What London Is Reading

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 24, 29 January 1938, Page 10 (Supplement)

What London Is Reading

—By Charles Pilgrim

IXSNDON. M GEORGES DUHAMEL ie • one of the greatest of con-, temporary novelists. Like other French novelists from Balzac onwards through Zola, he is inclined to run to length. He examines life and reports it thoroughly, noting each detail and building up a synthetic social whole. He did this in telling the life of his commonplace saint, Salavin. Hβ has done it even more thoroughly in "The Pasquier Chronicles," of which we now have the flve volumes in one eover, translated by Beatrice de Holthoir and published by Dent. M. Duhamel m«y be called an essential conservative. He will have nothing to do with the current doctrine of the omnipotent State; he does not even take to the idea of men living in large coherent communities. He ie a true Frenchman; for him the family ie the right, unchangeable and sacred unit. Directly the family flags the nation perishes. This great volume follows the fortunes and misfortunes of the Paequier family from 1889 to 1907. It follows them closely. It gives us portraite of them all. We have Raymond, the heed of the house, fecklese, bombaetic, selfleh. Wβ have his patient wife who endures everything and is obviously JVI. Duhamel's ideal woman. We come to know the children and the grandchildren end ■11 their afTiiirs with such intimacy and *m\\ sympathy that they seem to be parts of a family o f our own. In reading this book we are reading a great denl of the French heart. The Inst volume is a sort of envoi, detnehed and yet pointing the moral of the Whole. It tells the tale of an attempt to form an ideal community of men nml women in whirl, the family tie Bml the family ego should be swallowed up for the- good ~f the whole. M. Duhame I will In.vf nothing of it. The family (■cMi(|iivrM and the community disappears Thi« is a great volume and might have almost been entitled "The Chronicle of Modern France." Test Cricket If there be one thing which seems to bind the British Empire together in a spiritual bond it is the game of ericket. FroiiHimen, Germane, Spaniards end whnt you will may play football, and <In, but only within the confines of the Empire, seemingly, can cricket flourish. Even Indians and We«t Indians have fallen within the spell and played cricket like eons of Sussex.

There are many who writ* about cricket in England and elsewhere, but one of the finest of all ie Mr. Neville Oardus. Mr. Cardus went to Australia with the last England Test team, and has published in "Australian Summer" (Cape) a delightful volume of observations, criticism and reflection which everyone who loves the game will place beside the author's other volume, "Days in the Sun." Mr. Cardus gives us some vivid pictures of the voyage out and the Australian scene before he comes down to the batsmen and bowlere. He is one of those writers able to make us see and feel what he has seen and felt. With him we can follow the ball down the wicket and watch it neatly placed through the slips or soaring triumphantly over the heads of the outfield. With the mind of a philosopher as well as the eye of an expert he deals with the question of Larwood and his "bodyline" bowling. He pays an ecstatic tribute to Bradman's greatness. Even those to whom cricket may not mean very much can read this book with enjoyment and, when they have read it, cricket will almost certainly mean much more.

The Complete Pessimist? A. E. Houeman was a writer who built an extensive reputation on a very small quantit'7 of writing. There were his little volume, "The ('Shropshire Lad," which went into many editions, and the equally email volume entitled "Last Pocme." Now his brother, Laurence Houeman, has collected eome poetic fragments, pome letters and written a personal memoir which have been published as "A.E.H." (Cape). The fragment* dieplay all that careful workmanship which marked Housman's hitherto published pooirm; the lettpr« throw interesting and sometimes surprising sidelights on a complex character and the memoir is written with loving sympathy by a brother who shared very few of the opinione of the dead author. A. E. Housman might be called a. typical don, scholarly, hyper-eeneitive and rather crabbed. Although he had a eeen sense of humour and could write amusing light verse, he did not think much of life as a whole and had a poor opinion of other men and women. He called himself an atheist and regarded a belief in immortality as a form of cowardly egotism. He made little oollectione of particularly nasty eayin°e for use on occasion. One puts" down the volume wondering that two ewih different men can have been, brothers. '

Oar EngUsh Dead There has just been published one more ▼olurae of what must be accounted on* of the great treasures of English life in "The Dictionary of National Biography, 1922—1930" (Oxford University Press). Thie volume reminds ns of the harvest of leading British men and women gathered in during a comparatively short period. They include Asquith, Balfour, and Curzon, Marie Corelli and Maurice Hewlett, Ellen Terry and Katherine Mansfield. There are many scoree of the greatest names in our recent history to be found in those pages and the studies of them have been written by some of the most capable hands. Dipping into this fine work is a liberal education in our times. We learn of classical scholarship, political efforts, abstract and applied science and of a dozen other important thing*. We learn, too the importance of the. English mind and the English character and the part that Englishmen have played in developing and influencing the world as a whole. Arctic Adventures Mr. J. M. Scott was a member of the Gino Watkins Polar Expedition and has made good use of his. experiences in "The Silver Land" (Hodder and S toughton).. This book may be regarded as a sequel to the author's earlier romance, "Snowstone." It tells of how an Eskimo is found by a group of scientists on the Scottish coast. Before they can find how he got there he diee, but they are filled with scientific and" exploratory curiosity and set out to follow up the clue. The trail leads them to any amount of excitement for the mind and for the body. Mr. Scott knows how to tell a tale as well as make one. Readers of this will have the satisfaction of knowing that the author does not merely sit down in his armchair and imagine, ice. He knows at first hand what he is talking about. ' ♦ + -t- ♦

From the Publisher*. A Stiver Wedding, by Ruby Ayres (Hodder and Stoug-hton). VH-UXX: Story or an Aeroplane, by Captain P. G. Taylor (Angus ana Robertson). Persephone in Winter, a book or poems, by Robin Hyde—ropy lYoni Whitcornbe and Tombs (Hurst and Blacken). Qenesi*, by Martin Tree (Peter Daviois) — copy rr n Wnitrombe and Tombs, til" l? nd; Dick Sheppard and St. Mar*in •. By R. J. Northcott (Longmans).