"]
* * * * *
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks_.)
Mr. S.P.B. MAIS, in a dedicatory letter to _Interlude_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL),
tells us that he has "simply tried to show what a man constituted like
Shelley would have made of his life had he bean alive in 1917." Without any
doubt his attempt has succeeded. I am, however, bound to add this warning
(if Mr. MAIS'S is not enough), that a novel with such a purpose is not, and
could not be, milk for babes. Nothing that I had previously read of Mr.
MAIS'S had prepared me for the proficiency he shows here. Obviously
attached to the modern school of novelists, he has many of its faults and
more of its virtues. One may accept his main point of view, yet be offended
sometimes by his details. But the fact remains that in _Geoffrey Battersby_
he has given us a piece of character-drawing almost flawlessly perfect. Not
for a very long time has it been my good fortune to attend such a triumph,
and I wish to proclaim it.
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