THE LITERATURE OF MAL DE MER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 363, 25 May 1928, Page 14

THE LITERATURE OF MAL DE MER

(Written for THE SUN.) modest person who tries to write, in this fag-end of time, must be oppressed a little by the sense that all possible subjects have been done too well and often. A rash or naive poet, or a greatly courageous, may still allow himself to be inspired of roses, the sea, and his mistress’s eyebrow. But others have futile dreams of some virgin ore that shall at last be minted, some unpath’d waters of the mind through which a first keel may be steered. One thought, in a happy and forgetful hour, that such a matter was seasickness —mal de mer— mal di mare—seekrankheit. But, alas! an afternoon of browsing through the first good library was enough to discover that this, like all else, has been treated with a disheartening excellence. No time was wasted on jokes of the ‘ Punch'’ kind, mere trifling with the essential dignity and awefulness of the theme. Y’et one exception was made, of that which accompanies a George Belcher drawing: “We are just nearing the harbour, madam. Would you like some nice hot water to wash in?” "No, thank you, I won’t bother. I’m just going to relations”—not, in pictureless print, an exciting jest. Bvit the drawing is typical of Belcher’s rare land very English) gift for the kind presentment of unlovely women. A passage, reprehensive but not unamusing, was found in Captain Harry Graham’s “Deportmental Ditties” (Graham, you may remember, used to seem rather clever, before he was caught up in the manufacture of musical comedies—“ Dreadful trade!” as Shakespeare said of a very different person’s):— When Joseph Spence (a noted wag) Was sick into a stranger’s bag. The stranger, from an upper bunk Catted out: “/ say, that’s not your trunk !” But, with a Jeer: “I KNOW!” said Spence,

And then repeated the offence. We came nearer to the real right thing in “The Note-books of Samuel Butler,” that perfect pasturage for a desultory reader. Butler was, of course, incapable of being reverent toward anything except Handel’s music; but there is not too much levity in this:—

“When I returned from Calais last December after spending Christmas at Boulogne according to my custom, the sea was rough as I crossed to Dover and, having a cold upon me, I went down into the second-class cabin, cleared the railway-books off one of the tables, spread out my papers, and continued my translation, or rather analysis, of the ‘lliad.’ Several people of all ages and sexes were on the sofas, and they soon began to be sea-sick. There was no steward, so I got them each a basin and placed it for them as well as I could; then I sat down again at my table in the middle and went on with my translation while they were sick all round me. I had to get the ‘lliad’ well into my head before I began my lecture on ‘The Humour of Homer’ and I could not afford to throw away a couple of hours, but I doubt whether Homer was ever before translated under such circumstances.” The great subject appears to have fascinated Butler, for he returned to it again and again. Here is one of the passages in which he most anticipates the tone of Bernard Shaw: “Sea-sickness or, indeed, any other sickness is the inarticulate expression of the pain we feel on seeing a proselyte escape us just as we were on the point of converting it.” Butler could not stay for long, however, at such a fine philosophic height. One mistrusts the sympathy of this little note called “ The Channel Passage.”:— “ How holy people look when they are sea-sick! There was a patient Parsee near me who seemed purified once and for ever from all taint of the flesh. Buddha was a low, worldlyminded, .music-hall comic singer by comparison. He sat like this for a long time until . . . and he made a noise like cows coming home to be milked on an April evening.” But here is a last piece of Butler in which the cloven hoof and pointed ear are most evident (and indeed, how his portraits are like an elderly faun, who sits with deceptive quietness in a suburban drawing-room): “ I must one day write about how I hunted the late Bishop of Carlisle with my camera, hoping to shoot him when he was sea-sick crossing from Calais to Dover, and how St. somebody protected him and said I might shoot him ! when he was well, but not when he was sea-sick. I should like to do it in the manner of the ‘Odyssey’: “. . . And the steward went around and laid them all on the sofas and benches and he set a beautiful basin by each, variegated and adorned with flowers, but it contained no water for washing the hands, and Neptune sent great waves that washed over the eyelet-holes of the cabin. But when it was now in the middle of the passage and a great roaring arose as of beasts in the Zoological Gardens and they promised hecatombs to Neptune if he would stay the raging of the waves .... “ At any rate I shot him and have him in my snap-shot book, but he was not Rea-sick." The greatest of all writing in this kind, it seems, is the sonnet, "A Channel Passage," of Rupert Brooke’s

first volume. Though most of you have read this, it may be reprinted here for the benefit of any who have escaped its magnificent horridness (but the third quatrain is a little too magnificent for our cautious page): The damned ship lurched and slithered. Quiet and quick My cold gorge rose; the long sea rolled; 1 knew 1 must think hard of something or be sick; And could think hard of only one thing — you! "You, you alone could hold my fancy ever! And with you memories come, sharp pain, and dole. Now there’s a choice —heartache or tortured liver! A sea-sick body or a you-sick soul! What more is there to say? We must leave the last word with Brooke. Off Cape Leeuwin. Ulysses J. B. AN AUCKLAND AUTHOR TLTR. H. E. BOOTES, of Devonport, has received advice from Loudon, that Ernest Benn, Ltd., publishers, have accepted for publication his book, “Deep Sea Bubbles,” or “The Cruise of Anna Lombard.” The book will be published in December. Mr. Bootes has lately supplied a number of models of old-type sailing ships to the Auckland Museum. “Deep Sea Bubbles” will deal with whaling days in the Pacific in which industry Mr. Bootes has had experience “before the mast.” Havelock Wilson will contribute a preface to the book. MUSSOLINI BANS AN ENGLISH NOVEL Mr. Compton Mackenzie’s novel, “Vestal Fire,” recently published by Cassells, has been confiscated and prohibited throughout Italy. All copies of the novel have been seized, the reasons given being:—Making fun of the carabinieri. Making remarks derogatory to the State. Mentioning the unmentionable. Injuring the reclame of Capri “Contra bonos mores” (against good conduct). "Vestal Fire” has its setting in a large Anglo-American, colony on the Italian island of Sirene, where the scandalous conduct of Count Marsac set the whole of the inhabitants by the ears.