Chapter 4

I feel that Miss MARGARET SYMONDS had a purpose in writing _A Child of the Alps_ (FISHER UNWIN), but, unless it was to show how mistaken it is, as _Basil_, the Swiss farmer, puts it, "to think when thou shouldst have been living," it has evaded me. The book begins with a romantic marriage between an Englishwoman of some breeding and a Swiss peasant who is a doctor, and tells the history of their daughter until she is about to marry _Basil_, her original sweetheart. I cannot be more definite or tell you how her first marriage--with an English cousin--turned out, because _Linda's_ own account of this is all we get, and that is somewhat vague. A great many descriptions of beautiful scenery, Swiss and Italian, come into the book, and a great many people, some of them very individual and lifelike; but the author's concentration on _Linda_ gives them, people and scenery alike, an unreal and irritating effect of having been called into being solely to influence her heroine, and that lessens their fascination. Yet it is a book which makes a distinct impression, and once read will not easily be forgotten. It seems a strange comment to make on a new volume of a "First Novel Library," but _A Child of the Alps_, as you will realise if you have been reading novels long enough, is almost exactly the sort of book its title would have suggested had it appeared thirty years ago.

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These wrapper-artists should really exercise a little more discretion. To depict on the outside of a book the facsimile of a cheque for ten thousand pounds might well be to excite in some readers a mood of wistfulness only too apt to interfere with their appreciation of the contents. Fortunately, _Uncle Simon_ (HUTCHINSON) is a story quite cheery enough even to banish reflections on the Profiteer. A middle-aged and ultra-respectable London solicitor, whose thwarted youth periodically awakes in him and insists upon his indulging all those follies that should have been safely finished forty-odd years before--here, you will admit, is a figure simply bursting with every kind of possibility. Fortunately, moreover, MARGARET and H. DE VERE STACPOOLE have shown themselves not only fully alive to all the humorous chances of their theme, but inspired with an infectious delight in them. It is, for example, a singularly happy touch that the wild oats that _Uncle Simon_ tries to retrieve are not of to-day but from the long-vanished pastures of mid-Victorian London. Of course such a fantasy can't properly be ended. Having extracted (as I gratefully admit) the last ounce of entertainment from him, the authors simply wake _Uncle Simon_ up and go home. As a small literary coincidence I may perhaps add that it was my fortune to read the book in the very garden (of that admirable Shaftesbury inn) which, under a transparent disguise, is the scene of _Uncle Simon's_ restoration. Naturally this enhanced my enjoyment of a sportive little comedy, which I can most cordially commend.

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Mr. ST. JOHN G. ERVINE is a versatile author who exhibits that unevenness of quality which is generally the besetting sin of versatile authors. When he is good he is very good indeed, and in _The Foolish Lovers_ (COLLINS) he is at his best. The Ulsterman is seldom either a lovable or an interesting character. He has certain rude virtues which command respect and other qualities, not in themselves virtues--such as clan conceit and an intensely narrow provincialism--that beget the virtues of industry, honesty and frugality. But to the philosopher and student of character all types are interesting, and Mr. ERVINE'S skill lies in his ability not merely to draw his Ballyards hero to the life but to interest us in his unsuccessful efforts to become a successful writer. It is merely clan conceit that drives him forward in the pursuit of this purpose, for circumstances have clearly intended him to carry on the grocery business in which the family have achieved some success and a full measure of local esteem. The _MacDermotts_ never failed to accomplish their purpose; he, as a _MacDermott_, proposed to achieve fame as a novelist. It was quite simple. But it turned out to be not at all simple. The quite provincial young _MacDermott_ cannot make London accept him at his own valuation and his novels are poor stuff. His wife, loyal to him but still more loyal to the _MacDermott_ clan into which she has married and which now includes a little _MacDermott_, is the first to recognise that her husband had best seek romance in the family grocery business. Then the _MacDermott_ himself, with that shrewdness which may be late in coming to an Ulsterman but never fails him altogether, realises it too and the story is finished.

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The main object of the characters in _The Courts of Idleness_ (WARD, LOCK) was to amuse themselves, and as their sprightly conversations were often punctuated by laughter I take it that they succeeded. To give Mr. DORNFORD YATES his due he is expert in light banter; but some three hundred pages of such entertainment tend to create a sense of surfeit. The first part of the book is called, "How some passed out of the Courts for ever," and then comes an interlude, in which we are given at least one stirring war-incident. I imagine that Mr. YATES desires to show that, although certain people could frivol with the worst, they could also fight and die bravely. The second part, "How others left the Courts only to return," introduces a new set of people but with similar conversational attainments. Mr. YATES can be strongly recommended to anyone who thinks that the British take themselves too seriously.

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=A Burning Question.=

"The Germans have singed the Protocol."--_China Advertiser_.

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=A Master of Deduction.=

"At 11.30 last night a black iron safe, 22 inches by 18, was found by the roadside at Leaves Green-road, Keston. When examined it was found that the bottom of the safe had been cut out. A burglary is suspected."--_Evening Paper_.

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