MR. BURKE IN

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 112, 4 February 1933, Page 17

MR. BURKE IN

An Old Legend Stripped Of Its Falsity

"The Real East End,” the text by Thomas Burke, the lithographs by Pearl Binder (London: Constable). It may seem a little late in 1933 to be saying how extraordinarily well Mr. Burke writes of his beloved London, s Yet there is justification for doing so, even if it means telling his admirers something they know very well al- . ready, For in this new book on the East End —the real East End —he has done once again what he has several times done in the past. He forces even the. reader long acquainted with his skill to estimate that skill more highly than ever. At moments, in fact, when the magic Is on him, Mr. Burke is without a doubt one of the most considerable writers in England to-day. It is an astonishing gift; since his mind, after all, is naive, and his attitude to .certain things, including music, the same. But the gift is there most certainly—the rich gift of a lively interest, a vivid perception and this wonderful ability of Mr. Burke’s to set it all down In English which sometimes for long stretches at a time is sheer enchantment. Those who read this latest book ■will agree that there has been no extravagance here. And in any case, the thesis is not new. It is only Mr. Burke’s way of making one think it all over again that leads to a restatement. The book itself, as its title implies, sets out tb strip the East End of its false associations and show It as it really is, having first shown (even this, apparently, was necessary) just whefe •it lies and what territory strictly it includes. Mr. Burke opens in free style with the following passage:— '.East End! . . Visions in the public mind ot slums, vice, crime, sin, and unnknieable horrors. East. End! . . . Dregs of humanity. Beggars and thieves. Bare-footed waifs. Outcasts. Drunkards. Jack the Kipper. Crlmntng dens. Dangerous streets. Policemen walk in twos and threes. -Something worse than Chicago. Sidney Street. Limehouse. Opium dens. East End! . . . Hooligans. Diseased harlots. Public-houses at every corner. Thugs lurking in every alley. Sudden death. Well, legends are like old soldiers. But old soldiers do eventually fade away, and that .is more than legends do. Fact, set beside legend, is a poor, pale thing, apathetic and incompetent to hold its own. ■Facts fade away and die. but legends are invulnerable and immortal: and the East End legend, I suppose, will last as long as there is any East End. Because the East End did misbehave itself in the forties i«nd fifties of last century, the decent and kindly East End <>& the twentieth must go on paying for misbehaviour with which it was never concerned. The People are like that; they will cherish their traditions against all truth and all. disproof. That is Mr. Burke’s point of departure, and it will be no fault of his if the legend of the wicked East End does not come to a more abrupt conclusion than the old soldiers he speaks of. He by no means paints it.as a garden city with all modern conveniences, but he does show it as an admittedly extraordinary place, essentially decent and law abiding, where there seems to be more positive life and living than there is, probably, in many’a district with a better reputation. ' ' The sections of the book number five, and are entitled “Its Colour,” “Its People,” "Its River,” "Its Commerce,”'and “Tailpiece.” In spite of the surpassing quality of the middle section, the one which succeeds it, dealing with buying and selling, will for many be the most fascinating of all. Yet no one will be able to forget the light Mr. Burke throws on Jewish life in the East End, nor the singular beauty of his description of the Pool. All through. Indeed, fire things to remember; and if at times there Is a faint suggestion of Baedeker, or a slight blemish or defect, or from one aspect or another the suspicion of a weakness, the pleasure derived from Mr. Burke’s vivid writing more than makes up for them all. The many excellent lithographs, moreover, increase greatly the enjoyment to be reaped from this book. It Is a thorough success. HERRICK’S ENGLAND “They Were Defeated,” by Rose Macaulay (London: Collins). For Miss Rose Macaulay this new novel is a triumph of virtuosity, and for the average reader an extraordinary delight. It hds above all that rare characteristic of making one’s journey through it a source of continually increasing enjoyment. There are ho weaknesses in the telling, whatever may be said of the construction of the tale, and there are few who will not fall in love with the book more and more as they proceed. People exist, no doubt, to whose tastes the cavalier lyrists, with their feelings and their vocabulary, are utterly foreign. These people, who must be few, will either find Misti Macaulay’s novel impossible to read or, if they follow it only a short distance, must surely be won over. For Miss. Macaulay has cast' her story with almost fantastic success against the English background of 1040-41, a time when ideas of all kinds, religious, social and political, were simmering dangerously. The central character is the poet, Robert Herrick, who is surrounded by a number of other real figures, most of whom are well known. In fact, as Miss Macaulay says, only a very few of the people in the book are imaginary. All, moreover, use as far as she has been able to make them only those words, phrases and idioms that were demonstrably used at the time in which they lived. For most readers, probably, this makes at first for a quaintness which is no good thing, since it places the characters and their lives rather at a distance. But before many pages are gone, such is Miss Macaulay’s success, the action and life become very real.

Although the interest is largely literary, Alis« Macaulay introducing to a great extent the lives nnd works of Herrick. Suckling, Marvell, Cowley, Cleveland. Crnshaw and others who were writing at the time, there is no lack of story proper. The witch controversy has led her to describe the persecution of it witch in Devonshire, who is first apprehended in the home of the admirable Dr. Conybeare, in Air. Herrick's own parish. But the main story is of Julian Conybeare. the doctor’s daughter, a delightful figure with whom it is not surprising to find Cleveland falling in love. For after the witch hunt the scene has moved to Cambridge. where Julian's brother Kit has Cleveland for his tutor, Life at Cambridge, with the occasional rumbles of big events in the external world, makes up substantially the remainder of the book when once the excellent opening section. Bucolick, has come to an end. The title itself is a clue to what tlie render comes upon almost unexpectedly —that the whole book is essentially tragic, Julian’s seduction and death, the apparent defeat of the lives and ambitions of the characters, tlie overthrow of Cambridge and the general atmosphere of the last part of the book are things with which Miss Alacaulay has been most successful.

TWO RECENT NOVELS “The Narrow Corner,” by AV. Somerset Maughan (London: Heinemann); “Dazzle,” by R. H. Mottram (London: Ward. Lock). As an example of Mr. Somerset Maugham's powers as a story-teller it would be difficult to find anything more apposite than “Narrow Corner.” In the first page the attention of the reader is gripped, and it is held without effort or strain for the rest of the book. The opening scene is placid enough, but the tension grows steadily stronger from the time the doctor with the shady reputation nnd the clear philosophy goes to an out-of-the-way tropical island to treat a wealthy patient, and while there embarks on a schoonei with an ill-assorted pair, the ruffian Captain Nichols and the handsome boy, Fred, bo apprehensive of danger at every turn, till shocked by a tragic suicide. Fred , tells the doctor the secret of the crime which drove him from his home in Australia. The tale is, in fact, Mr. Maugham at his best. It is written with a splbndid sense of drama, and_ its touches of humour are delightful. Captain Nichols, so blustering and crafty, yet filled with abject terror of his wife, is one of the brightest character studies Mr. Maugham has done, and the scene in which the captain with strange rites and ceremonies conducts a burial at sea is particularly memorable.Mr. Mottram’s new novel can hardly be considered one of his best efforts. His last book, “Home for the Holidays,” was slight but so perfectly, finished that anything below its high standard must come as a disappointment. “Dazzle” is equally slight, but it gives the impression of having been left a little in the rough, and there is in it no real attempt at character development. Yet Mr. Mottram has successfully caught the hazy atmosphere which surrounds his chief character. a young painter, who walks through life unconscious of everything which does not directly affect his art. Even his marriage to the one really rational person in the book does not appear to alter his spiritual outlook in any way whatever. Perhaps the fault is not Mr. Mottram.'s at all. His hero is so disinterested in the affairs of the world that the worldly reader in turn is inclined to lose interest in him. However, there is compensation in the minor characters, who are depicted, for all the fact that they are, with the exception of . the artist's wife, of no real importance in the story, with all the author’s usual skill and charm. GALLANT LORD THOMSON “Lord Thomson of Cardington: A Memoir and Some Letters,” by Princess Martha Bibesco (London : Cape). .« This is no ordinary book. One picks it up anticipating that it is merely a valedictory, to- a politician who died in tragic circumstances. One finds it the record of an idealist and an honest man. But it is even more than that. The author was the heroine of Lord Thomson's posthumously published novel, "Smeranda," and his confidante, and the work was apparently undertaken as a repayment. As it happens he could have had no better biographer, for the Princess has, with charm and artistry, revealed the man who she knew and appreciated for' 15 years. She met Thomson whin lie was British military representative in Rumania, charged with the duty of bringing that country into the war on the side of the Allies, and her first-hand knowledge of conditions and happenings at that time is illuminating.

Lord Thomson stands revealed as a soldier who was a diplomat, a man with a singular honesty of purpose, and one who, leaving the army, risked the ostracism of his former colleagues and joined the Labour Party because his conscience called him there.

When he had brought Rumania into the war Zeppelins bombed Bucharest, nnd he was wounded in the first raid, and so gave “the first British blood to be shed for Rumania.” The suggestion is made that this turned his keen military mind to the value of airships, and resulted in his fostering the British airship programme. Princess Bibesco believes that if lie had been'pile of the survivors of the RlOl tragedy he would have died of grief over the destruction of his ship. Passages and word pictures of singular beauty are found freely within the pages of this emerald-covered book: — “If only I might write his life in music,” the Primxss sighs, “I should be happy. .. , It should be a heroic symphony, but one through which great gusts of laughter should sometimes sound. . . . But I should first introduce a fire motif. . . . . finishing with the prophetic little phrase, ‘Ah! My dear Tavernier, you belong to a very good and very beautiful country! Some day I shall come to die in France.’ "And dolce, fugato. muted, the three violins would whisper:— “ ’ln Allonne Wood’ ; . . “How, save by orchestrating it. can I tell the story of that life, so rich in every kind of harmony? . . . But I have only words. . ..” Had she written the story in music, and it were done as well as she has told it in this book, it would have been superb. Ix>rd Thomson of Cardington lives, a Phoenix from the flames of RIOL AN AIRMAN’S ESCAPE “Guests of the Unspeakable”: The Odyssey of an Australian Airman—being a record of captivity and escape in Turkey, by T. W. White (Australia: , Angus and Robertson). This is the first Australian edition of a book that has become a classic of the literature of escape. Colonel White was one of the pupils of the Point Cooke Flying School, Melbourne, at the outbreak of war, and was posted overseas to Mesopotamia. where he was taken prisoner by the Turks, and suffered fearful hardships, which were endured with stoic fortitude. before escaping. In addition to the value of the book as a record of adventure. the early chapters contain a splendid account of the work done nt Point Cooke in those far-off days when “our lumbering box-kite, capable' of only 45 miles an hour, with no instruments other than a baromoter,” and without an enclosed fuselage, “flew only at dawn nnd sunset when there was no wind.” The one complaint that can be made is that the series of plates which have graced the English cheap editions have been entirely omitted. The omission does not seem to have been warranted by the small reduction in price. MYSTERY AND ADVENTURE “Lawless.” by Carlton Dawe (London: Ward, Lock). A good thriller by the author of “Wanted” and “Leathermouth.” “Robbery at Portage Bend,” by T. Lund (London: Werner Laurie). A story of the Royal North-West Mounted Police. "The Flaming Frontier,” by Hugh Pendexter, and "Canyon Rims,” by Charles Weslev Sanders (London: Collins). Two —ore Wild West Club books.