the world to tell, is at pains to avoid anything that even remotely approaches fine writing. Only once have I even detected the literary man, when, in describing the strange finish of the _Königsberg_, he permits himself the pleasure of calling it "the sea fight in the forest." For the rest, the "strength and splendour" of England's greatest naval war are left to make their own impression. I shall be astonished if such a book, having figured brilliantly as a present this Christmas, is not treasured for generations as a work of family reference in hundreds of British homes.

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The name of Mrs. BELLOC LOWNDES on the outside would alone have made me open _From the Vasty Deep_ (HUTCHINSON) with a pleasant anticipation of creepiness, even without the generous measure of bogies depicted on the coloured wrapper. Having now read the story, I am bound to add (and I can only hope that Mrs. LOWNDES will take my admission for the compliment that it really is) that the net result has been one of slight disappointment. Briefly, I continue to prefer the writer as a criminal, rather than a psychic, "Fat Boy." After all, once grant your ghost and anyone can conjure it, with appropriate circumstance, at the proper moments. Wyndfell Hall was full enough of ghosts, all ready to appear at the voluntary or involuntary instance of a young lady named _Bubbles_, who was one of the Christmas house-party and the owner of a rather uncomfortable gift of spook-raising. But beyond making themselves an occasional nuisance to the guests I couldn't find that the phantoms did anything practical to help along such plot as there was. Even the quite palpable fact that the host was at least a double murderer came to proof by the ordinary process of law rather than by any supernatural revelation. Before this I have gratefully owed to Mrs. LOWNDES the raising of my remaining hairs like quills upon the fretful porcupine, but the ca'-canny bogies of her present story are too perfunctory to excuse even a shiver in any but the most unsophisticated reader.

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It may, I suppose, be accounted for righteousness to Major-General Sir ARCHIBALD ANSON that in _About Others and Myself_ (MURRAY) he is so little of an egotist as to convey scarcely any impression of what manner of man he is or what he thinks of this or that. Much more clear from her quoted letters is the character of his grandmother, who vainly tried to keep the over-gallant First Gentleman of Europe out of mischief. Our autobiographer gives us a plain, blunt, not to say bald record of what must have been an interesting life. He was at Eton under KEATE; a cadet at Woolwich, where he saw a gunner receive two hundred lashes; a gunnery subaltern in the Crimea, where he saw many queer and unedifying things; a successful administrator in Madagascar, Mauritius and Penang, and finally Governor of the Straits Settlements, with a K.C.M.G. and honourable retirement to follow. But he is a man of action rather than words, and his faculty of observation is but too often exercised upon such slender matters as that "Poor Captain Powlett met with a misfortune on the way to Kedah. His servant laid the dinner things on the deck of the gunboat, then went below for something and, coming up again, accidentally walked into the middle of the crockery and glass, causing considerable destruction." Also, I think he quotes his testimonials--those never very candid and always very dull documents--much too freely. The best of the book is concerned with his administration work in Penang and district, where on the evidence he seems to have kept his end up with skill and no small zeal for good government.

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The title of Lady (LAURA) TROUBRIDGE'S new novel, _O Perfect Love_ (METHUEN), applies to her V. C. hero only; with his wife it is a case of O Very Imperfect Love. _Jean Chartres_ is a common product of the age, the sort of girl that insists on "having a good time" and "living her life" and "being herself" (how well one knows the jargon!). Less common, let us hope, is the woman who would desert her husband, as _Jean_ did, because the injuries he had received in the War prevented him from giving her the kind of life for which she craved. Foolish rather than vicious, she drifts into a relationship which could have had only one conclusion, if her lover, tiring of platonics, had not prematurely pressed his demands. Thoroughly scared by his violence she runs away and finds sanctuary with the "perfect love" of the title. In this happy solution she had better fortune than she deserved. It is not every woman who has the good luck, when rushing blindly out of the House of Peril into the wintry night (in a ball-dress), to find--what had apparently escaped _Jean's_ memory for the moment--that her faithful husband's estate is in the immediate neighbourhood. Though Lady TROUBRIDGE'S sense of style is not impeccable she can tell a good tale; her dialogue rings true and her characters are well observed. The trouble with most authors of Society novels is that either they know their subject but can't write, or that they can write but know nothing of their subject. Lady TROUBRIDGE is one of the very few writers in this kind who both know their world and how to portray it.

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Mr. B. BENNION follows the vogue for confidentially descriptive covers in announcing, as a title to his volume of angling reminiscences, that _The Trout are Rising in England and South Africa_ (LANE) and suggesting that here is "a book for slippered ease." One is certainly warned not to expect anything very strenuous in its course, and indeed so placidly flow its waters that few, perhaps, but devotees of the craft will follow it to the end. Not but what there are metaphorical trout in it, too--enticing descriptions of bits of rivers, for instance--but on the whole they are easy-going fish that come to bank without showing very much sporting spirit. Here is no manual of precise information, though even old fishermen may gather a hint or two; nor yet a guide-book to the trout-streams of two continents; not even a collection of good stories, though anyone may come across some old friends in it. The author's yarns indeed are numerous and, on the whole, as an angler's yarns should be, picturesque. If he does seem to enjoy the rather feeble joke or incident as much as the other sort, that may be natural in a book of ease, whether slippered or not. Indeed one half suspects it is as a book for his own ease that the writer is mainly considering it, yet, taken in the right spirit and especially if you are an enticer of trout, it may be for your ease too. Of course, if you are not an angler and if your spirit is not right, the slipper may not fit.

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In the course of a long study of detective fiction I have never met any sleuths with a gift of loquacity like that of _Messrs. Corson_ and _Gibbs_, who during the first part of _In the Onyx Lobby_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) make futile efforts to trace the murderer of _Sir Herbert Binney_, proprietor of Binney's Buns. _Sir Herbert_ had gone to New York to persuade his nephew to become the manager of an American branch of a Binney Bun factory, and, on returning late at night to his apartment-house, was stabbed to death. Fortunately Miss CAROLYN WELLS seems to have grown as tired of them as I did, and they give way to one _Pennington Wise_ (whose name did not prepossess me in his favour) and his assistant, _Zizi_. This couple have the authentic sleuth-touch, and their detection of those implicated in the murder is a very ingenious piece of work. There is so much padding in this book that if _Sir Herbert_ had worn a tithe of it no stabber could even have scratched him; but with judicious skipping it will wile away two or three idle hours. And, as I said, the solution is a really skilful piece of work.

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Extract from an account of the unveiling of the portrait of Mr. ----, M.P.:--

"It was a happy idea to unveil the portrait in a darkened room."

_Local Paper._

But after the LEVERHULME-JOHN episode we ought to have been told whose was the happy idea, the artist's or the sitter's?