In the almost certain prospect of a stormy Session, why not adopt the 'Terrace' system as now used at the Zoo?In the almost certain prospect of a stormy Session, why not adopt the "Terrace" system as now used at the Zoo?
In the almost certain prospect of a stormy Session, why not adopt the "Terrace" system as now used at the Zoo?
I think I could best convey my impression of MissEthel Sidgwick'swork by quoting the advertisement of a popular magazine which used to proclaim that "these stories are different." All of MissSidgwick'sare this, though you might possibly be hard put to it to say exactly how. It is chiefly an affair of style; there is about all of them a certain dignity of utterance that combines with their humanity to produce an effect wholly individual and rare. Take her latest example,A Lady of Leisure(Sidgwick and Jackson). There is really very little to arrest attention in the story itself; the characters are persons whom you could meet every day, but in MissSidgwick'shands they become creatures of extraordinary fascination. The result is a novel by no means easy to criticise; partly because one is left with the feeling (of course the most subtle compliment to any author) that the characters have fashioned it themselves. Time and again one seems to observe MissSidgwickworking towards some inevitablescène-à-faire, when bounce! off go her people on an entirely unexpected tack, which you must yet admit to be the very one they quite obviously would follow. Never was a cast so incalculably alive. Naturally for this reason its vagaries (they are almost all in love and generally with the wrong person) would take too long to recount in detail. I can only state my personal preference for the group that consists of the heroine,Violet Ashwin, her father, the fashionable physician, and her brainless but quite wonderful mother. I plump for theAshwinhousehold in short as a really brilliant contribution to the homes in modern fiction. I don't say you will find their charm easy of assimilation. The society of such clever and elusive folk asVioletand her father is bound to be hard going at first for the general. ButMrs. Ashwin—oh, she is a joy, a marvel, an exasperation! You will delight to read about her.
The first thing I have to say aboutInitiation(Hutchinson) is that it might have been written by Dr.Clifford. The nice people in it are all Roman Catholics, but a group of Huguenots or of Calvinistic Methodists would have served the author's purpose equally well. ForRobert Hugh Benson, the novelist, has (so to speak) told MonsignorBenson, the priest, to mind his own business, and leave him to his, which is the telling of a story, and not the advocacy of any particular form of religion. The second point to notice in the book is that it divides its characters, and incidentally all characters, into those who are initiated and those who are not. The initiated are those who have learnt, chiefly by suffering, the lesson of life, which is that it treats us as it likes. Because they have learnt it, they trust, even when they do not understand, the purpose of the life-giver; because they trust they do not kick against the pricks. The young Catholic English gentleman, of whose initiation the story tells,suffers prodigiously under two of the greatest misfortunes, physical and mental, that a man may endure and live. And yet, when he comes to die, you feel, and he knows, that they are not misfortunes, but the opening up of the way of life. The chief cause of his mental suffering, a young girl of eighteen or nineteen, is described (well on in the book) as a practically insane egoist. She is, to my mind, the weak spot in the story. Frankly I don't believe in her. A girl of her age could not have been so selfishly cruel, and yet have taken in her world as she did. I will own that she took me in at first; but that was the author's fault. He ought not to have let me, as his reader, think her charming and particularly sympathetic when he knew all the time that she cared for no one but herself. I don't think that is playing the game. All the I same, I like his book.
Having read Mr.Reginald Blunt'sbook,In Cheyne Walk and Thereabout(Mills and Boon), I am now prepared to pass an examination in the history and the worthies (or unworthies) of Chelsea. I know thatDon Salterowas no Spaniard, but an ardent collector of childish curiosities who for a time kept a coffee-house and a smoking club of which "the ornaments and apparatus" were eventually offered toCharles Lamb. If I am asked about Dr.Messenger MonseyI shall say that he "tried hard, but with indifferent success, to popularise his own method of extracting teeth by tying one end of a piece of catgut to the offending molar and the other to a perforated bullet, putting the latter with a full charge of powder into a revolver and then pulling the trigger." Then again there isBartholomew Joseph Alexander de Dominiceti, Lordde Cete et de cortesi, Knight of the Holy Boman Empire and Noble of Venice in terra firma. How did he with his resounding name come to be in Chelsea and there establish "baths, fumigatory stoves and sweating chambers" for the relief of distressed humanity? This question and a hundred others of a similar nature you will find answered in Mr.Blunt'sdelightful book. Let Mr.Blunttake you by the hand and guide you through his beloved Chelsea. He is the most urbane and the most agreeably gossiping companion. He will re-introduce you to SirThomas More, SirHans Sloane; toNeild, the prison-reformer, and his sonJohn, the famous miser; to theCarlylesand their servantJessie Heddlestone, and a host of others. And he will remind you that Dr.Johnsonendeavoured to manufacture Chelsea china, and that hischefs d'œuvrealways collapsed in the firing. Take my advice and acquire Mr.Blunt'sbook.
I suspect thatMr. Simpson, who gives his name to the storySimpson(Methuen), can hardly have shared my own exhausting acquaintance with modern fiction, otherwise it is unlikely that he would have behaved as he did. What happened was this.Simpson, though on the wrong side of forty, well off and eminently lovable, was unmarried. Finding a charming old house in the country, he conceives the idea of renting it as a kind of bachelor residential club where he and other congenial cronies can enjoy the life of ease untroubled by any form of feminism. Well, that, to start with, one might fairly describe as "asking for it." But when I add that the old house in question was the property of a still young and charming widow you will probably agree with me that poorSimpsonhadn't even a dog's chance from the beginning. It is possible that this fore-dooming may a little spoil your enjoyment of MissElinor Mordaunt'sotherwise pleasant tale. Naturally, so far from women being banished from its pages, they simply abound; and the tale of the progress of the bachelor club resolves itself into a chronicle of proposals. There is however an attractive variety about the love affairs, of which I liked best that of the youngest couple. With two there is a note of tragedy; and though the courtship ofGilbert Strong, a respectable country lawyer, and the wild gipsy whom he marries may strike you as fantastic, the end of their romance is well told with a fine suggestion of inevitability. On the whole an agreeable and easy-going tale, though without any unusual claim to distinction.
It was an ambitious youth who, while travelling on the Continent,...It was an ambitious youth who, while travelling on the Continent, was offered the crown of one of the smaller states and refused it, saying, he "disliked these blind-alley occupations."
It was an ambitious youth who, while travelling on the Continent, was offered the crown of one of the smaller states and refused it, saying, he "disliked these blind-alley occupations."
I quite realise that I have not the shadow of a case against Mr.Algernon Blackwood. He frankly calls his bookTen Minute Stories(Murray), and that is exactly what they are. Nevertheless I did feel a little aggrieved when each of them stopped with a jerk just as I had become absorbed. One has a sense of having been cheated of one's rights. That is why, though many of these sketches are as good as they can be, I do not think that the book will be quite so popular as others of his. But devout Blackwoodsmen will add it to their collections and re-read the majority of its contents again and again, as I propose to do. On second thoughts, indeed, I may say that perhaps Mr.Blackwoodis not so unfair to his public as I have suggested, for he is one of those writers who are not dead and done with after a first perusal. He can pack a vast deal of food for thought even into a ten-minute story. A good example of what I mean is to be found in number fifteen of the collection, "Ancient Lights." Even a scene-shifter at the Savoy Theatre would believe in fairies after one reading of that. And if, after studying "If the Cap Fits," you lightly steal a fellow-member's hat from your club, I shall regard you as a very reckless dashing fellow. With the awful example ofField-Martinbefore me, I would not do it for a fortune. I shall buy one of those frightful plush hats which you see in shops but never out of them, and I shall have my name in large letters on the inside band. And to the hat-waiter's insidious "This is just as good, Sir," as he offers me some sinister bowler or topper with a past, I shall reply with gestures of disgust and threats to write to the committee.
"Detached 7-roomed horse wanted."—The Norbury Weekly News.
"Detached 7-roomed horse wanted."—The Norbury Weekly News.
Where is your one-stalled ox now?
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Page 161: 'Deutches' is as printed. (Alternative spelling). "HerrReinhardt's Deutches Theater"
Page 174: 'beleagured' corrected to 'beleaguered'. "likened to a beleaguered garrison,"
Page 174: 'lose' corrected to 'loose'. "A bull has got loose in the china"
Page 174: 'privonces' is as printed. (A 'Punch' joke: Metrolopis).