Shorter Notices
Peacocks and Primroses. A Survey of Disraeli's Novels. By Muriel Masefield. (Bles. 21s.) .
HAPPILY entitled, scrupulously compiled, this intelligent and pious tribute to Lord Beaconsfield as a man and a novelist is the worst example in this reviewer's recent experience of a work potentially of reference- value but rendered virtually useless by inadequate sign-posting. It is a book of 320 pages containing over 120,000 words. An index is surely essential. But there is no index. Sub-titling to chapters would help. But there is no sub-titling. Might not cDanging running headlines at least have narrowed the field of search for (let us say) mentions of Lord Hertford or of Alton Locke? But on the left throughout we have the title of the book itself, and on the right the title of a Disraeli novel. All these, one would have thought, are commonplaces of sensible book-making, in the case of a work as long as this and a work packed with names. More exigent (but in this case equally justifiable) would be a request for a calendar of events in the life of Disraeli. "The novels," Miss Masefield says, "pro- vide a pageant of English life from 1826 to 1880." So they do; but it is a pawant based on their author's sensational career, the chronology of which could with advantage have been made available.
The pity of it is that Peacocks and Prim- roses is a sensible and well-wrought book, whose utility is gravely damaged by inade- quate presentation. Miss Maseticld, more thoroughly than any other student hitherto, has related Disraeli's fiction to the realities of its petiod, has identified passages of autobiography and noted examples of partial portraiture. Fault-finding, though it may seem querulous, is really a compli- ment. In a bad book these failings would
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