SWORD AND STIRRUP
By Hervey de Montmorency
Sword and Stirrup (Bell, 16s.) is described by the publishers as " . . racy, readable reminiscences." It is much more than that. For these are the reminiscences of a man who has summed up in his own adventurous career a certain type of life. If a novelist were to invent a " man of action," have him born about 1868, put Irish and French blood in his veins, endow him with wit and courage; and then put him through as many experiences as could be credibly packed into one life—selected so as to give as complete a picture as possible of the life of an epoch—the resulting hero would be Mr. Hervey de Montmorency. In his gay salad days the author was an officer—the youngest in the Army—of the Royal Regiment of Artillery. Those were the salad days of London too, the 'nineties, when the jeunesse dere adored the Gaiety Girls, and Nellie Farren was the toast of the town, and Oscar Wilde 'scattered epigrams in the Corinthian Club—of which the author was one of the founders. At twenty-one Mr. de Montmorency resigned his commission and took up steeple- chasing. In 1898 he rode in the Grand National. He gives a vivid picture of the sporting life' of those days in Ireland, England and Paris. In the Boer War he served in the Southern Rhodesia Volunteers, and has some strong criticisms 'to make of the conduct of that war. In 1903 he went with a treasure- hinging expedition (unsuccessful) to the Cocos Islands. After 1913 he plunged into Irish polities, and in 1914 was in the Army again as an intelligence officer in Ireland. Mr. de Montmorency has recaptured. the atmosphereof a period, and his book is of unusual interest.
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