Nobody knows the stage child better than Miss Streatfeild; and [in Tops and Bottoms] her picture of Bobbie drafting his father's Era advertisements at the age of twelve and of Doris, the child prodigy, is deliciously amusing. But throughout the story runs Beaty's tragic destiny, which hangs like a cloud over the jollity and sardonic humour of the Timpson family's story—a story of the decline of the Variety Theatre and its people. Miss Streatfeild spares us nothing of sordidness in her picture of slum life in the beginning of the century, but the gaiety of the later chapters removes any implication of gloom from the book: even the final tragedy is so inevitable, so artistically shown, as to leave the reader with a feeling of satisfaction, while each character—even if, like Wee Weelum, it only strays into the pages for a few moments—is a complete...