November 28, 1918 ' 
LAND 6^ WATER 
21 
Recent Novels 
MISS NETTA SYRETT is an old hand at the 
novel ; and The Wife of a Hero (Skeffington, 
6s. gd. net) has the deftness and accomplish- 
ment which one expects of her. It is, too, up 
to a certain point true and convincing. Anne 
Templeton, a not unattractive heroine, her huslard, Hugh, 
and Roger, her husband that should have been, are all well 
drawn. One believes in them, one has met them — though 
ft is a little difficult for a reviewer to sympathise very heartily 
with Anne's yearning for conversation about books. And 
the tangle into which they get themselves is also credible. 
Roger Neilson, a man verging on middle age, would hesitate 
and consider a little before asking Anne to marry him. Anne 
might very well, at the outbreak of war, feel a sudden revul- 
sion from the atmosphere of "culture" in which she had 
been brought up, and fall in love with a handsome, brainless 
young barbarian of a newly gazetted officer. She would 
also after the honeymoon discover what she had let herself 
in for, find that her husband's family had all his barbarism 
and none of his good looks, and find that his selfish and 
narrow character constantly irked her. Through all this 
tying of the knot Miss Syrett has done verj' well indeed, 
unfolding the development of her story with a rightly con- 
fident hand ; and she does not outrage probability in ascribing 
to Hugh relations with a placidly and vulgarly disreputable 
widow of thirty-five, relations which he resumes after marriage, 
when liis high-brow wife begins to bore him. I only revolt 
from Miss Syrett when she makes her widow the goddess out 
of the machine. For she represents Hugh, with considerable 
accuracy, as a man in whom laxity of conduct is combined 
with great strictness of views on the conduct of his own 
women ; and then she makes him anxious that Anne should 
divorce him and leave him free to marry the widow, who is 
to be the indispensable co-respondent. I can only say 
frankly that I find this quite impossible. As the widow 
engagingly remarks, it would only mean another week-end 
with him at Brighton and — the Hughs of this world do not 
behave in such a way. Besides, what would become of 
Hugh if he had married his widow ? It seems to me that, 
if we are to take Miss Syrett 's word for it that he was anxious 
to do so, the most interesting part of her story was only just 
beginning. I look beyond the last page and see Hugh, aged 
forty, and still narrower and more selfish than before, sitting 
over the fire with his fifty-year-old Lydia, discussing the 
details of her past. . . . 
Mr. Thomas Cobb's Captain Marraday's Marriage (Lane, 
6s. net) is another tale of a war- wedding ; and Mr. Cobb is 
another accomplished novelist. The form his accomplish- 
ment takes here is the firing ofif at us of a perfect feu de joie 
of well-known situations. The broken and impoverished 
rake who confides to his old boon companion the care of a 
twelve-year-old daughter, the guardian who falls in love 
with his ward, and the man who sacrifices himself by marry- 
ing in name only the woman he loves to do her a service, and 
who is persuaded only with difficulty that she really loves 
him — these are the situations which in this book succeed 
one another like the explosions of a cracker. But — I am over- 
come by the reflection that, if there are only thirty-six 
dramatic situations, there cannot be many more for the 
novel ; and if Mr. Cobb continues to use them up three 
at a time he will soon be reduced to repeating himself. 
In The Little Daughter of Jerusalem, by Myriam Harry, 
translated by Phoebe Allen (Dent, 6s. net), I take up a very 
different book from either of these. Here, such little plot as 
there is is almost entirely superfluous ; and the interest of 
the tale lies in the author's impressions of childhood in 
Jerusalem. Life in that city seems to have been various 
enough for the daughter of a Protestant Russian Jew and 
his German wife ; and it is impossible to read the book 
without being instructed in the extraordinary conflict of 
religions which exists in Palestine. But it is not for this 
that the book should be read. Whatever its setting, it 
would have been a most remarkable study of a child's life. 
With the bright colours and strange things ^nd people which 
make up its setting, it is a book of unusual and irresistible 
charm. 
The Humours of Legislation 
The onl}' fault I have to find with Mr. Spencer Leigh 
Hughes's Press, Platform, and Parliament (Nisbet, I2S. 6d. 
net) is that he makes life in the House of Commons set m much 
more amusing than it really can be. It was recently my 
duty, during a period of about twelve months, to read every 
morning with as much attention as I could manage, the 
official Reports of Parliamentary Debates ; and durirg that 
time the Reports drew from me two smiles, and ro more. 
On the first occasion, Mr. Hughes himself made a speech en 
— I think — the relations between the Goverrment and the 
Press. On the second, a member asked a Minister whether 
he was aware that a certain local sanitary inspector had 
been lately murdered by a milkman, and whether he was 
prepared to grant the inspector's widow a pension, seeirg 
that he had met his death in the execution of his duty, and 
in view of the necessity of maintaining a si<pplv of pure milk. 
Apart from these, I found nothing in the debates but dullness, 
punctuated by grammatical errors ; and, taking all things 
into consideration, I believe that the humour of which Mr. 
Hughes's book is certainly full, lies in himself rather than in 
the body of which he has the doubtful privilege to be a 
member. 
And yet the forms and language of Parlicment are of a 
sort that lends itself to the humorist, as is well illustrated by 
one of the best stories in this bock. An Irish rnfmbcr cnce 
wanted Mr. Balfour to tell him why an extra force of police 
had been sent to a certain district. Mr. Balfour replied that 
the movement had been neces.sitated by the member's own 
disturbing presence. The member protested that he had 
not been there. " I think," said Mr. Balfour, in suave official 
tones, "that the honourable gentleman is misinformed." Not 
enough Parliamentarians, however, have grasped the possi- 
bilities of corhedy in the well-worn formula : and for the 
most part, Mr. Hughes's good stories are of lapses, intentional 
or unintentional, from decorum or sense. He tells an excel- 
lent tale of a junior Minister who was put up in the absence 
of his chief to oppose two amendments to the Budget, and 
who was carefully instructed by a Treasurj- official in the 
answers he was to give. He proceeded, however, to answer 
the first amendment with the second set of reasons, and so 
confused his opponent that the amendment was withdrawn 
in bewilderment. To such sidelights on our statesmen, Mr. 
Hughes adds sidelights on our orators. In his varied collec- 
tion stands conspicuously the speaker who lost his head 
during an all-night sitting, and began by the words " At this 
late hour of last night," correcting himself impatiently with : 
"Well, of course, I mean at this early hour of to-morrow 
morning." And not much after him comes the poetic gentle- 
man who said : "But, sir, the well is running dry, and they 
think that by putting in the pruning-knife they will bring 
more grist to the mill." 
In Mr. Hughes's experience there seem to have been very 
few deliberately satirical hits in speeches worth quoting, 
such as can be found in profusion in the speeches of the 
eighteenth-century giants and of Disraeli. Yet there is one, 
complete, polished and telling, which deserves immortality! 
It comes from Mr. Asquith, who said, in 1906, when it was 
proposed to defer the Tariff Reform debate until both Mr. 
Joseph Chamberlaiij^and Mr. Balfour could attend: "We 
all feel that the debate on the fiscal question would be very 
incomplete in the absence of both the .right honourable 
gentlemen — it would be like playing Hamlet in the absence 
not only of the Prince of Denmark^ but also of the ghost." 
And a proxime accessit might well be awarded to the member 
who capped this with, " Where's the grave-digger ? " 
These extracts will perhaps give an idea of the character of 
Mr. Hughes's book. It is true that he gives the misleading 
impression that the House of Commons exceeds most revues 
in the quality of entertainment — not a very hard thing to do, 
by the way — but, on the other hand, it was not his business 
to write a sociological essay on the faculty of humour in 
politicians. It is his business, as it was for so many years 
in the lamented Sub Rosa, to amuse ; let those, there- 
fore, who desire to be amused, read Mr. Hughes instead 
of seeking to enter the House of Commons. Thev will find 
it cheaper an^d — more amusing. Peter Bell. 
