LITERARY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 255, 27 October 1928, Page 2 (Supplement)

LITERARY.

Captain David Bone, author of "The Brasabounder," and the friend of Conrad, haa just returned from America as a passenger in his own ship, after a seriou3 illness in a New York hospital.

Invited ttf become honorary president , of an American Shavian Society, "ah, asylum for the sane," Mr. Bernard Shawii replied through his secretary: "Mr. Sha#« desires me to say that an asylum for th*i sane would be empty in America."

''The Stir in Samoa: An Independent Review," by A. B. Chappell, M.A. (Wilson and' Horton), is a very vigorously written pamphlet, called forth by the pamphlets on the, same subject issued by the Hon. O. F. Nelson and Mr. H. E. Holland, Leader of the Opposition in New Zealand. Mr. A. B. Chappell contends that Mr. Nelson has been the chief cause of the trouble in Samoa, and that the Government has been entirely blameless. The breakdown of the committee's case before the Commission, the complete vindication of the Government by the Commission on the order of reference, and the verdict of the Mandates Commission, of course supply Mr.,Chappell with plenty of ammunition, and he fires it with gusto. The truth is that in certain respects Mr. Nelson and his friends have "given themselves away" seriously. It is an effective piece of writing, and would be so even if t£e author were less skilled in controversy than Mr. Chappell. Some readers may think, however, that the pamphlet would be rather more effective if it were a little less like a machine-gun. No one would guess from this that among New Zealanders who have been uneasy about the Government's policy in Samoa, have been j men who nave no connection whatever ! with the Labour party, and even supporters of the Government. «ALONG THE ROAD." MISS ELSIE MORTON'S LOVE OF NEW ZEALAND. Many books have been written about New Zealand. Some have been bad; a few have been good; nearly all have expressed, in some form or other, a love of her. In "Along the Road," Miss Elsie K. Morton has used a new variety of an old method, and she might, with equal propriety, have chosen for a title, "Love Thou Thy Land." This "Book of New Zealand Life and Travel" as she calls it in the sub-title, is a collection of what may be called essay-sketches, which have been published from time to time in the "New Zealand Herald." Many of the subjects have been written about over and over again, but Miss Morton. brings to them an originality of treatment that makes the book a warm living thing of new delight. Such charm* is always impossible to define; it comes from personality, which is elusive. Suffice it to say that Miss Morton has rare insight and feeling and that she can write. It is difficult to describe scenery so that the leader is not bored after a page or two, and every New Zealander who has tried knows how hard it is to make a word picture of the bush that is at all satisfying. Miss Morton has succeeded. Her bush lives, and it does so because she knows her subject intimately and loves it with a seeing eye. Wherever she , has travelled in New Zealand, from Hokianga to the Southern lakes, she, has taken this intense love of her native land and a Tare faculty for putting- her emotions into words. This reviewer has been to most Of the places she. describes here, afid he can testify to the accuracy of her descriptions and to the difficulty of finding words to interpret beauty that is so often overwhelming. It is not scenery alone, however, that gives this collection the power to touch to heart so often. Humanity is infused into the descriptions of sea, forest and mountain. Whether she is describing old times at Hokianga, the struggles and triumphs of settlements, the glories of the Port Hills and the Kaikouras, Miss Morton never loses touch with the New Zealander. She has something of Katherine Mansfield's gift of making what are apparently the most commonplace things 1 interesting. Take this opening of "After the Rain." :

It was the third day of incessant rain when a little straggling group of children came up the muddy track, and a steady grey torrent made a curtain between earth and sky. It was two o'clock day, the children said, and the ditch at the bottom of the paddock was full right up to the brim, and did I think the old bridge at the foot of the hill would be washed away; because, If so, they'd like to see It go . . Wet clothes? They looked down at their faded little overcoatß and bare brown legs, and smiled In the country child's utter unconcern. They cared no more for wet clothes than the puppy dashing into the water after a (lung stick, and they laughed when I told them to hurry, home and change. They knew well, as every country child knows until it grows civilised and forgets, that wet days hold enchantment never known to. hot'blue skies, that after the rain the freshened world is filled with fascination and wonder a cycle of clear days could never bring! .So. they shouldered their dripping little bags and straggled slowly out of sight up. the muddy track. A wide rivulet of yellow water gurgled and spread and leaped, and straight Into it they walked one- after another, with laughing cries and mock screams of alarm as a deep hole plunged them :to the knees.

This is: a simple incident, well observed and described. A similar simplicity is impressive in the chapter on the pioneers of the remote Waimamaku Valley, in the description of the old garden in Parnell, and in the passage where she tells how she stood on the site of the old mission station at Kawhia and read the inscriptions on the graves of the missionaries' children. The effort and the -tragedy pf those early days live again in these poignant. sentences. Again and again the reader will be moved by such recapture of the past. It may be said that the book is oveji-sentimental in places, and occasionally rather commonplace. : Perhaps it is, but it is elsewhere so fine in quality that these blemishes can be easily overlooked.

It must not be thought that Miss Morton is always serious. She has an eye for humour, as when she enshrines one of the most deliriously involved resolutions ever put to a meeting. Nor that she is exclusively Auckland in her tastes. She does justice to (among other things) the moods of Wellington (which can be very lovely), the beauty of Akaroa and Peel Forest, and the contrasts of Central Otago. This reviewer, has long wished to transplant the tea-houses of the Port Hills to Auckland for their architectural propriety, and he hopes,' that those who will have the ordering of such additions to our own hills will read what Miss Morton has to say about them. The tragedy of the war has moved her deeply, and she makes several references to' the piemorialsfthat. are dotted about New-Zea : 'land. How-many, Auckland people know •that a memorial is ! let into the baSe of ■the iLion Hock at Piljp.? Miss Morton 'may well doubt whether anywhere ( there is,a memorial with a more impressive getting. ■ • : •••• '-'..A L Miss- Morton illustrates the ' book 'adniirably with photographs of her. own ftajkipg, and the Unity Press has turned out the book well. "Along the Road" is •4 ,• Welcome addition to New Zealand literature, and when the time comes for ■an,'anthology l of«' our prose to be made i; t|e compiler overlook it. ' . , ,

The idea of a wealthy Irish-American in possession of an island off the coast of Ireland defying the authority of all officials on that "other island" is a novel one, and C. H. Powell, in "Donovan's Island," has been at some pains to make the most of it. He may have misrepresented the legal position, for he assumes jfjthat beyond the three mile limit the law oftlie country does not run, and that an island/ privately owned, at that distance from, the* mainland is a law unto itself, absolved even from the rules which govfefn ships on the high seas. The book is One of Hodder and Stoughton's.

! That enterprising young Auckland writer, Mr. Hector Bolitho, is still very much in the swim. The latest news of him is that he is writing a life of the Prince Consort, and has been over to Germany to inspect the Coburg family archives. While on his work he was the guest of Prince Frederick of Saxe-Altenberg. A London paper remarks that Mr. Bolitho's "Life" of Queen Victoria's husband should form a valuable companion volume to Mr. Lytton Strachey's "Life" of Queen Victoria, which, as this "Life" is one of the most remarkable biographies of the age, must be very pleasant reading for Mr. Bolitho.

This is the third year of the "New Zealand Artists' Annual," which looks as if it had come to stay. Mr. Pat Lawlor, who edits this liberal shilling's worth, has agiiin enlisted the help a number of leading New Zealand black and white artists here and abroad. Miss Dora Wilcox, for example, writes from Australia, and Mr. Hector Bolitho from England, and Mr. Harry Rountree draws from London. Mr. Lawlor is doing our younger writers and artists especially a service by giving them this opportunity of displaying their talent. There is some clever black and white work, but Mr. Lawlor would raise the standard of the whole annual if he rejected a good many of the jokes he receives. There is some excellent verse. A SOUTH AFRICAN NOVEL. Of "The Coming of the Lord," by Sarah Gertrude Millin (Constable) our London correspondent writes:—"Sarah Gertrude Millin's work for South Africa takes high rank. If to know all is to forgive all, her novels depicting life* there are important aids to knowledge. For by them the world is made aware of the psychological reactions of the many races which make life there a complex of conflicting issues,, and therefore to be less pitiless in its judgment of racial characters which may affront. And with the knowledge she imparts to her readers public opinion is bound to take a more judicial and yet not less human part in whatever controversies— as controversy, if not worse, there must be in the future of South Africa—will disturb, perhaps disrupt, Dominion. For my part I regard Gertrude Millin's work as on a higher plane than that of Olive Schreiner, for, great as is the Dutch writer's work, it is full of prejudice. Gertrude Millin's flashes of psychological insight show her to be one of the least prejudiced among those who have written on a subject on which it is well nigh impossible to be unprejudiced, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that she has a mind to understand, and.a pen to describe, the racial characteristics which make different men act differently in given circumstanced. Her picture of the German doctor whose South African son died fighting for the Allies, of the Jewish storekeeper whose son, a doctor too, comes back to his South African home scatheless through the Great War, of the Englishman with those qualities of playing the game and habit of acting first and thinking afterwards had made him a good enough officer but a very stupid lawyer—one sees them all vividly in this new novel. The whole book is a joy in its insight .into character —so clearly does she show the honest but stupid Englishman, and the clever, analytically minded Jewish doctor, constitutionally able to see all sides, and, by his racial inhibitions, averse to that clear-cut action which the less sophisticated Briton would take, - friends in spite of all; and the woman, the Englishman's wife, devoted to her husband — for does she not work to earn that living he is too stupid to make at the law which is his profession —yet with a mind attuned to the greater depth and subtlety of the Jewish doctor. Thus we have Dr. Saul Nathan pitying Duerden, who was so feeble a mental match for him. There he was, unfortunate man, earnestly offering opinions on things which seemed to Saul quite unimportant, and be was unaware of the ironical negligence which inspired Saul's polite agreements. Saul looked at Duerden and thought how strange it was that Duerden belonged to ,the conquering race, and he, Saul, to the conquered one. 'The Coming of the Lord' is a fine novel in itself. But it is one which should be widely read, for the clear light it throws on some of the most perplexing racial problems which trouble our time."