OVERSEA WRITERS

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19508, 3 January 1929, Page 14

OVERSEA WRITERS

i LITERATURE IN EMPIRE j LANDS. : 1 - ! NEW ZEALAND'S ONE GENIUS. | I i OCS C*s COBES3SOSDr.XT.) LONDON, November 27. 51 r Hector Bolitho lectured before ! the Hcsperides Society at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, on November 7th, on li The New Conn trios: Their Associations and Achievements in Literature."' He traced the stories of early writers in Africa. Australia, and New Zealand, and pai 1 a tribute to the work of Olive Schreinor, Katherine Mansfield, Sarah Gertrude Millin, Pauline Smith, and I?oj Campbell. He made two interesting announcements: that he has tilted an anthology of stories and verse by writers of Africa, Australia, and Nc.v Zealand, to be published in the tpring by Jonathan Cape, and that me I'rince of Wales haa accepted the dedication of the book. Tvhich will be called ''The .\f-v Countries." In the "Daily Telegraph '' to-d v., Mr Bolitho has an article on ' Pioneer Writers and Artists." The average Englishman, he wrues, imagines that culture belongs to the old world, which produced Shakespeare and Reynolds and Wrenn, and not to the new earth, which was the La"»grouiid for men of actiou, like Cccjl Rhodes and Lord Strathon.i. The time Las come therefore when we might make a tally of another kind, md mention the names of Oliva Schreiner. Katherine Mansfield, Henry Lawson. Gilbert Murray, Sarah Gertrude Millin, Pauline Smith, Bliss Carman, and Roy Campbell, and ask people to believe that something more important than wool and wheat is to come from the young countries, which were little more than vague shapes on the maps of a hundred vears ago. Nor is it generally realised that the first colonists included men who gare the pioneers a certain background of culture; that while New Zealand was fighting the Maoris and building shrieks on the edge of the bush, Samuel Butler waa writing ''Erewhon" in t Canterbury, and Charles Meryon was sitting with his sketch book on the shores of Akaroa, not very many, miles ; away ; that Alfred Domett, the "War--1 ing" of Browning's verses, was in Wellington writing the first considerable poem, owing its inspiration to the Maori people. In Taranaki, Charles Armitage Brown, friend and collaborator of 1 Keats, was jealously guarding the pencil sketch of the poet which is now in tlie National Portrait Gallery. In Wel- ' lington of the 'forties, Mary Taylor, the Rose York of "Shirley," school friend of Charlotte Bronte, and the referred to so often in Mrs Gaskell's life, had opened a shop, and was writing amusing letters to the Haworth parsonage, telling stories of tho little struggling colony, to which vague and infrequent wind-jammers brought her news of England.

The first colonial writers found Indians. Kaffirs, or Maoris already hoarding legends as beautiful as the classic examples of Greece and Rome. They found artists, too, and, in New Zealand, at least, architects and carvers who put their own rude shanties to shame. These first Europeans were concerned with observation, which had to come before feeling. So they wrote poetry which was primarily photographic, poems like those of Adam Lindsay Gordon, Thomas Bracken, and the many earH Canadians. There wa3 feeling hi their work, but it was feelI iris borrowed from the world and adapted to the landscape and the conditions of the new earth. Olive Schreiner was the first rare genius to put the very soul of the colonies into a story. She wrote several good books, and one that is great I« that one great book, "The Story of an African Farm," she contributed the first creative work of the southern hemisphere to English literature. Many have followed her in Australia and New Zealand and Canada. The Canadians have produced good poets, bui their distinguished . English prose writers have been few. Katherine Mansfield. 'South Africa is the richest in suocesful writers. Following Olive Schreiner have come Sarah Gertrnde 3fillin and Pauline Smith. Mrs Millin wrote "God's Stepchildren," and amazed the review jrs with the restraint and. disciplined thought and cjuiet prose with which she told the story. Then came "The Little Karoo," by Pauline Smith, and the poetry of Roy Campbell. Katherine Mansfield, the one genius born in New Zealand, is a fixed star in the literary firmament, and Professor Gilbert Murray, born in Australia, is without a competitor in hi"! scholarly and beautiful translations. That the new countries have some quality new to the writers of the old wcrld. some fount of inspiration, some new lines of thought, was proved by Samuel Butler, when he found "Erewhon" in Canterbnry, New Zealand, by Mr Haveloek Ellis, in bis littleknown but perfect story, "Kanga Creek,'' by D. H. Lawrence, when ho wrote "Kangaroo," and by Louis Hemop, vhen he went to Canada and wrote "Marie Chapdelaine." Bat most of these were the visitors, the strangers in the young countries. Katherine Mansfield, Panline Smith, Sarah Gertrude Millin, Ethelreda Lewis, Roy Campbell, and the many brilliant Canadian writers were born of the new earth. Their story is that of experiment in colonisation, the building of little houses on the edge of the forest, the making of towns in wild places, the subduing of dark people, and the birth of a new race. They have been born out of a force which it is difficult for the old world to comprehend.