NOTES ON NOVELS

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21354, 22 December 1934, Page 17

NOTES ON NOVELS

POMPEY Silver Collar Boy. By Constance Wright. J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd. This is a beautifully toned and mannered, elaborate, and exquisite piece of work, which can only in the most carefully restricted sense be called slight. For such things judicious readers would sink half-a-dozen "Anthony Adverses" and "Herries Chronicles," knowing that amplitude can always be had but perfection rarely. It is nothing but the fanciful eduction, from some fancied historical hints, of the story of the lovely Belliza, Mrs Van Westervelt, and her little black servant and personal slave, Pompey. Belliza reigned as a beauty, the widow of the rich merchant who had raised her from the country vicarage to London importance; she was courted and pursued—a minor Mr Pope, a craggy, noble baronet, and her lounging, heavy cousin among her suitors. >At the height of her fame scandal struck a blow at her, a glancing blow, yet seemingly deadly, for Belliza's name dwindled to oblivion in London, and only a few lines of verse remained to call her, a portrait, and a ghost—the ghost of the black boy with the silver collar. It bore the engraved testimony: "My name is Pompey: to Belliza I am slave," and the pretty show of fine lady proprietorship concealed the truth of a pathetic devotion. Pompey, you see, became Belliza's guardian first, in her increasing infatuation with the portrait-painter, Mr Dee, and then the sacrificial means of saving her from the consequences of her own folly and the little mortified poet's squib. But not exactly that. Belliza could acquiesce in Pompey's being sacrificed to her, but not harden her heart to take the profit of it. Miss Wright's charming imaginative and stylistic achievement is well matched in Mr Rex Whistler's decorations and in the publishers' use of their materials.

VANCE PALMER'S WORK The Swayne Family. By Vance Palmer. An?us and Robertson Ltd. 332 pp. (6/-.) Sea and Spinifex. By Vance Palmer. The Shakespeare Head Press Ltd. 253 pp.

Mr Palmer presents in this novel the second and third generations of a pioneer family in Victoria. Perhaps because he has it in mind to continue their story in later novels, after the manner of Galsworthy in his Forsyte tales, he has left room to expand the theme; and there are few of his characters that it would not be interesting to meet again. There are indications, indeed, that Mr Palmer has drawn on Galsworthy for inspiration, for some of the characters might have stepped out of the Forsyte family into the Swayne family, had their environment been the same. The plot is scarcely original. The central character, Digby Swayne, the family man who plans careers for his children in the belief that they will conform to his ideas, and then finds that they have strong opinions of their own, is by no means a newcomer to fiction, or to real life, for that matter. Mr Palmer makes him a very human person, rather bewildered by his incapacity to make intimate contact with the children whose interests he is seldom able to share: George, whom Digby has made a lawyer when his heart is in the country; Kathleen, semi-high-brow but wholly human; Dorothy, the only one who conforms to plan (by making a satisfactory marriage), and Ernest, the artist, not quite sure what he wants at first, but in the end finding his niche and gaining contentment. Then there is Margaret, Digby's wife, calculating and managing within the orbit of Digby's plan and in the end achieving as little as he. Mr Palmer's next book about the Swaynes will probably be better than this; but he has made a good start. His book of short stories, "Sea and Spinifex," discloses Mr Palmer as happier in this form than in the novel. Some of the stories may be remembered when the author's more ambitious work is forgotten. There is one, "The Rainbow Bird," a charming study of the mind workings of an imaginative child, which is worthy to stand in any company, and "Young Girl's Fancy," more cynical in tone, is another gem in a rich collection. One could almost wish that Mr Palmer would concentrate on this form rather than reach out into the wider novel field.

JOHN BROADCLOTH'S CAREER Good Merchant. By John L. Graham. The Hogarth Press. 288 pp.

It is rare to be disappointed by any of the novels which the Hogarth Press issues, so obviously and admirably preferring a high standard to a long list; but Mr Graham's first novel is one of these rarities. His central idea is excellent. A modern business man, who calculates that marriage should adorn and complete his career, finds a most eligible bride; but she rapidly develops her own notions of her place in life and her claims on it, and takes flight, in the end, from John Broadcloth's name and status. The book ends with his sudden death, the news of which his chairman receives with a grimace of impatience-. "Mr Broadcloth was inconsiderate to die, just then." But "Tom Hill can carry on, I suppose, for the present," he said, and sat down to arrange for his air passage to Holland next day, which he had forgotten about. Mr Graham lets this fine ironical scheme fall into dullness.

MODERN MARTYR Blind Mouths. By T. F. Tweed. Arthur Barker Ltd. 306 pp. Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. Readers who are interested in modern political developments in Europe, and especially those who are interested in the collision between the doctrines that impel them and the doctrines of Christianity, will find Mr Tweed's book a thriller of the most absorbing kind. He imagines a great Fascist confederation in south-east Europe, whose leader half chooses, half is forced, to urge a quarrel with Italy to the arbitrajment of war; and he imagines also I a preacher called Johann Zimri, firing with -Christian conviction the masses who are to be led into this war. When his influence threatens to be dangerous—that is, to defeat the military and political aims of the Grand Elector—the necessary arrangements are made to extinguish him. And he is, with horrible ease and certainty, extinguished .... It is an allegory of impressive force, halted and weakened only by the author's tendency to heap up superfluous impressive details.

A FINE AUSTRALIAN NOVEL Maryplace. By Jessie Urquhart. Ivor Nicholson and Watson Ltd. 382 pp.

This must be counted among the few fine stories that Australia has produced in the last 20 years; yet it is in no way assertively Australian. Its artistic truth and significance are general; it is only in innumerable, slight, accurate touches that its faithfulness to its Australian setting is exhibited. Maryplace, a house in an Australian town, is left to four sisters—though it is one of the tragic developments of the book that proves that phrase false—by their lofty mother, Mrs Gane. The relations of these four are well unfolded and pursued: the eldest, Christina, cheated of life by her subservience to her mother; Joanna, a brilliant girl, ill-treated by her lover, devoted to Christina, and bitterly hostile to the third sister, Barbara, a fool, but a dangerous fool; and the charming, youngest girl, Elizabeth. Miss Urquhart does not spare either characters or readers the pain of facts and their inevitable consequences; but she does not belong to the rack and thumbscrew school of novelists. BETH AND ELIZA Elizabeth. By Frank Swinnerton. Hutchinson. 303 pp. Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. It would do no sort of justice to Mr Swinnerton's extremely good story, so psychologically supple and subtle, to give any accouunt of its build and incident. It must suffice to say that his study of the relation between two girls, Beth, the daughter of a successful romance-writer, and Eliza, the daughter of a literary failure, is remarkable for lucidity and for justice. Though Eliza's jealousy advances, under the thrust of circumstance and event, to distressing degrees of bitterness and malice, he seems never to labour in expressing the truth, either about her subversion or about its causes. An admirable novel. MONEY AND LOVE Bank Holiday. By Vincent Seliffman. Longmans, Green and Co. 304 pp. Another novel of love and business, lightly treated and sometimes even farcically. A London financial house is the rival of an American one for the honour and profit of floating a loan for the Government of Belgrania; and the junior partner, Anthony Tulloch, is deputed to get on the right side of the Belgranian Minister for Finance, and beat Wall Street. His success with the Minister's wife, in the pleasaunces of Paris, is the turning movement of his campaign, the history of which makes easy and amusing reading. BRAVE DAYS AND BRAVE HEARTS Two Valleys. By Howard Melvin Fast. Lovat Dickson Ltd. 293 pp. Mr Fast, who the publishers tell us is not yet nineteen, has written an astonishingly confident and convincing story. He describes with great energy and equal coherence pioneering America before and during the revolution; and the experiences through which he traces the lives of Kenny Wester, a backwoodsman and army scout, of the girl Bess who loved him and married Max Calver, and of this pair in the wild, perilous west are genuinely vitalised and connected with his characterisation. Not even at the last, when Kenny rescues his Bess and her husband, and knows that he must resign the love he has recovered, does Mr Fast swing away from truth into melodrama. MAN AND THE FOREST Jungle: A Tale of the Amazon Rubber Tappers. By Ferreira de Castro. Lovat Dickson Ltd. 340 pp. (8/6 net.)

This novel, translated from the Portuguese, is remarkable for the deep impression it gives of the loneliness of men in a vast country, of unrelenting sunlight, and of the terrifying growth of the forest. It is a simple enough narrative of the life of a young man who becomes a rubber-tapper in the upper regions of the Amazon. There is not much incident and very little definition of the characters; it all reads like the account of a personal adventure, and has a strange life of its own. As its title states, the book is more about the forest than about men. The English of the translation is good, and some of the descriptions are admirable passages of prose. Few books give a better impression of the way the forest takes command of men who are compelled to live in it.

FRUITLESS (iENIIJS Lost Battle. By Stephen Graham. Ivor Nicholson and Watson Ltd. 012 IM»I Til is book is notable for its full- [ length study of a Scotsman powerI ful in intellect, in personality, and in his head for liquor, who somehow never achieved his one great aim, of writing an epic on Flodden. His life went in secondary labours and in diversions, reputable and disreputable. Mr Graham's problem, however, is not quite solved, as is usual in the attempt to create a genius. If John Belfort was all he says, then it is hard to see why John Belfort did not do what he wanted to do, and was able to do. But the author must have the credit of presenting a character of | tremendous if puzzling interest. It is as hard to forget Belfort as to explain him.