FICTION.
BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS.t
UNDER this unattractive title Mr. Munro has collected a number of the sketches which appeared in the Morning Post and other papers, and with very few exceptions they bear the test of reprinting and re-reading surprisingly well. As a writer of grotesque social miniatures " Saki" stands in a class by himself. No one surpasses him in the art of condensation, or in creating the right atmosphere at the start. As an example of his skill in beginning we may quote the opening sentences of "The Name-Day":-
"Adventures, according to the proverb, are to the adventurous. Quite as often they are to the non-adventurous, to the retiring, to the , constitutionally timid. John James Abbleway had been
• The Tourist's Spain and Portugal. By Ruth Redaio Wood. London: Andrew Melrose. [6e.] t Beasts and Super-Beasts. By H. H. Munro (" Saki "). London John Lane. [6e.] - endowed by Nature with the sort of disposition that instinctively avoids Carlist intrigues, shun crusades, the tracking of wounded wild beasts, and the moving of hostile amendments at political meetings."
Moreover, "Saki" has the complementary, but by no means invariably concomitant, quality of knowing how to leave off. Perhaps the best instance of this is to be found in that extraordinary fantasia, " The Open Window," which we well remember reading in the Westminster Gazette. Here, after an almost intolerable situation has been suddenly con- verted into comedy with a jerk like that of a cinematograph, the strange conduct of the young lady is laconically summed up and explained in seven words: "romance at short notice was her speciality." It may he added that it is a formidable speciality, not confined to one of Mr.
Munro's young ladies, but the peculiar property of several : as, for example, Miss Vera Durmot, aged sixteen, who effectually contrived to keep the mind of the Parliamentary
candidate from dwelling on politics during his stay under her aunt's roof; or the terrible young "flapper" of thirteen, who blackmailed the uninvited guests who thought to secure entrance to the garden party of the season by a back way through the shrubbery. As a handbook of the gentle art of dealing faithfully with social nuisances—bores, cadgers, " thrusters," and "climbers "—Beasts and Super- Beasts is quite unique; but the enjoyment with which we read of their discomfiture is somewhat tempered by the fact that the executioners are not much better than their victims. To attempt to extract any moral lesson or edification from " Saki " would be as unprofitable a task as the effort to hatch a chicken from a bard-boiled egg. He is not an immoral, but for the most part a non-moral writer, with a freakish wit which leads him at times into inhumanity. He has no respect even for death, the references to which are frankly flippant, if we except the study of the old farm-servant called "The Cob- web." Death, in short, is treated either as a negligible or
annoying incident in the social drama, or, as in the study of Laura's reincarnations, as a convenient jumping-off ground for incursions into uncanny levity. As an inventor of practical jokes to dislodge or disconcert tiresome people, "Said" shows a mental resourcefulness bordering on the diabolical, but we like him best when he is least malicious. No one, for instance, could take exception to the satirical extravaganza entitled " The Unkindest Blow," with its admirable opening description of the strike at the Zoo, when the crisis was intensified by the threat of the authorities that " if the men 'came out' the animals should come out also" .-
" The imminent prospect of the larger carnivores, to say nothing of rhinoceroses and bull bison, roaming at large and unfed in the heart of London, was not one which permitted of prolonged con- ferences. The Government of the thy, which from its tendency to be a few hours behind the course of events had been nicknamed the Government of the afternoon, was obliged to intervene with promptitude and decision. A strong force of Bluejackets was despatched to Regent's Park to take over the temporarily abandoned duties of the strikers. Bluejackets were chosen in preference to land forces, partly on account of the traditional readiness of the British Navy to go anywhere and do anything, partly by reason of the familiarity of the average sailor with monkeys, parrots, and other tropical fauna, but chiefly at the urgent request of the First Lord of the Admiralty, who was keenly desirous of an opportunity for performing some personal act of unobtrusive public service within the province of his department 'If he insists on feeding the infant jaguar himself, in defiance of its mother's wishes, there may be another by-election in the north,' said one of his colleagues, with a hopeful inflection in his voice. 'By-elections are not very desirable at present, but we must not be selfish:"
For sheer irresponsibility nothing is better than the adventure of the vivacious lady of title who, when stranded without her luggage at a wayside station, is mistaken by a parvenue for the new governess she had come to meet, and promptly accepts the situation, treating her young charges to several crowded hours of delirious excitement by her novel and realistic method of teaching history. There is a fine touch in the observation that, though the parvenue had been woefully befooled, she derived a certain amount of relief from the know- ledge that she had entertained a Peer's daughter unawares.
"Saki" excels in decorative absurdities, as when he mentions that Clovis San grail, that arch-adept in fumisterie, was engaged in putting together the materials of a cocktail which he had irreverently patented under the name of Ella Wheeler Wilcox." And he has a wonderful gift of grotesque characterization, in proof of which we may quote his sardonic portrait of Lucas Harrowcluff, the futile elder brother of a laborious adminis• trator
"Lucas was an over-well nourished individual, some nine years Basset's senior, with a colouring that would have been accepted as a sign of intensive culture in an asparagus, but probably meant in this case mere abstention from exercise. His hair and forehead furnished a recessional note in a personality that was in all other respects obtrusive and assertive. There was certainly no Semitics blood in Lucas's parentage, but his appearance contrived to convoy at least a suggestion of Jewish extraction. Clovis Sangrail, who knew most of his associates by sight, said it was undoubtedly a case of protective mimicry."
We must not omit to applaud Mr. Munro's ingenuity in coining proper names. 'Yet, with all his gifts and accom- plishments, or perhaps we should say because of his peculiar gifts and accomplishments, we doubt whether he will ever be a popular writer. The vein of acidity is too constantly in evidence ; the plain person cannot subsist on a diet of perpetual olives.
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