Literary Views And

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25833, 18 June 1949, Page 3

Literary Views And

Reviews

FOLDER -

K?VP *■? se wel to Sheila Kaye-Smith s Sunday Times” review K ’ Chapman’s recent book. Jane Austen: Facts and Problems": “PRIDE AND PREJUDICE” ,< ikyTook° t O n e what S of aTrf* eithe Z Ja ” e or myseii of a preference for “Pride and ttS-e d i? e i > F ? r jane Austen's preference I thrn.Jh. r b i i e - Vl y tuall y no evidence; own fi S m r ■■Emma”’ “ Plai ° that my Oxford - R. W. CHAPMAN. sfet erP<mt U that “Pride and Prejudice was Jane Austen’s favourite among her novels is based on her refer-da-Tinl° child - the " Letters ” as “my. own aai ling child. supported by Dr Chanhi n ?wS-. SUgg ? stion u that “ tt remained **® r * avoui *te when she had moved on serious or ambitious work.” t L at J should have so misread him here and elsewhere as to credit him with which" 1 ? 6 P refercn< ; e requires an apology. Sin ' n . I he hope that he will Pl , *_ clow P my mistake to the erroneousness pre?udicl mPreSSlOnS and not tO pride and Rye - SHEILA KAYE-SMITH. a y e -Smith’s witty rejoinder ♦ e ? U 1 ° f my own mouth. But J\°, t „ build niuch on “my own ch !. ,d ’ ’ When Jane Austen so described Pride and Prejudice,” that book had only just been published and had no rivals*for her affection except .Sense and Sensibility” and possibly Mansfield Park, which was published in the following year. Some critics hav p made Fanny Price her favourite heroine st £ e " gt V of a sin e ] e “my Fannv.” But Elizabeth has a better claim, for she is *as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print.” p Oxford. R. w. CHAPMAN.

Dr. M Follick, M.P., whose reformed spelling bill was rejected in the House of Commons by a startlingly small majority, stirred with this bold push a vigorous correspondence in many English newspapers, and contributed to it himself in his reformed spelling.. These are twd letters from the “Sunday Times,” the first interesting because it brings forward a hostile witness from among the foreigners who are supposed to be perpetually and profoundly distressed by English spelling and whose delighted support the spelling reformers always take for granted:

MAKING A MYSTERY Sir.—l do not understand Dr. Follick’s argument that-his spelling reform would turn English into the world language. To a Dane (and the same applies to all speakers of Gothonic languages) neither the sound of, say, the English word nation nor its phonetic spelling “neishun causes any ideas of association. He would have to try to remember the meaning of “neishun” as he would try to remember a Tibetan word. The present spelling of the word "nation.” however, tells him all he needs, as the word is spelt exactly the same way in Danish, and means the same thing. If all “neishuns” adopted Dr. Follick’s idea of spelling as you pronounce, such words, which are now recognisable within the European language groups, would appear as formidable mysteries to the foreign student.—Yours truly, * ERLING NORLEV. The Danish Society. Glasgow. The second is an amusing statement, by example, of the old. strong case of the traditionalists—that “reform” would make a revolting mess of the masterpieces of literature, 'the associations of which are of the eye as well as the ear: NEW JOYS Sir,—Dr. Follick’s letter has at last opened my eyes to the beauties of English Literature. An anthology in New Spelling offers joys unknown before. I am particularly fond myself of that magnificent battle hymn: Uer dhe bi sukz. dher suk Ai In ei Kouslipz bel Ai lai, Dher Ai kauch, huep aulz dw krai. On dhe bat’z bak dw Ai flai After sumer merili. Merili, merili, shal Ai liv nou Under dhe blosom dhat hangz on dhe

It takes some time to write out. but. believe me. Sir, it is worth the “blud, suet and tirs.”—Yours, etc., W’hitstable N. A. TAYLOR.

NEW POETRY

YEARS OF WAR It is refreshing to the ear that delights in the more traditional measures of English poetry to read Christopher Hassall’s THE SLOW NIGHT (Arthur Barker Ltd. 64 pp.), a dignified and thoughtful collection of verse. As a poet he has been silent since 1941, but in this volume he has published a series of meditative responses tc the “slow night” of -he long war years,- together with an imaginary blank verse speech of Perkin Warbeck and a poem recording the strange achievement’ of rhe oainter Alfred Wallis. Tire prelude on the creation and fall of man leads to a series of scenes and incidents in which the horror and uathos of war are described by one who responds to sense impressions with a reflective mind and a gift of melodious phrase and rhythmical utterance. AFTER OLD MASTERS INVOLUNTARTES (Angus and Robertson. 35 pp.) is a series of love poems by “R.G.H. ” in the manner of the simpler metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century. No effort is made to hide the source of this inspiration. Sometimes in spelling, sometimes in vocabulary, he imitates his masters. Sometimes the echo of a phrase recalls a poet from the past. (“Spare me the laceration, love.” “Like a Patriot home After long Banishment.”) Sometimes the rel gious symbol. the abstract and unemotional word, or the use of an image drawn from science suggests the pleasing exaggeration and the poetic shock produced so often bv the “metaphvsicals.” “Involuntaries” though they may be. there is something artificial about this revival 01 the method and the manner of an o’der technique. Nevertheless. in phrase and line, sometimes m a stanza, the attempt finds sufficient excuse.—H. WINSTON RHODES.

DONALD COWIE’S POEMS

Sir, —In my previous letter to you I did not intend questioning the reviewer’s right to his opinions: I merely offered comment on his emphatic but inadequate treatment of the subject As I appear, however, to be the only one of your readers to do this, and as your reply clearly shows, I apnear to have been “out of step” in writing to you.

Your reference to impartialitv and mv being unable to submit mv competence to the same ooen view. etc.. I regard as unworthv of the hitherto better standards of “The Press.” and T have no wish to spy more than this Donald Cowie can. f think, afford tn ignore you and me and treat your reviewer’s opinions for what they are worth.—Yours, etc.. READER. June 15. 1949.

NEW NOVELS

THE TEWDWRS Some Trust in Chariots. By Jack Jones. Hamish Hamilton. 421 pp. The chapel-teas, the singing and the coal “, •• x N . ot that abominable parody of Gilbert Murray’s glowing Greek translation embraces anything like the exuberant scope and liveliness of Jack Jones’s Welsh novel. What formula could? This is a family chronicle. triumphantly sustained over about 60 years, in which we see the Tewdw.s iof Pontyglo, deriving a new vigour from the strong blood and brain of Elizabeth, restore the ancient power of their name. At least,, two of them do: her youngest son Rhys and her grandson Harry, who in partnership, beginning as carters in a small way, rise to great estate. They are delightfully contrasted: Rhys, anxious and circumspect; Harry, boisterous, pugnacious, confident, a man of infinite capacity in business, love,, and liquor. Mr Jones souanders a rich inventiveness and vitality in this story, yet it does not want the merits of a closely worked design.

THE BROTHERS There’s Glory for You. By Michael Harrison. T. Werner Laurie Ltd. 394 pp. Mr Harrison does very well indeed with the two reciprocal sides of his story—of two Italian brothers, one of whom became a power in Mussolini’s regime through his money, the other, debarred from the priesthood by his epilepsy, a leader of the resistance in the last phase of the war. Eugenio captured Carlo then, had him tried, and sent him to his death. . . . The story has its two sides as a dramatic picture of fascist Italy and its collapse and as a study of the two brothers, the “villain”—very persuasively drawn—and the “good” man. and the antagonism between them. Carlo’s last reference to their being “two aspects of the same character” lights it up. PAUL AND COMPANY There Were Three Men. By Helen Beauclerk. Gollancz. 284 pp. Miss Beauclerk may seem to some readers to have devoted to Paul Hanwell, a strange mixture of the ascetic and the libertine, more of her artistic care and to call on them lor longer, closer attention than he is worth, while he pursues the dreary, hopeless contest of his two selves to self-destruc-tion. If it seems so. this is not their novel; but there will be, certainly, more resolute and better-rewarded readers who recognise that Miss Beauclerk’s care and exactions are, indeed. an artist’s, and that Paul is an eminent success in characterisation, if an ugly one. As successful, also, are her studies of a medical extrovert—an amusing one, this—of an amiable, shallow humanitarian whose family administer a rough medicine, and —a series of slighter but neat sketches, mostly—of a considerable platoon of women. THE BORGIA FURY W’eb of Lucifer. By Maurice Samuel. Robert' Hale Ltd. 509 pp. “A novel of the Borgia fury ”: so Mr Samuel sub-titles his novel, and might have added fire, fun. and fancy. Giacomo Orso. the peasant boy whose first lesson in real politik was to see his father murdered and who derived from it the useful principle that it is better to have power than fall before it. made himself Machiavelli's pupil and Cesare Borgia’s right hand; and off we go, through the crimes and splendours of this prodigious period. Hardly a moment to draw breath till we climb out of the observation bus again. What a ride! JALNA SERIES Return to Jalna. By Mazo de la Roche. Macmillan. 408 pp. It is startling, even to familiars of Jalna, to be told that this is the tenth in Miss de la Roche’s series about the Whitcoaks family. The texture is wonderfully even and always quick in colour, character, and episode. Here the period is mid-war ana on. Maurice, one of the youngest generation, has his youth and a recent experience in Irei land to point the contrasts between tradition and progress at Jalna: Finch reappears, a concert celebrity now, ' though the gangling boy of old is not dead in him; so do others —Piers and | Wakefield, for instance, back from war service; and Renny, the\ master, creates the central emotional disturbance with a strange confession. TOTALITARIAN The Naz rovs. By Markoosha Fischer. Gollancz. 373 pp. This is a long novel of Russia, from the last years of Tsarism to the battle for Moscow. Both sides of the picture are boldly coloured, the best and the worst of the regime overthrown, tne best and the worst of the revolution and the new, totalitarian order; out Mrs Fischer’s biography, summarised on the jacket, is not needed to tell any reader that, if she began as an ardent .revolutionary, she ended in disillusion and revulsion. This is spec'ally evident in the later chapters where Natasha and her brother, Maxim, revolutionary loyalists both, fall victims to the monstrous, blind exactions of the party code and machine. She is expelled on malicious, false charges; he is sent to a camp for oolitical ‘offenders—and dies there — because his faith is not undiluted Stalinism. In this crowded, over-em-ohatic bonk, however, characterisation is limited to the broad strokes that define a type. PALESTINE The Dome of Rock. By Somerset de Chair. Falcon Press. 242 pp. Readers of “The Golden Carpet” and “A Mind on the March” will not need to be told with what mastery of local and racial background and of literary art Mr de Chair writes about the Middle East. Here his immedate subject is the conflict of British, Arab, and Jewish ideas and ideals over Palestine, as certain events in 1941 dramatically exhibited it. Less a novel than a linked series of three stories, his book centrally concerns an Arab child (the remote descendant of a Crusader), a Jewish girl, and two young British officers. These portraits are memorably good in a book of real distinction. NEW LIFE Not Into Clean Hands. By Louis Pauwels. Allen and Unwin. 108 pp. This tale, translated by Bernard M ? all from the French, concerns a French workman <the supposed narrator) and the disaster, as he supposes it to be. of his wife’s discovery of his ; infidelity; but Jousselin’s "discovery ; lies before him—of the peace and ; hapoiness a lonely man can win when ' he has “nothing left.” FARCE

In GONE TO-MORROW (Angus and Robertson. 174 pp) Gilbert Mant tells the hilarious story of a young man who. learning that he has but a few months to live, decides to spend them in doing all rhe things he has dreamed of doing. He leaves his virtuous aunt; he tells ais employer what he thinks of him; he throws a rotten egg at a pompous orator; he becomes acquainted with the Queen of the Underworld, stands for parliament, and conducts a whirlwind campaign for a political programme to abolish politicians. How sad. to have to die after all that! Die? Not on your life! NEW EVE

E. Charles Vivian’s ARRESTED (Robert Hale Ltd. 256 pp.) centrally concerns Eve Perceval, who married Ronald Holly to escape the consequences of her father’s disgrace and found the way out of the worse consequences of this mistake only when she learned to blame her own selfishness. The tragic »ssue of Ronald’s affair with’ the Spanish Maria Aguitia freed a new Eve for a new hope. DEKOBRA

Two newly translated stories by Maurice Dekobra. both published by T. Werner Laurie Ltd., will delight the admirers of his romantic invention. They are THE BLUE PARROT, in which the company of a Paris caf ? play their various parts in a drama of the resistance, and HELL IS SOLD

OUT, in which a hero of the resistance, an eminent French novelist, believed to have been killed, returns from captivity and makes an astonishing and problematical discovery. GANGSTERDOM John Creasey’s BATTLE FOR INSPECTOR WEST (Stanley Paul. 288 pp. Thrcugb Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd.> throws the Chief Inspector into the many fierce rounds of his contest with London’s king of post-war gan ’ sters, Carosi. This crackles througl* out