NEW NOVELS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19910, 31 March 1928, Page 7 (Supplement)

NEW NOVELS.

ARNOLD BENNETT'S LATEST. "The Strange ( Vanguard," by Arnold Bennett (Cassell). Iron and Smoke," by Sheila KayoSmith (Cassell). " Tho Old Tree Blossomed," by Ernest Raymond (Cassell). " Two voices are there," one the voice of the subtle realist who, for all the meanness and squalor he depicts, yet reaches a beauty at the core of things; the other, tho voico of the enraptured provincial for whom all the splendour of tho world is contained in the blatant magnificence of a. modern hotel. And, Arnold Bennett, both are thine! Admirers of "Tho Old Wives' Tale" bad better give " Tho Strange Vanguard" a wide berth. But anyone who revels in descriptions of super-gorgeousness should not miss the " opulent restaurant" of the Hotel Splendule, seen 111 rough a " gilded crystal partition" to bo full of tables " richly set with napery, cutlery, glass and liowers," nor yet the Vanguard itself, Lord Ember's yacht upon which he carries off another city financier and the mysterious but attractive Miss Harriet Perkins. Wo have the publishers' word for it that " The Strange Vanguard" is an amusing and exciting comedy. The fact that the present reviewer found it second-rate and incredibly boring need not therefore deter readers who prefer Mr. Bennett in his " fantasia" mood.

" If we paid our miners sixty pounds a week and gave them palaces to live in, they would still he a rebellious race because they live and work at enmity with nature. . . The farmer and the labourer have to struggle to face bad weather and bad harvests, and in the end perhaps they gently die of rheumatism and are buried a lew feet under the daisies in the village churchyard. But they arc net outlaws —thev don't carry their lives in their hands." Here we have the major theme of " Iron and Smoke," the curse of industrialism, man's crowning impiety for which he will he everlastingly accursed. " When he first discovered that he could dig into the earth's heart for treasure instead of merely planting and sowing on her surface lor his daily bread, then all his sorrows began." Love of iron and the riches it brings versus love of the land with the poverty it brings—this is the age-old combat, North against South, which is fought anew in" the marriage of Sir Humphrey Mallard, Sussex squire and landowner, ti Jenny Bastow, daughter or a Yorkshire ironmaster. Miss KayeSmith depicts with her accustomed skill the charm of the Sussex weald, but those of her readers who ate more interested in the human element will enjoy " Iron and Smoke," mainly as the story of the growth of a steady and enduring friendship between two women who have been rivals lor the love of the same man. The views and ideals of the Edwardian and the Georgian generations will here be found treated with humour, sympathy and sturdy commensense. " The Old Tree Blossomed" is described in tlio sub-title as a realistic romance. In the Gallimorc family, Robert, the husband and father, is an fucuiable romantic whom his wife, a gentle realisv, served with a loving yet clear-eyed loyalty that understood and pardoned all'shortcomings on his part. Mr. Gallimore escapes from reality—represented by a salary of £3OO alter Unity vears of clerking—through the magic door of fiction. He assumed the perfections of his heroes as his own, so that Mrs. Gallimore never knew whether she would meet in her husband a genial cvnic, a roystering English squire or, perhaps, a stoical Roman father trying to exercise, with a regrettable lack of result, the " patria pOleslas" upon his sou Stephen. Stephen, also a bit of a romantic, dreams of a legendary ancestor, the knight Gaillo-Mort or Joyous Death, and sees himself riding as gallantly in lists of life. Forced bv the prose of facts on to an office-stool at a salary of twelve and six a week, he apparently ties himself fast to earth by his marriage later with an estimable little waitress. Fate, however, had a surprise up her sleeve. The war gave Stephen the chance of a romantic and glorious death, and the " old tree blossomed once more. Vanit vor heroism ? Who can »">'? are all Gallimores. wo English, all Gallimores at heart. Let us then be grateful when the opportunity comes for heroism to take command and vanity to ho subaltern."