Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3824/Our Booking-Office
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
I can imagine the feelings of a romantic maiden who, prone to choose her novels by title, has set down on her library list The Price of Love (Methuen), and finds herself landed with one of Mr. Arnold Bennett's intimate little guides to "Bursley" and the four other drab towns. And yet if she will set her teeth and read the first fifty pages without skipping she will discover that she is being let into real secrets of real human hearts; that handsome Rachel (penniless companion to a benign old lady), and her debonair Louis (who somehow never can run straight where money is concerned), are becoming known to her as she knows few, if any, of her friends; and that, because known, they are extraordinarily interesting. She will see Rachel drawn out of the haven of her staunch and critical common sense by her infatuation for Louis; threatened by the shipwreck of despair when she realises his weakness and her irrevocable mistake, and again putting into a new harbour of determination to pay the price of her love and make the best of things. And I should not be altogether surprised if even our romantic library-subscriber finds the next live-happily-ever-after story a little flat by comparison. For there is no doubt that Mr. Bennett has some uncanny power of realising the conflict of human souls, and that there is an astonishingly adroit method in his mania for unimportant and unromantic detail. I refuse altogether to accept as adequate (or appropriate) his explanations of the adventures of the banknotes on the night of their disappearance, but I am grateful for every word and incident of this enchanting chronicle and for the portrait of Rachel in particular.
Modern Pig-Sticking (Macmillan) is a book that, appearing at this particular moment, has an air of detachment not without its own charm. Chiefly, of course, it appeals to a special and limited public—a public, moreover, that is at present too busy to give it the attention that it would otherwise command. Certainly Major A. E. Wardrop's spirited pages deserve to rank with the best that has been written about this sport. As one frankly ignorant, I was myself astonished to find how considerable a body is this literature. As for the gallant Major's own contribution, it is sufficiently well-written to make tales of sporting feats and adventures interesting to the outsider. Which is saying a lot. At the same time his sense of humour is sufficiently strong to save enthusiasm from becoming oppressive. Certainly he loves his theme, as I suppose a good pig-sticker should. "To see hog and hunter charge each other bald-headed with a simultaneous squeal of rage is," he says youthfully, "always delightful." It is all, in these more strenuous times, most refreshing and even a little wistful in its naïveté. The honest and brave gentlemen whose exploits it records are about another kind of pig-sticking now. One hopes that practice with the Indian variety may help them in their chase of the Uhlan road-hog. Here's power to their spears!
For all his good humour, Mr. Pett Ridge can say a hard thing now and then about humanity in general and point it with a touch of startling sarcasm. Possibly it is this combination which makes his the favourite author he is. While we get tired of the harsh satirist who is always up against us, and pay little attention to his teaching we not only profit by the occasional home truths of the genial humourist, but thoroughly enjoy hearing them. Certainly it is not Mr. Ridge's plots which so attract everybody, including myself. The Happy Recruit (Methuen) might as well (or even better) have been plotless. There is the central figure, Carl Siemens, who comes to England from abroad in his youth and has an unremarkable career, and there is a mysterious and rather tiresome trunk which is mentioned from time to time and finally opened; but apart from these the book is but a collection of little episodes more or less about the same people, the Maynard family in particular. It is not the story that lends the charm but the people who come into it, that upper-lower section of Londoners whose little peculiarities of thought, word and deed Mr. Ridge so perfectly understands. Through their mouths he utters his truest sayings, and they make his books always worth reading. It should be added that this one had nothing to do with present warfare; it is antedated by a reign and a half. In this the title is misleading, for there are so many recruits about nowadays and all of them are happy.
After reading Messrs. Hutchinson's announcement that the critics describe Mr. F. Bancroft as the most remarkable South African novelist now at work, I searched for a talent that was too successfully hidden for my finding. I was on the track of it two or three times, and once at least the scent was so hot that I thought the quarry was mine; but it got away. With Dalliance and Strife the author completes a trilogy upon the Boer War, but here we are given too much flirtation and too little fighting. His liberality in the matter of heroines compensates me not at all for his niggard accounts of the war. That he himself should apparently take more interest in dalliance than in strife seems to indicate sheer perversity, for, when once he has ceased to toy with tennis-teas and trivialities, it is possible to respect the opinions of those admiring critics even if it is impossible to agree with them. The little fighting and the few whiffs of the veldt that we are given come as welcome reliefs to the rather stuffy atmosphere that Mr. Bancroft has been at such pains to create. The British officer in his hours of dalliance is in his hands merely a figure of fun, but the militant Boer in field and camp is a faithful picture, so faithful, indeed, when contrasted with the other, that it leaves me astounded at such a combination of skill and futility.
Germaine Damiel was a little girl with considerable force of character. Having been told by a Solialist shoemaker that Squires were a mistake, she endeavoured to correct this error by driving a large knife into the first specimen of the race whom she met. This was Miles Burnside, a decent young man enough, and one obviously qualifying to be the hero of the story. So that when, quite early in its course, Germaine caught him asleep and apparently left him dead with a dagger in his heart, I was for a little time considerably puzzled as to how Mrs. Baillie Reynolds was going to get on with her tale. However, I need not have worried. Of course Miles was not dead; indeed the last six words of the book tell you that "His smile was good to see." And naturally he wouldn't have been smiling like that if he had not been enfolding the heroine in his strong arms. But before this happy moment we had a lot to get through. Miles on recovery had told the properly apologetic Germaine that she must never, never let anybody else know about the dagger business, and she said she wouldn't. Personally, if I had been Germaine, I should have done the same. Later in life, reflecting upon this injunction, and discovering that her grandfather had also killed a man, Germaine got it into her head that the habit was inherited, and the idea worried her quite dreadfully. This, I suppose, is why her story is called The Cost of A Promise (Hodder and Stoughton. Eventually, however, when the thing had gone on long enough and the revelation of her secret had scared away a superfluous rival, Miles informed her that her grandfather's record was (forgive me!) not germane to the matter, and that she was as sane as anybody in the story. M'yes. But Mrs. Reynolds has done better.