BOOKS AND AUTHORS

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 291, 8 September 1928, Page 27

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

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"LIBER.")

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

BOOKS OF THE DAY The New Zealanders. Messrs. J. M. Dent and Sons, to whom we owe so many excellent series, deserve credit for initiating the publication of a. new series of “illustrated handbooks for the information and entertainment of travellers and emigrants, and their friends at home,” under the general title of “The Outward Bound Library.” One of the first volumes to appear is “The New Zealanders,” by Hector Bolitho. In his preface, Mr. Bolitho, who at one time was a youthful reporter on a New Zealand paper, modestly refers to himself “as a second-rate writer” and states that “although my country may find little pleasure in acknowledging the fact, is—it is difficult to understand upon what ground he advances this hypothesis—is a product of the country whose people, social institutions, products, etc., he now describes. Mr. Bolitho's book is well planned. After a short chapter on early New Zealand, in which he is seemingly unappreciative of the early missionaries and their work, tie writes on “The New Zealander: His character, his culture and his architecture,” thence discussing in turn, “Education,” “The New Zealand Woman,” “Fishing, Shooting and the Mountains,” “A Journey Through the North Island,” “The South Island and Dependencies.” “The Parmer”; the -“lndustrialist”; “The Miner”; with concluding sections on “New Zealand and the World” and “Some Literary Associations.” There is much good work in the little volume but-not a little of this is due to the “utilisation of information the New Zealand Government gave me so willingly,” and to the notes on New Zealand fishing and shooting afiorded bv Mr. T. E. Donne. 'Mr. Bolitho’s own individual work contains so many inaccuracies, and some of it is in such questionable taste, that we do not wonder at the author frankly, declaring that without their (the New Zealand Government’s) encouragaement, and the efficiency and generosity.” “The New Zealanders” would be “a very tame performance.” For once, at least, an author’s frankness is based upon truth. Mr. Bolitho, who left his native country when quite a young man, and apparently is in no great hurry to return there, gibes amiably at the New Zealand housekeeper’s alleged inability “to exploit the hundred and one new fishes and fruits and vegetables of the young country/’ Uc laments the fact that “she has not got avocado pears from Fiji, and learned to serve them with camembert cheese.” “Avocado pears, with which the present writer experimented years before Mr. Bolitho was born, and which even with pepper and salt, as they eat them in Fiji I failcd to appreciate,. do not “carry well to this country. As for eating them with Camembert cheese, that, m France, quite delightful cheese, although, personally I shall always piefer the Gallis "brie” is terribly dry by the time it readies this country, to say nothing of its cost here—and one can scarcely blame the New Zealand housewife for ignoring it. Io Mr. Bolitho, accustomed, perhaps, to the more fastidious tastes catered for at “Very’s” or by the skilled chefs of the Trocadero, the Carlton, and Prince s of the London West End, the simpler cuosine of the New Zealand home is, no doubt, inconceivable. But it seems to suit us very well. “The greatest fault developed in the New Zealand men,’’ we are informed, is “casualness and the author is pleased to admit that he does not like the New “attitude towards literature and art. As a matter of fact New Zealanders are, so it may be learnt from statistics, the greatest readers in the world, lhe best book shops in the New Zealand cities carry a larger and much more varied stock of new books than do the few such shops one finds in most English towns, a fact which occasioned me some none too agreeable surprise when, a fairly experienced bookman myself, t rambled round the counters of English book shops in 1920. ]\ir. Bolitho contributes some quite interesting notes on

ling by rail and otherwise through the North and South Island. He is brief, though perhaps generally fair in his estimate of Wellington, although surely he should avoid reproducing that very ancient “wheeze” about the Wellington man and his hat. He might, too, have refrained from “padding” his book with lengthy quotations from a diary kept by the author during the Prince of Wales’s tour. It is difficult also to understand his reference to the “Wagnerian splendour” of thee Southern Lakes district. “Wagnerian” is quite a favourite, if often misapplied, adjective of the author’s. .The quiet self-satisfaction with which —“after travelling in fourteen countries,” time spent in each not stated —the author says his “affection for Rotorua is just the siune as when I was a child,” is naively touching, but to do him justice Mr. Bolitho's description of the country’s natural wonders has the ring of sincerity about it. If, as I trust may be the case, his book goes into a second edition, he might well wield the blue pencil with a palpably required freedom, but it unquestionably conveys some very pleasantly worded and very practically useful information about our land. Mr. Harry Rowntree’s illustrative drawings are agreeably effective, if all too few. (75.) Other volumes of the same series which have been received are “The Cities of Australia,” “The Australian Bush,” and “Malta and Cyprus.” Reviews to follow. Magic and Witchcraft. Messrs Rider and Co., who seem to specialise in books discussing psychic phenomena and research, have just published “Au Analysis of Magic and Witchcraft, a retrospective introduction to the study of modern metaphysics,” by C. W. Oliver, B.Sc. Mr. Olivier’s essays discuss many out-of-the-way and curious subjects such as religious symbolism, “Black Magic,” the Kabala; Sexual Worship; The Devil Myth; Sorcery and Witchcraft; The Witches’ Sabbat; Divination and Alchemy; White Magic; Ectoplasma, etc. Many old mysteries, trials for magic, and the like, are quoted, and the author has evidently gone to much trouble in his researches into littleconsulted works at the British Museum and in Paris. An extended bibliography of the general subject is given, and a series of diagrams and illustrations, the latter from old-time literature, some of the pictures being decidedly startling. (195.) LIBER’S NOTE-BOOK

.A work of the highest interest and importance to all concerned with the earliest history of New Zealand, “The Journals and Correspondence of the Reverend John Butler,” has been compiled by Mr. R. J. Barton, and printed by Messrs. Palamountain and Petherick, Masterton, the distributing agents being Messrs. Macleod and Young of that town. The compiler’s object has been, as he states frankly, to clear the memory of his great-grandfather from aspersions cast upon him by the Rev. Samuel Marsden. I make,” he says, “no apology for a compilation which is a labour of love, a theme of duty, and a debt due to the memory of an English gentleman.” Apart from the special purpose of the book, it will be seen at ouce that it deals at first band with the very earliest history of New Zealand, and is possessed of no small historical importance. I hope to review the work at length next week. The many who attended the course of lectures recently delivered in Wellington by Dr. J. J. Van der Leeuw, will no doubt be much Interested in Dr. Van der Leeuw’s recently-published work, “The Conquest of Illusion,” a copy of which has been kindly lent me by Lieut.-Colonel R. B. Smythe. The theme of this book is “that our approach to the great problems of life has been wrong; we have attempted,” it is claimed, “to solve them as they stand, never doubting their validity.” Our first duty is “to find reality and conquer illusion, and in the light of. reality to consider the problems.” The.

book, which calls for keen study of many philosophical and metaphysical questions, will, no doubt, attract widespread attention. It is illustrated by a number of novel diagrams. A “Life of Thomas Hardy,” by his widow, is to appear during the English autumn. Paul Morand, the clever Frenchman who made such a hit with his “Open all Night”/a cheap English translation is now appearing with Alfred (Knopf) has written what I read is modern negro, the most notable an astonishingly brilliant study of the story of the series, whose general title is “Magie Noire,” is the study of a Haitian black Lenin, who comes to the front in 1930, when, had M. Morand, Japan and the United States are to be at war. An English translation of the stories is to appear shortly. Two volumes of “Selected Essays” by the late Sir Edmund Gosse have been added to Cape’s excellent “Travellers’ Library.” Many who have admired the fine caricature portraits, by Nibs, which have appeared of late years in “John o’ London’s Weekly,” will regret to learn that the artist, Mr. F. Drummond Niblett, recently passed away, in the mid-sixties.

By the way, apropos of caricature portraits of literary celebrates, “T.P.’s Weekly” is publishing a series of drawings of this character from the pen of Joseph Simpson. In a recent issue was a’ really brilliant, if rather cruel, portrait of that clever Irishman, George Moore. Heinemann’s have recently added a finely printed edition of Mr. Moore s rather too outspoken but unquestionably well written book, “Memoirs of My Dead Life,” to a uniform series of his works. But what many of us want is a similar edition of Moore s greatest novel, “Esther Waters.” A contemporary, I notice, frequently refers to “The Tyrol.” Years ago I was reproved by a correspondent for making the same error. You no more require the quite superfluous The ■than you should place it before, say, Cumberland, Canterbury, Middlesex, Natal, or Victoria. Tyrol is the name of a state, or province, as you may deem it. The preceding definite article is, I am assured, quite ridiculous to a Tyrolese. Some one, writing in a London paper, upon the habitues of the British Museum Reading Room, suggests it as ihe subject of a book. But surely the inquirer can find all • he requires in George Gissing’s “New Grub Street. Why are not some of Gissings best novels available in one of the now numerous handy-sized “libraries . Mr Grant Richards, publisher and author, whose publishing business was wound up some months ago, has,. I see, joined the Cayme Press P r °P ri . and is to assist that new publishing firm in issuing some very important books. Richards deserves the thanks of all readers by having started that admirable scries, “The world’s Classics,” now issued by the Oxford University Press. Mr. Richards, whose really excellent book, “’The Coast of Pleasure,” bj’ far the best, and to the tourist most practically useful work on the Riviera I have ever read, wrote “Caviare," the first of several excellent novels. This is a book'of which some cheap and handy edition might well be printed. Sir William Watson, the English poet, seventy last month, has issued a volume of Selected Poems. Wonder whether it includes that ferocious attack on—well, the wife of a recently deceased English statesman—“ The Woman with the Serpent’s Tongue. w. B. Maxwell, Miss Braddon’s son, the lady who, once so famous as the author of “Lady Audley’s Secret,” married her publisher, Mr. W. H. Maxwell, has not been heard of much lately, but is now again to the front with a new story, “We Forget Because We Must,” published recently by Hutchinsons. . Sir Janies Barrie has presented his native town of Kirriemuir—the original of “Thrums”—made famous in Barrie’s “Window in Thrums” and “Auld Licht Idylls”—with a new cricket pavition. Well, well, with the Caledonian foreswearing “gowf” and “tossin’ the caber”* and taking to cricket, there is a change indeed. The Cambridge University Press, which has done such good work for bookmen by printing,, in pretty and handy form, Sir Arthur Quiller Couch’s excellent lectures and essays, “The Art of Reading,” “The Art of Writing,” “Studies in Literature” (two series), and Q’s capital essays, “Adventures in

Criticism” (this latter originally published by Cassells) has further reaped our gratitude by issuing a similar new edition (once, also a Cassells book, but long out of print), his “From a Cornish Window” essays, which first of all appeared in the “Pall Mall Magazine,” and including Q’s brilliant versical satire. "The Ballade of the Jubilee Cup.” This Oxford tlniversity series of Q’s essays should not be overlooked* A cheerful title, if you like, is that given to Rene Fulop Miler’s forthcoming book, “The Holy Devil,” to be published by Allen and Unwin, and dealing with the extraordinary career of that sinister Russian figure, “Rasputin.” SOME RECENT FICTION Roosevelt and the Rough-Riders. Herman Hagedorn’s story, “The Rough Riders” (Harper’s), lives up to its secondary title, “A Romance of Theodore Roosevelt and the Spanish War.” It is a well-written war story of the “martial nineties” of the United States, the time when martial fervour was simply “blazing hot,” when Roosevelt and his men—or most of them — behaved with such gallantry, and when all America followed the course of the Cuban campaign so breathlessly. Intermingled in what is primarily a semi-historical tale are two or three personal interests, both male and female, of decided interest. One does not look for humour in such a narrative, but the story exposes not a few cases of confusion and lack, of wise control, not the least amusing feature being the arrant cowardice of a politician, Blair Fisker, of whom as Mrs. Webb cynically remarks in the concluding sentence of the novel, “It’s too perfect,” she murmured. “Somehow it puts a cap on the whole war. He’s been breveted lieutenantcolonel and is running for Congress—on his war record!” “The Burying Road.” There may be perhaps an apparent excess of conventional, traditional features in Mary Wiltshire’s well-written story of English rural life in her novel, “The Burying Road” (Hodder and Stoughton), but the story possesses many good features of its own, and if we have met before the “cap-setting” of a certain type of feminine, in the reception given to the new young parson of Cannings, if there is an illnatured but lovely married lady of the “vampire” breed, there is much clever character-drawing. Hilary Thurston, the new vicar, sweet little Phoebe Chambers, the ill-fated Miriam, whose death is so tragic for Hilary, Andrew Bent, happily married to the Phoebe who for a time had been fascinated by the parson—all these are welldrawn figures in an agreeable story of West Country life. Mr. John Oxenham, the author of “The Man Who Would Save the World: The Story of a Supreme Adventure” (Longmans), is well-knoWn in two literary capacities, as a novelist who has a wealth of imagination and descriptive power, which he has exhibited in a long list ,of excellent novels, and as the writer of much and very earnestly and gracefully worded verse of a devotional character. In his new work he puts forward, in the mouth of an ex-soldier, Colonel Carthew, a scheme for the raising of his fellow men to a much higher standard of social, moral and religious wellbeing than at present exists. Many of the colonel’s theories and proposals may no doubt seem impossible of achievement, but all who read the story must be struck by the author’s sincerity and earnestness. (65.) “Gorry,” by Isabel Cameron (Cornstalk Publishing Company, Sydney), is a collection of eight stories, of family and social life written round a very pleasing boy character and mostly of a certain Celtic flavour, in the same graceful style and human insight which were exhibited in the author’s earlier story, “The Doctor.” (3s. 6d.)

Walter W. Leggett’s “The Frozen Frontier” (Hurst and Blackett) Is a vigorously-told and intensely exciting story of North-West Canada, where, under the dazzling splendour of the Northern Lights, a constable of the R.M.P., temporarily discredited and disgraced, fights to win back honour and the girl he loves.