Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3817/Our Booking-Office
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Far too rarely does the conscientious reviewer enjoy such a chance as has come to me now, a chance to let himself go in the matter of praise without stint or reservation. As a reward doubtless for some of my many unrecorded good deeds, there has come into my hands a slender volume called Naval Occasions (Blackwood), which seems to me to be the most entirely satisfactory and, indeed, fascinating thing of its kind that ever I read. The writer chooses for his own sufficient reasons to disguise himself as "Bartimeus," and under that name I have to ask him to accept my very sincere gratitude. The little book contains twenty-five sketches, mostly quite short, relating to (I quote its text, taken from the Articles of War) "the Navy, whereon, under the good Providence of God, the wealth, safety, and strength of the Kingdom chiefly depend." Never surely did a book appear so aptly. At a moment like this, when the dullest collection of naval facts can stir the pulse, such pages as these, full of the actual life and work of the men who are safeguarding us all, deserve a public as vast as the Empire itself. The appeal of of them is amazing, for their art is of so concealed a quality that the writing seems simplicity itself. To say that they bring the atmosphere of salt winds and the tang of the sea, is nothing; a skilful novel about Margate sands would deserve this praise; it is in their humanity that the charm lies, the sense of courage and comradeship and high endeavour that is in every one of them. You will laugh often as you read; and sometimes, quite suddenly, you will find yourself with a prickly feeling at the back of the eyes, because of the tears that are in these things; but they are the proud kind, never the sloppily sentimental. And at the end I am mistaken in you if you do not close the book with the rare and moving sensation that you have found something of which you can say, as I myself did, "This is absolutely It!"
Amongst the thousands of helpful suggestions for the conduct of war which have recently filled the columns of the daily press, I do not remember having seen any scheme for supplying the officers of the Allied Armies with an Irish terrier apiece. And yet if Marie von Vorst is to be trusted, this is a very serious omission, for, had it not been for Pitchounê, I fear that the gallant hero of His Love Story (Mills and Boon) would have perished in the Sahara and never have won the lady of his heart. The Comte de Sabron was forbidden by his military orders to take a dog with him to Algiers, but Pitchounê ran all the way from Tarascon to Marseilles and jumped into the boat. Subsequently, when his master was lying wounded in the desert, he tracked down the nearest native village—twelve hours away—and barked till they sent out a relief expedition. A boy scout could not do more, and, though my own experience of Irish terriers has led me to think that they do not spend over much time in the study of ordnance maps, yet for sentiment's sake, and because His Love Story is a charmingly written romance, I am ready to believe in all the feats of Pitchounê, and even to hope that he will not after all be de trop now that M. le Comte is happily wedded, but may have another brilliantly successful campaign in front of him.
Although Mrs. Penrose's new novel, Something Impossible (Mills and Boon), gaily admits in its title its difficulties, I cannot pretend that I consider her to have made the most of her opportunity. There are at least two classic examples of her theme, Mr. Anstey's Vice Versâ and Mr. De la Mare's Return. Mrs. Penrose cannot approach either the charming humour of the one or the delicate beauty of the other. On a lower plane her story has its amusing moments, and there is a vein of real tenderness in her picture of the relations of her hero and his faithful lady—a happy relief after the monotonous repetition of matrimonial infidelities dealt out to us by the average novel. It will be a consolation also to many readers to discover that plain people are far more popular than handsome ones and that to "have features of classical beauty" is the most unfortunate of handicaps in the race for comford and success. Mrs. Penrose, like many other women novelists, is very cruel to her own sex and never misses an opportunity of exposing its shallow sentiments and transient affections. But why are all novelists of today so merciless to the provincial town? There must be some pleasant people in Cathedral cities. I am weary of retired colonels with port-stained faces, and vinegary old maids, and unctuous canons. Mrs. Penrose has shown in her earlier books so real a sense of beauty and so touching a spirit of kindliness that I am bound to confess that, with the exception of her treatment of her hero, this rather acid and ironical piece of nonsense is a disappointment.