Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/165

East Coast Farmer. "Have I really to do this we' all my beasts, if so be as the Germans land in these parts?"

Officer. "Yes. Live stock of every description has to be branded and driven west."

Farmer. "I can see my way all right except for my bees. What am I to do we' my bees?"

There are few living writers of romance who can carry the sword and doublet with the ease of Miss Marjorie Bowen. She has long since proved herself a practised mistress of mediaevalism, and The Carnival of Florence (Methuen) finds her therefore on sure ground. It is a pleasantly stimulating tale of love and adventure in the days of Savonarola. The heroine is one Aprilis, a fair Florentine whose matrimonial affairs were complicated by the fact that early in the story she had been abducted (strictly pour le bon motif in order to score off the gentleman to whom she was then engaged) by the too notorious Piero dei Medici. The unfortunate results were twofold, for though Aprilis was returned unharmed to her father's house her noble betrothed would have no more of her, so she had to put up with another husband who took her for charity, and to suffer in addition the pangs of unrequited love for the Lord of Florence whom she was unable to forget. What happened—how the Medici were turned from their heritage, and the part played in all this by the grim Revivalist of San Marco—is the matter of a story well worth reading. As is his way with tales in which he appears, the figure of Savonarola comes gradually to dominate the whole; did he not even master George Eliot? The present story is dedicated "In Memory of Florence, Summer 1914." Presumably, therefore, Miss Bowen shares with me certain memories that have been very vividly recalled by her pages—memories of a June evening when, as in the days of which she writes, the Piazza della Signoria echoed to the clash of swords and the tumult of an angry mob. That it has thus reminded me of what would, but for greater happenings since, have been one of my most thrilling chimney-corner reminiscences, is among the pleasures that I owe to a stirring and successful novel.

Among my favourite gambits in fiction is the return to his impoverished home of one who left it a supposed wastrel, and has now lots and lots of money. Personally, if I have a preference, it is that my wanderer should be at first unrecognised; but I am perhaps. too fastidious. Certainly I am not going to complain about Big Tremaine (Mills and Boon) just because when he came back to the Virginian township that he had quitted as a bank thief his old coloured nurse saw through him in once. There is, of course, Homeric precedent for the situation; it is one that, deftly handled, can scarcely fail of its effect. And the story of Big Tremaine is very deftly handled almost all through. Marie Van Vorst evidently knows the gentle Southern life thoroughly; her pictures of it have served to increase my conviction that Virginia must be one of the pleasantest places on earth. Not less true and delicate ia her treatment of the relations between masterful Tremaine and the gently obstinate mother who turns so slowly from distrust to adoration of her returned son. There are, in short, a great many qualities in this story that I have