relieve it. Its story was shortly told by its leader, Lieutenant Campbell, in Scott's Last Expedition—the official report of a sailor to his commanding officer. Mr. Priestley is more communicative. As one of the famous six who went through it, he gives us, from his comfortable rooms in Cambridge, the full tale of that extraordinary adventure. He had a good angle of observation in the igloo, for it was he who doled out the eight birthday lumps of sugar and the other few ridiculous luxuries which relieved the monotony of seal. He was, in fact, the commissariat officer. How he must have been loved—and hated! To what a large extent also (one begins to realise) the ultimate safety of the party must have been due to his management. I recommend to boys and grown-ups a story as absorbing as Robinson Crusoe, and as heartening to the pride of Englishmen as the other stories which we are hearing now from places less remote. For boys in particular The Voyages of Captain Scott (Smith Elder) has been written by Charles Turley, a compilation excellently made from the original diaries; to which Sir J. M. Barrie has written a true Barrie preface describing the boyhood of Scott. I can think of no better present for a nephew.
The Woman in the Bazaar (Cassell), by Mrs. Perrin, is a story of the Anglo-Indian life in which she always moves at ease. It is Captain George Coventry's first wife, the golden-haired and "phenomenally" (as the newspaper-men will go on saying) innocent Rafella of the high-perched Cotswold vicarage, who eventually finds her deplorable way down to the Bazaar. If George (that beastly prig) at the psychological moment of their first serious quarrel, instead of threatening and laughing like a drunken man and reeling back into the room, had reeled forward and gone into the matter quietly, the entirely virtuous, if idiotic, Rafella would not have flown into the practised arms of that unscrupulous barrister, Kennard, who, as everybody knew, had left a mournful trail of dishonoured wives all over India, his legal knowledge presumably saving him at once from the inconvenience of marrying his victims and from the physical violence of outraged Anglo-Indian chivalry. And when George, now a colonel and on the verge of a quarrel with the second Mrs. Coventry about a young ass of a tertium quid, caught sight of poor Rafella at a window in the Bazaar, he was so genuinely upset that he rushed back to his wife, forgave her (nothing in particular) and lived happily ever after. Which, of course, is just one of those things that thrusts the avenging hatchet into the hand of the Militant.
I suppose that the "culture" (using this word in the strictly English sense) of Streatham Hill may perhaps be a trifle thinner than that of certain other suburbs, and, keeping this well in mind, I must try to believe that Candytuft—I mean Veronica (Hutchinson) is meant for romantic comedy and is not a one-Act farce hastily expanded by its author into three-hundred-page fiction form. The plot turns on a not very serious marital estrangement. C. I. M. V. (she had called herself Veronica suddenly one day after reading Ruskin) decided that she must have an intellectual companion and (rather daringly) that he must be of the male sex. So her husband's best friend dressed himself up as a fantastic and extremely repulsive-looking poet with a red wig and padded waistcoat and indulged in fantastic rhodomantades in order to disillusionise her. Well enough on the knock-about stage, of course. But, if I am to treat C. I. M. V. from the mildly satiric stand-point, which I fancy that Mabel Barnes-Grundy would prefer me to adopt, Mr. Shakespeare Waddilove is rather a big mouthful to swallow, even if I can accommodate my threat to the supposition that the lady would have allowed her husband to choose her Platonic friend for her and promise beforehand to give him a two months' trial. She did come from Streatham, I know, before she went to live in the country; but still the trams run all the way from Streatham to Charing Cross—and that padded waistcoat! However there are some amusing passages in Candytuft—I mean, Veronica, and so I shut both eves and gulped as hard as I could.
Do you know Mrs. Shovell? Violet Ashwin she was, and married young Charlie Shovell, some sort of a publisher and really rather a nice fool. She is an absolute dear. Gay and loyal and adorably kind. No, not a bit sentimental. Shy and yet has a way with her, and, thank Heaven, not the least bit of a scalp-hunter. We did think that Master Charles, who was distinctly by way of being a philanderer, mightn't perhaps run quite straight. But she's done wonders with him. Might I introduce you? Certainly ? Then get Duke Jones (Sidgwick and Jackson), by Ethel Sidgwick. She's entirely responsible for these nice people, and for Lady Ashwin, Violet's utter beast of a mother, and Sir Claude, that brick of a man and doctor, and insufferable Honoria and naughty bewitching Lisette, who came badly to grief and was pulled out of a really rotten hole by Jones. E. M. Jones (M for Marmaduke) was the fellow who worshipped Violet at sight and was ever after her faithful dog... I've put down this book with real regret. I can't help worrying as to whether there really is such a person as Violet because I might have the fortune to meet her. Really, Miss Sidgwick has an extraordinary power of making you feel friends (or bitter enemies) with her puppets, who aren't puppets at all. I've had the bad luck to miss A Lady of Leisure, to which Duke Jones is a sequel, but I'll readily take the responsibility of advising you to get it first.
Those who do not accept Archbishop Lang's view that the Kaiser is too sacred a subject for mirth should spend sixpence and a quarter of an hour on Keep Smiling (Nash). In dealing with the inexhaustible theme of William's Lie Factory, Messrs. Walter Emanuel and John Hassall are at their best.
Sergeant Instructor. "What's yer name?"
Sir Angelo Frampington, R.A. "Frampington."
Sergeant. "Well, 'old yer 'ead up, Frampington."
