PEOPLE WHO COME ALIVE TO US.

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 240, 30 December 1927, Page 14

PEOPLE WHO COME ALIVE TO US.

[Writtra for The San.] fj-sO bring the dead to life—that’s a JL miracle —but soma books perform just that. They defeat the death of the spirit. The death of the body has been twice defeated, but such defeats are too tremendous for careless repetitions. The life of living wordß can breathe through dead ages and dead men till they rise agam transfigured by the glory of the intangible. Bernard Shaw, with that drj scratchy pen of his. has made Csesai live as no commentary makes him. All the Gallic Wars, all his strife with Pompey. could not make him breatht and walk as that play "Caesar and Cleopatra.” And while we mention Cleopatra, she is rehabilitated too. She is no longer the overblown voluptuary, but a human cat with the charm and the perversity of feline and woman. Add a fierce innocence of childhood, and you have the most appealing portrait of the Nile woman ever given. “Old gentleman, I like you," she says to the lord of Rome the greater and Rome the less. That is the cry of a child. But she is woman enough to perceive that his kindness arises less from the love of a man than from the indifference of a philosopher. And her egotism is less immoral than amoral. She is like a stained glass that turns all to its own hue. Then Csesar. Is this the Ctesar of so many battles, so many legions, so many foes? A kindly, stern old man too weary to commit Injustice, too farseeing to succumb to folly. A man who put Rome and his work before all women! But a very human, childish conqueror. Take the scene in the lighthouse when his heart failed him and his blunt lieutenant made him eat the dates, telling him the middle-aged feel weak before their midday meal, Caesar answers sorrowfully, “True, Rufio. Achilles is still in his prime, Ptolemy is a boy.” Then, with sudden cheerfulness, “These dates are not bad, Ruflc.” From then on he is the sure Caesar. It is a little human touch like that that brings the dead to life. It makes Disraeli easier to picture when one remembers that he wore a ring outsido his glove, and Parnell that he Was afraid of green. Drinkwater has been much lauded as a playwright, but h? 3 characters owe much to the actors. Mary Queen of Scots is more vivid than Abraham Lincoln, especially in her scene with the English ambassador, Randolph, where, too wary for pretences, she breaks through his silkiness and lays bare the truth. “You might let our cousin know in seme lighter moment, perhaps, that Mary Stuart thought thus: That if she could have found peace, and not be destroyed by base an :l little lovers, she could have met an:l instructed the surest wits in England, and have delighted in the match, but that being too tired she said it was no matter.” She knows the game of diplomacy so well thsit it sickens her. And then, with the knowledge that he is there to undo her by espionage, she gives him the recorder she bad from Ronsard in old France. A queen in truth.

But with Lincoln Drinkwater had a hard tp.sk. That rough-hewn genius was hare! to catch in words. Now and again his humanness breaks through, but much is left to gesture and the actor’s characterisation. There are two human touches. He reads Artemus Ward aloud to hi 3 cabinet when they are gathered together after McClellan’s victory. It may have been a lull to let them simmer down, or it may have been a trick to irritate them to the frenzy in which truth escapes. Either way, the reading and its effects are human. The second is even more so. One of the cabinet accuses Grant ■—“Gram: drinks.” “Tell me his brand,” says Lincoln, "I’ll send the others some bottles He wins victories.” Curiously enough. Grant, appears only for a brief space in the play; but Drinkwater is more successful In making us see Grant alive than in making us see Lincoln. And he is more successful with Burns than with either, though of (course that is natural. Burns is a character less complex, and the lavish introduction of his famous lyrics makes the play popular. Donn Byrne has given us in "Marco Polo” a poem in prose, but to me at least it remains a poem, something in the realm of imagination rather than in the land of the living. I cannot see Golden Bells and I cannot see Marco Polo. They are not man and woman to me. They are lovely words. Shane Leslie has put the leading personalities of a whole nation into Doomsland so clearly that they are easily recognisable under their borrowed names. No poetry, plain bitter fact, sometimes a little too bitter for truth.

Hewlett has given us a speaking Image of Byron in "Bendish.” Belloc calls Danton back from the jealous shades. Life flowed from Shakespeare’s Angers. Kings and their jesters, queens and their tirewomen, sleeping in death as the magic court slept, awoke as suddenly at his touch. That needs no telling. And yet Bernard Shaw’s Juliu3 Cy*sar is the more complex character, tho subtler figure of the two. The old master has the grander gesture. That is all. And is it because he is nearer to justice that Shaw’3 Joan of Arc appears more vivid than Shakespeare’s, who hud the old, untrue idea of the little maid of Domremy? Instead of Joan, The Maid, he has given us Joan, the I ollard. He is like Shakespeare in this, that he seems to stand aloof from all the creeds. His early training crops out In Joan in a manner that must have astonished his cynical self. EILEEN DUGGAN, Wellington.

BOOKS REVIEWED. MR GUEDALLA ON TOUR. r ’shrewd, sharp eye fot J ■ ' ? ■ which la part ol Lt ‘ - P G'-cdalU-'a equipment, tv, sic lyiby and for use,

The surface of things in America nresefits so agreeable “a quantity of sub jects for witty inquisition that a man who looks through Mr Guedalla’s eye glass and can comment with Mr Guedalla’s wit does not need to be excused if he looks no deeper. “There is no attempt here at any ordered survey,” Mr Guedalla smiles, polishing his glass, and “No, no,” we nod, "No, of course not. Quite right; but do go on”—“at any ordered survey of the past, present, and immediate prospects of the United States (with maps, appendices, and a posthumous Introdu*

tion by Lord Bryce). The object of these pages is far humbler. Having crawled, buzzing slightly, across a vast window-pane, I felt that news of my adventure might interest some of the other flies—and, perhaps, the pans itself. I have described a surface; and surfaces, I warn the student, are superficial. Deeper studies may be sa'ely left to those whose stay was bi.jier still.” That’s our brave Guedalla! From “Passport” to “The Film Runs Backward,” then, “Conquistador” never drops into dullness or sententiousness. Whether we discover that American trains are surprisingly slow and sedate, or fail to discover why in American hotel lobbies gentlemen sit forever, “immovably enthroned and invariably with their hats on,” whether we are presented to the members of a State Legislature in session or hear Sister Aimde on her triumphal return to Angelus Temple, whether we muse over the "glorious and calculated disarray of American place-names’’ or over the possibility that “Prohibition may be acting as a continuous endowment of the criminal class,” we are happily untroubled by the absence of maps, appendices, and Lord Bryce’s benediction. This is an amusing book and, after all, a very able book; but—one word more. Mr Guedalla must tear out from his copy of Pater’s "Renascence'' that page where it is written of tL_ Monna Lisa that “her eyelids are a little weary”—a phrase which has given prose a new mannerism and Mr Guedalla’s prose a vice. Eighty times, once every three printed pages, his adjectives and adverbs are diluted with “a little,” or with “a shade” or “a trifle” or “a thought”—the slightlies and faintlies defy arithmetic. Even the Pacific Ocean is—oh the finnicking accuracy of it!—“a little still.” There are other tricks in Mr Guedalla’s bold and brilliant style which we find a little vexing, a shade tedious, and a trifle deplorable; but that will do just now. “Conquistador American Fantasia.” Philip .Guedal In. Ernest Benn. Our copy from the publisher.

Bateman The art of Mr. H. M. Bateman needs no introduction to the British public. Wherever the English illustrated journals circulate—and they are found from Baffin Bay to Bangkok— Englishmen have chortled over those eccentric and altogether-captivating creations of Bateman which are invested with an extraordinary power to cause the snigger which grows to the laugh and swells to the guffaw. “The Guardsman Who Dropped His Rifle” and “The Man Who Asked the Land Agent if he had a House to Let” are classic examples of Bateman drawings that have become the stock table topics. A new collection of his work, uniform with the popular “More Drawings” edition, has been published by the House of Methuen. The volume includes such gems as “The Plumber’s Paradise,” “The Man Who Revoked at the Portland Club,” the famous billiards problem: “Were They Touching?” and “Getting a Document Stamped at Somerset House” —all extravagantly funny. The book is a welcome addition to the Bateman “tomes” that have preceded it.

“Rebound.” Drawings by H. M. Batejri.'iu, Methuen anil Company, Ltd., London. Our copy from tho publisher*.

Milne—Set to Music The first book of the songs made from A. A. Milne’s thistledown poems to Christopher Robin—they were composed by Harold Fraser-Simson, the gifted English composer—sold to the tune of 50,000 in England alone. Small wonder: the words and music were most charmingly wedded. And from that happy union sprang a second set “Teddy Bear,” equally successful. Dr. Simson in a recent interview told of delightful evenings spent with Milne in this collaboration: He used to come across the road to our house [they are neighbours] to hear the songs after I had set them, and Christopher Robin used to come, too. j But Christopher Robin (who, by the way, is also known as "Billy Moon,” a name I fancy he invented for himself) wasn’t particularly interested in these occasions. He preferred to play with Mr. Henry Woggins (our spaniel) under the piano where Mr. Henry Woggins always goes when the piano is being played. We are celebrating this Christmas by bringing out the book of songs from “Now We Are Six.” And the third Milne-Simson book is as refreshing as its two predecessors. The “bill of fare” includes “Sneezles,” “The Emperor’s Rhyme,” “Cherry Stones,” “Wind on the Hill,” "Twice Times,” “Furry Bear” and “Down by the Pond” and dotted through the pages are exhilarating decorations by E. H. Shepard. A splendid gift-book. Songs from “Now We Are Six.” Methuen and Company, Ltd., London. Our copy from the publishers. Married to the Chauffeur “Children of the Ritz” differ only in one respect from the Lennox family, so amusingly introduced to us in “The Best People,” that enjoyable satire on the American home circle. There are the pleasure-loving mother, Mrs. Pennington—always known as Diane —and an easy-going father. The mere fact that he was in some measure responsible for their existence on this earth was even more than father’s indulged daughter and “boose-baby” of a son could understand. Last, but not least, the chauffeur. We must not forget the chauffeur, Dewey Haines. His age can be gauged from the fact that he was called after the American admiral of that name at the time of the American-Spanish war. Now, this is where the Ritz crowd differs from the Lennox menage. The relations between Lyle and her chauffeur-husband are presented even more intimately. For instance, the bed-room scene. Dewey could not understand his wife’s passion for privacy. “I love you, but I would not drink from your water-glass,” said Lyle, very determinedly. “You could have the most dangerous illness in the world and I wouldn’t be afraid to nurse you, but not unless you had your hair combed properly and wore v-necked pyjamas . . . There’s something indecent

about sleeping in the presence of someone else.” All of which was delivered in a wrapper of shell-pink marabou, sitting on the kitchen sink. Needless to say, Lyle returns, in good time, to her husband’s arms. Cornell Woolrich has written a prize novel. It brought him 10,000 dollars in hard American cash. “Children of the Ritz,” by Cornell Woolrich. Published in Australia by the Cornstalk Company. Our copy from Angus and Robertson, Castlereagh Street, Sydney. Desert Warfare. This is not a pleasant book. Death In any form is not pleasant; and death at the hands of Arab fanatics may be revoltingly horrible, even without false hope, then despair, then madness as attributes. The story links up with a patrol of 10 English cavalrymen on war service in the Mesopotamia desert. Their officer has just been shot dead by a stray “Buddoo” (the author thoughtfully provides a glossary) before he has passed his orders on to the sergeant, with the result that the patrol is hopelessly lost. They make an oasis the first evening; but that night the sentry is done to death and all the horses are stolen. Nine men are left they know not where, but probably 70 miles from friends, 70 miles of trackless, Arab-infested desert. And the men: a fair cross-sectien of the Army in “Mespot.,” probably, for Philip MacDonald has drawn on his own experiences in that campaign: the sergeant, a public-school boy kicked out of his home at 16; Morelli, the vaudeville dancer; Hale, the London fishmonger; Brown, the artist, who was moved to poetry at the thought of Italian sunsets; Sanders, the sanctimonious student; Abelson, the Jew boxer; McKay, once a Squadron-Ser-geant-major in the Regular Army, now, thanks to whisky, a plain trooper; and so on. The Arabs got them all in the end —and the dying sergeant got the last Arab with his last shot. But it is as a study of men in life, in life plagued by sun and sand and flies, in life that seems a mockery when all know it can’t endure, that “Patrol” deserves to be ranked as one of the most powerful novels inspired by the war. Mr MacDonald’s characters are drawn with a brutal frankness and set in brutal surroundings; but none of them is all brute. For a vivid, startling picture of what war in the desert may mean to the individual as distinct from the army or the nation, we commend this. But —again the warning—it is not a pleasant book, nor a delicate book. '‘Patrol.” Philip MacDonald. Wm. Collins Sons and Co., Ltd. Our copy from the publishers. Mr Button Is Let In For St. A very ordinary, timid, unadventurous fellow, this Henry Button, clerk to the firm of Pownall and Merritt, Wholesale Grocers, in the City of London. You would hardly expect him to do so desperate a thing as set out to spenfi his holiday on a walking tour in Cornwall—-he hardly knew him self why he broke out in this unusual way. But he did, and he fell in for it. Henry was strangely like one Blunt, and Blunt had Professor Allis’s formula, and desperately wicked fellows were bent on getting the formula from him, and they would cheerfully have killed him to get it; but then they made the excusable mistake of taking poor Henry Button for Blunt —they were cunningly bluffed into that—and then Henry’s holiday began to get furtaifil? exciting. He was lucky to

find an ally in Mr Valerian Hat, a stout fellow with a great capacity for Bass and popping up exactly when needed. All the conventional thrills are stuffed into this story, the good people came out on top, the dirty dogs are all scuppered. Henry is an agreeable little hero.

“The Amazing Adventures of Mr Henrv Button. ’ Leslie Despard. Hodder and Stoughton. Our copy from the publishers' Australian representative. Slick Stuff.

Mr Arthur Weigall’s latest novel, “Saturnalia in Room 23,” is as diverting as its title. There is enough scandal in the opening chapter to pleasq the sub-editor of a society titbits papier. It opens in what seems to be indelicate fashion, for the heroine, and hero, supposedly unmarried, awake in the same bed at a hotel on the Riviera among a crowd of smug people, representative of the stuffiest period of the reign of her Majesty, the lata Queen Victoria. But this promising little bedroom farce is all explained away by the fact that Peregrine Pennv and Camilla Worth, the hero and heroine, really married, are posing as very free lovers for the benefit of Camilla’s Aunt Sarah, who is an ardent leader of the women’s emancipation movement in England. Aunt Sarah did not believe in the divine right of husbands, and her fortune and an allowance went to Camilla only on condition that she lived with her beloved but did not marry him. Peregrine’s father, Sir Erasmus (beautiful name) Penny, on the other hand, believed in holy matrimony. The Pennyworth—the author’s name for the couple—are sorely put to it when both Aunt Sarah and Sir Erasmus arrive on the scene. Only Camilla’s very nimble wit saves the situation, and finally Aunt Sarah and an old admirer wed, on certain conditions. In the words of the blurb-writers, there is not a dull moment in “Saturnalia in Room 23,” and the characters are delightfully drawn. The gentle satire on women’s emancipation must not be missed. “Saturnalia in Room 23.” Arthur Welgall. T. Fisher Unwin Ltd. Ernest Benn, London. Our copy from the publishers.

POETS’ CORNER. RUNNING WATER. [Written for The Sun .l I sit beside a little shadowy stream And try to tell in words my thoughts of you. It is in vain. The running waters whisper, beckon, gleam; The running waters glitter through my brain. Dragon-By blue, The irises are sweet with half-re-membered rain; Their dark heads bend beneath their diadems of dew; One petal falls, and like a little boat Clings drowning where the yellow rushes Boat — The waters with swift fingers draw it dovsn. So one by one my petal fancies drown. And all my unborn words Fall and flutter and sink like wounded birds; Cool waters close above them, silvergrey — The running water hurries them away. ROBIN HYDE. Christchurch. COLUMBINE'S HOUSE. [Written for The San.] There’s a small house in a garden green and small, A jonquil garden, the warm haunt of bees; And by the door two old camellia trees Grow stiff, and stately, fair, and trim, and tall. They always bloom too early, and spring showers Tarnish and rob them as the cold gusts pass, Scattering like white rosettes upon the grass The lovely, formal, scentless, waxen Bowers. But O! on moonlight nights, when they are drawn In shining, Bower-decked shapes against the sky, When the white billowy clouds of spring drift by, And lovely mystery wraps the little lawn, They take my heart with loveliness; they look Like trees in some old magic wood, or more Like guardians set by an enchanted door, Or decorations from an ancient book. With such sweet art the empty stage is set, One half expects light music to begin, While Columbine, a. dainty marionette. Opens the door and beckons Harlequin. ALICE A. KENNY, Paeroa, BOOKS IN DEMAND AT THE AUCKLAND PUBLIC LIBRARY NON-FICTION "WILL CIVILISATION CRASH? by J. M. Kenworthy. "THE JUDGMENT OE DR. JOHNSON " by G. K. Chesterton. “PROPER STUDIES” by Aldous Huxley. "JOSEPII CONRAD : LIFE AND LETTERS” by G. Jean-Aubry. "FIFTY YEARS OF SPOOF” by A. Roberts. “CASTLES IN SPAIN” by John Galsworthy. “ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL" by E. M. Forster. "THROUGH TIBET TO EVEREST" by J. B. L. Noel. “NOW WE ARE SIX” by A. A. Milne. "BIRD IN HAND” by John Drinkwater. FICTION “GROWTH” by Booth Tarkington. “BENIGHTED” by J. B. Priestley. "RED SKY AT MORNING” by Margaret Kennedy. “TY PET’S TREASURE,” by J. T revena. “JALNA” by Mazo de la Roche. “THE TRAGIC MUSE” by Henry James. "GEORGIAN STORIES, 1927” edited by Arthur Waugh. “GALLIONS REACH” by H. M. Tomlinson. “THE FLYING BO’SUN” by A. Mason. "MAX CARRADOS MYSTERIES” by E. Bramah,