Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/474

I begin to suspect Miss Marjorie Bowen of possessing a private time-machine, she doth so range about the centuries. Only the other day she was conducting me through Medicean Florence, and now here she is in the New World of the eighteenth century, and as much at home as if she had never written about any other place and period. Indeed, for many reasons I incline to think Mr. Washington (Methuen) is the best historical romance she has yet given us. For one thing, of course, if ever there was a hero ready-made, it is the young Virginian planter who created a nation. I am quite sure that Miss Bowen felt this. She has a palpable tenderness for her central figure, the grace and courage and high purpose of him, which greatly helps the appeal of the story. Partly this is a tale of Washington himself, first as the young soldier fighting the French in Canada, and later as the victorious founder of the American Commonwealth. Partly, also, it concerns the fortunes of Arnold, the friend who betrayed Arnold, and of his English wife. Miss Bowen has certainly written nothing more moving and dramatic than the scene in which Margaret Arnold, loathing her husband for the treachery she has just discovered, holds Washington at bay in order to give the traitor time to escape. There is a real thrill in this. Throughout, also, you will find abundant evidence of that sense of colour which is of the essence of the costume story. She writes in pictures, and excellent pictures too. I can heartily recommend this gallant tale.

Samuel Henry Jeyes; His Personality and Work (Duckworth), is a book that will have two appeals, the special and the general—of which perhaps the former will be the greater. Certainly the rather wide circle of those who numbered the late Mr. Jeyes amongst their friends will be glad to welcome this record of a singularly charming man; while there must be many others, to whom his identity as an anonymous journalist was unknown, who will here recognize work in which they had taken pleasure while ignorant of its authorship. Both Mr. Sidney Low, who contributes a sympathetic memoir of his friend, and Mr. W. P. Ker, who has arranged and edited the selections from his fugitive writings, have done their task ably. The papers themselves were well worth collection into this more permanent form. Chief among them is the series grouped under the heading "Rulers of England" open letters to prominent political personages over the signature "Friar John." These show Mr. Jeyes at his best; trenchant, entirely fearless, more than a little Thackerayan in style. Memoir furnishes an interesting opportunity of tracing the beginnings of this method in a fragment of an essay on "Sisters," written for an Uppingham journal when the author was eighteen—a somewhat remarkable production. These "Friar John" letters, it should be added, are illustrated with drawings of the addressees by Mr. Harry Furniss, which recall many pleasant memories.

The late Tom Gallon contrived to make his own wide circle of readers who will appreciate this posthumous romance, The Princess of Happy Chance (Hutchinson). It tells of Felicia of Sylvaniaburg who fled from her betrothed prince, Jocelyn, whom she chose to dislike on principle because he had been arranged for her. She fled to England, and at midnight met a young English girl of her own age, Lucidora, who was a beauty and a daydreamer. So that when Princess Felicia, with delightful impulsiveness, proposed that poor Lucidora should take her royal place with car, chauffeur and maid, she welcomed the adventure as an opening into the realms of high romance. Also an impecunious, handsome and rather nice gentleman—a journalist—foisted himself upon her as a Court Chamberlain, and the little court travelled about and behaved in the most naïve way possible, and sent the most charmingly and indiscreetly explicit telegrams, until Lucidora fell badly in love with the Chamberlain, and Jocelyn discovered she was a fraud, and explained how much he was really in love with Felicia, and everything ended happily. This is not a romance in the inspired manner of R. L. S.'s Prince Otto, or the fashion of robustious Ruritania, but just a gentle, easy-flowing, quite wholesome, unpretentious and strictly unlikely narrative to while away the time.

In those days of complex novelists I find Baroness Orczy very ingenuous and refreshing. She is indeed so anxious to impress me at the outset with certain facts about the Hungarian peasants that she repeats them again and again, and this—if a little uncomplimentary to my intelligence—does at any rate clear the way for the tale she has to tell in A Bride of the Plains (Hutchingson). What, however, I do resent is that she should address me as "stranger," for the truth of the matter is that she is the friendliest and most confiding of writers, and to be called a stranger when one feels, as I did, like a member of a family party, is nothing less than shattering. As to the literary merits of this story of love, murder, wine and dancing, I prefer to be silent, and shall hold my tongue with the greater content because I doubt if admirers of the beautiful Elsa will greatly trouble about the style in which her tale is told. Sufficient it is that the Baroness knows these Hungarians of whom she writes, that her villain is as pretty a scoundrel as I have met for many a day, and that, although the present is not a propitious time for visiting Hungary, she has induced in me a warm desire to go there eventually and see just how they dance the csárdás.

Thomas (who has bagged a sitting pheasant—as officer suddenly appears). "So you'd try to bite me, would yer?"

"Usually the annual effort is a sale of work and a concert, but in this case so as not to put too great a strain upon supporters, a concert and a sale of work have been arranged."—Exeter Express & Echo.

We ourselves always adopt this order as being far less exhausting.