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Rather a Give-Away

Daisy Ashford: Her Book. — By the Author of ‘The Young Visiters’

While realizing how difficult it must have been to resist —especially as the cupboard was not bare—we think that the author of ‘The Young Visiters’ has been unwise to respond to the greedy public's desire for more. Her new book was bound to invite comparison with the other; it is not a patch on it; and, more than that, does it not remove a little of the bloom from what was surely the chief charm of the adventures of Mr. Salteena and Ethel —we mean their uniqueness? ‘The Young Visiters’ was funny enough in all conscience, but the source of its funniness was that it was such a find. As we read, the picture was before us of the little girl making it up, saying the absurd things over to herself before she wrote them down with a very special kind of relish, and putting in the stops afterwards, especially the exclamation marks, with a heavy hand. But when Miss Ashford tells us in the preface to this new book that the first story was ‘dictated to my father, who took it down faithfully word for word,’ it is a very different affair. Likewise when she tells us that portions of her sister's story were dictated to her father and mother, ‘and I think the nurse had a hand in it too.’

We do not doubt her sincerity for a moment, but was it possible for those grown-ups to refrain from getting all the fun they could from the amusing child; or could the child refrain, when she saw how they rolled their eyes, from playing down to them, from adding that couple of shrimps to the absurd enough afternoon tea? It is common and humiliating enough to see on the face of a baby a shade of contempt at the things these monsters titter and giggle over. ‘If you will think it is so very funny that I don't happen to know how babies come,’ we page 226 can almost imagine Angela Ashford saying, ‘I'll write you a whole story about it,’ and she proceeds to compose, ‘The Jellus Governess.’ If we had not been told that nurse, especially nurse, helped with the writing out, we should have been more merry.

Perhaps the most amusing passage in this new book occurs in the first story, ‘Love and Marriage.’ A young gentleman is on his way to see his beloved.

Just as he was thinking of going up to her house he saw Norah Mackie and Evelyn Slattery coming along together.

‘Your friend,’ they said chaffingly, ‘is picking some old geraniums in the front garden.’

Burke stared at them straight, and, putting out his tongue once or twice, walked on to find his darling pet.

This, we feel, is a true contribution to the number of retorts one can make to a silly, and certainly intended to be rather insulting, remark of that kind.

The remaining stories were written between the ages of eleven and fourteen. They are, for the most part, very dull, and dreadfully like the vast number of novels written by ladies whose intellectual life seems to remain for ever in its early ‘teens.’ But psycho-analysts, please note—it is surely strange for a child between these ages to occupy herself so passionately with the subject of courtship and marriage. The heavy, detailed descriptions of young gentlemen and their true loves read as though they were culled from the covers of servants' novelettes—those shiny, coloured covers that appear to have a rich varnish on them. In our experience the female child between those ages would have held such horrors in high contempt.