Fiction
Hotel Splendide. By Ludwig Eemelmans. (Hamish Hamilton. 78. 6d.) Ayah. By Parr Cooper. (Allen and Unwin. 8s. 6d.) Rick Afire By David Severn. (The Bodley Head. 75. 6d.) Elizabeth Goes Home. By Edward Shanks. (Gollancz. 6s.) Escape to Chungking. By Jan Maclure. (Milford. is.) Biggles in the Jungle. By W. E. Johns. (Milford. 5s.)
Hotel Splendide, by Ludwig Bemelmans, might have been in London, Rome, Paris, or Berlin instead of in New York during the pause between the wars. Through eighteen episodes we see with the clear, melancholy eyes of a servitor the idle rich ; their comings and goings, at feeding-time and at play-time, the bored and the boring. But more important than the clients, much more important, is their temple and its attendants. Many people, of whom Arnold Bennett was one, believe that luxury hotels are efficient and elegant machines. The falsity of such an absurd view is demonstrated with merciless humour in this study of the Splendide, with its brilliant thumb-nail sketches of waiters, valets, maitres d'hôtel, pantrymen, charwomen and others of the staff. Having detailed the tragic end of a millionaire's mistress, the author comments : "All such things are not as important and terrible as they would be outside a large -hotel. In a hotel too much is happening—the guests eat and drink, laugh and complain us at any time, the orchestras play in the restaurants, the hum of conversation is not a shade lower. Whatever is unpleasant is done quietly. When someone has died in a hotel, two men carry a plain basket out of a side door early in the morning."
The book is illustrated by the author, and some of his material first appeared in the pages of The New Yorker. "Where have we heard this story before?" asks the waiter Mespoulets, and without waiting for an answer commences to read aloud the long episode of Trimalchio's banquet from The Sat yricon of Petronius : his hearer comes to the conclusion that nineteen hundred yftrs have effected very little change in human nature. This book would make a deliciously suitable Christmas gift for deserving friends and relations.
Flavoured with irony, too, is Ayah, by Parr Cooper. During childhood the heroine, Sironmani, makes friends with two little English girls, Anna and Elizabeth. The Madrassi girl leaves Poona and marries young. At first all goes well, but her husband falls ill, and having sold all their possessions, the childless Sironmani gets herself a job as a nurse to an English baby. Her husband, Luke, becomes interested in the affairs of Congress, and because he makes a seditious speech, Sironmani is given the sack. Burdened with invalid mother and husband, she works for a time at a hospital. Then Elizabeth comes to Lucknow, wife of an adjutant and mother of two children. She needs an experienced ayah, and Sironmani, now a stately personage, gets the post. Anna, whose marriage has turned out badly, comes on a visit to the station. Neither of the
Englishwomen recognise the friend of their childhood days, and Sironmani, content with her position, does not remind them. Eliza- beth dies her children are sent home and Anna gives the ayah charge of her adopted son. The boy is delicate' and he too has to be sent to England. Sironmani, after recalling the. past to Anna, gets herself a new place. While not completely successful, this queer, unusual novel should be read, if only for its vivid portrayal of everyday life in Anglo-Indian society. Gift books for children from round about twelve upwards are never very easy to choose. However, even at this late date, a few notes on some of the recently published adventure stories will, no doubt, be welcome. Rick Afire! is a pleasantly illustrated volume, detailing the holiday Derek and Diana spend at Whitehouse Farm with the twins, Pamela and Brian who live there. They discover an odd young man camping in the Gibbet Wood, and decide to investigate him. Before very long they have become friendly with the stranger, who takes them on an expedition to see fox-cubs at play. That same night a rick belonging to a neighbouring farmer is fired. The young man is suspected, but the children succeed in clearing him and discovering the real culprit. All very possible and convincing, and we are promised a sequel, in which we hope the author will abandon the word " jolly ": hardly the sole adjectiye of the contemporary child!
Elizabeth Goes Home will please those who revel in whimsey- whamsey about animals, for the heroine is "a small though rather plump dachshund, of an affectionate but sensitive disposition," who has a couple of mild adventures archly related. In the first and longest story, with the aid of a few saints, David Garnett's famous vixen, an incredible sergeant-major and some others, Elizabeth makes her way from war-time evacuation at the seaside to her adoring master and mistress in London. In the second story she goes on an expedition with a pet lamb. Our favourite niece liked the drawings very well, but the stories made her snort. Escape to Chungking, on the other hand, pleased her immensely. It is tightly packed with likely and unlikely incidents in the old- fashioned manner, as the rather priggish fourteen-year-old hero escapes from Japan after the outbreak of the present war. "You do get your money's worth!" she declared, having devoured the book in one evening. Indeed, one does if excitement is the criterion, what with the unfamiliar, ever-changing scenes, the genuinely imagined difficulties of the travels, trials, tribulations experienced by the disguised hero as he journeys by land, sea and air with the precious formula for a new high explosive, stolen from the Japanese. A rattling narrative, marred by the contempt expressed by the hero for small nations and other ways of life than our own.
Biggles in the 7ungle contains the further exploits of the ubiquitous squadron leader and his usual companions ; this time in Central America. The exploits are many and varied, but all are highly coloured. "He decided he would endeavour to take some of the butterflies that were hovering over the pool, but he found it difficult to approach from the side on which he stood," is a fair sample of
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