The Author Of "Mauric Guest"

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 755, 30 August 1929, Page 16

The Author Of "Mauric Guest"

Mr Ilugli Walpoles May •London Letter ’ to the Sew York ■ Herald-Tri-bune ’ contains an enthusiastic reference to the success of "Ultima Thule," by the author of "Maurice Guest," a novel which has been steadily acclaimed by Mr Walpole (and other eminent judges ) as one of the finest of our time—and as steadily overlooked by the public. When il was reprinted eight or nine years ago, Mr Walpole wrote an introduction for it. equally generous and just. The second example of recent but belated recognition of a writer’s merit is that of Mr M. P. Shiel. whose work has been reissued by Gollancz. IT seems to be a pretty safe rule in letters that however crowded the world may become, however hurried every human citizen is now compelled to be, nevertheless, if you have something to say and an individual way of saying it, and if you keep pegging along year after year, and if you don’t die of cold, hunger and disappointment in the meantime, you will one day come into your rightful kingdom. It Is a eomfortaing theory and does no one any harm. I really believe there Is something it it. Looking back over 10 years it is very difficult to think of any novelist or poet who has done good work (and not died too soon of it) who has been refused at the last every sort of recognition. Two remarkable instances of belated justice have recently occurred here. One is Henry Handel Richardson. I-ias America ever heard of “Maurice Guest”? I am not sure whether it has ever appeared beyond England; if it has not, let some American publisher snatch it up quickly and reap his reward. Here it was published nearly 20 years ago, and since then some of us have continued to murmur, day after day: “Yes, but have you read ‘Maurice Guest’?” No one knew him; scarcely any one knows now who Henry Handel Richardson might be. It appears that she Is. and has been for many years, a married lady living ■'quietly in the hidden depths of Kensington. No one ever In aliahistory has been more determined on obscurity, and not only on obscurity, but on writing books that have, in any popular sense, simply everything against them. “Maurice Guest” was a long, realistic and tragic study of musical life in Leip. eig, the best musical novel in English I have heard it called, and that it may be in spite of “Evelyn Innes.” This was followed by a brilliant study of child life. “The Getting of Wisdom,” and then, of all things in the world, by a long, excessive gloomy trilogy of Australian life. Australian life! I have nothing to say against Australia, but has any novelist, save possibly Henry Kingsley and. for the boys of a generation ago, Rolf Boldrewood, succeeded in making Australia interesting? Yes. D. H. Lawrence made poetry of it in “Kangaroo.” but that was a book very much more concerned with D. H. Lawrence than with Australia. The first two volumes of Henry Richardson’s Trilogy were still born. Surely the same thing might be expected of the third. “Ultima Thule,” es. pecially as it reeks with gloom and ends in the bitterest analysis of hopeless insanity! But the miracle has occurred. “Ultima Thule” is one of the successes of the spring. Henry Richardson has been interviewed, confessed to her sex. to her schooldays, to her ambitions, and a great many people are reading the Trilogy from end to end. (“Ultima Thule” will be published here shortly.) The effect of three volumes is of unrelenting truth. The author is a creator and is concerned only with veracity. Her work conveys the excitement one feels of an eye-witness. The hero, his wife, his child, his friends, once found, are never again tortgotten. I hope that America, the America that has supported ”Of Human Bondage” and “An American Tragedy” will recognise the great granitelike structure of this splendid work.