A LITERARY CORNER

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVII, Issue 10852, 18 March 1921, Page 3

A LITERARY CORNER

(R.A.L.) “THE PASTON TETTERS.” (Selections from). Alice Greenwood (Editor). (G. Bell and Sons, London.) The “Paston Letters” are famous and interesting, but there are too many for the average reader to rvade through; therefore a selection has been made. The work has been carefully done and the letters are in the modernised, form of Sir John Fenn’s version, which is more easily understood than the original. They deal with the life of a mid-dle-class family of good standing holding land and attached to a noble patron by ties of service, chiefly military, for protection amid the disorders of the time, which touched the reigns of Henry VI., Edward I\ ~ Richard 111., and Henry VII. The Wars of the Roses did not conduce to tranquillity, and the disputes of the great, conducted with rapacious lawlessness, helped the discontents of the peasantry to make life a troubled thing. Litigation was a. favourite pursuit, and the administration of justice was not immaculate. The light thrown on the life of the people by these letters is very interesting to the student of history. Imagine a gentleman complaining to his patron that one of his servants, a tenant, has been assaulted by the retainers of a magnate and thrown into prison, without any warrant, or charge, and forcibly removed from the gaol to a castle, there to bo hanged, and begging for help to prevent the ruthless execution which may hay)pen at any moment. An extreme ease perhaps, but narrated with simple gravity without any hint of surprise. It is the life of sturdy folk, tilling the soil, going about its business of buying horses, clothing, taking part in resisting piracy rife in the narrow seas, watching the trend of the stormy politics of the day, punctual in attendance at mobilising musters, attending church and the schooling of children, keeping a wary eye on troub’esome neighbours, and exact as well as thrifty in its household duties. The book is a welcome addition to the shelves of those who like to supplement the pageants of history with ordinary realities. ' THE FINDING OF THE MAYFLOWER.” Rendel Harris. (Longmans and Green, London.) We have books about the historic voyage of this famous ship and of other voyages of hers; more hooks about the doings of the Pilgrim Fathers she carried on that famous occasion when they left Plymouth to found a new society in the New World. Of that work this author has done his share with great reverence for the old craft. In this little volume he winds up the story by tracking the old craft to the hands of the breakers, and locating her timbers. He has found them in the County of Buckingham in “a tract of land which is becoming popuI larly known as the Milton and Penn ; country.” In the village of Chalfont, , Thomas Ell wood, the Quaker, found a 'refuge for his friend Milton during the plague. The original name of the village was Chalfont St, Giles, but in the hands of the Quakers it became simply Giles-Chalfont, for they “dissainted the calendar” on the principle of rejecting all distinctions as they discounted and rejected the titles of nobility prevailing on earth. . Near this village (and Milton’s cottage) is the simple graveyard of the Quakers, with many famous names on the plain 1 gravestones, and hard by is a great ham belonging to an ancient Quaker farm. That barn was built with the timbers of the old Mayflower. With great ingenuity the author tracked the hones of the old ship to this her last | resting-place—all recognised with the aid of a famous naval architect, who classed the timbers as various parts of a boat of the Bchooner type, pointing out their various places in the anatomy of the ship, indicating sheerß, contours, and so forth. The identifying he established by various marks, inscriptions, and certain proppings and mendings, verified by quotations from the accounts of the ship’s voyage, in whiolTthese things, done through stress of weather —in some cases to keep her afloat —are carefully narrated. The identification is a feat of ingenuity and perseverance, and the numerous plates add conviction to • the collected testimony. The 'author is very proud of his labour of love, which has, no doubt, given great satisfaction over a very wide area of the earth’s surface. ‘‘IRELAND AND THE ULSTER -LEGEND.” W. A. McKnight. (P. S. King and Son, Orchard House, Westminster, London. This hook will cause much stir. The author defines what he calls ‘ ‘the Ulster legend” as the generally recognised claim of Ulster to superiority in ways over the rest of Ireland, which is the basis in his opinion of the separate treatment accorded to Ulster in the scheme of Irish self-government. This position he attacks statistically, using the census figures compiled under the authority of the British Government, and also such as Parliamentary Blue Books and White Pacers; and for the correctness of his analysis and extracts, he submits the verification of a firm of London accountants, duly signed. Ho claims that by this means he has demolished Ulster’s claim to “superior prosperity and civilisation.” The tests he applies from this material are of material prosperity, of education, and public spirit, of physiauo and hygiene, of moral, and this includes slums, emigration, and the condition of factory workers. The results he brings out in most of these statistical comparisons are against Ulster. The book will bo read with interest, for it is the first in which the facts have been so reviewed, and as the results it announces will be surprising, agreeably or otherwise as the readers may choose, there will surely he floods of comments for and against. Whatever the settlement between these may effeet, one , thing may he legitimately hoped. It is that when the Irish question clears in certain ways, the book will be a valuable help in the discussion of Irish affairs, which can never return to normal until everything concerning them has been •fairly threshed out. It will he regarded as an addition to the cards face up on the table at which final peace will have to he made.

“THE DIPPEKS.” Ben Travers. IJohn Lane, “The Bodley Head,” London.) Everyone knows how ludicrous blunders are made by well-meaning people when they happen to be in too great a hurry to explain things fully to one another in moments of urgenev. The author begins by utilising a rather pronounced instance of this unhappy sort of blunder, invoke? the spirit of caricature, and enlists the extreme of dramatic possibility at- the point where it approaches the impossible, and works

the combination with amusing mastery. Two men going different, ways miss their train?—one a lawyer bound for London on pressing legal business; the other a dancer of the tango, jazz, and similar varieties, bound for a great country house to meet his wife, also of the light fantastic, thero to amuse a great collection of important guests with the giddiest art, for which the pair have a prodigious reputation. The lawyer misses the train for London at a country station; the dancer missing hie train from London docs not arrive at the said station. But My Lord’s chauffeur from the country house gets there with My Lord’s limousine to fetch the dancer. The chauffeur, seeing only one pcn.on on the platform, and he with a big bag, mistakes him for his man, and abruptly invites him to get aboard. The lawyer, being anxious to get some conveyance, is much obliged, but wants to explain. Both arc. frantic with haste. The natural result is a misunderstanding which lands the unhappy lawyer at the country house, where he is taken for the dancer, hailed with acclamation mixed with reproaches for unpunctuality, and hastened, without being allowed to explain, into the bedroom assigned to the dancing pair, where he finds himself alone with Mrs Dancer, who gets no chance to denounce him as the wrong man. Certain people who are playing a game of their own in the country house intervene at this point, and the lawyer finds himself let in for impersonating the husband. His bag containing only law papers, he has to wear a suifc of My Lord’s twice too big for him. Mrs JL><«nccr, being a person of resource, very anxious to pocket the incidental big fee, and finding her new husband utterly unable to do a step of any dance in the platform repertory of the tango-jazz family, decides that their turn must be a earica- '■ true. A caricature it is, and it has an uproarious success of the most comical. Everybody demands “Encore,” and the poor lawyer, nearly dead from fatigue of Number One, is dragged forward, bows dejectedly to the company, and starts off according to directions whispered by Mrs Dancer, whom he has to lift off the ground and carry along a few yards of screaming burlesque. At this point, Mr Dancer—the missing “Dipper”—turns up, and the burlesque turns towards tragedy. The saving of the situation seems . beyond human power. But, thanks to the ingenuity of the people who, having a game of their own to play, contrived the burlesque, the impossible is achieved, and the merry story comes to a pleasant end. As the ill-treated lawyer finds in the meddling clique the lady who has long conquered his heart but not his bashfulness, even he has no cause for dissatisfaction with the denouement. The fact that all these people are real—so good is the portrayal—gives a good ground of bare probability to this exceedingly amusing story.

“REGGIE, QUEENIE, AND BLOT.” Edith Cuthill. (Stanley Paul and Co., 51, Essex street, Strand, W.C. 2.) A pleasant story of the Indian Mutiny, written for children, which will not be unpleasing to “grown ups" who like sidelights like this —a very good cne—on great historic events. It tells how a colonel was wounded and left for dead by his men on parade, how his two children were brought to safety by faithful Indian servants through a rebellious population, and their father and mother were helped by a few loyal natives to join them. The adventures of the little people, which are, of course, the main interest of the book—which is well illustrated —are very thrilling, all the more so that they are managed with due regard to probability. The local colour in blazing hot weather is admirably managed.

“THE NEW AGE ENCYCLOPAEDIA.” Sir E. Parrott, LL.D.. Editor. (T. Nelson and Sons, London.) The 7th and Bth volumes off this series maintain its character as a reference bock up to the most recent date possible for compilation and printing. The rapidity of the issue is, in fact, one of its most remarkable features. The “star” item in the “M” division is “Marne,” with excellent accounts of the two great decisive “Battles of the Marne.” The first of these, which was the most decisive battle of the war, ia presented, although necessarily in brief form with a completeness superior to anything hitherto published in book form, or any other. It is, we believe, the first account which professes, to present all the movements of that great fight in their true perspectives. The general result is not the impression made by Mr Hilaire Belloc in his famous book, of a- combat of two wrestlers, French and German, in which the first loses his first grip (Manoury’s attack on the German right), and wins by catching a fresh hold (Foch’s attack on the Saxon army), which upsets the whole German advance. It is. the impression of a victory won by a master of strategy with a great enfilading movement, made against his enemy at the very moment of a change in his order o/ battle. This movement was the throwing forward of Manoury’s army against van Kluck’s right, which necessitated and brought about for its support the sudden change of front effected, at the order of Marshal J.offre, by the armies of Marshal French and General Franchet d’E-fsperev. This brought three armies m line across the German line oi advance, and the impact of the three not only compelled the retreat of von Kluck’s ill-judged oblique advance, but shook the whole German line, which was held up by the suddenly-assumed French offensive as far as Verdun. The shock was increased by Foch’s attack, after his stubborn resistance of three days, on the Saxons. It was this swing forward of the three armies which, according to this account, forced the retreat of the enemy, destroying his carefully-prepared offensive into France. Mr Belloc’s writings, after the appearance of his book, appear to corroborate this view of the battle, for he kept on asking the hour at whirl, the German lder wor retreat were issued. Was it, he asked, issued before Fooh’s famous stroke on the Gond marshes or after? Tile Germans have never answered the question. This account answers it by the statement that the enemy had begun to retreat when Foch struck von Hansen’s army with the result that the troops Foch threw forward into the marshes were small retreating units, not large advancing divisions. This account, then, gives the impression of a great masterstroke by the French commander who, by throwing three armies on to the German right flank—one of which was the British army off two corps and a rein forcement —forced the German line to retire from the battle. Making this the main feature, the account at the same time puts the action of all armies undor Joffrc in their true perspective as fighting with skilful gallantry, and ali co-operating in the long, brilliant, sustained assault, which took place of the long retreat from Mons, Charleroi, and Mezieres. The account gives a Napoleonic tourh to Joffre’s historic declaration, “I have ordered .a general advance.” Right or wrong, the new version certainly brings method for the first time out of the chaos off conflicting account? which lias buried this most decisive battle of the war ir. an undesirable mystery. The account of the Second Battle ol

the Marne, also a decisive battle, ded sire as the turning point of the l&si phase of the war, followed by the coreei of Allied victory, urged on by the genius of Marshal Foch, is in accord with the sum of tho contemporary accounts. These, it is necessary to ro. member, had, owing to four years o| experience; acquired a clarity and power of realistic report, unknown in the earlier years. These qualities no doubt were due also, and perhaps chiefly, to the genius of the commanding general, who had. unlike his predecessors, very definite plans and carried them out rapidity and certainty of touch, making understanding easy for obserr* ers and rominentators alike. Tho cot incidence of the lines of the account ef the Rattle of the Marne in r hi> b*x>t-. the lines of the contemporary reports, a fine tribute to Foch’s mastery of .the wa^