BOOKS OF THE WEEK

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 36, 12 February 1938, Page 26

BOOKS OF THE WEEK

The Chief Librarian of the Wellington Public Libraries has chosen "John Cornelius," by Hugh Walpole, as the book of the week, and has furnished the following review:—

The question of how far fiction is entirely the work of the imagination and how far it is derived from the remembered experiences of the.author is one which it is impossible to determine. Frequently a story is presented in a form unrecognisable to the general populace, and yet to the author so little altered that he knows it for the plot of someone else's novel, or a real life situation of which he has heard. Very few novels, apart from the fantasy type, are the result of sheer imagination. These are mainly the result of experience, and of the selection and alteration of actual situations.

Sir Hugh Walpole, like Mr. J. B. Priestley, has been likened in his characterisation to Charles Dickens. Whether or not this parallel has affected his work, one cannot say, but the first part of "John Cornelius" has an unfortunate similarity to some of those parts of Dickens's novels in which the characterisation is almost caricature. It is rather a pity, for it is a form in which Sir Hugh does not excel. However, when he has finished with the earlier part of the book which introduces Cornelius, the son of a washerwoman and a decayed gentleman who is too feckless to make a living, he brings his hero to a stage in which.his sensibility and perceptions help him to show John Cornelius as a sensitive, unusual, but very real type.

John Cornelius is one of those authors who, in his youth and to please himself, has adopted a certain type of writing, and later on, to make a success, has tried and failed with another. Cases like this are not unusual, and when the book came out in England the reviewers immediately jumped to the conclusion that Sir Hugh must have had Hans Andersen in his mind when he drew this unusual character. John Cornelius, like Hans Andersen, was the author of a small book of fairy stories. He married a woman who was wealthy, beautiful, and accomplished, and who moreover believed in his ability. He proceeded to write fiction; rather pretentious fiction, and it was not a success. He continued on this course for some time, during which his wife came to look on him as a failure, and her affection in conse,quence, not great enough to survive, the shock, began to wane. By the time he did succeed in achieving real resounding fame in his own metier of fairy tales, he had come to depend less on his wife's affection, and was almost unmoved when he saw that it was beginning to wax again. Unhappy in a good many ways, John Cornelius was happy in all sorts of small respects, but it was rather tragic that he should not believe in his own fairy stories. He wrote them because he wanted to; they amused him; he liked them. None the less he did not have any illusions about them and could not consider them great. That, incidentally, is a situation in which many authors have found themselves. There is a wellknown New Zealand poet who will probably be remembered for his prose long after, his poetry is forgotten, and yet he looks upon himself as a poet first and almost all the time.

Although the book is very unusual and has been received with very mixed feelings by the English public, it is quite definitely one of Sir Hugh's more successfu.l books, the only trouble in its composition being that it has taken him some time to warm properly to his subject and to get past the rather artificial background opening which makes up too much of the earlier part of the book. Once this has been done and he is free to concentrate on the development of his main character, Sir Hugh is at his best, and of course it is a pleasant experience for all his admirers to be within striking distance of Polchester again.

The parallels with real life are quite frequent. One reviewer claims to have recognised the publishing house which produced the book which makes John Cornelius famous. Others claim to recognise the various literary giants who come into the pages, and of course there is the central parallel with Hans Andersen, although the action is laid in the present time. However much the book may be founded on fa#, and however much it may be pure imagination, »the fact remains that the main character is interesting, unusual, and strong enough to carry the reader's sympathy and attention. RECENT LIBRARY ADDITIONS. Other titles selected from recent accession lists are as follows:—General: "Augustus," by J. Buchan; "Red Sea Nights," by W. J. Makin; "We Cover the World," edited by E. Lyons. Fiction: "Celia," by E. H. Young; "The Home that Jill Broke," by S. McKenna; "The Elgin Marble," by Baroness yon Hutten.