September 5, 1918 
LAND 6P WATER 
The Reader's Diary 
15 
Recent Novels 
THE rambling diary-novel, a form of composition 
worked to its fullest extent by the author of 
Elizabeth and Her German Garden, gives in a few 
hands opportunities ior writing of a very pleasant 
and agreeable sort. The essence of it is that the 
author should have a strong sense of humour, and should not 
be ambitious ; and both these conditions are fulfilled by 
Miss Marjorie Grant, whose Verdun Days in Paris (Collins, 
6.S. net) revolves round the life of a French canteen. Miss 
Grant essays no plot, unless the diarist's own love-affair 
with an English officer or the marriage of her intellectual 
cousin Clara to a French refornte, who take up the profession 
of ta.xi-driving, can be counted in that category. But a 
plot in the proper sense would be only detrimental to the 
amiable and ambling progress of a diary in which the more 
pleasant side of Paris in war-time is reflected. The canteen 
and its habitues — the serveuses, the distrihittrices, the soldiers, 
the refugees — are described with a quite charming touch ; 
and the Russian hospital on the Riviera, run by princesses, 
and the Hopital-Hotel des Palmiers et des Roses, with its 
amateur masseuse, make a pleasing interlude of satirical 
comedy. But in tliis book, as in others of its kind, success 
depends not on the intrinsic interest of what the diarist 
describes, but on her power of turning all the w'orld around 
her into friendly ridicule ; and this Miss Grant performs with 
a reasonably delicate touch. Her Milburn family, who " look 
at you, paUid and wispy and emotionless, and declare that 
■ they have had cecent halcyon moments on an exhaustive 
walking tour, or'sleeping all night at Stonehenge, or doing 
research work of some sort, or preparing lantern-slides of 
early Christian art," are none the less enjoj'able because one 
recognises them easily. It is easily possible, even in these 
days of restricted publishers' lists, to do worse than spend 
an hour or two over Miss Grant's gentle and humorous 
diary. 
1 seem to have read, before Mr. Cyril Russell's Wren's 
Wife (Collins, 6s. net), novels in which a young lady passed 
over the horlest, humble narrator of the story, married a 
drunkard, suffered in her life with him and was set free at 
last for the marriage which she would have made at first, 
if only she could, as we can, have turned to the last chapters 
at oncfe instead of going through them one by one. I seem 
also to remember that the honest, humble narrator was 
insulted by the drunken husband, and put up with it for the 
lady's sake, and that also, in contradiction of his manifest 
interests, he made efforts to persuade the drunkard to reform. 
And, frankly, I do not think that Mr. Russell ever had any 
chance of doing anything much with these well-worn elements 
of a story. I do not mean every novelist ought to invent a 
fine new plot ,for each of his new novels. Any such necessity 
would circumscribe the industry to an unbearable degree. 
But if he has nothing new in his situation he ought to have 
sometliing new in his characters ; and I do not perceive in 
Mr. Russell any very striking ability in characterisation. 
It is true that he gets a slightly original twist at the end, 
when the perverse drunkard makes a bet with the narrator 
that he will disappear for six months, and so leaves all the 
persons of the story in doubt as to w;hether they can accept 
the scanty evidences of his suicide. But the narrator is the 
same old narrator, the drunkard the same old drunkard, and 
the wife the same old wife ; and Mr. Russell, though he can 
write skilfully, does not succeed in making them very inter- 
esting. 
In Adventure oj Bindle (Jenkins, 6s. net), Mr. Herbert 
Jenkins presents us with a fresh set of episodes from the life 
of a personage who seems to have had already a pretty con- 
siderable run. The popularity of his previous appearances 
rather stifles criticism ; and I almost hesitate to own, there- 
fore, that I cannot enrol myself in the goodly company of 
those who rejoice uproariously over the adventures of Joseph 
Bindle, the Cockney furniture remover. To be honest, I 
find his humour a little fhin, his escapades a little mechanical, 
and the whole atmosphere of the book more than a little 
dreary. But Bindle has been a success ; and his admirers 
will find that in this book he maintains his usual level. He 
figures in turn as the foiler of a Suffragette raid, porter in a 
block of flats, waiter in a restaurant (where he warms the 
champagne with disastrous results), and benevolent protector 
of his niece Milly Hearty, whom he rescues from the designs 
of a snivelling Scotch minister, and bestows in marriage on 
the worthy Sergeant Dixon. Blessed be they all ! 
The Title 
The habit of reading plays apparently continues to grow ; 
and Mr. Arnold Bennett's The Title (Chatto & Windus, 
3S. 6d. net) is a very favourable specimen of the play in book 
form. It is a sort of war-time revue. The characters 
include Culver, the Controller of Accounts, his personal 
clerk, his daughter, who is a clerk in the Ministry of Food, 
and writes under a pseudonym polemical articles against the 
Government, and an independent newspaper proprietor, who 
is a nephew of the magnates who control the popular news- 
paper press. And the dialogue is highly topical. There is 
hardly a current joke provoked by the conditions of war 
among the civihan population that Mr. Bennett has not 
woven adroitly into it. John, Hildegarde's schoolboy 
brother, remarks that when she had "spent all her dress 
allowance and got into debt besides, about a year and a 
half ago, she suddenly remembered she wasn't doing much 
to help the war, and so she went into the Food Ministry as a 
typist at thirty-five shillings a week. Next she learnt 
typing." Tranto, the newspaper owner, accuses Mrs. Culver 
of "undergoing a course of Pelman with those sixty generals 
and forty admirals," and confesses that "Fve been boarded 
five times, and on the unimpeachable authority of various 
R.A.M.C. colonels I've been afflicted with valvular disease 
of the heart, incipient tuberculosis, rickets, varicose veins, 
diabetes — practically everything, except spotted fever and 
leprosy. And now flat feet are added to the rest." And 
Culver complains: "Good Heavens, I haven't even spoken 
to any member of the War Cabinet yet. I've been trying to 
for about a year ; but, in spite of powerful influences to help 
me, I've never been able to bring off a meeting with the 
mandarins." All this means that, instead of essaying, 
whether from a comic or a tragic point of view, something 
serious and solid upon civihan England in war time, Mr. 
Bennett has written a fragile but vivacious ^entertainment 
round the slender question whether Culver shall accept a 
baronetcy in the unsavoury company of the usual members 
of the Honours List or alienate his wife and his personal 
clerk by refusing it. And, as usual, Mr. Bennett has done 
precisely what he set out to do. No man ever chose a target 
more carefully than he ; and he shows here his habitual 
wisdom in leaving the ■further and the mistier mark for a 
future occasion. The play is said to have been performed 
to the great satisfaction of the audience. I can testify that 
it makes very agreeable reading ; and there is one point in 
particular in its appearance as a book that appeals to me. 
Mr. Bennett has discarded superbly all that old-fashioned 
nonsense of elaborate stage-directions for the reader's benefit. 
Tranto is introduced with the terse and sufficient phrase, 
"Enter Tranto, back" ; and if you want to know the colour 
of Tranto's hair or his manner of walking into a room, you 
must go to the theatre and find out for yourself. 
Other Volumes 
Dr. Muehlons*Diary (Hodder & Stoughton, 5s. net) stands 
very appropriately by the side of Mr. C. Grant Robertson's 
Bismarck (Constable, los. 6d. net), a new volume in the 
series called "Makers of the "Nineteenth Century." Dr. 
Muehlon was a director of Krupp's at the outbreak of war, 
and condemned with all his heart the German plot of which 
he took very much the view that the Allies have consistently 
taken. And Bismarck, Mr. Robertson shows, was the man 
who made that plot possible, who forced again on a Europe 
which was beginning to outgrow it the doctrine that "reasons 
of state" necessarily outweigh all other considerations of 
justice or morality. It is true, as Mr. Robertson points out, 
that the policy of WUliarn II. is not the pohcy of Bismarck, 
who would hardly have willed the present situation ; but it 
is equally true, as Mr. Robertson again insists, that it is a 
policy founded on the ideals which Bismarck made to prevail. 
How much this is so is proved by the disclosures of Dr. 
Muehlon, who finds his emperor guilty, though he beheves 
him to have been led into an error of judgment by Austrian 
intrigues ; but Dr. Muehlon also proves that not every 
thinking man in Germany is guided by the gospel according 
to Bismarck. His book is all the more valuable and more 
convincing because it deals some shrewd strokes at the 
Allies ; and Mr. Robertson's brilliant analysis of Bismarck's 
career provides a remarkable historical introduction to it 
and to the situation in which we find ourselves to-day. 
Peter Bell. 
