“FLUSH: A BIOGRAPHY”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22114, 18 November 1933, Page 4

“FLUSH: A BIOGRAPHY”

MRS WOOLF’S STORY OF A DOG " Flush: A Biography." By Virginia Woolf. Four Drawings by Vanessa Bell and Six Other Illustrations. the Hogarth Press. (Its not.) A new book from the pen of a writer who, in her own lifetime, not only reaches heights of fame, but also has the assurance that, after she is dead, her books will endure in the nature of classics, is received with particular interest. What has been done this time? Does the new work add another laurel to a brow already nobly crowned, or is it unworthy when compared with the writer’s previous output, and, being so, detrimental to the value of that output? When a writer inclines to only one style of book and attempts to draw too often from the one successful source, the latter is often the result. But where she has other channels to explore and the ability to take the best from them as she has taken it on other occasions, then does the critic rejoice, comforted to know that she whom he had predicted as being great is great indeed, and delighting in proclaiming the fact. One has com" to associate Virginia Woolf with certain excellencies of writing, whether she writes as a novelist or as an essayist. As a she leads the modern movement in its aim of creating impressions not by words but by silences, her last novel, “The Waves,’ being a remarkable example of her power in this direction. As an essayist—and incidentally as a critic, a book reviewer, a biographer, and a writer_ of belles lettrcs —she follows the tradition of what an essayist ought to be, but characterises her work with an astonishing vitality, n whimsical ability to introduce a new turn of thought in staid and settled ideas, a rich and forceful vocabulary giving an almost masculine impetus to her sentences, and a fine sense of discrimination which marks all she writes with good taste, and forbids her to say more about a subject than is in keeping with the subject itself. To read her as an essayist is to be enchanted with the _way in which she manipulates the King e English, and to be given a sense of reality often lac - ing in the most promising of writers. “Flush: The Biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browping’s Cocker Spaniel how should such a book be composed? Not obscurely, one feels, -for it is to deal, with a dog, and canine intelligence is, after all, of the lower mental order, so, if it is written in the style of Ihe Waves,” it will not do./ In a straightforward fashion, then? Yes, but one m keeping with the subject: with dignity, because, along with hounds and greyhounds, a spaniel belongs to the aristocratic order of dogs; but also with humour, for the truest aristocrats are those who possess an understanding ot life; yet, not with too much humour, for if you endow him with over many human attributes you take away a dogs very being; not with condescension, for to patronise him as if he were a toy would be to insult him; and yet with kindness —always with kindness—because that is what he expects of you. Finally, because, with the aid of playwrights and novelists, Elizabeth Barrett Browning is herself ever becoming more and more real, a biography of her pet should be one which, could she read it, : would give her pleasure, and, above all, be truthful and not a mere imaginative fabrication. Virginia Woolf writes a biography of Flush and you seize it for inspection. And all at once honesty compels the admission that, though you have been so peremptory in your demands, until you read what Mrs Woolf had to say you did not .know what such demands were to be. She has anticipated your wishes and given vou what, until it was put before you, yon did not know you wanted. Her biography, in short, is so admirably achieved that it gives you. the power of knowing what such a biography should be —just what it is, in fact. v Here is your straightforward style—Virginia Woolf of the essays with their exquisitely balanced and well-constructed prose. Here are the dignity, the humour, and the curb on humour, and the insight which never becomes patronising. There is no way of laying a finger on any definite example of kindness, for it runs through the whole book in _ a gentle, tender undercurrent. But a hint of it is seen in the description of the meeting of Elizabeth Barrett and Flush when they first became acquainted:—

" Oh, Flush! ” said Miss Barrett. For the first time she looked him in the face. For the first time Flush looked at the lady lying on the sofa. 1 Each was surprised. Heavy curia hung down on either side of Miss Barrett’s face; large bright eyes shone out; a large mouth smiled. Heavy ears hung down on either side of Flush’s face; his eyes, too, were large and bright; his ■‘mouth was wide. There was a likeness between them. As they gazed at each other each felt: Here am I—and each felt; But how different!. Hers was the pale, worn face of an invalid, cut off from air, light, freedom. His was the warm ruddy face of a young animal; instinct with life and Broken asunder, yet made in the same mould, could it be that each completed what was y dormant in the other? She might have been—all that; and he—but no. Between them lay the widest gulf that can separate one being from another. She spoke. He was dumb. She was woman; he was dog. Thus closely united, thus immensely divided, they gazed at each other. Then with one bound Flush sprang on to the sofa and laid himself where he was to lie for ever after — on the rug at Miss Barrett’s feet. Finally, truth is vouched for—if such voucher is needed beyond one’s own sense of what is right and possible—in the list of authorities and notes at the end of the book, a book leading from the past in which the word “ spaniel ” had its origin, to Three Mile Cross where Flush had his, into Miss Barrett’s bedroom, down the dark alleys of St. Giles s street when Flush was stolen,. over to Italy when the hooded man who at first had been so great an enemy became beloved Mr Browning, the guardian of one’s mistress and oneself, and so, back to London and then to Italy again, till the end. Not only does Flush come alive so that never more will he be only an apt name, but a creature with instincts and passions and a remarkable -ense of smell, but his background comes alive also—Miss' Mitford, Miss Barrett. Mr Browning, the Browning baby, and Miss Barrett’s maid, Lily Wilson; yet only as a background, for, after all, Flush is the hero. The new book passes muster, it meets the severest test without hesitation; and, in the Virginia Woolf collection it takes its place with confidence and pride, becoming at once an unobtrusive part of the whole. E- L. S.

Wodehouse and Goethe A report of the Institut International de Co-operation reveals that the authors most translated into foreign languages recently are P. G. Wodehouse, Edgar Wallace, Jack London, Goethe, Zane Grey, Gogol, Somerset Maugham, and Stefan Zweig. The Italians are shown to bo enthusiastic Wodehouse lovers; to the French, Jack London, Maugham, and Zweig appeal with almost equal force. English and American readers show no striking preferences for the works of foreign authors.