A NEW ZEALAND WRITER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18874, 29 May 1923, Page 8

A NEW ZEALAND WRITER

APPRECIATION OF “THE HAPPY WANDERER.” MR MAURICE HEWLETT’S TRIBUTE. Ode Own Coreespondent.) LONDON, April 13. There is always the danger of a prophet not being accepted in his own country, and because of this there is some justification for the action of the editor of The Happy Wanderer in sending me some extracts from the English reviews on the late Godfrey Turner’s collection of articles. Perhaps Mr Maurice Hewlett will be the most widely known of those who have expressed their appreciation and admiration of the work. * Writing in tho Daily News, the well-known novelist says:— “There was something in Turner bettor than good journalism, something better than tho flattery to be obtained from his evident admiration. He did admire; even ho loved. But he understood ;he saw. He saw the things which abide, which have made our nation and will keep it made through the desperate years which are still to come. It was in my experience rare to find a colonial so appreciative as Turner. . . . But I should have said, before I knew anything of Turner, that if there was to be a seer among tho invading host ho would prove to be a New Zealander. “Though he is direct and strong in his writing, though he is fully charged with knowledge of good and evil, gathered where men can be seen at their best and worst, ho is never brutal, nor other than a gentleman. Turner’s ‘Happy Wanderer’ stays by mo. He has seen what I love in my own country with clear and sympathetic eyes. He has seen the best of us. and loved it. For that we should respect his memory.” THE PICTURE OF A SOUL.

“The book is altogether delightful,” says Mr G. F. Maine in “Tho Outlook Tower,” “and it is full of that charm which is the outcome of understanding quickened by travel coupled to die ‘big view’ of what I call the Imperial outlook. I wish that every prisoned soul might read this book. It breathes the colonial spirit—it is full of good fellowship and human kindness—it is the picture of a soul.” According to Tho British Weekly “ ‘The Happy Wanderer’ is a clean, sane wholesome book by a man who may have professed too little, who nevertheless has attained a great deal. To meet with this quietness and gentleness is very refreshing.” “We can but wish,” says The Nation, “he had had time to write more at length of what he discerned so finely.” Tho Schoolmaster expresses a similar regret. “All who rend will. I think, lament that this bright, brave spirit departed, not only from England, but from life untimely.” It may bo said that Mrs Richardson Rice, u-ho edited the volume, is receiving a large number of appreciative letters from prominent people, and she is hopeful that in duo course the demand for the hook will bo so great as to justify a second edition.