LOCAL COLOUR.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 966, 5 November 1910, Page 9

LOCAL COLOUR.

■' There are few things more remarkable in connection with recent developments in popular fiction than the illcreased richness and accuracy of the local colour with which authors embellish their tales. If the action is cast in a distant land or in a time" remote from our own'it is recognised that the customs and scenery and characteristics should bo those of the time or place. Tho contrast in this respect with the eighteenth century is complete. The novelists, indeed, 'of that century generally cast their scene in England; they seem to have acted upon a principle ascribed to a Victorian author — one to which subsequent developments have given so,brilliant a dementi—that the Englishman is of a mind so essentially insular that 110 life story Would interest him that took place beyond his own Nevertheless there aro exceptional eases, and one of them is "llasselas." Now in "Rasselas" local colour is at a minimum. Thero is a casual allusion to monkeys and elephants, to give, apparently, verisimilitude to a bald and unconvincing narrative, but thero is 110 attempt, by the creation of a special, atmosphere, to keep before the reader tho fact that he is not only outsido England but, specially, in Abyssinia. ; The scene is really laid in the human soul, and tin? fact- that tho details of the life and scenery of a foreign nation have a curious interest of their own as an element in fiction is, quite clearly, as yet undiscovered. Tho truth is, it was only with tho Romantic outburst of tho early nineteenth century that novelists came to see what fresh resources were at their disposal if they subjected the lore of travellers and the results of antiquarian research to the play of the imagination. AVo have assurance that excellent local colour may be acquired without personally visitins the locality paintec\, and it is Jaines Tayn who gives it. He tells us that judicious reading, especially if coupled with the privilege of precognoscing someone who has had first-hand experience, will put an author in possession of material which, mixedwith imagination, will make paint plausible enough to deceive the most tliscernine reader. Ho jzives instances and

says, "I liovcr yot knew an Australian who could be persuaded that tho author of _ 'Never Too Lato to Slend' had not visited the underworld, nor a sailor that he who wroto 'Hard Cash' had never been to sea." One might beliove tho assurance on the strength of tho single instance of "With Edged Tools." It is a most convincing book; niay readers believed in the actual existence of "simiacine," and the author received application for shares in die "Simiacine Company." Yet Merriman had never visited West Africa. It is tho one book of Slejriman's, however, the colour of which was not picked up on the spot, for he was the most assiduous searcher for local colour that cur recent literature has produced. He visited Corsica for "The Isle of Unrest," Russia for "Tho Sowers," Spain for "In Kedar's Tents," the Balearic Islands for "The Grey Lady," Holland for "Roden's Corner," Germany lor "Barlasch," and Poland for "The Vultures." Moreover, he exercised his local knowledge with a wise parsimony, placing a touch of colour hero and another there, and tho whole breadth of the brusli nowhere. Not all authors have shown equal self-denial, and perhaps oven such a writer as Mr. Joseph Conrad in the third chapter of "The Nigger of the Narcissus" has given us too much of the ship on her beam ends, for no better reason than that he had it to give. Those who wisli to see tho method adopted by Merriman in order to bring himself as closely as possible alongside the- people of the various places ho visited should read the preface to the recent edition of his works.—"Manchester Guardian."