SCENES FROM RURAL LIFE

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 86, 5 January 1935, Page 7

SCENES FROM RURAL LIFE

TVIr. Beverley Nichols Finds Romance in Rusticity

“A Village in a Valley” by BeverleyNichols (Londin: Cape. 11/6). Everyone who enjoyed Mr. Beverley Nichols’s “Down the Garden Path,” and turned the last page of “The Thatched Roof” with a sigh of regret will be enchanted with "A Village in A Valley,” the third book of this series. In it one renews acquaintance with Allways, a tiny village in Huntingtonshire, the quietest county in England. All one’s friends are there: the Professor with his queer mixture of intricate mathematical formulae and drawings Of animals; Undine Wilkins with her' be-ribboned gardening hat and her affectation; “Mrs. M.,” efficient as ever; Miss Haylitt, the vil-

lage saint; the Vicar; and of course, Mr. Nichols himself, through whose observant and often twinkling eyes we see the whole pattern of rustic life, mild social" intrigue, and adventure. Though there is sometimes friction in the village, all are united against the “foreigner’’ and in their passion for keeping Allways aloof from the progress of the outside world. Those who see romance and adventure only in a battle with tropical storms, the rise and fall of thrones, or in a record-breaking world flight, will be surprised to find it a-plenty in Miss Hazlitt’s back garden among the mangels and hollyhocks. It was there, according to Mr. Nichols, that a grubby schoolboy found real treasure-trove —'the famous Allways windows buried by cavaliers to save them from the Roundheads. There the windows had lain through the centuries while unknowing feet tramped over them, to reappear still with the strange radiance undiminished as though the windows were burning, sending out a flame of gladness for their , deliverance. “And,” says the author, “when it was found there sang a nightingale who could trace back his ancestry to the very bird who sang to Shakespeare when he was writing a little play called ‘Romeo and Juliet’. / .” This was the supreme moment for the village; but in All ways every moment holds its thrill; the day in early spring when the first snowdrop is discovered; the morning when the bell above the door, heralds the first customer to Miss Hazlitt’s shop, even though she buys only a box of “Head and Stomach”; the signing of Miss Wilkin’s curious “visitors’ book” by a Great Lady; or the battle with the flood in the wood. Mr. Nichols weaves all this and much more into an enthralling story to be read and re-read, for it holds something for every mood —something of humour, of pathos, of excitement, and of quiet content.

JOHN GALSWORTHY’S “The Collected Poems of John Gals’worthy” (London: Heinemann). One might easily read through the whole of Galsworthy’s poems, from those of his youth to those expressive of his mature philosophy, and discover in them nothing to fault. All things he sees and feels are sensitively expressed, with economy and a fitting sense of their poetic values. His poems are intellectual in content and show fine craftsmanship in form. They are informed by all that is. typical of Galsworthy’s keen mind, his idealism, his essentially English feeling toward sociologic problems, and with it his humanitarianism, his love for the under-dog, his satiric comment. All this is true, but—it is in this case a faintly tragic but, for Galsworthy obviously , set store by his poems—one might also read through the entire volume and find nothing to praise, nothing, that is, to inspire one to say “This is true poetry.” Galsworthy can write of nature, for instance, clearly and faithfully, yet without exhibiting anything of that intense lyricism that makes the work of the true’ poet. “Tingling is the test,” cried the wise Babbalang to Yoomy, the the poet in Herman Melville’s “Mafdi.” But Galsworthy, one feels certain, did not tingle when he wrote his verse. One can picture him composing calmly, with every faculty alert to achieve correctness. And his work reads like this. There is nothing compelling about it, no urgency of communication • that can pass on to the reader any sense of the poet’s emotion. In his plays and in his fiction Galsworthy could do this constantly, but never in his verse. A FAMOUS WAR HORSE "My Horse Warrior,” by Lord Mottistone. (London: Hodder and Stoughton.) To readers of Lord Mottistone’s (Major-General Seeley) earlier books an account of the life history of his veteran charger, Warrior, will be welcome. Warrior, who was bred by Lord Mottistone, was in France for the greater part of the war, and escaped the untimely fate that befell so many war horses. That he did so on more than one occasion was largely due to his own sagacity. Warrior’s many adventures make enthralling reading, and 'drawings by Mr, A. J. Mannings, who had previously painted him in France, add interest to the book. After the war Warrior not only returned safe and sound, but was equal, on becoming a hunter, to winning a point-to-point. The book records attractively his long career and tells of the individuality which marked Warrior as a horse in a thousand, and made his name almost legendary to thousands of troops.

Mr. Hugh Walpole, who went to Hollywood to work on the film version of “David Copperfield,” is now adapting his own novel Vanessa.”

A hundred years ago Charles Uanib, then living at Kdmonton in the house uoiv called after him, slipped and fell, contracted erysipelas, and in four days—on December 27—was dead. The event passed unnoticed (writes Mr. E. V. Dudas in the “Sunday Times”), for Lamb had little fame. The “London Magazine” between 1820 and 1825 was the only popular periodical for which he had ever written, and even then he signed himself “Elia”—a pseudonym which, by the way, we know, bn the evidence of a letter from John Taylor, hi.s editor, preserved in the Huntingdon Library at Pasadena, he pronounced Eleea, with the accent on the second syllable.