Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 156, April 2, 1919, Various [10 best novels of all time txt] 📗

Small Boy (who has been promised a visit to the Zoo to-morrow). "I HOPE WE SHALL HAVE A BETTER DAY FOR IT THAN NOAH HAD."

(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)

I found myself as much taken with the title of The Great Interruption (HUTCHINSON) as with any of the dozen short war-stories that Mr. W.B. MAXWELL has collected in the volume. Yet these are admirable of their kind—"muffin-tales" is my own name for them, of just the length to hold your attention for a solitary tea-hour and each with some novelty of idea or distinction in treatment that makes the next page worth turning. The central theme of all is, of course, the same: the War in its effect upon people at the fighting front and elsewhere. Perhaps it was inevitable that Mr. MAXWELL should betray a certain faintly cynical amusement in his dealings with the people of elsewhere. Two of the stories especially—"The Strain of It" and "What Edie Regretted"—are grimly illustrative of some home-keeping types for whom the great tragedy served only as an opportunity for social advancement or a pleasantly-thrilling excuse for futilities. There will be no reader who will not smilingly acknowledge the justice of these sketches; not one of us whose neighbours could not supply an original for them. Fortunately the book has other tales of which the humour is less caustic; probably of intention Mr. MAXWELL'S pictures of war as the soldier knew it, its hardships and compensations, contrast poignantly with the others. On the active-service side my choice would undoubtedly be for the admirably cheery and well-told "Christmas is Christmas" (not exactly about fraternization), as convincing a realisation of the Front at its best as any I remember to have read in more pretentious volumes.

I am bound to admit that for all my appreciation of Mr. J.D. BERESFORD as a literary craftsman I did find The Jervaise Comedy (COLLINS) a bit slow off the mark. Here is a quite considerable volume, exquisitely printed upon delightful paper, all about the events of twenty-four hours, in which, when you come to consider it afterwards, nothing very much happened. The heroine thought about eloping with the chauffeur, and the onlooker, who tells the tale, thought about falling in love with the sister of the same. In both cases thought is subsequently translated into action, but only after the curtains fall. Meanwhile an affair of hesitations, suggestions, moods and (as I hinted above) rather too many words. It is a. tribute to Mr. BERESFORD'S art that out of all this we do eventually emerge with some definite idea of the characters and a pleasantly-amused interest in their fate. There is, of course, plenty of distinction in the writing. But I could have wished more or earlier movement. Even the motor-car, whose appearance promised a hint, the merest far-off possibility, of farcical developments, shared in the general lethargy and refused to move from its ditch. In spite, however, of this procrastination I wish it to be understood that the story is in some ways one of unusual charm; it has style, atmosphere and a very sensible dignity. But, lacking the confidence that I fortunately had in my author, I question whether I should have survived to the point at which these qualities became apparent.

An author who in his first novel can deliberately put himself in the way of temptation and as unhesitatingly avoid it must be worth following. And so, if for no other [pg 272] reason, one might look forward to Mr. BERNARD DUFFY'S next book with uncommon interest. His hero comes into the story as a foundling, being deposited in a humble Irish home and an atmosphere of mystery by some woman unknown; he is supported thereafter by sufficiently suggestive remittances, and he passes through a Bohemian boyhood and a more normal though still intriguing early struggle and fluctuating love-story to eventual success, always with the glamour of conventional romance about him, only to turn out nobody in particular in the end. Congratulations! One was horribly afraid he would be compelled to be at least the acknowledged heir to a title. Quite apart from this, too, Oriel (FISHER UNWIN) is after an unassuming fashion one of the most easily and happily read and, one would say, happily written books that has appeared for many a long day, with humour that is Irish without being too broadly of the brogue, and with people who are distinctive without ever becoming unnatural. The dear old tramping quack-doctor, Oriel's foster-father, in particular might well be praised in language that would sound exaggerated. Mr. DUFFY'S work, depending as it does mainly on a flow of charming and even exquisite side incident, suggests that he is no more than beginning to tap a most extensive reservoir. I greatly hope that this is the case.

I gather that The Son of Tarzan (METHUEN) is the fourth of a Tarzan series by Mr. EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS, who specialises in an exciting brand of hero, half ape, half man. Tarzan père had been suckled and reared by a proud ape foster-mother, and after many jungle adventures had settled down as Lord Greystoke. This latest instalment of the Tarzan chronicles finds the Greystokes somewhat anxious about the restlessness and unconventional tastes of their schoolboy son, who inherits not only his father's vague jungle longings but all his explicit acquired characteristics, so that when, with the decent old ape, Akut, disguised as his invalid grandmother, he sails away from England and plunges into the wild he promptly becomes the terror of the jungle and bites the jugular veins of hostile man and beast with such a precision of technique that he becomes king of the ape-folk, as his father, Tarzan, had been before him. Plausibility, even within the limits of his bizarre plan, is not Mr. BURROUGHS' strong suit, but exciting incident, ingeniously imagined and staged, with swift movement, undoubtedly is. If the author wouldn't let his favourites off so easily and would give their enemies a better sporting chance, he would more readily sustain the illusion which is of the essence of real enjoyment in this kind of fantasy. But I imagine the normal human boy will find nothing whatever to complain of, and to him I chiefly commend this yarn.

The Tale of Mr. Tubbs (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is one of those which hover agreeably between low comedy and refined farce, in a world which, being frankly to the last degree improbable, makes no urgent demand for belief. Sometimes indeed (as I have observed before with Mr. J.E. BUCKROSE) the characters themselves are more credible than the way in which they carry on. Thus while Mr. Tubbs, the middle-aged and high-principled champion of distress, is both human and likeable, I was never persuaded that any more real motive than regard for an amusing situation would compel him to saddle himself with the continued society of a squint-eyed maid-servant and her yellow cat, turned adrift through his unfortunate attempts to befriend them. I think I need not tell you all, or even a part of all, that happens to Mr. Tubbs and Belinda and the yellow cat after their arrival as fugitives at the pleasant village of Holmes-Eaton, or do more than hint at the trials of this poor knight-errant, mistaken for a burglar and a libertine, till the hour when (the book being sufficiently full)