Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/454

"cast his stone at the rat of Prussianism," as he set out to do. And he can be very annoying, as when he opens his epilogue with a spasm of elegiacs and "I was lying in bed one morning in September, 1914, reflecting on the death of Tibullus." I felt that the superior person, restless during the earlier chapters, had at last broken out, and being a "general reader," and as such frequently put in my place throughout the book, I was annoyed. Besides, what is to become of Mr. George Moore's monopoly of this sort of thing?

From childhood Michael Repton felt the call of the forest. He dreamed strange dreams—or dreamed often the same strange dream—of trees and still water. Elstree and Winchester wrought a temporary cure, but, as he drew to manhood, the woods became more and more of a necessity to him, till finally he obeyed the call. That is the main theme of Behind the Thicket (Max Goschen), the first novel of Mr. W. E. B. Henderson. It is a curious, arresting book, loosely constructed yet never lacking grip, an odd blend of realism and mysticism, of fantastic imagery and careful delineation of ordinary middleclass life. If Mr. Arnold Bennett were to collaborate in a novel with Mr. Arthur Machen, each to have a free hand, they would produce something very like it. This is not to say that Mr. Henderson falls short in originality, for that is the last charge that could be brought against him. It would be easy to be flippant about Behind the Thicket, and still easier to be over-enthusiastic. I am saved from the former blunder by the genuine fascination of the tale; from the latter by an intermittent facetiousness (quite out of place in a novel of this kind), which finds expression in such sentences as "the moral peculiarities of ladies odolized—tut! idolized—by a grateful nation," and "he would not fetch and carry, though she looked fetching and carried on." I cannot better convey my admiration for the book as a whole than by saying that these and similar horrors jarred me like blows. But it would be uncanny if a first novel were to be flawless, and Mr. Henderson's mistakes are few and easily corrected. Behind the Thicket is not great work, but it has so much promise in it of better things that one feels justified in looking forward to the time when its author will produce something to evoke what Mr. W. B. Maxwell has called "the emotions experienced on widely differing occasions by stout Cortez and slender Keats."

A sad interest attaches itself to a passage in the Preface which the late Mr. Frank T. Bullen wrote for his Recollections (Seeley, Service) where he states of the book, "I really believe it may be my last." He died while the volume was being published. No doubt, therefore, this collection of his random memories—"the reminiscences of the busy life of one who has played the varied parts of sailor, author and lecturer," and from whose written and spoken words so many have drawn a sincere pleasure—will command many friends. To be honest, the chronicles themselves, though they contain many diverting sketches of experiences in a lecturer's life, with chairmen, hosts, lanternists and the like, are for the most part rather small beer. Missed trains and railway waiting-rooms may seem to play a disproportionate part herein, to those especially who do not share Mr. Bullen's sense of the minor discomforts of life. The fact is that the real attraction of the book has lain (for me at least) in its revelation of a singularly simple and unaffected personality. Things that many of us are apt to take for granted appear to have preserved an unusual freshness for the author of The Cruise of the Cachalot. I like him, for a random example, upon the hospitality of Fettes, which "went far to convince me that the lecturer's life was a charming one, the people were all so pleasant, so eager to make one happy and comfortable. Moreover, it was a delight to address the lads. Of course it was impossible to tell how they would have received the lecture had they been perfectly free agents, but that is one of those things about which it is well never to show too much curiosity." A remark in its mingled shrewdness and amiability very typical of the man.

Those who like to retain some visible souvenir of their charitable actions should send to Mr. Anthony R. Barker (491, Oxford Street, W.), for The First Belgian Portfolio, containing six sketches of peaceful scenes over which the fury of War has lately passed. The entire proceeds of the sale of these drawings are to be given to the Belgian Relief Fund. The contrast of light and shade in his studies of Dinant and Namur may be a little fierce and his treatment of the romantic Château de Valzin, in the Ardennes, not quite perfect in construction; but his sketches of a wharf-scene at Antwerp and a winding poplar avenue in Flanders are touched with a very pleasant imagination.

"They tell me there's not much to be seen when they sink one of them submarines—just a few bubbles and spots of oil on the surface!"

"The E 15 belongs to a class of sixteen submarines. Built in 1911, she steamed (sic) ten knots below the surface, and sixteen above."

The Irish Times.

What was the use of our gallant sailors facing fearful odds to prevent the secret of the E 15 falling into the enemy's hands if it was to be given away like this?

"Young Lady, R.C., dark, musical, moderate means, desires meet educated Gentleman, same faith, comfortable income, sot over 40; view matrimony."—Liverpool Echo.

The young lady will find it difficult to gratify her peculiar taste in husbands. The article required happily grows scarcer every day.