LITERATURE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19904, 25 September 1926, Page 4

LITERATURE.

■NEW YORK. THROUGH NEW ZEALAND EYES *

JANE MANDEE’S NEW NOVEL. By Constant Readeb. A year or more tine©, Miss Jane Mander, in an interview in the London Bookman, expressed her dissatisfaction with the reception given to her novels, the scenes of which were set in New Zealand—“ The Story of a Now Zealand River,’’ “The Passionate Puritan,” and “Allan Adair,”—especially with the apatlry displayed by readers within the Dominion. She declared her inten-

tion of seeking her scenes in a wider field, taking a less restricted area in which to place her stories. This she has at length carried into effect, her new book, “The Besieging City,” being frankly described as “A Novel of New York.” Apart from its intrinsic merit, the novel has an interest in the picture it presents of New York seen through the eyes of a Now Zealand woman. Primarily it is a picture of life in Greenwich Village, New York’s Bohemia, —but it also gives a vivid picture of New York in war time, at the Armstice, and in the grip of the "flu.” There are hints of life as a student at Columbia University,

and the drawbacks and discomforts of a university rooming house; and the humours, vulgarities, _ and tragedies of a great city are mixed in equal proportion. Just as Katherine Mansfield had to live in London before she found her true metier, so Jane Mander has discovered herself in New York. It is passing strange that little New Zealand should have produced two women writers so thoroughly_ unconventional and so, inclined to cynicism. For this reason neither writer can ever be popular with the popularity served out to books which exhibit more than a dash of

sentimentalism and give due deference to the respectabilities. It is not stretching the imagination to suggest that, from a literary point of view, the place accorded to Katherine Mansfield as a short story writer may yet be won by Jane Mander in the role of novelist. The heroine of “The Besieging City’’ is Christine Mayne, a Sydney girl, who, having taken a course at Columbia University, New York, has just finished a novel and, while awaiting the verdict of the }. üblisher, is—it being war time—filling in her time as a worker with the Red Cross. As the book opens, Chris is apartment-hunting in Greenwich. 1 Her resources were limited and she had to find a cheap place to live. At length she hit on an apartment in Waverloy Place, giving on to Washington Square, and adjacent to the Italian tenement* in Eighth street. Miss Msndor is a clever writer, and the progress of her, story is helped and enlivened with many brilliant passages, of which tho following is a sample:— For three years now Chris had lived in, a university rooming house crowded with people she knew well enough to talk to whenever she wanted company. She, had. in fact, become very t ired of feeling the crowded vibrations cf a host of people always about her. For some time she had longed for a place of her own in a house where she knew no one.

She Had an extraordinary sense of peace as she stood this first night by herself in the very place she had so far in her life been able to call her own. ; After spending her twenty-six years with other people’s wallpapers, other people’s ancestors, other people’s discarded wedding presents, other people’s odours, it was a revelation in personal freedom to be where she could have bare walls, and make a choice, even if it were orly in a junk store, between one wobbly table and another. Though almost everything she had was a makeshift, and f tough she could not deceive herself about the worth of anything she had in these rooms, each object, down to the utensils she had r , bought in the ten cent store, did actually represent some fraction of personal choice. Chris was practically alone in New York. “There was no one she would have called in ajiy complete sense a friend. The people she had liked best in her three years at Columbia University had been nomads there and were now scattered to all quarters of the globe.” ' jNevertheless, Chris was not really aloof but was one of the most sociable of persons and there were three girls at the university whom she liked, —Ada

Hamilton, Myra Delaye and EUi sMair. The story resolves itself into a study of these four girls, absolutely modern in their outlook, impatient of all restrictions, especially of the restriction of marriage> and free in the liberty which a great city affords, to give full vent and expression to their impulses and desires. When Ellis visits Ohris in her new apartments, she exclaims, “Oh, Chris, these stairs! Will anybody erver come to see you?” To which Chna returns, “I don’t want feeble friendships. I shall use the stairs ns a test.” The visit over Chris walked with Ellis to the Fifth Avenue car, then, turning, she walked past the Washington Arch and began to ramble languidly round the Square. This ramble is the occasion for one of the vivid bits of description which recur in the pages of Miss Mandcr’s story: It was packed with Italians from the little Italy on the South side. Only once in a while did she pass au Anglo-Saxon. She had the feeling down here of being in a foreign city. Every little store about her waa run by foreigners. . . . Greeks, Italians, Jew’s —Slavic and Teutonic. And . ' indeed the whole of New York waa much the same. A few blocks away about Hudson street was a now Syria. There were teeming Chinatowns and Greek towns on the lower East side. There were New Jerusalems crawling octopus like over Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Long Island and the immediate suburbs; two and a half million Jews within the town boundaries. ‘There were all the Nordic races and every Slav dialect in the world. There were the negro cities of Harlem and San Juan Hill. And at the outbreak of the war there were said to be more Germans in the city than in any German town outside Berlin. Only pno person in someth’ng over 20 was an AngloSaxon. All this Chris knew, for she was no longer an outsider. Three years of this place, she thought, and you would either die, or leave it, or begin to be a New Yorker. She had been tokl many times (bat the city was peopled by outsiders who had become New Yorkers. New Yorkers were not necessarily Americans. Many people had begged her when she first arrived not to judge the rest of America by New .York, People from the south and west in particular were sensitive about it. The city had created a new species. It required super-nerves and super-endur-ance Not only in a limited sense was it America. And this was where the European, dogmatising about its colossal claims, follies and extravagances, erred overmuch. It was not anything but itself, an immense, immeasureable composite of foreign cities; of a little Europe, in fact, packed into caves and ravines of steel and stone. The Hamiltons had a luxurious house in West Fifty Fifth, and Chris liked going there for many reasons. “It was characteristic of anv member of the Hamilton family to arrive just as you were going out. It was characteristic of any one ot them to suggest immediately that you do something other than the thing you intended to do. They were promoters of dislocation, but always with gaiety and the best intentions.” Ada Hamilton was the spoilt child of a fashionable set, and she was the first girl Chris had known to wear her hair short. Ada was dark as Chris was fair. At the Hamiltons Chris met Gerald Lloyd, an architect iron* Chicago, called Gerry for short, fehe also met Fay and Lincoln White, Fay being the possessor of the loveliest head and shoulders Chris had ever scon. At dinner at the Lincoln Whites, she met Redman Feltz. a New York journalist, described by Lincoln White as “ one of the most remorseless of the younger vivisectors ol the poor diseased American spirit, i Early in the story the underlying * tragedy begins to reveal itself. Gen., had a “horrid wife” from who he desired a divorce, and Chris had begun to care for him. “I’m going to have a baby, said Kay, in a voice full of fear, which evoked from Chris the satirical comment: “At least you are unique, Fay. \ou arc the first person I’ve ever met m .New York who was going to have a child. Thereupon Fay exclaims: “Thats the horrible pan of it. Nobody ever is born in New York but negroes and Italians and Jews. ... I don’t want a child. 1 want to go" back to Italy and paint.” Chris next became aware of Julia Haydon. Ada was beautiful and Fay was beautiful, but not like Julia: • ‘•Tb* Swinging City: A Novel of New Xork.” fy T f* Kaadar. London: Hutchinson and Co.

To a girlish shape nowhere overdrawn, to brilliant black-and-white colouring, to beautiful hands and exquisite feet, to a delicate oval face, there was added a quality of spirit that etherialised them all. Here was flesh that was not flesh; something diaphanous that you felt the sun would shine right through. She had the haunting brown eyes that are the distinction of so many beautiful American girls. The tragic expression at the back of them was constantly dissipated by a puckish twinkle. Under Julia’s guidance Chris tasted the delights of luxurious living, including a bathroom described as “ one_ of the most beguiling of American achievements in that direction. She could have played in it for hours. It breathed an amalgamation of delicate scents and gleamed with silver and crystal." Redman Eeltz, who plays a prominent part in the story, is smartly described: — His features had a sallow, arrogant handsomeness, lit by the most deceptive sneer that - ever played about a kind man’s face. • He was curiously the opposite of almost everything he at first glance appeared to be. You heard him pronounce judgments as if they were the snap opinions of- a neurotic and captious autocrat, only to discover that he held his opinions diffidently, and cnly came to them after much consideration. He gave you the impression of being completely debauched. His life was one of unremitting labour, self-sacrifice, and stern discipline. He talked as if he were the embodiment of selfishness. In reality he spent himself upon others, opulent in friendship and passionate loyalty to the many he cared about, and ' completely devoted to an invalid sister. His expression at rest, contemptuous cold and glaring, dissolved into childlike joy at the sight of a friend.

With such cleverly created characters and against a background so vividly pictured, the story moves to its appointed end. Not only is the plot a compelling one, but the action and inter-action' are well thought out. Miss Mander describes life in New York in its many phases as, perhaps, no native American author has been able to do. Into the mo.uth of Redman Feltz she places a heavy indictment of America and things American; — Tragic! America never rises to tragedy about anything. It can only fall to bathos. We can’t be tragic. That is to be spiritually great. We can only be ridiculous. We are a nation of marionettes perpetually doomed to make futile gestures. We will go down to history as the nation that sent a crazy idealist and a bunch of callow college students in a silly little ship to stop the greatest war in history. We who discovered ■ applied psychology for the world. . . . Wo applied it like that! And we had the cheek to sneer at the Germans! Blah! And now we’ve taken to rant about courage! There’s less courage in this city than any place on earth. We are afraid of mere things. . . . We are terrified of being dull, of being out of date, of missing something. We are afraid to appear with a spot on our clothes, afraid to wear a straw hat before the fifteenth of May or after the fifteenth of October. We are afraid the bath has been used by somebody else and that there is a germ in the milk. We are afraid to meet our friends at lunch if we haven’t read what F. P. A. or Alexander Woolcot said this morning. We are afraid to appear in public if we haven’t read the latest pronouncement of our own particular god and seen last night’s new play. We are afraid to be different, afraid not to be different. Our entire life is spent dodging our numerous fears, and in creating fresh ones. We are' eternally apologising that we haven’t got the latest kind of soap-holder in the bathroom and that our refrigerator is slightly out of date. Our rest cure resorts are full of people who have broken down worrying over these gigantic trifles, and every year there are a hundred new millionaires made out of feeding these fears and giving people more to worry about. “The Besieging City” is a powerful story, with telling passages on almost every page. If Jane Mander can keep up to this standard she ought to go far. A CONTRADICTION! * BARBARISM AND CIVILISATION. By Constant Readbh Mrs Elinor Mordaunt, the well-known novelist, is never so nappy as, when casting off the veneer of civilisation, she seeks solace among the natives of the South Sea Islands; and. in “The Venture Book,” while recounting her travels, she shows her repugnance to social conventions and her delight in the primitive way of life. Alfons Petzold, the famous Viennese poet, playwright, and novelist, had the misfortune to be born and brought up in such circumstances that in the midst of civilisation he was held in an atmosphere of barbarism and cruelty from which he naturally recoiled and from which he longed to be del. ered. In “Raw Life” he has penned his autobiography. The contradiction involved in these two records cannot fail to strike the intelligent reader. On the one hand a cultured Englishwoman gladly resigns all the comforts and conveniences which civilisation confers and elects to suffer the hardships and crudities of life on a cargo steamer and in native, villages, rejoicing in the pains and penalties which such a mode of life compels. On the other hand we see a lad whose very being cries out for an atmosphere where music and art and poetry flourish, condemned to poverty, suffering from sickness and generally steeped in misery—influences which in after life turned him into a socialist of an extreme type. Without in any way striving to stress the moral, it may be said that both volumes possess unusual interest for the thoughtful reader, and should attract by the very unusualnoss of their contents. I.—THE VENTURE BOOK.

Mrs Mordaunt admits that she craves “to live wonderfully, to live adventurously, to live by the skin of one’s teeth,” but she simply cannot help herself. In this mood she set out from Marseilles on a French cargo boat calling at Guadaloupe, Martinique, Colon, and Cristobal, and on through the Panama Canal to Tahiti. Thence she made her way in a trading schooner to Samoa, calling at Apia, ami to the Tongan Isles, visiting Vavau, Hapaai. Tongatalu, and Nukualofa, and on to Fiji. She traversed Fiji by canoe and on horseback through Viti-Levu and Inbau. Catching the steamer to Auckland. she visited Rotorua. From Auckland to Sydney she travelled on a Chinese boat. This is as far as the hook takes her. but her itinerary appended goes mucli farther afield, and presumably means a second volume. The book, which is illustrated by a number of photographs and original sketches by the author, is quite out of the ordinary because of the spirit in which it is written, and the writer’s original standpoint. Mrs Mordaunt revels in unusual repasts, and her descriptions of the meals to which she sat down on various occasions are particularly tempting. She is also hail fellow well met with everyone she meets, whether native or European, and she manages to sleep under circumstances impossible to the less hardened traveller. She gives a vivid description of the ways of the natives, for whom she has an intense admiration, and she makes the scenery live before the eyes. The account of a Sunday picnic at Tahiti is a good example of Mrs Mordauut’s treatment and style:—Johnny Parec is mixing the salad of raw fish —which lias been soaking in vinegar, amid peppercorns and spices for 21 hours —with every kind of delicately shredded vegetable and a saneo made of coconut cream and lime juice and pin and salt. The young American, attired in a white shirt and scarlet paten, resembling some strange bird with his long-pointed, beak-like nose and dark-rimmed glasses, sits upright upon a stone and sings to us as we recklessly drink punch from out of long

tumblers. The dejeuner is ushered in with Martini cocktails, also in tumblers; then comes raw fish the sauce of which is so delicious that we all finish it by lapping, for there are no spoons, no

•(1) “The Venture TV>ok. M 15y Timor Mor* dnunt. lilustr.itoi by the nuthor n.rnl from photograph-. r»ri]on: John Trine Tunrvlin: Whitcombe iiml Tomb?. (K>r.) C2) “ ITiw Life. 1 * By Alfons TtUolJ. Translated by T. Bennett. London; George A lieu iui‘l Vcuia.* W act.)

knives and forks —steaming hot bread fruit as mealy as the best Irish potatoes, cold chicken, tender young pork with stuffing and Russian salad. In company with all this is white wine followed by a very great I'eal of champagne, for which no one seems in the least the worse. . . , The natives on the opposite side of river dive into the water, not as we dive, but jumping, and lighting sitting. They swim out into the sea, breast the waves, shouting and singing, and are driven back into the shore with a great sweep ot surf. . ~ . All our party, excepting myself and the Englishman, jump from the immense meal with cries of delight, run behind the bushes to get into their bathing clothes, then into the sea. . I lie upon a white woven mat in the shade and try to sleep. But it is to hot; besides. I am too happy, too well entertained, watching the bathers. The Englishman, however, draws apart, and really does sleep with a handkerchief over his face. After a while a little black pig goes and lies down at his side, snuggles against him, and sleeps also. This illustrates the light-hearted way in which Mrs Mordaunt approaches her adventures, which, however, are not all of the same pleasurable sort. Thj result is a racy chronicle which, besides aftordnig the reader capital entertainment, conveys a good deal, of out-of-the-way information. •‘The Venture Book” is likely to be one of the most popular travel books ot the year. IL _ nAW LIFE. Whereas Mrs Mordaunt _ discovered much romance among the natives of the South Sea, Alfons Petzold found little besides sordid misery amid the luxuries of Leipzig and Vienna. Fr> \ a child he was dodged by weakness and ill-health, and the death of his father made living difficult for his mother and himself. As a boy he was bullied, despised, and cruelly treated by his fellow-workers, and often he was too tired to reach home after his day’s work. This autobiography gives much insight into the lot of the workers in a big European city. Petzold early developed a love tor poetry, and longed for opportunity to express himself. He delighted in the theatre and attended performances whenever opportunity offered. He was for ever failing at one sort of employment and attempting another, for he was ever handicaped by physical weakness. Nevertheless his love for poetry and for the drama triumphed, and eventually, after severe disappointments and great trials, he won a meed of recognition before his death. It is a moving record which might aptly be dubbed "How a Socialist Was Made. The translation is adequate, and the book is likely to attract the attention of students of sociology. It is a living document.