GLANCES BACK.■
Ma. SIMS'S Glances Back is a book which will appeal chiefly to the middle-aged—to those, we mean, who can look back a long way. A man who sees his youth well behind him, and who passed his early life in London, cannot fail to be well entertained by it. He will see the lighter side of mid-Victorian life depicted in gay, some- times in garish, colours, and he will get an impression that, while things have altered in many ways for the better, the spirits of the upper and middle classes had—even before the war—very much gone down. Victorian seriousness was not sad, not at all cynical, not in the least conscience-stricken. According to our author, " the outward and visible signs of the joy of being alive " were many of them very silly, but such signs are apt to be. Drinking was still common among the mid-Victorian " better off." " Those were the days of animal spirits—and others." Young men got drunk in public, though not by daylight. " To be mellow was to be good company. Peers were mellow in Piccadilly, Aldermen were mellow when they left the City banquets, actors were mellow on the stage, and journalists were mellow in Fleet Street." Violence was common after dark. Garroting, though a short-lived phase, was of a piece with the fashion of the hour. " The spectacle of a golden youth dancing on the pavement with one of the fat, middle- aged, and generally inebriated flower women who hawked their wares at midnight in the Haymarket was a common one." Frith's " Derby Day " forms an illustration to Mr. Sims's verbal picture of that national holiday of the past. The book is illustrated by small photographs, and—so to speak—illuminated by short charac- terizations, of what we may call the secondary celebrities of the day before yesterday. It is a great pleasure to meet them again— for a short time. Mr. Sims deserves the thanks of all his con- temporaries who in a time of almost unbearable anxiety and worry desire a little distraction.
• Glances Back. By George It. Sims. London : Jerrold/. 15e. net.]
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