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Page 17
* * * * *
Mrs. SKRINE has collected some charming fragrant papers from various
distinguished sources concerning the ever-recurring phenomenon of
_The Devout Lady_ (CONSTABLE), in order to inspire one JOAN, a V.A.D.
heroine of the new order. I guess JOAN, of whom only a faint glimpse
is vouchsafed, must be a nice person--the author's affectionate
interest in her is sufficient proof of that. I suppose we all know
our Little Gidding out of SHORTHOUSE'S _John Inglesant_. Mrs. SKRINE
deprecates the Inglesantian view and offers us a stricter portrait of
MARY COLLET. "Madam" THORNTON, Yorkshire Royalist dame in the stormy
days of the Irish Rebellion and the Second JAMES'S flight to St.
Germain, is another portrait in the gallery; then there's PATTY MORE,
HANNAH'S less famous practical sister, of Barleywood and the Cheddar
Cliff collieries; and a modern great lady of a lowly cottage, in
receipt of an old-age pension and still alive in some dear corner of
England--the best sketch of the series, because drawn from life and
not from documents. If the author has a fault it is her detached
allusiveness, her flattering but mystifying assumption that one can
follow all her references, and her rather mannered idiom: "He proved a
kind husband, but sadly a tiresome." These, however, be trifles. Read
this pleasant book, I beg you, and send it on to your own Joan.
* * * * *
I have read with deep interest and appreciation and with a mournful
pleasure the _Letters of Arthur George Heath_ (BLACKWELL, Oxford). It
is the record, in a series of letters mostly written to his parents,
of the short fighting life of a singularly brave and devoted man.
There is in addition a beautiful memoir by Professor GILBERT MURRAY,
whose privilege it was to be ARTHUR HEATH'S friend. HEATH was not
vowed to fighting from his boyhood onward. He was a brilliant scholar
and afterwards a fellow of New College, Oxford. The photograph of him
shows a very delicate and refined face, and his letters bear out
the warrant of his face and prove that it was a true index to his
character. Until the great summons came one might have set him down
as destined to lead a quiet life amid the congenial surroundings of
Oxford, but we know now that the real stuff of him was strong and
stern. He joined the army a day or two after the outbreak of war,
being assured that our cause was just and one that deserved to be
fought for. He had no illusions as to the risk he ran, but that didn't
weigh with him for a moment. On July 11th, 1915, he writes to his
mother from the Western Front: "Will you at least try, if I am killed,
not to let the things I have loved cause you pain, but rather to get
increased enjoyment from the Sussex Downs or from Janie (his youngest
sister) singing Folk Songs, because I have found such joy in them,
and in that way the joy I have found can continue to live?" Beautiful
words these, and typical of the man who gave utterance to them.
The end came to him on October 8th, his twenty-eighth birthday. His
battalion of the Royal West Kent Regiment was engaged in making a
series of bombing attacks. In one of these ARTHUR HEATH was shot
through the neck and fell. "He spoke once," Professor MURRAY tells us,
"to say, 'Don't trouble about me,' and died almost immediately." His
Platoon Sergeant wrote to his parents, "A braver man never existed,"
and with that epitaph we may leave him.
* * * * *
The scenes of _A Sheaf of Bluebells_ (HUTCHINSON) are laid in
Normandy, where they speak the French language. But the Baroness ORCZY
does not take advantage of this local habit, and is careful not to put
too heavy a strain upon the intelligence of those who do not enjoy the
gift of tongues. "_Ma tante_," "_Mon cousin_," "_Enfin"_--these are
well within the range of all of us. Indeed, though I shrink from
boasting, I could easily have borne it if she had tried me a little
higher. "_Ma tante_," for instance, got rather upon my nerves before
the heroine had finished with it. The plot (early nineteenth century)
is concerned with one _Ronnay de Maurel_, a soldier and admirer of
NAPOLEON, and in consequence anathema to most of his own family.
The heroine was betrothed to _Ronnay's_ half-brother, as elegant and
royalist as _Ronnay_ was uncouth and Napoleonic. It is a tale of love
and intrigue for idle hours, the kind of thing that the Baroness does
well; and, though she has done better before in this vein, you
will not lack for excitement here; and possibly, as I did, you will
sometimes smile when strictly speaking you ought to have been serious.
* * * * *
"Economy, I hate the word!" said a much-harassed housekeeper recently:
echoing, I fear, the sentiments of the great majority of the British
people. Nevertheless, let no one be deterred by a somewhat forbidding
title from reading Mr. HENRY HIGGS'S _National Economy: An Outline
of Public Administration_ (MACMILLAN). Although written by a Treasury
official--a being who in popular conception is compounded of red-tape
and sealing-wax and spends his life in spoiling the Ship of State by
saving halfpennyworths of tar--it is not a dry-as-dust treatise on the
art of scientific parsimony, but a lively plea for wise expenditure.
Mr. HIGGS is no believer in the dictum that the best thing to do with
national resources is to leave them to fructify in the pockets of
the taxpayers--"doubtful soil," in his opinion; nor is he afraid that
heavy taxation will kill the goose with the golden eggs. It may be
"one of those depraved birds which eat their own eggs, in which case,
if its eggs cannot be trapped, killing is all it is fit for." The
author is full of well-thought-out suggestions for saving waste and
increasing efficiency in our national administration. The introduction
of labour-saving machinery, the elimination of superfluous officials,
the reduction of the necessary drudgery which too often blights the
initiative and breaks the hearts of our young civil servants--all
these and many other reforms are advocated in Mr. HIGGS'S most
entertaining pages. I cordially commend them to the attention of
everyone who takes an intelligent interest in public affairs, not
excluding Cabinet Ministers, Members of Parliament, and political
journalists.
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