LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3338, 6 March 1918, Page 52

LITERATURE.

BOOK- NOTICES. "The Dwelling-place of Light." ByWinston Churchill. London: Macmillan and Co. (Cloth; Empire Library; 45.) The scene of Mr Winston Churchill's new novel is laid in a manufacturing town in New England, with its vast colonies of Poles, Russians, Scandinavians, Belgians, etc., the very off-scourings .of Europe living in a state of dirt and ignorance, ill-clothed, ill-fed, herded like

animals, a whole family in one room, the other rooms being let to lodgers of the same type; poorly paid, yet ocasionally I undergoing unheard-of privations in order J to save a little money and so improve their position in the future. The picture, evidently true to life, is drawn with realistic, merciless power. And, on the other hand, the great mills themselves, carefully -provided, by law, with necessary ventilation, etc.,- with their managers and other officials, living in more or less comfort, utterly oblivious of and indifferent to. the constant privations of their workpeople. Of these fa-ctories the attention I of the reader is chiefly centred on the great Chippering Mill, its manager, Claude Ditmar, and his stenographer, Janet Bumpus, the hero and heroine of the tale. The family of Bumpus deserves and received great attention at the hands of the author as a psychological study of the deepest interest. Edward, the father, at the age of 55, after a long course of minor misfortunes, finds himself—he hardly knows how —gatekeeper in the Chippering Mill, with no alleviation to his lot except the remembrance of the past greatness of the Bumpus family, and an intense interest in their genealogy and history, which he feeds by constant correspondence with , persons, . otherwise strangers, bearing the name. In this way he obtains an outlet for the imaginative part of his nature, and, perhaps, for that innate and ineradicable questing of human nature for something brighter and better, which seems to be the central "motif" of the book. Hannah, his wife, is a typical New England woman of a past generation, abundantly satisfied with the old aims, objects, and ideals of an olden time, accepting her husband's incapacity and ill-fortune without a murmur, accommodating herself to the narrow j limits of a " four'-roomed flat, and the drudgery of cooking and cleaning, a slave to the ' old-fashioned ideals _ of religion and duty, and finding a certain amount of comfort in them; silent, undemonstrative, but deeply affectionate. The two daughters, Janet and Lise, are modern to their finger-tips, and yet have not escaped the curse, or the blessing, of heredity. Janet is the stronger, the finer, the nobler. She has her father's pride of race and her mother's sense of duty, but without recognising them under their new names; also an artistic temperament and passionate craving for beauty all her own. Lise is a milk-and-water copy of her elder sister, without the strong, inherited tendencies and the redeeming temperament, with an ever-thwarted craving for ease and comfort and the good things of life. Ditmar is more ordinary—a typical, ambitious, hard-working, self-pleasmg man of the world, devoted to his mill, for the success of which he labours with an almost personal devotion, but absolutely indifferent to the condition of his "hands " when once they are out of his sight. Ho is a widower, and, unpleasantly remini-

scent of the matrimonial yoke, has always avoided any compromising intimacies, especially among his own work-people and dependents; yet lie falls deeply and desperately in love with Janet* transfers her from the outer office to hie own sanctum, and wooes her in the usual way. A short romance follows, in which the girl is completely carried away by the man's devotion and her own feelings. What her mother would call "conscience" warns her of her danger; but the more modem spirit prevails, and;'she walks without misgiving into the trap set for her by man and Nature. Then comes the strike, when the "hands," goaded to madness i by a small decrease in their pay, rise against their oppressors, and proceed by decrees to acts of lawless violence. Ditmar is their strongest opponent, and the 1 object of their chief hatred. For the first time in her life Janet realises the sufferings of these wretched beings. She at once throws in her lot with them, and I a flame of sudden understanding and hatred ! flares up in her heart and fights' with her love for Ditmar. She even goes to -. his office armed with a pistol, purposing to shoot both him and herself. But she cannot do it; memory is too strong. Like all Mr Winston Churchill's work, this book is a powerful and intimate study of psychological conditions.. It is terribly realistic, terribly modern. Everywhere we feel the modern revolt against existing conditions, from the wretched, under-paid, exploited, miserable factory workers of the lowest type to those at the head of the concern and higher still—all are discontented, suffering, seeking something, they know not what. Knowingly or unknowingly, they are asking, '' Where is the | Wa" to the Dwelling-place of Light?" | Who will show us ? Who will guide us ' thither ? Is there any such place ? Is there i any hope of finding it, here or elsewhere? | Have we left our old gods, our old faith, ! and" received nothing in exchange? To I these and similar questions our author ■ offers no solution. He is content to throw down the gauntlet, to hold the mirror up to Nature. The widespread unrest of modern life and some of the causes which contribute to it stand forth from every page and challenge the reader: but no panacea is suggested, unless a hint may be found in Brooks Insall's simple life and tenderness for the children. Unlike Mr H. G. Wells, Mr Winston Churchill leaves his readers to draw their own moral from a most powerful and painful narrative. "June." By Edith Barnard Delano. London: Methuen and Co. (Cloth; illustrated; 5s net.) This is a charming little story of great simplicity and directness. It begins when the child heroine, finding the hero, who has fallen over a cliff and injured himself seriously, bids her servants come to the rescue and bear him to "her " house; — a tumble-down, ancient mansion in Virginia, once the centre of life and splendour, now the abode of one white child and a faithful family of slaves. -The first interview between Hilary Warburton and this fairy princess is of the most amusing kind. He is not so much injured that he cannot enter into the spirit of it, and his gentle raillery when she , claims jurisdiction over "my valley" and the stalwart -negroes, who come and go at her beck and call. Further investigation reveals a very unsatisfactory state_ of things, an unfaithful guardian, an unchildlikelife, with no other education but that which the faithful "Mammy " can supply. Hilary institutes himself June's knight, and succeeds in finding relations and friends for her. He never loses interest in the quaint- child, whom he invariably speaks of as " the lady who owns me," ii\ reference to the claim which she advances as "the saviour of his life." The rest of the tale runs somewhat on the lines of Miss Alcock's charming stories, but is more modern in treatment. A wholesome, happy atmosphere pervades it. June's adventures are entertaining and often humorous, and her efforts to help those who have helped her lead to a very satisfactory denouement, in which the barren valley and the tumble-down old house assume a new value when the prince restores the talisman to the fairy princess.