Tourcoing Part 7

=SOME OLD ENGLISH WORTHIES.= Thomas of Reading, George a Green, Roger Bacon, Friar Rush. Edited with notes and introduction by DOROTHY SENIOR.

Medium 8vo, cloth. 10s. 6d. net.

=BY DIVERS PATHS.= By ELEANOR TYRRELL, ANNIE MATHESON, MAUDE P. KING, MAY SINCLAIR, Professor C. H. HERFORD, Dr. GREVILLE MACDONALD, and C. C.

COTTERILL. New Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt. 3s. 6d. net. A volume of natural studies and descriptive and meditative essays interspersed with verse.

=IN DEFENCE OF AMERICA.= By BARON VON TAUBE. Crown 8vo, cloth. 5s. net.

This very remarkable book gives the American point of view in reply to criticisms of "Uncle Sam" frequently made by representatives of "John Bull." The author, a Russo-German, who has spent many active years in the United States, draws up about thirty "popular indictments against the citizens of Uncle Sam's realm," and discusses them at length in a very original and dispa.s.sionate way, exhibiting a large amount of German critical ac.u.men together with much American shrewdness. Both "Uncle Sam"

and "John Bull" will find in the book general appreciations of their several characteristics and not a few valuable suggestions.

FICTION

Crown 8vo, cloth. 6s. each

=LADY ERMYNTRUDE AND THE PLUMBER.= By PERCY FENDALL. This is a tale fantastical and satirical, of the year 1920, its quaint humours arising out of the fact that a Radical-Socialist Government has pa.s.sed an Act of Parliament requiring every man and woman to earn a living and to live on their earnings. There are many admirable strokes of wit dispersed throughout, not the least of these being the schedule of charges which the king is permitted to make, for he also, under the Work Act, is compelled to earn a living.

=AN EXCELLENT MYSTERY.= By Countess RUSSELL. The scene opens in Ireland with a fascinating child, Will-o'-the-Wisp, and a doting father. A poor mother and a selfish elder sister drive her to a marriage which has no sound foundation. The husband turns out eccentric, unsympathetic, and even cowardly. Will-o'-the-Wisp has to face at a tender age and with no experience the most serious and difficult problems of s.e.x, motherhood and marriage. Then with the help of friends, her own good sense and determination, and the sensible divorce law of Scotland, she escapes her troubles. This forms the conclusion of an artless but thrilling narrative.

=A NIGHT IN THE LUXEMBOURG= (Une Nuit au Luxembourg). By REMY DE GOURMONT.

Crown 8vo, cloth. 5s. net. With preface and appendix by Arthur Ransome. M.

Remy de Gourmont is, perhaps, the greatest of contemporary French writers.

His books are translated into all languages but ours. "Une Nuit au Luxembourg" is the first of his works to appear in English, and will be followed by others. It will certainly arouse considerable discussion. It moves the reader with something more than a purely aesthetic emotion.

=HUSBAND AND LOVER.= By WALTER RIDDALL. In this book is given a discerning study of a temperament. The author has taken an average artistic man and laid bare his feelings and impulses, his desires and innermost thoughts under the supreme influence of s.e.x. Frankness is the key-note of the work; its truth will be recognised by everyone who faces the facts of his own nature and neither blushes nor apologises for them.

=THE CONSIDINE LUCK.= By H. A. HINKSON. The Considine Luck is primarily a story of the Union of Hearts, an English girl's love affair with an Irishman, and the conflict of character between the self-made man who is the charming heroine's father and the Irish environment in which he finds himself. The writer can rollick with the best, and the Considine Luck is not without its rollicking element. But it is in the main a delicate and serious love story, with its setting in the green Irish country, among the poetical, unpractical people among whom Mr. Hinkson is so thoroughly at home.

=A SUPER-MAN IN BEING.= By LITCHFIELD WOODS. Both in its subject-matter and craftsmanship this is an arresting piece of work. It is not, in the usual sense, a story of love and marriage. Rather, it is the biographical presentment of Professor Snaggs, who has lost his eyesight, but who is yet known to the outside world as a distinguished historian. The revelation of the Professor's home life is accomplished with a literary skill of the highest kind, showing him to be a combination of super-man and super-devil, not so much in the domain of action as in the domain of intellect. An extraordinary situation occurs--a problem in psychology intensely interesting to the reader, not so much on its emotional as on its intellectual side, and is solved by this super-man in the domain of intellect.

=GREAT POSSESSIONS.= By Mrs. CAMPBELL. A story of modern Americans in America and England, this novel deals with the suffering bequeathed by the malice of a dead man to the woman he once loved. In imposing upon her son the temptations of leisure and great wealth he is a means of making him a prey to inherited weakness, and the train of events thus set in motion leads to an unexpected outcome. The author is equally familiar with life in either country, and the book is an earnest attempt to represent the enervating influences of a certain type of existence prevailing among the monied cla.s.ses in New York to-day.

=THE DARKSOME MAIDS OF BAGLEERE.= By WILLIAM KERSEY. A delightful novel of Somerset farming-life. Although a tragedy of the countryside, it is at the same time alive with racy country humour. The character drawing is clear and strong, and the theme is handled with the restraint of great tragedy.

This book is of real literary value--in fact, it recalls to our minds the earlier works of Thomas Hardy.

PLAYS

=THE KING.= A Daring Tragedy. By STEPHEN PHILLIPS, Crown 8vo, cloth. 2s.

6d. net. Don Carlos, heir to the throne of Spain, learns that Christina, a young lady of the Court, with whom he is secretly in love, is really his sister. The gloom of the tragedy is deepened by the discovery that Christina is about to be a mother. Brother and sister, who are at the same time husband and wife, die by the same dagger. The king, who has already abdicated in favour of his son, whom he desired to marry the Princess of Spain, resolves to put an end to his life also, but is persuaded by his minister that the task of living as king will be a greater punishment for all the misery he has created. The story is developed with skill, reticence, simplicity, in solemn harmonies and with tragic beauty.

=SHAKESPEARE'S END AND TWO OTHER IRISH PLAYS.= By CONAL O'RIORDAN (Norreys Connell). Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. Mr. O'Riordan, who is better known by his nom-de-guerre of "Norreys Connell," which has served him for twenty years, has brought together in this volume the three plays in which he has given expression to his view of the relation between England and Ireland.

In a prefatory letter to Mr. Joseph Conrad he presents a synthesis of the trilogy, and explains why this, of his several books, is the first which he wishes to a.s.sociate with his proper name.

UNCLa.s.sIFIED

=OH, MY UNCLE!= By W. TEIGNMOUTH Sh.o.r.e, author of "The Talking Master,"

"D'Orsay," etc. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net. Wit, fun, frolic, fairy tale, nonsense verses, satire, comedy, farce, criticism; a touch of each, an _olla podrida_ which cannot be cla.s.sified. It certainly is not history, yet cannot fairly be put under the heading fiction; it is not realism, yet fairy-taleism does not fully describe it; it deals with well-known folk, yet it is not a "romance with a key"; it is not a love story, yet there is love in it; in short, again, it cannot be cla.s.sified. It is a book for those who love laughter, yet it is not merely frivolous. It deals with the lights of life, with just a touch now and again of delicate shadow. One thing may safely be said--Miss Blue-Eyes and Uncle Daddy will make many friends.

STEPHEN SWIFT & CO., LTD.

Footnotes:

[1] These dates are important in another aspect of the matter--the authorship of the plan. I will, therefore, return to them in more detail at the close of this section.

[2] I pay no attention to the ridiculous suggestion that the delay was due to the contemporary peril in Poland, and to Thugut's anxiety to have Austrian troops in the east rather than on the western frontier. People who write modern history thus seem to forget that the electric telegraph did not exist in the eighteenth century. The more reasonable pretension that the Austrians hesitated between marching north to effect the plan against Souham, and marching east to relieve the pressure upon Kaunitz, who was hard pressed upon the Sambre, deserves consideration. But Kaunitz's despatch, telling how he had been forced to fall back, did not reach headquarters until the 12th, and if immediate orders had been given for the northern march, that march would have begun before the news of Kaunitz's reverse had arrived. The only reasonable explanation in this as in most problems in human history, is the psychological one. You have to explain the delay of George III.'s son, and Joseph II.'s nephew. To anyone not obsessed by the superst.i.tion of rank, the mere portraits of these eminent soldiers would be enough to explain it.

[3] Fortescue, vol. iv., part i., p. 255.

[4] After so many allusions to his youth, I may as well give the date of his birth. Frederick, Duke of York, the second son of King George III. of England, was not yet thirty when he suffered at Tourcoing, having been born in 1765. He had the misfortune to die in 1827.

[5] The reader not indifferent to comedy will hear with pleasure that, among various accounts of Kinsky's communication with the Arch-Duke Charles at this juncture, one describes that Royalty as inaccessible after the fatigue of the day. His colleague is represented as asking in vain for an interview, and receiving from a servant the reply "that his Imperial Highness must not be disturbed, as he was occupied in having a fit."

[6] At a point somewhat below Wervicq: much where the private ferry now plies.