DESPERATE DORSET.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 224, 21 September 1929, Page 2 (Supplement)

DESPERATE DORSET.

A STRUONG NOVEL. ,John Cooper Powys has long been known to the British public as novelist, poet and essayist. Now he has given to the world an extraordinary novel. "Wolf Solent" (Cbatto and Windus) is almost, but not quite, a great book. The novelist 'has achieved much in his six hundred and fifty large pages, and he carries his readers with him to the very end. Here we cannot be bored, despite, the extraordinary length of the book; we are not disgusted, though there is much that is horrible and repulsive in the theme; we cannot be disappointed, though the issue does not carry that final affirmative which the publishers claim,for it. Such praise may be negative, but the novel itself is an accumulation of negatives. Like every modern hero, Wolf Solent is a. young man out of tune with the,' world and modern conditions, out of tune with the very friends be tolerates so pleasantly; above all, out of time with himself. The unusual child of extraordinary parents, he has been doomed to spend his youth as a London schoolmaster. One day revolt seizes him, and he raves to his class against the conditions of modern society. His "malice-dance" costs him his position* and he returns to liis native country of Dorset, to, help the evil and perverted squire of King's Barton to write a scurrilous history of the neighbourhood. This original and startling novel tells of the eighteen months that follow. It is the S'tory of his passion for Gerda of the lovely body and of his love for Christie of the beautiful soul; of his struggles, his mistakes and his ultimate resignation. Struggle against what, resignation to what? Frankly, the book leaves one guessing. What is this modern soulsickness after all? Do the victims themselves really ' know, _or is Jean Jacques Rousseaa with us again? The publishers tell us that Wolf Solent i« "madly enamoured of Dorsetshire." If so, he is to be congratulated on hugging his possession to his solitary soul, for his experiences will not send others flocking to this rural spot. King's Barton is apparently a desperate j lace; crime of a disgusting and perverted sexual nature flourishes there, and the whole neighbourhood seems to join in a furtive alliance to shelter and protect the criminals. Certainly there are a few exceptions, but they can be numbered. We must protest against the modern trick ,of over-emphasising physical peculiarities, but it is the only trick that the writer allows himself- His style is. delightful—limpid, forceful, picturesque, with never the weakness of the redundant word or the irritation of'.the deliberately cryptic. It is the easy and flowing style of a master of English prose. His psychology, too—and the book is full of- it —never wearies" or 'confuses. The keynote to Wolf Solents character lies in his "mythology," as he calls it— his "secret vice cf sinking into his own soul." Thus he consoles himself in all perplexities and making himself one with the beautiful nature he adores and thence returning to the struggle strengthened and', refreshed. In the long, constantlyrecurring accounts of this "mythology lie some of the interest and originality of the book.

Emile Cammaerts recently told a London audience that it is easier for a foreigner to understand the most difficult of Browning's poems than the simplest of Lewis Carroll's. Some months ago M. Cammaerts wrote a remarkable article iii one of the English quarterlies, emphasising the importance' of the child and what may be termed "other world" elements in English literature. He said England was the only country in the world where nonsense was liked for its own sake.

Sir James Barrio made a delightfully characteristic speech on receiving the freedom of Edinburgh the other day, and incidentally revealed the original of the "mother" in "The Old Lady Shows Her Medals." Referring to those under whose spell lie came in his student days, Sir James said there was one, a woman, whom he would rather see there that day than anyone else. She kept lodgings. She was an old and poor widow woman without kith or kin. "I think," Sir James Barrie continued, "it would ill become me to stand up in Edinburgh without recalling the fragrant memory of Mrs. Edwards. In after years I used to come to see her here. She would shake a gleeful fist at me and say, was being acted by the play actors; I was avid to go to the theatre, but oh! Mr. Barrie, I couldna daur.' The short play of mine, 'The Old Lady Shows Her Medals,' was written entirely in thinking of Mrs. Edwards. Why is it that landladies are so much maligned? I think all tlie old Edinburgh graduates might do wore than raisj a statue in Edinburgh to the students' friend."