"GOOD COMPANIONS."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20922, 11 July 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

"GOOD COMPANIONS."

A GREAT NOVEL.

BY A.R.G

Honours continue to shower thickly upon Mr. J. B. Priestley by virtue of his "Good Companions." Recently the James Tait Black Memorial Prize came his way. Rather belatedly I have just finished reading the book: For months past I had read reviews and thumb-nail sketches of the author it has brought fame to, yet the novel itself eluded me, and now that I have closed the plain blue covers and put the volume away carefully in the corner of the book-shelves where I keep my favourites, I feel that I do not want to open another book for a time; I wish to dwell a little longer with a pleasant company of pierrots who lived and played and laughed for me long into the night after the house and street had grown quiet and still.

So much has been said and written about this book, so much of praise and so little of censure that I " had been rather sceptical. So many "best-sellers" prove disappointments to the lover of literature that one grows rather shy of the term. But there is no doubt in my mind about this book. Mr. Priestley has written a great novel. The phrafce, "The End, le'ft me with a sense of regret and a feeling of desolation, as if it were the red tail-light of a train vanishing in the night along with.a carriageful of friends. I for one hope that it is not farewell, but only au re voir, and that we may again meet Mrs. Joe and Mr. Oakroyd and Inigo Jollifant. It is many years since I felt so lonely on finishing a book. I can remember as a small boy, who read more perhaps than was good for him, feeling like creeping away to a corner and dissolving in tears when the Count of Monte Cristo disappeared in his yacht over the blue horizon of the Mediterranean, leaving me in what seemed a rather dull little world, but that was long ago.

-"Best Sellers.". '■' Best-sellers" are unaccountable things. The public thrusts greatness upon them and there is. no foretelling the choice of the man-in-the street when he pauses at a bookstall. It is not long since we were told that the day of the long novel bad gone, and people pointed to the dust from our rushing modern world lying thick upon the faded gilt edges of Dickens and Thackeray. On© simply had not time to wade through such terrific works in these days. And then Mr. Priestley produces a long novel in the old-fashioned style minus the sex-compleXes and mindcomplexes so obligingly discovered for us in our unsuspecting natures by the modern school of novelists, and lo! over-night, it" is acclaimed, amazingly, as a "bestseller." An unaccountable gentleman is Mr. Man-in-the-Street. This time I take my hat off to him. *

There is something old-fashioned about this TjoolcV Ordinary, every r dsty minds are not turned inside out and motives dis-, covered in them which would astonish their owners—just little details and tricks of speech are smoothly recorded and the characters spring to life. There is little attempt at personal description as the characters are introduced to us, yet long before we are told in a casual way we know that Miss Trant is rather pretty and is unaware of the fact; that Inigo Jollifant wears his clothes untidily; and that Mr. Oaltroyd has an honest, ruddy faco and a little flame of romance deep down in his Yorkshire heart. That is the art of characterisation, and as such was understood by Dickens and Thackeray. Some of the Players. We take Mr. Oakroyd to our hearts instantly and readily sympathise with him in his desire.to see the world, even though ho has reached mature years and jobs afield are likely to be scarce. Wo are with him when he makes his great decision and goes bumping through the night aboard a huge lorry, and we exult in his joyous thought that mill-whistles are far behind and that at last he is "on t* road." Nor can we help liking the amusing Mr. Jollifant, schoolmaster, who, in another part of England, plays catching airs after hours on a hopeless piano in an effort to forget the existence of small boys and stewed prunes, and in superb defiance of Mrs. Tarvin, the headmaster's wife. The same lady, returning unexpectedly one night, discovers Jollifant and two of his colleagues celebrating his birthday in no uncertain manner. She demands an instant explanation of this outrage of the proprieties, and Inigo, raising his long body from the Bacchanalian litter of flasks and dirty tumblers, wages' a. wordy and glorious warfare with the dame. The fearful row ends with his resignation and his facing the night with a knapsack on his back and peace in his heart. And then there is Miss Trant, the prim and rather aristocratic lady of Hitherton Hall, whose one dissipation in life has been a taste for historical romances, with glimpses of crossed swords, sudden skirmishes and wild rides on nights of storm. The same little demon of rebellion that has proved so upsetting to Mr. Oakroyd and Inigo Jollifant tugs at Miss Trant, so that she suddenly takes it into her head to leave her herbaceous borders and dash away in a little blue car with a flush on her cheeks that was not there before. The story of how these after many, adventures, come together, how they join up with a broken-down troupe of players, and under the new name of the "Good Companions," with Miss Trant as their leader, Inigo as the pianist and Mr. Oakroyd as "t' property an* odd-job man," come to tour England, meeting the ups-and-downs of the road, to come at last to safe harbourage, forms the theme of this entertaining work.

The Secret of Appeal. Mr. Priestley has held up a mirror and shown us a very true picture of life. Other great inoderns have done the same, notably the creator of the Forsytes, but there is this difference, that whereas Mr. Priestley kindles hope, Mr. Galsworthy invariably leaves us pitying. Delving for the reason of the success of this book, is it not that we are all very much in sympathy with its characters ? Who has not wanted to break away from the shaeklbs of routine lives at some time or other and be on " t' road" at last with romance ahead, or wished to step out from a door with an old pipe in one's mouth and a knapsack on one's back ? Have we not all yearned to slip away, unknown to anybody, over a green hill and down a long x'oacl in a little blue car? t The travelling stage itself has a peculiar fascination for us. Perhaps it is the splash of scarlet and gold it suggests, or that strange something which sets the blood tingling and the feet Wo can roam behind the scenes at will in these pages—-and who has not wanted to lift the curtain just before the show' begins? There are few to whom this book will not make an appeal, for we are all rebels at heart and deep down in us is something which quickens to life at the throb of a drum and the clash of a cymbal.