"JUST OUT"—BOOKS WORTH READING

Ladies' Mirror, Volume I, Issue 6, 1 December 1922, Page 40

"JUST OUT"—BOOKS WORTH READING

“T OVE and Freindship,” and other Early Works, by Jane Austen. Chatto and Windus, London. Said to have been written at the age of seventeen, these Juvenilia are now printed from the original manuscript for the first time. It certainly seems almost too good to be true that work of such charm should have remained unvalued among the family papers of the Austen family until to-day. This, says G. K. Chesterton in his preface, “is something more than the discovery of a document; it is the discovery of an inspiration.” And the inspiration was laughter—almost exuberant, always ironic, and genially satirical. These early writings anticipate the satire that pervades “Northanger Abbey,” hence their value for Miss Austen’s many admirers. Her sense of humour makes her ridicule everything she considers morbid, lax or silly. When Sophia is dying of galloping consumption, her friend nurses her as ineptly as might be expected from a woman of her “extreme sensibility. “I had wept over her every day,” says Laura, “had bathed her sweet face with my tears, and had pressed her fair hands continually in mine.” The art of fainting on every possible occasion, which was supposed by the fiction writers of the day to be a feminine characteristic, is satirised with great neatness. Thus when Edward and Augustus meet after a separation of three weeks, they flew into each others’ arms. • “It was too pathetic for the feelings of Sophia and myself,” says the young bride, “we fainted alternately on a sofa.” “The History of England,” by a partial, prejudiced and ignorant historian, is full of neat sallies. Of Henry VIII she writes that “his last wife contrived to survive him, but with difficulty effected it.” Charming miniatures of the sovereigns of England painted by Cassandra Austen, adorn the end papers in the book, and the frontispiece is a fac simile of a page of the original MS. Altogether the little volume is delightful. “I\/TY Discovery of England,” by -L’J- Stephen Leacock, London: John Lane, the Bodley Head Limited. In his latest book, Mr. Leacock sustains his reputation for genial humour and delicate satire. Though a Canadian and a loyal British subject, he sees England through Americanised spectacles, while he endeavours in a sympathetically amused way—to let us see ourselves as others see us. Underneath his good humoured castigation of Britain’s insularities it is easy to read his large pride in this England which he has so cleverly discovered. His version of the inner history i of the Washington Conference is full : of humour. “It is whispered,” he writes,, “that immediately on his arrival, Mr. Balfour was given a cigar by President Harding. Mr. Balfour offered at once to scrap five ships, and invited the entire American Cabinet into the British Embassy, where Sir A. Geddes was rash enough to offer them champagne. The American delegates immediately offered to scrap ten ships. Mr. Balfour, who simply cannot be outdone in International courtesy, saw the ten and raised it to twenty. President Harding saw the twenty, raised it to thirty, and sent out for more poker chips. At the close of the play. Lord Beatty, who is urbanity itself, offered to scrap Portsmouth Dockyard, and asked if anybody present would like Canada.” But he mingles some undeniable shrewdness with his charming nonsense. He castigates the modern tendency to rely upon the State for everything to avoid individual effort at all costs.

A Review of Current Literature

“This vast new system of leaning on the Government is spreading like a blight over England and America, and everywhere we suffer from it. Government that in theory represents a union of effort and saving of force, sprawls like an octopus over the land. It has become a dead weight upon us. Wherever it touches industry it cripples it. It runs railways and makes a heavy deficit, it builds ships and loses more money, it piles up the taxes to fill up the vacuum, and where it has killed employment, opens a bureau of unemployment and issues a report on the depression of industry.” “TTIIS Freedom,” by A. S. M. Hutchinson. London: Hodder and Stoughton Limited. Is this woman’s era? With the women of Great Britain enfranchised and sitting in the House of Commons, Englishmen begin to envision women as about to enter any and every calling hitherto occupied by themselves only. The novelist finds here a rich and unexplored field of possibilities. In “This Freedom” Mr. Hutchinson depicts with insight and understanding the aspirations of a woman, and her desire for the freedom enjoyed by men in building up a life career outside the home. Rosalie, developed from a clever child into a beautiful brainy woman, kicks against the pricks of conventional domesticity. Men have a career—why not women too —if they wish it? Her dream was to become a banker, so she trained to fit herself for that career. And she hated men—or thought she did, until she discovered that she loved one who was determined to make her his wife. Well, why not? But she is not going to shut herself in a house with a man and children. Agreed, says the man! Their marriage is to be a partnership. She is to have perfect freedom to attend her office in the city. Her home is to be organised so perfectly with efficient labour as to run itself. Then she reaches the summit of her ambition. A bank invites her to join its staff, and she becomes an official of importance. Children arrive, but nurses and servants are competent, and domestic affairs run on oiled wheels. Thoroughly up-to-date governesses educate the three children by the most scientific methods. Fairy tales and all imaginative lore is banished from the nursery. Such intellectual children, so well-informed, so good-looking, and so conscious of it, too. Happy and proud mother—so esteemed in banking circles! Happy father, on his way to a Judgeship! Everything going well—and then the bolt from the blue! Rosalie learns through blinding tears that no hireling can take the place of a mother. While satisfying the intellect, she can starve the affections, and without affection and all it implies—given as only a mother can give—the child is an incomplete human being, and likely to lose his way in the world. The husband misses his home. The only person satisfied, for a time, is the woman who sates her desire for a business career at the expense of all that is worth while.

“HPHE Home.” Art in Australia Limited, Sydney. Whitcombe and Tombs, Limited. This Australian quarterly for September maintains its reputation as a production of artistic value. Among its beautiful reproductions is that of the Normandy home of Mons. JaquesEmile Blanche, the famous French portrait painter, while the illustrations of the art collection of Mons. and Madame Rene Turck, of Chiselhurst, Melbourne, contains much that will interest the connoisseur in old French and English furniture. Short stories and articles are brightly written, and the whole is a joy from beginning to end. “THE Altar Steps,” by Compton Mackenzie. Cassell and Company, Limited, London and Melbourne. This story of Mark Lidderdale is a sympathetic study of the High Church movement in the Anglican Church during the latter half of last century. Mark is the only child of a ritualistic curate, whose mental attitude forms a curious as well as a nauseating study. He blamed his wife for weaning him from the state of celibacy, and failed to reconcile his duty to her and to his son with his duty to his God. The scene between the holloweyed, narrow-minded ascetic and the patient loving wife is probably unique in fiction. The Missioner threw himself into his worn armchair and stared into the unlighted fire. His wife came behind him, and laid a white hand upon his forehead, but her touch seemed to madden him, and he sprang away from her. “No more of that,” he cried. “If I was weak when I married you, I will never be weak again. You have your child. Let that be enough for your tenderness. I want none of it myself. Do you hear? I wish to devote myself henceforth to my parish ! The parish of a coward and a traitor 1” But his gentle wife refuses to make him a martyr. She sets him free of her presence by returning to her childhood’s home with her son, and her husband betakes himself on missionary work to Africa, where he finds an early grave. Lack of means made an Oxford University training impossible for Mark, who in his way was a zealot like his father. He, too, is strongly attracted by the ritualistic section of the Church of England, but in the end sheds its more extreme views, and after a long probation attains happiness by taking holy orders. “CAND,” by Olive Wadsley. Cassell and Company, London and Melbourne. This desert romance emphasises once more the peril in which a European woman places herself when she tacitly encourages the attentions of an Oriental. First in Paris, and later in Cairo, the irresistible charm of the handsome Egyptian Hamid-el-Alsm intrigues Mrs. Cleveland in a way that might have troubled her peace of mind had it not been occupied by the memory of her fickle and forsworn husband. As a distraction, she accepts the devotion of the handsome Egyptian without realising that she is playing with fire. Hamid’s English veneer deceives her, and, failing to realise the vast difference between the Eastern and Western points of view, she laughs to scorn the advice of her best friends, and—pays dearly for so doing. The two last books are from Cassell and Company, Melbourne and Sydney. All the others from Whitcombe and Tombs Limited, Auckland.