September 12, 1918 
LAND &> WATER 
15 
The Reader's Diary 
Recent Novels 
THE hero of Simpson of Snell's, by Mr. William 
Hewlett (Skeffington, 6s. net), is an invoicing 
clerk, who is launched on a career by the purchase 
of a briUiant necktie, which either — it is obscure, 
even, to Simpson — expresses the temperament of 
its wearer or confers the gift of a temperament on him. In 
due course, Simpson becomes a ledger-clerk at two pounds 
a week, and the husband of a wife who is still attached to a 
former faithless lover, and bound to him by the child he has 
given her. Thus great events from little causes spring — 
even in Peckham and the City. 
Mr. Hewlett is a novelist who handles well-worn situations 
in an unambitious but fresh and agreeable manner. It 
cannot be said that there is anything very new in Mr. Paradise, 
the elderly expansive actor, who aspires to play " Hamlet, " 
in Otley, the rascally young man of good family, who is sent 
into Snell's office after expulsion from school, and seduces 
the typist, Nancy, or even in Simpson himself, simple, honest, 
ignorant, aspiring, and "a true gentleman" at bottom, who 
forsakes his own love for the chivalrous purpose of making 
Nancy an honest woman. The ingredients are not new, 
and the pudding is of a recognised type ; but it passes the 
test of eating in a satisfactory manner. The author of this 
sort of novel can hardly help patronising his hero a little; 
and Simpson, in the misadventures of his search for tempera- 
ment and "toniness," calls for humour and pity. The 
patronising tone in Miss Elizabeth Kirby's Little Miss Mtcffet 
(Duckworth, 6s. net) is rather more irritating. Miss Muffet 
was brought up in a country rectory, and was so unfortunate 
as to fall in with the works of the modern novelists, which 
drove her to seek Life and London and the Literary Career. 
So she dined with a stockbroker in a private room at the 
Caf^ Rouge, and played at bears with Philip Hungerford, 
the elderly, famous, and emancipated author of Emancipation, 
in his flat. In the course of these adventures, she found that 
she could not behave like Hungerford's passionate heroines, 
and that no one made love to her in the way that these young 
ladies were entitled to expect. So she confessed to a bishop, 
and fell in love witli a doctor, who had prescribed a rest-cure 
for her over-wrought nerves. Certainly Miss. Muffet was 
silly enough to deserve all the patronising condescension 
which Miss Kirby bestows on her. But, after all, the works 
'of the modem novelists, though frequently maudlin, are 
hardly as maudlin as Miss Kirby represents them to be ; 
and their dupes cannot often be so childish as Miss Muffet. 
.\s a satire, the book is forcible- feeble ; and it is written 
throughout with a playful superiority that grows very 
annoying. 
The works of "Bartimeus" are too well known, perhaps, 
to call for any elaborate comment at this date ; but their 
re-issue in a uniform edition is a welcome event, which must 
be noted. The three volumes. Naval Occasions, A TalL Ship, 
and The Long Trick (Cassell, 5s. net each) certainly make a 
series of naval pictures which stands out among those which 
haye been produced in great plenty by the war. Naval 
Occasions w'as first published, happily enough, in August, 
1914, and was taken up eagerly then by those who felt that 
it was with the Navy first that England wheeled' into the line 
of battle. This volume deals with the Navy in time of peace, 
and the two succeeding volumes show, with the same know- 
ledge, the same light and certain touch, the same power of 
getting an atmosphere, how the Navj' adapted itself to war 
conditions, and remained the same service, the same body 
of men. Si.nce "Bartimeus" became popular, we have had 
^ great many volumes of sketches of both Army and Fleet. 
It is rarely, however, that we have had just this combination 
of long experience and a literary skill, which came into play 
naturally and was not matured in haste by an overwhelming 
popular demand. The sailors, whose jest and earnest make 
up two collections of sketches and one novel, are real men, 
known intimately over a long period. "Bartimeus" does not 
set down a superficial account of their qualities and peculiari- 
ties, as though they were some strange animals of whom he 
had made a hasty survey. Nor does he foist off mere types 
on his readers for the gen"hine thing. His Torps and the 
Indiarubber Man and the Young Doctor are real people, 
as are also their womenfolk ; and their adventures, always 
varied, often exceedingly funny and sometimes touching, 
which end appropriately with the Battle of Jutland, are real 
adventures. In their new shape, they should add to their 
previous popularity. 
An Admiral's Memoirs 
Some Recollections, by Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge (Murray, 
I2S. net), follows "Bartimeus" fitly. Sir Cyprian has had 
a long and distinguished career of public service which ranges 
from the blockade of Archangel in the Crimean War to the 
Mesopotamian Commission in 1916 ; and the Navy, when he 
first joined it, was organised in a manner very different from 
that which obtains to-day. Then, when a captain was given 
a ship, it was left to him to find his own crew ; and as soon as 
he had hoisted his pendant, generallyon a boat-hook, for the 
ship was most likely mastless, a lively private recruiting 
campaign followed, with posters and bargains with seamen 
.as to the ratings in which they were to be employed. Sir 
Cyprian gives a specimen of the appeals which were employed : 
Come, my lads, don't be silly. 
Pick up your bags and join the Lily. 
a couplet not inferior to the inducements composed by more 
expert hands in recent days. Then, also, there was no 
general uniform for anyone under the rank of officer ; and 
crews were dressed according to the fancy of each individual 
captain, who, in addition, provided the crew of his own gig 
with a special distinctive uniform— in one case, says Sir 
Cyprian, "a sort of kilt made of duck and reaching nearly 
to the knee like that worn by a stage pirate." Thirty-three 
years after he first joined. Sir Cyprian commanded the 
Colossus, the first ship in commission which was armed with 
i2-inch breech-loading gims ; and his gunnery-lieutenant was 
Lord Jellicoe. Between these two points lies a store of 
varied and entertaining recollections, too many and too 
miscellaneous to be summarised here. Sir Cyprian had the 
good luck to be in San Francisco just after the Vigilance 
Committee organised a rising against the political boss, 
Casey, formed an army, took Casey out of gaol, where he 
had been, placed for. safety, and hanged him out of hand. 
He was also privileged to be present when Prince Wellington, 
heir to King George Tubuo of Tonga, observed, on seeing a 
new mechanical device in the engine-room : " How small is 
the mind of man ! How great are its works ! " Indeed, his 
experience of the intelligence of royalty was fortunate, for 
he records also hearing from the Duke of Edinburgh, then 
commanding the Mediterranean station, "a short lecture 
on the equipment of lighthouses, lightships, and illuminated 
buoys," which he found "interesting and instructive" — 
perhaps illuminating, as well. 
Dora Sigcrson 
In a memoir prefixed to Dora Sigerson's (Mrs. Clement 
Shorter's) volume of posthumous poems, The Sad Tears 
(Constable, 5s. net), Miss Tynan says that Dora Sigerson 
attributed her breakdown in health to her distress at the 
events following Easter Week, 1916, in Dublin. Certain it is 
that these pieces betray a genuine and ungovernable emotion — 
an emotion not controlled by the verse in which it is partially 
expressed. Thus her summary of "the sad years" : 
Hands, hands, hands, tearing, grasping, slaying. 
Cold, stiff, still, soothing, strangling, praying, 
Feet, feet, feet, running, toiling, stamping. 
Crushing, killing, falling, stumbling, tramping. 
is almost rather the raw material of poetry than poetry 
itself — but, still, a raw material of real value. And all 
Mrs. Shorter's work has, and always had, this quality of 
roughness, of an imperfect finish, which makes it not dis- 
appointing, but intensely, almost painfully, personal. Her 
metres jolt, her rhymes are faulty, her diction is sometimes 
awkward, sometimes very loosely fitted to the thought. Her 
poetry is like a smoky fire, through which sometimes, as if by 
chance, a flame strikes fine though imperfect. Such are 
the lines : 
I saw cliildren playing, dancing in a ring. 
Till a voice came calling, calUng one away ; 
With'sad backward glances she went loitering. 
Hoping they would miss her and so cease to play. 
Pettishly and pouting, "'Tis not time to sleep." 
I Sobbing and protesting, slowly she did go ; 
But her merry comrades they all run and leap, 
Feeling not her absence, heeding not her woe. 
The connoisseurs of well-turned verse will not care, perhaps, 
for this work, the jottings of a poet who never troubled to 
learn to write ; but there is feeling in it, and feeling sometimes 
poignantly conveyed by its own intensity and even its own 
clumsiness. Peter Bell. 
