A Literary Log

Southland Times, Issue 21097, 31 May 1930, Page 13

A Literary Log

ROLLED BY

IOTA.

WOMEN AT WAR. Women are so imitative that their appearance in the Remarqueable class of war writers does not come as a surprise. The first to come under my notice is Helen Zenna Smith in a book entitled “Not So Quiet ...” dealing with the “Stepdaughters of War,” in what is called “an honest, unsentimental, savage record of a girl ambulance driver in France.” Helen Smith’s chief trouble is that she is not accurate in her estimates of herself. She closes an extraordinarily vivid, bitter book with this':

“Her soul died under a radiant silver moon in the spring of 1918 on the side of a blood-spattered trench. Around her lay the mangled dead and the dying. Her body was untouched, her heart beat calmly, the blood coursed as ever through her veins. But looking deep into those emotionless eyes one .wondered if they had suffered much before the soul had left them. Her face held an expression

of resignation, as though she had ceased to hope that the end might come.” The opening sentence of this paragraph is untrue. It is because her soul is not dead that Helen Smith’s emotions led her to thia savage display of sentiment. It may be argued that the brutality of realism has no room for sentiment. I am not suggesting that it hasa I am offering as an explanation of the brutality of this book the fact that Helen Zenna Smith is sentimental, is hitting back because of her longing for the things she has lost, that she is blind in her hatred of war because of the things war has done to her. “Not So Quiet ...” shows an exaggeration of

the purpose that was behind Remarque’s book, a purpose the German author stoutly declared not to be there. Helen Zenna Smith went to the Front as an ambulance driver because "everybody was doing it,” and she found war to be very much more uncomfortable, very much more horrible than she had been led to believe and, as she was sensitive, and perhaps softly reared, disillusionment struck a terrible blow, greater perhaps than that of the bomb which, in the spring of 1918 filled the trench in which she was standing with the dead and dying. She was courageous, held up by pride, and went through with a horrible job. Her experiences as a field ambulance driver are terrible enough to shake the nerve of anyone, but it must not be thought that the picture of incompetence, bungling, blind efficiency or even rabid ill-treatment can be believed because they are set down by an eye-witness, and if they are believed they represent not warfare but the reaction of the author to warfare. Probably at the back of Helen Smith’s book is an intense personal hatred of war, but that very thing has led her to emotionalism in a record claimed to be unsentimental. One has to go to “Her Privates We” for a clearer view. Mind you, I am not condemning Helen Smith’s book; I am struggling to put it in its proper place and to remove those factors which, to my mind, lead to a false estimate of the acene she has pictured and the emotional stresses she has interpreted. Behind it all is the pitiful fact that highlystrung young girls were thrown almost carelessly during the hurly-burly of improvisation into the maelstrom and there told to learn to swim. The author of this book could drive a motor car and so she went out as an ambulance driver, but though she had never driven at night, her first job alone was to drive an ambulance, filled with stricken men, at night over a war smashed countryside. From her account the ration scale of the ambulance drivers, apart from the monotony of the food, was inadequate, and her commandant is a virago in khaki. In this book are the things she saw, but the realities were probably not so harsh. There is a fine picture of another ambulance driver, Tosh, who stands up to the shocks of war, and whose death, one of the most poignant episodes of the book, loses a very fine woman to the world. It is extraordinary, however, to notice how these women are imitative of men, how they take the masculine ways, the masculine oaths, the masculine coarseness of expression. Perhaps it is that the Colonel’s lady and Mrs O’Grady in addition to being the same under the skin, are also very much the same as the Colonel and Mrs O’Grady’s husband. After her long spell of duty as an ambulance driver, Helen Smith comes home and she carries her bitterness to the home front, where the well intentioned efforts of the older people “to do their bit” arouse in her anger which, while very similar to that which carried many men into brutal misunderstandings, leads her to strident condemnation, based on warped estimates of her relations and her friends. Her standards have been changed by her experiences but she does not realize that they are not necessarily sound as a consequence. “Not So Quiet . . . ” is the first war zone book of the Remarque type by a woman I have come across. I expect to read many others. It is a gripping record, it deserves a great deal of prominence, and it should be read as a piece of evidence of the terrible efforts war service can have upon a young woman.' It is an extraordinarily impressive, human document, but it is not the whole case—it is a revelation of Helen Zenna Smith and not the truth of war. It is an honest attempt to be honest; it is realistic without being real. It. is savage and therefore sentimental, but it is a mighty moving book.

“Not So Quiet ...” is published by Albert E. Marriott, Ltd., London, my copy coming through Angus and Robertson, Sydney. UNSUSPECTED POWERS. The Follettes belonged to Graylings, a sombre stone manor in the English country, and the family traced its line proudly through a long line of ancestral pictures, on which James Follette frequently let his fancy stray. His mother, bedridden but shrewd and exacting, ruled the house, while bitterly angry with the Fates who took her husband off suddenly when he was on a simple errand for her and riding a vicious mare. James, artist and musician, did not fit squarely into the slot of country life to which his family responsibilities bound him, but ancestor worship, habit and the iron-willed old lady held him so fast to duty that he could never reach conscious dissatisfaction. Even Marjorie Conway, who loved him passionately behind

a mask of restraint, could do no more than stir him pleasantly with dreams of travel to other lands where oranges are gold in the sunshine. Atilda, his sister, taciturn but, his comrade, was similarly part of Graylings. This is the scene Mabel L. Tyrrell sets with a neat economy of words for her novel “The Noble Error, ’ and into it she thrusts Isabelle Carew, the granddaughter of Lady Bridgewater, who years before had dashed off with a man and provided the district with a generous helping of scandal, and who now has returned to marry Isabelle to James Follette if possible. The old dowager of Graylings scents danger, but before she cau avert it James has fallen hopelessly in love with Isabelle, who appears in his eyes as the personification of his dream dryad. Gone are the plans to match James with Marjorie, but when the son brings his bride home, the old lady carries on the war. James has committed the “noble error” of' falling in love with a woman who is unworthy. Isabelle’s training disqualifies her for marriage with a man like James, but she makes a brave effort to defeat the inevitable. In the clash with Mrs Follette she is victorious because James shifts his mother from Gaylings to a small cottage. The author turns from the contest between these two women, and concentrates her attention on the failure of Isabelle to be worthy of her hueband’s love. She is a subjective character, the victim of circumstance and her ancestry, and James* is fortunate in meeting death before he can discover that his marriage was a noble error. Isabelle’s advent has tremendous influences, and one would have liked a continuation of the story to learn more of the unfinished combat between this dryad and the embittered woman she dethrones. Marjorie has gone abroad to find the oranges alone; Atilda has found love unexpectedly and laughed at the conventions, and really these people are more interesting than the girl who changes their lives. Miss Tyrrell has written a novel which could easily have become as artificial as a plaster cast, but one that moves easily and effectively and is convincing because her characters are so Very much alive. “The Noble Error” is arresting for its unusual qualities, and probably it is a compliment, rather than a criticism, to say that the author should carry her story further. My copy * from the publishers, Messrs Hodder and Stoughton, London.

AT The following were the books in keenest demand at the Public Library during the past week: — Fiction: Wilder (T.I “The Woman of Andros;” Tomlinson (H. M.) “All our yesterdays;” Deeping (W.) “Exiles;” Hever (Georgette) “Powder and patch;” Hill (Grace L.) “Ladybird;” Bridges (V.) “Secret of the creek.” General: Morton (H. C. V.) “In search of Scotland;” Thomas (L.) “Sea Devil’s fo’c’sle;” Jones (E. S.) “Christ of every road;” Eadie (T.) “I like diving;” by Sir R. H. Bacon “The Life of Fisher, Lord;” by Hopkins (O. G.) “Hop of the Bulletin.” A COMPLETED TRIOLOGY. '

In 1926 Mr Pat Lawlor published the little book called “Maori Tales,” a collection of examples of Maori wit for which there has evidently’ been a great demand, thirty thousand copies having been sold during the last four years. A year later “More Maori Tales” appeared, and the reception accorded these two volumes has encouraged Mr Lawlor to present the public with “Still More Maori Tales,” in the foreward of which he admits that his stock of Maori witticisms has run dry. If that is the reason why many paragraphs informative of the Maori race and customs have been sandwiched in the pages of the present volume, the compiler need have no cause for regret on that score. This, book will be of general interest to anyone interested in the Maori, and Mr Lawlor is to be congratulated on the wide range and variety covered by the contributors, who include many New Zealand artists responsible for the numerous illustrations. The cover design is by Oriwa T. Haddon, and the New Century Press, Wellington, are the publishers, whence my copy. NEW MAGAZINES.

Amongst the new magazines I have received for the N.Z. Book Depot is the latest number of, Pearson’s resplendent with such names as Rafael Sabatini, Norman Reilly Raine, J. B. Priestley, Denis Mackail and Alan Tattersall amongst the short-story writers, while Charles Shepherd contributes a story for dog-lovers, besides special articles by A. S. M. Hutchinson, J. R. Wade, Harold T. Wilkins and H. Ashton-Wolfe. F. E. Baily begins in this April issue a series of “Letters of a Pre-War Father to His Son” which strike a new note in magazine contributions. As usual there are numerous competitions both novel and varied, an element which has helped to give Pearson’s the standing it has so long enjoyed. The April number of West opens with a complete novel by George G. Henderson. There is another story of the Ghost Patrol by Robert Emmet Johns, and amongst the other contributors are such names as Stephen Payne,. H. H. Stinson, Kenneth Keith Colvin and Henry Olmstead, all writers of repute when it comes to stories of the Wild West. The May number of Weldon’s Children’s Fashions includes numerous features invaluable to house-wife and mother, with notes on health, mothercraft and furnishing, a short story by Ella Sinclaire, and the practical points of dressing children for which this publication has built is reputation. AS UNCLE JOSHUA PLANNED.

Where class distinctions persist with a fervour unknown in the Dominions such a story as “The Secret Year” is possible, and so reading it one must divorce from one’s mind all suspicion of snobbery when the authoress, Pauline Warwick, writes of men and women of the middle classes with an unmistakable air of condescension. Having succeeded in disregarding this one comes to a brightly written and pleasant story of a young girl’s adventure in a manufacturing town, to which she goes to earn her living in response to her uncle’s challenge. Isobel, the daughter of Sir George Stukeley, Bart., was rich and securely established in society. Her old uncle, Joshua, has made his money in iron in Middlehampton, and when he bequeathed his fortune to her, he stipulated that she should keep herself by her own efforts as an employee in that

town for twelve months before she could secure the legacy. The challenge ’ rather than the money attracted Isobel, and so, under the name of Helen Barrett she goes to Middlehampton and obtains a position in an office as a French correspondence clerk. One suspects that Joshua was a matchmaker, that he was pretty confident Robert Anthony, his protege, would be attractive. He had prepared the way for his schemes with skill, and Isobel meets Anthony almost at once. The course of the romance runs along unexpected lines to the inevitable ending, but it retains its interest throughout, and this is due in large part to the bright, fresh style of the author, whose spontaneity is always pleasantly present. “The Secret Year” is a charming little story, and should have a good place in the season’s light fiction. My copy from the publishers, Messrs Mills and Boon, London.

SAWDUST.

Frederic Manning, the author of “Her Privates We,” the best soldier war book yet, is an Australian, though he left his home country when he was 13. He served at the front, and since the war has been living near Vienna.

One hears that George Earle Buckle is well forward with his new volume of “The Letters of Queen Victoria,” and that we may expect it shortly. He had much material to select from, because the. volume covers, the years 1886 to 1890,''which were the openin' and crucial period of Gladstone’s compaign for Irish Home Rule. Later Mr Buckle will give us two further volumes of the “Letters," bringing this intimate record of Queen Victoria’s life down to her death in 1901.