Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1924 “THE HAPPY WARRIOR”

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 4 October 1924, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1924 “THE HAPPY WARRIOR”

IN our issue of last Saturday, A. S. M. Hutchinson’s “Happy Warrior” was briefly commented on; it is proposed now to further examine this example of a popular writer’s early efforts. 111 the previous article it was. contended that the idea underlying the story had not been satisfactorily worked out. This failure to grasp the true meaning of the theme on which the story is to be built is the chief fault (f the hook, hut there is a very serious defect in the management of one of the leading characters. Egbert Hunt, when we meet him in the earlier chapters, is a pure delight. His hatred of “tyrangs” and “sikopants,” though often misplaced and burlesque, strikes a sympathetic chord in the reader’s feelings and liis troubles, though comic, are real enough to awaken our pity. We laugli at him heartily, but we rather like him, and he responds immediately to the least gleam of kindliness. To turn this poor timid dyspeptic into a stabber and murderer is a vital mistake; the comic relief ought never to develop into the heavy villain; it is an outrage against ordinary probabilities no less than against literary conventions. Of minor faults there are many. Mr Hutchinson is fertile in character-creat-ing but that is a very different thing from character-drawing. Though some of his characters stand out as perfectly flawess and consistent pieces of work there are several, the inconsistencies and unreality of which, sadly mar the general effect. For instance, Mr Letham, through several chapters talks without betraying the least sign of superior education. He sprinkles his conversation with “What rot” and “By gum” and uses other crude but forceful expressions, but because ho is such a good fellow we overlook his lack of culture till wo learn casually that he is engaged in coaching university students. Coaching university students for exams! And he never uses a phrase .by which we can imply that lie has ascended any higher scholastically than about the fifth standard in a primary school. Again, a hoy in his eighth year, who uses such words as “perfectly” and “possible” does not say. “blug” for “blood.” These are small matters perhaps, but the presence of such little defects detract from the merit of the work as a whole just as their absence would add to its general excellence.

In point of literary quality "the book makes a mixed appeal. There is muck tliat is finely done. There is high art in the masterly restraint which intensifies the tragic climaxes. There are passages —many of them —which make pleasant reading. Not built up, these, after the strict grammarian rule, with major and minor qualifying clauses all in their set places, but free, unconventional, yet in their fluent irregularity arriving the more surely at the goal of merit. Still, this rule-untrammelled method is not without its dangers; here and there the author becomes obscure and there arc a few sentences which defy analysis. Unfortunately, as readers know, this is a bad habit of which Mr Hutchinson has failed 1o free himself in later works. In fact, this regrettable habit has become distinctly more pronounced. Some sentences in “If Winter Comes” are simply acrobatic in their tangled syntax, and to unravel the twisted tortures of the paragraphs often calls for an interpretative skill of no mean order.

Near the end of “The Happy Warrior,” and spoiling an otherwise fine passage, there is a most regrettable use of an adjective. When Percival falls dead by the pistol of Egbert Hunt, Ima “threw herself full length upon him, where full length lie lay. With her body she shielded him Jroin the immense rain, with her arms she enfolded him, put her mouth to his. So she lay scarcely breathing; so she held him —hers, her own.” Immense rain! There are a dozen other adjectives that would have better served. It goes perilously near to turning the pathetic into the bathetic.

Yet, wlieh all is said, “The Happy Warrior” remains a good book, a line book, a book full of faults but more lull of merit, an eager, virile, beginner's book; and we are not at all sure that the author’s later works deserve a more' ample tribute at readers’ hands.