SMALL SOULS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIV, Issue 14820, 20 October 1920, Page 4

SMALL SOULS.

(By William Jlaas.) 1 want, if I can, to interest m the work of a very remarkable* one of the greatest of living Bo J Louis.. Couperus. At presently half a dozen of his novels have' tj translated into English, but fortunij this task- has been admiriiblv doJ that very skilful translator Mr \ ]j eiro de Mattos, so that the reajJ them is pleasant and natural, I year there was published "Old*fo and the Tilings that Pass,'' n vcrv racteristie work of Couperus, l«ii books to which Itdesire chielly to ( your attention are a series pf'fo® ed "The Books of the Small Souli, 1 The first two books of this swrn "Small Souls" and "The Later Li were published by Mr Heineman 1914, and the second two, light of the Souls" and "Dr Ailrii have only recently been issued lit same publisher. 1 have found ver professional writers who arc niifaii with the work of this great D novelist, but among tho gSieralbo novel readers he is still eompnrJl unknown. The Books of the Small Souls practically the history of an i middle-class Dutch family who lis The Hague. The liamo of tliijfau Van I.owe. When we first mate acquaintance tho father, who t mediocre politician, is dead, ki meet his wife, the mother of a family, who. with sons and dam and their wives and husbands, ni nearly 30 souls. _ A bio; family, but within a very time we come to know them al timately. So deftly are their char etched, so skilfully differentiate] so accurately and sensitively art drawn from life that each stand vividly, and we soon feel that m known them all our lives. It is a traordinary tribute to tho geni Couperus that we are able to feel and that the we at once ten® terestecl in them. For they area ordinary set of people, with habit . customs alien from our own, but are so alive, so vividly delineate! in a literary but in a human way. seems, that' we are at once absori their little lives.

It is the custom of this big fam Van Lowes to gather together Sunday evening nt llama's house it is at one such gathering (Is meet them all. The moment is auspicious than usual, for Const one of tho daughters, lins com to Holland after an absence abro 20 years, Constance is n littJo.oW how she will bo received hy her ni and the big family that surrounds For when she left them it w s ' envied wife of de Staffelacr, the 1 Minister at Home. Ho was an old and she a young girl. It was a n ago d'estime, that turned out a I? for Constance fell in love with a J diplomat; Van dor Welcke,,.*wi •ced by do Staffelaer, and after married her lover. So now as ® der AVelcte, with a small boy hi sho returns Hoping that tho ft (which it is hinted hastened the of her father) is forgotten and rag Her hopes arc not fulfill™. ™ never been really forgiven o)' small souls. She is received scarcely-veiled malico and suw® her. relations, and soon P° Q . r i [ is torn between feelings of Wl 1 mother and her family and to escape from a. life of P c "j that threatens to overwlieliii,. : . Her many years' absence Constance a fresh, "stranger of Dutch home life, its ugli • tions, jealousies, narrow W / vinistic cruelty and the I®-. among small souls, inters , small things. Cruel as rt small minds and souls are. comes ever and anon the hii j reflection that these arc lie .W that she is, like tlicni, a - person. , , K(I .T i Were there space to do " like to give you a « linl l' se Kin brothers and sisters ot Cateau, her brother opulent, respectable, clul -j, and godless. Her hrotlie dier, and his fluffy-«< Boriha. tlio cldost dawJ •-j a Cabinet llinister, «'J 10 ,. at e ceive her sister because -p ] Court set. .Her bro amusing cynic and nan •<\ virtuoso. v Pmtn .i „ In th,e "Later Ld'V 'of the four, we P ;t " ie j foi the lives of t'onstjince ■ Welehe. "The t«'i hgM follows the unhapP? , brothers Gen-it and ' Gonf' "Dr. Adriaau" ; toI J little'boy, Addie. lo \ , [i, a t'tb Some readers »'«>'. ,vl f. n .j , W Lowes as a p 1 .' ll . 1 '?,, 'i [8 j morbid, less fea t m<w soul, but. thai is t!h aJ® books teach, as ,0$ those who can j ll ' 0 ,, v 'have ? Being small souls tliej, the destiny of irtU ,r.scri!*j the littleness tho c' r M f lives of coiiiinoniilacc 1 • And monplace circuins' j_,perM we look into it- . IIU d W knows ?-fi."l our o vnsa out at ourselves, it ffit h.»« impetus to n lt soul