BOOK NOTES

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 161, 8 June 1929, Page 7

BOOK NOTES

“THE GARDEN OF ILLUSION.’} There is progressive merit in the writings of Mr G. 11. Ellis, whose new novel, “The Garden of Illusion,” i,9 a definito advance on “Every Man’s Desire,” and “The Bondwoman,” concerning which Mr T. P. O’Connor wrote: “I think Mr Ellia has written two of the finest stories of our time, and that he has a great and brilliant future bbfore him.” Mr Ellis’s latest novel is a masterpiece of its kind, and indicates a closer application, crisper literary style, and a gift for creation and construction far in advance of his earlier efforts. The “Garden of Illusion” is a refreshing change from that crude and sometimes vulgarly blunt conversational style with which too many novelists attempt to deal with the affections and sex. problems. The “talk” of the book, even where it borders on the delicate, is always clean, free from the crudities of so many fictionists, light, easy, but never sordid. The story is well-woven, and arre9ty attention from its beginning to the last page. Literally it is of a literary character. It centres • around the domestic affairs and to a slighter extent, the professional intricacies of a publisher. Justin Wyhwood is married tu a butterfly and is drawn into a platonic affair with the taster of one of his clients whom he has befriended, and the narrative tells of liow this likeable, simple, honest man is torn between loyalty to a beautiful though unfaithful wife and love for the busy, practical little woman whose homely and virtuous devotion conquers his heart and sways his life. All the author’s characterisations are fair, true to type, clear-cut, and the outstanding personalities are full of winsomeness. The Thames Valley is chosen as the central scene, and there are some excellent descriptive passages, with the touch of literary geni,us. Mr Ellis is a philosopher, as those who know anything of his skill as a debater and a conversationalist have recognised, and “The Garden of Illusion” emphasises. Thus: “The creative mind is very delicately balanced. It is quite different from the critical mind. Instead of savouring the taste of new ideas' and influences it is so often coloured by them. That may not matter in the case of a man whose temperament is resilient enough to absorb without changing its essential texture. But Colin—he is still among the verities; things are either right or wrong with him, and I am just a little afraid that when he begins to find that so many things that were right are wrong, he’ll think that nothing’s right, and that is very wrong.” This new novel is a really dramatic story, told without over-emphasis. Justin had drifted, but what of those who had tried to steer? “Whispers and footfalls, a little scheming, some dreams, and —.”

POOR RELIEF. The Poor Law has received a disproportionate amount of attention in works on English economic history, owing probably to the abuses that preceded its reform in 1834 and to the controversy that that reform excited. In a little volume entitled “Early Tracts on Poor Relief,” Mr F. M. Salter suppleiiients our information at a vital point at which information has hitherto been not easily accessible. Miss Leonard's work traced the establishment of a national system of public relief, and showed how the vigorous administration of the Stuart Monarchy accounts for its survival in England when contemporary systems on the Continent collapsed. And Sir William Ashley thirty years ago, in one of the most interesting chapters of his invaluable survey, pointed out that “the Poor Law of Elizabeth was but the English phase of a general European movement of reform.” But hitherto the student who lacked the time or opportunity or knowledge of languages to consult German historians and original editions of Renaissance writers has been unable to judge for himself what was the nature of this general movement and of the measures that it evoked. Mr Salter has made this judgment possible. Ho gives us, in translation where necessary, six documents dealing with tho public relief of the poor, all dating from the years 1523 to 1536, and drawn from five countries and six nationalities. The earliest is Luther’s Ordinance for a Common Chest, drawn up for tire little town of Leisnig in 1522. This, like Zwingli’s Ordinance and Articles touching Almsgiving for Zurich, is a simple measure of reorganisation, which might be attributed to the contemporary ecclesiastical changes. But the more detailed schemes of Ypres and Rouen, which follow the same general lines, were in Catholic communities. “It cannot he stated too emphatically (Mr Salter says in his general introduction) that the necessity for Poor Law arrangements was not due to the Reformation. It is a problem which confronted Catholic Rouen as much as Protestant Wurtemberg, and is due to the economic conditions of the age—agricultural distress, rise in *prices, the influence of Roman law, disbandment of feudal retinues, and the like.” The Catholic Church was in some places disturbed at the intervention of the secular authority in the matter of charity; but the doctors of the Sorbonne, on an appeal

from certain of the Mendicant Orders, upheld tho orthodoxy of the Ypres scheme, on condition that ecclesiastical revenues were not confiscated and almsgiving not absolutely prohibited. A translation of this judgment is given. The most interesting of the’ tracts is a memorandum drawn up at the request of a Mayor of Bruges, by tho Spanish scholar Vives. This, though it was not acted on in Bruges, sums up enlightened opinion of the age on the relief of the poor. It is singularly modern in its tone and outlook. - Just as neglect of one member imperils the uhole body, so too In a State the poorer members cannot be neglected without danger to the powerful ones. “Look again,” Vive says, “at the public danger from infectious diseases,” and the decay of morals that the public neglect of distress involves. His remedies are the classification of tho poor, the organisation of charitable funds and the co-ordination of institutions for relief, careful investigation, the administration of relief by independent persons in accordance with the recipient’s special needs, relief work and the education of the young. If his phraseology is different, his recommendations anticipate in essentials tho report of the majority of the 1909 Poor Law Commission. And it is not only the theorist who thus anticipates the best practice of a later age ; tho municipal schemes, whatever their effect in practice, embody the same principles.

CASINO GAMBLING. The numerous adventures of Gilbert do Courville both on tho press and the stage make diverting and often frequent reading. In his book “I Tell You,” Mr de Courville tells us about the little old ladies who wait in queues every morning for the Casino to open, who live by gambling for small stakes, and whose one object is to make their fifty to a hundred francs a day. “Gambling is simply their day’s work to be got over as soon as possible, and that is why they always play during the morning before the rooms are crowded. They have their little “systems” and their little superstitions, and the whole Casino staff knows them. They are careful and they make a living. At the other end of the scale

are the men and women who gamble for all or nothing—and one of the most amusing, if slightly pathetic, features of Monte Carlo is the women gamblers, whose jewels are always changing hands. A woman who has gambled unsuccessfully sells the jewels given to her as a present by some patron or other, and back they go into the slioj> window to be bought as a present for another woman, who “goes broke” and sells them in her turn. These extracts give a good idea of the intriguing contents of a volume of memories.