What London Is Reading

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 165, 15 July 1939, Page 10 (Supplement)

What London Is Reading

ByCharles Pilgrim

LONDON. IN these European days it is very well to be reminded now and then that there have been and even that there still is a quiet life. Mr. Adrian Bell is a lover of the countryside. With his pen he can draw the peasant scene, which changes but little and is never hurried. In "The Shepherd's Farm" (Cobden Sanderson) we are told the simple tale of two generations of land workers. Luke Pargetter is a shepherd. His forebears hava been shepherds; they have owned and worked no land of their own. But Luke has his ambitions. He takes a small farm and succeeds. He marries ami ha 3 a son, Christopher. Thanks to his father's success, Christopher goes up in the world. He continues farming, but he lacks hi.-i father's skill and patience. These defects lead to his failure. The family go down in the world together, and in the end old Luke is back where he .began, as a simple shepherd. We have many pictures and many portraits of a country folk, men and women. Best of all, we are into the calm of hedgerows and meadows, of the undeviating life of sheep and cattle and farmyard. It is all beautifully done with an assured manner and a knowledge which never falters. This changing world of England may even make an end of this quiet life before long. Mr. Bell has set it on record. Cousins And Aunts Once upon a time and not so many years ago there stood on almost every drawing-room table the album of family photographs. Numbers of the men wore

whiskers and what appeared to be illfitting clothes. Some of the women sported ringlets or chignons, crinolines or bustles. Mr. Humphrey Pakington has drawn on this source of inspiration for "Family Album." (Chatto and Windus.) Happily, in telling the tale of the Brunswick family, Mr. Pakington has not been led into any lengthy saga of nearly a thousand pages. He has cultivated verbal economy without aridityHe starts his tale with the last decade of the 19th century and finishes last year. We become acquainted with, three generations and learn to know sons and daughters, daughters-in-law, eons-in-law and grandchildren. All these sisters and cousins and aunts seem familiar, at least to readers of the older generation. The world before the War is renewed in ft. thousand touches of memory and reconstruction. The scene passes from Lhe Victorian to the Edwardian and to the nea-Georgian. There is pathos here airi there, but no acute tragedy The whole brightly written novel is in the vein of a come'dy of manners. One Of The Terryr There are certain families whese name stands for certain human expressions: the Darwins for science, the Rothschilds for finance, and the Terrys for acting. Mr. John Gielgud, although Ms name is Polish, is a Terry by desc2iit and by vocation. In "Early Stages" (Macmillan) he has told us something of his life. It has been an interesting life, because almost of necessity Johu

Gielgud has met a large number of interesting persons, at the head of whom he seems rightly to place his great-aunt, Ellen. But not all lives outwardly interesting are good to read. Mr. Gielgud has given us the quality of goodness because he has a mind which at once observes and can be brought to bear critically on his own work. This saves him from that superficiality and irritating egotism too common in the actor. Mr. Gieltnul is humble as well as gifted in the Terry manner, and he can write.