18 
LAND 6? WATER 
October 3, 1918 
The Reader's Diary 
Recent Novels 
IT is not like Mr. Wells, who, if he is anything, is acutely 
alive to the latest turn of circumstances, to write his 
longest novel in the middle of a paper. shortage. But 
Joan and Peter (Cassells, gs. net) is written ; and it is 
really only by quite modern standards that its length 
is unusual. Much of the shrugging of shoulders and half- 
humorous complaint that it has evoked has been purely 
mechanical. As I have said before, the fault of most modern 
novelists is that they tell their stories in just as few words 
as will make (to the eye) a decent volume. 
But though he has "only allowed himself a space that no 
serious novelist need be ashamed of taking, Mr. Wells's 
book is, in another sense, undeniably too long. A great 
many of its 750 pages are filled with a froth that severe 
examination reduces to a very few drops of useful liquid. 
And many of the incidents are superfluous or are developed 
to an unnecessary length. The excess of energy which led 
Mr. Wells to satirise the foibles of the late Victorians is a 
thing to be deplored. It led him to waste his time ; for not 
only are the late Victorians dead, but their foibles died 
before them. Nevertheless, though its bulk is somewhat 
dropsical, this is probably the best novel Mr. Wells has 
written since The New Machiavelli. Its scope is in essence 
the same, though it takes two persons as protagonists instead 
of one, and leaves them earlier and happier. It illustrates 
the endeavour of Joan and Peter, children born in the early 
'nineties, to adjust themselves to this confusing modern 
world and to find their places in it. And it makes also, 
through the mouth of the guardian, Oswald Sydenham, a 
commentary on the failure of the modern world to provide 
a decent education not only for its poorer inhabitants, but 
equally for those whom Sydenham calls the "ehte" — the 
persons whose means enable them to have the best that is 
going. 
I confess that the commentary leaves me puzzled as to 
whether Mr. Wells intends it for a serious contribution to 
the educational problem. Sydenham is so easily baffled and 
produces nothing whatever of a positive nature as an alterna- 
tive to the present state of affairs. But this, on the whole, 
matters very little. Mr. Wells's true line — if he would only 
admit it — does not lie in the solution of problems or t"he 
discussion of ideas, but in the delineation of manners. Twice, 
in Tono-Bungay and The New Machiavelli, he has painted to 
admiration great sections of our own times. In neither of 
these books did he produce any new idea which could con- 
ceivably be of the slightest use to a reformer ; nor is it his 
business to do so. His ^genius lies in the fact that he 
can catch the decade on 'the wing and fix it for ever, so 
that any fool henceforward can see it steadily and see it 
whole. 
The story which he uses for these purposes means nothing 
to him or to us. I confess to not caring a tinker's curse 
whether Peter married Joan or not. As a matter of fact, 
Mr. Wells's characters, principal and secondary alike, all 
have a certain shadowiness. He understands generations or 
groups better than he understands individuals. But this is 
not a matter for reproach against him. His gift is a very 
special and very valuable one indeed ; and, if one knows 
his persons only as acquaintances and never intimately, one 
does get from him a clear conception of the general drift of 
a vast crowd of people whom one seems to know quite well 
by sight. The general impressions given of such institutions 
as the third-rate boarding-school in which Peter made a 
brief sojourn, the studio and night-club set in which Peter 
and Joan moved in the year before the war, and the R.F.C. 
in which Peter served as a pilot, are most e.xcellently con- 
ceived and rendered. England ^in 1903, as it presented 
itself, confused and chaotic, to Oswald Sydenham on his 
return from opening up Central Africa, is an admirable 
picture ; and the beginning of the war, a pageant of fateful 
events which has been painted too frequently, has not often 
been painted so well as here. As usual, Mr. Wells throws 
into the heap innumerable characters, smaller than minor, 
described in a phrase or two ; and some of these are ex- 
quisitely sketched. Of the more elaborate humorous por- 
traits, the aesthetic aunts, Phyllis and Phoebe, are well done ; 
but Lady Charlotte Sydenham, a sort of embodiment of the 
Morning Post, often very funny in a farcical way, is laboured 
on the whole. Taking a general view, the book, with its 
large pictures and wealth of rich detail, is a book such as 
only Mr. Wells could have written. 
A Romance of the Trenches 
In a diffident preface, Mr. John Lane introduces The Love 
of an Unknoicn Soldier (Lane, 3s. 6d. net) as a manuscript 
found in a deserted dug-out. Its publication was suggested 
to the finder and to himself, he says, by the feeling that it 
properly belonged to the nameless American lady who inspired 
it. They could imagine no better way of bringing its exist- 
ence to iier notice ; and they are waiting for her to claim her 
property. They imagine that the writer must be dead. It 
consists of a series of unposted letters written by art English 
officer to an American lady, whom he had met in America, 
and again in Paris, where he was on leave and she engaged 
in war work. He fell in love with her, but, having always 
deplored war-marriages, forbore to tell her so, and wrote 
these pages as an outlet for his emotions. His story is told 
with simplicity and feeling ; and it giVcs, incidentally, 
another plain little tale of life at the front. But certain 
considerations, which appear to have escaped Mr. Lane, 
have occurred to me. He says that many divisions had 
been in the area where the manuscript was found, and that 
it would be impossible to trace the batteries of the various 
brigades which had occupied those gun-pits. But, though 
it is true that the writer gives neither his name nor his unit, 
he does provide several clues to his own identity. He was a 
subaltern in the artillery. He was of good social position, 
had been at Oxford, had been a Member of Parliament, and 
had resigned his seat. He was a member of the British 
jVIission to America. His battery contained two officers 
whose names are given. Bill Lane and Jack Holt. Perhaps 
inquiries made on these converging lines would have revealed 
the author without the drastic step of publishing these 
intimate confidences ;. and then the simple expedient of an 
advertisement in, say, the Paris edition of the A' eze' York 
Herald wc-uld probably have produced the lady. But, on 
the other hand, the confidences may not be so intimate, 
.after all. Yet another possibility occurs to me. The 
manuscript, though found in a dug-out under circumstances 
of mystery, is not- necessarily a genuine confession. It is 
quite possible that a gunner-subaltern had been amusing 
himself with an essay in fiction, and is at this moment 
deploring tl e absent-mindedness which led him to leave his 
promising fledglirg behind him. If so, I trust he will turn 
up to take his royalties. He is not without skill as a writer. 
Mr. Lucas's Essays 
I confess without shame that I have not yet read the 
whole of Mr. Lucas's eighth volume of essays, 'Twixt Eagle 
ami Dove (Methuen, 6s. net). The reviewer who would 
think it necessary to sit down and solemnly read through a 
new book by Mr. Lucas before writing about it would be a 
man hardened beyond all decency by much devouring of 
books. I have dipped into it, and read here a page and there 
a whole essay ; and I am prepared to certify that it is the 
genuine stuff. Does a tea-taster drink the whole pot before 
pronouncing an opinion ? I state with confidence my belief 
that this is the way to test Mr. Lucas, and the way he himself 
would choose. 
The ingredients are as usual^ — anecdotes, London streets 
and the things that happen in them, the animals in the Zoo, 
odd old books, dogs, and I know not what else. The prin- 
ciple of mixture is also as usual ; and it is difficult to think 
of any other 'essayist in these times who can fling together a 
charming trifle — or give charm to a triviality— with so little 
effort as Mr. Lucas. He can make his essay out of the slen- 
derest joke or incident — a picture that was injured by a 
bird, a lady telling fortunes by cards, a girl in a music-hall 
with three soldiers, his own resemblance to some one slse. 
One of his secrets is that he always knows when to stop, 
and almost always stops very soon. He hops from subject 
to subject like a bird, never staying long anywhere, but 
always leaving a swaying twig behind him. For myself, 
I think I like the conqueror of the cinematograph as well as 
anything that Mr. Lucas has discovered. It was a horse, 
which was intended to look ill ; but though you may have a 
million-dollar production and an all-star cast at will, you cannot 
persuade a horse to look ill when it is feeling well. That is 
the sort of discovery that, one feels, could come only to Mr. 
Lucas. If so, it is just as well. No one else could describe 
it exactly as he does ; or weave round so slight a joke so 
many words without using just a few words too many. 
Peter Bell. 
