February 2^, 191 8 
Land & Water 
21 
3ILLY GLADSTONE, 
THE OxrpRO rET. 
QLH. DIZZY, 
Books of the Week 
In the Days of Victoria. By Thomas F. Plowman. The 
Bodley Head. los. 6d. net. 
The Wandeperon a Thousand Hills. By Edith Wherry. 
John Lane. 6s. 
Our Miss Yorke. By Edwin Bateman Morris. Cassell. 
6s. net. 
Scandal. Bv Cosmo Hamilton. Hurst and Blackett. 
6s. net. 
BOOKS of well-told reminiscences are peculiarly 
welcome in these days, and hearty greetings will 
be accorded to Mr. Thomas Plowman for his 
111 the Days of Victoria — a poor title, by the wa\'. 
The autlior writes almost entirely of Oxford ; here 
he was born ; coming of age he was elected a freeman of the 
^aTr««.r,c B.ATTUE rof<TK£«M ^'^y'' 'aterhebe^ 
^MncriAMPiOKSKiPOfTHsitxcKtqutB^^raH ^"'^^^''^ associated 
'^ ' '"- "' '"■ -™i«i with the University. 
Hardly any event 
of importance occur- 
red in Oxford, or 
any personality of 
note visited Oxford, 
without Mr. Plow- 
inan being a spec- 
tator or auditor 
from 1850 onwards. 
In November 1864 
he was present in 
the Sheldonian 
■^^_ 'mi__ ■ ■■'' ^^^^^ Theatre and heard 
|K 'u T^ bHIt^ ^^^^I Dizzy's famous " I 
the angels " speech 
— a phrase which set 
all England laugh- 
ing, but which 
nevertheless ren- 
dered good service 
to the cause for 
which it w a|s 
uttered. This was 
Dizzy's peroration 
spoken amid an 
impressive silence, 
and it seems to 
have peculiar sigiiiticance in *hese disturbed times : 
When the turbulence is over — when the shout of triumph 
and the wail of agony are ahke stilled — when, as it were, 
the waters have subsided, the sacred heights of Sinai and 
Calvary are again revealed, and amid the wreck of thrones 
and tribunals, of extinct nations and abolished laws, man- 
kind, tried by so many sorrows, purified by so much suffering, 
and wise with such unprecedented experience, bows agaiii 
before the I^ivine truths that Omnipotence in His ineffable 
wisdom has entrusted to the custody and the promulgation 
of a chosen people. 
Dizzy's great rival Gladstone, Mr. Plowman lieard on many 
occasions ; " for real genuine oratory of the Demosthenes 
school Gladstone, when at red-heat was unsurpassable." 
We reproduce from this volume a political cartoon of 
these times ; it is d' awn in a different spirit to political 
cartoons to-day. Not a Uttlc of the social history of the 
University town is related in these pages ; of course, glimpses 
are given of Gown and Town rows ; the author was present 
at the first theatrical performance permitted by the University ; 
and there is a capital story of how Thackeray lost a Parlia- 
mentary election when everything seemed in his favour 
through a hot night and an open window at the Mitre. The 
last free election in 1868, when Sir William Harcourt, one of 
the sitting members was defeated, lasted a fortnight, and 
cost £12,000. We have changed that ! 
Originality is apparent in the title of Miss Edith Wherry's 
latest novel. The Wanderer on a Thousand Hills, and the 
promise of the title is fully confirmed by the book itself, 
which is thoroughly original, and must rank as one of the really 
important novels of the year. The story is that of a Chinese 
woman, whose baby girl, in accordance with the custom of 
The Fight for tl; nentary 
Championship in tlie 'Sixties 
infanticide at one time prevailing among certain of the 
Chinese, was drowned by its grandparents, whereupon fate 
sent to its mother a tiny boy, the son of a family of mis- 
sionaries. This boy was trained up by the Chinese woman 
as a scholar, being destined by her to take the place of laureate 
in the highest examinations at Pekin. To this honour the 
boy attained, only to find in the very day of attainment that 
he was not her son. 
The story, being devoid of the conventional " love " 
interest as a main motive — for the Chinese woman's love 
story is but a slight incident — is also unique in that it is a 
picture of Chinese life and customs drawn by one who knows 
China as few people know it. The old teaclier, the widowed 
woman stealing thi^ boy from the foreign devils, the avaricious 
Lu and his fiend of a wife. ;uid all the inliabitants of the 
N'illage of Benevolence and Virtue, are made real to the 
reader. There is shown, too, the different conception of life 
that rules in the East, as compared with precepts and practices 
of the West, and the net effect of the book is that one feels 
nearer to an understanding of the Chinese race, with its — to 
westerners — twisted views of life. The story, which ends as a 
matter of course in tragedy, since it concerns a hybrid being of 
European birth and Chinese training, never loses its grip on 
the reader ; story and scene are equally compelling, and the 
result is a book of rare charm and, one feels, almost photo- 
graphically 'clear presentment of people and things little 
known outside the land of their origin. 
It is claimed for Our Miss Yorke, by Edwin Morris, that it 
is the first novel m which the business woman has played the 
leading part ; the claim is, as Mark Twain said of the report of 
liis death, greatly exaggerated, but Miss Yorke is, all the same, 
a very entertaining person, more especially for the time that she 
confines herself strictly to business, in which she is a decided 
success. It is to be noted that the author does not attempt to 
make of her a super-woman, nor does he introduce business 
schemes which might strain the credulity of the reader. He 
is content to select his material from the ordinary routine of a 
well-conducted business office, and to show how by the exercise 
of initiative and common sense a woman may succeed just as 
well as a man. But, being himself a man, he is careful to show 
also that the business career, no matter how well a woman may 
succeed in it, can never be her real sphere of activity — it is at 
best a substitute, although she may fit herself for it so well 
as to compel the admiration of the men with whom she comes 
into contact, and may be just as capable as a man of seeing 
a deal to its best termination. 
A curious psychological phenomenon comes to light toward 
the end of this book : the author, having been concerned with 
making his heroine a good business being, and then turning to 
make the reader realise her as a woman, fails to convince ; it 
is not his fault, but is more the limitation of the work of fiction 
of normal length, in which is not space for picturing fully the 
many sides that go to make up a character. Our Miss Yorke as 
business woman is quite convincing and not a little attractive ; 
the same woman concerned with the real business of a 
woman's life is unconvincing, and not nearly so interesting. 
* * * 41 « 
When Mr. Cosmo Hamilton turns his hand to comedy the 
result is usually good ; in his latest book. Scandal, the comedy 
is very good indeed — it is a book to bear in mind for the 
hohday season — if ever such a season should come again. 
Beatrix Vanderdyke, a spoilt American heiress, in order to 
get out of a scrape that had come about through a surreptitious 
series of visits to a set of bachelor chambers, pleaded a 
secret marriage with another man whi) had chambers 
in the same building, and persuaded the other man 
to play up to the part of her husband before her parents. The 
complications following on this extraordinary step are rather 
impossible, but they make the gayest and most exciting reading 
though all the time one has the impression that even the author 
himself did not know what to do next with regrad to his charac- 
ters. Therein lies the only complaint one can possibly make 
against the book — the hand of the writer shows at times, rather 
than the characters themselves. But it is all very witty, and 
not a little wise ; the angered man, intent on getting even with 
the girl who entrapped him into confessing to a marriage that 
had never taken place, gradually develops — as he ought — into 
one wishing the marriage had taken place, and the book ends 
with a satisfactory solution to the problem set by Beatrix. 
It is among the most amusing of recent books. 
GOGGLES 
VOHD-SCREENS 
<Sc WINDOWS 
^.^^ ^^ 
THE ONUY ^ 
SAFETY CLASS 
