LITERARY NOTES.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1212, 24 May 1895, Page 10

LITERARY NOTES.

“ l 'would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading.'’— Lokd Macaulay.

Address all communications for this column to “The Editor, Nkw Zealand Mail.” Publishers and booksellers are invited to send books and publications of general interest for notice in tins column, thereby enabling country readers to be in touch with the latest works in the Colony. Publishers sending books for review are requested to mention their price.

WITH PAPER-KNIFE AND PEN.

“ The Darleys of Dingo-Dingo,” by C. J. McCartie. (London : Gay and Bird.) Mr McCartie has given us a very pleasantly if not brilliantly written story of Australian up-country life in “The Darleys of Dingo-Dingo.” The Darleys are a very agreeable family to meet with in fiction, healthy-minded Anglo-Australians ■who, as a result of losses in their Melbourne business, decide to take up their residence on a two thousand acre block some twentyfive milQs inland from the coast of Victoria. The “ hps and downs ” of np-eountry life' are well described in the book, and although of disappointments and losses the settlers have their share, the young Darleys are so industrious, so plucky, so determined to succeed, that the record of their experiences should act as an inducement to many city folks on the “other side” to adopt the broader, freer and healthier if more arduous country life. No small share of their success is due to Mrs Darley, a lady of good education and sound common sense, and a feature of the story is the insistence by the author upon the fact that the settler’s home may not necessarily be devoid of comfort and culture, and this at no sacrifice of material prosperity. Some of the characters in the story are very well drawn, and although the author is inclined at times to; force the humorous note a

trifle too much, lie possesses a keen sense of the ludicrous, and. the book will afford the reader, a good many hearty laughs, no small praise in' these days of dreary pessimism in fiction. A sensational gold find in a long unexplored gully is very well described, and the principal incidents of up-cpuntry life, though familiar enough, are liit off very happily and in some cases with a freshness which excuses their primary Jack of novelty. Altogether “ The Darleys of Dingo-Dingo,” though not on the highest level of Australian fiction, is a very readable, story, and will give the home-staying Briton a very fair and interesting idea of country life beneath the Southern Cross. The. book is very well printed on excellent paper, and the stoutness of its binding specially commends it for country libraries, to which it should certainly be added. “A Daughter of ■ this World,” by Fletcher Battershall. (London : William Heinneman—Heinneman’s Colonial Li-

brary). V : A very clever novel this, and one of which the title J foreshadowed, to us at least, a very agreeable disappointment. We had imagined it a “New Woman ” novel, yet another example of that wearisome harping upon inharmonious strings to ; which Sarah Grand and her school had accustomed, us., The “New Woman” as a novelist is so given,to the assumption of the masculine, in horns de plume as in other matters, that “ Fletcher Battershall ” might, we feared, as we regarded the title page, prove to be the usual discontented and railing exponent of the “Eternal Feminine,” and with such misgivings we began “ A Daughter of this World” with much fearsomeness. Judge our surprise when we found unmistakeable signs of masculine authorship, and made the acquaintanceship of a heroine and of a story completely American. The “ New Woman ” in fiction at any rate has not yet

invaded Broadway and Fifth Avenue, and Mr Battershairs characters, novel though they be in conception/ have nothing whatever in common with the extraordinary creations one has met with in George | Egerton and others of the cranky coterie to whom every man is a selfish debauchee, and every woman the afliicted subject of a brutal husband's felly and vice. No, Mr Battershall introduces us to a household in a quiet New England village, to a literary, man who seeks rest and quiet therein, and finds himself gradually assuming the role of confidant and undeveloped lover of a mysterious young lady who is persecuted, mentally and physically, by an

even more mysterious priest. The priest, who is a mystic, and whose methods smack Hot a little of quackery, has an intensely strong will which enforces itself upon the mind of the girl in various but always disagreeable, and occasionally positively brutal ways. To the machinations of the priest the hero opposes the determination and s avoir faire of a man of the world. There is a stern conflict and the priestly spell is broken, the girl disappears to go to Rome to study, and ultimately to develop into a great singer, and then again to meet her novelistin fashionable New York society, which by the way, is described with considerable satiric skill. The priest, too, turns up again, but his crimes—amongst others the murder of the heroine’s father—are discovered by the novelist, he commits suicide, and a happy termination comes to a most novel and extraordinary story. Were it not that the priest, one Father Axon, is described more as a dangerous schemer, a mystic j whose ideas seem more in keeping with j mediaeval than modern life, than as a! minkitet- of religion, his portraiture, in such dark colours, might very properly be adjudged highly offensive to those who profess the Roman Catholic faith, but the religious side of this character is kept in the background, and Axon might just as well—better, perhaps, that he had—have been a mere every-day maniac of a highly dangerous order. The hero strikes one hero and there a 3 being tainted with priggishness, but this is not a dominant or a just impression, and Ills conduct when he meets the girl again, after a lapse of years, and champions her when she is in serious inoral danger, is depicted with a refinement of language which is admirably in keeping with the delicacy of his feelings. Many readers will no doubt vote Father Axon, with his mysticism, his hypnotism of thejmfortunate heroine, and his tragic end, as an impossibility in this eminently prosaic end of the nineteenth century, but to us he is essentially a real, living entity, and just about as disagreeable, indeed, hateful a creature —albeit to be pitied a little on account of his helpless fanaticism—as we have met with in modern fiction. It is a 'strange story altogether, strikingly novel in its incidents, and, as far as regards the mere craftsmanship of the novelist, imbued with a fine literary instinct. Somehow or other, we fancy Mr Battershall has read his Hawthorne very carefully. Here and there he strangely reminds us of the author of “ The Scarlet Letter,” although in other places he is redolent of a modernity quite out of touch with that author. To anyone who wants a novel which is utterly different to the average fiction of the day, we can strongly recommend this very strange, but undeniably clever story.

“An Island Princess,” by Theo. Gift; “ A Perfect Fool,” by Florence Warden; and “ ’Midst the Wild Carpathians,” by Maurus Jokai. Bell’s Colonial Library. (Melbourne: George Robertson and Co. Wellington: H. and J. Baillie.) Messrs Bell and Sons are including some really admirable novels in their now wellknown and popular Colonial Library, to the excellent get-up of which we have drawn the attention of our readers on previous occasions. The first of the three volumes now before us, “An Island Princess,” by Theo. Gift, is a pretty story; simple as to plot and not over-strong in incident, but exceptionally rich in character studies and in descriptive power. The scene is cast in an island in the Atlantic Ocean, Las Malvinas, a British possession and a naval station of some small importance. Society on the island includes a few sheep farmers and smart Yankee storekeepers and shipowners, and their wives, a limited gubernatorial circle, and such representatives of the naval interest as may find their way thither in the discharge of their duties. The Princess is a young lady, Jean Coniston, island bred; and a very charming heroine Miss Coniston makes, with her frank, open character, her freedom from conventionalities, and her

really noble heart, which the ‘ reader regrets to find thrown away upon a priggish, egotistical and selfish young naval officer, Keith Fenwick, a gentleman of highly aristocratic connections. A summer holiday spent on the island by the young officer affords Mr Fenwick opportunity for love making with the pretty islander, of which he takes full advantage, but the pair were nt-ver meant to mate, and once the aristocratic Fenwick is back in England he forgets the vows and protestations he made in the now far-distant Las Malvinas, and weds with a maiden of high degree at St. George’s, Hanover Square; whilst poor Jean, broken hearted, meets her death by drowning in a way highly suggestive of suicide —a sad end, it is true, to a summer’s lovemaking. The strong point of the book is its portraiture, and in some of her sketches of life in the little

settlement of which poor Jean was the “ Princess,” Miss Gift displays a considerable sense of humour. Very well done is Molly Wanklyn, a jolly, blundering, good hearted Irishwoman of lowly origin, who gradually forces her way into the charmed circle of the Malvinas elite ; and well drawn, too, is Mr George Wanklyn, a keen witted Yankee storekeeper. Las Malvinas is, we fancy, identical with the Falkland Islands, judging by the fact that Miss Gift places its position as "an English colony one thousand miles from the nearest point of civilisation on the nearest continent, and S3ven thousand from Old England;” and it certainly cannot be a cheerful place of residence, for “ the cruel, ice-bound winter, with its long, dark evenings and bitter

frosts, its endless snow, hail, sleet and gales, lasts for nearly six months of the year, and is only alternated by a raw blustering spring, a wet and stormy autumn, and a summer as brief, cold and changeful as an (modern) English April.” Ho wonder there is a good deal of hard drinking, and on this subject Miss Gift’s chapter, specially headed “Not for Teetotallers ” contains one or two very amusing stories. The pomposity of the

gubernatorial entourage is also very amusingly sketched; and altogether the book is very readable. . , / Some years ago we read a capital little “ shilling- shocker,” “ The House on the Marsh,” and we now make very agreeable reacquaintance with the author, Miss Florence Warden, who in “A Perfect Fool” has written an unpretentious but web-told ! story. The “ Perfect Fool ” is in reality a very charming young lady, Miss Chris. Abercarne, whose mother, falling into what English people are so fond of j calling “reduced circumstances,” takes j a position as housekeeper to a wealthy gentleman, Mr John Bradfield, of Wyngham House, her daughter accompanying her. The wealthy gentleman is, as a matter of fact, a very fine specimen of the genus villain, a wicked, fraudulent guardian, who keeps his ward, a handsome and amiable young gentleman, snugly shut up in the traditional “left wing” of the mansion as an alleged lunatic, the while he (Bradfield) makes revel with the said young gentleman’s rightful heritance. All this shocking state of affairs is in due course set right by the “perfect fool,” who, though set down as a “ninny” by one of her mother’s friends, who says “ Chris, doesn’t know the difference between a cabbage and a cauliflower,” de vedopes into an accomplished little strategist in delivering the handsome young ward, discomfiting the wicked guardian and making a really excellent marriage—of course, with the handsome young man aforesaid. For “ a perfectfool,” Miss Chris. Abercarne manages remarkably well, and she is withal such a lovable young lady, that the reader, although glad to find the conclusion of the book recording a decided triumph for her, feels quite sorry to have to part with her. The main incidents of the story are somewhat stagey (Miss Florence Warden is, by the way, a well-known London actress), but the tale is told very pleasantly, and will

serve well to wile away a few spare hours. Translations from foreign fiction are growing steadily more popular with the English novel-reading public, judging by the number now published. There is fashion in this taste, apparently, for we have witnessed a Scandinavian boom—initiated with Bjornsen; a Russian boom—of which Gogol, Poushkin and Turgenieff were the heroes; and yet more recently certain Spanish novels have found a new vogue in their English dress. To-day we have just finished reading what is looked upon by the Hungarians as the magnum opus of their national historical romance writer, Maurus Jdkai, and have found a perusal of his “’Midst the Wild Carpathians,” “ done into English,” as the phrase now goes, by Mr Nisbet Bain, a very enjoyable task. In this story, Jokai, so Mr Bain tells us in a most interesting preface, “ deals with life among the virgin forests and inaccessible mountains of seventeenth-century Transylvania, where a proud and valiant feudal nobility still, maintained a precarious independence long after the parent State of Hungary had submitted and become a Turkish province. We are transported into a semi-heroic, semi-barbarous borderland between the Past and the Present, where Medievalism has found a last retreat, and the civilizations of the East and West contend or coalesce. Bizarre, gorgeous and picturesque forms flit before us—rude feudal magnates and refined Machiavellian intriguers ; superb Turkish pashas and ferocious Moorish bandits ; noble, highminded ladies and tigrish odalisks; saturnine Hungarian heydukes, superstitious Wallachian peasants, savage Szelders, and scarcely human Tartars. The plot too is in keeping with the vivid cflouring and magnificent scenery of the story. The whole history of Transylvania, indeed, reads like a chapter fiom the “Arabian Nights,” but there are no more dramatic episodes in that history than those on which this novel is based —the sudden elevation of a country squire (Michael Apafi) to the throne of Transylvania against his will by order of the Padishah,

and the dark conspiracy whereby Denis Banfi, the last of the great Transylvanian magnates, was so foully done to death.” A more stirring romance, and one richer both in incident and characters, we rarely meet with. A Turkish freebooter, Corsar Beg, who has a fairy-like palace on one of the loftiest summits of the great Carpathian range, with a harem of odalisques, is one of the most romantic figures in the story, and for weirdness of conception, the character of Azrael, a demoniacal creature, bewitchitogly lovely and “as utterly soulless as her own pet panther,” is a creation which positively enthralls the attention of the reader. Brim full of wild love-making and wilder adventure, replete with stirring incidents by flood and field, and studded over with beautiful word pictures of the picturesque beauties of a magnificent mountain country, “’Midst the Wild Carpathians ” is a novel almost impossible of detailed description, save in a much more liberal space than that at our command. To the lover of romance it should prove the most delightful of books, and in its present cheap and handy form it should enjoy a very wide popularity.