THE BOOKMAN

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 151, 16 September 1927, Page 12

THE BOOKMAN

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THE WOODEN HORSE.

AN OCCASIONAL COLUMN.

And with great Ues about hia wooden horse Set the crew laugblaj and forgot bis course —J. li. Flecker. MR STRACHEY, once the Editor of “The Spectator,” is dead. 1.0 his very good, even if rather self-sufficient, autobiography he described how he came, by two or three effortless steps, to what was lor a long time the complete control of that paper. One might have thought that easy and early success would have defeated him by making him lazy; but it did not. He was happily untouched by genius—nothing is more debilitating than a touch of it. —a faithful believer in his own ability, which was various and indeed considerable, and tirelessly industrious. Men of greater gifts have done much less. Though he was confident of himself, he made few mistakes in aim. Hb never “tired upon a thousand schemes his wit.” Perhaps the greatest of his few mistakes was his decision to write a novel —“The Madonna of the Barricades”—which was one of the most competently dull fictions of recent years. The reviewers were very tactful about it, and it was soon hushed up. But it might have been worse: he might have published an epic or a blank verse tragedy, as Lord Beaconsfield did: Go tell him, sirs, the Count Alarcos lived To find a hell on earth; yet thus he sought A deeper and a darker. [THE END... People U3ed to laugh at his paper because excited enthusiasts and cool liars had the habit of writing to it to report that they had heard a premature cuckoo or spotted the rathe primrose. “Punch” has made an excellent joke about this, its youth perpetually renewed, almost as often as it has made its three excellent jokes about the plumber, and Dr Bridges, and modern art. At one time 1 read “The Spectator” often, and for some years have read it regularly; but the cuckoo aaid primrose period must date back at least 10 years. For I have never discovered a single letter announcing the earliest bird or the rathest primrose. This is no imputation against the freshness of “Punch’s” jokes. According to Professor Leacock, we make too much fuss about ventilation. “Open your doors and windows,’* he says, “and fill your room with good fresh air. Then shut it in. It will keep for years.” Good jokes are like that. Once get them into “Punch,” and they will keep for ever. It Is true that “The Spectator” contains a great deal about country life, about plant, animal, and bird life, the life of the fields, the woods, the moors, and the streams. Much of it is very good, especially what is contributed weekly by Sir William Beach Thomas and by sensitive observers like Hen ry Williamson. There is nothing comical about this. Perhaps it was a little comic that “The Spectator,” which politically was so steady and safe, should for a few years have swung almost to the extreme of literary radicalism. The influence of Mr Strachey’s daughter. Mrs Amabel Wil-Uams-Ellis, set the literary pages, creative and critical, dancing to some ▼€»ry revolutionary tunes. A Mr V/. W. C. Dunlop not long ago wrote to “The Spectator” from Barbados to ask for information about the authorship and date of the following poem: Mistress, those starry eyes that light the way For me that know none other light than theirs Are now down-cast, nor now reflect the day. Nor will not meet mine own that look my prayers. Their downward ray is bent upon thy book, Thy happy book, upon thy lap that lies. And still may joj- in thine unwavering look. And watch the changing glory in thine eyes. Mistress, come lay that lifeless book apart, And take this living other that I bring, Writ fair on virgin vellum of my heart With chronicles of love’s leng labouring. Bead therefore (Mistress) those therein, and see No word of all hut’s writ in praise of thee. After an interval he wrote again to supply the information himself: the author was a Mr W. W. C. Dunlop, of Barbados, who flattered himself that he had caught the “old manner” pretty well, well enough to risk pulling “The Spectator s’* leg; and so he had. The best feat in the recapture of the spirit and language of a past poetic age must be George Darley’s. Darley—whose name has a curiously Elizabethan sound —last century wrote a poem so exactly Elizabethan in that free and careless lyrical style which looks as if it achieved perfection by accident, that F. T. Palgrave unhesitatingly put it among the anonymous Elizabethan poems in the “Golden Treasury.” When he found out that it belonged to the 19th century, he threw it out altogether from later editions, whether in a pet or because he changed his mind about its worth each may decide for himself. During the war somebody wr:>te a poem, a strikingly bad one, and palmed it off on “Ttie Times” as by Rudyard Kipling, over whose name it was printed. But thi« was less a case of deception by skilful forgery than of kowtowing to the lordliness of a name, a sort of ser vilitv which was properly rewarded by heirv? exposed. I think I have before now referred to Mr Polly’s marvellous pastiche of Carlyle: “Wow wow wow wo w ....*• J H. E. S. POETS AND THINGS r (Written far THE SUN.) I used to incline to the Oracle’s opinion about poets as expressed by him in “The Innocents Abroad.” “I didn’t expect nothin’ out of him. I never seed one of them poets yet that knowed anything. Pity but somebocy’d take that poor old lunatic and dig all the poetry rubbish out of him. Why can’t a man put his intellect on to things that’s some value? Gibbons ancl HippocratUß, and Sarcophagus and them old ancient philosophers was I

Well, I was down on poets, too, but now 1 begin to recognise in them some qualities which compensate for their general futility. They commonly hare, for one thing, a great liking and sympathy for the animal world; theyi are more aware of all forms of life about them, as if they move about the earth's surface with more widelyopened eyes than most people. I Imagine that that quality of mind

which causes them to see a glow of rose and purple, where an ordinary man sees a ploughed field with, a cloud shadow moving across it, and go away “and grind out about tour reams of the awfnllest slush about it”—l quote the Oracle again—gives them aeuter perceptions, a wider consciousness in regard to other living creatures. They resemble savages in their strong tendency to animism, sublimated to be sure, but undeniable; even Burns poetically endows bridges and haggises with personality. But to return to th;'ir sympathy with animals; Shakespeare shows it unmistakably. The most emphatic passage that occurs to me at the moment is in Cordelia’s speech when she passionately laments that her old father should have been shelterless on the night of the great storm. Mine enemy’s clog Though he had bit me, should have stood that night Against my fil-e! A very excellent sentiment, so effectively worded that I know a family who never describe a night of violent storm otherwise than as “an enemy’s dog night.” Burns had the tenderest feeling for little living things, and when he had finished toasting the haggis, and John Barleycorn, and singing the praises of all the bonnie Jeans and fair Marys of his acquaintance, and was sober again, he wrote beautifully. No offence to any brither Scot; I love the unlucky, warm-hearted, proud-spirited poet as much as they do. He was sober and heavy-hearted on that cold November day when he paused behind his plough to sympathise with the frightened mouse through whose nest “the cruel coulter” had crashed. Thy wee bit housde, too, in ruin! lt-’s silly wa’s the wins are strewin’! And naethin now to big a new ane O’ foggage green! And bleak December’s winds ensuin Baith snell and keen. That wee bit heap o’ leaves and stibble Has cost thee mony a weary nibble. Most readers have heard of the Cotter's dog, too, with “His honest, sonsie, baws’nt face, and coat of glossy black. A baws’nt face, by the way, is not as bad as it, sounds, being only a face with a white stripe down the middle Yes, these poets are an animal-loving race. One could quote lovely lines without end; from Coleridge; from Wordsworth mourning over his old house dog, and in anqflfler poem expressing the hope that the day will at length come when men

shall cease to blend their pleasure or their pride “with sorrow of the meanest things that feels.” From Cowper dear melancholy, absurd being, In his nightcap, or whatever the headdress was, denouncing the cruelty of sport in an age that was a hundred years behind him in compassion; fretting over caged birds and declaring; I am recompensed, and deem the toils Of poet'-y not lost, if verse of mine May stand between an animal and woe. And teach one tyrant pity for bis drudge. It has always seemed very strange to me that Rupert Brooke does not Include animals in “The Great Lover,” his song if love and thanksgiving for the delights of life. Among so many precious and wholesome everyday things it is extraordinary that a young Englishman of his class and character should not mention dogs, or horses, or the birds of his English countryside. 1 remember feeling the same lack in

R. L. Stevenson's “Child’s Garden of Verse.” Dogs and cats generally loom large in a happily-situated child’s early years, but that child seemed to know no animal but the gentle cow so red and white which he loved with all his heart — She gives me cream with all her might To eat with apple tart. Byron, who certainly knew better, said a most ridiculous thing about dogs, but then he only said it for effect: he was trying to rouse sympathy for himself as usual about being ;1 poor exile whom no one loved when he perpetrated this libel: My dog stands howling at the gate, Till fed by stranger hands, But long ere I come back again He'd tear me where he stands. He deserved, if not to be torn, at least to be bitten by Poms for that. ALICE A. KENNY. Paeroa. BOOKS REVIEWED A STRIKING NOVEL IT'RNEST HEMINGWAY is being spoken of .... It is just a question whether he should not be spoken to. He leaves one, in his novel "Fiesta,” not the faintest doubt that he is unusually able, and he could not have written a book so masterful in its grip upon the reader without having worked at it mightily. One rebels against it, against the people in it, against what they do and say, though they could do and say nothing else; but Mr. Hemingway takes one by the scruff of the neck and forces one to see his bitter comedy out to the bitter end. He should be spoken to —is it necessary for him to prick so deep and scarify so harshly? Perhaps; only Mr. Hemingway can say that. There is, at any rate, no trace of insincerity in this strangely powerful book, in which a number of people are lifted from the garish incoherence of their life in Paris and regrouped in a Spanish town during the fiesta, the bullfight festival. Isolated here, a small party in a crowd, they stand out vividly clear against a brilliant, a violent background. Brett, loved absurdly and in vain by Cohn, with aching, futile hopelessness by Jake, j and waiting to marry Mike —these names are absurd —is infatuated by J the young bullfighter Romero. The j group breaks up after the fiesta. Jake ! goes to Madrid, where Brett has dis- j missed her Romero and thinks of returning to Mike. “Oh, Jake,” Brett said, “We could have had such a damned good time together. “Yes,” Jake said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” That is the last, piercing sentence in the book. But the story

cannot be summarised. The violins play higher and shriller and wild together, but never in harmony; and at the end, when two only are heard, the music Is softer but broken still, and the strings frayed near to snapping. “Fiesta,” Ernest Hemingway. Jonathan Cape. White Wolves An artist on a ranch paints a picture depicting wolves with the faces of cowboys. This was intended to be symbolic, suggesting that the cowboys were “rustlers.” After a fistic encounter (no guns, for a wonder!), he leaves the ranch and buys a little island on the Missouri, where he accidentally discovers that his picture was prophetic. After some close calls, he escapes from the locality, taking with him a strange young woman of musical tastes, whom he decides to marry after a second brief interview. His hardest job Is the 200-miles row down the Missouri with the girl, seeking the good offices of the parson. The deed done, the blushing brade, complete with husband, returns to the island, which by this time is cleared of the “rustlers.” And that’s all there is to it. “White Wolves,” B. M. Bower. Hodder and Stoughton. Our copy direct from the publishers. Australia Looks at U.S.A. Seen through the eyes of a thoughtful and unbiased investigator, America is not the workers’ paradise many believe it to be, according to a recentlypublished work of Hugh Grant Adam, associate editor of the Melbourne “Herald.” Mr. Adam accompanied an Australian delegation which toured the United States of America Investigating industrial conditions. He presents a concise yet vivid description of the relationship between the worker and the employer, and shows why to-day little more than five per cent, of the American workers are organised. He shatters many of the* ideals held in Australia and New Zealand as to the relationship of the American employer and worker, and argues that the majority of the so-called paternal schemes of the employer applying to the welfare of the worker are but schemes of expediency. He presents a strong case, and the book is well worth the perusal of those interested in labour aud industrial problems. “An Australian Looks at America,” by Hugh Grant Adam. Our copy direct from the! publishers. Angus and Robertson, Ltd., Sydney. A Tale of Tasmania Bernard Cronin, the author of “Red Dawson,” sets his stage in Tasmania. Let it be said that he seems to know very little about Tasmania, for his local colour is unconvincing to one who has lived in “The Tight Little Isle.” His humour is faintly imitative of O. Henry's and he uses terms that are never heard outside of the cowboy country of America. “Red Daw-

son” is a bachelor who remains so because he was unable to wed a woman who preferred someone else. The woman is widowed and dies in New Zealand, and her daughter comes to Tasmania to be under the protection of “Red.” It fits in that “Red” j has an adopted son, and after the j girl’s arrival on the Tasmarfian (?) j farm there is rivalrj r for her hand between this young man, his closest I friend, and a villainous farmer-sly-I grog trader, whom one is subse- | quently glad to leave—with a knife j stuck through his ribs by a Frenchman, whose wife he had stolen years before in Canada. (How these international complications pile up!) In the end, “Red’s” adopted son weds the daughter of “Red’s” life’s disappointment, his friend discovers that he loves a beautiful blind girl, and all ends as the reader has long before anticipated. ‘•Red Dawson,” Bernard Cronin. Hodder and Stoughton. Our copy direct from the publishei's. Humanity in England. There are no commonplace people in England, except to the superficial observer. Edgar Wallace demonstrates. He has turned aside from journalism and the writing of many “thrillers” to give us a pleasant book of little bits of observation and experience. As a journalist, and especially as one who has found much material for stories of what used to be called the “seamy side” of life, Mr Wallace has been able to study a great

variety of human types. But his equipment has been even better than that. Readers of his very interesting and all-too-short autobiography, “People,” know that the circumstances of his upbringing and his varied career gave him such unusual opportunities for friendship with many kinds of people that his knowledge of humanity is both wide and deep. It is that fact that enables him to say there are no commonplace people in England: for he has seen what the superficial observer misses. Writer of novels though he is, he says that not all the real stories, the big ones, are found between book covers. In the chapter in which he makes that remark he cites striking instances. That is only one chapter of a score in which he shows us the inner humanity of all kinds and conditions of people, from the impossible people to the modern girl, from the burglar to the judge, from the racing man to the parson. The reader Qf these delightful sketches cannot doubt that Edgar Wallace loves them all. Bert Thomas has illustrated them just as they should be illustrated, and the whole result is charming. “This England.” Edgar Wallace. Illustrations by Bert Thomas. Hodder and Stoughton. Ltd. Our copy from the publishers’ Australian representative.