LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3618, 17 July 1923, Page 61

LITERATURE.

BOOK NOTICES. f‘The Money-lender Intervenes: A Tale of Monte Carlo and the Turf.’ By Id. Noel Williams, author of “Tainted Gold,” “The Grasshampton Stable,” etc. Stanley Paul and Co. This is a story belonging to the same class as Nat Gould’s racing novels; its appeal is chiefly to those interested in the turf and versed in the technicalities of racing and gambling. But the general outline of the story is clear enough for it to be followed without such special knowledge; it is well and agreeably written, and will suit a large number of readers who like a straightforward story without problems or sentimentality or sordidness. The *tory opens in England, where most of the action takes place. The money-lender, who intervenes to good purpose in a l’acing event at the end of the story, is of aristocratic connections, and is known in general society and sporting circles as Mr John Rumpton. But he has acceded to the fortune and the business of his Jewish grandfather, and, under the name of Mowbray, lias an office near Hampstead, where from 10 till 5 he aits with Debrett, the Army List, and other works of reference at hand, prepared to relieve, at sufficiently high interest, the monetary embarrassments of nobility and gentry. To him comes Austin* Romain, a young officer in the Coldstream Guards, who seeks the means of staving off his creditors till he can accomplish the marriage with a plain but very wealthy heiress which is to free him from all difficulties and set him up comfortably for life. But lie knows that Mowbray Will not lend him the sum ne requires in the absence of any security, so he impersonates another officer, Lord Netherfield, and signs a promissory note in his name. T* or tune seems to smile on his sceme; but shortly before the date of the wedding Lord Netherfield is killed in the hunting field, and Romain is faced with exposure and ruin. Another officer, who is a friend of Lord Netherfield, agrees to gloss over the transaction on condition that Romain breaks off his engagement to the heiress, who is a cousin ’of the intervener, Arthur Hathaway. Romain, incensed at being thus baffled in his hopes of fortune, vows never to rest till he has smashed Hathaway, and some seven years later lie seems in the way of attaining his revenge. At Monte Carlo he then meets Arthur Hathaway, in company with his father, Sir George Hathaway. In this instance it is the father, not the son, whose sporting proclivities threaten to ruin the family. Sir George, desperately embarrassed, holies for relief in the success of his colt Volcano, of splendid racing powers hut of dangerous temper. The action returns to England, and Romain engineers things so that Lord Winterbourne, whose horses he manages, shall unexpectedly run a favourite for the Derby, claiming the jockey who alone was likely to ride Volcano to victory. The scheme succeeds ; Sir George loses al. that he has staked on Volcano, and is faced with ruin, while his son sees his inheritance lost and his hoped-for marriage no longer to be thought of. But at Monte Carlo Arthur Hathaway had rescued Jack Rumpton, son of the moneylender, from the gang of rogues, who, headed by Romain, had got him into a predicament. Jack learns something of the Hathayav situation, and urges his father to help them. The latter, grateful for Arthur Hathaway’s service to his son, is very ready to do so, and uses his knowledge of Remain’s past and recent doings to defeat his further schemes. Sir George's difficulties are tided over, Volcano wins successive racing events, and everything ends happily for father and son and the other engaging characters of the storv.

“Post Mortem: Essays, Historical and Medical.”v By C. MacLaurin, Lecturer in Clinical Surgery, University of Sydney. Jonathan Cape, London.

From one point of view this book may be characterised as a volume of unedit'ying and unsavoury gossip about a number of notable historical personages; but Dr MacLaurin claims to have written it in the interests of truth. The actions of historical persons were often the result of their state of health, but this fact lias been strangely neglected by historians and others. The doctor writes as a materialist and a cynic, willing to expose all the foulness and deformity that afflict poor humanity, but also charitably ready to assign a physical cause for all moral depravity. As many of the most repulsive stories reproduced are confessedly based on mere rumour or were the outcome -of malignant political or religious prejudice, the service to truth in retelling them is questionable. The first chapter on Anne Bolyn gives particulars in connection with her trial and current scandals about the King. all of which have been mentioned or referred to in the pages of Hallam and Froude. The other characters dissected in the light of medical knowledge are Jeanne d’Arc, the Empress Theodora (wife of the great Emperor Justinian, under whom the laws of the Empire were reduced to the Justinian code], the Emperor Charles V, his illegitimate son Don John of Austria, victor of Lepanto and one of the most conspicuous figures in the history of the period : Philip II of Spain, Samuel Pepys and his wife; Gibbon, the historian ; Marat, whom Charlotte Corday assassinated; Napoleon, and Benvenuto Cellini. In the chapter on Don John, Cervantes and his great creation, Don Quixote, are discussed. The account of Don Quixote's last days (says Dr MacLaurin) proclaims Cervantes an accurate observer who •would probably have made a good doctor in our dav. Jeanne d’Arc’s role in his-

tory is attributed to her being a subject of arrested physical development with “well-marked repression of the sex-coni-idax.'” RuS will y should a deviation from the normal in her case have produced unselfishnes, courage, and heroism rather than ignoble manifestations? Such alleged explanations really carry one no further. The author, however, preserves enough of the common sense which so often deserts specialists to see that the careers of Julius Caesar and Napoleon are sufficient contradiction to the theory thiat these two famous men were epileptics. Dr MacLaurin’s inveterate propensity to belittle and drag down may be harmlessly illustrated by quoting a few lines in connection with Charlotte Corday, and a portrait of her which to the doctor suggest “priggish neurosis” and “extreme conscientiousness and self-righteousness” : “Such a face might have been the face of a Christian martyr going to the lions—if any Christian martyrs were ever thrown to the lions, which some doubt.” —Two New N.S.W. Bookstall Novels.— 1. “Jumping Double: A Racing Story.” By Charles E. Sayers. Illustrations by Vernon Lorimer. Luke Matthews, a young Australian of wealth and a racing man, runs across in a Melbourne slum the notable jockey who used to ride his father’s horses, and who suddenly disappeared from the racing world. In fact, the young jockey, Ned Anderson, has been the victim of a gang of people connected with the turf who seek profit through the shadiest devices. The prime mover, who keeps in the background, is- one Noel Morris, a man of wealth and social repute, who uses scoundrels of lower grade as pawns in the games he plays. Luke Morris rescues his father’s former jockey from his dangerous associates, and engages him to ride his newly-purchased horse, Arrowshaft. from whom he expects great things. Morris and his instruments employ all their guile to prevent Arrowsbaft’s running to win, including a murderous assault on the, jockey Anderson. The narrative of their conspiracies and the racing events involved provides both suspense and excitement. There are two women in the story —one, Luke’s fiancee, is the daughter of a man to some extent involved in Morris’s schemes and victimised by him; the other is a girl who has been associate ot tile low-class rogues employed by Morris, and she and Anderson are in love with one another. In t-lie end villainy is unmasked, and the leading villains meet with appropriate retribution. Though dealing with the shadier side of turf transactions and with criminal characters, this, like meet of t-lie Bookstall novels, is a perfectly innocuous story. As in the first novel noticed, the respectable characters may not be actuated by the very highest ideals of life, but they are honourable in business and in love vice is made unattractive, and the atmosphere is wholesome. 2. “Children of the Sunlight ; Stories of Australian Circus Life.” By J. D. Fitzgerald. Illustrations of Percy Lindsay. The artist can scarcely be congratulated on the very flamboyant coloured coverpicture, in which the female recumbent figure looks as little like a fatally-injured and dying person as possible. The girl it represents has slipped during an equestrian circus performance, with fatal results. This is early in the story, and the girl who so tragically perishes is a leading performer in a big American circus, the very biggest thing that Australians had seen when it landed at Sydney some time last century. Bill Larrabee, the leading character of the narrative, was then young, and employed with a small circus travelling in the northern backblocks. He went to Sydney to see the wonderful show, and came to the rescue when the circus proprietor, owing to the absence of his expert in the erecting department, was at wit’s end to get his big tents erected in due time for the show. He remains with the circus and he and the beautiful equestrienne fall in love with one another. After her death he returns to the hush circus company, and after some years, when Bendolo, the proprietor, absconds from his creditors and vanishes, he becomes manager, and gradually improves the show and enlarges its enterprises. He acts in loco parentis to unfriended girl performers, but his early love remains his only one. The narrative of the wanderings of the circus is told pleasantly, with some humour, and the circus men and women appear as a good sort of folk, right-hearted and kindly. In the course of its travels the circus visits an undefined big island of the Pacific—probably New Zealand, where an officious friend “bills the show like Barnum,” with posters displaying elephants, giraffes, and all the animals it hasn’t got. Later in its history Larrabee takes it on a far Eastern tour, including Java and Hongkong, where a typhoon strikes it in the midst of a. performance. There are two love romances, one ending in the marriage of a girl of the troupe to a young man who has just come into an English fortune and title, the other, which runs its course in Batavia, involving the colour question, and being ended in a manner satisfactory to the white Australia principle. Mr Fitzgerald had given a pleasing picture of circus life, and this should be a very popular Bookstall number.