LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3398, 30 April 1919, Page 53

LITERATURE.

BOOK NOTICES. "Mummery: A Tale of Three Idealists." By Gilbert Cannan. London, Melbourne, etc. i W. Collins and Bon. (Cloth, 65.) Like most of Mr Caiman's recent tales, "Mummery" touches on the stage and stage questions. The secondary title. "A Tale of Three Idealists," gives a hint as to the method of treatment. The stage is regarded from three different standpoints, all of them idealistic, and all of them different, in contrast with the materialistic views 01 the ordinary theatreJ[oer, the rank and file of the employees rom stars to supers, and even of the actor-manager himself. This' clash of opinions, feelings, even of principles, continues throughout the whole book, and imparts a curious feeling of unrest. The reader asks himself, "How will it end?' And in truth It does not end in the ordinary sense. It is merely cut off, leaving all its problems unsolved, and apparently insolvable. For although the crassest materialism wins the first round, the reader is well convinced that such a triumph is not final or probably long enduring. The first idealist, Charles Mann, wishes the stage to become the supreme exponent of art to the nation; he desires to see all old and conventional ideas abolished, especially as regards scenery and lighting, and the purest and most poetic Idealism installed in its stead. "It was Mann's mission to open the theatre to the musician, the poet, and the painter and to close it to the mere actor." Of course, such an innovation could never "pay. But here the Government and wealthy patrons would step in, and run the show from the highest motives of patriotism and art, to train the people in the love and appreciation o* pure beauty. To this end he wishes to have built "in London a theatre which shall be at once a school and a palace of art. There will be one theatre on the German model, and an outdoor- theatre on the plan of an arena in Sicily, of which I have sketches and plans. . . . The outside theatre could be protected from wind and rain if found necessary. There would be attached to the inside theatre an experimental stage: schoolrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, a dancing room, a music room, three lifts, and two staircases," etc. The second idealist proposes that nothing shall appear on the stage but the purest realism—nothing but h£rd fact and the most terrible and tragic experiences of life, which he considers to be the only real experiences. Truth is the keynote of his desires. He spends his life writinsr and destroying what he has written, but the strength of his will sustains him. He makes no effort to get his plays accepted, declaring that when the stage is purified and fit to receive them they will be forthcoming. The third idealist is a woman and an actress by choice and heredity. She ie young and beautiful, and her ideals are not so iconoclastic as those of the men. She merely wished that all theatrical persons should be judged on their merits; that no money or influence or secondary motives of any kind should be suffered to interfere between them and their chances of success. Thie girl has a charming! personality, and her adventures in the. London theatre make a delightful entertainment in Mr Caiman's best manner. She the heroine of more than one love affair, and the absolute innocence with which she carries off some most compromising situations cannot fail to amuse the appreciative reader. This is probably the most pleasing novel which this popular author has yet given to the public.

"The Making of an Englishman." By W. L. George. London: Constable and Co. (Cloth, 65.) This .brilliant story tells how Lucien Cadoresse, son of a shipper of Bordeaux conceives, when but a child, a passion foT all things English, and on the death of his father comes to London as clerk in the company of which his father was the French partner. It treats of his evergrowing love of all things English, and of his determination to make himself an Englishman of the beet type. The story is excellently done. It reveals in a thousand ways the inherent racial differences between the Latin and Saxon —the cool, undemonstrative Northerner' and the neurotic, emotional Southerner; the man of iron self-control and well-simulated indifference and the man who talks, boasts, "gives himself away" on every occasion. It is a vivid analysis of both French and English character, giving- the salient points of each without undue partiality, but with the fidelity and freshness of an unbiased observer. In the head of the English firm he sees his ideal, beholding in him " respect and self-respect, decencies, knightliness, and all kinds of lofty but'appealing fetishes" ; which raised a passionate hero-worship in his own nature, so that he " fought hard for the dignity of his own soul." He realises that " you can be a Frenchman x and just be a Frenchman, and be' a German and that is enough; but what is the good of just being an Eglishman unless you can be an English gentleman." In nothing does he find the difference of nationalities so great as in their estimate and treatment of women. He cannot understand the freedom enjoyed by English women and the respect with which they are treatd. To the ordinary Frenchman friendship between the sexes is unknown and impossible, all women being divided into two classes—"the women you marry and the women you don't," the latter being fair game at all times, and the former unapproachable until after the mystic words are said; the marriage being without love and the liaison without permanence. Cadoresse gets into a number of sentimental scrapes. When he thinks himself a fully-fledged Englishman he finds that he Is still looked on with suspicion as an alien and a foreigner j that the apparent indifference of his English

acquaintance masks a deep-rooted hostility- When he asks his typical Englishman for the hand of his daughter he is told: "I don't want Edith to marry a foreigner. I've gob nothing against foreigners, but they're different, they're — foreign. There is no harm in being a Frenchman, but they are different, from, us. They educate you differently—in a way, better. They cram you with all sorts of things we never hear of even in the 'Varsity. That's one of the things. You may not think it matters, but it does. That means that you do not grow up Uke us. You may be better men; but what does matter is that like must mate with like. You're too different; especially you don't play games. . . . We like a man to be handy with an oar, a racket, or a golf club. Football and cricket have j made us; and, again, I want you to see that we may be nothing much, but we ro different." In vain Cadoresse declares j that his one supreme desire is to make \ himself an Englishman, and that he has ; been striving to make himself one for years. Mr Lawton is immovable, and the J young man- is dismissed. For & time he foes completely to the dogs, gives up all, is fine ideals, plunges into the _ wildest dissipation, abuses all things English, and returns to Bordeaux in disgust. But he cannot settle. He 1 is no longer French in . heart and sympathy. He cannot go_ back to his own people or accept their point of view. He is a fish out of water. He returns to London, changed and sobered, I accepts a position in a new firm, makes a j brilliant success of it, and is finally rewarded with the hand of his lady love, | although her father still protests against ! " the difference," but as Edith is con-- j giderably over age she is allowed to please ; herself. The story is cleverly dedicated , "to the small French boy who in 1894 first called me John Bull and to the young Englishman who in 1902 first addressed me as Froggy," thus showing how in the author's own personality the ! two so different races have been fused to , the manifest advantage of each. J