BOOKS AND AUTHORS

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 12, 8 October 1927, Page 29

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

(By

"LIBER.")

Give a man a pipe he can smoke, Give a man a book he can read: And his home is bright with a calm delight Though the room be poor indeed.

BOOKS OF THE DAY "Alpysius Horn, Trader.” A very remarkable book, “Aloysius Horn, His IJfe and Works,” edited by Ethelreda Lewis, has been published by Jonathan Cape (Whitconibe and Tombs). The American edition published earlier in the year, has run into several editions, close upon a quarter of a million copies having been sold already. To the English edition of the book no one other than John Galsworthy, who himself testifies to having met Horn in the flesh at Johannesburg last February’ contributes a preface in which the author of “The Forsyte Saga,” not given as a rule to unqualified approval of anything from an English political or social institution, to a new book, declares roundly that Horn's autobiography is a gorgeous book, more full of good things than any you are likely to come across in a day’s march among the bookshops of wherever you might be, and, although, as he says, never given to prophecy, asserts he “would wager that this book will be read by countless readers with gusto as great as I have felt myself? 1 “Liber” is not given to accepting the word of any man, however distinguished an author lie may be, as to the qualities of a new book, but it is at once a duty and. a pleasure to add his own Immble testimony to. the extraordinary originality, freshness, and unfailing interest of Horn's now famous book, bound, I fancy, to. become a classic of adventure. The. genesis of the autobiography is decidedly uncommon, the author first calling, a peddler of small tinware and what in America are called “Yankee nations,” upon the lady who became his editress, Mrs. Lewis, a novelist herself living in the suburbs of Johannesburg. At that time, it was only last year, Horn was living in a “doss house” at Johannesburg, a poverty-stricken old man of over seventy who, nevertheless, had had a wonderful career as an African hunter and trader. Struck by the peddler’s speech and manner, Mrs. Lewis got into converr.ation with the old fellow and eventually induced him to visit her regularly and recount his adventures. Eventually he put his story into manuscript, which Mrs. Lewis now reproduces, adding at the end of each, section, which is left in with its original spelling, her report of “Conversations” with the old man, the whole forming an autobiography of such marked originality as at once to stamp the book as a truly remarkable record. Mr. Galsworthy sets down in print his personal impression that “the old Visiter,” as Horn describes himself, was in truth the “character” disclosed in his story. Horn’s record relates very largely to his life on and in the hinterland of' the Ivory Coast, to ' which he, a Liyerpool-born lad, went “in the carlies.” It is mainly of Horn’s life as a hunter and trader in the Congo and to the south thereof that he writes. He describes native life and how both the traders, missionaries, French, and Belgians behaved in their relations with the Africans. Never was there a recital as this of such amazing stories. Horn tells of lion, gorilla, and elephant hunting, of the ways of these and many , curious savage animals. 'Anon, he swings off to discuss cannibals and their ways, witch doctors, and other natives, and relates at length how he discovered an octoroon goddess in a native joss house, and of how he contributed to her escape therefrom and her marriage to a fellow adventurer, a white man. It is curiously new to hear him testifying to the moral purity of the cannibals. Of one tribe of whom he was

made a “blood brother,” he pays a warm tribute to the value to the blood brother of initiation in the rite of Egbo. Egbo, Ma'am? I've been blood brother to cannibals. No need to say been. I still am. Nothing destroys the bond but death. Cannibals? The most moral race on earth. The women chaste and the men faithful. I’ve lived amongst them like a brother, a young lad clean and safe. Safer than what he'd a been in London. The rite of tgbo’s a safer accomplishment than French when you're hunting ivory. Horn’s, own calling on the Ivory Coast was trading in ivory, but he was often also >1 hunter of wild animals. He praises the elephant. “One must be a gentleman in killing an elephant.” The lion he describes as “such a sensible soul” Dainty, too, like a lady, over his food. It’s only certain portions he’ll tolerate. The hyena now’ll uot leave two bootsfull of his kill, nor of anybody else’s kill. He’s a coarse feller, no death’s bad enough for him.” Sly the elephant can be at times, but- he often displays very little common sense. The elephant hunt (he writes) makes a pretty splash of activity. What’s so peculiar about that way of catching them (by enticing them into an enclosure), is that they’ll walk round aud round in a circle for a day or a couple of days, following the leader, and never thinking of breaking through the brushwood. “Tis only when they get exhausted that they’ll turn and eat the bananas that lured ’em in.” An elephant fight among the beasts themselves must be far more exciting than a Tunney-Deiupsey combat. The

human heavy-weights are mere caterpillars compared with the elephant. The two fighters did not charge each other, but with head to hencl pressed each other back. There weie great gaps in. the sand caused by the weight and pressure ol the fighters as they moved slowly in a circle. Now the younger one was forced head to ground and seemed fagged out, and was bleeding from tusk wounds, and the larger elephant, taking advantage of his position, now forced his head up and jabbed him fiercely several times with his tusks. The fight was about up, 1

thought, aud I gAe the motion to fire. Of the gorilla and his strange ways Horn has much to say. I find him telling of the hunting of a notorious gorilla which was as much the terror of certain natives as an Indian maneating tiger can be: “The Okellies now fired on him, but instead of scampering away, as he was only slightly wounded, he made a bound on them, using his arms. One man and gun he sent fully 30ft. in the air and played havoc with the, others, scattering them with a snap of his arms, while one of them gaining his feet was knocked sideways again. He used his knuckles and long arms (I. never saw him bite) so quickly that one could scarcely see which was gorilla . and which was man in the mixup as he played skittles with them, he seemed to knock them before him. Contrary to what I expected, he never used his teeth, although their bite is terrible and said by the natives to be poisonous.” Horn seems to have done a good trade in shipping carcasses of gorillas to European and American museums, but he was never a big game hunter and killer for so-called sport sake. He was a gold hunter at times, the weird experiences some of the goldseekers seem to have had. T could go on quoting tit-bits from Horn’s strange narratives at some .length. Suffice it it to say that I have not, for some time, read a book • bearing so much the imprest of truth as this. In the “Conversations,” which often disclose a rich store of homely •philosophy on the part of the old man, one seems in places to suspect the novelist has herself led “the talk” into channels rather strange to the old hunter and trade, but there is no. suspicion of any “fake” about a quite out-of-the-way and most fascinating story. I am glad to see there is to be a second series of Horn’s curious experiences and wonderful adventures. In these days the jaded reader finds a book of this kind so eminently refreshing that he must fain ask and hope for more. By no means miss the “Horn” book. . It is worth a full score of the best of the latter-day autobiographies. (N.Z. price 12s. Gd.) LIBER’S NOTE BOOK To that excellent little collection, “The Picture Galleries” series (Duckworth and Company) • have .recently been added two volumes, “Hours in the National ,Portrait Gallery,” by John Stecgmann, official lecturer at the Gallery, and “Hours in the Glasgow Art Galleries,” by T. C. F. Brotchie, Directin’. Each volume contains sixteen full-page reproductions of notable paintings. New Zealand lovers of art should make a point of visiting the Glasgow Art Gallery when in the Old Country, for it is unquestionably one of the most interesting galleries to lie found in Great Britain. Not only can sonic of the best work of the revolution-making “Glasgow school” be there studied in the collection, but the Dutch masters are much better represented than in many British galleries. This is a very interesting series. (New Zealand price, -is. Gd.) ■Most excellent advice and practically wise counsel, conveyed both to parents and young people in an eminently readable wav," is to be found in Sir Charles Cheers Wakefield’s book, “Ou Leaving School aud the Choice of a Career” (Hodder and Stoughton). The author is one of the pioneers of the lubricating oil industry in . England, a director of the largest English insurance company, has been Lord Mayor of London, and is still a prominently influential figure in the commercial world of the Old Country. The essays now published deal with “character” forming in young people, with the importance of. “good

English,” with such subjects as education and commercial life, with careers for boys and girls, and with cognate subjects, the book closing with some excellent counsel for the future. (N.Z. price, os.) In “A Short History of Physics” (Methuen and Co.), Mr. JI. Buckley, M.Sc., who holds an important position in the photometry division of the National Physical Laboratory, deals with present-day physics, from the evolutionary or historical standpoint. With this object in view an attempt has been made to illustrate its more important phases by extracts from the masterpieces of Galileo, Boyle, Faraday, and Newton, and ether great works in the literature of science. Mr. Buckley’s treatment is general rather than particular, so that his book may be described as popular without, it is hoped, any loss in accuracy or scientific spirit. (N.Z. price, 10s.) Under the general title “A Handful of Nuts” (H. R. Allenson), the late Air. Samuel .Morris, “Uncle Oliver” of the. “Baptist Record,” wrote a series ol twenty-seven short tales to girls and boys, all of which inculcate “a simple wholesome spirit of Christian morality.” There is a convincing air of sincerity about these pleasantly-worded little tales, a sincerity which their youthful readers will no doubt fully recognise. (N.Z. price 3s. Gd.) Under the t'tle “Yourself and Your Body” (Hodder and Stoughton), Dr. \\ ilfrid T. Grenfell, of Labrador fame, has written a book which should be welcomed by thousands of parents to whom their children pose questions often very difficult to answer concerning the various parts of their bodies aifd the exact place they take in human physiology. The information is conveyed in language as non-technical as possible, its practical value being enhanced by a large number of illustrations and diagrams. A capital little book. (N.Z. price us.) In “Some Things That .Matter” (Hodder and Stoughton), Lord Riddell collects and reprints a number of excellent essays wherein he describes, in popular language, the laws of evidence, outlining, in addition, the laws of thought. The essays, which originally appeared in “John o’ London's Weekly,” contain a vast amount of practical and agreeably conveyed information, accompanied, very often, by much excellent counsel. I am specially struck with the two essays “The Use of the Dictionary” and “Circumstantial Evidence,” but all Ihe essays are replete with sound common sense and useful counsel. (N.Z. price 3s. Gd.) SOME RECENT FICTION Some “Detectives.” However hardened may be the reader who finds special entertainment in what is called “detective” fiction, he or she must always accord a hearty welcome to a new story of this kind from the well-practised pen of Mr. J. S. Fletcher. Messrs Herbert Jenkins aud Co. publish the latest yarn, “The Passenger to Folkestone,” from .Mr. Fletcher’s prolific pen. A French diamond merchant is found murdered in a Folkestone hotel, ami Detective I’crivale and a local police inspector set to work to solve the mystery. (Juite a number of people are more or less concerned in the tragedy, the Folkestone murder being followed by two others, this time in Paris, and both the English “tec” and liis Parisian friend Petabos being for a long time completely baffled. A secret society is also concerned iu the mysterious murder of Monsieur Aiibergc. Unless I mistake not, it will be no easy task for the reader of Mr Fletcher’s capital yarn to “spot” the denouement. A “detective” much above the average.

Mr. Ronald A. Knox pleased many readers by his novel - “ The Viaduct Murder.” His new story, “The Three Taps,” deals with the death, by gas poisoning, of a wealthy manufacturer who had taken out a policy of insurance for an enormous amqupt with the Indescribable Company. The circumstances attending his death, suicide and murder being in turn suspected by the company’s expert investigator, Mark Predon, and Inspector Leyland for the police, are such as alternately bring under suspicion the dead man’s secretary and his nephew, and the author displays considerable ingenuity in piling up mystery upon mystery. Eventually, of course, the problem is solved in n manner which may largely astonish the reader of an exceptionally well written novel, one special feature of which is the constant play of humour in the author’s descriptions of the leading characters ,

Not a few "novels of mystery and suspense” have come from Mr. Arthur J. Rees, author of “Greyniarsh” (Jarrolds Limited).- An apparently insoluable mystery attaches to a murder committed during the night of a great storm, in a tower close to an old grey mansion in a lonely spot on the Norfolk coast. To unearth the real meaning or this mysterious murder, to unearth and bring to punishment the perpetrators of the crime and incidentally to ensure the happiness of some good and charming people, is the work of that famous detective Colwyn Grey, who has already figured in two of Mr. Rees’s earlier stories. The story not only abounds in thrills, but shows its author's clever powers of striking characterisation, and his mastership of a high standard of literary merit. The typography of this booic, the work of a Plymouth firm of printers, strikes one as being exceptionally good. Would that much more of our current fiction were so clearly printed, and on such good paper. To the almost innumerable romances in which that much accomplished and singularly lucky rascal Fantomas has figured has been added a new story bv Marcel Alain, “The Revenge o Fantomas” (Stanley Paul and Co.). Here to the front once more are our old friends Juve of the “Surete,” the Parisian Scotland Yard; Jerome Fandor, the story-seeking, adventurous journalist, and of course the mysterious Fantomas. Marcel Alain’s ingenuity m devising new and sensational situations in winch the trio separately or collectively engage is quite extraordinary, there being seemingly no limit to" the novelist’s powers of imagination. Fantomas. as an aviator has new avenues for his audacity and criminal exploits, and there is scarcely a couple of pages in which some new thrill is not afforded the beader.