LONDON PANORAMAS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 736, 21 August 1953, Page 12

LONDON PANORAMAS

THE COCKNEY, by Julian Franklyn; Andre Deutsch. English price, 18/-. FASHIONS IN LONDON, by Barbara WorsleyGough, the Londoners’ Library; Allan Wingate. English price, 15 /-.

(Reviewed by

A.

M.

HESE ‘two excellent books ‘4 cover different layers, one plébian and one aristocratic, of the infinitely varied world of London, Julian Franklyn devotes more’than 300 pages to the history, habits, and = general characteristics of what ‘is loosely called the Cockney, by whom he means the human London, the men and women who keep the city going, who sweep its streets, cook its dinners, keep its accounts, mend _ its shoes, build its homes and deliver its newspapers. Out of wide reading and exceptional personal knowledge, he traces the Cockney down the centuries, end pictures his modern environment in detail --his home and street life, his amusements and state of mind. We are introduced to music halls and _ coffee stalls, markets and games, even ito marbles. It is a Dickensian panorama of fact, bright and warm and greasy with life. The chapters on' Cockney speech, including slang and profanity, are the

most scholarly part of the book. Mr. Franklyn is very severe on those who would suppress the Cockney dialect as something vulgar and ‘undesirable. Cockney, he contends, is as honourable a dialect as anything in England, and he quotes in support Professor Weekley, who calls it "that noble blend of East Mercian, Kentish and East Anglian" associated with Chaucer, Spenser and Milton and modified into the literary English of the present day. The author is also a staunch champion of Cockney virtues, which he declares have been clouded by realistic writers about life in mean streets. However well-intentioned the outside philanthropist may be, he will never really get inside the Cockney’s heart. This record of the Londoner's passionate local loyalties, adaptability, good humour and zest for life, goes far to explain. why. London defied the bombers so magnificently. The other end of the social scale is reached in Barabara Worsley-Gough’s addition to the admirable Londoners’ Library. Fashions in London is concerned at first with the old moated aristocracy, the. really exclusive upper or inner set, whose customs included long and yast dinner parties followed by deadly dull evenings, when even innocent card games were tabooed. Then we

see the barriers of caste and conduct broken down, largely at first through the influence of Edward, Prince of Wales (Edward VII), and later through the impact of two wars. There is much information, clearly and wittily presented, about dress (the 18-inch waist), amusements and general social set-up. The illustrations add to the amusement and incredulity, with which we regard the

fashions of long ago, but it may be wise ‘to reflect that 50 years hence people may be feeling the same about us. BETTER THAN MOST HEAVEN AND EARTH, i) Carlo Coccioli; Heinemann. English price, 15/-. IT’S DIFFERENT FOR A WOMAN, by Mary Jane Ward; Victor Gollancz. English price, 12/6. THE HILLS WERE JOYFUL TOGETHER, by Roger Mais; Jonathan Cape. English price, 12/6. MAN ON THE TIGHT ROPE, by Neil Paterson; Hodder and Stoughton, English price, 7/6.

ONTEMPORARY Italy, America, Jamaica and Czechoslovakia provide the settings for these four novels. The first two are good, the second two competent: high scoring

these days, when life has so far outstripped fantasy-at least in the amazing, the horrifyifig, and the unexpected -that fiction has fallen into a languishing decline. Carlo Coccioli’s novel, translated from the Italian, is the story of a religious vocation. Don Ardite, the saintly priest, is strongly drawn. Like most saints, he is both unpredictable and demanding. This

book has net the insight of Bernano’s Diary of a Country Priest, but Coccioli has set his sights on a different target, the delineation of Latin puritanism. The ending, with the voluntary sacrifice of Don Ardite’s life to a German firing squad, does not sort with the rest of the novel; it puzzles the reader by clouding a-clear issue with stale nationalism. It’s Different for a Woman turns a typical American small-town family inside out and shakes down a galaxy of brittle epigrams. The need to keep up such a standard of wisecracks must make American family life rather strenuous. Sally, approaching middle age and meeting for the first time her husband’s old flame, was finding the going hard anyway. There is good comedy at a higher level than the verbal, but the latter harries the reader and distracts him from the book’s merits. Several parallel family groups in a Jamaican slum are dragged through a number of painful episodes by Roger Mais to endings all conscientiously unhappy. But in spite of a certain crudity and its exaggerated brutality, his\ novel does give us a feeling that, however much it is kicked around, human nature among Jamaican negroes still has its own dignity. "Neil Paterson’s novel about the escape of a circus from Iron Curtain Czechoslovakia into Austria is no more than an inflated short story; big print and slick drawings «scarcely make it worth the money, It has already been filmed.

David

Hall