LITERATURE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18766, 20 January 1923, Page 2

LITERATURE.

WANDERERS AND WANDERINGS.* ABROAD AND AT HOME. By Constant Rbadxb. “When I was fifteen years old,” writes Mr C. E Bechhofer in “A Wanderer’s Log.” “my father, most generous of men, not in lalurally alarmed at a sudden swerve in my character towards the writing of poetry and tho championing of advanced causes, decided in the manner of fathers that it was time I was sent about tho world to ‘knock the nonsense out of me.’ . . . And so it came about that in November. 1911. within a few days of my seventeenth birthday, I was a passenger on an ocean liner on route for the East. But there must have been a terrible lot of nonsense in me, for although I have outlived my infantile infatuation with such booby traps as Idarxian .Socialism and Women’s Suffrage ami have reduced my attempts at verse, as tiie reader will discover, chiefly to :rinsiatioiis, I have been wandering about restlessly for the past ten years and have not yet found wisdom." In “A Wanderer’s Log” Mr Bechhofer gives a well-written and absorbing account of those ten years’ travel. He has produced a book which may be adjudged as especially suitable for this epoch in the world’s history. In the present time of perplexity relief can alone bo found in a wide outlook; short views are an avenue of pessimism and despair. In this dominion. isolated and far removed from the

scene of world-conflict, the need of tho wide outlook is keenly felt, and Mr Bechhofor’s hook comes as a distinct boon with its breath of other lands and alien peoples, i he amazing extent of his wanderings is told in a few words:— Indeed, I no longer know where to turn in search of new travel experiences. I traversed India more than once from Malabar to the Himalayas; I travelled through parts of Japan where the people would run out of their houses for the unprecedented adventure of seeing a white man; I knew that now vanished German province of China, Tsing-Tau, as well as many other parts of the Far East; I toadied, somerimos for a long time, sometimes not for long, at all the ports of tho Mediterranean, from Port Said to Ageciras, whoso hinterlands held a promise of interest; I saw Russia at first hand, from the Tsarist regime at the outbreak of the war. by way of the uonikin campaigns in 1919 and 1920, to its final agony under the Bolsheviks, to say nothing of tho numerous new border states, both in tho Caucasus and by the Baltic, which rose out of its disintegration with greater or less degree of permanence ; and several times I crossed to the New World and got nonsense knocked out of me in the United States and in Canada

Mr Beckhofer not only takes his readers out into the wide spaces of the groat world hut he introduces them to all sorts of little-known places right off ?he beaten (rack. These out-of-the-way wanderings led to his being definitely listed by (bo Indian police as a fomenter of Indian revolution, a charge which, officially investigated was withdrawn as more stupidity. “During my wanderings in India,” says Mr Beckhofer. “I wont to see Indians of all political views front sturdy old reactionaries to such revolutionaries as Arakindo Ghose in his refuge in the French settlement of Pondicherry: naturally the Indian police, like all police, were more anxious to make out a case against, me than to discover the truth, and affected to believe that my visit to the revolutionaries revealed a wholehearted sympathy with them and their aims —a plausible theory, but not true.”_ While not neglecting British India, Mr Beckhofer visited “the parts of India which represent the ruins of older European civilisation in the Kart.” He describes interestingly his visit to Goa, “a small Portuguese province on the West Coast of India, half-way between Bombay anl Malabar” and “once the headquarters of the groat Portuguese Eastern Europe. From Portuguese India Mr Beckhofer wont across the peninsula to French India and its capital Pondicherry, over which city the “tragic glory of Dupleix still broods.” After Pondicherry came Kashmir, where ho thoroughly explored (he delights of that native State. Following this lie joined a couple of English friends who were journeying along (ho road that lends to Thibet and on that journey ho lost his nerve and nearly i lost his life. With stiff rush sandals oh his feet Mr Beckhofer started to climb a steep bare slope ns a short cut to his lent. His foot slipped: I found myself lying fiat on the steep face of the slope. Below me it ran sheer down three or four hundred feet to the stony river bed, where the tossing river dashed against the timbers of the little bridge that led across to the wooden houses of the village. 'There was nothing to clutch but rare and vain blades of grass. I tried to dig my fingers into the soil, but it was too hard; nor could I do anything but press my bare knees and elbows hard against the slope. I knew that if I released my pressure I should

slide down the hill side in an instant. In the nick of time he was rescued by a villager who, barefooted, clasped him firmly by the hand and led him back to safety. “I had no fear at all,” says Mr Bechhofer, ‘‘for I did not believe it possible to die then. ... I had never doubted; yet my nerve was gone, and for all the rest of the trip I staggered and swayed over the narrow places when I started over them alone.” There is a capital description of the beautiful city of Benares, venerated by every Hindu, in contrast to which Mr Bechhofer inveighs against Canton with its crowds, the lack of space, the fetid air, and the smells. ‘‘lt is an incredible city, full of incredible sights, incredible sounds, and incredible smells.’ those smells have a paragraph all to themselves:

Never in my life had I imagined such smells. They are not simply unpleasant odours, to be avoided by turning one’s face aside or by delicately holding a handkerchief to the nose. Cantonese smells are of abominable persistency. They will not be denied; in their intensity^ they are almost to be seen and heard. They seem to enter by every channel of the senses, by every pore of the skin. After a few minutes "in Canton, 1 had my handkerchief to my face, ready at the first suspicion of a. 'particularly bad smell to bury my whole face in it for as long as I could hold my breath. I did this with some success for a lime, until at last I had to own defeat. From afar off I had scented a horrible odour blowing at right angles across the alley along which 1 was being carried. 1 covered my face and held my breath as I came into the zone. When I thought we were well past the danger T look away my handkerchief, and started to draw a long breath of the fresher air. Alas! the air was indeed pure when I i.-egan to draw this breath, but all of a sudden we came into range of (he most fiendish stink that even China ever produced. I had now no breath to hold, and I had to fill my lungs with this devastating odour. Then I lay back in tiie chair coughing and choking till 1 was black in the face.

Mr Bechhofer went to Russia for the first time at the end of 1914, after medical discharge from the army, with (ho object, of learning’ the Russian language, in order to <|nidify as interpreter with the English or Indian armies which might be operating in conjunction with the Russian troops. In Kiev he came into contact with the Ukrainian nationalist, movement, anti lie paid a. visit to the grave of Shevchenko, (ho Ukrainian poet. From Kiev ho went south and then east to the Caucasus, “the most romantic part of the Russian Empire” : it was a curious experience to leave the broad, monotonous plains and pine forests of European Russia and to plunge into the wild Oriental, stib-tropical regions of (leorgkt. At Baku, with its deserts and bubbling oilfields, T halted hardly a day; at Tiflis, a wild town I was to know so well a few yours later, after the Russian Empire broke up and the Georgian Republic came into existence, I stayed a fit lie longer, but scon I was on the shores of the Black .Sea In Ihe Billnm Brovince, whore 1 was to slay with Russian friends, who were now

*O) “A Wanderer's Log: Bump .Sonic Memories of Trav.d in India, tho Fur Fa.-d. Russia, iho Mt-dnurranuan, and Flat-where.” By V. K. Ihulihof*T. With I*l Illustrations from Photographs. London: Mills and Boon. Duufdin : Whitcombe and Tombs. CBs Rd not.) Ill) “ Thu lJani.'*'r of sharnahka.” By Armun Ohanian. With a .Prefatory Letter by Anntoln Franco. London: Jonathan Cape. Thinodin: Whitoomhu and 'bombs. (7s t?d nut.)

(.T) “ From Sawdust to Windsor Castle.’' By Whimsical Wjiikur. With 8 full-page half-tone Illustrations. London : Stanley Pan). Punudin: Whitcombe* and 'bombs. H-s fid nut.) (4) “London Vignette*.” By Fophiu (‘o!f. London : Mills and Boon. Imaetliu; Whitcombe and Tombs. (4a net.)

returning: there after having had to escape northward at the outbreak of the War from the menace of a Turkish invasion. Mr Bechhofer gives vivid impressions of Moscow and Petrograd both before and after the Bolshevist regime. Of Moscow he writes: “When I first know it. in 1915 it was a splendid and animated town; when I returned six years later it was, ns a friend of mine said, like a city in a war zone occupied by hostile troops.” Of his early visit to Petrograd two of the most vivid moments relate to the ‘‘Stray Dog,” a famous literary cabaret, and an interview with Rasputin. ”1 cannot forget,” he writes, “but I am the only Englishman whom Rasputin ever kissed.” In the autumn of 1919 Mr Bechhofer returned to Russia, after two or throe years’ absence, to follow General Denikin’s campaign against the Bolshevists, and he took part in the military occupation of Batum. This occupation was not a success in any other than the military sense and for this reason:—

'lhe British officers there, most of them well intentioned and (in their proper line of work) very competent men, were rather at sea in the difficult atmosphere of Batum. Not a single officer or man spoke Russian fluently—they were just a body of troops sent from Macedonia and Constantinople—and they had to rely upon local interpreters, who were in many cases extremely unsatisfactory persons. The trust that each officer reposed in his own Greek. Jewish, or hopelessly denationalised interpreter and the contempt he rightly held for everybody elsc’s were wonderful lo heboid. It was no marvel that every Rus sian, Georgian, Kurd, Adjnrian, Armenian. Greek, Persian, and so on in the province had his own complaint against tho British administration. . . Nobody knew tetter than I how hard the British authorities worked to make their administration successful. . . . Besides, as one of the officers remarked as ho dolefully added up the long monthly list of murders, robberies with violence, thefts, and other crimes in Batum, it was not as bad as in Ireland during the same period. Mr Bcchhofer’s views in regard to the “ new independent Georgian Republic” are far from reassuring. He describes (he condition of things as Chauvinism run wild and running wilder, mingled with a spirit of opera bouflo. “ Nothing,” he writes. “ was too idiotic for the Georgian politicians to try to do in the sacred name of patriotism and Social Democracy.” For the Armenians, on the other hand, he acquired great re- ' spect:

When I went to Armenia I wag astounded to find here, with all their many faults, Ihe Armenians stood head and shoulders not only in intelligence but also in courage. Ever since the day when I first visited the trenches in which a miserably small and ill-equipped Armenian force was resisting a far more numerous and bettor-armed army of Kurds and Turks, I have had an admiration for this people, so basely betrayed by (he Allies, with whom, alone of all the peoples of the Caucasus, they have always kept faitn and who have requited them with neglect, forgetfulness, broken pledges—how many of these! —and even definite hostility. We could so easily have kept our promises to the Armenians, with some advantage and little cost to ourselves; but we have not done so. To us and to the Allies as a whole, the desertion of Armenia is a little thing, easily to be forgotten, still more easily to be slurred over with pleas of necessity (which arc not wholly true! and counter-charges of treachery against the Armenians (which are unjust); but to Armenia is has meant the difference bctvvon freedom and renewed slavery, and its repercussions still shake the basis of our prestige (which is the earnest of our power) in the Middle East.

A striking postcript to Mr Bechhofer's book is furnished in “The Dancer of Shamakha,” in which an Armenian girl describes he" childhood in Armenia and her subsequent travels as a professional dancer through Persia, and especially her life in. Teheran, afterwards journeying across the Caucasus to Constantinople and Greece, and thence to Egypt, where she took farewell of Asia. Armen 0 Hanian has made a reputation as a dancer in London, Paris, Brussels, and Berlin. She can not only dance; she has a gift of descriptive writing ; and her autobiography elicited the following high eulogy from so renowned a litterateur as Anatolo France:

You have put into these descriptions and tales the same charm that exhales from your eyes and your gestures. I do not know what subtle art is hidden beneath your perfect simplicity, but you have known how to paint with a word the dawns and the sunsets of the Caucasus and to reveal a, thousand secrets of Nature and of life. You lead us into scenes which can. never be forgotten: the drowsy school of Toulouse, the scenes of Holy Week, the festival of Easter, when one eats Kebab of mutton, the meeting with the handsome peasants, and that solemn night of watching when, as you have said, it seemed that the moon was broken to fill the assembly with its light. How much that contains of poetry and of truth I How beautiful it is! Do not refuse, dear mademoiselle, the felicitations and the thanks of your old friend.

Apart altogether from its literary charm, which even in translation is considerable, this book has a special interest because revealing so much of the intimate life of the Bast, and throwing light upon the racial feuds which render the settlement of the Caucasus so exceedingly difficult. Mingled with charming traditions set forth in poetic language are pictures of life at Zergueran, .Shamahka, Baku, Restch, and Teheran. There is a thrilling description of the earthquake which destroyed Shamahka; there are realistic accounts of the bridal customs of the country, and much light is thrown upon the reason of the secluded life led by the Eastern women; there are vivid accounts of the outrages on the Armenians perpetrated by Turks and Cossacks alike. The picture of Persian life at Teheran, amid the entourage of the Shah, is brilliant in the extreme. Besides ell this, Armen Ohanian is especially eloquent when reflecting upon the bestiality of Western civilisation as compared with the poetry and imagery of the East. It was in Cairo that she first encountered ‘‘the incredible grossness and brutality of the civilised West.” She was accustomed to lose herself in the poetry of her dances. “When with halfclosed eyes, to the sound of the stringed instruments, I drew with my naked feet the arabesques of onr dances upon the Persian carpets, I would forget that I was very far from the dear walls of our gardens. My dancing was also a mute but eloquent language by which I said to those who treated us with contempt that though humble in our inferiority to Europeans, we nevertheless have a little grace and tenderness, and that even in our dreaminess there is splendour.” The contrasts between East and West have pungency in Uio following paragraph:

In the time Orient, the most depraved man venerates instinctively the image of her who gave him birth. . . Thus m Cairo one evening I saw, with sick, incredulous eyes, one of our most sacred dances degraded into a brutality horrible and revolting. It was our poem of the mystery and pain of motherhood, which all true Asiatic men watch with reverence and humility, in the far away corners of Asia where the destructive breath of the Occident has not yet penetrated. In their olden Asia, which has kept, (he dance in its primitive purity, it represents maternity, the mysterious conception of life, the suffering and the joy with which a new soul is brought into the world. Could any man born of woman contemplate this most holy

subject, expressed in an art so pure and so ritualistic as our Eastern dance, with

less (ban profound reverence? Had this been (old mo I could not have behoved it. Such is our Asiatic veneration of motherhood, that I here are countries and tribes whose most binding oath is sworn upon (he stomach, because il is from this sacred cup that hunumily lias issued. But the spirit of the Occident has touched (his holy dance, and it became the horrible “danse du ventre,” the ‘■b-noehie-koochie.” To me a nauseating revelation of unsuspected depths of human bestiality, (o others it was—amusing. I hoard iho lean Europeans chuckling, 1 saw lascivious smiles »ven upon the lips of Asiatics, and I fled. No greater change of atmosphere is imaginable (ban from die glowing imagery of “The Dancer of Shamahlca” to the everyday commonpiiues of "Whimsical Walker,” the famous clown of Drury Lane Theatre, London, who in “From Sawdust to Windsor Castle” tells his own life story. It is n plain unvarnished tale, void of any literary assumption, and yet replete with human interest. From the time when by reason of bis father's second marriage “Whimmy” Walker ran away from home, until as the famous clown ho had the honour to perform before Otteen Victoria, it is a recital of tho ups and downs of the circus ring and theatrical life. “.Whimmy,”

who inherited the instincts of a showman, was especially successful in the training of animals. No species came amiss to him—donkeys, monkeys, dogs, pigs, cats, j and even geese, were trained by him to Ido any manner of tricks. In connection I with an old controversy he denies most strongly the charges cf cruelty made against animal trainers and he most emphatically assorts (hat no animal can be properly trained except by kindness. The book is full of anecdotes of theatrical and circus life in Great Britain and America, and it makes most racy reading. “Whimmy” Walker is a strong advocate of the oldfashioned pantomime with the traditional harlequinade and he laments the substitution of the modern musical revue. He retails many amusing reminiscences of Scarborough, and some of his Irish experiences are highly entertaining. The famous clown is now in his 72nd year, and as he started clowning before he was ten years old, his story covers the life of the showman for over fifty years past, and for a large part of that period he was associated with Hengl.or’s Circus. "From Sawdust to Windsor Castle” is a most entertaining chronicle.

In “London Vignettes” Miss Sophie Cole, whose “Lure of Old London” has revealed her fitness for the task, gives a clever description of such well known London resorts as Madame Tussaud’s. The Temple Church, Covent Garden Market, The Tower, Gray’s Inn, Bow-bells, Leicester Square, and other places of interest. The sketches, which embody many literary allusions, are well conceived' and carried out, and lovers of London will find much to interest them in these pages.