LITERARY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 85, 11 April 1925, Page 18

LITERARY.

Our contributor "Cyrano" wishes to I thank correspondents who have identified the poem of Shelley that was sent in as an original contribution in a South African competition, and awarded third prize. The poem is called "Time Long Pact," and is as follows:— Like the ghost of a dear friend dead, Is time long past. A tone, which Is now forever fled, A hope which Is now forever past, A love 60 sweet It could not last, Was time long past. j There were sweet dreams In the night, Of time long past. And wae It sadness or delight, Each day a shadow onward cast, Which made us wish It yet mtght last — That time long past? There Is regret, almost remorse. For time lons past. 'Tie like a child's beloved corse A father •watcbee, till at last Beauty Is like remembrance cast From time long past. One correspondent says: "It is in Shelley's well-known depressing style; and if it. took third prize or any (no?); prize at all, that is nothing to laugh at!" We hope our correspondent has something better to say of "The West Wind," and "Adonais" than this. What Charles Lamb alliteratively described as "that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood" rarely commends i itself to men of imaginative genius, ! and Anatole France, it appears, was no exception to the rule. In the December number of "La Revue de Paris," M. Louis Barthou, the wellknown Academician and statesmen, tells the story of France'e complete failure in the post which he held for some 15 years of assistant library clerk to the-French Senate. His duties were chiefly concerned with the preparation of the catalogue and the classification for binding of various papers connected with the two Chambers, but France, engaged in literary work which he polished and repolished with Flaubertlike precision, found cataloguing and collating little to his taste. He soon [ drew upon himself the sharp censure of Charles-Edmund, then the chief librarian of the Senate, and his duties, and preeumaibly his pay, were curtailed. But fresh troubles arose. France has told us in "La Vie en Fleur" how he played truant at school, and at his library he used to take unauthorised vacations. One year he prolonged his holidays, which ought to have terminated on July Iβ, to October 11! It was probably owing to France'e steadily growing literary reputation —he had published "Les Noces Corinthiennes" and "Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard" —that the Senate authorities winked for so long at the intermittent character of his work in the library. But the chief librarian was continually filing complaints about his subordinate, and at last* a crisis came. There is a ring of pride, and certainly no hint of remoTse for failure in duty, in the letter, published by M. Barthou, in which France cent in.hie resignation to the Senate authorities. "In reroaching mc," he eaye, "with I know not what acts of carelessness in my work, tho chief librarian forgets that I have served French literature with some honour and that some consideration is due to mc." Released from hie desk at the libraiy, France tet about the publication of Wβ novel "Thais." It was written, .cays M. Barthou, on paper bearing the stamp of the Senate of France I SOME NOVELS. Zane Grey's latest, "The Thundering Herd" (Harper's), is interesting not only for the vigorous action of the* etory, but for its location. The scene is laid in the Western States of America in the seventies, when the prairies were beginning to feel the first waves of pioneering; when bison roamed these vast spaces in millions; when the hunter had begun to realise the value of the animal's skin; and when the Indian faced the newcomer in defence of his hunting grounde. It is not a pleasant subject. - The buffalo-hunters whose work Mr. Zane Grey describes so vividly, were ruthless men with no thought but making money as quickly as possible. They shot the animals as rapidly as 1 hand could lire gun, left the carcases to rot, and took away the skins. The result of this indiscriminate killing was that in a few years the animals were exterminated, and to-day a herd is a curiosity. It was a rough trade, which wae made all the more dangerous by the hostility of the disturbed Indian. The hero of "The Thundering Herd" joins one of the many hunting " outfits," and out on the plains he and the heroine meet with many adventures. Some of | the descriptions of scenery and life in' those wilds are vividly written, notably. | the great stampede of miles of maddened buffalo. Altogether a stirring story. A young naturalist approaching a trading post in the wilds of Canada, coining upon a beautiful girl standing on a rock playing Massenet's "Elegie" on a violin, is a sufficiently arresting opening for a novel of love and adventure. The girl is the daughter of the French factor at this lonely post, and there is a plot to ruin the poet and force her Into a loveless marriage. The valley where the post lies is haunted by an evil spirit that howls at night and frightens the Indians out of their senses. The young man eete himself to solve this mystery, and in doing bo has many strange and some perilous experiences. "The Valley of Voices," by George Marsh (Hodder and Stoughton), with its attractive Canadian setting, will appeal to many, in spite of some naive devices. Charming as the girl is, we almost lost all our patience with her when we found her ready to weigh the' word of a strange woman against the obvious devotion and courage of her lover, but if there were no such misunderstandings there would be fewer novels. Nor could we help smiling at the ease with which the young man picked up an Amati violin for his beloved when her own had been destroyed.

There is a quality in the writing of "Rogues and Diamonds" (Harrap's, through Whitcombe and Tombs) which places it a little above the average of " shockers." A young man, starving on the Embankment, and wanted by the police for the most serious of crimes, reßcuea a girl from euicide, and both of them become involved in an intrigue that centres in the plausible manufacture of diamonds. There is some livelywork in an old house by the headwaters of the Thames, in which an engaging ruffian is foiled by the hero. There ia humour in this book, and altogether it is less wooden than pinny tales of crime and detection that we have read.

"Murder will out," they say, but Roy Vickers in "A Murder for a Million" (Herbert Jenkins) eucceeds in baffling his readers until the end of his story. The tale is about an ailing millionaire who offers his fortune (to any one of hie nephews and nieces who will kill him. He is found dead coon afterwards, and the problem is to find who killed him. To give a hint would be to epoil a mystery. . :.

THE REPERTORY THEATRE. A BOOK ON BIRMINGHAM ENTERPRISE. Coincident with talk of establishing a repertory theatre in Auckland, we have received a copy of Mr. Bache Matthew's " History of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre," published by Chatto and Windus. It is a chronicle that should act as an incentive to all interested in the establishment of a repertory theatre in their own town. It tells how the formation of the Birmingham playhouse sprang from private theatricals at "The Grange," the home of Mr. Barry V. Jackson, M.A., who founded the theatre and who has since acted as director, producer at times, and designer of scenery. From "The Grange" the small band of players (including Jackson and John Drinkwater), who aimed to increase the aesthetic sense of the public in the theatre, to give living authors an opportunity of seeing their worka performed, and to learn something from the revival of the classics — in short, to serve art, instead of making that art serve a commercial purposemoved to St. Jude's Mission Hall, and continued their work under the name of I the Pilgrim Players. Then, in 1012, a site was selected, and, in the following year, the Birmingham Repertory Theatre was born. •■■*> i-ffl The history of that theatre shows that it was only by persistent work and strategy that the venture was placed upon a firm footing. At first the Birmingham public regarded the place with suspicion. They fostered an idea that all the performers were merely amateurs. That thought dispelled, they took unto themselves to think that no scenery was used. This impression was based on the fact that the draped stage was frequently used by the company. Again, this singularly mindful, but profoundly mistaken public had an idea that the players were out for purely educational purposes—and, if ever an adjective was formed to drive people away from a show it was "educational." In short, the Birmingham people, with the exception of a few earnest regulars, so neglected the Repertory Theatre that it was obliged to close down. It was only then that the public realised what the theatre meant to the town, and to-day we find Birmingham jealously proud of its famous temple of plays. Describing the theatre's own procedure, Mr. Bache Matthews, who is an assistant-director of the concern, cays that a gong is sounded a minute before the curtain rises. Then the lights slowly dim, until, at a second sounding of the gong, the curtain lifts Thus an almost religious atmosphere is created, whether it precedes comedy or drama. "Until a year ago," writes the author, "we refused to take the curtain up after it had once fallen at the end of a play. Aesthetically, I am sure, this course is right. The players should be seen only in the play's action, and not standing in a row along the front of the stage to receive applause." (We noticed that Mies Dorothea Spinney refused to return after she had left the stage at the conclusion of her plays.) Nor was applause allowed during the progress of an act. The shutting out of late-comers was another commendable rule of the theatre, and it is one that could well be followed in Auckland, where this particular class of public nuisance is exceptionally annoying. The great lessons we learn from the history of the theatre is that, properly organised, and blessed with any amount of courage, men and women with, one common object in view—the furtherance of art—can attain much, even from a most insignificant beginning. If Auckland is to have a repertory theatre, then all those really interested must band together, become the "Pilgrim Players," as it were, of the city, and slowly fight their way to success. THE PRICE OF BOOKS. We all grumble at the price of booke— at least those of* us who buy them. Among the classes that are in a position to buy books, probably the expenditure in this direction is less in proportion to the importance, of the thing bought than the money spent on anything else, though perhaps charity and religion should be excepted. Mr. Stanley Unwin, of Allen and TJnwin, publishers, has j written a pamphlet in defence of the I publisher. He contends that not only I are books not so dear in proportion to increased cost of production as is generally supposed, but that there are few other commodities of which the price to the public -shows such a slight rise. Paper used in book production costs about one and two thirds of what it did in 1914. Printing costs nearly three times what it did before the war. Binding has doubled, or more than doubled. Advertising is very expensive. It is a common thing for £50 to be spent in advertising a book whose sales do nqt reach one thousand, which means a shilling a copy. The over-production cry Mr. Unwin meets by statistics. Despite the increase in subjects interesting to the public, fewer new books were issued in 1023 than in 1913. The real problem is not over-production, but underconsumption, and in discussing this point he pay's a compliment to New Zealand. "Most people," he writes, "have not yet learned to regard books as a necessity. They will beg them, they will borrow them, they will do everything, in fact, but buy them. People who would be ashamed to cadge for anything else they wanted, who will unhesitatingly pay 8/6 apiece for a dozen gramophone records, or 12/6 each for stalls at a theatre, will think twice, if not three times, before spending even 5/ upon a book which will last a lifetime. The fact that we in England do not spend on books —per head of population — anything approaching the amount spent by the population of New Zealand, and that, relatively speaking, we have not nearly! so many booksellers' shops, demonstrates that, despite the increase' in demand since the war, there is still ample room for expansion." This is all very interesting, and it is undeniable that publishers have done a great deal to cheapen books. Contrast the tiny number of cheap editions of good books a generation ago with the flood of such editions to-day. The younger generation does. not know what its fathers and grandfathers had to put up with. It may be asked, however, whether the publishers are' doing everything possible to cheapen books. Why, for example, should we be charged for a slight \csume of the plays of so popular a writer as Sir James Barrie about as much as is charged for a long novel ? Why should Mr. E. V. Lucas ask several shillings for a small volume of collected essays? The sale for such books would be much greater if the price was within reach of the person of moderate means.