Oliver, the hero of The Woman who Looked Back (Stanley), seems to have been a person of exceptional credulity. Having as a boy married a quite undesirable foreigner, he subsequently went to India, and on his return accepted without question his mother's statement that he was a widower. So he married Sara, the heroine of the tale, and lived in great placidity for soine eight years with her, till the expected happened, and the discovery of an old letter proved that wife No. 1 was very much alive. It is at this dramatic crisis that M. Hamilton raises the curtain upon his (or her) story. If I treat it with flippancy it is not from any dislike of it; on the contrary it seems to me both interesting and human, especially human. The dialogue is profoundly and movingly natural; in every chapter I have felt that, given the postulated situation, the characters would talk exactly thus, which simply means that M. Hamilton is an adept in her (or his) art. The situation is complicated by the fact that, though Oliver had accepted his second marriage as an ideally happy one, Sara in her secrot heart was becoming monstrously bored. Indeed in a soft, play-with-fire fashion she believed herself in love with Oliver's friend George, who himself adored her passionately. Naturally, therefore, when the bomb burst and Sara was no longer the wife of anybody, George thought his moment had come. I shall not carry the story of their three-cornered fight further. It remains three-cornered. Contrary to every accepted custom, the original and only genuine wife never once appears upon the stage. This strikes me as constituting a record in the avoidance of the scène-à-faire. Incidentally also it confirms me in my opinion of M. Hamilton as an author of originality and honesty, whose picture of Sara in particular shows that she understands a great deal about her own sex.
My enjoyment of a book that is frankly a study on a special subject is always limited by the interest of the subject itself, however prettily the theme be embroidered. The most eloquent disquisition on postage stamps, for example, would leave me unmoved. Margaret Peterson needs no introduction as a most eloquent writer on things Indian; yet "Eurasia," her set study in Tony Bellew (Melrose)—I am not likening it to philately, and should be sorry to be disrespectful to either—so swamps her story, and is in itself so little agreeable, that I cannot feel much enthusiasm for her latest work. That it is dry and barren cannot be said of a single page; indeed, I could even wish that such adjectives might be applicable here and there as a relief from the—shall I say?—clammy fungoid atmosphere that permeates, and is intended to permeate, the world that lies between the covers of this volume. The central figure—certainly not hero, and wanting something to be man—exhales in his fickle violences just this miasma; and rightly so, if the general conception of the book be just, for he is born of a Bengali mother. Even his final sacrifice to save Joan, herself about the only character one would care to meet, is hysterical and unnecessary, and does little to redeem him. I would gladly believe that the picture of her unpleasant experiences is as false as, I think you will agree, it is on the whole ugle and unsympathetic; thought I admit that a lack of sympathy is as much against the intention of the writer as a certain unpleasantness is the deliberate object of her able craftsmanship. I must place it in your hands at that, with the advice to read of pass by according to your interest in the subject.
The Wise Virgins (Arnold) is one of those quaint old-world stories of the day when there were artists and individualists who despised convention and the stiffness of ordinary morality and wanted to realise themselves and occupied quite a lot of our attention. To read it is to plunge back through the mists of time into the early summer of 1914 A.D. And even then I have my doubts as to whether I should have been persuaded to share the sympathy which L. F. Woolf appears to feel for Harry Davis, the young Richstead painter. The two types of people among whom his lot is cast are cleverly if much too bitterly and unkindly contrasted—the Garlands, pre-eminently suburban, unable and (all except Gwen) unwilling to leave their monotonous groove, and the Lawrences, too cultured and full of aesthetic sensibilities to do anything but sit still and talk. Harry combines the aesthetic sense with a restless vitality which he attributes to his Jewish origin, and is desirous of action and enterprise. And so, rejected by Camilla Lawrence, he talks to Gwen until she almost compels him to compromise her, and the book closes with the mockery of a forced marriage in deference to the sentiments of Philistia. In spite of some skilful and penetrating satire, I fancy that 1915 will consider The Wise Virgins neither a very nice nor a very necessary book.
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Teashop Waitress (feeling the pinch of War). "Just look at that lot, Edna! Not five minutes' chat in the whole crowd."
IN A GOOD CAUSE.
The claims which have been made by Belgium upon the generosity of the British public have been eagerly met, but the needs of her Army do not seem to have been fully realised. If we owe one debt more than other it is to the fighting men among our Belgian allies. These brave fellows are still in want of warm clothing and those simple comforts—such as tobacco and chocolate—which sound so little and mean so much. Mr. Punch, at the risk of seeming importunate in his demands upon the goodness of his readers, begs them to give their help where it is so corely needed. Gifts in kind should be addressed to Commandant Maton, 23, City Road, E.C., and money gifts (perhaps the more useful form of help) to M. Vandervelde, Victoria Hotel, Northumberland Avenue, S.W.
The Honorary Secretary of the Queen's "Work for Women" Fund, 33, Portland Place, W., desires to express her gratitude to those who generously responded to Mr. Punch's appeal for this good cause.
