SOME RECENT FICTION

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7979, 9 December 1911, Page 12

SOME RECENT FICTION

(BY "LIBER”)

THE FANTASIES OF FRANK “The Yacht of Dreams.’* By Frank Morton. Loudon: Andrew Melrose. Mr Morton's first long novel is a literary achievement in which, not a few New Zealanders and Australians will take a very keen interest. For tho author, Both as poet, journalist, and writer of short stories and sketches, has long been lyidely and favourably known in Australasia. "Tho Yacht of Breams” is tho first of three novels which have been accepted by a London publisher, but it differs, so 1 learn from the author*, from--tho two which are to succeed it, in that it is more purely a literary novel, a novel in which imagination and tho critical spirit arc more prominent than plot and characterisation. Regarded as a medium for expressing ideas—often of a most original, not to say surprising nature, upon life in general, and especially upon Eastern life, it must bo pronounced, oven by those who may most totally disagree with many of the sayings and doings of the leading characters, an exceedingly fine literary perforinance. Its chief defect that it is too deliberately, too studiously clever. Its pages sparkle with epigrams, with odd and droll, iiVat times, most eccentric views or life, and there is no denying tho allpervading smartness. But even smartness cloys when one has too much ot it. The story of "The Yacht of Breams" is simplicity itself. At Melbourne, Fielding Rathlxme, a young and handsome American millionaire, marries—in the guise of a poor man—a pretty and clever Australian girl, a "typiste.” The next scene discovers the happy pair honeymooning at Singapore on Rath bane's beautiful yacht, "Tho Nell,” in company with a much-travelled ex-journal-ist and present millionaire (oh, rarest of developments) _ named Mortimer, and an eccentric individual named Lenton, who, like Mortimer, has been everywhere and seen everything worth visiting and seeing in the East —from. Bombay right x'ound to China and Japan. Tho yacht proceeds with the parr-y to Calcutta, Ceylon, Bombay, and thence through tho Red Sea to Fort Said and on to tho Piraeus, all on board enjoying themselves immensely. Egypt fs next visited, and then, a day or two after leaving Alexandra "The Nell strikes a strayed mine or torpedo, or some such abomination, and goes down with all hands. That is all the story, as a story. But, as I have said, "Tho Yacht of Breams” is merely a vehicle for a series of most xdoturesquo descriptions of Eastern ports and Eastern people and for a scries of brilliant monologues, quaint and weird stories of occult happenings, in which indulge the chief characters, notably Lenton and Mortimer, the ladies, Mrs Rathbono and Nesta Whitfors, a young American lady, added to the yacht’s company at Colombo, acting as useful foils by punctuating the by brief remarks wnich set tho verbal ball rolling on again yet more rapidly.

Travel Pictures. Mr Morton’s Beiscbilder are sometimes most delightful. Singapore, the Malay ports, Colombo, Calcutta, Bombay, Athens, Cairo, are all made the subject of gorgeous word pictures. They are full of gay colour, instinct with evi-dences-of shrewd observation, and a broa’d svmnathy- for the cxotically beautiful. Mr'Morton can give his leaders the very atmosphere of a place. Thus, at Bombay, where the party are sitting after dinner on the hotel balcony : The city sighed and murmured beneath them as the hour drew on to midilight. The late breeze was faint and ' vagrom, stealing furtively through the deen dark as though it feared to have its presence there detected, but still lending to the dense body of the night a grateful edge of coolness. Always in tho midnight ,husli man stands most consciously and humbly between -the two eternities, and on the balcony for some minute© the tide of talk had been, stemmed. Now and then, the irregular clash of some complaining punkah would intrude, and constantly there was the indescribable timid crackling of the wicker lounges in. the deserted drawingroom behind. Occasionally a solitary star would peep from'a cloud rift and as speedily vanish, or there would bo a bloom of sudden crimson in the murk as the ash fell from one of the men’s cigars. Among the big cities of India, Bombay has on the whole the most salubrious heat, and deep summer nights on that sido are graciously enjoyable whenever* there is a breeze. That was just such a night.

The Weird Fascination of the Hughli. Or, again, this Tittle pen-picture of the Hughli at 'Calcutta:

The Hughli is as strong as an army with elephants, as inscrutable as the eye of Kali, as treacherous as any jade of Asia, /The great yacht was moored by an intricate multiplicity of lines fore and aft, and a score of keen eyes watched her closely all the time. ’ If you are naturally a fool, it doesn’t matter what you do, anyhow; but if you are wise, you never trust the Hughli. In hgr irresdstfble lithe onrush there is infinite power; in her caprices she sometimes develops tho malignity of a synod ox old demons. She has swirls and undertows, and they have never been two days alike since the ancient gods of Ind digged the shifting trough of her, and let loose her overwhelming waters. She purrs and gurgles oast the ghats with all the vigour of her immemorial - youth, but her hotly bears unfathomable the mystery of the untold millions of her dead. She has a language of her own, and some men learn a few words of it, but whoever caught the full import 'of her throaty . mutterings should go shrieking mad. She is altogether a delightful stream to swim a nightmare in. but no good ship ever felt really_ comfortable in her since the first good efoip was built of Asian timber, and swart wise men went forth to see what strange things might lie towards the rim of the world. That happened a number of years ago.

Dunedin’s Dislike for the Unusual. Hero and there, too, in the book are silhouetted memories of more familiar scenes. Thus, Mr Lenton appears to have drifted to Dunedin in the course of his wanderings and was not favourably impressed : Dunedin is not sleepy, it is serious. It takes its business and its plea-

earns with a certain savage streuubusness that stands for the highest achievement of the deliberately respectable spirit. They will pardon yon anything in Dunedin, so long as you are not unusual. You must never ask who John Knox was, or suggest a kink in the halo of Oliver Cromwell: because it is assumed that

you have been suckled on Knox and bred in tho fear and worship of O. Cromwell, and so inquiries and suggestions are unusual. You must not express surprise at the manners and customs of the inhabitants, because

surprise at anything Dunedin does is held to symptomise an unusual den-

sity of ignorance. You must not pretend that Milton was a greater poet

than Burns, because that is a blasphemy so unusual as to ho utterly unpardonable. ... It cannot be said that the gods are dead there, because there the gods never lived. One man cut me iu the street because I

mentioned tlio Venus do ilodici at his dinner tabic. Oh, a most; strenuous and moral town, like caviare to the palate. A Discourse on Cleopatra. Mortimer’s speciality is the retailing of quaint and weird stories of tho East. Lcuton roams over the whole world oi literature and life. Hero are some extracts from a lengthy and curious discourse on Cleopatra : Cleopatra was the soul of burning beauty perfectly incarnate. Mind you, the beauty was not tho beauty of Holiness, iter eyes wore blacker than tho deepest night, but fiery as tho sun. All the elemental passions lurked and brooded in. them, and ; her loves were fiercer than her hates. Sho was of the old race of women absolute. Sbo was royal, "ob, royal to excess, royal inevitably in ali her body and blood. . . . Sho uas obeyed instinctively, not because of what sho was by birth, not because sho was queen and arbitress of lii'o and death, but because sho was Cleopatra and' compeller of men. lier mouth was vivid as a red convolvulus, cruel as fate, sweet as sin. When sho smiled, all creatures stood at pause and ©very atom of the universe stirred and sang. Sho never frowned, never dreaming of tho need of frowning. When, she was angry her taco was loveliest, but tlio reek of blood was like ambrosia to boxdelating nostril. Sho loved intensely alw-ays, and when sho loved ate up her life. Having no natural sorrows sho slew her cherished lovers so that she might taste tho luxury of tears. She xvxxs utterly antique, etc., etc., etc. Soon his audience of one, the lovely Nesta, asks the truly feminine question: “Were her feet email?" to which .Henton responds "gravely": “Her feet were ecstasy mad© iiesh. ; her ankles were* shapely and pure, like pearls; the curve of her instep was Nature s > highest achievement in the harmony of lino. Her body was praise made' noble." And then the amiable and “matter-of-fact young , lady" somewhat sensibly remarks •. “ Air I Lenton, you are shamelessly making phrases," and later .on declares hex* opinion: "I think your Cleopatra was a venomous beast." It takes Mr Morton or. tho puppet a good six pages or so to oxuress Jiis ideas on Cleopatra, -they are ideas • which suggest memories of Gautier and Baudelaire. Not that there is any plagiarism—it is simply that Mr Morton has steeped himself in the Latin Utelary' spirit. The Latter Day Pirates. There can bo no doubt that Lenton i& a terribly long-winded talker* but Mr Morton makes him* talk very cleverly and, at times, very shrewdly. Out on the lawn at Mount Laviuia Nesta. deplores that Romance is dead, and specially laments that the old-time pirates are no move. This gives Lenton an opening—ho is awfully keen at snapping up any excuse for delivering an oration, —for a ferocious attack upon the pirates of to-day, the dull-witted men who steal clover men's ideas, tlu> pirates of commerce, of trade, of politics; Their name is legion. They exploit us, and if any'natural cry escapes us they rail at our insolence in lacking respect, for dignities. They toil not, neither do they spin, nor in the true' sense can they ever he said to think; but the earth is theirs, and the fulness thereof. We sow and reap tho grain, but it is garnered into their barns, and in the end wo buy back our own at a killing price. They have cornered all the habitable earth, and now they claim monopoly of the air. ... I have to admit, that thepirates generally, being very ignorant and addle-pa ted of their nature, honestly believe themselves to be the salt of the earth, God's chosen ministers. Behind tho white-lead monopoly, and the nail-making monopoly, and every monopoly that murders men and women under the sun, there lurks tho true philanthropist of this type, as honestly zealous in the salvation of souls as he is professionally indifferent to the slaying of bodies. Then there is the pirate of patriotism who honestly keeps alive the ghoul of war. AVer© it not for these pirates and their interests, the bit- ; terest sources of international hatreds would.be removed. This pirate is never in any true sense cosmopolitan. because, when he docs not actually trade in the butcher’s tools, he naturally fears any such enlarging of boundaries as must make obvious and laughably conspicuous his proper insignificance. In his view the man in the next parish is an alien, and the man in the next county a - heathen. The Soul of the East and Its Mystery. Although both Mortimer and Lenton are inclined to strive too palpably after paradox and epigram, there is no gain? saying the fact that Mr Morton has placed in the mouths of these two gentlemen some remarkably curious and fascinating stories of Eastern manners, customs, and beliefs. Also, a drunken, ‘'broken" Irishman at Calcutta has some Poe-like yarns to tell, and a Hindu, one S. V. Banerji, who, though a native Christian, is skilled in occultism, performs some very extraordinary deeds. Mr Morton evidently knows India, the Malay States, and the Hast generally by first-hand acquaintance, and has gathered together a wealth of curious tacts and stories about tho Oriental. He shares Kipling’s views as to the impossibility of fully reconciling Eastern and 1 Western ideas: Between Bast and West there is no true/ point of contact. You only hear of friendships between a European and an Asiatic because the world is-so full of desperately stupid liars. Tho Asiatic may cringe for his own purposes, but at the bottom of his feeling for us there is always a-fathomless contempt. He reads us like a book, and because he knows us he deeoisee us; and because we cannot think his thoughts and cannot grasp his purposes, we decide that he Is an inferior animal and send out sniritual spinsters to persuade him to desert his immemorial' religions.* But my quotations must come to an end, and with -them my notice of a book entirely, delightfully out of the common, a story which is hardly a story at all, as mere story-telling goes, but one which makes strong appeal to’ the better educated and more thoughtful class of reader. It is a book which some may not like at all, may indeed treat as a mcro collection of fantasies. Of fantasy, of imagination, of romance, and of poetry there is' no lack in Mi* Morton’s book. But underlying the fantastic form which the story assumes, below its;, occasional wilful frivolity, there is a strong undercurrent of wit and wisdom, of daringly original views on life, expressed, at times, in language of singular and most striking charm. “The Yacht oi Dreams" is no mere novel. It is literature. SHORTER NOTICES Two new ''Blackwoods" are “Patches and Pomander," by Arthur Brcbncr; and “Tlho Joyous Wayfarer," by Humphrey Jordan (Edinburgh; William Blackwood and Sons), Mr Brobner gives us a vigorously written romance of the days of Charles the Second. The story centres round a piot (in which. Lady Caetlemaine plays a lending part) to pass ofi a young snan, Anthony Rutherford—himself quite ignorant of the intrigue—as the son of the Merry Monarch's elder brother. Prince Henry. A retired buccaneer, in his old ago given to dabbling in (necromancy and devoted to a quest after the Philosopher’s -Stone, a gay young court gallant, and, of course, a very chaiming young lady, oi whom both Anthony and the gallant are enamoured, are leading characters in a

storv which contains many exciting incidents. In “'The Joyous Warfarer" Mr Humphrey Jordan, of whose admirable novel, “My Lady of Intrigue," i have pleasant memories, tolls of tho yarned experiences, nvainly in Paris, of aai ec-: centric but dclightiul young artist—bred originally to the law—of Bohemian vat;: re. ixennetii Massingdalo is a typo oy no moans unknown in tiio Quartior Latin or in Montmartre, and his vagaries somewhat dismay his highly convene tional British relatives, and estrange him for a season, from the young English lady to whom ho is engaged. But his gallant behaviour when his friends at a Preach chateau are in danger from a gang of ruffianly peasants, wins hint back his love, and tlio story ends exactly us the friends of both hero and heroine—and .these will include all read* ere of the novel—would have it. Tin* Parisian scenes aro vivacious, and some of -the minor ‘Characters, .notably a toppling Englishman of good education, who ilxas ‘‘gone under" through au unwise devotion to absinthe, are strongly and convincingly, drawn.

Hr Warwick Deeping must either he waiting night and day or have a big cdock of old manuscripts by him in his bureau, lor his “Bertrand of Brittany" (Cassell and Co., through 6. and \VT Mac-kay) is tho fourth novel from this author's pen that I have read within the lust three or four months. It is a. story in Mr Deeping’s earlier genre, the genre of “The Red Saint," author ’ than, that of “Fox Farm" (an excellent story), “The Return of the Petticoat," and “A Woman’s War." Mr Deeping's hero is tho famous French patriot, warrior and preux chevalier, le Sieur Bertrand dig Gueasclin, and the story is full, as wero Du Gucsclin’s times, of bravo deeda of gallant warriors, and handsome, much loving dames of high and low degretVi The story is a mediaeval romance ot tire best kind, replete with exciting incident and told in a vigorous, breezy style which makes the exciting narm* live all the more attractive.

Messrs Ward, Lock and 00. send mo, through Messrs S. and W. Mdckay, a story. ‘‘Paleo Evidence,” by E. I’hill. Oppenhoim. A publishers’ note imforn the reader that tlio book ’’inis writte. by the author some years ago and non- issued in literary form for the first time.” Last year Mr Opperahedm wrote, to the press complaining that 'Tome of his earlier efforts la fiction, ■written for serial publications of no great standing, and not doomed by him" to b® worthy of rc-publication in volume form, had been "resurrected” without his consent. I should imagine that a similar, complaint .will bo forthcoming concerning “False Evidence,” for' although, in. its own highly dramatic or melodramatic way, it possesses a contain merit, lt» general literary Qualitj 7 falls far siiotto of that of its anther’s more recant work, The story hinges upon a false charge of cowardice,' made by a half-brother, against an Baglidh officer, and of the. righting of has father's name by a devoted eon.

"The Bees,” by M. Ellen Thongcn (Londbn: George Bell and Sons;, Wei-lin-don: AVhitcombo and Tombs), as the story of three delightfully niredtoevous but v-ery fovablo liiittl-o lads, nie. and Burton, .whoso mother, the wife of a fashionable artist, sadly' neglecsa them They are befriended, howoyer,\ by a landly aunt, and the story resolves itself into a record of amusing esca* ™des wdiich reminds mo not a little o» the once-famous' story of Helen s Babies.”

“LIBER’S” LETTER-BOX

"B .T."—Will look matter up, and pro* bably send you reply by post in a few days. .