BOOKS and AUTHORS

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 140, 9 March 1929, Page 31

BOOKS and AUTHORS

A Weekly Survey

By

“Liber”

Give a man a pipe he can smoke. Give a man a book he can reads And his home is bright with a calm delight Though the room be poor indeed. —James Thomson.

BOOKS OF THE DAY Crime in France. Mr. Ashton Wolfe, the author of "The Thrill of Evil" and "The Invisible Web” (Hurst and Blackett), has established a now widespread reputation as an authority on French crime, and the way in which it is combatted by those in command at the Suretes of Paris, Lyons and Marseilles. It has been said that “Truth is stranger than fiction,” and Mr. Wolfe's stories of the detection and punishment of various prisoners, motor bandits, notorious swin/lers and thieves, both male and femqde, are far more sensational than the romances of Gaboriau and De Boisgohey, which a generation ago were so popular in France. Mr. Ashton Wolfe was for some years attached to the, French Surete as scientific investigator, and some of his experiences relate to international as well as French-born rascals. Hanoi Shan, the cruel Asiastlc, and Chang Foo Lee again appear in several episodes, their exploits surpassing in creepy horror Poe’s most grotesque imaginings. In “The Invisible Web” and “The Thrill of Evil,” the author shows the latest methods by which Dr. Edmund Locard and Dr. Beraud, controlling tthe police laboratories at Lyons and Marseilles, have secured the punishment of several members of a gang of criminals which stretches over Europe. Mr. Wolfe has worked upon official records, his stories being rendered all the more truthfully sensational by photographs reproduced from documents in the possession of the French authorities. The portraits here given of famous criminals and others showing how widely scientific investigation of their manner of criminal procedure, are numerous and greatly enhance the interest, often most dramatic, of Mr. Wolfe’s sketches. The author was formerly an assistant of the famous fingerprint expert, Monsieur Bertillon, and his two books may well be described, as notable. contributions to the literature of crime. (225. each.)

Some Admirable Reprints. The book buyer of to-day has a singularly wide choice from which to choose books of really outstanding interest and value. The various series of reprints, such as “The Travellers’ Libary,” “The Week-End Library,” Constable’s "Miscellany,” and other such excellent series, now procurable at moderate prices, are continually being added to, and make strong appeal to the modest-ly-lined purse. Just recently Mr. Jonathan Cape has added to his “Travellers’ "Library” a most charming souvenir of the late naturalist, Mr. W. H. Hudson, in the shape of "Men, Books, and Birds,” “Letters to a Friend,” namely, his letters to his old friend Mr. Morley Roberts, who himself adds an introduction, with notes and a few of his own letters. This is an invaluable memorial to the many-sided genius of Hudson. To the same series has been added a capital book of personal adventure, "The Adventures of a Wanderer,” by Sydney Walter Powell, with an introduction by F. V. Morley, a brother of the well-known American author, Christopher Morley. Mr. Powell is a man in whom the wanderlust is a strongly-developed influence. His experiences in South Africa, in the South African War, and later practically all over the world, Including Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, and elsewhere are told in a pleasantly direct style, and are very readable. It is true that Mr. Powell has but unpleasant memories of Wellington, “cold, bleak, and windy,” ' but he has more agreeable recollections of the South Island, and his is one of the best accounts we have yet read of Tahiti. This book is not a reprint, and was well worth including in this series. Another recent addition to the Travellers’ Library is Mr. J. G. Squire’s “Grub Street Nights Entertainments,” stories mainly of authors and bibliophiles, some of which originally appeared in the London “Mercury.” This is par excellence a bookman’s book and one which one should place alongside Gissing’s "House of Cobwebs” and his delightful “Henry Rycroft.’’i Might I venture to suggest to Mr. Cape that he should include in his Travellers’ Library the first-named of these. I would put in a plea also for John Hailsham’s “Idlehurst” and “Lonewood Corner.”

To Dent’s cheap and tastefully produced “Duchy” edition of the tales and romances of. Sir Arthur QuilterCouch have now been added some of his- best stories, amongst which are that old favourite “The Mayor of Troy” and Sir Arthur’s equally vigorous later novel, “Mayor Vigoreux.” “True Tilda,” also by Sir Arthur QuilterCouch, is a modern variant of the old theme of “The Babes in the Wood," both Tilda and Arthur, whom we leave as a midshipman attached to the Mediterranean fleet, being delightful young people whose youthful experiences afford some very pleasant reading. To the same series is added a collection of stories, “The White Wolf. Other Fireside Tales.” This is one of the most tastefully produced of the many series of reprints. Messrs. Methuen and Co. ought to find many readers for their well-print-ed reprints of the many humorous sketches, stories, and satires contributed to “Punch” under the title of “Uoneybubble and Co.” (Bs.), by that always merry humorist Mr. A. F. Herbert; and a volume of stories and sketches bv one of the stalwarts of •’Punch,” “Evoe" (Mr. E. V. Knox). Mr. Herbert’s volume is one long laugh, but for our own part we are beginning to find “Evoe’s” jokes just a little thin and worked to death. The fact is that Mr. Punch, while his pictures are as good as ever, might give a few of his writers, so palpably anxious to be “humorous” at any cost, temporary rest. Mr. E. V. Lucas and Mr. Herbert are always amusing, each in his own particular vein, but the editoriaLfavouring of Mr. Knox is sometimes difficult of justification. “On the Border of Spain,” “The Escape,” and “Uncle James and the Lamb” strike me as very poor stuff, and certainly not worth reprinting. (75.). Anything and everything that comes from the learned and witty pen of Dr. Logan Pearsall Smith is worth reprinting and placing on one’s shelves. To Constable and Company’s “Miscellany” has just been added Dr. Smiths “Words and Idiomfl,” studies in the English language, first published in 1925. Originally appearing in the English “Review,” and other high-class periodicals, Dr. Smith’s papers on English idiomatic expressions, their origin and their history, are always most readable, sometimes decidedly amusing. (4s. 6d.) As an ardent Trollopian I always keep my eyes on the look-out for a new Trollope reprint in “The World’s Classics,” which has already included many of the Victorian novelist’s earliest stories, original editions of which bring high prices in the auction rooms. The latest to appear in this capital series (Humphrey Milford, for the Oxford University Press), is “Six Harry

Hotspur and Humblethwaite”; not one of Trollope’s best-known and more popular tales, but one which Mr. Hugh Walpole commends as a specially happy use of a country scenario. In this story of the proud, generous, irascible old father, and the gentle, falth-ful-unto-death little heroine, a story the scene of which is played out among the Westmoreland hills, ten miles north of Keswick. Trollope, says Mr. Walpole, is specially happy in his colours and tones and shapes of hill and sky. I trust that in “World’s Classics” will be reprinted several others of Trollope’s minor stories. (2s. 6d. cloth.)

The Barnard Letters. “The Barnard Letters,” 1778-1824, edited by Anthony Powell (Duckworth and Co.), cover what was a singularly interesting period of England’s—and Ireland’s—military and social history, the story they recall being that of the Irish branch of the Barnard family, which produced two bishops in the later eighteenth century and a general and a colonial secretary in the nineteenth, the last-named’s wife being Lady Anne Lindsay, author of “Auld Robin Gray." The Barnards had many connections with the aristocracy, with the Army and the Church. Perhaps the chief figure in this interesting collection of family letters is Andrew Barnard, the soldier, born 1773, and dying unmarried in 1855. Andrew Barnard had what was in many ways a remarkable career. Some of the earlier letters were addressed to him as quite a small boy, by his grandmother, an exceptionally well-read and clever old lady. Andrew joined the 81st Regiment, with whom he went to the West Indies in 1793, but returned home to share in the suppression of the Irish Revolution. One of the Barnard family was Bishop of Limerick, Andrew’s uncle, a sprightly old gentleman, who was convinced—or pretended to be—that the native Irish were descended from the snakes banished by Saint Patrick, and who at 77 married a second wife of 22, and actually survived her. Andrew saw more service in North Holland under the Duke of York, but when we come to the Waterloo campaign not a few good stories and anecdotes crop v < in his letters. He had an important command, the 95th Rifles —now the Rifle Brigade—in Picton’s division at Waterloo, and was there wounded, though not seriously, as we next find him commanding the British division which occupied Paris. In a letter to the General from Lady Anne Barnard, always a sprightly correspondent, there is a good yarn about the Comte de Flahaut, Ambassador to the Court James, who married Margaret Elphiustone, the Countess of Nairn, cousin and heir to the 6th Lord Nairn. The story was told to Lady Anne by a gentleman who had dined with the happy pair in Scotland a few days afterwards.

The old Butler had just put down the claret when the family Piper entered, as was the fashion after dinner whenever there was a stranger dressed in his full regalia, making the three circles of the table and playing his horrible pibroch. The Comte de Flahault stuffed hie fingers into his ears at the sound. The piper paid him no attention, but calmly marched out at the acme pace he. came In. Donald then stepped up to his new Master, and in a manner of great tenderness whispered In his ear. “Ah! it's nae wonder that ye dlnna like that sound. Ye heard o’er muckle o' that at Waterloo .” Donald certainly believed it was the Highlanders who had carried the day.

Several family portraits and reproductions of pictures of historical scenes enhance the interest of the book, in which letters are included written by George IV, Sir John Moore, the Princess de Wagram, the Duke of Kent (Queen Victoria’s father), and others. (215.). SOME RECENT FICTION Mr. Arnold Bennett’s Latest. Mr. Arnold Bennett seems nowadays to have forgotten the existence of the “Five Towns” as a scenario. Latterly he has lived and found his fictional atmosphere amongst the monde which affects trains de luxe, expensive yachts, and the grand hotels of Riviere resorts. But still he has all that affection for a family trouble which we can rfemember his exploiting so well in the old days, and it is mainly with the Frith Walters and the troubles of father, son and daughter-in-law, that we are speedily and almost solely concerned with in his latest novel, “Accident” (Cassell and Co.). We meet Frith Walter pere, a well-to-do business man, first at Victoria Station, where, first providing himself with mental sustenance, we encounter him about to take the boat train to Dover on a journey to the Riviera, en route to join his wife in Italy, never dreaming of the fate which has in store for him his being plunged into a struggle betwixt his son, equally wealthy, but immersed in politics, and his daughter-in-law, a thoroughly up-to-date and beautiful, but self-willed young lady, all of the present time. At Calais, after an amusing description of his departure by a train de luxe, he seems settled down to an uneventful journey south, when he catches sight of a lady bearing a curious resemblance to his daughter-in-law, Pearl. It cannot be her, he must be mistaken, and so he dismisses the matter from his mind, solaces himself with his volume of Wordsworth —curious literary provision for such a journey—and after dinner is soon concerned with his luxurious sleeping-car. Then, some time in the night, he wakes up to find the train stopped and a strange rumour —of which, as is the way of the train de luxe officials they seem to know nothing—of a terrible accident. A travelling companion, a lady, the “bag-lady,” who is “all nerves,” after an operation, declares her horror of the train and gives another travelling companion, her husband, a very bad time as the train moves on, passing a railway yard all lights and confusion which no one can explain. Mr. FrithWalter discovers a wealthy business rival, and listens to and sympathises with the lady’s lamentations, that she is sure of coming disaster to the train. Later on Mr. Frith-Walter, who has by this time recognised that his daughter-in-law is actually on the train, runs into a railway accident in which he himself is a victim, being badly bruispd as the express train runs off the line—near Chambery—and be recovers sufficiently to know that his own son has flown by air, following his wife, and that he is now on the edge of a matrimonial row. The son, it appears, has informed his wife _of strenuously objecting, has left him, and made off by herself to the Continent. Poor Mr. Frith-Wal-ler, whose interest in Wordsworth has by this time given place to m,ore mun-

his intention to stand as a Labour candidate for the House. The daughter, dane matters, endeavours to make peace, and we have a scene ’twixt his son and his wife, which is unfortunately non-eventful. and father and son go on, by a relieving goods train, to Genoa. To tell the sequel would take too long, save that woman’s weakness from changing her mind is again exemplified, and the son, deciding to give up his project, Pearl puts everything right by reversing her decision, and at Genoa a very puzzled Mrs. Frith-Waller receives a husband who has to convey his account of his railway adventures and to explain the unexpected arrival of son and daughter-in-law. No great plot, but Mr. Bennett’s comments upon Continental railways, their officials, and things in general, are immensely diverting. Here is a three hundred or slightly less-paged novel, concerned with a few hours’ railway journey, and what it may mean in the way of a family upheaval. Mr. Bennett is as amusing as ever, and he makes everything end as happily as possible in this, the best possible of worlds—for people who are well off, and can travel by the most expensive of trains —even if they do break down and railway officials can be marvellously ignorant as to what exactly has happened. The one passenger we are really sorry for is the husband of the “hag-lady” with her “nerves.”

Four Good Detectives. Messrs. Collins, Sons and Co. have established quite a notable reputation as the publishers of detective yarns. Messrs. Freeman Wills, Crofts, A. Fielding, Agatha Christie, and Lynn Brock have all written for this house detective stories much above average merit. To these Mr. and Mrs. G. H. Cole must fairly be added as writers of detective fiction, in its own way as original in motive and as clever and striking in expression as even that of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. If Mr. Freeman Wills Crofts can boast a Scotland Yard superman in Inspector Frend, the Coles could match against hi; that astut. crime investigator. Superintendent Wilson, a selection of whose extraordinary exploits in crime detection are now set forth in a volume entitled "Superintendent Wilson’s Holiday” (Collins). The title story—placed, oddly enough, second on the list of the eight separate yarns in the book —concerns Wilson’s investigation, in the course of a motoring jaunt, of two murders in Norfolk. Other crimes, similarly sensational and for a time inexplicable, are the murder of an "International Socialist,” “An Oxford Mystery," and “The Robbery at Bowden.” In all these cases the detective shows quite remarkable powers. Mr. Ralph Rodd’s "Without Judge or Jury" (Collins) deals with the battle Of wits between Cheviot Dane, an expert unattached crime Investigator, and an ex-detective dismissed from Scotland Yard for accepting a bribe, and above all anxious to be reinstated. The mystery each seeks to elucidate,Dane with a view to winning the hand of a clever young lady, the ex-detective with the hope of getting a hold over certain influential people who may effect his reinstatement at the Yard, concerns an old miniature with a history and a secret of great family importance. Mr. Rodd writes a skillfullyplanned story, much different from most of the current detective novels. A very remarkable story. Two other of Messrs. Collins’s recently published sensational novels, Philip Macdonald’s "The White Crow” and Francis Everton’s “Hammer of Doom,” will be reviewed when space permits. Sundry Stories.

“Maidens Three,” by Curtis Yorke (Hutchinson), deals with the fortunes of a Town Mouse and two Country' Mice, the principal interest of the story centring round the marriage and various adventures of Priscilla Templeton. As is usual with Miss Yorke, the sentimental Interest is paramount. Mr. Fletcher’s Yorkshire tale, “The Threshing Floor” (Jarrolds) is a somewhat grim story, possessed of a certain dramatic force in its picture of simple rustic life amid the Yorkshire folk, n story Of much the same type as Mr. .Fletcher’s fine novel, “Daniel Quayle.” The principal characters, especially the proud, masterful father, the ill-controlled, wild, impulsive daughter, are strongly drawn. In his own way Mr. Fletcher reminds me of Halliwell Sutcliffe in the latter’s earlier novels. Bright Challenger justifies Mr. Fletcher’s claim to be the “Thomas Hardy of the North.” Grace Richmond has a faithful public of her own and her latest story, “At the South Gate” (Methuen), will well sustain her popularity with the lovers of the sentimental Interest in fiction. Julia Hath and Dr. Dan, the man she loves, are both very likeable characters. Adapted from Anthony Asquith s film of the same name, “Shooting Stars.” by Ml Charles Vivian, is a welltold, if highly sensational,_ story of afilm actress and her experiences when her husband, discovering her love for a comedian working in th o hcxt set, threatens her ruin by a divorce action. Those who like fiction in which the ways of filmland are set forth will no doubt enjoy the story. Novels Received. "Cock Angel,” by Rachel Swete McNamara (Hurst and Blackett) ; “So Far,” by G. de S. Wentworth-James (Hurst and Blackett) ; “The Story of Hassan,” bv John Anthony (Nisbet and Co.); “Stlfison’s Troubles,” by the late Herbert Jenkins, of “Bindie” fame (Herbert Jenkins and Co. ; “Wronged by His Friend,” by Courtenay Hodgson (Herbert Jenkins and Co. ; “Sally of Show Alley,” by Homer K. Gordon (John Long).

Miscellaneous. Under the heading of “Christ and Society” (George Allen and Unwin) are set forth six lectures delivered last year at St. Botolph’s Church, Bishopsgate, in the city of London, under the auspices of the Halley Stewart Trust. The main propositions formulated are that the present state of society demands a reform so thorough as to amount to a peaceful revolution, the final conclusion being that Jesus Christ is the Saviour and Redeemer of man in social t- -well as individual life. (65.) Dr-. William A. Williams D.D., expresident of Franklin College, Ohio, is at once the author and publisher of “The Evolution of Man Scientifically Disproved, in Fifty Arguments.” It is claimed that the book is designed (1) as an up-to-date text book and a companion to all other text books on evolution; (2) as an antidote to books in libraries teaching evolution, infidelity, and atheism; (3) as an aid to all students, parents, teachers, ministers, lawyers, doctors, and all other lovers of the truth.” (Price 1 dollar.) In a booklet, “Morals for Ministers” (Allen and Unwin) a writer who conceals his identity under the initials “R.E.X.,” affords a quantity of practically useful and often very frankly expressed counsel to those who preach the gospel. (3s. 6d.)