THE PENCARROW SAGA.

Marlborough Express, Volume LXVIII, Issue 148, 25 June 1934, Page 3

THE PENCARROW SAGA.

CONCLUDING VOLUME. NELLE SCANLAN'S NOTABLE WORK. One does not suppose that Miss Nelle Scanlan claims to have outGalsworthied Galsworthy, or Walpole, or any other writer who has adopted the style of the saga. She probably knows her limitations. But she has the 'distinction of having written the first New Zealand saga, and thus, as it were, to have put this country on the literary map. Some people complain that the "Pencarrow" books are not literature, but journaiism. Others that there is not enough excitement in them. Others, again, that there are too many babies, who grow up and cluiter up the pages. The answer to the last complaint is that if one is writing a history of four generations .there have to be ^babies to provide the material for the next book; and any way, better babies than lap-dogs ! The Pencarrows as Miss Scanlan has limned them are a family of true New Zealanders, vital, impulsive generous-minded, although som.etimes barbed-tongued. As she says of them, "Whenever the whole family met they generated some dominant mood; they seemed so highly charged, even their mass gaiety was likely to strike a spark. Some chance remark would start friction, and thero were growing elements of discord in several directions." This was shortly after the War, but it had been true of the older generation also, when Miles Pencarrow had been in his heyday. When all is said and done, the Pencarrows never bore you; there is always something unexpected happening. * . Miss Scanlan's trip through New Zealand a year or so ago was not confined to admonishing us to count our blessings. The main object of her visit was to see how we were standing adversity, for the purpose of chronicling these reactions in her book. Generally speaking, we have come out of it pretty creditably, if "Winds of Heaven" is to be believed. There is an amusing passage-at-arms between Genevieve Herrick (nee Pencarrow) and a farmer named Johnstone on the subject of who (or what) is the backbone of the country. "If the farmers are ruined (says Johnstone) the whole country is done — finished. We keep the towns, they live off us; they depend on the farmer for everything they have. Yet they oppose every policy designed to help us. "Not everything," Genevieve said, "Practically everything," Johnstone msisted. "Where would they be without us? Answer me that! We're the backbone of the country," he added emphatically. "You're quite right," Genevieve agreed, "but what is the use of a backbone by itsclf, except for a museum? .... The backbone of farmers requires the blood of finance, the limbs of transportation, the brains of organisation — banks, shipping, railways, insurance, merchants, markets, and these belong to the town, and without them you are helpless. . . You are merely the hrst agents to Landle the produce of the sheep and the cows — just agents, that's what the farmers are, like any

other agent through which it passes later on. . . . Until town and country work together, instead of flying at each other's throats, you'll never get out of this mess." The Pencarrows do, thanks to the January, 1934, wool sale, the good prices coming along just in time to save the situation. In the meantime tbe Clan had gone through the same so'rt of time as their flesh-and-blood prototypes have had to face— the office-workers as well as the farmers. Keily, who flnishes up as "head of the house," shows the marks left by the depression coupled with advancing years in his reaction to the change in the tide brought about by the" recovery in wool. Kelly drove home when the evening was cool, his heart light and his hopes high. As he passed the Taitai, he stopped the car and sat for a while on old Grannie's grave. It was a peaceful place, and he smoked. a pipe as the rush of traffic went hurrying by. Duffield was his again. Only by a slender thread had he clung to it during the past year; how slender, not any of them knew. Now he could lift his head once more, and he swore, as he sat alone in that quiet spot where he had faced so many of his problems, that he would never rest till Duffield was free of debt. "We got top price, old girl," Kelly said, as Maisie met him, smiling. They sat on the verandah in the evening cool, and talked of the past and the future. "Matt is giving Mike and Measle a party at the St. George," he told her. "They wanted me to stay — " "Why didn't you, dear?" He looked at her a. moment, his placid, patient, kindly wife. "I thought I'd rather come home," he said simply. "I hope they won't get into mischief." "I don't care a damn if they do." It was the old Kelly who laughed as he said it. "Winds of Heaven" deals quite kindly with Blenheim — for,. be it rcmembered, Miss Scanlan is the town's first "ireeman."

Blenheim was a quiet market town, with a solid dignity that had its roots away back in its conservative beginnings. It was the business eentre of a great stretch of country: big sheep stations among the hills and distant plains, and small agricultural areas on the ricli flats redeemed from swamps, or between the rivers. It was a substantial little town, with its market place, a wide triangle, surrounded by shops and banks, and dominated by the big grey post-office with its square clockiower. . . . There were no floods now. No longer was the town submerged under sudden muddy water after spring rains and the melting of the snow 011 the ranges. Stop-banks kept the river in its appointed course. The Pencarrow Saga is completed, and Nelle Scanlan is deserving of warm congratulations upon the conclusion of a notable achievement. Especially warm will be the felicitations of her many Marlborough friends.