sheer funk we feel the same sort of sense of loss that we felt when Richard Middleton and John Davidson killed themselves. These things are not done. For some rather obscure reason there is a good deal of talk about night clubs in this book, but as it all leads up to an exceedingly cunning suggestion about their reconstruction much dull description may be forgiven. I, for one, am quite willing to subscribe to Mr Cumberland's establishment if it comes up to his vision: "A night club is never for the old. There should be no card-playing. Dancing one would have, of course, and music of the best. And wine, and many pretty women, and a perfume of roses . . . and above all, a big room set apart for the hour that comes after dawn. At dawn we would all go into another room, a room coloured green, with narcissi and jonquils and hyacinths on the tables: a room with open windows : a room with fruit spread invitingly: a room where one could still be gay and in which one need not feel sordid and spiritually jaded and spiritually unclean." Set Down in Malice is altogether a most curious book. It certainly satisfies a craving that we all feel to know something about our more famous contemporaries, but I cannot, for the life of me, think why he should search for something nasty to say about most of them. It is as false a method as that of the headmaster's testimonial to his assistants when he wants to get rid of them: to be fulsome in eulogy iscertainly no worse, except that it is commoner, than to be blatant in one's rudeness. Mr Cumberland has certainly met some most interesting people, but it is doubtful whether any of them will ever speak to him again : he seems to have wantonly infringed one of the severest unwritten laws of society: he has broken the confidence which was not asked. In his endeavour to achieve perfect honesty he has tried to evade another natural law which cannot lightly be broken, that of compromise, and has succeeded in giving us a false and quite dishonest portrait. He is like popular caricaturists who emphasise Lord Northcliffe's hair and G. K. Chesterton's embonpoint. Even Lytton Strachey did not stop at Manning's "Hat." No. Gerald Cumberland's book ought to have been worth a place on one's permanent bookshelf, but isn't. In a year it will be as dead' as this week's Bystander. I VIII THE HUMOUR OF "SAKI" Reginald Reginald in Russia The Chronicles of Clovis T was in the Christmas vacation of 1905 that I was presented with a copy of Reginald by a fellow undergraduate. There are some debts that one can never repay in full; it is perhaps something that we never forget the friend who introduces us to an author who ultimately becomes a favourite: I shall feel that I have, in some degree, repaid him in this case if I can entice any reader of this chapter who may have missed Munro's work to love it as I do, for he who brings before our notice what exactly suits our temperament is a private benefactor of a very high order. "Saki's" humour-let it be admitted at once-is not for all tastes. There may be some who look upon such playing upon phrases as "There are occasions when Reginald is caviare to the Colonel," or "We live in a series of rushes-like the infant Moses "-as unworthy. These are they who refuse to laugh at the nimble-witted Nelson Keys, and prefer to reserve their merriment for an abstruse Shakespearean pun about points" and and "gaskins." 66 Again, it may be urged that such a jest as the following may be found every week in the comic papers: "There is my lady kitten at home, for instance : I've called it Derry: then if there are any unseemly noises in the night, they can be explained succinctly -Derry and Toms." Whether or no that is a good joke I don't profess to judge. All I know is that I have remembered it for nearly fifteen years, and I have no memory whatever for stories of any kind. I am not ashamed to say that I laugh whenever I think of it. That is the type of humour that exactly appeals to me. How we laughed too over the deft, ironic touches that we afterwards came to regard as Munro's choicest gift, from the simple "Reginald considered that the Duchess had much to learn: in particular, not to hurry out of the Carlton as though afraid of losing one's last bus," or "she was one of those people who regard the Church of England with patronising affection, as if it were something that had grown up in their kitchen gardens," to the crisper, unforgettable never be a pioneer: it's the Early Christian that gets the fattest lion," the frock that's made at home and repented at leisure," "the stage can never be as artificial as life; even in an Ibsen drama one must reveal to the audience things that one would suppress before the children or servants"; "in a few, ill-chosen words she told the cook that she drank the cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go, she went "1: "c'est le premier pa qui compte, as the cookoo said when it swallowed its foster-parent," "a young man whom one knew instinctively had a good mother and an indifferent tailor-the sort of young man who talks unflaggingly 66 99.66 1 This has now received the supreme honour of being introduced into a revue as an original joke! through the thickest soup, and smooths his hair, dubiously as though he thought it might hit back " ... and so on. I am tempted to go on quoting, as we used to in those far-off days of youth. but with me, at any rate, Reginald has stood the test of time. I read it to-day with just as many involuntary guffaws of mirth as I used to: it is no book for the railway carriage, if you are constituted as I am. The sketch of Reginald, who is forced to spend Christmas at an intolerably dull house, planning some diversion (a favourite trick of Munro's), is almost a test example. "I had been preceded [to bed] a few minutes earlier by Miss Langshan-Smith, a rather formidable lady, who always got up at some uncomfortable hour in the morning, and gave you the impression that she had been in communication with most of the European Governments before breakfast. There was a paper pinned on her door with a signed request that she might be called particularly early on the morrow. Such an opportunity does not come twice in a lifetime. I covered up everything except the signature with another notice, to the effect that before these words should meet the eye she would have ended a misspent life, was sorry for the trouble she was giving, and would like a military funeral. A few minutes later I violently exploded an air-filled paper-bag on the landing, and gave a stage moan that could have been heard in the cellars. Then I went to bed. The noise those people made in forcing open the good lady's door was positively indecorous; she resisted gallantly, but I believe they searched her for bullets for about a quarter of an hour, as if she had been an historic battlefield." I find it impossible to copy that story down without |