THE BOOKSHELF.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 252, 24 October 1931, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE BOOKSHELF.

NEWS AND REVIEWS.

biography or richard

burton.

ALDOUS HUXLEY'S ESSAYS.

On page one " Cyrano" reviews a " life" of William Macleod, for many years managing director of the "Bulletin."

It is not the young people have taken the bit between their teeth but the middle-aged and old who have dropped the reins and refused to guide.— Canon Peter Green.

THE STUPID ENGLISH.

Professor Macneile Dixon, in his book "The Englishman," answers with a question the old charge that the English race dislikes ideas, or is incapable of them. Taine said that English boys hate books and cannot, or will not, loarn; Professor Santayana is quite sure that ideas are unwelcome in England; Shaw declares that England is brain-lazy and slovenly beyond belief, and though observers like Professor de Madariaga and Emerson admit tliat Englishmen think well if they think at all, ° or even that their dullness is a dusauiso and a refuge, Count Keyeerlmg verv ruthlessly declines to take even the* greatest Englishmen seriously as thinkers. Mr. Dixon asks:

Of what race and its representatives are we told of this incapacity for thought. This terrible mental inertia? 0£ some Ibackward community, which has plaj lmrt, or a minor part, on the woritl s stace a people destitute of accomplishments? Or of a nation which lms been Teat and powerful, Is the mother of nations and Parliaments, has stumped deep noon the world the Impress of Its habits, tastes, opinions, ruled all the an unexampled empire Sterns a fifth part of the earth's inhabitants, exhibited in a literature Becond to none an Intense s 'lnathy with intellectual and spiritual things, produced Shakespeare and Newton. Khen to the world Innumerable masterpieces e*en In art and architecture, anil in science a legion of its most astonishing discoveries, and inventions?

But, of course, Shaw and company will go on saying these things, with little or no reservation. It is so easy and so profitable.

THE FICTION SHELF.

Mr. J. S. Fletcher is a capabk writer anda-renot «orth collecting m volume '"Sr. A. Marshall's "The AfcWM. j< (Collins) is the taography ot.nn Entire English family covering a period 00 vears and several generations. Letters and diaries are used in place of conversation to reveal the.thonght, ot the numerous characters in the tale, which is far too "solid" for the average reader. A free and open and otherwise unoccupied mind is needed to absorb the XSon of all these rather heavy and progressive people, who rise from a bov who is better than the best of his progeny. This book must be studied, and not merely read, to be appreciated, and we cannot do more than wish the author a public attracted by this need for study. „ Mr, W, Plomer's second novel, baao (Hogarth Press) is a of studies in character. The melancholic Japanese poet Sado; the materialistic, conceited artist from England, Lucas; the English oirl who has married a Japanese en o inee and finds nostalgia more lasting than married love; and the tea-house are all clear-cut, word-painted lite studies on a Japanese canvas, Mr. Plomor prefers to describe his people at length rather than allow them, to impress you by conversation, and ho shows no economy in words when writing of places or people. Analytical, and a dissector of motives, Mr. Plomer reveals the secret promptings of all lus puppets, the machinery which the wheels go round," and is so like a clinical clerk when case-taking in lus desire to be accurate that liis characters are marioncttish, but precisely foi 1 this reason his word pictures of Japan, both town and country, arc excellent and forceful- The whole thing might have been built up from the diary of an English artist travelling in Japan, comparing East and West, and not the fiction it may be. The heavy-handed thoroughness throughout suggests Ger-man-English literature.

UNCENSCFED TRAVELS.

A NEW ZEALANDER'S PILGRIMAGE

A newish aspect of travel is suggested bv a New ZealanderV reported "worW pilgrimage to see banned plays ami films and read banned books" (says the Manchester Guardian"). If it be the aim cf travel to broaden the mind here is one wav of deliberately applying the stretchin*" process—the happy voyager says that he read Joyce's "Ulysses" in Paris, Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley s in Italy, and other banned works in Austria. There may be some of the sterner sort in New Zealand who will be inclined to tell him that his philosophy is too much like that of the Llangollen innkeeper who assured George Borrow that "a pint of bad liquor abroad is better than a quart of good at home"— lie goes abroad to look for manure heaps instead of nosegays, as Max O'Rell once told Mark Twain in the course of rather unedifying and now forgotten controversy, However, the traveller who goes to Paris to read James Joyce is not absolutely precluded from making some other use of hia visit. When he has finished "Ulysses" there is nothing to stop his wandering into the Louvre or Luxembourg, nor need his addiction to D. H. Lawrence in Italy leave him in the case of tho young gentleman described in the "Duneiad" —"All classic learning lost on classic ground." He may begin with the banned, but is at full liberty to proceed to tho universally admitted. And as a lure to "tourisme" in general his system is not without its possibilities. Liquor that is banned in U.S.A. is said to bring some American tourists to freer Europe; forbidden letterpress may have the same effect. It is a pity that the idea does not hold out much hope of profit for the "Come to Britain" movement; perhaps we have been too rash in our embargo on unedifying books. Perhaps we ought to have remembered that literary lapses as well as liquor may be part of the traveller's lure when the voyager is suffering from too many repressions on the homo front.

The real, trouble with exercise is that it can. become a religion, and. not a. recreation.—Mr. Norman K- Collins.

Standing on one's dignity is the pinnacle of all absurdities. —Mr. Reginald Berkeley.

ALDOUS HUXLEY'S ESSAYS.

One may be sure that a volume of essays by Aldous Huxley will contain an assortment uniformly fine in quality, and capable of evoking in the reader admiration, approval and hostility. That some of his essays should provoke hostility is what Mr. Huxley would wish, for few of the moderns detest so much as he the standardisation of thought. "Music at Night, and Other Essays" (Chatto and wfndus), will maintain his reputation as an essayist, without strengthening it. Hie perfect detachment in writing on subjects of all kinds has the unfortunate effect of making all his essays seem alike, in tlie sense that no one of them remains in the memory. It is not uncommon in modern writers to find that there is nothing they can praise; but there is usually much that makes them angry. Mr. Huxley is simply passion-lees. Some of the most interesting essays in this volume are those in which he deplores ("•ently, of course) the spectacle of "intelligent and cultured people doing their best to feign stupidity and to conceal the fact that they have received an education"; discusses "Selected Snobberies"— culture-snobbery, snobbery, art-snobbery; and doubts that prosperity, however well-diffused, will increase human happiness beyond.a certain point. But there is something in the book for nearly everyone, including, as might have been expected, an assault on Mrs. Grundy.

A GREAT ORIENTALIST.

RICHARD BURTON'S CAREER.

In a consideration of England in the nineteenth century, Mr. G. M. Trevelyan suggests that tho earlier system of education produced a larger number of men of strong personality—eccentrics, so to speak—than the more uniform, more carefully organised methods o later times. Later generations, he suggests, have been more intent on turning men out to a pattern. Certainly in the early and middle periods of tho ceutury England did produce a remarkable number of very strong and capable individualists men who walked through a crowd like' kin«B. Among them all there was Burton, who went on a pilgr-ima-^ 0 Mecca, explored tne headwatei» of the Nile, "and translated "The Arabian Shts." In the latest "life" of one of

tho aaost picturesque Englishman who ever lived, "Burton, Arabian Nights Adventurer" (Angus and Robertson), the story of that astounding career w told for popular consumption. The career of our own Lawrence of Arabia may seem to contradict Mr. Trevelyan's suggestion, but beside Burton tho other seems almost pale. Burton was soldier, explorer, master of thirty.-flve languages and dialects, swordsman, 'author and translator. Splendid in physique and magnificent in outward personality (Mr. Fairfax Downey, his biographer, suggests that he may have been ft throwback to some Arab ancestor), Burton combined with these qualities superb courage and iron self-control and patience. Much has been said of the failure of the British Government to make full use of his amazing knowledge of alien life and language,, but such an original and dominating genius never works well in the official groove. As it was, he served for many years as a British Consul. No sooner did he go to India as a voung soldier than he showed the bent of his disposition. He lapped up" native languages, and set about perfecting-that native disguise which was to take him, at peril of his life every moment, to Medina and Mecca. No detail was too small to be overlooked, and lie made himself think in the language of the character he assumed. His knowledge of the Mohammedan religion won him the admiration ■ of Moslem scholars. He warned thai authorities of the Indian Mutiny, but the warning went unheeded. His exploits in Africa were enough in themselves to make a reputation. Only the «reat swordsman that he was ,(in this he had an international reputation) could have done what he did when ho and two other Englishmen were attacked at night by three hundred Somali; ho literally carved his way to safety. To all the' other romance of his career in four continents was added that of low. He attracted a beautiful English girl of good family, but they had to wait years owing to parental disapproval. This wag not surprising, for Burton,' a penniless captain and combination of Benedictine monk, Crusader and buccaneer (as one of his friends described him), and a man round whom rumour had gathered darkly though falsely, was not a suitor attractive to the average mother. They ■married at last',, on Burton's insistence, and she made him a devoted wife —too devoted, some think, for after his death, obeying a command given in a dream, she burned his diaries and numorous manuscripts. The triumph of his later years was his unexpu.rgated translation of "The Arabian Nights," which is still ! the definitive edition.

Mr. Downey compresses this amazing record capably into three hundred pages, and gives us a pretty clear portrait of an 'extraordinarily masterful man, who not only understood the East, but sympathised with much of its way of life. Burton's opinions on sex were very frank indeed. Unfortunately Mr. Powney seems to have considered it necessary to match Burton's glamour

with a florid stylo, which was not necessary. His attempts to be persistently picturesque are rather irritating. A wondrous tale like this should be allowed to tell itself a§ plainly as possible.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

Finch's Fortune, t>y Mazo de la Roche; third volume of the chronicles of the Whiteoak Family (MacmUlan). Women and God, by Francis Stuart (Jonathan Cape). . . ■ A Consideration of Thackeray, by George Saintsbnry (Oxrord University Press). An Outline of Modern Knowledge, twentyfour subjects, a thousand pages, in one volume; edited by William Rose, M.A-, Ph.D., and written by twenty-two authorities (Gollancz). Tho Applotons of Herne, by A. Marshall; Singing River, toy W. C. Tiittle: The Range Pefender, by Frank Richardson; Mystery in Red, by F. D. Grierson (Collins). Builders of Illusion, a Tour Among the Best Minds, by Henshaw Ward (Murray). Music at Night, and Other Essays, by Aldous Huxley; Richard Aldington,, by *»■ Thomas McGreevy; WriUrs at Work, by Louise Morgan. These last two in the Dolphin Library. (Chatto and Wlndus.) j Burton, Arabian Nights Adventurer, i>yj Fairfax Downey (Ansus ao<J Robertson^.