THE BOOKMAN

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 138, 7 December 1912, Page 17

THE BOOKMAN

NEW PUBLICATIONS "The Lady Next Door." By Harold Begbie, author of "Broken Earthenware," etc. London : Hodder and Stoughton. With such an attractive title, most readers will take up this book thinking it is a novel, especially when they see the name of a well-known novelist as its author. It is not a novel, though it is intensely interesting. The "Lady Next Door" is Ireland personified— a charming portrait of her appears as a frontispiece —and the neighbour is an old gentleman named John Bull. The book, in fact, is a treatise in support of Home Rule, written after exhaustive enquiries on the spot from all sorts of people, including bishops, Quakers, peers, lawyers, Fenians, peasants. Socialists, and workers in the Belfast milk. Britons overseas have long ago made Up their minds on the Home Rule question i they enjoy selfgovernment themselves, and they see no reason why the Irish should not have the same privilege. Britons at Some, or a large proportion of them— outside the Emerald Isle— remain to be convinced, though almost invariably impartial observers who visit the country are converted to the national cause. Many English people are apt to regard Ireland as hopelessly split up into Catholic and Protestant, Home Rule and Unionist, Conservative and Radical divisions. Mr. Begbie found that the supposed religious difficulty is purely a myth. Catholics and Protestants live together on the best of terms ovef the greater part of the country, and even in Ulster the supposed sectarian division is exaggerated for political purposes. The most generally accepted view in England is that the demand for Home Rule is inspired by the desire for Catholic domination. A peretial of Mr. Begbie's book seems to show that the real cause is economic. Ireland suffers, according to the bishop whose views he quotes, be* cause, being a poor agricultural nation, she is attached to and legislated for by a rich industrial nation. The taxation which sits lightly on England falls heavily on Ireland,. where rents are lower, commodities cheaper, and living much simpler. Industries find it hard to flourish on the western side of the St. George's Channel, ih competition with those on the eastern side, supported by heavy ■ capital ; and legislation, it is asserted, tends to keep shipping in English hands. All the evidence gathered during the author's travels tended in one direction till he came to Belfast, where an impression appeared to prevail among many people that they had more to gain by preserving the English tie. How little ground there is for this impression is made clear - in Mr. Begbie's book. Poverty in plenty he found in the south and west during his pilgrimage—always, however, borne cheer' fully and with -good heart. It was only in the commercial capital of Ireland that he found wretched misery accompanied with discontent, squalor, and dirt. All the evils rampant in English manufacturing towns seemed to be repeated and intensified in Belfast. The houses crowd- | ed into the courts and alleys are grimy and loathsome, and smell with the acrid bitterness of beggary and want. The author was taken by a doctor through one of the Bqualid quarters of the city, where the poor are herded in a swarming mass, with less room, less light, and less cleanliness than the criminal can claim in penal servitude. Children are ragged, unwashed, and ill* fed, with the look of premature age that tells of want and neglect. Infantile mortality is excessively high. Sweating by means of home labour is prevalent ; We learn that the delicate embroidery for which manufacturers demand high prices is paid for at the rate of about a penny an hour ; while the wage in the factories is little more than half the corresponding rate in the Lancashire mills. Summing up, Mr. Begbie says ; — "The condition of Belfast is a disgrace to civilisation and a frightful menace to the health and morals of the next generation. The heavy scowling faces of the poor, the stunted and anaemic bodies of the children, haunt the soul of an observer with a sense of horror and alarm." If this is the state of that part of Ireland claimed to be the most prosperous, after more than a century of English control, one may well doubt if things could possibly be worse under native rule. In a Nationalist Parliament Ulster members would number a quarter, possibly a third, of the whole ; in the Imperial Assembly they comprise less than a twentieth. What chance have Ulster grievances of being heard at Westminster? Even more on positive than on negative grounds Mr. Begbie has made out a crushing indictment of the i present system. " The Sultan s a Romance of the Harem of Abdul Hamid." ByDjelal Noury Bey, editor of Le Jeune Turc. Translated and adapted by Archie de Bear. London : Cassell and Co., Ltd. (S. and W. Mackay, Wellington). In this book the author presents, in the form of a novel, a narrative of the life of Abdul Hamid 'from the time immediately preceding his accession down to his deposition and imprisonment at Salonika-— a period of over thirty years. Djelal Bey, the translator states, was fortunate in obtaining information direct from reliable sources, enabling him to reveal that side of the life and character of the Red Sultan hitherto unknown to all but a few of those with whom he chose to be intimate. Much of the story deals with life in the harem, where Murghi Irem, a beautiful and accomplished Cir* caßsian girl, enjoys for a time the somewhat fickle affection of the Ottoman despot. Murghi was one of some villagers who had been driven from their homes | in the Caucasus by the ruthless Cossacks, and had sought refuge in the land "renowned for its hospitality—the land of pity, qf the Sultans, and of the Caliphs." So far as the maiden was concerned, she escaped Scylla only to fall into Charybdis. She was taken to Constantinople, where she became, first ah attendant on the mother of the reigning Sultan (Abdul Asia), and then one of the household of Hamid, at that time second heir presumptive. After Hamid b intrigues had placed him on the throne she became his chief favourite, but, bein^ suspected by her master of complicity in an imaginary plot, she was banished to Arabia, where she married the man of her choice, Subsequently returning to Stamboul to witness the fall of the Sultan and the installation of his successor. With this fiction the author has interwoven some of the leading events of Abdul Hamid's reign, keeping closely to historical fact. He shows how the Sultan violated his pledge to rule constitutionally, how he pxiled his Liberal Ministers, how he entrapped Midhat Pasha, the ex-Grand Vmer. had him tried for high treason and sentenced to death. On the intervention of the British AmliaßsncloT. Midhat's sentonre was commuted to banishment to the Yemen, where his death occurred soon afterward*. The prisoner's death, officially ascribed to' natural causes, was. according to ihe author, leally due to strangulation. Other incidents are narrated, not so generally known to Western peoples, though in record with the Red Sultan's reputed character, such ns the slaughter of a number of women in the Vildis*. Kiosk because a fire accidentally oncurroil

there. The author closes his narrative with the downfall of the Sultan and the triumph of tho Young Turk Party, of which he is an ardent member. That party, however, must have been bitterly disappointed with the failure of their latest ruler to realise their ideals. "An Amurath an Amurath succeeds" ; recent events have shown that the regenI eration of the Ottoman Empiro is yet to come. "The House of Fortune." By Max Pemberton. London : Eveleigh Nash. (S. and W. Mackay). | Max Pemberton's books are always readable, and he certainly displays iiij genuity of plot, and freshness in handling, if his tales do border some times on the improbable. "The House of Fortune" has the elements of the mystery and magic of the East, to which the romance belongs. It tells of a French expedition against a brigand of Algiers, a monster called El Haygari. The brigand proves too subtle for the Frenchmen, and every soul is massacred save Captain Adolphe Chenier, who, struck with sudden madness by the catastrophe, laughs loud and long at the horrible torture of his comrades. The superstitious Moors spare him, and he is taken to the "House of Fortune," an old Moorish castle of the i forgotten agea. Here Chenier meets with many adventures. Here, in the Court of the Fountains, after being entertained at a barbarous feast by the old bandit, he meets a beautiful dancing girl, Dolores, who, in early childhood, had been branded with the symbol of the cross by ft Jesuit priest, wise in his generation, and thus she has escaped the usual fortune of an Eastern dancing girl. She was regarded by the Moors as accursed. El Haygari rides off on one of his expeditions, giving Chenier the run of the castle, and all that it contains, yet strongly guarding him. Chenier tries to escape. Dolores tells him that some* where in the old castle there is a door, the secret of El Doreid, through which the Berbers came in and out of the castle, but, search as they may they can- , not find it. In the end Chenier sets fire to the old castle, and burns a way out, and he and Dolores escape together. Later he places Dolores in a convent to bo educated. There she meets a young Spanish lady, Isabel, daughter of a noble of Cadiz, with whom she spends a long holiday. Tragedy follows Swift on her heels. Juan, brother of Isabel, is killed by a lover of Isabel's, and Dolores is blamed. She returns to the convent at Cadiz in disgrace. Dolores 1 experience of men is not a happy one; she is wooed by her friend's father, and with the aid of a servant, whose brother is captain of the "Guadalquiver," she sets sail for Algiers to look for Captain Chenier. She is kidnapped by a notorious slave* dealer, and rogue, by name of Tacub, who intends selling her at a great price. Meantime, Chenier, knowing Dolores to be a product of the desert, despairs of finding her. The final denouement is left to the imagination, but one concludes that it is satisfactory. The story is well told and consistent throughout, and the delineation of the beautiful Spanish dancing girl, pursued by ill fortune, who is moreover, in spite of her pagan upbringing, a womanly woman, is a faithful bit Of character drawing. The book is not the least interesting given us by Mr. Pemberton's facile pen.