THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18231, 15 November 1924, Page 11

THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

HALF-HOURS IN A LIBRARY.

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By A. H. Gbdtlino.

LXXXVIL—ON THE A B C OF FICTION (ni.).

In August last —to be precise, in the issues of the 16th and 30th—I commenced a series of comments on a haphazard collection of. novels arranged in alphabetical order according to their author's names, the underlying idea being to illustrate how quickly much of modern fiction is forgotten and relegated to limbo. I had got through the letter A and was in the middle of the letter B, which brings me to James Blyth with "Celibate Sarah" and "Juicy Joe. 1 ' Twenty years ago Mr Blyth set out to.do for the people who dwell in the Norfolk marshes what Mr Thomas Hardy has done for the •Wessex peasantry—he dedicates "Celibate Sarah" to Thomas Hardy—and to an extent he succeeded, although his stories are marred by an element of un : necessary coarseness. He gives "personal testimony- to the great mystical influence which the earth,, water," wind, and sky of the lonely lands of Nature may have upon a character by no means imaginative." Mr Blyth's later books, however, have not maintained his earlier promise, and he has sunk to the level of the ordinary purveyor of fiction who turns out novels with the unfailing regularity of an automatic machine.

Miss Phyllis Bottome is one of the women novelists of to-day with a gift for making pleasing stories which give delight and cause no offence. "A Servant of Eeality'' is well above the average, and the standard is sustained in "A Derelict and Other Stories;" Besides which her books are thoroughly English. In contrast comes one of the stories of B. M. Bower, one of the most popular of American novelists and prolific to a degree. He writes of cowboys and broncho-busters and the like, and his characters converse in a lingo of which the following is a fair sample: "And I'm shore glad yuh-all feel that way." A little'of B. M. Bower goes a very long way, yet "The Voico at Johnny-Water," with its spice of .spiritualism, is one of the best of his efforts.

', It must be seventeen, or eighteen years ago since Miss Marjorie Boweh startled the literary world with "The "Viper of Milan," following up her first success with "The Glen of Weeping," and a long list of other novels, mostly historical in their bearing. At the outset the Bowen boom,, was cleverly stagemanaged; paragraphs appeared... in the papers expressing surprise that a girl so young in years :• should show so fine a grasp of history. Miss Bowen was able ,to take advantage of the opportunity thus .created, and ias more than held her own,'and besides writing,she .has lectured on]history in England and Holland/ having been; specially honoured "in the latter country. Some of her books have been utilised by the British War' Office for educational .purposes; wiiile. in-Holland they are us,ed for national and .military educational pur-; •poses.. Besides' her vogue in Britain; Miss Bowen's stories have been translated into Dutch, Swedish, Norwegianj. Danish/; and..ltalian.

I have siidlv" to confess that "The Wallet of /Kai-Lung," by Ernest Bramah, is one of the.'book's which has never taken.hold of me, and this despite its.great popularity in other quarters. I have made several'attempts to read it but have never got very, far without being bored; and boredom is fatal in fiction. Oh "the Mother hand, I have memories of huge enjoyment while perusing "An Honest Man," by Ealph Harold Bretherton,, an author whose other books I have not inet. This picture, of an honest;'man who carries honesty so far as to make it positively

being crowned. Then it becomes lost for a long while in the flames of suneet. When at last $ emerges its banks are dark 'with forests and bewildering witt fiery flowers cind sweet fruits. Men are naked and furtive and voiced like monkeys. Not drums nor warcries nor .the whizz of arrows can pierce the enveloping hush of that hot forest. Suddenly =there is a shot, a crashing of trees, a'ciirae in Spanish and a glittering of armour.". The* forests divide in fire and 'smoke. You see Oortez standing more enormous and significant against • the panorama of history than any man since Christ has stood. The crucifix is-raised above the jungle and carried to the ; mountain, passes, only W. decay j that which announced the spirit, and the nothingness of man and eai th,; the symbol of a desert and a salt sea, rotting in the fiery, fertile incubation of the'tropics. . '. Strange thoughts to have, in the compsmy of brigands, amid the sierras of Spain! But. why, when the fires are out and the moonlight blinds their ashes. We step among those fellows to our bed. We take the'turnings we: were told of and reach our lane. The stillness is strange, being the stillness, of a-larid'for which we cannot account. For which w© cannot account. For look there—before our doorway, a herd of, goats quieflv seated in the moonlights iNot a hundred yards through that alley to the trams; and not a blade . of grass in sight. It gives you <"a shock at first. Beturnuig home to your "fonda" late at night, you step among them in the moonlight, feeling a debauched, unnatural modern caught; in some gentle spectacle of. goodness «nd, peace; ..You elap your hands as you were bidden, and out of the as it were, rises a, sort of jinn with sword and keys, who unlocks your'door for you. I remained in Seville long enough to become accustomed to these' matters. I have seen goats at that late hour scaling the sheer wails of houses and gambolling on thfe tiles. . _-. _ We. la? that'ingp*. start riafeed' In a Steaming Oven at different ends of the bed. For three nights*, we slept so, but only on discovering that .the bed .was tolerably clean and quite free from vermin. A cm-tain separated us from the lobby into which the porter of the place would creep sometime after midnight, spitting and coughing and breathing as aged, broken men do. At thai hour tie air was" intolerably _foul. Once in bed he would writhe" and moan .and ecratch himself all night, muttering in a conventional, exasperated manner to God, always in" his.s]^p/T' : believe., Not a minute was he silent, and when I would tell hini to shut ujiv he would answer, me with & . kind, o£" shout. On. tfaV first ju^ht'l.\iM unable to sleep, unable to ttdmy mind ofthat stifling hole and its decaying inhabitant while expecting I:fkn®w not what to issue from the .beijdittg: beneath us.,, Just when his struggles : had. developed into paroxysms I realised. >he had dressed Mdwaseoiiig.wit. It, was dawn. How weird and abominable! , /It is terrible to. be old in Spain.. Gaunt discomforted and shaken, night and day they seem to burn «nd "writhe in : apprehension of the end.' ; . , , . ,- (To be continued.)

repulsive to his family and friends is conceived in a splendid satirical spirit. Which brings me to one of my favourite "shocker"- authors, Mr Victor Bridges. I . know no better sedative when one's brain is wearied and one's nerves are frayed than a first-class "shocker," the "bluggier" the better. The gift of writing first-class "shockers" is the possession of the few. and Mr Victor Bridges has it in high degree. Well do I remember the thrill of his first book, "The Man From Nowhere," and "Mr Lyndon at Liberty" was equally good. In "The Lady Prom Long Acre" ana "Greensea Island" the old standard was fullv maintained and there was no falling, off in "The Bed Lodge." To open a chapter in thit latter story Mr Bridges writes: "In the days when a young and promising draper called Mr John Barker had recently opened a small shop in the High street, Kensington." This statement interested me greatly: I knew John Barker in the days before he became Sir John, and the story of the creation of the huge business now known as Barker s_ is one of the romances of modern trading.

Mr Harold Brighouse is one of the Manchester men who formed a ""le literary coterie and called it the Swan Club, the membars including Jack Kahane —who has recently come into prominence with a couple of rather risque storieg of Parisian life called "Laugh and Grow Eich" and "Love s Wild Geese"—Stanley Houghton of "Hindle Wakes" fame. Gerald Cumberland and others. In "Set Down in Malice" Cumberland says some lltnatured things about Brighouse, who scored a big success in London with one of his plays, "Hobson's Choice. He has written a large number of plavs besides several novels, and or the* latter " Hepplestalls" is the best, in my opinion. Mr Brighouse is a plodder rather than a brilliant writer, but he has a quality of perseverance which wins through in the long run.

There was a time before Socialism became so intertwined with Bolshevism ns to confuse the keenest minds,_wnen I meditated a section in my library consisting of novels dealing with the position of the under-dog. I was inspired thereto by "The Story of a Ploughboy," by James Bryce, a, story which, if true to . fact—and it bore all the marks of a sincere chronicle —cast an light upon the conditions of the agricultural labourer in England. In the same section I included "The Kagged-trousered Philanthropist" by Eobert Tressall, the work of. a Socialistic house painter,, who wrote his book and died; "The Eoyal Eoad," by Alfred Ollivant, being "The History of the Life, Death and Ecsurrection of Edward Hankey, of London; "The Underworld," by James Welsh, M.P., a book about mining life by a working miner; and, "Tumbleford," by Joseph Whittaker, describing life in the slums of an English manufacturing town. It is significant of ; the change, coming over, the spirit of my dream that these books; no longer form a separate section on a shelf by themselves, but are included, in, the general alphabetical order, to the intent that the little leaven contained in their pages may leaven. the whole lump- '' •

Long before Mr John Buchan was so; prominently in'the-limelight as he'has since been, I Tead. and: enjoyed"'? The Watcher by the' Threshold;?:''.'3a=-buofc first published in; ■ a, collection of the most' eerie;' "creepy stories ever "The ,Moon Ehdureth," issued -ten years later,' was in- the same vein but not; so. powerful.; Mr Buchan is wonderfully and -he has been successful with' his-: 'toricW romances "feuch . as. Biifnet of Barnes.'' ever, be gratefully reiiiienibered/. fof ; 'The Thirty-nine' Steps,". ",(?,reenmantle" and.."Mr Standfast:"... An author of quite a different calibre is Thomas Burke with the realistic sketches of the East End of London contained in "Limehouse Nights" and ''Twinkletoes. \ •' The. stories' .are terrible, but powerfully fascinating in their power and they reveal a side ef the.life of the. great metropolis which,' it is.to be .feared, is only, too .true to: fact. Mr Burke has ■> an acquaintance with all phases of London life which is almost unrivalled, and he sets forth that knowledge in books like 'f Nights in Town;" "The Outer Circle,"."Out and About'» and '' The London Spy. " Mr Burke has also written verse which is well worth attention. I remember getting into sad trouble with a worthy man, who, on my sfacong recommendation, bought a copy of "Limehouse Nights." After Teading a few pages he threw if behind the fire declaring emphatically that he was ashamed to have snch a book in the house. Which only goes to show how divergent are people and tastes, and what a risky proceeding it is to recommend a book to another man. Women as a rule are easier to please. •

"When Frank Bullcn wrote "The Cruise of the.Cachalot" twenty-seven years ago, he received the following letter fr6m Mr Budyard Kipling, to whoni proof sheets of the book had been sent: "Dear Mr Bullen:—lt is unm'ense—there is no other word. Ito uver read any thing that equals it in its deep-sea wonder and mystery; nor do I think that any book before has so completely covered the .whole businoss of whale fishing, and at the same time given such real and' new sea pictures. You have thrown away material enough to make five books. X congratulate you heartily- It .is a new world that you've opened the door toThus highly sponsored, Bullen's first book was a great success, : and he followed it a year later with/.'The Log of a Sea "Waif, being recollections ol the first few years of my Sea Life, dedicating the work to Mr J • ™> Loe Strachey. In a preface Bullen says some.things which read interestingly to-day. The date is September, 189 V and the. place CamberwelL ..

Notwithstanding the oft-reiterated statement that the days of eea romance «« •over, it may be well ■■A»b«iWkeft« period of our literary history hw been mTre prolific in books ■ dealing- .«*■ §«* eabject'than the last twenty-five years. I£r doeTthe output show «my signs of lessentag, while the quality of-the *%£?%£ certainly- not deteriorating. W " te^ n ±T Sng, Cutcliffe Hyne,. *"P*J?°Z& £a Clark -Swell, each in. his. owr» style. Sl°e presented M with J . oerMß *!_^ pictured that -i»«d .tic* feax o °f m STln| with any nautical writer's work <* * ' St although they deal,almost exclusively merchant Bervice._ . . • ' Having been . fifteen je«s»-"^ has often occurred to me now mw» »", nas <»"[" -_ rf seaman's actual „B the Mast"

ESS'' aSiograpny" It,.tad'; a St eirTulatiol in the Dominion seeg** that the. author gave a detailed f„nnt of the events which led to the xeSus crLis in his life called «cou3V' this taking place :v the 7fSlS's Best" ftt. Port; Chalmers.

Bullen's popularity in the Dominion was dimmed somewhat during his lecture tour through Australia ana New Zealand in 1906, and t&e publication of M 3 book "Advance Australia." in 1907, did not enhance his literary reputation. In the "Confessions of a Tradesman," issued in 1908, Bullen attempted, but with slight success, to portray the life of a small struggling tradesman or shopkeeper, reminding his readers that prior to going to sea he was not entirely unconnected with trade, "having for two or three years been employed with varying degrees of unsuccess ■by «mall tradesmen as an errand boy." "

. Dom Bryne is an Irish-American author with a penchant for titles taken Horn the Bible. "The Foolish Matrons" is derived from the passage in Proverbs, "Every wise, woman buildeth her house; "but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands"; the story deals with some of the social problems which afflict the women of America. In "The Wind Bloweth" the author plainly reveals his Irish sympathies, the title of course being taken from a familiar passage in St. John's Gospel:—"The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit."

The letter C opens with the books of James Branch Cabell, an American author, who after writing for years virtually unknown and practically unheeded, came into prominence a year or two back because one of his books, "Jurgen," was suppressed by the American authorities under the Comstqck law. At. once English editions were forthcoming; not only so, but all his other books were unearthed and reprinted, and they are having a considerable circulation. Apart from the demand which immediately sets in friim the curious and the morbid when it. is announced that a book, has been suppressed or withdrawn from circulation, Mr Cabell's stories are not likely to appeal to the general public- The satire is too subtle and obscure and the narratives are steeped in a mediaeval atmosphere which Mr Cabell is able so successfully to create. Even, the indecencies inseparable from such an atmosphere- are decorously veiled and consequently scarcely appeal to the reader with purely pornographic instincts. The discerning few, however, rejoice in Mr Cabell's books, which besides "Jurgen," include "Figures of Earth," "The Cream of the Jest," and "The High Place." It may be remembered that " Jurgen" was highly recommended by Mr Hugh Walpole.

We next come to a- long row of books, the work of Sir Hall Caine, who has now passed the allotted span of three score years and ten. Ho began writing forty years-ago, his first novel being "The Shadow of.a Crime".and his last "The Woman! of Knocbaloe"; and it is only stating the truth to declare that the first was-far.better than his last. In "My, Story," published in 1908j Sir Hall Caine tells the tale of his literary beginnings, in which he was greatly aided by his friendship .with Dante Gabriel Eossetti. Beginning with■:■ "The Deemster, " published iii 1887J Hall Caine enjoyed a tremendous popularity, to recall which it is only necessary to detail the titles of his books,. "The Bondman," "The Scapegoat," " The Manxman," " The Christian;'»•" The Eternal! City,'' and ''The Prodigal. Son." A number of these stories were dramatised,.and attracted huge! audiences, and even today some of them.are to be seen on the films- With/'Thb '■ /White.; Prophet," published in; 1909, Sir Hall Cainel's popularity began to : wane* and ; eyen the tremendous -publicity; campaign which preceded ItheX issue 'in : 1913 .of ".The /Woman; Thou, Gavest Me'? did not- avail- Consequently, '-'The Master of published three -years.ago, attracted comparatively, In the field .of fiction. Sir Hall Came may to-day be reckoned a spent force.

It is a good many years since ,1 read a most amusing little; skit called Mfrreat- Snakes!" by Came, after which I,lost sight of the writer until three years ago when he came o!efinitely to the front with that delightful satire on London literary and artistic life,-"Mendoza and -a, Little Lady " In the interests of the wider circulation of a capital story I lighted that Mr William Camc's masterpiece is now appearing in an attractive reprint.. If Mr Caine.'s book is a thing to joy over, I must reckon Mr Gilbert-Cannan as among the disappointments- Certainly-he has earned the gratitude of all lovers of literature miable to read, the original, for his masterly translation of .M. Bomaiji Holland's "John .Christopher." And : when in 1913 Mr Caiman published "Bound the Corner" it was-difficult not .to predict, for him a distinguished career as a novelist. Alas,Tthese; expectations have not been realised; probably inspired.by the example of M. Holland, Mr Cannan began with "Little Brother", to, trace the ■career of the three., Lawrics, Stephen and James and M. M.; he has followed their fortunes in "Three Pretty Men" and '.'The Stucco. House " and '' Time and Eternity" arid again in "Annette and- Bennett." The books are clever studies, but as stones they are not attractive, and the reader tires of the history of a family which, dominated by its own most despised and contemned member, is compelled in the end'to turn from the emptiness of material success to the- spiritual store amassed through his obstinate failure. Occasionally'Mr Cannan turns from what in imitation of-John Galsworthy he terms the "Lawrie Saga" and attempts with success a separate study, '«' Pink Hoses, "or " Sembal "or its sequel "The House of Prophecy," but on the whole it would seem that Mr Oannan. -uses his undoubted i-.uent to little purpose. His best work is seen in a study like his book on Samuel Butler. "'.'

A reminder of .a cause celebre which - perturbed. Christchurch and the Dominion' a couple of decades since is a copy of a rubbishy story called "The Adventures of -Join Johns," which purposed to relate the adventures of an Australian bounder who succeeded in journalisrii in the Home Land by the simple expedient of' making love to the wives of editors and -wealthy newspaper proprietors. This book, together with some other—"The Yoke" was one of, them—was the subject of a case brought by the police against some booksellers in Christchurch, the chief effect of which was to create a demand for the works among the curious who otherwise would not have heard of them. To-day the book is as dead. as.a doornail, since by the operation of ; ait, unfailing law rubbish always; perishes.* .____

Since the typewriter has almost done away with holographic manuscripts and collectors find them increasingly difficult to obtain, galley proofs of the works of modern- authors, corrected by them, have acquired, a considerable value. Not. long ago a-first corrected proof of an early Kipling short story brought £72 in a New York salesroom. Rudyard Kipling, for one, has long been aware of the commercial value attached to his handwriting and does not scatter it around promiscuously. It is said that his contracts contain a clause requiring the return to him of all manuscripts to which they relate, typed or otherwise; " \