Various - Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920
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Various >> Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920
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_John Fitzhenry_ (MILLS AND BOON) is one of those pleasant stories about
people who live in big country houses, a subject that seems to have a
particular attraction for the large and ungrudging public which lives in
villas. We have already several novelists who tell them very ably, and I
feel that some one among them has served as Miss ELLA MACMAHON'S model. The
tale deals with the affairs of a showy fickle cousin and a silent constant
cousin who compete for the love of the same delightful if rather nebulous
young woman, and moves to its _denouement_, against a background of the
great War, which Miss MACMAHON has very sensibly decided to view entirely
from the home front. It contains some fine thinking and some bad writing
(the phrase telling of the middle-aged smart woman who "waved her foot
impatiently" gives a just idea of the author's occasional inability to say
what she means), some quite extraneous incidents and some scenes very well
touched in. The people, with a few exceptions, are of the race which
inhabits this sort of book, and, as we have long agreed with our novelists
that "the county" is just like that, I don't see why Miss MACMAHON should
be blamed for it.
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Mr. COSMO HAMILTON lays the scene of _His Friend and His Wife_ (HURST AND
BLACKETT) in the Quaker Hill Colony of Connecticut, the members of which
were typically "nice" and took themselves very seriously. So when one of
them brought a divorce suit against her husband there was a feeling that
the colony's reputation had been irremediably besmirched. Mr. HAMILTON can
be trusted to create tense situations out of the indiscretions of an erring
couple, but he also contrives, in spite of its artificial atmosphere, to
make us believe in this society, though he tried me rather hard with a
scandalmongress of the type we happily meet less often in life than in
fiction. I hope he will not be quite so dental in his next book. I didn't
so much mind _Mrs. Hopper's_ teeth, which "flashed like an electric
advertisement," but when he made two golfers also flash "triumphant teeth"
I recoiled.
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_The Golden Bird_ of Miss DOROTHY EASTON (HEINEMANN) is indeed lucky to set
out on its flight with a favouring pat from Mr. JOHN GALSWORTHY. He asserts
that these short studies of people and things in England and France are
very well done indeed; that moreover, though the short sketch may look, and
the bad short sketch may be, one of the easiest of literary feats, the good
short sketch is in fact one of the most difficult. Now who should know this
if not Mr. GALSWORTHY, and who am I that I should presume to disagree? As a
matter of fact I don't. Quite the contrary. But naturally I shall get no
credit for that. I will only add that Miss EASTON has not a majority mind,
that she sees the sad thing more easily than the gay, that I like her work
best in her more objective moods, and that, like so many writers of
perception, she finds the quintessence of England's beauty in happy Sussex.
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[Illustration: IN OLD VERSAILLES.
_Mother._ "GOOD NEWS, MY SON! EVEN AS I PONDERED WHETHER I SHOULD EAT OUR
LAST CRUST THE EVER-KIND ABBE CALLED TO SAY HE HAD FOUND THEE A HIGHLY-PAID
APPOINTMENT AT COURT."
_Son._ "YES--BUT DID HE TELL YOU IT WAS AS FOOD-TASTER TO HIS MAJESTY, WHO
DAILY EXPECTS TO BE POISONED?"]