"ACTION AND PASSION."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 243, 14 October 1933, Page 2 (Supplement)

"ACTION AND PASSION."

P. C. WREN'S SEA ROMANCE. Mr. P. C. Wren has already shown! that the Foreign Legion is not his only subject, but one may doubt whether the regions outside North Africa will ever be as profitable to him as that part of the world. His new story, "Action and Passion" (John Murray), is a romance of the sea, and its main fault is that it is a good deal too long. The hero, a tall, strong apprentice, with a powerful "left," scion of an old naval family, ships on a sailing vessel at Glasgow to go round the world, and his life in port and at sea is described at length, but nothing very much happens until the ship, after going to San Francisco via Australia, loads nitrate on the South American coast for Home. The story resembles "The Wrecker" in taking a long time to come to the point. But when things start to happen they arrive with a rush. The captain is a "crook" and a lunatic, and the first mate an incompetent coward; while in tho fo'c'stle, mixed up with decent men, are a choice collection of scoundrels. And in league with the captain is a woman passenger with a huge white-slave and illicit drug business. One almost loses count of the number of acts of violence. The second mate is murdered, the captain stabs tho first mate, and the two go overboard together, and tho command of the ship eventually devolves on the young apprentice, who brings her safe to port and holds himself aloof from tho advances of a beautiful and determined young woman. It is an, exciting stcry in parts, but Mr. ; d I

too diffusa and over-colou'-i ins landscape. This sort of thing, for instance, which we print just as it is in the book:— Eyea of a panther In the face of a tortoise. No, a very beautiful woman. She would be a beautiful woman but for her eyes, like those of a great eat. No, they are wonderful eyes . . . glorious . . . almost golden . . . but how they could glare . . . tigerish. She has been a very beautiful woman. But no, she has no more lips than a tortoise has. IJer mouth is a perfectly straight line . . . compressed ... a steel trap. The eyes of a fierce leopardess In the cold', hard faco of a tortoise. This could almost bo passed off as free verse by tho latest idol of Chelsea.

WHITE AND BLACK. Mr. Kenneth Bradley, who has been an ollicial iu Africa and is familiar with at least ouo great section of the native people, has written a most stimulating study of a difficult problem—the whito man's duty to the black. He imagines a native of superior type taken from his homo by an Englishman with the idea of enabling him to learn something of Western civilisation, and to carry back to his tribe news of all the strange things to bo seen in a town of the white people. Tho novel is, for those with feeling, a tragedy, for tho arrival of civilisation in remote Africa means destruction of much that is admirable and such changcs as we have seen here in the Maori people. The story is in thrco parts. The first tells of native life amongst a people who know nothing of any advances since the llomans were in Britain; the second of what an ignorant native might see and hear in a white town in Africa; the third of what lie would have to tell his tribe a year later, and the effect of his message. "Hawks Alighting" (Lovat Dickson) is an appeal to th - ;rreat intruders of tho earth to consider ti o spiritual, racial and moral results of intrusion, and not to concentrate attention upon commercial affairs only. The fate of many millions of dark races is in the hands of the pushing, adventurous English, and trade should have a secondary place.

RICHARP KIDDLETON, I i Richard Middleton, port, story-writer and critic, v.lio died by his own hand in !1 S> 11, had something iri common with j m the decadents of the 'nineties, that very depressing band of writers. Itc suffered greatly at school, prepared for the profession of engineer, and became an insurance clerk in London. Literature called him early, however, and he attracted the> attention of Lord Alfred Douglas, Edgar Jepson and Austin Harrison, the last of whom called him the English Verlaine. lie seems to liavc met with a pood deal of success, but "always short of money, with an intermittent neuralgia ' and the misery caused by tragic love affairs, lie was at times a prey to the most overwhelming melancholy." So Mr. John Gawsworth writes in a memoir of him published as a preface to "The Pantomime Man," a collection of tales and essays issued by Rich and Cowan. "The inspiration evoked by a sequence of actress inamoratae, Lily, Louise and Christine, resulted in passionate poem after passionate poem. Literature was enriched, but at tiic cost of the poet." That is just it; experiences like these can be capitalised, but as Sir Arthur Quiller-Coueh says, what about the element of subtraction? 110 went to live in Brussels, and poverty, ill-health and "the dilatoriness of a deserved recognition" drove him to suicide. Middleton certainly had remarkable talent; both in prose and verse. Some of his short stories are poignant, his stylo its very readable, and lie was well equipped as a critic. Unfortunately, he was at odds wit+i the world, and ho allowed to world to crush him.

AUTHOR WANTED. Commenting on a spcech liy Lord Lloyd, formerly High Commissioner in Egypt, a writer in the, "Evening Standard" says: Wo ought to know the authorship of these lines (which Lord Lloyd quoted), found in the pocket of a. dead New Zealander at Anzac, for they arc very beautiful: Wp cannot tell how goodness springs From tlie rude tempest's brealh. Or scan the birth of gentle things From these red hursts of death. We only know from good and great Nothing save good shall flow, That where the cedar crashed so straight No crooked tree shall grow; That from their ruin a taller pride, Xot for those eves to see. Shall clothe one day the valley side, Non nobis Domine. Do any of our readers know where these came from ?