DANCE LITTLE GENTLEMAN. By Gilbert Frankau. (Hutchinson. 75. 6d.)—Freak novels
abound, and now Mr. Frankau has succumbed to the temptation of pretending to be somebody else, in order, perhaps, to give his Muse the chance of expressing herself through a new medium. In his preface, he says that he has collaborated with a Mr. Henry St. Aubin, a gigolo, whose amatory adventures are recorded with all the sententiousness of early Victorian novelists ; with the sententiousness certainly, but not with the sentiments, for his Victorianisms save him from trespassing too obviously near to that line which marks the novelist's " out of bounds." Mr. St. Aubin, whose adventures are told in the first person, excuses himself from relating his early Wild oat-sowings, having, as he says, "no sympathy with those present-day novelists, so rightly chastised by the editor of my favourite Sunday newspaper, whose works, 'a foetid blend of salacity and sensuality, are attempting to corrupt this great Empire of ours.'" But really Mr. St. Aubin need not apologize for his rectitude : he gives us quite enough of his dallyings with Cora and-Lutetia and Dolly and Lesbia, and even intro, duces us to a Colonel Doodah, who was neither a colonel nor a man. Mr. Frankau is a good scoffer and a good fighter, but there is an unpleasant savour about his latest book.
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