Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3833/Our Booking-Office
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
I am sorry that I cannot now be the first to call King Albert's Book (Hodder and Stoughton) The Golden Book. But, since this term has already been applied, I can only applaud it. I suppose never in the history of books had such an one as this been put together, just as never in the ilne of kinds has monarch received, under such circumstances, so rare a tribute. If in the Belgian heart, from ruler to refugee, there is room for more pride than should of right be there already, surely these pages, voicing the homage of all that counts in the world to-day, will bring it. We are all King Albert's men now, and in this book we have a welcome chance of proving our fealty. You will observe that I say nothing about the volume as commercial value for the three shillings that it costs to buy. One glance at the list of those who contribute (a kind of international supplement to Who's Who) is all that is needed to satisfy you on this point. The Daily Telegraph is primarily responsible for gathering together a greater assemblly of the names that matter than was ever collected between covers. To the proprietors, to Mr. Hall Caine, who edits the book, and to the printers (especially for the illustrations in colour, which are triumphs of reproduction) I can only offer my thanks and congratulatory good wishes. Certainly, The Daily Telegraph Belgian Fund, to which will go the entire proceeds of the sale, deserves well the shillings that this splendid effort will bring to it. King Albert's Book is indeed a noble tribute to nobility—ont that for every sake will become an historic souvenir of the Great Days. And (if I may confess the secret wicketness of my heart as I read) how I should love to see the Berlin Press notices!
When Mr. Theodore Roosevelt stated on page 25 of Through the Brazilian Wilderness (Murray) that his was not a hunting-trip, but a scientific expedition, I winked solemnly, so often have I read books in which science is used as an excuse for a slaughter that to the unbloodthirsty seems to be more than a little indiscriminate. Now, however, there is nothing to do but to withdraw that wink and to say that Mr. Roosevelt and his companions killed only for the sake of food and speciments, though on one very exciting occasion a man called Julio displayed a most unwholesome desire to slay anybody or anything. This renegade's lust for murder was merely a side-show, but it serves vividly to illustrate the dangers and risks that the travellers took as they fought their way along the River of Doubt. No escape is possible from the buoyancy of Mr. Roosevelt's style; as frankly as any schoolboy enjoying a holiday he revelled in the ups and downs of his adventures; and if his enthusiasm for the important work that he was helping to accomplish occasionally leads him to relate trivialities, and also prevents him from advancing a few kilometres without adding up the total number he had travelled, the essential fact remains that his tale of exploit and exploration is told with a joie de vivre that carries everything before it. Among the many discoveries that he made is one from which time has taken away any cause for surprise. "There was," he says, "a German lieutenant with the Paraguayan officers—one of several German officers who are now engaged in helping the Paraguayans with their army." Through the Brazilian Wilderness is packed with wonderfully good photographs, two of which introduce us to a game played by the Parecis Indians, of which the initial rule requires the "kicker-off" to lie flat on the ground and butt the ball with his head. One wonders if Brazil's future battles will be won in the playing-fields of the Parecis.
The opening liens of the Preface to Sir Charles Villers Stanford's book of reminiscences contain so good a story that I cannot forbear to quote them. the tale concerns the famous conductor Hans von Buelow, who (says Sir Charles) was once taking the Berlin Philharmonie! Orchestra through a rehearsal at which some ladies had been invited to be present. They indulged in whisperings and chatterings which greatly disturbed the players. Buelow turned round and said, "Ladies, we are not here to save the Capitol, but to make music." Pretty neat that for a a Prussian! It is an example of the many excellent tales to be found in Pages from an Unwritten Diary (Arnold). Some of the best of them concern this same Buelow, and have done much to disprove my personal belief in the non-existence of German humour. But throughout his book Sir Charles is the best of good company. Whether he is chatting about Royalty—there is a rather moving little anecdote of Queen Victoria and Tennyson that was new to me—or telling again the often-told history of the Cambridge Greek Plays and the A.D.C., he has a happy pen for a point, and even the chestnuts inevitable in such a collection are served with a flavour of originality. I must be allowed to quote one more of von Buelow's good things. A gushing lady at a musical party begged for an introduction to the great man. Which being given, "Oh, Monsieur von Bülow," she said, "vous connaissez Monsieur Wagner, n'est-ce pas?" Bowing, and without a shade of surprise, BUELOW answered at once, "Mais oui, Madame; c'est le mari de ma femme!" A great man!
I am quite prepared to accept Mr. Lindsay Bashford's Cupid in the Car (Chapman and Hall) as a nice unpretentious diary of a motor-tour on and about the Franco-German Frontier, ingeniously done into novel form and wholesomely seasoned with adventure and the arrangement of marriages shortly to take place. And I distinctly like his taciturn paragon of a chauffeur, Eugene—a nephew of Enery Straker the voluble, as I should judge from a certain family resemblance and, by the way, much too intelligent to murder his French phrases in the hopeless manner which the author, none too scrupulous in these little touches, suggests. But whether Mr. Bashford hasn't spoilt an enthusiastic travel book without producing quite a plausible novel—a defect of tactics rather than of capacity—and whether the book doesn't show too many signs of the hustle and vibration of the car are questions that intrude themselves; and certainly one has a right to jib at the Preface, which seems to suggest that the novel, written before war broke our, was to enlighten the public, by a sugar-coated method, as to the general terrain of the conflict inevitable at some future date, so that we might "better picture the work our loved ones were doing at the Front." If this were indeed so, then it was distinctly untactful that the only British officer who appears should be a tosh-talking General obviously too fond of his food. The fact is that the topical preface is being overdone these days.
My only complaint against The Flute of Arcady (Stanley Paul) is that Miss Kate Horn, who wrote it, seems somewhat to have disregarded the classic advice of Mr. Curdle to Nicholas Nickleby in the matter of observing the unities. It struck me, indeed, that she had begun it as a Cinderella-tale and then found that there wasn't enough of this to go round. Thus the early chapters roused my sympathetic interest for Charlotte Clairvaux (the bullied companion of the hateful cat, Mrs. Menzies) and her admiring suitor, Dr. Shuckford. I felt deeply for poor Charlotte, and longed for the moment when the doctor, who was eminently desirable, would fold her in his manly arms. But this moment came confusingly early, in the third chapter, and left us with three-quarters of the book to to fill up. So Charlotte, for no reason—that I could see—but this of space, refuses her Shuckford, and off go she and Mrs. Menzies to Versailles, where they meet a good number of pleasantly-drawn people, and encounter a variety of adventures, some amusing some merely farcical. Without doubt Miss Horn has a pretty wit, but I admired its exercise far more in character than incident. There is, for example, a delightful new version of Mrs. Malaprop in the lady whose ambition it was "to live in a mayonnaise in a good part of London." I loved her, and the terrible French infant, and the nuns, and the old countess and the other Versailles folk. but of the incidents, fantastic adventures with elephants and such, one sometimes feels that their humour is, as the author says of M. de Lafontaine's smile, a thing the seemed to be jerked out by machinery. Yet I am bound to confess that it made me laugh. So why grumble?