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Page 19
"END OF COTTON SUIT.
DRAMATIC COLLAPSE."--_Daily Paper._
We are more than ever convinced of the superior wearing qualities of
woollen.
* * * * *
"The Government of the Commonwealth of Australia agrees to the
admission on passport of Indian merchants, students, tourests, with
there irrespective wives."--_Indian Paper._
But ought any Government to encourage this sort of thing?
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Dancing Man_ (_at Galleries of New Primitive Art Society_).
"ONE WOULD HAVE THOUGHT, WITH SUCH A GOOD FLOOR, THEY MIGHT HAVE PUT UP
SOME BETTER PICTURES."]
* * * * *
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
Following the iconoclastic spirit of the age, Mr. BARRY PAIN has essayed in
_The Death of Maurice_ (SKEFFINGTON) the revolutionary experiment of a
murder mystery tale that does not contain (_a_) a love interest, (_b_) a
wrongly suspected hero, (_c_) a baffled inspector, (_d_) an amateur, but
inspired, detective. It would be a grateful task to add that the result
proves the superfluity of these time-worn accessories. But the cold fact is
that, to me at least, the proof went the other way. From the first I was
painfully aware of a lack of snap about the whole business, and I am more
than suspicious that the author himself may have shared my unwilling
indifference. _Maurice_ was an artistic bachelor, a landowner, a
manufacturer of jam, a twin (with a bogie gift of knowing at any moment the
relative position of his other half, which might have been worked for far
more effect than is actually obtained from it), and a reputation of making
enemies. He had also an unusual neighbour, in the person of a young woman
whose unconventionality led her to perambulate the common at midnight,
playing the first bars of _Solveig's Song_ upon the flute. One night, at
the close of the first chapter, a gun was heard. But you are wrong to
suppose (however naturally) that the flute-player was the victim. It was
_Maurice_. And of course the problem was, who did it. I have told you my
own experience of the working out; nothing written by Mr. BARRY PAIN can
ever be really dull, just as no story starting with a mysterious murder can
lack a certain intrigue; but the fact remains that my wish, heroically
resisted, to look on to the last chapter was prompted more often by
impatience than by any compelling curiosity. Others may be happier.
* * * * *
The author of _A Journal of Small Things_ has done much to make us
understand the sufferings of stricken France and the more intimate sorrows
of war. _Chill Hours_ (MELROSE) deals with that dark period before the end,
when, to some, it seemed all but certain that the will to victory must
fail. Of the three parts of this gracious little book the first consists of
six sketches of life behind the lines, life both gentle and simple, as
affected by war. "Odette in Pink Taffeta," an episode of bereavement, is in
particular exquisitely visualised. "Their Places" and "The Second Hay"
treat, with a quiet intensity of conviction, of the absolutely deadening
absorption, by overwork and anxiety, of peasant wives and children left to
carry on in the absence of their men. The third part is a series of
hospital vignettes. They do not attempt to be too cheery, but they have the
stamp of realised truth. "Nostalgia," the second part, is in another
mood--recalled memories of the beauties of a loved land and of dear common
things affectionately seen. To those who dare look at war with open eyes
and who take pleasure in sincere and beautifully-phrased writing I commend
Mrs. HELEN MACKAY'S book without reserve.
* * * * *
_Somewhere in Christendom_ (ALLEN AND UNWIN) is somewhat embarrassing to a
reviewer, for it has the theme of a great book with the manner of a trivial
one. It is the history of a very much smaller nation, Ethuria, left
despoiled and starving at the end of a nine-years' war, in which its great
neighbours have used it as a battle-ground. Revolution begins, but a woman
prophet steps in and switches it off in an unusual direction. The Ethurians
perfect among themselves that fellowship which is the nice ideal behind
many nasty manifestations in the real world, and, when next they are
invaded by neighbouring nations anxious to use them as an excuse for
belligerency, they resolutely stick to their guns (only the metaphor is
most unsuitable), refuse to find any cause of quarrel with their "foreign
brothers," and finally persuade them to abandon the ideals of war, so that
peace on earth becomes a reality at last. Here is the book's theme; its
working out allows for a boxing match between the President of Hygeia and
the Foreign Secretary of Tritonia as the minimum of hostilities; a wicked
newspaper lord, who pulls strings in both countries, and a faithful butler
to the Royal Family, who becomes assistant state nursemaid and cleans
silver as a hobby. Though I quite agree with Miss EVELYN SHARP and the
Ethurians that it _is_ love that makes the world go round, I am not so sure
that either hers or theirs is the best way of advocating their common
cause.
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