THE BOOKMAN A BATCH OF NOVELS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 74, 28 March 1914, Page 13

THE BOOKMAN A BATCH OF NOVELS

"Melutovna." By Hannah Berman. London : 6. Bell and Sons, Ltd. Melutovna is the. name of a small village in Lithuania. It is largely inhabited by Jews, very poor Jews for the most part, and one rich one at their head. The time is 1869. From her intimacy with the Jewish character and the customs of the Jews, and also from her name, the writer is probably a Jewess. She makes out the Hebrew of Melutovna to be no better and no worse than the Gentiles with which they are surrounded. She keeps her vision quite clear, seeing the weakness of the .Jew as well as his strength. But for all that she shows how terrible was the pr-essure brought to bear upon Jews by llussian officialdoni of neaxly fifty yeara ago^ And, when compared with what happens to-day, she shows how slight is the improvement of the lot of the poor Russian Jews in this, the twentieth ceil-tiii-y. But Hannah Berman does not whimper or moan for the lot of the Hebrew in bondage in Russia. She sets out to tell a most pathetic 6tory of peop*e whose portraits she has evidently cL'ciwn from the life, or, rather, painted in a, grey monochrome. "Melutovna" as a novel is a. thoroughly conscientious piece of craftsmanship. The descriptions ,of the principal personages, in the storj are given to the utmost detail, li one possesses the necessary patience and time, a careful reading, and rereading of "Melutovna" will bring their own reward. The book would gain rather than lose by compression, however, and the impressions left upon the mind of the essentially human people described/would still be deep ana enduring. The story is mainly about Zelda, a Jewish girl, bom in the forest, who is married (through the good offices of a professional matchmaker) to a man of tiibstance of her faith, a man who has divorced his first wife Basse for sterility. The drawing of Basse is one of the finest studies of character in a novel that is of outstanding merit. How Basse (who is really a subordinate character) comes to marry a poor Jewish soldier, out of whom most of his manliness and much of his memory have been battered by long years of ill-treatment in the Crimea ; who he actually is ; and what becomes of him; are all skilfully told in "Melutovna." The story is one for men and women to read, rather than a novel lor young people. In the case of the man who became Basse's second husband the credulity of the reader will no doubt undergo a somewhat severe strain. He forgets so much of liis boyhood, notwithstanding that he returns to*his native village by accident, that short of some cerebral catastrophe it is extremely hard to believe that he went through all he did on his return without hesitation or question. Possibly, so careful does Hannah Berman appear to have been over her work, she liad^a similar case of ( forgetfulness in mind and with a similarly tragic sequel. "MelutoVna" explains in large part the strain" of . melancholy in the poor Russian Jew. Centuries of suffering are expressed in his music alone, to say untiring else. In the story under notice one can see some of the reasons for tliis. 'tint it must not be imagined that al though the writer so .graphicalljr desoribes the persecution of the Jews in Russia, to the extent of the starting of, a pogrom that she- is soliciting pity and sympathy for -thft racßi ' She does not ask for them ; but they cannot be withheld by anyone living under liberal and equitable lawa. "Square Pegs." By Charles Inge. London :' Methuen and Co. Bernard Farquharson, having made money in South Africa in diamonds and other enterprises, comes to London and buys a. paper, the Dictator, with which he hopes to set right social things that have gone all awry. He finds what so many people find, what the man who iirst takes a public house finds, what the pensioner who opens a little grocery shop finds, what the man who first "goes in for poultry" finds: Experience even in successfully running a newspaper costs a lot of money. Appalled by what he se'esofthe squalor and sordidness of the lives of thn London poor, he tries what one man can do to effect improvemept. He soliloquises: — "I suppose the big cities do draw people ; they think it is going to be all brilliance and gaiety, and there is the idea of company ; they don't learn the real loneliness till afterwards, then they can't get away. But, Lord, the armies of men in the ghastly cifush of the streets"— he waved his hand out towards the sharp outlines of house-tops and chimneys against the reddened sky — "who'd jump at the chance we can give them — and wompn, too." The "chance" is emigration. But Farquharson continues: "I hate the big cities! It isn't only the broken unemployed who want real open life and a new chance ; it's the driven workers, too — the men and women just holding on for a Hying. I've seen them fighting for omnibuses and trams, and trying to look as if no one was within shouting distance of them. That sort of polite callousness, amid the pushing elbow? and the clinging hands, always makes me think of the trampling struggle that is' going on here every day. And their faces I" Alcfcte for a time he sets out to fight the Cannes of "his fierce competition in which so many men and women, metaphorically speaking, go down, crushed, trampled on, and beaten, to death by the cruel circumstances of their existence-. Then *ac is joined by a woman in his work — a typical woman of the middle and educated class, who sets out to earn i her own bread honestly and by sheer work. Together ihey get right down to the rough sidn of hid — as if they did not sjispect its existence beforehand — and they oian-y. The people that Charles Inge brings upon his stage are all possible jjeopie and mostly probable. He has a light 'iQ\ui\, and wastes no words, use» jio padding, und, above all. exhibits all through the story » thorough knowledge of liumatt nature. "Incbf alien." By E. Everett-Green, i aufchoi of "The Master of Marahkpds." "Monica," "Mis.s Rachel's Jiomaiice," etc. Ward, Locke, and Co.. London and Melbourne, '"•"o hu- romp of luchfallen, an old Enghsl« country «eaf, Reginald Farquhar leads liis uewly-wedded wife Cbristabel. Oji --he --nad he tells her that he has been previously married— a faci. ho had h'therto '-oncealed — and that the three children of the first Mrs. Farquhar were bei/iK b r o«ght up by two maiden annts of that ' lady. After the first shock of hearing this news, Christabel wisely determines to gain the affections of her step-children, a task she finds very difficult, owing to the aunts in question — or 'rather one of them — having estranged the children from < their fathei, and implanted in then minds the idea that they would be supplanted by the issue of the later marriage. How Chnstabel, by patience and perseverance, finall\ breaks down the barriers of reserVe" and suspicion, and unites the two branches of the family into one happy household, is told by the author with a uood deal of skill. The book is a story of home life, illustrating the domestic virtues and tbo poww 6Hove_.

"The Master of Merripit." By Eden Phillpott^. London : Ward, Lock, and Co., Ltd. One of the hardest things for people who write, or think they can write, i.« to write for boys. Possibly, in setting out on "The Master of Merripit," Eden Phillpotts did not have this fact in mind, was not writing for boys. This result has, however, been achieved. Boys wbo are now middle-aged men will remember with affection their Dick Tuipins, Claude Duvals, and Jonathan Wildes, and especially Turpin, who waa the hero highwayman, and Claude Duval, the most gallant of them all. Such old boys will revel iD "The Master of Mn> ripit v " for, although the twin highwaymen who figure in it are not held up for admiration ; they are plucky, fearless men nevertheless.- The scene of the story is laid, of course, in Dartmoor, to^* which Eden Phjllpotts has an uncling affection ; but this wild country and its fascinations take the place only of a back cloth rather than an elaborated setting for "The Master of Merripit." The character drawing, too, is not, and probably is not intended to be, so carefully done aa t in, say, "The Mother"— one of the finest of Eden Phillpotts's novels. But "The Master of Merripit" is a bright, crisply written book in which boys, as well as old boys, wilJj take much pleasure The story revolves round a, promise of a buxom Moorland beauty to marry the first ot two men who catiches the, twin high way men, Crabb and Charlie ' Spring. These outlaws have terrorised the moorfolk, killiug and robbing their men and kissing thtiir maidens. It had beconfe time that they were speedily laid by the heeld. "The Master of Merripit," . .% quiet, grave young fanner, has his scheme tvi catching the robbers, and S^til Copieutone, a noisy innkeeper, has his ides.-* ; both, of cjurse, aspiring to win the handsome Sarah Rowlands to wife. How they go about their work, and how they fare over it, the reader will find out for himself. The quaint humour of Great-grarißfather Rowlands is one of the best features in "The Master of Merriliii." It would 6erve Mr. Eden pott's purpose just as well if it were introduced as seasoning into a story of a later day than in the time of the novel under review, viz., a hundred years ago. " The Adventures of Mortimer Dhron," By Alicia Ramsay. Stanley Paul and Co., London. Whatever the facts may be in fiction the Chinese are commonly pictured as a people who have made a fine art of "underground " work. They are so depicted in Alicia Ramsay's novel, " The Adventures of Mortimer Dixon." Dixon is a young journalist who is sent out to investigate the mysterious, disappearance of a white girl in London. He finds himself at grips with a powerful and cunning Chinese. The journalist has many thrilling adventures and is captured by the men whom he is endeavouring to trace, but eventually he returns triumphant, having solved the mystery. The story is wholesome and breezy. The authoress has a taste for romance, and mixes it rather recklessly with the mystery of the novel; with tho . consequence that the interest of ihe 'reader is divided- Nevertheless, the work is. of its class, a. very pleasing example.