G-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)

Why is it that novels with scamp-heroes are so much more interesting
than the conventional kind? _Bellamy_ (METHUEN) is a case in point, for
the central character, who gives his name to it, is about as worthless
an object, rightly-considered, as one need wish to meet. He steals and
lies and poses; he betrays most of his friends; and throughout a varied
life he only really cares for one person--himself. Yet Miss ELINOR
MORDAUNT never seems to have any difficulty in making us share
_Bellamy's_ delight in his own conscienceless career. Perhaps it is this
very delight that does the trick. Charlatan as he is, and worse,
_Bellamy_ is always so attractively amused at the success of his
impostures that it becomes impossible to avoid an answering grin. It was
not a little courageous of Miss MORDAUNT to write a story about a hero
from the Five Towns district; but, though this may look like trespass
upon the preserves of a brother novelist, _Bellamy_ is Miss MORDAUNT'S
very own. I have the feeling that she enjoyed writing about him--a
feeling that always makes for pleasure in reading. Perhaps of all his
manifold phases I liked best his _role_ of assistant necromancer at a
kind of psychical beauty parlour. There is some shrewd hitting here,
which is vastly well done. But none of the adventures of _Bellamy_
should be skipped. I am sorry to add that the copy supplied me for
review did not apparently credit me with this view, as it ruthlessly
omitted some forty of what I am persuaded were most agreeable pages. The
fact that it so far relented as to go back about ten, and repeat a
chapter I had already read, did little to console me. I could have
better spared part of a duller book.

* * * * *

A story by Mr. DION CLAYTON CALTHROP, with the title _Wonderful Woman_
(HODDER AND STOUGHTON), may almost be regarded as a work of expert
reference. Because what he does not know about The Sex, and has not
already written in a galaxy of engaging romances, is hardly worth the
bother of remembering. So that his views on the matter naturally command
respect. _Wonderful Woman_ is perhaps less a novel than an
analysis--painfully close, with a kind of regretful brutality in it--of
one special type of femininity, and a glance at several others. Perhaps
its realistic quality may astonish you a little. You may have been
delighting in Mr. CALTHROP'S fantastic work (