BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

Evening Star, Issue 14523, 26 November 1910, Page 9

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

‘Sewards and Fairies.’ By Rudyard Kipling. London: Macmillan and Go. It is the fashion nowadays to shake the head over Rudyard Kipling and to make regretful and depredatory comparison between the author of very ‘ Plain Tales from the Hills.’ ’The Light That Failed,’ and ‘Soldiers Three,’ and the clever, mysteri|ne, technical, confusing, elusive gentleban who turns out ‘Traffics and Disjoveriea,’ 'Actions and Reactions,’ ‘Rewards and Fairies,’ and much rhymed matter that is sometimes poetry and rarely doggerel. But in spite of candid friends and more candid critics the unique genius of the man cannot be gainsaid. He writes as no other can, and almost invariably he manages to say the thing we are all thinking but cannot express. His present book is one of fairy tales, but not such fairy tales as one meets in the brothers Grimm, or Hans Andersen, or Mis Nesbit. His fairy tales are called “polyphonic fairy tales: fact, fable, and fiction superimposed, with child’s-play frolicking in the foreground and a moody allegory stalking behind. If the book is a poor book it is just because it is too rich; it is spellbound, so to say—one charm choking another. Too many broths may have spoiled the cook; but that is not because he has forgotten any of his old cunning recipes, but because he now tries to blend them in one big bounteous potage. And even the people who don’t appreciate the flavor ought to admit that a soup of soups is by no means the same sort of thing as mere soup of the soup." However, we may easily learn what Mr Kipling is driving at by glancing down his introduction: Once upon a time Dan and Una, brother and sister, living in the English country, had the good fortune to meet with Puck alias Robin Goodfellow alias Nick o’ Lincoln alias Lob-lie-by-the Fire, the last survivor in England of those whom mortals call Fairies. Their proper name, of course, is “The People of the Hills.” This Puck, by means of the magic of Oak, Ash, and Thorn, gave the children power To see what they should see and hear what they should hear, Though it should have happened three thousand year. The result was that from time to time, and in different places on the farm and in the fields and the country about, they saw and talked to some rather interesting people. One of these, for instance, iras a knight ol the Norman Conquest, another a young Centurion ol a Roman Legion stationed in England, another a builder and decorator of King Henry VII. s time, and so on and so forth, ns I have tried to explain in a took called ‘Puck of Peek's Hill.’ A year or so later the children met Puck once more, and though they were then older and wiser, and wore boots regularly instead cf going barefooted when they got the chance, Puck was as kind to them as ever, and introduced them to more people of the old days. And when Mr Kipling cannot express himself in prose allegory he turns to rhymed verse, which, whatever els© it may be, is to the point. The most telling, perhaps, of his poems is one of four stanzas, entitled ‘lf ,’ of which the second reads as follows: If you can dream —and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two'iinposters just the same; If vou can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make r. ’-ap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life .to broken,

' Add stoop and build ’em up with wornout toolfi—

1 The conclusion being that if you can do these and other things Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it. And, which is more, you’ll be a Man, my eon.

Needless to add, there is nothing that is base, or soiling, or repulsive in ‘Rewards and Fairies.’ Kipling is neither a Wells nor a Hewlett.

4 Rest Harrow: A Comedy of Resolution.’ By Maurice Hewlett. London; Macmillan and Co.

The above continues the history of the characters made familiar to readers of the inthor’s ‘Open Country.’ It tells bow Banchiacame through her troubles “to peace and happiness.” We are not of those who rave over Mr Hewlett’s work. There is a smear of sensuous phraseology and luscious description throughout the greater number of his pages, and far too much dwelling upon dew-dimmed eyes, crimson lips, and white limbs to be over-pleasant. The happiness Sanchia finds, after having married the wrong man, consists in going back or turning to the man who should have married her in the first place. Life is too full of the things that count for the average of us to become interested in the wooing of a widow or the thrills of a lover who finally captures not Artemis, but the experienced dame. It is doubtful whether her happiness includes the marriage ceremony by way of preliminary, but we gather not, which, in these days of easy and enlarged divorce and purely legal ceremonies, is what due might expect from a novelist who has no standards that count.

4 A Snail’s Wooing: The Story of an Alpine Courtship.’ By E. M. SneydKynaersley. London: Macmillan and Co.

A pleasant story, dedicated to two people—a man and a woman—and to the officers and members of the Riffel Alp Club. It is prefaced by a calendar, each chapter has its own quotation from the poets, there are conversations, and musings, and letter's, and a postcript, containing the announcement of a wedding, the Last words of which read: “ A diamond brooch from Mr Richard Thornton, of Te Wurra Wurra, New Zealand.” Mr Thornton, of course, is the man who did not marry Cordelia Preston. Mr Snoyd-KynnerUey (no amount of genius will ever make such a name popular or justify its use by a writer of books) was formerly one of His Majesty’s inspectors of schools, and has written an entertaining narrative of some of his experiences.

‘The Devil and the Deep Sea.’ By Rhoda Broughton. London: Macmillan and Co.

Miss Broughton is seventy years of age this month, and age has not withered her vitality nor dimmed tho freshness of her matter, the incisiveness of her style, and the charm of her word pictures. For over forty years she lias been before the public, «md, like that other veteran Miss Uroddon, she has held her own, though her great vogue has long since passed and a newer, cleverer, smarter generation of book producers has come into being. Miss Broughton’s latest story reflects the much lower moral standard that has usurped the place of that of tho mid-Victorian era. Efer hero is made to say to the heroine on last page but one; “ What does anything in either of our lives signify that happened before we met each other?" Many would answer "A great deal,” and a few efcn would eay “ Everything.” Not so the twentieth-century novelist. “Liar, libertine, swindler as he was, would not existence with him, if he by any possibility really loved her, be preferable to the hideous void of the only alternative left her?“ It was hardly necessary for Mias Broughton to close her story with the query “Did the or did she not?” She most certainly did.

‘Hearts and Coronets.’ By Alice Wilson Fox. London : Macmillan and Co.

Miss Fox tells a simple love story of wellmannered, well-bred people. It has a plot, is bright and_ amnsmg, with touches of pathos, and will give pleasure to all who are satisfied with a tale that neither makes large drafts upon one’s credulity nor offends one’s sense of decency.

‘A Sinner in Israel.’ By Fierro Costello. London: Hurst and Blackett. Dunedin : Whitoombo and Tombs.

Mr Costello's novel is described by the publishers as “great” It certainly has for its theme apt absorbingly attractive though little known subject—a story of modern Jews. The author, it is said, writes with intimate knowledge, reverence, and keen appreciation of that groat race and of the problems that are fraught with interest to modern Jewry. But it is not a religions book, even while the author’s 1 sympathies are with the Jews. like Mr 2kuigwill, who first delved into this practically virgin field, he has studied the Jew both inside and out, and knows his faults as well as his virtues. The attention of the reader is sustained throughout the 1 400 odd pages of closely-printed matter.

‘At the Villa Rose.’ By A. E W. Mason. London: H odder and Stoughton. Dunedin : R. J. Stark and Co.

Mr Mason has descended to the mysterious - crime - falsely - accused - all - eome-right-in-the-end sensational story, and the critics do not like it. They cry out foolishly, we think for more Mirandas and balconies and young soldiers with four feathers. No man or woman, however clover, can for ever be turning out books of exceptional merit. What may be fairly suggested is the query whether it is wise to write at all when one cannot write at one’s best. However, Mr Mason, like a healthier and better Wells, has departed from the path of his earlier days and boldly appealed for public support in a field where there axe many expert craftsmen. He gives us a crime, a really nice heroine, a Sherlock Holmes, a Continental summer villa, and an ingenious clearing up. If these stories have to be told, as, presumably, they must bo, wo prefer the Mason to the Queux way.

‘The Portrait.’ By Ford Madox Hueffer London: Methuen and Co. Dunedin: Whitoombo and Tombs.

The time is the early years of “Fanner” George’s reign, and the society in which we move is of the highest. Mr Huefier takes us into the very best circles, where the language is of the forcibly lurid, fashionably coarse type with which students of the earlier Restoration drama are familiar. The author does not mince his words, and his aristocratic people, doubtless, are as true to life as are those in tho School for Scandal.’ At a midnight meeting of the Dilettante Society, which was attended by the male members of what nowadays is called the smart set, after much obscenity and blasphemy, the real name and person of a beautiful woman (whose portrait, called ‘ Celia in her Arbor,’ had recently been painted) became the topic of their shameless converse and tho object of their bets. The upshot of the wrangle was that the most decent man among them made four bets of £6,000 apiece that ho would within a month “find, fetch, house, and marry the lady if she bo of approved and virtuous life.” The bets were promptly taken by these cynical worldlings, and tho quest to find the original of the portrait commenced then and there. How Bettesworth proceeded and succeeded in his search is tho stoiy that Mr Hueffer tells. Its distinction, perhaps, consists in the striking and forceful sketch that ho draws of an age which has secured its own peculiar and special niche in tho annals of human depravity.

‘The Price of Lis Doris.’ By Maarten Maartens. London : Methuen and Co. Dunedin : Whitcomo and Tombs.

Mr Maartens himself tells tho purport of his long story. In a dedicatory note he says : " To my friends among the painters, in tho hope that they will like a tale about a painter which says nothing about painting.” The story of Lis Doris, who was bom in the village of Boldam (Holland) on the sth of December, 1861, is carried through till the day of his death. It takes nearly 500 pages in the telling, but is told with the sympathetic touch, the keen insight into human motives, and in the musical tones of one who is a master of his craft. There are • passages that lay bare the sordid and repellent, but more that proclaim the ennobling and spiritual side of our common nature, while quaint touches of humor and pathos are delicately blended' in the retelling of the old but rarely wearying tragedy of the sacrifice of self for others.

‘The Trampled Cross.’ By Joseph Hock-

mg. 'The Days of Auld Lang Syne.’ By lan

Maclami. ‘Doctor Xavier.’ By Max Pemberton. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

Dunedin: 11. J. Stark and Co.

The above are three reprints of popular novels whoso names and contents are familiar to the ordinary reader of light literature. It is something in days when novels—many of them as clever as they are stupid in aim and vicious in moral—are yearly turned out by the hundred (or is it thousand?) to bo the author of one that has lived through two, three, and more seasons. This is true of each of the above, while that of lan Maelaren has been selling for fifteen years or more. No further commendation is needed than this. If these stories had not in them something that lifts them out of the ordinary reck they would never have been reprinted. It only remains to say that thev are bound in red cloth covers with gilt lettering, wrapped in colored pictorial paper cover, printed in bold, clear type on good paper, and sold in London for one shilling each. Truly, the present-day giver of books and peruser of nove's are in fortune’s way.

‘The Just for Two’ Cookery Book. By Jennie C. Williams. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Dunedin; R. J, Stark and Co.

The above probably is what Charles Lamb would call a book that la no book. And yet how much of the world’s happiness depends on good cooking, and how much human misery is caused by bad ! Of the making of such bool®, however, there is no end, and Miss (or Mrs) Williams (there should be a law compelling women who write hooka to state which they are) offers a prefatory apologia for hers. She asks; “Have you not often heard that remark (they are all prepared for families) made by the young housewife when speaking of the legion of cookery books already ou the market? Well,” she answers, “ that is just the reason why I have undertaken and now offer to the public ray book. Every recipe has been carefully estimated and tested—the ingredients reduced so as to supply the requirements of two. Soon the young wife learas that it is impossible to live on love, and in the following pages are presented in plain words the way to provide economically or lavishly that which more effectually sustains life.” Which is very land of Miss (or Mrs) Williams, and, doubtless, will be duly appreciated in this season of freshly-mated couples, provided it catches the grumbling male and disillusioned female at the psychological moment. MISCELLANEOUS. Referring to the girls in the Borstal Institute at Aylesbury, the chaplain says in a recent prisons report: “ Works of fiction generally regarded as masterpieces make no appeal to them, and they simply do not read them. They inquire for two kinds of works —‘ about love ’or ‘ about a murder,’ with a marked preference for the murder.”